>>"Has zero bearing on Trump"... POS trump thinks otherwise. Trump accuses China of 2018 election meddling: They 'don't want me to win'
By Guy Taylor and Dave Boyer - The Washington Times - Wednesday, September 26, 2018
washingtontimes.com
UNITED NATIONS — President Trump accused China of “attempting to interfere” in the upcoming U.S. midterm elections as he chaired a high-stakes meeting of the U.N. Security Council here Wednesday, asserting the Chinese government is bent on meddling in American politics out of frustration over his administration’s bare-knuckle trade posture toward Beijing.
“ China has been attempting to interfere in our upcoming 2018 election, coming up in November against my administration,” Mr. Trump said. “They do not want me or us to win because I am the first president ever to challenge China on trade, and we are winning on trade — we are winning at every level.”
“We don’t want to them to meddle or interfere in our upcoming election,” he said, breaking from protocol at the traditionally highly scripted Security Council.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi appeared to shrug as the president made the accusation, which comes at a moment of heightened tension between Washington and Beijing following a wave of heated trade negotiations that have been a signature of Mr. Trump’s foreign policy over the past year.
In his own statement to the session later, Mr. Wang appeared to break from his prepared statement at the end to deny what he called the “unwarranted” U.S. accusation of election-meddling.
China “did not and will not interfere with any country’s domestic affairs,” Mr. Wang said.
The administration has leveled hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs against a wide range of Chinese exports, including everything from lobster and soybeans to steel products. Beijing has responded by targeting U.S. goods headed to China.
While Mr. Trump did not offer specifics at the Security Council session on his accusation of Chinese election meddling, the president indicated later he that he was referring in part to China’s retaliatory tariffs against U.S. farm products, as opposed to the type of cyber-hacking that Russia conducted in the 2016 U.S. elections.
“You have statements made [by the Chinese] that they were going to hit our farmers, those are my voters,” Mr. Trumptold reporters. “I love the farmers, I’m taking care of the farmers. I’m opening up markets like nobody’s ever opened markets before.”
China has responded to Mr. Trump’s tariffs by targeting higher duties on U.S. farm exports, hitting especially hard at Mr. Trump’s GOP base in Midwestern and southern states.
A leaked propaganda memo from the Chinese government in July stated that Beijing was using to tariffs to try to disrupt and split Mr. Trump’s Republican base. The notice, published by the China Digital Times, said the Chinese tariffs are meant to split “apart different domestic groups in U.S.”
“We stop negotiation for now, acting tit for tat, roll out corresponding policies, hold public opinion at a good level without escalating it, limit scope, and strike accurately and carefully, splitting apart different domestic groups in US,” the propaganda memo stated.
China also placed a four-page ad in the Des Moines Register last weekend calling the dispute over soybeans “the fruit of a president’s folly.”
Mr. Trump’s presence at the chairman seat on the Security Council, meanwhile, marked only the third time in history that a U.S. president has headed a meeting of the world’s most exclusive diplomatic panel.
He used the moment to also level fresh threats against Iran, saying new U.S. sanctions against Tehran will be enforced in full by early November, and that more penalties against Tehran are being prepared beyond that.
But Mr. Trump’s criticism of the 2015 nuclear deal found little support in Wednesday’s sessions, as European leaders such as French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Theresa May joining China’s Mr. Wang and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in urging that the deal be preserved.
Mr. Trump raised eyebrows by then openly expressing gratitude to Iran, Russia and Syria for yielding recently to his administration’s demand they use caution in their impending offensive in the Syrian province of Idlib, where a sensitive mix of jihadists, opposition rebels and innocent civilians threatens to unleash a major humanitarian crisis.
“I want to thank Iran, Russia and Syria for at my very strong urging and request, substantially slowing down their attack on Idlib province and the three million people who live there in order to get 35,000 targeted terrorists,” Mr. Trump said. “Get the terrorists, but I hope the restraint continues. The world is watching.
“Thank you also to Turkey for helping to negotiate restraint,” he said in a reference to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s efforts during recent weeks to convince Russian and Iranian leaders to avoid a heavy-handed and rushed military campaign in Idlib.
“Anything the U.S. can do to help resolve this problem in order to save perhaps even hundreds of thousands of lives, maybe more, we are willing and able,” Mr. Trump said. “We are available to help.”
The energy was buzzing among world leaders as Mr. Trump took to the microphone inside the Security Council’s hallowed chamber here in New York on Wednesday morning.
Former President Barack Obama was the first U.S. president to preside over a session of the council, which has 15 member nations and five permanent members — the U.S., China, Russia, Britain and France. Mr. Obama addressed the body twice during his tenure, once in 2009 and again in 2014.
The official topic of Wednesday’s session was world efforts to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction. While Mr. Trump has spent much of this week at the U.N. General Assembly gathering of world leaders criticizing Iran for what he claims is its ongoing pursuit of nuclear weapons, the president sought to draw attention at the Security Council to chemical weapons and their use in Syria’s civil war.
“Many of us are rightly focused on the dangers of nuclear weapons, but we must never forget the risk posed by biological and chemical weapons,” he said. “The United States was one of the first nations to unilaterally renounce the use of biological weapons and since World War I, we have led international efforts against the scourge of chemical warfare.”
He went on to remind the Security Council that his administration has twice authorized retaliatory U.S. military strikes against the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad for “using chemical weapons against innocent civilians.”
Mr. Trump, in a tweet, noted the newspaper ad in Iowa last week.
“ China is actually placing propaganda ads in the Des Moines Register and other papers, made to look like news,” the president said. “That’s because we are beating them on Trade, opening markets, and the farmers will make a fortune when this is over!”
In a conference call arranged by the White House, a senior administration official said China is using a “whole of government approach” to interfere in the U.S. democratic system, including political, economic, commercial, military and informational “tools.”
“The activities have reached an unacceptable level,” the official said.
Referring to Chinese tariffs, the official said, “Some examples of the ways that China is actively interfering in our political system include hurting farmers and workers in states and districts that voted for the president, because he stood up to the ways that China has taken advantage of our country economically.”
The official also said China also spends billions of dollars on “propaganda” and punishes or rewards businessmen, think tanks, journalists, religious leaders and even political candidates “depending on whether they criticize or support China’s policies.”
China also engages in “intimidation, from cyberbullying to threatening phone calls from embassy officials, to stifling free speech on college campuses, targeting administrators, professors, and even Chinese students who want to talk about their good experiences in the United States,” the official said.
Vice President Mike Pence is preparing to deliver a speech next week on China’s malign activities.
• Dave Boyer reported from Washington. |
