Welcome to Thursday’s edition of Washington Secrets. The president is due to fly to China next week for his postponed summit with Xi Jinping. We talk to one of the top Trumpworld thinkers on the Chinese Communist Party, the man who raised the alarm during Donald Trump’s first administration. Michael Pillsbury says Trump faces a big decision as he assembles his team and devises his strategy. Plus, why is anyone still reporting that an Iran deal is imminent? …
When President Donald Trump sits down with Xi Jinping next week, he will be able to draw on the experience of six previous meetings with the Chinese premier.
Perhaps no one on his team can match that sort of insight, says Michael Pillsbury, author, China expert, and a key outside adviser who has helped the president prepare for past encounters. Pillsbury is coy about his role this time around.
“The White House doesn’t like it if it sounds like I am speaking for the president,” he tells Secrets.
But he said Trump faces a critical decision about how to handle the summit between the leaders of the world’s two biggest economies, almost 12 months after a truce halted a tariff war.
Does the president make it a vibes meeting and emphasize a message of stability, or does he try to placate the superhawks by winning concessions from Beijing?
Neither is a soft option, said Pillsbury.
The former might involve taking Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff, with their vocabulary of security and espionage, to set out what the U.S. is doing on Iran and explain Washington’s position in talks.
“I would call it the minimalist approach,” said Pillsbury. The idea that Xi Jinping is my friend. I’m going to see him. I’m taking Melania with me. Just the meeting itself, the summit itself, is the win, and the use by both sides of this magic word ‘stability,’ or ‘stable.’ This is the big new buzzword now.”
Trump himself has hinted that this is where he is in his thinking about China. During the 2016 campaign, he repeatedly accused Beijing of huge, systematic theft.
“We can’t continue to allow China to rape our country, and that’s what we’re doing,” he said at a rally in Indiana, for example. That language is long gone, particularly since a 2020 trade deal was signed.
On Tuesday, Trump was asked about his trip and his relationship with Xi.
“I find him to be a tremendous guy, and we get along well, and you see how we do a lot of business with China and making a lot of money,” he told reporters. “We’re making a lot of money. It’s different than it used to be.”
So where does that leave the superhawks, as Pillsbury dubbed them — the likes of Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson, and hardliners in Congress — on the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party?
The other option for a meeting is to come away with a deal signed that would give them a win. It might involve billions of dollars of Chinese investment (but only in “white-listed” areas that have no impact on national security), a crackdown on the supply of fentanyl or its precursors (in a measurable way), and maybe even the freedom of businessman and publisher Jimmy Lai.
That route is fraught with problems. Multiple rounds of talks have yet to yield any written draft proposals, said Pillsbury.
“The Chinese have been very tough to Trump during the second term,” he said. “They strongly reject any compromise, and they do not wish to make another written agreement.”
The danger is clear. China is playing the long game and is happy to let summits come and go with only modest agreements as it continues building its manufacturing base and avoiding anything that could be seen as provocative. All the while it is inching closer to America’s position as the world’s most powerful nation.
Pillsbury calls the approach “strategic patience.” His book, which became required reading in the first Trump White House, is called The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower.
Only Trump can decide how to play the summit, said Pillsbury.
“There are two options, and I don’t think the president has decided,” he told Secrets.
Either way, the danger is that Trump comes away with little more than a photo op.
Trump’s semi-official news agency
When the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps wants to get its message out, it uses the semi-official (whatever that means) Fars news agency.
When the White House wants to release its take on Iran, officials go to Axios reporter Barak Ravid. On Tuesday, Ravid scooped that the Trump team believes it is close to a deal with Tehran.
“SCOOP: The White House believes it’s getting close to an agreement with Iran on a one-page memorandum of understanding to end the war and set a framework for more detailed nuclear negotiations,” he posted.
The result was an immediate drop in oil prices, combined with a collective eye roll from academics, journalists, and think tankers. Ravid has form in announcing an almost-deal.
“Kind of wild that Barak Ravid has predicted seven of the last zero peace deals between the US and Iran,” posted Justin Logan of the Cato Institute.
The story is in a familiar cycle. Trump himself or White House sources claim a deal is close. Markets rise, the price of oil drops, and within a day, stories emerge that Iran is blocking a deal and that things are not quite as straightforward as reported, often accompanied by a Ravid follow-up suggesting a U-turn or a surprise twist.
Gregg Carlstrom, Middle East correspondent, posted: “God grant me the optimism of an oil trader reading headlines about a vague bullet-point MOU that leaves the details to be resolved in further negotiations, which may end up collapsing or dragging on indefinitely.”
That was one of the more charitable takes. Others accused Ravid of juicing the market or worse.
Ravid denied the wilder allegations and reacted to some of it with a sense of humor. When one satirist claimed Axios was close to achieving nuclear breakout, he popped back: “Nuclear weapons are not part of Axios’ defense strategy. We have a Fatwa against nuclear weapons and all of our nuclear activity is solely for peaceful purposes.”
Now, whatever happened to that peace deal?
Lunchtime reading
Kash Patel’s personalized Bourbon stash: What do you do if your reporting on allegations about the FBI director’s drinking has attracted a libel suit? If you are Sarah Fitzpatrick, you follow up with a story about his supply of bourbon emblazoned with his own name and job title.
Ted Turner, creator of CNN and the 24-hour news cycle, dies at 87: Obituary departments are the repository of the finest writing in journalism. Fact. And Turner made it easy for the writer of his obituary by living an extraordinary life. The result is asides like this: “Along the way, he found the time and energy to captain the winning yacht in the America’s Cup race…”
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