{"id":612582,"date":"2026-04-29T04:27:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T04:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/612582\/"},"modified":"2026-04-29T04:27:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T04:27:09","slug":"uk-king-charles-roasts-trump-with-colonial-quip-youd-be-speaking-french","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/612582\/","title":{"rendered":"UK King Charles roasts Trump with colonial quip: \u2018you\u2019d be speaking French\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

UK King Charles gave US President Donald Trump a taste of his own medicine at a White House state dinner on Tuesday when he joked that without the British, Americans would be speaking French.<\/p>\n

As the heads of state traded jokes during their dinner toasts, Charles referenced previous comments by Trump aimed at European allies he accuses of freeloading on defence since World War II.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou recently commented, Mr President, that if it were not for the United States, European countries would be speaking German. Dare I say that, if it wasn\u2019t for us, you\u2019d be speaking French,\u201d Charles quipped.<\/p>\n

The king was talking about places with British and French origins in North America, where the rival colonial powers battled for control of the continent before US independence 250 years ago.<\/p>\n

At the Davos summit in January, Trump said that without US help in World War II, \u201cyou\u2019d be speaking German and a little Japanese\u201d.<\/p>\n

But the king\u2019s lighthearted remark reflected the warm tone as he and Trump bonded over the \u201cspecial relationship\u201d between London and Washington, despite tensions over the war in Iran.<\/p>\n

\"USUS President Donald Trump speaks during the state dinner. Photo: AP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UK King Charles gave US President Donald Trump a taste of his own medicine at a White House…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":612583,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,265942,37329,1340,198809,4515,12,133249,12336,265941,801,7672,1150,3,4265,21,19,22,20,25,24,3123],"class_list":["post-612582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-boston-tea-party","tag-british","tag-congress","tag-davos","tag-democrats","tag-donald-trump","tag-east-wing","tag-european","tag-hms-trump","tag-iran","tag-keir-starmer","tag-london","tag-news","tag-north-america","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=612582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612582\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/612583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=612582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=612582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=612582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}