Britain Bends for Royal Pomp for Trump’s Second State Visit

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By breaking precedent with a lavish second state visit, King Charles and Britain signal how far they are willing to go to flatter Trump — even at the cost of tradition and optics.

By TRH Global Affairs Desk

NEW DELHI, September 18, 2025 — The United Kingdom gave US President Donald Trump what no other American president has ever received: a second state visit. In doing so, it has also revealed just how willing Britain is to bend the rules of diplomacy to satisfy the US president’s thirst for pomp, spectacle, and royal validation.

As CNN reported, the distinction between a “state visit” and a mere “official visit” in British diplomacy is more than semantic. State visits are rare, wrapped in centuries of pageantry, and historically never extended twice to a US president. Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and every predecessor settled for a luncheon, a castle tour, or tea. Trump, however, is different — not in stature, but in ego. And Britain knows it.

Trump and First Lady Melania were welcomed with a gilded itinerary straight out of his fantasies: a carriage procession through Windsor Castle, a Royal Air Force flyover by the Red Arrows, and a “beating retreat” military ceremony never before used for a state guest. The climax was a banquet at St. George’s Hall beneath heraldic ceilings adorned with the arms of every Knight of the Garter since the 14th century. It is the kind of grandeur that Trump tried — and failed — to replicate with his militarized July 4th parades in Washington.

Royal historian Robert Lacey was blunt as he told CNN: “We’re buttering up to him. He wouldn’t come to Britain if he wouldn’t have the chance to stay at Windsor Castle… and to meet the King.”

The royal household even released a nine-minute YouTube video glorifying the work of gardeners, chefs, and military musicians preparing for Trump’s arrival, added the US-based media house in its report. This was not diplomacy by necessity. This was diplomacy by flattery.

The irony is unmistakable. The report by Oscar Holland noted: “Trump has long fetishized monarchy — appropriating a coat of arms for his golf courses, boasting falsely about reviewing the Queen’s guard for the first time in 70 years, and even once fantasizing on a radio show about dating Princess Diana so he could become King of England.”

This visit indulges that very fantasy, with King Charles playing host to a man who relishes crowns, coats of arms, and golden trappings more than any American politician in living memory, added Holand.

Unlike Obama, who arrived in a Range Rover for a private lunch, Trump was feted with symbols of a global power past its prime, eager to curry favour with a figure who thrives on grandeur. Britain’s willingness to roll out gilded carpets for Trump — not once but twice — underscores a deeper truth: the monarchy has become a tool not just of soft power, but of flattery politics.

To Trump, the Windsor carriage and RAF flyover will not read as diplomacy. They will read as deference. And for a leader who measures power in optics, status, and spectacle, Britain has handed him the crown jewels of symbolic legitimacy.

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