Exclusive: Piers Morgan Talks Trump 2024, His Viral Interviews, Murdoch and The Israel-Hamas War
Piers Morgan has established his young news program as a must-watch in recent months. The British journalist and commentator, who hosts Piers Morgan Uncensored on TalkTV, has interviewed a steady stream of major voices on both sides of the conflict between Israel and Palestine. He has earned plaudits from the right and left for tough interrogations of those in power and important debates between opposing voices. The audience for his show online has been staggering: His two interviews with Egyptian comedian Bassem Youssef drew 32 million views on YouTube.
Morgan, whose TalkTV show is aired on Sky News and Fox News streaming platform Fox Nation, has continued to deftly cover U.S. politics as well. His careful evisceration of 2024 president candidate Vivek Ramaswamy went viral and was met with acclaim.
Morgan’s television career has been a bumpy one. He was primarily known in the U.S. for his ill-fated stint as an anchor on CNN. After that experience he decamped back to England, where he landed a co-hosting gig on ITV’s Good Morning Britain. That years-long run came to a dramatic end after some controversial comments he made about Meghan Markle led to him storming off the set — and eventually the show altogether. His hiring at TalkTV brought his career as a star journalist full circle: he was returning to Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, where he started as a reporter for Murdoch’s tabloid The Sun in the late 1980s.
Morgan joined Mediaite’s The Interview podcast this week to discuss the success of his show; the importance of asking tough questions and platforming a wide array of voices on Israel-Palestine; his views on old friend Donald Trump and the dangers of his 2024 re-election bid; the future of Murdoch’s media empire; the ongoing turmoil at his former home CNN.
Watch the full interview above, and read highlights from the discussion below.
On Trump
I think anyone who defies democracy in the way that Trump has been doing by refusing to accept that he lost the last election, with no evidence, as I kept saying to him, produce the evidence that it’s a rigged, stolen election. But he hasn’t been able to. And many senior Republicans agree he’s not been able to. So his own side, a lot a lot of them, just aren’t having this. But many people do have it. And they do believe it. And Trump just cries foul. And that’s been his modus operandi his entire life, by the way. It’s been very successful for him. Remember that. You’re talking about somebody who’s facing 100 criminal indictments and yet is way ahead in the polling, not just to be Republican nominee, but he’s also ahead in many polls I’ve seen to beat Biden if it’s that much up in the general election. So we all think this is nuts, but Trump’s thinking this is a plan. I always say about Trump, I think he has the thinnest skin of anyone I’ve ever met. He’ll react to absolutely everything in the most ridiculously over-the-top way. But he also has the thickest skin so he can soak up stuff that would kill off any other political career. He can take it all, and that is an admirable quality for a politician.
On Trump 2024
Absolutely he can win again. What would he be like if he won again? Again, I suspect his bark would be worse than his bite. I think he talks a far more dangerous game than he actually executes with action. But that may be wishful thinking. There’s definitely a touch of authoritarianism about his his behavior and rhetoric since the last election. So I would hope that would not be the case.
On his heated clash with an Israeli government spokesman
That interview you spoke about with the Israeli government spokesman: it was clear to me very quickly he didn’t know how many Hamas terrorists they’re killing. Once you know that, that’s a really significant part of this debate. Because many people, particularly in Israel [say] Israel has an absolute right to defend itself in the way that is doing, and that because Hamas immerses itself in civilian population, inevitably you will get large civilian casualties as you try to eradicate them. But you have to be able to know how many Hamas terrorists you’re killing, particularly if the number of innocent civilians being killed, especially in a place like Gaza with 50% of children. When that death toll skyrockets in the way that it has, if you want to win the moral argument with the world watching, you have to be able to know how many you’re killing. And I don’t think, honestly, that Israel has a clue how many Hamas terrorists they’re killing in this war. And that’s going to be an increasing problem as they now wage this war in the south.
On getting his big break from Rupert Murdoch
It began with extraordinary circumstances. I can remember very vividly. I was a young show business reporter on The Sun, which was the biggest selling daily newspaper in Britain. And Rupert had this dinner party for about ten executives from The Sun. I was very young. I was 27. I didn’t know what I was doing there because all the others were nearly double my age and much more experienced. But I was put down my my career path to peach brandy, which is a wonderful liqueur, which if you’re ever around Rupert Murdoch, I would urge you to drink and I’ll tell you why. Because when it came to the liquers, everyone passed because they all thought they shouldn’t be seen drinking a liqueur in front of the big boss. And he got round to me after no, no, no, no, no, no, and I said, Well, what would you recommend? to the somelier. And he said, The peach brandy is very good sir. And I said well I’ll have the peach brandy. And then the guy next to me was a guy called Stuart Higgins, then the deputy editor of The Sun. He said, I’ll have one of those, make it two. And then Rupert said, That’s my favorite, make it three. And I’m not saying I’m a conspiracy theorist, but a month later, I was the new editor of The News of the World, and Stuart Higgins was the new editor of The Sun. So the two guys at the table who had gone with the peach brandy ended up with the big jobs. May have been a coincidence. Or maybe Rupert thought, You know what? I like people who’ve got the balls to order peach brandy. That started my relationship with him and it was extraordinary. He flew me out to Miami a few weeks later, and we walked along the beach for three hours, literally, talking about world affairs. Like I say, I was not an executive. I was a show business guy. I interviewed celebrities and that was my job. And I did a column about celebrities. But at the end of it, he announced that I was the new editor of his biggest selling newspaper in the world. And that was a staggering moment for me in my career and one that I’ll always look back to him and be incredibly grateful to him for.
On the power of bucking tribalism
I actually think there’s a real power, as I have done multiple times during this conflict, of saying, you know what, I’ve changed my mind and I think there’s something wrong with that. Social media has made people so terrified of changing their mind. They don’t want to drift out of their tribe. They just want to be told what the tribe has decided. And facts don’t matter. Well, facts should be the first starting point for any debate, for any conversation, for any opinion. You can then have a view about a fact. You can have an opinion about it. But what you shouldn’t get to do is just ignore changing facts. And we saw that with the Covid pandemic, we’ve seen it with Donald Trump, we’ve seen it with Brexit over here, very incendiary topics. And the Israel-Hamas war is probably, I would say, in terms of the reaction I’ve seen on social media, the worst example of this where people just go straight to the extremities of their tribalism and they don’t deviate. And I feel that’s a real problem for modern democracy.
Subscribe to The Interview on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.
