Amid an outpouring of condemnation over US president-elect Donald Trump’s telephone conversation with President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), some prominent US conservatives are commending his decision to take her call.
Trump’s conversation with Tsai on Friday broke decades of US diplomatic policy, risking a serious rift with China by calling into question one of Beijing’s self-described “core interests” — the “one China” policy, to which then-US president Richard Nixon agreed in 1978.
“I would much rather have Donald Trump talking to President Tsai than to Cuba’s Raul Castro or Iran’s Hasan Rouhani,” US Senator Ted Cruz — Trump’s main challenger and a fierce critic during this year’s US Republican primary race — said on Twitter on Saturday. “This is an improvement.”
US President Barack Obama has spoken with Rouhani by telephone and met Castro on a trip to Cuba.
Ari Fleischer, White House spokesman under former US president George W. Bush, did not think that accepting the call was a bad idea.
“China has been increasingly aggressive with us because they know we won’t do anything meaningful about it,” Fleischer said on Twitter. “I don’t mind Trump pushing back.”
Any US move implying support for Taiwanese independence — even calling Tsai “president,” as Trump did in a tweet announcing the call — prompts grave offense in China.
However, some critics thought that Trump had crossed a dangerous line.
“What has happened in the last 48 hours is not a shift. These are major pivots in foreign policy w/out any plan. That’s how wars start,” US Senator Chris Murphy said on Twitter.
Senior Trump aide Kellyanne Conway brushed aside the criticism, insisting that the call did not necessarily indicate a change of policy.
“Senator Murphy’s tweet is pretty incendiary,” she told CNN late on Friday. “This is how wars are starting and it is a major policy shift because you get a phone call? That is pretty negative.”
Asked whether Trump’s decision to take Tsai’s call was the result of a mistake by an inexperienced staff, she said the real-estate billionaire was fully aware of the implications.
Trump’s other defenders included US Senator Tom Cotton.
“I commend president-elect Trump for his conversation with President Tsai Ing-wen, which reaffirms our commitment to the only democracy on Chinese soil,” Cotton said in a statement.
“Obama breaks w/decades of US policy on Cuba & gets endless fawning coverage,” conservative journalist Stephen Hayes said on Twitter. “Trump breaks w/US policy by phoning Taiwan & he’s reckless?”
Trump received criticism on another matter from an unexpected source on Friday: outspoken former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, who strongly supported him during his campaign.
A favorite of the powerful far-right Tea Party movement, Palin condemned Trump’s deal with the air conditioner maker Carrier Corp this week to keep 1,100 jobs in Indiana instead of shipping hundreds to Mexico, in return for what the company said would be a US$7 million tax break from the state.
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
STEADFAST FRIEND: The bills encourage increased Taiwan-US engagement and address China’s distortion of UN Resolution 2758 to isolate Taiwan internationally The Presidential Office yesterday thanked the US House of Representatives for unanimously passing two Taiwan-related bills highlighting its solid support for Taiwan’s democracy and global participation, and for deepening bilateral relations. One of the bills, the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act, requires the US Department of State to periodically review its guidelines for engagement with Taiwan, and report to the US Congress on the guidelines and plans to lift self-imposed limitations on US-Taiwan engagement. The other bill is the Taiwan International Solidarity Act, which clarifies that UN Resolution 2758 does not address the issue of the representation of Taiwan or its people in
DEFENDING DEMOCRACY: Taiwan shares the same values as those that fought in WWII, and nations must unite to halt the expansion of a new authoritarian bloc, Lai said The government yesterday held a commemoration ceremony for Victory in Europe (V-E) Day, joining the rest of the world for the first time to mark the anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe. Taiwan honoring V-E Day signifies “our growing connections with the international community,” President William Lai (賴清德) said at a reception in Taipei on the 80th anniversary of V-E Day. One of the major lessons of World War II is that “authoritarianism and aggression lead only to slaughter, tragedy and greater inequality,” Lai said. Even more importantly, the war also taught people that “those who cherish peace cannot
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on Friday expressed concern over the rate at which China is diversifying its military exercises, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Saturday. “The rates of change on the depth and breadth of their exercises is the one non-linear effect that I’ve seen in the last year that wakes me up at night or keeps me up at night,” Paparo was quoted by FT as saying while attending the annual Sedona Forum at the McCain Institute in Arizona. Paparo also expressed concern over the speed with which China was expanding its military. While the US