Sept. 29, 2024 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
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| I mean, I've interviewed most people I've wanted to interview over the years. | ||
| I mean, I've probably done 3,000 interviews, and I've been very lucky. | ||
| You know, from Nelson Mandela to the Dalai Lama. | ||
| I did the last interview with Professor Stephen Hawking. | ||
| I've done pretty much every movie star. | ||
| I've done five American presidents, ten British prime ministers. | ||
| I've been very fortunate in that way. | ||
| I can remember bits of all of the memorable ones. | ||
| If I was to choose one, It's someone who's not given a television interview in nearly 50 years. | ||
| And I think it's a brilliant I don't think you do one now. | ||
|
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It's a crazy world, crazy world Somebody's gotta have the same views | |
| It's a crazy world It's a crazy world | ||
| Somebody's gotta have the same views Thanks for watching! Like, share, and subscribe! | ||
| Joining me today is a British journalist, television personality, and host of Piers Morgan Uncensored. | ||
| And I guess a guy who needs no introduction. | ||
| He's either hated or loved by everybody. | ||
| Depends who you're asking. | ||
| Piers Morgan, how you doing, man? | ||
| I'm feeling very loved. | ||
| A minimal amount of hatred. | ||
| Just the right amount. | ||
| Just the right amount of hatred. | ||
| Now you host these debates on your show, which I've been part of some of these things, and you're really seemingly capturing something special online, because it is just how, what would be a good way to describe it, a cacophony of insanity at times? | ||
| Is that how you set it up when you started doing these things? | ||
| You know what? | ||
| It kind of became organic. | ||
| I see the show uncensored, really, as being what it says on the tin. | ||
| I want people to come on from all sides of the political divide, from all sides of any debate that's raging, whether it's the Israel-Hamas war, whether it's the US presidential election, whether it's Ukraine, whatever it may be. | ||
| I want to get on the most passionate people. | ||
| I want to get intelligent, smart people. | ||
| That's why you've been on several times. | ||
| I want to get people, though, who are going to engage with people they don't agree with. | ||
| That, to me, is the sweet spot, because there are very few places in the world Where people actually get people from both sides to duke it out. | ||
| You don't see it on mainstream television very much. | ||
| They all have their kind of partisan position, whether it's MSNBC and CNN, my former employers to a degree, where they skew very liberal. | ||
| Whether it's Fox, it skews obviously pretty conservative. | ||
| You know, I like to be a place where it doesn't matter what your beliefs are, But it does matter that you're prepared to be challenged on them, and it does matter you're prepared to debate them with people who completely disagree with you. | ||
| Do you find that there's a little bit of an asymmetry there in that, at least at the moment, people who tend to lean right are a little more willing to discuss things, open to being on panels with people who differ. | ||
| Where the lefties, it's much tougher. | ||
| I mean, even when I've done your show, the selection of people on the left, With all due respect, it's not like the most great level thinkers versus you're getting really great people on the right, I think. | ||
| And I don't blame you for that. | ||
| I think it's just sort of the way politics is kind of shaken out at the moment. | ||
| No, I think you make a good point. | ||
| I think all the big players in this space on the right are very happy to go on and debate with anybody and to say their piece and to be challenged on it. | ||
| There's a lot of confidence I find in a lot of people on the conservative right. | ||
| On the left, they don't really like being challenged so much. | ||
| I do have a lot of people that come on. | ||
| I do get some great thinkers who skew left, and I really enjoy it when they come on. | ||
| You know, my own politics, I'm a pretty centrist kind of guy. | ||
| I'm not really an ideologue on either side. | ||
| You know, in the UK, for example, I voted for Margaret Thatcher, conservative right classic leader. | ||
| I voted for Tony Blair, who was sort of centre-left. | ||
| I tend to be drawn to leaders as much as any ideology and I don't try and come at any of my debates or big interviews from a politically ideological place. | ||
| I come at it essentially as a journalist who just wants to know what do you believe and what holes can I pick in that belief and how well can you defend what you believe in and if they are prepared to come on and do that we're gonna we're gonna have a good time and I admire those who do. | ||
| As a Brit, do you find it odd or a little bizarre that you have to spend so much time talking about American politics, or is that just kind of the way of the world at the moment? | ||
| We've got the number one show and you're a host. | ||
| You know what? | ||
| It's exactly that. | ||
| I mean, I've worked on American Media, television, primarily since 2006. | ||
| I was a judge on America's Got Talent. | ||
| I then did a show called Celebrity Apprentice, where a certain guy called Donald Trump picked me as his first apprentice, which may explain a lot of things. | ||
| I was a member of that, but his last words, I think, before he may be the apprentice in the live finale, were peers. | ||
| He said, you're tough, You're ruthless, you're arrogant, you're obnoxious, but you beat the hell out of everybody. | ||
| So you're possibly evil, I don't know, but you beat the hell out of everybody and you're my apprentice. | ||
| So what do you want the presidency? | ||
| I sent him a note. | ||
| I said, Donald, you're tough, you're ruthless, you're obnoxious, you're arrogant, you're possibly evil, I don't know, but you beat the hell out of the opposition and you're the President of the United States. | ||
| He did laugh. | ||
| So I threw the words back at him. | ||
| But yeah, and then I obviously did CNN for four years in the days when CNN, you know, had a pretty different kind of view of how they went about covering news. | ||
| Very doubtful. | ||
| Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that actually, so feel free to go on that. | ||
| Yeah, you know, there were very, very strong standards and practices instilled in you. | ||
| You know, I remember the trouble I used to have just getting Donald Trump on air on my show to interview him. | ||
| He was always a great interviewer. | ||
