All Episodes
Previous Next
Plain Text
May 2, 2022 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
45:18
20220502_piers-morgan-uncensored-martina-navratilova
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
|

Time Text
Freedom of Press Matters 00:02:52
I'm Piers Morgan, uncensored.
Tonight, Putin again ramps up his nuclear threat.
Russian sports stars, should they be banned from Wimbledon?
And a former President Trump serves his own volley.
It's at me again.
First, it's my brain dump.
As Vladimir Putin butchers Ukraine, millions of ordinary Russians are forced fed a daily diet of six propaganda to convince him of his warped alternative reality.
And there's no such thing as a free press to tell the truth or hold him to account.
Putin's Russia is a country where journalists are routinely murdered, literally thrown out of windows reporting the facts.
They face 15 years in jail for criticizing his evil war, or the special military operation, as he so disingenuously calls it.
Here in our free world, brave journalists are risking their lives daily so that we know exactly what is going on in Ukraine, where the barbaric dictator is waging genocide in a democratic sovereign country.
In Putin's Russia, even his closest allies had a football field away from their slayer-in-chief.
But here in our free world, comedians can sit a few meters away from the President of the United States, hurling zingers at him as if he was the groom at a wedding.
You know, I was a little confused about why me, but then I was told that you get your highest approval ratings when a biracial African guy is standing next to you.
So...
So let me just say, Joe, I'm glad that I could do my part.
I think ever since you've come into office, things are really looking up.
You know, gas is up, rent is up, food is up, everything.
This is truly the golden era of conspiracy theories.
Whether it's the right wing believing Trump can still win the 2020 election, or the left believing Joe Biden can still win the 2024 election.
Well, that was Trevor Noah at the White House Correspondence Dinner, an annual event in Washington, for journalists who spend their lives scrutinizing and criticizing the President of the United States without fear of being killed.
And amid the glamour, the black tie and the comedy, there was a very serious point here, and Noah made it rather beautifully.
In America, you have the right to seek the truth and speak the truth, even if it makes people in power uncomfortable.
Even if it makes your viewers or your readers uncomfortable.
You understand how amazing that is?
I stood here tonight and I made fun of the President of the United States and I'm going to be fine.
I'm going to be fine, right?
Can you ever imagine Putin, President Xi in China, or North Korea's Kim Jong-un attending a celebration for journalists whose job it is to shine a light on their incompetence or allowing themselves to be publicly ridiculed on national television?
We all know what would happen to a TV star like Trevor Noah who dared make jokes like that at their expense in those oppressive totalitarian regimes.
Hypocrisy in Sanctions 00:02:40
And that's why we should never take any of our freedoms for granted.
And that's why this couldn't have come as a more timely reminder of how important it is to live in a country with a free press and freedom of speech.
Well, just as mere tough talk and sanctions won't end this war, we can't defeat Putin the demon by demonizing ordinary Russians.
Tennis stars from Russia and Belarus are barred from competing at the Wimbledon Grand Slam tournament this year over the Ukraine invasion.
It means that two of the top 10 best men's players in the world won't be at the world's premier tennis competition.
That's despite both of them courageously speaking out against the war and calling for peace.
Well, tennis superstars like Novat Djokovic, Andy Murray, and Rafa Nadal have now all criticised the ban, and I agree with them.
I think it is very unfair for my Russian mates, my colleagues.
In that sense, poor them.
There's not much they can do.
Poor them.
At the end of the day, it is not their fault.
What is happening in this moment with the war?
First off, this reeks of hypocrisy.
Did Wimbledon ban Stan Smith, Jimmy Connors, or John McEnroe during the wildly unpopular wars waged by America in Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan?
Of course they didn't.
And what about the ill-fated and what many viewers are illegal invasion of Iraq by the US and UK?
Andre Agassi, Andy Roddick, and Serena Williams all won tennis grand slams in 2003.
Applying this new logic, they'd have been banned from taking part.
There's also been no clamour to ban Saudi Arabian athletes over their country's bloody war in Yemen, which is no less reprehensible than Russia's war in Ukraine.
In fact, Saudi Arabia hosted a Formula One Grand Prix just a few weeks ago, and its athletes compete in the Olympics.
I fully support blocking Russian national teams who represent the Russian state under the Russian flag.
But targeting the country's individuals for blame over the behavior of their despotic leader doesn't make sense and is part of a worrying trend.
We've seen Russian sports stars heckled, Russian arts being cancelled around the world, Russian products being boycotted, even stupidly summed to sound Russian.
Russian restaurants blacklisted, even some of them, are run by Ukrainians.
The city of Oxford even daubed over this sign because it used to be partnered with Perm in Russia.
This is all pointless tokenism.
It won't work and it hurts the wrong people.
Dictators depend on stoking fear and hatred of the outside world.
This is all just ammunition for Putin's propaganda drive.
Cancelling Russian sport and culture won't win this war.
Wokest Production Axes Project 00:03:15
Well, speaking of alternative realities, the Conservative MP caught watching porn in the House of Commons, heaping global embarrassment on Britain's democracy, has fallen on his sword, no pun intended.
Sadly, it wasn't without one last blast of cringe-worthy squirming.
Neil Parrish, who's also a farmer, first brazenly called for an investigation into the allegations, allowing rumours to swirl about his own colleagues when he knew he'd done it.
And he tried to explain it all away with an excuse that was frankly utterly ridiculous.
The situation was that I, funnily enough, it was tractors I was looking at.
And so I did get into another website that had a sort of very similar name.
And I watched it for a bit, which I shouldn't have done.
Who hasn't stumbled across porn looking for tractors?
It gets worse.
Parrish later briefed that specifically he was searching for dominator combine harvesters when a rather different kind of dominator popped up.
But there is a pathway to redemption for Hapless Parrish, and it comes in this form of his former Conservative colleague Brooks Newmark.
You may not remember the name, but Newmark quit as a British government minister in 2014 after newspapers exposed him for sending lewd photos to a reporter posing as a young female fan.
For years after, we never really heard anything about him again.
But now it's emerged that Newmark has risked his life to almost single-handedly save over 7,500 Ukrainian women and children in the past two months, helping them evacuate the war zone.
He raised $300,000 from friends and family to begin a bus service taking refugees out of Ukraine.
From sinner to savior.
Good for him.
Now I don't believe in cancel culture, so I was obviously distraught to learn that the woman who cancelled me has now herself been cancelled.
Yes, Netflix has shelved the development of Pearl, an animated series created by Meghan Markle with Sir Elton John's husband David Furnish, about a 12-year-old girl inspired by influential women.
Apparently, it was based on her own very inspiring rags to royal riches story.
But sadly, it seems nobody at Netflix shared my inspiration.
The streaming giant reported very bad results last week.
A direct consequence, some critics say, of their increasingly tedious woke output, including a new series about a pregnant man.
Netflix stocked tanks, so they've had to pull the plug on Megan's vanity project to cut costs.
And concern is now mounting that the Duke and Duchess of Netflix's whole hundred million dollar deal with the company may now be in jeopardy.
None of this brings me any pleasure, especially after the sad failure of her nauseatingly patronizing children's book, The Bench.
But it would be remiss of me not to just politely suggest that Megan and Harry may be suddenly discovering that maybe the rest of the world isn't quite as excited by their self-righteous brand of pious, hypocritical, money-grabbing, virtue-signaling royal bashing as they are.
Because let's face it, when the world's wokest production company axes the world's wokest project by the world's wokest celebrity, that's a whole new level of humiliation.
I wish Megan sincerely all the very best at this difficult time.
West Must Support Ukraine 00:08:36
Russian state television have issued a brazen warning that Moscow could wipe out Britain with a nuclear tsunami in retaliation for supporting Ukraine, declaring there would be no survivors.
In Britain, they seem to be rambling.
Why do they threaten vast Russia with nuclear weapons while they are only a small island?
Why do they play games?
Another option is to plunge Britain into the depths of the sea using Russian underwater robotic drone Poseidon.
The explosion of its torpedo close to Britain's shores will raise a giant wave, a tsunami up to 500 meters.
This tidal wave is also a carrier of extremely high doses of radiation surging over Britain.
It will turn what is left of them into a radioactive desert.
Well, retired four-star general and former Vice Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, General Jack Keene, joins me, as does Tobias Elwood, Conservative MP and former Defense Minister.
Welcome to both of you.
General Keene, first of all, great honor to have you on the show.
Thank you very much for joining Piers Morgan Uncensored.
When you hear that kind of rhetoric from the Russians, and we're hearing more and more of this now, it is pretty sobering listening, isn't it?
It's frankly quite terrifying to many people.
When I interviewed President Trump earlier this week, he felt that America in particular should be using more bellicose rhetoric back, reminding them, the Russians, that America has just as many nukes as they do.
