I will have plenty to say about the Supreme Court’s decision today in Callais v. Louisiana, but tonight I want to make sure that yesterday’s speeches by President Donald J. Trump and King Charles III of the United Kingdom don’t get lost in the tidal wave of news. They presented a very clear picture of what is at stake in the United States today. King Charles and Queen Camilla are in the U.S. on a state visit, and in his speech welcoming them to the White House yesterday, Trump redefined the United States from a nation based on the principles of the Enlightenment, as it has historically been understood, to one based in the white nationalist ideas of blood and soil. “Long before Americans had a nation or a constitution, we first had a culture, a character, and a creed,” Trump said. “For nearly two centuries before the Revolution, this land was settled and forged by men and women who bore in their souls the blood and noble spirit of the British. Here on a wild and untamed continent, they set loose the ancient English love of liberty and…Great Britain’s distinctive sense of glory, destiny, and pride.” Weirdly, Trump’s speech then turned the American Revolution—which included a war against the British to create an independent country—into a celebration of unity between the Patriots and their English countrymen. “The American patriots who pledged their lives to independence in 1776 were the heirs to this majestic inheritance. Their veins ran with Anglo-Saxon courage. Their hearts beat with an English faith in standing firm for what is right, good, and true,” Trump said. And then he got to the heart of the matter. In words that sounded far more like White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller—who has been clear he wants to see the nation purged of nonwhite people—than like Trump himself, the president rejected the longstanding belief that the United States is based on the profound idea articulated in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” and “[t]hat to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” In 1776 the idea that men were born equal and had a right to a say in their government was a revolutionary idea indeed. It was one that shaped the new nation and then set the world on fire. But Trump rejected that idea in favor of the idea that a nation is about bloodlines. “In recent years, we’ve often heard it said that America is merely an idea, but the cause of freedom did not simply appear as an intellectual invention of 1776. The American founding was the culmination of hundreds of years of thought, struggle, sweat, blood, and sacrifice on both sides of the Atlantic,” he said. The American and the British people “share that same root,” Trump said. “We speak the same language. We hold the same values. And together, our warriors have defended the same extraordinary civilization under twin banners of red, white, and blue.” After riffing on his parents for a bit, during which he said his mother “had a crush on Charles” when he was younger, Trump turned the Atlantic Charter, drafted in 1941 by British prime minister Winston Churchill and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, into an affirmation of a shared gene pool. In fact, the Atlantic Charter was the founding document for the post–World War II order that Trump is deliberately destroying. It defined a post–World War II order based on territorial integrity, national self-determination, economic growth, and alliances to protect those values. It was the basis for most of the postwar international institutions that have protected a rules-based order ever since. Ignoring the substance of the Atlantic Charter, Trump said the meeting illustrated “our nations’ unique bond and role in history.” He concluded: “If they could see us today, our ancestors would surely be filled with awe and pride that the Anglo-American revolution in human freedom was never, ever extinguished, but carried forward across centuries, across oceans, and across history until it became a fire that lit the entire world…. Let us remember what has made our countries the two most exceptional nations the world has ever known, and together let us go forward with even stronger resolve to carry on our sacred devotion to liberty and to the traditions of excellence that have been our shared gift of all mankind.” Later, King Charles addressed a joint session of Congress. He was the second British monarch to do so; the first was his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, in 1991. He began by noting that “our destinies as Nations have been interlinked.” But, unlike Trump’s, his understanding of that linkage underscored the traditional understanding of the United States of America. He began by defining Congress as “this citadel of democracy created to represent the voice of all American people to advance sacred rights and freedoms.” His picture of the United States also was markedly different from Trump’s. He noted that the Founders “united thirteen disparate colonies” by “balancing contending forces and drawing strength in diversity.” When they created a nation “on the revolutionary idea of ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,’” they “carried with them, and carried forward, the great inheritance of the British Enlightenment—as well as the ideals which had an even deeper history in English Common Law and Magna Carta.” King Charles noted that at least 160 Supreme Court cases have cited the Magna Carta. That observation was not idle. It was the heart of his message. The Magna Carta, or Great Charter, hammered out in 1215 by King John of England and a group of rebel barons, established the concept that kings must answer to the law. It prohibited unlawful imprisonment and protected the right to trial by jury. Famously, it put into writing that: “[n]o free man shall be seized, imprisoned, dispossessed, outlawed, exiled or ruined in any way, nor in any way proceeded against, except by the lawful judgement of his peers and the law of the land.” It also stated:“To no one will we sell, to no one will we deny or delay right or justice.” The Magna Carta placed limits on the king’s ability to tax his subjects and established the law as an authority apart from the king. Anticipating the idea of checks and balances, it set up a council of barons to make sure the king obeyed the charter. If he did not, they could seize his lands and castles until he made amends. When the Founders came together to stand against taxation without representation and to demand jury trials, all in the understanding that the king could be checked by the people, they were standing on the principles enshrined in the Magna Carta. King Charles recalled Congress to this tradition, reminding them that “it is here in these very halls that this spirit of liberty and the promise of America’s Founders is present in every session and every vote cast.” Rejecting Trump’s blood and soil nationalism, he added that political debate is enriched “by the deliberation of many, representing the living mosaic of the United States. In both of our countries,” he said, “it is the very fact of our vibrant, diverse and free societies that gives us our collective strength.” Rather than centering the friendship of the U.S. and the U.K. in what Trump had defined as their cultural and genetic heritage, he said instead that “the essence of our two Nations is a generosity of spirit and a duty to foster compassion, to promote peace, to deepen mutual understanding and to value all people, of all faiths, and of none.” King Charles reminded Congress that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has invoked its collective defense Article 5 just once: after the U.S. was attacked on 9/11. He recalled the decades in which the U.S. and U.K. have stood together under NATO, and he called for continued cooperation. He called for the “same unyielding resolve” to help the people of Ukraine fight off the Russians. “We do not embark on these remarkable endeavours together out of sentiment,” he said. “We do so because they build greater shared resilience for the future, so making our citizens safer for generations to come. King Charles explained: “Our common ideals were not only crucial for liberty and equality, they are also the foundation of our shared prosperity. The Rule of Law: the certainty of stable and accessible rules, an independent judiciary resolving disputes and delivering impartial justice. These features created the conditions for centuries of unmatched economic growth in our two countries.” In addition to celebrating the past, King Charles looked forward to the future, asking his audience to “reflect on our shared responsibility to safeguard Nature, our most precious and irreplaceable asset.” He noted: “[O]ur generation must decide how to address the collapse of critical natural systems, which threatens far more than the harmony and essential diversity of Nature.” King Charles urged the U.S. to “ignore the clarion calls to become ever more inward-looking,” and reminded his listeners that “America’s words carry weight and meaning, as they have since Independence. The actions of this great Nation matter even more.” He called for the U.S. and the U.K. to “rededicate ourselves to each other in the selfless service of our peoples and of all the peoples of the world.” Appearing to miss the point completely, at about the time King Charles finished his speech, the official social media account of the White House posted a picture of Trump and King Charles with the caption “TWO KINGS.” — Notes: https://singjupost.com/transcript-president-trumps-speech-at-king-charles-white-house-ceremony/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/04/trump-king-charles-speech-white-house/686996/ Bluesky: You’re currently a free subscriber to Letters from an American. If you need help receiving Letters, changing your email address, or unsubscribing, please visit our Support FAQ. You can also submit a help request directly. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
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