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Oct. 17, 2022 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
47:25
20221017_piers-morgan-uncensored-john-hinckley-jr-exclusive
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Britain Brink of Another Leader 00:03:24
Good evening, I'm Piers Morgan, Uncensored in New York City.
Tonight, clinging to power, the new British Chancellor lays waste for the Prime Minister's own controversial economic plan.
So it's the country on the brink of yet another leader.
And the man who tried to kill a president, John Hinkley Jr.'s attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan changed the course of US history.
He's now a free man, but is he a changed man?
Tonight he joins me for his first ever international TV interview.
From New York, this is Piers Morgan Uncensored.
Well good evening from New York City and welcome to Piers Morgan Uncensored.
I might be three and a half thousand miles away, but don't worry, I can still call out the incompetent and reckless clowns currently running Britain into the ground from right here in Manhattan.
Liz Truss is now a lino, a leader in name only, a puppet prime minister, beholden to backbenchers who want her out and to a chancellor who agrees with her about absolutely nothing.
Today, Jeremy Hunt did this.
Firstly, we will reverse almost all the tax measures announced in the growth plan three weeks ago.
It is not right to borrow to fund this tax cut.
Beyond that, the Prime Minister and I have agreed it would not be responsible to continue exposing public finances to unlimited volatility in international gas prices.
There will be more difficult decisions, I'm afraid, on both tax and spending.
Unbelievable.
Devastating.
In four simple steps, he reversed everything his boss, his current boss, has done as Prime Minister, subjecting her to the fastest and biggest humiliation of any prime minister in modern history.
The only thing he didn't reverse was lifting the cap on bankers' bonuses, because let's be honest, they are the people who really need most help right now.
Truss promised more spending, less debt, and lower taxes, all funded by a magical growing pie.
But now we're getting the exact opposite.
Her plan is in ruins and so is her credibility.
Even President Biden can see it.
Speaking this weekend, he made an unprecedented and merciless intervention.
Well, it's predictable.
I wasn't the only one who thought it was a mistake.
Anyway, I just didn't think.
I disagreed with the policy, but that's up to Great Britain to make that judgment, not willing.
Well, Great Britain's made its judgment.
Truss is not fit to be our leader.
This evening, she sat gormlessly like some kind of brain-dead zombie next to the Chancellor as he dismantled her entire economic strategy.
And even as he spoke, a new poll gave Labour a staggering 36-point lead, the biggest for any party by any pollster since Blair swept into power in 1997.
The Tories must now urgently decide if the chaos of a fifth leader in six years is worse than the ongoing chaos of Liz Truss.
And if they can't, they must call an election and let we, the people, make that decision and choice.
Prime Minister, let me remind you what I said to you on the day you took office.
You, Liz Truss, wanted this job.
You spent weeks promising us that you can fix it.
You have the solutions.
Well, Britain needs you to keep that promise and keep it fast.
Urgent Resignation for Truss Chaos 00:02:03
And we'll be very unforgiving if you fail us.
Well, you have failed us, Ms. Truss.
You failed us dismally.
And we will be unforgiving.
You must now resign as a matter of urgency.
Well, more on the British political dumpster fire in a moment.
Also, tonight, I'll be speaking exclusively to John Hinckley Jr., the man who tried to assassinate President Reagan.
That interview in full later in the program.
But first, I want to know why he's broken his silence to talk to me tonight.
John Hinkley Jr., thank you very much indeed for joining me.
Hello, Piers.
How are you?
I'm fine, thank you.
I just, I'm curious, I guess.
Why are you doing this interview and what do you hope to achieve from it?
Well, I'm doing some interviews because I'm just trying to get across to the public that I'm not the person that I was all those years ago.
There's been an image of me for many years, a really negative image, and I'm trying to change that and show them that I'm a totally changed person than I was so long ago.
Obviously, you took part in one of the most infamous moments in modern American history.
When you look back on that day, it was actually my 16th birthday, March the 30th, 1981.
I remember very well what happened.
I was celebrating with my friends, and then we heard about this assassination attempt on the president, which fortunately was unsuccessful.
But when you look back on that, what are your feelings about what you did that day?
I just feel so terrible about what I did.
I was right in the middle of a really severe mental illness.
I had a really bad depression, and I had some delusions going on.
And I mean, looking back on it now, I just, it's like a whole nother lifetime.
I just can't imagine doing what I did.
I'm sure you're aware that there are many people who feel you shouldn't be free, that if you try and kill the president, then you deserve to spend the rest of your life in prison.
Deep Concern Over UK Next Steps 00:12:00
Do you understand that?
And do you understand why people feel that way?
I understand that because it's such a serious, heinous crime.
But, you know, it was 41 years ago and a lot has happened to me in those 41 years.
And I'm hoping to show the public that, you know, I'm a good person now and I'm trying to do some good things with my music and my art.
Well, John Hindley Jr., we'll come back to you later for more from this interview.
I appreciate you joining us tonight.
Thank you very much.
Here with me in New York, a former Conservative MP, Louise Mensch, editor-at-large at the U.S. Financial Times, Gillian Ted, another author and journalist, Vicki Warder.
Welcome to my stunning pack tonight.
This is really on every level.
Well, your words, not mine, Gillian.
Yes, I like that.
With a balance of power, probably more with you than me, though, right?
We're going to do a power kick.
Well, Jillian, we wanted you because you are the most talked about journalist in Britain this week, because in one beautiful little clip on live television in Britain, you managed to perfectly encapsulate exactly the farce of what has been happening with our economy.
This was in response when you were asked, you know, as Jacob Reese-Mogg had tried to claim, that all this stuff going on had nothing to do with Liz Truss's budget.
And you replied as follows.
Well, to use a non-technical term, that's pretty much bollocks.
I think that for the most part, it really was the budget and the way it was delivered and the message inside it, which sparked the beginning of the crisis.
Well, look, other shows would censor these comments.
We are called Piers Morgan uncensored for a reason.
And honestly, nobody has said it better because it has been an absolute load of old bollocks, hasn't it, Gillian?
Well, bollocks, as Channels were actually transcribed as bullocks.
And so they've all been mooing and, you know, or not mooing, but, you know.
We're all trying to get our heads around all this chaos, obviously, back home.
It's pretty unprecedented.
It's pretty extraordinary.
It's pretty depressing, actually.
Just want to play a little mashup of what was going on even this afternoon for those who've missed this.
Watch this.
With apologies, with apologies to the Leader of the Opposition and the House, the PM is detained on urgent business.
But where is the Prime Minister?
Hiding away, dodging questions, scared of her own shadow.
The late is not for turning up.
Well, the Prime Minister is not under a desk.
With regret, she is not here for a very good reason.
I guess under this Tory government, everybody gets to be Prime Minister for 15 minutes.
The Prime Minister is not under a desk was one of the things that had to be defended as an official statement.
Quite extraordinary scenes there.
But Gillian, there's a serious point to this.
Even by reversing everything today, that might calm things in the short term.
But there's already been significant damage caused by this mini-budget, which is irreversible.
Absolutely.
I mean, the thing about Britain was that the way it ran its finance and economy used to be considered really, really boring.
And boring was good because it was technocratic and predictable.
And now, as I said last week on Channel 4 as well, basically, you know, Britain's starting to look like Italy in the sense you've got big political instability, you've got policy-making uncertainty, you've got financial market stresses, all of which have been considered to be Italian in the past.
Britain hasn't got the good food, unfortunately.
But, you know, this is a kind of problem that is going to be very hard to fix because as we all know, in relationships, trust when shattered is very hard to restore.
Well, trust and trust have both been shattered.
I mean, you, in all your time in the world of finance, have you ever seen a more cack-handed budget in your life in terms of consequence and then the unravelling?
The short answer is we've seen this kind of pattern a lot of times before, but in emerging markets, developing markets, where essentially you have interest rates that are very high in the markets because investors demand some kind of compensation for political risk.
If you're really boring, you don't need that kind of risk premium.
And that's unfortunately what we've seen creeping into the UK recently.
Louise Metch, you often defend the indefensible when it comes to your party.
You're going to try and defend Truss or?
No, I'm not.
I think it has to be for her.
Jeremy Hunt has just restored some confidence to the markets by basically junking everything that Liz Truss herself put forward and ran on as leader in a leadership contest that went on for far, far too long over the summer.
And there's only one way out of this for the Conservative Party, and that is to pull off the plaster as quickly as possible, take the medicine, get rid of Liz Truss and do it quickly.
I mean, in a way, they've done that by unravelling the entire budget.
The only thing they haven't done is get rid of truss.
The argument is, well, you know, the rules say there has to be a leadership contest within another year and so on.
But they're going to change the rules and just do this now, aren't they?
The rules can be changed.
The thing that matters now is not internal Tory party rules.
It's the British Constitution.
And a Prime Minister is somebody who can command a majority of the House of Commons.
Liz Truss is already well on her way to not being able to do that.
