Piers Morgan Uncensored - Piers Morgan Uncensored: Youngsters Abandoning the Monarchy, Britain's Worst Ever Leader, Vivek Ramaswamy
Episode Date: April 26, 2023On tonight's episode of Piers Morgan Uncensored, Piers back in the hot seat and asks why are young people abandoning the monarchy. Piers debates whether Boris Johnson was Britain's worst ever leader. ...Also Piers looks into the US candidate race as Biden will be oldest potential leader of the world and Piers speaks to the youngest, Vivek Ramaswamy. Watch Piers Morgan Uncensored at 8 pm on TalkTV on Sky 522, Virgin Media 606, 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
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I'm Pierce Morgan. I'm censored tonight. Shocking new polls show that young people are abandoning the monarchy in droves.
So how do the royals win them back? Could them suing Prince Harry for invading their privacy be a good place to start or debate?
The damning Boris Johnson biography by one of Britain's eminent historians lays bare the shambles of his premiership.
Was he Britain's worst ever leader? And as the oldest president in US history gears up for another White House rome,
will debate aging politicians with a man who thinks he could become the youngest president
in American history.
From the news building in London, this is Pierce Morgan Uncensored.
Well, good evening, London. Welcome to Pierce Morgan Unsensored.
Next week's coronation of King Charles will be a global spectacle.
Tens of millions will be watching, as Charles is crowned in a ceremony steeped in a thousand
years of regal history.
But judging by the headlines this week, the monarchy's problems lie not in the past,
but the future, a shocking new polls says 78% of Britain's young people don't care about the monarchy.
Almost 40% of them would even prefer an elected head of state.
And actually, who can blame them for having a dim view of the royal family or the monarchy,
given that two of our most famous young royals have waged a three-year war on the institution?
They weaponised the culture of validation for victimhood
and convinced a generation of young people that monarchy is an antiquated.
evil institution. Unless at a fortnight before the biggest day in the monarchy's recent history,
they're again out in force, making sure the headlines are all about them.
Our next speaker has an unmatched eye for a good photograph. I've experienced his talent firsthand,
as he has captured many meaningful milestones for me and my family.
There's Sharon retiring, Megan, ostensibly introducing a photographer friend at a talk this week,
but of course, unsubly debuting a new look that apparently we're told is more paltrow than,
And Brin says, either way, we haven't seen us since Harry's acidic memoir pumped 416 pages of poison into the royal debate.
So why now?
Well, I think we can guess, right?
Well, only this week, we were treated to, well, I don't know what you call these pictures,
but we're supposed to believe these are surprised.
They're Duke and Duchess at a basketball game in L.A.
It's the Lakers.
I was there myself two weeks ago.
And trust me, you don't get caught unawares if you're a famous person at the Lakers.
They tell you in advance.
The cameras will be on you,
do you mind if they use you?
Yeah, they knew.
Now, about the same time here,
5 a.m. in Britain, Prince William was laying flowers
at Nanzac Day dawn service.
So the message from California is clear.
You can dress up in your dusty robes
and pout through ancient rituals for antique politicians.
But we're the real royals.
We're young.
We're spontaneous.
We're free.
And, of course, Prince Harry has launched another
privacy-shattering projectile and his family.
Newspaper front pages are plastered with details of a private settlement.
Let's emphasize that again.
A private settlement by Prince William his brother.
The details of which have only become public
because Harry has chosen to invade his brother's privacy
and tell everybody.
Even on the eve of the coronation,
he's chosen to cause deep embarrassment and potential harm to his family.
Harry's book of a six-hour Netflix documentary
unleashed unprecedented volumes of private secret, intimate details about royal conversations
into the public domain for breathtaking pots of cash.
The reality is that the biggest and most ruthless invader of royal privacy, however,
in the monarchy's history, is Harry.
Maybe it's time the royal family sued Harry for invading their privacy.
Because the damage that these two are doing is becoming very clear.
Protesters chanting, Not My King,
tried to disrupt a visit by the King and Queen to Liverpool today.
But, and it's a really good but this, there's some hope.
Look at what these schoolchildren did, who were there,
had other ideas.
I love it.
That's the future, surely.
Now, joining me now is the host of the Big Fish podcast,
Benson Matthews, and Alex O'Connor,
who is the host of the Within Reason podcast,
and is an anti-monicist,
plus writer and commentator Larissa Kennedy.
Well, welcome to all of you.
So, Spencer, you're related to the royal family.
Your brother's married to Pippa Middleton,
who's obviously Kate says,
so let's go out of the way.
So you're not a completely impartial observer.
But you're a monarchist, like me.
You believe in the royal family.
This poll about young people, what do you make of it?
Well, I suppose it's a high number of people
who are claiming not to care.
It's not a high number of people who are claiming they would want something else.
What is the number?
Do you know of people who would prefer the alternative?
About 40% indicated they may not be opposed to having some form of republic, a president, whatever.
Yeah, I mean, which is exactly, I mean, the alternative would be to have an elected head of state,
which is, that's what you would prefer, is it?
Yeah, you described, you mentioned earlier that the poll was shocking and said that some people would even prefer an elected head of state,
as if this is some kind of radical idea.
