One great thing about talking to Piers Morgan: there is never a shortage of topics he is willing to share his opinion on.
From Joe Biden’s cognitive decline to Donald Trump’s media barbs, his issues with certain CNN reporters and celebrities like George Clooney to who hates Meghan Markle and Prince Harry more between the American and British public, Morgan is game to talk about anything, it seems.
That is a big reason why his YouTube show, “Piers Morgan Uncensored,” has become one of the biggest politics and culture-focused programs since launching on the platform in early 2024, racking up 4 million subscribers.
His show also has an unrivaled knack for going viral on X and elsewhere. Two recent examples: Kanye West storming off mid-interview, and self-described “unapologetic cultural commentator” Lilly Gaddis saying she uses the N-word “quite frequently.” Morgan blasted her for the comment, and soon after, guest Marc Lamont Hill got riled up when the “Uncensored” host dared her to say it, leading to another viral clip from the segment.
“I know a story when I see one. I know the potential for a story, and I know what the media is likely to get excited by,” Morgan told TheWrap during a lengthy interview last week.
He added: “And I don’t really see anybody else [in the media] quite doing it the way that I do it.”
That was a driving force behind the media veteran — who has worked for CNN, NBC, the BBC, and most recently, Fox News — deciding to break his deal with Rupert Murdoch to take control of “Uncensored” earlier this year. He said the move has worked out brilliantly so far, with Morgan claiming his show is valued at $100 million already, based on one key investor.
Morgan believes “Uncensored” can be worth much more than that, and he is not going to hang up if CNN or other potential investors come calling, he said, if the price for a slice of his operation is right. Long term, he said his goal is to build a business that mirrors Ben Shapiro’s “The Daily Wire,” where several opinionated personalities can thrive.
One thing he is certain of, though: Most legacy media outlets are dead, or at best, in the process of dying off. The old model does not work anymore.
“You’ve got to move where younger people in particular have moved. They want opinion. They want to see good debates. They want to hear all the sides of an argument and work out what to really think,” Morgan said. “They don’t want boring, they don’t want stodgy.”
Morgan was not boring as he touched on the topics mentioned above, plus a few others — including what he thinks of Jake Tapper’s recent book tour. Read the interview below:
TheWrap: What’s been the trickiest or most challenging part, now that you do have everything under your control, of just running the show and keeping it humming?
Morgan: That’s the easy part, because as I say to people, we’re not a startup. We’ve been going as a show for three years now [the show started on TalkTV in the UK, before moving to YouTube in 2024], and we’ve been very successful. We’re in the top five news-debate-opinion shows on YouTube in the world, no question. And I think we make more noise probably than anybody else, pretty much.
But I also think in my case, what I want to do is expand the “Uncensored” brand into other genres. I’ve done all the crime documentaries in my time. I want to start building out a “Crime Uncensored” channel. I want to roll out a “History Uncensored” channel, and then look to other genres that we can do where we build out new channels around the “Uncensored” brand.
You know, my sons are my best barometer. They’re 31, 27, 24; they don’t watch conventional television. The average age of cable news viewers in America is 70. Now, I come from newspapers, but no one really under probably 45 buys a print newspaper anymore. They all watch newspaper stuff online.
The other challenge I’ve had is, lots of people — since I’ve been talking about this and made it clear, I now own the channel, own the business — wanting to invest. And the question, as everybody in my position is asking is, how much of the hide do you want to give away to people at this stage when you’re building?
TheWrap: What is that number? Where someone came to you today and said ‘Hey, you can retain control, but we want a slice of the pie.’
Morgan: We’ve already got some [investors who have a small percentage of the pie. Have come in at a kind of valuation that we’re talking about, which is well over $100 million. People have already taken the plunge at that level. One investor has, and we have others that we believe are going to come in at that level too.
So that gives you some idea, I think, of how we value the business. I think it is going to be worth a lot more than that going forward.
TheWrap: Your show has a knack for going viral. Whether it’s the Kanye West interview recently that went haywire or the Lily Gaddis and Marc Lamont Hill confrontation, can you kind of fill me in on what the secret sauce is there?
Morgan: I was a tabloid newspaper editor for nearly 10 years. So I know a story when I see one. I know the potential for a story, and I know what the media is likely to get excited by. That’s been ingrained in me for many years, being in the media, three, four decades now.
But then the second part of the equation is the team. I’ve got a very good team of bookers, very good team of producers, and very good show runners. And we collaborate together and work very carefully on casting each thing that we do.
The criteria is [guests] have got to be smart, they’ve got to be opinionated, they’ve got to be passionate, they’ve got to be knowledgeable about their issue, or they’ve got to be in the news. If they tick any of those boxes, then we either do one on one interviews with them, if that’s appropriate, if it’s a big news exclusive, or we’ll do a casting of a debate where I always try and make it balanced.
If I do a one-on-one interview, I think I know what buttons to push, to get good news lines, to get good viral moments. So it’s all part of the magic. [But] we never give away all our secrets.
TheWrap: I’m always pointing to this Gallup poll from last year that showed the American public’s trust in the mainstream media is at an all-time low. Do you think there’s anything that these mainstream outlets can do to win back that trust? Or do you think that ship has sailed at this point?
Morgan: I think the problem is a lot of them have masqueraded as being [neutral].
Take CNN, which is a network that I love. I worked there for years, got a lot of friends there. But I think when they lost their reputation for impartiality [was] in that Trump first term. It’s very hard to get that back once you’ve made it clear that you’re partisan, you’re in the tank against a political leader, [and] then it’s difficult to wrestle back your reputation as an impartial source of news. And I think also that young people don’t watch cable news. They just don’t. The average age is 70, which means a lot of the viewers of cable news are 80 or 90.
