
What you need to know about Donald Trump vs President Xi
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She was the sister who went unnoticed. A daffodil might look plain next to a lily, but on its own there is much to be admired. Now her greatest chapter is yet to come. The most important thing is to be yourself. From the world of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice comes a new BritBox original drama, Marry you will flourish, based on the best selling novel the Other Bennet Sister, now streaming only on BritBox. Watch with a free trial at BritBox.com I'm Kai Wright.
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Foreign.
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Donald Trump has landed in Beijing for his first trip to China since his second term began. And the stakes are pretty high. We've got talks that will be looking at everything from trade, artificial intelligence, relations with Taiwan. But underpinning it all is Donald Trump's really unpopular war in Iran. And that's what's going to make this trip difficult. He is under pressure at home where voters don't like it. His cabinet members are coming under pressure from Congress about the spending and the strategy. Will Donald Trump ask China to speak to its close friend and ally Iran about ending this war, about doing a peace deal? Could China help get the Iranians to the table? And should Donald Trump even accept their help if they offer it? Welcome to AmericasT. AmericasT.
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AmericasT from BBC News. You hear that sound? Oh, I think when I hear that sound, it's reminds me of money. We didn't start this war, but under President Trump, we are finishing it. This is a big cover up and
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this administration is engaged in it.
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This guy has Trump derangement syndrome.
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I have four words for you. Turn the volume up.
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Hello, it's Sarah here in the BBC's
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Washington bureau and it's Anthony right across the table from Sarah here in Washington
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D.C. at about 10 o' clock in the morning here. So 3 o' clock in the afternoon in London. I don't know what time it is in Beijing actually, but whatever time it is, Donald Trump has just landed there on this big state visit to China. Sadly, neither you nor I are there with him, Anthony, but it's a Big deal, isn't it?
C
It is a big deal. This is the first trip he's taken to China since his first term. Joe Biden didn't go to China at all. So this is first US Presidential trip to Beijing since Donald Trump went there during his first terms. And the stakes are quite high.
D
Often US Presidents go there to talk about military, national security kind of things, or to pressure the Chinese into changing their economic system or, you know, looking for some kind of fundamental reforms. It seems like Donald Trump's more likely to go there and do a bunch of economic deals than push for some kind of major change.
C
Well, yeah, if you look at the people he's bringing along with him, a selection of various corporate leaders from across the United States. The head of Nvidia, Elon Musk is gonna be there, the head of some financial companies, the head of Boeing. It is essentially, it seems like, at least by Donald Trump's perspective, this is a business deal making trip. But the reality is there's so much more to US China relations than just opening up China to new business deals. There's the Iran war, of course, there's trade. A year ago, it seemed like the US and China were on the verge of a trade war with tariffs up over 100%. And they got walked back in the ensuing months and then kind of put on ice during that Trump Xi meeting at the airport in South Korea. But that still looms over these negotiations, plus Taiwan, plus national security issues, plus AI and regulating AI, There's a lot of stuff they could talk about. The question is, what will they say and what will come out of this, if anything?
D
Yeah. I was fascinated, looking at the list of chief executives who were on the plane with Donald Trump, trying to work out what that meant for his priorities. And as you say, it was people like Tim Cook from Apple, Elon Musk, the head of Boeing, because we know for sure that they want to get China to buy more Boeing planes. And it was being reported that Jensen Huang from Nvidia had not been invited. And that was really fascinating because of course Nvidia make the high powered computer chips that China needs for AI. And that's like the one bit of leverage that America really has is being able to stop companies like Nvidia selling these chips to China, so slowing their development of artificial intelligence. Whilst on the other hand, of course, China has got a stranglehold on the rare earth, critical minerals that American manufacturing needs. These are the two big points of tension in the relationship. And so I was looking at this, thinking, why has Jensen Huang not been invited. Is it because Nvidia actually want to sell more of their really high tech chips to China? What's the disconnect here? And then all of a sudden, after all the other chief executives are boarded in Washington, the plane stops in Anchorage, Alaska to refuel and lips on. But there's Jensen Huang after all. So I thought that really interesting. Yeah.
C
And then Trump posts on Truth Social that all of the reports that Wang wasn't going to be coming along were fake news and he was always going to come along and that he's looking forward to having him aboard and that all of these people are going to be brought before President Xi in an attempt to open up China, in Trump's words, to American investment. They could, with these brilliant people, he said, could work their magic. That seems to be where Donald Trump's head is. But of course, the big question is the Iran war. What can China do? What is the United States going to ask China to do in order to bring this to some sort of a resolution? Because China and Iran do have fairly close relations. The foreign minister for Iran was in China just last week. China imports a considerable amount of gas from, from the Gulf, from Iran. They have trade agreements. So this is something that China might have some ability to exert some pressure. The question is, how much is Donald Trump and the American side going to push him to do so?
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As he was leaving the White House yesterday, I saw Donald Trump being asked about that and he said he didn't need their help. But of course, I mean, people could look at what's happening in the war with Iran and think, well, he needs somebody's help for sure. I mean, not least because this trip was postponed, wasn't it, by six weeks? It was supposed to happen at the beginning of April. Now it's happening in the middle of May. And I think Donald Trump thought by delaying it for six weeks, he would be going into Beijing victorious in Iran. He would already have nuclear weapons out of Iran's capability. The whole thing would be done and dusted. He would look strong and victorious as he arrived to meet President Xi. And of course, it's quite the opposite.
C
Yeah. Just last week he said in an interview that there wasn't going to be anything to talk about with Iran because he predicted that a deal would be done. He's been predicting that now for two months. But let's listen to what he had to say at the White House as he was about to leave. When asked about Iran, do you think
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he needs to intervene at all with The Iranians. Do you think he can help in any way?
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No, I don't think we need any help with Iran.
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We'll win it one way or the other.
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We'll win it peacefully or otherwise.
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Their navy's gone, their air force is gone, every single element of their war machine is gone. So the he there is President Xi and I mean kind of dismissive there, although I think the reports coming out of American media is that there is going to be an ask and that they do need China's help. But Donald Trump isn't going to acknowledge that, I guess to the assembled journalists on the South Lawn. Yeah.
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Do you think it does mean that he is going into this summit not holding all the cards as he would say? We know how he always loves, doesn't he, to make out diplomacies like an international game of poker and it matters who's got the cards. It feels to me like he's got a weaker hand than he might have done going into this. And maybe President Xi is holding more cards than Donald Trump.
C
Yeah, it's a bad place for the US to be with this war going on now two months and Trump continually saying that the United States is winning, that Iran's navy is at the bottom of the sea and everything's been destroyed. There's actually an intelligence report that was leaked from the United States saying that Iran's military actually may be stronger than Donald Trump is letting on that their missile launch facilities have been rebuilt and are still operational around the Strait of Hormuz. That wasn't the primary objective of this, of course. The primary objective was to stop Iran's nuclear program in its tracks and get them to hand over their nuclear enriched uranium. And that hasn't happened either. So it has been two odd months now and we still haven't had any kind of resolution here. He is going to now to try to talk about trade and to tout American might. And yet he has this kind of nipping at his heels throughout the whole trip.
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It's costing China too though, isn't it, the Iran war? Because they get a lot of their oil and gas from there, albeit they've got more reliance on renewable energy than some other countries. And they do seem to have some quite good stocks of oil. So it's not hitting them really hard yet. But they want this war over with as much as anybody else, I would assume. And presumably that's how Donald Trump would couch this, as it being in China's best. Maybe he could help China to help themselves somehow with Iran.
