How did the Trump family’s UK state visit look from social media?

Charlie, via email

I’m glad that you have emphasised that this was the Trump family’s state visit, as opposed to just the president’s, because this was very much – I just need to cue up Sly and the Family Stone – a family affairrrrr! Zzzzip! Record scratch! Sorry, that was a bad booking for this party, given that, according to the New Yorker, whenever the man now improbably known as President Trump would visit his casino in New Jersey, “the bosses would order all the black people off the floor”. So come on, Stones: you can leave through the fire exit, and be quick about it, please. This is a presidential issue.

Quite why US taxpayers were funding Trump’s four very definitely adult children to come on a family holiday to London has never been explained by a White House administration whose only consistent policy has been “never explain, never apologise”. Yet, in an administrative snafu, someone with self-awareness has been hired to run the White House’s Instagram account and he or she notably cut the Trump juniors out of all photos posted of National Lampoon’s London Vacation. Even Ivanka only makes a fleeting, possibly accidental appearance, even though, as we all know, she has a very important job in the White House that she totally got on her own merit.

Yet while the White House itself might have been strangely reluctant to record this made-for-TV sequel to the 90s comedy King Ralph, the Trump juniors were documenting their every move online with the enthusiasm of, well, hopelessly basic American embarrassments. And given that this presidency was pretty much won on social media, it makes sense to recall its high points the same way.

Ivanka kicked things off with a photo of her outside the V&A, on her way to visit the Christian Dior show, and as an American taxpayer, can I just say how thrilled I am to have paid for her to do this? Other highlights include what is now known as the Children of the Corn photo, in which Ivanka peers mournfully through a window in Buckingham Palace alongside her husband, Jared Kushner, who, judging from his recent TV interview appearance, has Botoxed his brain. Another photo shows her sitting at a boardroom table “to discuss advancing our bilateral trade relationship”, and of course she would be there, being the – wait a minute, let me check my notes. I need more time. Ah! She is the “informal adviser to the president”. Is that just code for “favourite child”? Nothing strange AT ALL about her being at these talks, looking very much like Boardroom Barbie. And before anyone cries “sexist”, I say that not because Ivanka is an attractive woman. I say it because she is an idiot.

Which brings us to Dumb and Dumber, AKA Donnie Jr and Eric. Donnie, sadly, left his girlfriend, former Fox News presenter Kimberly Guilfoyle, back in the US, which is a shame, because she would have been the sludge on this whole trip’s cowpat pie. Still, Donnie wasn’t a total bust: the photo he posted of him and his siblings in the Churchill War Rooms was a real insight for those who ever wondered what Britain would have looked like if the Nazis had won the war. Eric Trump is best known for the lawsuit issued against his charity, and his presence here, alongside his pregnant wife Lara, was so inexplicable I have nothing to say about it. Other than that his fondness for placing a hand on his wife’s stomach (“Look what I did!!!”) in photos is so creepy it should be illegal.

I loved youngest Trump daughter Tiffany’s decision to dress like Aunt Pittypat for the dinner at Buck House. But more than that, I loved that dinner. One day, can the person who decided which American was paired with which Brit – Ivanka with Liam Fox! Kate Middleton with Steve Mnuchin! Sarah Sanders with Prince Michael! – explain how those decisions were made? And will I go to hell for wheeling out the shamelessly predictable Star Wars cantina analogy? Ah well, too late.

But it was the King of Social Media, the big Don, who definitively won this trip’s social media war, when he marked D-day by furiously tweeting at 1am on Wednesday about “psycho Bette Midler”. You can take the Trump out of America, but you can’t take the Trump out of Trump.