Royal staff in charge of the seating plans for Donald Trump’s visit to the UK will have a dicey task on their hands.
Trump and his wife Melania will meet with a host of senior royals at the event – including Princes William and Harry.
Though the princes will no doubt observe decorum, the fact remains that the American president has publicly made a series of lewd and sexist comments about their late mother Princess Diana, and William’s wife, the Duchess of Cambridge.
The Howard Stern interview
In the past, Trump has bragged that “could have” slept with Diana, but only if she passed an HIV test first.
In a Howard Stern radio interview recorded just months after the princess died in a car crash in 1997, he also branded her “beautiful” but “crazy”.
Stern asked Trump: “Why do people think it’s egoistical of you to say you could’ve gotten with Lady Di? You could’ve gotten her, right? You could’ve nailed her?”
“I think I could have,” Trump replied, before pretending to ask the princess to accompany him to a doctor for a “little check-up”.
In another interview with Stern three years after Diana’s death, Trump said: “I tell you what, I think she’s magnificent. Lady Di was truly a woman with great beauty. I’ve seen her a couple of times. She was really beautiful, and people didn’t realise that beautiful. She was supermodel beautiful. She had the height, she had the beauty, she had the skin, the whole thing.”
‘Only one regret’
Trump referred to the princess yet again in his book The Art of the Comeback, published two months after she died, lamenting: “I only have one regret in the women department, that I never had the opportunity to court Lady Diana Spencer.”
Trump on the Duchess of Cambridge
Trump has also made remarks about the Duchess of Cambridge after she was photographed sunbathing topless by the paparazzi in France.
“Kate Middleton is great – but she shouldn’t be sunbathing in the nude – only herself to blame,” he wrote on Twitter.
Moments later he tweeted: “Who wouldn’t take Kate’s picture and make lots of money if she does the nude sunbathing thing. Come on Kate!”
During a call to Fox and Friends, Trump continued his musings, asking: “Why would she be outside in the nude? Why would she be standing in the nude in a swimming pool?”
Harry’s wife Meghan is on maternity leave and will stay at home with their month-old son Archie.
She has been a vocal critic of former reality star Trump, backing his rival, Hillary Clinton, and suggesting before the 2016 election that she would leave the US if he won. She has previously labelled him “divisive” and a “misogynist.”
On a leaked tape from 2005 which surfaced during Trump’s presidential campaign he was heard making lewd remarks about women.
“When you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything,” Trump said, adding later: “Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”