Former President Donald Trump claims that he would not boycott the upcoming Olympic Games in China if he were still president, saying that such a move would make the U.S. look like “sore losers.”
The 45th president made the comments in an interview with Maria Bartiromo on Sunday Morning Futures. The Fox News host asked Trump whether he would implement a diplomatic boycott of the upcoming Beijing Winter Olympics like the Biden Administration has done.
Trump replied, “No, because I watched Jimmy Carter do it, and it was terrible. It was terrible. It hurts the athletes.
“There are much more powerful things we can do than that, much, much more powerful things. That’s not a powerful thing. It almost makes us look like, I don’t know, sore losers,” he added.
Unlike Biden’s so-called “diplomatic boycott,” Carter’s boycott of the 1980 Moscow Games was complete, including athletes. Biden’s boycott is a token political calculation of no impact whatsoever since the Chinese have not invited our diplomats to attend the games. In addition, it does not restrict the ability of U.S. athletes to compete at all.
US President Joe Biden meets with China’s President Xi Jinping during a virtual summit from the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, DC, November 15, 2021. (Photo by MANDEL NGAN / AFP) (Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)
Instead of a boycott, Trump says he would like to see U.S. athletes attend and “win every medal.”
Given Trump’s answer and the differences between Carter and Biden’s boycotts, it’s possible Trump thought he was being asked if he would keep U.S. athletes out of the game.
Trump made the same comments in a recent interview with Breitbart News.
“Or go and do a lot of things that are much more severe,” Trump said when asked if he would withdraw the U.S. entirely from the Beijing games. “You know, you hurt the athletes. Jimmy Carter tried a bigger version of that, and it was a big failure. I think that there are many things we can do that are much more powerful than that. That sends a double signal. It also sends a very negative vibe. No, I don’t think I’d do it. I think it’s unfair to the athletes, and I think it’s unfair in many ways to a lot of other countries. I would not do that. I would do other things that are more powerful than that. But it was done before, and it didn’t work. That was under Jimmy Carter, who now goes down as the second-worst president.”
Conservative politicians and international human rights groups have brought pressure on the Biden Administration and leaders of other countries to launch a complete boycott of the upcoming Winter Game in Beijing in protest of China’s enslavement and persecution of thousands of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang Province.
Tibetan and Uyghur activists wear masks during a protest against Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics in front of the Olympics Museum in Lausanne on June 23, 2021 as some 200 participants took part to the protest. (Photo by Fabrice COFFRINI / AFP) (Photo by FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP via Getty Images)
However, instead of walking away from the games entirely, the governments of most Western nations have opted to lodge their protest by not sending diplomats to Olympic contests that they weren’t invited to.
While Trump insists that there are other “much more powerful” things the U.S. could do to take a stand against Chinese oppression, he does not list what they are.
The Beijing Winter Olympics begin on February 4.
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