Wrapping Up the Trump-Xi Summit / The President vs. the White House Press Corps

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0:32From the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch. As Donald Trump wraps up a three-day summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, what did the two men discuss and what has this U.S. diplomacy accomplished? Plus, a federal judge rules against the administration after President blocks three news outlets from the White House grounds. Welcome, I'm Kyle Peterson with The Wall Street Journal. We're joined today by my colleagues on the WSJ's opinion pages, editorial board member Kate O'Dell and columnist Kim Strassel. President Trump rolled out the red carpet for Xi Jinping's arrival this week at Andrews Air Base, held a state dinner for him with America's tech titans, and capped it off Friday with a visit to the National Archives.

1:21So what has this international diplomacy accomplished? Let's start with David Perdue, America's ambassador to Beijing, answering that question Friday on Fox News. I will tell you from the inside that this is the first Chinese president visit in over a decade. It would be irresponsible for us not to engage with them. And from March of last year, I'm sorry, October of last year, when we had the first meeting in Busan to the May summit, which you covered, to this summit, great progress is being made on the real issues. I mean, think about this. A year ago, when President Trump put the tariffs on, that got them to the table.

1:55And we now are in a situation where we're finding our way forward. The trade deficit's been reduced by 50 percent. Look, the old adage of deliverables in a relationship that we have with China is really not measurable in many ways. In some ways, the best thing that we accomplished in this visit is to continue the conversation. They talked about going to APEC-26. President Trump would like to do that. President Xi would like to come to G20. that may happen this year. That will be a historic year of conversation. Okay, talking beats the alternative sometimes, but what's your perspective as we now get to the end of this summit on what the U.S.

2:32interests here are and how they've come out? Well, first of all, I don't think anybody objects to China and the United States talking. I think one of the questions here is just whether is the talking advancing United States interests or is it kind of obscuring the real competition that we have with China militarily, economically, and even ideologically. And so I think that's a valid question of this summit. Now, the list of deliverables, as he was saying there, is pretty short. I mean, the United States and China did agree to a temporary extension of the trade truce. That truce was developed after Trump threatened his tariffs and China retaliated by, you know, threatening to choke off the world's rare earth mineral supply.

3:13So you have something of a short extension of that trade truce and an agreement to keep talking on other issues. Now, one thing that's interesting about that is why a two-month extension? There are going to be two more meetings, and there is a valid question here about whether the United States and China are looking to cut a larger deal, maybe even larger than just trade issues and touch on some other really fundamental U.S. interests, such as Taiwan, which we can talk about. But that is one of the questions of the meeting. Is this trust building toward kind of a larger accommodation with China that may not be good for the United States?

3:48Is it an attempt to drive progress on some substantive issues, such as more clarity around their nuclear buildup and their military buildup and deterring them from provoking a crisis in the Pacific? My concern at this juncture is that there may be more of a larger deal here in play that I think would not be good for the United States from how it looks currently. To that point, the reporting out from China's official news agency says that on Thursday, Xi Jinping urged the U.S. to, quote, adhere to the correct position of opposing Taiwan independence, unquote. David Perdue, in a different section of that interview, said that there was no change in U.S.

4:30policy, U.S. stance toward Taiwan during this summit. But certainly Xi Jinping wants to keep asking and keep putting the pressure on that point. What is the distinction here, Kate, that listeners should be aware of? And why does it matter whether the United States opposes independence or does not support independence? What's the distinction? Well, first of all, it is unambiguously good news that the president made no change in Taiwan policy at this meeting. Your question about why is it a big deal if the United States were to, quote, quote, oppose Taiwan's independence. Our current policy is that we, quote, do not support Taiwan's independence.

5:07And we expect for that matter to be resolved peacefully. And I think Xi is playing the opening here to say Americans won't think that's a big deal, right, to make this change. Maybe Donald Trump won't think that's a big deal. And it really would set the conditions to allow Xi to subdue the island, whether through his gray zone tactics, that kind of coercion or a quarantine or a blockade or possibly even a military assault. And the difference is really because it concedes Xi's framing that Taiwan is a rogue island and that the threat to peace here is Taiwan going out and declaring itself independent from China.

5:44And in reality, Taiwan already governs itself. It's a democratic island. It already has the status that it wants. So what Taiwan wants is to be left alone and to keep the status quo of being a prosperous, free country. And the only parties that are obsessed with Taiwan's independence are in Beijing. They want to change the status quo. They want to bring Taiwan under Chinese Communist Party control, which it has never been under the CCP's control. And so you have to hope here that Trump isn't going to fall for this charade because it would make it significantly more likely that Xi would try to provoke a crisis in the Taiwan Strait because he would say, the Americans have accepted my framing.

6:26And I take that as progress toward my goal of subduing the island and, you know, green light to do it. And Trump does not want a crisis in the Western Pacific on his watch for just a multitude of economic and strategic and regional alliance reasons. So I think, you know, the hope here is that he sees through what she is offering here and does not fall for the independence charade. Hang tight. We'll be right back in a moment. Why can't we get AI to production? Our competitors are all ready. How do we keep data secure? When do we actually see ROI? All this talk about AI, but talk doesn't transform businesses.

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8:11Welcome back. You mentioned China's nuclear buildup and some reporting suggesting that that has been a focus of U.S. diplomacy. Here's the top of a Wall Street Journal news story on Thursday. It says the Trump administration has been quietly holding talks with China about its rapidly expanding nuclear arsenal amid doubts over Beijing's compliance with a 30-year test ban. Story goes on to say that China currently has more than 600 nuclear weapons and is on track to have more than 1 ,000 by 2030, which is a lot of nuclear weapons, Kate, being built. What are the U.S. goals in this diplomacy? And do you suppose that those were advanced by this meeting with Xi?

8:55It's not clear whether the nuclear issue came up directly in this meeting. Now, the Chinese Communist Party has refused to talk to the United States about its nuclear breakout. And every year, the Pentagon comes out with a Chinese military power report. And often many years in a row, this breakout looks faster and faster. And, you know, it is the the Chinese have gone well beyond what they would need if they just want to keep a homeland deterrent. They clearly have broader nuclear ambitions than that. And that that may include kind of battlefield tactical nukes to try to get the U.S. to stay out of any, for instance, Taiwan scenario like we were talking about.

9:32And so we don't really have any insight into this massive nuclear breakout that the Chinese Communist Party is doing. And so one of, I think, a bright spot in the Trump administration's China policy has been that the State Department made public allegations that the Chinese tested a nuclear weapon in 2020 and that they have evidence really showing that that's true. And it kind of gets to the heart of the dishonesty about this nuclear breakout. And so that's one issue where I think Trump is right to raise the profile of it and to explain to Americans why it's dangerous to us. At the same time, I mean, the Chinese have been completely unwilling to enter any sort of arms control talk at all with the United States.

10:18they want to get to parity, nuclear parity with the United States before they negotiate. And so to the extent Trump can try to get more sense of what's going on with their nuclear buildup, to highlight it to Americans and to try to constrain it, I think that would be a good policy goal. But they see themselves, I think, as an adversary to the United States and one that intends to displace the United States as a global leader. Another recent news story that I think underlines that, Kate, is this remarkable tale of missing F-35 stealth fighter parts. Here's the piece of a Bloomberg story recently.

10:57It says UPS was shipping a cockpit canopy and weapons-made door from an Australian military F-35 that was being sent to the U.S. for inspection and possible repair or disposal in late May. And then it ended up diverted, apparently, to Hong Kong. And now it has gone missing. Kate, what's your read of this situation? I mean, maybe I am a little bit naive and behind the news on how global these supply chains for these top-notch pieces of U.S. military hardware actually are. But the idea that they are shipped through commercial services was news to me. Is there a signature required on that? Can we leave it on the doorstep?

11:37Kate, what's your sense of this? And if we're really dealing with a nation that we're trying to cut deals with, you'd think if we had a package misdelivered onto their porch, we should be able to get it back. It's a good question whether Trump raised this with Xi. We don't know yet whether he said, hey, you know, can we have our F-35 parts back? The circumstances, such as we understand them around the diversion of these F-35 parts, are very mysterious. And they do underscore that we are in a much larger military and technological competition with China as much as we might like to paper over that or have a better trading relationship with them.

12:14I mean, the Communist Party would very much like to get its hands on a F-35 canopy. The United States, one of its great advantages is its stealth technology, and it's improved a lot over the past 20 years. And so the Chinese want to get a hold of our military equipment and understand how do we help U.S. pilots evade Chinese radars. And so they will try to get a hold of this technology and use it to their advantage. I mean, the J-20, China's latest fighter aircraft, if you look up a photo of it, it will look familiar to you. We know that they simply try to steal U.S. military technology and rip it off.

12:50But I think the story ahead of Xi's arrival, I mean, really, Trump should raise the issue with Xi if the goal here is a strategically stable relationship. But I think it's just one more example where there is a larger competition going on here. And the Trump administration in its first term did a lot to really raise the profile of that, quote, great power competition, and especially how China also works with Russia and North Korea and Iran to work against the United States. And so the question here is whether are they looking at the relationship with China in a different framework? And to kind of loop us back to where we started, I mean, one of the arguments that I hear around why we should try to have this calm, stable relationship with China is because the U.S.

13:37has some vulnerabilities. We have some vulnerabilities in rare earth minerals. We are short on missile interceptors and other kind of military equipment that we would need in any kind of West Pacific conflict. And so we need to take some time. We need to have a good relationship with them while we rearm and become more competitive. But if that's what we're trying to do, then you actually use the loot that you have to pass the$1.5 trillion defense budget to make the U.S. economically structurally more competitive. You don't use that time to look for a larger grand bargain with China that might involve handing away Taiwan in exchange for something like agriculture purchases.

14:13So, again, the summit here, while it doesn't look like maybe all that much tangible came out of it, there are some much larger questions about where the administration is going that I think are still looming for the remainder of the year. Hang tight. We'll be right back after one more break. You're either all in on this model or maybe you're building with another. You're either speed or is it security? You're either custom or are you ready to use? Or you're AWS AI. With hundreds of models, ready to use agents, speed and security built in, you don't have to pick a side. You can have them all. How will AI revolutionize your business?

14:57AWS AI is how. Don't forget, you can reach the latest episode of Potomac Watch anytime. Just ask your smart speaker. Play the Opinion Potomac Watch podcast. From the Opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch. Welcome back. If TV coverage of the China summit this week seemed to be lacking, one reason might be this fight that President Trump has picked with the White House press corps. Kim, it started last Friday. President Trump said he was proud to announce via True Social that effective immediately, he was banning CNN, MSNOW and Politico from the White House grounds. He said this was a result of their constant reporting of fake news.

15:47Media outlets shouldn't be able to constantly write or report fiction and lies when they're covering the president of the United States. He was then asked the same day by reporters if there was any specific coverage he was referring to. And he said, no, it's simply you get sick of reading their coverage over a couple of years. And can pity the poor lawyers who had to try to make a legal case for this then. What ended up happening is media outlets sued. The administration went into court and actually said no. And it was because of some specific stories issuing letters dated this Tuesday to those outlets complaining.

16:24about leaking of classified information and sensitive national security secrets. Not convincing, though, to the federal judge, the Trump-appointed judge, who ended up with this case, who then on Thursday issued a temporary restraining order allowing those outlets back into the White House grounds. But in the meantime, the TV pool, which is made up of five TV networks that share the duties and the costs, the financial burden of covering the president, including when he travels to the United States, had said that they were not going to play ball without CNN. And so the result of this was an interesting lack of coverage of some major news events, including this China summit and the president's trip to New York.

17:08Yeah, so I see this through two separate frames. One is the political question. One is the legal question. And on the politics, I find this a bit head scratching. First of all, why pick this fight now? And even the president seemed to admit that there was no clear trigger for this. He complained on True Social that he'd removed these three outlets as a result of their constant reporting of fake news. But then he told reporters in the Oval Office that there was no particular piece or story that had set him off at rally. Rather, and I quote him here, it's really just cumulative stories over the last two years.

17:47You get sick of it. Okay, but here's the political cost of having engaged in this. As you note, one of the outlets that was banned, CNN, is also a member of the television pool system, which includes CBS and ABC, NBC, and Fox. And out of solidarity, even though it was just these three outlets that had been banned, all of the members of that TV pool system decided that they were going to boycott the White House. So this president, who had an enormous week of news, United Nations, General Assembly, the visit by the Chinese president, a lot of that did not get TV coverage. And the thing that is weird to me about this is, yes, there are certain mega voters out there who love to watch the president engage in these fights with the media.

18:36But those people are already voting. They'll crawl over glass to go vote for Trump this fall. The people he needs to be reaching as a wider audience, those on the fence, those who don't get excited about these drag out fights with the press, they want to hear about plans for prices, how the war in Iran is going to end. And all of that was denied the president because of this. And in a case that, as you know, legally, he almost instantly lost as well. And the administration is saying that it disagrees with some of the precedents under which this judge ruled. And maybe it intends to appeal them to the D.C.

19:13Circuit and to the Supreme Court. But it might be worth teasing out a little bit of the legal arguments, Kim, because there is a tension here, I think. I mean, the White House is the president's office. The Oval Office is a private and intimate space, even though it is a government building. to say nothing of the residential parts of the White House. On the other hand, there are pieces of the White House that are government workplaces where officials do their business. They are the site of state events like state dinners that we had this week with the Chinese president. And so just to explain the distinctions, the D.C.

19:51Circuit Court of Appeals has a precedent from 1977 that this judge relied on. And what it says is that there was no challenge in this 1977 case to the idea that the president has some discretion over those non-public spaces and particularly his choices of individual journalists, individual news outlets with whom he treats and gives individualized interviews. But it suggests that there are also portions of the White House grounds that have been created kind of as a non-public form for the media. And so this is just reading a section of the ruling that the judge relied on here. It says the White House has voluntarily decided to establish press facilities for correspondents who need to report therefrom.

20:40These press facilities are perceived as being open to all bona fide White House journalists. It goes on to say, White House press facilities having been made publicly available as a source of information for newsmen, the protection afforded news gathering under the First Amendment guarantees the freedom of the press, requires this access not be denied arbitrarily or for less than compelling reasons. And so the gist there, Kim, is some of the figures I've seen reported is there are something like a thousand journalists who have hard passes, these press badges to get into the White House grounds.

21:13And the idea is that that is not the kind of discretion we're talking about when you're giving the president the leeway to say, I'm going to pick that correspondent to give a one on one interview. It's more like the White House has set up a neutral process and it can change the process. It can tighten those criteria. But according to this precedent, which, again, the Trump administration says it disagrees with and maybe it will challenge once it starts giving out a thousand press passes under some kind of neutral criteria, then it can't under the First Amendment say, well, I just don't like you.

21:46I just don't like your coverage. So you're gone. Yeah, just to boil this down, what this case is really dealing with is the question of broad access to the broad White House grounds and areas that the press is just generally allowed to go in and out of, including, for instance, the press room. And it's worth noting that the administration has actually had at least two prior lawsuits here kind of related to this. One of these was brought by a former CNN reporter, Jim Acosta, during the first Trump administration after the White House pulled his press credentials. And a judge sided with Acosta after CNN sued and ordered his press pass to be given back to him.

22:29And the White House just complied with the order and kind of dropped the suit. So it didn't go very far. The more relevant one here, I think, is he barred the Associated Press from attending certain White House events after AP said it wasn't going to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. And it sued. And initially, a judge says you have to give him access. But then the U.S. Court of Appeals in a 2-1 decision put out a ruling that said that, in fact, the problem for AP was that they were asking to go into certain restricted spaces that can only provide for a very small number of reporters like the Oval Office and Air Force One.

23:11And that, therefore, they didn't necessarily have a right to do that. But as a part of that ruling, the judges also said, that being said, you can't just ban journalists from spaces that are generally open to the press. And that's like following this precedent that you mentioned from the 1970s. So, you know, the White House has a couple of options here. You can appeal this, and it sounds like it is moving along that path and argue that that precedent is incorrect. I mean, the other option, which is interesting because they've already discussed doing this, is they could just entirely move the press corps off the White House grounds.

23:46There's been a discussion about putting them in an adjacent building, the Eisenhower Executive Office building, and have all sort of press things there. That would be a big change for the press corps, which has always kind of reveled in its presence in the White House. We'll see where this goes. But I do see right now what just came out of this judge is simply the very following, I think, kind of close following of some presidents that have now been ruled upon and reiterated even in recent years. Kicking the press out of the White House grounds entirely would be an escalation if President Trump wants one in response to this ruling or whatever the appeals court does or maybe the Supreme Court does in response to this specific dispute.

24:31And it would not raise the same kinds of First Amendment targeting legal questions, I think. Again, if you have a thousand people with hard passes and you change the rules and you say, OK, the hard passes are now going to be for the building next door and we're not generally going to let the press into the White House, that would be a neutral rule. It bears noting that the White House press office has not always been the White House press office, that the briefing room until the next administration was a swimming pool. And so, you know, under this kind of theory, President Trump maybe could turn it back into a swimming pool, divert the construction crews after they're finished working on the ballroom.

25:13But Kim, part of what makes that a difficult choice for the president, particularly this president is that he loves meeting with the press. He loves doing these open-ended interviews where he invites people into the Oval Office and he answers questions. And sometimes he's signing executive orders and he holds the order up and he shows it around, shows off his signature. And so I find it hard to imagine President Trump in particular doing that. I mean, we are in an age of new media. We have the White House now launching Trump TV. And so there are more ways than ever for politicians to get out their own messages and try to reach the public in ways that were not the case 10 or 20 years ago.

25:58On the other hand, so far, they have not matched the reach of the traditional media. And so I find it hard to imagine the idea of President Trump saying, you know, all you people who are putting me on TV, I'm not going to move you outside the fence. There is an element of this that feels in some ways a little bit like a dying fight. I mean, a fight against sort of an older system, as it were. The White House, it seems to bounce back and forth at times between different approaches for how it's going to deal with the press. And by the way, I certainly understand their frustration at times. Let's be clear.

26:33I've been doing this for a long time and I have never in my life witnessed the major press outlets be so incredibly open in their hostility to one side over the other to seem to be batting so hard for one team. But it strikes me that the better approach, and you see the White House using this at certain points, is when they agree to do interviews with all of these characters. And you see the administration engage in this a lot. They'll sit down and if they feel as though the outlet is asking a question that's unfair or biased or on one side, they'll actually just call it out on air. I think that's far more effective.

27:10It kind of puts the interviewer on the spot and signals to people who are watching it that the White House certainly feels as though there's an agenda going on in the press interview. That at least allows them to get their message, continue getting what they have to say out to everyone. And you are right. At a time when the midterms are coming, president needs to be talking to a lot of people. It just seems that taking steps that reduce the coverage and reduce his ability to speak to the country, even if there are other and alternate routes out there for him to be speaking, it does seem to be counterproductive.

27:48Thank you, Kim and Kate. Thank you all for listening. You can email us at pwpodcast at wsj.com. If you like the show, please hit that subscribe button. And we'll be back next week with another edition of Potomac Watch. you're either all in on this model or maybe you're building with another you're either speed or is it security or you're awsai don't pick a side pick them all awsai is how