President Donald Trump was breaking bread with the United Kingdom’s King Charles III, but he’s crossed swords with one of the guests at the state banquet: Rupert Murdoch.

Trump lavished praise upon his hosts during the first presidential visit to Windsor Castle. He is the first U.S. president invited for two U.K. state dinners.

“The British Empire laid the foundations of law, liberty, free speech, and individual rights virtually everywhere,” Trump said.

But his comments contrasted sharply with the harsh terms he wielded against Murdoch in July, after filing a $10 billion lawsuit against him as owner The Wall Street Journal, over an article linking the president to accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Pranksters projected a video of Trump and Epstein on the castle wall for the visit.

Trump had lambasted the article on social media as “FAKE NEWS” and the paper as a “useless ‘rag.’” The company has called the lawsuit meritless.

Trump didn’t mention Murdoch in his toast before tucking into deboned and stuffed chicken. The table was half a football field long, with 100 staffers to serve the food. The dinner featured 160 guests including corporate CEOs Tim Cook of Apple, Jensen Huang of NVIDIA and Satya Nadella of Microsoft.

Trump noted he shook “about 150 hands,” suggesting he might have pressed the flesh with Murdoch before dinner.

“The king knew every single person and every single company, and some of them had bad names like XYZ-Q3 – and he knew every one of them, or at least I think he did because nobody was complaining,” Trump said.

Trump is no stranger to litigation. He has sued other news organizations, including filing a $15 billion lawsuit this week against the New York Times.

As Trump left the White House on Sept. 16, he berated an ABC News reporter about how the company paid him $16 million in December 2024 to settle his lawsuit over a misstatement about a lawsuit by columnist E. Jean Carroll.

Asked about how he would police hate speech, Trump said, “We’ll probably go after people like you because you treat me so unfairly – it’s hate.”

The disputed Wall Street Journal article described Trump having signed a page in a birthday book for Epstein, who died by suicide in jail while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

House Republicans have since released the entire book, which includes a page attributed to Trump. Trump denies writing the letter.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Litigation not on the menu as Trump, Rupert Murdoch dine at Windsor Castle

Reporting by Bart Jansen, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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