DECLINE: The president thinks we're in decline!

MONDAY, MAY 18, 2026

President Xi, that is: A finding has emerged from the sitting president's recent trip to China:   

A very tall man named Xi Jinping apparently thinks the United States is in a state of decline!

Aside from his friendship with President Trump—it's a friendship our president surely imagines—who is the real Xi Jinping? 

You rarely see his background described. The leading authority speaks:

Xi Jinping

Xi Jinping (born 15 June 1953) is a Chinese statesman and politician who is the fifth paramount leader of the People's Republic of China. He has served as the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and chairman of the Party Central Military Commission (CMC) since 2012, the president of China and chairman of the State Central Military Commission since 2013.

The elder son of Xi Zhongxun's second marriage to Qi Xin, Xi is considered a princeling but kept a low-key image in his early career. As a teenager, his father was purged, and he was sent down to the rural village of Liangjiahe, Shaanxi, during the Cultural Revolution. He lived in a yaodong there, joined the CCP after several failed attempts, and served as the local party secretary. After studying chemical engineering at Tsinghua University as a worker-peasant-soldier student, Xi rose through the party ranks.

He has more jobs than Rubio does! He's president, chairman and paramount leader all rolled into one!

(Meanwhile, what's a "yaodong?" President Xi once lived in one. To examine that matter, click here.)

On his recent trip to China, our sitting president spent a fair amount of time pretending that he and President Xi share a deep personal friendship. In muted fashion, this echoes the sitting president's odd first-term behavior with respect to Kim Jong Un, supreme leader of North Korea. 

AI Overview, citing Reuters, recalls the madness into which our nation, now in headlong decline, has unmistakably fallen:   

The Trump-Kim "love letters" refer to a series of 27 personal, back-and-forth letters exchanged between Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un during their unprecedented diplomatic engagements in 2018 and 2019. Trump famously declared that he and Kim "fell in love" after receiving the messages, which Kim reportedly filled with poetic flattery and referred to their friendship as a magical force.   

With respect to the question of decline, let the word go forth to the nations: 

Almost surely, our sitting president seems to be suffering from some form of "mental illness." Some degree of cognitive decline may now be layered atop that long-standing medical problem.

Also, our high-end press corps has sworn an oath according to which these blindingly obvious possibilities cannot be reported, explored or discussed.  Let it also be said that our high-end journalists wouldn't know how to discuss the topic of "mental illness" in this delicate context, even if they wanted to try. 

Let it further be said that our high-end journalists aren't especially sharp as a group, and they never have been. With respect to the question of decline, let it be said that no "decline" is involved in this part of our national affliction since there was no earlier lofty standard from which we were able to fall.

Back to President Xi! Did he really have the temerity to say, as our sitting president sat and watched, that our nation is in some form of decline?  

You can teach it flat or round! President Xi seems to have cited the so-called Thucydides Trap, which the leading authority discusses at some length, as you can see by clicking here. 

As for our sitting president, he later revealed—in his latest set of pitiful comments—what he apparently believes he heard his counterpart say. Headline included, here's the report by ABC News:  

Trump responds to Xi's 'Thucydides Trap' comment about America's decline   

President Donald Trump on Thursday responded to Chinese President Xi Jinping's comment about the "Thucydides Trap" during their state visit, in which Xi appeared to reference the political theory that a dominant power's fear of a rising power could lead to war.

Trump claimed his counterpart was not saying that the U.S. is currently a "declining nation," but that it was during former President Joe Biden's term.   

Xi, during his opening remarks on Wednesday, according to a live translation, said, "The world has come to a new crossroads. Can China and the U.S. overcome the 'Thucydides Trap' and create a new paradigm of major country relations?"

In his post to Truth Social on Thursday, Trump said, "When President Xi very elegantly referred to the United States as perhaps being a declining nation, he was referring to the tremendous damage we suffered during the four years of Sleepy Joe Biden and the Biden Administration, and on that score, he was 100% correct."

Pathetic? Pitiful? Childish? Sad? When the sitting president heard Xi say that our nation is in decline, he scurried away, then pretended that Xi had been talking about the way we were under "Sleepy Joe Biden."  

Sad! He played his pitiful nickname game as he interpreted the comments made by his imagined friend. He continued to kowtow to President Xi, praising the elegance of his remarks even as he bravely pretended that Xi hadn't said what he said.

"There was no apparent indication that Xi was referring to Biden in his statement," the ABC report mildly says. Here's the way the Wall Street Journal reported this same global embarrassment:

Trump Plays Down Xi’s View That U.S. Is in Decline   

President Trump sought to paper over differences of opinion with Xi Jinping, playing down the Chinese leader’s prior comments that the West is in decline.

“When President Xi very elegantly referred to the United States as perhaps being a declining nation, he was referring to the tremendous damage we suffered during the four years of Sleepy Joe Biden and the Biden Administration, and on that score, he was 100% correct,” Trump wrote on social media ahead of the second day of his summit in Beijing.

Xi has in recent years said, “The East is rising and the West is declining.” Though the wording broadly references “the West,” Chinese leadership, state-controlled media and political analysts specifically apply the phrase to the U.S. Beijing views American political polarization, societal divisions and economic shifts as clear markers of long-term American decline.

Beijing thinks our nation is in decline? Vladimir has given voice to that assessment too!

Indeed, given the mess into which we've proceeded, is there a sane person on the face of the earth who doesn't hold some such view? Meanwhile, concerning the mental health of the older president, now he's gone off and done this:

Trump Posts Bonkers Image of Himself Firing Missiles at Earth From Space  

President Donald Trump posted an AI-generated image of himself firing missiles at Earth from space on Sunday in a post promoting the U.S. Space Force.

In the image, simply titled “Space Force,” Trump could be seen in a spaceship or station pressing a big red button.

In the background, five monitor screens showed lasers hitting the Earth below and creating a huge, nuclear bomb-like mushroom cloud, seemingly large enough to eradicate all human life on the planet, as the monitors read, “TARGET DESTROYED.”

The president also posted another Space Force image that showed him operating satellite weapons to destroy other satellite weapons in Earth’s orbit, next to a flag that read, “STACEBS SPACE FORCE.”

And so on from there. This sort of thing goes on and on, and then it continues from there.

Our president pictures himself as Jesus. Our president angrily says that David Sanger (the New York Times) has engaged in treason by asking a question our president doesn't like.

Everyone gets an insulting nickname. Everybody else is a traitor—and President Obama's middle name is "Hussein."

Still, our journalists refuse to describe what's sitting right there before them. Is some such country possibly in something like a state of decline? 

We'll agree with that assessment—but only if you throw "headlong" in. Only if you're willing to say that we're trapped in a (very dangerous) form of astonishing headlong decline.

A mental illness is an illness. That's even true of a serious mental illness. As with physical illness, it isn't the ill person's fault.

That said, mental illness can be very dangerous. And what sane person can fail to see that our roiling, flailing nation may be in a dangerous state of decline?

In Red America, tribal certainty continues to hold that the sitting president is a deal-maker of great genius. In fairness, over here in Blue America, we have our own unhelpful beliefs:

We have our own agitprop. We can be wrong at times too.

Are we a nation in decline? Perhaps more to the point, do we remain a nation at all—or have we instead become two?

We Blues keep churning Blue agitprop as the redistricting / gerrymandering wars grind on. It's 1892 all over again, or at least so we've been told, in this case by Stacey Abrams. 

(You may feel that that isn't what she said. We'd say that it pretty much is.)

Does it make sense to keep saying such things? We'll be exploring such questions all week as the American decline—accompanied by our own tribe's Blue decline—continue to grind on and on.

Tomorrow: The 1892 files

Update: We forgot to include this additional report from Mediaite:

Trump Mocks Political Rivals in Social Media Flurry, Including Pic of Gavin Newsom in a Mental Asylum

President Donald Trump digitally whacked a number of familiar political rivals on Sunday during a social media posting spree that included posting a picture of California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) looking terrified inside a mental institution.

The president shared that post—and several others—on his Truth Social platform. Newsom—whom Trump often calls “Newscum”—is surrounded by the president’s name while huddled in a padded room in the fake picture

And so on from there. 

(For the record, he's known as "Newscum" on Truth Social. On The Five, he's known as "Greasy.") 

This goes on and on and on, as does the attendant high-end silence. To see the posts, click here.