Piers Morgan Uncensored - Piers Morgan Uncensored: Caitlyn Jenner

Episode Date: October 31, 2022

On this episode of Piers Morgan Uncensored, listen to Piers' exclusive interview with Caitlyn Jenner, talking about Elon Musk, Twitter, freedom of speech and more. Historian Tessa Dunlop challenges Piers Morgan on his criticism of Prince Harry's upcoming book. Piers reads out some uncomplimentary choice words written about him by guest Matthew Syed. Watch Piers Morgan Uncensored at 8 pm on TalkTV on Sky 526, Virgin Media 627, Freeview 237 and Freesat 217. Listen on DAB+ and the app.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tonight on Piers Morgan Uncensored a predictable panic on the left as Elon must takes charge at Twitter. Is this a brave new dawn for free speech, as I believe, for open season for hateful trolls? I'll talk live to Caitlin Jenner. Pressure builds on the new Home Secretary, who was the last Home Secretary, over Britain's migrant crisis and a growing security scandal over her private emails. Is it time to sack Leaky Sue again? Plus fears of Prince Harry has sexed up his memoir to inflect maximum damage on the the world family. Should he now be stripped of his remaining royal titles? Live from London, this is Piers Morgan Unsensored.

Well, good evening from London. Welcome to Pierce Morgan Unsensored. It's Halloween, and something very, very scary is happening. I'm not talking about a ghoulish or normal events. It's not even the inflation rate. It's Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter. And according to many so-called liberals who use the side of obsessively, we should be very, very afraid. It's like the gates of hell opened on this sight, said this Washington Post columnist. All the red lights are flashing here, says Ben Collins of NBC.

This is an emergency. Twitter's about to be taken over by the evil Sith Lord, says this professor. Most absurdly of all, look at this MSNBC commentator who told his fellow crybaby, Stay, hold your ground like a Ukrainian. Sorry? A free speech-loving maverick takes over a social media site, and it's the equivalent of a genocidal dictator trying to take over a country.

And wait, who's been helping the Ukrainians? Oh, that would be Elon Musk by donating $100 million worth of his starlings, these satellites which help the Ukrainian military connect with each other when everything else has been destroyed. Is he really the enemy to the Ukrainian people? America's top liberal TV network also collapsed into an immediate, predictable spasm of panic. It's official. Musk is in, top executives are out, and the far right is rejoicing.

What are we in for? Yes. Well, there you are. That's kind of says it all. You know, I think it's going to be really difficult. When do free speech become far right? Elon Musk isn't even conservative. He's a fan of Bernie Sanders.

That's left wing as a politician gets in America. What these people are really scared about is hearing opinions they don't agree with and having their own opinions challenged. Twitter has for a long time now been managed by a very woke workforce, which are systematically shadow banned and buried commentators who are mainly on the right. All Elon Musk has said is he wants to restore Twitter to what it should have been, a digital town square where a wide range of beliefs can be healthfully debated. That's not opening the gates of hell. It's not death threats, incitements to violence or hate speech.

We have a word for those things already. It's called crime. A free speech Twitter simply means open debate about different ideas on what's arguably the single most important incubator of elite opinion in the world. Both sides make their case, you decide. That's free speech, that's democracy. Liberal people used to be in favour of it. Well, my first guest tonight is a passionate advocate for free speech,

and she also knows more than most about what it's like to be trolled online. I'm like to say that Caitlin Jenner joins me now. I think from Hollywood, Caitlin, how are you? You know what, Pierce, I'm doing just fine. Actually, very excited to see what's going to happen to social media now that Elon Musk is in control of Twitter. I think it's going to be very interesting in the future. Actually, if I could, and this is going to take a little while for social media

to kind of get used to this, the Elon Musk here. It's kind of almost like when Liv Golf came in to the golf world, the PGA kind of had a monopoly going here. Well, social media has had a monopoly on, you know, the far left. And finally, Elon Musk came in and he wants a free speech platform for everybody, the left, the right. And I think it's going to be good, and I think it's going to really shake up social media. You look at Mark Zuckerberg, was reported last week. He lost like $100 million, or $100 billion, whatever it was, in value of meta, because he's been so far left for so long and a voice for the left that people are leaving

and going someplace else. So this is going to take some time to figure out exactly how it's going to work out, but I think it's going to be very good in the long run for social media. Yeah, I mean, I completely agree. And I think Elon Musk, you know, he's proven himself to be a genius who likes to challenge orthodoxy in terms of how we think, whether it's electric cars, whether it's SpaceX, his extraordinary space company, which does all be Starlinked satellites as well.

