Trump Finds His Empathy: Too Bad for Jimmy Lai
Donald Trump, the man who once lauded Chinese President Xi Jinping as 'unbelievable' and 'a great gentleman' even as Beijing cracked down on dissent and Uyghurs, now 'feels badly' about Jimmy Lai's guilty verdict. This sudden burst of empathy arrives conveniently after Trump completed his own trade deals and business ventures with Beijing, not during the actual crackdown that led to Lai's arrest
and prosecution. One might wonder where this profound concern was when Lai’s Apple Daily was raided and shut down in 2021, on Trump’s watch ( New York Times, 2021 ). It’s almost as if 'feeling badly' for victims of authoritarian regimes becomes politically viable only when there's no immediate personal or geopolitical cost. The mainstream media, of course, presents this as a genuine expression,
rather than a performative platitude from a leader notorious for transactional relationships with autocrats. His administration's own policies largely turned a blind eye to human rights abuses when it suited his 'America First' agenda (recall the silence on Uyghurs during trade negotiations), demonstrating a consistent pattern of selective outrage.