All Episodes
Previous Next
Plain Text
April 28, 2022 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
44:12
20220428_piers-morgan-uncensored-caitlyn-jenner-ant-middlet
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
|

Time Text
Calling Putin's Nuclear Bluff 00:03:31
Good evening, I'm Piers Morgan, uncensored.
Tonight, is it time to call Putin's nuclear bluff?
Ex-Special Forces hero and TV tough guy Anne Middleton will be here to discuss that.
And who better to talk about the burning issue of trans athletes in sport than the most famous trans woman in the world, Caitlin Jenner, will be here live too.
But first, it's my brain dump.
I want to start with Ukraine, where Vladimir Putin continues to show the world he's the new Hitler as he commits monstrous genocidal barbarism against a European democracy.
The deluded dictator claims he's waging war over what he calls the denazification of Ukraine.
The truth is that what he's doing is the Nazification of Ukraine.
And the only difference between what Hitler did in World War II and what Putin's doing now is that now the West is standing back and letting him get on with it.
Putin thinks he's got us over a barrel because he keeps threatening to use his nuclear arsenal if anyone tries to stop him.
And we keep recoiling in fear and horror when he does and assuring him that's not what we're going to do.
Well, just last night, he was at it again, warning that Russia has weapons nobody else has and he's ready to use them should we intervene.
But as Donald Trump told me earlier in the week, he shouldn't be allowed to throw around the N-word as a protective shield when he bombs maternity hospitals, targets refugees as they flee to safety and incinerates Holocaust survivors in their homes.
At what point do we call Putin's bluff and directly engage with him to protect the Ukrainian people from yet more of this hideous slaughter?
We're watching war crimes in real time, acts of depravity as wicked as any in modern history.
And as we're watching, we're also sitting on the most advanced and powerful military force ever seen in NATO.
When will enough be enough?
The single argument against using Western conventional military might to blast Russia out of Ukraine is fear that it would drag us into a conflict with a nuclear enemy and potentially trigger World War III.
That's what Putin wants us to fear.
He's relying on us to do nothing because we haven't got the moral backbone to stand up to him.
But a nuclear deterrent is supposed to be there for protection.
It's not a free pass for dictators to decimate sovereign democratic countries without fear of consequence.
And Putin knows if he fires one nuclear weapon in anger, he and his entire country will be eviscerated.
Why would someone like him who's spent his whole life craving power and wealth and hoarding luxury possessions risk losing everything?
If we let him win in Ukraine, he'll come for more countries.
Once a bully smells weakness and fear, they never stop bullying.
And we all know that bullies only understand one language, a punch on the nose.
The question really now is do we have the guts to give him one or do we let the brave Ukrainians continue to die in huge numbers and have their country destroyed?
The Palace of Westminster is a stunning Gothic monument to democracy in the middle of London, an awe-inspiring symbol of British honour and integrity.
For 700 glorious years, we've elected members of parliament to defend our rights, to uphold our values, and now apparently to watch porn.
Yep, two female MPs have reported an unnamed male Conservative member of parliament for watching X-rated content on his mobile phone as he sat in the House of Commons in full view of his colleagues.
It's pretty unbelievable that any elected official in the public purse could be so reckless and stupid and of course deeply insensitive to the horrified women sitting near him.
The Malaise of British Politics 00:04:42
But it's also reflective of a deeper malaise inside British politics right now.
Three government ministers and two opposition lawmakers are all currently being investigated for alleged sexual misconduct.
Government officials from the Prime Minister down are also being handed police fines for breaking their own laws to party during lockdowns.
The public are entitled, in my opinion, to expect higher standards of personal probity from those they elect to run the country.
When MPs think it's okay to scroll through porn on their phones, as they're supposed to be engaging in vital parliamentary debate during a pandemic and a European war, it's pretty clear that a dismal culture of laddish misbehaviour exists now at the heart of British democracy.
And that can't be tolerated.
This MP, if found guilty, should be removed from Parliament.
Talking of removal from classless to cashless, the name Alex Jones may not be familiar to you until I replay an old clip from the time he screamed at me about guns on American television.
How many gun murders were there?
Oh, you're going to ban your fist now?
In Britain last year.
How many chimpanzees can dance on the head of a pen?
The tyrants did it.
Hitler took the guns.
Stalin took the guns.
Mao took the guns.
Videl Castro took the guns.
Hugo Chavez took the guns.
And I'm here to tell you, 1776 will commence again if you try to take our firearms.
Oh, I hear you cry, that crazy guy.
Well, Jones isn't just crazy.
He's a nasty piece of work who built a gigantic online following with his InfoWars website and made many millions of dollars peddling mad conspiracy theories about the US government.
His most vile claim was that the 2012 Sandy Hook mass shooting was faked.
Now, very few tragedies have ever moved me more profoundly than that appalling massacre in which 20 children aged between six and seven were shot dead in their classrooms by a lone lunatic.
