WTH is going on with the Beijing Olympics? Rep. Mike Waltz on why the US should boycott the 2022 Olympic Games
Episode #96 | March 31, 2021 | Danielle Pletka, Marc Thiessen, and Rep. Mike Waltz
Danielle Pletka: Hi, I'm Danielle Pletka.
Marc Thiessen: And I'm Marc Thiessen.
Danielle Pletka: Welcome to our podcast, "What the Hell Is Going On?" Marc, what the hell?
Marc Thiessen: What the hell is going on is that we're discussing an issue that I am truly torn on, which is Congressman Mike Waltz, a good friend of this podcast, frequent guest, a friend of ours, has introduced a resolution in Congress, calling on the US Olympic Committee to withdraw from the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing unless the IOC finds an alternate site. He makes a very, very strong case about the atrocities that are taking place in China, the human rights abuses, the abuses of women, the concentration camps that they're running for the Uighurs, the repression against the people of Hong Kong. And on top of that, the virus they just unleashed on us here in the United States through their lies and repression.
Marc Thiessen: And he makes the case that we shouldn't be rewarding the Chinese Communist Party with this honor, and with this quite frankly, propaganda opportunity, and all the rest of it. On the other hand, I hold in my heart the athletes who have trained their entire lives for this opportunity, had nothing to do with any of those things, and just want to compete for medals. And this is the culmination of, in many of the cases, decades of training and work, and you only get one shot sometimes at an Olympic medal and they would lose it. So, I'm torn. What do you think?
Danielle Pletka: Well, I'm not torn at all.
Marc Thiessen: Well, you don't care about sports.
Danielle Pletka: Well, but look, I mean, again, you are right. I don't care about sports so, of course, it's easy for me to stand on my moral high horse. But I do understand and do recognize the unbelievable work that goes into being an amateur athlete that competes at the Olympics. And I have so much respect for those young men and women who give their lives, really, in order to compete. But that being said, there are things that are bigger than a game or a set of games in this instance. And I think that we need to remember what it is the US represents on the world stage.
2 Danielle Pletka: You and I have had this conversation a thousand times. We decry people who say that America does not represent what is best and brightest. How many times have we used that old saw, America the shining city on the hill? We may not be perfect. We are far from perfect. We have lots of ways to improve, but we still stand for what is best in the world. And when we are complicit, and believe me, going and funding, and providing commercial opportunities, and providing a platform, and providing what is essentially a seal of approval to the Chinese communist government makes my stomach turn.
Marc Thiessen: Well, it makes my stomach turn too with the way you describe it, but I don't necessarily think that's what it would be. First of all, there are a couple of ways to look at this. This is an opportunity, because the spotlight will be shining on Beijing during the Olympic Games, for those of us who care about all these issues to use that spotlight to highlight the atrocities, to highlight the human rights abuses, to highlight those things. And also, quite frankly, you're going to have women's hockey players and women's skiers and all the rest of it, to talk about how women in China live.
Danielle Pletka: What? Do you think they're going to have an opportunity to say those things in China?
Marc Thiessen: We need to make sure that they do. But we need to use that opportunity. And I mean, again, I go back to the 1936 Olympics, where Hitler stood proudly in the Olympic stadium in Berlin while this great parade of propaganda happened. And then Jesse Owens came in and set three world records and won four gold medals, which completely demolished in front of the world Hitler's theory of the racial superiority of the Aryan race. Right in front of him, Hitler had to sit there and watch Jesse Owens do that. These are opportunities for us to shine a spotlight on what the Chinese communist regime is doing to its own people and doing to the world. And we can use that opportunity without destroying the lives and the careers of all these athletes who've worked their whole lives to get to that moment.
