It’s almost as if Donald Trump “looked into Xi Jinping’s soul” when the Chinese president visited Mar-a-Lago a few weeks ago. What else can explain the U.S. president’s bizarre affinity for the repressive Chinese dictator, which he laid out in a disturbing interview with Reuters on Thursday?
In the interview, Trump gives Xi a clean characterological bill of health. Basing his appraisal on two–two!–meetings the pair held (enough, Trump claims, to get to know Xi “very well”), Trump judges Xi a “good man . . . a very good man.” Far be it for me to question President Trump’s judgment—unlike he, I’ve never eaten chocolate cake with a Chinese dictator—but it’s worth bearing in mind that Xi has led a brutal political crackdown at home, initiated an aggressive (and illegal) expansion in the South China Sea, and tightened the screws on restive provinces.
Normally one has to read China Daily or flip on CCTV to imbibe pure Chinese propaganda. Now we get it courtesy of the American president. Just last week, Trump claimed that “Korea used to be part of China,” an ahistorical remark that he “learned” from President Xi. Now this week, Trump tells us that he’s decided to abandon Taiwan. After an encouraging move before his inauguration—Trump’s bold and brave decision to take a direct phone call from Taiwan’s president—the president now says he would rebuff any overtures from the beleaguered democratic island.
Trump’s remarks about the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system are even more disturbing. THAAD, a U.S.-owned system, is currently being deployed in South Korea with the primary objective of protecting the nearly 30,000 American troops who are stationed there from North Korean missiles. THAAD will also defend South Koreans. China, for specious reasons, hates the system.
And so, the Chinese regime has taken a hard line on South Korea for having the audacity to want to protect itself and the American troops it hosts and subjected the country to a campaign of unofficial sanctions. Amazingly, Xi has now successfully enlisted Donald Trump in his campaign against South Korea. In the Reuters interview, Trump says he wants South Korea to pay $1 billion for THAAD—this despite the fact that the system is U.S.-owned and operated. Trump’s remarks are a major propaganda coup for Beijing (and by extension North Korea, which has every reason to oppose THAAD), as they will strengthen a leftist South Korean presidential candidate who appears to oppose installing the system. And it completely undermines the more right-leaning candidates in the race, who have stressed the importance of the U.S.-South Korean alliance.
There is at least one optimistic read on this: Perhaps Donald Trump knows what’s he doing and figures that the only way to get Xi to rein in North Korea is to butter him up. Let’s hope so. Because at this point, it seems disturbingly likely that in his next interview, Trump will say that Chairman Mao “was 70 percent right” and refer not the “Korean War” but the “War to Resist American Aggression and Aid Korea.”
