Tim Pierce

Yeah, it is serious.

Some analysts have called it unprecedented in the context of China's current communist regime.

But it's hard to know what exactly is going on since the inner workings of Beijing is a black box to the rest of the world.

But what we found out last month is that Xi's number two, someone Xi has known since childhood and whom Xi personally elevated as being investigated for corruption.

In a state like China, the announcement of an investigation is tantamount to a guilty verdict.

General Zhang Yusha has been suspended from his role as the vice chairman of China's Central Military Commission that controls the armed forces.

The commission is a seven-person board, counting Xi, but Xi has now removed all but one of the generals he appointed to it in 2022.

Trump was asked about the turnover over the weekend.

Here's what he said.

So it's hard to know what this means exactly for Xi, but it does appear like his hold on power is more secure, though he may be more isolated.

The amount of unpreparedness runs pretty deep.

It's convenient to blame it on NES because they're the most visible, but it goes way deeper than that.

People united will never be defeated.

If we don't get it, shut it down.

If we don't get it, shut it down.

The added difficulty they've had is they didn't have enough vegetation workers.

So a lineman goes in and repairs the line, but you typically have vegetation workers go in and clear out the tree so that the lineman can work.

And so there's kind of two concurrent bottlenecks happening there, lack of vegetation workers and lack of linemen.

You have the ICE raids, the ICE immigration enforcement operation that happened on May 4th.

in Nashville.