Ted Yoho

I admire the job you do. I was just reading here the amount of volume of equities, global equities, the exchange and the derivatives, hundreds of trillions of dollars and the whole global market is $500 trillion.

The election was, by all accounts, theatrics, as potential challengers were intimidated and oppressed.

Many of Sisi's actions appear to me as steps toward an authoritative strongman-led government.

The state of democratic governance and human rights in Egypt has continued to challenge me.

But Egypt's drift toward China, Russia, and, most especially, North Korea raises grave concerns.

Human rights are vital to the growth of a healthy democracy and these issues cannot be put on the back burner under the guise of focusing first on the economy or other factors.

While the United States desperately wants to see Egypt's security and economy sectors be strengthened and bolstered, we cannot ignore the suffering of people and the challenge to democracy just to focus on economic and security assistance.

I must express my sincere concern about some of the activities and trajectory of the Egyptian government.

I urge Egyptian officials to ensure their rights, their safety, and their wellbeing are being taken care of and that their rights are not being violated.

It doesn't matter who sits in the government--our message and respect for human rights must remain the same.

On freedom of religion I should mention that because we have a visit coming up by the U.S. ambassador for international religious freedom...

On torture, we continue to see--continue to get information of really horrific torture...

But, as you said, Chairman Rohrabacher, Radio Free Europe is still not operational...

I just met the wife of one of them, a professor of Turkish studies named Andrei Kubatin...

It's important to note that none of these people have been rehabilitated...

I think it shows, again, the value of pressure, the value of speaking out...

We don't want that, but I mean, we want the safeguards there.

What are the safeguards that you guys can help us with on that so that we can follow it?

Well, the important thing is that we don't want to stifle the imagination, the entrepreneurship, the development of this, but yet we want to have the safeguards in place.

We have been talking about this for 20, 30 years, but we are not getting the results.

Ortega is a bad player. And the people can't respond because of the form of government he has.

There has got to be a paradigm shift. We have got to do something different.

I want to build off of what Albio Sires says, and I agree with his sentiment that the West, the Western Hemisphere, the democracy is falling down.

We must not let this crisis create a trend in Latin America by allowing Nicaragua to follow the path of authoritarian governments like Cuba and Venezuela.

So far, approximately, my understanding is approximately 300 people have been killed and anywhere from 1,000 to 1,500 or more injured.