Charles goes to Washington: King visits Trump with ‘special relationship’ at a low

Two hundred and fifty years after the United States declared independence from Great Britain, the great-great-great-great-great grandson of King George III will be strolling the streets of Washington, D.C., to see how the revolutionaries are faring these days.

King Charles III is following through on plans for a state visit with President Donald Trump at the White House this week — the most refined, powerless aristocrat in the world side-by-side with the “blue-collar billionaire” shaping global politics in his image.

Trump did little to moderate his speech in the weeks leading up to this royal engagement: lambasting British Prime Minister Keir Starmer as “weak,” writing off the British Navy’s vessels as “toys,” and questioning the very nature of the two countries’ long-celebrated “Special Relationship.”

The Pentagon even floated the idea of questioning British sovereignty over the Falkland Islands to punish the United Kingdom for a perceived lack of cooperation on Operation Epic Fury.

An acceptable fig leaf for reneging presented itself after a would-be assassin broke into the White House correspondents’ dinner over the weekend. It was the third failed attempt on the leader’s life in the last two years.

British journalist and author Rachel Johnson told the Washington Examiner that there was “at least a couple of conversations about the security aspect” of the trip, but “by the time that happened on Saturday night, it was too late to cancel.”

“I’ve worked in the Foreign Office — people would have been working on the minute-by-minute schedule for everyone for months. It was never going to be canceled,” she told the Washington Examiner.

Johnson added that while the Foreign Office has certainly made some “adjustments and mitigations” to bolster security, pulling out ahead of such an important state visit “would have gone against the Blitz Spirit and British upper lip.”

King Charles has demonstrated such spirit in his own attempted assassination debacle decades ago. A protester charged the then-Prince of Wales while he was visiting Sydney, Australia, in 1994 and fired two blanks at the prince with a starting pistol.

He got within 3 feet of Charles before being tackled by bodyguards. Charles hardly reacted to the fake rounds and watched the frenzy unfold while disinterestedly fiddling with his cuffs.

Perhaps that dignified and aloof persona is why Trump, a well-documented fan of the Windsors, has always had a much more convivial relationship with Buckingham Palace than with 10 Downing Street.

King Charles and Queen Camilla will be joining the president and first lady Melania Trump for tea at the White House on Monday, followed by a garden party at the British ambassador’s residence. The last reigning Briton who hosted such a party on U.S. soil was King George VI in 1939.

The real pageantry of the state visit will take place on Tuesday, when the president and first lady will formally welcome the king and queen with military honors and a 21-gun salute. National anthems will be played, gifts will be exchanged, and the other routine niceties of Anglophonic diplomacy.

Trump and Charles will meet in the Oval Office to talk shop while the wives keep themselves busy with an international culture event at the White House Tennis Pavilion. King Charles will then give an address to a joint meeting of Congress and wrap up the day with a state dinner in the East Room.

It’s all rather standard fair for this kind of trans-Atlantic visit, but a curveball has been inserted into the Wednesday schedule as the royal couple likely meet with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani while visiting the Sept. 11 memorial.

Mamdani is perhaps Trump’s most bizarre frenemy in his second term — the two exchange accusations of fascism and communism between otherwise cordial meetings in the Oval Office.

A trip to Virginia is also expected, with the royals attending a “block party” celebrating 250 years of independence on Wednesday before their departure the following morning.

There is one glaring omission in the itinerary — murmurs of a meeting between Queen Camilla and victims of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein ultimately amounted to nothing.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) filed a letter to King Charles last month requesting such a meeting, and the family of victim Virginia Giuffre made a similar request. Royal reporters in the U.K. have previously suggested that it was an idea Camilla was not entirely opposed to.

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former prince and the king’s younger brother, had been among the highest-profile associates of Epstein before the disgraced financier’s death in prison. Buckingham Palace distanced itself from such a meeting, claiming it could jeopardize the investigation into Mountbatten-Windsor.

A Palace source told the BBC: “We fully understand and appreciate the survivors’ position, but can only reiterate that our position is clear that anything that could potentially impact on ongoing police inquiries and assessments, and any potential legal action that could result from that, would be to the detriment of the survivors themselves in their pursuit of justice.”

The royals will be keen to avoid live events as much as possible, seeking to minimize the risk of Trump’s infamous off-the-cuff comments that have at times put visiting leaders in difficult positions with the cameras running.

Throughout the multiday tour of his ancestors’ colonies, the king will have multiple chances to speak with Trump in official and unofficial capacities. The royals are typically expected by the British government and foreign hosts to avoid making their opinions known on vulgarities like day-to-day politics.

But with such bad blood between the U.S. and his own country, it may be the rare occasion when the British sovereign is compelled to offer something approaching an opinion.

Lord Daniel Hannan, a conservative life peer in the House of Lords, speculated to the Washington Examiner that the king “may have something to say about the Falkland Islands” during his one-on-one time with Trump.

“It is hard to stress quite how badly the leaked Pentagon emails have gone down here,” he explained. “A country that seeks to bully you out of petulance is not an ally.”

As always, royal watchers and diplomats will be paying inordinate attention to the tiniest details of the visiting royals’ behavior — searching their wardrobes and polite comments for coded messages. King Charles’s ties are thoroughly scanned for clues, the color combinations of Queen Camilla’s dresses dissected for possible motive.

DC MISTAKENLY DISPLAYED AUSTRALIAN FLAG INSTEAD OF UNION JACK AHEAD OF CHARLES VISIT

Trump, who is half-Scottish on his mother’s side, has always had an infatuation with British royalty. He scolded then-President Joe Biden for failing to attend Charles and Camilla’s coronation in 2023, calling the pair “two very special people” and wishing them a “long and glorious” reign.

Hannan told the Washington Examiner that he believes Trump “connects better with [Charles] than with Starmer” because Charles represents the old British virtues.

“The virtues that Brits and foreigners admire: courtesy, stoicism, restraint,” the peer explained. “Think of the British ambassador from the West Wing, or even of James Bond. He doesn’t do multi-culti cringe.”

Trump even reacted positively last year to far-fetched rumors in the Sun claiming that King Charles would extend an invitation for the U.S. to join the Commonwealth of Nations, the international alliance of which the British sovereign is head. “I love King Charles. Sounds good to me!” he said at the time.