Trump Family Welcome Royals to White House With Rousing Speech Celebrating American History

President Trump hailed “the two most exceptional nations the world has ever known” as he and First Lady Melania welcomed the Royal couple to the White House on Tuesday morning for the first full day of the state visit marking the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

King Charles III and his Queen Consort Camilla arrived at the White House on Tuesday morning as invited guests of U.S. President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania, met by an impressive display of martial music, an honour guard of U.S. troops, and the executive mansion draped in American and British flags. The four stood for the national anthems of the two nations, before the broadly smiling President Trump delivered a speech extending his welcome to the United States for this historic state visit, and celebrating the long shared history of the United States and the United Kingdom.

President Trump particularly dwelled on this history as he expressed that America’s founding ideals hadn’t blinked into existence in a vacuum, but were rather born out of the traditions and beliefs of the first Americans, British colonists. He said:

Here in the shadows of monuments to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, honouring the British King might seem an ironic beginning to our celebration of 250 years of American Independence. But in fact no tribute could be more appropriate. Long before Americans had a nation or a constitution we first had a culture, a character, and a creed. Before we ever proclaimed our Independence Americans carried within us the rarest of gifts, moral courage. And it came from a small but mighty Kingdom across the sea.

For nearly two centuries before the Revolution this land was settled and forged by men and women who bore in their souls the blood and noble spirit of the British. Here on a wild and untamed continent they set loose the ancient English love of liberty and Great Britain’s distinctive sense of glory, destiny and pride… the American patriots who pledged their lives to Independence in 1776 were the heirs to this majestic inheritance. Their veins ran with Anglo-Saxon courage, their hearts beat with English faith in standing firm for what is right, good, and true. In recent years we have often heard it said that America is merely an idea, but the cause of freedom did not simply appear as an intellectual invention of 1776. The American founding was the culmination of hundreds of years of thoughts, struggles, sweat, blood, and sacrifice on both sides of the Atlantic.

Fate drew a long arc from the meadow at Runnymede to the streets of Philadelphia that ran through the lives of people born and bred on the British code that no man should be denied either justice or rights. American patriots today can sing ‘My Country, Tis of Three, Sweet Land of Liberty’ only because our Colonial ancestors first sang ‘God Save the King’.

The President spoke of a tree in the grounds of the White House planted by King Charles III’s mother, Queen Elizabeth II in 1991, noting “like our nation itself it was laid with British hands but grew in American soil”. The tree stands as a reminder that it “like the greatest of nations, must be anchored by the strongest and deepest roots”, he said.

The common fight against the extremist regimes of the 20th century by British and American troops serving side-by-side was in defence of the “extraordinary civilisation” common to the two nations, President Trump said, and returning to his opening themes — the friendship of the two nations because, not in spite of, the circumstances of the birth of the United States — said of what the Founding Fathers might make of America’s 250th birthday:

…[at Congress today] the direct descendent of King George III will speak to the direct successor of the very body that gathered in Independence Hall on July 4th 1776. If John Addams and George Washington or the King’s fifth great-grand-father could see that sight they might be absolutely shocked, but probably only for a moment.

Surely they would be delighted that the wounds of war healed into the most cherished friendship… they would be moved beyond words to know the soldiers who once called each other ‘Red Coats’ and ‘Yankees’ became the ‘Tommies’ and the ‘GIs’ who together saves the free world as brothers in arms, and brothers in eternity… if they could see us today, our ancestors would surely be filled with awe and pride that the Anglo-American revolution in human freedom was never, ever extinguished but carried forward across centuries, oceans, and across history until it became a fire that lit the entire world.

So today we look back on 250 years. Let us remember what has made our countries the two most exceptional nations the world has ever known and together let us go forward with even stronger resolve to continue our sacred devotion to liberty and to the traditions of excellence that have been our shared gift to all mankind.

Trump’s speech, with its talk of “Anglo-Saxon courage” and exceptionalism common to both countries follows another address of enthusiasm for the special relationship and appreciation for Britain and America’s heritage made at Windsor Castle when he spoke of a “priceless and eternal” bond of “kinship and identity”. The President’s evident affection for Britain and his own Scottish heritage appears clearly separate from his ever-deteriorating view on Britain’s left-wing government, which has taken it upon itself to attempt to unilaterally withdraw from the special relationship.