Over the past two weeks Emanuel, who served as White House chief of staff to former President Barack Obama, has criticized Xi directly and sarcastically speculated about the Chinese leader’s treatment of his top aides, using the hashtag “#MysteryInBeijingBuilding.”

A longtime, outspoken Democratic operative, Emanuel served in Congress and left the chief of staff job in 2010 to mount a successful campaign for mayor of Chicago.

But for months the White House has sought to engage China and get relations in a more stable position since they hit a nadir in February after the Pentagon shot down a Chinese spy balloon that had traveled over the U.S.

Emanuel’s most recent disparaging post about China came just as Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, was set to secretly meet with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi for two days of talks in Malta.

Sullivan’s discussions are seen as laying the groundwork for a meeting between Biden and Xi, possibly in November around the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, or APEC, summit in San Francisco.

Emanuel’s last post about Xi likened the disappearance of Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu to the Shakespearean play “Hamlet”: “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark,” he wrote Thursday.

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