Anti-Gunner Kelly Silent On Ties To China :: 05/16/2020

Former astronaut turned gun-control activist Mark Kelly wants to become a United States senator, representing the Democratic Party. Of course, an anti-gunner running as a Democrat is about as surprising the sun rising in the east.

However, because of that, he’s going to be under a bit more scrutiny than he would otherwise. Not too much, though, because he’s an anti-gun Democrat and the media hates to undermine those kinds of folks.

During COVID-19, though, Kelly has lined up as someone critical of China’s handling of the virus.

That made the media interested enough to look at him in a way that they wouldn’t have otherwise.

Last August, in another press interview, Kelly mentioned his national security experience with some of “the space stuff, and satellites” as making him particularly sensitive to the threats from China, along with Iran, North Korea and Russia, with the biggest danger coming from “stuff you can’t see,” an apparent reference to cyberwarfare and less obvious malign activities.

Kelly, however, has been far more reticent about the investment by a Chinese company in a commercial space exploration venture he co-founded.  The company, tech giant Tencent, is one of the world’s largest internet enterprises and owns the Chinese social media platform WeChat. The text platform has more than a billion users and is suspected of monitoring the activity of many of them inside and outside of China.

In the fall of 2014, the CEO of World View Enterprises, the company Kelly co-founded, announced during a visit to Beijing that Tencent had invested an undisclosed sum of money in the Tucson-based space travel venture. In April 2016, as part of a subsequent, $15 million investment round, World View announced that it had received more funds from Tencent, along with three other venture capital firms.

In other words, Kelly is in bed with China financially.

Now, he can talk a big game while he’s running for office, but what will he do if he wins? Can he be trusted to stand with the American people, or will he turn his back at key moments in an effort to appease his financial partners? You’re deluded if you don’t think they’ll try to exert some kind of influence on him, especially at the behest of the Chinese government.

So, the man who wants to disarm millions of Americans is also tied to the country that may well be our biggest enemy and one of the few nations crazy enough to risk an invasion of U.S. soil. After all, they have the numbers for it.

Of course, that’s not particularly likely, but neither is Kelly getting his way on guns.

Still, the man has questions that need to be answered. Can the people of Arizona trust him to look after their best interests and not those of Beijing? Obviously, I’m biased as hell when it comes to Kelly, but that doesn’t change the fact that China has shown itself to be untrustworthy.

“He’s been critical of China,” some supporter might try to point out.

To that, I only need to point out that the same people who screamed “Russian collusion” with regard to President Donald Trump and claimed he answered to Putin also thought Trump was going to start a war with Russia.

It’s not out of the realm of possibility to believe that someone might give lip service to being tough on China while knowing damn good and well that tough talk is as far as he’ll dare take it.

Tom Knighton is a Navy veteran, a former newspaperman, a novelist, and a blogger and lifetime shooter. He lives with his family in Southwest Georgia. https://bearingarms.com/author/tomknighton/

https://bearingarms.com/tom-k/2020/05/16/kelly-silent-on-ties-to-china/