| He always got great ratings. | ||
| And back then, he was just a TV star and a property mogul. | ||
| Obviously, the trouble started at CNN when he became a politician because they helped get him elected, gave him acres of airtime in that 2015-16 cycle. | ||
| And then a bit like Dr. Frankenstein, when they think they've lost control of their monster, they then try to kill him off, and it was too late. | ||
| But I've watched CNN with great interest because I've got a lot of time and affection for the play. | ||
| I've had a great four years there. | ||
| And it's interesting to me, there are lots of very good hosts there who I really respect and admire, but there are some who could barely contain their hatred of not just Trump but everything on the right really. | ||
| And it was just very transparent in a way that would never have been allowed before when I was a CNN. | ||
| You couldn't be that obvious about which way your political leanings were. | ||
| But you look at people like Anderson Cooper now and you think, come on now. | ||
| Still pretending, right? | ||
| We know you're not running down to vote for the Republicans, okay? | ||
| You make it so obvious. | ||
| And I think that's a shame because... Wait a minute, are you telling me that Dana Bash and Jake Tapper are not Republicans? | ||
| Is that what you're telling me? | ||
| Well, I think in both those cases, actually, I would defend the fact that I've watched them a lot. | ||
| I'm a big admirer of both of them. | ||
| I do think they try hard to be impartial. | ||
| They don't always succeed, but I do think they try hard. | ||
| I think some of the others, I remember when Don Lennon was there, Very, very partial in his obvious leanings on Ed. | ||
| I think Anderson's the same. | ||
| I think quite a few others are. | ||
| And there are others like, you know, Walt Blitzer, John King and others who are completely impartial. | ||
| So they've got a mixed bag there. | ||
| But generally speaking, people no longer perceive CNN as the voice that people go to for utterly impartial news coverage. | ||
| And that is a shame for the brand. | ||
| And I wish that it was different, because I think CNN has an important place in the American media where it's not perceived by people, or never used to be, as a politically partisan network. | ||
| I think you're completely right, which is why it's why everyone beats up on CNN, because people know what Fox is. | ||
| They know what MSNBC is. | ||
| People want CNN to be better, I would say, including me. | ||
| You know, I'll have a little mea culpa with you. | ||
| When you took over for my friend Larry King, he was my my friend and mentor and put me on TV for the first time ever. | ||
| And I was kind of like, well, who is this Piers Morgan taking over for Larry King? | ||
| And so you did the interview show there for four years. | ||
| Is that right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And were you seeing the change happening yet, or did it happen kind of after? | ||
| It's a long time ago already. | ||
| I mean, what is that, a good seven years ago, something like that? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I left CNN in 2014. | ||
| That's 10 years ago. | ||
| But I was there from 2010 to 2014. | ||
| Yeah, no, I had a great time there. | ||
| I did a lot of amazing interviews. | ||
| And it was a time where they had The license for someone like me to do genuine interview shows rather than just endless debate politics shows, which is what it's kind of morphed into. | ||
| I just think it's really important to see and then goes through a bit of a struggle with his identity right now. | ||
| And I think they've got some very bright young stars coming through. | ||
| I think Caitlin Collins is a big star to me in the making. | ||
| I look at her and think, yeah, absolutely. | ||
| She was a very good correspondent. | ||
| My director is shaking his head no, but everyone's entitled to their opinion. | ||
| I do think when she corresponded, I always felt during the Trump presidency, she was extremely fair and impartial, as opposed to someone like Jim Acosta and others who like to lock horns with Trump and play to their liberal fans. | ||
| So I think they've got an identity struggle, which is ironic given how much they bang on about identities. | ||
| But I think they'll probably sort it out because America needs a strong and impartial CNN. | ||
| People can go to you, we're not really sure what to think about stuff, but I think they're going to get a fair shake. | ||
| But I would look at the panels that CNN get together and compare them to mine And if I was CNN, I'd be coming to me going, we should put your show on, right? | ||
| Because actually, that's what CNN should be. | ||
| One or two from either side, two and two from either side. | ||
| Completely fair that airtime we give people with contrary opinions. | ||
| Often what they do at CNN, they have four liberals and one conservative. | ||
| That's not fair. | ||
| Immediately the optics look like they're skewed. | ||
| Do you think it matters anymore, in a certain respect, whether CNN or anything from the mainstream media survives? | ||
| I mean, I've seen the numbers that you're pulling in lately. | ||
| We're crushing it, Megyn Kelly. | ||
| I mean, there is a new selection of people, some of whom I probably don't even know, let's say, on the other side, that are filling that void. | ||
| Now, I know we're all going off into our own little corridor and there's some danger there, but does it really matter whether the New York Times or Washington Post or CNN survive this thing? | ||
| Ultimately, no. | ||
| I don't think it does. | ||
| It'll be like every jungle survivor of the fittest. | ||
| I've got three sons who've been very instrumental in the way I've taken my career, for example, because I've done lots of linear television in my time. | ||
| I did the morning show in the UK for five years and I did CNN, like I said, and other stuff. | ||
| But my sons are 31, 27, 23. | ||
| None of them watch linear television. | ||
| If they do, they do it through the YouTube app. | ||
| I read the other day that 10% of American television watchers who have a TV set, smart TV, they watch television through the YouTube app. | ||
| And only 23% watch network television on their smart TV. | ||
| And those graphs are going like this. | ||
| You can see that in five years time, YouTube is highly likely to be the number one thing that people use as an app on their smart TV to watch television. | ||
| So I'm going where the real action is going. | ||
| And I've got 3.2 million subscribers now to Piers Morgan, I'm censored in. | ||
| just over two years. | ||
