03-28-25 *INTERVIEW* Senator Tom Cotton Seven Things You Can't Say About China

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Very very pleased to welcome to the show, Senator Tom Cotton.
Tom went from cattle farm in Arkansas to Harvard, which
I won't hold against him because I went to Columbia,
so I can't say anything to Harvard law. To two
combat tours in the Army, including service in the elite
Old Guard unit that's famous for their duties at Arlington

(00:20):
National Cemetery. That's actually the first time I talked to
Tom was about the book he wrote about that experience.
Then he went into the House of Representatives, now the
US Senate. I'm pretty sure he's the tallest member of
the Senate right now, and probably in the top five
or ten tallest ever, which is of course the most
important thing you need to know. Tom Cotton. It's good
to see you, good to talk to you again, Thanks

(00:40):
for doing this. Thank you Ross.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
Good to be back on with you.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
So, Tom, is a new book that I'm holding in
my hand and that I have read the entirety of already,
and it's called Seven Things You Can't Say about China.
So normally this first question I'm going to ask you,
I normally don't ask because it's usually a boring question.
But I think in this case, it's going to be
interesting question, and that is why did you write this book?

Speaker 2 (01:03):
Thank you?

Speaker 1 (01:04):
Ross.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
I wrote Seven Things you Can't Say about China as
a kind of alarm bell to the American people who
rightly hold Communists China in low regard, but who often
ask me, are things really as bad as it seems?
And my answer to them, as a ten year member
of the Arm Service Committee and Intelligence Committee, now shaired

(01:24):
Arm Intelligence Committee, is no, it's actually worse. The threat
from China is not a distant or remote thread. It's
not just a threat in grand strategic matters that it
is that it's a pervasive, constant, everyday threat right now
to you and to your family and to our way
of life. And I wanted to ring that alarm for

(01:47):
the American people in a way that is easy to digest.
You said you read the book. You can hold in
your hand. It's a short book. It's a small book.
It's not loaded up with footnotes, it doesn't go on
for eight hundred pages. Probably pick it up and read
it on the flight between Colorado and Washington, d C.
If you wanted to, because I want it as many
people as possible to understand. Just how severe that threat

(02:11):
from communist China is to America.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
I just took a listener trip to the Galapagos Islands
and we had to go back from the Galapagos to Keto, Ecuador,
to Miami to Colorado. And I indeed did read your
book on the airplane flying home. So good good call
on that you would you address this a little bit
in the book. So you just told us why you

(02:35):
wrote it. Why don't you think somebody else has has
written it? Well?

Speaker 2 (02:40):
First off, ross to be cleared to all your listeners,
you could have read this book on any one of
those any one of those flights, don't have can go
from the Galapagos to Colorado. What part of the you know,
the title contains some of the answer seven things you
can't say about China. Unlike communist Russia, Communist China is
deeply embedded and entangled in an American society and in

(03:01):
our economy, and therefore they have tremendous pressure points and
leverage over many Americans, and that they can try to
silence those Americans. Think about the controversy I write it
about in the book when the Houston Rockets general manager
merely posted an image about supporting Hong Kongers who were
fighting for their freedoms against Chinese oppression. China came down

(03:25):
on the Rockets and the NBA like a ton of bricks,
began to take off their streaming platform, took Jersey and
other memorabilia out of their stores. Another team CEO of
the Brooklyn Nets, who spoke up in his defense, was
also out of a job just a couple months later.

(03:47):
ESPN didn't really cover the controversy because it's owned by ABC,
which is owned by Disney and Hollywood. Movie studios never
say a negative word or have a Chinese villain in
their movies because they need access to the Chinese movie market.
So there are so many Americans that feel like they
have to censor themselves or maybe face the threat of

(04:08):
actual censorship from China through the loss of contracts or
jobs or livelihood, or if they're Chinese immigrants who have
threats to their families back in the home country. I'm
not in that position. I'm a United States Senator James Madison.
Our family fathers designed the United States Senate in part

(04:30):
to be the institution with the longest view that could
look past immediate dangers or threats or interests to the
broad common good in the future of the nation. And
that's what I exactly what I tend to do. I
try to do it every day for the people of
Arkansas and the Senates, and this book is an effort
of that as well, is to speak clearly and frankly

(04:54):
to the American people who may not understand why so
many other institutions or people in America don't tell them
the full truth about the nature of the threat in
communist China.

