Piers Morgan joins me to talk about his new show on YouTube, Piers Morgan Uncensored, which is now available on all podcast platforms as well. He also talks about his recent victory in the CNN defamation case against the network.
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00:03:58.860So just as a practical matter, I'm curious because I knew you broke away and you did the YouTube thing.
00:04:05.720But does this mean you're not working with Rupert anymore or what does this mean?
00:04:10.300Well, what it means is I have basically acquired my YouTube channel.
00:04:14.140So I had a three-year deal with Rupert Murdoch and News and I had a very good chat with him about what I wanted to do.
00:04:20.700I didn't want to be just a talent for hire anymore when it came to the deal being renewed.
00:04:25.360They made me a very generous offer, which I said, look, it's very generous.
00:04:29.220I'm really appreciative, but I actually want to own my own business.
00:04:33.280And like you, I think we've both worked out that the future is not traditional linear television or traditional newspapers or any of the kind of legacy media, for want of a better phrase.
00:04:45.720Anyone under 40 is now consuming almost all of their news, opinion and comment from shows like mine, shows like yours.
00:04:54.720And individuals who are creating their own kind of media entities and using YouTube as the main platform to do that.
00:05:18.920You know, we've done the hard yards, you and I, I think in building our personal brands and people, I think, like to hear what we have to say.
00:05:39.660And one thing that's great about YouTube and this other format is people can consume it the way they want.
00:05:45.400If they want to watch the whole show, they can watch the whole show.
00:05:47.720If they prefer to just watch sort of the hot clips or the things that interest them that were in the show, it's so easy for them to do it.
00:05:54.860It's just such a, it's, it caters to the, what is the desired user experience so much better.
00:06:00.200Yeah, and I would add to that, that they can watch it when they want to.
00:06:04.780You know, the younger generation do not want to be beholden to conventional schedules.
00:06:09.840You know, when I first started doing my show, I was doing it on YouTube, but also on a linear platform called Talk TV in the UK, which didn't last very long because it wasn't the kind of appetite for it that Americans have for cable newsletter night.
00:06:22.880And that was fine because I could see that the numbers on the YouTube version were going through the roof and that was completely unencumbered by any kind of artificial schedule.
00:06:33.020You know, before I was trotting into a television studio at 8pm every night here in London and there were advertising breaks and there'd be an hour.
00:06:42.040So maybe you get 47 minutes of airtime all broken up and you're like, why are we doing it like this?
00:06:47.040Why don't we just forget about the linear thing?
00:06:49.280Most of our audience actually don't want it.
00:06:51.460They're all gravitating to a YouTube version of what we're doing here, which doesn't have any ad breaks in real time.
00:06:57.840We can go as long as we want and people can watch it whenever they feel like.
00:07:01.260And that has been, I think, the absolute eye opener, not just for me, but for a lot of people in the industry.
00:07:07.040So with the recent election in America, the more people watched the election night on YouTube than watched it on cable and broadcast.
00:07:15.200And the latest numbers I saw as well a few days ago said that I think it's about 11 and a half, 12% now of American television watchers watch television on their smart TV through the YouTube app.
00:09:17.840Well, the interesting thing, I think, is it's a generational thing.
00:09:21.300I mean, the average age now of cable news watchers in America is 70, which means a lot of their regular viewers are 80 or 90.
00:09:28.900If you think about it, that's the average age.
00:09:31.460It's a similar dynamic, I think, with people who buy print newspapers.
00:09:34.960So, you know, the print newspapers in America that have done quite well, mainly thanks to Donald Trump, actually.
00:09:40.760But if you look at, say, the New York Times business model, the reason they've managed to survive and thrive when others have really struggled is because of their digital strategy, which, again, was fueled almost exclusively by that first four years of Donald Trump's term in office.
00:09:55.700So I think that everyone's working out what their future game is going to be.
00:10:00.420But if you're not in the digital space now in the media, then you are, frankly, a bit of a dinosaur and you've got to wake up.
00:10:07.380You asked me at the start whether I'm still working with Rupert Murdoch.
00:10:11.680And, in fact, news are retaining a slice of the advertising revenue for the next four years on my YouTube channel.
00:10:18.360And I'll continue to appear when I come to the States on Fox on all the shows there, The Five and so on, which I love doing.
00:10:25.180But they understood that, you know, I believe, rather like you do, I think, you know, when you've built up a YouTube channel that has, you know, both of us have over 3 million subscribers now.
00:10:34.820This puts us in the top five or six people in the world right now who are in the news opinion debate space and we're on YouTube.
00:10:43.920And, you know, I'm sure that you would have similar numbers to these, but I've done some interviews.
00:10:47.820I did a guy called Basim Youssef, who's the Egyptian version of Jon Stewart.
00:13:55.580We all got booted from different organizations for just being too outspoken.
00:13:59.120And so I feel like it's landed where it should.
00:14:02.480And thank God this ecosystem rose up and I think was in part developed, at least in the news lane, not originally, but in the news lane by folks like us.
00:14:11.760Necessity is the mother of all invention.
00:14:13.820Something you mentioned about CNN I wanted to ask you about.
00:14:16.860As I mentioned in the intro, in the second hour, we're going to have on the guy who just successfully sued CNN for defamation and won big.
00:14:23.460And one of the things I saw in the packet as I was preparing for that interview is they appear to have a much lower bar for what can make it onto their air than they do for what can make it onto CNN.com, like their digital website.
00:14:44.880You don't, you know, he has to prove the same whether he's been defamed by an anchor or, you know, a producer writing for the website.
00:14:53.040But I was kind of shocked at how lazy and lackluster CNN apparently is about what goes out on what most people know CNN for, which is its airwaves, all this internal correspondence, which we'll get to, on how it's like, it's very sloppy, it's full of holes.
00:15:16.240I mean, you used to work at CNN, but what do you make of that?
00:15:19.060Yeah, I think it's a very interesting point.
00:15:20.520I mean, what is, I think, probably a bigger picture interest to me is this follows the big payout by Jules Stephanopoulos and ABC to Donald Trump, which was 15 million or whatever it was.
00:15:32.800You're beginning to see quite big payouts for people who've said things on air, on cable news, and now being held a proper account for it.
00:15:42.220Many people think that's long overdue.