| You know, we did a debate yesterday on the US presidential race, obviously the assassination attempt and so on. | ||
| So like 1.4 million people have watched, to be watching for an average of 20 minutes. | ||
| Those kind of numbers would be like a goldmine to CNN right now. | ||
| And they're global, but we're 40-45% American viewers. | ||
| In relation to your question earlier, America is the big show in town. | ||
| You are the big dog. | ||
| I know that. | ||
| You know that. | ||
| And I've worked out pretty quickly that on YouTube, for example, if we do America-centric content, which is always going to appeal to an American audience, the rest of the world will follow it and enjoy it. | ||
| If we do UK-centric content, a lot of Americans go, no thanks. | ||
| So that's not necessarily to your credit as a country, but it is a harsh reality that Americans have far less interest in non-American stuff than we have in American stuff. | ||
| And that applies not just to the UK, but Australia, the Middle East, and everywhere. | ||
| So I think there's an undeniable fact. | ||
| So again, we're going where the eyeballs are and where, to be honest with you, where the biggest action is. | ||
| Piers, I don't want to upset you, but I guess I'll let you in on a little secret. | ||
| The main thing that we know about you guys is that you put out Downton Abbey. | ||
| If it's for the last hundred years, it's basically just focused on Downton Abbey. | ||
| I remember Jay Leno telling me, I did the Tonight Show and he was still doing it, and at the time I was taking on the NRA at CNN. | ||
| Rather infamously, as it will turn out. | ||
| And I was obviously depicted as the British gun grabber and so on. | ||
| And Jay Leno said to me, Piers, here's the problem. | ||
| It would be like you go to Germany and telling them they can't speed on the autobahn. | ||
| You know, there might be the smart liberal crowd who say, he's got a point, this British guy. | ||
| But most Germans would go, we don't want to hear it from him. | ||
| And we definitely don't want to hear it from his accent. | ||
| I kind of realized that, probably the hard way. | ||
| But actually, if you are a visitor to another country, wherever it is, but especially America, you've got to be respectful of the fact that America has its own laws, its own culture, and its own attitudes, and you have to respect that. | ||
| And sometimes I'm also a little bit of a rampaging bull trying to instill the values of my country and the laws of my country on America. | ||
| And that, with hindsight, I overdid that. | ||
| It's an interesting May a couple to have, actually, because most people don't look back and go, I might have made a mistake here or there or the other thing. | ||
| So that's, I appreciate that. | ||
| Let's talk about some of the issues of the day. | ||
| You mentioned you know Trump well. | ||
| You're having these debates constantly. | ||
| As we're taping this right now, we're only a couple days off the second assassination attempt. | ||
| As you know, everyone will forget about this in three days, and there could, God forbid, be another. | ||
| And then if that doesn't work out, like, we are just so beyond the pale in so many ways. | ||
| How concerned are you about where the West is, where all of our governments are? | ||
| I mean, we have a particular version of it here, but as you said, we're the big fish, so it's not like you guys are that far behind, probably, in a cultural sense. | ||
| Look, I think I'm particularly concerned right now that Donald Trump stays alive. | ||
| Because I think it would be catastrophic for America if Donald Trump was killed. | ||
| And I think he's come perilously close twice now in two months to being killed. | ||
| And that is completely outrageous. | ||
| Both times, in my opinion, there's been an abject failure by the Secret Service to do their job properly. | ||
| In the first case, a 21-year-old kid gets on the obvious roof, where you would put yourself as an assassin to shoot Trump at a rally, literally 150 yards from you. | ||
| How did that happen? | ||
| And while we're still puzzled and bemused by that, Two months later, Trump decides he wants to play golf, and the Secret Service don't even check the perimeter of the golf course where he's about to spend four hours of his time, where everybody knows he regularly plays golf. | ||
| So people ask, how did this guy know Trump was going to be there? | ||
| Because he's usually there when he's in Palm Beach. | ||
| He's usually playing at his own golf course. | ||
| There's a clue with the name, the Trump International Golf Course. | ||
| And where did this shooter go? | ||
| He went where he, if he Googled Trump at this golf course, he would have seen that all the pictures get taken from that corner. | ||
| Because that is the place, ironically, where photographers get the cleanest shot. | ||
| So this would-be assassin went, whoa, yeah, you do get a great shot there. | ||
| With a gun, too. | ||
| And for 12 hours, he sat in a bush. | ||
| And the Secret Service, he promised us, after getting rid of their previous leader two months ago, that they'd learn the lessons. | ||
| This wouldn't happen again. | ||
| Yesterday, we were on some weird victory parade at a press conference. | ||
| But what a great job they'd done, because one agent With very sharp eyes, happened to spot the rifle barrel poking out of a bush. | ||
| If he had, Trump would now almost certainly be dead. | ||
| Because four minutes later, he would have arrived at that green, where that guy was waiting, 20-30 yards away. | ||
| AK-47 against Donald Trump on a green from 30 yards. | ||
| He's a dead man. | ||
| And, you know, I spoke to Donald Trump the week after he was shot the first time. | ||
| And he showed remarkable, I would call it balls of steel, both the first time and the second time. | ||
| He's bundled down again by Secret Service. | ||
| It must have been terrifying because he hears the shots going off, which turned out to be the agent shooting at this guy. | ||
| But apparently his first thought was, where are the other people who were on the course? | ||
| Are they okay? | ||
| And his second thought to Sean Hannity was, I'm really frustrated because I had a birdie putt that was playing really well. | ||
| You know, this is the thing about Trump. | ||
| Whatever you think of him, he's got balls. | ||
| And he's shown it several times now. | ||
| But as his son Eric said, you know, he's running out of lives. | ||
| And so, you know, I'll come to your bigger point question. | ||
| But my immediate concern is somebody who's known Trump for 20 years now and considers him to be a friend, albeit we've had a few bust-ups and occasional fallout, as a lot of people do with Trump, but we've fallen back in. | ||
