Bill on Secure Freedom Radio 12/14/21

Frank Gaffney (00:00):

We’re back. And as is often the case about this time each week, we have the chance of visiting with Bill Walton. He is a master of the universe. Now recovering, I should say, from his time in Wall Street, where he was very successful there with Allied Capital Corporation. He is, these days, most notably the prime mover behind a terrific podcast television program called the Bill Walton Show. And what Bill is doing with that program, I think is really quite extraordinary in terms of his interviews with thought leaders, entrepreneurs, business tycoons, and other influencers, providing deep insights into money, culture, and politics. He does this under the rubric of the Resolute Protector Foundation, which is producing such content and more. Bill, you are always welcome here, but particularly as I understand, you’ve got some fresh insights for us on what is going on with the romance between your former colleagues on Wall Street and communist China that is enabling so much of the threat to us.

Frank Gaffney (01:15):

Talk a little bit about this chap Ray Dalio and his machinations to, well, obviously stay in the good graces of the Chinese Communist Party, but sort of avoid some of the appropriate criticism that is received for what seems to be his slavish devotion to doing business with the CCP.

Bill Walton (01:40):

Well, Frank, as we’ve talked about, these global hedge fund managers seem to see themselves as hovering above and superior to mere nation states. And Ray Dalio runs one of the largest hedge funds in the world, invested in about 42 countries. And his view China or any other country is simply that if he can go in and make some money, he doesn’t really care too much about the rest of the political landscape. And last week, maybe it was week before last, he was on CNBC and was asked about how he felt about doing business in China with their terrible human rights record, what they’re doing with the Uyghur forced organ donations and on and on. And he said, well, that’s just the way China operates. And then he was asked about what about the disappearance of certain people who are protesting or not aligned with the Chinese Communist Party. And he said, well, China’s got a long reputation of being authoritarian. And when people disappear, they’re just acting like stern parents. Well, that was not well received.

Bill Walton (03:05):

And he came out last week, again appearing, saying he didn’t mean to convey that human rights weren’t important. I was just tempted to explain what the Chinese told me about how they did things. And the question you’ve got to ask yourself is, why are we putting our money with these people if they float above really basic human concerns and why are they supporting what’s going on in China?

Frank Gaffney (03:36):

They’re not alone, of course. We have, in addition to the financial sector, hedge fund types, lots of other people, the guys, of course, putting money into index funds and exchange traded funds, mutual funds, pension plans, and so on as sources for funding the sorts of things you about Bill and it’s, of course, not just the Chinese Communist Party’s oppression of its own people that’s being underwritten in this fashion. It is their ability and obvious intent to threaten people elsewhere around the world, including ours. And the thing that is so astounding about this is as you euphemistically put it, it’s not just that they’re rising above the rest of the political landscape. They are betraying our country by so doing, it seems to me.

Frank Gaffney (04:31):

And one of the things that we’re hopeful to facilitate with conversations like this among other things, including a Mad As Hell campaign, which I encourage people to look into at madashell.org, to get those whose money is being invested in this fashion to say no, not with our money any longer. Your thoughts on how important that is given the kinds of damage that you’re talking about being on with our money.

Bill Walton (05:02):

Well, for those of us that care about liberty and care about the basic limited constitutional government we have in the United States and the great freedoms we’ve historically enjoyed, although even in the United States, we’re seeing those freedoms eroded, and in some cases erased in the last several years. We’re up against some stubborn realities. I think I mentioned to you, the Chinese represents what the investment community sees as almost a $70 trillion investment pool of consumer savings that they would love to be part of investing. The Chinese Communist Party is welcoming US firms in because they want help in innovating an incredibly primitive capital market there.

Bill Walton (05:51):

We’re also up against the stubborn reality of Chinese, the second largest consumer market in the world after the United States, and is the largest market for consumer luxury goods in the world. And that’s a function of the fact that the Chinese standard of living has risen dramatically in the last 20, 25 years. And when we think about dealing with the Chinese Communist Party and its human rights violations. A lot of the ordinary Chinese are pretty happy with what’s been happening in China so it’s hard for us to get traction. And then you see a report this week that Apple essentially bribed the Chinese Communist Party with $275 million to invest in various initiatives that Beijing was pushing and promised to use more components from Chinese suppliers. And it’s going to sign deals with Chinese software firms, collaborating technology with Chinese universities, and it’s not alone. I mean, we’ve got Nike, Coca-Cola, they’re all lobbying Congress to not pass a bill that would oppose the use of forced labor of Uyghurs in China.

Bill Walton (07:10):

And you don’t think about this, but the province that the Uyghurs are being prosecuted, in Xinjiang, is a huge natural gas producer and consequently great for the resins that produce plastics and poly silicon, which is used in Apple products or produced there using forced labor provided by the Uyghurs. The interrelationships are stunning. And so I think our job, Frank, and we’re doing it right now is to just make people aware of how we’re being sold out by these companies. Apple’s got a $3 trillion market cap, it’s the most valuable company in the world. And when you look at those cute little stores with the nice kids in there, you ought to realize that that’s really good out a very sinister underpinning.

Frank Gaffney (08:02):

And this brings me to the genocide games because there are, in addition to Apple and Nike, a number of other American companies, Airbnb comes to mind, that are pouring very substantial sums into the so-called Winter Olympics in Beijing, in February. And Bill, what we are on notice about is that, well, history has a very powerful precedent for what happens when you see the so-called international community ignoring the nature of the regime that it entrusts to host Olympic games only to discover that the regime interprets that trust as legitimization and a flashing green light for the government in question to behave, not only aggressively, but murderously so on an epic scale in the case of the previous example of the Berlin Olympic games in 1936.