00:15:44.320So I think that people are probably having a very nervous time now in cable news.
00:15:49.900If the day isn't just saying whatever you feel like, with no accountability for it, they're long gone.
00:15:55.120And I think that you're now seeing people on the receiving end going on the attack legally and exercising their rights to say, no, this is wrong.
00:16:10.860You know, the CNN went to court to defend itself.
00:16:13.320But the moment he got to punitive damages, they bailed because they knew it might be really horrific to deny that figure.
00:16:19.280ABC bailed in a way that I think horrified a lot of their staff, but actually quite rightly, because George Stephanopoulos repeatedly, in that interview, repeatedly defamed Donald Trump and repeatedly said that he'd been convicted of a crime he hadn't been convicted of.
00:16:34.800And if you're going to do that, I'm sorry, it doesn't matter who you are.
00:16:37.900You know, if you and I did that on our platform, we would also be susceptible to people suing us for defamation.
00:16:43.600There shouldn't be some sort of loftier-than-thou rule that just because you work for one of the legacy media, you work to different rules.
00:16:50.540So I think the worm is changing very quickly here.
00:16:55.960It would have been really interesting in the Russia collusion mayhem of the first two years of Trump's term of novice.
00:17:02.060If he decided to go after all those networks and all those journalists who perpetuated what turned out to be a complete myth for two years,
00:17:10.080A, he would have ended up extremely rich.
00:17:12.180And B, it might have nicked it in the butt because, you know, at the time a lot of us were saying, you were saying, I was saying, that this is ridiculous.
00:17:19.520There is no actual hard evidence to support this.
00:17:22.560And yet it's dominating the news agenda now for years and turned out to be a nothing burger of monumental proportions,
00:17:31.240but a nothing burger that caused Donald Trump a lot of damage.
00:17:34.360And, you know, it would have been really interesting if he'd sued at the time about that stuff because it did turn out to be nonsense.
00:17:40.060And he knew it was nonsense because he was the one that was being accused of it.
00:17:45.040I know there's been absolutely no proof of it.
00:17:47.020You've got just this week, well, last week before the inauguration, AOC saying, I'm not going to the inauguration because I don't support rapists.
00:18:54.420And you're completely right about AOC.
00:18:55.920She brazenly repeated in a private capacity, as you say, not on the floor of the house or anything like that.
00:19:03.740She did it in her own home to the world on her account.
00:19:07.320She put it out there repeating the exact same defamation that George Sepulopoulos had said on air that cost ABC $15 million.
00:19:15.400So if you're going to be that brazen, you know, think about what a judge or a courtroom would make of that.
00:19:21.140They'd say, well, you could hardly pretend you didn't know.
00:19:23.700This has literally been a massive headline grabbing settlement in the last few weeks.
00:19:29.360And you've decided that it doesn't apply to you, that somehow you are on some superior plane to George Sepulopoulos, which allows you to call Trump a rapist and get away with it.
00:19:40.460Well, if I was Trump, I'd call her bluff.
00:19:55.120It's a bit like what I said about the real-life alleged stalker from Baby Reindeer.
00:20:00.560If Netflix is going to put out, I love Netflix, a very successful company.
00:20:04.440I use it all the time, just to be clear.
00:20:06.700But Netflix is going to broadcast a seven-part series, which they say at the start of it, this is a true story.
00:20:15.020So every time you logged on to watch an episode, this is a true story.
00:20:18.620And then you say in that true story that Richard Gad, who's the writer and who's the guy who plays himself in the series, if you then depict him being forensically stalked by this woman, who then gets convicted and put in prison, and it turns out they claim has already had a previous prison sentence, and none of that is true, then little wonder that she's now taken out a massive lawsuit against Netflix.
00:20:47.840You know, why would you call it a true story without, A, doing the due diligence of whether actually this was true, or B, worse, you know it's true, but you don't care?
00:20:57.380And there's a little bit of that about Donald Trump, isn't there?
00:21:00.040Well, a lot of that about Donald Trump, which is, I think a lot of journalists feel they can say whatever they like about him, and that's fine.
00:21:06.180And I think what he did with the Stephanopoulos case is put a line in the sand and say, right, if you guys are going to defame me on fact, and you mentioned earlier, you try and stick to facts, you're a lawyer by background.
00:21:36.060We come from the facts are actual facts.
00:21:39.540Now, you can then, if you take a fact, you can then comment as you wish about it.
00:21:44.880You can interpret a fact any way you like.
00:21:47.280You can be as opinionated as you want.
00:21:49.500Right, but what you can't do is do that about something which isn't true, because then you're just defaming people.
00:21:56.280And, A, there's no point in that, because you lose trust with your viewers if you keep doing that.
00:22:01.600If they know you're saying one thing, but actually it's not true, and you repeat that, I think you're pretty dead in the water as a broadcaster who'd be taken seriously by anybody.
00:22:27.340I mean, she would have been covered if she had said alleged rapist, but she didn't want to because it wasn't as powerful, didn't sound as despicable.
00:22:35.180And so she really put herself out there on a limb.
00:22:37.920On the Netflix front, they continue to do this.
00:22:45.120I don't agree with the politics of the guy who owns Netflix, but they continue to do this to people, and it's really wrong.
00:22:53.260They say it's a true story, and they lead you to believe, and like you point out, in Baby Reindeer, they had the actual guy to whom this allegedly happened as the star.
00:23:03.340So you believe he's telling, it's like, oh, it must be true.
00:23:06.400And then they also did this long thing on the Central Park Five and the prosecutor, Linda Fairstein, whose reputation they absolutely ruined with this.
00:23:18.120And her critics have tried to ruin her over and over and over, and they put on, thanks to Ava DeVornay, the celebrated leftist director, a bunch of things about Linda that weren't true, that were made up, and they were forced to admit it when she sued them.
00:23:34.560So that's been an ongoing litigation, or it was for a while now.
00:23:38.440She actually wound up on my husband Doug's podcast, which he does about books.
00:23:42.280It's called Dedicated with Doug Brunt.
00:23:43.940And Linda Fairstein talked a little bit about this, where she really hasn't at all.
00:23:49.160In 2019, Netflix did this docuseries called When They See Us by Anna DuVarnay about the Central Park Five, which is an event from the 80s.
