During an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity on Thursday, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham blasted China for their coronavirus response, stating that the communist government should be “severely” punished for the deaths of 16,000 Americans who died from the deadly disease.
“The first thing I want to do is get the United States Senate on the record where we, we don’t blame Trump, we blame China,” Graham said. “The Chinese government is responsible for 16,000 American deaths and 17 million Americans being unemployed. It’s the Chinese government and the way they behave that led to this pandemic. This is the third one to come out of China.
“I want to make our response to this so overwhelming that China will change its behavior,” Graham added. “I want to get the medical supply chain back into the United States. I want to [start] canceling some debt that we owe to China because they should be paying us, not us paying China. So I think you will see a bipartisan pushback against China to punish them so severely to deter them in the future.”
WATCH the clip below:
Read the full transcript below:
FOX NEWS HOST SEAN HANNITY: Tonight Senator Graham is building a bipartisan coalition in the Senate to call on China to shutdown its so called ‘wet markets,’ which caused not just this pandemic but are breeding grounds for future ones. He joins us now. Senator, I think that’s just the beginning. I think the U.K. study showed 95% of this all could have been prevented.
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): Yeah. So, the first thing I want to do is get the United States Senate on the record where we, we don’t blame Trump, we blame China. The Chinese government is responsible for 16,000 American deaths and 17 million Americans being unemployed. It’s the Chinese government and the way they behave that led to this pandemic. This is the third one to come out of China. I want to make our response to this so overwhelming that China will change its behavior. I want to get the medical supply chain back into the United States. I want to stop canceling some debt that we owe to China because they should be paying us, not us paying China. So I think you will see a bipartisan push back against China to punish them so severely to deter them in the future.
HANNITY: What do you think of, if we’re going to get the country up and running, and we’re going to do it safely. We have great innovators in this country. Abbott came up with this five minute test, five minutes, it’s the size of a toaster. If there’s somehow we can get other companies mass producing this, to me that’s the key to doing it safely and securely.
GRAHAM: There is two kinds of tests, do you have it or have you had at? A lot of people have had it and don’t know it. We need to test them and get them back to work because they are good to go, and we need mass tests to show we don’t have it right now. The road to economic recovery is through testing labs, we’re turning the corner on testing. We are going to get the economy back open safely and the way to do it is a have a testing regime that allows people to go back to work safely. Better days lie ahead.
