President Trump had made no secret of his contempt for Theresa May, the soon-to-be-former British prime minister.
He had told friends that May was too weak to lead Britain out of the European Union and offered unsolicited advice on how she should do her job.
But on the second day of his state visit to London he stood amid the colonial grandeur of the Durbar Court in the heart of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to deliver his wholehearted praise.
“I have greatly enjoyed working with you,” he told May during a joint press conference only three days before she will stand down as Conservative Party leader. “You are a tremendous professional and a person that loves your country dearly. Thank you very much. Really an honor.”
He was speaking only a few minutes’ walk from where protesters gathered to vent their anger at his visit. However, numbers fell far short of the organizers’ quarter-of-a-million target.
So rather than angry placards, the Trump motorcade passed upraised cellphones as curious locals watched the president travel the short hop from Buckingham Palace to nearby St. James’s Palace for his first event of the day: a business forum hosted by the Duke of York.
From there it was off to Number 10 for talks with May, covering everything from the ongoing Huawei saga, tensions over Iran, and a potential trade deal. Where the first day was marked by the pageantry of the royal family, the second was dominated by the business of politics.
But the feelgood factor carried through to the news conference. Trump couldn’t resist wading into British politics by discussing the politicians vying to succeed May as prime minister but reserved his most glowing praise for the woman beside him and her efforts to resolve the Brexit crisis.
“And perhaps you won’t be given the credit that you deserve if they do something, but I think you deserve a lot of credit,” he said. “I really do.”
Then he rolled out the highest compliment in his vocabulary: “She’s probably a better negotiator than I am.”
This was a different Trump to the one who has told friends he was not impressed by May’s leadership as the U.K. stumbled through its Brexit crisis from parliamentary defeat to parliamentary defeat. “Weak,” is the term he frequently used.
Publicly he has described how he offered her advice on how to drive a hard bargain but she failed to listen. “I think it could have been negotiated in a different manner,” he said in March. “I hate to see everything being ripped apart right now.”
A Foreign Office official said the program had been tailored with Trump in mind. It included a tour of the Cabinet War Rooms, the bunkers from where Winston Churchill ran his World War II campaign.
May presented him with Churchill’s personal copy of a draft of the 1941 Atlantic Charter. The statement of British and American war aims is dotted with the red ink of Churchill’s amendments.
The atmosphere was helped considerably by the poor turnout of protesters.
Sir Christopher Meyer, a former British ambassador to Washington, said the visit had gone as well as possible despite an early controversy when Trump savaged the mayor of London. The schedule, with its heavy reference to Churchill and plenty of royal pomp, had clearly kept the president entertained, he added.
And while it was not unusual to find fault with May’s handling of Brexit, he was not surprised to hear Trump’s warm words for the personal relationship.
“I don’t think the two of them dislike each other,” he said. “It is not a marriage made in heaven but they rub along pretty well together.”
The overall effect was a very different atmosphere to last year’s visit, according to Chris Ruddy, the Newsmax chief executive and a Trump confidant. May would be moving on soon and it all felt like a turning point in Trump’s relationship with Britain, he said.
“The press reaction here has been tremendous,” said Ruddy. “The last time he was here was a little rocky, and this time the Queen’s involvement was very helpful. People see the shared kinship between our two countries.”
