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June 19, 2023 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
46:50
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Levi Belfield Wedding Controversy 00:14:13
One of Britain's most wicked murderers, Levi Belfield, was permissioned to wed behind bars in what will be a sickening ceremony featuring him in a Versace suit and the pair of them having a Harry-style soundtrack.
Lawyers say it is human right.
Why should a serial killer have any right like getting married in prison?
We'll debate.
Fury over shocking leaked footage of Conservative Party staff partying through lockdown.
At least two of them were just granted lifetime honours by Boris Johnson.
Should those honours now be removed?
Plus the Spotify executive says Harry and Meghan are lazy effing Griftons after axing their multi-million dollar podcast deal.
Obviously, I couldn't possibly comment.
Live from the news building in London, this is Piers Morgan Uncensored.
Well good evening from London.
Welcome to Piers Morgan Uncensored.
Levi Belfield is a name that sends chills down the spine of anyone who knows about him.
He's one of Britain's most notorious and wicked and merciless serial killers, now serving two whole life orders for murdering at least three teenage girls.
His victim included 13 year old Millie Dowler, who he abducted and brutally killed in 2002.
Her disappearance sparked a frenzied nationwide search that galvanized the whole country behind her devastated family.
And to this day, he's a stain on our collective memories.
I don't believe in the death penalty, but if I did, Levi Belfield's name would be at the top of the list.
The very least the public expects is he's locked up forever and sees out his life in something close to the miseries inflicted on the families of his victims.
But instead, he's getting married.
Yeah, you heard that right.
One of Britain's most malignant human beings is to wed behind bars.
Everything about this case is staggering.
Belfield spent £30,000 in legal aid funded by our taxes to defend his case.
He began talking to his fiancée, a woman in her 40s, after spotting a photograph of her in the cell of Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire ripper who murdered 13 women.
He was allowed to get down on one knee to propose to this woman in front of the prison guards.
Now he's being allowed to plan his own ceremony in the prison chapel.
Reportedly, she'll wear a white dress.
He'll wear a Versace suit.
They'll listen to his favourite Harry Styles song.
This is all completely outrageous.
And the government told us it wouldn't happen.
The prisons minister at the time, Victoria Atkins, said this.
Absolutely appalling.
I've ordered an immediate review into this.
I very much welcome the debate we're about to have about the Bill of Rights and looking at human rights in the United Kingdom in the 21st century.
And believe you me, I'll be raising this.
What happened?
Dominic Rav, the former Justice Secretary, said this.
What I can tell you is it's inconceivable that the prisoner of the Ministry of Justice would authorise that marriage.
We're dealing with a dangerous serial killer, right?
So why is he getting married?
Belfield's lawyers reportedly threatened a blockbuster human rights case against the government if he was blocked from getting married.
But where are the human rights of the girls he murdered?
Through his deplorable actions, Belfield deprived his victims of a chance to themselves fall in love and get married.
The absolute least he deserves is to be deprived of the same thing.
The government must stop this farcical wedding and if need be, have its day in court.
I suspect the entire country would be with them.
Well, joining me now as criminal barrister in King's Castle, Chris Dahl, and by the former Met Police Detective Colin Sutton, who caught Levi Belfield.
Well, Colin Sutton, let me start with you.
Some stories just make you so angry, just on sight.
And this is one of them.
What are we thinking as a country to allow someone like Levi Belfield to get married like this?
Yeah, I think there's unanimity on this, which is unusual.
You know, I haven't heard anybody say that this is a good idea, aside from one or two lawyers who don't say it's a good idea, but actually have said it's the law, he's entitled to do it.
And, you know, I suspect that may be what Chris is going to say.
But it's wrong.
It shouldn't happen.
To me, it's a manifestation of a wider problem.
And that problem is that predatory men who are convicted of crimes against vulnerable women are still able to access, to speak to, to groom women from behind bars.
And I think that's the wider ill that we need to be looking at.
This is a man who has controlled by force and by coercion every single woman who has crossed his path as an adult.
And we let him carry on doing it from within prison where he's serving multiple whole life terms.
Yeah, I mean, to me, it's ridiculous.
All right, Chris, from a legal perspective, we know it's currently lawful.
So let's just agree that that's the current law.
But why is it the law?
Well, I think it's the law because of an understanding that there is in our society certain acts and certain practices which are available and should be available to everyone no matter what they've done.
Even serial killers on whole life tariffs who are never coming out of prison.
Well, that's the state of the law, as you say, and that's what the law says.
And it was surprising that you heard government ministers who apparently didn't know that when they were suggesting they were going to be able to stop it because it's act of parliament.
But what about the fact that this is a guy who we've just heard used coercion and violence to mentally, visibly control a lot of women, not just the people he killed.
But here we have a clearly vulnerable woman.
I mean, one of these, frankly, lunatic women who get attracted to serial killers like Levi Belfield and pretend they've fallen in love with them and want to get married to them.
I've interviewed lots of very dangerous people in my time for crime documentaries.
These women are to a penny for reasons that baffle most of us.
But she's clearly vulnerable.
She's not of mental sound mind.
Why should he be allowed anywhere near a vulnerable woman given his track record?
