BUCK: Clay wants to talk about this story of an owner for the Golden State Warriors. I was just gonna give you all a little bit of an update on what happened here. We can discuss how wokeness apparently has its limits at our borders or even just basic concern for human rights and human dignity somehow in corporate America can stop the moment that the bottom line is affected by China. So Golden State Warriors owner, Chamath Palihapitiya… Is that it? That’s a tough one. Is that right?
CLAY: I do not know the correct pronunciation there so I’m glad you handled it as opposed to me.
BUCK: Palihapitiya. All right. I’ll go with that. He’s a billionaire investor and he — in his All-In Podcast — said that the Joe Biden signing of the Uyghur forced labor prevention act is not something that he really cared about. In fact, he declared, nobody cares about China’s treatment of the Uyghurs. I believe we have the actual audio. Let’s hear it.
BUCK: So, Clay, just a lot of things here. First of all, I think that it’s fascinating to watch people in corporate America — who I’m sure would bend the knee to BLM in a heartbeat and profess their undying love for every aspect of the movement and act like they really care about the plight of minorities dealing with police and inner city America, et cetera. But when it comes to China there’s a lot of money at stake so, “Nobody cares,” to quote our friend here “about the Uyghurs.” Wow.
CLAY: Look, first of all, I encourage honesty, okay? So what is saying is the quiet part out loud, which is his statement there is representative of what the NBA actually thinks too. Now, they may do a dog and pony show where they come around and say, “Oh, we desperately care about genocide.” Did you know, Buck, that Chinese — and I don’t think a lot of people do know this. There are a couple of different Chinese sneaker companies.
There was a big discussion about the fact that the Uyghurs who are — let’s make no mistake about it — having genocide committed against them by the Chinese government. They are a Muslim minority group that the Chinese basically are seeking to wipe off the planet in many ways based on their genocidal treatment. They also have cotton there. They are using Uyghur slave labor to pick cotton!
When it became an issue, many different companies came out and said, “We’re gonna make sure that we aren’t using any.” By the way, it’s the twenty-first century. “We’re gonna make sure that we aren’t using slave labor cotton in our products.” These two Chinese sneaker companies said the opposite. Buck, they said, “We are going to make sure that we are using Chinese Uyghur slave labor cotton in our tennis shoes.”
The NBA has multiple players that are endorsing those sneakers. They are — while claiming to be a social justice warrior organization — allowing slave-labor-produced shoes to be worn in their games and for players to directly profit as slave owners did generations ago in the United States and around the world. We are still allowing these players to profit off of slave labor.
So what this part-owner — he’s not the official head owner, part-owner — of the Golden State Warriors is saying is the quiet part out loud, which is, “The NBA doesn’t care at all about slave labor in China or genocide,” and, by the way, Buck, they cared immensely if a team would deign to go to the White House when Donald Trump was president.
But when it comes to actual genocide — and this goes back to my point about people who lecture you all the time about being on the right side of history. I could be wrong here, but most of the time being on the side of genocide is the wrong side of history.
CLAY: A little bit of sarcasm there. But, yes, you’re usually there. People love to believe that they’re on the right side of history. Being opposed to genocide should be a relatively easy — In basketball parlance, it should be a — layup for anybody to be like, “Hey, you know, I’m opposed to genocide.” So the right and wrong side of history, honestly, the NBA is going to be on the wrong side of history as it pertains to Chinese genocide.
This owner is coming out and saying the quiet part out loud, which is effectively what NBA policy is. Now, Buck, if we had a real sports media that was honest, they would start holding players and coaches and owners accountable for this, and they would say, “Hey, do you agree that genocide is beneath your level of caring or not?” Nobody’s even gonna follow up on this, probably, because they all carry the water of the NBA.
BUCK: What kind of actual monetary…? When you look at the connections in China… We’re talking about what level of money that the NBA is getting from being able to air the games. Do we have some sense of that?
CLAY: It’s billions of dollars. Not every year. Not every year a billion dollars, but it’s a multibillion-dollar year that they have signed contracts that they have signed. And honestly, it’s probably a billion or more a year if you start factoring in product with NBA logos on it and everything else, the overall impact. I mean, There are more people… Here’s a way to put it, Buck. There were more people — prior to this Daryl Morey thing blowing up — watching the NBA in China than watched the NBA in the United States.
BUCK: I think that’s the context that we need here, to give folks a sense of how important it is for access to that market, because for some companies if you look at their bottom line — some U.S.-based companies — having access to the Chinese market in one form or another is something that they’re just not willing to do without, and it’s particularly true of entertainment media these days.
BUCK: It’s true of Hollywood and the big budget movies. They make so many of these brainless so-called blockbuster movies that if you want anything that is decent writing with a story worth watching, you’re not gonna like it, but it dubs really well when they put ’em in the Chinese market and they’ll make political concessions — which is even big problem — to the Chinese market on a regular basis. And obviously the NBA, the same situation.
For all the challenges we had with the Soviets on a military and political level, they never had the kind of entanglements with the absolute financial and corporate elites in this country that we do now with the Chinese Communist Party. It’s a much deeper and bigger challenge over the long term than I think most folks have realized.
CLAY: Here’s a good example of that. When’s the last time there’s been a bad guy from China in an American movie? Compare that with how often the Russian is still the bad guy. Just think about it in a James Bond movie. Think about it in the context of any sort of international movie of intrigue. There is ever a Chinese bad guy. In your head, think about it. Oh, my God. When has there ever been a bad guy coming out of China? Every single international intrigue movie — the Bourne movies, the James Bond movies, whatever they are –almost always there’s some eastern European bad guy.
BUCK: You remember with Red Dawn which I think they changed it, originally it was the Soviets and the Cubans, right? And then they redid it with North Korea when they did the redo of it?
CLAY: I didn’t see the remake.
BUCK: I didn’t see the remake. So I’m not sure exactly. But that was North Korea, not China?
CLAY: Yeah.
BUCK: Was that China is in the remake? I’m trying to think of the time.
CLAY: I don’t think it was Chinese bad guy.
BUCK: I know that there was that James Bond movie where there was the Chinese agent involved, but the bad guy was actually the British guy who used to do the Infiniti commercials, remember him from back in the day?
CLAY: I love Top Gun. I bet you love Top Gun. I bet anybody with a functional brain that listens to this show liked Top Gun. They’re doing the remake of Top Gun, right? Not the remake, but the sequel. On Tom Cruise’s letter jacket in the 1980s version, there was a symbol for Taiwan on it. They scrubbed out the Taiwanese symbol from Tom Cruise’s leather jacket for the remake of Top Gun.
CLAY: No doubt!
BUCK: This is why this Golden State Warrior owner who’s made a ton of money — he’s a billionaire investor. He probably invested in a bunch of tech companies or something, and now we’re all supposed to think he’s a genius. Patriotism is supposed to matter too. If you’re a billionaire in America, you should think of yourself as an American billionaire. That’s actually the way you should view things.
CLAY: Not only that, again, what’s the point of having FU money if you’re not willing to say FU? I don’t understand these billionaires who continue to bow down to China. You’ve got a billion dollars! Stand up for American exceptionalism and American values. If you won’t do it when you’re a billionaire, when will you ever do it? It’s embarrassing.
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