But Alex Jones responded to what happened by saying it was all a government-staged hoax perpetrated by crisis actors to justify new gun control laws being introduced.
It was a disgusting lie that caused immeasurable new grief and misery to the poor families of the children who died.
But 10 of those families decided to sue him for defamation and they won.
And they won big.
Now Jones, the great government conspiracy theorist, has filed for bankruptcy as he awaits details of the huge damages he'll now have to pay.
And he's been reduced to desperately and pathetically begging the same government he has always said is the enemy of the people for bankruptcy relief.
Oh, the irony.
Jones deserves everything coming his way.
What he did to those Sandy Hook families was beyond despicable.
He's been morally bankrupt for decades.
Now he'll be financially bankrupt too.
And hopefully that means he'll never again be able to lead such a vile smear campaign like the one he did to desecrate the memory of those 20 young children.
Now talking of children, I'm old enough to remember when Disney's sole focus was to entertain kids.
But now it also wants to govern how they're educated.
For reasons that completely baffle me, the family-friendly movie company recently abandons its historic stance of not engaging in any partisan politics to wage a public battle with Florida's governor and potential presidential candidate, Ron DeSantis.
It's all about a law banning schools from teaching children as young as five about sexual and gender preferences.
Disney bosses originally said they wouldn't get involved.
Then they were bullied into speaking out against the supposed don't say gay bill after many of its own angry woke staff staged walkouts and protests.
But putting aside your own opinions about the bill itself, and it doesn't actually say, by the way, don't say gay anywhere, what does any of this have to do with Disney?
Most Florida parents, I would guess, probably agree with DeSantis that they should ultimately decide what their young children get told about sex and gender.
And if Disney's really that concerned about morality, well, when will we hear it stop streaming to countries where it's illegal to be gay?
Or making movies in China where the Uyghur Muslims are suppressed?
Have we heard Disney speak out against the Uyghur Muslim suppression?
Have we hell?
Sadly, this is yet another example of corporate cowardice and hypocrisy in the face of the woke mob.
And I predict that Disney will soon regret ever getting involved in politics.
Or perhaps they'll just go the full hog and woke wash their movies to avoid upsetting any of their sensitive snowflake wokefalls.
I can see the hurriedly revised billboards now.
Peter Pansexual.
Snow Mixed Heritage and the seven vertically challenged individuals.
Worried About Aussie Health 00:02:52
Lady and the economically disadvantaged person.
And of course my personal favourite, Wocahontas, starring Meghan Markle.
Now you might be thinking, oh, come off it, Piers.
But trust me, there will be people at Disney right now already thinking about it.
Well more on Woke Disney with a great guest in just a moment.
Before we go any further though, I want to talk about my good friend Sharon Osborne.
She was here on Uncensored last night talking about cancelled culture, the devastating year she had since she was cancelled for supporting me over the Markle debacle and about her new TV show on the talk on Talk TV called The Talk.
Well, I'm very sad to say that her husband Aussie caught COVID-19.
He tested positive overnight and because of his underlying health conditions, which have been very serious in recent years, Sharon understandably has flown back immediately to be in America with her husband.
And she has released this statement when she was interviewed by a reporter earlier.
Ozzy was only diagnosed, it was like middle of the night, our time, but I spoke to him and he's okay.
You must be so worried about him.
I am very worried about Aussie right now.
We've gone two years without him catching COVID and it's just Aussie's luck he would get it now.
What's the first thing you'll do when you get back?
Hold him and kiss him, but with about three masks on, I think.
Oh, my family's my life.
Are you sad to be missing the show?
I can't believe my luck, but I'm missing the show.
I've only been there three days.
I can't believe it.
Three days and I'm missing the show.
But I will be back.
I know I will.
It'll take me a week to get my old man back on his feet again and I will be back in a week.
How are the family coping with Aussie's COVID?
Unfortunately, he was diagnosed in the middle of the night and they're all sleeping, so I haven't spoken to them yet, but they'll rally round, they'll be with him.
When will we see you back on air?
You're going to see me back on air in a week because I know my husband, we're going to get him back on his feet and we're going to get a negative test by next week.
Absolutely heartbreaking development for the Osborne family.
I know from speaking to Sharon earlier how desperately worried she is about Aussie, again, because of the underlying health conditions he's had.
And she's flown back to be with him, understandably.
She sent me a text from the airport.
Johnny Depp and the Victim 00:15:38
It's just a nightmare.
Piers, I'm at the airport now.
I feel like the Osbournes are cursed.
And they've certainly had a terrible run of bad luck.
I want to send Sharon all my love to Aussie as well.
My best wishes for a very full and speedy recovery.
And everyone here at Talk TV and Piers Uncensored is right behind you, willing you on.
So good luck to you, Aussie.
Now let's get back to the Woke Disney Company and its intervention into politics, plus two other Hollywood stories, a tawdry Johnny Depp and Amber Heard's soap opera continuing in court, and the whiny, self-pitying Alec Baldwin with new audio, which reveals him moaning about losing work following the fact that he shot somebody dead on the set of his movie Rust.
I'll discuss all this.
It's one of the most prominent conservative TV hosts in America.
So I'd have to say, Megan Kelly of the Megan Kelly Show joins me now.
Megan, how lovely to have you on the show?
Hi, Piers.
Congrats.
It's great to see you.
Thank you.
Great to have you.
And so much to talk about.
But I know one of our mutually favorite topics, Hollywood and the sort of rancid hypocrisy which pervades Tinsel Town at the best of times.
I want to go through all three of these things with you.
Start with Disney, because Disney's original position over this supposed don't say gay bill issue in Florida was that their new CEO was going to do nothing.
He said, we just don't get involved in politics.
That's always been their position before.
And I applauded that.
I thought, what a sensible position for anyone to take.
And then, of course, the woke brigade internally at Disney came for him and basically bullied him into speaking out against the bill.
And now all hell's broken, Liz.
What do you make of it?
Yeah.
Well, first of all, they started off by misrepresenting what was in the bill at all.
All the bill says is that you can't in curriculum be teaching five to eight or nine year olds, K through third grade, sexual identity or gender identity lessons.
That's it.
In curriculum, that's too early.
It's too young.
And then beyond that, whatever lessons are brought should be age appropriate.
That's all the law said.
These teachers who are like, I'm not going to be able to talk about my partner with the children.
You can mention your partner.
And if the child says, what is a partner?
What do you mean?
Why didn't you say wife?
You can say, I don't have a wife.
I have a husband, even though I'm a man, because we're in a gay relationship.
That's fine.
You can't get into curriculum with gay, trans, all of that.
That needs to wait.
And it doesn't stop a parent from teaching his or her child at home about all that anyway.
Okay, so Disney misrepresented the bill.
And what happened was the CEO initially said, I'm not going to comment on it.
I'm not going to do anything.
But then Bob Iger, too, the old CEO, was on the sidelines.
They don't like each other.
And he tweaked the guy like, oh, well, I would have said something.
And then the new guy has no spine.
And inside the wokesters are saying, oh, this is awful.
We should do something about this fake don't say gay bill, which is a misnomer.
And he caved.
So that guy has no spine whatsoever.
And he's gotten Disney into a world of hurt now because they've lost 15 points on their stock.
They've lost billions of dollars since they've gotten into this fight with the state where they should have stayed politically neutral.
And at the same time, all of this happened, somebody leaked internal Disney videos showing that they actually do, in their own words, have a secret queer agenda and that they, in their words, are trying to sneak it into films and product wherever possible.
So they've taken a hardline stance with the woesters against not just America, but Floridians.
The polls there show that they're not.
And even Democrats are in favor of this law.
Right, I saw that.
And it doesn't surprise me.
I think a lot of parents would be in favor of that.
But putting that aside, it's the fact that Disney felt compelled because of their internal woke force to actually change their position on it was what was so fascinating to me.
And also, it does expose them, doesn't it, to charge of rank hypocrisy?
Because Disney still streams their movies, making a lot of money, to countries where it's literally illegal to be gay.
And of course, they have a huge box office market now in China where you see the Uyghur Muslims are being persecuted.
Not a word from Disney about their horror about what's going on there.
So their morality is very localized, very central to this one little issue in Florida, but not the wider morality of inconsistent moral policies around the world.
Of course.
And what are they so upset about in Disney?
I mean, in Florida with respect to Ron DeSantis and his bill, that you can't sit down at kindergartner and say, you need to understand what it means to be a girl who thinks she's a boy.
We're talking about that right now as part of our curriculum.
They're trying to learn their ABCs.
That's what Disney's upset about.
But the forced sterilization of the women and the people being taken off to the concentration camps, no problem.
That's, you know, it's somebody else's problem.
We saw the same stuff.
I had Mark Cuban on my podcast lamenting racism in America and the alleged racism, all these cops in his head.
And he said, you know, you've got to just do the right thing.
BLM needs to go on the courts.
And I said, what about your support in the NBA for China?
What about the fact that you get billions of dollars from them?
Do you feel the need to speak up about that at all?
Yeah, the apoplectic peers wouldn't speak out.
Oh, I condemn all human rights abuses.
Oh, in China?
In China?
But that's the problem.
Very few people will condemn China because of commercial interests.
I want to talk to you very quickly, Megan, while I've got you, about these two other Hollywood things.
First of all, Johnny Depp and Amber Herbert.
We don't want to waste much time on this, but have you ever had a more repellent public squabble than these two now?
Second court battle.
I want to play a little clip of some of the tawdry highlights.
Listen to this.
The tip of my finger opened separately.
Put f ⁇ ing cigarettes out on someone else.
You have consequences for your actions.
That's it.
Shut up, fat ass.
I'm sorry that I didn't hit you across the face in a proper slot, but I was hitting you.
