Why Trump’s Fawning China Welcome Might Be His Biggest Gamble

Jonathan Ernst / REUTERS For a president who has spent years promising he’d never let China push the U.S. around, Xi Jinping’s visit to Washington gives Donald Trump an awkward political problem: the Chinese leader gets the red-carpet treatment, while Trump does much of the accommodating.

Trump personally greeted Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, at Joint Base Andrews on Wednesday evening—the first time a president has left the White House to greet a state leader there since 1962, when JFK met British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan.

On Thursday, the Chinese president will get the full ceremonial welcome at the White House, complete with nearly 500 military personnel and a flyover, before Trump hosts a lavish state dinner with senior officials and tech titans.

The visit wraps up on Friday with tea at the White House and a trip to the National Archives.

For Trump, this is not simply diplomacy.

It is a political gamble.

The 80-year-old president has spent years portraying China as a threat to American power and accusing Beijing of stealing American jobs, manipulating trade, and, as recently as July, carrying out what he described as a massive campaign of election interference.

As the midterms approach, he’s also spent months railing against communists and socialists and the supposed threat they pose.

Now, he’s lavishing extraordinary attention on the leader of the Chinese Communist Party.

Little wonder the spectacle is already rubbing some Republicans the wrong way.

Sen.

Roger Wicker, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he would not have invited Xi to Washington for such a high-profile visit, citing China’s actions around the world.

Four other Republican senators–including, somehow, the ailing Mitch McConnell-have signed a letter simultaneously demanding that Trump release more than $15 billion in stalled security assistance for Taiwan.

And MAGA acolyte Laura Loomer said it was “truly embarrassing that American men and women in uniform” were asked to greet “the communist dictator of China” at Joint Base Andrews.