Showing posts with label Taiwan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Taiwan. Show all posts

Thursday, August 24, 2023

Ramaswamy's endless flipflops

 Lose yourself: Vivek Ramaswamy's 2024 presidential campaign haunted by endless flip-flops:

on: his voting history
pardons for the Biden family
drug decriminalization
foreign aid to Israel
support for Taiwan
masking
Juneteenth
 


Wednesday, March 29, 2023

The always feckless Barack Obama makes speeches abroad for $1 million, blames threat of China on Trump when he himself failed to recognize the new threat in Xi Jinping from 2012


 The vacuum was all his.

Here's Obama:

“With my successor coming in, I think he saw an opportunity because the U.S. president didn’t seem to care that much about a rules-based international system,” Obama said, the Daily Mail reported. "As a consequence, I think China’s attitude [is], 'Well, we can take advantage of what appears to be a vacuum internationally on a lot of these issues.'"

 

It was Obama who never cared about the rules, never challenged China's military expansion in the South China Sea under Xi, and telegraphed nothing but weakness to China. 

Here's Xi Jinping as early as 2014:

Tabled by the popular ultranationalist blogger Zhou Xiaoping, the plan would authorize the assassination of blacklisted individuals—including Taiwan’s vice president, William Lai Ching-te—if they do not reform their ways. Zhou later told the Hong Kong newspaper Ming Pao that his proposal had been accepted by the conference and “relayed to relevant authorities for evaluation and consideration.” Proposals like Zhou’s do not come by accident. In 2014, Xi praised Zhou for the “positive energy” of his jeremiads against Taiwan and the United States. ...

But the most telling moments of the two-sessions meetings, perhaps unsurprisingly, involved Xi himself. The Chinese leader gave four speeches in all—one to delegates of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, two to the National People’s Congress, and one to military and paramilitary leaders. In them, he described a bleak geopolitical landscape, singled out the United States as China’s adversary, exhorted private businesses to serve China’s military and strategic aims, and reiterated that he sees uniting Taiwan and the mainland as vital to the success of his signature policy to achieve “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese ethnos.”

In his first speech on March 6, Xi appeared to be girding China’s industrial base for struggle and conflict. “In the coming period, the risks and challenges we face will only increase and become more severe,” he warned. “Only when all the people think in one place, work hard in one place, help each other in the same boat, unite as one, dare to fight, and be good at fighting, can they continue to win new and greater victories.” To help the CCP achieve these “greater victories,” he vowed to “correctly guide” private businesses to invest in projects that the state has prioritized.

Xi also blasted the United States directly in his speech, breaking his practice of not naming Washington as an adversary except in historical contexts. He described the United States and its allies as leading causes of China’s current problems. “Western countries headed by the United States have implemented containment from all directions, encirclement and suppression against us, which has brought unprecedented severe challenges to our country’s development,” he said. Whereas U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration has emphasized “guardrails” and other means of slowing the deterioration of U.S.-China relations, Beijing is clearly preparing for a new, more confrontational era.

On March 5, Xi gave a second speech laying out a vision of Chinese self-sufficiency that went considerably further than any of his previous discussions of the topic, saying China’s march to modernization is contingent on breaking technological dependence on foreign economies—meaning the United States and other industrialized democracies. Xi also said that he wants China to end its reliance on imports of grain and manufactured goods. “In case we’re short of either, the international market will not protect us,” Xi declared. Li, the outgoing premier, emphasized the same point in his annual government “work report” on the same day, saying Beijing must “unremittingly keep the rice bowls of more than 1.4 billion Chinese people firmly in their own hands.” China currently depends on imports for more than a third of its net food consumption.

In his third speech, on March 8 to representatives from the PLA and the People’s Armed Police, Xi declared that China must focus its innovation efforts on bolstering national defense and establish a network of national reserve forces that could be tapped in wartime. Xi also called for a “National Defense Education” campaign to unite society behind the PLA, invoking as inspiration the Double Support Movement, a 1943 campaign by the Communists to militarize society in their base area of Yan’an.

In his fourth speech (and his first as a third-term president), on March 13, Xi announced that the “essence” of his great rejuvenation campaign was “the unification of the motherland.” Although he has hinted at the connection between absorbing Taiwan and his much-vaunted campaign to, essentially, make China great again, he has rarely if ever done so with such clarity.

