Trump’s Taiwan phone call generates stupid media tricks

Once again, Donald Trump has reframed the national conversation and provoked the media into unwise knee-jerk responses that will backfire. Trump receiving a congratulatory from a democratically elected head of a state with which we have deep defense and economic ties does not strike most people as outrageous. So in order to explain their outrage, progressives and establishment people have to resort to explaining the “delicate diplomatic” nuances of our relationship with the Communist regime. What percentage of the American public believes that the balance we have achieved with the Chinese in the give-and-take of great power relationships is so heavily in our favor that we must maintain it at all costs? Trump won a lot of support over his promises to change the balance of our relationships with China, Mexico, and many other places sending us goods formerly manufactured here.

I think that after two days of telling the American pubic that Trump’s phone call was “bizarre” (as I heard a CNN anchor say Sunday), a conspicuous lack of popular outrage has caused a desperate search for other grounds. In a move that foreshadows what we will see throughout the Trump presidency, The New York Times launched a conflict of interest foray with this headline: Taiwan City Planning a Makeover Says a Trump Agent Showed Interest It’s all about a massive redevelopment project in Taiwan and a rather thin implicit accusation: Investors are welcome, and on Sept. 8, a Taiwanese-American woman named Chen Siting, or Charlyne Chen, arrived, claiming to represent a very prominent businessman: Donald J. Trump. She had been referred to the Taoyuan mayor by Annette Lu, a former vice president of Taiwan, the mayor’s office said in a statement on its website. “I told them: Isn’t Mr. Trump campaigning for president? Isn’t he very busy?” the mayor, Cheng Wen-tsan, said in a television interview that aired on Nov. 18, referring to Ms. Chen’s group. “They said she is a company representative. His company is still continuing to look for the world’s best real estate projects, and they very much understand Taiwan.” But the Times admits: On Friday, Amanda Miller, a spokeswoman for the Trump Organization, said that there were “no plans for expansion into Taiwan” and that there had been no “authorized visits” to Taiwan to push for a development project. Asked on Sunday for clarification about the company’s relationship with Ms. Chen and knowledge of her activity in Taiwan, Ms. Miller did not respond to specific questions. She instead repeated in a statement that there had been “no authorized visits to Taiwan on behalf of our brand for the purposes of development, nor are there any active conversations.” Quite obviously, the intent is to label Trump’s phone call as intended to open development opportunities, something we can expect to hear every time the Trump administration pleases the leadership of a country. Any global real estate development firm might want to be briefed on the nature and scope of the development. So we’ll be getting bored with fake eyebrow-raising for the next four to eight years.