C
Yeah, he's characterized it in the past as an American gift to the world, including to China, that we are securing the Strait of War moves. Of course, the strait was open before this war began, but I think he does want to remind the Chinese that they are suffering from this as well. Although, as you point out, the Chinese resilience, their energy independence through their renewable resources has helped them weather this storm. I think if there's anything that's really hurting China right now is that the other Asian markets in Southeast Asia, places that get a lot of Chinese exports, they are hurting because they are less able to find alternative sources of energy. And so they're curtailing their imports. And that is going to directly affect China. So this is a global economic issue, and anything that affects the global economy is going to obviously affect China, one of the world's largest exporters.
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Yeah, and this whole linkage between China and the war in Iran came up when the Republican Senator Lindsey Graham was questioning Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in the Senate yesterday and asking him about these concerns about China. You can listen to some of it here.
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Bottom line here, China. Does China buy 90% of Iranian oil? Mr. Secretary?
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China buys a very large percentage.
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Okay, 90% is pretty large. So does China buy. Are they largest purchaser of Russian oil and gas?
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I would imagine they're up there. They are.
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They're the largest. So, President Trump, when you go to China, realize that the person you're talking to is propping up Russia and Iran. I appreciate what you've done in Iran. I appreciate what you're trying to do to end the Russian Ukraine conflict. Do you agree with me, Mr. Secretary, that of all the countries on the planet, China could have the most influence of ending this war if they chose to?
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I think the most influence is in President Trump's hands and what he decides to do.
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And he'll say, what if China stopped?
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But ultimately, China has a lot of leverage. You're right.
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Yeah, they do. What if they stop buying 90% of oil from Iran? That's not President Trump. That's up to China. Do you support putting tariffs on China if they continue to buy Russian oil and gas?
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Tariffs is not my lane, but anything you can do to put pressure on people, I usually support.
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Well, do you believe that when we put pressure on India by 25% tariff for buying Russian oil, they kind of backed off?
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I would say I've had a front row seat to the efficacy of tariff policy. Yes.
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Yeah, I think it works, guys. And we're on the breakthrough breakout here in a minute of Having a bill that would give the President ability to tariff the largest purchasers of Russian oil and gas, and I hope he will use it.
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That was a bit more optimistic, I think, about America's chances in Iran. The sum of what went on at that hearing, I thought it was really fascinating, Anthony, when Pete Hegseth, the Defense Secretary, was being questioned about the strategy around the Strait of Hormuz, why didn't they see the possibility that Iran could simply move to close it? And what were they going to do about opening it up? And Pete Hex kept insisting, oh, they had more military might to deploy than they already had. But I thought it seemed pretty clear from what he was saying, there is not a strategy for reopening the Strait of Hormuz at the moment. And it still seems mind blowing that they didn't see this coming and just quite how difficult this was going to be.
C
Right. As we talked about before, anyone who has planned for any kind of a military conflict with Iran over the past few decades has looked at this and said, okay, the one real point of weakness is the Strait of Hormuz in Iran, just by nature of their territory looming over that narrow waterway that they can exert control and disrupt the global economy, which is exactly what they did. The talk about this Operation Freedom that was on again, off again, and may be on again at some point, escorting tankers through the Strait. You can't escort tankers that don't want to go through, and you can't do it in large enough numbers in order to really reopen the Strait in full. So it's not a complete solution. There has to be some sort of negotiated settlement or the other option, I suppose, is some sort of massive ground invasion where you have US Troops occupying the area around Hormuz, including the towns where Iranians are, and Iranian military could pop up and fire drones out. You have to control the speedboats, the little Zodiac boats that could be going out with machine guns or missiles or their own drones or mines. It's just. It's really, really hard to exert militarily the kind of control over that that would be necessary. Which is why when you're talking to the Defense Secretary about solutions, there is no obvious military answer. As you say, you got to talk to Marco Rubio or to Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner about what sort of negotiations there are. And it does seem like Iran is willing to reach some sort of an agreement to open Hormuz. And if the United States suspends the blockade and allows Iranian shipments to go out but that doesn't address the nuclear issue, which the Iranians seem to want to handle separately. And it also doesn't address the fact that Iran seems to now want to be able to say it should always be able to exert some sort of control over Hormuz, as it's shown it can. So this is a much more complicated nut to crack than just sending in warships or flying American helicopters over that water.
