The controversy over President Trump’s comments about Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, have been “overblown,” according to the Sun journalist who interviewed him.
The Sun published an interview Friday in which Trump expressed surprise that the American-born royal called him “divisive” and “misogynistic” during the 2016 election and said he was unaware she was “nasty.”
Sun reporter Tom Newton Dunn reacted to the ensuring controversy — Trump insists it is “fake news” despite there being an audio recording — during an interview on CNN as Trump began his state visit to the United Kingdom.
“I think this is all a bit of a row about semantics,” Dunn said Monday. “He clearly said the words ‘I didn’t know she was nasty.’ That’s on tape. We played the tape. We’ve had it on our website since we published the whole interview. So, I don’t think that’s in dispute. Perhaps what is in dispute is what he meant by that. If he finished the sentence, I didn’t know she was nasty about me, or to me, then clearly he would have been referring to the fact that she was pretty disparaging about the president during his 2016 election campaign.”
CNN’s Brooke Baldwin pressed Dunn on whether he was trying to antagonize Trump but said he was simply curious about Trump’s reactions to multiple topics. Dunn added that “you really don’t need to push him too far to get a pretty strong opinion out of him.”
Trump also praised the duchess in the interview with the Sun, claiming that he hopes she succeeds as a member of the British royal family.
“I am sure she will do excellently,” he said. “She’ll be very good. She will be very good. I hope she does [succeed].”
The Sun is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s New Corp. The Sunday Times, another British news outlet under the same ownership, also got an interview with the U.S. president.
Trump is in the United Kingdom and attended Queen Elizabeth II’s state banquet. He will meet with the duchess’ husband, Prince Harry, but not Meghan. The Duchess of Sussex is still on maternity leave after giving birth to a son in May.
