Ted Cruz suggests NBC's a 'subsidiary' of Chinese gov't after reporter says China is doing 'diplomacy better' than US
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Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas., blasted NBC on Tuesday after one of the network's correspondents praised China's "diplomacy" amid the coronavirus pandemic.
During a segment on MSNBC, the network's senior international correspondent Keir Simmons suggested that China was doing "diplomacy better" than the US.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"Who else is running into that leadership vacuum?" MSNBC anchor Nicolle Wallace asked in an apparent dig at the Trump administration.
Simmons pointed to the leaders of Germany, France, and other nations who have come together in hopes of combatting the virus outbreak globally at an event this week and how President Trump "could have made an address" and reiterated his criticisms of the World Health Organization but "didn't."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"And again, another example, we've talked about this yesterday, Nicolle, about how China really seeming to do the diplomacy better than America at this stage," Simmons said. "where President Xi steps up and gives an address we didn't know he was gonna do that until hours before and kind of steels the limelight."
The NBC correspondent also dinged the White House for not proposing any sort of alternative for other countries to replace the World Health Organization with.
"You can't just pull out of the World Health Organization in the middle of a pandemic because President Trump wants you to when there is no proposal for what to do instead," Simmons told Wallace.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}NBC NEW'S RICHARD ENGEL TAKES HEAT FOR SAYING CORONAVIRUS IS A 'BAT VIRUS, NOT A CHINA VIRUS'
Cruz ripped NBC in response on Twitter.
"Is NBC in fact a wholly-owned subsidiary of the CCP?" the GOP senator asked.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}In March, NBC News chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel faced backlash for dismissing the term "China virus" as some labeled the disease from its geographic origins.
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"It's easy to scapegoat people and that is what has always happened when there have been pandemics or epidemics, that foreigners are attacked or sometimes physically attacked if you look at what happened during the Middle Ages," Engel said. "There was lots and lots of scapegoating against an ethnic group or a religious group whenever there were pandemics that affected the society and frightened a lot of people. And China certainly feels that's what's happening now with people calling it the 'Wuhan flu' or the 'Wuhan virus' or the 'China virus.'"
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}He continued: "This is a virus that came from the territory of China but came from bats. This is a bat virus, not a China virus. It doesn't speak Chinese. It doesn't target Chinese people. It targets human beings who happen to touch their eyes, nose or mouth."