Trump in bonkers boast reveals he told Xi 'we spy like hell on China'

US President Donald Trump, during his recent trip to Beijing, apparently boasted to Chinese President Xi Jinping that the US is better at spying than China. The POTUS, as per reports, even confessed that American spooks have targeted China in ways which they cannot even fathom. Trump made the revelation while speaking to journalists aboard Air Force One en route to Washington.

'We spy like hell on them, too'

Aboard Air Force One, Trump was asked if he had questioned Xi about China's alleged cyberattacks on the US. "I did. And he talked about attacks we did in China. You know, what they do, we do too. We spy like hell on them, too," said the US president.

"I told him, 'We do a lot of stuff to you that you don't know about," he added. When pressed further, Trump said, "I'm talking about spying. The question was asked of me yesterday, I guess, 'What about the fact that China is spying?' I said, ‘Well, it's one of those things because we spy like hell on them, too'."

A 'double-edged sword'

Trump was also asked whether he was worried about China secretly inserting malicious code into critical American infrastructure, a concern US intelligence agencies have repeatedly flagged as a major national security threat. “You don’t know that,” Trump said. “I’d like to see it, but it’s very possible that they do.”

“I told them, ‘We do a lot of stuff to you that you don’t know about, and you are doing stuff to us that we probably do know about'," he said, adding, "But we do plenty. It’s a double-edged sword."

Public bravado, private caution

While Trump projected relative calm publicly, reports from journalists travelling with him suggested his staff operated under an entirely different level of concern. According to accounts from reporters aboard Air Force One, US officials confiscated all Chinese-issued badges, pins and devices before passengers re-boarded. At the same time, staff reportedly relied on burner phones during the China trip.

Some were allegedly instructed to leave devices behind or destroy temporary phones rather than risk surveillance vulnerabilities.

"Nothing from China allowed on the plane," one White House correspondent reported.