welcome back the senate confirming
anthony blinken as joe biden's new
secretary of state today but some are
questioning whether the biden
administration is ready and willing to
handle
pressure from china my next guest was
one of the first trump officials
sanctioned by the chinese communist
regime
joining me now in this exclusive
interview is former secretary of state
mike pompeo mr secretary it's great to
see you thanks very much for being here
tonight
maria thank you so much for having me on
the show it's great to be with you
so i know that you have spent time with
the
new team the biden administration
uh tony blinken do you believe that they
understand the threats that america
faces
effectively enough
you know maria i do i think they
understand it and i i wish them all the
best
this is an adversary that as you know is
determined
to create a global hegemon to impact
asia in ways that are detrimental to the
people the united states of america
i think they know that i think they see
that i am i hope that they do
well by understanding that appeasement
backing off
giving in those are not the things that
will lead the chinese communist party to
change its direction and change its
course of action rather
they need to see fierceness of
resistance a capacity to impose
costs on them and if they do that if
they get that piece right i'm confident
the american people will
not be rewarded by a relationship that
protects the american people in a way
that the chinese communist party's hope
hopes that we just simply won't do
well i just wonder if hunter biden's
relationships and partnerships with
chinese companies tied to the ccp
will get in the way i wonder if the
the reviewing of the ban on investing in
chinese companies that are tied to the
ccp
opens up some room for them to be softer
and then of course there are the
sanctions you were the first one to get
sanctioned by beijing communist party
after the election here's what senator
tom cotton told me this weekend
about those sanctions listen to this got
to get your take these sanctions against
former trump administration officials
are a
dangerous and insidious escalation of
china's effort to influence american
policy
i was sanctioned last summer and i kind
of laughed it off but these sanctions
apply not just to these individuals
they apply to any company or institution
that associates with them
now this is not designed so much to
punish trump administration officials
for taking a tough line on china
but to send a shot across the bow to
biden administration official
do you agree with that secretary is this
a message to the biden administration
what do you think of these sanctions
yeah look i think senator cotton largely
has that right i think this is something
they want
the current secretary of state the
national security adviser
all the counterparts of the people that
were sanctioned i want they want them to
be thinking about this
when they're doing their calculus about
decisions i hope hope is officials won't
take that into account i hope they'll do
the right thing
regardless of what it may mean for them
personally i don't have any doubt that
the chinese communist party was
trying to send a message but maria it's
important too to remember
this is part and parcel of the chinese
communist party's behavior this is
exactly the kind of thing they've done
for an awfully long time and for 50
years for 50 years
administration after administration
turned the other cheek allowed the
chinese communist party to run over
america
and our administration didn't do that we
responded and i think
i think the ccp is hoping that we will
have been anomaly
that we will been one administration for
four years to challenge them that
confronted them
that protected the american people and
so i think they wanted to impose
sanctions on those individuals who
executed our administration's policy and
implemented it in a way that will cause
anyone else not just the current
administration but those
who come behind people in business will
say
that there's a cost if you challenge
china we need to be prepared to walk
through that fire we need to be prepared
to get it right
and we have a duty as solemn duty as
does the next administration
to continue to tell the chinese
communist party we're not going to go
back to what we did the appeasement
policy of the last 40
50 years of engaging and allowing the
chinese communist party to take
advantage of the american
people and destroy millions of jobs here
in america
that's just unacceptable and the united
states won't tolerate it
well then why is joe biden banning the
words
china virus i mean in in all of the
things
in terms of this cancel culture now we
are not allowed to say
china virus even though it originated in
wuhan
you also have kurt campbell who is the
asia czar
at the nsc uh you you he was making
money in in china consulting so was tony
blinken
is this going to get in the way are they
going to say well wait a minute
china just told me if i push back on
them
they're going to take away my livelihood
i mean these are real stories hunter
biden and his ties to chinese companies
tied to the military
does this get in the way of policy
these chinese sanctions maria these
chinese threats
they are real stories more importantly
they are real facts
real facts that i think the american
people need to know about come to
understand how it might impact
american foreign policy as it relates to
china but make no mistake i hadn't i
hadn't seen this
this banning of the term chinese virus
i've called it the wuhan virus
almost since its inception it it began
at wuhan it's a
it is in fact a virus that came from
that place we know that the chinese
communist party covered that up we know
that they
disappeared doctors and journalists who
wanted to write about it were told they
couldn't
we know that i think it's still to this
date the world health organization
hasn't been able to see
the most important elements of where
this virus may have begun
these are things the state department
