Ex-Biden Spox Takes to Fox News With Blistering Slam on Trump and Elon Musk for Not ‘Putting America First’

Former Biden senior spokesman Andrew Bates took to Fox News with a blistering op-ed slamming President Donald Trump and DOGE czar Elon Musk for not “putting America first.”

Since departing the Biden press shop after Trump took office, Bates has served as an adviser to Unlikely Allies and continued to be a vocal critic of President Trump.

In addition to other media appearance, Bates has penned a scathing critique of Trump and Musk for Fox News.

The piece — entitled “Trump’s ‘China First’ record: Selling the West’s economy and national security out to Beijing” and subtitled “Trump promised us he’d put America First, but instead he and Musk are surrendering to Beijing” — reads:

Instead of putting America First, President Donald Trump and Elon Musk – who has sprawling business interests in China – are putting China First, gutting assets we need in order to stay ahead of them. This heightening trend is making America less safe and less capable of overcoming China’s economic abuses. And it extends to Ukraine.

China – like Iran and North Korea – is in league with Russia in its invasion of Ukraine, providing Putin with billions of dollars in resources even as Russia murdered tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians and kidnapped 20,000 Ukrainian children.

Trump’s position on Ukraine is not just a “gift” to Putin, as the Kremlin put it, but a windfall for China and a loss for the West. NBC recently reported, “‘China is the real winner’: Trump’s reversal in Ukraine aids Beijing, Western officials say.”

Bates goes on to take a page from former colleague Jen Psaki by citing current Trump Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s comments while he was a U.S. senator to bolster his point.

Rubio wrote for The Washington Post in 2022 that “Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has laid bare to the world what some U.S. policymakers have been aware of for some time — that the Moscow-Beijing axis is real, and it is a growing threat to the United States and to freedom worldwide.”

The op-ed is the second Bates has written for Fox News.

Read the full commentary here.

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