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Feb. 27, 2023 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
46:49
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Shamima Begum's Return Demand 00:15:32
Tonight on Piers Morgan Uncensor, Britain's top terror watchdog says ISIS brides Shimima Begum should be brought home to face justice.
But why should taxpayers be forced to pay for keeping tabs on terrorists?
Censored, not stirred.
Now so-called sensitivity readers target Ian Fleming's James Bond novels.
Are they modernising the classics or just airbrushing history?
We'll debate that with novelist Frederick Forsyth.
Plus, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy is famous for running his mouth off about the woke takeover of American businesses.
Now he's announced he's running for president in his first international interview.
He joins me live.
Live from London, this is Piers Morgan Uncensored.
Well good evening from London.
Welcome to Piers Morgan Uncentre.
I'm back from New York, but we're still here and we're still lively.
A 15-year-old in Britain who's convicted of murder will automatically be given a life sentence.
The 15-year-old can also apply to join the armed forces and begin serving in the next year.
And they'll also be able to get married and start paying taxes.
In Scotland, the new trans rights bill allows 15-year-olds to begin the life-changing process of altering their gender with no medical diagnosis.
Anyone who criticised that law was scolded as a bigger and told the 15-year-olds are perfectly capable of making adult decisions.
So what about the decision to leave your home in East London and join an Islamic death cult in Syria?
Well, Shamima Begum made that decision when she was 15.
She left the country that raised her, cared for and educated her to marry a murderer.
She joined an Islamic death cult bent on destroying Western civilization through rape and torture, beheading people, setting fire to them.
Several years later, when a suicide bomber killed 22 at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, she said this.
It's a two-way thing, really, because women and children are being killed back in the Islamic State right now.
And it's kind of retaliation.
Like, their justification was that it was retaliation.
So I thought, okay, that is a fair justification.
A fair justification that children, who were most of the victims watching a pop concert, were blown to pieces in one of Britain's most harrowing terror attacks.
Begum also told the Times newspaper that seeing decapitated heads in bins, quote, didn't phase her.
And most damningly of all, perhaps, she said this.
Yeah, I will admit I was the one that made the choice.
Even though I was only 15 years old, I did have, I do have like, I could make my own decision back there.
I do have the mentality to make my own decision, but I did leave on my own, knowing that.
Begum's defenders say she's an innocent child who was groomed.
That's not how she sees it, though, so why should we?
In recent years, Begum's attempted to reinvent herself.
She has savvy advisors and a battery of legal minds fighting her case in the UK at vast expense.
She styled on a BBC podcast, and the headscarf's been replaced by a cap and sunglasses.
A little more TikTok than Terror State.
I think I could very much help you in your fight against terrorism because you clearly don't know what you're doing.
Yeah, we don't need any help from you, thanks, in our fight against terrorism.
Begum was rightly stripped of her British citizenship in 2019, leaving her languishing in a Syrian refugee camp.
Last week a court upheld that decision.
But now the UK's own terrorism watchdog, Jonathan Hall KC, says we should bring her back.
I don't agree.
Other countries, including the US, Canada and France, do this differently.
They prefer their homegrown terrorists to sit in their jails and be permanently monitored at vast taxpayers' expense.
But I think Britain made the right call on this.
She was our problem, but she chose not to be our problem anymore.
Well joining me now is criminal defense lawyer and human rights campaigner Arma Anwar and former US Ambassador Peter Galbrais.
Well welcome to both of you.
So let me start with you Amar Anwa.
I just can't find it in me to see a credible reason why we should let Shamima Begum back given that she also had Bangladeshi citizenship.
They may have renounced her but that's not our problem.
She seems to me to be a very cynical young woman.
who actually knew exactly what she was doing.
I've got four kids.
Three of them have all been through their young teens.
They're 15, they know what they're doing.
She knew exactly what she was doing when she got on her path to Syria.
She married an ISIS fighter who was committing terror atrocities.
She had three children who all sadly died with this monster.
She could see a severed head in a bin and not be phased by it.
She thought the Manchester terror attack was justified.
That was the logic of the death cult she was with.
I just don't see why we should be spending a huge amount more of taxpayer money on top of the legal bills we've already had to face to fight this case on just putting her here somewhere.
Well the first thing I'd say is that I don't believe that people that we accuse of terrorism who are British citizens should be dumped in other countries that didn't want it.
The Syrian people, the Kurdish people, the Iraqi people suffered enough with foreign fighters coming to their land.
That's the first thing I would say.
The second issue, of course, Pierce, is that this was an individual who at the age of 15 has been accepted by the courts, was groomed, was radicalized, was then trafficked and a victim of child exploitation.
She was married off.
She's not a victim.
Let me finish.
She's not a victim.
She's 15 years old.
A child doesn't get to consent.
A 15-year-old doesn't get to consent to have sex and to be married to somebody who's an adult.
If Nicola Sturgeon had had her way in Scotland, she could say that.
But if you're talking about Shamima Begum, you can try and divert the issue.
I'm trying to answer.
No, no, I'm just saying.
I'm saying to you.
I'm just saying that.
Are you saying that a 15-year-old has a right of consent?
That's no, that's child exploitation.
That's right.
Actually, that's rape under the law.
What I'm saying is we've literally just had this debate in Scotland where we were all assured a 15-year-old.
You're talking about Shamima Begum.
Hang on.
