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Biden says he was ‘blunt’ with Xi on areas of tension but touts cooperation

President Biden on Wednesday announced that he had reached three key areas of cooperation with Chinese President Xi Jinping, even as the president said he pushed hard on some of the most fraught issues between Washington and Beijing. 

The president described Xi as a “dictator,” following what appeared to look like a friendly bilateral summit in San Francisco. Biden was earlier seen joking while sitting across from Xi at the start of the meeting, and showed a photo on his cellphone of Xi as a young man in San Francisco in 1985. 

Still, the president touted what he described as critically important breakthroughs in his meeting with Xi.

“I welcome the positive steps we’ve taken today,” Biden said at a press conference following his meeting with the Chinese leader. 

“We’re talking to our competitors and just talking, just being blunt with one another, so there’s no misunderstanding, as a key element to maintaining global stability and delivering for the American people.” 

That included reestablishing direct military-to-military contacts that were severed last year, a priority area for the president that he views as essential to avoid any potentially disastrous, accidental conflicts. 

“Vital miscalculations on either side can cause real trouble with a country like China, or any other major country, and so I think we’re making real progress there as well,” Biden said. 

The president’s meeting with Xi took place on the sidelines of the APEC business summit. It was the first contact between the two leaders in nearly a year, since they last met face-to-face on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia. 

Biden said that Xi agreed to keep lines of communication open between the two leaders. 

“He and I agreed that if each one wants to pick up the phone, call directly, and will be heard immediately,” he said. 

The president said he had also reached agreement with Xi on restarting cooperation on counternarcotics, with the U.S. pushing for China to crackdown on the export of chemicals that are used to manufacture fentanyl, the deadly opioid responsible for tens of thousands of drug overdose deaths in the U.S. 

Another priority goal for the president was to get Xi to sign onto discussions about the responsible use of Artificial Intelligence.

“We’re going to get our experts together to discuss risk and safety issues associated with artificial intelligence,” Biden said. 

But Biden also clashed with Xi on the fate of Americans detained in China. Biden didn’t name the Americans detained but they some have earlier been identified as Mark Swidan, Kai Li and David Lin. The president also raised with the Chinese leader U.S. opposition to the practice of placing exit-bans on American citizens, a practice Beijing uses to prevent what it views as suspicious persons from leaving the country.  

“I gave him names of individuals we think are being held and hopefully we can get them released as well. No agreement on that. No agreement on that,” Biden said. 

The president also raised the importance of stability in the Taiwan Strait, “Russia’s refusal to stop the brutal war of aggression against Ukraine,” where China has sided with Moscow; and Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, “human rights and coercive [Chinese] activities in the South China Sea.” 

Even as the areas of confrontation seemed to outnumber the points of cooperation, a senior administration official sought to stress Biden’s effort to connect with Xi personally, in particular wishing the Chinese leader’s wife a happy birthday, which she shares with the president. 

Xi said he was embarrassed, the senior administration official recounted, saying that he had been working so hard he had forgotten the date of her birthday is next week, and thanked Biden for reminding him.

Updated 9:53 p.m.

Go to Source: Administration News | The Hill

Five for Fighting: Who are the meanest, toughest and roughest on Capitol Hill?

The biggest question on Capitol Hill this week is whether the meanest, toughest people in the country come from Oklahoma or Tenneseee?

California?

Perhaps you’re dreamin’.

“I’m a guy from Oklahoma first,” said Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., a former MMA fighter on Fox News Radio.

Mullin rose from his seat on the dais during a Senate hearing to challenge Teamsters President Sean O’Brien to a fistfight. Mullin even loosened his wedding ring. That signaled that he was serious about throwing haymakers with O’Brien.

THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE AS TO WHY TENSIONS ARE RUNNING SO HIGH RIGHT NOW ON CAPITOL HILL

Mullin’s staff tells Fox that as a former pro fighter, the senator knows that “if he hit something with a ring on, his hand would likely swell up.”

Mullin stared down at O’Brien, towering above the witness table from the dais where senators sit.

“You don’t run your mouth like that in Oklahoma unless you’re willing to stand up and back it up,” said Mullin of O’Brien. “He just ran his mouth off to the wrong person.”

