This is who is actually running the country
At 7:50 PM local time last night, Air Force One came to a stop on the tarmac at Beijing Capital International Airport. Three hundred Chinese children in matching blue and white uniforms lined the red carpet, waving American and Chinese flags. A military band played. An honor guard stood at attention. And then the door of the plane opened.
The President of the United States walked down the steps first. Behind him came his son Eric. Then his daughter-in-law, Lara. Then Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, with a personal fortune Forbes estimates at over 800 billion dollars. Then Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, who makes the chips powering nearly every artificial intelligence system on earth, with a fortune of roughly 183 billion. Then, Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Then, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. And somewhere in the cabin behind them, filmmaker Brett Ratner, the man who directed the Melania documentary that Amazon paid 40 million dollars for, and who appears in the Epstein files.
These are the people who are now the face and decision makers of the United States of America. It was the delegation strategically chosen for one of the most consequential state visits in nearly a decade. They are not diplomats or career national security officials. They are not even the people we elected. Instead, there are a handful of officials, members of the Trump family, and a cluster of billionaires whose combined net worth approaches one trillion dollars. They were not there for diplomatic agreements. They were there to broker deals for themselves, at the expense of American taxpayers.
This is what diplomacy looks like now with President Donald Trump. Not negotiation between nations on behalf of citizens. A presidential trip turned into a corporate sales call, with the President of the United States acting the part of the closer while the real decisions are made by the people who financed his re-election.
And as bad as this initial image is, the full delegation is even more staggering. Across the various meetings, Trump brought Larry Fink of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager. Stephen Schwarzman of Blackstone, with a net worth of roughly 50 billion, according to Forbes. Jane Fraser of Citigroup. David Solomon of Goldman Sachs. Michael Miebach of Mastercard. Ryan McInerney of Visa. Kelly Ortberg of Boeing, who openly told the press he expected the trip to “include some aircraft orders.” Brian Sikes of Cargill. Chuck Robbins of Cisco. Jim Anderson of Coherent. Larry Culp of GE Aerospace. Jacob Thaysen of Illumina. Dina Powell McCormick of Meta. Sanjay Mehrotra of Micron. Cristiano Amon of Qualcomm.
These were not government officials or even official advisors. They are principals of for-profit businesses with everything to gain by being there. When Trump introduced them to Xi at the Great Hall of the People, he called them “distinguished representatives from the American business community,” who “all respect and value China.” The CEOs told Xi back that they “highly value the Chinese market” and hope to do more business in the country. Xi, sensing exactly what was happening, told them China’s door would “only open wider” and that “U.S. companies will enjoy even broader prospects in China.” This was billed as a state visit, but once again, we saw what it really was: a deal-making summit, with Donald Trump doing favors for his friends and making sure he isn’t left out of any deals.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was also in attendance, but he did not fly on Air Force One. He flew ahead of this group. First to Tokyo to meet with the Japanese Prime Minister, then to Seoul, where he was received by South Korean President Lee Jae Myung at the Blue House. From there, he went to Incheon Airport, where, in a private VIP lounge with all press access blocked, he sat for three hours with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng, the 70-year-old longtime confidant of Xi Jinping who has served as Beijing’s lead trade negotiator since 2023. The two of them coordinated the agenda for the summit. And it is hard not to imagine that during that time they must have worked out which deals would be announced, which concessions would be made, and which framings would be used. By the time Trump’s plane touched down in Beijing, much of the negotiation might already have been completed in a closed room at a Korean airport. The summit itself was more of a show for Xi Jinping to exhibit dominance and show the world his hold on Trump.
And then there is the part that needs to be mentioned. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was there and attended the welcome ceremony at the Great Hall of the People. Standing alongside the billionaires. Hegseth is the first U.S. Secretary of Defense to ever accompany an American president on a state visit to China. Going back to Richard Nixon’s historic 1972 trip that opened relations between the two countries, no defense secretary has done this in fifty-four years. And there is a reason for that. The Secretary of Defense represents the part of the relationship that is military, sovereign, and adversarial. They go on separate trips, with separate agendas, because their presence at a state visit blurs a line that is supposed to stay clear. Hegseth blurred it on purpose. He stood in formation with the billionaires negotiating private deals with the country he is supposed to be preparing the military to deter.
Because even though we can push for economic trade between our two nations, we can never forget who the Chinese government really is, even if Trump and his billionaires want us to. China is an authoritarian regime that surveils its own citizens at a scale never seen before in human history. It is the country that has perpetrated what the United States itself has formally declared a genocide against the Uyghur people. It is the country that crushed Hong Kong’s democracy movement and disappears its own billionaires when they step out of line. It is also the country our own intelligence agencies have named as the most significant long-term threat to the United States, the country actively threatening Taiwan, and the country running the most aggressive cyber-espionage program against our government and our companies. None of that goes away because Trump wants to do business with Xi or because the billionaires want access to the Chinese market. We can never forget who we are dealing with, even when our own president has so that he and his enablers can enrich themselves.
And because this was so important to Donald Trump, he even had Marco Rubio there. The Secretary of State has been under Chinese sanctions since 2020, when, as a senator, he criticized China’s human rights record. To get him into Beijing, China reportedly changed the Chinese transliteration of his name, using a different character for one syllable of his last name so it would not match the sanctioned version. They literally laundered his identity to get him through the door. Beijing wanted this meeting badly enough to fake the paperwork.
One other notable addition was Jensen Huang. The story of how he got on Air Force One for this meeting is very telling as well. The original White House list of business leaders accompanying Trump did not include Huang. CNBC reported it, and Trump saw the report. He could not stand the optics of the most important chip CEO in the world being left out of his club, so he personally invited Huang, who flew separately to Alaska and boarded Air Force One during the refueling stop in Anchorage. Then Trump went on Truth Social and attacked CNBC. He wrote that “CNBC incorrectly reported that the Great Jensen Huang, of Nvidia, was not invited to the incredible gathering of the World’s Greatest Businessmen/women proudly going to China,” and called the original reporting “FAKE NEWS.”
