you ve studied trump s incentives and how he behaves in relation to incentives. when you see the president saying suddenly that we have to preserve jobs in a chinese company, and this is three days after a trump project has been supported by a half a billion dollar loan from a chinese government-controlled bank, is there anything about that that makes you a little bit suspicious? alarms go off. i have to say, alarms go off. think about it. it happens on a sunday afternoon by all accounts. he suddenly hits twitter, and he is reversing what had been a very measured and thought through process to sanction zte and essentially put 80 it of business. i think david and malcolm have both hit on some of what i think are what caused the president to change his mind. i think the common thread in all of it is trump s own self-interests, as it always, and china. i imagine it was an amalgam nation of three things. he realized he needed chinese leverage to get a deal with north korea. he realized i
the united states department of defense has banned zte s created telephones because they believe that they could but surped by the intelligence agencies of china and they can actually be turned into pocket-sides surveillance systems inside u.s. military bases and against u.s. military and intelligence personnel around the world. i mean, it s the best of all worlds. why president trump would be actually going out to say that they were going to create an agreement to save jobs of this sanctions busting spying agency is beyond me. david frum, how about a $500 million loan backed by the chinese government that assists the development of a trump property in indonesia? might that be an explanation? that might be. i can think of three explanations for why the administration is doing what they re doing. one is the corrupt one that you just pointed to. there are two others that are less corrupt but in their own way equally bad. donald trump may be trying to beat back chinese
deal to $500 million in government loans to a theme park resort in indonesia which of course an afp report includes, quote, trump-branded hotels, residences, and a golf course as well as other hotel shopping and residential developments. the president s sudden sympathies for the chinese phone call zte come only weeks after the commerce department cut off zte s supply of american parts and components because zte violated u.s. sanctions on sales to north korea and iran. today in a hearing on capitol hill, bill aevenino told the senate intelligence committee that the u.s. intelligence view s of zte technology views them as a national security risk.
bipartisan report? i do. joining our discussion now, david frum, the author of trumpocracy: the corruption of the american public. malcolm nantz is with us, author of the plot to hack america. and joined by tim o brien, author of trump nation: the art of being the donald. tim is an msnbc contributor. malcolm, i want to start with you on this issue of zte, this chinese telecommunications company and the president s sudden concern with preserving and building jobs in china, something i don t think we heard about on the campaign trail. well, it s utterly dumbfound for me. zte is an organization that has been implicated in breaking sanctions with north korea and iran by transferring modern technologies over to those countries, particularly in their communications.
states that have lost jobs to china, as donald trump sees it, but preserving jobs in china. and that s after running a presidential campaign that was all about taking jobs away from china and bringing them to the united states. the president tweeted president xi of china and i are working together to give massive chinese phone company zte a way to get back into business fast. too many jobs in china lost. commerce department has been instructed to get it done. so the federal government has not been instructed to clean the water in flint, michigan. but it has been instructed to save jobs in china, save jobs at a giant phone company in china. three days before the president tweeted his sudden concern the chinese government tweeted a