May 15, 2026 • 13 mins
In the middle of President's Trump's historic summit China's President Xi, pundit, author and expert on China's political pulse, Gordon Chang, joins Jack for his analysis of the meeting.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
She wants reunification. He has said this time and time again.
He's claimed that it is unstoppable. And look, this has
been the position since the inception of the Chinese Communist Party,
but it has become an obsession under She he wants
the US to stop selling arms, to change his posture,
(00:21):
and to reduce its.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Support of Taiwan.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Yeah. So the scary news so far in the big
summit between Trump and President She, the leader of the
two biggest economies in the world, the two leaders meeting
is that man she went there right away on Taiwan,
and as you just heard in that report there from
CBS News, it has become an obsession of his that Taiwan,
(00:46):
the independent country off the coast of China, become part
of China. President She believes it is part of China
and should become a full on part of China. Our
position is currently no, you ain't, but President she said
to Trump yesterday. If handled poorly, it could lead to
conflict in an extremely dangerous situation. I've seen no reporting
(01:09):
on how Trump replied to that. Basically a threat from
President She about don't get in our way if we
decide to take Taiwan. So we got that on a
little more of the optimistic side. This is just out
from the White House. The two sides agreed that the
Strait of horror moves in Iran must remain open to
(01:30):
support the free flow of energy. That's good the President.
She said that also made clear that China's opposition to
the militarization of the strait or any effort to charge
a toll or anything like that. And both countries agreed
Iran can never have a nuclear weapon. And I hope
President She means those things sometimes he doesn't. Joining us
(01:52):
now to discuss all of this. Gordon Chang, we've had
on the show many times over the years of author
and calumnist, written a whole bunch of different great books
that we've talked to him about. He's a columnist at
The Daily Beast. You can follow him on Twitter at
at Gordon g Chang. Mister Chang, welcome to the Armstrong
and Getty Show. Appreciate you being here.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Oh well, thank you so much. Jack.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
So was that a threat from President She on the
whole Taiwan thing?
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Sure it was, and President Trump has responded. We've been
told by a White House official speaking off the record
that there will be no change in US policy, which
is good. Now, i'd like President Trump to publicly say, look,
we're not changing our policy. And actually i'd like him
to say we're defending Timewan, because I think at some
(02:39):
point we're going to need to do that. But thing
has just been huffing and puffing, and I think President
Trump knows it and he's just not feeling And Trump
is feeling well, there's no point in actually opposing him publicly,
but the US will not change its position.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
Yeah, that's damned interesting. I mean because the readout after
their first talks, the Communist Party's readout was basically she's
threat to Trump, with no indication of how Trump responded
the White House. Initial White House readout didn't mention the
Taiwan thing at all. It just talked about, you know,
business relations. So that's interesting that you have an update
(03:20):
on that.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Yeah, it's and you can you know a lot of
people and there's a whole industry of people who will
blame Trump for things he has not done, and this
is one of them where people are really worried that
Trump will sell out Taiwan. Now she hasn't done it yet,
and I don't think he'll do it, and if he
(03:42):
does it, we'll criticize him then for it. But until
he does it, people should just sort of calm down
a little bit. And I think it's important for us
to give the president some credit here.
Speaker 4 (03:53):
Well I don't.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Yeah, I don't know what Trump's true thoughts on this,
but I don't know that Kamala Harris would have defended
Taiwan if president or Joe Biden or Barack Obama. I mean,
so's it's always been kind of an open question would
we actually go to war with China to defend Taiwan
if it came down to it. So I don't know
where we are.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
Yeah, well, and we also don't know where we are
as Americans because we had to go back to nineteen
fifty where Dean Ahison, who was Secretary of State at
the time, publicly drew America's western defense perimeter that did
not include South Korea. So that encouraged Kim olsunga North
Korea to invade the South. And what did Truman do?
