Then: Warn Xi if Trump attacks. Now: “President Trump is sucking up to President Xi.”
AP reported, “Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Washington is getting a much chillier reception on Capitol Hill than at the White House as lawmakers from both parties use the visit to denounce China’s actions on the world stage.
“Lawmakers have long found little downside to taking a hawkish tone on China, but the U.S.’s war with Iran has inflamed tensions as U.S. officials accuse China of propping up Iran’s economy and supplying its military with components and intelligence, endangering U.S. service members in the Middle East.
“In speeches, letters, press conferences and hearings, lawmakers from both parties aired criticism of Xi’s visit. Their actions and events stand in stark contrast to the warm welcome that Trump gave Xi on Wednesday as he arrived in Washington for a lavish state visit.”
Senator Roger Wicker said, “Quite frankly, had the White House asked me for advice, I would have suggested the president not invite Xi Jinping to Washington for such a lavish welcome here in the United States of America based on all of the troubling issues we have with President Xi and the Chinese Communist Party.”
Senator Tammy Duckworth said, “President Trump basically spends too much time sucking up to President Xi. He’s very distracted. When he focuses on the Indo-Pacific, it’s about him cozying up to an authoritarian regime at the expense of our friends and allies in the region.”
That is just dandy. Neither senator called out General Mark Milley who promised his counterpart General Li Zuocheng in late 2020: “If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise.”
Wicker and Duckworth did not call the general out. You know who did? Marco Rubio. On September 14, 2021, he wrote Biden and said, “I do not need to tell of you the dangers posed by senior military officers leaking classified information on U.S. military operations, but I will underscore that such subversion undermines the President’s ability to negotiate and leverage one of this nation’s instruments of national power in his interactions with foreign nations.
“Even more egregiously, reports indicate that General Milley interfered with the procedures by which the civilian commander-in-chief can order a nuclear strike. He purportedly instructed officials not to take orders without his involvement and forced them to take an oath to that effect. A senior military officer interfering with that civilian-controlled process is simply unacceptable at best, and at worst, would cause ambiguity which could lead to war.
“General Milley has attempted to rationalize his reckless behavior by arguing that what he perceived as the military’s judgement as more stable than its civilian commander. It is a dangerous precedent that could be asserted at any point in the future by General Milley or others. It threatens to tear apart our nation’s longstanding principle of civilian con
“General Milley has attempted to rationalize his reckless behavior by arguing that what he perceived as the military’s judgment was more stable than its civilian commander. It is a dangerous precedent that could be asserted at any point in the future by General Milley or others. It threatens to tear apart our nation’s longstanding principle of civilian control of the military.”
“You must immediately dismiss General Milley. America’s national security and ability to lead in the world are at stake.”
Instead of firing him, Biden gave Milley a pre-emptive pardon. He needed one. Generals are not allowed to make foreign policy because the Constitution makes the president the commander in chief of all branches of the military.
Now as Secretary of State, Rubio explained just why the president hosted Chairman Xi, “Let me just say it to you this way—the U.S. and China are probably the two most powerful militaries in the world. The idea we would not interact with them at the highest levels is irresponsible. It’s outrageous. We have to.
“The relationship between the United States and China will define the 21st century, what happens in that relationship. Even at the height of the Cold War, even in the midst of the threat of nuclear annihilation and life ending on the earth, the United States had communication with Russian officials.”
“This is not some small country.”
To be fair, Trump criticized Obama for hosting a state dinner to honor China. Trump said, “Just take them to McDonald’s and go back to the negotiating table” at a rally in South Carolina in July 2015.
McDonald’s isn’t a bad idea. Trump worked there once and in the 1980s he was pals with Grimace. They did a TV commercial together.
Trump had Xi over for dinner at Mar-a-Lago within his first 100 days as president. During dessert, Trump launched an attack on a Syrian airfield. Dessert was a choice of chocolate cake with vanilla sauce and dark chocolate sorbet or a trio of sorbets (lemon, mango, and raspberry). Trump chose the cake. Xi did too.
Before the dinner, the Washington Post ran a column by Ely Ratner of the globalist Council on Foreign Relations. He served as deputy national security adviser to Vice President Joe Biden.
Ratner began, “If President Trump wants to get tough on China, hosting President Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago later this week is a big step in the wrong direction.
“It’s easy to imagine how the Florida summit will unfold: rich with ceremony, heavily scripted and full of hollow declarations about the importance of a constructive U.S.-China relationship. With few, if any, interactions with the media, official cameras will capture a confident Xi casually strolling with Trump and later dining with his family, including daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner. The photos will splash across China’s state-run media as Xi heads home triumphant the next day.”
9 years later, the song remains the same. Dinner with Xi bad.
However, not everyone is in that queer choir.
Steven W. Mosher of the New York Post had an interesting take ahead of the dinner, “Don’t be fooled—Trump’s red-carpet rollout for Xi is a strategic coup.”
Mosher wrote, “China’s initiative to replace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency is failing. Xi himself was basically sidelined at this month’s BRICS summit in India; he skipped the obligatory banquet and left a day early. Media apologists claimed he was tired, but it’s more likely that he was just tired of being ignored.
“Now, just two weeks later, the American president’s impressive show of hospitality—giving him face, as it’s known in Chinese culture—not only massages Xi’s ego, it also provides useful propaganda fodder for his captive audience back in China.
“And it costs America nothing.
“Trump, on the other hand, has cost China dearly. He has radically reduced China’s inroads into the Western Hemisphere, ousting its agents from Venezuela and the Panama Canal. With the Cuban dictatorship apparently unable to keep the lights on, and China now permanently shut out of Greenland, Beijing’s losses in the Americas appear certain to keep piling up.”
Mosher’s observation is Xi was the main course of the dinner—the vanquished shown off by the victor. But we shall see.
The dinner went well. Jhonf Fonseca tweeted:
Xi Jinping, the man who almost never laughs in public, just burst out laughing at the White House.
It wasn’t because of a treaty. It wasn’t because of pandas. It was because Trump stopped him in front of the Presidential Walk of Fame, pointed to the gap between his two portraits, and let loose, like he was delivering a stand-up routine:
“Trump… Trump… and this one’s the autopen.”
Pause.
“That’s Biden.”
Xi doubles over. Behind him, the Chinese delegation loses it. In a hallway where everything’s supposed to be protocol, the president of China cracks up over a portrait that isn’t a portrait: it’s a machine signing Joe Biden’s name.
That picture’s been hanging there for a year. Trump didn’t move it. He waited. And today, he showed it to Asia’s most powerful leader like it was the best gag of the whole visit.
Dinner diplomacy is important. On June 11, 1939, FDR hosted King George VI and Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother at a picnic at Top Cottage in Hyde Park, New York. Hot dogs were on the menu.
The king ate his first hot dog, came back for another, and drank beer with them. The queen reportedly asked how to eat one; FDR said to push it into your mouth. She used a knife and fork instead.
The picnic was an attempt to soften U.S.-British relations and sell on the American people—still displeased with the War of 1812—on saving England from the Nazis. It worked.
Three months later, Hitler and Stalin invaded Poland.
War is serious. Most senators today are not serious people.
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This article first appeared on Don Surber’s Substack. Reprinted here with permission.
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