What it is for this country?
I don't think it's a surprise that young people in this country are quite mystified by this
bizarre relic of our constitution that still relies on the notion that hereditary political
office is a legitimate institution.
So you think they've looked at, for example, the premiership of Boris Johnson and Liz
Truss over here, or Donald Trump in America thought, you know what we need.
Get rid of the stable royal family at the head of our country.
Let's go for a Boris and a Don.
You think people have done that in this country?
Well, unfortunately...
Do you think that's what British people actually think about elected officials?
In other words, be careful what you wish for.
We have...
They're not elected, no.
They have no real executive power.
But what they do provide in my estimation,
they provide us with something unique.
Now, when King Charles gets crowned at the coronation
in a week and a half's time,
the whole world will watch,
and they will see our country at its best,
doing what very few places can do,
the pomp, the pageant,
the military procession.
And it's something to make us all feel proud.
What's wrong with that?
Well, nothing, but don't do it on my dime.
I don't see why.
It's not on your dime.
It is.
This is being funded by the taxpayer.
Tourism pays for it.
Tourism, look, if it were true that this money is essentially going to pay for itself,
then why is it that the government and the king felt it necessary to say that this would be a service
that had value for the taxpayer?
Why are the taxpayers even involved at all?
No, no.
Why can't the royal family for this bill and pay themselves back with money.
Yeah, but the taxpayer gets the money back.
Get some money back from tourism.
That's the point.
The net cost of the royal family is a positive.
They don't cost us anything.
So that argument never watches with me
because they actually bring more than they cost.
So then you're down to,
I don't like the fact these people are privileged
and live in palaces and so on.
They perform hundreds of duties a year.
I mean, you know this better than anyone
about the amount of...
Let's bring Spencer back in.
You know better than anybody
the amount of work they all do, right?
I mean, they work hard.
Well, just to be clear, I'm not...
I can't speak from, you know, for them.
But you're aware of the work they do?
As an observer, they're a very hardworking family
that symbolize patriotism, you know, in this country.
And, you know, the majority of them have dedicated their entire lives
to service to help Britain.
You know, they, that's all they really try to do.
We're often told that we don't really have a good alternative
to monarchy in this country, but I feel like we're already living it.
I'm told, on the one hand,
when I complain about the illegitimate influence
that the monarchy has over the politics of this country,
that they don't really have any power at all.
They don't really do anything.
They cut a few ribbons here and there,
except for the legal and tax exemptions that they have,
the influence over the Prime Minister.
Perhaps this is true.
You're missing the point.
Maybe they really don't have the power,
but I can't be told in the same token.
Missing the point.
If I therefore suggest that we should get rid of them all together,
if they're somehow integral to the upkeep of the political system.
No, they're not.
Royalists seem to want to have their Victoria's Pied.
I don't, I don't argue that.
All that is ceremonial.
These are difficult to record.
All that stuff is ceremonial to me.
They don't have any executive power.
They don't make the laws that we abide and live by.
What they provide, and we saw this clearly in the COVID pandemic
when the Queen went on national television
and acted like a national comfort blanket,
they are there as a constant, above all the political fray and turmoil.
And when we have the big royal events,
there are millions and tens of millions around the world
who look at our country in a favorable light.
And you cannot calculate, to me,
that value just in what you think it costs
to put them in palaces and things
because the value in my view,
if you take it in totality, outweighs that.
And that's where their value lies to me.
Let me bring in Larissa,
who's been listening patiently.
Larissa, you're a young woman.
What do you think of the royal family?
Are you violently opposed to them?
I think it's not necessarily important
to dwell on my personal opinion,
but looking at the statistic that you've shared there,
I think it's interesting that, you know,
in the video prior,
this bringing in Harry and Megan,
into this, is bringing all sorts into this, when really young people not caring about the royal
family is because young people have so much to care about right now. We care about the intergenerational
economic gap between those who have come before us and being a generation that may not
do better than those prior. We care about climate breakdown and the fact that we may not even
have a planet to have royals on. We care about the housing crisis. We care about the cost of living
crisis. There is not space within the Overton window to then discuss the fact that, you know,
is the, are these pompous displays of excess, displays of excess, rather, an insult to the
widening gap between rich and poor and the poorest in our society? To even question this is seen
as hating Britain, and really it's about wanting the best for everyone in Britain. So I do
struggle with this idea that, oh, there are certain things that have happened recently that have
cause young people to move away from liking the royal family,
when really is that we're not steeped in all of the nostalgia that I think lots of people are.
Well, yeah, except that I would argue this, right?
We've become a far more multicultural society than we were, say, 30, 40 years ago.
And there's no doubt that in the polling, for example, on Megan and Harry,
young people tend to feel sympathy and believe what they're saying about the royal family.
Older people over 40 don't.
I mean, the polls are very clear and very split.
And my argument would be that their allegations in particular about racism in the royal family
and callous disregard for mental health and so on, which were pushed very hard and now seem to be a massive retreat,
that those allegations caused enormous damage with young people, particularly perhaps young non-white people in Britain,
who believe the royal family, because Meghan Markle said they were, for a bunch of races.
I was going to ask you if that was a dog whistle, but you actually just explicitly.
said that yourself. So you are, let me just get this correct. You believe that because there are black and brown young people in the country, they hate the way that the UK functions. Is that what? Is that your argument? Did I, they hate what? They hate what? They hate the way that the UK functions with the royal family. Is that, is that the purpose of your arm? Sorry, you've obviously missed. Before you throw phrases like dog whistle around, maybe listen to what I actually say. What I said was, what I said was, what I said was, what I said was, what I said was, what I said was, what I said was,
young people in the polling
tend to be a lot more sympathetic
and a lot more believing
of the allegations of racism
by Megan Markle and Prince Harry against their royal family.
And that may be one of the explanations
why they are in favour of perhaps
getting rid of the monarchy altogether.
So in my view, it's been damaging
what Megan and Harry have said, and now they're backtracking
from what they said, so they're never meant
to say there's any racism, but actually we all heard
what they said, and it caused damage.
That's not a dog whistle, so I'm just revealing facts.
It's not a dog whistle
It's an explicit statement
Oh hang on a statement of what?
What do you think I'm saying?
The implication
that black and brown young people
are the reason that
80% of young people
don't care about the monarchy.
I didn't say that.
I didn't say that.
I said one of the reasons
why young people may not
have a good feeling about the monarchy
is because of the allegations
not just about racism,
but also about mental health.
So you've got to listen to what I'm saying.
before throwing around phrases like dog whistle.
Otherwise, you can jump to rather extraordinary conclusions
and make rather bizarre allegations.
I'm listening to what you're saying,
and I also know the links that you are hoping that listeners will create.
So I'm just being real about it as you like to.
Well, you're not, though, are you?
I'm afraid, I'm afraid, Larissa, what you're not being is real.
Let's get back to the real.
Because Divers can actually hear what we're saying.
Which is that young people are not only, I think, separately,
from talking about Megan Harry, I don't think he has anything to do with that.
I think they're looking at countries like Barbados, perhaps,
who are distancing themselves from the monarchy,
and it gives us a fresh opportunity to actually discuss the history of monarchy,
not with a lens that is riddled with nostalgia, but critically.
And that is to say that, yes, much has been achieved, but at what expense?
And there are lots of young people and students who support campaigns
around reparations, around decolonisation.
And so to do that and at the same time to not have a critical lens towards monarchy is incongruent.
It doesn't make any sense.
So I think it's really important that we're seeing that young people's opinions and particularly young people who are criticising monarchy isn't about recent events.
It's about a historical analysis.
I don't agree with you about it not being connected, but I'm sure it's partly both.
Spencer, you do a great podcast.
I've been on it.
you talk a lot about mental health on that.
You talked about all that yourself.
Do young people just look at all this stuff
through a different lens to people of my age?
Am I young people?
You're sort of in the middle.
I'm 34 years old.
You're nearly middle age.
But what's your general sense about how generations...
I mean, is this a generational thing?
Do older people have a different view of the royal family and monarchy
to young people, partly because of things like that?
I suppose so.
I mean, most of my guests on Big Fish are slightly older.
And typically they've had very interesting stories of how they rose to be successful.
And lots of that has come through hardship and failure.
And it's how they've navigated, you know, treacherous and difficult times to become who they've become.
You know, I can't really speak to the mental health of the younger generation.
But I certainly feel things might be a bit softer nowadays.
That's my foot. Actually, yes. In a way, I think that is what I'm getting at, really. And I don't want to always bring these royal debates back to Megan and Harry. But part of my problem with what they did is they weaponized things like racism and mental health. And it caused a lot of damage to the reputation of the royals, not just here, but abroad. And I think, I mean, just to bring you back in, Alex, there's no doubt in my mind that has contributed to young people, and particularly, I suspect younger people of colour in this country.
country who have bought in perhaps to, by believing what they've been hearing, that the royal
family has a group of racists amongst them. And that's not going to make you like an institution,
it's going to make you want to get rid of it.
Sure. Well, I wouldn't know. There are a few things I find less interesting in this world
than the sort of private affairs of Harry and Meghan, or indeed, public affairs of them
either. But the problems of the monarchy predate these two individuals. I mean, there are plenty
of ways to respond to what you were saying earlier to engender national spirit and buttress the economy
that don't involve subscription to a hereditary,
a controversial hereditary dynasty,
whose right to rule is, still, if I might be allowed to remind you,
officially legitimized by the authority of an Anglican god
that doesn't exist.
I'm sorry, I just can't take this seriously.
You're an atheist anti-monic.
I understand why they have to keep up with the crowns and the caves.
Without these, who are these people?
Nothing more than thin.
Well, I might say the same about you.
Who are you an atheist anti-monicist to tell me how this kind of
should be wrong. Why do you have more rights?
The only qualification of person needs to criticize the head of state is
history within that head of state.
I'd be quite concerned if you disagreed with that.
I think that, look...
With what?
If you thought that you require more of a reason
to criticize your head of state than just being supposedly
a subject to that head of state.
I mean, at the moment somebody claims the right to rule over me by birth rate,
I think I sort of automatically adopt the right to criticize them too.
