Guest lists for White House state dinners have always been political rather than social documents. Avidly chewed over in Washington, they broadcast an administration’s priorities, favored businesses, top donors and media allies. They are supposed to reflect the country being honored.
By those standards, the Trump guest list for the state dinner for King Charles III of Britain and Queen Camilla on Tuesday night was another whack at norms in an administration that likes to shatter them.
Among the more than 100 guests were at least 10 American billionaires, six Fox News hosts, one Fox News executive, six conservative Supreme Court justices, numerous Silicon Valley tech titans and assorted friends of the president’s. There were no British cultural figures and, for that matter, a meager number of British overall. The British Embassy in Washington appears to have had limited input into the guest list.
There were also no Democratic politicians, which has been the case at other Trump state dinners.
Previous White House social secretaries took note.
“There’s no attempt to reach out to the other side,” said Gahl Hodges Burt, who was the White House social secretary for three years in the Reagan administration. “There are no clergy, there are no minority group representatives, there are no medical researchers, there are no vaccine developers. And I would have had the astronauts who just came back.”
Nevertheless, she said, “it’s an impressive group. And a group you would expect.”
It is unclear who put together the guest list, which is typically overseen by the White House social secretary, along with heavy input from the West Wing, the White House political operation and the White House liaison to Congress. Melania Trump, the first lady, has had no social secretary in her husband’s second term.
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