For anyone who tuned into President Donald Trump’s highly anticipated summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping Thursday, you likely saw, or felt, quite a bit of unease on stage.
Given the ongoingglobaltensionsbetween the two world superpowers, that shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise.
What may come as a bit more of a surprise, however, were the roiling tensions behindthe celebratory scenes.
The New York Postreported that “chaos” erupted all around the fringes of Trump’s summit with Xi.
The first major incident that occurred happened during Trump’s morning meeting with Xi. When the doors were opened for the Chinese press, they — quite literally — stampeded inside.
Amid the chaos, a female White House staffer was knocked over and trampled. Thankfully, the staffer avoided any serious injuries, though she was bruised and shaken. The entire ordeal prompted the American side of this summit to vociferously protest the behavior of the Chinese press corps.
You can view a part of that incident below, courtesy of the BBC (the final 20 minutes does a good job of capturing the early morning chaos):
Later, in the afternoon, there was a tense standoff between groups at China’s Temple of Heaven, a historical complex of imperial religious Confucian buildings.
The White House press pool was there ahead of the two world leaders (Trump and Xi’s morning meeting apparently ran long), and were stopped by Chinese officials, who demanded that a Secret Service agent assigned to the group give up his firearm.
The agent refused, the group refused to leave without the agent, and Chinese officials refused to leave without the agent’s gun. This reportedly lasted for half an hour.
Source: VidNews » Feed
