Former President Donald Trump marveled at how Chinese President Xi Jinping rules his country during a Fox News town hall Tuesday, calling the ruthless despot the “perfect” man to run the world’s biggest communist dictatorship.
Trump made the remarks Tuesday night in Iowa with Fox News host Sean Hannity.
“Think of President Xi. Central casting, brilliant guy. You know, when I say he’s brilliant, everyone says, ‘Oh that’s terrible,’” Trump said. “Well, he runs 1.4 billion people with an iron fist. Smart, brilliant, everything perfect. There’s nobody in Hollywood like this guy. I got them to pay us $28 billion because they screwed our farmers for years.”
Mediaite noted that Trump praised Xi during an interview in April on Fox News, saying: “President Xi is a brilliant man. If you went all over Hollywood to look for somebody to play the role of President Xi, you couldn’t find, there’s nobody like that. The look, the brain, the whole thing. We had a great relationship.”
Donald Trump on Chinese President Xi Jinping: "Smart, brilliant, everything, perfect."
Why does this almost sound like an endorsement of Communist China?
We should be ATTACKING President Xi for the evil man he is, not praising him!pic.twitter.com/TVbuNvzRSh
— Proud Elephant 🇺🇸🦅 (@ProudElephantUS) July 19, 2023
The Tuesday night town hall happened just hours after the former president announced on social media that he had been notified that he was the target of special counsel Jack Smith’s federal criminal investigation. The letter, which contained an offer for him to testify at trial, is a strong sign that he is likely to be indicted in the coming days.
“Deranged Jack Smith, the prosecutor with Joe Biden’s DOJ, sent a letter (again, it was Sunday night!) stating that I am a TARGET of the January 6th Grand Jury investigation, and giving me a very short 4 days to report to the Grand Jury, which almost always means an Arrest and Indictment,” Trump wrote on social media.
Smith was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland in November to investigate both Trump’s handling of sensitive documents and his alleged efforts to overturn the election. The Washington grand jury is believed to be looking into Trump’s conduct in the time between the 2020 election and Jan. 6, 2021.