| And I just feel very strongly right now he's not being protected properly. | ||
| And if he isn't, then another crazy will get through and they will kill him. | ||
| And then what? | ||
| Where would that leave America? | ||
| So, what is the state of America like now? | ||
| Well, like a lot of countries, I feel like the political discourse is getting poisoned by social media, and not in a good way. | ||
| I think people are getting put into what they perceive to be their tribe on social media. | ||
| Facts no longer seem to matter. | ||
| they're not prepared to change their mind or admit they're wrong as i just did earlier to you and you were quite surprised people don't even do that anymore because they don't like the fact that your back click gets put on social media All their fans, all their tribe will immediately go, oh my god, why did you do that? | ||
| Why did you give them an inch, these people? | ||
| Well, that's part of the problem. | ||
| Part of the problem is we have forgotten how to debate like a proper society does, where you and I could have a... we could have had probably an hour-long debate about guns and gun control and all the rest of it. | ||
| Second Amendment. | ||
| We won't because I don't want to bore your viewers, but we could have done. | ||
| I'll link everybody to you and Ben Shapiro and they can decide. | ||
| Exactly! | ||
| We could have done, but I would be damn sure if we did, however passionate and engaged that argument became, you and I at the end of it wouldn't fall out or want to kill each other. | ||
| But in a way, we've kind of regressed back 2,000 years to where we literally lived in tribes. | ||
| And you only ever hung out with people who looked like you, sounded like you, had the same attitude, ate and drank like you, and so on, dressed like you, looked like you. | ||
| And then they ventured out of their tribes after a few thousand years, and they met other tribes who looked different, sounded different, had different attitudes maybe. | ||
| And the only answer both tribes came up with at the time was to kill each other. | ||
| Well, we've regressed back to that on social media. | ||
| It's become a screaming cesspit of hatred from one tribe to another. | ||
| And I think both sides... I actually think the left would be worse, and they've become the new fascists in this. | ||
| But I think the central concern I have is the inability we now have to do what you and I are doing right now. | ||
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Right. | |
| So what do we do about that? | ||
| So if you and I are both in agreement on that, it can be a little more difficult to get guests on the left to debate, but you're saying it's not impossible, but it's just, it's just a thinner bench. | ||
| It just obviously is. | ||
| And that they've become a little more hysterical. | ||
| I mean, you know, this, you go to a Trump rally and you have gays for Trump and Latinos for Trump and blacks for Trump, and it's a celebration of America and everything else. | ||
| So what do you do in a media environment where we have you know, roughly dishonest mainstream media. And now I | ||
| would say a wide tent Republican Party here and another party that I don't think it's hyperbole that to | ||
| say they don't really like America. I mean, that's what they say themselves. So what | ||
| do you do about that? I mean, I think that's what everyone's thinking about now constantly. Well, | ||
| the biggest, the biggest scourge of society in the last five to 10 years has been | ||
| the rise of the woke virus, as Elon Musk calls it, the woke mentality, stroke cancel culture, where | ||
| it seems to me that the left have morphed a lot of them. | ||
| And this is where people like Bill Maher and I have a lot in common. | ||
| Politically, probably. | ||
| You know, slightly old-fashioned, slightly centre-left guys feel completely alienated from what anything on the left or liberal has become. | ||
| Because the woke left is so extreme, it's become, ironically, the very kind of fascism it professes to hate most. | ||
| It believes in destroying people for having opinions they don't like, or for reading books they don't like, or for admiring pieces of history they don't like, or for liking a problematic movie, or television show, or a record, whatever it may be. | ||
| And it's riddled with hypocrisy. | ||
| I mean, one of the best examples would be when John Lenton decided to unilaterally rewrite the lyrics to Baby It's Cold Outside. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because he had decided this was encouraging sexual assault. | ||
| Now anyone who's watched the video for that original song from the 60s knows it's actually one of the most harmless and kind of fun and warm examples of consensual sexual, you know, whatever you want to call it, but the most tame kind of courtship process going on. | ||
| What is not is sexual assault. | ||
| And the moment you have someone like John Legend doing that, but conveniently, Not doing that to any of the hardcore, often disgusting and repellent misogynist rap lyrics that his rap friends were doing. | ||
| And I called him out at the time and went, this is the problem, is that he would rather take the cheap hit and the cheap likes on social media for rewriting as this great hero to the feminist world of the woke left, rewrite Baby It's Cold Outside, but would do nothing about the disgusting lyrics of his rap mates. | ||
| What do you think happens to these people? | ||
| I don't mean specifically John Legend, but the reason it's interesting you mentioned him is you may have seen this week, as we're having this whole fiasco in Springfield, Ohio, where apparently he's from, he was basically like, oh, of course they should take Haitians there. | ||
| He happens to live in an $18 million mansion in Beverly Hills, where I'm pretty sure they've taken zero Haitians. | ||
| What do you think the psychology, I mean, you're around celebrities a lot and a lot of these people, what do you think is happening there? | ||
| You think it's as simple as the cheap clicks or is something else going on there? | ||
| I think it literally is as simple as the cheat clip. | ||
| I saw what he did there. | ||
| It's the classic piece of virtue signaling, this other scourge of our time, where he wants to attach his virtue to an issue which actually he ought to be directly involved with. | ||
| But I would have admired it if he got on a plane, went back to Springfield, right, and actually tried to find out what the problem is there. | ||
