Saturday Afternoon News Updates: How Trump Surrendered in China — 5/16/26
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THANK YOU JAMIE RASKIN! JAN 6 HEROES! Saturday Afternoon News Updates: How Trump Surrendered in China — 5/16/26Trump returned from Beijing humiliated, while Americans inch closer to $7-a-pound ground beef and can't afford to fill their tanks.
Hi all, Ben here. It’s Saturday, and what a week it has been. Let me get you caught up on everything we’re tracking right now, because there is a lot. Here are the top stories:
Before I go any further, if you haven’t yet joined as a paid subscriber, consider doing so now by clicking here to support our work. This is how we grow. If you’re already a Meidas+ paid Substack subscriber, thank you for your support of pro-democracy media! Let’s get into it. The more we learn about Trump’s China trip, the worse it getsThe reviews are in, and they are brutal — not just from Democrats, not just from the media, but from former ambassadors, foreign policy scholars, and even people inside China who watched this unfold in real time. One Chinese citizen summed it up in a video that’s now going viral. She said Trump acts less like a world leader and more like an internet influencer. That he’s too focused on himself, doesn’t consider what others think, and gives off a desperate, attention-seeking energy. And honestly, what she said tracks with everything we saw. Xi Jinping had Trump sit in a shorter chair so that Xi would appear taller when they were photographed side by side. And the handshake… Trump tried his usual weird dominance-grip thing, and Xi just stood there, expressionless, while Trump didn’t know what to do and ended up patting Xi’s hand like he was greeting a puppy. It was painful to watch. Even Fox felt the need to do damage control on it in a segment on Laura Ingraham’s show my brother Brett called “possibly the most embarrassing segment ever to air on tv.” Fox contributor Raymond Arroyo told Ingraham: “People were saying XI dominated Trump because of the handshake but look at what Trump does. He gives XI’s hand a little swat to diminish whatever that dominant move was at the top.” Nicholas Burns, who served as U.S. Ambassador to China under Biden, noted that Trump did not get reciprocal praise from Xi. Not even close. Xi stuck to his agenda and his talking points, while Trump heaped on the compliments. Burns said it made America look weak. Geopolitical analyst Ian Bremmer noted that Trump’s approach to Taiwan now mirrors exactly how he handled Ukraine. He finds the weaker party in a conflict and pressures them to capitulate, rather than standing with U.S. allies. And Philip O’Brien made the point that the press has been far too gentle in describing what actually happened in Beijing. The U.S. got nothing on Iran. It got scolded on Taiwan. It got a smaller-than-expected Boeing deal that China hasn’t even confirmed. Trump gave ground on Chinese students, microchips, and Chinese ownership of American farmland. And then Xi, to Trump’s face, said America is a nation in decline. And Trump agreed with him. Josh Simpson, citing author Peter Frankopan, wrote that Trump “acted like the humble number two” throughout the visit, exactly the image Xi wanted to project to the world. Poor preparation, no real expertise, and the belief that everything reduces to a business deal, that’s what Frankopan said, and that’s what we all watched play out. Taiwan pushes backBefore this trip, the U.S. maintained a policy of strategic ambiguity on Taiwan. It was deliberately vague, and that vagueness actually served a purpose. It kept China guessing. Within 24 hours of Trump meeting with Xi, that ambiguity evaporated. Trump went on Fox News and argued that Taiwan is a small island 9,500 miles away, China is big and powerful, and we’re not going to war over that. He said he wasn’t looking for Taiwan to go independent. He raised the possibility of halting arms sales to the island. Phil Gordon, a former senior NSC official, noted that Trump’s language implied the 1982 assurances have expired, and that his willingness to openly discuss Taiwan’s arms situation with Beijing, in great detail, represents a significant shift regardless of what Secretary Rubio insists publicly about policy being “unchanged.” Taiwan’s foreign ministry responded on Saturday with a direct statement: Taiwan is a sovereign and independent democratic nation, and it is not subordinate to the People’s Republic of China. They also reaffirmed that U.S. arms sales remain a core part of Washington’s security commitment to the island. Good for them for saying it. But this situation is genuinely alarming. Trump just came back from Beijing and handed Xi exactly the rhetorical wins he wanted on Taiwan, without getting anything of substance in return. Iran is exploiting Trump’s weaknessRight on the heels of the Beijing summit, Iran came out with additional statements asserting full control over the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian political figure Ebrahim Azizi announced