By Humeyra Pamuk and Jonathan Allen
WASHINGTON, April 30 (Reuters) - Britain's King Charles and Queen Camilla began wrapping up their four-day state visit to the U.S. with a very quick stop by the White House to bid farewell to U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday, having already charmed him at a formal dinner two days prior.
The official reason for the royal trip was to mark the 250th anniversary of the U.S. winning its independence from British colonial rule, cueing multiple wry jokes from Charles in speeches to Washington's elite about being on the losing side of the American Revolutionary War.
But it was also designed to mend what Charles called in Tuesday's state dinner with Trump an "unbreakable bond" and "indispensable alliance" between the two countries, lately strained by the UK, alongside other European allies, declining to join the two-month-old U.S.-Israeli war against Iran.
It seemed to work. As enraged as he has been by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Trump told reporters at some length how fond he was of his "great friend" Charles the day after their dinner: "When you like the king of a country so much, it probably helps your relationship with the prime minister."
Posing for photographs on a red carpet outside the White House's South Portico on Thursday morning, Trump, frequently denounced by political opponents as a would-be king, pointed to the monarch and said: "He's the greatest king, in my book." The two men, joined by Camilla and U.S. first lady Melania Trump, went inside, came back out five minutes later, and the royals got in their car to tour several sites in Virginia.
"Great people," Trump, who ran on an anti-immigration platform, said toward the departing motorcade. "We need more people like that in our country."
CHARLES TO JOIN 'NORTH AMERICAN TRADITION' OF POTLUCK
The royal trip has seen Charles draw smiles from lawmakers in the U.S. Congress to young Harlem school children at an urban farm in New York City. Among the biggest smiles of all came from Trump himself, as Charles revealed a gift for the president at Tuesday's White House reception: the original bell that hung from the conning tower of a Royal Navy submarine launched from a UK shipyard in 1944 and named HMS Trump.
For his final day, Charles is expected to lay a wreath at Arlington National Cemetery, across the Potomac River in Virginia, a sacred site for many Americans where tens of thousands of the country's war dead are buried. On Wednesday the king and queen commemorated victims of the September 11, 2001, al Qaeda attack on New York City, laying a floral bouquet at the memorial where the World Trade Center's twin towers once stood.
The royal couple are also expected to attend a small-town block party in Virginia to join in what the British embassy called the apparently exotic "North American tradition" of "a 'potluck' meal."
Later in the day, the royal couple will fly to Bermuda for Charles' first visit as sovereign to the British territory that, unlike the U.S., has not obtained independence.
(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk in Washington and Jonathan Allen in New York; Editing by Nick Zieminski)
