Piers Morgan Uncensored - Elon's Salute, Woke Bishop & Jan 6 Pardons - Feat Riley Gaines, Clay Travis & Dave Smith

Episode Date: January 22, 2025

Donald Trump has begun his work in his second term as US President with a palpable urgency, and the global news cycle has spun up to match him. Many contentious incidents have occurred during Trump’s short tenure; such Elon Musk controversial salute, a sermon-turned-lecture from Bishop Mariann Budde, and a broad slew of pardons for January 6th rioters, even ones who violently attacked police officers. Is this what his MAGA supporters voted for? To discuss these issues further, Piers Morgan has assembled a cavalcade of contributors. Founder of Outkick Clay Travis, host of the 'Part of the Problem' podcast Dave Smith, former MAGA supporter turned Democrat Ally Sammarco, host of the 'Bulwark' podcast Tim Miller, host of 'Gaines for Girls' podcast Riley Gaines and president of Samaritan’s Purse Reverend Franklin Graham all have their say, before filmmaker Justine Bateman joins Uncensored to talk about the LA wildfires and why she still thinks Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are 'disaster tourists'. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Constant invoking of the Nazis is just stupid. It just seems to me slightly perverse that a Republican party would be comfortable with people who attacked police officers at the Capitol. Donald Trump pardoning people that tased police officers. It's like, this is supposed to be a patriotic pro-police, pro-Christian party. Do you feel uncomfortable about that?

I don't. Kamala raised money to bail out the people who were burning down Minneapolis. Ross Ulbrick, who was given two life sentences plus 40 years, served nearly 11 years in prison for creating a website. I thought it was a skit. Trump's EO that he signed. It merely just defined male and female.

I would love to ask this bishop, okay, if there are more than what are they? It's clearly a political speech, but you present it as if you're transcending above politics, and it's just about morality where... But obviously it's not. It's not. I don't know. There's something about it that I find disgusting.

The first hundred days of a presidency have held a special significance in U.S. politics ever since Franklin Roosevelt wielded his economic sledgehammer to fight the Great Depression. After President Trump's opening day blitz, we might be in future talking about the first hundred hours. And for voters of a MAGA persuasion at least, a very different kind of depression is now lifting very fast. DEI is dead. There are two genders, male and female. and you don't get to choose. The big, beautiful, border wall is back,

and the military will be deployed as part of an emergency response that could see mass raids and the end of birthright citizenship. China is on notice for a tidal wave of tariffs, and January 6th, the fixation of Trump critics for the past four years has essentially been scrubbed from the record,

with 1,500 defendants having now been pardoned. As the president says, it's a big one. I want to explain about this? We hope they get them. They come out tonight, frankly. Democrats are outraged, and in some cases, they may have a point. But their moral high ground is looking decidedly wobbly right now after being hit with a parting torpedo from Joe Biden,

his last-minute acts of clemency, including the cop killer, among other murderers, alongside sweeping pardons for the January 6th committee, Dr Fauci and, yes, pretty much his entire family. So not everyone is happy with Trump's MAGA shock therapy. He's already facing legal challenges and savage criticism from his political opponents, The president would have been expecting that.

He probably didn't expect it during his inaugural prayer service. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and independent families, some who fear for their lives. Well, the inaugural sermon for the 47th president brought to you apparently by Elizabeth Warren. As much to debate with today's panel.

Joining me now, our founder of Outkick, Clay Travis, host of Part of the Problem podcast, Dave Smith, the former MAGA supporter turned Democrat Ali Samarko, and joining us shortly the host of the Ballwork podcast, Tim Miller. Well, okay, Clay Travis, let me just start with you with the Nazi salute as it's being billed. I want to show a little, well, first of all, what it was that sparked this whole debate, which is Elon Musk doing his, from my heart to you, salute. Let's take a look. This one really mattered.

And I just want to say thank you for making it happen. Thank you. And he repeated that a couple of times. I then want to show a mash-up of how the liberal world has, with entire predictability, responded to this. Let's take a look. Throwing something that looks like what is politely called the Roman salute. And maybe this is not what he meant,

when he did it. Who among us knows what is in the hearts of men? But the Roman salute is a thing. And that is what it looks like Elon Musk was doing, which added a nice blood-curdling chill to the day for many people today. He does it twice. I still am not rocking with anyone sympathetic to Nazis. If you're cool and want to defend the Sig hails and the Nazi salutes, All the, you know, whatever you want to do, that's on you. I'm on the opposite side of that. I'm not with the Nazis.

Clay Travis, I mean, I have spent the last eight years trying to help my liberal friends to avoid playing the Nazi Hitler card at every opportunity. The one person who seems completely impervious to this is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who literally can't go 10 minutes without calling Trump or his supporters, Nazis. And she's at it again.

She's quite clear. Elon Musk was doing a Hitler salute. I see Kyle. He's a Nazi. And she wants everyone to know. I'm not part of this lot. To me, it's pathetic. I mean, I tweeted,

and it's had about 10 million people have viewed that post I did, which shows the response to this. But I said, look, it was ill-advised of Musk to do it like that. Let's just all agree. He probably won't do it like that again. but he certainly didn't intend to do a Nazi salute.

He made it clear it was from my heart to you. That's what he was doing. He said it. What do we make of the fallout from this? Are we right back to 2016, post-Trump victory, just endless liberal. You're all Nazis hysteria? It's a good question.

Thanks for having me on, Pierce. Let me start with this. I think probably the best people who would judge whether there are Nazi tendencies or Nazi values emblazoned or embodied in a party would be the people of Israel, Pierce. And I just came back from Jerusalem. I went all over Israel to the border with Lebanon, to the cabotses right up against Gaza. Can hear the bombs going off. I was just there. Do you know that if Israel were able to vote in the United States presidential race, based on the polling there, it would have voted like West Virginia and Wyoming, 70-30 for Trump.

Now, I don't know for sure, but I tend to think Adolf Hitler himself would poll worse than that in Israel. In other words, Pierce, the actual Jewish people fighting for their survival in Israel love Trump as much as the most Trumpian red states in the United States. That is important because this attack just failed. time after time after time. And I think it's actually emblematic of why the Democrat Party lost to Trump and why nobody's watching MSNBC and CNN because their narratives are tired and old. And for AOC, for Rachel Maddow, for those clips that you played Pierce, I would love to have seen the same vociferous acknowledgement and analysis of all the stupid college kids that we saw on campuses in the spring of last year, who were actually advocating for legitimate Nazi policies.

They weren't worried about an awkward hand gesture and how we analyze it. We were actually having young, highly educated kids on college campuses that were, in fact, embracing many of the ideals of anti-Semitism. And I would just point out the reason that Tim Walz, in my opinion, was the nominee, was because Josh Shapiro had a big, bad problem that connected in an awful way with the modern-day Democrat Party base. Do you know what it was? He was Jewish, because otherwise, I think he would have been the pick, and he would have been a far better VP pick than Tim Walls was. I think it's actually the Democrat Party that has an issue with anti-Semitism now, not the Republican Party at all. This is desperate. It doesn't land. It's a failure. Well, what is incredible is that the

defamation Lee actually defended us. It was an awkward gesture to which AOC wouldn't even accept that from them. She said, no, no, no, just to be clear, you're defending a Heil Hitler salute that was performed and repeated for emphasis and clarity. People can officially stop listening to you as any sort of reputable source of information now. You work for them. Thank you for making that crystal clear. In other words, the anti-deformation league now worked for the Nazis. extraordinary stuff from AOC. He seems to have gone even by her standards, bonkers. We've been joined, Tim Miller's with us now.

Tim, great to have you back on Uncensoreded. I just watched this happen. I watched the immediate reaction. I thought, here we go. Here we go. We're back into the Nazis. Is there no way of American political discourse, led by the Democrats, I have to say,

is there no way of just moving past Nazis and Hitler? Can we not just all agree that it's a ridiculous and fatuous thing to keep playing out as a narrative and doesn't work? Hence Trump's big win, despite everyone on the left calling him a Nazi. Thoughts? Yeah, I think, yeah, we'll start with one area of agreement, actually, that I have with you and Clay, which is different for me lately, which is I agree that it is, I don't think, a good strategy. The fact that you guys are talking about it shows that it's not a great strategy. if they were doing some very effective messaging, I kind of think that Clay would probably be ignoring it.

So I agree. I think Elon's kind of a weird guy that was doing kind of an awkward gesture. I think we could all admit it was kind of awkward, but he does a lot of kind of awkward things. If I was the Democrats, here's what I'd be focused on when it comes to Elon Musk. This man is the largest government contractor, the largest recipient of government money.

He was the largest donor to Donald Trump's campaign. He is the owner of a community. communications platform, and he will have an office inside the White House. I mean, there was mass outrage on the right about the fact that some people in the Biden administration were emailing Facebook and Twitter people recommending the content be taken down. I don't think that that was very smart. I think that was bad policy by the Biden administration. But, you know, it was kind of mid-level bureaucratic stuff. I don't think it was really limiting people's free speech, all that much. Now, I don't understand how you can be upset about that, but then be okay about the owner of a

communications platform, having an office in the White House, having a security clearance, and being able to put the thumb on the skill of his algorithm to promote what is happening out of this administration. We can all agree if you just go on the Twitter or the X4U page, It's like Elon Musk Propaganda Central. So now we have an officer of the American government controlling a communications platform. I would think that people who are concerned about speech and free and open dialogue in this country would be astonished by that. In addition to the potential corruption, if you're an Elon competitor, what must you be thinking right now if you're a competitor of SpaceX or competitor of Tesla, which receive billions of dollars for the government? and the owner of that company is now going to have control over a government efficiency program

where he gets to choose where money goes. The corruption here is astonishing. It would be like if George Soros had an office off of the West Wing when Joe Biden was president. It's insane. So if I was the Democrats, I'd be focused on that level of corruption and not his awkward hand gesture. Well, it's very interesting what you just said. I'll bring Dave Smith in because I've got to say, A, it's good to hear someone on the left admit that this Nazi stuff is bullshit.

I just think it is and it's just stupid. And also, I just feel I'm not Jewish, but if I was, I would be so endlessly offended, deeply, mortally offended that people keep trying to draw an equivalence between Donald Trump and the Republicans and the Nazis. I just think it's ridiculous. Anyway, first your thoughts on that.

But secondly, interesting point I thought there from Tim, which is, yeah, you can... I didn't actually agree with your first... part, Tim, about Facebook and stuff. I think they did have a pretty insidious impact on things like suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story, the New York Post getting locked out of social media for the last two weeks of that last election and so on. I think that was very wrong. However, I do think you make a very interesting comparative point. And Dave, I'm interested in what your take is on this. First, Nazi gate. But secondly, the point Tim makes about Elon Musk getting an office

in the West Wing and comparing that to... to the influence perhaps the Facebook had last time, Rad? Yeah, yeah. Okay, so, well, there's some that I agree with a lot. I don't. So I would be in agreement that I think even if you want to make the argument somehow that, like, Elon Musk was, this was a dog whistle. He's a secret Nazi, and he chose this as his moment to, like, subliminally come out as a

Nazi, and that was the message somehow. The fact is, Pierce, as you addressed at the top of the show, the Democrats have just gone to this well far too many times and nobody's listening anymore. So even if this was the real case, which I don't think it is, I think he's just a somewhat awkward kind of herky-jurkey guy in these moments. But even if this was the case, I'm sorry, you just build Donald Trump's rally as a Nazi rally because it was in Madison Square Garden. And that was the only connection that you had. So it's just boy who cried wolf. And I will say, you know, I am Jewish. I don't think it matters that I'm Jewish and you or not. I think we can all have an opinion.

opinion on this. But I think that the constant comparisons to Hitler and the constant invoking of the Nazis is just stupid. And I'll put the blame initially, I really think it's the neo-conservatives who first really put this into the popular lexicon where every single enemy that they wanted a regime change against was always the next Hitler. Saddam Hussein's the next Hitler, Bashar al-Assad, Omar Gaddafi, whoever it is, they're the next Hitler. And it's always just so ridiculous. And I've heard from a lot of the hardcore Israel supporters that Hamas are Nazis. The comparisons are ridiculous. And we don't need to pretend that this very—I'm sorry, I'm not hearing you if you're trying

to interrupt me, but let me just finish my point. That I think that the Nazis were a unique evil, and to call everybody Nazis just, it does just make the term lose value. Now, I would say that to definitely the amount of censorship that we saw. under the Biden regime, and even before Joe Biden came in, I think is just not fair. I mean, listen, as somebody who was adamantly opposed to lockdowns and vaccine mandates during COVID, the censorship was very widespread. And many people had their lives and livelihoods ruined simply for speaking up about government

policies that, by the way, they turned out to be right about. And all the people saying follow the science turned out to be wrong about quite a bit of the science. I would also say that it's interesting to me that Democrats always seem to get concerned with the concentration of power as soon as they're out of power. And it's kind of wild to see that the party of George Soros and banker bailouts and all types of just corrupt concentrated power now have an issue with this. I think there's always a concern. This is the way the American political system is set up. And yes, there is a concern with powerful private interests wielding government influence.

but I also would not equate the government getting in the business of censoring the American people with someone like Elon Musk who at least his promise with Twitter has been that it's going to be a free speech platform. And I think he's moved more in that direction. And so they're not the same thing at all. Like I don't have the same problem with a tech executive being in the White House who's going to protect free speech than I do with the government instructing tech executives to censor speech. Okay. Tim, you were trying to speak there. I'm not quite sure what happened because we couldn't hear you. So let's bring you in to respond just quickly before I go to Ali.

Yeah, just, sorry, very quick, just two quick things. One, I just, Bashar al-Assad and Hamas are pretty, are Hitler-esque, I would say, certainly more than Elon Musk. I was just trying to object to Dave's point that it was like the neo-conservatives comparing Bashar al-Assad and Hamas to Hitler. I mean, there were some comparisons there. So I was just going to say that. But look, just to the last point. We'd all be speaking. This is how the American system works.

We could all be speaking Arabic if we hadn't overthrown Bashar al-Assad. Okay. Well, we weren't all speaking in German either. But the thing about Musk, this idea that's how the American system works, that is wild. Please tell me and show me an example of this. The largest donor is the largest government contractor is now in the West Wing. That is insane. That is not how the American system works.

And I guess if you go back to the Gilded Age Rockefellers, but like the idea that, that one of the richest men in the world who also gets money from the government is now going to be deciding how the government spends money, that is not how the government. That is not how the American system works. It is the, obviously, they've only been in two days, so we'll see. But the potential for corruption and influence there is unprecedented in post-war American history. And then on top of that, to say that he has a platform, and maybe you're saying it's free speech because he's not banning people, though I think he was taking away some people's blue checks. But his platform has an algorithm where he promotes certain things. So if you're on the

4U page, you get promoted pro-Musk, pro-Trump stuff. So somebody having that kind of concentrated power in the government, please show me an example of anything even remotely close to this in the modern times. I want to be fair. I want to bring you now to you. I will say the word. I'd be waiting very patiently. I will bring you all the guys back in on this. It's a really interesting debate, I think, about Elon and his power. Ali, first of all, your view of Nazi gate. Yeah. No, I tend to agree with Tim here. I don't really know what happened there. I think it was pretty bizarre hand gesture, but ultimately, I'm not in the business of giving Elon the benefit of the doubt necessarily, but I think there's a lot more we can criticize him on and the Trump

administration on and we should focus our efforts there. But no, like Tim said, I think it's unprecedented to have this level of money and power in support of this administration and have access to this administration. You have CEOs of major media companies, X, Meta, Apple, Google, you know, and we've never seen this before. Just a few years ago, the right was complaining about Mark Zuckerberg and Zuckbucks and how they were funding the Democratic campaigns and now all of a sudden he's their best friend. So I think there is a level of hypocrisy there

that they are in support of this now and they weren't just a few years ago when Joe Biden was in office and we weren't even close to this level of power and money behind the scenes. Okay, Clay, what's your view of Elon? Elon Musk is now everywhere. It's kind of omnipotent.

He seems to be almost attached to Trump's side. Are you concerned about that? A lot of the diehard MAGA crowd are pretty concerned about this. They don't even think he's a real conservative. They think he's somebody who used to be on the left, who's come in for perhaps financial expediency, that he's making tons of money out of this relationship with Trump. I don't think he's as simple as that,

but do you have the same concerns about Musk here? I don't, but primarily because I don't even think Elon Musk has necessarily a Republican, constituency here because remember Elon Musk voted for Joe Biden against Donald Trump in 2020 publicly. He said that. And Elon and Trump really didn't get along very well at all. If I remember correctly, Elon withdrew from one of the blue ribbon panels of CEOs that Trump had put him on in the first Trump regime. And look, if Elon is advocating in some way, for his companies. I'm not even sure that that's a bad thing.

That's his job. And let's think about this. He's actually better at sending rockets to space than NASA is. I mean, let's just focus on this for a moment. We're talking about the most successful entrepreneur, maybe in the history of the world. He was a darling of the left not very long ago because he had the radical idea,

hey, we've got to take fossil fuels out of the way that we propel vehicles, I'm going to redesign an entire method by which we move vehicles, and we're going to do it on the electric grid, which is a seismic, unbelievable success story. Like I said, he's better at sending rockets to space now than NASA. They had a 70-year head start on him. We can't even get our astronauts off of the International Space Station right now because we don't have the competence. We can't even go back to the moon right now because we don't have the competence at NASA.

Meanwhile, Elon is landing reusable rocket ships and he's again caught up and passed NASA after 70 years. And here is the larger reality. I think motivation matters. You talk about X and what he wanted to do. Elon's goal, I really believe this, is to make mankind multi-planetary. He wants to send us to Mars. that speech, you saw the meme that went viral of Elon losing his mind when Trump said,

hey, we're going to put a man on Mars. I think Elon wants to go to Mars and probably end his life there one day in the future. So I'm not concerned about Elon Musk trying to be some sort of dictator or emperor or whisperer into Trump's ear to destroy the fabric of American democracy. Because I think what this guy wants when you look at vehicles, when you look at spaceships, when you look at why he bought Twitter, they're all aligned with the goal of ensuring that we're multi-planetary because he's worried about mankind being wiped out. And by the way, all of his actions, that's why he's got 11 kids because the global population is collapsing. So I am not concerned about Elon's motivations right now because I think his motivations are not to make sure that

Democrats suddenly have less success in the political arena. If Democrats would line up with Elon Musk and say, hey, you know what, we support free speech. We're not going to try to shut people down. Hey, we also are in the opinion. I'd love to hear from the left on this panel. You talk about, like, kind of misguided notions. There's only one Democrat in Congress right now that will say men shouldn't compete in women's sports.

Elon Musk is far from the issue for Democrats right now. It's that they're trying to sell something to the American public. Well, we're going to get to that whole, yeah, we're going to get to the whole gender thing. I first of all want to touch on this whole pardon situation, Tim, because it seems to me that if it wasn't for Joe Biden, you guys on the left could run riot about, literally, about the January 6th rioters. And you could say, hang on a second,

this is an outrage. And the reason is because many people on the right, including Jenny Vance, very publicly said, the people who committed violent acts that day shouldn't be pardoned, and they've all been pardoned. The problem you've got is that at least they, all were in prison having been convicted of crimes at the time they got their pardon. But your guy, I'm not saying your guy, the current Democrat president of two days ago,

but now no longer Joe Biden, has preemptively pardoned so many people, including half his family, so that they can never ever be in a court of law over any potential crimes and so on. So it seems to me that by doing that, what Biden's done, he's just completely, the argument on the left about the January 6th rioters who've been pardoned. Discuss. Yeah. Yeah, I'm happy to talk about that. I just want to do one sentence if you don't mind on just something that Clay said, because

I just, it raised my eyebrows for anybody that cares about a free market economy, which is what I think people on the right at least used to believe in this country, that he would say it does not bother him that somebody with immense power who is a government employee now. would be looking out for the interests of his private company inside the White House. Like, that's Russia. That's kleptocracy. Like, we have a free market. We shouldn't have the CEO of one car company.

His private company is more successful than our public tax dollars are with NASA. That's SpaceX is way better than NASA. I agree with you. I want SpaceX to be better. I agree with you. Congrats. I agree with you. But there's Blue Origin.

Tesla has many competitors that are American companies with American. with American workers that work for those companies? I just, it's insane to me that we think it'd be okay for a CEO of a company to be inside the White House advocating for his company's private interest when there are other American companies that should have equal playing field and a free market. To bring the Elon debate to an end,

I think the reality, and Clay won't admit this, I wouldn't expect him to, but if this was the other way around and you have Martin Zuckerberg suddenly popping up in the Biden administration with an office next to Biden, I think on the right, all hell would break loose. I do.