was talking about while i was a
secretary of state we put out just in my
last couple of weeks a few key pieces of
information about some doctors who
contracted something that looked like
were symptomatic of
something that seemed like this virus
back in november of 2019
these are important things the american
people need to know them because they
matter
they matter for health for our safety
for economic prosperity
and for our security and i hope and i'm
counting on this next administration to
do what the american people
demand of them and continue to confront
the chinese communist party
well i'm glad that you put that
information out you're right we learned
because of you
and because of your administration that
doctors scientists were getting sick in
october and november of 2019
shouldn't president biden acknowledge
china's role in the coronavirus
we i mean i don't know have you heard
him say anything
about the about the communist party's
role in the coronavirus
and should the administration say
something about these sanctions
should they come out and say you will
not sanction
a former secretary of state
i hope they will i hope they'll take
sanctions against former officials the
same seriousness we took
actions that other governments tried to
take against ours
i remember when michael mcfaul was uh
attacked by the russians we came out and
defended him it's the right thing to do
more importantly with respect to the
virus
look this virus has now destroyed
thousands and thousands and thousands of
lives
economic toll that is unequaled and
awfully long time
and it began in a place of wuhan china
and the chinese communist party did
everything it could
to give itself the time to respond to it
on its own terms and it didn't do
what it was supposed to do its duty to
the world to let us know that this
indeed had human to human transmission
and that it had begun this threat had
begun that was
enormously costly to the american people
and those are facts so yes i hope this
administration and
everyone in the world will acknowledge
where it began and how the chinese
communist party misbehaved
and we'll make sure that two things one
that there's a cost associated with that
and second
that we put in place processes it's look
it's why we left the world health
organization
it was a failed political institution we
have to put in place processes to make
sure something like this can
never emanate from china again
joe biden just is getting the united
states back in the world health
organization
yes i i think that's a mistake president
trump thought that was a mistake we we
believed it was unreformable it had
become
corrupt and political and had cow towed
to the chinese communist party at the
most
critical moment at the most critical
moment of the
global health challenge we didn't think
it was fixable
we were working our best to make sure
that there was a system that it could
actually deliver
a global health solution that actually
helped
health all around the world we think the
who has no
opportunity to do that and i hope i'm
wrong i hope it turns out that the
who can fix this but i we couldn't see a
path to making that happen
well they obviously went along with the
beijing line would not allow the cdc in
there
to investigate the origins of the kurta
virus back in march
you have called out china for crimes
against humanity and genocide
crimes against humanity obviously was
used to prosecute the nazis
so the question is will the biden
administration do anything about it
tony blinken did agree with your
assessment secretary
when you did call out the genocide uh
and what's happening with the uyghurs
right now
i was i was very pleased to see that the
uh
statement that i'd made the
determination that i had made about this
genocide
uh was concurrent with by secretary
blinken i think that's fantastic
it's true these are real facts and these
are real people being truly
impacted by some things we haven't seen
since the 1930s the
atrocities that have taken place there
and the actions the
sterilizations the forced abortions that
are continuing to take place there
are of historic proportion and the world
not just the united states but the whole
world
needs to unite and put costs on the
chinese communist party
such that they change and stop these
atrocities that are taking place there
in xinjiang china i want to i want to
move on to the middle east and
the great work you did in terms of the
abraham accords and the uh
the normalization with israel but before
i get there taiwan
it feels like beijing is testing this
administration
they are testing uh them with taiwan
uh obviously 12 aircrafts on saturday 15
on sunday
flying fighters and bombers into
taiwan's international
zone that's one thing another test
of these sanctions we talked about and
then of course there's there's jack ma
disappearing for two months a real
message to the american companies
going over there getting ready to build
and and grow their businesses
uh those financial services companies
that that got uh
that got licenses to do so do you expect
beijing to try to take over taiwan
the way it has moved into hong kong the
way it has acquired tibet
well i don't think there's any doubt
what the ultimate ambition of gender
secretary xi xinping
is i also know the promise that they've
made they've made a promise that that
would not be how they would behave
and i have every belief that they will
challenge this administration to see if
they can find
the soft underbelly to see if they can
find a path forward
to continue to apply pressure to the
taiwanese people i hope this
administration
will do what a number of administrations
have done i think ours
did it in a way that was unique but to
make clear the expectation that the
chinese communist party would live up to
its commitments in the same way
that we would live up to our commitments
that we made with respect to taiwan
it's the right thing for the american
people it's how you put america first
and it's the thing that the chinese
