Biden, Xi talk trade and human rights in call
Joe Biden had his first call as president with Xi Jinping, a two-hour conversation in which he pressed the Chinese leader about trade and Beijing’s crackdown on democracy activists in Hong Kong as well as other human rights concerns.
The two leaders spoke Wednesday just hours after Biden announced plans for a Pentagon task force to review U.S. national security strategy in China.
A White House statement said Biden raised concerns about Beijing’s “coercive and unfair economic practices.” Biden also pressed Xi on Hong Kong, human rights abuses against Uighurs and other ethnic minorities in the western Xinjiang province, and its actions toward Taiwan.
Biden in an exchange with reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday described his talk with Xi as a good conversation.
The president, however, expressed concern that Beijing will build an advantage as economic competitor if the U.S. doesn’t move quickly to bolster the nation’s infrastructure.
“We don’t get moving, they’re going to eat our lunch,” Biden said.
China’s state broadcaster, CCTV, struck a mostly positive tone about the conversation, saying Xi acknowledged the two sides had their differences and those differences should be managed, but urged overall cooperation.
CCTV said Xi pushed back against Biden’s concerns on Taiwan, Hong Kong and Xinjiang, saying the issues are China’s internal affairs and concern Chinese sovereignty. He warned, “The U.S. should respect China’s core interests and act with caution.”
As a day of violence and mayhem at the Capitol slid into evening last month, with bloodshed, glass shattered and democracy besieged, President Donald Trump posted a message on Twitter that seemed to celebrate the moment. “Remember this day forever!” he urged.
The House Democrats prosecuting him at his Senate impeachment trial a month later hope to make sure everyone does.
With conviction in a polarized Senate seemingly out of reach, the House managers, as the prosecutors are known, are aiming their arguments at two other audiences beyond the chamber: the American people whose decision to deny Trump a second term was put at risk and the historians who will one day render their own judgments about the former president and his time in power.
“The Democrats and House managers are playing to a different jury in this case than in any previous impeachment trial of an American president,” said Ken Gormley, president of Duquesne University and author of books on impeachment. “Regardless of the outcome of the trial, the first paragraph of historical accounts of the Trump presidency is likely” to say that he incited a mob attack on Congress after refusing to accept the results of an election.
If Trump is not convicted, the managers want to ensure that he remains so politically radioactive that he cannot be the same force he once was — at least a figure that many mainstream Republicans and their corporate donors keep at arm’s length. In effect, if the Senate will not vote to formally disqualify him from future office, they want the public to do so.
Trump’s camp acknowledges that the prosecution has been effective but portrays it as an illegitimate smear borne of partisan animus. Jason Miller, a longtime adviser and campaign spokesperson for Trump, called the impeachment drive a “vindictive way to try to beat him for future elections” but one that he said would not work, given Trump’s enduring support with the Republican base.
“I think the president is going to be involved in making sure we win back the House and Senate in 2022,” Miller told Fox Business.
Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University who testified against Trump’s first impeachment in 2019, said the managers this time were just playing to the crowd rather than making a legal argument.
“The House is presenting an emotionally charged but legally deficient case in terms of conviction,” he said. “Indeed, much of the argument seems designed to enrage rather than convict.”
The managers were also looking past 2024 to the pages of history. When it comes time to record this era, they want scholars to focus first on the events of recent weeks, branding Trump in the minds of future generations as a dangerous demagogue responsible for a deadly assault on the citadel of democracy.
“Quite honestly, as a presidential historian, it was clear to me watching these events unfold on Jan. 6 that the insurrection would be the defining moment of his presidency,” said Kathryn Cramer Brownell, a history professor at Purdue University.
That was not the story line Trump was promoting as he spent weeks falsely claiming that the election was stolen from him.
“History will remember,” Trump said in a tweet about 10 days before the riot. And the trial this week will go a long way toward deciding what those memories will be.