Trump accuses Biden of having 'a very close, personal relationship' with Beijing, dubs WHO 'puppets for China'
Former President Donald Trump made his first public speech post-presidency on Sunday, February 28, and there, he targeted people and institutions he perceives to be his enemies. Among those that Trump slammed was President Joe Biden who the former accused as an "America last" president who could not strongly deal with China – a country which the former Trump administration had strongly handled over issues ranging from trade to Covid-19 pandemic.
Speaking to a conservative audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the Republican leader said his successor had “the most disastrous first month of any president in modern history”. He slammed Biden over his decision to rejoin the World Health Organization (WHO) and called it “puppets for China” and said the current president failed to rein Beijing in. Trump took an aggressive stance on China in the wake of the outbreak of the pandemic that has wreaked havoc in the US and also pulled the US out of the WHO alleging that it was being influenced by the Chinese.
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The businessman-politician also complained that companies were relocating to China and said the country has “ripped” America for years and “should not be rewarded”. The former president, who took an unswerving stand on a trade war with China alleging the Asian power was making unjust gains commercially, said the situation has completely changed once the Biden administration has come to power. “That’s what the Biden administration is doing. But, of course, as you know, they have a very close, personal relationship with China, so I don’t expect much to happen,” he said.
This is not the first time that Trump has targeted Biden as someone who goes soft on China. In the run-up to the presidential election last year, Trump’s campaign had released a video accusing Biden of being soft on Beijing. Even the president’s son Hunter has been accused of making business gains vis-a-vis China. The senior Biden has explained that he was not aware of his son’s alleged efforts but Trump trashed it and said the incumbent president was too lenient on China despite continuing many of the policies that his administration had pursued on China.
America should dominate the future, not China, says Trump
“We believe in standing up to China, shutting down outsourcing, bringing back our factories and supply chains, and ensuring that America, not China, dominates the future of the world,” Trump said.
“We took in hundreds of millions of dollars from China during my administration, hundreds. It was a one-way street. We took in hundreds of millions, and during negotiations they would say, look, we don’t want any more of these tariffs. Those tariffs, we took in so much money. And what happened is they became competitive,” the former president said, tomtoming the stance his administration had taken vis-a-vis China.
The former president also used the opportunity to blame China over its handling of the pandemic, which originated in the city of Wuhan in late 2019 and went on to kill 2.5 million people worldwide. The US has the biggest death toll with over 513,000 dying of the virus. According to the former commander-in-chief, China covered up the virus’s spread and said: “What happened with that was just disgraceful.”
Trump also sharpened his attack on the Biden administration by calling it “anti-jobs, anti-family, anti-borders, anto-energy, anti-women, anti-science”. He said in just a month, the US has gone from “America first to America last”.
Trump also lashed out at Biden over the latter’s immigration policies which he has vowed to make more humanitarian, compared to his predecessor. He said Biden was “eliminating our [southern] border” to trigger “a massive flood of illegal immigration” that was allowing criminals reach America’s streets.
In mid-February, Trump fiercely criticized Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell saying the latter had no credibility on China “because of his family’s substantial Chinese business holdings”. McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, who immigrated to America from Taiwan at a young age, served as Trump’s transportation secretary before stepping down in protest against the former president’s supporters’ storming the Capitol on January 6. According to Trump, it is because of his family links to China that McConnell did nothing on China’s “tremendous economic and military threat”.