BEIJING — Donald Trump likes Chinese President Xi Jinping.
This was very evident at yesterday’s lavish state dinner in The Great Hall of the People.
He praised Xi as “a very special man” (https://www.politico.com/story/2017/11/09/trump-china-trade-deficit-244728?lo=ap_e1), and, as an accommodation to the wishes of the most powerful Chinese leader since Chairman Mao, he refused to answer any questions from the press corps.
This, from a man who, during last year’s presidential campaign, repeatedly lambasted China for maintaining an unfair trade balance with the United States.
But now, he desperately needs Xi’s help to curb North Korea’s Kim Jong-un.
As associate solitary reporter Johanna Jones looked on, Trump told Xi that he will look the other way when Xi launches a full-scale invasion of Taiwan.
(It was Trump who, breaking all diplomatic protocol, accepted a congratulatory phone call one year ago from Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen.) (In Chinese, Ing-wen means English. Tsai Ing-wen, who has a Master of Laws from Cornell University, speaks better English than Trump does.)
“You can have Taiwan as part of China,” Trump told Xi, “and I’ll even let you have North Korea so you can go in there, capture Rocket Man, and put him in Qincheng Prison, right here in Beijing, so you can keep a close eye on him.”
But when Tsai Ing-wen learned about what Trump had just said, she called Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tennessee), who immediately denounced Trump for forsaking a longtime ally of the United States, the Republic of China. Trump then told Jones that Corker is “a real loser, who is so afraid of me that he’s not running for reelection."