Just Saying | 14 minutes to obliterate Hong Kong: deconstructing Donald Trump’s bizarre boast

Yonden Lhatoo breaks down the US president’s astonishing claim that he stopped his Chinese counterpart from wiping out the protest-torn city with a million PLA troops

Reading Time:3 minutes

US President Donald Trump says he had a quiet word with his Chinese counterpart about not sending a million troops in to obliterate Hong Kong. In 14 minutes. Photo: EPA

Published: 4:53pm, 23 Nov 2019Updated: 11:03pm, 23 Nov 2019

Ridiculing Donald Trump is too easy. There’s more than enough of that going on already, and it’s become an exercise in futility because America’s 45th president is who he is, will say what he will say, and will do what he will do.

But let’s just pause for a minute, for the benefit of Hong Kong’s anti-China revolution and its US-flag-waving warriors, and deconstruct their great white saviour’s latest message to them.

“If it weren’t for me, Hong Kong would have been obliterated within 14 minutes,” Trump boasted in a phone interview on Fox & Friends, his audiovisual Wikipedia of world news. Chinese President Xi Jinping “has got a million soldiers standing outside of Hong Kong that aren’t going in only because I asked him, please don’t do that”.

Soldiers from the People’s Liberation Army are already in Hong Kong. Just last Saturday, they helped clear the roadblocks in Kowloon Tong near Baptist University. Photo: Edmond So

Any willing suspension of disbelief hits a snag right away when he claims a million PLA troops are all revved up at the border, poised to pounce on Hong Kong, with only his magnanimous eminence preventing them from wiping us all out, apparently.

Don’t Americans get it? The PLA is already here, in strategic locations across the city, confined to barracks, as it has been for more than two decades since the handover to Chinese sovereignty.

Select Voice

Choose your listening speed

Get through articles 2x faster

1.25x

250 WPM

Slow

Average

Fast

00:0000:00

1.25x

.css-1m2rp1p{color:#34b8b5;}Just Saying | 14 minutes to obliterate Hong Kong: deconstructing Donald Trump’s bizarre boast

.css-1mniedq{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;} Yonden Lhatoo breaks down the US president’s astonishing claim that he stopped his Chinese counterpart from wiping out the protest-torn city with a million PLA troops

Just Saying | 14 minutes to obliterate Hong Kong: deconstructing Donald Trump’s bizarre boast

Yonden Lhatoo breaks down the US president’s astonishing claim that he stopped his Chinese counterpart from wiping out the protest-torn city with a million PLA troops