It’s not often that Donald Trump receives push back from one of his sycophantic interviewers on conservative media. But it happened at least twice during his sit-down with Fox News host Maria Bartiromo on Sunday.
When the former president said he had “unbelievable people” in his administration, Bartiromo told him he made “plenty of personnel mistakes,” citing FBI Director Christopher Wray as one example. But it was Trump fawning all over China that seemed to really catch her off-guard.
“I want China to do great, I do. And I like President Xi a lot. He was a very good friend of mine during my term,” Trump said at one point.
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“Well, look, COVID, COVID cover-up, intellectual property theft, the list is long from our number one adversary, so I don’t know if he’s a friend but—” Bartiromo replied as Trump continued to talk over her.
In the same interview, however, Trump accused President Joe Biden of being China’s puppet. “When it comes to a lot of countries, I think he’s a Manchurian Candidate, because he receives money from China,” Trump said, offering zero evidence to back up that explosive claim. “People say, I wonder why he’s so weak on China? He gets a lot of money from China.”
Those comments did not receive any meaningful follow-up questions or criticism from the Fox host, who recently floated the conspiracy theory that China deliberately released COVID-19 into the population in order to oust Trump from office.
