Piers Morgan Thought Jan. 6 Was Disqualifying For Trump. Then He Changed His Mind

Piers Morgan has been friends with former President Donald Trump since his winning turn on Celebrity Apprentice in 2008. Their relationship has had some very public ups and downs, including a falling out over a tough interview in which Morgan confronted Trump on his 2020 election claims and the Jan. 6 riot. “It was an awful day for America and an awful day for democracy,” Morgan said on this week’s episode of Mediaite’s Press Club. “I thought at the moment, he’s done, there’s no way back from this.”

In the years since, however, Morgan said he changed his mind. He admits he thought at the time that Trump’s conduct after the 2020 election was disqualifying. Now, on the eve of an election that he believes will send Trump back to the White House, Morgan is more forgiving.

“Some of the things that I admire most about Trump are his durability, his resilience, his personal strength. He’s got balls of steel. And I admire that in a leader,” Morgan told Mediaite editor in chief Aidan McLaughlin. “Trump has slowly but surely gotten himself back to a place where I would say he’s favorited to win the election. And if he wins it, it’s the greatest comeback in political history.”

Morgan isn’t moved by arguments that Trump would be more unbridled in a second term. “He’s a narcissist,” Morgan said. “He will want to have a better legacy than the one that he left the first term of office with, which was at that moment disastrous. We might see a different and better Trump.”

He also takes issue with comparisons, sparked by General John Kelly’s accusations, between Trump and Adolf Hitler. “Does Trump say stuff off the cuff that doesn’t look well in print? Of course. It’s not the most surprising thing in the world. But my question for people is, do you really think he is capable of murdering 12 million people?”

That hysteria over Trump from his critics, Morgan said, fuels his appeal. “He literally has a unique ability to drive liberals to complete and utter destruction. They can’t even think straight.”

Morgan, who attended Trump’s rally this week at Madison Square Garden, also weighed in on the now-infamous dig at Puerto Rico by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe. Morgan said the Trump campaign made a mistake by booking him in the first place:  “He’s a roaster. That’s what he does.” Morgan had higher marks for Trump’s performance: “Whether you love him or hate him, he’s a rock star and he’s performing like a front man of a band.”

Morgan also spoke about the success of his YouTube show, Piers Morgan Uncensored, leaving linear television behind to go fully digital, what he makes of criticism that his show platforms trolls, and his wild career in media.

Mediaite’s Press Club airs in full Saturdays at 10 a.m. on Sirius XM’s POTUS Channel 124. You can also subscribe to Press Club on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Read a transcript of the conversation below, edited for length and clarity.

Aidan McLaughlin: Piers Morgan, thanks for coming on Press Club.

Piers Morgan: It’s great to be in your lair. I haven’t been here. It’s very impressive.

You like our studio?

I like your studio very much.

I appreciate it. What brings you to New York?

I don’t know, you’ve got some weird event going on, the election.

We do have an election going on.

As you know, I do Piers Morgan Uncensored. The YouTube stuff has been flying recently and a lot of that is down to our coverage of the election. I think I had to be here to just get the feel for what’s really going on. Because a lot of the key people who you want to have on the show, they’re all here. Everyone’s around. The energy’s up, the excitement, the tension. You can feel it in the streets. It’s fascinating.

I do want to ask about the show. Has the election been really a big driver of audience for you? Because I know your most viewed video is your interview with Bassem Youssef, which was fascinating.

I’d say the two things over the last year would be the Israel-Hamas war and the US presidential election. They’ve been the two big things, although the other story I would say surprised me by the scale of interest has been the P. Diddy scandal. In a way, you see a microcosm there of where I think we sit as a channel, which is people will come to us for war, for politics and for celebrity culture, albeit serious scandal celebrity culture. And that’s where I want us to be. Viewers come and they’re interested in all those things.

I know you used to live here. Where do you go to eat?

The Ralph Lauren Polo Bar is my go-to for a lovely steak. I like the prawn shrimps, the ones that steam when they arrive. I like Elio’s up on the Upper East Side. Orsay, a little French place on the Upper East that I really like. I’ve got a few Irish bars. I lived here on and off for a few years, so I love New York.

Those are some favorites among journalists and cable news stars.

I like bumping into other media types. That’s why we gravitate to those places.

Let’s talk about the election and Trump. I want to first get your take on the big story this week, which was his rally at Madison Square Garden that caused a lot of controversy. What did you make of it? We were both there.

It was the first rally I’ve ever been to. For any politician.

It was the first rally I’ve ever been to for Trump.

I’ve not been to anyone’s rally. But I happened to be in New York. It’s interesting because I wrote a column about it for The New York Post a few months ago, and I compared him to Mick Jagger. I said that he’s basically the frontman of a rock band. And that’s exactly what happened. And of course, it was ironic that the first time I see him, he’s at Madison Square Garden where The Stones have played. Everyone has played Madison Square Garden. It’s where Marilyn sang Happy Birthday, Mr. President. The Pope has been there. Muhammad Ali fought there. So for Trump, this has been a genuine dream.

But for me, having compared him to Jagger, now I’m watching this political rock star. Whether you love him or hate him, he’s a rock star and he’s performing like a front man of a band. It was like being at a six-hour rolling festival where he’s the headline act. And before that, you get all the warmup acts. The crowd is there for the fervor, the energy. They’re there for the warmup acts, but then they want the main event and then they want to go and buy all the merchandise. It’s like being at a rock concert.

The warmup acts got criticism for racist jokes and some comments that were pretty extreme. Kamala Harris got compared to the anti-Christ. What did you make of that?

I think the Tony Hinchcliffe scandal was interesting because I watched the Tom Brady roast in which he says far worse things and nobody seemed to mind. He was incredibly racist in that. And you think, okay, so nobody cared that he was doing that at the Tom Brady Roast. So it was more the environment that he was operating. Hinchcliffe does that. He’s a roaster. And it’s just interesting to me, it’s not even a double standard, but if you’re going to unleash him at a political rally like that, you’re going to have to expect blowback when he says something blatantly racist, which he did.

I thought it was a mistake to book him for a political rally actually, because what’s happened is all the attention gleefully seized by the Democrats, as the Republicans have done the other way around, has been on what he said about Puerto Rico. Jon Stewart did a brilliant piece on Monday night about this. If you go watch the roast of Tom Brady, the number one most offensive guy there, including a lot of racist stuff, is Tony Hinchcliffe. That’s what he does. And I think that you know what he does, so who booked him? Why did they not think that was going to be deliberately taken and used as a battering ram against you? I thought it was a bad decision to have him there. But I don’t particularly blame Hinchcliffe because that’s what he does.

Occasionally his Kill Tony Show appears on my Instagram feed and it’s probably the most controversial comedy out there that’s still popular. I guess maybe they thought he would moderate for the crowd.

I didn’t hear exactly what he said, but I saw the crowd reaction because I think he was the first guy out. And they just didn’t find it funny. They were like, why is this guy saying stuff about Puerto Rico? Tony Hinchcliffe fans would have laughed. Jon Stewart went, I’m sorry but this guy’s funny, but that’s in the roast environment. I think the problem was wrong guy for the wrong event. Don’t blame Hinchcliffe because that’s what he does and everyone knows that. And we all found him hilarious in the Tom Brady roast, but somehow he can’t be funny doing the same stuff here. I think it was a bit of hot air about nothing. But I don’t blame the Democrats. I think the Republicans would have done exactly the same to them.

Last time we spoke you said there’s “a touch of authoritarianism in Trump’s rhetoric and his actions,” but you think his “bark is bigger than his bite.” Has your view changed on that? This has been a big issue this campaign. Democrats say a second Trump term would be a horrifying disaster. Republicans dismiss that as ridiculous and over the top, because we already had Trump for four years and he wasn’t that bad. But you could point to a couple of things that he did during the first term that were alarming.

But you could also point to things where he was absolutely right. And that’s the thing about Trump. You have to take the bark from the bite and treat them slightly separately. I’ve known nearly 20 years. I know him very well. I spoke to him the other day. I’ve spoken to him a few times this year. He’ll say a lot of inflammatory stuff to get headlines. I would focus more on what he actually does. And if you look at the vast amount of his first tenure, if you actually take the tweeting and the rhetoric generally out of the equation and focus purely on his actions, he was a reasonably moderate Republican president. People don’t want to admit that. And I would say to Democrats, you keep calling him the new Hitler. Hitler murdered 12 million people. He perpetrated a Holocaust on the Jewish people. He was an absolute genocidal maniac.

If he’s really the new Hitler, when he came to Madison Square Garden on Sunday to do a rally in Democrat heartland, why did only 150 of you turn out to protest? Where were the hordes from 2016, when we were told he was the new Hitler, but then he didn’t actually turn out to be the new Hitler. Now they’re calling him the new Hitler again because they don’t seem to have any other game plan against him. But if he’s that dangerous, if he’s the new Adolf Hitler, where were they all when he marched into the middle of Manhattan and did this massive rally at Madison Square Garden? I’m afraid I just think it’s incredibly disingenuous. All this, he’s a fascist, he’s a Nazi. He’s a Nazi, but he had a Holocaust survivor sitting in the rally? His son-in-law is Jewish. His daughter converted to Judaism when she married Jared. He’s been one of Israel’s biggest supporters. It’s not the most convincing Nazi rally I’ve seen.

I want to put aside the comparisons of Trump to Hitler because I agree they’re ridiculous. But I think his defenders are using that as a way to circumvent what I would say is the most potent argument against a second Trump term, which is that a considerable amount of people who served in his administration, including General John Kelly, decorated four-star general, served as his DHS secretary and chief of staff, and by no means a flaming liberal, very conservative, as well as people like Mark Milley and Jim Mattis, all say that Trump is dangerous, that he should not be elected president again, that a second Trump term would be very bad for the country. General John Kelly said that he expressed admiration for Hitler, which is why we have a news cycle about Hitler now. Is that a red flag for you?

I think a lot of people who used to work for Trump took the job knowing what he was reputed to be like, then when he behaves how they were told he might behave, they go, ‘My God, he’s a fascist, I had no idea.’

Isn’t that behavior alarming, though, to begin with?

It is if you genuinely think he’s a fascist. Do I think he’s a fascist? No, I don’t. Do I think he’s a neo-Nazi? No. Do I think he’s racist? Not in my experience. I’ve had a lot of time around Trump. I’ve never heard him be racist, which racists are, by the way, in private. It’s not like I want to be his biggest fan. When I was a columnist at the Daily Mail during his first term in office, I wrote 120 columns about Trump. Half of them are positive and half were negative. Some of them incredibly scathing. And that seemed to me a more accurate reflection of his term in office. With Trump, there’s very little middle ground. There are very few people like me who can say, well, that was good and that was terrible. That was great and that was awful.

Yet I think that is the way to best handle Trump. He’s going to do stuff that’s going to drive you nuts. He’s going to say things which are awful. When he attacked John McCain after he died, or Colin Powell after he died, I winced. Why would you do that? But trying to say to Donald Trump at 78, change, he’s not going to change. He’s always been a very bombastic, aggressive kind of character. If you read his book, The Art of the Deal, it’s all in there, the whole template for how he is. So when I did Celebrity Apprentice, I read that book three times so I could get inside his head. It’s probably why I won, I basically did stuff I knew he liked. I understood what I was dealing with.

And I think too often people, either because they don’t really understand him or because they do understand him and want to pretend is worse than he is, they whip themselves into this lather about Trump. He literally has a unique ability to drive liberals to complete and utter destruction. They can’t even think straight. I don’t see him like that. The best description I’ve heard of Trump, my daughter’s 12 years old and she said to me recently that she’d heard me say that Trump is a unique character. And she said, Dada, there is such a thing as being too unique. And I thought that was a good description. If anything, Trump is too unique. But I just don’t see him as this existential threat to democracy or to America.

But then how do you explain those comments from John Kelly and Milley and Mattis?

I think, honestly, they want to sell books, they want to make money.

But Kelly’s done it pretty subtly. There’s no book.

I know, I know. Listen, I’m not disputing that that’s what they think went down. They’ve got their views or whatever. But there are lots of people that were in the rooms with people like Kelly and others who dispute what they say. And Trump denies it. I don’t know. Does Trump say stuff off the cuff which doesn’t look well in print? Of course. It’s not the most surprising thing in the world. But my question for people is, do you really think he is capable of murdering 12 million people?

Because when he was the president of United States, he didn’t declare war on anyone. He actually took out the leader of ISIS. He forged interesting relationships with leaders like Putin and President Xi and Kim Jong-un. He did some stuff, like NATO with the funding, which I thought was incredibly effective in a very Trump-like way, which is if you want America to stump up the most cash for this organization and always be there if you get attacked, you better pay what you’re supposed to pay. And guess what? They’re all now paying it. And so I think he’s a blunt instrument, but sometimes that can be quite effective. Now he does other stuff which drives me nuts. I thought the whole January 6th thing was awful, and I was very scathing about him at the time. I thought some of his stuff in the pandemic was ridiculous, talking about injecting yourself with bleach and so on. So I’m not afraid to criticize Trump at all. But I do think the hysteria about him is massively overblown.

You previously pointed to January 6, his denial about the 2020 election, his handling of Covid as major issues that you had with Trump. A lot of people see his conduct after 2020 as as reason he should never be in office again. Do you think that is disqualifying for an American president?

I did in the moment, because it all looks so horrific. I have to say, since that time, I’ve watched all the arguments play out. And you could certainly construct an argument that when Hillary Clinton lost, everyone said it was stolen, she didn’t legitimately lose, blah, blah, blah. There’s always a bit of that going on after every election result. We haven’t seen the scene that we saw at the Capitol. It was grotesque and awful. Just how complicit Trump personally was remains to be tested in court. I did not like any of it. I remember messaging one of his people in the middle of it, saying, for God’s sake, tell him to stop. He did very soon after, not because of me, but he was going to do it anyways. I think he belatedly realized what was happening and then realized how awful it was. But it was an awful day for America and an awful day for democracy. I thought at the moment, he’s done, there’s no way back from this.

I think everyone did.

But some of the things that I admire most about Trump are his durability, his resilience, his personal strength. When he got shot, to get back up, not even knowing if there’s another shooter around, and start punching the air, to go back on a rally stage a week later, that shows me he’s got balls of steel. And I like those qualities in a leader. So Trump slowly but surely got himself back to a place where, right now, I would say he’s favorited to win the election. If he wins it, it’s the greatest comeback in political history. It is the Tiger Woods winning the Masters again in 2019 of politics. And you can’t help but admire the strength of character which has allowed him to come back from that place where not just me, but a lot of people, I interviewed Kevin McCarthy today, he was heard on tape at the time saying he’s done, that was the generally perceived wisdom, that he was finished and there was no way back from it. And yet here he is, the favorite to be president again. It’s an astonishing arc. So was it disqualifying? I did feel that in the moment, yes. I do not feel that now.

But do you think that’s based on a changing moral standard?

I have a pretty dim view of politics and morality generally. I think they’re all pretty power-crazed and they’re all susceptible to moments of madness, if I’m honest with you. Trump’s Trump card, if you like, the plus and negative of being Trump, I always say he has the thinnest skin in the world. He reacts to the slightest perceived insult by going to DEFCON 1 immediately. However, he also has the thickest skin in the world. He soaks up stuff that would kill any other politician, and that’s an admirable quality for a politician, it’s an admirable quality for the leader of the free world on the world stage. I’ve been around Trump, I was in Davos when he first became president, watching other world leaders congregate. Nobody really gave them much attention. When Trump arrived, it was literally unbelievable. It was mayhem, everyone going crazy.

He’s by far the biggest figure in global politics, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing for America. I think people have factored in what they think of Trump now. So if you’d asked me on January 7th, should he run again? No, as he pointed out when I interviewed him last time, he said, you said I shouldn’t run! Yeah, I did. But I also think you can change your mind. And the interesting question now is not what I think. It’s down to the American people. I can’t vote. It’s not my country. I’m very happy to come here a lot and I’ve got a place here, but it’s down to the American people. If they determine that Trump is going to do a better job than Kamala Harris, and I can quite understand why a lot of them would think that, because I think she’s a pretty useless candidate, then that’s on the American people.

You had a falling out with Trump after your last interview with him in 2022. Then he called you out of the blue back in June. It sounds like you have been speaking with him more regularly now. Are you back on good terms?

He called me on Sunday. I texted him to say I was going to the rally and he called me thirty seconds later, made a fun chat about it. And I knew what it meant to him because he is a New Yorker. And if you’re a New Yorker, Madison Square Garden, you’ve got to perform that, you’ve got to headline Madison Square Garden. This was a big deal for him but he was very confident. People always ask me, what do you think he’ll be like a second time around?

I think you would see a different Trump, because he would know then he’s not going to try and get reelected because he can’t. Also, look, he is a narcissist. He is a big egotist. He will want to have a better legacy than the one that he left the first term of office with, which was at that moment disastrous. He will want to have a better legacy. It will play to his ego to do that. And I would not be surprised if you see a slightly different style of Trump the second time around. Now, I might be completely deluded. And he might just make me look an idiot when you play this back in a couple of years. But I get a feeling that this time around, because he knows that this is the last time he can run. He won’t be in running mode, he’ll be in legacy mode and we might see a different and better Trump.

The common wisdom, I would say, is probably a little more pessimistic on that front, because the feeling is that he would be more unbridled in a second term, and that he would do a lot of the things that his aides stopped him from doing in his first term, which people see as illiberal.

I think the checks and balances in the American system are very strong. They’re very robust. As I said to his face, you did not have the election stolen from you. And he went nuts and called me a fool and so on. He then issued four presidential statements of increasing ferocity, including Piers Morgan, “so dead he’s catching flies,” I think was my favorite. But then, like with all these things, six months later he went, “Hey! How are you?” But I just felt like he didn’t have the election stolen for that. But I said to him, if you’d argued about the Hunter Biden laptop as a reason why that might have cost you the election, I’m with you 100%. You’re just fighting the wrong stolen election argument because there’s no evidence that you’ve produced. And he won’t hear it and everyone knows he won’t hear it. But it’s interesting to me to have that debate face-to-face with him. He needs to move on. He needs to move on to the next phase of it.

I want to talk about your show. You left TalkTV, which was a linear network.

Well we ended talk TV basically. I came off it first and then a few months later we shut down the linear version. But the main reason was our YouTube channel running concurrently with the same material was just doing gangbuster numbers. And so it made no sense to me.

Just to give viewers a sense of what TalkTV was, to put it briefly and crudely, it was Rupert Murdoch’s attempt to launch a news network in the UK, in the same vein as Fox News.

Yeah, although I’m not a conservative.

You’re really at the vanguard of something new that’s going to accelerate over the next decade, which is people leaving linear television as it gets smaller. You were hosting a nightly show at a scheduled hour that was reaching quite a small audience, but you were getting millions and millions of views on YouTube. So you went where the audience is, and where the audience is going to be.

I’ll give you one example of why. I interviewed Bassem Youssef, the Egyptian Jon Stewart, on TalkTV linear. We got about 80,000 people watching. On our YouTube channel, same interview, 22 million. And that was the moment when I went, okay, we need to pivot because it’s very expensive to do linear television. Why are we spending all this money to produce a version of this content which has got a minimal audience out there, and it’s probably never going to be that big? But at the same time, we’ve got this phenomenal thing on our YouTube channel, we saw it with Cristiano Ronaldo, Kanye, Donald Trump and others. It just made much more sense. I’ve got three sons and they’re 31, 27, 23. They don’t watch linear TV other than live sport. They watch YouTube. My daughter’s nearly 13. She watches YouTube. They were like, Dad, why are you doing this? This is for dinosaurs. And I agreed.

You recently pointed out that 10% of Americans’ time watching television is spent on YouTube on their TV app, which is astonishing. It makes a lot of sense to move over to YouTube now. Was there hesitation jumping over or did this just make the most sense?

Not really. It just looked to me like you’ve got parallel lines going with the same content and the costs were far more prohibitive for the linear version than for YouTube. And you can be much more nimble. I don’t have to trudge into a studio at 8 each night to do a live show where often I was cutting short interviews that I really wanted to go long. And I was looking at people like Joe Rogan and thinking, that’s what I really want to do. Where you just go as long as you want. And that’s what I do now. And I much prefer that freedom. It’s interesting, I’ve done a lot of big things, America’s Got Talent, Britain’s Got Talent, Celebrity Apprentice, I won it, CNN for four years replacing Larry King, Good Morning Britain in Britain was the number one breakfast show by the end. I’ve done all these big conventional things and I’ve had a level of recognition for all of them that’s been quite high. A lot of them have aired in many countries. Nothing has compared to the YouTube attention I’ve been getting. Just walking around New York in the last few days, a number of people have come up to me who are watching it and they’re really into it. And that shows me it’s the right decision. And they’re younger.

Well that’s the thing. I wrote a story for The Spectator a couple months ago about Patrick Bet David, who’s huge on YouTube. And I would tell people over the age of 40, 50 about him and they had no idea who he was. Tell anyone under the age of 40 and they look at me like, of course I know who that is. And so the audience is distinct, but it’s the future audience of media. It’s definitely something that’s going to grow. You cut your teeth in the British tabloids. Do you feel like they’re similar mediums, the tabloids and YouTube? It’s the same kind of headlines, they’re loud, there’s emphasis on conflict.

Yeah, no different. What I’ve tried to do, Patrick Bet David is actually a good example of someone who’s a bit more like me, he doesn’t really take an ideological right or left position on everything, he’s quite surprising. Joe Rogan’s the same. That’s why I really like listening to these guys. I don’t like to box myself into left or right. I’m very happy to appear on Fox where they stick me in the liberal chair sometimes on The Five and so on. And sometimes I agree with them and sometimes I don’t. But I like to be almost like a ringmaster where I’m challenging everybody.

So I’ll get people on for the Israel-Hamas War, get very big, followed people on from the Palestinian side, from the Israeli side, put them together, will go after them one-on-one and just challenge them all. And people like that. And I said, look, we’re called Uncensored. We’re going to get everybody on. I’m going to give them all a hard time and we’ll see what we get. But the viewer should benefit from just hearing all the views. And I think that is the way forward for someone like me. And I love that. The tabloids, in a way, it was sort of the same aggressive treatment. You’d have the headlines, of course you’re going to promote conflict, all those things. But you’re still quite heavily regulated in newspapers, particularly in the UK, certainly by the end. And you don’t have that with YouTube. It’s far more free-ranging. You can really be quite liberated and just say, come on, let’s have a big, open debate. What do you think? What do you think? Say what you like, spit it out. However mad your idea is, let’s hear it. And if I think it’s mad, I’ll tell you I think it’s mad.

Your show has leaned into to these debates. You have on these major YouTubers. Some of them can be quite extreme on either side of whatever issue you’re debating. The criticism, I’m sure you’ve seen it, is that you’re just platforming trolls.

I don’t like platforming stupid people. I’ve had a few people where I’ve said to my team afterwards, that’s just circus television. I’m not interested in that. What I do like is smart people who are very passionate. Smart, angry, passionate people. That’s fine. As long as they’re smart and they have a position they can genuinely articulate and defend and robustly argue. That’s fine. I don’t mind getting heated. I had a great debate on Monday. We had Sarah Palin, Mehdi Hasan, Dave Smith and Destiny. The idea you could get those four together was pretty miraculous anyways. It was very heated, but it was actually very interesting. And I think we got some really great feedback too. That’s, to me, a dream panel. But in terms of my criteria, my team will tell you, it’s just no dummies. The dummy act doesn’t work. It’s just like, why am I watching a stupid person? I won’t name names because it’s a bit cruel to do that. We’ve had a few people we’ve tried out and they’re just pretty stupid. And it’s like, well, I think our audience are pretty smart. They want to have smart debate. They want to see the verbal punch-ups if it’s appropriate. But today, we had a much more nuanced debate between some people, which is airing tonight, which was a very different vibe going on. And I like that too in the mix.

And I like to go and then interview Kevin Spacey for two hours or Armie Hammer or people who have been canceled and have those interviews. Or I want to go and do different kinds of stuff. So there’s no set rules, it’s not like we sit there and go, how can we get the most incendiary debates in the world? What I do like is having people with big followings, because in the YouTube world, there’s a kind of Zeitgeist which then blows up when they’re all promoting their own stuff. Everyone on that debate, they’re all doing their own thing, and that generates a lot of interest, a lot of heat, and that will generate a lot of eyeballs.

And ultimately, and here’s a similarity with newspapers, people would say, you’re just doing that to sell newspapers. Well, yes, it’s literally my job. And now they say, you’re just doing that for clicks. Yes, I want clicks. That is my job, to get people to watch. But actually, the type of click I want is a click where I see the average watch time is over 20 minutes. Because if you’re doing that consistently, as we are, then people are sitting there and they’re properly getting into it. I don’t want to see them clicking off after a minute. I want a 20-minute average minimum and off we go, where you sit there and you feel at the end of it, well, I heard a lot of opinions here and I’m slightly better informed. That’s the sweet spot for me.

Of that universe, who do you admire the most and who do you admire the least?

I’ve got a lot of admiration for people like Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro.

He’s a bit odd, Jordan Peterson. No?

I like him a lot.

He cries a lot.

He’s an emotional guy. He’s cried on my show a few times.

What did he cry about?

He cried about the state of young men who feel completely disenfranchized from society.

It moved him to tears?

Yeah. I’ve got a lot of time for Jordan. I think he’s one of the smartest thinkers out there. I’ve got a lot of time for The Daily Wire guys. I think the way they built that business…

They’ve built a serious media company.

Amazing. I’ve got a lot of time for you guys. I love what you guys do. And it’s nice to come here and see how you do it, because I’m very invested now, I’m trying to work out the best way for me to go. I think all those guys, Mehdi Hasan, we don’t agree about a lot of stuff, almost nothing in fact. But I like having him on.

And Zeteo is a very smart media business.

Very smart, and he’s a smart guy and he argues himself very well. He interviewed me for his own podcast and he gave me a good old skewering. And it was good. I like that because actually, if you’re going to do what I do, you need to be skewered a few times about your changing positions and explain, as you’ve done, how could I say that about Trump? He did the same thing. I need to think about that. I need to answer to myself on my changing positions.

But I would say generally that I’ve become a lot less intransigent than I used to be. One of the things about being a tabloid editor is everything is black and white. Bang! Here’s my view. And I used to be like that on Twitter for a long time. I’m a little bit more nuanced now. I’m a little bit more, oh that’s interesting, okay, maybe I’ve changed my mind. I never used to be like that. And I think we need a lot more of that in our society where you can have a robust exchange. That’s how you get to resolution on things. Megyn Kelly I’d also put in the admire by the way.

You didn’t tell me who you admire the least.

Let me think about that. Megyn Kelly, I’m a big fan of. A guy called Steve Krakauer, who worked with me, is her producer. He was with me to do digital at my CNN show. I think they’re a very successful set-up. I think it’s very smart. And I look to people like Tucker and what he’s doing. A lot of them are far more conservative than I am, or in Mehdi’s case, far more left-wing than I would feel comfortable being. But I look at the way they run their businesses and I think this is the future for a lot of big opinion people. This is the way it’s all beginning to go. And I think that in ten years time, people will look back at this particular period and hopefully they’ll look at people like me and Medhi and Megyn and Tucker and all these people, Jordan and Ben. And they’ll think, yeah, they were at the start of this, and actually this is the way young people want to consume content.

Speaking of the business, if I have this correctly, you’re under contract with News Corp. And then in addition to that, you own part of Piers Morgan Uncensored?

I own the name.

How much money are you making from the News Corp contract?

I nearly told you.

I was close.

You nearly had me.

I figured if I spoke fast enough, you might slip. It’s going well though?

I think it’s great. I think it’s been an interesting roller coaster to try to work out what’s working or what isn’t working. Personally as part of the overarching deal, I’ve loved, for example, doing columns in The New York Post, columns in The Sun every week as well, the biggest tabloid in the UK. I’ve got a book with HarperCollins I’ve been working on, my last one was a big number one bestseller. I’ve been doing crime documentaries for Fox Nation. But ultimately, the most successful thing of all of it came out of the wreckage of the linear version on TalkTV, which I would love to have seen work better, but it didn’t.

But I think making that decision to move fully digital was the best thing we could have possibly done. And now we have indisputably one of the biggest news opinion YouTube channels in the world. And when I speak to these other guys like Medhi and Dave Smith and others, they’re all like, wow, your numbers are insane. And they are. And the good thing about YouTube is you can’t hide all that. People can see all the numbers. You can see exactly how many people are watching, how long they’re watching for. And people can do the math themselves and they can see a proper business building. And I find that very exciting.

I’ve looked at people like Daily Wire and Ben in particular, but also Jordan and others, Matt Walsh and Megyn, when you add things like live shows, you add, as I’ve done, a books division, a documentary division. Merchandise, there’s some great stories out of Daily Wire about how advertisers were mucking them around. So they did their own hair gel. And suddenly they’re making millions.

Tucker Carlson is also moving into product now.

Which is very interesting. It’s like you’re basically in the opinion brand business. And I’m a newcomer to that in terms of YouTube, but I’ve been very excited by the speed of the growth. And my next logical move is to then take it into all those other areas.

Have you spoken to Rupert Murdoch recently? Do you have a sense of what the future of the Murdoch media empire is?

I have not. You’d have to ask him.

If the Murdochs called you up and said we want you to host a show on Fox News, would you do it?

I always listen to the Murdochs when they call me. I’ve got massive admiration for the Murdochs. Obviously, I’ve known Rupert since 1994. So we’ve known each other for 30 years. And I’ve got massive respect and admiration for him. But as to what his plans are, you’d have to ask him. One thing about Rupert, he’s always surprising. He’s always got stuff on the go. That’s what makes him invigorating to work for.

