WASHINGTON – United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) joined Alex Marlow on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily to discuss China, as well as the Biden Border Crisis.
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Partial Transcript Below:
Hagerty on U.S. and China meeting in Anchorage: “What we saw, in the open… was very concerning to most Americans. Frankly, I wouldn’t have agreed to have an open forum like that because the Chinese are only going to use that to pump propaganda back to their home country. That was the show. And what they really should be doing is understanding that China is our strategic adversary. That’s a term that I want to continue using, Alex. They’re our strategic adversary and the Biden Administration has been backsliding ever since they came into office. If you think about it, they rejoined the World Health Organization, pumping millions and millions of dollars back into that organization, which… was highly influenced by China. They rejoined the Paris Climate Accord, which China has no obligations under for decades to come yet. We’re going to be putting ourselves at a disadvantage immediately. And I think even more obvious is canceling the Keystone XL pipeline. If that oil is not coming to America, I can tell you where it’s going to go, Alex. It’s going to get piped straight to China. They’re going to have the advantage of low cost oil. And when we turn to try to make new jobs in the green energy sector, well, where are we going to get the turbines? Where are we going to get the solar panels, they’re all made in China? So again, China’s laughing all the way to the bank on this one. And it’s an embarrassment.”
Hagerty on U.S. energy independence: “[The] pain [of higher gas prices] is very much felt in Tennessee. Our population commutes much further than Northeastern corridor folks who are able to ride a train or are walking distance to their office. This is just, as you say, another hidden tax that the Biden Administration, because of their knee jerk decision to just undo everything President Trump did, has put ourselves in a weaker economic position. They’re putting us in a far weaker strategic position. If you think about it, under the Trump Administration, we finally got to a point of energy independence. We actually became a net exporter of energy, and I worked very hard as U.S. Ambassador to Japan to get the Japanese to import more United States energy. They put billions of dollars of investment into place to do just that. And my view was we were not only exporting energy, we were exporting freedom. Because we were removing they’re reliance on some countries like Russia, like Iran, you know, those countries that don’t necessarily have the strategic interest of our allies at heart. We should be strengthening our relationships through our energy capabilities rather than weakening ourselves. And again, what we’ve done by killing projects like the Keystone pipeline, stopping federal land leasing, and allowing people to access energy there, what we’re doing is making ourselves again, more dependent on countries like China, because we have to go there to get these alternate sources like wind and like solar.”
Hagerty on his latest letter to Biden demanding transparency on the border crisis: “I’ve asked them very simple questions. I mean, I asked the Biden Administration, since President Biden took office, how many of these migrants have been released in the United States by the border patrol, by ICE? I want to know how many of them were in Tennessee. I want to know how many of these children have spent more than 72 hours awaiting transfer to a Health and Human Services (HHS) facility? They won’t answer that. What percentage of the migrants that have been apprehended at the border have actually been tested for COVID-19 and how many have tested positive? You know, we’ve been expected to lock down our communities, we’ve been expected to shut our kids out of school. Yet Biden has open the border for these folks and let them move in. I presume the answer is that they aren’t testing them or they certainly aren’t getting them all tested, and I’d like to know how many have tested positive. I’ve heard some numbers and they’re very concerting. I really want to know why did they remove the Stay in Mexico policy – the Migrant Protection Protocols? That had a dramatic impact of keeping the people that were seeking asylum south of the border. The Mexican government was even protecting the border. Now they went straight to catch and release, they opened the door, and it’s a flood gate right now. It’s been an open invitation. And when you offer stimulus checks to illegal immigrants, I mean, what sort of incentive is that, Alex? It’s all the wrong incentives and that’s why they’ve got a crisis of their own making on their hands right now. And it’s really threatening the safety and security of states like mine. We’re seeing an increase in drug trafficking right now, I’ve talked to several sheriffs. And in human trafficking, it’s terrible, the stories are horrible… They won’t talk about it in the media, but that border is a huge problem. And people just focus on the migration aspects of it. But the drug trafficking and human trafficking, all of the illegal activity with folks that are on various watch lists, that should not be gaining admission to this country, all they have to do is go to Mexico. And they walk. It’s a huge problem in China is pumping this fentanyl into Mexico again, where it’s manufactured and used as their opponent of drugs that are coming in and killing our kids in Tennessee.”