Latest / Sid & Friends In The Morning / Gordon Chang | Author & Geopolitics Expert Previews Trump-Xi Meeting at The White House Today

Transcript

Gordon Chang | Author & Geopolitics Expert Previews Trump-Xi Meeting at The White House Today · Sid & Friends In The Morning

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Tonight is this big dinner at the White House. Big
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: meetings today. They arrived yesterday. President Xi and his wife,
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Melania and the wife, will go around town tonight. I
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: guess the Smithsonian is on the docket, some other spots.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: But the president of China and the United States will
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: come together tonight. The question is, what's on the docket?
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Who better to speak to than the great Gordon G.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Chang on Twitter?
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: Gordon G. Chang. Gordon, good Thursday morning, buddy. How are you?
• 0:32
  Speaker 3: I'm fine, Sid. And congratulations on being able to walk
• 0:37
  Speaker 3: around with the Prime Minister of Israel. So fantastic.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: It is great.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: And look, you know, it's going to be a bad
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: scene here today. You know, there's going to be rallies
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: and all these losers. And let me make it very,
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: very clear. If you're out there today yelling and screaming
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: that Israel's committing genocide and murder, you're a loser. But
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of them because between the media and
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: social media and these horrible podcasters, more and more stupid
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Americans are buying the lie.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: But you know better, right, Gordon?
• 1:11
  Speaker 3: Certainly. And by the way, is Mondami going to arrest
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: Sid Rosenberg? I mean, I'm waiting for this.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: I hope so. God, I hope so. I'm not even kidding.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: I swear. Could you imagine?
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: Gordon, that they take me and Bibi away together in
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: some police car. Could you imagine the great exposure for
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: this show?
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: You would cover it.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: But look, that is coming up later on today. And
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: he's going to talk about a whole variety of issues,
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: including Mamdani, who's a liar. He's going to expose the
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: mayor as an even bigger liar. But he's also going
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: to talk about Iran and President Trump once again has
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: complete annihilation on the table, something he really should have
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: done a long time ago. What are your thoughts on that?
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the important thing here is that President Trump, you know,
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: the Wall Street Journal just within 24 hours reported that
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: through June, China sent about 1,300 shipments of dual-use items
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: to Iran. And this is on top of the targeting
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: data that China has provided Iran, which almost certainly killed
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: six Americans on March 1st in Kuwait. And on July 17th,
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: three more Americans in Jordan. This is something that President
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: Trump absolutely needs to talk to China about. You know,
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: in the past, Trump has said that the Chinese were cooperating.
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: But this report just a few hours ago is really stunning.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: But you've talked about this with me for a while,
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: China's actual participation in this war, actually on the side
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: of the enemy, right?
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: Yes, clearly on the side of the enemy. And the
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: issue here is not only China being on the side
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: of the enemy, but the U.S. refusing to call out
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: China for this. So there's a two sided problem here.
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: And the Chinese will continue to support Iran until we
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: speak about this in public and until we start imposing
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: costs on China for this clearly unacceptable, dangerous, malicious behavior.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, agreed.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: So what do you think is going to be the
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: conversation today? I guess these meetings tonight at the dinner.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: What do you think President Trump and President Xi really
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: focus on?
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: A couple of things. As we heard from Treasury Secretary
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: Besant yesterday, the Chinese agreed to a two-month extension of
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: the trade truce. That's what they call the Busan Agreement,
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: which was reached last October when Presidents Trump and Xi
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: Jinping met on the sidelines of a regional meeting in
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: South Korea. So that's important. There's going to be talk
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: of an AI hotline. In other words, both sides agree
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: to tell the other if there are national security-related incidents
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: regarding their AI models. This is something that we need.
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: But unfortunately, this is something that is probably not in
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: our interest, Sid. And the reason is that the Chinese
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: don't pick up the phone. During the balloon incident in 2023,
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: Lloyd Austin, who was then Secretary of Defense, tried to
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: reach his Chinese counterpart to talk about this, and the
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: Chinese just completely blew off our Secretary of Defense. So
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: the question is, why would the Chinese talk to us
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: and reveal problems with their AI models? So I'm concerned
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: that this will be a one-way agreement. We notify the
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: Chinese of problems with our AI, and they are complete
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: silence when it comes to their problems with their AI models.
