Democratic Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett of Texas has gone viral for a speech blasting former President Donald Trump over his relationship with the Chinese government.
Crockett on Wednesday delivered the remarks after Republican Congresswoman Nancy Mace of South Carolina claimed that President Joe Biden was "bought and paid for by China," during the GOP-led House Oversight Committee hearing on "Defending America from the Chinese Communist Party's Political Warfare."
"Today on the Oversight Committee, my colleague from South Carolina got a little confused about which of our last two presidents heaps praise on the authoritarian leader of China every chance he gets. Hint: it's the orange one," Crockett wrote while sharing a clip from the hearing on X, formerly Twitter.
Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung denounced Crockett as "another China-loving CCP puppet" in a statement emailed to Newsweek on Wednesday night.
In the clip, Crockett recites a series of quotes from Trump praising Chinese President Xi Jinping over the years, during and after his time in the White House, while a person standing behind the congresswoman holds a poster featuring the Trump quotes and associated dates.
"These are things that Trump has said about Xi: 'Smart, brilliant, everything perfect' ... 'We love each other' ... 'President Xi, who's a friend of mine, who's a very, very good man' ... 'There's nobody like that, the look, the brain, the whole thing' .... 'My feeling towards you is an incredibly warm one,'" Crockett says in the clip, repeating the Trump quotes.
"This doesn't sound like someone that has any intentions of being hard on China, in my opinion," she continues.
Before Crockett's recitation of the Trump quotes, Mace had recited a number of favorable quotes about Xi from Biden, with the incumbent president also having described the Chinese leader as "smart."
Later in the hearing, Crockett alleged that Trump, while serving as president, had lifted sanctions on state-sponsored Chinese telecom company ZTE for the benefit of himself and daughter Ivanka Trump, who acted as senior adviser during his administration.
"Trump received over $5.5 million from the Chinese government," Crockett says in a clip from the hearing that was shared by Oversight Committee Democrats on X. "President Trump and his White House senior adviser daughter Ivanka received hundreds of trademarks by the PRC (People's Republic of China)."
Crockett goes on to reveal a timeline of several Trump trademarks being granted by China leading up to the removal of sanctions on ZTE in 2018.
"In May of 2018, China approved Ivanka's trademarks ... May 7, 2018, China approved five additional trademarks," Crockett says. "May 13, 2018: Trump tweets he's instructed the Commerce Department to reverse its decision to sanction ZTE."
"[On] June 7, 2018, Ivanka's company gets three more provisional Chinese trademark approvals, the same day the Trump administration officially announces an agreement to lift the sanctions," she continues.
At the time of publication, posts featuring Crockett's remarks during the hearing had been viewed on X hundreds of thousands of times.
"Jasmine Crockett is another China-loving CCP puppet who continues to sell out America like Joe Biden has," Trump spokesperson Cheung told Newsweek earlier Wednesday. "The fact is that China has grown stronger under a weak Biden presidency, and our allies are even more in danger as China builds up its economic and military power."
"Deadly Chinese fentanyl continues to flow into American communities killing scores of people while illegal Chinese migrants are the fastest growing group crossing the Southern Border," he continued. "There is only one person who can stop that from happening: Donald J. Trump."
In 2020, ex-Trump administration official Anthony Scaramucci accused his former boss of lifting the ZTE sanctions—which had been imposed months earlier over the company doing business with Iran and North Korea—as part of an attempt to "shake down China for personal gain."
Multiple reports at the time said that Trump called for the ZTE sanctions to be removed days after China approved $500 million in loans to an Indonesian theme park that had struck a lucrative deal with The Trump Organization to license the name of Trump, who was president at the time.
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Aila Slisco is a Newsweek night reporter based in New York. Her focus is on reporting national politics, where she ... Read more
