When President Trump begins a state visit to Britain on Wednesday, it may feel like a holiday from history. For a few days, he will trade the United States and its sulfurous politics for a fairy tale world of horse-drawn carriages, royal artillery salutes and an opulent banquet in Windsor Castle.
Mr. Trump leaves behind a country convulsed by the killing of his ally, the right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, and a White House unable to settle foreign conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza. Britain hopes to use its gilded charms to nudge its guest in the preferred direction on a complex agenda including trans-Atlantic security and trade.
But it is far from clear that Mr. Trump will be interested in more than the pomp and pageantry. And his hosts, King Charles III and Prime Minister Keir Starmer, may not feel as shielded from the backwash of a messy world.
Last week, Mr. Starmer was forced to dismiss Britain’s ambassador to the United States, Peter Mandelson, over troubling revelations about his long-ago friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, the financier and convicted sex offender — and the same man whose ties to Mr. Trump have generated their own battery of questions.
While Mr. Trump has largely deflected those questions, the Epstein scandal still haunts the British royal family. Charles’s younger brother Prince Andrew was forced into internal exile in 2019 and later stripped of his military titles after he fumbled questions about his friendship with Mr. Epstein.
British officials are determined not to let the sordid saga spoil the visit. They played down Mr. Mandelson’s abrupt departure, saying that a British-American technology agreement he negotiated with the Trump administration, billed as the policy capstone of the visit, was signed and sealed. Mr. Mandelson said that he reviewed the technology partnership with Mr. Trump in an Oval Office meeting last Tuesday.
Prince Andrew is not expected to take part in the ceremonies involving Mr. Trump and the royal family. Buckingham Palace instead plans to feature the king’s eldest son, Prince William, and his wife, Catherine, Princess of Wales, who will play host to Mr. Trump’s wife, Melania, at a meeting with young scouts.
Yet diplomats on both sides of the Atlantic said that the lingering questions were bound to sound a discordant note amid the visit’s choreographed rituals. Mr. Trump’s trip, after all, is all about symbolism: an imperial-minded president who relishes his ties to the royal family, being feted by an actual king.
“For him, this is personal,” said Fiona Hill, a British-born foreign policy expert who served in Mr. Trump’s first term and was involved in planning his earlier trips to Britain. “He’s building his own dynasty. He wanted to forge those ties with the royal family because that’s how he sees his own family.”
“Given the crisis with Mandelson,” Ms. Hill added, “there are going to be shadows around this trip.”
Mr. Trump is the only elected leader to be accorded a second British state visit (Queen Margrethe of Denmark and King Olav of Norway each had two). When Mr. Starmer handed Mr. Trump an invitation from the king during an Oval Office meeting in February, he emphasized its extraordinary nature.
“This is really special,” the prime minister told the assembled press corps. “This has never happened before. This is unprecedented.”
The parade of superlatives had the desired effect. Mr. Trump read Charles’s letter almost reverently before showing it off to the cameras. “A beautiful man, a wonderful man,” he said of the 76-year-old monarch.
Much has been made of the royal family as a not-so-secret weapon for the British government in its cultivation of Mr. Trump. During the first state visit, the Foreign Office paired off the president with Charles, who was then the Prince of Wales, even though Queen Elizabeth II, then 93, was the official host.
The two men are almost contemporaries — Mr. Trump is 79 — and they both know a bit about being heirs to a family business. They both also have strong views on architecture, with a preference for classical style. Charles is overseeing a decade-long refurbishment of Buckingham Palace; Mr. Trump is breaking ground on a ballroom attached to the East Wing of the White House.
During the first visit, British officials hoped that Charles, a fervent campaigner against climate change, would gently raise the issue with Mr. Trump during a lunch at his London residence, Clarence House. Mr. Trump had announced plans to pull out of the Paris climate accord two years earlier.
Afterward, Mr. Trump told aides that Charles had spoken almost exclusively about climate change, according to an official briefed on the lunch who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a private meeting. But the president did not express any noticeable irritation, the official said, suggesting that he had a level of tolerance for Charles’s views because he was heir to the throne.
The king is “actually a very accomplished diplomat,” said Kim Darroch, who served as ambassador to Washington during Mr. Trump’s first term. “Charles would tell you what he thought, and he does have some quite strong views.”
Since Charles ascended to the throne in 2022 after the death of Elizabeth, he has somewhat modulated his commentary on climate change, in keeping with the monarch’s traditional obligation to steer clear of politics. But he has not hesitated to exert the monarchy’s soft power in more symbolic ways.
Charles invited President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine for tea at his country residence, Sandringham, in March, two days after Mr. Zelensky was dressed down in the Oval Office by Mr. Trump. In May, he presided over the opening of Parliament in Canada, of which he is head of state, a subtle rebuke to Mr. Trump, who has called for Canada to become the 51st American state.
Britain has felt the reverberations of events in the United States. A rally organized by the far-right leader, Tommy Robinson, on Saturday drew tens of thousands of people into the streets of London. Some said they were honoring Mr. Kirk.
Diplomats predicted that the king would not bring up such topics with Mr. Trump. There will be plenty of distractions: A royal salute will be fired from the east lawn of Windsor Castle as Mr. Trump arrives on Wednesday morning. Charles and his wife, Queen Camilla, will join the Trumps in a carriage procession on the Windsor estate.
Mr. Trump and the king will then inspect an honor guard. The president famously stepped in front of Elizabeth at a similar ceremony at Buckingham Palace, which was portrayed at the time as a faux pas, although palace officials later told British diplomats that Mr. Trump had done nothing wrong.
A lunch, a wreath-laying at the tomb of Elizabeth and the banquet will follow — all within the crenelated walls of Windsor. That guarantees that Mr. Trump will not face any protesters. In a nod to his fondness for military displays, the king will treat him to a flyover of F-35 fighter jets and Red Arrow acrobatic planes, weather permitting.
British officials hope the stagecraft will reduce the risk of unwelcome topics, like Mr. Epstein, intruding on the visit. Buckingham Palace will do its part by banishing Prince Andrew, who accompanied Mr. Trump on a tour of Westminster Abbey during his first state visit. But the hosts are well aware of Mr. Trump’s penchant for taking questions from reporters — and for offering unfiltered responses.
The last time Mr. Trump visited London, in 2019 for a NATO summit, he was asked about the furor over Andrew’s ties to Mr. Epstein.
“It’s a tough story,” the president said. “It’s a very tough story.”
Mark Landler is the London bureau chief of The Times, covering the United Kingdom, as well as American foreign policy in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. He has been a journalist for more than three decades.
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