185. Trump Vs China: Who Really Holds the Cards?

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1:21Hello and welcome to The Rest is Politics US with me, Katty Kaye, in a very dreary Washington, D.C. Anthony is off this week. He is being a superstar in his son's movie, so we're very excited about that. Can't wait to see his starring role. I hope he's learned his lines. I texted him yesterday, said get on it, don't forget. So filling in for Anthony today, we have the host of The Weeknd Show on MS Now and a very good friend of mine, Eugene Daniels. Eugene, I'm so happy to have you here. Hello, Katya. I'm so excited to be here. I'm honored, actually. Also, I want to be in a movie. How do we get in this movie?

1:56The only movie I've ever been in, I shot down on Capitol Hill, and of course, I ended up on the cutting room floor. I was down there all day and I had to play a member of the press corps and then I watched the movie and nothing. So I don't know. I think if your son is making the movie, you can probably guarantee that you don't end up on the editing floor. You would hope so. That's the way to do it. You would hope so. Yeah. Surprised you haven't been in a movie, actually, Eugene. I'll put your name forward. You'd be good at that. Thank you. So it's lovely to have you on the show. I should fill in a bit.

2:23You were also a White House correspondent for Politico for a long time and you wrote the Politico playbook. So there are very few people who are more plugged into what is happening in the White House and in Washington than you are, which is why it's so great to have you on the program. Today, we are going to talk about Donald Trump heading to China later this week, this huge important summit, which was delayed from the beginning of the war. It's happening this week on Thursday, Friday. An enormous amount is at stake in this summit. But of course, hanging over it all is the shadow of Iran. and I was speaking to a senator this morning who said, look, he is heading into this summit weaker than he would have done because of the war in Iran.

3:01So we're going to talk about that. And in the second half of the program, we're going to talk about Virginia and the Supreme Court ruling that overruled the vote in Virginia to redistrict the state. It feels like a million years ago, but it just happened. It's like a million years ago. We haven't been on air since then. And I thought it was worth discussing because I do think it has ramifications for the midterms. And they may not be as disastrous as the most suicidal Democrats who are texting me seem to think it is. But let's kick off with China and Iran. You were covering the White House in the first term, and he went to China and they had, I didn't even know that such a thing existed, but the Chinese gave him a state visit plus.

3:40I suppose no one wants a state visit minus, right? I mean, that's like not something you would want. That's the bad one. That's the bad one. He got the state visit plus and the Chinese rolled out every piece of red carpet they could find in the country and showered him with love and praise. And I'm just, is this going to be the same? Is this going to be the same sort of, maybe it has to be a gold carpet now anyway, or a gold statue, a gold statue of Trump. Maybe that would help if he turned up at Beijing airport. All of these leaders understand Donald Trump. Sometimes I think better than he understands himself.

4:12They know that a long red carpet, maybe a flyover of some jets, you know, a lot of people walking around. All of that makes him move, act differently. He wants to feel important. It is the pomp and circumstance of the presidency that is kind of his favorite part, right? When everyone stands in the House chamber, when the State of the Union happens and he gets announced, all of those kinds of things are the kinds of things that if you are a leader of a different country, that ingratiates you with Donald Trump. And so I'd assume it'd be something similar, but the relationship is different. The timing is very different.

4:49and kind of the temperament is going to be different. What they're asking for, what we're asking for as the United States and what China is going to probably want in return are going to be completely different things than they would have been and that they were in that first term and that they would have been two months ago when this trip was originally supposed to happen. Yeah, I think Trump, I mean, to that point of it's kind of, with Trump often it's all personal and foreign leaders kind of now get Trump after however long he's been on our national stage, 430 years. it feels like that. I wonder sometimes if he mistakes these relationships because he is proud of saying that he has good personal relationships with Kim Jong-un, with Vladimir Putin, with the king of the United Kingdom, with Xi Jinping.

