President Donald Trump made a one-day stop in the UK at the request of King Charles III. It’s already his second state visit to the UK — unprecedented, considering how the crown reportedly has not been too warm about his sporadic statements regarding members of their family. This time, however, Trump started on a good footing and complimented Kate Middleton immediately upon landing on the grounds of Windsor Castle.
The crown seldom forgets. Prince Andrew still hasn’t been fully invited back into the fold since he was implicated in the never-ending Jeffrey Epstein saga. And even Prince Harry is only slowly returning to the good graces of King Charles, despite his issues with the King not being nearly as serious. So this warm welcome for Trump came as something of a surprise to quite a fair share of royal experts.
Per People, as soon as Trump landed at Windsor Castle, accompanied by the First Lady, he was met by Prince William and Kate Middleton. Trump immediately reached for Kate’s hand and told her she was “so beautiful,” an exchange conveniently caught by a nearby microphone.
This isn’t the first time Trump has been complimentary toward members of the royal family. During the long-awaited reopening of Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral after it partially burned down in 2019, Trump had a one-on-one with Prince William and was completely taken aback by his looks. Trump remarked, “Some people look better in person? He looked great. He looked really nice, and I told him that.”
Earlier, however, when Trump wasn’t in office, he didn’t have such nice things to say about the British royals. A 2022 Newsweek report included excerpts from a book titled The King: The Life of Charles III, which was then on the verge of release.
Kate is a cancer survivor — and since that announcement, the media has been notably more measured in reporting on her. But before that, many outlets treated her privacy as something not worth respecting. Around that time, the French magazine Closer used a long lens camera to click topless pictures of her while she was sunbathing and published them. While most public figures expressed outrage at how uncalled-for that was, Trump insisted she only had herself to blame.
He tweeted, “Who wouldn’t take Kate’s picture and make lots of money if she does the nude sunbathing thing. Come on Kate!” That wasn’t even half of the crown’s issues with Trump — apparently, tensions began in the mid-1990s when Trump aggressively pursued Princess Diana, going so far as to say he would only “nail” her if she passed an HIV test.
Trump saying awful things has, in many ways, become part of his brand — alongside trying to curtail the speech of people who say things he doesn’t like. Yet he has also managed to make some royals laugh. Apparently, Queen Consort Camilla couldn’t stop laughing when Trump mistakenly referred to King Charles — then Prince Charles — as “the Prince of Whales.”
Trump is the only person whose ignorance and ridiculousness could, even if only for a moment, make you forget about his conduct.
