What you need to know about Trump’s state visit to the United Kingdom

When President Donald Trump arrives at Windsor Castle in a royal carriage on Wednesday, announced by three distinct military bands and escorted by horsemen on horseback, his host – King Charles III – will somehow be returning a favor of almost 37 years.

In 1988, the then Prince of Wales was invited to have tea in Mar-lago, Trump’s mansion in Palm Beach, Florida. The visit gave the real estate entrepreneur the stamp of royalty, even though Carlos chose to spend the night in a horses ranch at some distance, instead of sleeping at the Trump club.

There is a long time with the British royal family, Trump’s visit to the United Kingdom this week offers a similar opportunity: a validation seal, applied with honor guards and a state banquet, some of the few people for those who have genuine and until now unshakable respect.

“I hate to say it, but no one does it like you in terms of pomp and ceremony,” Trump said in July during a visit to Scotland.

“Windsor,” said on Sunday, “it’s supposed to be fantastic.”

Aware of the president’s taste for royalty and the ceremony, British Prime Minister Keir Stmerer went to the White House with Carlos’s first weeks of Trump’s second presidency, hoping to use real bonds to facilitate ties with a political opponent at a sensitive diplomatic moment.

Strmer was the second Prime Minister of the United Kingdom to perform this action. One of his predecessors, Theresa May, did practically the same thing in the early days of Trump’s first term, although the state’s visit was only implemented two years later – and little contributed to bringing the president of May, who fired three days after the visit.

This week’s trip – with a different prime minister, welcomed by a different sovereign and gathered in a different castle (Buckingham Palace is being the target of a renewal of several years) – is a rarity. Normally, US presidents on a second term are not entitled to the pomp of another state visit.

“This has never happened before; this has no precedents,” Starmer said in the Oval Room in February, when he took an envelope with Carlos’s written invitation.

“Is it supposed to read it now?” Trump asked before he silently read the missive. Eventually, after some embarrassment, his answer came: “The answer is yes.”

What will it be to a state visit?

Trump, who will be accompanied by the first lady Melania Trump, arrives in the United Kingdom on Tuesday night. But the show really starts on Wednesday, according to the program released by the Buckingham Palace.

When Trump and the first lady arrive at Windsor Castle around London, they will be welcomed by the Prince and Princess of Wales – William and Catherine – who represent the future of the royal family.

When Trump last met with Prince William in Paris in December at the reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral, he was impressed. “It’s a beautiful man,” said the then president -elect. “Some people get better live? He was great.”

From then on, the Trumps will meet Carlos and Queen Camila, while a real greeting will be fired from the Windsor Castle lawn. They then embark on their carriages and follow Windsor’s property towards the castle, with horses and knights next door and military bands accompanying the route.

After extensive inspections of troops and a lunch with the royal family wide, Trump and the first lady will spend some time at Green Drawing Room to see objects from the real collection. They will place a crown of flowers in the tomb of Queen Isabel II in the chapel of St. George. And at night the central event: a state banquet in the Windsor castle.

The fanfare will also extend to Melania Trump, who will join Camilla for a visit to Queen Maria’s doll house and the Royal Library at Windsor Castle, followed by a recognition event on the lands of the Castle with Kate on Thursday. The princess’s rare detachment and his considerable star power underline the widest diplomatic effort of the United Kingdom to cultivate narrow ties with the Trump administration.

Is it just pomp and circumstance?

Almost always. And any open conversation about politics will be prohibited by royalty, which carefully avoids the matter.

Still, there will be a day at work on Thursday, when Trump moves to Checkers – the Prime Minister’s country house in Buckinghamshire – for talks with Strmer.

They will join several presidents of technology business councils, who will be present to announce new technological partnerships and reveal tens of thousands of millions of dollars in new investments, a US official said.

Trump and Starmer are political opposites who, however, have managed to develop a seemingly friendly relationship. His conversations have avoided the sourness that tends to mark some of Trump’s best meetings with his counterparts.

“We are friends with friends in a short time,” Trump commented during a G7 summit meeting in Canada this summer, adding, “He’s slightly more liberal than me.”

