Sen. Tom Cotton said Thursday he doesn't think it would be a surprise if Beijing wants former Vice President Joe Biden to win the November election after President Donald Trump accused China of engaging in a "massive disinformation campaign."
"Joe Biden has a terrible 30-year record on China, whether it's voting to give them normal trade relations or elevating them to the WTO and saying last year they weren't our competitors," the Arkansas Republican said on Fox News' "Fox and Friends."
Trump, he added, "recognizes we have a complicated economic relationship with China. We shouldn't be in a position where we are today where they have some leverage over Americans, for instance, because they produce so many of our drugs and medical equipment. In a gradual step-by-step fashion we need to begin to change that relationship and turn the tables on China."
There is already a great deal of momentum growing against China, including with countries such as Japan and Australia "trying to bring back more manufacturing or standing up to Chinese disinformation," said Cotton.
The United States should support its allies against China, he added, and "ought to do everything we can to limit sourcing products inside of China so we never have this kind of position again where China has us over a barrel."
The senator also said he opposes a resolution from Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif. calling for a senate ban on phrases such as "Wuhan virus."
"It's just a city," he said. "It's not even a people. I guess she is going to have to call out Lyme disease for being anti-Connecticut or maybe Legionnaires' Disease for being anti-veterans, or Zika since Zika is a forest in Africa."
Such political correctness, he added, covers up the fact that Democrats "don't have an answer for China's rise and the threat that China poses to us."
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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