Xi Jinping, the President of the People's Republic of China, is “playing [Donald] Trump like a fiddle,” Mexico’s former ambassador to China Jorge Guajardo said Thursday.
From the extravagant welcome in Tiananman Square to a rare dinner in China’s Forbidden City, Guajardo said Trump is falling prey to classic Jinping tactics.
“You don’t have good chemistry with a Chinese leader who doesn’t speak your language and is geared to not develop chemistry,” Guajardo said.
“You leave that meeting thinking ‘It went great,’” Guajardo noted, insisting the goal is to have visitors feel like they’re a part of a special friendship only to “laugh and say ‘No, let’s not confuse all that pomp and circumstance with the meat of the matter.’”
“I would be lying to you if I tell you I didn’t fall for it when I was there,” he said.
Guajardo said that a “bilateral relationship with the US is now just a matter of stroking Trump’s ego,” noting “that’s all it takes.”