. mark: hello, america. i'm mark levin. this is "life, liberty & levin." we have a great guest, gordon chang, how are you, my friend. >> fine, thank you so much, mark. mark: great to see you, gordon chang, expert on china, north korea, really asia, generally. you graduated from cornelle university in american history. then you graduated from cornelle law school in 1976. >> i couldn't escape.

mark: you couldn't escape. i'm sure you were surrounded by all kinds of cool liberals. anyway, you are fairly ubiquitous as an expert on north korea and china. and frankly america in terms of our dealings with these countries, obviously, this is teed up because the president is supposedly in june, june 12th to be meeting with the dictator of north korea, kim jong-un, and yet, this week there's been all kinds of ups and downs and so forth, and i want to get into that, but i want the folks to understand also something here. i have here a document, a document that goes back to 1985, and all the discussions, negotiations, side deals, actual deals, bigtime deals between the united states and north korea, the united states, north korea and china, the united states and five other countries and north korea, the united states, south korea,

japan and north korea, all aimed at preventing north korea from getting nukes. we've given them enormous amounts of money, enormous amounts of resources and they have nukes. what happened? >> i think that the united states had other priorities, and so what we did was we put north korea almost all the time at the bottom of the list, and so, of course, the north koreans were able to just basically lie, cheat and steal, and we weren't paying that much attention. there were only certain moments that we're concerned. for instance, 1994, when we almost went to war. but you know during the administration of george w. bush, you know, they spent a lot of time on north korea, but for them, the most important thing was integrating china into the international system. the bush administration put, for instance, china at the center of the six-party talks, and because of that, you know, we sort of got an arrogant beijing because we fed their notions of self-importance, and we got a nukedup north korea.

so you know you get to the obama era, and basically it's in the too-hard basket. they spend much more attention on iran. almost nothing on north korea, and the most amazing thing, and this i credit to president obama, is basically an admission of mistake because during the transition period they went to the trump team and said, look, you're number one national security priority is going to be north korea. and the trump administration actually took that seriously because when you look at trump's foreign policy, it's basically north korea driven. yeah, of course, they're interested in the middle east because they have to, but for the rest of it, you know they subordinated china policy to north korea and that's the reason why you get kim jong-un at least saying he's going to show up in singapore june 12th. maybe july 12th, maybe august 12th but i think it will happen. mark: what was donald trump done that's so different from most of the recent presidents with respect to north korea? >> really, there are two

things, first of all, you have the sanctions, not only u.s. sanctions, but also a concerted effort at the u.n. for security council sanctions. and the other thing, of course, is the president's comments that he was going to strike north korea. he was not going to allow them to be able to strike the american homeland, and then, of course, have you john bolton, national security adviser, mike pompeo. you know, this has unnerved the north koreans, and also the south koreans and the chinese because there's a guy named andre lankov, the world's number one expert on north korea. he said, look, the policies of these three countries changed dramatically toward the end of last year, the only reason is they were afraid of war. he doesn't say the next line is they're afraid of war because of president trump, that's the reason why. and because of that, you had a much bigger pathway to peace, and essentially, we had for a moment peace looked like it was

going to break out in north asia. that's because they were concerned about what the u.s. was going to do, that for the first time in a very long time, mark, you know, the united states was going to protect the american homeland, whatever it took. mark: and the president put a very significant naval presence off the korean peninsula, hasn't he? >> he did that with three carrier strike groups, and a navy that's been severally depleted, three carrier groups in one place is really important. of course, there were the escorts and the nuclear subs, and you also had the b-52's, the b-1's, the f-22's, this is a deployment of military resources at certain times they think the north koreans looked at that and especially the chinese, they looked at that and said we really got to take the united states seriously. mark: let's take a look at this from of all places, the

