All Episodes
Previous Next
Plain Text
May 14, 2025 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
01:14:08
20250514_ex-prince-andrew-crisis-manager-on-shock-sting-sta
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
|

Time Text
Royal Scandal Fallout 00:08:40
People know you were brought in to try and get through the fallout from the Newsnight interview.
Virginia Dufray, she has just taken her life.
Right in the middle of all this, here is you, John Bryan.
You were involved in a massive royal scandal yourself.
So you know what it's like.
If what you said to this undercover journalist in the bar is the truth, you would be accusing Prince Andrew of a very serious criminal offence.
I regret it sincerely and deeply.
You say that he was effing underage girls.
That's not cool.
I was completely shocked and surprised when it came out.
Why did he continue to see Epstein after Epstein had already become a convicted paedophile?
Do you know the answer to that?
Epstein was there to pull his extortionate plot and he was a target.
Do you believe that Prince Andrew has sex with Virginia Dufray?
General McChrystal.
That moment when you knew your comments about Biden had been reported by Rolling Stone, that must have been one of the worst moments of your life.
To be really honest with you, I didn't know how to think about going forward in life.
I thought about suicide.
John Bryan is a hugely successful businessman and financial advisor whose close relationship with members of the royal family has often brought him to the attention of the British press.
He was summonsed for secret crisis talks at Prince Andrew's Royal Lodge in the wake of his disastrous BBC interview during which the Duke of York floundered on the subject of his relationship with paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
Witnesses say they saw many young girls coming and going at the time.
There is video footage of Epstein accompanied by young girls and you were there staying in his house catching up with friends.
I never, I mean, I mean, if they were, then I wasn't a party to any of that.
I never saw them.
I mean, you have to understand that his house, I described it more as a, as, as, as almost as a railway station, if you know what I mean, in the sense that there were people coming in and out of that house all the time.
What they were doing and why they were there, I had nothing to do with.
Well, John Bryan worked with Prince Andrew on a crisis plan and went on record to attest his innocence.
But the longtime royal confidant was recently caught up in an apparent sting in which he was secretly filmed saying the opposite.
I was so pissed about that.
I was really pissed.
I was really pissed because he lied to me about it.
Epstein.
No, I knew he saw him.
He lied to me that he was such a close friend.
I was don't.
And John Bryan joins me now.
Mr. Bryan, thank you very much indeed for joining me on Uncensored.
I feel like I've known you a long, long time, even though I don't think we've ever met or I've never interviewed you.
So it's good to finally be one-on-one with you after all these years.
And we'll come to the background of your friendship with the family later.
I just want to talk to you about this sting that's happened because famously in 2022, you gave a lengthy interview to the Daily Mail in which you were extremely supportive and defensive of Prince Andrew.
You didn't believe that he was guilty of any crimes.
You said, I believe Andrew is innocent.
If he was genuinely involved in orgies, as has been alleged, Epstein would have used that to try and bribe the Queen into paying out millions to protect her family.
Andrew never had the money.
The Queen was the one with the money.
You said you never saw him turn up with any woman who was not in at least her mid-20s.
If there'd been anything untoward, I would have known about it.
Sarah would have known about it.
There was never a hint of that.
And you went on to talk about other parts of this.
In this sting video, which came out from the O'Keefe Media Group, you are seen in a bar and you're having drinks and you're talking to people that we don't see on camera.
And you appear to say the complete opposite to what you said there.
Now, first of all, what is your reaction to that sting video?
Well, the sting video is very interesting.
I think O'Keefe Media is genius in certain ways.
The woman that I met was spectacular.
She was interesting, fun, bright, a great actress.
Let's say she's putting on a role.
But if I was a producer or director, I'd be hiring her for any acting role.
And I think that part of the reason that I was saying these things is I had quite a lot to drink and I just was not speaking the truth.
And I have to admit it.
And I regret very much what I said.
And none of it reflects what I actually believe.
And what I was saying was stuff that was basically you could Google anywhere in the world.
And I regret it sincerely and deeply.
I mean, the key part of what you were called on camera saying was what I'm about to play.
Let's just play it and then I'll ask you about it.
This is where you talk about Prince Andrew and whether he may have had sex with underage girls.
I was really pissed because he lied.
And then I did a big thing in the Daily Mail saying that I believed in.
And then I found out he was lying.
I was so happy.
I mean, look, I've had a few drinks in my time.
I don't remember having a few drinks and then saying the complete opposite to what I actually believe to random people in bars.
I don't know why alcohol would make you do such a U-turn on what you think.
Well, I think it was much more than alcohol.
I think that it was alcohol combined with somebody that, you know, I have to confess I was very taken with this young lady.
And she, you know, the more encouragement of negative, the negative things that she liked to hear.
And so I was trying to, you know, it was a mistake.
I can't say it any other way.
And I can only say that I regret it very much.
And it was, it does not reflect in any way, shape, or form what I believe to be true.
But when you're so specific, whether that happens to you, whether that happens to anybody else, it doesn't matter.
That doesn't mean it didn't happen to me.
What happened to me was a mistake.
So that's here's what I would say.
Look, famously, infamously, whichever way you want to put it, but you were the man at the center of the infamous toe-sucking pictures.
Now, full disclosure, Sarah, the Duchess of York, has been a longtime friend of mine.
I don't know Prince Andrew.
I've met him once or twice, but don't know him.
I know his daughters quite well.
I know that you spent a lot of time with Eugenie and Beechers when they were younger.
And I remain a good friend of Sarah's, but I can only imagine what they must have felt because they called you in to help them try and get through the post-BBC interview mayhem that was erupting around him.
And you couldn't have been a more supportive or publicly defensive person of Andrew in that interview that you gave to the mail or more helpful behind the scenes and the advice you gave.
If you're Andrew or Sarah and you're seeing that footage of you in which you say you're really pissed because he lied to me, and then you're very specific.
He lied to you about Epstein.
The Lie About Epstein 00:02:05
You did a big thing in the mail saying you believed Andrew and then you found out he was lying.
You were so pissed.
Lying about what?
The journalist says, screwing underage girls.
You say that he was effing underage girls.
That's not cool.
I mean, it is just when you look at the stark wording of what you said, it appears to be a complete repudiation of all the defense you'd put up.
Do you accept that?
Tax day has passed, but for millions of Americans, that's where the trouble begins.
The IRS is now ramping up enforcement for those who miss the April deadline or still owe back taxes.
Well, today's sponsor, Tax Network USA, can still help.
If your books are a mess, if you're self-employed, or if you're a business owner, Tax Network USA specializes in cleaning up financial chaos and getting you back on track quickly.
They say the IRS is applying enforcement pressure at levels they've never seen before.
But even after the deadline, it's not too late to take control.
The consultation is completely free.
Acting now could stop penalties, threatening letters and surprise levies before they escalate.
Call 1-800-958-1000 or visit tnusa.com slash peers.
That's tnusa.com slash peers.
Let Tax Network USA make the next move, not the IRS.
I totally accept that.
And as I said, I regret saying it.
It was absolutely not what I believe.
And we can go over every word of what I don't believe.
But the fact is, I apologize for having said it and I shouldn't have.
And it's not what I believe.
And it's not what I have researched and done my own due diligence on.
And for what I know, I've known Andrew for a very long time.
Regretting Past Words 00:15:38
He's a wonderful man.
I think that he's his life for the most part.
I mean, the tabloid version of what he's accused of and everything else is absolutely unlike the person that I know.
He was a great friend, and I have great admiration for his career, his military career, going to war for his country.
These are momentous and very important things.
And I think those are the things he should be judged on.
And getting in the way, some stupid remarks that I said is not really relevant.
It's not a representation.
Look, the reason it's relevant is because people know how close you've been to him over the years.
They know you were brought in to be part of his PR campaign to try and get through the fallout from the Newsnight interview.
Obviously, very recently, Virginia Dufray, who was the young woman who accused him of having underage, by American law, underage sex with her, and who he paid many millions of dollars to settle that case without going to court to clear his name as he always said he would.
She has just taken her life.
So this has all been back in the news.
And then right in the middle of all this, with so many unanswered questions still swirling around, here is you, John Bryan.
You know, a man is you're not exactly unused to media coverage.
You were involved in a massive royal scandal yourself.
So you know what it's like.
And here you are in a bar saying stuff, which, if what you said to this undercover journalist in the bar is the truth, and you've said that it wasn't, but if it was, you would be accusing Prince Andrew of a very serious criminal offence.
Well, I just know, I mean, from my perspective, I can only say it's not true and I shouldn't have said it and I regret it.
And that's it.
As far as Virginia goes, you know, I want to express that there's nobody who's had a more difficult and more is the biggest victim in this.
And I just feel horrible for what she's been through in her life.
I think that what Epstein did with her was criminal and awful.
And I just feel for her family and I feel for her.
And I don't ever want to mix, to have my own errors and my own mistakes tarnish any of that.
And I don't...
So, I mean, that's the best I can say, but it was not reflective of what I meant and not reflective of how I think.
Do you believe that Prince Andrew has sex with Virginia Dufray?
Absolutely not.
And I know he didn't.
And I know it from the bottom of my heart.
And, you know, I'm here because I want to be sure that that message is the message that I put out and the message that I do on camera.
And the message that I do, uncensored, as your show says.
Yeah.
Well, it will go out uncensored.
Yeah, we do.
Listen, we don't censor stuff.
I mean, have you spoken to Prince Andrew since the sting?
I have not.
Have you made any attempt to contact him or not?
No, I don't think that's appropriate.
And the only thing I can do is apologize and say I'm deeply, deeply sorry for having put anybody through that pain and suffering.
Have you been in touch with Sarah, the Duchess?
I was sort of forewarned a little bit that there was something coming, but I didn't know what to expect.
I was completely shocked and surprised when it came out.
But have you been in touch with Sarah, the Duchess of York?
Yes, as I say, she did message me, and I have, and I've expressed my regret and sorrow and apologized.
I mean, I know her well.
I'd imagine she was A, extremely shocked, and I would imagine probably very hurt.
I imagine, but, you know, she's brave and she's a strong woman.
And, you know, I think that when things like that happen, her best side comes forward and she's always consistently kind and gentle and she's a wonderful person.
So she forgave you, did she?
Well, I think that I wouldn't really expect, I don't think it's appropriate to even say that, whether she did or didn't.
I think it's been.
She can't have.
I don't want to put words in your mouth, but she can't have been happy.
I mean, you accused her ex-husband, who she's been so loyal and supportive of, of being a pedophile.
Well, I think that, no, I didn't accuse him of that.
I accused him.
Well, you did.
Well, I mean...
Just to remind you, you literally said he was...
You said he was having sex with underage girls.
That is Peder Velier.
Well, again, I lied and I said things that weren't true, and I apologize for that.
That's all I can say.
So whatever you can repeat it over and over.
Well, I'm only repeating it because you tried to say you didn't say it.
So I was just reminding you of what you'd said.
No, I didn't.
Okay.
You accept that.
I'm not.
Listen, I'm not.
I don't have...
I don't have a horse in the race, John.
I'm not trying to put words in your mouth.
I'm not trying to put words into the camera footage.
I'm just literally telling you what they had on camera.
And it just seems to me, you know, what is strange about it is just that you seem quite relaxed in that conversation in the bar.
And I'm trying to work out in my head, I totally accept you're very regretful.
You wish you hadn't said it.
It was all a lie, as you say.
I just can't work out why you would lie like that to someone you don't really know in a bar about something so serious.
Well, we were together several times.
This was our second or third time together.
We had spent four or five hours together.
And the, you know, what, you know, I can't in any way, shape, or form justify it.
So I'm not going to try.
There was another part of the conversation they put out, which is about your relationship with the two princesses, but in particular, talking about the infamous toe sucking.
Let's take a look at this.
Working with the Queen.
I was working along family's Princess Diana, my best friend.
And I met the Duchess of York.
It's Prince Andrew's wife.
They were separated.
And Sarah and I sort of fell apart.
And we lived together for like seven years.
Let me read to you what you said to them.
This was from the 2022 male interview.
We used to play fun games, make-believe games.
On this day, we were playing Cinderella.
I said, look, let's kiss Mummy's Toes.
It was part of the game.
I did it first.
And I think one of the girls, probably Beatrice, did it.
It was a totally innocent, beautiful family moment of love.
A, when you said that to the male, was that true?
Your...
Yes, absolutely.
So that was all correct.
And, you know, we were on a holiday and the children were right there, or I believe Eugenie was right there next to me.
She's just out of camera.
So there was nothing sexual about it, as people thought.
Absolutely not.
And it was completely, You know, when I, when they first came out and I first saw them, I, uh, you know, the shock that I was, I thought, wow, if these were under ordinary circumstances, they'd be beautiful family photos from a holiday in the south of France.
It was, uh, you know, that's what it was.
Well, the word, the problem, John.
I mean, look, I think, look, the problem, as you know, was that you were sucking the toes of the wife of the second in line to the heir to the throne of England.
Hey, Mike Baker here, host of the President's Daily Brief podcast.
If you want straight talk on national security, foreign policy, and the biggest global stories going on of the day, this is the show for you.
We publish twice a day, Monday through Friday, once in the morning, again in the afternoon, and on the weekend.
We go longer with the PDB Situation Report with excellent guests, including national security insiders and foreign policy experts.
Check us out on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Also, on our YouTube channel at President's Daily Brief.
Okay, let's be very clear.
I was not sucking anybody's toes.
What were you doing?
That's completely exaggeration.
I was kissing the toes with Eugenie sitting next, and we were playing Cinderella.
So that's, you know, let's call it what it is.
Okay.
Okay.
That's a good clarification.
I didn't.
Listen, it went down in the annals of royal scandal history as toe sucking.
If it was toe kissing, I accept your clarification.
Well, let me put it this way.
Let me put it this way.
The Daily Mirror paid 13.7 million pounds for those photos.
No, they didn't.
I don't think they wanted to.
They didn't.
They didn't, John.
You seem to forget.
I was editor of the Daily Mirror for 10 years.
I know exactly what they paid.
It was nothing like that.
Well, I was told by Stuart Higgins.
If they paid that, it would have put the paper out of business.
They didn't pay anything, anything like that.
Well, okay, well, that's what I was told by Stuart Higgins.
So I can't.
Well, Stuart was the former editor of the Sun.
But I did go on.
I wasn't editor of the Mirror at the time, but I went on to run the Daily Mirror for 10 years.
And I can tell you the idea they paid 13 million is for the birds.
I doubt the Daily Mirror in its entire existence.
I don't think the Daily Mirror in its entire existence has ever paid more than about a quarter of a million pounds for anything ever.
I can say that with some authority because I was the one signing the checks for 10 years of it.
Well, all I know is I've seen it in the press that it was many millions of pounds.
I had a lawsuit in France where it was disclosed what the worldwide rights came in.
And if the Daily Mirror was part of that, the total worldwide was over 13 million.
Oh, well, that's a different question.
It also came right.
Yeah.
What the pictures may have been sold for, you know, overall around the world is another matter.
But I can tell you, the Daily Mirror certainly didn't pay anything like that.
Well, the Mirror, but hold on, but hold on.
The Mirror had the worldwide rights in order to sell them worldwide.
So the Mirror did pay the full balance of whatever they paid and then syndicated them for approximately $13 million.
And I believe that came out in the testimony of my trial.
I think we're getting into the weeds a bit on the finance.
I can just tell you, they wouldn't have paid that.
Listen, they were very hot pitches.
Let's be clear.
And I know from talking to Sarah afterwards that it was very damaging to her.
The royal family, particularly Prince Philip, took grave exception to these.
And obviously, it was, you know, it was a very, I think, very difficult time probably for everybody involved.
What was it like for you to be caught up in that?
It was a surreal nightmare.
And I just, it was a terrible, terrible experience.
And I don't know what to say other than I really had a tough time with it.
Did you apologize to Andrew over that?
Or did you not feel that was necessary?
You know, I suppose that we're in the south of France.
We're on a family holiday.
A series of photos are taken and completely misconstrued and written up as a different...
I think the paparazzi knew exactly what was going on when they were photographed.
You were having a fling.
You were having a fling, though.
I mean, it wasn't creating a false narrative.
You were together.
You said you were in love with her.
You were with her for years, weren't you?
Well, that has nothing to do with the photos.
That's the case with Sarah and I as a boyfriend and girlfriend, but that has absolutely no relevance to the photos.
The photos are being misconstrued so that they can maximize the value of them for a newspaper trying to make money.
But when you say they were misconstrued, John, look, call me naive, but what do you mean?
If you were having an affair and the pictures suggested you were having an affair, even if the technicality of the sucking is downgraded to kissing the toes, aren't you just having an affair and got caught?
Isn't that the bottom line?
I'm not, no, I think that your description of that is completely wrong.
Really?
I'm not having an affair.
I have a girlfriend and we're together.
She's separated and legally separated and I'm single.
That's not having an affair.
We're together as a couple.
Okay.
That's a much more appropriate way to say it.
It's a more romantic way to say it.
Well, it's the truth.
Yeah, so I mean, you were in love with her, right?
That was the bottom line.
Yes, absolutely.
Absolutely.
So I'm not having a fling or an affair.
We were very much in love and very much together.
So I think that's the appropriate way to describe it.
I think, yeah, I think, look, I think the only inappropriate aspect to it all was that as far as the British public were concerned, she was still married to Prince Andrew.
That was the problem.
Well, she was still married, but she was legally separated for quite a long time prior to us even meeting.
So it's not inappropriate in any way, shape, or form.
So did you have any conversation with Andrew after it, after the publication of those pictures?
Fatherhood And Manipulation 00:14:07
Yes, I would see him.
I saw him frequently over the next years and became very close to him.
I'm a big fan of his.
I'm so grateful the way he treated me and welcomed me into the family.
I'm very, I consider him a great, great friend.
And so that's, you know, that was my, that's how I experienced it.
You described yourself in the sting camera.
Let's take a look at this bit.
This is what you talk specifically about the children.
Peter's using my children.
My kids.
I raised those kids.
That was raised.
Day to day raised.
I was father to the boy.
And then you won the French Andrew.
Yes, pretending.
Yeah, he's over the, he's on the f ⁇ ing.
He was in the Navy.
He was 250 days at sea.
He never thought of it.
Now, again, I would just say, I would imagine Andrew would not have been overly happy to hear you describing yourself as the sort of real father to his children.
Do you want to...
Right.
I don't think so either.
And I regret it, and I apologize for it.
I was drunk and speaking totally out of school.
And I apologize sincerely for it.
And I'm not going to defend it in any way.
It was wrong.
So that's it as far as I'm concerned.
Because he's always been, from, well, I gather, a very, very good father to his girls, to Beatrice and Eugenie.
A unbelievable role model of a father.
And I admire more than anything in the world the way he and Sarah Ferguson have raised those children, the way that they...
Everything was always, they're the most important.
Every decision they made, and you know this as well as I do, was all based on what's best for those children.
And they were always so well parented.
And my comments in a drunken, absurd moment are irrelevant and they have no bearing.
And you can say whatever you want about me, but they are absolutely irrelevant.
Well, no, all I would say about you is I tend to be very truthful when I've had a few too many.
Most people I know, they're the opposite to you.
It tends to loosen their tongue and they say what they really think.
You appear when you get drunk to say the complete opposite to what you actually believe, if what you're saying now is correct.
It's just a strange thing, isn't it?
Well, then I'm strange.
Yes, I guess I'm strange.
But is that a trait?
I mean, is that a regular thing in your life that whenever you get drunk, you tell complete whoppers?
I don't.
I don't think that you can standardize and categorize.
I don't drink.
I drink very rarely.
And I'm, you know, it is what it is.
Maybe that's why I don't drink.
That's simple as that.
How do you feel about all this, John?
I mean, you're back in the headlines for reasons you obviously feel very embarrassed about.
You know, if Andrew and Sarah are watching this, do you have a message for them?
Well, I would certainly have a message for them.
I apologize sincerely for having this whole episode being created.
It's my fault and maya culpa and let's go on with life and it's I'm here to say that it's a it was a mistake and I apologize.
So I don't think I can say this.
I don't know how many times we want to say the same thing over and over.
No, no, I just wanted to know if you had a message and you've given one.
I just got two more questions really, which is your general support for Andrew over the years, particularly after the Newsnight interview where he dug himself into a terrible hole, it seemed to me.
Very inconsistent.
A lot of stuff didn't add up and it was all just very odd and weird and damaging to him.
And as a result, he had to withdraw from public life, which I know has been very difficult for him.
So I know that from talking to the family, you know, his life as he knew it is basically over.
But there are two reasons, I think, from the public point of view about why there's so little sympathy for him.
One is, why did he continue to see Epstein after Epstein had already become a convicted pedophile?
Do you know the answer to that?
Hey, I'm Caitlin Becker, the host of the New York Postcast, and I've got exactly what you need to start your weekdays.
Every morning, I'll bring you the stories that matter, plus the news people actually talk about.
The juicy details in the world's politics, business, pop culture, and everything in between.
It's what you want from the New York Post wrapped up in one snappy show.
Ask your smart speaker to play the NY Postcast podcast.
Listen and subscribe on Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Well, I think that let me say this.
I think that that's too general or too low down in the issue.
The issue is you were dealing with a master manipulator that the world has almost never seen before.
And this man was professionally looking to extort and to, you know, that's his history.
He's a pedophile criminal psychopath.
And that's his M.O.
And manipulating people is exactly what his business was.
So are you going to blame Andrew for this?
I don't think so.
Really?
You wouldn't blame him as a member of the royal family for consorting with a convicted pedophile?
Really?
I don't know how much he knew about that.
No, because I think, you know, I don't know what he knew.
None of us knew what he knew, what he knew at the time, or how aware he was of the convictions or what the exact nature of it was.
But I don't believe, you know, I think that the reason that he was with that man is because that man, Epstein, was there to pull his extortionate plot.
And he was a target.
And that's all it is.
And Epstein would have said anything and done anything to stay in his life.
And that's, you know, is, you know, you can blame Andrew, but it's, you know, he was with a professional manipulator.
The other question that baffles people is: Andrew kept saying, I want my day in court.
I will clear my name.
And then at the last minute, in the case with Virginia Duffray, who'd made all these serious allegations about him having sex with her when she was underage, he suddenly settled the case for many millions of dollars, rumored to be up to $12 million.
And it does beg the question: why would you give $12 million to somebody you say you've never met?
So here's, I think, the, I can speak generically, having been party to a lot of legal proceedings in my career.
The mistake often is not settling something early and saying, okay, you know, I'm not guilty of anything, but, you know, there's got to be a settlement done in order to put this thing to bed.
And the fact that it went so far, and you can't have the, you know, Duke of York on a witness stand in a public trial.
I think that At the end of this, it's a, you know, that's what they were asking for, and it was a negotiation, and I don't think Andrew had anything to do with that negotiation or those numbers.
So it's just how it turned out being resolved.
What is your view?
Let me put it this way.
It couldn't be resolved for less money.
So what are you going to do?
Go to trial?
Actually, I would have been advising him, I would have said, go to court.
You said you're going to clear your name.
You said you want to have your day.
Go to court.
However embarrassing it is, if ultimately you're telling the truth and you clear your name, then you will clear your name.
If you're not and you're exposed for lying, then a very different thing.
But I'd struggle to see how going through a court case would have been any more damaging to what has happened to Andrew as a consequence of taking that deal.
I think it's much more damaging, much more damaging and inconceivable to put yourself into a position as a member of the royal family to be in a trial where you are actually being questioned by professionals who are there to make you look bad.
I think it's inconceivable.
So why this?
Why don't you follow through with that?
So why repeatedly say in public you want to clear your name in court?
Because I think that's what he believed and that's what he definitely wanted in life.
I think when you're innocent, that's of course what you're wanting, but that's not realistic with the system of justice in which you're cross-examined in a courtroom.
It doesn't give you proof that you're innocent.
You're never innocent once you've been through one of those trials.
But you have no lawyer's job to call it into question.
I mean, do you 100% believe Andrew when he says he didn't have sex with Virginia Duffray?
I don't think, I think, let me say it this way.
Not only do I 100% believe him, but I absolutely know in my heart that it's not true.
I know the man.
I've been spent incalculable amount of time with him.
I dearly believe that it's absolutely not true.
And I don't think that there's any question about that.
How do you explain the picture taken on the first floor of the London property with his arm around her with Ghillaine Maxwell in the background?
Well, let me just address that.
I would guess there's probably 30,000 photos exactly like that.
Really?
And the master manipulator, Mr. Epstein, 30,000 photos with him in public events was the public event, though, is it?
It's a job.
Hang on.
It's not a public event.
It's a private home.
It's the first floor balcony of a private house.
He's there for a dinner involving Epstein and Ghillain Maxwell.
This is not a public street or a public event.
And he's got his arm around a girl he was 17.
But it's A, he doesn't have any idea of that.
And B, the master manipulator is setting all this up.
It's all a scam.
And then you would have to logically take a picture.
She'd love to have a photo with you.
But do you think she was lying?
It's a completely normal thing.
And the reason, but no, the reason that he would have a photo with her is because he wasn't doing anything wrong.
Right.
And so that's why he'd be happy to have a photo.
So why did Virginia Dufray said that he had sex with her three different times?
Because I think that, you know, victims, the abuse and the victimization of people like Virginia never stops.
Not only does it happen during the period she's with Epstein, but after you're even out of it, you're victimized by the legal system.
It takes 10 years to get justice.
You're victimized by financial institutions that come and lend you money in order for you to fight your legal case.
Every aspect of this system is geared against them.
And you know what?
Then you have a nice journalistic tabloid press.
And they come to you and they go, wow, would you like to tell us your story?
We'll pay you.
And you feel in your mind, wow, is this the only justice there is?
Is this justice?
And, you know, at some level, I think you begin to think, yes, this is the only justice I'm ever going to get.
Justice Through Storytelling 00:03:30
But it sounds like you're saying she deliberately lied.
No, well, I think that there's, you know, in the testimony and in her own testimony, which I've seen, in many occasions, she told, I didn't say that.
I didn't, that that wasn't true.
I was doing a fictitious novel, all sorts of things that she said and admitted to to say that things that she had stories she had told were absolutely not true.
So yes, that is quite possible.
John Bryan, thank you for your time today.
I appreciate it, and I appreciate your candor.
Out of interest, what are you doing these days?
Are you still working?
What's your deal?
I am.
You make me sound like a very old man.
No, no.
How old are you?
Gosh, I think that might be...
You'd have to sign an NDA for that one.
Well, come on.
I'm 70 in a month.
And you're obviously looking forward to that like a smack around the head.
Yes, exactly.
It's not one of the celebrated 50.
I kind of celebrated 60.
I think this one's a little nerve-wracking.
But you're still working.
I am.
I'm very much involved in restructuring and corporate realignment, corporate takeovers, corporate turnarounds, and transitional.
My history is as a transitional CEO and somebody that comes in to help turn companies around to get in trouble.
Do you reckon you could turn around Harry and Megan PLC or not?
Are they lost cause?
A person like me always thinks you can do anything.
But I think that the I think it's a tragic situation and I feel for them and I met them.
I met Harry and his brother when they were very young and they were wonderful, sweet young men and I used to have a great time with them and I dearly miss them and wish them well and I think they're both wonderful people.
I think Harry is a wonderful kid and I think that his brother is as well and his brother's obviously just done spectacularly well as the heir to the throne.
Well John Brian on that positive note thank you very much indeed for coming on our sensitive.
I enjoyed our conversation.
Thank you.
Thank you Piers.
I'm a great fan and I might say that this is a great honor for me because I was part of the news business for much of my career and to be back here is a full circle because I really helped start part of CNN.
Yes, that's very true.
And so yeah.
And listen, I've never interviewed you.
I've never met you, but I've enjoyed talking to you and I appreciate you coming on and facing the music.
And thank you for your time.
Defining True Character 00:03:01
Stanley McChrystal is a retired four-star general whose final assignment was commanding the U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.
He was once described by Robert Gates, the Defense Secretary under both Bush and Obama, as the finest warrior and leader of men in combat I ever met.
His new book is called On Character, Choices That Define a Life, a thought-provoking take on how legacy is defined not by medals and statistics, but by integrity at a particularly dangerous and frenetic time in the world.
I'm very pleased to say that General McChrystal joins me now.
General, great to have you on our sensor.
Thanks for having me, Piers.
I appreciate it.
We have something in common, albeit slightly tenuous.
My brother was a British Army colonel and worked, well, under you, actually, in Afghanistan.
He was directly under General Caldwell in Kabul, but he said you were the overall boss.
And for some inexplicable reason, you didn't find cause to fire him.
So he's very grateful.
Well, give him my thanks for what he's done.
I hope he's well now.
He's retired, so very well.
He'll be pleased to hear.
But thank you.
Interesting choice of title for a book, On Character, the Choices That Define a Life.
When you decided to call it that, presumably you thought, right, I'm going to tell people what I think it means to have character.
So let's start with that premise.
What do you think it takes to be a person of character?
Yeah.
I'd like to circle back to that because I didn't write the book for that reason.
I wrote the book as a series of started as conversations with my wife.
And then she told me to shut up and write them down.
And so when I wrote them down, I found out that what I was thinking about was all intersected with character.
And I've become, at this point in my life, I'm 70 years old.
I have reached the conclusion that character is the most important thing of everything.
And so what I think character is, is it's the essence of who we are.
Thomas Paine, the old pamphleteer, said that reputation is what men think of us.
Character is what angels know of us.
I think it's best measured by what we do.
We can talk about our character, we can write about it, but we look at what a person does, that really defines the character that they have.
And I have come up with a mathematical equation for it, which, you know, I'm terrible at math, but I came up with this one that I think character is the product of our convictions.
Those of our deeply held beliefs, the things that we've pressure tested, not the things we've accepted.
Somebody just said to us and we nodded, but things we actually thought about.
And then it's our discipline to adhere to them.
So if you've got great convictions, but you don't have the personal discipline or courage to live to them, then you really don't have character.
Convictions Over Feelings 00:15:41
And of course, the opposite would be true as well.
When you look back at your own very illustrious career, but you've had, as all people would have in a military career, I presume, some great highs, but also some lows and maybe moments of regret, things you would have done differently.
When you look back at your own life and career, what do you think is a good example of your character coming through in a way you're most proud of?
And conversely, what is an example of an occasion where perhaps the opposite happened, where you didn't live up to the ideals, the values, the character that you wished you had?
Yeah, there were a lot more of the latter than I would like to admit, but I'll describe one.
It was a young, it was the beginning of my military career, and I was in a U.S. Army course called Ranger School, which was designed to test you, to push you to the brink.
It's nine weeks long.
And we were in about the seventh or eighth week, so we were exhausted, we were tired, and they rotated people to be in charge of the patrol and they would be graded.
And we had a guy who none of us liked because he was a jerk, and he was suddenly made the patrol leader.
And we were supposed to pull security.
And if we didn't pull security, he would likely flunk the patrol and maybe flunk the course.
And myself and a few other Ranger students, we all just laid out our ponchos and we lay on the ground and we said, no, we're going to sleep.
And the guy says, no, you have to pull security because that's the right thing to do.
We say, well, you've been a jerk the whole time, so screw you.
You know, in the moment, we felt justified.
In the sweep of it, I'm ashamed about it because it didn't matter who the patrol leader was.
It mattered that there was a professional standard, there was a personal standard, and I failed it completely.
And I've had a number of other failures.
My most public failure, of course, was when I left Afghanistan in 2010, it was due to the publication of a magazine article in Rolling Stone.
And I have mixed feelings on this one because on the one hand, I allowed the magazine article to be written and the conditions to occur that caused it.
I didn't completely agree with it, but the fact is I was in charge.
And then when it blew up and it blew up, I offered my resignation to President Obama and took responsibility.
So in the one incident, the worst, you know, undoubtedly the worst day of my life so far, where I lost my career, I lost a lot of my self-confidence in that moment, I am sad it happened.
I'm glad I took responsibility.
It was interesting.
I remember all that happening.
I just joined CNN, actually, at the time.
And for those who don't remember, the Rolling Stone article said, quoted, then unable to help themselves, he, McChrystal, and his staff, imagine the general dismissing the vice president, then Joe Biden, with a good one-liner.
Are you asking about Vice President Biden?
McChrystal says with a laugh.
Who's that?
Biden, suggests the top advisor.
Did you say bite me?
Now, on the face of it, I think at the time, you were obviously not aware that this was going to be reported in the way that it was.
But even when it was, was that enough of an offense to justify the abrupt end of your very successful military career, do you think, looking back on it?
Well, I'm probably a little biased.
I'm probably going to give you the view that, no, it shouldn't have been.
But the fact is, it was a tough political period for President Obama.
He was a new president.
It put him into a corner.
There was a perception that the generals were potentially not respecting him.
That wasn't the case in our hearts or in our intentions.
But the reality is, it put him in a corner, and I was responsible.
What's interesting is I would have agreed with you about Biden's competency.
Let's put it politely at the time.
But you went on to endorse him.
I mean, that, to me, was surprising.
Not quite as surprising as the fact you then went on to endorse also Kamala Harris.
And I would put it to you, General.
I put this very respectfully, but if you were having those two in your ranks when you were a military commander, I don't think you'd have endorsed them for the highest ranking jobs that you had available to allocate.
Yeah.
You know, doing any endorsement was a big decision because most retired military try to stay out of politics completely.
In both cases, for President Biden and then for Vice President Harris, I looked at the choice and I essentially went with character.
I don't, you know, my political views are pretty much down the center.
I agree with as many Republican views as I do with Democrats and both parties frustrate me.
But the reality was I thought the difference between their character and their opponents was significant enough and substantive enough that I had to weigh in.
So let me take you up on that because it's an interesting thing because I can see why in the military you've got to have, I think, a values-based system.
Because if you're going to expect men to come after you in terms of an officer making decisions and to follow your lead and your command, you've got to be, I think, people of unimpeachable moral probity and so on.
I completely understand that.
Otherwise, the whole system fragments.
But in something like politics, for example, when I think back to take American presidents, you know, two of the most popular American presidents of modern times were serial philanderers, John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton.
Both, I think, extremely brilliant men in many ways, but clearly led life a little loose on the moral front.
They probably wouldn't, I mean, they wouldn't last as military commanders.
They'd be straight out on their ear.
And yet they were both, I think, I mean, Kennedy, sadly, for a very short period of time, Bill Clinton for eight years, proved themselves to be pretty competent, skilled leaders of the country and certainly very popular.
Is there necessarily a direct correlation between character and an ability to successfully run a country?
And obviously, the elephant in the room I'm talking about is Donald Trump, who in his second term has gone on what many people think is a rampage.
But as I sit here that today, for example, this week, he's making real inroads with peace in the Ukraine-Russia war.
He's making real inroads, it seems, with the Israel-Hamas war.
He's trying to forge good relations with the Middle East and the United States, trying to calm things down by essentially freezing out Netanyahu because he fears he's warmongering with Iran and so on.
Even his tariffs, which alarmed everybody with the scale of them, he's now doing deals with the UK.
My country's beginning to do a deal now with China and so on.
And yet, you know, he probably wouldn't pass your character test.
Clearly, he hasn't.
You've endorsed two of his rivals.
Does it necessarily follow that just because you might fail a character test by your criteria, that you are not a good leader?
No, because you raised a good point, Piers.
There are a lot of leaders who have many pretty deep personal flaws, and yet they're still effective.
But I don't think they're effective leaders because of those personal flaws.
They are effective despite those flaws.
And in many cases, I admire some of those leaders who had aspects of their personality that you just couldn't accept.
And I think it was Frederick Douglass, the American abolitionist, former slave, who said that we have got to be able to take the good from people and ignore or discard the bad, or we'll discard everybody because everybody's got some.
In the case of current political leaders now, I think you've got to do a full qualitative assessment.
You can't go on one event.
You can't go on one aspect.
Again, you'd like to have people who are perfect.
You won't find them.
But when I find someone who I think fails that standard so often and so fundamentally that I don't think I can trust them, like your brother would say, that of course that the key metric on the battlefield is if you are in a difficult position, will they come for you?
If that person doesn't build that level of trust in you because you believe that their character is enough to do that, then I think you've got to take that into account and vote differently.
What bothers me in America right now, the reason I say we've got a crisis of character, is we seem to have normalized things.
We have politicians stand up in front of the camera and say things that they know are untrue.
And interesting, they know we know they're untrue.
And there's this strange agreement that we go, well, because they're politicians, it's okay.
That's not okay.
There's got to be some level of norms and expectations if we're going to have a society that works.
Now, I would throw back at you, okay, I hear you.
But let's take one issue, for example.
The whole issue, which became hugely emotive, I think, in this last election campaign, the whole issue of trans people.
And I've always said that trans people deserve exactly the same human rights as anybody else, the rights to fairness, equality, to safety, and so on.
And I have never deviated from that.
So I'm not an anti-trans person whatsoever.
However, I could see that there was manifest unfairness and inequality and a lack of safety, frankly, in the way that the trans activist lobby was trying to move that debate, where you had biological men competing against women in sport, for example, in boxing rings, which would just be unthinkable in the military.
You would never have a biological male, even if they're identified as trans, fighting against a woman, I don't think.
I mean, correct me if I'm wrong.
And yet there it was being not just tolerated in society, but actively encouraged by both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
And so it's an interesting thing, the truth.
You know, it seemed to me that Trump can be very economical with the truth.
I don't take issue with that whatsoever.
Although I always think he's most guilty of hyperbole.
He's a salesman.
He's used to selling buildings and property and it's a pile him high and then do a deal sort of mentality.
But Kamala Harris and Joe Biden were quite happy to endorse things that were blatantly wrong, blatantly unfair.
And so the truth is obviously important, but so is a reality check in leaders, isn't it?
I mean, you know, you supported Kamala Harris.
She supported biological men competing in women's sport.
I'm interested in what you think about that issue, but also whether is there much difference between a politician who tells a bareface lie and a politician who endorses something which is biologically absurd?
Yeah, I think there is a difference.
First, I'll tell you my position on the issue is about where yours is.
I don't believe that it's fair in sports, but I think it's absolutely common sense to let trans members serve in the military because the military needs to be the ultimate meritocracy because we need the best people.
So at the same time, I have those views.
I think that most good ideas can be taken further to extreme than I agree with.
And in that particular case, I think that's what happened.
They were trying to create what was viewed as a wrong for a long time.
And again, I don't agree as far as it went there.
But one thing I will say is I do respect the fact that they can have that opinion if it's genuinely held.
If someone has that genuine belief that that's the right thing, I have to respect them for that.
I remember we're fighting terrorists with al-Qaeda and then ISIS and whatnot.
And I completely disagreed with what they were doing.
But I did respect the fact that they believed it and their life journey had taken them there.
So I try not to be too sure that I'm always right.
In the case of the trans thing, I have that opinion, but we can be a little bit judgmental sometimes.
Donald Trump, many would say, is somebody who's very unusual tactics, particularly on the world stage, particularly actually in terms of war, are very unusual in many ways, but not least because he's a Republican president who genuinely hates war.
I mean, he's never actually declared a new war on a country.
He's tried to end wars everywhere that they've been raging.
I would have thought as a former supreme military guy in America that putting aside your personal feelings about his character, isn't that something to be applauded?
Well, there are lots of things about policies that he has put forward to be applauded.
I think the idea that we try to avoid and limit war as much as possible is something that we should be celebrating.
On the other hand, I think the things about our alliances that are so important to preventing war in the future, in my view, and those relationships, are things that need to be very carefully protected.
So simultaneously, he will have positions that I can agree with and disagree with.
But I don't, you know, I don't trip over his policies.
That's really not where we are.
I go back to the issue of character in our nation and the crisis is that what I think has happened, Donald Trump is a symptom.
He's not the cause of what's happening in America and in some cases around the world.
He's a symptom of the fact that we've let character erode and we don't hold ourselves personally to account enough and we don't hold each other to account.
We don't talk about character routinely.
We sort of throw it out in one word and then we move on.
We need to stop and say, no, just like you began this interview, what is it really?
And is it very important?
How should I rank it with other things in my rating of someone?
What was your view of Barack Obama's character?
He ended up effectively firing you.
What's your view of him personally from a character perspective?
Well, probably for a very short period I would have given you a negative, but in reality, he was gracious to me.
Obama's Leadership Style 00:03:13
And I think his character was very good.
I think he got up every day trying to be the best president he could and live within the rules as he thought that they were.
I would bring up John McCain, who I got to know quite well, Senator McCain.
And he and I had a couple of real knockdown, drag-out arguments because we strongly disagreed on things.
But I always respected him because I always thought that he had come to the conclusion of what he thought was right, and then he lived up to that.
Now, part of the time I thought he was wrong, his conclusion was wrong, but I never thought that he was articulating or pushing something he didn't believe to be correct.
You see, again, so let me just let me just play devil's advocate here for those who support Trump.
Yeah, they would say, and I've known Trump 20 years, I would say that he believes a lot more of his overall positioning on stuff than people think or assume.
You know, I think he has fundamental big picture beliefs about the state of America, what needs to be done to sort it out, whether it's tariffs to sort out what he thinks is the pillaging of the U.S. economy by particularly the Chinese, whether it's controlling the southern border, which he's done very effectively in his second term so far, certainly by comparison to what happened under Biden.
Whether it's forging, as he would put it, more peaceful alliances around the world with traditional enemies of the United States and so on.
He has a kind of overarching philosophy, which I think he does believe in.
Now, that's not to say that he's not capable of saying black is white and white is black when it suits him.
But you talk about Obama's character.
I didn't know Obama personally nearly as well.
But I do know that Obama, for example, a lot of stuff is made of the number of people that Trump wants to deport.
And yet the single biggest deporter of migrants in the history of the United States was Barack Obama.
Over 3 million people he kicked out in eight years.
Nobody seemed to know that when it was happening or care because he was Barack Obama and looked and sounded more of a presidential character than people perhaps want to think Trump does.
Similarly, he dropped more bombs, I think, famously outside of World War II than any American president in history in a calendar year.
He kept Guantanamo Bay open when he was a lawyer who campaigned to close it when he first became president because he knew it was an illegal torture chamber.
Oh, I would say that anyway.
And so on.
And, you know, and he ran a lot of drone programs that many people thought were deeply unethical.
In other words, you can look and sound the part of what people think a president should be and exude an air of character.
But ultimately, I would say character should be judged more on your actions than what you present about yourself.
Would you accept that?
I would absolutely accept that.
But I would also say shame on us, you and me, peers.
Here we are.
We're spending all our time talking about Donald Trump and Barack Obama.
Actions Define Character 00:04:05
And they were important examples.
But the reality is character is bigger than that.
And character starts with us.
Because in fact, we're the people that empower people.
We're the people that allow those leaders or those celebrities or those business leaders.
And we almost authorize, encourage behavior that we then criticize.
And I think that's what we have to pull out of.
When I wrote this book, I was exploring my own character.
And so I'm writing about all the things that I thought about it.
And so I have no answers, but I think I've hit many of the questions I would encourage other people to at least ask themselves.
And if we ask ourselves as a society about that, the questions you're asking, how do we judge President this or President that?
And I think that at the end of the day, their actions are the things that we need to focus on.
That moment when you knew your comments about Biden had been reported by Rolling Stone, that must have been one of the worst moments of your life, I guess, closely followed, if not exceeded, by then having to go and see the President of the United States and resign in what was perceived at the time to be disgrace and shame and so on and ignominy.
You know, for you, a very proud man who'd had an incredibly successful career rising to the very top of the United States military, what were those two moments like on a personal level?
Well, the first one happened about two in the morning because this reporter had been around us on and off.
He hadn't spent a long time with staff over about three months.
And then the article came out.
And my military assistant woke me up and said, the Rolling Stone article came out.
And I said, so.
That's supposed to be kind of a puff piece about a group of people who've been together at war for many years.
And he says, well, it's not.
The title of the article is The Runaway General.
In that moment, I knew that it was going to, of course, become a political firestorm.
I assumed that I would have to accept responsibility, and I immediately decided to do that.
To be really honest with you, I didn't know how to think about going forward in life.
I thought about suicide.
Really?
Because I had never in my life, I'd thought about being killed in combat.
I'd thought about being fired for incompetence.
I never thought I'd be accused of anything that smelled or felt like disloyalty.
So that was on one day.
And the next day, I flew back to the United States to meet with the president.
I knew, you know, the outcome.
I carried my resignation with me.
On the flight, we had connectivity, you know, for email.
And I got an email from three privates in the command, you know, like 10 levels down the chain of command.
And these three privates, I had gone on a combat patrol with them about a month before.
And they sent this email straight to me and they said, sir, we heard about the article.
We heard that you're flying back to meet the president.
If the article is correct, we don't think that was very smart.
And, you know, that ends paragraph one.
I go, okay.
And then paragraph two says, but sir, we know you.
We love you and we trust you.
Good luck.
And you go from those moments, those incredible lows, to those things which help buffet you.
And I walked out of the Oval Office after having the president accept my resignation.
I drove back across Washington, D.C. to the quarters where my wife was living while I was gone.
And I told her, okay, Annie, after 34 years, our life in the military is over.
He accepted my resignation.
And she looked at me and she said, good.
We've always been happy and we'll always be happy.
Resignation From Afghanistan 00:03:05
And so in that instant, you realize that it's really bad.
It didn't feel good.
It still doesn't feel great.
But it didn't feel good for a long time.
But you realize the people around you.
And as you explore that, you start to understand the relationships that matter, that give you the real strength.
You start to find some strength inside yourself.
You can be self-critical of the things that help cause the problem, and you can try to say, well, but I am going to go forward, and I'm going to try to do better.
Extraordinary way you spoke about that.
I fully understand why you would feel that way, because it was such a cataclysmic way for your otherwise glittering career to end.
It's a fascinating book on character, choices that define a life.
I'd love to have talked to you longer.
I mean, I might just, while I've got you, given your background, just ask you very, very quickly to give me a prediction of where you think we're going to end up at the end of this year with three scenarios.
One, India-Pakistan, many fearing what we've just seen took us to the precipice of a very dangerous situation.
Where do you think we'll be by the end of the year with that?
I think they will calm down, and I think it will just be a very tense status quo, like it has been for decades now.
Ukraine-Russia.
I think Ukraine is going to end up having to cut an unfortunate deal, a worse deal than I think that they should have.
But I don't think Putin is going to get the big win that he had hoped from the beginning.
Do you think he'll end up keeping the land that he's taken?
Unless the Europeans can provide just tremendous help to Ukraine, it will be difficult for that not to be the case.
I wish it was not the case.
And Israel-Gaza, I mean, this is obviously the last two years since October the 7th have been particularly horrendous, but we're talking about a 75-plus-year conflict here.
How do you think that ends?
I went over there not long after October 7th, have a lot of friends in the Israeli military and intelligence.
I don't think there's a way to destroy Hamas in the complete sense that their leadership hopes.
I don't feel good about where that goes.
I'm not sure how that ends.
I lack confidence to give you a real good prediction.
Do you think there's any way it ever ends with a two-state solution with both sides living side by side peacefully?
We saw a parallel of sorts in Northern Ireland where that was ultimately successful.
I think that's the only really durable outcome.
It's got to be a two-state solution.
But right now, it just seems so distant when it seemed so close a couple of decades ago.
Predicting The Future 00:01:00
Well, General, it's been great to talk to you.
I can only say my brother said you were an outstanding leader, and he was proud to serve under you.
So I hope that means something to you.
I'm sure you've heard that from many people that served under you.
I think it was ridiculous the way that you lost your job.
And I'm very sorry that your career ended that way.
But I'm glad you've written a book to show us how to have a better character.
I look forward to giving it to my friends.
Thank you, Piers.
You're very kind to have me.
And again, thank your brother for all he's done.
I will.
And thank you for your service.
Take care.
Piers Morgan Uncensored is proudly independent.
The only boss around here is me.
You enjoy our show.
We ask for only one simple thing.
Hit subscribe on YouTube and follow Piers Morgan Uncensored on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
And in return, we will continue our mission to inform, irritate, and entertain.
And we'll do it all for free.
independent uncensored media has never been more critical and we couldn't do it Without you.
Export Selection