(04:34):
President Truman immediately sent troops to defend South Korea. So
we don't even know our own mind, but I believe
that we would defend Taiwan because if we didn't, it
would be catastrophic.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
That's what I wanted to ask you about. Explain to
people why that would be a big deal if China
was able to make Taiwan part of China in the
same way that they did Hong Kong, Okay.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
First of all, Taiwan makes ninety two percent of the
world's most sophisticated semiconductors, so forget about the future with
involving microchips. But also after the catastrophic which all from Afghanistan,
Taiwan has become the test of American credibility and resolve
around the world. China, which has been attacking democracies, we
(05:20):
cannot allow them to absorb any democracy, especially one as
important as Taiwan, because the propaganda would be malicious that
the United States was no longer a world power. And also,
since the eighteen hundreds, we Americans have drawn our western
defense perimeter off the coast of East Asia. Taiwan sits
(05:42):
in the center of that critical line. It protects our
allies Philippines in Japan. We would not be a world
power if we allowed China to take Taiwan, and this
would be just shameful. Forget about these strategic implications. It
would just be shameful we allowed that to happen.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
I agree with all that, and we're all seeing what
the Strait of Horror moves has done to the world economy,
and China controlling all the shipping lanes of that part
of the world would make that look like nothing.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Yes, and President Trump deserves a lot of credit because
just on April thirteenth, the Pentagon announced a defense pack
with Indonesia. The Indonesian island of Sumatra is the southern
end of the Strait of Malacca, which is far more
important than the Strait of Horror moves to world commerce.
So Trump is thinking about these things in a very
(06:40):
determined way. So here again give him credit.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
So this is new from the White House. As I
mentioned a little bit ago, I wondered what your take
on this isn't and this is good news that President
she agreed that the Strait of Horror Moves, that's the
strait with the war in Iran we've been following, must
remain open. They don't get to charge tolls, all that
sort of stuff. And he agreed Iran can never have
a nuke.
Speaker 4 (07:03):
That's all good news, right, well mostly, And the reason
is we need to keep the Strait of Hormos closed
until the Iranians actually give up their.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Nuclear program and their ballistic missiles. And this puts a
lot of pressure on China, which we need not only
for Iran but for other things. And you know, it's
up to us. This is a fault not just of Trump,
but of all his predecessors, going back to Clinton. Actually
even before that, Iran has a nuclear weapons program because
(07:35):
the Chinese transplanted Theirs on Iranian soil. They did that
by direct transfers of equipment, material and technology, but they
also did it indirectly through the aq Con black market
network of Pakistan. So you know, a lot of people
blame Trump for this war. Trump knows this. He needs
(07:56):
to say it in public that there's a war because
China made this war virtually inevitable.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
That's really interesting. I was struck yesterday watching the Leader's
meet and all the kids dance around and everything like
that under the watchful eye of a giant portrait of
Chairman Mao that is there in the square. I can't
believe that's not more remarked upon about the fact that
you have this enormous poster painting whatever it is of
(08:27):
Chairman Mao, the guy responsible for more deaths than maybe
anyone in human history.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
No, you're right about that. Mao is responsible for more
deaths than any other figure in history, more than Hitler,
more than Stalin, more than Genghis Khan. It's just Mao's
death toll is enormous. We don't know exactly what it was,
but from a number of events, especially the famine following
(08:54):
the Great Leap Forward at the end of the nineteen
fifties in the beginning of the nineteen sixties was horrific.
Should have known or knew what was happening, but allowed
the famine to continue. And this is something that the
United States needs to talk about. You know, the Communist
Party maliciously hits us every day with propaganda, except for
(09:15):
the two weeks around a visit of an American leader
to China or vice versa. But apart from that, you
get malicious propaganda every day, and the United States needs
to hit back.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
Yeah, I would like some sort of statement about that.
There's the cognitive dissonance thing going on in my brain
that we can have Elon Musk and all these people
in Trump and everye we're all smiling, holding hands, and
the kids are the dancing around, and you got the
most evil person in world history looking down on it.
Seems like somebody ought to throw out by the way,
that system is currently in place, and that's evil. But
(09:48):
I guess nobody wants to upset the Apple.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Gart right, And that system has declared the United States
to be its enemy, and we need to say that
we ignored Osama Bin Lad, we're ignoring the Chinese. Both
believe that they must destroy the United States. Fortunately we
killed Osama Bin Laden, but China is still in a
position to do that.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
Gordon Chang, thanks for joining us today on short notice.
I know you're super busy. Everybody wants to hear from you.
Find him on Twitter at least at Gordon g. Chang
or writing his column for The Daily Beast. Thanks for
your time today. Really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Oh well, thank you, Jack.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
Yeah, I got another comment about that, But first I
want to tell you about rough greens for your dog.