I'm talking about a 15-year-old's right to give consent about life-changing things in their life.
About child sexual exploitation.
A 15-year-old under the law of this country does not have the ability to give consent to be married off to a man, okay, and to have sex with him.
Those people, and I agree with you.
What about ISIS?
What about when she turns 16 when she married Angie?
She's impregnated by the people of the world.
She was groomed and radicalised.
That's the first thing.
I don't know what went on her head.
I don't have any truck with her ideas.
Without ISIS, the surprise consent is...
We've heard her ideas.
Exactly.
And I've got no truck with them because as far as I'm concerned, ISIS is a perverted death cult.
The first thing I would say is, why should Syria, why should Kurdistan, why should Iraq have to put up with British fighters?
The second issue you raised about citizenship is this, because it seems to me as though there's two classes of citizenship in this country.
First of all, if her name was Sharon and she was white from Manchester, there's no way her citizenship would be ripped away.
The second issue is about you said about her having a Bangladeshi citizenship.
Well, actually, no, because like for myself, I was born and brought up in this country.
But by the quirk of fate, I could have my citizenship stripped because my parents happened to be of Pakistani origin.
That's not acceptable.
Because Bangladesh said at the age of 19 that they were revoking it because she has never been to Bangladesh.
That's the other part of it.
Living in a camp of 20,000 ISIS fighters, you've already mentioned America, Germany, and other countries that have taken back terrorist fighters.
And the other issue I have is this: because it wasn't just 15-year-olds, there were children who were younger than that who were being groomed and trafficked by a perverted death cult, sexually trafficked, sexually.
I would want those like Shamima Begum, who tore up the social contract with this country and went to join ISIS, who if they want to come back to this country, then the first demand should be share the information, provide us the details of those who have gone into the shadows, who will still be recruiting, who will still be trafficking, and who still want to carry out attacks in this country, but also aboard.
But we should not, under the international law, wash our hands of those individuals who happen to be British, because you would have been the first, of course, Pierce, to turn around and say the likes of Abu Hansa and terrorist preachers and radical extremists should be deported back to their country of origin.
Yet for some reason, because you happen to have a brown skin, because you happen to be Shemima Begum, that we shouldn't take responsibility.
No, no, hang on.
It's nothing to do with her skin colour.
I just think she's a disgusting piece of work who made her ISIS bride bed.
Well, if you have evidence, you have evidence.
Having repeated children who died in appalling circumstances, she's shown absolutely no sign of real remorse to meet her.
The last child died because Sajid Ja Vey decided to strip her of a citizen.
You're blaming the British Home Secretary.
I am because the actions that she made herself.
But that child was innocent.
The child was innocent and doesn't deserve to die.
If you have evidence, this is what I believe in this country.
We don't rule, we don't have the rule of law, which is dictated by opinion polls, by a revenge mob or retribution.
What we have is the rule of law.
And if we have evidence, again, a British citizen who commits crimes abroad, bring them back, investigate, prosecute, and send them to prison.
That's what you do.
It's because we have the rule of law that the rule of law has now been applied to her and it has reaffirmed that decision by Sajid Javid that she shouldn't be allowed back into the country.
You just talked about wanting the rule of law to be at play.
The rule of law has literally been implemented.
The rule of law, it was done on an administrative process, and the three panel judges actually said that they had grave concerns because she was about to upheld child expectation.
They had to deal with it on an administrative process.
Hang on, they upheld the decision.
Therefore, the rule of law has actually been carried out, which is what you wanted.
Well, you were talking about Scotland earlier on.
The law has changed constantly in this country because of a public debate.
Homosexuality used to be illegal in this country.
Same-sex marriage used to be illegal.
So what you're saying is the rule of law that literally has just been upheld decriminalising homosexuality back in the 60s.
You are the one who organised the debate tonight about Shamima Begum.
It was your choice.
No, you asked the question.
No.
I answered it.
You know, you cited the rule of law as being incredibly important.
I just said to you, the rule of law has literally just been implemented and it said she can't come back.
I want to bring in Jay Clough.
Now, Jay Clough was one of the survivors of the Manchester bombing attack.
Jay, thank you very much indeed for joining me.
I can't even imagine how people like you must feel or relatives of those who died and even the debate taking place, frankly, that someone like Shamima Begum should come back.
But has anything you've just heard persuaded you that actually she should be allowed to?
Not really, no.
I think she kind of made a decision and she hasn't really shown much remorse since in any of the things that I've seen on TV.
She doesn't demonstrate much remorse.
And I think the things that she said about the Manchester Arena attack are really terrible.
I mean, you were there.
It was one of the most horrendous attacks this country has ever seen.
A deliberate targeted attack on young pop fans, Ariana Grande fans.
What was it like for you just having to go through that?
Horrendous.
Obviously, I took my nephew to a pop concert.
He's a massive Ariana Grande fan.
And we were having an amazing night.
And he was only, well, he was 16, nearly, well, he's 17, just turned 17 at the time.
And it was his first concert, and it ended like that.
Absolutely horrific.
And it ended, obviously, for so many people in a completely disastrous manner with so much loss of life.
Do you have any sympathy?
Do you have any sympathy at all, Jade, for Shamima Begum's age when she went to Syria, that she was 15?
Do you believe that at 15, you don't really know what you're doing, that she was somehow groomed for this?
I have a level of empathy for everyone that's radicalized.
