As Donald Trump returns from his trip to Beijing, where he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping, the consensus of MS NOW’s “Morning Joe” panel is that the American president appears weaker now before the summit.
And Trump all but admitted it.
On Friday morning, longtime political analyst John Heilemann pointed to Trump’s admission that the Chinese leader talked about the US as a “declining nation,” without pushback, was a particularly humiliating effort by the American president to ingratiate himself to Xi.
Pointing to Trump posting on Truth Social, “When President Xi very elegantly referred to the United States as perhaps being a declining nation, he was referring to the tremendous damage we suffered during the four years of Sleepy Joe Biden and the Biden Administration, and on that score, he was 100% correct,” Heilemann admitted he was stunned that Trump would admit that in public thinking it would help him make the case for his presidency.
“So basically, this is Xi Jinping saying, hey, let's not get into war. But the implication was decline, that the U.S. was in decline and Trump's response to that was so sad,” he exclaimed to agreement from the panel. “I mean, not just the fact that he's blaming Joe Biden, but let's read the first sentence of it where he says something like yesterday, when Xi Jinping, so elegantly, I have it here: ‘When President Xi very elegantly referred to the United States as perhaps being a declining nation,’ that's all you need.”
“It's like — that's just — it's an amazing thing to write,’ he elaborated. “It's a wonder — one of the more incredible Trump sentences ever. ... Because I can't ever say anything critical of Xi Jinping. Never does. Right?“
“You didn't have to to pin the tail on the donkey and say, the United States is the declining power for it to be very clear that in the optics and dynamics and on any metric that Trump understands, let alone the rest of the world: which of those two countries is the declining country? “ he added. “And Xi Jinping didn't need to say it directly. It's pretty clear to everyone where they stand in terms of relative power.”