President Donald Trump shrugged off a Chinese cyber intrusion described by the FBI as a “major incident,” saying the U.S. did the same to the other country's government computer networks, but he erupted when pressed to explain how he would respond to the attack.
The 79-year-old president sat down for an interview with Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo, who asked about China's reported weapons transfers to Iran to use against U.S. troops, and Trump said Chinese leader Xi Jinping assured him that wasn't taking place.
"I wrote him a letter asking him not to do that," Trump said, "and he said essentially he is not doing that."
Bartiromo then asked about the alleged cyber attack.
"We heard from the FBI that there was a major cyber attack attributed to China," she said. "What responses under consideration for the cyber attack."
Trump seemed unconcerned.
"They do it to us, we do it to them," he said, echoing language he used when asked about Russia providing weapons to Iran.
"When was the last time we did a cyber attack in China?" Bartiromo countered.
"I'm not going to tell you that," Trump replied. "We do them, they do us, it's been like that for a long time."
"So it's not going to be addressed?" Bartiromo asked, seemingly astonished.
"Maria, I will address things, but it is what it is," he said. "Look, China's China. They are never easy, but we're doing great with China. I'm the toughest person on China anywhere in the world. I put on a hundred percent tariff on Chinese cars. We don't have a Chinese car in the whole country. If you look at Europe there being inundated with Chinese cars, and it's killing their car companies, okay. There is nobody tougher than me – don't forget I put a 20 percent tariff on them for what they've done with fentanyl. I put a penalty, I call it a penalty – I put a 45 percent tariff. I had 145 percent tariff, and literally they were going to go out of business.
"There's never been anybody tougher on China than me," he added. "But I have a good relationship with presidency and that's a good thing. TikTok – billions and billions of dollars, not the biggest thing in terms of China, bigger is the other things that I do, but everybody said they will never approve the deal, it's a hard no, President Xi said it's a hard no, we will never do it. Then American business people got together, paid billions of dollars, and I called the President Xi and said it would be a good thing if you did it and he did it."
