CNN Newsroom: Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA) Is Interviewed About China And The U.S. Meeting And Much More
Interview
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First, thanks for having me. I disagree with the Republicans on this. Secretary Blinken is traveling to China in a position of strength. Our Indo-Pacific alliances, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia have all strengthened relative to China in the last year.
Our economy is turbo charged after the depths (ph) of the pandemic, where the Chinese economy has high youth unemployment and lower GDP than they expected. And also, we're putting their military friend of no limits on a path to strategic defeat in Ukraine. Secretary Blinken has a strong hand to play here and I think it's the right time for him to go, sit down and make very clear that the United States is not going anywhere in the Indo-Pacific. We are going to represent our values and advance our priorities throughout that region and throughout the world.
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The Department of State is going to have to craft that one on one to give President Biden maximum leverage. Timing matters there, obviously, but this president came into offense with one of the best rolodexes of any commander-in-chief in recent history. He obviously prides himself on the strength of his personal relationships with world leaders. We've seen it to great effect already in his tenure.
And I do think it's important that he's able to convey directly to Xi Jinping who's really a dictator at this point of the Chinese Communist Party, that Xi Jinping's hallucinations about United States being in decline or dysfunction relative to the CCP just is not accurate. Do not bet against the United States. We are going to be in the Indo- Pacific.
We're going to stand by our allies there. We're going to ensure freedom of navigation. We're going to build strong economic partnerships and the pacific fleet is going to continue to make its passages in South China Sea and East China Sea and the Taiwan Strait. And for this reason, I do think it's important that we establish strong military to military communication channels. We don't want inadvertent escalation from what we've seen with Chinese war planes being really -- really being reckless.
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I agree with you. And what's more frustrating even than that is that we know what works, red flag laws, safe storage laws, universal background checks, ending the liability shield that gun manufacturers have for the carnage that their products cause. I represent Massachusetts. These laws have saved tens of thousands of lives.
And on to your question, this ends when voters get fed up with GOP politicians putting the NRA and gun lobby ahead of the safety of their families. We had people out there who are turning our churches, our schools, our grocery stores into shooting ranges. We know how to stop it, but GOP politicians want to put their head in the sand.
The good news here, and I understand it can be hard to find, is that voters in general elections are increasingly punishing the Republican Party for their extremism on gun issues. I am optimistic that in the election cycles to come, we're going to see it increasingly hard for Republican politicians to go out there and defend the NRA over children.
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So, first of all, the Department of Justice is enforcing the law. And in this country, nobody is above the law. It's one of the things that gives us such strength as a democracy. I would add per our China conversation, you know, in China, people swear an oath to the Chinese Communist Party. In this country, people swear an oath to the Constitution.
And both Republican and Democratic officials need to take that seriously. I would ask my GOP colleagues; do you bear true faith and allegiance to Donald Trump or to the Constitution? Because right now it sounds like you're putting him first and that is deeply concerning for our democracy.
President Biden is doing what any responsible president would do, which is allowing the DOJ to pursue facts and the law, allowing a jury of Donald Trump's peers to decide if there's merit to the charges against him. And then just showing the American people what he can do as the leader of this country, investments in infrastructure, semiconductor manufacturing, empowering Medicaid to negotiate drug prices. He's got a lot to talk about without having to let Donald Trump set the terms of this debate.
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I do think it's important to emphasize that under common law, it is a jury of Americans who get to decide the gravity and the voracity of the charges brought against Donald Trump. Joe Biden didn't give the green light to prosecute Donald Trump and he's certainly is not going to be the judge or jury of Donald Trump.
And he's demonstrating to the American people the value of strong rule of law in this country in direct contrast to Donald Trump's unbelievably irresponsible accusations against career law enforcement officers that have been, unfortunately, seconded by other GOP candidates and members of Congress. Again, Joe Biden is just -- he's not going to let Donald Trump set the
terms of this presidential campaign. Joe Biden is going to go out there and talk about the fact that he took over when we were facing the worst crisis in our democracy since the civil war, the worst public health crisis since World War I, the most complicated economy since World War II. And since then, this country has had two and a half years of stability, of economic growth, and of an opportunity to help heal our democracy.
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My pleasure. Thank you.
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