When I was at CNN, they would always win the big news story nights if there was a major disaster or a major event, CNN would win the ratings war on that because people trusted it. Now it often comes last on big news. And you ask yourself, if you’re CNN, why? Why is that happening? What’s happening is people don’t view CNN anymore as an impartial purveyor of news, so they’ve lost their unique selling point. That’s a big, strategic error by them as a network.
I mean, the Biden story is a classic example of why young people have gone off mainstream news. You know, they could all see with their own eyes how incapacitated the president of the United States was. It didn’t take a genius to work out when a guy keeps falling over and mumbling his words and confusing people and all the rest of it, there was probably something rather badly wrong with his cognitive and physical ability.
And the idea that the mainstream media pretty much colluded to keep that secret from the American people, and are now all doing books about it, and reveling in “Well, you know, this is the truth. It’s a bit shocking, is it?” Well, yeah, it has [been].
TheWrap: What do you make of Jake Tapper’s media tour?
Morgan: Well, I like Jake Tapper and I like Alex Thompson. I think they’ve been actually quite honest about their own failings in this area. I think I’ve seen Jake say he didn’t really have much direct access to Biden or his top people to really make an assessment for himself [during his presidency], which I think is probably true. Biden didn’t give many interviews to people like Jake Tapper, or certainly people not like me. Trump gives interviews all the time to people [and] is much more transparent and courageous in that sense, I would say so.
I think Jake Tapper’s book with Alex Thomas is a very important book, and it will go down in history as a very important book, because it recounts in pretty shocking detail the full scale of not just Biden’s cognitive and physical issues, which were, in my view, disqualifying for President of the United States, but also the general cover-up at the White House and by all the celebrity supporters.
You know, the likes of George Clooney now coming along saying, “Well, of course, the moment I knew [about Biden’s cognitive issues], I told you.” Oh, come on, man. You knew, George. I like George Clooney, but come on, stop taking us for [fools], George.
TheWrap: Have you seen a difference in how the media is covering Trump this term versus his first term?
Morgan: I think so. Look at CNN. if you look at Abby Phillip’s show, for example, you wouldn’t have had a show like that back in the first [Trump] term. They wouldn’t have had someone like Scott Jennings going into bat so firmly for Trump every night, which he does brilliantly. He’s still always outnumbered. I mean, it’s not fair, you know, I don’t think it’s fair. They line up four against one, but he can more than capably handle himself. That kind of thing is good to see.
I think the general tone of a lot of [media] people [is] they have dialed down their obvious sneering towards Trump and his supporters. Which, last time, people like Anderson Cooper could barely keep the sneer off their faces. Don Lemon, you know, sneering away about Trump morning, noon and night, and they’re still doing it now to a large degree, and that’s fine.
Jim Acosta has revealed his colors [now that he has left CNN]. Everybody accused him of being biased against Trump. He’s now making a fortune on Substack by being relentlessly biased against Trump, thereby proving that people were right to think that the White House correspondent for CNN was biased. He was. He’s now making a ton of money by being brazenly, openly biased. So I think that, again, is part of the problem why people lost confidence in CNN.
If I was running things, I’d tell the Andersons and others like that, “Stop sneering. You’re sneering at someone who won everything in the election.” Report it [and] just be fair, be firm, be straight. But don’t make it obvious that you hate the guy or that you hate his supporters or you think they’re all idiots. Because you tried that last time, and it a) played into Trump’s hands and b) it diminishes credibility in your network.
TheWrap: Do you have any issue with how President Trump talks about the media?
Morgan: If you read Trump’s book, “The Art of the Deal,” it’s all in there, right? If you whack him, he’s going to whack you 10 times back. No surprise. There’s no secret. You know, he was a billionaire New York real estate guy, right? Who likes to trash talk, and I think we should all just stop having a collective anaphylactic shock every time he says something a little bit outrageous.
It’s Donald Trump, he’s not going to change. He’s nearly 80 years old, he’s not going to change. He’s going to be Donald Trump. If you come after him, as Bruce Springsteen found out, you’re going to get a whack back. You’re going to get called overrated and wrinkly.
I find it quite entertaining, because I’ve known him so long, that in 20 years I know how he is. I’ve sat in “The Apprentice” boardroom with him night after night for six weeks. So none of it is a surprise to me. None of it should be a surprise for anyone who read his book.
TheWrap: I’d love to know who you think dislikes Meghan Markle and Prince Harry more, the American public or the British public? And why?
Morgan: Very interesting question. I think the American public mock and ridicule them on a scale that dwarfs even anything that happens here. Here, we just feel very let down by Prince Harry, who was very popular. And then along comes Meghan Markle, and within a few years, she’s dragged him back to America, trashed his family. He’s now fallen out with all his family. She’s fallen out [with] all her family, and I think that most Americans find them objects of ridicule.
Most people in Britain hate the attacks on the monarchy and the royal family and feel it’s been very damaging, and feel it’s been very disingenuous. Ultimately, we see two people who trade off their royal titles — making themselves very rich in the process — whilst continuing to attack the institution that bestowed the titles upon them. There’s just a recurring hypocrisy there.
I’ve got no problem with them whoring themselves around in any way they see fit. But do it, in terms of commercially, without using the royal titles. If you hate the monarchy that much and you’ve fallen out with all the royal family, stop calling yourselves a Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Stop using the HRH title, and just be Harry and Megan and then see how you get on.
And the answer is, they wouldn’t get on very well, because nobody would be that interested. There’s a kind of boredom level setting in with them. I certainly feel pretty bored by their antics. I think that when you’re down to making jam in your kitchen, the game is probably up.
