Republican Rep. Mike Waltz calls the Beijing Olympics ‘disgusting’ and says it is like ‘holding the games in Germany in 1940 or in Rwanda during their ethnic genocide’
- GOP Rep. Michael Waltz expressed disgust Monday when talking about the winter Olympics being held in Beijin, while China engages in Uyghur genocide
- ‘This is like hosting the games in Germany in 1940 or Rwanda during their ethnic genocide,’ Waltz said on Fox & Friends. ‘It’s disgusting’
- Waltz and Boston Celtics player Enes Kanter Freedom filmed an ad together blasting the ‘genocide games,’ and shaming U.S. companies for participating
Republican Rep. Michael Waltz expressed disgust Monday morning when talking about the winter Olympics being held in Beijing, while China engages in genocide of the Uyghur Muslim minority.
‘This is like hosting the games in Germany in 1940 or Rwanda during their ethnic genocide,’ Waltz said. ‘It’s disgusting.’
Waltz and Boston Celtics player Enes Kanter Freedom – who also appeared on Fox – filmed an ad together blasting the ‘genocide games,’ and shaming American companies for participating.
Republican Rep. Michael Waltz expressed disgust Monday morning when talking about the winter Olympics being held in Beijing, while China engages in genocide of the Uyghur Muslim minority
‘The world’s greatest athletic showcase, but just outside the show, rape, genocide, slave labor,’ Waltz says in the spot. ‘American companies are drunk on Chinese dollars.’
NBC – the network that airs the Olympic games – declined to run the ad.
‘The ad was not rejected. Per NBCUniversal’s long-standing advertising guidelines, changes to the ad were requested to it could air,’ an NBC spokesperson said.
Fox & Friends’ Brian Kilmeade explained that the changes involved scrapping the logos used in the ad, including those for AirBnB, Intel, Proctor & Gamble, Visa, Coca-Cola and Nike.
‘That was the whole point of the ad,’ Kilmeade noted.
AirBnB, Intel, Proctor & Gamble, Visa and Coca-Cola are all top-tier sponsors of the games, while Nike made athletes’ apparel.
On Fox & Friends, Waltz outlined some of the atrocities the Chinese Communist Party has committed against the Uyghurs – including putting them in forced labor camps to produce products for American consumers.
‘Those same companies are now sponsoring these Olympics Games,’ the Florida Republican said.
‘They shouldn’t be. Our athletes shouldn’t be there at all. And we want to bring awareness to the world of what’s going on, that these companies and everybody participating are complicit in what has been labeled by the Trump administration and the Biden administration as an ongoing genocide,’ he continued.
Waltz also hit the corporations that ‘want to preach social justice here at home, they want to boycott baseball in Georgia, but then completely turn a blind eye to millions of Muslims in concentration camps and slave labor.’
Waltz was referring to Coca-Cola and other companies criticizing the restrictive Georgia voting law, which help pushed Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game out of Atlanta last year.
The Republican called it ‘hypocrisy.’
Waltz, the first U.S. Army Green Beret to be elected to Congress, has been more critical of the games than some of his Republican peers.
The Biden administration enforced a diplomatic boycott of the games, refusing to send a delegation of U.S. officials to the opening and closing ceremonies as a protest over China’s human rights abuses.
A number of Republicans said they backed this decision, so that U.S. athletes weren’t punished.
In 1980, President Jimmy Carter’s administration fully boycotted the summer Olympic games in Moscow, over the Soviet Union’s decision to invade Afghanistan.