A political action committee associated with Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) has launched a new attack ad in Ohio and swing states across the nation attacking former Vice President Joe Biden for being “weak on China.” Cotton, a veteran of the war in Iraq, is determined to help GOP candidates who are veterans succeed in their quest for elective office, as The Federalist noted.
The Republican Majority Fund’s ad starts by citing a litany of China’s alleged human rights abuses and history of cyberwarfare, stating:
They run concentration camps. They forced the abortions of millions of babies. They brutally crack down on protesters. They hack America’s networks. They have stolen millions of our jobs. China is the greatest threat to our national security and our values. Career politician Joe Biden is weak on China.
The video shifts to footage of Biden pronouncing, “China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man. They’re not bad folks, folks. But guess what? They’re not a competition for us.”
A 2019 Pentagon report stated:
China’s military modernization also targets capabilities with the potential to degrade core U.S. operational and technological advantages. China uses a variety of methods to acquire foreign military and dual-use technologies, including targeted foreign direct investment, cyber theft, and exploitation of private Chinese nationals’ access to these technologies, as well as harnessing its intelligence services, computer intrusions, and other illicit approaches. In 2018, Chinese efforts to acquire sensitive, dual-use, or military-grade equipment from the United States included dynamic random access memory, aviation technologies, and anti- submarine warfare technologies.
The narrator in the ad continues, “When Joe Biden was vice-president, his son got a sweetheart $1.5 billon deal from the Bank of China. When Joe Biden was senator, he voted to give special trade status that devastated American workers. Biden is weak on China and wrong for America. We need to stand up to China and protect American jobs and our national security. Senator Cotton is standing with President Trump to take on China and keep America great.”
Cotton noted in National Review:
Despite the occasional box-checking, wishy-washy comment slapping Beijing on the wrist for the worst of its abuses, the reality is that the former vice president’s support of the People’s Republic of China is deep and longstanding. In the critical fight over whether to grant most-favored-nation trade status and World Trade Organization membership to China in the 1990s — a fight in which, again, many of his party’s leaders in Congress were on the right side — Biden carefully shepherded China through the process from his powerful perch as the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Wherever a brake might have been applied — by placing human-rights or labor conditions on most-favored-nation status, for example — Biden voted the measures down and lobbied other senators for Beijing.
Cotton told The Federalist: “Throughout his career, almost every time he got the chance, Joe Biden took China’s side and American workers are still suffering for it. Last year, Joe Biden claimed that China is ‘not competition for us’ and last month, he opposed President Trump’s travel ban on China as ‘xenophobic.’ Whatever the issue, Biden can be relied on to take China’s side.”
The Federalist noted, “Cotton’s Biden attack ad airing in Ohio might play to Sanders’ benefit in the state’s primaries next week as Sanders has targeted Biden on trade.”