"washington post." 1994-2002, north korea agrees to halt construction of two reactors the united states thinks could be used as part of a nuclear weapons program. instead according to the agreement, international consortium is supposed to replace the plutonium reactors with water reactors and the u.s. agrees to supply half a million tons of heavy fuel oil every year during the construction period. u.s., japan, european agency form an organization task with implementing the accord but when george w. bush becomes president in 2001, the united states walks away from the talks with north korea over concerns it is running a clandestine program. the north ultimately confirms the program's existence in 2002, rejecting further negotiations, kicking out inspectors, doubling down on efforts at a time when the united states is preparing to invade iraq. 2005, in august 2003, the united states decides to participate a new negotiations

with north korea. the six-party talk, alongside china, south korea, russia and japan, two years later in february 2005, north korea suspends involvement in the negotiations, citing u.s. conditions and resistance, after restart in summer 2005, again only takes 13 days for the negotiations to derail. 2006, despite suspending involvement in the talks several times that year, north korea agrees to end nuclear weapons program. this is 12 years ago. only about half a year later in september 2005, once again north korea suspends participation in the talk over u.s. sanctions. soon thereafter in october 2006, it launches first nuclear test. 07-08. in 2007, six-party talks resume, north korea grease to major concessions, steps are taken to follow through on promises but then north korea rejects u.s. verification methods, violates its own promises, causing the breakdown

of negotiations again. 2009-2010, u.s. rejects north korea's new talk,tections reescalate after it accuses the north of having torpedoed one of its navy ships in 2010. dozens die in the attack. 2012, weeks after kim reaches a deal with the united states suspend nuclear weapons program, north korea launches a long-range rocket. causing the agreement to fall apart. the following year north korea cancels scheduled family reunifications that have south korea of u.s. joint military drills. 2015, north korea rejects future talks on suspending nuclear weapons program after being drawn in open military conflict, north korea, south korea engage in talks that quickly fall apart and in 2016, in july, north korea signals willingness to negotiate but subsequently launches a number of missile tests. tensions further escalate in 2017, and now he's messing around again. that is, kim jong-un is messing

around now as we lead up to this so-called deadline of july -- june 12, i think it is, talking about now i'm concerned about the military exercises and we don't like john bolton and this sort of thing. what to you make of all this? >> well, i think that this has a similarity to it. there is a kim family playbook. the sanctions are starting to hurt kim jong-un, you don't have money, you can't launch missiles, you can't detonate nukes and can't engage in gift politics. a kim ruler giving luxury items, mercedes and rolexes to senior regime elements to buy loyalty. we're starting to see evidence that north korea is really hurting. so for instance, you know that soldier who defected on november 13, across the military demarcation line? cnn had the story which was

gross, about how the guy had 11 inch parasites in his stomach. that's because they have human excrement as fertilizer, we've known that for a long time. what was significant is the soldier had uncooked kernels of corn in his digestive tract, he was scrounging for food. reason this is important, those soldiers assigned to the security area in the demilitarized zone, this guy had to be well-connected, probably a family in pyongyang, so the regime had every reason in the world to keep this guy well fed, they couldn't do it. you know, we're starting to see also that rations in north korea even for elite officials are starting to be reduced. there's a whole sorts of things. the chinese are saying office number 39, the kim phamly slush fund is running low of cash. the list goes on and on, that's because the administration has tightened sanctions and done a good job of. this more they can do, but what

they've been trying to do is get the kims to the bargaining table. now they've been sort of successful in doing that and we'll have to see. that's what i think is different and that is that the president put north korea at the top of the list. that's not to say he's going to be successful, but that's a precondition to success, and we haven't had that in a very long time because as you read through that list, i can think of all of things american administrations were doing that didn't relate to north korea. north korea was sort of off to the side for almost all that time. with maybe one exception, 1994 for a month when looked like we were going to war, but apart from, that you know, north korea is, oh, this is destitute little country, can't do things. >> can we collapse north korea economically if we tighten it more with the chinese and russians eventually come to the rescue with economic aid? >> the chinese right now are coming to north korea's rescue. if you look at chinese sanctions enforcement over two

