<\/p>\n
In an interview with Sky News, Trump denigrated Starmer, whose policies he characterized as \u201cinsane\u201d; his political future, he said, depended on cracking down on immigration. (\u201cThey\u2019re destroying your country.\u201d) Charles, meanwhile, was a \u201cgreat gentleman.\u201d The King is the embodiment of the England that the President still likes: Windsor Castle, glossy magazine covers of Princess Diana. As Freddie Hayward, of The<\/em> New Statesman<\/em>, put it, \u201cInstead of sending their hapless Prime Minister, they would work with the grain of Americans\u2019 love for our royals.\u201d He went on, \u201cOne official compared it to the King\u2019s Speech in Parliament, where the monarch becomes the mouthpiece for the government.\u201d<\/p>\n There is always glee in Washington in advance of royal visits. When Charles came in 1985, as a prince, the Post<\/em> ran a hundred-and-sixteen-page supplement from the British Tourist Authority. This time, the most sought-after invitation was for a garden tea at the British Embassy, where members of Trump\u2019s Cabinet joined the receiving line for the King. \u201cI wasn\u2019t invited, so my republicanism is hardening,\u201d a British journalist told me. \u201cThe visit seems far more significant to Washington than it does to Westminster, where the press is more fixated on using the previous U.S. Ambassador to bring down the Prime Minister than on what the current U.S. Ambassador is doing with the King.\u201d In D.C., he continued, \u201cPeople here have switched from \u2018No Kings\u2019 to \u2018O.K., one king, as long as he\u2019s not ours.\u2019\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n And Trump, of course, enjoys royal cosplay. He has posted memes of himself as a monarch; this weekend, after an apparent assassination attempt<\/a> at the White House Correspondents\u2019 Association dinner, he told a CBS anchor, \u201cIf I was a king, I wouldn\u2019t be dealing with you.\u201d Just before the White House welcome ceremony, Trump responded to an article in the Daily Mail<\/em><\/a> which suggested he might be a distant cousin of the King\u2019s. \u201cWow, that\u2019s nice,\u201d the President wrote on Truth Social. \u201cI\u2019ve always wanted to live in Buckingham Palace!\u201d<\/p>\n The speech on the South Lawn went beyond the usual pomp and circumstance. \u201cFor nearly two centuries before the Revolution, this land was settled and forged by men, women, who bore in their souls the blood and noble spirit of the British,\u201d Trump said. \u201cTheir veins ran with Anglo-Saxon courage, their hearts beat with an English faith.\u201d This heritage, he said, was the foundation of liberty. \u201cIn recent years, we\u2019ve often heard it said that America is merely an idea. But the cause of freedom did not simply appear as an intellectual invention of 1776.\u201d<\/p>\n A senior Administration official reacting to the speech told me that \u201crepublican ideas and Anglo-Saxon heritage are inextricable.\u201d Last year, when Starmer said that England risked becoming an \u201cisland of strangers\u201d owing to migration, he quickly apologized for his phrasing, which seemed to echo Enoch Powell\u2019s notorious \u201cRivers of Blood\u201d speech: \u201cFor reasons which they could not comprehend\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0they found themselves made strangers in their own country.\u201d Many on the right in both countries seemed glad that Trump was willing to affirm what Starmer skirted around. Another reporter told me that Steve Bannon had sent him a text after the speech: \u201cblood and soil\u2014epic.\u201d<\/p>\n A few hours later, the King travelled to the Capitol to give a joint address to Congress. When I arrived on the Hill, as Charles and House Speaker Mike Johnson<\/a> were taking a ceremonial walk through Statuary Hall, my phone buzzed with the news that the Justice Department was again indicting James Comey<\/a>, the former F.B.I. director, this time for an Instagram post in which he arranged seashells in a manner that allegedly threatened the President\u2019s life.<\/p>\n