Producers' Pick | Piers Morgan: Larry King pretended to wish me success

Close your eyes. It's time to discover what starting and growing your own business feels like. Whether your business is bedsheets or skincare, Shopify is with you every step of the way.

Now, open your eyes. This is Possibility, powered by Shopify. Sign up for a free trial at Shopify.com slash offer 22.

Shopify.com slash offer 22. Hey, thanks so much for being here, everybody. It's the Brian Kilmeade show. Pierce Morgan, my first guest. This is my whole open.

I can't believe it. But I am his first, I think I'm your first broadcast appointment today, correct? Correct. So I'm honored.

You are the chosen one. But you'll be on all day. Yes. Because we're going to work you to death.

That's one thing about Fox News. Of course. Whenever you enter this building, you never leave. Right. But you don't want to, are you?

No, of course not. Larry Kudlow is at the bottom of the hour and he, of course, making a business on business news again. He's number one guy in business and he came out from CNBC here.

You never thought Larry would be successful here. Why not? I'm trying to start controversy, Pierce, like you. You know what? My view of all these career trajectories is the same as Winston Churchill. Which is?

Which is the definition of success is going from failure to failure with no discernible loss of enthusiasm. Right. You, Brian, of all people should know about that. That really hurts my feelings because I may be slow, but when it comes to insults, I'm very quick.

Right? It takes me a while, but not that, not in that way. So, Pierce, it's been great to get to know you and get here and have you on. And the one thing I've learned from interviewing you as opposed to just watching you is that every segment matters.

Yeah. Like you're into every segment. So, you know, like, okay, I'm going to do this and I'm just going to join Fox & Friends for a while. I feel as like every sentence you thought about, you know, has impact. And that pretty much comes across in your shows.

When was that a reality with you? I think, look, I think to be a good journalist or broadcaster of any kind, you've got to have two things. You've got to have lots of energy and lots of curiosity. So, I'm genuinely curious about issues, about topics, about guests. I want to find things out.

I want to learn. Every day, I think, if you're learning, you're having a good day. Because you don't think you know everything. No, well, well, that's not going to be too hasty.

No, I mean, part of me does. But then I'm also very pleasantly surprised when I do learn things. Right. And that's why I think you should always try and speak to people at least as smart as you are, or smarter, present company accepted, obviously.

Yeah. Because I think you can always learn from people and you can always change your mind. And we shouldn't be afraid to change our minds. What I liked about doing Fox & Friends yesterday was there we all sat and we were having a genuine disagreement about Ukraine, for example, and the best way to deal with it. That's healthy in a democracy. The idea that you can't disagree about big issues because you're so tribal in your thinking that there's only one way you're allowed to think.

Right. Whether you're on the left or right, that is a danger zone for me. I don't want to be in either of those radically, you know, tribal camps. I want to be in a camp where if somebody persuades me I'm wrong, with genuinely good argument, I'm prepared to change my mind. But a lot of the times, you make your opinion because you actually talk to the sources.

Right. So you wouldn't talk to Zelensky. So you're like, it's different and I'm not saying you would have a different opinion, but when you go over there and see the players and see the sincerity.

It's very different. And what you realized is Zelensky could have left on the first day when the Russians attacked. Like Rouhani. He was offered the chance to disappear and instead he stayed with his people. He went on a video, which he posted on social media, live addressing his people. And he said, I'm going nowhere until this is won.

And I thought that was extraordinarily heroic. This guy used to be in television. You know, he was literally a TV star and TV producer. Suddenly he's a president and it's all going fine. And then within a year and a half, he's at war.

And he had to make a calculation. Do I put myself and my family first or do I put the country first? People that put their country before their own safety, to me, are always heroic. Right. And usually victorious when it's your place.

Yes. So, and you're seeing right now, no one even, Vladimir Putin didn't tell his soldiers what they're about. They have no experience fighting, it turns out. They might be a superpower in nuclear weapons only. And I'll tell you, just my opinion, when you see how they were using 1980s version military equipment, when you see the tanks that they were operating, to see how things weren't kept up to snuff, how no one was trained, how generals were forced to lead, what condition do you think their nuclear weapons are in? Well, I think also there's a wider point. The nuclear weapon issue, they're supposed to be a deterrent for the countries that have them, a deterrent to other powers to attack them with nuclear weapons because you also have them and therefore it would be Y power. What Putin has been seizing on is a fragility of mindset, I think, on the West. That all he has to do is rattle his nuclear weapons at us and we run a mile.

We don't have the stomach for that kind of conversation. We're afraid of him using his nuclear weapons. We forget that we, and by we I mean NATO, have just as many nuclear weapons as he does. We forget that actually he's almost certainly bluffing. But what he's using, he's using his nuclear weapons now as a protective shield to commit horrendous war crimes and bordering on genocide in Ukraine.

He's grabbed 15% of that country. And I would simply say to Americans who are wavering about where the moral line is here, you know, when Saddam Hussein tried to grab Kuwait, America and Britain were straight in there to kick him out because we understood you cannot do that to a sovereign country. What's the difference? What's the moral difference?

There's none to me. You know, when people, when dictators attack... They grab the whole country.

He grabbed the whole country. Yeah, when people like Putin think they can just help themselves to sovereign democratic countries' land. When I was in Ukraine, and you're right to mention this, because when I was there, to a man and woman of all ages, when I said to them, should there be any kind of deal, no, no, no. We don't want Zelensky to give one inch of our land to that monster.

And the more people that Putin kills, the harder and more entrenched they get. And I say again, knowing Americans, if we British, who once they claim to your great land, if we decided we fancied some of it back, right? We want to come back and we want to take 15% of America back, because we British used to rule it, right? Okay, what would happen? Would you just say, look, okay, let's do a deal. Let's give you Texas, let's give you Florida.

Would you help? I'll give you a better example, which is more practical, and I believe it was Hitler that offered it to Mexico. Get involved, attacked America, and we'll give you Texas and Arizona back, and California. So if Mexico was powerful and decided that historically they deserve to have, since 1845, Texas was part of Mexico, this new country, want it back. And then we should negotiate so they only take 50% back, and some other countries should decide what I give back and when I should stop fighting.

You would say no across the board. And you have in Putin someone who's creating fake referenda to basically pretend that people in Ukraine have voted to hand their land back to power under the Russians, which we all know is completely bogus. 93% of Ukrainians polled don't want to give an inch to Putin or do any kind of deal. And I just think in the end, if we let Putin win, if we let him take control of Ukraine or as much of it as he wishes to have, does anyone think he's going to stop there? Once he knows he can battle, once he can threaten nuclear war and get what he wants, he'll keep threatening nuclear war and he'll keep taking all the land back which he thinks Russia was wrong to lose when it was the Soviet Union. He wants to restore the Soviet Union. I talked to Garry Kasparov on Saturday night, and his connections in Ukraine as well as Russia are pretty strong, and obviously his passion is there. He's worried that conservatives, because I haven't really seen much wavering on the left, although Bernie Sanders has no idea why we're there, but he doesn't want to do anything, he's worried that conservatives are starting to waver because number one, they don't want to get involved in another foreign war.

To me, we have no choice at all. And number two is the question is we have so many doubts about what Vladimir Putin's stability is, emotionally and politically, and he believes Russians don't lose a war without losing their government. So the minute it becomes clear that they can't win this war, and nuclear weapons are not even practical because it's going to blow back on them, even tactical weapons aren't even going to change the complexion of the battle, he thinks the whole government's going to fall, at which point Russia's going to break up. That's how he sees this thing playing out by the spring.

And by the way, that would be in the interests of the world that that happens to Russia. Putin is a very bad man. I'm not even sure that he's mad. I think he knows exactly what he's doing. He's done it before. We've seen him do it all around the world.

He is somebody that believes he has an entitlement to other people's land. And I'm afraid that is what a dictator believes. And when Adolf Hitler did this in 1939, if the response of the world had been actually, we're not going to get involved because he may kill us, well then he would have taken over the world. Instead, Britain and America together rose up and said, we're not having this. We're going to fight for our freedom and democracy.

That's what the Ukrainians are doing. But we waited so long, we had to fight our way back into Europe. You guys had to escape at Dunkirk for your own salvation, and then civilian ships famously saved them, brought them back, and you guys kept fighting by yourselves.

It took forever. And when you see a chronicle doing it, a documentary worth its salt is put together. It must have been maddening to be the Brits. To say, do you understand what's going on? It's only maddening when Americans say, yeah, we won the war actually.

And you're like, you know what? Why don't we just agree that we helped each other? Because we did our bit.

Winston Churchill actually did his bit. And I think it's very important. I do think the special relationship is known.

I do think it was founded on the fact that we both rose together to defeat Hitler. Piers Morgan here. I'm sure you know that.

So, Piers, a couple of things. I believe that free trade agreement has got to be done between our countries. The Brexit that happened seems to have bent the Democrats out of shape, the ones that can figure it out and remember it, because Barack Obama said, don't do it.

You go to the back of the queue. Set up that free trade agreement. Why wouldn't that work for President Biden?

78 years old has to know. That would have to actually help you guys out and us out. And the split-off from the EU has worked for Britain.

Why not help you get the rest of the way? Well, because I would say, and I voted against Brexit, I would say there's absolutely no evidence at all that Brexit has worked at all. In fact, the opposite. Now, it's been clouded by the pandemic. It's been clouded by the war in Ukraine, clouded by a lot of upheaval politically at home. But there is at the moment no discernible benefit. Do you like making your own decisions?

I do, but I also believe there is power in numbers. You are stronger together. We are the United Kingdom, for example. You now have Scotland wanting to break away. You have Ireland potentially wanting to go back to a united Ireland and break away. You could see the breakup of the United Kingdom.

I don't agree with that either. I think the United Kingdom is stronger together as the UK. I think that Europe actually is stronger together. I didn't agree with us breaking away from the European Union. You always had your own banking system, right? Yeah, but yes, we had a lot of independence.

This idea that we had no independence, we had a lot of independence. But the bottom line is the Brexit supporters have got to show tangible benefit. At the moment, there's a lot of negatives.

I'm not seeing any benefit. Now, I was very open-minded when the country voted to Brexit, and it was a big, big vote, 16, 17 million people on both sides. But when they voted to leave, I said, okay, my side lost. My argument was defeated. Now let's make it work.

I want this to work. Because then the country benefits. I believe that about democracy generally. Whoever wins, you want them to succeed, right? But if they don't succeed, rather like you're seeing with President Biden right now, you might say, look, it's in the American national interest this president succeeds. He's clearly not succeeding. So at what point do you look for an alternative?

I feel the same way about Brexit. So I'm not saying it can't work. I'm not saying it's definitely going to fail.

What I am saying is that a few years after we did it, I see no evidence of anything actually working. So I would love to see the U.S. help you through that, through this special trade relationship. But it won't happen because Biden, I think, believes that there is a power from the European Union, and he's under a lot of pressure from the French and Germans and others, not to make Brexit a success. Because, you know, if Brexit is helped by the Americans to succeed, then of course the French and German peoples will say, well, hang on, why is Britain getting all these favors from the Americans? We want to have the same thing. Again, I'm into the special relationship to make that work, and then you guys let them figure it out.

I would love to have it, but I see the danger of us being allowed to have it. I just don't know why Trump hesitated. That's something he could have gotten done right before he left. Pierce Morgan's here, unless he storms out. We could have a terrible conversation on the break, and he could storm out. But one more segment, and then you can start the rest of your broadcast out.

Don't move. A talk show that's real. This is the Brian Kilmeade Show. So Pierce Morgan's here. He's hosted the same Pierce Morgan. He goes, Pierce Morgan, uncensored.

It's on Fox Nation, and he's going to be filming in New York this week. Pierce, who do you have on tonight? We have the two most infamous pugilists in America, Mike Tyson and Tucker Carlson. Tucker Carlson. And they're not on together, are they?

No, they're going to be following each other back to back. Now, what is your main question to Mike Tyson? I'm actually interested in Tyson. Where he is now is a very interesting place, where he's an iconic figure in America. But he's been through so much ups and downs, highs and lows. Where is he now? Mike Tyson with himself. He's got a cannabis farm that he's now making money out. You know, he's getting into fights on planes with people who are abusive. Wasn't that his fault?

With the world's most stupid passengers. I know what I'll do. I'll goad Mike Tyson. I just find him a really fascinating character. I've known him a long time, interviewed him many times, and I prefer with Mike to just riff with him and have too big a script.

Everyone knows his story. I'm more interested in where he is, what he's got to say, what he cares about right now. Tucker. Tucker, to me, in England, he's a fascinating sort of figure because he's been sort of polarized as far right by his enemies on the left. I think there's a lot of misunderstanding about Tucker. I always say that when I watch Tucker's show, I find myself agreeing with about 70% of it every night, which is a pretty good ratio for someone like me who's not really a right-winger. So I don't really understand the over-demonization of him. I think he's a compelling contrarian. I think he's a great debater. He loves stirring things up. I do, too.

I think we're quite similar in that respect. He's worked like I have at CNN and other places, and now we're both at Fox together. I think it'll be a normal interview with Tucker where, again, I don't like to have too big a script or plan it too much. It's more like, hey, you're Tucker Carlson.

What do you think of the world right now? So is that the way you approach the morning show, when you are with four-minute segments and six-minute segments? I had to ignore all those. You would? Yeah, I didn't even look at how long I have the segments. In fact, I would take my earpiece out.

So how would you prepare for a show? I didn't. What about reading the news? I was always reading all day, every day, everything that's happening.

That's what I did. So I was incredibly across all the news. Watching, too? Reading, listening, all over social media. So I was very informed, and I would form my own opinions about stuff.

But what I really loved to do was just freewheel with guests. Get somebody compelling on, like a Tucker, like a Tyson. And listen. And listen to them and go with the flow a bit.

You know, what are they exercised about, rather than you telling them what they should be? So when you went into CNN, different landscape, I get it. You replaced Larry King.

Yeah. He wasn't too nice about it, right? He wasn't. He said after a month of me being there, he pretended to be happy about a young brick guy taking his prestigious real estate. And then he was asked on a red carpet about a month into my tenure, what do you think of Piers' show? And he went, you know what? He said, it's like watching my mother-in-law drive my favorite Bentley over a cliff.

Wow. And how did you handle it? Well, I was asked by a response a few days later. I went, well, to be fair to Larry, he knows all about mother-in-laws.

He's had eight of them. That's awesome. Did anything ever, when you go over there, we know how crazy it is now that more people got in and out and the little success that anyone's really had there, did that ever shake your confidence? Not really. I mean, I did look, I was there nearly four years having a show that aired three times a day around the world. It was an amazing privilege to sit down with someone. You make good news every day.

Yeah. I was interviewing presidents and the biggest stars and whatever. I kind of felt I'd run out of steam because I went there to do big interviews and I interviewed everybody. I also felt, and we were talking about this in the break, I felt like I really missed the culture of my own country just to exist. When you live full-time in another country, as I did for four years in New York and L.A., I really missed going into my local cafe and just talking about English football, soccer. You don't need to hang out with celebrities. As you call it. You like everyday people.

I like everyday people and I like just having a conversation about stuff I care about. Cricket, for example. You ever try to have a conversation about cricket in a New York cafe? Can't do it.

It doesn't last, right? I would say if I took you, Brian, and put you in London for four years, you'd be tearing your hair out. Because you'd want to talk about the New York Knicks or whatever it may be. Except I do like soccer. Right.

I'm not a big international guy, but I would definitely dive into the game. It's a cultural thing. Absolutely. And I think you've got to understand that when you live somewhere else for a long time, you either go one where you never go back or it tugs at your heartstrings. But I'm glad you're at Fox and I'm glad you're at a period in Fox when we have free snacks. Absolutely. Never happened before. That is fantastic.