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New Statesman
a day ago
- Politics
- New Statesman
Trump in the wilderness
A video showing Donald Trump dictating social media posts to an aide while watching Kamala Harris deliver a speech at the Democratic National Convention in August 2024 offers a glimpse of a magician at work. Seated at a table along with a dozen or so of his campaign team, the presidential candidate – sipping from a bottle of Coca-Cola with what appears to be a plate of chicken nuggets before him – is in charge. His comments are typed up by the aide, corrected and approved, then posted on X and Truth Social. Working as a clairvoyant channelling the American unconscious, he voices the fears that gave him a popular majority. 'We've got to get to the border, inflation and crime,' he says. His tweets may be peppered with exclamation marks and capital letters, but he speaks softly. The mood in the room is calm. The message of the footage – broadcast in October 2024 as part of a documentary series, Art of the Surge, backed by Tucker Carlson – is clear. Trump was the sole author of the regime change that took place with his sweeping victory last November. However, to view him as a mere political thaumaturge, a sorcerer of social media, is to understate his historical importance. If that were so, he would be an anomaly – as liberals would like to believe. But, six months along from his second inauguration, there is no going back to the world as it was before him. Trump, a harbinger of things to come, has released forces that neither he nor the baffled remnants of the liberal order have any idea how to control. In a letter to a friend, Hegel described seeing Napoleon the day before the French emperor crushed the Prussian army in the Battle of Jena in 1806 and recognising him as 'world history on horseback'. Trump on his golf cart has a similar significance – without embodying any emerging rationality of the kind that the windy German philosopher believed was unfolding in history. Driving more erratically than any Napoleon, Trump is unloosing a new logic in politics and history. There will be no restoration of the ancien régime. Another round of liberal lawfare will achieve nothing of substance. The weaponisation of the courts by the Biden administration did not prevent Trump's return to office. Lawfare is a game anyone can play. In his first term, he appointed three conservative judges to the Supreme Court, stacking it in his favour. By making judicial institutions targets for political capture, liberal legalism signed its own death warrant. Trump is eviscerating any institution that could inhibit executive authority. He has shut down the Pentagon's internal think tank, the Office of Net Assessment, a much-respected organisation founded more than 50 years ago, shrunk the National Security Council and downgraded Fema, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. He has fired senior intelligence officials, including the heads of the National Security Agency and US Cyber Command. These purges ensure that his successor – Republican or Democrat – will inherit a polity more closely resembling an authoritarian democracy than a constitutional republic. Stale chatter of a rerun of fascism is misguided. The mutation in American democracy is deeper and more enduring. The fascist regimes of interwar Europe and Asia could be decapitated by removing their leaders. But Trump's removal would leave a society too polarised for consensual governance, while the international system in which a liberal superpower could function has imploded. An American-led financial system is already history. In the eyes of the rest of the world, the US is drifting inexorably towards default. As Elon Musk noted after his expulsion from the administration, his Doge department achieved little and Trump's 'big beautiful bill' will add trillions to the spiralling federal deficit. A crisis may have been staved off by the US treasury secretary Scott Bessent, a George Soros associate involved in the 1992 Black Wednesday bet against the pound. But as Musk himself demonstrated, no one lasts long in Trump's inner circle. In recent weeks he has turned his ire on Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve central bank – another institution he aims to gut. The current weakness of the dollar – following its worst year in modern history – is structural, a by-product of chronic American political dysfunction. That does not mean any successor is on the horizon. Attempts by Brics countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) to fashion an alternative have repeatedly failed. China's renminbi is too tightly controlled and illiquid. The president of the European Central Bank Christine Lagarde's suggestion that the dollar could be overthrown by the euro is unworkable. The second-largest global reserve asset, surpassing the euro, is gold. Around a fifth of the world's production is disappearing into the vaults of central banks. Unlike dollar assets, the ancient precious metal cannot be sequestrated in financial sanctions. Unlike crypto, it cannot be hacked. There is mounting pressure to repatriate gold reserves held by the Fed or Western banks closely associated with it. India and Turkey have already repatriated bars from London and New York, and there are influential voices in Germany, France, Italy and Switzerland demanding that they follow suit. A multipolar currency system is emerging, in which Keynes's 'barbarous relic' plays a key