Sean CoughlanRoyal correspondent
BBC
US President Donald Trump is going to be greeted with a spectacular royal charm offensive during his state visit this week.
The aim will be to dazzle and flatter him with the ultimate red-carpet experience, with guards of honour, flypasts, historic carriages, a lavish banquet, pomp and pageantry.
In return, Sir Keir Starmer will be hoping this gilt-edged reception will help to deliver the UK’s message on awkward issues such as Ukraine and trade tariffs.
And if anyone can get the US president’s attention and influence him, surely King Charles III and the Royal Family can.
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Queen Elizabeth II greeted the President and First Lady on the state visit to the UK in 2019
But how will King Charles handle his sometimes unpredictable guest in Windsor? Can he be the Trump whisperer?
“Trump loves the monarchy and the Royal Family. It’s a potential diplomatic ace card for the UK government,” says Anna Whitelock, professor of history of the modern monarchy at City St George’s, University of London.
This attraction to royalty will give the King a “rare advantage” in dealing with Trump, who usually expects to have the upper hand, says Prof Whitelock.
Sir Anthony Seldon, biographer of the UK’s prime ministers, agrees. The King can benefit from Trump’s “palpable enthusiasm” for the royals, he says.
“At the same time, King Charles is in the most delicate of positions. His own known views, on the environment, and standing up for democracy and the rule of law in Europe, are a long way apart from the president’s,” says Sir Anthony.
“He will, I am sure, be scrupulously correct and civil,” he adds. In essence, the King will stick to the script given to him by the UK government.
The government will certainly hope that this week’s royal schmooze-fest will make a positive impression on Trump, creating a feelgood factor for the UK.
It’s an unusual and carefully crafted state visit. There’s a crammed schedule squeezed into a day and a half, most of it dedicated to royal spectacles. Windsor is being used like a royal theme park.
With fears over security and protests, there won’t be any cheering crowds and no public procession, like the one recently enjoyed by France’s President Emmanuel Macron. Instead, it will be helicopters and closed events, including the carriage ride, which will wind its way inside the Windsor estate.
A YouGov poll over the summer showed opinion divided on whether Trump’s visit should go ahead, with slightly more wanting it cancelled.
And the nearest thing to the public that the president will see will be the staff working at the banquet.
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The King has shown his public support for Ukraine’s President Zelensky
The King will make a speech in honour of the president at the state banquet in St George’s Hall, inside Windsor Castle. He’s likely to praise the special relationship and talk of the anniversaries of wartime alliances, perhaps mentioning his mother, the late Queen, and Trump’s mother, who so admired royalty.
Every word will have been written in close consultation with the government, anxious to hit the right notes.
Guests, including many celebrity faces, will dine on a showcase of US and British food, from a menu written in French, with five or six different glasses for each place, in a hall lined with royal portraits and suits of armour.
Charles has decades of experience at playing host. Whatever his own private thoughts – and he’s not exactly going to be signed up to Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” message – the King has a strong sense of duty and will work hard to make this visit a success.
Royal author Robert Hardman suggests they’ll stick to safe topics – such as talking about the president’s Scottish roots.
And the royals have, of course, had plenty of visits from people with whom they might not have seen eye-to-eye. Mr Hardman describes how the late Queen Elizabeth II once hid behind a bush rather than bump into Romania’s President Caecescu in the palace gardens, during the dictator’s state visit in 1978.
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There will be no public carriage rides for the US visit, unlike for President Macron
The King is also not alone. The rest of the Royal Family will be deployed to help with the hospitality.
All eyes will be on Catherine, the Princess of Wales, and the First Lady, Melania Trump, when they visit a nature project involving the Scouts on Thursday.
Trump is also an admirer of Prince William, praising their “great, great talk” in France at the re-opening of the Notre-Dame Cathedral. William and Catherine will be an important part of the ceremonial welcome on Wednesday.
Queen Camilla will show Melania one of the quirkier items in Windsor, a remarkable dolls’ house, made a century ago by the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens. If things get too tough, the miniature wine bottles in the dolls’ house have real drink inside.