I'm not the one who requires...
Just be clear.
You'd rather be ruled by Boris Johnson.
I'm not the one who requires...
Would you rather be ruled by Boris Johnson?
I'd rather have an elected head of state, yes.
Like Boris Johnson or his trust.
I'd much rather.
You can see the problem with led to heads of state.
They're often complete.
Do you not see stability in the royal family in the sense that they have always been there
and kind of, you know, if they do continue, will always be there, whereas politicians kind of come and go.
Yeah.
And politicians, you know, are in in one minute and then somebody does something and all of a sudden they're ousted.
And also it's typically, you'll always have kind of 50% of the country that dissoned
that dislikes any particular kind of head of state.
And so aren't the figures just on paper for the royal family
better than any politician in history?
Perhaps, but aren't you troubled by the incessant referral
to these people as highness and majesty?
Highness is a relative...
Well, I'll tell you what I'm more offended by.
Highness is a relative...
Higher than what, peers.
Higher than what, and on what grounds?
Let me tell you.
I'm more offended by calling Boris Johnson
the right honourable gentleman.
We could probably do with getting rid of that.
So when it comes to titles,
That gives me more of a problem than calling Charles King.
Anyway, got to leave it there.
We're going to debate the right Honourable Boris Johnson in the next segment.
Thank you both very much indeed you for coming in.
And you, Larissa, thank you with your dog whistles.
I appreciate that.
Unsetson next is Boris Johnson, the worst leader in modern history.
Discussing that next with Sir Anthony Selden,
the historian and author of a bombshell book about Johnson's pretty awful time in number 10.
Welcome back to Pittsburgh and our sensitive.
Just over six months as Rishie Sunat became Prime Minister
and tried to restore an order after the disaster.
rainds of wet letters to his trust, and Boris Calamity Johnson.
Well, Johnson's three tumultuous years in Downing Street have now been serialized in a new book,
which includes having no plan, surprise, surprise, when the UK voted for Brexit
and describing herself to a number 10 advisor.
Again, no surprise as the furor.
So is Boris Johnson one of the worst, if not the worst, leaders?
Not just this country, but the modern world has ever seen.
Well, joining me now is the author of the book.
Johnson at number 10, the inside story, Sir Anthony Selden,
I'm also joined by talk to be contributor Esther Cracker,
and the Daily Mirror's associate editor, Kevin McGuire.
Well, Sir Anthony, great to see you.
How you managed to churn out these weighty tomes on our leaders
is beyond me, given the extra work you do in your day jobs.
But you do, and history is the beneficiary of this.
So a simple question, in the pantheon of prime ministers,
has there ever been a worse one than Boris Johnson?
Well, it's difficult, peers, to say,
because prime ministers like footballers,
they're in different eras
with different worlds of operation.
But I think we can say that in the last 100 years,
no prime minister has so underperformed as Boris Johnson
and it's such a wasty time.
He made Brexit happen.
It's highly debatable whether Britain would have voted
in favour of Brexit at the referendum
for better or worse. They voted with a majority to come out. He made it happen and he got Brexit
through Parliament, but he didn't have a plan. Well, this is an extraordinary bit. If I can just,
I sort of read an extract from the book. I mean, this is unbelievable. John Somers is the night of the
Brexit vote. Johnson was finding it hard to think straight. He went up all night watching
the television as Islington home. Only towards dawn did he realise vote leave would actually win.
Oh, bleep, he said, we've got no plan.
We haven't thought about it.
I didn't think it would happen.
Holy crap, what will we do?
This is unbelievable.
This is the guy who drove Brexit admitting he didn't think it would happen,
and he had no plan.
And guess what, it turned out, he didn't have a plan.
Well, he didn't have a plan, and neither did Dominic Cummings,
who was the other key person who made it happen.
Look, there are a lot of very good reasons for doing Brexit,
and I think that Brexiteers and non-Brexiters have a right to feel aggrieved that there wasn't something really worked out so that the benefits,
and there are real benefits of coming out of the EU, that they weren't really quickly seized upon.
And we've lost a lot of time.
And part of the reason why there is a cost of living crisis at the moment and business is finding it hard to secure alternative markets outside the EU,
is because not enough work was put in.
And frankly, blaming other people,
which is what ministers tend to do, isn't good enough.
I mean, they were there on the bridge at the time,
particularly the captain Boris Johnson
and first mate Dominic Cummings,
and they needed to have done better.
But it wasn't just peers, no plan for Brexit.
There wasn't a plan for running the country either.
Well, no, what's extraordinary is the delusion of Boris Johnson.
There's another extract here when he talks about,
where he's quoted this saying,
I'm meant to be in control, he says,
after being increasingly troubled by being bypassed by AIDS.
I am the furor, he says.
I'm the king who takes the decisions.
I mean, these are extraordinary comments
by somebody who's a British prime minister,
likening himself in language to Adolf Hitler.
Well, I think it's extraordinary,
and I think that it was something he always wanted,
and he had some of the real attributes that you need to be a great prime minister.
I mean, he was hugely captivating when he was speaking.
