Carlos Barria/Reuters
Donald Trump with Chinese President Xi Jinping
President Donald Trump said that he told Chinese President Xi Jinping about the US strike on Syria over chocolate cake at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida last Thursday night.Trump recounted how he told Xi that the military had just struck a Syrian government air base with 59 cruise missiles after Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo asked him to describe the interaction in an interview that aired Wednesday morning.
"You have no idea how many people want to hear the answer to this. I have watched speculation for three days now on what that was like," Trump said.
"When did you tell him? Before dessert?" Bartiromo asked.
"I will tell you - only because you've treated me so good for so long, I have to right?" Trump said, to which Bartiroma laughed and thanked the president.
Trump said he and Xi had finished dinner and were winding down a day-long meeting in Palm Beach.
"We're now having dessert. And we had the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake that you've ever seen and President Xi was enjoying it," Trump said. "And I was given the message from the generals that the ships are locked and loaded, what do you do? And we made a determination to do it, so the missiles were on the way."
Trump mentioned that the interaction occurred over dessert four times during his two minute response.
"I said we've just launched 59 missiles heading to Iraq," Trump said, before Bartiroma asked him if he had meant to say they were heading to Syria. "Yes - heading toward Syria, and I wanted you to know that."
Adding to the suspense, Trump said he wasn't sure Xi had received the news well when Xi was silent and then asked his translator to repeat the information.
"I didn't think that was a good sign," Trump said.
But Xi apparently told Trump that he "agreed with" the attack.
"He said to me, anybody that uses gases -- you could almost say or anything else -- but anybody that was so brutal and uses gases to do that to young children and babies, it's OK ... he was OK with it, he was OK," Trump said.