Piers Morgan Uncensored - Dr Phil On Why He Made Speech at Trump Rally

Episode Date: November 5, 2024

Dr Phil just might be one of the most influential doctors in America today, and though he hasn’t practised psychology since the early 2000s, everyone who encounters him knows they’re speaking to an educated man. Today however, Dr Phil is tentatively wading into a sticky political swamp after speaking at a Donald Trump rally. Many have assumed this to be a transparent endorsement of the former president, but Dr Phil says otherwise. Piers Morgan talks to the good doctor about why he gave the speech at Trump’s rally, why he hasn’t spoken at a Kamala Harris rally, and why he’s so concerned about the effects of social media on children. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

That was an act of rebellion on my part. I requested 25 plus times to speak to Kamala Harris. I offered to give the identical speech at a Harris rally. I'm just not here to endorse Donald Trump. I do not like celebrity endorsements. I don't like a lot of what he says or does. I can tell you exactly what I want to hear because I've given this some thought. Do people not get it?

The world is watching. Have you decided who you're going to vote for? I think I have, but I'll never tell. Lady Gaga, Katie Perry, Harrison Ford, Will Ferrell, Cardi B, Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi, Jennifer Lopez, Ben Stiller, Robert De Niro. We don't have enough recording time to list all the celebrities backing Carmelah Harris. The number of famous faces prepared to publicly back Trump is decidedly shorter. Well, Dr. Phil is one of those who's taken that risk.

Last year, he told Bill Marr, but he's always remained non-political because he sees idiocy on both sides of the aisle. And he's not a fan of either Biden or Trump. So what changed? Well, Dr. Phil is hosting live election day coverage on America Decides 2024 on his new cable network Merritt TV. And he joins me now. Dr. Phil, great to see it. Well, it's good to see you, Pierce.

It's been a while since we've talked. It has, and a lot has gone on. I mean, I was saying to someone the other day, even in the last four months, this presidential race is like nothing we've ever seen before. Two assassination attempts. the unseating of the Democrat nominee to be replaced by his vice president. You know, Trump rocking up on a McDonald's, Trump driving a garbage truck, et cetera, et cetera.

First of all, what do you make of it all? Well, it certainly is different than what you or I grew up with. I'm decidedly older than you, so I've maybe seen one more or two elections more. But statesmanship has been redefined, wouldn't you say? Things have gone decidedly less traditional. And I think that not for the better, to tell you the truth, in my opinion. I much preferred the more traditional type where the issues were discussed. There was a degree of decorum.

And I hate to see it head into the gutter the way it has. Yeah, it's very interesting you say that, because I've always been struck by, the civility that you've always brought to your broadcasting, always. And you're like that in private, as you are in public. And it seems to me that the level of discourse, not just in America, we've seen the same thing in the UK, it's got very tribal, very toxic, and completely lacking in the kind of civility that we would both like to see more of. Well, I think you learn more, because when you get into so much of the hyperbole and the

name calling and the analogies. and the rhetoric takes over. That's at the expense of the issues. And, you know, people have always said politics are local. I disagree. I think politics are personal. Maybe people don't want to say that because it seems like they're greedy or they're just egotistical and they care only about how it impacts them.

But at some point, at some level, whether people like to admit it or not, there is that moment where they say, how does this impact me and my family? How does this impact the ability for me to provide for my family to be safe and secure in my home? How does this impact all of that? And I think to do that, you have to really understand what some of the core issues are. And when you get into all of this character assassination and, you know, people talk about, you know, Trump calling people names and things like that. but if you look at what's come back from the other side in this election,

it's been very much the same. And I don't think that advances the ball at all. When I sat down and interviewed Trump for the first time, if you saw any of that, I said, when he was talking about revenge, you saw that I talked to him and said, how does this help? And got him to agree at least. least temporarily, that this doesn't help the country. You getting even with people that you think

have aggressed against you. That doesn't help people put tennis shoes on their children. It doesn't help them feed them or give them lunch money for the next day. It doesn't help fill their car up with gas. They're not interested in that. They're interested in the things that impact them, not you getting even with people, how did it help when people came after you? And he said, well, it didn't. Well, how's it going to help when you come after them? It doesn't. That's bad. And you know, you said that after all this time, I had become, I quit being apolitical. And that's really not true. I knew when I spoke at the Trump rally and everybody would go, oh, oh, there he is. He's gone political. But that was an act of rebellion on my part because

