Piers Morgan Uncensored - Piers Morgan Uncensored: Let Trump Tweet

Episode Date: May 11, 2022

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Good evening, I'm Piers Morgan. Uncensored. Tonight, freedom and free speech, from the shocking abandonment of Afghan women to the Taliban to Donald Trump's possible Twitter comeback and the death of comedy. I'll discuss that with the new superstar of US late-night television. But first, it's my Orwellian free speech brain dump. Well, George Orwell knew a thing or two about free speech. You could fill a book with sensible things he had to say about it. This quote especially resonates today. In any given moment, there is an orthodox sense. he wrote, a body of ideas of which it's assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It's not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it's not done to say it. Well, incredibly, things have got a great deal worse since Orwell wrote that, because it is indeed now forbidden to say this, that or the other. And the orthodoxy today is the draconian illiberal worldviews stamped on public life

by woke fundamentalists, this cancelled culture mob, said all the rules, trampling over our rights to free speech in the process. And anyone who doesn't conform is instantly slammed, silenced and shamed. And much of it is, of course, politically motivated. That's why former President Trump is barred from Twitter, even though 74 million people voted for him in a democratic election. But Vladimir Putin, the Supreme Leader of Iran and the Taliban, are all still free to tweet.

This is obviously utterly ridiculous. Now, the billionaire maverick and free speech absolutist Elon Musk, who's about to buy Twitter, says that the ban is morally wrong and he will reverse it. And he's been supported by Jack Dorsey, one of the founders of Twitter. Trump told me he doesn't actually want to return to Twitter, even if he's allowed to,

but I reckon he'll change his mind about that. And the point is, it should be his decision. Liberals have reacted with an inferno of rage and panic, as they always do do everything. Ever since, Must said he'd restore free speech and Trump to the platform. London mayor, Sidney Khan, today blamed Trump, for a massive spike in abuse he got online.

But even he says he's open to Trump returning, But he qualified it by adding, let's wait and see if Donald Trump has learned his lesson. If it's the case, I think that's all well and good. If he breaks the rules, there need to be consequences. Well, that's fine, words. But there's the number of the problem. Who decides what those rules are, which are to be broken? All racist abuse is wrong, and so is any incitement to violence.

But both of those things are already illegal. Free speech doesn't mean you can break the law, nor does it mean you have to continue listening to somebody who's spewing something voting. that you don't like. To illustrate that, sports presenter Elib Barber has written today about how she dealt with completely unacceptable, homophobic

and racist comments made during an afternoon speech at a Scottish sports awards at the weekend. She didn't demand the speaker be cancelled, but she did exercise her right to walk out and she exercised her right to free speech to call it out on Twitter. And that was right. Believe me, and this may shock you,

people do say nasty things about me all the time on the internet. I don't want to cancel them, but I do sometimes block them or call them utter morons. That too is an exercising of my right to free speech. One of the biggest problems of Twitter is that many people on it don't seem to have any sense of humour. My fiery interview with the Taliban's official spokesman last night got everyone talking, and Twitter, of course,

whipped itself into a frothy lather of rage about them, in fact, I was even doing it. One woman named Laura tweeted comedian Ricky Jervais, always a bad idea, to say, what do you think about Pierce Morgan interviewed with the Taliban tonight? and she added the hashtag, Disgusting! Or Javis replied, like this,

I've lost all respect for them. I've had to add the candle after so that any wokeys watching realize he was joking. But not everyone knew this. So you mean you've had respect for them, was one replied to Jervais? I thought you claimed to be an advocate

for free speech, said another. No, you're backtracking on people. That's because they want to air an opinion you don't like. Incredibly, even the Daily Mirror, a national newspaper, but I used to run, fail to get the joke. Ricky Javeh slams Piers Morgan for disgusting Taliban interview.

It raged. No, he didn't. No, it wasn't. He was joking, obviously, but obviously not. Otherwise, he would have got the joke. It took another British comedian, David Bediel, to point out the bleeding obvious. This is a great joke, he tweeted.