Danielle Pletka: All right. Let me just step back for a moment to the 1936 Olympics. Okay. I don't know whether you ever saw, but I certainly have seen Leni Riefenstahl's film called The Triumph of the Will, which was admittedly a very well done long- form commercial for the Third Reich and for Hitler, filmed through the prism of the Olympics. There was a strong effort in the United States, starting in 1934, to oppose US participation. And, in fact, one of the most senior people, a guy named Jahncke, who was a former Assistant Secretary of the Navy, was a member of the International Olympic Committee, he is the only person in the IOC's history ever to have been expelled because he opposed the US participation and opposed the Olympics taking place in Nazi Germany.
Danielle Pletka: The head of the International Olympic Committee was somebody who I don't want to compare him to Hitler, but let's just say that he didn't find all of Hitler's ideas that objectionable. He went to Germany and he gave them a clean bill of health on religious equal participation for Jews in the Olympic Games. These are disgusting things. It was a magnificent triumph for Hitler. And Jesse Owens might've been a little shining moment in that.
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3 Marc Thiessen: Of course, it was a shining moment. That's what the Olympics are remembered for today.
Danielle Pletka: Well, you might remember them for that. At the time, that wasn't the case.
Marc Thiessen: Yeah, well, that had a lot to do with the state of race relations in our country at the time, perhaps.
Danielle Pletka: We're digressing.
Marc Thiessen: We're digressing. Here's the point. I hear what you're saying, Dany. I hear what Mike is saying. I'm truly torn on this issue. I just don't know. very interesting because this is an issue where Mike Waltz, Green Beret, Conservative from the free state of Florida is aligned with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez against Ted Cruz and Mitt Romney. This is not something that breaks down on party lines. This is not something that breaks down on ideological lines. This is one of these issues, there are few of them in our politics it seems today, where there really is a strong argument on both sides. And so, I think what we should do is hear Mike Waltz, let him make his case, and then we can talk about it after.
Danielle Pletka: So, for folks who don't remember Mike Waltz, he is a member of Congress, as Marc just said, from the free state of Florida, from the 6th congressional district. He's a Republican. He's also a member of the US Army National Guard Special Forces. He fought in Afghanistan and he is the first Green Beret ever elected to Congress. He worked in the Pentagon prior to that, and I have a lot of respect for him and I know you do too, Marc. So have a listen, folks.
Marc Thiessen: Mike, welcome back to the podcast.
Rep. Mike Waltz: Hey, great to be back with you. And next time, we said this last time, we are drinking bourbon over the next one. The commentary will get better as the podcast progresses, I promise.
Marc Thiessen: Well, we will all be vaccinated by then and we'll all be able to sit around and drink bourbon, smoke cigars, and all the rest of it, so I'm looking forward to that.
Rep. Mike Waltz: Or even better, we can do it down in the peninsula of freedom, otherwise known as Florida.
Marc Thiessen: Oh, excellent. I will take you up on that invitation.
Marc Thiessen: Well, Mike, I am not used to not being in lockstep agreement with you on pretty much everything. So, you have made the pitch in columns and you've introduced a resolution saying that we should boycott the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. Make your case.
Rep. Mike Waltz: Well, first, I want to say that the resolution and the call for the boycott didn't just come out of the blue. Senator Rick Scott, myself, and others have been asking, frankly, begging the International Olympic Committee for well over a year now to move the games, move them out of Beijing, rebid the games, put them
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4 somewhere else so that our athletes can compete as we all want them to. Heck, even delay the games as Tokyo did last year because of COVID. But we have been met with a resounding silence from the IOC. They've actually now said no, they're not going to. And with just 11 months to go and the Beijing Olympics are just right around the corner in February of '22, I said enough is enough. We need to call for a boycott. How can we, as a leader of the free world, reward Beijing after unleashing COVID on the world, 2 million dead and counting? They completely covered it up as we well know, arresting journalists, arresting doctors. Still to this day, won't fully share the data that the WHO, the CDC, and others need.
