‘Secret weapon’: King Charles embarrasses Donald Trump with Volodymyr Zelensky move

Because just when you think you might have the full measure of His Majesty, he has just gone and pulled off an extraordinary swifty for the ages.

In fact, the King has just managed to do what the presidents of the UK, France, Japan, Jordan, China and India and Melania Trump have all failed at – to smear egg all over Donald Trump’s ochre face.

Charles, a man with less actual power than a Coles shift supervisor, has just delivered the US President a real slap down – and all it took was a handshake on the Sandringham front steps.

The key detail is with whom – namely Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, fresh off having gone several rounds with Mr Trump and Vice-Presidential bully boy JD Vance at the White House last weekend.

Mr Zelensky had been in Washington to sign a mineral rights deal that he had hoped would help seal a security guarantee for his war-torn country. 

Instead, Mr Trump and Mr Vance staged an Oval Office ambush, attacking the Ukrainian leader in front of the press in a bilious display sure to have delighted Vladimir Putin to the very bottom of his latest facelift.

In the aftermath of the attack, the world reeled, aghast; the President and his White House Robin preened; and in London, someone decided to check that the Downing Street nuclear bunker still locked.

And then into this melée stepped Charles, who promptly invited Mr Zelensky to his Norfolk estate in a powerful show of support.

As far as subtle royal statecraft goes, this was the equivalent of Queen Camilla standing on the Buckingham Palace roof with a bullhorn, the loudest possible public gesture of kingly backing for the bruised Mr Zelensky.

Timing is, of course, everything.

Only two days before Mr Zelensky’s disastrous Washington showdown, it had been Mr Trump basking in the glow of a royal invite.

Just prior to the Ukrainian President’s visit, British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer had been at the White House trying to placate the Twistie-coloured leader, hand delivering him an invitation to come to London for a historic second State visit with all the Palace bells and whistles, including a stay at one of the royal family’s private Scottish royal estates.

“Beautiful man, a wonderful man,” said Mr Trump in response as Camilla started locking up the good silver and wondering if Domino’s could cater a State Dinner. 

“The answer is yes.”

For Charles to then – only days after handing out this honour – invite Mr Trump’s most famous enemy of the moment for a nearly hour-long meeting where he served him tea in Sandringham’s Saloon room was a highly significant and pointed move.

But wait, there’s more – because the King was not done with sending Mr Trump a message.

Only a day after the Zelensky visit, the King had Mr Trump’s other biggest global adversary, dreamboat Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, around to Sandringham too. 

On the table for discussion, among other things, was Mr Trump’s threat to annex Canada and to make it into America’s 51st state.

That two of Mr Trump’s biggest foes were handed the privilege of an afternoon with Charles and all the finger sandwiches they could stuff in their pockets is not a situation that would have gone down well with the President, a man who is only a smidgen shy of being officially obsessed with the British royal family.

Ironically for the leader of the country that threw off the yoke of British tyranny nearly 250 years ago, Mr Trump is an ardent Buckingham Palace fan girl and he, according to the New York Times, viewed the late Queen “with a reverence bordering on awe”.

Meanwhile, back in December, Mr Trump came away from a private 40 minute meeting with Prince William in Paris, after they both attended the reopening of Notre Dame, energetically enthusing about the Prince of Wales and saying they had had a “great, great talk”.

Given all of this, given Mr Trump’s love for British royalty, Charles having both Mr Zelensky and Mr Trudeau around to Sandringham, a privately-owned royal estate only very occasionally used for official meetings, and before Mr Trump’s visit, no less, carried with it serious weight and meaning.

All of this was, a UK government official confirmed to the Guardian, “a deliberate message to Washington”. A Palace source described the meetings as “highly significant, given the global context”, while speaking to the Telegraph.

Essentially, with that Sandringham meeting, the King just became the world’s most powerful unofficial peace envoy.

And so in 2025, it’s time to meet a new Charles, the first time a British monarch in decades – if ever – has been called up to deploy all of their soft power and to play such a highly sensitive and key role in global affairs.

Meet King Charles, our best secret weapon to yank the world back from the brink.

What has become clear in the last week, as Mr Trump has continued to terrify the pants off the world with his seeming readiness to let NATO fall apart and the world order to descend into chaos, is just what a pivotal role that Charles and William are going to be called up to play with the irascible, erratic Mr Trump swivelling, bored in the chair behind the Resolute desk.

This image of His Majesty at the heart of international derring do is one the Palace appears keen to push, getting onto the briefing blower and telling the Telegraph: “It has been six days of royal diplomacy at its most delicate, deliberate and nuanced”.

The Palace source has said that Charles is “very conscious of his responsibility globally” and said he sees himself as a “global statesman” who is “determined to play his part”.

It’s a role that the King relishes, having told the Sunday Times’ Roya Nikkhah in 2020, “I have spent much of my life trying to bring people together. I’d rather be a peacemaker”.

There’s a certain irony that at a time when support for the monarchy is quietly on the wane in the UK, though the institution still enjoys majority support, that it is being called up to play its most important role in decades.

What has become clear is that rather than just being grand, titled ornamental figures to be wheeled out for an occasional bout of international gladhanding, King Charles and Prince William especially are going to play a genuinely weighty and meaningful diplomatic role in the coming months and years.

So, we truly live in strange times when an afternoon cup of tea could be all that stands between us and World War Three. 

Better get in more cucumber sandwiches. We are going to need them.

Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles