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.”
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.
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.
I could see a cunning propagandist trying to get a strong foothold early in order to “claim territory.” Remember voat?