TEA TIME

Trump Will Meet the Queen

His long-delayed visit to the U.K. is happening in July, and Donald Trump will get to meet the queen, according to a report.

He hasn’t been invited to Prince Harry’s wedding, but Donald Trump will be taking tea with Harry’s granny.

The long-awaited, much delayed meeting of the queen and Donald Trump is likely to take place when the president visits the U.K. in July this year, according to a report by the BBC.

The palace declined to comment when contacted by The Daily Beast this morning.

BBC North America editor Jon Sopel reports the pair will meet at either Buckingham Palace or Windsor Castle.

The U.S. president is to visit the U.K. on Friday, July 13, having previously canceled a trip scheduled for February to open the American Embassy. Trump said at the time he was canceling the trip to express his anger that the new U.S. Embassy had been built in a sub-prime location, however, many suspected the president was put off by threats of mass protest in London.

Downing Street has sought to downplay the summer trip, calling it a “working visit” as opposed to the full-blown state visit Trump was promised last year.

However Trump is thought to be eager to meet the queen and it now appears that a tête-à-tête with Her Majesty has indeed been scheduled.

The July visit to the U.K. was announced yesterday and follows a NATO summit in Brussels which the president is expected to attend.

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who unwisely lambasted and publicly mocked Trump in the run-up to the election, saying he wouldn’t visit New York for fear of meeting him, said it was “fantastic” news, while the mayor of London, Labour’s Sadiq Khan, who attacked the president over the Muslim travel ban, said Trump would experience a city that chose “unity over division” if he visited London.

That remains a very big if, and Windsor may well end up being the preferred location to avoid demonstrators.

Sir Christopher Meyer, a former British ambassador to the U.S., told the BBC’s Today program: “Things can be organized in a way where he does not have to come into confrontation with or even hear demonstrators.”

Theresa May was the first foreign leader to visit Trump in the White House following his inauguration in January 2017, and at that meeting she invited Trump to come for a state visit—a formal occasion with much pomp and ceremony.

Trump accepted the invitation but it has been delayed—and the announcement that July’s trip will not be a full-blown state visit increases the possibility it has been postponed indefinitely.

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Tom SykesEuropean Editor at Large

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