XiJinping
Xi Jinping

Fawner-in-chief... Donald Trump anxiously waited on the tarmac of Joint Base Andrews for Chinese president Xi Jinping to emerge from his 747 and walk down the stairs onto the red carpet.

It appeared that the president was ready to open his arms to embrace his guest of honor.

Xi milked the scene for all that it was worth. He made Trump wait a couple of minutes before leaving the aircraft. Xi knew that he won the PR image battle over the obsequious American.

Trump, who made a 12-mile trip to grovel before Xi, only does tarmac greetings for authoritarians. He traveled to Anchorage to greet Vladimir Putin. One can imagine the Trumpian reception that awaits North Korea’s Kim Jong-un.

The president on Sept. 23 greeted a guy whose country is bankrolling and providing support for an enemy of his administration.

China spent $31B in 2025 to buy 80 percent of Iran’s oil and supplied the drones and satellite imagery intelligence that killed American soldiers and destroyed US bases throughout the Middle East.

Its assistance to Iran is part of the reason why Trump can’t find an exit from unnecessary war that he started with Israel.

Just ahead of Xi’s touchdown in Maryland, Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS), chair of the Armed Services Committee, blasted Xi as a “brutal, unelected, and oppressive dictator who seeks to dominate his neighbors and whose massive military arsenal is aimed directly at the United States of America.”

He reminded Trump that Xi sent more than 1M Uyghurs to concentration camps in China’s Xinjiang region, where they remain as a symbol of his many human rights abuses.

The Senator said he would not have planned such a lavish welcome for Xi due to all the troubling issues that the US has with China.

You can be sure that Wicker won’t be too thrilled if Putin takes Trump up on his offer to attend the Miami G-20 summit in December set for the president’s golf club. Ka-ching for the Trump family coffers.

Following Putin's invasion of Ukraine, Wicker called him a “war criminal who should be in jail for the rest of his life, if not executed.”

He believes Putin is guilty of genocide and labeled the Russian leader “a modern-day Adolf Hitler.”

Trump’s kowtowing to Xi and Putin is a disgrace and a pathetic sign of his weakness. It’s also a sign of America’s decline on the global stage.