She has to do the patriotic thing.
I know it's embarrassing and I know it's difficult.
The patriotic thing is for Liz Truss to resign and for the Conservatives to coalesce around one leader and start to put this right.
Why should we give the Tories any more time?
Why should we not now actually go straight to a general election and let the British people decide, which judging by tonight's poll, which is catastrophic for the Tories?
I mean, this is wipeout territory, the like of which we've not seen since Blair in 97.
But what real moral right do the Tories have after this fiasco, which will cause so much harm to millions of people with mortgages?
They might nothing else.
What moral right do they have to try and stumble on rather than go to the electorate?
I don't think they will stumble on as long as they get rid of trust and put in a strong consensus leader.
But you're right.
And I'll be honest with you, Turkeys don't vote for Christmas.
If there was an election tomorrow, the Conservative Party would be wiped out.
And you have to remember, despite the current chaos and the disaster of Liz Truss, Conservatives are Conservatives for a reason.
I don't think putting running a general election, having every single socialist guy who supported Jeremy Corbyn and didn't expect to win, all of a sudden catapulted into parliament, talk about unintended consequences, that wouldn't be good either.
So you can say, do they have any right?
I think they've actually got a duty to get rid of her, get their act together, get a consensus leader and change.
Mickey Ward, there was a moment where she addressed the media very briefly the other day, and there was a moment that I think will become her legacy.
Look at this Robert Peston.
I mean, completely and utterly clueless, like the proverbial rabbit trapped in headlights.
For you living here in America, we've, you know, back in Britain, we've had a good laugh about Trump and dopey Biden falling asleep and always going.
I think the laughter's stopped now.
The laugh's on us, isn't it?
When it comes to world leadership?
Well, you know, I think I'm the only American.
I don't sound it, but I am the only American.
You're an American.
I am.
Yes.
You're the poshest sounding American I've ever heard.
It's very advantageous.
The, you know, I think I've probably looked at this with the greatest distance of probably all of us.
And I have to say, I'm just totally bewildered on every, you know, I mean, Liz Truss had time.
The Queen died.
She had time.
And, you know, Julian Tesh, one of my closest friends, I've been longing to ask her for several weeks, could they not just add up?
I mean, if you're going to...
Well, that was the point.
They didn't even try.
They didn't even try to do the songs, it seemed to me.
And they hadn't even shared their thoughts with the cabinet.
It's quite extraordinary.
Well, and I would, you know, so my thoughts as the American at the table, I think the one thing that helped Liz Truss, by the way, was Joe Biden talking down to her.
Right.
You know, British people don't like it when American presents talk down to them.
And to be honest, he's in no position to lecture anybody about the economy.
As I've written in a column for the New York Post.
I loved your column.
I completely agree.
I write about private equity hedge fund owners all the time.
And Joe Biden campaigned on getting rid of carried interest, which is a very unfair tax loophole.
And his latest act absolutely kept that in.
So he's not one to talk.
I sort of move to just running a little low on time.
I want to move to another issue I have today, which is these oil, stop the oil protesters back in the UK who started doing more and more acts of wanton vandalism.
We got a little mash-up of their antics in the last few days.
We've seen them dropping milk in supermarkets at a time of a cost-of-living crisis, the like of which most of us have never seen, which seems an extraordinary act for trying to get public sympathy.
They've also been lying in the middle of roads and closing big bridges and big tunnels and so on.
So I think my overriding view of these people is the more of this they do, whatever the merits of the cause that they're fighting for, which is climate change and about the over-excessive use of oil around the world, it's eroding by the second with these acts of childish, petty, pathetic vandalism.
Am I wrong?
Does anyone want to defend these people?
Well, I'd personally say that I agree that that kind of act is not helpful for the cause at all.
It makes it look like it's all a kind of teenage protest and a kind of sulky teenager pouting, if you like.
But at the same time, I think that it also reflects deep concern about what the UK is going to do next on this front.
The UK did have a pretty sensible set of policies.
One of the many things that appeared to be happening under truss was that some of these were being reversed.
And so at the same time as saying that this kind of act probably milked down in the supermarkets, it's pretty dumb.
It's equally dumb to not have some kind of coherent government policy to switch rapidly to renewables.
I mean, these things can both be true.
I mean, my view about the renewable energy of the fossil fuels is you can't do it all in one go.
And my God, we've discovered this year that the energy situation is pretty desperate for everyone.
And in the short term, we need fossil fuels just to survive.
But we are going to have to try as a planet to move to renewables.
