The Influencer
Dan Friedman
On June 3, a collection of some of the right’s most prominent purveyors of election-fraud lies and coronavirus misinformation congregated in the window-lined observatory atop One World Trade Center, with views of the Hudson River and Manhattan’s expanse. On hand were MAGA luminaries including Rudy Giuliani, who had crisscrossed the country attempting to overturn Donald Trump’s 2020 loss; Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser turned QAnon hero; and Mike Lindell, the mustachioed bedding magnate who’s been aggressively peddling the Big Lie along with his MyPillows. Trump’s former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, wearing a single button-down shirt instead of his usual two or three, was the master of ceremonies.
The event’s host, Guo Wengui, however, did not show up. According to one associate, he said he was worried that his presence might inspire the Chinese government to mount a 9/11–style jet attack on the tower to silence him for good. But Guo, the fugitive Chinese tycoon and self-described whistleblower on Chinese Communist Party corruption, did appear throughout the gala via a pair of screens at the front of the room, wearing an assortment of eclectic outfits that evoked a fashion mashup of Michael Jackson and Moammar Qaddafi.
Throughout the 12-hour spectacle—attended by a couple hundred guests in formal wear and no masks, and me, the only reporter present—a music video for Guo’s new rap-pop protest song “The Hero” ran repeatedly. In it, Guo, who also goes by Miles, performs in a leather jumpsuit, occasionally wielding a light saber. “Galloping on my horse,” he sings in Chinese, while dancers gyrate in front of a private jet, presumably his own. “An eagle stands on my shoulder. To sacrifice on the battlefield is my honor.”
It was the anniversary gala for the New Federal State of China, a supposed government in exile dedicated to the overthrow of the CCP, launched by Guo and Bannon at another surreal event one year before. On that occasion, Guo signed a declaration of principles in his own blood and, declaring “Love you,” planted a kiss on an uncomfortable-looking Bannon as planes dragged congratulatory banners overhead. The launch was held in New York harbor aboard the Lady May, Guo’s $28 million, 150-foot yacht—the same boat on which federal agents arrested Bannon later that summer on charges of defrauding donors in a quixotic campaign to fund border-wall construction.
For an outfit dedicated to overthrowing the Chinese regime, the New Federal State’s anniversary gala included scant criticism of China’s human rights record or economic policies. Rather, it featured an assortment of conspiracy theories that centered on US politics, albeit with Beijing lurking behind the plots.
“How can you switch tens of millions of votes?” Lindell asked the crowd, during a presentation so inscrutable that he seemed to have a hard time understanding himself. “It has to be done with these computers. It had to be done through these machines. China did it.”
President Joe Biden “is bought and paid for by the Chinese Communist Party,” Giuliani declared in a keynote speech.
Peter Navarro, a former economic policy adviser in the Trump White House, praised Guo via video: “He reminds me a lot of Donald J. Trump here in America—Miles is a billionaire, but he also has great empathy for the ‘deplorables.’” Navarro went on to use his speech to “damn Anthony Fauci…in front of the world.”
Dr. Li-Meng Yan, a Guo-endorsed researcher and leading proponent of the theory that Covid is a Chinese weapon, was hailed by Bannon as “a hero to all mankind.” “No vaccine has worked,” she concluded from the podium. “The vaccine cannot overcome biowarfare.”
Bannon has long crusaded against China, once saying it wouldn’t be long before the US would go to war in the South China Sea. He hosts a daily podcast, War Room—Guo is a frequent guest—where he manages to trace the roots of nearly all American social upheaval, including George Floyd’s murder, to Beijing. The coronavirus has provided Bannon and other China foes a potent new vector to attack the regime, which they accuse of unleashing the deadly pathogen. In Guo, Bannon has linked arms with an enigmatic and deep-pocketed patron, one who has positioned himself as a leader of the Chinese diaspora even as he bolsters wild anti-CCP conspiracies, in some cases deploying anti-Semitic themes.
Guo and Bannon claim their New Federal State of China will eventually receive official recognition—a prospect as far-fetched as me
