President Trump joined Queen Elizabeth II and British Prime Minister Theresa May at an event Wednesday to commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day.
The President’s whirlwind trip has seen a spat with London’s mayor, meetings with British royals, a state banquet, a sit-down meeting with May and protests.
Trump is now in Ireland, where he’s staying at his golf course. He’ll later head to France for a ceremony marking the Normandy landings.
We’re wrapping up live coverage for the day, but keep reading CNN for more details about Trump’s trip.
Here are some of the highlights from Trump’s trip to the UK:
President Trump defended his stay in Ireland saying his trip is not to promote his golf club but about the US-Ireland relationship.
An Irish reporter asked Trump if the visit to Ireland is just to “promote” his golf course.
Here’s what Trump said:
Trump also boasted his “great relationship” with Ireland, saying, “We have millions of Irish (in the US) and I think I know most of them, because they’re my friends. We love the Irish.”
When confronted with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar’s previous comments that his views on climate change were “reckless,” Trump said he hadn’t “heard those comments” adding, “We have the cleanest air in the world in the United States and it’s gotten better since I’m president.”
Trump also said he was “looking at” granting Irish citizens access to the E3 visa.
Irish officials have taken notice of President Trump’s first low-key visit as President to Ireland as being more about pleasure than work.
An Irish official says it appears this trip is more about downtime for the President. It could also be an easier way for him to visit Ireland without facing protests if it was a more formal visit with events in Dublin.
The official said as of now the President, who will be spending two nights at his golf resort, is scheduled to play golf on Friday, but the weather could be an issue.
Additionally, acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney is expected to host a dinner at Doonbeg Thursday evening with Irish officials, including the ambassador to Ireland. Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar is not expected to be there.
Soon after arriving in Ireland, Trump met with Varadkar at the airport.
President Trump, in a meeting with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, said he thinks everything will “work out” when it comes to Brexit.
“I just left some very good people that are very much involved with Brexit,” he said. “I think it will all work out, It will all work out very well.”
A reporter asked Trump if Brexit would be bad for Ireland. Here’s what Trump said:
Some background: One of the big fears in the Brexit debate is that Britain’s departure from the EU will mean the reintroduction of border posts on the frontier between Northern Ireland, which remains part of the UK, and the Republic of Ireland, an EU member. You can read more about the issue here.
Air Force One is wheels down in Shannon, Ireland — marking the first official visit of President Trump to the country.
At the airport in Shannon, Trump will meet with Ireland’s Prime Minister Leo Vardakar, who he has met with twice before in Washington for St. Patrick’s Day.
Plans for the visit: Trump is due to meet the Irish prime minister at the airport’s VIP lounge — a compromise venue after the Irish government balked at meeting Trump on his golf property.
Trump will spend Wednesday and Thursday night there at his Trump International Golf & Resort in Doonbeg. Tomorrow, Trump travels to Normandy to commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day.
President Trump is departing the United Kingdom after a three-day state visit, which included two banquets, afternoon tea with Prince Charles, government meetings and several encounters with Queen Elizabeth.
Air Force One took off from Southampton Airport around 10:30 a.m. ET (3:30 p.m. local) en route Shannon, Ireland, where Trump will spend two nights at his golf course around a visit to Normandy to commemorate D Day.
Upon landing in Ireland, Trump is due to meet the Irish prime minister at the airport’s VIP lounge — a compromise venue after the Irish government balked at meeting Trump on his golf property.
President Trump and the first lady have departed Portsmouth after participating in a D-Day commemoration ceremony.
He’s in Marine One en route Southampton Airport, where he’ll take Air Force One to Shannon, Ireland — ending his three day visit to the United Kingdom.
US President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke briefly after the D-Day commemorations in Portsmouth, in what the White House described as a “brief pull-aside.”
The President’s National Security Adviser John Bolton and his acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney also joined the meeting, after the media was ushered out.
Merkel has been a stringent critic of some of Trump’s policies, including his decision to pull out of the Paris Climate Accord. Last week, she told CNN that the pair have “had contentious debates” but that they’ve managed to find “common ground” where it was needed.
Merkel also spoke briefly to reporters. She called the Normandy landings “a unique, unprecedented military operation that finally brought liberation from national socialism for us in Germany.”
“And that today, as German Chancellor, I can be here, and together we can join in in advocating peace and freedom together, is a gift of history to be protected and nurtured, and in this spirit today we have spent these festivities as well this commemoration.”
A wedding ring and a photograph are all Leon Lomax has left to remember his mother by, a woman he has longed to know his whole life.
Leon’s white British mother met his African-American GI father during World War II, when he was stationed at RAF Birch, an airbase in Essex, southeast England.
When Leon was born in December 1945, his mother, who was unmarried, left him in a children’s home. He has a “distant memory” of what he thinks was the last time he saw her – and remembers “standing in the corner of a crib and crying real hard.”
Leon, now 73, is still haunted by the choice his mother made. For decades, he has wondered: Did she want to give him up, or was she forced to?
“I just want to know what conditions she was under,” he tells CNN, from his home in Ohio. “I always thought about trying to find her.”
He’s not alone. Historian Lucy Bland estimates that around 2,000 mixed-race children were born in the UK to British women and African-American servicemen between 1943 and 1946.
The US Army refused permission for black GIs to marry their pregnant white girlfriends and so the babies they gave birth to were branded “illegitimate.”
D-Day – the military term for the first day of the Normandy landings – was the largest amphibious invasion ever undertaken and laid the foundations for the Allied defeat of Germany in World War II.
It paved the way for Allied success on the Western Front in World War II, turning the tide of the war against the beleaguered Axis powers.
