Sean Hannity Show host Mark Simone reports on President Trump's China summit, noting strict surveillance laws forced the use of burner phones despite a successful meeting where Trump faced no intimidation from Xi Jinping. While China agreed not to sell weapons to Iran, experts warn such deals are unkept, contrasting Trump's trip with Biden's by highlighting Eric versus Hunter Biden's presence. Gordon Chang analyzes China's deceptive strategy and reliance on coercion, identifying Iran as a proxy that may pressure the Strait of Hormuz, suggesting the summit's outcomes remain fragile amidst historical mistrust. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Trump's Formal YMCA Moment00:13:19
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The second revolution was against the billionaires of their time.
The tax system as we have it is fundamentally unjust.
We are speaking about living in the wealthiest city and the wealthiest country in the history of the world, where one in four New Yorkers are living in poverty.
And we are going to have to explore massive judicial reform, state by state and at the federal level.
And everything should be on the table as far as I'm concerned.
Freedom is back in style.
Welcome to the revolution.
Yeah, we're coming to your city.
Gonna play our guitars and sing you a country song.
Sean Hannity, the new Sean Hannity Show.
More behind the scenes information on breaking news and more bold, inspired solutions for America.
Hey, it's Mark Simone here for Sean Hannity.
I got the easy part.
Just do the show here in the beautiful studios in New York while Sean is halfway around the world.
He's in China with the president and reporting back, getting all kinds of exclusive interviews.
We'll hear some of them a little later in the show.
It's a long trip over there.
It's like 6,000 hours to get there.
It's three days in China.
It's not a lot of fun over there.
And then it's like a million hours to come back.
Now, you might be a little upset because the president has not tweeted, has not truth socialed, done nothing online for a couple of days.
That's because when you go to China, you can't take your phone.
You can't take your computer.
The surveillance there is brutal.
Not only total surveillance, they will embed stuff in your phone that you can never find or never, ever get out.
So the president had to leave everything here.
Sean, too, you can't bring your phone.
You can't bring any device.
You have to get a special burner phone that you'll throw away as soon as you leave.
So because of that, he can't truth social.
He can't do any of that.
I guess that's good.
Take a break for a few days.
Lots of meetings.
Uh, you know, I knew Donald Trump, he lived right down there, right a block from where we're sitting right now.
His office was a block from there.
He was in New York, he was having fun.
And now, look what he's got you got a flight to China.
You got to, would you like to meet with Xi for two hours?
It doesn't sound like a lot of fun to me.
Apparently, it went well.
Uh, depends what you read.
New York Times tensions mount, it's all about how bad everything.
Everybody says it went very well.
In fact, you know, the best signs sometimes are these body language experts.
And they got this body language expert to go over exactly how it looked.
And she's a real good body language expert because she's the one the government uses to testify in trials.
And she analyzed all the footage of Trump greeting Xi, Trump walking with Xi, all this.
She said, clearly, Trump is king of the jungle, not the least bit intimidated.
You can tell by all the body language that they both respect each other.
No intimidation.
Trump feels the power.
You can tell by the way he walks.
She says, it's like a peacock.
Like a lion, showing his power.
He's walking in a straight walk, a military walk.
And Trump, very friendly.
You know, it's a very formal thing when you meet Xi, but she says Trump is patting him on the back, which she says is a power move, but also an affectionate move.
And at some point, you see Xi pat him on the back as well, indicating there's a great connection, an affection between these two guys.
The opposite of other presidents.
You know, when Obama went, they wouldn't even bring out the stairs for the plane.
He had to go down at the back entrance of Air Force One down the little baby stairs.
It was pretty embarrassing.
And you can always tell the way you gauge what you're greeting is by who's sent to greet you.
And with Obama, with Biden, it was somebody in the government, some government protocol, somebody.
With Trump, it was the vice president of China.
Now, Xi never does this himself.
So the highest thing they could give you is the vice president of China, all the top ministers, officials.
They had a red carpet, literally a red carpet.
They had a military ban.
They had 200 kids waving the flag.
It was.
Pretty impressive.
And the meeting went well.
I mean, there were tense moments, and there should be.
Tense about Iran, tense about Taiwan.
Now, a couple of things have come out of it.
The word was that China was going to start selling weapons to Iran shoulder fired missiles, other things.
They would do it through a third country.
But now you can never trust China to live up to any agreement.
But apparently, they agreed not to sell the weapons to Iran.
They did pretty well on most things.
