Donald Trump\u2019s White House does not do soft power. On Tuesday afternoon, King Charles delivered a masterclass in nuanced diplomacy as he addressed the US Congress in a careful speech, laced with reminders of our nations\u2019 shared democratic commitment to \u201cthe principle that executive power is subject to checks and balances\u201d. Even before he finished speaking, the Trump administration had reverted to its default vocabulary: online rage-bait.<\/p>\n
A photograph shared across the White House\u2019s social media platforms showed the King and President together, laughing as they waved to crowds. In block capitals, the caption: \u201cTWO KINGS\u201d. Donald wasn\u2019t targeting his friend Charlie \u2013 far from it. The post was deliberately calibrated to wind up American liberals and leftists, particularly those who last month joined the latest in a series of \u201cNo Kings<\/a>\u201d protests, denouncing the President\u2019s accretion of executive power.<\/p>\n But whether Trump cares it or not, it will also embarrass his British guest. The incident serves as a reminder of the golden rule of diplomatic engagement with Trump. However hard America\u2019s allies work to engage with nuance and care, this President will reframe the terms of the conversation with a single tweet.<\/p>\n Does Trump understand what it means to be a king? Not in the sense that Charles defines it. Charles is a constrained king who in his younger years made no secret of his yen for greater political power; Trump is a politician who longs to be a king. Yet, although Charles seemed to deliver a warning this week to America\u2019s political class, the Washington he visits serves as its own warning to the UK about the risks of untrammelled populism for our own future.<\/p>\n Charles pegged his pitch for transatlantic democratic values to both the Magna Carta and the English Parliament\u2019s Declaration of Rights of 1689.\u00a0The latter is lesser known, but a more radical warning when delivered from one monarch to another wannabe.<\/p>\n When the political class of the 1680s effectively deposed James II, and invited his daughter and son-in-law Mary and William of Orange to be the first to reign in a new, constitutional model of monarchy, this was the document read out publicly to the new sovereigns to define the ways in which their predecessor overreached. Every British monarch since joins in an unspoken covenant never to make the same mistakes.<\/p>\n When William and Mary were warned off such overreach, they were hostages to a parliamentary institution which had recently executed King Charles I. Nearly 350 years later, and 250 years after the American founding fathers built their constitution from the same vocabulary, King Charles III clearly understands these limits on kingship; Trump finds them alien.<\/p>\n Charles has no choice. He is the representative of a neutered monarchy \u2013 and as his years of \u201cblack spider<\/a>\u201d memos to politicians makes clear, he has not always appreciated the limits that he celebrated this week. Meanwhile, for all that British monarchists like to harrumph about the potential value of the throne to check the excesses of populist politicians, that bluff was called when Boris Johnson illegally prorogued parliament in 2019.<\/p>\n