Trump had a helicopter landing pad built on the White House South Lawn and has spent the week telling people it will impress Xi Jinping, who arrives in Washington for a state visit. Trump calls the pad a "work of art." The AP photographed a worker finishing it on Tuesday 15 September. Trump spent the same week telling voters that the Democrats are the communists.
Trump told the Republican midterm convention in Dallas that communism is the greatest threat the United States has ever faced. "It's going to be a communist country if they win," he said. He closed on the promise: "America has beaten communism before, and we will beat it again."
Trump has one regret. "I can tell you this: It's too bad we don't have the ballroom open," he said Friday. Trump has floated naming that ballroom the "Great Hall of the United States." Xi receives his guests in the Great Hall of the People.
Trump has paid Xi a decade of compliments, his own Republicans have begun asking who really owns the means of production in Washington, and he once had a far cheaper plan for hosting the man.
Trump's White House has taken government stakes in more than 30 companies, including Westinghouse and Intel. Sen. Rand Paul put the question on X: "If socialism is government owning the means of production, wouldn't the government owning part of Intel be a step toward socialism?" Rep. Jim Himes told Treasury Secretary Bessent he could "think of no administration in the last 50 years that is quite as communist as the Trump administration." Trump answered that plainly: "I will make deals like that for our Country all day long."
