The Times Herald (Norristown, PA)

President Trump has a strange sense of honor

- Dana Milbank Columnist

President Trump, on his way to a border photo op that even he reportedly thought pointless, gave insight into the thinking that faked an immigratio­n crisis, shut down the government and gave him the “absolute right” to use emergency powers to circumvent Congress. Asked an unrelated question on the White House South Lawn, Trump volunteere­d a comparison between Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y. — and the leaders of the People’s Republic of China.

“I find China, frankly, in many ways, to be far more honorable than Cryin’ Chuck and Nancy. I really do,” he said. “I think that China is actually much easier to deal with than the opposition party.” China, honorable? China, which is holding a million members of religious minorities in concentrat­ion camps for “reeducatio­n” by force?

China, according to Trump’s own FBI director, is, by far, the leading perpetrato­r of technology theft and espionage against the United States and is “using illegal methods” to “replace the U.S. as the world’s leading superpower”?

China, whose ruling Communist Party has caused the exterminat­ion of tens of millions of people since the end of World War II, through government-induced famine, the ideologica­l purges of the Cultural Revolution, and in mowing down reformers in Tiananmen Square?

Trump has a strange sense of honor.

In April, he bestowed the same adjective on the world’s most oppressive leader, North Korea’s nuclear-armed dictator: “Kim Jong Un, he really has been very open and I think very honorable from everything we’re seeing.”

In Trump’s view, your opponents are your enemies — and your actual enemies are your friends.

Reasonable people disagree over border walls and other national priorities. Opponents often dislike each other. But it’s another thing to believe loyal Americans, sworn to uphold the Constituti­on, are less honorable than the leaders of China, which former defense secretary Jim Mattis described as a “malign actor” promoting its “authoritar­ian model” at our expense.

We saw Trump place similar faith in the other “malign actor” Mattis cited, Russia, when Trump, in Helsinki in July, sided with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the U.S. intelligen­ce community concerning Moscow’s election interferen­ce.

We have also seen Trump’s upside-down sense of honor in his belittling of former senator John McCain’s wartime heroism and posthumous disrespect for McCain, in his petty squabbles with parents of fallen American soldiers, and in his descriptio­n of a free press as the “enemy of the people” — a phrase his honorable Chinese friends used during their Cultural Revolution.

Maybe Trump, who has, more than once, misspelled the word “honor,” is ignorant of this regime’s history.

But he can’t be unaware of China’s current atrocities.

The Congressio­nal-Executive Commission on China, led by Republican­s Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Rep. Christophe­r H. Smith (N.J.), issued a report in October on China’s persecutio­n of Christians, and a “dire human rights situation” on a “downward trajectory, by virtually every measure, since Xi Jinping became Communist Party General Secretary.”

When Trump’s “good friend” Xi effectivel­y became president for life last year, Trump spoke approvingl­y and called him “a great gentleman.”

By declaring this man’s government “far more honorable” than patriotic American legislator­s, Trump dishonors us all.

 ??  ??

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United States