Has King Charles salvaged special relationship with Trump? – The Latest

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:09They do go a bit weak-kneed at the sight of a monarch. It's that notion of history. Remember, Americans' history is quite short. The founding fathers were bold and imaginative rebels with a cause. 250 years ago, or as we say in the United Kingdom just the other day. They declared independence. It was quality stuff. Coded, but not that coded. By royal standards, it was actually pretty direct. This visit and the rave reviews he's getting, the ovations, the laughter at the White House, will represent a big moment for him in his own life story. A historic day for King Charles, sent to Washington to salvage the ever shakier special relationship.

0:52There were jokes, there were digs. The supposedly apolitical monarch even appealed to Trump on NATO and Ukraine. But was the president listening to what the king was really saying? From The Guardian's today in focus, this is the latest with me, Helen Pitt.

1:09Joining me today is Guardian columnist Jonathan Friedland, who's also the host of our Politics Weekly America podcast. Lovely to see you, Jonathan. Good to be with you. So Tuesday was a pretty historic day for King Charles. He was the first British monarch to address the US Congress since his mum 35 years ago when the first George Bush was in the White House. We're going to get to that speech a bit later. But let's start with his, I'd say, more of a barnstormer of a speech. The one that he gave at a very lavish dinner at the White House. I genuinely laughed, I think, five times while I was watching it.

1:42It was sort of Notting Hill meets the darkest hour. A lot of subtext and also a lot of jokes. What did you make of it? Yeah, it was a chance for King Charles' stand-up. I mean, it was his Washington debut of his comedy routine, and it went down extremely well. I mean, they were very well-judged jokes. You recently commented, Mr President, that if it were not for the United States, European countries would be speaking German. Dare I say that if it wasn't for us, you'd be speaking French. You know, the speechwriters at the Palace, I've thought this for a long while, are really the best in the UK, I think, better than any politician has.

2:22And that includes the gag writing. It was quality stuff. And it played on the idea that he is this historical figure. And his audience will have thought of, you know, his great-great, I think he said five times, great-grandfather George III and the character from Hamilton. He was sort of playing that in a way, you know, with these references as if the 18th century had only just happened. And so playing into, leaning into the fact he is 77 and that he represents the old world and that the Americans who broke from Britain, they have a kind of nostalgia. You can tickle their tummy with jokes about the royal past.

3:03Yeah. And there was one bit where Charles dared to make a joke about Trump's plans to build this fantastic new ballroom in the east wing of the White House. And I'm sorry to say that we British, of course, made our own small attempt at real estate redevelopment of the White House in 1814. For those whose American history isn't great, what was he getting at? Well, there was a war between Britain and the United States, and it did culminate in British forces burning down the White House. And that is still remembered in some quarters. And so he was nodding to that. And it was just those jokes that appear to be self-deprecating, in which, you know, he's having a poke at his British forebears for daring to burn down the White House, but really having a little sly dig at what is controversial in the United States, which is Donald Trump's rather vain plan for a ballroom, you know, to glorify his own image.

4:01And the jokes all had that quality all the way through where, you know, he made a reference to the fact that his mother had had to be charged with resetting, putting the special back in the special relationship after there'd been a war in the Middle East. He was referring to Suez in 1956, but he said, you know, 70 years on, who could imagine such a thing happening now? And it's just that deft ability that he had, I thought, which was to, yes, name the elephant in the room, but to do it in a light enough way that everyone could laugh and join together rather than being pulled apart. Yeah. And by the time he stood up at the dinner, he'd already had to deal with a few curveballs from Trump, who had given his own speech.

4:45And the US president put Charles on the spot a little bit, didn't he, when he raised what Trump called, and what a euphemism this is, a little Middle East work, the war in Iran. And we're never going to let that opponent ever, Charles agrees with me even more than I do, we're never going to let that opponent have a nuclear weapon. Yeah, I mean, a massive violation of protocol. Every British prime minister knows, for example, that what is said in the audience with the monarch is utterly confidential, must never get out. That's been followed by British prime ministers and it's been followed by American presidents, that convention.

