King’s carefully crafted address to US Congress was the result of close liaison with aides, No 10 and Foreign Office
Donald Trump called it “fantastic”, Democrats cheered references to Magna Carta, while the joint session of the US Congress came together in giving it a standing ovation.
King Charles’s address to US lawmakers, while non-political, did not shy away from politics. And, though the president did not take offence – “He made a great speech, I was very jealous” – its pointed mentions of subjects the US president has previously disparaged were not lost on America.
“Beneath King Charles’s jokes and decorum, some subtle rebuttals to Trump”, headlined the Washington Post; “King Charles urges checks on executive power,” said the New York Times.
The fact that Charles’s address was so beautifully crafted and delivered with warmth was almost in itself “an implicit reproach to the president’s own rambling, undisciplined public pronouncements”, said Prof Philip Murphy, the director of history and policy at the University of London.
