Transcript of Trump Heads To Beijing & California Mayor Spies For China? | 5.13.26 New

President Trump heads to China for a high-stakes sit-down with Xi Jinping. I think you're going to see that, uh, good things are going to happen.

This is going to be a very exciting trip.

I'm Daily Wire executive editor John Bickley with Georgia Howell. It's Wednesday, May 13th.

This is Morning Wire.

A mayor in California resigns after being charged with acting as an agent of China. How is China trying to influence our domestic policy? What we know is that she is guilty. It just makes the point the spies are among us.

And how are Americans feeling about Trump's handling of the economy? We talked to a pollster who's taken the pulse of the public.

Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned, we have the news you need to know.

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President Trump arrives in Beijing later today for a highly anticipated face-to-face with Chinese President Xi Jinping. He's expected to address Iran and other pressing issues.

Joining us now is DC Bureau Chief Tim Rice. Tim, thanks for coming on.

Thanks for having me, John.

So it's a big foreign policy week for the president with this big Beijing trip and a lot more. What can you tell us about that? What's the latest on the foreign policy front?

Yeah, absolutely. So the president is making his way to China as we speak. It's obviously going to be a big visit, but before we get into that, I do want to talk about Iran. They said that our proposal was tantamount to a full surrender on their part and takeover of their country by Western powers. So they— their counterproposal included, you know, basically the opposite of that, lifting all sanctions on Iran, releasing and freeing Iranian frozen assets, and giving Tehran full control over the Strait of Hormuz. President Trump and his administration roundly rejected this, and the president is taking an increasingly harsh tone on the Iranians, saying, we don't play games. So it's going to be very interesting to see where that resolves. Sort of a holding pattern, but a very stressful holding pattern, especially if you're, you know, in the State Department or in the nascent Iranian government. Now, of course, it's hard to listen to the president striking such a hard tone on Iran without keeping in mind this China trip. Right. So China is, of course, one of Iran's biggest allies. Firmly China isn't sending troops, but they're absolutely watching it and they're interested in the Middle East.

Right. So that's going to be an unexpected kind of, you know, wrinkle and element to this trip. They're going to talk about trade. They're going to talk about AI. And one other thing to note, as our own— our White House correspondent Mary Margaret Ollahan has been all over— the president has promised to talk to Xi Jinping about Jimmy Lai, the Catholic media tycoon who has been unjustly imprisoned by the Chinese government in Hong Kong. For running a newspaper that was critical of the Chinese regime. So a very high-stakes visit and definitely one to watch. And as if that wasn't enough, also on the foreign policy front, the president joked, maybe didn't joke this week, that he is seriously considering— that's a quote— seriously considering making Venezuela the 51st state. Now, of course, the president does this every once in a while. Canada, Greenland. He had no shortage of ideas for a 51st state. He says this would be good because we would— we could use their oil reserves and it would drive gas prices down. For her part, Venezuelan President Delcy Rodriguez said they would prefer to remain independent.

Maybe there can be a bidding war for who gets to be the 51st state. We'll see who wins.

They should all be smart. Yeah.

Now, back here at home, there have been some significant personnel changes on the president's team. You guys have been tracking that on the D.C. bureau. What's happening there?

Yeah. So yesterday afternoon, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary resigned. As the nation's top drug regulator. He, as President Trump was kind enough to leak the screenshot of the text that Makary sent him. So apparently Makary resigned via text. I'd probably do it over an email, but hey, you know, he's a doctor. I'm not. The official unofficial story going around Washington is that Makary wanted to resign because he couldn't get on board with the president's call to re-legalize certain flavored vapes. But I think the biggest thing and probably the final nail in the coffin was that the pro-life movement has been pretty unhappy with Makary from the beginning. Spinning because they've said he's not done enough to combat the spread of abortion drugs. Right now, the deputy FDA commissioner is expected to take, take over. We'll see if the president nominates anybody else. He's been on a bit of a nominating spree recently. There's something like 15 or 20 different people he sent to the Senate, and a lot of them are getting approved. But the one that everyone's talking about and the one that everyone's going to watch is Kari Lake, former Arizona Senate candidate and current embattled head of Voice of America.

Has been appointed ambassador to Jamaica. So congratulations to Kari Lake on her, on her, on her trip to Jamaica.

Permanent vacation.

That's right.

We have a lot more going on with the White House, of course, that you guys have been reporting on daily. What else is on the docket for the White House this week?

Yeah. So just two other stories that I think are really worth noting. One of them, again, I mentioned our White House correspondent Mary Margaret Ollahan. She broke this story over the weekend. The White House marked Mother's Day by launching a website called Moms.gov. And this is a site that primarily connects expectant mothers with crisis pregnancy centers. This is partially the Trump administration continuing its push to promote big families and defend life. But it's also a direct rebuke to the Biden administration, which very infamously launched something called like ReproductiveRights.gov, which was a taxpayer-funded website that directed these same vulnerable mothers, expectant mothers, to Planned Parenthood and other abortion clinics. So that's probably the biggest thing. And just one other fun one to close on. Everyone in Washington is wondering who's going to be the Republican nominee, Vice President J.D. Vance or Secretary of State Marco Rubio. President Trump, as only President Trump could, decided to throw an early and major wrench into this by asking a group of people gathered in the White House to cheer based on— Vance and Rubio were right behind him and they said, who do you want for 2028? Cheer for JD, cheer for Marco Rubio.

And then he said, that's a pretty good showing, but this is not an endorsement. So, uh, definitely a sign of it's going to be a really long road to that nomination. And I do not envy either the vice president or the Secretary of State.

Indeed. Yeah, you guys have your work cut out for you as always tracking all this stuff. Tim, thanks so much for joining us.

Thanks for having me, guys.

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A mayor in Los Angeles County, Eileen Wang, has quit her job and now faces prison after admitting she was acting as an agent for China.

Joining us now to discuss is Seamus Brunner, director of research at the Government Accountability Institute. Seamus, thanks for coming on.

It's great to be with you.

So can you break down this case for us? What exactly happened in Arcadia?

Yeah, so the mayor, Eileen Wang, has been working at the direction of CCP operatives. I mean, they, they ran this website where she would post all kinds of pro-CCP messaging, uh, there's no genocide in Xinjiang, all kinds of stuff like the CCP is not a brutal regime. And then she would respond to her, I guess, effectively CCP handler saying, it is done, you know, thank you, leader, uh, clearly at the direction. If she were just merely saying pro-CCP messages, I guess that would be protected as free speech. However, this obviously crosses a line where you're taking directions from a foreign adversary like China. So she's resigned, she's indicted. Um, I have a question about why it didn't happen sooner. She had a boyfriend, uh, fiancé, who was indicted 2 years ago for the exact same activity, acting as a foreign agent of the CCP. And it also makes me wonder what the heck's going on in California. You have so many Chinese spies, CCP agents, uh, infiltrating the highest levels. It goes up to the governor's office. Senator Dianne Feinstein famously had a chauffeur who was a CCP spy working for her for well over a decade.

You've got Eric Swalwell, uh, who's got his own scandal with Fang Fang— well, several scandals— but, uh, Fang Fang, Christine Fang, the CCP spy. So There's, I mean, countless examples. I mean, we could, we could spend an hour talking about whether, you know, what the Biden family did for China. They got some $31 million— Hunter Biden, as we reported— from individuals linked to the highest levels of CCP intelligence. We've got CCP infiltration of our university system, whether it's Harvard or the UPenn Biden Center in the University of Delaware. They both took millions of dollars from the CCP, and then in return sent out a letter, uh, signed by faculty saying that the Department of Justice needs to close investigations into CCP espionage and intellectual property theft in the university system. The state is riddled with, uh, Chinese agents infiltrating and penetrating, uh, the highest and I guess the lowest levels. That's the kind of the other interesting thing about this Arcadia story is they're not just targeting the highest levels, they're going right down to the city council level.

Well, I was going to ask you about that. So to what end? What kind of work was she doing for the CCP from that station?

