Airstrike On Syria Was Trump's 'After-Dinner Entertainment' At Mar-A-Lago, Wilbur Ross Says

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross Monday characterized the U.S. airstrikes on Syria early in April as “after-dinner entertainment” for President Donald Trump, while speaking Monday at the Milken Institute Global Conference at The Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California.

During the speech, Ross recalled the scene with the president at Mar-a-Lago on April 6, when the Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit was interrupted by the missile strike on Syria and Trump explained the incident to Jinping.

“Just as dessert was being served, the president explained to Mr. Xi he had something he wanted to tell him, which was the launching of 59 missiles into Syria,” Ross said. “It was in lieu of after-dinner entertainment.”

Ross continued joking about the strike and added: “The thing was, it didn’t cost the president anything to have that entertainment.”

Read: Ivanka Trump Influenced Her Father To Conduct Airstrike In Syria

After the airstrike in Syria last month, the president also spoke in his own expressive way about how he shared the news with the Chinese president during their meeting at Mar-a-Lago.

“I was sitting at the table. We had finished dinner. We’re now having dessert. And we had the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake that you’ve ever seen, and President Xi was enjoying it,” Trump told Fox News Business host Maria Bartiromo last month. “I said, ‘We’ve just launched 59 missiles heading to Iraq and I wanted you to know this.’ And he was eating his cake. And he was silent,” Trump added.

Bartiromo reminded the president that the country was Syria, not Iraq. Trump’s carelessness had gained a lot of social media attention then.

The United States fired 59 Tomahawk missiles on April 6 into the government-controlled Shayrat air base in Syria. The move was in retaliation to the deadly chemical gas attack against civilians, allegedly conducted by Syrian President Bashar Assad in Idlib province April 4, which left over 100 people dead and 300 wounded.

"Tonight I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched," the president announced April 6 from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, where he was meeting with the Chinese president. "It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons."

His commerce secretary, Ross, is a billionaire financier who was speaking Monday at an event hosted by the Milken Institute, a California think tank. While having lunch with David Rubenstein, co-CEO of the Carlyle Group, Ross spoke about how he felt about his first time doing public service, according to Variety.

“I’ve been heartened,” he said. “I thought the quality of people in the government was not as high as it has turned out to be. There are actually quite a lot of very good, very serious, very intelligent people wanting to do their best. It’s just they’ve been trapped in a fundamentally dysfunctional system.”

Trump’s tax cut proposal had gained spotlight in the business community at this year’s conference at the institute. Rubenstein asked Ross whether it was realistic to think that a tax plan would be passed this year.

“I certainly hope so,” he said. “God knows Congress has debated the issue enough times. It’s really a question of, ‘Is there the willpower to do it?’ If the Republican side can get itself unified, then it will work, even if the Democrats remain as determined as they seem to be to block any kind of progress.”