‘I Love Your Country’: President Trump Praises Queen, Remembers His British Roots

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DOMINIC LIPINSKI/AFP/Getty
Victoria Friedman

U.S. President Donald J Trump has expressed his “love” for the United Kingdom and his “respect” for the Queen in an interview where he discussed his ties to Britain and his Scottish born mother who loved the Royal Family.

Speaking to ITV’s Piers Morgan in an interview aired Wednesday morning, the most pro-British U.S. president since Ronald Reagan said that despite the protests — which were notably smaller than had been billed to be — he feels he has a “very good relationship with the people of the United Kingdom”.

“Is it me or is it the country? Our country loves your country. I love your country,” President Trump told Mr Morgan in the pre-recorded interview taped within the Churchill War Rooms bunker complex beneath Westminster.

During the interview, President Trump articulated his view that due to their shared heritage and values, he considered the United Kingdom and the United States as nearly indistinguishable.

The U.S. leader, who Mr Morgan reminded viewers is “half-British” due to his Scottish mother, is enjoying his last day on a three-day State Visit, which is focused on commemorating the 75th anniversary of D-Day, a future bilateral trade deal with post-Brexit Britain, and the Special Relationship, which President Trump called “the greatest alliance the world has ever known” in a joint press conference with Prime Minister Theresa May on Tuesday.

The ITV interviewer then remarked on the “natural rapport” he had observed at the State Banquet Monday night between the President and the Queen, with President Trump saying: “We had a great rapport. We had a conversation that lasted over an hour and a half non-stop.”

Calling the Queen “very impressive”, President Trump said he had “great respect for her” adding: “Last night was unbelievable with the Queen. She is a great woman.”

Love for the monarchy appears to be in the blood for the President, with Mr Morgan evoking the British patriotism and monarchism of his late Scottish-born mother Mary Anne MacLeod Trump, who watched the coronation of the young Queen Elizabeth II on television with the six-year-old Donald in June 1953.

Watching President Trump at the State Dinner, Mr Morgan said: “I was thinking what would your mother have made of her little boy, Donald, being the guest of honour at a State Banquet at Buckingham Palace with the same Queen, now in her nineties, with you as President of the United States. What would she have made of it?”

“She would have been very proud,” Mr Trump said.

“She was a tremendous fan of this country,” the President continued, explaining that his mother had grown up in Stornoway and left at 19 for New York, later marrying Frederick Trump.

“She loved the Royals and she loved the Queen. I always noticed whenever there was something on about the Queen she would watch. She was a big fan… I told her [the Queen] last night. She was very honoured.”

He added: “My mother understood people very well. She knew people. She got it right from the beginning. The Queen is a great lady, and my mother knew that.”

The State Visit has revealed elements of the shared histories and experiences of the United Kingdom and United States, and between the Queen and President Trump, not least in the speeches during the State Banquet by the two heads of state, who reflected on the Anglo-American alliance which was forged in blood on the beaches of Normandy 75 years ago.

And while President Trump recalled memories of his mother expressing their British patriotism, during the State Banquet he evoked a moment between the Queen and her late mother, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, during the war.

In comments that appeared to greatly touch the Queen, President Trump had said: “In April 1945, newspapers featured a picture of the Queen Mother visiting the women’s branch of the Army, watching a young woman repair a military truck engine.”

“That young mechanic was the future Queen, a great, great woman. Her Majesty inspired her compatriots in that fight to support the troops, defend her homeland, and defeat the enemy at all costs,” he added.

The Good Morning Britain interview was conducted Tuesday after the prime minister and President’s joint press conference in the Churchill War Rooms, which is now part of the Imperial War Museum. An underground bunker complex hidden beneath the streets of Westminster, it is where Prime Minister Winston Churchill planned key World War Two operations.

There were a number of key rooms in the secret Cabinet War Rooms, including the Map Room and the Cabinet Room itself. Visiting the underground Cabinet Room in May 1940, Mr Churchill had said: “This is the room from which I will direct the war.”

President Trump is a fan of the war-time prime minister, with then-candidate Trump famously pledging to return the bust of Winston Churchill to the White House’s Oval Office should he be elected U.S. leader — as a nod to the Special Relationship — making good on his promise on January 21st, 2017. The bust had been removed from the president’s office by his predecessor, Barack Obama.

On Monday, Queen Elizabeth II gave President Trump a first edition of Churchill’s Second World War, while Prime Minister May presented the President with a copy of the 1941 Atlantic Charter, which set out the war-time aims of Churchill and President Franklyn D Roosevelt and the policies on which both their nations would “base their hopes for a better future of the world”.

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