00:23:59.420And you were at the DA's office at that time, and they attributed words and actions to you that you say and neither said nor did.
00:24:14.440The judge looking into this went to DuVarnay and said, well, where's your source material for these scenes where Linda said and did these things?
00:24:22.600Her response was, well, it's not a documentary.
00:24:24.460It settled, and the settlement required Netflix to pay a million dollars to the Innocence Project, and they had to change the messaging when you stream this.
00:24:33.000Up front, the messaging now says inspired by and fictionalized, you know, events are fictionalized here.
00:24:38.860Because DuVarnay admitted, actually, that she invented, invented is the word she used, my dialogue and invented my actions.
00:24:48.540The Netflix flicks executives asking, did she really do those things?
00:24:54.380Did she, being Feirstein, really do those things?
00:24:57.460And no, I invented it because I figured that's what she would be like.
00:25:11.940She just decided, this is the character I'm going to have represent these.
00:25:16.660I can't tell you because I don't know her, but I would think because I was the visible person, I was the known name as a best-selling author.
00:25:26.940And the other characters who really worked on the case weren't known to anybody, and it was just a good way to take a shot at me.
00:25:51.480Well, it is when you've got a woman involved who, look, for what it's worth, having interviewed her, I think she's a pretty unpleasant troll.
00:26:00.340I heard from other people who've been on the receiving end of her trolling that it could be pretty unpleasant.
00:26:04.340Do you mean Linda Feirstein or baby reindeer lady?
00:26:13.200But, no, Fiona Harvey, who was the alleged stalker in the baby reindeer series, the real-life woman behind that, you know, in her case, she was leading a normal life.
00:26:24.640Now, she's not, you know, like I say, she could be a pretty unpleasant troll.
00:26:27.420I know people have been on the receiving end.
00:26:29.620But that doesn't make you a criminal stalker.
00:26:32.420And there's a big difference between the two things.
00:26:34.840And the moment that the Netflix story drama dropped on, I say drama, they didn't bill it as a drama.
00:27:11.280So they immediately realized it was this woman, Fiona Harvey.
00:27:13.800Her life then becomes completely turned upside down and destroyed to the extent she couldn't leave her house because people were bombarding her with hate, turning up on her doorstep, calling her, shouting abuse at her, and so on.
00:27:26.600Because they believe the version of events in the series.
00:27:29.840Now, like I say, she's not a particularly, you know, she's not someone you warm to or you feel particularly worried for because I've seen the stuff she sent people and it's pretty unpleasant.
00:27:40.140But I would categorize it like I would a troll on Twitter, on X, right?
00:27:48.580And she has not, through anyone's proof so far, passed the bar of criminality.
00:27:54.320And yet in the series, like I say, they don't only say at the end he gets charged and convicted of stalking Richard Gadd.
00:28:00.820They also throw in for good measure that she had a previous conviction for stalking somebody else.
00:28:05.700Now, I interviewed the person that was supposedly part of that story.
00:28:09.780And she's a lawyer from Scotland who confirmed that actually, no, she never got convicted of stalking her.
00:28:14.980There was a warning letter from police, but again, a very different thing.
00:28:18.580So I was able to be careful with criminal convictions.
00:28:21.440Wait, can I ask you a question about her?
00:28:22.660Because I'm always I'm always afraid to interview anybody who's been accused of stalking or convicted of stalking, which I realized is not her case, because I don't want to pick them up.
00:28:34.780You know, like they have this weird gravitational pull.
00:28:38.340And if you spend time with a stalker, especially as a public figure, Pierce, you're you're waving the red flag to the bull.
00:29:33.280You know, a very good friend of mine is a top broadcaster in the UK has had a stalker for 25 years.
00:29:40.520And it's been relentless, despite this person going to prison several times for stalking her.
00:29:45.760And real stalkers are so demented, they never stop their obsession.
00:29:50.740So I guess why I really don't believe she's one of those.
00:29:54.360Not only is she not a convicted stalker, I don't think she behaves like an actual stalker.
00:29:59.120That doesn't mean to say she's squeaky clean or a particularly nice person.
00:30:03.000But, you know, you cannot build a whole hugely successful, very profitable Netflix series that you call a true story by telling the viewers who are watching this woman is a convicted criminal.
00:30:17.080If she's not, if you do, that is a serious defamation.
00:30:21.080That's what we call defamation per se, where you don't even have to prove damages.
00:30:24.340The court will presume them if you say somebody is a convicted felon and they're not.
00:30:29.320Well, that's the whole thing is fascinating.
00:30:31.380I was very into that baby reindeer series and I learned a lot.
00:30:34.160I couldn't, I thought the interview with her was riveting, Pierce.
00:30:37.280While we're on the subject of the media, there is in the news today, because we're kind of talking about the Trump derangement syndrome in the media too,
00:30:45.920is a confession by someone at The Intercept, which is the news organization that Glenn Greenwald helped found.
00:30:54.980You know, it's on the left and it had a certain POV.
00:30:58.360And then it just went so crazy that Glenn left it in a blaze of glory, but it continues on.
00:31:05.240And there is a guy there named Jim Risen, who Glenn says they, they hired just to be sort of a counterpoint to some of what Glenn was saying.
00:31:13.420Glenn always thought the Russiagate stuff was nonsense.
00:31:16.140So they bring this guy on to say, oh, Russiagate, Russia, you know, it's real, it's real, it's real.
00:40:20.660And can you imagine if you did a heterosexual version of that?
00:40:25.000The outrage that would be erupting from the LGBTQ plus community, that they were being offended and insulted in this way by having a straight version of that in classrooms.
00:40:38.920So there's an absolute hypocrisy here as well.
00:40:50.680You know, because apart from anything else, what you end up with, you know, I'll tell you one little story about a school in the south of England, which I happen to know quite well.
00:40:58.640And they got a thousand pupils and when the gender fluid craze was sweeping through the world, and particularly in Britain, but also America as well, 98 pupils, I was told out of a thousand, began identifying as gender fluid.
00:41:14.780Now, when I heard that, what was quite obvious to me was two things.
00:41:19.300One, they didn't know what they were really doing.
00:41:21.660And secondly, that if you asked the question today, how many of them are still gender fluid, the answer would probably be almost zero, which is, guess what, exactly what's happened.
