The NY Times notes that Trump for some reason brought his whole damn family with him for what should have been an official visit but instead was more like “Let’s everybody go to Disneyland three decades late.” They were everywhere – on the balcony, mugging for the camera at the dinner, stuffing their faces while chatting with various odds and ends of the royal household.
They were also present on Tuesday at Mr. Trump’s news conference with the British prime minister, Theresa May, seated in the second row, in front of some of the president’s senior government advisers. The president has also said that his children would join him on a tour on Tuesday of the Churchill War Rooms, and American officials said they might go to Normandy for the French leg of the trip, too.
You’ll recall that normal presidents don’t do this. You’ll recall that normal presidents treat the presidency as a real job, and don’t invite their kids to join in whenever the mood strikes them. You’ll recall that normal presidents leave the kids at home, whether that’s in the White House or in their own adult living spaces.
Monday’s lavish audience with the British royals was the culmination of more than a month of planning by White House officials who have grown accustomed to accommodating President Trump’s children, whether that includes redrawing plans for a state visit or evicting guests from their seats at the State of the Union address.
The officials may have gotten used to it, but that doesn’t make it not weird and presumptuous.
“He’s surrounding himself with his family in this kind of certainly royal family, prince-and-princesses way,” Gwenda Blair, the author of “The Trumps: Three Generations That Built an Empire,” said in an interview. “Just as traditionally crowned heads surrounded themselves with their progeny, he has surrounded himself with his progeny.”
Privately, White House officials say that some of the Trump children, particularly those working in the White House, see themselves this way. One senior official, who did not want to speak publicly about internal planning, said that Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump in particular had grown more emboldened with their requests to be accommodated at official events.
Yes well there’s a reason I refer to them as princess and prince. I’ve never seen such smugly entitled people in my life.
[U]nlike the royals, who wage an endless battle to keep Britain’s voracious tabloids at arm’s length, the Trump children shared behind-the-scenes photographs and tweets of their trip.
“It was an incredible honor to meet Her Majesty The Queen, the longest ruling Monarch in British history,” Ms. Trump wrote of the day on Twitter. “Thank you for a warm welcome to the United Kingdom.”
She loves her some publicity.
They don’t hesitate to shove other people out of the way, either.
The weekend before President Trump delivered his State of the Union address in February, several of the special guests who had been invited to sit near the first lady were suddenly told that some changes needed to be made.
Instead of sitting with Melania Trump, half a dozen of the 28 guests she had chosen were told that they would have to sit down the hall from the House chamber, in a room featuring a television, chocolates, tissues and White House aides. The newly available seats were then given to two Tennesseans whose sentences had been cut short by Mr. Trump under a criminal justice overhaul effort that his son-in-law pushed for, and to three of the president’s adult children and two of their spouses.
A few days before the event, Mr. Trump was alerted to the lack of seats by one of his children, and Mrs. Trump was told to make room, according to three White House officials.
In the box that day were Ivanka Trump and Mr. Kushner; Tiffany Trump; Eric Trump and his wife, Lara Trump; and Donald Trump Jr. (Donald Jr., a popular Republican surrogate, had offered to get a seat from one of the members of Congress he is close with instead, officials said.) Among those whose seats were gone was Aubrey Reichard-Eline, the mother of Grace Eline, a 10-year-old cancer survivor who was invited because she works to help other children fight the disease.
Cancer shmancer; you’re down the hall.
A White House official with knowledge of the last-minute planning said at the time that the guests for the box were invited a month before the address, with the goal of focusing on extraordinary Americans. That person added that seats were changed at the last moment to accommodate the children per their request.
The people who were invited to sit in the box were probably excited about it for that whole month, but oh well, Ivanka and Jared and Tiffany and Eric and Lara and Baby Don are more important than they are, so fuck’em, they’re down the hall with some chocolates and kleenex.