The issue at the moment is cost and availability, right?
Yes, absolutely.
But I don't think that these guys should be part of that debate.
That's a serious debate for serious people.
And when I look at that picture of them throwing paint at Van Gogh Sunflowers, I felt anger internally.
And that's what they wanted me to feel.
If you think about their protests, attacking the cenotaph, dumping a bucket of feces over a statue of Captain Tom, they are not actually as childish as you think.
They are carefully designed to provoke an emotional reaction of fury in the British people.
It's a bit like when the vegans start, the extreme vegans start shrieking away and doing mad things.
It makes me want to go and order a Big Mac.
Exclusive Interview with Hinckley Jr 00:15:00
Vicky, before we let you go, I want to talk just quickly about another story in the news this week.
Prince Andrew and Ghillaine Maxwell, her first interview from the prison.
You obviously had an interest here.
You had a big scoop about Epstein, which got suppressed.
Ghillaine Maxwell comes out supportive of Andrew.
His friends are telling the papers this is the last thing he needs right now as he tries to rehabilitate himself.
What do you make of it?
You know, I think Gillene Maxwell is very clever and it was very clever messaging on her part.
Basically, what she was telegraphing in just a few sentences was, you know, Prince Andrew is still in my world.
Bill Clinton, she called him a special friend.
You don't want to be called my dear friend by a convicted sex monster.
It's not good for them, but I think it's telling about her state of mind, which speaks again to the trial that we went through and the critical.
Is there any doubt for you that Ghillaine Maxwell was up to her neck in it as much as Epstein, that she knew a lot of the stuff that was going on?
And was a willing part of it.
No, I sat through the trial.
She clearly knew what was going on.
She was not, by any stretch, the only person who knew what was going on.
And what's really troubling and why I think she's called out these men is that the men are who's missing from this story.
I would echo that because she's done a great podcast on that.
And it really is very unfair how the spotlight has been so much on the woman and so many people.
Well, because the man killed himself.
Right.
Well, no, but all of the men.
No, I agree.
There's lots of very powerful people and they should all be held to account.
I totally agree.
Before we go, final one-word answer.
Will this trust survive till the end of the week?
Probably till the end of the week, but not much longer than that.
I hope not.
I'm going to echo my very clever friend.
I'm going to say an emphatic, simple, because I did say one-word answer.
No.
She'll be gone by the end of the week.
And if not, the world's gone nuts.
Thank you to my Stella Pack.
We love to do this again.
I love this.
Thank you very much.
We're coming next, an exclusive interview with a man who tried to assassinate President Ronald Reagan.
John Hunting Jr. will join.
Welcome back to Piers Morgan Uncensored from New York City.
Tonight, exclusive interview with a man who almost changed the world and who some people believe should still be locked up in prison for the rest of his life.
It was 30 seconds and six bullets that changed American history.
On March the 30th, 1981, a man opened fire on President Reagan as he left the Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C.
A bullet ricocheted off the president's limo and lodged within an inch of his heart, almost killing him.
Reagan's press secretary, James Brady, was paralyzed for life.
The gunman was John Hinckley Jr.
The mentally ill 25-year-old was obsessed with a young actress, Jodie Foster.
Depressed and delusional, he thought killing the president could win her affections.
After 12 days in hospital, Reagan made a full recovery, serving two terms as one of America's most popular ever presidents.
Hinckley was found not guilty of attempted murder by reason of insanity, but spent 30 years in psychiatric care and another 10 under close supervision.
This year, he was granted full freedom.
The whole world knows his name and what he did.
Tonight they'll hear his story and it's uncensored.
Well, John Hinkley Jr. rejoins me now.
John Hinckley, thank you again for coming on the program.
I appreciate it.
And you said that you want to change, I guess, people's perceptions if they have a negative view of you.
Just to take you back to that day when Ronald Reagan was shot by you, along with three other people.
What memories do you have of your actions that day?
Piers, I just remember I was at a hotel in Washington, D.C.
And I happened to have the newspaper before me.
I saw the president's schedule for that day and that's how I knew where he would be that day.
And I think I went and got some breakfast and then I went up to the hotel.
And in those days, it was easy to get pretty close to a president.
Of course, that's all changed now, but back then, it was pretty easy to get close to the president.
And unfortunately, I was able to go through with the crime.
Do you remember actually firing your gun?
Not anymore.
No, I don't.
Your motivation at the time, albeit it was decided that you were suffering from severe mental illness, so not responsible directly for your actions, was that you'd become obsessed with the movie star Jodi Foster after watching the movie Taxi Driver, in which a character does actually plot to assassinate a presidential candidate.
Do you recall any of your feelings about Jodie Foster that would lead you, you know, I think you were trying to impress her by doing this, but do you recall that the build-up of feelings that you had about her that would lead you to do such an extreme act?
Well, I mean, I had first seen her, I believe, in the movie Taxi Driver, and that was in 1976, I believe.
And this obsession that I developed just kind of built over the next several years to where in 1980, she went off to college at Yale University, and I went to Yale to follow her and try and find her.
And that just didn't turn out.
That turned out badly.
And so I just kind of, my thinking just went very negative, and that's why I went ahead with the shooting.
What do you feel about Jodie Foster today?
Well, I have very kind feelings for her.
You know, I've apologized to her for bringing into all of this, and I just wish her a very good life.
There will be a lot of people, John Hinckley, who will have just heard the last few minutes of what you've been saying and felt a chill go up their spine that somebody could stalk a major celebrity for several years.
I think at one stage you also stalked Jimmy Carter before you fired these fateful shots at President Reagan, which, well, fateful for at least one of the people you shot, James Brady, who ended up dying many years later from his injuries.
But they'll feel a chill up their spine thinking somebody that could do all this, have such a dangerous obsession that led to such dangerous stalking and then the ultimate act of danger of trying to assassinate an American president, that that person should never be released.
And there's been a lot of anger since you were given full freedom.
What do you feel about that?
I mean, do you feel yourself that it is right that you should be released?
I mean, I'll give you an analogy.
Mark Chapman shot John Lennon, I think a year before you.
He remains incarcerated with no real sign of being released at all, but that's because he killed Lennon.
But at least one of the people you shot died as a result of those injuries years later.
Do you see a distinction between the two of you, between you and Mark Chapman?
Do you think it's right you're free?
I see a big distinction because Mark Chapman was found guilty and he's been in prison all these years.
I was never in prison, Piers.
I was in a hospital for 35 years receiving treatment.
I was found not guilty by reason of insanity and sent to St. Elizabeth and I received treatment all these years and my family stood behind me and I had a great lawyer, Barry Levine.
And, you know, I feel like my release was very justified.
But do you understand why many people feel angry?
Because if you'd been successful in your mission, which was premeditated, you've already said that, if you succeeded in killing Reagan, you would have changed the course of American history, of global history.
He turned out to be a very popular, successful president, but you would have snuffed him out at the very start of his presidency.
Do you understand why some people feel enraged that you've been let out and allowed to lead a completely free life?
I can understand that, yes.
I just hope that they would also understand that I'm a completely changed man now.
I just, it's been so long ago that that happened, and a lot of good things have happened to me since then to where I just hope people who have negative feelings about me can take another look at me and listen to my music.
I tell people if they want to get to know me to listen to my songs because all of my songs are uplifting about overcoming hard times and then get to know me pretty well by listening to my music.
I mean, you've actually, you've been trying to perform live at music venues, but they've all been cancelled because of outcries and threats to people's lives and security issues and so on.
It may be impossible for you to pursue this kind of career publicly by performing, which again suggests there's a lot of anger out there and concern that people may take the law into their own hands because they feel that justice wasn't properly served.
Well, I keep trying.
I mean, you're right.
I've had about five or six venues cancel on me because after the concert gets announced, they start receiving negative backlash and they back out of the concert.
That's happened about six times.
So I'm going to keep trying, but hoping for a venue that'll stand by me.
Just to be clear about one thing, you did want to kill President Reagan, right?
Well, I suppose so back then I did.
I'm just so glad I did not succeed.
And obviously James Brady, as I say, died many years later from the injuries from you shooting him.
He was paralyzed for life.
It ruined his life.
What are your feelings towards the Brady family, who, I mean, at the very least, I would imagine, are pretty concerned about the fact you've been let out?
Well, I just wish them all the good health in life, and I wish they could just forgive me.
I wouldn't blame them if they don't forgive me, but I wish they could, because I'm sure sorry for what I did.
Have you ever heard from any of the Reagan family directly?
No, I've not.
And see, all these years I've had a court order to where I could not communicate with the victims of the shooting or their families.
But even now that I don't have that court order anymore, I don't think they want to hear from me, to be honest.
So I'm just going to try and let them have their distance.
Okay, gonna take a short break.
John Hinckley Jr. will come back with more.
My exclusive interview with the man who tried to kill a president.
Welcome back to Piers Morgan Uncensored from New York City.
More from my exclusive interview with the man that tried to kill President Reagan.
John Hinckley Jr. rejoins me now.
John Hinckley, do you still take medication for the severe mental illness that you had?
I do, Piers.
I take two psychiatric medicines.
And what impact do you believe the medicine has had on you?
One's an antidepressant, and it just prevents me from getting depression.
And I think they are effective, and I have no problem taking the medicines.
When was the moment for you that you became aware of the enormity of what you'd done?
I think after I got hospitalized, maybe about six months later, it all kind of just dawned on me that what I did was so terrible.
And I think that was the start of my recovery.
I mean, if you'd actually killed Reagan, obviously you would never have been released from prison.
Have you thought about that?
That's probably true.
It changed security around presidents irrevocably.
You know, I've been around a few of the more recent presidents, and the security around them is extraordinary as a result of what happened that day.
What do you feel about guns?
You obviously used a gun to cause carnage that day, nearly killed a president.
It's an ongoing debate and issue in America.
Do you feel there should be, as there are now, many more restrictions around the president?
Do you feel there should be more restrictions around guns themselves for the wider populace?
I do.
I do.
I think there are too many guns in America, to be honest.
It's just kind of a very volatile time right now.
And it's not good that there's so many guns in America.
When you did what you did, John Henckley, what was your family reaction to it?
Did they stand by you?
Did they disown you?
My family stood by me from the first moment up till my parents' deaths.
They stood by me all the way.
Your father and...
And my brother and sister still stand by me.
Your father, I think, blamed himself for what had happened.
Why would he do that?
I don't know, but I certainly didn't blame him.
I think he said that on the stand during my trial, but I never had that feeling of blaming him.
Family Stood By Through It All 00:14:56
When you look back at your life, what do you think prompted such a severe mental illness that you would commit the crime you committed?
I had a good upbringing with my family, so I think it was more of a chemical imbalance in my brain that caused the depression, which led me to get estranged from my family.
That was another thing that happened that was too bad was I got isolated from my family, and it took a bad turn after that.
Many Americans, I think, believe in second chances for people, in rehabilitation.
Some don't, but many do.
But do you tell people who you are?
Because your name is very distinctive.
And if they work out who you are, how do they react?
Well, here in Williamsburg, you know, people are very nice to me, and that's the main reason I live here is I get along fine here.
My name is very well known, but I've always said that, you know, my persona is not that well known.
So I can go to the grocery store or to other places and I don't get bothered.
It's just that my name is so well known.
There will be some people who don't think we should even do this interview, who don't think you should be given the oxygen of publicity.
What do you say to them?
Well, I'm glad you did because I'm trying to just get out the message that I'm a changed person.
And if all these years people have had a negative image of me, I hope they can see me now as somebody who has changed a lot.
I suppose the obvious...
I thank you, Piers, for giving me that opportunity.
Right, I mean, the obvious question I guess I would throw back at you for that is, how can we be sure you've changed?
As you say, you're still on medication to control your illness.
What you did wasn't just a one-off, spontaneous moment of violence.
It was after several years of very sinister stalking of a movie star, stalking of another man who became president, and then ultimately shooting Ronald Reagan.
There will be people watching this going, well, he may say he's changed.
How can we be sure?
Well, I would say that I have a really good track record.
I wasn't just released one day from the hospital.
I got released over a number of years.
My judge gave me freedom and incremental steps to see how I would do.
And I've always done well with the freedoms that he gave me.
And I've proven myself to be a very peaceful person now.
And that's how I plan to live my life.
Do you want forgiveness?
Is that something you seek?
And if so, who from?
Sure.
I think everybody wants forgiveness if they need it.
And just from the public at large.
And from the Reagan family and from Jody Foster, from the family of James Brady?
Certainly, I mean, the victims, yes, the victims' family, I wish so much they could forgive me.
But as I said earlier, I wouldn't blame them if they didn't forgive me, but I wish they would.
In the case of James Brady, of course, as I say, he died from the wounds that he suffered and it was designated homicide by the coroner because of the year and a day rule which existed at the time.
You could not be tried for murder.
But do you accept now that because you fired the gun at James Brady that caused his catastrophic injuries and subsequent death, that you were guilty of his murder?
Well, I wouldn't say that.
I mean, I certainly caused him to have devastating injuries, but I believe he lived on for another 30-something years.
So I can't really say I'm the cause of the murder.
I mean, it was ruled a homicide by the coroner, and he suffered horrendously from those injuries.
He was paralyzed for the rest of his life.
You did kill him, didn't you?
I mean, there's no doubt about that.
Ultimately, you killed him.
I understand.
But you accept you killed him?
I would say yes.
John Hinkley, in the end, people will watch this interview and they may have already made their minds up about you.
We're going to have a debate with three people with different views about this in a moment.
But what's your final message really to viewers who might remain unconvinced by what they're hearing and seeing and think, actually, you know what?
He should have stayed in prison.
If John Lennon's killer is in prison, why is this guy allowed to be out?
Well, I would say to anybody who's listening that I'm a changed person and that I was not just sitting in prison all these years not getting treatment.
I've gotten treatment all these years and I'm just, I don't have the same thinking that I had back then.
And I've shown through the freedoms I've gotten over the past 10 or 15 years that I do have a good track record of being a very good law-abiding citizen.
John Hinkley Jr., I appreciate you joining me tonight.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Well, coming next, should John Hinckley Jr. be locked up for life or did he deserve to be allowed to walk free?
We'll be debating that after the break.
I'm Piers Morgan in New York City and I'll be here all week with all the big names in the big apple.
World heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson and the most controversial and most watched man on American cable news, Tucker Carlson.
Join me and my guest totally uncensored in New York City.
Welcome back to Piers Morgan Uncensored in New York.
Some people believe that John Hinckley Jr. should remain behind bars the rest of his life, or at least under supervision.
So can someone who shot a U.S. president and, by his own admission, killed somebody else in the same shooting, eventually after a number of years, ever be considered no threat to society and regardless, should he be allowed to walk free?
Well, joining me now is the former Navy SEAL who killed Osama bin Laden, Robin Neal, former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, and Fox News contributor Joe Concher.
Well, welcome.
A great panel, if I may say so.
Joe Conch, let me start with you, because I found that a fascinating interview, not least the revelation that I got out of him at the end, which was this.
You did kill him, didn't you?
I mean, there's no doubt about that.
Ultimately, you killed him.
I understand.
But you accept you killed him.
I would say yes.
So that was John Hinkley Jr. for the first time admitting that he did kill James Brady, albeit it took 30 odd years for James Brady to die from the wounds he suffered that day.
What did you make of that confession?
And does that alter the balance really about how he's been treated?
Piers, there wasn't a lot of vigor behind that, was it?
You had to ask three times.
He said, I understand, I understand.
He didn't say outright, I take responsibility.
I apologize to the Brady family.
I apologize to the Reagan family.
He seemed to make that interview more about himself than talking about the victims and truly understanding what he did, particularly as it pertains to Brady, because he was in a wheelchair for 35 years.
What kind of hell is that, right?
And then, as you said, when he died, it was because of those gunshot wounds, and that becomes a homicide.
And I didn't see that.
As a lot of the coroner decided.
Correct.
I just didn't see a lot of remorse behind John Hinckley's rhetoric.
Do you think he should have been freed?
No, absolutely not.
I can't see any advanced country.
It's so hard to imagine trying to assassinate a sitting president and then you send out a tweet when you get out after 41 years, two months, 15 days, freedom at last, as if he was the victim somehow.
Right.
Robert Neal, what do you think of this?
It's complicated, I think.
It's not an easy situation.
He obviously did suffer from a severe mental illness, which all the experts said through treatment he had come through and was no longer a danger to society.
I believe in rehabilitation.
It's the bedrock of any democracy in a sense and fair justice.
But is it right that someone like him is out?
Well, I believe in rehabilitation too, but just the fact that he used devastator bullets, which are designed to explode a second time inside your victim and he shot all six out of a revolver, that seems mentally sound enough to try to murder someone, especially a president, and hitting a police officer, hitting the press secretary, and a Secret Service agent.
I mean, it's attempted murder, and then 33 years later, through his own, well, now through his own admission, it is homicide.
I mean, that's interesting because he was found not guilty of attempted murder on the grounds of insanity.
And then he was put into a mental illness place for the next 30 odd years.
And yet, by that admission, he's conceding that his actions that day actually constituted murder.
Right.
I don't know if it's double jeopardy or whatever it is.
I'm not an attorney, but just him admitting to it right there.
And, you know, I mean, he saw a taxi driver.
He was influenced by a movie that was influenced by an assassination attempt.
Who knows what's going through his head?
And he's trying to do it.
He was actually going to go to try to kill himself in front of Jodi Foster just to prove he loved her.
So there's something there.
But if he's of sound mind to find out where the president is, to get a weapon, to get the bullets, to get close enough, and then take six shots, he seems like he knows what he's doing.