00:41:31.780In other words, young kids will pick up fads and they'll run with them.
00:41:35.460When David Bowie was a massive rock star in the 70s and was a slightly cross-dressing guy who wore makeup, lots of kids at school began doing the same to emulate their hero.
00:41:44.800That's what young teens in particular do.
00:41:47.320But what you mustn't do as a society, I don't believe, and I'm sure you share this view, you don't put this kind of stuff into classrooms to get inside young, impressionable minds in some positive pursuit of what you think you're doing is positive, but actually could have a very, you know, discombobulating, confusing effect on these young minds at the same time.
00:42:12.300I really just hate it. I've got four kids. I don't want my kids anywhere near this stuff.
00:42:19.200It's a social contagion and it's one that could lead to sterility, not to mention the numerous problems that overtake you physically when you go on puberty blockers.
00:42:28.940Forget cross-sex hormones as a young person.
00:42:31.940Then they parade it out there in a way they would never do with anorexia, with cutting.
00:42:35.940Can you imagine a video like cutting? If you're stressed out and depressed and anxious, it can really be a relief for you to just take a knife and start slicing your body up.
00:42:46.160And then in four years, you might feel a whole lot less anxious.
00:42:49.800You'll have scars all over your body and you might actually be playing with fire on your life.
00:42:53.880But I'm telling you, you'll feel less anxious.
00:42:58.240This is exactly the same equivalent thing of that.
00:43:02.360I cannot believe they're putting this in classrooms.
00:43:05.040But then I can, because we were at a school in New York, a private school, where they were celebrating and promoting trans ideology in the third grade, which is one of the reasons why we left.
00:43:15.780All right, wait, let me shift gears. There's a lot more I want to get to.
00:43:18.340What do you make of the Trump order declassifying JFK, RFK and MLK files finally?
00:43:24.380Yeah, I think it's fantastic and long overdue.
00:43:28.080And I'm sure it's been driven by RFK Jr., who I've interviewed many times, including talking to him about this very issue.
00:43:34.480And this is the guy whose father was assassinated, whose uncle was assassinated, and he's never really got the answers himself.
00:43:40.700And it is ridiculous that something that happened back in the 60s, both of these assassinations, that there should still be anything held from the American people.
00:43:50.500The American people have a right to know absolutely everything about their presidents and about their leading politicians.
00:43:57.380Here you've got two of the most famous and charismatic politicians in American history, and, of course, Martin Luther King as well.
00:44:03.860So three of them are going to be three of the most pivotal political figures of modern American times.
00:44:08.640And yet there still remain all sorts of conspiracy theories, all sorts of unanswered questions about all of their deaths.
00:44:16.440And the best way to try and deal with that, as always, is to be completely transparent and to let everybody see absolutely everything that's in those files and work it out for themselves.
00:44:28.320The moment you start hiding stuff, the moment you start suppressing the truth from the public, that is what fuels conspiracy theories.
00:44:36.560Every single time, nailed down, if you let the public know, as they have done for many decades, that we are not showing you some of these files because it might be dangerous for American national security or whatever, it's a load of hogwash.
00:44:49.840The reality is there's a duty to be transparent about these things.
00:44:54.160The American people, and the world, frankly, have a right to know.
00:44:59.520Here's Trump signing the EO and with an interesting closing comment yesterday.
00:45:05.420Lastly, sir, we have an executive order ordering the declassification of files relating to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
00:45:42.580I don't actually, unfortunately, expect any smoking guns because I don't think these people are dumb enough to put one in writing and keep it in a government file.
00:45:49.020And if it were already in there, knowing that declassification was very much in the news for the past 10 years, it would have been pulled and destroyed.
00:46:05.920I saw that poor woman who was literally just praying in her head outside of a U.K. abortion clinic, and she got arrested because the cop was like, what are you doing here?
00:46:22.500We've seen the same stuff happen over here.
00:46:24.800There is, some of the people who are being released are, one was a Holocaust survivor who was protesting quietly outside of an abortion clinic.
00:46:35.380Here's one, Eva Edel, singing with other protesters at a Nashville abortion clinic in 2021.
00:46:43.160This is not one of the ones that she was indicted in, but you can see that she is sitting in a wheelchair with the purple blanket.
00:46:49.980Okay, so my own take on it, Pierce, is I assume they're violating law.
00:47:19.400I don't actually take the time to look it up, but there is generally a time, place, and manner of restriction around abortion clinics that doesn't allow you to go in, doesn't allow you to disrupt the experience for a woman going in there.
00:47:30.920What the police should do is go remove those people.
00:47:33.080They should get them out and enforce the law in that way.
00:47:36.340But to actually throw these people in jail and treat them like they're hardened criminals, they gave real jail sentences to so many of these people, and I support the pardon.
00:47:48.860I think that my criteria is all these things, and it applies to the January the 6th rioters, protesters, whatever people want to call them, and Trump's pardons.
00:47:58.740I actually came down with J.D. Vance on that and not Donald Trump.
00:48:02.740I would not have pardoned the ones who perpetrated acts of violence against the police.
00:48:07.240And I have the same view of the anti-abortion protesters.
00:48:10.300If they're protesting peacefully, that is the basic intrinsic right of every American citizen, to have the right to exercise your right to peacefully protest.
00:48:19.420And if you've transgressed some, you know, little local law about trespass or whatever it may be, fine.
00:48:28.580If they're then violent towards the police who are removing them, then that's a different thing.
00:48:33.680If they're not, then that's where it should be left.
00:48:36.780And I just think we're seeing a lot of it in the UK where people are being arrested and charged and sometimes in prison for putting comments on Facebook and so on.
00:48:45.740And my criteria with them is if they are actually organising violence, and you can see that in what they're writing, if they are genuinely organising violence or they're perpetrating it, that is one thing.
00:48:58.080If they're not, they're expressing perhaps very unpleasant views or, you know, nasty views, whatever it may be, or they're, you know, using language that people don't like.
00:49:06.980That is not an imprisonable offence to me.
00:49:09.500That's your free speech right to be obnoxious, to be unpleasant and all these things.
00:49:14.680So the dividing line for me always is violence.
00:49:18.160And it doesn't matter whether you're a BLM rioter or a January 6th protester or an anti-abortionist or whatever it may be.
00:49:24.800If you cross the line into violence or you are orchestrating violence or planning it, that is one thing, and you should feel the full force of the law.
00:49:34.280If you're peacefully protesting, then you should be left alone to peacefully protest.
00:49:41.320I think even it's like some of these cases, like six, five years in prison, three years in prison, several years in prison.
00:49:51.080Like, if you really want to make a point with the 87-year-old Holocaust survivor, which, I mean, truly, this is what we're doing, 89-year-old Holocaust survivor.
00:50:03.940Maybe you say you have to do one day of community service now.
00:50:08.120Like, you've got to go out there, and I don't know what an 89-year-old could do in community service, but I'm sure it's something.
00:50:16.120You know, like, I think most people who know they're going to break the law and do this at an abortion clinic are prepared to accept something like that.
00:50:21.680I think most of them would even take a day in jail, you know, sort of civil disobedience style.
00:50:31.440And now we must get to the most important news of the day, obviously, when the two of us are together.
00:50:35.520And that is Meghan Markle and Prince Harry.
00:50:38.000But we actually do need to talk about the fact that Vanity Fair has turned on them, Piers.
00:50:45.740Vanity Fair with a hit piece on her in particular, writing all about how she's a diva, which some of us have known and have been talking about, and how people can't handle working for her.
00:51:07.600Two sources say a colleague with ties to archetypes, her podcast, took a leave of absence after working on three episodes, then left Gimlet, the podcast producer, altogether.
00:51:16.700Several others described taking extended breaks from work to escape scrutiny, meaning from her, exiting their job or undergoing long-term therapy after working with Meghan.
00:51:26.340The person who interacted professionally with her says, I think if Meghan acknowledged her own shortcomings or personal contributions to situations rather than staying trapped in a victim narrative, her perception might be better.
00:51:41.580And going on to say the prince and the prince and the starlet, according to Vanity Fair, have become local villains in Montecito.
00:51:50.000Quoting someone is saying they are the most entitled, disingenuous people on the planet.
00:51:55.100They move from England to get away from the scrutiny of the press, supposedly, and all they do is try to get in the press in the United States.
00:52:04.820What it tells us is, rather comically, that when you have this couple who, remember, on their website, it says that they're all about compassion.
00:52:16.800They're also all about mental health and helping people with mental health.
00:52:20.460They've been very vocal about that recently, about the perils of online trolling and the effect it has on people's mental health.
00:52:26.200And yet here we are with Vanity Fair, the Hollywood Bible, the thing that Meghan was most thrilled about getting the cover of a few years ago when she got engaged to Harry, which went down very badly with the palace at the time, I can tell you.
00:52:40.080But now it reveals that actually she in particular is a nasty little bully who sends staff into therapy.
00:53:48.280And these two for five years have reveled and wallowed in royal dirt for vast amounts of money.
00:53:54.620And that's what makes Prince Harry's ongoing campaign against the UK newspapers, which had another flare up this week, so laughably hypocritical.
00:54:03.480Because he talks about intrusion into royal privacy.
00:54:07.720And yet, if you ask any senior member of the royal family who has invaded your privacy the worst, it's Prince Harry.
00:54:15.980It's the guy who gave the inside track for money to Oprah, to Netflix, to his publishers, to anyone who would pay top dollar.
00:54:27.160This guy invaded the privacy of his family.
00:54:30.020And yet, he has the goal to present himself as some great standard bearer of ethics and decency when it comes to royal privacy.
00:54:49.720She's bullied almost all of her staff out of the job.
00:54:52.980They all wind up leaking to the press.
00:54:54.560What a horrid nightmare she was to work with.
00:54:56.560And the other piece in the Vanity Fair article, which was amazing, was about him and how neither one of them showed up with any ideas on what to do.
00:55:07.700Like, actually, how are we going to earn all this money?
00:55:09.580And that one of the ideas for the podcast that he had was that he would get people like Vladimir Putin and Mark Zuckerberg to sit with him.
00:55:20.400But it wasn't because because he said everybody's got damage in their childhood and I had damage in my childhood, too.
00:55:27.600So you're thinking, OK, all right, I guess he's going to use that to bond with them.
00:55:31.540The conclusion was that their experiences had made them into sociopaths, according to Harry.
00:55:37.980And he wanted to explore how they became sociopaths, but he remained totally normal and was not, quote, one of these bad guys.
00:55:49.120And the Vanity Fair pointing out trying to get a season's worth of world famous sociopaths to talk about how they developed sociopathy would be what is referred to in access journalism as a booking challenge.
00:56:01.220I mean, they're just so completely deluded.
00:56:06.780That's the thing that always strikes me.
00:56:38.880And now what's happened, I mean, what's most laughable of all in a sort of horrible way is that she's got this new series where she's trying to be the new Martha Stewart,
00:56:48.320where she's going to be cooking in her fancy mansion for all her fancy friends, very fancy food.
00:56:54.740Can you imagine a less appropriate thing in California right now than this fake princess, this duchess trading off the title she got given by an institution she's trying to ruin?
00:57:08.320Actually, it's prancing about in this kitchen in a multimillion dollar mansion with her famous friends in California,
00:57:15.820when 12,000 to 14,000 people have just lost their homes in the most horrendous fires that the city's ever had in Los Angeles and that the state's ever seen.
00:57:26.780It is so unbelievably inappropriate that that series could go ahead.
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00:59:46.760Last week, we told you about the blockbuster defamation verdict against CNN.
00:59:55.000Jake Tapper's show The Lead in 2021 ran a report by a reporter named Alex Marquardt that accused Navy veteran Zachary Young of exploiting, quote,
01:00:06.880quote, desperate Afghans by demanding, quote, exorbitant fees and operating in a, quote, black market while offering evacuation services after Joe Biden's disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.
01:00:21.060CNN scrubbed the report from the Internet, but we have it here, which you can watch for yourself.
01:00:25.720As CNN's Alex Marquardt has discovered, Afghans trying to get out of the country face a black market full of promises, demands of exorbitant fees, and no guarantee of safety or success.
01:00:37.440What is the U.S. doing that you know of to try to get you and your family out?
01:00:41.960Unfortunately, they are not doing now anything.
