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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
ARTICLE VIEW:
Pomp and pageantry are the way to Donald Trump’s heart. And Britain
knows it
By Oscar Holland, CNN
Updated:
10:05 AM EDT, Tue September 16, 2025
Source: 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 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 . 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 and (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
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 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 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 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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