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Washington D.C. — U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) joined Special Report to discuss the Beijing Olympics, the anniversary of China joining the World Trade Organization, woke corporations, the weakness of the Biden Administration, and his relationship with former President Trump. See below for highlights and watch the video here.
On the United States’ diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics:
“Well, there [are] two things at play here. Obviously the first is doing the right thing. Right? I mean calling these things out should matter, irrespective of how powerful that country is or how important they are geopolitically. But the other thing is that there is pretty clear evidence of how dependent our economy has become on China. When I say our economy, it’s the things we buy at stores. It’s also our corporations.
“I mean, we’ve got large, very influential and powerful organizations in our country and the business sector who rely on the access to the Chinese market and production in China for their bottom line. It is too valuable for them now to jeopardize. I think that’s true for the National Basketball Association. I think that’s been true for Nike, for Apple, and a host of others and that includes, I imagine, NBC as well, with the coverage of the Olympic games. If their coverage gets out of line they could very well be barred from sending journalists there to cover an athletic competition.
“I think what we are seeing here is evidence of how deeply intertwined [China] has become with our economy and how much control it gives them over how much we get to see, watch, buy, how much we pay for things, and what our companies are willing to say.”
On former president Bill Clinton’s speech in 2000 about adding China to the World Trade Organization:
“I believe that speech was about 20 years ago this very week. When you listen to those words now, that’s actually not what’s happened. What we have done is exported jobs. We have sent American jobs, American manufacturing capability. We exported that to China. China took it.
“They made our companies dependent and in many cases, they actually stole the secrets of those companies. And now those companies are no longer there because China is doing it instead. It made us incredibly dependent [on China] to produce all kinds of things to rely on, including to defend our country.
“China has also become a place where we have a finance market now. [We have] a stock market and a Wall Street where … major American investment funds … are investing in companies that are developing weapons that will one day potentially be designed and aimed to kill American servicemen and women. And that has been the outcome of the last 20 years. It was a bad decision based on flawed assumptions and now we are seeing the consequences of it.”
On woke corporations working with China:
“Ultimately, you have to understand that all these companies that are publicly traded have quarterly reports. If they get kicked out of China, their profits are going to go down, their costs are going to go up, and they’re going to have to answer to their shareholders.
“They’re basically now in a trap. A trap that creates a situation in which we have American companies who benefit from being here in the United States with our laws and our system. American companies who consistently advocate now for policies that are good for China and bad for America because of what it would mean to their bottom line.
“It’s a very difficult situation to unwind now. We have to. We have no choice. This cannot continue on this trend line or the world is going to look very different 10 or 20 years from now.”
On the weakness of the Biden administration:
“[I think the Biden administration is] weak on China because they’re divided. There are some people who recognize this threat. I think there are others that are practitioners and believers in the failed bipartisan consensus that brought us to this point.
“Then you’ve got John Kerry, who is a breed unto himself. He wants to do a climate deal with China. He doesn’t want to say or do anything that forces or creates a ruckus with the Chinese because he’s hoping that his legacy in life is going to be that he cut some deal with the Chinese on climate change, which by the way, the Chinese won’t keep because they don’t keep any deal that’s bad for them.”
On the potential of former President Trump running for president in 2024:
“I don’t know. You’ll have to ask him. I mean, I believe that if he runs, he’s going to be the party’s nominee. He’s the most well known and popular Republican among Republicans in the country. I don’t have any idea as to what he is going to do. He doesn’t have to make that decision now.”
On his relationship with former President Trump:
“Look, I would tell people that when President Trump was president of the United States, I got a lot of good things done for Florida and for our country. We had a very good working relationship.
“At the end of the day, we didn’t agree on everything, but he seemed to always respect that. I don’t believe he said a single negative word about me since the day I stopped running for president.
“We had a good working relationship, which is possible with people you don’t agree with 100 percent of the time. I give him a lot of credit on China. The orthodoxy that the Republican party and much of our politics was not what it is [today]. It was something very different and he challenged that as a candidate and I think he deserves credit for it.”