Piers Morgan screened the second part of his interview with Donald Trump on Tuesday afternoon, revealing that the former president did not storm out.
A heavily edited trailer for the interview released last week had appeared to suggest that Mr Trump had angrily walked out of the interview amid questions about his so-called “Big Lie” that he was cheated out of victory in the 2020 election.
The implication infuriated the former president who released a statement accusing his former Celebrity Apprentice contestant of “unlawfully and deceptively” editing his “tedious” interview.
Introducing the final section of the interview on Talk TV on Tuesday, Morgan blamed Trump aide Taylor Budowich for the bad-tempered ending, saying he constantly interrupted the pair while trying to bring an end to the talk, which had already overrun. Morgan called him “incredibly incompetent”.
However, footage showed Mr Trump answering a final question about hitting a hole-in-one – and claiming he had hit seven during his golfing career – before standing up, taking off his microphone and walking away. He can be heard saying “very dishonest”, apparently referring to Morgan’s questioning of his bogus election fraud claims, as he leaves.
The former president had disputed Mr Morgan’s claim that he had stormed out of the interview after a question about election fraud, and last week news agencies obtained audio of the interview that appeared to back up Mr Trump’s version of the events. The argument led to the cancelation of another of Mr Morgan’s inaugural-week guest interviews when former GOP gubernatorial candidate Caitlyn Jenner refused to appear on the show.
Mr Morgan himself famously stormed off a broadcast in 2021 after being berated for his treatment of Meghan Markle.
The Duchess of Sussex was a topic in the wide-ranging interview as Mr Trump directly insulted her husband Prince Harry by claiming the latter was “whipped”, or submissive to, his wife.
"I won't use the full expression, but Harry is whipped like no person I think I've ever seen," Mr Trump said in the interview. "I'm not a fan of Meghan, I'm not a fan, and I wasn't right from the beginning. I think poor Harry is being led around by his nose.''
He and Mr Morgan did touch on the issue of the 2020 election and the veracity of the results indicating Joe Biden had won, and while contentious the exchange did not immediately precede the end of the conversation.
“I believe it was a free and fair election and that you lost. That’s my belief,” the TV host told Mr Trump after the latter repeated his claim about a stolen election.
"Well then you’re a fool, then you’re a fool,” responded the ex-president. “And you’re a fool and you haven’t studied."
The former president’s falsehoods about the 2020 election resulted in his bans from both Twitter and Facebook following the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, but he has remained undeterred in his insistence that he in fact won his reelection bid by a wide margin. According to The New York Times’s Maggie Haberman, he has even suggested (falsely) to guests at his Mar-a-Lago resort that he could be reinstated before Mr Biden’s term ends.
Despite, or perhaps as a result of his long-running efforts to sow distrust in America’s election systems, the former president remains the de facto leader of the Republican Party and the broad favourite in most polling of likely Republican primary voters for the party’s 2024 nomination.
He has continued to host campaign-style rallies across the country, endorsing various loyalist GOP candidates along the way, and all the while hinting that a 2024 run may be on the horizon and building a massive political war chest that stood at more than $100 million at the end of 2021.
The president himself told Fox News in November that he would make an announcement regarding his 2024 plans after the 2022 midterms conclude in the fall.
