Prince Harry says the First Amendment is 'bonkers', gets told to go back to England

The estranged royal criticized America's free speech, a move which was not taken lightly.

In a recent interview on actor Dax Shepard's Armchair Expert podcast, Harry made a series of controversial statements. As The Spectator points out, while Harry's grovelling about "the 'genetic pain and suffering' of growing up as a royal" made the papers in the UK, his comments regarding America's first amendment were left out. On the other side of the Atlantic, however, things were reversed.

Harry was recently hired at the Aspen Institute to serve on the "Commission on Information Disorder", a group deemed "Orwell-esque" by some. In a statement, he said that "the experience of today's digital world has us inundated with an avalanche of misinformation, affecting our ability as individuals as well as societies to think clearly and truly understand the world we live in."

With this as background, it's not surprising that Harry views America's generous freedom of speech rights as problematic. "I’ve got so much I want to say about the First Amendment", he told Shepard. "It is bonkers." He admitted that  he didn't "want to start going down the First Amendment route because that’s a huge subject and one which I don’t understand because [he's] only been here a short time."

His concerns centered around peoples' ability to abuse the system. "You can find a loophole in anything", he said. "You can capitalise or exploit what’s not said rather than uphold what is said."

Harry also criticized Joe Rogan and his recent statements, which were walked back, claiming that young people don't need to get vaccinated. "The issue is in today's world with misinformation endemic", Harry said. "You've got to be careful about what comes out of your mouth. Because news doesn't exist in just news anymore. It's splattered all over the place, so people like to listen to Joe Rogan and say, 'Oh, if he says that.'"

Following the release of the podcast, Harry was met with calls to "go back to Britain", with one angry Twitter user pointing out that "[America] fought a war to get rid of royals on [their] soil."

Even Texas Republican Dan Crenshaw weighed in, joking that  he "just doubled the size of [his] Independence Day party."