President Trump is pulling a “reverse Nixon” and putting a wedge between Russia and China after his predecessor “drove” Beijing and Moscow together, US Chief of Protocol Monica Crowley explained in the latest episode of “Pod Force One.”
Crowley, who worked on behalf of former President Richard Nixon in his later years out of office, told Post columnist and now-podcast host Miranda Devine that Trump’s approach would eventually leverage Russian power to act as a bulwark against growing Chinese power.
“President Trump is doing almost, or wants to, I think, do a reverse Nixon and try to improve relations with Moscow, to use Russia as a counterweight against growing Chinese power,” Crowley said.
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“Presidents of both parties for decades have exerted themselves to keep both countries apart, and then Biden, of course, drove them together, which is madness,” she noted.
In February 1972, Nixon made a historic trip to begin the process of normalizing relations with China after a quarter century of diplomatic silence — but also to strategically counter the Soviet Union.
Trump by contrast has sought to decrease diplomatic tensions with Russian President Vladimir Putin amid his war with Ukraine, while engaging in more aggressive trade negotiations with China.
At times, he’s lashed out at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, accusing him of being a “dictator” as well as an ungrateful recipient of US foreign aid that’s bankrolled his nation’s war against Russia.
In the most shocking confrontation between the world leaders this term, Trump accused Zelensky of “gambling with World War III” during a heated Oval Office meeting Feb. 28.
Full episode
“You’re right now not in a very good position. You’ve allowed yourself to be in a very bad position,” the president charged.
But Trump has also railed against Putin for conducting drone strikes on civilians in Ukraine, claiming in May that the Russian strongman “has gone absolutely CRAZY!”
Former President Joe Biden often praised Zelensky’s valor in confronting Russia’s war machine and even once suggesting during a widely watched speech in Poland that Putin “cannot remain in power.”
Despite the shifting approaches to dealing with Russia, both Biden and Trump similarly applied tariffs to China while in office.
Crowley explained that Nixon “decided to open the door to China” and use it “as a strategic counterweight against growing Soviet power” to “buy time strategically for the United States.”
“They worshipped [Nixon] in China,” Crowley added, “because he had opened China to the rest of the world.”
The Trump official also noted that Nixon would be much more wary of Chinese power nowadays, particularly given how quickly the landscape of foreign policy has changed since his tenure as president.
“Now, President Nixon was nothing if not adaptable to the changing world, so I think he would understand now that China is a complete adversary and an existential threat to the United States,” she said.
Elsewhere in the podcast, Crowley and Devine discussed how Nixon and Trump had exchanged letters in the 1980s and 1990s — and how former first lady Pat Nixon had admired the real estate mogul’s appearance on “The Phil Donahue Show” and claimed he had a future in politics.
As chief of protocol, Crowley advises the president, Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio on matters of diplomatic protocol, both national and international. She also holds the rank of assistant secretary of state.
Reflecting on what drew her to serve in the Trump administration, Crowley said that from the beginning, she knew that he was “the one that is not just going to save the GOP, but he’s the one that’s going to save the country, and frankly, the West.”
