Chinese commie affiliate? MSNBC defends China to attack Trump

MSNBC’s Morning Joe

7-27-20

6:42 AM

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: And still ahead, with tensions ratcheting up between the U.S. and China, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave a speech last week that Richard Haass says not only misrepresented history but advocated a policy for the most important relationship of this era that is neither viable nor coherent.

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BRZEZINSKI:  Joining us now the President of the Council on Foreign Relations and author of the book “The World: A Brief Introduction,” Richard Haass. And Richard, we want to dive right in. You took issue with a few things the Secretary of State had to say?

RICHARD HAASS: Yes, I did. He gave a speech at the Nixon library late last week. What he did, I thought, was misrepresent the past. He called engagement with China, a policy introduced by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, essentially a failure. Last I checked we cemented the Sino-Soviet split and we won the Cold War. And then going forward essentially he seemed not so much to call for policy change from China, he went right up to the edge of calling for a regime change. There were striking similarities between how he described policy towards China and policy towards Iran. I just don’t think we have the ability to bring about regime change in China. Meanwhile, to paraphrase your good friend Donald Rumsfeld we need to negotiate not with the government that we wish that existed, but with the government that does exist and that means we need to push China to change its ways to some extent at home in terms of human rights, Hong Kong, in terms of what it’s doing in in the region and on the other hand we have to work closely with our allies, rather than bashing them or ignoring them and put up a common front against China. And there are things we need to do here at home to better compete with China. That would be a serious policy.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: And well, also, Pompeo talking about democracy, talking about freedom, talking about several things that right now across the world many of our closest allies believe the United States is actively working against itself. That Donald Trump is actively working against itself. A look at what’s happening in Portland, what’s happening in Seattle, those are huge propaganda wins for Russia, for China, for all of those people who consider themselves our enemies.

HAASS: Exactly right, Joe. If you’re going to talk the talk you’ve gotta walk the walk. And an administration that’s targeted the media, that’s targeted judges, now sending federal troops to wipe out dissent in American cities, very hard to take on China and Hong Kong and what they’re doing to the Uighurs. All the things we should be criticizing, and there’s a related point. If we were serious about human rights and democracy around the world, where is this administration on Putin and Russia, where is it on Erdogan and Turkey? We could just go hopscotching around the world, about North Korea. Instead they’re singling out China. Which, you know, you don’t have to be a cynic to say, this is not a pro-democracy, human rights policy. This is just simply opportunism.

SCARBOROUGH: You look at what Donald Trump has done over the past three and a half years, apologizing for Vladimir Putin, taking Vladimir Putin’s side over the U.S. Intel community’s, basically accepting what he’s doing in Ukraine, what he’s doing in Crimea. Jonathan Lemire, according to John Bolton, actually giving the go ahead for the building of the concentration camps saying that was fine with him in China you look at the dirty deals that Bolton was afraid he was doing with Erdogan in Turkey. This is a president who, over the past three and a half years, with the full support of the Secretary of State has acted contemptuously of his democratic allies in the west and cozied up to one authoritarian regime or another.

JONATHAN LEMIRE:  This is a president from day one has indeed cozied up to strongmen across the globe and strained our traditional alliances. I was there in Brussels when he almost flew up NATO, and threatened to pull the United States out of it. We have seen the war, the trade wars he has embarked with the European Union and the relationship with China has been so scattershot. Where, so much of his campaign in 2015 and 2016, was about being tough on China. But once he took office he was flattered with a remarkable state visit in Beijing and that first, one of his first foreign trip to Asia, he seemed to be wowed by China and changed his tone. He was so key to get this trade deal, which he thought would be politically beneficial to him. We know that he would not call out human rights abuses portrayed, carried out by China. And we know that — no better example than earlier this year when he was trying to find the second phase of this trade deal which he thought would be a big part of his election campaign and that led him to be slow to call out XI Jingping and China for their efforts in managing the coronavirus as it was starting to bursting to life overseas and he didn’t push for American scientists and American medical experts to get on the ground there and it cost the United States precious time. Richard, I wanted to ask you, on that idea, with relationships so strained right now between Beijing and Washington, the pandemic is obviously still going. There’s a race for a vaccine, there’s a race for treatments. Right now is it possible that the cold war that seemingly we’re on the verge of with with China is going to work against the development and distribution of a vaccine to both Americans and the Chinese?

HAASS:  Short answer is yes, Jonathan. Neither China nor the United States has joined this fledgling international effort that has essentially pledged to make available any vaccine that emerges to people around the world. Each one seems to be approaching a vaccine as a form of foreign policy in a very narrow sense. So you’ve got that continuing competition, let me just also say, I think things between the United States and China, as rough as they are, can get worse quickly. I can imagine there being an incident in the South China Sea. I can imagine the United States banning the entry of all 90 million or so members of the Chinese Communist Party. I can imagine the administration reopening the Taiwan issue which would be an existential question for China. I think this is the most dangerous period in U.S. Chinese relations for half a century. We’re not talking just any relationship, this is the single most important, even potentially defining relationship of this period of history. So much will follow what happens between these two great powers and right now everything, I believe, is in play.

SCARBOROUGH: AndJohn, John Heilemann, one of Donald Trump’s problems in this campaign is everywhere that he wants to go to attack Joe Biden, if it’s on saying something incoherent on camera, of course, the situation is worse for Donald Trump. Nowhere is that more true, I believe, than in his relationship with China. Jonathan Lemire reminded me of Donald Trump on January 24th, congratulating President XI for the coronavirus, when his own administration was telling him they weren’t cooperating. And this quote, I was just looking up after hearing Jonathan, from spring of 2018, listen to this quote, this was as President XI consolidated power, became leader for life, the became the most powerful Chinese leader since Chairman Maeo, and Donald Trump said this  at a Mar-A-Lago speech to Republican donors . He’s now president for life, president for life. He’s great. And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great maybe we’ll have to give that a shot some day. Donald Trump congratulating President XI for consolidating power, becoming autocrat for life in China and saying that one day maybe we can try that here. He’s had — it’s been a schizophrenic relationship with China because there is no doubt, you can find quote after quote of Donald Trump praising President XI for amassing power.

JOHN HEILEMANN: Yes, exactly, Joe. I think, you know, it’s been one of the great schizophrenic Trump issues throughout the entirety of his administration, Jonathan pointed out that getting tough on China was an important part of Trump’s appeal to white, working class voters in 2016. It was a huge issue for Steve Bannon, when Bannon was central to Trump’s political vision and Bannon brought a China hawkishness into the White House, wanted it central to Trump’s politics and then Trump for reasons you laid out, partly because of the economics advantages of making trade deals with China and partly because he was actually flattered by the way the Chinese treated him, and partly because he, like with every other autocrat in the world, he looked on someone enviously at the position that XI had, and couldn’t help himself from saying things like the quote you just read. They now find themselves in the position where, facing Joe Biden, there is still a strong China hawk contingent on the politics and on the policy inside. And I would say, one of the ways that we think about Mike Pompeo is don’t think of him strictly as Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo is a future presidential aspirate,  he’s someone who wants to run for president on a hawkish China platform when it’s his turn to run and who right now is a political instrument of the president and those inside the administration, who think, as they look around, for issues on which they can try to beat up Joe Biden, this issue, the China issue is one that the China hawks are trying to pull into the center of Donald Trump’s campaign but you correctly point out how difficult that is because as with so many other things, there’s not just one tweet for that, there’s a lot of tweets for that and a lot of quotes that make Donald Trump a really imperfect messenger for a hawkish China posture in this campaign and one that he would try to beat up Joe Biden over his position on China in it.

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