When I first approached the biographer Michael Sheridan to commission a piece on Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader and subject of Sheridan’s book, The Red Emperor: Xi Jinping and His New China, Trump was scheduled to visit China for the first time since 2017. Soon thereafter, Trump waged a war against Iran, forcing him to postpone the landmark trip. This turn of events became a prime example of the differences between the two men, which Sheridan highlights in his piece today. “Xi is not a transactional politician who improvises policy on a whim, who posts his intentions on social media, or changes his mind in the meeting,” he writes. And as Sheridan points out, Trump and Xi have never quite bonded, “Despite effusions of friendship from the Trump side, Xi has typically responded with cautious formality, best characterized as avoidance diplomacy.” Now that the trip is back on, here’s everything Trump needs to know about the art of the deal with the red emperor.
Also in the mix today, an inside look at the star-studded premiere of Euphoria, a conversation with the one and only Pamela Anderson, and learn what Jeff Goldblum’s idea of misery is as he answers the VF Proust questionnaire.