One thing that is clear a decade into Xi’s rule is that it is important to take him seriously—something that many U.S. analysts regrettably do not do. When Xi launched a series of aggressive campaigns against corruption, private enterprise, financial institutions, and the property and tech sectors, many analysts predicted that these campaigns would be short-lived. But they endured. The same was true of Xi’s draconian “zero COVID” policy for three years—until he was uncharacteristically forced to reverse course in late 2022.

Xi is now intensifying a decade long campaign to break key economic and technological dependencies on the U.S.-led democratic world. He is doing so in anticipation of a new phase of ideological and geostrategic “struggle,” as he puts it. His messaging about war preparation and his equating of national rejuvenation with unification mark a new phase in his political warfare campaign to intimidate Taiwan. He is clearly willing to use force to take the island. What remains unclear is whether he thinks he can do so without risking uncontrolled escalation with the United States.

Monday, September 19, 2022

Biden repeats May statement committing US forces to the defense of Taiwan

 

Asked in a CBS 60 Minutes interview broadcast on Sunday whether U.S. forces would defend the democratically governed island claimed by China, he replied: “Yes, if in fact, there was an unprecedented attack.”

More.

Monday, May 23, 2022

President Biden finally removes the ambiguity and commits the USA to the defense of Taiwan in the face of increasing Chicom military threats against the island

 

When asked at a joint press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida whether the U.S. would be prepared to defend Taiwan if attacked, Biden replied: “Yes.”

“That’s the commitment we made,” Biden said. “We agree with the ‘one China’ policy. We signed on to it. All the attendant agreements [were] made from there. But the idea that that can be taken by force, just taken by force. It’s just not it’s just not appropriate.”

More.

A fuller account here adds this from the president:

“We support the ‘one China policy,’ we support all that we’ve done in the past. But that does not mean, that does not mean that China has the ability, has the – excuse me, the jurisdiction – to go in and use force to take over Taiwan.”

Tuesday, December 21, 2021

Michael Anton doesn't have a clue about the immense value of the periphery


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Taiwan is "peripheral" to our interests, Michael Anton says over and over again, here.

Well then, so is Hawaii.

Keep thinking like that and eventually Catalina Island becomes peripheral, too.

If you want to legitimize China's nine-dash line, something he never mentions, giving up Taiwan is the fastest way to do it. 

There is MUCH more at stake than Taiwan's relative freedom and independence. All of southeast Asia is at risk if China retakes Taiwan.

The answer isn't to accept the fact, as Anton does, that our Navy is rotten to the core and unable to defend Taiwan. The answer is to reform the Navy before it's too late.

If the Chicoms kill all our woke Navy in a battle over Taiwan, that wouldn't be the start we want, but it would be a start to the reform we most need.

Thursday, December 9, 2021

Sean Davis of The Federalist only pretends that wars in Ukraine and Taiwan will be wars of our choosing

We can bolster the defenses of these nominally free states in order to prevent Russia and China from attacking them, or we can do what he says and do nothing, inviting their demise.

He is profoundly mistaken.

https://thefederalist.com/2021/12/09/following-debacles-in-iraq-and-afghanistan-failed-interventionists-are-now-agitating-for-wars-in-ukraine-and-taiwan/


Monday, September 27, 2021

In a world where "no first use" of nuclear weapons helps keep the peace, the Chicoms are willing to reject that policy because western powers have the temerity to form alliances even as China prepares to add 3,600 deliverable warheads

Beijing's former ambassador to the UN, Sha Zukang said China must make the first nuclear strike against the US if Joe Biden continues to defend Taiwan.

He said: "The unconditional no first use is not suitable . . . unless China-US negotiations agree that neither side would use [nuclear weapons] first, or the US will no longer take any passive measures to undermine the effectiveness of China’s strategic forces.

"The strategic pressure on China is intensifying as (the US) has built new military alliances and as it increases its military presence in our neighbourhood." ...

The country is constructing nearly 300 new nuclear missile silos, while it is thought to possess around 320 nuclear warheads, report the Times.

