Trump softens tone on alleged China election meddling before Rubio-Wang talks
US president says Washington will discuss alleged 2020 election interference with Beijing but plays down prospects of retaliation
“We’re going to talk to them about it,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday, adding that the alleged interference “took place a long time ago” and that China might be “a little bit different today than it was then”.
“They do things to us and we do things to them,” Trump said. “I’ll be honest, we do things to them too. It’s not a one-way street, but we’ll be talking to them.”
People familiar with the planning told the South China Morning Post that the meeting between Rubio and Yi is expected to take place on Wednesday in the Philippines’ capital on the sidelines of meetings involving the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
The talks will come less than a week after Trump accused China of carrying out what he described as the “largest compromise of election data in history”, alleging in a televised address that Beijing had illicitly obtained over 200 million US voter records.