President Donald Trump appeared to grimace in pain during a military flyover he staged during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s arrival in the United States.
Xi, 73, appeared stone-faced as the planes neared, but the 80-year-old Trump visibly recoiled at the noise, ducking and baring his teeth as B-1 bombers came screaming overhead.
The octogenarian president watched the bombers fly ahead, pursed his lips in apparent astonishment, and whispered something to Xi with a smirk.
The White House did not immediately respond to the Daily Beast’s questions about the president’s reaction to the flyover.
Trump rolled out the red carpet for Xi on Wednesday, happily greeting the communist dictator after he descended the stairs of his plane at Joint Base Andrews.
The two leaders walked down the red carpet before stopping to take in a fawning display of U.S. military pomp, complete with a band, ceremonial cannon fire, and the flyover.
First lady Melania Trump, 56, who has been conspicuously absent from view amid growing scrutiny of her husband’s close relationship with 34-year-old aide Natalie Harp, joined Trump to welcome Xi and his wife Peng Liyuan.
After Trump and Xi spoke for several minutes, the Chinese president got into his car as Trump waved goodbye.
U.S. presidents rarely greet foreign leaders on the tarmac and instead wait for them to arrive at the White House, but Trump is treating Xi with an unusual level of pomp and deference during the dictator’s first Washington visit in more than a decade.
On Thursday, Trump will host Xi for only the second state dinner of his second term. The first was in April with the United Kingdom’s King Charles III and Queen Camilla.
Administration officials tell Politico that Trump, who is usually eager to cast himself as the most powerful person in the room, is taking a different tack with Xi. They say Trump is trying to woo the Chinese president and position himself as his “equal” rather than the more dominant one.
High-stakes talks between the two superpowers during Xi’s visit are set to address a laundry list of issues, from artificial intelligence to the war with Iran to tariffs and rare earths, but concerns are mounting that Trump won’t secure terms favorable to the United States.
“He needs good news,” Trump biographer Michael Wolff told the Inside Trump’s Head podcast. “And his way of getting good news is not to negotiate a good deal. His way of getting good news is to agree. So he goes into flattery mode.”
