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July 26, 2023 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
48:58
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Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Sinead O'Connor's Turbulent Life 00:06:35
From the news building in London, this is Piers Morgan, uncensored.
Well good evening, Franco.
Welcome to Piers Morgan Ascended.
We start the show with some very sad breaking news.
The Irish music legend, Sinead O'Connor, has died at the age of just 56.
She was a troubled and beautiful soul, fearless, uncompromising, shocking, courageous.
She was a rebel at heart.
She took on the Catholic Church.
She used a prime-time performance on US TV to stage a protest, even as everyone warned her it could ruin her career.
Above Elsa, she enchanted millions with a song that's known across the world and across generations.
Few people can truly say their voice defined an era, but Sinead's did.
Put simply, nothing compared to Sinead O'Connor.
On a statement tonight, the singer's family said it is with great sadness that we announced the passing of our beloved Sinead.
Her family and her friends are devastated.
I'm sure that millions of people across the world will share that sentiment.
Sinead of course led a very turbulent life.
She always said her rebellious streak was driven by the abuse she suffered as a child and that music rescued her.
It certainly unleashed a creative talent that made her world famous.
She struggled with her mental health for many years and talked very openly and powerfully about that.
And tragically, she lost her 17-year-old son, Shane, to suicide just 18 months ago.
I had a number of exchanges with Sinead and interviews over the years.
They were most definitely uncensored.
This was the last time I interviewed her.
Sinead, we go back a long way.
I used to write about you as a young pop writer.
We used to lock horns, clash, blah, blah, blah.
I never doubted your talent.
I mean, the one thing that rose above all the controversies, all the stuff, was that you just had this wondrous voice.
And to hear you now, if anything, even richer your voice, I think, than it was back then.
It's a magical thing to hear.
I mean, at your heart, you're just a great singer, aren't you?
Yeah, I think I was very young.
I wasn't ready for the type of success inverted comments that happened.
Do you know what I mean?
I wasn't really setting out to be a pop star, so I didn't really fit the mold.
I was more of a punk.
She was.
And she was a unique talent, a unique character.
Well, I'm joined now by RTE radio presenter from Ireland, Dave Fanning.
He's interviewed Sinead multiple times.
Dave, very sad, this news.
It really gave me a jolt when I read this just before I came on air.
You knew Sinead very well.
You interviewed her.
She's an Irish music legend, of course.
What is your reaction to this news tonight?
Dreadfully sad.
I mean, an Irish cultural legend as much as an Irish music legend.
Obviously, it's the music that people would know her best by.
I mean, she's got about 10 studio albums.
She must have 30 collaborations with some of the biggest artists around.
Obviously, she took Prince's song and made it into the greatest love song of all time.
There it is there, yeah.
I mean, absolutely no question about it.
It's her song.
Her first two albums just broke every mold you could imagine.
The next ones were all quite kind of experimental.
Sometimes the Shannon's the old Irish singing one, there was a reggae one.
They didn't always work, but the last two albums that she made were just a great collection of new pop songs and they were really good.
And with David Holmes, the Belfast musician, she had another one, an 11th one coming out.
I don't know if it still will, I'm not sure.
But it was the cultural impact that she had.
I mean, she was self-deprecating.
She was pragmatic, a very sharp observer.
She was uncompromising and she had no regrets about anything at all.
And she was an absolute icon to a certain generation of Irish people.
that generation now is anything between the ages of 20 and maybe 45 or 50.
The older generation, they didn't necessarily like all the things she did.
Tearing up the picture of the Pope on TV 25, I mean, 30 years ago was obviously something that didn't necessarily go down well with some people, but how prescient was she?
Everything she was saying, every reason she did it came true 10 years later with the dreadful, dreadful revelations of just exactly how crazy the church was.
Yeah, I mean, she was controversial.
She was outspoken, but she spoke her mind.
I always felt that it was sincere.
You know, I had some great run-ins with her where she'd tear into me and the next thing we'd be drinking Guinness and she'd be smothering me in kisses and love.
And she was like that.
She was a contrarian figure.
I think she liked rattling cages and she liked telling you what she really thought of you, whether it was good or bad.
And so, you know, I feel very, like I say, I feel very sad about this news.
I also feel it probably, I don't want to guess here, but it probably can't be unconnected to the tragedy about her son, who died only 18 months ago, of course, taking his own life.
Well, I don't want to be too sad all the time about something.
And this is still like just kind of trying to sort of put this grief into some kind of perspective.
But in some ways, she was a bit Piers Morgan.
She was an Argent provocateur in many ways.
She really knew how to rattle people's cages and was able to stand up to whatever had to be said to her in terms of Sinead, you're wrong.
She'd say, no, here's why I'm not wrong.
And she was fun and she was great.
She was very fearless and fragile, often at the same time.
No regrets.
She did put herself into some very, very tough situations.
And you kind of used to wonder and say, why is she doing this?
The very first interview she did, she did with me on the radio back in 87 direction or whatever it was.
And then the last thing she did was on stage in Dublin.
There's a thing in Britain called the Mercury Music Prize.
In Ireland, we call it the Choice Prize.
And at Vicar Street in Dublin, she came out first time since Shane had died.
And I had to give her the award for her second album.
Like it was a classic album award thing.
And I didn't even think she'd come to collect it.
And she did.
And she came out on stage and smiled.
And honestly, not so much the standing ovation, but the love in the room.
I know it's going to cliche.
So I'll just leave it at this.
Everybody wanted to put their arms around her.
She knew that and smiled all her way home.
Fantastic.
Dave, thank you so much for joining me.
I'm so sorry for your loss, for the country's loss.
You know, she really was an iconic figure.
And I thought you summed her up absolutely perfectly.
I can already hear her ranting about you saying she was Piers Morgan.
That would be just about the last thing she'd want to hear.
But she'd also have a wry smile because she and I had a bittersweet, but always fun relationship.
Dave, thank you.
I appreciate that.
The Saudi Sporting Dynasty 00:06:15
Look, take it easy.
Thanks.
Jeanette O'Connor, who's died at the age of just 56.
What a voice.
What a talent.
What a mark she made.
Well, my next guest is from a sporting dynasty.
Despite his father, Barry Hearn, claiming his son was born with a silver spoon, Eddie Hearn has grown the family business, signing boxing's first billion dollar deal, become one of the sports most recognizable faces around the world, including America.
But just how far will the promoter go to follow the money?
Saudi Arabia's so-called sports-watching empire is expanding across football, Formula One, golf, and of course, boxing.
And there's now a reported $1 billion offer for Paris Saint-Germain's Kilian Mbappe.
Should we be afraid of the Saudi world takeover?
Well, I'm delighted to say Eddie Hearn is joining me live, uncensored in the studio.
Welcome, Eddie.
Good evening.
Great to see you.
This whole Saudi thing has been fascinating to me.
Watching Live Golf, for example, take on the PGA and basically batter the PGA into submission.
Watching Formula One embracing all the money from the Middle East.
And then my friend Cristiano Ronaldo going out to Saudi and really transforming world football.
You look at all the stars going there now, following Ronaldo.
As he said, it could be the fifth best league in the world within a year.
It is extraordinary to watch.
Should we be concerned about this?
What's your view of this Saudi domination of world sport?
I mean, we first went there in 2019 with Anthony Joshua against Andy Rees in the rematch.
Got a lot of criticism, obviously.
I don't like to position boxing differently to golf or tennis, but it's prize fighting.
And our job is to obviously maximise the earnings of a fighter over a short period of time.
What I've learned through my work out there is you've got a lot of passionate people about sport.
The political argument of sports washing and so forth.
Now, I don't want to push that away and say, you know, that's not my responsibility.
I don't see that as much.
I see a group of people in charge of certain sports that are ultimately huge fans with an unparalleled budget.
And people in boxing that have actually worked amongst the grassroots, it's up 300% for boxing clubs.
I think they've quadrupled the number of amateur boxing clubs, etc.
But it's just people in charge who have a huge passion for a sport.
I was there three or four weeks ago talking boxing in Prince Khalid's house who runs the boxing.
They're all watching football.
Unbelievable football fans.
Well, Ronaldo told me that the fans, it's incredible.
He said the stadiums are packed out.
The fans go crazy.
They're very knowledgeable.
The quality of the football is better than he thought it was.
And he's obviously massively improving with all these signings.
He's got all these top players going.
There's no doubt they're on a mission to be very dominant in the sport.
Do you see a downside to this?
Or when you see Mbappe potentially going for one season, if he accepts this deal for a billion dollars, most people will think this is completely insane.
They would see it as a marketing play.
Yeah, I see, I think we can talk about it, we can debate it, we can talk about the pros and cons, but all of it's irrelevant.
It's not going away.
This is a group of very determined individuals who want to make Saudi Arabia the forefront of global sport.
And they have the budget to do it at every single level.
And is there a lot of hypocrisy?
The reason I ask that, take someone like Jordan Henderson, who's just gone to play in Saudi.
I remember at the Qatar World Cup, he said, when we were given the briefing on Qatar, which is really important, it was shocking and disappointing.
It's horrendous, really, when you look at some of the issues that are currently happening and have been happening over there.
All sounds great, right to the point.
He then gets on a plane and goes and plays in Saudi Arabia.
He's put his morals to one side and his concerns.
Is there a lot of hypocrisy?
I believe there is.
I think that if you look at most countries around the world, us included, you know, if you go to Qatar like I did and talk to the locals, they say, well, what about your illegal invasion of Iraq?
Who gives you the right to put a halo on your heads?
Yeah, and I think every country has their problem.
Obviously, Saudi Arabia, perhaps more so from a human rights issue.
But also, sometimes I return to this country and look at the problems we have here and prefer to worry about that.
I think when we talk about sport, you know, like I said, this isn't going away.
This is a group of people that are very determined to make an impact.
Is it good or bad?
Let's be honest.
What I didn't like about Live particularly was the press conferences that were held where people were talking and glorifying the format and the change in structure, moving from the PGA tour to Lived.
Let's just be completely honest.
And by the way, I don't blame these people.
It's a huge amount of money that will set them up, their kids, generations for years and years beyond.
Who can actually blame Ronaldo or Mbappe for taking a deal like that?
You can celebrate ones that don't because of other issues or because of a moral principle.
But at the end of the day, in all business, and sport is business as well, money talks and they're not going to be able to reject this amount of money over time.
Why has money not yet talked Anthony Joshua fighting Tyson Fury?
I think it's a lot of things.
I think Tyson Fury, who I'm saying he's slowly being found out, but he's not always as truthful as he appears on Instagram.
Timing is something.
I think television rights and partnerships are something.
Instagram is something.
Ego is very much something.
Everybody wants to see this.
Everybody wants to see it.
And on August 12th, Anthony Joshua will fight Dillian White on Dazone.
After that, he will fight Deontay Wilder in Saudi Arabia.
And then after that, it has to be Tyson Fury.
Tyson Fury turned down the Alexander Usik fight, the biggest fight, really, the most important fight in boxing, the undisputed heavyweight world championship, to fight an MMA fighter who's never had a fight before in his life, also in Saudi Arabia.
We've got to be honest.