Yeah, well, so they, they ran this website in the town of Arcadia that was putting out pro-CCP propaganda. So it's kind of, I mean, at the highest levels and lowest levels spreading a pro-Beijing message That's just one. I— you don't think that the city of Arcadia could do a whole lot for the CCP? But there's another case, uh, going on right now developing over in Maryland with a state delegate from Maryland who's been accused of, uh, acting on behalf of the CCP. He's proposing legislation in Maryland that says that, uh, no new data centers can be built without the AI companies disclosing and divulging all of their top, uh, proprietary corporate information. So it runs the full spectrum of the types of things they're trying to get done, um, whether it's, uh, you know, with the Bidens, they really wanted to close down these espionage cases, in which the Biden DOJ, they did close those down. So, um, there, you know, there's a number of items that, that is on the, uh, Chinese agenda for what they want American politicians to do.

Well, and it, it looks like they're pretty prolific in pushing those items across America. Seamus, thanks so much for coming on.

Thank you.

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With the Iran conflict quickly approaching the 3-month mark and gas prices and inflation inching up, President Trump's approval is way down, particularly on the economy.

Joining us now is Brent Buchanan, founder and CEO of the Signal Polling Group. Brent, great to have you back on.

Hey, good to be here.

So President Trump's approval rating on the economy is significantly underwater in recent polls, from 20 to even 30 points in some polls. Is public perception of him really that grim? And what's driving this downward trend from your perspective?

Well, you're seeing a degradation of the political environment in general, but it's not necessarily affected the generic ballot, which is, are you going to vote for the Republican or Democrat? At for Congress. So one thing that we saw— let's go a step above Trump's image, and that is how do people view the direction of the country. And in just one month, we have seen a 25-point net drop among strong Republicans in the direction of the country, yet they're still voting for the Republican candidate for Congress. And so the reason that I frame it in this way is that this whole narrative that the president's image and the direction of the country are indicative of what's going to happen in the election just isn't true anymore. And so, yes, his image has decreased, but not as bad as the direction of the country has decreased. Yes, the generic ballot has dropped a little bit, but Republican votes only went to undecided, not to Democrats. So there's still a lot of fluidity in all of this. And I don't think that somebody's approval on Donald Trump's handling of the economy is the be-all end-all that maybe it was 20 years ago in politics.

Now, this downward trend for Trump on the issue of the economy does look like it correlates directly with Iran. Is that too simplistic, or is that just the truth?

No, I believe that the Iran issue for two reasons has driven a decrease in his image. One, these younger men who took a chance on him in the '24 election that he was going to be different, he was not going to create new wars, he was going to end wars. And then also gas prices. It's simply the one price that everybody sees every single day when they're driving around, whether you purchase interested or not. And it is the in-your-face reminder, right?

You simply cannot ignore it. Looking ahead, uh, what kinds of events or conditions could meaningfully shift polling in either direction? For example, if we actually wrap up the Iran conflict relatively soon and we do see a return of lower gas prices, could that significantly shift things, or is it already too late for that?

Well, I'm not an economist, so I don't know how long increased diesel prices will impact the cost of everything else. But if by this summer, we're not talking about an Iran war, you're starting to see prices come down, which is something that, that voters don't remember. All of us, look, going back to COVID, almost can't remember what it was like when prices were stable. They've only ever gone up since the COVID pandemic started, especially when the stimulus efforts began. And so I think it could create a unique scenario where Voters are actually starting to see prices come down. Now, do they come down to what they were before the Iran War? I don't know. But it's a direction that voters are not used to seeing, uh, on their receipt.

Now, we're looking at a lot of the headwinds for Republicans. Democrats also are facing some major headwinds themselves. The fraud issue has really become front and center here at The Daily Wire. We've reported a lot on that. That's become a talking point for basically every Republican in the country.

Is that having an effect It would if we talked about it more. The problem is it's been talked about some. You guys have covered it a ton. But if we're talking about what is getting across all the media outlets, this has not been there since the Minneapolis and Minnesota efforts really peaked and then have waned in attention since then. It is a great issue. Government waste and spending is a great topic for turnout for Republicans. It fires people up on an issue that they already believe is happening, which is the government is wasting their money and enriching certain people at their expense. And then there's the whole other issue of immigration. It is what we see in our polling is the top issue for low-propensity Trump voters. And, and so I really hope that that's another topic that we bring to the forefront because these are great contrasts with Democrats.

Well, the summer is fast approaching, so the clock really ticking for the Iran conflict to get wrapped up and for Republicans to unify around some of that messaging you talked about. Thank you so much for joining My pleasure.

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