Speaker 1: And look at here here we are. It's Tuesday. Today
is the eighth day of July, year of our Lord,
twenty twenty five. My name is Tom Sullivan. Glad you
could come by today. We have something different for you today.
I've got basically two main stories. One of them is
about China, and Gordon Chang is going to join us,
an absolute expert on everything regarding China, and we get
we'll talk to him about his beliefs on what's going
to happen with China, with their economy, with the trade
war with Taiwan, all of of all of those topics
we will cover. We've also got this story that has
it came out late yesterday afternoon, which is that the
Department of Justice has come out and said there's nothing
to see. Nothing, no, Jeffrey Epstein, there's nothing to see,
there's no there's no file. Gosh, we were so wrong.
I mean, this is this is crazy. The Attorney General,
Pam Bondi, came out last February and said, I got
the papers on my desk for me to sign off.
They've got names, they've got flight records, they've got everything
is right there. And then she called They had a
big orchestrated meeting at the White House that she orchestrated
with all these online influencers who were given binders and
they walked out of the White House. There's lots of
coverage of that with all these binders. They were smiling
ear to ear and then the next day all of
these influencers came out and said, there's nothing in there.
There's nothing in there. So now, the Justice Department yesterday
released an eleven hour video that was outside Epstein's prison
cell door, and what they wanted to do was dispel
the rumors that Epstein was murdered, that he did not
die by suicide. And they say, no, no, no, you
can see nobody did anything to him. There's the video
doesn't actually show the door to his cell. It's the
area outside of his cell, and it shows some people
walking around, and it oh, that's right. There's a problem
because the timestamp on the video skips from eleven fifty
eight pm to midnight. And so Pam Bondi during the
cabinet meeting said the video was not conclusive, but the
evidence prior to it was showing that he did commit suicide.
I don't know what you It doesn't make any difference
to it is. It's one of those though about cover
ups and transparency, and the Attorney General is defending the
interview she gave in February where she said an Epstein
client list was on her desk to be reviewed. There
were reports of law enforcement after Epstein died that went
into his various residences and found photographs and videos, and
we wonder who those photographs some videos were of, and
you can bet it was powerful people. But all of
a sudden, none of that, it's just disappeared. So Pam
Bondi said that there's thousands of hours of video turned
out to be child sex abuse and they would not
be released. So the Justice Department and the FBI published
a memo yesterday concluding there was no evidence of a
client list, none of that that she said earlier. So
Cash Ptel, the FBI director, and Dan Bongino, the number
two guy at the FBI before they were officialdom, they said,
oh yeah, this absolutely looks like a conspiracy. Was So,
I don't know where the robber's going to hit the
wrote on this thing, but somebody's head will probably fall.
I'm guessing that it's Pam Bondy. She's the one who
orchestrated this whole thing, had the big meeting at the
White House, says she had the file on her desk
with the client's names, she had all these videos, she
had all this stuff, and now she's going up, I
don't know, we don't have it. There's nothing there. And
Dan Bongino and cash Pttel they're sticking to the company
line and saying, oh, there's nothing there. I'd like to
refer back to doctor Michael Boden. I've interviewed doctor Boden
a number of times. He's the former chief Medical Examiner
for the City of New York. He has done and
supervised so many autopsies and high profile ones. He knows
what he's doing. It's not a matter of political opinion.
He goes or no, this may be a little rough
for some of you are sensitive. If so, you might
want to try something else. But this is the medical
facts that doctor Boden got out of the auto He
was there at the autopsy and he said this here.
Let's listen to what he had to say.
Speaker 2: Making requests of things to be done if necessary as
part of the autopsy, ad in to the autopsy. What
I was there for the autopsy. During the course of
the autopsy, it became apparent that there was a ligature
mark around his neck from where he supposedly died of hanging,
and that there were multiple fractures of the bones underneath it.
