For six years, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle built their life in America.
California became home. Their children grew up there. Their careers changed there. And from thousands of miles away, the couple spoke openly about the circumstances that had led them to step back from royal duties and leave Britain in 2020.
Then, at the end of August 2026, everything shifted again.
Harry and Meghan returned to the United Kingdom with Prince Archie, 7, and Princess Lilibet, 5, for what has been described as an extended stay. They are expected to remain non-working royals rather than return to official duties. (MarketScreener)
Days later, President Donald Trump was asked what he thought about their departure from the United States.
He did not dodge the question.
He did not offer a carefully polished diplomatic response.
Instead, during remarks in the Oval Office on September 2, Trump delivered several blunt observations that made his opinion of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex remarkably clear.
Four statements in particular stood out.
He was “happy” they had left.
He was “not a fan.”
He believed they had treated the Royal Family with “great disrespect.”
And if the decision had belonged to him?
Trump said he would not have taken them back. (Reuters)
It Began With One Question in the Oval Office
The exchange was remarkably straightforward.
A reporter asked Trump for his reaction to the recent news that Harry and Meghan had left the United States and gone back to Britain.
Trump’s first response consisted of only a handful of words:
“I’m happy about it.”
Then he added:
“I was not a fan.” (Reuters)
There was little ambiguity in the answer.
But Trump immediately began explaining why he felt that way, and his explanation had less to do with California than with Buckingham Palace.
For him, the Sussex story appeared to be inseparable from his own admiration for the late Queen Elizabeth II and King Charles III.
Trump Immediately Brought Up the Queen
Trump recalled having what he described as a very good relationship with Queen Elizabeth.
He said he had gotten to know her well.
Then he turned to Charles.
Trump explained that he had known the current King since the years when he was still Prince Charles and described him enthusiastically as a “great, great guy.” (MarketScreener)
It was only after establishing that affection for the senior royals that Trump explained his objection to Harry and Meghan.
He believed the couple had treated the family badly.
“I thought they treated the royal family with great disrespect,” Trump said. (MarketScreener)
Those words were his opinion, of course, rather than an objective description of the long-running dispute between the Sussexes and the monarchy.
Harry and Meghan have offered a very different account of the events that drove them away.
But Trump clearly wasn’t persuaded by it.
His Third Remark Focused Directly on Meghan
Then the president became more specific.
Rather than continuing to speak about Harry and Meghan together, he singled out Meghan.
Trump said he didn’t like the way she had acted and characterized her conduct toward Queen Elizabeth and King Charles as “terribly disrespectful.” (MarketScreener)
It was a striking remark, but hardly the first evidence that Trump and Meghan do not see eye to eye.
Their public disagreement stretches back years.
Before becoming the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan criticized Trump during his first presidential campaign. Trump subsequently made his own negative comments about her.
Even after Meghan and Harry moved to California, the friction occasionally resurfaced.
Now the couple had left the United States altogether.
And when someone finally asked Trump what he thought about that, years of tension seemed to collapse into a few sentences.
Then Came the Fourth — and Sharpest — Remark
Trump could have ended there.
He didn’t.
Instead, he imagined what he would have done if he had been making decisions for the Royal Family.
His answer was unequivocal:
“If I were the royal family, I would not have taken them back.” (Investing.com)
It was arguably the strongest part of the exchange.
Trump wasn’t merely saying he disagreed with Harry and Meghan.
He was saying that, in his view, what happened after their 2020 departure was serious enough that he would not have welcomed them back.
But there is an important distinction buried beneath that statement.
Harry and Meghan have returned to Britain.
They have not returned to their former lives as working royals.
Six Years Earlier, Their Departure Had Seemed Almost Permanent
In early 2020, Harry and Meghan announced that they intended to step back from their positions as senior working members of the Royal Family.
The decision quickly became one of the biggest royal stories in decades.
After a period in Canada, the couple established themselves in California.
Their new life was deliberately different.
They pursued independent commercial projects.
They signed media deals.
They raised their children largely outside the British royal system.
And they began talking publicly about what they said had happened behind palace walls.
The separation soon became much more than geographical.
It became emotional.
Institutional.
Public.
Then Came Oprah
In March 2021, Harry and Meghan sat opposite Oprah Winfrey and discussed their experiences inside the monarchy.
The interview generated headlines around the world.
Harry spoke about feeling unsupported.
Meghan discussed her mental health struggles during her time as a working royal and described conversations that she said had taken place about how dark Archie’s skin might be before he was born.
Prince William subsequently responded publicly to the racism controversy, telling reporters that the royals were “very much not a racist family.” (MarketScreener)
For people sympathetic to Harry and Meghan, the interview represented an attempt to explain why their situation had become intolerable.
