Pomp and pageantry are the way to Donald Trump’s heart. And Britain knows it
By Oscar Holland, CNN
(CNN) — For the British, the difference between state visits and plain old official visits is far more than semantics.
By convention, the full pomp and pageantry of a royal welcome — the guard of honor, the cavalry band, the palace’s finest silverware — is strictly for the former, making it one of British diplomacy’s most powerful tools. And, until now, state visits were bound by another unwritten rule: second-term US presidents don’t get them.
When Barack Obama visited Windsor Castle in 2016, he and Michelle traveled in a plain black Range Rover, greeted by only a handful of royal guards ahead of a private lunch with Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip. Eight years earlier, his predecessor, George W. Bush, made do with afternoon tea and a quick palace tour. But neither of them valued regalia, resplendence and royal associations quite like Donald Trump.
This week, the president and first lady Melania Trump will become lone exceptions to the rule after King Charles III invited them for an unprecedented second state visit. It will be just the fourth such welcome ever rolled out to a US leader, meaning Trump accounts for precisely half of them.
Britain clearly knows the way to his heart, and the palace is sparing no effort. Last weekend, the royal family even published a nine-minute video to its official YouTube channel detailing the “huge amount of planning, expertise and hard work” the household’s gardeners, chefs and military musicians put into state visits.
Trump’s two-day agenda begins with a carriage procession through the Windsor Castle estate, escorted by mounted cavalry, as part of a full ceremonial welcome. From the castle’s east lawn, the first couple will witness a flyover by the Royal Air Force’s aerobatic team, the Red Arrows, and a military ceremony known as a “beating retreat” — neither of which has ever been deployed during a state visit before. Then comes the multi-course banquet at St George’s Hall, complete with toasts and speeches, beneath a ceiling decorated with the coats of arms of every single Knight of the Garter since the order was founded in the 14th century.
This combination of old-world luxury and military posturing is bound to please the president, especially if his recent Washington DC military parade and goldification of the Oval Office (which is now embellished with numerous gilded ornaments) are anything to go by. Visible status symbols matter in the Trump era. In fact, Wednesday’s royal parade seems like the very kind of reception he dreams of receiving at home — a notion surely not lost on US protesters who decried June’s DC parade under the banner “No Kings.”
“We’re buttering up to him,” Robert Lacey, a royal historian and consultant on the Netflix series “The Crown,” told the Associated Press this week. “He wouldn’t come to Britain if he wouldn’t have the chance to stay at Windsor Castle, probably pay homage to the (late) queen he admires so much, and to meet the King.”
For his part, Trump will come bearing gifts for a customary exchange with his hosts. On his last state visit, in 2019, he presented the Queen with a silver brooch by American jeweler Tiffany & Co, and, for Prince Philip, a personalized Air Force One jacket and signed first-edition autobiography by James Doolittle, a decorated World War II American general. (By way of return, the royals gave the Trumps a rare copy of a book written by Winston Churchill, a set of pens and a silver box decorated with roses, thistles and shamrocks).
The president will also be expected to attend the banquet in full white tie — a dress code that many fashion-watchers felt he botched last time around. “The waistcoat was too long and too tight,” veteran fashion critic Robin Givhan wrote in the Washington Post at the time. “The tailcoat did not fit. The trousers were voluminous.”
Regardless, the president clearly reveled in his proximity to grandiosity. He also memorably aggrandized himself after that visit by falsely claiming he had reviewed the Queen’s guard of honor “for the first time in 70 years” (she had only been on the throne for 66 years at the time). After all, this is a man who allegedly appropriated a British coat of arms for display on the gates of his golf courses and resorts.
In fact, Trump has a longstanding and well documented fixation with the monarchy. Royalty was a social stratum so exclusive that even his vast wealth was unable to infiltrate it, though he seemingly considered other ways in: During a 1993 radio appearance, he told Howard Stern he’d love to date the “hot” Princess Diana, who was then only recently separated from (and still legally married to) this week’s host, Charles. “There could be a love interest,” he said. “I’d become King of England. King of England. I’d have to leave; I’d have to lose the New York accent quickly. See they wouldn’t like my accent over there.”
In the 1980s and 1990s, Buckingham Palace also frequently refuted news stories claiming that various British royals, including Charles and Diana, were interested in Trump’s properties. In 1994, Mar-a-Lago resort’s membership director told the Palm Beach Post the couple had filed applications to join the club and paid the $50,000 initiation fee, a claim dismissed by the palace as “complete nonsense.”
These stories, according to multiple biographies of the real-estate developer, originated with Trump himself. In his 1987 book, “The Art of the Deal,” he wrote that reports saying Charles and Diana were considering buying a $5 million, 21-room apartment in Trump Tower helped promote the Manhattan property more than any other press story, though he did not admit to starting the rumor. (“In the absence of a denial, the story that the royal couple was considering buying an apartment in Trump Tower became front-page news all over the world,” he wrote.)
These incidents are unlikely to come up over dinner on Wednesday. And Trump’s past comments aren’t the only embarrassment being sidestepped. In fact, the whole glitzy spectacle serves as a distraction from an awkward reality: many people in the UK have reservations about Trump’s visit.
By keeping the president in a self-contained Windsor bubble, the British establishment reduces the likelihood and impact of any potential protests — or the reappearance of the diaper-clad “Trump baby” blimp that flew over the British capital during his last visit. Trump will not partake in any public-facing events and will go on to meet Prime Minister Keir Starmer at his countryside residence, not in London.
Meanwhile, in a stroke of convenient (or perhaps intentional) timing, Westminster is closed for recess, helping dodge the question of whether Trump should have been invited to address Parliament. Many high-profile British politicians will have argued that he should not.
In this sense, it’s a win-win for Trump, who has more to gain from the trip’s optics than his predecessors (Obama and Bush’s second-term visits were essentially farewell tours at the end of eight-year presidencies, whereas Trump is only in the fifth year of his). He will enjoy all the fuss but little risk of slipping on political banana skins.
The arrangement suits the British, too. It is notable that Starmer extended the King’s invitation in the heat of UK-US trade talks, perhaps as a sweetener for a deal the UK’s post-Brexit economy desperately needs. It would not be the first time a state visit has been used for commercial leverage: Even Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu was invited for one in 1978, shortly before the two countries struck a £200 million (then $360 million) aerospace deal.
Pomp and pageantry help avoid questions neither side wants asked. And that’s why rolling out the royal red carpet is the ultimate diplomatic move, an act of realpolitik disguised as a gesture of generosity. Trump’s state visit to Britain is a golden, trumpet-soundtracked, ceremonial ego massage — from a country uniquely able to offer them to a US president uniquely interested in receiving them.
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