Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) yesterday said he could not see how he resembled US president-elect Donald Trump.
After news of Trump’s electoral victory began circulating on the Internet, some netizens dubbed Trump the “American Ko,” in reference to their notoriety for being loose cannons and that they were both elected as political novices.
During a question-and-answer session at the Taipei City Council yesterday, Democratic Progressive Party Taipei City Councilor Yen sheng-kuan (顏聖冠) asked Ko to comment on the comparison.
“Frankly speaking, I do not see how we are alike. We have different backgrounds and the demographics of our supporters are different,” Ko said.
The make up of Trump’s supporters is different from Ko’s, as most of Trump’s supporters are “Caucasian or older people, or they have lower income,” Ko said earlier in the day in response to media queries about the comparison.
Asked to comment on his and Trump’s penchant for controversial remarks, Ko said: “I assure you that he will make adjustments faster than I did,” citing Trump’s experience in the business sector and his “more functional” team.
Responding to comments that Trump won the election because he “spoke the truth,” as Ko did in the 2014 Taipei mayoral election, Ko said that there could be some similarities between his, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s and Trump’s election.
“It would be an interesting topic for social sciences,” he said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching