Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) Rips China, NBA And Questions The Impeachment Process

Senator Rick Scott Of Florida Talks To Guy About The Current Situation With In China. Senator Scott Explained The Need For Organizations Like The NBA And Olympics To Stand Up For Human Rights.  Scott Also Questioned The Ongoing Impeachment Inquiry Into President Trump And How Democrats Are Handling It Saying “They don’t need to have private classified hearings and there is nothing classified in this. This is just for them to control the information they put out.” 

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Full Transcript:

Guy Benson:  We’re back on the Guy Benson’s show Coast to Coast. Thank you for listening. Guy Benson, show dot.com. Joining me now for the first time on the program is U.S. Senator Rick Scott of Florida. He was the governor down there for years. Now he’s in the Senate. Rick Scott, welcome to the show. It’s great to have you here.

Sen. Scott:  Well, first, congratulations on all your success and thanks for informing people all over the country.

Guy Benson: Thank you very much, Senator. I want to start talking about China and Hong Kong. You may not know my background on this, but I lived in Hong Kong as a kid for about seven years. It’s somewhere that means a lot to me. What’s happening there is very distressing. And I appreciate the leadership that you have shown, not just in terms of press releases and the type of thing that sometimes you see from politicians. You went to Hong Kong, you were the first member of Congress, to my knowledge, to go over there after the protests really began in earnest. Talk about why this issue matters so much to you and what you learned when you were in Hong Kong.

Sen. Scott: Well, you just your heart goes out. You think about these individuals, the Hong Kong citizens will guarantee basic right sort of close to our Bill of rights when the Brits left and gave Hong Kong back to mainland China. And now President Xi is basically taking this away. And these are things that they’ve had protests with two out of seven million people show up. Unbelievable. And so and the stories are devastating to hear about. You hear about protesters that are beaten up. They’re not allowed to see a lawyer. They can’t do peaceful protests, carry land to the CEO, which is. Like the governor has gotten rid of that. They are you have business people that just disappear. I talked to one businessman that he said that President Xi sent his sister down to see him, to tell him that if he didn’t stop protesting, that his nephew would go to prison in mainland China for life. I’ve talked to military or religious leaders and they tell me that there’s no freedom of religion. Now they’re being told who their leaders have to be. Business people are told who their leaders have to be. President Xi is just this is My opinion This is the beginning of what’s going to happen, Taiwan and other places in Asia, because communist China wants to control the entire world. And they’re doing it piece by piece by piece. And so Hong Kong, the first I met with the Hong Kong protesters today and last night, and they continue to tell me. Tell me their stories. And, you know, there’s this one. These you see players like LeBron James, they go out and they talk about soical justice in the U.S But The impact in Jersey sales or shoe sales. Man, you can’t talk about that. Be long. Now that these people do that, then the uneducated is what he said. So but then, you know, there’s good people like Shaq that they’re willing to stand up and kowtow to the Chinese. Then the latest is, why is the Winter Olympics going to be in in and China? Are they going to allow or not allow the athletes to say anything negative about XI, President Xi? Why is FIFA agreed to do the club World Cup now and Shanghai? So those players are not going to have any. Rights. So this is this is a this is, to me, very important issue that we’ve got to start standing up for people’s rights.

Guy Benson: You know, Senator, on the issue about the World Cup, that’s coming up in China and then you mentioned the Olympics as well. If those are allowed to continue as planned, I would love to close my eyes and envision every free country who shows up during the flags ceremonies. And then when they march in at the beginning, if they all march in with their own flag and also the flag of Hong Kong, maybe even the old flag of Hong Kong. And you see if that could send a message to the Chinese who have very clearly and you’re exactly right about what’s happening and why in Hong Kong and why it’s so distressing, because under the treaty that the Chinese are obligated to follow, there should be another 30 years of relative freedom in Hong Kong. And they’re already starting to infringe on that and crack down in ways that that are very disturbing. And if they’re allowed to get away with it with very little international consequence, then then you are concerned, understandably, about places like Taiwan and of course, areas of the South China Sea. You did invoke the NBA. So I want to ask you about the NBA side of this. One of the arguments that is made about U.S. companies investing in China as heavily as they do is, of course, there is a big market there. It can be good for shareholders and profits and all that. But also if with freer markets and bringing our goods and our people to. Places like China. We can start to win the war of ideas and win hearts and minds and affect things in a positive way. And it just seems it’s a concern. I mean, I’ve said this several times on the show now you’ve got a group like the NBA and you see what Nike has done, an Apple and any number of American companies and organizations, they go over there, they see how much money is to be made possibly. And rather than standing up for our values, totally taken a racer and get rid of our values in the name of profit. That is not the way it was intended, I think. And it is. And it is a source of concern.

