Meghan Markle Won't Meet With Donald Trump When He Visits England Next Month
Next month President Donald Trump will make an official three-day state visit to the United Kingdom. While he’s there, he’ll be meeting with many members of the royal family at various events. But the lone American royal, Meghan Markle, is noticeably absent from the itinerary.
According to CNN, Queen Elizabeth II will be joined by Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles, the Duchess of Cornwall, to greet the president and First Lady Melania Trump at Buckingham Palace. (They’ll accompany the couple to other events over the course of their stay as well.) As for the rest of the family, Prince Harry will join his grandmother for a private lunch with Donald and Melania that afternoon. The first night of Trump’s visit ends with a state banquet, and Prince William and Kate Middleton are expected to attend that.
Markle, however, will reportedly not be joining any of those events—not even the lunch with Prince Harry.
There’s a simple explanation for this: Markle is still officially on maternity leave, so she’ll likely be at home with baby Archie. That said, this may come as a welcome reprieve for Markle. The actress was quite vocal about politics and her dislike of Trump specifically before she became the Duchess of Sussex. (The royal family is expected to remain politically neutral in public.)
“It’s really the moment I go, we film Suits in Toronto, and I might just stay in Canada…” she said on The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore in 2016 about Trump’s election. “Yes, of course, Trump is divisive, think about female voters alone, right? I think it was in 2012 the Republican Party lost the female vote by 12 points; that is a huge number and with as misogynistic as Trump is, and so vocal about it, that is a huge chunk of it.”
This isn’t Trump’s first visit to the United Kingdom since becoming president. He and Melania met Queen Elizabeth at Windsor Castle in 2018, when he reportedly kept Her Majesty waiting for 15 minutes which caused a major stir on Twitter. Trump also walked in front of the queen, which the New York Times dubbed a “royal no-no.”
If only we could be on the royal family group text to hear what they really think after the visit…