Donald Trump scored a tremendous victory this week after Piers Morgan falsely gave the impression that Trump had angrily stormed off in the middle of an interview after being pressed about his claims that the 2020 election was stolen.
On Wednesday, Morgan tweeted a video promo for his upcoming interview showing footage of Trump getting hammered by Morgan, billing it as “the most explosive interview of the year,” concluding with Trump getting up and demanding that the cameras be turned off. It made for an exciting promo and certainly was bound to get many people interested in seeing Trump have what Rolling Stone originally described as a “tantrum.”
Little did Piers Morgan know that Trump’s people recorded the interview and shared the audio with NBC News, prompting various outlets to concede that the discussion ended cordially, with both men laughing and thanking each other.
“That was a great interview,” Morgan is heard telling Trump.
“Yeah,” Trump agreed.
“Thank you very much. I really appreciate it,” Morgan added.
It was only at that point that Trump said, “Turn the camera off.”
“Piers got caught red-handed,” Trump said in a statement, “and the interview that I rather enjoyed doing is now in shambles.”
Trump was absolutely right. Piers Morgan was indeed “caught red-handed,” and the media, which jumped on the story without making any attempt to verify it, wound up with egg on their face by having to update their stories with the new evidence proving Morgan’s promo had been deceptive.
But that doesn’t change the fact that the interview still exposed a glaring weakness in Trump’s potential 2024 candidacy.
Based on the promo (and Piers Morgan’s op-ed on the interview), we know that Trump was asked about the 2020 election.
According to Morgan, “I told him I believe he lost the supposedly ‘rigged, stolen’ election, I repeatedly pointed out his failure to produce any evidence of the widespread voter fraud he insists occurred to rob him of his presidency, and I blamed his refusal to admit defeat for the deadly riots at the Capitol.”
The promo features Morgan telling Trump, “It was a free and fair election. You lost.”
“Only a fool would think that,” Trump bites back.
“You think I’m a fool?” Morgan asks.
“I do now,” Trump tells him.
Now, this portion may be edited, and the remarks could be taken out of context. However, there’s no denying that Morgan pressed Trump on the 2020 election, and Trump probably didn’t respond well to Morgan’s assistance that it was a free and fair election. Trump may be justified in his reaction—heck, we just learned that over 300,000 ballots in Fulton County, Ga., are allegedly “unverified,” and last year, a forensic audit of the 2020 presidential election vote in Maricopa County, Ariz., found 53,214 ballots impacted by irregularities of medium, high, and critical severity, Joe Biden’s margin of victory in that state was only 10,457.
So I don’t blame Trump for being miffed at Morgan for insisting that the 2020 election was on the up and up. The problem is that if Trump runs in 2024, the media will focus more attention on that election than anything else. Heck, Morgan and Trump were friendly before this recent interview, and he had to press Trump on the issue. The 2024 election needs to be a referendum on Biden and the Democrats, not on Trump and the 2020 election challenges.
That’s just something to think about.