Don’t mess with Oklahoma?

Texas is not pleased.

Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., says that former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., deliberately elbowed him in the kidneys this week. NPR Congressional Correspondent Claudia Grisales recorded the exchange as she interviewed Burchett.

“Why’d you elbow me in the back, Kevin?” hollered Burchett at McCarthy, before pursuing the Speaker and his United States Capitol Police security detail down a Congressional corridor. “Hey Kevin, you got any guts?”

Burchett was one of the eight Republicans who voted to oust McCarthy from the Speakership last month.

“What kind of chicken move is that? You’re pathetic, man,” yelled Burchett at the former Speaker. “You’re a jerk. You need security, Kevin.”

You’ve heard Mullin opine on how Okies settle things mano-a-mano. But how do the gentlemen handle business in the Volunteer State?

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“It’s just a little different with the way people react in Tennessee than they do in California,” declared Burchett. “In Tennessee, if you’ve got a problem with somebody, you take it to him face to face. I guess in Southern California, where (McCarthy’s) from, you take a cheap shot at somebody from behind.”

Know thy enemy, suggested Sun Tzu in the Art of War.

McCarthy hails from Bakersfield, which is not Southern California. It’s part of the Central Valley.

The former Speaker was far from contrite. He denied lowering the boom on Burchett. 

“I didn’t punch anybody,” said McCarthy. “If I would hit somebody, they would know I hit them.”

Which suggests that McCarthy has contemplated hitting someone.

Could you blame the former Speaker after lawmakers like Burchett voted to can him?

Amid the hurly-burly, lawmakers seemingly violated the first rule.

Oh. Come on. You know what rule.

They talked about fight club.

Boxers usually beat each other to a pulp. They’re sometimes black and blue.

But how about just blue?

It isn’t every day in Congress that a House committee chairman calls one of his members “a Smurf.”

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., and Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., tangled verbally Tuesday.

“You look like a Smurf,” charged Comer, an apparent reference to Moskowitz’s diminutive stature and stylish, “Crayola Blue” suit jacket.

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Moscowitz later characterized Comer as “Gargamel,” the sworn enemy of the Smurfs.

“La la la-la la la. Sing a happy song. La la la-la la la. Smurf the whole day long.”

Yeah right.

No happy songs on Capitol Hill amid these tensions. 

There’s a reason altercations and tensions are boiling right now in Congress.

The House is in session for its 10th consecutive week. Such a stretch without a recess is extraordinary. Laypersons will say that’s nothing. But lawmakers split their time between Washington and their home states/districts. They conduct business on Capitol Hill. They conduct business back home. In essence, Congress is always “in session.”

Congressional veterans attest to the fact that stress spikes when lawmakers are in Washington for more than three or four consecutive weeks. Double that to ten weeks – a period not seen in years. Then mix in an unprecedented move to boot the Speaker of the House and two possible government shutdowns.

Pressure is also mounting over the war in the Middle East, aid to Israel and what could happen with Ukraine. House members also viewed gruesome, disturbing video Tuesday morning of Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians from October 7. Members have also raged about multiple efforts to censure one another for their actions and even expel Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y. There was also a failed effort to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

Blend all of that together and you have a volatile Congressional concoction. Hence, the contretemps.

Moreover, there are questions about why House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., was able to get away with an interim spending bill – yet the same approach cost McCarthy his job.

The reason? Look no further than the elbow heard ‘round the Capitol.

Burchett voted to remove McCarthy from the Speakership.

Frankly, some members will tell you they never trusted McCarthy.

 “He did stuff like (elbowing Burchett) to us all the time,” said one House Republican to Fox. “Only behind the scenes.”

In short, there was always a cohort of Republicans who disliked McCarthy. But they prefer Johnson. Hence, McCarthy’s ouster was personal. It was not over policy or legislative strategy.

And just as a point of information, McCarthy and Mullin are longtime allies. In fact Mullin trekked regularly to the House chamber to visit with McCarthy when he faced challenging votes on spending bills, his ouster and even during a possible effort to resurrect the former Speaker.

Yours truly asked Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., if he had any influence to adjust the political climate.