Everything we are seeing play out with this trip and Trump’s whole administration is what Citizens United built. Sixteen years ago, the Supreme Court ruled five to four that corporations and unions could spend unlimited amounts on independent political expenditures, on the theory, as Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, that independent expenditures “do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” That single sentence is the foundational lie of modern American politics. Sixteen years later, the corruption is out in the open for all to see. It is no longer something that happens through dark money channels or undisclosed donors. It walks down the steps of Air Force One on television, in broad daylight, in front of three hundred Chinese children waving flags. Citizens United did not just permit this. It manufactured it. It built the legal architecture that made it possible for a handful of billionaires to fund the rise of a president, fly with him to a foreign capital, sit behind him in his meetings with that capital’s authoritarian leader, and walk away with deals signed in their names.
The American people did not vote for any of them to negotiate with Xi Jinping or use the office of the presidency to grow their businesses in this way. The American people did not vote for Elon Musk to sit at a state banquet or for Brett Ratner to fly on Air Force One. The American people elected a president, expecting that president to be surrounded by career diplomats and confirmed cabinet officials whose loyalty was to the country and the Constitution. Instead, they got a man who treats the office as his personal company, and a regime that treats the country as inventory to be liquidated for the benefit of the people on his plane. They walked off Air Force One in Beijing as representatives of the United States, but they were not there for us. They were there for themselves.
If this all feels overwhelming and insurmountable, I want you to know that you are not alone. The past couple of weeks have been hard. I have written about that here, and I have been hearing from more and more people who do this work every day that they are feeling the same. And I know that if we are feeling it, those of us who have dedicated ourselves to this work, then I know you must be feeling it too. It feels like a nonstop assault, like so much is being thrown at us constantly. And it is on purpose. To break us and make us stop asking questions, to start thinking about our own survival rather than our country’s.
For a long time, I tried to cover as many of the daily attacks on our Constitution and our country as I possibly could in a single post. And it became too overwhelming even for me. When I sit down to write, I am compartmentalizing a lot of what is actually happening. But what I am seeing in my daily life is harder to process. People are forgetting their humanity. People are forgetting that we share an existence. I am seeing it online, and now I am seeing it in person, too.
Part of me has to imagine it is because finances are getting harder for so many Americans. The income and wealth gap keeps growing. The squeeze on the middle is real. And when people are in survival mode, asking themselves how they will get through this week, it gets harder to think about the people standing next to them. That is what I am seeing. And unless you are one of the billionaires walking off Air Force One in Beijing, you might be too.
When I struggle, this is what I do, and maybe it will help you too. I stop. I remind myself why I am doing this. Why I chose to speak up at this pivotal point in time, when I was not nearly as politically outspoken before. I look at my daughters. And I think about what our job actually is, as parents, as grandparents, as people of this world. Our job is to leave this country, this world, and this planet better than we found it for the generations that come after us. That is it. To encourage kindness and humanity. At the end of the day, I want to know that I did everything I possibly could in these moments. That is what reignites me and what keeps me grounded.
I also hold on to the good still in the world and the signs that the resistance is building. Like how new polling released today shows Trump’s net approval rating is at a new second-term low of negative 18.9 points. Forty-eight percent of Americans strongly disapprove of his job performance. Among US adults overall, his net approval is negative 20.6. And even within his own party, he is becoming increasingly more and more unpopular. Pew Research found that Republican approval of Trump has slipped from 73 percent in January to 68 percent now. He is one of the most unpopular sitting presidents in modern history. The country sees him for who he is.
Tonight, I am reminding myself that we are six months from the midterms. The most important elections of our lifetimes. And that the polling numbers are largely in our favor, or more importantly, the country’s favor for a Democratic majority in Congress. That is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.
I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather
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This commentary represents my personal opinions and analysis of matters of public concern, informed by publicly available information. Any references to individuals constitute opinion and commentary protected under the First Amendment.
Picture of the day: My daughter and I just got back from listening to Mac McAnally. As a Jimmy Buffett fan, this is as close as I can get these days. Mac was Jimmy's longtime collaborator and bandmate for over thirty years, and hearing him play those songs live brought back all the warmth and joy I associate with Buffett's music. A perfect night with my girl.
Sources:
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5875767-nvidia-ceo-joins-trump-china-trip/
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/13/nvidia-says-ceo-jensen-huang-is-joining-trumps-china-trip.html
https://www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2026/05/14/trumps-approval-rating-hits-new-second-term-low/
Nate Silver: link
Once upon a time in China there was a small, but powerful group of greedy moths who were attracted to a mesmerizing bright flame. They were dazzled by the rich splendor of the bright light and could think of nothing else except to capture that splendor for themselves and all else be damned. Their lust to possess drove them at full speed straight into the flame. The flame had the last laugh.
Thank you Heather for presenting the details of this abomination inhabiting our White House.
I keep hearing Congressmen and commentators half apologetically say, “I know we have two more years….”
If they do not impeach Trump for treason/insurrection and making war on the American people and Constitution NOW, all is lost. If they successfully impeach Trump for what you so clearly demonstrate as part of his neglect of duty to the idea of America expressed in the Constitution, then under Article II, Section 4, all of these businessmen, Vance, Johnson, and the Cabinet will fall with Trump.
Is the law tough enough to withstand the money and foreign influence under oxymoronic “Citizens United”? Amendment 25 is not strong enough a removal. It must be TREASON/Insurrection to bring down the monied oligarchs as well.
Keep us informed, please. We need your clear, detailed insights.