Drawn from "The Queen and Her Presidents: The Hidden Hand That Shaped History," by Susan Page, to be published April 14, 2026, by Harper.
Queen Elizabeth II was not smiling as she watched the whirlwind of Marine One's blades flatten her flowers. "It ruined the garden," a senior palace aide said. "She was furious about that." The annoyance lingered to the point that she later complained about it to Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison. "Come and look at my lawn," she told him. "It's ruined."
But on June 3, 2019, nothing could spoil this moment for PresidentDonald Trump.
He had wanted a state visit to England, and being toasted by Her Majesty, since his inauguration. Whatever else his presidency might bring, he saw it as a highlight, a personal milestone with a meaning beyond politics. He was "slightly awestruck" when he talked about her, National Security Council staffer Fiona Hill said, and his voice and face would soften. "A meeting with the Queen of England was the ultimate sign that he, Trump, had made it in life." The monarch's personal charm and storied history were just one side of the appeal. The other was the mirror she would provide, reflecting the stature he had long sought.
Finally, he was arriving. But it had taken two years of effort to overcome British alarm about this unexpected new American president. When they arrived at Buckingham Palace, rather than driving from Winfield House, the U.S. ambassador's residence, the Trump White House wanted the president's helicopter to land on the grounds, offering more dramatic visuals.
Despite the flowers.
At the white-tie banquet that night were eight Trumps and 16 members of the royal family, spanning three generations − 170 guests in all.
The evening's conversation between Elizabeth and Trump was lively. "I was in the groove," he told Woody Johnson the next morning. The U.S. ambassador, who had known Trump for decades, offered: "My own judgment is, after the first four years and maybe to this day, of all the people that he met, the Queen had the most special relationship, the most special impact on him."
Scoops from the new book:When Queen Elizabeth II phoned Trump
'Did you like Ronald Reagan the best?'
Later, the president gave me a rundown on their conversation that night.
"I said, 'So could I ask you who was your favorite president?'"
The Queen replied, "Why? They were all so good."
"I know, but did you like Ronald Reagan the best?" Trump asked.
"Oh, yes, I liked him very much, but they were all good."
"Oh, well, what about Nixon?"
"Oh, he was excellent."
"So what do you mean you liked them all?" Trump pressed.
"I liked them all. I can't say anything bad about any of them. They were great."
"OK, let's go to prime ministers. Who was your favorite prime minister? It had to be Churchill, right?"
"No, no, no. He was wonderful, Winston. But they were all so good. They worked so hard. They were very different, but they worked so hard. They were all so good."
Trump was dazzled by her skill at charming deflection. "I said to myself, how genius is this?" he said. "I couldn't get her to say a bad thing about anybody. She was amazing, actually. And not for any reason other than I don't think she wanted to create controversy. It was unnecessary."
For Trump, she prompted a rare moment of self-reflection.
"I hate to say this because it's very disparaging to myself. She was sort of the opposite of me. She didn't mix it up." That discipline was at the foundation of her reputation and her role. "She was there for so many decades, and she literally never made a mistake," he said. "If you think about it. I mean, everyone was making mistakes around her, but she never made a mistake."
Trump said Harry and Meghan hurt the Queen
She parried his queries about Prince Harry and Meghan, her wayward grandson and his problematic bride. Seven months after Trump's state dinner, they announced they would step back from their duties as senior royals and in short order moved to Montecito, California.
Despite the headlines that Harry and Meghan were generating − no one could possibly have missed them − Trump was almost certainly one of very few guests who raised that most personal of topics directly with the Queen. She responded with the most diplomatic of stonewalls. "I asked her about it constantly," Trump told me. "I'd say, 'Come on, tell me.' 'No, no. It's very nice.' Everybody was nice. She liked everybody."
But he was prepared to take offense on her behalf.
