Queen Elizabeth II charmed and cajoled a succession of American presidents. Then came one of her toughest challenges yet: Donald Trump.
She did her best to handle Trump, including overlooking a few of his royal protocol slights.
Now her successor, King Charles III, will face the same test this week during his first state visit to the White House as Great Britain’s monarch, said Susan Page, author of “The Queen and Her Presidents: The Hidden Hand that Shaped History.”
Page, Washington bureau chief for USA Today, shared stories from her book in a lively conversation with journalist Jerry Roberts, host of the podcast show “Newsmakers with JR.” The event was held at the CEC Hub in downtown Santa Barbara. About 75 people attended the gathering, sponsored by the News-Press, the Santa Barbara Literary Festival and Voice Magazine, which also featured a reception and book-signing.
Roberts and Page bantered on a variety of topics, including Elizabeth’s interactions with presidents such as Trump, Obama and Reagan, the ways she impacted U.S. policy, and her aversion to shaking hands or hugging those she greeted.
Charles could hardly be arriving at a more consequential time for the U.K. — an era in which its relationship with the U.S. and other nations is rapidly being reshaped. As Page put it, the world is in a “kind of a pivot point” as Trump shakes up a geopolitical order that has largely stayed in place since the 1940s.
Just as Elizabeth had to navigate an American-led, post-war environment during her 70-year reign, Charles now arrives as the global state of affairs is being reshuffled.
“I think we are moving into a world that will have a different sense of alliances and assumptions,” she said in response to Roberts, who read excerpts from her book, and took hand-written questions from the audience.
Page thought it unlikely there could be a reversion to pre-Trump norms once the 47th president eventually leaves office.
“You can’t have such enormous change over a period of years…and then say, ‘Oh, never mind.’ Whoever succeeds Trump is going to face a world that is again being reshaped, maybe in a similar way to what we saw after World War II,” she said.
Elizabeth, crowned in 1952, came onto the world stage at a unique time for her county. Page said Elizabeth honed her abilities to exert “soft power” and help maintain the global influence of the U.K. even as the island nation was shedding its status as an empire.
“The queen didn’t just wear a tierra and go to dinners,” Page said. “She was consequential.”
Elizabeth had to navigate the various eccentricities and nuances of each successive U.S. administration as she both hosted and visited every American president up to her death in 2022 at age 96. While some presidential relationships proved more challenging than others, her interaction with Trump would call for its own special approach.
This was aided by Trump’s own belief that he and the queen had a unique relationship.
Among the standard protocols in dealing with Britain’s monarch—such as never touching them unless they extend a hand—it is considered bad form to reveal any private conversations had with them. Yet Trump, interviewed by Page for the book, didn’t hold back.
He told Page that he pressed Elizabeth to name her favorite U.S. president—not once but repeatedly.
“She would dodge the answer,” Page said. After the dinner, Trump was led to believe that her favorite president was, indeed, him.
That may or may not have been true, as Elizabeth never disclosed if there was a particular American leader that most caught her fancy. According to Page, however, there were some with whom the queen’s attempts at making a connection never gelled. One was President Lyndon Baines Johnson, who entered the White House after the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
“LBJ was a failure for her,” Page said. Johnson, among the more earthy individuals to hold the nation’s highest office in the modern era, “didn’t like elites.”
Then there was Johnson’s successor, Richard Nixon, another complicated personality. Nixon’s presidency would become mired, and eventually sunk, by the Watergate scandal. Elizabeth appeared to have actively avoided Nixon during this time, likely to avoid association with the controversy. This was done by way of her staff identifying dates Nixon might propose a state visit and then finding excuses for the queen to be unavailable at these times.
If there was one president with whom the queen appeared to have developed a genuine rapport, it was Ronald Reagan. For starters, she was a movie buff, a plus in dealing with a former leading man on the silver screen. The pair also shared having to balance their private lives with the demands of constantly being on view to an eager public. But the biggest bond of all was over a shared love of horses. They exchanged private notes in which they talked extensively about favorite ponies and adventures on horseback.
When Elizabeth met Reagan at the Santa Barbara Airport and visited his ranch in 1983, California was drenched by rain. A photo at the time showed an apparently tense Nancy Reagan beside President Reagan and the queen who both looked perfectly at ease, happy to be in each other’s company despite the dreary weather.
Despite snafus and miscues involving her visits through the years, one thing shined through.
“I do think she actually quite liked Americans,” Page said.
