Last Updated on November 8, 2020
With the AP and NBC News projecting that Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden may, in fact, become the next President of the United States, the realities of the election are starting to take shape. There will have to be a cooperative relationship between a President Biden and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).
But cooperation between the two men might not be as hard to attain. There is a camaraderie among the two men from when Biden was a member of the Senate.
“They have negotiated big things before. They’ve come through some very hard and even bitter fights over judicial confirmations,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE), a Biden ally, said to reporters. “But I think they’ve managed to stay friends or have a working, professional relationship even in the hardest of times.”
McConnell was the sole Senate Republican to attend Beau Biden’s funeral in 2015, a gesture that certainly signals friendship, if not respect. And McConnell was deafeningly silent on the exposure of the Biden family influence scheme that was outed by information on Hunter Biden’s laptop.
NEW: A source close to Mitch McConnell tells Axios a Republican Senate would work with Biden on centrist nominees but no "radical progressives" or ones who are controversial with conservatives. https://t.co/beI9692HkP
— Axios (@axios) November 5, 2020
But it is the muted common thread of China that perhaps finds these two very different political creatures poised to cooperate on legislation should Biden, indeed, capture the presidency.
While the saga on the Biden family’s deep entanglement with the Communist Chinese has now been exposed and well-covered – well covered to the tune of millions of dollars to gain influence in the US government, the Chinese connection to the McConnell family is less understood.
McConnell’s wife is former US Secretary of Labor and former Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao. Chao was born in Taiwan and immigrated to the US as a child, naturalizing when she was 19 years old.
But it is her family business that sees deep ties to China.
The Foremost Group, formerly the Foremost Maritime Corporation, as founded by Chao’s father, James S.C. Chao. Its fleet includes some of the world’s largest “capsize” bulk carriers.
Most of Foremost’s ships were built by China State Shipbuilding, and many of them were financed by loans from the Communist state-owned Export-Import Bank of China. Flagged out of Liberia and Hong Kong, the chief product moved by the company is iron ore and 72 percent of its freight is shipped to China.
Stunningly, the company received a forgivable loan under the Paycheck Protection Program valued between $350,000 and $1 million in 2020.
To suppose that there are common people, associates, operatives, and even perhaps vulnerabilities between Biden and McConnell where China is concerned would not be outrageous to want to explore.
