Former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, comfortable at home and clad in a hideous argyle sweater, probably thought he was in for a softball interview with MAGA shock jock Stewie Peters, and though Stewie’s tone grew increasingly hostile over the course of the 38-minute hit, Meadows handled it well enough, seizing opportunities to make Kevin McCarthy’s life just a little more miserable by throwing the minority leader under the bus to Stewie’s audience a few times, including blaming him (as well as Lindsey Graham, Jared Kushner, and former 2020 Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien) a few times for the lackluster 2022 endorsements Trump has made.
At 30:45 in the video Stewie uses this subject to segue into China connections, and that’s where things quickly go to shit for Meadows in the interview. Referencing a report in the National File, Peters says “Back on November 19th, this show discovered a really concerning report” regarding Meadows’ “very close connections with Chinese communists through the ridiculously named Humpty Dumpty Institute as well as the CCP-tied Taihe Institute. What were you doing with these Chinese communists, exactly?” Meadows was taken aback, but powered through with some convoluted explanation about “Humpty Dumpty”. “In terms of any connection with China, actually, I was actually on the China commission, holding China accountable during that time,” responded Meadows. “I can tell you that there’s anyone who believes that China is our number-one threat, it’s me. And I will continue to believe that.” Stewie didn’t press it further, probably due to time constraints, but in the “just asking questions” world, having asked the question is enough to cast a cloud over one suspected of disloyalty to the MAGA Reich.