President Joe Biden said on Sunday he does not want to isolate China as he works to shore up ties between the United States and other countries.

The commander in chief made the assertion during a press conference in Hanoi, Vietnam, after participating in a G-20 summit in India that Chinese President Xi Jinping did not attend.

“So, really, what this trip was about — it was less about containing China. I don’t want to contain China,” Biden said. “I just want to make sure that we have a relationship with China that is on the up and up, squared away, everybody knows what it’s all about.”

BIDEN: "I don't wanna contain China" pic.twitter.com/S3ddEsiDgr

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) September 10, 2023

Biden further explained that his itinerary was about “having India cooperate much more with the United States, be closer with the United States, Vietnam being closer with the United States.”

He also insisted that his travel abroad was meant to create “a stable base in the Indo-Pacific” and establish international “rules of the road” on matters related to the ocean, airspace, and space.

“I want to see China succeed economically, but I want to see them succeed by the rules,” Biden added.

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, criticized Biden during an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“The whole point of him going to the region, in my view, was to get our friends and allies and partners together in the event of an invasion of Taiwan and a greater invasion into the South Pacific Sea,” McCaul said, adding that Biden chose the “wrong message to send” because it was not one of “deterrence.”

Ahead of Biden’s visit to Vietnam, Beijing expressed disapproval of the U.S. approach to dealing with China’s neighbors.

“We believe that when dealing with relations with Asian countries, the #US should abandon the Cold War mentality of a zero-sum game, abide by basic norms of international relations, not target third parties and not undermine regional peace, stability, development and prosperity,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning, as reported in a post to X by China’s Global Times.

During his press conference, Biden stressed, “I think we think too much in terms of Cold War terms.”

The president said he spoke with Xi’s No. 2 Chinese Premier Li Qiang at the G-20 summit about “stability”and their conversation “wasn’t confrontational at all.” Biden also said he hopes to meet with Xi “sooner than later.”

People are being misled about studies examining the effectiveness of face masks against COVID, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Jonathan Karl, a co-anchor of ABC’s “This Week,” pressed Fauci on the efficacy of masking near the end of an interview on Sunday. “There’s a new study out that suggests that masks were actually not effective, at least in a global sense, in containing the pandemic,” Karl said. “What is your sense, looking back at all this? Did masks prove to be less effective than you anticipated?”

Fauci responded by insisting that “some of the studies are confusing” and then singled out an analysis released in January by The Cochrane Institute, which raised the prospect that masks hardly made a difference in stopping the spread of respiratory viruses such as COVID.

The study prompted headlines saying that face masks made “little to no difference” in preventing the spread of COVID after a wave of mask guidelines and mandates during the pandemic, but Karla Soares-Weiser, editor-in-chief of the Cochrane Library, responded with a statement in March saying it was an “inaccurate and misleading interpretation” to claim that the study found that “masks don’t work.”

Fauci JUST NOW: “There are a number of studies that show that masks actually do work.” pic.twitter.com/hJeT6EZXyw

— DeSantis War Room 🐊 (@DeSantisWarRoom) September 10, 2023

“The study that recently has been now quoted a lot and causing a lot of confusion is this Cochrane study, which even the people who run the Cochrane study say that that study can be misleading because people have commented on that study saying, ‘Absolutely masks don’t work,’ which is absolutely not the case because there are a number of studies that show that masks actually do work,” Fauci said.

“And there’s a lot of confusion where you take a broad series of studies, and you look at them in a meta-analysis,” he added. “Only a couple of those studies were specifically looking at COVID. So, I think we’d better be careful that that study that people keep talking about can be very, very misleading. There’s a lot of good data that masks work.”

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Fauci, now part of the faculty at Georgetown University, was a longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and former chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden. Toward the end of his tenure in government, Fauci faced blowback for how he jumped from advising people not to wear face masks early in the COVID pandemic to advocating for masking against the virus, a change he attributed to the emergence of new data.

Fauci admits that masks don’t work for the public at large but still absurdly claims masks work on an individual basis.  More subterfuge. pic.twitter.com/UcjOa8flkr

— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) September 3, 2023

In an interview that aired on CNN last week, Fauci insisted that “many studies” show masking protects people on an “individual basis” rather than on a “broad population” level.

One of Fauci’s most vocal critics, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), shot back in a post to X. “Fauci admits that masks don’t work for the public at large, but still absurdly claims masks work on an individual basis. More subterfuge,” Paul said.