"I couldn't get her to say it. I'm good at that, too," he said. She demurred. "She would always say, 'No, no, would be lovely, lovely.' But it wasn't lovely, and I think it hurt her. I really think it hurt her. It was tremendous dissension, and I just don't think they treated her with the respect that she should have, frankly."
He said he wouldn't have reacted to a similar affront in the same forgiving way.
"I actually told her I couldn't do what she does, because she was very cool on the subject. She would talk about it but never said anything bad about either of them, and I think she loved Harry, really loved Harry. But Harry's been, I feel, led astray. I really do. I think he's been terribly led astray. It's just so disrespectful the way that happened, and she didn't deserve that. This is a woman that everybody respected so much. I think she was stunned by what was happening, actually. She couldn't believe it in real time."
The grand banquet at Buckingham ended with a dozen bagpipers circling the room three times as they performed, a tradition Queen Victoria had begun.
"They gave me a tremendously, the five-star dinner, and it was really incredible," Trump told me. "I sat with her for hours, and Camilla was on my right and she was on my left, and we talked for a long time."
The Queen and he had "a great chemistry together," he said with satisfaction. "There was a great honor for me to know her, then ultimately get to know her well."
After the dinner, trouble
There had been a small discordant note at the state dinner.
Stephanie Grisham, thenMelania Trump's press secretary, was seated next to Kim Darroch, the British ambassador. "We bonded over wine and American football," the first lady's spokesperson recalled, "but I did get an odd vibe from him when he asked, 'How do you do it? Work for a man like your president?'"
Advertisement
Two days later, Darroch was among the dignitaries gathered at Southampton to say goodbye to Trump as he boarded Air Force One. "This was a wonderful visit, and U.K.-U.S. relations are now in the best state ever," Trump told him, shaking his hand. A jubilant Darroch sent a diplomatic cable with his "impressions and implications" of the state visit − a trip that the British had delayed as long as they could.
"With this unorthodox President, there were genuine risks," he wrote, but "the gamble paid handsomely." The highlight for Trump had been the "extensive personal engagement" with the Queen at their private lunch, at the glittering dinner, at D-Day commemorations in Portsmouth.
Trump's team had been "dazzled," he said. "We are basking in a big success, with doors open everywhere in Washington."
Three weeks later, the door would be opened for Darroch's forced exit. The problem: Trump found out what the ambassador really thought about him in leaked cables from 2017 that said the president "radiates insecurity" and led a dysfunctional administration.
Darroch didn't intend his candid views to be read by the White House or by anyone beyond an elite circle in London with the security clearance to see documents stamped "Official Sensitive."
But on July 7, 2019, his cables were leaked and splashed on the front page of Britain'sMail on Sunday.
The British government's first instinct was to stand behind him. But the president was "absolutely livid," John Bolton, the White House national security adviser, recalled. "He was saying, 'I want him out of here; get him out of here.' I tried to explain that when it's not our ambassador, we can't fire him." What the president could do, Bolton told him, was make it clear to the British that he wasn't happy.
Bolton called Mark Sedwill, the national security adviser for British Prime Minister Theresa May, to give him a heads-up. "I said, 'Look, this isn't going to end well,'" Bolton told him. "'You got to pull him back.'"
The ambassador acknowledged the inevitable. "The current situation is making it impossible for me to carry out my role as I would like," he said in his resignation letter.
Behind the scenes, Queen Elizabeth reached out to calm troubled waters, as she had so often before, with so many presidents.
"She couldn't believe it; she thought he was terrible," Trump said, revealing a conversation not previously reported. "I think they fired him over that, didn't they? They fired him. She said, 'He doesn't speak for our government.' Oh, she was furious over that. He was a total lightweight. He was just a guy; he was trying to be a Mr. Tough Guy."
Trump's evolving account of their conversation to me reflected the delicacy of the Queen's comments. "She apologized," Trump said at first. Then he qualified that statement, saying, "It wasn't an apology." She distanced herself and her government from Darroch's comments, but after Trump labeled the ambassador "a fool," he added, "She didn't call him a fool, but she basically indicated that he was a stupid person."
