Trump’s master class in handling Xi — and why the pageantry was the point The Beltway press scored the three-day state visit the way it always scores a Trump–Xi meeting: pomp over progress, spectacle over substance, two months of trade truce and a pair of pandas. That scorecard is not wrong on the ledger. It is wrong about the game that is being played. Donald Trump did not host Xi Jinping this week to close a grand bargain on Taiwan, rare earths, or “super intelligence.” He