So I do think there's a slight light. We're not comfortable about this, but we don't really want to say it. Now, I'm not going to speak for Clay. But I do want to move on to January 6th. Thank you, Pierce. January 6th, parents. Let's discuss that. Yeah, good news.

I got good news. I don't wear a Democratic team jersey. I'm on the left, I guess, in the sense that I don't like Donald Trump. And I think that he's corrupt. I think his administration is going to be a disaster. But it's very easy for me to say that Joe Biden's pardons were absolutely disgraceful. And I don't think that Joe Biden's really, frankly, disgraceful behavior over the last year, basically, does anything to alibi Donald Trump's appalling pardons. Like Joe Biden doing a favor for his brother sucks.

That is bad. But we can rank, we can judge two bad things against each other and decide what is worse. Donald Trump pardoning people that tased police officers. Donald Trump pardoned a man, Enrique Tario, that burned flags and started an arson and had a group of people that stowed people outside of a black church. So, like, this is supposed to be a patriotic pro-police, pro-Christian party. And immediately the first thing you do is pardon people that did an arson outside of black church that tased police officers that stormed the Capitol. Have you seen the picture of Sergeant Achilles Gennel's body, like what happened to his feet and hands because of the way that these people attacked them? The actual person that tased Michael Phanone, that person got pardoned.

It is just insane and appalling that Donald Trump did that. And the fact that not a single person in the supposed black-the-blue party, I guess that's not true. I think Tom Tillis might have. But the fact that you have to maybe come up with one person that said this is wrong. I just, I don't know. I don't know actually how you kind of sleep at night. Okay. If you're a back to blue person and you're like,

we're going to let somebody out of prison that tased police officers. Well, I mean, Dave Smith, if you look at the list of people that Biden's pardoned, they include murderers, very controversial, cop killers and others. There is a direct parallel there. They've also preemptively pardoned Dr. Fauci, interestingly, going back to 2014, which means it doesn't just cover the immediate period of the pandemic. It goes back to potentially when he may or may not have been doing stuff he shouldn't have been doing in relation to work on these kind of viruses. So it's a very all-encompassing preemptive pardon.

And it's that preemptive nature of it, which Biden himself was on record as saying he'd never do, which I think has been particularly problematic for him. But in relation to Trump's pardoning, J.D. Vance said clearly that there should be a difference. Those who were violent against police officers should not be pardoned. And those who were not violent, many of them did get, it seemed to me, got very lengthy sentences. They should be pardoned. And that's what Trump has done. But he went further. He went and pardoned the violent ones too.

So he went against what his own party, senior members, his own vice president wanted him to do. So what do you feel about all this? Well, I mean, my perspective on this, because I am a radical libertarian, and I do believe in laissez-faire free market economy, which we do not live under. But I think it's interesting that people almost have this kind of like police state mentality, where as we're asked here, how can you sleep at night, knowing that there are some violent, you know, crew who I don't know, I guess only did a few years in brutal conditions and are not going to continue to be a lot. in prison. And yet, personally, I subscribe to kind of the classical liberal idea of like, better 100 guilty men room free than one innocent person is put in jail. And so my focus, my, how do you sleep at night, is much more about the nonviolent people who were so brutally, essentially tortured by the state. By the way, one other one, which is very close to my heart, is that Donald Trump

just pardoned Ross Ulbrick, who was given two life sentences plus. 40 years, served nearly 11 years in prison for creating a website. I mean, it was essentially the same logic as if you were to throw Zuckerberg in jail because two people on Facebook messaged about doing something illegal together on his site. I mean, and to me, how do you sleep at night knowing that that's what our society does? That our society, could you imagine Pierce ever justifying a double life sentence plus 40 years for anything short of like a heinous, brutal, violent crime. No, listen, on that, on that, I totally agree with you.

But on the point about the violent offenders on January 6th, it is slightly perverse. And I'll come to Clay on this, actually. It just seems to me slightly perverse that a Republican Party would be comfortable with people who attacked police officers at the Capitol, the very heartland of American democracy, that they attacked them and were convicted of attacking police officers

and that they have also been part of. as if that crime never happened. Do you feel uncomfortable about that? I don't. And let me explain why. I've been making this argument, and I was on the fringe making this argument for years. What has happened here is we've kind of lost sight to me at what a pardon is intended to do

and also what a commutation is intended to do. What Joe Biden did, and I'm going to circle back to Trump, what Joe Biden did, I think is actually unconstitutional. because as you said, Pierce, he has preemptively pardoned Dr. Fauci and five of his family members for things that they haven't ever been charged with so far. He's just basically given them a get-out-of-jail-free card. Not only that, but you can never even be accused of having done anything that might justify you being in jail. I said, and I don't have a problem with it, I've got three sons. If I were Joe Biden and Hunter Biden, my son had been convicted of felonies,

and he was potentially going to go to prison as he was. And as part of that, I believe that he was being prosecuted to a certain extent because of my political background, I would pardon my own sons. I went on, I don't have a problem with that. I expected him to do it. My issue there is he lied and said he wouldn't do it when I think a lot of dads and moms out there said, of course he's going to do this, right? But Hunter Biden was tried and convicted.

That's what a pardon's for. his five brothers and sisters and Fauci, preemptively, that shouldn't happen. Now, on the Trump side, I don't have a problem with it at all because these individuals were all convicted, many of them had already begun to serve sentences. They were prosecuted politically in a way that did not occur for all of the BLM protesters that were burning down police stations, that were engaging in violent acts. Well, many people involved in those did actually get convicted of crime. was that led to violence differently. And so Trump is now saying, well, they've served their time.

I think they have been punished beyond what they would have been punished if this hadn't been a capital riot. If it had been a riot that was going on in Washington, D.C. four months, as we saw with BLM. And in one fell swoop, rather than get into the intricacy and the nuance and say, hey, this guy's going to be treated differently. He just said, I'm putting this behind us. this is no longer going to be the argument that this is a worse day than Pearl Harbor, January 6th, or that this was the most dastardly an awful day for the Republic since the Civil War. We're putting this all behind us. One more thing.

I wish Biden had pardoned Trump. If I were advising him, I would have said to do it because if he cares about his legacy, Biden could have done this and just wiped the slate clean once and for all and said, you know what this whole lawfare era is awful. We shouldn't do it. That's what I would have encouraged. I think that's a good point. I want to treat like situations and a like that.

I think that's a good point. Ali, briefly, your view of the pardon situation? Yeah, I mean, look, I think the GOP has positioned itself for a long time as the pro-police anti-crime party, and then they have made a million excuses for what happened on January 6th and whitewashed and gas-lighted all of America, essentially, about that day. And anyone who was watching that day knows how, how, how, violent it was and how scary it was to watch people break into the Capitol building.

So, you know, now that they're okay with these people back on the streets facing little to no consequences for their actions, I think it's disgraceful. And if these insurrectionists were, again, like he said, BLM, I think they would not have even considered pardons for them. So it's suffice to say that I don't think that the GOP today has steady more. Yeah, many of them did. And I think it's surprised to say that they're steady. when it comes to crime. But we already knew that because they endorsed. Kamala bailed them out. Kamala raised, hold on. Kamala raised money to bail out the people who were burning down Minneapolis. The tweet is still up. And if Trump had raised money to bail out people before they even got charged

with anything, the comparison to the damage done by BLM and the January 6th is seismic, right? There were tens of billions of dollars in damages during the months-long BLM protest. test. Fauci, who just got a pardon. People couldn't even say goodbye to their grandmas and grandpas in hospitals. They had to record videos and nurses were holding it for them. Meanwhile, Fauci comes out and says, well, hundreds of thousands of people can go march in the streets because this, this is more important than wearing a mask and be concerned about COVID. This was when a lot of people started looking around and saying, this is fundamentally broken. And so these guys have all, again, a pardon. You can argue it should have been a commutation, could have been a pardon. Most of these guys,

the 1500 plus and gals, have all been punished already. And if you look, this is important, in Washington, D.C., half of all felony charges are dropped and lowered to misdemeanors. They basically don't put violent criminals in jail in Joe Biden's administration unless you were involved in the January 6th riot. So they're not, they weren't treated equally under justice. This was a political prosecution. People that stab cops and Taze cops and Barryma's cops in D.C. get misdemeanors. I would like to see the evidence of that. I just don't understand. If you're so cool with this, if you're just like, whatever, it's no big deal. Let's wipe the

slate clean. Why don't we wipe the slate clean and let out all of the BLM rioters who attacked cops, too? Let everybody out. It was unfair, was politicized. I don't think hardly any of them were actually put in prison. You can't decide on a case by case. But if, if, I'll say this. Yes, of course they were. If. Of course they were. Google it, Clay. Of course they were. People that attacked, please go to prison.

They prosecuted thousands of people. Hold on. If there are, I'll follow up. If there are BLM protesters who were put in prison and are still there because of the actions that they undertook, hold on, the actions that they undertook and they were prosecuted far more so than somebody who was accused of carjacking or someone who was accused. of a robbery that was not politically related, I would also support them being released from prison because if they were treated unfairly relative

to the standard of the law, to me that is an injustice. We have to treat like crimes in a like manner, regardless of race, gender, politics, ethnicity, or anything else. If we're not doing that, then I think we have a banana kangaroo republic. And to me, that is what, to a large extent, Washington, D.C., justice has.

has become justice in quotation marks. Okay, listen. I just don't think you have any evidence that people that attack cops were let off easy. I just, again, there might be other people. There might have been single cases. Here's what we should do. We should all agree. I've given cases of a man that tased a cop.

Yeah, I don't think anyone that committed. And he's being led off. I agree. Listen, Tim, I agree with you. We're in a rare place today. I'm finding myself nodding away to all of what you're saying. I just think that J.D. Vance was right. And if I was Donald Trump, I would not have pardoned the ones who attack police officers.

because it goes against everything Trump believes about, you know, the police and law and order and all the rest of it. It's kind of disrespectful to the police. He's going to want to listen to his president. It's a brave new world, tears. We should have tea after this. I'll get you tea. It has to be Yorkshire Gold, just for the record,

and you need five bags and apart. You're going to draw the line at tea. Come on at least cough. You have to put the milk in the cup first, otherwise it doesn't work. I want to bring in Riley Gaines now to join the panel, host of course, of Gaines for Girls on Outkick. And Riley, great to see you back on on Centson. Always good to have you.

I want to start by playing a clip of this extraordinary moment in the Washington National Cathedral yesterday where Bishop Marianne Edgar Buddy, who was officiating, decided to suddenly turn it into a political rally. Let's take a listen. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country. We're scared now. There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in democratic, Republican and independent families, some who fear for their lives. Well, Trump has responded. He took a while. His first response was kind of didn't really say very much,

he was asked by the media. And then he said the so-called bishop who spoke at the National Prayer Service on Tuesday morning was a radical left hardline Trump hater. She brought her church into the world of politics in a very ungracious way. She was nasty in tone and not compelling or smart. She failed to mention a large number of illegal migrants that came into our country and killed people. Many were deposited from jails and mental institutions.

It's a giant crime wave that's taking part in the USA. Apart from her inappropriate statements, the service was a very boring and uninspiring one. She's not very good as her job. She and her church owe the public an apology. So I would say a fairly predictable response from President Trump, Riley. But I've got to say, I was pretty staggered

that at such a moment when you got a new president, whoever it is, for the bishop to suddenly launch into what was very clearly a pretty partisan political speech, which brought very little relation to the fact that all Trump had said was there were two genders, male and female, that's it. That doesn't seem to me to be leading directly to young kids all over America fearing for their lives. And if I missed something.

No, no. And before I even answer that, Trump put out that tweet at about midnight. So the 12 a.m. mean tweets are back in full effect. I know. I know. Yeah. When I first saw this video, I saw it in the same format that you just showed. It looked like a stitch almost, like one side and one side. And I thought it was a skit until I realized, of course, that it wasn't. As you mentioned, Trump's EO that he signed, which I would imagine, this is why this bishop went into to this. parade in the way that she did, it merely just defined male and female

and indicated those are the only two sexes that exist. I would love to ask this bishop, okay, if there are more than what are they? I know you've had Harry Sisson on this show. I love that clip of you peers asking him, what are, you know, you say there are more than two genders, what are the other genders? And of course, there's never an answer.

So it's wild to me that we live in this time where we have to applaud such. such decisive and executive action. Truthfully, I don't want to because it's like we're applauding someone for saying that the sky is blue. But nonetheless, that is the point of decay that we have reached as a society.

So it's a big victory. And it's certainly worth celebrating. And I think this female bishop is just your classic progressive pastor, quick to speak of God's grace, but hesitant to condemn sin. And so preaching half of the truth isn't preaching the gospel at all.

Yeah, I mean, Dave Smith, I just found it extraordinary that she went to go to DefCon 3. There are children all over America fearing for their lives, simply because Donald Trump said there's male and female out there. That's it. That's how we're now going to deal with this issue. That's how people are going to be referred to. How does that lead? Where's the correlation to a load of American kids terrified for their lives?

Well, I mean, look, and I just think this represents so much of what we've had to deal with insane wokeism over the last decade at least and what has just been rejected by the American people. And you nailed it, Pierce, right? It's that it's, this is clearly a political speech. This is how the woke like do it, right? It's clearly a political speech, but you present it as if you're transcending above politics. And it's just about morality where, but obviously it's not. And look, the two major political issues that she was hitting on, number one, I mean, I completely agree with Riley on this. And if humanity survives for another 50 years, when historians write books about this time period, it will just be about the mass psychosis and how madness just swept,

you know, culture. And this stuff is just so, it's so ridiculous. And again, like the example of you asking that kid, how many genders there are. Nobody can answer the most simple questions when it comes to the trans thing. Like the most basic one of like, why can't I identify as a horse? Yeah. If objective biology doesn't exist anymore. No, I've been. I've actually been on this. I identified on International Women's Day. You can. Several years ago, I identified as a...

Go for it, Dave. Well, I can go better. I can go better. I identified as a... Can I also... Okay. Well, Dave, the point I was going to make was on International Women's Day a couple of years ago,

I identified on a show as a black lesbian. Because, frankly, if self-identity is limitless, why can't I? Exactly. And let me just... By the way, to your point of your response of, like, I can identify as a horse... Yes, okay, I can. And the correct reaction to that should be for everyone else.

You're an insane person. You're not a horse. And you're also a person, a human being. Not a horse. Just for the record. But anyway, and then with the whole, this whole like weaponized empathy about, you know, immigration. I mean, look, Pierce, I'm sure you've seen some of the most recent polls.

Americans agree by supermajorities that they reject the de facto open borders of the Biden administration. And so to make this political speech, while the guy, which is against the politics of the guy who just got elected, and also against what has been, wokeism and open borders have been rejected by super majorities of the American people. And so to make this speech in this moment was just totally inappropriate and just, I don't know, there's something about it that I find disgusting. This thing where you just hide behind like,

there are people who are afraid and the trans kids are afraid. Yeah, you know what? There are other people who are afraid that these progressive maniacs are going to propagandize their children more with this gender nonsense. And I'm a little bit more concerned for those people. So we've had an election, we've had national debates about this. That stuff has been rejected, again, by super majorities of the American people. It has. Ali, what are your thoughts on this?

I really did think it was hit completely the wrong mark. She may feel all these things. But to just start, I mean, it seemed to me the biggest problem the Democrats had in the last four years, culminating in the terrible beating they got in the election was that they kept scolding the American people. Constant scolding. Culminating in Barack Obama, scolding other black Americans.

If you don't vote for Kamala because she's black effectively, then you're betraying black people. It's this constant, self-righteous, high moral scolding. And they took a terrible drubbing in the election, Trump's back with a bang, and rather be clever and move on and evolve as a party, and work out how to find the next Bill Clinton or someone like it who can actually take this head on and be a proper opponent.

It seemed to me they've learned nothing. Say you, you're a Democrat now. Did you enjoy what that bishop was saying? Did you not think like I did? Wow. Have you not got the memo that people are fed up with this stuff? Okay, let me start off by saying the slippery slope argument is not a real argument of, oh, people are going to start identifying as horses.

That is reminiscent of... The gay marriage era, that is what you said. The gay marriage era where people said people were going to start marrying their pets. It's ridiculous. It's a logical. Listen, it's not, again, just to not straw man made. I'm making a logical analogy. I'm not equating the two things.

And I'm not saying that transgenderism will lead to people identifying as a horse. The point is to attack the logic. What's wrong with me saying, I'm a horse, you now have to respect my identity as a horse. What's wrong with it is that objective, reality exists. Exactly. The point is, the point is,

Ali, limitless self-identity means that anyone anywhere can identify as whatever they like. And the reason it matters is that this goes right to the heart of a trans debate, say, in women's sport. I want trans people to have the same rights to equality and fairness

as everybody else on this panel, including me, right? What I don't want is women's rights being trashed in the process. And when you allow people who are born biological mayor with all the advantage, in terms of power and strength and speed and so on, when you allow them to simply put their hand up

and say, I'm now a woman, and I want to compete against women in women's sport, and then they start performing immeasurably better, comparative to how they were performing against other biological men, then you realize the problem. And this is why the Democrats, one of the reasons they lost,

that last ad that Trump did. Carmel is for they, them, Donald Trump's for you. One of the most effective ads in modern times. There's a reason, because most people actually went, yeah, he's got a point. We're fed up with his crap. So did you, honestly, Ali, when you heard that bishop,

did you think, great, really needed to be said? Or did you slightly wince and went, we haven't got the right memo here? No, I really respected what she said, actually, and I think she has a lot more guts than a lot of politicians do. Not many people get to sit and talk to the vice president, the president, and their families face-to-face like that. And so she could have easily just, you know, put her head down and complied.

And I think they needed to hear what she said, whether they wanted to or not, they clearly didn't. But I truly believe it was important for them to hear that. And it shows just how truly cruel, callous and anti-Christian that these people actually are. And another point is that trans people have existed since the beginning of time. They will exist. They'll always exist. The Republican Party's current position is that there are only two, and trans people don't exist.

Or it's made up. And that's just not true. There are a lot of transgender kids that genuinely are scared. If you haven't met one, just say that. But I have met many, and I've met transgender friends. And they are scared because there's a target on their back by this incoming administration. And I understand the Republican Party's concern about men and women's sports. That makes it sound very scary and perhaps dangerous.

But I think there is a common sense solution to, having inclusivity and not isolating transgender kids from their friends or sports that they want to play in high school that aren't even at the competitive level because we simply think that they you know they just don't belong and it's there is a common sense why can't they just compete against their biological sex like everybody else has to let me let me bring in clay Travis quickly on this because it's a big issue this i just felt like wow here we got miss bishop just didn't get them stop scolding everyone memo and just sounded ridiculous. Yeah, and I give credit to Riley, and I think Outkick has really been outspoken on this, but when she had to swim against a grown-ass man in the NCAA championships and everybody

saw it for what it was, a complete and total farce, I thought that a lot more people would in the political arena say this is ridiculous, but Democrats somehow have painted themselves into a corner that they just had a bill, that all it says, said was, if you get taxpayer funding, you should compete against the gender on your birth certificate. Peers, two Democrats in the entire House signed on for that bill. Every Republican. Now, we are winning on this issue because it is an issue of common sense, which I think doesn't even really have a strong political association in the real world. According to New York Times, 65% of Democrats don't think that dudes pretending to be women should be able to compete in women's sports. 94% of Republicans

80% of the population at large. You just referenced that ad. Do you know who it performed remarkably well with? It ran in every football game that I watch. Black men, Hispanic men, white moms. All of them watched it and said, yeah, this is ridiculous. And let me hit you with identity politics, Pierce, because you said you can be anything.

I actually want to push back, and I think it kind of goes to how broken Democrat identity politic beliefs are. Do you remember Rachel, Do you know, was all. The woman out in Spokane, Washington, who was the head of the NDACP, said she was a black woman. They ended her. They canceled her. I think she's on only fans now. I don't know who's the market there for fake black women, but maybe she's making a living. I hope she is. I'm for capitalism. But think about this. Democrats now as party orthodoxy believe if you claim to be a different race, you are racist, cultural appropriator. It's unacceptable.

If you claim to be a different sex, everyone has to believe it. And you're a hero and courageous and there are poor young kids that are suffering. And actually, Clay, that's a very, that's a very. Was four, he thought he was a Jedi. Yeah, look, that's a great point. We didn't let it actually go to Jedi school. Yeah. Look, A, that's a great point.

But B, people like J.K. Rowling, the Harry Potter author, who put her head over the parapet, they got gunned down in the most vicious, appalling manner. Death threats by the thousand. people trying to cancel her, ruin her, shame or whatever, just for standing up to protect women's rights. I never saw a single transphobic thing she ever said, but she was branded the biggest transphobe in the world. And it was that kind of ridiculous retribution

against people who tried to stand up for common sense. Tim Miller, finally, you on this story, it's such a vote loser, this whole issue. And it's not about being transphobic. You could be supportive of trans rights, as I've always been, also understand this is just wrong. Can we not all agree? Can the Democrats not disagree just not to go down this road again? Well, I think that some of the Democratic policies around this are not smart.

But I think that some of the way that this has talked about, I don't appreciate, you know, Clay, like talking about dudes, pretending to be women. I don't know. If you actually say you respect trans people, but you just want a level playing field, then you don't have to be a dick about it. But also, if you say that you respect trans people's rights, the other EO that Trump is planning is regarding trans soldiers in the military. So, again, I don't understand how you can say, oh, I'm for trans rights. I just, we don't like, you know, the pronoun thing.

We don't like the transports thing. I think he doesn't want taxpayer dollars to go to changing people's genders, which actually is pretty rational. Well, but what about existing, what about existing? trans soldiers in the military. And the last time he was in there, he had a ban on people honorably serving the country who were transgender. That, to me, is too far.

That is cruel. It's wrong. And it's attack. And it's unpatriotic, frankly. So, you know, I think that a lot of times this conversation on the right goes overboard. Okay. Final word to Riley, because you've been heroic on this issue for so long. On that point that Tim made, I mean, where is the line?

I mean, do you feel uncomfortable about Trump banning all transgender from the military? Where the line is is, personally, I'm speaking out of my own personal experience here. I don't care what people do in their free time. I don't care what people do behind closed doors. It's none of my business. I don't want anyone telling me what I do behind closed doors, quite frankly, okay? Where the line is is when you start to infringe on people's children, number one, and when you start to infringe on our rights as women.

I can speak personally again to how I was violated. in a locker room where a six foot four man takes off his pants, fully unclothed, exposing his penis, inches away from me. I'm a married woman. You think my husband like that? You think I like that as a devout Christian, which I want to make the point. I know, Ali said, you know, Trump and Vance came off

as callous and anti-Christian. It goes back to the first book, Genesis 1. He made them male and female intentionally and uniquely in his perfect image. So I think there was one person, or maybe a group of people who were anti-Christian in that room, but it certainly was not Trump and Vance

and the standpoint of that issue in particular. So I think that's where the line is. Don't infringe on kids and don't infringe on my rights as a taxpaying American. Okay, got to leave it there. Great panel. So you're against the military ban, great. Well, another agreement, here.

We don't allow people with bipolar disorder or other mental disorders into the military. I think it's worth considering... Oh, okay, so you don't agree. Never mind. Yeah. I think it should be, I mean, it matters who is on our front lines, who is protecting people. I believe in a strong military. That's what I believe in. Okay, we're going to leave it there. Thank you all, panel, very much indeed. I appreciate it.

I'm sure we'll be talking again soon. This is going to be a roller coaster ride next four years, but thank you very much. More reaction now to that sermon by Bishop Buddy. I'm joined by Reverend Franklin Graham, President of Samaritan's Perth, who gave an impassioned address to the inauguration ceremony on Monday. Frankly, great to have you back on Uncensored. How are you? I'm doing fine, Pierce, thank you for having me. An amazing moment for you to be center stage there at the inauguration. What was that like for you? Well, it's, you know, it's an honor, peers, to be able to always pray for your leaders and to encourage the nation and those that are watching to pray for the leaders.

Our president, he needs prayer, he needs help. So does J.D. Vance, Vice President. And so it was honor. And I was just a real honor for me to be. be their privilege. You managed to avoid the temptation to launch into a sort of pretty partisan political rant from your pulpit in that moment, but the same cannot be said about Bishop Buddy, who seemed to take it upon herself to scold the president, the new president, and his vice president in pretty spectacular fashion. What did you make of what she did? Well, she was completely wrong

to do that. She was mixing the LGBTQ plus agenda along with the immigrants. And because the president talks about having a new policy of just as far as the government, it's just two genders, male and female, but somehow the LGBTQ community is going to be maligned some way. It's just not true. Like they said they're going to be, she said they're going to feel unsafe. Why? Nothing's change. They still have their freedoms and their rights as we all do. Just because the government's only going to recognize male and female. So she was wrong on that. And then to talk about, you know, having compassion, the problems that we have with the border go to Biden. You have to lay those at his feet. And you've had a policy that welcomed people to come from around the world.

and if you can just somehow get to the southern borders, you can cross at great risks to yourself and come to America. And so we saw millions of people come to the United States, going through Venezuela, places like that, going through the Dary and Gap, through Panama, all the way through Mexico walking, people being raped, people being murdered. And then if you made it to the border,

you had to swim, go across Bob Wire and things like that to get into America. That put people, at great risk. So you talk about compassion, we need a system to go back to where people can come into this country legally, where they can apply. And like Melania Trump, she, her family came in legally. And so we just need to go back to that. But there's nothing wrong with it. We need immigrants. We need people to come, but not illegally. And they don't need to come in a way that puts their family and their loved ones at great danger. And that's what's happened these last four years.

President Trump has said that Bishop Buddy and the church owe the public an apology for what she said. Do you agree with him? Well, I mean, I don't know, but certainly she was wrong, and she took advantage of that pulpit, which was really a national pulpit at that point for her own personal agenda, and that was wrong. President Trump in his inauguration speech stated something he said to me, actually privately, the week after he got shot, which was that he believed, that's why I genuinely believe he believes this, that God saved him for a greater purpose, and as he sees it, of making America great again, saving America.

I mean, do you agree with him? And what do you make of Trump talking much more openly, really, about faith and about God, particularly since he survived an assassination attempt? Well, he had a, I think it was probably a 55 grain bullet go within a millimeter of his brains at over 3,000 feet per second. And it got his attention. And he just turned his head just slightly there at that last moment and the bullet missed him.

And he believes God saved his life. I do too. No question about it. I think God reached down and saved Donald Trump's life. And I believe it is for a greater purpose. And I hope the president remembers that every day. I've encouraged the president when he wakes up in the morning, roll out of bed and get on your knees beside your bed, just ask God for help.

Just say, God help me today. And he'll do that because he's got an incredible, I don't know how the man does it to begin with, but he's got an incredible responsibility. And I just think we better pray for him in government prayer. Because there's a lot of people that would like to stop him, including this bishop, whatever her name is, Buddy or whatever. And she would like to stop him. And there are a lot of people out there that just hate the president because of what he stands for.

He stands for common sense. They don't want common sense. He stands for truth. They don't want truth. They want the lies that we've been hearing for the last four years. And the president needs our help. He needs our prayers. And I stand beside him.

I'm not going to agree with everything he does. I promise you that. He'll do things and say things. and I have policies that I disagree with, but I'd look at the man overall, what he's going to do for this country, he's going to move this country forward, and that's what we need.

If he can bring the gas prices down, that's going to help everybody. If food prices come down, that's going to help everybody peers. Poor, rich, I don't care who you are, it's going to help everybody. And so I'm just going to, I'm going to pray for him and stand beside him.

You must have, I guess, prayed privately with President Trump, have you? Yes, I have. Do you get a feeling that he's a man of real faith? I believe so. No question he believes, okay? At what level and depth of a person's spiritual walk? We're all at different levels, but no question, he believes.

You're going to see him, I think, next week in North Carolina. I think he's visiting. Are you planning to see him then? He's coming Friday, yes, sir. So I'll see him Friday. You've known him a long time. Do you think Trump has changed? I've detected, I've had about five or six conversations with him since he got shot.

I have detected a slight change in him, not in like the kind of rhetoric or anything else, but just about him surviving something that should have killed him. And later, the incident on the golf course where he came very close to being killed again. But also by getting a second chance, not just at life, but at the presidency, I do feel like he's a slightly changed man. Do you get that feeling? I sense that. Here's no question.

I think there's a difference in the way he, his demeanor. I think there's a difference in just the way he carries himself. I do believe that he sees himself differently than he did four years ago. Have you given him any advice for a second time around? No. My advice is to ask God for help. That's my advice. Just let God help you, and he'll do it.

And when you suggested he do that, did he agree? Is he going to get out of bed and pray every morning, do you think? Sure. When you get up, before you have your cup of coffee, just say, God, help me today. I need your help. Thank you. And it doesn't have to be a 10-minute prayer. It could be a two-second prayer.

And God will hear you. If you really mean it, God will hear it, and he'll answer those prayers. But have you had the chance to tell President Trump this bit of advice yet? I've shared that with him. And what do you say? Well, he listens. You know, sometimes he doesn't say anything. He just listens.

And I think that's, you know, he hears you. You know, I think if I survived an assassination attempt by a millimeter, I'd probably get out of bed every morning and say a few prayers. I think your advice is good. Well, you know, we could have been going to a funeral this last fall. Yeah, absolutely. And his brains could have been blown out all across that field. But God, I believe, just, you know, it was just a little tweak, just a little turning in your head.

And his life was spared. Yeah, quite extraordinary. Frankly, Greg, great to see you back on Unsensor. Thank you very much. Well, joining me now is the family ties actress and filmmaker Justine Bateman, who branded the Duke and Duchess of Sussex disaster tourists after a photo op that they did with Los Angeles wildfire victims. Well, Justin, welcome to Uncensor. Great to talk to you. Thanks.

I'm a filmmaker and an author for the last decade, so acting is a past experience for me. I'm sorry we didn't categorize you correctly. I'm glad you corrected the record. You made a lot of noise and headlines with what you said. I have to say, I thought you were completely right. It does seem to be that every time there is any kind of disaster at the moment, these two trot along, and they're almost like pretending to be a separate rival royal family without any of the duties that the actual royal family back here in the UK have to perform to be royals.

What was it that motivated you to do this? I don't know what they do for living. What's important here is that there is a devastating lack of leadership in California. There were things that were not been done that could have been done to mitigate the damage. And at the point that these two had this strange tour, Fires were still raging. People were missing. There might have been human remains in the ashes upon which they walked.

This was bizarre. Me, I mean, everybody in Los Angeles either lost their homes or knows somebody, more than one person who lost their homes where it was burnt to the ground, everything just to ash. So we're all busy. And also, a lot of people didn't have power. We personally didn't have power for three days. And so there were looters going up and down the streets,

looking for places to go in and steal. For anybody that's not a politician or a government official who's looking at the damage to see how much money they're going to allocate to this area, for anybody besides that, to be having any kind of tour, is just insane. It made no sense whatsoever, completely offensive.

And now, Now it's important that California rebuilt that we get different leadership so we have, so practices are put in place to, could we have kept the wind from being that strong and from the fire raging that big? No. But there were things we could have done to mitigate this maximum level of damage that occurred. And that's what I hope happens going forward.

The voters stop voting for D or R. Just look at the person and vote for who you think can handle your worst case. scenario in your state or city or country. Yeah, but it was utterly absurd that the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, who literally said two years ago, the New York Times uncovered this quote, that if she won and became the mayor, she would never leave America through the duration of her mayorship.

She would stay in America, only travel internally. And then she, at the moment of utter crisis for Los Angeles, with a prediction of extremely dangerous winds, with obviously incredibly dry terrain because there's been no rain since October, that she chose that moment to get on a plane and go to the inauguration ceremony for an African president.

It's like, what are you doing? Why are you there? I mean, in a way, it was as inappropriate to me as Megan and Harry trotting down to do this photo op in the way that you obviously were offended by many other people were. It was equally inappropriate. So what are you doing?

You don't need to be there other than for self-aggrandizing, photo op? Yeah, the leaving town. I mean, as I understand in Carabas' capacity as representative California for many, many years in Washington, that she went on a trip, I think New York Times said the other day, she went on a trip to Africa like every couple of months or something, and that someone asked, like, if you are a mayor, will you miss these, you know, what will you miss? And she said, I'll miss that the most.

Right. Well, obviously, that still was part of her agenda. and like you said, I don't know to what end. And it makes me feel like she is, I know she's completely unfamiliar with the entertainment business, which is the main business of this city. But she's also seems to be unfamiliar with Los Angeles as a whole, even though she's been a representative of this area.

Because if there is a wind prediction that there's going to be 60, 70, 80 mile an hour winds, You know at the very least, you're going to have power outages all over the place because nobody's buried the lines. Let's do that. There's so many things we could be doing here. And for a state where we pay almost the highest, I know New York City has a double tax, but if you're just looking at state tax, we pay the highest tax, I believe, of the country to not have things that mitigate the problems you know happen here and will happen over and over and over and over again. And as a politician, like you said, to leave at that moment, two days after you knew this was going to be an issue. Ridiculous.

We saw a response to what you said about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Somebody on their behalf briefed page 6 of the New York Post. It's offensive to Megan and Harry that anyone would think this is merely a photo op. Megan was born and raised in Los Angeles. So this is and always will be home to her. Her heart is completely broken for the lives that have been lost for those whose homes have been destroyed. they're also dedicated countless hours to volunteering

long before the media even got winded their involvement. What's your response to their response? I don't know who these people are. I don't know why they were walking all over possible human remains because there were people missing, right, in the ashes. I don't know why there was this official mayor of Pasadena a tour. This, the whole thing is really so out of place, so ridiculous, so tone deaf. And it was, like I said, disaster, they were like disaster tourists. What's important, like I said,

is that we help the people who have been devastated by these fires, that we, I know there's been a moratorium on, put a moratorium on insurance cancellations, but I'd like to see a moratorium on zoning laws because what they're going to do to a lot of these people, especially those in Altadena, who maybe can't afford to rebuild

or, you know, we'll have a struggle with that. They want to rezone all the thing, and so it's not single home family, it's not single family homes anymore. It's just apartment buildings. Yeah. Yeah, I'd like to see more effort put into helping

the people of Los Angeles. Yeah. Justine Ben, great to talk to you. Thank you very much indeed for joining me.