For nearly every world leader, appealing to Trump has been an adjustment. Zelensky put on a suit. Starmer dangled a palace visit. South Korea’s president showed up with a bag of red MAGA-style hats. We at Domino Theory aren’t sure what Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te’s (賴清德) Trump card should look like. But here’s a preliminary suggestion: Stop trying so hard.
Last week, Lai sat down for a conversation with Buck Sexton, the neatly bearded radio voice of the American Right. The MAGA people are listening, Lai’s aides must have told him, 400 local radio stations’ worth. So Lai came out swinging. Well, sort of. “If he is able to convince Xi Jinping (習近平) to permanently renounce the use of force against Taiwan, President Trump will surely win the Nobel Peace Prize,” Lai said, later adding: “We want to help make America great again.”
Maybe the problem was the live translation. Maybe, in the original Chinese, Lai’s comments sounded a bit less like a middle-schooler desperate for a spot at the lunch table. But we doubt it. Cringeworthy pandering sounds the same in every language.
If Lai wanted to get in Trump’s ear, maybe he should have listened to the advisors who told him to call Trump to personally congratulate him on his 2024 election, instead of using an old friend to sneak a congratulatory letter past the Marco Rubio-shaped Oval Office guard dog.
Let’s give Lai some credit. He mentioned some of the points that Trump’s policy people want to hear: more defense spending, peace in the Indo-Pacific. But he drowned them in the sort of bureaucracy-speak that will make Sexton’s listeners fall asleep at the wheel. Instead of “we have established the Whole-of-Society Defense Resilience Committee under the Office of the President,” how about: “We’re getting the people ready to fight.” Nobody wants to hear about your 17 strategies to address the five major threats and the four pillars. (Good thing he didn’t mention his 10 speeches!)
Sexton gave Lai a softball about TSMC, but if you were watching on YouTube, you might have missed it. You might have been distracted by the pop-up on the bottom of the screen reminding you that you can boost your testosterone with CHOQ. (35% off with promo code Clay or Buck!) Maybe Lai’s translator should be taking some of that stuff. Does the president really think he’s going to get through to Pete Hegseth with a voice-over from a guy who sounds like he just got back from his Oxford acapella try-out?
The gap between the worldview of the DPP elite and the aesthetics of MAGA is so big you could drive one of Taiwan’s fancy new M1A2T Abrams tanks through it. And that’s a problem no number of DC lobbyists or Palmer Luckey drones can fix.
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