President Trump is having what might be called Communist Week.
It began Monday with a high-profile visit to Gracie Mansion, where he met New York’s controversial Mayor Mamdani.
On Wednesday, Trump welcomed another Communist leader to Washington, rolling out the red carpet for Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Trump and first lady Melania Trump greeted Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, as they stepped off their plane at Joint Base Andrews. The couples then walked together along the red carpet while a 21-gun salute rang out, followed by the national anthems of the United States and China.
Trump even sent a US Air Force jet overhead to greet Xi, setting the stage for Thursday’s planned military spectacle: a flyover featuring F-22 fighters and a B-2 bomber ahead of the leaders’ Oval Office meeting and state dinner.
Let’s hope the impressive display of American military power is matched by equal determination in the private talks.
For all of Trump’s elaborate diplomatic courtesies, he appears to have no illusions about China’s intentions or its effort to challenge America’s position as the world’s leading power.
During his second term, the president has moved with calculated speed to dismantle China’s expanding footholds in America’s strategic neighborhood.
The Greenland security agreement he signed at the United Nations on Tuesday prevents China from establishing bases or expanding its influence in America’s Arctic backyard.
He has also pushed Chinese port operators out of the Panama Canal and secured majority control over Venezuelan oil supplies that Beijing had been targeting.
Even Trump’s confrontational stance toward Canada is partly aimed at pulling America’s northern neighbor away from China’s orbit.
Lay down the law!
As Melania Trump accompanies Peng on a visit to the National Gallery of Art, Republican China hawks such as Sen. Tom Cotton are urging Trump to be direct with Xi. They want him to demand an end to the theft of US artificial-intelligence models and to China’s threats against countries including Taiwan and Japan.
Trump could also continue pressing Xi to free Jimmy Lai, the Hong Kong publisher who remains in detention.
The irony is hard to miss: Democrats are now presenting themselves as China hawks after years of accommodating Beijing, particularly during Joe Biden’s time as vice president and president.
Hunter Biden made millions of dollars from China, critics contend, while Joe Biden treated Xi deferentially and allowed China to militarize islands in the South China Sea and take American intellectual property with little resistance.
Yet Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer has accused Trump of “once again bend[ing] the knee to the CCP [Chinese Communist Party].”
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Far-left Sen. Bernie Sanders, meanwhile, called on Trump to “sit down and negotiate with President Xi for a comprehensive treaty to establish . . . a ban on superintelligence.”
And pigs might fly.
The Trump administration is treating China far more seriously than Democrats did as America’s principal rival in the struggle for global leadership. That competition is especially intense in artificial intelligence, an arms race Trump wants to rebrand as SI, or Super Intelligence.
As Trump says repeatedly: “Whoever wins AI, WINS!”
Technology executives are reportedly confident that the United States can prevail, even as some appeal to Washington for tighter regulation and protection from legal liability.
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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent predicts that the United States will control 80% of the world’s computing capacity by 2028, up from roughly 60% last year.
Apocalypse not!
In his UN speech Tuesday, Trump dismissed the apocalyptic warnings of AI doomers that the robots will kill us all unless the UN or some similar global entity oversees AI development.
“We’re leading now over China by a lot and everyone else, and we’re going to keep it that way. We’re going to keep it very, very straight and very strong. I’m not going to stifle growth of anything that’s going to be bigger than the Industrial Revolution,” Trump said.
“We will be very careful, and that’s why we have a Department of Justice.”
Judging by Beijing’s secrecy and malevolence in allowing COVID-19 to spread from its Wuhan lab around the world, any global supervisory regime would not constrain China, only the US.
Bessent has at least managed to strike a deal with Beijing to establish an emergency hotline for the two countries to communicate in the event of an AI emergency, but again that relies on trust.
While Trump’s domestic rivals underestimate Trump’s resolve to best China, you can bet Xi doesn’t.
Trump received an uncharacteristically enthusiastic hearing at the UN Tuesday — his speech was interrupted three times by applause, on Iran, Gaza and Malania Trump’s efforts to repatriate Ukrainian children from Russia.
The crowd applauded again as he finished.
The assembled global leaders may be starting to realize that Trump is good for the world, even if Americans barely notice.
But while kid gloves, warm smiles and quiet subterfuge are necessary to win the contest with China without risking a trade war or worse, the same can’t be said for New York City’s current toxic leadership.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered the message to Mamdani this week that a lot of New Yorkers wish Trump had.
“Shame on you, Mr. Mamdani,” Netanyahu said in a video message to the mayor ahead of the PM’s UN speech Thursday.
“Shame on you for supporting the Hamas terrorist monsters who butchered our people. Shame on you for inciting riots against New York Jews.”
By contrast, Trump could not have been more charming to Mamdani, standing alongside the mayor at a press conference saying he had the potential to be a “great” mayor.
Wrong to raise stature
Why normalize Mamdani by granting him equal stature before the midterms when Republican candidates across the country are running on the craziness of the far-left DSA faction of the Democrats, which has Mamdani as its leader and his good friend, the Hamas-loving 9/11 apologist Hasan Piker, as its poster boy?
Mamdani, who normally has a ghastly grin plastered on his face, was uncharacteristically somber-faced.
He put on the appearance of eating something distasteful as Trump gushed over him.
Trump probably wants to coax the mayor into not ruining the hometown he loves, but Mamdani just wants to trick Trump into giving him millions of dollars to waste on more socialist boondoggles that will entrench his power and make New Yorkers’ lives worse.
The one way to deal with Mamdani and save New York is to support Bruce Blakeman, who is catching up to Kathy Hochul in the latest polls of the all-important gubernatorial race.
But if Mandani is so great, as Trump is telling us, why would we need Blakeman?
Schmoozing Xi we can stomach, but no more with Mandani, please.