FROM EIR DAILY ALERT
Donald Trump Defends Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un
Sept. 1, 2018—President Trump’s interview Aug. 30 with several Bloomberg reporters showed Trump countering much of the crap being dished out by the fake-news media.
In discussing China, Bloomberg intoned that Xi Jinping “is an autocrat, doesn’t have to do midterm elections. He doesn’t....” Trump cut him off, rejecting the common mischaracterization of Xi and China in the West: “He has his own election. He has a different kind of election.”
Bloomberg asked if the reports were true that he would impose a next round of $200 billion in tariffs on China this coming Thursday, Sept. 6, when the comment period runs out. Again he cut them off: “Did you just release a story that I’m putting out $200 billion? Who was the genius [who said] that?” The reporter responded, “Me. Am I wrong?” Trump refused to say.
On Helsinki:
“And with Putin, which was actually one of my best meetings because of my talk on Syria, Ukraine, Israel and other things. I think the press covered it unbelievably fake.”
On North Korea: “If you go back to the end of the Obama Administration, we were ready to go to war with North Korea, just so you understand.”
Asked if his goal with China was “to prevent China from becoming the world’s number one economy,” Trump made clear that the problem is not China, but free trade:
“No ... the best thing that China and I have going, and the U.S. has going, is that President Xi and I have a really great relationship. OK? That being said, he represents China, I represent us. We were going in the wrong direction. The United States—since the WTO, which was probably the single worst trade deal ever made—I called NAFTA the second worst trade deal ever made. And if they don’t shape up, I would withdraw from the WTO.”
On the South Korea trade deal KORUS:
“We made a deal with South Korea [in March]. Nobody talks about it. We took the terrible deal that was made by Hillary Clinton where she said 200,000 jobs will be produced—and she was right—for South Korea, not for us.”
On reviving the U.S. steel industry:
“Call the head of U.S. Steel.... Great guy. He’s opening up six or seven plants, he’s going to open others, he’s spending billions of dollars. You call Nucor [biggest steel producer in the U.S., mini-mills] it’s like nobody can believe what’s happening with this.”
Asked if he thinks “the President should have the right to be able to approve or disapprove some of the Fed’s decisions?” Trump would not answer directly, but made clear he has no respect for the “independence of the Fed” line used by the monetarists to castrate the government’s influence on the economy: He said that higher rates make it harder to sell our products, and other countries are “cutting their currencies very substantially, far more than they should be allowed to do, and we’re not being accommodated [by the Fed]. I don’t like that.”
On Sessions and the DOJ: Trump listed the illegal acts and the lies of Bruce Ohr, Nellie Ohr, Brennan, Comey, Strzok et al., and asked: “Why aren’t they looking at the other side?”
Asked about the Mueller investigation into “collusion” with Russia, Trump said: “I view it as an illegal investigation. It should never have been. There should never have been a special counsel.” He said he had purposely not gotten involved at the DOJ, “But, you know, at some point I guess that could happen.”
Asked about breaking up the social media giants which are censoring Trump supporters, Trump said: “Many people think it’s a very antitrust situation, the three of them, but I won’t comment.”
