The Trump–Xi summit.
Tangle
Isaac Saul
4.7 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 18 May 2026
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On Friday, President Donald Trump departed China after a two-day summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, in which the leaders discussed trade deals, diplomatic relations, the Iran war, and other issues. Trump and Xi each spoke favorably about the other and emphasized their interest in a mutually beneficial relationship between the countries, though the two sides did not mutually announce any major commitments. Trump’s state trip to China was the first U.S. presidential visit to the country since Trump’s 2017 visit during his first term.
Isaac’s message to college students.
On the last stop of his whirlwind college speaking tour, Executive Editor Isaac Saul implored students at St. Olaf College to “choose decency.” In this divided country, Isaac said, “be one of the fair ones. Be curious. Be open-minded. Be willing to say you’re wrong. Don’t treat politics like a team sport but as an opportunity to explore your own views, challenge your beliefs, and adopt new principles and ideas if you find them compelling.” To share what he’s been saying to America’s college students over the past five weeks, we published Isaac’s whole speech on Friday. You can read it here.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. |
| 0:08.4 | Good morning, good afternoon and good evening and welcome to the Tangle podcast, a place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. |
| 0:28.1 | I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we're going to be talking about President Trump's China Summit, the meeting with China's President Xi. |
| 0:38.2 | We're going to break down exactly what happened, share some views from the left and the right, |
| 0:43.3 | some international writers as well, and then my take. |
| 0:46.9 | Before we jump in, I want to give you a quick heads up that on my last stop of the little whirlwind |
| 0:53.4 | college speaking tour I had, I implored college students |
| 0:57.4 | at St. Olaf to choose decency. And in this kind of crazy divided moment, I asked them to be one |
| 1:05.4 | of the fair ones, be curious, be open-minded, be willing to say you're wrong. I did this in an effort to try and bring them |
| 1:13.3 | into a future where maybe our politics aren't quite so divided. And I decided to share this talk |
| 1:19.4 | with our audience. So I actually recorded a version of the talk for the podcast last week, |
| 1:24.0 | and we published the talk in its full form in the newsletter on Friday. Both are |
| 1:30.7 | members-only edition. So I encourage you guys to go check it out if you haven't yet. And with that, |
| 1:35.9 | I'm going to pass it over to Audrey, who's doing the podcast today. John and Will are out this |
| 1:42.2 | week in Alaska recording a YouTube video I'm very excited about. |
| 1:46.9 | So I'm going to be joined by a little rotating cast of some Tangle co-hosts this week on the pod. |
| 1:52.5 | And today's Audrey's turn. |
| 1:53.9 | So with that, I'm going to send it over to her for the breakdown of today's story. |
| 1:57.3 | And I'll be back from my take. |
| 2:06.4 | Thank you. today's story, and I'll be back from my take. Thanks, Isaac. Let's get right into it with today's quick hits. |
| 2:10.5 | Number one, President Trump warned that Iran would be hit much harder if the country's |
| 2:15.0 | leaders do not offer a more favorable deal to end the war. |
... |
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