Originally Authored at TheFederalist.com
If Donald Trump were the covert Kremlin agent Democrats made him out to be, he might have given President Vladimir Putin the same kind of red-carpet treatment that Democrats gave Chinese communist dictator Xi Jinping this week.
On Wednesday, President Xi was greeted in the hastily sanitized streets of San Francisco with all the fanfare of a communist parade, complete with waving red banners, to welcome the head of Red China.
Days before Xi touched down on the West Coast, state and local Democrats scrambled to scrub the San Francisco streets, which for years have been a national embarrassment emblematic of American decline.
[READ: Clean For Xi But Not For Thee: Democrats Hastily Clean Up San Francisco Ahead Of Chinese Visit]
Democrats in San Francisco were eager to greet the Chinese president with a welcome parade, ostensibly designed to ease tensions with the East Asian nuclear power. Business leaders increasingly anxious about their corporate interests under Xi’s regime similarly gave the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) a standing ovation at a summit dinner with Indo-Pacific leaders Wednesday night. Reducing the risk of global war might be one motivation behind their applause for the Chinese dictator, who is overseeing the active genocide of Uyghurs in Western China, but protecting a $750 billion trade opportunity is likely far higher in their calculus.
On one hand, it’s odd that a major American city would give VIP treatment to the nation’s top adversary. On the other, San Francisco is also the heart of West Coast liberalism, and therefore American communism.
One can easily imagine how the press might react had President Trump given Russian President Vladimir Putin the same grand entrance at Mar-a-Lago. President Joe Biden is to China what Democrats claimed Trump was to Russia: that is, compromised by complex financial ties that raise significant conflicts of interest and warrant a congressional impeachment inquiry. What if the streets of Palm Beach, Florida were draped in Russian flags to greet President Putin after Donald Trump Jr. had accepted $3.5 million from an ex-Moscow mayor’s wife? Actually, the recipient of those millions was Hunter Biden, who also received an $80,000 diamond from a Chinese energy tycoon, sought to funnel millions from Chinese communist leaders directly into family bank accounts, and secured six-figure shopping sprees from Chinese businessmen.
Will the same people who raised a circus over ridiculous “pee tape” rumors about Trump and Russian prostitutes wonder if the Chinese have any more illicit films of Hunter Biden indulging in crack cocaine and hookers? We never found those pee tapes but there’s plenty of graphic porn online starring the first son.
But even beyond the Bidens’ entanglement in influence-peddling schemes involving prominent Chinese leaders, there’s good reason why Democrats might want to leave a good impression on the world’s leading civil rights offender. A Federalist analysis of federal campaign donations found that companies credibly accused of harnessing Chinese slave labor overwhelmingly donated to Democrats. Of the nearly $40 million that went to congressional candidates between the two major parties in 2020, Democrats took home more than 85 percent while Republicans received less than 15.
[READ: Is The Entire Democratic Party Compromised By China?]