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: Interesting.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: You were on last week talking about this, though, when
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: the Democrats were going crazy, Obama and the media yelling
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: and screaming how we need guardrails and safety and how
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: AI is going to kill us. These bots, one day
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: you're going to wake up and kill us, which.
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: Is ridiculous, of course.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: And I know that you said last week, and I
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: agree with you, that you agree with President Trump that
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: more important than the guardrails is winning. Bottom line is
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: we need to win the AI race and beat China.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: At the end of the day, that's what matters. You
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: still feel that way?
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: Absolutely. Trump is 100% right on AI. Now, he's getting
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: a lot of grief from the media. He's getting a
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: lot of grief from the New York and Washington elites.
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: But clearly, we need to win AI. And, you know,
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: we're going to do that if President Trump is able
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: to overcome all of this criticism. It just seems to
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: me so wrong for people to say, oh, you know,
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: we need all of these agreements with China when we
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: know that China, first of all, never complies with its agreements.
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: And second of all, an AI agreement is unenforceable, inherently unenforceable.
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: You know, people say, well, we agreed with the Soviet
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: Union about nuclear warheads. But you can count warheads. You
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: can't count AI. That's the problem here. So Trump is
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: absolutely 100% right. You know, one other thing about this summit,
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: you know, I think it's sort of a sense that
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: very little is going to come out of it, especially
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: no breakthroughs. But the one thing that is important, and
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: this I love, is that when Xi Jinping arrived at
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: Andrus yesterday, President Trump had that flyover of six F-16s,
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: six F-22s, and two B-1s. And you could see Xi
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: Jinping's wife had that smirk on her face. But Xi Jinping,
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: he was stone cold. He did not happy about that.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: And why is that the case, Gordon?
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: Because this was a power move on the part of
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: the president. So I love that. And the other thing
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: that I love is that on Friday, and people aren't
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: focusing on this, but Trump is taking Xi Jinping to
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: the National Archives. And I'm sure he's going to be
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: showing them the founding documents of America about freedom and
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: democracy and human rights. Again, another power move.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: I mean, let's make something very clear here right now.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: When you watch television, you see the handshakes. You see
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: the wives. They'll be all over D.C. together today. You'll
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: see probably a very jovial Trump and Xi later on tonight.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: But let's be honest. These guys don't like each other.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: And even if Trump likes him just a little, just
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: a little. Like, I don't think Trump likes Mamdani. I know.
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: I don't think he likes him. I don't think he
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: likes this guy either. But I know this guy hates him.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: Trump, no matter what you see on TV the next
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: two days, agree or disagree?
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: Oh, absolutely. You nailed that one. Xi Jinping, first of all,
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: Chinese leaders don't have friends. They are very cold. They're
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: very practical, ruthlessly pragmatic. But Xi Jinping is different. He's
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: worse than the other Chinese leaders. He's as bad as
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: Mao Zedong. And certainly Xi Jinping looks at Trump and says,
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: I got to get this guy out of the way.
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: So clearly here, you know, I'm sure Trump knows that.
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: I don't like when Trump says Xi Jinping is my friend,
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: but I don't believe Trump believes that for one moment.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: I don't either. So I think I saw something today
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: about some of the things that China has already said.
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: Don't bother bringing it up.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: I could be wrong. One of those things was Taiwan.
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: Does that get discussed today?
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: You know, maybe the Chinese in May, what they did
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: was they raised the Taiwan issue. They ran for 20 minutes.
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: The Americans just sort of sit there and take it
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: and then move on. And that's probably going to happen
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: this time as well. You know, there are four things
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: that the Chinese ambassador to the U.S. said were red
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: lines and could not be discussed. And Taiwan was.
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: One of them.
