‘Taiwan at China’s mercy’, Trump says in new podcast

Donald Trump tells The Australian’s What Really Happened in Wuhan podcast that the risk of China invading Taiwan has escalated under Joe Biden’s ‘weak leadership’.

Donald Trump being interviewed by Sharri Markson on SkyNews.

Former US president Donald Trump says the risk of China ­invading Taiwan has escalated under the “weak leadership” of his successor, Joe Biden, in the wake of Afghanistan’s collapse.

Mr Trump predicted “bad things” could unfold in Taiwan – and he claimed they would not transpire if he were still president.

“I think China had a lot more respect for the United States when I was president and, frankly, respect for me,” he said, noting his relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping soured over his condemnation of China’s culpability for Covid-19.

“China does not respect our country anymore. They respected it a lot when I was president, they don’t respect it now and certainly they don’t respect Joe Biden and I think probably bad things could happen with respect to Taiwan.

“They see very weak leadership, pathetic leadership. I also think that when you look at ­Afghanistan where they moved out the military before they moved out the civilians, where they left all of this, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars and even billions of dollars of equipment behind without taking it out, I think it’s very disgraceful.”

The 45th president made the comments in the extended interview for the Sky News documentary, What Really Happened in Wuhan. The full interview with Mr Trump features for the first time in The Australian’s new podcast by the same name, released on Saturday.

The Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda outlet, the Global Times, had warned America’s leadership failure after ­Afghanistan indicated the US would not lift a finger should China invade Taiwan. Asked about this proposition, Mr Trump said China had no ongoing ­respect for the US under Mr Biden’s presidency, which could lead to the invasion of Taiwan.

“When I was president, I had an understanding with China, I had a very good relationship with China and President Xi, they would never have said that,” he said.

Mr Trump said he was not confident the Biden administration would defend Taiwan militarily should there be a forced reunification with mainland China.

“I don’t know whether or not he (Biden) would come (to ­Taiwan’s aid), you’d have to ask that question to him,” Mr Trump said. “But I can tell you during my years as president China had a lot of respect for the United States.”

Criticising how Mr Biden handled the Afghanistan withdrawal, Mr Trump said the correct strategy was simple.

“The first thing you take out are the civilians. The next thing you take out is the military equipment and then you take out the military when everything is finished,” he said. “And bomb the bases before you leave, so that ­nobody else can use them.”

During the interview, Mr Trump, who is considering running again for the US presidency in 2024, was at times animated as he called house Speaker Nancy Pelosi “crazy Nancy” and claimed Mr Biden did not know the meaning of the word xenophobic.

He also said medical adviser Anthony Fauci was a “radical masker” who liked to wear three or four or five masks at the same time.

The former president took aim at the tech giants for their censorship of any suggestion Covid-19 leaked from a Wuhan laboratory.

He blamed the tech giants, rather than Chinese disinformation, for the treatment of an inadvertent laboratory leak as a conspiracy theory over the first 18 months of the pandemic.

“I think it was the tech giants going crazy, and they probably want to curry favour with China because they make a lot of money from China,” he said.

“And I’m not sure that China made them do it or suggested that they do it, it’s possible they did, but I mean people were being banned from Twitter and being banned from everything and the media was going crazy if you suggested it.”

At a later point in the interview Mr Trump said: “I think big tech basically wants to protect, really wants to protect China from anything, whether it’s the China virus or anything else. I mean, if you use the term China virus, you can forget it on big tech.”

One of the reasons some voters who supported Mr Trump in 2016 turned against him in 2020 was his handling of the coronavirus and the mounting death toll. In the interview, Mr Trump made the unsubstantiated claim doctors were paid more if their ­patient died from Covid-19 than from other ailments, providing an incentive to record more Covid-19 deaths.

-

In her new podcast, Sharri Markson goes deep into the secret history of Covid-19. In a series of exclusive interviews – from Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo to intelligence chiefs and Chinese dissidents – Markson takes us inside the investigation behind her bestselling book and documentary, to explore What Really Happened in Wuhan and beyond.

-

Hear Episode 1 now on The Australian’s app in the Podcasts section. Subscribers get episodes first, plus all Sharri Markson’s reports on this topic.

Go to theaustralian.com.au/wuhan for more on What Really Happened In Wuhan.