Remarks by President Obama and His Royal Highness Prince Harry of the United Kingdom

Oval Office

4:14 P.M. EDT

PRESIDENT OBAMA:  Well, it is a great pleasure to welcome His Royal Highness Prince Harry here to the Oval Office.  I’ve had an opportunity to spend a lot of time with so many of his family members, but this is the first time that we had a chance to talk directly.

He has gotten to know Michelle very well, for a range of reasons, but in particular, he’s here to talk about the Invictus Games, an initiative that is bringing together wounded warriors around the world, under the leadership of Prince Harry and others, to make sure that we see not simply the sacrifices they’ve made, but also the incredible contributions, strength and courage they continue to display.

And so we are very glad to support the Invictus Games.  It’s going to be coming here to the United States, to Orlando, in March May [sic] of next year.  Michelle and myself are interested in promoting it.

We want to thank His Royal Highness for his own service in Afghanistan alongside our outstanding American troops.  It is a testament to the special relationship, the incredible bond that we share between our two countries.  And that bond continues into the next generation of leadership that His Royal Highness represents.

So we’re very grateful for him not only for this specific work, but also for continuing to strengthen the deep, deep bonds between our two countries.

PRINCE HARRY:  Mr. President, thank you very, very much for hosting us today, and especially in giving the Invictus Games the voice that it so readily deserves, I suppose.
We had huge amounts of fun designing the Invictus Games based around stealing the Warrior Games off yourselves and making it international, making it better, and now we’re giving it back to you.  So we’re really looking forward to the 8th through 12th of May, and hoping to see as many people as possible come down and support all our wounded warriors together.

So thank you very much.

PRESIDENT OBAMA:  Thank you.

END
4:17 P.M. EDT