Speaker 1 (05:05):
I'll say, I don't have the platform or visibility that
you have, but at this point, given what I've said
about China, many of the same things that you say
so well in this book, I think I would be
afraid to go to China personally right now. I'm not

(05:25):
famous like you and I you know, I don't have
that leverage that you have, But I don't. Do you
think that's paranoid of me?

Speaker 2 (05:35):
No, I don't. I'm not going to China anytime soon
because I've been sanctioned by China for my congratulations. They
sanctioned me in twenty twenty. I think it was both
about calling China to account for the Wuhan pandemic. Almost
certainly originating those labs in Wuhan, as well as standing

(05:57):
up for Hong Kong's autonomy. I told them at the
time that if they think that those sanctions would silence me,
they were very wrong. And my real answer was, you
haven't seen anything yet. And this book is part of
a promise to fulfill to them from twenty twenty. So
I certainly wouldn't be going to China, and I think

(06:19):
anyone who does go to China has to understand they have.
As I write in the Book of Techno Totalitarian police State,
especially if you're an American citizen, especially if you're an
outspoken American citizen, you should consider yourself at risk of
surveillance at all times at the airport, when you arrive,
in vehicles, on the street, in your hotel room, hacking
into your devices if you're foolish enough to take your

(06:41):
personal devices to China, and there's always a risk that
you'll be denied in exit visa as well. These are real,
actual risks that have been faced by other people in China.
So I'd be very very careful about traveling to China
and subject acting yourself to Chinese communist surveillance and jurisdiction.

Speaker 1 (07:04):
We're talking with Senator Tom Cotton about his interesting and
important new book, Seven Things You Can't Say About China.
So I want to jump into something that's kind of
the intersection of the book and ongoing news, and that
is TikTok. You have been one of the most outspoken
opponents of TikTok in the US Senate. You expressed at

(07:26):
least a little bit of frustration to the degree that
a Republican can, with Donald Trump's move to not enforce
the law as it was written. Now there are rumors
of a deal where Oracle may end up hoting some
of this, and I read that you're you said, all right,
I'm going to just see what happens here. But what's

(07:47):
your take on TikTok right now? What do you want
to see? And is there some you know, line for
you where you're going to say, I've waited long enough.
Now it's time to enforce the law.

Speaker 2 (07:58):
Sure, TikTok is a serious threat to the American people,
especially to our kids. I know a lot of people say, well,
it's just kids data, what does it matter. Well, there
are a lot of grown ups on TikTok as well.
But even kids become grown ups. So when they become
grown ups, they often do things like go to work
in the military or intelligence or law enforcement, or sensitive

(08:20):
corporate positions that China might want to target. And once
you've handed over your data to TikTok, even if you're
just a teenager, they have it forever, and sometimes at
data from your time as a teenager might be the
most embarrassing data you'd ever hand over to TikTok. Second,
I understand a lot of people saying, what's the big deal,
It's harmless content, And for many people it is harmless content.
It's cat videos or how to instructions about home repair

(08:44):
or knitting or grilling or what have you, and that's
all fine. But a lot of the content is not harmless.
If you look at the evidence produced by state attorneys
general and their lawsuits against TikTok, you can see that
it intentionally targets teenagers with inappropriate content, teenage boys with
graphic violence, loot of scene pornography, teenage girls with content

(09:08):
about eating disorders, both of them, both boys and girls,
with content about suicide, even and tragically, some kids have
committed suicide after seeing that those kind of pro suicide content,
and of course it's a tool of Chinese communist propaganda.
You see that in the surge of anti Semitism on

(09:29):
TikTok that you didn't see on other platforms after the
October seventh attacks in Israel, the celebration of the Little
Gazas that have sprung up on campuses all around America.
So there's no doubt that it's a threat to the
American people, especially our kids. That's why Congress passed overwhelming
by a person vote last year a bill. They didn't
ban TikTok. It simply required TikTok to be divested from

(09:53):
its Chinese parent company if it was to continue to
operate in the United States. If we do that, if
we TikTok out from underneath the thumb of communist China,
well then it's just another social media app. And whether
it's Oracle or Microsoft, or private equity investors or friendly
nations investing in it, none of that is worrisome. What's

(10:16):
worrisome is having it under the thumb of communist China.
And that's where I think any deal needs to accomplish.
It needs to break that tie with communist China.

