Gingrich: Trump's Taiwan Call Lets China Know They
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President-elect Donald Trump has been criticized for accepting a phone call from Taiwan President Tsai Ing-Wen because it violates a prior agreement with the Chinese government.
On "Fox & Friends" this morning, Newt Gingrich, a longtime Trump surrogate, said that Trump showed that he's going to be his "own person" and will not be "intimidated" by the Chinese.
"If the leader of a free people call you, why wouldn’t you take the call?" Gingrich said. "I think this whole State Department mythology that we have to somehow let the Chinese dictate to us is nonsense."
"I thought it was a good signal to the world that Donald Trump is going to be his own person and that if the Chinese want to deal with the United States, they’re going to actually have to deal with the United States. They’re not going to be able to intimidate us."
Gingrich added that the U.S. policy regarding China has been negatively impacted by the fact that our leaders have been "intimidated by Beijing" for the past 40 years.
"We’re not the enemies of China. Let’s be very careful. We don’t want to start some kind of cold war with Beijing, but I think we’re going to have very tough negotiations. And I think we have to try to understand each other," Gingrich said. "But that means the Chinese will have to try to understand us as much as we have to try to understand them."