This afternoon, Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) joined The Story with Martha MacCallum to discuss President Biden’s meeting with General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jingping, and the urgent need to arm Taiwan against growing CCP aggression.
Watch the full interview HERE or read highlights of the conversation below.
On Biden’s China policy:
“[Their meeting] is a big missed opportunity to press Xi publicly on his intentions with respect to Taiwan, as well as to get [China] to commit to full transparency when it comes to a Coronavirus origins investigation…so that we can prevent a future pandemic. I can’t help but think that the Biden administration remains committed to this incoherent approach of, on the one hand, cooperating with the Chinese Communist Party when it comes to climate change and stability on the Korean Peninsula. But on the other hand, we’re going to compete very aggressively. You can’t segment off different parts of our relationship like that. It lulls us into a false sense of security, particularly at a moment when Xi Jinping is preparing his populace for war. If you read anything he’s said in recent weeks, particularly as he secured a third term, I fear that a confrontation over Taiwan is increasingly likely not just within the next five years, but perhaps within the next two years.”
On the need to arm Taiwan:
“The lesson of Ukraine is that you need to arm your partners and allies before the shooting starts. It gives you your best chance of actually avoiding war in the first place. We need to take advantage of the fact that we’re no longer bound by the INF Treaty which limited the…deployment of key weapon systems, to really start to complicate things for the Chinese military. It starts on Taiwan itself. We have $14 billion worth of backlogged Foreign Military Sales (FMS) items that have been approved but not delivered. We need to clear that backlog as soon as possible. We need to rebuild our defense industrial base for key munition systems. There are a lot of things we can do, but we need to get to work now with a sense of urgency.”
On the dangers of TikTok:
“The Chinese Communist Party controls ByteDance, which owns TikTok. So by extension, the Chinese Communist Party is controlling the algorithms that are addicting all your children and sucking up your data, and they can use it to track your location. It is a threat to American national security.”