D
Yeah. So Iran may very well be on the agenda, if not the public communique between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping in Beijing. We know they'll be talking about trade, and that sort of seems fairly positive. I mean, it seems more like the kind of trade discussions you would have between America and like a European ally or something where they both have capitalist market economies, they both subscribe to the same international trade rules. That's not the case with China. I mean, this time last year we were going into a full blown trade war between the US And China. Donald Trump had just put really high tariffs on Chinese exports into the United States. And now they're behaving more like friends. What's happened to the fact that they were supposed to be the world's greatest economic rivals and Donald Trump was trying to punish the Chinese?
C
I think maybe a mutual acknowledgement that neither side could win a trade war. Trump. Trump raised those tariffs to 125% just about this time last year. He dropped them down just later on in May of 2025. And it was an acknowledgment that China does have the ability to exert pain on the United States, whether by refusing to buy soybean exports and hurting farmers, or by imposing their own tariffs on American imports. They do have the ability to control, say, critical minerals coming out of China, which the United States economy, its high tech economy relies on. So I think both sides ultimately realized, and when they were sitting across the table in South Korea during that trip in October that I was with him on, I think they both realized that it's better to back away because no one is going to come out of it unscathed. And since then, it's just kind of been, all right, we're going to go along to get along and hope things calm down. I think that may be the biggest hope out of this. I know Donald Trump wants trade deals and he wants announcements, and I think Xi will give him some of those. But I think the biggest hope from both sides is that they come out of this without any other kind of indication that the trade war that seemed inevitable just a year ago is going to crop back up again and disrupt the global economy that way.
D
But this was a big part of Donald Trump's agenda, wasn't it? This was part of his platform, was his anti China rhetoric. He complained that they were sending chemicals to the United States that could make fentanyl. He complains that they fiddle and fix their exchange rates in a way that's disadvantageous to American exporters, that they are copying American technology. I mean, he was a full throated complaint and attacks on China. You know what, 18 months ago that we were hearing from Donald Trump before he was elected, how he was going to do something about this.
C
Yeah, great. For the campaign trail, I was at an event in Pennsylvania that Donald Trump attended that was all about the threat China posed to agriculture, to American agriculture, that they were buying up property, that they were controlling the technology that was needed for agricultural harvesting. And to be quite honest, the people around Donald Trump were talking a big game about the Chinese threat. Donald Trump, when it came time for him to answer questions, said, I've got good relations with Xi. If Biden hadn't been elected, they would be buying all of these soybeans and exports and the farmers would be doing great. And it was Biden that messed everything up. So his campaign, I think, saw a benefit to using this rhetoric and stirring up kind of anti Chinese sentiment. I think Donald Trump, in his heart of hearts, really does like Xi. And he's a very personal, transactional kind of a politician. So when it comes right down to it and the two of them get in the same room, I think he thinks he can strike a deal with China and does not necessarily see them as any kind of a threat that he and his friendships cannot defuse.
D
Tell you what I noticed yesterday was a few of the big MAGA influencers, some of the same people who've been complaining about the war in Iran, saying that they didn't want to see a lot of Chinese money coming into America, big investments, because there's a possibility that Donald Trump could announce about as much as $1 trillion in inward investment, and that's Chinese and building factories to manufacture things inside America to get around the trade tariffs. But I saw Marjorie Taylor Greene, Megyn Kelly, some other people like that, saying they didn't want this Chinese money coming into America, that this was one of the reasons why Donald Trump was in the White House to stop this kind of Chinese takeover of American manufacturing. Is there a possibility of another kind of MAGA fracture over this?
