Trump has been full of strange ideas lately, and people are starting to wonder if something has short-circuited upstairs. The latest example: the White House posted a video on social media of Trump repeating the word "winning" for a full, unbroken hour, captioned "President Trump saying 'WINNING' for one hour. Can't stop, won't stop." Friends laugh every time they watch it. They see it for exactly what it is — another tired roll-out of the old trick: repeat a lie often enough until it sounds like truth.
Trump is heading to China — and trotting out the Jimmy Lai line again. He has said it N times. It is a broken record, no different from his recent hour-long loop of "winning".
That stunt maps almost perfectly onto his latest round of Jimmy Lai talk. In an interview with a right-wing outlet yesterday, Trump said he would raise the Jimmy Lai case again when he meets President Xi. Anyone paying attention will recall he has given virtually the same answer N times over. It is no different from his hour-long loop of "winning" — hollow repetition to tick a box. Only a fool would believe he genuinely intends to save Lai.
Trump has been tied up in knots over the Iran war situation lately. When he meets President Xi, there will likely be no good news from the front to offer. He and his aides are almost certainly preoccupied with that headache. A trivial matter like the "Jimmy Lai case" is naturally the last thing on his mind. Yet having pledged multiple times to raise it — whether sincerely or not — he needs some kind of cover.
So yesterday he told a right-wing influencer from The Salem News that he had already raised the Jimmy Lai case before and would bring it up again with President Xi. He immediately followed that with a caveat: "Hong Kong was not as easy." Translation — it is too complicated, there is not much that can be done. Raise it? Sure. Expect action? Do not bother asking.
This is nearly 90% identical to his response last October when a Fox News host asked him about it. Back then, he similarly said he would raise the Jimmy Lai case with President Xi at the G20 summit in Busan. Then he pivoted immediately, saying he "understood that President Xi would not be willing to release Jimmy Lai." The script was identical: a fleeting mention, a box ticked, and then a quiet retreat.
And that is exactly what happened at the meeting with President Xi. Trump raised the "Jimmy Lai case" for just a few minutes. There was no discussion. There was no follow-up request. American officials went silent afterwards, neither confirming anything nor issuing any statement. Only days later did a vague, informal tip-off reach Reuters. The whole affair was handled with extreme discretion from start to finish — signalling that Trump had no intention of letting this “mosquito-sized matter” get in the way of a bigger deal with Beijing.
Jimmy Lai once believed Trump would ultimately come to his rescue — like a victim of an online romance scam, he is surely beginning to understand that what he received was never genuine affection, only scripted performance.
Then, at the end of last year, when Jimmy Lai was convicted, Trump went through the motions once more. He said he had asked President Xi to release Lai. He put on a show of sympathy, declaring "I feel so badly" by the verdict. Then he promptly moved on.
A pattern emerges from Trump's "linguistic artistry": when he keeps repeating something over and over, he simply wants it lodged in the listener's head. Take it seriously at your peril. Recently, Jimmy Lai's children — seizing on Trump's imminent China visit — ran a heartstring-pulling piece in The Times of London, painting a picture of their father's bleak existence behind bars. That script has also been recited N times already. Readers are numb to it, and its impact on Trump is precisely zero. Their father has, after all, reportedly transferred wealth running into the hundreds of millions to his wife and children — they have their own reasons to put on a good performance for the cameras.
While everyone plays their part, the one who may be hurting most is Jimmy Lai himself. He once firmly believed Trump would eventually ride to his rescue. So even after the National Security Law came into force, he pressed ahead bravely as America's point man — going so far as to smear Biden in a last-ditch effort to help Trump win. The dream has now shattered completely. By the time Trump returned to power in 2025, the international landscape had shifted entirely. Jimmy Lai, that small pawn, has no further value on the board. Whether he lives or dies is of no consequence to Trump.
A friend who looked through the court records of the Lai case came across a passage that is almost darkly funny. The judge asked: "What promises did Trump make to you?" Jimmy Lai replied: "I can't quite remember! But my impression is that he promised to take the Hong Kong issue seriously." Trump's promises are worth less than a lettuce leaf — and even Jimmy Lai himself can barely recall what was said. Yet he gave everything for the man. Like a romance scam victim who has finally understood that the sweet words were never real.
Lai Ting-yiu
What Say You?
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