James Carville said he knows exactly why Donald Trump is in China, and he put it in the bluntest terms he could find. In a video published Wednesday on the Politicon podcast, the longtime Democratic strategist said Trump’s two-day diplomatic trip to Beijing is really just a cover to line his own pockets.
“Because I think there’s only one thing that he’s thinking about in his trip to China: and that is a big grift,” Carville said, adding, “You know what? He might be telling the truth.” Trump arrived in Beijing for two days of talks on trade, AI and Taiwan, and Carville said the 79-year-old president’s focus is not policy but profit.
The trip is the first visit to China by a U.S. president since Trump’s previous visit in 2017, and it comes with a notable guest list. Among those traveling with him are Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, Tim Cook, David Solomon and Kelly Ortberg, a lineup of wealthy executives that gives the delegation a business-heavy feel rather than a traditional diplomatic one. Carville seized on that roster, saying, “Look at who he’s taking with him. Look at what he’s doing.”
Trump, for his part, has publicly framed the visit around U.S. business interests. In a Truth Social post Wednesday, he said he plans to ask Xi Jinping to “open up” China to American companies and said he would make that “my very first request” when the two meet. He called Xi a “Leader of extraordinary distinction” and said, “I have never seen or heard of any ideas that would be more beneficial to our incredible Countries!”
Carville dismissed that explanation as window dressing. He said, “And the Chinese... there’s going to be economic exchanges. There’s gonna be investment opportunities,” before adding, “You can see this is where this is going. They just buy him off! He does not care.” He went further, saying Trump “does not give one s--t about you” and that “as long as he can go there and make as much money as fast as he can make it, that’s all that he cares about.”
The exchange lands on the same week Trump was already signaling that his attention was elsewhere. On Tuesday, he said, “I don’t think of Americans’ financial situation,” a line that Carville used to sharpen his attack. “It is the last thing he is worried about,” he said, warning viewers, “You’re going to watch a grift and graft over there like you can’t imagine. That’s all this trip is about.”
There is a political edge to the attack that goes beyond the trip itself. Carville is not accusing Trump of a vague inconsistency; he is arguing that the president’s China trip is, at its core, a money-making exercise wrapped in statecraft. That charge matters because the delegation, the setting and Trump’s own words all point in the same direction: a presidency that keeps merging public business with private gain.
Trump says he is going to Beijing to push for American companies to get access to China. Carville says that is not the real story. His view is that the president is using the visit to chase cash, not concessions, and that the presence of corporate heavyweights on the trip makes the point for him. The question now is not whether Trump will ask Xi to open the market; he already said he will. The question is whether the trip looks, in the end, like diplomacy at all.