Speaker 1 (10:26):
Do you think that that the tie to communist China
will be sufficiently broken. In the mind of Tom Cotton,
if Byteedance, the current Chinese parent company of TikTok ends
up as a minority owner in the new venture, would
that be okay with you?

Speaker 2 (10:46):
It's possible. I would say that really two things. The
most important one, how large is the stake? And with
that steak, do you have any formal governance right seats
on the board, veto over any decision. That sort of
thing may be more important. Again, the devil will be
in the details of this deal, where lies control of

(11:06):
the algorithm. That's what really drives the content on TikTok,
and says to an American teenage boy, here's content celebrating
graphic violence, or a teenage girl, here's content celebrating and
encouraging eating disorders. Lawyers in China they don't even allow TikTok.
Their version of TikTok, you know, just tells their teenagers

(11:28):
to eat their vegetables and do their homework and respect
their elders. So it really it will depend on the details.
But without any formal governance rights and with a complete
break in the algorithm, it's at least possible to imagine that.

Speaker 1 (11:44):
All right, I've got more on TikTok, but just in
the interesting time, I'm gonna I'm going to move on.
One of the things that you talk about in your
book is China's role in the number of Americans being
killed every day, every week, every month by by fentanel
and And to me, it's it's a it's a really
shocking thing and it's incredible that it's still going on

(12:05):
like this. Tell us, you know what you might want
my listeners to understand about China's role here.

Speaker 2 (12:12):
What was important to trace fentanyl into the United States.
Almost all fentanyl comes from Mexico, comes from the drug cartels.
They get most of their fentanyl from China. Now, years ago,
in the Obama era and early in the first Trump era,
it was actual fentanyl. Chinese pharmaceutical companies and chemical companies
would overproduce, intentionally overproduced fentanyl, which does have legitimate pain

(12:35):
management purposes in the care in the hands of a
licensed doctor, and send it to Mexico. President Trump's big
victory on this front in his first term was to
get Jiji and Pain to cut off the flow of fentanyl. Well,
what happened especially in the Biden administration, is you saw
an increase in the flow of the chemical precursors, the
ingredients if you will, to make fentanyl. So China is

(12:55):
now overproducing these chemicals, sending them the cartels, even sending
them in effect recipe and the pill presses to turn
them into pills, and then sending it to the United States.
It helps that President Trump has effectively closed the border,
but still there's ways to get in fit molists so
deadly and so small it completely lies reality for Czech

(13:19):
Beijing to say, well, you know, we don't know what
they're producing and we can't control them. Again, China is
not the United States, is not Great Britain. It is
a police state that boast that can monitor any one
of its people within moments. Of course, they could monitor
what these companies are producing. Of course they could prevent

(13:41):
these chemical precursors from going to Mexico. The reason they
don't is they are willing to see tens of thousands
of America's youth die every year because they know it's
destabilizing to our society and it keeps our leaders focused
on that problem as opposed to other problems like Chinese.
I mean it's cheating on trade deals or influence operations

(14:04):
through state and local governments or their military build up.
So your listeners should understand that for years, the vast
majority of deaths from ventnol or other synthetic opia waves
may have come most immediately from Mexico, but it originates
in China.

Speaker 1 (14:23):
Do you have about four more minutes you can spend
with me, Tom, So do one more quick thing from
the book, and then I want to ask you a
couple of things not related to the book. One of
the things that really shocked me in here was by
the way, I've been to Tibet and I have a
sense of all the stuff you talk about that the
Chinese are doing with Tibet. But Tom as a whole

(14:43):
chapter in here about what the Chinese are doing to
various different subcultures, the Tibetans, the wigers you write in
the book about and I don't have the page open
in front of me about the Chinese harvesting organs from
fell and Gong members. Can you talk about that a
little bit?

