How Meghan Turned Tribute to Massacre Into Greedy New Low

Using an antisemitic massacre to drive traffic to a fashion platform is a new low, even for the Sussexes.

Meghan Markle’s final day in Australia began with meeting survivors and first responders connected to the Bondi Beach shooting, the Dec. 14, 2025, terror attack on a Hanukkah event in Sydney that left 15 people dead.

Selling the clothes off her own back at the site of a massacre where 15 people died might come easily to Meghan, but, like any right-minded person, I find it sickening—much as I found it sickening earlier in the week when the clothes she wore when visiting a children’s cancer hospital were put on the platform.

(Meghan then changed before going to a veterans’ art event later in the day, and also put that outfit online.)

How wise the late Queen was when she advised this foolish, impatient, know-it-all couple not to try and combine a life of service with a life of profit.

How idiotic they were to ignore her.

Today’s display was particularly grating to Buckingham Palace, one former staffer told me, as this is the sort of solemn, empathetic engagement that working royals carry out: meeting victims and listening to first responders at a place marked by grief.

To nakedly commercialize such duties in this way is not just hugely disrespectful, it is also unbelievably shortsighted.

I do not think anybody would seriously object if Harry and Meghan went to Australia purely to do business, make money, and pursue private commercial opportunities. Equally, I do not think many people would object if they were simply privately supporting charities dear to their hearts.

The problem is that not only have they merged these two positions, but that they have then marketed the results.

What this trip has done is reopen an argument that was supposed to have been settled in February 2021, when Buckingham Palace, under Queen Elizabeth II, said of Harry and Meghan that “in stepping away from the work of The Royal Family it is not possible to continue with the responsibilities and duties that come with a life of public service.”

The Palace position was that public service, in the royal sense, could not be mixed with commercial independence in the same package.

Harry and Meghan’s response was the line that became the banner for their side of the argument: “We can all live a life of service. Service is universal.”

This trip, with a structure so recognizably royal, is their attempt to make that point—although in my opinion it has only proved the queen’s foresight.

I have no doubt that if Harry and Meghan had disclosed this was what they were planning to do, she would have removed their royal titles to prevent the confusion that is currently extant about their roles.

It is now beyond obvious that to expect the British people and those of other realms to sit around and wait for Prince William to remove the Sussex titles upon his ascension to the throne is a delay King Charles cannot afford.

The second half of Friday was occupied by Meghan making her two-hour appearance at the Her Best Life retreat at the InterContinental Sydney Coogee Beach, a luxury women’s wellness event with VIP packages including a group photograph—which now looks like a largely harmless hustle.

But this short-term pursuit of cash will do terrible damage to the Sussexes.

The tour has drawn crowds in Australia. Harry and Meghan can still attract attention.

The issue is what they are doing with that attention. It looks performative, public-service symbolism, monetized.

The monarchy has always been obsessive about demarcating the line between duty and commerce. Bondi shows why.

Is Meghan Markle really the most trolled person in the world?

I have a lot of sympathy for Meghan but, at times, I do think that the Duchess of Sussex could do with putting her trials and tribulations in perspective

Iran may have reopened the strait of Hormuz, but a global energy crisis has not yet been averted. The war has already damaged as much as $58bn worth of power infrastructure. Even under the best-case circumstances, these could take years to repair.

Luckily, I think I’ve got a way to get us out of this mess. First we invent some sort of large suction device (technical details to be worked out later). Then we turn it on and hoover up all the rage directed at the Duchess of Sussex. Boom, energy crisis solved.

It is extraordinary how, at a moment when international human rights law is being trampled by bloodthirsty men, one of the most disliked people in the world is a somewhat bland woman. The duke and duchess are currently on a tour of Australia which, predictably, is sending certain tabloids into a tailspin. The Daily Mail appears to have published a piece every 10 minutes criticizing everything from Meghan’s Australian outfits (“stiff, impractical, and worst of all, horribly ageing”) to the guestlist for the women’s wellness retreat at which she’s doing a paid meet-and-greet.

