He’s now president for life,” Donald Trump told a closed-door meeting of Republican donors at his Mar-a-Lago resort on 3 March, referring to the Chinese government’s decision to abolish term limits and allow President Xi Jinping to rule indefinitely. “And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot some day.”
Is this the “scariest thing Donald Trump has said as president”, to quote a headline on the CNN website? Was this Trump not just endorsing but envying a model of dictatorship? Or was he just joking? To be fair, the US president was smiling and there were laughs from the audience. So it was all tongue-in-cheek, right? Right?
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