Did Donald Trump demand on March 19, 2024, that Prince Harry leave the United States? No, that's not true: In an interview posted online that day, the GOP presidential nominee said only that his administration would take "appropriate action" if shown findings that the prince had "lied" in his U.S. visa application about drug use. Trump switched to a different topic when asked about what specific action he thinks should be taken in Prince Harry's case.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on Facebook on March 20, 2024. It opened:
TRUMP CALLS FOR PRINCE HARRY TO
LEAVE THE U.S... READ BELOW!
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of the writing of this fact check:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Fri Mar 22 19:00:44 2024 UTC)
The first comment under the post, published by the author of the initial entry, redirected to an article (archived here) on the website called The Raging Patriot.
That article, in turn, cited a post on X (archived here), formerly known as Twitter, with a video fragment of an interview with Trump uploaded on the internet on March 19, 2024.
But neither that fragment nor a longer version of the interview showed him saying anything that could be interpreted as an explicit demand to expel Prince Harry, who lives in California, from the United States.
At the 27:04 mark in the longer version of the conversation (archived here) on YouTube, the audience hears the following exchange between Trump and Nigel Farage, a British broadcaster and former politician:
FARAGE: If he's lied on his visa form, he doesn't, doesn't the truth need to come out ... Should, should he get special privileges that nobody else ...
TRUMP: No. And we'll have to see if they know something about the drugs and if he lied enough to take appropriate action.
FARAGE: Appropriate action?
TRUMP: Yeah.
FARAGE: ... which might mean? (inaudible)
TRUMP: Oh, I don't know. You'll have to tell me. You'll just have to tell me. You would, you would have thought they would have known this a long time ago. But I thought they were very disrespectful to the family, to the royal family. I'm a big fan of the concept of the royal family ...
As the transcript above demonstrates, this fragment of the interview contained a discussion of a hypothetical scenario, with rather general statements preceded by the "if" part.
Furthermore, Trump did not elaborate on defining what an "appropriate action" would be, and switched to a different topic.
Prince Harry's visa records came into the spotlight in mid-summer 2023 when a conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation, demanded (archived here) the release of these documents. It speculated that the prince's admission in his memoir "Spare" about past recreational drug use could constitute grounds for denial of his application.
On March 7, 2024, a federal judge ordered (archived here) the Department of Homeland Security to submit the related records to confidential review in court so a decision could be made on whether or not any of the documents concerning Prince Harry's admission to the United States should be released in any form.
Officially known as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, relocated to California in March 2020 after stepping back from their royal duties.
Other Lead Stories fact checks mentioning Prince Harry can be found here.
