President Donald Trump stated on Sunday that he never called Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex and the wife of Britain’s Prince Harry, “nasty.”
The president used the adjective while discussing Meghan in a recent interview with Britain’s The Sun newspaper in the run-up to his state visit to the U.K. on Monday. But the debate on social media since then has raged over whether his use of “nasty” referred to the duchess herself or the negative things she said about him in 2016.
Trump and his defenders have accused the news media of spreading a deliberately false narrative about him.
A look at the claim:
TRUMP: “I never called Meghan Markle ‘nasty.’ Made up by the Fake News Media, and they got caught cold!” — tweet Sunday.
I never called Meghan Markle “nasty.” Made up by the Fake News Media, and they got caught cold! Will @CNN, @nytimes and others apologize? Doubt it!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 2, 2019
Trump, in fact, did use the word “nasty” to describe Meghan when asked about her comments about him during the 2016 campaign.
In audio of the interview posted on the newspaper’s website, Trump discusses the upcoming state visit, his second meeting with Queen Elizabeth II and the Trump family members who are tagging along on the trip. The reporter then asks about Meghan, who isn’t joining other royals to meet Trump and his wife, Melania, due to the recent birth of her first child, Archie, in May.
Asked if he was sorry to miss out on meeting the American-born Meghan and told that she “wasn’t so nice about you” during the campaign, Trump says: “I didn’t know that. No, I hope she’s OK. I did not know that.”
When told that Meghan once said she might move to Canada if Trump was elected, Trump responds: “No, I didn’t know that she was nasty.”
