Donald Trump has said he did not call Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, “nasty” when giving an interview to the Sun, despite an audio recording released by the paper.

Speaking to the tabloid before his visit to the UK, Trump was told that Meghan “wasn’t so nice” about him during the 2016 US presidential campaign, to which he replied: “I didn’t know that. What can I say? I didn’t know that she was nasty.”

However, in a series of early morning tweets on Sunday, the US president said he “never called Meghan Markle nasty” and that the “Fake News Media” had invented his remarks.

He said it was “Made up by the Fake News Media, and they got caught cold! Will CNN, NY Times and others apologize? Doubt it!”

The Sun posted a recording of the original interview to prove that its reporting was accurate.

In the interview, Tom Newton-Dunn, the Sun’s political editor, said to Trump: “[Markle] can’t make it because she’s got maternity leave. Are you sorry not to see her? Because she wasn’t so nice about you during the campaign. I don’t know if you saw that.”

Trump replied: “I didn’t know that, no. I didn’t know that. No, I hope she’s OK. I did not know that, no.”

Newton-Dunn continued: “She said she’d move to Canada if you got elected. It turned out she moved to Britain.”

Trump said: “A lot of people moving here, so what can I say? No, I didn’t know that she was nasty.”

The property mogul turned politician went on to say that having an American princess was “nice” and that he was sure she would do “excellently”.

“She will be very good, she will be very good,” he said. “I hope she does.”

Meghan described Trump as “misogynistic” and “divisive” during an appearance on Comedy Central’s The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore.

She will not be taking part in the royal functions around Trump’s visit because she is looking after her three-week-old baby, Archie.