Donald Trump’s abrupt drawdown of troops in Europe—the result of his irritation at European countries declining to throw themselves enthusiastically into his war with Iran—continues: The Wall Street Journal reports that the Pentagon this week abruptly canceled the deployment of an armored brigade to Poland. Some of the brigade’s equipment and troops, the Journal reported, were already en route when the cancellation order came through. Happy Thursday.
Our Kowtower-in-Chief
by William Kristol
In 1859, President James Buchanan sent an ambassador, John Ward, to the court of the Emperor of China. No American ambassador had ever met with a Chinese Emperor, and Ward was invited to do so.
A foreign representative meeting the emperor was expected to “kowtow” to him (“kou” = to knock, “tou” = head), to bow and touch his head on the floor. Ward refused, writing that “I will not kneel or knock my head on the ground before him.” The Emperor in turn refused to see him. The meeting was never held.
China no longer has an emperor—at least, it doesn’t use the title. Its president, Xi Jinping, does not require guests to kneel and touch their heads on the floor. And so President Trump was welcomed today outside the Great Hall of the People with an honor guard and rows of cheering children and a twenty-one-gun salute.
Still, the spirit of the kowtow was alive and well. In the Great Hall, Xi greeted the American president politely but professionally, calling on the United States and China to be “partners, not adversaries.”
Trump responded much more personally. “I have such respect for China, the job you’ve done. You’re a great leader. I say it to everybody, you’re a great leader. Sometimes people don’t like me saying it, but I say it anyway because it’s true.” Trump also liked the ranks of Chinese children the state assembled to greet him with forced enthusiasm, telling Xi: “I was particularly impressed by those children. They were happy, they were beautiful. Those children were amazing.”
It’s a kowtow, twenty-first century style.
The fawning was, in a Trumpian manner, combined with grandiosity. “There are those that say this is maybe the biggest summit ever. They can never remember anything like it. I can say in the United States people aren’t talking about anything else.”
Well, I’ve been out and about a bit in the last couple of days. I can report that people in the United States are talking about everything else but this summit. And I know of no foreign policy analyst who expects this to be “the biggest summit ever.”
Quite the contrary. As Politico put it, the Trump–Xi meeting has become “the shrinking summit”: “President Donald Trump’s ambitions for his summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping have shrunk from ‘grand bargain’ to a plea for help in reopening the Strait of Hormuz and a push for small trade deals.”
I’ll probably have more to say about Trump’s pilgrimage to China tomorrow, after the summit ends and we can begin to judge its practical results, if any. But the sad truth already is this: With Trump backing down last fall after starting a trade war with China, and with our ongoing humiliation in the Gulf, if this summit is remembered at all, it’s likely to be recalled as a signpost in American decline. Trump did not quarrel in public, nor, so far as we know in private, with Xi’s claim to equal global status (“partners”) with the United States. How could he? Given Trump’s success in reducing the standing of the United States in the world, he had no grounds to do so.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported that a confidential U.S. government intelligence analysis produced this week for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff “details how China is exploiting the war in Iran to maximize its advantage over the United States across military, economic, diplomatic and other fields.”
The report points out that during the Iran war, “China has sold weapons to Persian Gulf allies of the U.S. as they struggled to defend their military bases and oil infrastructure from Iranian missile and drone attacks.” China “has also assisted countries around the world struggling to meet their energy needs after the U.S.-Israeli attacks prompted Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz.”
And the analysis notes that the war has drained the U.S. military of stocks of weapons that would be critical in the defense of Taiwan against China. In fact the Chinese news agency Xinhua reports that in their private meeting, Xi warned Trump about the possibility of conflict over U.S. support for Taiwan. Trump had already raised doubts about U.S. backing for Taiwan before leaving for the summit. We have no reports of Trump pushing back in the meeting.
But not to worry. The Trump administration assures us that all is well. When asked about the intelligence report, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, Sean Parnell, said that “Assertions claiming the global balance of power have shifted towards any nation other than the United States of America are fundamentally false.” White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales claimed that the United States joining Iran in blockading the strait was “one of the most successful naval blockades in history.” And in Beijing, Elon Musk, one of Trump’s fellow supplicants at the summit, shouted “Wonderful!” to reporters as he left the Great Hall.
