"The reviews are in on Trump and Xi's summit"

Summary

Podcast Summary: Deadline: White House

Episode: "The reviews are in on Trump and Xi's summit"

Host: Nicolle Wallace
Date: May 15, 2026

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Overview

In this episode, Nicolle Wallace and guests deliver a sharp, deeply reported, and at times cutting review of the Trump-Xi summit. With Trump returning from China seemingly empty-handed — and with U.S. interests diminished — the panel unpacks the president’s dramatic change in approach to China, how it undercuts both his own political brand and America’s global standing, and the broader implications for U.S. foreign policy and domestic politics. The hour also touches on a series of alleged self-dealing, culminating in the revelation that Trump is poised to benefit from a $1.7 billion taxpayer-financed “slush fund” for his allies, and evidence of possible insider trading by Trump himself.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Summit’s Aftermath: Trump’s Weakness and China’s Win

• Trump’s Flattery: Trump lavished praise on Xi Jinping, calling him “a tremendous leader…very powerful, very strong…tall, very tall” ([01:38]), echoing not only Chinese state rhetoric but also directly parroting Chinese propaganda lines about U.S. decline (see notable quotes).
• Wallace’s Take: Nicolle Wallace sharply frames Trump’s performance as a geopolitical humiliation:

  “Donald Trump took to his favorite network, Fox News, for an exercise in flattery…leaves China largely empty handed and parroting the talking points of China’s authoritarian leadership.” ([01:06])

• Public Perception: Only 27% of Americans approve of China, underscoring Trump’s outlier stance ([02:26]).
• Xi’s Assertiveness: Citing NYT’s David Sanger, Wallace and guests note Xi was “quietly more confrontational…especially on Taiwan,” while Trump sounded “conciliatory—the exact opposite of his portrayals of China in public appearances back home.” ([04:30])

2. Reversal of Trump’s “Tough on China” Brand

• Tim Miller’s Analysis:

  “It’s kind of amazing how flexible this president has become, to use a charitable word, or how dramatically he’s reversed some of his past positions.” ([05:38])

  • Details how Trump’s summit performance contradicts MAGA orthodoxy, especially amid domestic economic anxiety and ongoing military conflict in Iran.
• John Heilman’s Critique:

  “Trump ran on being a China hawk…Instead, he goes there and just basically lies prostrate before Xi…He’s extremely weak in the face of this negotiation.” ([11:33])

3. Danger for Taiwan and Perception of U.S. Weakness

• Guests emphasize how Trump’s rhetoric and ambiguity on Taiwan may embolden Chinese aggression and create insecurity among U.S. allies.
  • Tim Miller:

    “If Xi Jinping thinks that President Trump is not going to put up any kind of a fight, he can roll in and take it and that makes it safer [to invade].…People in Taipei have gotta be pretty freaked out…” ([08:21])

  • Wallace highlights how Biden previously signaled clear support for Taiwan, while Trump now projects uncertainty ([09:27]).

4. Trump’s U-Turns on China-Related Domestic Issues

• Contrasts Trump’s old campaign rhetoric (“We don’t want you buying our land”) ([14:15]) with his new, much softer justifications for Chinese economic involvement in the U.S.
• Points out his reversal on Hawkish policies, including welcoming Chinese students and echoing Xi’s propaganda lines.

5. Panel’s Satirical Tone and Media Dissection

• Incorporates clips from The Daily Show lampooning Trump’s simplistic and “childlike” approach to geopolitics ([09:45]), underscoring a new level of open ridicule and criticism even from previously right-leaning media spheres.
• Miller and Heilman lament right-wing media’s lack of pushback:

  “Conservative media has been so flaccid…this thing that it’s cared about since you and I have been alive, conservative media has cared a lot about America’s posture toward China…the idea that their voters aren’t going to see through this is embarrassing.” (Wallace, [23:40])

6. Failure of “Stagecraft” and Perception of Presidential Decline

• Michael Crowley: Reports of Trump looking tired, being short of breath, and the U.S. team’s seeming lack of preparation adds to the image of presidential decline ([21:16], [21:48]).
• The lack of any significant diplomatic deliverable is noted as a sign of both political and administrative dysfunction ([27:01]).

7. Corruption and Self-Dealing: $1.7 Billion "Slush Fund"

• Wallace details a deal reportedly under negotiation that would create a $1.7 billion fund, possibly going toward January 6 defendants and Trump allies, in exchange for dropping Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS ([32:42]).
• Michael Feinberg (Guest):

  “Now apparently we’re going to be giving these sort of funds…to the perpetrators of crime…if you engage in a coup…there should be some sort of consequences. I always thought those consequences should be negative.” ([32:39])

8. Ethics in Crisis: Insider Trading Allegations

• Trump is accused of buying and selling millions in stock—including in Nvidia—coinciding with regulatory decisions that benefited him or were under his administration’s direct purview ([42:41]).
• The White House deflects, referencing the separation of Trump’s personal financial management from presidential actions.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

Trump’s public flattery of Xi Jinping:

"He's a tremendous leader. He's been here a long time. Very powerful, very strong." ([01:38])

"If you went to Hollywood and you looked for a leader of China to play a role in a movie. Central casting, central casting, you couldn't find a guy like him. Even his, his physical features, you know, he's tall, very tall." ([01:47])

Wallace on Trump echoing Chinese propaganda:

"Donald Trump's man crush on Xi is so deeply felt...Trump went beyond complimenting the leader. He even parroted and agreed with Chinese propaganda about the decline of his own country." ([02:26])