Now, everybody, every major cabinet official is on the trip.
So, Hegseth meets with his counterpart in China.
Besant meets with his counterpart in China.
And again, it doesn't sound like a fun.
Linda, would you like to have to meet with the foreign minister in China for two hours?
Are you coming with me?
No, I don't want to.
I think if you and I went together, we'd have a good time.
I don't think so.
I think we'd have some interesting conversations.
Again, I don't know why he wanted this job.
He was having fun here in New York.
I watch him now every day.
You know, he's meeting with the president of Peru for three hours.
What the heck would you say to the president of Peru for three hours?
If you were somewhere and somebody sat him down next to you, this is the president of Peru, talk to him.
What would you talk to him about?
I think he's having some pretty good conversation.
I mean, well, listen, obviously I'm crazy and he's not.
He enjoys this.
He loves this.
And all these guys, Steve Witkoff, Jared, they love this.
They love meeting with the president of Finland.
What the heck would you say to the president of Finland?
What would you talk to him about?
But did you see that Xi went down the line and shook the hands of so many of our cabinet members?
Pretty big deal.
Yeah.
Unlike with Biden, unlike with Biden, Biden did not get that kind of treatment.
He also, you know, Eric Trump is on the trip.
Now, think about this.
He brings his son, Eric, who's an international businessman.
The guy is building skyscrapers all over the world, he's running a massive business all over the world.
Joe Biden brings Hunter with him.
A crack addict doesn't work.
He's an artist, okay?
No, not at the time.
He had not yet started that fake painting career.
No, at the time he was just a crack addict with no job of any kind.
And obviously, Eric, you wouldn't believe where they're building these Trump towers.
There's one in Dubai, there's one.
A couple of them are going up in countries I never even heard of.
I had to look them up.
So obviously, he's looking to do this in China.
So it's a good business opportunity.
Now, this is, and she must appreciate this.
Here's a guy who will build spectacular.
Skyscrapers for him.
With Biden, he brings his crack addict son, and Biden says, You know, he just started a hedge fund.
He'd like you to invest.
A crack addict who knows nothing about a hedge fund.
So it's a whole different trip.
Now, there were some problems.
There was apparently a White House staffer got trampled by Chinese reporters.
A Secret Service agent was kept out of some event.
There was a big clash over that.
Now, here's another problem, although I don't mind this one American journalists were prevented from going places.
American journalists were prevented from joining the presidential motorcade.
Yeah, it's not so bad.
These fake news people deserve it.
Dust ups with the Chinese.
Americans are all upset.
Part of the officials to keep a tight hold on their American guests dictate coverage of a global news event.
U.S. reporters were subject to strict controls, including limited access to bathrooms and the confiscation of water bottles.
It's like 85 degrees there.
No water, no bathroom.
I think we should bring that system here.
I think we should use that in this country.
Do that to these reporters.
No water bottles allowed.
And then, when the president departed the meeting, reporters tried to follow and they were blocked.
And I bet the president liked that, too.
I don't think he minded that at all.
They had the big state dinner.
Beautiful, magnificent.
You see the tables, the chairs, the stuff on the tables, those big things, the covers on the food.
It was quite impressive.
What was the menu?
See, I don't think Donald Trump was too thrilled about this.
Beef ribs, roast duck, and tiramisu.
Now, that's not Donald Trump.
Donald Trump is a cheeseburger, french fries, chocolate cake.
No tiramisu.
What else did they have?
Well, they had lobster in tomato soup, stewed seasonal vegetables.
I don't think Donald Trump has ever heard the words seasonal vegetables.
It's not for him.
Slow cooked salmon in mustard sauce, pan fried pork bun, and in what was described as a trumpet shell shaped pastry.
It doesn't sound so great.
Now, the other good thing is.
President Trump did a 10 minute toast, and it was pretty impressive.
Not just an ad lib toast, but it was a really, really well written toast.
Apparently, it went through the whole history of Chinese American relations and brought up all this stuff.
You may not realize it was Chinese workers that laid the railroad tracks back in America that connected the Atlantic and Pacific.
It was American travelers to China millions of years ago that helped spread literacy and modern medicine.
So he went through the whole thing.
President Theodore Roosevelt, who provided the funds.
To build President Xi's alma mater.
So it was a great 10 minute toast.
And at the end, he announced they've agreed President Xi will visit the White House September 24th.
So it's a great relationship.
He's coming September 24th.
Now, I guarantee you, he's going to get some real food for once.
