Trump: Princess of Wales photo editing row ‘shouldn’t be a big deal – everyone does it’

Donald Trump has said the Princess of Wales’s photo editing row “shouldn’t be a big deal” because “everybody doctors” their pictures, as he called for the public to stop criticising her.

The former US president weighed into the debate on the princess’s Mothering Sunday photo, days after she released an apology for airbrushing the image of herself and her children.

In an interview with Nigel Farage on GB News, Mr Trump said: “Well it shouldn’t be a big deal. Because everybody doctors [their pictures].

“You look at these movie actors, and you see a movie actor and you meet them and you say: ‘Is that the same person in the picture?’”

Mr Trump was accused of editing photographs when he asked government officials to crop an image of crowds on the National Mall in Washington DC during his inauguration in 2017.

The photograph was cropped to remove the space “where the crowd ended”, after Mr Trump was frustrated that more people were pictured at Barack Obama’s inauguration ceremony.

On Tuesday, he said that the public should stop criticising the Princess of Wales for a “minor” edit, which sparked online conspiracy theories about her health.

“I looked at that, actually, and it was a very minor doctoring,” Mr Trump said. “It is a rough period and, you know, they’re really going after her.”

He also used the interview to take aim at the Duke of Sussex, who has been accused of lying on his immigration forms about whether he had used drugs when he moved to the US with the Duchess in 2020.

“We’ll have to see if they know something about the drugs, and if he lied they’ll have to take appropriate action,” Mr Trump said.

Pressed on whether that would mean “not staying in America”, he replied: “Oh I don’t know. You’ll have to tell me. You just have to tell me.”

The Duke of Sussex’s immigration status has become the subject of a lawsuit by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, which is suing the government to release his immigration forms. Lawyers for the US government have said that his description of taking narcotics in his memoir, Spare, is “not proof he took drugs”.

Mr Trump said the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s decision to leave Britain had insulted the late Queen, describing their decision as a “great disrespect done to a person that I got to know very well”.

“She was unbelievable, and I thought she was treated very disrespectfully by them,” he said.

“I would say, although she wouldn’t show it because she was strong and smart, I would imagine they broke her heart.

“The things that they were saying were so bad and so horrible. And she was in her nineties and hearing this stuff. I think they broke her heart. I think they really hurt her.”

‘I’m a different kind of environmentalist’

It is rare for Mr Trump to give an interview to a British news outlet, preferring instead to speak to conservative networks in the US.

Mr Farage, the former Ukip and Brexit Party leader, is a friend of the former president and has suggested he would like to serve as the UK’s ambassador to the US under a Trump administration.

Asked for his views on the King, Mr Trump said on Mr Farage’s programme that he and the monarch had “different views” on environmental policy, but “got along”.

“He was a little bit more into environmental restriction than I am,” he said.

“I’m an environmentalist, I feel in a true sense. But I’m a different kind of environmentalist. You know, I want to get things built, I want to get things done.

“He was very much into the environment. And he meant it from the heart.”

Asked whether he would continue to support the Nato alliance if he wins in November’s presidential election, Mr Trump said he would “100 per cent” defend other countries if they meet defence spending commitments.

In a bizarre tangent, the presumptive Republican nominee also claimed the Democrats had allowed “15 million people” into the country during Joe Biden’s administration.

“15 million people that come in from prisons, they come from prisons, many of them, they come from mental institutions and insane asylums like Silence of the Lambs,” he said.

“Hannibal Lecter, I wonder if he’s one of the terrorists coming into our country totally unchecked.”

07:58 PM GMT

Interview has finished

The much-anticipated sit down with Farage and Trump has now finished.

Thank you for following along with our live coverage.

07:50 PM GMT

Trump: election will be ‘most important day in history’

The former US president said 5 November is going to be “the most important day in the history of our country.”

He added: “With that being said, seven months is a long time. When you have somebody as destructive and incompetent as this President that’s a long time - a lot of bad things can happen to our country in that seven months.”

07:47 PM GMT

Putin wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine if I was in power

Trump said he thinks Putin is someone you can negotiate with. 

“I got along with Putin great. I got along with President Xi great”, he said.

