President Joe Biden's dismissive remark at a CNN town hall this week – where he appeared to accept China's human rights abuses of Muslim Uighurs as different cultural "norms" – has "disheartened" former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
"To pawn this off as a different norm or a different set of behaviors, that's what the Chinese Communist Party says," Pompeo told Newsmax TV's "Saturday Agenda." "That's how they talk about this. They just say, 'look, we have a different culture, we're a little bit different.'
"This isn't about different cultures or different norms. This is about a deep human rights violation."
Pompeo noted Secretary of State Antony Blinken has agreed with the Trump administration's classification of China's treatment of the ethnic Uighurs as "genocide," so President Biden needs to get with the program, he told host Heather Childers.
"To hear an American president talk about it in such a way that doesn't connote to all the seriousness with which this must be taken is disheartening," Pompeo said. "And I hope the administration will take it seriously in the same way that we did when we were in office."
Pompeo acknowledged it might have just been an early Biden gaffe he will come to realize.
"Maybe they're just getting their feet underneath them," Pompeo said of the differing messaging of the Biden administration. "I'm happy to give them the benefit of the doubt for these opening weeks. Every administration takes a little while to get themselves straight."
Pompeo said Biden must stand against the "hegemonic desires of the Xi Jinping" China.
"We will know soon, because the American people are going to demand that the Chinese Communist Party stop abusing the United States of America," he concluded.
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Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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