It was not punching you.
Babe, you're not punched.
What the jury and judge think?
Tell the world, Johnny.
Tell them, Johnny Depp.
I'm Johnny Depp.
Yeah, I'm a victim to domestic violence.
Tell the world, Johnny.
Tell them, Johnny Depp, I, Johnny Depp, a man, I'm a victim to of domestic violence.
I said, yes.
I don't know about you, Megan.
I'm just seeing two actors clearly damaged, clearly hate each other, clearly were involved in extensive mutual abuse of all different varieties.
And I just, it makes me puke, to be honest with you.
The whole thing.
The selfishness and the kind of self-obsessiveness of it all.
It's a lesson for everybody sitting at home.
If you think that these Hollywood celebrities have a better life than you do just because they have a lot of money and they have these beautiful homes, think again.
Because there's an emptiness inside that cannot be filled by fame or unlimited spending.
And these two are a perfect example of that.
But I do think that this case is important.
And I've been following it.
You know, not, I've been watching the trial every day, but I've been following it closely enough, Piers.
And I think he wasn't wrong to file the lawsuit.
And here's why.
She came out in that Washington Post op-ed and said, I'm a victim of domestic abuse.
And, you know, I've suffered all the consequences of that.
And we all knew it was about Johnny Depp.
And that's, he said he was defamed.
And he said he lost his Pirates of the Caribbean deal.
And what this trial has shown us is she gave as good as she got.
There's been very little evidence of him harming her.
And there's been a ton of evidence of her harming him.
But I think in the end, I think in the end, it doesn't really matter.
I mean, she won the first case.
He might win this one.
She might win again.
I don't think either of them win.
I think it's so taudy, it's so awful that most people look at it and go, you're both as bad as each other.
He's not going to win.
But I do think that's the same thing.
No, he's not going to win his legal claim.
He's not going to win a defamation case against her.
But he, as a PR matter, has shown the world that she was hitting him regularly.
She hurt him regularly.
And the evidence of him doing it to her is very little so far.
So we'll see how this plays out.
But I think as a PR matter, he's made his point.
Abuse can go both ways.
And so it's important to know exactly what she did.
Yeah, she's no angel whatsoever.
Just finally, Alec Baldwin has been going on this six-month self-pity tour since he shot a woman dead.
Accidentally, I'm absolutely prepared to say that from everything we've gleaned about this.
But Helena Hutchins, his cinematographer on the set of his film Rust, is dead because a gun in Alec Baldwin's hand was fired and killed her.
And he seems to be going out of his way ever since to make himself look like the victim.
New audio overnight released by the police, which had him saying this.
It was really tough because I had six kids.
And we had to tell my older daughter today what happened.
She started to cry.
She said, I'm going to go to school and everyone's going to make fun of me.
My eight-year-old count the jobs I had lined up between now and the second half of the year they fired each other, but they don't want to do that.
We haven't got long, Megan.
What do you make of Alec Baldwin's self-putty talk?
Because it's all about him.
No one cares.
No one cares about him at all.
A woman was shot by him and he knew it.
And his first thoughts were for himself.
And that's how it's been all along.
In his interview with ABC, he's saying he feels no guilt.
Well, it feels no guilt.
No.
He's been botching this as a PR matter from start to finish.
And meanwhile, he's been hanging out his entire crew to dry from the get-go.
That's what the most recently released documents show as well.
He'll hang up the working class people on his set.
He'll have no sympathy for anyone but himself.
And if this thing has done anything on the positive, because there's been so much on the negative, it's shown us who he really is.
Yeah, completely.
He really is a narcissistic bully.
Unbelievably selfish and narcissistic.
It made it all about him when, in fact, there's a grieving widower and a young child who's lost his mother.
Megan, could talk to you all night.
Thank you so much.
Come back soon.
Really enjoyed talking to you.
Great to see you.
On sense of next.
Russian state media is now openly discussing the prospect of nuclear war.
Is it more evidence of Putin's great nuclear bluff?
I'll give you my thoughts next and talk to Ant Middleton.
So Vadimir Putin's once again threatened to use nuclear force if any other nation intervenes in the Ukraine war.
And even Russian state television is now telling viewers a nuclear war is probable.
So let me bring in now British Special Forces war hero at Middleton.
And great to see you.
Thanks for coming to the studio.
Lovely to have you here.
Thanks for having me.
Start with the Ukraine war.
What's your gut feeling here?
My feeling about Putin is he knows that he's got us over a barrel, that he's got this big nuclear arsenal and all he has to do is wave it at us and we all run a mile.
That goes against every instinct that I've ever had about dealing with a genocidal maniac.
What's your view there?
Obviously it's complicated.
Obviously it's got risk.
But what do we do about this guy?
Well when you've got someone barking as much as Putin about nuclear weapons, first of all you ask yourself two questions.
One, does he have that capability?
And two, has he got the minerals?
Has he got the balls to use that capability?
