Rubio: China Has ‘Deputized’ American Businesses to Push for China-Friendly Policies, Apple’s Cook Can’t Speak Freely about China

On Friday’s “Hugh Hewitt Show,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said China has “deputized” major U.S. companies to push for policies that help China and stated that he doesn’t think Apple CEO Tim Cook can freely say what he thinks about China and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t want to get on China’s bad side.

Rubio said China has “deputized major American corporations and their leaders to come to the United States and push for and pressure for policies that favor the Chinese position.”

He added that companies want to be able to do business and produce products in China.

Host Hugh Hewitt then asked, “Do you think CEO Tim Cook of Apple is able to speak his mind freely about China?”

Rubio responded, “No. Absolutely not.”

Hewitt then asked about Zuckerberg, and Rubio responded, “Facebook is not in China. But I think they’re increasingly concerned about China’s growing telecommunication influence all over these other countries around the world. And so they don’t want to get — they don’t want to — they don’t want to start running into problems in these other places where the Chinese go to some country and say, hey, you should get rid of Facebook and replace it with our version of Facebook. So I think they’re concerned about that, absolutely. And I think he still dreams and hopes that one day, they’ll be able to get into China.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett

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