Speaker 2 (15:03):
Yeah? So, Fallong Gong is a harmless spiritual movement that
arises out of the Buddhist tradition in America. You know,
if anyone has seen them, they probably most likely seen
them doing yoga or other exercises in public parks. It
arose in the nineteen nineties in China, became very large,

(15:27):
almost as large as the official membership of the Chinese
Communist Party. Again very harmless. One day in the nineteen
nineties there was some small, peaceful protests, and unlike the
left says about rioters by our mombing stories in America,
these actually were peaceful protests, and the Chinese dictator at
the time, jangs A men cracked down ruthlessly on Fallong

(15:50):
Goong because Chinese Communist leaders were petrified that any organization
outside of the Communist Party could grow so large in China,
so they began to arrest, detain, disappear, and torture. Many
of these members of fall On Gong and their ranks

(16:11):
have been devastated since then. But one thing they do,
and there's strong scientific evidence backing this up, is harvest
organs from living Fallon Goden prisoners, and that's done in
part because the organs are more likely to succeed and
are more valuable on the black market if the person
in an organ is harvested from is still alive when it's harvested.

(16:34):
So think about that. They basically sentenced these harmless Fallong
Gong practitioners to execution by live organ harvesting. To give
you just a sense of the brutality of communist China.

Speaker 1 (16:50):
Well, Tom Cotton's new book is called Seven Things You
Can't Say about China. All right, last thing I have
for you, So your chairman of the Intelligence Committee. I
saw you on TV talking about this stuff with signal,
and of course you served in the army as well.
And I'm not really interested in the very political conversation
who should get fired and who not. I'm just I'm

(17:10):
curious in what's your angle? How do you think about
this story? I assume you think it was a pretty
big mistake. Again, I'm not asking you point fingers and stuff.
What do you think is the most important thing to
come out of this story? What do you think will
be the most important lessons learned or changes because of
the story.

Speaker 2 (17:31):
Well, first, I don't think anyone should be fired. President
Trump has been clear it was a mistake. But I
think Pete Hexeth and Mike Waltz are doing outstanding jobs
in service to the President Trump and our nation. I suspect,
as President Trump said, there may be less use of
signal even though it was authorized for use as a

(17:54):
communications device in the Biden administration. As the CIA Director
John Ratcliffe testified my committee last week, it was uploaded
on his computer at the day he was torn in.
I would encourage people, though, to think more about the
underlying decision that was being debated and then executed, And

(18:14):
I commend President Trump for that, which is to finally
finally strike back at these outlaw rebels in Yemen. They
have been targeting our sailors on the Red Sea since
the October seventh attacks. They've been targeting Israel, and Joe
Biden largely left our sailors there like sitting ducks, just
shooting down missiles when they were flying at our ships.

(18:38):
President Trump launched long overdue strikes. Strikes have been overdue
since October seventh, twenty twenty three, to not just defend
against incoming missiles, but to attack launch sites, to try
to find munitions depots, manufacturing facilities, and the leader of
those rebels. And that has been and remains an ongoing

(19:00):
excellent operation that also has the secondary effect of further
neutering Iran's Aron's threats to Israel and to our friends
in the region and to our troops. So, as President
Trump said, mistake, learn from it, move on.

Speaker 1 (19:16):
But let's not.

Speaker 2 (19:17):
Forget the big difference between Joe Biden and Donald Trump
is Donald Trump is willing to use military force when
necessary to defend America's interests.

Speaker 1 (19:27):
Tom Cotton Harvard Law grad, Old Guard, former member of
the Old Guard. That's capitalized Old Guard unit, famous for
their work at Arlington National Cemetery. And by the way,
we're talking about Tom Cotton's book today, Seven Things you
Can't Say about China, But go check out his fabulous
book on the Old Guard. Remind me the title of
that book, Tom, I did read it, but I'm blanking
on the title Sacred Duty. Sacred Duty. It's a wonderful

(19:50):
read as well. Tom Cotton serves Arkansas in the United
States Senate. It's very good to see you again. Thanks
for me in time for me and my KAA listeners,
Tom will we'll talk again in a wonderful book. By
the way, thanks for writing it, all right, thank you.
Ros's going to be out with you