Rep. Mike Waltz: How can we with that, on top of an active, ongoing genocide, as we speak, there are literally over a million Muslims, the Uighurs being lined up, crammed into railcars, heads shaved, shipped off to concentration camps, slave labor, forced sterilization of Uighur women. The BBC has exposed a mass rape campaign for which, of course, they were summarily tossed out of China for exposing, not to mention the squashing of freedom in Hong Kong, the march across the South China Sea, how can we give the CCP a global platform to whitewash everything that they've done? I mean, it's essentially us and the international community shrugging our shoulders, turning a cheek, and saying none of that really matters and giving Beijing then a platform to perpetuate its propaganda and whitewash everything that it has done to the world.
Rep. Mike Waltz: I go back to all of the times that we didn't boycott and probably should have. Dany, you mentioned 1936, we all know what Germany did to the world after that. I like to remind people that, look, after the Sochi Games 2014, Russia invaded Crimea a month later. That means all of the military planning was actually progressing and coming to a head during the Olympics. And look at what Beijing has done since 2008. They promised the world, all of the Tibetan groups, the Christian groups, and even, then, the Uighur groups that it was abusing, that they would improve their human rights records. They promised the Bush administration and the rest of the world that they would improve. And they've only gotten demonstrably worse. That's because these authoritarian regimes seek and thrive off the legitimacy that comes with a global platform like the games, and then take that as a license to continue their bad behavior or even worsen it.
Rep. Mike Waltz: So, I fear, what's next after all of that? Is Taiwan truly next? And then 40% of the world's GDP and trade after that. Break, break. Let's talk about the economics of it. First of all, 180 human rights organizations, 180 agree with me that there should be a boycott. And I have to ask you if the United States, imagine if the Trump administration was imprisoning and benefiting from the slave labor of a million Muslims, our own athletes would be demanding a boycott and would be refusing to compete, so why is it okay then if China does it?
Rep. Mike Waltz: And then finally, Marc, let's look at the economics of it. I am sick and tired of these woke corporations and their hypocrisy, Nike, Adidas, NBC, who's going to broadcast the games, Apple, and the list goes on, who are contributing millions in the name of social justice in the United States but are perfectly willing to turn a blind eye and make billions in the middle of an active, ongoing genocide.
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5 Rep. Mike Waltz: And the Biden administration is really in a corner here. I mean their own Secretary of State, Tony Blinken admitted in his nomination hearing, he agrees it's genocide ongoing. How can we then just pretend like it's not happening in the name of some athletes, who I guarantee you, if it were happening in the United States wouldn't compete anyway. I hate that politics are mixed with sports. But politics got mixed with sports some time ago, often by many of these athletes own doing. And I just don't see how we reward Beijing after all of that.
Danielle Pletka: So, there's a ton to unpack here.
Rep. Mike Waltz: Yeah.
Danielle Pletka: Let's start with the simplest question, which is the International Olympic Committee. I understand that cities make bids to become the venue of the Summer or the Winter Olympics. How have we ended up in China? How did we end up in Sochi? Isn't that where a lot of our rancor should be directed in the first place? What's wrong with the International Olympic Committee?
Rep. Mike Waltz: Yeah, no, it's completely where our rancor should be. The IOC, and complicit with them is the US Olympic Committee, is putting these athletes in a horrible situation. You completely turn a blind eye. If you're a female athlete, how do you go and compete in a place that has a state-sponsored, state-run sterilization campaign against women? I mean, really, how do you do that in good conscience? The IOC has had plenty of time to move these games and they absolutely should have considered all of the broken promises from Beijing after the 2008 games. I mean, their behavior's only gotten demonstrably worse. So, I think they could credibly say, hey, they gave China a chance. There are many, many scholars in the United States and abroad who bought into the notion that Beijing would improve its behavior, both from a political and a human rights standpoint if only their economy opened up enough.
Rep. Mike Waltz: Well, we've seen now that that hasn't been the case, that under Xi it's gotten far worse. So, fool me once, fine, IOC, but not twice. And again, we're not just calling for this 11 months out with no chance to move anything. We've been asking them to move it for well over a year. But really probably the bluntest answer to your question, Dany, is they're awash with Chinese money, just like sports in the United States, just like Wall Street, just like Hollywood. And at the end of the day, that is why I think the CCP, and China, are the, by far, most dangerous adversary we have ever faced in the United States because certainly the Soviet Union didn't have that kind of economic power to throw around, neither did Germany nor did Japan.
