The President swept off to Beijing to court Xi Jinping. Back Stateside, it was non-Presidential motorcades, video games, and a languid vibe at the White House.
By Antonia Hitchens
Source photograph by Chip Somodevilla / Getty
The endless motorcades and wail of sirens in Washington this week made it seem as if the President were travelling non-stop around the city, or receiving a bevy of foreign dignitaries. As it happened, it was National Police Week, and the ceremonial convoys were carrying the families of police officers, from around the country, who had been killed in the line of duty. Donald Trump was leaving for China. Some supporters expressed concern for his safety. (“I don’t feel good about President Trump going to China tomorrow,” Glenn Beck wrote on X. “I pray everything goes well, but I wish I trusted the Secret Service.”) Sebastian Gorka, Trump’s counterterrorism chief, announced that Trump kept a letter in the Resolute Desk in which, in the President’s words, he provided “very firm instructions” for what Vice-President J. D. Vance should do if a foreign nation like China were to “take him out.”
Quotidian rhythms continued. On Tuesday evening, on the steps of the Capitol, House members made their way down the stairs after casting their votes, some alone, others flanked by staff or trailed by a Hill reporter. A line of cars had materialized to collect them; it was like a school-pickup line. “How was your recess?” I heard someone ask. (Congress was on break last week.) “Where do you normally pick the congresswoman up?” a staffer said into her phone, trying to find her boss’s driver. One member lit a cigar.
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