In 1953, Donald Trump sat down with his British mother Mary to watch the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II on their new television set in New York.
Donald, then just six years old, looked on in awe and wonderment at the extraordinary scenes from London.
As did Mary Trump.
‘She was just enthralled by the pomp and circumstance,’ he later wrote in his best-selling book Art of the Deal, ‘the whole idea of royalty and glamour.’
On Monday, 66 years later, the same Donald Trump, now 72, walked into a state banquet at Buckingham Palace as the 45th President of the United States and guest of honour of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, now 93.
Special relationship: Trump is clearly in awe of Queen Elizabeth II and his state visit to the UK was a triumph of planning and execution by both the British and US governments
When I asked him during our exclusive Good Morning Britain interview on Wednesday what his mother would have made of this extraordinary scene, he smiled and replied: ‘She would have been very proud. My mother loved the Royals and she loved the Queen. She had great respect for her, the Queen is a great lady and my mother knew that.’
By any PR yardstick, it’s been a stunningly successful week for the President, perhaps his best since winning the 2016 Election.
The only bigger star in the world than him is the Queen, and she beamed the full radiant and lavish light of British pageantry onto him and his family during only the third state visit by a U.S. President.
The body language between these two iconic figures was genuinely warm and effusive.
The Queen showed the President the same unconfined respect she has shown to all his predecessors.
Trump should exercise control like the Queen does and ignore sniping from bitter, fading old stars like Bette Midler
And Trump, in turn, was quite obviously deeply moved and impressed by both the occasion and his host.
Of course, this state visit was not just about an extravagant palace dinner.
It was timed to commemorate today’s 75th Anniversary of D-Day, the astonishing and game-changing World War II invasion of France that most perfectly exemplifies the special relationship between Britain and America.
Side by side, the Allied forces went into ferocious beach battle with the Nazis to save freedom and democracy.
So there was a far deeper historical context to the meeting between the Queen and President Trump.
But that doesn’t mean we should under-estimate the very real significance and impact of this trip on the world’s most polarising and divisive public figure.
For this was the week where I think we finally saw Donald Trump become presidential in most people’s concept of what that means.
Trump’s behaviour was almost unprecedented in that he managed not to do or say (almost!) anything during his three days in the UK to scare the animals, upset the children, and grab unsavoury headlines.
In fact, the President displayed a level of decorum that many feared he was simply incapable of doing.
Bette Midler started the whole debacle with this tweet posted earlier this week – which is fake news – and attributes a quote to the president he has never said and riles him when it is repeated
He was dignified, charming, respectful, solemn where appropriate, and thoroughly polite and decent to everyone he met – from the royals to D-Day veterans.
And as a result, he got incredibly positive media coverage even from Britain’s notoriously snarky press.
I credit the Queen for this.
I genuinely think Trump is completely in awe of her, just as his mother was before him.
Not just because the Queen is far richer than him, lives in the kind of palatial homes even he can only dream about, and has vast armies of servants to tend to her every whim.
No, he’s in awe of her because he sees how universally loved, admired and respected she is not just in Britain, or America, but around the world.
And she’s achieved this status by being everything Donald Trump is not – quiet, calm, discreet, non-controversial, reliable, inclusive, tolerant, comfortingly predictable and utterly dignified at all times.
Sitting in his bed at the US Ambassador’s residence at 1.30am on Wednesday morning the president could not help but fire back at Bette Midler
The Queen, the longest serving leader of any kind, is the world’s comfort blanket, an oasis of unruffled serenity, reassurance and certainty amid an increasingly manic and disunited planet.
So in many ways, she is the very antithesis of Donald Trump.
Yet when they came together this week they bonded in spectacular fashion to the huge benefit of both their brands – the US Presidency and the British Monarchy.
I’ve rarely seen the Queen look so relaxed with a world leader, and I’ve definitely never seen Donald Trump look so respectful and star-struck.
He did all the right things, he said all the right things, and he didn’t put his gigantic size 67 feet in it once.
Well nearly.
As always, the President couldn’t help himself, and rather than sit back and bask in the glory of his triumphant treatment by the Queen, whose nickname among her family is Lilibet, Trump got into yet another ugly Twitter spat, this time with another Bet – American singing legend Bette Midler.
Sitting in bed at the US Ambassador’s residence at 1.30am on Wednesday morning, he read a story about Midler having to delete her retweet of a fake viral internet quote from Trump saying: ‘If I were to run, I’d run as a Republican. They’re the dumbest group of voters in the country. They believe anything on Fox News. I could lie and they’d still eat it up. I bet my numbers would be terrific.’
He never said those words. It was fake news.
But after deleting it, Midler – who has, to her increasing detriment, viciously and relentlessly abused and mocked Trump ever since he ran for President – attacked him again anyway, saying: ‘I apologize. This quote turns out to be a fake from way back in ’15-16. Don’t know how I missed it, but it sounds SO much like him that I believed it was true!’ She later mocked his fashion style at the state banquet and told him not to ‘slam your d*ck in a door.’
Trump, being Trump, hit back, tweeting: ‘Washed up psycho Bette Midler was forced to apologize for a statement she attributed to me that turned out to be totally fabricated by her in order to make ‘your great president’ look really bad. A sick scammer!’
As a result of this ugly late-night tirade, many of the column inches that would have been devoted to positive images and words about his friendly bonding with Lilibet were replaced by reporting of his bust-up with Bette.
Trump remembers watching the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953 with his mother, Mary – and so meeting the British monarch stirs powerful memories
So a good story was marred by a bad story.
And this is where President Trump needs to take a leaf out of Queen Elizabeth’s leadership playbook.
Her Majesty might or might not think Bette Midler is a washed-up sick scammer psycho too.
But we’d never know it.
And we certainly wouldn’t see her deliberately wreck a carefully planned and brilliantly well-executed bi-lateral PR strategy by furiously blurting such an opinion out to the world at 1.30am from her bedroom.
Donald Trump thrives off a good fight and likes nothing more than punching back when he gets punched.
Sometimes, it’s fully justified.
When, as he did on arrival to the UK this week, he aggressively responds to unedifying attacks by a political leader like London’s pathetic virtue-signalling Mayor Sadiq Khan, I think that’s perfectly reasonable.
But publicly squabbling with gobby Trump-bashing celebrities is a different matter.
Sometimes, as the Queen shows time and again, the most powerful weapon in a leader’s armoury is silence and discretion.
The smartest thing the President could have done when Bette Midler came for him, unpatriotically and shamefully trying to embarrass her country’s President as he commemorated D-Day, would have been to ignore it, and to rise above the goading.
Instead, he unleashed a torrent of vitriol at a fading, bitter old star who was doubtless hoping and praying he would do exactly that to keep her vaguely relevant.
So there will now always be an asterix attached to this highly successful trip that says: ‘*Half way through a very successful state visit, President went on Twitter and called Bette Midler a washed-up sick psycho.’
Ditch the silly trash-talk with your celebrity haters, Mr President – it demeans you and demeans the office of the presidency.
It’s also pointless.
The Queen’s the world’s most popular head of state and she’s never trash-talked anyone.