More

New alliances by the west wouldn't be necessary if China weren't building super-hardened silos for its MIRVed missiles, each of which can carry 10 warheads. 320 new invulnerable silos will mean an arms race requiring western powers to modernize systems to withstand a first use strike by China and deliver enough additional firepower to take them out.

There is still time, brother.

 








Thursday, September 2, 2021

While America has been bogged down in Afghanistan, China has been building nukes

 From Bill Gertz:


China is building a third missile field that will hold more than 100 new DF-41 intercontinental ballistic missiles, The Washington Times has learned.

Construction of a silo array for DF-41s was identified from satellite imagery by U.S. intelligence agencies in the past several weeks and appears equal in size to two other new Chinese missile fields recently identified, according to Pentagon officials familiar with intelligence reports on the strategic development.

Adm. Charles Richard, commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, said Thursday that the first two missile fields being built are part of China‘s “explosive” expansion of nuclear forces. ...

Analysts at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, California, first told The Washington Post in June that commercial satellite photos had revealed the construction of scores of silos near Yumen in China‘s Gansu province for the new missiles. Some missile sites were placed underneath a 230-foot cover in an attempt to conceal the silos from the prying eyes of satellite spies.

Last month, the Federation of American Scientists discovered the second DF-41 field some 240 miles northwest of Yumen near the city of Hami in Xinjiang Province. Xinjiang is also the location of China‘s active nuclear testing site, which the Pentagon said recently had begun increased operations after years of limited, irregular activity.

Mark Schneider, a former Pentagon nuclear policymaker, said the discovery of a new missile field is significant and indicates that Beijing’s ICBM force will soon be more powerful than U.S. nuclear forces were at the height of the Cold War.

“It is now beyond any reasonable doubt that China is going for large-scale strategic nuclear superiority over the U.S.,” said Mr. Schneider, now with the National Institute for Public Policy. “The new silos will give China the ability to deploy thousands of strategic nuclear warheads on DF-41 ICBMs.”

Mr. Schneider said he believes the main motivation for the large buildup is that Beijing is planning some type of military action in the next few years and hopes to deter a U.S. military response to action against one of China‘s neighbors, such as Taiwan. ...

Until the discovery of the DF-41 silos, China‘s land-based, silo-deployed ICBM force consisted of around 20 DF-5 ICBMs.

More.

 

 

Sunday, September 27, 2020

Things to remember from the week that was, Sep 19-26, 2020, and none of it is about COVID-19

Democrat Senator Chucky Schumer tweeted on Feb 22, 2016: Attn GOP: Senate has confirmed 17 #SCOTUS justices in presidential election years. #DoYourJob.

But now that they're about to do just that, he's saying Ruth Bader Ginsburg "must be turning over in her grave up in heaven". RBG is actually on ice right now, until her burial this week at Arlington. The Senate Minority Leader, like a lot of Democrats, has problems with spatial, temporal, dimensional and proportional imagination, not to mention the American idiom.  

Democrat Senator Harry Reid tweeted on Nov 21, 2013: Thanks to all of you who encouraged me to consider filibuster reform. It had to be done.

In 2013, Reid was then asked if he was worried the GOP could change the filibuster on #SCOTUS, too. His response: "Let 'em do it".

So Mitch McConnell did, sooner than Reid was imagining.

The cannibal Reza Aslan was so hungry for human BBQ he called for the whole fucking thing to be burned down if the GOP replaced RBG, who died at home and "lied in state" according to NBC News. That's one way of putting it. Democrats threatened riots if they didn't get their way, like that was something new.

Like the George Floyd protests which were mostly peaceful, except for the $1-$2 billion in damages caused so far, most of the fires out west recently have been wild except for at least four major ones caused by 13 people arrested for arson.

Ann Coulter tweeted that Amy Coney Barrett would be a "disastrous pick" for the Supreme Court because Barrett has stated that her Catholicism would require her to recuse herself on e.g. immigration and death penalty cases. Yes, what are we paying you for? Not to recuse yourself but actually to issue opinions. Plus it would set a terrible precedent for an appointee to add to the prohibition on religious tests such a prohibition of religion itself from the public square, as if religion has no legitimate contribution to make to our public life. 