Marc Thiessen: First of all, I agree with you a hundred percent on the Olympic Committee, and it should have never been awarded to Beijing in the first place. I'm sure that they are as corrupt as the WHO is when it comes to Chinese influence internally and all the money and all the rest. But one of the examples that Dany brought up and that you've mentioned is the 1936 Berlin games where Hitler used the spectacle. There were Nazi flags everywhere. It was a big propaganda win for the German regime. But that's also the Olympics where Adolf Hitler had to stand there and watch while a Black American, Jesse Owens, won four gold medals and set three world records, which was a huge repudiation to his racial superiority of the Aryan
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6 race theory.
Marc Thiessen: So those games actually backfired on the Germans in a lot of ways. I mean, putting aside whether you're right or wrong, let's assume that you lose this fight. How do we turn around and use the opportunity of these games to shine a spotlight on all the atrocities, and all the list of horrible things you've listed? Can we as a fallback, find a way to pressure the media and all the sponsors and everybody else to pay attention to these issues and use it as a way to shine to spotlight on those things?
Rep. Mike Waltz: Marc, I'd like to think so. First, I'd say a better analogy would be, would we have participated in the games... Obviously, we were at war with Germany, but would we have participated in the games in 1944, for example, knowing that the Holocaust was going on and knowing that those atrocities were going on and pretend like they didn't and try to make a statement? I would argue, I would certainly hope not, right? I think that's a better analogy. We are well and completely aware with our eyes wide open to what's going on in Western China to a degree that wasn't going on in 1936.
Rep. Mike Waltz: So, I think that really begs the moral and values question, particularly coming from the United States. And I would ask every one of these athletes, particularly the female athletes, go sit down with a Uighur woman who was tortured, gang- raped, and sterilized in these camps until she denounced her religion, denounced her culture, refused to even speak her language, and even in many cases denounce her own family. Go sit down with them a bit and then ask yourself if being able to compete in soccer or gymnastics is worth it, number one.
Rep. Mike Waltz: Number two, the difference in back then and now is I think our media frankly, is completely corrupted. We see time and time again, whether it's NBC or Hollywood, where they bow down to Chinese propaganda demands, whether it's erasing the Taiwanese flag, erasing any mention of Tibet or the Dalai Lama. Disney, who was openly thanking the officials in Xinjiang province, and heck, even Nike and Coca-Cola and Apple that were lobbying against a bill to ban products coming from known slave labor camps. They lobbied against it just as recently as December of last year and killed it in the Senate. The difference now than then is these institutions are corrupted by the amount of money that's flowing out of China. They're worried about their next quarterly earnings. They're overly attracted to what they're going to make off of these sponsorships.
Rep. Mike Waltz: And frankly, sadly, no, I do think when the Chinese say, you're not going to show an athlete wearing some type of jacket showing sympathy for the Uighurs, or for Christians, or for Hong Kong. When athletes are in Beijing tweeting, "I stand with Hong Kong," it's all going to get censored. And our own corporations from the United States of America, I think are going to be complicit in it.
Danielle Pletka: So, one of the things I really like about this issue and was eager to follow-up with you about it after you wrote this op-ed with Newt Gingrich and others is how bipartisan it is. This is one of those great, strange bedfellow issues where you've got Ted Cruz, Republican from Texas, Mitt Romney, Republican from Utah saying, "No, no, no, no, no, no, we have to go. The last time we did this against
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7 the Soviets in the Carter administration, it didn't work at all." And on the other side, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez saying, "Look what they're doing to Tibet. We can't validate Beijing's domination." So, I think that's terrific. Mitt Romney was the head of the Olympic Committee. Ted Cruz is certainly no squish when it comes to China. What do you think about this debate and the counterarguments that you're hearing?
