EXCLUSIVE: Rep. Michael McCaul, who is expected to chair the House Foreign Affairs Committee if Republicans take control of the House, is casting doubt on President Biden’s ability to project strength on the world stage as the president travels to Egypt and then Indonesia to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
“[Biden must project] strength, and all he projects is weakness. And that invites aggression,” McCaul told Fox News Digital. “And that’s why we’re in so much trouble.”
The president on Thursday flies to Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, where he will attend the 27th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The White House said Biden will “build on the significant work the United States has undertaken to advance the global climate fight and help the most vulnerable build resilience to climate impacts.” Biden will then travel to Cambodia and Indonesia for the G20 meeting of nations, where he will meet with Xi.
However, McCaul said Biden has shown he is incapable of projecting strength in these sorts of meetings.
“That explains why we have so many hotspots. And it’s dangerous, quite frankly,” McCaul said. “I mean, when you look at Putin invading Ukraine and China’s Xi doing a war game at the Pentagon with China and Taiwan. Actually it’s frightening. And I would hope he’s projecting deterrence to aggression and strength. But this administration doesn’t seem capable of doing that.”
Biden was asked Wednesday during a post-election press conference about his upcoming meeting with Xi, and whether he would tell the Chinese president that the U.S. is committed to defending Taiwan against aggression.
“I’m going to have that conversation with him,” Biden responded.
The president also said he is “not willing to make any fundamental concessions” to Xi, and that he is “looking for competition, not … conflict.”
China has conducted wargames against Taiwan for months, and just last week, 11 Chinese aircraft and naval vessels were detected near the island. Xi has also reportedly ordered his military to “fully enhance training and preparation for war.”
McCaul told Fox News Digital that the administration has also offended the United States’ key allies, which is a great national security issue.
“And then they offend,” McCaul said. “Egypt can be a great ally, and they’ve got a Muslim Brotherhood problem. But if [Biden] is going to go in there, like, for instance, what he did in Saudi and call them ‘pariahs’ and then demand the increased more energy after he calls them a pariah. And then stops our weapons shipment, that I signed off on, and precision guided weapons to defend themselves from the Houthi rebels, which, by the way, attacked the Emirates.”
McCaul referred to when Biden, during one of the presidential debates, called Saudi Arabia a “pariah” state. He said that remark put the president in a difficult position when he took a trip to Israel and Saudi Arabia over the summer and urged additional energy production by OPEC+ to offset costs as gas prices skyrocketed, which it did not do.
The Texas Republican told Fox News Digital that he recently spoke with Jared Kushner, who spearheaded the Trump-era Abraham Accords that strengthened relationships and promoted stability among Arab nations in the Middle East.
Kushner told him that the Biden administration has not done anything to “reinforce” the agreement, which McCaul said is also detrimental to U.S. national security.
McCaul said that no matter where on the political spectrum you sit, the Abraham Accords were “a great foreign policy breakthrough.”
“And this administration has done nothing to advance the Abraham Accords. In fact, everything they’ve done is damaged it. And that’s peace in the Middle East,” he said.