This must come as quite a shock to the Catholic integralists of the "right" who seek an explicit Catholic hegemony over the Americas, because Amy is not their man, so to speak. It's probably more disappointing to such Catholics than to the millions of US Protestants who still don't have one justice on the court, completely dominated by Catholics and Jews as it is, even though Protestants still constitute the largest, though splintered, Christian group in America.

Ann Coulter also said Trump would lose if he picked Amy Coney Barrett to fill the vacancy of RBG. I say, only if they let her talk in public. The woman's a bot. And a Karenbot to boot. I don't think she's going drinking with Brett Kavanaugh.

The New York Times is playing fast and loose with its own so-called 1619 Project, stealth-editing-out its claims that the "true founding" of America was in 1619, not 1776, after taking sustained in-coming from critics about it.

Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is in re-election trouble according to the polling. The guy flaps his gums about many things and so gets caught flipping and flopping quite a bit, which apparently is wearing thin down there.

Democrats like David Axelrod are basing many of their arguments for and against everything these days on what has the "popular vote" and what doesn't, saying things which don't have the popular vote create a tyranny of the minority.

In a republic like America the popular vote has always been subsidiary in order to prevent the tyranny of the majority. Representation in a republic means that you can have a voice to persuade, not a guarantee that you can get your way and impose. But rather than argue the principle head on, of course, they'd rather assert the claim that the majority wants this, the majority hates that, is what counts, as if all the republican institutions and the republican framework itself have no legitimacy any longer, almost as if they don't even exist. This is the ideological habit of mind in action: Denial of reality.

The reality is Trump won in 2016. His position in the Senate strengthened in 2018 and the impeachment trial failed in 2020, which means the voters have already expressed their assent to the president's prerogative to make judicial appointments and to Republicans' Senate role in approving or disapproving of those appointments.

The filibuster issue, however, is a fraught matter.

Some are saying about the issue of filling the current Supreme Court vacancy that the Court's legitimacy is on the line. Many of us already thought the Court lost its legitimacy in 1973 in Roe v Wade. We thought that again in 2003 in Lawrence v Texas. We thought that again in 2012 in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius. We thought that again in 2013 in United States v Windsor. We thought that again in 2015 in Obergefell v Hodges. We don't think that in 2020 per se, but I mean, look at the thing. It's a mess. Liberals are only upset because for the first time in decades their ability to impose their undemocratic will on the American people is in jeopardy.

Meanwhile it's good to remember in the first place that RBG was appointed to the Supreme Court by a president who received just 43% of the popular vote. Talk about a tyranny of the minority, eh David Assholerod?

Speaking of minorities, RBG had just one black clerk in all those years from 1993-2020. A Jew practicing tokenism? I'm shocked. She was also a eugenicist, like the Nazis: "at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of."

Oh really? 

In 2014 RBG told Reuters she wasn't going to retire because she didn't trust Obama to appoint a true liberal like herself to replace her, but she thought rather that he would appoint a compromise candidate. RBG must have reckoned in 2014 that Hillary would win in 2016, allowing her to retire safely knowing HRC would appoint another true liberal. Says a lot about RBG, but also about Obama, who by the end of 2009 had already alienated the far left. Yet by 2016 the far left supported Bernie, not Hillary.

And they say the Republicans are cracking up. The Democrats haven't finished cracking up.

We learned this last week that in April the USPS and HHS were prepared to distribute 650 million face masks to Americans but that never happened because the Trump administration didn't want to cause a panic. Like we hadn't panicked already.

Senator Chuck Grassley used Twitter to identify the numbers on a tagged pidgin he found dead on his farm. Thank you, Chuck.

Video of RBG warning against court-packing emerged, but you probably won't see that.

As recently as July Ann Coulter was hashtagging #DefeatMcConnell in support of his Democrat challenger in Kentucky. In September she was appealing to McConnell to talk up someone other than Amy Coney Barrett to Trump.

Well make up your mind, lady.

In a September Quinnipiac poll McConnell has a comfortable 12 point lead and appears headed to another term in the Senate representing the Bluegrass State. They should change that to Badass State, in honor of Cocaine Mitch.

McConnell did join Republicans in voting 96-3 to confirm RBG in 1993.

Sad!

In Minneapolis a charter amendment to defund the police failed to get on the ballot. Crime is up dramatically in the wake of the riots . . . because police are afraid they'll be prosecuted for doing their jobs. Maybe next year the reality will sink in: George Floyd wasn't "killed by the police". He was killed by an overdose of illegal drugs he took.

