US President Donald Trump denied on Sunday that he had called Meghan Markle "nasty" just days before heading to Britain to be hosted, and lavishly feted, by other members of the royal family.
And yet the remark about the American-born Dutchess of Sussex is heard clearly on a tape of a Trump interview with the British tabloid The Sun.
Trump's tweet Sunday came a day before his three-day state visit is to begin with a pomp-filled ceremony at Buckingham Palace followed by lunch with 93-year-old Queen Elizabeth I.
He tweeted: "I never called Meghan Markle 'nasty.' Made up by the Fake News Media, and they got caught cold! Will @CNN, @nytimes and others apologize? Doubt it!"
On the tape, the interviewer points out that Markle, who married the queen's grandson Prince Harry in 2018, had been critical of Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign, saying "she'd move to Canada if you got elected; turned out she moved here."
"Well, a lot of people are moving here, so what can I say," Trump replied. "No, I didn't know that she was nasty."
And yet he went on to say he thought that as princess "she'll do excellently, she'll be very good, she'll be very good. I hope she does."
An official Trump campaign Twitter account had rather bizarrely called attention to the "nasty" comment on Saturday by linking to a video of the interview and suggesting the president had not used the word; it urged people to "Listen for yourself!"