Rep Derrick Van Orden slams Democratic push for EV on 'Fox & Friends' as it promotes 'child slavery'
NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK: 'Fox & Friends' co-host Rachel Campos welcomed Rep Derrick Van Orden on the January 1 show to talk about Joe Biden administration's push towards electric vehicles and one of the darker sides of its manufacture.
At a Capitol Hill hearing on December 13, Orden had spoken of artisanal mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo that used child labor for their business operations.
Campos stated that most of the world's cobalt used for electric car batteries comes from Congo, where more than 40,000 children are employed in mining activities, according to data shared by UNICEF.
'The green agenda is built on the backs of African child slavery'
Reminding audiences about the foundation of the Republican Party in Wisconsin by the abolitionists who fought against slavery, Orden said that at present "we got 21st-century slavery that is being financed by the United States government by giving people tax rebates to buy electric vehicles."
The congressman went on to present statistics to back up his claim.
"4.3% of all electric vehicle batteries consist of cobalt. 70% of the world's cobalt comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo. We have 40,000 children mining cobalt with their hands to forward Biden's Green New Deal agenda," he stated.
"I will have no part in this, and neither should anyone with a conscience," exclaimed Orden.
The demand for change in policy
The congressman recalled the Blood Diamond Movement, when Sierra Leone used children to mine diamonds in the midst of being in a civil war, and the diamonds were banned from entering the United States.
"The difference is this, a diamond is a luxury commercial item, which has no type of other agenda… With cobalt, there is an ideological bent by the Democratic Party to push the Green New Deal forward, and they are willing to do that at the expense of children working in the conditions of slavery."
"So if we just redid the Blood Diamond policy, i.e., we will not accept Cobalt from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and more importantly, we are going to start slow-rolling this arbitrary day of 2030 of having all vehicles produced in the United States of America being electric vehicles… We could dry up child slavery, and what could be a more noble goal for 2024 than that?" concluded Orden.
