After a week of hype, Piers Morgan’s interview with Donald Trump finally aired on Rupert Murdoch’s new channel, TalkTV.
For nearly an hour, the two men — who first met when Morgan was a contestant on Mr Trump’s television show The Celebrity Apprentice – held forth on a variety of topics, including the war in Ukraine, Mr Trump’s relationship with ex-German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and why UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson intervened to block a previously scheduled conversation between them.
Here are some of the more explosive revelations from the Trump-Morgan sit-down.
Trump still thinks Russia invaded Ukraine because of a ‘rigged election’
Mr Trump attempted to walk back his prior praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who he called a “genius” as Russian forces were launching an invasion of Ukraine in late February.
Speaking to Morgan, he said his comment about Mr Putin’s “genius” only referred to the months-long Russian troop buildup along Ukraine’s Eastern frontier, which he characterised as a brilliant negotiating strategy.
Two months later, Mr Trump said he agreed with Morgan’s description of Mr Putin as “an evil, genocidal monster,” but said the thousands of Ukrainians who’ve been killed by Russian forces died not because of the work of soldiers acting on the Russian dictator’s orders, but “because of a rigged election”.
Mr Trump also claimed to have threatened Mr Putin not to invade Ukraine, but offered no specifics as to what he threatened him with or what the Russian leader’s response was.
The ex-president doesn’t understand how nuclear weapons work
Mr Trump, who often brags about the intelligence of family — specifically his uncle John Trump, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who helped develop radar during the Second World War — appeared to suggest that what he described as an American advantage in nuclear weapons was reason not to fear the possibility that Mr Putin could choose to employ such weapons in Ukraine or against the United States.
“I call it the 'N-word.' He uses the 'N-word,' the nuclear word, all the time. That's a no-no. You're not supposed to do that. He uses it on a daily basis,” said Mr Trump, who added that he would tell Mr Putin in response that the US has “ar more than you do, far, far more powerful than you”.
He chastised his successor, President Joe Biden, for not wanting to escalate the confrontation between Russia and the West over Ukraine, and suggested Mr Biden should threaten Mr Putin.
“We have more powerful than them and there would be no Russia, there would be no Russia, but we don't want to talk about that,” he said, apparently ignorant of the fact that a Russian use of nuclear weapons would result in the destruction of most of the United States as well.
He still insists on lying about the 2020 election and blames other Republicans for not helping him stay in office against the wishes of voters
More than a year after leaving office, Mr Trump refused to reflect on whether he might have turned off American voters with his disastrous response to Covid-19 or his profligate use of social media, or his attacks on popular elected officials in swing states.
Instead, he insisted on blaming Republicans who accepted the legitimacy of his loss to Mr Biden and attacked the US press for failing to signal boost the crackpot conspiracy theories his supporters have clung to since he lost his bid for re-election in November 2020, even though those same theories were a significant motivator for the horde of Trump fans who attacked the Capitol in hopes of preventing certification of Mr Biden’s victory.
“This is like a communist country,” Mr Trump said, complaining about the US press.
“We have a crooked, corrupt election, and I’ve proven it”.
When Morgan countered that the US election had been “free and fair,” Mr Trump called him a “fool”.
Offered an alternative theory of the case, which alleges that the press failing to signal boost an October 2020 New York Post story on Mr Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, amounted to election rigging, Mr Trump claimed that the younger Mr Biden’s troubles could have given him a 17-point advantage had the press been more credulous about them, but quickly returned to attacking his erstwhile GOP allies after telling Morgan that he “won it [the election he lost] big” nonetheless.
“Mitch McConnell was stupid and he shouldn’t have allowed it to happen,” he sad referring to the Senate GOP leader who recognised Mr Biden as the legitimately-elected president and voted to certify the election once the mob had been cleared from the Capitol on 6 January 2021.
And what of Mike Pence, Mr Trump’s loyal Vice President, who was targeted by a mob — egged on by Mr Trump — who called for him to be lynched after refused to claim non-existent powers to reject electoral votes from swing states won by Mr Biden?
“Mike was foolish and he was weak,” he said.