This sort of criticism is nothing new for Meghan Markle. Indeed, on Thursday, she spoke about how much online vitriol she’s received while addressing young people affiliated with an Australian mental health organization about the harms of social media. “[E]very day for 10 years, I have been bullied and attacked,” the duchess said. “And I was the most trolled person in the entire world, man or woman.”

She’s not entirely wrong there. I’m no fan of the Sussexes but the amount of rage Meghan inspires is beyond reason. Her dimwitted but affable husband isn’t exactly universally loved either. But, because of good old-fashioned racism and sexism, she provokes a lot more ire than he does. I mean, Harry wore a Nazi uniform for lolz when he was young, and has been forgiven for it. Meanwhile, Meghan only needs to wear a green dress to a Netflix shindig where most people were wearing black to get the tabloids seething with hatred.

This is not to say, however, that the pair should be beyond criticism. There is obviously a difference between legitimate scrutiny of public figures and obsessive misogynistic outrage around every little thing that Meghan does. I have criticized the Sussexes myself plenty of times in the past for their seeming hypocrisy around their royal titles: they don’t want anything to do with royal life, they keep telling us, and yet they can’t seem to part with their aristocratic honorifics. At a time when frontline humanitarian workers are being murdered in record numbers their efforts to style themselves as great philanthropists can also feel a little out of touch.

It doesn’t matter how rich or famous you are, being relentlessly trolled online can be incredibly damaging. I have a huge amount of sympathy for Meghan in this regard. And I would also gently urge her to get some better PR help. I don’t think you have to be a comms expert to realize that making hyperbolic statements about being the most trolled person in the world – when you’re busy headlining $3,200 wellness retreats and have been handed multimillion-dollar content opportunities – is bound to ruffle some feathers. Senator Ted Cruz has already seized on the “most trolled” remarks to joke that, actually Meghan, Donald Trump has more trolls.

While it isn’t a competition I think I might give the Most Brutally Trolled award to Francesca Albanese, who is the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.

For the crime of doing her job and speaking out about the genocide in Gaza, Albanese and her family have faced relentless death and rape threats online. The Daily Mail may not be churning out an article a minute about Albanese’s outfits, but she has been demonized by the Trump administration. Indeed, Trump issued executive order sanctioning Albanese, which means no American person or entity can provide her with “funds, goods or services”.

These sanctions aren’t just a mild inconvenience; they have been called a “civil death”. She can’t use a credit card and her apartment in Washington was seized. A Maine university even cancelled an academic conference in which Albanese was to make an unpaid appearance by Zoom because it was scared of the sanctions. She’s certainly not going around getting paid large speaking fees for women’s wellness retreats. I have a lot of sympathy for Meghan but, at times, I do think that the Duchess of Sussex could do with putting her trials and tribulations in perspective.

Media coverage of violence against women reaches ‘dismal’ low

A new report called the Global Misogyny News Coverage Tracker analyzed 1.14bn online stories published worldwide between 2017 and 2025 and found misogyny is still not treated seriously by the media. The proportion of articles that include terms relating to misogynistic abuse peaked at 2.2% in 2018, the height of the #MeToo movement, and dropped to 1.3% in 2025. “Men’s perspectives lead coverage and have recently been growing, with 1.5 men quoted for every one woman in misogyny-related stories,” the report notes.

Eric Swalwell and Tony Gonzales resign from Congress amid sexual misconduct allegations

Swalwell, a Democrat, and Gonzales, a Republican, submitted their resignations on Tuesday after lawmakers from both parties threatened to introduce resolutions expelling the men.

Congresswoman Lauren Boebert says ‘I have nothing to do with King George or the royal family’

Quite confusing considering all the King Georges have been dead for quite a while.

