Last week, Donald Trump pulled out all the stops for Chinese President Xi Jinping.
This marked Xi’s first White House visit in more than a decade, so Trump pulled every lever he could to create a memorable impression. The scene included a red carpet, a military flyover, and a formal greeting on the tarmac.
Then, as the guests kept mingling at a black-tie dinner, Trump produced a surprise tied to a moment he can’t escape.
Two uniformed service members drew a gold cloth away from a tall display in the corner of the East Room. The moment appeared as though the president was unveiling a masterwork while the room rose to applaud.
The gift presented to Xi was a polished, bronze version of the very creature that had once made Trump recoil on camera.
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The moment occurred on Thursday, Sept. 24, during the state dinner honoring Xi Jinping and his wife, Peng Liyuan. For most of the day, Trump lavished praise on what he called a “truly great friendship” with Xi. By dinner, he claimed that the two countries had “never gotten along better.”
Then he announced a present he said he and Melania had personally helped design. It was a bald eagle.
This particular eagle was not alive, thankfully. The three-foot-tall bronze sculpture featured its wings spread wide as it perched on a twisting branch.
Trump credited “an extraordinary American artist, one of the greatest in the world,” though he did not name the sculptor. He added that the piece was “designed in personal collaboration with Melania and myself.”
“The bald eagle is a national symbol of the United States and an embodiment of the free and soaring spirit of America,” he said. “And we hope it will find a nice place, a wonderful place, in Beijing.”
Some viewers on social media zoomed in on the base and insisted the eagle appeared to be clutching a snake. “Is the eagle holding a snake?” one person asked.
That didn’t stop the jokes, as one commenter quipped, “Trump always knows how to piss people off.”
One observer noted that Xi was born in 1953, the Year of the Snake, suggesting that whoever picked the gift either didn’t understand Chinese culture or had a less-than-friendly intention. Xi later added a community note clarifying that the eagle was landing on a branch and not attacking anything.
If the gift felt familiar, it’s because it nods to a moment Trump rarely mentions. “Guess we now know what happened to that eagle,” someone remarked.
Back in 2015, Time photographed Trump as the runner-up for its Person of the Year. The honor went to Stateswoman and former German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The shoot took place in his Trump Tower office and featured a live bald eagle named Uncle Sam.
When the clip resurfaced earlier this year, a viewer joked that the bird “almost knocked the wig off.”
Footage shows the eagle perched on Trump’s forearm, constantly angling its beak toward his face.
That prompted Trump to ask, “How does my hair look?” Later, when he reached for something near the bird’s stand, Uncle Sam suddenly flapped and lunged.
The president stepped back as the handler intervened. He described the eagle as “seriously dangerous, but beautiful.” Many viewers thought, “Are you kidding me?” and “It was all good until the eagle messed with the hair.”
It also resurfaced just two months after Trump shared a Truth Social post claiming a bald eagle he spotted had been killed by wind turbines. A community note clarified that the bird pictured was actually a falcon killed in Israel in 2017.
Xi Jinping now has a bronze version of the bird to bring home. Whether it ends up in a prominent place in Beijing or languishes in a storage closet, Atlanta seems to have emerged from the summit with the more tangible prize. Its new residents, two pandas, are furry and unlikely to lunge at anyone.
Xi’s side of the exchange touched down closer to home for Atlanta. He announced that two giant pandas, Ping Ping and Fu Shuang, would arrive at Zoo Atlanta “in a few days,” calling them an “envoy of friendship,” according to The Hill. The zoo hasn’t hosted pandas since their predecessors were returned to China in 2024.
Not everyone was impressed with the trade: “Yes, Trump clearly outmatched Xi. A gaudy gold-plated statue of a bird in exchange for two live pandas, not one but two! A true genius.”
“We get two whole pandas and they only get a small statue of an eagle???” another joked.
The bald-eagle gift exchange has become a Trump hallmark. Xi is just the latest world leader to receive one, according to The New York Times.
In the previous year, Trump sent a bald eagle sculpture to Polish President Karol Nawrocki as an inauguration gift. Scottish First Minister John Swinney also received an eagle figurine during one of Trump’s visits to Scotland.
President Trump gave Xi Jinping a gift: a statue of an eagle grasping a snake.
🐍 🦅
😎🍿 pic.twitter.com/qln5yqn5UQ— Iwona C (@IwonaC735474) September 25, 2026
