President Donald Trump presented Chinese President Xi Jinping with a custom-made bald eagle statue on Thursday, capping the first full day of Xi’s three-day state visit to Washington. The gift was announced during an evening state dinner at the White House, according to an account published by Breitbart News.
Trump described the sculpture as the work of an American artist and said it had been designed in collaboration with First Lady Melania Trump. “In that spirit of friendship, it’s my honor to present President Xi with a gift made by an extraordinary American artist, one of the greatest in the world, and designed in personal collaboration with Melania and myself,” the president said during the dinner.
He framed the bald eagle — the national bird and a longstanding symbol of the United States — as a gesture of goodwill between the two powers. “The bald eagle is a national symbol of the United States and an embodiment of the free and soaring spirit of America, and we hope it will find a nice place, a wonderful place in Beijing,” Trump added.
A Look Inside the Ballroom — Construction Dust and All
The statue was not the only item on the evening’s agenda. Before presenting the gift, Trump led Xi on a brief tour of the White House ballroom, which remains under construction. He then invited the assembled guests to see the space for themselves.
“As a special treat in honor of President Xi and Madame Peng, I’d like to invite everyone in the room to visit through that beautiful curtain in the back door,” Trump said. “It’s all lit up and it looks beautiful.”
The president noted that dinner guests would be the first members of the public to set foot in the unfinished room. “You’ll be the first people to step foot on that, and we’ll do that maybe after we’re finished with the entertainment tonight,” he said. “Anybody who wants to walk into a construction site that’s nice and clean and sparkling, it’s our honor to have you do so.”
The ballroom project has been a recurring theme in Trump’s public remarks about the White House grounds, and Thursday’s tour gave the visiting Chinese delegation a firsthand look at the work in progress, complete with the president’s own sales pitch to the room.
Talks at the White House Preceded the Dinner
According to NDTV, the two leaders used the day to discuss a range of issues, meeting at the White House earlier on Thursday before the state dinner. The evening event drew senior officials from both governments along with several prominent American business and technology leaders, NDTV reported.
The gift exchange unfolded during Xi’s three-day stay in Washington, a visit that represents one of the most closely watched diplomatic engagements of the year given the breadth of economic and security questions between the two countries. NDTV’s account noted that the leaders’ talks at the White House covered a broad set of topics, though the outlet did not detail specific agreements or outcomes from the discussions.
State dinners of this kind typically serve as both a ceremonial high point and a venue for informal diplomacy, and Thursday’s program followed that template: a working session during the day, followed by an evening of formal remarks, entertainment, and gift-giving in the East Room. Photographs from the dinner show Xi seated in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, Sept. 24, 2026.
The eagle statue now joins a long tradition of state gifts exchanged between American and Chinese leaders — objects chosen as much for their symbolic weight as for their craftsmanship. In this case, the symbol was unambiguous: the bird that appears on the Great Seal of the United States, offered as a token of friendship to a leader whose government has been both a rival and a counterpart to Washington for decades.
Trump’s remarks tied the gift directly to that theme, describing the eagle as an embodiment of the “free and soaring spirit of America,” and expressing the hope that it would occupy a prominent spot in Beijing. Whether it does, of course, is a matter for the Chinese government — but the presentation itself was the message, delivered in front of an audience of officials and business leaders from both countries.
For Xi, the Washington visit marks three days of high-level engagement with the Trump administration, with the state dinner as its centerpiece. The Chinese president’s schedule included the White House talks earlier in the day and the evening festivities alongside Madame Peng, with the ballroom tour and the eagle statue serving as the more unusual flourishes of an otherwise traditional diplomatic program.
The White House has not released further details about the artist commissioned for the statue or the specific materials used. Breitbart News reported that Trump described the piece as custom-made and personally designed in consultation with the first lady.
Source: www.breitbart.com — https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2026/09/25/trump-presents-chinese-president-xi-jinping-with-a-custom-made-bald-eagle-statue/