Trump Team Denies He Stormed Out of Piers Morgan Interview

Clip was deceptively edited, communications chief says
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 21, 2022 4:39 AM CDT

TalkTV, Rupert Murdoch's new TV channel in the UK, is calling it "the most explosive interview of the year"—and even a promo clip of Piers Morgan's interview with former President Trump is controversial. The trailer, titled "Donald Trump walks out on Piers Morgan," appears to show the former president storming out of the interview after clashing with Morgan over the 2020 election. Trump's team, however, says it has been deceptively edited. Trump communications director Taylor Budowich provided audio to NBC of the interview ending amicably, with the two men laughing and thanking each other. The channel launches Monday and Morgan's show will also appear on Fox Nation.

Budowich says producers deceptively added audio of Trump saying "turn the cameras off" when the official interview was over to footage of him rising from his chair to make it look like he was leaving in anger. But the interview does appear to have had tense moments, the Guardian reports. The trailer shows Trump saying, "Only a fool would think that" after Morgan tells him that he lost the election. Trump also calls Morgan "very dishonest," though Budowich says that remark came after Morgan stretched out an interview that was supposed to last 20 minutes to more than an hour.

In a New York Post op-ed, Morgan writes that Trump angrily confronted him minutes before the Mar-a-Lago interview, holding a document with a collection of negative remarks Morgan had made about Trump. Morgan—who suspects rival TV host Nigel Farage gave Trump the document—says Trump only agreed to do the interview after he told him he wanted to talk about his recent golf hole-in-one. He says the first hour or so went well but after he brought up the election, Trump ended up calling him a "fool" six times, "in between calling Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell 'stupid,' and his former vice president, Mike Pence, 'foolish and weak.'" (More Piers Morgan stories.)

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