“That’s a good thing. Not a bad thing.”

He added that Putin “certainly wouldn’t have gone into Ukraine”, had he still been president.

“You wouldn’t have Ukraine, you wouldn’t have had Israel. The attack on October 7 would never have taken place. Iran was broke. They had no money.

“I said anybody that buys oil from Iran can’t do business in the United States. And Biden came along and he lifted everything. Now Iran has $221 billion.”

07:44 PM GMT

Trump: I made NATO strong

He said “lot of money’s come in” since Trump said he wouldn’t protect NATO countries that wouldn’t pay.

“I went to the first meeting early in my administration, and I saw what was going on. And I said, you’re going to have to pay your bills, everybody.

“And the second meeting, I hit them hard... I said, ‘You mean you’re delinquent? You’re not paying the bills? We’re not going to do it. We’re not going to defend you. If you’re not paying your bills, we’re not going to defend you. It’s very simple.’ And hundreds of billions of dollars came flowing in... NATO became strong because of me.”

07:39 PM GMT

Trump: Kate Middleton editing photos is no ‘big deal’

The former US president said the furore over the Princess of Wales editing a family photograph “shouldn’t be a big deal because everybody doctors” pictures.

He added: “You look at these movie actors and you see a movie actor and you meet him and you say ‘that the same person in the picture?’”

Trump added that it was a “very minor doctoring”.

07:21 PM GMT

Trump claims he is winning over female voters

The former president said the Black and Hispanic communities “like me” and “I like them”.

He said “we’re doing so well”, adding: “Nobody’s ever done well with the Hispanics like I’ve done, with the Black community, the whole thing has been amazing.”

Trump went on to say he is “doing well with women” - a group he has traditionally struggled to win over - because they “want security”.

07:16 PM GMT

Trump defends his ‘bloodbath’ comments

Over the weekend Trump said the country would face a “blood bath” if he lost in November.

Asked about this, he told Farage he was only referring to the car industry.

“I said it’s going to be a bloodbath… it’s going to be a terrible bloodbath for the auto industry.”

07:13 PM GMT

Trump: I’ll ‘close the border’ if I’m re-elected

The former president said he is going to “deport” illegal migrants in a bid to battle “migrant crime”.

He claims the US had the “best border we’ve ever had” when he was president but now has the “worst in history”.

Asked how he would get it back, he said: “We’re going to close up the border… you can come to you can come into the country but you have to come in legally.”

07:09 PM GMT

Trump: Biden cheated in 2020

Donald Trump has continued to claim the 2020 election was stolen from him.

He said he did “great” in 2016 and “much better” in 2020 but “very bad things happened and we’re not going to let that happen again.”

He claimed Biden is the “worst president in history” and said he is going to do “very well” in the November election.

“The polls have us leading by a lot and there was a lot of cheating going on and we’re gonna get that cheating stopped”, he said.

07:06 PM GMT

And we’re off

So far we’ve had a montage of Trump and Farage shaking hands and sitting down.

06:41 PM GMT

Trump: America backs NATO if countries ‘play fair’

06:26 PM GMT

Trump: NATO countries are ‘paying’ because of my comments

In a clip trailed ahead of tonight’s interview, Trump questions why the US “guard” countries that do not pay.

“Why should we guard these countries that have a lot of money, but now they’re paying because of those comments that you saw, two, three weeks ago”, he said.

06:09 PM GMT

Prince Harry’s future in the US

During the interview Donald Trump will suggest he could deport the Duke of Sussex from the US over claims he lied on his visa application about taking drugs.

The former president will say he would take “appropriate action” if he were to win November’s presidential election and the Duke was found to have lied on his immigration forms.

The Duke has been accused of giving false information to the Department of Homeland Security when he moved to the US with his wife in June 2020.

US immigration authorities typically require visa applicants to declare they have not taken illegal drugs, but the Duke admitted last year in his memoir Spare that he had taken cocaine, marijuana and magic mushrooms.

Read the full story from The Telegraph’s US Editor Tony Diver here

06:06 PM GMT

Welcome to our live blog

Thanks for joining us for tonight’s live coverage of Nigel Farage’s sit-down interview with Donald Trump.