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President Donald Trump split with immigration hawks by defending Chinese students in the U.S. while also softening on Chinese-owned farmland — creating friction inside MAGA and unexpected overlap with moderate Democrats.
Fox News’ Sean Hannity asked Trump in a recent interview from Beijing about concerns surrounding Chinese nationals attending school in the U.S. and China-linked entities purchasing farmland, including in sensitive areas like near a North Dakota military base that raised eyebrows earlier this decade.
Republicans have long warned that Chinese student visa programs could expose U.S. research and state secrets to the Chinese Communist Party, while GOP officials like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Nebraska Sen. Deb Fischer have pushed for tougher restrictions on Chinese ownership of American farmland.
“It’s not that I love it. You want to see farm prices drop; you want to see farmers lose a lot of money just take that out of the market. But they’ve had a lot of land for a long time. Obama did nothing about it,” Trump said.
SENATORS RICKETTS, FETTERMAN UNITE AGAINST CHINA’S QUIET INVASION OF US FARMLAND
President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping listened to each other on Taiwan, but Trump stressed he did not give in to Xi’s claims of control over Taiwan, declining to assure Xi the U.S. would not defend Taiwan against a Chinese invasion. (Brendan Smialowski – Pool/Getty Images)
Trump also defended allowing Chinese students to study in the U.S., calling them “good students” and arguing banning them would unnecessarily inflame tensions with Beijing.
“I frankly think that it’s good that people come from other countries and they learn our culture and many of them want to stay here,” Trump said, while admitting that it “doesn’t sound like a very conservative position – and I’m a conservative… commonsense guy. I think MAGA is ‘common sense’,” he said.
The comments triggered backlash from the…
