Trump’s Right: We Need to Deport Prince Harry

Donald Trump has done everything he can to elevate the so-called migrant crisis to the center of his electoral project. The former president has always employed the occasional fascistic flourish when he speaks about the families who cross the southern border, but the keening, diabolical malice he’s hitting as the 2024 cycle ramps into high gear is sicker and starker than ever before. Trump has promised to withhold municipal benefits from the children of migrants born in the United States, has threatened to activate the National Guard to assist in mass deportations, and hasn’t been afraid to get frighteningly Blut und Boden-y when he outlines his reasons why he thinks America can only thrive if it is impermeable by immigration. (They’re “poisoning the blood of our country,” he said in an interview in October.)

Unfortunately, Trump’s appeals to our inner hatred do appear to be resonating with a large swath of Americans. The border, at least, is a top issue for a plurality of American voters. I have found all of this stuff to be profoundly distressing and disappointing—especially when you consider how much of the Democratic base, including President Biden himself, has demonstrated a willingness to placate hawkish fears about the border. (After his attempts to work with Republicans in Congress on an immigration bill failed, the incumbent is reportedly mulling an executive order that would heavily restrict asylum for those who cross into the U.S over the Mexico border.)

However, on Tuesday, for the first time in his political career, Trump said something about immigration that I think we can all agree on, and it could honestly serve as a compromise platform between Republicans and Democrats: Prince Harry should be deported. We all know it. What are we waiting for?

Trump made this assertion in an interview with Nigel Farage, one of the U.K.’s foremost psycho-conservative wingnuts. They were speaking about Prince Harry’s bestselling memoir, Spare, where the former royal, and current Los Angeles socialite, admitted to bumping a few lines of cocaine in his life. Those who apply for U.S. visas must disclose whether they’ve ever used illegal drugs, and Farage asked Trump: If Harry was found to have lied on his application—if perhaps, Harry claimed to have never spent a suspiciously long time in a bathroom stall—would that mark him for a potential removal from American territory? Trump coyly replied that Prince Harry would not be the beneficiary of any special privileges, and that if he lied, the Department of Homeland Security “would have to take appropriate action.”

It goes without saying that deporting someone for something as harmless as getting coked up at Buckingham Palace (who among us?) is monumentally stupid, cruel, and a flagrant waste of resources. However, the spirit of Trump’s larger point is completely sound. Prince Harry moved to America and immediately revealed himself to be the most annoying person in the oligarchy. He is coasting on a ridiculous endowment, itself supported by literal centuries of exploitation, despite his possessing no skills, attributes, or insights to speak of. In their absence, Harry has been forced to wield his sole remaining asset—the ability to whine, endlessly, about the various low-stakes indignities thrust upon him by his dad and brother—until he managed to worm his way into California’s celebrity enclave. Spare, his turgid memoir, sold 1.4 million copies, and it mostly contained passages about all the trauma he has from getting mildly bullied by his older brother. You could not waterboard that information out of me. What an embarrassing way to become famous.

Everything about the prince reeks of pervasive mediocrity. He successfully convinced Spotify to hand him and his wife $20 million for a podcast which resulted in 12 episodes. He broke ground on a charity, raised $13 million from his rich friends, and managed to redistribute … $3 million of the net holdings, which seems a little off? (The charity also includes a for-profit media arm. Their first production? A Netflix series about—you guessed it—Harry and Meghan!) The Duke of Sussex will continue to defraud the nation’s greasy tech-industry plunderers for as long as he’s left to his own devices. Want a national rallying cry? Send his ass back to England.

I’m telling you, man, this is a great opportunity for Joe Biden. It’s an unsteady time in America. People are out for blood. Chaos is in the air. But if we could just refocus some of that rancor a little bit—away from the brutalized men and women at the border, and onto someone who truly doesn’t belong here—maybe we can throw a bone to the swing voters who’ve suddenly found themselves hungry for deportation. Biden should be bolder than to file those measures based on Harry’s juvenile coke habit. (After all, considering what’s popping up at the White House, that might be the one thing he and the prince have in common.) No, Biden should be foreclosing Prince Harry’s American era because he is a clear net negative on the cultural ferment. Who knows, maybe he can convert the royals’ $14 million Montecito mansion into some much-needed temporary housing while he’s at it.