Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo put Chinese President XI Jinping on notice after urging U.S. lawmakers to ban travel from China.
“There is no reason that we should allow the Chinese to do this again, to send Chinese infected persons around the world, knowingly infecting people all across the globe,” Pompeo commented, according to Fox News. “Just as in the spring of [2020], he sent people around the world who he knew were infected. He’s doing the same darn thing again, he’s going to infect millions more. We shouldn’t let that happen.”
The comments come after an apparent COVID-19 case spike in China.
During an appearance on the Fox News, former Assistant Secretary of State and former Naval Intel Officer Robert Charles agreed with Pompeo’s assessment. Charles argued that by not restricting Chinese travel, the United States is bound to repeat the mistakes of the last pandemic.
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“The bottom line is we don’t want Groundhog Day, we don’t want to have to do this all over again,” Charles said.
Pompeo and Charles’s arguments stem from Morocco’s recent decision to ban Chinese travel after Bloomberg reported that up to 50 percent of all passengers from Chinese flights tested positive for COVID-19.
Charles also argued that it is not enough to just verify COVID test results, as a striking proportion of COVID test results are not valid enough for assessment.
Charles was then pressed on his assessment of the recent announcement by North Korea to bolster its nuclear weapon capabilities. Charles argued that the U.S. needs to focus more on deterrence, ballistic missile defense, and cybersecurity defense.
“Pre-emption and prevention are worth pounds and pounds of cure. We need to get ahead of this and right now the Biden Administration is dragging their feet a little bit,” Charles said. “I think we need to see a lot of bipartisan focus on how to deter and how to protect.”
