hanging out with Richard NixonTricia, daughter of the “Super-Dance” at the White House. Swapping stories with Ronald Reagan about horseback riding. bow the ears of Donald Trump And Joe Biden About climate change.
King Charles III, who became head of state after the death of his mother, the Queen Elizabeth IIintroduced 10 of the 14 US presidents who have held office since their birth in 1948.
He was just 10 years old when he held his first presidential check in 1959. That was when Dwight Eisenhower visited the Queen and her family at Balmoral Castle in Scotland, where she died on 8 September after 70 years of reign.
“I think you can’t start too early,” said Barbara A. Perry, director of presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. She said Charles’ grandson, Prince George, was a child when Kensington Palace released a photo of him shaking hands with Barack Obama during the president’s visit to London in 2016.
Perry said that Charles had never met Harry Truman, Gerald Ford, Lyndon Johnson and John F. Kennedy.
His encounters with US presidents included what he remembered as an “entertaining” weekend trip to the Nixon White House with his sister Anne in 1970, when the 20-year-old future king – one of the world’s most eligible bachelors – sensed that there was an effort underway to install it.
“That’s when they were trying to get me married to Tricia Nixon,” he later recalled.
King interacted with presidents on his tour of America and met others when he traveled to the United Kingdom. He was in the company of Donald Trump, Obama, Bill Clinton and George W Bush when he represented the British monarchy at the funeral of former President George HW Bush in 2018 in Washington.
Charles met President Joe Biden last year at a climate change conference in Glasgow, Scotland.
The royal has visited America nearly 20 times since that memorable first visit in Nixon years, he told CNN last year.
The royal siblings were invited to Washington for a three-day visit in July 1970 by Nixon’s daughters and sons-in-law, Tricia Nixon, Julie Nixon Eisenhower, and her husband, David Eisenhower, President Eisenhower’s grandson.
The young VIP had a packed schedule that included frolicking at the Camp David Presidential Retreat, a night tour of Washington’s monuments, museum visits, a lunch cruise down the Potomac River, George Washington’s estate in Mount Vernon, Virginia, on the South Lawn A dance was involved. for 700 guests, and a Washington Senators baseball game.
Charles and Nixon also met in the Oval Office. But if the president had established a union between his family and the royals, this was not meant to be.
In June 1971, less than a year after Charles’ visit, Tricia married longtime boyfriend Edward Cox in the White House Rose Garden. A decade later, in July 1981, Charles married Lady Diana Spencer. They got divorced in 1996.
According to a January 1970 memo, Nixon himself had persuaded Charles to move to the US for an alleged public relations bonus he had sent to his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger.
“I think it could work very well for US-British relations,” Nixon said. He wrote that he was told that Charles is the “real gem” of the royal family and “makes a very favorable impression wherever he goes.”
Charles returned the praise in a thank you note.
“The kindness shown to us in the White House was almost overwhelming and we are so grateful for that,” Prince wrote to Nixon. “Both my sister and I take back to Britain what is known as the special bond between our two countries and most heartfelt testimony to the great hospitality you and your family have shown us.”
Many of the former Prince of Wales’ conversations with recent US presidents focused on his interest in tackling climate change. Charles campaigned for the environment for 50 years, but after becoming king he acknowledged that his new role required him to set aside his activism on that and other issues.
Charles, 73, and Biden, 79, discussed global cooperation on the climate crisis last year, while the two attended a summit in Glasgow, Scotland. They met in June 2021 at a reception at Buckingham Palace, which was hosted by the Queen ahead of the World Leaders’ Summit in Cornwall.
Biden rejoined the 2015 Paris climate accord after Trump withdrew the US from the accord as president.
Biden and King spoke on Wednesday, with Biden offering his condolences to the Queen.
Trump has said that during his visit with Charles, the former prince “talked mostly” and pressured the climate during a 15-minute meeting that stretched to 90 minutes in 2019 at Charles’ residence in London.
During a three-day visit to Washington in 2011, Charles, an advocate of eco-friendly farming, met with President Obama. In a speech, he praised Michelle Obama’s campaign against childhood obesity and hunger and the efforts of American manufacturers to produce healthier foods.
He criticized US government subsidies for large-scale agriculture and encouraged increased trade and government support for organic and environmentally friendly food production.
In his toast to a White House dinner in 2005, the future king called on President George W. Bush to call the world “the United States for leadership on the most important issues facing our planet and, indeed, on the lives of our grandchildren.” Looks at.
“Indeed, the burden of the world is on your shoulders,” he said.
In the comments, Charles also said that the trip reminded him of his first trip to America, “when the media was busy trying to marry me to Tricia Nixon.”
While traveling with Reagan in the Oval Office in 1981, the two discussed their interest in horse riding, as a steward brought tea. But it was not served like the British.
Of the experience, Reagan later wrote in his diary:
“The ushers brought him tea – fearing the horrors they served it our way with a tea bag in the cup. It finally dawned on me that he was just holding the cup and finally put it on the table. Not me. Knew what to do,” Reagan confessed.
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AP News researcher Rhonda Schaffner in New York contributed to this report.