| And he probably would have found out pretty quickly, like a lot of parts of the UK, The problem is when you take a community or a town or wherever it may be and you suddenly, over a short period of time, dramatically change the fabric of that society by transporting a very large number of people from a different community and putting them slap into a town and expecting everything to just go perfectly swimmingly. | ||
| And that's not to denigrate any of the Haitian migrants there. | ||
| I've not been there to see it for myself. | ||
| Nor is it to lend succor or support to the cats and dogs story, which I happen to think has been unsubstantiated and actually should just be stopped unless there is hard evidence. | ||
| But putting that aside, I do understand why people in Springfield probably have a lot of concerns about how dramatically The look and makeup of their society has changed. | ||
| That doesn't make them racist. | ||
| It just makes them people who have understandable concerns about the very fast-changing nature of their town. | ||
| We see it throughout the UK. | ||
| You've seen it a lot in America. | ||
| You see it a lot around Europe. | ||
| And no one's really got a handle on how you do this when you have a lot of people moving around. | ||
| Is it right to just take areas and suddenly dramatically change What they're like. | ||
| And I think that's where the problem has been. | ||
| So what's your answer for that? | ||
| Because I think more and more people are seeing it. | ||
| I think from the American perspective, people are like, oh, we don't want to be like what the UK has become, or maybe more so what Sweden or Germany has become. | ||
| Obviously, Tommy Robinson from the UK has been talking a lot about this for years. | ||
| And the last time I was in London for Jordan Peterson's art conference about eight months ago, I mean, I went by a Hamas rally. | ||
| It was a Hamas rally. | ||
| That's what it was. | ||
| And I thought, man, if I get out of this car, I could be killed right now. | ||
| I mean, I would have never expected that in London, and yet here we are. | ||
| Well look, things are nowhere near as bad as Tommy Robinson would like people to think. | ||
| And I'm not a fan of Mr. Robinson's work, and I think he's slightly hoodwinked people in America, frankly. | ||
| And I don't like the way he talks down our country. | ||
| The UK actually has a remarkably good record of assimilating different nationalities into our country, and having a very strong and vibrant immigration policy, as America historically has had. | ||
| But if you look at the scale of what's happening on the southern border in America, we look at the number of illegal migrants coming on small boats, many of them drowning in the process, coming onto the shores of the south in the UK. | ||
| And you look at our legal migration problem, where we had, I think, a net migration last year was something like 700,000 people. | ||
| In other words, we're getting 700,000 coming in, More than a league of it. | ||
| A country like the UK of 66, 7,000 people, a million people, we cannot cope with that kind of level of influx of people, whoever they are. | ||
| We just don't have the infrastructure. | ||
| We have a creaking health system. | ||
| The National Health Service is on its knees because people are living longer and they're requiring more treatment. | ||
| So when the NHS, which was a famous health system lauded around the world, was created in the 50s, we only had a population of 50 million. | ||
| We now have a population of nearly 70 million and we're living, on average, 15 years longer. | ||
| So you can see there the problem with our system. | ||
| Same with education. | ||
| Crime is pretty much out of control in certain parts of the country. | ||
| I don't blame migration for a lot of these problems. | ||
| I do blame the pressure just of a bigger burgeoning population and people not thinking through how they're going to properly manage this. | ||
| So why do you think this is happening all throughout Europe and now here in the United States? | ||
| Because if you ask the average American, the average American knows that America is a country of immigrants, as virtually all of us, our ancestors are immigrants, usually legally. | ||
| We're not a racist country. | ||
| I know that's not the meme, but we're not. | ||
| I don't think the UK is a racist country either. | ||
| And yet no European nation, well now I would say maybe Hungary and Poland are doing it a little bit differently. | ||
| But why has it become so messy, do you think? | ||
| Well, because I think going back to the woke mind virus, anyone that speaks about immigration issues immediately gets branded a racist. | ||
| It is the way that if you talk about issues like the trans debate, or trans athletes competing in women's sport, which is obviously ludicrous and incredibly unfair and unequal, you get immediately accused of being transphobic. | ||
| If you talk about any issues to do with You know, radical feminism, you're a sexist, and so on and so on and so on. | ||
| You could rack up a lot of ists before you know it, as you and I know, if you dare to challenge all of this bullshit. | ||
| But the truth is that as a society, Everybody, I think, if you ask them to give an honest answer would say, of course, we need to have strong border control. | ||
| Of course, you need to know who's coming in and out of your country to make sure you're not bringing in undesirable people. | ||
| You shouldn't be there. | ||
| And how do people have gone through the legal process? | ||
| Of becoming an American citizen or a UK citizen. | ||
| How do they feel about so many people coming in illegally? | ||
| I often think of that. | ||
| I know people who've gone through a really, you know, long and quite tough process to do things the right way because they think that's the right thing to do. | ||
| And yes, I absolutely believe that countries like ours, both of our countries, should have refugees and asylum seekers from war-torn countries. | ||
| But I also know that both of our countries have had that particular generosity thrown in our faces way too often. | ||
| in recent years with way too many people trying it on. | ||
| Most of the people coming in illegally to the UK are not actually from war-torn countries. | ||
| A lot of them are young economic male migrants who just want a better life, which is fine, but they should apply to do this legally like so many other people have done. | ||
| And when, as a country, you allow people to do this with apparent indiscriminate ease, and just arrive on a dinghy and come into the country without any paperwork or anything, then understandably people who live there will be annoyed and understandably people who've come in the right way and done it properly will probably be even more annoyed. | ||
