Hong Kong —
Days before winning his second presidential term, Donald Trump made a bold promise: if he returned to the White House, he would free a pugnacious, self-made billionaire from a Hong Kong prison.
“100% I’ll get him out. He’ll be easy to get out,” Trump declared in a podcast interview in October, radiating his trademark confidence.
Nearly ten months later, that tycoon Jimmy Lai – a pro-democracy firebrand and persistent thorn in Beijing’s side – remains behind bars.
The 77-year-old media mogul has spent more than 1,600 days in a maximum-security prison, much of it in solitary confinement, staring down the possibility of spending the rest of his life there.
Lai, the outspoken founder of the now-shuttered Apple Daily – a fiercely pro-democracy tabloid newspaper known for ye