All Episodes
Previous Next
Plain Text
June 8, 2023 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
44:56
20230608_piers-morgan-uncensored-boriss-resignation-honours
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
|

Time Text
Trauma in Sweden's Asylum 00:11:40
Live from the news building in London, this is Piers Morgan uncensored.
Good evening from London.
Welcome to Piers Morgan Uncensored.
There are many words the British public associates with Boris Johnson's premiership.
Chaos, parties, lies, shambles, scandals.
Well, they all spring to mind.
The word honour is definitely not one of them, even though he remains the right honourable gentleman.
Few people have done more to dishonour the high office he held and the country he was supposed to serve.
Johnson lied to the Queen and to Parliament.
He bungled the pandemic, partying his way through half of it.
He spent fortunes on golden wallpaper.
He defended his disgraced cronies at every turn.
And he did it all with a carefree, gurning grin and the sartorial elegance of a scarecrow.
There can't be many people in British politics less qualified to adjudicate on honour, which is why it's frankly disgraceful.
He's being allowed to move ahead with his personal resignation honours list.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who's in Washington, D.C. tonight, is about to weigh through Johnson's gongs and peerages for his cronies and mates and apparently even his father if he can get away with it.
And unsurprisingly, Sunak's not that keen to talk about this.
I can completely understand the interest in this topic, but all I can say is there's a process that is currently underway.
It hasn't concluded yet, and until it does, it wouldn't be right for me to comment any further.
Yeah, but it's a process that I don't agree with, and nor do most people.
It should be a very, very short process to which the answer is a rapid no.
Liz Truss, who was outlasted by a lettuce, shouldn't even think about nominating anybody either, but she will.
If you resign in shame and disgrace, dishonourably, as Boris Johnson does, did and is trusted.
Why should you be able to then hand out honours?
Isn't that just one final insult to the public?
One last log on the giant bonfire of all things decent that rage through these terrible time at the top?
I think it is.
Well, we'll debate that later.
But we come first with this dreadful breaking news from France today.
There are a few things that have appalled me more than the scenes from this children's playground in France today, in the southeast of France, which just stop you from what you're doing and gasp in utter horror.
They show this lakeside playground in Annecy, a picture postcard alpine town where most people were relaxing in the sun on holiday, until a Syrian man, a refugee who'd come via Sweden, began to unleash utter terror.
Graphic videos, some too horrifying to share, show him stabbing a toddler in his pram as his screaming mother tries to defend him.
The attacker, who was 31 years old, deliberately attacked children again and again.
He could be heard shouting in the name of Jesus Christ.
Videos show him running around the park, waving a knife he'd used on defenceless children as members of the public chased him until eventually he was subdued and reportedly shot by police.
The police say we don't know what his motivation is yet.
What we do know is that four children and two adults were injured in the carnage.
A British child and little girl is among the four children hurt.
Two of those children and another are severely and critically injured.
Well, I'm joined now by David Chasn.
He's the France reporter at the Times who is at the scene of the attack in Annecy and in the studio by talk to the international editor Isabel Oakeshott.
Well let me start with you David if I may.
It's one of those things when you watch the video it's utterly gut-wrenching to watch this man charging around armed with a knife deliberately attacking children, young kids in prams.
Absolutely, it's completely horrifying and the scene that people witnessed here this morning has left this whole town stunned.
I mean, I'm standing now in the playground where the attack happened.
And the noise you can hear behind me is a demonstration by a handful of right-wing people.
They've just sung the national anthem, and they're now singing patriotic songs.
People have come here and left floral tributes at the place where the children were stabbed.
Tonight, so four toddlers, including a three-year-old British girl, are fighting for their lives in local hospitals.
The prosecutor here says that there doesn't appear to have been a terrorist motive behind the attack.
It was carried out by a Syrian refugee who's been arrested.
He described himself to police as a Syrian Christian and video of the attack shows him saying, in the name of Jesus Christ, as he launched the attack, that local people and witnesses seemed to think that he was mentally unbalanced rather than attacking the children for terrorist motives.
Yeah, there seems to be reports that I've read that he had married a woman in Sweden.
He'd been living there for 10 years or so.
So he came over as a refugee a decade or more ago.
There'd been no problems with authorities at all, but that he'd split up from his wife and they had a young three-year-old child.
And it's wrong to try and guess what has gone on here in terms of motivation, but you would think potentially mental health issues perhaps as a catalyst of what was going on in his own life.
Yeah, that's right.
I mean, the wife, the ex-wife rather, has spoken to French media.
She says that she last spoke to him four months ago and he was living in a church here in France.
It's believed he came here last autumn and he made a series of applications for asylum here, which bizarrely were rejected on the grounds he'd already been granted asylum in another EU country.
But according to his ex-wife, he didn't want to stay in Sweden because they'd rejected his applications for citizenship.
And she says that he often looks after their three-year-old girl when he was in Sweden.
And she describes him as being nice natured.
So, I mean, it beggars belief.
Mental health issues may well be the cause.
I think prosecutors have still got to get to the bottom of it.
The police are obviously still questioning him and investigating judges also.
So we'll see what more comes to light.
David, thank you very much indeed for that report from the scene there of this horrific atrocity.
Much appreciated.
Thank you.
Isabel, I mean, I've got four kids.
You've got kids.
We've all been to these playgrounds.
It's like a little sanctuary, isn't it?
You go, there's other little tiny kids running around.
They're in prams.
You can't think of anything more unthinkable.
It is incomprehensible, particularly as we learn that the attacker is a father of a child that age.
I mean, you know, very difficult for anyone to perpetrate an attack like that, but least of all someone who's got young children themselves.
I think the question here is, are there any broader implications to this politically?
Or is this just the most horrific act of someone who's perhaps suffering from schizophrenia, perhaps heard voices in it?
We don't know.
But what we've seen from our correspondent there is that there are already far-right demonstrations on the scene.
Now, the issue of mass migration is already pretty toxic in France.
France takes a very high number of asylum seekers, many of them from Syria.
That's the top country, certainly before the Ukraine war.
I don't know what the figures are now.
And I think this will inflame an already very, very important thing.
But on that, it's interesting because when I first saw that, I thought, God, this is going to be a huge political issue.
Never mind anything else.
And then you read, he got asylum in Sweden 10 years ago.
It's nothing to do with it.
That's the reality, but it won't stop it properly.
No, I agree.
We've got some breaking news actually.
Rishi Sunak has now just commented in Washington about this incident.
All our thoughts are with those affected by this unfathomable attack, including a British child and with their families.
I've been in touch with President Macron and we stand ready to offer any assistance that we can.
Well, we're joined now by Eleanor Vinson, who was on holiday in Annecy.
She's actually from California.
Eleanor, thank you very much indeed for joining me.
I understand that you turned up at the scene of this just after it had happened.
What kind of mood was there when you got there?
Because this is such an appalling thing to have unfurled.
Yes, it certainly is.
The mood was one of shock.
We were many meters away from the actual scene of the crime.
It was already a crime scene.
The French police were there very quickly within four minutes.
There were medical personnel.
There was a life flight helicopter landing as I arrived.
And everybody was on their phones trying to figure out what happened.
I happened to have a live BBC feed update, so I knew the very basics because even the news media at that point didn't really know what had happened.
And so I just started taking photos of the scene.
I'm a former journalist, and in my state of shock, I thought, well, I need to do something.
It might be useful to document what's happening.
And so that's what I did.
It's sort of, it's a strange story in a sense.
It's very hard to work out what motive there is here.
The police have very quickly said they don't think it's terrorism.
The fact he's an asylum seeker 10 years ago coming from Syria to Sweden would suggest this is not a sort of immediate issue with someone coming from a war zone in the last few weeks.
There may be a domestic issue, a mental health issue.
He's flit from his wife and had himself a three-year-old child, we understand.
It's a completely baffling story, isn't it?
Well, I personally don't find it so baffling.
I find it horrific and incredibly sad.
But it seems to me that someone from Syria coming, even having been in a state of living in another country like Sweden, which is, I understand, a very lovely country for 10 years, still can have untold amounts of trauma.
And the fact that he split from his wife, he had a child that was three years old.
And according to news reports here, he was seen hanging out in this park for three days.
So I can only imagine the state of mind that this person was in.
And whatever happened, he snapped and lashed out in this horrific way.
I don't use it in any way, but I personally feel this is a mental health crisis.
And we'll wait and see what authorities say.
Thankfully, he's alive, so he can be interviewed, and hopefully they can understand or try to understand what drove this.
But absolutely, I do not think this is an issue about immigration.
I do not think it's an issue about terrorism.
I think it's an issue about mental health, which we have abundance of in this world.
And it's leading to untold problems of violence.
In my own countries, there are three times as many guns as people.
I partly came to Europe to get away from the ongoing level of violence, but it's everywhere.
And thank God this man did not have a gun.
It would have been a bloodbath.
I mean, it's horrible enough as it is.
But.
No, you're right.
Biden's White House Crisis 00:08:06
Eleanor, I really appreciate it.
Thank you for your passion.
I appreciate it.
It needs to be said.
I appreciate you joining me.
Thank you very much.
You are very welcome.
Welcome back to Petersburg Nonsensical.
President Biden said the UK's special relationship with the US is in real good shape today as he hosted Rishi Sunak at the White House.
Probably better shape than him, I might politely and respectfully argue.
Having previously referred to his counterpart as Rashid Sanouk when he got the job, the 80-year-old Commander-in-Chief this time introduced Sunak as Mr. President.
He also completely forgot Winston Churchill's name.
Completely.
Couldn't remember it in a bizarre rambling anecdote about Churchill prowling around the White House.
So how did the big visit go down in the US?
Well, joining me now to talk about this is Washington, D.C., is Fox News White House correspondent, Peter Doosey.
Peter, brilliant to have you on the program, first of all, adding a touch of rare class to our show.
Much needed.
So I watched you in these press conferences at the White House, and quite often you're taking them to task over the physical and cognitive competence or otherwise of the president.
It wasn't a great day, was it, for them to show him at his best?
Well, at one point, the prime minister had to bail President Biden out because he's trying to tell this story about Winston Churchill visiting the White House after the Pearl Harbor attack.
It's the stuff of legends in Washington, D.C.
And as the president was kind of searching for the name Winston Churchill, Sunak bailed him out and then they kind of moved on.
He did accidentally introduce him at first as Mr. President and then joked that he had demoted him and then he corrected Mr. Prime Minister.
And so that does follow.
That is just about a week after President Biden fell down giving a commencement address in Colorado.
It follows him getting the name of the South Korean Prime Minister Yoon wrong.
He called him President Loon.
And so it is part of kind of a long couple weeks for the president, Pierce.
Well, let's take a little look at here, a little greatest hit, if you like, of what you've just been talking about.
Well, Mr. President, I must just demote you, Mr. Prime Minister.
We've got news.
Rashid Sunook is now the Prime Minister.
As my brother would say, go figure.
Probably a bunch of apocryphal about the former prime minister.
Making fake baths of the wandering around at three in the morning.
Yeah, Winston Churchill bothering Mrs. Roosevelt.
Yes.
So don't worry, you won't see me there bothering you and the First Lady.
I mean, on one level, Peter, it's kind of funny.
On another level, it is disconcerting for the rest of the world to watch the Commander-in-Chief of the United States of America sort of falling apart in front of our eyes.
And that's just, that is what we see in public.
We don't know what is going on behind closed doors, but you would hope that everybody is as sharp as can be, considering the things that they were talking about.
They're talking about these threats to the entire West that Russia poses.
They're talking about threats of artificial intelligence, which President Biden today described as being like science fiction and ways to put together guardrails for that.
These are very serious things that the leaders are discussing.
And so we don't know how it went.
I'm sure that this Biden White House doesn't really leak that much.
I'm not sure how the 10 Downing Street staff are about letting us know what happens in these meetings, but we will hopefully have some more details about how the president and the PM were shortly.
And Peter, the special relationship, the much vaunted special relationship, it's felt in recent years more special if you're here in Britain than it perhaps does to many Americans these days.
How would you categorize the reality of the so-called special relationship?
The reality is, as somebody that covers the White House and literally every single thing that President Biden does, it's been hard to keep track from here of who the prime minister even is over the course of the last 18 months.
And, you know, that a big chunk of President Biden's diplomacy comes at these summits where the prime minister and the president are like two of seven or two of 20.
They go sit at some hotel conference room for a half an hour.
We get a picture.
And then you don't really hear that much about it afterwards.
And so President Biden hasn't gotten a chance to know any of the prime ministers well enough to really have any sort of depth to the relationship.
And maybe that'll change now, depending on how things shake out over there.
But also over here, President Biden's up for re-election.
He just wants stability at home.
I don't know how much of a focus the special relationship is going to be for him when he's just trying to convince people in Pennsylvania and Ohio to back him for a second term.
But how damning that one of the main reasons the special relationship can't be that special is we never have a prime minister in the job long enough.
I mean, Liz Truss lasted 44 days.
I mean, Alettis lasted longer than she did at the end.
Peter, just want to talk about something else.
The smog issue, that New York has currently got the worst air quality in the world.
And it's all coming from these wildfires in Canada.
How bad is it?
Even in DC, I'm told you can smell stuff.
It's weird.
It's like the air's not right.
But New York is looking apocalyptic.
This morning, walking out of my car into the White House, the air smelled like about nine or 10 years ago when I was covering the Baltimore riots.
Like there was something right here that was on fire.
And I think it is extraordinary that President Biden has said so little about this.
He did very briefly mention it near the top of his remarks and he showed an air quality chart and they put out a tweet and a statement talking about how they sent firefighters to Canada to try to help put it out.
But this is something that affects millions of high-risk people.
When we were dealing with COVID, even when COVID was not at a peak, they talked about risks to vulnerable parts of the population, elderly folks, babies.
You don't hear anything from this White House about go stay inside.
Maybe that's because they know that it is politically a bad time for him to tell people to go back inside their houses after the COVID lockdown a couple years ago.
But he has said so little about something that affects so many people.
And considering the fact that yesterday, so about 30 hours ago, probably around the time that he woke up, I was standing right here and having a hard time swallowing because my mouth was so dried out from this stuff.
He just has not addressed it.
It's something that affects him.
He lives right here.
I don't know if he's been outside since it got here.
We haven't seen him outside.
They were supposed to have some party last night, or rather tonight, and it's been postponed to Saturday.
I don't know if he's actually gone out, but he can turn on the TV and see that it looks like the mothership just landed in Manhattan.
It really, it's amazing.
The scenes are really amazing.
Peter, thank you so much for bringing us up to speed with all that.
Really appreciate it.
Yeah.
Thanks for having me.
Peter Doosey, one of the top reporters in America there.
Well, British Sunak was in the US to tout British leadership on artificial intelligence just days after one of his top advisors warned that AI could begin to kill humans within two years.
It follows an open letter signed by Elon Musk and hundreds of the biggest names in tech, calling for an urgent pause in the development of AI.
The AI Control Threat 00:09:38
Well, Mo Goudat, who's a former chief business officer at Google X, was among the first to raise the alarm.
He says the situation is beyond emergency.
And Mo, author of Scary Smart, which is a scarily smart book, by the way, joins me now.
Mo, great to see you.
Thank you so much.
You were part of this quite secretive Google X group, which I presume your job was to think the unthinkable about stuff like AI.
And you very quickly were out of the traps to warn people that this is serious.
Very.
What was it that you saw where you thought, okay, we've got to be really careful now?
We had a tiny bit of an experiment that was about teaching robotic arms to grip items that were some funny developer used children toys in front of those arms.
And basically they kept trying for weeks without any success whatsoever.
And I passed by them and I was thinking we wasted so much money on something that wasn't going to work.
On a Friday evening, one of them gripped one yellow ball, showed it to the camera.
And basically I was like, there you go, millions of dollars for one yellow ball.
Monday morning, every one of them was gripping every yellow ball.
By a few weeks later, every one of them was gripping everything.
The speed at which those machines were learning is staggering.
But at the same time, the understanding we have about why they learn, why they do what they do, is very, very limited.
Is that self-designing what they were doing?
They basically are mimicking human intelligence.
Well, the reason I asked that is I interviewed Professor Stephen Hawking just before he died, his last television interview, and I asked him what is the biggest threat to mankind.
And he said...
Well, actually, let me show you the clip.
We've got to hear of it.
Ever since the start of the Industrial Revolution, there have been fears of mass unemployment as machines replaced humans.
Instead, the demand for goods and services has risen in line with the increased capabilities.
Whether this can continue indefinitely is an open question.
But there is a greater danger from artificial intelligence.
If we allow it to become self-designing, then it can improve itself rapidly and we may lose control.
It seems very prescient now.
That was a few years ago.
Yeah, I mean.
That was prescient.
This is really what you're talking about.
I left in 2018 warning in my first video that I issued after I left was all about that.
And the idea that, you know, we always had three boundaries, if you want, for AI.
We said, don't put them on the open internet until you solve the control problem.
Don't teach them to code because that makes them self-developing.
And don't have other AIs prompting them, other agents working with them.
And we've crossed all three lines.
I mean, I remember with chess, I'm a big chess player fan.
Not great, but I like playing it.
And I remember when Deep Blue, I think, was the first one against Gary Kasparov.
Right, that was it.
And to start with, the Grandmasters beat the first ones.
And then suddenly, Deep Blue won, and then it got completely invincible.
Never again, never again did a human win.
Well, no human can beat it, even the greatest players like Kasparov.
So that showed me how quickly robots, technology, computers can leapfrog past human brains.
Let's stick with gaming.
AlphaGo was designed by DeepMind, actually here in the UK.
Amazing, amazing team, to win in the game strategy game of Go, right?
It took them months and months and months and a couple of versions to win and be the world champion, if you want.
Then they had AlphaGo Master learn the game without ever watching a human player play.
The AlphaGo Master learned by playing against itself.
Within three days, it won against the first version.
Within 21 days, it won 1,000 to 0 against the world champion, which was already an AI.
Do you understand that?
The speed at which they are learning.
So look, talk me through timings here, because people have been calling experts in this letter calling for a six-month pause.
But if nothing is paused, if we carry on at the rate that we're going at the moment, what could happen?
The reality in my personal view is that it is very difficult to predict.
Something could happen tomorrow or in four years or in five years.
I wouldn't say later than 2029.
Most of our predictions...
And when you say something, what do you mean?
What is the worst case scenario?
Beginning of the worst case scenario is that they are smarter than us, so they are not controllable, right?
And the thing that we...
And what would they do then?
What would artificial intelligence do once it becomes smarter than human beings?
Would it see us human entities as pointless?
There are two stages of threat, right?
And I think the biggest challenge we have in the world today is we're focused on the existential threat that we saw in science fiction movies.
The closer threat is much worse, right?
This is an Oppenheimer moment.
The one that controls AI has enormous power over everyone else, right?
And basically that means that everyone who doesn't control AI today is in an arms race trying to take control of it.
This is why when I think of the prime minister's move, it's a great move, overdue almost when you think about it, but so difficult to achieve because you have to unify China, Russia, and the US to be able to regulate and...
I mean a well-intentioned person trying to regulate and control AI would give it morality.
That's the whole point.
But a nefarious controller of AI, presumably, could teach it to be immoral, the opposite.
Which is happening as we speak.
There's absolutely no doubt.
If you tell the drug lords of the world and the criminals of the world that AI is a super powerful tool, they're finding a way to hack your bank as a matter of fact.
It's scary.
It is very, very concerning.
And I think the reality is, interestingly, the only way you can defend against a super intelligence is through another super intelligence, which is what creates that prisoner's dilemma, what I call the first inevitable and scary smart, is that we have to continue the development because if it falls in the wrong hands, we want the right hands to have power to defend us.
At the same time, that complexity of the situation is entirely about morality and ethics.
And interestingly, the latest development of something like ChatGPT, for example, is using reinforcement learning, which is a very interesting technique because it basically allows a human to interface with ChatGPT and say, that was the wrong answer.
Can you go back and think about what it is, what?
Really?
So the challenge is almost like you're teaching a child at school.
100%.
And in reinforcement learning, I mean, in a simplified way, we're basically telling the machine to revisit its algorithm so that the answer becomes a cat, not a bird.
Also, we can tell it that answer is immoral.
Can you revisit your algorithm so that you become aware of that?
But again, the problem I see is that if you're well-intentioned doing this process, that's one thing.
If you're teaching it deliberately to be immoral, very quickly you could get out of control AI, which has very unpleasant tendencies taught to it by human beings.
Yeah, my very clear statement is that I honestly am not concerned with the machines, even though the existential threats are possible.
You're concerned with what humans teach us.
I'm concerned with humans, with AI in their hands.
I totally agree with you.
Let's end on a happier note.
It actually starts on a desperately unhappy note.
But you had this awful thing in your life where your son went in for a routine operation and ended up dying through a series of errors made by the medical team.
And out of it, you could have fallen apart, like a lot of people may have done in that situation.
But you turned it into a huge, extraordinary positive.
Tell me what you did.
I don't know, honestly.
I felt in a very interesting way that my son should not have left the world for no reason.
That I could never bring him back.
It was four hours, Pierce.
Between the moment he hugged me and went into that operating room to the minute he left our world altogether, four hours.
And you have to get to a point where you say, what do I do with this?
Do I fall apart and then on my deathbed he's still not here?
Or do I try to do something that reminds the world of his essence?
And believe it or not, everything I've done since 2014 has been influenced by what that young man taught me.
And in a very interesting way, this, my work on AI and artificial intelligence, my work on happiness, my work on stress.
Tell me about the work on happiness specifically.
I found a happiness equation, basically.
You know, when you deal with engineers, we're weird people.
So when I was very unhappy as a young man, I couldn't actually find my happiness through the teachings of, you know, sages and gurus and so on.
And I had to give myself a practical, mathematical way of looking at it.
I took that, I discussed it with my son, he taught me the hard side of it.
And then I wrote my first book, Solve for Happy, which basically was based on that, based on an idea that happiness is very logical, that if you can control your brain to have an interesting conversation with you, I can also control my brain to become a little happier, right?
Maybe not to become absolutely happy, but to become a little happier, right?
And that got a lot of acceptance.
Solve for Happy was an international bestseller everywhere.
And basically because the modern world, as we know it, is here.
Keeping Beliefs Off Stage 00:15:24
It's no longer here.
And so, you know, my first mission was 10 million happy, which was an attempt to make the world remember Ali, if you want.
And then my second mission, 1 billion happy, was 100% because of AI.
Amazing.
And ultimately, actually, it comes back again to the human brain.
100%.
And the key denominator here, whether it's dealing with AI, whether it's dealing with your ability to feel happiness, actually in the end, it's about the human brain.
It's about being human.
Yes.
Brain and heart, intuition and analysis.
It's about being human.
Mo, it's fantastic to talk to you.
Thank you very much for coming in.
Scary Smart, The Future of AI and How You Can Save Our World.
Well, it couldn't be a more important book at a more important time.
This is exciting for me.
I'm joined by rock royalty, Gene Simmons from KISS.
How are you?
How are you, young man?
Well, it's great to have you here.
Thank you.
In the UK, in London, in my studio.
In your studio.
We go back a long way.
We do.
We did Celebrity Apprentice.
What?
I knew it.
2008.
And just to remind anyone left in the world I haven't told, which one of us won?
Go on.
I did.
Yes, he did.
But only because you quit early.
And if you hadn't, you'd have beaten me.
Well, that's not so.
But you're very bright and good looking.
No, that is the case.
You know what?
You can come back anytime, Gene Simmons.
You're very kind.
No, your talk, it's signaling that it may be the end.
No, it is.
It is.
You've got to have, you know, at some point, we're all grown-ups.
You've got to be able to understand when the curtain comes down.
Everything's got to come to an end at some point.
Have a little dignity and self-respect.
Love your fans and understand when it's time to graciously thank them for an amazing journey that's lasted.
Could you really walk away from the stage?
Yes, yes.
Really?
Because the alternative is staying on the stage too long the way.
Who has gone on too long in your estimation?
Oh, many, many.
If you want me to stay.
Name and shame.
Who have you looked at and gone, come on, it's time to stop.
No, it's not fair.
Look, you can see them by the number of creases on their faces and so on.
Rock basically is a young man's, generally speaking, form of music.
And look, half a century is plenty of time to put on more makeup and wear higher heels than your girlfriend.
We've done this a long time.
December the 2nd is going to be the last time, and we would love to see those few tickets remaining if there are any.
Some of our friends in London at the O2 is going to be the last time we will ever play.
Really, that's it.
Yeah, we wanted to play indoors instead of usually we headline download or used to be called monsters of rock.
We wanted a more sort of emotional thing because it is.
What's been for you?
I mean, if I could let you relive one moment of your entire rock career right now, which one would you choose?
I would choose the beginning.
The very first time we ever got up on stage, fourth on the bill, New Year's Eve, 1973 in New York City, my heart was pumping like nothing you ever saw.
Because you have to understand, when you come from the loins of the people, you know, you sort of come up on the streets and you see these sort of godlike figures on stage having the time of their lives being adored.
There's no other plumbers don't get that.
Even the Pope doesn't get knickers thrown in his face.
He might, but I'm going to get in trouble.
But this astonishing lifestyle.
And I was never the best-looking guy and all that stuff.
But as soon as you start strumming the guitar and, of course, sticking out my prodigious oral appendage.
How is the tongue?
Oh, it's very.
Can we have a quick flash?
I would, but the floor's dirty.
Thank you for that.
Thank you.
As being a rock star, has it lived up to everything you hoped it would be?
It's more than that.
So many people moan about their life in show business.
Oh, it's okay.
You've never moaned about it.
He thinks they protest too much.
One of your famous writers said that.
It's nonsense.
How would you like to have more money than you know what to do with, have more adoration?
Oh, I forgot.
You're Piers Morgan.
You get that every day.
Thank you, Gene.
I want to talk about someone else who's in Talama, Roger Waters, King Floyd.
You're obviously Jewish.
He's been coming out with...
He's Israeli.
And Israeli.
And he's been coming out a lot of very anti-Israel and what people perceive to be anti-Semitic comments.
I'm not sure that's the same thing.
Right.
So what's your position about Roger Waters?
Well, first of all, he's a very talented guy.
He's written some of the most wonderful music along with Floyd many, many decades.
And it's obviously held up and he's got lots of fans.
There is something to be said for keeping your political and other beliefs off the stage.
His choice is to use the stage as a platform to further his point of view.
There is a difference between a political statement about Israel and about anti-Semitism.
By the way, anti-Semitism also involves Arabs.
The definition of a Semite includes the Arab world.
So I think he's a well-meaning guy.
I don't agree with his point of views, of course.
So do you think he's anti-Semitic or do you think he's anti-Israelism?
I think he is, from my point of view, inflamed, angry about the political situation, as we all are.
You want there to be peace someplace.
And look, I turn our attention to this wonderful fairy tale of a country where there are leprechauns and so on.
Ireland, the North and the South.
It's been ongoing for God knows how long, and the divisions are deep.
If you're either Protestant or Catholic or different, and I've visited Parliament there.
We're going to come to that as she asked us a break.
I just want to play a little clip.
This is Roger Waters today.
He popped up doing some interview, and he said this.
My story is yet another story of council culture.
Why are they trying to cancel Roger Woods?
Why aren't there real journalists going, hang on a minute, this is maybe I'll call up and see what he has to say?
Why aren't you?
Piers Morgan.
Eh?
Well, you know, the truth is, Roger, we have for the last two years at Piers Morgan Uncensored.
Well, actually, about 18 months, six months before we came on air, and since we've been on air, we have repeatedly asked you, these are all the stuff that we're showing on screen now, all the requests.
And back came the response saying, no, not available, can't do it, too busy, on stage, offstage.
So, Roger, you need to talk to your people because you've had a standing offer to come on Piers Morgan Uncensored the entire time we've been on air.
Look, I'd like to jump in just for a quick second.
The best way to have a discussion or even an argument is to find common ground and then get into the diversions of what you think.
So, what we agree with, and I'm Israeli and Jewish, my mother was in a concentration camp in Nazi Germany and so on and so forth.
I'm not saying this to get your heart anyway.
We agree there absolutely should be an Arab state, Palestine.
No question about it.
It should exist side by side with Israel.
No question about it.
There should be free flow of information and commerce and so on.
Okay, so it doesn't exist now.
Let's work together to try to make it happen.
So, what's the problem?
If only it were that easy, Gene.
But, you know, as always, you have a lot of clarity about these things.
That's why I like you.
Let's have a short break.
We'll come back and talk about, well, Britain and our parliament.
You were there yesterday, being fated like a, quite rightly, like a rock god, being baked for selfies by politicians.
But what do you think of our system?
What do you think of him, Boris Johnson, the shambles, as we call him?
We'll have more from Gene Simmons after the break.
Welcome back to Piers Morgan on Sensor.
With me, I are talk-to-view contributor Paula Roan.
Adrian, talk-to-view presenter, Richard Tice, and the rock legend that is Gene Simmons.
Well, gee, yesterday you were in the heart of our British Parliament.
Why?
What were you doing there?
Well, a beloved and respected MP invited me.
As a matter of fact, as a statement of fact, there he is, Junior.
His dad is a legend, of course.
I was invited to come by and visit the House of Commons and so on.
And so we have a jet we travel on.
We were playing Newcastle, and all the airports were closed because Mr. Zelensky from Ukraine was here.
And for political reasons, so I called up and I said, you know, I can't come because we can't land our jet.
There was a phone call made by the MP, by the respected MP, and all of a sudden, we were the only jet allowed to land in London.
What's up?
And we landed, and of course, I will tell you, I was a sixth grade school teacher in New York, in Spanish Harlem, before I stuck out my tongue for a living.
And to try to make 12-year-olds and 13-year-olds understand in New York City this astonishing little island, little by American comparisons, where a monarchy has existed for over a thousand years.
The amazing stories, the characters and so on, and how this kind of transference of power, of course, the Star Chamber and King Henry VIII who wouldn't get a divorce, like all this juicy historical stuff.
And then Guy Fawkes, notwithstanding, he didn't quite get there.
