Tina Brown sat down with Washington Post Live this week to discuss her book, The Palace Papers. I’m reading the book now, and I just got through the phone hacking section, which was so painful. The British media is full of crooks, criminals, perverts and scum. If you ask me, I think Brown was rough on all of her royal subjects, even though it’s also clear that for Brown, Meghan is her BEC. Brown’s interviews are a whole other story, as Brown hems and haws about how Meghan and Harry are simply the worst and Kate can do no wrong at all. It’s very strange. Anyway, this WaPo Live transcript was more of that, but there were some interesting moments/lies/misrepresentations:

On Kate landing William: Very few women would have had, frankly, the patience for that, or the strategy for that. And she did…So, I do think that there was a certain amount of strategy… And like Camilla, Kate has never said or leaked an indiscreet word. It required a family that that really erected a Praetorian guard around her.

Kris Jenner of Bucklebury: “They forged this guard around her, particularly Carole Middleton, wonderful strategist, the Kris Jenner of Bucklebury–you know, we’re absolutely focused on her children and making them successful. And you know, it worked. I mean, she was a kind of wonderful home counties tiger mom, and she’s absolutely kept–you know, her children have all done extraordinarily well. So you have that with Kate. So they were hugely important.

Why Harry left the Army: “But he had to leave after 10 years, because, essentially, to move up in the army these days, you have to have much more sort of academic prowess than Harry ever had. You can’t be sort of, you know, in the frontlines of, you know, the military forever. So, there was no way that he could stay.”

William was envious of Harry: “I think that William was really quite envious of the success of Invictus Games, the initiatives that Harry launched very, very successfully to create a kind of Special Olympics for vets, which has just happened. All of these things were kind of bubbling, and you know, and kind of pushing them apart.

The Sussexes missing the palace platform: “I think they both completely underestimated what it was going to be like to be without the–you know, the palace platform. However much they hated–and they really did, I think, at that point–the constraints and this sort of pettiness, essentially, they conceived of the palace, you know, and the advisors, try doing it without the palace and the advisors, right? Because what the palace does, of course, it’s an amazing convening–has amazing convening power. There’s no one who won’t take a phone call if they see Buckingham Palace on the phone, Kensington Palace on the phone. So they’re a huge convening power… All of that’s now gone. And essentially, they have to just hire PRs to do that for him. And their judgment is not necessarily the best judgment they should be listening to, because of course, you know, they’re trying to leverage, whatever they say, the royal brand. And there’s no PR that really knows how to do that better than Buckingham or Kensington Palace, right? So they’re suddenly without this leverage.

Meghan doesn’t have a brand: “Meghan doesn’t really have a brand, is the truth, and she sort of–you feel that she is sort of grasping somewhat at, you know, whatever is the kind of Twitter caring of the moment. You know, it’s, you know, vaccinations, it’s Ukraine, it’s women’s rights, it’s hey, my 40th birthday, let’s have a mentoring scheme. Nothing is really going anywhere for Meghan.

The Queen set Meghan up to succeed: “She also made her vice chairman of the Commonwealth Foundation, which given that Meghan had said that she had a huge desire to do sort of global humanitarian work, there’s no better platform, essentially, to be able to talk about women’s education, to talk about, you know, the question of minorities. This was a fantastic platform, really, that needed modernizing and dusting off and repositioning, particularly in the kind of atmosphere right now, the social atmosphere at the moment with Black Lives Matters and all of these things that we’ve seen impacting on the Cambridge tour. But there was nonetheless a big role there, a longstanding role with a lot of longevity for the Sussexes.

Everyone in the royal family knew Harry wanted out: “I really think Harry wanted out himself. And you know, one of the advisors did say to me–and I was kind of shocked by this. A very close in the circle said to me, you know, we always knew that Harry was going to go at some point. He was really unhappy. The queen knew that at some point it was highly likely that Harry would want out. But they didn’t know it would be so fast, and they didn’t see it happening in the way that it did. And I think it’s also, then, fair to say that Meghan gave Harry the tools to leave, you know, I mean, because she was wired in. She understood the world of agents and deals.”

[From WaPo]

Harry didn’t leave the Army because he wasn’t “smart enough.” He left the Army after a decade because he knew he would never see frontline action anymore and he didn’t want to sit at a desk in London for another decade. Plus, William and Kate “needed” Harry to dump his military career and start working full-time for the Firm. They needed to hide behind him and take credit for his work. Thus, Harry was encouraged to retire from the Army after a decade.

Brown reveals so much in her jumbled answer to how the Queen set Meghan up to succeed. “…To be able to talk about women’s education, to talk about, you know, the question of minorities…” The question of minorities!!! As if minorities are, as a group, a giant question mark. Do they exist, Brown wonders. Should they exist, she wonders. But really, Brown is saying the Queen gave Meghan the Commonwealth stuff because she’s Black and many Commonwealth countries are Black and so Meghan can represent that and now the rest of the family doesn’t have to care. And to think, Meghan threw that away!

As for Meghan not having a brand… lol. Yes, she does. Brown just doesn’t like Meghan’s brand. Anyway, Brown keeps revealing herself to be xenophobic, anti-American, racist and full of lies.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Instar.