Sen. Scott: Well, think about it. You know, it sounds really good if we engage communist China. Let’s remember what they are. It’s not China, it’s communist China. The idea was if we engaged communist China, it would get better.

Sen. Scott: Well, ask the million workers that are better in prison right now because of their religion. Only reason they’re in prison is because they have a they they have a religion that they believe in. That’s it. They’re detaining American citizens. The American system is being tamed right now. There’s no freedom at all.

Sen. Scott: And but if you talk to a typical business, people like I was talking to a guy, a guy that has a medical device company, this is what all they do is they allow me in for a short period of time that makes me feel all my technology and then the market goes away. And so in Americans, we’re supposed to stand up for something. What’s frustrating is Nike sits there and they won’t they won’t do a shoe with an American flag on it. But they’ll kowtow to communist China. The NBA, we’ll talk about that. You know, social issues in the United States, but not in China. You can just go on and on and on. And so as Americans, we’ve got to think, well, we’ve got to understand, we have to send one. China wants to take all our jobs. It didn’t open up the market like this us all along. But the WTO is stealing our technology. They’re killing our citizens. But by sending all the signal into the United States, they know the end. They just realize all the things that, you know, that our founders are believe in the Bill of Rights. These companies are saying, well, that’s only good for America. We’ve got to sell some more jerseys or cell Phones are like that. That’s wrong. I mean, we ought to stand up for what we believe in. We want freedom. We want jobs in this country. We want our kids to not get stuck on ftentinel. Standing up for something that will force China to change. This engagement has been done just the opposite. They’ve stolen everything from us.

Guy Benson: Right. And in the NBA actually is in a unique position because that’s not a talent or a technology that they can steal. Right. That’s just natural God given talent of these athletes and the fact that they are still running an NBA camp or facility in Shenzhen, which is the province where the Wiggles are in concentration camps. Something that LeBron and Steve Kerr and Gregg Popovich and the whole hippo kind of hypocritical crew of them don’t want to talk about. It’s just I mean, it is really disheartening to put it lightly. Senator, I want to turn to news of the day briefly. We have a few minutes left. Obviously, there’s a whole controversy raging here in D.C. about impeachment, wondering what your thoughts are on the testimony that we saw, what we were able to see, the opening statement, Ambassador.

Sen. Scott: We don’t get to see it now.

Sen. Scott: They’re putting out only what they think the Democrats are putting out, only what they think is helpful to them. This is a charade. If they want to do this right, they will do it the same way they did it under the Nixon impeachment process, in the Clinton impeachment process. It would be, you know, people can testify in the open and the opposing party had the right to call witnesses and into interrogate witnesses and ask questions, things like that. But no, I mean, this is about the president. Trump has been under basically impeachment for whatever just before it get started. I mean, they said they were going to impeach this guy as soon as he won the election. This is all an off. This is just their chance to try to take away the 2016 election. So, look, I will hold people accountable. But how can you how can you hold people accountable when when you don’t get any information except when one side wants to put out this? It’s right. Right.

Guy Benson: Right. So I guess your your points on the process are well taken. There’s also the substance of it. So I get the complaints about the process on the substance of what we know. And we don’t know everything. Are you troubled by some of what is being alleged involving the Trump administration and their their actions in Ukraine?

Sen. Scott: Okay, so let’s stop and look at it. What do we put it for sure? We know we have the transcript from the call. Phone call. So I didn’t see anything in the transcript that there’s a violation of a law. I mean, what I always keep saying is to the Democrats, tell me the law. You’re going after them. Tell me what law you said has been broken. If they have one look, I want. I believe in accountability. I did as governor for eight years. I believe in accountability. So you’re taking the whole process when you don’t come up with a law that the president suppose is broken. And then the way they give you information, they don’t give all the information out and they piecemeal out. They don’t need to have private classified hearings and do nothing classified in this. This is just for them to control the information they put out. So I wonder if they’re going to do a dual process, get this all this all understand it to then when you ask me a question, I can say I know for sure exactly what somebody said because I saw it. I saw it. I got to sit there if I wanted to and understand exactly what they said. And then people ask some questions to make sure, you know, it confirmed what they were saying. Right.

Guy Benson:  And that is, I think, a completely fair point and we appreciate your time, Senator Rick Scott of Florida. We’d love to get you back. I want to ask you about Florida politics at some point, too, because President Trump’s is need going to need to win your state again next year. And you’ve made a habit of barely winning that state over and over again. So we want to learn more about your magic. Thank you, Senator.

Sen. Scott: All right. Have a great day. Bye bye.

Guy Benson: You bet. We’re going to take a quick break here. And when we come back, there’s just much more to get you on the Guy Benson Show.