American Infighting Makes Our Foes Stronger

CLAY: We’re in the middle of a battle for the soul of the country, and what you said I agree with a hundred percent. And what I would add on is, think about who this makes stronger. This is why I think this is the story that is not being told enough. We had the whole Russia collusion lie. Who benefits from Americans fighting internally the most in the entire world? It’s China.

China is the biggest beneficiary of American disunity, of a failure to have a shared purpose. We are getting — I really believe this — punched in the back of the head every day by China. And instead of turning around, raising our fist as a country and starting to throw punching back at China — I think this was why Trump was so scary to China — we are throwing punches at each other.

We’re having our own internal family squabble, a civil war of sorts in this country. Instead of turning around and standing up to China and standing up for American ideals and freedom around the world, we are throwing punches at each other. And many of our biggest companies are, worse than that, bowing down to Chairman Xi and telling him, “What else can we do to make you happy?” because they are so owned by the China dollar right now.

BUCK: Yeah, Clay, there was never a time during the Cold War —

CLAY: Amen. We never did it.

BUCK: — with the Soviets where American corporations —

CLAY: That’s right.

BUCK: — were saying, “Hold on a second.” Now, yes, they had journalists. They had a lot of the colleges, of universities.

CLAY: Different levels.

BUCK: They were commies who penetrated the United States government. That’s a real thing. Anybody who’s never read or heard about the Venona project, I highly recommend it. They will not teach this stuff in schools, the labor unions in this country at the early, mid-part of the twentieth century riddled with communist sympathizers, riddled with American Communist Party members. This was all real. But, Clay, they never had the most powerful companies. They never had the Ford Motor Company saying, “Oh, hold on a second, guys. We gotta kind of do a little bit of a different take her on Soviet foreign policy.”

CLAY: There was a great piece tied into James Bond talking about how the newest James Bond came out and they basically have ignored China as a foe in the whole Bond films, right? There’s essentially no negative Chinese characterization, and they’ve continued to continue the old Cold War dynamic where Russia’s always the bad guy, ’cause they want the money to be paid in China.

BUCK: I have a little insight, ’cause of the spy movies, people ask me, “Buck, you were the CIA. What do you think of them?” I’ve seen a lot of spy movies and read a lot of spy movies — and, by the way, most of them are absurd. Unless they’re having people freak out about the cappuccino machine breaking at Langley, they’re not really showing you what it’s actually like to be in the CIA at any point in time.

But I’ll tell you this. There was one, and it was the Irish guy who played Bond. Pierce Brosnan. It was a Pierce Brosnan James Bond movie. I think it might be Tomorrow Never Dies, but all those Pierce Brosnan ones kind of meld together, except Golden Eye. Golden Eye was okay. But the rest of them — and remember, China was in that one, but there was a Chinese agent who actually teamed up with James Bond. And the bad guy was, of course, a British media mogul who is starting a war for ratings. When you think about it, that’s the best we could do? That’s the best we could do? Okay.

CLAY: They’re terrified of angering China to such an extent that even in our pop culture… Think about how long it’s been since a movie like Seven Years in Tibet was made where China was a villain in any way. America won’t even touch it.

BUCK: Well, this is ’cause Hollywood, all these movies they’re making, especially the reason the superhero franchises are so valuable is in part because all that CGI and star power translates very well to movies with subtitles or dubbed over movies in the Chinese market, which is the biggest single market in the world. Their cultural and economic — the Chinese Communist Party’s cultural and economic — hold on this country exceeds what the Soviets had.

CLAY: Oh, by far.

BUCK: It’s not even close, and the amount of intellectual property theft and sensitive technology and secrets stolen by Chinese Communist Party compared to what… Remember, the Soviets to steal our stuff, had to actually get people to film it.

CLAY: Old school espionage.

BUCK: Exactly. Old school briefcase, weird mustache, dead-drop espionage. The Chinese Communist Party pays a bunch of hackers in North Korea or on Russian soil or Chinese soil or whatever and breaks into our stuff, and steals the lifeblood of U.S. economy which is intellectual property advantage. Anyway, you can tell Clay and I get fired up about this ’cause is where we’re heading, folks. This is the future.