Everything Wrong With Trump's 'Prince Of Whales' Tweet

From Esquire

You've presumably seen the fact that Donald Trump tweeted then deleted a statement which said he had met with the "Prince of Whales" on his recent state visit to the UK as a riposte to outrage over him saying he'd happily collude with a foreign government if he was offered dirt on his 2020 election opponent. Obviously he didn't delete it quickly enough though, because you've already seen it. Let's have another look, shall we?

Obviously it's very, very funny. Much merriment has been had. However, beyond the Wales/whales snafu, there's a whole GCSE Citizenship class' worth of misconstrued ideas of what England is, what the United Kingdom is, and who exactly runs the country. You'd hope for a little better from the other half of the special relationship, but this is scarcely the first time Trump's proved that he's not exactly FDR.

The title 'Queen of England' hasn't existed since 1707

As historian Dan Snow pointed out, it disappeared with the Acts of Union 312 years ago which legally tied together the kingdoms of England and Scotland to create Great Britain. Nowadays, the title is 'Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth Realms'. Snow noted that "there has been a Son of Heaven, King of Kings, Caesar of the Roman Empire, The Most Mighty of the Universe and Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah more recently than a Queen of England."

"England (U.K.)"

We've been here before with Trump. The man seems to genuinely not know the difference between England, Great Britain and the United Kingdom. One's a country, one's a land mass, one's a political union and sovereign state. It's not hard. Remember the time he got really wistful about how "you don't hear the name England as much as you should" in the middle of the World Cup? And this ramble at a rally for Republican candidate Lou Barletta in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania last August: "I have great respect for the UK. United Kingdom. Great respect. People call it Britain. They call it Great Britain. They used to call it England, different parts."

"Foreign governments"

Quite apart from the "suspicious quote-marks", it's a bit of a stretch to describe the "Queen of England (U.K.)" and the "Prince of Whales" as "foreign governments". Does he think that they still pull meaningful strings behind the scenes, or does he think Charles has a day job in the Department for Work and Pensions?

Whales

WALES. WALES. WALES. IT'S LOVELY. GO SOME TIME. YOU'LL LIKE IT. WALES.

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