The windpipe was fractured in three places. It was more
of a crush injury than a hanging injury, and that
there were hemorrhages in the eyes. That this was more
of a strangulation case, manual strangulation case than or a
ligature strangulation by somebody else, not by hanging in a cell,
because in hanging there are there aren't that many fractures.
The hanging the bone. The ligature comes up under the
mandible under the jawbone, which is above the ligature above
the Adams apple. The ligage is higher in the Adams apple.
So he had three two fractures of the Adams apple
and uh a fracture of the bone right above the
apple with the highered bone. That the the liga, the
mark on the neck didn't match the sheet ligature that
was present in the in the cell the photograph of
the and that this was more typical of a homicidal
strangulation than suicide.
Speaker 1: These are not political opinions. These are medical facts, and
he's saying this is more of a homicide than it
was a suicide, so he thinks somebody killed him. And
this from an interview with dj vladd on YouTube. You
can watch the whole thing there. But he's very certain
that Jeffrey Epstein was murdered. He goes on talking about
some of the more details that convinced him in the
autopsy that Epstein was murdered.
Speaker 2: The first autopsy a very nice autopsy, and also was
concerned about whether it's a homicide or suicide, was considering
it and unless the initial death certificate was the undetermined
pending further study, but the chief Medical examine at the
time a few days later changed it to homicide. And
then there was a lot of information came out out
that he was the correction officers who were supposed to
check the sell his cell every fifteen minutes or a
half hour didn't do that for about eight or ten hours,
and nobody looked into the cell or on the site
where the cell was, and that the video was didn't work,
and there was a lot of other things came up
to We also raise the issue of whether somebody else
did the strangulation. But my opinion is still that it's
more likely a homicide than a suicide.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we talked about the fact that the video
didn't work. Originally they said that, oh, the video was broken.
Now yesterday they release a video. Well, I thought the
camera was broken. Now the video is there. But the
problem with the video is there's a two minute gap,
and they're trying to explain her to say that's what
that that's what happens every night they change tapes or something.
So this what bothers me about this is it doesn't
make any difference in my life whether Jeffrey Epstein was
murdered or committed suicide. What bothers me is is that
the government is once again into that doesn't matter which
administration is not being transparent. And for Pam Bondy to
come out and say, I've got the file on my desk,
I've got the client names, we've got the videos. Well
we got all this, and then all of a sudden,
not all of a sudden, but months later, we don't
have anything which story is true. And I'm looking at
Dan Bongino and Cash Ptel and thinking, all right, they're
they're they're keeping the company line. They'll probably survive. But
Pam Bondy as the one who held a news conference
and convinced everybody that they had all the details and
we're going to release them. And a lot of people
in MAGA world were convinced that Donald Trump was going
to release all of this. He absolutely would not talk
about it. Today at the cabinet meeting, they had the
media there. He was doing his thing where he sits
there in the whole cabinet, sits and waits for him
to answer fifty questions from the cabinet from the media,
and it was over well over an hour of him
just talking to the media, and some one of the
reporters brought up the question about Dan about Epstein, and
Trump said, We're not going to talk about it. Here
is the President and Pam bond at the cabinet meeting today,
in reaction to a reporter asking about Epstein.
Speaker 3: Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy's been
talked about for years. You're asking, we have Texas, we
have this, we have all of the things, where and
are people still talking about this guy? This creep that
is unbelievable. Do you want to waste the time, and
do you feel like answering.
Speaker 4: I don't mind answering.
Speaker 5: I mean, I can't believe you're asking a question on
at Epstein at a time like this where we're having
some of the greatest success and also tragedy with what
happened in Texas. It just seems like a desecration.
Speaker 3: But you go ahead, sure, sure.
Speaker 4: First to back up on that, in February, I did
an interview on Fox and it's been getting a lot
of attention because I said I was asking a question
about the client list.
Speaker 3: The DOJ maybe releasing the list of Jeffrey Epstein's clients.
Speaker 6: Well, that really happened.
