Ambassador Robert Blackwill

He doesn't have to announce it, although Joe Biden did four times.

Right.

And at each time, as we know, the State Department walked it back the next morning.

But I think we do have some evidence that Biden would go to war with China over Taiwan.

I think you're right that there is no such evidence with respect to President Trump.

And he has said things like Taiwan has a little dot

on the coast of China, which stole all of our chip technology and so forth.

So would he go to war with China over Taiwan?

I think at least there's a doubt in his case.

President Xi Jinping may want to test the hypothesis, maybe not with a. I mean, if I were sitting in his shoes and again, I don't want this to happen.

But it's still, nobody knows what an American president is going to do before he does it.

And this is a particularly, I might say, erratic American president.

He can't, even with the perhaps footprints in the sand heading toward a quiet reaction to such Chinese aggression, he can't be sure.

Using his military force is a great gamble.

It hasn't been in combat since the late 1970s.

It's corrupt and all the rest.

So what if he tries and fails?

So making that decision to say, okay,

There's not going to be a better moment than now.

Go.