I think you make a good point, but the difficulty of me is I don't know where you get all that information about this woman because I'm not aware of all of that being in the public domain.
My view would absolutely be if this woman has mental health.
What normal woman would want to marry to Levi Belfield?
It's not a bad question, but the point is you say what normal person would do lots of things in this world.
And I agree with you.
I don't understand why any rational human being would want to marry someone like this.
Not least because they'll never get to spend any time alone together.
They'll maybe be allowed an hour to a month in a visits room and that's the extent of the relationship.
But you would say that, wouldn't you, about any woman who wants to marry anyone who's in prison?
I mean, and particularly if they're in prison for a long time.
Well, not necessarily.
It depends on the crime.
But here you have a specific crime of somebody who snuffed out the lives of a series of young women and also raped and attacked and coerced and controlled many more.
This is one of the most evil people in the country, but who specialises in preying on vulnerable women.
And yet here is a clearly vulnerable woman, because she can't be a sound mind, that he's allowed to get married to.
That is where the law to me becomes a mass.
Well, for me, that's not about the law at all.
That's about risk assessment in an individual case.
If it's the truth that this woman is not capable of giving rational, open-minded consent to get married, she shouldn't be allowed to get married.
But why should anyone?
Why should anyone on a whole life tariff be allowed to get married anyway?
Particularly when they've removed the option of getting married of a series of women they've murdered.
Why should they?
But you make a good point.
But by that rationale, you would take away the right to marry from anyone who's ever committed a murder of anyone.
No.
No, it's not what I'm saying.
Where's the line then?
Where do you put it?
Whole life tariff to start with.
Okay, so just 70 or 80 people.
Well, Pete, yeah, start with them.
Okay, and then the next.
Well, then I think you look at the case by case.
I mean, let me bring you back, Colin, here.
I mean, you were a detective a long time.
How evil was or is Levi Belfield?
Off the scale.
I mean, you know, he's just simply the most evil, dangerous human being I ever encountered.
But I mean, I would say, what sort of society do we have, or what sort of legal or criminal justice system do we have, where we incarcerate somebody for offending against women when we know all this about what they do with women, and yet we allow them to contact and groom other women once they've been convicted.
Yeah, I mean, we shouldn't.
We shouldn't do that.
We shouldn't let them groom anyone any more than we let anyone voluntarily engage in grooming.
If there is evidence that there is grooming, and there should be, because every telephone call is recorded, every visit is monitored by video and by microphones.
If there's grooming going, you shouldn't be allowed anywhere else.
If you're a mentally sound woman seeks out and introduced by the Yorkshire Ripper, for goodness sake, right, seeks out someone like Levi Belfield to fall in love and get married.
She's clearly sick.
Well, you say that.
Yeah, I do say that.
I do say that.
But what about someone who maybe has a deeply Christian faith and believes in forgiveness?
I mean, lots of very, very religious people believe in redemption and forgiveness.
Are you saying that they shouldn't be allowed to take forward that religious viewpoint and to try and find redemption for someone because you don't believe in it?
No, I'm saying in a civilized society where a series of young women have been robbed of their chance for romance, for love, for marriage, the idea that the perpetrator of their wicked murders is allowed to do all that is so sickening that we should change the law to stop it, as indeed the government kept indicating they were going to do.
But the problem is you keep using words like sickening and evil.
All of these words, they're words that go back thousands of years ago.
It's Old Testament nonsense.
What we should be doing is asking ourselves...
Well, you don't think he is sickening or evil?
I don't think evil is a concept I really accept.
No, his acts were evil, undoubtedly.
But I don't believe anyone is born evil.
I just don't believe that.
If you perpetrate acts as evil as he did, you are an evil person.
What if you're a sociopath who have no understanding of what you're doing?
You're no fast computer.
There's no suggestion Belfield's a sociopath.
He's not being diagnosed as sociopath.
Well, it's very interesting that you think that you could do all of those acts and be of sound mind.
Well, he's not to my knowledge of the person.
But to marry someone who's done those acts, you must automatically be insane.
Well, let me bring back Colin.
As far as I'm aware, Belfield has not been diagnosed as a sociopath or a psychopath who is completely immune from feelings.
He just is, to me, the personification of evil.
Yeah, I don't think labels like this are helpful at all.
I think you look at the evidence, you look at the facts, and the fact is there is ample evidence available to show how he interacts with women and what he will do to groom and get women, charm them, if you like, at first, and then act in a way that is coercive and is dangerous and harmful to them.
And, you know, we listened.
We listened to every single phone call he made while he was on remand for our offences.
That took lots and lots of time.
I think the notion that every phone call from every prison is actually listened to from beginning to end is fanciful.
There just isn't the star for it.
They may be dip sampled at best.
And, you know, what I'm saying is that we should look at these people where there is evidence of their history and their past offending, which shows that they are a danger to women.
And we should take steps actively to prevent them from contacting women from within their prison.
I mean, I think that is a very good idea.
I agree.
I'm not disagreeing with...
If you have evidence that someone has been manipulated, coerced and subject to potentially criminal behavior, the prison service shouldn't allow it any more than they would allow someone to physically attack someone in a visits room.
