Piers Morgan: 'Harry and Meghan represent the worst of the woke'

0:02The Telegraph

0:09Piers Morgan is back in the Daily Tea studio talking about his new book, Woke Is Dead. It's a cracking read, even though I say so myself. It's basically about the scourge of wokeism. How the hell do we let ourselves get run by a bunch of virtue-sickling, victimhood-peddling, porcupine-slewing imbeciles? And how do we get out of it? And just to warn you, this podcast does contain a little bit of fruity language.

0:48Piers Morgan, welcome back to the Daily Tea Podcast. Well, I enjoyed myself so much last time, I thought I'd come back and have another pot of tea with you. You've got the sniffles, though. I have a severe, extreme case of man flu. Because you were playing golf with celebs. I was, and beating most of them. Not that I want to get into it. No, of course not. You don't imagine it. What are you playing off these days to be very manly in my golf course? That's good, isn't it? No, but I'm beginning to have people call me a bandit, which I've never had on a golf course. And you beat Andy Murray, who I know is known for another sport, but that's quite impressive.

1:20He's really good. He's really good, but he did not like being beaten by me. We've been in regular message exchange since. He's taken it very, very badly. Well, he's very competitive. He said it's actually the most crushing, sporting humiliation he's ever endured. I think it was his last text to me. You know when people say, have you read the book? And you go, yeah, I have. I've actually read this book. I've read it between the Manchester Tory party conference and today. And it's a compelling reminder of the madness of the last decade. Well, I'm glad you've read it, because I do think when you actually put it together, as I did in the book, when you go through a lot of the things which the woke brigade tried to force on us, with hindsight, so much of it looks completely insane.

2:04Completely insane, yeah. And you're like, you know, I think in 20 years' time people will look back on this period and they'll say, what on earth was going on in Britain in this period? Yeah, will it be a bit like Covid? Yeah. What were we thinking? It really is. And I think that, you know, hopefully, the point of the title of the book is to say, I'm aware there will still be people out there who have this thinking. What has changed is the majority's reaction to wokeism. Is that people have just gone, you know what, we're done with this. and so you're seeing immediate rejection now whenever it pops its head up.

2:33But like a little whack-a-mole, it's going to carry on popping up for quite some time and when it does, it has to be firmly put back in the box. Indeed, and you make the point at the end of the book, the weeds remain so there will still be Wokeery. But what's changed between Wake Up, which you wrote in 2020, and now Woke is dead? President Trump is, you know, the reason I start the book with my phone call to Trump the morning after he wins is that really, to me, If I look at the whole process of the sort of outbreak of the woke mind virus, how insidious it became across the world, actually. And then you see the Democrats seize this.

3:12You know, Biden and Kamala Harris were fully on board the woke train. Yes, they were fully on board trans athletes in women's sport. It was all great. It was all the future. This is the way it should be. And, you know, the very interesting thing that I recount in the book, which you'll probably recall, but there was an amazing assessment by the New York Times about the impact of one ad in the American election, the last one. And it was an ad that just they put it a little bit into football grounds and things. They were just running it in a few states. and it was 30 seconds and it basically showed Kamala Harris talking about the trans issue, you know, supporting various ludicrous things to go with it, endorsing biological men and women's sport and so on.

3:56And at the end it said, Kamala is for they, them. Donald Trump is for you. And the New York Times assessed that it could have moved the needle by three points, that it was the single most powerful and effective advert in modern political American history, which is extraordinary because if you ask any Democrats or any of the woke left, they still say nobody cares about this issue. And yet, obviously, they did. And so there's a real sort of denial going on about those who perpetrated this nonsense. And, you know, my advice to them, you know, I wrote Wake Up as a clarion call to my liberal friends.

4:28I've always identified as liberal before they sort of took it and turned it to something I didn't recognize. To say, look, if you're not careful, you know, this is just going to massively self-harm your political interest. You're never going to win power with this kind of insane ideology. And of course, you know, when Trump won, I felt that was the moment when wokeism was really ended, you know, because Trump was like, no, you know what? We're not going to let men compete in women's sport. Sorry. You detail two different conversations you had with Trump at the beginning of the book, one back in 2022 when you'd been very critical of him, the January the 6th riots and all the rest of it.

5:06You go in to do an interview with him at the nth hour. he is ranting and raging because somebody who turns out to be Nigel Farage has sent him a list of all of your very vocal criticisms of the US president. But then you've made up and you're now, I mean, he phones you a lot. You posted something on Instagram recently. Oh, he's just phoned me. Yeah, he texted me the morning after the recent state dinner with the Royals. And then he called me for about 10 minutes. Do you mind telling us a little bit of what he said? Well, yeah, I'm always careful about revealing too much of what we talk about. But he's, you know, And we talk a lot.

5:37I mean, you've got to remember, I've known Trump since 2006. Yes. It's nearly 20 years. I competed in and won his first Celebrity Apprentice series in America when I was doing America's Got Talent. And then after that, each season I go back in as his boardroom advisor. So we got to know each other very well. And then when I joined CNN for four years, replacing Larry King, I interviewed him all the time. I probably interviewed Trump 40, 50 times now. But what was interesting about him, you know, he's a very complex character in many ways. A very simple character in some ways, but very complex in others.