I'd say no.
And third, I would say third, I would say, what would be his motivation to start a war that would lead to the immediate destruction of himself and his own country?
It would be the next World War III.
Basically, what he's done, he's gone into Ukraine.
They're amazing people.
Their fighting force is holding the fort at the moment.
You know, don't think that the Russians are going in there and they're having an easy time because they're certainly not.
I know people who are on the ground in Ukraine and they're quite happy at the moment actually because they're actually holding on to the people.
They think they're genuinely holding them.
They think they can genuinely beat them.
But Putin can be in this for the long term.
We've seen his track record in these situations.
He might be doing this for years.
The guy's unstable.
It's clear to see.
When I saw his first interview with Putin, I saw how unstable he was.
And I thought to myself, wow, this guy's got potential to do something crazy.
But the amount of barking that he's doing and the amount of sort of talking that he's doing, especially about nuclear deterrence and nuclear weapons, I think that he's just, He's at his wit's end now.
And now he's trying to divert people by making the noise of that he's got.
If he invaded a NATO country, we would be morally compelled to get involved.
I don't see a lot of moral difference between that and what's happening in Ukraine, other than Ukraine is not a member of NATO yet.
You know, I just feel, do we not at some point have a moral duty to get involved with conventional weapons, given NATO is so powerful?
Well, what we've got to realise is not a game of poker.
You know, people are saying, oh, is he bluffing?
Should we go in there?
It's more sensitive than that.
If we go in there, it's going to cost millions more lives.
It's going to start World War III, let's be honest.
We either look at the situation and go, right, do we now come together as NATO and strike first?
Or do we hold back and see what Putin's up to?
But it's a catch-22.
It's one of those where if nuclear weapons are involved, then it's World War III.
We can't be able to use the nuclear capability as a protective shield to genocide, which is what's going on.
It's supposed to be a mutually assured destruction system when neither side would ever use it.
Both sides have it.
NATO and Russia both have it, but we both understand what capability to do.
If he keeps saying, if you do anything, I'll use it.
That's a misuse of the nuclear deterrent, isn't it?
Yeah, but the more time he gives like that, the more we think to ourselves, right, it's just a bluff.
He's just really.
But also, he can't have the liberty or the freedom to keep doing that.
There's something has to be done about it.
That's what I feel.
There has to be a time scale where we say, as NATO, as the UK, we say, right, enough is enough.
This is when we need to strike.
Or this is the action that we need to take together.
I agree.
And I believe we're reaching that point pretty quickly.
You talked about the Ukrainian spirit of the people.
They are quite extraordinary.
And it really reminds me, I think, of what I think is becoming a sort of rarity in our society, certainly here.
And you see it in America, you see it in Australia, around the world now, where there's almost a premium on not having resilience or mental strength.
Everyone talks all the time about mental weakness in a way.
And society seems to me to have got a bit soft.
What do you think is going on here?
How can we get the kind of spirit you see Ukrainians showing?
Well, it's the whole wokeness, isn't it?
It's sort of taken over.
Everything's pampy-pampy, feelings and emotions.
And ultimately, it's about facts.
Especially with Ukraine, the fact is your country has been invaded.
You have to now, you know, deep into that psychological reserve and go, right, listen, this has happened.
Now we need to, you know, all come together and we need to stay resilient and we need to fight back.
Or those that have been forced, the children, women that have been forced, especially children.
I talk about this to my wife when I say about the children, been forced to understand about war.
You know, these should be innocent children that are going about their everyday lives, going to school, learning, growing up and understanding who they are.
They're having to learn about war from the young age of five to seven years.
But I think we should be, I would love to see people like you going into schools, teaching kids about perspective, about resilience, about mental strength.
I don't see any of that.
The whole debate is skewed towards almost, almost celebrating weakness, turning everyone into victims.
Everyone's complaining about...
It's about the healthy competition.
They're like, woe is me, and they go on Instagram and all this kind of thing.
I want to show you a little clip.
This is the opposite in a way.
This is what's giving me hope for the future.
It's a young eight-year-old kid called Jack.
And he plays at Sebur, a famous rugby school in the north of England.
Twitter, Musk, and Hypocrisy 00:17:05
This is him when one of his little teammates was upset.
Jack decided to grasp the metal.
Look at this.
Everyone's older than me.
Everyone's a little bit of a drink.
You don't have to chuckle.
Oh, listen to me.
No, Bobby, listen to me.
Trust me.
Look at me.
Look at me, Bob.
I'm the shortest kid here.
Listen, it doesn't matter who you are.
It doesn't matter if you're short, you're young.
It doesn't matter if you're tall or hit.
It doesn't matter if you fight.
It doesn't matter if you're tall.
Bob, you are a brilliant rugby player.
You understand that?
You're insane.
You are actually insane for your age.
You're insane.
Come on, give me a hard.
Blessed team, mate.
Blessed teammates.
Come on.
Come on.
