During a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Thursday, David Perdue, President Trump’s China Ambassador nominee, spoke about Elon Musk’s influence within the Trump Administration.
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NewsTranscript
00:00And I turn the floor over to Senator Van Hollen.
00:05Thank you, Senator, and congratulations to both of you.
00:08Senator, it's good to see you again, and I enjoyed the conversation in my office.
00:13I'm just going to cover a couple topics here today.
00:17You mentioned in response to a question that it was important to have our friends and allies
00:22with us in a unified stance with respect to our policy in China.
00:29I fully agree.
00:30One of the things we hear from our allies in East Asia, Japan, South Korea, friends
00:36like Taiwan, is that what happens in Ukraine matters to what happens with respect to Taiwan.
00:44In other words, that President Xi has one eye on what's happening in Ukraine and another
00:50with respect to Taiwan in terms of U.S. resolve and the credibility of our allies.
00:57Do you agree with that simple statement?
00:58Well, I think that's a complex comparison, and I'm not sure of what President Xi is thinking
01:04or not thinking except what he says, and he has said over and over the last 10 years that
01:10the reunification is very important to the PRC and the CCP.
01:14Our role in that is simply that we're going to continue to honor the one China policy
01:20as stated in the Taiwan Relations Act, also backed up by the three communiques and the
01:26six assurances.
01:28So the situation is a little more complex than just making a binary comparison between,
01:32I think, Ukraine and Taiwan.
01:34Well, certainly there are differences between Taiwan and Ukraine.
01:38I wasn't suggesting otherwise, but I was suggesting what our allies tell us.
01:43You just said it was important to be united with our allies.
01:47I can just tell you what our allies have been telling us repeatedly is that what happens
01:53in Ukraine impacts and influences the way Xi thinks about Taiwan and the situation there.
02:02I think all of us, not all of us, but on a bipartisan basis, many of us have been deeply
02:06concerned with the way President Trump threw Ukraine under the bus and President Zelensky
02:11under the bus and called Ukraine the aggressor.
02:17At the same time, we know that China has been supporting Russia.
02:23Of course, President Xi famously said that the bonds of friendship between China and
02:29Russia know no boundaries.
02:33The previous administration made clear that if China was to supply military assistance
02:39to Russia, that that would result in some kind of sanctions or punitive response from
02:46the United States.
02:47Do you agree that we should make it clear to China that that kind of assistance would
02:53be unacceptable from our point of view?
02:56You know, the situation is, with regard to Ukraine, is not – I wouldn't characterize
03:02it as throwing them under the bus, Senator.
03:04I would just personally disagree with that.
03:06I think over 300 and plus – Senator, I know how this works.
03:09I get that.
03:10If you could just answer the question.
03:12I asked you – I do, I do.
03:13Do you agree that the previous administration's policy, that it would trigger sanctions from
03:20the United States if China were to provide offensive – or to provide military equipment
03:24to Russia?
03:25Well – Do you agree or disagree?
03:27I agree, and we already have sanctions on them about cross-border trade right now between
03:31China and Russia on dual use, and we know that 80 percent of what Russia has available
03:37to it on dual use comes from China, and we know a lot of that is ending up in the Ukraine.
03:41So yes, I fully support that.
03:43I think President Trump's strategy does the same.
03:46Okay.
03:47So I do want to follow up on some of the questions Senator Merkley raised, because I think it's
03:52indisputable that Elon Musk has an enormous amount of influence in this administration.
03:57He's single-handedly gone about, you know, firing lots of federal employees.
04:03He said he was going to put AID through the wood chipper.
04:06He actually said it was a criminal enterprise.
04:11And I think others have pointed out, including Senator Shaheen, that on a bipartisan basis
04:15we've thought that AID has been an important part of U.S. soft power.
04:21And we've already seen instances of where AIDs retreated in the last couple months that
04:27China has worked to fill the void.
04:30And I do want to just read a statement by Vivek Ramaswamy, who was originally, of course,
04:37Musk's partner in the Doge effort before he left it.
04:41This is what he said in 2023.
04:44Quote, Tesla is increasingly beholden to China.
04:48And then on his podcast, he said, and I quote, I have no reason to think Elon won't jump
04:56like a circus monkey when Xi Jinping calls in the hour of need, unquote.
05:03He also referred to Musk as a Chinese puppet.
05:07So do you agree, would you agree that we should have concerns that somebody with the
05:13amount of influence that Elon Musk has in this administration is getting briefings at
05:22the Defense Department?
05:23Fortunately, they called off, apparently, the war plan on Taiwan.
05:26But doesn't it concern you that somebody like that might have an inordinate amount of influence
05:30with respect to our policies?
05:31Well, first of all, I'm not going to discredit the individual, but that comment is coming
05:35from an individual who was fired basically by the Doge for not doing his job.
05:39So my view is that what they're doing is absolutely necessary.
05:43I think we all.
05:44Are you Vivek Ramaswamy?
05:45Yes.
05:46Being fired?
05:47Yeah.
05:48Okay.
05:49I think that, you know, what they're trying to do, I think we all would agree to.
05:50I mean, we've got to find a way to get better use of the money we spend in the federal government.
05:55When it relates to the breadth of responsibility of what Doge is doing, the president has said
06:02publicly, this is 132 days.
06:04They're well into that now.
06:06They had a, I think they had a press conference this week about the results so far.
06:10Look, there's, when you go in, I've done this several times in the corporate world, and
06:13when you go in and do this kind of effort, there's going to be some areas that you have
06:18to come back and clean up.
06:19And even Elon Musk said that this week, as a matter of fact.
06:22So I agree with you that it's a careful process.
06:26We need to make sure we don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
06:28At the same time, again, I'll relate my comment earlier about the debt funding of everything
06:33we're doing here.
06:34And by the way, the overhead of USAID, let me say this one more time.
06:38The overhead of USAID is redundant in so many cases.
06:41I think that CARE does a great job around the world.
06:44It's about a billion dollar benefit.
06:45We fund about a third of that.
06:47A friend of mine runs it.
06:49But they only have about a 10% overhead.
06:51So if you add USAID overhead on top of what CARE is doing, you end up with an unacceptable
06:57level of overhead.
06:58I'll end with this.
07:00With respect, this committee, the chairman of this committee, has not held a hearing
07:04so that we could ask these very questions.
07:07Senator Shaheen has had two rump hearings with AID officials, which tell a very different
07:12story than is being portrayed by Elon Musk and company, who again called it a criminal
07:17enterprise, which, as I've said, makes every member of this committee a co-conspirator
07:21in a criminal enterprise.
07:22Well, I don't issue that kind of proclamation, Senator.
07:24I don't want to be associated with that.
07:26But what I just said, I'll stand by in terms of the overhead.
07:29He's the one that did that at AID, and that is what he said.
07:32And he said he wanted to put it through the woodchipper, not reform.
07:34So we should be very clear about what they're doing, not what they want us to think they're
07:38doing.
07:39Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
07:40Thank you, Senator.