Trump praises Xi and Putin at Michigan rally, slams Biden

Exactly a week after the unsuccessful attempt on Donald Trump's life, the Republican candidate for US president appeared at the party's rally in Michigan.

Xi "wrote me a beautiful note the other day when he heard about what happened," Trump told his supporters during the first rally after July 13, when he almost fell victim to an assassin.

"I got along very well with President Xi," he added, discussing economic policy towards China during his presidency.

A significant part of the Republican candidate's speech was devoted to criticizing Joe Biden's policies. It also became an opportunity to make flattering remarks about Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, whom the incumbent president considers dictators.

Trump called Xi "a brilliant man; he controls 1.4 billion people with an iron fist" and added that Xi makes people like Biden look like "babies." Trump noted that his praise for the regimes stirred up controversy and criticism in the media.

However, he decided to fuel the fire by saying about Xi and Putin: "They're all smart, tough. They love their country."

This is not the first time Trump has spoken positively about Xi and Putin. At the end of January, he similarly evaluated the Russian dictator and the Chinese leader.

At the rally, Trump also made some snide remarks about the Democrats. "They have a couple of problems. No. 1, they have no idea who their candidate is," he said, drawing applause from the crowd. "This guy (current President Joe Biden) goes and he gets the votes and now they want to take it away," he added, referring to—according to Reuters—the fact that Biden has won the nomination process in his party so far.

"They keep saying he's a threat to democracy. I'm saying, What the hell did I do to democracy? Last week I took a bullet for democracy. What did I do against democracy?" said the Republican candidate.

"As you're seeing, the Democrat Party is not the party of democracy. They're really the enemies of democracy," he added.

During the rally in Michigan, one of the key "swing" states, which largely determine the outcome of the November 5 election, Trump also appeared for the first time with his vice-presidential candidate, Senator J.D. Vance.

In the 2016 election, Trump won Michigan by just over 10,000 votes, but Democratic candidate Joe Biden regained the state in 2020, winning by 154,000 votes.