Given the task definition and input, reply with output. In this task, you are given a text of many news articles seperated by special token "|||||". Your task is to summarize them.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross is getting flak online for a report that says he made a joke about the news of the Syria strikes coming “in lieu of after-dinner entertainment.” 
  
 According to Variety, Ross recalled when he found out about the decision to strike Syria at Mar-a-Lago, when President Trump told Chinese President Xi Jinping about the strike. 
  
 Ross added, “It was in lieu of after-dinner entertainment.” 
  
 The crowd laughed, Variety reports, and Ross then said, “The thing was, it didn’t cost the president anything to have that entertainment.” 
  
 Katie Couric was in attendance and tweeted about the remark as well. 
  
 As one of the attendees noted, Ross cracked a bunch of jokes during the event, but this one earned some less-than-positive reactions on Twitter: 
  
 Perhaps instead of a standup comic or lounge singer? https://t.co/ml9CJLlYOl — Andrea Mitchell (@mitchellreports) May 1, 2017 
  
 This is a most unfortunate quote and headline for Wilbur Ross https://t.co/QtkhPjZqTu — Blake Hounshell (@blakehounshell) May 1, 2017 
  
 [image via screengrab] 
  
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 Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac 
  
 Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.com ||||| Syrian missile attack was 'after-dinner entertainment,' Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross says 
  
 In this image provided by the White House, taken April 6, 2017, Deputy National Security Adviser Dina Powell, right, joins President Donald Trump, and others, as he receives a briefing on the Syria military strike from his National Security team after the strike at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla. (Photo: AP via White House) 
  
 Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross likened the U.S. attack on a Syrian airbase to "after-dinner entertainment" for those who were at Mar-a-Lago that week, according to a new report. 
  
 The way Ross describes it, on April 6, in the middle of President Trump's summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, "just as dessert was being served, the president explained to Mr. Xi he had something he wanted to tell him, which was the launching of 59 missiles into Syria. It was in lieu of after-dinner entertainment." 
  
 After the audience at the Milken Institute Global Conference laughed, per Variety, Ross continued: "The thing was, it didn’t cost the president anything to have that entertainment." 
  
 Even if the strikes were the "entertainment," they certainly did cost the president something. 
  
 The cost of a Tomahawk missile, per the Navy budget for fiscal year 2017, is $1.355 million. Given that the strike used 59 missiles, that comes out to roughly $79.9 million for just the missiles alone. 
  
 Ross's remarks to the conference were just the latest in unusual public remarks from the Commerce secretary on the Syria strike. 
  
 Ross was in the secured conference room at Mar-a-Lago where Trump and other administration officials huddled during the strike, though he's not necessarily charged with national security interests as head of the Commerce Department. 
  
 After the strike, he noted that the attack took out 20% of the Syrian air force, a number that was later confirmed by the Pentagon. 
  
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 Both politicians and pundits have made many bizarre remarks about the U.S. strike on a Syrian air base last month, from President Trump’s childlike description of the chocolate cake he was eating at the time to Brian Williams repeatedly praising the “beautiful” war footage on MSNBC. 
  
 Now Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has pulled off an impressive feat: combining the Marie Antoinette element of Trump’s remarks and the callousness of Williams’s commentary. During a speech on Monday, Ross recalled the scene at Mar-a-Lago on April 6, when Trump dined with Chinese president Xi Jinping as two navy destroyers launched 59 Tomahawk missiles into Syria. 
  
 “Just as dessert was being served, the president explained to Mr. Xi he had something he wanted to tell him, which was the launching of 59 missiles into Syria,” Ross said. “It was in lieu of after-dinner entertainment.” 
  
 Ross was addressing the annual Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, which Bloomberg describes as a gathering for “four thousand of the wealthiest, most influential leaders in the world.” 
  
 The crowd chuckled at Ross’s remark, according to Variety, and he added: “The thing was, it didn’t cost the president anything to have that entertainment.” 
  
 The “entertainment” might not have cost Trump anything, but USA Today calculates that the Tomahawk missiles alone cost about $79.9 million. The strike was launched after Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s forces killed at least 87 people with chemical weapons, and the Syrian military claimed that at least seven people were killed and nine wounded in the U.S. strike. ||||| Speaking at the Milken Institute Global Conference on Monday, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross recalled the scene at Mar-a-Lago on April 6, when the summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping was interrupted by the strike on Syria. 
  
 “Just as dessert was being served, the president explained to Mr. Xi he had something he wanted to tell him, which was the launching of 59 missiles into Syria,” Ross said. “It was in lieu of after-dinner entertainment.” 
  
 As the crowd laughed, Ross added: “The thing was, it didn’t cost the president anything to have that entertainment.” 
  
 Ross, a billionaire financier, is new to government service. In the lunchtime conversation with David Rubenstein, co-CEO of the Carlyle Group, Ross reflected on his first impressions of public service. 
  
 “I’ve been heartened,” he said. “I thought the quality of people in the government was not as high as it has turned out to be. There are actually quite a lot of very good, very serious, very intelligent people wanting to do their best. It’s just they’ve been trapped in a fundamentally dysfunctional system.” 
  
 The president’s tax cut proposal has been a hot topic among the business community at this year’s conference. Rubenstein asked Ross whether it was realistic to expect a tax plan to pass this year. 
  
 “I certainly hope so,” he said. “God knows Congress has debated the issue enough times. It’s really a question of, ‘Is there the willpower to do it?’ If the Republican side can get itself unified, then it will work, even if the Democrats remain as determined as they seem to be to block any kind of progress.” |||||

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross was trying to be funny, but his recollection of his boss' decision to launch an airstrike on Syria is not going over well. At a conference Monday, Ross publicly recounted the move made by President Trump while he was entertaining Chinese President Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago in April. "Just as dessert was being served, the president explained to Mr. Xi he had something he wanted to tell him, which was the launching of 59 missiles into Syria," Ross said, per Variety. "It was in lieu of after-dinner entertainment." The crowd chuckled, and he added, "The thing was, it didn’t cost the president anything to have that entertainment." USA Today does some quick math, calculating that at $1.355 million per missile, the strike cost about $80 million just for those alone. Ross' flippancy about the military action is now being roundly panned in the media, and not just from the left. "Yeesh," is the one-word tweet from Allapundit of the conservative Hot Air site, per Mediaite, which rounds up a bunch. "Oh, Wilbur Ross. No," tweeted Chris Cillizza at CNN. At New York magazine, Margaret Hartmann is reminded of Trump's own recollection of the decision, in which he talked about the "most beautiful piece of chocolate cake" they were having at the time, as well as MSNBC's Brian Williams waxing poetic on the beauty of the missiles. Ross, she writes, "has pulled off an impressive feat, combining the Marie Antoinette element of Trump’s remarks and the callousness of Williams’s commentary."