Mark Meadows taken aback after right-wing podcast host accuses him of allying with 'Chinese communists'

Former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows got more than he expected on Thursday when he appeared on the podcast of far-right talk radio personality Stew Peters.

As reported by The Daily Beast, the former Trump chief of staff thought he would be doing a friendly interview with a sympathetic conservative host, but was taken aback when Peters began peppering him with questions about his purported ties to the Chinese government.

During the interview, Peters cited a report on a right-wing website that claimed Meadows had "very close connections with Chinese communists through the ridiculously named Humpty Dumpty Institute as well as the CCP-tied Taihe Institute."

Peters then bluntly asked Meadows, "What were you doing with these Chinese communists, exactly?"

Meadows replied that he had been affiliated with these institutions without apparently knowing about their ties to China.

"Yeah, so the Humpty Dumpty Institute, I joined that actually in trying to work, not knowing any connections with China back when I was a freshman member of Congress," he said. "It was only as a freshman member of Congress, and then they didn’t have any affiliation. In fact, they continued to use my name after they were looking at a number of things—so I had to send them a letter to distance myself from them."

Peters, however, wouldn't let Meadows off the hook.

"Well, it’s obvious that China is attacking us,” he said. “I mean, given the China virus, Americans are rightly concerned, if it seems that the infiltration had risen, all the way to your level, the chief-of-staff of the president of the United States.”

The full interview follows below.