I requested 25 plus times to speak to Kamala Harris and never got so much as a yes, no, maybe, just wouldn't agree to. Really? I'd interview. I asked to speak to her. I asked to speak maybe Robin and I sit down with she and her, asked to have a dinner interview. And there are people that are very close, that I have very close friends in the power structure of the Democratic Party who know me well and said, let me tell you something. He would never disrespect the office of the president or vice president in the United States because he

thinks it's a terrible look internationally. So listen, he is a cross-examiner. He did spend his life in litigation arena. But I promise you, that... This is not an ambush interview that he's going to hammer you. He thinks that's a bad look for the United States to the rest of the world. I can tell you personally, as a friend of yours, as a member of the Democrat Party, and knowing him for 20 or 30 years, I will stake my personal reputation. That will not happen. Please sit down with him.

And, nope, won't do it. And some of the reasons given were we've seen him cross-examine people in criminal cases on his show. We've seen him where he won't move off a question until it's answered. Just absolutely not going to do it. And I said when I gave the speech at the Trump rally, I offered to give the identical speech at a Harris rally. I will cross out Trump's name, write in Harris' name, and give the identical speech at a Harris rally. And the morning after, we got contacted by somebody that we had been talking to in the Harris camp in writing. So I have the text to my producer, Sarah, that said, is he serious?

He'll give that speech at a Harris rally, because if he will, we're interested in him. him coming to the DC rally. And she wrote back, she talked to me, and I said right back and say, absolutely, tell me when and where to be. I will bring a transcript of the speech and give it at a Harris rally. And she answered accordingly, crickets,

never heard another word once they found out I was serious, they never heard another word. What a fascinating sequence of events. What does that say then, Phil, about where you are politically in this race? personally. Well, you know, I said in the talk that I gave there, I said several things. And it was so interesting how some people got so exercised by me giving the speech. I said, I love this country. I'm just not here to endorse Donald Trump. I do not like celebrity endorse

We don't know enough about policies and political dynamics to speak intelligently about it. I'm just willing to admit it. Most are not, but I am. I'm not here to stand up for him. I don't like a lot of what he says or does. And I thought he might be upset after the fact of because I had said that so clearly that I'm not here to endorse him and I don't like a lot of what he says or does. and I'm not here to stand up for him. I'm here to stand up for the people that are voting for him

that are getting bullied, ostracized, criticized, criticized, marginalized, people calling their work, getting fired, just attack so much online and in the real world because I think that's bullying. And I was very clear about that. And I think it's a bad thing. The legacy media, I believe, has sold out and are totally one-sided. And I think that's terrible.

And I was very clear about all of that. And maybe that's why they didn't want me to give the speech when they found out I was dead serious that I would come and do it. I mean, it's so interesting, Phil, because, you know, obviously you're very smart guy. You understand how the media work. I presume you would have known probably how that would play out when you appeared at Madison Square Garden. I was there, actually. And I was only surprised because I hadn't heard you be quite as emphatically pro-Trump as a lot of the other people who were speaking. So I was like, it's curious.

And I heard your speech, and I totally accept that what you were saying was a more bigger picture speech, not an endorsement as such. But were you surprised by the reaction to you being there? Obviously, it became nothing to do with you, but it became a very controversial rally. in many ways. You had the opening guy who was a comedian doing the stupid joke about Puerto Rico, which fell flat in the room, but obviously was ill-advised. Were you surprised by the way people latched on to you being there as if it was an obvious endorsement? Well, look, I'm at a Trump rally. And when I came out, people didn't know I was going to be there. And you were there. you saw there was an enthusiastic reaction to my being there.

