President Donald Trump rolled out the red carpet for Chinese President Xi Jinping Thursday night with a lavish state dinner at the White House, during which, noted one former Trump official on Friday, the president’s frequent “knowing grin” sent a telling message.
A literal red carpet was rolled out for Xi Wednesday for his arrival in the United States, followed by a state dinner featuring a “cavalcade of billionaires” and gourmet dishes. During the event, Trump was often seen grinning, which immediately caught the attention of Miles Taylor, a former senior Homeland Security official in Trump's first administration.
Writing in an analysis published Friday on his Substack, Taylor described the state dinner as a “Great Gatsby from hell,” and contrasted the lavish event with the growing economic pain inflicted on working-class Americans, along with Americans’ fear of being “replaced by machines” amid Trump’s embrace of rapid AI data center development.
“I was amazed by what I saw last night. Trump assembled every one of those fears… dressed them up in a suit and tie… and toasted them,” Taylor wrote. “You cannot make it up. Is it stupidity? Is it indifference? Is it unconcealed greed? His knowing grin tells us, yet again, that it’s all of the above.”
Taylor was also taken aback by the optics of the event taking place amid the unprecedented rise in fuel costs, with diesel reaching an average of $6.50 per gallon as of Friday, just two cents below the all-time high recorded on Tuesday. Taylor went as far as to call photos and videos of the event “one of the most tone-deaf images of any American president in history.”
“Chandeliers blazing in the East Room… sesame-crusted sea bass on the white plates… the president in a tuxedo, smiling behind a gaudy gilded eagle, telling the room he would have packed in a thousand more of them if only his hand-designed ballroom were finished… and Trump almost winking as he promised Xi Jinping a late-night stroll to be the first to set foot on the construction site,” Taylor wrote.