King Charles and Queen Camilla Come to Washington
In an interview with Sky News, Trump disparaged Starmer, whose policies he called “crazy”; his political future, he says, depends on cracking down on immigration. (“They are destroying your country.”) Charles, on the other hand, was a “great gentleman.” The king is the embodiment of the England the president still loves: Windsor Castle, Princess Diana’s glossy magazine covers. Like Freddie Hayward, THE New Statesmanhe said: “Instead of sending their hapless prime minister, they would work towards Americans’ love for our royals. ” He continued: “One official compared it to the king’s speech in Parliament, in which the monarch becomes the government’s spokesperson. »
There is always joy in Washington before royal visits. When Charles arrived in 1985, as prince, the Job published a hundred and sixteen page supplement from the British Tourist Authority. This time, the most sought-after invitation was to tea in the garden of the British embassy, where members of Trump’s cabinet joined the queue to receive the king. “I wasn’t invited, so my republicanism is hardening,” a British journalist told me. “The visit seems much more important to Washington than to Westminster, where the press is more obsessed with using the former US ambassador to bring down the prime minister than with what the current US ambassador is doing with the king.” In Washington DC, he continued: “People here have gone from ‘No kings’ to ‘OK, one king, until he’s ours.’ »
And Trump, of course, loves royal cosplay. He posted memes of himself as monarch; this weekend, after an apparent assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, he told a CBS anchor: “If I were king, I wouldn’t have to deal with you.” » Just before the White House welcome ceremony, Trump responded to an article from Daily Mail which suggested he might be a distant cousin of the king. “Wow, this is nice,” the president wrote on Truth Social. “I always wanted to live in Buckingham Palace!”
The speech on the South Lawn went beyond the usual pomp. “For nearly two centuries before the Revolution, this land was settled and forged by men and women who carried in their souls the blood and noble spirit of the British,” Trump said. “Their veins flowed with Anglo-Saxon courage, their hearts beat with English faith. » This heritage, he said, was the foundation of freedom. “In recent years, it has often been said that America is just an idea. But the cause of liberty did not simply arise as an intellectual invention of 1776.”
A senior administration official reacting to the speech told me that “Republican ideas and Anglo-Saxon heritage are inextricable.” Last year, when Starmer said England was at risk of becoming an “island of foreigners” due to immigration, he quickly apologized for his wording, which seemed to echo Enoch Powell’s famous “Rivers of Blood” speech: “For reasons they could not understand…they found themselves strangers in their own country.” Many people on the right in both countries seemed happy that Trump was willing to confirm what Starmer had bypassed. Another reporter told me that Steve Bannon texted him after the speech: “blood and dirt – epic.”
A few hours later, the king went to the Capitol to deliver a joint speech to Congress. When I arrived on the Hill, as Charles and House Speaker Mike Johnson took a ceremonial walk through Statuary Hall, my phone rang with news that the Justice Department was once again charging James Comey, the former FBI director, this time for an Instagram post in which he disposed of the shells in a way that allegedly threatened the president’s life.
Watching the House chamber from the viewing gallery before the speech was like watching a garden party from above. Near me, in the audience, a man was dressed as George Washington. As Vice President JD Vance sent the congressional escort committee to fetch the king, we received an alert that the Federal Communications Commission was reviewing ABC’s broadcast licenses. (A few days before the WHCA dinner incident, late-night host Jimmy Kimmel had joked that Melania had “the glow of a pregnant widow.”) Across the mall, Trump was posting on Truth Social that Germany was a failed nation. The king entered the room to a long ovation.
