“It's NOT Far-Right!" Musk Fuels UK Flags & Free Speech War | Andrew Wilson vs Cenk Uygur
‘Operation Raise The Colours’ has sparked a nationwide debate. For some, flying the St George’s Cross and Union Jack is a patriotic act of defiance against a broken asylum system. For others, it’s a dangerous far-right signal. The truth may lie somewhere in between. With over 32,000 asylum seekers housed in UK hotels, migration pressures are rising - and social media is pouring fuel on the fire. Elon Musk’s platform X is driving viral stories about immigration, while critics accuse him of stoking Islamophobia. He’s even backing a brand-new political party, Advance UK, calling Nigel Farage’s Reform “weak sauce.” Joining Piers Morgan to discuss all this and more is leader of ‘Advance UK’ Ben Habib, political commentator with Joe, Ava Santina, CEO and host at ‘The Young Turks’ Cenk Uygur, host of ‘The Crucible’ Andrew Wilson and former State Department official Mike Benz. Piers Morgan Uncensored is proudly independent and supported by: Birch Gold: Visit https://birchgold.com/piers to get your free info kit on gold. Oxford Natural: To watch their full stories, scan the QR code on your screen or visit https://oxfordnatural.com/piers/ to get 70% off your first order when you use code PIERS. 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
Free Speech and Immigration Crisis00:03:37
People go to these programs.
Isabel Brown.
The wait is almost over.
She's joining Daily Wire Plus with the Isabel Brown Show.
Cannot wait for you guys to see how hard we've been working.
I could not be more excited for this new adventure.
You can expect larger-than-life guests, deeper questions to the nerds.
Meeting the President of the United States and the Vice President, and now meeting our new American Pope.
This is crazy.
Let's jump in.
Join me every weekday for the Isabel Brown Show on Daily Wire Plus or wherever you get your podcasts.
Protest with these flags to remind the authorities that this is England.
But that does seem intimidating.
Why?
Because it's being done in a way.
It's being waved flagrantly in a way to intimidate.
No, it's not.
Everybody on this side of the pond is looking in absolute horror at the state of speech in the UK.
It's absolutely abhorrent.
Every day there's a new monstrosity.
You've also got the same time President Trump wanting to jail people who burn the American flag.
What do you feel about that?
Are you allowed to burn one?
Yes, of course you are, because that's part of what's great about this country.
You have freedom of speech.
We have the stars and stripes, which men have died and bled for for hundreds of years.
Immigrants don't get to come here, many times illegally, and burn it on the cameras as part of a demoralizing system for the public.
But I don't think a single one of your family members fought for the right people to burn your nation's flag that they were fighting for.
Actually, I think they did.
It says a lot about the national mood in the UK that the simple sight of national flags waving from lampposts and houses has become a major flashpoint.
Operation Raise the Colours is a mass movement of ordinary people flying and in some cases painting the St. George's Cross and the Union Jack across their neighbourhoods.
Many people see it as an act of patriotic defiance.
A peaceful protest against an asylum system where just about everybody agrees is out of control.
But others see it as a far-right dog whistle, organized and amplified by nefarious people who are fundamentally racist.
The truth, as always, probably sits somewhere in between the two.
More than 32,000 asylum seekers are living in British hotels at vast expense, with hundreds more arriving routinely on small boats across the English Channel each week.
Brexit was supposed to take back control of the UK's borders, but migration has simply increased.
People have every right to be unhappy about that and to protest peacefully.
But daubing paint on war memorials and cars, scrawling racist slogans on a Chinese takeaway, that's wrong.
And it's not who we are as a country, or I hope it isn't.
There's no question that many people are fired up by what they're seeing on social media.
Just as he's doing in the US, Elon Musk is driving vast amounts of traffic to his ex-platform with stories and stats which paint a vivid picture of chaos and danger caused by immigration.
Prominent critics, including Basim Youssef, say he's deliberately peddling anti-Muslim and anti-Arab hatred with no concern about whether the stories are true.
And just as he's doing in the US again, Elon Musk is backing a new political party.
Nigel Farage and Reform UK are, he says, weak source.
And he'll be back, he'll be backing the newly minted Advanced UK instead.
Well, tonight we're going to debate some big questions which are pertinent on both sides of the Atlantic.
Is flag waving populism a symbol of patriotism or prejudice?
Does Western culture have a problem with Islamophobia?
And is Elon Musk partly to blame?
And can a brand new party, backed by the world's richest man, really transform politics in the UK and the US?
Musk Backs New Political Party00:06:02
Well, joining me for the first uncensored of the new term, Cheng Uger, CEO and host at the Young Turks, Andrew Wilson, host of The Crucible, Mike Benz, the executive director for the Foundation for Freedom Online and a former State Department official.
Ben Habib, leader of new party Advanced UK, which is now backed by Elon Musk, and Ava Santina, political commentator with Joe.
Well, welcome to all of you, a stellar panel, to welcome us back on Uncensored in September here.
I want to start, though, before we get into the main purpose that we got you all on.
I want to start with this breaking news story today, which in many ways is, to me, symbolic of the mess that my country is getting itself into, not just on immigration and asylum, but also fundamentally about free speech.
The father Ted, co-creator Gremlinhill, one of the most popular comedies in UK TV history, was arrested today after arriving back at Heathrow on a flight from the United States.
And he revealed in an online Substack article that officials became highly concerned for his health and his blood pressure raised to over 200 and took him to hospital.
That's been confirmed by the police.
But he says five armed cops seized him and arrested him at the airport.
And why did they do that?
Because in April, he did these three tweets or posts as they're now called on X. If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent abusive act.
Make a scene called the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls.
The second one, commenting on a picture of a trans demonstration, he wrote, a photo you can smell.
The third one, I hate them.
Misogynists and homophobes, fuck the M for them.
Let me start with you, Ava.
No one would dispute that the language he uses there is inflammatory.
He's a comedian, so he would argue he's being funny, but also making a mocking point about the massive issue of the last few years, about the issue of trans women in women's spaces, be it in sport, be it with safety, be it with equality.
Is it right in your mind that he should be seized by five armed police officers on his re-entry to the United Kingdom?
Do you feel comfortable with that happening to somebody for a few inflammatory comedically intended posts on social media?
I think you're going to be very surprised by my answer.
And I would say that I don't think it's right that he has been arrested.
I think that he has made a career out of being hateful.
I think that what he does to that community is incredibly dangerous.
And I worry about the trans men and women who have to experience the fallout of his disgusting tirades every single day.
But it does scare me that he was arrested and it scares me that people are being arrested for what they're posting on social media.
And I think that the government here and the Metropolitan Police need to be clearer about what the parameters are of what you can and can't post online if they're going to legislate on it.
I think the worry though is that many trans people don't know how to deal with the vitriol or the fallout after he's had one of his explosions.
I mean you can't sue him, you can't shut him up, but every single day they have to deal with the tirade that falls on them.
Well his tirades, as you put it, are based on a firmly held belief by him that is shared by many other people.
I don't care about his.
Well hang on.
Let me finish my point.
The comments he makes, all right, they can be expressed in an inflammatory way, as I've said.
But that actually underpinning it is his argument that the trans activist lobby, for want of a different phrase, but the activist lobby supporting trans rights has spent the last few years traducing and reducing women's rights to fairness, equality and safety.
And that it's actually the refusal to deal with that central problem, both in the United States, the United Kingdom and other countries, that has led to such rage on behalf of women's rights.
The rage comes from trans people existing, which is what I find extraordinarily dangerous.
You know, I work with trans people.
Friends of mine are trans.
You know, the sort of the danger and the vitriol that is spread across our tabloids every single day, I have never, ever experienced or seen.
And honestly, I just think he needs a new bit.
I think, you know, maybe it would be helpful for him if he wrote a new show or wrote a new play and just left these people alone.
Let me bring Andrew Wilson in here.
So, Andrew, Graham Nunnhan, I'm not even sure if you're familiar with him, but he's one of the most successful comedy people in the country over here.
But he's been at the center of this debate for a long time with his very stark views about this trans issue.
He's been bailed by the UK police, but only with the condition that he doesn't go on X.
He wrote on Substack, in a country where paedophiles escape sentencing, where knife crime is out of control, where women are assaulted and harassed every time they gather to speak, the state have mobilized five armed officers to arrest a comedy writer.
What is your response to that?
Well, his tweets are satirical in nature.
It is comedy-based.
She's right.
He shouldn't have been arrested, but she's also wrong in the fact that, look, people are done with the trans thing.
They've had enough of it.
This whole, you know, they're just kind of regular people like you and me, but happen to dress up like, no, that's not really what's going on.
You've unleashed an entire fleet of mentally ill lunatics on the public, and now we have to deal with the fallout of it.
We have to deal with having to deal with these people on a day-to-day basis.
A lot of people are sick of it.
This guy is just echoing the thing which is in a lot of our minds, which is that, hey, we're kind of tired of these mentally ill lunatics on our streets.
Dealing with Daily Fallout00:02:25
We really are.
Ava?
I find that really frightening.
I mean, why would you say someone was mentally ill?
Because they feel they were born in the wrong body.
I mean, does that give you pleasure or joy to just stamp down on someone's personhood?
What's the intent here?
Do you value truth?
Of course I value truth, yeah.
Good.
Then here's what's true.
What's true is that if you're a man, you can't be a woman.
And if you're a woman, you can't be a man.
That's what's true.
I don't think it's helpful to get into...
Hang on, hang on, hang on.
I'll let you talk, but let me finish.
Your attempt to gaslight everybody into the opposition of this truth builds resentment.
And it's that resentment that you have to deal with.
And it's you have done it to yourself.
Like most of these things, the left does it to themselves.
It's very obvious people are not going to accept this.
The trans agenda has stalled and it stalled out the LGBTQ agenda with it because you're trying to gaslight people into something which is obviously not true.
I think that, you know, if you look just 30 years ago in the United Kingdom, we were treating gay men in the same way that we are now treating trans people.
You know, the mood does shift and the mood moves.
And, you know, I think that the stalwart belief here that we need to hold is that if someone does feel that they are born in the wrong body, it does not affect me as a woman if they decide that they are going to be a trans woman.
It doesn't affect me.
It doesn't change the way they are.
It's a rate of assault.
Today's show is brought to you by Oxford Natural, makers of the Optimum Day and Optimum Night, all natural supplements.
Thousands of Brits and Americans are already taking them with incredible results.
Optimum Day is designed to boost your energy and support weight loss throughout the day.
Optimum Night helps you relax and get deep, refreshing sleep.
And don't just take their word for it.
Here are just a few of their success stories.
England football legend, Michael Owen, lost £40.
Robbie, the face of AFTV, dropped over £100.
Linda, a top laurel firm executive, lost £50.
And Danita, an immigration lawyer, shed £60.
to watch their full stories and find out more, scan the QR code on your screen or visit oxfordnatural.com slash peers.
And here's the best part.
Use the code peers, P-I-E-R-S, and get 70% off your first order.
You're 70% off with the promo code, PEARS.
Mental Illness Logic Debate00:08:36
Okay, but Avery, I'll bring Ben in here, but let me just say, as somebody who's always considered myself to be pretty liberal-minded, you know, The moment this campaign started, for example, to allow trans women who are biological men and they've become identified as trans women.
Okay, I've got no problem with people being trans.
If they want to do that, I respect them.
I want them to have rights to safety, equality, and the rest of it.
But the moment somebody tries to persuade me that allowing biological men who identify as trans women to compete in women's sport against actual women with women's bodies, which are, because we separate the sexes and things like the Olympics, which we know are inferior in terms of power and strength, endurance and so on.
The moment people try to persuade me that is fair and equitable, I think they are absolute lunatics.
And I'm not even sure they even believe it when they say it.
So part of the problem here, it seems to me, and I'll bring Ben in here to comment on this, but part of the problem is that the trans lobby has brought a lot of this stuff on themselves.
If they had just gone about this in a different way and have fought simply for equality, I would be absolutely leading the charge.
It ceases to exist.
I want them to have equality and safety and fairness, but not at the expense of eroding women's rights, Ben.
Well, I agree with that.
And fundamentally, the feeling that you're a woman when you're in fact biologically a man is a mental health issue.
That's how it's defined.
And of course, if someone wants to identify as a woman, even though they are a man, fine, that's their prerogative.
But for the regulatory and legislative environment in which we now live, effectively to progressively discriminate in their favor, not for them to be equal, but for them to have the right to go into women's loos, compete with women in sport, go into women's prisons, all these things is an assault on the very form of liberalism that emancipated women and brought women to an equal footing with men.
And now, in the pursuit of what I would call ultra-liberalism, we're setting aside women's rights.
We've lost sight of common sense in our society.
And what we've got to go back to is that commonsensical position.
Just because a man identifies as a woman, that does not make him a woman.
And he should not be allowed to infringe on women's space, personal space.
Well, actually, I mean, it's no longer a question of opinion here, of individual opinions.
The UK Supreme Court has said this.
The British Prime Minister has finally come around to saying this.
Let me bring Chenk in here.
We've discussed this issue on and off for a few years now.
But what's happened to Graham Lennon here in the UK really disturbs me.
You know, it's interesting because many people in the UK would consider Ben to be right-wing.
Some would say he's far-right.
I think that's an exaggerated term that's overused.
But certainly, I would not normally readily agree with somebody who's on the right about what I would consider a liberal issue.
But here I do, and that to me is the most interesting part of this debate.
The woke left have basically lost their minds to the extent that they want us all to sign up to disbelieving in science and biology.
Here you've got a comedy writer who's been calling this out for years, now being arrested for clearly comedic.
I mean, this first one, you know, make a scene, call the cops.
If all else fails, punch him in the balls.
It's an obvious joke.
You might think it's crass.
You might not want to laugh.
But actually, the point he's making is that biological men should not be in women's spaces.
What is your view of what's happened to this government?
J.K. Rowling, who's no friend of Grand Lenin, in fact, had a pop at him a few times before, said, what the fuck has the UK become?
This is totalitarianism, utterly deplorable.
Elon Musk calls this a, he replied to her, it's a police state.
What do you think of this?
Yeah.
So as you know, look, maybe some folks on here disagree with trans activists 95% or 200%.
I disagree with them about 5% about professional sports.
And nevertheless, I've been attacked just as viciously as anyone on this panel.
So I get it, guys.
I get that trans activists sometimes drive people away.
First of all, they don't represent all trans people.
Second of all, the bigger problem to me is the hatred that trans people are getting that is irrational.
So this guy, when he does the tweets about the smelling and the homophobia and misogyny and all that stuff, I don't care.
Those are just his opinions that no one should ever be punished for their opinions, even if they're terribly obnoxious, right?
When he gets into, hey, if you see a trans person in the wrong place, start screaming about them and maybe physically assault them, that depends on the laws in the UK.
But if you're threatening violence like that in general, yeah, it might be something the cops should talk to you about.
And having nothing to do with your opinions about trans people or anything else, it's just that you're threatening violence.
And then this other guy, the dude with the beard here, I mean, okay, so this is a common thing that the extreme right does.
Okay, in my mind, there is no such thing as feeling like a woman.
And I agree.
I don't have that in my mind either.
That doesn't mean that other people don't.
I don't know why that's such a hard thing for folks to understand.
So you weren't born that way, but they were.
You think they're just all lying?
And why would they be lying?
And this whole thing of calling people who don't think like you mentally ill is actually super stupid.
It's literally unintelligent.
Okay.
So people think in different ways.
They have different proclivities, including sexual proclivities and gender proclivities.
If you can't understand that simple concept and you think anyone who doesn't think like me is mentally ill, there's actually something profoundly wrong with you.
All right, Andrew, there's something profoundly wrong with you.
Yeah, sure.
Well, nobody said.
Yeah.
What was articulated to you was something which is kind of exactly what you said.
Well, yeah, what was articulated to you is pure logic.
Pure logic, and I'll explain the pure logic.
You have no comparison to make as a male for what a female does even feel like.
That's how we know it's a mental illness, Sank.
It's really simple.
It's the law of identity.
I hope that you know what logic is because that's what that is.
It's a law of identity.
You can't make a comparison for what it is to feel like a female, Sank.
It's not possible because you're not one.
That's how that works.
Stop trying to gaslight me.
Stop trying to pretend that I don't know what a male is, what a female is.
Stop trying to pretend that I don't know what mental illness is.
The mark of mental illness is irregularities in behavior.
That's how you know what it is, Sank.
How else would you even know?
Jank?
So, okay, that doesn't make any sense at all.
And it defies logic completely.
So first of all, you say, how would I know what's inside their heads?
That's my point to you, brother.
It seems like you have trouble understanding similarity.
My question to you is, how can you say that?
How would you know what's in a trans person's head?
You don't know what's in their head.
Instead, what you're doing is a simple concept called projection.
Hey, since I feel this way, you should feel this way.
And then you start talking about irregularities.
No, there's a difference between, hey, someone is detached from reality and is committing violence.
Okay, that's a mental illness, regardless of what their background is, right?
But when you say irregularities in general, what is regular?
And let me guess, you're going to claim that whatever you think is regular and everything else is mentally ill.
And then you call that logic from logic.
How can you ever identify what mental illness was unless it was irregularity in behavior?
It wouldn't even be possible.
Not only that, you still didn't address the point.
It's never addressed.
It's not an actual point.
But that would be the process for the identification of mental illness is irregularity in behavior.
It's the study of the mind.
That's what psychology is.
Also, you didn't address the point.
How is it that a male could have any comparative cognitive function to know what a female feels like?
They can't.
It isn't possible.
You just said you don't know what's in their heads.
Don't need to.
I know it's not possible for a male to know what it's like to feel like a female.
It's not a possibility.
Okay, every male.
Hang on.
Guys, every male.
I think we're getting something to do with masculine.
You get the menu.
Hang on.
Hang on, Dork.
You have no idea what you're talking about.
So there is no such thing as masculine or feminine.
Given that neither of you think the other has any idea what I'm talking about.
My life.
Nobody said anything about this.
Let me give you time.
Jailed Enemies and Civil Liberties00:10:23
Time out.
Given that neither of you thinks the other one knows what I'm talking about, and given we're drifting away from, I think, the real core issue of this debate.
Let me just try and wrestle it back here.
Let me bring in Mike Bence.
I mean, Mike, it seems to me, putting aside what people think of trans people, I happen to think they're entitled to exactly the same rights to fairness, equality as me and safety, but not at the expense of eroding women's rights.
But let's put that to one side.
It seems to me this is a fundamental battle going on in the UK in particular for free speech, where we're seeing a number of people now who are being arrested.
They're being imprisoned in some cases for articulating quite incendiary views on social media.
But in the case of a woman who was jailed for, I think, nearly two years recently, just been released due to public pressure, you know, she was articulating views, which she then, when she calmed down, because it was articulated in the wake of an appalling attack on young girls where three were murdered, she then realized the misinformation had affected her judgment.
She deleted the post and then apologized.
But despite that, got jailed.
This was all within a few hours.
She got jailed for nearly two years.
Now, this strikes me as completely wrong.
What is your view from a free speech perspective?
US national debt is more than $37 trillion.
And these are uncertain times for the global economy.
It's enough to make you think maybe now would be a good time to buy some gold.
Whether it's a hedge against inflation, peace of mind during global instability, or just sensible diversification, Birch Gold Group believes that every American should own physical gold.
They've created something special.
Until the 30th of September, if you're a first-time buyer, Birch Gold is offering a rebate of up to $10,000 in free metals on qualifying purchases.
To start the process, request a free information kit now.
Just text Piers, P-I-E-R-S, to 989-898.
Make right now your first time to buy gold and take advantage of a rebate of up to $10,000 when you buy before the end of September.
Text my name, Piers, to 989-898.
Claim your eligibility and get your free information back.
Again, just text Piers to 989-898.
Well, I'm proud to be an American where at least I know I'm free.
I think everybody on this side of the pond is looking in absolute horror at the state of speech in the UK.
It's absolutely abhorrent.
Every day there's a new monstrosity.
The statistics are over 30 arrests per day in the UK.
That's about 12,000 a year, I think, was the estimate by the Times from a report in April.
12,000 people a year arrested by their government for the speech they have online.
Pierce, I was mortified when you said not only was that comedian arrested, but the bail condition was there was a single bail condition.
I had to look this up in the background to confirm I didn't mishear this.
The one bail condition was that he was not allowed to post on X.
So either he has access to his X account or he spends the entire term in prison awaiting trial.
This is the sort of thing that I would imagine would happen in Abu Ghraib or some sort of third world prison hellhole where you're trying to stop ISIS propaganda from terrorists or something.
And even then there are civil liberty concerns.
Right.
And so one of my questions actually is to Ben from the Advanced Party here.
What would happen if you campaigned on, since it doesn't look like there's any momentum within the UK to actually shut down these laws, what would happen, do you think, if the Advanced Party used these laws against its political enemies the same way the system is using them against Advance?
What if, for example, speech about heterosexuals or speech about straight white males or speech about the majority of the population for whatever term that is or speech about conservatives or speech about people who are patriotic or whatnot?
What if it was hate speech for invective to be hurled at them online?
I think if folks had to taste the medicine of this from across the different groups in the UK so that everyone had a kind of mutually assured destruction about this.
I think everybody knows that if these laws were actually applied with any sort of fairness at all, then basically everybody in the UK would be arrested.
Okay, but let me throw it back at you quickly on that point because very critical of the UK, as indeed most people in the UK are, frankly.
But you've also got the same time President Trump wanting to jail people who burn the American flag.
What do you feel about that?
Presumably, you would be as incensed about that infringement of people's rights.
Yeah, I think that I certainly have an issue with that.
I feel that that is an infringement on free speech rights.
I think that there are some complications about, well, I guess the scale of the damage when I think about...
If you own the American flag and you want to burn it, why should the state get in your way?
Why should you face a year in prison?
I don't think they should.
And let me be clear about that.
I don't agree with Trump's policy on that.
I'm simply looking at the scale of damage here in terms of that's there's with the UK what you have what I'm trying to say here is you have this massive problem in the UK where you have 12,000 arrested I just don't think it's just a UK issue what about the Palestinian protests on campuses what about the number of college students that were arrested on campuses for protesting Palestine should they have been arrested already well hang on let's be clear about what was going on on those campuses in the wake of October the 7th.
There were protests and many of them were protesting perfectly peacefully.
There were others who were genuinely seen.
I'd like to hear from him about the question.
Hang on, I'm just putting it on.
Yeah, but they were genuinely seen harassing Jewish students who were barricaded into classrooms.
Others had Hamas sort of signage and so on.
So they weren't all just innocent, peaceful protesters.
But I'm asking about the barometer for free speech from your guest, because at what point do you limit free speech?
That's what I'm asking.
Smashing into letter rooms is a definite red line, is it not?
Well, it's an act of vandalism, stroke violence, and threatening intimidation.
It's not free speech.
That is just violence.
But just going back to the point that you made, Mike, the question you asked me, which was extremely pertinent.
When a government practices extreme ideologies, such as trying to convince its population to turn their heads upside down and accept that men can be women, the only way to perpetrate that extreme ideology and to get it accepted is to shut down free speech.
And it goes for many other forms of ideology that are being perpetrated against the people of this country, including mass migration, illegal migration, a refusal to detain and deport people who come to this country illegally.
So they're now policing our posts on X about our feelings about migration.
We've got a whole police unit dedicated to it.
We have journalists, and I'm sure peers will agree with me here.
We have journalists being questioned by police for non-crime hate incidents.
They're actually termed non-crime hate incidents.
They're not criminal activities, but they have the police turning up to their doorstep on a Sunday morning.
And this is all anti-democratic.
And I think that was the underlying point you were also making, Mike, that when you have minorities being protected with this extreme form of ideology and the shutting down of free speech, effectively the damage that's done is to the majority, to the democratic voices within this country.
And that is what is happening.
Okay, Andrew Wilson, on the issue of burning the American flag, where do you sit with that?
Because I hear a lot of Americans taking a very high moral ground about censoring free speech and expression in the UK.
But it seems to me that is a pretty direct attack on someone's right to do that if they wish to do that.
Where do you sit with it?
Yeah, so a couple of things.
First, I think it's fine to throw people who burn the American flag in jail.
I have no problem with it at all.
If you're in the United States, you burn our symbols.
By the way, this has only been since 1989 that this has been a law, only since 1989.
Almost every state had laws against this.
Why?
Because they considered it incitement.
Trump's executive order says the exact same thing.
He considers it incitement under certain contexts.
That's how they're going to avoid the Supreme Court.
It's a good law.
I support it 100%.
We absolutely should be able to throw these people in jail.
In some ways, also, kind of going, circling back just very quickly, when you say, oh, the UK prosecutes people for speech, that's true, they do.
In some ways, that might even be superior to the system we have in the United States, though, where if you're far right, you're debanked and depersoned with no due process at all.
We do that history behind it without ever even knowing why that was the case.
I mean, at least there you're getting some kind of due process.
Here, you don't even get that.
And so the thing is, it's like this is everywhere.
It's not just there.
The idea that we have to allow our enemies to pick our battles for us, we have to let Sankey Gur say either it's the case that you allow your enemies to burn the flag while they tear down all of your monuments.
They tore down the Confederate flags.
They don't care.
They don't care about free speech.
I'm not letting them pick our battles for us.
Sorry.
You burned our symbols.
You do these riots in California where you combine a Mexican flag and an American flag.
While you're burning our American flag, it looks like an invasion, not a riot.
And so, yeah, there has to be a line in the sand that we draw.
And I'm going to draw it at the symbol.
And I'm not going to let lefties tell us one way or the other what we can organize.
Well, let me ask the two lefties here.
Let me start with you, Ching, then I'll come to you, Ava.
Ching, as one of the two lefties on the panel, your response to the flag-burning support of people being jailed for that by Andrew.
Flag Burning and Leftist Responses00:15:54
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 postbiotics, 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 Tea.
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 Piers.
That's peak, P-I-Q-U-Elife.com slash Piers.
Yeah, so I believe in and I love freedom of speech, and I'm principled on it, as Mike is here.
And obviously, Andrew isn't.
So look, I also love the American flag.
I think you should bring the flag to all protests because protesting is one of our fundamental rights in America.
That's part of why we love America, especially if you're going to an immigrant protest.
Please bring an American flag.
So I would never burn an American flag.
I think it's the dumbest thing in the world.
It bothers me viscerally.
But are you allowed to burn one?
Yes, of course you are, because that's part of what's great about this country.
You have freedom of speech.
But our freedom of speech is being taken away.
There is one particular case where it is super aggressive, and that's if you criticize Israel.
If you criticize Israel on a college campus, you'll be arrested by masked men and whisked away.
And there's threats of taking your diploma away, never being able to get a job, arrested, denaturalized, deported.
If you criticize Israel in America, you're in a world of trouble.
And in a lot of other countries.
So if you want to talk about abuse of free speech, there is one giant abuser, and that is Israel and all the politicians that they buy in all the Western countries and especially America.
Okay, let's go to London.
He's right about that.
It is atrocious that there's even a proposed legislation that if you burn the Israeli flag, you can go to jail.
Has nothing to do with American symbolism.
It has nothing to do with our flag.
We have the stars and stripes, which men have died and bled for for hundreds of years.
Immigrants don't get to come here many times illegally and burn it on the cameras as part of a demoralizing system for the public.
To hell with that, we don't have to allow that at all.
You don't have to allow it, but Andrew.
But Andrew, I would say we shouldn't.
But Andrew, I would say this.
You know, a lot of my family served in the UK armed forces in warfare, including in World War II, and they fought for the freedom of people to actually exercise their right to free speech and expression, even if it's very offensive to other people.
I mean, isn't that the point of fighting for freedom?
No offense.
I don't believe that.
You are allowed to then express yourself in ways that other people find offensive.
No offense, Pierce, but I don't think a single one of your family members fought for the right of people to burn your nation's flag that they were fighting for.
Actually, I think they did.
I would say I believe that my countrymen and my family members were fighting in wars so that we could have more gay button, more freedom to go and make sure that we can have gay pride parades.
Don't believe it for a second.
I don't believe they were fighting for trans rights.
I don't believe it.
No, I don't believe it.
You're missing the point.
They stormed Germany for trans rights.
They were fighting.
They were fighting nonsense.
No, but Andrew, they were fighting for the freedom, for people to have the freedom to live their lives as they want to lead them.
I mean, isn't that the whole point of the World War II?
The defeat of the Nazis.
The Nazis wanted us all to behave a certain way.
But you decided to do that.
We decided there's a world where we don't accept it.
But you have to have freedom from the very oppression of the people who are now invading your nation and taking it over, destroying the very things that these people fought for under those symbols.
It's a very important thing.
Are the Germans invading America?
No, but Andrew's making a very...
Andrew's making a very powerful point.
The people who've come to the United States, people who've come to the United Kingdom, are using the very freedoms that we've granted them effectively to mount an attack on the United Kingdom and the United States.
That's what's happening.
We have a very delicate, fragile, advanced form of a constitution, a democratic.
Through demoralization.
Through demoralization, invasion, and abuse of laws, Sank.
It's obvious how.
It's so obvious how.
How can you?
No, it's not at all obvious.
You're just making that point.
Do you want me to walk into the state?
You're making it by step how I just watched in California.
No.
Huge amounts of Hispanics, many of whom were illegal, burning our very symbols, doing it with the...
They had a flag, which was a combination of the Mexican flag and the American flag.
They made it themselves just to do anything you could to shit on our symbols, Sink.
It has been a total invasion here and in the UK.
And you're full of shit.
No, this whole talk of invasion is nonsense.
Okay, okay, then we can, let's flip it on its head.
How about the invasion of the Mayflower and the Puritans who invaded the Native American land here?
Look, I'm not making that point.
You're making it.
So you're making a right to come.
You're talking about like every wave of immigration.
So hold on, hold on, hold on.
Let me make the point.
Let me make the point.
So, okay, so then the wave of Italians and Irish that came.
Oh, it's an invasion.
It's an invasion.
Wave of Jews that came.
It's an invasion.
Muslims, invasion.
Every time there's immigrants, we're laying.
I don't know about the UK.
The UK is not my business.
The United States is about freedom, and it's a country built on immigrants.
If any of those immigrants, like the Irish and the Italians, they burned the flag.
They would have gone to Jewish.
Jews and jail centers.
And then all across the world and Chinese, and they've all made incredible contributions to America.
And that is why America is stronger than all other nations, because we take the best of the best from the whole world, and they come here for our freedom.
So I love those freedoms.
I love America.
These are the best of the best of people forming the flag is equality and justice.
They don't come here for some sort of weirdo white state that you're doing.
They burn it.
What do you mean?
They're burning it.
And by the way, the Italians and the United States.
No, you say they, the great majority of the people in jail.
You're talking about flags.
No, this is nonsense.
They should get around.
It's not nonsense.
No, you're talking about two people on TV.
Let's talk about millions of immigrants in this country.
The idea that every immigrant in America is out there burning flags.
Those immigrants who love it.
Let me bring Ava.
You got to give it a job for burning its flag.
All right.
Let me bring in Ava.
Ava.
Look, you're on Native American land.
Why don't you go back home, okay?
You're on Native American land.
Go back home.
Okay, you invader.
You're an invader.
You're ruining America by invading it.
Get out.
And you don't even believe in our freedom or our justice or our equality.
So why don't you get out and go back to the mercy of the same people?
You're at the moment of the same argument.
You're at the mercy of the same exact argument.
Then you're on Native American land.
And if it's all about the conquerors, they're not just and equal.
I love the idea of America.
That's why I don't care about equality.
You don't love the idea of America.
You want an exclusive place based on race or symbols.
The exact opposite of a majority of the people.
Okay, let me jump in.
What the country is about.
Okay, let me jump in.
I think let me jump in, John, guys.
I want to bring in Ava here because I want to play a clip.
This is Yvette Cooper, who's the UK Home Secretary, so the Homeland Security boss in this country.
Because what's been happening is, as Nigel Farage and the Reform Party, and indeed Ben and his party, they've been banging the drum ever louder about this issue of immigration with good reason in many cases, because most British people, I think, now accept that the issue of people coming in illegally only small boats is completely out of control and no government appears to be able to stop it.
In fact, it's getting worse.
That the issue of legal migration has got out of control.
We had nearly a net million people come in, I think it was a year and a half, two years ago.
Not on small boats, though, just to clarify.
No, no, I said legal.
So you've got the illegal issue of people coming on the small boats.
You've got legal migration also out of control with all the pressure that that's been putting on public services already creaking up.
And also alleviating a lot of the problems.
Okay, let me make my point.
Then I'm going to come to you.
So the point being that more and more people are concerned about this.
So the Labour government under Sakir Starmer and Yvette Cooper, who's Homeland Security in the UK, Home Secretary, they've now, in many people's eyes, are now pivoting more and more to what is perceived to be the right, particularly over the issue of flags.
And it led to this extraordinary interview with Yvette Cooper on the BBC News this morning.
Let's take a look.
Do you have a flag on display in your home?
On your home?
We actually have Union Jack bunting on our garden shed at the moment.
I've got St George's flags.
I've got St. George's bunting.
I've got the Yorkshire Rose bunting as well.
I've got Union Jack's flags and tablecloths.
We've got the lot.
The reason that is so laughable to many people is that many on the left have associated the Union Jack and St George's flag with the right wing.
No.
Right?
Well, if you have a bunch of flags like that in your house, you must be a right-wing headbanger.
Ava, is there not a delicate situation here where the left are becoming the far right?
It's honestly, it's just not true.
I'm laughing at the lunacy.
I suppose this is difficult for an American audience because you guys do have flags around.
And, you know, my partner is American and he does have his flag loud and proud quite often.
But Brits don't do this.
They don't sort of adorn everything with a union jack.
It's just not the same.
Well, Home Secretary does because it's a little more demure.
So it's laughing.
Almost not a single inch of the house doesn't seem to have a flag.
I know.
But that's funny to me because they've got themselves so embroiled in this argument about trying not to be perceived to hate the flags that they've actually gone way overboard with it.
But I can't even remember what the main point was.
Well, the whole issue is whether flag waving, flag hanging, whether it's become a symbol of patriotic pride or is it something more sinister where it becomes a very nationalistic thing which is driven by people who perhaps have a more nefarious intent.
I mean, Ben, maybe you're...
Well, I mean, the point I was going to make is that the reason people fear it's becoming nationalistic when they do fear it, if they do fear it, it's because the nation state of the United Kingdom is under attack.
People, no, absolutely it is.
We are having our constitution and our culture and our people set aside.
Mass migration, coupled with diversity, equity and inclusion, which we've touched on briefly with the transgender debate, puts a protective blanket around people who come to this country, celebrates their culture, promotes their culture and sets ours aside.
We have a whole employment agenda from the RAF to public services to GCHQ, all employing ethnic minorities over white British people.
They're designed to do it.
And so our flag waving is not divisive.
It is an act of defiance when we do it because we're saying we are British.
We are English and we want to be recognised for it.
And we want the government to do what's right for the United Kingdom and for England.
That's what we want.
And it's a perfectly reasonable thing.
Hang on, let Ava respond first and I'll come to the other side.
So this is confected outrage.
So every single, you know, twice a year, we will celebrate the England football team will celebrate that.
We've just celebrated the Lionesses, the English football team, winning the Euros.
It was incredible.
Everyone is waving the St. George's Cross, which is the English flag.
No one fears the flag.
What they do fear, which I think where this sort of conversation has been born out of, is that when there are times of, say, instability and there is a fire underpinning, you know, there's sort of like a rage burning out of the far right, those people do tend to.
Did I even make the point yet?
No, but you go straight to far right.
What's the far right got?
I haven't said it yet.
But believing in your national symbol, being proud of your flag.
I'm pouring water on, like, you know, my own argument.
You don't know yet.
The point being, when there is, say, a protest outside of an asylum hotel that seems very dangerous or vitriolic, those people do, they're waving these St. George's crosses.
And sometimes there are people who point out that that does seem intimidating.
Why?
Because it's being done in a way.
It's being waived flagrantly in a way to intimidate.
No, it's not.
It's not saying it's sending.
My British values are we are inclusive.
We go to wars to protect people who are at the subjugation of a dictatorship.
My British flag does not represent people who are burning effigies outside an asylum.
The extreme policy of mass migration coupled by the protection and promotion of minority, ethnic and cultural rights in the United Kingdom is an assault on civil society in this country.
It is an assault on the United Kingdom.
People go to these protests with these flags to remind the authorities that this is England, that this is the United Kingdom.
Please protect ourselves.
Right, but Ben, let me just hold you.
Hang on.
I just want to talk to Ben about something you said in April last year when you were talking about what should happen.
Julia Hartley Brewer.
To people coming in on small boats, right?
And you said, let's not infantilize these people.
They have free will.
I'm not going to be held to ransom by their claim.
They deserve protection as soon as they get to our territorial waters.
If they choose to scupper that dinghy, then yes, they have to suffer the consequences of their actions.
In other words, drown.
Now, the reason they've created such a furore is I don't recognize a country in the UK where we are that contemptible towards anyone who may be seeking genuine asylum in our country, coming from a war-torn country, particularly, by the way, if we've been involved in waging an illegal war in that country.
Take Iraq, for example, right?
I don't like our elected officials to be talking about, yeah, let them drown.
Well, that's a kingdom.
As a general comment about everybody coming in, some of whom are obviously genuine asylum seekers.
That's not to say they all are.
There are many people on these small boats coming in who are clearly young men, economic migrants, on the make, wanting to make a better life for themselves in the UK.
That's fine.
But if you want to do that, do it the legal way, which is the way it should be done.
And we've lost control and that's wrong.
But I don't want to have a country, Ben, where we are so heartless that we think everyone, including women and children who might be coming in as genuine asylum seekers, should just be left to drown.
Well, I'm very glad you brought this up, Piers, because I know you had a debate on question time about this comment with Nigel Farage.
And it's got to be put into context.
The argument that Julia Hartley Brewer was making was that the argument I had made was that we needed to- She was the interviewer for me.
She was the interviewer.
And the argument I had made is we need a dedicated trained force which intercepts these dinghies and prevents them from entering our territorial waters and sends them back to France, which, by the way, under international law is our right.
And she said, what if Ben, one of the dinghy people on the dinghy produce a knife and they stab their dinghy and they end up in the North Sea?
Border Control and Immigration Context00:10:31
Would you rescue them?
I'd say, well, I said, give them another dinghy and they can go back to France.
And she said, what if they stab that dinghy as well?
And at that point, I gave into the gotcha moment that she was seeking.
And I said, well, at some point, they've got to take responsibility for their actions.
But the really crucial issue here is that Benjamin.
Do you regret the way you phrase that?
Well, I regret the fact that it's been taken out of context and repeatedly used against me.
Well, if they reach the stop of that dinghy, then yes, they have to suffer the consequences of their actions.
If someone repeatedly puts themselves in danger, are you obliged to allow them to assault your civil society in their protection?
I think there is a difference between someone who's coming in as a perfectly fit and healthy economic migrant from a country that is not a war-torn country.
Which is France.
Right?
France is...
Well, they're all coming from France.
With respect, I think that is a rather fatuous argument.
I'll explain why.
Of course they're all coming from France.
And I have massive issues with the French not doing more to stop them getting on the boats.
But my point is, where is their point of origin?
And if you've got women and children, let's be specific here, women and children who are coming from war-torn countries, genuinely seeking asylum because of the horrors that they've having to endure.
And they are on one of these boats, I don't like the language of they should be left to drown.
For that part of it, I think you should apologize.
No, I'm not going to apologise because you're taking it out of context.
But the key thing here is that there's nothing more uncivilized than allowing criminal entry into your country and not protecting civilized society in the United Kingdom.
I agree with that.
That is a fundamentally uncivilized position.
I agree with that.
But it is nuance.
And I think when we don't allow for any nuance here, when we don't accept that there are certain people...
But the quotes taken out of the, there was nuance in the debate.
Look, as you put it, you were gotcha into basically saying, let them drown.
I don't think he's gotcha.
He just showed his true colours.
Well, thank you.
I can question yourself into my mind.
I don't understand.
This is the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
Yeah, if they stab their boat and they drown, who cares?
What are they?
Stupid, right?
If you're dumb enough to stab your boat and then you go under the water and you drown, why do I care again, Pierce?
Well, because you want to make a political statement.
Let's assume for a moment that a younger person.
Let's assume for a moment, Andrew, that a young child on that boat did not stab the boat and knew nothing about what was happening.
Would you feel comfortable about just letting them drown?
Yeah, sure.
Sure.
Go save the children if you can.
But the thing is, is he's absolutely right.
Hold responsible who is responsible for stabbing the boat and having the boat go down and having these people drown.
Hold to the responsibility those who are responsible.
Don't hold to responsibility those who you're begging to come save you after you die.
But to be clear, to be clear, though, unless I misheard you, you said you should try and save the innocent people in that scenario.
Yes, but the accounting morally is.
So you wouldn't let them drown, is my point.
Yes, but the account morally isn't.
But I mean, that's the point we're talking about.
You either let them drown or you try and do the humane thing, which is you save their lives and then you have the arguments about what to do with them.
Yes, but the thing is you should not behold them to that.
You're not beholden to the people.
Well, I should be holding you hostage.
Yeah, listen, honestly, I look at what Trump has done on the southern border and I wish we had a bit of that here, right?
He's basically shut that problem down.
Can I just make one more point?
The Belgians have developed a specific force to intercept dinghy leaving Belgian shores and send them back in exactly the same way that I was advocating on talk radio that morning.
And it has succeeded.
The launches from Belgian shores is almost under a returns agreement because they haven't left the European Union.
The return is absolutely implementing.
You might be able to shout platitudes here because these are three Americans.
They probably aren't familiar with the Dublin agreement with the United States.
The Dublin agreement never worked.
There were net five people that were ever deported from the United Kingdom.
The point is, none of the government policies from the Conservative right or the Labour left have worked with either illegal or legal migration this century.
That is the cold, hard truth.
And you can chart it back to when Tony Blair was prime minister and suddenly took off all restrictions pretty much on people coming in from Eastern Europe.
So it was never even a question of skin colour, as some people have tried to make it.
We got a huge number of people coming from Eastern Europe.
And that began to immediately change the fabric of the country in terms of pressure on public services and so on.
And actually, one of the ironies of Brexit is far from enabling us to control our borders, it led to a more out-of-control border.
Well, it's because we had Boris Johnson as prime minister who was incapable of governing anything.
Let me bring my Benz in.
Hang on.
I just put Boris Johnson into government.
When you were part of the Brexit party, when you were part of that formation, you stepped aside to allow Boris Johnson to go.
Let's just go.
I don't care about whether you just go.
Let's just be clear.
Let's be clear.
I don't care.
Let's bring in my Benz.
My Bence, you've been waiting very patiently here, but this whole issue of, because I think it's all woven in.
You're seeing a massive increase in the flag waving, in the patriotic statements and so on from people who are genuinely concerned about what is happening to their country.
I think both here and in the United States.
You're seeing obvious problems with immigration.
You're seeing in America, I think Trump's been very successful with his policy on the southern border.
I think most Americans agree with him when he says we should deport undocumented people in the United States who commit crimes.
Where the flashpoint has come is that people, largely, the majority of Americans in the polls I've read do not agree with Donald Trump when he basically says that anyone who's in the country is undocumented should be deported or should be encouraged to leave the country.
That's where it seems to me the flashpoint is.
What is your view of how everybody is handling this issue of immigration?
Well, I'm not sure what polls you're citing there.
I wouldn't be surprised, I guess, in either direction on that.
I think that Trump has tried to walk a kind of fine line on that in at times offering the idea that everybody who's here illegally has to go out, but under certain conditions, you could come back in with a letter essentially from your employer.
I think this was proposed in the agriculture space, for example, where many U.S. agricultural industries and travel and hospitality industries have become dependent on essentially illegal labor, which is something that unions in America used to be very much against.
And then I think as the kind of wokeness took over and militarism and war refugee policy to help American wars kind of ran over that kind of left-wing union protectionism, that seems to have gone away.
But now I think what Trump is doing is kind of the right approach in a difficult topic.
Yeah, I mean, Cheng, again, we've discussed this before we broke a few weeks ago, but this issue of immigration is fundamentally the core issue which has been causing so many of the problems.
You know, because of things like the war in Syria, the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, the war in Ukraine, seeing it now potentially happening the same in Gaza for different reasons.
But you're seeing millions of people coming over, particularly across Europe, looking for somewhere better to live, fearful of where they are living, fearful of the wars they're having to endure.
And the question becomes, how many people should a reasonably safe democratic country like the United States, like the UK, be expected to take in?
And where do you draw the line between genuine asylum seekers and people who just want to come in for economic reasons but are coming in illegally?
Yeah, I largely agree with everything you're saying.
And you're basically citing the polls.
We're agreeing with the great majority of the American people.
By the way, a lot of the independent podcasters like Joe Rogan, Tim Dillon, Theo Yovon, almost all of them are on our side.
So what's our side?
Our side is, look, of course you got to close the border.
Of course, you got to kick out criminals who are undocumented.
That's common sense.
And then once you start getting to guys in masks without badges, grabbing people off the streets, that's a disaster.
That doesn't feel like America.
It is an America.
And by the way, the number of immigrants is a separate issue.
I'm going to come back to that in a second.
But now, unfortunately, we're seeing in New York, North Carolina, and one other state that's already happened, mass men with vans without badges, just like ICE, pretending to be ICE, putting women in vans and then raping them.
So there's a reason why we show badges and why we don't wear masks in law enforcement in America.
We should go back to making America what it was and not this weirdo military, quasi-military state.
No one's in favor of that.
Now, in terms of how many immigrants to let in, that's a fair question.
There's no reason why the UK and the U.S. can't collectively, through democracy, decide how many we should let in.
And I think that immigrants are great for America.
UK is a little bit different.
You guys have to make up your own mind on how you want to deal with things.
But part of America is that we are an open society and one that is built on immigrants.
And so, you know, we often talk about, oh, immigrants use social services, but they also contribute massively to America, both literally in the taxes that they pay in Social Security and Medicare that they never get back, but also in other ways.
Like, for example, in all the great things that they create.
Steve Jobs' dad was a Syrian immigrant.
And now we have Apple that's created so many jobs and an economic boom in America.
So immigrants built this country.
In America, I would say that we should allow a healthy amount in and we should have a pathway to citizenship.
But that doesn't mean that we have to tolerate law breaking.
And lastly, on the asylum seekers, look, there's international laws and U.S. laws about this.
And you have to give people a fair hearing.
But that doesn't mean that you necessarily have to let them into the country.
Money, Betrayal, and Political Parties00:05:20
It just means you have to expedite that process very quickly.
And finally, Piers, to your point, it's a really good one.
I mean, we start endless wars for Israel in the Middle East, Iraq, Iran, the devastation of the Palestinians in the occupied territories.
They just killed the entire Houthi cabinet and prime minister and Lebanon, Syria.
It goes on and on and on, all the wars that Israel has created all over the Middle East.
And then they say, okay, now take all the immigrants and the refugees from there, who a lot of them have decent asylum claims.
If they stay in the occupied territories, they'll be brutalized by Israel.
So now we have to take them.
Why don't we just stop the wars?
And that's another thing that the great majority of Americans agree with.
But unfortunately, our leaders don't.
They want more wars for Israel.
And then we have to deal with all of the different consequences that flow from that.
Okay.
Final word just for you, Ben.
Elon Musk is throwing himself behind your party here and being very critical of Nigel Farage and reform.
How do you feel about your new backer?
Are you happy about this?
Are you perturbed that he may find you the new shiny toy and then do a farage on you?
What's your message for Elon?
No, not at all.
I mean, Elon Musk and I, it was, I had a discussion in January and he said to me in January when he first twigged that Farage isn't the right man.
Ben, you know, you should start a political party.
And I said to him that I think it's terribly challenging in the United Kingdom to do it.
And I sort of poo-pooed the idea.
And then, of course, Rupert Lowe was thrown out of reform in the way that he was thrown out.
And I felt that opened up an opportunity because it revealed to the world really what Farage was like.
And at that point, I went back to Elon and said, I think it's time to start this party.
I go back on, you know, I go back on what I said to you in January.
I think we need to do it.
And I started building this party behind the scenes.
And he's obviously been watching what I've been up to.
Is he now financially backing you?
No, he isn't.
Has he offered to?
No, and I'm not seeking any money.
Would you accept it if he did?
Look, it's critical.
It's a yes or no.
Well, it's critical.
He's the richest man in the world.
It's critical.
He's an American citizen.
It's critical.
Would you accept money for your party from a non-British citizen?
Advance UK stands for the restoration of the United Kingdom.
Why wouldn't you ask?
And therefore, I'm.
Well, it is a simple answer.
It's yes or no.
Well, it depends on you either take Elon's money or you don't.
No, it depends on the quantum, whether it comes without any quantum quantity and the route in which it comes.
Well, let me clarify.
Would you have no problem in principle with receiving money from Elon Musk?
I would not take money from any individual who sought to influence the party as a result of their donation.
But if money comes in...
You've already seen with his relationship with Donald Trump that Elon, of course, would want to have influence.
But look, he has his influence just simply by endorsing us.
There's influence there.
And, you know, it's propelled Advance UK forward.
So just find them.
I've got to move on.
I thought we've run out of time.
But just yes or no.
Would you accept his money?
In the right circumstances, I would, yeah.
Okay, we got there.
Thank you very much.
I usually like foreign money.
Don't you?
He's an immigrant from South Africa.
You're betraying everything you stand for.
Why?
But he's now an American.
Hold on.
Hold on.
Who says that I'm against immigrants?
Who says I'm against immigration?
I'm not.
No, no.
I'm against mass immigration and I'm against illegal migration.
They're completely different things.
And to conflate the two is to completely miss it.
You're in favour of his money, right?
No, actually not taking his money.
And what the immigrants say.
Isn't that great?
I will never.
I will take his money and throw out Elon.
I'll say something absolutely categorically now.
I will never upstage Elon Musk for money.
I will not ask him for money.
Well, what else can he offer you?
I didn't ask him for anything, Elon Musk.
You've left yourself the wriggle room for him just giving it to you.
Well, if someone... You've already said if he gives it to you, you'll take it.
If someone generously offers up money through the correct legal process and doesn't seek to influence the direction of travel of your political party, then why would you not take it?
I think we're in Notre Dame.
Ben Habib, I will take Elon's billions.
I didn't say that.
We will leave it.
You're not getting that gotcha moment.
I've just got it.
Thank you all to my panel.
I'm not leaving immigrant money.
I appreciate you all.
And for my first panel back, it was as lively as I hoped.
Thank you all very much.
Piers Morgan Uncensored is proudly independent.
The only boss around here is me.
If you enjoy our show, we ask for only one simple thing: hit subscribe on YouTube and follow PiersMorgan 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 on censored media has never been more critical and we couldn't do it Without you.