Morgan, Trump And Creative Retelling

With just four days to go before new Murdoch property TalkTV launches, the dramatic music is already being deployed, endless streams of copy promoting the new channel are being published across Rupe’s various newspaper titles, and the station’s new star, former Screws and Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan, looks determined to prove that he was worth the alleged price tag on his services of £50 million over three years.

So it was that The Great Man secured an interview with Combover Crybaby Donald Trump, his old mucker from the Celebrity Apprentice days. This would be one way of diverting attention away from there being no more than three hours of new content a day from TalkTV, with daytime schedules copied and pasted from TalkRADIO, and so still featuring the likes of tedious self-promotion specialist Julia Hartley Dooda.

How did the interview go? According to the Sun, it all got a bit heated, and to help deflect readers’ attention from the latest travails of alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, it’s been splashed across the front page as a “World Exclusive”. “Don V Piers … GRUMPY TRUMPY … Ex-Prez storms out of Piers chat … Rages ‘You’re a disloyal fool!’” As Sir Sean nearly said, I think we got the point. And there was more.

Lest we forget ...

“DONALD Trump stormed out of a world exclusive interview with Piers Morgan in a blazing row over the 'stolen' US presidential election. The ex-President reached boiling point after Piers blamed Trump's refusal to admit defeat in the 2020 vote for last year's deadly riots at the Capitol … Trump screamed that his interviewer was 'dishonest', 'a FOOL' and barked at the shocked TV crew: ‘TURN THE CAMERAS OFF!’”

Morgan backed that up with an article boasting how he calmed Trump down in order to get the interview out of him, with readers reminded that this was all part of “Piers Morgan UNCENSORED”, which is rather like he has been for decades already. But then a problem entered: the Trump camp had audio of the interview, which didn’t match the Sun hype.

... the previous Morgan grovelling

NBC News has the story: “An audio recording obtained by NBC News appears to show that former President Donald Trump’s highly publicized interview with Piers Morgan did not end with Trump storming off the set, as edited promotional video clips suggest. Instead, according to the recording, which was provided by Trump's spokesman, the two men thanked each other and laughed at the conclusion of the interview for Talk TV”.

Do go on. “‘That was a great interview,’ Morgan says in the audio at the end. Trump agrees with a ‘yeah.’ ‘Thank you very much. I really appreciate it,’ Morgan says. That's when Trump says, ‘Turn the camera off.’ By then, the former president had already risen from his chair, according to his communications director, Taylor Budowich, who supplied the audio”.

Budovich then left his foot in the tackle: “This is a pathetic attempt to use President Trump as a way to revive the career of a failed television host … 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”. And it gets worse.

Jim Waterson of the Guardian noted earlier “Lorraine Kelly is patiently explaining to Piers Morgan on national TV why he has not been cancelled while he shouts ‘cancel culture’ and ‘woke mob’ repeatedly”. Trying too hard to justify the price tag, perhaps? Sad, really.

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