Trump Lied to a Pennsylvania Crowd Saying The Queen of England Kept Him Waiting To Meet

President and Mrs. Trump met with Her Royal Highness, Queen Elizabeth II at Windsor Castle last month, a first for the two world leaders. The Queen has met 11 out of the last 12 U.S. Presidents—she never formally met Lyndon Johnson—and all eyes were on the notoriously mercurial current president (we’re talking Rumplestiltskin level mercurial) to see how he handled an interaction drenched in decorum and tradition.

Things went about as well as you’d expect them. The Trumps showed up about 10 minutes late and stayed far longer than the allotted 15 minutes.

YouTube

YouTube

Also, at one point Trump walked ahead of the Queen and then wandered into her path, forcing her to walk around him, like he was a thunderstruck tourist breezing through Times Square, wowed to his core by the obviously fake Elmo mascot.

Pick a side, PLEASE, some of us have work to get to.

Getty ImagesWPA Pool

Of course, President Pity Barnum remembers it differently. Last night, at a rally in Pennsylvania, he told the undoubtedly cool, calm, collected, and fact-valuing crowd that the Queen had kept him waiting. “I landed and I’m on the ground and I’m waiting with the king’s and the queen’s guards,” he had the unmitigated gall to say. “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? We can wait. But I’m a little early.”

The Queen. Of England. Portrayed by Claire Foy and Olivia Colman on Netflix. Stood around and waited for Donald J. Trump like she’d ordered an Uber that got turned around in a traffic circle. And then he claimed that she was the late one. Despite the fact that his arrival and their meeting were filmed and broadcast live in this temporal plane.

There aren’t enough italics in the world the express this level of chicanery.

The Trumps arrived on their own at 5:01 p.m. local time in reality. They were dropped off by their Uber directly in front of the viewing stand, where they greeted the Queen, and inspected the guard of honor.

Meanwhile, in an alternative universe, this is the story:

What else can we expect from a man who constantly lowers the bar and yet still can’t clear it? Trump was in Pennsylvania trying to maintain support in a region that swung the state in his favor in the last election and it’s telling, exhaustingly telling, that he cannot even tell these people, whose coal jobs didn’t come back, who don’t have a border wall to hurl their existential fears at, who are still suffering effects of the opioid crisis despite the first lady’s suggestion to “Be Best,” who have to resort to conspiracy theories, comments section battles, and bad faith social media protests to make sense of a leader who will look at them and tell them with a straight face that what they are seeing and what they are hearing are not real?

So. Whatever.

As a palate cleanser, let’s all recall that when President and Mrs. Obama met the Queen, Prince Philip picked them up in his Range Rover and drove them to Windsor Castle himself.

“Get in, winners. We’re going tea-drinking.”

Getty ImagesGEOFF PUGH

In any case, the seasons of The Crown that this produces will be better than fiction.

Follow R. Eric Thomas on Twitter.