Donald Trump has tea with the Queen amid protests on UK visit
Donald Trump has struggled to put a foot right during his trip to the UK. His meeting with the queen was no exception.
Donald Trump has struggled to put a foot right during his headline-grabbing trip to the UK, and it seems his meeting with the queen was no exception.
A video of US President having to be shown how to walk properly by the British monarch has gone viral.
The brief but awkward exchange was captured by the world’s media as Mr Trump made a visit to Windsor Castle to take tea with Her Majesty.
After meeting and shaking hands under a canopy on a dais, the President and First Lady Melania Trump stood beside their royal host as a military band played the American national anthem. The president and queen then broke off to review the troops, walking slowly past a line of Coldstream Guards wearing traditional bearskin hats.
The queen appears to give Mr Trump instructions on how to walk the line before he takes off without her, blocking her from view and leaving the monarch gesturing behind him and struggling momentarily to restore order.
This is hilarious. The Queen acting like she’s training one of her dogs as Trump struggles to master the art of walking. pic.twitter.com/M7tNwJFlOX
— SimonNRicketts (@SimonNRicketts) July 13, 2018
The Trumps and the queen were scheduled to spend about 30 minutes getting acquainted over tea inside the castle but the visit stretched past 45 minutes. Trump has talked at length about the royal family over the years. He told The Sun newspaper before his arrival that he was looking forward to the visit, complimenting the queen and marvelling at the lack of controversy associated with her over the years.
“She is a tremendous woman. I really look forward to meeting her. I think she represents her country so well,” he said, adding: “If you think of it, for so many years she has represented her country, she has really never made a mistake. You don’t see, like, anything embarrassing. She is just an incredible woman.”
He also talked about how his mother, who was born in Scotland, loved the royal family and all things pomp and pageantry.
“My mother loved the queen. Any time the queen was on television, my mother wanted to watch it,” said Trump.
Elizabeth has now met every U.S. president since Dwight Eisenhower with the exception of Lyndon Johnson, who did not visit England while in office. One of her favourite guests was probably Ronald Reagan, who shared her passion for horses and went for a ride with the queen on the magnificent grounds surrounding the castle.
As the Trumps took tea, huge crowds marched through central London for several hours on Friday to protest his presence and his policies.
Dozens of similar protests were held at various locations throughout the UK and more were planned for the weekend as the Trumps arrived in Scotland.
Activist group Stop Trump, which organised the main protest in central London, claimed 250,000 people marched along Whitehall to Trafalgar Square.
Big crowd protests Trump appearance
The heaving crowd at Trafalgar Square far outnumbered a handful of Trump supporters, including some from the Australian Liberty Alliance, who heckled the crowd from the sidelines.
While the mudslinging between the groups was noisy, there were only a few scenes of actual violence as police formed a deep wall around the pro-Trump group.
Within the space of five minutes, on separate sides of Whitehall, two men, both anti-Trump, were arrested by police.
One of the men was seen spitting at officers before he was tackled to the ground and taken away.
The day of protest started about 9am local time in Parliament Square where a 6m blimp portraying an orange, snarling President Trump in a nappy, was floated 25m above the ground.
The effect was less sensational than had been imagined throughout the week, but about 1000 protesters rallied beneath it.
“This is how the UK feels about Trump, we think he’s a big baby,” one protester said.
Most of the crowd dispersed about two hours later when the “baby Trump” blimp was brought down.
It resurfaced gain several hours later during the first “Women’s march” procession along Whitehall, where tens of thousands of people took to the street.
Another two hours passed before the much larger parade, which took the opposite route and converged on Trafalgar Square.
Placards saying “Dump Trump”, “Free Melania” and “Not my President” were carried down the street, along with chants decrying the President.
Cherie McCoy, from California, said she had changed her travel plans to join the rally.
“I think this is the best day ever and I think the folks here in peace, not riot, brings unity and solidarity of all nations,” she said.
“But I think he will actually be pleased with the attention.”
Outspoken Australian political activist Avi Yemini, of the Australian Liberty Alliance, was in the crowd and described the stunt with the blimp as “overrated”
“It was a little balloon,” he told The Australian.
“They want to say it’s about freedom of speech, but we tried to get permission to fly a balloon of (London mayor) Sadiq Khan and they wouldn’t let us.
“What I found walking around talking to people here is that they don’t like democracy.
“They don’t like Trump, who was democratically elected, and they don’t like Brexit.”
Mr Yemini, who is Jewish, said he had been called a Nazi when he questioned the motives of protesters.
The Hobbis family attended the rally together, saying they stood against President Trump’s dismantling of longstanding institutions.
“I think he knows it’s here and he does feel unwelcome,” one family member said.
“He’s a complete narcissist but he said he wasn’t feeling welcome here.
“That’s what we wanted.”
Pro-Trump activists and supporters of jailed far-right leader Tommy Robinson are preparing to march through the city on Saturday.
The police presence will be bolstered out of fear they will clash with another anti-Trump protest.
A Free Tommy Robinson march in June turned violent and several people were arrested.
Controversial Dutch right-wing leader Geert Wilders was expected to address the rally on Saturday but The Australian understands he changed his plans after he was not offered a security detail by the Metropolitan Police Service.
Additional reporting: AP
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