President Trump will have cheeseburgers, french fries, and that great chocolate cake that he has.
Hey, even at the state dinner, they had these Chinese musicians play.
And at some point, they played YMCA for the president.
Now, it's just instrumental, and it's a Chinese, like a very formal bunch of musicians playing it.
Trump revealed earlier that the First Lady hates YMCA, hates when he dances to it, can't stand to see it.
It's okay when he does it.
Now, they did say, again, China never sticks to any agreements, but they did say that China's agreed to help, and that it would actually love to help between the U.S. and Iran.
Again, they committed to not sending any weapons.
And you got to remember, Straits of Hormuz closed doesn't really affect us.
We don't need any oil.
We don't get oil from the Straits of Hormuz.
We get nothing from it.
China gets 50% of its oil out of the Straits of Hormuz.
So it's hurting them.
Not so much right now because they have tremendous oil reserves, but that's not going to last that long.
So they will need, desperately need it reopened.
They're also talking about them buying oil from America, which has never happened before.
It's a little tricky, though, because if you look on a map, Iran is pretty close.
To one side of China, very close.
It's easy to ship it.
For us to do it from the West Coast, it's a little tough.
Believe it or not, we don't have enough oil on the West Coast because all those environmentalists blocked the building of pipelines for all these years.
So we don't have the pipelines to get enough oil out to California.
That's one reason they're paying $7 a gallon because they block the pipelines from coming there and bringing the oil that they need.
So anyway, we've got a lot to get to today.
Linda, you've been very quiet.
China Trip and Oil Deals00:02:40
What's going on?
You okay?
Listen, you're on a roll, brother.
I mean, you know, when the man is in his moment, who am I to interrupt?
Yeah, that means she's doing something.
No.
You want to know what I was doing?
I'm saying, Jason.
Please, that's beneath me.
All right.
I'm sending Jason a copy of the Chinese band playing YMCA as President Trump disembarked from Air Force One because we act they actually have video of it and it when you first hear it, you're like, is this is this YMCA because it's so formal?
Oh, but it's pretty funny.
And we can play it on the air.
Yes, we can.
Oh, don't go away.
We'll get to it coming up.
We'll get to it coming up.
Mark Simone here for Sean Hannity.
Now Sean's in big exclusive interviews while there.
We'll play some of them a little later.
Hey, make sure you follow me on Instagram.
They took away like hundreds of my followers.
What they said they were bots.
No, they're not.
I don't, well, maybe they're just New Yorkers with attitude.
It's the same thing.
We need them replaced.
Follow me on Instagram, MarkSimoneNYC at Instagram, and make sure you go to Hannity.com.
Lots of good stuff up there.
We'll take some calls.
Uh, 1 800 941 Sean is the number.
Back in a moment.
So here at the Sean Hannity Show, we want a thriving economy, border security, and protection of our children.
Now what else can we come up with to piss off the left?
Keep it locked right here for all the latest news and information.
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Hey, it's Mark Simone here for Sean Hannity.
Now, normally you can hear me on our big flagship station, W O R, here in New York, or you can get my podcast on iHeart.
1985 Construction vs Today00:02:36
And now, the trip to China has been going so well.
If you're the New York Times, how do you attack it?
What do you do?
Oh, look at this headline about the summit that shows pictures of all the meetings, all the New York Times.
Where are the women at the Trump Xi summit?
How come all these business leaders are men?
I don't know.
I mean, they happen to be, you know, no president has more women in higher positions than Donald Trump.
It's his whole history, his whole life.
Trump organization, more women in power than any other company in America.
You know, when he built Trump Tower, that's 1985, a woman was the project manager.
That was unheard of in construction in 1985.
It's going very well.
And they really went out of their way to, they knew about YMCA.
They knew he loved that song.
So at the state dinner, they had the very formal.
Chinese musicians play YMCA.
Let's listen to it.
Sounds like a college football marching band, doesn't it?
I would have so loved it if he did the Trump dance, honestly.
It would have been so great.
I've got to be honest, if they started playing this, I don't know if I'd recognize it.
It took a minute, for sure.
Oh, now you recognize it.
It's getting better.
It's getting better.
Yeah, I don't know.
If somebody, if they had released that back then, it never would have been a hit.
I like it.
I think it's fun.
It's like a Big Ten game.
I think it's really cool.
Yeah, it sounds like the Ohio State marching band at a football game.
It's okay.
