While declaring a national emergency at the Mexican border, US president Donald Trump also found time to applaud China’s execution of drug dealers and affect a fake “Asian” accent to imitate Chinese president Xi Jinping.

During a characteristically rambling, incoherent, and falsity-filled press conference, Trump spoke about his meeting with Xi in Argentina in December, recalling how he had asked the Chinese leader to place fentanyl, a synthetic painkiller that can be 100 times stronger than morphine, on China’s “criminal list.”

“Their criminal list is much tougher than our criminal list,” Trump said. “Their criminal list, a drug dealer gets a thing called the death penalty. Our criminal list, a drug dealer gets a thing called ‘how bout a fine?'”

Trump added that Xi had told him that China does not have a drug problem despite its large population.

“Why? ‘Death penalty. We give death penalty to people who sell drugs,'” Trump said, speaking as Xi while mimicking a stereotypical accent of a non-native English speaker.

The US president then went on to lament that instead of capital punishment, the US tackled its own drug problem with “blue ribbon committees” that only “waste a lot of time,” adding that one of the things he is “most excited” about in the planned trade deal between the two countries is China sentencing fentanyl dealers to death.

”So if we want to get smart, we can get smart. We can get smart,” Trump smiles. “We can end the drug problem. We can end it a lot faster than you think.”

Watch: Trump says he's "most excited" about the death penalty for drug dealers while talking about his trade deal with China after declaring a national emergency earlier at the Rose Garden. https://t.co/iH24TKJLxW pic.twitter.com/vSdCHzQpE8 — Newsweek (@Newsweek) February 15, 2019

Trump’s words of praise for China’s justice system come about a month after a Canadian man was sentenced to death by a court in Liaoning province for smuggling over 222 kilograms of methamphetamine.

The Canadian was originally sentenced to 15 years in prison in November, but he was given a hasty retrial after a diplomatic spat ignited between Canada and China over the arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou.

China executes more people each year than the rest of the world combined though the official number is a state secret.