At the White House gala dinner April 28 to honor King Charles III, President Donald Trump and King Charles delivered speeches which jointly attacked the principles of the U.S. Declaration of Independence of 1776 and the U.S. Constitution of 1787-88, all in the context of the celebration of the 250th year of America’s freeing itself from British colonial rule.
Trump stated: “I want to congratulate Charles on having made a fantastic speech today at Congress… Americans saw themselves as free men carrying forward central liberties and ancient rights of the Anglo Saxons into this new and beautiful world. In the eyes of America’s founders, our war of independence was fought not to reject this heritage, but to reclaim it and perfect it…. But even though the political bonds between the United States and Great Britain were dissolved forever, on July 4th, 1776, the more powerful strands of memory, culture, and identity proved unbreakable in any conflict and grew into a friendship unlike any other on Earth.”
Trump continued with his historical falsification, asserting that the same courage that led Americans to fight in World War II, was “the same keen sense of righteousness that drove the English crusaders to the Holy Land a thousand years ago.” With respect to Iran, Trump stated, “We’re doing a little Middle East work right now, you might know. And we’re doing very well. We have militarily defeated that particular opponent, and we’re never going to let that opponent ever—- Charles agrees with me even more than I do—we’re never going to let that opponent have a nuclear weapon.”
This would indicate some of the real content, such as suppressing Iran’s civilian nuclear program, at the closed door meeting that Trump and Charles held at the White House before the state dinner.
Finally, Trump endorsed British imperialism outright, attributing it to America as well. “History has known no more powerful force than the combination of American patriotism and British pride. The British Empire that began here in America certainly did not end here. The sons and daughters of the British Isles went on to found more countries and spread more civilization than any nation before. They built an English-speaking world upon which the sun never sets… Today, most of Britain’s former colonies have no idea what they truly owe to this towering legacy of law, liberty, and British customs they were given.”
For his part at the dinner, King Charles referenced Trump’s remodeling of the White House’s ball room with an attempted joke: “I’m sorry to say that we British, of course, made our own small attempt at real estate redevelopment of the White House in 1814.” This referred to British troops burning down the White in the War of 1812, in which the British Empire attempted to conquer and eliminate the young United States. The audience, which included U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and U.S. Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent, laughed uproariously.
The Trump-Charles attack on the political and philosophical principles underlying the U.S. Constitution dates back to a visit by Trump to Windsor Castle on Sept. 17, 2025 where Charles first hosted Trump for a state dinner banquet. At that dinner, Trump cited favorably and fawned over the British imperial authors “[John] Locke and [Thomas] Hobbes, and [Adam] Smith and…[Isaac]Newton.” He called that banquet “one of the highest honors of my life.” Charles, with deep cynicism stated: “I cannot help but wonder what our forebears from 1776 would make of this favorable friendship today. The rebel commander and pioneering first President George Washington famously vowed never to set foot on British soil.”