It's really sad.
Radicalization is horrible.
But I think because she's shown no remorse since then, yeah, that's kind of my opinion on it.
Yeah.
I want to bring in Peter Galbraith, the former US ambassador under Bill Clinton's Croatia and the UN envoy.
In America, Peter Galbraith, they do it differently.
They basically would let someone like Shamima Begum back.
Do you think that Britain should be doing that?
Yes, in the United States, we have brought back our people and we have prosecuted those who deserve to be prosecuted and they're serving long prison sentences.
So yes, I think Shamima Begum should go back to Britain and she should be tried for the crime of having gone to join a terrorist organization, but tried as a juvenile.
At least in the United States, a 15-year-old would be tried as a juvenile.
Right, but she wasn't a juvenile for very long.
I mean, she very soon bedded down as an ISIS bride for a number of years.
She had repeated children, none of whom sadly lived.
She watched everything that her husband was doing.
She saw severed heads in bins and she talks casually and glibly about how the Manchester bombing was justified.
She doesn't really show any real remorse.
People who've been around her don't think she's actually got any remorse about it.
And many people think she still remains a dangerous person for this country.
Why should we have a back?
Well, the crime was, of course, going to Syria to join a terrorist organization, marrying a bad person, having three babies, expressing disgusting opinions, and certainly I think to have endorsed the Manchester attack is a disgusting thing to have done.
None of those things are crimes.
I've met Shamima a number of times in Raj camp.
First, I think that her change from being an Islamist to being something else is genuine.
But I don't think that's terribly relevant.
I think the issue is that she is a British citizen or should be.
And the crime she committed is as a juvenile.
Now, if she committed other crimes once she was in Syria, and many of these people have, for example, enslaving young Yazidi women or murder, then the place that she should be tried is in Syria, because that's where the victims are.
You know, just because you're British or American or Swedish doesn't mean you get a free pass when you commit a crime in another country.
You should be tried in that country.
That's what the Kurds want to do, and the international community ought to help them conduct trials.
But once again, I know the Kurds have no evidence that Shimima Begum committed any crime when she was in Syria.
Well, she was certainly very aware on a daily basis of the horrific crimes being committed by her husband and by other ISIS fighters.
And I would take issue with this idea that a lot of people have said they've met Shamima Begum and think, oh, she's not dangerous anymore.
Justice for Terror Crimes Abroad 00:02:01
People would have said that about her before she went.
There was no sign of this radicalization for family and close friends.
So I think she's an extremely cynical, manipulative woman who continues to pull the wool over people's eyes.
And in terms of her citizenship, it is complicated, of course, by the fact that she also would qualify as Bangladeshi.
And the Bangladesh has said they don't want her back either.
So that's why she's stateless, not just because Britain doesn't want it.
Well, I don't, you know, I think that she has, you know, there's no evidence again that she's committed crimes once she's been in Syria.
And if she has, then that's the appropriate place to do it, to try her.
You know, I want to say something else about this because I brought out a number of children from Rojkamp, but I've also brought 26 children born to raped Yazidi girls, kidnapped and raped by the Islamic State.
And then their children were taken away from them after the Islamic State fell.
And I got some of them, 26 of them, after two or three years.
And where are those children and mothers?
They're in safe houses in Iraqi Kurdistan because countries are taking a long time, a very long time to process them.
So I wish that some of the human rights activists who have taken up Shamima's cause would also take up the cause of the victims.
Again, I do think that Shamima ought to come back to the United Kingdom precisely because she committed the crime as a juvenile.
And incidentally, in Britain, you know, I was looking this up.
It turns out that if you commit murder, you're generally eligible for parole after 15 years.
And yet, in the first decade of this century, there were 30 murderers who went on to commit murder.
Why hasn't Britain just had life means life and you never get out?
Juvenile Crime and Accountability 00:02:05
But you don't do it that way.
And yet a person who's committed a murder or a serious assault is, of course, always at risk of doing it again.
And yet your society allows those people out.
I think the chances of Shamima committing another crime or a terrorist act are very, very small, certainly less than somebody who committed a murder or an assault.
Okay, Peter Galbraith, you raise interesting points.
I don't agree with all of them, but I respect your right to have that opinion.
Thanks also to Amar Amwa.
Thank you very much for coming in.
And to Jay Clough.
And Jade, I wish you all the very best.
I'm sure it's an ongoing process for everybody that was involved in that horrific night.
And I wish you all the very best.
It is.
Thank you.
Well, sort of come.
First, it came for Roald Dahl.
Now, Ian Fleming's classic James Bond books are getting the sensitivity reader treatment.
Are they modernizing the classics or just airbrushing history?
We'll debate that with novelist Frederick Forsythe.
That's next.
Well, first, Roald Dahl, now Ian Fleming's James Bond novels, are being rewritten by so-called sensitivity readers.
The classic books will be republished in April to mark 70 years since Casino Royale.
But they'll feature a disclaimer about offensive terms and attitudes.
And a number of so-called offensive references will be removed or reworded in Live and Let Die, Bond's assessment.
The would-be African criminals in the gold and diamond trades are petty, pretty, law-abiding chaps I should have thought, except when they've drunk too much, just becomes pretty law-abiding chaps, I should have thought.
In Doctor No, the race of a doctor and an immigration officer now go unmentioned, as does that of a henchman shot by Bond.
The use of the N-word has been completely removed, but references to the sweet tang of rape, blithering women, and homosexuality being a stubborn disability, well, they remain.
Joining me now is the author of the classic spy thriller, The Day of the Jackal, Frederick Forsythe, alongside political journalist Ava Centina and talk to you contributor Esther Kragger.
Censorship in James Bond Novels 00:09:19
Well, welcome to all of you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I mean, I've got to mention the dresses probably very inappropriately, and someone somewhere will be offended.
Thank you.
Is this all for me for my...
I come back from New York.
Of course, I know Fresh Suits.
And a very smart suit to you, Freddie, as well.
Before we get into this, I want a quick reaction to Shimeen Ma Begum.
Should she come back and face trial here?
I think if there's a genuine charge that she can be subjected to, she should be brought back and charged and tried.
I think that trial would likely last about an hour.
Right.
Before acquitting.
I mean, to me, Ava, the deal is, she, all right, she was 15 when she first went.
But we've literally just been told by the people of Scotland, the Nicola Sturgeon, for months after month, that a 15-year-old can make life-changing decisions about their gender.
What's the difference?
That's a ridiculous question.
Why?
Because it's not a question of...
Whether you're old enough or you're not.
Do you know what?
I actually would pull the discourse right back and I would say, what is being British and what is our prison system?
And if our prison system is not up to scratch to deal with someone who has potentially joined a terrorist organisation, then what's that?
I meant hypotheticals.
Terrorist bed in Scotland.
And we can't deal with her.
Why should we spend taxpayer money dealing with her?
Because she was born here, because she's our property.
She's literally like, she's a bad person.
She also has Bangladeshi citizenship.
She's never been.
She's renounced.
She's never been there.
She's not fair.
No, Bangladesh.
She's a lot of citizens there.
They did reject her, but she could qualify for citizenship there.
Not just here.
Esther, I've got no sympathy for Shimeela Begum.
And this sort of, this celebrity tour she's been going on, fueled by the BBC, giving her this massive podcast, fueled by magazines and so on.
I just...
Well, clearly it's a PR tour.
Look, I think the one thing I don't think can wash as an argument is that she was groomed.
Unless at 15 you had the IQ of a carrot, she knew that joining a terrorist organization was a very bad idea.
So I don't think she knows that's fair.
I'm sorry, she was very unfair.
She was a straight A student.
My 15-year-old, when my sons were 15, I didn't need to sit down and say, by the way, if you go and join a terrorist group where they cut people's heads off and set fire to human beings in cages, that's not a good idea.
I didn't need to have that moral chat with them.
They kind of knew, yeah, you know what?
At 15, they know.
My daughter is 11.
She knows.
This idea that poor little Shime Ma Begum, she's 15, therefore she didn't know anything about what she was doing.
She got her way out there.
I mean, that alone was pretty good.
Yeah, but I've sat here and I've had discussions before about 15-year-old men not have, they shouldn't be responsible for sexual assault that they might have perpetrated because they're too young and they didn't understand the ramifications of it.
How is that any different?
15 is either too young to consent or it isn't.
So you just said it was that you just accused me of having a terrible argument using the gender debate in Scotland, which what is it?
But also the...
The one minute is terrible.
Let's minute you're using it yourself.
The age for criminal liability in this country is actually 10.
So I think we need to start there.
You cannot say that she cannot be held criminally liable if a 10-year-old can be.
But she can't be groomed.
She cannot be groomed because she's not sick.
She was a straight A student before she left.
That's managed to get to an airport.
She can read and write.
Okay, look, talk your reading and writing.
Let's move on.
But I want to move on, Freddie, to this.
I mean, the moment I hear things like sensitivity readers being employed by publishers to go back over old classic books, Roald Dahl, Ian Fleming, or whatever, I think this, let's have the old.
We haven't done this for a while.
I love doing that when the world goes nuts.
But the world is going nuts, isn't it, Freddie?
What are we doing?
Why can't we just leave these books alone?
Well, it's all part of this thing called woke-ism.
Yes.
Do you know what that is?
Yes, it's the new dictatorship.
Yes.
It's an e-fascism, right?
It's a kind of fascism, yes, because it says you will think the way we think, you will talk the way we talk, you will believe what we believe.
That way lies, and we will control you.
And we'll go back in history.
We'll be controlled.
And we'll go back in history and we'll apply today's slightly warped morality in many cases.
We'll apply the rules of today, the woke rules, will apply it to books in history.
I don't think the Bible would survive.
Well, the Bible wouldn't survive.
Shakespeare wouldn't survive.
No opera would survive.
I mean, Ava Santa Ina, I know you love this stuff, this wokery, but nothing that I'd like in the world would survive this purge.
I don't, I mean, look, I don't think that we should rewrite it, but not for the same reasons that you do.
I think that I don't understand why a book would have to have the N-word in it or any of these slurs to begin with.
And I think that he should hang for that.
I think that, you know, people should be able to read that now and know that their favourite franchise is actually rooted in racism.
But there was a lot of people who were...
Okay, but do you also want the N-word expunged from all rap lyrics?
Or is it a different thing?
I don't think that's a question for me.
I think that in context, I think so, like in Television.
I can understand why that is in there.
It's either offensive or Ian Fleming needed to use it when actually those books weren't written that very long ago.
You could totally unnecessary.
Okay, so Esther, I would say there is certainly an argument to remove, say, the N-word, personally.
I sort of agree with you, right?
Although I do have a big problem with rap lyrics continuing to propagate words like that all the time.
So I think it just sends a wrong message to the wrong people who then think it's all right for them to use it.
But on this general point, some of the changes being applied to Roald Dahl were ludicrous.
It's a brilliant investigation by the Telegraph, a coming relative, fantastic.
Some of these changes on Bond.
I mean, they go to a strip club, right?
Bond's visiting Harlem in New York.
And there's a strip club.
There's a male crowd getting agitated.
Before it ripped, Bond could hear the audience panting and grunting like pigs at the trough.
He felt his own hands gripping the tablecloth.
His mouth was dry.
All right, you might think, all right, it's a little bit, you know, near the knuckle, but that's probably a very good description of exactly what was going on with that male crowd at that strip club.
It's now, Bond could sense the electric tension in the room.
The sensitivity reader has taken a quite sort of colourful description of a strip club scene in all its dinginess and turned it into the most dry, boring, pathetic thing as if somebody inspired it.
But the thing is, it already remains wrong.
He's a great writer.
Oh, he's not a great writer.
Oh, no, he's a terrible writer.
Is he a good writer?
I reckon.
I think he is.
No, but here's the argument.
You have to remain true to the vision of the author.
You cannot tell an author what they actually meant to write.
They wrote what they meant to write.
But I think, one, why is there a hierarchy of what's offensive?
So you can remove the N-word, but you can't remove glorification of rape or clear homosexual slurs.
And also, how do I become a sensitivity reader?
Because that clearly is a gift.
Well, actually.
Actually, my wife Celia has done a piece of Telegraph Tomorrow in which she found out.
And apparently you can literally do an online course and within one week you are deemed qualified to be a sensitivity reader.
That is absurd.
I mean, literally, it's as ridiculous as that.
I mean, Freddie, has anyone come for you yet?
Have your books been read sensitively?
I don't, so far, I think not.
How would you feel if they did?
I wouldn't give a damn.
Would you let them do it?
You can't stop them.
You can.
You can say you're not publishing my book.
Oh, dear.
Well, no, I don't think it's...
Well, it hasn't put it so it hasn't happened, so Wakeley does happen.
When you saw the Roll Dahl.
I don't know what they'd object to, I suppose, of a description of a garden, perhaps?
I just think a lot of this stuff, it's a bit like the Roald Dahl ones.
Some of it, I can understand the argument about whether the N-word should be published at all in a book in a derogatory manner.
I can completely sign up to that.
So it's not like I think there's no rule at all that can be applied in removing things which are absolutely grotesquely offensive.
But most of this other stuff is, to me, it's inconsistent.
And in the case of Roald Dahl, completely nonsensical.
In Roald Dahl, they said it was wrong.
It was offensive to call someone fat.
Fat, but they could call him enormous.
Okay, but I don't think Royal Dahl should have been on the curriculum in the first place.
I don't think children should be reading it.
Why?
Because his family, after he died, posthumously apologised for it as anti-Semitism.
No, no, that's about his own spirit.
But that's about his own views, right?
So you think that anyone with dodgy views, all their work, should be expunged?
I think if you were a Nazi, I don't think that you should be on the school curriculum.
No, I don't.
You know, people still buy Mein Kant up to this day.
Yeah, but that's no anti-speaking.
So that's learned.
Who's learning that?
I don't know.
Because there's no anti-Semitism that I'm aware of in Roald Dahl's books.
These were private views which he then made back.
Actually, I don't know if we're going to name it in the Twits.
You know, there are references to long noses, or there's been pieces written about that, which is, you know.
I don't know.
I'm actually a complete absolutist in this regard.
I don't think you should centre any books.
I don't think you should rewrite any books.
I think if you want to, you can have a disclaimer so that you can have a discussion about it.
You would hate the disclaimer.
That would be wild that you would advocate for that.
I would be wrong.
Or you can choose just not to read the damn books, right?
I mean, just don't read them.
But would you not, do you not think that children should read and they should get immersed in the world?
I think children...
Listen, I've got four kids from 30 to 11, right?
Nearly 30 to 11.
They have read a lot of books which have probably challenged them, scared them, made them laugh, made them cry, right?
I want them to read stuff that actually brings out emotions in them.
I don't want them protected and cosseted.
I don't want them reading Roald Dahl and someone putting little cotton wool over their face to make sure that little Johnny isn't upset.
It's like, no, I want you to be challenged.
Okay, would you let them read Prince Harry's book without any of that?
I don't want my son's turning out to be a drip like that.
Beating Donald Trump with Integrity 00:12:06
I don't.
So I wouldn't let him on just on humanity grounds.
Freddie, where does it all end?
As you said, there's no Bible if this goes on.
There's no Shakespeare.
I don't know.
They'll come for the Beatles.
They'll come for everyone.
Once the woke virus infests itself into any form of culture, it destroys it.
Whether it's historical statues, whether it's books, whether it's movies.
When they came for Baby It's Cold Outside, that great song in the 50s, and tried to pretend it was about sexual assault.
And the person who led that campaign was John Legend, who rewrote the lyrics whilst saying nothing about his rap mates who come out with the most terrible, awful misogynist lyrics.
At that point, the debate lost me completely.
Yeah, I know.
There is no logic to it.
And actually, there's no humanity to it.
It's not about protecting you from being shocked, which is the idea.
It's about control.
We want to control you.
We're a tiny minority, but we would very much like you to think the way we think, do what we do, say what we do, what we say, read what we read.
That way lies control.
If you look at every dictator that ever was, what did they try to control?
The education of the children and the media.
What did Mao do, right?
With Communist China.
That's exactly what they did.
What happens in North Korea if you try and read books?
They stop you.
I don't quite understand the argument because, I mean, if you turn on the television, if you watch any broadcaster at the moment, you will hear exactly the same point of view in exactly the same line.
I don't understand ideology.
No, but all news broadcasters teach you exactly the same thing.
Propaganda is very much alive, but it's not in rewriting a little bit of literature.
Stay here, Pat, because it's actually one of the great packs of all time, I think.
It's basically beauty on TVs.
Right?
So, we're going to keep you.
Freddie, if you don't mind staying around, do you, Freddie?
No.
We're going to talk to a presidential candidate in a moment.
A young man, very dynamic in America, who's something announced he's running for president.
He's got everyone going.
Very interesting, exciting guy.
He's a multi-millionaire and entrepreneur.
He's on an anti-woke crusade, which is why I want you guys to comment after us.
It's going to be his first international interview since announcing his candidacy.
Vivek Ramaswamy is live next from the United States.
Well, I'm not saying this show has particular powers, but a few weeks ago, I interviewed a young man who came on and was very impressive on Piers Morgan Uncensored.
And the next thing, he's running for U.S. president.
And he's running really as the first properly anti-woke president of the United States, entrepreneur and author Vivek Ramaswamy, is a self-declared America first conservative running for the Republican nomination.
He's promised to defend America against what he calls the secular religion of wokeism, which we've just been talking about.
So, welcome back, Vivek.
Great to see you.
Was it the appearing on Piers Morgan Uncensored that drove you to announce your candidature?
I think it must have been just a subconscious urge you gave me.
That's right.
I didn't realize it till you mentioned it there, but it must have played a role.
Well, listen, good to see you.
It's exciting, you running.
I think you've energized the race, and it'd be very interesting to see how far you can take it.
The great elephant in the room, in every sense, of course, is Donald Trump.
And the recent Fox News poll yesterday showed Trump with a massive lead, even over his second-place person, Ron DeSantis, and then a huge gap back to the rest of the field, including yourself.
How can you barrel your way past Donald Trump to win the nomination?
So, I view myself as building on the foundation that he already laid, taking America first to the next level.
But I say this very clearly, Pierce: in order to put America first, we in this country have to rediscover what America is.
And if you ask most people my age in the country today, really any age in the country today, what does it mean to be an American today?
You get a blank stare in response.
And the hallmark of my candidacy is that I'm reviving the ideals that set this nation into motion 250 years ago from your side of the pond.
Set this nation into motion not only 250 years ago, but the ideals that define it today.
Basic ideas like merit, that you get ahead in this country not in the color of your skin, but in the content of your character and your contributions, free speech and open debate, the radical idea that the people who we elect to run the government ought to be the people who actually run the government.
I think most people agree on these basic rules of the road, regardless of partisan affiliation, but very few candidates are talking about this issue of national identity.
And that's what the heart of my campaign is all about: reviving this missing national identity in America.
My travels of this country suggest that people are hungry for it, they're starved for it.
And so far, I'm beginning by saying the things that other candidates are not willing to say in polite company, but which are just fundamentally true-from ridding ourselves of the cancer of race-based affirmative action to abandoning this climate religion that shackles the West while leaving China untouched.
And I think people know deep in their bones these things are true, need to be said, and most importantly, need to be delivered.
I mean, talking of truth, I was in New York last week and interviewed George Santos, this Republican congressman who has told so many lies, it's impossible to keep up with him.
And eventually, I just put it to him that he might just be a terrible liar.
Here's a clip: I've been a terrible liar.
I mean, would you be prepared to say that?
Sure.
Like I said, well, I've been a terrible liar on those subjects.
Kind of stunning that to watch a serving U.S. congressman just brazenly admit I'm a terrible liar and still sit there serving the American people.
It might be, it might be the most truthful thing he's actually said, and it might even be more truthful than many other politicians, actually.
So the irony is that, you know, I don't give him a lot of credit for much, but I give him credit for saying that because there's a lot of other people, peers, who are sitting in Washington, D.C., who could call themselves terrible liars too.
And I think that that's part of why, bluntly, I respected Donald Trump for what he did coming in as an outsider in 2015.
You only get to be an outsider once, though.
I'm coming in as a new outsider.
As far as I know, I'm the only real outsider in this race.
And you know what?
At a certain point, you become a creature of the very swamp that you wanted to drain.
You become a creature of the government that you wanted to reform.
I'm coming in with an agenda to do something that I haven't heard from other candidates, shut these agencies down.
I've already committed to shutting down the federal Department of Education in the United States.
It has no reason to exist other than to cause greater problems and spend money.
I'm going to identify a list of other agencies we intend to shut down too.
I want to fire over half the federal employees.
I actually think that that would be good for the federal government, not just in terms of saving money, but restoring Democratic integrity.
That is speaking truth.
But you know what?
Maybe after eight years on the job, I'll be like one of them too, which is a good reason why I need to get the heck out of the way.
But right now, what I'm going to say to you is that you're going to bring a fresh perspective and shake it up.
Listen, I think you've got a very dynamic style, a very dynamic message.
Don't agree with everything you say, but I like the way you say it all.
But you still not really address the original question, the elephant in the room, because to achieve any of the things you're talking about, you've actually got to win the Republican nomination.
That will give you the chance to then potentially win the White House and be president and do the things you want to do.
And as you know, Donald Trump still has this massive stranglehold over the Republican Party.
How are you going to beat him?
Because I've known Trump a long time, right?
In good times and bad.
We've had great friendship.
We've fallen out a few times, always fall back in is fine.
But the thing about Trump is you're either all in or you're all out.
There's no sitting in the middle, Vivek.
There's no like, you know what?
I like the guy, but I still want to beat him.
If you want to beat him, you've got to say how you're going to do it, and he's going to come after you.
You know that.
So I'm going after this on the substance, Piers.
And I traveled to Iowa and New Hampshire.
Those are the early voting states here in the United States.
I had many people who came in.
There was actually one elderly woman, but many, she was caught on camera, but many others said the same thing, which is, you know, I liked what you had to say.
Maybe I want to see you be Trump's VP.
Now I'm moving to you.
Why was that?
Because it was because of the specificity of what I said I'm going to deliver.
Just take this example of affirmative action, right?
Most Republicans hate affirmative action, as do I, but very few have done anything about it.
And it was because of a Lyndon Johnson executive order in America that mandated race-based quotas in the private sector for any company that did business with the government.
Every Republican president, Donald Trump included, could have taken a pen and crossed it out.
They chose not to for fear of political backlash.
I don't have that fear.
And so in a certain way, I think what I'm going to be, my candidacy is going to be defined by the substance and specificity of clear solutions.
But how much solution?
Not just by looking backwards and complaining.
All right, but you're delivering.
You have age on your side, clearly.
You're a young, dynamic person, as I've said.
Nikki Haley, one of your other rivals now running for the Republican ticket, she says effectively Donald Trump and Joe Biden are too old.
It's time for a new generation.
Do you share that view?
So I don't quite share Nikki Haley's view because I don't believe in eliminating the competition.
If you want to be the leader of the free world, you do it by convincing the voters of the merits of your vision over somebody else's.
She picked 75 arbitrarily because Donald Trump's 76.
If Trump had been 71, she would have said 70.
I think, frankly, that's a pretty lame approach to actually try to eliminate competition.
I think we should have it out in the open, have the open brawl, debate it out in the open.
And I think that the best ideas and the best candidate to carry those forward ideas will win.
And I'm running because I believe I'm that candidate.
So you believe it given name or something.
All right, so the bigger a threat you become, the more Trump will come for you.
We've seen it with Ron DeSantis, who he calls Ron supercilious, whatever it is.
Is your message to Donald Trump, if he's watching, I'm sure he is, he's a big fan of Piers Morgan on Censor.
If he's watching, is your message that you're going to beat him?
My message is I'm going to win this election because I wouldn't run for president of the United States if I didn't intend to see this all the way.
So you're going to beat Donald Trump.
As a friend, I really don't know.
So just look down the barrel, Vivek.
Look down the barrel and say, Donald, I'm going to beat you.
I believe that's what I'm doing.
That's what I'm setting out on this election.
We'll stay friends after.
I mean, talk directly to Donald Trump.
Imagine he's watching, which I think he will be.
Just say to him that you're going to beat him.
I love your energy, man.
I love what you've done for this country.
You were an inspiration to what you did in 2015.
Now it's my turn.
We're taking this forward and reviving America.
Something you care about, something that I care about.
And hopefully we can work together to do it in some way because it's going to take every one of us to revive this nation.
And I'll tell you this too, okay?
To be really honest about it, if you can't handle some name-calling, I see other Republican candidates whining about this possibility.
If you can't handle being called a name in this country, you probably shouldn't be the person representing this country sitting across the table from Xi Jinping.
We all need to toughen up a little bit.
And I think that all of us do genuinely care about this country.
I'm running because I believe that, in all seriousness and joking aside, Piers, I care about this thing called national unity in the United States.
And I think Donald Trump is misunderstood.
I think he cares about national unity a lot too, even though people misunderstand that about him.
But the question is who can actually deliver it right now?
And I think that if it was going to have been delivered, it would have happened already.
We need a different approach to uniting this.
If you're going to win, if you're going to win, Vivek.
I've got to wrap it sadly because I love talking to you.
But if you're going to win, are you suggesting then that maybe Trump could be your running mate?
I would take him as an advisor.
You know what?
I would take his advice on reforming the administrative state.
I want to shut down those agencies.
He has some experience trying.
I want to benefit from his experience.
So I'll take his advice at every step of the way.
He's such a high bar in this primary.
I'm going to thoroughly enjoy.
That's why I'm running.
I'm going to thoroughly enjoy telling Donald Trump that you have kindly offered to employ him as one of your advisors.
Vivek Ramaswamy, you're an exciting.
I'm excited, is what I would say.
Brexit's Impact on Northern Ireland 00:04:38
Thank you.
Well, you listen.
You're an exciting candidate.
I'm glad you're in the race.
I think it's what it needs, a bit of energy and dynamism.
And it'd be very interesting to see how far you go.
But it's great to have got to know you on the show.
