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Mental Health Crisis Explained
00:14:13
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| Tonight on Piers Morgan Uncensored, Gen Z workers take an average of one day off sick every week due to mental health, costing Britain £150 billion a year. | |
| Are we all really losing our minds or maybe our pack boats will debate? | |
| Thus Trump returns to uncensored. | |
| That's his daughter-in-law, the senior campaign advisor Lara Trump, who joins me live to discuss another barnstorming victory for the former president. | |
| And St Pank Station seals off Sir Elton John's legendary public piano after a YouTube peerness was ordered to stop playing by tourist tones of Chinese communists. | |
| Dr. K joins me live. | |
| Live from the news building in London, this is Piers Morgan Uncensored. | |
| Good evening from London. | |
| Welcome to Piers Morgan Uncensored. | |
| At no point in human history have we been more self-aware about mental health. | |
| And if stress is a pandemic, there's a multi-billion dollar market for the vaccines. | |
| You might start your day by swallowing a Prozac before unpacking your trauma with a therapist, popping a diazepan for your workplace anxiety and winding down with meditation or wellness app in a desperate hope of getting some sleep. | |
| If you've got it, there's a product for it. | |
| We've never been more medicated, more therapised or more legitimized for confronting our feelings. | |
| And many would say quite right too. | |
| But every study is now telling us that we've also never apparently been more depressed or riddled with anxiety. | |
| Something is broken here. | |
| And the answer can't be that it's all in our minds. | |
| A new study published today said that Gen Z employees in Britain miss an average of one workday every single week due to mental health, costing the nation a rather stressful £138 billion a year. | |
| And to be clear from the outset, mental illness is a deadly serious thing. | |
| Like every serious illness, it needs serious treatment. | |
| I would never question people who are clinically depressed or genuinely suicidal. | |
| But I do think it's time to draw a line between mental illness and mental health. | |
| Matt Walsh, who's been on the show many times, stirred in a motive debate about this in recent days when he tweeted that depression is one of the basic side effects of being conscious. | |
| He later said that labeling negative emotions and behaviours as diseases is exactly the problem and precisely what the psychiatric field has done. | |
| Maybe he has a point. | |
| The global therapy industry is worth $150 billion and it's growing at a rate of knots. | |
| Young people in particular are relentlessly bombarded by content which gives them every reason to feel uncomfortable and anxious and they're actively encouraged to then vaunt their suffering. | |
| Is that part of the problem? | |
| And Britain used to celebrate the so-called stiff upper lip. | |
| I guess that boils down to being resilient in the face of adversity. | |
| If times are tough, well we were told to soldier on, keep pounding, find a way through. | |
| It's become more fashionable, and again, many people think this is the right way to go, to be perhaps more in touch with your trauma, to get help for it, to talk about it publicly. | |
| Criticism, though, has now become recategorized as shaming. | |
| Disagreement becomes very quickly described as hate. | |
| All confrontation is categorised as violence. | |
| Is that right? | |
| It should be no surprise that there's been a bit of a cultural fight back. | |
| Hugely influential characters like Andrew Tate, for good or bad, have encouraged their millions of followers to see depression as a man-made concept, which ironically is unbefitting of men. | |
| What do you believe about depression? | |
| Do you believe depression is a real thing? | |
| I can't become clinically depressed. | |
| Why do you know? | |
| Because I don't believe in it. | |
| I can't be haunted by a ghost if I don't believe in ghosts. | |
| Well, that's not saying I'm never going to die because I don't believe in it. | |
| It's ridiculous. | |
| Well, he's completely wrong, as I said there. | |
| And there is a middle ground, though. | |
| And I'll gladly call out the excesses on both sides of the argument, just as when I questioned Tate's creative interpretation of the tears he shed in jail. | |
| Did you shed tears in your cell? | |
| There were tears that ran down my face, but I did not cry. | |
| I mean, that's crying. | |
| I would disagree. | |
| Yeah, you were crying, Andrew Tate. | |
| Maybe you're a little bit depressed as you sat in your prison cell. | |
| Nothing wrong with that. | |
| Just confront your feelings. | |
| But somewhere in his bombast, Tate maybe has a point. | |
| Podcaster Zuby struck a call with me this week, having just returned to the UK from New York, when he posted, if you absolutely believe you will get jet lag, and that's inevitable, you will get jet lag. | |
| I don't get jet lag. | |
| Well, as someone who just flew back from New York and has jet lag, maybe I should think harder about not having jet lag. | |
| You might be right. | |
| We do talk ourselves into a lot of this stuff. | |
| And we maybe have lost sight of the idea that everyday stresses and strains are as much about our ability and will to manage them as they are about whatever is getting us down. | |
| Maybe we've forgotten how to keep calm and carry on. | |
| Maybe we should stop thinking that that's a bad thing to be frowned upon. | |
| A lot of people making a lot of money by telling us we're not okay. | |
| What joined me to discuss this is my PAC, talk to V Contributor Esther Kracker, Associate Editor of Daily Mirror, Kevin Maguire, legal journalist Ava Santina. | |
| And we're joined from across the pond by the podcast host I mentioned earlier, Zuby. | |
| Zubi, let me start with you. | |
| Because I'd like your comment about jet lag. | |
| It hasn't worked for me, but I like the inspiration that you gave me to try and make it work. | |
| And I'm working on my I don't have jet lag skills. | |
| On the wider point, it's a minefield, this whole area of mental health. | |
| There's no doubt to me. | |
| I've got three sons in their 20s and I know lots of their friendship groups. | |
| There are lots of young people suffering from genuine anxiety. | |
| I wouldn't categorize it as clinical depression. | |
| It may be in some cases, but just general levels of anxiety that I don't think existed when I was that age. | |
| A lot of it may be phone driven, you know, being subjected to endless terrible imagery, which we never used to have to be exposed to when we were young. | |
| I'm not sure what it is, but when you look at this whole situation, what do you think? | |
| Yeah, Piers, I think it's one of those situations where multiple things are true at once and people often go to extremes when it's not necessary. | |
| It can absolutely be true that there are people who suffer genuine serious traumas which require things like therapy and that there are people who have real mental illnesses or severe mental health issues where medication temporarily or even on a perhaps longer term may help. | |
| And that can be true. | |
| It can also be true that many things are being overdiagnosed and that the human condition itself has been pathologized in various ways and that there are all sorts of influences out there which are not necessarily serving people's best interests because they do make money, billions of dollars and pounds off of certain medications. | |
| You said the therapy business itself is worth, I think you said $150 billion per year. | |
| And so there are very misaligned incentives here. | |
| But I do think that one thing that happens with a lot of these conversations is people are very willing to talk about the symptoms. | |
| But as a society, we don't often go deep on what some of the causes are. | |
| We'll talk about mental health, we'll talk about depression and anxiety, but there won't be a lot of talk about the family situation and the households that people are growing up in, their friend, social networks, not online social networks, but their real social network. | |
| Are they part of a church? | |
| Are they part of strong communities? | |
| What are their beliefs? | |
| What's their physical health status? | |
| Physical and spiritual health are connected to mental health. | |
| So similar with many other issues, we talk about everything at the symptom level and try to find a pill or a potion or a therapy that is going to work for everybody. | |
| But I think in many cases, we're not really getting to what the root of the issue is. | |
| Touched on one other thing, which is the rise of use of smartphones and social media. | |
| That's absolutely having an impact on people's mental well-being. | |
| Being bombarded by all these images and opinions and just pure amount of information every day this is something very new that our ancestors didn't have to deal with, so i'm not surprised that there are more young, more and more young people every year who are reporting that they're having anxiety, depression or whatever else it may be. | |
| Yeah Ava, it is a minefield just to even talk about this. | |
| You know I could almost feel us all. | |
| You know you're treading on eggshells with this, not to say the wrong thing, not to be insensitive, but also to recognize this survey that's come out. | |
| It's pretty shocking that you know gen z kids are missing a day a week at work and the on cost of all that. | |
| What do you think is going on here? | |
| Well, I agree with the premise there of your guest Zubi, because you need to be talking about, like, what are the causes of this? | |
| If you look at gen z at the moment, some of most of gen z are spending up to 60 of their pay packet on rent. | |
| They're poor and they're not having a nice time at home. | |
| I think that really drives into anxiety and also, as you talked about, their phone dependency. | |
| But yeah, I mean look, there is a conversation we need to be having about self-diagnosis. | |
| That is going on. | |
| I mean, I think, particularly on Tiktok argument, I do understand we're not in the best of economic circumstances, but you know, like I said, there is less poverty now than there's ever been exactly. | |
| And I grew up, I grew up in relatively yeah, but the thing is I grew up, I grew up in a population that we categorize as poor, but the thing is, but it's relatively. | |
| I grew up in Garden. | |
| I i've seen triple the amount of depressed people in this country than there. | |
| So I don't think necessarily material depression. | |
| I know some well-off people who are extremely depressed and very riddled with anxiety. | |
| I'm not sure that money or whether you're poor or rich, i'm not sure that's really what the core here. | |
| I actually think the dopamine impact of phones bringing so much stuff into their heads all day in a way we never, ever had to experience when we were young, when I was young you, just you, didn't have any phones. | |
| There was no internet. | |
| Now, if there's a war somewhere, they're seeing, you know, kids heads being blown off in real time all day long, but there was also have a bad effect. | |
| But there was also suffering in silence, like after the First and Second World War. | |
| People came back, they were absolutely traumatized and it wasn't recognized and their lives were blighted. | |
| Uh, as a result. | |
| Now I love Zubi's positive view of overcoming jet lag. | |
| But it exists. | |
| Mental illness exists, but you have a scale where there will be people clinically depressed and you'll have just have other people who feel down for whatever reason. | |
| They're in a completely different category. | |
| And if we're medicating them, is there a danger that if you talk too much about these things, you encourage people, as with everything in life? | |
| Yeah, if there's too much conversation yeah right, and it's pretty well been wall to wall 24, 7 now for a few years I see no evidence necessarily that it's working in reducing the number of people saying they're feeling bad. | |
| That's right. | |
| It's the reverse of not talking about it and denying it yes, and then people hurt. | |
| Uh, you know, with real pain is, you can medicalize, you can talk yourself into it. | |
| There's no medicalized, we've medicalized real life. | |
| That's the problem. | |
| Someone who has lost a spouse, for instance, of course, will feel sad and depressed, but to say that they have depression and has to take a pill. | |
| That's a problem because you're not treating it the way that it should be treated. | |
| Real life happens, sad things happen and we have to have a way to deal with it. | |
| Young people also lack purpose. | |
| Right, if they're seeing all these you know people getting rich and having bugattis online, they're thinking, how am I supposed to have that? | |
| What is my purpose? | |
| The fear of missing out, exactly the envy factor I mean bringing Zubi back in here um, you know, I think all these things come into play. | |
| The difference, like I said, between when I was young and young people now is their ability to have all this staring at them all day long. | |
| You know, when I was young, the most exciting thing you had in front of you was a conker fight, you know, and you'd be studying conquers outside in fresh air. | |
| We didn't have any phones, there was no internet, there was nothing like that. | |
| Um you, you weren't really aware of all the bad stuff going on, unless you watched the one tv news bulletin. | |