You know, and now this. I think he's the right guy because, as I keep trying to explain to people, he's not even someone who identifies as right-wing or conservative. You know, he's a Bernie Sanders fan. He spent most of his life, actually, positioning himself politically to the left. And yet it's the people on the left who have gone so far left, in my opinion, that it makes people who are on the center or maybe even slightly center-right look like they're far right by comparison. That's been the problem. No, Elon Musk, I think, is going to be very good for Twitter. I have met him on a couple of occasions. Actually, I'm into aviation and I got a private tour of SpaceX where they down at Hawthorne where they build the rockets.

And he gave me an hour tour. We sat in his office. He was wonderful. And I think he is a big thinker. I mean, when you say you're going to start SpaceX a space company and you're going up against NASA, that takes a lot. You know, it takes some pretty big ones there.

And I think he's going to do the same thing here. The first thing he's starting up with is he's going to make it as a subscription where he has Twitter Blue. I think one of the reasons why when he first got in and started looking into Twitter, he saw that there were so many accounts that you couldn't verify. And he wants to be able to verify it.

So he's going to put up for 1995, you can get a verified account on Twitter Blue. And I think that's going to be very good. You're going to get rid of a lot of the junk that's out there. He's immediately started firing all the top executives. In fact, I think it was today he completely fired the entire board of Twitter, bringing his people in. Actually, he's bringing in a lot of technical people from Tesla. And he's going to shake this thing up.

I think it's going to be so interesting to watch. And I think it's going to be nothing but good. You know, I've been on Twitter. I've been shadow banned. In fact, interesting. I was shadow banned. And the day it was announced that I joined Fox News as a contributor, I immediately got... It's funny.

It's funny you say that, Caitlin, because oddly, I'd noticed over the last few months my Twitter following number had gone down quite slowly but steadily for months and months and months. I was losing followers. But in the last two weeks since it looked like Elon Musk was basically going to be taking it over, I've suddenly gained all the followers I lost in two weeks. Now, it might be coincidence. It might be, I don't know, they were taking away bots or something like that. Or it might just be that from the moment it looked like Elon Musk was actually going to run Twitter. A lot of the people doing this kind of shadow banning, which were people who don't know,

they put stuff in the technology which basically reduces the visibility of people they perceive to be conservative or maybe anti-woke or whatever it may be. Certainly in my case, it would be anti-woke, not conservative. but I smell a rat here, and I think you probably have experienced similar stuff, right? I've experienced the same thing. You know, here's a little trivia. I broke a Guinness Book of World Records on Twitter. When I came out and the guy was not on Twitter, when I came out and was on the cover of Vanity Fair,

I immediately, when that came out, I immediately opened up my Twitter account. And I broke the world record for a broken set of Guinness Book of World Records for the fastest to one million followers. Barack Obama had it at five hours, five hours and like 20 minutes. I did it in four hours and two minutes from zero to one million. I would expect nothing else from an Olympian gold medal champion. Yes. And so, yeah, I've been with Twitter for a video. very long time. And yes, I've been shadow banned. I have also noticed in the last couple of weeks

things have started to change. Your amount of engagements is going up. I think it's honestly, I think this is going to be good, not just for Twitter, but for social media. If you were Elon Musk, if you're looking at all the problems of Twitter, and I think we all know what they are, there are way too many anonymous bots, and they can influence, I think, political, uh, issues in a manipulative way, which could potentially then manipulate votes and therefore elections. I think that remains a big concern. Also, this, the amount of abuse, you know, racism, harassment, death threats and so on, is still there. I see it, you know, every now and again, where it's ugly head. Yeah. Where for you, where is the line? It's a very interesting debate at this,

about where the line is for free speech? Where is free speech? And where for you, who's been on the subject of a lot of abuse and trolling, where for you is the line that gets crossed? Well, first of all, I think that's in Elon Musk's hands right now and the people that he brings in. He has to bring in some really good, competent people to be able to run Twitter. Because obviously, hate speech shouldn't be anywhere. It shouldn't be online. It shouldn't be anywhere. And there is that fine line between hate speech and something that's either true or maybe not quite as, you know, true.

It's almost like for me, it's almost like I get a lot of jokes about me. I've been roasted and this and everything. And there is that fine line between a funny joke that is really true, okay, and a funny joke that is like hateful. To me, that always, I don't want hateful jokes against me. I want funny jokes against me. And you can use me and I love as good a laugh as anybody. But it's going to be the same thing with Twitter. where is that fine line?

And I think he's going to have to have very competent people in there to be able to find out where that fine line is. Well, it's interesting you mentioned comedy because he actually tweeted, comedy is legal again. Oh, yeah. And I responded by tweeting back two laughing emojis and a thumbs up, which he then likes very quickly.

And being liked by Elon Musk on Twitter at the moment, it's a bit like getting a papal blessing from the Pope if you're a Catholic. You know, it's not the ultimate validation. And it shows, of course, his own incredible engagement in Twitter. I mean, he's all over it. He reads everything. He sees everything.

