Donald Trump’s Asia trip has featured plenty of pomp and the kind of spectacle that this president seems to crave, but evidence of meaningful policy advances for the United States has been in short supply. The Republican’s sojourn concluded with a lengthy meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea, which Trump described as a “12” on a scale of 1 to 10.
But after the interaction, it was Beijing that beamed. A New York Times analysis explained, “When Xi Jinping walked out of his meeting with President Trump on Thursday, he projected the confidence of a powerful leader who could make Washington blink. The outcome of the talks suggested that he succeeded.” The report added that it was Xi who “won key concessions from Washington.”
Longtime journalist John Harwood summarized, “Xi wiped the floor with Trump.” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer offered a related assessment: Trump’s trip, the New York Democrat said on the Senate floor, “has been a total dud.”
Evidently, the comment did not go unnoticed on Air Force One. Trump wrote on his social media platform:
Worked really hard, 24/7, took in Trillions of Dollars, and Chuck Schumer said trip was ‘a total dud,’ even though he knows it was a spectacular success. Words like that are almost treasonous!!!
While there’s plenty of room for analyses about the merits (or lack thereof) of the Republican’s Asia trip, let’s not brush too quickly past Trump’s suggestion that he sees criticism as “almost treasonous.”
It’s a word he uses with unnerving frequency. It was just three months ago when Trump, at an Oval Office event, pointed to a bizarre conspiracy theory and claimed that Barack Obama was “guilty” of a scheme that Trump characterized as “treason.”
In the not-too-distant past, an American president accusing anyone of treason would’ve been a very big deal, but the comments generated very little notice — in part because the allegations against Obama were literally unbelievable and in part because of the length of Trump’s “treason” list.
The Republican has, after all, previously accused House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi and former FBI Director James Comey of treason. He has also eyed treason investigations into Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff of California, along with The New York Times, Google and federal law enforcement officials.
At one point, after one of his first-term State of the Union addresses, Trump even suggested that congressional Democrats might have committed “treason” because they failed to applaud to his satisfaction. In 2023, he declared his belief that members of the bipartisan Jan. 6 committee “should be tried for Fraud and Treason.” A year later, the Republican amplified a social media message that accused former House GOP Conference Chair Liz Cheney of being “guilty” of “treason.” You’ve heard of the boy who cried “wolf”? I’d like to introduce you to the president who cried “treason.” It’s not at all healthy when an authoritarian president falsely — and casually — accuses various people and institutions of treason, effectively making this the background noise of our civic lives. And yet, here we are. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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