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.”

    • CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social
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      25 days 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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        25 days 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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          24 days 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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      25 days 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.