Maybe I'll ask Katie. Katie Katie the news lady who's
gonna call in a little later in the show with
a special announcement. And she's got a cute little dog
how her dog is like in the Rough Greens, which
is something you sprinkle on top of your current dog's
food to give your dog the very best life possible.
Dog food is dead food, has no live nutrition. Roughgreens
(10:48):
has live stuff in it, live probiotics, enzymes, w mago oils,
and over twenty vitamins and minerals. It's America's number one
dog supplement, all natural, made in the United States, and
you can try it for nothing. Just cover the shipping.
Go to Roughgreens dot com. You can get a free
Jumpstart trial bag today. You just cover the shipping. Use
the discount code Armstrong. That's are you Ffgreens dot com
(11:11):
discount code Armstrong. Roughgreens dot Com discount code Armstrong. Make
any dog food better with Roughgreens. Uh yeah, we've never
had so we could call out the Soviet Union for
being bad, although we didn't always. When when Reagan back
in the eighties said, you know, called the Soviet Union
(11:34):
an evil empire, a lot of people, oh.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
You can't say that, that's.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
Revocative or whatever. So we didn't even very often with
the Soviet Union point out loud how awful they were,
And we weren't nearly as economically intertwined or dependent. I
looked this up before the show today, because I'm that
sort of statistic geek. The Soviet Union had about a
third of our economic power, or we were the number
(12:01):
one economy throughout the Cold War, they had about a
third of our economic power. China is about seventy five
percent of our economic power, and in some ways of
measuring they're equal to us. So it's a completely different ballgame.
So I guess that's why business leaders, including our president,
aren't gonna call them an evil empire. But when you
got Chairman Mao staring down over everybody as the leading
(12:26):
killer of humans in human history, that is really weird
that nobody says anything out loud about that. Not I mean,
why doesn't the CBS Evening News say that. By the way, there's,
as you can see in the background, there's Chairman Mao
responsible for the deaths of thirty to fifty million people.
Why does nobody say that out loud? Isn't that weird?
I assume that if you were in Munich and he
(12:47):
had a giant Hitler poster, somebody would say something. I
don't know you had any thoughts on that text line
four one five two nine five KFTC
She wants reunification. He has said this time and time again.
He's claimed that it is unstoppable. And look, this has
been the position since the inception of the Chinese Communist Party,
but it has become an obsession under She he wants
the US to stop selling arms, to change his posture,
(00:21):
and to reduce its.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Support of Taiwan.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Yeah. So the scary news so far in the big
summit between Trump and President She, the leader of the
two biggest economies in the world, the two leaders meeting
is that man she went there right away on Taiwan,
and as you just heard in that report there from
CBS News, it has become an obsession of his that Taiwan,
(00:46):
the independent country off the coast of China, become part
of China. President She believes it is part of China
and should become a full on part of China. Our
position is currently no, you ain't, but President she said
to Trump yesterday. If handled poorly, it could lead to
conflict in an extremely dangerous situation. I've seen no reporting
(01:09):
on how Trump replied to that. Basically a threat from
President She about don't get in our way if we
decide to take Taiwan. So we got that on a
little more of the optimistic side. This is just out
from the White House. The two sides agreed that the
Strait of horror moves in Iran must remain open to
(01:30):
support the free flow of energy. That's good the President.
She said that also made clear that China's opposition to
the militarization of the strait or any effort to charge
a toll or anything like that. And both countries agreed
Iran can never have a nuclear weapon. And I hope
President She means those things sometimes he doesn't. Joining us
(01:52):
now to discuss all of this. Gordon Chang, we've had
on the show many times over the years of author
and calumnist, written a whole bunch of different great books
that we've talked to him about. He's a columnist at
The Daily Beast. You can follow him on Twitter at
at Gordon g Chang. Mister Chang, welcome to the Armstrong
and Getty Show. Appreciate you being here.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Oh well, thank you so much. Jack.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
So was that a threat from President She on the
whole Taiwan thing?
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Sure it was, and President Trump has responded. We've been
told by a White House official speaking off the record
that there will be no change in US policy, which
is good. Now, i'd like President Trump to publicly say, look,
we're not changing our policy. And actually i'd like him
to say we're defending Timewan, because I think at some
(02:39):
point we're going to need to do that. But thing
has just been huffing and puffing, and I think President
Trump knows it and he's just not feeling And Trump
is feeling well, there's no point in actually opposing him publicly,
but the US will not change its position.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
Yeah, that's damned interesting. I mean because the readout after
their first talks, the Communist Party's readout was basically she's
threat to Trump, with no indication of how Trump responded
the White House. Initial White House readout didn't mention the
Taiwan thing at all. It just talked about, you know,
business relations. So that's interesting that you have an update
(03:20):
on that.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Yeah, it's and you can you know a lot of
people and there's a whole industry of people who will
blame Trump for things he has not done, and this
is one of them where people are really worried that
Trump will sell out Taiwan. Now she hasn't done it yet,
and I don't think he'll do it, and if he
(03:42):
does it, we'll criticize him then for it. But until
he does it, people should just sort of calm down
a little bit. And I think it's important for us
to give the president some credit here.
Speaker 4 (03:53):
Well I don't.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Yeah, I don't know what Trump's true thoughts on this,
but I don't know that Kamala Harris would have defended
Taiwan if president or Joe Biden or Barack Obama. I mean,
so's it's always been kind of an open question would
we actually go to war with China to defend Taiwan
if it came down to it. So I don't know
where we are.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
Yeah, well, and we also don't know where we are
as Americans because we had to go back to nineteen
fifty where Dean Ahison, who was Secretary of State at
the time, publicly drew America's western defense perimeter that did
not include South Korea. So that encouraged Kim olsunga North
Korea to invade the South. And what did Truman do?
(04:34):
President Truman immediately sent troops to defend South Korea. So
we don't even know our own mind, but I believe
that we would defend Taiwan because if we didn't, it
would be catastrophic.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
That's what I wanted to ask you about. Explain to
people why that would be a big deal if China
was able to make Taiwan part of China in the
same way that they did Hong Kong, Okay.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
First of all, Taiwan makes ninety two percent of the
world's most sophisticated semiconductors, so forget about the future with
involving microchips. But also after the catastrophic which all from Afghanistan,
Taiwan has become the test of American credibility and resolve
around the world. China, which has been attacking democracies, we
(05:20):
cannot allow them to absorb any democracy, especially one as
important as Taiwan, because the propaganda would be malicious that
the United States was no longer a world power. And also,
since the eighteen hundreds, we Americans have drawn our western
defense perimeter off the coast of East Asia. Taiwan sits
(05:42):
in the center of that critical line. It protects our
allies Philippines in Japan. We would not be a world
power if we allowed China to take Taiwan, and this
would be just shameful. Forget about these strategic implications. It
would just be shameful we allowed that to happen.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
I agree with all that, and we're all seeing what
the Strait of Horror moves has done to the world economy,
and China controlling all the shipping lanes of that part
of the world would make that look like nothing.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Yes, and President Trump deserves a lot of credit because
just on April thirteenth, the Pentagon announced a defense pack
with Indonesia. The Indonesian island of Sumatra is the southern
end of the Strait of Malacca, which is far more
important than the Strait of Horror moves to world commerce.
So Trump is thinking about these things in a very
(06:40):
determined way. So here again give him credit.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
So this is new from the White House. As I
mentioned a little bit ago, I wondered what your take
on this isn't and this is good news that President
she agreed that the Strait of Horror Moves, that's the
strait with the war in Iran we've been following, must
remain open. They don't get to charge tolls, all that
sort of stuff. And he agreed Iran can never have
a nuke.
