Republican Senator snipes at Prince Harry over his ‘democracy lecture’
A Republican senator has mocked Prince Harry for wading into US politics, quipping: “[I] love being lectured on democracy by an actual prince.”
The Duke of Sussex has previously cited a "rolling back of constitutional rights" in the US as part of a "global assault on democracy and freedom".
In a speech on Thursday, Mike Lee, a Republican senator representing Utah, drew on the remarks as he critiqued bureaucratic largesse within the US government.
Mr Lee championed the values of “limited government, free markets, [and] individual liberty”, which he said were “absolutely instrumental in shaping the American landscape.”
Speaking at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington DC, Mr Lee outlined the irony of a descendant of King George III advising Americans on liberty and governance.
The Republican listed restrictions the British government imposed during King George III's reign, according to the Daily Signal.
He went on to critique the expansion of the US federal government, claiming it is "really good for bureaucrats, [where] lifetime individuals who couldn’t be elected to dogcatchers are treated like emperors, or at least like princes.”
“Americans deserve to be in charge of their own destiny and their own government,” Mr Lee said.
Mr Lee's comments were met with some derision online, coming in the wake of his efforts to overturn the 2020 election through legal challenges.
Text messages between the senator and senior White House aides revealed Mr Lee pushed legally dubious schemes to keep then-President Donald Trump in power.
Mr Lee has defended his actions by saying he was merely look into legal arguments and noted that he ultimately voted to certify Joe Biden's victory over Mr Trump.
The Duke of Sussex sparked a backlash in his adopted home with his 2022 keynote address at the United Nations on Nelson Mandela day in 2022.
He said: "We're living through a pandemic that continues to ravage communities in every corner of the globe; climate change wreaking havoc on our planet, with the most vulnerable suffering most of all; the few weaponising lies and disinformation at the expense of the many, and from the horrific war in Ukraine to the rolling back of constitutional rights here in the United States, we are witnessing a global assault on democracy and freedom, the cores of Mandela's life".
Meghan McCain, the daughter of the late Republican senator John McCain, was among those criticising the comments, calling them "confusing and wildly insulting" to Americans.