That's it. That was it. It was a funny joke. joke. Now, it was off the back of an incredibly serious, sobering subject. But we must never let serious things in the world mean we lose our sense of humour. Unfortunately, jokes are increasingly an endangered species in today's miserable misdour of a world were being mortally offended and outraged is very much in fashion. The joyless woke brigade are so desperate to feel aggrieved, affronted, and appalled. To which I remind them all of the advice from the late great cricket

genius Shane Warren. And in this politically correct day and age, we've just got to be a little bit careful, but sometimes just say get stuffed to the fun police. I mean, seriously, just tell them to get stuffed. Nobody puts all his better than the man who got me into all this

mess last night, Mr Jervais. There's going to be a bit of that throughout the show, see if you can spot it, okay? Now, that's when I say someone I don't really mean for comic effect, and you as an audience, you laugh at the wrong thing, because you know what, right thing is. It's a way of satirising attitudes. Like that first joke, I use the old-fashioned

sexist trope that women aren't funny. Now, in real life, I know there are loads of funny women. Like, um, I did it again. Well spotted. Good. Even as that clip ends, I know there are people tweeting me, incensed wokeies, who don't get the joke, or perhaps they do get it, but pretend not to, so they can virtually signal their mock outrage. It and they are exhausting. Well, as he's tired of, some wokey's wail about Trump being unbanned from Twitter and half-wit excuses for journalists failed the irony test and would have failed my employment test if I was still at the mirror.

Real free speech champions are putting their lives on the line for the truth every single day. Palestinian reporter Shereen Abu Akle was shot and killed today while covering an Israeli raid in the West Bank. The Al Jazeera correspondent, who's also a US citizen, was hugely respected. She's reported for decades on flashpoints in Israel and Palestine,

bravely crossing between both sides report uncomfortable truths about a complex and emotive conflict. She was wearing a press badge. Journalists like Shireen are the reason why we understand the world. George Orwell himself wrote vividly about the Spanish Civil War. A free press is the reason we know that Putin is a genocidal war criminal, while millions of brainwashed Russians in a country where journalists get murdered for their job,

think he's saving Ukraine from Nazis. Several journalists have already been killed in Ukraine. covering the war. Many others are out there right now, risking their lives to bring us that truth. Now, you might be tempted to think that a free press can be taken for granted in 2022, but it can't. The facts show it's in decline. It's time we began fighting much harder for it. More and more countries are gagging reporters. Many use the pandemic as an excuse to muzzle journalists on the bogus pretext of protecting public health. And according to UNESCO, a staggering 85% of the world's population lives in a place where press freedom has been restricted in the last five years.

And ironically, by their own measure, the last time press freedom plummeted to these depths was 1984, the very title of George Orwell's iconic novel. Well, Newspeak was, of course, the name of a dystopian language in George Orwell's 1984. It was a controlled and contorted vocabulary designed to limit people's ability to think for themselves. Well, besides being a free speech champion, Alwell had a big imagination. But I doubt even he would have believed that news, New speakers now being imposed on British doctors and nurses. First, maternity services were ordered to use gender-inclusive terms,

like chest feeding for new mothers to avoid upsetting trans patients. To which I say, well, what about the upset cause to women who want to identify as women and be called women and mothers and who want to be told they're breastfeeding? Where are their rights? Well, now NHS bosses are being lectured on the danger of microaggression which is one of my least favorite words in the whole English language. Apparently, these can be worse than overt acts of hate

and can cause PTSD post-traumatic stress disorder. What? What does it even mean? People who literally have to deal every day with patients suffering very real PTSD from life-threatening illness or terrible injuries. I've now got to watch their words in case it sends perfectly healthy people into a spiral of trauma.

When did we get so pathetic? Why did we get so pathetic? I grew up in a world where the usual advice offered to anyone who overreacted to hurtful words with sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. I kind of miss that world. Coming up, how do we save Afghan women from the Taliban walls

with Trump be allowed to tweet again? China's zero COVID nightmare and one of the funniest men in America, Greed Gutfeld, is live. All coming up, all uncensored. Welcome back to Bismorgan Unsensored. The citizens, the Taliban regime tightens its grip over the people of Afghanistan. It's the women who are suffering catastrophically.

They're treated like chattels. The human rights have been taken away. They're forced to wear full-faced coverings. And if they don't, their male guardians face imprisonment. Last night on the censored, I interviewed Taliban spokesperson Suhail Shaheen and challenged him on this. Mr. Shaheen, of course, denied it was happening. 99% of the Afghan women, they are observing hijab voluntarily. So they consider it a dignity, a safeguard for their modesty.

I asked you, my teenage girls are still being banned from going to school. We have never said they are banned. Girls have the right to have access to education as boys. Yeah, except they're not allowed to go to school. So that's a nonsense. I then asked him if his own daughters went to school. Of course, yes. Of course.

And it will. Of course they do, because you're in Dalai and they can go to school, right? Yeah, they are observing hijab. They are observing hijab. And so, well, that means we have not denied. Of course, one rule for his daughters, another rule for everybody else's daughters in Afghanistan. We're joining me now a former US ambassador to the United Nations, political consultant, John Bolton, and chief foreign correspondent for the Sunday Times, Christina Lam, who's in Ukraine.

Well, welcome to both of you. Christina, let me start with you because you spent so much time in Afghanistan. Interviewing the spokesman for the Taliban was pretty dispiriting last night because I felt like he was spinning a completely bogus narrative about what is going on there. And it seems pretty clear to journalists who are on the ground that women are being taken right back to the medieval dark ages of the previous Taliban rule. Yeah, it is very dispiriting. It's like been one restriction after another, particularly in the last few months.

So women can't travel on their own, women are not supposed to go out of their house on their own. We thought that girls were going to be able to go back to high school in March. And then they went that day and were sent straight back home, many of them in floods of tears. So it's been absolutely terrible for women and girls since the Taliban took over. And all of the hope at the beginning that this was a sort of different. kind of Taliban somehow, I'm afraid now really doesn't look like that. And this latest restriction of the hijab and in particular recommending that they should wear the balker is really the last nail in the coffin, I think.

Yeah, I mean, John Bolton, many people would say that the American sudden overnight withdrawal from Afghanistan basically handed the whole country back to the Taliban very quickly, allowed them to now suppress women all over again and almost certainly emboldened Vladimir Putin to conclude that maybe Joe Biden wasn't up for the fight anymore and that's why he invaded Ukraine. What do you think of that? Well, I don't think it was simply the withdrawal last summer.

I think in the Trump administration, critical mistakes were made, most particularly negotiating only with the Taliban about a potential U.S. and NATO, withdrawal, not bringing in the government of Afghanistan. And I think President Trump was so eager to get out of the country that he didn't really care what he left behind. So no negotiations with the Taliban about human rights or women's rights and no participation of the legitimate government of Afghanistan until the end when they received basically a done deal from the U.S. on the way out.

So I think the entire process of trying to cut a deal with the terrorist organization was a mistake from start to finish. What you're saying now, tragically, I think it was entirely predictable. Yeah, Christina, you're now in Ukraine. It's obviously horrendous what's going on there. But there are, well, there is a belief by many people that the Ukraine resistance is strong and that there is a chance that Russia could actually lose this. What's your feeling on the ground there?

Yeah, I mean, the Ukraine resistance has been astonishing, really humbling every body that you meet is so united in Ukraine pretty much in trying to drive out the Russians. But I'm in the east at the moment, which is where the second offensive is going on. And that's a little bit different. I mean, we know that Russia was kind of humiliated in trying to take Kiev in the center of the country and was driven back. But here, the front line is much more static.

It's sort of moving a few miles back and forth. It, you know, looks like it could. I was near the front line yesterday. It looks like it could go on for a very long time. And John Bolton, What is your assessment of how America and Joe Biden in particular have handled the Ukraine crisis? And what do you make of the development today where Boris Johnson's basically said to Finland and Norway, if you come under attack from Russia, will be there for you, and they're obviously lined up now to join NATO?

What do you think of NATO in all this and the way America has handled it? Well, to start with Biden, I think the basic failure at work here is the failure to do. deter the Russian invasion to begin with. I mean, nobody can be happy regardless of NATO's performance or the Ukrainian military's performance after the Russian invasion takes place simply because we've supplied weapons and ammunition to the Ukrainians or simply because we've imposed sanctions on Russia. That's not a happy situation. The objective here should have been deter Russia from invading in the first place, and that failed for a number of reasons, the lack of credibility of the administration, the lack of the gravity of the threats involved, and I think Putin's

misapprehension of what he would find once he got inside Ukraine. But all those failures now, that's good for historical debate. The real question is, do we have staying power to continue this? There were press reports a few days ago, the president of Volkswagen, for example, saying it was time to negotiate a deal with the Russians. And you can count on the Kremlin believing that that's coming up, that the West as a whole will lose its result and that he will be able to take the substantial territory he's gained, notwithstanding the colossal failures of the Russian military.

Remember, this war is still being fought on Ukrainian territory, Ukraine's still being ground into dust, and Russian forces are still way ahead of where they were the night of February the 24th. Christina, I don't want to let you go without congratulating you because tonight it was announced to you at the Society of Enverend, You received an outstanding contribution to journalism awards. So congratulations on a well-deserved award.

I followed you for a long time. You're an outstandingly courageous journalist. And we've touched on today already that we saw another journalist killed today over in covering the Israel-Palestine conflict. We've seen journalists killed in the Ukraine as well. It's a dangerous time to be a foreign correspondent, isn't it? But I think it's a really important time to be a foreign correspondent. foreign correspondent. I mean, actually, Ukraine, I think, in a time of, you know, lots of discussion

of fake news and all of this that actually shows the importance of journalism and being there and bringing back the stories, I mean, some of the atrocities that many of my colleagues have been reporting that the Russians have done, I think, you know, it's really, it's horrendous, It's difficult for us to hear, far more difficult for the people to go through. It's difficult for people to read about or listen to, but it's really important that we document those things and bring to book the people that are doing these horrendous things, whether it's raping, killing, you know, blowing up schools and hospitals. People here say that the most dangerous place to hide now is in a school because the Russians keep bombings.

them. Absolutely disgusting. Well, congratulations on your world. Well, deserve. Keep up your great work out there. We need the truth. And it's people like you that bring it to us. And thanks also to you, John Bolton. I appreciate you coming on the show. Thank you. Well, now one of my favourite sports stars is tennis player Emma Radikana. She came from absolutely nowhere, of course, to stand the world and win the US Open. She showed remarkable strength and resilience for a 19-year-old. He's also a very likable and engaging character. But she forgot the golden rule

when it comes to showing off your television skills in a foreign language to an interviewer. Never ask your friends to advise you on what to say. They will always do this to you. Last one is about your Italian. Did you learn some words in these days, a few days? I did. Like, is that a bad word?

I'll do a little bit, yeah. Oh, my friend told me that one. Don't cut that one. What does it mean? What does it mean? I will tell you later. Really? At the end of the...

I just sworn on camera. I'm afraid you have, Emma, and it was a very bad word in Italian. So congratulations to your friend who stitched you up like the proverbial kipper. Well, on censored, Elon Musk said it's morally wrong for Donald Trump to be banned from Twitter. Is he right?

What I heard Elon Musk was going to reinstate Donald Trump to Twitter? I've got to admit, I smiled. I've kind of missed it. It's been a bit boring without him and his own particular brand of raging perma controversy, and there were wonderful moments like this. None of us will ever forget where we were when we read this and thought, what the hell is he talking about?

We still have no idea what he was talking about. Nobody was safe from Trump's tweets. He had a go at London mayor, Siddeek Khan, calling him a terrible mayor and foolishly nasty. This was after Sadie Khan allowed a big, gigantic, grotesque balloon to fly over Parliament Square during Trump's state visit. Today, Sadie Khan said this about the idea of, Trump was coming back to Twitter.

The amount of racial abuse I received on social media increased by 2,000 percent. 2,000 percent in Trump's first year. In the last year he was being president, once he was banned from Twitter, I received the least racial abuse of any time over five years. Well, certainly be allowed back. Joining me now is Conservative radio host of Ben Ferguson. I'm political activist and campaigner, Gina Miller. Welcome to both of you. Ben, I'll come to you in a moment.

Gina, lovely to see you. Thank you for coming into the thing. Jack Dorsey has defended Elon Musk saying Trump should come back. He said he does agree, but he had got some exceptions. He said in terms of behavior, spam, network, manipulation, illegal behavior. But generally, he said permanent bans are a failure of ours and don't work. And he said that it was a business decision, and they shouldn't make business decisions about freedom of speech.

I have to say I agree with him because, you know, one of the things that Elon Musk said was that he is a free speech absolutist. Well, that means he's black and white. And actually, life is shades of grey. So there's quite worrying that he said that. And he's going to be, if the deal goes through in charge of Twitter. But I think it's free speech, it's different from inciting violence or fueling hatred or, you know, the integrity of an electoral system. But saying someone, you know, abusing someone and disagreeing with them or being harsh on. them, you have every right to say that.

Right. I mean, I thought... Salique Khan getting racist abuse because Donald Trump criticised him on Twitter. I didn't see Trump... I don't see how you can make that connection. Well, I thought it was a bit spurious because I didn't see Donald Trump encouraging people to be racist about Sadiq Khan. He was criticising him. He got 80 million followers,

including a lot of idiots. Clearly, we thought it was okay to racial abuse him. Ben Ferguson, the argument against bringing Donald Trump back is that he incited violence on January 6th at the Capitol, and that was why he got banned. That was the reason Twitter had at the time. I've got to say that when you think that Vladimir Putin, the Supreme Iran leader, and the Taliban chiefs are all still on Twitter, it seems a ridiculous moment that the President of the United States is not there. Yeah, it was their

excuse. They were looking for an excuse to silence what many would argue is the most powerful man on Twitter at the time, Donald Trump, and that was their excuse. They were waiting for an opportunity. And you notice within a couple of hours, everything, had banned him, right, from social media. Facebook jumped on there. Sites that allow you to sell goods even banned him because they hated Donald Trump. And if you look at Twitter and you look at their big problem now,

it's even when they say that he should come back under certain guidelines, those own guidelines still don't apply to Vladimir Putin, to ISIS leaders, to al-Qaeda, the Aetola and Iran. I mean, the list goes on and on and on of people. You even had someone last week that threatened Supreme Court justices by giving out their addresses and say, you will not feel safe until you are dead in the ground. And they didn't even suspend that Twitter account.

So the idea that Twitter is out there going, oh, we're going to have law and order here is absurd. And they should allow people to come back. And if you don't like what they say, then fine, you as a user have the option to never look at Donald Trump's tweets again. I mean, that's the point I would say, is that with free speech, people sometimes get it wrong,

I think, what free speech is. You know, you don't have to listen to it. You can block people on Twitter. I do that a lot if they're just really horrendously abusive. I think at the moment with this whole conversation, which is actually lots of shades of grey, is that we're looking at the medium, not the message. Because actually, there are lots of...

If you did that, if you spray painted graffiti, which incited violence, then that's illegal. Just because you're doing it on social media, it should be the same rule. So the rules should not be applied to the medium. It's the message. Would you ban Trump? I would...

Would you extend the ban, in other words, not bringing... Well, I think it wouldn't a life ban, but I think I would look at it and see that there were times when he incited hatred and he did fuel insurgents and he did cause incite violence. And those are things that are illegal in states in the America. Not all, not freedom of speech, funny enough. It's a line for you. No, no, freedom of speech is interesting because in the US under the First Amendment of Constitution, there is actually no legislation for hate speech as we do in most Western countries. So territories, different countries, different rules. They do, differ.

Very much so. And Twitter is a global platform, which creates its own problems. It has huge problems there, but not only that, you've got this, you have to apply whatever the rule is consistently across everyone. And also, you have to not just make this about celebrities of politicizing everything. Because actually there are real problems with pornography, with self-harm, with lots of other things that are happening on this platform. So Ben, my issue with it is... But that's not a free speech issue. Well, Ben, I'm going to come to...

Let me put this to you, Ben. I mean, I had a case on Instagram where some vile yob in this. this country in the UK, posted a death threat specific to me and one of my sons on his Instagram page in public. It's going through the legal process now. It's taken 16 months, I have to say, and there's still be no charging decision. But I was absolutely incensed that someone would target one of my kids like that with a genuinely horrible death threat. And I've decided to pursue it. That, to me, there is a line. And I think we do know where a lot of these lines are. Yeah, and I agree with you. And I think that's common sense.

but this idea that Twitter should have rules like someone's a kindergarten or first grade teacher, and we're going to put you in time out in the corner because you say something that we just don't like, or you have an opinion that we just don't like, is never going to work. And I think that's what Dorsey even understood now. Yes, you can have rules that you can't threaten to kill somebody, for example, as you just described. I've dealt with death threats before as well. And when you deal with it, when it comes after your family, it is very personal. And the fact that it takes so long to get them taken down, when you're really,

report them, but they will go after people for political speech is where there is a clear, as he put it, black and white. There is not a gray area here. You either have a platform that's in favor of free speech and you can have rules like no death threats, right? But this idea that Donald Trump is banned, but Vladimir Putin and ISIS and Al-Qaeda leaders still have their Twitter accounts. It tells you that this was about targeting him politically. It was not about safety. It was about shutting up at conservative. Yeah, it's definitely been a bias against conservative right in terms of who gets the platform. And it even went to the extent where the New York Post had their own account on Twitter

de-platform because they had a genuinely true story about a laptop belonging to the president's side. It's ridiculous. I think there is too much of this is being made political football. That's absolutely true because there are real crimes happening on social media platforms. As you said, by the way, your case, maybe you should quote my precedence because actually the same thing happened with me and I did get someone sent to jail. for exactly that threatening to kill me and children, et cetera. So, you know, those sorts of things, those are black and white.

I absolutely agree with that. But expressing dislike or prejudice isn't, that is free speech, inciting violence and actually fueling hate and destabilizing democracy. Now, those, to me, are also black and white. And that's what I think Trump should have been banned for, not for having views that we don't agree with. But you wouldn't necessarily give him a lifetime. So you do believe that Trump should be banned.

Not for a lifetime. I think you know what we should do, maybe a two-strike rule. So come back and see what happens. Final point, Ben. This is where you lose me. You just said that you would ban Trump. So my question is for how long. And would you ban them right before an election and use that to your advantage?

Would you wait for it right before a midterm election or a prime minister or any type of election in the world? And then you let people politically go in and silence someone that they want to shut up. That's the problem. If you do it the way you're describing it, it will be used to understand. undermine freedom and democracy and election results. It's when you say something to break the law. people like the Hunter Biden story. I think there is, he didn't break the law.

The line about, I mean, the argument with Trump is, did he actually break the law by inciting the riots at the Capitol? No, he didn't. But there is an argument about that. Some people think he did. Some people think he didn't. It's still going through courts. We'll find out eventually what the conclusion is on all that.

But it's a very interesting debate. I don't think there are easy answers. I'm actually glad Elon Musk is the one to tackle them because he has a massive brain. And I think these need a massive brain. A bit like you, Ben Ferguson. And certainly like you, Gina Miller. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm very much to two massive brains. Now, what is real leadership? The captain at West Ham United Football Club, Mark Noble, decided it was about cleaning out the dressing room floor after each game. A remarkably humble act of self-lessness by a multimillionaire star. But the whole idea was to send the right signal

to his younger players that they're not above anything and that humility matters. Leadership comes in many forms, but I really like this. It reminds me of the New Zealand rugby team, the All Blacks, were the most successful sporting franchise of all time anywhere in the world. They also believe in what they call sweeping the shades, the most experienced of the youngest players at the end of every game,

clean out the dressing room. Well, Mark Noble's example works. He's actually inspired one of his young defenders who began doing it out of sheer fear that his captain may find out he hadn't. Watch this. There was a picture. I think it was after the Leon game,

where you were sweeping the changing room, and he sat on his phone. Did he offer to help or not? Let's clear this up. The truth is, I always do it, But there was a game I wasn't at. What one was it? Brentford.

Brentford away. I wasn't there. And I got a text message from Jono about 8 o'clock that night. He said, no. I was just about to walk out the changing room. And I see your face in my brain. So I turned around and went and swept the changing room. Fair play.

I love that. And if somebody gets me a broom, I'll do the studio. End of the show. What I call the issue. Now, China's tyrannical zero COVID policy is reaching new debts as people in Shanghai already locked in their homes under the world's strictest lockdowns are now banned from getting food deliveries and accessing certain hospital services. Video shared on social media shows suspected COVID patients being forcibly quarantined.

Look at this. Now, the head of the World Health Organization has issued a rare rebuke to China, saying it's zero COVID policy is simply unsustainable. I'm joining on my global public health expert Professor Debbie Sreedar. Debbie, love me to talk to you. Used to speak to a lot on the morning show. Great to have you on Piersmorgan Unsensitive. This zero-COVID strategy that China is still trying to follow,

you were a supporter of this early in the pandemic before vaccines came along. What changed your mind and what do you think of what's happening in China? Yeah, nice to see you again, Piers. I think early on when we could see there were numerous vaccine trials and the early results were really promising, the idea of zero-COVID was to buy time because every infection averted could let someone live into an era of vaccines, therapeutics, and actually live for years and years to come.

And I think countries like Taiwan, South Korea, New Zealand recognize that, have done mass vaccination and opened up. South Korea has no more restrictions. New Zealand is opening its borders. Unfortunately, China hasn't moved forward with mass vaccination, still has a substantial fraction of elderly and vulnerable people unvaccinated. And if it opened up the same way that other countries have, it would have 1.6 estimated million deaths. And so right now it's in a difficult position because we know the true exit is science. It's scientific tools. but right now China just doesn't have access to those.

The Chinese government is in a very difficult predicament. Which country do you think has done the best? I read that Vietnam, for example, has had a really good pandemic, very low death toll, very high take-up on vaccines, etc. Yeah, so I think the countries to look at are largely in East Asia and also in the Pacific, where they suppressed, they kept infection numbers low, but they didn't do that through daily lockdowns.

They knew their economic and state. social performance would really suffer under that. So what they did instead was actually watch their borders, limit importation, have a great testing and tracing system, and therefore suppress, then mass vaccinate as soon as vaccinations became available, and then open up now back to normal. And so they've taken a wave of infections in many cases,

but the damage has been blunted because of the protection we now have through the scientific progress over two years. I was very critical of the British government in the first couple of waves of this pandemic. I felt they handled it really badly. I think you shared that view at the time. When you look now two years on, you see the overall death rate now around Europe, for example.

And the UK hasn't fared too badly because of the success and speed of our vaccine programs. So when you look at it in totality, what would your verdict be on the way the UK government has handled this? Yeah, I think you're exactly right, Piers. We have to look at pre-vaccine, where we saw in the first year a lot of lives lost unnecessarily, mistakes made in delayed testing, not having any checks. in terms of people entering the country during our first lockdown, you know, a very delayed lockdown in several cases. But actually, when you hit 2021, the rollout was pretty superb and stellar.

I think many places looked at Britain and said, wow, how did they do that? And that really credit goes to the UK government for getting the supply of vaccines, but also the staff of the NHS. We know people were there working 24 hours on the weekend to get vaccines and jabs into arms, but also the British public. The vaccination rates are absolutely astonishing, which means people showed up. They knew it was something they could do to help us exit this pandemic,

and they got not one, but two, but three jabs. And that's why we're able right now to have as much freedom as we do in our daily lives without the devastation that we're seeing in other places. Final question, and it's a contentious one, because when people air the theory that COVID began in a lab and not a wet market, they were sort of taken off social media and howled and abused and so on. It's becoming a much more popular theory. What do you think?

Well, I think there's, you know, when initially people talked about lab leak, they talked about some kind of bioweapon. I think virologists are clear that this was not designed by people. This is natural in terms of its origin. Where there's more debate is when did the spillover event happen? Did it happen in a wet market or did it happen through a lab leak? Knowing that lab leaks happen all the time in different places across the world, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology does indeed do research on coronaviruses.

So I think the jury is out on this. And what you've seen is this becoming quite political with the WHO, the World Health Organization, just unable to get an independent mission in to do an audit. of that lab to actually look for reservoirs of where could this virus be in terms of an animal population. So we just don't know. But it is an open debate. And I think there are arguments on both sides of that debate. Davy, it's great to talk to you. You've done a brilliant book called Preventable. It's really about how we avoid getting ourselves into this kind of situation again. It's very hard because we never know where the next pandemic may come from. But

great to talk to you've taken a lot of flak for your positions that you've taken. But I've always felt you've followed the science. You've changed your view when facts have changed. and I think that's what scientists should do. So I thank you for everything that you've done and good to talk to you. You too. Thank you so much, Peers. Unsensored next, have we totally lost our sense of humor? Is comedy dead?

We're still alive with the new King of Late Night US TV. Greg Gutfeld, he's alive, he's funny, I think. We're about to find out after the break. No pressure, Greg. Welcome to the Unsensored Comedy Club where no topic is off limits and we laugh. When do we all lose our sense of humor? Well, one person who hasn't is comedian Ricky Jervais.

When asked on Twitter yesterday, what he thought about me interviewing the Taliban official spokesman? He said, I've lost all respect for them. It was a gag. A lot of half which didn't get the gag. Why have a loss the ability to understand humor? In a moment, I'll speak to one of the funniest men in America. It's Greg Gutfeld. But first, let's see him in action. So it's 2021, and this monologue is on the steel dossier. Like a birthmark, this story never ever goes away. Is that my fault? No. I would much prefer to do something. something on Joe Biden breaking wind at the climate summit. That breeze was so hot, Greta Thunberg asked him to stand in front of a windmill.

But look, that fart was the only honest thing to come out of Joe since he became president. As you know, Hillary Clinton is on her, please don't forget me to her. Now showing up on a late night show to crack wise about the guy who shall act her like a driftwood sculpture in 2016. Yes, Trump is her meal ticket, her free bird, her stairway to heaven. She brought Chelsea because she's also unemployed and Bill wanted both. both of them out of the house before his 5 p.m. shows up. Her name's Crystal. Well, Greg Garfield, George. Greg, brilliant to have you on Pierce Morgan Unsensored. I had a great time with you in New York, doing the Five, the show that you're a superstar on.

Your own show is the biggest show on cable in America. Congratulations. I want to take you back to a... Thank you. I'll take you back to a quote that you said, which I thought was really pertinent to the time we live in. He said, I became a conservative by being around liberals, and I became a libertarian by being around conservatives. You realize there's something distinctly in common between the two groups are left and the right. The worst part of each of them is the moralizing. And I thought that was so pertinent to what goes on now, especially on social media. Absolutely. One of the greatest things that the woke has done is that they've made humorlessness hilarious. So what I was talking about is like when you're around the left and they're so earnest and sanctimonious, and yet they

get nothing done, you drift away. Then you get into the conservative realm and you have the same kind, except they might be more religious, more moralistic in a different way. And you move into the libertarian world. But then even in libertarians, you find some humorlessness there. But what wokeism has done for all of us and has united, like, left and right and center is they have taught us how humorlessness is the funniest damn thing on earth. They, I mean, the only reason why my show was a hit is because of them, right? Cancel culture, wokeism. I don't have to, I don't really have to do that much work, peers,

which is kind of my goal in life. All I got to do is go on Twitter, you find the most extreme idiot, which is about 10% of Twitter, and then let them do the work for you. They do the heavy lifting with their twisted mindset. I mean, it was hilarious. It was hilarious last night.

I interviewed the official spokesman for the Taliban. And somebody tweeted Ricky Javit. Ricky Javis to say, isn't it disgusting that Piers Morgan's doing this? And Javis replied, I've lost all respect for them, the Taliban, right? Of course it's just a simple gang. But absolute mayhem erupted because most of Twitter took him seriously and just thought he was talking about, you know, this is all disgusting. And of course he wasn't. Yeah.

No, and it's a classic joke. I mean, you could kind of see it coming. It's like, you know, I'd call you a dirt bag, but I don't want to insult dirt bags. It's so easy. But the problem with Twitter, and it's part of free speech absolutism, everybody's got to be there, is that it's given an avenue for the humorless. So they get on, and they'll actually go on and they'll see the best, the funniest part about Twitter is when people come on and explain the jokes. So I saw that Ricky Jervais tweet. The stuff that didn't bother me was the people who didn't get the joke.

It was the people that explained the joke. There was like a David. Like there was like David Bedeal. Is that his name? David Bedele? Is that his name? He's British. He was like trying, he was like, oh, here's why this joke is so good.

And then he goes on to explain it. And it's like, oh, God. So you have, in Twitter, you have joke explainers. You have the humorless contingent, which is probably now, probably about 25%. But it's just what you have to live with. I find that to be, in my opinion, more enjoyable than the actual legitimately funny people. I mean, without wokeism and without the humorlessness, we wouldn't have, you know, Tadiana McGrath. Well, this brings me to two of my favorite subjects of humor, actually, which are Megan and Harry,

who are planning to come and hide that the Queen's Platinum Jubilee. And I know you find them a constant source of hilarity as well. They don't ever intend to make us laugh. They just make us laugh through their absurdity. I love that her woke cartoon on Netflix got canceled. There's a great story behind this. The cartoon is called Pearl. It's about a coming of age, right? Which is which is a code word for nauseating, you know, self-involved tripe. So what happened is this is my favorite part. So it's like young girls rise in social justice. And you know who Megan's cartoon is inspired by?

Megan. She made the car. It's inspired by her, which is amazing. But that tells you everything that in the woke world, it is not actually about helping people. It's a disguise. It's a virtue signal that helps you. that makes you look good.

And there's perfect evidence of this because they never help anybody but themselves. And they never mean it. They don't even change course. Yeah, they never mean it. It's never about actually anything but enriching themselves and making themselves look virtuous.

Exactly. I'm preaching one thing I do. I resent you. I resent England for sending your second-hand royalty to us. Because now we got to deal with this. Well, to be fair, you did. Hang on, hang on. To be fair, you lot sent two,

women into our royal family. One of them led to an abdication, and the other one has nearly broken up the entire monarchy. So with respect to you, America, you're two for two, and it's not looking good. Yes. I just love the fact that they thought that they were going to be royalty here in America. So there was an assumption that when, and they were almost there. I mean, they were going to get gigs everywhere. They're, you know, Netflix, Hulu, Apple TV, everybody who's just going to give them millions and mills. And then they had to sit in a room with them and realize, my, God, they're vacuous. He's a nice guy, apparently. But, I mean, just thoroughly vacuous. She leads him around on a rope and, you know, and it's like, that's it. That is the kind of

sitcom I want to see. I tell you the other thing. I want to see a reality show. The other thing. We do a nightly thing called The World's Gone Nuts. And I want to just go into this one with you. I'll clip my fingers and show. The World Gone Nass. Apologies for the American accent there, Greg. But this is such a brilliant story. It sums up the world we live in. Scientists have declared that there is sex in the naming of parasitic worms. A team of scientists has concluded that there were apparently 596 new species of parasitic worms,

and of those, only 111, 18% honored female scientists. Therefore, they wanted an end to this etymological nepotism and cronyism and sexism. In other words, they want more parasitic worms to be named after women, otherwise it's... otherwise it's sexism. You know what? I'm so tired of ships being named after women.

Now they want our worms. They want our worms, peers. It's like, by the way, has anybody talked to the worms? How do the worms feel? Well, exactly. You know? By the way, by the way, if they had named every parasitic worm after women, the women would have gone nuts saying,

why are you calling us all after parasitic worms? And how does a worm feel being called a parasite? A parasite is not a nice word. Why don't you call them adjunctive livers, like, or adjacent, adjacent survivalists? Because, I mean, parasitic, is just so mean-spirited? Worms have feelings, too. I could talk to you for a very long time. I know that you've made yourself the biggest star on American TV because you just laugh at all this nonsense. It is all nonsense. And the world has gone nuts, but thank God you're here to help try and save us. Greg Gutfeld, thank you. I appreciate you coming on.

You got it. Thanks, Pierce. Great guy. That's it for me. Tomorrow, we'll be back with more. But until then, stay on Senton. Good night.