Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) joined Maria Bartiromo on Mornings with Maria to discuss President Biden’s foreign policy failures and the reprehensible behavior of the International Olympic Committee.
Read highlights of the conversation below, or click HERE to watch the full interview.
On the collapse of American deterrence:
“All these things start to add up, Maria. The humiliation of our surrender in Afghanistan, our weak posture in Ukraine, and I think our misplaced priorities. The way in which the Biden administration is deemphasizing conventional deterrence and hard power in favor of their domestic agenda, in favor of climate change priorities. I mean, Maria, yesterday, as we’re trying to deal with deterring Russia from invading Ukraine, the United States Army released its climate change priorities. You can’t make this stuff up.”
On military readiness:
“The first budget Biden submitted for the Defense Department was a cut in real terms, and next year’s budget is going to be worse. And what they did in the first few months of the administration was really to prioritize identity politics, diversity, equity and inclusion, and wokeness training, which had the practical effect of demoralizing a lot of people on active duty. That’s bad. What’s even worse, as you look at the situation with China, is that we haven’t heard a coherent plan from the military for how are we actually going to defend Taiwan. How are we going to deter this invasion? We’ve asked for access to the war plans, but we can’t get them on the Armed Services Committee. How are we supposed to make critical decisions about what weapon systems to fund if we don’t have a coherent story from the Pentagon as to how we intend to solve the biggest national security issue we are facing today?”
On his efforts to sanction members of the International Olympic Committee:
“The IOC has acted despicably. They recently claimed to have met with Peng Shuai and answer the question ‘where is Peng Shuai’? Well, where is she? She’s being detained by the Chinese Communist Party. She’s being silenced. She’s being held hostage. And the IOC is complicit in her being held hostage because they don’t want to do anything to upset the CCP. It’s absolutely shameful. And they should be held accountable for that. Add on to that the fact that our athletes are at risk right now. If one of our athletes has the courage to speak up or criticize the CCP for the human rights abuses while in Beijing, I fear they could be detained. And we absolutely cannot stand for that. We should not have held this Olympics in Beijing in the first place. But now we need to do everything possible to protect our athletes, as well as call out the hypocrisy of the IOC.”
