Piers Morgan has made many enemies throughout his tenure as a journalist, pundit, and America's Got Talent host. Yet Morgan's tendency to speak his own brand of blunt honesty no matter the political alignment has earned him a loyal fanbase across the board. Today, Morgan sat down for an interview with CNN, who praised his willingness to put pressure on British politicians over their poor leadership whilst in a crisis.
As it happens, Morgan's hard line of questioning was not reserved for European politicians. As he explains, both the United Kingdom and the United States have two populist leaders, who have been forced to pivot from "partisan politics to war crisis leadership." Drawing a comparison between Trump and Johnson, Morgan criticizes both men for proving unable to make the pivot.
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"I've known [Donald Trump] a long time, I consider him to be a friend," admits Morgan. "But I've been watching these briefings with mounting horror. This is not what the president should be doing. The president of the United States right now is an incredibly important person in the world. Not least to Americans who are dying by the tens of thousands to a virus we don't know much about. They have to be calm, they have to show authority, they have to be honest. They have to be accurate, entirely factual, and they have to have empathy. On almost every level of that, Donald Trump at the moment is failing the American people."
Morgan goes on to say that Trump's briefings have been "overly defensive," feeling closer to one of his rallies. Is the criticism fair? Donald Trump, a personal favorite among self-described contrarians among other demographics, has basically absolved himself of all blame and responsibility pertaining to the COVID-19 outbreak. As many publications have pointed out, Donald Trump previously described the coronavirus to be the "Democrats' new hoax." Do you feel he has been handling the crisis adequately? Or have political alignments and grudges run so deep as to completely overshadow the objective truth?
[via]