Speaker 7: Sitting on my desk right now to review. That's been
a directive by President Trump. I'm reviewing that. I'm reviewing
JFK files, MLK files. That's all in the process of
being reviewed because that was done at the directive of
the President from all of these agencies.
Speaker 2: So so have you seen anything there?
Speaker 8: You said, Oh, my gosh, not yet, And my response was,
it's sitting on my desk to be reviewed, meaning the
file along with the JFK MLK files as well.
Speaker 4: That's what I meant by that.
Speaker 1: So to be fair to the president. Yeah, there are
many more important things going on in the world, and
he's holding the gabinet meeting and they've got all the
things about Ukraine and about Texas, all these things that
are important. But I will tell you, I am convinced
this is the kind of story that will go on
and on and on because it's who killed JFK. Speaking
of the AFK files, they're almost completely released. They're still
digitizing some of the records and the MLK files. No,
they're not going to be released until twenty twenty seven,
so they're getting around to it. And like I said,
and the President's right, this is not as important as
today's world events. But I'm telling you it's going to
be who shot JR. It's going to be one of
those conspiracy stories that just will not go away. Now,
let's get onto the business of China. I haven't talked
to Gordon Chang for a few years. I've always been
impressed with him. He is about the most knowledgeable guy
regarding China and China's relations with this country, and I
thought I would reintroduce you to Gordon Chang and we'll
go through China's economy, their military, Taiwan the trade war.
So let's talk to Gordon Chang. Oh, by the way,
he wants to make sure you know his Twitter handle,
which is Gordon g. Chang. Let's introduce you to the audience.
I know who you are. But you're a You're a lawyer,
you're political analyst, you're a columnist. You've written I don't know,
handful of books. Got any new books out that you
want to promote. We'll start. We'll start with that. I
mean you've done a lot of things. Yeah, let's start
with that. You you've written a number of books. What
do you got lately?
Speaker 6: Okay? A couple of things. First of all, I no
longer practice law, so we can talk lawyer. Okay, and
you can say former lawyer. That's fine because I practiced
in China, in Hong Kong. The most recent book is
called Plan Read China's Project to Destroy America. Came out
last October.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, it adds. Yeah, with a number of books,
I saw where you did work in Hong Kong. And
also where were you on Shanghai? Which is Shanghai? Was
that the was that the industrial shipping magnet city of
China when you were there? Or is that happened since.
Speaker 6: Well, no, it's it's It's always been a financial center
and the shipping center as well, so it's always been
a major commercial hub for China.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Also, if the other thing is mentioned by Twitter handle
sure ex handle, which is Pat Gordon Chi Chang GEO
or g O n G c h A.
Speaker 1: N G on on Twitter or x or whatever you
want to call it. First of all, I'm curious because
you did work in China for what I read was
for a couple of decades as a lawyer working for
two major law firms that I'm familiar with here in
New York. What brought you to China? Your father is Chinese,
your mother Scottish or something like that. But what made
you go to China to do that? You were born
in New Jersey.
Speaker 6: I was born in New Jersey. I was born in
Long Branch, New Jersey, and lived in New Jersey until
I went to college. And the reason I went to
China was that I was practicing law at the time.
I was in California and my primary client was the
Shanghai branch of Citybank, and we were traveling too much
across the Pacific, so we finally decided that it was
better just to move there, which is what we did
in August of nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 1: My family's from Ireland, and my parents always bothered and
bug me about why don't you go to Ireland and
see where you came from? And I finally, finally, finally
did Gordon after a long time of not doing it.
And I was humbled to go back to where my
father's father packed up the family and left for America.
Was there any of that. Did you do some sort
of road down ancestry Lane to see where your father
came from?
Speaker 6: Well, my dad and I went to his hometown, which
is north of the Yung Sea River, close to Shanghai,
but on the other side, and that was in the
late nineteen eighties, and that certainly was humbling. That was
a magnificent experience to see the family and to see
where my dad came from. And since that time we
were back the number of times, my wife and I.
It is of course always important to see where you
came from, but also it's important to see where you're going.
And we were in Shanghai practicing law, and it was
an amazing experience. But we saw the side of China
that was very different from what people thought at the time.
And I had always wanted to write a book. Never
thought I had anything to say until we were in China,
and then I saw a vision of China, a view
of China that was very disturbing.
Speaker 1: But I do highly recommend it sounds like you might
jump on the same recommendation unless you're a Heinz fifty seven.
If you know where your family came from, I really
highly recommend that you make the effort to go to
go see where your people came from. You did that,
then you went to Hong Kong. And I've been to
Hong Kong once and I loved it. Wow, what a
free market city that was. You could do whatever you
One of the ships in the harbor did not follow
on the right or the left. They almost ran into
the sandpans. It was just get the job done. I
was amazed by Hong Kong. What was your thinking?
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, I moved to Hong Kong in nineteen eighty one,
stayed there for a decade. It was amazing. I thought
that I would never leave. It was such a vibrant city.
We went to various cycles. I arrived at the height
of the boot. Then it fell into a deep, deep contraction,
and then it climbed itself back out, and Hong Kong
is resilient. It was amazing, And it's sad to see
Hong Kong today because the Communist Party in China has
essentially taken it over. It is no longer separate and
apart from the mainland as it once was. It is
effectively part of the People's Republic of China. And it's
not a safe place for Americans to be.
Speaker 1: Kinda itself is not saying really, I felt very comfortable there,
but that was oh, I know what it was, y
two k We had January first, two thousand here in
the US, and because Chinese New Years is later, we
were in China in Hong Kong for the New Year
and my gosh, Gordon, those skyscrapers are as big as
NLC in Manhattan, and they had neon lights strung all
the way up to the top of the buildings. They
know how to throw a party. That was an exciting
city on February whatever it was two thousand.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's after what they call the handovers, when Britain
turned over Hong Kong to the Chinese, and it was
of course a seminal event. After that, there was a
semblance of one country, two systems, which is what the
Chinese promised in the nineteen eighty four sign Out British
Joint Declaration. But come to twenty when China passed its
National Security Law for Hong Kong, it was essentially an
annexation of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was it. Yeah over over, Yeah.
Speaker 6: Almost over. And what we're seeing right now is China
which is taken over Hong Kong, so it's no longer
an autonomous region. Britain and China they came to an
arrangement that Hong Kong would be semi autonomous. It would
be one country, two systems, may Hong Kong people governing themselves.
And it was a formula that did have success in
the beginning, but after protests in twenty nineteen, China decided
that it was now time to take over Hong Kong.
So the fifty year period of autonomy ended essentially in
the middle of twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: And I take it from your writings and talking to
you in the past that that was no surprise. You
knew that that was going to happen, correct, We knew that.
Speaker 6: It was going to happen because communists they can't help themselves.
They first of all, they don't ever honor their promises
when they think that they can get away with it,
and they essentially thought they could get away with it
because Britain was not enforcing the Sign of British Joint
Declaration and other countries, including the US, didn't seem to
really care. So I'm China decided it would make a
move on Hong Kong. But communists basically in general, can't
control themselves. They absolutely have to dominate society. They can
never run a free market, semi autonomous city, and so
it was inevitable. It took a little bit longer than
I thought it would, but you know, when we're talking
about nineteen ninety seven to twenty twenty, it was thirteen years.
Had promised fifty years of autonomy.
Speaker 1: That's right, So much for the promise which it brings
up obviously Taiwan, and their promise is about Taiwan or
whatever they're saying about Taiwan, and you've written about that.
Let's talk to the audience about what is going to
happen with Taiwan.
