Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley said Monday she doesn't "doubt that for one second" that China intentionally blocked information about the dangers of the novel coronavirus and allowed the disease to spread so it would not be the only country that suffered, and it "would not surprise me at all" if China's President Xi Jinping lied to President Donald Trump about the disease.
"I don't know if the virus got out by accident," Haley said on Fox News' "Fox and Friends." "What I do believe strongly is that they knew the virus was out there and they knew they were going to suffer, and they didn't want to be the only country that suffered, so they let it get out to the rest of the world. I don't doubt that for one second."
That, she added, is "how China is."
"They want to be dominant across the world and they don't want to be weakened in any way," said Haley. "If they are weakened, they want everybody else to suffer with them."
Her comments came while she called out for tougher action on China, and she also drew comparisons between China's government and social media censorship of conservative views in the United States.
"They don't want anyone to paint them in a negative light," she said of the Chinese government. "That's why they don't like Taiwan ever mentioned and the Uighurs mentioned and it's what they do. If you go and talk to the younger generations in China they don't even know what happened at Tiananmen Square because it's been totally suppressed to them."
And with social media, "a lot of what we're seeing in China that's why people should be upset about what's happening in America ... they're teaching them what to think, what to feel, what to say, by controlling what they hear. We can't have that happen in America either."
She also accused Democrats, including Joe Biden, of enabling China.
"I think all you have to do is look back several months ago when Biden said China was no competition to us, and that we didn't need to be worried about them," she said. "I think you look at Nancy Pelosi in Chinatown saying we were being racist and overreacting ... this is nothing small. China has wanted to dominate the world for a long time. They want to bring down America and they almost did that with the coronavirus. What we have to do is understand we've got to quit talking about China and we've got to do something about China."
She added that China is "trying to go and spy on our satellites and trying to build up their military. They are the biggest human rights abuser. They're trying to control communication. They're getting involved in elections. We have to stop talking about China and we have to start doing something about it and that's just not happening."
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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