US republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said in a TV interview that if he had his way, Chinese President Xi Jinping wouldn't be getting a state dinner during his visit to Washington in September, but rather a McDonald's Big Mac. Well, a Double Big Mac.
The remarks came amid an exchange between the Trumpster and Bill O'Reilly on a Monday evening airing of "The O'Reilly Factor".
The Daily Caller provides the transcript:
Bill O’Reilly: Two people coming to the United States of note in September, the Pope, okay, and the president of China is coming, a man named Xi Jinping. Do you know him? I have never heard who he is. But he is the president…
Donald Trump: Very smart.
O’Reilly: He is coming over. He is getting a big dinner free at the White House and addressing the U.N. If you were president of would you be throwing him a dinner?
Trump: I would not be throwing him a dinner, we’ve had this conversation. I would get him a McDonald’s hamburger and say ‘You will get down to work because you can’t continue to devalue.’ You know, we will give him a state dinner and what he has done is sucked all of our jobs and he has sucked the money right out of our country.
O’Reilly: Again, he hasn’t done it. U.S. companies do it. They’re doing it.
Trump: No, it’s our system.
O’Reilly: So, you would be confrontational with the Chinese? You are saying look,’I’m not giving you a dinner, here is a Big Mac’? Is that what you are going to do?
Trump: I would give them probably a double sized Big Mac. Look, it’s not so much the companies. It’s our government that allowed China to do that to us.
O’Reilly: I don’t buy that for a second.
Trump: I do 100%, Bill.
But that is not to say that Trump doesn't like Xi. Actually, he said he'd get along with the Chinese leader "very well", after commenting that the biggest imbalance in the "trade wars" between the US and China is that "their leaders are intelligent" and "[America's] aren't".
Of course, Trump's list of grievances with China is long and he's not shy about openly airing them on television. Just the next day, he managed to make headlines for his China-related comments when he attempted to imitate Asian investors using broken English.
"Negotiating with Japan, negotiating with China, when these people walk into the room, they don't say, 'Oh hello, how's the weather, so beautiful outside, isn't it lovely? How are the Yankees doing? Oh they are doing wonderful, great,' " he said while speaking in Iowa.
"They say, 'We want deal.'"
Deep down Trump loves China, though. He's already explained this during his 2016 presidential announcement using some baffling sports analogies.