Tim Miller on the president’s shifting tone and distracted administration:

“It makes me wonder what's going to happen next. Is Trump going to give Hillary Clinton a job in his administration? It's just kind of amazing how flexible this president has become…” ([05:38])

John Heilman on political collapse:

“This is a piece of what we're talking about a lot on the economic issues where he doesn't care about Americans financial concerns. And he seems to have kind of given up caring about the specifics of this stuff.” ([25:37])

Michael Crowley on international humiliation:

“The only mild deliverable Trump announced…was that he’d gotten the Chinese to buy 200 Boeing jets…Wall Street was expecting 400, 500. And when he announced that on Hannity, Boeing stock fell 4%.” ([27:21])

Michael Feinberg on the "slush fund":

“In the past, these sort of funds…have gone to the victims of crime. And now apparently we're going to be giving these sort of funds…to the perpetrators of crime.” ([32:39])

Heilman, on corruption:

“It's theft and it's bribery and it's grift, but it's coming from us. That is the craziest thing about this.” ([36:35])

On Trump’s personal enrichment:

“According to Forbes, Donald Trump is now worth $6.5 billion…up from $1.4 billion a year ago…he didn't make the money in a successful business venture.” (Wallace, [39:16])

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Important Timestamps

• 01:06: Wallace introduces the summit’s “abysmal outcome.”
• 01:38–02:26: Trump’s public praise for Xi and parroting of Chinese propaganda.
• 05:38: Miller on Trump’s flexibility and inconsistent approach.
• 08:21: Taiwan as a flashpoint.
• 09:45–10:22: The Daily Show lampoons Trump’s grasp of geopolitics.
• 11:33: Heilman on how the summit became an embarrassment.
• 16:05–18:12: Stereotyping and loss of Trump's “strength” brand.
• 21:16–21:48: Reports on stagecraft failures and Trump’s apparent fatigue.
• 23:40–26:26: Panel discussion on media complicity and MAGA base betrayal.
• 27:01–28:24: No substantive summit deliverables; Boeing disappointment.
• 32:42–35:22: Discussion of the $1.7 billion “slush fund” for Trump loyalists.
• 39:16–42:00: Trump’s dramatic personal financial gain while in office.
• 42:41: Trump’s alleged insider trading discussed.

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Conclusion

Through lively discussion, fact-driven analysis, and a rich array of sourced anecdotes, Wallace's panel deconstructs Trump’s summit with Xi as a clear diplomatic and political failure for the U.S. — a departure from his hawkish campaign persona and a foreboding sign for both U.S. foreign policy and the global perception of American strength. The summit’s fallout is starkly contrasted with both Trump’s earlier rhetoric and the looming scandals of self-enrichment and presidential corruption now dominating domestic headlines.

Key Takeaway:
The summit reveals a president adrift: reversing course on core policy promises, projecting weakness abroad at a time of military conflict, and doubling down on corrupt self-dealing, all while his support—and the coherence of his coalition—continues to erode.

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Transcript

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[Nicole Wallace (Host)]

Hi there everyone. We made it to Friday. It's four o'clock in New York. The reviews are in and the summit between Donald Trump and China's leader Xi Jinping was a huge success for China. Donald Trump's profound political weakness is now on full display for the entire world to see as Donald Trump leaves China largely empty handed and parroting the talking points of China's authoritarian leadership. During the trip, Donald Trump took to his favorite network, Fox News, for an exercise in flattery.

[Donald Trump (quoted)]

We have a friendship, really. He's a tremendous leader. He's been here a long time. Very powerful, very strong.

There's no doubt about it.

I say about him that if you went to Hollywood and you looked for a leader of China to play a role in a movie. Central casting, central casting, you wouldn't, you couldn't find a guy like him. Even his, his physical features, you know, he's tall, very tall. I'll get criticized. They always criticize me when I say good things about certain leaders. But. And this one. But he's a leader for China. He's led almost 1.5 billion people for a long time. And he's respected.

[Nicole Wallace (Host)]

He's respected. And he's so handsome. He looks like he's at essential casting. He's quote, powerful and strong. 27% of Americans agree with that assessment. 27% of Americans approve of China. But Donald Trump's man crush on Xi is so deeply felt by Donald Trump and now on public display that Trump went beyond complimenting the leader. He even parroted and agreed with Chinese propaganda about the decline of his own country, the United States of America. Donald Trump posted this on social media, quote, when President Xi very elegantly referred to the United States as perhaps being a declining nation, he was referring to the tremendous damage we suffered during the four years of sleepy Joe Biden and the Biden administration. On that score, he was 100% correct, end quote. Trump went on to list a litany of complaints about America and culture war grievances, things Donald Trump has said many times before, but not after being in charge of the country for 18 months. That post appeared to be in response to President Xi referencing the so called Thucydides trap, a theory in which war erupts when an existing power is threatened by rising power. Instead of defending the United States of America, Donald Trump threw in with China's dictator, agreed with him in his assessment and criticism of his own country, and then tried to spin it away as the result of the policies enacted by his predecessor, who, as we said, has been out of office for a year and a half now. All in all, Donald Trump's post underscored who clearly, undeniably came out the winner of the summit. On that, David Sanger of the New York Times writes this quote, trump sounded conciliatory, the exact opposite of his portrayals of China in public appearances back home. Mr. Xi, while smiling and welcoming to Trump, was quietly more confrontational, especially on Taiwan, where he delivered an unequivocal warning. The gap spoke directly to the new level of confidence and authority Mr. Xi has adopted in his public speech, despite his challenges with the domestic economy as he watches the United States plunge into conflict with Iran. Donald Trump leaving China on the defensive and empty handed is where we start today with some of our favorite reporters in France. New York Times reporter Michael Crowley is here with me for the hour. Political analyst and host of the Bulwark Podcast, Tim Miller is back. And back with me at the table. Michael, what could go wrong? Puck News senior political columnist national affairs analyst John Heilman is here. Michael Crowley, you and your colleagues had an incredible live blog running, as well as some great reporting and analysis. I read something from David Sanger and honestly, I was homesick and I kind of kept updating it to see if I was missing, like, the good news part of the trip. It was a pretty abysmal outcome for the United States of America and Donald Trump.

[Tim Miller]

You know, I'm just really marveling here at the point that you struck in that intro, which is the change in the president's tone toward China. And, you know, you couple that with the fact that he launched a war in the Middle east with sort of unclear objectives that was aimed at regime change, a regime change war in the Middle east, and then went to China and praised its leader and took a pretty soft line approach toward the U.S. china relationship. It's like, makes me wonder what's going to happen next. Is Trump going to give Hillary Clinton a job in his administration? It's just kind of amazing how flexible this president has become, to use a charitable word, or how dramatically he's reversed some of his past positions. And just as a footnote to this, although it's not Trump himself, I stumbled on something really interesting, which was that in 2012. No, I'm sorry, 2015, Marco Rubio gave a big speech about China attacking President Obama. And he stopped just short of saying that Obama should not, should cancel a visit from Xi Jinping at the White House because Rubio was saying that Xi was committing atrocious crimes against humanity and oppressing his people, but said, you know, Obama should not roll out the red carpet and basically not, you know, treat him like his good buddy, because that's not how we treat authoritarian leaders like this. So, you know, Rubio is part of this here also, and it's quite remarkable. Now, the last thing I would say is, look, if there's good news here, it's that we are not on the brink of a dangerous confrontation with China. I mean, a lot of. A lot of people that, you know, national security experts were worried that we were in this kind of cycle of escalating rhetoric and, and threats between Washington and Beijing that could spiral out of control. And, you know, at least we're talking because there are so many important things, including AI, where we've got to be on the same page. However, last point, the warning about Taiwan from Xi Jinping was kind of chilling. That remains a very dangerous flashpoint, and it's not clear to me how President Trump is thinking about that. So that remains a huge question mark out of all of this.

[Nicole Wallace (Host)]

I mean, Trump said about Taiwan, what do we want to be in a war thousands of 9,500 miles away, almost the same distance as Iran? I mean, I mean, I think people who watch Taiwan found the summit most ominous for the prospects of the Taiwanese and our alliance with Taiwan. I mean, doesn't this make actual aggression? They're far more likely or far more palatable from Xi's perspective?

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, it may. Well, it's an incredibly complicated issue, you know, that involves, among other things, this chip manufacturer on the island that no one can afford to see. Heavily damaged or destroyed because this one, the whole global economy basically depends on this one factory. But you know, maybe if Xi Jinping thinks that President Trump is not going to put up any kind of a fight, he can roll in and take it and that makes it safer. I do think that what the President says and what he would actually do in a circumstance like that might not be the same thing. I just think it's very difficult to predict. Having said all that, I think that people in Taipei have gotta be pretty freaked out right now about how President Trump is messaging. Cuz you'll recall on several occasions when President Biden was asked what he would do if China made a move on Taiwan, Biden broke with official US policy, which is, which is to remain ambiguous and to say that he would come to Taiwan's defense. The White House walked it back, but Biden did three times, which led me to believe that Biden was kind of playing a little bit of a wink and nod game. They're definitely not what Trump is doing.

[Nicole Wallace (Host)]

Let me show you. Because we're at a moment where Trump's approval rating drops a little bit every week. I want to show you how sort of the culture shapers assess the trip. This is from the Daily Show.

[Daily Show Comedian]

President Xi said that he hoped the two countries could avoid the so called Thucydides trap. It's a historic reference about a great power being threatened by the rise of another.

Damn it, Xi, you're gonna hit President Trump with a Thucynides trap. Now you're making his brain go up a flight of stairs. Come on. All right. President Trump, don't let this guy history Mog you show, show him you can communicate in equally sophisticated terms.

[Donald Trump (quoted)]

Chinese restaurants in America today outnumber the

five largest fast food chains in the

United States all combined. That's a pretty big statement.

[Daily Show Comedian]

Yeah, that's my president putting his understanding of geopolitics into fast food terms. He gives us some at speed, like a third grader who got assigned China for his geography project. In conclusion, China is a land of contrast. And I brought Panda Express for everyone.

[Nicole Wallace (Host)]

So, Tim Miller, I think before Donald Trump started a war for which 9 to 17% of Americans feel supportive and enthusiastic about these could be read as sort of elite things that Trump doesn't know anything. I think that now that his ignorance of geopolitical dynamics and his weakness on the world stage has led, has cost the lives of 13American service members in a war in Iran for which there's no explanation, no articulated endgame, and gas is going up by the day. I think his weakness on the world stage is a different political calculation. How do you see this trip sort of fitting into an increasingly transparent, troubling narrative for him and Nicole?

[Nicole Wallace]

We're singing from the same hymn book

[John Heilman]

like usual today because that's exactly where I was going to go with this. I think that the, because of what is happening in Iran, like the. Whatever you want to call this confab, the summit, the non result of the summit is actually worse than what we just laid out. Right. If you removed Iran from the equation, it would have still been a pretty humiliating summit. I mean, Trump ran on being a China hawk. He's got a lot of alleged China hawks around him like Mike waltz and Rubio, etc. As Michael Crowley pointed out. And instead he goes there and just basically lies prostrate before Xi and talks about how hot and strong he is. Like, honestly, you can imagine what Fox would do if any Democratic president would talk about this or just minute by minute it would just be about how weak and humiliating and embarrassing the President is. And that's what our President is. He's extremely weak in the face of this negotiation. And so like, that would be one thing if we were talking about like big picture, long term geopolitical concerns, Thucydides trap, what happens with Taiwan in the future.

[Nicole Wallace]

But like we have this acute crisis right now and Iran is simultaneous, excuse me, China is simultaneously helping Iran somewhat in that crisis. They're also providing assistance to some of our putative allies in the region that

[John Heilman]

now are dealing with shortages in gas

[Nicole Wallace]

and other products such as that because of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. There have been multiple articles by Mike's colleagues at the Times and the Wall Street Journal and others about experts about how China is taking this moment of our demonstrated weakness in Iran to kind of increase its footprint around the globe. And so Trump goes there for this summit, kind of like the Iran war with no clear objective, doesn't get anything out of it. And it happens amidst an ongoing conflict that we started that is exposing us

[John Heilman]

as being very ineffectual on the world stage and on top of that as

[Nicole Wallace]

harming people in our country and abroad. So it's just a total disaster class as far as I'm concerned.

[Nicole Wallace (Host)]

Yeah. And I think, John, this is in league with betrayals of his own base. Right. Like, I think, I think that we could have warned that he was not. If you're not strong with Russia, it's very hard to then have a totally different posture with, with China. But here he is reversing on his own promises to his own voters. This was Trump in 2024 about the issue of Chinese buying up farmland. And then I want to play it immediately with what he said last night on the same topic.

[Donald Trump (quoted)]

Going to protect it by saying, you can't come, you can't do it. We don't want you buying our land. We don't want you taking the land and basically taking it off the market. We don't want you doing it. And they're buying at levels that nobody's ever seen before. We don't want you buying it. It's very easy to do. That's a very easy thing to do. But it's causing a lot of disruption and that's what they want to do. So we can do that very easily.

[Marco Rubio (quoted)]

The issue of Chinese students in our universities, more importantly in my mind, is that Chinese nationals have been buying up thousands and thousands of acres of farmland, ranch land and land near military installations. Now, I would assume I'm in Beijing if I wanted to buy property near one of their military installations. I don't think President Xi, nobody wouldn't like you.

[Donald Trump (quoted)]

I don't. Look, it's not that I love it. You want to see farm prices drop, you want to see farmers lose a lot of money, just take that out of the market. But they've had a lot of land for a long time. Obama did nothing about it. They bought a lot of it during the Obama administration. He did nothing about it. As far as the students, it's 500,000 students. They come good students. I could tell them I don't want any students is a very insulting thing to say to a country.

[Nicole Wallace (Host)]

Again, leave. Whatever you think of the substance of those two positions aside for a moment, this is another reversal to the Trump base for whom these issues are almost coded and imprinted, and part of the Trump package that he is reversing himself on on these two big issues on China.

[Lara (possibly Lara Brown or Lara Logan)]

First of all, I'd like to know,

[Michael Crowley]

how would you feel if you were

[Lara (possibly Lara Brown or Lara Logan)]

the staffer who had Trump had to brief Trump or explain to Trump what the Thucydides trap was?

[Michael Crowley]

Yeah, absolutely. The least enviable job in the history

[Lara (possibly Lara Brown or Lara Logan)]

of White House staffing.

[Michael Crowley]

He's like, Thucydides, is that good for us or bad for us?

[Nicole Wallace (Host)]

I'm guessing that was Rubio because he has every other job.

[Michael Crowley]

The other thing is just.

[Lara (possibly Lara Brown or Lara Logan)]

I don't mean to be like a fact checking school, but there is something telling in the Trump thing about how she is unusually tall.

[Michael Crowley]

She's like 5 9, which is about

[Lara (possibly Lara Brown or Lara Logan)]

an inch taller than the average Chinese, which is 5 8. American average men are also 5 9.

[Michael Crowley]

So his whole thing about how the Chinese are unusually small is a kind of weird like Asian, some Asian stereotype

[Lara (possibly Lara Brown or Lara Logan)]

that Trump has kind of a Pan

[Michael Crowley]

Asian stereotype with all the Asians are kind of small. I mean, it's just a weird thing. We're all basically in those in the

[Lara (possibly Lara Brown or Lara Logan)]

advanced economies which China, Japan and America now are.

[Michael Crowley]

They're all basically, the men are all basically the same height.

[Nicole Wallace (Host)]

And it's not like she's same height as Trump.

[Michael Crowley]

He's not, he's the same height, not like Yao Ming or something. And Chinese there are very, in the north of China, there are famously tall

[Lara (possibly Lara Brown or Lara Logan)]

people like Yao Ming.

[Michael Crowley]

So I just find it hilarious that even when he's, why he's kind of gushing over his slurring, he's making up, he's slurring and he's also making up this thing.

[Lara (possibly Lara Brown or Lara Logan)]

Oh, he's a colossus, Sean. And Sean Hannity, who's sitting over there going, central casting, sir, central casting.

[Michael Crowley]

It's so gross. And it actually, all of this gets to your, to your point because that, that post on True Social about this, responding to Xi, he starts the post by saying, as President Xi so elegantly put it, he's gotta like lay a little, do a little glazing on the way into that. I think that Dan Pfeiffer wrote a

[Lara (possibly Lara Brown or Lara Logan)]

piece in his Message box column this

[Michael Crowley]

week which was basically the one thing

[Lara (possibly Lara Brown or Lara Logan)]

that Trump has always had as a superpower is strength.

[Michael Crowley]

Projecting strength in a way that at least his base understands. In a lot of cases, that's dominance. In a lot of cases, that stuff that we don't think is really strength and bullying, all this stuff that's kind of, but his thing has always been a very deep understanding of for his voters what looks like strong.

[Lara (possibly Lara Brown or Lara Logan)]

And the old Bill Clinton thing about strong and wrong being better than weakened.

[Michael Crowley]

Right. He's now lost that. And the polling shows that overwhelmingly that he now looks weak, obviously looks old, he looks more confused, he falls asleep, all of that stuff. But that all feeds this picture. And I think the kind of buttering up the constant glazing of Xi is another example of that. Nobody looks at an American president, even

[Michael Feinberg]

if he hadn't made these promises about

[Lara (possibly Lara Brown or Lara Logan)]

buying up the farmland.

[Michael Crowley]

I mean, those are betrayals of the mega base. But for most people, again, ordinary voters, what they see is America losing a war against a second rate power in the Middle east, which over the course of less than three months has already depleted American stockpiles down in this really dangerously, perilously low way. And then we move on to that. We take the show on the road to try to take the focus off Iran. And what you have is the president kind of bowing and scraping before Xi Jinping and doing all of this stuff that just codes as weak. And if Donald Trump loses the ability to project strength to anybody who's open to voting for him, he really almost has nothing at that point, cuz that is the main thing that he's always had.

[Nicole Wallace (Host)]

And projecting weakness to a country only 27% of Americans have anything favorable to say or feel about them entirely. Yeah. All right. No one's going anywhere. There's much more on this story coming up. Also ahead for us, take, take, take. Donald Trump taking another payout from the federal government, one that Trump says will go right back to protecting and propping up many of his own MAGA allies. We'll get to that rather extraordinary and explicit example of presidential grift and corruption ahead. And later, more on Trump's failures in China coupled with how his war in Iran has weakened him at home and abroad as well. We'll talk with a veteran intelligence officer, our friend SW Sue Gordon. We'll get to all those stories and much more when Deadland White House continues after a quick break. Don't go anywhere.

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[Chris Hayes]

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[Daily Show Comedian]

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[Nicole Wallace (Host)]

Yeah, we're back with Michael, Tim and John. So, Michael Crowley, as I said, I tracked the trip on the Live blog. There was also just some color that's in the line of what Heilman's talking about. Xi waiting up for Trump, who was out of breath. I mean, it wasn't. And I say this because Team Trump is usually other than when in their own events, he falls asleep behind the Resolute desk, they're usually decent at stagecraft. The stagecraft of the trip was awful.

[Tim Miller]

Nicole, we had a story, it's up right now, that quotes an expert in Beijing who tracked the summit, who said that the Americans seemed a little passive and like they weren't very well prepared. And, you know, I think that that does ring true. And as a data point, that person said that President Trump didn't say much of substance. We also know that there really haven't been any significant deliverables as we conventionally understand them. You know, big signature announcements that come out of a summit like this, which are usually rigged up well in advance. So it makes you wonder a couple things. Number one, is the president and the White House team overwhelmed right now by the situation in Iran? And were they able to put enough focus into this trip and effort and preparation? Have they been thinking enough about it? And, you know, yeah, look, President Trump turns 80 in about a month, and he has shown some signs of aging and appearing tired. And although obviously one is hesitant to try to diagnose or scrutinize someone's health from far away, President Trump has invited this kind of speculation and I think lowered the bar for it through the way that he talked about President Biden, through Biden's terms. So any evidence that President Trump is slowing down, looking older, you know, having trouble in meetings, is gonna be pounced on. And I think with a certain degree of fairness, because of the way he has set the context for that. And so that was another part of this trip that I think a lot of people have found underwhelming.

[Nicole Wallace (Host)]

Tim Miller, Michael Crowley is always accurate and steeped in deep reporting, but diplomatic. The idea that the American people, including Trump's own voters, are being fed this sort of slop. This is, you know, a presidency in sort of a political death spiral that is now bleeding into hurting America's standing on the world stage. And the idea that right wing conservative media is so flaccid right now, that this thing that it's cared about since you and I have been alive, since you and I have been alive, conservative media has cared a lot about America's posture toward China. The idea that most of them sort of just shrugged, that Hannity just sat there and didn't say, whoa, wait a minute, what are you saying? Like, of course this stuff matters is such a sign of sort of the hollowness and the stupidity that they think their own base is sort of permanently wrapped up in the idea that their voters aren't going to see through this is embarrassing for their voters.

[John Heilman]

It is. And just shout out to Michael Crowley, we need some diplomacy on the panel, 100%. We are discussing a summit. We're discussing a diplomatic summit, after all.

[Nicole Wallace]

But it is humiliating. And you're, and you're right, Nicole, that the conservative media has been so flaccid

[John Heilman]

in pushing back on it.