In Seattle the Seattle Times is lying about why 126 businesses have closed downtown. The paper says it's due to COVID when it's really due to the rioters. Looted businesses are boarded up everywhere as law and order has broken down and riff raff own the streets. Who would shop there now?

"Fiery but mostly peaceful protests" has been trending but will be replaced soon by "no evidence of meaningful fraud" in the fall elections. Analysis that's a little bit pregnant from the Mother of Idiots, the media.

After ~17 weeks of $600 federal unemployment checks, a Trump executive order has resulted in follow-up checks for $300 for six weeks. Democrats filibustered a Republican relief bill for the unemployed in the Senate which would have made that superfluous. Another opportunity to make Trump appear small, squandered.

The stock market in the 20 years since the August 2000 peak has underperformed the previous 20 years by almost 68%, so No, this is not a bull market.

Joe Biden said 200 million have died from COVID so far, which makes it a good thing hundreds of millions of Americans in 57 states have Obamacare now. In 1991 he said that he'd probably be dead by 2020. Just pointing out that there's still time . . .

Not to be outdone, Kamala Harris on Friday night said 2Pac is the best rapper alive. This is the second time she's pandered on 2Pac, who was shot and killed in 1996.

Glenn Beck wants 1 billion Americans. We want fewer Glenn Becks.

The Chicoms, who have over 1 billion Chinese, are imposing Xi Jinping thought on private businesses and sending warplanes to buzz Taiwan.

We learned Hunter Biden got $3.5 million from a Putin stooge, but it's still "Trump-Russia!" 24/7.

Robert Curry pointed out that John Locke 'had made what philosophers call a “category mistake.” Property is alienable; unalienable rights are not property'. So among the unalienable rights, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are not to be thought of as property of which you can be deprived.

We were reminded that in late August Hillary urged Biden not to accept the election result under any circumstances. Well, if Trump wins and stays in the White House, Trump won't be wrong, but Hillary already is.

An article attempting to tout the benefits of the 2017 tax bill for the middle class contained this unfortunate line: "The average tax liability of millionaires was reduced by roughly $54,000 between 2017 and 2018", which way overtops the 2018 median wage of $32,838.05, meaning your average millionaire saved a minimum of $21,000 more than half the country's workers make in a year.

If we're going to have a limitation on SCOTUS power by limiting the terms of Supreme Court justices, it had better include limitations on House and Senate power, too, by limiting their terms of office. This hamstringing of the judiciary is in the service of the present Legislative Tyranny, where representatives and senators keep seats warm forever. It is a devious end run aimed really at the executive, which appoints the judiciary, to further weaken it.

Think about it. In 1929 the Congress grabbed power by stopping growth of the US House and limiting it to its then 435 members. In 1947 the Congress grabbed power by limiting the president to two terms. In 2020 Congress wants to limit the term of SCOTUS justices to 18 years.

The Congress does a lot of limiting, except of itself.

We have $27 trillion in debt for crying out loud! Congress has picked our pockets, our children's pockets, and the pockets to the third and fourth generation of them that hate the government of the United States. Debt is servitude. Debt is slavery. Debt is tyranny. And that debt is the secret of the Legislative Tyranny's success.

A tyranny of 218.

Brutus tried to warn us in 1787:

[I]n reality there will be no part of the people represented, but the rich, even in that branch of the legislature, which is called the democratic. — The well born, and highest orders in life, as they term themselves, will be ignorant of the sentiments of the midling class of citizens, strangers to their ability, wants, and difficulties, and void of sympathy, and fellow feeling. This branch of the legislature will not only be an imperfect representation, but there will be no security in so small a body, against bribery, and corruption — It will consist at first, of sixty-five, and can never exceed one for every thirty thousand inhabitants; a majority of these, that is, thirty-three, are a quorum, and a majority of which, or seventeen, may pass any law — so that twenty-five men, will have the power to give away all the property of the citizens of these states — what security therefore can there be for the people, where their liberties and property are at the disposal of so few men?