For critics, it represented a deeply damaging airing of private family matters.
Trump has now made it abundantly clear which interpretation is closer to his own.
The Story Didn’t End With Oprah
More revelations followed.
There was Harry and Meghan’s Netflix documentary.
There were additional interviews.
Then, in January 2023, Harry published Spare.
The memoir included deeply personal accounts of his relationships with his father, King Charles, and his brother, Prince William.
Harry described arguments, resentments and private moments that would once have remained firmly behind palace doors.
The book became an international bestseller.
It also deepened the sense that the rupture between Harry and the rest of his family might never completely heal.
Years passed.
Harry returned to Britain on various occasions.
Meghan appeared far less frequently.
Archie and Lilibet remained primarily in California.
And then 2026 arrived.
Suddenly, Britain Was Part of Their Future Again
News emerged in August that the Sussex family planned to leave California and spend an extended period in Britain.
They arrived on August 26, six years after establishing their American life. (MarketScreener)
The move was significant precisely because it wasn’t simply another brief visit.
A person close to the couple said the family planned to live somewhere outside London, and Archie and Lilibet would attend school in Britain. (MarketScreener)
School changes everything.
A vacation lasts a week.
A royal engagement might last a day.
School means mornings and afternoons, classmates, homework, routines and ordinary family life.
Harry had previously expressed a desire for his children to spend more time in the country where he grew up.
Now that was actually happening.
Yet They Haven’t Rejoined “The Firm”
This is where Trump’s statement about the Royal Family “taking them back” requires context.
Harry and Meghan are expected to remain non-working royals. (Reuters)
There has been no announcement that they will resume the official roles they relinquished in 2020.
There has been no restoration of the arrangement they originally hoped to create, in which they would divide their time between independent life and official royal duties.
They are returning as members of the family, but not as working representatives of the monarchy.
That distinction may sound technical.
Inside royal life, it is enormous.
King Charles Appears to See Things Differently From Trump
Trump said he wouldn’t have welcomed Harry and Meghan back.
King Charles, however, reportedly looks forward to spending more time with them privately, according to reporting surrounding their return. (The Guardian)
That doesn’t mean the problems of the last six years have magically vanished.
It doesn’t mean every conversation has happened.
And it certainly doesn’t mean every relationship has been repaired.
But Charles isn’t simply a King confronting former working royals.
He is also Harry’s father.
And Archie and Lilibet’s grandfather.
That creates an entirely different calculation.
Archie and Lilibet Were Barely Part of the Original Conflict
Archie was still a baby when his parents stepped back from royal duties.
Lilibet wasn’t born until afterward.
Neither child made the decisions that fractured the adults around them.
Now they are old enough to establish their own relationship with Britain.
Archie is seven.
Lilibet is five.
Both are expected to attend school there during the family’s stay. (MarketScreener)
For Charles, having them in Britain creates opportunities that thousands of miles of distance simply couldn’t provide.
A grandfather can see his grandchildren.
The children can experience their father’s home country.
Family encounters no longer require transatlantic planning.
Whether those opportunities ultimately lead to deeper reconciliation remains unknown.
But they now exist.
William Remains the Great Unanswered Question
If Charles represents one possible path toward repairing family relationships, Prince William remains a much more complicated part of the story.
Harry’s relationship with his older brother deteriorated dramatically during the years surrounding his departure.
Spare made the extent of their problems impossible to ignore.
Harry even described a physical confrontation between them.
Publicly, there has been little evidence that the brothers have returned to anything resembling their old relationship.
And moving back to Britain does not automatically repair that.
Geographical distance can disappear overnight.
Emotional distance rarely does.
Trump Has Always Had a Special Attachment to the Monarchy
There is another reason his comments sounded so personal.
Trump has long expressed admiration for Britain’s Royal Family.
He has connected that fascination partly to his mother, Mary Anne MacLeod Trump, who was born in Scotland.
According to The Guardian, Trump has recalled watching Queen Elizabeth’s 1953 coronation on television with his mother when he was a child. (The Guardian)
Decades later, he would meet the Queen himself as president.
Those encounters clearly made an impression on him.
So when Trump talks about what Harry and Meghan did, he isn’t approaching the story as a detached observer.
He has repeatedly spoken about Elizabeth with admiration.
And during his latest comments, he was similarly warm about Charles.
That admiration appears to shape his judgment of the Sussexes.
Meghan’s Relationship With Trump Was Already Complicated
Meghan, meanwhile, had publicly expressed her own opinion of Trump years before she became a duchess.
