Trump calls Pakistan, Taiwan and other world leaders to chat

[ThelmaLou]

@Dewey_Finn

I saw an article today that claimed that tweets from Trump from months and months ago indicated that he was well aware of the situation with regard to Taiwan, meaning that he well knew what he was doing when he took this call.

So I tried but failed to do the Google search to find older tweets from him referencing Taiwan. Is anyone else able to do this?

The Washington Post has something on this:
Trump’s call with Taiwan’s leader looks like a calculated move, some experts say

In an article for Foreign Policy titled “Donald Trump’s Peace Through Strength Vision for the Asia-Pacific,” Peter Navarro and Alexander Gray called Taiwan a “beacon of democracy in Asia” and complained that its treatment by the Obama administration was “egregious.”

The article, flagged to China experts as a significant policy blueprint, described Taiwan as “the most militarily vulnerable U.S. partner anywhere in the world” and called for a comprehensive arms deal to help it defend itself against China.

Friday’s phone call does not necessarily mean that will happen, but it does look like the first sign of a recalibration by a future Trump administration, experts say.

It was planned weeks ahead by staffers and Taiwan specialists on both sides, tweeted Julia Famularo, a research affiliate at the Project 2049 Institute, an Arlington-based think tank, adding that she had spoken to someone with direct knowledge.

The goal was to address and amend counterproductive “protocols” that prohibit direct contact between the U.S. president and Taiwan’s leader, she wrote.

“Of course both sides agreed ahead of time before making contact,” Alex Huang, a spokesman for Tsai, told the news agency Reuters.
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Priebus is reported to have visited Taiwan with a Republican delegation in 2011 and in October 2015, meeting Tsai before she was elected president. Taiwanese Foreign Minister David Lee called him a friend of Taiwan and said his appointment as Trump’s chief of staff was “good news” for the island, according to local media.

Edwin Feulner, a Trump adviser and founder of the Heritage Foundation think tank, visited Taiwan in October and met Tsai, the China Post reported.
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