The washington post obtained a list of demands from the chinese government to the u.s. the post reporting demands range from reasonable to kind of ridiculous. president trump has already caved on one demand instructing his commerce department to help zte get back in business. joining us now is cnn politically analyst and columnist for the washington post , josh rogin. he broke the story. and resident scholar derrick scisso scissors. gentlemen, thank you. josh, congratulations to you. important information. let s put it on the screen. a big list of different things. but here are four pages of different things. we will scroll through them.
There was chinese involvement several years ago. it still hasn t gotten off the ground. i don t think that s the story here. i think the president made a serious mistake. first of all, he interfered in the u.s. legal process, which you should not do while bargaining with the chinese. second, he gave away the one action the trump administration has taken before the negotiations have started. that doesn t sound like the art of the deal. so we have a bargaining mistake and we have a political mistake. i don t think there s any connection to the chinese participating in a project in indonesia. why would he do something, derrick, so obviously inimical in the state of proposition to create balance? well, i agree with you it is inimical. there is a tweet too many jobs in china lost by the president. right. the whole job was to bring the jobs back to the united states. that s what he ran on. so there is definitely a mistake
Off the hook. and that raises the question inside and outside the administration of what the heck is going on here? it sends a signal that the trump administration doesn t have the stomach to fight this long economic battle that is definitely coming with china. and it s negotiating. it sends mixed messages and leaves a lot of people scratching their heads. all right. let s engage that scratch a little bit, derrick. the idea of why is the trump administration doing something like helping zte when you have these issues of them abusing intellectual property to create unfair advantage. do you believe this is about a larger strategy, or do you have questions about whether or not there is length between chinese fund of trump projects and his new found leniency towards them? i don t think there is a link to the projects.
Ourselves. we re not quite there yet. this was a huge step back in that regard and one i think that the transportation already regrets. are you on the same page with derrick, that you don t buy the chinese financing trump s deals so he is being nice to them. i agree hundreds of things are going on. they are not all related all the time. because this is a complicated and big project, we have to not see a boogeyman under every single day. we should be careful but keep our eye on the prize. thank you for bringing us the information just how bold their asks are giving you a window into what their leverage is. derrick, nice to aside you to the mix. good to have you. let s talk sports. a huge night for lebron james, but was it enough to beat the celti celtics. we ll find out in a bleach or report next. ttens