Trump has been reduced to crawling to China – it’s humiliating

But what was really striking was to see Trump – the self-proclaimed most powerful man in the world, the scourge of foreign leaders visiting the Oval Office – being so chummy with the head of the Chinese Communist Party.

“We had a great meeting – and he has a great interest in granite,” Trump told a group of reporters including myself during the impromptu tour of the helipad on the White House lawn, which is made out of the long-lasting stone. Questions about Iran and Taiwan went unanswered.

“He’s an expert on stone, aside from many other things, and he loves good granite.”

Trump has long had a fondness for stone-faced autocrats, openly expressing admiration for their powers and seeking their approval even as he lambasts Washington’s allies.

But this was different. This was Trump as the eager-to-please friend, or even the besotted suitor. This – whisper it quietly – was Trump being desperate.

It was a far cry from the Trump who returned to the White House 20 months ago in a blaze of executive power. Where was the Trump who bullied Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky in front of the cameras? Where was the Trump who even a few months ago was happy to compare his powers to those of Mao, Hitler and Stalin? 

The new Trump has come across as an increasingly diminished figure in recent weeks.

Trump’s ill-conceived Iran war is dragging the Republican Party down in the polls ahead of November’s midterm elections. Foreign leaders have learned to call his bluff and his speech to the United Nations General Assembly was a curiously muted affair.

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And as Trump hosted Xi Jinping, the hints of desperation grew stronger. Trump became the first US leader to travel to Andrews Air Force base for the visit of a non-papal foreign leader since 1962. But as a B-1 bomber roared over the red carpet ceremony in what was meant to be a show of American military might, Xi remained stone-faced – while Trump visibly winced.

Then there was the fact that this new Trump kept touching Xi throughout the visit. 

“Who is that? I don’t recognize him!” quipped Trump as he pointed to a photo in the West Wing of a previous meeting between the two leaders, before patting the Chinese leader’s arm – a gesture he repeated throughout the visit.

He then quickly added: “We have a lot of respect for you.”

Yet much of the visit didn’t even appear on US television, in a major blow to a former reality star who obsessively watches TV. The main US networks refused to film most of Xi’s trip in solidarity with journalists from CNN, MS NOW and Politico that he had banned from the White House a few days earlier.

Meanwhile, Trump’s desire to show off gave Xi access to some of the most sensitive areas of the US presidential bubble.

Like a child with a new toy, Trump brought the Chinese leader aboard his new Marine One helicopter on the impromptu helipad tour.

Then after the grand state dinner Trump said he was going to give the head of America’s main superpower rival a look at the construction site of his new White House ballroom.

This is the same site that Trump has described as a “military-complex-slash ballroom” with layers of top secret underground facilities and a drone port on the roof.

It was a remarkable turnaround for a man who spent his first presidential term raging against China, first because of trade and then because of the Covid pandemic.

The summit produced little in the way of concrete results. There were no policy announcements on big issues including trade and AI. China said it was sending two pandas to a US zoo, but the zoo had already announced that in April.

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The aim, it appeared, was for the spectacle to outweigh the substance.

But ultimately Trump and Xi may have got what they wanted from the summit after all. The two leaders, both students of great-power politics, had stressed how important it was to continue the dialogue between the rising power and the old empire.

They announced two more summits later this year – even if they promise to be as vanilla as the “vanilla cremeux with White House honey ice cream” served at the state dinner.

Trump still got to strut his stuff on the world stage. The summit was also a distraction from Iran, a war that bores and frustrates him.

Xi too may have got what he needs, too. China’s priority has been to manage what promised in Trump’s first year in particular to be a highly volatile relationship with an unpredictable US president.

Xi left the summit having made no major concessions, while kicking the can on key issues down the road until their next meeting at a summit in the Chinese city of Shenzen in November.

Jonathan Czin of the Brookings Institution in Washington said the fact Xi decided to come to Washington at all demonstrated “how much progress they feel like they’ve made in terms of managing Trump and putting him in a box over the past year.”

Czin added at a recent briefing that “from Xi’s perspective, it’s useful for Trump to think that they’re buddies, and to focus on the bonhomie, because that buys him time.”

Time is something Xi, 73, still has on his side. In 2027, Xi is expected to extend his iron grip on China into a fourth term at the Communist Party’s national congress. 

But in just over two years the 80-year-old Trump’s era will – barring an assault on the US Constitution – be over.