Saturday, January 12, 2019

Trump’s bizarre statement on China dishonors us all; The Washington Post, January 11, 2019

Dana Milbank, The Washington Post; Trump’s bizarre statement on China dishonors us all

"Asked an unrelated question on the White House South Lawn on Thursday, Trump volunteered a comparison between Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) — and the leaders of the People’s Republic of China.

“I find China, frankly, in many ways, to be far more honorable than Cryin’ Chuck and Nancy. I really do,” he said. “I think that China is actually much easier to deal with than the opposition party.”

China, honorable?

China, which is holding a million members of religious minorities in concentration camps for “reeducation” by force?

China, which, according to Trump’s own FBI director, is, by far, the leading perpetrator of technology theft and espionage against the United States and is “using illegal methods” to “replace the U.S. as the world’s leading superpower”?

China, whose state-sponsored hackers were indicted just three weeks ago and accused of a 12-year campaign of cyberattacks on this and other countries?

China, whose ruling Communist Party has caused the extermination of tens of millions of people since the end of World War II, through government-induced famine, the ideological purges of the Cultural Revolution, and in mowing down reformers in Tiananmen Square?

Trump has a strange sense of honor. In April, he bestowed the same adjective on the world’s most oppressive leader, North Korea’s nuclear-armed dictator: “Kim Jong Un, he really has been very open and I think very honorable from everything we’re seeing.”

Now, the president is declaring that China’s dictatorship, by far the world’s biggest international criminal and abuser of human rights and operator of its most extensive police state, is more honorable than his political opponents in the United States.

In Trump’s view, your opponents are your enemies — and your actual enemies are your friends. How can you negotiate with a man who thinks like this?"

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