President Trump Spoke to Time Magazine, and I Have Some Thoughts

Never let it be said that President Trump won't talk to the media, even members he considers hostile, which includes pretty much all of the legacy media.

In an example of this, the president recently spoke with Time, and while that was a long, drawn-out conversation (you can see the Time article here), Fox News Senior White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich has selected some key points - and they are worth noting.

Some notables from POTUS interview w/ TIME:

Q: Will you call President Xi if he doesn’t call you?
TRUMP: No.
Q: You won’t?
TRUMP: Nope.
Q: Has he called you yet?
TRUMP: Yep.
Q: When did he call you?
TRUMP: He's called. And I don't think that's a sign of weakness on his behalf.…
— Jacqui Heinrich (@JacquiHeinrich) April 25, 2025

First, on China and Chairman XI:

Q: Will you call President Xi if he doesn’t call you?
TRUMP: No.
Q: You won’t?
TRUMP: Nope.
Q: Has he called you yet?
TRUMP: Yep.
Q: When did he call you?
TRUMP: He's called. And I don't think that's a sign of weakness on his behalf.

The president is playing his cards very close to his chest here, and that's prudent. China is a big economic problem in addition to being a big geopolitical and military problem. Trump is maintaining a rhetorical upper hand while noting that he has apparently spoken to Chairman Xi. That's a veiled sign that there are talks in the works. The trade issues with China are not only a major source of news right now, they are causing a lot of consternation in the stock markets; if you value your blood pressure, this isn't the time to be checking your 401 (k) every couple of hours. But this is the first indication I'm aware of that President Xi has personally reached out. There's also a "face" thing involved here; President Trump made a point of indicating that Chairman Xi called him, and not the other way around. There can be little doubt that this was deliberate.

And, as my colleague Nick Arama pointed out earlier on Friday, the Chinese Communist Party is already backing down some. That's a start.

On the Russo/Ukraine war:

Q: If Putin can make peace?
TRUMP: Yeah, I think Putin will. I think Putin would rather do it a different way. I think he’d rather go and take the whole thing. And I think that because of me, I believe I'm the only one that can get this thing negotiated. And I think we’re a long way. We've had very good talks, and we're getting very close to a deal. And I don't believe anybody else could have made that deal.
Q: Do you believe peace is possible if Zelensky is still President of Ukraine?
TRUMP: Yeah, I do. He is president now and I think we’re going to make a deal.

Yes, it's for sure and for certain that Tsar Vladimir I would like to annex all of Ukraine - but if he could, if that was within his ability, he would have done so by now. As I've written several times, both sides are going to have to concede some things if there is to be any negotiated peace; Putin will likely have to surrender some or all of the Ukrainian territory now under Russian control, and Zelensky will have to concede Crimea. That's my estimation, anyway. But they are, from all reports, talking about it - that's a start.

And, finally, Israel and Iran:

Q: You reportedly stopped Israel from attacking Iran's nuclear sites.
TRUMP: That's not right.
Q: It’s not right?
TRUMP: No, it’s not right. I didn’t stop them. But I didn't make it comfortable for them, because I think we can make a deal without the attack. I hope we can. It's possible we'll have to attack because Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. But I didn't make it comfortable for them, but I didn't say no. Ultimately I was going to leave that choice to them, but I said I would much prefer a deal than bombs being dropped.

President Trump appears to be an adherent to the old Churchillian credo that jaw, jaw is better than war, war. But talking, deal-making, presumes that all parties to the deal are rational; Iran is not. More to the point, the mullahs, those Bronze-Age barbarians that run Iran, are fundamentally irrational. The operating assumption when dealing with them should be that no matter what they say, they are almost certainly lying. Whatever agreements they make to halt their nuclear weapons efforts won't be kept; they will just try to hide them and claim to have stopped.

And they will never stop supporting Islamic terror groups.

In this case, in this issue, with these players, it's hard to see any kind of negotiated ending.

The president also indicated he would support a ban on insider stock trading by members of Congress - a move that, if it happens, is far, far overdue.

And one final note: President Trump has spoken with the media, including the hostile legacy media, more in 100 days than Joe Biden did in four years. If that alone doesn't point up some drastic differences in the two presidents, I don't know what will.

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