President Biden on Friday accidentally praised “China” when he meant to say Canada during a speech to parliament members in Ottawa — just moments after he conspicuously failed to identify China when discussing fentanyl smuggling.
“Today, I applaud China for stepping up,” the 80-year-old president said, before halting and adding, “excuse me, I applaud Canada.”
Biden quickly added, “You can tell what I’m thinking about China. I won’t get into that yet.”
The US leader made the error while discussing how Canada’s government agreed to accept more migrants from Latin American countries — immediately after not mentioning China at all while discussing fentanyl, which is driving a surge in US overdose deaths.
“We’re tackling the scourge of synthetic drugs that are devastating Canada and American communities, particularly our young people. Fentanyl is a killer and almost everyone knows someone who has been affected by this — lost a child or lost a friend,” Biden said of the lethal drug.
Biden said that fentanyl, which is largely shipped from Chinese labs, “has its roots around the globe” and is “shipped from overseas” without specifying from where. By contrast, he mentioned Mexico specifically as a common transfer point en route to the US.
“Canada and the United States are working closely with our partner in Mexico to attack this problem at every stage, from the precursor chemicals shipped from overseas to the powder to the pills to the traffickers moving into all of our countries,” Biden said.
“And we all know, [the] synthetic opioid epidemic has its roots around the globe, not just here. So today, we’re announcing a commitment to build a new global coalition of like-minded countries led by Canada and the United States to tackle this crisis. This is about public health.”
Biden’s reticence to mention the fact that fentanyl originates primarily in China contrasts with the approach of his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, who frequently mentioned the fact while claiming he convinced Beijing to adopt the death penalty for exporters.
Fentanyl is available by prescription to treat severe pain, but the illicit supply from China is increasingly cut into a wide variety of illegal drugs and counterfeit prescriptions, often killing unwitting users. The DEA says a fentanyl dose the size of roughly 10 grains of table salt can be lethal.
About 196,000 Americans died from fentanyl from 2018 to 2021 alone. Complete figures are not yet available from 2022.
When Biden mentioned fentanyl during last month’s State of the Union address, heckling Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) shouted out that it was from “China” when Biden’s own remarks focused on interceptions at the US border.
Because of fentanyl’s small size, it can be shipped into the US through the international mail system and doesn’t necessarily require the risk of border busts, though large amounts of the drug is seized there.
Although Biden said following his gaffe that he would return to the topic of China, he ultimately did not do so other than to share a frequently uttered anecdote about a memory of telling Chinese President Xi Jinping on the Tibetan Plateau during Biden’s vice presidency that the US is the land of possibilities.
Biden worked in a hockey joke, however, saying that he wasn’t fond of the Toronto Maple Leafs team because they beat first lady Jill Biden’s Philadelphia Flyers.
Republicans in Congress routinely attempt to link the Biden family’s income from Chinese business ventures to the president’s allegedly permissive attitude on issues such as determining the origins of COVID-19, which Biden rarely mentions despite the virus killing more than 1 million Americans after potentially leaking from a Wuhan lab, and on stopping fentanyl exports.
The Biden family had at least two major business ventures with Chinese government-linked companies during and after his vice presidency.
Then-second son Hunter Biden co-founded state-backed investment firm BHR Partners in 2013 within weeks of joining then-Vice President Biden aboard Air Force Two on an official trip to Beijing, according to the Wall Street Journal. Hunter introduced his father to BHR CEO Jonathan Li during the trip and Joe Biden later wrote college recommendation letters for Li’s children.
The Journal reported that Hunter Biden’s “paid-in capital” to establish BHR Partners was $425,000, according to corporate registration records.
The company’s website says, “We work with China’s industrial leaders, state-owned enterprises, multinational corporations, as well as with start-up visionaries in their international mergers and acquisitions, domestic restructurings and pre-IPO financings.”
One week after Joe Biden’s 2021 virtual summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Hunter Biden’s attorney Chris Clark said the stake in BHR had been divested. However, records don’t reflect a new holder of Hunter’s 10% stake and neither Clark nor the White House provided further information on the supposed transaction, such as the dollar amount or buyer’s identity.
The second Biden family venture in China involved a murky relationship with CEFC China Energy, a since-defunct firm reputed to be an arm of Beijing’s “Belt and Road” foreign influence operation.
The Post exclusively reported in October 2020 that Hunter’s abandoned laptop included a May 2017 email from Gilliar proposing that the “big guy” get 10% of the partnership with CEFC.
A whistleblower, former Hunter Biden associate Tony Bobulinski, says that he personally met with Joe Biden in May 2017 to discuss the venture and both Bobulinski and Gilliar have identified Joe Biden as “the big guy.”
Hunter and first brother James Biden ultimately received at least $4.8 million in 2017 and 2018 from CEFC — a since-defunct reputed arm of Beijing’s foreign-influence “Belt and Road” initiative — according to the Washington Post’s later review of laptop records.
The House Oversight Committee last week revealed that subpoenaed bank records show that first daughter in law Hallie Biden, who was married to the president’s late son Beau Biden before becoming a lover of his other son Hunter, also received money from the CEFC venture, with $35,000 in transfers from a Biden family associate in early 2017.
Evidence hinting at Joe Biden’s involvement in the CEFC venture includes an October 2017 email that identifies Joe Biden as a participant in a call about CEFC’s attempt to purchase US natural gas.
Hunter Biden also asked in September 2017 for a new sign and more keys to an office he was renting in DC’s House of Sweden building. The sign was to say, “The Biden Foundation and Hudson West (CEFC-US)” and the keys were for Joe Biden and his wife Jill Biden, uncle James and a Chinese exec named Gongwen Dong.
A spokeswoman for the property told the Washington Post, however, that the sign was never changed and the keys were not picked up.
Biden recently denied congressional Republican claims that he is “compromised” by China due to his family’s businesses, laughing dismissively last month and saying, “Give me a break, man,” when asked by The Post.
Joe Biden claims that he has “never spoken” with his son about “his overseas business dealings” and that “that “I have never discussed, with my son or my brother or with anyone else, anything having to do with their businesses.”