Jake Tapper Digs Up Clip of Trump Mocking Obama-Xi State Dinner: ‘Get Down To Work’

CNN’s Jake Tapper aired an old clip of President Donald Trump blasting then-President Barack Obama for hosting Chinese President Xi Jinping for a state dinner in 2015.

Tapper aired a snippet of the footage, which comes from a August 2015 interview with former Fox News personality Bill O’Reilly, on Friday’s edition of The Lead. At the time, Trump was running for president — an election he later won.

“He’s getting a big dinner, free, at the White House, addressing the UN,” O’Reilly said in the clip, referring to the Chinese president. “If you were president, would you throw him a big dinner?”

“I would not be throwing him a dinner,” Trump declared. “We’ve had this conversation. I’d get him a McDonald’s hamburger, and I’d say, ‘We gotta get down to work.'”

Last night, though, the president did just that, hosting Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, at the White House. The menu incorporated, according to The New York Times, sesame-crusted sea bass with baby bok choy and roasted eggplant, followed by vanilla crémeux and White House honey ice cream for dessert.

Guests, including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, and other tech industry leaders, were also treated to live entertainment by opera singer Christopher Macchio.

Tapper went on to say to his guest, Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-IN), on Friday, “He changed his position, which is fine. People change their positions when they get elected president, but what was accomplished, what was achieved with all of this lavish rolling out of the red carpet?”

Here, the CNN host is talking about Xi’s Wednesday arrival. Trump met Xi on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews on Wednesday — the first time a U.S. president has done so for a world leader, minus the pope, since 1962. Uniformed U.S. military personnel unfurled a literal red carpet for his arrival, at times getting on their hands and knees to make further adjustments.

Watch the archival clip above on CNN.

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