This week, Rep. Gallagher joined John Roberts on America Reports and Martha MacCallum on The Story to discuss the Biden administration’s attempts to discourage Speaker Pelosi from visiting Taiwan, and why Speaker Pelosi must continue on with her trip.
Click HERE to watch Rep. Gallagher’s interview with John Roberts, click HERE to watch Rep. Gallagher’s interview with Martha MacCallum, or read highlights of the conversations below.
On the CCP’s intimidation tactics:
“The Chinese Communist Party is trying to intimidate us. They’re trying to coerce us. And remarkably, it seems the Biden administration and Biden’s Pentagon is helping them do that by proactively backing down and telling Speaker Pelosi not to go. It raises an important question: If we’re too afraid to allow Congressional delegations to go to Taiwan, as the Taiwan Travel act explicitly calls for, how are we ever going to expedite arm sales to Taiwan? For all this worry about when will Xi Jinping start an invasion of Taiwan, I would submit to you that this is part of the invasion plan. In some meaningful respect, it’s already begun by trying to coerce us, by trying to get us to be afraid and lose our will to defend Taiwan.”
On Biden allowing fear to dictate his policies:
“What we’ve seen in crisis after crisis with this administration is that it’s the fear of provoking our enemies that governs their actions. Remember, this was a lot of the rhetoric leading up to the invasion of Ukraine when the Biden administration preemptively pulled our forces on the ground. It was all because they were afraid of provoking Putin. And similarly here, with respect to China and Taiwan, the Biden administration is so afraid of their own shadow and afraid of the People’s Liberation Army, that they’re unwilling to do the most basic things to maintain relationships between our country and Taiwan, as is called for by law in the Taiwan Travel Act…So the Biden administration needs to escape this fear trap that is governing all of their foreign policy decisions.”
On sending a bipartisan message of strength to the CCP:
“In my work on the House Armed Services Committee, I’ve worked with my Democratic colleagues to expedite our purchase of long-range fires and chips. In order to defend Taiwan, we passed numerous provisions in this defense bill that were geared toward clarifying and strengthening our commitment to Taiwan. And I would even note, though I disagree with Nancy Pelosi on almost everything, and I will shed no tears when she is no longer Speaker of the House, when it comes to this issue, she does have a long track record — going back to Tiananmen Square — of being willing to criticize the Chinese Communist Party. I would urge her to continue to reach out to folks on my side of the aisle and invite them on the congressional trip. I think we have a rare opportunity to send a bipartisan message of strength, as opposed to backing down, projecting weakness, and that weakness inviting further aggression by the Chinese Communist Party.”
