Mehdi Hasan’s viral debate on Jubilee against far-right conservatives has sparked some interesting conversations, not least because one of the self-proclaimed “fascists” has now been fired from his job - only to raise a fortune on a crowdfunding website. Have young conservatives, raised on inflammatory social media content, become just as mad as their 'communist' counterparts? Piers Morgan speaks to Mehdi to break down the debate and why young right wing adults are becoming more emboldened. But first; Donald Trump is trying to shift focus to the files that have been declassified this week by intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard, saying they are proof that Obama committed treason by weaponising intelligence agencies to lay the groundwork for Russiagate. And joining Piers to discuss this and more is historian and author Victor Davis-Hanson. Piers Morgan Uncensored is proudly independent and supported by: American Financing: Call American Financing today to find out how customers are saving an avg of $800/mo. 866-721-3300 or visit https://www.AmericanFinancing.net/Piers - NMLS 182334, https://nmlsconsumeraccess.org OneSkin: Get 15% off OneSkin with the code PIERS at https://www.oneskin.co/ #oneskinpod Pique: Get 20% off your order plus a FREE frother & glass beaker with this exclusive link: https://piquelife.com/PIERS Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
|
Time
Text
Declassified Documents and Distraction00:09:39
Bruce Willis, Leonard DiCaprio, Alan Gershowitz.
It doesn't mean that they did anything wrong.
When they started to see that Donald Trump was going to release them, a lot of people put pressure and said, wait a minute, I didn't do anything.
And I think at this point it would be very wise to let the chips fall where they are.
This should have been in the time that he was exploring the truths of his labor.
Instead, he got angry.
You're a little bit more than a far-right Republican.
Eh?
What did I say?
I think you say, I'm a fascist.
Yeah, I am.
I think it diminishes your argument.
When you're faced with actual people saying, I'm a fascist.
Many of them are Trump supporters, Piers.
Many of them are Trump supporters.
When they say they want to make America great again, it's because they want to go back to a whiter America, a less browner America.
They're just grabbing brown people, Latino folks, off the streets who are American citizens.
And they're saying very clearly why they want to do this.
There is no evidence Donald Trump wants to throw them out because of their skin government.
Actually, there's a lot of reporting from the first term where he says, why can't we have more people from Sweden, less people from shithole countries?
Well, Media Hastings' viral debate against far-right conservatives has sparked some interesting conversations, not least because one of the self-proclaimed fascists has now been fired from his job, only to raise a fortune on a crowdfunding website.
There's a free speech debate here, obviously.
There's also a legitimate charge that some young conservatives raised on inflammatory social media content have become just as mad as their communist counterparts.
Have we stopped teaching history or has the internet sent everyone a bit bonkers?
That's certainly what the president would now like us to think about the Epstein files, a conspiracy.
It's become a media obsession and a political crisis.
Trump is trying to shift focus to the files that have been declassified this week by intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard.
Trump says they are proof that Barack Obama committed treason by repetizing intelligence agencies to lay the ground work for Russia Gate.
Well, we have two big interviews to put all this into context.
And joining me now is the historian, author, and host of the Victor Davis-Hansen Show, Victor Davis Hansen.
Victor, great to have you back on us, Enzen.
Thank you for having me, Piers.
This idea of a creeping rise in fascism and of people, of young Americans being unashamed of saying I'm a fascist, what do you read into that?
I think largely it's ignorance.
And you mentioned historical ignorance.
People have no idea that there were 75 million people killed in World War II as a result of the appeasement of fascism in Germany and Japan and Italy.
They have no idea about that.
It's the same thing when people on the left praise communism.
They have no idea that the Soviet Union and Mao between them probably killed 80 million people over 30 or 40 year period.
So it's kind of, you know, the iPhone and instant access to the internet when 30 years ago the promise was that this was going to give us the world's history and all of the knowledge in the world at our fingertips.
And this young generation then, if they wanted to know who Leonardo da Vinci was or what was the Battle of Britain, they could find out and an analogy.
That didn't happen.
It just didn't happen.
It was a distraction.
It was actually antithetical to intellectual inquiry and historicism.
And do we toss around the word fascist too much?
I mean, I think in particular of Donald Trump, who's been called a Nazi, of course.
But no, Mehdi Hassan has repeatedly said to me that Donald Trump is a fascist.
When people do that, what do you feel about the use of the word in the case of people like Trump?
Yeah, I've always, I note that very carefully because almost 99.9% of the time they don't give me specific examples.
And we know what fascists do.
And so did Donald Trump suspend an election?
Did he try to unduly Subvert the court system.
He's followed these district court rulings up all the way through the circuit courts and the Supreme Court.
And people who are waging a fascist takeover are not the subject of 93 indictments, which he duly went to court each time.
Most of all of them, except one court, were bogus.
Fascists are not taken off the ballot in temps.
25 states tried to take him off the ballot.
Fascists, their homes for the first time in presidential, ex-presidential history was raided.
So it is one-sided, and you would think that a true fascist would have been competent or would have tried to exercise extra judicial or legal power to prevent what they did to him.
But in fact, he was sort of a punching bag both during the first 22 months of his administration and then during his wilderness years.