Speaker 6: Well, the one country, two systems formula that China promised
for Hong Kong was originally developed for Taiwan, and Taiwan
has seen what China's done in Hong Kong and it
wants none of it. That we're seeing in Taiwan an
intentity that is separate and apart from China because the Taiwanese,
by and marge do not think that they are Chinese,
and we see this in self identification surveys. So, for instance,
the Pew Research Center did a survey between June and
September of twenty twenty three, and it showed that sixty
seven percent of the people on the island saw themselves
as primarily Taiwanese, only three percent saw them as primarily Chinese.
But the really bad news in the survey was that
in the younger age cohorts there was even less of
a Chinese identity. For those eighteen to thirty four, eighty
three percent saw them as Taiwanese, only only one percent
percent saw themselves as Chinese only. And we have seen
these survey results consistent with other surveys that have done
on self identification. So the people in Taiwan don't think
of themselves as Chinese, and therefore they want to maintain
their own separate society. They want to govern themselves, they
want to have free market.
Speaker 1: Well what about they don't. What about the next generation Gordon,
what's going to happen when those young men and women
get a little older run for office.
Speaker 6: Well, we're going to see even more of what we
call the green forces in Taiwan, in other words, people
who want to run their own society, separate and apart
from China. And as we're seeing progressively, fewer and fewer
people see union with the mainland as something important. So
the two societies will continue to diverge unless China uses fourth.
Speaker 1: Which I am no expert about China and Taiwan, but
it could not escape me that when Joe Biden was
in the White House, I thought, just like Vladimir Putin
used the opportunity to go into Ukraine, I thought, President,
she was going to that's it, this is the time
to go. Biden's not going to do anything. Let's go
grab Taiwan. Didn't happen.
Speaker 6: It was different. It was different. Remember Biden in February
of twenty twenty two was talking about it might be
okay if there were a minor in Persian by Russia
into Ukraine. That was a signal. But when Biden talked
about Taiwan, he spoke in very different terms. There were
four times when he was asked by reporters would the
US in a Biden administration use force to prevent China
from using force to a next Taiwan? And four times
Biden promised to use the US military. Now, the problem
was that all four times his subordinates undermined him and
said no, that there was no change in US policy
or ambiguity with the US, and not say what it
was going to do.
Speaker 1: But I remember what I remember his staff was, you know,
quick clean up on Aisle nine. The President just misspoke
again because our policy has been one China policy. In
other words, Taiwan and China are one and the same.
And Biden said, no, they're not correct me where I
get that wrong?
Speaker 6: Okay? Our One China policy is complicated, and it boils
down to this. We recognize Beijing, the Communist Party of China,
as a legitimate government of China. We say in our
One China policy that the status of Taiwan is undetermined,
has yet to be finally determined. And we say that
the status the resolution of that status must be with
the consent of both sides of the Taiwan Strait, in
other words, China and Taiwan. So we recognize, yes, the
Communist Party is a legitimate government of China, but we
don't recognize it as the legitimate government of Taiwan. What
we do say we say that we quote unquote acknowledge
that Beijing believes that it is the government of Taiwan,
but we acknowledge it in the sense that we understand
that's their position, but we do not acknowledge it in
the sense that we accept it. So we do not
accept the notion that the People's Republic of China governs
Taiwan or is a legitimate government of Taiwan.
Speaker 1: Do you think Joe Biden talking about yes, will use
US forces was enough to halt President she I think it.
Speaker 6: Was a factor. I think that that certainly the Chinese
saw the disorganization of the Biden regime, as you talked
about it, that his subordinates undermined him. And by the way,
that's a constitutional crisis because in our constitution, it's the
commander in chief, the President of the United States or
makes foreign policy, not the State Department. Spokesman, not the
Secretary of Defense, not the White House spokesperson, all three
of those individuals contradicting Biden when he made those statements
about US using a military force. But put that aside
for the moment. I think the Chinese knew what Biden
would want to do, and I think that that was
enough to deter them. As we know, the Chinese did
not invade during Biden's administration. Now it was partly because
I think that they saw Biden's determination, but also I
think that they felt in China that they were not
ready to invade Taiwan. I've got to remember, there are
a lot of factors that inhibit the government in Beijing
from invading Taiwan. And it gets a little bit complicated,
but if I can just sort of.
