Donald Trump reached into his bottomless bag of sexually aggressive/violent metaphors this weekend and emerged with one while talking about U.S.-China trade relations. “We can’t continue to allow China to rape our country,” the celebrity billionaire declared at a rally in Fort Wayne, Indiana, on Sunday.
And here is a fuller version of the Republican front-runner’s nuanced, geopolitical assessment of the relationship between the world’s two largest economic powers:
Don’t forget. We’re like the piggybank that’s being robbed. We have the cards. We have a lot of power with China. When China doesn’t want to fix the problem in North Korea, we say, ‘Sorry, folks, you gotta fix the problem.’ Because we can’t continue to allow China to rape our country. And that’s what they’re doing. It’s the greatest theft in the history of the world.
On the trail to date, Trump’s preferred line about China has been that “they’re killing us,” though CNN notes that the real estate tycoon actually used the rape metaphor at least once before this campaign cycle started, back in 2011 while he was touring a defense manufacturer in New Hampshire.
Why the change? Perhaps it has something to do with the fact Trump’s recently seen his name in the same headlines with the word rape thanks to his bizarre decision to tout his relationship with Mike Tyson during a campaign event in the very same city where the former heavyweight champ was convicted of raping a woman. Or, more likely, this is just what the GOP front-runner does. Either way, don’t expect Trump to tamp down his language. Once he stumbles up on a new incendiary turn of phrase, he tends to reuse it until he finds his next one.