years, it's improved. look over the last two months, it's markedly deteriorated. just to give you one example, kim jong-un went to beijing at the end of march. china allows north korean media to photograph all the gifts that xi jinping gave to kim. $394,000 worth of porcelain, jewelry, silk. that by the way, mark, is a u.n. security council violation, and what xi jinping was doing is look, i'm going to -- i'm violating u.n. sanctions, better yet, i'm going to photograph and say you had evidence that i'm violating u.n. sanctions. so trump has sort of let that go, and if indeed we come to a good deal with the north koreans that they honor, we can let that go and not worry about the chinese have done. if things fall apart, like they could very well, we have to go after the chinese. the answer to the question and sorry for taking a long time. the answer to the question is yes week can collapse north

korea. they have an economy, $28.5 billion in 2016, the last year we have numbers. we can close off all commerce to north korea and even more important, we can go after the chinese. mark: want to get to that in a minute. my question on north korea is this: we removed about 100 nuclear warheads from south korea. the deal was under george h.w. bush, we've denuclearized the peninsula. as just goodwill and now you don't need nukes. so now the only country that with nukes is north korea and south korea has none. shouldn't we make an effort, if necessary, to reintroduce the nuclear warheads that were removed in south korea if necessary? >> that very well may be necessary sometime down the road. i don't think we have do it now. we have 28,500 service personnel in the korean peninsula. we put tactical nukes on the peninsula. we've got to take a fair number of those men and women and guard weapons.

wartime scenario, you don't want the north koreans to be capturing them. that would degrade military readiness. most important thing, mark, of course, is we disarm north korea. we do that, we're okay. mark: if we don't? >> if we don't, we have to do something and might be worse than putting nukes back. mark: like japan? >> you read my mind. mark: encouraging japan and other countries in that area to step up. >> the united states has this crazy policy. what it does is we've allowed our enemies to get the destructive weapons on earth and tell our friends they can't defend themselves! this is absolutely nuts. if we have the policy, mark, we've got to be effective making sure the rogue regimes, north korea, iran and the others don't get nukes. if we can't do that, then we have to thank our nonproliferation policies. we're going to end up with the bad guys being armed and we be disarmed. mark: i want to remind you, you

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. mark: gordon chang, really north korea is a puppet state, is it not, of china. not of russia. was a puppet state of russia, but still a stalinist regime, a puppet state of china and china is becoming more stalinist under xi and more mao-like, stalinist, whatever you want to call it. do you think china would tolerate the collapse of north korea and what can we do about china in that regard? >> yeah, china, if north korea looks like it's going to fail we're going to see the people's liberation army move south across the two rivers. the reason is, look, everyone wants to secure loose weapons of mass destruction. chinese want to do, it south koreans want to do, it we want to do it. chinese want something else, though, and this makes it very difficult to work with china on ekippian failure of north

korea. they want the paper of pyongyang, they were the archives, shows china's complicity in crimes and weapons programs, completely undermine the narrative that xi jinping has been putting out there. so i would think that really, yeah, they'll of course look for the nukes but want to make sure that we don't get to pyongyang first, so we can't see what's going on these decades. up the chinese have a narrative about north korea. it is mostly false. mark: what is their narrative? >> the narrative these days is look, we don't control the north koreans, there's a lot of friction between beijing and pyongyang, and yes, there is, and kim jong-un generally does not like the chinese, he's a korean and for two millennia the koreans have been fighting the chinese. the border between china and north korea has moved hundreds of miles in both direction as koreans have fought chinese over two millennia. so yeah, but the point is kim

is a vassel and we know that. we have proof positive this year because kim jong-un went to china two times in a row. at the end of march and went last week, and that is a real indication. because first of all, once kim went to china, xi jinping said, look, i'll go to pyongyang, and that's reciprocal. that's the way diplomacy works. uh-huh. we had two trips of kim to china in a row. mark: what does that indicate? >> the chinese control the north koreans, they understand the north koreans and don't expect obedience all the time. they allow the north koreans to mouth off. when the chinese want something, when chinangs its interested are affected, it will pull the string, and will get the north koreans to do what they want. we've seen this for instance last year. at the height of the friction between beijing and pyongyang when xi jinping wanted something he got it. in the run-up to the communist