Speaker 1: Summarize, let's go through some of those, because I do
want to get to the terriff issue. But the economy itself,
I've I've been reporting on the economy here in the
US for forty years, and I have always found that
whenever there's any reporting about the economic growth, the GDP,
whatever measure you want to use for China is always
with an eyebrow raised. A lot of people in the
financial world in this country, do not believe they're reporting.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and they're reporting right now is even more fabricated
than it has been in the past. So right now,
they their most recent report for quarterly GDPs for Q one,
where they reported five point four percent growth. But that's
really unlikely because what we're seeing right now in China
is deflation. So for instance, the last month for which
we have price data is May, and May was the
fourth straight month where the consumer price index was in
negative territory year on year. May was also the thirty
second straight month where the producer price index, which measures
factory gay prices, was in negative territory. That's deflation. So
deflation has gripped China. And you know, once an economy
is in a deflationary spiral, it's very difficult to get
out of it. And the deflationary spiral is almost mutually
inconsistent with robust growth. It's just very, very difficult to
have those two phenomena at the same time. So we
can say that China appears to be in contraction at
this moment.
Speaker 1: Which let's jump to the tariff issue then, because President
Trump is I have personally, I have a problem with
tariffs in general. Historically they're usually inflationary and supply problems
and everything else. Why go against all of our allies,
Why go against two hundred countries. Let's start with China
because that's where the biggest egregious trade imbalance is. Why
not start with them? And it seems like this what
you're just talking about, their economy isn't strong. This would
be a good time, I think, to bend China as
far as we can.
Speaker 6: I absolutely agree with you. I think that President Trump's
implementation of the tariffs has really left a lot to
be desired. And I agree with you he should have
done what he did in his first term, which is
focus on China, because China is the country that has
almost single handedly taken down the rules based trading order
through its criminal and predatory trade practices. So this is
what he should have done. Instead, he has, as you
point out, going after everybody, which has made it very
difficult for him to build a coalition to deal with
the most important issue, which is China.
Speaker 1: Yeah, tell me about bricks, which is Brazil, China, India,
Oh boy, what's the sea?
Speaker 6: Russia, South Africa?
Speaker 1: Russia? Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 6: So they now have additional members, so that.
Speaker 1: Yes, they've been adding countries. Is that a NATO look
alike or is that an economic group that have banded
together to try to basically cut off the United States's power?
Speaker 6: Well, bricks is I think unimportant and is ineffective, especially
as it grows larger and larger. China and Russia have
certain goals for bricks, turn it into an anti US,
anti Western grouping. But unfortunately for them, there's an eye
in bricks. The eye is India India, and India does
not want to be part of an anti Western effort.
And India has frustrated China's and Russia's ambitions for the
bricks and us the problem.
Speaker 1: And does I mean you talk about Switzerland beings in
pro non commital India. They buddy up with Russia, they
buy oil from Russia, they buddy up with China, they
budy up with Us. They're trying to be friends with everybody.
Speaker 6: Right, but Modi does not want to be part of
any anti Western coalition. And yes it's right. He does
a lot of things that we really do not like,
in which we should have posed costs on him for doing.
But he one thing that he's doing that we should
like is that he is making the bricks completely ineffective anyway.
Bricks would be ineffective anyway, because it's all the same
with these large groupings. You know, you take the G
twenty or whatever. When you have a diverse group of countries,
you cannot have an effective organization because everybody has different goals. Yep.
The only time that you can get an international organization
to be effective is something like the G seven because
basically everybody's on the same page on the big issues.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's so true of so many organizations. Back to
the economy in China, then we'd hear I play a
lot of clips from General Jack Keene and he talks
about how the Chinese navy is bigger than the US Navy,
and it looks like they're putting a lot of their
effort and money. It looks from afar that put it
into being a military powerhouse. They've already, over the last
forty to fifty years, through design, built an industrial powerhouse.
