This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

We're joined by Josh Rogan, Global Opinions columnist with the Washington Post, author of a terrific book, Chaos Under Heaven, Trump Shee in the Battle for the 21st Century.

Speaking of Trump, Xi and battles, Josh, welcome. How are you? Let's talk about it.

Hey, guys. Great to be back with you.

So let's talk about Taiwan and the stakes involved because there's been a lot of talk,

well, for decades and certainly more recently about does the U.S. defend Taiwan, et cetera,

what's China's timetable?

Let's start with what would it look like to the world economy if China made a serious military move on Taiwan?

Right. Well, it's in the news, of course, because President Trump went to China,

met with Xi Jinping, and then said, I'm not so sure I'm going to sell Taiwan. The arms

that we promised we were going to sell them. We sent a shockwave through the region, especially

through Taiwan, because without those U.S. arms, the chance of deterring, much less repelling any sort of Chinese invasion for the Taiwanese goes way, way down. So that's not great, okay? And, but the question that you ask is the right one, what happens if they actually try it? And, you know, the main determinant is whether or not we help them.

And, you know, would that American president in that moment press that button and send U.S. troops or U.S. ships or U.S. bombs to help the time we stop the Chinese invasion.

And when I asked President Trump about that when reporting for my book, he was very clear.

He said, we're 9,000 miles away.

China's two feet away.

If they attack, there isn't an effing thing we can do about it.

That's what he said.

Okay.

So he's not very enthused about the idea of intervening on Taiwanese.

He doesn't say that, but that's the idea.

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