For once, a momentous royal week is met with the sound of silence from Montecito.
Why would Harry and Meghan suddenly — and uncharacteristically — exhibit good manners?
Appropriateness? Decency, even?
I’ll give you one guess.
And no — it’s not because they’re graceful enough to allow this historic state visit among President Trump, First Lady Melania, King Charles, Queen Camilla, Prince William and Catherine, Princess of Wales, to be the smashing success it was.
Nor is it because they’ve been humbled by what they threw away, or Meghan’s recognition of the unique role she could have played as the American princess welcoming an American president in her adopted homeland.
As for allowing Charles to revel in a highlight of his brief tenure as King — forget about it.
Or for wisely keeping their mouths shut as the Western world reels from the assassination of Charlie Kirk — for we surely know what Harry and Meghan think of Donald Trump and his ilk.
For once, a momentous royal week is met with the sound of silence from Montecito
Why would Harry and Meghan suddenly – and uncharacteristically – exhibit good manners? Appropriateness? Decency, even?
And no – it’s not because they’re graceful enough to allow this historic state visit among President Trump, First Lady Melania, King Charles, Queen Camilla, Prince William and Catherine, Princess of Wales, to be the smashing success it was.
To be fair, we actually don’t know where Harry stands politically, but he tends to follow Meghan’s lead, and while she was no doubt appalled by Kirk’s killing, we all know that she hates Trump.
Not that she’ll even talk politics anymore. Her softball Bloomberg interview with Emily Chang a few weeks ago made that quite clear.
Chang showed a clip of a pre-Harry Meghan on The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore from 2016, the future duchess saying what Chang called ‘a few choice words’ for Trump, while wearing a tight lilac dress and bold red lip.
‘Yes, of course, Trump is divisive,’ Meghan said, adding that he was ‘misogynistic… and so vocal about it.’
We well know where Meghan stands. But listen to her dodge and weave as Chang tries to get the bare minimum out of Meghan — let alone get Meghan to acknowledge that bare-knuckled earlier statement.
‘Are there things that you’re dying to say or do right now that you feel like you can’t?’ Chang asked.
‘No,’ Meghan said, ever so solicitously. ‘I just make a choice. Of what matters to me and what’s important to me.’
Well, what seems to be important to Meghan is fame, wealth, adulation and her husband — in that order. Just my opinion.
And with her most recent failures surely feeling raw, Meghan has been firmly boxed into one option: Play nice.
The very recent second drop of her Netflix show, With Love, Meghan, was hardly a resounding success. It didn’t even make the streamer’s Top 10 upon debut, and the reviews on both sides of the pond, in right and left-leaning publications, were savage.
‘Season 2 is as sour as the first’ — The Hollywood Reporter
‘Like being gaslit by a multimillionaire’ — The Independent
‘Montecito Marie Antionette’ — The Telegraph
‘Painfully contrived’ —The Guardian
And Hilary Rose, in The Times of London, urged anyone viewing to ‘start therapy now’.
Wise words. If only Meghan and Harry would heed them.
With her most recent failures surely feeling raw, Meghan has been firmly boxed into one option: Play nice
The very recent second drop of her Netflix show, With Love, Meghan, was hardly a resounding success. It didn’t even make the streamer’s Top 10 upon debut, and the reviews on both sides of the pond, in right and left-leaning publications, were savage
Now, the flop of Meghan’s Netflix show — and the scaling back of the Sussexes’ overall deal with the streamer — is far from her only fresh humiliation.
She was a no-show at the Emmy awards. Same at New York Fashion Week — and this is a woman who clearly considers herself an influencer in fashion, if not an icon.
Harry himself is at increasingly loose ends.
What does he do all day? He seems to have no real job, no real friends in the US, no animating force or purpose.
What he does have, it seems, is a diminishing set of options.
Last week’s summit with King Charles, seeing his ill father for the first time in 19 months, consisted of a meeting that ran for just 54 minutes.
An 11,000-mile journey for less than an hour of face time. How humiliating. How obvious that the King remains suspicious as to his younger son’s next move.
For what do Harry and Meghan have to offer other than their connection to the British Royal Family?
The meeting has, of course, been spun as a win by Camp Sussex.
Was it, really?
After insisting to the media that the tea with Charles was ‘private’ (please — for how long?), Harry then gave an interview to The Guardian.
This was not a smart move. Meghan must be incensed.
When asked if he regretted anything about his memoir Spare, in which he spilled royal secrets and betrayed his family, Harry said no.
‘My conscience is clear,’ he said. He then went on to insist that he’s happier than ever, even though the last four years have been the equivalent of a firewalk for him.
‘I think parts of the British press want to believe that I am miserable, but I’m not,’ Harry said. ‘I am very happy with who I am and I like the life that I live… I have certainly had to deal with some very stressful events over the last four years. There has been the uncertainty and stress of the litigation’ — lawsuits he and his wife keep filing — ‘and finding out certain things that have really, really hurt.’
Know what else must have hurt? Hearing President Trump, at that lavish state banquet, call his visit ‘one of the highest honors of my life’, before praising King Charles for raising a ‘remarkable son’ in Prince William.
Brutal.
Of course, Harry just can’t help himself. But now he’s back under Meghan’s influence in Montecito. Perhaps she’s got him muzzled in hopes that he can somehow gain access, fresh intel and the chance to replenish those million-dollar deals.
Too bad. Few people could have guided these two in business better than Donald Trump.