6:08And I always remember when I left CNN in quite sort of dramatic circumstances and came back to the UK, a lot of people were trampling on my career grave. No problem with that. I remember Jeremy Clarkson writing, one of the most vicious columns ever written in the grave-trampling annals of history. Which I have to say, it was so vile, I actually read it laughing. And I think I messaged him, so that was fantastic. Although he wrote another column about Meghan that you would have agreed with, but back to Trump. We'll come to that. So when I spoke to him after the Stoke Dinner, for example, I was thinking then back to what did his victory actually represent?

6:44And that was the core of the book, really. What did it really say about the world, that Donald Trump could win the presidency back after four years in the wilderness? And the fact that I had a bust up with him, OK, we had a few of those over the years, but then we always made up. and the moment I remember back to him, I said, the thing about his character you have to understand, when I was back in the UK after finishing CNN, he was one of the very few people that used to contact me from America, high profile. He'd ring me, he'd text me, he'd send me little funny notes, he'd check in on me just to see how I was.

7:20Yes. Not many people do that. No. So when I say he's complex, what I mean is that he's not exactly, if you try and pigeonhole Trump into something, I don't think you ever quite get the guy. He may not even be able to articulate himself what he actually is. But he's a complex character who I found to be extremely loyal. I think his gut instincts about things, I say this in the book, have a running core of common sense. If you ask most Telegraph readers, would you like a Britain which is engaged in fewer foreign wars? They'd say yes. Yes. Pay less tax? Yes. Would you like to have a tougher policy on crime, especially serious crime?

8:00Yes. You know, would you like to find peace in the Middle East and Ukraine rather than warfare? Absolutely. You know, do you believe in the concept of family and faith? I suspect most Telegraph readers would go along with that. Do you think that most of the woke stuff is complete bullshit? Yes. Do you think we've lost our marbles about it temporarily the last few years? Yes. So you look at Trump and there was a survey in The Economist recently that said that most Brits don't like him personally. They don't like his style. He's a bit too brash, a bit too New York trader and so on. But they like increasingly Trumpism.

8:40They like what he stands for. Yes. And you're seeing people like Nigel Farage, the little rat in that story that you were talking about. Well, you called him a treacherous weasel. Well, he was a treacherous weasel. Well, I'll tell you why. So you've got to remember the context. In 2022, he launched GB News. He was one of their stars, and I was doing Talk TV. Great channel. So we were kind of, yeah, exactly. You're very good on it, by the way. Thank you. As I've told you. But he was one of the stars, obviously. And I was, then we launched Talk TV. This was the first interview for Talk TV was going to be my Trump thing.

9:09And he'd interviewed Trump three months before, and I'd sent him a text. Nigel, congratulations on your interview with Donald. Great hit. And he went, thank you. That's very good of you, he replied. Right? That's the context. So how did he return the favour? I then go to Mar-a-Lago. I remember this so well. April 2022. I've taken a team of six, seven people. We spent a six-figure sum of money. This is a major, major thing. And I was a little bit surprised because I had been very critical of Trump in the previous 12 months about the pandemic. Yes. In particular, when he started suggesting he used bleach to cure COVID.

9:46He'd unfollowed me on Twitter over that. He was so angry. That's the ultimate thing for Trump. He only followed 50 people. So that was a big blow. And then January 6th and, of course, refusing to accept the election result and so on. But I thought, OK, he's obviously decided to put that to one side and we're back on track. And here we are, you know, two years later. Anyway, I was 10 minutes from starting the interview. He was about to come down when this aide comes up. There's like a go-between between us. And he's clutching three pieces of paper. And he said, I said, what's that? He went, we've got a big problem.

10:16I went, what? He said, the boss has just been sent this by somebody. I said, what is it? He said, you better have a look. And I read it. Like somebody. I read it and I was like, oh, no, no, no, no. This was every single one of the worst things I had written and said about him in the previous 12 months. But intriguingly, buried amid the opprobrium that I was pouring on Donald Trump's head was two quotes from somebody called Nigel Farage. Strange, isn't it? That had been included. Waxing lyrical about how brilliant Donald Trump was. So that made me think, hmm. So I checked Nigel's Twitter account as it was then.

10:51And by a remarkable coincidence, two days earlier, he'd been at Mar-a-Lago having dinner with Donald Trump, who had obviously said to him, I've got your friend, Piers, coming in two days. So, Nigel, mindful of the text I sent him, congratulating him on the interview he did with Donald Trump, went back to London and decided to screw me and to wreck my interview. You have to admire the man's chutzpah. I mean, at the end of the day, he was competing with you for the next interview. Not a problem. I can be mafioso with the best of them. Oh, goodness. And I then went to see... Eventually, I begged to see Trump to try and save the interview.

11:27And I went to see him. And I was saved by golf. We talked about golf at the start of this. I was saved by Ernie Els, the golfer, because I was in there and it was not a good scene. Donald Trump was basically losing his shit at me. Actually shouting? Oh, yeah, yeah. And he gets quite profane when he's doing that. Does he? And there was a lot of noise. Was he pacing and ranting? No, no, he was sitting behind his desk and he was just, like, reading it out slowly. Were you a bit scared? He was reading your words back to you. Did you call me a mob bus? Did you say Trump should never be allowed to run for office again?

