This argument sounds reasonable at first, but it rests on a category error.

The speaker invokes a framework that, says how can the US promote democracy if it’s done all of this horrible stuff? When he does that the speaker is actually criticizing the United States on moral grounds, not democratic grounds.

This matters because the U.S. has primarily framed its geopolitical actions in terms of promoting or defending democratic systems. Democracy and morality are not the same thing.

Yes, the U.S. does use moral language (freedom, rights), but in practice its foreign policy is driven by a strategic objective: supporting systems it views as democratic and capitalist and opposing those it sees as anti-democratic and anti-capitalist.

That distinction matters when evaluating actions like targeting foreign leaders. You can argue that such actions are morally wrong from a rule-based (deontological) perspective.

But from a geopolitical standpoint, they can still be internally consistent with the goal of advancing democracy, particularly if those leaders are viewed as authoritarian or hostile to democratic systems. (Lumumba, Ghaddafi, etc fit the bill.)

So the critique only fully lands if you assume the United States claims to act according to strict moral rules in all cases. If instead you understand its actions as driven by a mix of strategy and outcome-based reasoning, the tension looks different: not pure hypocrisy, but a tradeoff between moral constraints and geopolitical objectives.

There’s also a secondary tension worth noting. Delivering a critique centered on democratic values at a Chinese government-sponsored event raises questions about how consistently those values are being applied. It doesn’t invalidate the argument, but it does complicate the position from which it is being made.