In an interview that aired Wednesday on Fox Business, President Trump was asked by Maria Bartiromo whether he had planned to strike Syria during his dinner with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Trump proceeded to set the scene:
Trump: I was sitting at the table. We had finished dinner. 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. 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. And I said, “Mr. President, let me explain something to you.” This was during dessert. ‘We’ve just fired 59 missiles,’ —all of which hit, by the way. Unbelievable, from, you know, hundreds of miles away. All of which hit. Amazing.
Bartiromo: Unmanned? Brilliant.
Trump: It’s so incredible. It’s brilliant. It’s genius.
It’s brilliant. It’s incredible. It’s genius. It’s war described in precisely the manner a schoolchild would relay the details of a field trip to a science museum. Food, of course, figures largely. Trump went on.
Trump: So what happens is I said, “We’ve just launched 59 missiles heading to Iraq.”
Bartiromo: What … you … heading to Syria.
Trump: Yes. “Heading toward Syria. And I want you to know that.” Because I didn’t want him to go home. We were almost finished. It was a full day in Palm Beach. We’re almost finished and—what does he do, finish his dessert and go home and then they say, “You know, the guy you just had dinner with just attacked a country?”
Bartiromo: How did he react?
Trump: So he paused for 10 seconds and then he asked the interpreter to please say it again. I didn’t think that was a good sign. And 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.
After this, Trump presumably returned happily to his cake, which, according to that night’s menu, matches the description of Mar-a-Lago’s signature Trump Chocolate Cake provided by Caity Weaver in a piece for GQ last year. A slice is typically served with “four dots” of vanilla sauce. It’s also accompanied by a scoop of dark chocolate sorbet and a “diamond” of white chocolate. The white chocolate is stamped TRUMP.
