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Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) joined Mornings with Maria to discuss China, the success of Operation Warp Speed, unidentified aerial phenomena, and more. See below for highlights and watch the interview here.
On U.S. corporations’ relationship with the Chinese Communist Party and its effects on U.S.-China policy:
“What is going on is that there are a lot of people on Wall Street that stand to make a lot of money on investments they’ve made in these companies… and the Chinese government is leaning on them. And, yes, Wall Street and the financial class gave a lot more money to Democrats than Republicans in the last cycle and will do so again in the next cycle, and so they will lean on the White House and say, ‘We can’t do this. It’s bad for our business, it’s bad for America.’ This is good old-fashioned lobbying. The difference is, of course, it’s an influence lobby that the Chinese have figured out how to influence our system. This is typical and what’s been going on in this country for 20 years. It didn’t happen for the last four, but it’s happening again and it’s bad for America. American investors and American investment funds are helping to finance and grow Chinese companies linked to the Chinese military so they can grow in their capabilities to one day defeat us in a war.”
On efforts to prevent American investments from being used to fund Chinese military companies:
“There [are] about three or four different bills out there that deal with this issue in different ways, and not only do I support them, I wrote two or three of them — and so I definitely want to see that as part of anything we do now in this China bill.
“This has to be dealt with. People don’t realize it, but the Chinese figured out a long time ago [that] there are American corporations and American investors, and what they want to do is make money, they want to make a profit. And they don’t really care if long-term it’s damaging for America. Or maybe they do care, but they’ve convinced themselves to overlook it. And what happens is you now see all these dollars flowing, including the money from federal government retirees. Basically the equivalent of a 401k for federal employees — including members of Congress — is investing in companies that are controlled by Chinese military — the companies that are helping the Chinese build the weapons that are designed to defeat America in a war one day and kill Americans.”
On Nancy Pelosi’s call for a ‘diplomatic’ boycott to the 2022 Beijing Olympics:
“I don’t know what [Nancy Pelosi] meant by that. It doesn’t make any sense to me really. Again, at the end of the day, the Olympics, it’s an important thing and it could be a way to send a message.
“But in the long term, whether or not the Chinese Olympics goes on with or without Americans or Western countries isn’t going to change the fact that they’re building missiles that are designed to destroy our aircraft carriers. It isn’t going to change the fact that we buy 80-something percent of our medicines made from China. They could cut us off and really hurt us. It doesn’t change the fact that 80-something percent of the rare-earth metals that we need for advanced technology and weaponry has to come from China because we let them take over this industry.
“These are the things that are going to matter a hundred years from now, fifty years from now, ten, and five years from now. Those are the things I want to focus more on. Not that the other things are meaningless, but this is what matters. The balance of power in the world is being decided by the decisions that we decide to make now. We have a lot of people focused on the trivial and not willing to do what needs to be done. We’re headed down a road of humiliation and decline if we don’t deal with this.”
On America’s dependence on China for pharmaceutical ingredients:
“We made changes to our tax law 20 years ago that incentivized these companies to leave. It’s cheaper to make it in China, it’s cheaper. So the most efficient outcome, the market outcome, is ‘let’s make it in the cheapest place.’
“The problem is sometimes the market outcome, and I’m as capitalist as they come, but sometimes the market outcome is not good for America or not good for Americans. In those instances where the market outcome, as efficient as it may be, is bad for the country, we have an obligation to step in and correct it.
“The only way we will ever be able to produce our own rare-earth minerals is if the government partners with the private sector to create the demand and the capacity. The same is true for pharmaceuticals. We have to say, ‘It is a national priority to do this and to make it happen; we are going to partner with the private sector to incentivize it to make it happen.’
“That’s what Operation Warp Speed was. The market would have eventually given us a vaccine in 3 or 4 years. We needed it right away. So the Trump Administration stepped forward, they partnered with the private sector, and six, seven months later, we had two vaccines and an antibody treatment that saved millions of lives.”
On the Biden Administration’s posture toward China:
“I can tell you at the end of the day that I also believe that his Administration is influenced by some of these people who come from this old consensus that used to exist up here. That old consensus that it doesn’t matter if China cheats and steals as long as we’re making money.
“There’s people in our own party frankly, in my own party, that are very fundamentalist when it comes to the economy, and their view is if it’s good for the economy, if it’s good for the stock market, if it’s good for investors, that is something we should be for. Generally yeah, we should, except if it’s bad for America or bad for Americans. I think those people have a lot of influence in American politics. They put a lot of money in super PACs, a lot of money in campaigns.
“We have to stop pretending that because someone is the CEO of a major corporation, they are somehow speaking on behalf of the American people, the American economy. They are speaking on behalf of their company and their short-term interests most of the time.”
On recent reports of Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (UAP) sightings:
“I don’t know, we don’t know, and that’s the problem. I am going off what our military men and their radars and their eyesight is telling them. There are multiple highly trained, highly competent people. There is stuff flying in our airspace. We don’t know what it is. We need to find out. That’s my position on it.
“I think we will find out more [in June]. I am not sure that they will have all the answers. I hope they do. Maybe there is a simple explanation for all of this. I think at least we’re starting to answer the question. For years no one was even answering the question because of stigma about little green men.”