Donald Trump has a fondness for depicting himself as a king. He did it last year with memes showing him with a crown—something particularly distasteful as we approach the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. And he just couldn’t help himself when he was visited by an actual monarch, Britain’s King Charles III.
The U.K.-based Independent reports:
As King Charles addressed Congress on how executive power is “subject to checks and balances,” the White House’s official X account posted a photo of the British monarch with President Donald Trump captioned: “TWO KINGS.”
King Charles III emphasized the importance of the U.S.-U.K. alliance as well as NATO in his historic address to a joint session of Congress Tuesday afternoon, during his four-day state visit with Queen Camilla.
As the royal praised American democracy to cheers and applause from lawmakers, the White House posted an image on X of Charles and Trump earlier in the day.
It showed the two men sharing a jovial moment on the South Lawn of the White House and was captioned: “TWO KINGS,” complete with crown emoji.
It’s more than a little ironic that as we approach the 250th anniversary of America’s independence from Britain, the British king is now less of a monarchist than our current president.
The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.
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