Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) attacked former President Trump over his past comments about Chinese President Xi Jinping, displaying a “Trump Xi” poster during a hearing on Wednesday.
“The enemies of constitutional democracy and freedom seek to destabilize the American government. The world’s tyrants target Joe Biden and promote Donald Trump, who affectionately described President Xi as a ‘brilliant man,’ who called Vladimir Putin a ‘genius,’ and who said he fell in love with Kim Jong Un.” Raskin said during his opening statement for a House Oversight and Accountability Committee hearing.
Wednesday’s hearing focused on the Chinese Communist Party and any threats it poses to the U.S.
As Raskin made the comments, employees behind him held up signs, one of which read “Trump [heart emoji] Xi and included a quote from Trump in April 2023 who said: “President Xi is a brilliant man. If you scoured Hollywood looking for someone to play President Xi, you wouldn’t be able to find one. There is no one like that. The looks, the brain, the whole thing.”
On another sign behind Raskin, a photo of the 2019 Hong Kong protests was shown, in which police appeared to be beating protesters with batons. The text below the image read: “Former President Donald Trump: President Xi acted ‘very responsibly’ during the Hong Kong ‘riots’, in reference to a Comment Trump assumed the presidency in 2019, at the time of the protests.
“Although Donald Trump has described President Xi as a very good man, China is in fact an authoritarian police state and a violator of the human rights and civil liberties of hundreds of millions of people,” Raskin said. “President Xi has persecuted, imprisoned and oppressed Tibetans, Uyghurs and the people of Hong Kong and Taiwan.”
Trump’s comments about Xi and other foreign leaders have sometimes been criticized by Democrats and even some Republicans as being too friendly toward the dictator’s leadership. He was criticized last year by his former vice president Mike Pence and former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, who repeatedly targeted their former boss’s comments during the Republican Party’s presidential campaign.
“Praising dictators is not normal. Make America Normal Again,” Haley wrote on X last February, in response to Trump describing Xi as a “very good friend.”
Since then, both Pence and Haley have suspended their Republican Party presidential campaigns and Trump is the presumptive Republican Party presidential nominee.
Raskin later attempted to contrast Trump’s attitude toward China with that of the Biden administration.
“Although Donald Trump proclaimed that he and Xi loved each other, the Biden-Harris administration responded forcefully to the political security and economic challenges posed by the CCP. As secretary [Antony] Blinken said the US relationship with China is the biggest geopolitical test of this century. The Biden administration has strengthened our democratic institutions to resist attacks from autocrats and strengthen our allies with democracies, both in Europe and the Indo-Pacific.”
Trump’s communications director, Steven Cheung, criticized Raskin’s decision at the hearing.
“Jamie Raskin is another CCP puppet who loves China and continues to sell out America like Joe Biden did. The fact is that China has grown stronger under a weak Biden presidency, and our allies are in even more danger as China builds its economic, military power,” Cheung wrote in a statement to The Hill. “Deadly Chinese fentanyl continues to flow into American communities, killing dozens of people, while illegal Chinese migrants are the fastest growing group crossing the southern border. to happen: Donald J. Trump.”
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
