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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
Entertainment
Martin Pengelly in New York

Letter from King Charles to be included in new Trump book, report says

Donald Trump with the then Prince Charles on Trump’s state visit to London in June 2019.
Donald Trump with the then Prince Charles on Trump’s state visit to London in June 2019. Photograph: Alkis Konstantinidis/Reuters

Donald Trump’s forthcoming book of letters from famous but mostly former friends will include a missive from King Charles III, the Telegraph reported.

According to the report, the letter from then Prince Charles was sent in 1995, thanking Trump for an honorary membership at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida and inviting him to London.

According to publicity materials, Letters to Trump contains 150 messages from figures also including Queen Elizabeth II, Kim Jong-un and Ronald Reagan.

Trump caused controversy last month when he said: “I knew them all – and every one of them kissed my ass, and now I only have half of them kissing my ass.”

The book is due to be published on Tuesday.

Richard Nixon is also among correspondents in Trump’s book. On Sunday, Trump invoked the disgraced 37th president in a discussion of his own predicament.

In New York this month, Trump pleaded not guilty to criminal charges arising from his hush money payment to the porn star Stormy Daniels. He also faces a civil rape trial – beginning this week – and investigations of his election subversion, incitement of the January 6 attack on Congress, handling of classified materials and tax and business affairs.

Denying all wrongdoing, the former president has surged in polls regarding the next Republican nomination.

On Sunday, speaking to Fox News, Trump said of his legal predicament, “I’ll never forget: when that happened, we had such great support.

“Nixon had no support. You know, he just didn’t have support. He was very, very tough with people. I get along with people. I mean, I have great Jim Jordan and all these congressmen are great. They’re really incredible people.”

Jordan is a hardline Trump ally from Ohio, currently the chairperson of the House judiciary committee and a select panel meant to investigate Joe Biden, the president’s family and his allies.

“Nixon didn’t get along with the people in Congress,” Trump said. “He didn’t get along with the senators. But the fact is, we have some great people in the Republican party but I get along with them and they stuck together.”

Regarding the letter from Charles, the Telegraph said Trump had not obtained permission to publish it. It also said Trump’s book contained a letter from Charles’s first wife, Diana, Princess of Wales, from July 1997, shortly before her death in a car crash in Paris, thanking Trump for flowers sent for her birthday.

“They truly are quite magnificent, and I am deeply touched that you have thought of me in this special way,” Diana reportedly wrote.

Trump once told the radio host Howard Stern he thought he could have slept with Diana.

Not long after the princess’s death, Stern asked: “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 said.

The Telegraph reported letters from other key world figures: the former British prime minister David Cameron (answering a complaint about windfarms near golf courses in Scotland), the current Russian president, Vladimir Putin, (an exchange regarding Moscow’s staging of Miss Universe in 2013) and Simon Cowell.

The light entertainment impresario wrote to Trump in 2009, sending a tape of Britain’s Got Talent and saying: “I would love you to be on it.”

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