During an appearance on FBN’s “Mornings with Maria,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) insisted the hypocrisy of so-called woke corporations like Nike, the NBA, Major League Baseball and some of the airlines, which all do business with an oppressive Chinese government while being critical of alleged injustices in the United States needed to be highlighted.
While those companies have a “right” to believe or say what they wish, Rubio said they were operating on a double standard.
“Look, first of all, let me be clear, I don’t want us to not be a free country,” he said. “These companies have a right to believe and say whatever they want to say. But we have a right to point out the hypocrisy. I think if you’re going to stand for human rights, if you’re going to stand for voting rights, if you’re going to stand for all these things and you’ve got to be consistent about it, and I think what’s happening here is very simple, it’s about money. It’s about the billions of dollars that they make from access to the Chinese market in some way, shape or form. And so what happens is, the price of having access to that market is their silence. Look, if you speak out against something the Chinese Communist Party is doing, they’ll kick you out of the country and — and you — and you’ll become a target of all sorts of things.”
“Look at the — it’s not an American company, but H&M, as an example, is a company that dared to speak out against the, you know, cotton that’s coming from forced labor in Xinjiang, and they’ve been the target of boycotts,” Rubio continued. “They’re going to get run out of the country. It’s also why we have American companies who are — Nike and others — who are here in Washington lobbying against our Uighur forced labor bill. They don’t do it openly, but they’re doing it. Everybody knows they’re doing it because they are profiting from their business arrangement and part of that business arrangement, whether it’s the NBA or Major League Baseball or some airline, part of the business arrangement with China is you can’t say anything. And that’s hypocrisy, and that needs to be pointed out.”
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor