Trump’s Meet the Press Interview: Evasive on Stance Regarding Taiwan Defense

Former President Donald Trump, in an interview airing Sunday, refused to say if he would commit U.S. forces to defend Taiwan against China if he’s elected president.  

“I won’t say. I won’t say,” Trump told new NBC “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker. “Because if I said, I’m giving away — you know, only stupid people are going to give that.”

But still, Trump said the option remains open to help Taiwan, telling Welker that “I don’t take anything off the table.”

President Joe Biden has said the United States would protect Taiwan in the event of an invasion, and Trump noted that he heard Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — who he referred to with the nickname “DeSanctimonious”  — say “something about he was willing to do this or he was going to do that.”

I say, “Well, why is he saying the strategy?” Trump said. “You can’t say that. So when you ask me that question, I would never say that. Because you give away all your options.

Meanwhile, Trump has spoken often about brokering a deal between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to end the war in Ukraine, but he told Welker he does not think such an agreement would embolden China to attack Taiwan. 

Trump said he and Chinese President Xi Jinping “got along” until “we had the China virus…once COVID came in.”

“I made a great trade deal with China, one of the greatest deals ever made for the farmers and for the manufacturers, $50 billion a year,” Trump said. “It was a great deal [but] I don’t even talk about it. Because once COVID came in, it was, like, I didn’t want to talk about anything. I was a much different person. What happened to this world, not our country, the whole world, what happened with COVID, it just shouldn’t have happened. It shouldn’t have happened. What happened, what China did to the world was so bad.”