The other kid was called Bob.
Good on Jack.
You know, when I see that, I think that's the spirit, right?
Don't just quit.
Don't just lie on the floor.
You know, I talked to Tyson Furiously about Rocky Balbo.
It's not about how many times you get knocked over.
It's how many times in life you can get back up and keep moving forward and keep punching.
That's what resilience is all about.
But in schools, they don't teach that now.
You know, the healthy competition where no one is about participating.
No one's first.
No one's second.
No one's third.
It's like, you know, we want to be winners.
We are a nation of winners.
You know, that kid is the biggest hype gutter.
You know a great stat came out the other day.
The Oscar winners who win Oscars live on average about five or six years longer.
And they researched a thousand Oscar winners nominees, the nominees who lost, right?
Which was final proof to me.
But no one wants to lose.
Winning actually makes you live longer.
No one wants the silver or bronze medal.
I don't know the gold medal.
I must debate every Olympics.
Who celebrates losing?
But why is there a silver and gold medal?
It should be silver and bronze medal.
It should be a gold medal one or nothing.
I totally agree with you.
You know, the world's gone.
The world does need to toughen up.
And in all seriousness with Ukraine, it's a sad state of affairs.
And it's about time that we realize that the facts are, we need resilience.
We need to be strong.
We need to, you know, when everything is crumbling around us like it is with the UK.
And also, I hope it gives people some perspective.
These Ukrainian people are showing such unbelievable courage and resilience and inspiring, inspiring personal behaviour when everybody else is squealing about stuff that just doesn't matter.
I've got to leave it because there's a genuine former Olympic gold medalist.
Waiting for me.
Listen.
Caitlin Jenner.
Let's do it.
Who won the Olympic gold decathlon medal for the United States before becoming the most famous trans woman in the world.
So I'll talk to her in a moment.
Amazon, great to see you.
I know you got ridiculously cancelled off your show in the UK.
That show's never been the same since.
You've got onto better things.
So great to see you.
Thank you very much, Piers.
All the best.
Well, on Sansa, next, brash, fearless, antagonistic, is free speech absolutist Elon Musk, the savour of Twitter.
The founder of Wikipedia has a strong view on that.
The billionaire and free speech warrior Elon Musk has bought Twitter.
But what happens next?
He's joked on the platform that he'll be buying Coca-Cola to put cocaine back in.
He'll make the platform maximum fun, he says, but responding to a meme admitted, he can't make miracles happen and fix all the ice cream machines in McDonald's.
Joking aside, ultimately he says he wants Twitter to be politically neutral, which effectively means upsetting the far right and the far left equally.
Well, hurrah to that.
But how will he do it?
And can he do it?
I'm joined now by Sky News Australia presenter Erin Molan and co-founder of Wikipedia.
Jimmy Wells, welcome to both of you.
Let me start with you, Erin, over there in Australia.
My first reaction when I heard this, and I'm a Twitter shareholder, so I have a vested interest in it not collapsing.
My first reaction was good because Elon Musk is a maverick billionaire genius, but he believes passionately in free speech.
Isn't it bizarre that you look at someone who's spending $44 billion to buy an asset and that the selling line, the mission statement, so to speak, is I just want to make everyone absolutely miserable.
That is so Twitter.
It is so brilliant.
It's look, can he do it?
I don't know.
Is he the right person?
I don't know.
Not many other people have the kind of money that he has to do it.
I like some of the things that he's talking about.
At this stage, it is really all head, no beer.
There's not much detail in how he'll actually try and achieve all the things he's saying.
But I think authenticating humans is a great start.
We know that the bots, the spam, the fake accounts are really where the cesspit of Twitter erupts.
So I think that's a wonderful thing.
The town square as well, I think, is a great concept, but he's also got to realize that town squares, even archaically, are regulated.
So it can't just be an absolute free-for-all.
You need rules, you need regulations, you need free speech, absolutely.
But he needs to also remove the hypocrisy, which I think he's doing.
Yeah, and you say then that obviously Donald Trump is banned, yet a bloke committing genocide is still on the platform.
Well, exactly.
That's the hypocrisy which has to be eliminated.
And you've done some great work in going after trolls, vicious trolls, and getting them made properly accountable, which is one of the things Elon Musk says he'll do.
So, Jimmy Willis, he said he's going to create a situation where you've got to be identifiable to be on the platform and all of that.
You, though, are very skeptical about Musk being an effective owner of Twitter.
Why?
Yeah, I mean, I think it's a couple of things.
So, first of all, I mean, you know, one of the most famous and incredibly talented Twitter trolls in history takes over Twitter.
What could possibly go wrong?
But when we look at his promises about free speech, okay, good, but it's not really clear what that means.
This idea of identifying everyone on the platform, though, that's going to be very, very hard.
And it does raise a lot of really complicated questions.
People are using Twitter as a support group mechanism.
They're talking to people in lots of ways that aren't huge and in the public eye with millions of followers.
