Scottish Daily Mail

Trump: I wasn’t late to meet the Queen – she kept me waiting

- From Tom Leonard

DoNALD Trump has attacked reports he was late for the Queen at windsor Castle – insisting she made

him wait.

The US President pounced on claims he was 15 minutes late for his visit last month as more ‘fake, fake, disgusting news’.

Describing their tea and inspection of the Coldstream Guards as a ‘beautiful, beautiful visit’, Mr Trump claimed he had arrived 15 minutes early.

He said they ‘got along fantastica­lly well’ and enjoyed ‘good chemistry’ but claimed the media instead dwelt on the footage of the Queen waiting in the 80F heat for his presidenti­al cavalcade to arrive.

At one point, she was seen looking at her watch.

Speaking at a rally of supporters in Pennsylvan­ia, in which he listed a string of grievances against the media, Mr Trump said: ‘I was asked to have tea with the Queen, who is incredible by the way. Incredible… I landed and I’m on the ground and I’m waiting with the king’s and with the queen’s guards – wonderful people. I’m waiting. I was about 15 minutes early and I’m waiting with my wife and that’s fine. Hey, it’s the Queen, right?’

In fact TV footage shows he arrived on schedule, not 15 minutes early. He added: ‘we then go up and we have tea. And I didn’t know this – it was supposed to last 15 minutes but it lasted like an hour. Because we got along. And she liked our First Lady and our First Lady liked her. But we got along fantastica­lly well. But the time went by – you know, sometimes if you like somebody you get along – good chemistry – the time goes by. So we were there for about an hour.

‘So here was the story by the fake news: the President was 15 minutes late for the Queen. wrong… and then, here’s the rest of the story: The President overstayed…but they can make anything bad because they are the fake, fake, disgusting news.’ A day after United Nations experts warned his anti-media outbursts were putting journalist­s at risk, Mr Trump described reporters as ‘horrible, horrendous people’.

During a 15-minute diatribe which produced angry chanting from the crowd, he also lambasted media coverage of his 2016 election victory, and his recent meetings with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, NATo and Vladimir Putin.

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