One of Strmer’s main goals with Trump was to reach a new trade agreement, something he was able to accomplish quickly, even when other countries struggled for weeks to negotiate plans to avoid comprehensive tariffs.

But, like many of the trade agreements announced by Trump, some of the most delicate details are not completed or are still subject to dispute. But some details were realized when Strmer announced a nuclear energy agreement between the US and the United Kingdom, which will facilitate the construction of new electric centers in both countries.

The close relationship of Starm with Trump has not been able to bring the president of Europe as far now to bring the president of Europe on Ukraine war, despite call hours and meetings on the subject. Trump did not apply new sanctions to Russia, despite the pressure from Starmer and other European leaders to act.

These themes will certainly appear on Thursday, both in the private discussions of the two men and later at a joint press conference. For Starmer, hope may be that Trump has just been received by royalty – do not feel uncomfortable with a little more pressure.

Why is this important to Trump?

One of Trump’s first memories is to see his mother, Scottish Mary Anne MacLeod Trump, sitting in front of the television watching Queen Isabel II’s coronation.

“For God’s sake, Mary is enough, she hangs up,” complained her father Fred, according to Trump’s book “Art of the Deal.” “It’s all a bunch of con artists.”

In this respect, Trump came out to his mother. She passed the love for the royal spectacle to her son, who has spent much of her adult life to admire the Windacors at a distance or trying to cultivate them as friends.

His first state visit in 2019 was one of the highlights of his first term.

“Knowing Queen Isabel II was particularly important for President Trump,” wrote Fiona Hill, a counselor in Trump’s first term, in her 2021 memories. “A meeting with the Queen of England was the definitive sign that he, Trump, had won in life.”

At the same time he received Carlos in Mar -a -Lago, Trump – according to several biographies – put in circulation rumors that the prince and his then wife, Princess Diana, were thinking of buying an apartment at Trump Tower (not).

And when Carlos and Diana were divorced in 1996, Trump bombed the newly sost soltto princess with flower branches at her Kensington Palace house, according to her friend, the former British television pivot Selina Scott.

“Trump clearly saw Diana as the final tatter woman,” Scott wrote in a 2015 column at The Sunday Times, citing private conversations at the time with her friend.

Decades later, Trump, 79, and Carlos, 76, are leading their nations, with distinct roles to play in the management of the wide “special relationship”.

“I’m a big fan of King Carlos. I’ve known him for a long time,” Trump said in July. “He is a great man, a great person.”

Can the Epstein scandal make things strange?

Much of the state visit was orchestrated and planned by a man who is no longer invited, the former UK ambassador to Washington, Peter Mandelson. The reason? His calls to convicted sexual criminal Jeffrey Epstein.

Mandelson was fired from the position of Ambassador last week after US legislators released a collection of letters that constituted Epstein’s “birthday book”, in which the labor party veteran wrote a handwritten note, describing the financial as “my best friend”.

Although Mandelson underlined he wrote his birthday message before Epstein’s conviction in 2008 for requesting sex to smaller girls, this defense quickly broke out. Bloomberg has published a series of emails that showed that Mandelson continued to support his “friend” after the conviction and offered to use his political contacts to help cleanse Epstein’s name.

Mandelson was fired the day after the publication of his emails, with the British Foreign Ministry to claim that the new information showed that the “depth and extension” of its relationship with Epstein was “materially different” from what was known when it was appointed.

Mandelson’s moment of resignation drew attention to Trump’s ties with Epstein, which the president has made a point of nullifying. Another letter from the “Birthday Book” was signed on the behalf of Trump, but he denied having her written.

Trump’s visit occurs days after Elon Musk, the president’s former “first friend”, spent a london anti-immigration manifestation, appealing to the dissolution of Parliament and the change of government in the United Kingdom. “Violence is coming,” Musk said through a video call. “Either fight or die.”

When Trump arrives in the United Kingdom, he will be received by a Prime Minister weakened by Mandelson’s scandal and under increasing pressure from the British right fever. It remains to be seen whether Trump’s visit will give Starmer any relief or increase his problems.

CNN Betsy Klein and Christian Edwards contributed to this news.