Trump has the measure of Harry and Meghan

‘The gaiety of nations’ is a lovely phrase, as nations are generally in the news when they are in a state of woe. Originally, it was Samuel Johnson’s tribute to actor and playwright David Garrick (‘I am disappointed by that stroke of death, which has eclipsed the gaiety of nations and impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure’), but I can’t help associating it with political leaders.

Politicians don’t generally set out to be amusing. But for many, the gap between what they are and what they believe they are renders them infinitely entertaining. UK foreign secretary David Lammy springs immediately to mind, but it’s probably true of most of the Labour Party, as we witnessed from that hilarious recent WhatsApp car crash. It’s the David Brent effect. Keir Starmer has it in spades – the more serious he tries to sound, the funnier he comes across. The recent footage of those two preening popinjays, Macron and Trudeau, at this week’s AI Action Summit in Paris, posing like two male models off to dinner after a long day at a Vilebrequin bathing-trunks shoot, was a masterclass in evoking subtle sniggers.

These politicians have no idea how ridiculous they are – but Donald Trump does, which is why he wins people round. In fact, the US president plays up to it. As Gareth Roberts has put it: ‘Trump is unusual in that he is comfortable with his own oddness. It’s impossible to imagine him worrying, “Oh, I hope I don’t make a fool of myself”, one of the key human qualities that almost all the human race shares.’

Trump does do some deadly serious things, such as swiftly signing an executive order stopping girls and women being injured in sports by men with a fetish. But he has also added greatly to the gaiety of nations. Like all truly confident people, he doesn’t mind whether people laugh with him or at him, as their opinions don’t impact upon his sense of self. The YMCA dance, which he has always been fully aware looks like the most ludicrous thing ever, is a great example.

I’ll bet Joe Biden didn’t like people laughing at how feeble he is, or at his massive vanity in continuing in a role he was surreally unsuited to and which damaged the US’s standing greatly in the eyes of its enemies (if he was even aware of such real-world facts, that is). But if Trump suffered some misfortune, he would find a way to build it into his ‘routine’. That’s why he gives people a feeling of comfort and continuity, despite his recklessness. He’s a vaudevillian.

I doubt if he cares about the deluge of bitchy cartoons about him (and it must be said that Trump has probably inspired some of the lamest cartoons the British press has ever produced – Hogarth would not be proud). I’d also be surprised if he’s fussed about all the jokes about Melania, aware that she’s as tough as he is. They do annoy me, though, due to the hypocrisy of the kind of faux-feminists who indulge in them: ‘Look at the funny foreigner who doesn’t spill her guts in the approved modern manner!’ During the Women’s March in 2017, following the first election of Trump, we were treated to the spectacle of banners that said, ‘MELANIA, BLINK TWICE IF YOU NEED HELP’. This was made even more inappropriately patronising by the fact that this was the day when hijabs were voluntarily worn by women not condemned to them by birth, in protest against Trump’s rhetoric about Islam. It would make far more sense for Western women to take on ‘BLINK TWICE OVER YOUR BURQA IF YOU NEED HELP’ as a slogan. But of course they wouldn’t, the lily livered wet wipes.

As Trump does not care whether people poke fun at him, so he is similarly keen to deal it out. This weekend, the New York Post reported that the POTUS has decided against attempting to have Prince Harry deported. This is despite the peevish princeling being the subject of litigation, as the Heritage Foundation has alleged that his past use of recreational drugs should have disqualified him from obtaining the US visa that allows him to live in Montecito, California.

Anyone who has read – or rather, suffered through – Harry’s autobiography, Spare, will know of his fondness for marijuana and the occasional foray into psychedelic drugs. He memorably recalled having a conversation with a toilet while out of his box on magic mushrooms, though he may have confused this with his first date with Meghan Markle. Rather than own his drug use, he once came up with the absolute howler of a theory that he became a druggie pretty much because the press said he was one. ‘You’re then either the “playboy prince”, the “failure”, the “dropout” or, in my case, the “thicko”, the “cheat”, the “underage drinker”, the “irresponsible drug-taker”’, he said during one of his many court cases (this one in 2023). ‘I thought that, if [the media] are printing this rubbish about me and people were believing it, I may as well “do the crime”, so to speak.’

Whatever Harry’s reason for doing more blow than a Love Island love rat, Heritage’s Nile Gardiner was quite right to tell the Telegraph: ‘Anyone who applies to the United States has to be truthful on their application, and it is not clear that is the case with Prince Harry.’ He went on to suggest that the Biden administration might have turned a blind eye due to the doleful duo’s support of the Democrats (that went well!). But rather than react in a punitive manner, Trump told the New York Post that he has no intention of ordering Hazza never to darken the Staten Island doors again. ‘I don’t want to do that’, smirked The Donald. ‘I’ll leave him alone. He’s got enough problems with his wife. She’s terrible.’ In the past, Trump has also opined that ‘poor Harry is being led around by the nose’.

Trump knows how much this depiction, in particular, of Meghan will annoy her. She has several images of herself, from siren to saint, feminist to femme fatale, but middle-aged (her official age is 43) owner of a hen-pecked husband probably isn’t one of them. I strongly doubt she took Hilda Ogden, Sybil Fawlty, Hyacinth Bucket or Yootha Joyce’s Mildred as role models when a girl. The stereotype ruins her sexual capital somewhat, which has always been her strongest currency.

I can’t help thinking that there’s a part of each of the Sussexes that would actually relish being deported, but for vastly different reasons: Harry so he can see his mates again; Meghan so she can cast herself as a tragic, persecuted heroine. But thanks to Trump’s intervention on Harry’s visa, Meghan’s hen-pecker-in-chief image will stick with her now, and their marriage will continue to go from romcom to sitcom.

Julie Burchill is a spiked columnist. Her book, Welcome to the Woke Trials: How #Identity Killed Progressive Politics, is published by Academica Press.