‘I Don’t Want To Sound Foolish’: Trump Gushes About ‘Dear, Dear Friend’ Who Controls His People ‘With An Iron Fist’

Former President Donald Trump gushed about his “dear, dear friend” who controls his people “with an iron fist,” adding he didn’t “want to sound foolish.”

Trump gave remarks and answered questions Thursday at an event for the New York Economic Club, during which he attracted widespread derision for his answer to a question about childcare.

But in another portion of the Q&A, Trump began a very lengthy response about tariffs by offering effusive praise for China President Xi Jinping and explicitly lauded his authoritarian tactics:

SANDER GERBER: Mr. President, for all the details on your economic policy, as you alluded to, tariffs are the other side of sanctions. And given that China is our major trading partner with our largest imbalance and possibly our chief, security, national security threat to the United States, how can we better institutionalize trade policy and national security policy to be coordinated?

DONALD TRUMP: So I had a great relationship with President XI of China. Really very close relationship. Now he likes China! I like us!

But, I don’t want to sound foolish, he’s my dear, dear friend! He’s a tough guy! He’s a fierce person!

I say very smart. You know when you say he’s smart, the fake news. That’s crazy. You said President XI is smart. And I say, you know, he controls 1.4 billion people with an iron fist. He’s smart!

But we had a very good relationship with China until Covid. And when that came in, it was a whole different ballgame as far as I was concerned. Yeah, we made a great China trade deal or maybe better than the U.S.M.C.A.

And I never talk about it because what happened with Covid for the whole world. $60 trillion. And, you know, deaths 70,000,000,060. Nobody even knows somebody else. And it all came out of Wuhan. And so it changed my relationship.

But I think I’ll have a great relationship with China. I had one before and they respected us, but they respected us because they no longer thought we were fools.

They used to think we were fools because we built China. They would take over $500 billion a year and use it for the military and other things. So we got nothing out of that.

We got some cheap product. We got, you can buy 19 pencils instead of two, who the hell cares? You can buy 16 dolls for your daughter instead of two nice dolls.

His response continued for another six minutes.

Watch above via Pool .