00:00The real potency of power lies not in the exercise of it, but in the perception of it.
00:07The moment that it is exercised, as the United States and its allies have discovered
00:11to their cost in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, and now Donald Trump's campaign against Iran,
00:20the limits of it are immediately exposed, both to rivals and enemies, but also to allies. Now,
00:27as Donald Trump heads to China for a summit meeting that he's very excited about with
00:33President Xi, he will be in a position of weakness. Sure, he has still on paper a much more potent
00:40military. He has on paper a much more potent economy, but he's already tried and essentially
00:48failed to put heavy economic pressure on China. He has revealed the limits of American power with
00:55the failure of his campaign in Iran. And he's also vulnerable, as Fiona Hill explained to the
01:01Independent, because Donald Trump just loves to be in the room with the world's top autocrats. And
01:08top of those pyramids sit in one sphere of influence, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and in the Asian
01:16sphere, President Xi. He wants the Western Hemisphere for himself. And the Chinese know that,
01:22and they will be able to play on his vanity in what Fiona Hill described as the coin of the
01:29realm for
01:30him. The idea that he is special, if he can appear to be at the top of the top of
01:36the top of the most
01:38powerful pyramids. And that makes him vulnerable to those players who've been at this game for a long
01:43time, particularly President Xi now, but also in the past with Vladimir Putin, because they play on that
01:50level of vanity. They have a perception of real politic and the actual limits of their power. But above all,
01:57they know how to exercise it in a way that Donald Trump simply does not.
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