Donald Trump says he would have left G20 summit in China over Barack Obama's Air Force One plane 'snub'
Donald Trump has said he would have left the G20 summit over what he said was a show of Chinese "disrespect" to President Barack Obama upon his arrival.
Mr Obama did not receive a red carpet welcome, unlike other world leaders including Britain's Theresa May, when he landed in Hangzhou on Sunday morning.
The other leaders attending the summit had a red carpet laid on a rolling airport staircase. Mr Obama, however, used a smaller exit at the rear end of Air Force One.
Mr Trump jumped on the "snub" on Monday.
“They won't even give him stairs, proper stairs to get out of the airplane. You see that? They have pictures of other leaders who are … coming down with a beautiful red carpet. And Obama is coming down a metal staircase,” the Republican said at a round-table campaign event in Brook Park, Ohio.
“I’ve got to tell you, if that were me, I would say, ‘You know what, folks, I respect you a lot but close the doors, let's get out of here,’” he added. “It’s a sign of such disrespect.”
The Clinton campaign immediately responded that Mr Trump's outburst was an indicator of his "temperament". "Temperament Update: Trump would leave G-20 [meeting because] the staircase offended him," Jesse Ferguson, a Clinton spokesman tweeted.
Diplomatic sources in Beijing told The Telegraph that the US team would have likely requested to use its own stairs, rather than those offered by the Chinese.
It is not the first time that Mr Trump has claimed that Mr Obama receives a lack of "respect" by world leaders.
“The truth is they [other countries] don’t respect us. When President Obama landed in Cuba on Air Force One, no leader was there, nobody, to greet him. Perhaps an incident without precedent in the long and prestigious history of Air Force One.
"Then, amazingly, the same thing happened in Saudi Arabia. It’s called no respect," Mr Trump said in April, according to the Washington Post.
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