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Let’s Blame Piers Morgan for Megxit

Did Piers Morgan drive Prince Harry and Meghan Markle out of England?
January 17, 2020
Let’s Blame Piers Morgan for Megxit
(Photo illustration by Hannah Yoest / Photos: GettyImages)

Last week the queen’s second grandson decided to step back from his duties as a senior royal and take his young American wife and move to Canada. It was the kind of thing normal people do all the time—change jobs, move to a new city—but Prince Harry isn’t normal. He’s sixth in line for the British throne.

Everyone was shocked and, improbably, Megxit became the weird non-crisis crisis that the world needed. A pleasant, if slightly stupid, firestorm erupted on both sides of the Atlantic and for once we didn’t have to think about white nationalists or migrant children kept in cages and could instead argue happily about the gilded lives of people who are just like us, only even more privileged.

Why would Prince Harry want to leave his golden castle? Perhaps because the British media has been incredibly, shockingly, and needlessly cruel to Meghan Markle. Buzzfeed did a quick recce and came up with a host of headlines where the British press covered Princess Meghan and Princess Kate doing the exact same things, and labeling the former as horrible and the latter and adorable.

In the annals of media bias, it’s more or less the most stunning thing you’ve ever seen: In 2018, the Daily Mail delighted in how Kate sometimes held her baby bump. A year later the same paper published photos of Meghan cradling her baby bump and scolded her for “pride, vanity, acting.”

In 2017, the Express ran a story about how wonderful it was that Prince William gave Kate an avocado to help with her morning sickness: “Prince William Gifted with an Avocado for Pregnant Dutchess.” Two years later, the same paper wrote about Princess Meghan eating avocados to help with her morning sickness: “The pregnant Duchess of Sussex and so-called ‘avocado on toast whisperer’ is wolfing down a fruit linked to water shortages, illegal deforestation and all round general environmental devastation.”

You can’t make it up.

Maybe it’s racism. Maybe it’s xenophobia. Maybe these people just really hated Suits. Who could say.

Or maybe it’s Piers Morgan’s fault.

Morgan, the host of Good Morning Britain is one of Markle’s biggest critics. He is a big celebrity “journalist” on a very small island, so his voice carries. He’s also a preening, bitter fool with neither a sense of irony nor self-awareness.

Here, for instance, is a column Morgan wrote in the Daily Mail slugged:

Why the Queen must FIRE Their Royal Hustlers: Deluded Meghan and Harry should be stripped of their titles before this pair of grasping, selfish, scheming Kardashian-wannabes bring down the Monarchy

And here is a picture of Serious News Presenter Piers Morgan mugging for the camera as a judge on the reality show America’s Got Talent. He’s the one on the left. Next to Ozzy Osbourne’s wife and David Hasselhoff.

Oh, and here’s Morgan, as a 43-year-old man, jousting with Omarosa as a contestant on Donald Trump’s Celebrity Apprentice.

You tell me who the “Kardashian-wannabe” is.


For all we know, Morgan is only hard on Princess Meghan because once upon a time, she ghosted him.

As Morgan told Access Hollywood—because, of course—he and Markle were long-time Twitter friends and then, after they met IRL for the first time, she stopped returning his DMs. Maybe it’s because she’s met Harry. Maybe it’s because she and Morgan didn’t get along in meat space. Or maybe it’s because, seeing Morgan’s puffy, old-man face in person she realized that the Reaper will come for us all and that life is too short to be wasted maintaining fake relationship with grasping, local celebrities.

Again, who can say?

Whatever the case, after their Twitter friendship broke up, Morgan’s public tone toward Markel changed noticeably.

But what really bothers me is that the person Markle is treated like most isn’t her sister-in-law, Kate, but her husband’s uncle. By which I mean Prince Andrew, aka Jeffrey Epstein’s BFF.

You may remember Prince Andrew as the guy who kept staying with Jeffrey Epstein, whose wife borrowed money from Jeffery Epstein, who had his picture taken—by Jeffrey Epstein—with his arm around an underage girl.

Piers Morgan says that Princess Meghan should be stripped of her royal title because she wants to get away from people like Piers Morgan.

But while Piers Morgan notes that he likes seeing Prince Charles showing “sibling loyalty” to his brother, he also says that Prince Andrew should be stripped of his royal title for being close friends with the most not-secret pedophile since Tiberius.

Samesies.

It’s entirely possible that the man whose mother was more or less killed by the paparazzi is moving his wife and child to another country so that they don’t wind up suffering at the hands of the British press, too.

Alternatively, it’s possible that Prince Harry and Princess Meghan are moving to Canada just to get away from Piers Morgan.

Either way, I’m pro-Megxit.

Molly Jong-Fast

Molly Jong-Fast is a contributor to The Bulwark and the author of three books. Follow her on Twitter @MollyJongFast.