NBC's Savannah Guthrie: China using Uyghur athlete in Olympic ceremony 'an in-your-face response' to West

In media news today, an AP reporter spars with the State Department’s Ned Price over allegations on Russia, a report claims that Jeff Zucker and Allison Gollust gave Andrew Cuomo COVID ‘talking points’ to combat Trump, and an MSNBC broadcast gets interrupted by a ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ flag.

NBC anchor Savannah Guthrie described China's use of a Uyghur athlete in its opening ceremonies at the 2022 Winter Olympics as "an in your face response" to Western nations that have condemned the Chinese treatment of the Uyghurs as genocide. 

During NBC's Friday coverage of the Beijing opening ceremonies, Guthrie called the moment a Uyghur athlete participated in the ceremony "provocative," and described it as "a statement" from Chinese President Xi Jinping to choose an athlete from the minority group to participate.

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"This moment is quite provocative. It's a statement from the Chinese President Xi Jinping to choose an athlete from the Uighur minority. It is an in your face response to those Western nations, including the U.S., who have called this Chinese treatment of that group genocide and diplomatically boycotted these games. There will be much discussion about this," Guthrie said as the ceremony unfolded. 

NBC also covered China's human rights abuses towards the Uyghurs during the broadcast.

The U.S. under former President Trump's administration designated China's treatment of the Uyghurs as an "act of genocide" last year. 

"We are witnessing the systematic attempt to destroy Uyghurs by the Chinese party-state," then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wrote in a statement at the time.

The following month, a legal opinion from a British court declared