President Joe Biden said on Thursday that the U.S. is considering a diplomatic boycott of the upcoming 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, China.
“Sir do you support a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics?” a reporter inquired.
“Something we’re considering,” Biden responded.
The United States is considering a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics, President Joe Biden confirmed, a move that would be aimed at protesting China’s human rights record https://reut.rs/3HxFHnvu00a0pic.twitter.com/c3k2d2GH0I
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America and other countries typically dispatch delegations to the Olympics, according to the Associated Press, which noted that First Lady Jill Biden led a U.S. group to the Olympics earlier this year in Tokyo, Japan while second gentleman Doug Emhoff led a group to the Paralympics.
GOP Sen. Tom Cotton described a diplomatic boycott as “the absolute bare minimum that any civilized nation would do for these genocide olympics.”
The Arkansas Republican is calling for the Biden administration to adopt full blown boycott, with “no athletes, no administration officials, no corporate sponsors.”
Cotton mentioned concerns about the safety and privacy of American athletes, and he pointed to China’s human rights abuses.
He said that “the Biden administration has laid out no plan how to protect our athletes from the Chinese communists.”
“China runs a totalitarian slave state, in which they keep hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of religious and ethnic minorities in gulags, subjecting them to slave labor, subjecting ethnic women to mass rape and sterilization as a form of ethnic cleansing. They harvest organs from dissidents and ethnic and religious minorities,” Cotton said.
The lawmaker also pointed to China’s crackdown against Hong Kong and he noted the COVID-19 pandemic, which has swept the globe.
November 18, 2021: Senator Cotton Holds Press Conference on Beijing Winter Olympics www.youtube.com