Shortly after President Donald Trump publicly called for China to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden amid an impeachment inquiry into his urging the Ukraine president to do the same thing, Wall Street Journal editor-at-large Gerard Baker praised the president for doubling down, claiming Trump feels this is a “legitimate thing to ask of foreign powers.
Appearing on Fox News’ America’s Newsroom on Thursday morning, Baker—who also hosts the Fox Business Network weekly series WSJ at Large—was asked to react to the president adding China to the list of countries he wants to probe a potential 2020 rival.
“It’s classic Donald Trump,” the former WSJ editor-in-chief declared. “He doubles down. When everybody—when the Democrats and his opponents and the media are clutching their pearls about some new outrage and they think ‘Wow, this is the end now,’ he just doubles down!”
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Noting that Trump doesn’t feel “ashamed or sorry” for being outed that he was pressuring the Ukrainian president to investigate the Biden family, Baker said that this shows Trump feels he’s on “pretty solid ground on this topic.”
“Far from this being an abuse of power, as the Democrats would say, to get a foreign government to investigate a domestic political opponent,” Baker added. “He feels there is some suspicious, questionable stuff that Hunter Biden has done in his various roles around the world and he feels it is legitimate to ask foreign countries to investigate.”
Moments later, co-anchor Sandra Smith circled back to Trump’s open request that China look into Biden, wondering how the Chinese president would feel about being under this kind of scrutiny amid an ongoing trade war with the United States.
Baker, meanwhile, suggested that Trump could use this to offer China a carrot in their trade negotiations.
“It adds an interesting a little bit of spice to the trade dispute,” he said. “Maybe again for the president, it’s a possible area of agreement between the U.S. and China.”
Baker concluded: “He is saying look, if there has been something nefarious going on, China lost out from it. We’re anxious to help China investigate as China should want to. So it may, against the background of pretty tough trade negotiations and a deteriorating economic relationship between the U.S. and China without any question, maybe this offers a little sunshine.”
