Currently, the news in the United States is dominated by President Trump’s impeachment inquiry. In an oddly unsurprising turn of events, Trump tried and failed to defend himself by simultaneously implicating himself further, and doing publicly what he has been accused of doing in private, namely calling on foreign powers to become involved in US domestic politics.
Rather than denying that he asked the President of Ukraine to investigate the Bidens’ activities in Ukraine, Trump is now saying that it doesn’t matter if he did. However, legally, it does matter, because he is openly inviting a foreign power to mess with the US elections, which is what sparked the Russia probe in the first place.
Furthermore, Trump committed the exact offense Democrats are accusing him of, in public, by asking China to look into the Bidens as well. That move has been criticized from both sides of the political spectrum in the US.
China and the United States are currently engaged in a heated trade dispute, and trying to use such an investigation (which is equivalent to a personal favor for Trump) over their heads is unethical. Furthermore, China itself is a country infamous for not getting involved in foreign affairs, as a strategy to keep other countries from getting involved in Chinese domestic politics.
Equally alarming, it appears that in a private phone call earlier this summer Trump also promised President Xi Jinping that he would not mention the protests in Hong Kong during their trade negotiations, as long as China investigates Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren.
This revelation is especially poorly timed, as China’s poor handling of the protests has been criticized by many countries, and even US politicians have advised Trump to show a stronger position on that matter, on behalf of American values. The fact that Trump is willing to ignore human rights violations if China does him a political favor is going to damage Trump’s defense against impeachment even further.