C
There was a big pushback to that because the idea was floated. You know, Donald Trump wants more investment. He wants foreign countries to invested in the United States and to build things here. And yeah, it's all well and good when South Korea or Japan or European industrial automakers and such, but it's a very different thing when you talk about China. And there have been reports even that China was interested in striking a deal with Ford Motor or another American motor company to build electric cars here in the United States. And Trump seems to be okay with that in theory, but, boy, that is going to kick a hornet's nest, because the one thing you hear from the MAGA faithful is that they are very wary of China's role in the United States and China's influence in the United States. And any kind of talk of allowing that to happen, whether it's these H1B visas that allow foreign workers to come over here, attend American universities, which Donald Trump has actually been kind of open to Chinese students coming over here. He seems pretty fine with that. And that has generated a lot of anger among the base, among Republicans I've talked to out there in middle America. And then this idea of investment also, or property ownership also, just, they're very suspicious of that.
D
So staying in Washington, we heard earlier, Pete Hegseth giving evidence in front of a Senate committee yesterday. Also on the Hill in Congress, was Kash Patel, head of the FBI, being questioned about a number of things, including recent reports of alleged excessive drinking on the job that was reported in the Atlantic magazine. And Mr. Patel clashed pretty fierily with Senator Chris Van Hollen over those allegations. And as you can hear, Patel had obviously been waiting for this question and had prepared for it.
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Is it your testimony that those allegations are categorically false?
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Unequivocally, categorically false.
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So there have been no occasions during your tenure when FBI personnel were unable to promptly reach you?
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Absolutely not. You can ask my entire workforce. They hear from me at every single hour of the day, as do these great gentlemen here, as do the men and women of the interagency and state and local law enforcement in the White House.
A
And so there have been no occasions when your security detail had difficulty waking or locating you, Is that right?
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Nope. It's a total farce. I don't even know where you get this stuff, but it doesn't make it credible because you say so.
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I'm not saying it, Director Patel. I, I, it's been written and documented.
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You are literally saying it.
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No, I'm saying that these are reports,
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Director Patel, unlike, unlike baseless reports, the only person that was slinging margaritas in El Salvador on the taxpayer dollar with a convicted gang banging rapist was you. You know, the only person that ran up a director bar tab in Washington, D.C. was you. This room, allegations, drinking on taxpayer dimes.
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Do you know, Mr. Director, that it is a crime to lie to Congress? Do you know that?
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I do not lie to Congress.
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I didn't ask you that.
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You're insinuating that I am.
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I asked you want, whether, you know,
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you want to correct your time in this session where you got steamrolled by the facts so you can have a Twitter narrative, raise more money and spend more money on $7,000.
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Just let the record.
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I'm not going to give it to you.
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The director of the FBI apparently does not want to answer the question.
C
Okay. There was a lot there that we heard from Kash Patel. A couple of things I think probably need clarification. The convicted gang banging rapist that he was referring to there was Kilmore Abrego Garcia, who has not been convicted of rape or anything else. He has been held by the United States and was deported temporarily to El Salvador. He's back. His case is ongoing. There allegations of human trafficking, but he denies them. The margaritas in El Salvador. It was at a point where the Congressman Van Hollen went down to see him while he was being detained. Brego Garcia is a resident of Maryland, which is represented by Van Hollen. And they sat at a table with some water glasses that had sugar around the top. The El Salvadorian government may have placed them there. That's what Van Hollen said, but they weren't drinking. And then the $7,000 bar tab. The Van Holling campaign has said that that was a campaign event. That was the $7,000 as part of a fundraiser. Van Hollen did not drink $7,000 worth of booze. But I think that shows, you know, like you said, Patel was prepared to punch back. It's kind of the Pam Bondi strategy where you dig up things about the person questioning you in these hearings to try to throw them off balance. And I guess our listeners can judge the effectiveness of it.
