{"id":71313,"date":"2025-09-18T10:33:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-18T10:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/71313\/"},"modified":"2025-09-18T10:33:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T10:33:09","slug":"behind-ancient-castle-walls-the-rich-and-powerful-celebrate-trump-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/71313\/","title":{"rendered":"Behind ancient castle walls, the rich and powerful celebrate Trump \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

As beggars\u2019 banquets go, this one was pretty rich.<\/p>\n

There they sat, side-by-side, some of the wealthiest, most influential and best connected people in the world, all together at one long table inside a nearly 1,000-year-old castle.<\/p>\n

The guest of honour was in the middle of the table, wearing white tie, looking happier than ever. He was being treated like a king by an actual king.<\/p>\n

The state dinner that King Charles<\/a> hosted for US president Donald Trump<\/a> on Wednesday night at Windsor Castle seemed like a new apex for Trump: a glittering showcase of the powerful outdoing themselves to get (or remain) on the good side of a president whose second term has been marked by demonstrations of brute power.<\/p>\n

\"TrumpTrump speaks to King Charles during the banquet. Photograph: Yui Mok\/WPA Pool\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

Those demonstrations have increasingly taken the form of retribution against perceived enemies at home and tattered alliances abroad.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe bond between our two nations is indeed a remarkable one,\u201d said Charles. \u201cIn renewing our bond tonight, we do so with unshakeable trust in our friendship and in our shared commitment to independence and liberty.\u201d<\/p>\n

The president seemed supremely pleased by the whole thing; he didn\u2019t look the least bit bothered when the king used his speech to gently prod about environmental issues and the need to support Ukraine<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0In pictures: King Charles and Donald Trump at Windsor CastleOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Trump got up and cooed: \u201cIt\u2019s a singular privilege to be the first American president welcomed here.\u201d (Usually these dinners happen at Buckingham Palace back in London, but that old pile is undergoing renovations. Besides, Trump has already had one state dinner there, the last time he was president. And other US presidents have been welcomed at the castle \u2013 including Trump in his first term \u2013 albeit not at a state dinner.)<\/p>\n

Britain\u2019s aim is clear: The royals were working in tandem with the British government, lavishing attention and honours on the president Wednesday so that he might be more pliable in negotiations with America\u2019s oldest ally in his diplomatic meeting with the prime minister Thursday.<\/p>\n

\"OpenAIOpenAI chief exectuvie Sam Altman was one of several big tech bosses attending the Windsor Castle banquet on Wednesday. Photograph: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds\/Pool\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

But what about the rest of the table? There were 160 people sitting in that banquet room. And 1,452 pieces of cutlery, clanging and scraping in hands held by media barons, financiers, politicians and tech moguls. Peppered in between the power players were members of Trump\u2019s cabinet and most senior White House aides.<\/p>\n

The seating chart for Wednesday\u2019s dinner ought to be kept inside the castle and studied another 1,000 years from now as a fascinating document about the history of the West.<\/p>\n

This wasn\u2019t a table of pop singers, movie stars, celebrities or fashion figures, whose company Trump has often sought. This was not about star power. It was about real power.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Four arrested after Trump and Epstein images projected onto Windsor CastleOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Britain\u2019s prime minister Keir Starmer was seated beside the New York financier and chief executive of Blackstone, Stephen Schwarzman. Bank of America chief executive Brian Moynihan sat on that side of the table. So did Silicon Valley\u2019s boy-king of artificial intelligence, Sam Altman, who was put beside Kemi Badenoch, the leader of Britain\u2019s Conservative Party. <\/p>\n

Demis Hassabis was there (he runs DeepMind, the secretive London AI lab owned by Google), and so was Satya Nadella, the top dog at Microsoft, and also Marc Benioff, the Salesforce cofounder. Tim Cook, the head of Apple, was there, too.<\/p>\n

Cook\u2019s presence in particular seemed notable. It was just a few weeks ago that he appeared in the Oval Office, with cameras rolling, to give a beaming Trump a piece of handmade Corning glass in a 24-karat golden stand. <\/p>\n

\"AppleApple chief executive Tim Cook and Tiffany Trump at the banquet. Photograph: Kevin Lamarque\/WPA Pool\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

It was a trophy meant to showcase his company\u2019s investment in the US, but also to help patch up his relationship with Trump, who was irked when the Apple executive chose not to join his fellow tech titans in the Middle East last May for the president\u2019s visit to the region. Trump took notice of Cook\u2019s absence and publicly poked at him during two stops on the trip.<\/p>\n

