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March 25, 2024 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
25:29
20240325_does-kate-deserve-an-apology
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Time Text
Silence Broken by Truth 00:04:57
It was pretty clear from comments and feedback over the weekend that many people feel quite angry about the way Princess Catherine, the Princess of Wales, has been treated.
We now know the real reason she's been absent from public life in the months since her abdominal surgery and is whirled away from the conspiracy theories and frenzied speculation.
In January, I underwent major abdominal surgery in London.
And at the time, it was thought that my condition was non-cancerous.
The surgery was successful.
However, tests after the operation found cancer had been present.
This, of course, came as a huge shock.
And William and I have been doing everything we can to process and manage this privately for the sake of our young family.
It has taken us time to explain everything to George, Charlotte and Louis in a way that's appropriate for them and to reassure them that I'm going to be okay.
Well, first, I think Kate deserves enormous credit for delivering that statement with such poise, grace and composure, and yes, courage.
This is a woman who's been at the center of an absolute firestorm for months, baited by trolls, mercilessly mocked by so-called comedians and TV stars, all while recovering from surgery, managing a spate of crises in the royal family, and we now know fighting cancer.
It's been a pitch-perfect illustration of why she's so beloved and popular across the world.
And if anyone owes her an apology, I would suggest it's people like this.
Isn't their motto, never complain, never explain?
That's true.
And they had her explaining on Twitter?
Yes, there is a non-zero chance she died 18 months ago.
They might be weekend at Bernie's in this situation.
Non-zero.
I'm not saying it happened, right?
Right, but non-zero.
I'm saying it's non-zero.
Until proved otherwise.
And so you'd see her with a copy of the day's newspaper.
Internet sleuths are guessing that Kate's absence may be related to her husband and the future King of England William having an affair.
Oh no.
Since 2019, according to tabloids, back then, when Kate supposedly confronted him about it, he laughed it off, saying there was nothing to it.
Aha, always a good response when your wife accuses you of cheating.
But it was actually a completely untrue story.
Many popular and influential people turned legitimate questions about Kate's absence into a feeding frenzy.
They speculated wildly, as we've seen, about extramarital affairs, plastic surgery, even whether she was still alive at all.
They fueled and emboldened the conspiracists who turned Kate's absence into an obsession.
Kim Kardashian posted to her millions of followers that she was on her way to find Kate.
James Barr, a regular panelist and friend of his show, started selling free Kate t-shirts.
Omid Scoby, the Lickspittle hack of the Sussexes, posted a countdown to Kate's announcement at a time when most people in his industry had been briefed about what was to come.
He deleted it, but he posted it originally, and that says it all.
Harry and Megan have now privately offered their best wishes to Kate, so privately that we all know about it.
And they talked about demanding privacy and peace for two people that they have been abusing for the last four years.
And in Kate's case, branding her and King Charles racists.
Is that what their idea of privacy and peace is when it comes to family matters?
All of this was in rancidly bad taste, as is often the case with a digital frenzy.
Too many simply forgot there's a real human being at the centre of whatever soap opera they're harvesting for cliques.
And that's where I think this went wrong.
There is or should be a clear line between inquiry and mockery.
And too many people crossed it.
But I don't think it's wrong to ask questions.
The royal family represents us.
They're paid for by the taxpayer.
And ultimately, it works for us, the British people.
Britain benefits from the global fascination with the monarchy, and the royals live a life of immense privilege as part of that unwritten social contract.
Conspiracists filled an information vacuum.
Case disastrously edited Mother's Day photograph simply fanned the conspiracy flames.
This has been a learning curve for a lot of people, including the monarchy, in these rapidly changing times.
It can no longer control the flow of information in the way it did for decades.
I've nothing but incredible admiration for the way that the Princess of Wales gave her statement and to Prince William, who deserves every plaudit now for the way he's conducted himself.
He missed his godfather's memorial, it turned out, because he just found out his wife had cancer.
And besides that, he's done his best to keep calm and carry on with public duties, even as he's grappled with the death of a friend and the cancer diagnosis of his father, the king.
On a personal level, I've nothing but empathy, sympathy, and admiration for the royal family, but we're not in North Korea.
We must have the right to ask questions.
For more on this, I'm joined by the royal editor, Sarah Hewson, the Times is former royal correspondent Valentine Lowe, the Royal Historian and author Tessa Dunlop, and the Fox News contributor, Dr. Mark Siegel.