D
Yeah, that was exactly. What it reminded me of was when Patton Bondi used to go in front of Congress and she would have something prepared for every single congressman who was going to speak to her, something from their past which she would have crafted into, she thought, some kind of clever little sound bite and aggressively hit them with that rather than answer the question. It's just the time she did the most of that. The kind of kind of peak Bondi led to her getting sacked, didn't it? So you wonder if it's the most effective strategy. And if you were to look around at Donald Trump's appointees, high on the list of people who might be next to lose their job probably is Kash Patel, because there's been a lot of stories around about him.
C
Yeah, there were a lot of stories, and not just this Atlantic story, which talked about alcohol abuse. Also, remember he went to the Olympics in Italy, and there was that famous photo of him in the locker room of the US Hockey team, chugging a beer and celebrating. There have been allegations that he's been traveling around the country on a private FBI jet with his girlfriend. There have been several times where he's posted social media comments about ongoing cases that ended up being unfounded. The Utah shooter, for instance, he said that they had had the person who shot Charlie Kirk, but it wasn't the right person and he had to walk that back. So it's been an ongoing thing. And actually there were some pretty solid reports that he was on thin ice. And there were Trump administration officials saying it's only a matter of time before he was fired. That all happened before the attempted shooting at the White House Correspondents Dinner, where he kind of took a prime role in responding to that. Those criticisms have died down a bit since then, but I think the storm may be delayed but not entirely diffused.
D
Yeah. And it was even reported that he had sent FBI investigators to look into the journalist who'd written the story in the Atlantic about his excessive drinking. And also a follow up story about the fact that he has created his own Kash Patel branded bourbon that he hands out bottles of. But he also made the opening sketch of Saturday Night Live this weekend. And I don't think that's ever a good place to be, is it, when on national television people are making fun of you? It probably doesn't bode terribly well.
C
Right. It was Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Chief Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Cash Patel, portrayed by Saturday Night Live actors at a bar in D.C. you know, living it up. And Cash Patel, they're talking about, like his branded, branded liquor. There were also the shoes. I think we talked about his own, like Nike swoosh shoes are FBI branded. He's not the kind of guy who strikes the normal button down, GI Man, FBI Director, just the facts kind of Persona that we're used to. And that's been part of the reason why he's attracted so much attention. But when it Comes right down to it, there could be all these allegations around Patel, all these kind of questionable stories, but as long as Trump has faith in him, then he's on solid ground. So we haven't. We haven't heard anything from Trump recently casting any kind of doubt about Patel's standing. And that may be the thing he has going for him the most.
D
Keshe Patel denied everything that was in that Atlantic magazine article, and he's actually suing them for defamation. It's also been reported that he sent FBI investigators who's using his own department to go after the journalist who wrote the story. And he was asked about that in the congressional hearing. He denied that the FBI was investigating her simply because she was reporting on Kash Patel and saying things that he didn't like.
C
Right. And there's also been reports that the FBI is now looking into prominent Donald Trump critics. Of course, we had the James Comey indictment just a few weeks ago for allegedly making threats against the president in seashells on a North Carolina seashore. But also there's a recent report about the FBI interviewing CIA officers, about John Brennan, the former head of the CIA during the Obama administration, and those findings by the intelligence agencies that Russia tried to meddle in the election, and allegations of ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. And this is an example of maybe the FBI starting to do what Donald Trump wants it to do, which is go after his critics, the deep state that he says is out to get him. And that may have gotten Patel back in Trump's good graces.
D
Yeah, because what he wants most of all out of some of his appointees is, as you say, to use the justice system to go after enemies and adversaries. That was one of the things that former Attorney General Pambanka Bondi fell out of favor for not pursuing that effectively enough. So if Cash Patel's got that high on his agenda, I guess that may be the one thing that will save him. Although I'm a little surprised, actually, sometimes by the number of people who have been accused in the past of excessive drinking, like Pete Hegseth, Defense Secretary Casp Patel, the FBI director. Because the one thing Donald Trump can't stand is it is a drunk or anybody who even appears to be a bit intoxicated in his presence.
