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Nov. 1, 2022 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
47:09
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Hancock's Jungle Reality Show 00:14:08
Tonight on Piers Morgan Uncensored, disgraced MP Matt Hancock flees to the jungle to become a reality star.
Should the man who failed to protect our elderly through a deadly pandemic now be allowed to profit from his infamy?
Train drivers, doctors, postal workers, barristers, even coffin makers, as Britain is paralysed by strikes, I'll talk to the union boss holding the country to ransom.
After the shocking attack on US Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband, I'm talking about the tough on crime senator who could challenge Donald Trump for the presidential nomination.
Live from London, this is Piers Morgan Uncensored.
Well good evening everyone and welcome to Piers Morgan Uncensored.
Britain's had its fair share of failed politicians lately.
Boris Johnson lied more often than he tried.
Our last prime minister, Liz Truss, had the shelf life of a lettuce.
And Theresa May's legacy, if only we could remember it, would fit very neatly onto a postage stamp.
But few politicians in modern history have failed harder and more often than Matt Hancock.
This attention-seeking, perma-grinning gopher of a man is about to appear on I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here.
That means he'll spend several weeks in a jungle in Australia, pocketing a massive fee on top of his MP's salary, eating kangaroo testicles, a public dedictation.
I never thought I'd say this, but I actually feel sorry for the kangaroo testicles.
I spent six years as a judge on Britain and America's Got Talents.
I know a thing or two about entertainment TV and talent.
And it got me thinking, why would they choose Matt Hancock?
What are his special talents?
Maybe, maybe it's singing.
No, for the love of God, do stop him now.
He's not a singer.
What about acting?
Look very carefully here.
Look for tears.
Just simple words there, reacting it.
You're quite emotional by that.
Well, it's just, it's been, you know, it's been such a tough year for so many people.
And there's William Shakespeare putting it so simply for everybody that, you know, we can get on with our lives.
Yeah, not a single tear, was there?
I've seen more emotion from the waxworks at Madame Tussau's.
Matt's also a budding text whiz.
Earlier this year, he became the first MP to enter the metaverse with his digital imagining of himself, bringing a whole new level of meaning to Instagram versus reality.
So finally, what about his actual core skill?
The one thing we know that he is supposed to be competent at?
Being a politician.
The thing he's paid to do.
Well, he was forced out as health secretary for snogging and groping his advisor during a lockdown, breaking his own lockdown rules.
And before that, as health secretary during the pandemic, he said he was doing this to protect nursing homes.
So right from the start, we've tried to throw a protective ring around our care homes.
Well, we absolutely did throw a protective ring around social care.
We'll keep working to strengthen the protective ring that we've cast around all our care homes.
Absolute nonsense.
There was no protective ring.
Quite the opposite.
Hancock sent thousands of elderly patients and hospitals back to their nursing homes without testing them.
That led to COVID spreading the wildfire inside those homes, causing countless more deaths than should ever have been allowed to happen.
It was a deadly fiasco of a policy from a travesty of a health secretary with tragic consequences for thousands of families.
I may shock you now, Mr. Hancock, because I'm actually glad you're going to a remote tarantula-infested jungle on the opposite side of the world.
On behalf of the entire British public, I think I'm safe in saying I hope you stay there.
Well, joining me now to discuss this is former Liberal Democrat MP Lembit Opic, who also went into I'm a Celebrity, and the former Conservative Minister Anne Wittacomb, who I presume would rather shoot herself than go into the jungle, although she did compete instructively and extremely capably on Badanza, I might add.
We're also joined by care home owner David Crabtree.
Now, 16 of his residents died in the first wave of the pandemic.
Well, welcome to all of you.
I want to start with you, David Crowder, because I remember interviewing you at the height of the pandemic when so many people were dying.
And you gave such a heartfelt and agonized interview in many ways about the appalling situation in care homes.
When you heard that Matt Hancock is going into the I'm a Celebrity jungle while he's still an MP, what was your view?
Before I comment on that, Piers, can I thank you personally for being the lone voice in early 2020 for social care workers and social care residents?
There was no one more shouting for us.
As to Mr. Hancock, it's the last pitiful act of a pathetic lying man.
There was no ring, no protection for us.
What's emotional is that when somebody brings this up again, it brings back all the things that you sort of put to the back of your mind.
We only this month were able to have a memorial for those who died in 2020 simply because relatives weren't allowed to go to their funerals.
We weren't allowed to see the relatives.
So for two years, we've never seen those families again.
So we've just been able to sort of at least bring that to a conclusion.
But as to Mr. Hancock, he lied.
There is no two ways about this.
He lied.
850 social care workers died on top of thousands of elderly.
They were collateral damage.
Someone, with his permission, gave the hospitals the report to say you can discharge without a negative test.
They do not need to be negative to discharge.
They discharged two to us within the first week of March and both died.
And subsequently, a further seven died as a result of those discharges directly.
This man oversaw this is this is Blair's Iraq.
This is Hancock's death of elderly.
He is solely responsible for it.
I'm still angry.
I know what that man does.
I can tell.
And you know what angers me about all this is that while some people have been sort of laughing about this extraordinary twist to his career, it emerged today.
He's also been taking part in the celebrity SAS show on Channel 4.
He's already filmed that.
He's also written a book of his pandemic diaries, which I'm sure will be an attempt to gloss over any of his culpability because it wasn't just about care homes.
He also failed and lied to the public about testing.
He massaged those figures about the number of tests that were being done, and we held him to account for that.
I thought our open border policy was a A complete disaster, and he was partly responsible for that as well as health secretary.
We had no PPE, so hundreds and hundreds of health and care workers died in their workplace because they weren't properly protected.
This first wave of the pandemic in our country was a complete disaster.
And it's completely true to say that later we did well with vaccines, but that first wave was a disaster.
And the health secretary presiding over this was Matt Hancock.
And for him to now, before there's even been a proper inquiry into what happened and what culpability he may actually be proven to have had, for him to now go into a reality show in a jungle in the way that he's doing for hundreds of thousands of pounds, I think is an absolute smack in the face, particularly to people like you who had to go through so much appalling trauma losing all these people in your homes.
And I know other people.
I have friends of mine who lost their parents in care homes and had to have a last conversation on FaceTime.
You know, I just think it's an appalling smack in the face to them.
And the idea he's still an MP receiving an MP salary is completely disgraceful.
I couldn't agree more.
I don't know whether this is to pay the divorce settlements or what it's supposed to do.
But in the end, he should have all he had to do was say that we couldn't do it or there was some reason that they couldn't do it.
But instead, contracts were awarded for PPE that were no use to us.
We couldn't get them.
More importantly, they were discharging elderly people back to home where home care workers were going in without PPE, without the knowledge that the resident had COVID.
He put at risk millions of people and then denied it and had the blatancy to stand there and say he had put a ring of protection around us.
Not once, but several times.
The man needs to be held account.
Yeah, I agree.
David, it's good to talk to you.
I wish it was always in better circumstances, but I love your passion.
I love how much you care about what happened in your care homes.
And it's good to catch up with you.
And I'm just sorry, again, it's for the wrong reasons, but I look forward to talking to you perhaps on a happier occasion.
Thank you.
Well, let's bring in.
I mean, and I don't know what you think.
To me, the idea of an MP, particularly one who's been disgraced, who's lost his ministerial position because he was breaking his own lockdown rules whilst having an affair and was caught doing it by a newspaper, that had also presided over a shambolic first wave of this pandemic by any yardstick.
There's been no inquiry yet, which has cleared him, as he presumably hopes it might do, but I don't think it will.
You put all this in totality, and he's now getting hundreds of thousands of pounds to go into a jungle and prance about with celebrities.
What do you make of it?
Well, what I would say is this: that even without all those horrendous circumstances, no serving MP should go on a reality show which takes them away from their constituency and from the House of Commons where they're paid to vote, takes them away for weeks on end.
I mean, you know, weekend here, a weekend, that's different.
Weeks on end.
And that is why I turned down strictly for five years running.
I said no.
As soon as I retired, I said yes, because I wanted to do it.
But I wasn't going to do it while I was an MP.
And it's not only time, there's something else, Piers.
Dignity.
You do actually have a duty of dignity to the office while you're an MP.
And there's nothing dignified about the government.
Well, okay, what about his constituents?
Right.
This guy has already heaped embarrassment onto his constituency, right?
He's managed to hang on as an MP.
But this is, as I say, not a sign of a celebrity.
He's managed to find time to write a book of diaries.
He's managed to find time to do this SAS show on Channel 4.
Now he's going in the jungle.
When is he finding any time to do the job he's actually paid to do on a daily basis to serve the constituents?
Direct answer to that question.
That is a matter for his constituents at the next election.
And I've got experience of this.
I may or may not have lost my seat in 2010.
Why isn't it a matter for me as a taxpayer?
Who pays his salary?
You can have an opinion, but we have a democratic system here.
Just as in 2010, Montgomery should decided they didn't want many more for whatever reason.
So also his constituents in our democratic system can make the judgment.
Now, I know Anne's position and I respect it.
I hold a different view here.
You've just heard what sounds like a tragic performance as a cabinet minister.
That's different to the principle which Anne rightly raises about whether you should be able to do these extended programs on reality TV.
Now, surely no one disagrees with the principle of a politician doing a reality show.
Have I got news for you?
It's a comedy show.
Vince Cable, very popular politician, did do a little bit of dancing.
We've got the whole thing.
Hang on, hang on.
Have I got news for you?
It's a three-hour taping on a Thursday night.
This guy is disappearing off for weeks to Australia, right?
When we're in the middle of a crushing cost of living crisis, I've got a brass neck of the man.
Could be four weeks.
The brass neck of it.
All right, so the first point.
He's being paid by us, the taxpayer, not to go and eat kangaroo testicles.
Who is going to cope?
No, let me ask you this, Lembert.
Who is going to cope if there is an emergency in his constituency or a constituent has an emergency?
Where does that constituent go?
Yeah, I work on the assumption that if there's, and I don't know this, but I've been told this by second-hand authority that there is some clause which says if there's an emergency of a sufficiently serious nature, which is a judgment call, he would.
Sorry, there is.
It's called the cost of living.
All right, well, hold on.
Millions of people in this country are currently facing a winter of hunger, you know, of freezing cold.
We've got pensioners going on buses to the public.
Pierce Piers, because I do have experience with this.
Let me just ask you this.
A constituent gets in touch with the MP because the electricity is about to be cut off.
They've got kids in the house.
This has happened.
And it probably happened with you as well.
And when that sort of thing happens, you need the MP.
His staff don't have the cloud.
Right, to put it in.
I'm not saying on TV earlier, then, but I'm not being look.
I'm trying to answer your question.
I know, but you're trying to defend the indefensible.
You don't know what I'm going to say.
Well, I do know what you said earlier on television.
I watched the interview.
You compared him to Winston Churchill.
No, that's not.
You said Winston Churchill also made mistakes and came back and won us awards.
Winston Churchill.
Do you think Winston Churchill would go into a jungle?
Right.
Put a bunch of Zed-list celebrities and munch kangaroo testicles in a vote by the public.
I was one of those Zed list celebrities.
Exactly.
But I wasn't admitted.
You don't know Winston Churchill either.
First point, I've never pretended to be.
First point, let's recognise no one here on the three of us is denying that you could do reality shows.
You're arguing about the length of time away.
Yes.
So let's move straight to that second point that Anne's raised.
If you're on holiday with your family as an MP, the same situation can arise.
Churchill Comparison Backfires 00:15:11
Does that mean that the MP has to fly back?
You can pick up.
So it's not about physically being presented.
It's on holiday.
Parliament's not in recess.
You can have a phone in the jungle.
Parliament's not in recess.
I can't holiday.
Well, let's remember that point.
But you can pick up the phone if you're on holiday.
I've had to do that as well.
Some MPs have had to come back from their holidays.
So number one, it's not about whether you do reality shows.
It's the length of time.
Number two, it's not about being physically present, as Anne's just said.
So it's the third question.
Is it enough of a...
Actually, he has because he can't be contacted on the phone.
Is it enough of an obstruction?
You don't have phones in the jungle.
He can't vote remotely.
Is that enough of an obstruction to say that no politicians should do that remotely?
Yes, absolutely.
Yeah, I don't agree.
And I hear.
But I'm just going to tell you, most things that do turn up in your surgery are handled de facto.
Certainly for me, this was the case.
But I don't pay myself to the best.
I can't pay my taxes to see serving members of parliament go on jollies to Australia.
Wait a minute, Lloyd George.
So run away from my answer.
How do you vote from the jungle when there's a big issue in Parliament?
How do you vote?
How does he vote?
Well, I don't know if he's got a pairing circle.
Well, he can't vote though.
He's had the whip taken away.
But he could.
But he can still vote.
He can still vote?
Yeah, but have you seen it?
So explain that for me.
If you have the whip taken away, then you can still vote.
You're not expelled from Parliament.
What's the punishment, really?
Well, if you have the whip withdrawn, what it means is you're no longer regarded as a member of the party.
But you can still vote in Parliament as an individual.
So why is he not going to be voting then?
Well, obviously, because he's not physically there.
He's made that.
But you said he doesn't need to be physically there.
He does.
Let's get to the core point here.
You listed all the things he's doing.
My guess is he's trying to change his career.
He may not stand at the next election.
I think he's ending his career.
Maybe so.
I said it was going to happen.
Maybe that's what they're going to.
They're going to make him do the worst possible challenges and then very quickly boot him in.
Maybe so, but think about it this way, right?
You're mixing up his performance as a cabinet minister with the principle of whether any political issue.
No, I'm not going to say that.
I'm actually saying that.
No, I'm actually saying both to me are disqualifying, right?
One, he was the health secretary.
But the two different things.
He was the health secretary.
Well, I'm explaining to you why both matter, right?
On one count, he was the health secretary, presiding over the worst imaginable pandemic conduct by government I've seen, which is why we had the worst overall death toll in Europe in terms of total number killed, mostly in the first wave.
One, he should be held accountable for that before he jollies off to some jungle.
And secondly, as a serving MP where we pay a salary, he should not be doing this.
All right, on the first point, we can now pass judgment about Matt Hancock.
Perfectly legitimate political conversation to have.
But it's separate to me, separate to the point that Anne's raised, where I disagree, but I respect your position about whether you can go on an extended state.
That's your question.
The question is: how does he vote, which is his constitutional duty as a member of the public?
How does he vote?
It's not his constitutional duty.
Why is he an MP?
There is no job description.
He's not going to serve his constituents.
It's not a constitutional duty.
And he's not going to vote.
Let me ask you, did you vote on every single vote?
Were you there on Fridays for a German debate?
I was frequently there on a Friday.
But you misstated it.
Not the German debates.
The worst thing about it.
The worst thing about it is, I think he waited.
There was an absolutely cringe-making clip of Rishi Sunak celebrating becoming prime minister.
I don't know if we've got it.
And it's the one where he basically goes past, and this happens.
We've got it.
And you know what?
All right, he completely deliberately shuns Hancock there.
But the reality is.
You see what you want to see.
No, he doesn't.
I know Rishi Sunak, trust me.
He saw him there and decided to blank him.
So, but the point being, though, if he hadn't, if he'd embraced Hancock and given him a new job, Hancock would have immediately abandoned all plans to go to the jungle.
So why should he not be pragmatic about his future peers?
Why doesn't he make honest decisions?
Why doesn't he be honest and stand down as an MP?
He's got two more years for an election.
I'm dishonest about him making that judgment.
Back to my original point.
You haven't answered.
Look, why don't he go?
He can leave it to his constituents to make a judgment.
That's how democracy works in this country.
I'll tell you how democracy works in this country.
We elect members of parliament.
We, the taxpayers, pay their salaries.
And the very least we expect is they serve their constituents and they turn up and vote.
Neither of which he can do for up to four weeks in Australia while he's on this ridiculous vanity exercise of assuming the British public will suddenly warm to his creepy little self and vote for him.
They're not.
They're going to vote for him to do despicable things and then kick him out.
But as Anne said, as Anne admitted and I admit, we didn't make it for every single vote.
A good percentage of that 16 weeks.
He's made a judgment.
I tell you the judgment he's made, to be utterly, like he's made many times actually in the last few years, to be utterly self-serving, to do what he thinks is best for Matt Hancock, not anybody else.
And the result is a slap in the teeth to the British taxpayers at a moment when millions of them are facing the worst cost-living crisis of their lifetime.
Piers, hang on.
Last word to you, Anne.
Yes, you've said we didn't all attend every single vote.
That is quite true.
But we all took judgments on the votes we attended.
And let me give you an example.
When I was actually moving house, that was the night there was a vote on post offices, I actually got assistance to move the house while I went to the vote on post offices.
If there's a big vote while he's in the jungle, what does he do?
Yeah, but he stays in the jungle.
I've got to leave it there.
Look, in a way, Limit, you're the perfect example of why you shouldn't be doing this because your political career could have been restored.
You could have actually rebuilt your career and you were a very capable politician.
But the moment you see munching the old kangaroo nuts, Nadine Doris, Nadine Doris did it, and she's never recovered either.
She did.
Come on, she got into the cabinet.
She didn't even run an auto-cue on this.
She went to the cabinet.
I've got to leave it here.
Thank you for coming in.
I appreciate it.
Good to see you both.
We're coming next to train drivers, doctors, postal workers, barristers, nurses, teachers, coffin workers.
Just about everybody in Britain appears to be wanting to go out and strike.
And I'll talk to Britain's top union boss, who is presiding over this mayhem.
And from the firebomb attack on the UK Migrant Centre, the shocking amber assault on the US Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband is political violence on the rise and what's behind it.
Welcome back to Piers Morgan Centre, the biggest rail strikes in decades have caused recurring chaos for communities across Britain.
Several more are planned beginning this weekend.
This year's already seen walkouts by postal workers, dock workers, airport staff, bin collectors, barristers, bus drivers, even coffin makers, teachers, nurses, and doctors.
Could be in a Scottish ambulance staff very to strike earlier today.
So are Britain's newly boisterous unions testing the resolve of a penny-pinching government?
Or are they just annoying and aggravating the patients of working people who are just as squeezed as they are?
Well, joining me now is General Secretary of the Trade Union Congress, Francis O'Crady.
Well, thank you very much for coming in.
First of all, your reaction to Matt Hancock choosing to take hundreds of thousands of pounds as a serving MP to fly all the way across the world to Australia to munch kangaroo testicles.
Well, I think probably pretty similar to yours, Piers, in that, frankly, if anybody else in a job walked off the job to moonlight and get paid a huge amount.
They'd have no chance.
So should he basically be, should he be out as an MP?
Well, to be honest, I think there are many people, many working people who'd like to see the whole lot of them go off to the jungle.
Right, but on this specific point, should Matt Hancock be kicked out as an MP?
I think people are right to question how does he stay in his job when any other ordinary person facing, I'd like to see him fired, whatever the democratic process is.
But surely, I mean, this is the man I heard you talking before, not only promised this protective ring, frankly, he should be preparing his defence.
He should be with lawyers.
But it was those social care workers were not only wrapping themselves in bin bags, most of them earn less than £10 an hour.
And huge numbers of them are on zero hours contracts.
That's why they were moving about between different homes, unwittingly spreading the let all the elderly in hospitals go back to care homes without being tested.
And meanwhile, PPE contracts and other contracts were being handed to mates.
Yeah, people who knew the local pub.
Let's turn to you because you're, I mean, depending on who you talk to, people are either supportive of what you're doing, presiding over all these strikes, or they think you're as annoying as Matt Hancock, because a lot of ordinary people's lives are being directly impacted in a negative way at an incredibly difficult time by this blizzard of strike action.
Yeah, and what I'm very clear about is I have not met a single worker who's voted for strike action lightly.
You lose pay, it's the last resort.
Any trade unionist wants the employer to get around the table and negotiate a fair deal.
But one of the reasons why we've had unprecedented public support for these strikes is that all working people are facing the same cost of living crisis.
And this isn't just this year.
This has been 10 years of stagnating pay and real pay cuts.
Nurses, thousands of pounds worse off than they were 10 years ago, paramedics, teachers.
People have just hit the limit.
I mean, one thing they're being, but one person who doesn't nearly as badly as that has done rather well is you, Francis O'Grady.
You gave yourself pay rises of £18,000 since 2013.
That was just to 2018.
I haven't had a pay rise for the last four years.
Rob, your gross salary is £112,000 a year and the total package £167,000 a year.
I mean, forgive me for thinking, you're in the top 3% of earners.
Your package is equivalent to 22 times the average amount for a recipient of universal credit.
Do you feel comfortable about that?
I'm a trade unionist.
I believe that people should get paid the rate for the job.
I think you should get paid the rate for the job.
I don't know what you're on, but I'm leading an organisation that represents workers.
I understand that, but you think that you should be getting 22 times the average recipient of universal credit.
Does that seem fair to you?
In the TUC, the pay ratio bottom to top is one to five.
I'm getting paid, I think, a fair rate for the job.
But most of all, I'm going to...
Who's the lowest paid person in the TUC?
We directly employ all our staff.
Who's the lowest?
The cleaners.
What would they get?
They get more than the London living wage.
And what would they get?
Well, more than the London living wage.
What does your lowest earning employee get?
We only have one employee on less than £15 an hour.
So you've got an employee on less than £15 an hour.
You're raking in £167,000.
It's not bad, is it?
You see my point.
I mean, my point is, you're talking a lot about how much you care about people's pay packets as well, only strikes are necessary.
And yet there's a gap of somebody on your staff earning under £15 an hour.
If you look at the average...
You're hoovering up £167,000.
If you look at the average CEO, as you full well know, and if you look at bonuses.
They're not all CEOs running trades unions.
£3.5 million.
You're in charge of the trades unions.
Wouldn't it be a great gesture to say?
Wouldn't it be great to say, you know what?
I'm actually going to set an example and halve my salary.
But I'll tell you what, Piers, and give that to some of the people earning under £15.
I really hate £15 an hour at the TUC.
Is why are the four biggest banks in Britain making £33 billion worth of profit and the government is lifting the cap on businesses?
I agree with you.
I also agree that they should be whacking the energy companies more so.
Some of these profits being announced by BP and others today, absolutely disgraceful.
Let's talk about the real issues and why it is that we're going to have thousands of workers.
So why don't you target them?
There are thousands of workers in Westminster tomorrow lobbying the government and saying we've hit the limit.
And by the way, I agree with you lobbying the government.
I agree with you going after the bankers over this ridiculous decision to release the cap on their bonuses.
It was the bonuses that got us into 2008-09 financial crash.
I agree with you going after energy companies, right?
Exactly what we should be doing.
What I don't agree with is this unbelievable ripple effect of strikes, which is now really destabilising the country at a worst rate.
We've created the black hole in our finances.
Well, Lizzie and Quasi-Carta.
So why make life even more difficult for people already suffering?
Inflation is running at over 10%.
RPI is a lot higher.
If you take into account mortgages.
So how can we afford the government to give everybody whacking pay rises?
They caused the crisis.
I know.
And it's about time they made the wealthy and big business pay their fair.
I don't disagree with you.
And that.
But surely you're not expecting everybody to be...
Are you expecting everyone that you represent in totality to get enough money to cover the inflation?
Do you know what, Piers?
If you equalised capital gains tax with income tax, that would cover an entire pay rise for the entire country.
And do you want them all to be paid in line with inflation?
That would cover it.
That would cover it.
Do you want everyone to get a 10%?
If we were more ambitious, bolder, on the windfall tax on greedy energy companies, if we did something about those four big banks, £33 billion.
Think what difference that would make.
I mean, some people would say again.
Well, it's all very well come from you, Franz O'Grady.
167 grand.
You're like one of the greedy bankers yourself.
There are a hell of a lot more than that, Piers, and I'm sure you are too.
It was a very nice package, isn't it?
You know, I'm representing the business.
You're not embarrassed, as a head of the TUC.
Because I just believe you're taking a little bit less.
I believe in the rate for the job, and that's what nurses, teachers.
And you get even more than math.
Social care workers.
What, on the jungle?
I don't think so.
I think he's on a bit more than that.
But the point hit this, I mean, I think you're being a bit trivial here, because the point is...
I don't think your salary is trivial.
Millions of workers who deserve a payment.
I understand that.
And I agree with that.
That at least keeps up with inflation.
And that's why it's difficult to say.
But you've also said to me, you have one of your own employees on less than 15 quid an hour.
One.
What about taking somebody 167 grand and bumping them up?
What about the government?
What about you doing what you want the government to do and be fair to your poor employee who's earning under 15 quid an hour?
We are very fair.
I think we're coming.
You think that's fair?
Do you feel comfortable in London?
Really?
Yes.
David, Francis, why don't you give that employee a little bit of your dough?
Why don't you talk about that?
Set an example.
I've decided today, Francis O'Grady, that the best way to show the government you've got to spread the money around is I'm going to spread some of my vast fortune myself.
We have a much lower ratio top to bottom than any other oral.
167 grand to 15 quid an hour.
Yes.
And I well, I believe 1 to 5,000.
That's pretty.
I mean, that's...
We're talking about the best.
$15,000.
Those CEOs are earning.
I've hardly got arms big enough for that gap.
How much more do you earn than the cleanest?
I'm not the head of the TUC.
No, but if we've got a sense of fair... I'm not demanding that everyone goes on strike.
Rising Political Temperatures 00:10:22
I'm not out there causing mayhem with shutting down railways and everything else.
Here you go, Piers.
Will you support our Westminster lawyers?
Tell you what I'll do.
Tell you what I'll do.
Here's what I'll do.
I will personally match, pound for pound, every pound from your salary you give the poor person at the TUC earning under 15 quid an hour.
Untempted.
I will match it.
Pound for pound.
Deal?
Untempted.
We'll talk about that.
Okay, we have a deal.
Francis O'Grady.
Thank you very much.
We're coming up next.
President Biden says there's too much hatred and too much political violence in America.
Is he right?
And if so, who is to blame?
I'll be asking the man who could challenge Donald Trump for the presidential nomination.
And to stop oil strikes again, you know what?
I'm sick of them as well.
Why don't we just shut up about them?
Look at them.
Childish little toddlers throwing tantrums.
Come and do it in my studio.
Go on.
See how you get on then.
Welcome back to Piers Morgan Sensor.
A 42-year-old US man has been charged with attempting to kidnap Nancy Pelosi, the third most senior politician in America.
David DeBappo raided the speaker's home of San Francisco and attacked her 82-year-old husband with a hammer.
His motive is yet to be disclosed, but police say it wasn't random.
It comes just months after an alleged assassination attempt on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, raising fresh concerns about political violence in an already very polarized country.
President Biden, today, condemned the attack.
The chant was, where's Nancy?
Where's Nancy?
Where's Nancy?
Enough is enough is enough.
Every person of good conscience needs to clearly and unambiguously stand up against the violence in our politics, regardless what your politics are.
Well, joining me now, the Republican Senator for Arkansas, Tommy Cotton.
Senator, thank you very much indeed for joining me.
I appreciate it.
What was your reaction to what President Biden said there?
Well, first off, I condemn the violent attack on Paul Pelosi.
I wish him well.
I hope he has a full recovery.
We should throw the book at his assailant, just like we should throw the book at all violent criminals, not just those who commit crimes against the powerful and the wealthy, but people who are pushing New Yorkers in front of subway trains or committing carjackings or committing murders.
Too often, we have gone soft on crime in this country in recent years, and I think that's contributed to the crime wave we've had.
But if Joe Biden wants to be serious about political violence, why didn't he have his own Department of Justice enforce the law this summer when you had left-wing agitators protesting in front of Supreme Court justices' homes in direct violation of federal law, which culminated with a deranged left-wing hitman traveling from California trying to assassinate Brett Kavanaugh?
I condemn that just as strongly and think we should throw the book at him as well.
Well, listen, I don't disagree with you.
I would agree with you about that.
I suppose my question would be, should we throw the book also at people who are political, either politicians or budding politicians, have big public profiles, who make a mockery of incidents like the appalling attack on Paul Pelosi?
Would you throw the book at them as well?
Well, their words, though, unwise and unhelpful to healthy debate, are protected by the First Amendment.
Look, there's a lot of heated rhetoric in campaign, but pointing out that Nancy Pelosi passed Obamacare 12 years ago or has spent trillions of dollars we don't have and contributed to this inflation has no bearing whatsoever on this violence.
Well, I wasn't actually referring to that.
I was actually referring to this, this, or two clips, actually.
One is the Arizona governor candidate, Carrie Lake, who said this in response to what happened.
It is not impossible to protect our kids at school.
They act like it is.
Nancy Pelosi, well, she's got protection when she's in D.C. Apparently her house doesn't have a lot of protection.
I mean, hearing an audience laugh out loud at such a crass comment, you must share my horror at that, don't you?
Well, Piers, again, rhetoric on the campaign trail that may be tough does not contribute to this kind of violence.
If anything, what you heard there, what you've heard from Republicans about Nancy Pelosi, pales in contrast, say what Chuck Schumer said on the steps of the Supreme Court, that Brett Kavanaugh wouldn't know what hit him if he issued rulings that Chuck Schumer did.
Listen, I'm not for a moment defending anything else that you've been talking about.
And I think they've all been appalling incidents.
But for instance, Donald Trump Jr. put a Halloween tweet out, which he then deleted, which said this.
This is a picture, as you can see there, of a hammer on a pair of underpants.
And Donald Trump Jr. tweeted, the internet remains undefeated.
And if you switch out the hammer for a red feather boa, you could be Hunter Biden in an instant.
Now, again, I would simply say that if you're going to say that we've got to throw people out for bad behavior, bad commentary, bad whatever, these are just, to me, extraordinarily crass things to be doing in the light of an elderly man who happens to be the husband of the United States speaker, who was nearly killed in this attack, from all accounts.
This is not a subject for humor, is it?
Well, Piers, I can only tell you what I think it is.
I think it's a heinous attack, and we should be throwing the book at people who commit these violent acts, whether against Paul Pelosi or Brett Kavanaugh or just ordinary Americans.
Something that politicians may say in the heat of the campaign, you can think it's crass or that it's poor judgment, but it's not the same as committing these acts of...
No, no, listen, I'm not for a moment saying it's the same.
I just think it would be really helpful.
I speak because I'm in a country right now, Britain, where two members of parliament have been murdered by crazy people in the last six years.
And I'm extremely worried.
As someone who has a house in America, spends a lot of time over there, loves the country, loves the people.
I'm very worried that the temperature of political debate is reaching the kind of levels which we had here over Brexit and other incendiary issues, which caused crazy people to do crazy things to our politicians.
