December 12, 2016

Taiwan Dispute Provides an Early Look at the Trump White House

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Here is the New York Times last week:

Former Senator Bob Dole, acting as a foreign agent for the government of Taiwan, worked behind the scenes over the past six months to establish high-level contact between Taiwanese officials and President-elect Donald J. Trump’s staff, an outreach effort that culminated last week in an unorthodox telephone call between Mr. Trump and Taiwan’s president.

Here is Donald Trump yesterday on Fox News:

I took a call. I heard the call was coming probably an hour or two before. I fully understand the One-China policy. But I don’t know why we have to be bound by a One-China policy unless we make a deal with China having to do with other things, including trade.

Knowing Trump, I think we can assume that “an hour or two” was more like 15 minutes. We can also assume that he had never heard of the One-China policy before that, since he typically defends himself only when he’s lying.

So: the China hawks on the Trump team worked on this for months; dumped it on Trump a few minutes ahead of the call; and counted on Trump having no idea what he was getting himself into. Plus one other thing: whenever Trump gets caught making a mistake, he doubles down and becomes more committed to his mistake with every passing day. They were probably counting on that too.

It’s Trump 101. This is how you handle the guy. I expect we’re going to see a lot more skullduggery like this in the White House over the next four years.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

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