01:00:44.620Up to 31st, they said everything is closed and it's finished.
01:00:48.800We did not receive anything back from U.S. Embassy or from any other organization.
01:00:54.200So he went online where he found a man named Zachary Young, who is one of many advertising evacuations from Afghanistan, posting just this week, we can deliver.
01:01:04.960One LinkedIn user posted messages with Young where Young said it would be $75,000 for a car to Pakistan.
01:01:12.420He told another it would be $14,500 per person to get to the United Arab Emirates or Albania for another $4,000.
01:01:21.040Prices well beyond the reach of most Afghans.
01:01:23.900We got Young's number and called, but he didn't pick up.
01:01:27.480In a text message, he told CNN that Afghans trying to leave are expected to have sponsors pay for them.
01:01:33.220If someone reaches out, we need to understand if they have a sponsor behind them to be able to pay evacuation costs,
01:01:39.080which Young says are highly volatile and based on environmental realities.
01:01:43.680Young repeatedly declined to break down the costs or say if he's making money.
01:01:48.260And the lower third for the listening audience has got the stuff about black market and exorbitant fees.
01:01:55.440I mean, it's a fascinating story, except it's not true.
01:01:59.560Despite what the report and its onscreen chyrons, being the lower third on your screen, showed, Young did not operate in a black market.
01:02:07.160He did not advertise to Afghans, he did not charge exorbitant prices to Afghans, and he did not exploit Afghans.
01:02:17.680And if that report were not bad enough, what CNN was doing behind the scenes and what they were saying about this guy Young was even worse.
01:02:26.380You just saw CNN's Mark Hart tried to make the phone call to Young.
01:02:31.580Well, thanks to Discovery in the case, we have the video of him filming his reaction shots to this.
01:03:16.920Texts show this guy, Marquardt, writing,
01:03:19.940We gonna nail this Zachary Young M-F-er.
01:03:23.180And other CNN employees calling him a shit, an a-hole, and a shit bag.
01:03:29.280This is relevant because in a case like this, you generally have to prove that they behaved with some malice, depending on whether the court finds Mr. Young a public figure.
01:03:39.440And those would be exactly the kind of texts that would suggest there is some.
01:04:48.320They gave him $5 million compensatory.
01:04:50.260And now they were about to debate just how big the punitive damage award would be when Young and CNN entered into a confidential settlement.
01:04:59.200CNN, for its part, released this statement.
01:05:01.240We remain proud of our journalists and are 100% committed to strong, fearless, and fair-minded reporting at CNN.
01:05:07.680Though we will, of course, take what useful lessons we can from this case.
01:05:12.340Zachary Young joins me now, along with his attorney, Val Friedman, here for his first long-form interview.
01:05:18.460Guys, thank you so much for being here.
01:06:57.940And so to get liability on the underlying count, meaning for the jury to say you have to pay him your compensatory damages, the $5 million, we only had to show negligence.
01:07:07.280But in order to get the punitive damages award, you have to show malice.
01:07:12.780So the jury, when the jury eventually found that CNN should be liable for punitive damages, they had to have found that CNN knew what they were publishing was not true or had at minimum substantial doubts as to whether it was true.
01:07:29.200They published anyways, despite knowing it was true or probably not true, and that they did it with a primary intent to harm Zachary.
01:07:36.460And so the jury had to find both those things and did find both those things in order to hold CNN liable for punitive damages.
01:08:11.380By the time we were forced to attend the court-ordered mediation, CNN asked the court to force Zach to come in from Vienna in person for that meeting.
01:08:22.000They said they wanted to take it seriously.
01:08:24.580But I got to tell you, it wasn't really legal strategy.
01:08:29.300We told him we thought he had a really strong case.
01:08:31.940The evidence here was overwhelming in our view that CNN had committed defamation, had it done so maliciously.
01:08:38.540But it was really Zach that wouldn't settle.
01:08:41.060He said he had to, you know, I think he told me there were two things he wanted to accomplish.
01:08:44.820One, he needed to clear his name because they had slandered him internationally to millions of people.
01:08:50.280And the second is he thought this was a very rare opportunity to kind of expose wrongdoing and bad actors in the media and just kind of try to course correct a little bit.
01:09:27.980I mean, I can't imagine a case in which like I've never texted with my producers this way about somebody that we're reporting on, like with such disgust and animus.
01:09:38.240And then gone out with a report that my internal producers were telling me was, quote, full of holes like Swiss cheese and not even worthy to make the website.
01:10:05.760And frankly, I probably would have put you on the air to let you tell me to my face in front of my audience how wrong I was.
01:10:11.800That's that's truly how I would have handled it had I ever been in such a terrible situation.
01:10:16.280But all you got out of CNN from what I read is and we'll get we'll go we'll do the backstory in a second was like this generic sort of Pamela Brown sitting in for Jake Tapper, anodyne, milquetoast, correction and generic like we're sorry.
01:10:36.260Is that basically all you had prior to filing the lawsuit?
01:10:38.980It is. And, you know, now that I understand more about the legalities, I understand why they did it.
01:10:46.480It wasn't a sincere correction or apology.
01:10:50.080And in fact, when we depose all of CNN's witnesses, more than a dozen, including their corporate rep, they all retracted their apology.
01:10:59.480They said that they disagreed with it.
01:11:01.460They they were never consulted about it.
01:11:04.240The reporters, the editors, the CNN corporate rep, and that it was made for legal reasons by lawyers.
01:11:12.840So that was pretty disturbing to hear.
01:11:15.960And it's it's a position that they maintained all the way up through trial.
01:11:20.240We gave them opportunities to, you know, say something like we made some mistakes.
01:11:29.860We could have used different words, but they didn't.
01:11:33.140They doubled down all the way up until the very end.
01:11:35.940And for me, I think that was the most disturbing part was that even faced with this lawsuit and the overwhelming evidence that we had in discovery, they still couldn't say that they made a mistake.
01:11:48.960And even now you read this statement that CNN put out after the decision, they said that they stand behind their brave journalists and they're proud of it.
01:12:06.420But you mentioned, you know, why didn't we settle years ago?
01:12:10.180So this was very important to me to expose what happened, because if it if it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone.
01:12:17.460And I think that more often than not, this is the way that mainstream media gets away with it.
