King Charles and Queen Camilla arrived at the White House on Monday for a state visit in Washington, a city still rattled by a weekend shooting and a transatlantic alliance showing fresh signs of strain. British flags could be seen lining lamp-posts outside the White House, where Donald Trump and the first lady, Melania Trump, greeted Charles and Camilla with handshakes. The four appeared to exchange pleasantries and posed for several photographs before heading inside the White House for a private tea. The British monarch was spared the potential humiliation of being upbraided in public by the US president this week after the White House agreed that any meeting between the two men should be held off-camera. UK ministers have pinned great hopes on the state visit, which they are hoping will help repair the relationship between the two countries at one of its most difficult periods in decades. With Trump threatening retaliation for criticism of the Iran war by the prime minister, Keir Starmer, and the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, the government is hoping the king might be able to talk Trump down from some of his more aggressive statements. The four-day tour, intended to mark the 250th anniversary of US independence, begins against the backdrop of a diplomatic rift over Trump’s war in Iran and a dramatic security scare at last Saturday’s White House correspondents’ dinner. The shooting in the White House correspondents’ dinner has prompted questions over security with some asking how a shooter was able to get close to where Donald Trump and many other senior administration officials were gathered and many others praising the actions of law enforcement that swiftly stopped the attack. The US supreme court formally reinstated on Monday a redrawn Texas electoral map that was designed to add more Republicans to the US House of Representatives, as Trump’s party seeks to keep control of Congress in the November congressional elections. In the aftermath of the White House correspondents’ dinner shooting, Melania Trump accused Jimmy Kimmel of “hateful and violent rhetoric” and said it was “time for ABC to take a stand” against the comedian who has long been critical of Donald Trump and his policies. The first lady appeared to be referring to a monologue by Kimmel broadcast on Thursday, well before the Saturday attack on the White House correspondents’ dinner, in which he referred to Melania Trump as an “expectant widow” in a speech otherwise largely about the Trumps’ connections to Jeffrey Epstein. Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s president, said on Monday that her government told the United States, in a diplomatic note, that the unauthorized presence of US officials at an anti-narcotics operation in the northern state of Chihuahua should not be repeated. The US is being “humiliated” by Iran’s leadership, according to Friedrich Merz, Germany’s chancellor, who suggested the Trump administration was being outwitted at the negotiating table by Tehran.
