President Donald Trump openly scolded a cameraman on Monday who accidentally hit a 400-year-old mirror with his camera.
Trump held a bilateral meeting with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to sign a key minerals deal worth $8.5 billion. While he discussed the newly signed deal between the U.S. and Australia, Trump stopped himself mid-sentence to tell the cameraman not to break the antique mirror hanging up in the Cabinet Room.
“Oh, you gotta watch that. Watch that. You’re not allowed to break that. That mirror is 400 years old,” Trump told the cameraman. “The camera just hit the mirror. I just moved it up here special from the vaults and the first thing that happens, a camera hits it. Hard to believe isn’t it. Hard to believe, but these are the problems in life.”
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Trump had redecorated the Cabinet Room with presidential portraits, an antique clock that was previously in the State Department and painted the room a beige color.
“This is called the Cabinet Room,” Trump told reporters in July. “It’s been here for a long time; and it had some pictures that were not many of them and not very good ones. And I actually spent time in the vaults. The vaults are where we have a lot of great pictures and artwork; and I picked it all myself. I’m very proud of it.”
The deal between the U.S. and Australia comes at a time when China is trying to tighten the global supply on rare earths and critical minerals. Albanese described the deal as a $8 billion pipeline that his country has “ready to go.”
China has the world’s largest rare earth reserves, though Australia has significant reserves, according to U.S. Geological Survey data.
The U.S. and Australia intend to each invest more than $3 billion in critical mineral projects in the next six months, with recoverable resources from the projects estimated to be worth $53 billion, according to a White House fact sheet.
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