Queen Elizabeth called Trump ‘very rude’

Good heavens. As the 2024 US presidential campaigns pick up pace, some rather damning revelations have emerged about the impression contender Donald Trump left on Queen Elizabeth II. A new biography serialized in the Mail, A Voyage Around the Queen by Craig Brown, has set out the late monarch’s reflections on meeting the businessman and former president — and it appears that she was not particularly complimentary…

The pair first met in the summer of 2018, over English tea at Windsor Castle. But despite the civilized setting, the then-president is said to have rather ruffled feathers. It is claimed Trump first kept the Queen waiting for ten minutes in stifling eighty degree heat before discourteously walking in front of her while viewing a guard of honor — leaving the ninety-two-year-old royal some steps behind. The late monarch is described by Brown to have not shied away from voicing “a discreet word of disapproval” about some of the controversial world leaders she met — and the president was no exception. The biographer revealed:

A few weeks after President Trump’s visit, for instance, she confided in one lunch guest that she found him ‘very rude:’ she particularly disliked the way he couldn’t stop looking over her shoulder, as though in search of others more interesting. She also believed President Trump ‘must have some sort of arrangement’ with his wife Melania, or else why would she have remained married to him? 

Ouch…

It seems Trump remained rather unaware of just how exactly he’d come across. At the time, Brown penned that: “For his part, Donald Trump was confident he had been her favorite guest ever. ‘There are those that say they have never seen the Queen have a better time, a more animated time,’ he later told Fox News.” Fiona Hill, a former White House advisor, later wrote that the ex-president was “awestruck” by the monarch, adding that he believed his meeting with her was a sign he’d “made it in life.” And after Queen Elizabeth II’s passing in September 2022, the former president released a statement insisting that he and his wife would “always cherish our time together with the Queen, and never forget Her Majesty’s generous friendship, great wisdom, and wonderful sense of humor.”

Quite. And Cockburn is rather sure that Trump won’t forget her perceptiveness now either…

This article was originally published on The Spectator’s UK website.