Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) slammed the left in America for denouncing the United States while turning a blind eye to China’s myriad human rights violations.
“The Chinese Communist Party is an evil regime. … They are running concentration camps in Northwestern China, and they are persecuting Christians throughout their region, and they have long forced abortions on women or sterilization on women,” Cotton said in an interview Monday with Sirius XM’s Breitbart News Daily with host Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow.
“Yet many of the woke champions on the left in America, like so many NBA players led by Lebron James, turn a blind eye to their crimes, at the same time we denounce our own police officers, which I think is a disgraceful and shameful contrast,” he said.
The NBA has been particularly careful about not wanting to offend the Chinese Communist Party, since China is a profitable market for the NBA. After Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey tweeted #StandwithHongKong, he was forced to apologize.
Cotton listed off a number of ways China’s behavior has affected the world, not just its own people.
China has unleashed a pandemic on the world, and taken U.S. jobs and U.S. factories for decades while “too many politicians in Washington stood by, ” he said,
“They have broken their fundamental obligations to Hong Kong. When they received Hong Kong from Great Britain, they promised to preserve its unique character for 50 years. … Years later, that’s gone.”
“They in essence invaded India, the world’s biggest democracy, killing 20 Indian soldiers in a brutal attack. They’re conducting threatening air and naval maneuvers in the vicinity of Taiwan and Japan,” he said.
“China is only growing more aggressive, partly using this pandemic for cover. That’s one reason why it’s so important that we’ve finally begun to stand up to China under President Trump,” he added.
He said the Trump administration currently has two carrier groups in the South China Sea to demonstrate American resolve as China conducts naval exercises in the disputed body of water.
He said he expects to see more legislation from the Senate to hold China accountable.
He said the Senate is considering amending the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act to allow American citizens to hold Chinese officials accountable inside or in American courts and has legislation that would help bring back critical supply chains and critical pharmaceuticals, medical goods, and medical equipment currently made in China.
“If Beijing had had its way, we might never have known about this coronavirus originating in Wuhan until it spread all across the country and perhaps all around the world,” Cotton said.
“And yet [the World Health Organization] covered for Beijing’s duplicity for months and months and months. This is one reason the president is withdrawing from the WHO and rightly so,” he said.
Catch the full interview here:
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