Tyson Fury cares about one thing only, the money.
Don't talk to me about legacy.
Don't talk to me about Undisputed.
Don't talk to me about Daniel.
But he has banged over everybody out there.
Really?
Who?
What?
Who, everybody out there?
Well, Wilder, who your boy's good.
So he's beat Klitsko and Wilder.
That's his wins.
He needs to beat Usik and AJ, and then we can talk about him, as I believe he is, as one of the greatest heavyweights of all time.
Listen, he's unbelievable.
Winning Mentality in Sports 00:15:51
What he's come back from, incredible.
Couldn't commend him more.
But to create a legacy, to create that history, to go down as a modern day great, to put yourself up with Ali, with Lennox Lewis, with Joe Frazier, those guys, he's got to beat Usik.
And he's got to beat Anthony Joshua, but particularly Usik, who's the undisputed champion.
Well, I think he will beat Usik.
He'll fight him and beat him.
And then the real fight I want to see is him and Joshua.
Let's get through Dillian White first.
Yes.
Let's talk about you because I got to know you and your dad.
We holiday in the same place and I've seen how competitive you are even at playing golf with each other.
You were brought up in a very similar atmosphere as a family to the one that I've tried with my kids, that my parents tried with me, where it was tough love.
You know, like no quarter was given.
Your dad wanted you to be successful and he felt the best way to do it was, for example, you put a cricket net in your garden and bowl as fast as he could at.
He's a very good cricketer and could bowl quick.
When you were like a young kid, 11, 12 years old, then when you were 16, he'd been boxing for a few years, he said, we're going to have a fight, you and me in the ring.
And the pair of you get in a ring and have a proper match.
And first of all, what happened in that fight?
Well, you know, I was a big kid.
I mean, I'm six foot five now, but he always said to me, look, you know, you have to understand.
And people, there was an article in The Garden recently where the writer kind of failed to understand my child.
It wasn't normal.
And as I get older, I realise more and more it actually wasn't normal, but it worked for us.
My dad was from Dagnum, right?
The one thing he hated more than anything growing up was a sport kid, right?
A rich kid who had everything.
And he was petrified that I was going to be that kid.
So he drilled into me work ethic, working class mentality.
You get given nothing.
Winning is everything.
And I was brought up on sport.
You know, it was the one thing that taught me discipline, manners, respect, winning, losing.
Of course, physical health, mental health, all of that stuff, working as a team.
And that's why I'm so passionate about that for the next generation.
But, you know, he always said to me, when you get to 18, I'm going to take you down the gym and I'm going to give you a complete pasting.
He said, you're a soft, silver spoon sport kid and I'm from Dagnum and I'm going to, you know, I'm going to take you to school.
So I said, all right, I understand.
And I boxed a little bit.
You know, I thought I was good, but I was terrible.
But I got to 16 and I was already six foot old.
I was 14 stone.
He said, look, we need to bring it forward a couple of years.
Because he was worried.
Yeah, I was a bit of a lump.
So we went down to the Romford boxing gym and there was fighters down there.
We put on these little gloves and we got in the ring and the bell went.
We're doing three two minute rounds and a bell ring.
And I'll never forget because he came at me and I've never seen such determination and grit to inflict damage.
On his own son.
Yeah.
And the teeth were grit, you know, and he was banging away and I was taking shots.
And anyway, beat me up for the first round.
And in the second round, he was completely gone.
He's out of gas.
And I left up to the body, took one knee, got up, done him again, and he was counted out.
And the next day, it's in every paper.
And he's told, he couldn't have been prouder.
You know, normally, if your son gives you a bit of a pacing, you'd sort of want to keep it a bit quiet.
He was so proud that...
And how did you feel about the whole thing?
I knew, you know, again, he'd done a job on me growing up, you know, with the right mentality.
But, you know, he was like, you're one of us.
Do you know what I mean?
That's how he felt.
And the problem is, is, you know, sport is the answer for something, and we were talking in the green room.
Sport is the answer for me.
Totally agree.
For the growth, the education and moulding.
I mean, I'm so about resilience for all of it.
Boxing in the community.
Now, politicians, the government, they don't go to these clubs.
If you go in there and see the types of kids that are in these clubs and speak to every fighter that exists, and some of them obviously are a bigger torch than others.
Anthony Joshua, great example.
Got in trouble with the police, got arrested, stumbled across Finchley ABC, didn't go in there to be heavyweight world champion.
Went in there for some direction, some hope, that family feeling that a boxing gym gives you, you know, and through it, actually became Olympic champion and world heavyweight champion.
But every fighter that we represent will tell you the same story.
Boxing changed or boxing saved my life.
That goes across all sports.
What do you feel about two issues about sport right now?
One, that at school, everyone gets a participation prize, even if they come last.
Secondly, boys now race against girls, which I think is completely ridiculous.
Many schools have gone down this way.
Unisex Sports Day, which I think is ridiculous.
And then you have the ongoing issue of transgender athletes in sport dominating biological females in women's sport.
Let's take the first one.
Well, let's take the last one first, the transgender issue.
What do you feel about that as a sports promoter?
I mean, I'm of the old school mentality where, you know, of course, male athletes compete against male athletes, female athletes compete against female athletes.
It's an awkward conversation to have.
It's not about a level play.
I mean, when you talk about physical sports, there is no way.
And boxing is a great example.
We haven't had that problem yet.
But if Mike Tyson suddenly turned around and said, I'm now Michelle Tyson and I'm going to compete as a woman.
The world would go completely crazy and say, you're going to kill somebody.
You're going to kill a woman.
But we seem perfectly okay with six foot four inch swimmers.
Biological males dominating women's sports.
