The Chinese state propaganda outlet Global Times cited the words of pop superstar Taylor Swift in an attack on President Donald Trump on Monday after she accused him of “gaslighting” his opponents into questioning their own love for the country.
In a piece titled “Why Are the Chinese Brushing Aside Trump’s Tweets?” opinion writer Mu Lu tries to downplay Beijing’s reported concern at Trump’s warnings against China last week, when he ordered American companies to immediately leave China and move their production back to the United States.
“The vast amounts of money made and stolen by China from the United States, year after year, for decades, will and must STOP,” he wrote on Twitter. “Our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China, including bringing your companies HOME and making your products in the USA”:
Lu argues that many Chinese people believe Trump’s rhetoric to be merely a “bluff” and that such a move would “actually [be] damaging the interests of his own country and people. ”
“Many people were concerned they would have to suffer a downgraded lifestyle due to Trump’s tariff war against China as he described,” the piece read, and continued:
He vowed to correct trade practices of China by imposing additional tariffs, saying China would pay to help the US make more money. But the truth is many American enterprises are suffering from the tariffs and Americans have to shoulder higher living costs.
The writer goes on to quote singer Taylor Swift’s suggestion that Trump is “gaslighting” his political opponents and bullying those with different political views.
“The Chinese people are now aware that Trump would say something impulsively on Twitter regardless of a president’s code of conduct,” the writer explains, and continues, saying:
Followed by more than 63 million people on Twitter, Trump is using the platform to attack and bully those with different political views. As Grammy winner Taylor Swift said in an interview with The Guardian published on Friday, Trump is ‘gaslighting the American public into being like, ‘If you hate the president, you hate America.”
During the interview, Swift also claimed she was “very remorseful” about her failure to endorse Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, but pledged to do “everything I can” to help defeat Donald Trump in 2020.
The op-ed concludes by citing the fact that #TrumpGibberish recently trended on Twitter, evidence it claims proves that “Trump’s posts increasingly lack credibility.”
“Trump has turned Twitter into a stage for his political show, where he says things to gain votes for reelection. He repeats what he has done for the US – to provide Americans welfare, and to “make America great again,” it concludes. “But he is actually damaging the interests of his own country and people.”
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