The definition of “dog whistle”: A coded message communicated through words or phrases commonly understood by a particular group of people, but not by others.
When Gates tells about the stalled budget talks in the House with these words, “It feeds the narrative from China in particular, our system doesn’t work, that it’s broken, it’s paralyzed, it can’t get things done.” It blames the GOP as it always does. Gate’s dog whistle is saying that the GOP is causing a national security issue. All the Dems have to do is dig in and stop the GOP and that’s all they have to do—blame the GOP as a security risk. For them, there is no negotiation, no argument on the merits of a policy and sucess is causing the GOP to eat the failure that the Dems created.
I agree that is what he is saying. Blame the House Republicans.