The invasion took place on June 6, 1944, and saw of tens of thousands of troops from the United States, the UK, France, Australia and Canada landing on five stretches of the Normandy coastline – codenamed Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword beaches.
Planning for D-Day began more than a year in advance, and the Allies carried out substantial military deception – codenamed Operation Bodyguard – in order to confuse the Germans as to when and where the invasion would take place.
The operation was originally scheduled to begin on June 5, when a full moon and low tides were expected to coincide with good weather, but storms forced a 24-hour delay.
D-Day in numbers:
Read more about the Normandy landings here.
Britain’s Queen Elizabeth has delivered a speech at the D-Day commemorations, describing her own wartime generation as resilient and paying tribute on behalf of “the whole free world” to those who died during the Normandy landings.
Here’s what the Queen said:
The monarch received a hearty applause when she finished speaking. A dramatic RAF flypast then took place, featuring Spitfire, Hurricane and Typhoon fighters, followed by the Red Arrows display team.
That brought the main part of the event to an end. The Queen, President Trump and the other world leaders have left the royal box.
Commemorations are continuing at the D-Day anniversary event in Portsmouth, where UK Prime Minister Theresa May just delivered an emotive reading of a letter by Captain Norman Skinner of the Royal Army Service Corps.
The letter was in Skinner’s pocket when he landed at Normandy, but he was killed the next day.
May read:
Scenes from the war are being recreated by actors on stage, while images are projected onto a screen behind them.
Later, leaders including Trump and May will meet troops present at the event. A flypast will also take place, featuring aircraft including the RAF’s Spitfire fighter.
US President Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have both taken to the stage to perform readings, as other leaders will do throughout the event.
The President read a prayer that Franklin D. Roosevelt gave over the radio during the Normandy landings.
The prayer read:
Trump spoke underneath a huge picture of his wartime predecessor, and the audience applauded politely as he finished. After Trump spoke, dancers came onstage to an upbeat version of “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B,” the wartime classic sung by the Andrews Sisters.
Donald Trump and the Queen are watching on as the story of the Normandy landings is retold from the stage.
The President is seated with Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles to his right. Theresa May and Emmanuel Macron sit to the right of the royal couple.
To Melania Trump’s left sits Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and Dutch PM Mark Rutte.
Before taking her seat, the Queen and Theresa May greeted several of the leaders present.
Tom Rice, a 97-year-old D-Day veteran of the US Army’s 101st Airborne Division, will be replicating his jump during Wednesday’s commemorative events.
The division, nicknamed the Screaming Eagles, played a crucial role in the Normandy landings 75 years ago.
But Rice told CNN he’s not nervous about replicating his feat three-quarters of a century later. “They’re not shooting at us this time,” he joked. “It’s much safer. And I’m going for the ride, it’ll be a lot of fun.”
Explaining his decision to take part in the event, Rice said: “I decided to honor those who didn’t come back, who were wounded, who walked away from it, who are deceased. Those are the guys who are the heroes.”
President Donald Trump has taken his seat in the royal box, alongside the first lady. Prime Minister Theresa May has also arrived.
Now that all the world leaders have taken their seats, the Queen is being welcomed with a guard of honor by British troops. She will sit between May and Trump in the center of the royal box.
This marks the formal start of the D-Day commemorative event. It will feature speeches, music and a dramatic flypast of military aircraft.
US President Donald Trump and British Prime Minister Theresa May aren’t the only world leaders attending Wednesday’s D-Day commemoration in Portsmouth, marking 75 years since the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France.
Also present will be German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron, and Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, to name a few.
Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II will also be present, as will political leaders from across the spectrum of British politics, including Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. Trump has already dined with the Queen during his visit, but he was less effusive for Corbyn – calling the opposition politician, who has frequently criticized him, a “negative force.”
President Donald Trump and first lady Melania have disembarked Marine One in Portsmouth, on the south coast of England.
The pair are being driven to a D-Day commemoration event, which Trump will attend with the Queen and political leaders including UK Prime Minister Theresa May.
The Queen will then bid a formal farewell to Trump before he leaves the UK.
US President Donald Trump told ITV’s “Good Morning Britain” in an interview aired Wednesday that he spoke with Prince Harry during his visit to Buckingham Palace on Monday, but not about his comments on Meghan, Duchess of Sussex. Harry stayed across the room from Trump during the part of that visit that was open to the press.
When asked last week about Meghan’s comments in 2016 – before she was a royal – that she would move to Canada if Trump was elected, the President told British tabloid The Sun, “I didn’t know that she was nasty. I hope she is OK.”
The US President also defended his comments about the Duchess.
Asked by ITV whether he thought Meghan is nasty, Trump said: “They said some of the things that she said and It’s actually on tape. And I said, ‘Well, I didn’t know she was nasty.’ I wasn’t referring to she’s nasty. I said she was nasty about me. And essentially I didn’t know she was nasty about me.”
“She was nasty to me. And that’s OK for her to be nasty, it’s not good for me to be nasty to her, and I wasn’t,” Trump added.
President Donald Trump says he talked about climate change with Prince Charles when the pair met during his state visit.
Trump said he had a “great conversation” with Charles on the issue, and was “moved” by the heir to the UK throne’s passion for the issue of climate change and the need to protect the world for future generations, in an interview with ITV’s “Good Morning Britain.”
Trump, a skeptic on man-made climate change, and Charles, a lifelong conservationist, were always likely to touch on the topic. They had tea together on Monday before Charles and his wife Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, joined the Trumps for dinner on Tuesday evening.
Asked if he believes in man-made climate change, which the scientific community universally recognizes as a fact, Trump said: “I believe that there is a change in weather and I think it changes both ways. It used to be called global warming, that wasn’t working, then it was called climate change and now actually it is called extreme weather.”
