GOP Rep. Says Trump’s Call With Taiwan Shows He’s Not A ‘Pushover’

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Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), who is reportedly being considered by Donald Trump to be secretary of state, on Monday morning said that the President-elect’s unprecedented phone call with the president of Taiwan was “terrific.”

“It will demonstrate that by not just paying attention to the norms — and he didn’t violate any treaties by doing that — but by doing that, by picking up that phone and for the first time having a conversation with the president, elected president, of Taiwan, he showed the dictators in Beijing that he’s not a pushover,” he said on “Fox and Friends.”

“These people, you’ve got to remember, China has had an enormously aggressive foreign policy and by him actually going to Taiwan, he’s showing the people in Beijing that they cannot have this aggressive foreign policy and expect to be treated just the same by an American president,” Rohrabacher continued. “So I think it was a terrific message to them: We’re no longer going to be pushovers, and there’s going to be consequences for their hostile and aggressive actions.”

The congressman also said that he agrees with Trump that the United States should be “trying to establish a positive relationship with Russia in order to defeat radical Islam.”

Trump spoke with the president of Taiwan last week, the first U.S. leader to do so in decades. The call prompted China to issue a warning to Trump. The President-elect’s team spent weeks setting up the call in a deliberate move to change the country’s approach to Taiwan, according to a Washington Post report.

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Notable Replies

  1. Of course - no rank hypocrisy here. Why if Obama had made a policy breaking phone call between the time of his election and his inauguration, the Republicans would have been delighted.

  2. “So I think it was a terrific message to them: We’re no longer going to be pushovers, and there’s going to be consequences for their hostile and aggressive actions.” (Dana Rohrabacher)

    This is a very provocative statement to make. What sort of “consequences” are you suggesting, Dana? And define the “hostile and aggressive actions” on the part of the Chinese. You people are just itching for a physical altercation of some kind. I hope Trump’s voters are readying up their young boys and girls for war time.

  3. No…it shows the man is reckless and doesn’t care about diplomacy. Instead, it shows that he doesn’t care if the Chinese demand the repayment of everything we owe them pretty much right away or they start doing nasty things to our imports. Oh, did you miss that memo…apparently the US has started to creep towards a positive trade deficit with China with them importing more to us then they export. BUT, I guess staging a call with the President of Taiwan is more important than keeping one of our largest trading partners happy. And then what? You go to war? By the time our troops make it halfway across the Pacific, our other trading partners will have cut us off and there won’t be a US economy worth mentioning.

    Talk about stupid.

  4. Has Donald Trump called for U.S. citizens to scan the label for country of origin on everything they buy, and told them they need to make every effort humanly possible to buy products only made in the U.S.A.? He vilifies Carrier for exporting jobs. Has he vilified Walmart for selling Chinese made goods cheaper than U.S. made goods? Has he asked Walmart to mark up their Chinese imports 35%, thus saving him the trouble of doing it when he becomes President? Why is Walmart waiting to do something the President-elect must wait weeks and months more to do, when they could be doing it now and proving they care about the nation and the nation’s workers?

  5. Well, there it is. “Yessiree! Donald is gonna show them furriners what’s what!”
    When I heard yesterday that this fuckwit was being considered for Secretary of State, my blood froze. Take a moment to consider even the remotest possibility of that being real, folks. Dana Rohrabacher??!
    I think John Bolton might be preferable…Okay, now I’m going to wash my mouth out with Drano for that gem.

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