The United Kingdom shamelessly prostrated itself at the feet of Donald Trump on Wednesday, throwing a lavish welcoming party for his state visit to Windsor that resembled less diplomacy and more fealty.
No foreign leader has ever been greeted with the degree of ceremonial extravagance, as Britain rolled out a show of pomp unmatched since the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II.
The display left those who see Trump as a hostile force intent on dismantling the post-war settlement feeling distinctly queasy, but there was at least something honest in the absurdity.
Trump demands spectacle, and Britain provides it. He wants to be king, and, for a day, Britain is letting him.
In doing so, the U.K. has revealed something deeply unflattering about itself—in the scramble to keep America close, it will debase itself and its values completely.
It will silence dissent, empty out its traditions, and rent out its monarch like a sex worker, deployed to flatter the ego of a man who has spent much of his political life suggesting he should be treated like one, a monarch, not a sex worker, that is.
As stage props go, the monarchy is unbeatable. But if this is what the “special relationship” between the U.S and the U.K. now means, it looks to many in Britain less like a partnership and more like groveling, feudal servitude.
Nothing about the welcome was subtle. From the moment Marine One touched down in the grounds of Windsor Castle at 12:14 p.m., Trump and Melania were greeted not by a minister or a courtier, but by the Prince and Princess of Wales, William and Kate, who walked them up to Charles and Camilla as a 41-gun salute thundered across Windsor. Simultaneously, a second salute shook the air from the Tower of London.
The choreography spoke volumes. Every cannon, every plume, every flashing braid, every polished boot timed to inflate and flatter Trump’s sense of himself.
Then came the pageantry proper. A carriage procession through Windsor Great Park’s long avenues, Trump and Melania ensconced with King Charles and Queen Camilla, dutifully present despite having sinusitis, William and Kate following in another coach with the U.S. ambassador. It was a grotesque parody of a coronation parade.
Heavy drizzle forced canopies onto the carriages, but nothing could disguise the pathetic Trump-pleasing of the U.K. government. Ranks of soldiers in scarlet and gold, plumed helmets catching the rain, polished breastplates gleaming in the grey light, the clang of armour, the rhythmic clip of one hundred and twenty horses, the rolling of drums, the blast of brass bands, the Star-Spangled Banner ringing off Windsor’s medieval stone.
A royal ceremony is theatre, but this was theatre that revealed far more than a sovereign nation should about its craven need to please a foreign leader who has done absolutely nothing to help the sovereign nation in question, and plenty to harm it.
The numbers give a sense of the scale of this people-pleasing operation gone mad: 1,300 military personnel were involved—1,000 from the British Army, 160 from the Royal Navy, 140 from the RAF. Three bands, from all three services, filled the air with martial noise. The Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment provided what was formally described as a “Sovereign’s Escort,” but the sovereign, it seemed, was not Charles.
At the castle’s Quadrangle, the massive Guard of Honor was another extraordinary attempt by a desperate Britain to win Trump’s favor. The Grenadier Guards, the Coldstream Guards, and the Scots Guards all paraded their colors together for the first time on such an occasion. To pretend this was normal diplomacy is ludicrous. It was carefully chosen excess intended to impress one man.
And impress him it did. Trump, beaming beside Camilla, looked delighted with himself, wrapped in pomp. His entire career has been built on an appropriated version of that image: gold leaf, chandeliers, uniforms, titles, and now here was the real thing being presented to him from his gilded coach.
Protests were pushed miles away. Images linking Trump to Jeffrey Epstein may have been projected onto Windsor Castle the night before. Still, the demonstrators themselves were invisible, outside the walls, their voices drowned out by salutes and hoofbeats. Britain managed to suppress dissent so thoroughly that you would never have known there was any. It was as if the entire nation had agreed to collude in pretending Donald Trump is universally revered.
This is a national embarrassment for a once-proud nation. Britain has every reason to want a functional relationship with Washington. Nobody disputes the importance of the alliance. But the line between respect and abasement has to be drawn somewhere, and Windsor on Wednesday crossed it.
It was not a welcome; it was a deliberate performative subservience. It sent the message that Britain will not merely tolerate Trump, we will exalt him, indulge him, and play courtier to him, no matter the damage he does here and elsewhere.
Want more royal gossip, scoops, and scandals? Head over to The Royalist on Substack
The post Britain Indulges ‘King Trump’ Fantasy With Historic Ceremony appeared first on The Daily Beast.
