President Donald Trump did not wait long after Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, left California. Within days of their return to Britain, he told reporters he was “happy about it,” then sharpened the attack in a GB News interview: Meghan, he said, had been a “horrible influence” on her husband, Harry had written a book that was “terrible” to Prince William, and if he were King Charles he would not have taken them back.
That combination — relief that they have left the United States, loyalty to the late Queen and to King Charles, and a personal verdict on the marriage — is what tabloid headlines have packaged as a “horrifying” claim. The word Trump actually used on camera was “horrible.” The substance is the same: he is arguing that Meghan changed Harry, that the couple treated the royal family with “great disrespect,” and that the King’s willingness to welcome them home is more generous than he himself would have been.
The California chapter is over — at least for now
Harry and Meghan stepped down as working royals in 2020 and built a life in Montecito, California: a large hillside estate, Netflix and Spotify deals, the Archewell foundation, and a lifestyle brand. They kept that U.S. home, and a property in Portugal, even as they flew back to Britain in late August 2026 with their children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet. Reports say the children have been enrolled in British schools and that the family is expected to live in a non-royal house outside London rather than resume official royal duties.
How long the stay lasts is still unclear. “Extended period” is the phrase used around the move; it is not a formal announcement that they have abandoned America for good. That ambiguity is part of why the story travels. A return close enough for school runs and family visits also puts the Sussexes back on the same island as the people they left — and the people they later described in interviews and in Harry’s memoir Spare.
Trump’s first public reaction came in the Oval Office, after a meeting with travel executives, when a reporter asked about the couple leaving the United States.
“I’m happy about it. I was not a fan,” he said. “I thought they treated the royal family with great disrespect. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the way she acted. I thought she was terribly disrespectful to the Queen, to King Charles. I don’t know. Maybe I’m different. I wouldn’t have taken them back.”
That is the political frame: not a policy announcement about visas or security, but a personal scorecard. He likes the institution. He liked the late Queen. He likes the King. He does not like how the Sussexes handled the split.
The line that turned a royal feud into a marriage story
The sharper language came in the GB News interview with Bev Turner. Asked about the couple’s U.S. exit and U.K. return, Trump said the Sussexes had done “too many horrible things” to be taken back easily.
“First of all, I think King Charles is fantastic, he’s a friend of mine. Personally, I would not have taken them back. Too much hate, too many really bad things. He wrote a book that was so bad, and she was a horrible influence on him. What she’s done to him is unacceptable.”
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That is the sentence Newsner and others recast as a “horrifying” claim about the marriage. Trump is not alleging a crime or announcing a legal finding. He is offering a familiar celebrity-politics diagnosis: that Harry, in his view, has been steered, that Meghan is the steering force, and that the public rupture with William and the wider family is the proof.
He went further on the brothers. “I think that what she has done and him [Prince Harry], he wrote a book that was very terrible to William, it was terrible. The things he said, I wouldn’t… I mean, it’s just me. I’m sure I’m wrong on this, but I would not have taken him back. I would have never spoken to him again.”
The hedge — “I’m sure I’m wrong on this” — is classic Trump: a hard judgment wrapped in a shrug. The judgment itself is not new. In a 2022 Piers Morgan interview he predicted the marriage would “end bad,” called Harry “whipped,” and said the Queen should have stripped titles and told them not to come around. Those older clips are now being replayed next to the 2026 remarks, which is why the story reads as a claim about the marriage rather than only about protocol.
Why Trump keeps circling Meghan
The feud predates the Montecito years. During Trump’s first presidency, Meghan had described him as “misogynistic” and “divisive.” He later said in a Sun interview that he “didn’t know that she was nasty,” then denied he had called her nasty even after audio circulated. He also said he was “not a fan of hers” from “day one” and that she had been “very disrespectful to the queen.” After the Sussexes moved to the U.S., he posted that American taxpayers should not pay for their security. In 2025, asked about Harry’s immigration issues after Spare discussed drug use, Trump said he would “leave him alone” because “he’s got enough problems with his wife. She’s terrible.”
