{"id":1330963,"date":"2022-02-23T08:04:34","date_gmt":"2022-02-23T13:04:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1330963"},"modified":"2022-02-23T08:08:24","modified_gmt":"2022-02-23T13:08:24","slug":"john-ullyot-olympics-fizzle-points-way-forward-on-u-s-security-challenges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/john-ullyot-olympics-fizzle-points-way-forward-on-u-s-security-challenges\/","title":{"rendered":"John Ullyot: Olympics Fizzle Points Way Forward on U.S. Security Challenges"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">22<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fjohn-ullyot-olympics-fizzle-points-way-forward-on-u-s-security-challenges%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1330963&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div id=\"article-header\">\n<div class=\"row\">\n<div class=\"col-xs-12\">\n<div class=\"contributor-img pull-left\">\n<a href=\"https:\/\/townhall.com\/columnists\/johnullyot\/\"><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"John Ullyot\" class=\"img-thumbnail\" src=\"https:\/\/media.townhall.com\/townhall\/reu\/contributor-sm\/authorimages\/\/97240be3-f8d2-4335-99ff-5d2fbdf8533b.jpg\" \/><br \/>\n<\/a>\n<\/div>\n<p>|<\/p>\n<p>Posted: Feb 22, 2022 12:01 AM<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"row\">\n<p><em>The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"article-body\">\n<aside id=\"aside1\" class=\"left aside-wrapper aside-wrapper-950\">\n<\/aside>\n<p>This weekend\u2019s closing ceremony in Beijing brought an end to one of the most disappointing Olympics in decades in terms of U.S. viewership and overall interest. \u00a0Although NBC will not say whether it lost money broadcasting the Games, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.marketwatch.com\/story\/why-nbcs-nearly-8-billion-investment-in-olympics-may-have-been-a-bad-bet-01645404252\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the Associated Press captured the disappointing fortnight succinctly<\/a>: \u201cThese Olympics were a disaster for the network: a buzz-free, hermetically-sealed event in an authoritarian country a half-day\u2019s time zone away\u2026Viewers stayed away in alarming numbers, and Comcast\u2019s NBC has to wonder whether it was extraordinarily bad luck or if the brand of a once-unifying event for tens of millions of people is permanently tainted.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There are several reasons for the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.marketwatch.com\/story\/why-nbcs-nearly-8-billion-investment-in-olympics-may-have-been-a-bad-bet-01645404252\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">reported 42-47% decline in viewership<\/a> of the Beijing Games among Americans compared to the previous Winter Olympics, including a continued pandemic response that limited in-person fan attendance and athlete interaction, as well as a maximum time-zone differential that made live viewership a challenge. That said, many Americans stayed away in protest of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.post-gazette.com\/opinion\/Op-Ed\/2022\/02\/08\/Steve-Chapman-The-shattered-hope-of-a-freer-China\/stories\/202202080009\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the authoritarian host-country\u2019s pariah status on the world stage<\/a>, particularly in areas of human rights and lack of transparency on the origins of the global pandemic that has <a href=\"https:\/\/covid.cdc.gov\/covid-data-tracker\/#cases_deathsper100k\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">killed close to a million Americans in two short years<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>FOX News\u2019s Laura Ingraham did a lot to drive this response nationwide, through <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/media\/laura-ingraham-beijing-olympics-boycott\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the \u201cNot One Minute\u201d campaign that she rolled out on her program on January 17<\/a>. Outlining Chinese President Xi\u2019s abysmal record on the pandemic coverup and \u201ccrushing dissent in Hong Kong and committing ongoing atrocities against [China\u2019s] ethnic Muslim minorities; the Uyghurs,\u201d she noted, \u201cAfter all this, the [Chinese Communist Party (CCP)] is going to be rewarded with a huge propaganda coup: the athletes of the world will be traveling to compete in the Beijing Winter Olympic Games on February 4. How obscene\u2026we can&#8217;t force a boycott, but we can pledge not to spend one minute watching NBC&#8217;s coverage of President Xi-ocide&#8217;s Olympics.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ingraham connected viewership of the Games with support for American corporations\u2019 decision to sponsor them, either directly or through TV advertising: \u201cEvery minute you watch, you put money in the pocket of those profiting off the Communist PR coup. And you all know that I love sports and we love our athletes and we celebrate them, and we&#8217;re going to celebrate them upon their return. But we will respond to this hideous sellout by corporate America [in] the only language they understand: money. The corporations that have decided to sponsor the torture games like Visa, Coca-Cola, and Intel \u2013 they must hear from you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Republican Senator Marco Rubio <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/opinion\/olympics-nbc-china-national-beijing-corporation\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">went even further<\/a>: \u201cAt this point, the National Broadcasting Corporation (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/media\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NBC<\/a>) could just as easily be named the \u2018National Beijing Corporation,\u2019\u201d while also calling out the corporate sponsors by name: \u201cThere is no way around it \u2013 by supporting the Winter Olympic Games, Coca-Cola, Airbnb, Intel, Visa, and others are helping the CCP whitewash slavery and genocide.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ingraham and Rubio indeed helped drive millions of Americans to stay away from Olympics coverage, and a source close to NBC <a href=\"https:\/\/www.marketwatch.com\/story\/why-nbcs-nearly-8-billion-investment-in-olympics-may-have-been-a-bad-bet-01645404252\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">stated the obvious to the Associated Press<\/a>, namely that \u201cNBC was looking for ways to improve its deal with the International Olympic Committee [IOC] given how badly Beijing went.\u201d Whether the network is able to negotiate a better deal with the IOC for covering future Games remains to be seen, but given the vocal, location-driven blowback the organizing body faced this year, it\u2019s hard to see it opting to award the event to another autocratic regime with expansionist designs, as it did three times in the last 14 years (2008, 2014, 2022).<\/p>\n<p>The successful calls by Ingraham, Rubio, and others to ensure NBC and other corporate sponsors pay a price for supporting the Chinese Communist Party\u2019s Olympics to underscore the value of American consumer-driven activism in altering the behavior of our corporate leaders on the international stage. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/politics\/china-international-apologists-high-profile-americans\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">By calling out companies, sports leagues, or countries<\/a> for looking the other way on actions by autocratic regimes with which they intend to do business, American consumers wield the most potent economic weapon to drive change in those countries\u2019 behavior.<\/p>\n<p>Today, <a href=\"https:\/\/cdn.nixonlibrary.org\/01\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/19105850\/Presidents-Daily-Diary-Feb-21-28-1972.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">fifty years to the day that President Nixon visited China to open-up relations with that country<\/a>, the American economy accounts for over a fifth of worldwide GDP, and when Americans decide to vote with their pocketbooks and steer their investment away from bad actors on the world stage, that generates some of the strongest pressure imaginable. This economic pressure usually takes the form of governmental action, such as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/business\/energy\/nord-stream-2-table-russia-sanctions-german-foreign-minister-2022-02-18\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">threatening to shut down the Nord Stream 2 pipeline<\/a> over a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine, or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/326ef7d5-5ad3-4352-95b7-4d072590a648\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">steering some of our deepest-pocketed retirement funds away from investment in China<\/a>. That said, the actions of ordinary Americans over the last two weeks in changing the channel away from the Beijing Olympics remind us of the power of the consumer in driving important change on matters of national security. \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n<p><em>John Ullyot was Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and NSC Spokesman from 2019-2021.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>| Posted: Feb 22, 2022 12:01 AM  The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1330963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1330963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1330963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1330963\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1330963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1330963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1330963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}