‘Xi didn’t even flinch’: The internet is having a field day with Trump and Xi Jinping’s very different reactions to a bomber flyover

President Donald Trump came to Joint Base Andrews prepared, with a 100-foot red carpet, a 21-person honor guard, and a flyover by two B-1 bombers, according to PBS. It was a rare planeside welcome, with Trump greeting Chinese President Xi Jinping on the tarmac rather than waiting for him at the White House.

When Xi arrived, the bombers came over just as the American anthem was wrapping up. Trump’s salute dropped as he ducked, teeth clenched at the deafening sound above. Xi, meanwhile, barely changed his posture in the footage. His gaze rose to track the jets for a moment, then came back down.

As you’d expect, it took almost no time for the side-by-side to become a meme template on social media. This post, which has racked up a whopping 16.5 million views as of this writing, shows the moment Trump flinched.

Another account reposted the clip in higher quality. “Damn, President Xi didn’t even flinch at the flyover greeting,” the user wrote, before mocking Trump for his involuntary reaction.

Some outlets interpreted the maneuver as a way to intimidate or impress Xi, while others, including IBTimes, questioned whether the reaction pointed to the 80-year-old’s health, though nothing in the footage establishes that. The Daily Beast said the White House did not respond to its request for comment.

Why did President Trump wince when Xi was unmoved?

Not everyone sees weakness in the wince. Writing for aviation-experience company MiGFlug, Joseph Duncan argued that the reaction says more about the aircraft than the man. “It is an auditory reflex,” he wrote.

Indeed, according to the Air Force’s own fact sheet, each B-1B runs on four General Electric F101-GE-102 engines that produce more than 30,000 pounds of thrust apiece with afterburner. A two-plane pass means eight of those engines at once.  

There’s no established convention on the use of aircraft for welcome ceremonies, but they appear to have become a fixture under Trump, whose administration staged a similar flyover for Vladimir Putin’s arrival in Alaska in 2025.