#Tom Cotton rips NY Times over Chinese scientist’s op-ed criticizing US

Republican Sen. Tom Cotton blasted the New York Times for publishing an op-ed from a Chinese scientist critical of the US response to the coronavirus, after the paper apologized for running a Cotton piece that called for military intervention in George Floyd riots.

“The New York Times: Explicit Chinese propaganda: no problem,” Cotton posted Wednesday on Twitter. “Op-ed from a Republican Senator supported by most Americans: Fire the editor!”

Cotton, of Arkansas, was referring to the controversy that erupted after the newspaper apologized for publishing his opinion piece last month that recommended President Trump dispatch the military to put down violent protests over the killing of Floyd while in police custody.

The column led to an uprising of Times staffers critical of Cotton’s op-ed and the ouster of editorial page editor James Bennet.

On Wednesday, the Times published Yi Rao, a Chinese molecular neurobiologist, who said while his relatives in Wuhan, China, survived the pandemic, his uncle in New York City did not.

“The United States had two months or more to learn from China’s experience with this coronavirus and it could have done much more to lower infection rates and fatalities,” Rao wrote.

“My father is struggling to accept his brother’s death partly, too, because he believes that he could have treated Uncle Eric — that in China Uncle Eric would have been saved,” he added.

Rao, who became a US citizen in 2000, said he moved back to China in 2007 and renounced his citizenship in 2011 because of the George W. Bush administration’s response to Sept. 11.

“A decision that has been validated since by the advent of President Trump and Trumpism, which are a natural expansion of what was put in motion after 9/11,” he wrote.