Trump Cozy With Xi Jinping Despite Past Accusations
Left 100%
Center 0%
Right 0%
3 left · 0 center · 0 right
What happened
President Donald Trump welcomed Chinese President Xi Jinping and Peng Liyuan at Joint Base Andrews on Wednesday with a red carpet, a 21-gun salute, both countries’ national anthems, and a U.S. Air Force jet overhead, ahead of Thursday Oval Office talks, a planned flyover of F-22 fighters and a B-2 bomber, and a state dinner. On Monday of the same week, Trump visited New York City Mayor Mamdani at Gracie Mansion. At a press conference standing with Mamdani, Trump said the mayor had the potential to be a "great" mayor. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a video message that told Mamdani, "Shame on you for supporting the Hamas terrorist monsters who butchered our people" and "Shame on you for inciting riots against New York Jews."
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Omitted — what each side leaves out
Unpacked
Left-leaning coverage never mentions Trump's meeting with Mayor Mamdani, so the second greeting that right-leaning coverage treats as the week's real fight never appears. Only a Daily Show joke about Trump picking Xi up at the airport appears. Right-leaning coverage instead opens with both visits, records Trump calling the mayor "great," and then argues that granting him equal stature before the midterms was a mistake.
Left-leaning coverage makes the airport pickup the whole Xi story. Right-leaning coverage leads with a military flyover and a hope it is matched by resolve behind closed doors, and only then describes the red-carpet walk.
What, if anything, did Trump require of Xi after the cameras left?
Bottom line
The New York Post can stomach Trump's red carpet for Xi but draws the line at Mamdani; the New York Times never mentions the mayor.
The receipts — 1 fact one side's coverage lacks
- Senator Chuck Schumer accused Trump of bending the knee to the Chinese Communist Party
The Left View
The Daily Show’s Desi Lydic framed Trump’s ceremonial welcome for Xi as excessive personal warmth rather than ordinary protocol, roasting him for “pulling out all the stops.” She treated the airport greeting as the punchline of that closeness: “Trump picked him up at the airport? OK, that is friendship.”
The Right View
Miranda Devine of the New York Post branded the pairing of the two meetings “Commie Week,” arguing that Trump’s elaborate courtesies toward Xi are “crafty” because he “clearly has no illusions about China’s mal-intent,” a claim she tied to the military display and to steps she said have blocked Chinese influence in Greenland, the Panama Canal, and Venezuelan oil. She wrote that Republican hawks want him to “lay down the law” in the Oval Office on AI theft and threats to Taiwan and Japan, and she dismissed Democrats as newly minted China hawks, quoting Chuck Schumer’s charge that Trump had “once again bend[ing] the knee to the CCP.” On Mamdani, Devine said it was “Wrong to raise stature” by granting him “equal stature before the midterms,” arguing Trump “could not have been more charming” and that Mamdani seeks federal money “to waste on more socialist boondoggles,” in contrast to Netanyahu’s rebuke. She concluded, “Schmoozing Xi we can stomach, but no more with Mandani, please.”
Our Take (balanced)
The left’s strongest argument in the available coverage is Lydic’s: the airport pickup and full honors look like “friendship” with Xi, a visual of intimacy with a rival autocrat. The right’s strongest argument is Devine’s: the same honors can be “crafty” statecraft that does not imply naïveté, which she supports by pointing to the accompanying military display and to Trump’s second-term moves against Chinese influence, while arguing that publicly calling Mamdani a potentially “great” mayor is the more damaging act of normalizing a far-left figure before midterms—an elevation she contrasts with Netanyahu’s “Shame on you” video. The central unresolved tension is whether Trump’s high-ceremony welcome for Xi and his public warmth toward Mamdani are themselves concessions of stature, or a personal diplomatic style that can be separated from how hard he intends to compete with Beijing and how he will actually treat New York’s mayor.
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