‘Far from normal’: US President Donald Trump sparks massive crisis for King Charles
King Charles has just been engulfed by a massive new disaster – and it’s all courtesy of US President Donald Trump.
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OPINION
It’s been said that the late Queen did nothing and she did it bloody well.
A carefully cultivated blandness is, after all, a fundamental part of being a constitutional monarch.
Until now.
Until King Charles invited Donald Trump to pop across the pond so he could personally reintroduce him to a plate of cucumber sandwiches and explain again why there is no round table.
Donald Trump might be causing economic, legal and political chaos at home, but His Majesty is facing the growing prospect of his own crisis, courtesy of the US President.
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Things began earlier this month when, while in Washington, UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer hand-delivered an invitation from the King to Mr Trump for a historic second State visit.
The President, in turn, preened and called Charles “beautiful”, which even his devoted wife Queen Camilla never has.
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Then, days after that queasy love-in, the president and his moonfaced minion JD Vance ambushed Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky in front of live cameras in the Oval Office in an instance of political sadism for the ages.
Suddenly, Charles’ willingness to lie back and think of Britain by schmoozing Mr Trump looked less like pragmatic realpolitik and more like pandering to Vladimir Putin’s most devoted proxy.
The backlash in the UK to a second Trump State visit was swift and brutal.
For some strange reason, Britons, based on recent polling, are strongly opposed to having him round to their island for a jammy dodger, and there are now fears of a possible constitutional crisis, mass protests and serious damage being done to the institution of the monarchy.
Let’s note here that State visits are staged on the advice of the government, meaning that offering Mr Trump a stay at Buckingham Palace is really Prime Minister Starmer’s choice and not the King’s.
Charles, in the best tradition of his forebears, is simply acting on the advice of 10 Downing Street.
However, no matter who asked who and which Palace bedroom they will get to sleep in, there are already warning signs that when el presidente and his travel sun bed arrive in the UK, there could be mass protests and even civil disobedience.
After all, the last time Mr Trump and his BYO collection of barbecue sauce sachets arrived in the UK in 2019, he was greeted by 75,000 protesters and a giant Baby Trump blimp hovering over central London.
For the King, this second State visit, for which a date is yet to be set, is shaping up to be something of a nightmare and not that recurring one he has where Jeremy Corbyn is PM and he’s been forced to raze his yew hedges for turnip crops.
Then, White House-Palace relations took a further hit.
After Mr Trump’s Oval Office bully boy treatment of Mr Zelensky, last week the King promptly invited the Ukrainian leader to Sandringham, his privately-owned Norfolk country estate, for a nearly hour-long tea in a patently obvious and highly public gesture of support.
A day later His Majesty was back at it, and had outgoing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pop over for some Lapsang Souchong too, a politically fraught gesture given Mr Trump’s threats to annex its northern neighbour and repeated hokey-pokey of tariffs.
(You put the tariff in, you put the tariff out …)
This all was, as a royal source told the Times, “royal diplomacy at its most delicate, deliberate and nuanced. His Majesty is very conscious of his responsibility globally”.
Interestingly, it’s a role the 76-year-old clearly enjoys, with a palace aide separately telling the Times, “there is a renewed sense of purpose and imperative about the role that the institution has played for many years. This is what soft power looks like”.
Charles might have been chuffed with his Zelensky tea, enjoying all that new-found usefulness and all the leftover honey babka in the Sandringham kitchens, but his geopolitical manoeuvring has also worsened Palace-White House relations.
Because seeing Charles cosying up to his two biggest antagonists reportedly left the president in a right old strop.
The Daily Mail reports that Trump “allies” have told UK officials that the Charles/Zelensky tea party made the former reality TV star feel “less special” about his State visit.
They, in return, informed Team Trump “it would have been inappropriate for the Government to ‘direct’ the King not to meet Mr Zelensky”. Translation: Eff off.
A well-placed source told the Mail: “Things definitely went a bit cool in Washington after [Zelensky’s visit to] Sandringham. We told them that the King makes his own decisions about who he meets”.
Charles, 1; Trump, 0.
The King might have marginally won this round, but he finds himself in a serious bind.
On one hand, Brits are clearly opposed to the second Trump State visit, with a poll showing a majority (51 per cent) believe the president should never have been invited to begin with.
Petitions calling for the visit to be canned have gotten nearly 300,000 signatures.
A courtier recently told the Telegraph that the King is “highly sensitive” to public feeling.
On the other hand, the dangling carrot of a State visit has long been relied on by Downing Street as a means of building bridges and for nakedly pragmatic purposes.
Over the years, the late Queen had to have Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping over to stay at the Palace at the behest of the government of the day.
Should Charles decline to host the Trump State visit, it could force the Prime Minister and the government’s resignation and a general election. If, in this scenario, according to the Telegraph, “Starmer remained in office and the King still refused, it could force an abdication”.
This is a highly unlikely scenario – but still, the very fact that it is being talked about in the British press reflects just how far things are from normal in the White House.
In 2020, Charles told the Sunday Times he wanted to be a “peacemaker”, and the way the cards are falling right now, he is going to get plenty of practice.
Someone, cough, cough, Camilla darling, should think about getting him one of those nice baby blue UN berets.
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles
Originally published as ‘Far from normal’: US President Donald Trump sparks massive crisis for King Charles
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