When he was in a room, everyone wanted to be with him.
He had a great gift of optimism.
We did see good things from him.
He was, I think, very good communicating with the nation during COVID at his best.
He did well during the Ukraine crisis.
leading the fight against Russia, showing great courage. He had it within him, but look,
every great Prime Minister appears has to have a great team around them. And he disparaged his
cabinet, didn't appoint the best people, appointed people, some who were transparently not up to it.
He made it clear to Cabinet that he had no time for them at all. And to his team, rather than
the people who really know their way around Whitehall and Westminster
who know what the job is who can support the Prime Minister.
He sacked them or failed to stand up to Dominic Cummings when he was sacked him.
That's true, and he also...
He didn't have his best team.
Right, he also comes across as just a serial liar.
Somebody where you just cannot really believe much that comes out of his mouth.
Well, one person who worked closely with him said,
this is tough because he lies morning, noon and night. So Raymond Newell, co-author and I,
ourselves, what we say is he had a curious relationship with the truth. He had his own vision of
what the truth was. He himself didn't think that he was a liar, but people around him found it
extraordinarily difficult to know what he really thought. And he kept changing his mind, not
the least when the latest person had been in the room with him. And that happens when you come
into being prime minister without any clear ideology like Satcher had or a sense of the party.
He didn't like the Conservative Party. He didn't like Parliament, didn't like Cabinet, didn't
like the EU, didn't like universities, didn't like intellectuals. It was very clear what he
disliked, but very unclear
what he liked. He had, let's remember,
being a successful,
pretty successful,
um,
uh, mayor of London at
City Hall. And there he was a
much more inclusive figure.
And he also had a really good quality
of people around him. Yeah. The leader
is only as effective as the
team around them. I think you fit in the middle. I think that really
came through. Yeah. And also he
had Cummings and he had Carrie Johnson
is now a wife and they were always at each other's
throats with their different camps. And it was all
completely divisive and dysfunctional.
Sir Anthony, thank you very much indeed.
It's a compellingly awful book, and I mean that as a compliment.
It's compelling and brilliantly written.
It's just awful in terms of confirming all my worst suspicions about Boris Charles, albeit he's a complex character.
But it's a fascinating read, as always.
So thank you very much indeed.
I want to bring in Kevin and Esther here.
It really lives down to every expectation of this book, but just in really grotesque detail,
as Sir Anthony always finds with his history.
He comes up very badly, Boris Summers.
Yeah, I think history will judge him really badly.
Ukraine is the one thing I think he really got right.
But there he gets an 80-seat majority.
He throws it away because he emphasised the conning conservative.
He was like a snake, Ile Silsman.
He caught a moment.
He didn't really believe in Brexit himself.
It was a form of him getting promotion, which it worked.
He went to number 10.
Is he the worst prime minister the last 100 years?
I noticed, Anticel.
he underperformed.
Yeah.
I look back, Eden was poor, 55, 57,
so it was a crisis.
Liz Truss was terrible, but very short-lived.
I think David Cameron would go down badly
because he lost Europe in a referendum he didn't want.
But I think Johnson, you go through it, even on COVID.
Look, he was breaking the law himself.
Yeah.
Lecturing everybody else.
I mean, he may have been communicating well from the podium,
but he wasn't practicing what he preached.
I think he will be the worst on Johnson for two reasons.
He was never meant to be a leader because he's not a leader.
He doesn't have the integrity to be a leader,
but also because he had no ideological coherence
to anything that he did, because you would read his pieces
that he used to write, you would think he was the, you know,
the bluest Tory.
And then what he actually did, there was no ideological coherence there.
And I think that was probably the biggest downfall
because he basically squandered the largest majority
that the Tories had seen since Thatcher.
And also, he didn't really have any lasting legacy outside of Ukraine.
And if you look at for...
And I thought Ukraine became for him a very expedient crush.
No, he seemed to get on that train to Keeve every time the crap was hitting the fan.
I think almost anybody else in British politics would have done the same.
Okay, I can hear people shout in the name of Jeremy Corbyn.
I wouldn't be sure about him, alas, doing the right thing on Ukraine.
But just about everybody else would have done.
Okay, so I say worst ever, British promulister?
You agree?
Yeah, the last hundred years, certainly.
All right, yeah.
It's right up there.
Anyway, you're staying with me, Pat.
Come back a little later.
Thank you very much.
On Census next tonight.
but one of the worst modern leaders to one of the oldest, Joe Biden,
said he's going to run for president again,
which is he took him to 86 by the end of a second term?
Is he too old and too unpopular to run again?
Debating that with the man who wants to be the youngest ever president,
Republican nominee candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
That's next.
Welcome back to Feas, Morgan on the Sensor.
We've just been discussing failed leadership in Britain across the pond.
Polls indicate that people feel much the same way about their leaders.
Just 5% of Americans want Biden and Trump to run a next year's presidential election again.
but it remains the most likely outcome,
this apparent crisis that the leadership brought to mind
an interview I did with the legendary singer Harry Belafonte,
who's just died at the age of 96.
Well, there's Harry, singing, of course, his best-known song.
A great singer and a great performer,
and also a great interviewee.