that Iran is preparing a formal mechanism to manage all traffic through the strait — only vessels cooperating with Iran will be allowed through, fees will be collected, and anyone affiliated with what he called the “freedom project” will be blocked entirely. This is not the behavior of a country that feels any pressure from Trump’s diplomacy. If anything, Iran appears emboldened. And from what we’ve been hearing, Xi’s government has effectively recognized this new security architecture. Chinese ships move through the strait, and no one else really can. Trump came home from China without a single concrete concession from Beijing on Iran, and now Iran is announcing new toll mechanisms on the world’s most critical oil shipping lane. Skyrocketing ground beef prices and a White House in a bindMeanwhile, back home, the American people are getting crushed. Ground beef is approaching $7 a pound, up about 12 percent from last summer and up 24 percent since Trump took office. The White House was apparently ready to sign an executive order earlier this week to temporarily ease tariffs on imported beef, which might have brought some price relief to consumers. Then the ranching lobby pushed back hard, Republican senators from farm states made clear they would not be happy, and the order got shelved. So now the White House is stuck. They’re trying to water down the executive order, but even a watered-down version is drawing fire from ranchers who say imported beef will undercut domestic producers already struggling with drought, the parasitic New World screwworm, and spiking diesel costs tied to the Iran conflict. One beef industry lobbyist called the plan “half-baked” and said it wouldn’t address the root causes of high prices anyway. A person close to the White House told Politico they worry that even if Trump eventually acts, relief won’t reach voters before the midterms. “You worry that people aren’t feeling it by the time election day rolls around,” this person said. On top of that, we got a leaked internal memo from AutoZone, shared by a CEO in the lubricant industry, warning that the country is facing the largest supply shortage of lubricating fluids in modern American history, with estimates of available supply dropping 40 percent. Even radio host Charlamagne tha God said what a lot of people are feeling right now: Trump ran on fixing the economy on day one, promised to lower grocery prices, and literally said this week that he doesn’t care about the financial situation of the American people Trump’s latest Truth Social tantrumsAnd through all of this, the humiliation in China, Iran asserting control of the strait, beef prices at record highs, Trump has been posting on Truth Social. Constantly. He’s reposting accounts calling former CIA director John Brennan a traitor and demanding he be arrested for sedition. He’s posting random videos of people pretending to be blind in some social experiment. He’s sharing AI-generated images of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool. He’s calling Senator Bill Cassidy a “sleazebag” and urging Louisiana voters to defeat him. He’s attacking New York Governor Kathy Hochul over the Long Island Rail Road strike, a strike he admits he knew nothing about until this morning, and calling her a “Dumacrat.” He’s pushing the conspiracy theory that Biden’s FBI secretly set him up to be arrested after his term ends. Don’t let the $1.776 billion slush fund story go awayBefore I wrap up, I want to make sure we don’t let the “Truth and Justice Commission” story drop off the radar, because it deserves continued attention. The DOJ is finalizing a deal to create a $1,776,000,000 compensation fund — yes, the number is intentional, to pay out claims from people who say they were victims of government “weaponization.” This arose from Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS, and sources told ABC News that DOJ lawyers internally argued they could simply ignore the conflict of interest involved, reasoning that Trump has the right to sue as a private citizen while simultaneously running the executive branch. Trump wants to take your money and give it to the people who tried to overthrow our democracy on January 6th. This is one of the single biggest scandals in American history. Yet, too many in the media just treat this as “Trump being Trump.” Our own DC bureau chief Scott MacFarlane has been all over this story and got reactions from multiple members of Congress at the Capitol. Democrats are calling it exactly what it looks like: a slush fund for Trump’s political allies. Legal hurdles ahead or not, the fact that this is being seriously discussed inside the DOJ tells you everything you need to know about where things stand. That’s your Saturday afternoon update. A lot is happening, and we are going to keep covering all of it. Let me know what you think in the comments, and make sure you’re subscribed to the MeidasTouch Podcast on your favorite audio platforms so you don’t miss a thing. |
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