Bill Walton (09:08):

And Frank, let’s look at what the Nazis were doing. The Nazis put Jews and other Eastern Europeans in concentration camps. And what are some of the things they did? They experimented on live human beings for medical purposes, or just to be outright evil. And fast forward to where we are today in China, they have not ended. In fact, their steps seem to be stepping up the practice of forced organ harvesting. And it’s all part of, well, I don’t know, if it’s all part of, but it’s interrelated with their crackdown on Falun Gong, which is really just sounds like a very lovely kind of spiritual religion, which gained popularity, had almost a hundred billion adherence in China in 1999. Since then, they’ve been cracking down and if you’re a believer in Falun Gong, you’re also a target for forced organ harvesting. And so when you go [crosstalk 00:10:11]

Frank Gaffney (10:11):

This brings us back, Bill, to our own responsibility, if I could just interject this, because Americans, medical practitioners and individual patients are part of the enabling of this organ harvesting operation becoming a cash crop, if I could use that expression for this murderous Chinese Communist Party regime. People are going over there, they’re getting livers, they’re getting hearts, they’re getting other organs, kidneys on very short order compared to what frequently is entailed if you need one and are relying on the US system or European ones to provide you with those organs. So this is very much an example of a practice that is being enabled, being underwritten, being rewarded, made more profitable by the west. Is it not?

Bill Walton (11:06):

Well, if we want to send a signal to the world that we care about freedom, and we care about human rights, we ought not to be sending anyone into China to compete in Olympic games, which legitimizes their regime. Just look what the Chinese, the Party does to its own people. Beijing, as we know, has terrible smog because China provides most of its electricity from coal-fired power plants. And we’ve talked about it. They’re building one on average a week still today, and they’re shutting them down in the regions around Beijing. Why, because they don’t want the smoke from the plants to cloud the air in Beijing to ruin their photo op that they hope to get when the TV cameras come over to cover the Olympics. But they’re willing to let their ordinary Chinese suffer through a very cold winter in Beijing. So they don’t care about us and they don’t care about their own people.

Frank Gaffney (12:08):

We are, it seems, at the cusp of having this so-called Build Back Better, huge spending bill, approved by the House of Representatives last week, and now awaiting Senate action, possibly favorable action. Tell us what’s going on on that front, Bill. And is there any hope that this, well, it can only be fuel on the fire of inflation as well as perhaps the end of our constitution and free market capitalist system. If the Build Back Better types have their way. Will they succeed in getting this through the Senate? Do you think?

Bill Walton (12:48):

Well, the egregious thing about what the Biden administration’s doing and what Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are doing on the Hill is that they’re trying to pass the most radical social engineering, big government socialist program in history, and they’re doing it with razor thread margins. I think Nancy’s got about a four or five vote margin in the House. And in the Senate, it’s a 50-50 number. And the tied vote is our vice president. And we all know about her, this Kamala Harris. So that means that if they need every single Democrat Senator to vote for this bill, and Joe Manchin, which has made a career out of being the swing vote on things like this has been hanging in the balance. And just this week at the urging of the Republicans, the Congressional Budget Office scored Build Back Better.

Bill Walton (13:50):

And Democrats have been claiming that this has been paid for through various taxes and fees and other things, and having 80,000 IRS agents provided for the bill being more aggressive about collecting taxes from Americans. Well, it turns out that’s not true. It’s not paid for. And it’s at least to the tune of $3 trillion. It’s not paid for. And as I’ve talked about before, our national debt to our GDP is at historic highs. It’s higher now than it was during World War II. And so this is just more adding to our deficit. And Joe Manchin cares and the people of West Virginia care and Joe would like to have a viable political career so this is very good news, if we can keep him focused and give him an excuse to not vote for the bill. If he doesn’t vote for it, it doesn’t pass. And as I told you, our mission here is to kill the bill, not edit it, not adjust it, kill it.

Frank Gaffney (14:54):

This is a really high stakes poker, for sure. And I think that to the extent that we’re watching some measure of honesty now being injected into of this debate about the bill and most especially this idea that the techniques that were used to claim, however fraudulently, that the bill was paid for by saying that the new entitlement programs that it’s going to set up will somehow disappear in a year or two or whatever the sunset might be. This is again, a bait and switch. No entitlement program ever goes away as a practical matter. So hopefully, the CBO numbers are reasonably accurate and hopefully that they will be taken seriously by, I would like to think, not just Joe Manchin or Krysten Sinema from Arizona, who’s made similar noises from time to time, but others [crosstalk 00:16:08] just to have some measure of responsibility in the Senate. Go ahead.

Bill Walton (16:12):

Well, to tie a loop around this a bit, the Green New Deal is an integral part of this Build Back Better. And the Green New Deal would, in trying to get us to zero carbon emissions essentially moves our whole energy dependence over to China. Because if you depend on wind and solar, you’re essentially saying you’re going to buy all the sub components or components of that from China. And of course, people overlooking, if we did go to all wind and solar require about one third to one half of the surface area of the United States to put up all those windmills and solar panels.

Frank Gaffney (16:54):

Aside from that, what’s wrong with it?

Bill Walton (16:57):

So that’s in the bill. So the longer we can push this out and it looks like we’re going to push it into next year, the more people know what’s in it, the less likely it is they can pass this thing. And Americans don’t want this.

Frank Gaffney (17:14):

We will be watching it closely, Bill, with your help, not least. And I thank you very much for addressing the latest developments today, and for all of the work that you do at the Bill Walton Show and beyond. Keep it up, my friend. We’ll talk with you again next week, I hope, before Christmas. Thank you very much for joining us today.

Frank Gaffney (17:33):

Next up, we will speak with Jonathan Emord about the authoritarians at work, not just in the Chinese Communist Party, but here at home as well. Stay tuned for that and more straight ahead.