Trump has convinced a majority of Americans that China is responsible for our problems, particularly our ailing economy and the coronavirus outbreak. From Tom Luongo at strategic-culture.org:
Donald Trump has finally won a war. It’s a war he’s uniquely suited to fight, a propaganda war, and he’s successfully waged it on China through his command of Western media.
Stating this doesn’t imply any kind of judgment on my part as to whether he should or should not have waged this war with China. He has and he has emerged victorious, thanks to his reframing the threat from COVID-19 as an evil Chinese plot to kill millions of people.
Now, I’m convinced that the circumstances surrounding COVID-19 were a plot by evil people to kill millions of people and usher in a bleak, authoritarian nightmare they’ve had legislation and action plans written to execute for years. I’m just not convinced it was China that was wholly behind it.
In fact, my fundamental problem with Trump’s China propaganda war vis-à-vis COVID-19 is that it lets the real culprits for how it unfolded around the world off the hook. But, ultimately, that’s a different discussion.
Today’s discussion is about where things stand between the U.S. and China and what’s on tap for the future. Why do I think Trump has won his war against China?
Simple, the numbers.