At 10:07 this morning, Donald Trump emerged from the South Portico doors of the White House, gripping First Lady Melania Trump’s hand with one of his own bruised and deeply discolored hands while the U.S. Army Herald Trumpets played in the background. As he made his way down the red carpet, he struggled to walk a straight line, at one point shaking his upper thighs apart to separate his inner legs, before finally coming to a stop as the moment he had been waiting months for was finally here. His close friend and the authoritarian leader of China, Xi Jinping, had finally arrived at the White House.
With both men wearing nearly identical matching suits and ties, the large protrusion beneath the lower back side of Donald Trump’s jacket was hard to miss as the two leaders and their wives walked into the White House to start a very long day of carefully staged diplomacy. He would later say of their time together, “We had a great meeting, and he has great interest in granite. He likes granite.” Before adding, “He’s an expert on stone, aside from many other things, and he loves good granite.” That is what the President of the United States was most excited to share about his time with President Xi. He likes granite.
Way before their day spent together, Donald Trump had already begun laying the groundwork to set the tone for the day ahead with some early morning social media posts. At 8:24 a.m., he shared on Truth Social: “I met President Xi at the plane (Airport!) yesterday and he looks strong, vibrant, and fit, Better than ever. Madam Xi, of course, BEAUTIFUL!”
Donald Trump’s fascination with men’s looks got the best of him and distracted him from realizing that he had called President Xi’s wife the wrong name. The White House itself refers to Xi Jinping’s wife, Peng Liyuan, as Madame Peng, not “Madam Xi.”
Before that post was an even odder social media post. Trump posted a photograph of himself standing beside President Xi on the tarmac the night before, where both men were saluting as a military jet flew overhead. The words “Only Trump” were written at the top of the picture in Old English lettering. It might have been an image that was posted and forgotten, but this was an image that had already been shared before, so many people online were quick to point out that Trump’s version and the original press photograph were very different in the strangest ways. In the one Trump posted, one of his gloves was missing, the woman in the background, Monica Crowley, had shoes that looked different, and Melania and Peng had been completely removed.
During Xi’s time at the White House, Trump took him on a grand tour, weaving through rooms and corridors and stopping at many of Trump’s pet construction projects. One stop along the route was one he was clearly proud of: his “Presidential Walk of Fame.” We have seen him take guests there before to see the gallery Trump installed in September of last year, which has gold-framed portraits and biographical summaries of every American president. Well, all but one. In the place that should have Joe Biden’s portrait, Trump has instead placed a photograph of an autopen. He took special interest in showing Xi his own portraits on the wall before pointing toward Biden’s spot and saying, “Trump, and then Trump, and this is the autopen.” Xi and his entourage laughed with Donald Trump, as seen in the video White House aide Margo Martin posted on social media.
Later in Trump’s tour, he stopped at more gold-framed photographs, including one showing him and Xi shaking hands during an earlier meeting. He pointed it out as it hung on the wall inside the White House and grinned, before joking, “Who is that? I don’t recognize him!” Then he told Xi something with the cameras close enough to hear, “We have a lot of respect for you.”
Just minutes apart, Donald Trump, the leader of the free world, mocked the last democratically elected president of his own country while standing beside an authoritarian leader who has never faced a free election in his life, and showed the world he has a picture of them together hanging in a place of honor inside the White House and that our country respects him.
What Donald Trump hangs on those walls tells us a lot about where his loyalties lie. We do not see pictures of Trump standing with Mark Carney, Emmanuel Macron, or Mette Frederiksen. Which doesn’t mean they aren’t there, just that he isn’t showing them off. But photographs with Xi Jinping are displayed predominantly because Xi Jinping is the kind of leader he wants to be.
After the 90 minutes they spent together away from the press, where they were supposed to be discussing the future of our economic relationship, among other important matters, Trump came back outside and took Xi on another tour, this time to the outside areas of the White House too. He took Xi to see his new granite helipad on the South Lawn, where he pointed out the presidential seal that had been embedded in the stone. He repeatedly touched Xi’s arm, breaking traditions and customs. He then walked him over to Marine One and took him inside the military helicopter. He pointed toward the massive pit off the White House, the construction site where the East Wing once stood, and where Donald Trump’s ballroom is currently being built. Each step of the way, he watched Xi’s face as he showed him all of the things he has done and is doing. Donald Trump appeared to be having an absolutely fantastic time.
That wasn’t the end of the Xi and Trump “friend day” either. This evening was also Trump’s state dinner, which must have felt like going back in history to another century. The room was draped in red and gold, and the guest list was filled with many of the same people and companies that have been enabling Trump’s worst impulses. Reporting shows that Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman, Tim Cook, Jensen Huang of Nvidia, and Bernard Arnault were all there. Supreme Court justices, the tech elite, and Fox News personalities were all gathered in the same room.
Donald Trump wore a tuxedo and presented Xi with a gold sculpture of a bald eagle that he said he and Melania personally designed. He called Xi and his delegation “truly amazing, outstanding people.” He even invited the entire room to tour the unfinished ballroom construction site after dinner, saying, “In honor of you, you’ll be the first people to step foot on that.” He bragged that if the ballroom had been finished, they could have had more than a thousand people with standing room only.
In his toast at the dinner, Trump said, “President Xi and I both understand we represent different systems, but the ties between our people endure, and we’ve never gotten along better.” They ironically raised their glasses to Schramsberg Blanc de Noir, which is the same wine served when President Nixon toasted Premier Zhou Enlai in Beijing in 1972.
Then Xi, the leader of the Chinese Communist Party, spoke to the room filled with some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in America: “President Trump has pledged to make America great again,” and added that “China is committed to achieving great national rejuvenation,” as well. He rounded out his remarks by saying, “These two goals are both ambitious and can surely be mutually reinforcing.”
The leader of an authoritarian regime that surveils its citizens, crushes dissent, and operates detention camps for ethnic minorities stood inside the White House and said that MAGA and China’s rise could help each other by being “mutually reinforcing.” We can’t forget all the recent times Donald Trump has tried to convince us that Democrats are communists, that the left wants to turn America into a socialist nightmare, and that liberals are destroying the country from within. He knows the word “communist” is a loaded one, one of his most recent and reliable weapons. Yet when the actual leader of the Chinese Communist Party stood inside the White House and fused his country’s authoritarian ambitions with Trump’s political slogan, Trump seemed to have no issue with it.
After all the cozying up to an authoritarian regime at the expense of our democratic allies, the American people so far haven’t received better trade deals. Instead, we learned that we are temporarily being given Pandas. Specifically, two pandas are being sent to Zoo Atlanta. Xi announced that Ping Ping and Fu Shuang will be arriving in the coming days as part of China’s panda loan diplomacy program. As someone who loves pandas, I think that is genuinely wonderful, and the cultural significance of this gesture is not lost. But that does not come anywhere close to justifying what we traded for it. Aside from extending the tariff truce, there were no major breakthroughs on any of the other issues between the two countries.
Tonight, I am writing this from Disneyland. Over the years, when our family has faced difficult times or just needed to escape to new scenery for a few days, this is where we go. Last week was tough, and I thought we could all use some family time and fun.
One of our favorite attractions here is Soarin’, where you feel like you are flying over some of the most beautiful places in the world. Not realizing it, we went on the new version of the ride built for America’s 250th anniversary. It is called Soarin’ Across America, and in it you fly across the New England coastline, the Grand Canyon, the Great Plains, national parks, bayous, and over Washington, D.C. Seeing all of those places reminded me of times before Donald Trump unleashed all this madness and where we are as a nation now.
Watching all those scenes go by, I thought about what he has done to this country. I saw national parks whose protections he is stripping. I saw a capital that now makes people boo instead of cheer. I thought about the world before he came back, when the Middle East was not destabilized again because of his recklessness, when he was not trying to separate us from every ally we have, when he was not convincing half the country that their neighbors are their enemies just because they were not born here.
I try not to let myself think back to the before-Trump days very often. It is too painful. But today I did. I sat in that seat, and I let myself remember. I also let myself dream about how more stable the world will be and how thankful I will be when he is gone from the presidency. I also reminded myself how long this road is going to be, and how many steps it will take to get back to as close to where we were before him, and then onto building the country this was always supposed to be.
The midterms are 40 days away, and they are just the beginning. If we can take back Congress, we restore the checks and balances. Then we hold these people accountable. It is a long path. But this country was not built by quitters, and it was not built by people who were afraid of hard work. It was built by enslaved people who endured suffering most of us cannot begin to comprehend. It was built by immigrants who came from China and Japan, from Vietnam and dozens of other countries, people who poured everything they had into a place they believed could hold hope for the future. As long as we can still see the America they saw and the one in the Disney movie today, the one that is beautiful, vast, and generous and worth every ounce of the fight, we will never lose our way. We will always find our way home. That is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.
I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather
PS. You can make a significant difference right now by subscribing to my Substack. Your support helps me cover more ground and keep telling the truth about the lies and destruction unfolding in this country.
This commentary represents my personal opinions and analysis of matters of public concern, informed by publicly available information. Any references to individuals constitute opinion and commentary protected under the First Amendment.
Picture of the day: The more people I talk to, the more I hear the same thing from those of us who are deeply invested in doing everything we can to stop this authoritarian takeover. We feel the weight of the world on our shoulders, and nothing we do ever feels like we are doing enough. We feel a strange guilt creep into the normal moments of our lives. WE wonder how we can laugh, celebrate something, or simply enjoy an ordinary day when we know that there is so much suffering happening around us.
If you feel that too, something that helps me is when I remind myself of the oxygen mask rule on airplanes. It feels wrong to put your own mask on first when someone beside you needs help. But you do it because you cannot help anyone if you can no longer breathe. I think the same is true right now. We have to give ourselves permission to step back sometimes, to rest and spend time with the people we love so that we can make sure we still have enough left in us to keep showing up tomorrow and every day after that. I tried to do that a bit today, taking some time to look at all the Halloween decorations with my daughter. I didn’t last as long as I wanted to before my mind wandered back to everything happening in the world, but even a few minutes to ground myself these days helps.
Links to sources used in writing this article:
https://abcnews.com/Politics/wireStory/trump-relishes-showing-xi-marine-chopper-new-white-136734173
https://www.npr.org/2026/09/25/g-s1-144973/trump-state-dinner-xi
https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/trump-china-xi-jinping-state-visit-dinner-tariffs-ai/
Ironic, isn't it? Trump is so good at labelling Democrats as "communists " as if they are the enemy that when he meets President Xi, leader of one of the most oppressive countries of the world, he's all smiles. It's quite obvious that the Donald has no self awareness whstsoever.
Always a worthwhile read, thankyou, Heather.