When President Donald Trump used the word “nasty” when talking about Meghan Markle last week, the media didn’t waste any time plugging the soundbite into their latest anti-Trump narrative. But the record is being clarified, and it turns out that it’s President Trump who is the victim — of the dishonest media.
Trump’s “nasty” remark was set up by a reporter who goaded the president to comment about “not so nice” things Meghan Markle said about Trump, Eddie Scarry writes. President Trump told Piers Morgan himself in an interview airing Wednesday that he was not calling Markle “nasty,” but rather, he was taken aback by the negative things she had said about him.
“I wasn’t referring to ‘she’s nasty.’ I said she was nasty about me. And essentially I didn’t know she was nasty about me,” Trump told Morgan in the interview.
The media lied about Trump – again
Trump’s allegedly offending remark came during an interview with British tabloid The Sun, who interviewed Trump before he went away on his trip. The interviewer, apparently looking to get a juicy soundbite from the president, repeatedly prodded him for a Trump-ian response.
“Are you sorry not to see her? Because she wasn’t so nice during the campaign, I don’t know if you saw that,” the journalist said. When told that Markle would be away on maternity leave during his trip, Trump said, “I didn’t know that. No, I hope she’s OK. I did not know that.”
Of course, what Markle said about Trump almost three years ago is irrelevant to Trump’s meeting with the royal family in Britain. But the reporter didn’t let this one go, recalling Markle’s 2016 comments that Trump is “divisive” and “misogynistic.”
“She said she’d move to Canada if you got elected; turned out she moved to Britain,” the reporter pursued, according to Scarry. Finally, Trump said: “That will be good. A lot of people moving here, so what can I say? No, I didn’t know that she was nasty.”
Trump went on to say that Markle would be a “very good” American princess — but it was too late; the media got their soundbite, and the outrage train left the station.
The breakdown
The “nasty” controversy came amid a wider media blitz to smear President Trump while he’s away on his first state visit to Britain. The media’s lines of attack have been predictable: the blundering U.S. president insults the royal family, interferes in local politics in a time of turmoil, and embarrasses his country in front of a long-standing ally.
But the media had their narratives about Trump’s visit to Britain lined up before he even got on the plane. The media’s coverage of Trump’s Britain trip has been shot through with predictable motifs that Trump is an unwelcome guest and an uncouth disrupter in Britain’s national politics — a narrative that was only exacerbated by protests in London a nasty screed from the city’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, who compared Trump to 20th-century fascist dictators before Trump’s arrival.
Trump fired back, calling Khan a “stone cold loser.” But the media blamed Trump for the spat, apparently agreeing with Khan’s assessment that Trump is a “global threat.”
Some in the media have also suggested that Queen Elizabeth took shots at the president when she lauded NATO, which Trump has attacked, and similar post-World War II institutions in a speech at Buckingham Palace on Monday. (But that probably says more about the media’s prejudices than the queen.)
Straying from the norm
The media has also depicted President Trump’s comments on the Brexit turmoil as a break with the norm, apparently forgetting all about former President Barack Obama’s heavy-handed remarks on Brexit in 2016. The former president warned Britain not to leave the European Union, saying they would have to go to the “back of the queue” in any trade deal with America if Britain did so.
The media was fine with Obama’s comments because Obama said them, and the media is pro-EU and pro-globalist. By contrast, Trump “interfered” with British politics by having the wrong politics: he affirmed Brexit, threw his weight behind Brexiteer Boris Jonson in his bid to become prime minister, and touted a bilateral trade deal between America and Britain.
By any reckoning, Trump has done nothing to deserve the avalanche of bad press on his state visit. But the trip was too sensational an opportunity for the media to pass up.
No ill will
For her part, Markle did not join the royal family’s reception with the Trumps at Buckingham Palace on Monday, but Trump maintains that there’s no ill will between them. In his interview with Morgan, Trump said that Markle’s husband, Prince Harry, is a “terrific guy” and remarked that Markle is “very nice.”
“You know what? She’s doing a good job, I hope she enjoys her life,” Trump said. “I think she’s very nice.”
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