Trump takes pity on Prince Harry

Say what you like about President Trump — and people very much do — but there is little doubt that, at the outset of his second term, the Donald has behaved like a man in a hurry. Not a day seems to go past without a blizzard of executive orders closing this and shuttering that, and generally attempting to Make America Great Again. Yet amid all the threatened deportations of the undesirable, there is one particular high-profile resident alien whom the president has decided to allow to remain in the country: none other than everyone’s favorite Montecito dweller, Prince Harry.

Few would disagree with Trump’s comments on Meghan

There had been a great deal of speculation, whipped up by various forces in the Republican Party, including the think tank the Heritage Foundation, that a resurgent Trump would deport Harry from the States. This was on the grounds that the drug-taking stories in the Duke of Sussex’s memoir Spare sat uneasily with a country that has always frowned on its visitors having any kind of narcotic past. (Look at British chef Nigella Lawson, who confessed to taking cocaine on a small number of occasions and has consistently found entering the United States a nightmare ever since.)

In Prince Harry’s case, however, the president has chosen to exercise magnanimity — albeit with a catch. He told the New York Post: “I don’t want to [deport Harry]. I’ll leave him alone. He’s got enough problems with his wife. She’s terrible.”

Few would disagree with Trump’s comments on Meghan, whose appalling-looking new television series looms ahead of us with the inevitability of judgment day. Still, it’s a volte-face from Trump’s earlier statements about Harry. He had previously said, “I wouldn’t protect him. He betrayed the Queen. That’s unforgivable. He would be on his own if it was down to me.” The president suggested that the Biden administration had been too soft on the Duke of Sussex and that he would take a harder line. However, the pressures of office seem to have meant that this particular prince will escape further censure and be able to remain in his strange Californian exile as long as he wishes to.

Needless to say, Harry and Meghan are not fans of Trump and have taken consistent swipes at him in their public statements. Just yesterday, Harry opened the Invictus Games in Canada with the pointed remarks that “at this moment, when there is no shortage of crises, no absence of uncertainty, no lack of weak moral character in the world, the values you embody, the way you carry yourselves — not only at the Invictus games, but each and every day — your courage, your resilience, your humanity, illuminate a path forward for us all.” Some people might have considered “thank you, Mr President” to be a more appropriate response, but never mind.

It is one of Trump’s more endearing qualities that he is a fully paid-up admirer of the royal family and indeed idolized the late Elizabeth II beyond measure. It is not known whether she returned his appreciation. Certainly King Charles will deal with Trump with appropriate tact and dignity when the president’s inevitable state visit rolls around, and it would be astonishing if the Prince and Princess of Wales did anything differently. (Perhaps Prince Andrew will sidle up to him and, after some reminiscences of their mutual friend Jeffrey Epstein, try and elicit a job in his administration: any port in a storm.) It is therefore left to Harry and Meghan, who would so dearly have preferred a Kamala Harris administration, to fight the good fight against the 47th president: a fight that, on current view, he is undeniably winning so far.