party's 19th national congress in october, which is a really important event for xi personally, there was quiet in the weeks. no north korean missile launches. no north korean detonations of nukes. that's because xi jinping didn't want anything to derail his move to power. when the 19th party congress was over, kim jong-un sends this warm message of congratulations to xi jinping. despite all the friction. yet kim doesn't like xi jinping, yeah, kim doesn't like the chinese. yeah, they had two millennia of friction. mark: but it's the life line. >> it's life line. mark: all right, china. dick cheney said china is the problem, other problems, russia, iran, no question about it, china is the problem. i happen to agree. their military spending, their stealing of our technology, their land grabs in the region,

outreach into great britain and central america and middle east and so forth, this is not a country content with just defending itself and the region. this is a country that intends to project. whether it's cyberactivity, whether it's satellites, all of these things. i have in front of me and i'm sure you read it here. understanding china's strategy by our pentagon for 2016-2017 from the secretary of defense. it is alarming. it is alarming what the chinese are up to, and i do not think that the media have been given the proper folk us it deserves. what's your take on this? >> absolutely. under xi jinping you have china returning from authoritarian, started under mao tse-tung as a totalitarian state. moved as soft authoritarianism under deng xiaoping. we see it going to a totalitarian state there is less room for political discourse in the 80s for instance. have you all the elements of

surveillance and control which looks orwellian, and all the things that you talked about plus more. china is a threat to the american homeland and i think provides -- is an existential threat. there is something worse than this. we have an international system of competing sovereign states. this goes back to the treaty of 1648. wong yi the chinese foreign minister in september in steady times an authoritative chinese publication, the central party school wrote an article that xi jinping and thoughts on diplomacy and go to audiological body of work, xi jinping's thoughts on diplomacy replace and transcend 300 years of western international relations theory. you take 2018, subtract 300, you get almost to 1648. xi jinping has been talking like a chinese emperor, in the system where china is the only

sovereign, so when wong yi the foreign minister says that xi jinping is replacing the treaty of west feelia, he's telling us there is only one sovereign state. that's china and only one legitimate ruler, that's xi jinping. he looks at us and says you americans are are powerful, but i am the ruler under heaven. all under heaven which is the phrase in china, that's mine. and he's acting like that and when you look through the behavior of xi jinping, he can do whatever he wants and it's up to the united states, really, the only power in the world, that can actually stop the chinese from really just breath takeingly broad ambitions. mark: and the last half decade, he's made massive moves. half decade-decade, the south china sea with the fake islands, militarized those. threats he's made to vietnam. vietnam comes to us now.

>> right. >> the philippines, taiwan and even japan. south korea is trying to make nice. they're trying to figure out what to do with him. >> intimidated. mark: intimidating the indians, they seem to be pushing back but military is quite weak though they're trying to modernize it. he's pushing out in all directions, isn't he? >> he certainly is. and he's going wide and far, and one of the things he's doing that we don't focus on so much. first of all, trying to take territory by force from india. china has territorial ambitions. lot of countries have territorial ambitions, china has bigger ones. china willing to use force to realize them. mark: when we come back, i am to elaborate on this. china militarily and china's military and china stealing our technology, to advance its military. we'll be right back.