During the 2016 election campaign, she criticized him while appearing on television.
The comments resurfaced after she married Harry and Trump became president.
Their relationship was never personal in the traditional sense.
But politically and publicly, they had already established opposing views of one another.
So perhaps it shouldn’t have been surprising that Trump’s reaction to her departure from America was not sentimental.
Still, “I’m happy about it” is unusually direct.
Four Remarks, Four Different Messages
Taken together, Trump’s comments tell a much bigger story than any single sentence.
“I’m happy about it.”
That was his reaction to their leaving America.
“I was not a fan.”
That described his broader opinion of the couple.
“They treated the royal family with great disrespect.”
That explained the central reason he gave for his criticism.
And finally:
“If I were the royal family, I would not have taken them back.”
That revealed what he believed the consequences should have been. (MarketScreener)
There was no carefully disguised meaning.
Trump said exactly where he stood.
Harry and Meghan Have Their Own Version of the Story
It is important, however, not to confuse Trump’s opinion with the complete history of what happened.
Harry and Meghan have repeatedly explained their departure in very different terms.
Harry has cited intense press scrutiny and concerns about his family’s security among the reasons for leaving Britain. (MarketScreener)
Meghan has described feeling deeply isolated during her years inside royal life.
The couple have argued that they felt insufficiently protected and unsupported.
Their critics believe they subsequently went too far in publicly discussing private family matters.
Both realities explain why the argument remains so emotionally charged six years later.
Trump’s remarks simply add another powerful voice to one side of it.
The Irony Is That the Sussexes Haven’t Said Much
Perhaps the strangest part of this latest chapter is that Harry and Meghan themselves have not publicly laid out a detailed explanation of their new plans.
As of September 2, they had yet to publicly explain exactly how long they intend to remain in Britain or precisely what their new life there will look like. (The Guardian)
Yet everyone else is already discussing what their return means.
Royal commentators.
Newspapers.
Supporters.
Critics.
And now the president of the United States.
Six years after leaving Britain became one of the most discussed decisions of their lives, returning has created almost as many questions.
But This Time, They Return as Different People
Harry is now 41.
Meghan is 45.
Their children are no longer babies.
They have spent six years outside the royal system.
They have built businesses, charitable projects and an entirely separate public identity.
They know what life in America looks like.
They know what life outside official royal duties looks like.
And unlike in 2020, they are not trying to decide whether to leave.
They already left.
This is about deciding what part Britain should play in their future.
That may be why describing the move simply as “going back” misses something important.
There is no going back to 2019.
The monarchy has changed.
The family has changed.
Harry and Meghan have changed.
Queen Elizabeth is gone.
Charles is King.
Archie and Lilibet are growing up.
The old arrangement no longer exists.
And Trump Has No Interest in Pretending the Past Didn’t Happen
While Charles may be looking toward the possibilities created by having his son and grandchildren nearby, Trump remains focused on what happened before.
His answer in the Oval Office made that unmistakable.
He remembers the interviews.
He remembers the accusations.
He remembers the public criticism of the institution.
Most of all, he remembers the Queen and Charles.
And in his view, Harry and Meghan crossed a line.
Whether the Royal Family ultimately agrees with him is something only its members can answer.
Charles appears willing to maintain a private relationship with his son.
The Sussexes remain outside official royal duties.
William’s relationship with Harry remains uncertain.
Nothing about the situation fits neatly into a single headline.
Six Years Later, the Story Has Come Full Circle
In 2020, Harry and Meghan left Britain and eventually made America their home.
Now they have left California for an extended period and returned to the country they once felt compelled to leave.
And almost immediately, an American president who has never hidden his admiration for the monarchy was asked how he felt about seeing them go.
Trump could have chosen diplomacy.
Instead, he chose four remarkably clear messages.
Happy they left.
Not a fan.
Great disrespect.
Wouldn’t have taken them back.
For all the speculation surrounding Harry and Meghan’s future, there is at least one mystery that no longer exists.
No one has to wonder what Donald Trump thinks.
He just told everyone. (Reuters)
For more on Trump’s thoughts on Meghan, check out how Donald Trump Says Meghan Markle Treated the Royal Family With “Great Disrespect” – His Blunt Reaction Comes Just Days After Her Return to Britain. And if you’re curious about other celebrity family dynamics, you might enjoy reading about Three Years After Bryan Randall’s Death, Sandra Bullock’s Daughter Has One Very Specific Rule Before Her Mom Dates Again or how Catherine Zeta-Jones Was Left One Remarkable Bronze Piece by Kirk Douglas – Six Years After His Death, the Meaning Behind the Gift Has Finally Emerged.