role. In domestic terms, Trump's protectionism is a double-edged sword. When properly designed and implemented, tariffs can protect jobs, though always at a cost to the consumer. Trump's tariffs risk inflaming inflation with little benefit to employment. As living standards fall, voters may swing leftwards – not back to Bidenite progressivism, but to more radical versions of Trumpism, which in many respects resembles a reprisal of Argentine Peronism. A premonitory tremor can be detected in the adoption in the New York mayoral primary of Zohran Mamdani, who promises redistribution, rent freezes and welfare spending. Musk has proposed founding a new 'America' party with fiscal conservatism as one of its central themes. But would American voters support the savage reductions in federal entitlements – social security, Medicare, unemployment insurance, food banks – that would be necessary to get anywhere near sustainable levels of federal debt? A time may come when the Argentine president Javier Milei's agenda of slashing the state could marshal majority support, but only after a terrifying brush with national bankruptcy. Whatever comes to pass, pre-Trump America is irretrievable. The future is a foreign country; they do things differently there. [See also: There is one man that Donald Trump fears] Just as Juan Perón courted labour unions and the poor, Trump has mobilised the cast-offs of the neoliberal era. As in Argentina, their hopes may be destined to be disappointed. Visiting Buenos Aires in the Nineties, I asked a former Peronist minister what the next development in world politics would be. Without hesitation, he replied: 'The decadence of market power.' A generation later, the old man's prophecy has been fulfilled. Western capitalism has become a self-undermining system. Great concentrations of wealth exist in China and Russia, but they are subordinate to the objectives of government. Billionaire business leaders who display too much independence are swiftly disciplined. In China they may be charged with corruption and executed, or like the founder of Alibaba, Jack Ma, spend years in obscurity and disgrace before they are rehabilitated in a demonstration of Xi Jinping's power. In Vladimir Putin's Russia, wayward plutocrats have a habit of falling out of high windows or suffering fatal indigestion. Neoliberal capitalism allows its oligarchs to locate their businesses in countries that are not necessarily friendly to the West, as Musk has done with his Tesla gigafactory in Shanghai, while allowing the same countries into critical parts of national infrastructure. A faction of Maga led by Steve Bannon seeks to break the hold of corporate power and prioritise the interest of workers. Mainstream opinion discounts Bannon as an inconsequential, marginal figure. But as Joshua Green showed in Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump and the Storming of the Presidency, Bannon was crucial in rescuing the languishing 2016 campaign. It was he who provided the ideological script – an anti-modernist, ethno-nationalist narrative of Western decline – that opened up Trump's path to power. Trump's rise was political blowback against globalisation. Combined with offshoring production, free trade devastated America's manufacturing capacity. But protectionism cannot revive the patterns of industry and employment that free trade destroyed. Absent an industrial strategy and an educational system that steers young people into science and engineering rather than law and finance, the US will be locked in economic decline. The world-changing technologies that came out of Silicon Valley will be used for financial engineering rather than building new industries. Through his podcast War Room, Bannon continued to shape the current direction of travel in the administration. At the end of May, he described the Department of Justice's decision to close the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein as 'a catastrophic mistake' that could cost the Republicans up to 26 seats in the 2026 midterms, and possibly even the presidency in 2028. Bannon was correct: following the revelation in the Wall Street Journal that Trump is himself named in the Epstein files, the president is facing the biggest revolt of his political career – from within his own base. Having led his supporters into the looking-glass world of fake news and boundless conspiracy, Trump finds himself trapped in it. Unless the populists prevail, Bannon predicts, there will be no fundamental change in the ruling American regime. The casualties of globalisation will be abandoned. The rich will retreat to their gated enclaves, and the post-industrial wastelands will spread. [See also: Donald Trump, the king of Scotland] In 'Gerontion' (1920), TS Eliot wrote of: 'These with a thousand small deliberations/Protract the profit of their chilled delirium,/Excite the membrane, when the sense has cooled,/With pungent sauces, multiply variety/In a wilderness of mirrors.' Eliot's image – the 'wilderness of mirrors' – was invoked by James Jesus Angleton, head of counterintelligence at the CIA from 1955 for nearly two decades, to describe the labyrinthine world of espionage. A lifelong poetry-lover who knew Eliot, Angleton co-founded a quarterly journal of verse in 1939 when a student at Yale, publishing ee cummings, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens and WH Auden. Traumatised by his betrayal by the British double agent Kim Philby, a long-time drinking companion whom he