Trump calls female Fox News host ‘one of the Least Attractive and Talented People on all of Television’

It’s a common pattern by now, isn’t it? A woman dares to suggest that Trump isn’t God’s gift to mankind and the thin-skinned president hits back by calling her stupid or ugly. This time Trump’s ire was aimed at Jessica Tarlov, a liberal Fox News co-host. Tarlov’s crime was pointing out that the president has terrible approval ratings. At which point co-host Greg Gutfeld jumped in to say: “[Trump’s] not a politician.” You heard it here first, folks, presidents are not politicians.

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Israeli forces fire teargas at schoolchildren holding West Bank sit-in

As part of an ongoing campaign of terror against Palestinians, settlers blocked access to a school in the West Bank. When the schoolchildren staged a peaceful sit-in to protest, Israeli forces fired teargas at them.

The number of people in need of sexual violence support quadruples in Sudan

The war in Sudan is now entering its fourth year and sexual violence continues to escalate. According to a new report by UN Women, the number of women and girls requiring support after experiencing gender-based violence has nearly quadrupled since the start of the war.

Won’t you chip in $5 today to help get Gavin Newsom to top of the bestseller chart?

The California governor’s Pac spent $1.5m buying and distributing thousands of copies of his book to supporters, representing two-thirds of its total print sales. It’s a shame the Democrats all seem to be more concerned about flogging their books and raising their profiles than fighting for democracy.

The week in pawtirarchy

If you were taught in school that penguins mate for life, you were taught wrong; many do not. The penguins at the Kyoto aquarium in Japan don’t seem to be the monogamous type anyway. The aquarium has a huge flowchart tracking the romantic entanglements of its penguin community which is updated every year. And by the looks of the 2026 edition, there is more drama than Love Island.

Apparently Naka keeps dropping by his ex-girlfriend’s nest all the time and a penguin called Pon is in the middle of a complex love triangle. No judgment from me, Pon: I’m sure the situation isn’t black or white.

 

 

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Australia Tour Has Sparked Very Mixed Reactions

They are the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, but they don’t officially represent the King.

veryone was in agreement that it was not an official royal tour. Harry and Meghan are no longer working royals—they do not receive public funding and they do not officially represent King or country. Yet their four-day whirlwind visit across Melbourne, Canberra and Sydney had so many hallmarks of a royal tour that you could be forgiven for wondering whether it has become futile to point out the distinction.

But the distinction is, of course, very much there. And this has been central to the reaction towards their trip to a Commonwealth realm where King Charles remains head of state. When Harry and Meghan stepped back as working royals in 2020, the Palace did not want them to be half in and half out. The path they have chosen, with overseas visits and a mixture of philanthropic and business ventures, continues to spark intense debate.

Pool//Getty Images

The couple arriving to visit a mental health engagement program at Swinburne University.

“Australia was good to Harry and Meghan. Now they want to use us as an ATM,” read one much-repeated headline in the Sydney Morning Herald ahead of their arrival. They have repeatedly been described as “grifters.” There have been countless opinion pieces condemning this trip as, among other things, a “desperate attempt to stay relevant” and a “pathetic cry for public love.”

Yet, at the same time, on the ground Harry and Megan have drawn large crowds and much praise. “It was fascinating to see the polarising couple in action,” the Daily Telegraph’s Deputy Royal Editor Victoria Ward wrote in a piece headlined, “Harry and Meghan’s Australia tour shows what the Royal family is missing.”

 

 

Their stop at Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital was described by the hospital’s chief executive as “a genuinely meaningful visit for our staff and for the young people receiving care.” And they were praised by a social media campaigners as “kind, warm and authentic.” “Hearing Prince Harry speak at the InterEdge Summit and give his time so generously offered a powerful insight into lived experience, grounding the conversation in something real and deeply human,” said organizers of the mental health summit.

Money has been a big topic of debate around the trip. There have been suggestions that the couple could be raking it in. However, the theory they have charged large appearance fees for some events has been debunked, and it is unclear which, if any, appearances have been paid. Megan also announced herself as an investor in AI fashion platform OneOff, on which she is also selling her tour wardrobe.

