Bye-Bye Piers! A Top 10 Countdown of the Soon-to-Be Ex-CNN Host's Most Outrageous Outbursts
This week marks the end of Piers Morgan’s show on CNN and his run has been full of effusive praise for liberals and damnation of conservatives. Even before Morgan began his show, back in 2010, he tipped his hand in which ideological direction he wanted to take the show when he revealed who he most wanted to interview: “I’d love to do President Obama. I like what he’s done for the reputation of America abroad, which I’m not sure many Americans fully understand.”
In contrast, Morgan viciously attacked gun rights advocates and Tea Party activists, while giving better treatment to Iranian dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who he once asked how many times he had “been properly in love?”
From oozing that Obama was the “perfect physical specimen” to repeatedly insulting “unbelievably stupid” gun rights activists and comparing the Tea Party to Nazis, the one time British tabloid editor alienated viewers with one progressive punch after another.
The following is a countdown the of Top 10 Most Obnoxious Piers Morgan quotes:
10. Barack Obama, the “Perfect Physical Specimen”
“Chris Christie, is his weight a genuine issue for the American people after a fit athletic president who turned out to be not quite what people thought?...After the perfect Barack Obama — who’s a perfect physical specimen to many people’s eyes — does it matter?”
— CNN host Piers Morgan talking to crisis management expert Judy Smith on Piers Morgan Live, December 1, 2013.
9. Morgan Slams Limbaugh Yet Laughs at Maher’s Vulgarity
“Limbaugh’s disgusting comments are the work of an archaic old dinosaur living in a warped, ugly swamp, who thinks it’s okay to degrade decent young women for sport and ratings. Well, it isn’t. Shame on you, Rush Limbaugh.”
— CNN’s Piers Morgan wrapping up his Piers Morgan Tonight, March 2, 2012.
vs.
Host Piers Morgan: “If you had a choice, gun to your head, which one is it? Palin or Bachmann?”
HBO Real Time host Bill Maher: “I would need a gun to my head. I hope Sarah Palin gets in so that they split the MILF vote.” [both laugh] ...
Morgan: “May you remain gloriously uncensored on HBO....Love the show.”
— CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight, July 11, 2011. MILF is an acronym for a “Mother I’d Like to F---”
8. Post-Partisan Obama vs. “Express Train of Bile”
“Obama, to be fair to him, when he came in to power, he said ‘Look, I’m going to try to change all of this partisan crap that’s going on. I’m going to try and do it a better way.’ What he’s found is he can’t at the moment. I mean, it’s like he's up against this express train of bile, and he can’t get anything done.”
— CNN’s Piers Morgan to comedian Lewis Black on Piers Morgan Tonight, Sept. 28, 2011.
7. Fawning Over the Dictator of Love...
Host Piers Morgan: “How many times in your life, Mr. President, have you been properly in love?”
Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (via translator): “I’m in love with all of humanity. I love all human beings.”
Morgan: “That might be the best answer I’ve ever heard to that question.”
— CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight, September 24, 2012.
6. Morgan Savages “Unbelievably Stupid” Gun Rights Advocate
Gun Owners of America executive director Larry Pratt: “I honestly don’t understand why you would rather have people be victims of a crime than be able to defend themselves. It's incomprehensible.”
CNN host Piers Morgan: “You’re an unbelievably stupid man, aren’t you?...You have absolutely no coherent argument whatsoever....You don't give a damn, do you, about the gun murder rate in America?...I know why sales of these weapons have been soaring in the last few days. It's down to idiots like you. Mr. Pratt....You are a dangerous man espousing dangerous nonsense. And you shame your country.”
— From the imported British host’s anti-gun tirade on CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight, December 18, 2012.
5. “A Lot of Things Are Just Perfect About Barack Obama”
“When you watch the President like that, I always feel he’s got so many pluses, doesn’t he? In a sense, he’s personable, he’s handsome, he can be funny. You know, abroad he has this great image for America. A lot of things are just perfect about Barack Obama.”
— Host Piers Morgan to Obama strategist David Axelrod on CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight, December 5, 2011.
4. British Host Belittles Constitution: Your “Little Book”
Host Piers Morgan: “The way that the NRA through the ’80s and ’90s and this last decade have deliberately tried to frame this as a left-wing attack on the American Constitution and the Second Amendment — it’s exactly what you’ve tried to do. You come in, you brandish your little book [holds up book] as if I don’t know what’s in that-”
Author Ben Shapiro: “My little book? That’s the Constitution of the United States.”
— Exchange on CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight, January 10, 2013.
3. Morgan Smears: “You Know Elements of the Tea Party Are Racist”
“I’ve had a lot of guests on recently getting very hot under the collar about the Tea Party....black Americans, leading black Americans who say the Tea Party is racist. And I know that your fairly humorous response is to say, ‘I looked in the mirror and I appear to be a black man, and I'm in the Tea Party,’ which I get and you’re perfectly entitled to say that. But you all know there are elements of the Tea Party who are racist. It’s a trade secret. How do you deal with that as a black man who is now leading the Tea Party charge?”
— Host Piers Morgan to GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain on CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight, October 19, 2011.
2. Morgan Deplores America’s “Gun Culture”
Host Piers Morgan: “Do you think that the gun debate will ever change in the way that the drunk-driving debate changed in the ’70s, the civil rights debate changed from the ’60s onwards? Do you think it’s one of those things that in the end, it will change?”...
Panelist Margaret Hoover: “You and I both know that there's a culture in the United States, a gun-owning culture. And it is the difference between rural and urban, coastal and the middle of the country-”
Morgan: “There was a racist culture, there was a drunk-driving culture...”
Liberal panelist Mark Lamont Hill: “A Southern gun owner is not like a Klan member. I mean, come on.”
— CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight, May 30, 2013.
1. Tea Partiers Not Bright, Like Hitler’s Mobs?
Host Piers Morgan: “Where is the similar mob to Mussolini’s and Hitler’s in the modern democratic era?...The Tea Party?”
Ann Coulter: “No. No, no, no.”
Morgan: “The nearest thing to it in America?”
...
Morgan: “Are you wild about them?...The Tea Party?”...
Coulter: “Oh, yeah, I love them.”
Morgan: “See, I don't really get that....I don’t get that because you’re a smart cookie.”
Coulter: “So are the Tea Partiers!”
Morgan: “What do people think about you? You’re intelligent. You live a provocative life.”
Coulter: “I believe you’re insulting the Tea Partiers.”
Morgan: “Well, they’re not among the brightest of spellers, are they?”
— CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight, June 7, 2011.
— Geoffrey Dickens is Deputy Research Director at the Media Research Center. Follow Geoffrey Dickens on Twitter.
