ABC, NBC Knock Trump for Taiwan Call, Ignore Weapon Sales Under Obama

Nicholas Fondacaro | December 5, 2016
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The liberal media was still up in arms Monday over President-Elect Donald Trump accepting a congratulatory phone call from the president of the island nation of Taiwan. “Already, Trump has caused quite a stir on the world stage,” whined ABC’s Jon Karl on World News Tonight, “Ruffling China’s feathers by talking to the president Taiwan.” While chastising the president-elect for his phone call and selected defense tweets, they failed to mention the billions of dollars in arms sales to Taiwan under President Barack Obama.

The ABC reporter complained that Trump was not seeking advice from the current administration on how to deal with foreign countries. “And Trump has held many other calls with foreign leaders, but none of them with experts who could brief him on sensitive diplomacy,” Karl stated, “The current secretary of state all but begging Trump to hear them out.

And according to reporter Kristen Welker on NBC Nightly News, a singular “A high level source familiar with the issue tells NBC news, Mr. Trump talked with top advisers about the possibility of establishing contact with Taiwan for months.” She even hyped the Chinese response through their government controlled media, “Today China firing back. The state-run newspaper writing, ‘creating troubles for the China-US relationship is creating troubles for the US itself.’

Both ABC and NBC claimed Trump’s defense of the call was a tweet, which said “Did China ask us if it was okay to devalue their currency (making it hard for our companies to compete)? I don't think so!” But there was another tweet Trump sent on December 2 that they totally ignored.

The tweet, as quoted by Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin, said, “Trump's response to his critics came in a tweet, ‘Interesting how the US sells Taiwan billions of dollars of military equipment but I should not accept a congratulatory call.’ Her report substantiated Trump’s claim:

U.S. arms sales to Taiwan have totaled more than $46 billion since 1990. In December 2015, the United States announced a $1.83 billion arms sales agreement to Taiwan, the first in four years. The White House was on the defensive today.

A fact that was conveniently forgotten by the liberal networks. Griffin also reported that on November 26 China sent bombers capable of launching nuclear weapons to circle Taiwan. The provocation forced Japan to scramble jets to intercept them.

On NBC Welker perpetuated claims that Trump was also seeking business deals on the island, only reporting that, “Tonight Trump officials are disputing reports that Trump's team was exploring potential business dealings with Taiwan.

CBS was the only network in the Big Three to move on from the “diplomatic firestorm” that was the phone call between two democratically elected leaders. 

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