President Donald Trump flew to China to make nice with communist leader Xi Jinping this week. It didn’t sound like the Cold War, or the recent trade wars. The word “détente” was in the air, so for anti-communists who didn’t love President Richard Nixon in China or President Jimmy Carter kissing Soviet dictator Leonid Brezhnev on the cheek, it wasn’t the best look.
Trump called Xi a “great leader,” which sounded more like the Chamber of Commerce than the Victims of Communism Museum. The word “communist” is typically missing from broadcast network coverage of China, which began bemoaning “capitalist” China decades ago under Deng Xiaoping.
The worst network in Beijing, unsurprisingly, was ABC News, which reliably casts Trump in the most negative light. The China trip was hampered by the war in Iran, which Trump is supposedly losing. White House correspondent Mary Bruce, who often sounded positive or defensive notes about President Joe Biden, hit the theme.
“The president had envisioned that he would arrive here today victorious in Iran,” she announced, “that he would use that momentum to help secure deals on trade and technology, other investments and artificial intelligence, that this was a chance to reset the U.S. relationship with China. But those ambitions, now largely overshadowed by the war with Iran.”
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ABC turned to foreign correspondent James Longman, who also cast a pall over the Iran situation: “The big question: how much more pain can the U.S. take from high gas prices created by the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz? And, in many ways, you know, the Iranians have realized they don’t need a weapon of mass destruction, a nuclear weapon. They’ve got this weapon of mass disruption over the Strait of Hormuz. I’m reminded of an Economist magazine front cover last month, which attributed a quote to Napoleon Bonaparte, which said, ‘never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.’ That feels like China’s strategy right now.”
The Economist magazine is as reliably anti-Trump as ABC News, so that citation came as no surprise.
Then, for another set of body blows, ABC foreign correspondent Ian Pannell saw America sinking: “In some senses, this is a diminished America. I think its influence, if not its power, is now in serious doubt, not just from its adversaries, but also from its friends.” The war in Iran split Trump from European allies: “The general view here, I think, is that this was a war of choice, has brought nothing but economic misery for not just the old world, but especially Asia.”
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The surprising network was CBS News, because – surprise! – they somehow failed to get a visa for their new evening anchor Tony Dokoupil to get into China. Instead, he broadcast from Taiwan this week and ended the Wednesday, May 13, “CBS Evening News” on a different note. “Finally, tonight from Taiwan: as President Trump and China’s Xi Jinping prepare to meet, you will hear a lot about American decline and the rise of a powerful new China.” Yes, from ABC.
He continued: “Xi’s China is a marvel by many measures,” but there’s also negatives: “China’s population is in decline, though, well below replacement rates. Unemployment is high, with millions in rural provinces living in poverty, and massive housing complexes that now sit empty. Most importantly, and perhaps I’m stating the obvious here, none of these problems are a topic on the Chinese evening news. In fact, pessimism itself is forbidden on the Chinese internet. The freedoms we have, they simply do not.” This is the benefit of not having “minders” following you around.
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On Thursday, Dokoupil went further on the theme that, while “communism had failed in the old Soviet Union” and democracy seemed triumphant, today China is challenging that argument. So Dokoupil brought up “democracy activist” Jimmy Lai, now in a Hong Kong prison. He ran a clip of CBS’s Holly Williams noting Hong Kong is a wonderful city with prosperity. Lai replied: “That’s what Chinese think. They think we just have a body, we don’t have a soul. You guys just make money, have a good life, don’t think about politics, don’t think about freedom, don’t think about human right, don’t think about of law, just eat. Enjoy life….We have soul. We are not a dog.”
Dokoupil concluded: “And when you step back, that is the bigger picture this week, not just which superpower walks away with a mightier military or a larger economy, but whose ideas should lead the future?” This does mark a difference from the old Peter Jennings or Dan Rather model, and could make an argument that Bari Weiss has changed things, at least part of the time.
NBC anchor Tom Llamas was in Beijing and secured an interview with Trump which the liberals thought wasn’t confrontational enough. CNN “fact checker” Daniel Dale claimed Trump lied repeatedly, and Llamas failed to correct him in real time. Some of them were obviously false (like Trump claiming he won in 2020) and some were nitpicking (China doesn’t pay tariffs). NBC published its own “fact check” online.
Because the tone between the two leaders was positive, the end result was less negative than the typical week on the broadcast networks. But if Trump’s conservative backers started complaining about being too accommodating to communists, they might predictably pounce on a “MAGA split” and “more negative news for Trump.”
