U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) said Friday that the United States has a way to hold China accountable for unleashing COVID-19 upon the world.
Blackburn said this during a tele-town hall with U.S. Senate candidate Bill Hagerty. Hagerty and opponent Manny Sethi both want to replace the retiring U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) in the August 6 Republican primary.
During the call, Blackburn said she has talked with the White House and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin about China holding more than $1 trillion of U.S. debt.
“I think that negotiating that payment, maybe waiving that payment, is something that we have to put on the table. The Wuhan virus has cost us now over $6 trillion. In the state of Tennessee for every one person that contracted the virus we have 33 Tennesseans that have been adversely impacted economically and financially by being furloughed or losing their job or having to take a reduced wage,” Blackburn said.
“At this point, what we need to say to China is ‘Look. You took our jobs. They went to China. You sent us a virus, and we’re going to hold you accountable for this.’ That debt is a great way to do it, to hit them in the pocketbook, if you will, and to hold them to account.”
As The Tennessee Star reported, Blackburn endorsed Hagerty for the U.S. Senate last week.
No one on the call mentioned Sethi, who is also a Republican.
Hagerty and Sethi have sparred with one another in various television advertising campaigns the past few weeks. U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence have endorsed Hagerty.
On Friday’s call, Blackburn said Trump and Pence endorsed Hagerty because “they know he has a backbone of steel when it comes to standing up to the left.”
“They know he can sniff out a liberal,” Blackburn said.
“He can end up finding a way to end that argument.”
– – –
Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected].
Marsha, Why have you got involved in the Primary? Mitch and John Thune have you doing their marketing in Tennessee. Why didn’t Hagerty contribute to your campaign ion 2018? He did contribute to Little Bob Corker and worked for RINO Haslam. Please ditch Mitch, we need a new generation of GOP leadership in the senate. Speaking of conservatives have you checked Mitch’s liberal voting record according to the Heritage foundation! How do you claim to be a conservative and vote for RINO McConnell? Sethi is the real Tennessee Conservative! 🙂
Larry H, exactly, & what has the DOJ done about Antifa after declaring them a terrorist organization? The FBI, CIA, DHS, should be rounding them up by the hundreds. And they need to go after the Marxist domestic terrorists who lead the BLM organization.
Another empty move from an empty suit. Nothing but symbolism behind this. If you guys were actually serious about hurting China, you’d introduce incentives for American manufactures to move back over here.
Or if they were serious about consequences due to the Coronahoax, then they would be looking at Fauci/NAIAD funding the research at Wuhan with millions of taxpayer dollars, and the monkey kidney cell lines for coronavirus research with the bats illegally shipped to Wuhan from USAMRIID at Ft. Detrick. Our government and military are complicit in the Plandemic. CONgress gave them the funding to do it.
Back to our own bigotry again, huh, Marsha?
There needs to be a way to hit California, Oregon, Washington, and New York back. Before we can conquer the Greatest Satan, we have to conquer the Satans inside the border.