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bush in maine for the summer. the 93-year-old arriving today at seaside home in kennebunkport. dozens greeted his motorcade at the town's dock square with some waving flags and holding signs. jim mcgrath shared this picture on twitter showing the 41st president greeting his well-wishers. i'm lauren green, now back to "life, liberty & levin." . mark: welcome back. red china, that's what i like to call it, red china, they have a substantial military, don't they? they have a lot of men in their military. they're trying now to build up their navy, that's the number one priority. they've stolen enormous amount of technology from us. i want to talk about how they do that, in a moment. they are starting to build subs. i think they built one or two aishg carriers. they're okay but moving in that

direction and, of course, nukes. now they have nukes, 20 years ago they couldn't do any of that stuff. this is a country on the rise, and our congress over the years has seemed to undermine r&d for military and so forth. how old the chinese dictator, how would they do that? is america being weak while they are being strong? >> they certainly do that. they realize the american military is stronger than theirs, more sophisticated, in some cases larger, but the chinese almost don't care. they think this is not an issue of ship versus ship or plane versus plane, they view this as issue of political will and believe they got a lot of it and they believe we don't. you started to hear the narrative about united states in terminal decline, they can do anything they want, and their actions actually match that. the actions actually match that of imperial emperor, they have a right to do whatever they

want, wherever they want. so military is now challenging us, you know, in all domains in every area of the world, and so that's going to be the reality. but, of course, it's also an asymmetric challenge because of cyber and other means. and here again, we probably have as good cyberwars as they do. but they're willing to use theirs and we're not willing to use ours. we're not willing to let companies who have been attacked by attacking back. so this is an issue of political will for us, mark, that we for various reasons tried to integrate china into the international system. we thought that the way to do that is to be cooperative because eventually they would reciprocate that, understand it's in their interest to enmesh themselves into the international system as it is. you're taking the world's most populous state, it's got a lot of economic growth. one could make the argument, if they didn't do anything, they

would grow and swamp us eventually. but that's not what they're doing. mark: they do look longball, and we don't. >> and we don't look as long as we need to. what we're focused in on russia, of course, and that's i think a perception that we have holdover from the cold war. russia is minuscule. economy that is less than $2 trillion. mark: what's the chinese economy? >> the chinese economy, they claim in 2017 was $12.8 trillion. mark: what's america's? >> 19.4. mark: so economy is much larger, but china's moved very fast on their economy. >> their economy is not quite as big as they say it is, but it's growing. the problem china has right now and we're seeing it the last few months is that it's reached the limit of what it can do within the current political system and with the current notions of state dominance. state dominated markets, state

enterprises, state banks and so you are starting to see bond defaults increase substantially over last year because they're trying to deleverage the economy. they can't quite do it but whenever they make the attempts to deleverage, companies go bankrupt, and then they panic and start throwing in more money, but this is something -- you know, we had a 2008 downturn, we took our medicine. maybe not as much medicine as we should have, but we took medicine. the chinese decided not to take medicine, flooded economy with cash. just to give you one example what they did. in the five years after 2008, they increased the amount of credit in china by an amount roughly equal to the entire u.s. banking system. even though at the end of 2008, their economy they claim was less than a third the size of america's. they flooded china with money. they built everything. bridges to nowhere, high-speed rail lines to nowhere.

they've been able to do that, create growth and the problem is they have not come to terms with the problems that swamped the world in 2008. eventually they have to do that. imbalances now are so large. mark: we have a capacity to do to them what we did to the soviet union economically? based on what you're saying, they are vulnerable? >> extremely vulnerable. mark: where are they vulnerable? banks? currency? >> we could do a number of things, and i look at this from north korea perspective. their four largest banks have been laundering money for the north koreans, that's a violation of the patriot act section 311. we can designate largest banks as primary money laundering concerns. that would lead to the banks being decoupled from the global financial system because they could no longer transact business in dollars. that's a death sentence. if we put four biggest banks under, banking system is dead, financial system is dead, economy is dead. and if all this goes, mark, the

political system goes. i think president trump could get on the phone with xi jinping and say, look, you know, my good friend xi, if you don't do what i want to you do, you're not going to be in business in three months. and during the phone conversation, you're not going to say anything, you are going to listen and you better say yes the the end of the 10 minutes. if you don't, you're history. we can do that. we don't do that because we're the united states of america, but we don't. mark: we did it once. >> we did it once. ronald reagan -- we did simple tactics, with the chinese we wouldn't mess with commodity prices, mess with the cost of money. if we were willing to increase interest rates a little bit, that would throw the chinese economy itself into turmoil. mark: when we come back, let's talk about how they steal our technology. they do it broadly, all the time and many ways. don't forget, check out levin tv every week night on