seems to have trusted implicitly, Angleton launched a mole hunt that came close to wrecking the CIA, from which he was forced to resign in December 1974. He died in 1987 of lung cancer, taking his secrets – and his paranoid delusions – with him. But his borrowing from Eliot was prescient about both modern America and a larger fracturing across the West. One school of thought has Trump as a Manchurian candidate. In Richard Condon's 1959 novel of that name, an agent of a foreign power is manoeuvred into the presidency to pursue policies inimical to American interests. Some speculate that the current occupant of the Oval Office may be acting under duress – threats of blackmail relating to financial or sexual impropriety, perhaps. It is true that he appointed figures like Tulsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence, who have echoed Kremlin talking points on the Ukraine war, and shut down State Department centres for countering disinformation. Yet Trump has publicly dismissed Gabbard's claim that Iran is not building a nuclear bomb, excluded her from meetings and ridiculed Tucker Carlson's opposition to entering the war against Iran as 'kooky'. Announcing his intention to destroy the country's nuclear programme, he suggested God may have spared him from death by the assassin's bullet for this very purpose. If this reveals the man within, he is moved by epiphanies and emotions as much as by calculation or subterfuge. Global politics is not a maze of secret stratagems and knowing deceptions, as Angleton believed, but a phantasmagoria of reflections and projections. When Trump looks at other world leaders, he sees replicas of himself as he would like himself to be – a hard-headed dealmaker. Putin is a ruthless practitioner of realpolitik; but he is also a neo-tsarist political mystic, aiming to resurrect a fabulous imperial realm. Xi is careful to avoid being drawn into any conflict in which he cannot see strategic advantage; but he is also determined to restore China to what he regards as its rightful place as the Middle Kingdom. Iran's leaders are cautious in their strategies; but they are also possessed by millenarian myths of martyrdom and a messianic saviour. History is driven by impulses more visionary and sanguinary than the pursuit of profit and survival. When liberals look at humankind, they see imperfect specimens of themselves. Some sections of the species – the despised deplorables – may be so retrograde that there is no future for them. A progressive society is best off letting them fade away and die. The rest of humankind yearns to join the ranks of the enlightened bourgeoisie. That was the phantasm of globalisation, and its concomitant – mass immigration. Instead, immigrants have brought with them their ancestral faiths, identities and enmities, while pre-existing populations – including previous generations of immigrants – recoil from the political caste that launched the experiment. Even the progressive nomenklatura are beginning to suspect their future may be cloudy. Strangely enough, an idea of truth survives among the tyrants as a domain of fact that must be unceasingly denied. Putin may be wedded to fantasies of a restored 'Russian world'. In advancing them he continues the Bolshevik practice of vranyo – telling lies he and everyone else know to be lies, but which dictate the terms in which war and politics are understood. For Xi, deception is the heart of the art of war. It is the post-truth West that cannot bear very much reality. Trump's strike on Iran illustrates this interplay of illusions and realities. The Iranian nuclear project has likely not been ended, only delayed for a few years. The US finds itself in the same bind it has been locked in since the collapse of British and French power in the Middle East after Suez and the fall of the shah in 1979. Trump's outburst against Israel and Iran at the breach of his ceasefire – 'They don't know what the fuck they are doing' – was a telling moment. Like many American presidents before him, he can neither dominate the region nor extricate himself from its intractable conflicts. Trump is trapped in a 21st-century version of the Great Game, the shifting imperial rivalries that preceded the Great War of 1914. There is reason in history, though not of the Hegelian variety. When liberal ideologues enabled Trump's rise, an irreversible process was set in motion. He and the defunct progressive ruling class are mirrors of one another. Trump's economic nationalism is the perfect inversion of an unfettered global free market. A seemingly immovable economic orthodoxy has been upended to prioritise the well-being of those injured by globalisation. Will this revolution amount to anything more than political rhetoric? The deep cuts in Medicaid and funding for treatment of opioid addiction made in the 'big beautiful bill' suggest that the collateral human damage of neoliberalism is being quietly written off. But is this politically sustainable? Before they fade away, America's deplorables may exercise their right to vote – chiefly moved by a worsening economy, but possibly rallying round the Epstein deceit. The former middle class may not accept their descent into endemic insecurity. Millennial professionals will struggle to avoid obsolescence, the nemesis of surplus elites. The figures who channel the fear and anger of these sections of the population – whether JD Vance, Bannon, Mamdani – will shape post-liberal America. Trump's most lasting inheritance will be a hodgepodge of populisms more radical than any he intended or imagined. On the global stage, Trump's 'realist' geopolitics is releasing forces – mystical imperialism, millenarian fervour, ungovernable impulses of hatred and revenge – that are derailing his would-be deals. His transactional schemes are as unreal as the progressive utopias he has casually brushed aside. Liberal rationalists avert their gaze from the world they have unknowingly made. Trump conjures with chaos, while a fateful logic unfolds around him. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe [See also: Trump's gangsterism towards the EU is working] Related