And so, there was Cook on Wednesday, seated beside Tiffany Trump in the banquet hall. Other than the first lady, Melania Trump, who sat between Queen Camilla and Prince William, Tiffany and her husband were the only Trump relatives in attendance.<\/p>\n

But there was a dinner guest Wednesday whose presence seemed especially telling. Across the table from Cook and a few places to the right sat media mogul Rupert Murdoch. He and Trump have a long and tangled on-again-off-again relationship.<\/p>\n

Things are definitely in the off mode at the moment: A few months ago, The Wall Street Journal \u2013 the crown jewel of Murdoch\u2019s newspaper empire \u2013 broke a story about Trump\u2019s former friendship with deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, leading the president to deny the story and sue the paper and its owner. Trump\u2019s suit became especially personal; he demanded, successfully, that the 94-year-old Murdoch provide updates about his health after the president pushed for him to be deposed within a matter of days.<\/p>\n

\"MediaMedia mogul Rupert Murdoch arrives at the banquet. Photograph: Phil Noble\/PA Wire <\/p>\n

Murdoch\u2019s position in the banquet hall was far enough down the table that he was out of the president\u2019s field of vision, and yet, he was still there, sitting through a speech about Trump\u2019s greatness. (Intriguingly, the newspaper baron was seated beside Morgan McSweeney, the prime minister\u2019s chief of staff and right-hand man who is taking a ton of heat in the media, most especially in the pages of \u2013 you guessed it \u2013 the Murdoch papers.)<\/p>\n

Even on this night of maximum acquiescence, Trump\u2019s appetite for retribution was not sated. After the dinner was over, he posted gleefully on social media about how ABC had pulled the comedian and Trump-critic Jimmy Kimmel\u2019s show off the air indefinitely<\/a>. He also posted that he was designating the \u201cAntifa\u201d movement as \u201cA MAJOR TERRORIST ORGANISATION\u201d. He did this all while he was preparing to spend the night inside the castle.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Explainer: What did Jimmy Kimmel say about Charlie Kirk\u2019s death?Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\"FromFrom left: US president Donald Trump and King Charles, Queen Camilla and US first lady Melania Trump arrive for the banquet. Photograph: Doug Mills\/The New York Times<\/p>\n

Windsor Castle is often described as the oldest and largest inhabited castle in the world, in almost continuous use since William I built it up in the aftermath of the Norman Conquest in 1066. There is a moat and thick stone walls and a maze of rooms. The soaring banquet hall contains the shields of the Knights of the Garter dating back to 1348. Polished suits of armour look down on the dining table from plinths carved into the walls.<\/p>\n

Outside those castle gates, Trump must return to a world that does not necessarily see him \u2013 or at least, will not necessarily treat him \u2013 the same way that the mighty men and women gathered at Windsor Castle did. Last week, when the president left the White House to have his first dinner out in Washington since his comeback, he got screamed at inside a restaurant by a band of protesters who, while supporting the Gaza Strip, compared him to Adolf Hitler. They were tossed out.<\/p>\n

Still, in Britain, the night before the state dinner, protesters beamed images of Trump socialising with Epstein on to the walls of the castle, a reminder of the political furore that awaits him back home.<\/p>\n

After all, fortresses are designed to keep the world out. And no banquet lasts forever.<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared in The New York Times<\/a><\/p>\n

2025 The New York Times Company<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As beggars\u2019 banquets go, this one was pretty rich. There they sat, side-by-side, some of the wealthiest, most…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":71314,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,49107,356,13,14,6,18028,8417,11,12,15,16,30888,5,308,49122,310,7,8,2264,393,384,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-71313","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-camilla-parker-bowles","11":"tag-donald-trump","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-kemi-badenoch","16":"tag-king-charles","17":"tag-latest-news","18":"tag-latestnews","19":"tag-main-news","20":"tag-mainnews","21":"tag-melania-trump","22":"tag-news","23":"tag-sam-altman","24":"tag-stephen-schwarzman","25":"tag-tim-cook","26":"tag-top-stories","27":"tag-topstories","28":"tag-ukraine-crisis","29":"tag-united-kingdom","30":"tag-united-states","31":"tag-world","32":"tag-world-news","33":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71313\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}