"Rolling out the red carpet for President Xi Jinping"

Deadline: White House

The episode examines the recent high-profile White House visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping and the controversial implications of potential arms

Key takeaways

• U.S. Ambassador David Perdue suggested Donald Trump offered to sell arms to China, prompting White House damage control.
• The U.S. is currently withholding $14 billion in approved weapons sales to Taiwan.

Main topics

• US-China diplomatic relations
• Taiwan security and arms sales

Notable quotes

The U.S. had no plans to sell arms to China.

Conclusion

The episode highlights deep concerns regarding the erosion of American

Transcript preview

Speaker 5 (0:00) For me, being a part of this place has always been about the people, not about the politics. Speaker 3 (0:05) From the field to the studio, Jacob is finding the heart of the story. Connect with Jacob Soboroff. Weekends at 10 a.m. Eastern on MSNOW. Speaker 3 (0:18) I've been very tough on China. Tougher than anybody. That's why they respect me. We have been very tough on China. Tough but fair. When I took over, it was $507 billion that China, this is originally, first term, and we were very, very tough on them. I got along with President Xi, but nobody was tougher, like, on China than I was. Speaker 2 (0:41) like on China than I was. Remember that. Hi again, everybody. It's now five o'clock in New York. So much for Mr. Tough Guy. Over the last few days, we saw Donald Trump roll out an actual red carpet for China's President Xi Jinping when he came to the White House, a visit which Reuters called, quote, a stalemate summit that was a glitzy gift to China, end quote. And then there was this moment on Fox News yesterday, courtesy of America's ambassador to China, David Perdue. Speaker 4 (1:11) President Trump continues to say, hey, we sell arms to other people around the world. He actually asked President Xi would he like to buy some at one point. Speaker 2 (1:22) Yes. You want some of our arms? You heard that correctly. That was the ambassador to China saying that the United States president offered to sell arms to China, which the New York Times reports like this. It is, quote, extraordinary. The communist ruled nation is considered by most American policymakers and legislators of both parties to be the greatest military, economic and diplomatic rival. of the United States, the only real challenger to America as a superpower." Speaker 2 (1:57) So the ambassador's comments had the White House actually backpedal, go into damage control mode, which is a rare thing this time. Quote, when the Times asked for comment, the White House said through a U.S. official that the U.S. had no plans to sell arms to China. The State Department said in a statement this, quote, U.S. law prohibits arms sales to China and there is no offer or plan to sell arms to China, end quote. Okay. Speaker 2 (2:26) Trump also denied the comment when he was asked about it this afternoon. Meanwhile, approved arms sales to our ally, a fellow democracy that is deeply needed by China, Taiwan, have been withheld. A package of $14 billion worth of weapons was approved by Congress earlier this year, but has yet to leave the State Department. Sound familiar? Speaker 2 (2:49) Congressman Adam Smith of Washington, the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, noted how bonkers the admission by U.S. Ambassador Perdue was, yet at the same time, how it is what we've come to expect from the country's president. Speaker 4 (3:05) I guess it's not stunning to me that President Trump would have made that offer to President Xi. As we know, Trump bounces all over the place in terms of his relationships with just about everybody and says a lot of deeply unhinged things. I can conceive of him saying that. But that Ambassador Perdue would repeat it. I have a lot of respect for Ambassador Perdue. I was in China in September, met with him. I think he's doing a good job. But yeah, and let me just be clear that that is not going to happen. It's illegal, it's bad policy, and it's not where we're headed. I mean, I don't know. Where did it come from? Why did the ambassador say it? Why did President Trump say it? I think you'd need a team of psychologists more than you would need a team of political analysts to get to the bottom of that. Speaker 2 (3:50) We don't have any psychologists, but we'll try to get to the bottom of it. We know Trump loves to cozy up to dictators, but offering to sell them weapons. Goes way beyond that. It's where we begin the hour with some of our favorite experts and friends. Former director of the CIA, senior national security and intelligence analyst John Brennan's here. Also joining us are military analysts and retired Army Lieutenant General Mark Kirtling's here. At the table, former State Department spokesman Ned Price is here. He also served at the CIA and former undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs during the Obama administration. Former managing editor of Time magazine, political analyst Rick Stangles here. Director Brennan, let me just posit some assumptions. Purdue doesn't freelance. The offer, he had to have been either repeating it or socializing it. We are withholding $14 billion from Taiwan. I know you hate it when I ask you to do this, but please connect those dots for me. Make them make sense. Speaker 3 (4:52) I can't. And as Representative Smith said, it really is. bonkers. It's bizarre. And this was a very informative visit for President Xi coming here to the United States in terms of, you know, rolling out the red carpet and Trump's fawning over him. That's the type of thing that the Belarusians do when Vladimir Putin visits. So it's clear that Donald Trump and President Xi sees the United States as the junior partner trying to, in fact, ingratiate itself with the more senior partner. And then also for Donald Trump to say something as crazy as you want to buy our weapons, it just demonstrates directly to President Xi just how clueless and foolish Donald Trump is. He doesn't have any substantive depth whatsoever. And President Xi has a lot of substantive depth. And so Xi sees that Donald Trump would prefer to show him the ballroom or talk about other types of things and show him a helipad. I mean, these are things that, you know, are. very far beneath the