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Donald Trump has said he feels sorry for the royal family after the former Prince Andrew was stripped of his royal titles amid pressure over his ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
While speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday, Nov. 2, Trump, 79, was asked about Andrew, 65, no longer being known as a prince or His Royal Highness, among other titles.
“I feel very badly,” Trump told reporters on Sunday.
“It’s a terrible thing that’s happened to the family,” he continued, adding, “That’s been a tragic situation, and it’s too bad. I mean, I feel badly for the family.”
Buckingham Palace announced on Thursday, Oct. 30, that Andrew would now be called Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, marking an unprecedented move for the royal family.
The decision was a continuation of the fallout from renewed scrutiny of his friendship with the late Epstein, who died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal conspiracy and sex trafficking charges.
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Andrew’s connections to Epstein have been increasingly under the microscope in recent weeks. In 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty to soliciting sex from a minor. At that time, his friendship with Andrew was well-documented, and the two had been photographed together at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
In recent years, there have also been multiple reports about Trump’s ties to Epstein, including that he allegedly gifted the convicted sex offender a lewd letter for his 50th birthday back in 2003, PEOPLE reported in July, citing The Wall Street Journal. Trump has since insisted the outlet’s story was “fake.”
Andrew was born a prince and had the styling of His Royal Highness since birth as the son of the then-reigning monarch Queen Elizabeth. He was given the title of Duke of York, as well as Earl of Inverness and Baron Killyleagh, by his late mother on his wedding day to Sarah Ferguson in 1986.
The honors affected as part of King Charles’ decision last week are Andrew’s Order of the Garter and Knight Grand Cross of the Victorian Order. The disgraced royal will also be moving out of the Royal Lodge in Windsor, where he has lived since 2003.
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Despite lately trying to downplay their ties, Trump previously called Epstein a “terrific guy” in a 2002 interview with New York magazine.
“It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side,” Trump added. The president’s infamous quote was recently displayed on a bus stop in London ahead of his visit to the U.K. in September.
Four men were also arrested after images of Trump and Epstein were projected onto Windsor Castle ahead of his visit, but the charges have since been dropped, per the BBC.
Trump and members of his administration have also repeatedly promised the declassification and release of the Epstein files — even on the 2024 campaign trail.
Meanwhile, Trump and Andrew have actually been pictured together on multiple occasions through the years.
“He’s not pretentious. He’s a lot of fun to be with,” Trump told PEOPLE about the former royal in 2000.
However, in December 2019, the month after Andrew stepped back from his duties as a working royal, the president told reporters, “I don’t know Prince Andrew, but it’s a tough story, it’s a very tough story.”
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Andrew withdrew from royal duties following a scrutinized interview with BBC’s Newsnight about his alleged ties to Epstein.
Then, in January 2022, Queen Elizabeth stripped her second son of his military titles and patronages after he attempted to have a sexual assault lawsuit filed by noted survivor Virginia Giuffre against him dismissed. The following month, he settled with Giuffre — who died by suicide on April 24 of this year at the age of 41 — out of court for an undisclosed sum.
Giuffre alleged that she was sex trafficked to the former prince, who has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, when she was 17 and had three sexual encounters with him.
On Oct. 17 of this year, Andrew then announced he would give up the use of his royal titles and other titles and honors amid renewed interest in his relationship to Epstein ahead of the release of Giuffre’s posthumous memoir, Nobody’s Girl. In the book, Giuffre wrote that Andrew “believed having sex with me was his birthright.”
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PEOPLE spoke to Queen Elizabeth’s former press secretary, Ailsa Anderson, after news of Andrew having his royal titles removed was revealed.
Sharing why it took so long for King Charles to strip his brother of that status, Anderson said, “Andrew had been dragging his heels. They had to take constitutional advice and legal advice and over the lease on Royal Lodge.”
“They had to get all the dots on I’s and T’s crossed before they made this announcement,” she added.
