David Rohde: Trump Made Three Geostrategic Mistakes that Led Him to Come to the China Summit in a Very Weak Position

TRANSCRIPT:

ROHDE: "Why speak that way to an authoritarian leader who has, like, the greatest firewall in the world in sort of stopping the free flow of information, who’s, you know, jailed Jimmy Lai, the publisher and pro-democracy advocate from Hong Kong. And Donald Trump has no problem belittling political rivals in the U.S. and being incredibly mean to other people, you know, and I just — looking back, Trump made this — made his bed here. There were three key mistakes he made. First was this trade war with China, the one he started out with all the tariffs. He lost that trade war. And then China came back at him. This was before the last meeting in Seoul. That did not work. He was going to bring the Chinese to their knees. It didn’t work. The second thing was the — I think the obsession with first Canada as the 51st state, but then Greenland. And he destroyed essentially the relationship with Europe and NATO. That was a major mistake. And then the last one, obviously, is this war with Iran. So it’s three geostrategic mistakes, in my view — and I talked to experts about it — that led him to come into this summit in a very weak position, and we saw that."