| Now kids are not only aware of it, they're seeing it in real time Yeah, there are a lot of different factors. | |
| I mean, social media and smartphones absolutely play some role in here. | |
| I'd say another thing that has massively changed over the decades as well is just the situations that people are growing up in, their environment, how many different communities that they're plugged into and how strong are those communities. | |
| We know that there's an epidemic of loneliness that we talk about. | |
| We talk about the epidemic of suicide, particularly male suicide. | |
| We're talking about all of this mental health things. | |
| And it's like all of the things that help to keep individuals and societies sane and stable from family to faith to community to the sense of meaning and purpose that someone else brought up earlier. | |
| All of these things have also been eroded over the past, let's say, 50 or 60 years. | |
| So when it comes to these situations, I mean, why are people so desperately seeking therapists? | |
| I think in many cases, sure, there might be people who really genuinely need a professional therapist, but I think there are also people who just need someone to talk to and they don't really feel like they have friends or they have parents or family members that they can confide in and talk about these day-to-day issues. | |
| And then it builds up and it gets to a stage where they feel like the only thing that they can do is go to a therapist or take medication or perhaps even do something that's far more drastic. | |
| I mean, in the United States, for example, I read recently that 80% of the world's painkillers are sold in the United States. | |
| 80%. | |
| I mean, we think we're over-medicated here. | |
| My God. | |
| I mean, in the US, it's really out of control. | |
| Yeah, it's crazy. | |
| I mean, the USA has, I believe, 4% of the world's population. | |
| And then, as you said, they're taking 80% plus of the pain medication and things like opioids. | |
| And these things are causing massive crises in the USA. | |
| Every year, over 100,000 people in the USA, American citizens, are dying of drug overdoses. | |
| That's 100,000 deaths. | |
| So imagine how many other people are abusing those substances. | |
| And these are genuinely scary numbers. | |
| 100,000 people dying per year of something that is completely avoidable. | |
| I think that should be much bigger news. | |
| But as I said, I don't know every single solution, but I think for the diagnosis, we have to go down the tree a little bit and not just hack at the branches and the twigs, but we need to get to the root of the problem. | |
|
Misogyny in Oscar Nominations
00:09:57
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| And it's not going to be one single thing. | |
| It's going to be multiple things. | |
| And I think several of them have been mentioned. | |
| Yep, I completely agree. | |
| Let's take a short break. | |
| I'm going to keep our stellar pack. | |
| We're going to come back and we have day two of Barbiegate, the shocking snub, apparently, to Margot Robbie in the best actress category at the Oscars and Greta Gerwig and Best Director. | |
| But good old Ken, he had the last laugh, didn't he? | |
| Well, Ryan Gosling, of course, who plays Ken in the movie, he's absolutely Gilen, horrified, shocked, issued a statement about how outraged he is. | |
| His two female colleagues didn't get nominated, hasn't yet offered to hand back his nomination and has given no indication he won't be leaping along to the Oscars to receive his award if he should get one. | |
| So we'll debate that after the break. | |
| Letterman said you were the funniest of them all. | |
| He also said you were very insecure. | |
| Lennon was on the cover of Success Magazine. | |
| You know, Dave, I'm on a magazine called Super Success Magazine. | |
| My number one bucket list has been to get inside your mind. | |
| Well, it's not like I didn't invite you. | |
| Says a lot about Taylor Swift. | |
| What do you, what do you make of the fact she's now this billionaire? | |
| I think it's wonderful. | |
| Breaking all records, beating Elvis, Michael Jackson, all of that. | |
| Yeah, I think it's wonderful. | |
| I think it's great. | |
| Joe Biden. | |
| He's fine to be president. | |
| I'm a fan. | |
| I like the man. | |
| I've known him for years. | |
| No, I like him. | |
| I think he's a good guy. | |
| And you know, the economy is doing pretty good. | |
| I don't want a president who's been impeached. | |
| If he's able to bamboozle you, if you choose to have someone who's a criminal who's president, I have to accept your choice to wake up. | |
| Elon Musk is a genius? | |
| Yes, genius. | |
| Very breakout. | |
| I got a face full of gas. | |
| And you were literally on fire? | |
| When rich people catch on fire, the public loves it. | |
| Well, that was a trader for a brilliant interview with Jay Leno, the king of late night in America for so many years. | |
| Great battle with the great David Letterman, but he also has the most incredible car collection of any human being I've ever seen in my life. | |
| 260, I think, plus supercars, one of which alone is worth 20 million. | |
| And he takes me on a guided tour of his amazing cars and gives me a quite remarkably open and honest interview. | |
| It's like Mr. America, Jay Leno. | |
| So well worth watching. | |
| That'll be tomorrow night, a special on Piers Morgan Uncensored. | |
| Jay Deno. | |
| Anyway, my pack is still with me. | |
| Let's start with the Uaver about Barbie. | |
| We discussed this briefly yesterday, but it's been ratcheted up by Ryan Gosling's rage-filled statement about himself being nominated for an award at the Oscars, but not the two women who were basically behind the movie's success, Margot Robbie and Credit Gerby. | |
| Here's my question. | |
| Why the hell should they have been nominated? | |
| I thought the movie was awful. | |
| I thought it was man-hating, patronising, anti-patriarchy nonsense from start to finish. | |
| I didn't think Margot Robbie, who I love and think is a brilliant actress, was very good in this. | |
| I thought he was probably the best of a bad bunch of acting performances. | |
| And Credit Gerwig, right? | |
| She's a good director. | |
| But really, one of the best director movies of the year, do me a favor. | |
| There's a woman who has been nominated in the best director category who made a fantastic film. | |
| Yes, on merit. | |
| Why should this kid make a silly movie attacking men using real-life dolls? | |
| Why should you get any nomination? | |
| Look, I have to say. | |
| End of rants. | |
| I was kind of, I was slightly confused why people were so upset and calling it misogynistic because the other people who were nominated were women, so I wasn't quite understanding that. | |
