Sen. Tom Cotton said Monday he's glad to see President Joe Biden "singing a different tune" on China, but still, he thinks it's not enough for Biden to rebuke former President Donald Trump on his policies without outlining plans of his own and that the new president must also recognize China as a threat.
"In the campaign, he said that Chinese leadership weren't bad folks and that they weren’t our competitors," the Arkansas Republican said on Fox News' "Fox and Friends." "Of course, they are our most dangerous and long-term strategic competitor."
Biden last week said China is the United States' most serious competition, but on Sunday said he wants to create a relationship with the rival country that is not one of conflict.
"To simply to rebuke President Trump for being the first president in two generations to stand up to the Chinese Communist Party and say he's going to do it differently, without specifying how he's going to do it differently is not a show of strength," Cotton said.
The senator said that it was a year ago this week that he started demanding an investigation into labs in Wuhan, China in connection with the impending coronavirus pandemic, but the media "hyperventilated that I was spouting conspiracy theories."
However, the fallout is continuing in the United States over the disease, as "our schools are closed and kids are not getting educated in no small part because of Chinese communist malevolence and negligence."
There are steps Biden can take, said Cotton, including continuing the arms sale the United States accelerated to Taiwan through the Trump administration and to "make it clear we are going to stand with our allies on China's periphery as they continue to threaten places like Taiwan and India and make clear that we recognize that China is a dangerous threat."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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