So, if you look, I just texted you because you hadn't seen this story, but Brett Baer, who does special report at 6 o'clock, also on the FOX NEWS channel, was out doing his reporting on the streets and with his, his crew, and he was talking about how it's a surveillance state.
There's cameras everywhere and literally his guy got ticketed while standing there because he was two minutes in the wrong spot from he got ticketed by a drone.
Xi Jinping Wants a Deal00:15:55
Right yes hey, remind me to talk about this later.
Drone tickets that's coming, and speed cameras you know they got them in the cities.
They are here.
Speed cameras are about to go on the highways.
That is not right.
You'll have to go 55.
It's terrible.
Hey, back in a moment.
More on China.
We'll talk to an expert.
It's Mark Simone here for Sean Hannity.
You can't always.
welcome back.
Mark Simone here for Sean Hannity.
Now, make sure you watch Hannity tonight, 9 o'clock on the Fox News Channel.
Big exclusive interview with President Trump after the summit.
It's the president for about an hour talking about it.
So don't miss it tonight at 9 o'clock on Hannity.
We'll play a clip or two in a moment.
But right now, let's talk to the China expert, Gordon Chang.
Author of Plan Red, China's Project to Destroy America.
Nobody knows this stuff better.
Gordon Chang, how are you doing?
I'm fine, Mark, and thank you so much.
Hey, and I've talked to people that have been in these China negotiations in the past, and they say no matter what China agrees to, they will never stick to it.
Is that true?
That's true, and it's unfortunate.
You know, and we've seen this in a number of different cases.
So, for instance, in the past, the January 2020 phase one trade deal.
where China agreed to specific purchases of U.S. agricultural and manufactured products, really easy to comply with, and they completely failed.
Also, Boeing's.
They have agreed in summits with presidents to buy Boeing's and then afterwards canceled the orders.
So this is going to be a challenge for President Trump, but Trump is Trump, and I think that he is going to be able to force the Chinese to do things.
So we'll have to see, of course, but I'm optimistic that Trump can get the Chinese to comply.
But what is the Chinese thinking on that?
We'll just agree to everything and just never do it.
What's the strategy there?
The strategy is deception.
This goes to the heart of Chinese strategy for millennia.
And they feel that they can say one thing and people will agree to it.
They also, there's a certain amount of arrogance because they believe that they're at the center of the world and that everybody else has to pay homage to them.
So they believe that they don't have to comply with their words.
And it's just a historical carryover from a very long period.
Xi Jinping is also arrogant.
He's arrogant beyond belief.
Matter of fact, today he insulted President Trump in his face in those public comments by referring to something, an ancient Greek theory about a rising power meeting a declining ruling power.
In other words, he was saying, President Trump, you're the leader of a declining power.
I don't really have to deal with you.
Now, we all have this illusion that these Chinese are the most brilliant, these Chinese leaders.
Are so brilliant.
They've got a 200 year strategy.
They're light years ahead.
Is there any truth to that?
If we go back to the millennial period, yeah, they did think long term.
But Xi Jinping has been making some very short term decisions recently.
You know, people say an American president thinks in two or four year increments of time.
Well, Xi Jinping, he thinks, I think, daily because he has an election daily.
He's very happy if he wakes up alive.
So this is a point where the U.S., I think, as of Leader who thinks in longer term increments.
Because President Trump, he did something by dealing with Iran that his predecessors just kicked the can down the road.
Trump said, No, I'm going to do something that's important for the American people, even if it's unpopular.
Now, the other illusion, or I guess the narrative, is that these Chinese leaders are evil.
They're like James Bond villains.
They're plotting to destroy us.
Is that true?
Yes.
Oh.
Not in the way, for instance, like Dr. No.
Yeah.
But they do believe that their system depends upon the destruction of the United States.
They do not believe that they can coexist if the United States exists.
And they're basically because they run a very insecure system that's very top down.
They survive on coercion.
And they are worried about the inspirational impact of America's values and form of governance on the Chinese people.
So they do not believe that their Communist Party can survive a world in which the United States exists.
Wow.
But don't they want the United States to be consumers, to spend a fortune on Chinese products?
Well, they would.
Of course, they want people to buy stuff, but they want. other communists to buy stuff, and they tolerate us.
And, you know, they understand, yes, in the short term, maybe they want Americans to buy stuff from them this month, but they don't believe long term that that's the case.
And we have seen them in public talk about the destruction of the United States.
This is not only permitted, but it's encouraged narrative.