5:18And it enables the monarch to speak very candidly. And we're only now beginning to discover that the Queen really was, you know, quite focused in her political comments to world leaders, but knowing it would stay in the room. Of course, the one person you can't trust with a confidence of any kind is Donald Trump, who immediately then goes and blabs it. And I think that could have been very awkward for the for the king. I think where he's lucky is people will assume, you know what, Donald Trump hears what he wants to hear. he probably exaggerated what Charles said to him, but he may be more guarded in their private conversations from now on.

5:57Yeah. And remind us, why is Charles there anyway? Well, it's the 250th anniversary of the... The semi-quincentennial anniversary, as Charles put it. Yeah, he did. And again, leaning into that image of the sort of quite fusty, older, more formal Britain and sort of playing on that role. 250 years since the Declaration of Independence, of course, when the United States broke from Britain. And so the running gag through the whole visit has been, well, we're still a little bit annoyed with you for leaving us, but we've got over it. And therefore, that's a model for our whole relationship. We can have these differences of agreement.

6:32The whole relationship began with the difference of opinion and we've got over and had a good relationship anyway, which is a very timely message for when the British government refusing to go in with the war in Iran and on Iran is at odds with the American government. in a way he is the king to say that's been our whole history all along from the beginning and it's okay. Yeah and so it seems that this visit is basically yet another attempt to shore up the fated special relationship which it seems even our own new ambassador to Washington, the UK ambassador, doesn't even believe in. He was caught on some kind of hot mic from some school children I think according to the FT saying that the real special relationship that the US have is with Israel and not the UK.

7:15Yeah, I mean, terrible timing from the point of view of the Royal Visit. Somebody leaked that obviously trying to cause trouble because it was a while ago, I think it was in February, that the new replacement ambassador, the replacement of Peter Mandelson, made these remarks. I suspect what he was saying, not very diplomatically, was if you actually think about military cooperation now, the Israelis and the Americans are working closely, hand in glove, more than any two countries, I think, probably ever before in the Middle East, in the war in Iran, and therefore that's more special. But I think, again, such is the separate, distinct category a monarch is put in.

7:53I think, in a way, the American political class will look past that because they treat Charles differently. If this was Keir Starmer coming, and now those remarks had surfaced, that would have been trouble. But instead, it's people are prepared to put all that aside and as our colleague David Smith wrote they do go a bit weak knee at the sight of a monarch and he's the first British king of course his mother did it to speak to congress it's that notion of history remember Americans history is quite short it's 250 years old notice how Charles played on that said this happened 250 years ago or as we put it in Britain just the other day it's that idea that America knows it's not that long established a country it feels like an infant on the world stage compared to Britain or France.

8:41And so there is a kind of deference even to a visiting British monarch. And we've seen this week why that is such a powerful weapon in the diplomatic armory. And so the speech at the White House dinner was only the second one that Charles gave on Tuesday. The first one was to Congress, which is historic for reasons that we've already mentioned. And even though he, as the monarch, is supposed to stay out of politics, there was You would say potentially a thinly veiled plea for the US to return to its traditional values when he was discussing the importance of NATO and the defence of Ukraine. How significant do you think that was?

9:16I thought that was very significant, particularly by naming Ukraine. Now, usually the royal style, like that reference to the past, is sort of allusive. It just sort of nods to something where you work out what it might mean. You need to be able to speak British. That's right. And royal British, which is a separate dialect. A subtext of a subtext. Yes, where you have to really read between the lines. And for example, there was a reference to the victims of Jeffrey Epstein, which I think most people, it would have passed them by. But it was briefed afterwards that there was a line in there about those who suffer from bad things that happen on both sides at the Atlantic.

