Legendary investor and liberal mega-donor George Soros took a few shots at U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping during his annual dinner at the World Economic Forum, also warning of impending calamity in the U.S. economy.
While dining among the world’s elite in Davos, Switzerland, Soros said Xi is “trying to exploit Trump’s weaknesses,” and he also thinks the Chinese leader is using “artificial intelligence to have total control of his people,” according to CNBC.
The 89-year-old Soros has yet to back anyone in the 2020 Democratic primary race but he was fairly ominous and melodramatic in his take on the presidential election, saying it was going to decide the “fate of the world.” The relationship between the U.S. and China, he continued, was only a small part of it.
The two largest economies in the world signed phase one of a new trade agreement earlier this month, with China agreeing to $200 billion in purchases of U.S. goods over the next two years while also agreeing to fight intellectual property theft and forced technology transfer. Trump has mentioned phase two negotiations will begin soon, but there are doubts it will be signed before the end of 2020.
Soros was not shy about criticizing the current U.S. president, calling Trump “a con man and a narcissist who wants the world to revolve around him.”
He went on to say that Trump’s narcissism ramped up “when his fantasy of becoming president became a reality.
“This has turned his narcissism into a malignant disease,” Soros said.
And Soros warned that Trump’s economy may be getting too hot, too soon.
“Trump’s economic team has managed to overheat an already buoyant economy,” Soros said.
“His problem is that the elections are still 10 months away, and in a revolutionary situation, that is a lifetime,” Soros said.
When discussing the impeachment trial of Trump that started in the Senate this week, Soros said Democrats will have a tough time voting the president out of office because Trump has a way of retaining support from his base.
“He has an instinct of how they are going to respond to his actions,” Soros said. “This makes the tasks of the Democrats who impeached him extremely difficult. The trial in the Senate is setting up to be strictly pro forma.”
While Soros avoided discussing the primary, he hasn’t kept his coffers shut since donating over $20 million to Democrats during the 2016 election.
The billionaire has funded a new super PAC, the Democracy PAC, which has raised over $5 million, according to the fund’s records. It helped fund many Virginia Democrats in the recent elections that helped them take control of the state’s legislature for the first time in over 20 years.
Back in October, Soros said that Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren is “the most qualified to be president,” but she’s been slipping in the latest RealClearPolitics poll. She is currently third behind former Vice President Joe Biden and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.