Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, died Friday at the age of 99 following a lengthy hospital stay. But it would be a stretch to say that this death was much of a surprise: Philip, longtime husband of Queen Elizabeth, wasn’t in the best of health, and his resiliency despite looking a little worse for wear became a meme of sorts. That he made it just two months shy of his 100th birthday is regarded as a feat considering the fact that the man was repeatedly compared to the Crypt Keeper from Tales from the Crypt.
But try explaining that to Fox News.
Fox and Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade offered a rambling summation of Philip’s life and personality, moving wildly from lauding his 73-year marriage to Queen Elizabeth to condemning last month’s damning Oprah interview with Meghan Markle and her husband, Prince Harry. In it, Markle alleged that the royal family’s PR machine fed lies about her to the press and that the negative attention led her to suffer from suicidal ideation with little to no support from the family. Additionally, she and Harry said that a close member of the family wondered how dark the skin of their child would be.
“If you factor in this, there are reports that he was enraged after the interview and the fallout from the interview with Oprah Winfrey,” Kilmeade said. “So, here he is, trying to recover, and he gets hit with that.”
In another dig, Kilmeade cited journalist Piers Morgan, a deeply embittered man who somehow hasn’t started the Fuck That Bitch Meghan Markle I Can’t Believe She Ghosted Me Society yet.
“Just think about this, this one thing that Piers Morgan was saying on his morning show—which he famously walked off of—is, like, ‘Really? Your grandfather’s in the hospital, you know he’s not doing well, is this really the time you have to put out this interview?’” Kilmeade said. “And, evidently, it definitely added to his stress.”
There has been a litany of rumors about how much Philip knew about the explosive interview, how upset he was about it, and so on. None of that negates the fact that the man was 99 years old and has been in and out of the hospital for years. The lasted hospital stay lasted from February 16 to March 16 and sought to treat an infection as well as a pre-existing heart issue.
For all we know, Philip might have keeled over after taking a quick peek at the new Lil Nas X video. But it’s a lot juicier to blame the black sheep of the royal family over Philip’s not-so-untimely death than a gradual build-up of health issues.