Audio provided by former President Donald Trump’s team to Breitbart News of the end of Trump’s interview with Piers Morgan proves that Morgan and his team deceptively edited the interview to make it appear as though it was a contentious ending when it was not.
A 30-second promotional clip that Morgan released on Wednesday afternoon seemed to show Trump flying off the handle and walking out mid-interview as a righteous Morgan asked him tough questions about his views on the 2020 election. But the full story seems to indicate that Morgan’s team deceptively edited the clips together to make it as nasty as possible for Trump—and to drive up the ratings for Morgan’s new show. Morgan’s new show, Piers Morgan Uncensored, launches next week on Talk TV, a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.
LISTEN:
“This is a pathetic attempt to use President Trump as a way to revive the career of a failed television host,” Taylor Budowich, Trump’s communications director, told Breitbart News. “It is also another example of President Trump being right, as he told Piers Morgan that the host was dishonest to his face, and Piers, for the first time in his life, didn’t disappoint.”
The 30-second clip that Morgan’s team released splashed across tabloids and media outlets, taking the lead spot across the Drudge Report with multiple links accusing Trump of having a “meltdown.” In it, Morgan splices several clips together that make it seem like as on-screen graphics and a deep male voice over says that Trump is a “former president in denial” over the 2020 election. The promo, which calls it “the most explosive interview of the year,” pulls a few short clips of Trump calling Morgan “a fool” and saying “this is very dishonest” and “let’s finish up the interview,” before showing Trump standing up and walking away and saying “turn the camera off.”
But that’s not what happened—not even close. Trump spent more than an hour with Morgan, and the way the promo clip cuts together what it calls “Morgan Versus Trump” moments to promote the interview which will air on this coming Monday night is particularly deceptive. Most of those moments had nothing to do with the election issue at all, and the full audio of the last bit of the interview shows that Trump standing up and walking away and saying “turn the camera off” came after Morgan ended the interview and thanked Trump for a “great interview.”
The audio file obtained by Breitbart News, which is about seven and a half minutes long, begins with Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich interjecting into the middle of the interview to tell Morgan to wrap it up. “We’re an hour in,” Budowich says. “We need to wrap.”
Morgan responds by begging for more time with Trump. “Just a few quick questions and then—” Morgan says. “Thank you,” Budowich responds.
Morgan next asks Trump to define the meaning of a woman, to which Trump responds by bashing Lia Thomas—the biological male transgender athlete who has been competing in women’s swimming events—then Morgan just keeps rolling asking more and more questions.
The next one he asks is about Trump putting his family through the pressures of him being president again should he decide to run again—and whether his family members would want him back in the White House.
Trump answered by saying his family loves the country and then touting several of his accomplishments in office. When Trump turned to Operation Warp Speed, which pushed the coronavirus vaccine through quickly, Morgan asked yet another question—this one about Trump having said he is fully vaccinated and encouraged Americans to take the jab. “We saved tens of millions of lives,” Trump said. “Maybe this would have been the Spanish Flu of 1917 had we not we come up [with the vaccine]. I got it done in nine months as opposed to—they were projecting five to 12 years. I got it done in nine months. I’m very proud of that.”
“You’re against mandates,” Morgan followed up again, asking yet another question.
“I’m strongly against mandates but I’m very proud of what we did,” Trump replied. “I saved, worldwide, tens of millions of lives.”
After that, Budowich interjects again—now nearly two minutes after he told Morgan to wrap it up—to say: “One last question.”
Morgan asks Trump if he accepts the criticism that some have leveled against him that he did not take coronavirus seriously enough early on in the pandemic.
“I’m a cheerleader for this country,” Trump replies. “I want to be positive for this country.”
The audio breaks up for a few seconds as whatever recording device that was recording it seems to have been moved, but then it comes back in at about 2:10 into the file and Morgan says: “Final question, Mr. President, it’d be good to catch up after this lengthy time—it’s been a tumultuous time for the world and the country. There is a chance you’re going to be running. Quite clearly, you’ve made that clear in this interview.”
“I don’t think I’ve made it clear,” Trump interjects.
“You have said they’ll be happy?” Morgan asks.
“I said I think people are going to be very happy,” Trump said.
