Donald Trump was told at least twice about Jensen Huang’s affair with a woman described as a suspected Chinese spy, according to media reports that have turned the Nvidia chief’s resignation into a Washington fight over what the president knew. Trump denies it.
The reports matter now because they put a national security allegation, a major chip company and the White House’s handling of China policy in the same frame. Huang is stepping down over the affair, and the dispute over whether Trump was briefed has become part of the broader question around Nvidia’s sales of advanced chips to China.
Trump was said to have been informed most recently in May by Marco Rubio, who was serving as his secretary of state and national security adviser. On Monday, Trump said he had heard “davon” nothing, added that other people had heard about it, and said Huang denied it. That denial sits at the center of the story: the reports say Trump was told, while Trump says he was not.
There is also a financial thread running through the controversy. One analyst said Nvidia had used its considerable lobbying power and influence on the Trump administration, including a 25 million donation for Trump’s ballroom, to get the government to look away and not enforce export control laws. He also noted that the US government has, for more than a year, been taking at least 15 percent of the revenue from sales of a certain chip to China. Trump himself owns Nvidia stock, and papers to buy more Nvidia shares were added for him five times this year.
The Congress is now pressing for answers, because the case ties a personal scandal to a policy area that Washington treats as a national security test. What remains unclear is what Rubio actually told Trump in May, and whether the administration’s China decisions were made with full knowledge of the affair that has now put Huang on the way out.
