If Kevin Roberts, the author of the extreme conservative Project 2025 “blueprint” for a second Trump term, is granted an influential position in Donald Trump’s new administration it might be time for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle to start packing their bags.
This is because Roberts is the president of The Heritage Foundation, a right-wing conservative think tank formerly best known as the publisher of the right wing blogosphere favorite, The Daily Signal.
The Heritage Foundation is also behind the ongoing efforts to force the US authorities to release details of Prince Harry’s immigration application.
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The pressure group noted that Harry revealed he had used hard, soft, and psychedelic drugs in his memoir, Spare—in which Harry, among other stories, wrote of the time he took got high on mushrooms at Friends star Courteney Cox’s house. He also revealed he had used cocaine at 17 “to feel different.”
The pressure group claims that given such a declaration usually bars an individual from immigrating into the U.S., that this means either Harry lied on the forms or was given a sweetheart deal by the Biden administration.
They sued in court to find out which, but in September a federal judge ruled the paperwork would remain private. However in an interview Thursday with the Daily Mail, the Heritage Foundation’s Nile Gardiner argued the documents could be made public following Trump’s election victory, as the Heritage Foundation is now appealing the ruling.
“I do think there’s a strong possibility that this could happen. It’s the president’s prerogative,” Gardiner told the Mail, claiming the Biden White House, “has bent over backwards to protect Prince Harry and that protection is going to come to an end after the inauguration.” (The Trump campaign disavowed Project 2025 in the run-up to the election.)
The Daily Beast has previously reported on the residency jeopardy Harry could face if Trump, who has a personal animus toward him and Meghan, were elected.
An immigration lawyer recently told The Daily Beast that Harry could be vulnerable to a politically motivated attack on his residential status, saying: “Department of State decisions are discretionary and very susceptible to political influence. His visa could be canceled. He could be denied entry upon return to the U.S. from foreign travel for inadmissibility due to prior drug usage, despite an unexpired visa in his passport. There are many scenarios where political influence could impact Harry’s ability to re-enter the U.S.”
British celebrity Nigella Lawson was famously denied entry to the U.S. over admissions of drug use in 2013.
Donald Trump has regularly hinted that, under a second Trump administration, Harry could be kicked out of the United States if he is found to have lied on paperwork about his drug use.
Trump told Nigel Farage in a GB News interview earlier this year: “We’ll have to see if they know something about the drugs, and if he lied they’ll have to take appropriate action.”
Farage asked if “appropriate action” could mean “not staying in America,” to which Trump replied, according to the outlet’s website, “Oh I don’t know. You’ll have to tell me. You just have to tell me. You would have thought they would have known this a long time ago.”
Trump told Britain’s Daily Express newspaper at the Conservative Political Action Conference that if he wins a second term, Harry will be “on his own.”
Trump said, “I wouldn’t protect him. He betrayed the queen. That’s unforgivable. He would be on his own if it was down to me.”
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?”
Chris Edelson, a professor of government at American University, told DailyMail.com, “The President can do whatever they want as long as people go along with it.”
The Daily Mail’s Richard Eden noted Thursday that the couple could have a convenient “escape route” in the form of a property they bought in Portugal earlier this year.
Eric Trump earlier this year called the Duke and Duchess “spoiled apples,” adding, “You can happily have those two. We might not want them anymore; it feels like they’re on an island of their own.”
Gardiner told the London Times: “The new administration will be strongly focused on ensuring the security of America’s borders and enforcing immigration law and should scrutinize anyone that applies to enter. Immigration law should be applied fairly and there should be no exceptions. If Harry lied on his application then he should be removed from the United States. It is now very likely Harry will finally be held to account.”
A spokesperson for Harry declined to comment.