Bizarre.
Sprinters.
Shouldn't be allowed.
Weightlifters.
Bizarre shouldn't be allowed.
And ultimately, you know, whoever you upset, you upset.
But not sport, not a fair sport, not a fair race, not a fair competition.
It's to me, it's the same as doping.
You're giving yourself a physical advantage.
Exactly, which, of course, can't be allowed.
Kids and participation prizes at school.
If you come last, I used to win the non-finalist race on Sports Day, which was for all the losers.
But I used to make sure I was the best loser.
Because I wasn't an athlete.
My two brothers used to win everything.
And my sons have been very good at Sports Day.
But I wasn't.
But I remember the pain of losing and I wanted to be the best, at least the best loser.
But this idea that if you come last, you still get a little prize because they can't be upset.
This mindset is where I think this country is going so wrong.
Yeah, and I'm a bad person to ask because I couldn't be more on your side and on your page.
Winning, this is how I grew up.
Winning is everything.
It's the only thing that matters.
Whatever you do, win.
And that's the attitude we have in sport, in business.
Doesn't matter if I'm playing my old man over a game of table tennis, he's diving on the floor.
You know, it is absolute do or die.
Winning is everything.
I struggle having two daughters especially, and one is very good at football, and she'll get taken off in matches because we have to give everybody a game.
I hate that.
Why is she being punished for her ability?
But it's so difficult.
I mean, on one stage, we talk about the importance of sport and we talk about encouragement.
You can't close the door to a young kid.
No, but you tell the young kid, if you want to be as good as that kid, here's what you've got to do.
But at the same time, we don't want to close the business.
Don't sacrifice your principles.
No, I will never.
And, you know, as my older...
Don't let them take your daughter off.
My old man referred to me recently as a project, you know, and that was like, that's his thing.
You know, it's about winning.
And we have that mentality.
What we must do is we must continue to create winners.
Because if it's in sport, if it's in business, in life.
And, you know, unfortunately now we live in a world where everybody actually tries to bring the winners down and deflate the winners.
You know, make sure they...
But this thing of having a school on Sports Day, boys competing with girls, I think it's complete madness.
Complete madness.
What are you trying to do to these girls?
Kill their self-esteem?
Tell them they're not as good as boys simply because the boys have a physical advantage?
I think all of it is wrong.
I think completely wrong.
And also on the winning argument, ultimately, kids need to be told.
Winning, you know, I used to come home from a game of cricket.
My old man would go to me, how'd you get on?
I'd go, oh, no good.
Got a good ball, got four.
Useless.
What's the matter with you?
Get out there tomorrow and go knock in 100.
Right?
And that was it.
That was life.
And that to me is about teaching someone to, A, to want to compete properly.
Why bother entering anything that's competitive if you don't want to win?
And why is winning such a bad thing these days, right?
Nowadays, people who lose get celebrated.
If they quit, they get more celebrated than if they compete.
But that's a classic British trait, isn't it?
We really do glorify our greatest losers.
Almost like, I mean, Frank Bruno's a great example.
Was one of the most popular characters, sportsmen in this country.
Won a world heavyweight title.
Actually, people sort of went, oh, he's won the world heavyweight title.
It was like a bit of a disappointment.
Our Frank, who couldn't really ever win a World Heavyweight title, has won one.
I feel like Andy Murray suffers from that a little bit through his success.
I mean, Tim Hemervin, another example.
Bit old Tim couldn't quite win Wimbledon.
We love him.
And that's sometimes the British mentality.
We need to move more towards educating young people that you have to achieve.
You on your cabinet, in your office, you have a school board, Eddie V. Barry, school board.
Boxing skills, it says 1-0 to Eddie.
Obviously, you beat him.
Snooker skills, 1-0 to Barry.
He beats you at Snooker.
Instagram followers, 62 Barry, 1.2 million Eddie.
Amazon book.
I love this.
Amazon book reviews.
33 Barry, 1,370 for Eddie.
Height, well, obviously you're taller than him.
Golf handicap.
You're now beating him.
So actually, you're quite ahead now on the metric.
But I'll tell you one very quick story about my old man, which the book is the one, right?
So I get asked to write a book.
It's called Relentless.
It's about my work ethic, my love for the business, for sport, all that kind of stuff.
Wrote it in three months with a ghostwriter during lockdown, right?
He's been writing his for nine or ten years.
You know, I won't want to embarrass him, but I made significantly more money for my fee to write the book than he did.
But what he said was, what I'm going to do is I'm going to take more money on commission.
So I'm going to make more money than you.
After the book was written, fantastic book, took him six or seven years to write the book.
I must recommend.
He drove around the country with books in the boot and was knocking them out at events to try and outsell me.
I think I'd done 60,000, he'd done 8,000 in the end.
But this is what I'm up against.
I get the feeling though, because you have such a lovely relationship.
I've seen it at firsthand.
And you're very similar in many ways.
And he just wanted you to be the best you could possibly be.
Even if that meant you were more successful than him, I don't think he really minded that.
He just never wanted you to shortchange yourself, right?
He wanted you to be the best competitive beast that he could possibly empower you to be.
And he wants me, you know, he wants to be a grafter.
He wants to win.
And that's the thing with business now.
You know, he might say to me, how'd you get on at Dallas Cowboys?
You know, how many turned up to that Canelo fight?
You know, and he'll say, Well, have you seen the ratings for the darts?
Smashed your boxing.
And it's like, dad, we're in the same company.
You know, but that's that.
But I'm like this to my sons, right?
That's a great thing.
If I go to cricket net with my boys, he'll try and kill me.
Yeah.
I mean, but I want nothing else.
I don't want them giving me anything.
I don't want to give them anything.
When I play table tennis with my daughter who's 11, I want to beat her so that when she finally beats me, she knows she beat me trying to beat her.
That will mean so much more than if I just let her win.
It's exactly what happens around my old man's house on a Sunday.
Just want to ask you quickly about Connor Benn, because I interviewed him on this show.
He's one of your fighters.
I've got to say, I ended that interview really just not sure what to believe, but actually veering slightly.
I felt in my gut that he might be telling the truth, that he has been the victim of a miscarriage of justice here over this suggestion that he took illicit drugs.
You believe in him.
Why?
Why are you so convinced?
Because I've known Connor Benn since he was 18, 19 years of age, since he came over from Australia on his own, left his mum and dad there to make a name for himself in boxing.
The meticulous nature of his preparation, you know, his love of the sport, you know, his deep faith, all of the things, the way he trains with Tony Sims, the closeness of their relationship, the way that he was so insistent on additional testing that he paid for going into this fight, and the amount of times that I've sat with this young man in my office and watched him break down in tears on the floor.
And for me to question him, I didn't believe him.
Because you've been criticized because you've always ripped into other cheating boxes.
You know what?
In this instance and in life in general, guilty until proven innocent.
My first reaction was, I can't believe it.
He wouldn't do that.
Do you believe he'll be exonerated?
I do.
And I believe, you know, he went through the right procedure with the WBC and Varda.
That's who did the test.
He was cleared.
He was reinstated in the rankings.
Everyone said, oh, he needs to go through UCAD and the British Boxing Border Control.
He turned around and he went, okay, I'll do that as well.
He spent hundreds of thousands going through that process and the result is imminent.
And I believe him.
And I've had so it's one year since the test.
Every day.
I mean, I've had loads of stick.
He's had untold.
And if he's cleared, which I believe he will be, I hope that some people understand what he went through.
Well, look at Kevin Spacey, the actor, who today got found not guilty on all these sex assault charges.
He's been already convicted by the court of public opinion on Twitter, mercilessly, called the most horrendous things.
And today he's come out an innocent man.
Twitter is, and social media generally, it's an unforgiving court that just prosecutes people without seeing evidence.
And I feel that a little bit about Connor Ben.
It'd be interesting to see what happens on that.
Before I let you go, how much are you worth?
Me.
If you die tomorrow.
I don't know.
Yes, you do.
I don't know.
Yes, you do, anyhow.
You're doing all right.
Do you know to the nearest?
I tell you what, I tell you what, we're doing all right, but I'll work like I'm skin every day.
That's a good one.
That's a good moral.
And if you were Prime Minister, which many people think you should be, you couldn't do a worse job than the Tories have done the last 10 years, let's be honest.
What's the first thing you do to fix this country?
The first thing I would do would be to increase participation in sport for young Jews.
Our young kids are in a terrible, terrible situation.
Social media, disaster.
Twitter, toxic.
You know, everybody that has ambition, everybody that has desire, everybody that has a strategy in their mind gets derailed by negativity by people who can't do it.
What we were saying, I put a video out just before we came out of me and you, right, and immediately in comes the abuse.
About both of us, right?
Now, we can handle it.
We've got thick skins.
I think I say the one quality I really have that's great is I've got an incredibly thick skin.
I just watch it off me.
Most people I know in the public eye find it really hard.
But you know, we can say we've got a thick skin, which we have.
You have, I have.
After waking up every morning, it was a great, we said, you know, you wake up in a great mood.
You have a, it's like, what on earth am I reading here?
What is going on?
And that, there's no point in infiltrating yourself with negativity.
Life too short, we can handle it.
Kids can't.
No.
That's the difference.
And they're being bombarded with constant negative nonsense.
And the algorithms of content, which is ultimately designed to feed the way they think.
Yeah, you see girls who are talking to each other about self-harming.
Next thing, TikTok is sending them loads of stuff.
Total.
It's feeding a horrible thing.
And we, you know, parents have to make sure that you limit that time and we have to educate the kids.
And I think the best way to educate is through sport.
Every time you see a kid put down their phone and participate with energy, with a smile on their face, with a desire to win and compete, it's the greatest thing to watch.
And whether it's boxing, which I'm a massive fan of, or the government needs to make sure that we keep the opportunities because inner city schools just don't have a sporting.
Ukraine Ethnic Russians Debate 00:09:29
They don't.
I went from a fee-paying prep school at 12, 13 to comprehensive, and I went from playing three hours of sport a day to nothing once a week if someone could find any kit or a teacher.
Just not good enough.
This country has to do that.
I think sport is the answer, actually.
It's good for well-being, it's good for physical, for mental, everything.
Eddie, I could talk to you all night.
And I felt your guns earlier.
You did feel my level.
And in fact, you would say, why are you not competing?
I need your schedule.
Thank you.
Well, you may see my pinned tweet on Twitter, which is Ronaldo telling me what great abs I've got.
No, he knows all about abs.
Eddie, great to see you.
Thank you.
Come back again.
I loved it.
We should do more.
I really appreciate it.
And you're so right about all of it.
Thank you.
So next, he's the world's most hated dictator.
So what's behind the growing movement of commentators who hate Ukraine but love Vladimir Putin?
I'll debate with one of those next.
Welcome back to Petersburg and I'll sense it.
Vladimir Putin is probably one of the most hated leaders in the world right now.
That's what happens when you invade illegally a sovereign nation and order your army to slaughter innocent people.
But as well as opposing the West financial and military backing for Ukraine, a substantial movement of digital influencers hold Putin in bizarrely high regard, praising him as a peace-loving leader who stands up for his country.
Jackson Hinkle, a conservative commentator and YouTuber with 260,000 subscribers, is a prominent voice in this pro-Putin community.
He recently tweeted Putin has God on his side in his quest to defeat NATO Satanists.
So why is he saying all this?
Well, let's ask him, Do you want me now?
Is the Putin fan, YouTuber Jackson Hinkle, and the Russian-British host of the trigonometry podcast, Konstantin Kissing?
Okay, welcome to both of you.
Jackson, I don't get it.
Vladimir Putin invaded illegally a democratic sovereign country, has wreaked total mayhem.
He's killed innocent women, children, he's bombed maternity hospitals.
He's been on a barbaric rampage.
Why would you choose this moment to revere him?
I would choose this moment because most of what is said about Vladimir Putin in the mainstream press by talking heads like yourself is just factually not true, just like everything that people like you said about COVID.
The fact of the matter is, this war that everyone talks about that so-called started on February 24, 2022, actually began in 2014 after the U.S. led a violent coup on the Ukrainian government that was democratically elected.
When people, specifically ethnic Russians and the Donbass, decided that they didn't want a U.S.-installed puppet government filled with Nazis.
They vocalized their opinions.
And for that, they were met with violence and aggression by the Ukrainian government, who slaughtered them for eight years.
15,000 people died in this fighting while Putin tried to achieve peace through the Minsk Accords and the Minsk II accords, all of which ended up being rejected by the Ukrainian government at the behest of Germany and the United States.
The Ukrainian government continued to push forward despite the fact that Putin wanted peace and they said that they wanted to join NATO.
They said they wanted to have nukes right on Russia's border.
And because of that, Putin stepped in and said, hey, look, we're going to stop the bloodshed.
We're going to stop the NATO escalation.
We're going to stop the risk of potentially this unfolding into a full-fledged nuclear war.
And we're going to do what needs to be done.
We're going to liberate the ethnic Russians in Ukraine.
We're going to denatofy Ukraine and we're going to denazify you.
All right, I've given you a good chance to answer that.
I've got to say, a lot of that I thought was a crock of crap.
But let me go to Konstantin Kirsten.
Konstantin, I find this attitude completely mind-blowing.
There used to be a time when Americans in particular, particularly conservative Americans, when faced with a choice between a democratic sovereign country and a murderous Russian dictator invading them, they wouldn't even hesitate to support the Ukrainians in this battle.
What has happened that's turned people like this guy into Putin lovers who just think he's a man of peace?
Well, he did say that Putin stepped in to end the bloodshed, which I thought is interesting given what's been going on in Ukraine for the last year and a half.
But actually, there's a history.
I mean, first of all, isolationism is a policy that has had some support in America historically.
In fact, 1939, 1940, there were people marching up and down Times Square saying, Hitler hasn't done anything to us.
Let's have peace with Hitler.
So Jackson is following in their footsteps there.
But you were right in your introduction.
This is a very online phenomenon.
I was just in several conservative states in America, West Virginia, Utah.
You go around, there's Ukraine flags on most of the houses there.
So this is quite a fringe position.
But I think Jackson actually alluded to some of the reasons.
There is a growing movement of people who feel that they've been lied to by the mainstream media, quite rightly, by the way, particularly over things like COVID.
And they've developed a sort of teenage oppositional defiance disorder where they now think that the truth is whatever is the opposite of what the mainstream is saying.
And we've just heard a very good representation of that.
Yeah.
I mean, Jackson, I get that it's you've got it.
I don't think we've lost our connection with you, unfortunately, which will immediately lead people on social media to claim it's a conspiracy.
And we've silenced him.
That's not the case.
We actually, as you saw, his head froze in mid-ramp.
We could hear his voice.
Now we can't hear either, I think.
So, Konstantin, let's just keep talking until we get Jackson back.
I don't know.
I mean, I don't know where this mindset takes him.
I always say to conservatives who come up with this kind of stuff, well, what did you feel about the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein, the first one?
Because they weren't part of NATO, Kuwait, and yet the Americans, along with the British, raced to throw Saddam Hussein out of there.
And I get told, well, he didn't have nuclear weapons.
Well, we thought he did actually have weapons of mass destruction that whole period, but it didn't stop us doing what was morally the right thing to do.
And it's that weird moral maze that they've all got themselves into, where they're now defending the very person that historically conservatives would have railed against.
And a KGB colonel, of course, you remember that too.
And it's interesting because one of the arguments people like Jackson make, it's a pity we've lost him because I'd love to have more of a debate.
But one of the things they seem to think is that this guy is a representation of the Christian tradition, which is interesting because this is a man who's had several children out of wedlock with his mistress.
And by the way, what's interesting is people like Jackson often talk about how under Vladimir Putin, Russia has become this great country.
And by the way, Putin has stabilized Russia.
There's no argument about that.
But most of the elites in Russia have their children and their wives in Europe.
This is interesting, isn't it?
Because they claim that Russia is this great place under Vladimir Putin, yet all of those people place their families outside, which tells you a lot about what they actually think about the country.
We've got Jackson back, I think.
Jackson, genuinely, the connection went down, so there's no conspiracy.
We weren't trying to silence you.
I just find it odd.
I mean, for argument's sake, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, did you feel that he was a peace-loving guy that we should be instinctively supporting?
Or did you agree with American conservatives then that what should actually happen is Desert Storm and General Shortskoff should be leading the American charge to repel him?
And if you felt the latter, why would you feel differently about someone like Putin doing this in Ukraine?
Well, I don't know if you know, Pierce.
I'm only 23 years old, so I didn't have fully fledged opinions on that at the time.
But what I think is very interesting is for all the Western officials that are so outraged over what Putin is doing in Ukraine, why were they not outraged over what NATO did to Yugoslavia or what NATO did to Libya or what the United States did in Iraq and Afghanistan or Syria?
The United States drone operation program in Africa had a 95% civilian death rate.
For everyone to be so up in arms over Putin liberating these ethnic Russians in Ukraine from Nazis is just, I have no idea.
Seriously, Jackson.
Jackson, the trouble is, some of the stuff you said in your initial response is historically defensible.
You can argue from 2014, there's been this issue there.
I get that.
That's a perfectly reasonable thing to say.
But when you say that Putin's only game here is to go and liberate the Ukrainians from Nazis, you just sound completely bonkers.
Bonkers.
Not to say there aren't some far-right people with Nazi tendencies in Ukraine.
There are, as there are in many countries.
But the idea this is a Nazi-run country when the president is Jewish, never mind anything else, is laughably ridiculous.
Well, just because he's Jewish doesn't mean he's not sticking his Azob Nazi thugs on ethnic Russians in the Donbass.
You think a Jewish president is going to be actively promoting Nazism?
That's right.
The ones with swastika tattoos and Hitler tattoos in Mariupol, for example.
Pierce, one question, one question.
What I'll say is, if you're so outraged over the, you know, the atrocities allegedly of Putin in Ukraine and all these Ukrainians that have been killed, and you tweet about it non-stop, why did you not tweet once about the atrocities that were perpetrated by the Ukrainian government from 2014 to 2022 against those ethnic Russians in the Donbass?
Well, yeah, Cosmos.
Well, my family are actually largely ethnic Russians in Ukraine.
The idea that there's a significant body of people in Ukraine who, by virtue of being ethnic Russians, support what Vladimir Putin is doing.
It's complete hogwash, frankly.
Proven Guilty vs Public Opinion 00:08:40
And there are lots of other points that have been made.
I mean, you're right.
There are some far-right elements in Ukraine as there are in America.
The Azov Battalion that Jackson's referring to was formed after Russia invaded in 2014, in the same way that if Mexico invaded the United States, there'll probably be some far-right people going out and fighting there.
So he's got the whole thing backwards, which is not surprising.
You know what?
We could probably explore this in more detail.
I mean, well, Jackson, I've got no desire to censor you, to stop you having your views.
You're entitled to them.
I will challenge them.
We run out of time tonight, but I think we should do this again another time.
You can have a platform here.
We can talk about these things because a lot of people seem to agree with you, which I find baffling, but that's a reality.
So thank you for joining Piers Morgan on Census tonight.
Constantine, always good to see you.
On census next tonight, Kevin Spacey was today found not guilty of sexually assaulting four men, putting an end to years of legal action against the actor.
Are they now in the clear, will he be able to revive his Hollywood career like, say, Johnny Depp has done?
And if not, why not?
Well, that's next.
Welcome to all of you.
I want to start with you, Douglas.
Kevin Spacey, a dramatic turn of events today where Kevin Spacey was found not guilty of all charges in the sex assault case.
This, despite being already convicted by the inevitable court of public opinion on social media for a year, this is what he said when he came out of court afterwards.
I would like to say that I'm enormously grateful to the jury for having taken the time to examine all of the evidence and all of the facts carefully before they reach their decision.
And I am humbled by the outcome today.
And what was interesting, I thought, Douglas, was the number of people I've heard on the airways, commentators, broadcasters, and so on, saying, you know, despite this, it's going to be almost impossible for Kevin Spacey to get his career back in Hollywood.
To which my response instinctively is, why?
The guy's just been found not guilty.
Right?
How have we got it?
This, to me, is the personification of cancel culture, where someone is found innocent on all charges, and yet there's a kind of presumption that he can't return to his previous career.
Well, one thing, Piers, is, I mean, you said that this is a surprising verdict.
It's not surprising at all.
Kevin Spacey has been exonerated at each of the trials he's been put through.
He was exonerated in the US last year.
He was exonerated today in London.
Anyone who followed the US trial, the civil case of Anthony Rapp, knows that Anthony Rapp made false allegations against Kevin Spacey that were proved to be false in a US court.
Now, if anyone followed closely the incredibly weak, appalling case that the CPS brought against him in the UK, the four claimants had one of the weakest cases I have ever seen brought before a jury.
And nobody who followed this case could possibly be surprised that the jury came back saying that Kevin Spacey was innocent.
He has been repeatedly proven innocent in court for six years now.
He has been put through the most incredibly intense cancellation you could possibly imagine.
Six years of false allegations against him and a destroyed career.
And just remember, before this, he was one of the most successful actors on the planet.
House of Cards was the most successful show on Netflix.
This shows what happens when a society loses grip of the idea of innocent until proven guilty and decides always believe the alleged victim.
Because you know what?
Sometimes the alleged victim is an absolute provable liar.
And that has been the case in the trials of Kevin Spacey.
And I wish that our society would learn something from it.
Yeah, listen, Grace, you know, I look at Kevin Spacey and I see a guy, life ruined.
He's got no money left.
Apparently, he came out in court.
He's got no career.
No one will hire him.
Everyone dropped him like a sack of spuds.
Social media persecutes him mercilessly, convicts him, and so on.
What does it say about our society?
That this guy turns out to have been innocent of all charges, but he's dead and buried in terms of his career.
I don't know if it says something about our society.
You know, these cases are complicated.
They're always incredibly complicated because they often boil down to he said, he said, she said.
Obviously, it is incredibly important to maintain this idea of innocent and proven guilty until proven guilty.
Well, I'm talking about reducing the way social media puts people disgust behind the scenes.
What, you know, if people say he's not going to work again, what, you know, there's always this idea of there are people who, it's an open secret that they do exercise.
I'm talking about specifically about the court of public opinion fueled on social media, which is so merciless that it makes people so damaged.
As well as I do, Piers, that that is what happens when you put yourself into the public eye.
You know, there are going to be people who are going to want to take you down.
And, you know, we have a legal system for this reason.
It's to try and get to the truth at the bottom of some of these allegations to make sure that people are, that these things legally at least do abide by the principle of innocence until proven guilty.
There's nothing you can do short of literally censoring free speech to stop public figures from being attacked.
Well, actually, what you can do, Esther, I mean, I saw that on the Hugh Edwards story, for example, when a lot of other BBC male presenters started being inaccurately accused of being that person, Jeremy Vine was one of the people who took legal action against one of these people and actually did make the person pay a thousand pounds to a charity.
Maybe public figures just do need to start suing people on social media on a regular basis to make them realize you can't just say everything you want when you feel like it when someone's facing a trial that could be the end of their entire careers.
Well, that's certainly part of it, but I think two things need to be done here.
One, if a claimant in a case like this has been proven to be a liar, they need to be prosecuted.
We really need to tighten the laws on these things because these acutely affected public eyes if it's proven because it's difficult because then you don't want to disincentivize people that exactly know what it's exactly.
That's what I think.
Social media companies do not abide by the same regulations that say the print media do or broadcast media do.
And it's a massive problem.
They don't abide by really any regulations.
Well, that's their button.
They're publishers.
But I think it's insane.
They are publishers and they should be treated as publishers.
But if that's not censoring free speech, are we not on uncensored?
Douglas, you want to come in?
I need to make a point about this because actually this isn't just about social media, it's also about the media.
The media went huge internationally when Anthony Rapp made his initial provably false allegation about Kevin Spacey.
The international media around the world went huge on that allegation.
It was only an allegation.
Now, of course, social media then whipped it along and made it even worse and made his career even more in tatters.
But if you look at the fact, how many viewers know that Kevin Spacey was exonerated last year in the US courts on the Anthony Rapp charges?
This is a fault of the media as well.
The media very often whip along the initial claims and do not cover the subsequent judicial findings.
And that is a major problem of the media, not just of social media.
It's legit because a lot of the media doesn't cover things that they consider to be boring.
And that's like a massive problem.
We have this media that's driven by like this other feed.
Well, I mean, we can blame the media, but I think the bigger conversation is culture, right?
Just for every person that is saying that Kevin Spacey was guilty, there needs to be 10 people saying, wait until he has been proven guilty.
We don't see that on social media.
And the reason for it is because we are so averse to seeing someone being accused of sexual assault, not fraud or other crimes, that they are automatically assumed to be guilty.
For every person that said Kevin Spacey was guilty, there should have been 10 people saying, wait until he's been proven guilty.
That's the problem.
One other thing, if I may, which is that the problem of this is the social media thing is you have rapacious hordes of people who want to demonstrate their ostentatious horror and apparent virtue by standing as being opponents of the claim.
But you do not find rampacious hordes of people going around social media trying to show that people are innocent.
We only have the same thing.
No, I agree.
It is the Salem Wish Trials.
It is.
And it's McCarthyite and it's horrible and it's out of control.
And as more and more people go onto social media, it just gets worse and worse.
Mick Jagger and Social Media 00:02:05
And I think something has to give.
These tech companies have to be held more accountable for what they allow to be published on their platforms.
I mean, wouldn't I actually know what stance you took on this issue, Pierce?
Can you remind me?
But when it's like Donald Trump was banned from Twitter, what was your view on that?
I don't think he should have been.
Well, I mean, where are we supposed to draw the line here?
You know, I don't think you should be banning any presidential.
If we're giving, you know, unlimited power, but I don't think you should be banning.
I actually don't think that most of these people should.
I don't think Argument was: if you're going to allow the Ayatollah of Iran and the Taliban and Vladimir Putin to have Twitter accounts, you can't remove someone says Trump doesn't hate speech.
I personally don't think Elon Musk, a private billionaire who's a weird guy, should be given that much power.
Well, you can pay $44 billion, you can do what you like.
That'll change the thing.
Really?
Can you?
You can do what you like.
Very good.
You can say what you like if you have a lot of money, right?
I said that to wind you up and it worked.
Esther, Mick Jagger.
So Mick Jagger is 80 years old today.
Quick reaction.
Can I call him crusty?
Anyway, happy birthday.
You cannot.
Happy birthday, Mick Jagger.
Please stop having kids.
Douglas Murray, Mick Jagger's the same age as Joe Biden.
I mean, is there not evidence right there that Joe Biden's problem is not his age, it's everything else?
All I can say is that if Mick Jagger were running for president, I'd back him.
Grace, final word.
Mick Jagger, come on.
Is it 80 years old?
Is that what you're asking me when you say Mick Jagger?
Come on.
That's the problem with you.
I'm not asking you, have you?
If that's what you're worried about.
I mean, no.
What?
No.
I mean, happy birthday to him, but happy birthday to Mick Jagger.
Can't we all embrace Mick Jagger at 80?
The greatest octogener in the world, right?
He doesn't give up on the little blue pill.
Incredible.
No, he doesn't.
He doesn't give up anything.
Incredible energy.
Great role model.
Loves to Mick Jagger.
The greatest front man in the history of rock music.
Happy birthday, Mick.
Keep on rocking.
Keep giving us satisfaction.
That's it from me.
Thank you, Douglas.
Thank you, Grace.
Thank you, Esther.
Whatever you're up to tonight, keep it like Mick Jagger.
Uncensored.
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