And I think that's a very difficult thing to say, oh, let's not have that anymore.
I mean, it's very hard, isn't it, to regulate any of these things properly.
Like, I mean, on your platform, for example, Wikipedia, my eldest son is actually here tonight to watch the show.
And he waged several years-long battle with somebody out there who kept changing my Wikipedia entry on a tiny point, a factual point, to make me the youngest of four children when I'm the eldest, which meant every profile that ever occurred about me had me the youngest of four kids.
And every time my son edited it back, whoever this was changed it back again.
Oh, dear.
How do you, that's a little trivial thing.
It doesn't really matter.
But all it meant was that when people looked at Wikipedia on my site, they just got a wrong piece of information every time.
And that's just a small thing on Wikipedia.
How does Elon Musk, do you think, have any kind of regulatory system which allows free speech but doesn't allow the kind of cesspit stuff that we see all day long on it?
Well, so one of the things about Wikipedia is like our job is actually a lot easier.
We don't say we're a wide open free speech platform.
We say we're an encyclopedia.
You need reliable sources.
I imagine in your case, if profiles said it, then suddenly there's a bunch of sources that maybe got it from us and then they print it and we think, oh, the journalists are the sources.
We call it cytogenesis.
It's sort of the circular thing that can happen.
But in general, we don't allow people to come on and just sort of say whatever random thing is on their mind.
And when you do, then you're really into this area of really complicated questions about freedom of expression.
You know, how do you determine what's just a snarky comment versus what's actually abusive?
Okay.
There aren't easy answers.
No, none of this is easy, I don't think at all.
But I do, Erin, I come back to my initial gut feeling about Elon Musk is that I like his basic principled position, that he wants to enrage the far left and the far right equally, because he wants them all to basically be put back in their box and allow the vast majority of people who are reasonably not extreme at all to have a proper debate and conversation again and not feel that they're being hindered or censored.
Absolutely.
And that's what we've managed to do here in Australia with the new laws that we have.
And look, the threshold for what would be considered criminal threatening harassment is incredibly high.
It's akin to that of the criminal code.
And that's what you need in a space like Twitter.
You want robust debate.
You want people to be able to disagree.
You want differences of opinion regardless of what side of politics you're from, regardless of where you're from in the world.
But you cannot have a free-for-all platform where people are allowed to threaten to rape other people's children.
You spoke to Sharon Osborne and you look at the damage that's done.
So I would like Elon Musk to not just look at advocating for free speech, which I know it's a mountain that you want to die on and not not want to, but that you'd be willing to.
It's so important.
But he needs to eradicate the crap that has made Twitter just a vile platform.
Well, he does.
And by the way, Erin, I've been on Twitter since August last year and happiest I've been.
Well, it's not just Twitter, though.
I mean, on Instagram, you know, I've got a police case going through now where somebody made specific death threats to one of my children on his Instagram page.
It was in the sort of period of all that Meghan Markle thing on the morning show.
And that's still going through the wheels of justice because I just thought, you know, I'm not having that.
Even for someone making a threat to the threat of the threat.
Everything, and that's why the laws in Australia are so good and they're world first is because they cover everything.
It's not about one platform doing something specifically.
These are laws that cover every single social media platform and it makes the online world safer and better for everyone.
Erin, got to leave it there.
Great to talk to you.
Come back soon, please.
Jimmy, thank you so much for the bottom.
I'm a huge fan of Wikipedia, by the way.
Absolutely.
Despite my fact that I am actually the oldest person.
Actually, Jimmy, could you change my photo and my Wikifeed rating is low too?
We'll take a look.
None of us could be on TV without Wikipedia, let's be honest.
Jimmy, thank you.
Great to talk to you both.
It's become one of the thorniest debates in society today.
Should trans women athletes be allowed to compete in women's sport?
Well, who better to talk to, frankly.
I'm an Olympic gold medalist as a male athlete, and I'm going to be the most famous trans woman in the world now.
Caitlin Jenner.
Caitlin, I'm so happy to have you on the show.
Thank you very much.
Well, it is my pleasure.
But first, Pierce, let's clear the air here.
I was asked to do this show like a month ago.
In the last couple of weeks, I saw, and I wound up canceling about two weeks ago.
Why?
Because I saw what you did to President Trump, our president, who I have a lot of respect for.
And like he was walking out, you sensationalize the promo to build up ratings and all this.
And I thought to myself, I don't want to be part of that.
And so I cancelled.
But since then, and I stand by what I did, but since then, we've had a chance to talk.
I've talked to your producers.
I feel pretty confident that you won't do that to me.
I'm not going to oversensationalize this, Caitlin, at all.
I'm delighted to have got you back on the show.
And all I would say about the promo is I know Donald Trump through Celebrity Apprentice, which I won.
And he did those kind of promos on me every night to get people watching.
So all's fair in love in promo.
Oh, I get it.
However, let's turn to the main event of this interview.