11:58How could you do as to me, my apprentice? What was your demeanour at this point? Sweating. Sweating and thinking, this interview's off, and how am I going to launch my show? This is a complete disaster. But then also thinking, as I used to in The Celebrity Apprentice, ironically, thinking on my feet, how do I get out of this? How do I gain the moment? And he kept saying, I kept saying, well, you wouldn't, you didn't make me your celebrity apprentice because I sit on the fence. I've always defended you when I think you deserve it. And I've criticized you when you don't. This isn't criticism. This is treachery.

12:29And eventually, by an astonishingly blissful coincidence, that morning, I had read the local newspaper, the Palm Beach Gazette, whatever it was. And there was an interview with Ernie Els, the golfer, the South African golfer, who'd played with Trump the week before when Trump got a hole in one. and he said not only was it a fantastic hole-in-one, one of the best he'd ever seen, but that Trump was the best presidential golfer he'd ever played with. And I thought, well, this could be my... So I said, I want to talk about some positive things too. And he said, like what? Like what? I said, well, like your hole-in-one last week.

13:00And he went, you know about that? I said, yeah. He said, I said, everyone knows about it. Everyone's talking about it. I said, Ernie gave an interview this morning saying it was one of the best holes-in-ones he'd ever seen, a big, beautiful hole-in-one. and that apparently you're the best presidential golfer he's ever played with. So Trump's whole demeanour just changed immediately. He ordered 10 copies from one of his aides and then he said, all right, let's do the interview. I don't know why, but let's do it. So I was saved by earning. Is for reasons like this, is this kind of about-facery that led J.K.

13:29Rowling to describe you, as you admit in the book, as a fact-free, amoral, bigotry-apologising celebrity toady? Any negatives or...? We'll get on to her in a minute. Should he get the Nobel Peace Prize? Absolutely. I read a column in The Spectator right at the start of his presidency saying, here's my prediction, is everyone screaming. Yes, I remember this. Everyone's screaming again about the new Hitler and they're all Nazis and all this. I said, unlike Adolf Hitler, here's what I suspect he's going to do. He's a man who prefers peace to war. He's going to try and forge peace in Ukraine, which will be very difficult, but I think he may be more successful in the Middle East, and I suspect he will deserve, not get, because there'll be a lot of people who just on principle won't want to give him a Nobel Peace Prize.

14:13But if you think what Obama got a Nobel Peace Prize for, literally eight months into his tenure for a couple of fancy speeches, if Trump gets peace in this war, I think he not only deserves a Nobel Peace Prize, he should absolutely get the Nobel Peace Prize. And the only thing that will stop it happening is a ludicrous double standard about Trump. Well, wokery will get in the way. Well, it's that mindset of you can't... Trump's derangement syndrome will say no. It really is. and it would be ridiculous. But there we are. That's the state of the world. But I think it's an amazing moment in history, what's going on here.

14:44And if Trump pulls this off, it will be spectacular. What did he tell you about the royal visit? He worked hard. He said, I was up at seven marching all day long. Did he seem to enjoy that? He loved it. People forget, he goes back so long with the royals. When he was six years old in 1953, he watched the coronation with his mum on TV, which had just come out in New York. And he remembered how he raptured his mother. Remember, his mother was Scottish, you know, was born and raised in Scotland until she was 18, and loved the royal family and loved the Queen. And the Queen was only mid-20s herself.

15:21So there was, you imagine this scene of little Donald, aged six, sitting with his mum, enthralled. And then, you know, I said to him, I sent him a text, I think, the morning after, because I thought his speech was great at the State Dinner. Yes, and it was extremely sort of intimate and personal about the king. Yes. And you wouldn't think they're natural bedfellows. No, no, but they get on. Somebody who's an eco-warrior. I'm told they went off for a pot of tea after the state dinner and had a really good chat. And William and Kate as well. I mean, he told the Princess of Wales, you're beautiful and all that.

15:48I think he did all the right things, but I think the royals showed him a lot of respect. And I think that I said your mum would be so proud of this amazing... You've now been the recipient of an unprecedented second state visit for a US president, but with two different monarchs. I mean, think about that. Queen Elizabeth reigned for over seven decades. And then her son, King, an amazing moment. And he was genuinely really touched. And he loved the respect he was given. And there are people here who said we should not do that. Don't roll out the red carpet for him and stuff. And I'm like, why? Why would that serve the UK's interest to try and belittle?

16:22I look at what Sadiq Khan does to Trump every time he comes to town. It's like, grow up. You know, I'm a Londoner. I don't want to see my mayor just pouring bile all over the president of the United States every time he comes just because he doesn't like him. Well, there's a contradiction as well with the way the Prime Minister has treated Trump. I mean, at the end of the day, they've also got an unusual relationship because, again, on paper, you'd think they have nothing in common whatsoever. Trump rather likes Dahmer, actually. Yes, I know. Why? I mean, it couldn't be more or less alike. Well, maybe he's just quite straightforward.

16:48And by the way, he doesn't try and upstage him on any national occasion or international occasion. I think he plays Trump very well. And again, people can say, well, you shouldn't have to do that. But actually, if that's what it takes to further the interests of the UK, I'm all for it. Can we talk about Harry and Meghan as we're talking about the royals? If we have to. Do you actually hate them? No. I actually have less and less interest in them. But they do feature in a chapter of the book. They do. There's a royal chapter. Yeah, there is. A chapter really about the royals generally, but also about, to me, what they represent is the epitome of the worst aspects of wokeism.

17:24The virtue signalling, the victimhood, the always blaming other people, the rank hypocrisy, you know, jumping on private jets and preaching about the environment, preaching about poverty on their Twitter account and then having a half a million dollar baby shower and so on. There's sort of an underpinning of hypocrisy, double standards, virtue signalling, victim, and all these things which I despise about the woke mentality. But they've become increasingly less relevant, really, is what I would say. You know, I've never met Prince Harry, so you can't hate someone you've never met. He's slightly weirdly obsessed with me.

17:58I think, and that's fine, I don't care, I think in her case she's got what she wants. She's gone back home to California, has a lovely life of luxury, but her status over there, if you ask Americans, is pretty low now. They don't view them as A-list at all. They view them as, you know, just falling stars, really. And I think that's a sadness for Harry. I don't know what really he thinks he's getting out of all this. But he's reconciled somewhat with his father. Well, has he? Cups of tea last month and a half. God, a 40-minute meeting in two years. I wrote a column and got absolutely lambasted for it.

18:32And it was completely caveated with, look, I know they have just been literally the scum of the earth when it comes to their own family, selling them out on Oprah, selling them out on Netflix and all the rest of it. But the King's had cancer, Kate's had cancer, isn't life too short? Shouldn't Prince William be the bigger brother here? In all senses of a world. I don't think William will ever forgive him. No. And I'm not sure I would. I mean, if one of my brothers did that to me... Yeah, but you'd hate your sons to be at war. Yeah, but if one son did what Harry's done publicly, trashed the family, carried on trashing them...

19:04Hang on, we've just been talking about Trump's power of forgiveness of you. I mean, how long can one bear a grudge? Because you say very openly... I settle... ..you have on-off relationships with different celebrities... I settle lots of grudges, yeah, but I just have heard William will never make up with him. Now, maybe he will. Families are complex things. I don't know them that well, you know? It may be they do make up, but I think that he said a lot of very hurtful things publicly about the family, from Camilla to Kate to Charles. Well, as you point out, he then backtracked to Tom Bradby and said, no, we were talking about unconscious bias.

19:38Yeah, absolute horseshit. Sorry, horseshit. And we all know it was. We all watched that Oprah interview. I mean, I have a vested interest in remembering it because it led to my pretty sudden departure from Good Morning Britain for disbelieving it. So, look, I think they've made their ugly bed with the viciousness they've gone after the family and the way they trashed the monarchy. They're very unpopular in this country. I mean, to be as unpopular as Prince Andrew, given what he's been engulfed with, is quite an achievement, but they are if you look at all the polling. Yes, that's a subject for another podcast, I think.

20:21When it comes to wokery, was the most damaging and pernicious aspect of wokery in the UK what went on at the Tavistock Clinic? I mean, you talk about young people having been put on puberty blockers. We mutilated young children. Let's be crystal clear what was going on. And we did it because anyone who raised concerns about this was immediately accused of being transphobic. This is the general war on free speech that's gone on for the last few years, which has been really insidious. But the Tavistock Clinic was a complete disgrace that shames this country. We mutilated kids and it was being done legally in this country.

21:03How could that have happened? And it happened because any young, slightly disturbed, a lot of the kids involved had genuine psychological issues, suicidal, depressed, on drugs. You know, a lot of them had... The patients there, there was a high representation of children with autism. Yes. Yeah. So, you know, how they can make coherent decisions about the future of their bodies is completely ridiculous. And yet they were allowed to. And everyone sort of went along with this. And people that did raise concerns about it were shouted down, vilified, shamed, told you can't raise concerns about this because you're a transfer.

21:45Well, let's talk about J.K. Rowling and that concept. I mean, when you said at the beginning of this podcast, you know, we'll look back on this, how on earth are we going to reconcile the fact that people got cancelled for saying that men are men and women are women and that biological sex is immutable? It's nuts. How did we get to that point? We got to that point because people like J.K. Rowling, who I do not get on with. No, clearly. She's trashed me publicly many times. We had a very frosty encounter in one of our local restaurants. We actually had homes very near each other. We were actually neighbours in Kensington.

22:20What happened? Oh, I eventually, I was with some of my kids. She was with, I think, one of her kids and her husband. And I went over and said, come on, let's have the hand a piece. and my hand hanged there for a few very long, awkward seconds and eventually she did shake my hand. What moment was this? There was no indication... I don't know, a couple of years ago, but there was no indication she would like to pursue a further conversation. But notwithstanding that, even though I know she doesn't like me and I don't particularly like her, I do think she's been extremely courageous in the stand she's taken about women's rights.

22:54And I've never thought for a moment she is transphobic, which means you hate trans people. She's never said that. What she's done is to defend women's rights against the obvious erosion of women's rights to safety, equality and everything else. The altar of trans activism. That's a very different thing to being hateful towards trans people. I want trans people to have exactly the same rights to equality as me and to safety as me, right? I mean, why wouldn't I? I want everyone to have that. But the argument that was made at the Supreme Court is they already had those rights enshrined in law, but a trans woman is not a woman and never will be, and it was preposterous to cancel anybody who said that a trans woman wasn't a woman.

