Donald Trump Jr. tweeted on Wednesday that former Vice President Joe Biden is “incentivized” to dismiss the threat posed by China because of his son’s business dealings with the Chinese government.
Trump Jr.’s tweet came in response to Biden’s comments at a campaign stop in New Hampshire yesterday in which the 2020 contender dismissed concerns about China’s economic threat to American workers.
“We’re in a position where we have the most agile venture capitalist [sic] in the world,” Biden said. “Our workers are literally three times productive as workers in the far east — excuse me — in Asia. So what are we worried about?”
“Well his son took $1.5 BILLION form [sic] the Chinese govt so I’m sure he’s incentivized to pretend they’re not a threat,” Trump Jr. tweeted. “Of course no one with a brain believed it but media won’t cover it, because Joe’s their guy and always gets a pass despite his 50 years of failures in government.”
Trump Jr.’s comments appear to reference the revelations in Peter Schweizer’s bestselling book Secret Empires regarding the $1.5 billion deal Hunter Biden’s private equity firm secured from the state-owned Bank of China while his father was vice president and negotiating U.S. policy with Beijing. Schweizer’s research has been confirmed by numerous news outlets, including the New York Times in an article last month.
Biden’s remarks on Tuesday occurred on the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing, when the communist regime used machine guns and tanks to put down a peaceful protest of citizens requesting democratic reforms.
This was not the first time the 2020 Democratic candidate downplayed China’s threat to the United States. At a campaign rally in Iowa last month, Biden dismissed the notion that “China is going to eat our lunch.”
“Come on, man,” Biden scoffed, “They can’t even figure out how to deal with the fact that they have this great division between the China Sea and the mountains in the east, I mean in the west, They can’t figure out how they are going to deal with the corruption that exists within the system. I mean, you know, they’re not bad folks, folks.”
“But guess what, they’re not competition for us,” he stated.
The New York Post editorial board disputed Biden’s comments by pointing to the fact that China is the world’s second-largest economy and its mercantilist state-run economic system seeks to “dominate global markets” by “stealing intellectual property wherever it can and bribing and bullying other nations with its Belt and Road program to lock up markets across the globe, among other cheats.” The Post op-ed also countered Biden’s “not bad people” claim with facts about the Beijing regime’s flagrant and ruthless oppression of its own people, including the forced internment of one million Uighur Muslims in re-education camps.
This is also not the first time President Trump’s eldest son has criticized the Biden family’s business ties to China’s communist regime.
At a rally for his father in Pennsylvania last month, Trump Jr. blasted Biden’s comments that China is “not competition for us.”
“He’s running around saying that China is not a threat,” Trump Jr. said. “Guess what boys and girls? China has been stealing the American dream from all of you, from your kids, from your grandkids for decades, and this clown doesn’t think it’s a problem? No. You know why? Because his son took $1.5 billion into his hedge fund from the Chinese!”
Last month, President Trump added his voice to the chorus of those calling for an investigation into Hunter Biden’s business deals with China while his father was negotiating U.S. policy with the communist regime.
“100 percent,” the president replied when asked by Fox News Channel’s Steve Hilton if Hunter Biden’s business ties to the Chinese government should be investigated.
“It’s a disgrace,” Trump added. “And then [Biden] says China is not a competitor of ours. China is a massive competitor of ours. They want to take over the world.”
The president also stated that China is hoping that Biden will win the 2020 election in order to negotiate a more favorable trade deal with him.
“The reason for the China pullback & attempted renegotiation of the Trade Deal is the sincere HOPE that they will be able to ‘negotiate’ with Joe Biden or one of the very weak Democrats, and thereby continue to ripoff the United States (($500 Billion a year)) for years to come,” Trump tweeted on May 8.
In an interview on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight, Schweizer was asked if Biden could be trusted to negotiate with China in light of his family’s financial ties to the communist regime.
“With the commercial relationships that the Biden family has with the Chinese, there is no way that that is not going have a dramatic effect on Joe Biden’s perceptions about China [and] in negotiating with the Chinese,” Schweizer said.
In an interview with Breitbart News Tonight yesterday, China expert David P. Goldman speculated as to why Biden is so dismissive of the threat posed by China despite all the evidence to the contrary. Goldman offered three possibilities.
“I can’t tell you what [Biden is] thinking, but I can suggest a number of possibilities,” Goldman said. “One is the fact that his son Hunter Biden raised a billion and a half dollars in investment money from the Chinese right after he flew over to China on Air Force Two with his father, then the sitting vice president in 2014.”
“One possibility is he’s been bribed by the Chinese or his son has,” Goldman continued. “The second possibility is the Chinese have something on his son for having taken favors while his father was vice president, so he’s being blackmailed by the Chinese. And the third is he’s stupid.”
Schweizer’s research on Hunter Biden has already triggered Democratic strategists worried that Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign could suffer the same fate as Hillary Clinton’s in 2016. The similarities between the two candidates are hard to dismiss: both are establishment favorites, both are Obama administration alums, and both are tainted by accusations that they used their authority as government officials to benefit their family to the potential detriment of U.S. foreign policy.
Rebecca Mansour is Senior Editor-at-Large for Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Tonight on SiriusXM Patriot channel 125, which broadcasts live weeknights from 9:00 p.m. to midnight Eastern (6-9:00 p.m. Pacific). Follow her on Twitter at @RAMansour.