London: One of US President Donald Trump's earliest memories, one he routinely recounts to journalists and biographers, is of watching his mother watch television, so enthralled that she barely moved for hours, on the day in 1953 that Queen Elizabeth II was crowned.
He was only six years old, but he understood that the gilded spectacle unfolding more than 5400 kilometres away inside Westminster Abbey struck a chord in his mother, Mary Anne MacLeod Trump, a poor girl who had migrated from Scotland and who had worked for a time as a housemaid in a grand mansion. He also understood that, for some reason, the same spectacle offended his father.
The Queent and US President Donald Trump lead guests through the East Gallery ahead of the State Banquet at Buckingham Palace in London.Credit:PA/AP
"I also remember my father that day, pacing around impatiently, 'For Christ's sake, Mary,' he said, 'enough is enough, turn it off. They're all a bunch of con artists,'" Trump recalled, years later. "My mother didn't even look up. They were total opposites in that sense."
Trump tells this story in his book The Art of the Deal as an explanation for why he was not satisfied with simply inheriting his father's business. His mother had passed on a love of spectacle and grandeur, as expressed in the coronation —"loftier dreams" of "splendour and magnificence."
The story also explains why this week's visit to Britain matters to the President, who throughout his life has expressed a desire to be close to, or on an equal footing with, the British royal family. Though Trump met the Queen for tea at Windsor Castle last year, the event was marred by a gaffe when he walked ahead of her while reviewing troops, and it lacked the pageantry of a state dinner at Buckingham Palace.
From left, President Donald Trump, Queen Elizabeth II, US first lady Melania Trump, Prince Charles and Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, pose for the media ahead of the State Banquet.Credit:AP
"This is more important than any piece of legislation he could get through Congress, greater than resolving problems at the border with Mexico," said Michael D'Antonio, author of The Truth About Trump, a 2016 biography. "I would think one of his dying thoughts will be of this. When he is about to leave this Earth, he will think, 'I was that person, standing with the Queen'."
Trump likes to declare that he does not respect most people, because "most people are not worthy of respect," said D'Antonio, who said that he interviewed Trump for about eight hours.
"The Queen may be one of the only people on Earth who could expect he was going to be respectful," he said. "It is sincere. He is as sincere as he can be about anything with this respect."
Trump arrived in London on Monday morning, local time, bringing turbulence with him. He is a deeply popularising figure in Britain, with 67 per cent of respondents in a recent YouGov poll reporting negative opinions of him, and only 21 per cent reporting approval. An outspoken proponent of a hard Brexit, he has already brushed aside any pretence of diplomacy, giving interviews to The Sun and The Times of London, endorsing Boris Johnson's campaign to succeed Theresa May as prime minister, and describing the American Duchess of Sussex, Meghan, in an answer to an interviewer's question, as "nasty" for speaking critically of him in 2016.
US First Lady Melania Trump, left, attends a welcome ceremony with the Queen and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, right, in the garden of Buckingham Palace.Credit:AP
But the royal family has plenty of experience hosting contentious figures, said Andrew Morton, author of several royal biographies. The Queen is expected to remain neutral on political matters, so she will steer clear of divisive topics.
"They tend not to take a view, or try not to," Morton said.
But in some cases, he added, "they take the view that they can influence things." Prince Charles, for example, may try to influence Trump on the issue of climate change, Morton said, adding that the prince has the power to extend invitations to the next coronation.
Thomas Wright, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said that in the past, private conversations with "iconic individuals" have made an impression on Trump's thinking.
"If the Queen says something to him, he might take it to heart," he said. "He would probably tell everyone about it."
In a sense, it is curious that Trump's mother was such a royalist.
Portraits of President Donald Trump’s parents, Mary Anne MacLeod Trump and Fred Trump, in the Oval Office.Credit:Doug Mills/The New York Times
Her forbears had been impoverished and evicted from their farms in a land grab by English-backed Scottish lords, known as the Highland Clearances, writes Nina Burleigh in Golden Handcuffs: The Secret History of Trump's Women.
The youngest of 10 children, Trump's mother sailed to the United States around 1930, reporting to immigration officials that she had an eighth-grade education. Late in life, she had a taste for luxury, which her son was happy to indulge, said Gwenda Blair, author of The Trumps: Three Generations That Built an Empire.
"The photos that we see of Queen Elizabeth in her dowager clothes, and often, if it is winter, in some extremely luxurious warm fur coat, reminds me of how his mother came across," she said. Mary Anne MacLeod Trump died, age 88, in 2000.
As a real estate developer and television personality, Donald Trump seemed to regard the royal family as a benchmark for prestige. In the 1980s, he circulated a rumour that Prince Charles and his wife, Diana, were considering purchasing a unit at Trump Tower, D'Antonio wrote in his book.
The late Diana, Princess of Wales, a month before she was killed in 1997.Credit:AP
He expressed attraction to Diana, Princess of Wales, sometimes in crude terms.
Selina Scott, a British journalist who interviewed him for a documentary in 1995, recalled that as soon as she entered his office in Trump Tower, "he wanted to know the intimate details of the deteriorating state of the marriage" between Charles and Diana. After the two divorced, in 1996, Scott later wrote, Trump sent Diana "massive bouquets of flowers, each worth hundreds of pounds," accompanied by handwritten notes.
Trump sent Diana 'massive bouquets of flowers, each worth hundreds of pounds,' accompanied by handwritten notes.
In 1997, shortly after Diana had died in a car accident, Trump told television journalist Stone Phillips that he regretted not having asked her on a date. "Do you think you would have seriously had a shot?" Phillips asked.
"I think so, yeah," Trump replied. "I always have a shot."
Trump returned to the subject with radio host Howard Stern, who asked him, "You could have gotten her, right? You could have nailed her?" Trump joked that he would have asked her to take a medical exam beforehand.
Trump also made a comment about Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, after a photographer took a picture of her sunbathing topless in 2012.
"Who wouldn't take Kate's picture and make lots of money if she does the nude sunbathing thing," he wrote on Twitter. "Come on Kate!"
He also hoped to acquire some of the trappings of royalty. Morton, Diana's biographer, recalled that he was giving a speech about her around that time at Trump's Mar-a-Lago Club. One of the club managers approached him to ask if he could help Trump hire Paul Burrell, who had worked as the Queen's footman and Diana's butler.
The two families couldn't be more different, Morton said.
Biographer Andrew Morton with a copy of his book about Meghan, now the Duchess of Cornwall.Credit:Nick Miller
"I would argue that Trump is more royal than the Queen, he behaves more like a potentate," he said, adding that Trump had an "ostentatious type of living, whereas the British royal family are known for their parsimony. The Queen famously collects string, and eats her breakfast out of Tupperware."
Morton said that, for Trump, Monday's state dinner represented a particularly important stamp of approval.
"What strikes me about people around the world, if they've had any interaction with the monarch, it defines their lives," he said. "They save the invitation, they save the train ticket, they save the article in the newspaper."
It will be the same, he said, for Trump.
"If he is accorded love by the Queen, he will be smiling like a Cheshire cat," he said. "He will be purring away."
The New York Times
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