Donald Trump’s White House reportedly made extensive accommodations for Chinese President Xi Jinping during his Washington visit, amid claims that the 73-year-old leader was dealing with physical difficulties and limited stamina.

The two leaders appeared to strike up a warm rapport in public, including at an elaborate State Dinner hosted for Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan.

However, a new report says a series of unusual requests from Xi’s team consumed significant time during the summit. The Wall Street Journal reported that the arrangements were made behind the scenes.

According to the report, the measures focused on the Chinese leader’s need for regular rest and concerns surrounding his physical condition, fueling renewed speculation about his health.

People involved in organizing the summit said Xi’s schedule was structured around how long he could stand or walk comfortably, as well as the points at which he would need to pause for breaks.

Chinese officials reportedly requested a private “hold room” in the West Wing where Xi could rest between engagements. Only his wife was said to have been permitted to remain with him there.

Dennis Wilder, a former senior China director at the National Security Council, described the request as highly unusual and without precedent.

The reported need for additional rest also led to the cancellation of a working lunch with Trump on September 24, creating a five-hour gap in Xi’s two-day Washington itinerary.

Trump and Xi had previously held a comparable meeting when the American president traveled to Beijing in May.

Xi also had no public engagements beyond the official summit on the evening of his arrival. He spent only about 10 minutes at the National Archives, despite US officials having prepared for a longer visit.

Some viewers closely watching his arrival in Washington noted that Xi appeared to grip his wife’s hand tightly while walking down the aircraft stairs, interpreting the gesture as a possible need for additional support.

The Daily Mail said it contacted the White House and a spokesperson for President Xi for comment.

Speculation about Xi’s health has circulated for years. Unverified claims have variously suggested that he suffered a heart attack, was diagnosed with cancer or survived a stroke.

More recently, conspiracy theories intensified during last month’s BRICS summit after video footage appeared to show Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi pausing during a speech to check on Xi.

The footage shows Modi interrupting his opening remarks and turning toward Xi after what appeared to be a commotion nearby.

“Is it okay?” Modi is heard repeatedly asking the translator accompanying the Chinese leader, while several people who appeared to be aides or staff members moved toward Xi.

Later in the day, President Xi skipped the gala dinner hosted by Modi for leaders of the BRICS nations – where ally Vladimir Putin was also in attendance – spurring commentary about his ill health.

It later emerged that the exchange at the summit was because Xi’s translator earpiece had broken. 

However, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal, he skipped the gala because he was unwell, with Foreign Minister Wang Yi attending in his place.

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Theories previously reached a peak in 2012, after President Xi mysteriously disappeared for two weeks when he was still the country’s vice-president – fueling rumors he had potentially been the subject of an attempted assassination. 

 In July 2024, a photo of the Chinese leader supposedly wincing in pain went viral on social media, with people claiming that he had suffered a stroke.

It turned out the image was taken from four months before, and the Chinese president was merely reacting to something he had drunk while at the National People’s Congress.

In September 2025, a hot mic caught Putin discussing immortality during a summit with President Xi and Kim Jong Un in Beijing to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War.

The pair were heard chatting about the possibility of achieving immortality with organ transplants and advanced medical procedures.

Even before Xi became president, his health was a popular topic of speculation in the country, particularly among critics of the communist regime.

This is despite the fact that the high level of internet censorship in China means that anything deemed a criticism of President Xi or the Chinese Communist Party is blocked or immediately removed.

Leaders’ health is typically considered a state secret in China.  

Trump pulled out all the stops for his visit with Xi as the two spent much of his time discussing the toughest issues facing their nations. 

The dramatic spectacle began the moment the Chinese president and his wife touched down at Joint Base Andrews.

As the leaders stood on the tarmac alongside rows of soldiers positioned in front of F-35 fighter jets and Air Force One, a screaming flyover shattered the air overhead.

The deafening roar caught Trump off guard, causing him to visibly wince while a stoic, stone-faced Xi didn’t even flinch.

Breaking more than a decade of presidential protocol, the Trumps personally greeted the Chinese delegation on the tarmac – marking the first time a sitting US president has met a foreign leader at an airport in over 11 years.

