One would think that once Meghan Markle had officially married Prince Harry and started to form a routine, her white relatives would take a chill pill, simmer down, stop embarrassing her and crawl back into the messy closet from whence they came.
Alas, apparently that is not the case, at least not with Thomas Markle, Meghan’s dad. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have barely celebrated a month of wedded bliss and Thomas Markle decided it was a good idea to give his first interview—including spilling the deets on what he says were his private chats with his daughter and his new son-in-law.
Classy.
In an interview with Good Morning Britain on Monday, Markle said that he and Prince Harry had spoken over the phone multiple times, including about politics.
“Our conversation was, I was complaining that I didn’t like Donald Trump,” Markle said. “He said, ‘Give Donald Trump a chance.’ I sort of disagreed with that. That was his politics, I have my politics.”
Mind you, Harry is expected to keep his political views private (as are all members of the royal family), which is why some speculated that the Obamas weren’t invited to the royal wedding (i.e., to avoid Harry having to invite Trump as well, and who wants that orange menace at a party?).
Piers Morgan, one of Markle’s interviewers, asked him if he thought Harry supported Trump, to which the older man replied, “I would hope not now. At the time, he might have been.”
Trump politics aside, Markle also dished on Harry’s supposed thoughts on Brexit, saying that he thought the duke was open to the “experiment.”
“It was a loose conversation about something we have to try,” Markle said. “There was no real commitment to it. ... I think he was open to the experiment.”
As BuzzFeed notes, the 30-minute tell-all is probably not going to sit well with the royal family, given that these were meant to be private conversations (and as a rule of thumb, you don’t leak the details of these kinds of conversations, period ... well, unless you’re a member of the Trump administration. Maybe Markle heard about the White House job fair).
The father of the year also revealed how his daughter told him that she was dating a prince.
“The first phone call was, ‘Daddy, I have a new boyfriend,’ and I was like, ‘That’s really nice.’ Then the next call was like, ‘He’s British,’ and I said, ‘That’s really nice.’ Eventually the third time around was like, ‘He’s a prince,’ and at that point she said, ‘It’s Harry,’ and I said, ‘Oh, Harry, OK,’” he recalled. “[She said,] ‘Of course we’ll have to call him H so no one knows we’re talking about Harry.’”
Well, that’s fallen to shit now, hasn’t it? Since not only are you revealing his whole government name, Dad, but you’re going into detail about private conversations.
Markle also speculated that he would be a grandfather via the duke and duchess sometime soon.
“She’s wanted children for a long time,” he said of his daughter. “When she met Harry and spoke about how much she loves him, there’s got to be a child somewhere soon.”
This is not Markle’s first train wreck of a pass through the press. In the lead-up to the wedding, Markle was exposed for setting up photo shoots with the paparazzi.
He apologized for doing so, saying that he was just trying to change his image in the press.
“[Paparazzi would] take pictures of me to look negative,” he said. “So I thought this would be a nice way in improving my look.
“Obviously that all went to hell. I feel bad about it, I apologize for it, and that’s all I can do,” he added.
Clearly, as I said before, however, he’s not sorry enough, despite what he may say.
Markle said that watching the wedding was difficult for him; he wasn’t there because he was recovering from heart surgery, just days after the allegations surfaced about his photo op with the paparazzi.
“I was very upset it wasn’t me, because the whole world was watching my daughter. The unfortunate thing for me now is I’m a footnote in one of the greatest moments in history, rather than the dad walking her down the aisle,” Markle said.
But I guess, instead of being a footnote, he’ll settle for his 30 minutes of infamy.