British rocker Rod Stewart just proved once again that aging rock stars and royal receptions are a dangerous cocktail.
The raspy-voiced “Maggie May” singer went full loose cannon Monday night at a glitzy London celebration for the 50th anniversary of the King’s Trust, when he grabbed King Charles III by the hand and congratulated him for what Stewart apparently saw as a diplomatic smackdown of President Donald Trump during the monarch’s recent US swing.
“May I say, well done in the Americas,” Stewart gushed during the Royal Albert Hall schmoozefest. “You were superb, absolutely superb. You put that little ratbag in his place.” Classy.
The king — who’s spent decades mastering the royal art of pretending not to hear awkward comments — appeared to chuckle and move on while Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood stood nearby grinning like a guy watching a pub argument unfold in slow motion.
Stewart, 81, didn’t explicitly name Trump, but nobody in the room needed Sherlock Holmes to crack the case. The singer has spent the last several years publicly souring on the president after once bragging about partying with him in Palm Beach back when the billionaire was still better known for gold-plated excess and tabloid divorces than tariffs and NATO lectures.
“I knew him very, very well. I used to go to his house,” Stewart said in a previous interview. “But since he became president, he became another guy. Somebody I didn’t know.”
Funny enough, Stewart himself once flirted with sounding sympathetic toward Trump-world politics before pivoting hard once the culture-war temperature hit boiling point. In recent months, the rocker has blasted Trump over military comments and foreign policy, especially involving NATO and Ukraine.
As for Charles, his heavily choreographed American tour last month was billed as a charm offensive aimed at reminding Washington that the so-called “special relationship” still exists — even if both countries increasingly resemble family members forced to sit together at Thanksgiving.
During a historic address to Congress, the king warned that the alliance between Britain and America “cannot rest on past achievements” and pushed for closer international cooperation in an “unpredictable environment.”
Still, Charles also sprinkled in enough royal dad humor to keep things light, joking at a White House state dinner that if not for Britain, Americans “would be speaking French.” That line reportedly sailed straight over the room like a runaway weather balloon.
For his part, Trump kept things diplomatic afterward, calling Charles a “fantastic person” and praising both the king and Queen Camilla as “incredible people.”