The Cancer Diagnosis Revealed 00:03:01
Well, Dr. Mark, great to have you back on Censor.
Let me ask you, first of all, about the medical side of this story, because a lot of people are still quite confused about what preventative chemotherapy means and what may be really going on here and how serious it may be.
What is your professional take on where we are with Kate's health following her announcement?
You know, Pierre, as we talked about this back in January, you and me.
Let's start with the abdominal surgery, which you and I took very seriously.
And one thing I didn't tell you is you never mock someone who's having a health problem.
That's the third rail.
You don't do that.
Anyone who did that should be ashamed.
And it was clear to me that she was having an extensive surgery of some kind.
And as you just said, she's dealt with it with class, with grace, with courage, with fortitude.
Daffodils in the background of that video, resilience, life, celebrating life.
Tremendous, tremendous inspiration to me as a physician.
Now, what was she suffering from?
Here's why I'm starting with that abdominal surgery.
If it was something like a gynecologic surgery, you'd be out in a day.
And we were wondering why this was prolonged.
And back in 2012, there was a lot of scuttlebutt about how she might have, and I mean might being the emphasis here, inflammatory bowel disease.
She was raising a lot of funding for them, Crohn's and ulcerative colitis.
If that were the case, that could explain that surgery, and you could find a cancer incidentally when you were doing a bowel resection.
I'm not saying that is what it is because, again, we don't have any definite information, but a lot of the oncologists and colorectal surgeons I've spoken to have put that at the top of the list.
And the good news would be, whatever this is, completely resected.
And she says the chemo is preventative, meaning that it's to make sure it doesn't come back.
Now, another thing going for that possibility, and I'm not saying I know this, is that it doesn't look like she's lost her hair.
There's debate over that in that video, but she looks pretty healthy.
And if she got taxol, which is the chemo we use for ovarian cancer or cancer of the cervix or uterine cancer, that makes you really sick and you lose your hair.
Certainly GYN cancers are on the list because they also are something you might find incidentally.
If you were looking inside the abdomen or you were doing a hysterectomy, you might find something and then send it for pathology and find out later that it was an incidentally picked up early cancer.
Again, early.
We're talking early because she used the word preventative.
So I think the chances of long-term survival here and full recovery are very high.
That's excellent news.
Dr. Mark, as always, a brilliant overview.
I appreciate you joining us.
Thank you.
Okay, that's the medical sort of analysis.
And as you made clear, we don't know, but it certainly seemed a pretty well-informed take on possibilities here, Sarah.
We spoke on Friday when this first blow, it felt like a real earthquake story, didn't it?
A Defining Royal Speech 00:15:06
And it's come on the back of so many others.
You know, you think about the death of Prince Philip was only three years ago.
That was a huge thing.
Huge funeral.
Then the death of his wife, the queen, huge, enormous.
The coronation of the king.
Then it turns out he has cancer.
Now it turns out the wife of the next king has cancer.
This is, I would argue, an unprecedented period in the modern story of the royal family.
It really is.
And if you think about the age of Prince Philip and the Queen, they almost seemed invincible, didn't they?
As if they were going to go on forever.
And now we have, we're less than a year since the coronation.
And here we have King Charles having been diagnosed with cancer and our future queen having been diagnosed with cancer.
And it really is unprecedented and extraordinarily challenging for the royal family.
And I think you can see from the reaction from the public and on social media just how much this has rocked the nation.
And if you ever had any questions about whether the royal family was still relevant, I think that's paid to those now, hasn't it?
Yes.
Good question.
Tessa Dunlop, I mean, the feeding frenzy that's gone on for the last few weeks, you know, like I said in the monologue, I think there's a line between legitimate scrutiny and interest, particularly given the lack of information that was being put out, by contrast to the information we were given about the king, for example, and the kind of widespread, wild, crazy conspiracy theories.
What do you think?
Yes, I think you're absolutely right.
And I wonder if you and I shouldn't both publicly apologise, Piers, because I sat with you on your platform and we speculated as to why the future king hadn't turned up at his late godfather, the ex-King of Greece's memorial service in Windsor.
We speculated as to what had happened to Kate, whether she still had the will for the job and the role, which she expressed, I thought, very poignantly in that video, explaining it gave her great joy.
And we bit into that feeding frenzy.
And I, for one, had a sense on Friday, almost a deja vu, back when I was 21, consuming stories of Diana when suddenly down came the guillotine, that terrible story about the car crash.
And I felt kind of part of this voyeuristic wave that had consumed the late Princess of Wales.
And when I saw that video of the current Princess of Wales, I felt an equivalent guilt.
And I want to publicly say, I think I got the balance a bit wrong.
And I hope you'll share and join me in doing the same.
Well, no, I don't, actually.
I don't think you did.
And I certainly don't think I did, because I do think there is a legitimate line for journalists and pundits and everyone involving the royal family when they're huge, huge stories like this, that you are allowed to scrutinise and talk about it and try and work out what is happening.
That is completely normal and legitimate.
They are taxfare, payer-funded.
We couldn't have second-guessed or worked out what the real story was.
Now, the moment you know what the real story...
Well, hang on, hang on, let me finish.
The moment you know that the story is that she has got cancer, of course, everything must change.
That doesn't mean you have to apologise for doing your jobs before.
Your job is to comment on these things.
My job is to report on these things and comment on them.
I don't think anything I've said crossed the line in terms of the kind of outrageous stuff that we saw in America, where people were talking about her possibly being dead.
They talked about her marital situation, which was complete baloney.
That crosses the line.
But simply asking what is happening theorizing.
I don't have a problem with that.
But we know, Piers, there is no line in the wild west that is the internet and the human world.
What's expected from people, but what's expected from people like you and me is higher standards.
Actually, we knew that a youngish mother had had serious abdominal surgery, which was going to knock her out of action until after Easter, irrespective of what they found.
And had we taken a step back, we might have said, you know, hands up, forget the clicks today, guys, forget the fee.
I think that the Prince and the Princess of Wales, something's happening, very personal.
We're going to give them the time that they asked for until Easter to sort it out.
To hell with you, Charles.
And I'm saying, from my personal point of view, I wonder if I could have played my hand with more empathy and more effectively.
And I'm actually humbled by the princess, by the way in which she sat there.
I thought it was epoch defining for a royal family that's been floundering around for a role for a while now.
And she's hard to match.
Really, she became, because of the conspiracy theories, the most famous woman in the world.
And she's pretty untouchable at the moment.
Okay.
Look, an interesting perspective.
I mean, Valentine, you report on the rules for a very long time.
You're out of the game now, but you're back here and I thank you.
I mean, does Tessa have a point?
I mean, should we be revisionist in the way that we were speculating?
I mean, I actually don't think there's anything to apologise for.
If you were doing it from a position of, well, what has happened here and how serious is it?
And so on.
They, to me, are perfectly normal questions that the public were all demanding to know answers to.
Our job as journalists, surely, is to try and find out what's happened.
Once you know that she's got cancer, completely different landscape, as we've seen from all the coverage since that moment.
But I actually think the way the palace handled it was pretty poor.
You know, allowing that picture to be released on Mother's Day when it had been clearly edited many, many times, I think was a massive error.
It just fueled the conspiracy.
So I think, yeah, you can criticize people along this way, but the real people who've been the villains here are the ones making up all the crazy stuff, which was getting legitimacy on social media.
Am I wrong?
Yes, obviously, I mean, there are definitely legitimate questions you can ask, and I think journalists' job does not stop.
I think what this exposes is the fundamental difficulty at the heart of the royal family.
They're both an institution which are there to represent the country, to be a unifying force for the country, to be the head of state or future head of state, but they're also a private family.
And I think in the modern media age with social media, the palace hasn't quite grasped how to deal with those two different things pulling in different directions.
You know who I think did, Sarah, is the Princess of Wales.
I mean, I saw the editor of the Sun, Victoria Newton, on the BBC yesterday, saying that it was two weeks ago that she took the decision to do a video message once, which is pretty soon after we understand she was told she had cancer, because it was quite soon after William suddenly skipped that memorial.
And we all wondered what could have been so serious.
Well, now we know, obviously.
But if it was two weeks ago that she planned this, it wasn't a reaction actually to a lot of the more absurd conspiracies.
She probably recognised that in the modern era, with social media the way it is, that this is the only way to deal with these kind of stories.
And I thought she got it absolutely spot on.
And she recognised that it was about that bond of trust between them as royals and the public.
She also recognised that if she just put out a print statement, there would still be more questions.
And that also the shock might have been even greater.
And let's not forget, she's not someone who is particularly comfortable public speaking.
This was an address to the nation, an address to the world.
The very first time she has ever had to do this.
And Tessa describing it as epoch defining.
It was unbelievably significant.
I thought when she said at the end, you are not alone, it had echoes of the late Queen's speech during COVID.
Well, actually, it reminded me of another speech by the Queen, actually.
I mean, that bit did, I agree with you, where the Queen talked about, you know, we'll be together again, evoking Vera Lynn and stuff.
Actually, Valentine, the speech it reminded me most of was the Queen's speech after Diana died, when for a few days the Queen didn't say anything.
And the papers, I was one of the editors saying, Speak to us, ma'am, your people are hurting, which was true.
And the Queen eventually came down from Balmoral, and it's all in the movie, The Crown, and it's exactly how it went down.
And she made the speech without a crown, and she was very like, I'll speak to you as a grandmother.
And I thought she completely nailed that speech.
And I felt the same way about Kate, that this was suddenly not a princess, this was a woman talking about a profoundly serious moment in her life.
Yeah, I mean, the Queen, what was interesting about the Queen's address after the death of Diana was initially the palace officials, when asked if she would do live, said the Queen doesn't do live.
Yeah.
And turned out the Queen did do live.
And of course, we all remember the line about speaking as a grandmother, which actually came from Downing Street, from Alastair Campbell, I believe.
So he says.
He claims a lot of credit for a lot of things, Alastair Campbell.
Turn out a lot of the time to be complete baloney.
Tessa, let me ask you a wider question, which is what this has shown us, and we've talked about this before in the last few weeks, but the fragility of the monarchy and the royal family, given how few senior members there are now, they've lost some of their top players, Philip, the Queen, so on.
The Queen Mother.
I mean, I remember the Queen Mother, you know, in the late 90s, 2000s, what an amazing figure she was for the family.
Princess Margaret, all these great figures of the family have died.
You've now got two of the top four who've got cancer.
And who knows how that plays out?
We just have to hope for the best.
And I'm sure that will hopefully be the case.
But if it isn't, this could plunge the monarchy into a genuine crisis, the like of which we haven't seen.
I actually, I profoundly disagree with you.
We've moved beyond the court circular ribbon cutting, minor royals being seen to unveil a plaque.
What Kate's done is she's given our royal family global relevance almost overnight.
In the last month and a half, I have had more calls from Australia, America, Europe, tapping into the same narrative.
Kate became world famous and then she delivered a message that was almost a kind of where were you moment.
And when you're talking about which moment in history does this hark back to, I would go far further back.
I would go to the Princess Elizabeth when she was 21 years old in South Africa, pledging herself to a life of service.
In that moment, you had vulnerability because she was young and she looked feminine and vulnerable and you also had commitment and duty.
And Kate walked the same line.
She was vulnerable.
She's a woman with a young family with cancer and she is committing herself to this dutiful future, remembering other cancer sufferers, telling us that her dutiful role gives her joy.
So I agree, listen, I happen to agree with everything you just said, actually, about Kate and her importance to this family is now stratospheric.
What did you think about the statement issued by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex from their mansion in California, where they demanded privacy and peace for this couple who they've basically been terrorising for four years?
I think that it's, I feel a degree, as you'd expect, Piers, of compassion for Harry, because I think in that moment when he discovered his sister-in-law had cancer, with all that means to a man who lost his mother young and what he understands that the implications for his brother's young family and the uncertainty they feel, he must feel a bit foolish, very, very alone on the other side of the Atlantic, a bit cut off.
And I believe, because I believe fundamentally Harry's a good guy, that he'll have extraordinary levels of empathy and feel a bit trapped in the narrative that he's spun over the last few years.
But I don't, and I think we have to remember this.
Valentine pointed out this out at the beginning of the show that the fault line runs through monarchy.
Harry was knocking the public face of the royal family, which included his brother and the position.
His brother always had a step in front of him.
And I don't think that will detract from the very personal situation the family find themselves in.
You know, it redefines family relations when cancer comes knocking.
And I think this will hasten Harry's desire to try and find a way back in, at least personally, into not just his father's life, but hopefully so to his.
Yeah, I suspect he's going to make a brick wall with his brother William because William will have a long memory, as we know he does.
And he will remember that this couple branded his wife a racist and his father a racist.
We know this from the Omis Scobie leaked book in Amsterdam.
This is what Meghan Markle and Harry claimed.
They expressed concern about the skin colour, potentially, of baby Archie, which I've always thought was utter nonsense.
But he also remembered the digs about his wife in the book, you know, where Harry tried to imply that somehow he married for love and William had to marry for duty.
He'll remember all the jibes, all the secrets that Harry spilled, the conversations at Philip's funeral in a garden with Charles.
I mean, he won't forget any of this.
And the idea that they're going to suddenly have all sort of happy families again because of this terrible tragedy that's befallen Kate, I think is for the birds.
Obviously, he'll remember, but forgiveness is a little bit forgiveness is about moving on and being prepared to forget and putting things into the past.
Some people have to apologise to get forgiveness.
And there's no sign of Harry ever apologising.
Quite the reverse.
He thinks the royal family should apologize to him for him trashing them for the last four years.
I think that's ridiculous.
That is ridiculous.
But we read, and I don't know if this is true, that Harry has moved on from the idea of demanding an apology that he now accepts that's not going to happen.
So that shows a level of understanding and maturity.
And your view of the monarchy and its survivability through this?
I think this is a dreadful crisis for the royal family, but I don't think it's a major constitutional crisis.
I think they'll power on through.
The only thing which made me worried was seeing all these briefings in the newspapers on Monday morning.
The royal family will come back stronger than ever.
That made me think...
Oddly defensive.
That made me think the palace is rattled.
Well, they are rattled.
They remember the sort of equivalent of in good spirits.
Yeah, Sarah, there's also been a lot of upheaval in the palace press offices, right?
And we all know this and the media, particularly at Kensington Palace.
Well, they're advertising a role for £25,000 for a communications assistant.
Well, you know what?
Bump the money up.
I'll get around there and give you some home truths because I think they need it.
Actually, my only advice to them would be look at what Kate did off her own back.
Look at the impact that's had worldwide.
Look at the way it's basically killed most of the conspiracies.
Not all.
You're going to get the wackos there.
But it's basically shut down a lot of the frenzy.
And look at the grace and dignity that she did.
But look also at what we had to go through before we get to that point.
Palace Press Office Upheaval 00:02:23
It reminds me of the problem.
There immense damage that happened before that.
No, no, I agree.
I agree.
You think about Lancashire Police with that information void around the search for Nicola Bulley.
And that was filled by conspiracy theories.
And these are people who are making a lot of money.
Yeah, but that's why I think that what Kate's shown is that actually you have to get on the front foot and you have to be more open.
You cannot hide actually anymore.
I totally understood why I've got four kids.
And when she talked about her children and wanting them to be told at the right time in the right way and for this to come out on their last day at school so they wouldn't have to go back to school immediately.
I completely get that.
And I think you have to have full respect for that.
But there were other missteps they all made along the way, which contributed to the frenzy.
And I think in that will have been William as well, remembering just how awful it was to be at school when his parents' marriage breakdown was being played out and he and when his mother died.
Yeah.
Right?
I mean, let's not forget that.
I mean, William's been through a hell of a lot.
And they are family first, always this couple.
And so what they've done is say, we'll tell you this, and then we are going to retreat into our Norfolk bubble.
The five of us and everyone else stay away.
Let's give Tessa the last word because she loves to have the last word and you've been chomping at the bit.
Go on.
But I just think we have to bear in mind this is the beginning of a journey for Kate.
And I think we all have to ask ourselves, you know, when do we expect the next statement, the next update?
Because anyone I know who's had cancer, the road goes like that.
There's ups, there's downs.
What do we expect her to share?
To what extent do we expect to be in the know?
And I think this is a learning curve.
We saw the palace learn.
They went from that appalling doctored photograph to the sublimely, brilliantly filmed two-minute video that Kate was anchoring.
And I wonder where we all stand on the next move for monarchy.
Well, here you are again, speculating.
You better get your apologies ready.
Tessa, thank you.
Valentine, great to see you.
Sarah, great to see you.
Appreciate it.
Sure, the debate will run and run, but I think with a lot more empathy than perhaps it was doing before.
Now we know exactly what is going on.
And our very best wishes, of course, go to Kate in particular, but also her family and her three young children.
And her husband, who I think is doing an incredible job.
Think about that for a moment.
His dad has got cancer.
He's the king.
He's the next king.
And his wife now has cancer too.
And he has three young children.
That's a hell of a hell of a load for anyone.
And I have a lot of sympathy for William right now.
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