RED CARPET RAPPROCHEMENT

How Fawning Trump Just Showed Exactly How Weak He Is

The president’s embrace of the Chinese dictator isn’t just diplomacy. It’s a political high-wire act.

For a president who has spent years promising he’d never let China push the U.S. around, Xi Jinping’s visit to Washington gives Donald Trump an awkward political problem: the Chinese leader gets the red-carpet treatment, while Trump does much of the accommodating.

Trump personally greeted Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, at Joint Base Andrews on Wednesday evening—the first time a president has left the White House to greet a state leader there since 1962, when JFK met British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan.

On Thursday, the Chinese president will get the full ceremonial welcome at the White House, complete with nearly 500 military personnel and a flyover, before Trump hosts a lavish state dinner with senior officials and tech titans. The visit wraps up on Friday with tea at the White House and a trip to the National Archives.

For Trump, this is not simply diplomacy. It is a political gamble.

The 80-year-old president has spent years portraying China as a threat to American power and accusing Beijing of stealing American jobs, manipulating trade, and, as recently as July, carrying out what he described as a massive campaign of election interference.

China is also helping two of America’s adversaries: maintaining a lucrative relationship with Iran, including continued purchases of Iranian oil, while deepening its economic ties with Russia despite the war in Iran.

And as the midterms approach, Trump has spent months railing against communists and socialists and the supposed threat they pose.

Now, he’s lavishing extraordinary attention on the leader of the Chinese Communist Party.

“I met President Xi at the plane (Airport!) yesterday, and he looks strong, vibrant, and fit - Better than ever,” Trump boasted on Thursday morning ahead of Xi’s arrival at the White House.

Little wonder the spectacle is already rubbing some Republicans the wrong way.

Sen. Roger Wicker, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he would not have invited Xi to Washington for such a high-profile visit, citing China’s actions around the world.

Four other Republican senators–including, somehow, the ailing Mitch McConnell-have signed a letter simultaneously demanding that Trump release more than $15 billion in stalled security assistance for Taiwan.

And MAGA acolyte Laura Loomer said it was “truly embarrassing that American men and women in uniform” were asked to greet “the communist dictator of China” at Joint Base Andrews.

“I guess everyone forgot about the China Virus and China’s interference in the 2020 election. Unbelievable,” she lamented.

The summit’s choreography is revealing, too. No joint press conference or statement is expected afterward.

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Instead, Washington and Beijing are expected to issue separate announcements, giving each side control over how it presents the outcome to its own audience.

For Xi, the optics are useful. China is being treated as a peer superpower as its leader arrives in Washington with major demands, such as relief from U.S. technology restrictions and longer-term easing of trade barriers. Above all, he wants the U.S. to back off from Taiwan, which China views as an inalienable part of its territory.

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For Trump, the political calculation is more complicated. The more he personalizes his relationship with Xi, the harder it is to distinguish pragmatic negotiation from fawning over another dictator.

Trump needs Xi to deliver something tangible, such as a durable trade truce and access to China’s critical rare earth minerals. He also needs cooperation with Iran, an ally of Beijing and Russia, as he attempts to end a conflict now in its seventh month, with no end in sight.

Otherwise, this extraordinary spectacle risks becoming the story itself.

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Farrah TomazinPolitical Correspondent

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