Tuesday on Fox News Channel’s “America’s Newsroom,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) reacted to President Joe Biden’s so-called “diplomatic boycott” of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, which U.S. Olympic athletes will still be participating in.
Cotton argued the half-measure in response to China’s long list of ongoing human rights transgressions was “really nothing more than the sleeves off of Joe Biden’s vest.”
“[T]his is really nothing more than the sleeves off of Joe Biden’s vest. This is the status quo,” Cotton said of Biden’s announcement. “China was going to have very strict travel controls anyway on diplomats and corporate officials because of their draconian coronavirus lockdowns. What I am worried about is the safety of our athletes. I sent the Biden administration a letter last summer asking them how they would assure the safety of our athletes. They sent me back a letter through restricted channels, but there was nothing classified about it, and they had no plan to protect our athletes, whether it’s from ubiquitous technical surveillance of their electronic devices or DNA harvesting under the guise of coronavirus testing or even outright kidnapping.”
“I mean, China will take hostage and disappear one of its own tennis stars and trot them out for hostage videos. What will they do to one of our athletes if one of those young men or women should dare speak up about Tibet or Hong Kong or Taiwan or any of China’s crimes against the civilized world?” he added. “If we can’t protect our own athletes, we should not be sending them to compete in the games of the country that is committing genocide.”
Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent
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