Sky News AU
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Sky News AU
'He truly adored her': US President Donald Trump gets emotional over Queen Elizabeth and King Charles in newly resurfaced video
A resurfaced clip of Donald Trump getting emotional over the late Queen Elizabeth II and King Charles III has gone viral, just as reports swirl that the British monarch is growing "very concerned" about the President's upcoming state visit. The footage, originally posted to social media in November as part of Trump's Art of the Surge documentary, shows the 79-year-old leafing through a personal photo album on board a private jet. The video was captioned in part, "You can see that he [Trump] truly adored her [the Queen]". "Now this is with Queen Elizabeth, who was fantastic by the way," he said, pointing to an image captured during his first UK state visit in June 2019. "Who has images like this?" Trump added about himself. "And these are real relationships too." He then paused on a photo featuring King Charles (then the Prince of Wales) standing beside a ceremonial guard. "Look, he is now the King, here's Charles with the guard," Trump said, before shifting back to the late monarch. "And this is the Queen. Queen Elizabeth. These are pieces of history at the highest level." He takes a moment to reflect before quietly adding: "So beautiful." The video continues with Trump praising the entire royal family, including Queen Camilla and Charles, noting, "Hopefully he (Charles) is going to be well, because he's a really good person." Interestingly, the remark was made just months before the King publicly revealed a cancer diagnosis, following treatment for an enlarged prostate. "Camilla is fantastic too," Trump said. "I mean, you get to know them so well." In another image, Trump is seen in conversation with Queen Elizabeth during a state banquet. "Here's your favourite president with the Queen. She was unbelievable. We had a very good relationship. Really good," he said. It's not the first time the former president has publicly expressed admiration for the late monarch. After her death in September 2022, Trump wrote that he and his wife Melania would "always cherish our time together with the Queen, and never forget Her Majesty's generous friendship, great wisdom, and wonderful sense of humour. "What a grand and beautiful lady she was- there was nobody like her!" he added. "Our thoughts and prayers will remain with the great people of the United Kingdom as you honour her most meaningful life and exceptional service to the people. May God bless the Queen, may she reign forever in our hearts, and may God hold her and Prince Philip in abiding care." However, author Craig Brown's recent royal biography A Voyage Around The Queen paints a less rosy picture, claiming the late monarch found Trump to be "very rude" during his visits to the UK in 2018 and 2019. Trump dismissed the suggestion during a campaign rally last year. "I have no idea who the writer is, but it was really just the opposite," he said of Brown. "I had a great relationship with the Queen. She liked me, and I liked her." Since resurfacing online, the video has sparked widespread commentary, with Trump supporters praising his tribute to the Queen and the British monarchy. Britain loves the US. I love the respect he showed to our queen & history," one fan wrote. Another added: "Can't wait for you to come in September to GB. Royal Windsor will give you a huge hug! GB loves you Mr President. It wasn't just our beautiful queen. It was also her people." Others were more sceptical, with one user claiming the King "hates Trump's guts". "These pictures are just standard diplomatic photos; hundreds of them exist with hundreds of other leaders over the years," they said. Another wrote: 'He (Trump)'s crying over his own ego tbh." According to The Daily Beast, one person watching the growing hype with some trepidation is King Charles himself. A palace insider told the outlet on Monday His Majesty is worried Trump "could upend protocol and make politicised comments when delivering a traditional speech at his state banquet." Concerns have reportedly been growing since Trump's recent comments about Canada, a Commonwealth realm where Charles is the head of state, referring to it as "the 51st state". But they've intensified after a string of inflammatory comments made by the president during his current five-day visit to Scotland. "On immigration, you'd better get your act together. You're not going to have Europe anymore," Trump told reporters on Friday. The insider added the 76-year-old monarch "will be very concerned about the possibility of a repeat of Trump's outburst [when he visits] in September." The state visit, expected to go ahead on September 17-19, will mark the first time any elected political leader has been invited back for a second royal reception.
