The Duchess of Sussex is eyeing a possible run at the US presidency in future, royal watchers have claimed.
California-born Meghan, 40, has been rumoured to have had her sights on the White House for some time. Talk of her ambition to become president dates back to a “secret” meeting with Hillary Clinton at Frogmore Cottage in 2019, the Daily Star reports.
At the weekend, she spoke out about the US Supreme Court's controversial decision to strike down the Roe vs Wade judgment, which protected a woman's right to abortion. It put her ambitions in the spotlight again, and royal expert Russell Myers says that she is making “all the right noises” to get into politics.
Speaking on ITV’s Lorraine programme, Myers said: “Prince Harry and Meghan have moved over to the United States. They’ve got their financial freedom. They’ve got their essential freedom from the royal family so they can speak on political issues. And certainly, Megan was speaking to Vogue at the weekend, talking about Roe vs Wade.”
As part of a discussion with legendary women's rights campaigner Gloria Steinem for Vogue, mother-of-two Meghan promised to join her on a trip to Washington DC to advocate for the Equal Rights Amendment.
“Being home, seeing what’s happening in our country and feeling energised and motivated, if this is the type of legislation that we need pushed through, then this is a moment that I am absolutely going to show up for,” Meghan said. “Not just because it’s what we need as women, but it’s what we need as people”.
Myers, the royal editor of the Daily Mirror, thinks that the Duchess’s increasingly political rhetoric is further proof that she has “political ambitions” and that she is on the right course to realise them: “She’s certainly rubbing shoulders with the right people and making the right noises,” he said.
The Daily Mail’s royal commentator Dan Wootton agreed with that assessment, saying her words sounded like “a future campaign ad for the 2032 Democratic primaries”. An anonymous royal source told the Daily Mail: "I am now convinced there is something bigger going on here,” they said, “an eventual plan that involves running for office in America.
“[Meghan is] obsessed with US politics. I think we’re now just a stepping stone to something she considers far more important and attractive”.
Another Daily Mail royal commentator, Richard Eden, claims that “a very good source” had told him that Meghan’s ultimate goal was the White House. He said that the Duchess renouncing her title in order to become her home country’s president seems to be increasingly likely, adding: "What a fascinating prospect it would be."
Before her marriage to Prince Harry in 2018, Meghan, then acting in TV legal drama Suits, was already an activist for causes including gender equality in developing countries. She became a UN Women’s Advocate for Women’s Political Participation and Leadership in 2015.
The following year, she travelled to Rwanda and India as an ambassador for World Vision, an organisation that fights global childhood poverty. The experience inspired her to write an op-ed in Time magazine about the effect stigma around menstruation can have on a girl’s future.
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