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. mark: so gordon chang, this stealing of technology which is ubiquitous, that china is stealing our technology is a huge problem, builds up economy, helps build up their military, it takes hundreds of billions of dollars out of the american economy. they're able to leapfrog where we've been, we're spending all the money in r&d. what are we doing about this? what are they doing to sale our technology? >> there's a number of ways they take technology. they learn from us, that's legitimate. but what they also do is by cyber means penetrate our networks and steal our technology. that's not. they acknowledge patents, a price of market access to surrender technology, that's in violation of the world trade organization obligations and

this matter because the ip commission, the blair huntsman report updated landmark 2015 study by update last year. in that update last year, they estimated that the u.s. loses somewhere between 225 to $600 billion a year in technology that has been stolen. not all of it is china, but most of it because they're the ones who benefit from it. when the russians take technology, which they do, they don't use it for themselves because they don't have a manufacturing sector. i think they're stealing it for china. here the issue is the united states has not had an adequate response, this is up to us. yeah, the chinese are thieves but we left the door open for them. you take a look at, for instance, in september 2015, xi jinping was in washington. president obama announced an agreement that neither country would take the technology by cybermeans of the others for commercial purposes? the chinese completely ignored

that. and what happened eventually was we started to see a little bit of improvement in china's theft of u.s. tech but at the same time that china's theft of our stuff by cybermeans declined, russia's increased. you know, this was the russians weren't taking it for themselves, i think they were working with the chinese. and we have done very little to impose costs on china for this. one thing the trump administration is thinking of right now is the section 301 tariffs. section 301 of the trade act of 1974. the president has threatened tariffs on $150 billion of chinese goods. he's doing that to protect american technology because the goods that he is looking at are those that are benefitting from theft of u.s. tech. mark: and we can prevent china from buying key companies, depending on the technology they have. we have a whole regime of export controls in place, which they get around by many of our corporations as you point out

wanting to do business in china, but that's fine, you have to partner in this company, a state front company and steal the proprietary information from it. >> right, sometimes it's out. i practice law in china. you set up a joint venture, u.s. company, chinese company, the chinese company take the technology, establish the same business down the street. it's happened countless times. and that's why you're starting to see u.s. and european companies are very concerned about bringing their best technology to china. these days they just won't do it. but i'm afraid because you see the allure of the chinese market which i think is overstated, but none the little that's the way business sees it, and because of that, we're losing technology out the door, and so many different ways. we can stop this mark, and we have to stop it because innovation is the core of the american economy these days. we don't have innovation, we don't have an economy, and you know what we're seeing right now in washington and across

the political spectrum led by president trump is to protect american technology. he's doing a lot of different ways. one of them is preventing the chinese from buying u.s. tech companies. that is absolutely important you. >> see a big change from this president and the prior president, don't you? >> certainly is. and especially when it comes to china. because the president has his views about the way the chinese have been operating. he's been talking about this stuff for a very long time, even before people started talking about him as a presidential candidate. the thing i'm concerned about, mark, is he has some people in his cabinet who want to go back to the old way of doing things with china. you know trying to encourage and entice them into the international system. sounds good to the ear but hasn't worked. mark: which cabinet member? >> my wife doesn't want me to name them. but i'll tell you there's a treasury secretary his name is steve mnuchin. mark: he's a weak link, i'm sorry, i agree. >> yeah. mark: he's not an ultraweak link but weak enough, i agree,

that is a problem. there's more the treasury department could be doing in terms of china. we'll be right back. this is bill's yard. and bill has a "no-weeds, not in my yard" policy. but with scotts turf builder weed & feed, bill has nothing to worry about. it kills weeds and greens grass, guaranteed. this is a scotts yard. (vo)have to happen?idn't and greens grass, guaranteed. i didn't see it. (vo) what if we could go back? what if our car... could stop itself? in iihs front-end crash prevention testing, nobody beats the subaru impreza.

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. mark: welcome back. gordon chang, the chinese have us

used cyber, really, warfare to breach governmental data. the office of personnel management, very little pushback, but they've gone beyond that, haven't they? >> they certainly have, and the thing just from a couple weeks ago, you know you had over djibouti in the horn of africa, china's military lasered two c-130 cargo planes, temporarily blinded two american pilots. mark: they shot the lase right into the cockpit. >> right into the cockpit. when you try to blind the pilot of a plane you are trying to bring the plane down. this is an attack on the united states. and this i think, mark, is the first time since the end of the fighting in the korean wars in 1953 that the chinese have injured american personnel this cannot so unchallenged. the chinese lasered planes over the south china sea.

one thing we haven't talked about is the chinese are challenging us in the global commons, trying to prevent us from flying through international airspace and sailing through international waters. if we have had any consistent foreign policy over the course of 21/2 centries, it's the defense of freedom of navigation and the chinese are trying to prevent us from being in the global commons. this is zero-sum challenge. mark: let's talk about the chinese, they militarize the south china sea, claimed ownership of the sea lane, of the airspace, of the minerals, they claim that's theirs, they had a court ruling with respect to the philippines that said when they were grabbing distant rocks, they thumbed their nose at it and said who cares? you are wrong. this is a big deal as you point out $5 billion of economic activity. not only, that our fleets need

to travel through there. >> xi jinping thinks he's emperor of the world. in december 2016, they took a u.s. navy drone in sight of one of our ships, the u.s.s. bowditch out of international water. it was so far from china it was outside the ludicrous 9 dash line claim. they told us they were taking it and we didn't do anything about it. basically, the chinese have been villains but as i mentioned we're permitting them to be villains, of course they're doing all this stuff and we've got to stop them. this is the problem, now they don't believe us and we have a president who believes what he's saying, there's going to be a problem when they think that trump says something, they're not going to believe it. and when trump actually pushes back, that's when we could have an issue. this is a dangerous period. mark: when we come back, i'm going to ask gordon chang, okay, north korea/china, how

does he see this working out over the next 20, 30 years, i know you're not nostra damus, we'll be right back. ♪ you're simply the best. ♪ better than all the rest ♪ applebee's new bigger bolder grill combos. ...

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mark: unified by the north or south? >> i would be an optimist and say unified by the south but we now have a south korean president who is pro- north korea and that is giving opportunity for kim jong-un to do what is inconceivable to americans and that is takeover of vibrant democracy but kim being kim is going to pass off people in south korea like he's doing right now with his tactics. i will be a little bit of an optimist and say it south korea and will be south korea aligned with the us in aligned with japan and a very strong group of nations. mark: i think you're right as long as we have the right president after trump and as long as we don't think our own economy and build up the united states military and don't move backwards as we did during the obama era. i thank you are exactly right. a lot of it depends on america's future and what we do. do you agree? >> absolutely. the future is in our hands, mark. we might screw it up but we won't because, as you say, we've got a view of society and life

that is absolutely the right one. mark: it has been a pleasure. keep up the great work out there, gordon. you are a national treasure. ladies and gentlemen, join us next time on "life, liberty and levin" previously on legends and lies >> i have been chosen to save this union, not to change it, but to preserve it. >> colonel sherman, crest that hill. >> yes, sir! >> all men are created equal. these dead shall not have died in vain. >> no terms except immediate and unconditional surrender. >> i must free all the slaves. the constitution says slavery is legal. the constitution must change. >> your republican president wants to force us to fight for you. >> hooligans will not stop until they have brought down your administration, as well.