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Interestingly, one of the most trailed events of the trip—Meghan’s appearance at a Sydney girls’ weekend with the Her Best Life podcast—was not on the Sussexes’ official itinerary, suggesting that it was seen in some way as separate to the couple’s charitable appearances. As with every aspect of the visit, its meaning and merits have been dissected, with the £1,400 ticket price attracting much discussion.

The Sussexes have made it clear that their costs for the visit are privately funded—something that was not the case when they visited the country as working royals in 2018 at a cost of more than AU$400,000 to the Australia taxpayers (when working royals visit realms, the host country pays). Nevertheless, Australian politicians have been vocal about the suggestion that taxpayers may still foot the bill this time around for policing costs.

Pool//Getty Images

Harry and Meghan on their first day in Melbourne.

Ordinary Australians have displayed a range of views about the trip. “I don’t know why they’re coming,” one told the BBC. “They’re very much about self-promotion,” another said. “Honestly, I kind of feel a little sorry for them,” was the verdict of another woman. In Melbourne, one fan gave them presents for Archie and Lilibet and told Australia’s ABC News, “They’re just the epitome of what human beings should be about.”

As is often the case with the royal family, it’s not just what is said that tells the story, but also what is not said. While Harry and Meghan have been impossible to miss in Australia, there has been radio silence from the country’s Governor General Sam Mostyn, the King’s representative there. Similarly, Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said nothing to publicly acknowledge the couple.

It will be a very different picture when King Charles or Prince William next visit Australia. But there is currently no indication as to when that will be. For now, it is the King’s second son who is making waves in this Commonwealth Realm, albeit unofficially on this not royal tour.

Meghan Markle Gives Herself An Honor No One Would Ever Want

Meghan Marklehas given herself a title that may even be worse than her lifestyle hacks.

On Friday, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex visited Batyr, an Australian youth mental health charity, to speak with teenagers about the damaging effects of social media.

At one point during their conversation, Markle got candid about the online vitriol that has been slung her way for the past decade, which began even before Prince Harry confirmed their relationship in 2016.

“For now, 10 years — every day for 10 years — I have been bullied and attacked,” Markle said in a YouTube video that included snippets of the conversation published by the Royal Family Channel. “And I was the most trolled person in the entire world, man or woman … but, I’m still here.”

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“And when I think of all of you and what you’re experiencing, I think so much of that is having to realize that you know that industry,” Markle said, likely referring to big tech companies like Meta and YouTube. “That billion-dollar industry, that is completely anchored and predicated on cruelty to get clicks — that’s not going to change. So you have to be stronger than that.”

Elsewhere in the conversation, Prince Harry spoke about how the Australian government enacted a ban on social media for children under age 16last year.

“Australia took the lead,” he told the young adults in attendance. “Your government was the first country in the world to bring about a ban.”

But his praise also included a dash of criticism.

“So many countries have now followed suit,” he said. “But it should have never got to a ban. It should have never, ever got to a ban. But now that the ban is in place, now what follows? Because the companies themselves have to be accountable. And there’s no way that young people should be punished by getting banned from something that should be safe to use no matter what.”

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Proposals for similar legislation in the U.S. — like The Kids Online Safety Act — have faced major pushback since President Donald Trump took office. KOSA, which had more bipartisan support in 2024, is now causing some critics to ring the alarm bell over concerns that the law could be exploited by fierce backers like the the Heritage Foundation to censor content for young adults regarding LGTBQ rights, gender affirming health care, *** education, birth control, and abortion, according to the digital rights advocacy group Fight for the Future. The same group also warns that age verification on social media platforms may “ramp up” online surveillance.

“All lawmakers will claim that they are [enacting age verification] to protect youth from some harm, but they fail to mention the convenient power it hands to government to control and chill speech they oppose, and even punish their critics,” Ari Cohn, the lead counsel for tech policy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression told The Guardian in March.

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