House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy told Breitbart News this weekend that Democrats under orders from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi backed out of a planned bipartisan commission to investigate the Chinese Communist Party and in particular the Chinese origins of the coronavirus.
Democrats, he said, have instead opted for an impeachment-style House Select Committee to investigate President Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic rather than zoning in on China as they had originally intended to do.
Appearing on Breitbart News Saturday on SiriusXM 125 the Patriot Channel this weekend, McCarthy noted that Democrats had been working with Republicans to launch a Task Force in the House to investigate China for more than a year—but just before the pandemic struck the United States, Pelosi pulled the Democrats back. Despite Pelosi backing out on holding China to account, McCarthy extended an open invitation to Democrats to join the Task Force and work on this critical issue as they originally intended to do. At this stage, no House Democrats have agreed to stand up to the Chinese Communist Party.
“This is something we’ve been working on for over a year,” McCarthy said. “I went to the Democrat leadership with this. The challenge for the 21st century for us and others is going to be China. We need to come with one strategy of America together, not as Democrat and Republican but together as one American plan. It took me a long time and I finally got the Democrat leadership to agree. This would be the same number of Republicans and Democrats. We went to make the announcement. We selected who was on it. There was even a great story in the Washington Post—something I could never say before—by Josh Rogin. He literally had the story written about us going to do this together when the Democrats pulled back on February 24. Before the virus, they pulled back—and now they don’t want to do it. I’m moving ahead without them. We’re doing our own China Task Force. I welcome the Democrats to join with us. Rogin just wrote this story this week about it, but we’re going to analyze everything about China. One thing of course will be COVID. Think when the Chinese found out about this in Wuhan. They stopped the flights, any domestic flights to Beijing or anywhere else in China, but they allowed international flights for people who wanted to continue to leave and go to other countries and spread the disease. We’re going to study about them taking over different organizations like the World Health Organization, U.N., and others. We’re going to study what the Chinese are doing when it comes to our university system. Just recently you saw where the Harvard professor was arrested for taking $50,000 a month from the Chinese and giving them our secrets. Think about the theft that has gone forward, or the expansion of their military—the lies that they gave to President Obama and he accepted that the islands would not be weaponized and they were. There is so much out there that we cannot sit back and just hope this stops. We need to have an understanding and a strategy behind it. That’s what we’ll do in this task force.”
McCarthy said that the Task Force will investigate the origins of the Chinese coronavirus, which the U.S. intelligence community is unanimous in the belief it originated in China. Intelligence officials also increasingly believe that it may have come from a Wuhan laboratory called the Wuhan Institute of Virology inserted of a wet market, and that work that Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (R-PA) has led investigating U.S. tax dollars that flowed to that Chinese lab will be a part of the investigation.
“That will be part of the Task Force study as well,” McCarthy said. “We need to know where this came from. If the Chinese government truly believed that it came from the wet market, they never would have reopened the wet market. They know where it came from. Why did they withhold our scientists from coming in and still why will they not give the information? This is an answer that the entire world needs to know.”
Pelosi, meanwhile, is blocking any U.S. congressional investigation into China to instead pursue an investigation of Trump. “That’s exactly what it is,” McCarthy replied when Breitbart News asked him if Pelosi’s select committee plans were just “impeachment 2.0.”
“You’ve got to understand, because in the CARES bill that we passed that was more than $2 trillion—you know what we put in there because we wanted to make sure we had oversight? We put three new oversight committees, knowing that every committee has an oversight component and knowing that in Congress we have just the committee of oversight,” McCarthy continued. “We went even further—we put three new entities. One is with inspectors general. They select who, and they’re going to analyze the money. One is the president nominates somebody and the Senate confirms and they’re going to be in for another five-year study. Then another one was all four leaders from the Senate to the House appoint a person and then the Speaker and the Leader in the Senate pick who’s the chair. Then they report to Congress every 30 days. The difference between that and what Nancy Pelosi wants to do is these are all nonpartisan, meaning it’s an equal number senators—Republicans—and you’ve got inspectors general who are independent. You’ve got somebody who has to be confirmed. You’ve got the protection there that somebody is going to do their job. Nancy goes and puts in a new one, and you’ve got to look who she put on the committee. It’s weighted for Democrats to have the majority, not an equal number. There’s no senators involved either. They named the chair before they ever told you the mission of the committee, Mr. Clyburn, who’s the person who said when the COVID virus came forward that it was an opportunity for them to restructure government into their liberal views. She put in Maxine Waters, we all know what Maxine has said that she will not stop until she impeaches the president.”
McCarthy said that in addition to investigating the coronavirus origins in China, the House’s China task force will investigate the broader threat of the People’s Republic of China and its Communist Party leadership’s efforts to take control worldwide.
“China has a very clear plan. By 2049, they want to be a one-world power. They want to defeat America by stealing our technology, overrunning our universities to take our very best minds, then you look at what they’re doing in agriculture and others,” McCarthy said. “You look what they’re doing even in the middle of COVID. They cornered the market when it came to PPE, personal protective equipment. Now when countries ask to buy some, they say that Huawei has to be able to enter their country. Then when you find today, does the American public know we don’t make aspirin, we don’t make penicillin, we don’t make vitamins in America anymore? China controls that supply chain. It’s the ingredients within, more than 70 percent when you go to the pharmaceuticals and others. Then were we shocked when we look to South Dakota and we had a meat-packing plant but what did we find out as well? It was owned by the Chinese. Are they trying to control our meat supply? This is a tactical move that the Chinese have been planning strategically for quite some time. Remember, it’s a Communist Party that runs China. Every company in China has to allow the Communist Party into it. If you want to buy an airline ticket inside China, and you’re Chinese, it doesn’t matter if you have money. It’s your social score that will allow you whether to get an airplane ticket or train ticket. That’s based upon what you have said—and not just what you have said about the government but what your family has said. It will determine what college you get into. Look what they are doing in Hong Kong when they said they would not for more than 50 years. That all changed. These are the types of tactics we have continued to watch and sit back on. I have talked to people who have been a part of government who campaigned on and wanted China to join the World Trade Organization who now come back and say that was a mistake. They have been stealing and theft from us for too long. We’re going to study every element of it, lay it out for the American public, get it back to the American public by October 1. We have some excellent experts out there and we welcome Democrats to join with us.”
He also said that the November presidential and congressional elections will be a referendum on China. He said voters will remember that Pelosi’s Democrats in the House chose not to stand up against the Chinese Communist Party just like how former Vice President Joe Biden—the 2020 presumptive Democrat nominee for president—has stood down when it comes to Beijing. McCarthy even called Biden “Beijing Biden,” and said the American public will have a clear choice of appeasing China with Democrats or standing up to them with Republicans.
“In November there’s going to be two questions before us,” McCarthy said. “There’s going to be two people running for president, President Trump and Joe Biden, who many people refer to as ‘Beijing Biden.’ You look at Biden and the money they’ve been able to provide his family, you watch what Biden has done for more than 40 years—appease China—providing them the resources they need. Did he ever stand up to them? Now what we’re finding is who is the best to stand up against China? Who’s the best to rebuild the economy? You’ve got Biden, who sat over one of the weakest economy growths of our time since World War II and you’ve got President Trump, who built the strongest economy in the history of America. It’s an easy decision between those two questions, on who is going to protect our children for the future and make sure that the 21st century is the American century not China’s century.”
LISTEN TO KEVIN MCCARTHY ON BREITBART NEWS SATURDAY:
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