Frank Figliuzzi hosts The Frank Figliuzzi Show on Lincoln Square. He is an FBI Assistant Director (retired); 25-year veteran Special Agent; and author of the national bestseller, The FBI Way, and Long Haul: Hunting the Highway Serial Killers. Subscribe to his Substack.
Next week, a diminished, retreating President Trump will meet President Xi of China for a scheduled summit that could prove pivotal to the demise of American power and the emboldening of an adversary poised to take Taiwan.
On Sunday, aboard Air Force One, Trump was asked about a Wall Street Journal report that China helped provide Iran satellite images of a base in Jordan prior to a July attack that killed three U.S. troops. Trump dismissed the startling intelligence by nonsensically equating China’s alleged responsibility for U.S. service member deaths with his irrelevant observation that America spies on China. He either purposely downplayed what should be an outrage, or his mental capacity precludes him from understanding the gravity of this moment.
“They basically do what we do,” he told reporters. “You know, when they say that China spies on us, I say you’re right, and we spy on them, too.” Trump added, as he almost always does, that he has a good relationship with Xi. “I think he’s behaved reasonably well, and we behave reasonably well.”
One thing China is most assuredly not doing right now, is behaving well. Whether it’s because of his unrequited love for world dictators or a nefarious strategy to destroy America’s global standing, Trump is not behaving well either. He’s acting like an American president hellbent on a hands-off policy toward an established adversary.
With Trump there is no bedrock principle to stand on when it comes to defending American values and free people who rely on us to stay that way. Rather, everything is transactional, including whether we care more about potential profit from weapons sales to Taiwan, or about hosting a White House summit with Xi. This week, Xi threatened to not show up at Trump’s summit if the U.S. went through with munitions sales to Taiwan.
Trump said he’s not worried about Xi cancelling the summit. But everything Trump does indicates he cares very much about the embarrassment factor of Xi skipping out on him. The Trump administration already paused a $14 billion weapons package earlier this year, ostensibly to preserve a trade truce and focus resources elsewhere. This dynamic reveals a dangerous asymmetry: China uses the summit as a threat to dictate American security policy, while Trump treats the meeting as an indispensable photo-op to showcase a diplomatic achievement ahead of the November midterm elections.
Trump’s comments were consistent with the administration’s recent efforts to downplay wide-ranging tensions between Washington and Beijing, despite U.S. frustration over Beijing’s close ties to Tehran. But Trump’s approach to Xi on this and many other issues reflects his ignorance of how China generally, and Xi specifically, interpret Trump’s apparent inability to give a damn about the deaths – 18 so far, of our troops. To put it plainly, the Chinese see Trump’s sleepwalking into a summit as submission, weakness, and pathetic performance begging to be exploited.