Never wanting to waste an opportunity to out-hawk everyone else, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham issued a blistering response to fresh reports that Chinese President Xi Jinping directly warned President Joe Biden during their recent summit in San Francisco that China will move to unify Taiwan with the mainland.
Graham expressed outrage and called for bipartisan efforts to work toward urgently beefing up Taiwan’s defenses and military capabilities. “This story as reported is beyond unnerving,” Graham stated on X Wednesday. “I will be working with Democratic and Republican Senators to do two things quickly. First, create a robust defense supplemental for Taiwan and second, draft pre-invasion sanctions from hell to impose on China if they take action to seize Taiwan.”
The senator from South Carolina then warned Beijing directly, saying: “To communist China, if you think you can bully your way into destroying world order without consequences, you will be making Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine look wise.”
Specifically he was responding to widely circulating NBC report published Tuesday which for the first time unveils new details surrounding Xi’s San Francisco trip in mid-November.
Multiple current and former officials said Xi very bluntly told Biden that Taiwan will be reunified and that the only undecided factor is the timing. “Xi told Biden in a group meeting attended by a dozen American and Chinese officials that China’s preference is to take Taiwan peacefully, not by force,” according to the sources.
And further unexpected was how specific Xi got in his words to Biden:
The Chinese leader also referenced public predictions by U.S. military leaders who say that Xi plans to take Taiwan in 2025 or 2027, telling Biden that they were wrong because he has not set a time frame, according to the two current and one former official briefed on the meeting.
Xi was likely more emboldened to convey a tough, direct message given the White House rejected earlier requests regarding a sought after statement on Taiwan.
The White House is said to have rejected the following request going into the summit:
Chinese officials also asked in advance of the summit that Biden make a public statement after the meeting saying that the United States supports China’s goal of peaceful unification with Taiwan and does not support Taiwanese independence, they said.
While Beijing’s longtime official policy has emphasized peaceful reunification of the self-ruled island, US officials said they were particularly alarmed by the timing of the message given China’s recent and ongoing behavior of stepped-up aggression aimed at Taiwan. Meanwhile… another nightmare scenario…
“Mainland China will reunify with Taiwan” — Chinese President Xi Jinping told Senile Biden during the San Francisco visit.
Umm… I don’t know why US media is making a big deal.
It’s a pregone conclusion & an inevitable historical event. Deal with it!
— S.L. Kanthan (@Kanthan2030) December 20, 2023
Stretching back to the Trump administration and through Biden, Washington has approved a series of record defense aid and weapons packages for Taiwan, which has even in recent months includes hundreds of millions of dollars worth approved.
Back in February of this year, Graham issued a similarly irate statement in response to China. He responded at the time to prior reports that China was mulling lethal aid for Russia for its war in Ukraine. “If you jump on the Putin train, you’re dumber than dirt,” he had said.
Loading…
