Senior figures in the Invictus Games, the paralympic style event for wounded veterans founded by Prince Harry, have criticized the royal for a “woke agenda” and using a speech at the opening of the games to criticize “weak moral character in the world,” remarks which have been generally interpreted as an attack on Donald Trump.
Harry’s speech was met with cheers in the Invictus arena, and many will enthusiastically support his stance. However, the remarks represented a significant departure from standard royal practice. It is normal for members of the royal family to avoid any mention of global affairs, lest they risk being seen to be meddling in politics, let alone the political choices of a specific country.
Harry said the competitors’ “courage, values and humanity” deserved special respect at a time “when there is no shortage of crises, no absence of uncertainty, no lack of weak moral character in the world.”
His office has not responded to a request for comment on what he meant.
But Harry’s decision to take on Trumpian values in an arena full of veterans and their families was a slightly bizarre choice. Although he is much loved in the Invictus community, veterans typically tend to trend conservative politically, and in the U.S. support Trump by a wide margin, research by the Pew Centre shows.
One organizer of the event told the Daily Mail: “While we remain committed to supporting the veterans and their families, there is growing frustration over how Harry and Meghan have dominated the narrative. Public sentiment, especially among veterans, reflects this frustration—most do not respect how they continuously insert themselves into the spotlight. Unlike them, veterans and their families do not see themselves as victims. Their ‘woke’ agenda dies with veterans.”
Harry made his veiled dig at Trump after the president said he wouldn’t deport Harry over historical drug use, but then added: “I don’t want to do that. He’s got enough problems with his wife. She’s terrible.”
Another Invictus insider told the Mail that while they could “understand” Harry’s upset reaction to Trump, “it is a shame that Harry chose to say what he did, when he did. This event should be about the veterans, not royal spectacle.”
Harry’s remarks represented an escalation of his and Meghan’s simmering feud with Trump.
He also saluted the Invictus “spirit of unity” in a “moment of difficulty and division.”
Trump’s deeply personal attack on Meghan distracted from Trump’s climbdown on deporting Harry, whose immigration status has been the subject of debate and court actions ever since he admitted to taking drugs in his memoir, Spare. In the book, Harry wrote of the time he got high on mushrooms at Friends star Courteney Cox’s house and thought a toilet was talking to him. He also revealed he had used cocaine at 17 “to feel different.”
The Heritage Foundation, the right-wing lobby group which authored Project 2025, has launched legal efforts to force the U.S. authorities to release details of Harry’s immigration application.
The Sussex-Trump feud dates to a 2016 Comedy Central panel show in which Meghan, then an actress and not linked to Harry, expressed her contempt for Trump, labeling him “misogynistic” and “divisive,” and joking that she might move to Canada if Trump was elected president.
Trump later famously referred to her comment as “nasty” ahead of his state visit to the U.K. in June 2019, by which time he was president and Meghan had married Harry.
In 2022, Trump told fellow Meghan critic Piers Morgan: “Harry is whipped like no person I think I’ve ever seen.” He predicted the couple would divorce, saying, “It’ll end, and it’ll end bad… I want to know what’s going to happen when Harry decides he’s had enough of being bossed around… Or maybe when she decides that she likes some other guy better. I want to know what’s going to happen when it ends, OK?”
Trump used his new interview with the New York Post to praise Harry’s estranged older brother, William, with whom he met in Paris in December.
“I think William is a great young man,” he said.
