King Charles and Camilla will arrive in Washington on Monday, for what will probably be the most chaotic state visit of Charles’ reign. Personally, I believe that there was basically no way for Charles to wriggle out of undertaking this state visit, although I definitely believe that British diplomats and Downing Street should have used the threat of canceling the visit as a carrot/stick approach for the Trump White House. Whenever Trump started acting up and saying crazy sh-t, there should have been more of an effort to threaten to take away the state visit. But it’s too late for all of that now – Charles and his side-chick queen will march into a “diplomatic nightmare” on Monday, because Trump and his people cannot stop being complete morons. This time, it’s all about the bloody Falkland Islands.
King Charles was sleepwalking into a diplomatic nightmare on Friday, after Donald Trump launched another vicious attack on the U.K., prompting new calls for the king to abandon his state visit to the United States just days before it was due to kick off.
The latest insult to British honor was a leaked Pentagon email that suggested a review of British ownership of the Falkland Islands to punish the U.K. for not supporting Trump’s war in Iran.
The U.K.’s Foreign Office has made clear that the visit will go ahead, while a palace source also told the Daily Beast that there was no question the visit would be abandoned and that the king would invoke the old royal mantra of “keep calm and carry on.” But the level of insult involved underlines the danger of the trip for the king, because Trump’s maneuvering on the Falklands is built on the back of British war dead.
The 74-day Falklands War was fought between April 2 and June 14, 1982, after Argentina—then in the hands of a far-right junta government—invaded the British overseas territory in the South Atlantic, hundreds of miles off the coast of Argentina, and with a population fiercely loyal to the British crown. It had been British since 1765 and had no indigenous population. Margaret Thatcher, then the U.K. prime minister, sent a naval task force more than 8,000 miles to retake the islands, making it the last major overseas war solely fought by the U.K.; Ronald Reagan’s administration stayed firmly out of the dispute. The conflict killed 255 British troops and 649 Argentine military personnel.
Since the war, the islands have remained under British control, although Argentina still claims sovereignty over them, calling them Los Malvinas. The Falklands give Britain a strategic position in the South Atlantic and access routes toward Antarctica.
Sir Ed Davey, the leader of Britain’s third party, the Liberal Democrats, which holds 72 out of 650 seats in the House of Commons, described a leaked Pentagon email indicating that the U.S. support for Britain’s sovereignty over the Falkland Islands could face review due to U.K. opposition to American policy on Iran as “frankly outrageous.”
He urged the cancellation of the king’s state visit scheduled to start Monday, branding Donald Trump an “unreliable, damaging President” who “cannot keep insulting our country.”
While Davey’s comments have no prospect of any impact on the king’s plans, they do accurately reflect a sense of disgust in large swathes of the British population at the prospect of King Charles III’s visit to the U.S.
A poll by YouGov on March 26 found that 49 percent of Britons said Charles should cancel the visit, versus 33 percent who wanted it to go ahead. The figures broadly mirror last year’s sentiment, when 45 percent of Britons thought it was wrong to invite Trump for a September 2025 state visit.
The government and royal aides have insisted the trip will help cement “deep” transatlantic connections and “shared values.” Still, the reality for Charles is that he can ill-afford to be seen cozying up to a U.S. president now openly reviled in the U.K.
Tom Sykes (who wrote this piece for DB) also cited Charles’ terrible approval numbers, as of the latest YouGov emotional-support poll. While Prince William, Kate and poor dead Queen Elizabeth II all poll above 75%, Charles’ approval rating is currently at 60%, with 33% of the British public viewing him “negatively.” So, a (relatively) unpopular king is visiting a catastrophically unpopular American president, with the sad hope that two dogsh-t heads of state will somehow fix each other’s political problems. All while Trump and his cronies plot their revenge on the UK because Keir Starmer wants nothing to do with Trump’s war in Iran. Won’t someone think of the Falklands??
Against that backdrop, the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell are still speaking out and asking to meet with Charles. The brother of the late Virginia Giuffre also gave an interview to the Times.
Updated to add – I wrote all of this before last night’s WHCD shooting. Do you think the state visit will still move forward? My guess is that it will.
The family of Virginia Giuffre have called on the King to meet them in Washington.
As the King arrives for the US state visit, Sky and Amanda Roberts tell @RoyaNikkhah why a face-to-face meeting would be “monumental” — and why they want action, not just words.
Tap the link… pic.twitter.com/JcmHmQqxVJ
— The Times and Sunday Times (@thetimes) April 25, 2026
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.