This, what people think is a distraction tool by the Trump administration of trying to paint Barack Obama as someone that was involved in treasonable activity by fueling the Russia, what turned out to be a hoax, collusion crisis around Trump.
You're quite an expert in this whole thing.
What do you think of the documents that Tulsi Gabbard released?
They're declassified documents.
She says they show that Obama and his national security team manufactured and politicized intelligence to lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against President Trump.
What's your response to that?
Well, we had the narrative down.
I think everybody agreed through the House intelligence, the Devin Nunes report, Michael Horowitz, the Inspector General, the Durham Special Counsel, and the Mueller investigation that there was no active collusion between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump.
We also knew that Hillary Clinton had inherited a hit piece from, to be frank, a conservative person who had prompted the Steele dossier.
She hid her payments to Christterfer Steele through three paywalls: the DNC, Perkins, Coe, Fusing, GPS.
And her attempt was to really undermine the Trump campaign.
And there were people in the FBI and the CIA and the director of national that helped her.
They disseminated that document when they knew it was not false.
And they did things that were felonious.
Dr. DeFisa, Kevin Kleinsmith, Dr. DeFisa affidavit.
James Comey leaked a confidential conversation with the President of the United States after assuring him he was not the subject, et cetera, et cetera.
But what was new about this, and I don't know if it constitutes treason, but this is the first time we had hard evidence that all of what I've mentioned, there was a buzzword: 17 intelligence agencies, 17 intelligence heads.
Well, they come up and their consensus was there was no evidence of Russian collusion.
And yet, either Barack Obama said to John Brennan and James Clapper, and indirectly James Comey, find the collusion, whether your own subordinates and analysts and experts haven't found it, or whether they, with a wink and nod, offered Obama that out and said, Well, you know, our people haven't found it, but we're going to still, we have it here and we'll give it to you.
And so I think it's going to be, if this continues, there's going to be a he said, he said, or maybe they both did.
But right now, it seems like Clapper and Brennan, there's evidence that they overrode the assessment of the intelligence authorities under their direction to further this narrative.
And what was interesting was the timing.
This was in January 5th, I think, this meeting.
It was after the election.
It was an intent to undermine an incoming president.
In fact, the proof of the pudding is in the end.
Michael Flynn was set up, as James Comey laughed about, that he didn't even have a lawyer when they sprung that interrogation of him.
And then we had the Mueller investigation that ate up 22 months, $40 million.
So whatever they did was successful post facto.
And then we lead into the laptop and the 51 intelligence.
They didn't wise up and learn that they shouldn't have done that.
They just pressed their feet on the accelerator and went right into the laptop disinformation that really warped the second presidential debate of 2020 and maybe the election with that narrative that Donald Trump and the Russians had cooked up that laptop.
Yeah, yeah.
And of course, we had all the big tech suppression of the laptop scandal, including deplatforming the New York Post, who broke the story of what was in there, which was a completely outrageous piece of censorship.
Barack Obama unusually issued a statement through his office saying it doesn't normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response, but called the allegations a weak attempt at distraction.
What do you feel about the way he's responded there, Obama?
Yeah, it's not, it would be wiser for him not to attack the messenger, but to deal with a message.
And all he had to do was saying in that meeting on January 5th of 2017, there were discussions back and forth about the accuracy of these subordinate 17 agency heads.
And I decided that maybe we should question them a little.
Epstein Scandal as a Diversion00:08:56
And there was a bureaucratic out for him, but for him just to get outrage, it just further raises suspicion.
Today's show is sponsored by American Financing.
If you're feeling stretched by everyday expenses, groceries, gas bills, you're not alone.
Most Americans are putting these costs on credit cards, and many feel there's no way out.
One option is to delay your mortgage payments and win some breathing room.
Experts at American Financing can show you how to use your home's equity to pay off debt.
Consultants are helping many homeowners to restructure their loans and consolidate dates, all with no upfront fees.
Their customers are saving an average of $800 per month, which is like a $10,000 raise.
It's fast, it's simple, and it could save your budget this summer.
So call them today before it's too late.
866-721-3300.
That's 866-721-3300.
Or visit Americanfinancing.net slash peers.
The other thing that's swirling, which of course is what people think this has been released to distract from, is the Epstein scandal.
Just as an overview, Victor, where do you think we are with this?
I mean, A, how serious a scandal is it?
And how damaging could it be to Donald Trump that it appears to be causing significant unrest amongst his most loyal MAGA supporters?
Yes.
I don't think Trump realized that trying to suppress names would energize the MAGA base in opposition to him, and that would feed the ongoing left-wing criticism.
But when you look at all the evidence, you get the impression that Jeffrey Epstein wasn't really a financial advisor.
He was a blackmailer.
And he invited very powerful people and got them in compromising and often illegal situations as a way of managing their money or getting money from them.
He had no visible skills, and yet he died with a fortune of nearly a half a billion dollars.
So I think what happened, Piers, very quickly is Trump thought that this was going to be an open and shut case.
Were going to be, he was going to be transparent.
And then all these names.
There was no list that we know of, but there were names.
I think there was 170 of them.
90 of them have come uh, transparent.
We had Bruce Willis, Leonard DiCaprio, Alan Dershowitz uh, the former uh, George Mitchell, the former Democratic majority leader.
But it doesn't mean that they did anything wrong.
They come across in these indictments, these interrogatories of all these these two criminal proceedings, that that they either wanted money from Jeopardy Epstein or he solicited them for influence, or they talked to him or they texted him or they visited him.
But we don't know, of all those names, how many people actually engaged in these horrendous, horrendous activities.
So I think what happened?
When they started to see that Donald Trump was going to release them?
A lot of people put pressure and said, wait a minute, I didn't do anything.
I didn't do anything, and if you lease my name and I think he, that that team, gave into that pressure I think at this point it would be very wise to let the chips fall where they are, release it, and each person should try to explain why they were there if they need to do that.
But it's only going to get worse if they, if they suppress it, and and you know they had the Wall Street letter, uh that Donald Trump wrote.
That was kind of ridiculous.
I don't think Donald Trump usually writes typewritten interrogatories to people.
He may or may or not uh, he says he didn't the the the the uh, the illustration.
But at this point, after Egene, Carroll and Stormy Daniels, that's all baked into the To The Trump phenomenon and the idea that he wrote a risque note is of no value.
I think I don't understand the sensationalism about it yeah, and I don't quite understand why he's so angry about it.
Um, because all that does, I think, is draw more attention.
But I don't really understand the strategy of all of this because, you know, I had a Lena Haber on uh from the Trump administration about three months ago and she was absolutely walking everybody up the hill to to believe that these Epstein files were sensational, that they included a lot of names that were going to be released and it was going to be really shocking, and that we finally get accountability.
Because of course, there is this perverse reality that because Epstein took his life or, as some people believe, you know, maybe something more nefarious, but because he died before he could face proper justice, that the only person who's been made accountable for everything that went on um is is Ghillaine Maxwell, a woman uh, you know, and I interestingly I had her brother on Ian Maxwell who said this.
Let me just play the clip, she's entitled to bring new evidence that was not available at her trial showing government misconduct, uh prior to the trial, in the trial and post the trial including, for example, the now, as far as we're concerned, confirmed perjury of one particular juror who purged himself in front of the judge at the hearing brought at her request,
as to why he did not disclose his prior sexual abuse on the jury selection.
For so all of this is to say that Gillen didn't have a fair trying.
That's the bottom line.
Now what is interesting about the whole interview he gave is that my feeling is that she is going to give some kind of deposition.
Maybe she'll appear in front of Congress.
I'm not entirely sure what she's going to be revealing because his position as her brother, who's talked to her throughout all this, is that she did nothing criminal and had no knowledge of him doing anything criminal.
It's hard to see if what they're hoping for is that she gets some kind of immunity in return for information, then either she does a complete 180 and starts spewing out all sorts of stuff in return for immunity, or it really doesn't really take things any further.
Yeah, I think what they're expecting, I think that all of us, what we would like to hear is some kind of categorization of these people that came in and out of their world.
In other words, she said, this was a CEO, this was a major politician, we had an office at Harvard, and these names are in that category, and these people are in this category, and there were some people that went down to the Caribbean, or they were on the so-called Lolita Express without maybe incriminating herself or incriminating them.
But just give us some idea, because right now the public perception is that anybody who turns up in any way, shape, or form next to Jeffrey Epstein is a pedophile.
That's not true.
It's absolutely not true.
They had bad judgment or they were unduly impressed by his wheelie dealing and his apparent wealth or young women are on his arm.
But it doesn't mean that they're necessarily criminal.
So she could be of value trying to explain how people that we would never think should be turning up on various government documents or his own private communications had anything to do with him.
I mean, the problem, it seems to me, in terms of optics, is that everyone in the Trump administration was taking everybody up this hill, like I said, right to the point Elon Musk fell out with Trump and then tweeted or posted on his ex-platform, you know, the biggest bombshell is that Trump's in the Epstein files.
And then within like two, three weeks, everything on the Epstein files is shut down.
And all that has done is fuel just massive conspiracy theories about what did Elon Musk see in these files?
How is Donald Trump potentially compromised, et cetera, et cetera?
And I think like you do, I mean, my gut feeling is Trump has done nothing criminal here whatsoever in relation to Epstein, but he was quite a friend of his for quite a while.
That is uncontestable.
You know, there was a report, I think CNN last night said that Epstein attended Trump's 1993 wedding to Marla Maples.
But again, that doesn't shock or do anything to me.
It's like, well, they were friends.
I'm sure Trump had all sorts of people there that probably with hindsight might look a bit dodgy, but it doesn't mean Trump did anything wrong in relation to them.
So I just feel like they've created a much bigger problem with the way they've handled this.
They did.
And there's a sin of commission and omission because his brand was transparency and they hyped it up in a way that would be spectacular and that was impossible to fulfill, I think, because a lot of people pressured them and said they were innocent and they were going to be guilty by association and they backed off.
But they could have said that.
Middle East Tensions Explained00:10:17
The second thing is he was having a spectacular run the last 90 days.
The border is shut down.
We have all of a sudden we have 55,000 more recruits.
There is no recruiting shortage.
All of the Wall Street Journal news alarm that we're going to be in recession, stagflation, trade wars, that all didn't turn out to be true.
The economy is sound.
He's really taken on a lot of the corruption where I work in higher education.
The DEI is pretty much dead in the United States, at least publicly.
It's now subterranean.
So he had a lot of spectacular successes, and yet this should have been in the time that he was explaining them and enjoying the fruits of his labor.
And instead, he got angry and he started.
He should have, you know, when he said he attacked his supporters, he said that they were in collusion with the left.
That took away from his very good record.
And I think they need now just to be as transparent as they possibly can.
Yeah, I totally agree.
Victor, I just want to end by asking about Israel.
You've been very pro-Israel as a defender of Western values.
But you said recently we're at an historic time in the Middle East.
Never in our lifetime have we been closer to a complete revolutionary further that gives promise of normalcy for the Middle East.
And never have we been in more danger of seeing the entire region blow up.
How do you feel today?
Summer is here and everyone knows to protect their skin from the sun.
But what if you could also protect it from collagen loss and inflammation, even repairing damage you did when you were younger?
Well, the good news is that you can.
Something I learned from the scientists at One Skin.
They can protect your skin from UV damage and work at the cellular level to repair damage and prevent collagen loss.
It's packed with science-backed ingredients, including the OS-1 peptide for protection, nourishment, and repair in one step.
Our sponsor, OneSkin, is the world's first skin longevity company.
By focusing on the cellular aspects of aging, OneSkin keeps your skin looking and acting younger for longer.
For a limited time, you can try OneSkin with 15% off using code peers at oneskin.co.
That's 15% off at oneskin.co with code PEERS.
After your purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them.
So please show us your support by telling them that I sent you.
I'm cautiously optimistic.
I think Israel and Donald Trump exposed to the world the mirage of Iran.
We were told that this theocratic Iran and its goose-stepping Hezbollah were indomitable.
And yet when you looked at the evidence, Hezbollah really had not won a war.
Their forte was killing innocent people in Beirut or in the barracks.
And Iran had never won a war in 50 years.
They'd lost basically stalemate with Iraq that had about 40% of its population.
So suddenly there is no Iranian air force.
There's no Iranian Navy.
There's no Iranian air defenses.
There's no nuclear program.
Hezbollah is not only, its hierarchy has been killed, but they're identifiable now.
Everybody who has maimed injury, everybody knows who they were all the time.
Hamas, I think, will be eliminated.
The Houthis are kind of corralled.
And it's a surreal situation where Donald Trump goes in there for 30 minutes.
He has to ask the Israelis' permission to go into Iranian airspace.
He comes back out.
He declares a ceasefire.
Any other Republican would have retaliated to that performance art missile attack to save face by the Iranians when they hit our base in Ghatr.
Donald Trump says they had to get out of their system, make Iran great again.
So it was really bizarre, but it confused the enemy.
And now I think with the Middle East and the idea that Israel has this power and that it's really privately the Middle East so-called, if that term is accurate, the moderate states that think that Israel has done more for it by defanging Hezbollah and defanging Hamas and defanging Iran than they could themselves.
They will never admit that.
But I think there's a chance that there's going to be a de facto peace and maybe five or six more countries in the Abrams Accord.
It all depends, though, on Iran and the future of Iran.
And that depends on the administration that's in power in Washington or Netanyahu.
Everybody's been arguing here, I think, quite stupidly about the actual degree of damage.
Is it damaged forever or 10 years, five years, the nuclear capabilities of Iran?
But it all depends on what a future American president would do.
We've learned now that you could have stopped that at any time you wanted.
They had no ability to prevent you from doing so.
It was just a matter of high-risk geostrategy, vis-a-vis China, Russia, et cetera.
But Iran is now entirely at the mercy of the Israelis and the United States government for a while at least, and they've lost face.
And if they continue the pressure, I'm not sure that you won't.
I don't think the Iranian people after what happened in 2009 will rise up again.
But the military, the second echelon, knows that they are on the target list and their superior commanders have been killed.
They've been humiliated in the public eye and by the theocracy.
And I wouldn't be, you could have some movement in the military against this theocracy if the pressure continued.
The one big problem, it seems to me, for Israel in terms of global support is Gaza and what is going on there now.
You know, I've got to be honest, I've moved from a position of defending Israel pretty vociferously in the few months after the appalling attacks of October the 7th to now finding a lot of what they're doing in Gaza indefensible.
You know, the starving of people, the constant slaughter of civilians, particularly children, and the failure to achieve the original goals and the apparent new goal, as articulated by people like Smodrich on the far right of the government, that they want to cleanse Gaza of all Palestinians.
I mean, are you concerned that there seems to be no obvious plan here, and that in the process of prosecuting the war that they're doing, in the way that they're doing it, the Israeli government is turning Israel into more and more of a global pariah, particularly amongst its friends, who have all been issuing statements condemning what they're doing,
and also perhaps making the lives of Israelis and Jews around the world less safe as a consequence.
Well, it is true.
I think everybody realizes, I think some people in Israel realize it, and maybe even the government, that there's only one solution to Gaza, and that is the Palestinian people will be in Gaza.
It's their territory.
But Hamas is a terrorist organization.
And if they come back, they will not only oppress their people again.
They had one election one time, and then they hijacked that government in 2005, 2006.
Israel pulled out, they invested, left $50 million in infrastructure, and they destroyed everything.
And so they pulled out all the settlers and they said, it's all yours now.
And we know what followed.
So I don't think that the idea of a Hamas in Gaza is compatible to the United States or Israel.
So the solution is, how do you rebuild that by getting rid of Hamas and not letting Hamas terrorize the people?
Nobody's found a solution.
I will say here in the United States on campuses, if when I see people protesting, and by the way, most of the protests started after October 7th, but before October 23rd or 4th when Israel went into Gaza, there's an asymmetry that no one really explains.
I mean, there's a million people in labor camps in China, Rwanda and the Congo, it was one of the most bloody wars in the world.
Turkey is illegally occupying Cyprus, still illegitimately, illegally, much more dramatically than even Gaza.
The Kurds have been pretty much attacked.
Armenia just was ethnically cleansed of 200,000 people by Turkish forces.
No one says a word.
So as a historian, I always ask myself, why is everybody talking about this?
And they should talk about it, but they're not talking about what happened to Armenia.
They're not talking about what happened to the Kurds.
They're not talking about occupied Cyprus.
They're not talking about any of this.
And I don't know.
I don't have an explanation other than Israel is very successful and Western, and people think that it's an easy target.
It listens to its critics.
It's a democracy.
Or there's a lot of...
I have been surprised how much anti-Semitism, and not just, I knew it was on the left, but it's also starting to emerge in the right-wing base.
And I hadn't seen that since the 1950s, the United States.
So it's very worrisome.
And I don't think it's just in response to what Israel's doing.
I think there was a deep-seated anti-Semitism that the Israeli Gaza thing gives people a legitimate platform.
Because some of the things you hear on campus, it goes way beyond.
I mean, when a Harvard, two Harvard students rough up a Jewish student and one of them is made the grand marshal of a graduation ceremony and the other one, after that is known and investigated, and he's on probation, he's given a $63,000 scholarship by Harvard.
Something is very wrong in American higher education.
Yeah.
Victor Davis Hansen, what a pleasure to have you back on our sensor.
Thank you very much.
Thank you for having me, Piers.
We're telling now to our sensor there's Medi Hassan, the editor-in-chief of Zatteo, who says his debate with those self-declared fascists was the most insane thing he's ever done.
Campus Anti-Semitism Rising00:02:54
We've got plenty to discuss here, but I'll start by reminding viewers what we're talking about.
My family lineage is settlers from the 1500s.
You don't look very Native American to me.
I am Native American.
Whites are Native Americans.
What are you talking about?
No.
What are you talking about?
You're a little bit more than a far-right Republican.
Hey, what can I say?
I think you can say I'm a fascist.
Yeah, I am.
Listen to me.
I am an immigrant.
I'm speaking from personal experience.
I don't even like...
I should get the hell out.
Yes.
It was pretty shocking, a lot of that stuff.
I mean, how much of it was of that nature?
Unfortunately, the vast majority of it, it's about our 40 edited on YouTube.
If people want to watch, I believe several million people have watched.
The Jubilee format is very viral and buzzy and clickbaity and gets a lot of views.
Unfortunately, a lot of it was that.
I mean, Piers, you know me.
I like a good debate.
I like a good argument.
It's why I agreed to do it.
The idea of 20 to 1, I like those odds.
But even going into that room and seeing those people as Trump supporters, as self-declared far-right conservatives, that should have been assigned to me, which people proudly self-identify as far-right.
That should have been a giveaway.
But even I did not expect.
And you know me, I've used the word fascist to describe Trump and his supporters.
But even I did not expect this level of open authoritarianism, fascism, white supremacy, conspiracy theory, racism to my face as an American citizen, telling me that I'm not a real American, that America is only for white people, that I should get the hell out.
That was deeply disturbing and shocking.
Now, everybody knows how much I enjoy my tea.
And I'm very happy to say that today's show is sponsored by Peaks Pure Fermented Teas.
These are not your average brews.
They're sourced from 250-year-old wild trees in the Himalayan foothills, which are untouched by modern farming.
No pesticides, no fertilizers, just nature at its best.
Pure delivers a full spectrum of prebiotics, probiotics, and post-biotics, just like the fermented foods found in longevity hotspots.
It comes in crystal form, so there's no messing around.
Just dissolve, sit, and feel the difference.
It's trusted by health experts, including Casey Means and Dr. Mark Hyman.
There's teas for all occasions, and they all support your gut health, metabolism, and cellular renewal.
The next time you put the kettle on, ask yourself, is my tea working as hard as me?
Peak's pure fermented teas for the gut of a Brit and the longevity of a Himalayan monk.
You're 20% off for life, plus a free frother and glass beaker with the pure bundle.
Visit peaklife.com slash peers.
That's peak, p-i-q-u-elife.com slash peers.
I mean, there's a difference between being far right and a fascist.
Do you accept that?
I mean, unfortunately, right now, it's all very gray in the United States.
America's Authoritarian Moment00:15:40
But I would say that's part of the problem is that because in the last few years, everyone has casually tossed around phrases like fascist, Nazi, et cetera, et cetera, it kind of diminishes the reality when you see it, when they clearly are.
Like, if you see an actual Nazi and you remember what the Nazis did, or you remember what the fascists did, you know, actual fascists doing actual fascist stuff on a mass scale.
The reason I've always quibbled with you using that word for Trump, for example, is that I just think it trivializes what actual fascism really is.
When I saw these kids, though, what I'm seeing is a complete breakdown in any historical knowledge to brazenly admit, I am a fascist.
You never mind the open racism you had to put up with, which is obviously contemptible, but to just casually admit in a sort of cheery way, I'm a fascist.
It just said to me they don't understand what that means.
Maybe, I mean, or that they do understand what it means and they like it.
And this is the slight problem.
All of the polling shows, Piers, that the Republican base has become more authoritarian over the last five, 10 years, has become more open to strongman rule, do call Donald Trump daddy because they like the idea of a strong leader, have told pollsters time and again that they're happy for Trump to ignore court rulings and ignore Congress and take more power for himself, which he's done, by the way.
He has defied court orders, has defied the Supreme Court.
And I look, we can argue back and forth about the word fascist, just like on Ghazi, you and I have argued about the word genocide.
What we can't argue about, and surely what you cannot deny, is that America right now is going through an authoritarian moment.
Most political scientists and scholars of democracy are saying American democracy is in decline, is going backwards, is regressing.
We are seeing a much more authoritarian approach to government.
The Republican Party is enabling Donald Trump's worst excesses.
Again, call them whatever you want, authoritarian, illiberal, fascist.
And these kids, quote unquote, they're all adults, but yes, young Americans sitting in that warehouse with me, I don't think they're just ignorant.
I actually do think they're taking their cues from the top.
They are saying this stuff because Donald Trump has emboldened them.
These views, Piers, as you well know, you lived in the United States, these views have been around for decades, but they were said in private.
They were said in people's homes.
They were said on some weird internet message board.
They've become emboldened to say this stuff out loud because the leader of the country says similar stuff out loud.
When they say to me, I'm not a real American, I should be deported, denaturalized.
I mean, Donald Trump, Piers, is openly saying that Zoran Mandani, the Muslim American citizen candidate for mayor of New York, is maybe here illegally.
Maybe we have to investigate his citizenship based on nothing.
They sat at the RNC and held up placards saying mass deportations now.
They didn't just mean quote-unquote illegal immigrants, Piers.
That's become very...
No, but you know what's interesting is I interviewed Joy Reed the other day, right?
Who was obviously MSNBC for a long time.
She started ranting away about Trump and the deportation stuff that's going on.
I just said to her, okay, how many people did Obama deport?
Okay.
No, no, you know, it's one of my favorite questions.
But what was striking was not just that she had no idea, which she admitted, she never bothered to find out, even though people like me had been telling everyone the number for a long time, to expose actually, I'd take a liberal double standard on this.
But secondly, she said, I don't care.
She didn't care.
How many people Obama had deported, even though he's by far, pro rata, the biggest deporter of people in American presidential history?
So, you know, my question for you about this would be, okay, I don't happen to think Trump has been that authoritarian.
I think he pushes the courts as hard as he can.
But then he reigned, well, then he reigned over.
He's defied court orders.
The people that have been deported where there was a big blow-up and contention about it, they've come back and they're facing due process.
That's not one of authoritarian doctrine.
He's cleaned up.
That's not true.
Well, on the southern border, for example, I presume you would praise Trump for stemming the number of people coming illegally there, or would you not?
No, I don't praise somebody who tortures people in detention centers, and I don't think you should either.
And you said a lot of things that weren't true.
With regard to Joe Reid, who's a good friend of mine, I believe that what she meant, I'll tell you in a second, let me just deal with Joy Reed.
I believe Joy was talking about not caring because it's not relevant.
I mean, Joy can speak for herself, but that's my interpretation of what she said.
It's not relevant.
Obama, first of all, and you tried this gotcha on me, I've written pieces in The Guardian attacking Obama's deportation record.
It was a very bad record.
And I've been critical of Joe Biden's immigration record.
I was on MSNBC attacking Joe Biden's immigration record for being too Republican-esque.
But that is not relevant to right now because when we're talking about deportations, we're not just talking about numbers at the southern border.
We're talking about what ICE is doing in what's called the interior of America in LA on the streets of New York, grabbing people off the streets, masked agents with no badges, no IDs, unmarked cars, grabbing American citizens, doing racial profiling of Latino gardeners or customers at Home Depot, putting them in detention, disappearing them like fascist countries do.
When American citizens, veterans, a disabled veteran in LA, Piers, just disappeared off the street for three days.
His family don't know where he is at.
That is Pinochet Chile style.
Do you agree?
It's the same, but I'm saying that is reminiscent.
No, no, hold on, hold on, Piers.
You had a long thing about it.
I just need to deal with your points.
Then you come back in.
He has defied court orders.
The Washington Post just did a study the other day of 160 lawsuits brought against him.
They've defied one in three of those lawsuits.
He hasn't given due process to people in El Salvador.
People were tortured, Piers, in El Salvador.
Kilmar Brego-Garcia talks about being sat on his knees all night long, being beaten, being deprived of food.
Well, I should oppose people like I did.
You oppose George Bush.
But it's not nonsense.
People have, what are you talking about?
Congress members have gone to Alligator Alcatraz in Florida and talked about 35 people to a room, drinking water out of the toilets that they have to do a number two in.
You oppose the Iraq war.
I assume you opposed Gwan Tanamo and Abu Ghraib at the time.
I don't quite remember.
But this is torture.
This is what Trump's doing.
And he's doing it to American citizens.
He's doing it to America.
Well, he's not giving due process to American citizens.
He's chucked out American children out of this country.
Let me get a question.
Let me get a question in.
Do you agree that undocumented immigrants in America who then commit a crime should be deported?
Yes.
Good.
So then we got a bit of agreement on that.
Do you agree that reducing the number of people coming over the southern border illegally from the many millions, depending what you want to report you want to believe, 8 to 12 million is reported to have come over in the Biden administration four years.
Do you agree that reducing 8 to 12 million?
That's a nonsense number.
2 to 4 million.
How many?
I think it's about 2 to 4 million.
The experts I talk to say two to four million.
Okay, so millions.
Do you accept that reducing that to just a few thousand a month is a good thing?
Not if it ends the right to asylum, which is America's right under America's apologies under international law and American law.
Donald Trump.
No, hold on, hold on, Piers.
You can't just elide that.
Donald Trump has ended the right to asylum effectively in this country.
That is outrageous.
It is illegal.
But he has horror, is it?
Do you support ending the right to asylum?
He has, actually.
He's ended the right to asylum.
You can still claim asylum.
No, that's not true, Piers.
You can.
That's not true.
You can still claim asylum.
ICE agents are picking up.
Piers, no.
In fact, not only can you not claim asylum at the southern border, you're being rejected, but people in the middle of asylum hearings in courtrooms in America on camera are being grabbed in the middle of their asylum hearings by ICE officers.
Judges are calling this out, Piers.
And I assume, again, you support a right to asylum as a British citizen in the UK, the US, every developed country.
I do, but I also support the right to asylum.
Donald Trump has ended that.
And by the way, Stephen Miller is openly opposed to that.
So there's no point defending people who don't want to.
I'm not defending anybody.
They're openly opposed to this.
I'm about to tell you that I think that you...
Well, I think the fact that we've just appraised Trump's record at the border's horrific record.
I think if Trump had stuck to deporting people who committed crimes when they're undocumented in the United States, it would have had widespread approval.
I do not like everybody.
I do not like this chilling sense of fear that everyone undocumented America currently has because of the extraordinary work they do for the U.S. economy.
Never mind anything else.
Never mind the human.
It's just undocumented, Piers.
What about the legal?
Hold on, not just undocumented.
What about legal immigrants?
He's detained green card holders.
He's going after American citizens.
I don't think it's right.
They've set up a committee.
I don't think it's right.
So, okay, you don't think it's right?
Do you think it's authoritarian?
You're not worried about the direction of travel in the U.S. where two-thirds of Republicans basically identify as authoritarian where a majority of Republicans tell pollsters we think Trump shouldn't follow the courts or Congress.
Well, of course, he should follow courts, but I think that in relation to the immigration issue, the vast majority of Americans I've seen interviewed, right, doesn't necessarily mean that is the majority of the country, but most people think if you're in the country illegally, that isn't something to be applauded.
I know that when I wanted to go to America and get a home there, which I have, and work in America, I had to go through a laborious, quite painstaking, quite expensive process of getting a visa, for example, right?
That is the normal way people operate in other countries.
So that is how a lot of people do it.
They do it the legal way.
We have the same issue in the United Kingdom with people coming over on boats from France in the tens of thousands, right?
It is annoying to those who do things the right way.
So I understand that, but I also understand you cannot just deport every undocumented person in America.
It would create complete mayhem.
It would wreck the economy.
It's unworkable.
And it's also intrinsically unfair if someone's been there for a few years, has family born in the United States, is working and paying taxes and contributing to the economy.
I think it's not right that those people should be picked up and thrown out, right?
Now, so there are lots of complexities to this, and I agree with a lot of it probably along with you.
I just don't think that you can ignore, as Joy Reid wanted to, what Obama did for eight years as a Democrat president.
And as a black, come on.
Piers, I get that you need to do this both sides stick for your show, but Obama is not relevant.
Why does he do that?
Look at both sides.
Well, okay, point to me.
Well, Piers, point to me then.
I'll give you as long.
I've got to go through, but I'll give you as long as you want before I go.
When did Obama defy the Supreme Court on immigration?
He didn't.
When did he defy lower court judges?
He didn't.
Joe Biden didn't either.
So we're talking about the courts here, right?
Judges, Trump-appointed judges, Piers.
A Trump-appointed judge said earlier this year that an American child was expelled, deported from this country, even though you can't legally deport an American citizen, but was kidnapped and taken out of this country without meaningful process.
That is the words of a Trump-appointed judge.
You cannot find an equivalent for Barack Obama.
And I hold no, I carry no water for Obama on immigration.
One thing I've got to say on undocumented folks, some of these people, not just here a few years, they picked up an Iranian woman, a grandmother, in her front yard gardening, who'd been here since 1979.
She came as a child.
Her family claimed asylum after the Iranian Revolution.
They picked up and detained her.
This is insane.
And by the way, the polls show, Piers, that Americans do want deportations.
But when they're asked, when they're asked more detailed questions, do you support people who've been here for many years?
Do you support people who have committed no crimes?
Do you support deporting people who want a pathway to citizenship?
They don't support deporting those people.
They support, like you and I do, deporting violent criminals, which Biden was doing.
Trump did.
Obama did.
Everyone agrees on that.
What he's doing right now, what Stephen Miller is doing, Piers, just so your viewers know, Stephen Miller went to ICE and said, you better round up 3,000 people a day.
He's given them an arbitrary number.
And ICE people are saying, we can't do this.
It's not possible.
He said, just go to 7-Eleven, go to Home Depot, and just round people up.
They're doing racial profiling, Piers.
They're just grabbing brown people, Latino folks off the streets who are American citizens.
And they're saying very clearly why they want to do this, right?
They want to make, when they say they want to make America great again, it's because they want to go back to a whiter America, a less browner America.
That is Stephen Miller's vision.
Get Stephen Miller and ask him.
They've not said that.
They've not said that, have they?
Stephen Miller is a white nationalist.
Stephen Miller is a white nationalist who spent a career enabling and promoting white nationalism.
It's all on the record.
But there is no evidence Donald Trump wants to keep people in because of their skin color or throw them out because of their skin colour.
Actually, there's a lot of reporting from the first term where he says, why can't we have more people from Sweden, less people from shithole countries?
So I'm pretty sure I know what he was talking about when he was talking about Swedish folks.
Well, he's probably talking about the seven countries which Obama banned people from coming in from because of their terror record.
Was he?
He didn't ban entire people from coming in.
Actually, he did.
That was the fight.
I don't agree with.
That was the farce when Trump did it.
No, no.
The left all went nuts and it turned out a big thing.
He didn't ban everyone from coming in.
By the way, by the way, Donald Trump in December 2015 said we need to ban every Muslim coming into the United States.
Do you support that Islamophobic racist position?
He said, if I remember accurately what he said, it was after an appalling terror attack where I think over 50 people got murdered.
And he said we're going to have a short-term suspension on people coming in from the same countries that Obama had done this to.
No, he didn't.
Until every Muslim Muslims will be banned.
Not true, Piers.
People can Google it right now.
You're wrong and I'm right as ever.
He said all Muslims will be banned from coming into the United States.
He didn't say anything about seven countries.
That's what it became when he came into office.
But he said he wanted to ban all Muslims from coming in.
Surely you disagree with that.
No, Mehdi, in the end, I always say with Trump, act on what he does, not what comes out of his mouth, right?
You don't like that.
And I've been telling you, I've got to run, but I've been telling you for the last 20 minutes what he's been doing, and you partly agree with me.
But now at the end, because you've got to do the both side stuff, you've got to defend it.
How many countries outside of Home Depot?
Because you don't agree.
You don't agree with picking people up outside of Home Depot.
How many Muslim countries in the end did Trump ban people coming in from?
I think five, if memory says we can't.
I think it was seven.
The same seven Obama had done.
That's my point.
You can't ignore history.
You can't just pretend Obama did not ban Muslims from coming into the U.S.
He did not say Islam hates us.
He did not say that he did not tell Muslim members of Congress to go back to where they came from.
I remember when you came on my show, Piers, and I read out the quote to you where he told the four members of the squad to go back to the countries they came from.
And you would not call it a racist statement, but it was a racist statement.
You know it, and I know it.
And everyone watching knows it.
Mehdi.
Everything they said to me on Jubilee, by the way, is stuff that Trump has said, or a version of.
It's not.
I think it diminishes your argument.
When you're faced with actual people saying, I'm a fascist, it's hard to get it.
It's hard to think they're getting it for.
Many of them are Trump supporters, Piers.
Many of them are Trump supporters.
Where do you think they're getting it from?
They're proud Trump supporters.
Every political leader has appalling people that follow them.
Every one of them.
You tell me one in America who has.
But only one pardoned the violent criminals who supported him.
Only one.
And his name is Donald J. Trump.
And I assume you don't support those parties.
Well, Joe Biden pardoned all his family, who many people think are a bunch of criminals.
What's the difference?
And Donald Trump pardoned people who beat police with pipes.
There's a big difference, Piers, as you know.
Is there?
We don't know.
We'll never find out.
It's always a pleasure.
We'll never find out what the Biden family is a pleasure to crime because they've all been pardoned.
Piers Morgan Uncensored00:00:30
Meddy, great to talk to you, as always.
Thanks, Piers.
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.