INTERVIEW: Sen. Tom Cotton tells all in his new book raising the alarm on the CCP

THE LOWDOWN:

• Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) released his new book, “Seven Things You Can’t Say About China,” on Tuesday;

• The book has already sold out on Amazon;

• Cotton told the Reporter that Americans likely don’t know the “pervasive influence” Communist China has in America through things like the sister cities program.

Most Americans will agree that Communist China and its ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) pose a significant threat to America and an existential threat to not just our influence around the world, but to our American culture and way of life. Several leaders have emerged as prominent voices against the CCP’s incursion into our nation, but none have been as vocal as Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.).

Cotton, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a U.S. Army Ranger veteran, has been an outspoken critic on Communist China and the eastern power’s attacks on American institutions, from Hollywood to academia to even our own federal government. And he continues that push with his new book, “Seven Things You Can’t Say About China.”

The Arkansas Republican hopped on the phone with the Washington Reporter to talk about his new tome on the CCP threat facing America, which was already sold out on Amazon at the time of the interview.

Cotton told the Reporter that he wrote his new book “to ring the alarm bell about the threat China poses to the American way of life” and that he is “pleased” that his book has “been received very well” and that “so many people want to know more about the threat that China poses to America.”

Cotton told the Reporter that “Americans have a justly low opinion of Communist China” and are “probably better in their common sense than most American elites,” but he does not know if the public “knows the full extent of matters, in part because so many of our elites are invested in not sharing the full extent.”

“But I think, for instance, most Americans understand the military threat from China, the threat that a Chinese nuclear buildup poses,” Cotton said. “I think they understand what China has done to rob us of jobs and companies, or even whole industries.”

“They may not appreciate the pervasive extent of Chinese influence in the country everywhere they turn,” he said. “And it’s because our economy is so dependent on China, because there’s so many points of leverage and pressure China can bring to bear. No interaction with Communist China is just about economic gain. It’s not just about cultural exchanges. It’s always designed to bring points of pressure to bear.”

Cotton pointed to a “telling,” though “not the worst,” example of Communist China’s influence in American society most people wouldn’t think about: sister city programs.

“Many cities across America have sister cities, and if your sister city is in Denmark or Japan, that might be fine. But if your sister city is in China, Communist China has specifically chosen your community as a place that it wants to develop relationships and exert influence. And it’s going to do so by offering economic inducements or cultural exchanges, paid trips to China, and then [China] expect[s] your local officials, whether they’re elected officials or the chamber of commerce, the economic development corporation, to then lobby on China’s behalf. Not just about your relationship with that sister city, but about all of the things.”

“When you go to Congress, tell your congressman like, ‘Hey, you should really pipe down a little bit about Taiwan, you shouldn’t be so outspoken about tariffs. You shouldn’t ring the alarm bell on genocide against Chinese people,” Cotton said. “That’s just one example of the pervasive influence that China exercises in our society.

Cotton, one of the first voices to note the COVID-19 virus likely originated from a lab in Wuhan, China, described his media opposition and attempted discrediting as “a curious episode.” The Arkansas Republican said that, in 2020, he “observed that it probably came from the superlaboratory in Wuhan” and that he made this observation based on “common sense”, not based off of “classified intelligence” — which he noted he did not believe there was “any at the time” — or “any kind of specialized training in medicine or science.”

“I mean, just look at the facts: that laboratory researched novel bat-based coronaviruses. In fact, the director was nicknamed the ‘Bat Lady,’ literally,” Cotton said. “They had a long history of safety lapses, bats are not native to the area around Wuhan, bats are not even sold at food markets.”

“So, it was clear to me, just using common sense and the facts in front of my eyes, that that virus almost certainly came out of a laboratory and Communist China had already covered up the fact that they unleashed this plague on the world. They probably destroyed all the evidence, and they probably disappeared anyone with knowledge of it,” Cotton continued.

Cotton said he was not surprised at the attacks and silencing attempts from Chinese communists, as they have “been doing that for years,” but said that more Americans were surprised by “how many American elites joined in,” like at “the Washington Post, at CNN,” and “at the New York Times.”

“Disputing my claims, calling it a fringe conspiracy theory that was already debunked. As I say in ‘Seven Things You Can’t Say About China,’ not only was it not debunked, not only was it not a conspiracy theory, many of those outlets have had to go back and scrub their stories and change the headlines secretly, without issuing corrections about them. And now, not only the FBI and the intelligence unit at the Department of Energy, but even Joe Biden’s CIA agrees with me that the virus almost certainly came from China.”

“So that not just proves the threat that China poses to America and to the rest of the world, but also how many Americans are ready to man the ramparts at any given moment and defend China,” Cotton added.

The Arkansas Republican said it’s “important to recall” not only “what China did to the world,” but how the “defenders” of China in America “tried to silence” him and others, and even “called Donald Trump names” when the president followed Cotton’s “recommendation to shut down air travel from China.”

“Because it still happens on other questions, on other issues. Whether it’s tariffs on China or China’s efforts to bend international organizations to its will,” Cotton said. “So we need to remember what happened in the early days of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, because it’s kind of the template that China uses over and over again.”