If someone is being damaged by a prisoner, that needs to be stopped.
But it's a completely different point to whether, in principle, you should change the law based on this one case to stop a certain category of murder, murder at marrying.
It needs a wider debate than that.
And it needs, I think, to get away from this idea that somehow the more harsh and inhumane you make the treatment and the conditions in prison, the better your society will be and the safer it will be for women.
Well, our society won't be.
Well, okay, I would say to that, our society is not improved or damaged in any way by Levi Belfield being in prison for the rest of his life.
It makes no difference to us on the outside.
Provided he remains a danger to the public for the rest of his life.
He's certainly a potential danger to this woman, right?
Who you seem to think may be some God-fearing Christian.
I know nothing about it.
You've told us me lots about it.
I've not read that.
I just know I've interviewed a lot of serial killers.
They all have women like this who become obsessed with them.
They're all, in my view, damaged and they're all vulnerable and they're all sick of mind.
Because how could you possibly genuinely fall in love with someone you've never even been with in any sexual way or physical way?
And you know the crimes he committed on other women.
To me, that's not, you know, there's no doubt about the fact they're mentally fragile or damaged because what else could they be?
Well, if a psychologist and a psychiatrist say that this woman is not fit to consent, then the marriage shouldn't take place.
I agree.
But if she's fit to do so, that's her prerogative.
That's her choice.
Yeah, but not ours.
Colin, final word to you.
I mean, I read a heart-rending interview.
I read an interview with the parents of one of the victims this week, and it was heartbreaking.
You know, I've got a daughter, and it was just the fact that they felt so robbed themselves of seeing their daughter get married.
And now to have to read this with the details, the Versace suit, the Harry Styles music, all of it.
It is all, and people may not like this language.
It is utterly sickening.
Yeah, it is, and I understand that point of view entirely.
But I want, like Chris, I want the wider thing to be looked at, but perhaps coming from a different position.
I think that we should be preventing.
We don't know what this woman, how this woman has been coerced, persuaded, charmed, or whatever into marrying Levi Belfield.
We don't know what happened in those conversations.
Theresa May Political Integrity 00:14:26
Okay?
And the fact is, there is ample evidence that he will charm, persuade, coerce, and mentally harm.
And we heard him doing this while we were listening to his course.
We heard him doing this to a 16-year-old who was his mistress, for want of a better word, where she just obeyed him instantly when he was groomed from when she was 14.
And that wasn't even one of the crimes that was deemed serious enough for his record because of all the more serious stuff, which involved murdering people.
Exactly that.
Yeah.
But there are lots and lots of men in prison in this country for offences against women who are still allowed access to those women and other women and can still harm them and make their lives a misery.
And that's the wider issue that needs looking at, not the one-off marriage, which happens once in a blue moon.
Okay, got to leave it there, Colin.
Thank you very much indeed.
Chris, I understand you're just explaining the law, really, and that's what it is.
I think in this case, the law's an ass.
But that's my prerogative in a free society.
Thank you both very much indeed.
Well, from monsters to, well, a moron?
Is that being too rude?
MPs are tonight deliberating Boris Johnson's political future.
The Commons are debating the report that said the former PM lied repeatedly and deliberately to the Commons over Party Gate.
What is pretty says that Theresa May has been sticking the boot firmly in tonight?
This committee report matters.
This debate matters and this vote matters.
They matter because they strike at the heart of the bond of trust and respect between the public and parliament that underpin the workings of this place and of our democracy.
And I also say to members of my own party that it is doubly important for us to show that we are prepared to act when one of our own, however senior, is found wanting.
Well, here, here.
I never thought I'd feel inspired by Theresa May, but I was today.
She stood up for what Parliament should be.
Well, joining me now is talking to these political entities, Kate McCanns.
Okay, that was a powerful speech.
It really was.
By Theresa May, and that was a leader speech.
It does beg the question, where is the actual Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who seems to have done a sickie?
Yeah, I was in the Commons Chamber for that speech, and it was a real moment.
There was, you know, complete silence.
Labour, as much as the Conservative benches, were cheering on Theresa May in the way that MPs do.
And I think the point that she made most clearly was that this is not about Boris Johnson now.
This is about the fundamental way that Parliament works.
It's about truth, it's about upholding it, and it's about accountability to the public.
And so naturally, it follows, where is Rishi Sunak?
Because for lots of MPs there on all sides, this is a man who came into Parliament promising integrity, promising to uphold those values.
And this is an opportunity to prove that.
Why is he abstaining from this?
I think the politics of this were always going to be complicated for the Prime Minister.
I mean, while a lot of Boris Johnson's supporters have exited stage left, you know, they've already gone, they have triggered by-elections.
There is still a rump of the party who don't want to have that exposed, the row between the current and the former prime ministers.
But it's actually quite difficult, really, to formulate a reason.
It would have given him the opportunity to spring forward.
The next election looks very complicated and difficult anyway, so what do you have to lose?
I think the reality is he just didn't want that political argument.
Yeah, but you know what?
If you're going to, I like Rishi Sunak, but if you're going to stand up for decency in public life, for standards for ethics, as he has laid down his sort of flag, you've got to turn up for this and you've got to actually say, yes, I am going to vote.
I'm going to support the parliamentary process because I believe in its integrity.
By abstaining, you're saying you don't really go along with it.
Yeah, and that's exactly what a lot of his own MPs are saying today.
You know, they are fed up of Boris Johnson and they would have quite liked actually to be able to draw a line under it.
And what you heard from Theresa May there was the fundamental point, which is that when it's one of our own, it's even more important to stand here.
Particularly, as you said, if it's one at the top.
Yes.
And particularly where it's been a question of preaching one thing to the public and doing another.
Well, Harriet Harmon said that if Boris Johnson hadn't been held to account by this committee, he would have contaminated, she used that language, the rest of government.
And actually, there was a real moment in the Commons today where Jacob Reese Mogg stood up and said, well, hang on, Harriet Harmon.
You tweeted you'd already made your mind up about this committee before you even sat down.
And she said, and it was, you know, a Labour MP said mic drop moment.
It really was.
She said, well, actually, I went to the government and I said, I'll recuse myself if you're worried about that.
And the government said, no.
It was the first time we've ever heard that.
And it shows that she had the backing of, you know, those at the very top of Downing Street.
They had no concerns.
And I wonder whether that may play into this too, because the politics of whether Rishi Sunak wanted this committee to find against Boris Johnson is rumbling behind the scenes.
Sadly, I think it comes down to the politics rather than actually the fundamental question of lying to parliament and the integrity.
And we saw a video at the weekend of precisely what this is all about, which is a bunch of young Tories illegally partying in the middle of a lockdown.
I'll debate that in a moment.
But they're right there on video was also the mindset, which is we better not stream this so people see that we're bending the rules.
They knew what they were doing.
Boris knew what they were all doing.
And that's why it's so shameful.
Kate, thank you.
Appreciate it.
And so it's the next anger over that leaked footage of Conservative Party staff partying through lockdown.
At least two of them, incredibly, have just been given lifetime honours by Boris Johnson in his resignation list, a resignation that was, of course, forced through shame, ignominy, and disgrace.
I would suggest those honours should all now be scrapped.
We'll debate after the break.
Welcome back to Pittsburgh and Uncensored.
Welcome to my PAC, Esther Kraken, Talk Toview Contributor, Kevin Maguire, Associate Editor of the Mirror, and the talk-to-view presenter, Brazanna Lockwood.
Welcome to all of you.
Quick reaction on Rishi Sunak not turning up for this vote.
I think he just knew the way it was going to go and didn't want to be taken down at this point, making a comment on it.
But I just think that's a real damp squib.
Actually, he needed to let the country know which way he was going.
So I think we could guess why and which way he would have voted, but I don't know, maybe it's just Tory infighting.
Moral cowardice, Kevin?
No, yeah, it's certainly cowardly.
It shows he's weak and he's left the heavy lifting to others.
And I don't think that's leadership.
A strong leader is from the front.
What's he scared of, Esther?
He's throwing a line in the sand.
I think he's scared of saying that, you know, Boris, the whole Boris faction has now been marginalised and the Tories need to accept that.
But he doesn't want to do that because Boris still has a pool with a significant portion of the Conservative legislation.
There's a whiff of Trump about all this, right?
It's the same thing in America, where senior Republicans are loath to criticize him too much, just in case he comes back.
That's not a basis for integrity or political courage, is it?
No, it's not.
It's the opposite, in fact.
Yeah, and I think Sunak will pay a price for it.
I want to play a bit of this video.
This is these young Tories on the lash in the middle of the lockdown in December 2020, which really says it was the first video we've seen.
We've seen some still pictures that don't really tell the whole story.
This is indisputably a party, and they're all pretty drunk.
So it's been going on for quite some time.
Let's take a look.
And so it goes on.
Rosanna, I mean, the kick in my teeth for the public is you actually hear them say at one stage, let's not stream this because we're bending the rules.
They know what they're doing is against their own rules set by the Conservatives in the lockdown.
It was called mingle and jingle, for Christ's sake.
I mean, the way that the government were telling people to stay in their homes and not associate with other people and not mingle is absolutely galling.
I showed it to friends and family over the weekend.
So, what do you think?
And somebody said, I was having heart palpitations at about this time.
My mum actually said that about going to collect my sister from London and saying, you know, you weren't sure if you were abiding by the rules or not.
And then you watched that video, the way they're behaving, these people who know better, and like you said, they knew they should.
I think I have a bigger issue with this.
And it's not just the, you know, obviously blatant hypocrisy.
It's what information were they privy to when they were telling the public that we should be terrified of COVID because it could, you know, it could kill us, we could lose our lives, but they weren't terrified enough to be doing that.
It'll make all those who've been sceptical about the veracity of the public statements from the government believe that they were entitled to feel sceptical.
Because if it was that dangerous, we all had to be locked down.
Why were they able to do this?
You do.
Knowing it was that dangerous.
You do.
You alienate all of those people and then you alienate all those who followed the rules and couldn't go to funerals, had to see loved ones through windows instead of visit them.
Yeah, who'll forget that?
I mean, that's the image.
That party was in Goncode of the HQ.
Yeah.
That's where it was.
It was in Conservative HQ.
The guy with the jumper, the dodgy jumper, he works in parliament for a Tory minister.
The woman in red is on the campaign of a Tory hopeful for London Mayor.
They should all lose their jobs.
The two who are given honours in Johnson's dishonourable list, one, you would see him in dodgy.
He shouldn't go.
I don't think losing their jobs would do anything.
These are dishonourable people being honoured by a dishonoured ex-prime minister.
I mean, Keir Starmer has said he doesn't want to have a resignation on this.
I agree with him.
Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, Labour former prime ministers, they didn't have them.
Look, it should be scrapped.
It's cronyism.
It's kind of gongs for your mates and your chums who will do anything for you.
It has no place in a model.
No, it doesn't.
Okay, let's turn to two people that I think have no place in modern society.
Harry and Megan, who've been called by the Spotify executive producer Bill Simmons on his own podcast.
This is after Megan's brilliant podcast was so tragically unceremoniously cancelled.
He described them as lazy effing grifters and then went on to spray gun them a bit more.
I mean, it's got a point, isn't he?
They got 20 million apparently for 12 hours of or 12 shows of half an hour each.
Rosanna.
12 shows of half an hour each.
Any defense here for these two grandson?
And you know, I do come in swinging to defend Megan and Harry sometimes because I feel they're in my age back and I should.
But this time, you've got not an impartial voice, but somebody who did business with them saying you should hear some of the stuff I heard from Harry.
Now, he was talking, particularly the Spotify executive, about the Zoom call he had with Harry to plan these podcast episodes.
And he said, I want to get drunk sometime and tell people.
I mean, how bad must have been.
How bad, my honestly.
Kevin, I know you're not a massive fan of the Royals anyway, but this is the problem with this, isn't it?
If they're going to do what they're doing and they're just basically pocketing the cash and not delivering, and all they've really got that's interesting is trashing their families, right?
Or trashing the media.
It's one of the two.
And that shtick's kind of run its course.
It has, Larry.
The book spare was incredibly successful.
The Netflix series was.
Of course, because they're trashing their families.
But I think they're running out of steam.
And look, and I've tried to defend them in the past because I don't think they ought to.
Have you run out of steam too?
Well, I think there's no point if you're getting somebody at Spotify saying they're grifters.
Alleging she didn't even do some of the interviews.
Well, that's on Casso.
I read that.
I read that today.
It's not been confirmed, but there's a podcast website which is suggesting that various staffers who worked on it said that she didn't even do all the interviews.
Yeah, I think she's not.
Apparently, she's not going to get the full payment of the contract.
But look, at the end of the day, the Sussex has overestimated their brand, and so did other businesses.
They thought they left the Royal Family, they have all this attention, they're big business, but that didn't take them very far.
And I think, you know, the Sussexes are now re-rethinking.
Well, the money.
I always said the money for them was in trashing their families, right?
You can only play the victim of the media card so far before people find it ridiculous given the way they're using the media at the same time.
But the trashing of the family thing, it's a double-edged sword.
Yeah, of course you make millions if you're a member of the royal family trashing the royals.
Of course you do.
But then what?
You've lost your family.
Because they're very unlikable.
You've lost your families.
And there's also, once you've done it about five times, people get bored with it.
The shock value wears off.
That's what we're fighting with.
The realities are not very likable.
So after the trashing of the families, they're not really people you want to hang out with in a pub.
But isn't the animal?
I definitely won't be hanging out with you in the pub.
Isn't the culprit, though, not really them, but the corporations that showered them were cash.
Well, yeah, because they thought their brand would outlast that, but it didn't because there's no substance there.
They're just not like that.
Who's daft?
The people who don't put the money or the people who gave them it.
Yeah, I agree.
Let's move to Wix, Rosanna.
The Wix chief operating officer, Fraser Longdon, says trans voices must be amplified in business.
He said at an event organized by Pink News on Trans Rights, anyone who disagrees with him are bigots who are not welcome in the stores.
It's fascinating, this, because obviously we're in Pride Month.
And obviously, this is a company that's trying to show its alliance with the Pride kind of community.
And I can get that.
Perhaps got a little carried away on this front.
But I just find it fascinating that this is a DIY store that is basically playing morality police and saying we're going to police who comes in and out the store based on their business.
Why haven't they learned?
Kevin, why haven't they learned from America where you've seen this now blow up massively with Target, with Budweiser, with all these things, all these companies that are trying to go ultra-woke and their fan base just don't want to hear it, fans?
Yeah, if you have a DIY store and you're slagging off your customers, you must have a screw loose because it's only a very good thing.
But I think he was trying to be a little more subtle than he's come across.
And I think he was really talking about he said most people are kind.
They're a little confused, a little ignorant, but they're mostly kind.
I think that's right.
I think there are a few people who are hardline bigots on this issue.
And there are lots of serious issues to discuss, including women's space.
I don't want a man's space.
Citizen Responsibility vs Bigotry 00:09:38
I don't realize I'm there.
But women are.
But you know.
Esther, we used to joke, you know, go won't go broke.
That is actually happening now.
Well, exactly.
That's why my message is companies, be careful, because in all your virtue signaling, actually, companies are losing billions.
Business is a numbers game, right?
It's really, and I hate to be so crude about it.
It's not worth pandering to the 10 trans people in the UK for some extra business.
It's not worth it.
Yeah, but if you show some respect, I think that's what he was really about, wasn't he?
Both as employees and people coming in.
But does that have a place in business?
In the summer of 2020, I was getting emails from ice cream brands.
And I'm like, your ice cream, why are you sending me emails?
I just don't want to hear any of it.
Exactly.
And I just want to jump into some updated breaking news.
This is this extraordinary story that there was a submarine that went down to see the wreck of the Titanic.
And it was 12,500 feet below the Atlantic Ocean.
And on board was a British billionaire called Hamish Harding, who runs a big Avave Asian company.
This submarine has disappeared in completely mysterious circumstances.
Everyone is trying to find it, but they only had 96 hours of oxygen.
It's down to under 70 now.
And there's this frantic race now to try and find this submarine.
But there is a lot of fear that they won't be able to.
It's just too deep.
It's too dark.
And they'll be very lucky if they find them.
But obviously, we wish that rescue operation all the very best we can.
That's the wreckage there.
And it's a desperate situation for those who are on board.
But how eerie that you have on that particular submarine trip down to see a wreck that infamous and you just disappear.
Quite extraordinary.
Breaking news story there.
Well, thank you, Pac.
Good to see you.
And since the next, could a Democrat topple President Biden?
Well, one of the hopefuls, Marianne Williamson, is here in my studio to tell me why, yes, she thinks that they can't.
Welcome back to Piers Morgan Uncensor.
Well, Marianne Williamson is a best-selling author, a celebrity spiritualist, a confidant of Oprah Winfrey.
And she has her way.
She'll also be America's first female president with many Democrats warning that Joe Biden is simply too old to run again.
She wants to outflank him from the left, the more youthful left, you might think, and harness love to defeat Donald Trump.
And I'm delighted to see you're here in London and in my studio.
Great to see you.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for having me.
I want to play you a clip.
This is President Biden last week ending a speech about gun violence by completely randomly saying this.
It's the least consequential part of this whole meeting for you, I promise.
All right.
God save the queen, man.
Okay, well, two things.
The Queen died 10 months ago.
She's not our queen.
Our monarch, yes, not your queen.
And our queen died 10 months ago.
This is the latest thing involving President Biden, where he just says stuff which makes no sense.
Actually, it's pretty inappropriate.
to some people quite offensive.
He seems to have forgotten our queen died last year.
And it goes to his mental capability.
It's a big issue.
I mean, he can't be ignored, I don't think.
How do you feel about this?
You know, I think it's for the individual voter to decide.
It gets personal, and I don't want to be personal about this.
I'm running against the president on issues.
There are many people in his camp who would argue, yes, he makes gaffes like this, but when it comes to his decision-making on issues, he's just fine.
Every individual has to decide on that, and I think it's kind of cheap for me to go there.
I mean, it happens a lot.
It happens a lot.
Obviously, I wouldn't be running if I didn't think I'd make a better president.
Right.
I want to talk about a couple of issues with you, which are in the news, which you have quite strong views about.
One, I want to play you a clip.
This is the British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, who was heard on a leaked video talking about the big trans debate at the moment.
You may have noticed Ed Davey has been very busy.
Like me, you were probably seeing that he was busy trying to convince everybody that women clearly had penises.
And I was reflecting, you all know, I am a big fan of everybody studying math to AT.
But it turns out that we need to focus on biology to AT.
So this has become a big thing, right?
Along with the question, what is a woman?
There's now a big debate where British political leaders have been asked about whether a woman can have a penis and they've given varying answers.
The British Prime Minister says no.
The Labour leader says 99% of women do not.
And the Liberal Democrat leader, who he was referencing there, says clearly women can have penises.
On the face of it, this might seem a strange debate to be having, but what are the answers?
I mean, you're a presidential candidate.
Well, in the United States, I think we are obviously going through a cultural transformation.
People are getting more comfortable with the notion of gender fluidity, non-binary sexuality.
For me, it's an issue of freedom.
People get to be whoever they want to be, do whatever they want to do, if it doesn't hurt anyone else.
To me, we have to follow a North Star in our society.
That North Star is the idea that all people are created equal.
If you talk to me about a trans-American, the part that matters to me is the word American.
And so...
But what is a woman to you?
Listen, it's whatever at this point in somebody's culture.
In American culture, certainly, kind of whatever anyone says that it is.
I know I would.
It can't be this.
Yes, it absolutely can.
If people don't...
You say until it hurts people, but if anyone can put their hand up and say they're a woman, we have a situation we had recently where the leader of the Scottish of Scotland, Nicholas Sturgeon of the Scottish National Party, she had to resign after putting a biological male rapist into a woman's prison.
So there is obviously damage there from self-identity, isn't there?
Well, certainly, yeah, but I think the issue there was rapists, not the issue of the sexuality.
What is the fact that she felt that this male rapist who identified as a woman at his trial simply to get into a woman's prison?
That's wrong, right?
Well, yes, but then that's, once you're talking about something like rape, then obviously it becomes relevant.
It's not relevant.
What about sport?
Well, on sports, I do think we need to protect girls who were born as girls if they are in a situation where somebody obviously because of the size of their muscles and of their body gives them an idea.
But that's all biological names.
Well, yes, that's sort of my point.
So you would stop, well, hang on, just to clarify that, you would stop biological males competing against biological females.
Unless it can be proven.
There are some situations where somebody, let's say, they were born as a man, but they're a small man, right?
And it can be proven through hormone testing, through muscle testing, and so forth, that there is no biological advantage.
But, you know, the other day I spoke at Cambridge University, and I noticed when I went into the area where the bathrooms were that it said, use whatever bathroom you're more comfortable with.
And I thought, oh, my God, it could be that easy.
So I think everybody needs to lighten up on this issue.
Well, it's fighting.
It's hard to lighten up if you are, say, a female Olympic athlete and you're losing out on your place.
Well, that's...
Because a biological male who's six foot three inches and built like an outhouse decides to take your slot by saying, hey, I'm a woman, which goes back to your initial thing that you should all be what you want to be.
Well, sure.
I want to be, you know, I want to be a movie star, but I'm not.
There's a reality check.
If you're talking about specific instances, such as sports, such as where somebody goes in prison, et cetera, then obviously these become issues that have to be deciding points.
But there is another world out there, which it's not hurting anybody.
It just has to do with somebody's desire to identify a certain way, the area where we need to culturally open our minds to the idea of fluidity in gender and so forth.
And both can be true at the same time.
Well, I'm not sure it can, because I don't think you can have limitless self-identity without it infringing particularly on women's rights to equality and fairness.
That's the problem with it.
And that's why it sounds great to say, of course, you can, but then you end up with that ridiculous woman, Rachel Dollarzel, who started to identify as black.
Well, if you have limitless self-identity, why can't you?
You know, I think that somehow we have to find that balance in ourselves as well as ourselves.
As a lawmaker who wants to be the first female president of the United States, what's the balance?
Because you either allow it or you don't.
No, I disagree with you.
As president, I think my responsibility is to the notion of all people created equal.
I, as president, quite the opposite of what you just said.
As president, hey, I want the whole notion of my presidency would be, please be who you want to be, do what you want to do, spread your wings and soar.
If you get to the point where you're infringing on the rights of other people, you're going to have a hard time.
How would you feel if a man decided to, a male politician, decided to suddenly identify as female and became the first woman president of the United States?
I'd be like, damn, but that wouldn't mean that wouldn't be.
You wouldn't just be damned.
You'd be like, what?
I don't think.
You'd be horrified.
But that wouldn't.
That doesn't mean I think it would be illegal or that it's just.
I didn't say it'd be illegal.
That's the whole point.
The whole point, madam would-be president, is it's perfectly legal.
Roman Financial Injuries Persist 00:02:33
I think, well, that's my point.
It's just wrong.
I don't even think it's wrong.
I think we'd all down a few glasses of wine that night.
We wouldn't be real happy about it.
Usain Bolt wants to run as a woman in the Olympic 100 meters.
You're going to allow it?
No, I believe that this thing with sports, we must protect those who, you know, when you see these girls who were born as girls and they have worked so hard, you know, obviously, and I think most people see that.
Quickly about reparations.
Yes.
We've had lots of debates on the show about this whole issue.
I have to admit, I come from a position.
I don't see why people today should be compensated for sins against their ancestors, some cases, centuries ago.
Explain to me why I'm wrong.
Because it's not just about you.
It's about the responsibility that you have as a citizen to the fate of your country.
And whether you are an individual or a nation, you're not going to have the future you want if you don't clean up the past.
So should I, okay, but on that then, should I be claiming money back as someone in Britain from the Italians for what the Romans did, from the Normans for what they did, from the Vikings, for their forebears?
Now, should I be claiming reparations from all of them?
And if not, what's the difference?
I'll tell you what the difference is.
There is no way that a modern Brit is being economically disadvantaged by something that the Vikings did.
Well, I think it's been a long, long time.
I don't know.
There might be people in the middle of Britain who are still suffering the appalling financial injury of what the Romans did to their families.
Let me answer your question.
It is very obvious that there has been intergenerational hardship financially.
The gap between blacks and whites that is so egregious in America today is a legacy not only of slavery, not only 250, almost 250 years of slavery, but also of almost 100 years since then of institutionalized suppression of black people.
This is 300 people.
But at what point do we stop feeling guilty about the past?
After we've paid our debt.
Or paying for the past.
There's a difference between...
But Mariana, here's my point.
It never stops.
Once you uncaque that bottle, you end up never stopping.
Indita, let me talk.
There's a difference between blame and responsibility.
I don't feel I need to feel guilty.
My parents came from Russia and Poland, my grandparents.
So it's not about my grandparents.
It's not about my feeling guilty.
It is about my feeling responsible for the well-being of my nation.
Germany paid over $89 billion to Jewish organizations after World War II.
Free Speech During Pandemics 00:05:00
It's true.
