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.”

  • Nougat@fedia.io
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    1 month ago

    This has been up for two hours, I wonder where the propagandists hollering about genocide are.

    Edit, four hours now: It must be acceptable to genocide Uyghurs, I guess.

    • Myxomatosis@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      I suspect that most of them don’t really care about genocide or the welfare of others in general. It’s a self-righteous bandwagon for them to jump on.

      • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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        1 month ago

        At this point, I’m just posting this graphic

        Anytime I run into the “Don’t Vote Harris, that will stop Genocide!” camp

        • Funderpants @lemmy.ca
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          1 month ago

          And the democrats are at least working towards a cease fire. Trump would let Bibi turn his enemies lands to glass because Trump only cares about Trump.

          • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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            1 month ago

            Trump’s team has literally been caught sabotaging peace talks, while he runs on “The Democrats will not stop the genocide that my campaign wants to do more of!”

            Reminds me of Iran-Contra…

    • barsquid@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      We all knew that. Just like it is acceptable to jail citizens for writing mean things about the government on the internet.

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        1 month ago

        I’m honestly still skeptical of that, It seems to me like Lemmy would be too small to be an efficient use of a paid shill’s time, vs having them go to a mainstream social media platform. I think they’re either genuine in intent but have twisted themselves into a completely counterproductive idea of what to do out of anger at how things in the world have gone, or in some cases are people trolling for a position they don’t support, but who are doing it for free to advance their own position rather than for a paycheck.

        • seaQueue@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          I think most of these folks you find on Lemmy are just useful idiots whose stupidity/ignorance/naiveté has been weaponized on other platforms.

          I’m sure we’re on someone’s sentiment management radar by now but I’m not sure if we’re populated enough for a truly serious effort to be mounted. That’s coming at some point though, of that I have no doubt.

          • Nougat@fedia.io
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            1 month ago

            I could see a cunning propagandist trying to get a strong foothold early in order to “claim territory.” Remember voat?

      • ArxCyberwolf@lemmy.ca
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        1 month ago

        They don’t need to be paid to be ignorant. A lot of people don’t understand nuance or how the American political system works and it shows in those threads.