After a glance at the official schedule for President Trump‘s visit to the UK, there’s one notable Royal missing from the planned lunches, exhibitions, and tours, and that’s the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle.
As most reports point out, the official reason for Markle’s planned absence is the fact that she’s currently on maternity leave after the recent birth of her son Archie Harrison, who is less than 4-weeks-old. But Markle’s bowing out from meeting Trump has some wondering if it has anything to do with her history of being a vocal critic of the President.
From Elle:
Though we know that Markle was in fierce opposition to the election of President Trump, the new mother will be absent from the meeting due to her maternity leave, and not necessarily her personal feelings towards the 45th President.
That being said, prior to her royal status, the former Suits star spoke out repeatedly in favour of Trump’s 2016 Democratic Presidential opponent Hillary Clinton, and against reality TV star-turned politician Trump.
During an appearance on the The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore in 2016, the US-born Markle said that the prospect of a Trump presidency makes her want to defect to Canada.
“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…Trump has made it easy to see that you don’t really want that kind of world that he’s painting,” she said.
As CBS News points out, Trump’s past visit to the UK wasn’t as welcoming as he’d like. In July of 2018, throngs of protesters flooded the London streets protesting Trump’s visit, even flying an inflated effigy of a baby Trump overhead.
Other protesters followed Trump to his golf resort in Scotland, where they yelled chants of “Trump is a racist!” and “Trump is a liar!”
Featured image: screen grab/Guardian News
