What Trump Is Doing in China

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Per Business Insider, here is the complete list of people accompanying Trump in China.

Also Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, who was not on the official list but is joining according to a Truth Social post. Even better, Eric Trump — who is running the Trump family business now — is there also,  “The Trump Organization has said Eric Trump is traveling to China only to support his father, and there is no indication he will pursue business while there,” says the New York Times. Sure.

The Times article says Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent tagged along also. Why is Hegseth there? That’s very weird.

And I don’t entirely understand what these people expect to accomplish in China that relates to, you know, the United States.  One might think that all these people going to China could be looking for business opportunities for themselves. Considering that China is providing critical economic and technological support to Iran to help Iran survive Trump’s war — mostly buying Iran’s oil and helping them make missiles — it seems a bit surreal for Trump to be undertaking a friendly diplomatic visit to China now. And Trump has been so addled lately there is genuine concern that any deal he might make with Xi Jinping would involve a promise not to interfere if Xi invades Taiwan. 

At this point, everything about the Trump 2.0 Administration has failed; it’s all a shambles. The tariffs have been a disaster. Inflation is up more now than it was when Trump took office. the Iran War is turning out to be an even bigger mistake than Dubya’s invasion of Iraq, if that’s possible. And Trump himself exhibits little interest in fixing any of it. He has mentally retreated into his pet projects like the ballroom. Trump may have invited all these people along to China just so he doesn’t have to deal with anything himself.

And do see Paul Krugman, The Apotheosis of Willful Ignorance.

3 thoughts on “What Trump Is Doing in China”

  1. Apotheosis took me higher and higher which is not the direction one goes to normally find willful ignorance.  As a determined determinist, anything willful is suspect, assuming human characteristics almost never seen in the species.  Ignorance is normally associated with low places not high ones.  Never before, uncharted territory, unique, and similar words are today so ubiquitous in the news. one would think normal has vanished, but it has not.  Normal is still the norm even when things get skewed.  Skewed in so many ways happens to be the best descriptor of that list of people gone to China, and skewed-up is the probable outcome from the trip.  More things skewed-up when that is the last thing we need.

    Krugman did get the point made, though.  It is much the same point Maha made several posts ago when talking about anti-intellectualism.  She linked a book by Richard Hofsteader who, like Krugman, saw it a chronic error of the American Right.  

     

    Great men, great nations, have not been boasters and buffoons, but perceivers of the terror of life, and have manned themselves to face it.

    The American Right mistakes boasters and buffoons for great men, as they consistently confuse these groups. They see only the facade and fail to look further.

    The list is above.  For each ask Boaster and Buffoon or Great Man?

    Hofsteader noted this problem many years ago.  Krugman and Maha reminded us of how normal a problem of American Superficiality we were again dealing with.  

    How many of them would you say could perceive the true terror of life and be manned up to meet it or even do so in a more gender-neutral sort of a way?  Standards have changed a wee bit over the years.  Our problems are just the normal ones.  We hope normal ones with a wee bit of change in quite a needed sort of a way.   

  2. Back when I was a kid in school, there was a game without rules or teams that the nums broke up every time we got going. It was called "Slaughter the Pig." Whever has the ball was trying to keep the ball – everyone else was trying to tackle the ball-carrier and take the ball. 

    It was fun to have the ball til things got too exciting. No pads, no helmets. So the 'pig' would look for someone to toss the ball to. I see Trump at that phase and Xir the next ball-carrier. All Trump wants is the enriched uranium in Iran. I think he'll settle for the promise of the uranium sometime in the future. Just as long as Trump gets out of the war with any shred of dignity. Iran proposed this with the demand that its frozen assets be thawed before a third-party country (China) would release the nuclear fuel. 

    If Trump saves his hide by passing off the pigskin to Xi, he's gonna leave the field of battle with NO intention of retuning, I think. That leaves Bibi in a cage match to the death with a wounded Iran. 

    Worth considering as part of the strategy – there will be no reductions in the Prime interest rate before the midterms, even though Trump got his toadie. No one believes the 'Golden Age of Trump' is here. The plan is to do a bunch of 'deals' and promise the Golden age is NEXT  year if you vote GOP in November. 

    Xi did not show at the airport to greet Trump. Getting his nails done, I guess. Trump knows who the bitch is in negotiations. 

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    • Ha, we called it "Kill the man with the Ball", but same [lack of] rules; all the neighborhood kids loved it.  Luckily, no one ever got [seriously] injured.

      And Yes, Xi is probably explaining the deal which will get us out of the current stupid war with Iran.  That's a very delicate task; Trump, uh, isn't a good listener.

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