Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) gave a direct message at the Falkirk Center’s Freedom Summit:

“China unleashed this plague on the world.”

In a dialogue with former Congressman Dave Brat, Cotton explained how the Coronavirus is far more about China’s adversarial nature as an international actor than other narratives covered by the media.

While many speculations have made their way through the courts of public opinion, Cotton’s message blames China not only for initiating the virus, but allowing it’s transmission without informing the world of the danger at hand.

This is an aggressive statement, but nothing Cotton didn’t back up with sobering reason:

“Some people say it’s too cynical to suggest that Xi Jinping and the leaders of the Communist Party would intentionally inflict this virus on the world. I would respond by saying the modern Chinese Communist Party has killed 65 million of their own people. So, if you don’ think that they would sacrifice a few hundred lives of foreigners to maintain their relative power in the world, to ensure that they were not the only one that suffered a virus-induced recession, then you’re being very naïve.”

Cotton’s message is challenging to hear but it also exposes the responsibility to hold international antagonists accountable early in their misbehaviors.

Cotton also described the Chinese Communist Party as “deeply indifferent to human life. Not just our lives but their own citizens’ lives and the Chinese people are the first and worst victims.”

The lethal actions taken by the Chinese Communist Party against their own citizens far predate COVID-19. Forced abortions, executions based in religious intolerance, and killing citizens for their convictions to blow the whistle in event of COVID-19-type actions on part of China are all part of the violence the communist state takes against its people.

These violent actions have been happening for years, but Cotton said COVID-19 is a tangible way to show that “America has seen the true face of Chinese communism.”