ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Ari Shapiro in Washington.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
And I'm Mary Louise Kelly in London, where we have been tracking President Trump's U.K. visit, which just wrapped up. The Brits laid on the pageantry...
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KELLY: ...And the protests.
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UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: Say it loud. Say it clear. Donald Trump not welcome here.
KELLY: But today, the final day of the trip, was all business. The president traveled to U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer's country home, Chequers. At a joint press conference, both the president and the PM asserted that the state of the special relationship is strong.
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PRIME MINISTER KEIR STARMER: This historic second state visit is a moment to celebrate the unique bond between our two countries.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We're forever joined, and we are forever friends, and we will always be friends.
KELLY: Trump and Starmer both spoke of their desire for peace in Ukraine and of their lack of faith in Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war.
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TRUMP: He's let me down. He's really let me down.
STARMER: In recent days, Putin has shown his true face, mounting the biggest attack since the invasion began.
KELLY: But they did not see eye to eye on every issue, including Palestinian statehood.
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STARMER: It's part of that overall package, which hopefully takes us from the appalling situation we're in now to the outcome of a safe and secure Israel, which we do not have, and a viable Palestinian state.
TRUMP: So I have a disagreement with the prime minister on that score, one of our few disagreements, actually.
KELLY: The daylight between the U.S. and the U.K. was something I talked through with NPR's Danielle Kurtzleben, part of the White House pool traveling with President Trump. I caught her just as she was leaving the press conference.
Hey there, Danielle.
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DANIELLE KURTZLEBEN, BYLINE: Hey there. You can hear a helicopter behind me. That's how you know this is real (laughter).
KELLY: Yeah, tell me where you are. What's the scene?
KURTZLEBEN: Well, I am outside of Chequers. That is the prime minister's country residence. That is where we just watched that press conference between President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Keir Starmer. And right now, the press pool is just waiting (inaudible) next move.
KELLY: Danielle, we're taking some hits on your line. I know coms there are tricky with probably every single reporter in the press pool trying to upload their reports. What jumped out at you from this much-anticipated press conference with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer?
KURTZLEBEN: First of all, there were questions about the U.K.'s impending decision to recognize Palestine as a state. And Donald Trump responded to a question about that, saying, look, this is just one of the few issues on which I do not agree with Prime Minister Starmer.
KELLY: Yeah, I'm just going to jump in - 'cause we can hear that you're very much in the thick of it - and just get a little bit of your sense of what it is there - pull back the curtain on what it's like to be actually in that room. What struck you in terms of things we might not have been able to see, those of us who were, you know, watching a video feed from the outside.
KURTZLEBEN: The room was opulence, but, like, opulence has been the name of the game this week here in the U.K. And that room that we were in for that press conference - it was a room about as wide as it was tall. It was kind of a cube. And so it wasn't very large, length and widthwise. All the reporters were really packed in like sardines.
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KELLY: I was interested in who got called on at this press conference. The prime minister...
KURTZLEBEN: Right.
KELLY: ...Took the first few questions. President Trump, who did he call on, and what were you noticing as a White House correspondent?
KURTZLEBEN: Well, quite frankly, the president called on right-leaning - not to put it mildly - reporters from right-leaning organizations. And he called on GBN, which is a U.K. organization that is right leaning.
KELLY: Yeah. I was in the GB News newsroom here in London yesterday getting a sense of how they were covering this visit. So it was really interesting to see their new Washington anchor getting the first question. One topic that did not seem to come up was Jeffrey Epstein. There was a lot of expectation that these two leaders didn't want to talk about it. Therefore, reporters would definitely ask them about it. What do you make of that?
KURTZLEBEN: Look, I am not going to speculate. I don't know what to make of that, but that was stunning to me. I don't know why no one asked about that. The question of that U.K. ambassador did come up, though. Someone did ask Keir Starmer about Peter Mandelson, the ambassador who was fired recently after some emails came to light showing that he was quite friendly with Epstein, even after Epstein had been convicted of some pretty heinous things. So that did come up a little. But you are absolutely right that direct questions about Jeffrey Epstein did not come up today. And look, I don't know what to make of it beyond being very, very surprised.
KELLY: OK, Danielle Kurtzleben, we are going to release you to the helicopter and to the flight that is taking you and the rest of the White House reporters back to Washington today.
Well, NPR diplomatic correspondent Michele Kelemen has also been watching all the pageantry, all the wining and dining of President Trump. She joined me to talk about the state of the so-called special relationship.
What was your takeaway on what these two leaders walked away from after this meeting?
MICHELE KELEMEN, BYLINE: Yeah. I mean, it's really hard to tell yet whether all of this flattery, the pomp and circumstance, is really going to make a difference. I mean, we did hear the president shift gears on Russia a bit. I mean, you know, he had met with Putin in Alaska and rolled out the red carpet there. And since then, we've seen the Russians continuing to bomb Kyiv. And Keir Starmer even pointed out that they're, you know, hitting things like the British Council in Kyiv and the EU Embassy, and you have Russian drones flying over Poland. So the Europeans - particularly the Brits - have really wanted to keep a focus on that and to get Trump to kind of change his mind on Putin and to really step up the pressure.
KELLY: So let me end us back on the special relationship. I looked this up. It was actually Winston Churchill who coined that phrase shortly after World War II, of course. Of course it was Churchill. He owns all the best turns of phrase. Does the special relationship still look special from your vantage point covering U.S. diplomacy?
KELEMEN: I think the special relationship has never always been, you know, all that special. I mean, you know...
KELLY: It's come a long way since Churchill?
KELEMEN: Yeah. It's not like the U.S. and the U.K. are on the same side on everything. And this is a tense time right now because, remember, it hasn't even helped the U.K. I mean, the U.K. has seen tariffs, like other countries. President Trump has a fondness for the Brits. He, you know, has - his mother came from Scotland, and he talks about that a lot. But, you know, they're treating the Brits like they are other European countries. It's all about dealmaking, transactional diplomacy and not so much about these big-picture issues of what the world looked like after World War II and this special alliance. It's gotten down to kind of more transactional diplomacy.
KELLY: That was NPR diplomatic correspondent Michele Kelemen. We also heard earlier from NPR White House correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben, traveling with the president. And you can hear more of my conversations with both of them on our new podcast Sources & Methods. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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