What is your view?
Well, the fact is, we have a very effective strategic deterrence about the kind of warfare that's being threatened here, which is global nuclear warfare.
And that kind of language is absolutely horrendous and certainly outrageous to do that.
I don't think we have to walk up the nuclear escalation with them, but we remind them that there is a significant strategic deterrence here among the United States, Britain, and France.
And certainly the destruction of their entire country and population is what they're putting at risk here.
I think they clearly understand that.
I think this is mostly trying to rattle your population as well as mine and also impact our leaders.
I think what's really troubling to them is the unanimity that the EU and NATO has really defined here, not just in getting better sanctions and improved sanctions, but most significantly is the arms and ammunition that we're providing to the Ukrainians.
And certainly, the backdrop here, Piers, is the fact that the Russians have largely been failing.
And even in this much smaller offensive that they're conducting right now, they haven't made much gains.
And last 24, 36 hours, they haven't been doing much of anything.
So yes, there is saber rattling going on here for sure.
Now, the issue with a tactical nuclear weapon, I think that gives us all a little bit more concern that something like that could be used.
I really believe the Biden administration could be much stronger about what our response should be here, both publicly and privately.
And I will say this, I do think that some of this rattling is going on, particularly as it concerns the Biden administration, Pierce, because the Biden administration set the tone here very early on.
March 21, 70,000 troops show up on the Ukraine border 60 days into the Biden administration's reign, right after the inauguration.
It's no accident.
I'm absolutely convinced Putin is doing that to test this administration, which he believed would be weak and there's an opportunity.
The Trump administration had a scheduled deployment of arms and munitions in March of that year planned.
Biden administration did not execute it and publicly stated the reason.
They did not want to provoke Putin.
Yeah, I mean, Tobias Elwood.
Let me bring in Tobias Elwood, General Keen, if I may.
Tobias Elwood, I mean, I felt that one of the things that may have empowered Vladimir Putin to go into Ukraine, and President Trump said the same thing, was the very cack-handed, if not catastrophic, withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan.
That that looked like it was America in a form of surrender.
What did you think of that?
What do you think of where we are with this war?
And actually, what does defeat look like now for Putin?
Well, these are all great questions.
Firstly, good to see General Keene please to share a platform with him.
But yes, I think Putin has seen that over 30 years, in fact, the West has become quite timid.
And our humiliation in departing from Afghanistan, I think, was the ice another cake.
That was the moment that he intended to strike.
And we need to wake up that we are actually witnessing a turning point in our history.
This isn't just about Ukraine.
This is much, much bigger.
This is about Putin taking advantage of complacency over 30 years as we've withdrawn back on our military capabilities.
Putin is very much now alignment with President Xi, with China and Russia forming an access and leveraging our timidity.
What we're seeing at the moment, though, is an abysmal invasion, as General Keene just implied.
In contrast, incredible resilience and heroism from the Ukrainian forces themselves.
But we haven't leveraged that.
You know, Russia's ineptitude caught the West off guard.
Remember, the US even offered to Zelensky a helicopter to fight out.
That's how they thought, how competent they thought Russian forces would be.
But here we are, Ukraine doing an incredible job.
Russia having to back away from Kiev, move around to Donbass.
That is the moment when they're regrouping, rearming.
They're starting to redeploy.
That's when you launch a counterattack.
But where is the West?
Where is NATO to leverage that?
The big question I pose to the West, indeed to Britain and the United States, is what is our objective?
What are we trying to achieve in Ukraine?
Is it to support Ukrainians to push Russia completely out of mainland Ukraine?
Or are we content with some form of stalemate occurring over Donbass?
We need to clarify exactly what the strategic objective is.
Okay, I mean, look, these are good questions.
Let me ask General Keene those questions.
What do you think the West's objective is right now?
And let me ask you also, General Keen, what is defeat for Putin and what is victory now, do we think?
Well, first of all, I think we were very ambiguous about what our intent there is.
We started out by just arming the Ukrainians, certainly, to likely deal with an insurgency because most people felt the regime was going to be collapsed.
And then certainly the Ukrainians responded very positively.
Russians responded very incompetently.
And huge opportunity arose.
It took the Biden administration far too long to make that transition and get them the weapons they needed.
And finally, we're there.
We are clearly doing that.
