Ahead of the visit, a diplomatic challenge for the UK had been that Trump had been an enthusiastic fan of the King and the monarchy, but had criticised the UK’s prime minister and its armed forces.
The state visit had sought to build back bridges between the UK and US, beyond the focus on the royals.
“It’s not a competition between the King and the government,” said the royal aide.
“The King is there to support the government, to help the government. It was at the government’s request, of course, that he undertook this visit.”
There were no press conferences during the state visit, but there were still diplomatic eyebrows raised over Trump having seemed to suggest that the King was closer to his own views on the war with Iran.
In his state dinner speech, Trump had said: “We have militarily defeated that particular opponent, 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.”
Buckingham Palace had smoothed that over, saying that was in line with the UK government’s position on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.
But later the president continued to suggest that the King was supporting his line on Iran – on an issue that has caused friction between the UK government and the Trump administration.
“If that were up to him, he would have probably helped us with Iran,” said the president, about his talks with the “great King”.
There had been no comment from Buckingham Palace on that.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.bbc.co.uk ’