[Nicole Wallace]

But even like the small little bits

[John Heilman]

of pushback that we've seen, a lot

[Nicole Wallace]

of this has come from the conservative media. Like this, the, for example, that story

[John Heilman]

about the 500,000 visas for Chinese students.

[Nicole Wallace]

I do believe it was a Daily

[John Heilman]

Caller reporter a couple of months ago now that was really pressing him about this in the Oval Office.

[Nicole Wallace]

And I'm kind of surprised he didn't fold on it. To me, it shows he is totally out of touch. This is a piece of what we're

[John Heilman]

talking about a lot on the economic

[Nicole Wallace]

issues where he doesn't care about Americans financial concerns. And he seems to have kind of

[John Heilman]

given up caring about the specifics of this stuff.

[Nicole Wallace]

And the specifics that he does care about are what kind of marble is

[John Heilman]

going to be in the ballroom.

[Nicole Wallace]

And you can see in Hannity there,

[John Heilman]

he did not push back. It was not a strong interview. It's not a real interview as agitprop. But he's trying to push him there.

[Nicole Wallace]

He's trying to be like, this is

[John Heilman]

a little bit strange that we're letting the Chinese nationals have all this land and bring all these students in when you're not allowing any other immigrants in

[Nicole Wallace]

except for the white South African. And it's like Trump just goes back into his Obama shtick. We're in fat Elvis territory where he's giving the same talking points he was giving 10 years ago. And I do think that there's this

[John Heilman]

escalating element of things, of betrayals to the MAGA base.

[Nicole Wallace]

And I think that the response, I think a lot of us wish it

[John Heilman]

would be anger and rage and betrayal. But instead, I think it's kind of like this disassociation and a loss of momentum for a presidency that doesn't really have any juice right now, but unfortunately has a lot of power just to

[Lara (possibly Lara Brown or Lara Logan)]

Crowley's point about deliverables, which he made diplomatically. You've been on foreign trips with the President. Crowley's been on a bunch. I've been on a bunch, Tim. I'm not sure whether how much foreign travel Trump's done in a presidential context.

[Michael Crowley]

But these things are. All the deliverables are always wired up. Reporters know well in advance what the deliverable's gonna be.

[Nicole Wallace (Host)]

They're like, written before you leave.

[Michael Crowley]

There might be extra things, but every. The whole point is the summit, we have deliverables, right? And there were none here. The only mild deliverable with Trump announced on Hannity that he had gotten the

[Lara (possibly Lara Brown or Lara Logan)]

Chinese to buy 200 Boeing jets.

[Michael Crowley]

And he said, you know, they thought

[Lara (possibly Lara Brown or Lara Logan)]

they were going to get 50 or maybe 100, but I got 200.

[Michael Crowley]

Wall street, it was expecting 400, 500. And when he announced that on Hannity,

[Lara (possibly Lara Brown or Lara Logan)]

Boeing stock fell 4%.

[Michael Crowley]

That's the one. Deliverable was something that he trade was a big win, but in fact was less than was expected for Boeing and the Chinese made to this point, I believe, and Mike Crowley will correct me if I'm wrong, the Chinese have said basically nothing. I mean, the humiliation here is that, you know, Trump's like, well, we talked about Iran and we agree about this.

[Lara (possibly Lara Brown or Lara Logan)]

And Xi Jinping's like, didn't say anything

[Michael Crowley]

about, you know, just, just kind of. He's letting him twist in the wind. Without deliverables over there, they're not claiming any deliverables. They basically said, come to Beijing and bow and scrape before me and then we are going to kill you with our silence. In terms of any of the normal things that a summit partner would do.

[Lara (possibly Lara Brown or Lara Logan)]

Well, the US Got this and we

[Michael Crowley]

got this, and of course we're going to work with them in a bilateral way. Even talking points. Nothing. Just brutal.

[Nicole Wallace (Host)]

It's brutal. Maybe it was the comment about Chinese restaurants, which again, I know no one here is numb, but in a normal time, that would be something people would talk about for days because it's so bizarre. Michael Crowley, we will name you our, our chief diplomat. Thank you for being here today. Tim and John, stick around a little bit longer. Up next, Trump's latest shakedown of the American taxpayer. Coming into sharper focus today, billions of taxpayer dollars potentially coming in the form of a deal to reward Donald Trump's army of MAGA followers, including the hundreds charged in connection with the deadly January six insurrection. There's a lot more to unpack today. We'll get to it next.

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[Nicole Wallace (Host)]

Donald Trump's friends, allies, enablers and supporters the ones who helped him push the Big Lie and attempted to overturn the 2020 election, which Joe Biden won and Donald Trump lost, are said to be the beneficiaries of a taxpayer funded slush fund. In a story first reported by ABC News and now confirmed by the New York Times, Donald Trump is expected to drop his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS in exchange for the creation of a $1.7 billion fund to compensate his allies who claim they were wrongfully targeted by the Biden administration. That's according to sources familiar with the matter. Speaking to ABC News, the commission overseeing the compensation fund would have the total authority to hand out approximately $1.7 billion in taxpayer funds to settle claims brought by anyone who alleges they were harmed by the Biden administration's weaponization of the legal system, including the nearly 1600 individuals charged in connection with the January 6th Capitol attack, as well as potentially entities associated with Donald Trump himself. This potential deal follows other claims he's made against the federal government, effectively the taxpayers, including the 2022 raid of Mar A Lago for allegedly hoarding classified documents, the Russia collusion investigation and the 2019 leak of his tax returns, which, 11 years into his political career, Donald Trump is still yet to release. The settlement terms are expected to prohibit Donald Trump from directly receiving payments related to those three legal claims. However, entities associated with Trump are not explicitly barred from from filing additional claims. Joining our coverage, former Assistant Special Agent in Charge at the FBI and national Security and intelligence analyst Michael Feinberg, Tim and John are still here. Michael Feinberg, the history, the recent history of funds like this are things like the 911 Commission, right. Which gave money to people whose injuries, physical and mental and legal, were from a terrorist attack. Never before has a president self deal himself $1.7 billion in taxpayer dollars to, I don't even know how you, how you spin it, to take money from the government that sought to hold him accountable.

