Queen Elizabeth found Donald Trump ‘gracious’: source

Queen Elizabeth II found Donald Trump and his family to be “gracious” and “wonderful guests” — despite recent claims the late monarch dubbed him “very rude,” according to an ex-Buckingham Palace official.

In the upcoming biography, “A Voyage Around the Queen,” author Craig Brown alleges the queen confided in staff that she was annoyed by the way the former president behaved when they met, and “particularly disliked” the way he kept gazing over her shoulder.

However, a former aide with close knowledge of the Queen’s views, told The Post: “I know this to be untrue, first hand.

“I spoke to the queen subsequently after the State visit, and other members of the royal household, and she told me she found them [the Trumps] to be really gracious and wonderful guests to have in the palace.”

Trump, 78, was hosted by the Queen in the UK twice during his presidency: once for a working trip in July 2018 and again for a state visit in June 2019, when he brought his wife Melania and four of his five children — Ivanka, Donald Jr. Eric and Tiffany — to stay at Buckingham Palace.

The ex-staffer added: “She said they were a lovely family to have in the palace.”

Brown writes that the queen made her thoughts about the current Republican presidential candidate clear in a private lunch.

“A few weeks after President Trump’s visit, for instance, she confided in one lunch guest that she found him ‘very rude’: she particularly disliked the way he couldn’t stop looking over her shoulder, as though in search of others more interesting,” Brown continues, according to an excerpt serialized in the Daily Mail.

“She also believed President Trump ‘must have some sort of arrangement’ with his wife Melania, or else why would she have remained married to him?” he adds.

While the palace source confirmed to The Post that the monarch would hold private lunches with a small cross-section of household staff once a month, they added, “I always found her to be incredibly discreet in the private lunches that she held.

“It doesn’t ring true, as someone who worked for her, it’s not the kind of thing she would say. 

“It contradicts directly her recollection to me of the state visit and of the general atmospherics at the time … I find the whole thing difficult to believe because it wasn’t in her character. She was so impossible to read on certain things by design. She didn’t want to be partisan, and people would project their own thoughts on her,” the source said.

“I worked for her for over three years and, for the most part, she was certainly inscrutable.”

Trump did, indeed, make a string of gaffes on his meetings with the Queen.

At Windsor Castle in July 2018, he walked in front of the monarch while inspecting the Guard of Honor, a clear breach of protocol.

A year later, Trump made another blunder during an official state visit when he put his hand on Queen Elizabeth’s back during the state banquet at Buckingham Palace.

While royal family’s website guides that there are “no obligatory codes of behavior when meeting the queen or a member of the royal family,” the traditional forms of etiquette suggested are a neck bow for men and a curtsy for women

However, the palace source recalled, “I remember someone once asking her about the protocol for a particular person on a different state visit. She expressed very clearly that her interest was to be the best host she could be and to make our guest feel comfortable.

“She wasn’t really interested in people following protocol. She wanted them to feel comfortable and welcome. With respect to Trump as he was reviewing those troops, she would have only been worried he was in the right place at the right time,” the source added. “The book seems to mis-use her ethos and approach to these kind of visits.”

Upon the state visit, the queen gifted Trump an abridged first edition of Winston Churchill’s book on World War II and gave Melania a “specially commissioned silver box” with a “handcrafted enamel lid” that was designed to match the ceiling of Buckingham Palace’s music room.

Trump, meanwhile, boasted, “I have such a great relationship, and we were laughing and having fun. And her people said she hasn’t had so much fun in 25 years.”

Asked about the Brown book, Steven Cheung, Trump’s communications director, told The Post, “This is nothing more than fake news intended to use made-up, salacious fabrications in order to sell copies of a book that belongs in the bargain bin of the fiction section.”