Why Trump’s critics had a royal meltdown over his visit with the Queen
Picture a beautiful day, 72 degrees, low humidity, not a cloud in the sky. One guy says to another guy at the bus stop, “Nice day, isn’t it?” The second guy loses his mind. “Nice day? Whaddya mean nice day? You can’t talk to me like that. Help, help, police, I’m being accosted. This guy said it was a nice day!”
Guy No. 1 was President Trump, this past week. Guy No. 2 is the news media, especially CNN. Proving that there is literally nothing they will not try to spin as evidence of Trump’s perfidy, the president was polite and deferential to the Queen of England this week. Naturally, the media set its hair on fire again.
CNN rolled out chief international correspondent Clarissa Ward to argue that Trump was polite to the queen not because being polite to the queen is something heads of state should do but “perhaps he likes the idea of being a king.”
On your mark, get set, groupthink: CNN international correspondent Max Foster followed up by repeating the same idea, “He likes the idea of being a king, which would explain why he’s so reverential in the palace environment.”
CNN White House correspondent Kate Bennett echoed the idea with the message of the day, saying that although it was no big deal when previous presidents brought their children to meet the British monarch, “the president perhaps sees his children as American royalty or this is sort of our equivalent … the equivalency, which, you know, it’s not at all how we operate in America.”
This isn’t reporting. It isn’t even “analysis,” the way journos take a drop or morsel of news and make it into a banquet of opinion. It’s practicing mind reading without a license. If President Trump said, “I like people,” Brooke Baldwin and Jim Acosta would pop up on CNN to somberly warn us, more in sorrow than in anger, that our president has just admitted he was a cannibal.
If the president tweeted, on Father’s Day, “America needs strong families with fathers present in the household,” CNN’s chyron monkeys would be writing, “DOES TRUMP HATE MOTHERS?” Nothing is not alarming for CNN and the rest of the Trumpbait news industry, even when Trump is acting completely normal.
Even stranger than accusing Trump of “throne envy” (a phrase used on MSNBC by ex-Sen. Claire McCaskill, who maybe has a little bit of envy for those who remain in office) is when people lapse into a key of royalism and suggest grubby commoner Trump is unworthy of the queen’s presence. An editorial in the British paper The Observer and a petition signed by a million Brits said Trump should be denied the honor of the monarch’s company.
Twitter randos went apes**t when Trump lightly touched the queen on the back (an etiquette no-no, not that it matters; Michelle Obama actually hugged the sovereign). They accused Trump of “fist-bumping” the queen based on a photo taken from an awkward angle during their handshake and castigated Trump for clinking glasses with the monarch, which is also, apparently, a no-no.
see also
Queen Elizabeth II gifts Trump a first edition of Churchill’s World War II book
Queen Elizabeth II gifted President Trump an abridged first edition…
Didn’t we fight a revolution to break free of all this “Downton Abbey” crapola and earn the right to put our elbows on the table when we dine and to reserve titles of nobility only for those who truly earned them, like Duke Ellington and King (LeBron) James? After we saved Britain on D-Day, all future presidents enjoy an automatic right to clink glasses with the UK’s ruler.
You really can’t have it both ways. Support snobby British malarkey, where rank is determined by birth and you get sent to the Tower if the salad fork is in the wrong place, or robust American democracy where you have to earn leadership.
To his credit, British humorist John O’Farrell noted the hypocrisy of his fellow lefties in a tweet:
ME: “Royal etiquette and deference are ridiculous and a barrier to equality and progress.”
ALSO ME: “What?! Trump walked ahead of Her Majesty and used his fish knife before the Queen, how dare he show such disrespect!!!”
Kyle Smith is critic at large at National Review.
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