{"id":145500,"date":"2026-06-04T15:42:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T15:42:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/145500\/"},"modified":"2026-06-04T15:42:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T15:42:12","slug":"house-votes-to-end-iran-war-in-a-bipartisan-swipe-against-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/145500\/","title":{"rendered":"House Votes to End Iran War in a Bipartisan Swipe Against Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Chinese, for their part, have proved that they know exactly what the president likes. Xi kicked off Trump\u2019s visit with a rapturous welcoming committee outside of Air Force One, cheering for Trump<\/a> as he strode down a very literal red carpet. <\/p>\n

The next day, the Chinese kept that vibe going with a surreal public spectacle that included dozens of schoolchildren jumping up and down, cheering ecstatically for the president, who grinned his head off as he passed. <\/p>\n

\u201cI was particularly impressed by those children,\u201d Trump said during remarks at the bilateral meeting<\/a>. \u201cThey were happy, they were beautiful.\u201d <\/p>\n

After the warm welcome, Trump and Xi settled into their talks. The White House characterized the negotiations as a \u201cgood meeting,\u201d with productive dialogues on international trade and the war in Iran. Trump managed to get in a few lines about the issues that he really cares about: fast food restaurants. \u201cChinese restaurants in America today outnumber the five largest fast foods in the United States \u2014 all combined,\u201d the president marveled. \u201cThat\u2019s a pretty big statement.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s right, of course: many Chinese people do love blue jeans and basketball \u2014 and in turn, Americans love their food.<\/p>\n

In some ways, Trump\u2019s behavior is not unusual for a head of state or foreign dignitary. There\u2019s always a certain amount of pomp and circumstance that come with a major diplomatic visit, and playing nice with rivals and allies alike is part of the job. You could even make the case that it\u2019s one part of being president where Trump succeeds \u2014 for better or worse, the man loves to have a good time.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

But what\u2019s vaguely concerning is that Trump\u2019s China trip is another example of how the person leading our nation is uniquely susceptible to flattery and spectacle. You don\u2019t have to be a China hawk to feel uncomfortable by this. Xi Jinping is the leader of the most powerful foreign nation in the world, and while Trump\u2019s cheerful demeanor certainly seems to keep everyone at ease, it raises questions about whether he\u2019s capable of correctly threading the many needles of international relations. <\/p>\n

The end of Trump\u2019s tour through the Chinese century also reinforced this. On Friday morning, Trump released a surreal statement<\/a> exonerating Xi for his supposed comments on the decline of the U.S. \u2014 something that would normally be a major sticking point for an egomaniacal leader like Trump \u2014 and basically deflecting the reasonable line of criticism onto the Biden administration. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen President Xi very elegantly referred to the United States as perhaps being a declining nation, he was referring to the tremendous damage we suffered during the four years of Sleepy Joe Biden,\u201d Trump wrote. The president earlier on Friday lauded<\/a> Xi as \u201can incredible guy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Xi\u2019s personality blitz, then, appears to have been incredibly successful. This has cropped up in basically every public statement that\u2019s come out of the White House since. Here\u2019s Trump aboard Air Force 1 being asked if he thinks Xi is a dictator.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Immediate pivot to Biden, no answer to the question. And sure, \u201cDo you think [insert leader of major U.S. rival] is a dictator\u201d is not exactly the most incisive or useful question in the White House Press Corp\u2019s repertoire. Its answer is basically irrelevant to the greater goals of the United States and really only serves to let any given U.S. official calibrate how much of a hawk or dove they want to appear to be. Still, responding by bashing an American president isn\u2019t ideal. Trump\u2019s answer also included a very funny mistake about who was actually in charge of the Iran nuclear deal, which, when it was pushed through by President Obama, not Biden, was one of the most successful points of U.S. diplomacy in decades.<\/p>\n

Still, there was another more relevant question in that gaggle as well: How is Trump handling China\u2019s repeated cyber attacks against U.S. assets? \u201cI did [talk to him about it],\u201d Trump said<\/a>. \u201cHe talked about attacks we did in China. What they do, we do, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Again, this is an honest answer \u2014 we do spy a ton on China. But it\u2019s not exactly one that makes an impartial viewer feel confident about the president\u2019s ability to trade in actual leverage with a rival power (particularly when Trump also gave a relatively noncommittal response<\/a> on whether he intends to follow through on the congressionally approved defense arrangement with Taiwan).<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s breezy posture and chumminess with Xi is aggravating even some of his most staunch rivals. Here\u2019s Sean Hannity, becoming visibly annoyed when Trump refuses to actually engage with the realistic position China holds in regard to the Iran war, instead dismissing their influence over Iran by reasoning that at least \u201cthey\u2019re not coming in with guns.\u201d <\/p>\n

As we\u2019ve seen in the past, Trump\u2019s mood can turn on a dime, turning routine negotiations into tense debates and creating impasses on issues where a smarter leader would find a compromise. It\u2019s funny, sure, to watch our big galoot of a president and members of his administration goggle<\/a> at the trappings of Chinese power (Trump\u2019s first Truth Social message after leaving on Friday was about the fact that they have a ballroom). But it only reinforces the creeping suspicion that in one of the most important diplomatic relationships in history, the only adults in the room are sitting on the opposite side of the table. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Chinese, for their part, have proved that they know exactly what the president likes. Xi kicked off…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":145501,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[11130,21259,34,1889,47346,392,36],"class_list":["post-145500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-iran","tag-end","tag-house-of-representatives","tag-iran","tag-maga","tag-rebuked","tag-trump","tag-war"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116692604806425468","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145500\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}