King Charles visits Trump as U.S.-U.K. special relationship is under strain

King Charles visits Washington this week as tension with Donald Trump and strained U.K.-U.S. relations overshadow the royal trip. Photo by Jordan Pettitt/WPA Pool/Getty Images /Getty Images

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To say the special relationship is going through a rough patch ahead of King Charles III’s visit would be an exercise in British understatement.

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The 77-year-old monarch will arrive in Washington on Monday with ties between the U.K. and the U.S. at their lowest point since the Suez Crisis in the 1950s. While President Donald Trump often praises Charles as a “fantastic man,” he’s been heaping scorn on the country’s elected prime minister, mocking Keir Starmer as weak and unreliable for refusing to join America’s initial strikes on Iran.

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Trump has threatened to reopen a trade deal the two nations signed last year and withdrew his support for Starmer’s plan to give up a strategic island chain in the Indian Ocean. He’s warned the U.K. might have to learn to fight for itself, questioning one of the U.S.’s deepest alliances, even as American warplanes took off from English bases en route to the Middle East.

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It provides an awkward backdrop for a state visit meant to mark the 250th anniversary of America’s Declaration of Independence from British rule. Charles — the fifth great-grandson of King George III, whom America declared its independence from — is bound by constitutional convention to stay above politics. And his interactions are governed by strict protocols designed to maintain dignity and respect for the throne.

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Trump, 79, meanwhile, seems increasingly unconcerned with convention and protocol in his second term, illustrated by his recent broadsides at the pope, raising the risk of an embarrassing moment that deepens the transatlantic rift. The king, with Queen Camilla by his side, will have to navigate a bilateral meeting with Trump, a White House banquet and a speech to a joint session of Congress during his four-day visit.

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“I really fear for what Trump might say or do while our king is forced to stand by his side,” Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey said in Parliament earlier this month, dismissing the U.S. president as a “corrupt gangster.” “We cannot put his majesty in that position.”

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The visit takes place days after a shooting at the hotel where the White House correspondents’ dinner was taking place, forcing Trump to be rushed from the stage. The U.K. government and the administration are “working closely to ensure the security arrangements are appropriately in place” for the King’s trip, Darren Jones, chief secretary to the prime minister, told Sky News on Sunday.

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Secret service agents respond during the White House Correspondents Dinner, Saturday, April 25, 2026, in Washington. Photo by Mark Schiefelbein /AP

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Trump has complained that “unfortunately, Keir is not Winston Churchill,” the late prime minister who popularized the special relationship term in the wake of World War II. Instead, he accused Starmer of sounding like Neville Chamberlain, whose appeasement policy has been blamed for emboldening Nazi Germany.

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Besides criticizing Starmer, Trump has frequently mused about annexing Canada, one of the 15 countries that count the British monarch as their head of state. Charles’ decision to strip his brother, Andrew, of his royal titles over his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, offers another point of contrast with Trump, who has been accused of holding back efforts to secure justice for the late sex offender’s victims. The king has passed up a chance to meet Epstein’s victims while in the U.S.