01:12:23.480They they settle, they sweep it under the rug and you never know the details.
01:12:27.160So Val and I were were very transparent from the beginning three years ago that we wanted to take this all the way to the end.
01:12:34.740And then, of course, we went through the experience with discovery.
01:12:38.520And I I didn't understand in the beginning how bad it really was.
01:12:42.160All the internal messages about arranging my funeral, nailing me, the concern from editors saying this story is 80 percent emotion, 20 percent obscure fact, full of holes like Swiss cheese.
01:12:57.160And they talked a lot about this internal mechanism called triad, this quality control system.
01:13:02.940And they tried to make a big deal out of it during the trial that, you know, they this the story went through that process and they approved it to me.
01:13:12.220That doesn't make it better. It makes it worse.
01:13:34.140They're afraid for the reasons I said.
01:13:35.980But it's like if you if you approach your job earnestly and you do it's not to say you'll never potentially defame somebody.
01:13:42.940It's like you talk about people for a living. There's always that risk.
01:13:46.280But you have to have trust that you're when your heart's in the right place and you have an honest approach to each of your stories that will rule the day because the defamation bar is high.
01:13:55.580It's high. So, you know, it's like if you're quick to correct and you're honest about did we make a mistake and do I owe this guy an apology?
01:14:02.880Did I screw it up? In my experience, you'll be fine.
01:14:05.920You'll be fine. And by the way, you know, you can times that by 100 when you're dealing with, you know, a former veteran, a veteran, because it's like there actually is a reputation there to harm.
01:14:18.940Like you've got to be extra careful. You're talking about somebody who's served his country honorably like you really could could hurt such a person.
01:14:25.760I want to I want to show this the correction by Pam Brown, which was aired months later.
01:14:32.640The report, I think, was November of 21. And then the the correction came March of 22.
01:14:40.600And then that corporate representative, the CNN senior VP, I think, at trial saying everybody on the editorial team disagreed with the correction.
01:14:53.660And before we go, a correction in November, we ran a story about Afghans desperate to flee the country who face paying high sums beyond the reach of average Afghans.
01:15:06.000The story included a lead in and banner throughout the story that referenced a black market.
01:15:11.740The use of the term black market in the story was an error.
01:15:15.260The story included reporting on Zachary Young, a private operator who had been contacted by family members of Afghans trying to flee the country.
01:15:24.220We did not intend to suggest that master Mr. Young participated in a black market.
01:15:29.600We regret the error. And to Mr. Young, we apologize.
01:15:51.080And I think CNN made a decision based on what Mr. Young and you had brought forward that it would make sense to do this correction.
01:15:59.420Editorially, I think you've heard that people don't think that what they did misrepresented anything editorially and they don't agree with our legal department.
01:16:11.440Because the legal department was saying you've gotten it wrong.
01:16:17.600And also the standards department, Val, looked at the report before it hit air and said that I think they're the ones who said Swiss cheese.
01:16:29.780Internal communications at CNN saying, OK, it had approval from Triad, which is senior editors of CNN who story vet and their editorial team known as the row.
01:16:41.440So standards editors and lawyers and that the internal communications showed that there was CNN employee Allison Hoffman saying this story was, quote, pretty flawed and we should consider forgoing the right, meaning on CNN dot com and just having the video programmed.
01:16:59.180CNN employee Tom Lumley, Lumley texting, quote, my fundamental question is not answered, but on TV it's less of a problem.
01:17:06.440Dramatic, silhouetted, silhouetted interviews and it zipped along so less glaring and exchanged between this guy, Tom Lumley and CNN employee Megan Trimble.
01:17:17.060Lumley, it's an incomplete story, in my opinion.
01:17:27.160Trimble, but it's not fleshed out for digital.
01:17:29.860Again, here again for the audience that they're making a distinction between what they'd show their audience on air and what they'd put on CNN dot com.
01:17:35.560Lumley explained that, quote, the TV package was watchable because it had interviews with people scared for their families, but the story is full of holes like Swiss cheese.
01:17:44.600Trimble agreed that, quote, the story is 80 percent emotion, 20 percent obscured fact.
01:19:13.840He didn't participate in any of the, you know, kind of name calling of Zach or anything like that.
01:19:19.560And then he became CNN's corporate representative and was asked to defend, which is an impossible position because CNN's lawyers took one look at the clip and immediately issued an apology to try to take advantage of the retraction statutes that give some protection to media if you offer a retraction.
01:19:36.280But then CNN decided its legal team decided it wanted to defend the peace and claim it wasn't an error.
01:19:58.120And, you know, it was it's a tough position to be in.
01:20:01.520But, you know, some of the others did you think of what did you think of Alex Marquardt and his testimony, the reporter who caused all the trouble?
01:20:10.120You know, in my opinion, he was not forthright.
01:25:52.940And they pointed to a few clips that were technically correct.
01:25:57.600He had screenshots of correspondence for me quoting prices.
01:26:02.280But the way that they laid it out in the in the clip made it look like I was charging Afghans these these fees and made it sound like I was a criminal.
01:26:12.040So two pretty big errors that I don't think were covered up by the fact that they did accurately quote a few prices that I put out there.
01:26:20.320And again, just looking through discovery from start to finish the way that it was, it was about black markets and extortion from the beginning before they even had a story before the investigation.
01:26:32.440And that's just that happens to be exactly where yet we where he ended up two weeks later before going to air two hours before I told him that a lot of the stuff he was about to say was was not correct.
01:26:44.600And I would need some time to provide thoughtful comment.
01:26:48.440He just ignored it and they went on the air.
01:26:51.000So how long did they give you to respond to this hit piece they were preparing on you?
01:26:59.460And there were there were a lot of questions in there that would have required careful consideration, including my former affiliation with the Central Intelligence Agency.
01:27:08.160I would have had to reach out to some people and get some guidance on how to answer that when confronted by a reporter.
01:28:38.680You know, I mean, I've interviewed Eric Prince.
01:28:40.480It's a it's a unique skill set to know how to operate in this kind of theater safely and to do something as risky as evacuations.
01:28:48.800I think that's why you charge money for it.
01:28:52.080And people like companies like Audible are willing to pay for it.
01:28:55.360But when that all went away as a result of this CNN report suggesting you're some sort of a dark force on the black market, taking advantage of hurting people.
01:29:05.380And here you are talking about what happened in your life.
01:29:52.040Zach, can you explain how the CNN report caused that for you?
01:30:17.940It's hard to explain unless you've actually gone through it.
01:30:26.680You know, there was the professional damage that CNN caused, but that was not nearly as severe as the impact that this has had on my family.
01:30:35.520My wife, my mom, not being able to tell them that things are going to be okay, that I can recover from this, that it's not as bad as it sounds.
01:30:48.020Because, you know, as it turned out, it was a lot worse than I thought when I first saw the video.
01:31:35.580They have human resources departments.
01:31:37.320So if they're bringing me forward for work or project, and someone Googles my name, you know, prior to this outcome anyway, this is what they find.
01:31:50.000It's human trafficking, black market operator.
01:31:53.300And no company is going to take that risk.
01:31:55.800And I wouldn't expect anyone to put their name next to mine.
01:32:00.080And that was the devastating impact that it had over a three-year period.
01:32:06.580People used to come to me for important work.
01:32:11.480And the outcome, the immediate outcome of this broadcast was no one would take my calls.
01:32:17.720That has improved somewhat since the lawsuit.
01:32:22.780And I'm hoping that now that we have a jury verdict and my name has been officially and legally cleared and CNN has been exposed for making up lies about me, I'm hoping that that has some mitigating effect.
01:33:22.480And a few of them, including Mark Hart, said any amount of money would be too much, anything north of zero.
01:33:29.240So while it may be defensible as a matter of opinion, the term exorbitant,
01:33:35.380I can tell you in the world of defense contracting, 100% margin in a place like Afghanistan, even during the best of times, is not unusual at all.
01:33:48.860This says $75,000 for one vehicle, five to six passengers, Kabul to Peshawar.
01:33:54.460So it was for multiple people, just so the audience understands that wasn't for one person.
01:34:10.040There's a lot of operational planning and work and precision that goes into an emergency evacuation from a place like Afghanistan after the Taliban took over.
01:35:27.560I thought that came out of trial is, you know, the reporters sort of exhibited this disgust for Zach because he had profited off of the situation in Afghanistan.
01:35:36.400Mind you, he was charging corporations and NGOs who were happy to pay for this service and had no qualms about it.
01:35:46.160The people rescued rescued from Afghanistan were happy.
01:35:49.220But CNN decided that their reporters that this was disgusting and this was horrible and Zach deserved punishment for it.
01:35:56.220And at trial, we kind of brought out this hypocrisy, which is some of you all, including Mark Hart, are war correspondents, right?
01:36:03.400You go into war, you're paid to report on war.
01:36:06.180CNN advertises its own advertisements and sells advertisements while it's reporting on war.
01:36:12.100Both CNN's reporters and Zachary Young were paid by corporations to operate in war zones.
01:36:18.160No one's saying that what CNN is doing isn't appropriate to report on war and no one should be saying that servicing corporations to evacuate people from war zones is a problem either.
01:36:28.900And yet CNN turned, it was just so hypocritical, just turned this, like, hatred on Zach as a result of what he was doing.
01:36:38.300And I think that really appealed to the jury, this idea that, you know, they were hating him, they were going after him, they were maliciously targeting him.
01:36:46.060And this was one of the reasons why, and it was completely hypocritical.
01:36:49.520I mean, it's so crazy because I think about, you know, even my own show, if I had a correspondent who was over in Afghanistan, and let's say it's not a war correspondent, it's somebody there who's just reporting on international relations, and this happens and I need to get him out.
01:37:04.200It's my responsibility as the company owner to get him out.
01:37:07.240I'd be thrilled to have an option like Zachary.
01:37:11.020Like, great, I would have no idea where to even begin.
01:37:17.340So I need to hire somebody who's got a background that's appropriate, that he knows what he's doing, was in the Navy, was in the CIA, knows the region, knows how to do risky ops to rescue my person.
01:37:28.200That is definitely worth something to me.
01:38:08.380Stand by, because I want to tell the audience what has happened to Alex Marquardt since this happened, since this whole, you know, dispute arose.
01:38:17.800And we'll ask Zachary to give us a feel for how much he got.
01:38:23.720I'm Megan Kelly, host of The Megan Kelly Show on Sirius XM.
01:38:29.000It's your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations with the most interesting and important political, legal, and cultural figures today.
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01:38:44.420Great people like Dr. Laura, Glenn Beck, Nancy Grace, Dave Ramsey, and yours truly, Megan Kelly.
01:38:50.900You can stream The Megan Kelly Show on Sirius XM at home or anywhere you are.
01:40:41.080We've never seen this document before.
01:40:42.980And we went to sidebar with the judge.
01:40:44.900And Mr. Axelrod told the judge that this had, I don't remember his exact words, but something along the lines of this, like, by sheer luck, we obtained this document.
01:40:53.620And, you know, it just kind of landed in our lap.
01:40:55.880And, you know, it's so crucial to the case.
01:40:59.320And the judge allowed them to use it, notwithstanding that it wasn't disclosed and didn't allow us to consult with Zach before it was used.
01:41:07.180And when he was confronted, when Zach was confronted with it, he explained it perfectly.
01:41:11.200And he said, listen, this is not a commercial agreement.
01:41:13.860This is simply an agreement to hold my security clearance.
01:41:16.800I've never done any work for this company.
01:41:18.560You have seven years of my bank records.
01:41:46.920They had made a partial production of them using only one of the documents.
01:41:51.460Turns out in that correspondence, this company informed CNN that Zach no longer had a security clearance as of 2022, something we didn't even know anymore.
01:42:00.720Then CNN, knowing that, put an expert on the stand to testify that because he had a security clearance, he could still get more work.
01:42:10.260And so when we found all this information out, we filed a motion with the judge and we said, look, we've been massively prejudiced here and we were very careful not to ask for any kind of sanctions or anything like that.
01:42:30.300They told you yesterday that it fell in their lap based on basically luck that wasn't true.
01:42:36.100And, you know, when a judge believes that a lawyer, which we call like an officer of the court, you have duties of candor and ethical obligations not to lie.
01:42:44.080People like saying lawyers are liars, but we're not.