Trump Invites Xi, State Dinner Attendees to ‘Walk Into a Construction Site’

President Donald Trump invited guests at his state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping — including Xi himself — to get a firsthand look at his much-touted White House ballroom, encouraging them to “walk into a construction site.”

Xi arrived on Wednesday for a three-day trip, his first state visit to Washington in more than a decade. Trump met him on a rolled-out red carpet on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews — the first time a U.S. president has done so for a world leader, minus the pope, since 1962.

On Thursday night, Trump hosted Xi for a state dinner at the White House. Its guest list was tech-heavy, including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, and other industry leaders. Fox News hosts Bret Baier, Laura Ingraham, and Jesse Watters were also in attendance, along with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh.

Trump stayed largely on script during his address to dinner guests. He spoke several paragraphs at a time, pausing after each stretch to allow an interpreter to translate his remarks into Mandarin.

Around five minutes into his speech, though, Trump seemingly just couldn’t resist mentioning his ballroom, telling the crowd, “And if I could go off script just for a second, I just wanna say — I had to do it. I had to do it!”

After a translation was read aloud, the president continued:

As a special treat, in honor of President Xi and Madam Peng [Liyuan], I’d like to invite everyone in the room to visit through that beautiful curtain in the back. The door’s all lit up, and it looks beautiful. It’s one year away from completion — the new ballroom that you’ve heard about — and you will see something that I think you will really love.

[…]

In honor of you, you’ll be the first people to step foot on that, and we’ll do that maybe after we’re finished with the entertainment tonight. If anybody wants to walk into a construction site that’s nice and clean and sparkly, it’s our honor to have you do so, but this is in honor of President Xi and Madam Peng.

Watch above on YouTube.

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