Donald Trump seemed to be trying to start a feud with a dead woman Thursday after he said reports the late Queen Elizabeth II found him “very rude” were “totally false” and added for good measure the highly questionable claim that he was her “favorite president.”
While technically his outrage was aimed at “sleazebag” journalist Craig Brown, who has claimed in a new book that the queen disliked Trump and cast aspersions on his marriage, Trump appeared to come dangerously close to picking a fight with the ghost of Elizabeth.
Trump’s claim that he was Her Majesty’s “favorite” seems a very unlikely boast.
ADVERTISEMENT
While the queen was careful never to express a preference in public, her close relationships with Trump’s predecessors date back to the 1950s. She met 13 of the 14 presidents who were in office during her reign. She invited President Dwight D. Eisenhower to stay at her beloved Scottish retreat, Balmoral, and stayed in Eisenhower’s private White House quarters when visiting America.
She was also said to have bonded personally with President Ronald Reagan over a shared love of horses and President Barack Obama was invited to visit her for her 90th birthday.
Trump was interviewed about the book by the DailyMail.com after a campaign rally in Asheboro, North Carolina. “It was totally false. I have no idea who the writer is, but it was really just the opposite,” Trump said. “I had a great relationship with the queen. She liked me and I liked her.”
Incredibly Trump then implied he spoke with the queen on a regular basis, saying: “I spoke to her often, and I spoke to her in particular when I was there. We spent hours together at a state dinner. She was a fantastic woman. I think it’s a shame that a sleazebag can write an article that’s totally false.”
In his book, Brown says the queen made the comments about Trump being rude to a friend over lunch a few days after one of his two visits, which were made in 2018 and 2019. She also speculated witheringly that Trump must have “some sort of arrangement” with his wife, Melania, the book said.
However, Trump claimed to the Daily Mail to have his own sources close to the queen, telling the outlet: “She said to friends of mine that, ‘President Trump was my favorite president.’ And then you have this guy looking for some publicity for a book that probably is phony, and a lot of other ways too.
“Now I know nothing about him. I have no idea who he is.
“We had an unbelievable relationship. She was an amazing woman.”
The new biography of the late queen, serialized in the Daily Mail, was written by the well-connected society journalist Craig Brown. The new account of the queen’s life, heavily reliant on anecdotes, is entitled A Voyage Around the Queen.
Brown also reported that British politician David Blunkett, who was blind, told him that his assistance dog barked angrily at Vladimir Putin when the Russian tyrant arrived late for a 2003 state event.
Blunkett said that he apologized to the queen, who smoothly replied, “Dogs have interesting instincts, don’t they?”
One former Buckingham Palace staffer, however, has dismissed the claim made about Trump.
Speaking on GB News)" href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__http:/www.gbnews.com__;!!LsXw!XXPjitsraCr3yoSA8VXI8jq1xz6SSjiTyCqYXBwRevAAspZgzs5pIVBa09ojkzqqFL7vC6Oh_vC-P0If2KnjuhChoE8g$">GB News former royal household member Jack Stooks said: “We know what the queen was like as a person. We know that in her reign, she never put a foot wrong. It’s not something she would do. It’s just ridiculous.
“There are so many ways that these kinds of rumors can come about, but I just can’t see why the queen would have done anything like that or even be inclined to do.”