5:34And I don't know that he really understands that he may be misjudging the power of the relationship and the nature of the relationship himself and in a way that could weaken his position. Because I think he thinks I can go in there, be leader to leader, work my famous art of the deal charm on him with a bit of leverage thrown in. And because we understand each other man to man, we're going to get something done, which is some kind of grand bargain. And I don't know that he realizes that's not actually the way, that they have processes and they actually do have institutions and they do have a National Security Council or whatever the National Security Council equivalent is.

6:12And this goes through formal steps. It's not actually all just done leader to leader. And anyway, he may not have that great relationship that he thinks he does. He overestimates himself and underestimates everyone that sits across from him, right? That is kind of how Donald Trump has always operated. The Chinese are very skilled negotiators. They're very proud people. The leadership there is very proud. They are a superpower also. It's not like you're going to, you know, he's going to some state where, you know, South Dakota or North Dakota talking to the governor. He's talking me of like when you were a kid and someone would be like, you're my best friend.

6:47You'd be like, you're my, I'm your best friend, but you're not my best friend. That's what it feels like with some of these relationships with Donald Trump is that he anticipates that he has these strong personal relationships because they pulled out the little red carpet. They gave him a gift. They talked nice about him. And when you talk to ambassadors of, as I have, as I know you have, who were in those rooms who prepped their leaders for these kinds of visits, is they prepped their leader to basically just shower him with praise. Shower him with praise. He will kind of be nice to you, and you guys can probably get what you want.

7:22But then when the leader leaves in that post-meeting that they all have with the ambassador, the leader's rolling their eyes, laughing at Trump. A lot of them look at him and see him as someone who's not prepared, right? He famously doesn't read all of the documents that other presidents tend to read. He goes off of his instincts. All of the documents or any of the documents? Any of them. And also his team, there were stories a couple of weeks ago, months ago at this point, that the chief of staff, Susie Wiles, in the White House was getting concerned because she didn't think, according to the reporting, that the president of the United States was getting a full view of the Iran war.

8:04And that is kind of how, if it's the war, it's all of the issues that Donald Trump looks at. It's the polling that they show him. So he's not getting a full picture of the impacts of his presidency and how the actions of his presidency are impacting his popularity. And so you have a whole, you know, he goes in there thinking he's the most popular person in the world and everybody should love him. But then that is not at all how it actually operates. And you, you know, remember he was talking to the UN and everyone was laughing at him and he thought they were laughing at his joke. But when you talk to the leaders that were in that room when he did that speech in his first term, they will tell you that we were laughing at how silly it was.

8:41And that's what you hear from the leaders. And he doesn't seem to get that. And if his team gets that, it doesn't appear that they're like telling him that. We're actually going to be speaking a lot more about Susie Wells in the bonus episode for founding members if you'd like to listen to that. Do you think he wants this China visit? I mean, I know it was pushed back right from the beginning of the Iran war. And my reporting is that they pushed it back and they hoped that the Iran war would be done and dusted. And as we're recording this on Monday morning, the latest is that the latest peace proposal that was flying around Donald Trump on a truth social post late Sunday night roundly rejected and said it's totally unsatisfactory.

9:18It doesn't work. So he's going into this meeting with a hot wall, literally, and a very unstable situation in the Middle East. And it's a hot wall that he had hoped that he would have won by the time he met Xi Jinping. How does that affect how he goes into the meeting? I mean, even Trump cannot be deluding himself that he's going into this meeting with the strongest possible hand. Right? I mean, I know he has a way of, no, he does. I know he likes to bend reality to his own reality. Exactly. But do you think he's getting on the plane later this week to fly to China, which he probably doesn't want to do.

9:57It's a long way, jet lag. He wants to be home in Mar-a-Lago in the White House, mostly thinking, actually, I'm in a great position. Yes, I do. I think that he always thinks that. Yes, I think there is. Did you read Maggie Haberman's book? Yeah, of course. Confidence Man. We talked about it. We did a series on Trump and we talked to Maggie for it. It is such a, if you, if folks who are listening, if you want to understand Trump's psyche, that is probably the best book to do it in. He has been convincing himself and other people of things for decades. He is 79, 80 years old. So that means his entire life, almost 100 years at this point.