Morgan does not stop there and keeps pressing yet again. “For those who don’t like you—there are people out there who don’t like you, I know you’ve said recently you were very popular and the most honest man in the world—“ Morgan says.
“I’m a very honest man,” Trump replies.
“Is that true?” Morgan asks again.
“Yeah, I think I’m a very honest man,” Trump says. “Much more honest than you actually.”
“Really?” Morgan replies.
“Yeah, because I don’t think you’re real,” Trump says. “Yeah, I think I’m a much more honest person in most ways than—“
“Why am I not real?” Morgan asks.
“We’re not going to get into that,” Trump says. “Let’s finish up the interview. Go ahead.”
“My question was this,” Morgan asks next. “What message do you have for people who can’t think of anything worse than you running again and would be distressed again? Would you come back with all the experience you had of being president, would you come back a different person? Would you do things a bit differently?”
Trump replies by saying: “So, I like this question in a certain way. I came in and I was attacked from day one, unfairly. Russia, Russia, Russia. It was all a hoax. The impeachment hoax, number one, number two. It was all a big hoax. The Mueller report? I had to fight back, and I had to fight back strongly. If I didn’t fight back strongly, I wouldn’t have survived. I say it, and I say it louder. I had two jobs to do: Run the country really well, and the second was to survive. No other president went through this fake stuff where fake stuff was made up like Russia, Russia. I’m the one that ended the pipeline. I’m the one that put all those sanctions on there. I’m the one that saved NATO. NATO was dead. They had no money, they were broke—and I got the money to pour in from countries that would have never given it. If I wasn’t the way I am, you know what would have happened? I wouldn’t be there for two weeks. Two weeks. Now, would I like to be a little bit different? Yes. But if I didn’t act the way I acted, it would not have been the great success it was.”
Morgan then starts asking another question, this time about his time together with Trump when they co-starred on The Apprentice, and another Trump aide can be heard in the background saying as Morgan begins it: “Last question.” Morgan replies to that person by saying: “Yeah, yeah.”
After another minute of back and forth between Trump and Morgan, Morgan asks Trump’s team for yet another “last question.”
Budowich replies by saying: “You’ve done last question four times now. I feel like you’re lying at this point.”
Trump interjects and says “very deceptive.”
“You’ve said last question four times,” Budowich says.
“I haven’t asked about—I wanted to end with your hole-in-one,” Morgan says, then asks Trump to describe his recent hole-in-one when playing alongside golf legend Ernie Els.
Trump agrees and says “go ahead.” Then Morgan asks his question, and Trump answers for more than a minute. After that’s over, Morgan agrees the interview is over and thanks Trump for a “great interview.”
As they’re unhooking their microphones and Trump is getting up to leave, Trump can be heard saying “turn the camera off,” and then a Trump staffer asks to “turn the mics off too,” and Trump says “very dishonest” as the audio file ends.
NBC News, which also published a story about the Trump team’s audio file, got a spokesperson for News Corporation to provide this comment in response to the deceptive editing revelations: “We have nothing to comment beyond the public information (i.e. the video clip and Piers’ column in the NY Post).”
“A producer for Morgan did not immediately return an email for comment,” NBC’s report adds.
UPDATE 11:17 p.m. ET:
After the publication of this story, Trump blasted Morgan in a press statement that also linked to the audio published here by Breitbart News.
“Piers Morgan, like the rest of the Fake News Media, attempted to unlawfully and deceptively edit his long and tedious interview with me,” Trump said. “He wanted to make it look like I walked out on the interview when my time limit of 20 minutes went over by an hour. The good news is that the interview was taped by us as a means of keeping him honest. The interview was actually very strong on the 2020 Election Fraud, with me calling him ‘a fool’ if he truly believed those results.”
Trump added that the 2020 evidence was “massive and irrefutable,” and pointed to the forthcoming documentary from Dinesh D’Souza based off surveillance footage that True The Vote’s Catherine Engelbrecht obtained on drop boxes in Georgia and other states.
“For those who want to make Piers look bad, compare his video promo and how it was doctored to the real thing,” Trump said. “Hopefully they will now be doing some big changes to their final product. It just shows, however, what I have to deal with in the Fake News Media. He went out of his way to deceptively edit an interview and got caught. That is a big story, isn’t it?”
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