What will the King's visit really achieve with Trump?

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0:33This is a Global Player original podcast. Is there a chance in hell that the law is going to change as a result of this latest episode? Not a cat's chance. There's sort of coverage in the US press. Like, this is not who America is. It's like, I don't know how to tell you this, America. If you're a Brit, this is exactly who we think you are. There was someone there who intended to kill the president. And this idea that, you know, political violence has no place in America, wake the f*** up. And I'm afraid, America, it's your same old story of too many guns and too many people who will resort to violence when anything else fails.

1:16The king is coming here, king of England. I think it's great. He'll be very safe, yeah. Yeah. And will your events be able to go forward? No concerns about security going forward? The White House grounds are really safe. this area of not very many acres it's really safe and he'll be staying here now i believe he's going to a couple of other locations because he's here for a few days and he's a great guy oh they called and they are so looking forward to being here so looking forward to being here well up to a point they are they've got a job to do with the so-called special relationship in such a parlour state.

1:58But looking forward to it, I think there's a sort of dread, an anticipation of what could go wrong. Will the King manage to reset the political relationship between Starmer and Trump? Or has he actually got his sights on something much bigger? Welcome to the News Agents.

2:24It's John. It's meatless. And the King's plane will be touching down at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. And there'll be a motorcade and there'll be all the brouhaha that surrounds a royal state visit to the United States. And this one in the 250th anniversary of the founding of the USA. say. And I just go back to the press notice that was put out by Buckingham Palace confirming that the visit was going ahead. And it started on the advice of his majesty's government, as if the palace was already putting a little bit of distance, saying it wasn't our bright idea that we should be going over so soon after Donald Trump was here for an unprecedented second state visit.

3:13This was the government's idea and you can see why given the state of the relationship right now between Donald Trump and the person who isn't Winston Churchill. Yes we are told that the King's trip was never in doubt notwithstanding the events of Saturday night at the White House Correspondents Dinner of which more later. The palace has said minor adjustments have been made but what I am learning from somebody deep in the king's inner circle, who actually was dining with him a few days ago, was that the whole sort of keep calm and carry on thing works to the monarchy to perfection. You know, the idea that whatever the chaos going on, he just has to sail forward and get on with it.

4:06And there was never really a question of this being pulled at all. But I was told that the king himself was full of reservations and then this was actually changed. The person told me said, no, no, not reservation, apprehension about getting the tone right. And what I understand is that the king is particularly focused on the address to Congress that will come tomorrow. He's not worried about the Trump visit. You know, he's met Trump a few times. They know what's going to go on, as it were, behind closed doors. But the tough bit is going to be getting this tone right in his speech to Congress.

4:44We've learned it could be up to half an hour long. It's much longer than when the Queen last addressed Congress. But what I was told, and I couldn't sort of help dwelling on this line, was that they imagined this speech will be full of lines that will, this is a direct quote, go over the president's head, but will go down beautifully to legislators and to us at home. And when I sort of pressed to understand what this meant, obviously, I was just being guided in certain directions with no specifics. But I was told that actually, culture and civilisation is very important to the king. And yes, he is there to celebrate 250 years of the American Republic, the United States of America.

5:36But this person said to me, Iran is a civilization that is 2000 years old. So perhaps we can expect a gentle nudge towards that excruciating tweet that Trump wrote about destroying civilisations. Not a direct hit, but something that speaks the importance of other cultures, of other civilisations, of other peoples, of other religions, in some of the words that the king will use tomorrow. Look, you could draw up an easy list of problematic subjects for the king over this visit with Donald Trump. I mean, you know, where Britain has clashed, the Chagos Islands, not sending troops to Iran, support for Ukraine, NATO.

6:21I mean, the list goes on and on where Donald Trump is clearly pissed off with Keir Starmer. Oh, you haven't mentioned the Falklands. I haven't mentioned the Falklands. God, no, I forgot the Falklands, which was a kind of more recent one that popped up after that Pentagon memo. And so, yeah, you know, look, there's a lot of fraught, difficult issues. I suspect Donald Trump is going to be on his absolutely very best behaviour, which he can do. I suspect that he won't try to ambush the king in the Oval Office, as he has done with South African presidents and, you know, the Ukrainian leader. I don't think that any of that will happen.

6:59But then you're left with the question, well, OK, there'll be this kind of grand ritualistic loving between the king and the president and the closeness of the relationship. And as you say in that speech, it will dwell on the long historic relationship between the two countries, which is, you know, for the most part true. But a week later, what would be different? Will Donald Trump go back and saying, Starmer, you're no Churchill, Starmer, you're an appeaser, Starmer, you're more like Chamberlain? You know, all those things that we've heard. Does the reset really make any difference in any long term sense?

7:34So I think this is when you have to reach to that old Afghan quote about clocks and time. So in the king's mind, and obviously, you know, as you've said at the beginning, the king doesn't choose to go. He is sent and he's sent at his majesty's, I can't say pleasure because it sounds like he's going to prison, but you know what I mean. Starmer decides that he wants the king to go and that's what happens. But this is about the 250 years. The king is not going as some junior spad, right, to sort of smooth the waters. He's not even going as Yvette Cooper, who is the foreign secretary. He'll be at his side throughout this whole thing.

8:09The king is going in the spirit of this long stretch of history that the two countries shared. And somebody said to me, you know, there may be those looking at the king sort of up there speaking and thinking, oh, 250 years ago, you know, perhaps we had sort of less of a madman in charge than we do now. Right. It's not inconceivable. So I don't think that we will be able to judge. I mean, I know we as daily journalists want to judge, you know, what happens next week. Right. I don't think that that is the spirit in which this visit was ever conceived. Although it's interesting, he's also meeting Mamdani in New York.

8:46Right. Which is so I think there is a sort of and about a week later, there's this big sort of trip which is full of cultural and and sort of business people that is going to L.A. to the West Coast, which is a, I think it's called the Great, you know, it's called something like the Great Campaign. Exactly. 500 people on a BA flight going to the West Coast. So I think this is meant to sort of say this is not about Trump and it's not even about a reset. It's about us speaking to them. It's about Britain speaking to America. It's about British business people speaking to American British people. And it's all the sort of cultural ties in between.

9:23Right. Which I suppose, I suppose, has to have more of a longevity than whatever, you know, Trump says about Starmer next week, which, frankly, he could contradict the week after. Yeah, look, so in one way, there is an obvious comparator in terms of state visits, and that's the Queen going to the United States in 1957, a year after the Suez crisis. And Eisenhower, then the president, who'd been the Supreme Allied Commander during the Second World War. So a good friend of Britain's was furious that Britain went on this last madcap imperial venture with France and Israel to re-nationalise the Suez Canal.

10:02and Eisenhower stopped it dead in its tracks. The special relationship was in tatters and the Queen soothed it over. And at the end of that visit, Eisenhower said, don't worry, fences have been mended. The special relationship is back on track. Now, I suspect Donald Trump will say something similar at the end of this visit by the King. The difference being that, do you trust Donald Trump's word as much as you'd trust President Eisenhower's word? And I think the second point on that is that Starmer does quite well here when Trump's hating on him. Right. The more backbone that Starmer shows to Trump, the better his poll ratings are, as we saw over the kind of, you know, the Iran stuff.

10:46And he needs that. And he needs that right now. They're not great poll ratings at the best of times. But actually, you know, when Trump is on a downer with Starmer, Starmer tends to be put in higher regard by the Brits. And an interesting, another fact, actually, that I was told over the weekend was that actually the king's own disposition towards Keir Starmer is very favourable. When somebody had suggested to the king that there might be a change of leader in the sort of coming weeks and months, I was told he rolled his eyes. In other words, that's partly about stability. You know, he wants, obviously as a monarch, he wants stability.