[Michael Feinberg]

Yeah, well it's an interesting reversal because as you noted in the past, these sort of funds and these sort of distributions have gone to the victims of crime. And now apparently we're going to be giving these sort of funds and these sort of distributions to the perpetrators of crime. You know, I'm somewhat old fashioned. I've always thought that if you engage in a coup, attempt to stop the peaceful transition of power in the United States, assault federal officers and generally vandalize and destroy a federal building, there should be some sort of consequences. I guess where I and the President differ is just that I always thought those consequences should be negative.

[Nicole Wallace (Host)]

What recourse exists, if anything, in the system? I mean it feels like this is another area like the pardon power, which the New Yorker recently reported. Those are for sale. Like this foreign trip which had this incredible sort of presentation to the Chinese of American alt oligarchs and people in his own family who were doing business deals. I mean what recourse does the taxpayer have or the voters have

[Michael Feinberg]

their votes? I'm not trying to sound cynical or to minimize what ordinary citizens can do, but we are bound by the Constitution. And what we are realizing now is what the framers warned us about from day one, which is that the Constitution only works if the citizenry and leaders have republican virtue. And I think we're past that point. We've been past that point for a while, I would argue, but we are certainly at our nadir right now. And between the pardon power, between the sort of presidential immunity, the Supreme Court created out a whole cloth as near as I could tell, because there's nothing in the Framer's intentions or in the text of the Constitution that would support the sort of immunity they granted for so called official acts, there's not a lot of recourse. The 14th Amendment, Section 4 does contain a prohibition on dispersing US funds to insurrectionists. But as we saw when the state of Colorado tried to enforce some of the insurrection clauses in that amendment, the Supreme Court was having none of it. So I don't expect that a similar argument would succeed.

[Nicole Wallace (Host)]

Now Tim, there's been a thing With Trump, where the amounts of money he's sought to grift and pocket have been so massive that you can't get your brain around it. You know, like 1.7 billion with a B. They're like Austin Powers numbers. Right? What does it mean? But at a time when the economy is something that causes a vast majority of Americans anxiety and despair, at a time when people are foregoing health care, when people are choosing between rent and groceries, $1.7 billion more from the government after all the other things he's taken feels like sort of the other bookend to the first story we talked about, that maybe if people were feel like they were thriving economically, this wouldn't bother them so much. But this is again, stealing from the taxpayers to enrich himself and his allies.

[Nicole Wallace]

Yeah. And the political part of this question

[John Heilman]

is, can this break through that thick media bubble? We showed Sean Hannity interviewing him in the last segment. I don't know if Sean Hannity's asking him about this or questioning him about

[Nicole Wallace]

this, but it's truly mind boggling. It is hard to find the words

[John Heilman]

for it because it is, it's theft and it's bribery and it's grift, but it's coming from us. That is the craziest thing about this.

[Nicole Wallace]

Nicole. We still have enough kind of vague

[John Heilman]

memories of being in Republican communication shops.

[Nicole Wallace]

Think about all the time that we talk about waste, fraud and abuse, protecting taxpayers dollars, how people work hard to earn their money and how it shouldn't

[John Heilman]

be wasted by the government.

[Nicole Wallace]

Like they are taking money from, you know, people that work hard for a living and taking their taxpayer dollars and creating a billion dollar slush fund. 1.7 billion. Like more money than rich, rich people have. 1.7 billion. And they're going to hand it out to their friends, criminal friends. They're going to hand it out to people that beat cops at the Capitol. They're handed out to people that store in the Capitol. And there's this horrible story. I really like to take this to a personal place of a guy who was one of the insurrectionists. He climbs into the building of the Capitol, he gets pardoned and then in March two months ago, he gets arrested or he gets, excuse me, convicted of a crime of sexual assault of two minors. And he told the minors he tried to bribe them to not talk to the police because he said, I'm going

[John Heilman]

to get this payoff from the government.

[Nicole Wallace]

And he was probably, he would have been right had he not been convicted of this. Donald Trump is giving those people the people that are criminals, that charge the Capitol, that beat up Michael Fanon, that went and subsequently molested kids, and they're going to get a payoff with our money. It's one thing if it was a payoff with whatever stupid MAGA donors money, but it's our money. It's our tax dollars. It's such an. It is really, I think maybe the

[John Heilman]

biggest affront of all so far in a really long list of corrupt acts.

