It’s not entirely clear why Donald Trump keeps accusing President Joe Biden of receiving funds from China. Apparently it has something to do with the Democrat having a relative who has done business with a company with affiliates in China.
Either way, the former president has been talking about it for much of the year. With great enthusiasmTrump told a South Carolina audience in February that Biden was “Paid off“It’s China’s fault” – Republicans make the same argument In an interview with a conservative media outlet.
During the first presidential debate of the year, the Republican front-runners returned to the topic. As The New York Times reported:
As the night went on, Trump’s discipline began to slip. He began making more extreme claims, claiming that Biden was a Manchu candidate who was “paid for by China.”
The obvious problem, of course, is that there is literally no evidence that Biden is “taking money from China.”
The less obvious problem is that Trump is drawing attention to one of his weaknesses.
In January, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released a shocking 156-page report titled “The White House for Sale.” Based on documents from Trump’s former accounting firm, congressional investigators determined that Republican companies received “at least” $7.8 million from 20 foreign governments over the two years while Trump was in the White House, despite the emoluments clause of the U.S. Constitution prohibiting such payments.
NBC News reports that China “was the biggest spender, paying more than $5.5 million for the Trump-owned property.”
A week later, the issue was raised at a Fox News town hall event, but Trump, a Republican, made no attempt to deny the accuracy of the Democrats’ findings. Trump’s defense was, in effect, that it was OK to accept millions of dollars from foreign governments while he was president because he provided services in exchange for the money.
In other words, the former president is falsely accusing his successor of accepting Chinese money, even though China spent millions on Trump-owned properties during Trump’s presidency.
Admittedly, this has barely featured as an issue on the campaign trail, and the Biden campaign doesn’t seem to have made much effort to draw attention to it, but the more Republican candidates bring up the issue, the greater the chance their attacks will backfire.
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