President Donald Trump has admitted he caused his high-stakes meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping to run overtime.
Trump, 79, met with Jinping, 72, on Thursday for 2 hours and 15 minutes, according to White House press pool reports.
“It was a long meeting,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, which aired on Thursday evening.
“It started off interestingly because they are very organized people,” Trump said of the Chinese.
Trump then bragged he had “30 of the biggest business leaders in the world, biggest everything” as part of his entourage. That includes Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Apple CEO Tim Cook, who are in China to spruik doing business with their companies.
“I did not invite them, they all wanted to come,” Trump said. “I suggested that before we start the meeting, I would like to introduce them to you. And they were surprised because it wasn’t, you know, it wasn’t scheduled. And they looked around and they said ‘Err...’”
Trump said he did not want to name all of the business leaders “because I will leave some out,” but noted at the meeting, “They each spoke a bit and introduced themselves.”
He continued, “The Chinese leadership, because it was President Xi and many other leaders... they got used to the fact that we were a little off schedule here and we’re talking about a subject that wasn’t even thought about.”
Trump claimed the Chinese president was happy with the unexpected introductions.
“He actually said, ‘That was very good, that was a good idea.’ But it was very different from what the schedule had.”
This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
