Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” while commenting on the controversy over the phone call between President-elect Donald Trump and Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen, MSNBC anchor and commentator Andrea Mitchell said China was now concerned about its future diplomatic relationship with President-elect Donald Trump.
Partial transcript as follows:
CHUCK TODD: Andrea, let’s start with this kerfuffle. Why isn’t Donald Trump’s tweet about this right? We gave all this money to Taiwan and everybody makes a big deal over a phone call. The average American sitting out there going, this seems like the typical Washington kerfuffle that means nothing to my life. Why are they wrong?
ANDREA MITCHELL: It won’t mean anything until something goes really, really bad with China, either economically or militarily. Look, this is arguably the most important relationship that the U.S. has. There has been no call, no conversation — it doesn’t matter who made the call. The point is the conversation happened. And even here, someone as careful as Mike Pence referred to her as the President of Taiwan.
CHUCK TODD: That’s a no no?
ANDREA MITCHELL: That’s a no no. The ‘One China’ policy devised by Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon, articulated and finalized by Jimmy Carter, it has been bipartisan. The Chinese are ripped, but they are trying to seize — they will seize on what Mike Pence just said. It was one of 50 calls, it was a courtesy call. Try to move on in a certain way. But they are looking at Donald Trump in a very different way. They were hoping this is a guy — this is a businessman, we can do business with him. This is not Barack Obama, who is going to bludgeon us over human rights. And they really had an open mind and now their first signal is, ‘Wow, this is a new relationship and we have got to arm ourselves.’
(h/t RCP Video)
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