But democracy came forth in full bloom.
And I saw it firsthand with, you know, sitting there respectfully and silently and watch it.
And I will tell you there's a bit of civility missing in American politics because the fine gentleman is addressing, I would like to say, in essence, you're full of respectful.
Well, you mentioned the point because they call each other the right honorable gentleman.
Richard Seiss, we have a situation now where Boris Johnson's honours list is about to be approved by Rishi Sunak.
I don't think anyone who's been dishonourable and had to quit in shame and disgrace and broken the law and be fined by the police and so on, I don't think they should have an honours list.
Well, I mean, that's the convention.
But the reality is a deal's been done.
Sunak has said, okay, you can have your honors list as long as you just lay off, give me a break, you do your thing.
And then I suspect there's a deal being done with regard to the Partygate inquiry.
So this is what's happened behind closed doors.
Just Mark.
Well, he's now had his report, Paula, today, Boris Johnson, about the Partygate Inquiry.
And if it goes the wrong way for him, he's got two weeks to respond.
If it goes the wrong way, that could be the end of his political career.
Well, we know that he's had a warning letter as well, don't we, in terms of that investigation.
But you talk about his political career.
What political career?
Even when he was in politics, could anyone really say that he had a political career?
He bumbled through various different mistakes.
And we know that he has left us in such a derisory position in terms of where we are on the world scale.
Who respects us?
They're laughing at us.
What are you making, Boris, Gene?
Well, you have to consider that I'm an outsider and the view from far away is decidedly different than being in the thick of it all.
I'm a big fan of Boris.
The body politic worldwide is really, as far as I'm concerned, what the story is about.
You've either got the ability to confer with and make deals worldwide that then benefits the UK and the various countries they're in, or you don't.
B.B. Netanyahu, who I've met at...
Doesn't it start with your constituents?
And where has he been for his constituents?
And there's been a recent poll that suggests he's going to lose his seat.
He's gone.
By the way, I love watching Paula arguing with Gene Simmons.
I don't get this anywhere, Paula.
I've also orange today, my just oil protest.
If I'd have known that you've got Bishop Talab, I would have been there, Gene, with my own.
He was a dreadful Prime Minister.
It's not too late.
I just want to quickly put in, right now, the people's business is being done by Mr. Sunak in Washington, D.C., because there's a momentous and never-before-done deal with the UK and America.
And I'm sure the news people will be reporting on that.
What I mean to say is that Mr. Sunak is in Washington, D.C., so perhaps I saw his deputy at the House of Commons addressing certain issues.
It's the big story, folks.
The world is, as far as I'm concerned, the body politic.
Yes, there will always be unions who complain, I don't have enough Social Security stuff.
Right, you can pay attention to that, but there's a big story, and as far as I'm concerned, Boris was a great communicator.
Perhaps locally, he was not as opposed to.
All right, well, let's talk about your own backyard because you and I, when we competed together on Celebrity Apprentice, the person that chose me as the winner was Donald Trump.
I don't know if I mentioned that enough, but he became President of the United States, and he at the moment is roaring ahead in the polls to become a Republican nominee.
Given the state of Joe Biden right now, even calling our Prime Minister Mr. President today, you couldn't bet against Trump getting re-elected, could you?
There is a decent chance.
You have to understand that America is physically larger than Europe.
And in the same way that the UK is not one group of people, you've got the Celts and the Picts and different languages, different accents, and so on and so forth.
And of course, lots of new folks from around the world coming here.
So it's not one people.
America, likewise.
New York and LA is not Wisconsin and Nebraska.
Who's going to win the American election?
Give me a name.
Donald Trump.
Wow.
Wow.
We can ignore all the cases.
We can ignore the indictments.
We can ignore the sexual assistance.
We can ignore the fact that he wasn't making a judgment.
He just said he thinks he's going to win.
I'm not even saying that I'm for it, but I will tell you: if I was Mr. Trump, and Mr. Biden, I think, is an ethical man, and so on, and I call both Mr. out of respect.
Somebody is going to run a 30-second sizzle reel showing Mr. Biden falling down.
Totally agree.
I totally agree.
Gene, we've run out of time.
I wish I'd had you on for longer.
Please come back soon.
KISS are playing 5th of July in London, 7th of July in Manchester, 8th of July in Glasgow.
They're back in December at the O2.
It's the end of KISS, he says.
I don't want to believe this.
KISS should never end.
It should be forever, forever long going, like your tongue.
Export Selection