What Did Trump Really Say About China?

Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Mohegan Sun Arena in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., on Sept. 3, 2022. (Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Images)

Commentary

In a Pennsylvania rally on Sept. 3, according to the Financial Times, former President Donald Trump “spent time praising Chinese leader Xi Jinping for his ‘iron fist,’ describing him as ’smart.'”

Did Trump really say these things, or is it a spin from the liberal mainstream media? Because we suspect that the mainstream media rarely depicts Trump’s speeches with much fidelity, let’s drill into exactly what Trump said about China from the original source—a recording of the entire two-hour speech in front of cheering fans. It’s critical to listen to Trump rather than just read transcriptions, which arguably never do the man’s inflections and emphases any justice.

Trump jumped right into the China topic at the beginning of his speech by ascribing the decline of America in part to COVID-19 and fentanyl, which he rightly links to China. Approximately a quarter of the way through the speech, he vowed to set America straight, like “it was before the COVID came in, before the China dust [fentanyl] came in.”

Illegal fentanyl can be deadly, its chemical precursors are mostly imported from China, and it’s likely the cause of much, if not most, of America’s over 107,000 overdose deaths in 2021. Throughout the speech, Trump delves deeper into this and other China issues.

China and Energy Independence

Trump warned against becoming overly dependent on China for energy. He criticized electric vehicles partly because of their dependence on manufacturing in China and their tendency, along with other renewable energy sources, to jettison fossil fuels that Trump argues provide America with energy independence at an affordable price.

“Number one, people can’t afford” electric vehicles, he told the cheering Pennsylvanians. “Number two, the batteries are made all in China, all the earth, the rare earth comes out of China.”

The former president pointed out that the United States is firm in gas and refining (we were a net petroleum exporter in 2021, according to the Energy Information Administration), whereas China tends to control materials for electric vehicle batteries.

“It all comes out of China, and a little bit in the Congo, [and] guess who controls the Congo? China! We play right into their hands,” he said.

A worker with electric car batteries at a factory for Xinwangda Electric Vehicle Battery Co. Ltd, in Nanjing in China's eastern Jiangsu Province, on March 12, 2021. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

Trump makes a similar point about wind power, arguing that “all of those big giant turbines are built in China and Germany to a lesser extent.”

China and Afghanistan Withdrawal

Trump also argued that Biden should not have given up the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan for strategic reasons beyond Islamic terrorism.

“Bagram Airbase cost billions and billions of dollars, years ago, to build,” he said. “It’s one hour away from where China makes its nuclear weapons. We should have never left without keeping Bagram.”

Xi Jinping and Drugs

Trump spoke extensively about Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping, who he described as “fierce” and “smart.” Trump justified calling Xi “smart” because Xi “rules with an iron fist 1.5 billion people. Yeah, I'd say he’s smart, wouldn’t you say he’s smart?”

The former president recounted a time he spent with Xi, in which he made a “great trade deal with him” that helped America’s farmers and manufacturers.

Trump said he “had a great relationship” with Xi and called him “king” over the latter’s protestations because “You are to me, you’re president for life. It’s the same thing.”

Then Trump noted that China makes fentanyl and sends it into the United States via America’s porous border “in numbers that you wouldn’t believe, wouldn’t believe it, pouring through that porous border.”

Supposedly, according to Trump, Xi attempted to stop the fentanyl flow but could not.

Seizure of more than 3,000 pounds of methamphetamine, fentanyl powder, fentanyl pills, and heroin in Otay Mesa, San Diego, Calif., on Oct. 9, 2020. (U.S. Customs and Border Protection)

Trump then asked Xi if China had a drug problem, to which Xi answered no.

“So President, President, you don’t have a drug problem, but why?” Trump asked.

“We have quick trial,” answered Xi, according to Trump.

Trump asked, “What is a quick trial?”

“We immediately catch the drug dealer. We give him quick trial,” said Xi, according to Trump.

Trump then spoke to the crowd in Pennsylvania. “And if he is guilty, which I would say probably they’re batting … about 100 percent? Or only 99?”

“If the drug dealer is guilty, he is immediately executed. So we have no drug problem in China,” said Xi, according to Trump.

This was Trump’s introduction to calling for the death penalty for all drug dealers in the United States. He said that other countries, like Singapore, follow the same approach.

Trump did not mention former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who is under international scrutiny for his government’s alleged extrajudicial killings of not only drug dealers, but drug users.

Duterte also made headlines for his unprecedentedly positive relationship with Xi.

China in Trump’s Closing Remarks

In Trump’s closing remarks, he said, “We will hold China accountable for unleashing the virus upon the world.” He vowed to protect innocent life.

“We are a nation that allowed Russia to devastate a country, Ukraine, killing hundreds of thousands of people, and it will only get worse,” Trump noted. “It would never have happened with me as your commander-in-chief, and for four long years, it didn’t happen. Never happened. And China, with Taiwan, is next.”

The Rocket Force under the Eastern Theater Command of China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) fires live missiles into the waters near Taiwan from an undisclosed location in China on Aug. 4, 2022. (Eastern Theatre Command/Handout via Reuters)

Trump claimed that China would never invade Taiwan as long as he were president.

“We are a nation that is allowing Iran to build a massive nuclear weapon, which they are incredibly being allowed to do right now when China [is using] trillions and trillions of dollars that is taken from us to build a military to rival our own,” said the former president. Trump claimed to have had Iran, China, and Russia “in check” during his presidency.

Mainstream Media Coverage

The Washington Post and The New York Times covered the speech but did not mention Trump’s comments on China, which the U.S. Defense Department and NATO recognize as their biggest threat.

Newsweek provided a full transcript of the speech but frequently misquoted the former president, in one instance to the point that some could misconstrue his meaning as support for Russian terrorism.

Bottom Line

So what did Trump really say about China? Regrettably, he did, in fact, call Xi “smart” while marshaling the faulty evidence that Xi’s rule over China’s vast population with an “iron fist” somehow indicates intelligence rather than a communist or fascist approach to politics.

The Financial Times, at least, got that right.

But the breadth and depth of Trump’s comments on China were, to my knowledge, otherwise entirely ignored by the liberal-leaning mainstream media, which unfortunately chose instead to focus on the relatively less substantial fireworks display of polarizing language by both Trump and President Joe Biden in labeling each other as “semi-fascist” and “enemy of the state,” respectively.

Neither is true.

Unfortunately, Trump calling Xi intelligent for his “iron fist” while mooting the idea of a “quick trial” and death penalty for drug dealers, the latter he supports for introduction into the United States, will be grist for the Democrats’ propaganda mill.

That is a mistake and fatal to America’s need for moral and material strength for the coming struggle with authoritarian regimes.

To protect America from our greatest threat in Beijing, we must first praise democracy and human rights as smart rather than “iron fists” and “quick trials.”

The Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to a jury trial of one’s peers, which is in no way consistent with “iron fists” and “quick trials.” America’s material power rests in large part on our moral leadership internationally, on issues like democracy, human rights, and the rule of law.

Former American presidents were right to highlight the American role in the world as a moral “beacon of hope.” Failure to highlight America’s moral high ground by any U.S. president only hurts America’s standing internationally.

If Americans could overcome their partisanship to rally our moral strength and unite against our most dangerous foreign threats, including Xi and the Chinese Communist Party, it would make America’s Founding Fathers proud.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.