Max Baucus, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s top pick for Ambassador to China during the Obama years, insisted a Biden administration would be “less heated in his rhetoric and criticism of China” than President Trump.
This follows a National Pulse exposé on Baucus, a “good friend,” frequent donor, and presidential campaign endorser of the former veep who now leverages the connections he gained during his 2014 to 2017 ambassadorship to “consult” for various Chinese Communist Party (CCP) linked companies.
Having known Biden personally and worked together politically for over four decades, Baucus’s insistence that Biden would be softer on China, following him saying Biden “would not publicly criticize China nearly as much” as President Trump during another interview with Chinese state media, is a striking admission.
Baucus’s remarks in full included a declaration of his support for Biden’s presidential bid:
I’m supporting Joe Biden. If he’s elected president, my judgment is that it’ll be less toxic. It’ll be less heated in its rhetoric and criticism of China.
Baucus also provides insight into what the makeup of a Biden administration would look like: individuals – perhaps Baucus – who share his Chinese Communist Party (CCP) appeasing worldview.
In the interview with China Global Television Network (CGTN), a registered foreign agent in the U.S., Baucus also lamented, “the United States has been way too hypercritical in its criticism of China, as you say, sometimes without any proof whatsoever.”
Politico recounts how Baucus secured the ambassadorship, specifically how Biden was the “chief advocate for his nomination”:
The vice president — an old friend of Baucus’s dating back to their three decades serving together in the Senate — had emerged as a chief advocate for his nomination, a topic they discussed over lunch at Biden’s residence near the Naval Observatory several weeks ago, according to several sources familiar with the meeting. That friendship, along with Baucus’s close ties with his former chief of staff, Jim Messina, who was also the president’s 2012 campaign manager, helped make what seemed like a pipe dream a reality.
The Biden associate also praised China’s coronavirus response, commenting “President Xi, China did a good job.”
Except that’s not what happened. Remotely.
China intentionally hid the virus, suppressed local doctors who tried to raise the alarm, and pressured the World Health Organization to delay notifying the world of its human-to-human transmission.
Meanwhile, Baucus slammed President Trump’s coronavirus response, aiding and abetting the CCP’s quest to absolve itself of blame for the virus:
The United States has done a poor job for several reasons. One, the United States did not have in place a good public health system to deal with national emergencies and pandemics like this. Second, I think President Trump pushed too hard to open up the country rather than wanting people to stay home, wear maks, keep social distancing. He was not a true wartime leader, rallying the country against this war, in a war against this disease, this enemy, which is Covid-19. We’ve done a miserable job. It’s very unfortunate. I think President Trump has roundly failed the test at leadership for not getting better control over the disease.
While Biden is keen on angling himself as tough on China, his past polices, business dealings, and personnel choices tell a different – and much softer – story.