10:36He has been convincing himself of how great he is and convincing the world of that thing. Now, if we had O's Porlman go in his head and pull out things, would he believe it? It's hard to know. But the way that he operates is as if the confidence of that you project is the most important thing. And so does he want to go on this trip? I don't know that he wants the flight. But I do think that Donald Trump in the second term has been so focused. And you talk to people around him and they will say this. He is so focused on the legacy aspect of this. And he knows that the presidents who have like long lasting legacies, for the most part, there was some kind of international component to it.

11:18Right. It's rare that a president gets to be, you know, a legacy if he doesn't have some kind of international peace deal or doesn't stop, doesn't win a war. Right. That doesn't happen as much. And that's how he views the presidency and hit this current presidency. And when you talk to folks who are around Donald Trump, Steve Bannon has said this publicly, is that they want him to be focused more on domestic issues. But his eyes are set on, you know, getting the, you know, the Nobel Peace Prize and being seen as someone who has stature. Because at the end of the day, that is so important to him.

11:57So he wants to go on this trip because of that. But he also sees himself as the leader of the strongest country in the world. I probably also imagine that he doesn't see China really on the same level. The way that he talks about it sure doesn't make it seem like it is. It seems like he believes the United States, above all else, is the most powerful country in the world. And there's a truth to that. But that doesn't mean that other countries aren't nipping at our heels or have beaten us in a lot of different metrics when you look at how do you grade the greatest country in the world. I mean, you speak to a lot of people who are around Trump and you covered the White House for years.

12:32Do you get any sense that he's going into this meeting and kind of juggling the Iran situation, which doesn't seem to be going well for him, realizing that in the eyes of the Chinese, the United States of America, the great United States of America, the biggest economy in the world, the biggest military in the world, has just been brought to its knees by a second-rate power and does do you know do you think he doesn't go realizing that because we know he would have liked this wrapped up that he is frustrated with the war right it's why they canceled it the first time was because why they canceled it the first time exactly so the logic of that is that you then set it for hoping that it's finished but it hasn't finished it hasn't finished and of course it wasn't going to be finished like this like it's it's in in his head it's Venezuela.

13:24It'll be done in a couple of days, whatever the operation is. But Iran is completely different. And, you know, when you talk to even people who are allies of his, they will say that he has misjudged the Iran war, their ability to obviously close the Strait of Hormuz, their ability to keep fighting back, how many munitions they continue to have stored. He keeps saying this 18 to 20 percent number, that they only have that left when the intel, according to reports, is that they have 70 to 75 percent of pre-war munitions. And so I do think he goes in and he still continues to think that he has the upper hand.

14:03He does not. This is New York real estate 101, right? At some point, you're faking it and faking it and faking it, and it just becomes a part of who you are. That's when I talk to young journalists. I'm like, go take a psychology course, because understanding how the human psyche work is so key to understanding how these politicians operate. Donald Trump truly believes he is the best negotiator on earth. That's why he truly believes that he is the best communicator in the White House and the administration in the country. And when he goes there to China, he is going to believe that he's going to sit across from Xi Jinping and be able to convince him of anything.

14:42And while other presidents would leave there and the readout would be, you know, we had a great conversation. They're coming closer to us. Trump, on the other hand, will actually believe what he's saying, whereas other presidents will know that it's a spin. It's like Sun Tzu in the art of war, you know, when you're weak, appear strong. He doesn't actually think that he appears weak. He thinks that he appears strong. What do you make of the rejection of the news this morning that Trump is not happy with what the Iranians have proposed? And what's your understanding of the conversations in the White House around what America's options are now.

15:20Because it seems to me, there's a great piece I would recommend everyone read, Checkmate on Iran. It's in the Atlantic, Robert Kagan, who is a big, long-time Iran hawk. And he is now saying it is time to accept defeat and pull out of this situation, which has not done any favors for Donald Trump. It's in the Atlantic. We'll put it in the newsletter, but I really urge you to read it. It's one of the best things on Iran at the moment. His argument is we're never going back to the status quo ante. Trump can't wrestle control of the Strait of Hormuz from the Iranians because the Iranians will just attack neighboring countries and neighboring energy facilities, and that will have a massive ripple effect around the world.