I sat with him at CNN about 10 years ago,
and he told me about meeting Dr. Martin Luther King
and what remarkable leader both King was,
and also Robert F. Kennedy, of course, was the brother of John Kennedy,
and both of course got assassinated.
And he went on to say this about what we lacked in the world today.
I think a lot of guys are politically smart.
They can play the chess game.
But they have lost moral compass.
And it is the absence of that moral vision
and the absence of that moral courage that I think we suffer from.
Well, joining me now is a Republican presidential candidate, Vivek Ramoswamy.
I thought that was a fascinating quote that I found when I look back at my interview with the great Harry Belafonte about the lack of moral courage in modern leaders.
That really I felt resonated with me because there's a lack of moral courage in our leaders.
It resonates with me, Peters, too.
It's part of why I'm in this race is it's not just a case for stylistic differences to say that, hey, that's just the way to be.
I happen to believe that is the way to be morally courageous.
I want to look my son in the eye and say, I want you to grow up to be like him, whoever's in the White House.
And I can't have said that in good conscience for a very long time, probably since Ronald Reagan.
But I also think it allows you to be more effective because, look, I'm taking our America First agenda further than Donald Trump did.
But I'm going to go the distance by not making it so easy for the other side to come after me.
And I think you can go further when you're doing it from a place of moral conviction, moral authority, and first principles.
not just vengeance and grievance.
And as the first millennial ever to run for president as a Republican,
I think that will actually hopefully be able to set an example
that the next generation of Americans is actually hungry to follow,
even though they may not admit it openly.
I mean, I've had it on the show a few times,
and I love your energy, your dynamism,
and the different way that you think about stuff.
I think it makes you a very interesting candidate,
even if, according to the polls at the moment,
you don't have a lot of hope of winning the nomination,
but you may well shape the eventual winner.
I don't want to, you know, downgrade your chances,
but as things stand, it looks at way.
There's plenty of time to go, though.
So we'll see you, I'm not writing you off.
I'm just saying it's going to be a tough mountain.
But my point really is,
but my point really is,
when I see your youth and dynamism and energy,
and I compare it with Joe Biden, for example,
who is going to be 82 at the next election,
which he wants to contest,
and then 86 by the end of it.
And, you know, people over here think,
my God, really?
Joe Biden's going to run again?
It's like you can barely strike a sentence together.
And that his rival may be, according to the polls at the moment, Donald Trump,
who himself is heading towards 80.
Again, people across the pond go, well, there must be better candidates in America
than two, you know, one oxygenary and one heading that way,
one who's just got the criminal indictment,
and one who looks like he's senile.
Well, I'll say a couple of things.
I mean, first of all, I'm about in the polls where Donald Trump was in 2015
when he came down the escalators.
So I think that there's room for this race to mature,
and that's why I'm in it, both Trump and Biden are over twice my age, literally two X and Biden by
a margin and then some. But it's not even just an age question, Pierce. I think that you want to see
the essence of what's happening with Joe Biden. It's not that his cognitive deficits are a bug.
They're a sort of feature, actually, because Joe Biden isn't really running for president in this
country in a technical sense he is, but he's not actually running. It's the managerial class that
has propped up President Biden as a sort of frontman, as a sort of kind of the Wizard of Oz,
sort of a hollowed out husk, a symbol that they're using to advance their agenda. So measured against
that, it makes a lot of sense. Him having cognitive deficits is an advantage, much like Senator
John Federman being able to mentally function effectively in the Senate. That lends them to be more
easily captured by the managerial class, the true people that run the show in government
in the managerial bureaucracy. So it's a little bit more cynical than just saying why he's
Yeah, it is.
But I do think the main reason Joe Biden's running again
is because he thinks his opponent's going to be Donald Trump
and he's pretty certain he can beat him.
Now, I don't think he'd feel that way about any other Republican candidate.
I mean, you could pretty well put anyone else up against Biden
and they'd have a better chance.
The latest polls, for example,
show that governor of Florida Ronda Santis
in a matchup against Biden would beat him nationally
and is leading him in, I think,
five of a six main potential battleground states.
Trump, conversely,
in the same polar polls,
it seemed to be losing to Biden across the board.
So it looks to be like Trump has this weird stranglehold
over the Republican Party that the GOP can't shed,
and that may drive him to win the nomination.
That's why Biden wants him to be the nominee,
and that's why Biden's running again.
How do you stop it as a party?
I don't think that he has that stranglehold, Pierce.
That's what the polls say now,
but you've got to skate to where the puck is going.
Every time, pundits make this mistake,
Anything before that first debate in August is literally irrelevant, as it was in the last cycle in
2015, as it has been in so many cycles.
And what I see when I travel rooms across the country, I mean, I'm only eight weeks into this race.
I'm already kind of in a fourth position or fifth position in almost all the recent national
polls.
As somebody who came in as an outsider, what it shows is people in the Republican base are actually
hungry.
They're hungry for America First as an agenda.
But what I tell them is America First does not belong to Donald Trump.
He didn't invent it. It doesn't belong to me.
It belongs to the people of this country.
So this is a long process for a reason.
Okay, but when you're standing on that podium at that first debate next to Trump,
you know what he'll do.
He'll come after all of you.
Have you thought about a nickname he's going to give you yet?
Because he hasn't actually come out with one yet.
Well, actually, he's been calling me young Vivek Ramaswamy recently.
So I'll take that.
I am young as for a presidential candidate.
There's a lot worse on that coming.
But he's going to come for you.
Are you ready for him?
I've got a thick skin.
You might have seen me on with Don Lemon last week.
I go to the left.
I take a lot of arrows.
I don't think those people,
I don't think Donald Trump is going to relish being on that debate stage with me.
I actually think, Pierce, if Ron DeSantis doesn't enter this race,
I think Donald Trump will choose not to be on the debate stage with me.
You know, if I was in his shoes, I understand that argument,
but I personally think that we are a better party than the Democrats,
where Joe Biden is being protected by the managerial class in the Democratic Party
by saying they won't have the debates.
I think the debates are going to be crucial for actually
sharpening the iron of the Republican Party.
Well, I agree. And actually, I do think you're going to perform very well at those debates,
Vivek, because you debate well with journalists. And like you said, you went on CNN,
debated with Don Lemon, and that was the end of his career at CNN.
We don't hold back. We don't play with kid gloves.
And I won't on the Republican primary either.
Listen, I appreciate you coming on Pierce Morgan & Sensor.
It's always good to catch up with this. It's going to be really interesting to see how it all
develops. And you're quite right. When Donald Trump first said he was running, in 2015,
he had the same poll numbers as you.
So, stranger things have happened.
And I admire your energy, and I wish you good luck.
Thank you, Pierce.
Appreciate that.
Well, let's talk more about the race for the White House now,
because it's all kicking off.
Outkick Fox Nation host, Tommy Leran,
and Laura and Fox News host, Haraldo Rivera.
Join me, a wonderful double act.
Now, Haraldo, you are a lot older than you look.
And I mean that as a compliment,
in that you're quite near Joe Biden's age.
But to me, you're Joe Biden's real problem.
because you are full of 40-year-old VIM and energy and dynamism and mental acuity,
all the things we would want in a president of the United States.
Joe Biden is only a little bit older than you, but doesn't have any of it.
That's my problem with him.
Well, President Biden is eight months older than I am, peers.
I'm hearing a little mixed minus, so if I seem senile, it's because I'm hearing myself in an echo.
No, no problem. We hear you loud and clear.
They, you know, and Mick Jagger is just three weeks younger than I.
You know, I don't feel that his age is in any way compromising him.
I think that because he's, I have hair.
I have a narrow waistline.
That's where you get the impression, maybe false impression,
that I physically am different than our current president.
But I think that he has demonstrated in the last two and a half.
I'm not a fan. I'm not a Democrat. I'm a Republican. But I do believe that he is much more with it than his critics give him credit. And I also believe, fears, that uniquely, this election will be about abortion rights. The Gen Ziers here in the United States, the, you know, the progressive side of the Democratic Party, they are more motivated by reproductive rights and Roe versus Wade, our Supreme Court decision that Epic.
decision that avoided the constitutional right after 50 years for a woman to have a legal abortion
when and where she chooses. I think that that will be, it'll be an issue like that, that issue.
It'll be, I want to be very specific. I believe this race will be about abortion. Biden is for
abortion rights. Trump is against abortion rights. That's the dilemma the Republicans have.
They are a minority. We are a minority when it comes to that issue in the country. And I believe that
that more than his stumbling, fumbling, fumbling, frailty will decide the election.
Tommy Léon, I imagine you couldn't disagree more with what you just heard.
Well, I do agree on the abortion discussion.
I do agree that that is going to be a hurdle for Republicans,
and I have been very open about that.
We need to have a more moderate message on that topic.
But going back to what Geraldo said about we underestimate Biden's cognitive ability.
Let's cut the BS.
I think we've all listened to this president enough.
in the last couple of years to know that this man is clearly on a cognitive decline,
which is why he didn't announce his reelection in front of people.
He put out a Twitter video at 6 a.m.
This is a basement president, and again, he will be a basement candidate.
The American people deserve more than that.
However, as Republicans, we cannot underestimate Joe Biden because the Democrat machine is so
strong and so well-oiled that they could put a paper cup up and have a chance at beating our
candidate if we're not smart.
and if we don't get the message out about early voting, ballot harvesting,
and everything else that affects me to their advantage.
Let me ask you this, Tommy.
I've just written a column for the New York Post in which I say there's only one way Biden wins
if he genuinely runs again as he says he's going to next year.
And that's if Donald Trump is his opponent.
That's the only way the Republicans lose that election.
And I recommend that they should go for someone 30 years younger,
Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida.
He's a proven winner.
He was the big standout winner.
the midterm elections. Do you think, Tommy, I mean, can the Republicans actually win with Donald
Trump? I know Trump thinks he can, but do any Republicans think he can?
Fears are not wrong, and I agree with you wholeheartedly. Unfortunately, we are at a point now
where people are not going to vote for Joe Biden. They're just going to vote against Donald Trump
because people have such a bad taste in their mouth, which I believe is unfairly pointed towards
Donald Trump, but there's too many people in this country, Republicans and Democrats who just
don't like Trump. So as much as I love Donald Trump, I wish he was our president, but I don't want
him to be our nominee because I don't want Joe Biden to be my president again. And even worse,
I don't want Tomola or Gavin Newsom. And I truly think before 2024, I do believe that they will
throw Biden under the bus and they will usher in Gavin Newsom. I'm going to hold firm to that.
Well, they might, but Geraldo, just to come to you on that point, they might, unless Trump is
the nominee, because they may think, you know what, Joe Biden beat him once and he can beat him again.
And Trump has proven, really, since that amazing win in 2016,
that the next midterms in 2018, the 2020 election, the 22 midterms,
everything Trump has touched has pretty well turned to the opposite of gold.
So to me, it would be political suicide for Republicans,
but they do seem to be heading that way.
They might be.
I think that Biden is the only person that can beat Trump
and that Trump will beat everyone else in the Republican primary.
I think that it will beat Trump for a subject.
is Biden. And I do believe that the bigger issue, and you referenced it a bit there,
peers, is the number two on the Democratic ticket. Kamala Harris, God bless her,
a senator, attorney general, you know, a wonderful record has been a woeful vice president
in terms of the public's reaction to her. I've got nothing personally against her,
but she was named, for instance, the border czar, our southern border and the notorious issues.
issues with that.
And she barely showed up at the border.
I went and went on to something else.
I think that she is uniquely disliked right now.
I mean, I don't know.
Maybe she can turn it around.
But I think that if the Republicans focus on the vice presidential candidate on Kamala Harris,
maybe they may get some traction out of that.
Well, I'll make a prediction now, Torado.
You got to admit it.
You got to face it.
Here's my prediction.
You can play this clip back.
in two years time. But if the nominee is Trump, I say Biden will beat him.
And if the nominee is DeSantis, I say the Republicans have a big win.
Now, you can take that to the bank.
About half of my political predictions come true.
Harado, Tom, great to talk to you both. Thank you both very much indeed.
Thank you, Chris.
Well, coming next on Uncensored, Transgender Swimmer Leah Thomas,
calls out women for speaking up for women. We'll debate that.
Well, I'll take over back.
My great pack.
Leah Thomas. She's the person, the transgender athlete at the center of this huge row about
trans athletes in women's sport. And she's got on the attack about those that criticize the fact
that she is a former biological male who's now decimating female swimmers in the pool.
She thinks it's transphobic to even suggest that. Take a lesson.
You can't really have that sort of half support where you're like, oh, I respect her as a woman
here, but not here. They're using the guys of feminism to sort of push
transphobic beliefs.
And I think a lot of people in that camp
sort of carry an implicit bias
against trans people, but don't want to, I guess,
fully manifest or speak that out.
And so they try to just play it off
as this sort of half support.
Esther.
This is infuriating.
It made my blood boil.
Honestly, it's...
If you criticize Leah Thomas,
who, by the way, is a six-foot-four-inch,
biological male,
now identifying as female,
but with no surgery to change anything,
if you criticise you apparently are transphobic.
Listen, I don't think the surgery makes much of a difference,
although I would say there's a much more...
It does in a pool, probably.
To have no actual reduction in your physical size.
Well, I would say that if you go the distance
to actually chop off your penis,
I can assume you're serious about this.
So that's one thing.
But it's the audacity to say that you are fake feminist
because you don't want a biological male
to effectively disintegrate women's sports
and anything to do with women's business.
See, Kevin, for me, this whole debate
would be so much less insensitive.
century if people like Leah Thomas didn't say things like that just to enrage women yeah there
there are people on both sides who just really speak rather rather derogatory about the other side and that
we saw that there look biological sex matters in sport it's why we have men's sports and women's sport
and it's why they're no trans men's men's men yeah I'm happy to say Leah her she uh treat with respect in
every way but in sport okay there is an unfair let's move to an issue which you
is even more in Cendary, which is a new survey's come out that says that Jaffa Cakes, these things,
are the best things to dunk into a cup of tea. I've got you all cups of tea here.
Now, this is not even a biscuit. This is a cake, right?
But the cake failure, you don't dunk cakes in tea. The one you do dunk is one I asked for,
and they've managed to buy five different biscuits here without buying the one I actually asked for,
which is McVittie's rich tea biscuits. Oh, yes, yes, yes. Which are the only ones you should ever
dunk and say, oh, we agree. And custard creams. I would say, no, no, no, they're fantastic.
They're not in.
Rich tea for dunking.
Rich tea is the...
Rich tea is the...
Rich tea is the...
...followed only by the very thin digestive.
Yeah.
That's it.
That's it.
Really?
Nothing chocolate should ever go into tea.
But you're right.
Jaffa cake's...
These aren't biscuits.
In fact, the manufacturer argue...
If they had a little bit of rich tea, I'd be dunking it.
But unfortunately, they failed me.
Thank you, Pax.
Good to see.
That's it for me.
What are you're up to?
Keep it uncensored.
And don't dunk your Jaffa cakes.
Dump.