| So no one is happy about this apart from the people coming in illegally and often risking their lives to do it, which in itself is dangerous. | ||
|
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So we need better leadership. | |
| You know, you've got to have a strong border to be a country. | ||
| And it's not racist to say that, because if you lose control of borders, you see the mess you're seeing all over the world in so many countries. | ||
| Yeah, I would just add, it's not that nobody's happy about it. | ||
| I actually, I mean, I think the Democrats are happy about it. | ||
| I think they're getting new voters. | ||
| I think they're basically saying that and kind of admitting it. | ||
| I'd like to shift from politics for a minute, because you've had a couple great interviews with my friend Jordan Peterson, and obviously he talks politics, but it's really much more about philosophy and religion and a whole host of other things. | ||
| I'm wondering, do you enjoy talking, getting away from the political stuff and doing some of that? | ||
| And where do you stand when it comes to sort of philosophy and religion and maybe how that's applicable to some of the things we're talking about here? | ||
| Oh, very much so. | ||
| Listen, I'm interviewing Jordan again tomorrow, actually. | ||
| I love talking to Jordan. | ||
| I think he's one of the most intelligent and thoughtful and interesting and different minds in the world right now. | ||
| That's why he's so popular. | ||
| I think everyone has a philosophy. | ||
| Everyone has their own value system, if you like. | ||
| Everyone has their own environment that they came from. | ||
| You know, I grew up in a country pub in the south of England. | ||
| My parents were very hardworking, seven days a week. | ||
| We never had a lot of money, but we never had too little. | ||
| We were never poor. | ||
| But nor will we ever reach our first foreign holiday when I was 17, I think. | ||
| I didn't come from a silver spoon, as we would call it in the UK, but nor did I ever feel deprived. | ||
| But I was taught, you know, working with good things. | ||
| Having a work ethic is a good thing. | ||
| I still have that in my kids. | ||
| I was raised as a Catholic, you know, so I believe in God. | ||
| Much more popular to say that in the United States than it is in the UK now, where churchgoing is really going out of fashion in a dramatically fast way. | ||
| But I actually enjoyed it. | ||
| I was given spiritual guidance by Catholic nuns for two years, from 11 to 13. | ||
| I can remember that. | ||
| And I remember finding it quite an enriching experience, actually. | ||
| There's nothing wrong with listening to people giving you spiritual advice. | ||
| You've got to act on it all. | ||
| But it can definitely inform the way that you see life. | ||
| And I think that an ability, you know, people say to me, what is my, especially when I was a talent show judge, what is your talent? | ||
| And it's a tricky question, because I don't do a few things quite well, but I'm not a world-class talent in a conventional way. | ||
| But I do have a great talent for a thick skin, which is a massively underrated talent. | ||
| The ability to soak up life's crap when it throws itself at you, I think is something young people today are really struggling with. | ||
| So many young people, and I know a few of them, really struggle with life's regular crap. | ||
| And I have been able, I'm sure you're the same, to put a kind of shield around myself | ||
| based on the upbringing I had to just be able to deal with life | ||
| in a way that I would suspect would be quite helpful if I can impart that to young people | ||
| who seem to be riddled with anxiety, depression, and worse, suicide rates are so alarming | ||
| these days amongst young people. | ||
| Why is that happening? | ||
| A lot of it is down to phones. | ||
| This Jonathan Haidt book that came out was pretty scary about the impact | ||
| on impressionable young minds. | ||
| But I also think we're not preparing kids when they come through school, | ||
| we're not preparing them for the hard knocks of the real world. | ||
| You know, I charted back to when they stopped allowing like egg and spoon races in the UK because they were too competitive and people were getting hurt. | ||
| Everybody wins. | ||
| Everybody wins. | ||
| You know, everyone gets a participation prize. | ||
| Even little Johnny that comes last, because he's a terrible runner. | ||
| Why would he get a prize? | ||
| You know, I used to... I was not a great athlete. | ||
| I was a great cricket player as a kid, but not a great athlete. | ||
| But I do know that I used to always end up in the non-finalist race, which was for the best loser. | ||
| And I used to try and win that, and I sometimes did. | ||
| I was the best loser in my athletics field. | ||
| And that's fine! | ||
| I think you just came up with your next TV show, The Best Loser. | ||
| UK's Best Loser. | ||
| That's a fail upwardly. | ||
| I've interviewed lots of people who have been incredible successes, but almost all of them, Trump is one of them. | ||
| I remember interviewing Trump about the time he nearly lost it all back in the 90s when a lot of big business tycoons went under, and he very nearly did. | ||
| And he said he had to really rely on his ability. | ||
| And you see that with Trump. | ||
| You know, whether people love him or hate him, he's got an unbelievably thick skin. | ||
| I mean, he has an incredibly thin skin in that he reacts to absolutely everything. | ||
| But his ability to soak up Stuff which would kill off any other politician is extraordinary. | ||
| I'm sorry, but to me, that's the craziest part of what's happening right here. | ||
| The guy has been shot at twice and he's out there the next day and seemingly exactly the same where if any of us were shot at, you might need a week to just kind of think things through or whatever. | ||
| You might start questioning about your destiny, your lifespan, all of it, and you'll just He just goes. | ||
| No, it's incredible. | ||
| When I spoke to him after he got shot the first time a week later, I'd gone on Fox to say, you know, I just think it's extraordinary the courage he's been showing. | ||
| Once when he was shot, and tonight he's back on a rally stage a week later, and he'll be doing it again presumably this week after nearly being shot again. | ||
| That takes a lot of personal courage. | ||
| I mean, I asked myself, would I do that? | ||
| If I'd been shot in the ear and nearly assassinated, and then two months later, someone nearly killed me again, would I be back out in front of huge rallies? | ||
