The press is going into its full-blown 'fake news' mode, taking a reply President Trump gave to a question about Meghan Markle's anti-Trump remarks before her marriage to Prince Harry, well out of context.

The phony brouhaha started with this interview with the U.K. Sun:

THE SUN: She can’t make it because she has maternity leave. Are you sorry not to see her, because she wasn’t so nice about you during the campaign. I don’t know if you saw that?

TRUMP: I didn’t know that, no. I didn’t know that. No, I hope she’s OK. I did not know that, no.

THE SUN: She said she’d move to Canada if you got elected. It turned out she moved to Britain.

TRUMP: There are a lot of people moving here [to the U.S.] So what can I say? No, I didn’t know that she was nasty.

THE SUN: Is it good having an American princess then, Mr. President? Does that help the link?

TRUMP: I think it’s nice. I think it’s nice and I’m sure she will do excellently. She will be very good. She will be very good. I hope she does.

Hat tip to Human Events for finding the actual interview. Human Events also has a link to the tape.

The short summary shows that Trump was talking about her remarks, not the former Hollywood actress herself. Someone found a tape of her calling Trump 'divisive' and .misogynistic' and planning to move to Canada if Trump got elected, which was about par for anyone wanting to make it in Hollywood at the time, and rather than say she was typical Hollywood trash toeing the party line to get television roles, or a socialist victim of Trump Derangement Syndrome, or a mere actress doing politics like so many of them, he was actually very understated.

His statement was typical of his truncated, New York-y, use of language, and 'being nasty' was shorthand for 'speaking nastily.' New Jersey native Frank Sinatra would have spoken in that form, too. The interview doesn't actually make sense unless you read it in that context, because its emphasis was on his not knowing she had made the remarks and was 'being nasty,' which could be true - the press certainly kept those remarks out of the press until she got the crown job. Just as likely, he did know, and his stating he didn't know was along the lines of the royal 'do we know him?' meaning, a non-recognition of something low class. Read that way, it flows well into his polite statement about his believing she would work out 'excellently' as a U.K. duchess.

His remarks were actually kind.

But leave it to the press to come up with headlines like this, to try to get us all outraged:

• Royal Insult: Trump on Meghan Diss: ‘I Didn’t Know That She Was Nasty’ -Daily Beast

• 'Nasty' debate erupts over Trump's criticism of Meghan Markle ahead of U.K. trip -Politico

• Trump on Meghan Markle: 'I didn't know that she was nasty' -CNN

• Trump's 'nasty' slam at Meghan Markle proves her point -CNN op-ed

• Meghan Markle Called Trump A Misogynist In 2016 And Now He Called Her "Nasty" -Buzzfeed

• Donald Trump Called Meghan Markle ‘Nasty’ Then Tried to Suck Up to Her Before Prince Harry Lunch -Elle

• Trump didn't know Duchess Meghan was 'nasty' about him - but compliments her anyway -USA Today

The New York Times, based on what I could tell from my searches, didn't deign to wade into the matter at all (imagine its horror at having to key its story off something that ran in The Sun!), while the Washington Post, to its credit, did explain the issue in its correct context.

It just goes to show that media bias is real and most of the press will do anything it can to make President Trump look bad. It was obvious Trump was trying to stay out of politics and wasn't interested in attacking Prince Harry's new wife and didn't care whether he met her or not. She actually isn't that important. And his remark that a lot of people want to move here was a nice rebuke to Markle's common lefty trope of wanting to leave the country because Trump. (We haven't noticed she's given up her U.S. citizenship, by the way.) Most important, Markle seems to have left politics to join the above-politics British royal family and that is to her credit, she hasn't said anything disgusting since. Why would Trump want to attack her? 

The press was just stirring up the pot and trying to create an issue here, when the reality shows, there is no issue. Can you say 'Fake News'?

Image credit: Genevieve, via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 2.0