C
We've talked about this, this when we've dug into Donald Trump's past in previous episodes. And his brother, famously older brother, died of alcoholism. Effectively, Donald Trump does not drink anymore, and I think he does see that as a weakness. And so it is Kind of funny that he's surrounded himself with people who have been batting down these allegations left and right. And it used to be that allegations of excessive drinking was enough to sink prominent public officials. John Tower, who was a United States senator from Texas back In, in the 80s, his nomination to be Defense Secretary was, was tanked because of allegations of excessive drinking. So that was then, this is now.
D
And we should leave it there for now and just say bye. Bye.
C
Bye.
A
Thank you for answering our call and continuing to send your messages to us. We do read every single one. We love to hear your thoughts, your feedback and questions as well. So please do keep them coming. You can send us an email. It's americastbc.co.uk the WhatsApp is 443-301-239480 and you can get involved in the Ameracast Discord server. The link to that is in the description. And don't forget to subscribe. That way you will never miss an episode. Until next time. Bye.
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She was the sister who went unnoticed. A daffodil might look plain next to a lily, but on its own there is much to be admired. Now her greatest chapter is yet to come. The most important thing is to be yourself. From the world of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice comes a new Brit Box original drama Mary, you Will Flourish, based on the best selling novel the Other Bennet Sister, now streaming only on Britbox. Watch for the free trial@britbox.com I'm Kai Wright.
C
I'm Carter Sherman. Welcome to Stateside with Kai and Carter.
D
We're a new show from the Guardian.
A
We're talking to big thinkers and the best journalists just trying to understand the world through smart conversation and honest reporting.
D
We don't have billionaires telling us what to say.
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Stateside with Kyan Carter will come out three times a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday starting May 13.
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Subscribe on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast casts.
B
She was the sister who went unnoticed. A daffodil might look plain next to a lily, but on its own there is much to be admired. Now her greatest chapter is yet to come. The most important thing is to be yourself. From the world of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice comes a new BritBox original drama Mary, you Will Flourish, based on the best selling novel the Other Bennet Sister, now streaming only on Britbox. Watch for the free trial@britbox.com I'm Kai Wright.
C
I'm Carter Sherman. Welcome to Stateside with Kai and Carter.
D
We're a new show from the Guardian
A
we're talking to big thinkers and the best journalists just trying to understand the world through smart conversation and honest reporting.
D
We don't have billionaires telling us what to say.
A
Stateside with Kai and Carter will come out three times a week week Monday, Wednesday and Friday starting May 13th.
C
Subscribe on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.
Episode Title: Does Trump need China to end the war in Iran?
Date: May 13, 2026
Hosts: Sarah Smith, Anthony Zurcher
Produced by: BBC News
This episode delves into President Donald Trump’s high-stakes visit to Beijing—his first since starting his second term—set against the backdrop of an increasingly unpopular and unresolved war in Iran. The Americast team, led by Sarah Smith and Anthony Zurcher, analyzes Trump’s motivations, whether China could help broker peace with Iran, and the broader economic and political implications for US-China relations. The discussion also covers domestic controversies, congressional hearings, and the evolving state of the Trump administration.
[02:17–06:29]
[06:29–09:44]
[10:39–13:12]
[13:12–15:19]
[15:19–19:47]
[19:47–21:04]
[21:04–30:01]
[29:16–30:01]
This Americast episode paints a picture of a U.S. president seeking both deals and diplomatic breakthroughs abroad while embroiled in political and policy struggles at home. Trump’s China visit is framed as primarily business-focused, but with the real question—can, and should, China help end the Iran war—looming large. Meanwhile, deep tensions persist within Trump’s administration, his party, and among grassroots supporters over US-China relations and the conduct of public officials. Throughout, the tone is analytical yet accessible, marked by the hosts’ sharp wit and careful fact-checking.