King Charles brings the stiff upper lip to Trump’s Washington

A king who has spent his life perfecting the stiff upper lip is about to spend four days in a nation led by a president who has never met an impulse he didn’t broadcast.

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Official royal visits, especially those involving Britain’s monarch, are traditionally an occasion for pomp and pageantry — displays of ceremonial flourish and, yes, jewels — while substantive issues are tackled behind the scenes. The state visit scheduled to begin Monday in Washington is something else.

The frictions surrounding it are front-page news. On Saturday, a security incident forced the evacuation of President Donald Trump and other U.S. officials from a televised dinner. Bilateral tensions over Iran remain unresolved. The Jeffrey Epstein scandal hangs over both the U.S. and U.K. governments.  And there’s the question of whether Trump — who was recently willing to engage in a war of words with the pope — will maintain better behavior for his royal guests. 

King Charles III and Queen Camilla are set to arrive Monday afternoon for a four-day trip. The agenda spans events in Washington, D.C.; New York; and Virginia and includes a state dinner, a review of troops, an address to Congress, inspection of the White House beehive and a wreath laying at the 9/11 memorial. Receptions for literature — a favorite topic of Camilla’s — and bilateral business and finance interests, as well as a national park visit and a horseracing event (another love of Camilla’s) are also on the calendar. 

Officially, the couple are marking the 250th anniversary of American independence — that is, arriving to praise the United States’ success declaring independence from Charles’ ancestor, King George III, in 1776. 

Unofficially, the couple are on a diplomatic charm offensive, seeking to smooth bilateral relations with Trump, who has been publicly critical of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s refusal to partner on military action against Iran. 

While there is some inherent awkwardness in praising a country that ditched the crown and became a global superpower, Charles knows his role: radiate kingly statesmanship and appeal to Trump, whose fondness for British royalty has led him to lavish praise on Charles and his late mother, Queen Elizabeth II. The trip itself is, in some ways, a bet that majesty can do what diplomacy has not.

Charles, who was heir to the throne for a record 70 years during his mother’s seven-decade reign, has experience with challenging diplomatic missions. He spoke at the 1997 ceremony marking the end of British control of Hong Kong. He acknowledged the “appalling atrocity of slavery which forever stains our history” as Barbados became an independent republic in 2021 and cast off the British monarch as head of state. While a prince, Charles generated plenty of negative headlines over his opinions, such as public remarks about architecture and his reference to Chinese Communist officials at the Hong Kong handover as “appalling old waxworks.” As king, he has hewed to more benign pronouncements. (So criticism of Trump’s controversial ballroom project — and the destruction of the White House East Wing that enabled it — is unlikely.)

Although this is Charles’ first visit to the States as monarch, he has traveled to the U.S. 20 times since 1970, he noted in a toast during Trump’s visit to England last September. (“Had the media succeeded in the 1970s in their own attempt at deepening the ‘special relationship,’ I myself might have been married off within the Nixon family,” the king joked, a reference to Tricia Nixon, elder daughter of then-President Richard Nixon, who accompanied Charles and his sister, Anne, the Princess Royal, to events.) 

This visit follows a safe precedent: Charles’ parents, Elizabeth and Prince Philip, made a similar visit for the U.S. bicentennial in 1976. At a dinner with then-President Gerald Ford, the queen toasted the “new chapter in history” that followed the revolution and the two countries’ shared language, traditions and “common vision of what is right and just.” References to a mutual commitment to democracy and freedom, and praise for Trump’s British heritage are likely to be heard over the next few days.  

The timing, however, is awkward on a high-profile front: The Epstein scandal continues to be front-page news in Britain.