WASHINGTON – Sen. Tom Cotton is calling a plan for the White House to hold a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in Beijing a “half measure,” saying more should be done.

Cotton released his statement released shortly after the news broke of the White House plan, which would still see Team USA athletes participating in events but not have U.S. dignitaries attending the games.

The junior Arkansas senator said the United States should completely withdraw from the event, noting that he did not think U.S. corporations should “financially support the Chinese Communist Party” or that Team USA should be exposed to the “dangers of a repugnant authoritarian regime that disappears its own athletes.”

“Today, the Biden administration announced a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games. The President has once again opted for a half measure, when bold leadership was required. The United States should fully boycott the Genocide Games in Beijing. American businesses should not financially support the Chinese Communist Party and we must not expose Team USA to the dangers of a repugnant authoritarian regime that disappears its own athletes.”

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas)

Cotton first called for a full boycott of the Beijing games last month, claiming at the time that China may use COVID-19 tests as a way to harvest DNA from U.S. to “corner the market and lead the world on genetic data testing and harvesting to advance their life science technology research in many fields.”

The 2022 Winter Olympics are set to begin on Friday, February 4 and run through Sunday, February 20.