Today on the Playbook podcast, Donald Trump is gearing up for a week of diplomacy like no other.

He's headed to China, but Iran remains on everyone's minds.

And as Congress returns here in D.C., Republicans are feeling pretty good about life as redistricting wars tilt in their

favor. Hello, I'm Jack Blanchard. And I'm Dasha Burns. It is Monday, May 11th.

How you doing, Dash? Did you have a good weekend? Good. I did, except for if you've been watching

anything on my Instagram, you will see that Hellie got a really unfortunate summer haircut. It's really, really bad. It's really bad,

you guys. This is the dog. Obviously, this is the dog. The dog got a very bad haircut and

we're really upset about it. Is that why we're not seeing him on camera anymore? It's too

embarrassing for the family.

You know what? I love him in whatever state he's in, but this is not ideal. It's very silly.

There's an eyebrow situation. It's a whole thing. Right. I demand he comes on tomorrow night. I need to see this ridiculous looking dog, please. I'll discuss it with my husband. All right. Okay. Donald Trump

this week will become the first American president since Donald Trump back in 2017 to visit Beijing.

It should be really the biggest overseas trip of the year, more or less, I think.

He's flying out Wednesday. He's got bilateral talks with Xi Jinping on Thursday.

He's getting a tour of the Temple of Heaven. He's having a state dinner. He's got more talks on Friday and he's headed back. It's a long trip. It's a big trip. These are the two most powerful men in the world. So this is a really big deal. It's been more than six months since they last met, but a lot has happened in those six months, right? Including a postponement of this very meeting because of all the stuff that's been going on.

Exactly. Tariffs have been struck down by the Supreme Court since then, and of course, the war on Iran is still going on.

And yeah, I mean, it's kind of embarrassing for President Trump, right, that he postponed this trip just to get Iran sorted. And here we are a few weeks later. And yeah, it's kind of not really sorted, is it?

No. And in fact, China might have a big role to play on whether or not and how it gets

sorted. And that is looming over this entire meeting.

The general vibe is that President Xi is feeling pretty good about things at the moment,

even though the Chinese economy is not roaring like it has done in the past. This sort of general view from China is that America is making bad decisions and that China stands to profit over the very long term. Obviously, the White House would deeply refute that, so we'll see how it goes. But I think there are pretty much four things that most people are expecting to be on the agenda. And honestly, we can whiz through a couple of them. Trade should be a big deal, but not actually expecting very much to happen. They're going to announce some sort of board of trade, and G's going to agree to buy some American goods, and I'm sure Donald Trump will say that these are big figures. But most people think that basically the status quo we're at now is kind of where we'll end up at the end of the week as well, which leaves other things,

i.e. the war and Taiwan and maybe AI, to be more interesting topics. Yeah, that's right. I mean,

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