A grinning Trump also celebrated an immediate PR win when Xi announced Beijing is sending two giant pandas, Ping Ping and Fu Shuang, to Zoo Atlanta within days, continuing the famous ‘panda diplomacy’ tradition sparked by Richard Nixon’s 1972 trip.

That was followed by the State Dinner, a lavish black-tie affair in the historic East Room that stands as one of the most star-studded evenings of the administration, offering a glitzy opportunity to smooth over notoriously fierce geopolitical friction with the superpower.

Trump heaped praise on Xi, with whom he says he has developed a ‘truly great friendship’ over his decade in politics.

However, the two nations remain divided on the war in Iran and are still grappling to find common ground on trade and how to best navigate the jarring advances of artificial intelligence.

Trump had made clear he wanted to impress Xi with the visit. 

The Republican President made sure construction of a new helicopter landing pad on the White House’s South Lawn was completed before the visit and he met Xi and his wife on Wednesday evening when they flew into Joint Base Andrews outside Washington.

The Daily Mail contacted Xi’s office for comment. 

David Rivera, a former Miami congressman and longtime friend of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, was sentenced Friday to 10 years in prison for his role in a covert $50 million lobbying campaign carried out on behalf of Venezuela during the first Trump administration.

The Republican has been behind bars since a jury convicted him in May on every count, including failing to register as a foreign agent and conspiring to commit money laundering while working for the government of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Rivera, 61, sat stone-faced as US District Judge Melissa Damian condemned what she described as a betrayal of the mission he had built his life around. The judge said Rivera’s friends would almost certainly have viewed the case more harshly if the millions had come from Cuba rather than Venezuela, an allied government in Caracas.

“Nobody would accept that’s ok and I don’t think this is different,” Damian said. “There’s no dispute this money came from the Maduro regime.”

The seven-week trial provided a rare look at Miami’s role as a hub for foreign influence operations seeking to shape US policy toward Latin America. It also underscored the city’s complicated reputation as home to both staunch anti-communist activists and corruption within its large exile community.

Among those who testified were Rubio, President Donald Trump’s secretary of state, Texas Rep. Pete Sessions and a prominent Washington lobbyist. Each said they felt deceived after learning about Rivera’s enormous consulting agreement with a US-based affiliate of Venezuela’s state oil company, PDVSA.

Rivera’s attorneys intend to appeal the conviction and applied for a presidential pardon in June. He also faces additional federal charges in Washington, DC, stemming from a related foreign lobbying case.

Prosecutors said betrayal featured coded figures — ‘Sombrero’ and ‘Miss Clairol’

According to a 2022 indictment, then-Venezuelan Foreign Minister Delcy Rodríguez — now the country’s acting president — recruited Rivera to use his Republican connections to persuade the first Trump administration to soften its position and lift crippling sanctions on Venezuela.

As part of the campaign, Rivera and co-defendant Esther Nuhfer, a political consultant, attempted to leverage influential contacts, including Rubio and Sessions. Prosecutors said they wanted to restore relations with the incoming Trump administration and normalize ties even as Maduro’s government faced sanctions over serious human rights allegations.

Prosecutors argued that Rivera and Nuhfer concealed their lobbying because disclosure would have destroyed Rivera’s political career as a prominent anti-communist figure.

“The United States and the public were the true victims of this fraud,” Assistant US Attorney Roger Cruz said while seeking a severe sentence. “He used his position of trust — and betrayed it consistently and repeatedly.”

Prosecutors also alleged that Rivera created an encrypted chat group called MIA, short for Miami, to conceal his activities. His primary link to the Maduro government was Venezuelan media tycoon Raúl Gorrín, who was later charged in the US with bribing senior Venezuelan officials.

Participants used joking code names in their messages. Maduro was referred to as the “bus driver,” Sessions as “Sombrero,” Rodríguez as “The Lady in Red” and the lucrative payments as “La Luz,” or “The Light” in Spanish. Rubio was called “Miss Clairol,” a reference to the Spanish meaning of “rubio,” or blond, according to messages shown to jurors.

Defense said only missing paperwork made the $50 million contract illegal

At Friday’s sentencing hearing, Rivera’s lawyers reiterated their argument from trial: that the former congressman did not believe he was legally required to disclose his work.

