Donald Trump fawned over Chinese communist leaders and beamed at the billionaires he assembled last night at the White House, providing one of the most tone-deaf images of any American president in history.
I was up very late last night. Part of the reason was that I was editing a forthcoming documentary short that we’ll be releasing this year called CORRUPTIONLAND. Another part of the reason is that I was watching a spectacle that proved the point of the documentary we just shot.
The pictures and videos trickled in across social media all night of the State Dinner at the White House — Donald Trump hosting his Chinese counterparts. Chandeliers blazing in the East Room… sesame-crusted sea bass on the white plates… the president in a tuxedo, smiling behind a gaudy gilded eagle, telling the room he would have packed in a thousand more of them if only his hand-designed ballroom were finished… and Trump almost winking as he promised Xi Jinping a late-night stroll to be the first to set foot on the construction site.
It was Gatsby’s mansion. Except the party was thrown by the government and the guest of honor runs a police state, one that Trump jealously hopes to emulate. Call it the dystopian Great Gatsby. Or maybe the Great Gatsby from hell.
Outside the gates, the rest of the country was having a very different evening. Groceries cost more than they did a year ago, and a lot more than they did five years ago. Almost everything is at least 30-percent more than it was. People are furious about a presidency that has become a family business, tired of tech companies that are beginning to treat them like raw material, and scared of being replaced by machines while data centers go up in their backyards to power those machines.
I was amazed by what I saw last night. Trump assembled every one of those fears… dressed them up in a suit and tie… and toasted them. You cannot make it up. Is it stupidity? Is it indifference? Is it unconcealed greed? His knowing grin tells us, yet again, that it’s all of the above.
It’s worth noting that this is the same Donald Trump who told us over the summer — breathlessly in a primetime press conference — that China had compromised our electoral system and that the communist nation was assaulting American democracy. It was a serious accusation. But then he did nothing about it. No sanctions. No expulsions. No consequences of any kind. Not a peep since. Odd, right?
Not if you know Donald Trump. After years in the intelligence community, I know that the worries about the Chinese Communist Party trying to manipulate American democracy are very true and very alarming. So should Trump. But he doesn’t care much about that. What he cares about is that the threat is convenient for storytelling. To him, the China scare is the perfect pretext for his own meddling in the midterms, a threat to be invoked when useful and forgotten when not. How else do you explain that his answer to the supposed attack on our elections from China is to roll out the red carpet at Joint Base Andrews and grovel?
(Or at least the soldiers did. Trump and Xi looked on as U.S. servicemembers got on their literal hands and knees to smooth out the red carpet before the Chinese president walked down the steps.)
The irony was as thick as the vanilla crémeux that was served to the dinner guests (reportedly with a vibrant sour cherry confit center, set atop a rich walnut frangipane). Earlier yesterday, the White House was defending a taxpayer-funded TV ad of Trump promising that “America will never be a communist country,” running on Fox and Newsmax with the disclaimer: “paid for by the U.S. government.” Put aside the accidental satire that, while the ad was airing, Trump’s team was literally setting tables in the State Dining Room and preparing to welcome members of the Chinese Communist Party. There was a richer paradox. The people’s tax dollars were being spent on a propaganda piece for the leader… claiming that in America we don’t do “communism”… and aired on television ahead of an election he’s trying to rig.
And don’t forget that when Trump offered Xi that private tour of the ballroom, Chief Justice John Roberts was sitting at a table nearby, perhaps still working through his crisp baby bok choy and roasted garden eggplant. Three weeks ago, Roberts wrote that the ballroom was “likely unlawful” because Congress never approved a dime for it. He got outvoted by his own conservative colleagues (two of whom were also at the dinner)… and now here he was, a guest at the party, watching the president show off the thing he had just called illegal. But it’s all just a game, right?
Much like Xi, Trump didn’t bother seeking the legislature’s approval for his palace addition. He just built it and illegally moved around taxpayer dollars to make it happen. The Chinese know this move well. It’s why they call it the People’s Republic of China. They learned a long time ago that if you can’t deliver the thing, name yourself after it and call it a day. Trump knows that branding scheme, too. After all, he’s made more money since returning to office than in the rest of his career combined, while styling himself as a man of the people. Every now and then — like the other week in Dallas — he throws breadcrumbs to the plebes and promises he’ll cut them checks to make their little lives easier.
But it’s easy to forget such promises when you’re planning a big party, especially for your billionaire pals. And there were plenty of them last night. Tables full of tech executives. When I saw the guest list, that’s when I realized the evening was more farce than hypocrisy.
Of all people, Elon Musk sat at the head table with the president. This is the Musk who blew up his friendship with Trump last year by announcing that the president was in the Epstein files, which read at the time like a real act of solidarity with the 1,400 women and girls abused through that network, and a rebuke of a president who has done everything in his power to keep the files buried. Apparently it was theater. Musk laughed and smiled his way through the courses.
Mark Zuckerberg was nearby. That’s the same Zuckerberg who spent hundreds of millions of dollars on pro-democracy groups in an election that Trump tried to overturn. But then he saw where things were headed and remade himself as a MAGA bro, gold chain and all, cutting a seven-figure check to Trump’s inaugural fund. Sundar Pichai, whose company walked away from Pentagon work and opposed the first Trump administration’s travel ban, was also there... as well as Tim Cook, once a Trump critic, until he came to the Oval Office last year bearing a gift of 24-karat gold.
And the deans of the data centers turned out in force: Satya Nadella, Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Jensen Huang, Michael Dell, Lisa Su, and more, whose companies are pouring concrete across rural America for the server farms that’ve become the physical symbol of a country feeling priced out of its own economy and boxed out of its own future by tech. The people building the machines had a front-row seat to the man clearing the way for them.
But I think the widest smiles and biggest laughs may have come from the visitors. Honestly, maybe they were the only ones in the room who saw the whole picture. For two years this administration has made China the convenient villain for things Trump cares about — they’re the threat to our elections, the ones stirring up panic over data centers, the ones creating a trade imbalance that Trump must fix. Yet Xi’s delegation has long known what others are just starting to figure out. Trump doesn’t believe any of it. He uses Beijing as a foil for his own projects…. to take control of the elections… to profit from the data center boom… to run the American economy by brute force.
That’ll look familiar to men who built a regime on lies of their own. In Trump, they see a kindred spirit. The man who rails against communism on Fox News — and runs ads against it! — spent the evening rhetorically bear-hugging the communists scattered around his dining room. Everyone at every table was in on the joke.
The hangover from this dinner is going to last, though. Americans are waking up to the fact that they’re being conned. They’re gathering outside the palace walls with pitchforks; you just couldn’t hear it last night over the clinking glasses.
Your friend, in defiance,
DEFIANCE DAILY
In case you missed it, last night’s episode of DEFIANCE Daily is below. Catch our next episode tonight at 5 pm ET!
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