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July 13, 2023 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
45:54
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Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Press Coverage and Private Lives 00:14:36
Hugh Edwards may not have broken the law as things stand, but he faces mounting claims, not least from the BBC itself, that he may have abused his powerful position.
Do the public have a right to know about his private conduct?
We'll debate that.
Also tonight, one of the biggest stars in American politics, as you've never seen him before, Governor Chris Christie says he can beat Donald Trump, including with his fists.
Boris Johnson says he can't turn over his text messages to the UK's COVID inquiry because he's forgotten his password.
Has he tried the following?
B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T.
That might just work.
Live from New York, this is Piers Morgan Uncensored.
Good evening from New York and welcome to Piers Morgan Uncensored.
There are two things at the heart of the Hugh Edwards scandal that we shouldn't forget.
One is the well-being of a married father of five who's clearly in a desperate personal state now.
He's in hospital with what his wife has described as serious mental health problems.
Of course, we should be concerned about him and his welfare.
And the second are the mounting claims of a potential serious abuse of power by Hugh Edwards, an influential television star paid handsomely by the BBC license fee, whose alleged victims matter too.
Both these things can be right at the same time.
But if you believe Hugh Edwards' private life is no business of the press, you cannot, with a straight face, use it as an opportunity to eviscerate the press.
But the same people occupying what they believe is the high moral ground are the ones turning the scandal into a political football.
Twitter's ablaze with moralising takedowns of the media.
Well-known presenters are weighing in too.
Here's former BBC presenter John Sopal.
I think there are a number of people in the tabloid press, and dare I say it in BBC News, who need to give themselves a good, hard look in the mirror over the coverage, over the alacrity with which they have gone into someone's private life, and it hasn't been clear what the issue is.
Now, I understand emotions are running high, particularly for people who may have worked at the BBC for a long time with Hugh Edwards.
But let's get some facts straight.
On Saturday, the Sun reported claims by concerned parents that an unnamed BBC presenter, they didn't name him, had paid £35,000 to a vulnerable young person with a history of drug use for sexual photographs.
20 years ago, any newspaper would have splashed the story, probably with the pictures, gorging on every tawdry detail.
But the Sun didn't do that, nor did they reveal the gender of the alleged victim.
They didn't reveal the name of the presenter.
They didn't say that a crime had been broken.
They simply reported what were serious claims about a major BBC star, which the BBC itself had ignored for seven weeks after the parents had gone to them first.
And they did it, in my opinion, as a former tabloid editor myself, with extreme care and caution.
The Sun has, they say, a dossier of further claims, which has decided not to report and will be handing to the BBC.
But still, there's this narrative, too.
It does feed into a concerted political campaign in this country against the BBC.
And it's encouraged by the Murdoch newspapers, by the Telegraph group and the mail group.
They want to see effectively, well, certainly Rupert Murdoch does because he's talked about it.
He wants to see the end of the BBC.
They want to see it destroyed.
Well, hang on a second.
This is about a newspaper plot to bring down the BBC.
How do you explain what's happened since the story broke?
This story has led every newspaper and every TV and radio news bullet in Britain all week.
It's been big news over here in the United States.
They've revealed more details here, actually, than the British public have been told.
Further claims have been reported, not least by the BBC itself, which has been investigating Hugh Edwards.
It has been reported today, before the Sun published what they published last Saturday.
BBC News reported claims on Tuesday that a person in their 20s was contacted by the presenter on a dating app and then sent menacing text messages when he refused to meet.
The Sun then reported claims from two more people alleging Edwards may have broken lockdown rules to see a 23-year-old and sent direct messages to a teenager on Instagram.
Well, last night the BBC Newsnight reported that Edwards sent suggestive and inappropriate messages to junior colleagues and today we've learned that BBC journalists, as I say, have begun work on an expose about Hugh Edwards reportedly before the Sun newspaper was ever involved.
So it's very convenient to brand this a tabloid conspiracy, but that is clearly, demonstrably untrue.
At the heart of this is a very sad story about an alleged abuse of power by an influential public figure.
It's grubby, it's shocking, and for those who know Hugh Edwards, and I'm one of them, it's painful.
You don't want to think this about somebody.
Also important to say he's not yet responded to all these allegations, but nor has he denied any of them.
The public, I would say, have a right to know.
And blaming the Sun newspaper for reporting this originally when it's the BBC which has been driving most of the revelations in the last few days, I think is extremely disingenuous.
Well joining me now is former Conservative MP Louise Mensch, talk to V presenter Tricia Goddard, Times radio host Adam Bolton and political journalist Ava Santina.
All right let me start with Ava Santina because I've been reading some of your tweets about this.
You clearly don't think it's in the public interest.
Why?
Because it's his private life.
I mean it's quite clear now there hasn't been any criminality.
The Met Police have ruled it out so I've got no interest in knowing who he's been DMing or messaging late at night.
I mean Piers I could frighten you with how many people come into my DMs.
It really upsets my partner I have to say.
But it's not illegal and they are totally allowed to do that.
And why should anyone know who's in my inbox and why should I know who's in his?
Philip Schofield was a scandal that ran for weeks and weeks and weeks.
The BBC did huge amounts of coverage of this, including on the very news bulletins that Hugh Edwards presented.
What really is the difference?
There was no criminality there that's been established.
What's the difference?
We had allegations about Philip Schofield being inappropriate in the workplace by having what was a consensual relationship with a younger employee.
Hugh Edwards has now been accused not by the Sun but by the BBC itself of inappropriate contact with junior BBC employees.
What's the difference?
I think it's fair to say that the BBC might have gone overboard with their coverage over the weekend and that is probably because they are in the wake of Jimmy Savile and they're damned if they do and damned if they don't.
They have to report it properly and thoroughly and that's what they attempted to do.
The difference would be, I mean, not to get into it too hard, you know, too thoroughly, but probably that it's within the workplace and you know influence and power structures in a workplace are very different to messaging people on social media sites.
They just are.
Okay, Adam Bolton, I've been struck by the venom against the sun here, but I saw you on Newsnight last night putting up a pretty good defence of the journalism here.
I share your view.
I don't see that there's been any journalistic malpractice by the Sun.
In fact, if anything, they showed remarkable restraint.
Well, yeah, and we do have to remember that there are laws that in this country since 2018 and actually the BBC broadcasting live pictures of Cliff Richards' home being searched by police on what turned out to be completely untrue suspicions.
We've been told that there is an assumption of the right of privacy in individuals involved in criminal cases.
But I think where Ava is wrong is simply that the bar in this has never been criminal behaviour.
The Sun never actually, in its initial story, never said it was about criminal behaviour.
Let's be quite clear about it.
It's icky behaviour and it is behaviour which appears to be related to an older, richer, powerful man.
imposing themselves and in some cases threatening younger vulnerable people because the original young person involved is said to be a drug addict by his parents.
So his or her parents, I should say.
We don't even know that detail and again that can't be revealed.
So, you know, the point is, if you had behaved like this and it was proven, it hasn't yet been proven in Hughes' case, I suspect that you would be sacked.
Or if I had done when I was an anchor, I would suspect I'd been sacked.
Or most people in most workplaces, if they were behaving like this.
And when you are in a position, as Hugh is, as you are, as I are, in holding people to account of endlessly doing stories, not just about celebrities, but about politicians and others, it is frankly a bit rich and pompous for people like John Sopal or indeed John Simpson, both of whom happen to be friends of mine, to suddenly turn this into an institutional crisis.
It's not an institutional crisis.
And the final point I'd make is that the Director General of the BBC, Tim Davey, said from the beginning that he accepts this is a story of public interest.
That is why he has licensed or not interfered in the news operation, actually looking into it.
And we've now got the situation where the Sun and the Times and the BBC are working together.
Well, you know, John Simpson, that's not much sign to me of a conspiracy against the BBC by Rupert Murdoch.
No, I completely agree.
I think it's ludicrous to say that.
Tricia, this is a complicated story.
You've spent most of your life dealing with the complexity of human life and human frailties and so on.
On one level, of course, I know Hugh Edwards a bit.
I met him at a few functions and things.
He's always been perfectly decent to me and people have spoken very highly about him.
But that doesn't mean that you can just ignore these allegations if they all turn out to be true because there's a whole slew of them now, many of them being reported by the BBC themselves.
But let's wind it all the way back when the Sun reports that the family first went to the BBC because that's where I think things went wrong.
Where is HR in all of this?
Where is somebody not pulling him aside and saying, you've got to stop this right now?
Maybe he would have got help and the young person in question had got help.
Because remember, they only went to the Sun because they were desperate for something to do.
Let me ask you this.
On that point, and Adam, I think, touched on this.
Yeah.
If this was any other presenter, I mean, this was Phillips.
Let's just go back and rewind Philip Schofield.
If it turned out that Philip Schofield had paid £35,000 to a young man, because we knew by then he'd come out as gay, would he have survived it this morning?
I very much doubt it.
I suspect ITV would have fired him purely for that revelation.
So it wouldn't.
It wouldn't need to, as Adam says, it wouldn't need to pass the bar of criminality to potentially be a sackable offence and therefore a scandal.
But the reason it's become such a massive scandal is because the BBC didn't act all of the time.
I agree.
Before they had to do that.
Because if they had that quietly.
And if the family, when they went to the BBC, if the BBC had made more effort than just sending them a bog standard email and trying one phone call but didn't get through, if they had done that and done their job diligently and properly, this could have all been handled by the BBC and they might well have ended up firing Hugh Edwards.
And that might have been how the world found out about this.
Exactly, but they didn't do, when they talk about care and a duty of care, I mean, I'm sorry, a lot of HR departments, to me, seem to be attack dogs employed by their corporations.
It's not about really caring about the people who come and say, look, we're desperate because our child is using drugs for money for this man.
Where is your duty of care then?
It's not about stifle it, quieten it down.
Also, where is common sense here, Louise?
While this was going on, May the 19th, the parents go to the BBC and tell them all this, exactly what they ended up telling the son.
The Philip Schofield scandal is raging on the front page of every paper.
The BBC are reporting on it morning, noon and night.
The idea that someone then goes to the BBC and says, by the way, we have these concerns about your main news presenter about what's happening to our young child who was then 20, but had been 17.
The idea that doesn't ring massive alarm bells is to me absolutely extraordinary.
You've really got to feel for the parents, haven't you?
They physically went down to the BBC.
I don't know if people understand this.
They went to the building.
Yeah.
Probably thought that's the only way that they could get notice and they physically asked for help.
And perhaps they thought when they were watching Hugh Edwards and others cover Philip Schofield on the news at that time, that people would therefore pay attention to what they had to say and help them.
They might have expected that they could reasonably get a bit of help and they got absolutely nothing.
It makes me sick, frankly, to hear the presenting chattering classes talk about all these various different young people as though they were nothing, as though they didn't matter.
As though this is Hugh Edwards' private life and there's nobody else involved whatsoever because my mate Hugh should be left.
But also trying to frame it, as Adam was saying, trying to frame it as some kind of tabloid scam fueled by Rupert Murdoch's hatred of the BBC seems a pretty big reach given it's the BBC, it turns out today, were already investigating allegations about Hugh Edwards.
Newsnight, Victoria Derbyshire apparently was already doing it and had been approaching people.
She then reported some of these last night, new allegations.
Bear in mind, the son has said we won't be doing any more investigating.
Didn't she accidentally drop his name?
Well, I think that was a genuine error, but I think...
But what I think is more pertinent is that she was clearly already investigating allegations that had nothing to do with this.
So you put it all together, and I just don't see how you position all this as something the son has done heinously wrong.
I think Victoria Newton, the editor of The Sun and her journalists, are to be congratulated.
And I think all these Murdoch haters should choke on it, quite frankly.
I mean, I hate to tell you guys, but the story was true.
Confusion Over Allegations 00:03:52
It was absolutely true.
And it wasn't just this one young person.
There were all kinds of other victims or accusers, if you like, inside and outside of the workplace.
How many people need to come forward before you guys admit that the Murdoch press got it right and the BBC did nothing?
I mean, I do, I've got to say, I mean, Adam, just to come back to you for a moment, I do think it's incumbent now on Hugh Edwards when he's well enough.
And I don't for a moment.
He's had been very open before about suffering from depression.
According to his wife, who must be herself going through a hellish time with their kids at the moment, and your heart goes out to them, of course it does.
But when he is well enough to talk about this, as a senior newsman himself, I think it will be incumbent on him to properly address all these allegations.
Well, I suspect he probably will.
And I would just make one note that in that very, very brave and dignified statement by his wife, which is the only thing we've heard from his side in all of this, not only was there no explicit denial of any of the allegations, there was not a complaint, actually, about the experience which he's going through.
And I think that's because Vicky and Hugh are both experienced journalists.
They know that this is how journalism works when people are held to account.
And again, I'm not saying it's necessarily true, but I mean, those two things do stand for themselves.
And as far as the BBC and not picking up on this, I think they fell asleep on it.
The BBC is a massive institution.
I don't think there's conspiracy.
I think, frankly, it was fed in.
You know, they get a lot of complaints.
Nine out of ten, you can pretty much ignore and they come to nothing.
On this one, unfortunately for them, as you say, at a time when people were talking about Philip Schofield and ITV, it kind of fell through the cracks.
And Tim Davey almost really isn't denying that.
And on top of that, two police forces were pretty dozy as well.
Yeah, and of course the relevance.
I've got to go back and looked at it.
So, you know, what we are seeing is the fourth estate, collectively, but obviously starting with the sun, actually, you know, doing their job as the backstop in society.
Well, that's the point is that the family went to the sun in the end because they got no help from either the BBC or the police about this.
That's why they went to the sun in the first place.
Ava, has anything you've heard in this debate moved the needle for you and how you view this story?
Well, I can't forget.
I mean, Adam is correct to say that in the initial story, it didn't apply criminality, but over the weekend, there were many articles online that appeared and they used the word child.
And a lot of the public now believe that he was fraternising with a child and there's no evidence for that.
That is a totally separate allegation and totally different to what actually happened.
Well, hang on, hang on.
Just to be clear, I don't think it's been denied that this person was 17.
But it's not illegal, is it?
No, no, I'm not saying he broke the law.
What's really fascinating?
There's no evidence, but technically...
What's fascinating to me is that.
For example, Ava, for example, if any of these images had been passed when this person was 17, that would be illegal.
So we don't actually know the full story here yet.
I thought it was over 16.
No, 16 is the age of consent.
But in terms of the passing of sexually explicit images, you have to be 18.
That's why people drew an inference from the fact that their contact appears to started when this person was 17.
What we don't know is what happened in that first year when any exchange of explicit material would constitute a criminal act.
So that's where the confusion and the speculation may have arisen.
But look, it's a complicated story.
Hugh Edwards, you know, as I said at the start of this, he's in hospital.
He's suffering a mental health episode, his wife says, and your heart goes out to him on a human level and to his family.
Age Limits and Explicit Images 00:14:37
Of course it does.
But also, you cannot ignore in the way that some of those BBC journalists or ex-BBC journalists seem to be wanting to do, the welter of allegations now which are there, most of which have now come from the BBC.
And they have to be investigated as it would.
I saw, for example, Noel Clark, who was the guy who got cancelled for a load of allegations from women.
He didn't face any criminal charges in the end.
And he was tweeting, did anyone care about my mental health?
Well, they didn't.
I remember there was absolutely total unforgiving slaughter for him, cancellation of his entire career.
And you could argue, well, why is it one rule for him and another because you happen to be the face of BBC News?
There may be more to come, though.
Maybe more people out there who shouldn't be throwing stones at Glass.
I'm sure that may also be the case.
But we will see.
Ava, thank you very much.
Adam Bolton, great to see you.
Back on Uncensored.
Thank you.
Thank you, DeTricia.
Thank you, Louise.
Appreciate it.
Uncensored next.
Governor Chris Christie is on a mission to take down Donald Trump by whatever means necessary, including, he says, physically.
It's a remarkable, punchy interview from New York City, and he comes next.
Welcome back to Piers Morgan Uncensored.
You're looking at live pictures here from New York City.
That's the Empire State Building.
Governor Chris Christie is one of the biggest names in American politics, and he's on a mission to bring down Donald Trump and win the Republican nomination for the 2024 election.
It's fair to say he's been on a journey, though, when it comes to his old boss.
He is a different political phenomenon than anything we've ever seen in this country.
He's a very good executive, that he'll get his arms around it.
The thing that keeps moving this administration forward is the president and the president's charisma, the president's push.
I know Donald Trump.
I've known him for 14 years.
And Donald Trump is not a racist.
And there is no one who is better prepared to provide America with the strong leadership that it needs, both at home and around the world, than Donald Trump.
Well, it's fair to say that Governor Christie's changed his tune slightly since then.
Here's just a taste of what he told me.
Look, I think the rest of the world will look at us and think, why would you want someone of that awful character and that mediocre performance to be your president?
And he says he's prepared to get in the octagon ring and have a fight with Trump and says, quote, I'll bust his ass.
It's just quite an interview.
I spoke to Chris Christie a little earlier.
He didn't hold back on everything from Trump to his own family life and to Prince Harry, who he also had a bizarre encounter with and is now very scathing about.
It's a fascinating and punchy interview.
Governor, great to see you.
Good to be back.
How's it going?
How are you feeling about running for president?
I feel great.
You know, I've been in it for five weeks.
I feel really good.
I feel like what I'm saying to people is starting to break through in terms of what we're seeing in the polling.
You know, we're at 9% now in New Hampshire, only four points behind Governor DeSantis.
And for five weeks, that's pretty good.
So we're feeling good about the way it's going.
And I will tell you that I'm enjoying myself, and I think it comes through.
You've always struck me as a straight shooter.
You're a pugilist by nature.
Someone punches you, you punch them back.
Trump's like that.
You know that.
You were with him for a long time.
I was.
What was the tipping point for you to turn on Trump?
Election night 2020, Piers, because when he stood up at 2:30 in the morning behind the seal of the president in the east room of the White House and told the American people that the election had been stolen, when he had no evidence to prove that it was, to me, that's undercutting our democracy and people's belief in it.
And that is beneath the office that the people blessed him with.
And I think that, you know, no one likes to lose.
I've won and I've lost.
Winning's better.
And it makes you feel better.
But when you get in this game, you know that you can lose.
And you got to be a man about it, stand up and take your loss like a man and put the country first.
So that was the night, and I said it on ABC that night that I couldn't support what he was doing and I couldn't support him if he was going to continue to.
And when you saw the aftershock of that on January the 6th with the riots at the Capitol as a direct consequence of his refusal to accept what did you feel when you watched that sick to my stomach and quite frankly, astonished that that could happen in our country.
I expected that to see that in some other country with a less developed democracy.
Some people have sort of tried to play it down, but I remember watching that and thinking, I don't think I've ever seen anything like that in the United States.
I've never seen anything like it in the United States.
Where the actual embodiment, the physical embodiment of freedom and democracy was under attack by Americans, whipped into a frenzy by a president who simply could not accept that he'd lost a fair Democratic election.
I mean, he keeps talking about it being stolen, but as I keep saying to him, where's the evidence that it was stolen?
There isn't any evidence.
There isn't any.
And look, you could talk a lot of things about Donald Trump in terms of how he lies.
But let's just look at January 6th.
He stood in the ellipse that day, fired those people up, and said, let's march to the Capitol and our march with you.
Where the hell was he?
He sent those people on a mission to destroy the Capitol.
Do you think he meant for them to commit acts of violence?
I don't think he cared.
Right, which is as bad.
Yeah, I don't think he cared.
I think what he wanted to do was play as close to the edge of the envelope as he could.
He wanted to intimidate Mike Pence.
He wanted to intimidate the Congress and try to buy any delay he could to try to stay in office.
You know, he told me one time the White House was the most luxurious place he'd ever lived in in his life and he didn't want to leave.
Well, you know what?
If I go to the White House, I'm not going to care how luxurious it is.
I'm going to be honored that I'm in the same place where John Adams and Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln sat and we're going to try to do big things for this country.
He doesn't care about that.
He just wants to do big things for himself.
You've been a prosecutor.
When you see the evidence, obviously we've had the Stormy Daniels case, all right?
That may be relatively small potatoes by comparison to some of the others, but it was an indictment.
We've then had the documents issue at Mur-a-Lago, which seems altogether much more serious.
Then we've got maybe more indictments coming on what happened with the Georgia phone call.
And there may be more to follow after that as well around January the 6th.
He could end up with four different sets of indictments on criminal charges and yet still be able to run as president and in fact still be able to win as president.
And potentially, if he gets put into a prison cell, which is almost unthinkable, but it could technically happen, he could still be president from his prison cell.
Is that right that that can happen in your country?
No, it's not right for it to happen in our country.
But I'll tell you, our founders never thought that anybody would be such an egomaniac that when charged with crimes, they would still run.
You know, I remember everything that the media and a lot of people in America said when I was a young man about Richard Nixon.
But when Richard Nixon was confronted with the reality that he was going to put the country through an impeachment trial, he put the country first and he resigned.
Even though Nixon didn't think he should have resigned, but he did it for the good of the country.
Can anyone imagine Donald Trump even doing that for the good of the country?
And that's the problem.
I love the people who say, I know he's not a great guy, but I like his policies.
Well, the question is, if you like his policies, why would you ever hire him to get those policies implemented?
They would say back at you, all right, but you were with him for a long time knowing exactly what he's like.
I mean, I've known Trump a long time.
He hasn't really changed his character.
He's gotten worse.
He's always told whoppers over the years, right?
I don't think he's been the king of veracity for decades, right?
So to suddenly wake up and go, all right, he's a terrible liar.
I can't be with him anymore.
How do you defend yourself against the charge?
Well, you should have stood up against him much earlier.
Sure.
Because, you know, this reminds me of a story about one of your former prime ministers, Prime Minister Cameron.
I went over to visit in 2015, and he was getting ready to run free election.
And he was telling me it's only 48 days, the election season in Great Britain.
He said, how the hell do you guys do this for as long as you do it?
And explain your system to me.
And I said, well, David, I said the easiest way to describe it is in America, you don't necessarily get to vote for who you want to vote for.
You get to vote for who's left.
And in 2016, I ran against Donald Trump.
I lost.
Who was left was Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
I did not want Hillary Clinton to be president.
And I will tell you, as we sit here right now, Piers, I have no regrets of helping Donald Trump get elected in 2016 because I think Hillary Clinton would have been a monumentally worse president.
If he's the nominee this time around and beats you again to be nominee, would you vote for him?
Yeah, I've answered this one before.
No.
You wouldn't?
No.
What's the difference between the last time you're...
Undercutting of the democracy.
As I said, when you show you don't have respect for.
If you're, you would be more prepared for Biden to win again.
In that scenario, I I hope that neither one of them's the nominee, but I couldn't vote if they are the two nominees.
Well then the option is that you would help Biden win.
No no, I go on vacation.
So what would it say about America if Trump wins again?
Look I, I think the rest of the world will look at us and think, why would you want someone of that awful character and that mediocre performance to be your president?
And I think the rest of the world would question our votes.
But let's face it peers, there have been a lot of times.
We look at other countries too and we question the people that they've elected.
I mean, how many prime ministers have you guys had in the last like, oh my god, three years?
My country right, so?
So we all have questions about that.
But in the end, America's role is a little bit different, and we are the leader of democracy around the world.
We are the arsenal of democracy.
We are the shining light to people who look for us to be able to stand strong and defend liberty in the world, and we need somebody different than Donald Trump or Joe Biden to do that.
It's very interesting you raise that because i've been really struck by the fact the Republican Party in fact of all the candidates very split over this issue of Ukraine and how involved America should be.
Some of the candidates implacably opposed to any more involvement, if that want to remove any more money and and military hardware and so on.
Many others completely full-on behind Ukraine and supporting president Biden and giving them what they need.
Where do you sit with this?
I sit fully behind Ukraine.
We have to stand up against those kind of authoritarian aggressors.
And remember Vladimir Putin.
Donald Trump says he's a terrific guy and a great leader.
I don't know.
It doesn't look like that to me.
I stand behind Ukraine for that reason.
Second, it's a proxy war with China.
China is funding the Russians in this war.
They are coordinating with Iran to provide watching to see what happens with regard to potentially invading Taiwan.
That's right where I was going, Piers.
You know the Chinese are going to look at this and say, does America stand up for its friends?
Taiwan's a friend of America if we're not going to stand up for Ukraine.
Guess what?
President Xi, another guy who Donald Trump thinks is a great guy and handsome too.
Um, you know he, he thinks that of Xi Xi will be in Taiwan um, faster than you could say Jimmy Carter.
Um, if we don't stand up in Ukraine.
And so to me, they have deserved our support because of who they are, and we, in our own national interests, have to support Ukraine to send a very clear message to China, Iran and North Korea.
And so that's the next.
More from my encounter with governor Christie, including his reaction to Trump's attempts to fat shame him.
And what does a family man he thinks of prince Harry and king Charles' troubled relationship?
He has an interesting answer.
Stay with me for more from that extraordinary interview with the man who wants to be president.
Welcome back to Piers Morgan, uncensored uh.
Second part of my interview with governor Chris.
Christie used to work with Donald Trump, defended Donald Trump.
Now he's Trump's nemesis and, true to form.
The former president has taken it really well responding in kind by trying to fat shame him, and it was about our country and its future, and I wondered what our choice was going to be.
Were we going to be small or were we going to be big?
That was a meme which Donald Trump gleefully put out on social media.
So how far is Christie prepared to go in taking the fight quite literally to Donald Trump?
Let's find out if you and Trump got in the ring.
He loves his UFC and stuff like that, right?
If you got on the octagon, you and him, who'd win?
Come on, guy's 78 years old.
I'd kick his ass, I mean, we know that Elon Musk and Martin Zuckerberg are apparently going to get.
Yeah, I can't wait for that one.
Do you want to be on the car?
Did you see that picture of Zuckerberg?
Yeah.
Looking pretty buff.
It does.
If I were Elon, I'd be a little bit worried.
I mean, would you be prepared to be on the undercard?
You against Trump?
Look, I'll fight Donald Trump anywhere he wants in any arena he wants, whether it's on a debate stage or in the octagon.
He's mocked your weight, Trump.
Yeah, look at him.
Arnold Schwarzenegger.
I mean, for goodness sakes, come on.
I mean, look, you know what?
Here's the bottom line, Pierce.
You know, for the last 30 years, I've struggled with my weight like tens of millions of Americans struggle with their weight.
And there are times where I do well and there are times when I don't do very well.
And it's a struggle.
And for him to be such a child, an infant, and make those kind of remarks, especially, I guess, when he's staying up in Bedminster, New Jersey, there are no mirrors where he is because all he needs to do is look at himself.
And what he should do first, work on himself.
Then when he gets himself, because, you know, he wears those ties, you know, eight feet long.
Well, as long as eight feet long because he told me this, because they slenderize him.
Let me tell you, fail.
Not working.
Okay.
But here's the thing.
At least I've never pretended to be anything that I'm not.
I own my weaknesses.
I own my strengths.
And I'm transparent about it.
People can see it.
And when he says that stuff about me, to me, coming from him, it's a compliment.
Do you feel you were born to run?
Well, it depends on what kind of running you're talking about on our last talk.
For president.
For president.
Look, I think that for somebody.
Prince Harry's Troubled Path 00:03:37
There's a reason I'm asking you that specific question.
Well, of course.
Because the other most famous person come out of New Jersey is Briggson.
How many times have you seen him in concert?
Currently, 148.
When was the last time?
The last time.
He's on tour, right?
Yeah, he is.
The last time was in April at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey.
Have you ever met him?
Yes, a number of times.
Because there was a period when he was quite critical of you.
Well, when I endorsed Trump, he was not quite too happy with me.
Did that sever the relationship?
It cooled it.
It cooled it.
Are things back on track now?
You've been hammering Trump?
Things are getting better.
Things are getting better.
The New Jersey boys are back together.
That's right.
Because now you're saying the right stuff.
Well, I'm saying stuff he agrees with, and I think it's right.
Did you have that conversation privately with him?
Did he try and persuade you to say that?
No, no, no, no.
He more reacted to some of the stuff I was doing and commented to me privately about it.
What does he say?
I'm not going to tell you.
Give me a hint.
That's between me and the boss.
Prince Harry in 2012, when Hurricane Sandy, I was at CNN when Hurricane Sandy swept through Manhattan.
I remember the building CNN was in swaying.
It was scary stuff.
The power going out, the water.
It was mayhem.
Prince Harry famously visited your state.
He did your guest at the time, and you did a walkabout with him.
We did.
Things have sort of moved on for him since then.
What do you make of what's going on with Megan and Harry and their journey to freedom?
I've never met Megan, so it's hard for me.
And I try as someone who is a public figure to not judge too much based upon what I read or see.
So I don't have really any opinions on Megan.
I found Harry when I met him in 2012 to be a really kind-hearted young man, but also a pretty sad and confused one.
And I'll give you one example.
We were to exchange gifts when he got off the helicopter in New Jersey, and I had a fleece, like the fleece I was wearing during Hurricane Sandy.
I gave him a fleece that said Prince Harry on it.
He didn't give me a gift back.
And I thought, hmm, all right, well, he must have gotten the briefing wrong or whatever.
We later went back to the governor's beach house to have lunch together after the walkabout.
And he said, now, look, I have a gift for you.
He said, but I didn't want to give it in front of all those people.
And I will give it to you now, but only if you promise not to open it until I leave.
And I said, why?
And he said, because they make me give this, and it makes me very uncomfortable.
So I said, fine, Harry.
And he goes into his bag and it's this wrapped gift and he puts it on the table.
And I honored his request and didn't open it.
When we opened it afterwards, it was a framed picture, framed autographed picture of himself.
Seriously, I swear to you.
What did you do with it?
I gave it to my daughter who thought he was really cute.
So she kept the picture and she still has it.
It's interesting what's happened to them because the Spotify executive kind of summed up what many people think and called them effing little grifters.
Yeah.
Very unpopular in the UK now because they've basically trashed the royal family so ruthlessly.
What do you think of that?
I think it's awful.
You're a big family man.
I am.
I think it's awful.
I think if you have those kind of disputes with your father, with your brother, other members of your family, that that's fine.
Families fight, but they need to fight inside the family.
And I think when he decided to go public with all of that, and the only conclusion I can draw are two.
Family Feuds and Catharsis 00:05:17
One, that it was somehow cathartic for him.
And he's obviously a troubled young man.
And who could wonder about that because of his mother's passing at such a young age?
But secondly, it had to be to make money.
And I think that that, to trash your family for cash.
I totally agree.
I think is beneath someone who's been given all the honors he's been given over the course of his life.
And so, but the good thing is, I'm hopeful that, you know, his father now has what he's always wanted.
And I'm hoping that King Charles will be forgiving.
I think he's tried, but I think he's pretty much at the stage of washing his hands of him now because the attacks just...
Well, that's incredibly sad.
If that's what it is.
I think you can't trust him.
Every time he turns up, he just takes all the material he garners back and puts it in some other publication.
And if that's what it is, then, you know, even as a father, there are moments where you just have to walk away.
But I'll tell you, as a father of four, that it would be really hard for me to walk away from any of my children.
And if that's where the king is, that's a pretty sad place for him too.
Not his fault necessarily at all, but a sad place for him at a moment in his life when he should be really pretty happy.
He's got the woman he's always loved and he's got the job he always wanted.
Just go forward a bit.
You knock out Trump.
You win the presidency, Inauguration Day.
What do you say to the American people?
That it's time for us once again to put our country first.
It's time for us to put aside some of our differences and figure out areas where we can work together and compromise.
And that the kind of president I would hope to be would be one that would be able to forge those compromises and sacrifice my own popularity to be able to make action happen.
Your mother said to you before she died that far more important to be respected than to be loved because if you're respected, the love comes down the line.
I thought that was really good advice.
It was great advice.
Would you take that advice into a presidency?
It's the advice I take into every day of my life.
It's not just into my jobs.
It's into the way I deal with my kids, too.
I want to be someone who they respect in addition to someone they love.
Because if they respect me, then they're going to come to me when they have problems.
They're going to come to me for advice.
They're going to come to me when they just need to cry.
And that's the kind of respect that if I were to become president, I'd want the American people to know that every day I'd be working as hard as I could to make them feel that respect for me, but more importantly, for them to feel proud of their country.
And I think there are moments now where Americans don't feel proud of our country because of some of the things we're failing to do.
And I want us to do the big things.
The thing that I always wanted when I was governor, I used to say to my folks all the time, don't tell me about how something will affect my ratings today.
Tell me if it's something that really is consequential.
I want to be a governor of consequence.
And I believe I was.
And that's the kind of president I want to be, to do the big things, to be a president of the consequence.
Governor, great to see you again.
Good to see you, Pierce.
Well, you can watch the full interview with Chris Christie on the Piers Morgan Uncensored YouTube channel from right now.
Uncensored next tonight, Boris Johnson's been unable to give the COVID inquiry WhatsApp messages from his own phone because he can't remember his passcode.
I've got a few suggestions for him as to what that might be, and I'll share them with you after the break.
Welcome back to Piers Morgan Uncensored live from Manhattan.
You can see there 6th Avenue buzzing with activity at this time of day, mid-afternoon over here in New York.
I'm rejoined by my pack, former Conservative MP Louise Mensch, and talk to your presenter, Trichigoda.
Quick reaction to Chris Christie.
Interesting character, very engaging, charismatic, and going hardcore on Trump.
I thought that was a hilarious interview.