They maintained that the three-month, $50 million agreement with Rivera’s one-person consulting firm was aimed at bringing oil giant ExxonMobil back to Venezuela. Such commercial activity is generally exempt from registration under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, they said.

“David Rivera does not deserve to die in prison because he failed to file a FARA registration,” defense attorney Ed Shohat told the court Friday. “If he had filed that paper, that form, everything he did, including the $50 million contract, which totally distorted this case, is perfectly legal.”

The defense argued that Rivera’s meetings with Rubio and Sessions were separate from the consulting work. Those discussions, attorneys said, focused on encouraging a change in Venezuela’s leadership toward a government less hostile to the United States — not on helping Maduro normalize relations with Washington.

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“There’s not one word in any chat, not one document, not one thing he did to help Nicolás Maduro,” Shohat said.

Prosecutors countered that Rivera used the contract with PDV USA, the New York-based affiliate, as a cover for unlawful lobbying on Venezuela’s behalf.

“This is a classic money laundering case,” Damian said Friday as she rejected Rivera’s request to reduce the federal sentencing-guidelines range.

Where did the money go? A luxury yacht, among other things

The partners tried to hide the work — backdating documents and coming up with sham agreements, like one to justify a wire transfer of $3.75 million to a South Florida company that maintained Gorrín’s luxury yacht, prosecutors said.

The political activity included setting up meetings for Rodríguez in New York, Caracas, Washington and Dallas.

As part of the effort, Rivera roped in Sessions, who later tried to broker a meeting for Rodríguez with the ExxonMobil executive who took over as CEO when Rex Tillerson became Trump’s first-term secretary of state.

After a secret meeting in Caracas with Maduro, Sessions also agreed to deliver a letter from the Venezuelan president to Trump.

The outreach quickly unraveled, however. Within six months of taking office, Trump sanctioned Maduro and labeled him a “dictator,” launching a “maximum pressure” campaign to unseat the president.

And now, nearly a decade later, Rodríguez has emerged as the second Trump administration’s trusted partner after the US military’s ousting of Maduro.

Rubio’s former housemate faced scandal before, but Cuban Americans support him

Before being elected to Congress in 2010, Rivera was a high-ranking Florida legislator and shared a Tallahassee home with Rubio, who eventually became the Florida House speaker.

Rivera faced earlier controversy, including allegations that he secretly funded a Democratic spoiler candidate in a 2012 congressional race.

Last year, federal prosecutors dropped that case after an appeals court threw out a sizable fine imposed by a lower court.

Rivera was also investigated — but never charged — for alleged campaign finance violations and a $1 million contract with a gambling company while serving in the Florida Legislature.

Despite all that, Rivera remains popular among Miami’s Cuban American establishment.

Friends of the former congressman, including the former president of Florida International University and Miami-Dade County’s supervisor of elections, packed the courtroom to show their support.

Sessions, in a letter seeking leniency that was read into the record by his chief of staff, said his former congressional colleague devoted decades to public service, much of it focused on defending liberty and democracy.

“I don’t think it’s productive for society by sending David away for a long, long time,” testified Liliana Ros, a longtime Miami GOP committee member.

Donald Trump said he feels “badly” for the seven Cornell fraternity members under investigation by New York Attorney General Letitia James, whom he accused of being “corrupt.”

The president renewed his attacks on James, repeating the controversial “Peekaboo” nickname he has used for her after New York Governor Kathy Hochul appointed her special prosecutor in the alleged gang-rape case.

On Thursday, Hochul, a Democrat, signed an executive order naming James to oversee the investigation into allegations that a woman was gang raped by seven fraternity members.

Trump had previously told reporters that he believed Cornell University would “do what’s right” in response to the allegations. But on Friday, he criticized Hochul’s decision to appoint James.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump wrote: “Why would the Governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, appoint a Corrupt Prosecutor, Letitia ‘Peekaboo’ James, to represent the State in the highly controversial Cornell University rape case?”

Critics have previously accused Trump’s use of the nickname of being racist, a claim he has denied.

Asked about the case again on Friday, Trump did not offer detailed comments about the people involved. He said, however, that he believed James would prevent the defendants from receiving fair treatment.

“Well, Letitia James is a corrupt person. She’s totally corrupt and I cannot imagine it, and I feel badly for whoever she’s looking at, because they won’t get a fair shake. Letitia James is a corrupt person,” Trump said.