Tom's Guide
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Tom's Guide
How to watch 'Art of the Surge' season 2 online from anywhere
"Art of the Surge" season 2 invites viewers to "get closer to a United States president than anyone in history". What it reveals about America and Donald J. Trump remains to be seen, but you can judge it for yourself season two drops... Below is our guide to how to watch "Art of the Surge" season 2 online from anywhere with a VPN. "Art of the Surge" season 2 episodes 4 and 5 land Wednesday, June 11 exclusively on FoxNation.• U.S. — FoxNation (7-day trial) (via Sling TV or Hulu)• Watch from anywhere — try NordVPN 100% risk free The first three episodes revealed Trump on the campaign trail from a McDonald's Drive-Thru all the way through to Mar-a-Lago and the moment of victory with the President's inner circle. From that point, it's access all areas as the POTUS train starts rolling - ringing the bell at the NYSE, a SpaceX launch with the world's richest man, Elon Musk. The next two episodes (4 & 5) follow Trump (now also the 47th President) to the Army-Navy game and a huge celebration at Mar-a-Lago. Trump Force One is now airborne but enemies are gathering to make things difficult for the new administration. There are two more episodes to come and, probably, season 3 down the line. History, or one version of it, in real time. Read on for everything you need to know about where to watch "Art of the Surge" season 2 online – including any free streams. Outside the U.S. at the moment and blocked from watching "Art of the Surge" season 2 on FoxNation – or your usual U.S. streaming subscription? You can still watch your favorite TV shows from anywhere thanks to the wonders of a VPN (Virtual Private Network). The software allows your devices to appear to be back in your home country regardless of where in the world you are. So ideal for TV fans away on vacation or on business. Our favorite is NordVPN. It's the best on the market. There's a good reason you've heard of NordVPN. We specialize in testing and reviewing VPN services and NordVPN is the one we rate best. It's outstanding at unblocking streaming services, it's fast and it has top-level security features too. With over 7,000 servers, across 110+ countries. Get 70% off NordVPN with this deal "Art of the Surge" season 2 episodes 1 to 3 have already premiered on FoxNation, and episodes 4 & 5 land on Wednesday, June 11. FoxNation has a 7-day FREE TRIAL on offer and is also available via a live TV streaming platforms like Sling TV or Hulu with Live TV. You can also sign up for the free trial offer on the FoxNation app (annual subscription only). Away from home? Don't panic. You can still watch "Art of the Surge" by using a VPN to unblock FoxNation. We recommend NordVPN. Sling TV gives you live TV at an affordable price. The Sling Blue package includes more than 50 channels including ABC, Fox, Fox Nation, NBC (selected cities), AMC, Bravo, Food Network, HGTV, Lifetime and USA. Right now, new subscribers get 50% off their first month. 'Art of the Surge' season 2 has no release date in Canada as yet but see below if you are an American citizen in the Great White North on holiday. Traveling abroad? Use a VPN to watch FoxNation or your usual streaming service from anywhere on the planet. We recommend NordVPN. Unfortunately, there is no release date for 'Art of the Surge' season 2 in the U.K. as yet. The first season dropped on X (@ArtoftheSurge) but season 2 is exclusive to FoxNation in the United States. If that changes you'll hear about it here first. Remember, U.S. nationals visiting the U.K. can use NordVPN to unblock FoxNation and watch "Art of the Surge" season 2 now. Unfortunately, there is no release date for 'Art of the Surge' season 2 in Australia as yet but if that changes you'll hear about it here first. Meanwhile, U.S. nationals visiting Australia can still access their usual streaming services with the help of NordVPN. Season 02 Episode 01: "Not A Normal Situation": A rare inside look at Trump's fight for the White House; it starts in a McDonald's Drive-Thru all the way