Queen Elizabeth didn’t get it.
In the forthcoming book, The Queen and Her Presidents: The Hidden Hand That Shaped History, by Susan Page, the longtime journalist writes that the Queen was ‘baffled’ by the rise of ‘this person’ – Donald Trump.
She put the question to President Barack Obama, who visited the United Kingdom with First Lady Michelle Obama in April 2016, a month before Trump wrapped up the Republican nomination.
‘Why is this person so close to running your country?’ she asked Obama, according to excerpts of the book obtained by the Daily Mail.
Page wrote that she posed the same question to Prince Harry’s new American girlfriend, Meghan Markle, several months later.
The Queen was aware of Trump – and how he amplified the ‘birther’ conspiracy theory against Obama.
Trump was able to build a following on the political right by pushing the idea that Obama, the country’s first African-American President, was born in Africa, not Hawaii, and was thus ineligible to serve.
The Queen worked to kill those claims.
‘But from their first meeting, the Queen of England did everything she could to make it clear she harbored no such doubts, that the first Black president had her respect and admiration,’ Page wrote.
Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes recalled to Page that Obama’s relationship with the Queen represented ‘a powerful form of validation’ for the Democratic leader back home.
It took a year and a half into Trump’s first term before he came face-to-face with the Queen, and he is now expected to meet King Charles during a US state visit in April.
‘The Queen had formed a personal bond with the Obamas; that was no secret. Her view of Trump was less clear, but her expectations were surely shaped by what she had seen and heard during the first years of his presidency,’ Page wrote.
‘He had attacked her friends, the Bushes, faulting George W. Bush for the 9/11 attacks. Trump had publicly berated her prime minister. He had labeled the nations of Africa, a continent that included members of the British Commonwealth, as “s***hole countries,”‘ Page said.
Trump referred to Haiti and African nations as ‘s***hole countries’ in a private meeting with a bipartisan group of senators in January 2018.
At the time, the President was cagey about whether he made that statement – but confirmed he said it nearly eight years later in December 2025.
‘That remark wouldn’t sit well with a sovereign who had devoted her life to the protection of the Commonwealth she headed, and whose ties with African leaders were particularly close,’ Page wrote.
On July 12, 2018, the day Trump arrived at Stansted Airport for his working visit with the monarch, the Queen was at Windsor Castle meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar.
Queen Elizabeth wore a light pink floral dress.
‘In the official photo of the solemn trio, she was wearing a small vintage pin that depicted a green flower made from yellow gold, diamonds, and moss agate,’ Page wrote. ‘It nearly disappeared against the background of her brightly patterned dress, but it proved to be impossible to miss.’
The brooch was the one gifted to the Queen by Michelle Obama in 2011 during a formal state visit to the UK.
It was made in 1950 and was purchased at Tiny Jewel Box, a well-known jewelry destination in Washington, DC’s Dupont Circle neighborhood.
Before that day, the Queen had only worn it once, to the reciprocal dinner the Obamas had hosted for her during the 2011 visit.
The fact that she wore it again the day Trump arrived ignited speculation on whether it was deliberate, with Page discovering that it was.
‘There definitely had been a deliberate decision to wear that pin,’ a senior British official told USA Today’s Washington bureau chief. ‘It was a silent act of resistance.’
The next day, the Queen officially welcomed the Republican President and First Lady Melania Trump to Windsor Castle.
For the book, Page interviewed Trump, the Obamas, the Clintons, the Bidens and other American and British officials.
In a preview story about the book in Page’s USA Today, she wrote that Trump had recalled that he couldn’t get the Queen to name her favorite American leader.
‘I said, “So could I ask you who was your favorite president?” The Queen replied, “Why they were all so good,”‘ the President recalled.
Trump tried getting her to bite on past Republicans – Presidents Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon.
He notably didn’t ask about Obama.
‘So what do you mean you liked them all?’ Trump said he asked the Queen.
‘I liked them all. I can’t say anything bad about any of them. They were great,’ the Queen replied, Trump recalled.
