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May 17, 2024 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
26:10
20240517_former-mafia-boss-michael-franzese-returns
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Time Text
Mob Life and Public Support 00:12:23
I mean, people who are not associated with the mob, when they hear you say something like that, they laugh.
I know.
Because they don't really understand how you could be in the mob and be a good person.
Because you've been so public, whether you do live slightly in fear.
I don't live in fear.
Well, you say you didn't hurt people.
I mean, you hurt people.
Well, I didn't put people in prison.
How many bodies are there which have never been discovered?
I'm sure they haven't uncovered all of those bodies.
All the other venues, from what I understand, they all cancelled because of my interview with the Tate brothers.
Well, I was going to ask you about Trump.
It's the most pathetic trial I've ever seen in my life.
There is no crime.
One of the biggest questions we had after our last interview was, how do you look so good at 72?
Michael Francis is a former mobster.
His stories of the criminal underworld and how he escaped it with his life are both chilling and compelling.
Almost 3 million of you watched him recount those stories in our last interview, but this week reports suggested that some venues have cancelled bookings on his UK tour, not because of his dark past in organized mafia crime, but apparently because of some of his views about the Israel-Hamas war and the fact that he recently interviewed Andrew Tate.
So as the man who faced down the actual mob, seriously fallen victim to the cancel culture mob.
We're trying to answer that and pick up on our riveting conversation last time is Michael Francis.
Well, Michael, great to have you back in the studio.
I must admit, I wasn't expecting to have this conversation because these venues, I mean, let's start with some numbers first.
How much of the tour is still happening or has it all been shelved?
Well, every venue cancelled, everyone, in a matter of 24 hours.
They all cancelled.
But now they're coming back.
And, you know, one of the best ones, the garage in Glasgow, they had cancelled.
And then the owner obviously got involved in some way and said, no, we're not cancelling.
They brought it back.
He said, we believe in free speech.
So they've been great about it.
And the promoters now have been really scurrying around for the past 24, 48 hours trying to get new venues.
Quite extraordinary.
And some of them are unabashed about it.
A spokesman for The Globe in Cardiff told us, we are aware that a recent date on Michael Francis' tour attracted protesters at the venue who approached customers and resulted in police presence.
We view the safety of our customers and staff as paramount.
And with this in mind, we've decided to cancel his event at our venue tonight.
And those protests were pro-Palestinian protesters who were upset by support you'd offered Israel.
Yeah, you know, it was funny because we were driving to the venue and all of a sudden I see all those protesters out there.
I had no idea why they were there.
And I said, what are they doing here?
And then all of a sudden I hear them shouting, you know, mafia guy and, you know, support of Israel.
What had you said about Israel?
You know, first of all, I don't, you know, this is not part of my everyday thing.
I don't use it that much on my podcast.
But I said, look, I'm a Christian.
I support Israel, obviously, but I'm against the war.
And I don't want to see Palestinians, you know, innocent Palestinians or anybody get killed.
I wish the war would end.
So I haven't been that outspoken about it.
So why are they protesting?
I have no idea.
I have no idea.
They were really calling me out, too.
I mean, they started to get a little crazy.
They had to call the police, the security did, but they were saying mafia guy, and I support genocide and all these silly things.
Ridiculous, really.
What's extraordinary is that a venue like the Globe in Cardiff would cancel this event because a few protesters don't like what you said about Israel.
They didn't cancel it because of anything you did with the mafia.
I mean, there is, to me, a kind of moral problem with their position here, which is, all right, you can have a problem with you because of your life that you led, right?
And you would understand why people would have that.
I would.
Problem.
But to do it for this, to book you, and then say, well, actually, because you said something supportive of Israel and a few people turned up to protest, we're going to have to cancel you.
What does that tell you about where society now is?
Well, it's upside down.
I mean, really.
I mean, I didn't understand it at all.
Like I said, I'm not that outspoken about it, but I am a Christian.
I do support Israel.
But, you know, look, I see what's happening in the States.
I didn't realize I would be confronted with this when I got here.
But it's upside down, no question.
The other venue which came back to us, this was a church, actually, in Kingston, Kingsgate Church, cancelled you and said we believe that some of the promotion around the event you referred to is incompatible with our ethos, values, and policies.
And we believe that that refers to the fact that you just interviewed the Tate brothers, Andrew and Tristan Tate.
Now, I went to Romania and interviewed him.
I think you did the same thing.
What's that got to do with the church?
I mean, why, again, if you're running a church which is put out for events, why would you have a moral problem with someone sitting down with two people who are accused of various offenses, but have not been convicted of any, against somebody who was in the mafia?
Again, I don't understand that, but I'll tell you how out of control it got.
I spoke to the pastor of the church here, and he was getting a lot of flack from people that were calling up and saying that I was going to do this event, and Andrew Tate was going to be on video, and we were going to talk about it.
Absolutely absurd, nonsensical.
I said, Pastor, I've been doing this for 25 years, talking about the mob and then my change of life.
I said, I've been over 1,600 churches worldwide.
I said, so that's ridiculous.
But he got scared.
They were threatening him.
There was actually one group that put him and his family, I believe, on blast.
They put him on the internet, showed pictures of him.
So he totally backed off.
And I said to him, you know, as a Christian, I said, I even spoke to Andrew Tate about Christ.
I said, it's on video.
You could see it.
But then all the other churches, from what I understand, I'm sorry, all the other venues, from what I understand, they all canceled because of my interview with the Tate brothers.
And I want to say this, you know, I think my position that innocent until proven guilty, I've said that all along.
And Pierce, that goes for anybody on the planet.
I don't care if they're in Romania, the United States, or here.
It's been my position.
And we spent the weekend with them.
And with me, they were gentlemanly.
They were very accommodating.
I had my wife and daughter with me and there was no problem.
And then we did the interview.
I mean, one of the venues came back and said it was a decision taken for commercial reasons, implying you hadn't sold enough tickets.
What's the truth about that?
I hadn't heard that at all.
I think they were making all sorts of excuses because this was all set up well in advance.
Why would that happen the night before within 24 hours?
It was like Domino's, was it?
Yeah, I think that's what it was.
I mean, they weren't trying to openly say what the reason was, that it had to do with the Tates.
Some of them didn't, but it's not a coincidence that they all did it at the same time.
It is a bizarre situation where just by interviewing people like the Tate.
I've interviewed them.
I've interviewed Andrew Tate three times.
But I went to Romania.
I had no problem interviewing them.
They're not convicted criminals yet.
They may never be convicted criminals.
There's certainly people that have a huge following around the world.
Andrew Tate in particular.
I mean, I would say one in five people that come up to me on the street are younger men who want to know what's Andrew Tate really like.
And I always try and be honest and say, look, I agree with some of the things he says, and some of them I don't agree with.
But I can understand why young men gravitate to him because he has a message of taking care of yourself, working out, not abusing your body, you know, being a hunter provider kind of masculine kind of guy.
I get why young men who feel a bit disenfranchised from society are gravitating to people like him.
Absolutely.
And I feel the same way.
And I've supported that with him all along.
And I think that's a great message.
There's no question about it.
And I've had so many young men come up to me also.
The same thing.
You know, and then what I found out recently, just today, is that there was somebody in Parliament that was accusing me of being a misogynist and said that I shouldn't even be allowed in the United Kingdom.
I mean, that's how far it's going.
Because of your misogyny.
Yeah.
And I said, well, excuse me, but I'm married 39 years to a very independent woman.
I have five very independent daughters.
And I'm anything but a misogynist.
It's amazing that just because you have a relationship with someone that you get tagged like this.
But also, it's just a warped morality.
Now, when I heard about this, I was like, I'm trying to get my head around the fact they're booking somebody who has talked very openly about being in the mob.
And we all know what that entails.
You've been quite open about a lot of the stuff you did.
And you've renounced that side of your life.
And you talk very openly about your Christianity now and your beliefs and how you feel about it all.
And that's an important message for people to hear, I think.
But it's the idea that somehow they'd be more morally outraged by you sitting down with the Tate brothers, who at the moment are not convicted criminals, or that somehow something you said about Israel, which was not just full gung-ho, they're a bunch of genocidal, you know, evil people, that because you said these two things, that is somehow morally less acceptable than you talking about life in the mob.
I mean, I just find that it's laughable to me.
Well, yeah, you know, and some people said to me, you know, why would you sit down with Andrew Tate?
I said, well, why would Andrew Tate sit down with me?
Right.
I'm a former mobster.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, it's just this strange morality play, which is going on in society where there's so much hypocrisy, so much double standard.
I know.
You know, somebody, it was a reporter that called me up today just from the New York Post and said that he saw a posting that the movie The Goodfellas now has a warning that some of the material I've got might be.
It's ridiculous.
Yeah, it might be offensive to diversity and whatever they call it.
And he said, what do you think about that?
I said, what could I say?
You know, this whole world is upside down.
Well, funny enough, I'll tell you who was brilliant this week.
Dame Judy Dench, the actress.
I don't know if you know her, but she was M and Bond and everything.
She's fantastic.
And I know her a bit, and she's a great character.
But she came out and said, if you really need a trigger warning before you go to watch a play, right?
Don't go to the play, right?
If you really need to be told that goodfellas, a movie about the mob is going to be potentially violent and might upset you, don't watch it.
Exactly.
Right.
I mean, how have we got to the stage where people need to have a trigger warning to warn them about something so bleedingly obvious?
You know, Pierce, they want to hold our hands and tell us what we should do about everything.
You know, just leave us alone.
Let us live our lives.
I mean, it's crazy.
It's so bad now it's getting, really.
What do you say to your daughters?
You've got these five daughters as they're heading off into their own lives, their own worlds and stuff.
What do you think of the world they're going into?
Well, you know, one of the reasons also I support Andrew and Tristan in their message to young men, I want to make that clear, because my daughters tell me, dad, we can't find a good guy anymore, you know, out in California.
And it is an issue for them.
If you go see the movie Barbie and you see this is the kind of stuff they're pushing on, it's terrible.
So, you know, I just tell them, listen, you know, they have a certain standard.
They've seen me with their mother for all of these years and they know what they want in a man.
And that's what they're looking for, you know.
Pierce, I've sat down with their boyfriends and they come to the house and they said, let me explain something.
That can't be an easy first meeting.
Well, it's easy for me.
It's not easy for them.
But I tell them straight out.
I said, listen, you got good girls here.
Take after their mother.
They know they're good.
I said, but they're very tough.
I said, so if you can't deal with that, I said, leave right now because you're never going to win.
You know, I tell them straight out.
But I wouldn't want Andrew Tate dating my daughter because...
The stuff he says about women, I think, is misogynist, actually.
And that's where I have a problem with him.
And I think that's a bad message he sends to young men.
A lot of it I do agree with.
That's why he's a complex character and obviously has huge influence and a huge following.
But I think this idea that, you know, all women, well, I mean, to see what your daughters think of being told, you've all got to stay at home.
The man does all the work.
You just look pretty, do the cooking, serve your man and stuff.
Justice System Abuse of Power 00:04:41
I mean, I don't think you share that.
No, not at all.
And your daughter certainly would.
And your wife certainly would.
My daughters all at work.
They all have their job.
They're all very independent.
My wife actually works with me, but she's a photographer.
You know, if she wanted to go out and work, she'd go out and work.
I don't ascribe to that at all.
But, you know, again, I sat with the boys over the weekend, and they were perfect gentlemen.
They said all the right things.
And, you know, I have a whole different impression of them.
Plus, you know, before I sit with somebody like you, I do my research on it.
You know, people have a tendency, you get convicted in social media, people come up with an impression, and that's it.
You know, I can't deal that way.
I've been involved in this system.
I've been to trial five times myself.
I've seen what the government can do.
Give people a chance to defend themselves.
I say that all the time.
And I think the Tates, like anybody else, deserve that opportunity.
And a lot of things that I heard, I think are taken out of context with them.
You know, and I said this all the time.
Things that might be a bit immoral, they're not always illegal.
You know, it's the same thing they're doing with Trump now in this courtroom.
Well, I was going to ask you about Trump.
I mean, I think this Stormy Daniels case is pathetic.
I think it's so demeaning for America to allow a recent president of the United States, one of only 46 people to ever hold the job, to be dragged through a courtroom for weeks on end because he may or may not have paid a porn star 18 years ago to keep quiet about a one-night stand.
He paid her for something that happened 18 years ago.
I just think it's so pathetic and trivial and demeaning.
It shouldn't be happening in America.
It's not about him avoiding justice.
It's about it's clearly a Democrat justice system against him there and in some of the other cases where they have just decided we're going to try and take him down.
But it's having the opposite effect, I think.
I think Americans are really thinking this is wrong.
They're seeing through it.
It's the most pathetic trial I've ever seen in my life.
There is no crime.
No.
There's no crime.
And they're making this man sit through that trial.
It's a misdemeanor, even if he did what they say he did.
Even if it is.
But you know, they're embarrassing his family, his children.
It's terrible what they're doing.
It's a deliberate attempt to humiliate him.
Yes.
To try and then make him unelectable.
They've tried to take him off ballots in some of the states.
There's a real concerted effort to not beat Trump by fair means, but beat him by foul.
And of course, what they don't realize is that is likely, I believe, to empower him further, as his poll ratings have shown.
It is.
You know, I see it.
I think people are really starting to wake up.
You know, I'm on the Rumble platform now recently, the last couple of months, and people are so angry, you know, about what's going on because they really express themselves on that platform.
And the anger I'm seeing with going on in our system.
Pierce, you know this.
The two most dangerous things in any society are this.
Number one, when the ruling party, party in power, weaponizes Department of Justice and all the government agencies to go after their political enemies or their ideological enemies.
And secondly, for the press, the media to cover for them.
And, you know, half the time, you don't get the news anymore.
You just get opinions and, you know, it's just terrible.
What do you feel about Joe Biden?
Because many people, particularly here in the UK, look at this guy.
He's in his 80s.
Looks like he can barely think straight or speak straight or stand straight.
As an American, what do you feel about this guy potentially having another four years?
I think Joe Biden is destroying our country and I think he's causing chaos and unrest throughout the world because a weak America is bad for the whole world.
The things that are happening over the southern border, the crime that's happening in the cities, my city, New York, San Francisco, LA is really gone downhill.
Yeah, I mean, it's all these cities.
And, you know, you've got to have law in a society.
And, you know, the other thing about Trump, for them to drag him through that court and make this so important while people are getting stabbed in the street and pushed into the train tracks in the subway and giving him no bail.
I've never seen anything like this.
This district attorney there should be.
It's an abuse of power.
Terrible.
I've always felt, once I knew that was the first one of the four cases to come up, I thought this is just going to blow the whole thing out.
Terrible.
Because Americans, I think most Americans are not, they're not enjoying seeing a president humiliated like that.
They're not.
Even if they don't like Trump.
And what do you think about the gag order on him?
That's unheard of.
Well, it's completely one-sided.
So people like Michael Cohen, you know, who's a convicted criminal and a massive liar, can say what he likes about Trump.
He can sell merchandise off the back of this whole thing, but Trump can't respond.
And I think that is ridiculous.
Yeah.
I mean, I've never seen anything like that.
Good People in the Mob 00:08:08
I've been through the system half my life.
I've never seen it.
In the mafia, in the mob, was there an age limit?
I mean, for the big bosses, I mean, the godfathers, was there a moment where someone knocked on their shoulder and went, you're too old or not?
No, no, you could have stayed there until you couldn't stay there anymore.
But I mean, basically, you know when your time is up and people will let you know that and you leave quietly.
But I hadn't seen that.
You know, I haven't seen any retirees in that life.
You know, usually you don't retire.
You get retired.
You get in a good way.
Yeah.
I asked you this last time.
I was thinking about it again when I knew you were coming back, which is whether you, because you've been so public, whether you do live slightly in fear of getting that kind of knock on the shoulder from someone who, for whatever reason, from your past, doesn't like what you do now.
You know, I don't live in fear.
You know, one of the unfortunate things in that life, Pierce, you make a mistake, your best friend walks you into a room, you don't walk out again.
And so I've witnessed that in my life, and, you know, I had an experience like that.
So it kind of, you know, that was the fear at that time.
But look, I didn't hurt anybody.
I didn't put anybody in prison.
I don't thumb my nose in their face, go back to New York and say, hey, guys, I'm moving back into the neighborhood.
That wouldn't be right.
And when I'm in New York, I'm careful.
You know, I don't take anything for granted, but I don't live in fear.
Well, you say you didn't hurt people.
I mean, you hurt people.
Well, I didn't put people in prison right after when I walked away.
You mean your own side?
Correct, yeah.
Right.
But I mean, you would have hurt a lot of people.
That's part of the life.
You know, you have regrets and it's part of the life.
If you had your time again, I was going to ask you this last time.
Would you, if you had two doors, one was going down the door you went through, a life in the mob, and the other one would be not to take that option.
Which one would you take, given the way you've now turned out as a man?
Well, understand this.
I didn't get into the life because I wanted to be a mobster.
I got into the life because my father got a 50-year prison sentence and I wanted to help him get out, which I eventually did.
But knowing what I know now, I wouldn't walk through that door again.
You wouldn't?
No.
No.
It's a bad life.
It's an evil life.
And the reason I call it an evil life is because I don't know any family of any made guy that hasn't been totally devastated.
Really?
Including my own.
Now, not my wife and kids, but mother, brothers, sisters, a total mess.
Really?
Oh, yeah.
I mean, I had a sister that died of an overdose of drugs, 27 years old.
My brother, a drug addict, 25 years.
I can't even begin to tell you what I had to do just to keep him alive on the street.
My mother, 33 years without a husband.
When she passed away, Pierce, I can only describe her relationship with my dad as ugly because she blamed him for everything that went wrong.
Rightfully so.
I had another sister, 40 years old.
She died at the age of 40.
She was never mentally stable.
So the whole family is devastated.
My dad does 40 years in prison, comes out at the age of 100.
And every family of every member I know goes through some similar pain like that.
So any lifestyle that does that to a family is no good.
And I want to be clear, I don't call the men evil.
I was one of them at one point.
I just happen to be very fortunate.
Even the lifestyle is an evil one.
The lifestyle is evil.
Does the mob still really exist in the way that it used to?
Does it have the power, the tentacles?
No, absolutely not.
You know, and the story a lot of people want to bring is that John Gotti destroyed that life.
Absolutely not true.
He did not.
It was the racketeering act that destroyed the life.
It changed everything, no doubt.
Because too many got put away.
Too many got put away, too many informants that got scared of doing 100 years in prison.
That's the type of crime.
All of the power that they took away, the forfeiture laws, it really devastated that life.
So it's a shell of what it used to be, but it's not going away in my lifetime.
When you watch the many movies about Gotti that have come out, how close to the reality do you think they are?
Gotti?
Yeah.
Have you seen the 1996 Gotti movie, HBO, with Armand DeSantis?
Absolutely the best.
Really?
Yeah.
I think it's the best mob movie ever.
And very accurate.
Yeah, very accurate.
He's got that kind of mixture of sinister and charm.
Yeah.
Which the real Gotti had.
Yes.
Did you know him well?
I knew him pretty well.
I know his family well, and they're good people.
Good family.
I mean, people who are not associated with the mob, when they hear you say something like that, they laugh.
I know.
Because they don't really understand how you could be in the mob and be a good person.
Well, you know, why do good people do bad things?
You know, it doesn't mean that they're absolutely bad people.
And you could say that about anybody in life, you know.
There was a lot of guys that I thought were good people in that life.
We did bad things.
I did bad things.
You know, somebody can determine whether I'm a good or bad guy.
But look, I have fond memories of some of the guys that I ran with.
And when people ask me, Mike, what do you miss about the life?
The money, the power, and all that?
I said, no, it's the guys, the camaraderie we had with the guys at that time.
But, you know.
What about the girls?
Sophia Vegara plays the godmother, Griselda Blanco.
And then I think that's a good idea.
What do you think of that?
Well, there would never be any women in our life, that's for sure.
No women mobsters.
Did you know Griselda Blanco?
No, I didn't.
Never came across her.
No, I didn't know her.
We didn't get involved with the cartel or any of that.
No.
Pierce, we were not drug dealers.
I always get flashback whenever I say...
Well, because in the Godfather movie, there is that great scene where Don Corleone doesn't want to get involved in the drugs.
But some of the other families clearly are.
I mean, the mafia has, over the decades, dealt in drugs, right?
I mean, it depends which family.
In a big way.
Not in a big way.
More of the mafia in Italy, yes.
They were big heroin dealers, absolutely.
But during my time, my era in that life, if we dealt with drugs, we died.
We couldn't get involved.
Well, guys doing it on the sneak, a little bit here and there, of course.
You know, they're street guys, but we were not allowed to get involved with drugs.
How many bodies are there which have never been discovered, just lying under things?
Well, I think a lot of them have been discovered now because so many informants came forward and told these stories.
But, you know, I mean, if you look at Roy DeMayo, you know, who allegedly killed, you know, over 200 people, I'm sure they haven't uncovered all of those bodies.
You know, he had a method of getting rid of them that was quite... famously spoken about, I would say.
And what about this idea that there's just suitcases of cash all over America, which the mob left?
No, I don't believe that.
They don't believe suitcases anymore.
You haven't got a bit of paper somewhere?
Well, you know, no.
Well, you could go and dig and there might be something there?
No.
No.
No?
Mob guys don't leave their money.
They keep it.
They make sure they have it somewhere, yeah.
Do any mob guys end up rich or do they all end up blowing it?
No, there's guys that, yeah, that left this life wealthy.
Yeah.
Carlo Gambino, very wealthy guy.
He died, you know, at home in his house.
But, you know, most of them go to prison and die.
So when you go to prison, what do you have left?
Who was the most dangerous mobster you ever came across?
The most dangerous?
You know, it's a crazy question because everybody in that life is capable of doing something.
So people say, did you live in fear of a surprise?
When you think back over all the ones you came across?
Well, you know, the psychotic one I would say was Roy DeMayo.
Yeah, he was a guy, he was a loose cannon.
And that's why he didn't last.
You know, he didn't last.
One of the biggest questions we had after our last interview was, how do you look so good at 72?
Is it Botox, a Zempic, or a better both?
Can I say that this is the perfect form because we have a huge audience?
The only time I ever have makeup on is when I come to see you.
I don't do any of that.
No plastic surgery?
Aging Naturally Without Surgery 00:00:44
No, nothing.
No Botox?
Nothing, nothing at all.
I frown at that.
But my dad lived to be 103.
And at 103, he looked like maybe 85.
So we got good DNA.
That's it.
It's good to catch up.
I hope the talk gets back on.
People should hear your story.
It's actually a very inspiring story in many ways.
I think anyone who renounces a life and could talk openly about it and help others perhaps not go down that path, that's got to be a good message.
And the idea that churches have been taking exception over other stuff like your view about Israel or meeting the Tates, I think is ridiculous, but so indicative of a life we now have to endure until we fix it.
Michael, good to see you.
Appreciate that.
Thanks, Beris.
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