Trump praises China's 'president for life' move, hopes US to follow

Trump's remarks, made during a luncheon for Republican donors at his South Florida estate on Saturday, was met with laughter and applause. CNN claimed it had obtained a recording of the remarks.

Chinese President Xi Jinping recently consolidated power as he pushed to abolish term limits. In closed-door remarks, Trump told the gathering: "He's now president for life. President for life. And he's great. I think it's great. Maybe we'll give that a shot someday."

As donors gathered in the grand ballroom at Mar-a-Lago, Trump criticised his Democratic presidential opponent Hillary Clinton and repeated his view about "a rigged system".

"Is Hillary a happy person? Do you think she's happy?" he said. "When she goes home at night, does she say, 'What a great life?' I don't think so. You never know. I hope she's happy."

Trump also hit out at former President George W. Bush for his decision to invade Iraq, calling it "the single worst decision ever made".

"Here we are, like the dummies of the world, because we had bad politicians running our country for a long time," he said. He added that the decision amounted to "throwing a big fat brick into a hornet's nest."

"That was Bush. Another real genius. That was Bush," Trump said sarcastically.

"That turned out to be wonderful intelligence. You know? Great intelligence agency there," referring to the faulty intelligence received claiming that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Previously, Trump cited the unfounded - later disproven -claims by the CIA that Iraq secretly had weapons of mass destruction to attack US intelligence.

He has used this intelligence failure as a reason to cast doubt over the same agencies conclusions that Russia had meddled in the 2016 election.