[h=2]Meeting the Queen and memories of his mother[/h]‘I tell it like it is,’ he replied, ‘You and I both. That’s our problem!’
In the end, I got 30 minutes and covered a wide range of issues and people from Theresa May, The Queen, Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un to abortion and immigration.
Trump was as he always is – punchy, provocative, revealing and uncompromising.
I started by asking him more about his historic meeting with The Queen at Windsor Castle.
‘That moment when you walked towards The Queen, what was going through your mind?’
‘Well first of all I was thinking about my mother. My mother passed away a while ago and she was a tremendous fan of the Queen. She thought she was a woman of elegance, and my mother felt she was a great woman. I remember even as a little guy, if there was any kind of a ceremony to do with the Queen, my mother would be watching the television - she wanted to see it.’
Trump sighed. ‘I was walking up and I was saying (to Melania) “Can you imagine my mother seeing this scene? Windsor. Windsor Castle.” And it was beautiful, it was really beautiful but the Queen is terrific. She is so sharp, so wise, so beautiful. Up close, you see she’s so beautiful. She’s a very special person. And the way she’s conducted herself for so many years. And she’s got a lotta years left.’
The Trumps spent nearly twice as long (45 minutes) with Her Majesty as they’d expected and said they got on famously.
‘It was a very easy talk,’ he said. ‘You know, it’s hard to talk to somebody if you’re, sort of, if there’s not that something special. You know that better than anybody. Sometimes you’ll have a guest on where no matter what you do it’s not working, right? And then sometimes it’s magic. We had a great, a great feeling.’
‘Did you get the feeling she liked you?”
‘Well I don’t want to speak for her, but I can tell you I liked her. So usually that helps. But I liked her a lot.’
‘What were her opening words?’
‘Um, “Welcome”. Just “Welcome”. Just very elegant. And very beautiful. It was really something special.’
‘Did you mention your mother?’
‘I did, I said: “You know, my mother was your big fan. She was born in Stornaway in The Hebrides. And that’s very serious Scotland as you know, there’s no doubt about that.’”
Trump revealed the Queen told him the names of all the presidents she had met. ‘Harry Truman was the first president that she got to meet and know, and she went through a whole list. It was a very nice moment, Piers, very nice.’
I asked if they’d discussed Brexit.
‘I did. She said it’s a very - and she’s right - it’s a very complex problem, I think nobody had any idea how complex that was going to be...Everyone thought it was going to be ‘Oh it’s simple, we join or don’t join, or let’s see what happens..’
'Did she give you any clue as to which way she thinks about it?’
Trump suddenly clammed up.
‘Well, I can’t talk, you know I’ve heard very strongly from a lot of people, you just don’t talk about that conversation with the Queen, right? You don’t wanna do that...Let me tell you what I can talk about... she is an incredible woman, she is so sharp, she is so beautiful, when I say beautiful - inside and out. That is a beautiful woman.’
‘Your mother would have been looking down …
‘She’d be very proud.’
‘When you got in Marine One afterwards with Melania and you talked about what you just experienced with the Queen, it must have been, even for a tough guy like you, quite an emotional thing?
‘It is. To have that meeting I think was really great. We met, but also watching the guard, hearing the sounds, being in that place, that very special place. it was very special there’s no question about that.’
It was clear just how much meeting the Queen meant to Trump.
He sounded about as humble as I’ve ever heard him before as he spoke about her (admittedly, his humility bar is quite low…)
We turned to the rather more controversial matter of Brexit.
Trump spectacularly blew up his trip this week with an incendiary interview in The Sun that attacked Theresa May for watering down her Brexit plan to such an extent that it might kill off hopes of a trade deal with America.
It was the political equivalent of going to someone’s house for dinner and telling them their food is inedible.
He tried to rein back on his criticism when they appeared for a joint press conference on Friday, but a lot of the damage was already done with May’s critics leaping on the belief that her new Chequers plan which caused David Davis and Boris Johnson to resign, doesn’t allow Britain to do a bi-lateral deal with America.