I mean they did it by formula. Now are their
military powerhouse? Where are they?
Speaker 6: The Chinese military on paper is extremely s fearisome. I
don't think their ships are very good ship per ship.
I don't think that they are an effective fighting force.
I mean, but that's something that we'll only see the
problem with the Chinese Navy and the Chinese and the
People's Liberation Army a couple of them, but one of
them is that it's a communist army, which means it
has two reporting lines. It's got a military reporting line,
as every military does, but it also has something else
and that makes it weaker, and that's a political reporting line,
and the political commissars are more influential than the military
reporting line. Having two reporting lines is not a good
formula for having an effective military, and we saw, for instance,
the Chinese Army. It's it's just ineffective. Essentially. We've seen
this in the repeated clashes between India and the Chinese
Army in the Himalayas, where the Indians, who are certainly
out gone, usually get the better of their Chinese counterparts.
Speaker 1: In these How does that differ from the US. I know,
we have a civilian commander in chief, we have a
civilian defense secretary, but it's the commander in chief is
a politician.
Speaker 6: How does it differ, Well, it differs because there's only
one reporting line. That reporting line runs from the commander
in chief to the Secretary of Defense to the combat commanders,
and it's a single line. And yet of course they're
political considerations, but there is not two reporting lines as
there are in China. And right now we see the
Chinese military as in the midst of very fearsome purges
where people at generals and admirals are getting sacked, left, right,
and center. And this is partly because IMPI is having
troubles and sie Jimpang's loyalists are being removed and disappeared.
Some are saying that some of them have been even suicided.
So this is a very serious situation for the Chinese military,
and I think right now it is completely ineffective because
of these problems. Let me give you an example. General
hobw Dong was sie Jimping's number one loyalist in the
Chinese military, a vice chairman of the Communist Party's Central
Military Commission and the number two uniformed officer. He has
not been seen in public since March eleventh, and there
are rumors that he was forced to commit suicide at Bay.
We don't know if those rumors are sure or not,
but we know he's been out of circulation. We have
seen other Sejimping loyalists being sacked as well, and a
lot of people have been saying, and you'll see this
in the media, that Si Jimping has been getting rid
of his own supporters, which is possible, I mean, Sie
Jimping could be a Doalinist like paranoid, but from corroboration
we have from other sources, it's pretty clear that Cigympink's
adversaries in the military are getting rid of c gmping's loyalists.
And we know this because since July ninth of last year,
PLA Daily, which is the main propaganda organ of the
Chinese military, has been running articles that praise quote unquote
collective leadership. That's a direct slat against egmping's demand for
unity and one man rule. So those articles could not
have appeared if cgmping were in control of the military
interest and because those articles did appear, it's more likely
that sigmping's adversaries in uniform are getting rid of cigmping's
loyalist in uniform, which means you have a military and turmoil.
Speaker 1: One of I want to stay within my timeline here,
but I just do you have any predictions about the
trade fight that we're in with China. We're going to
win that.
Speaker 6: Well, we should win it because by the metrics, we
are more powerful than China. But the question is whether
the Chinese.
Speaker 1: Will sorry interrupt, But we keep hearing they they need
us or we need them. It seems well.
Speaker 6: They clearly they see clearly need us more than we
need them because they're an export dominated economy we are not.
They need our markets. Last year they ran well, it
was a five two hundred and ninety four point three
billion or seven trades start pussys. It's an enormous number.
I mean trade StarPlus countries do not have ammunition in
trade wars. The only factor that is that makes this
complicated is will the Chinese intimidate President Trump? And so
far the Chinese have been doing a very good job
of intimidating, but it has not been willing to play them.