And that tells us that we've got a problem because we're not really focusing on it, but we can see what the Chinese are saying and doing.
So we're talking to Gordon Chang.
Do they respect a smooth-talking, diplomatic, very formal Barack Obama type or a blunt, tough Donald Trump type?
I think that they respect more a blunt person.
And also, Trump is unpredictable, so they do want to give him a wide berth.
They know how to deal with tough American presidents, and they know how to deal with weak American presidents.
They don't know how to deal with presidents that they can't psych out in advance and somebody that they can't psych out.
Huh.
Hey, let's take a listen to Cut Four.
Sean Hannity interviewing the president after the summit.
Take a listen to Cut Four.
President Xi would like to see a deal made.
He would like to see a deal made.
And he did offer, he said, if I can be of any help at all, I would like to be of help.
He did say that.
Yeah, he did say that.
And look, anybody that buys that much oil has obviously got some kind of a relationship with him.
But he said, I would love to be of help.
If I can be of any help whatsoever, he'd like to see the Hormoz Strait.
Open.
He said, if I could be of any help whatsoever, I would like to help.
Now, Gordon Chang, is he really dying to help us with Iran?
I don't think so.
Iran has a nuclear weapons program because of China, which supplied materials, equipment, technology, either directly or both directly and indirectly.
And so that's the reason why we've got a war in the first place.
You know, does Xi Jinping want the Strait of Hormuz open?
Absolutely.
He needs the oil from not only Iran, but from Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states.
So, yes, he wants the strait open, but I don't know if that's in our interest until Iran surrenders its missile and bullets and its nuke programs.
And what's the idea here, that China uses Iran as a weapon against us, just like Iran uses Hezbollah?
Is that the same thing?
Yes, Iran is a Chinese proxy.
The mullahs don't think they're a proxy for anybody, but when you look at the relationship, China has used Iran to disrupt the Middle East to obtain Chinese objectives.
And we see the same thing in other places where China works through other states and works through terrorist actors to achieve its goals.
Yes, Iran is a proxy.
And now, what about Taiwan?
That seems to be a big sticking point here.
They absolutely want to take Taiwan, right?
Well, Xi Jinping does because he has based his legitimacy on annexing Taiwan.
Others probably don't think the same way, or at least to the same degree.
But for us, Taiwan is absolutely critical to our defense.
This is going to be a contest where there is no compromise.
And how do you think this is all going to work out?
Does China really have any influence?
Can they tell Iran to open the strait for us?
And will Iran do it?
I think that they can put a lot of pressure on Iran that, over a course of time, would force the mullahs to open up or the IRGC to open up the strait.
Because China, if it withdrew its support, Iran would be in a very, very, the leadership would be in a very, very difficult place.
And bringing all these business leaders, the CEO of Apple, of Boeing, of all, what does that mean for China?
Do they appreciate that?
I think that they would like to exploit foreign companies more.
Xi Jinping is driving foreign companies out of China.
He's been doing this for about a decade, but especially he intensified his campaign in spring of 2023.
So I think President Trump should be trying to reduce the vulnerabilities of our companies to China, not increasing them by having CEOs go to Beijing.
Yeah.
So you're the China expert.
Would you say that this president has the best relationship of anybody with China all the way back to Nixon?
What a great question.
Probably George H.W. Bush had the best relationship because he actually gave Beijing what it needed at a critical moment, which was right after the Tiananmen Massacre.
This is not a good chapter in American foreign policy, but the Chinese absolutely loved George H.W. Bush.
Yeah.
All right.
So now, how safe is the president?
Some people are worried about his safety in China.
I hear all the people worried that he might get poisoned.
He might get this.
He's safe there, isn't he?
I think he's safe.
The Chinese have done some things to American diplomats which we would have thought inconceivable.
So, for instance, they used sonic weapons on the diplomats in the Guangzhou consulate in 2018, 2019.
But I don't think that they would target an American president visiting the capital.
That's a little bit too far for them.
But at some point, I think we've got to start thinking in very different ways about the Chinese leaders because they're exhibiting some very brazen behavior.
Yeah.
Now, what about the surveillance?
Nobody can bring a phone or a computer over there because they'll embed stuff in it.
How bad is that?
Yeah, that's really bad.
China runs a near total or total surveillance state.
They'll take capture of your phone and any electronic device.
So that's why the U.S. government and companies advise people not to bring their electronic devices into the country.
And what about Brett Baer is doing a report for Fox, and he's walking the wrong way on the street or the.