| I don't know if I would. | ||
| So Trump is showing extraordinary personal courage. | ||
| It doesn't mean you have to agree with everything he stands for. | ||
| In fact, just like everything he stands for, you cannot deny the personal courage. | ||
| And Americans have to ask themselves one thing with Trump. | ||
| When they call him the new Hitler and all this stuff, Do you really think you're being helpful or constructive about this debate? | ||
| Do you really think you're potentially, when you say this all the time, and say he's an existential threat to democracy, do not a little part of you think that to the wrong kind of radicalized mind that is the trigger they're looking for? | ||
| This latest shooter I noticed began to parrot, having supported Trump before, began to parrot Kamala Harris lines in his social media posts about Trump being a threat to democracy, you know, you've got to stop it. | ||
| And, you know, you think he'd been to Ukraine, he'd seen battle scenes and so on. | ||
| All this starts to blend into the disturbed mind. | ||
| And then you see what happens. | ||
| And Trump is obviously not the new Hitler. | ||
| He hasn't murdered 12 million people. | ||
| He hasn't perpetrated the Holocaust. | ||
| All this language is incredibly unhelpful. | ||
| He also has Jewish grandchildren and had the lowest all-time black unemployment. | ||
| I mean, it's all so stupid. | ||
| It's ridiculous. | ||
| One of the things that I've been thinking a lot about, and I ask my audience all the time, is what do you think it would look like? | ||
| What would the world look like if we're able to get past this thing that we're stuck in? | ||
| It seems to me we're all in a game right now. | ||
| We know we're in this game. | ||
| Nobody knows what the off-ramp is, and we don't even know We haven't even been able to imagine what it might look like if we were to somehow get through this thing. | ||
| Because Trump will not always be here, we will not always be here, we will not always be in this thing. | ||
| Well, this will sound very self-interested, Dave, so my apologies in advance. | ||
| You'll have the biggest YouTube channel online, is that what you're about to tell me? | ||
| Well, it won't be unhelpful if I do. | ||
| Because actually, people need to hear opinions they don't agree with. | ||
| And understand, over a duration of the one and a half hour debate, that maybe that person isn't quite as awful as you thought they were. | ||
| Maybe you might have your views reinforced if they're genuinely awful, as some of them are. | ||
| But a lot of the time, you'll see that there are points of agreement that can be reached. | ||
| Social media is the enemy of that. | ||
| So when you ask how can this be helped, it's tricky when you have a new medium called social media, particularly Twitter now X, where people are screaming their views and they get more and more intransigent, less and less able or willing to have an honest debate, where you can genuinely... I remember, I used to get thrown out of my local pub when I was 17, 18. | ||
| for arguing and shouting too much at people. | ||
| You'll be unsurprised to hear. | ||
| But I always was allowed back in. | ||
| And the debates were always passionate, but great. | ||
| I just used to have too many pints of Harvey's Best. | ||
| But the point I'm making is we should be able to have passionate debate. | ||
| You can get angry, give a shout at each other, that's fine. | ||
| But at the end of it, you've got to metaphorically shake hands or genuinely shake hands. | ||
| And go and have a pint together or a cup of tea. | ||
| That's what used to happen. | ||
| And look to find common ground and remind yourself that the really common ground ought to be, in America's case, the United States of America. | ||
| If you both start from a position of how does this benefit the country, how do we come together on points of agreement that we both agree will benefit the country? | ||
| That's what's getting lost. | ||
| Because no one will give an inch. | ||
| And that I think is dangerous to any supposedly democratic society. | ||
| If you can't debate, if you don't tolerate what real free speech means, which is an ability not to listen to someone you agree with, but to listen and tolerate and respect someone's right to vehemently say the opposite to what you believe, Because they genuinely believe that. | ||
| You've got to go back to that. | ||
| That is what free speech is about. | ||
| It's why I admire Elon Musk for what he's trying to do with X. It will take him time, as it took him time with SpaceX and Tesla and the other things, but I think he will get there. | ||
| And one of the best things he's done is community notes. | ||
| You know, I think that's been a really valuable addition. | ||
| When people say crazy, stupid stuff, and before it would gather huge momentum and get huge volume of likes and so on, but now there's a little note there saying, actually, this is complete bollocks. | ||
| I always think it's hilarious that the same people who think that the Earth is going to end or human life is going to end because of climate change in six years are also so hateful to the guy who's trying to get us to Mars where maybe we could continue this operation. | ||
| Look, Elon is not a perfect guy, but if you look at his totality of his work, everything is geared to basically saving the planet from itself. | ||
| Whether it's Neuralink, whether it's SpaceX, whether it's Tesla, whether it's his defense of free speech. | ||
| I've had a few run-ins with him as well as good things. | ||
| He's a complex guy. | ||
| He's a very, very brilliant genius in many ways, but he's complex and he's not perfect. | ||
| But I think if you look at him in totality, he's a force for good and should be recognized as that. | ||
| He believes passionately in free speech and we all should in a democratic society. | ||
| Let me just ask you two more quick ones, one which people always ask me as an interviewer. | ||
| I'm curious your answer on this one. | ||
| Who have you not interviewed that you're interested in interviewing? | ||
| I mean, I've interviewed most people I've wanted to interview over the years. | ||
| I mean, I've probably done 3,000 interviews, and I've been very lucky. | ||
| You know, from Nelson Mandela to the Dalai Lama. | ||
| I did the last interview with Professor Stephen Hawking. | ||
| I've done pretty much every movie star. | ||
| I've done five American presidents, ten British prime ministers. | ||
| I've been very fortunate in that way. | ||
| I can remember bits of all of the memorable ones. | ||