Put those comments in a line and a pattern appears. Trump rarely attacks Harry as a standalone figure. He attacks the pairing: Meghan’s tone toward the late Queen, Harry’s book about William, the couple’s interviews, and what he calls her influence. That is why a story about a presidential soundbite becomes a story about a marriage. The president is treating the marriage as the engine of the royal crisis, not as a private relationship that happens to involve two famous people.
Supporters of the Sussexes will hear that as the same old pile-on: an American politician inserting himself into a British family fight and pinning the blame on the woman who married in. Critics of the couple will hear confirmation of what they already believe — that Harry’s public war with his family accelerated after 2018 and that Meghan was central to the strategy. Both readings are already flooding social media. Neither can be proven from a White House gaggle.
The Queen, the King, and the loyalty Trump wants to advertise
Every time Trump talks about the Sussexes, he talks about the monarchs he prefers.
“I had a very good relationship with the queen, really good, I got to know her very well,” he said this week. “A really good relationship with King Charles — I knew him as Prince Charles and King Charles. I’ve known him for a long time.” He called Charles a “great, great guy,” praised the King’s recent visit to America and speech to Congress, and singled out Charles’s “bravery” while undergoing cancer treatment.
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This is not small talk. It is a contrast. On one side: the late Queen and the current King, described as friends, “fantastic,” beloved in America. On the other: a son and daughter-in-law accused of “great disrespect.” Trump is aligning himself with the institution’s senior generation and with William’s camp by implication, even while insisting the decision to take Harry back is Charles’s to make.
He also used the King’s health as moral coloring. A monarch “fighting through a very tough situation,” he suggested, still offered an olive branch. Trump’s own standard, he said, would have been colder: no return, no further conversation.
Spare, William, and a door that may stay shut
Harry’s 2023 memoir remains the exhibit Trump cites when he talks about William. Spare described physical confrontation, media briefings, and a brotherly relationship that collapsed after Meghan entered the family. Palace sources have long said William treats broken trust as final. An unnamed insider quoted in British coverage of the 2026 return put it this way: when you go beyond a certain point with William, “there’s no going back.” Distance across an ocean made the rift manageable. Proximity does not.
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King Charles is widely reported to want time with Archie and Lilibet. William and Catherine, Princess of Wales, are described as far less enthusiastic. There is no public plan for Harry and Meghan to become working royals again. Security remains an unresolved practical question; Harry has previously said he would not feel safe bringing his family back without police protection, and no new official arrangement has been announced.
Trump’s intervention does not change any of that. It does, however, make the temperature higher. A U.S. president repeating that he would “never [have] spoken to him again” is not a family mediator. It is another megaphone in a story that already had too many.
What the “influence” claim actually does — and does not — prove
Strip away the headline adjectives and Trump’s claim is three stacked opinions:
- Meghan treated the late Queen and King Charles with disrespect.
- Harry’s book and public comments about William were “terrible.”
- Meghan’s influence on Harry made those choices worse, which is why the marriage itself is part of the indictment.
Points one and two are arguments about public conduct. Point three is speculation about a private relationship. No interviewer this week produced new evidence of the marriage failing. No court filing, no statement from the couple, and no Buckingham Palace briefing confirmed a split. Older Trump predictions that the marriage would “end bad” are being treated as prophecy by people who already dislike Meghan and as recycled grievance by people who already dislike Trump.
That is why the piece travels at high speed. It sits at the intersection of three reliable traffic engines: a U.S. president who speaks in verdicts, a royal couple who left the firm and then came home, and a marriage the public has been invited to judge since 2018.
Harry and Meghan have not issued a detailed reply to the latest remarks. They rarely do in real time. The royal household has not put the president’s comments on the record. The facts that are on the record are simpler than the headline: the Sussexes are back in Britain with their children; Trump is glad they left America; he says he would not have forgiven them; and he still describes Meghan as the decisive influence on a husband he thinks has been “led.”
Whether that is a fair reading of eight years of interviews, a memoir, and a transatlantic move is a separate argument. The president has now made his version of it, on camera, twice in a matter of days — first from the Oval Office, then to a British television audience that has followed every chapter of this story since the wedding. The couple can ignore it. The internet will not.
