Selected Text of the Letter to the Speaker of the House and President of the Senate on Addressing the Threat Posed by TikTok and Wechat

To protect our Nation, I took action, in an Executive Order of August 6, 2020 (Addressing the Threat Posed by Tiktok, and Taking Additional Steps to Address the National Emergency With Respect to the Information and Communications Technology and Services Supply Chain), to address the threat posed by one mobile application, TikTok.  I have now taken further action to address a similar threat posed by another mobile application, WeChat.

WeChat, a messaging, social media, and electronic payment application owned by the Chinese company Tencent Holdings Ltd., reportedly has over one billion users worldwide, including users in the United States.  Like TikTok, WeChat automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users — threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information.  In addition, WeChat captures the personal and proprietary information of Chinese nationals visiting the United States, thereby allowing the Chinese Communist Party a mechanism for keeping tabs on Chinese citizens who may be enjoying the benefits of a free society for the first time in their lives.  WeChat, like TikTok, also reportedly censors content that the Chinese Communist Party deems politically sensitive and may also be used for disinformation campaigns that benefit the Chinese Communist Party.

To deal with this threat, the order prohibits, beginning 45 days after the date of the order, to the extent permitted under applicable law, any transaction that is related to WeChat by any person, or with respect to any property, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, with Tencent Holdings Ltd. (a.k.a. Téngxùn Kònggǔ Yǒuxiàn Gōngsī), Shenzhen, China, or any subsidiary of that entity, as identified by the Secretary of Commerce (Secretary) under section 1(c) of this order.

Donald Trump

Joe Biden’s mental ability is a campaign issue that can’t be ignored

He might be riding high in the polls, but Joe Biden’s mental acuity increasingly is an issue in the election campaign, and growling at reporters who ask about it is no way to alleviate voter concerns.

Asked during an event with the National Associations of Black and Hispanic Journalists if he had “taken a cognitive test,” Biden snapped.

“No, I haven’t taken a test! Why the hell would I take a test? C’mon, man!”

Frowning and irritated, he paused before ripping into the reporter, Errol Barnett of CBS News.

“That’s like saying you, before you got on this program, if you take a test where you’re taking cocaine or not, what do you think? Huh? Are you a junkie?” said Biden in an interview to be streamed Thursday.

Ouch. Barnett had hit a nerve, and Biden’s flash of anger was a reminder of his interview in May with a black man, radio host Charlamagne tha God, when Biden blurted out the ruinous line that if you vote for Trump, “you ain’t black.”

This time, Biden’s startling go-to defense was to accuse a black man of being a junkie.

After the blunder, Biden appeared to look at something slightly to the left of the camera, suddenly laughed heartily, apropos of nothing, and nodded his head twice.

Maybe a staffer was frantically waving cue cards behind the camera or flashing a warning through the teleprompter.

Whatever was going on, Biden recovered his composure and delivered a sharp line about President Trump and the cognitive test the commander-in-chief recently boasted about acing. “If he [Trump] can’t figure out the difference between an elephant and a lion, I don’t know what the hell he’s talking about,” says Biden.

Phew, crisis averted. Or it would have been if Biden hadn’t kept talking.

“Look, c’mon, man. I know you’re trying to goad me, but I’m so forward-looking to have an opportunity to sit with the president — or stand with the president — in debates.”

It is an extraordinary exchange, and, in the absence of the candidate’s physical presence on the campaign trail, worth studying to try to understand what is going on in Biden’s brain.

It seemed obvious to anyone on the ground at the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary that Biden’s energy and cognitive function were fading.

Selected Remarks by President Trump at Whirlpool Corporation Manufacturing Plant

Strikes at China

Nobody can do what I’ve done in terms of all of the things that we’re doing to combat this horrible disease that never should have been sent to us, that was sent — it came from China; should never have been allowed to leave China.  They could have easily done something.  They stopped it from coming into China, but they didn’t stop it from coming into the U.S. and Europe and the rest of the world.  And China should have done something about it.  And, frankly, it’s a disgrace that they didn’t.

What China did is a terrible thing.  Whether it was incompetence or on purpose, it was a terrible thing that they did to the world — not only to the United States, but to the world.  A terrible thing.

For decades, you watched as politicians let foreign nations steal our jobs, loot our factories, and plunder the crown jewels of the U.S. economy.  And the word “plunder” is capitalized.

Globalization has made the financial elites, who donate to politicians, very wealthy, but it’s left millions and millions of our workers with nothing but poverty and heartache, and our towns and cities with empty factories and plants.

I promised to label China a “currency manipulator,” and I did.

I said we would bring trade cases against China to crack down on its economic aggression.

First and foremost, we will defeat the China virus.  We’re working very, very hard.  We call it the “China virus.”  We call it the “invisible enemy.”  We call it many different names.  It’s got many different names, but it’s bad.  And we’ve made tremendous strides.

Now is the time to come together as Americans and to unite against the plague inflicted upon us by China.  Together, we will prevail.

As we’ve seen in this pandemic, the United States must produce essential equipment, supplies, and pharmaceuticals for ourselves.  We cannot rely on China and other nations across the globe that could one day deny us products in a time of need.

During the course of the next four years, we will bring our pharmaceutical and medical supply chains home.  We’re going to bring them home where they belong.  And we’ll end reliance on China, just like we did with the washers and dryers, just like we did with many other things.

Attacks at Joe Biden

Joe Biden, this morning, totally disparaged and insulted the black community.  What he said is incredible.  And I don’t know what’s going on with him, but it was a very insulting statement he made.

For eight years, Whirlpool begged the Obama-Biden administration, who did nothing, to protect American workers from the flagrant dumping of foreign washers, dryers into America.  But your cries for help fell on deaf ears.  You didn’t see any action.  They didn’t act.  They didn’t care, and they never will.

For eight long years under Obama-Biden administration, American factory workers received nothing but broken promises and brazen sellouts and lost jobs.  The last administration tied America up in one globalist debacle after another.  They catered to the special interests while allowing foreign nations to siphon off our wealth, our dignity, our dreams, our money.  The suffering of our workers was met with nothing but cruel betrayal and callous indifference.

The Obama-Biden administration was laughed at.  They were a joke.  And they were perfectly happy to let China win, your jobs disappear, and your factory to close.

And, by the way, as I was leaving for the great state of Ohio — did you ever watch Biden, where he’s always saying the wrong state?  “It’s great to be in Florida.  Florida.”  “No, it’s Ohio.”  I’ve never seen a guy — I haven’t done that one yet; that’s a disaster.  I always say — Jim Jordan — if you do that, it’s over, right?  You can be Winston Churchill.  The speeches is over; you just walk off the stage.

But he does it all the time.  Nobody calls him for it.  “I love the state of Iowa.”  “Sir, sir, it’s Idaho.  It’s Idaho.”  And the worst is when he’s in, like, Indiana, and he says, “It’s great to be with the people of Florida,” and you have palm trees all over the place.  But he does it all the time.  There’s something going on.

Edited by staff