S15 EP172: Hour 1 - Xi Jinping Comes to the White House

Erick opens as President Trump welcomes Xi Jinping to the White House and the administration caves on its ban of CNN, MS Now, and Politico. He then explains why a declining China, not a rising one, is the real danger: purged generals, a stalled Chinese economy, Iran's oil squeeze, and Beijing's push to get Trump to abandon Taiwan. Then Erick celebrates Argentine President Javier Milei's blistering United Nations speech, the free market results of ending rent control in Buenos Aires, and why EU bureaucrats, Adrian Vermeule's common good constitutionalism, and Abdul El-Sayed's word salad on Iran all point the same direction.

• Trump and Xi Jinping at the White House: the CNN, MS Now, and Politico ban reversed, and the Tiananmen Square irony of barring CNN on the day China's dictator arrives
• China in decline: Peter Schweizer on Xi purging the Central Military Commission and 45 missing generals, Greg Ip and Rhodium Group on a Chinese economy that may be growing near zero, and Senator John Kennedy's "he learned to lie before he learned to talk"
• China, Iran, and Taiwan: Beijing helping Iran target Americans, U.S. missile batteries on Philippine islands in the Luzon Strait, and why Erick wants Reagan-style confrontation instead of friendship
• Javier Milei at the UN: a "cast of fatally arrogant parasites," Argentina's economy rebounding after cutting tariffs, price controls, and rent control, and the free market lesson for Trump populists and JD Vance
• EU Digital Markets Act rules forcing Apple to rewrite its app tracking prompt, Britain's disinformation push, Adrian Vermeule's common good constitutionalism, and Abdul El-Sayed refusing to condemn Khamenei and the IRGC in Michigan