On balance, would you have let him out?
Well, it all depends.
It depends on what the psychiatrists say.
I mean, he seems like he's remorseful, but he also seems like he's kind of slow because of all the medication he's probably been on for three decades, four decades.
I mean, that was slightly, I have to say, Ari, a concern to me, was the way he was speaking, very slow, pretty ponderous.
And he admits he's on several medications to this day to control his depression and presumably other feelings.
So he's not cured in any sense from all his mental illness problems.
And clearly, at the time, was highly dangerous.
I mean, it wasn't a one-off.
He'd been stalking Jody Foster for several years.
He stalked Jimmy Carter.
He obviously planned the attack on Reagan.
It's a very dangerous individual that can do those things.
Yeah, first and foremost, let me just say, Pierce, that interview was very uncomfortable.
Just watching it.
You know, when you know a name that's an infamous name, a person who tried to kill a president, a gunman, a shooter, and then you see them humanized.
You see another side of them that you don't want to see.
You know, there's some comfort in just living with the name of an infamous killer and just saying he got what he deserved.
And then you see him, you listen, and it's uncomfortable.
It's jarring.
I will say this about mental illness.
People do recover from mental disease, and particularly in the last many decades, treatments have gotten better.
The medicines have gotten more efficacious.
And psychiatry, et cetera, has gotten even more refined to the point where people can be mentally ill and are fine and are outstanding members of our society.
The difference is, are you criminally mentally ill or were you mentally ill and now you're fine, even if you are unclear?
And what about if you have Joe the, as he did, the awareness now to understand that his actions killed James Brady?
By doing that, he's admitting to murder.
That is a very serious crime.
There may be the year and day element which prevented him from being charged or convicted of that, but now he's got an admission on the record.
I'd be interested to see what that does legally.
I wonder.
But I think at this point, I don't think there is any legal option at this point, right?
Because it's after the fact he's out.
Who's going to go ahead and prosecute a case?
That sort of thing.
Here's my worry.
And when Rob was talking about it, talking about how slow he was in terms of his answers.
What happens if he goes off his medication?
Then does he revert back to the person he was before?
Well, that's a good question.
That's a worry about criminal mental illness versus mental illness.
And this is where we don't know.
This is where you just have to have hope and faith that the psychiatrists and the experts who were with him in prison and who watched him over the last 40 years know what they were doing.
I mean, it's interesting to me, Rob, that the Mark Chapman thing, and I was in a maximum security prison interviewing people this summer, and he'd been in one of them until recently.
And one of the guards said to me, no, he keeps being refused parole, probably because of his notoriety, because it was John Lennon he killed, right?
Clearly, this was on that level of trying to kill President Reagan.
But he did, it turns out, kill somebody else, albeit over a long period of time.
But he's now admitted responsibility for that killing.
In terms of infamy and notoriety, I don't see a lot of difference between Mark Chapman and John Hinkley Jr.
No, the glaring difference is the Secret Service agent McCarthy who faced the fight like you're supposed to in a protective detail.
That's probably the reason that he didn't kill the president.
And because of something like that, because Ronald Reagan was able to elevate his legend past that, no one really know that Hinkley got released unless we were doing all this press right now, unless he came out and said it.
And he's trying to play concerts to sold out crowds at venues that eventually cancel on him anyway.
But yeah, I mean, the notoriety is there and assassinating a president itself.
It's going to be interesting to see what happens after he just admitted to what he did.
I mean, if Lee Harvey Oswald had survived and not been shot by Jack Ruby and he'd been let out, I think all hell would have broken loose.
So, you know, it's only the fact Reagan didn't die that probably means John Hinckley Jr. is out, and yet his actions did lead to somebody else's death.
Well, I've heard people say that the penalty for attempted murder should be equal to murder because you shouldn't get rewarded because you had bad aims.
It's not good.
So there is something to be said about that.
On the other hand, that would violate hundreds of years.
It's complex.
I'm going to let you go without mentioning your book.
The title?
Deception, suppression, snobbery, and bias.
Sum it up in one sentence.
Why the mainstream media gets so much wrong and just doesn't care.
Apart from me.
Every prison company accepts it.
Every title's like that.
He's got a book, too.
You got to ask him.
What are your name in the book?
Come on, man.
The truth about Joe Biden's horrible terror.
And your books.
And your books are all brilliant.
I read them all.
Fantastic.
Great disabilities.
Thank you very much indeed.
That's it for me.
We'll be back here from New York City tomorrow night.
Whatever you're up to, keep it uncensored.
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