Donald Trump welcomes Chinese President Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago on April 6. (Carlos Barria/Reuters)
With Breanne Deppisch---Donald Trump makes a dramatic entrance from inside the Lincoln Memorial during a "Make America Great Again" concert the night before his inauguration. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Mark Thompson is escorted last night from his court-martial at Quantico. (J. Lawler Duggan/For The Washington Post)-Mark Thompson is escorted last night from his court-martial at Quantico. (J. Lawler Duggan/For The Washington Post)
THE BIG IDEA: Donald Trump believed he could convince China to pressure North Korea to stop its nuclear activities. Then President Xi Jinping tutored him on the history of the region.
“After listening for 10 minutes, I realized that it’s not so easy,” Trump told the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, recounting the session at Mar-a-Lago. “You know, I felt pretty strongly that they had a tremendous power over North Korea. But it’s not what you would think."
This comment is funny because, in 2011, Trump claimed that he has read “hundreds of books about China over the decades,” including works by Henry Kissinger, American journalists and Chinese novelists. Looking to do more business with Beijing, he provided a list of 20 books about China to Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, that he said had helped him understand the country, its politics and its people. “I know the Chinese. I've made a lot of money with the Chinese. I understand the Chinese mind,” Trump said six years ago. His list had some surprising titles on it, including “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.”
The Air Force released video of a 2003 test of a bomb, called a GBU-43. The military dropped same type of bomb on Islamic State forces in eastern Afghanistan on April 13, 2017. (U.S. Air Force)
After U.S. forces dropped a 22,000-pound bomb on the Islamic State in eastern Afghanistan on April 13, President Trump called the operation a “successful job.” (Reuters)
Washington Post columnist David Ignatius takes a look at the developing foreign policy of the Trump administration. (Adriana Usero/The Washington Post)
Color me skeptical that Trump has read anything by Amy Chua.
-- Even if he has, the fact our president needed an introductory tutorial on Sino-Korean relations to understand how hard it is to contain Pyongyang is just the latest illustration of one of his blind spots: He and his inner-circle have very little sense of history.
-- It is a cliché, but there is truth to it: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
