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The reviews are in: The British press say King Charles III delivered a masterful diplomatic rebuke of President Trump this week, in an ever-so-polite royal way.<\/p>\n
\u201cKing delivers hard truths\u201d read a headline<\/a> in the Daily Mail, praising him for urging the United States to defend NATO and Ukraine. A journalist at The Sun called him<\/a> \u201cBritain\u2019s No.1 diplomat.\u201d The Independent said<\/a> Charles chided Mr. Trump with a \u201ccombination of eloquence and \u00e9lan,\u201d speaking in \u201csuch nuanced and sophisticated terms that even Trump and his volatile supporters could not take offense.\u201d The New Statesman said it was \u201cpolitics couched in regal tones.\u201d<\/p>\n To many Americans, the sharp edges of the king\u2019s seemingly tactful message may not have been apparent. And even Mr. Trump seems to have been oblivious to the fact that Charles was gently taking him to task. After waving goodbye to the royal couple Thursday morning, the president turned to reporters and said: \u201cGreat people. We need more people like that in our country.\u201d<\/p>\n The king is, of course, British, and like his fellow countrymen, can be famously indirect. Americans looking for blunt or obvious statements were always going to be disappointed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Britain\u2019s constitutional monarchy requires, as Buckingham Palace puts it<\/a>, that the king remain \u201cpolitically neutral on all matters,\u201d including, presumably, while interacting with the volatile leader of one of the country\u2019s closest allies.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But citizens of the king\u2019s commonwealth are by now used to reading between the lines, looking for symbolic gestures or stinging criticism couched in wry humor and ambiguous deflection.<\/p>\n Charles is, after all, the son of Queen Elizabeth II, who in 2017 famously wore a blue hat with yellow flowers<\/a> \u2014 the colors of the European Union flag \u2014 to open Parliament a year after the Brexit vote, suggesting to many that she was showing her sympathies with the broader European cause. And last year, the king wore Canadian military honors<\/a> on his uniform not long after Mr. Trump began threatening to make the country the 51st U.S. state.<\/p>\n Of course no one can really get inside the king\u2019s head, and speaking obliquely can offer a level of plausible deniability. But anyone with even a glancing knowledge of the values and causes that Charles espoused when he was Prince of Wales \u2014 environmentalism, religious pluralism, tolerance and multiculturalism \u2014 could guess at his likely ideological differences with the president. The question before the trip was whether any hint of conflict would surface, or whether it would remain submerged in diplomatic niceties.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n To many British observers, the king\u2019s public speeches this week \u2014 deliberate messages, carefully composed with the help of diplomats and others in the government \u2014 were far stronger than expected, at several moments directly contradicting Mr. Trump\u2019s policies and his administration\u2019s approach to the world.<\/p>\n There were undeniable efforts during the king\u2019s speech to Congress<\/a> to push back against the president\u2019s attacks on Prime Minister Keir Starmer (\u201cAs my prime minister said last month: \u2018Ours is an indispensable partnership,\u2019\u201d said Charles), as well as comments championing NATO and the need for a \u201cstable and accessible\u201d rule of law.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n There was the call for \u201cunyielding resolve\u201d in the defense of Ukraine. The moment that the king recounted his own, proud service in a Royal Navy as a rejoinder to the president calling British ships \u201ctoys.\u201d And the part about a \u201cshared responsibility to safeguard nature\u201d to a president who has gutted environmental rules.<\/p>\n All of this was couched in dry wit and the king\u2019s vintage upper-class English; he actually said \u201cby Jove!\u201d in his remarks at the Capitol and tried hard to make a Hollywood cultural reference by calling the founding fathers of the United States \u201crebels with a cause.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n There was the joke about how the British have everything in common with America \u201cexcept, of course, language.\u201d And the moment when the king joked about Mr. Trump\u2019s new White House ballroom, recalling the \u201csmall attempt at real estate redevelopment of the White House in 1814,\u201d a cheeky reference to when the British burned down the building.<\/p>\n \u201cYou recently commented, Mr. President, that if it were not for the United States, European countries would be speaking German,\u201d the king quipped during his toast at the state dinner. \u201cDare I say, if it wasn\u2019t for us, you\u2019d be speaking French.\u201d<\/p>\n The approach could have been high risk because Mr. Trump is so thin-skinned and almost never makes self-deprecating jokes. But the humor appears to have charmed, not infuriated, the president. On Thursday afternoon, he announced on his social media account that he was eliminating a tariff on Scotch whisky, saying that \u201cthe king and queen got me to do something that nobody else was able to do, without hardly even asking.\u201d<\/p>\n There are few places where the king\u2019s words are dissected more completely than in British newsrooms, where a designated group of reporters cover the royal family exclusively.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The Sun newspaper hired a lip reader to see what the two men might have said<\/a> to each other. (The conclusion? Trump supposedly asked the king: \u201cAre you drunk?\u201d) Not to be outdone, The Mirror contacted a body language expert to decode the dynamic<\/a> between the king and the president. (That person decided that Charles seemed nervous upon his arrival at the White House: \u201cWhatever is going on in his mind, he is telling himself it\u2019s OK, it will be fine, calm down,\u201d they suggested.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Online, a virtual army of amateur royal sleuths have been publishing video clips showing the interactions between the king and the president over the last several days.<\/p>\n One person posted a short clip to Instagram of the king\u2019s face when the president joked about his mother\u2019s conclusion that \u201clittle Charles\u201d was \u201cso cute.\u201d Charles flashes a bit of an embarrassed smile and a royal wave of his right hand.<\/p>\n Several people who seemed not so fond of Mr. Trump posted video of the moment that the president walked in front of Queen Camilla and started shaking hands with people in the crowd gathered on the South Lawn of the White House.<\/p>\n As many noted, there were a couple of royal faux pas there: You\u2019re not supposed to walk in front of the queen like that. And Mr. Trump effectively prevented the king from shaking hands with the crowd as well.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Zooming in on the video to look at the king and queen\u2019s expressions reveals perfect poker faces \u2014 not betraying whatever they might be thinking. Which is something that Charles, in particular, has been trained to do all his life.<\/p>\n \u201cThe monarch in his role, he\u2019s so careful about disclosing his own particular position,\u201d said Arianne Chernock, a historian at Boston University. \u201cThe monarch, and his family by extension, they are always a screen onto which we project our beliefs.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n