Tune out the Winter Olympics, don't reward Communist China's scheme

Sen. Marco Rubio blasts NBC for seeking to monetize the Olympic games hosted by China on 'The Ingraham Angle.'

At their best, the Olympics are a celebration of the human spirit. We saw this last year when Japan, a country where I served as U.S. ambassador from 2017 to 2019, demonstrated the strength of its recovery from the devastating 2011 Fukushima disaster by hosting over 15,000 international athletes for the Summer Games despite a yearlong delay caused by the COVID pandemic.

In a jarring contrast, the 2022 Winter Olympics will soon be hosted by China, a country whose Marxist-Leninist dictatorship is perpetrating ongoing genocide against Uyghur Muslims and other minorities, in addition to committing other major human rights violations in Tibet and Hong Kong. The Communist regime there is actively staging international provocations, and aggressively exporting its authoritarian model through its Belt and Road Initiative.

MCCARTHY, CHINA TASK FORCE REPUBLICANS DEMAND OLYMPIC COMMITTEE INFORM ATHLETES ABOUT SECURITY RISKS, GENOCIDE

The Chinese Communist Party, with the complicity of the International Olympic Committee and the corporate media, is already using the Winter Games as an international propaganda exercise to bolster its legitimacy while silencing criticism.

Witness Yang Shu, the Beijing Organizing Committee’s deputy director general of international relations, who recently threatened foreign athletes with "certain punishment" for "[a]ny behavior or speech that is against the Olympic spirit, especially against the Chinese laws and regulations." It is unconscionable that an international competition intended to promote peaceful relations and celebrate human dignity was awarded to a totalitarian human rights abuser