[Nicole Wallace (Host)]

Yeah. I mean, not even just going back to our time as Republican communicators, we're just going back to Trump's first campaign for president when he was going to, what was it? Drain the swamp. This is filling the swamp up with like the ultimate swamp creatures. We'll get Heilman in on this. On the other side of a quick break. Don't go anywhere. So, Halman, for all the coverage that Trump doesn't like, here's one that I'm sure he'll love. Quote, according to Forbes, Donald Trump is now worth $6.5 billion. According to Forbes, latest world's billionaires list up from 1.4 billion a year ago. And while he'll like enriching himself to the tune of $5.1 billion in 12 months, he didn't make the money in a successful business venture.

[Lara (possibly Lara Brown or Lara Logan)]

He took it well, you know, I mean, we'd all like to see our net worth go up $5 billion, $5.1

[Nicole Wallace (Host)]

billion in 12 months. He didn't like, invent something. It's incredible.

[Michael Feinberg]

Well, of course not incredible. And it's, and you know, there have been corrupt presidents in America. There's nothing like this. This is on like, you know, orders of magnitude more corrupt than any other president in the history of the country by far, in terms of just dollar value in any adjusted for inflation. There's nothing like this before that we've ever seen before.

[Michael Crowley]

And it's so out of, it's so

[Michael Feinberg]

spectacularly egregious that it's almost hard to get your head around it. And we were just talking off camera about this.

[Michael Crowley]

I think, you know, people do, this is the thing we're always like, what

[Michael Feinberg]

really cuts with the ordinary voter? What can they get their head around? And I think, you know the story of a fund to fight lawfare for people who claim that the Biden justice. That's not Trump padding his own net worth.

[Nicole Wallace (Host)]

I'm not saying he doesn't need to. He's got 5.1 billion new dollars.

[Michael Crowley]

Right. But I think the thing is, like, where who what do people, what do

[Michael Feinberg]

voters care about that' kind of complicated story. I continue to think that the pardoning of the J6 people, of the J6 insurrectionist is the thing that has outraged me more than anything else in Trump 2.0. So I think this makes it doubly disgusting. But for ordinary voters, I think what they process is he's $5 billion richer as president. The president, in every rest of our lifetime, got paid a public salary. And basically they were constrained. They would make money after they went out of office, but in various ways. But their attitude in office was I get paid my public salary and I'm essentially not allowed to have side hustles while I'm in office. Republicans and Democrats basically agreed to that. There was nothing in the law that

[Michael Crowley]

said you couldn't have a side hustle.

[Michael Feinberg]

But people didn't do it. Nobody did it.

[Michael Crowley]

And I think for a lot of

[Michael Feinberg]

normal voters, they look at this and go, the president's tearing down the East Wing to build a gold ballroom for himself that we're now going to pay for.

[Michael Crowley]

And he's feathered his nest to the

[Michael Feinberg]

tune of $5 billion somehow through what the crypto grift. And we have the whole long list of the various grifty things that he's done to do this. I think that does for an economically stressed, anxious, frightened, bewildered country, they look at that and they get that that is corruption. And they thought that Trump, at core, we were talking before, strong and different, not like all those other politicians. This just reeks of swampy. Oh, he's just another one of those guys. He just, he lied to us. He pulled the wool over our eyes, he sold us bill of goods. And that's why he's collapsing politically, because for a lot of people, that's very easy to understand, very legible.

[Nicole Wallace (Host)]

$5.1 billion in 12 months.

[Lara (possibly Lara Brown or Lara Logan)]

That's a lot of cheese.

[Nicole Wallace (Host)]

Michael Feinberg, thank you for joining us today. Tim Miller, John Heilman, thank you for spending the hour with us. Coming up next, from slush funds to insider trading, Donald Trump has all forms of grip covered. We'll tell you about it next.

[Donald Trump (quoted)]

As we ensure that all Americans can

profit from a rising stock market, let's

also ensure that members of Congress cannot corruptly profit from using insider information.

[Nicole Wallace (Host)]

My favorite is Mike Johnson and J.D. vance nodding behind them. It was a novel idea, but looks like Trump has done exactly what he advocated for members of Congress to be banned from doing at his State of the Union address just about eight weeks ago. According to New government records Donald Trump personally bought and sold millions of dollars worth of stock stock in technology companies and government contractors early this year. The timing of those transactions coincides with specific companies is raising major ethics questions, and as the news site notice points out, the Trump administration directly regulates some of these companies, and many of these trades coincided with favorable regulatory decisions. Here's just one example of that. According to documents, Trump purchased $1 million to $5 million worth of Nvidia stock on February 10, only a week before Nvidia announced a major computer processing power deal with AI and social media giant Meta. Donald Trump previously purchased 500,000 to $1 million worth of Nvidia stock on January 6, a week before the Commerce Department officially approved the sale of some Nvidia chips to China. When asked for comment about those transactions, the White House referred notices, questions about the trades to the Trump Organization, which said the president, his family, and the Trump Organization itself do not play a role in the investments and do not receive notice of trading activity. That's according to a spokesperson for the organization. After the break, Sue Gordon will be here on Donald Trump's epic stumbles on the world stage. The next hour of Deadline White House starts after a quick break. Don't go anywhere.

[Chris Hayes]

Hey everyone, it's Chris Hayes. This week on my podcast, why Is this Happening? The next episode of our special miniseries, the AI Endgame, I'm speaking with author and professor Ethan Mollick about how quickly AI expansion is happening.

[Ethan Mollick]

It's gone from AI as productivity booster alone, which is you use it and you get answers and you do a bit better in your job to agentic work, where it starts to actually do economically valuable tasks. And now we've got to figure how people relate to that.

[Chris Hayes]

Why is this happening? The AI Endgame A special miniseries Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts.