During his latest interview with Hugh Hewitt, Donald Trump decided to go after the Democratic incumbent president, rather than his actual 2024 rival.
President Joe Biden, the Republican said, “is compromised by China. He’s had a lot of — he gets a lot of money from China, or he got a lot of money from China, tremendous amount of money. And he’s totally compromised.”
Part of the problem is the fact that there’s literally zero evidence of Biden getting “a lot of money from China.” Another part of the problem is that there’s ample evidence that Trump’s private-sector enterprise, not his Democratic successor, actually did receive millions of dollars from China.
But as relevant as such details are, a related question hangs overhead: Does Trump really want to talk about connections to China right now? An Associated Press report published this week suggests it’s a topic he should probably try to avoid.
Thousands of copies of Donald Trump’s ‘God Bless the USA’ Bible were printed in a country that the former president has repeatedly accused of stealing American jobs and engaging in unfair trade practices — China. Global trade records reviewed by The Associated Press show a printing company in China’s eastern city of Hangzhou shipped close to 120,000 of the Bibles to the United States between early February and late March.
The AP’s report, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, went on to note that the Trump Bible’s China connection “reveals a deep divide between the former president’s harsh anti-China rhetoric and his rush to cash in while campaigning.”
Well, yes, actually it does.
The Trump-branded Bible — one of many merchandising opportunities the Republican has pursued in recent months, none of which have anything to do with his 2024 candidacy — was already controversial. As part of the former president’s pitch, first made in March, customers were supposed to pony up $59.99 (not including shipping and applicable taxes) for a copy of a book he described as the “God Bless the U.S.A. Bible.”
It includes a copy of a King James translation of scripture (which, incidentally, is available for free from a variety of sources) along with the texts of the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence and the Pledge of Allegiance — all of which are also available for free from a variety of sources. What do the United States’ founding documents have to do with the Christian Bible? Effectively nothing. Why would people pay $59.99 for free texts? Your guess is as good as mine. Is all of this blasphemous? That’s not for me to say, though some critics have certainly pressed this point. But if the Associated Press report is correct, the story looks even worse now: The Chinese company making the product produces the Bibles for roughly $3 per book. Trump and his business partners are then charging 20 times that amount, all while complaining on the campaign trail about companies that produce products in China instead of the U.S. The next time the GOP candidate talks about how great it’ll be when he imposes tariffs on Chinese imports, it’s worth pausing to wonder whether Trump intends to give a waiver to his own products that are being produced in China.
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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