“It’s very difficult to control the behavior of everybody who’s in the building,” replied McConnell. “I don’t view that as my responsibility. That’s something the Capitol Police have to deal with.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., saw this as another episode he termed the Republican civil war.” Jeffries added that the GOP “hit a new low.”

But some Republicans downplayed the decorum breaches.

“That’s nothing man. That’s small potatoes,” said Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla. “Anybody who’s been in high school. College. Been in a sports locker room. Stuff gets testy. It’s not even a big deal.”

Mullin noted that fights and duels have a longstanding place in American history.

“Andrew Jackson challenged nine people to a duel when he was President. He also knocked one guy out at the White House (state) dinner,” said Mullin on Fox Business. “Maybe we should bring some of that back.”

Washington was a violent place in the 19th Century.

Newspaper reporter Charles Kincaid shot and killed Rep. William Taulbee, D-Ky., on a Capitol stairwell in 1890. The blood is still visible on the marble staircase today.

Rep. Preston Brooks, D-S.C., famously caned Sen. Charles Sumner, R-Mass., in the Senate chamber in 1856.

On Fox, Mullin contends he wasn’t going to hold back on O’Brien.

“Every now and then a bully needs to be taught a lesson,” boasted Mullin.

But Mullin’s braggadocio comes amid a contemporary era of political violence.

David DePape is now on trial for attacking Paul Pelosi, the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., at their San Francisco home last year. A gunman nearly killed former Reps. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., and Ron Barber, D-Ariz., in 2011. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, D-La., came close to dying during the Congressional baseball practice shooting in 2017. There was the Capitol riot which injured 140 Washington, DC and U.S. Capitol Police officers. A man wielding a bat burst into the district office of Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., in the spring, badly injuring two aides.

“Sit down!” admonished Senate Health, Education and Pensions Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., when Mullin rose to fight O’Brien. “You’re a United States senator!”

Calls for calm may be more important in this atmosphere than egging on people to brawl.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., received some blowback from House conservatives Tuesday as lawmakers careened toward voting on an interim spending bill to avoid a weekend shutdown. But Johnson defended his novel, two-step approach to keep the federal lights burning through mid-January.

“This allows us as conservatives to go into the fight on the next stages of this,” said Johnson.

Reporters peppered Johnson about his gambit since it renewed old funding and was still a temporary spending bill – both anathema to the right.

“We’re not surrendering. We’re fighting,” said Johnson. “But you have to be wise about choosing the fights. You’ve got to fight fights that you can win.”

It’s unclear who might prevail in a tilt between Kevin McCarthy and Tim Burchett. The same with a Markwayne Mullin/Sean O’Brien match. Johnson may have been talking about fighting policy battles with ideas and words. But under his stewardship, the Speaker offered sage advice: take on fights that you can win. 

And anytime Congress resorts to threats of physical violence, that’s a loss for everyone.

Go to Source: Latest Political News on Fox News

Texas Gov. Abbott endorsement of Trump possible when they team up Sunday near U.S.-Mexico border

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas may endorse former President Donald Trump for the 2024 GOP nomination when the two team up Sunday near the U.S.-Mexico border.

The former president will join the governor on Sunday in Edinburg, Texas, for Abbott’s annual pre-Thanksgiving tradition of serving tamales to Texas Department of Public Safety troopers and Texas National Guardsmen deployed along the southern border under the governor’s Operation Lone Star program, multiple sources confirmed to Fox News.

Those sources also say an Abbott endorsement of Trump this weekend for the GOP presidential nomination is possible.

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Trump endorsed Abbott in 2021, as the conservative governor was gearing up for re-election and faced multiple primary challenges from the right. Abbott overwhelmingly won renomination in March of last year before comfortably defeating Democratic challenger former Rep. Beto O’Rourke last November to secure a third term steering Texas.

Abbott was grateful for Trump’s early endorsement last cycle, according to those in the governor’s political orbit, and it’s possible he’ll return the favor.

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Trump, who’s making his third straight White House run, is the commanding front-runner for the Republican 2024 nomination, with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former ambassador to the United Nations and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley currently vying for a distant second place in the polls.