Rep. Mike Waltz: Yeah, well, I mean, and just to add to that, both Romney and Cruz are calling for a diplomatic and an economic boycott, but not one with our athletes. I think those are necessary, but not sufficient. I certainly would pray that we don't have a President Biden or a Tony Blinken, who's admitted genocide was going on, go over there diplomatically. I think the Bush administration, again, we wanted to believe China would change for the better. And President Bush went over in '08. I hope we certainly have learned that lesson.
Rep. Mike Waltz: I'd love to see the economic boycott. We are working on legislation coming out of the House that will really pinch some of these sponsors who are making billions off of the backs of slave labor and call out their hypocrisy. But again, at the end of the day, the propaganda victory that the CCP will use this for, and what I think will then be a whitewash of everything they've done from COVID to Hong Kong, to the Uighurs, until the next atrocity, really, truly what's next and when do we truly draw a line? Is it Taiwan? Is it the Senkaku Islands? Is it the fourth, fifth island chain and 40% of global trade?
Rep. Mike Waltz: This is all part and parcel to what we just saw in Anchorage, just this last week. And the line to watch coming out of the absolute dressing down that Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken took, sat there, and took on American soil, was shameful. But the line to watch that really jumped out at me was the Chinese foreign minister saying you no longer have the strength to talk to us, that basically deterrence from their perspective is gone. And I think that is a very, very scary thing. It was outrageous that they felt emboldened enough to do it. But frankly, I think the Chinese right now smell weakness in Washington, and playing right ig deal, we'll have the Olympics there too.
Marc Thiessen: So, what do you say to a young American athlete whose dream since they were five years old, was to compete in the Olympic Games, and especially for women athletes who for them in a lot of these sports, there's no NHL for women? The Olympic Games are the Stanley Cup, right?
Rep. Mike Waltz: No, I get you, man.
Marc Thiessen: You've dreamed about this your entire life. You've competed. You've worked for a decade or more to get to this point. And this is only once every four years. If you don't go to this Olympics, four years from now you're not going to be in the Olympics. You're going to be aged out. You're going to be too old. Some other young player has come up. And they're saying, I get everything you're saying, Mike, "But why should I be the one who has to sacrifice my dreams and everything I've worked for for my entire life because of geopolitics? I didn't ask for the games to be in Beijing. I don't decide where they go. I just work hard and compete. Why do I have to pay the price? Why can't someone else pay the price for this?"
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8 Rep. Mike Waltz: Well, as I've said to my 17-year-old daughter, some things are more important than sports. And this isn't some geopolitical maneuvering. This is the mass torture and rape of millions of people. It is gross and disgusting. And I would tell them to focus their outrage... I mean, we talk a lot about outrage culture. They need to focus their outrage on the IOC. It is beyond the pale that they would have awarded these games to Beijing again, despite what they've done in Tibet, despite what they've done to Christians, and despite what they've done to Hong Kong and others.
Rep. Mike Waltz: So, we saw Megan Rapinoe, the head of the US women's soccer team become an international celebrity for kneeling when it comes to the past sins of the United States and celebrated across America, across the mainstream media at least for taking that stand. I would tell these athletes, take a stand, focus your outrage as a generation and as young people who stand up for human rights, and stand up for women on the IOC, and demand that they delay the games and rebid. But if you're not going to take a stand against state-directed mass rape and sterilization against women, then I don't know what you would for.
Danielle Pletka: So, one sort of big push, Marc sees this from the athlete's perspective, and I respect that and understand.
Rep. Mike Waltz: And I do too. I do too. It's horrible.
Danielle Pletka: No, and I know. And understanding what these men and women put into years of their life, to the Olympics. What do you think about this question or suggestion that it be moved? Was that ever feasible, or do you think that's a little bit of a red herring? I mean, the IOC, the International Olympic Committee has not even engaged on the question. But is it realistic? Is there any precedent for that? Is it likely?
