A tale of Trump and two Asian leaders

On Friday, there were two major stories about President-elect Trump's communications with Asian leaders. One of them doesn't matter. One of them does.

The one that doesn't matter is Trump's surprise acknowledgment of Taiwan's sovereignty, in the form of his taking a phone call from Taiwan's president (and then tweeting about it). Yes, this goes against the utterly fraudulent "One China" policy that the U.S. once adopted as a means of countering the Soviet Union in the 1970s. But that policy is far more outdated than the Cuban embargo. Taiwan's government, having been elected, has more legitimacy than mainland China's. It's about time a president said so — get over it.

The gaffe that does matter — if true — is the still-unconfirmed allegation that Trump actually told Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte that he approves of the way Duterte is waging the war against drugs in his nation.

This doesn't only matter from a human rights perspective — it also matters politically. Trump, who has been almost bulletproof against every political attack launched at him, could be hurt a lot if people figure out what it means and believe it.

Among the Trump supporters I met while covering the Indiana primary, one man — a musician who had traveled to South Bend, Ind., from upstate New York and who sang to his crowd outside the Century Center about the "Trump Train" — described how he'd lost his son to drug addiction. Based on the maps showing where the current opioid epidemic has struck, I suspect a lot of the white working-class Trump supporters know people whose lives have been touched by this.