Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Donald Trump nightmare
Prince Harry has been hit by a fresh setback this week – and it could have truly life-changing legal and financial implications for the duke.
COMMENT
America has voted, and as the dust settles and we gird our loins for the exhausting tranche of hand-wringing post motems, across America millions are uneasy about what Donald Trump’s return to the White House means for them.
And that extends to Montecito, where Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are facing a grim new reality stuck living in the United States of Donald.
There is no love lost between the Sussexes and the man about to move into the White House, a situation which could have serious, if not life-changing, legal and financial implications for the royal expats.
The question has already been asked if Trump could go so far as to deport the Duke.
See, for nearly two years a conservative Washington think tank called the Heritage Foundation has been fighting the US government for access to Harry’s visa application. On Friday, it came out and declared that the 40-year-old father-of-two will “very likely be held to account” by the 47th president if the Duke lied about his drug use on his immigration paperwork.
At issue is that people classed as “drug abusers” can be deemed “inadmissable”, a situation that domestic goddess Nigella Lawson once found herself in.
Last year, the Heritage Foundation accused Harry of “bragging and encouraging illegal drug use” after writing about taking cocaine, marijuana and psychedelic mushrooms in his memoir Spare.
Nile Gardiner, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Centre for Freedom, has now called this week’s election of the golfer-in-chief “game-changing” for the Harry court case, arguing that the Biden administration had been “shielding” King Charles’ son.
“It all changes with the new administration coming in,” Gardiner told the Times.
“There are a number of potential scenarios: A new Homeland Security secretary could order a review of Harry’s immigration records, or the president himself could order their release.”
Mr Trump said of this courtroom fight earlier this year, “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 biggest positive for the Duke here is that Mr Trump will have much bigger enemy fish to fry. The Project 2025 blueprint means that the incoming president will have his hands full exacting revenge on his political opponents and trying to work out which wing of the White House Melania is sleeping in.
Even leaving this visa business aside, assuming Harry’s legal right to stay in the country never becomes a serious issue, the political phoenixing of Mr Trump is terrible news for the first couple of Montecito.
What the election has exposed is social and cultural fault lines that pose much bigger philosophical and commercial problems for the couple.
The sad fact is that the Sussexes have aligned themselves with what I personally view as the right side of history – which unfortunately also happens to be the losing side this election cycle. What we have seen this week is 72 million Americans – 72 million consumers and possibly if not already Netflix subscribers – having firmly rejected what Harry and Meghan represent.
In the increasingly politically riven United States, Harry and Meghan quite obviously sit on the left, firmly in the Democrat camp. The causes they espouse and the work they are doing, such as on climate change and gender equality, are the very issues that hundreds of millions of Americans have essentially just declared less important than the price of eggs and their resentment at dropdown menus offering more than the choice of two pronouns.
In this fractured climate, with the Sussex brand indelibly stamped with the catch-all pejorative “woke” label (a reductive, intellectually anaemic way of writing off everything someone doesn’t agree with, starting with those uppity women on And Just Like That), what will happen to their money-making chances?
The Duke and Duchess, like all of us, need gainful employment and for that they need to be bankable commodities who can attract and hold the attention of big business.
In an America that has just elected a man who has called immigrants “rapists”, has said women should be treated “like s**t”, encouraged an armed insurrection, refused the peaceful transfer of power, said the invasion of Ukraine was “genius” and who told, seriously, 30,573 lies or misleading statements (as counted by The Washington Post), is that even remotely possible?
In Donald Trump’s US, will the Sussexes be able to keep making money?
Post-election, what is undeniable is that they are sailing directly into some very strong cultural headwinds.
At some stage next year, the Duchess of Sussex is reportedly set to launch her American Riviera Orchard lifestyle brand – how might this fare when Harry and Meghan symbolise everything that America has just firmly rejected at the ballot box?
The Duke and Duchess now find themselves in the same boat as the 67 million people who cast their ballot for Kamala Harris – facing an uncertain legal, professional and financial future.
The one thing that sets them apart from those 66,999,999 other Harris voters – as the new owners of a house in Portugal as of October, they have options and can always escape.
Another glass of vino tinto, anyone?
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles
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