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The Princess of Wales at the state banquet for Trump in 2019
While King Charles and Trump might seem contrasting personalities, they’re very much known quantities to each other. They’re men of the same post-war generation – Trump aged 79 and the King aged 76 – who have overlapped for decades. As far back as the late-1980s, Charles had been to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
After Trump survived an assassination attempt last July, the King sent him a personal note. They spent time together during Trump’s previous state visit in 2019.
And it’s also not just the two heads of state who have crossed paths, but their families.
Before Trump had taken a tilt at the White House, his businessman brother Robert, who died in 2020, had been a significant donor to Charles’s charities, bringing him to royal dinners in the UK, along with other wealthy US socialites.
The King’s brother, Prince Andrew, had visited Mar-a-Lago in 2000, introducing himself as “Andrew York” to guests. Jeffrey Epstein, later convicted as a sex offender, and Ghislaine Maxwell were pictured at the same party.
Prince Andrew will be entirely airbrushed out of this week’s visit. But for Trump’s 2019 visit, he was described as Buckingham Palace’s “secret weapon”, accompanying the president on two of the three days. That was only a matter of months before the Duke of York’s notorious Newsnight interview.
Trump clearly relished meeting the late Queen Elizabeth II and he’ll pay his respects to her, laying a wreath on her tomb in St George’s Chapel.
Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Sir Keir Starmer handed over the historic invitation to a second state visit
Trump’s fascination with the monarchy is at the heart of this state visit. As with much about the president, it’s about his personality more than his politics.
“I still remember my mother, who is Scottish by birth, sitting in front of the television set to watch Queen Elizabeth’s coronation and not budging for an entire day. She was just enthralled by the pomp and circumstance, the whole idea of royalty and glamour,” Trump recalled in his book The Art of the Deal.
“I also remember my father that day, pacing around impatiently. ‘For Christ’s sake Mary,’ he’d say. ‘Enough is enough, turn it off.'”
It seems to be his mother’s voice that he listened to.
“A meeting with the Queen of England was the ultimate sign, that he, Trump, had made it in life,” wrote his former Russia adviser Fiona Hill in her White House memoir.
For Trump, getting close to a King or Queen seems to have been the ultimate way for an outsider to become an insider.
Offering him a second state visit has been called “unprecedented”. And it is very rare, although Queen Margrethe and Prince Henrik of Denmark also had two, in 1974 and 2000.
Since the start of Queen Elizabeth II’s reign in 1952, there have only been three state visits by US presidents – George W Bush, Barack Obama and Trump – who is the only one who has had two. There have been other presidential trips to the UK, but not fully-fledged state visits.
The significance of that shouldn’t be underestimated and it reflects how much Trump dominates the international news agenda.
For the UK government, his apparent fandom for the royals creates an opportunity to make its own pitch to Trump.
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The King and PM Mark Carney asserted Canada’s independence from US claims
It’s an important moment for King Charles, who used to be criticised for “meddling” in politics. Now he’s in the unusual position of being actively encouraged to play a role in diplomatic negotiations. Soft power is being applied to tough times.
It was the King who embraced Ukraine’s President Zelensky after his White House mauling in February. And it was the King who went to Canada in May to show solidarity when it was under pressure from Trump to become his 51st state.
Charles appears to have been effective. Former Canadian high commissioner to the UK, Jeremy Kinsman, said the intervention had been “outstanding” and Trump seems to have reduced his aggressive rhetoric.
The King has also received warm support and standing ovations after speeches to the parliaments of France, Italy and Germany. Charles is a bridge-builder in an era when populist politicians are burning them down.
Yet issues such as protecting Ukraine are personally and deeply held by the King.
“I imagine it is an uncomfortable moment for the King,” adds Mr Kinsman. “I cannot imagine two men more utterly different in values, purpose, style, and psychology.”
Mr Kinsman, the former professional diplomat, says the King will have been briefed to “play the genial host and continue to try to charm the US president and impress him with the majesty of the setting”. In turn, he says Trump will be on best behaviour and he will have been briefed and ready for small talk on topics such as organic farming.
“The King will know what to expect and I’m confident he will handle the president very diplomatically,” royal commentator Pauline Maclaran says.
“The chemistry between them will be very interesting.”