President Donald Trump had the stronger position in his recent meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, according to Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute and author of “The Invisible Coup.”
Schweizer made the argument Friday during an appearance on Fox News Channel’s “The Ingraham Angle,” telling host Laura Ingraham that the encounter undercut a Democratic narrative that Trump is “cozying up to Xi and other dictators” ahead of the midterms.
“Trump is the one here with the upper hand,” Schweizer said, according to a clip of the segment. He framed the meeting less as a concession than as a demonstration of leverage.
Military Purges as a Signal of Weakness
Schweizer pointed to Xi’s own moves against his military leadership as evidence that the Chinese president is operating from a defensive posture. According to Schweizer, Xi signed orders to detain and arrest two members of China’s Central Military Commission on his way to the meeting in the United States.
Schweizer described the commission as the most powerful institution in China — more consequential, in his telling, than leading the Communist Party or holding the presidency itself. He said Xi has now purged six of its eight members over the past two years, and he attributed the removals to Xi’s judgment that the officials were politically unreliable.
“There are 45 — 45 military generals in China that have been disappeared over the last couple of years because they’re not deemed to be politically reliable,” Schweizer said.
Those claims, as presented by Schweizer, were not independently detailed during the segment. The source article did not include a response from Chinese officials or any confirmation of the specific figures.
Economic Trouble Adds to the Pressure
Schweizer paired the purge claims with an assessment of China’s economy, saying it “is not doing well” and that Beijing has pulled back on the amount of economic data it releases compared with previous practice.
That combination — internal instability at the top of the military and an economy under strain — is what Schweizer argued gives Washington the stronger hand at the table.
“I think he handled it well,” Schweizer said of Trump. In his view, the right approach is to remain respectful, keep communication open, and avoid giving away concessions in the process.
The Constitution as a Closing Message
Schweizer singled out one element of the visit as particularly effective: Trump’s decision, before Xi departed, to show him the U.S. Constitution and walk through the First and Second Amendments.
“I thought it was a master stroke before Xi left to say, ‘Look, I’m going to show you, our Constitution. This is what the First Amendment says. This is what the Second Amendment says,'” Schweizer recalled. In his telling, the gesture “sends a message about the battle of ideas” and was a strong way to close the meeting.
The exchange on Fox News reflects a broader fight over how the Trump-Xi meeting will be framed heading into the midterm campaign. Ingraham introduced the segment by arguing that the left believes it has “a new narrative” casting Trump as friendly with authoritarian leaders, a charge Schweizer rejected.
Schweizer’s comments align with a broader conservative effort to portray the meeting as a win, turning the focus to China’s internal troubles rather than to any concessions the United States may have offered. Critics of the administration have argued the opposite — that the meeting showcased Trump’s willingness to accommodate Xi.
The GAI president also emphasized that maintaining lines of communication with Beijing does not amount to weakness, drawing a distinction between engagement and ceding ground.
“You want to be respectful. You want to communicate. You want to maintain lines of communication,” he said. “You don’t want to give anything away.”
Whether voters accept that framing is likely to play out over the coming weeks, as both parties compete to define what the meeting meant — and what it says about the balance of power between Washington and Beijing.
Source: www.breitbart.com — https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2026/09/26/schweizer-trump-has-the-upper-hand-over-chinas-xi/