Did Nancy Pelosi’s Taiwan Trip Set America On Course For Major Conflict? | Over The Target

Since Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan, we've seen a major uptick in the hostilities from the Chinese Communist Party towards Taiwan. We've seen missiles very likely flying over Taiwan airspace. There was a man arrested recently in China. They arrested a Taiwanese man in the name of anti-independence. They deliberately broadcast the handcuffing of this man as an act of intimidation. So many observers are saying that tensions have been heightened by Pelosi's visit. Yeah, that's right. The way that a lot of the press is describing it across the world is that Nancy Pelosi's visit has put Taiwan in the middle of an international conflict. However, I think there's another international power that's really in Beijing's crosshairs right now. Let's dig into some details. I'm Brendan Falun. And I'm Lee Smith. And we're Over the Target. The way this has been cast by the press, it seems like it's something radical, like something a little crazy that she's done, deciding to touch down in Taiwan. But that isn't entirely the case, because there is a bit of a background there. And Pelosi, in the past at least, has been active on the human rights front in terms of the things that China has been doing. Yeah, that's exactly right. And a lot of people have missed this. And it's hard not to because of Pelosi's reputation of late. But closer to the beginning of her career, for instance, in 1991, she went to Tiananmen Square two years after the massacre there, and she protested. She was waving a banner and she was roughed up by, you know, by CCP authorities in 91. And in 92, she helped push legislation, finally unsuccessful legislation, but it was to tie China's trade status with the United States to human rights. Of course, both the George H.W. Bush administration and then the Bill Clinton administration ignored that entirely. But Pelosi's background in the beginning, she seems to have been very good fighting or wanting to push back against the Chinese Communist Party. And that appears to have changed around 2008, the time of the Beijing Olympics, whereas Peter Schweitzer reports in his book Red Handed, the Pelosi family, in particular, her husband, Paul Pelosi, appears to have struck on some business deals that were tied to the CCP. But the background is that. So we don't quite know yet why Nancy Pelosi went to Taiwan, if it's some sort of idea to cap off her career as something of a freedom fighter or whatever it was. It's just important to have that background on who Pelosi is regarding China. Speaker Pelosi seems to have a very interesting and somewhat mixed background there in her relations, the way that she's been positioning herself in terms of China. What's happened recently? There's a lot of noise about this in the media, and there's all kinds of paranoia and fears that this talks about how this could potentially spark a war with China. Do you think it's really such a deviation from the norm, what Pelosi's done and also the kind of the messaging we're hearing from the White House at this point? I mean, she is the third highest ranking official in the United States government, as Speaker of the House. So people are making a big deal about that, that this somehow confers some sort of recognition on Taiwan that wasn't there before. And then we heard John Kirby, Pentagon spokesman, saying, we do not support Taiwanese independence. Well, for better or worse, this has basically been the mainstream American position since Nixon went to China in 1972. Henry Kissinger, Nixon's then number one foreign policy advisor, in secret meetings with Joanne Lai, was saying, yeah, we think it was a mistake to support Taiwan previously, and we're not going to support Taiwanese independence now. So again, for better or worse, this has been going on for about half a century. The kind of noise that's being made now that we're on the verge, the precipice of war, and we see different news segments from the right and the left, people are up in arms about this, whether it's the New York Times or Fox News, people are looking at the future of conflict with China. I think that's overstated. And I think that one of the ways that we can tell this is normally the different people who are up in arms when things really are tense with the Chinese Communist Party, they usually stick their heads up and they say, this is very bad, we have to walk this back. There's a whole bunch of examples that you and I can talk about, including in 2001, April 2001, when the Chinese brought down a US spy plane, right? This wasn't an accident. Chinese jet flew directly at the US spy plane, brought it down over Hainan Island. This was early on in the George W. Bush administration. And of course, the regular people like Henry Kissinger and others stepped forward to protect the US-China relationship. We're not seeing an awful lot of that now, which I think should tell us that a lot is being made out of this. What you're saying there, Lee, it reminds me of just how much money always factors into the exchanges between these two countries and the relationships