11:24But it's also that he thinks that he's got a good rapport with this man. On a personal level, he thinks Starmer is a good man doing a good job. And I guess, you know, there is, for Keir Starmer, much more of a danger from those around him at home, those closest to him at home than there ever is from what Trump himself says about Starmer, right? There's something else, though, that I think is kind of we're looking at this as though the king is going as a supplicant to Donald Trump and saying, oh, please forgive us, please, you know, be nice to us. We need your help. No, we're not. Do you think that?

12:00No, I think there's a lot of writing about Britain is on its knees and the special relationship is in tatters. I would just look at it at the other end of this telescope and say, I tell you who needs his reputation burnishing right now. It's Donald Trump. Donald Trump needs to have the king there. You know, kind of all through last week, we were doing endless reports on Mandelson and whether this was going to be the end of Starmer as prime minister. Did any American network get in touch with me to say, oh, my God, you might be about to lose your prime minister? No, I've had all the American network saying, could you come in on the king's visit?

12:34because they love the royal family. And so the royal family and Donald Trump standing next to a real king who doesn't have to paint the Oval Office gold. I mean, a lot of Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace are in gold and have been for a very long time. Whereas Donald Trump gets the real thing. Donald Trump is the pretend king who wants to be a king. He's got the real king going to be standing next to him over the next three or four days. And that is good for Donald Trump because his ratings are in the toilet. They've never been so low as a result of the Iran war, as a result of affordability, as a result of the excesses of ice, as a result of the misbehaviour of some of his cabinet members.

13:13So Donald Trump could do with a little bit of burnishing right now. And the king can give that. the the one uh area we haven't talked about um was the petition by epstein's victims abuse victims that the king spend you know a few minutes or 10 minutes coming to see them and the message that we had from the palace was a very firm no wasn't it it's like we don't want to get involved in the legal proceedings i'm not i don't know how much that stands up to scrutiny that a visit from the king or a word from the king would necessarily, you know, bring him into sort of legal jeopardy. But what I was told was that certainly up to two weeks ago, when this story was sort of first sort of fomenting, the queen, Camilla, was very keen to meet with Epstein's victims.

14:02And she wanted to do it alongside Melania. And she said, I've spent my life fighting for women's voices and spent my life fighting for victims. We will find a way to do it. So, So, I mean, it sounds as if they've ruled it out. But I was told, you know, never say never. There might be a moment in which Camilla manages to at least make some gesture towards Epstein's victims. And initially she wanted to have Melania at her side. So we'll kind of be watching to see if she pulls that one off. If the two women manage to pull that one off, that will be quite a moment. I think if you're a Buckingham Palace courtier, you are doing everything you can to minimise the risk of something that has the potential to be a moment, a moment, a kind of, you know, where it becomes viral as a result of something that you happen.

14:54And so this is a heavily manicured and orchestrated trip. I mean, all royal visits are, but this one even more so because of the potential for kind of, you know, explosions to go off when you least expect it and least want it to. Totally right. I think you're absolutely right. Nobody wants a moment. And this is all about sort of, you know, as we said at the beginning, keep calm and carry on. But just to go back to that, I keep on half quoting this Afghan line, which is I think it goes back to the 80s. It was the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. And the line that came from the Afghan leaders was, you've got the clocks, you know, you're in a hurry.

15:30We've got the time. In other words, you do whatever you want. We're just going to sit here drumming our fingers because we always win the wars in the long term. Right. You think the Iranians are looking at that place right now? Absolutely. And I'm not at all putting the king in the position of being the Afghan warlord in this metaphor. But what I am trying to say is maybe Trump is a complete irrelevance. Right. On the on the stage, in a wider picture, whether the queen manages to kind of reach out to victims of sexual abuse, which is something that she obviously feels incredibly strongly about and her life's work has been, you know, focused on women in a very sort of proper way, is going to be far more helpful to the monarchy than whatever the king has to say to Trump for two days.

