This week the United States government paid to run a television ad in which the president says America will never be a communist country. It aired while the same government was hosting the leader of the largest communist country on Earth, with a stealth bomber overhead and a state dinner waiting.
The ad
It runs 30 seconds and features Trump’s voice.
Together we will defeat communism, socialism and Marxism in America.
From the ad, in Trump’s voice
And: America will never be a communist country.
An image of Xi Jinping appears briefly in it.
Per AdImpact, it cost $14,000 and ran during conservative programming on Fox News and Newsmax. It was paid for by the US government, not a campaign, which is why Democrats and some Republicans objected.
What was happening at the same time
Xi arrived Wednesday. Trump met him planeside at Joint Base Andrews, which presidents rarely do.
Thursday brought the full ceremonial inventory:
- A South Lawn arrival ceremony with 479 military personnel.
- A B-2 Spirit flyover, the bomber used on Iran’s underground nuclear sites, plus fighter jets.
- The Marine Band playing both national anthems.
- A private tea, then a state dinner with Bezos, Musk, Cook, Huang, Altman, Pichai, Dell and Fraser.
The one deliverable was the trade truce pushed back to January 10.
What he used to say
This is not a case of a politician softening over time. The argument was recent and it was specific.
Trump built his China tariffs on the claim that Beijing is responsible for the American fentanyl crisis. That justification has never been withdrawn or amended. It simply went unmentioned all week.
The trade war that followed ran most of last year before a negotiated truce brought rates down.
The BeezLoop Take
Hosting China is not the problem and anyone claiming otherwise is not serious. Nixon went to Beijing. Reagan hosted Gorbachev. A president who refuses to meet the leader of a rival nuclear power is not tough, he is negligent, and the alternative to talking is worse for everyone including the people complaining.
The problem is that the government spent public money the same week telling Americans that communism is the enemy at home. Those two things cannot both be sincere. Either the communist threat is real enough to warrant federal advertising, in which case the B-2 flyover and the state dinner are unearned, or the word is a domestic political tool with no content, in which case taxpayers just funded a campaign commercial.
We think it is the second, and we think that is the actual scandal rather than the hospitality. Fourteen thousand dollars is nothing as a budget line. It is everything as a precedent. A sitting administration used federal funds to run midterm messaging on friendly networks six weeks before an election. Republicans who spent years objecting to the use of government resources for political ends should be the loudest voices here, and a few have been. Most have not.
The fentanyl argument is the part that should anger the people who believed it. Millions of Americans were told that tariffs would raise their prices because China is killing their neighbors with fentanyl. That was the deal offered and a lot of people accepted it. This week the same administration rolled out every honor the republic has for the government it accused, and did not mention fentanyl once. If the charge was true, the reception was obscene. If it was leverage, the people who paid higher prices on that argument are owed an explanation.
And the return is thin either way. A state visit is the most valuable thing an American president can hand a foreign leader. This one bought two months on a tariff clock. You can defend the meeting and still ask why it cost so much and delivered so little.
The question
If communism is dangerous enough for the government to buy airtime about it, what is the B-2 flyover for? And should any administration of either party be allowed to run midterm messaging on the public’s dime?
More: the B-2, the guest list and the deliverable, and why the fentanyl argument still hangs over this.
Sources: The Hill · US News · Political Wire · CNBC on the truce
