It’s been nearly a month since Piers Morgan stormed off the set of Good Morning Britain, furious that one of his colleagues called him out over his obsessive hatred of Meghan Markle. Since then he hasn’t apologized. Instead he’s done what most people with dubious opinions do these days: He doubled, tripled, quadrupled down. He’s been quiet for the last few weeks, but in his first proper interview since the incident — with Tucker Carlson (for Fox Nation), naturally — he revealed that, no, he’s still steaming.
The inciting incident the barnburning interview Markle and her husband, Prince Harry, did with Oprah Winfrey, the onetime CNN host, in which they alleged bullying, even racism from unnamed members of the royal family. (Queen Elizabeth, however, received lots of love.) At the time, Morgan declared that Markle — who said, among other things, that she had grown suicidal while interred with the family — was simply lying.
In an interview that ran well over an hour, Morgan went even further. He demanded she name names. “You’re accusing … people in the palace of being unspeakably cruel simply to protect the brand of the Royal family,” Morgan said. “If that is true, let’s have the names of these people, and let’s go to them and ask them is this true.”
Simply asking people accused of racism whether or not they’re racist may not sound like the most foolproof plan, but, still, Morgan insisted he’d thought this all through. “Here we are a month later, and frankly — I’ve had plenty of time to think about this — I still don’t believe any of what they were saying,” he told Carlson. “Seventeen different claims by the pair of them have now been proven to be either completely untrue or massively exaggerated or unprovable. I don’t understand why I should have to believe people who are not telling the truth.”
Morgan also called Markle “delusional” and brushed off accusations that the royal family was unconcerned with her mental wellbeing. “It’s not for me to say whether she felt suicidal, that’s only for her to know,” Morgan said. “What I was taking issue with, is she claims she went to two members of the royal household — a senior aide and also human resources. And she told both of them she was feeling suicidal, and need help and both of them rejected that and said that she couldn’t get help because it would be bad for the brand of the royal family. I just find that impossible to believe that you would have two people in the palace who would be that callous to a woman telling them that she was suicidal.”
For the record, Morgan did admit that storming off the set of his former regular gig was not a great look. I walked off for a few minutes, then I realized this is stupid,” Morgan told Carlson. “I shouldn’t have walked off. You know, you should always be able to have a debate.”
Alex Beresford, the guest presenter who called out Morgan, later said that he didn’t mean to scold Morgan — that he only wanted to do just that: spark debate. Morgan claims that did happen, albeit later. “I came back. And we then had a pretty lively and quite enlightening, like half-hour debate about this.”
In the wake of Morgan’s tirade against Markle, one of his friends, Sharon Osbourne, left her longtime job at The Talk after defending him on air.
(Via Deadline)