Georgia’s Democratic Senate candidate Jon Ossoff continues to take advantage of Fox News to create viral moments instantly in the campaign.
With a few days to go before the second round, on January 5, against Senator David Perdue (R-GA), Ossoff was once again approached by Fox News reporter Peter Doocy on Thursday during a live broadcast from Fox.
While Ossoff used Wednesday’s impromptu interview to appeal to Fox News viewers and attack Perdue and Senator Kelly Loeffler (R-GA), who is participating in a separate race in Georgia’s second round, this time around the hopeful The 33-year-old Senate rejected the conservative narrative that he is indebted to the Chinese Communist Party.
Noting that Ossoff changed its financial disclosure in July to list the additional payments his investigative film company received – which included a $ 1,000 payment from a Hong Kong TV channel – Doocy pressed Ossoff on why the transaction was not listed initial disclosure.
“Why did you wait until after primary school to reveal that your company was doing business with the company in Hong Kong that was linked to the Chinese government?” Asked Doocy, echoing Perdue’s accusation that Ossoff was “paid for by the Chinese Communist government through a media company”.
Ossoff, meanwhile, noted that “the whole substance of Senator Perdue’s campaign” against him is that a television channel in Hong Kong has licensed a documentary about ISIS war criminals from his company. He then went on to highlight Perdue’s own business history, which showed wealthy executives outsourcing jobs to China and helping to build factories in China.
Doocy returned to the corrected financial report, asking Ossoff why he waited until after primary to update his forms. The young Democratic candidate, however, dismissed the question as something that Perdue is trying to “make a big deal of.”
The Fox reporter then took another step with his question, invoking the recent revelation that Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) was informed by the FBI in 2015 that an alleged Chinese spy had gained access to him. The congressman severed relations with the woman after the FBI’s instruction and was not charged with wrongdoing.
“We recently saw the Chinese government try to make inroads with a young Democratic lawmaker Eric Swalwell. Are you concerned that, through a payment to a known young Democrat, someone connected to China or the Chinese through another company may be trying to influence you? “
“Come on man! You are a serious reporter,” countered Ossoff. “Do you really believe that a TV channel in Hong Kong showing an investigation that my company produced about ISIS war crimes in Iraq is what you are implying or what is David Perdue implying? ”
After Doocy wondered aloud whether Ossoff did not believe the Chinese government was trying to influence young politicians, the Democratic candidate turned the matter over to Perdue.
“Chinese intelligence operations in the United States are a serious threat to our national security,” he said. “And that is why it is so worrying that we have a senator like David Perdue.”
“Senator David Perdue boasted under oath how he spent most of his career outsourcing American jobs to China,” he concluded. “He operated factories in the province of Shenzhen, China, in cooperation with the Chinese Communist Party and should explain this officially.”