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: It was really interesting, though, that they talked again about,
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: quote unquote, development rights issues. And what they're meaning by
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: that is we don't want to talk about trade. We
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: don't want to talk about, you know, overcapacity, criminal trade practices,
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: predatory trade practices. Well, you know, my point is, well,
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: if you don't talk about those four things, especially the
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: issues that really matter between China and the United States,
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: then the issue is why are you sending Xi Jinping
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: over here in the first place? Why are we talking
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: to these guys?
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: And correct me if I'm wrong, one of those things
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: that you didn't mention, which is really scary in terms
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: of development.
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: Human rights. They don't want to discuss human rights. Is
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: that right?
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they don't discuss human rights, they say. and they
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: do in private but they say that that and that's
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: important because they know how vulnerable they are you know
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: we're Americans and so we don't think human rights are
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: that important as a topic because people got human rights
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: you know critics of President Trump they got lots of
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: rights and as you point out they got enormous access
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: to the media and But in China, critics don't have
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: any access. They don't have any rights. Nobody has any rights, actually,
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: except for maybe Xi Jinping. And the point here is,
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: you know, we need to understand how vulnerable they are,
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: because if we want leverage over these guys, it's not
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: just a question of trade and tariffs and all the rest.
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: It's human rights. That's where they are really sensitive.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: You think Trump brings up also, don't forget, when he
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: left China a couple of months ago, he was there.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: They're all there. It was this grand event. And He
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: got home and it was like two weeks later, very,
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: very quickly, he held that national conference that night on
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: television where he accused the Chinese of basically rigging the
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: 2020 election.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: Do you think that comes up?
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: I hope it does, because that's really critical. You know,
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: a lot of people, you know, a lot of people
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: didn't cover that speech. But Trump, you know.
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, you know, you know who wanted to
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: cover that speech? Maria Bartiromo. And look what happened.
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: Oh, boy.
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: A lot of people did not cover it. Go ahead.
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry.
• 11:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: And the point here, though, is that Trump was extremely factual.
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: You know, you heard people say, oh, there's election conspiracies.
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: I listened to that speech and I know, you know,
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: the New York Times in March of 2020 was reporting
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: how China was using its social media bots to spread
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: disinformation in the United States. And so the New York
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: Times laid it out in detail. And Trump, you know,
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: I think he should have mentioned that during that speech,
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: because it's not just Trump who believes this. It is
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: the reporting at the time at that time before the election.
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: So Trump was right about that.
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: Thousand percent.
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: So when wrapping this great conversation up and.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: Thank you, as always, for doing this, you're the only
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: guy I go to.
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: That's it. You're the best. You don't expect.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: Substantial, much of anything, to come from this couple-day trip
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: for the Chinese here to America.
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: Nothing really.
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: I hope I'm wrong, but the point is, Xi Jinping
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: right now has a lot of trouble at home. There's
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: political turbulence at the top of the Communist Party, especially
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: the military. That limits his room for maneuver, so he
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: can't make big compromises. Or if he does make a concession,
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: he's not going to follow through and honor his word.
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: The problem here is internal to China right now.
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: Gordon Chang, as always, excellent job. Nobody more prepared to
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: talk about these things than you. Gordon G. Chang on Twitter. Gordon,
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: have yourself a great day, buddy. Thank you so much.
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: Thank you, Sid. And by the way, you know, I'm
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: waiting for those pictures of doing that perp walk in
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: New York City.
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: It would be funny.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: It would be funny, Gordon, actually talking about the possibility
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: that I get arrested with Bibi Netanyahu. I'll be with
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: him later on today at the U.N. by this disgusting mayor.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: Later on today, Gordon Chang is always really terrific work.
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: You're all great.
• 13:30
  Speaker 4: Thanks for listening to Sid and Friends in the Morning.
• 13:34
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• 13:36
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• 13:41
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• 13:55
  Speaker 4: see you next time for a new episode so you
• 13:58
  Speaker 4: never have to wonder
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: What the heck is going on here