23:38But look at what happened to J.K. Rowling. She got absolutely destroyed. Now, credit to her, she was strong enough in character and wealthy enough to withstand any commercial. When you see the likes of these witless Harry Potter stars... Well, let's talk about... What I like about J.K. Rowling as well, a little bit like Trump, actually. She's kept the receipts. Oh, yeah. What we're also witnessing is a lot of revisionism from people who were trying to condemn and cancel people for just stating biological facts, now pretending that they didn't. So this spat between Emma Watson. Emma Watson gives this very heartfelt interview, again, on another podcast.

24:13Not worth listening to, by the way. Just listened to the J.D.T. Actually, it is. It was Jay Shetty. He's really good. All right, fair enough. Good competition, good healthy competition, where she basically said, you know, she wanted to reach out and she still loves J.K. Rowling. She literally poured the petrol on the flames of the condemnation J.K. Rowling felt. Disingenuous claptrap, Miss Watson. We all saw what you did and what you said. You were happy to take the millions from the work with the Harry Potter movies based on this evil woman's writing. You were happy to do that and to chuck J.K.

24:44Rowling under a massive, gigantic bus as you yourself trampled on women's rights. And now you want to just go, oh, I didn't mean it like that. I love J.K. No, you didn't. You did mean it like that. You joined the Virtue Signaling bandwagon. You wanted to destroy J.K. Rowling. Other members of that Harry Potter team did the same. And it was completely disgusting. And if they feel that strongly about it, give every single dollar back that you got paid for those movies. But they never do. Or apologise. Or just say, I got it wrong. What about I got it wrong? You know what? When I look back on this, I got it wrong.

25:16Of course it is wrong for six-foot-five-inch biological males to compete in women's sport. Of course that's not right. Particularly when it's boxing. Well, we all saw with Iman Khalif in the Paris Olympics. How did that ever happen? This boxer, Iman Khalif, had been banned from the World Championships the year before for testing positive for male chromosomes. All intents and purposes, she was male. And yet there she was fighting an Italian female who quit after 40 seconds of the bout in the Olympics, living her dream because she'd never been hit that hard in her life. She could have been killed at the altar of this trans activist nonsense.

26:00Although, as the book very clearly points out, this isn't just about individuals like, for instance, Emma Watson and her fellow Harry Potter stars. This is about institutions in a knee-jerk way buying into wokery. Yes. Be it BLM, be it, you know, Olympic committees suggesting it's fine for men to compete in women's sport and all the rest of it. You also detail a number of different cancellations. What do you think is the... I've got one written down here. The most ridiculous cancellation that we witnessed over the course of the last decade. What can you think of? What have you got? I've got the chairman of the US Poetry Foundation having to quit his job because his BLM tribute was deemed to be too short.

26:43I mean, right there is a classic example of how ridiculous it got. It wasn't unctuous enough. Yes. And so he had to go. I mean, how did he ever get to that stage? But maybe we were too silent in not standing up for these different individuals. I mean, again... Well, I wasn't either, but I mean, we... You weren't, you weren't, and I'll bring receipts. Majority. Luckily, I was writing columns for the Sun and New York Post throughout all this nonsense, calling it for what it was. Yes. All of it. The corporate nonsense, the virtue signalling going on everywhere, where the rush to condemn people who dare to stand up for common sense and reality, the deliberate ignorance of biology and science.

27:23I mean, it's just completely insane, all of it. And I look back very proudly at the columns I wrote because I used to get absolute tub loads of abuse for it. Yes. And threats, proper threats. Remember, this is the hashtag Be Kind Brigade, who don't hesitate to make death threats against you. Yeah. And it's like, OK, I remember. I know, but it would have been better if the silent majority hadn't been so silent. They were scared. You know why? Because their free speech rights were being trampled as well. People were being fired. Forget the high profile ones. Because people say, well, no high profile people were actually cancelled.

27:53And I would say, well, some of them were, but a lot of them are lucky enough to have the financial backdrop to not actually end everything. They could do their own thing. But imagine if you were working just as a teacher or a nurse or something like that who just raised concerns and got fired over it. Where's the way back for those people? What's happened to them? What's happened to their lives? Well, we've still got that Darlington nurses cases going on. What impact or how do we fit in the grotesque and gruesome assassination of Charlie Kirk into all this? There's quite a lot in the book about the manosphere.

28:26Yeah. I mean, you say Woke is dead and yet Charlie Kirk is dead. Yeah, yeah. Well, I make the point, again, just to stress, Woke is not dead yet. No. I want it to be and I warn about how it could resurge itself and I'm very aware there are still people out there who are behaving in an alarming manner, particularly over issues like free speech. Now, it's complicated when you have a young, deranged shooter. Who knows what's really going through their mind or what's going through their life? America is a very over-medicated country. 80 % of the world's painkillers get taken by Americans. A lot of them are on medication, these young kids, antidepressant medication and so on.

29:08We don't know yet enough about what motivated this killer to do it. What we do know is he had bullet casings with anti-fascist slogans on. And the significance of that is that if you, as many people have done, if you call Donald Trump Hitler and you call his supporters Nazis and fascists, then eventually a deranged young mind is going to think, well, the obvious thing I need to do is kill these people. Right? If we're literally being taken over by the new Nazis, then rather like Churchill did, I have to stand up to these people and kill them. Was that the motivation for the Charlie Kirk killer?

29:45I don't know. But he certainly believed in an anti-fascist mentality enough to put it on his bullet casings and then murder Charlie Kirk, who, irony of ironies, I interviewed Charlie a few times, didn't know him that well, but I interviewed him, and I respected him very much. I didn't agree with a lot of what he said, but I respected the fact he would go into the lion's den of student campuses, which were universally woke Ravi. at the time and he would have a headline over his little tent saying, prove me wrong, and they would line up and he would say, what's the thing you want to prove me wrong about?

30:18And they'd say trans rights or DEI or BLM or whatever it may be. And he would argue respectfully and politely with them, but firmly give his case. And one of the most sickening things about this wasn't just the murder of Charlie Kirk, which you can put down to an unhinged young mind losing it and doing something insane in a country full of guns, okay? all right, let's take that premise as, therefore you can't read too much more into it. Although I do think he was radicalised by a very woke left ideology. That's what the police investigating have said. But even if that's not the case, look at the reaction from so many on the woke left.

30:55Doctors, teachers, university professors. Professor, the president of the Oxford Union. Well, I'm going to come to him. So here you have the incoming president of the Oxford Union, the most famous, reputable debating chamber in the world. I've been there many times myself. Somebody who in May this year actually debated with Charlie Kirk in that chamber. And what was his first reaction to Charlie Kirk's murder? His first reaction was, LOL. Laugh out loud. His second reaction was, let's fucking go. Jubilant. Jubilant. This guy was celebrating this brutal murder. And then people say, oh, well, hang on.

31:33Then you don't believe in free speech? Yes, I do. but free speech has accountability. Clearly you are not compatible with the position of operating as president of a debating society if you think debates can be won with a bullet. Although now we know that George Aberronnier is not going to continue as president because he's just lost a no-confidence vote. You've done a lot of work in the past in prisons and you've interviewed people on death row in America. Should the assailant, Tyler Robinson, face the death penalty? Well, in Utah, that is the case. The death penalty exists and he might well get the death penalty.

32:09I have a difficult thing about the death penalty. I used to be very in favour. And then I interviewed a couple of people who were part of the West Memphis Three. And you may not remember the story, but it was one of the most harrowing stories in modern America where three young kids had been snatched and raped and tortured and murdered in Woodland. And three teenage boys were arrested and they were found guilty and they were given life sentences with death penalty. And after 27 years, they hadn't been executed, but they'd been on death row. And they were treated, obviously, horrendously, as you can imagine inside.

32:51They hadn't seen daylight. I mean, and I interviewed two of them and one had to wear dark glasses. It was at CNN the whole time because the lights in the studio months after his release were too blinding for his eyes because he hadn't seen daylight. And they were completely innocent. It turned out a local paedophile had done it and belatedly DNA evidence had come in which completely exonerated them. And if you'd asked me in the previous 27 years what should happen to those people, but I'd just say kill them. So the problem is, with the death penalty, there are lots of people that obviously deserve it, not least if they admit to the crimes.

33:28But, you know, is it worth it for the ones who slip through the net? You know, they reckon, I haven't seen the latest percentages, but they reckon maybe 5 % to 10 % of all the people who've been executed in America were done so erroneously, and many have been exonerated historically by DNA testing. That's a high percentage of people. Also, Erica Kirk, Charlie Kirk's wife, sort of gave that extraordinary speech where she called for forgiveness. I mean, is she somebody that you'd be interested in interviewing? I was thinking, who are you chasing for your big interviews now? She's an amazing woman.

33:59I mean, to have the... But that's the power of her faith, which Charlie had as well. You know, remember, he was the leading light of the Christian conservative movement in America, and she obviously took great comfort from her faith in trying to come to terms with his brutal murder and found it in herself to forgive the killer. Now, immediately after that, Donald Trump went up, but I kind of admired his honesty, and he went, I don't know if I could do that. Yes. I mean, it rather went against the grain of the very Christian values that were being espoused by Erica. It was, but if I'm honest, you know, he said, if that happened to me, I don't think I could feel the same.

34:30I admire his brutal honesty there. He didn't think it was going to be a popular thing to say, but I bet a lot of people went, actually, I'm probably the same. At the end of the book, you have 13 rules for life, which you basically ripped off from the idea that Jordan Peterson put in his best-selling book. Well, the reason I chose 13 was... Because I loved his 12 Rules for Life. But the reason I chose 13 was that there's a presumption that it's unlucky. And as I state at the start of it all, actually, there are many very lucky things about the number 13. And Friday the 13th, historically, has been an incredibly lucky day for a lot of people.

35:03And an unlucky day, like every other day. So the whole thing is kind of in our heads, right? It doesn't bear any sort of relation to reality. But they're just little markers I put down because it seems to me I've got three sons, for example, 32, 28, 24, and a daughter nearly 14. And I've long chatted with them regularly about life and how you deal with things. And they face very different challenges to the ones that I faced when I was young. You know, when I was a teenager, there was no internet. There were no smartphones. There was nothing like that. You know, if you wanted to date a girl, you had to get a home phone number and get past her dad who would answer the phone.

35:38Yeah, and her brothers. And her brothers. but, you know, my life was spent mainly outdoors because there was nothing much to stay indoors for other than three television stations, right? So, you know, you weren't bombarded with stuff all day long on your phone and the reason it's so damaging, you know, Jonathan Haidt wrote that brilliant book about smartphones. Anxious generation. Yeah, it's fantastic because you can really chart the incidence of anxiety and depression and suicidal thoughts from when smartphones became smart. I love this, though. You give me the impression of somebody that's on their phone a lot.

36:08Yes, I am, but I'm old enough to deal with it. And I've been in the news business 40 years. So I've dealt with a lot of very bad stuff. And I'm able to deal with it and able to park it and not let it affect me in the way that it does young, impressionable minds. But imagine if you're an 18-year-old. And I look at what comes on my phone every day from Gaza, from Ukraine. Horrendous. Right? Absolutely horrific imagery. We all get it. Imagine if you're 18 watching that stuff. And I think that's the problem. It's the constant overload of negative dopamine is really screwing with kids' heads. Then you add the FOMO, where in the old days, if you split up with a girlfriend or boyfriend, that would be probably the end of it.

36:49You wouldn't really see them, right? Now you're seeing every second of the day what they're up to and with who. I know. None of that is going to help you, right? Well, I get FOMO sometimes looking at your feed. Right, well, so you should. I mean, you're at the Beverly Hills Hotel. You're hanging out with Andy Murray. I actually had a great night last night, actually. I mean, you love to do the whole look at my celebrity life. That is literally your Instagram feed. Of course! But what else is Instagram for? It's showing off. Sorry, let me just be very clear to you. Instagram is for showing off.

37:17Right. People either admit it as they show off or they don't admit it but show off anyway. Right. I'm in the admitting camp. I'd like to see you in the morning in your pyjamas. No, you don't. You have hair dishevelled. Last night, I tell you what... I'd like you to go and get a take-out. You know, stop going to these expensive restaurants with Amanda Holden and ramming it all down our throats. Last night, I can really ram this one. I was at the new one, Carboni, at the new Rosewood, which is the site of the old... Do I have to just get ready for the names you're about to drop? No, no, it's going to be great, this, because I get there, Joan Collins is with us.

37:52Name drop number one, yeah, your mate, Joan. At the next table in the bar is George and Amal Clooney. Two more names drop there. We're up to three every week. I silo through and I'm going to see a mate who's texting me to say he's at another table. And as I pass, I suddenly think, oh, my God, it's the Arsenal manager, Mikel Arteta, who I'd never met, my team. So I go and have a chat with Mikel. And then when I'm leaving, Princess Eugenie comes up. Oh, number four. Who I do know. So that was just an average night. Did she say anything about her mum and dad? She said, whatever you do, don't tell Camilla a word.

38:23Quite rightly. Sorry. Which of the 13 rules for life is the best? which is the one you really, really, really live by? The one I really live by, and this is where I really respect Trump in many ways for his character, right, in terms of his ability. I think resilience is the key thing. Yes. The thing about life is, I quote my favourite speech from Rocky, which is the Rocky Balboa movie. It came after the first five, 20 years later, and Sly Stallone made another film. And he finally has it out with his spoiled brat son in the street. Because this brat son is whining about his life, whining about his lot.

39:00But obviously he's a very privileged kid, right? He's Rocky's son. And he finally has it out and he goes, listen. He says, life is tough. It will beat you down if you let it. And it will keep you down if you let it. But actually, the way you win at life, it's not about how hard you can punch and how hard you can hit. It's how hard you can get hit and get back up and keep moving forward. And that's the key takeaway, I would say, is that my biggest issue with the Woke Brigade is they love to celebrate failure. They love to whine and complain and feel sorry for themselves. You know, I quote a poem by D.H.

39:36Lawrence called Self-Pity about how wild things never feel sorry for themselves. The bird falling from the tree. A bird will fall frozen from about dead without ever having feeling sorry for itself, right? And, you know, I just think that we've got into a sort of terrible wallowing thing when my absolute bet noir was like Instagram and stuff. If people go, I'm so proud of myself. I had a terrible bout of Verrucas and I'm so proud of the way I dealt with it. I look to my inner self. It's been a nightmare. It's been an ordeal. And you're like, get over yourself. Having said that, some people might accuse you of being a different kind of self-obsessed.

40:18I am self-obsessed. Yes. I don't deny it. Well, so what's the difference between your self-obsession with confidence and other people's self-introspection? Mine's more fun. I'm not banging on about my hellish experience with my Verrucas. No, I know, but you do seem to have a tendency to tell everyone how great you are. I like to celebrate success. Yes. Yeah. But actually, don't you have the woke karate quite a lot to be thankful for? You know, if you hadn't been cancelled from Good Morning Britain over the Megan comments, you wouldn't have then gone off into the online space. Well, hang on, just to be clear.

40:47According to the Press Gazette, you're earning£17 million a minute or something. How much money are you earning, Piers Morgan, as you like a straight question? Are you earning more money than ever? I'm earning a lot more money than you, I would hope. Well, God, I mean, if you want to give me a job... It's a numbers game. It's a numbers game. I'm getting the numbers. If you want to give me an additional income in any way, then I've got about half a day free a week that I could possibly work a little harder. But don't you agree with that? Like, thank you, Megan. Thank you. You should be thanking the Duchess of Sussex.

41:19I think I thank her in the book, actually. I am grateful, yeah. Because without her contribution in demanding my head on a plate from ITV, then ITV wouldn't have come to me and said, you either apologise to Meghan Markle or you have to leave. And I said, I'd rather leave. So I sort of cancelled myself, but with her help. And again, it was the arrogance of thinking you could just call the boss of a television network and demand the presenter's head on a plate. Well, maybe the biggest shame was that the head of ITV listened to her, not you. Well, it's very interesting that Ofcom, the TV regulator, six months later, come back and throw out all 57 ,000 complaints.

41:55So I was the most complained about person in Ofcom history, but also the most exonerated person in Ofcom history. Because Ofcom concluded it would have been a chilling infringement of my rights to free speech to not be able to say what I said that day. I mean, bear in mind, when I think back to that Good Morning Britain thing, it was quite extraordinary. Everybody else on the show that day believed every word that they said. Yes. Well, I had the same experience on this morning. Right. You know, I had to go on immediately after the April interview. I have a discussion with then Phil Schofield and Holly Willoughby on set.

42:27It was awkward for me because she had obviously publicly traduced my bridesmaid dress tears story, which I stand by and never received any legal complaint about, by the way, nor any phone call from anyone associated with either of them. That story was in the Telegraph. No one complained about a jot of it. The next thing, primetime TV with millions, if not billions, watching. And I'm thinking, my goodness me. So I then went on to telly and, you know, they had believed it all hook, line and sinker. And we'd been watching it downstairs in the newsroom overnight and going, I don't think the Archbishop of Canterbury could have married them.

43:05And I'm not sure she did have her passport taken away because didn't they see Elton John that summer? It was all nonsense. But, yeah, people swallowed it. Now it would be completely reversed. Now, if I did believe Meghan and Harry with what they said to Oprah, I'd be told you have to apologise to the British people for believing them or leave. Indeed. So it's come full circle. I think we may have been vindicated on that one. Final question as our time is up together. What next for Piers Morgan? Because you're breaking away from News UK. You're going it alone. I have broken away. You've broken away already.

43:35I broke away at the start of the year. Right. And how's that going? I'm building a whole uncensored business. Yes. So my bet is that people like me who have a big following online, particularly on YouTube, can actually build out proper media entities, networks ourselves. I don't need a mainstream media network to help me. I can do it myself. So Piers Morgan Uncensored is my main YouTube channel. We have nearly 4.2 million subscribers in three years. By comparison, it took Joe Rogan three years to get to a million. It's not a like for like completely because YouTube is bigger now. but it gives you an idea of just how big we've got and how fast.

44:12And I want to roll out now, and you'll start to see this very soon, what they call verticals, which will be other uncensored channels, right, for other genres. So watch this space on that because one's coming very soon but they'll then be followed by a number of others. Newsy stuff or anything? Could be anything. Anything. It could be anything. Honestly, anything where I think we can get a good channel that's going to get good heat and good numbers. And ultimately, I want to have a whole uncensored brand that is much less reliant on me personally and much more reliant on the uncensored brand. Sorry, are you...

44:45It's going to be a shy and retiring moment for me. What? No, because actually if you talk to business people, they say, look, it's all very well, but what if you fall under a bus? I get that. So I'm going to protect the business from the fall under a bus thing by creating so many different strands to uncensored, I hope, that by the end of it, the entity itself is way bigger than any individual. How old are you now? 60. Oh, so you'd... Well, that's young, isn't it? Oh, is that what Joan Collins was like? She's 92. I didn't know you were friends with Joan. 94. I didn't know you were friends with Joan Collins.

45:16Have I not mentioned it? I've got to say, by the way, another takeaway of my rules for life. Joan Collins is... If in doubt, ask Joan Collins. She's out four times a week. She speaks her mind in the most hilariously blunt manner about absolutely everything, doesn't suffer fools, is hilariously entertaining and just refuses to grow old. Well, we need her 14 rules for life. Yeah. Encourage her to write it. She should actually do her rules for life. Why don't you give her a whole uncensored channel where we can have the wisdom according to Joan Collins? That should be really good. But there's no sense of you slowing down at all there.

45:50No, God, no. Where are you getting your energy from? What would I go and do? I don't know. Do you know, 50 % of... I do love gold, but 50 % of people who retire die within five years of retirement. Will you ever retire? No! Why would I? Unless you're retired. Joan was literally flying off to do some new movie. You could still be cancelled again, you know that, don't you? Yeah, but this time only I can cancel myself. Yes, would you ever do that? You like yourself too much to cancel yourself. Of course, I would like to assure your viewers that there are two hopes of me cancelling myself, No Hope and Bob Hope, and he's been dead about 25 years.

46:23On that note, Piers Morgan, thank you so much for joining me. A pleasure. Always love a daily tea with a telegraph. Yes, and Woke is Dead is out now. It is out. All good bookshops. It is out now in all good bookshops and audiobook. I put myself through two... Oh, we can listen to your dulcet tones in our earphones. You can listen to my dulcet tones. It may explain why I've lost my voice, but yeah. OK. But you can get it in audiobook fashion too. And it's a cracking read. I think you'd agree. I raced through it. It's eminently readable. Thank you very much. There's my pull-out quote. This is the only reason I did this interview.

46:54You will see it on the back of the paperback. Eminently readable, says Camilla. You don't want people to be put off by it by having my endorsement on the back. Piers, thank you very much indeed. Pleasure.