Source: United States Senator for Florida Marco Rubio
Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) joined The Ingraham Angle to discuss the 2022 Beijing Olympics, Chinese censorship, and more. See below for highlights and watch the full interview here.
On the safety and wellbeing of American athletes during the 2022 Winter Olympics:
“I am [worried about the American athletes] for a couple reasons. Obviously, if they come down with COVID, the Chinese won’t let them leave the country. They will lock them down. I think the second is if a United States athlete expresses a political view that runs counter to anything China believes or says, we don’t know what’s going to happen or what [the Chinese government] will do.
“I’m also worried about the state of journalism. We will have journalists over [in China] covering these Olympics and what if one of them goes off script and says something that the Chinese censors don’t like? Could something happen to them? I’m hoping that these networks that are covering this, and planning to make a bunch of money have the courage in their news departments to cover exactly what kind of country and what kind of government is hosting these Olympics. This is a government that’s committing genocide – pure and simple.”
On NBC’s participation in broadcasting the Olympics:
“I think it will be interesting to see what [NBC] talks about during those two weeks [in China]. At the end of the day, we’re not punishing the athletes for being part of the Olympics. The concern we have is NBC is putting up a bunch of subscription services that people have to pay for to watch some of these [events] in real time. I don’t think NBC should be making a penny out of this. Or at least consumers don’t have to participate in helping them make a penny out of it.
“If there’s an athlete you like and want to follow, I assure you the clips are going to be available online. We shouldn’t allow people to monetize from an Olympics being hosted by a genocidal, communist government that is trying to dismantle the United States’ place in the world by targeting our industries, our jobs, and supply chains across the board.”
On China’s lack of transparency on COVID-19 and the health of American athletes during the Olympics:
“I can’t speak to the medical part of it… but I can tell you that we are not going to have any transparency. If in fact there are health risks, some novel, new disease, or a new outbreak, or a new variant ofCOVID, we wouldn’t know about it.
“There’s no way the Chinese government is going to be transparent about that. They weren’t transparent about it when the COVID crisis first emerged. They will not be transparent about any risk the athletes run, anything from air quality to a new pandemic or a new disease.
“I can’t personally say I’m aware of a threat. But I can tell you that you are in a country where if a threat existed, you would not know about it.”
On American officials choosing to defend the Chinese government:
“For the life of me, I don’t understand why anybody would be a defender of the Chinese government. What they do in terms of stealing technology, intellectual property, and deindustrializing this country.
“There’s a lot of blame on the United States’ side too, because we’ve got a lot of corporations and a lot of political figures who are tied to –either directly through finances, or in many cases because of key constituencies– are tied to companies and/or practices that are helping China at the expense of American workers, American industry, and American national security.
“We welcome anybody who wants to join the fight on this and talk about this very clearly because this is not just about embarrassing China or calling them out. This is about changing our policies.
“A lot of what has happened is because we have allowed China to deindustrialize the country. We have allowed China to steal our technology and looked the other way. We have allowed this to go on for far too long, and if this continues, we’re not going to like the world.”
On China not living up to international commitments:
“China has never lived up to any international commitment they have made. They’ll sign any agreement… they don’t intend to keep it. When the time is right, they will break it.
“They never intended to comply with [Phase 1 trade obligations], and they are using it as a bargaining chip. Now they’re basically saying, ‘If you give in and you stop doing this and that, then maybe we’ll comply with Phase 1’ So now, they’re actually using things they have already signed as a condition of whatever it is they’re asking for from our government on a plethora of things. They will never comply with anything.
“As we keep these tariffs, we’ve got to do things to bring factories, factory-type jobs, and manufacturing back to the United States.”