Trump Gives Xi a Tour of Marine One and New White House Helipad

President Donald Trump gave visiting Chinese leader Xi Jinping a personal tour of some of his favourite White House projects on Thursday, ushering him aboard the Marine One helicopter and showing off a new granite landing pad built for it, along with the construction site of a future ballroom.

Xi was making his first state visit to the United States in 11 years. The two leaders had a long list of difficult subjects before them, including the risks of unchecked artificial intelligence, Taiwan, trade tensions over tariffs and the war in Iran, a country with which Beijing has close economic ties.

After about 90 minutes in the Oval Office, Trump walked his counterpart out to the South Lawn, where the helicopter had been parked in advance on the new granite landing area. As the leaders approached, a Marine opened the door and saluted while Trump and Xi climbed aboard with a small group of aides and translators. They looked around and spoke with the pilots for several minutes, though the aircraft never took off.

Trump also gestured towards the ballroom he is building where the East Wing once stood. Xi peered at two large concrete towers under construction as Trump watched his expression closely while describing the project, out of earshot of a group of reporters brought in for the occasion.

"We had a great meeting and he has great interest in granite," Trump said after giving Xi a first-hand look. "He's an expert on stone, aside from many other things -- and he loves good granite," he added.

Trump pointed with evident enthusiasm to the large letters spelling out the Seal of the President of the United States on the pad's surface. He touched Xi's arm repeatedly during the tour, and the Chinese leader returned the gesture once.

The president also used the visit to highlight photographs he has hung inside the West Wing, images of himself around the world framed in gold. According to a social media video posted by a White House aide, Trump showed Xi a picture of the two of them taken during his visit to Beijing in May. "Who is that? I don't recognize him!" Trump joked, adding that the photograph had been up for a year and that there was "a lot of respect" for Xi.

A handout image released by the Chinese Embassy showed Trump also displaying the wall-mounted copy of the Declaration of Independence he has installed in the Oval Office.

The tour began even before their Oval Office session, when Trump walked Xi past a row of presidential portraits installed along the colonnade between the White House residence and the West Wing, pausing to gesture at his own picture. Two portraits of Trump hang there, one for each of his terms. Between them, in place of a picture of President Joe Biden, Trump has hung a depiction of an autopen signing his Democratic predecessor's name -- a reference to his frequent claim that Biden was not up to the job by the end of his term. An aide's video showed Trump pointing to the three images and saying, "Trump, and then Trump, and this is the autopen," as Xi laughed. "It's Biden," Trump said, slapping Xi on the arm.