While a guest on the Fox News Channel’s weeknight Hannity program on Wednesday, April 12, Piers Morgan -- a former evening host for the Cable News Network and current U.S. editor-at-large of The Daily Mail -- sharply criticized MSNBC's Hardball host Chris Matthews for insinuating that President Donald Trump and his family might meet a savage end.
“Utterly ridiculous” was how Morgan described Matthews’ ongoing comparison of the Trumps to the Romanovs, the former royal family of Russia for 300 years -- but the MSNBC anchor stated ominously: “And we know how that ended.”
“Well, I’ll tell you how it ended,” Morgan noted. “The Romanovs all got slaughtered at the start of what became [the] communist Soviet Union. They were slaughtered with guns and knives in a most brutal and disgusting manner."
According to an article by our old colleague Matthew Balan (now with Mediaite), Morgan continued:
Whatever your view of the Romanovs, that’s not really a comparison I think anyone in the American media should be making about the Trump family.
What are we supposed to deduce from that comment -- that somehow Jared [Kushner], Ivanka and Donald are all going to be murdered by communists?
The interview began with Morgan saying that he’s glad not to still be competing for the same time slot as Sean Hannity, who then asked if his guest believes the Republican president is being "mischaracterized by the media.”
“Oh, my god! It’s unbelievable,” Morgan responded.
“I came to know Donald Trump very well, and I just find the characterization of him as some kind of monster -- sort of the new Hitler, as I keep being told -- is offensive, you know, for anyone who had to suffer what Hitler did,” the guest added.
In addition, he continued, Trump is “not a monster. This is a guy who’s a very successful businessman. You and I know he’s a good family man,” but now “he’s the most powerful man in the world, and he wants to be a success.”
“What I don’t like is what looks like the combined will of many sections of the media to not just beat him up because they’re all making tons of money by beating him up -- whether it’s New York Times subscriptions flying through the roof or [Late Show Host Stephen] Colbert, who beats him up every night and is getting great ratings.”
“Well,” Hannity noted, Colbert “is a comedian.”
“I’ve got no problem with any of that,” Morgan stated. “Just be honest as to why you’re doing it. You’re doing it to make money.”
He then stated:
Where I have a real problem is where it descends into a sense I’m getting is a will for him to fail.
How does that help America if the combined will of many of the sections of the media is: “We want this guy to fail, and we’re going to trash him every second of every day. We’re going to misrepresent him, mischaracterize him.”
Hannity referred to the “mainstream media” as he continued: “For eight months, they’ve been advancing a conspiracy theory that Russia and the Trump campaign colluded to help him get elected. Now they’re actually saying that Putin and Trump, they got together and they decided: ‘OK, we’ll launch this minimal amount of chemical weapons.’”
Then “Trump can respond and distract the media from the Trump-Putin conspiracy with no evidence after eight months,” the host added.
Morgan called that charge “utterly ridiculous. … We’re expected to believe that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin get together, and they plan the mass murder of children to make some kind of point that they’re no longer best buddies. Really? Really? We think this a legitimate conspiracy theory?”
“This is NBC News,” Hannity stated. “They’re attacking his 10-year-old son. They’re attacking his wife, they’re attacking Ivanka, gone after women.”
“To me, this is a new low," the host asserted. “I’ve said the words on this program often: ‘Journalism is dead;” and I believe America has an information crisis when major networks buy into bizarre conspiracies.”
“I take issue” with Hannity’s statement, Morgan noted. “I’m not going to agree that journalism is dead, but journalism at the moment is going through a very strange phase in America where a lot of people are pinning their efforts to an anti-Trump agenda.”
After all, he continued: “The guy won a free democratic election. There is right now, absolutely zero evidence linking Donald Trump to any collusion with the Russians to fix that election.”
“If some emerges, that’s a different story, right?” Morgan asked. “But I’ve seen nothing to link him to any collusion.”
“We’ve seen him attack Syria” after that nation’s president launched chemical weapons against his own people, the guest stated. “This is very strange behavior for a poodle. I see him as more of a Rottweiler!”