communist party will understand the most
and you would think that the rest of the
world understands this i mean you
led the rest of the world in this in
in terms of communicating and
understanding the threat 12 countries at
this point have pulled out of the china
belt and road initiative 30 countries
have banned huawei
nice work secretary by getting the
allies uh
in the corner uh with the united states
let me move on to the middle east the
abraham accords and the normalization of
relations with israel
is there another country poised to do
that
how do you continue that knowing that
the the lead negotiator on the iran
nuclear deal wendy sherman
is going to be the number two in the
biden state department jake sullivan
tony blinken all participated in the
iran deal
it looks like joe biden wants to get the
united states back into the iran deal
they say they want to have different
different terms but will they push for
those terms when
iran balks at them
maria for the protection of the american
people indeed stability and peace in the
middle east
i hope that they will there were two
things that set the conditions for
the prosperity and stability we created
in the middle east
the first was the president's decisions
with respect to israel whether it was
the golan heights or recognizing
jerusalem as the rightful capital of the
jewish homeland
those things made clear that we weren't
going to allow the conflict between
israel and the palestinians to stand in
the way
of peace and prosperity the second thing
we did was to withdraw from the jcpoa
and put
enormous pressure on the regime in iran
those two things allowed the countries
that are impacted most by iran
saudi arabia bahrain the united arab
emirates kuwait all
oman all the nations there in the middle
east that live with iran as a neighbor
appreciated the work that we did and so
many of them have joined the abraham
accords others have begun to
ease restrictions in doing business with
israel i think this trend will continue
but it will require those two central
underpinnings those two understandings
about
who the real bad guy is there in the
middle east the nation that is
fomenting the terror fomenting the
instability that recognition is
central to permitting these countries to
continue to expand
their relationship with israel and to
expanding peace and prosperity
all throughout that region you know
general jack keane
said to me recently that we are
outgunned
some of these threats for example china
china has more navy ships than we do
more long-range missiles
what are the plans in terms of making
sure
that our military readiness
is is is at the right point uh and ready
for these threats
do you think that the pla is winning
in terms of its readiness in terms of
its military what needs to be done now
with regard to the military
in the face of all of this
general keynes right to be concerned
about it and president trump put us back
on the right trajectory
you remember this for uh for an awfully
long time for the previous eight years
before the trump administration
we had continued to deny the department
of defense the resources that they were
asking for
to do precisely this second we also
actually delivered in making sure
everyone understood including the
department of defense that the
threat was from this great power in
china and while we had to continue to
perform our counterterrorism
mission we needed to make sure we
reoriented our focus and so we started
we got everything in the right place we
put the building blocks in place
so that we would continue to be the most
superior military in the world capable
of defeating
any military that was needed whether
that was cyber threats or threats to
satellites
or more conventional threats that we
would have the capacity to do that
i'm confident that we still can but make
no mistake about it
the chinese communist party and its
military the people's liberation army
is doing its utmost to be a rival to the
united states military
well what what about russia g7 ministers
concerned with jailing of russian
protesters
the biden administration says it wants a
new arms control agreement with russia
we all know that russia cheats is this
about
to vladimir putin
well we worked hard to try and get an
arms agreement with the russians too
and frankly got close we got the
russians to agree to freeze their
nuclear weapons systems
for the first time we ultimately
couldn't get that done because we
couldn't get them to permit us
to verify that commitment in a way that
would have been important i hope the
next administration will
continue to push in this direction if if
we can reduce nuclear risk in the world
that is
certainly a good thing uh but make no
mistake about it we were as tough on
russia
as any administration we sanctioned
dozens and dozens and dozens of
officials
we worked hard to make sure that we
tried to convince putin that he had to
behave in a way that was consistent with
global standards we didn't always
succeed at that
but there was no doubt that the united
states stood ready to protect the
american people from that threat as well
as the threat
from the chinese communist party
secretary
final final question here what are your
plans
a lot of trump supporters feel very good
about the way you handled yourself you
were the last one out the door
you stuck with president trump until the
end will you run in 2024
goodness maria it's a long way off i'm
still trying to figure out how to get
settled and
move on to the next thing the work that
we did
the mission that we were on was
important i believe that with all my
heart we did a good turn for the
american people to protect them and
create the conditions for their
prosperity by putting america first
i hope to continue to be a part of that
i don't know precisely where
what my role will be in that but i i'm
committed to continuing that effort
well that is not a no and i will take it
secretary it is good to see you tonight
thanks very much
thank you maria so we'll see you soon