• 2 days ago
During a Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus press briefing on Thursday, Rep. Mark Takano (D-CA) spoke about Elon Musk's financial interests in China.

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Transcript
00:00Obviously, you made it very clear that you feel some of the policies the administration
00:03are pursuing would create backlash in the Asian and Chinese-American community.
00:08But I'm just curious, do you feel that China poses a national security risk to the United States?
00:13Actually, I want to make it extremely clear that we want to make sure that our nation's
00:19secrets are safe.
00:22So we know that there must be strong security measures, but we do not believe that there
00:29should be scapegoating of Chinese-Americans.
00:31And what happened with this China initiative is that they looked at their ethnicity first
00:38and looked to see whether they could find something on them.
00:42And in most of the cases, it was paperwork mistakes.
00:45And what I mean by that is, you left out this grant that you had or this summer teaching
00:50program you had in China, therefore we are going to arrest you.
00:54And it ruined their lives.
00:56So yes, there was clear scapegoating of Chinese researchers whose names were then dragged
01:03across headlines, and they were fired from their universities.
01:09That's what I mean by scapegoating.
01:10But in terms of the national security risk?
01:12Of course we – okay, you know what, the China initiative was the first time that there
01:19was an initiative named after a particular country.
01:26If there was an initiative that was based on national security but not naming a country
01:32or an ethnicity, it makes a huge difference.
01:36But instead what it did was set the FBI to look particularly at a community, and that's
01:43where the scapegoating occurred.
01:44Can I add something to this?
01:45Yeah, please.
01:46I find it peculiar that the President has exempted Elon Musk from any financial disclosures.
01:55Everybody knows that he has a tremendous financial interest in China, his Tesla plants, his supply
02:01chain.
02:02Why isn't the press asking more about this contradiction?
02:06If you're really concerned about national security and how our posture with China might
02:12be compromised, why not question this very big financial interest and explore that financial
02:20interest that Elon Musk has and how his Doge activities may have a negative impact on our
02:27national security interest.
02:28I'm assuming you'd subpoena anybody who doesn't have the power.
02:31We already tried.
02:32We already tried.
02:33Michael, who?

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