Rep. Mike Waltz: Well, sadly now 11 months out, I think it's less and less likely. We thought perhaps a year, year and a half ago, I mean, this was even pre-COVID, we began asking when it was logistically much more possible to rebid. I think at this point, my last hope is that they're delayed. Tokyo effectively delayed theirs and I think the IOC could delay. But to Marc's point, I think it's going to take the collective outrage of the athletes themselves. And again, I guarantee you, if it was here in the United States, we would hear it. But I think they need to direct it at the IOC and demand action. 180 human rights groups are demanding action. I think we can certainly call out these various corporate organizations that are just shamefully making billions off of the backs of it. So, at the end of the day, if we are shining a spotlight on this issue and diminishing the propaganda value that the CCP seeks to get out of it, it's not sufficient, but at least it's a step in the right direction.
Rep. Mike Waltz: And I have to tell you too, this is not just a US issue. The head of the Canadian Conservative Party has now demanded the same thing. He forced a vote in the Canadian Parliament. Justin Trudeau, very interestingly abstained, for which he's getting a lot of heat for. Not surprising, the wishy-washiness there. But a number of Australian MPs have called for the same. Japanese MPs have called for the same, as have several members of the British Parliament. So again, these are all countries... I think the thing that is unprecedented is having a situation where the
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9 entire world suffered so badly economically and from a health standpoint, from the very country where we're about to celebrate the Olympic Games. So, this isn't just a partisan issue here or a debate here. This debate's raging and ongoing around the world with every freedom-loving nation. And I ask people again, would we have done the games in Bosnia in the midst of Srebrenica? Would we have done it in Rwanda with the massacre of the Tutsis? At some point, we have to ask ourselves, what does transcend sports?
Marc Thiessen: Well, Mike, you make a very strong case. I'm teetering. I agree with you on every substantive point you make about China. I think they're the modern equivalent of Nazi Germany. They're truly an evil regime. And I just got my second dose of vaccine, thank God. But our whole country has been locked down because the Chinese Communist Party lied to its people, lied to us, impeded the global response. And millions of people are dead around the world because of this regime. So, believe me, I'm torn over whether it's better to let the games go forward so the athletes can compete and use that as a way to shine a spotlight on them.
Rep. Mike Waltz: No. I just wouldn't underestimate the censorship and the propaganda machine in modern technology that the CCP has truly, truly perfected. I just don't see that message getting out. And the only entities to get it out would be American ones, and they're complicit at this point. They're bought off. And I hate being so blunt about it, but we're seeing it over and over and over again. It's really sinful.
Marc Thiessen: Oh, just look at the NBA and their response to all this stuff. I completely agree with you. Look, you're raising really, really valid and really, really important issues. And just by raising this issue, you're shining a spotlight on Beijing's atrocities, which is in and of itself, even if you don't win this fight, a huge public service to the people of China and to our country. So, we're grateful to you for what you're doing and for coming on the show.
Rep. Mike Waltz: Rock on. All right. Thank you.
Danielle Pletka: Thanks, really. So, Marc, what'd you think, persuaded?
Marc Thiessen: Still torn. I mean, look, Mike makes a very strong case. I don't disagree with a single thing he said about the communist regime in Beijing. I wish the Olympics were not taking place there. We should have never awarded it to them. Unlike the Berlin Olympics, the Berlin Olympics were awarded to Germany before Hitler came to power. Here, it was done in full knowledge of what was taking place in China. When you described the corruption of the IOC back then in the 1930s, the corruption is even worse today. So, look, I agree with all that.
Marc Thiessen: The reality is, I think he's not going to win this fight. I think all the powers are right against him. And so, what I think we need to figure out is what's plan B? All of us agree that we need to shine a spotlight on the atrocities of the Chinese communist regime. Mitt Romney has proposed, not an athletic boycott, but an economic and diplomatic boycott of the game, sort of a middle ground. That's certainly something that we should be pushing for. And quite frankly, we should be coming up with a strategy for how to use this platform even if you don't think it should exist. How do we shame corporate America and the media into
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10 highlighting the truth about what's happening in Beijing and not whitewashing it? Because that should be our effort going forward.
