We’ve learned again in recent days that the problem with the Trump administration is not the administration—it’s Trump.
While the administration has rightly called out China for its purposeful lying about the coronavirus and its deliberate anti-American propaganda, Trump has been minimizing China’s culpability and trying to appease its communist regime.
The National Security Council, for instance, tweeted Mar. 18, 2020:
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, likewise, has spoken truthfully, candidly, and importantly, publicly, about China’s reckless and dangerous behavior (Mar. 18 on Fox News’ Hannity:
“Instead of trying to do the work to suppress the virus, which is what the world demanded, the Chinese Communist Party didn’t get it right and put countless lives at risk as a result of that,” Pompeo told Sean Hannity.
Pompeo added that the Chinese government had created a “disinformation campaign,” and “wasted valuable days at the front end” after the virus was first reportedly discovered in November.
“They haven’t been sufficiently transparent. And the risk you find [is] if we don’t get this right, if we don’t get to the bottom of this, is this could be something that is repeatable,” Pompeo warned. “Maybe not in this form, maybe not in this way, but transparency matters.”
That’s exactly right. Too bad Trump doesn’t understand this. Here’s what the President said after talking with his “friend,” Xi Jinping, the dictator of China (Mar. 27):
Much respect?! Trump sucking up to China’s dictator would be laughable were the matter not so critical to U.S. national security.
China has accused the United States of hatching the coronavirus and spreading it worldwide. And they are waging a propaganda war against the United States to undermine our influence and dominate the world. Yet, Trump has “much respect” for China and its dictator, Xi Jinping.
Moreover, as CNN’s Jennifer Hansler reports, when
asked about reported efforts by China, Russia and Iran to mislead the public about the source of the deadly pandemic and the US response to it, Trump countered by voicing doubt about the media reports and suggesting that they were aimed at damaging his presidency.
“Number one you don’t know what they’re doing, and when you read it in the Washington Post, you don’t believe it,” Trump said on Fox & Friends.
“I believe very little of what I see. I see stories in the Washington Post that are so fake, that are so phony.
Pressed on the fact that the Chinese government has engaged in such a disinformation campaign, the President seemed to downplay the matter.
“They do it and we do it and we call them different things and you know, I make statements that are very strong against China, including the Chinese virus, which has been going on for a long time,” Trump said. “Every country does it.”
No, Mr. President, every country does not lie and sow disinformation. China is in a league of its own.
In any case, what Trump says is not what his own Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, says. Nor is it what Trump’s own coronavirus response coordinator, Deborah Birx, M.D., says.
During yesterday’s White House briefing, Birx explained that, because China lied big-time about the number of people there infected with the virus, U.S. officials were caught flatfooted and unprepared for how big a problem COVID-19 really is.
National Review’s Zachary Evans reports:
“When you looked at the China data originally,” with 50,000 infected in an area of China with 80 million people, “you start thinking of this more like SARS than you do a global pandemic,” Birx said at a press conference.
“The medical community interpreted the Chinese data as, this was serious, but smaller than anyone expected,” Birx continued.
“Because, probably… we were missing a significant amount of the data, now that we see what happened to Italy and we see what happened to Spain.”
“The reality is that we could have been better off if China had been more forthcoming,” Vice President Mike Pence said Wednesday on CNN.
What appears evident now is that long before the world learned in December that China was dealing with this, and maybe as much as a month earlier than that, that the outbreak was real in China.
Yet, at this same White House briefing, Trump disgracefully downplayed Chinese culpability, while touting his “good relationship” with the dictator, Xi.
I think we all understand where it [the coronavirus] came from. And President Xi understands that. And we don’t have to make a big deal out of it.
We didn’t like the fact that they said it came from our [U.S.] soldiers. And they haven’t pursued that. It was—and that was a mid-level person said that. That was not a high-level person, so I assume.
I will always assume the best. I’ll assume the high-level people didn’t know about it. It was a foolish statement.
Why would any American President “assume the best” when it comes to the China’s communist regime?
Shouldn’t we “presume the worst,” given the regime’s history and record of lying, deceit, and anti-American vitriol, propaganda and hostility?
Moreover, as HotAir’s AllahPundit points out:
It was a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry that elevated the “blame America” theory of the virus. The claim had been circulating on Chinese social media for weeks, doubtless with the consent of state censors.
It’s not like some random Chinese official went rogue and started pushing a message that Beijing opposed. Chinese officials who go rogue tend to disappear.
But no worries, because says Trump:
The relationship with China is a good one, and my relationship with him [Chinese dictator Xi Jinping] is, you know, really good.
If the relationship is “really good,” then why are the Chinese accusing the United States of causing the COVID-19 pandemic, and why did they lie to our scientists and medical personnel about the severity of the outbreak in China?
Well, again, let’s not worry too much about that says Trump:
Their numbers seem to be a little bit on the light side, and I’m being nice when I say that relative to what we witnessed and what was reported.
But we discussed that with him, not so much the numbers, as what they did and how they’re doing. And we’re in constant communication.
I would say the biggest communication is [between] myself and President Xi. The relationship’s very good…
As to whether or not their numbers are accurate, I’m not an accountant from China.
No, but you are President of the United States. Instead of making excuses for America’s enemies—and make no mistake: China’s communist regime is an enemy of the United States, not simply a “competitor” or an “adversary”—you should be putting America First.
But Trump, of course, has his excuses. He always does:
Look, they’re spending—they will be spending, when things even out—this is obviously a little bit of a hurdle, what’s happened over the last month.
But they’ll be spending $250 billion buying our product[s]: $50 billion to the farmers alone; $200 billion to other things.
They never did that before. So, we have a great trade deal, and we’d like to keep it. And the relationship is good.
Rhetorical Appeasement. There you have it. Trump believes he must appease China because if he does not—if, instead, he speaks candidly and forthrightly about the regime’s bad and virulently anti-American behavior—that might jeopardize our so-called phase one trade deal.
But this is nonsense. The truth is: China is hurting—because of the coronavirus and because of their own economic mismanagement. Thus they need American products in a very bad way. They really have nowhere else to go.
But even were it otherwise, Trump needs to take a more strategic and longer-term view.
What is most likely to effect a change in China’s bad and virulently anti-American behavior: appeasement now or speaking truth to the world and to Chinese regime power?
What is most likely to strengthen the hands of China’s liberal-minded reformers: striking deals with hardline communists like the dictator, Xi, or calling him out and showing everyone that the emperor has no clothes?
What is more likely to bring China into the community of peace-loving nations that respect the rule of law and intellectual property: making excuses for the regime and downplaying its transgressions, or holding it to account and highlighting its misdeeds?
Peace Through Strength. In 1983, Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union the evil empire. By calling out the regime, he helped to expose and weaken it until, finally, several years later, it collapsed.
Granted, China is not the Soviet Union. However, it is a bad and corrupt regime that needs to alter its course on the world stage and change its behavior.
But this won’t happen if, in the name of short-term gain and “phase one” trade deals, the United States coddles China and looks the other way even as the regime wages a sophisticated propaganda war against us.
Just ask the Trump administration. It knows and understands China’s communist regime. Too bad the man who leads that administration does not.
As we’ve seen time and time again: The problem is not the Trump administration. The problem is Trump.
Feature photo credit: Thomas Peter/Getty Images in Politico.