LONDON – If 2024 had been the year of health setbacks, then 2025 was the year when the monarchy was suddenly a trophy soft power asset – caught in a custody battle. In short, 2025 was about Donald Trump.
Trump’s fondness for the Royal Family was genuine and deep-seated. His first presidential visit to the UK was in 2018 (ahead of his State Visit in 2019) and that event came with one very firm pre-condition. ‘‘It was made very clear to us that the reason Donald Trump wanted to come was to meet the Queen,’’ the British Foreign Secretary at the time, Jeremy Hunt, admitted. ‘‘She was our greatest asset, and so we were told by the Americans, ‘If you want him to come and it involves tea with the Queen, he’ll come’. ‘‘The Queen was very happy to welcome him to Windsor for tea at the end of his short visit.
A popular press narrative, regularly resurrected by Trump critics on both sides of the Atlantic, has taken root that Trump was ‘rude’ to the Queen. The charges are that he had kept her waiting on the greeting dais by arriving late and that he had walked in front of her during the inspection of the Guard of Honour in the Quadrangle of Windsor Castle. Members of the Royal Household who were actually there deny this, saying that the Queen was not remotely put out.
‘‘Trump did nothing wrong at all. He arrived exactly on time. It was the Queen who had come out early because she wanted to check the dais and the steps, which were always a concern at that stage of her life,’’ says one senior member of her staff. ‘You have to remember that this was her first big event since the Duke of Edinburgh’s retirement from public duties the year before.
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