And that means that I can't tell you who's going
to win this trade war, because there's one person who
determines whether we win this trade war or not. It's
in his hands. It's a guy named Donald John Trump.
And by the way, his addresses sixteen hundred Pennsylvania Avenue,
Northwest Washington, DC. And if you tell me what Trump's
going to do, I can tell you who's going to
win the trade bar But until that happens, we don't know. No,
we don't.
Speaker 1: Garden. You're a font of great information. You always are.
It's been way too long. I really appreciate you taking
the time to share all of this with the audience today. Gordon,
thank you very much.
Speaker 6: Well, thank you, Tom. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: You bet we'll talk again again. His Twitter handle is
at Gordon g Chang and guy you should follow. He's
right on top of what's going on with everything. And
it's not a trade war. It's an AI war that
we have with China trying to figure out who's going
to win that whole competition. There is, however, so much
competition in the US that reports are out today Apple's
the head of AI for Apple is leaving to join Meta,
and that Zuckerberg is hiring the best of the best
anywhere in the tech world that no AI to come
to work for Facebook or Meta. This is a reporter
over on CNBC talking about the poaching that's going on
in Silicon Valley so that.
Speaker 9: Hire would be roaming. Pung the architect behind Apple's foundational models,
and he's not just walking away from a big job,
he's walking away. You could see it as walking away
from Apple's entire AI thesis. Now, Pung ran a one
hundred person team that builds lms powering Apple Intelligence. So
that's gen moji, writing tools, photo and video editing, and
what is supposed to or at least was supposed to
power the new series. So essentially, Pung is at the
center of Apple's bet that on device models could compete
with existing AI leaders like open Ai and Google. At
the same time, though, Apple has been undercutting his team
mandate by leaning more on third party models. Remember Eddie
q'es praise for perplexity and anthropic as part of his
Google testimony. There's reports that Apples and Talks replace Series
back end with Claude or Chat Gibt.
Speaker 4: That's gotta hurt morale.
Speaker 9: And it's not surprising then that when your company starts
shopping for a replacement for the work that you are doing,
you leave, and then there's Meta and Zuckerberg ready with
a new package reportedly worth tons of millions of dollars
and a bench that is quickly becoming a who who
of AI talent, and a mission that hits at the
purpose researchers care most about right now, that is building
something that can compete at the frontier or be first
to what comes after Superintelligence or AGI. So while this
looks like a win for Meta, this may be something
far more damaging for Apple, yet another crack in its
internal AI efforts. With Pung Goon too and Zuckerberg still
on the hunt, others could follow. We did a quick
linked in search guys for some of the other AI
researchers still at Apple. On that team, it includes talent
from Google, Deep Mind, Bite dance PhDs from Berkeley. Now
perhaps low hanging fruit for someone like Zackerberg.
Speaker 1: Some of the last minute news items coming out today
is that the Supreme Court has given President Trump the
go ahead to proceed with large scale personnel cuts. A
lot of lawsuits saying stop stop, don't you can't cut
all these people. Supreme Court said yes, he can go
ahead and do that. President also ratcheting up the tariff wars,
saying August first deadline is not going to change. That
was supposed to be tomorrow July ninth, that got postponed
until August first. He says, no, no, no, no, no,
we're not going to change August first. That's it. Okay,
we'll believe it when we see it. Also, he says,
copper tariffs are going to be forty percent. I have
to pay forty percent more to bring copper into this country.
And that pharmaceutical He's going to give them some months
to adjust, but pharmaceutical tariffs will be two hundred percent.
That's the opening ante on all of that. As far
as Wall Street today, the Dow finished lower, down one
hundred and sixty five, the Dow at forty four thousand
and two, forty SMP down four, NASDAK up six. The
price of gold fell thirty dollars to thirty three to twelve,
and oil up part of a dollar now at sixty
eight dollars for one barrel of oil. So that's it
for today. Thank you for coming by. We'll be here
again tomorrow. I hope you are too,