And I don't want to see the next bit of news that we see in America be that an actual politician has been murdered by a crazy person because the rhetoric being hurled around by people and the lack of seriousness taken by political figures when these things happen as well, by the way, that all this, it doesn't help, does it?
Isn't it time that everybody dialed things down?
Well, Piers, I think you can have tough campaigns.
You can have spirited debates, but you can also be civil and respectful.
Now, I think in many of these cases, unfortunately, like it would appear with the Paul Pelosi incident or Gabby Giffords incident more than a decade ago, you're dealing with someone who has serious mental health issues as well, which raises a different set of public policy questions.
But I think it's best that we have spirited debates, but debates that are respectful and civil and recognize that we're all Americans, or in your case, all British, and that we can have disagreements, that we can settle those disagreements through our elected representatives or at the ballot box.
Yeah, I can endorse that.
Now, Senator, you've got an extraordinary background.
You served in Iraq with the 101st Airborne Division and in Afghanistan with a provincial reconstruction team.
Between combat tools, you served with the 3rd Infantry Regiment, the Old Guard at Arlington National Cemetery, which I've been to, which is a remarkable place.
So a really commendable military career.
And I wanted to ask you specifically about one part of what's going on in the world right now involving Russia's invasion of Ukraine and what the recently deposed British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said today about the nuclear threat which Putin keeps making.
I don't think he will.
I think he'd be crazy to do so.
What would happen is that he would immediately tender Russia's resignation from the Club of Civilized Nations.
It would be a total disaster for his country.
What did you make of that comment?
Well, I tend to agree with Boris.
I know that Vladimir Putin has rattled the nuclear saber.
We've seen no indication of him taking any kind of steps to use nuclear weapons, nor can we allow the nuclear threat to allow him to blackmail the United States or blackmail the West.
You know, I've got a new book out called Only the Strong, and I write about exactly this kind of threat throughout the Cold War.
You know, Ronald Reagan took a very strong, assertive stance against Soviet Russian communism, even though the nuclear threat then was just as dangerous as it is now.
We have to be strong.
We have to be resolute in the defense of America's national interests.
And as you saw time and time again with Ronald Reagan, that kind of strength and resolution didn't lead to nuclear war.
It didn't lead to World War III.
It led to victory and success in the Cold War.
There are Republicans.
It's quite interesting.
I've just been in America actually.
I went to New York, LA, and talked to a lot of people.
Republicans do seem a bit split about Ukraine and about how far America should be going to help the Ukrainians.
Some Republicans bang up for it and think that they should be giving him whatever he needs, President Zelensky, to win the war, recognizing perhaps a wider threat to the world, including America, if Putin was to win.
But other Republicans, and I'm quite surprised about this, have taken a view that it's not really in America's interest to get involved in this conflict at all.
What's your view?
Well, I think it is in our interest to support the Ukrainians fighting in their own war to defend their own territory.
That's what we've been doing from the beginning.
If we had done it earlier and if Joe Biden hadn't granted so many concessions to Vladimir Putin in 2021, I don't think he would have been tempted to go for the jugular in Ukraine in the first place.
I go into great detail about this in Only the Strong.
And when I'm traveling across Arkansas, when I'm traveling on the campaign trail across America, I hear that most Americans want to continue to support the Ukrainians who are fighting their own war.
There is frustration.
They don't think enough European nations are doing their part.
Now, there are some weapons that only America has, that only we can provide.
But when it comes to financial aid for the government in Ukraine, there's certainly a lot of nations in Europe that could be doing more to help pull their share of the load.
Musk Takes Over Twitter 00:07:24
Finally, Senator, I was going to let you plug your book, but you've done that very comprehensively and very impressively, I must say, several times.
I won't bother.
Although I told it's a great read.
I do want to ask you, though, if, as is suspected, there's a red wave in the midterms next week, and I think it's pretty clear now that that is probably going to happen.
There's going to be a lot of speculation about who will be the Republican candidate in the next general election in 2024.
And your name is being thrown around with more gusto.
Can you say definitively whether you would be interested in running to be president?
Well, Piers, I appreciate the question.
I think I'll keep my focus on the election that's just a few days away rather than the elections that two years away.
But I will say this: anyone running for president in the Republican Party who wants to help restore American strength and power in the world should get themselves a copy of Only the Strong and learn exactly how to do that.
You know what?
If the presidential race is determined by somebody who can shoehorn the most mentions of their book title into one eight-minute interview, you, sir, are heading to the White House.
Senator, I appreciate you coming on.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Pierce.
Well, coming next, it's World Vegan Day, always a day that I celebrate with huge enthusiasm.
And there in my pack, a touching vegan sausage roll from Gregg's, one of my favorites.
We'll be discussing that after the break.
Welcome back.
I'm joined by Talk TV contributors Esther Crackham and Paula Road Adrian.
And very sadly, they brought with them some sausage rolls, one of which is a real one, which I will be eating for my supper later.
And the other one is a Gregg's vegan sausage roll, which remains as inedible as you could possibly imagine any food product to be.
But it's World Vegan Day.
If that rocks your boat, go and see a doctor, which is what most vegans, most vegans look like they need to.
Welcome to my pack.