The Daily Mail has contacted Hochul and James for comment.

James previously filed a civil lawsuit alleging that Trump’s business committed financial fraud. The case led to the president being fined more than $400 million, although the penalty was later voided as excessive.

Last October, James was federally indicted on allegations of bank fraud and making false statements. The case was dismissed a month later.

Trump had earlier said that, while he did not “know that much about it,” Cornell was a “fine school” and that he was sure the university would “do what’s right.”

Hochul said she had “lost faith” in the local investigation when she announced the appointment of a special prosecutor in the Cornell case.

“New information has raised serious questions about how this case was handled, and I’ve lost faith in the Tompkins County District Attorney’s ability to fairly oversee it,” Hochul said.

“The young woman at the center of this case deserves to know that every fact will be examined and justice pursued.”

Hochul’s decision followed the release of a transcript in which the alleged victim told Cornell police that she was “100 percent” certain she had been assaulted.

Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten has said his decision not to charge the seven alleged perpetrators at the time was based on the contents of Jane Doe’s signed 2024 statement.

But he told CBS News on Tuesday he had never before seen the transcript showing what Jane Doe told campus police. 

The District Attorney said he will now seek a copy of the transcript and follow up with Cornell police.

‘Nobody knows this information about the transcript and that gives me something to really dig into because that changes the landscape for me,’ he said.

Cornell officials, meanwhile, said its police department provided the results of the school’s investigation to the District Attorney’s Office as prosecutors reconsider whether to bring charges against the alleged rapists.

University officials have also said they agreed to undertake an independent investigation into its handling of the matter.

The case gained renewed attention after Jane Doe filed a civil suit on September 16.

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It alleges that Doe, then 20, arrived at the fraternity house on October 19, 2024, already heavily intoxicated following a night of drinking in Ithaca.

She alleges she was pressured to take ketamine and given marijuana and high-proof alcohol before being repeatedly sexually assaulted as additional fraternity members entered the room.

The complaint alleges seven men eventually participated and that Doe became ‘completely incapacitated.’ She says the ordeal continued until around 5.45am, when she lost consciousness.

It also claims that during the assault, one fraternity member posted to a ‘Chi Phi Actives’ Snapchat group that there was ‘free p***y’ upstairs, referring to Doe. 

‘Like you can walk in and whip it out,’ another member allegedly responded, according to a screenshot described in the filing. 

Doe reported the allegations to Cornell University Police on November 8 after friends encouraged her to come forward, according to the lawsuit.

Cornell temporarily suspended the fraternity and seven students that day.

The defendants have not all publicly responded to the allegations but no criminal charges have been filed.

Kretzschmar, Norris and Lopes have now publicly denied participating in the alleged sexual assaults or drug use described in the complaint.

Jeremy Saland, an attorney for defendant Scott Kretzschmar, said the alleged incident ‘did not happen.’

‘At bottom, Scott never sexually assaulted or even touched the plaintiff in any way. Period,’ Saland said.

‘We look forward to confronting the plaintiff in a court of law for her selfishly false claims with both the evidence and her own words.’

Defendant Scott Norris separately denied participating in sexual activity or drug use, while acknowledging sending one message cited in the complaint.

‘I did not participate in any sexual activity or drug use,’ Norris said. ‘I thoughtlessly engaged in Snapchat and briefly stopped in the room where misconduct happened but not when it happened.’

In 2024, Ingalls, Newell, Lee and Sarabia acknowledged having sexual contact with the woman but said that their interactions had been consensual. All men denied any wrongdoing during the Title IX investigation.

Cornell previously defended its handling of the situation, insisting it conducted a thorough investigation which resulted in expulsions and the fraternity being barred from campus.

For Doe, her attorney says the consequences have stretched far beyond the night at the center of the lawsuit.

He has claimed his client continues to suffer from anxiety, depression and sleepless nights and stopped attending Cornell following the alleged attack.

‘She is basically stalled, and her life is devoted to dealing with the trauma,’ Giuffra previously told the Daily Mail. ‘It’s like a constant, constant reminder.’

‘You could give her all the money in the world; nobody wants to have this as their story. Nobody wants to have this in their lives.’

The Daily Mail contacted James and Hochul for comment.