It’s Commie Week for President Trump.
First it was New York’s unlovely Mayor Mamdani Trump did the great honor of visiting at Gracie Mansion on Monday.
Then on Wednesday the president rolled out the literal red carpet for another Communist dictator, President Xi Jinping of China.
Donald Trump and the first lady warmly greeted Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, when they alighted from their plane at Joint Base Andrews and strolled together companionably down the red carpet as a 21-gun salute sounded, followed by the national anthems of both nations.
Trump could not resist sending a US Air Force jet overhead to buzz Xi as a prelude to Thursday’s promised spectacular military flyover of F-22 fighters and a B-2 bomber before their Oval Office talks and state dinner.
Let’s hope the impressive military show of force is matched by equal resolve behind closed doors. Despite Trump’s elaborate courtesies toward Xi, he clearly has no illusions about China’s mal-intent as it seeks to dislodge America’s geopolitical primacy.
The president has moved craftily and decisively in his second term to dislodge China’s sneaky footholds in America’s neighborhood.
The Greenland security deal he signed at the UN on Tuesday blocks China from establishing bases and exerting influence in America’s Arctic north.
He’s forced Chinese port operators out of the Panama Canal and has taken majority control of the Venezuelan oil that Beijing had its eyes on.
Even his belligerence toward Canada is partly designed to extract our weak northern neighbor from China’s embrace.
Lay down the law!
While Melania Trump takes Madame Peng on a visit to the national art museum, Republican hawks like Sen. Tom Cotton want Trump to lay down the law in the Oval Office and tell Xi to stop stealing our AI models and stop threatening its neighbors like Taiwan and Japan.
Trump could also keep pestering Xi to release Jimmy Lai, the Hong Kong publisher, from detention. It’s a joke that Democrats are now posing as China hawks after sucking up to Beijing for a generation — especially through Joe Biden’s vice-presidency and then his presidency.
His son Hunter raked in millions of dollars from China while Joe kowtowed to Xi and allowed him to militarize islands in the South China Sea and steal American intellectual property with gay abandon. Yet Democrat Senate Leader Chuck Schumer has the chutzpah to accuse Trump of “once again bend[ing] the knee to the CCP [Chinese Communist Party].”
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Far-left Sen. Bernie Sanders this week demanded that Trump “sit down and negotiate with President Xi for a comprehensive treaty to establish . . . a ban on superintelligence.”
And pigs might fly.
The Trump administration takes far more seriously than Democrats ever had China’s position as America’s archrival in the contest for global leadership — especially in the high-stakes arms race on AI — which the president wants to rebrand as SI — Super Intelligence.
As Trump repeatedly says: “Whoever wins AI, WINS!”
Tech leaders are reportedly bullish about America winning the race — even while some are begging for government to regulate them and assume legal liability.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is predicting we will have 80% of the world’s computing power by 2028, up from about 60% last year.
Apocalypse not!
In his UN speech Tuesday, Trump dismissed the apocalyptic warnings of AI doomers that the robots will kill us all unless the UN or some similar global entity oversees AI development.
“We’re leading now over China by a lot and everyone else, and we’re going to keep it that way. We’re going to keep it very, very straight and very strong. I’m not going to stifle growth of anything that’s going to be bigger than the Industrial Revolution,” Trump said.
“We will be very careful, and that’s why we have a Department of Justice.”
Judging by Beijing’s secrecy and malevolence in allowing COVID-19 to spread from its Wuhan lab around the world, any global supervisory regime would not constrain China, only the US.
Bessent has at least managed to strike a deal with Beijing to establish an emergency hotline for the two countries to communicate in the event of an AI emergency, but again that relies on trust.
While Trump’s domestic rivals underestimate Trump’s resolve to best China, you can bet Xi doesn’t.
Trump received an uncharacteristically enthusiastic hearing at the UN Tuesday — his speech was interrupted three times by applause, on Iran, Gaza and Malania Trump’s efforts to repatriate Ukrainian children from Russia.
The crowd applauded again as he finished.
The assembled global leaders may be starting to realize that Trump is good for the world, even if Americans barely notice.
But while kid gloves, warm smiles and quiet subterfuge are necessary to win the contest with China without risking a trade war or worse, the same can’t be said for New York City’s current toxic leadership.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered the message to Mamdani this week that a lot of New Yorkers wish Trump had.
“Shame on you, Mr. Mamdani,” Netanyahu said in a video message to the mayor ahead of the PM’s UN speech Thursday.
“Shame on you for supporting the Hamas terrorist monsters who butchered our people. Shame on you for inciting riots against New York Jews.”
By contrast, Trump could not have been more charming to Mamdani, standing alongside the mayor at a press conference saying he had the potential to be a “great” mayor.
Wrong to raise stature
Why normalize Mamdani by granting him equal stature before the midterms when Republican candidates across the country are running on the craziness of the far-left DSA faction of the Democrats, which has Mamdani as its leader and his good friend, the Hamas-loving 9/11 apologist Hasan Piker, as its poster boy?
Mamdani, who normally has a ghastly grin plastered on his face, was uncharacteristically somber-faced.
He put on the appearance of eating something distasteful as Trump gushed over him.
Trump probably wants to coax the mayor into not ruining the hometown he loves, but Mamdani just wants to trick Trump into giving him millions of dollars to waste on more socialist boondoggles that will entrench his power and make New Yorkers’ lives worse.
The one way to deal with Mamdani and save New York is to support Bruce Blakeman, who is catching up to Kathy Hochul in the latest polls of the all-important gubernatorial race.
But if Mandani is so great, as Trump is telling us, why would we need Blakeman?
Schmoozing Xi we can stomach, but no more with Mandani, please.
The post Miranda Devine: Trump’s crafty ‘Commie Week’ diplomacy with Mamdani and Xi appeared first on New York Post.
