Trump UK visit: Prince Charles, Prince William etc ‘snub’ US president

The British Royal family has allegedly snubbed US President Donald Trump during his UK visit last week. Queen Elizabeth II welcomed the unpopular leader last week at the Windsor Castle, but the first two of her heirs, Prince Charles and Prince William, were missing, and it was apparently not unintentional.

Trump’s UK tour was said to be not a state visit and that it was truly planned that the Queen would meet him and his wife, Melania, alone. However, a source told the Sunday Times that Charles and William were reluctant to participate in the meeting. Senior courtiers reportedly had to discuss which royals would include, but ultimately, it was just Her Majesty.

“The business of Prince Charles and Prince William not being there for the Trump visit was a snub. They simply refused to attend,” a source told the paper. “It’s a very, very unusual thing for the Queen to be there on her own. Usually she is accompanied by somebody.”

Charles instead opted to attend a police event, while his eldest son was in a charity polo match. Prince Harry also had private engagements. Even the Queen’s husband, Prince Philip, wasn’t present when the monarch received her American guests. Although the Duke of Edinburgh is already retired, he can still attend meetings if he wants to, and, according to the source, he didn’t want to in this instance.

A Whitehall official also claimed Trump’s meeting with the Queen was “kept to a bare minimum.” Apparently, the members of the royal family were “not as enthusiastic as they were” when former US President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, came to visit.

Obama’s visit vs Trump’s

With Trump’s UK meeting was greeted with protests, the public can’t help but compare it with Obama’s. Trump’s visit was a working visit, while Obama’s was a state visit in 2011, and therefore there were inevitable differences with the way they were received.

The Queen treated the Trumps to a few minutes of afternoon tea, while the Obamas had a full-on red carpet banquet at Buckingham Palace. According to reports, the current president’s tea with the Queen only lasted 17 minutes. On the contrary, the Obamas even spent the night at Buckingham Palace.

Why the royals don’t want to meet with Trump

It’s not an established fact if they indeed would rather avoid the American president, but it did appear as such. Trump didn’t have the best reputation, with many British people welcoming him with protests and hate slogans, including a giant “Trump Baby” balloon in London.

For William, he might have been reluctant to meet Trump because Trump had one time blamed Kate Middleton for the topless photos taken of her while she and William were on a holiday at a private resort in France. The images were taken by a paparazzo using a long-range zoom camera lens. The Duchess of Cambridge was owed an apology, according to the court, and the magazines where the photos were published were ordered to pay fines.

But for Trump, it wasn’t the photographer’s fault but Kate’s.

As for Harry, even though his father-in-law claimed he believed the British prince was a Trump supporter, his wife was anti-Trump. Before she became the Duchess of Sussex and even before her relationship with Harry came to light, Meghan Markle was a supporter of Hillary Clinton and a critic of Trump.

In her 2016 interview with the titular host of “The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore, Meghan said Trump had made it easy to see why she was voting for Clinton.

“You’re not just voting for a woman — if it’s Hillary —just because she’s a woman, but certainly because Trump has made it easy to see that you don’t really want that kind of world that he’s painting,” she told the host.