King Charles III, speaking after President Donald Trump, hailed the NATO alliance and the U.S.-U.K. trade and defense relationship to combat growing global challenges.
“Our people have fought and fallen together in defense of the values we cherish across the ocean and from coast to coast. We have traded, innovated and created together. We’ve stood together through the best and worst of times,” the king said. “However, the challenges we now face from those who wish us harm across the world, to balancing the risks and opportunities of powerful new technologies, to the threats to the very international rules that have allowed us to trade and have kept power in balance for 80 years.”
He also said that “freedom is under attack” because of the Russia invasion into Ukraine.
“Today, our partnerships in NATO and AUKUS deepen our technological and military cooperation and ensure that together we can meet the challenges of an increasingly complex and contested world,” the king said.
Charles also came to the state dinner with no shortage of jokes about the past U.S.-U.K. relationship.
He called the president’s second term “historic” and said it’s a pleasure to “be back in this wonderful building, the heart of your democracy.” He quipped that he noticed the “readjustments to the East Wing,” adding that the British made their own attempt at “real estate redevelopment of the White House in 1814” when British forces burned the White House building.
He also called out the states and cities, including Charleston and Annapolis, named after British monarchs, and gifted Trump a bell that hung on HMS Trump, a Royal Navy submarine that fought in the Battle of the Pacific in World War II, quipping: “should you ever need to get hold of us, just give us a ring.”