The White House celebrated King Charles III’s recent state visit to the United States by sharing a photograph of the British monarch standing alongside President Donald Trump. The image, posted to social media on April 28, is captioned, “TWO KINGS.”
White House shares photo of Donald Trump and King Charles
The picture features a moment from the ceremonial welcome at the White House, where King Charles and Queen Camilla were met with a full military review. The royal couple’s four-day trip is the first official state visit by a reigning British monarch in nearly two decades.
It began Monday with a garden party at the British embassy and will include a state dinner, a visit to the 9/11 Memorial in New York, and a Virginia block party celebrating America’s 250th anniversary of independence from the United Kingdom.
The “TWO KINGS” caption caught the attention of many due to Donald Trump’s own history of embracing royal imagery. Last winter, after his administration got an early legal win against New York City’s congestion pricing program, Trump posted “LONG LIVE THE KING” on Truth Social. The White House amplified that message with an illustration of the president wearing a crown on a fictional magazine cover resembling Time, sharing it across Instagram and X.
Those posts have not gone unnoticed by critics. Since June, thousands of Americans have joined “No Kings” rallies protesting the second Trump administration. Organizers state on their website, “The president thinks his rule is absolute. But in America, we don’t have kings — and we won’t back down against chaos, corruption, and cruelty.”
When asked last June whether the president viewed himself as a king, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissed the question. “The president views himself as the president of the United States of America,” Leavitt said. “This is a constitutional republic.” However, adding a lighter note to the regal theme, a Daily Mail report suggested Donald Trump and King Charles are cousins.
Originally reported by Devanshi Basu on Mandatory.
