Democrats on Monday slammed President Trump for his inconsistent stance toward the Chinese regime’s persecution of Uighur Muslims.
The condemnation came in response to statements Trump made during a Friday interview with Axios’s Jonathan Swan about an accusation from former national security adviser John Bolton that Trump had approved of the Chinese practice of interning Uighur Muslims. Trump admitted that he knew about the camps and had delayed sanctioning the communist state because “we were in the middle of a major trade deal.”
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said that Trump’s actions undermined the “moral authority” the United States has in demanding that other countries respect human rights.
“President Trump’s admission that he is looking the other way and enabling one of the worst human rights atrocities of our time in order to ink a trade deal is appalling,” she said in a statement.
Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden accused Trump of delaying the sanctions “because he thought it might get him a better trade deal,” adding that Trump’s failure to speak for Uighurs at the time makes him an “an easy mark for China’s leaders.”
Trump on Wednesday signed the Uighur Human Rights Policy Act, a law that passed both chambers of Congress in near-unanimous votes. The act makes Uighur rights part of U.S. policy toward China and requires that Trump sanction party leaders in the Xinjiang province, where many Uighurs are imprisoned.
Trump signed the act several hours after reports surfaced that Bolton had accused him of telling Chinese President Xi Jinping to “go ahead with building the camps, which he thought was exactly the right thing to do.”
Pelosi said that in light of Trump’s admission that he had not pressed Xi on the Uighur issue, his signing of the congressional act “rings extraordinarily hollow.”