9:51So normally it's extremely coded. But on the contrary, with Ukraine, it was named, it's very specific, where the king spoke as if this was absolutely a shared cause. in fact it isn't there are plenty of republicans who are who've gone very cold on aid to ukraine but he put it right back on the agenda and i also thought there were even um again coded but not that coded references even domestically and there was one passage where he talked about the importance of magna carta and how that has been cited in over 160 supreme court judgments especially he said those that relate to checks and balances on the power of the executive.

10:36Democrats in the hall got the message, leapt to their feet, applauded, thinking, here is the king of England, of Great Britain, of the Commonwealth, who is joining the no kings movement in America. But the irony of it by siding with the idea that Donald Trump, the executive, the president cannot be a king. So by royal standards, it was actually pretty direct. And you mentioned the rather oblique reference actually to the Epstein case. What Charles actually said was that both the UK and the US support victims of some of the ills that so tragically exist in both of our societies today. I mean, it's probably not a surprise that he wasn't going to name Epstein given his own brother's well documented relationship with the late sex offender and indeed Trump's own relationship with him.

11:24I mean, do you think that was still quite a bold move? Because when he was arriving in the US, he was under quite a lot of pressure, him and Camilla, to actually meet with some of Epstein's victims. Yes. And they've said that there are sort of legal reasons why they can't really do that. I'm not so sure about that. But when I heard that line, I did picture those speechwriters in Buckingham Palace sitting around with officials. And I suspect that's the diluted version we heard that there was probably one originally that was much more unmistakably about the Epstein victims and this became so general I mean it really could be the victims of drug addiction or poverty or homelessness it could be anything ills that exist in both our countries so that felt to me like a very carefully sort of lawyered and diplomated version of it but it was something I think he probably could have gone a little bit further.

12:16And so we're talking on Wednesday, day three of this four day visit, what else is in store for the king and Queen Camilla? Well, they're going to visit Virginia, which is obviously where a lot of this history happened, the colonial period and the independence war. And then he's going to go to New York, various commitments there. Unclear whether he's going to have a one on one meeting with the mayor of New York. It'd be fascinating if that did happen. You know, the self-described socialist mayor of New York, Zoran Mamdani, figure of the left, increasingly the global left. You could imagine the thinking behind that if it did happen, which would be, look, he's met Donald Trump, who is obviously for people back home in Britain, for many of them, a hate figure associated with the right, with the authoritarian right, nationalist populist right.

13:04How do we balance that? Well, what better way than by meeting with a figure of the left in Zoran Mamdani, so that he would be able to come back if this were to go ahead and say, look, this was not a party political thing or an ideologically one-sided thing. I met figures from the left and right in the United States. The palace are very careful to make sure the king maintains this sort of equipoise between left and right, that he's just a figure of the centre as they see it, and that you could imagine that being the thinking. I think one other subtext of this whole visit of course we're talking about repairing the relationship between Britain and America we've talked about Starmer and Trump the other dynamic at play here is about Charles and his mother that Charles for a long time was just waiting to take over this job and inevitably was therefore in the shadow of Queen Elizabeth II this visit and the rave reviews he's getting the ovations the laughter at the White House speech will make him feel that he has I think at last emerged as a big figure in his own right, the equal in terms of just doing the job of his mother in terms of just this diplomatic and smoothing out ruffled feathers.

14:18I think this will be a big moment for him. He's 77. He hasn't yet got to be the king on the world stage really until now. And the fact that people like us are saying it's gone pretty well will represent a big moment for him in his own life story. Definitely. Jonathan, thank you so much. Thank you. That's it for today. My thanks to Jonathan Friedland. You can find all of our coverage of the state visit at theguardian.com. And while I've got you, do listen to this morning's episode of Today in Focus, where Nasheen talks to our US tech correspondent, Blake Montgomery, about the future of Apple after Tim Cook.

14:51Thanks for listening to this episode of The Latest. Today in Focus is back tomorrow. The latest is back tomorrow night. This episode was presented by me, Helen Pitt. It was produced by Bryony Moore and Nicola Alexandru. The senior producer was Ryan Rangobin and the lead producer was Zoe Hitch.