16:25Right. And also, I mean, you know, Emily, you were a minute ago talking about the businessmen who are flying off to L.A. The wheels are continuing to turn. I said business people. Business people. I'm so sorry. I am going to go on that diversity awareness course straight after this recording of the episode. No, absolutely right to point that out. But the relationship goes on as normal. There is still the intelligence sharing between Langley, where the CIA are based, and GCHQ, which are our listening post. There are still British servicemen and women integrated into the US Armed Forces, as there are US servicemen and women integrated into our armed forces.

17:04on all sorts of levels none of this has made any difference at all it is atmospherics and that kind of to me goes to show that the special relationship is kind of something of a chimera because you know realistically there are areas where there are very very close links and the idea that donald trump says well you're no winston churchill and we all get an attack of the vapors because oh my god the special relationship is over no the relationship will go on because there is common national interest to keep it going on. And so the king will do much in terms of the atmospherics to repair things. But actually, things have been carrying on pretty much as normal, despite the spat between Starmer and Trump.

17:46I mean, I still think, actually, and I don't decide these things, which is a good job, I would still prefer the king not to be going, frankly. I still think it is, for all the reasons you laid out, It is an endorsement of a man who started, you know, an illegal war. It is an endorsement of, you know, all the stuff that's been happening on America's streets and the ice and the shootings and the arrests. And I know that we say, well, the king has to deal with all sorts of, you know, crazy dictators and totalitarians and Xi Jinping, Xi Jinping and all the rest of it. Yeah, but you can choose your moments.

18:25and if it is about the two countries, I don't know. I don't think you have to do it right now. So I've gone back and forwards on this. I am now... I initially thought, oh, for God's sake, don't go. I mean, why are we rewarding a bloke who is being so vile and so unpleasant and obnoxious? On the other hand, I think it's juvenile. I think that, you know, given the state of, you know, relations and given the historical closeness between the UK and the US and the vital role that the US has played in the 20th century in bailing Britain out twice in the First World War and the Second World War to deliberately cancel because you've been nasty to our man I think would look petty and small-minded.

19:06No, it's nothing to do with Keir Starmer. No, no, no. I think I'm just saying if the king cancelled the state visit on the basis that Donald Trump has been nasty... No, but it's nothing to do with that. That's what I'm saying. It's not. It's to do with, you know, America is now in the middle of a war that nobody understands with Iran and you're diving into that and you are somehow sanctioning it. You're not giving an imprimatur by going. Well, we're not going to Russia. We're not going to Moscow. We're not meeting with Putin. We don't have a historical close relationship with Russia or Moscow.

19:33So he wouldn't be going. But I mean, you know, it's the 250th year. If you want to plant a flag and say, this is the perfect opportunity for us to reassert that there is a very close relationship between the US and the UK. If the king then didn't go, I think it would look like a real kind of poke in the eye that really would have consequences. Yeah, I just think that works in every other context, but one in which Donald Trump is at the centre of it for all the reasons you said, that he just waves that flag. He waves the flag of acceptability. He waves the flag of the UK monarchy and he's got away with it again.

20:13Sure. And I think that, you know, as I say, I have every confidence that within a week or two weeks or a month, Donald Trump will say something very disobliging again about our government and its failure to send naval vessels up the Strait of Hormuz, even though America hasn't dared to put a vessel into the Strait of Hormuz yet. That's why I'd quite like her to meet with Epstein's victims. It's about something bigger than Donald Trump. We'll be back in a moment with what happened at the White House Correspondents' Dinner.

20:48from a range of trusted voices and award-winning journalists good morning i'm nick ferrari it's time to get to your calls find out the latest news and hear every side of the story there is also a judgment i made that was wrong i should not have appointed peter mandelson and i apologize again to the victims of the pedophile jeffrey epstein who were clearly failed by my decision The pendulum has become turbocharged over the last few days, swinging hither and thither with gay abandon. So where is it now regarding the Prime Minister? Listen on our free Global Player app or the LBC app. LBC, leading Britain's conversation.

