During Thursday's state banquet at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China's military band closed the evening by performing an instrumental rendition of the Village People's "Y.M.C.A." — President Donald Trump's signature rally anthem — because apparently even the Chinese Communist Party knows the playlist by now.
A Chinese military band. In full dress uniform. Playing disco. For the President of the United States. In the same building where Mao used to hold purge meetings. If that doesn't tell you everything you need to know about Trump's cultural dominance, nothing will.
The performance came at the end of a state dinner honoring Trump during his landmark visit to Beijing on May 14, 2026. According to the New York Post, a White House official confirmed that "YMCA" was part of the evening's official music program — along with "We Are the World," "Can You Feel the Love Tonight," and "America the Beautiful." So basically, China put together a playlist that sounds like a Trump rally crossed with a high school prom.
President Xi Jinping hosted the banquet and delivered a toast in which he said, per a New York Times translation, that the rejuvenation of China and Make America Great Again "went hand-in-hand." Sure, Xi. Hand-in-hand. Right up until we bring up that $11 billion arms package we authorized for Taiwan back in December.
Trump, for his part, called the evening a "magnificent welcome" — which is the diplomatic version of "Yeah, they know who the main character is."
The two presidents had met earlier Thursday for about two hours of talks covering trade, technology, Taiwan, and the ongoing situation in Iran. By Friday midday, Trump was expected to depart. But the real headline isn't the geopolitics. It's that China — a nation that controls what its own citizens can Google — voluntarily played the same song Trump dances to at every rally while doing his signature fist-pump shuffle.
Think about what that means for a second. Trump has been doing the YMCA dance since the 2020 presidential race. It's gone viral more times than anyone can count. His rally crowds go absolutely nuclear for it. And now a communist superpower has incorporated it into formal state protocol.
This is what cultural soft power looks like, folks. Barack Obama got a Nobel Prize for existing. Joe Biden got lost on a stage. Trump got a foreign military band to play disco at a state dinner.
Trump also invited Xi Jinping to visit the White House in September — because when you're negotiating with the second-largest economy on earth, you do it face-to-face, not through anonymous leaks to CNN.
The whole scene was peak Trump. The man walks into the capital of our biggest geopolitical rival, sits across from Xi Jinping, hammers out trade discussions — and then the hosts close the night by literally playing his theme song. Every Democratic strategist who spent 2024 calling him a "threat to democracy" just watched Beijing roll out the red carpet and cue the disco ball.
We've had presidents who got standing ovations abroad. We've had presidents who got polite applause. Trump is the first president whose entrance music has been adopted by a foreign government.
Somewhere in a retirement home, Jimmy Carter is watching this on a tiny TV and wondering why nobody ever played "Georgia on My Mind" for him at a state dinner. The answer, Jimmy, is the same reason nobody does the Carter dance at rallies. There isn't one.