Wall Street Journal:
President Donald Trump was expansive on Wednesday about his relationship with a world leader he has gotten to know since taking office.Indeed. What happened to "Trump is working for/with the Russians"? Syria happened.
“We have a very good relationship,” he said in a Wall Street Journal interview in the Oval Office. “We have a great chemistry together. We like each other. I like him a lot. I think his wife is terrific.”
The leader who came in for those warm words? Chinese President Xi Jinping.
It’s safe to say very few people saw that coming. China was, as much as any country, the target of Trump broadsides during the 2016 presidential campaign—for not playing fair in the world economy, for taking advantage of the U.S., for stealing American business, for intimidating its neighbors.
Meantime, of course, Russian President Vladimir Putin was the great-power leader who was supposed to emerge as the Trump favorite, the one who would develop a close relationship and be forgiven for past transgressions.
Continuing:
Yet somehow in the five months or so since Mr. Trump’s election victory, almost the reverse has happened. Now it appears the Trump-Xi relationship may be emerging as the world’s most important.Is that "flexible", or "easy to manipulate"? According to Scott Adams, it may be the latter.
As Mr. Trump recounted in the interview, he spent hours with Mr. Xi at his Mar-a-Lago resort last week, including long stretches minus their retinues. An opening discussion between the two “was scheduled for 10 to 15 minutes, and it lasted for three hours,” Mr. Trump said. “And then the second day we had another 10-minute meeting and that lasted for two hours. We had just a very good chemistry.”
Mr. Xi was the first world leader to learn of the American president’s decision to launch 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles into Syria; Mr. Trump told him over dessert at Mar-a-Lago last Thursday night.
Then the two talked by phone for another hour Tuesday night, specifically about the nuclear threat from North Korea, Mr. Trump said.
Asked whether he could have imagined that kind of relationship emerging from the smoke of campaign rhetoric, Mr. Trump replied simply: “No.”
He added: “He’s so smart. It’s to his advantage. I like to call it flexible.”
Regardless, it is good to see the U.S. having good, arguably great, relations with China. The closer China and the U.S. get, the less influence Russia has in the world.
Before you suggest this is just talk:
And, the president insisted, China may be starting to deliver. Mr. Xi told him in this week’s phone conversation that China has in recent days turned away some North Korean ships bearing coal—perhaps the most important North Korean export—as they were attempting to make deliveries to China.If true, this is a huge step in Sino-American relations.
On the other hand, do you think North Korea is feeling the heat?
The Sun:
US military bosses fear North Korea is ready to detonate a nuclear bomb it has placed in a tunnel.
It is believed North Korea is in the final states of preparing for its sixth nuclear test.
(hat tip to Pinterest for the pic)
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