Danielle Pletka: I think that's completely realistic and a good thing to talk about. But one point I really want to make, which is that last year during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement's protests across the United States we saw sports team after sports team, not just take the knee, but walk off the field, not play their games, not attend their practices. And I respect people's right to protest. I respect their right to live according to the morals that they have. And what I don't understand is why athletes have not been louder and more angry and more willing to speak out about China. And that is one of the incongruities here that troubles me the most. Megan Rapinoe saying, "Oh, no, we should go to China." Was that what you were saying otherwise, Megan? Give me a break.
Marc Thiessen: I'm not going to defend Megan Rapinoe. But one of the big problems we have also here is that the Olympics have changed. So, for me, the touchstone of the Olympic movement was the 1980 Winter Olympics when the US Miracle on Ice team beat the Soviet Union. And that was probably not only the greatest sports event in history, but one of the great geopolitical events of history, where it was the first time we were in the depths of the period where everybody thought America was declining, the Soviet Union was on the rise, and then a bunch of college kids got on the ice and played the great Soviet Red Army, and beat them. And that was the moment that America realized, yeah, if we can beat these guys on the ice, we can beat them in the Cold War too. We're America, we can do this, right? Great moment. They were college kids.
Marc Thiessen: Today, the US Olympic hockey team is all NHL players, professionals. The basketball team is all NBA players. There's been this professionalization of the Olympics, at least on the men's side, not on the women's side. And so, you've got the corporate NBA that's completely in Beijing's pocket, right? And all these business ties that deter us from actually calling out these things. And so, I think that's a bigger problem with the Olympic movement is that it's now this big corporate conglomerate, where it used to be, we'd highlight these great amateur athletes. And in a lot of sports, they still are. But in a lot of them, they're not. So, we need to really pressure these corporate sponsors to just shame them into acknowledging what's happening in that country.
Danielle Pletka: Well, listen, I agree with you. Look, I think those are all very practical. I think we should get together with Canada. Two Canadians being held hostage in Chinese prisons, okay? In order for them to get out their little Huawei princess, who's being held under house arrest in a magnificent villa in Canada for actual crimes committed. So, get together with our allies.
Marc Thiessen: Can I get under house arrest in a mansion in British Columbia? I'd really like that. Could we arrange that, Dany?
Danielle Pletka: I'm sure plenty of our listeners would be perfectly willing to see that happen. But get together with our allies, stand up, make sure that there is concurrent programming that shines a light on what the Chinese are up to. Absolutely do our best to ensure that China cannot exploit these Olympic Games for status or for profit. And really, as you say, dead-on, name and shame those who are willing
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11 to put their profits before the human freedom of others.
Marc Thiessen: And by the way, we need to make sure that the US Olympic Committee stands 100% behind any athlete that wants to speak out and protest what's happening in China. Because the reality is, as you point out, during the Black Lives Matter protest, there was all corporate America suddenly saying, "Oh, they have a right to protest, right to take a knee, right to all this stuff like that. Well, I bet you there are a lot of athletes who are disgusted with what's happening in Beijing and want to say something and discuss what's happening to the people of Hong Kong, and want to say something, want to use their platform for this. And they should not be feeling an ounce of pressure from the United States Olympic Committee, or from their teams, or from their corporate sponsors pressuring them to keep their mouth shut because they might upset the Chinese Communist Party.
Marc Thiessen: We should find some creative ways to do that because I bet you, there are a lot of athletes, especially women athletes, who once they become aware of what's being done to Uighur women, the mass rapes and the mass incarceration, they'll want to say something. They'll want to wear something during the Olympic parade. They'll want to hold up signs. They'll want to find some way to protest, and we need to protect the athletes who want to do that and make sure they're not punished or dissuaded in any way from speaking out during the Olympics. That's the next step for this.
Danielle Pletka: Amen to that. Hey, folks, thank you for listening. Don't forget, subscribe, rate us, comment, share with your friends, share with your enemies, send us comments, send us questions, send us your opinions, and complaints about the tech to Alexa. See you next week.
Marc Thiessen: Take care.
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