And I think that that financial remuneration has had a lot to do with not only the financial, but even more importantly, the psychological and emotional healing between Germany and the Jews of Europe.
And this is a healing that we have not had.
That war was over in 1945.
Ours was over in 1865, and we still take this topic and we pass it generationally.
You make a good point.
I need a one-word answer to this question to wrap things, okay?
Should Donald Trump, if he gets convicted of a federal crime and actually goes to prison, the Constitution says he can still be president of the United States.
Should he be allowed to be?
It's not about the law is the law.
Would it be disappointing?
Would it be awful for the country?
Yes, but if it's legal, it's legal.
Marianne, listen, great to see you.
Thank you so much.
Best about your campaign.
Great to have you in London.
And so next, claims of COVID leaked from a lab in Wuhan used to be heavily censored as a conspiracy theory.
Now it's what's mainstream thinking.
Author Michael Schellenberger says he has proof of a COVID cover-up and joins me next.
Talk about the theory that COVID originated in a Wuhan lab was once considered dangerous disinformation worthy of a ban from every mainstream website.
It's even characterized as racist.
Now the Sunday Times has evidence that Wuhan scientists were combining deadly coronaviruses just as the pandemic began.
Many Western governments now believe it's the most likely origin of the pandemic.
So what does all this tell us about censorship and about COVID?
Well, I've got the perfect person to ask.
It's Michael Schellenberger, who's teaming up with Russell Brand over here for the Censorship Industrial Complex Exposed Event in Westminster on Thursday.
Michael, great to see you, especially here in London.
COVID disinformation, the kind of agreed narratives that came out about COVID have slowly been chipped away at, suggesting that the scientists weren't always right after all.
And that actually querying science was probably a civic duty rather than something worthy of being expelled.
Well, it's even worse than that.
We know that in late January, Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins, the NIH heads in the United States, their own advisors, when they first looked at this, they said, looks like it probably came from a lab, not from nature.
Several days later, they then reversed their position.
They got new grant funding later, very suspicious set of activities.
Our sources tell us that we now know who the first three COVID patients or patients zero were, and they were the three people that were working on this manipulation of SARS-like coronavirus.
But it always seemed utterly absurd to me that you would discount a theory that you have a wet market here, but right next to it is the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is testing coronaviruses.
I mean, why wouldn't you at least consider it?
Well, not only that, but we know that there'd been this long history of lab leaks before then.
There had been a huge controversy.
There was a Cambridge working group that recommended a ban on gain of function research.
Obama did ban it in 2014, and then Fauci and his colleagues snuck it over into China under everybody's noses as though this was somehow their prerogative to do it.
The science, like I say, evolved a lot.
They would say evolved.
Others would say changed.
Some would say you turned.
I can remember being quite censorious myself about people who've not had the vaccine when it was believed, because the scientists said so, that you couldn't transmit COVID if you had the vaccine.
But once it was established, it made no difference.
Actually, I felt quite bad about being so censorious.
What does this tell us?
What does the COVID pandemic tell us, particularly in a social media era?
Well, I think the first thing is that in an emergency, you want free speech.
There's this idea that in an emergency that somehow we should set aside our normal free speech rules, but it shows the exact opposite.
Reality is changing.
The virus mutated and changed, and the vaccine wasn't as effective as we thought it would be.
That's particularly the kind of environment where you'd want all this open debate.
Free speech is something that you don't just suspend during emergencies.
You need it to get the facts out, to deal with the changing environment.
This idea that somehow the scientists declare the truth from on high and give it to the people.
That's a religious view, not a scientific view.
Scientific views are supposed to be debated and contested publicly.
The issue with it, I guess they would say, is, look, if you dissuade people from having a vaccine, which probably saved a lot of lives, I believe it did.
Others can have their view.
But if you dissuade people through that debate, you may end up killing people.
And that was the justification for a lot of censorship.
You remember, they were demanding, the censorship industrial complex was demanding the censorship of often true stories of vaccine side effects.
Remember, we fought for decades, liberals and progressives in the United States, to require the drug companies to say what the side effects of their drugs were in their television advertisements.
Here they were demanding that those side effects be censored when ordinary people were sharing them on.
Global Attack on Free Speech 00:00:57
So what's the key lesson we should take away from this?
I mean, the first lesson is that for us in the United States, we have this thing, the First Amendment.
It's a sacred part of our constitution, of our Constitution.
We think that that should be something that other countries should be embracing more strongly.
We shouldn't be defending ourselves from other countries trying to impose censorship on us.
We're in the midst of a global attack on free speech.
It's everywhere.
UK, Ireland, EU, Brazil, Canada, the United States.
We need to push back against that.
We need a global movement that's as powerful.
Free speech is not sort of a nice to have.
It's a need to have for a liberal democracy.
It's actually the bedrock of any proper democracy.
Without free speech, you are not a democracy.
Michael, great to see you.
Thanks for having me.
Good luck with your speech with Russell.
Great character.
Says a lot of interesting things, Russell.
I want him on the show, I should say.
Put a good word in, will he?
Absolutely.
Great to see you.
Hanker Schellenberger.
That's it from me.
Whatever you're up to.
Keep it uncensored, especially your speech.
Good night.
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