CNN’s Jake Tapper aired a 2015 clip of then-candidate Donald Trump criticizing Barack Obama’s state dinner for Xi Jinping, saying he’d serve Xi a McDonald’s hamburger and “get down to work.” Trump has since hosted Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, for a White House state dinner.
On CNN’s The Lead, Tapper told Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind.) that Trump had changed his position, adding that people change their views after being elected president. He then asked what the “lavish rolling out of the red carpet” had accomplished.
Trump met Xi on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews on Wednesday. The article describes it as the first time since 1962 that a U.S. president had met a world leader there, excluding the pope. Uniformed U.S. military personnel unfurled a red carpet, with some getting on their hands and knees to adjust it.