through the final minutes of election morning and the campaign. (Stream NOW) S02 E02: "The Biggest Comeback": Inside the campaign headquarters, Mar-a-Lago and the President's inner circle in the final hours and minutes of the win. (Stream NOW) S02 E03: "Where No Man Has Gone Before": Donald Trump is crowned Patriot of the Year and then it's off to ring the bell at the NYSE; it's back to MSG, but the UFC; witness a SpaceX launch alongside President Trump and Elon Musk. (Stream NOW) S02 E04: "The Don Diplomacy": Going inside the President Trump box at the Army-Navy game; attending business meetings and a big bash at Mar-a-Lago; meet the men and women of Trump Force One; boarding it for a trip to Greenland. (Weds, June 11) S02 E05: "The Confirmation Clash": As Donald Trump becomes the 47th President, enemies try to derail his cabinet picks; watch the President, his team and allies help Pete Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard overcome the swamp's dirtiest tricks. (Weds, June 11) S02 E06: "TBA": (Weds, June 18) S02 E07: "TBA": (Weds, June 18)
Daily Mirror
07-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
Oscar winner says Hollywood friends 'cancelled' him as he voted for Donald Trump
Producer Brian Grazer, a long-time Democratic donor, said the reaction he received after admitting he voted for Donald Trump made him feel like he was 'getting cancelled' An Oscar-winning producer has said he felt "cancelled" by his Hollywood friends because he voted for Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election. Brian Grazer, a long-time Democratic donor who identifies himself as "centrist", opened up about the reaction he received for supporting Trump during a new Fox Nation docuseries titled Art of the Surge. The behind-the-scenes documentary follows Trump's return to the White House - and in one scene, Brian can be seen alongside the then president-elect in a VIP box at the Army-Navy game. On that occasion, Brian book a photo with Trump and confessed to a group of surprised women in the box that he had voted for the Republican. At that point, the women asked him: "You mean, you're not voting for Kamala?" to which he replied: "I just can't do that." Brian explained: "And then, one of them leaned in further, and said, 'Are you voting for Trump?' And I said, 'I am. I swear!'" As part of the series, the producer, known for working on films such as A Beautiful Mind and Apollo 13, confessed the reaction he received made him feel like he was "getting cancelled." The New York Times reported that Brian explained his Trump vote by saying: "As a centrist, it was because I could feel and see Biden's deterioration and the lack of direction in the Democratic Party at that time." The second season of Art of the Surge, produced by former Tucker Carlson Tonight executive producer Justin Wells, is currently streaming on Fox Nation. Before voting for Trump, Brian reportedly donated to Kamala Harris in the past, and also raised money for other Democrats. After his confession emerged, fans took to Reddit to share their reactions - and while some agreed with his thought process, others said the fact that he no longer agreed with the direction of Democrats doesn't justify voting for Republicans, as there are "other choices" too. A person wrote: "Does he understand that if he doesn't like the Democrats he doesn't have to vote for Republicans? There are other choices." Another said: "He knew that as a rich person he'd be safe whichever party won. Not everyone has that privilege." A third expressed: "Every centrist is just a republican that is ashamed to admit it." One asked: "Does centrist mean something totally different in the US? In the UK it's synonymous with liberal (rather than left) and generally describes people who would never vote conservative. But in the US it seems to mean people who could happily vote far right?" Brian isn't the only Hollywood celebrity who voiced support for Trump. Other supporters of the president also include actor Mel Gibson, TV host Dr Phil, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe and actress Victoria Jackson.