Whatever she said, it was enough.
She had calmed his ire without actually apologizing. She had made it clear she disapproved of Darroch's comments without, perhaps, throwing the ambassador himself overboard. "She didn't have to apologize," Trump said. "She didn't apologize. She just said how terrible he was to do such a thing. So it wasn't an apology. She wasn't an apologist. But what she was − a great woman."
The diplomatic deftness of a mother
In 2024, British author Craig Brown got headlines when he reported in his breezy, bestselling book, "A Voyage Around the Queen," that Elizabeth had confided to an unnamed lunch guest that she had found Trump "very rude."
There was another secondhand report of Elizabeth's opinion of the president. Monty Roberts, a famed California horse trainer who had a long and close relationship with the Queen, said in the documentary "The Cowboy and the Queen" that she had told him she didn't like Trump. She didn't like bullies, he said, mentioning Russian PresidentVladimir Putinas another example.
But Boris Johnson, an ally of Trump, disputed reports that she had been put off by him. "Seriously, I think she was amused by President Trump and liked him," the former prime minister said. "That was my impression."
That was Trump's impression, too. While she refused to answer the question when he posed it, he said he was given to understand that she had identified her favorite president to others.
It was him.
"We just got along," he said.
To be clear, it wasn't a ranking that Her Majesty revealed. Even so, Woody Johnson thought Trump was right.
"The president has a very keen sense of things like that," said Johnson, the U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom. "It was his perception that, yeah, she was fond of him." That wouldn't have surprised Johnson, given Trump's personality and drive. "I think she recognized that Trump is a different kind of person, that's putting it mildly, and so he's not going to play by the rules. He didn't go to How-to-Be-a-President School ... and that's why he's effective."
She had hosted 113 state visits in all through her long reign; Trump's dinner was the last one.
Those who knew the Queen well were skeptical about the notion that Trump could have been her favorite president, whatever that meant.
Several senior officials in the palace and the British government responded with startled laughter to the idea that her relationship with him could have matched the affection she felt for some of his predecessors. Dwight Eisenhower had been a hero, and Ronald Reagan, a friend. She had met with George W. Bush more often than any other president − the only president to have the honor of state visits in both Washington and London − and her clear fondness for Barack Obama had struck officials on both sides of the Atlantic.
Perhaps Her Majesty had the gift of some mothers − to convince each of her children, without ever saying so, that he or she was her favorite. Part of her diplomatic deftness was her ability to persuade presidents that she particularly enjoyed their company. She never dissed any of them in public, not even the difficult ones. Presidents from Harry Truman to Donald Trump came away feeling that they had forged a personal bond with her.
When I asked former Prime Minister David Cameron about Trump's belief that he was the Queen's favorite president, he noted only that she was a "very good diplomat" who was "very discreet about those sorts of things."
Others thought that assessment was more telling about Trump than about the Queen. "That's hysterical," Jill Biden said asJoe Bidenshook his head. "Oh, that fits his character, for sure."
Hillary Clinton responded, "Why am I not surprised by that?" She added, "I don't think there is any evidence to believe that could possibly be true."
Bill Clinton recalled a conversation he had with Obama and Biden in 2024. "We were all joking at Ethel Kennedy's funeral about how she tried to make every Democratic president feel like he was her favorite, and she was shrewd about that, Ethel was. And Queen Elizabeth was no dummy. She knew what she was doing ..."
He would be "shocked" if Elizabeth had ever identified a favorite, Bill Clinton said. "I have no idea what she really thought of any of us. I just know ... what I thought of her, and I thought she was really special."
Susan Page is the Washington Bureau chief of USA TODAY and the best-selling author of biographies of Barbara Bush, Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Walters.
Pre-order "The Queen and Her Presidents" here.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:Trump adored Elizabeth. Was he the Queen's favorite president?