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.
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
‘COMING MENACINGLY’: The CDC advised wearing a mask when visiting hospitals or long-term care centers, on public transportation and in crowded indoor venues Hospital visits for COVID-19 last week increased by 113 percent to 41,402, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday, as it encouraged people to wear a mask in three public settings to prevent infection. CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said weekly hospital visits for COVID-19 have been increasing for seven consecutive weeks, and 102 severe COVID-19 cases and 19 deaths were confirmed last week, both the highest weekly numbers this year. CDC physician Lee Tsung-han (李宗翰) said the youngest person hospitalized due to the disease this year was reported last week, a one-month-old baby, who does not
RSS