Telegraph
27-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
King invites Trump to Balmoral in highly unusual gesture
The King has invited Donald Trump to visit the Royal family's private residence at Balmoral, while also planning a second official State Visit to the UK, a highly unusual honour. The King sent a two-page letter extending the warm invitation to the US president via Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, who attended a meeting with him at the White House on Thursday. The letter, which was visible in Mr Trump's hand during a press conference, extended a personal invitation to visit Balmoral, the Royal family's Scottish retreat where Elizabeth II spent the final weeks of her life. The King also suggested the president join him at Dumfries House, his personal passion project that he saved for the nation and now hosts training programmes for young people. The visit, the King suggested, would allow the two heads of state to discuss the details of a 'historic second State Visit' to the UK. 'As you will know, this is unprecedented by a US president,' the King wrote. The letter was signed by hand: 'Yours Most Sincerely, Charles.' Buckingham Palace confirmed that the letter had been sent. No date for the visit has been agreed or announced. The invitation to Balmoral is a particularly significant gesture for the president, whose admiration for the late Queen is well-known. During his election campaign, Mr Trump spoke at length about his fondness for the Royal family and the King in particular. Taking part in Tucker Carlson's documentary, Art of the Surge, Mr Trump proudly showed the broadcaster glossy photos of his previous State Visit. He described the King as a 'beautiful man'. Sources have said the rare invitation, which will see the Trumps welcomed into the heart of the Royal family in their summer Highlands retreat, will be a new draw for the president, after he visited Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle in his first term. The suggestion of Dumfries House was a personal touch from the King, who is deeply proud of the estate and has made it a key part of his life's work. Mr Trump showed the letter to press photographers gathered in the White House, saying: 'The answer is yes. We look forward to being there and honouring the king, honouring the country.' It is the first time an elected politician has been offered a second State Visit, and comes after the late Queen hosted the Trumps at Buckingham Palace in 2019. If Mr Trump visits Balmoral, he will become only the second US president to do so, following Dwight D Eisenhower in the summer of 1959. As Sir Keir presented the letter to Mr Trump, he said: 'It is my pleasure to bring from His Majesty the King, a letter. He sends his best wishes and his regards, of course, but he also asked me to bear this letter and bring it to you. So can I present a letter from the King.' He added: 'This is really special. This has never happened before. This is unprecedented.' Mr Trump replied: 'Thank you very much. Am I supposed to read it right now?' The King, he added, was a 'great gentleman. A great, great gentleman. Well that is really nice. I must make sure his signature's on that... That's quite a signature, isn't it? How beautiful. 'Beautiful man, a wonderful man and we appreciate.. I've known him, gotten to know him very well actually.' Sir Keir called it a 'very special letter', adding: 'I think the last State Visit was a tremendous success. As much as the king wants to make this even better than that; this is a truly historic and unprecedented second state visit and he wants to talk that through with you.' Mr Trump replied: 'The answer is yes. On behalf of our wonderful First Lady, Melania and myself, the answer is yes. And we look forward to being there and honouring the King and honouring your country. 'Your country is a fantastic country and it'll be our honour to be there. Thank you very much.' The King's letter spoke of his belief that 'our two countries' have a 'vital role to play in.. the values which matter so much to us all', adding that he recalls previous visits with 'great fondness'. It is a 'pleasure to extend that invitation once again', he said, explaining that any visit Mr Trump makes to Scotland to his golf course in Turnberry could involve a 'detour to a relatively [near] neighbour' which 'might not cause you too much inconvenience'. 'There is much on both Estates [Dumfries House and Balmoral] which I think you might find interesting and enjoy – particularly as my Foundation at Dumfries House provides hospitality skills-training for young people who often end up as staff in your own establishments!' he continued. 'Quite apart from this presenting an opportunity to discuss a wide range of issues of mutual interest, it would also offer a valuable chance to plan a historic second State Visit to the United Kingdom. 'As you will know, this is unprecedented by a US president. That is why I would find it helpful for us to be able to discuss, together, a range of options for location and programme content.' Underlining the purpose of Sir Keir's visit to the US, he added: 'In so doing, working together, I know we will further enhance the special relationship between our two countries, of which we are both so proud.' The King has previously met with Mr Trump during the three-day state visit in June 2019, when they had tea. The Prince of Wales recently met the president in Paris for a similarly warm meeting behind closed doors. Mr and Mrs Trump also had tea with the late Queen at Windsor Castle during a trip to Britain in 2018.