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22:36could hear what sounded like gunshots or commotion. People nearby could smell the gunpowder. Everybody hit the floor. How worried were you that there were going to be injuries? I wasn't worried. I understand life. We live in a crazy world. Donald Trump accepting that, yes, we do indeed live in a crazy world. after that attempted shooting at the White House Correspondents' Dinner in Washington, D.C. on Saturday night at the Hilton Hotel. And I think it's fair to say that over the last sort of 24 hours, we've been trying to analyse our own reactions and our own responses to this, haven't we, as a team.

23:24And they've gone from the sort of, you know, oh my goodness, to, oh, not again, to, oh, why are we being asked to believe something that feels like we've sort of been there before? To sort of how big a moment was this, right? Well, what gives it so much oxygen is there were 3 ,000 journalists to report on it in the room. Completely. Made for TV moment. Totally. I mean, I've been to the White House Correspondents' Dinner five times, I think, from when I was out there, six times. and i can't begin to describe this extraordinary space the the basement of the washington uh hilton which is i think it seats two and a half thousand people so if you imagine your wedding of 10 tables of 10 well this is 200 tables of 10 okay so just it's vast i mean it's just massive this room and all the tables are really tightly packed and it's virtually impossible to move around and in fact you know donald trump says he wasn't scared the gunman never got into the ballroom he's on the floor below i mean so you so you get you you say about all the reactions you go through so i was woken up on sunday morning with someone asking me to come on and talk about what it's like at my white house correspondence dinner and then i kind of read what had happened i thought oh my god and then you kind of he didn't get through security the security system worked so you wouldn't be that panicked by it when there's no gunman in the room i mean the thing that amazed me and this sounds a terribly dark thing to say how is it conceivable that the shooter is still alive because you saw him run through he's in the hallway where the security vetting is where the machines are the secret service guys draw their weapons and fire That's what the gunfire you could hear.

25:21And it seems like every shot missed. And so it's remarkable that there is a guy in custody at the end of this who is going to stand trial, which is exactly how you'd want it to be. So that is, you know, that's a great thing that there was that he wasn't killed. But, you know, the security operation worked and you think, you know, this is what Americans go through on a daily basis with a shopping mall, with a cinema, with a school, with a university campus, with whatever it happens to be. I'm afraid to say horrifying as it is. And political violence has been part of America's story since, you know, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.

25:59Yeah, I mean, I had the same. I was awake about three o 'clock on Sunday morning and was just sort of scrolling through my phone and saw it all sort of unfolding and the story being told. And a lot of people there were saying, oh, the security was very lax and nobody checked our bags and the security scanner didn't work and all the rest of it. Actually, it turns out that, you know, when there was an active shooter coming towards the room, the security detail do know how to act pretty fast. And I think it was eight seconds between them apprehending him and getting Trump out. But I think it does ask a bigger question, which is so many things were legal up to the point where he pulled the trigger on that gun.

26:39He checked into a hotel with his arms, you know, with knives, with guns. And that was completely legal. He owned the guns, completely legal, came came by them through legal means. And so we are back to the biggest, the oldest, age old question of America. If you don't want this stuff to happen, then change your sodding laws. Right. Which will never be a question that's asked by anyone on that side because we just see the repetition of it. And I went back and I was actually checking to see how many other fatal shootings there had been actually in that city on that weekend. And I couldn't find any record of another one on that night.

27:18But if you look through an average, so I went back to 2024, an average year, there are 148 fatal shootings in Washington, D.C. So if you imagine that in sort of weekends, it's almost three a weekend. So your point about the shopping mall, your point about the parts of Washington, D.C. that we never cover because it's not the Hilton. You know, this stuff is going on the whole time. Right. it's going on the whole time and it still remains completely legal to check into a hotel room with a gun no this hilton hotel which is just as i say cavernous vast ugly i mean it's just extraordinary place it's the capital washington capital hilton in washington we all know it as the hinckley hilton because it was named after john hinckley jr the person who tried to assassinate ronald reagan in 1981 and Reagan was injured and had to be taken off to a hospital and the guy who was his press secretary James Brady was paralysed and ultimately died of his injuries as a result of Hinkley opening fire outside the Capitol Hilton it's now the law was passed called Brady's law as a result of that.