sort of the dignity of the office of the president of the United States. But again, I think President Xi came away from this meeting feeling better, in fact, about the relationship between the United States and China, knowing that China really has a very strong hand when it comes to Donald Trump. Yes, Donald Trump can be reckless and unpredictable and therefore dangerous. But from the standpoint of strategic calculations that Beijing may be making, I think they see that Donald Trump was already weakened. as a result of the poor poll standings that he has in this coming election, I think he's going to be further weakened. And President Xi is going to see him very much as a lame duck. Speaker 2 (6:28) I mean, just to stay with how she experienced America. I mean, you imagine anyone that's been one on one with him has made the assessments of. his intelligence or grasp on reality. And we'll leave that to sort of personal diplomacy. But she comes here and is able to assess that Trump doesn't give a rat's behind about democracy. He's here as Trump is literally shredding the First Amendment of the Constitution, weakens America, weakens our democracy. He's here for... all of the catastrophic political developments that Trump is so cognizant of. He's using taxpayer dollars to put up his old campaign reel from 2024. He's in a room where someone offers to sell him arms. Like, I mean, the last time we withheld congressionally approved military aid, it was for Ukraine, that we know about. It was for Ukraine. And Trump wanted dirt on Joe Biden and his family. I mean. Trump doesn't have a lot of moves, and it seems like he revealed all of them to Xi. How dangerous is this moment for America? Speaker 3 (7:33) It's very dangerous. I'm sure President Xi didn't even have to use the talking points prepared for him in terms of how to respond to Donald Trump if he were to say something about the Iran conflict, you know, and trying to put pressure on China to stop buying Iranian oil, stop providing intelligence to Iran that Iran uses then to target U.S. military sites there. And so I'm sure that, you know, President Xi had, you know, in her smile when he's listening to Donald Trump, not engaging on the things that we really need to engage. And then, you know, not feeling as all that he has to, you know, press the issue of AI, artificial intelligence, in terms of what that could actually do, not just to U.S. national security interests, but to global security. So, again, Xi, who knows the world stage very well, has been dealing with these issues for, you know, well over a decade, decades. He has the depth that Donald Trump lacks. And again, I think Donald Trump was just exposing his ignorance to President Xi, the president of China. Speaker 2 (8:29) General Hartling, Xi essentially won round one, right? Trade war, China had more staying power, more tolerance for pain, more ability to outweigh America. Speaker 2 (8:43) China is aiding Iran in targeting American troops right now in a hot war. I mean, it's a reason in past administrations to not even meet with them, but certainly to not invite them to the White House for a state dinner. And certainly if you have them at the White House, to not have all the pageantry, to not suck up and look like you're trying so hard. What does this desperation mean militarily for our other Speaker 6 (9:09) adversaries? Speaker 4 (9:11) Yeah, it's interesting, Nicole, because you've talked about having the kind of pomp and circumstance at the White House for President Xi. We also had the same kind of thing to the Saudis, to the Taliban at Camp David during the president's first term. And what is most important, I think one of the things we have to focus on is I hadn't seen until you just showed it the State Department statement on how wrong this was. But it was interesting that it started off by saying. All of this is unlawful. We're not going to give arms to China. Well, you've been talking for an hour now about the laws that the president has violated. It doesn't seem to matter. Arm sales in this particular circumstances aren't simply business transactions. They are instruments of foreign policy. And decisions about who receives our weapons have consequences for American forces and allies. I'll take it outside what President Xi was thinking. You know, what was Japan, South Korea, Australia, the Philippines, Taiwan, what were they thinking when they heard this comment that was just thrown aside by the ambassador to China? They maintain they help us maintain regional security and American weapons technology and military assistance are very important parts of that relationship. So if we're talking about a transactional exchange. With the country that has been named in our national security strategy and our national defense strategy as the number one competitor and foe, it seems really strange that, first of all, the president would treat President Xi to the kinds of things he treated him to last week. But also, the rumors of him saying this are just jaw-dropping, and they should be. And I know why people are now trying to walk it back in the State Department and in China itself. But for the ambassador to even throw off that that funny little anecdote about the was it what the president said, did he say it or didn't he? The president said he didn't say it this afternoon. But, you know, we all know how that goes. Speaker 2 (11:17) Let me read you, General Hurling, the reporting in The Wall Street Journal. of how China is aiding Iran to target our troops. This was from September 11th, no less. Quote, before Iran carried out its attack that killed Speaker 6 (11:32) three United States troops in July, Tehran acquired high resolution satellite images of the base in Jordan from Chinese entities, according to U.S. officials familiar with details of the incident. The U.S. officials declined to identify the Chinese entities that supplied the imagery to Iran and didn't allege direct involvement by Beijing. Tehran procured the images both before and after the attack. It's incredible specificity of the targeting aid that China is giving to Speaker 2 (12:02) Iran. And I imagine that's not coming out. by accident. In the not too recent past, we cared as a whole of government matter very much about people who led to the Speaker 6 (12:14) loss of life of U.S. service members. Speaker 4 (12:17) Yeah, we