And I love New York and I love New Yorkers. They've always been a great market for me and my show over the last 20 plus years. And they gave me a very warm and enthusiastic reception as you saw. And I knew there would be a reaction. And in fact, in part of my presentation, I said, you know, there's this list of celebrities, some of whom you named at the beginning that came out for the other side. And no reaction whatsoever, no backlash, no nothing, nobody did anything, no one attacked them at all. I said, watch what happens tomorrow.

I'm not here to endorse, not standing up for him. don't like a lot of what he says or does, but nonetheless, just me being in this building, watch what happens tomorrow. And it's so predictable. And I think there were between five and 700 hits on digital media plus the legacy media attacking me for being there, but not on the other side. Now, there were also a lot of people that complimented the speech as being a call for unity and to stop the bullying. And I very much appreciate that.

But I predicted exactly what would happen, and that is what happened. And there are people saying, you know, you've let me down. You shoved up there. And I responded to those people with a... message eight. What part of the of the speech did you object to? Was it me saying I love my country? Was it me saying I don't agree with everything he says or does? Was it me saying I don't like bullying or bystander bullying? Was it me saying we're all Americans first and political party participants second? Was it me calling for you to stand up for people when

there being, which part of it did you not like? And either there was no response or, well, let me listen to it a few more times. You make a good point. I mean, people are just so hair triggered right now by all the vitrioles that it's a knee-jerk reaction. It's like fire, aim, it's backwards, you know. It's like, let's let's not aim, shoot, let's just shooting in an end. Had you known, Phil, about the scale of the reaction, would you still have done the rally? 100%.

And I predicted the scale of the reaction. Look, I don't back off of what I said one iota, not one word anywhere. I still say the same thing and I would still go to a Harris rally and say exactly the same thing, 100%. It's really interesting that she doesn't want to have you at her rally saying that exact same thing. Why is that, do you think? I think there's a, I think there's a double standard. And they started out, and what was the word that they used that this was a campaign of joy or whatever the term was, was something very positive. that quickly was abandoned and turned very dark, fascist, Hitler, you know, all of these go negative very quickly. And I think that there's a vulnerability to what they're saying and doing that I think, and it's happening on both sides. I mean, I'm not saying happening just on that side, but they are very vulnerable there, and I don't think they like being called on what they're doing.

It's certainly happening on the Republican side. No question about it. Both sides need to calm down. The polls are so tight in all the swing states. You could almost get any result you care to think of. You could get a narrow Trump win, a narrow Harris win, a landslide Trump win, and a landslide Harris win in the Electoral College, certainly, because it's just too tight to call. My gut feeling has been for a while, and it hasn't changed, that Trump will win and could win quite big. But would I bet my house on it?

No. Yeah. Yeah, it's, you know, there are a lot of signs that both sides point to in terms of, you know, registration, early voting and all of that sort of thing. But I think anybody that says they know what's going to happen, I don't think anybody really knows at this point. There are some indicators, but like I said, I don't get that involved in politics. I don't understand all the dynamics.

You read one article and go, wow, looks like this one's got it in the bag. You look at the next one, they say, oh, no, looks like this one's got it in the bag. So I just hope we have a clear result. So it's over with without controversy, one way or the other. And, you know, at the end of the presentation that I made, you heard me say, whoever is elected president will be my president, and I will support them 100%. If it's Trump, if it's Harris, whoever wins the presidency, that will be my president, and I will support them 100%. Have you decided who you're going to vote for?

I think I have, but I'll never tell. And I think the most important thing, and I hope everybody can say this. Whoever it is, we're all Americans. And once that process runs its course and America picks a president, we're all Americans. We have to get behind that person and support them. It doesn't mean we have to like everything they do or every policy they implement, but they're our president and we have to respect them. You respect the office of the president, even if not the person in that office. You have to respect the office of the president. This is our country.

This is our system. And if that system picks that person for president, then we have to respect and honor that. And the world is watching. I can't. Do people not get it? The world is watching. We have to honor our own system.

Yeah, I completely agree. It's a terrible look for America when, I mean, I remember the scenes on January 6th last time. That kind of thing is awful. for people like me that love America and love Americans, to see Americans storming a capital to try and overthrow the result of an election, I just thought it was so sad to see this toxicity

or reach that level. But it comes to a wider point, Phil, which is that you're a perfect person to ask, because as you say, you've lived through many elections. America has always had a lot of division. If you think back to the 60s and the race riots and the assassination of JFK, of Bobby Kennedy, of Martin Luther King, and so on.

It's not unusual for America to be fractured or divisive. It does seem to me, though, that at a time when statistically, there's probably never been a better time to be alive. You know, people are living longer. They're healthier. There's less abject poverty. The water's cleaner. There are fewer wars than in recorded history and so on.

Almost every metric says this is the time to be alive. And yet, I think, fueled a lot by social media, There's a general feeling, particularly amongst young people, that it's almost apocalyptic, that there's never been a worse time to be alive. The world's about to end. And everything is amplified to an extremity, which is really having quite a corrosive effect on impression or young minds. Do you sense that?

And if so, why is that happening? I do sense it. And I think you answered the question in your question quite eloquently. And I think it is social media. I think it is the internet because, you know, in every generation previously, the ability for information to be disseminated was at a snail's pace. You know, when I started my show originally in 2002, we still referred to, we got mail that came in, guests that wanted people that wanted to be guest on the show we got mail I mean we call it snail mail now but we got mail the first text message had never been sent

when I started the original Dr. Phil show in September of 2002 think about how much has changed since then because about 0809 that's when it's it's like planes flew over the United States and drop these on everybody. They dropped people on everybody. And so people went from going through life like this, looking around to going through life with their head down. And people, young people stopped living their lives and started watching people live their lives

and comparing themselves to what they were seeing on their phones. And at that point, we saw a tremendous spike in depression, anxiety, and loneliness. And it's continued to get worse ever since. So I just fear that we've got kids that aren't really toughened, and they don't get out into the world and observe themselves overcoming obstacles, observe themselves overcoming the challenges of life. And so they're bombarded with all of this information that they don't reality test.

I saw a stat the other day that I can't cite to you, but the general essence of it was that people from 18 to 25 get a significant amount of their news on like TikTok or Instagram. and there's no control over that whatsoever. So they get bombarded with all this information. We used to talk about a 24-hour news cycle. It's not a 60-second news cycle now. I mean, this stuff is coming out. And they treat it like it's like it's the gospel. And only 23% of adults use Twitter.

And 80% of the content is generally. generated by 10% of the people that are on. So if only 23% of people use it and 10% of them generate 80% of the content, you're talking about a very small percentage of people generating this mass amount of content that's influencing people. It's really the tail wagging the dog, Pierce. We don't have reality testing and we're not teaching critical. thinking. We're not teaching people how to say, wait a minute. Does that even seem right?

We're not teaching people to ask questions and challenge these things instead of just taking them and running with them. Another of the speakers at Madison Square Garden was Elon Musk. He's obviously now in charge of X, formerly Twitter. What do you make of what he's doing there and what he's trying to do, which he says is to restore the essence and purity of free speech in America? I think he's headed in the right direction. And I think Mark Zuckerberg, to a lesser extent, is trying to do the right thing. I've been very frustrated because, you know, we deal with cyberbullying a lot and exploiting of young people on these platforms a lot. And my question has been, you know, how can you leave these things up where kids are buying drugs on,

these social media platforms and 100% of them are counterfeit and over 50% of them the DEA now tells me have lethal doses of fentanyl in them. Over half peers have lethal doses. You've got a one in two chance of it killing

you if you buy a drug on social media and I'm saying you know, Zuckerberg how can you people leave these things up on your platforms but they have like what is it?

500 million posts a day or some massive number of posts. And that may not be the right order of magnitude, but it's some massive number. And how can they filter and check all those things? And when they take one down, they just get a new username and pop right back up. So I don't know how you control that. But I do think they're starting to show some,

social consciousness for free speech and controlling toxic content, but they're a long way off from doing it. And the algorithm is very, very toxic. It feeds, we've been studying the algorithm, and it doesn't just throttle content that they don't want you to see. It actually feeds content that upsets teenagers on purpose. purpose because they click more if they're emotionally upset versus looking at a box of puppies, which they have fun looking at for a few minutes, but then they put energy for it.

So the algorithm feeds them content that causes them to be emotionally distressed because it causes them to click more. So more ad money and so the algorithm gets served. But I think Elon Musk is headed in the right direction. And I really think Zuckerberg is trying to go in the right direction. trying to go in the right direction on some of the toxicity as well. But I think it's a beast that's out of control. Yeah, I think you're right for all the reasons you've just said. Phil, whoever wins the election, what do you want to hear from them on inauguration day?

You know, there's no doubt that it's felt like a very, very divisive race, and it feels like America's been on a slight tinderbox now for months. And you've had Trump nearly assassinated twice. I mean, if one of those have been successful, God knows what would have happened in America. It's almost unthinkable. So whoever wins, Trump or Harris, what do you want to hear from them on inauguration day to try and bring America back together? Well, I can tell you exactly what I want to hear, because I've given this some thought. I want to hear them speak to two different groups separately. I want to hear them speak to their followers, their adherents, and say, listen, we need to be gracious winners here.

This isn't a time to be on social media or out among your coworkers or wherever rubbing it in their faces, or gloating, this needs to be a time where you don't want to be doing an end zone dance. This is a time where you need to be extending an olive branch. You need to be saying, look, how can we come together and what can I do to allay your fears, your anxieties? How can we rebuild a relationship that got big? beat up during this campaign because the rhetoric got out of control. And I'm not blaming you.

I'm not blaming me, but it got out of control. But look, we're all Americans. How can we do it? And get back to the fact that we're all Americans. And, of course, they say, yeah, it's easy for you to say, you won. Well, that may be, but I don't know what else to do other than to say that I want us to to come together and tell me how I can help us restore and rebuild our friendship and trust that maybe got a wedge driven between it during that time.

And I hope each candidate will take some time to address that. And then to the people that did not vote for them, they need, I think, to say to them, look, we're going to put together an administration here that has your voices as part of it. And of course they're going to say, I'm everyone's president. I'm not just the president for the people that voted for me. I'm everyone's president. And I'm going to show that by trying to put people on my cabinet and in my administration that represent your point of view and give me a chance.

to meet you somewhere on common ground here and give me a chance to show that I'm not some wild extremist and let me try and be a president you can get behind. I really hope that both of them will do that. And if it's Donald Trump that wins, I hope he says, you know, my focus is on serving you. and not on getting revenge against people that I think have wronged me.

And there are people that have been in his circle that have said, when we win, we're going to get to Department of Justice, and we're coming after every one of you that has done this out of the other. I think he can go a long way by having those people stand down and focus on moving this country forward. and I think there's been a lot of lawfare, and I think they've come after him on some pretty specious claims, maybe some legit, maybe some that aren't.

But I hope that we have a gracious winner, and I hope that the idea of revenge and getting even is pushed to the side, and the American people are pushed to the front. And if I was writing that inaugural address, those would be things that I would really lean into because I think people would say, well, I know what they'll say. They'll say, well, we'll see.

And then I think you've got that first hundred days, everybody marks, to show that with appointments and policies and things that people can measure to see where their heart is. I think that's going to be very important. And that first hundred days could really calm this country down. Dr. Phil, as so often, I find myself nodding away as you speak. You speak so much common sense when a lot of people seem to have completely lost their ability to have common sense.

So thank you very much indeed for coming back on Uncensored. And best luck with your new venture, which is going great guns. I keep reading and seeing stuff about it. It sounds very exciting. Well, it is. And I hope you'll brace us with your press. presence very, very soon on Merritt TV, because we'd love to have you. I would love to do that. Consider that done, Phil. Lovely to talk to you.

All right. Thanks so much, Pierce. Cheers. All the best.