President Trump touched down at Stansted Airport outside London on Monday morning, kicking off his first official state visit to Britain. After a helicopter ride into the center of the British capital Mr. Trump and First Lady Melania will rest for a while before joining Queen Elizabeth II for lunch.
CBS News will have live, ongoing coverage of Mr. Trump’s state visit, during which he will also hold talks with Prime Minister Theresa May. On Wednesday, Mr. Trump will travel to Ireland to meet Prime Minister Leo Varadkar before attending events to mark the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landing in northern France by Allied forces in World War II.
As CBS News correspondent Charlie D’Agata reported, thousands protested during Mr. Trump’s last visit to Britain, and similar demonstrations are widely expected this week.
“It’s not just the normal threat of some violence, and you’ve got the assassination risk; it’s also a threat and risk really around protests and the level of that protest,” Richard Walton, the former head of counter-terrorism at Scotland Yard, told CBS News about the major security operation rolled out for the U.S. leader’s visit.
Royal greeting
President and First Lady Trump arrived Monday at Buckingham Palace for an official welcome ceremony. The first couple was greeted on the palace grounds by Queen Elizabeth II’s son and direct heir, Prince Charles, and his wife Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall.
Trending News
As cannons fired off a royal salute, Prince Charles and Camilla shook hands and exchanged a few words with Mr. and Mrs. Trump.
The Royal Salute saw dozens of artillery rounds fired off at both the Tower of London and in central London’s Green Park — to mark both President Trump’s visit and the anniversary of Queen Elizabeth’s coronation, which was on Sunday.
Prince Charles and Camilla then escorted the Trumps into the palace to meet the monarch privately. There were all to reemerge shortly after to review the Royal Grenadier Guards military unit, in full regalia and led by the Guards’ marching band.
Controversy over U.K. politics
As CBS News’ Paula Reid reports, there are protests planned across Britain during Mr. Trump’s visit, but the controversy started even before he left the U.S. In addition to the ongoing feud with the Mayor of London and the controversy around his remarks about the Duchess of Sussex, the president has been accused of getting too involved in the U.K.’s domestic political turmoil.
British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt told “Face The Nation” moderator Margaret Brennan recently that he didn’t believe the Markle scandal would spoil Mr. Trump’s visit, given the decades of close ties.
“It doesn’t affect the fact that we have the most important partnership that there is in the world for freedom, democracy,” Hunt told Brennan.
But Mr. Trump’s willingness to wade straight into the most divisive British politics in decades may prove more controversial. The president will meet Tuesday with beleaguered Prime Minister Theresa May, who is set to resign on Friday over her perceived failure to extricate Britain from the European Union three years after the public referendum vote to “Brexit.”
“They want to do trade with the United States and I think there’s an opportunity for a very big trade deal at some point in the near future,” Mr. Trump said before leaving Washington. But he also offered unsolicited advice to whoever succeeds May — and even backing for hardline Brexit supporter Boris Johnson to succeed her.
In an interview with British newspaper The Sunday Times, Mr. Trump said the U.K. should “walk away from Brexit talks” if the European Union doesn’t give it what it wants. When asked if he should be adding his input to the raucous British debate, the president said: “Don’t ask me the question if you don’t want me to talk about it.”
Even more thorny than his backing of Boris Johnson could be the trade deal Mr. Trump wants to negotiate with Britain — and what his administration demands during those negotiations. The U.K.’s scheduled departure from the EU may leave it free to strike its own unilateral trade deals around the world, but it will also leave it without the huge collective bargaining power of membership in the 28-nation trade bloc.
To strike a trade deal with the much larger U.S., the Trump administration has now indicated that Britain may be asked to open its cherished national health care system, the NHS, up to American investors. The concept is hugely controversial, and opposition Labour Party lawmakers were quick to point to Ambassador Woody Johnson’s remarks as evidence that the Conservative-led government was willing to “sell” Britain’s social healthcare system.
Johnson told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show that, “in a trade deal, all things that are traded would be on the table.” Asked by the host if that specifically meant healthcare, Johnson replied: “I would think so.”
Johnson also appeared to confirm fears among some Britons that in order to strike a deal with the U.S., post-Brexit Britain might need to lower some of the food safety standards in place under EU law, which ban genetically modified organisms and some pesticides and practices used in U.S. agriculture and food production.
“There will have to be some deal where you give the British people a choice,” he told Marr’s audience. “American products can come over and be allowed to come over. Agriculture is extremely important to the president and to any American president … but if the British people like it, they can buy it, if they don’t like it, they don’t have to buy it.”
Trump and the Duchess
Just days before Mr. Trump’s arrival, he was quoted by British tabloid newspaper The Sun as saying of Meghan Markle, “I didn’t know she was nasty.”
The Duchess of Sussex, Prince Harry’s wife and the first American to become a member of Britain’s royal family, has reportedly declined to meet Mr. Trump while he he is in the U.K. She just became a mother and reportedly cited that as her reason, but she has expressed negative opinions of Mr. Trump previously, calling him “divisive” and a “misogynist.”
Mr. Trump later denied in a tweet every leveling the criticism of Meghan, saying: “I never called Meghan Markle ‘nasty’… Made up by the Fake News Media, and they got caught cold!”
But that prompted The Sun to release an audio recording of its interview with Mr. Trump, in which he can be heard saying: “What can I say? I didn’t know that she was nasty,” before going on to say he was glad she had married into the royal family and thought she would do “excellently” at her new role.
Heading for a royal lunch
President Trump and the First Lady climbed down the steps of Air Force One and shook hands with U.S. and British officials on the tarmac at Stansted Airport before boarding the Marine One helicopter for the short ride into central London.
After a brief rest at Winfield House, the U.S. ambassador’s official residence in London, the Trumps will head to nearby Buckingham Palace for a ceremonial welcoming and then have lunch with Queen Elizabeth II.
The president and the monarch will then have a formal exchange of gifts before Mr. Trump leaves Buckingham Palace for tea with the queen’s son and direct heir, Charles, Prince of Wales.
Later on Monday the president was to lay a wreath at the grave of the Unknown Warrior and tour London’s ancient Westminster Abbey before an evening banquet back at Buckingham Palace with the queen.
Trump bashes London mayor
President Trump took to Twitter upon his arrival at Stansted Airport, outside London, even before he touched the tarmac to bash the British capital’s Mayor Sadiq Khan, who has criticized him in the past.
Mr. Trump, with a slight nod at another controversy around his visit, said Khan, “who by all accounts has done a terrible job as Mayor of London, has been foolishly ‘nasty’ to the visiting President of the United States, by far the most important ally of the United Kingdom. He is a stone cold loser who should focus on crime in London.”
Mr. Trump was annoyed ahead of his first visit to Britain when Khan’s office issued a permit for protesters to fly a massive balloon, depicting the U.S. president as a diaper-clad angry baby. This week’s state visit is expected to see the “Trump Baby” balloon — if not more than one — fly again.
Khan has voiced his opposition to Britain granting Mr. Trump an official state visit, saying the U.K. should not “roll out the red carpet” for the U.S. president.
Mr. Trump has often pointed to increase in stabbing attacks in London to criticize Khan. While there has been a spate of violent crime in the British capital, many attribute that at least in part to the Conservative central government’s “austerity” measures of recent years, which have seen many community programs and centers shut down and put huge strain on police resources across the country.
A spokesman for Khan told Britain’s PA news wire on Monday: “This is much more serious than childish insults which should be beneath the President of the United States. Sadiq is representing the progressive values of London and our country, warning that Donald Trump is the most egregious example of a growing far-right threat around the globe, which is putting at risk the basic values that have defined our liberal democracies for more than 70 years.”