He's firing out tweets, left, right, and center. I don't know how he does it. The guy's got a million things going on in his life. You know, he's sending rockets up to space. He's, you know, developing the electric car, which nobody said they could really do and do it right. And he didn't. Still, Tesla's the best electric car on the market. space X is just killing.

The only way any astronauts can get to the space station is now SpaceX. NASA doesn't have any way to get him there. So he's done an amazing job, but I think he'll do the same thing with Twitter. It's going to take a little time to work it out, but I think Elon Musk is really good at getting good people in the right place. I agree. And if they're not working out, he's afraid to, he's not, you know, afraid to fire, you know, afraid to fire something. I agree. If he gets the right people in place.

He said today, if he had a, I think he had a dime or a dollar for everyone who's asked him what he's going to do about Donald Trump, he'd be very rich, which of course he's already very rich. He's got $235 billion. But what would you do about Donald Trump? Would you let him back on the platform? Of course. Yeah. It's a free speech platform now. Of course I would.

Of course I would. You know what? It's interesting how the left is already starting to come after him. just on, what was it just today? Of course, Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, okay, on this Monday, said that they have to review Twitter because for the Committee of Foreign Investment. Why? Because the Saudis, a lot of people don't know this, the Saudis have been big investors in Twitter for many, many years. I think they hold about $1.89 billion in investment in Twitter. Most people don't know that.

But now all of a sudden, the left's going to come after and say, hey, we have to check out these investments. Saudi Arabia's been around for a long time with Twitter. They're the number two stockholder behind Elon Musk. But the left's going to take their shots. I think Elon Musk is a very sharp guy. I mean, my argument about Trump has been. My argument about Trump has been from the start of this

is if you're going to ban Donald Trump, you can't then allow, as they've allowed, Vladimir Putin, to retain his Twitter account, Taliban leaders, the supreme leader of Iran. There's no consistency there. Right. You know, you cannot allow people like that to have accounts and say Donald Trump should be banned, in my opinion.

It's not a question of being right or left or any of these things. It's a question of balance and consistency. And I do think the one thing Elon Musk is going to do, He's going to bring in a kind of a group of people from all walks of life, all political persuasions, and they're going to be the ones who form a consensus about who should be banned. Because there are some people who I think probably should be banned. You know, if you're going to be spewing, you know, racism or stuff which endangers people's lives, I would say Alex Jones, for example, would be one example to me where by spewing his lies about Sandy Hook

and imperiling the lives of the relatives of the poor kids who died, I don't think he should have a platform to do that and endanger their lives, personally. So I think there is a line, and I think he's going to get there with a group of people, which will be far more rounded politically, probably, than the current leadership group at Twitter. No, I totally agree with you. I think, again, Elon Musk is very good at picking the right people to go to the right places. Yeah, hate to peace on Twitter should not be there. maybe a different point of view, that can be there, you know, for the first time.

Because the problem with Twitter is that they have been just, you know, for the left. And they ban people who's on the right. Like in my case, shadow band, I work, I'm a conservative, love this country. They will do everything to limit my own. speech, okay? But that doesn't happen on the left. I mean, they just totally let it go. I think what now, with Elon Musk taking over, it's going to be a lot, much more well-balanced as far as who's on Twitter and what's saying what. I've got to ask you, I know you don't want to talk about this in any depth. I completely understand why, because you have obviously a personal

connection here. But Kanye, you know, Yey West, who I interviewed last week actually in the US. You know, there's a big debate about whether he should be given social media platforms now. So setting aside your fact you obviously know him through the family. What's your view about what he said and whether he should have a platform? First of all, any anti-Semitic remarks should be totally condemned by everybody, no matter if it's on Twitter or wherever it is. So that's where I stand. as far as, and that type of speech shouldn't be around. Yeah.

To me, that is a line. If that gets crossed, that that should be it. Caitlin, it's great to talk to you. I love you coming on the show. Please come back soon. You always talk a lot of sense. I really appreciate it. It's always good to talk to you, Pierce.

Take care, Kayle. Well, next tonight, chaos in the channel. Chaos at a Migrant Processing Center and chaos over her use of private emails and government business. Is Luke Leaky Soella Braverman about to be fired again? Welcome back to Pierce, Morgan, Unsensitive. British Home Secretary Suella Braverman is facing fresh demands

as she quits tonight, just days after Rishi Sunnet reappointed her, and what increasingly looks like is first major misstep as Prime Minister. She's admitted sending sensitive government documents to her personal email account six times in as many weeks. Now she's under pressure of a chaos at a migrant processing centre where 4,000 people are packed into a facility built for just 1,600. The evening she told the House of Commons that the asylum system she runs is broken and that Britain is facing an invasion.

Let's take a look. The British people deserve to know which party is serious about stopping the invasion. It is not. Some 40,000 people have arrived on the South Coast this year alone. Many of them facilitated by criminal gangs, some of them actual members. of criminal gangs. Well, Jordan Bina's Conservative peer, Lord Marla. Lord Marna, thank you very much indeed for joining tonight.

