Donald trump

“This is Greek… more or less… it comes out of Greece… this is the ultimate facade for Greece.” Donald Trump is wielding a blown-up graphical rendering of one of the planned porticos of the new White House ballroom. “This is a different facade,” he says, pointing to another placard propped up on an easel, “This one’s Rome.” The President spent the morning touring the ballroom’s construction site with the press. Currently a forest of rebar and metal prongs, the project has now burst its bounds and is developing into a general fortress-cum-lair. A vast underground complex is to be built below the ballroom, housing a hospital, research facilities and meeting rooms for the military.

So the royal visit was a resounding success. Charles III got whisky tariffs dropped, Trump got a shiny new bell, the “Special Relationship” (yuck) endures. If only the weather could have played ball for Tuesday morning’s White House greeting. The President branded the spattering rain and cloudy skies “a beautiful British day.” One member of Congress saw the forecast and decided to give the festivities a miss: Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, who opted to wait for the King to give his joint address indoors that afternoon. “I love King Chuck, but I am not going to ruin a suit for him,” Kennedy was overheard telling reporters. Quite. The state dinner Tuesday night produced a minor slip-up for the New York Times.

King Charles III is planning a state visit to Washington DC next month. He is rumored to be staying at the White House, attending a state dinner and possibly addressing a joint meeting of Congress. The last royal to address Congress was Charles’s mother, the late Queen Elizabeth II speaking to a full chamber in May 1991, during George H.W. Bush’s presidency, around three months after the end of Operation Desert Storm. Britain contributed more than 50,000 troops to Iraq during the Gulf War which was – and remains to this day – the largest deployment of British military personnel since World War Two. (Pay no heed to Punchbowl’s Jake Sherman, who this morning tweeted that “King Charles II” was coming: the previous Charles has been dead for 341 years.