CHINA MEDIA: TRUMP NAIVE
President-elect dismisses CIA report of Russian hacking to influence US presidential election
BEIJING—China’s state media have published another blistering attack of Donald Trump after the President-elect suggested again that he was reconsidering how America deals with Taiwan.
Trump told Fox News in an interview aired on Sunday that he didn’t feel “bound by a one-China policy unless we make a deal with China having to do with other things, including trade.”
Trump’s Dec. 2 call with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen had already angered Beijing, which considers the self-governing island Chinese territory and any suggestion otherwise to be a grave insult.
In a commentary published hours after Trump’s remarks to Fox, China’s Global Times called him “naive.”
It suggested Trump read books on US-China relations and stop resorting to “bullying.”
Meanwhile, the President-elect on Sunday called a recent CIA assessment of Russian hacking “ridiculous” and says he’s not interested in getting daily intelligence briefings — an unprecedented public dismissal by a President-elect of the nation’s massive and sophisticated intelligence apparatus.
Trump’s remarks come as key congressional Republicans joined Democrats in demanding a bipar- tisan investigation into the Kremlin’s activities and questioned consideration of Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson — who has close business ties with Moscow — as head of the State Department.
Asked whether he’s rejecting valuable intelligence on “Fox News Sunday,” Trump was defiant.
“I get it when I need it,” he said of the top-secret briefings sessions, adding that he’s leaving it up to the briefers to decide when a development represents a “change” big enough to notify him.
“I’m, like, a smart person. I don’t have to be told the same thing in the same words every single day for the next eight years,” Trump said.
The CIA has concluded with “high confidence” that Russia sought to influence the US election on behalf of Trump.
The finding alarmed lawmakers, including Senate armed services committee Chairman John McCain who said on Sunday he planned to put Sen. Lindsay Graham, a staunch Trump critic, in charge of investigating the claim.
McCain also has questions about Tillerson’s business relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, although it’s not clear Tillerson will be nominated.
Sunday afternoon, Tillerson had still not been formally offered the job, according to a person with knowledge of the process who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Exxon steadily expanded its Russian business on Tillerson’s watch even as its rivals faced expropriation and regulatory obsta- cles. In 2013, Putin bestowed the Order of Friendship on Tillerson.
“Maybe those ties are strictly commercial and got to do with his business in the oil business. Fine,” McCain told CBS “Face the Nation.”
And “we’ll give him a fair hear- ing. But is it a matter of concern? Certainly it should be a matter of concern.”
McCain wasn’t alone in raising questions about whether there would be enough blowback to sink a Tillerson nomination.