So I think the feeling on our side is that this problem has really now become urgent and we are going to be not only talking to the Chinese this week, but I think you saw on Monday, Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley announced that we’re going to be convening a ministerial meeting at which the Secretary of State is going to preside up in New York later this month to talk and galvanize a lot more support from our other partners and allies around the world on this issue and chart a way forward in a very urgent way, because we feel that this problem has now crossed a certain line and we can no longer hope for some kind of reversion to negotiations. We need to do something proactive to change the situation and get some results, and we hope that the Chinese are going to be involved in that. We’ll certainly be talking to them about that in the next couple of days. We think they have a lot to contribute, and so we’ll see where we get on that.
QUESTION:I know you’ve been serving on this position for years, and can you tell us a little the different of how you – how do you tell the difference between helping the two administration preparing the meeting with the two leader? And Matt, will you remember, there was a logistical flap last year when President Obama arrived in China, and Trump – the candidate Trump at that time tweet out that it’s a sign of disrespect, and he would have left. So when preparing for this trip, the first meeting of the two presidents, how do you try to avoid these surprise might infuriate the President to leave?
MR POTTINGER:Sure. So I should start by saying that President Trump is an extremely gracious host. He is going to certainly seek to extend complete hospitality to his guests, Xi Jinping and Madam Peng. I know that there is a lot of work going on to ensure that the safety and dignity of both leaders is well protected during the course of the visit.
MS THORNTON:Yeah, and maybe just a couple words on preparations for summits in general. It’s very hard to compare one visit with another visit, never mind across different administrations, because every visit is actually different, it’s special, and it comes at a different time in the relationship. So I think this visit is special because it’s not in Washington, D.C. It’s a more informal meeting. And with that comes a lot of preparatory work that’s being done down offsite in Florida by our – like I said, our protocol teams have been down there for days working together, the Chinese protocol team and the State Department’s protocol team, along with White House staff. We’ve got our security teams down there working with the local police in Florida.
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