Trump’s lead expanded over the spring and summer as he made history as the first former or current president in American history to be indicted for a crime. Trump’s four indictments – including in federal court in Washington D.C. and in Fulton County court in Georgia on charges he tried to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss – have only fueled his support among Republican voters.

The former president’s trip to Texas to meet with Abbott near the border will spotlight the combustible issue of illegal immigration and border security. The issue’s long been top of mind for Republican voters, and GOP leaders and politicians for two and a half years have heavily criticized President Biden’s administration over the surge in border crossings by migrants.

Trump has pledged if he wins back the White House to launch the largest mass deportation effort in American history, would reinstate travel bans as well as his 2019 “Remain in Mexico” program, which forced non-Mexican asylum-seekers aiming to enter the U.S. at the southern border to wait in Mexico for the resolution of their cases. Trump’s also said he’d seek to end automatic citizenship for children born in the U.S. to immigrants who entered the country illegally, an idea he proposed during his administration.

Biden’s 2024 re-election campaign has slammed Trump’s “scary” proposals, arguing that it would violate the U.S. Constitution, the nation’s values, and the rights of immigrants.

Border security has also long been a top issue for Abbott, who’s sparred repeatedly with the Biden administration.

The Texas legislature, during a special session called by the governor, this week passed a controversial measure allowing state law enforcement officials to arrest suspected undocumented migrants. Democrats have pilloried the strict immigration bill.

Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub.

Go to Source: Latest Political News on Fox News

Biden again calls Xi a ‘dictator’ after critical summit

WOODSIDE, Calif. — After rattling off a list of perceived agreements made with Chinese President Xi Jinping, President Biden on Wednesday once again called his counterpart a “dictator”  — a move that’s likely to agitate already fraught relations between the two powerhouse economies.

“He’s a dictator in the sense of he’s a guy who runs a country, a communist country,” Biden told reporters in off-the-cuff remarks following a press conference in California where he met with Xi for hours.

Biden emerged from that meeting during the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in San Francisco ticking off a list of agreements the two leaders came to, including resuming military to military communication and dealing with the influx of fentanyl into the U.S. They also discussed the upcoming Taiwanese elections, artificial intelligence and the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. 

The two leaders met for about four hours, had lunch and went for a walk, just the two of them, around the grounds of the Filoli estate.

It marked the second time this year Biden referred to Xi as such.

In June, while at a fundraiser in the San Francisco area, Biden said he thought Xi was a dictator after Biden described Xi as getting upset when a Chinese spy balloon was ordered shot down by the U.S. military in February.

“The reason why Xi Jinping got very upset in terms of when I shot that balloon down with two box cars full of spy equipment is he didn’t know it was there. No, I’m serious. That was the great embarrassment for dictators, when they didn’t know what happened,” Biden told donors at the time.

Go to Source: Administration News | The Hill

Biden cautions China on election interference in Taiwan

President Biden on Wednesday cautioned China against interfering in Taiwan’s upcoming elections following a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

“I made clear I didn’t expect any interference,” Biden said in a press conference following the hours-long meeting with Xi.

Taiwan will hold presidential elections in January, casting additional uncertainty around the future of the island’s relationship with China.

Taiwan has been a major source of tension between the Washington. and Beijing as China has carried out aggressive maneuvers in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, sparking fears of a potential invasion of the island in the coming years.

Biden has triggered further anxiety over the situation by repeatedly saying in the past the U.S. would defend Taiwan militarily if it were attacked, a contradiction to the strategic ambiguity the U.S. government has maintained for years. 

But the president on Wednesday emphasized his commitment to the One China policy, under which the U.S. does not recognize Taiwan as a separate state from mainland China.

“We maintain the agreement that there is a One China policy. I’m not going to change that. That’s not going to change. That’s about the extent to which we discussed it,” Biden said.

The president’s comments came after he and Xi met for several hours on the sidelines of the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco. 

A senior administration official separately told reporters in California that Xi expressed some exasperation in response to repeated speculation that China was preparing to invade Taiwan.

“I think President Biden responded very clearly that the longstanding position of the United States was a determination to maintain peace and stability,” the official said. “That we believed in the status quo. And that we asked the Chinese to respect the electoral process in Taiwan.”

Go to Source: Administration News | The Hill