Tennessee Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn blasted President Joe Biden on Sunday for being “weak” on America’s adversaries.
Blackburn made the comments during an appearance on WABC 770 AM’s “Cats Roundtable” with host John Catsimatidis. She said Biden’s performance as president has “emboldened” what she called the “new axis of evil.”
“What worries me tremendously is what we see happening with the aggression coming out of the new Axis of Evil: Russia, China, Iran, North Korea,” Blackburn said. “The pressure that they are putting on one another to stand up and fight against the United States.”
“And we see how they feel emboldened because Joe Biden is weak, Joe Biden is not holding them to account, Joe Biden has not asked China to explain COVID and what happened at the lab, that he has allowed them to continue to export to the United States without saying one word to them about the trade imbalance,” Blackburn said.
The Tennessee Republican added that Biden has “[continued] to allow” China to be aggressive with Taiwan. In the past year, China has ramped up its aggression toward the island nation, conducting extensive military drills after former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) visited Taiwan in August 2022 and when Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen visited California and met with current House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) in April.
In just one day last week, China sent 103 military aircraft around Taiwan, with 40 entering the air-defense identification zone. Earlier this month, roughly 24 warships sailed near Taiwan, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Blackburn also criticized Biden for his recent deal with Iran, in which the United States received five Americans held captive in Iran in exchange for releasing five Iranian prisoners and $6 billion in frozen assets.
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“We see Iran now emboldened because Joe Biden has released $6 billion to them, and we know, you know John, they are not going to use that money to feed the poor,” Blackburn said. “They are not going to use it to better the lives of their people. They’re going to use it to push forward on uranium enrichment and nuclear proliferation.”
A National Security Council spokeswoman said U.S. officials would oversee the use of the funds and called it a “procedural step” to ensure humanitarian aid gets to the country. However, in an interview with NBC News’s Lester Holt earlier this month, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said the money “belongs to the Iranian people, the Iranian government, so the Islamic Republic of Iran will decide what to do with this money.”
“With Iran saying, ‘We’ll do whatever we want to do,’ and knowing that Iran has teamed up with Russia to create drones that are now flying over Ukraine, and China, we hear, is pretty much banking that operation. This should be something that worries us,” Blackburn said. “Having Kim Jong Un over in Russia visiting with Putin, extending the hand of friendship, saying ‘We want to be your ally, come visit with us in North Korea, come see what we’re doing on developing next-generation rockets.’ This is not something that is going to serve the American people and our cause of pushing freedom around the globe.”