Gingrich: Under Trump, China won't intimidate us

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich praised President-elect Donald Trump on Monday for breaking with diplomatic tradition by speaking to the president of Taiwan, suggesting that their phone call will establish a new, more favorable relationship for the U.S. with China.

Trump spoke Friday with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, the first time that a president-elect is known to have spoken with Taiwan’s leader in more than 35 years. The U.S. officially cut ties to the Taiwanese government in 1979, when it recognized the government in Beijing as part of the "One China" policy. America maintains close but unofficial ties with Taiwan, which China views as a breakaway province.


“I think this whole state department mythology that we have to somehow let the Chinese dictate to us is nonsense and I thought it was a good signal to the world that Donald Trump is going to be his own person,” Gingrich said on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” Monday morning. “If the Chinese want to deal with the United States, they are going to have to actually deal with the United States. They are not going to be able to intimidate us.”

The former speaker, a close adviser to the president-elect throughout his campaign, said Trump was right to take the Taiwanese president’s call, as he would be to communicate with the democratically-elected leader of any nation. The Manhattan billionaire pledged during his campaign to take a stronger stance with China, stopping the flow of American jobs there and addressing its practice of currency manipulation. Trump’s Friday phone call was a first step in resetting the U.S.-China relationship on better terms.

“I think that for a long time we were intimidated by Beijing, and I think we were in part patient because we had this theory that they would gradually mellow and they would become more democratic and freer and more open. Well, that's not happening right now,” Gingrich said. “We're not the enemies of China. Let's be very careful. We don't want to start some kind of cold war with Beijing. But I think we're going to have very tough negotiations and I think we have to try to understand each other but that means the Chinese have to try to understand us as much as we have to try to understand them.”

Pushing back against suggestions that Trump’s phone call represented a haphazard approach to foreign policy, Gingrich said the president-elect is “winging [it] within some very core principles.” The former speaker urged Trump to continue to break with diplomatic norms where he sees fit and called on him to reform the State Department to more closely align with American values.

“Somehow it's okay with the state department to talk to any dictator on the planet, but an elected leader of a democracy, boy, that's really dangerous,” Gingrich said. “Which is why, frankly, I think the next secretary of state has to spend half their time cleaning out the state department and the other half their time negotiating with the world.”