Please come back again soon.
Appreciate it, man.
Actually, final question, Vivek, before I let you go.
Final question.
Should James Bond books be censored?
No.
It's a hard no to that answer, okay?
Got a 007 answer to that question.
We'd sort of like, you know, take aim at whatever that problem is and really say we're done with censorship in this country on both sides of the Atlantic.
I like a straight answer to a straight question.
Vivek, thank you very much.
Thanks, man.
Interesting character.
Well, next tonight, Boris Johnson said he'd get it done.
He then falsely claimed he had got it done.
Turns out he hadn't got it done at all and the oven-ready deal was burnt.
So now it looks like Rishi Sunak has come along, taken it out of the oven, cooked it a little better, and we have a better deal.
Or do we?
Where's Boris?
Does he run into a fridge again to avoid having to be part of this?
We'll discuss it with the pack after a break.
Well, welcome back to my pack, Freddie Esther, and Ava.
Let's talk Brexit for a minute, Freddie, because are we in a better place with this deal?
I mean, I voted against it from the start, but are we in a better place if you were a Brexiteer?
I think so, yes.
We are.
It was the one unfinished issue after the Brexit vote.
One that was held suspension.
What about Northern Ireland?
Why was it never sorted before we all went to vote?
Because it's a split country.
The island of Ireland is divided into two.
There are very few countries in the world, and most of them are a dispute with each other.
that are divided between two either two ethnic groups or two religious groups.
And in the case of Northern Ireland, two political groups.
You were a Brexiteer, right?
I was a Brexiteer, yes.
Are you still a Brexiteer?
Do you still think it's a good idea?
But not for that reason.
Not that I have anything against Europe, but certainly not a Eurovote.
Indeed, being a big headed, I've been going to about 25 countries in Europe and speak five of the languages.
So, yeah, I love Europe.
That's not the problem.
What's the best foreign language you speak?
Well, I used to pass for French among the French and German among the Germans.
Give me a little dash or something.
What?
Well, give me a little bit of it.
Yeah, but Azovissen.
Okay.
Anyway, Brexit.
It seems to me, seven years ago we voted in this referendum.
Three years ago, Brexit got implemented.
We're still trying to work out what to do about Northern Ireland, which seems a big problem to start with.
And I can't see any tangible benefits to Brexit at all at the moment.
Well, certainly not to the new protocol that has now been rearranged.
I mean, even after all of this has gone through, if it is to go through, you know, Northern Ireland is still potentially going to be not aligned with the UK.
The EU can still change laws that Northern Ireland can agree to.
So they're still not actually sovereign the way that it's being sold this afternoon that it has been.
And I think that's the thing, because it's such a unique situation.
You have to keep the integrity of the union.
But at the same time, something like Brexit has never happened in our history.
So how do you straddle those two lines?
And I think this is the best we could get.
I don't think people understand the gravity line.
I don't know the best we can get.
But the thing is, I don't think people understand the gravity of the situation.
The longer this drags on, the more precarious the UK looks as it's going on for seven minutes.
We're talking about tons of investment.
No one wants to invest in this country.
Listen, there's a reason why Britain is growing at a slower pace than the rest of the GC.
Exactly.
Right.
And it's not because we didn't all get hit by the same pandemic or the same energy crisis or the same war in Europe.
It's because Brexit has made it worse here.
And until this tangible benefit, I'm not...
I've always said...
I was voting.
Listen, I lost, right?
I voted remain.
But I've always said I'll respect the result.
But at some point, it has to work, Freddie.
Yeah, what you, I think you and a lot of those who supported or opposed Brexit failed to realize it was not the pact of being in Europe.
It was that we're in under punitive terms imposed by Georges Pompidou, the loyal servant and follower of Charles de Gaulle, who was passionately anti-British throughout.
Now, if you look at the history, Millenn tried to get in under...
Yeah, but I don't dispute any of this.
My issue is that right now, seven years after the referendum, I don't see any benefits of a statement.
That's because we haven't had a dynamic Prime Minister.
We've got a minute left.
Toxic Relationships After the Vote 00:01:04
I want to talk about toxic femininity.
I'm not pointing at you for any reason, Ava Santina.
But apparently all the men on Love Island are blubbing like big babies because the women are being beastly to them and they're toxic.
I mean, I could have solved them.
That was the real problem.
Wait, who's toxic in this situation?
We were talking earlier.
The women, apparently.
The women.
Look, the women aren't toxic.
But also, have you ever had a boyfriend that hasn't cried?
Absolutely.
Oh, really?
You would have done it in being with me.
You're crying.
You can pack it in, okay?
Husbands are not.
Men cry in private.
It's just unusual absolutely.
Why do women today want their men blubbing like babies all the time?
I don't want my boyfriend to cry, but I can't find real men that don't cry all the time.
I'm sure you cry, Pis.
I'm sure you cry.
Honestly, the last time would have been over 10 years ago, probably.
Oh no, cry.
What's the point you're crying?
If Arsenal don't win the league, Arsenal don't win the league, come back to me.
I will.
Come back to me.
Freddie, great to see you.
Thank you.
I miss your new books.
I'll at least get excited by them.
Come out of a time.
Come back and write a new one.
The Fox.
Oh, no, I see.
Any of them.
Love them.
Thank you, Pat.
Lovely to see you.
That's it from me.
What are you up to?
Keep it uncensored.
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