I think the meeting that was held in Ramstein, where 40 nations showed up, 14 of them not European, with Secretary of Defense Alston and Chairman of Joint Chiefs, the United States Milley, that is significant.
And what we have to do is continue that.
In terms of the objective, the objective was never clear from the beginning, but now it has come much more into focus.
The Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, others in the administration, even the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, is talking about victory here, defeating the Russian military inside of Ukraine, which is, I believe, should be our objective.
It should have been our objective and unequivocally clearly stated from the beginning.
And it's certainly when you have ambiguity like that, it actually leverages our enemy, Russia, to be sure, because they're not certain about what we're driving towards.
And that's why I think they've been surprised by the level of effort recently.
I think there still is opportunity here for that objective to be achieved.
And we've got to double down and continue the robust support that we're providing the Ukrainians, plus the moral support that they need as well.
General Keene, great to talk to you.
To Mars Elba, thank you very much too.
Really appreciate it.
On Censor, next, a mega blow for Megan.
Trump Wants Presidency Again 00:15:04
The Duchess of Sussex has had her next show cancel.
Can she still justify our $100 million deal that's coming up?
Welcome back to Piers Morgan Uncensor.
Now, there were two nailed-on celebrity certainties once war broke out in Ukraine.
The first was that Angelina Jolie would at some stage fly over there to make it all about herself, posing for numerous selfies with her adoring fans.
Fortunately, some of the Ukrainian youth didn't get the Angie PROC memo.
Look at the guy there with his headphones.
He's completely ignoring you.
Fantastic.
The second, of course, was Madonna deciding that what we all needed to cheer ourselves up in these dark times was her doing this on stage in Colombia.
Now, to be fair to Madonna, this did actually cheer me up.
It did bring a smile to my face.
Just not, I suspect, for the reasons that she owns.
Well, joining me now is a veteran journalist, attorney, Fox News host, legend, actually.
Harada Rivera.
Harada, what a joy to have you on my new show.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Piers, my pleasure.
We haven't seen each other since Donald Trump's Celebrity Apprentice in 2015.
That's completely true.
And in fact, why don't we start with Trump?
Because I was going to ask you about my interview, which is obviously ricocheted around the world.
It's attracted three Trump statements so far of increasing venom and humor, actually.
Basically saying the interview was terrible, brilliant, great for ratings.
I'm a loser.
I'm finished and washed up.
And then there was this clip last night from his, this was his appearance at a rally where he said this.
Think it's coming.
Is it coming?
You know, we'll come to the clip in a moment.
Herado, the point I was going to make, he says in the clip that I've gone crazy.
We got it.
We've got it.
I'm sorry.
We're going to play it now.
This crazy Piers Morgan.
Did you see that show?
Piers Morgan, thank you, sir.
Piers Morgan show.
You see Piers Morgan?
He sort of had it.
I think Piers is over the hill.
He opened the show with an interview of me.
I did him a favor.
I didn't want to do a stupid show.
It's on Fox Nation.
What is Fox Nation?
What is it?
They're going to love me when I say, what is Fox Nation?
It's on Fox Nation.
He opened with great ratings when he did me.
And then after my interview was finished, he bombed and he's now down over 70%.
And maybe they'll someday learn that maybe they should hire me as an anchor.
Should I go to work?
We'll get that greatest rating.
We'll sit there and we'll riff.
I've got to say, Herado, I would watch Donald Trump if he did anchor a show like this.
I mean, him live and unfiltered every night would be fantastic.
I doubt he's going to do it.
But what was that?
I just felt that it's a massive overreaction by Donald Trump to what was actually, when you watched it, a really insightful, revealing interview, which most people I know who saw it actually thought he came out of it pretty well.
I saw it, and that was the conclusion I had, Piers.
It was a pretty good interview.
He asked all the right questions, the necessary questions.
But as you know, he has profoundly thin skin.
He doesn't suffer insults lightly.
He has a rule, you hit him, he'll hit you back.
Even if you didn't intend to hit him by even asking a question that he viewed as vaguely impolite, he carries that grudge forever until there's something else.
Like JD Vance, the candidate here in the state of Ohio, running for Senate, has just been endorsed by Trump, despite the fact that he called Trump everything from, you know, imbecile and everything else.
I've got no doubt I'll be in company with him.
I was going to ask you two questions really about it, which I think everyone is wondering.
Do you think Trump will run again?
Because Tucker Carlson earlier last week on this show doesn't think he will.
And secondly, would he be a good thing for America, given how divisive and polarizing he was in those four years, albeit not unsuccessful in many ways either.
Would it be a good thing if he did?
I think President Trump really wants to be president again.
You know, I've known him since 1976.
I've never seen him shirk from a challenge.
I believe that he's really hurt by the results, the legitimate results of the November 2020 election.
You know, he's egotistical.
He wants to be back in the White House.
It's not that he's deprived of helicopters or huge jumbo private jets.
It's just his ego has been rattled.
And he has, it's a grudge.
It's a grudge now with the Democratic Party.
He wants to be back in the White House to evict them.
Now, will he win?
I don't know.
He'd have some real hurdles to clear, not the least of which is that he's lost voters like me in the middle who supported him, you know, pretty strongly until he decided not to abide by the Constitution of the United States.
So he has that hurdle.
But the Republicans have enforced amnesia.
They've decided not to remember January 6th or the rest of it.
So I think that he may, unless Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor who's gaining momentum here, you know, decides to make a go of it and Trump lives in Florida, he may, I don't know.
I'm not sure how that dynamic works.
The answer to your question is, I think he probably will run.
And do I think that's good for America?
I don't think that he will win.
I think that there's too much baggage.
So I know that that's a dodge. of your question because I just don't know the answer.
For instance, in Ukraine, what would have happened if Trump were president when Putin was rattling the sabers and mobilizing his army?
Would Trump have reacted differently?
He was friends with Putin.
Maybe it never would have come to an invasion.
But maybe, just maybe, when he called the invasion savvy and what was the other word, genius, that he would have kind of let Russia take Ukraine back.
I don't know the answer to that.
We just had the White House Correspondence Dinner.
I've attended that a few times.
You've been many times, I know.
We've got a little highlights reel here.
It was a fun night.
Let's have a look.
This is the first time the president attended this dinner in six years.
It's understandable.
We had a horrible plague followed by two years of COVID.
If my predecessor came to this dinner this year, now that would really have been a real coup.
In America, you have the right to seek the truth and speak the truth, even if it makes people in power uncomfortable.
Even if it makes your viewers or your readers uncomfortable.
I stood here tonight and I made fun of the President of the United States, and I'm going to be fine.
I'm going to be fine, right?
I thought that was a very powerful conclusion there by Trevor Noah.
I thought he had a good night all around, actually, zinging everybody.
But I thought the speech he made at the end there about the importance of free speech and his ability to do zingers at Joe Biden's expense, which would never be tolerated in a totalitarian country, had a powerful impact, I thought.
Well, he said all the right things to a very receptive audience.
I was there in 2011, one of the many times that I have been at the Washington Correspondence Dinner when Donald Trump was in the audience and President Obama just mocked him ruthlessly, saying that he was ready because he had to choose between meatloaf and some other obscure sea lister who had the hot tub in front of the White House.
Trump was outraged by that.
I am convinced that that was the night Trump decided he was going to run for President of the United States.
He was going to show them.
It's again, it's that, you know, it's that same, you're seeing it in miniature, you know, the way he reacts to those kinds of challenges.
And I think that that put him over the top.
Then he decided, I'm going to show Obama, I'm going to show everybody, I'm going to run for president and I'm going to win.
You've covered a lot of war zones in your time very courageously, Arado.
What do you make of Ukraine?
We had a debate earlier about the nuclear saber rattling they're doing constantly now.
But the scenes that we're seeing, we're sort of living this war in real time on social media like we've never lived a war before.
How does this all play out, do you think?
I think just in that last point, social media, now people with iPhones are doing as good a job as I did with two tons of satellite equipment.
It is extraordinary.
And the bravery, our Benjamin Hall, who lost his leg, he's lost his crew.
It's so dangerous.
It's heavy combat.
You know, I so admire the coverage.
Now, in terms of how this all plays out and where it goes, and I heard your interview with General Keene, how it ends.
I have no idea, but the nuclear saber rattling has rattled me as a child of the 1950s who used to duck under our desks at school in nuclear drills that would have been fruitless, who lived through as a cadet in maritime college the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
This is the worst it's been since then.
People have to understand that when people are talking about nuclear use of nuclear weapons in a way that it is plausible, if remote, it is unnerving to me.
It is absolutely so profoundly distressing to think that these world leaders would actively be considering.
Now, what the word is now that Putin is going to use a tactical, tactical nuclear weapon to explode over the Black Sea or some unpopulated area in Ukraine someplace, you know, as a demonstration.
That's insanity.
It's insanity.
It is ridiculous.
Mutual assured destruction is what nuclear warfare is all about.
And it's just so distressing to me that world leaders, even someone as nutty as Putin is showing himself to be, would be putting the world's very survival in play.
For what?
For what exactly?
For Donbass?
For some little shaving of eastern Ukraine?
What exactly is it that Putin is so angry about that he would end the world?
I had a history professor, very briefly, Mr. Fabrogas in social studies, who told me that he had no doubt but that Hitler at the end of the war, if he had a choice and there was a button that said, end the world, because we're losing or not, Hitler would have pushed the button.
He would have ended the world.
I remember how upset I was by that.
Is this the same thing?
Is Putin now playing with the button because he may lose this ridiculous, stupid war?
And bravo to Ukraine.
Bravo to Zelensky.
They're kicking bud at great cost, but they threw the world's second most powerful or third most powerful army out of the region around the capital.
And now Putin is trying to pick up the pieces in the east side.
You know, I think that this is horrible, what's going on with Putin and bravo to Ukraine and the Western allies.
You know, that's one thing about Trump.
I don't know.
Would Trump have held NATO together with the UK?
Would he have held them together to have a united front against Putin?
He hated NATO.
Half of NATO wasn't paying the 2%.
He was so disparaging of them and it sounded like he wanted the Atlantic Alliance gone that he didn't even think the United States should be in NATO.
You know, what if there was no NATO now?
You know, I think that there's so many interrelated questions.
As always, Rada brilliantly observed from all your experience.
I was going to throw you a question about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, but frankly, it feels almost an insult to ask you something so pathetically trivial after what you're doing.
It's not really, because I followed Prince Harry into Helmut Province in Afghanistan.
I missed him by a week, but all the American GIs were singing his praises.
He's kind of drifted away from that, but he was a hero in 2008.
I'd love that guy back.
My brother-in-law, actually, my sister's husband, he taught Harry and William at Sandhurst Military Academy.
He was in charge of their training.
And I think we'd love to see that Harry back.
Arado, great to talk to you.
Thank you so much for coming on.
Okay, Piers, thank you.
I'm saying so next, Djokovic, Murray and Nadal have all attacked Wimbledon's decision to ban Russian and Belarusian athletes from this year's tournament.
I'll speak to tennis legend Martina Ratilova.
It's next.
Welcome back to Pearsborg Uncensored.
Rafa Nadal says Wimbledon's ban on Russian players at Wimbledon is unfair.
Well, Sergei Stashkovsky retired from tennis in January and has now taken up arms to protect his homeland in Ukraine.
He took to Twitter to say, Rafa Nadal, we competed together.
We played each other on tour.
Please tell me how it's unfair.
How it's fair that Ukrainian players cannot return home.
How is it fair that Ukrainian kids cannot play tennis?
How is it fair that Ukrainians are dying?
And Sergei joins me now, along with tennis legend and nine-time Wimbledon winner, Martina Ratilova.
Well, welcome to both of you.
Sergei, let me start with you.
That was a powerful tweet.
And there's no doubt when you read that tweet and you think about someone like yourself who played tennis competitively for Ukraine for many years and has now gone back and has now joined the battle against Putin and his genocidal rampage.
There's no doubt everybody, I'm sure, will feel huge empathy with you.
The question becomes, I guess, that where do you take the argument?
Punishing Individuals for Leaders 00:11:58
If individuals, rather than nations, rather than teams, for example, if individuals get punished for the behavior of their leaders, then you could end up with a lot of people getting banned year in, year out, for all sorts of reasons.
Surely they can, but unfortunately, the regime in Russia created a delusional reality for Russians.
And the top athletes, they have that reach.
They have that audition for their fans and they could tell them what's really going on.
And honestly, if the Russian players and Belarusian players would come out and say publicly they condemn the invasion, that they would really say that they're against the war, there'll be something, you know, everybody would then consider about banning.
But they're staying silent.
Saying no war means if Ukraine will stop shooting, the war would be over.
But it's not true.
If Ukraine stopped shooting, there'll be no more Ukraine and no more Ukrainians.
So the question here is it's not about whether it is good to ban somebody or not.
It's a question whether it's normal to stay neutral when your country is killing innocent people.
Okay, well, Martina, obviously, that's not normal.
Obviously, it's disgusting.
I think we all agree with that.
But it's really about, I guess, the precedent that's being set here.
And I raised the point earlier at the top of the show that if you had the same kind of logic, for example, you know, after the Vietnam War, after what many think was the illegal invasion of Iraq, for example, then a lot of American stars would be banned from tournaments that they ended up winning.
What is your view about this?
Well, first I want to say, Sergei, bravo to you.
My hat is off.
You are just so brave to be doing what you're doing.
Truly unbelievable.
As for the players, as you say, it could be a slippery slope.
Because what is the option for the Russian and Belarusian players?
If they support the war, I mean, I'd say if they support Putin, obviously, openly, they should not be allowed to play.
But if they go against it, what happens to them?
What happens to their families, etc.?
They would literally be forced to defect in order to play tennis.
And I think you're making a very unfair situation, obviously, horrible situation in Ukraine.
You're making it worse by doing this.
I think the players who did not support Putin, who actually have spoken out against the war, like Polychenkova has openly spoken about it.
I think Rublev wrote no to war on the camera after a match.
It's such a fine line to walk if you're from those countries.
And there is no good way out of it.
So my heart goes out to everybody involved in this.
But if the only option is for these players to leave their country so they can play tennis, I think that's unfair as well.
Sergei, I mean, the precedent I would say immediately that springs to mind is Saudi Arabia's warmongering in Yemen, for example, hasn't led to a ban on Saudi competitors, for example, at the Olympics.
It hasn't stopped them hosting a Formula One Grand Prix race.
So there's a lot of hypocrisy here, isn't there, about the way that we view conflicts around the world and how we punish people.
Surely there is, but let's say Saudi Arabia doesn't possess any nuclear weapons and Saudi Arabian kings did not threaten Europe with airstrikes saying that the missile will land in London within 200 seconds.
It's going to land in Berlin in 160 seconds on a mainstream TV with your anchors saying these words and lines.
So it's a pretty different situation, I would say, when you're preparing your nation, which is Russia, to basically say that there's no world without Russia in it.
So they are preparing the nation if they are going to lose the war in Ukraine, that they're ready to end the world.
Is that something everybody should consider?
I mean, I've got to be honest with you.
I think, Martina, it's a very complicated issue.
I actually thought long and hard over the last day or so about what I thought about this once I heard about this ban from Wimbledon.
I understand that Wimbledon, for example, they're really doing it at the behest of the British government and the heavy sanctions they brought in.
They're sort of taking their lead from the government, which some people might think is a bit cowardly of them to stand behind the government, but I can understand them taking the lead in that way.
And they wanted to avoid, it's been reported, the potential spectacle of the men's tournament being won by a Russian competitor.
And for example, the Duchess of Cambridge, who's the patron of Wimbledon tennis, presenting him with an award and giving Putin a massive propaganda prize.
I mean, this is the problem, isn't it?
If you do allow them to compete and they win, Putin gets his moment on the world stage.
Absolutely.
And that's why we should not have been rewarding these horrible countries with international competitions, whether it's the Olympics in China, the World Cup in Qatar, the World Cup in Russia, etc.
Saudi Arabia having, as you said, the F1 races.
So it legitimizes these governments and that's not right.
On the other hand, tennis is a very individual sport, but it's like it's a normal situation.
I know if I was living in Russia right now, I would probably be moving my family out, as are many people that can leave the country because it's just such a disaster and what they're doing is so, so wrong.
But it is just sad that it would have to come to that.
But I think if I were living there, I would probably be doing that.
But there's no way of winning this one way or the other.
And the loss of life and destruction is just unimaginable.
But I don't know if banning players from playing tennis is helpful one way or the other.
Sergei, I want to end with you because you've gone back.
You've retired earlier this year.
You're now, you've joined the struggle.
What is life like for you in Ukraine?
In Ukraine, Kiev is getting better.
First two weeks were brutal, honestly.
Now the Kiev going back to normality because there's no other way.
But in general, until the 9th of May, I think is going to be the main time where we will see what's going to happen because Russia is planning to do a full-scale, I don't know, call in arms, that would say.
I don't know how it's called in English.
then unfortunately for many of us who have been put back into reserves most likely we have to go back to active duty so the next two weeks are going to be crucial and we just hope that the world will stay at one piece as it is well we wish you all the very best soggy to you and to your family and indeed to all ukrainians uh martin i just wanted to ask you quickly before we let you go about boris becker uh someone you know incredibly well uh who's now in prison and an extraordinary fall from grace Yes,
Boris had had some really bad advice and then he made some really bad decisions and now he's paying as high a price as you can.
I just hope that he'll be okay and that he'll come out all right on the other side.
My heart goes out to him and his family.
He made some really bad mistakes and he's paying for him dearly.
So I just hope he'll be okay.
It is an extraordinary situation, isn't it?
I mean, I know Boris quite well.
I have an interview, the first interview with his wife, Lily, tomorrow, actually, on this show.
It's a tragedy for them, obviously.
A lot of people don't feel any sympathy for him.
They think that he, you know, he did what he did and he committed financial fraud and he should pay his price.
But he was such an idol in the sport of tennis.
It just seemed extraordinary.
He's now behind bars.
Yeah, I think the first time it happened, I don't think it was his fault as much as it was of his advisors.
But he got let off because of who he is.
And because of who he is, I think they paid more attention to what he was doing.
And then the second time it happened, it definitely was on him.
It seems from what I've been reading, he should have been smarter than that.
But, you know, he didn't hurt anybody.
He was just trying to save his own property.
But that doesn't excuse, obviously, shorting taxes, etc.
So it's just, you know, as tennis players, we depend on other people to tell us what's right, what's wrong, lawyers, CPAs, etc.
I've gotten some really lobby advice over the years, nothing illegal, but lost some money because you depend on these people to do their job so you can do yours.
Not to excuse what Boris did.
And again, he's paying dearly.
And I just hope his family survives it intact.
And most of all, Boris does, because, yeah, this is really rough.
Yeah, well said.
Martini, lovely to talk to you.
Thank you very much indeed.
Thanks, Pierce.
And nice to talk again to Sergia that we lost the connection at the end, but we wish him and his family all the very best.
Uncensored next, China's zero COVID policy shows, well, zero humanity, because most countries are getting on with living with the virus.
How long can China hold on?
That's next.
Millions of people in China are still living under the world's most draconian lockdown measures.
The face of the country's brutal zero-COVID policy continues to emerge, given this footage of a man in Beijing who sealed himself into his car because he feared he might have the virus.
Residents in Shanghai have staged screaming protests from their homes.
Robert Lawrence Kuhn, who's a longtime advisor to Chinese leaders and the author of How Chinese Leaders Think joins me now.
Welcome to the show.
We haven't got much time.
I'm really sorry, but if you could just explain to me how long can this go on, this zero cover policy in China, given the reaction from the people there?
And can it work?
It'll go on for the rest of the year through the 20th Party Congress, which is probably in November.
It's important to understand three reasons why the lockdown policy is in place.
First, putting people first is the leadership, President Xi Jinping, the party's highest objective, their mission, and saving people's lives is the top of the list.
Estimates were that there might have been 200 million cases, 2 million deaths in China, if they hadn't done the draconian lockdowns in the early days.
Secondly, because of the early success with the original virus, China has claimed that their system for putting people first is the best in the world, better than the Western liberal democracies.
So that puts a marker down on the street.
Third, the 20th Party Congress, for people not familiar with it, is the most important event in China's political calendar.
It occurs every five years.
It establishes the leadership, the top people, which in China is the most important aspect.
And China needs absolute stability, especially in Beijing, until that time.
So I don't expect any changes from significant lockdown.
They'll try to modify it a little bit, as we see in Shanghai, as they can, but no significant changes until after the party congress.
And after that, there will be and has to be a relaxation of the zero COVID policy just to keep the economy going.
Robert, thank you.
Brilliantly articulated.
It's a fascinating situation there.
And I appreciate you joining us.
Sorry, we didn't have more time, but appreciate it.
Thank you.
Well, forget the fun police.
It's time to worry about the speech police, I'm afraid.
Well, internet search giant Google is rolling out a new inclusive language function that helps people avoid using PC words.
One of the problematic words is mankind, apparently.
To give you some idea, dear, how ridiculous this is, before I play the most famous TV clip in history, I now have to issue a trigger warning.
Google Rolls Out Speech Filter 00:00:28
Here's the clip: That's one small step for man.
One time leap for man.
Sorry, Mr. Armstrong.
Offensive, triggering.
You're going to get banned next.
Okay, that's all from me for tonight.
Tomorrow I'll be joined by Boris Becker's wife, Lily, for her first exclusive interview.
In the meantime, whatever you're up to, make sure it's uncensored.
Export Selection