Speaker 4 (07:03):
That's all good news, right, well mostly, And the reason
is we need to keep the Strait of Hormos closed
until the Iranians actually give up their.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Nuclear program and their ballistic missiles. And this puts a
lot of pressure on China, which we need not only
for Iran but for other things. And you know, it's
up to us. This is a fault not just of Trump,
but of all his predecessors, going back to Clinton. Actually
even before that, Iran has a nuclear weapons program because
(07:35):
the Chinese transplanted Theirs on Iranian soil. They did that
by direct transfers of equipment, material and technology, but they
also did it indirectly through the aq Con black market
network of Pakistan. So you know, a lot of people
blame Trump for this war. Trump knows this. He needs
(07:56):
to say it in public that there's a war because
China made this war virtually inevitable.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
That's really interesting. I was struck yesterday watching the Leader's
meet and all the kids dance around and everything like
that under the watchful eye of a giant portrait of
Chairman Mao that is there in the square. I can't
believe that's not more remarked upon about the fact that
you have this enormous poster painting whatever it is of
(08:27):
Chairman Mao, the guy responsible for more deaths than maybe
anyone in human history.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
No, you're right about that. Mao is responsible for more
deaths than any other figure in history, more than Hitler,
more than Stalin, more than Genghis Khan. It's just Mao's
death toll is enormous. We don't know exactly what it was,
but from a number of events, especially the famine following
(08:54):
the Great Leap Forward at the end of the nineteen
fifties in the beginning of the nineteen sixties was horrific.
Should have known or knew what was happening, but allowed
the famine to continue. And this is something that the
United States needs to talk about. You know, the Communist
Party maliciously hits us every day with propaganda, except for
(09:15):
the two weeks around a visit of an American leader
to China or vice versa. But apart from that, you
get malicious propaganda every day, and the United States needs
to hit back.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
Yeah, I would like some sort of statement about that.
There's the cognitive dissonance thing going on in my brain
that we can have Elon Musk and all these people
in Trump and everye we're all smiling, holding hands, and
the kids are the dancing around, and you got the
most evil person in world history looking down on it.
Seems like somebody ought to throw out by the way,
that system is currently in place, and that's evil. But
(09:48):
I guess nobody wants to upset the Apple.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Gart right, And that system has declared the United States
to be its enemy, and we need to say that
we ignored Osama Bin Lad, we're ignoring the Chinese. Both
believe that they must destroy the United States. Fortunately we
killed Osama Bin Laden, but China is still in a
position to do that.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
Gordon Chang, thanks for joining us today on short notice.
I know you're super busy. Everybody wants to hear from you.
Find him on Twitter at least at Gordon g. Chang
or writing his column for The Daily Beast. Thanks for
your time today. Really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Oh well, thank you, Jack.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
Yeah, I got another comment about that, But first I
want to tell you about rough greens for your dog.
Maybe I'll ask Katie. Katie Katie the news lady who's
gonna call in a little later in the show with
a special announcement. And she's got a cute little dog
how her dog is like in the Rough Greens, which
is something you sprinkle on top of your current dog's
food to give your dog the very best life possible.
Dog food is dead food, has no live nutrition. Roughgreens
(10:48):
has live stuff in it, live probiotics, enzymes, w mago oils,
and over twenty vitamins and minerals. It's America's number one
dog supplement, all natural, made in the United States, and
you can try it for nothing. Just cover the shipping.
Go to Roughgreens dot com. You can get a free
Jumpstart trial bag today. You just cover the shipping. Use
the discount code Armstrong. That's are you Ffgreens dot com
(11:11):
discount code Armstrong. Roughgreens dot Com discount code Armstrong. Make
any dog food better with Roughgreens. Uh yeah, we've never
had so we could call out the Soviet Union for
being bad, although we didn't always. When when Reagan back
in the eighties said, you know, called the Soviet Union
(11:34):
an evil empire, a lot of people, oh.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
You can't say that, that's.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
Revocative or whatever. So we didn't even very often with
the Soviet Union point out loud how awful they were,
And we weren't nearly as economically intertwined or dependent. I
looked this up before the show today, because I'm that
sort of statistic geek. The Soviet Union had about a
third of our economic power, or we were the number
(12:01):
one economy throughout the Cold War, they had about a
third of our economic power. China is about seventy five
percent of our economic power, and in some ways of
measuring they're equal to us. So it's a completely different ballgame.
So I guess that's why business leaders, including our president,
aren't gonna call them an evil empire. But when you
got Chairman Mao staring down over everybody as the leading
(12:26):
killer of humans in human history, that is really weird
that nobody says anything out loud about that. Not I mean,
why doesn't the CBS Evening News say that. By the way, there's,
as you can see in the background, there's Chairman Mao
responsible for the deaths of thirty to fifty million people.
Why does nobody say that out loud? Isn't that weird?
I assume that if you were in Munich and he
(12:47):
had a giant Hitler poster, somebody would say something. I
don't know you had any thoughts on that text line
four one five two nine five KFTC
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