Former President Donald Trump called Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi “very smart people” while ridiculing President Joe Biden for confusing China and Canada at his meeting Saturday in Waco, Texas.
Addressing the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa on Friday, Biden said, “I applaud China,” before quickly correcting himself. “Excuse me, I applaud Canada. You can see what I think about China. I’m not going to go into that yet.’
Biden applauded the northern US neighbor for agreeing to take in an additional 15,000 migrants from Latin American countries annually.
“But I saw Joe Biden say, ‘I want to thank China,’ and he’s in Canada,” Trump said at a rally at the Waco airport attended by thousands of his MAGA devotees. The whole room starts laughing. “I’d like to go to China,” but he’s in the Canadian Parliament. “I mean Canada.” The whole place, the whole place laughed.”
They laugh at our country. We don’t want anyone to laugh — no one laughed at our country when I ran it, I can tell you that,” Trump added.
Former President Donald Trump called Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi “very smart people” while ridiculing President Joe Biden for confusing China and Canada at his rally Saturday in Waco, Texas
Trump drew attention to the Moscow meeting between Xi (left) and Putin (right) earlier this week at his rally in Waco, Texas on Saturday. He said Xi was “smart” and at the “top of his game”, while also calling Putin “smart”
On Friday, Biden (left) addressed Canada’s parliament in Ottawa and said, “I applaud China,” before quickly correcting himself as he had intended Canada. Biden was photographed Friday in Ottawa alongside Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (right)
Later in his speech, Trump turned his attention to another gathering of world leaders that took place this week, Xi’s trip to Moscow to meet Putin.
“If you recently saw President Xi, smart, top of his game, President Putin, smart, very smart people, standing there talking about world order for the next 100 years,” Trump said.
“That’s one of the saddest things you can imagine.”
Trump continued to boast that the war in Ukraine wouldn’t have happened had he been president, while also saying he could end the conflict in “24 hours.”
“I used to talk to Putin, I used to get along with Putin, I used to talk to Putin about it. It’s something he definitely had in mind. I never even talked about it. You didn’t even hear about it for four years,” Trump said. “As soon as I got out, or left, or however you want to describe that catastrophe, they started putting soldiers on the border.”
“But even then he didn’t want to do it, he wanted to get a piece — now it looks like eventually he’ll probably get the whole thing,” Trump said.
Trump addresses a crowd of thousands in Waco, Texas on Saturday — his first campaign visit to the Lone Star State in the 2024 cycle
Trump boasted that he could end the war in Ukraine in “24 hours” if he becomes president again
The former president took ‘Trump Force One’ from Palm Beach to Waco, Texas on Saturday for a meeting at the Waco airport
Trump spent the Friday before his big Waco rally at his West Palm Beach golf course
The former president was spotted playing golf on Friday as he waits to find out if he will face charges over his role in a hush money scheme that played out before the 2016 election
As for how Ukraine would end, he said he would “get a settlement very soon.”
“And I know both people and you can get it very, very quickly,” Trump said.
Trump launched a 2024 presidential bid in mid-November, but Saturday marked the first time he made a major airport rally.
It was also his first appearance in Texas, a Trump-friendly state, this campaign cycle.
Trump has long admired strongmen and attached positive adjectives to leaders like Putin, Xi and North Korean Kim Jong-un.
While he has used some of the 80-year-old Biden’s gaffes against the Democrat politically, he joked at Saturday’s rally that the president is “cognitively impaired,” boasting that he had passed a cognitive test given to him by former White House doctor and current Texas Representative Ronny Jackson.
