Trump inspects the troops while war is brewing at home

Donald Trump basked in the pomp and pageantry of his second state visit on Tuesday, complete with marching bands, a Red Arrows flypast and the chance to lay flowers on the tomb of Queen Elizabeth II.

“It’s gonna be a beautiful event. Everyone’s looking forward to it, and we’ll just relax and have a good time,” the US president told reporters travelling with him on board Air Force One a day earlier.

It was a telling moment. He was flying out of a country still coming to terms with the death of Charlie Kirk, a Right-wing campaigner and Trump confidant shot last week.

There is talk of a crackdown on far-Left groups such as Antifa and their donors. Some of the president’s allies are even talking of war.

Mr Trump said he would attend Mr Kirk’s funeral in Arizona and then take action.

“So I’ll be going to the service on Sunday, coming back, and then we’re going in,” he said.

The result has been an extraordinary split-screen for viewers back home. While Mr Trump arrived at Windsor Castle in the golden splendour of the Irish State Coach before admiring the display put on by 1,300 troops, flicking across television channels would illustrate some of the tumult brought to America by his presidency.

In the US Senate, Susan Monarez, former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, testified that the country’s public health system was headed to a “very dangerous place” as she described how she was fired by Mr Trump’s anti-vaccine advisers.

At the same time, TV pundits questioned the legality of a second strike on a boat travelling from Venezuela, killing three “narco-terrorists”, as the Trump administration calls them.

While Mr Trump was being feted by King Charles III on the manicured lawns of a 1,000-year-old royal residence, the headlines served as a reminder that this is an administration emboldened by the president’s sweeping win in last year’s election.

Add in that he cheated an assassin’s bullet and survived four criminal court cases and the result is a man on a mission.

Meanwhile the fallout from the killing of Kirk continued to reverberate around an anxious nation.

Barack Obama said political violence was not new to America but warned that the country was “at an inflection point”.

Speaking at the Jefferson Educational Society, a non-profit organisation in Pennsylvania, the former president said Kirk’s assassination could deepen cultural and political divisions.

“There’s been some confusion, I think, around this lately, and frankly, coming from the White House and some of the other positions of authority that suggest, even before we had determined who the perpetrator of this evil act was, that somehow we’re going to identify an enemy,” he said.

Kirk was a dominant force in conservative politics and became a confidant of Mr Trump during his four years out of power. His Turning Point USA movement harnessed conservatives on university campuses in support of Mr Trump.

However, Mr Trump’s threats to crack down on what he calls the “radical Left” after Kirk’s death have stirred worries that it would provide cover to suppress political opposition.

Before leaving for the UK, Mr Trump said he was prepared to label Antifa, a collection of Left-wing activists, as a terror organisation.

“I would do that, 100 per cent. Antifa is terrible,” he said in the Oval Office.

Officials say they may target big donors to Left-wing groups, such as the Ford Foundation or the Open Society Foundations, run by George Soros, who has become a hate figure on the Right. But that would almost certainly trigger lengthy court battles and accusations that the administration was running roughshod over the First Amendment’s free speech protections.

Investigators say that they are still working to identify a motive for the killing, but Mr Trump and his allies insist it was part of a violent Left-wing campaign against conservatives.

Influential broadcasters such as Steve Bannon, Mr Trump’s former chief strategist, have amplified that message and suggested Mr Kirk’s death came during a time of war.

“The biggest thing is to broaden the assassination investigation from a single murder to the broader conspiracy,” Mr Bannon told Politico.

“If we are going to go to war, let’s go to war.”

Mr Trump was out of sight and out of earshot at times on Wednesday. He had a private lunch with the Royal Family and disappeared into St George’s Chapel for a quiet moment to lay flowers on the grave of Queen Elizabeth II, a leader he revered.

At about the same time, an email fundraising appeal, with the subject line, “I love the smell of deportations in the morning”, pinged into inboxes.

It highlighted Mr Trump’s use of federal agencies and the National Guard to round up illegal immigrants and urged supporters to back his political movement.

“Choose your side NOW because if we fail, we will no longer have a country to save!” said the message signed by Mr Trump.

“You’ve never let me down, and I know you won’t stop now.”

[Source: Daily Telegraph]