Senator Ted Cruz on Friday blasted the Biden administration as “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” for failing to stand up more vigorously against China when a former state media editor called for the plane of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to visit Taiwan shoot down.
He said the White House is making the world less safe.
Pelosi’s visit — the first by a House Speaker in more than 20 years — has heightened tensions between Washington and Beijing, which have launched live-fire exercises in the seas surrounding the autonomous island.
This was preceded by calls on social media to shoot down Pelosi’s plane if it stayed on course.
“The White House press secretary was asked what the White House thought about this, and I kid you, their answer wasn’t, ‘We have no position on this,'” he told an audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas, Texas.
“Like what the hell is wrong with you?
“I’m not a fan of Pelosi.
“But the only response to an enemy of America threatening to assassinate the Speaker of the United States is that it would be an act of war, and the results would be devastating.”
“And the weakness and appeasement emanating from these cheese-eating surrender monkeys makes America, and the world at large, far less secure.”
Senator Ted Cruz addressed conservatives at a conference in Dallas, Texas on Thursday. He said the White House is making the world less safe by not taking a firm stand on China
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan ignited tensions between Washington and Beijing. China has launched live-fire military drills across the island
Donald Trump will shut down the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday
Last week, Hu Xijin, a former editor-in-chief of China’s state-owned Global Times, made inflammatory comments on social media.
‘That [People’s Liberation Army] has the right to forcibly evict Pelosi’s aircraft and US fighter jets, including firing warning shots and conducting tactical blocking movements,” he wrote. ‘If ineffective, shoot them down.’
Cruz offered his answer during a red meat-packed speech to an enthusiastic conservative audience.
He spoke shortly after China ramped up its own rhetoric, sanctioning Pelosi and bringing up the murder of George Floyd as it sought to ridicule alleged US efforts to police the world.
Beijing announced it would impose sanctions on Pelosi and her immediate family in response to their “vicious” actions.
“Despite China’s serious concerns and staunch opposition, Pelosi insisted on visiting Taiwan, seriously interfering in China’s internal affairs, undermining China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, trampling on the one-China policy, and safeguarding cross-strait peace and stability to threaten,” a spokesman for the State Department said.
A spokesman for the communist government then compared the United States’ behavior to the killing of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis.
Hua Chunying wrote: “We cannot allow the US to consider itself a ‘world policeman’ and treat George Floyd in other countries, whom they can bully and strangle at will.”
It emerged that the White House on Thursday summoned Chinese Ambassador Qin Gang to condemn the escalating actions against Taiwan and reiterate that the United States does not want a crisis in the region.
The Biden administration has backed Pelosi’s trip to promote democracy in Taiwan and has criticized Beijing’s “saber-rattling” and “unnecessary” military exercises.
China yesterday stepped up its military intimidation of Taiwan, firing ballistic missiles that flew over the island and landed in Japanese waters
“Following China’s overnight actions, we called Ambassador Qin Gang to the White House to demarche about (China’s) provocative actions,” White House spokesman John Kirby told the Washington Post. A demarche is a protest through diplomatic channels.
Four days of war games around Taiwan began just before 2 p.m. local time with wave after wave of missile launches as Chinese jets took to the skies and ten warships patrolled the sea.
Five high-powered missiles launched from the mainland flew over Taiwan, Japanese officials said, and crashed into the sea south of Hateruma Island, part of Okinawa. The archipelago is part of Japan’s “Exclusive Economic Zone,” which stretches 200 nautical miles offshore.
On Friday, Taiwan accused Chinese warships and warplanes of crossing the “median line” that runs down the middle of the Taiwan Strait and separates it from the mainland.
The line is an unofficial but previously widely recognized boundary that Beijing insists “no longer exists” as it seeks to assert control over its much smaller neighbor.