The air in the Great Hall of Chequers, the Prime Minister’s official country residence, was stuffy – and it wasn’t just because dozens of journalists from across the world were crammed in.
In the minutes before Sir Keir Starmer and Donald Trump entered the room, there were intermittent moments of excited chatter and complete silence.
The atmosphere was tense, crackling. This wasn’t a typical bilateral press conference from two world leaders.
All of us knew that at some point, one of these 60 reporters would surely raise a subject that causes both of these men enormous anxiety for different reasons.
Lord Mandelson was fired as the UK ambassador to the US less than a week ago over his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, the same man who is still causing an enormous amount of domestic pressure for Trump – despite him having been dead since 2019.
We had all seen clips of the President lashing out at journalists who had previously tried to ask about his past friendship with Epstein.
Were we about to witness that in person, in these grand surroundings?
The truth is, nobody knew what was to come. At Trump’s last big international press conference, with Vladimir Putin in Alaska, the two presidents walked out after their opening speeches without answering a single question from reporters who had travelled hours to be there.
When Starmer and Trump finally entered the Great Hall – smaller than you’d imagine from the name – it was hard to read from their expressions how their talks had gone.
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First, there was all the detail from the US-UK tech agreement to get through. It’s genuinely a big deal, worth billions with all its moving parts, and the PM said it would mean the two countries ‘define this century together, as we did the last’.
Trump stood hunched on the podium beside him, looking a bit bored listening to his counterpart deliver his tightly written words.
He was quiet at the start of his own remarks, but – as is typical with this President – he started to get more animated when he veered off script and started to improvise about his love for the UK and loathing of Joe Biden.
Then, it was question time. Finally, the opportunity to needle the leaders on the topics they wanted to avoid.
We got plenty of interesting lines from Trump on Putin (‘He has let me down, he’s really let me down’) and Palestinian statehood (‘I have a disagreement with the Prime Minister on that score’).
Then there were questions on free speech and a bizarre one from a US reporter about Biden’s autopen, a favourite topic of the right-wing press over there.
However, there was still nothing on Epstein.
We had to wait for the very last question of the session, when Trump was asked by Sky News if he had any sympathy for Lord Mandelson. Some of the tension in the room immediately lifted.
His answer: ‘I don’t know him, actually.’
Out of all the possible responses to this inquiry – which, let’s not forget, was almost certainly going to come up at this session – this must have been the most bizarre and unsustainable.
Whether he was talking about Epstein or Mandelson with that comment, there are multiple pictures of the President with both. He was in the Oval Office with the former ambassador a matter of days ago.
But with those short words, he batted the subject over to Starmer, who spoke blandly about taking decisive action with the sacking.
And then the two leaders made a quick exit, vanishing back out the door past a forest of journalists’ raised arms.
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