The last election, Fox News had some trouble covering it. There was the early Arizona call that caused a lot of controversy with the viewers. There were Trump’s claims of a stolen election, which obviously was a big problem for them in terms of lawsuits. How do you think Fox is going to cover this election? Do you think the network is going to be more reserved? Do you think they’ve figured out how to cover this without falling into the traps?

I honestly don’t know the answer to that. You’d have to ask Suzanne Scott and the others that run Fox News. I think that from my point of view, what I will say to people about Fox News is that they know where I am politically. And I’m kind of Bill Maher really in terms of where I am. But I go on Fox a lot. They put me on, The Five, Gutfeld, they’re very good to me. They let me just say what I want to say. No one’s ever said to me, you’ve got to toe the line or say this line or this line. There’s a little bit of mythology about that. Fox has the opinion hosts in primetime. Look at Bret Baier, for example. He’s one of the best straight news anchors in the world. And they have a lot of people like that there as well. They have a mixture of very strong, I would say very robustly impartial news anchors. And then they have people who are unashamedly opinionated. Well, I think there’s nothing wrong with that. I look at MSNBC and I think they’re far more biased, actually, in totality than I see at Fox. They will laugh when they hear that. But I watch them and think, ‘hmm.’

Then look at CNN, where I used to work. A lot of them are unashamedly MSNBC-like. I had to laugh when I saw Anderson Cooper banging on about how impartial he is the other day. Really, Anderson? You think you’re impartial, mate? Really? You think in Trump’s presidency, you took a really robustly impartial line for four years? Because I seem to remember you running with the ol’ Russia collusion thing pretty, pretty damn heavily. So a little bit of a charlatan, Mr. Cooper, I’m afraid. I felt that what the Trump era did was expose a lot of prejudices. A lot of mainstream media in America is extremely liberal-skewed. There are lots of people I love at CNN by the way. So it’s not a curse on all of them. But there are some of them. And Anderson’s a prime example where you could not watch it for very long and not in that period, say, well, he’s obviously in the tank against Trump. And I don’t think they should be.

And I agree with what Jeff Bezos has written in The Washington Post defending the endorsement not to come out. In the end, why would you want a newspaper like The Washington Post to declare their colors yet again for the Democrat candidate? All it does is tell the world you’re a Democrat newspaper. Same with The New York Times, The L.A. Times, USA Today. The New York Times is obviously endorsing, but the others aren’t. I think it’s good that they don’t actually, because you got to at least pretend to be impartial. And to say you are, but to then just always endorse the Democrat candidate, that’s not impartiality. Sorry, guys. You’re in the tank for liberals and that’s fine. I’m one of them. But I don’t think it works. It doesn’t fly anymore.

And people have got other choices. They can come elsewhere out of legacy media. And I think when you’ve got people like Trump and you’ve got Elon Musk, all these guys on their case all the time now, exposing it when it comes out, you’re going to look at it and go, yeah, I’m afraid that game is over. So you may as well all just come out and show your true colors. I used to think that CNN could just be much more opinionated. Come on, let us know what you really think. Tell us.

Speaking of CNN, I don’t know if you ever overlapped with Sir Mark Thompson.

I know Mark.

He had a storied career at Channel 4 before he was at the BBC.

Yeah. And he did very well. He’s a very smart guy.

Are you optimistic that he will be able to turn around CNN?

I’ve had a lot of people at CNN ask me, what do you know about Mark Thompson? I’ve always gotten along very well with Mark.

They ask you how to navigate him?

Yeah, but I’ve never worked for him. I’ve sat next to him at dinners and had fun with and stuff. He’s a very smart, thoughtful guy who worked it out at The New York Times very well and made it a rip-roaring, digital-led success. It was brilliant. And I think he’ll probably do the same at CNN. It’s probably a harder ship to turn around, but I think he’ll probably get that. I would have every confidence if I was CNN that he will get there eventually because he’s a smart guy who’s got a proven track record and they need that. Look, I love CNN, but I liked CNN more when it was less censorious and less worthy and less virtue-signaling. It should all lighten up a bit.

You want them to have more fun.

I used to have a lot of fun at CNN. I remember some of the interviews we did were hilarious and I’m not sure how often I see that. They’ve got some brilliant people. I love Kaitlan Collins. I love Jake Tapper, Erin Burnett. These are all people I really admire. Wolf, obviously, John King, there’s Dana Bash. I think they’re all great, but they could all lighten up a bit. You don’t always have to be serious. They put that sort of pensive face on talking about Trump. Oh get over yourselves, have a laugh. The one thing is when Trump says something obviously funny and they’re all pretending they’re not finding it funny. Just laugh, it’s fine. No one’s going to shoot you. They might shoot him. They’re not going to shoot you. So just take the stick out of your ass and laugh.

Who are you going to be watching and reading on election night?

I’m very interested in what my producer, Jonathan Wald, is doing with Brian Williams. And I saw Abby Huntsman has joined in today, who I always had on my scene. I think she’s great. I think that’s a really interesting thing to see how that works. I’m watching it with particular interest because if streamers start getting into news and opinion, hallelujah. I always say Brian’s a really great operative. Jonathan Wald’s a very smart guy. And I think it’s a very interesting new thing to watch. So I’ll definitely be watching a bit of that. And I’m doing a bit for the BBC in the UK. I’m sure I’ll do a bit for Fox on the day and the days around it. I’ll do my own stuff obviously.

It’s curious because in England you normally know pretty quickly by ten in the evening who’s won here. I remember last time it was like four days. It could be longer. It’s a bit like watching a football match. We have to wait for the video assistant referee to give you a verdict days later. So it’s going to be fascinating. My personal gut feeling, and I might look very silly within a few days of this, but I think Trump could win quite big. I think just anecdotally, I was in L.A. recently, I was struck by the number of people who were very openly prepared to say they’re voting Trump.

Far more than I think in 2016.

Way more. And I felt it in New York. I’ve had a lot of people come up to me who know I know Trump and that visceral hostility is just not there. And when I saw the lack of protests at Madison Square Garden, I was like, yeah, you’re all talking a good game about this is the new Hitler. You don’t mean it, you don’t believe it. Or you’d be here trying to stop the new Hitler, but you’re not. So he’s kind of beaten them. I might be wrong. And maybe Kamala Harris could pull it off. I think she’s a very weak candidate. And the more that we’ve seen and heard of her, the weaker she sounds and comes across. And Trump is Trump and people have kind of factored in what they think of him.

Are you worried about anything on election night, whether it’s violence on either side? Obviously, we had January 6 the last time and Trump claiming victory before the vote is called.

A lot of that’s going to go on, I’m sure. I don’t think there’ll be violence and I hope there isn’t. I do think America looked at itself very hard after January 6th and was like, this is such a terrible look.

That’s what I was thinking at the time, what the world would think watching that.

I don’t think you can have that again. And I’m sure Trump would not be party to that again. I think he wouldn’t admit this publicly, but he must have been utterly horrified by the scenes. It was awful. I hope and pray there’s no violence. There was nothing going on in Madison Square Garden, and that bodes well. I just think democracies are built on people having spirited, passionate debate. But at the end of it in the UK, we go to our pub and we have a pint together or a cup of tea. I think America needs to get back to that, where America actually at its heart is a very unified country. It has just been very fractured and I think social media has a lot to do with it. It’s inflamed people into taking tribal toxic positions and then refusing to change their mind when new facts present themselves. I just want everyone to take a massive chill pill. The world is not going to end if Donald Trump becomes president again. It didn’t end last time. It’s not going to end this time. And similarly, if Kamala Harris wins, it’s not going to be the end of the world. America is a magnificent country, and I hope whoever wins uses it as a platform to make the country more unified. I think most Americans want that.

One throughline in your career is that you’re a survivor. You were named top editor at News of the World at 28 in 1994. You had a series of enormous successes and big failures throughout the years. You barreled through all of those obstacles, and now you’re probably one of the most enduring and successful journalists in the world. What advice would you give people in the industry about success and about survival?

Whatever it is if it’s professional, personal losses are a much more difficult thing to deal with often, but professionally, just count to ten, whatever it is. I think Winston Churchill had the best line, which is that real success is going from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm. And I knew what he meant. A lot of the things that people perceive were failures for me were actually, in my opinion, big successes. Like I only did just under four years at CNN. But that’s four years more than any other British anchor has ever done at CNN. I did 1100 shows. I interviewed some of the biggest names in the world. I did pretty much everyone I wanted to do and then sailed off into the sunset because people didn’t like my views about gun control. Okay, I get it. And then I went to The Breakfast Show, and if people remember how I left, walking off on that infamous day for not believing Meghan Markle. Now I’d be fired for believing Meghan Markle. So I think time has tested well on that one. But again, we finally beat the BBC in the ratings that week for the first time ever and probably the only time ever. And I’d reached the summit really and planted the flag. Because my body couldn’t get up at 4 a.m. anymore.

I moved on to the talent shows. I love them. America’s Got Talent, amazing experience, Britain’s Got Talent, number one shows in their countries for years. The Celebrity Apprentice. I would never have met Donald Trump if I hadn’t done that. And to be a friend, albeit warts and all, good and bad, good times, bad times with someone like Trump is fascinating. And to watch the way his political career started and then crashed and then has now come back again. Amazing. So I look at all these things and I think all the things other people thought were maybe down moments for me, fine. Even when I left the Daily Mirror newspaper, I was ready to go, I was ready to move on.

And I think count to ten. Whatever the problem is, I’ve had little things, big things, I just take a deep breath. And then move on. Don’t look back. Don’t worry about looking back. Just move on, positivity and just let people say what they want to say and remember that very little of it stinks. I could do a greatest hits of good and bad things in my media career, but I’m still here. I’m still having a great time. I love the media jungle. I love the world. And I want to keep testing myself and challenging myself and doing new, exciting things. But I’m sure I’ll crash and burn again a few times. And then one day the Grim Reaper will knock on my door and I’ll make my final crash and burn in a crematorium somewhere. So you’ve got to put things in perspective.