Prince Charles has been taking on more of his mother’s duties recently. Sometimes, that means he is asked to do relatively placid activities, like on Tuesday morning when he handed out the Queen Elizabeth Prize For Engineering to the four scientists who invented GPS. Other times it drops him right into the belly of the beast—or rather, drops the beast right into the Morning Room at Clarence House. Before heading to Buckingham Palace for a reception hosted by the Queen on Tuesday, Donald and Melania Trump had tea with Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cambridge.
Like the 2018 visit where the Queen was left waiting, the Trumps were nearly an hour late by the time they made it to Charles’s residence. The original schedule had them arriving at 5:10 p.m., but they didn’t make it until 6:05 p.m., according to the Daily Mirror. According to CNN, the Trumps left after about 15 minutes at Clarence House.
The two couples posed for a quick picture in front of the fireplace, and everyone was clashing. Melania arrived wearing a yellow and purple Valetino cape, while Camilla wore a red dress. Trump wore a black suit, while Charles wore a navy one. According to CNN, a crowd of supporters cheered “USA” outside as they walked in.
During the Trumps' last visit in June, the couples had a dinner together at the U.S. Ambassador’s house and also did tea at Clarence House. According to Trump, the meeting was a success, even though the two famously disagree about Charles’s signature issue, climate change. “He did most of the talking,” Trump told Piers Morgan at the time. “I did say, 'well, the United States right now has among the cleanest climates there are.” Though it might have taken an exercise of Charles’s stiff upper lip to keep quiet through that, later a spokesperson for Clarence House told CNN that the two had developed a “good working relationship” in the wake of those meetings.
On Tuesday Charles also met with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, at Clarence House, and the two talked about climate change. Later, Norway’s Prime Minister Erna Solberg gifted him a football decorated with Norway’s sustainability targets.
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