China Collaborator Predators Clip a China Hawk’s Wing

Did Billionaire Ken Griffin Sabotage Ron Santis' Presidential Campaign?

Did a small number of Fifth Column big donors sabotage the now flailing presidential campaign of Ron DeSantis?  That’s a possible sub-plot behind the recent clipping of DeSantis’ budding China Hawk wings.  The incident more broadly reveals a treasonous coterie of US billionaires and American lobbyists aiding and abetting Communist China’s dangerous rise. 

It all started last May.  To outflank the “Tough on China” Trump, Florida Governor DeSantis spearheaded passage of the Foreign Countries of Concern law in his state.  That same month “DeSanctimonious,” as Donald Trump would soon be calling him, launched his presidential campaign. 

DeSantis’ new Florida new law prevents Communist Chinese agents from buying property near US military bases.  It also bans Chinese investment from funding projects in Florida. 

It’s no state secret Communist China loves to buy land near our military bases to surveil these bases and intercept military intelligence.  I saw plenty of unclassified intel about that in the White House.

Nor should the Communist Chinese be gobbling up America’s commercial and residential property as spoils of their economic aggression.  China’s mercantilist manufacturers steal America’s intellectual property, flood our markets with unfairly subsidized goods, run up our trade deficit, and then recycle back our dollars into buying up America – while driving up rents and home prices for American citizens.

So, at first blush, the DeSantis bill does indeed seem like very Tough on China legislation.  Yet, as always in politics, the devil is in the details.

Enter Stage Right, the apex Wall Street predator, billionaire Ken Griffin -- one of the first big donors to hop on the DeSantis train.  Yet, it would be  Griffin who would successfully lead the lobbying charge to water down key portions of DeSantis’ now “weak on China” legislation.  Moreover, to DeSantis’ humiliation, his own Chief of Staff carried the watering can with a proposed weakening rule change.

Griffin had no shortage of help in seeking to make Florida’s land safe for the business of Chinese spying and plundering.  Front and center has been the DC Swamp-based Real Estate Roundtable -- the lobbying hammer of big real estate investors ranging from Citigroup, Starwood, and Wells Fargo to another apex Wall Street predator in the Blackstone group’s CEO Steve Schwarzman.

Schwarzman is the biggest Chinese Communist Party sympathizer I ever had the displeasure to spar with in the West Wing.  While constantly backchanneling the Chinese, Schwarzman lobbied against the Trump tariffs.  He would later brag about his outsized influence on the January 2020 trade deal that China would of course renege on.

The lust for more wealth of mega-billionaires like Griffin and Schwarzman seemingly has no bounds.  Griffin is already the second richest man in Florida; Griffin and Schwarzman rank third and fourth on the list of the richest people in the finance and investment industry behind only Elon Musk and Michael Bloomberg. 

Yet, Griffin and Schwarzman exhibit ZERO empathy for the working class Americans and domestic manufacturers under relentless mercantilist attack from China.  Instead, these de facto unregistered foreign lobbyists ruthlessly advance Communist Chinese interests to further pad their bank accounts.

Here's the simple lesson for presidential aspirants like DeSantis: You can’t out-Trump Trump on Communist China if you allow the likes of Ken Griffin to bankroll your presidential ambitions. 

Here’s the more complex question: Did Griffin initially throw his wallet behind Ron DeSantis just to get inside his perimeter, hook him on his big donations, and then force him to weaken his Tough on China policies as he has?  Or was the real chess move purpose not just to castrate DeSantis but to gut him? 

Griffin surely knew his high profile endorsement and lavish funding of DeSantis would immediately turn off any portion of Trump’s MAGA base that DeSantis might otherwise have been able to chip off.  In fact, DeSantis was dead in the MAGA waters just days after his official launch because the Griffin brand is so toxic in Flyover Country.

Of course, the gutting of DeSantis still leaves Griffin, along with other China collaborators like Schwarzman, Larry Fink, and Ray Dalio, with a Donald Trump problem.  But isn’t that where, for this flock of big donors, the birds of a feather Nikki Haley comes in?

As Governor of South Carolina, Haley welcomed Communist Chinese  with open arms as she littered the state with non-union, low wage, foreign auto assembly plants.  Haley even led the charge in 2015 to bring the Chinese-owned Volvo to build the first auto assembly plant in the US – even lavishing over $200 million in taxpayer subsidies on Communist China to land the plant. 

Of course, Griffin, Fink, Schwarzman, and the broader coalition of RINOs, Kochs, and neo-cons opposing Trump know that my old boss is now unstoppable as the Republican nominee.  So their game NOW is to quietly put their money and power behind Haley, insure she makes a credible showing, and then try to force Trump to put her on the ticket.

My guess is that Donald John Trump will never buy into a VP Haley in the West Wing.  One Pence was enough, and Nikki has been nothing but disloyal trouble since Trump bailed her out of a failing political career and appointed her UN Ambassador.  But this is why American politics is so interesting.

The broader lesson for the American public is that we the people must reign in the power of Communist Chinese collaborators like Griffin, Schwarzman, Dalio, and Fink.  One very good place to start may be to investigate those who lobby on behalf of Communist Chinese interests as possible unregistered foreign lobbyists under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.  Those found guilty face an up to five-year prison term – which may be enough to get this billionaire class to start waving the American flag instead.