It will literally be a government in the hands of the few to oppress and plunder the many. You may conclude with a great degree of certainty, that it, like all others of a similar nature, will be managed by influence and corruption, and that the period is not far distant, when this will be the case, if it should be adopted; for even now there are some among us, whose characters stand high in the public estimation, and who have had a principal agency in framing this constitution, who do not scruple to say, that this is the only practicable mode of governing a people, who think with that degree of freedom which the Americans do — this government will have in their gift a vast number of offices of great honor and emolument. The members of the legislature are not excluded from appointments; and twenty-five of them, as the case may be, being secured, any measure may be carried.

The rulers of this country must be composed of very different materials from those of any other, of which history gives us any account, if the majority of the legislature are not, before many years, entirely at the devotion of the executive — and these states will soon be under the absolute domination of one, or a few, with the fallacious appearance of being governed by men of their own election.

The more I reflect on this subject, the more firmly am I persuaded, that the representation is merely nominal — a mere burlesque; and that no security is provided against corruption and undue influence. No free people on earth, who have elected persons to legislate for them, ever reposed that confidence in so small a number. The British house of commons consists of five hundred and fifty-eight members; the number of inhabitants in Great-Britain, is computed at eight millions — this gives one member for a little more than fourteen thousand, which exceeds double the proportion this country can ever have: and yet we require a larger representation in proportion to our numbers, than Great-Britain, because this country is much more extensive, and differs more in its productions, interests, manners, and habits. The democratic branch of the legislatures of the several states in the union consists, I believe at present, of near two thousand; and this number was not thought too large for the security of liberty by the framers of our state constitutions: some of the states may have erred in this respect, but the difference between two thousand, and sixty-five, is so very great, that it will bear no comparison.

Thursday, April 23, 2020

USA coronavirus mortality rate vs. South Korea and Taiwan 4/23/20

USA             5.66%
South Korea 2.24%
Taiwan         1.40%

Saturday, June 1, 2019

In China, however, things are mostly wrong, very wrong

Chinese dissidents are being executed for their organs, former hospital worker says:

The world is beginning to wake up to the fact that virtually every organ transplant in China costs the life of an innocent human being. That’s why countries like Israel, Spain, Italy and Taiwan have already banned transplant tourism.

 

Tuesday, June 12, 2018

Trump may have kept the issue of US troops in South Korea separate from the North Korea talks, but he still wants them out

Removing US troops from the peninsula will only give China what it wants. A robust US presence in South Korea, Japan and Guam helps ensure the security of Taiwan, not simply the security of South Korea. The end game is Taiwan. Trump is misguided to think otherwise.

Quoted here before 6:30 this morning:

“I want to bring our soldiers back home,” Trump said, although he added that it’s “not part of the equation right now.” Then he said: “We will be stopping the war games, which will save us a tremendous amount of money unless and until we see the future negotiation is not going along like it should. But we’ll be saving a tremendous amount of money. Plus, I think it’s very provocative.”

Sunday, July 2, 2017

Reuters gets it exactly backwards on $1.42 billion Taiwan arms deal: It pressures China to help on North Korea

Trump is playing chess with China, which has been provoking the free world by building illegal islands in the South China Sea and militarizing them. Arguably Trump needs to move even more pieces in their direction on the board.


China's anger over the U.S. plan to supply Taiwan with weapons risks undermining Trump's attempts to press China to help on North Korea. ... The sales, which require congressional approval, would be the first since a $1.83 billion sale that former President Barack Obama announced in December 2015, also to China's dismay.


Reuters should stick to reporting the news instead of opining about it.

Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Middle Class: The 30-30-30 countries according to wealth distribution are primarily Germanic

The following are the countries with relatively equal sized lower, middle and upper classes in 2013, meaning roughly 30% have wealth under $10,000, roughly 30% have wealth $10,000 to $100,000, and roughly 30% have wealth in excess of $100,000 up to $1M:

USA: 31-33-31

Austria: 28-32-37

Germany: 29-33-35

New Zealand: 26-34-38

Qatar: 25-38-35

Taiwan: 23-45-31






Monday, December 5, 2016

Michael Savage gets Trump's Taiwan overture totally wrong, Marc Thiessen gets it right

Savage calls it a blunder, in keeping with his generally negative assessments about Trump's post-election behavior.

Thiessen calls it deliberate, and brilliant, here, which is what it is.