16:01So we're actually leaving the situation in a worse position because the Iranians do de facto and will do going forward have some control over the Strait of Hormuz. That's just the way it's going to be. And with the revenue that they make from that, they're going to rebuild their ballistic missiles and they'll move fast to rebuild their nuclear arsenal as well. Where does Trump think this is going? Are there any smart ideas inside the White House at the moment about how to avoid what looks like a pretty catastrophic defeat? I mean, Kagan is even saying it's defeat and just he's going to have to accept defeat and hope that the American voters forget that he was defeated.

16:38And he will never say he was defeated, right? No. What I have heard from folks inside the White House is that for many of them, the best case scenario is that they end up with something that kind of looks like the JCPOA, so the Obama-Iran deal. The Strait of Hormuz is open and Donald Trump gets to stamp his name on both of those things and kind of walk away. But after you have shaken the hornet's nest, after you have forced Iran and the regime there to even understand their own power, right? Like diplomats will say that Iran also is kind of surprised by how like steadfast they've been. That regime was kind of on the ropes before the war started, right?

17:21The economy was terrible. Yes, they'd killed thousands in the streets. Thousands of people in January because they had to. And if anything, this seems to have made the regime more solidified. Yes. And the leadership of the country, the new leadership, who we still have yet to see, the new Ayatollah, which people should know, but he is the son of the one that was killed by the United States and Israel. And at the end of the day, it sounds like the son is more hardline. So it means that the problem of Iran, as the United States has put it for a very long time, is only going to get harder to deal with, right?

17:57And I don't know that Donald Trump really thinks about or cares about the long-term impacts, right? He doesn't really care what the next president has to deal with. He cares about what he has to, as president, deal with. And the folks in the White House are looking for an off-ramp so he can say that he had a successful something or other. And really, honestly, the American people, and this is just true of any foreign entanglement, They only care deeply, right, the vast public, if American boots are on the ground, right? If the American people are put in harm's way. And since we haven't put boots on the ground, we've lost 13 service members.

18:35But if we haven't put boots on the ground, then the American people will probably forget. So long as gas prices come down. Exactly. if gas prices go down, which the CEO of Exxon just last week said on a call, it's unlikely to happen that the full impacts of what's going on with oil has not hit the market yet. And so it doesn't seem like gas prices are going to go down anytime soon. And a lot of folks haven't actually made that connection, that Iran is the reason why gas prices are high. Not everybody. And honestly, Trump's voters are going to get hit more. They're more likely to live in rural areas where there's the lack of access to public transportation.

19:14And so they're driving longer, right? They're driving 50 miles sometimes in a day from home to work to the grocery store. And that impact they care about. But the kind of, you know, whether we went to war, right? Like that aspect of it is hard for them to grasp sometimes. It's such a good point because actually what, cities are overwhelmingly democratic. Cities are the places where you have public transport networks. The people who have to drive to their healthcare job, to their manufacturing job, to their farming job, they tend to be more of Donald Trump's base. And they're the ones that were hit by tariffs in the first place and are now being hit by the high gas prices.

19:52I wonder, are you seeing any signs, Eugene, that that's having an impact on Trump's, I know obviously it's having an impact on the polling. We're all seeing the impact on the polling and the impact. Is it having an impact on a perception that the White House likes to say Trump's playing 4D chess and that he is the skilled negotiator and it is all of the art of the deal. Is that image being impacted by what's happening right now, do you think? I do. And I think there's the MAGA base who isn't going to go anywhere, right? In 2018, when I was at Politico, we went to Iowa and we went to a soybean farm.

