President Donald Trump's state visit to China ended with few gains for the United States, according to one of his biographers, and he predicted the president will try to whip up a win the only way he knows how.
Author Michael Wolff told The Daily Beast's "Inside Trump's Head" podcast that Chinese President Xi Jinping displayed political, economic and military dominance over the 79-year-old president during his visit to Beijing, and he said Trump has to realize his failure.
“I mean, I don’t see how you can characterize what happened in China as anything more than a win for the Chinese and an embarrassment for Trump,” Wolff said.
“Let’s remember: China was the point of Trump’s political enterprise," the author added. "China was responsible for all of the problems in America … This was Trump’s central issue — [it] was the central issue in 2016, remained the central issue when he came back into office. In 10 years of the Trump era, we have only seen China become more powerful economically, politically, and in their military, so that’s what Trump has accomplished.”
Trump likes to project a posture of dominance, according to his former biographer, but he said the president often ends up groveling when his bullying doesn't work.
“It’s interesting that he can go from pure confrontation to pure sucking up,” Wolff said. “Again, there are no goals here. The goals are really irrelevant to the fact that Trump can come out of a situation and say, ‘I won,’ which he’s doing now: ‘It’s all great, everything is perfect, nothing to see here – all good.’”
The president is likely self-aware enough to understand the perception that his visit didn't produce the results he had hoped.
“I think he probably does understand, ‘Man, these Chinese, this has been a lot more difficult than I thought it would be, we’re really kind of screwed here, so how do I look — me personally — look less screwed?’” Wolff said.
That means Trump will try to save face the same way he always does, Wolff said – and that's cashing in for himself and his family.
“It’s always ‘Look, what’s the silver lining here?’ and what’s the silver lining is always how much money can we make off of this," Wolff said. "You know, life is a transaction: 'How do we get something? Even if the overall deal is not looking good, maybe there’s side deals we can we can get,' and I think that we’re going to see likely side deals galore.”