And he's actually met him outside just when you were doing that interview.
He's a really nice guy.
I think he's very sincere and he sees straight through Donald Trump in that kind of earthy New Jersey way.
I think he'd be a very good president.
Yeah, I mean, he's an impressive character, isn't he?
He is.
He really is.
And I love the way that he took the whole fat thing and literally has run with it.
You know, if somebody's going to call you a name, own it, take it, and make capital out of it.
And are we to assume that the narcissistic streak that we guessed Prince Harry's developed may have actually been there all along, given he gives people like Chris Christie a gift of a signed picture of himself?
I think that's hilarious.
You know, I thought it was funny.
Back in the day, he actually didn't like publicity.
Imagine that.
What a change.
In the Cheyenne retiring days before he commercialized his private life.
Let's move to Boris Johnson, who's conveniently forgotten the passcode to his iPhone, which means he can't hand over all the crucial messages from the start of the pandemic to the COVID inquiry until they can guess the passcode.
Of course, but you only get 10 goes and then basically your phone, that's it.
You can never get into it again.
Apple can't do it.
We've had this with the FBI.
Does anyone believe he can't remember his passcode?
I do, actually, because it was 2021.
You can be a passcode from 2020.
Lipstick Trolling and Makeup 00:03:16
They should try B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T.
I'll tell you what.
I suspect that's what it is.
I tell you what, if Rishi Sunak is pushing forward the idea that Britain should be in charge of policing AI, how's it going to look that their tech guys in parliament can't sort that out in five seconds?
I just don't believe a word of it.
I think Boris Johnson knows exactly what his passcode is, and I suspect he doesn't want people to see the truth about what's in those messages at the start of the pandemic.
And there's probably a very good reason why he doesn't want us to see it.
So I sincerely hope they do.
And also, I don't think if you're Prime Minister, then I think you should give your passwords as a matter of public recording.
Why doesn't GCHQ, our intelligence agency, have a copy of that password even as a matter of national security?
Especially if they certainly intelligence.
Because what happens if he suddenly dropped dead and they needed to find information that was on his phone?
I think it's ridiculous.
The prime minister's phone is...
Find out how many children he's got.
Does he know?
Boris Johnson.
No!
I don't think he's got a clue, Boris Johnson.
Talking of strange things, Maybelline, which is the company that promotes, among other things, lipstick.
It's a cosmetics company.
They've come onto fire for using two men with beards to promote their new lipstick.
Here we are.
Now, look.
Who cares?
Every time I think this sort of farcical nonsense couldn't get more ridiculous.
Tricia, I mean, you don't think that's not aimed at you, darling.
Who's aimed at?
Younger people who couldn't give a stuff.
I mean, if these people wouldn't have to do that.
What woman is going to watch?
She's a great big ball bloke in a business.
Because it's funny.
Smearing lipstick on some I must go and buy that.
It's commercial suicide.
Young guys wear lipstick and affords makeup.
Oh, yes, come on.
You said your son's an actor.
He must wear makeup.
You were in the makeup.
He wears makeup to act, obviously, but not to go out for the night.
Louise.
No, I'm not sure.
What's happening to the world?
I think, honestly, I think some of these companies are just trolling women at this point.
But they're also trolling their business models because we saw with Budweiser, with Dylan Mulvaney, who likes to specialise, says, look, I'm trans since last year, but now specializes in mocking women.
So Budweiser's bottom line takes a massive hit.
The same thing's going to happen here.
Women don't want to see big blokes in the lipsticks.
Just one second.
I mean, I'm going to be voting with my wallet because honestly, how am I supposed to know what that lipstick's going to look like on me by watching some bearded bloke?
I totally agree.
The whole thing is utterly ridiculous.
What it is, all these companies have been infested with wokeys.
And they sit there all day going, how can we think of a really great campaign which would crater our stock price?
Here's one.
I know.
Let's promote this.
Hang on, Adam.
The great big ball bloat with a beard.
Listen.
For years and years and years, for years and years and years, we people have let me put it in why you bring up colour.
We didn't know what makeup would look like on us.
We still bought it.
I don't care.
Here's my prediction.
The share price will take a lot of time.
I'll buy the lipstick.
I love it.
Women will vote with their feet and they'll go to a cosmetic company which actually wants to celebrate women.
Laborly, brilliant.
Bearded blokes.
Labor leaving it brilliant.
London Week Predictions 00:00:36
On that bombshell, it's great to see you both.
Thank you both very much indeed.
I've got to say, you've been heroic this week.
Oh, thank you so much.
Day after day after day.
You should get a medal for putting up with me.
Yes.
Yeah, probably both of us should get medals.
But you've been great this week.
Tricia, always good to catch up with you.
It's been another fun week in New York City.
Next week, I will be back in London with more uncensored material.
And my final advice to you from New York City, from the bowels of Manhattan, is whatever you're up to, keep it uncensored.
That's it.
See you next week from London.
Good night.
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