Good evening, Peers. Here's my question about Leaky Sue, as she's been unfortunately nicknamed, because of all the things that she's leaked, which is when Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister and reappointed her for six days after she'd been effectively fired from government, I said at the time I thought that was a big mistake that I thought you cannot bring somebody back that fast. And I also suspected, as we're now seeing, there would be more to come in terms of the stuff that was being held against her. You can't be happy, surely, as a Conservative peer, to see all this attention now back on Suella Braverman and indeed all this detail from this migrant centre where it looks like she has been at least partly responsible for a lot of chaos there.

Well, I don't think she's responsible. She's only been in the job for 12 weeks. You know, this is a massive problem, peers, as you know, which has been building for a considerable time. 28,000 migrants have come to this country this year. This is only the start with the global starvation that's happening around the world. And I've been travelling around the world recently in Commonwealth countries and seen the real trouble that's ahead.

And we will have more of these migrants coming in. And as another point, you know, there are 117,000 people waiting for asylum. This is an enormous biggest size of towns across the country. This hasn't just happened. Sorry to interrupt this. Sorry to interrupt you. Can I just? Sorry, let me interrupt.

How long have we had a... Sorry. Can I just go to... Go on, finish. Go on, you carry on. Carry on. Over. Over to you.

My question for you then, I know where you were going with that. My question for you is I thought the Conservatives have been in charge for many years of this country. Why is the asylum system so broken? Why are these centres so dangerously overcrowded? Why is nothing working? Why are we processing just 4% of people? What is going on?

And by the way, who else can you possibly blame but the Conservatives? Well, I'm not going to shoulder that blame, but the issue is there is a government, there is the wheels of government that is meant to be dealing with this appalling crisis. And our sorrow goes out to those people who are having this terrible suffering, having to lean their own countries.

But this is a crisis, crisis has been going on for a long time. They can't get a chief executive for the border force. They're only paid 150,000. They've had to promote from within. The lack of quality of people is obviously, and management is not helping this cause. You and I go to, we travel a lot, we return to this country. It takes us half an hour, 45 minutes to get through the border force, and they then look as if it was something the cat's brought in. I'm not surprised in my case, but in yours you probably get a red carpet. But, you know, the system of government has broken down. And that is a real issue for any minister coming in. And I think with home office officials,

apparently only working 50% of the time in the office, there has got to be a real sea change in the attitude of the civil service to dealing with this crisis, because they are there in perpetuity. Well, look, again, I hate to be churlish here, but your painting is. a very grim picture of this whole system, as indeed Suella Braverman did earlier in the Commons. But again, I need to remind you, as you're a conservative peer, and as I would remind her, if I had her on the show, which you won't come on, that it's actually been a conservative government

that's presided over this catastrophe over the last decade. You can't pass the buck. The buck's with you guys. There's no... I'm not standing here passing the buck at all. saying that the levers of government have let the country down in lots of different ways over the last two to three years, and this is one of them, and it's coming to a real crisis. It's coming to a crisis because there is seemingly no cessation to it. It's going to increase,

and I'd like to know what the border force are doing about it, and what steps they're going to be taking. And of course it requires a leader in the Home Office to deal with it, but they can only operate as a leader with the right tools. That's my point. And I think you understand that point. And I think Suella Braverman is being blamed for all this. And maybe she will be blamed for it all. But she shouldn't be blamed for this because she's ending there for a short period of time. Well, it looks like a lot of people are blaming here, including people right at the heart of government. And I come back to my central point, if you've been fired for breaching ministerial rules, you shouldn't be getting the same job back six days later. You know, as I think,

I think it was Chris Bryant said in the comments today, I'm all for second chances in redemption, but you've got to serve some sentence first. This is the way I normally understood justice. Let's bring in Jonathan Ashworth, who's the shadow Wreck and Pension Secretary. Mr. Ashworth, you're smirking away there. Is that because you find the conservative position

on this of the brass neck variety? I mean, it's staggering, isn't it? I mean, they've been in power for 12 years, peers. And how many home secretaries have we have? They've all been Tory home secretaries. in those 12 years. And I'm afraid, Sualla Braverman, is a total liability. And she's only in place because of this grubby deal

between her and Rishi Sunak, which, and in the end, it was a monumental failure of judgment on Sunak's part to bring her back. And all this, oh, it's not her fault. Well, you know, there's these question marks tonight as to whether she was clear about whether she commissioned these extra hotel rooms or not. The source is coming out saying she wasn't entirely,

what she said in the House of Commons isn't entirely correct. is an absolute shambles, and it's a shambles taking place on the Conservative Watch. Should she resign again? Well, I mean, I can't, look, her career is clearly going down the toilet. Whether she'll survive or not, I do not know. It's, we understand tonight that the kind of right-wing Boris Johnson-style ERG Tory MPs are sort of trying to support her, and that number 10, the Rishi Sunak people are hanging her out to dry. What are shambles? Last week, Rishi Sunak told us he was brought up going to bring back integrity and professionalism. I just think it shows you that when it does come to Rishi Sunak, he does have, he is weak and this is a failure of his judgment.

Well, I mean, Lord Marland, you know, I'm actually a bit of a fan of Rishi Sunak, certainly by comparison to his two predecessors. But I do think this is a big mistake. I do think you can see the volume of attention now on Suella Braverman is getting so intense. He might get forced into relieving of Hurrah duties again. And that will be a big. big blow to his premiership very early on. Well, you and I have observed politics for a very long time, peers, and of course none of that would surprise us. You know, this immigration issue has been going on for a very long time.

It's been a big problem for the country. We're a small island. Tony Blair was the first who really let the floodgates open, so to hear the camp from Labour is a little bit rich. We've now inheriting a very significant problem. It needs serious grasp and real meaningful attempt to sort this matter out for the good of the country. And there's no point.

Point scoring over this. It needs the Home Office to get a grip. It needs, as you have identified, real leadership to get hold of it. And let's hope we do, because otherwise it's just going to get catastrophically worse. We're going to have loads and loads of people appearing here. We can't cope with them. We haven't been able to cope with them. And it's going to be a mess, a real mess.

Jonathan Ashworth, my issue with the Labour Party position is, I'm all for point scoring, by the way. I think that's what makes the political world go around. But I'm not entirely sure that you lot have a clue what to do about this problem either. I've not really seen any great idea from the Labour Party which will solve this problem. Well, first of all, Tony Blair stopped being Prime Minister, I think, 15 years ago. So it's pretty weak when the Tories are saying, oh, it's all Tony Blair's fault. I mean, goodness sake, get a grit man.

You've been in power for 12 years, so your party's been in power. Look, what would Labor do? Well, first of all, we know that criminal. gangs are exploiting this system because it takes so long to process. We used to be processing around 28,000 a year. We're now processing 14,000. There's some people waiting like, you know, the average weight is like 400 weeks. It's well over a year to process some of these claims. If you were processing quicker and had a firm, fair system, we're getting, you know, obviously refugees and asylum seekers who are with genuine claims, they obviously, we should be

humane and compassionate, but the people who are being, those who are exploiting the system, they need their applications processed and if they're not got the right to stay here, then we need to ensure the majority now of the people coming over on these boats appear to be Albanian men. So they're not from a war-torn country seeking genuine asylum or refugee status. They appear to be economic migrants. Well, their applications need to be turned around quickly. And, you know, where people are assigned seekers and refugees, we are a compassionate country and we're proud of our compassionate nature. But where people are exploiting the system, of course, we should be doing all we can to return them to other countries,

which is also why you need a deal. You need a deal with France as well in this. We've not got a deal. But part of this problem is, if you're not processing quickly, if you're leaving people languishing for 400 days, then criminal gangs will exploit this system. And that in the end does come back to the Tory Home Secretary. Because as we've been hearing from our friend in the House of Lords there, he himself is conceding that it's been a shambles, that there's all kinds of problems. Well, I think the one thing we can all agree on is it's been a complete shambles, and it's getting worse, not better,

and that's a very bad reflection on the succession of people put in charge of this country. And we can only hope that if Suella Braverman does survive, and I've got to say, I think the jury is out on that, that she does something about this, which works, because the Rwanda policy, which we were told was her dream, has already turned out to be a complete fiasco. I've got to leave it there, Lord Marlon.

Thank you very much, as always. I've got to say, to your great credit, you come and face the music on behalf of the Conservative Party when many run for cover or hide in fringes, and I appreciate it. And Jonathan Ashworth, you always come on, and I appreciate that. I live on the privilege of being on your show, Piers. Thank you, Lord Merlin.

If only some of your colleagues had a similar attitude, The world would be a finer place. But thank you to you both. Appreciate it. No, thanks a lot. Well, still to come, I'm going to talk to the Royal Expert who believes King Charles will strip Prince Harry and his wife, Megan Markle,

of their titles if his new book Trashes the Queen Consul Camilla. But next I'm joined by my pan today. You're going to debate the Brabman debacle, the Guitar World Cup, and Nadine Doris, I think we've had another one of the show, aren't we? You won't want to miss this. Well, welcome back.

As Elon Musk, the new boss of Twitter, himself said, I hope even my worst critics remain on Twitter because that's what free speech means. Exactly right. And indeed, to celebrate this statement, one of my worst critics is joining me now tonight. Welcome to you, Matthew Saeed from a Sunday Times. Good to have you.

Thank you. Kevin McGuire, my old friend, of course, and The Daily Mirror, and Emily Sheffield, the long-suffering co-presenter of Pierce, with Nadine Doris. That went well. I tell you what, let's have a quick look at Nadine Doris in action,

because it was sort of my suffering. monumentally spectacularly fascinating. Welcome to Pearce Morgan and Censett. Coming up on tonight's program for a change, a man who is going to clear up a woman's mess. That's Rishy's far as he enters number 10. As you were, Sunnixtability extends to the cabinet with the big B-stake and all her cages

but Fraberman back at home office. Sorry, I'm just completely messed up. They're in our studio, and we've risked them for, a clue. Stick around for just stop oil live. You know, I told them to get somebody on who wasn't quite as good as me, but that was ridiculous. It's not as easy as it, Nadine. I should stick to politics, actually.

Maybe not. Anyway, let's move on. Now, Matthew, you've got a great book out about free speech. Genuinely mean that. It's a good book of free speech. But I can't let this opportunity go without reminding you what you once said about a public figure in this country. He takes crude stances. He seeks. scapegoats for complex problems.

He goads guests into simplistic answers and humiliates him. When they think Bessra of return into the studio, a parasite on the contours of democracy, a temporary hero to the deluded souls for whom he becomes a cheerleader, he doesn't seem to care about what soapbox he's on, provided its topical and divisive. For the benefit of the viewers, which beloved public figure was that? That was, if memory serves, I think that was you.

It was me. It was me. And you know what? We live in a democracy. I believe in free speech like you do. We have locked horns many times. But actually, I thought, given what's going on with Elon Musk and given the fact you've written a book about free speech, the best way for me to show that I mean it is to have one of my more voracious critics on

and to say, you know what, we can disagree with each other. And hopefully at the end of it, we might like each other a little bit more than we started. We shouldn't be difficult. And in fairness, I think I should point out that in response, a barbed response, response to that column on television the next morning. You played out a clip before becoming a journalist.

I think you know as a table tennis player, the British number one for 10 years. And he played a clip of me losing badly to a German player. And he said, this guy's a choker. If he can't win at table tennis, happy we take his opinion seriously on anything else. I think it's fair. You gave as good as you did. I played down to every worst fear you had about my behaviour. It'd be good to see it.

Right, let's talk about Elon Musk for a moment, Matthew, because I think it's a really interesting thing that's happening here because Musk is not a right winger by any conventional stand. He's a Bernie Sanders fan, one of the left-wing politicians in America. He's always historically talked about being on the left, and yet it's the left that are going most nuts about him taking over Twitter. I think because they're used to really having their own way on Twitter, where it's the right that gets shadow banned,

it's the right that get banned completely, Trump and so on, and it's never the ones on the left who often, in my view, just as disgracefully. Well, for me, the great strength of liberal democratic societies is that we have opinions, we express them, hopefully, courageously, and occasionally in a slightly ad hominem fashion.

But in order to dispute someone's view, you should refute it. You should come up with evidence as to why it's wrong. When we censor other opinions, we're denied the opportunity to engage with them. We can often push them underground. They can develop a greater cachet.

I don't have a problem with listening to people who disagree with me. And it was, I think, Voltaire's most eminent biographer, I will defend to the death your right to say, even that with which I disagree. We lose that in liberal societies. If we have a liberal set of institutions cohabiting with an illiberal mindset, I think it weakens us and it strengthens the true. We have a lot more in common than you think, because I completely agree.

Emily, this is the nub of it for me, is that the very people who call themselves liberals are behaving in not just an illiberal way, but actually with this cancelled culture mentality, almost like the fascists that they profess to hate most. I think one of the more worrying things I've seen is people at Oxford and Cambridge University where you're not allowed to go and talk there.

You're sort of de-platformed. But only if you're on the right, only if you're a conservative. But even some of these were like really mild. It was like there certainly weren't my opinion of what was on the right. And I don't think many people's of what was on the right. And, you know, we've just seen this with the trans debate. There are lots of nuances to many arguments.

If you don't sit and debate a nuance and complex issues, how are you going to come up with solutions or you can't just be. Then you're just becoming binary. For 40 years. Let me start. Hang on. The papers like the sun, the telegraph, the mail and the express, trying to get people banned and lose their jobs

for saying things they find unacceptable. Yes, there's intolerance on the left. There's a huge number of right wingers who are intolerance. I was about to tee you up by saying, I think there are a lot of people on what I call the radical end of both ends of the spectrum, right, and left, who unfortunately dominate a lot of the noise and airspace. There's an amazing stat that 20% of people in Britain and America

are on Twitter, but off that 20%, 10% of those make 80% of the noise and they tend to skew radical. So you're getting a sort of constant reverberation of extremity of opinion. And that is, I think, diluting democracy in the process. Well, there's much to be angry about. But, of course, if you're on Twitter

or more social media platforms, the more outrage you make, the more follows you will get. And we saw it with Soella Braverman tonight, the Home Secretary, because she's accused of unlawful behavior, because she's accused of ignoring the ministerial code, and she gets a job back. after six days, she talks about the invasion of the South Coast. And she knows that is incredibly inflammatory,

24 hours after a petrol bomb attack on Dover detection. But she does that because half of Twitter in the country will say, yeah, you're quite right, we're being evaded. And the other half will say that's incredibly inflammatory, and that is outrageous and violent poisons. Piers, can I just ask you one thing? Because we were just looking at this in the green room. Sorry, please.

It just feels like it. We were just looking. So Donald Trump's son has just posted a picture of a pair of pants and a hammer. Well, he retweeted somebody else's as a Halloween thing about Nancy Pelosi's speaker of the house. I'm just interested. We've just had Nancy Pelosi's husband attacked. How do we think about things like that? Well, there's a very interesting debate to be had about... Because that's not about any kind of speech. Well, I'll tell you what my answer to that is. However stomach churning that joke may be, around Halloween, there's now this incredibly puritanical censorship going on, where,

This happened 24 hours ago. I know. I find it outrageous and horrible. Here's my point, though. Actually, I just come back from LA two days ago. In LA now, almost nobody can wear any costume on Halloween anymore. You're not even allowed to dress up as beauty. Because somebody somewhere finds it offensive. Whereas the whole point of Halloween is to be grotesquely offensive.

You dress up as the worst people in the world. Or you mock the worst things that happen. Could this be argued? And I assume it can't be. Otherwise, Twitter would have removed it by now. Well, maybe not. Is this inciting hatred? This was an attack.

I think there's an important distinction between who is cracking down on the expression of an opinion. I think it's very dangerous when the state gets involved, which has the power to imprison. Twitter is a private company. It is a private institution. It's part of private property.

I would like to see people argue against other people's posts. I don't want to get the government involved in this. I think that's my point. In a very small number of circumstances, incitement to racial hatred. But incitement of violence is one of them, isn't it? Do we want unaccountable billionaires to own what is effectively the public?

An unaccountable billionaire. Well, hang on. Because unaccountable... You have it on Facebook as well, I know. An unaccountable billionaire owns the Washington Post, Jeff Bezos, head of Amazon. And that is a problem. But all the journalists there will tell you he never interferes.

He's put loads of money into journalism. He's been a force for good. Well, we know that... Because you're rich and successful. It doesn't make you a bad person, Kevin. I know you think he does. But we know that Elon Musk. is going to interfere in Twitter because he's made that point.

And in fact, over the weekend, after that hammer attack, he actually retweeted conspiracy theory. Subsequently. But he's spreading it. He's spreading there fake news. But look, on the left, they're trying to portray him as a devil. Here's the thing about Elon Musk. He brings in electric cars like nobody else in history, right?

Big tick in the box of me. SpaceX, particularly what he's doing with the Starlink satellites, which would be directly helping at vast expense to his company, helping Ukrainian military to connect with each other when all their internet and cell phone stuff goes down, right? He does a lot of very good stuff Elon Musk and he actually identifies as to the left. He just finds the kind of ultra-woke,

cancel culture mentality, completely irrational and destroying democracy. I agree with it. We're talking about free speech and him owning a huge platform. You could have mentioned when those kids were trapped in a cave in Thailand. He's called one of the people

and save him one of the divers, an appalling slur. So he's out of control when it comes to free speech. And it goes over it into what you would call hate speech. Hang on, hang on, okay. But it's very interesting, isn't it? Because insulting people or being offensive, actually, if you believe genuinely in free speech, then you are allowed to do that.

I can offend you right now. You might be offended and insulted. It doesn't give you the right to stop me saying something. Unless I break a law. Now, if I break a law, you have the right of the criminal, justice act in this country to come and take action. The question then is what the law should be. I'm with you.

I think unless it's physical harm that you are in danger of being subject to. If it's just an insult. So you accept. That's quite hard to prove, though, the incitement to violence. They took Donald Trump off, which I don't think Elon Musk. I think Elon Musk didn't agree with that, am I right? He didn't think Donald Trump would have been taken off. And I do think to Jack Dorsey's defence, I think they genuinely thought Donald was using Twitter to incite violence that day.

There's a very good argument that that is a case. But if you use that as the Yard state for banning Trump, you've got to look at what's happened with the Supreme Leader of Iran inciting hatred against Jewish people, you know, with the Taliban, deciding hatred against just about everybody. I agree. You've got to be consistent. He's currently waging illegal war in your trade. Twitter made a lot of money from Trump by keeping him on for a long time,

and I knew he was very strong as a president. It was only one they saw he was going to be a loser, and he was incite and insurrection. They took it off. Unfortunately, we've run out of time because I loved this debate. I actually think it's the key debate of our time, free speech. I really think it's under attack like it's never been.

And people like Elon Musk, I think, are going to be the champions of saving free speech. We will see, and we'll debate it again. But thank you. You've got very interesting views on that. Good to see you, Matthew. Thank you. Wasn't so bad, was it?

Well, coming next, will the Wynathon memoir from Pence Harry be the final straw for his father King Charles? but it says this book could see Harry finally stripped of his remaining titles. And someone in his dreams of picture. Well, welcome back. First drafts of Prince Harry's forthcoming memoir, reportedly rejected by publishers, sparking concerns. He's ramped up revelations now likely to rock the royal family. The new book is called Spare, an unsubtle whine about his life in Prince William's shadow,

and it's due out just months before King Charles's coronation. I'm sure his father is thrilled about. What you're going to me now? As Vanity Fair Rule, it's a Cady Nicoll. And a story in Dr. Tessa Dunlop. fresh from her extraordinary performance on Good Morning Britain today, which I happened to catch it, actually. You were very fired up with old Tom Bowen.

I was extremely angry on a couple of counts, yes. Your position is that anyone is written about the Royals has no right to have adverse comment about Harry doing his memoir. No, that's absolute twisting what I'm about, Piers. I've just written a book out next week, which I'm very good at getting in there, Elizabeth and Philip. and I therefore cannot throw stones at glass houses, but I do take sincere objection to someone like Tom Bauer

sitting there across the table from me and having a go at Harry and Megan raking in the money off the back of the royal family. Tell me that Tom Bauer, with his ridiculous book, isn't any difference. Okay, here's what I would say to that. A, he's a very good journalist, and he never gets sued. And Megan is a brilliant PR person. Well, she might be actually...

And actually, I don't mind her podcast. She has a pleasing voice. I don't disagree that she milks that PR, utter, like very few people I've seen. But I think on the central point he made by way of defence, which I agree with him about, he's look, in the end, he's not Prince Harry. He's not given royal titles. He's not had all the privilege and wealth that comes from being a royal, which is paid for by the British public. It's a completely different kettle of fish.

Both of you are royal authors, but it's very, very different. And I would say, Katie, about this book by Harry, If you're King Charles, you're mourning your mother and your father in the last two years. No, I'm so sorry. I do believe that he was sincerely missing his parents. If you don't mind, I'll finish my question. He's mourning both his parents, he's lost in the last two years.

He's taken on being king after the longest apprenticeship in history. And obviously very protective of his wife, Camilla. And the word is that Harry is going to take down Camilla in this book. If that happens, why, frankly, after they've already been spray gun in the Royals now for two years, and say left for freedom and privacy. Why should they keep the titles of Duke and Duchess and Sussex? A county, by the way, I come from, where I have spent more time in the last month

than they've spent in their lives. Well, I think, and I've said this before, I know Tom said it as well, but I said it a while ago, I had on very good authority from a source close to the king, that if they do trash, Camilla particularly is very, very protective, as you would expect to the Queen Consort,

and if they use this as an opportunity to tarnish, not just the repatriation of the crown, but to attack Camilla, that really will... I think it'll be the nail in the coffin for the relationship and for the titles. Honestly, this is the family we're talking about it. They had a pop up at them on Oprah, calling them a bunch of callous racists. Are they going to really do it all over again in a book?

Do you know, if you don't want this book to succeed, if it irks you that much, stop talking about it. Oh, no, hang on, hang on. It will succeed. It will be a massive number one bestseller. That's not my argument. He's got to make his money back by getting out there and fucking you. Well, precisely.

My point is he is trashing the very institution and the people at the head of it which have afforded them the titles, which is the only reason anybody cares about it. It is an extraordinary gilded cage which comes with a dumpload of privilege and lots of problems. It's a goldfish bowl from day one.

Princess Elizabeth grew up in that goldfish bowl. Harry grew up in that goldfish bowl and couldn't really find another girl to go with him who wanted to join him in the goldfish bowl, which is why Megan became his savior in many respects. Look at Philip. Look at Philip when he first married in a little. The Queen died one of the most beloved people in the world. Indeed she did.

Because she never complained, she never explained, she never whined, she never trashed the monarchy, never trashed her family. She had her ups and downs. These two in California want their royal cake and eat it. They want to make millions trading off their royal status while saying the royal family are god awful. By the way, my father's awful, the Queen Camilla is awful, the monarchy is disgusting and they want to make millions doing it. And I believe that the written... I believe, I wish they weren't, but they are. and I believe the British monarchy

should be broad-shouldered enough to just let it wash over because that is what the Queen would want. I think there is an inevitability that if that is what they're setting out to do and he may not necessarily, by the way, none of us have seen these extras, don't actually know what's in the book.

Trust me, they're not paying 20 million for a lot of guff. If that is the intention, then it can be very damaging to you. Listen, you're both very good royal authors. You look very fetching in your king's hand. Meet a bully as a bully. Come back soon.

I'm not a bully. I just don't like people who are bullying the royal family.