The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021

by Peter Baker

If taunted by Putin, Trump relished his meetings with other autocrats over the course of the summit, even as he once again attacked America’s closest allies. After publicly dumping on the decades-old mutual defense treaty with Japan, he sat with China’s Xi on the opening night of the summit and discussed the imprisonment of up to a million ethnic Uighurs in camps by the Chinese. Not only did he express no concern about such a massive human rights atrocity, Trump even agreed that Xi should continue building the camps, according to the account of Trump’s interpreter later made public by John Bolton. In a telephone call the next day with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who had urged Trump to raise the plight of the Uighurs, Trump told her that Xi had explained that they “like being in those camps.”