I want to start with just something that's a bit of fun, but it is a bizarre thing to happen.
James Corden, who's been in the news a lot over his bused up in a restaurant and the owner giving him a wagon.
So he did a joke on Halloween night on his show in America.
And then people thought, hang on, we've heard that before and this is the masher.
Because if someone puts up a poster in a town square that says guitar lessons available, that's like going into a town square, seeing a big notice board and there's a notice guitar lessons.
Like you don't get people in the town go, I don't want to play the guitar.
And you go, but I don't want guitar lessons.
I mean, that sign wasn't for you.
It was for somebody else.
You don't have to get mad about all of it.
Fine.
It's not for you then.
Just walk away.
It's not great.
My theory, there's a secret omelette lover in the writing team at the Cordon Show who's basically slipped in one there, right?
Absolutely.
But let's not talk about that.
It's just a bit of fun, really.
I want to talk about Elon Musk taking over Twitter.
We're all on Twitter, right?
And today he's announced that it's going to be $8 a month to have your blue tick, about £7, to have your blue tick.
And with that, you get a few benefits on top bidding to edit tweets and so on.
Would you pay it?
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah, I think you would.
It makes sense as a business model as well, because then, you know, the site isn't beholden to just advertisers saying, we're going to boycott you because you haven't de-platformed this person.
It takes the power out of the advertisers and puts it back into the user's hands because only 1% of Twitter actually has over a thousand followers, but even a fraction of it have blue ticks.
He also thinks it would get rid of a lot of the bots and stuff because people will want to pay this or want to be part of the blue tick thing.
By doing that, you have to identify exactly who you are and everything else.
Yeah, and that's important to be able to be challenged because surely that's what Twitter's all about.
You want your voice to be heard, but also you have to have the right to be challenged.
And I think that's what's really important about this.
And actually, I think that's probably a good thing.
I mean, Elon Musk, you see...
I agree.
The thing about him is he's an absolute creative whirlwind genius.
Absolutely.
I think that goes without saying.
Already, he seems to be getting under the bonnet of Twitter and working out how to, A, make it a functional, better functioning platform, but also to make a lot of money out of it, which is what he's brilliant at doing.
And I've got no problem with that because the bedrock of what he wants to do is to restore what he calls a more balanced conversation and allowing people with different views.
I mean, we know that mainly conservative views are the ones that have been suppressed, right?
Absolutely.
And I think this is the thing.
Sorry, how do we know that?
They're the ones that are mostly getting banned.
You actually don't see many people on the left get banned.
And actually, I see some on the left do unspeakably nasty stuff on Twitter and they get away with it because they're on the left.
And I'm not one, I don't call for censorship because I don't really care for Twitter.
I don't think it should be a playground where it's supposed to be tit for tat.
I think these platforms should be exactly that platforms.
You should have, everyone should have a voice.
You shouldn't disproportionately favor one or the other because if that at that point, you're not a platform, you're a publisher.
And I think that's what I'm really happy about.
And I love the fact that Elon Musk has annoyed so many people.
They were like, we're leaving Twitter.
And I'm like, who are you?
I'd lost a lot of followers in the last few months.
And then they've all come surging back because Elon Musk bought Twitter.
I don't know why.
Probably a coincidence.
Or maybe the Twitter wokeys have been stopped doing what they were doing to anyone whose views they don't like, like people attacking their vegan sausage rolls.
But I'm currently on 7,999,104 followers, which means tonight, the big 8 million is coming in.
I'm going to wake up to a big 8 million.
And there's going to be an 8 million party on this show tomorrow.
What do you think of that?
How many followers are you coming?
How many followers have you both got?
About 8 million.
Yeah.
How many?
About 8 and a half, 8 and a half.
How many have you got?
I'm going to check if you don't want to tell you.
No, no, I'll have about 8 million.
Yeah.
I'm about 1,300.
1,400.
1,300?
I think so.
How about something like that?
I want to alarm you.
I don't need to check my EPA.
You're 57,000.
I'm eight millions.
You're missing half of my family members.
Twitter is ultimately a force for good or bad.
Are we all being sent completely nuts by it?
Are we too addicted to it?
We're far too addicted by it.
I think I am.
We're far too addicted by it.
Our egos are simply left to run wild.
And that is the problem with Twitter.
And on a serious note, I hope Elon Musk can rein it in slightly.
And I think he can, because I'm not sure that Donald Trump's going to last very long.
I don't think he'll even go back on Twitter.
I don't think it serves his purpose anymore.
Oh, of course he will.
He's a narcissist.
He's a narcissist.
He'll love me.
Let's be honest.
I mean, I don't see the incentive behind it.
But I don't think Twitter is a force for good as it currently is.
Because I don't think most people trust it.
They don't trust it.
And we talk about a force for evil, which is the Stop the Oil Cretans who've been up doing their thing.
They actually attacked our building in UCK with their paint.
They've attacked Downing Street today.
They are the biggest toddlers in world protesting history.
And I keep saying this, if they don't want to hear it, none of us are actually being moved to follow their cause by this pathetic behaviour.
And the police should be doing more to stop them.
Piers, what was the purpose of this?
We've run out of time for it.
Sorry.
Thank you, guys.
That's it for me.
What are you up to?
Keep it uncensored.
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