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Tags: darin lahood | china | beijing | olympics | covid

Rep. LaHood to Newsmax: Boycott Olympics in China If COVID Details Grow

Rep. LaHood to Newsmax: Boycott Olympics in China If COVID Details Grow
(Newsmax/"Wake Up America")

By    |   Thursday, 16 December 2021 09:56 AM EST

The United States must contemplate a full boycott of the Winter Olympic Games in Beijing if more information is discovered over the next six weeks concerning the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially with China's non-compliance in the investigation, Rep. Darin LaHood said on Newsmax Thursday. 

"You got to look at all things," the Illinois Republican said on Newsmax's "Wake Up America." "You have to look at sanctions. You have to look at our trade relationship with China. You have to look at the Olympics."

Most of all, LaHood said something must be done to hold China accountable, "because what we're doing now is not working. They think this is all going to go away. They're going to sweep it under the rug, and no one's going to find out what happened there."

LaHood, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, added that the Chinese government's continued lack of transparency and its deceitfulness is "frustrating."

"We're at 800,000 dead in this country and over 4 million worldwide," said LaHood. "How do you prevent a future pandemic when you can't even get to the origins or the genesis of this one? Everything that we've seen shows the Chinese are complicit. They were involved with this, but they've been non-transparent."

The congressman said members of the House Intelligence Committee are continuing to pull together open-source information on the Wuhan Institute of Virology about what had been going on there in 2019 before the pandemic broke out. 

"In the fall of 2019, people were getting sick there," LaHood said. "The CCP and the military were doing active testing there, and there were people that were getting sick at that lab. [It] had a history of leaks there." 

But the Chinese continue to refuse to comply, said LaHood. 

"They need to own up and admit to this," he said. "What we need to find out now is if this was intentional or whether this was blatantly reckless."

Meanwhile, it's a "tough question" about whether the diplomatic boycott of the Olympics that has been ordered by President Joe Biden is the way to handle the situation. 

"I think about these athletes that have been training for four and eight years to compete in the Olympics," he said. "I don't want to hurt them. I'm glad we're doing the diplomatic boycott, but I think we need to do more."

There are also concerns about whether participation in the Beijing Games will legitimize the Chinese Communist Party and its actions, much like participating in the 1936 Olympics is seen to have helped legitimize Adolf Hitler and Germanys' then-Nazi regime on the world stage. 

LaHood pointed out that Australia has also imposed a diplomatic boycott for the Games, as have other countries. 

"I think we have to collectively think about how this is going to make China look," said LaHood. "The number-one thing they want [is for these] Olympics to come off with no controversy. They want to make sure that China looks great through all this. Meanwhile again, in the backdrop is the origins of COVID."

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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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The United States must contemplate a full boycott of the Winter Olympic Games in Beijing if more information is discovered over the next six weeks concerning the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic...
darin lahood, china, beijing, olympics, covid
591
2021-56-16
Thursday, 16 December 2021 09:56 AM
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