between the business elites in America, their connection with their reciprocals, their counterparts in China, how this is often, if not always, the driver behind what happens between these two countries. Yeah, that's an excellent point, Brendan. That's exactly right. I mean, everyone knows, we've been following it, everyone who's following the news knows about the Biden families, first family's ties with the CCP, right? Hunter Biden and Joe Biden and 10% for the big guy. But it's much bigger than that, right? It's not just the first family and it's not just the Biden administration, right? If we're looking at the donor base for the Democratic Party, you look at Wall Street, big tech, Hollywood, and the academy, this is where the Democratic Party draws most of its money when it comes to campaign season. So can you imagine what the different donors are saying to the president and the president's office, like, are you crazy? War with China? This is nuts. Our cash flow will be cut off and you won't be able to run a political campaign for decades to come. If we make war with China, this is childish. There are billions, if not trillions of dollars at stake here. So that's the other thing that tells us that much ado is being made of this, right? Because otherwise we'd be hearing tremendous amounts of noise from people across the board, especially Wall Street. We'd be seeing stuff on CNBC. We'd be seeing stuff in the Wall Street Journal all the time. Stephen Schwarzman or Ray Dalio or Goldman Sachs is scared that the United States and China will go to war. There's so much money that comes from Wall Street itself. If the figures on Wall Street were deeply concerned about conflict between the United States and China over Taiwan, we'd be seeing a lot more noise coming out of the business press. And right now it hasn't really reached that level. This is very interestingly, the people who we'd expect, if there was a real problem here, to be making noise, don't seem to be making a noise. And the idea that money is kind of filtered from the Chinese Communist Party through these institutions in the U.S., like Hollywood, like big tech, like academia, and then makes its way to the Democratic Party, I think this explains why we see a lot of actions in American politics that seem to go in China's favor. Not just in America, though, are we seeing a lot of noise. Also in China, there seems to be a fair amount of theatrics around what's happened. One interesting thing is that the messaging from China is that they're backing away from talking to the U.S. about climate change. They're not going to come to the party and discuss climate change with the U.S. They're not going to talk about the illegal drug problem. The fact is that China hasn't done anything about climate change in all these years. It's one of the largest consumers of carbon. On the illegal drugs front, it's believed that most, if not all, of the fentanyl that's coming through the southern border, that's responsible for killing tens of thousands of Americans each year, is coming from China. So it's funny that they'd be saying that they're backing away from these agreements or having meetings with the U.S. when they probably wouldn't have done anything about these things anyway. Yeah, they haven't done anything about it. But of course, the U.S. makes a big deal without doing anything about it. They're worried about climate change, and they forced this down the throat of Americans. But of course, the world's biggest problem is the People's Republic of China, and they're not doing anything about it. So now China's just rubbing it in their face saying, we're not going to even talk to you. We're not even going to give you a front for this, and the same with fentanyl. As you say, exactly. This is China who is behind this. It's the Chinese who are taking advantage of it, and it's not just with fentanyl, and it's not just with climate change. Many, many different items across the board. They see the United States hurting itself, and the Chinese are more than willing to profit from this. The Chinese Communist Party is more than willing to profit from this. When Americans decide to take a gun and hold it to their own head, the Chinese are more than happy to provide bullets and then charge for them. And that's one of the things we see with climate change. I think this could really be quite a startling realization for many Americans. I think many people here are really concerned about climate change, and this is something we need to do for future generations. We need to save the planet. And the idea of the whole climate change agenda is actually being used by China, being exploited by China, to potentially weaken this country. I think this would shock many people if they understood the implications of what's happening with this. If you're watching us on YouTube, you can find the full episode on Epoch TV, where we don't face censorship or cancellation for discussing sensitive content. Follow us on Epoch TV, where you'll find not only Over the Target, but all your favorite Epoch TV shows, like The Wide Angle. That's right. You can check me out on The Wide Angle.