You're perfectly qualified, Caitlin, to talk about this because I have a strong view that I support trans rights to fairness and equality.
But in issues like sport and women's sport, not to the point where it starts to degrade the fairness and equality for women competitors in sport, for example.
You've competed as a man hugely successfully, and now you've transitioned to be a woman.
What is your view about this?
Well, I've been, you know, first of all, you're right.
We have to do the best we can here.
But I have said from the beginning, and I stand with it, that I don't want biological boys to compete against women and girls in sports.
It's just not fair.
Now, obviously, over the last six months, especially, because of Leah Thomas at the University of Pennsylvania, she had been on the boys' team just a few years earlier.
I do not blame her.
She played within the rules, but she dominated.
She had gone through male puberty.
Her lungs are bigger.
Her back's bigger.
Her hands are bigger.
She just has a tremendous advantage in swimming in the pool against the women.
And, you know, and she proved that.
So I don't have a problem with her.
I have a problem with the NCAA That we have to change the rules.
We have to do a better job because the bottom line is we have to keep it fair.
And I don't want to ruin women's sports or discourage women from getting into sports because they think, oh my gosh, I'm going to have to compete against a bunch of guys.
I mean, I totally agree.
I totally agree, Caitlin.
But what I would also say is, I don't want to expose trans people to mockery, which is now going on with this debate because it looks so ridiculous that you see Leah Thomas just dominating women's sport.
And I think that trans people who don't want to be part of any big angry debate about this, want to go about their lives in peace and quiet and get on with it.
I think they're being affected adversely by this debate.
And it seems to me nobody's prepared to put their head over the parapet and go, look, this is clearly unfair and wrong.
Here's how we're going to change things.
If you were in charge of changing things to make it fair, what is the answer?
Should trans women athletes, for example, compete against men?
Should trans athletes have their own category now of competition, given there are more and more trans athletes.
What's the answer?
Well, here's, Pierce, here's the problem we have here.
This is a very, very complicated issue.
Just like being trans is very complicated.
It's very, there's no right, there's no right answer here, Pierce.
If you just say, you know, no trans athletes, you know, in sports, well, what about female to male?
They're trans.
That's 49% of the population.
51% are male to female.
If we, what happens to the young trans athletes who transitioned, some of them, when they're five, six, seven years old, they take hormone blockers and they grow up as little girls their whole life.
They have no advantage whatsoever, you know, over the other girls.
And what do we do there?
So it almost has to be treated on an individual basis.
But I think the first thing we have to do is we have to make the qualifying for a trans athlete a little bit more difficult for them to be able to compete.
Because I think the number one thing we have to do is protect women's sports.
I mean, what you never see, Caitlin.
What you never see, you mentioned there, people who transition from female to male, but you never see any issue there on the sporting side because they never have an unfair advantage.
You know, the key point really about, I guess, trans women athletes is they have an unfair, natural biological advantage.
That's the number of the problem.
If they went through male puberty, you're absolutely right.
I went through male puberty, okay?
I mean, I don't even play.
I mean, I play a lot of golf.
And at our club, I mean, I play with the women a lot.
By the way, Pierce, the women are a lot more fun to play with than the men, but the conversation is much better.
But they always ask, you know, say, hey, we've got a tournament coming up.
Yeah, we've got a tournament coming up.
You want to play with us?
And, you know, when I'm there, I say, oh, well, that would be fun.
But then I never show up.
Why?
Because it's just, honestly, I would never want to take a trophy away from one of the other.
I love the ladies at our club.
They're wonderful.
I wouldn't want to take, I can out drive them by 100 yards.
Exactly.
You know, and yeah, and it's just my arms are longer.
I'm 6'1.
What I got left over is more than what most people ever had.
And so it just wouldn't be fair.
I don't play in that.
And to be honest with you, honestly, Leah Thomas is one of the toughest, one of the hardest, one of the worst things that happened to the trans community.
Yeah, I agree.
Because it's such bad publicity.
I've met so many wonderful trans people doing wonderful things, living their life authentically.
I hope Leah Thomas, it's over for her now because she's out of college.
And I just hope she has a wonderful life.
Being trans is not easy.
And I hope she enjoys the rest of her life and has a good life.
You know what, Caitlin?
I completely agree.
What Leah did is we need to look at the rules.
I agree.
Listen, I completely agree with you.
I don't want ill will to anyone involved in this debate.
I just want fairness and equality.
And I don't want women's rights to be eroded at the altar of political correctness and a scaredness to have a debate.
Caitlin, we've got to leave it there.
It's been a brilliant interview.
Thank you.
Come back soon.
I'd love to talk to you again.
I want you to have a guest.
Oh, it's my pleasure.
Yeah, absolutely.
I think we'll have fun.
That's really good.
You got it.
Lovely to talk to you.
Caitlin Jennett.
Well, that's it from me.
Remember, whatever you're up to this weekend, make it uncensored.
Good night.
Export Selection