Volunteer State News

NASHVILLE, TN—United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and former U.S. Ambassador to Japan, this weekend joined Maria Bartiromo’s Wall Street on Fox Business to discuss the Biden Administration’s weakness on the world stage and failure to deal with Communist China from a position of strength. 

Partial Transcript

Hagerty on China’s recent provocations against America’s military and infrastructure: “I think it just further underscores, Maria, that the world needs a strong America. And the fact is that since Afghanistan, we’ve been displaying weakness. China’s seeing that void. They’re stepping up, and they’re putting more and more confrontational pressure on that region. They’ve made their goals very clear in terms of their desire to bring Taiwan back into the fold of China. What they’re seeing right now is an opportunity, a moment of weakness in this Administration, and America stepping back from the stage at a time we should be stepping forward, and they’re taking full advantage of that. I’m shocked to see the level of aggression, but again, I’ve been dealing with China for a long time. They look for [an] advantage, and they’ll take it.”

Hagerty on the Biden Administration’s weakness in dealing with Communist China: “We’ve actually seen the State Department pulling down critical statements [of China’s role in fentanyl production]. You know, when the Treasury Secretary puts out a sanction that names a Chinese [entity] for sending fentanyl precursors into America and into Mexico, our State Department actually rips that out of their messaging because they don’t want to offend, I presume, they don’t want to offend the Chinese. They’re still trying to get some type of high-level meetings, and they’re willing to sacrifice our strength for that. I think that’s absolutely the wrong way to be dealing with this. We should be dealing from a position of strength and a position of power.”

Original Source can be found here.