On 28 April, 2026, King Charles III rose to speak at dinner in the White House and delivered a quiet masterclass in the oldest art in politics: the art of persuasion.
Charles opened his dinner remarks not with a grand thesis, but with an act of sympathy. He acknowledged the shooting at the White House Correspondents' Dinner just days before, paying tribute to Trump and Melania for their "courage and steadfastness." This is the oldest rhetorical technique, dating back to Ancient Greece. Aristotle called it ethos.
Ethos refers to the speaker's credibility and moral character.
Ethos has three elements:
1. Phronesis - refers to the speaker's intelligence and experience, establishing them as knowledgeable
2. Arete - moral value of the argument
3. Eunoia - mutual understanding, speaker's likability and accessibility
Let’s see how the King continues the art of rhetoric in his dinner speech.
Then the gear change. Having established gravity, the King pivoted immediately to comedy — remarking upon the East Wing renovations before noting that the British had made their own "small attempt at real estate development of the White House in 1814," the year British forces burned it to the ground. The joke was self-deprecating on behalf of his nation, and flattering the President's own passion for construction. Lightheartedly, with a single sentence, the King desused two centuries of historical awkwardness.
My favourite King’s joke was about Winston Churchill facing President Ruselvelt naked as he came out of the bathroom (the President wanted to have a chat). Upon seeing Churchill without his clothes, Ruselvelt stated, "The British Prime Minister has nothing to conceal from the President."
Having moved through sympathy, self-deprecating comedy, and shared history, the King arrived at his true destination: the language of kinship. He spoke of the "truly unique" relationship between two nations bound by language, history, and common purpose — and made it feel, for a moment, genuinely felt rather than merely diplomatic. That is what rhetoric, at its finest, can do.
Warmly
Olga Smith