| If I was to choose one, It's someone who's not given a television interview in nearly 50 years. | ||
| And I think it's a brilliant... I don't think he'd do one now. | ||
| But if he would, Jack Nicholson would be the one. | ||
| A, because he's one of my favorite movie stars. | ||
| B, because you never hear him talking about politics. | ||
| He doesn't come often. | ||
| He understands that his audience is pretty split between Republicans and Democrats. | ||
| And he's never given TV interviews because he believes it kills off the magic and mystique of being a movie star, which is why he's still revered as a movie star. | ||
| And I think that there's a lot to be learned from someone like Jack Nicholson. | ||
| Don't kill the magic. | ||
| I remember when I was having the guns debate, for example, at CNN. | ||
| And I remember a big movie star, who I won't name, rang me and said he was due to come on my show. | ||
| And he said, look, I just want to tell you why I'm not going to do it now. | ||
| It's not because I don't agree with you or to agree with you or whatever. | ||
| He said, it's just that half my audience, at least, are gun owners who Find what you're doing objectionable. | ||
| And I've got a movie coming out and I don't want to have to take sides publicly. | ||
| I'm a movie star. | ||
| I don't want to do this. | ||
| I admired that. | ||
| I respected that. | ||
| And that person didn't come out and express a strong view. | ||
| That person came out and promoted their movie. | ||
| They should be allowed to do that. | ||
| Too many movie stars see themselves as political activists. | ||
| And I'm always curious, do they not realize that immediately they do that, they are alienating millions of people? | ||
| Why would you do that if you're a movie star? | ||
| So Jack Nicholson would be fascinating simply because he hasn't done one for so long. | ||
| Yeah, well, he's a bit of a recluse. | ||
| And I think, I think if I'm not, I don't want to speak out of school, but I think maybe there's some cognitive stuff now that's been reported. | ||
| So probably that's. | ||
| Yeah, I mean on a political level, I would love to sit down with President Xi of China and have a proper interview. | ||
| Because I do think that what China is doing, without most of us really understanding what they're doing, I think is a kind of economic imperialism the like of which the world has never seen. | ||
| And it may be we only realize the scale of it because they don't tend to be overtly military in their ambition. | ||
| I think the scale of the economic imperialism is far greater than we understand, and that lack of understanding could come back and haunt us. | ||
| So, a sit-down with President Xi, perhaps on the same day I'll spend the morning with Jack Nicholson and the afternoon with President Xi. | ||
| How's that? | ||
| All right, last one before he appears. | ||
| So you mentioned the thick-skinned thing. | ||
| You've been in fights with basically everybody. | ||
| You've sat and, you know, argued and agreed with basically everybody. | ||
| Is there one moment you can think back to? | ||
| Because I think a lot of people see this in their own life now because of what you describe in social media, where they really get upset about something. | ||
| Something really cuts them. | ||
| Is there one moment you can think of, maybe being fired from a gig or whatever it might be, that really cut you, that really sort of had you thinking, do I continue doing this or do I have to rethink everything? | ||
| I've had a lot of threats over the years, but I tend to think people who threaten you are not the ones you need to worry about. | ||
| It's the ones who don't publicly threaten you. | ||
| I don't really have regret. | ||
| I think that there are things I would do differently. | ||
| Certainly, and your audience might want to hear this, but when I have the debate about gun control in America, for example, I should have recognized more as a British guy on television in America. | ||
| I should have been more respectful to American culture and the way Americans like to do things. | ||
| And if I had that debate again in the same platform that I had, I would try and reframe that debate in a different way. | ||
| I'd stop using the word control. | ||
| I don't think Americans ever like to hear the word control, and particularly not if they're law-abiding gun owners who believe passionately in the Second Amendment. | ||
| I would talk about gun safety. | ||
| I would simply say, look, let me just speak to you as an outsider, as a Brit, where we have very few guns here. | ||
| You clearly do in America. | ||
| It's a different culture. | ||
| You have 400 million guns in circulation. | ||
| A million new guns get sold every month. | ||
| The scale of mass shootings and the volume of mass shootings has been increasing steadily, particularly school shootings, very sadly. | ||
| What's the solution here to making America safer? | ||
| I don't want to grab your guns. | ||
| I'm not talking necessarily about new laws or anything, but given the volume of guns in circulation and the fact that number is rising so much each month, How do you do that and have a gun culture, gun ownership culture, where you can make it safer? | ||
| Talk to me. | ||
| Talk to me. | ||
| You know, let Republicans perhaps, who feel most passionately about this, let Republicans come up with the solutions. | ||
| I think if I'd done it that way, I would have had far more constructive debate. | ||
| You know what? | ||
| Let's do this. | ||
| How about we do part two of this on your show and you can ask me that very question because I think it has far more to do with mental health and social media craziness and cultural issues than I do the gun. | ||
| Who would you like me to spar with next time I'm on your show? | ||
| I can't deal with that little kid anymore. | ||
| Enough of that kid. | ||
| You know what? | ||
| Give me someone my size at least, you know? | ||
| If they're on the left, they're going to be pretty good to get up against you, Mr. Rubin. | ||
| I can tell you that. | ||
| So whoever I choose will not be a faint-hearted character. | ||
| I'm going to try and find a very strong left-wing character that can take you on and be good television. | ||
| Part two will commence on Piers Morgan Uncensored. | ||
| Thank you, Piers. | ||
| I'll see you soon. | ||
| Great to see you, Dave. | ||
| Take care. | ||
| If you're looking for more uncensored opinions from today's thought leaders, check out our media playlist. | ||
| And if you want to watch full interviews on a variety of topics, watch our full episode playlist, all right over here. |
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