Photograph Source: United States Ambassador to China – Public Domain
“China isn’t as strong as it appeared in Beijing, and America isn’t as weak.” (Washington Post, David Ignatius, “The Trump-Xi narrative isn’t true. America keeps falling uphill,” May 21, 2026.)
The Washington Post’s leading national security columnist, David Ignatius, has been an ever-present apologist for the “power of the military and the secrecy of the intelligence community.” At a crucial time that requires fresh thinking about the loss of U.S. influence and credibility in the international arena, Ignatius and the mainstream media continue to identify the U.S. as the #1 military and economic power in the world. The mainstream media have not been sufficiently aggressive in questioning and investigating the Trump administration’s abuse of our governing institutions, particularly in the realm of national security. Journalists, particularly Ignatius, have become beholden to official sources and insufficiently protective of contrarians and critics.
Xi Jinping has just completed his most successful week or so in conducting China’s foreign policy, ensuring that Beijing has strengthened its standing in bilateral relations with both the United States and Russia. It’s no exaggeration to say that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin traveled to Beijing “hat in hand” in order to improve relations with Xi’s China. Both Trump and Putin have been weakened domestically because of their wars with Iran and Ukraine, respectively, which are not going well for either nuclear power. Moreover, China holds important economic cards that require Russia to seek a formal agreement to advance a Siberian pipeline that would transport Russian gas to northeastern China. Once again, Xi refused to formally support the pipeline.
Similarly, the United States requires China’s willingness to part with rare-earth minerals and magnets that are needed for the construction of America’s most advanced strategic weapons systems, including submarines, fighter aircraft, and ballistic missiles. According to the New York Times, one F-35 stealth fighter requires 900 pounds of rare-earth elements, and an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer requires over 5,000 pounds. The Trump administration had to back away from its punishing tariffs against China last year because Beijing threatened to enforce restrictions on the mineral supply chain. The asymmetry in bilateral relations between Russia and China as well as between the United States and China, is likely to worsen in the coming years.
The inability of Ignatius and the mainstream media to comprehend the strategic changes in these important bilateral relations is not as significant as their failure to understand the damage being done to the United States at home and abroad by the Trump administration. Trump has neutered the Republican Party, which is turn has neutered the essential role that Congress must play in American governance. The Supreme Court has given Trump extraordinary powers, conforming to Chief Justice John Roberts’ support for the unitary executive. The damage being done to essential agencies of government, such as the Department of State, the National Security Council, the Department of Justice, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Department of Health and Human Services, will take years to correct.
Ignatius and the Washington Post have been a particular problem in the Trump years, starting in his first term and continuing into the 2024 presidential campaign, when the owner of the Post, Jeff Bezos, canceled an editorial endorsing Kamala Harris for president. In the process of compromising the integrity of the Post, Bezos has driven some of its best reporters to the New York Times, the Atlantic Monthly, and MS NOW.
In 2020, Post editorials endorsed Trump’s Cold War rhetoric regarding China as well as “maximum pressure” campaigns against Iran and Venezuela. The Post ignored at the time Iran’s efforts to improve relations with the United States by stopping pro-Iranian militias in Iraq from attacking U.S. forces, and significantly reducing attacks on merchant ships and tankers in the Persian Gulf. Currently, the Post is beating the drums for Trump’s $1.5 trillion defense budget, which is an obscenity.
The fact that journalists are pulling their punches in dealing with the Trump administration is a dangerous development. Benjamin Franklin said Americans who “give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserved neither liberty nor safety.” Like Franklin, all of the Founding Fathers emphasized openness over secrecy and were concerned with any threat to freedom of the press. For that reason, the First Amendment dealt with press freedom. James Madison argued that the “censorial power is in the people over the Government, and not in the Government over the people.” In view of the power of the military and the secrecy of the intelligence community it is essential for American democracy that a free press monitor the powerful institutions of the national security state. The cheerleading of the mainstream media, including Ignatius, for the United States as a national security state is a dangerous development.
