Former President Donald Trump heaped praise on authoritarian Chinese President Xi Jinping during a lengthy interview Friday with the podcaster Joe Rogan.
“We’re dealing with the smartest people,” Trump said, referring to the leaders of U.S. adversaries, about an hour and a half into their conversation.
“They hate when I say, you know, when the press — when I called President Xi, [the press] said, ‘Well, he called President Xi brilliant.’ Well, he’s a brilliant guy. He controls 1.4 billion people with an iron fist. I mean, he’s a brilliant guy, whether you like it or not. And they go crazy.”
We all knew that. Just like it is acceptable to jail citizens for writing mean things about the government on the internet.