| I also didn't understand the comparisons with Hillary Clinton. | |
| So a lot of people were saying that because, you know, this is why. | |
| She's compared herself to it. | |
| She has. | |
| This is that. | |
| We haven't had eight years of Hillary Clinton because people don't choose women. | |
| And I don't agree with that at all. | |
| However, what I would say is... | |
| More women got nominated this year, apparently, than ever before. | |
| What I would say is perhaps there is a little bit of a spirit in the air, which is, you know, a little taste of... | |
| Do people just not really like what girls like? | |
| Obviously. | |
| Do people. | |
| You know, a lot of women really enjoyed that movie. | |
| A lot of men enjoyed it. | |
| Eight other nominations. | |
| And, you know, I guess the ultimate prize is the billion dollars that it made at the box office. | |
| But look, it was the most pure metric. | |
| Genomics also made a billion dollars at the box office. | |
| All three Jurassic Worlds. | |
| And Fast and Florida. | |
| None of the Star Wars. | |
| North The Transformers nonsense. | |
| Yeah, exactly. | |
| Let me bring in Zuby. | |
| Zubi, where do you sit on Barbie Gate and this furori has erupted because Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig have been snubbed? | |
| I don't think they should have ever been even considered. | |
| I'm going to be as honest as I always am, and I really don't care. | |
| Does it? | |
| Okay, let me try and make you care. | |
| Do you think that the reaction to this snub is ludicrous or not? | |
| Yeah, I think it's silly. | |
| I think we certainly have much bigger fish to fry as a society. | |
| From the precursory glance I've taken at articles, it does look like the movie did get eight Oscar nominations. | |
| It just seems that people are mad that the director and Margot Robbie specifically didn't get nominations, but it looks like other people from the film did, including another one of the female actresses. | |
| So yeah, I think that the criticisms are silly, but also expected. | |
| Kevin, where do you sit on this? | |
| Well, we were told there's no Ken without Bobby, but there clearly will be. | |
| That's why I love that Ken's getting the last laugh. | |
| They make him out to be a total numbskull in the movie. | |
| He's the downtrodden, oppressed guy who ends up getting dumped. | |
| She doesn't need a man. | |
| She can do it all herself. | |
| And you know what? | |
| Turns out, Ken has the last laugh. | |
| It's the middle of the film when he takes over. | |
| And of course, she has two-thirds of the film. | |
| He's got the middle and the middle third. | |
| But I can say from his point of view, it's a little bit embarrassing because the film's not completely. | |
| Oh, it's not. | |
| Well, if I told me nominated for something that you three were involved in, I wouldn't give you a moment's thought. | |
| I just take the credit and practice my speech. | |
| I mean, I think I've been very vocal about how much I despise Bobby as a lifelong Barbie fan. | |
| I don't think a single one of them should have been nominated for anything. | |
| Maybe the Raspberry, the Razzies. | |
| I thought it was a dreadful thing. | |
| But you know the thing is they spent more money. | |
| They spent more money on the marketing. | |
| Maybe I should tell you everything you need to do. | |
| Because what is the patriarchy? | |
| But it wasn't for you. | |
| But the film wasn't for you. | |
| Yes, it was for me. | |
| I hated it. | |
| We celebrate matriarchy, right? | |
| I celebrate the matriarchs in my family. | |
| Very strong women down every single generation. | |
| We celebrate the matriarchy. | |
| Why can't we celebrate strong men anymore? | |
| Well, I have got the ick from Ryan Gosling, I have to say. | |
| I really don't understand why you put out that statement. | |
| Do you know what it actually felt like? | |
| No, no, no. | |
| It was manspaining. | |
| It was out of the way. | |
| What was that in the manscraft? | |
| Because there are two types of feminists. | |
| Well, there are three types of feminists. | |
| The ones that I like, who I identify with, which you just want equality for all, and that's great. | |
| Then there are the vengeful feminists who want to kill all men. | |
| And then there are the worst type of all, which are the weak male virtue signaling feminists who pop up in all these things. | |
| And try and position themselves as friend of the feminists. | |
| Oh, shut up, Aldi. | |
| He's been polite. | |
| He's made a film with these two women who are pretty successful in their family. | |
| I've even got Zubi laughing there. | |
| And they've got nothing. | |
| And he has got the nomination. | |
| The bloke. | |
| Because he was the only tolerable part of that film. | |
| And sorry, this whole male feminist rant. | |
| Most male feminists are just trying to get laid, to be honest. | |
| Let me go back to Zubi. | |
| He's been smirking away with this. | |
| I think getting more and more into the scandal as he hears more about it. | |
| A filmmaker called Kenya Barris is directing new remakes of It's a Wonderful Life and Wizard of Oz, two of my favourite films, to of course give diverse reboots for people who hadn't felt seen. | |
| I've got to say, when I read these stories, my heart sinks. | |
| It's like when Disney tried to remake Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and not give any dwarf actors any roles. | |
| Because why can't we just celebrate great movies as they were intended to be at the time? | |
| Like we do great music, great sport. | |
| We can accept life moves on. | |
| He can make new movies. | |
| Why do we have to ruin everything? | |
| Zubi, convince me I'm wrong. | |
| It's a very strange thing. | |
| Yeah, it's a very strange thing, Piers, because this has been going on for years and it backfires every single time. | |
| The movies tend to bomb. | |
| They lose money. | |
| They get low rankings from audiences, but they keep on doing it over and over. | |
| Whether this is the all-female reboot of Ghostbusters or this is race-swapping various characters and different things, people don't really like it, especially when you mess with their childhood history in such a way. | |
| If you want to create new characters and create new concepts and ideas, then go out and create new characters and concepts and ideas. | |
| Don't take things that have been loved and known for 50 or 100 years and go and gender swap them or race swap them. | |
| All it does is it really creates more contempt and resentment and division in society. | |
| I think that if you really want to have true diversity, you just let people do what they do and you naturally end up with varying degrees of diversity. | |
| It's not something you force. | |
| And actually, the more you force it, the more resentful you make people. | |
| And you know, Ava, the original Wizard of Oz, which is a brilliant movie, featured more than 120 dwarves who played the Munchkins. | |
| Most of them are from a performing group in Germany, landed the roles after escaping the country just months before the Nazis invaded Poland. | |
| This is likely to have saved their lives as Nazi policy was for a pogrom of undesirables and they believed that included dwarfs, right? | |
| It should be noted also, there are no white men in lead roles in Wizard of Oz. | |
| Dorothy, a tin man, a scarecrow and a talking lion. | |
| How much more diverse do you want it to be? | |
|
Trump's Political Icon Status
00:15:38
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| Look, I just think it's quite a fantastic PR move, isn't it? | |
| If you're bringing out a new film to say that you are making it woke, because then it gets on programs like yours, and then millions more people. | |
| They're doing it just to wind me up. | |
| Well, they're successful. | |
| They're doing, but look, you've got two classic films you probably cannot better. | |
| So if you're going to make two films in their mold, you want people to compare and contrast and look for the differences. | |
| That's why you'll do it with diversity. | |
| Hester, give me some common sense on this. | |
| It's just laziness, really. | |
| They're only capitalizing on the name. | |
| So if you have the name of Barbie or the Wizard of Oz, you don't have to put in any effort. | |
| And we talk about it, which gives them all the free publicity. | |
| So if we ignored it, they probably would do it. | |
| I know, but if we ignored it, we wouldn't have a chance to slam them. | |
| You want to see them, though, don't you? | |
| You want to see him, even if you go along, say that's all. | |
| Absolutely not. | |
| I want to see the first supposedly diverse posters for the new thing. | |
| Watch the public go, what are you doing? | |
| But you went to the bottom of the battle. | |
| Then watch them perform a U-turn. | |
| We went to Barbie there. | |
| Well, I had to give my daughter. | |
| She watched it. | |
| I had to give her a reprogramming session. | |
| You're a secret Barbie boy. | |
| Well, no, I had to reprogram the Barbie boy family. | |
| Zubi, great to talk to you. | |
| Thank you so much for joining us. | |
| Come back soon. | |
| Pat, thank you very much indeed over here. | |
| Uncensored next. | |
| Donald Trump is back. | |
| Triumphant in Iowa and now New Hampshire. | |
| Is the former president riding a wave that will take him sensationally all the way back to the White House? | |
| Well, Benny Johnson and Lara Trump, Donald's daughter-in-law, are up next. | |
| Welcome back to Uncensor. | |
| Donald Trump last night became the first Republican presidential candidate to win open races in both Iowa and New Hampshire, a feat only accomplished before by a setting president. | |
| You've got 55% of the vote in New Hampshire making a presidential rematch between Trump and Biden, looking now all but certain. | |
| Nikki Haley, Trump's only remaining rival for the GOP nomination, pledged to fight on though, telling her supporters there are dozens of states they have to go. | |
| And there are, but there will be increasing pressure if Trump keeps winning for her to pull out too. | |
| President Biden, meanwhile, won the New Hampshire Democrat primary as a writing candidate, little-known challenger, Dean Phillips, managed a very creditable 20%, a measure perhaps of the president's deep unpopularity. | |
| His approval ratings are currently at 33%, and no incumbent president has ever been re-elected with approval numbers that low. | |
| Well, I'm joined now by Laura Trump, a senior advisor to Donald Trump's presidential campaign, and his daughter-in-law, it must be said, and by the political commentator Benny Johnson. | |
| Well, welcome to both of you. | |
| Laura, great to have you on Uncensored. | |
| Thank you. | |
| You're a great singer. | |
| I happen to know this from my knowledge of your family. | |
| And you once recorded a cover of Tom Petty's song, I Won't Back Down. | |
| And I can't think of a more appropriate song to describe your father-in-law, who looked dead and buried politically 18 months ago and is now right back where he wants to be. | |
| In fact, winning in a way he didn't do when he first got elected president in 2016 with Iowa and New Hampshire. | |
| How has he done this? | |
| He's amazing. | |
| I mean, Piers, you know, this is a guy who really won't back down. | |
| And I think any other human being on this planet, quite frankly, with all that he has had against him, would have said enough. | |
| I mean, I think we can all pretty clearly see the goal of so much of what they've done to Donald Trump and whether they being the Department of Justice, obviously, that has been weaponized against him in so many respects, the mainstream media here in this country, his opponents in the swamp in Washington, D.C., man, they've leveled everything at him and he's not backing down. | |
| He's not giving up. | |
| Any normal person would, but I really do believe he understands what's at stake right now in this country and really for the rest of the world. | |
| It is our job to be the leader of the free world, I think, in the United States. | |
| And we've always taken that very seriously. | |
| Right now, we are in a weakened state. | |
| We have a weak president. | |
| We have an economy that's not doing well. | |
| People across this country are suffering. | |
| They want Donald Trump back. | |
| I think he knows he's the only shot. | |
| And you know what? | |
| He's in it to win it. | |
| And yeah, we've had a couple of great primaries in caucuses 2-0. | |
| Now we're going to go on and head to November 5th. | |
| You know, my phone went on Monday night. | |
| I was just about to come in to do the show and it was Donald. | |
| And we hadn't spoken since our rather contentious interview we did actually launching this show a while ago. | |
| But a very nice chat. | |
| And I got to say, he was exuding chilling confidence about what is happening. | |
| He really just believes he's going to win. | |
| Yeah, and I think he believes because the American people believe. | |
| I mean, you look at the way he's made history and the first two tests really of him as a candidate for president again. | |
| And it's not even fair to call him that. | |
| I mean, so many people kind of consider him an incumbent in so many ways, but he proved himself, Piers, in 2016, when the people of this country said, we want to give an outsider, a businessman, a shot. | |
| How will he do? | |
| It was amazing. | |
| He did things in four years in this country that most presidents wouldn't dream of doing in two full terms in office. | |
| And so I think he is feeling confident. | |
| You saw he had a blowout win in Iowa. | |
| And then to go to New Hampshire, a state that if Nikki Haley had any shot at winning any state across this country in a primary race against Donald Trump, she would want to be in New Hampshire because that's where they have, of course, an open primary. | |
| People who are not affiliated with the Republican Party can come vote. | |
| And you look at the win he had last night. | |
| It was really amazing. | |
| Listen, I remember him saying to me once, I remember him saying to me once, he said, you got to win. | |
| He says, Muhammad Ali said, you know, if you're going to talk the talk, you've got to walk the walk or the act doesn't play. | |
| Benny, let me bring you in. | |
| You've been waiting patiently here. | |
| One of the great advantages that Donald Trump has is that in 2020, Joe Biden was able to run as the anti-Trump after a very difficult year for the country with the pandemic, which wrecked all Trump's economic plans, as it did everywhere around the world. | |
| This time, Biden has to run on his own record. | |
| And his approval rating says it all on almost every key policy initiative from immigration to the economy to crime, you name it. | |
| He's in the tank with the American people. | |
| That has got to help Donald Trump, hasn't it, in a general election? | |
| Yeah, like not good, not a great strategy, actually, what Democrats have done. | |
| First off, could you imagine being a Joe Biden voter right now? | |
| Like, can you name a single accomplishment that you'd be particularly proud of? | |
| There's nothing less cool than being a Joe Biden voter, especially as a young person. | |
| And that is why you're seeing young people abandon Joe Biden. | |
| I'm looking at NBC News polling right now in front of me. | |
| The number one problem with Joe Biden's coalition, young people are abandoning Joe Biden. | |
| Donald Trump is winning with voters ages 18 to 34, 46% to 42%. | |
| When was the last time you saw that for a Democrat? | |
| But it gets even worse. | |
| Donald Trump is leading with Hispanics and Joe Biden has collapsed in his support with black Americans down to 63%, a collapse of 25 points since taking office. | |
| Also, they have turned Donald Trump into a gangster. | |
| That also a big mistake. | |
| You've made an icon out of your political rival. | |
| You've given him a mugshot, as you can see here behind me in the studio. | |
| This is totally hardcore ratchet stuff that kids actually love that's become a meme online. | |
| And you've turned the man who was already an American icon into a bigger icon. | |
| Everybody likes voting for the political prisoner and Don effed up, Democrats. | |
| And you know what? | |
| Donald Trump is the only person I know where if he was actually convicted of any one of the things he's been charged with and actually put into a prison cell, he's the only person I know that could probably still win the presidential election because the more they try and throw this stuff at him, the more popular he gets. | |
| Piers, Chris Rock had a comedy set that he did in Washington, D.C. with Nancy Pelosi in the audience. | |
| And Chris Rock said, you're going to turn Donald Trump into Tupac. | |
| He's going to sell more records. | |
| You're stupid. | |
| And, well, Nancy Pelosi was a little bit more. | |
| Well, you know what? | |
| It's actually very interesting you mention Chris Rock because I was at the New York Knicks in Manhattan the day after the 2016 election. | |
| And I found myself at a table sitting next to Chris Rock. | |
| And we got talking. | |
| And I said to him, why do you think Hillary Clinton lost? | |
| He went, let me tell you why he said, because if someone's murdered eight people, don't go around telling everyone he's murdered nine. | |
| And the point he was making was, if you wildly exaggerate everything with Trump, and let's be honest, I mean, even Lara would admit he's probably not the most angelic human being ever put onto God's earth. | |
| I would never admit such a thing, Pierre, please. | |
| But I don't think you would even admit that. | |
| You see that as a badge of dishonor. | |
| But the reality is that this constant attempt to take him down, culminating in the hypocrisy, in my view, of the liberal side led by senior Democrats up and down the country saying, we've got to get rid of Trump or stop him running again to save democracy. | |
| And then they try and remove him from presidential state ballots, which of course is the most blatant example of trying to thwart democracy and allowing Americans to have a free vote imaginable. | |
| So there's a kind of nonsensical hypocrisy, but also, as you mentioned, Benny, a stupidity, which is... | |
| It makes him hardcore. | |
| If you try and kill him off this way and all it does is make him more popular, stop doing it. | |
| You know, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over again and expecting a different result. | |
| People identify with him, Piers. | |
| People who feel like the system here has screwed them for their entire life. | |
| They look at that mugshot of Donald Trump. | |
| By the way, the Democrats thought that was it. | |
| That was going to be the nail in the coffin for him, that mugshot. | |
| That mugshot represents to so many people all across this country, hey, the same system that hasn't been working for me is working against him. | |
| And I understand it and I see myself in that. | |
| They done messed up with that one. | |
| How much has he made from that mugshot? | |
| I heard he was merchandising it and making an absolute fortune. | |
| It's all for the campaign. | |
| He should actually keep a tab. | |
| I had Christmas wrapping paper with the mugshot on it. | |
| You've turned him into a rebel, right? | |
| You've made him the sex pistols. | |
| You've turned him into the Ramones. | |
| He's now a rebel. | |
| And kids like voting for the rebel. | |
| And again, again, Benny, I would again bring this back to Joe Biden. | |
| The great advantage Trump has is the condition of the sitting president. | |
| This is a clip of Biden yesterday trying to pronounce the name of the country he represents. | |
| We'll teach Donald Trump a valuable lesson. | |
| Don't mess with him in America unless you want to get the benefit. | |
| I think he was trying to say United States of America, but he just, he couldn't get it out. | |
| And we see endless clips of him falling over on stage, falling off bicycles, tripping down the steps of Air Force One and so on. | |
| He's up against Trump, a very old 81-year-old. | |
| because he's 81 because Mick Jagger's a few months younger and is as fit as a fiddle. | |
| It's just he looks like he's 181. | |
| And if you're Trump, you must be licking your lips that this guy's going to be your opponent. | |
| It would be bad if you're not going to be if it was if it was just that, by the way, but it's also that coupled with the fact that everything's a disaster around Joe Biden, right? | |
| I'm sorry to cut you off, Benny, but that's the truth is you can lie to people and you can try and do the jazz hands that the Democrats do with the media all the time only so long. | |
| But whenever it hits people's bottom line, when they know that their life is harder right now, in addition to seeing stuff like that, I mean, you're exactly right. | |
| Joe Biden is basically serving up the entire thing to us right now. | |
| I hope that there's no funny business with 3 a.m. dumps this time around. | |
| And Benny, I mean, in the end, Trump, some stakeholder will choose a vice president pick. | |
| If you were him, who's the smart play for Trump? | |
| The smart play is absolutely somebody who's young enough and energetic enough to carry forward the MAGA movement. | |
| Donald Trump will get constitutionally one term in office. | |
| So you have to pick someone who's not going to backstab you like a Mike Pence and somebody who's not going to betray you like a Nikki Haley. | |
| And so you should choose somebody like either Tucker Carlson or Vivek Ronswami who are true believers, but are younger and who have this long stretch of a political career ahead of them so that you have a torch to pass when you are done with term two. | |
| Okay, Laura, what your thoughts on VP pick? | |
| You probably know. | |
| Well, I, well, I wouldn't, and I would never break any news here tonight. | |
| Of course, that's if I did know. | |
| I listen, I agree with Benny. | |
| I think that you've seen a lot of the youth coming into this party in a way that really, I think, was very unexpected for people. | |
| Look at Vivek. | |
| And I mean, the energy this guy brings. | |
| I was on stage with him last night with my father-in-law. | |
| He's incredible. | |
| But whoever it is, I can guarantee you this, they will be an America first patriot. | |
| They will be somebody who, as Benny said, will carry the mantle of this movement because he changed, my father-in-law changed the entire face of politics in this country. | |
| He changed the Republican Party. | |
| It will have to be someone who is in line with him on that front. | |
| And it's exciting stuff. | |
| We're breaking history. | |
| We're making history over here. | |
| All right, Laura, you mentioned change there. | |
| So I want to just ask you maybe a more difficult question. | |
| I've seen glimpses of your father-in-law when he made his victory speech in Iowa, not so much after New Hampshire, but in Iowa, of the kind of charm, civility, decency that I saw a lot of when I did the Celebrity Apprentice over the boardroom table for week in, week out, which he's been reluctant to show actually when he's been a politician. | |
| Is he capable at his age now of actually pivoting to a slightly more, dare I say, if he was to be re-elected, a less bombastic, slightly more inclusive president? | |
| Well, it is Donald Trump. | |
| So to make a prediction like that would be, you know, he'll do what he thinks is best. | |
| And the interesting thing with him is, yeah, you probably saw two very different Donald Trumps in the Iowa victory speech and in last night's New Hampshire victory speech. | |
| But he chooses his tone based on the moment. | |
| And I think his tone was very appropriate in Iowa. | |
| And quite frankly, last night, I feel like it was very appropriate as well. | |
| Right now, we have an election to win. | |
| We do not need to be fighting within the Republican Party for the obvious Republican nominee to actually take that title. | |
| We should galvanize our support together. | |
| We should go forward. | |
| We should make sure that we leave nothing to chance on November 5th because we have to take back the White House. | |
| Piers, we have no other option in this country. | |
| And quite frankly, I don't think the rest of the world has another option but to have Donald Trump back in the White House. | |
| the rest of the world is in a mixture of shock and awe and horror and delight and curiosity at the impending return of Donald Trump Letteflon Don. | |
| We shall see. | |
| It's going to be a fascinating year. | |
| Lara, great to see you. | |
| Thank you so much. | |
| Send the family. | |
| Here's really quickly. | |
| Benny, final word to you. | |
| Let me ask you a question. | |
| Yes. | |
| May I ask you a question? | |
| Yeah. | |
| This is a question that the internet's been asking for a very long time and we don't have an answer and it must come from you, sir. | |
|
China Police Filming Incident
00:07:40
|
|
| Were you in a movie with Donald Trump called Home Alone 2? | |
| That is where you leave. | |
| That is not me in Home Alone 2. | |
| I'm grateful for the chance to put the record straight. | |
| That's actually female. | |
| It's not me. | |
| It looks nothing like there's no shame in it. | |
| No shame. | |
| I'm not the pigeon lady in Home Alone 2. | |
| Although, I do go in Central Park a lot and I can see the resemblance, but it's not me. | |
| But thank you, Benny. | |
| I appreciate it. | |
| You got your viral moment, you bleep. | |
| Good to have you on the program too, finally. | |
| Lara, thank you very much. | |
| And we'll see what happens. | |
| It's going to be a fascinating, fascinating year for American politics. | |
| Great to see you, buddy. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Uncensored next. | |
| Brendan Kavanaugh is a world-known pianist with over 2 million subscribers on YouTube. | |
| But that's not why he's gone viral this week. | |
| Chinese communists might be responsible. | |
| Brendan, we'll explain next. | |
| Welcome back to Uncensored. | |
| Pianist Brendan Kavanaugh, a.k.a. K, was entertaining crowds at St. Pancras Station in London on the public piano there when he's approached by a group of flag-waving Chinese onlookers who demanded he stopped filming. | |
| In a shocking twist, the police don't seem to back the tourists. | |
| And today the piano has been mysteriously cordoned off. | |
| All very mysterious. | |
| It was quite bizarre. | |
| Dr. K, you join me now. | |
| I watched the whole video to get a proper context for this. | |
| You're just minding your own business. | |
| You're playing beautiful piano as you do. | |
| You're a very talented guy. | |
| Thank you, Pete. | |
| People are enjoying it. | |
| And your shtick is, they come over and interact with you. | |
| And it's great. | |
| Very harmless and fun. | |
| And this is you in action. | |
| I mean, fantastic. | |
| But then this group of Chinese people in the background with their flags come over and sort of believe they have the right to stop you filming and doing what you're doing. | |
| Let's have a listen to what happens. | |
| Okay. | |
| This is our right we're protecting and that's it. | |
| But what right? | |
| I don't understand. | |
| Image right. | |
| We are protecting our own image right. | |
| You're not sharing. | |
| But this we're in public. | |
| Yeah, exactly. | |
| But we're in a free country, Martha. | |
| That's true. | |
| We're not in communist China now, you know. | |
| Oh, I'm sorry. | |
| This is recent now. | |
| No, we're not in communist China. | |
| We're in a free country. | |
| We've got the Chinese flag. | |
| It doesn't matter. | |
| Show me the Chinese flag. | |
| Why are you touching her? | |
| Stop touching her. | |
| Don't touch her. | |
| Please. | |
| Do not touch her. | |
| Please, you are not the same age. | |
| Please do not touch her. | |
| Don't touch her. | |
| It was totally bizarre. | |
| He got very angry at that guy. | |
| But I also thought the policewoman who came over to you, I didn't like what she was doing either, which was almost acquiescing to this. | |
| Well, absolutely. | |
| She completely took the side of the Chinese because they mentioned the R word racist, she melted like a jelly. | |
| And nothing you said was racist at all. | |
| Well, I think she said her beef with me was that I said we're not in China now. | |
| And she found that an extremely offensive phrase because she said that would hurt the feelings of the Chinese around the piano. | |
| And you can hear her whispering, you can't say that. | |
| And I said, what? | |
| And she said, you can't say we're not in China now. | |
| I said, that's a factual statement. | |
| And I think when the police deal with these politically correct issues, they're all over the place because they think they're going to offend someone. | |
| And so she took it out on me. | |
| She thought she was, I suppose, virtue signalling to her masters. | |
| But she didn't. | |
| And the irony is they were filming themselves some kind of commercial. | |
| Sure, and they were also filming me. | |
| It's been pointed out if you actually watched the video. | |
| There's a guy in a gimbal from the CCP group that was there who was constantly filming me. | |
| One of the girls was filming me, but they said I wasn't allowed to film them and that I needed to delete my footage because they had a disclaimer that no one was allowed to film them in the station. | |
| It's really hit a nerve. | |
| Over six million people have now watched this online. | |
| You've probably never had a reaction quite like this, have you? | |
| Well, no. | |
| And also, I've got to tell you, just before I came in, Piers, I've just had a phone call. | |
| The video is on the verge of being taken down by YouTube because I've had a second strike against it. | |
| So someone does not want this video to be taken, doesn't want this video to be there. | |
| It's about to be taken down. | |
| So if anyone's watching this, please download it. | |
| And if the video disappears, obviously pressure has been put on YouTube. | |
| What does it tell you about where we are with free speech in the world, right? | |
| Ah, well, this whole thing was a mini parable about the value of free speech. | |
| It was a spontaneous live stream. | |
| We were attempted to be shut down. | |
| But in the end, free speech prevailed. | |
| And I think that's why it's got such a lot of traction around the world. | |
| Because where do you see free speech prevailing in a little mini drama? | |
| And that's what happened. | |
| They walked away. | |
| Free speech prevailed. | |
| But now they want to take the video down. | |
| The video is on the verge of being taken down. | |
| Please, if you're watching this, download the video. | |
| And if the video gets taken down, let's kick up a stink. | |
| How did the police end up with you over the whole thing? | |
| There was about five of them. | |
| And one of the group went and got the police and said that we've got here a violent thug who is threatening us and is calling us communists and we feel threatened. | |
| And he also needs to delete his footage. | |
| And the police lady immediately took their side. | |
| And she gave me quite a hard time. | |
| She told me I couldn't say things. | |
| She said to stop filming. | |
| No, I watched it. | |
| I couldn't understand what she was doing. | |
| I knew what she was doing. | |
| I couldn't understand it either, Piers. | |
| What reaction have you? | |
| I mean, have you been back since to play the piano? | |
| No, my friend Terry, I've got a good friend, my friend Terry Miles. | |
| God bless him. | |
| He was there today. | |
| He's a fantastic YouTuber. | |
| He was there today. | |
| And there was even a protest today supporting the piano and me in St. Pancras free the piano. | |
| Terry was there today. | |
| The piano's back. | |
| And I think the... | |
| When are you back there? | |
| I don't know if I should say, Piers. | |
| Yes, you should. | |
| Do you think I should go back? | |
| Absolutely. | |
| Would you come with me? | |
| Have you been tomorrow morning? | |
| You reckon? | |
| Yes, you reckon. | |
| Of course, you'll be a superstar now. | |
| You reckon. | |
| You get bigger crowds than Elton John who donated the piano, didn't he? | |
| He did. | |
| And Elton's team has been contacted by the Daily Express to give a comment on the fact that the piano was shut off. | |
| But when they heard that, they actually released the piano. | |
| So it's back in use again. | |
| When are you going back? | |
| Come on. | |
| Give me a scoop. | |
| Piers, Piers, Piers. | |
| I don't know if I can. | |
| Just free speech. | |
| Spit it out, ma'am. | |
| I might go on Friday. | |
| Friday? | |
| This Friday. | |
| What kind of time if people are in town? | |
| Piers, Piers. | |
| Oh, I caused a commotion. | |
| Piers, Piers, you're stirring this up, man. | |
| You're stirring this up. | |
| If anyone from the Communist Party in China is watching this, look. | |
| I can't tell you when he's performing, but it's Friday. | |
| MI5 have told me to keep a low programme joke. | |
| I'm only joking. | |
| But look, I may be there on Friday, but it's a sensitive situation. | |
| The police, British Transport Police have freaked out. | |
| St. Pancras have freaked out. | |
| But people have... | |
| You know what? | |
| They should all just calm down and recognise we live... | |
| Last time I checked, in a free democratic country, and you are allowed to play the piano where you've played it many times. | |
| We've got to leave it there. | |
| Wait to see you, Brendan. | |
| All the best. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Kendall and Pankas, we're all behind you. | |
| That's it from me. | |
| Whatever you're up to. | |
| Keep it uncensored, especially from the communists in China. | |
| God bless you, peace. | |