Donald Trump has a great affection for the British monarchy, for some reason. I think he likes all of the opulence, the gold, the jewels and all of the medieval castles. He was a huge fan of Queen Elizabeth II, even if she reportedly hated his guts and justifiably found him rude and unpleasant. It’s sort of a different story with King Charles. For some reason, Trump is wild about Charles too, even if Trump spent a good chunk of the ‘90s bad-mouthing Charles and Camilla, and trying to sleep with Princess Diana. Well, now Tom Sykes asks, in his Royalist Substack, whether Charles will be able to keep his poker face when Trump visits the UK next month.
Trump returns on September 17–19, 2025, for the honor of a second state visit, and will be staying at Windsor Castle. Hosting Trump at Windsor carries a degree of intimacy Elizabeth never offered. The question is whether Charles, more scrutable than his mother, can mask his distaste. He lacks the poker face Elizabeth perfected across seventy years of service. Palace insiders have already told me they are concerned that Trump might use the occasion to launch into an unfiltered rant about immigration, an issue on which he has already claimed that a “horrible invasion” is “killing Europe.”
Civil servants fear that he could even upend protocol by delivering politicized remarks while standing alongside the king, whose entire public life has been devoted to themes of tolerance and compassion.
Hanging over it all is the inescapable contrast: Barack Obama, welcomed for three nights at Buckingham Palace in 2011, later dropping by Kensington Palace in 2016, where he was greeted by a pajama-clad Prince George in his monogrammed bathrobe, a moment of genuine warmth and ease. Against that tableau, Trump remains the outsider, received with courtesy but never embraced.
Charles is currently at Birkhall, his house in Scotland, relaxing and no doubt preparing himself for the Trump state visit. I’m quite sure Charles will discharge his duties, and make nice with Trump seamlessly. But when the doors close and the visitors disperse, one wonders whether he too will confide, as his mother once did, that he found the man very rude indeed.
The thing is, QEII never hid her distaste for Trump – it was obvious from the way she treated the Trumps that she would only give them the bare minimum of what was required of her. For the Trumps’ visits during her reign, she made Charles and Camilla entertain them for the most part – there was a famous moment where C&C had to host the Trumps for dinner at Clarence House, and Camilla was photographed with a big glass of wine front and center. Honestly, though, Camilla is just as crude and graceless as Donny Dementia, which is probably why the two couples manage to get along.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.
