Trump is doing a reverse Nixon and using Russia against China, top adviser tells Pod Force One

President Trump is pulling a “reverse Nixon” and putting a wedge between Russia and China after his predecessor “drove” Beijing and Moscow together, US Chief of Protocol Monica Crowley explained in the latest episode of “Pod Force One.”Crowley, who worked on behalf of former President Richard Nixon in his later years out of office, told Post columnist and now-podcast host Miranda Devine that Trump’s approach would eventually leverage Russian power to act as a bulwark against growing Chinese power. “President Trump is doing almost, or wants to, I think, do a reverse Nixon and try to improve relations with Moscow, to use Russia as a counterweight against growing Chinese power,” Crowley said.Every week, Post columnist Miranda Devine sits down for exclusive and candid conversations with the most influential disruptors in Washington.Subscribe here!“Presidents of both parties for decades have exerted themselves to keep both countries apart, and then Biden, of course, drove them together, which is madness,” she noted.In February 1972, Nixon made a historic trip to begin the process of normalizing relations with China after a quarter century of diplomatic silence — but also to strategically counter the Soviet Union.Trump by contrast has sought to decrease diplomatic tensions with Russian President Vladimir Putin amid his war with Ukraine, while engaging in more aggressive trade negotiations with China.At times, he’s lashed out at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, accusing him of being a “dictator” as well as an ungrateful recipient of US foreign aid that’s bankrolled his nation’s war against Russia.In the most shocking confrontation between the world leaders this term, Trump accused Zelensky of “gambling with World War III” during a heated Oval Office meeting Feb.

28.“You’re right now not in a very good position.You’ve allowed yourself to be in a very bad position,” the president charged.But Trump has also railed agains...