Watch: Xi Descends Into Laughter as Trump Shows off 'President Autopen' Picture in Place of Joe Biden's Portrait
White House aide Margo Martin posted a clip Thursday that was as funny as it was infuriating.
While giving Chinese President Xi Jinping a West Wing tour that included the White House “Presidential Walk of Fame,” President Donald Trump showed the portrait that depicts former President Joe Biden with an image of an autopen.
Xi laughed out loud and the room played along, but for Americans the moment was far more serious.
.@POTUS shows President Xi the Biden Autopen photo 🤣 https://t.co/L0PbjQe2Aj
— Margo Martin (@MargoMartin47) September 24, 2026
Elon Musk even joined in on the conversation by commenting on Martin’s post with a tears-of-laughter emoji.
@MargoMartin47 @POTUS 😂
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 24, 2026
Xi Jinping did not need a tour of the White House to see that Joe Biden was fading; he had dealt with him for years. Through successive summits, Beijing observed the shortened schedules, the tightly managed exits, and the aides directing the president toward the correct podium. Chinese intelligence files on American leaders are not compiled by cable-news producers. They are crafted by analysts whose sole job is to pinpoint strategic vulnerabilities.
And China knew Biden had plenty of them.
Americans know it, too. The special counsel’s report, the debate night that ended a candidacy, the autopen pardons, the staff who treated the presidency like a signature machine. That record has been reported.
Trump holding the picture is not subtle. It is the current occupant of the White House telling the Chinese leader that Washington acknowledges what Beijing already priced in.
“This is the autopen… it’s Biden.” 🤣
President Trump shows off the legendary Presidential Walk of Fame to President Xi. https://t.co/qUQEM6XoLj
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) September 24, 2026
Xi can laugh at four things at once.
First, Trump’s nerve. Few American presidents would walk a rival through the White House and stop at a portrait meant as a punchline. Xi gets the theater. He also gets that the man doing it is not the one who spent four years in a White House fog.
Second, the autopen presidency. If a machine can sign what a president cannot explain, the other side of the table updates its model. Treaties, waivers, export rules, and talking points still went out under Biden’s name. Xi did not have to believe the man in the Oval Office was running the shop. He only had to notice who was not stopping him.
Third, the advantage taken. While liberal American media outlets argued over whether it was rude to mention Biden’s age, China kept building ships, wiring the Global South, squeezing the Philippines, and waiting out Ukraine fatigue. A diminished counterpart is not a mystery to a dictator. It is a planning assumption.
Fourth, the cost to America. That is the laugh that should sting. The joke might be funny in the West Wing. It is less funny if the years of Biden drift show up in the Taiwan Strait, in fentanyl precursor traffic, in the rare-earth leverage, in the universities that sold research while pretending the Chinese Communist Party is a climate partner.
If you are running China, what is not to love about your biggest rival country spending a full presidential term insisting the emperor had clothes?
None of that requires a conspiracy memo. It requires a functioning memory. Biden’s decline was visible to voters who do not have intelligence briefings. It was visible to allied leaders who shortened meetings. It was certainly visible to Xi, who has never been in the business of granting the United States the benefit of the doubt.
The proper American response is not to scold Trump for being gauche. It is to stop pretending that the Chinese-American relationship during the Biden years was a normal negotiation between peers. China took the measure of the man and of the staff who hid him. Then it acted like a great power that had been given time.
Xi knows it. He took advantage of it. Americans know it. And Americans know they were taken advantage of.
Advertise with The Western Journal and reach millions of highly engaged readers, while supporting our work. Advertise Today.
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
