{"id":760899,"date":"2026-04-29T08:20:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T08:20:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/760899\/"},"modified":"2026-04-29T08:20:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T08:20:12","slug":"king-charles-iii-meets-with-trump-and-addresses-congress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/760899\/","title":{"rendered":"King Charles III meets with Trump and addresses Congress"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 King Charles III<\/a> marked the 250th anniversary of American independence from Britain with gratitude that the two countries united to build \u201cone of the most consequential alliances in human history\u201d while urging \u201cthat we ignore the clarion calls to become ever more inward-looking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking Tuesday to a joint session of the U.S. Congress<\/a>, Charles repeatedly highlighted the historical and cultural ties that he said have cemented an enduring bond between the United States and the United Kingdom. But even as he spoke in unifying, optimistic terms, he delivered a series of nuanced warnings encouraging leaders in the U.S. to remain collaborative and engaged in global affairs.<\/p>\n

He said the alliance between the U.S. and the U.K., tested anew by President Donald Trump\u2019s<\/a> war in Iran, \u201ccannot rest on past achievements.\u201d Charles urged \u201cunyielding resolve\u201d in backing Ukraine against Russia and heralded the NATO<\/a> alliance that Trump has consistently undermined.<\/p>\n

The king praised religious pluralism and interfaith dialogue in terms that are rare in Trump\u2019s Washington. As the White House rolls back<\/a> regulations aimed at denting climate change, the king encouraged those in power to \u201creflect on our shared responsibility to safeguard nature, our most precious and irreplaceable asset.\u201d <\/p>\n

At one point, Charles traced the notion of checks and balances on executive power to the Magna Carta, the foundational legal document sealed by King John in 1215. Trump told The New York Times earlier this year that he was constrained only by \u201cmy own morality.\u201d<\/p>\n

And acknowledging a scandal that has roiled politics in both the U.S. and U.K., Charles subtly alluded to the victims of Jeffrey Epstein<\/a>, the convicted sex offender with ties to British officials, including the king\u2019s brother, Andrew. <\/p>\n

King celebrates independence and focuses on repairing a frayed relationship<\/p>\n

Charles is on a four-day visit to the U.S.<\/a> intended to both celebrate American independence and to repair the country\u2019s fraying relationship with the U.K. He hardly arrived in Washington as an oppositional figure to Trump. Joined by Queen Camilla<\/a>, Charles had a warm greeting with the president and first lady Melania Trump at the White House earlier Tuesday. <\/p>\n

In his welcome remarks, Trump also highlighted the shared history between the two countries.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmerican patriots today can sing, \u2019My country, \u2019tis of thee, sweet land of liberty,\u2019 only because our colonial ancestors first sang, \u2018God save the king,\u2019\u201d Trump said. <\/p>\n

The leaders met privately in the Oval Office for a meeting Trump later described as \u201creally good,\u201d adding that Charles is a \u201cfantastic person.\u201d <\/p>\n

Trump hosted the royal couple for a jovial state dinner later Tuesday in the East Room of the White House. About 130 guests were seated at two long tables that were decorated with low floral arrangements. The guests included tech leaders such as outgoing Apple CEO Tim Cook and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, along with conservative Supreme Court justices and several Fox News journalists and hosts. <\/p>\n

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Charles and Camilla will continue their U.S. tour this week with stops in New York City and Virginia.<\/p>\n

During his roughly 20-minute speech to Congress, the king, who is expressly apolitical, never directly criticized Trump. Still, the contrast was apparent at times and some British commentators described his speech as more political than they had expected.<\/p>\n

Just two months earlier, Trump stood at the same lectern and chided Democrats for not standing during part of his State of the Union address. The king, for his part, elicited multiple standing ovations from Democrats and Republicans who listened with rapt attention. <\/p>\n

Charles is just the second British monarch to address a joint session of Congress. His mother, Queen Elizabeth II<\/a>, delivered a similar speech in 1991 highlighting the historic ties between both countries and the importance of their democratic values.<\/p>\n

Charles acknowledges a \u2018more volatile and more dangerous\u2019 world<\/p>\n

While the king paid tribute to those remarks, he acknowledged that today\u2019s environment is \u201cmore volatile and more dangerous than the world to which my late mother spoke.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many of the lawmakers in the room were at Saturday\u2019s White House Correspondents\u2019 Dinner, which was disrupted by a shooting<\/a> that authorities have described as an attempted assassination against Trump.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet me say with unshakeable resolve,\u201d Charles said. \u201cSuch acts of violence will never succeed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Trump\u2019s up-and-down relationship with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer<\/a> has taken a particularly sour turn over the past several months as the Republican president has sought to rally international support for the war in Iran. Trump criticized Starmer, who has largely resisted his overtures, by saying, \u201cThis is not Winston Churchill that we\u2019re dealing with.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump has also imposed tariffs on the U.K. and warned of additional levies despite a Supreme Court ruling<\/a> earlier this year that has made such unilateral moves more challenging. Trump threatened just last week to slap a \u201cbig tariff\u201d on the U.K. if it doesn\u2019t scrap a digital services tax on U.S. technology companies.<\/p>\n

Trump has more broadly challenged the traditional trans-Atlantic alliance with efforts to annex Greenland<\/a> and threats to walk away from NATO<\/a>. He has repeatedly imposed tariffs on and taunted Canada<\/a>, a member of the British Commonwealth.<\/p>\n

Ahead of his speech, the king had faced some calls on Capitol Hill to meet with Epstein\u2019s victims while he is in the U.S. He didn\u2019t make a direct mention of the convicted sex offender, but did reference the \u201ccollective strength\u201d in the U.S. and the U.K. to \u201csupport victims of some of the ills that, so tragically, exist in both our societies today.\u201d <\/p>\n

If Charles offered low-key criticism of Trump, the president didn\u2019t seem to mind. He said later that the king \u201cmade a great speech.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI was very jealous,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Associated Press writers Stephen Groves and Aamer Madhani in Washington and Danica Kirka in London contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 King Charles III marked the 250th anniversary of American independence from Britain with gratitude that…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":760900,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[6229,3881,239,1157,12785,7838,84,69,57,59,83,6087,4061,15053,17723,45981,13754,405,403,50,8961,80,120633,45806,45980,126811,24822,89,61,376,4338,67,8128,132,68,906,93,107],"class_list":["post-760899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","category-us","tag-amazon-com","tag-ap-top-news","tag-apple","tag-camilla","tag-dc-wire","tag-diplomacy","tag-district-of-columbia","tag-donald-trump","tag-general-news","tag-inc","tag-iran","tag-iran-war","tag-jeff-bezos","tag-jeffrey-epstein","tag-keir-starmer","tag-king-charles-iii","tag-melania-trump","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-news","tag-north-atlantic-treaty-organization","tag-politics","tag-queen-camilla","tag-queen-elizabeth-ii","tag-royalty","tag-the-queen-consort","tag-tim-cook","tag-u-s-democratic-party","tag-u-s-news","tag-united-kingdom","tag-united-kingdom-government","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-congress","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-virginia","tag-washington-news","tag-world-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=760899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760899\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/760900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=760899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=760899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=760899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}