Piers Morgan went on "Tucker Carlson Today" to settle scores after exiting "Good Morning Britain."- "Now, is she deliberately lying? Is she completely delusional?" Morgan said of Meghan Markle.
- "I don't know, but, frankly, I don't care," he said on the
Fox News streaming show.
Piers Morgan made his first on-camera appearance Monday since walking off the set of "Good Morning Britain" in early March.
The former CNN host and Daily Mail columnist was interviewed virtually by Tucker Carlson for his new streaming show "Tucker Carlson Today," which is behind a paywall on the Fox Nation streaming app.
Embracing American culture wars, Morgan argued that his freedom of speech was impinged upon after he criticized Meghan Markle for telling Oprah Winfrey that she experienced racism from the British royal family.
"Now, is she deliberately lying? Is she completely delusional? I don't know, but frankly, I don't care," Morgan said of Markle at the outset of the interview, which lasted for more than an hour.
Morgan decried what he called "the appalling smearing of the Queen," repeatedly accusing Markle of implying that Queen Elizabeth II is racist.
Markle never leveled that accusation at the Queen in her Winfrey interview, and Prince Harry said after the interview that the Queen was not the unnamed member of the royal family who the couple said expressed concerns over their first child's skin color before his birth.
Later in the interview, Morgan said he should not have walked off the set of "Good Morning Britain" after his cohost Alex Beresford accused him of taking Markle's comments too personally because of her apparent ghosting of Morgan after they went out for a drink several years ago.
-Chris Rickett (@chrisrickett) March 9, 2021
"Now I walked off for a few minutes, then I realized, this is stupid. I shouldn't have walked off," Morgan said. "You know, you should always be able to have a debate. I was angry in the moment that he was trying to personalize this, make it some personal vendetta I have with Meghan Markle, which I don't."
Carlson repeatedly praised Morgan, telling his British counterpart that he "checked every box on the journalism checklist" before storming off the set. Carlson described that day's "Good Morning Britain" show as "great television" and congratulated Morgan for bringing the show ahead of the BBC's morning program in ratings on that day.
"Well, I'll tell you, it's very interesting, because if you believe Twitter," Morgan said, "I got my comeuppance rightly and deservedly. You know, the woke mob, their court had met. I'd been convicted summarily. Meghan Markle had complained to my boss, complained to the government regulator, and I was gone for not apologizing for disbelieving her."
Much of the interview followed a similar framework exhibited when Carlson interviews other "canceled" guests.
Carlson - who retains his record for the most watched cable-news show in the history of US TV ratings - framed Morgan as the victim of a "scam" concocted by those in power to silence a dissenting opinion on "Western" traditions.
"So if most people in Britain - and I think you speak for America, too - see what's going on here, they see that it's a scam, they see that wokeness is really an effort by the people who are already in charge to gain more power and wealth for themselves - it so clearly is that - why is everyone putting up with it?" Carlson said.
"Why in the nation that gave the rest of the world the freedom of speech - which is Great Britain, that's where that right came from, they were the first to enshrine it - why is a small percentage of the population able to impose this un-English, un-Western idea on everybody else?" Carlson continued before Morgan could answer. "Like how is this working if no one is for it?"
Morgan said it was "terrifying" that "people feel so cowed by the fear of the woke mob that they can't express an honestly held opinion without being immediately branded a racist," before reiterating his grievances with Markle.
"The only reason we are having this conversation is because the Murdoch family, which controls Fox, is standing up in the face of the mob, and they haven't bowed," Carlson said. "I mean that's literally the only reason that I still have my job, and we're having this conversation."
Before ending the interview at the one-hour, 16-minute mark, Carlson asked Morgan what he'd do next.
"Well, I've had some very interesting offers," Morgan said. "My normal strategy when something like this happens is to take a few months off, to get a bit fit. Breakfast TV is pretty punishing on the torso."
He added: "I'm going to scheme and plot my next stage of global domination."