Former President Donald Trump says the controversial photograph of Catherine, Princess of Wales, and her three children that was recalled by global news agencies because it was found to have been edited “shouldn’t be a big deal.”
“That shouldn’t be a big deal because everybody doctors. You look at these movie actors and you see a movie actor and you meet him, and you say, ‘Is that the same person in the picture?’ And I looked at that actually, and it was a very minor doctoring. I don’t understand why there could be such a howl over that,” Trump said in an interview with Britain’s GB News that aired Tuesday.
“It’s a rough period that, you know, they’re really, they went after her,” the presumptive Republican presidential nominee added.
The photograph was the first official picture of the princess since she underwent abdominal surgery in January, and it was released to mark Mother’s Day in the United Kingdom. But hours after it was released by Kensington Palace, four major photo agencies issued “kill notices,” expressing concerns that it had been edited.
The photo retouching controversy continued Tuesday with Getty Images saying that a photograph taken by the Princess of Wales of the late Queen Elizabeth with some of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren months before her death had been “digitally enhanced.” A CNN analysis found signs of alteration in as many as 19 places.
The Princess of Wales was not the only British royal Trump commented on in the GB News interview. The former president said that if her brother-in-law Prince Harry lied about past drug use on his US visa application form, “they’ll have to take appropriate action.”
“Which might mean … not staying in America?” GB News host Nigel Farage asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. You’ll have to tell me. You just have to tell me,” Trump said.
Trump also said that Harry, who now lives in California, should not receive special treatment because he is a member of the British royal family.
The conservative Heritage Foundation is suing the US government to find out if it acted according to procedure when it granted Harry a US visa. Under US immigration law, evidence of past drug use can be grounds to reject an application. Harry confessed to taking various recreational party drugs in his explosive memoir “Spare,” which was published in January 2023.