Former US President Donald Trump has described Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping as “very intelligent men” who “love” their countries. Trump frequently praises the two leaders, and insists that he is the only presidential candidate capable of standing toe-to-toe with them.
Speaking to Fox News on Monday, Trump said that Putin and Xi “whether you like it or not [are] very intelligent men, very powerful men, and very vicious men too.”
“They love their country more” than US President Joe Biden does, Trump continued, adding that the 81-year-old Democrat is “not capable” of negotiating with either.
“We have a man as our president who is grossly incompetent,” Trump told the conservative network. “He can’t put two sentences together, he can’t walk off the stage, he can’t find the stairs… he’s destroying this country.”
Trump took a hard stance toward China while in office, but spoke warmly of Xi once Washington and Beijing struck a tentative trade deal in 2020. Trump met with Putin in Helsinki in 2018, and again at the following year’s G20 summit in Osaka, but his efforts to build what he called a “very good relationship” with the Russian president were stymied by the so-called ‘Russiagate’ investigation, which after two years failed to turn up any evidence of “Russian meddling” in the 2016 US presidential election or “collusion” between the Trump campaign and Moscow.
If elected president in November, Trump has claimed that he could end the conflict in Ukraine “within 24 hours” by sitting Putin and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky down and negotiating a deal. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday that Moscow had not been in contact with Trump, and “has no idea” how his proposal could be accomplished.
Nevertheless, Trump maintains that neither Biden nor his last remaining Republican opponent, Nikki Haley, would have the mettle to negotiate with Putin or Xi. Haley, he said at a campaign rally on Friday, “is not tough enough, not smart enough, and was not respected enough” to deal with such “very fine people.”
“It’s good to get along with people like Putin and like others… it’s good to get along with people that have massive nuclear weapons,” Trump told Fox News last week.