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As the United States marks 250 years of independence, many people in Britain are struggling to talk about America without first bringing up President Donald Trump, according to interviews and historical references compiled by the Associated Press. The report depicts a relationship that no longer reads as purely bilateral—at least in everyday conversation—but as a view increasingly filtered through one American presidency.
The Associated Press said it asked Britons a “neutral question”: “What do you think of America now?” across locations including near George Washington’s ancestral home in Scotland, as well as Cambridge, Bristol and London. The reporting said virtually every response began with a pause and then moved to a euphemism for Trump and the Trump era, even when respondents supported some of his policies.
Mark Keightley, a printer technician in the Cambridge area, said, “It’s Trump’s world now, isn’t it?” In London, Eddie Boyle of Falkirk, Scotland, said his “own opinion of America is now dictated by the president” and added that the president was “not covering himself in glory as far as I’m concerned.” Boyle said, “It’s a shame that such a long arrangement between the two countries has been tarnished.”
The Associated Press also reported that interviewees described it as socially difficult to discuss America without referencing Trump, with the report characterizing a unanimous answer to whether Trump could be avoided. The stories told by respondents ranged from disappointment in U.S. politics to bafflement about how Trump became president, but the thread running through the interviews was that Trump now stands as the shorthand for how people interpret the United States.
The article places those reactions alongside earlier British criticism, including a letter by Charles Dickens after a 1842 visit. The report said Dickens wrote that the United States he saw was not “the Republic I came to see,” describing what he viewed as distortions including a “press more mean, and paltry, and silly, and disgraceful than any country I ever knew,” and also referenced writing about slavery and public spitting during the era.
In the report’s account of what shaped Britain’s sense of the U.S. over time, it points to a series of turning points: the War of 1812, the U.S. Civil War, American support during World War II and the post-Cold War role of the Reagan-Thatcher relationship in the early 1990s. Maria Miston of Suffolk told the Associated Press that Thatcher and Reagan “actually managed to bring the Cold War to an end,” but she also said, in her view, the image damaged by the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 has not improved, adding, “We’ve just gone backwards since then.”
The Associated Press also tied the contemporary framing to how Trump has handled Britain’s leadership, describing Trump’s approach to Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the president’s comments about wanting the king—not the prime minister—as a peer. The report said Trump’s second term included what it described as dismissing Starmer and treating the monarch as central, and it cited the White House’s social media post describing the two leaders as “TWO KINGS” during Charles’ visit.
That monarch-centered posture, the report said, sat alongside British domestic reaction to the state visit and political sensitivities around governance and sovereignty. The Associated Press described comments during the visit, including a statement attributed to rock star Rod Stewart at a May 11 gala, and it said U.S.-U.K. relations have been strained at points in history, including the Suez crisis in 1956 and the U.K. decision to resist pressure to join the Vietnam War a decade later.
Poll results provided by the Associated Press show that British views have grown more critical in recent years. The report said a Gallup poll conducted in the late summer and early fall of 2025 found that 28% of British adults approved of U.S. leadership while 68% disapproved. It also cited a Pew Research Center 2025 Global Attitudes Survey, reporting that roughly half of U.K. adults had a favorable view of the U.S., with a higher favorable share earlier in Joe Biden’s presidency, before falling to 54% by spring 2024.
Overall, the Associated Press reporting portrays America’s 250th anniversary as a moment that many Britons use not just to reflect on history, but to measure what they see as the present state of U.S. governance and culture. While the report says people cited American ambition, wealth, military strength, entertainment and resilience as qualities they admire—and it pointed to reactions to issues such as gun violence and immigration—Trump remained the focal point respondents used to interpret the country now, as a symbol that interviewees said they could not leave out.
Associated Press News Editor Amelia Thomson DeVeaux in Washington and video journalist Kwiyeon Ha in London contributed to this report.