All’s well, according to the Trumpists, as the American democracy declines and the Chinese dictatorship rises.
But I suppose we should be grateful that the president of the United States didn’t kneel down and tap his head on the ground. At least not in public.
AROUND THE BULWARK
Here’s What I Told the DNC Autopsy… The report may never see the light of day—so ROB FLAHERTY, the Harris campaign’s head of digital, offers his candid breakdown of what worked, what failed, and what Democrats have yet to learn.
There’s Something Wrong with the President… TOM NICHOLS joins TIM MILLER for a special live pod to break down the bad Orange President’s insomnia-induced, Obama-obsessed posting spree, one that should raise real concern about his mental health.
Rand Paul’s Son Berates GOP Congressman… In a drunken antisemitic outburst, as explained by WILL SOMMER and SAM STEIN on Bulwark+ Takes.
San Diego here we come! We’re thrilled to announce our lineup for Bulwark Live featuring special guest San Diego Mayor TODD GLORIA. Plus our very own MAGA culture expert WILL SOMMER.
Join Sam, Tim and Sarah for this one-night live show at the Balboa Theatre on May 20. Grab your seats today.
Quick Hits
ABUNDANCE AROUND THE CORNER: It was surprising back in March when the Senate got its act together enough to pass a good bill to address America’s housing crunch. It was perhaps even more surprising last night when House lawmakers announced they’d reached a bipartisan deal on their own, even better version of the bill.
As we wrote at the time, the Senate’s ROAD to Housing Act had one big flaw: a ban on large companies (defined as any company that manages more than 350 housing units) from building new single-family homes to rent out. Housing advocates had warned that this provision cut against the rest of the bill by choking off one pathway to new housing development. Now, per Politico, House negotiators have agreed to strip that provision from the bill—and to nibble at the corners of the bill’s other controls on institutional investment in single-family homes as well by narrowing its definition of a “single-family home.”
The House’s improvements have complicated the bill’s road to passage: The White House and the Senate had both hoped the House would swallow its objections, pass the Senate bill, and get it straight to the president’s desk.
GERRYMANDERING AWAY: Will South Carolina redistrict? After the Supreme Court gutted the remaining sections of the Voting Rights Act last month, Donald Trump has been demanding that Southern red states rush to eliminate their last blue-stronghold majority-minority districts ahead of November’s midterms.
At first, South Carolina’s Gov. Henry McMaster promised to leave the question of whether his GOP-controlled legislature would reconvene to consider redistricting up to the legislature itself. But after the state Senate unexpectedly shot down the idea Tuesday, McMaster changed his mind: Lawmakers announced last night that McMaster now intends to call a special session after all. Should they succeed, the likely effect would be to eliminate the district of Rep. James Clyburn, who has served in Congress since 1993.
ARGH DE TRIOMPHE: The White House ballroom may be unpopular, but Trump is still surging ahead both with it and with another of his eyesore vanity projects: his proposed jumbo-sized triumphal arch across the river at the entrance to Arlington National Cemetery. Today, the Washington Post reports that the administration has been trying to hustle its arch construction along “by piggybacking on an existing, unrelated contract for engineering services at the White House grounds more than a mile away”:
The move would allow the administration to bypass a potentially lengthy public bidding process, and experts said it was unusual because the arch site is on National Park Service land across the Potomac River and is not part of the White House complex.
Park Service acting director Jessica Bowron wrote to White House officials last month asking whether the agency could extend a contract between the White House and engineering firm AECOM Services for an environmental assessment for the proposed 250-foot arch. . . .
An hour later, the White House gave NPS a green light. “Yes of course,” wrote Heather Martin, an official in the Executive Office of the President.
It’s not clear from the emails whether the Park Service ultimately followed through with the plan to use the White House contract. But site testing was to begin this week, according to a timeline laid out by the Trump administration in federal court last week. Heavy machinery was at the site Monday.
Cheap Shots
I don't know, but maybe someone who's in the Epstein files thousands of times shouldn't be commenting on how beautiful a group of children are.
I am astounded that Trump doesn't realize every autocrat thinks he is a joke, and every leader of a democracy thinks he is a moron.