20:31And the soybean farmer, this is when he was having his first fight with China over soybeans and tariffs. And the farmer had lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in months. And I asked him, he was a Trump voter, I said, so do you blame Donald Trump? Are you upset with him? He said, I have to believe that he has a plan. And I think that has led me to believe that Trump can convince these folks that voted for him and supported for him, the hardcore folks, to believe anything, right? He has this uncanny political ability to convince people of anything and make them doubt their own eyes and ears, right?

21:07when they really support them. I also think, back to that psychology aspect, it's very hard to say that you were wrong, right? Like, you asked my husband. It's very difficult for me to be like, you know, I messed up, I was wrong. And I think that's the same thing with voters, is that at the end of the day, it is very difficult to say, I voted for the wrong person. Who messes up you or your husband, by the way? I can't believe you ever do, Eugene. It must be always his fault, right? It's always him. That's what I say. Always the one who messes up. Always wrong. It's crazy. It's crazy. And yet I love him anyway.

21:36Funny how it works. It's so funny. And so like his ability to convince him of anything. However, the folks that people need to watch are the Republicans that held their nose and voted for him because they didn't like Kamala. The, I call them rented voters, right? The voters who maybe voted for Democrats, black men, brown men, who may have voted for Democrats in the past, who thought Donald Trump was going to keep us out of wars and keep the prices low. And the independents. Those are the folks where the view of Donald Trump has changed. The people that he convinced who kind of like had an issue with some of the racism, had an issue with some of the way he spoke about people, about women, about everybody.

22:16But they voted for him anyway because they believe their lives would be better. And that is key. And if their life does not feel better, they do not believe that he's the key negotiator. They do not believe that he is the man who can fix it all. I alone can fix it. They are seeing that that is not the case. And what do you think some of those MAGA voters, like the guy, the soybean farmer who you interviewed in Iowa, I'm wondering too, just the nature of the fact of this second term, how much time and attention, let alone money, and I think we haven't got to the really interesting reporting yet, which is starting to be done on how much this war is actually in dollars and cents costing American voters, because I think that's going to be super interesting too.

22:56But what do they think of the amount of time and attention Donald Trump is spending on these foreign ventures? I mean, I don't know if most of them could find Venezuela on a map. I'm not sure I could have found Venezuela on a map until Maduro came onto the picture. Until recently, I actually did go to Caracas, I think, for Chavez's funeral. So maybe hopefully after that, I could still find it on a map. But most people, you know, Venezuela's far away. It didn't impact most people. Maduro did not impact most American voters. Iran also. I mean, ironically, it was Donald Trump who said, Venezuela is close.

23:31It's not a 20-hour flight away. That's why we're not getting involved in the Middle East. And then, of course, a couple of months later, he gets involved in the Middle East. And now he's going to China, which is a very important trip. I mean, there are a lot of people nervous that he's going to undermine Taiwan's position. I just had a text actually from Senator Chris Coons, who we spoke to when we were in Davos, who said that he's concerned that Trump may well give away something substantial on either AI or Taiwan just to have a win as he sees it on trade at the summit, because Trump's going to want to come away and say he got something out of it.

24:04But Koons is saying also that he thinks Iran does significantly weaken Trump because of how he's mishandled it and because of the divisions that it's created with our allies. Of course, Xi Jinping knows this and knows that Americans are worried about this. There are very real issues that need to be dealt with the Chinese. But I could imagine quite a lot of MAGA voters might be thinking, why is he going off again? Why does he keep doing these foreign things when we're paying$7 a gallon at the gas pump in some states in America for gas? I mean, it just feels like his attention is focused elsewhere.

24:40And maybe that's the legacy element that you're talking about. But I wonder whether that also has an impact on MAGA voters at some point. Why is he flying to China? Why is he spending so much time in Iran? Why is he talking about the reflecting pool that he keeps calling the reflecting pond? Why is he knocking down the East Wing? Why is he putting challenge coins on the doors around the White House and gluing them? Why is he doing all of these things that don't impact my life? Right. That is what voters care about. And this is sometimes when you talk to politicians, as we both do all the time, sometimes some of them really grasp that at the end of the day, they don't have the power.