Piers Morgan and Rudy Giuliani woke up Britain Thursday morning with an absolutely furious argument about whose reputation has nosedived more since the peak of their respective careers.
It’s quite a tough one to call. Morgan was fired as editor of one of Britain’s biggest papers in 2004 after publishing fake photographs of U.K. troops urinating on Iraqi prisoners, and his CNN show Piers Morgan Live was axed in 2014 due to extremely bad ratings.
Giuliani, meanwhile, has been reduced from being named Time magazine’s Person of the Year for 2001 to screaming about Trumpist conspiracy theories on any cable news channel which is still willing to run the risk of broadcasting his wildly unpredictable stream of consciousness live on television.
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So, perhaps Giuliani’s appearance on Morgan’s Good Morning Britain show Thursday was always going to come down to this. Following questions on the George Floyd protests and President Trump’s incendiary tweets about them, the interview erupted into what can only be described as a miserable spectacle with two losers.
Morgan was the first to seemingly lose patience with his guest, telling Giuliani: “I'm sorry, but you sound completely barking mad, do you know that? You’ve lost the plot and it’s sad to see.”
That was very much a red rag to a bull. Giuliani, so angry that he was barely able to enunciate, hit back: “You’re the one who got thrown off the television here because you had ratings that were about two... I know what happened to your show here Piers and I remember the mistakes you made and I remember how you [inaudible] up.”
Since the clip was widely shared, there has been some dispute about whether Giuliani said ‘fucked up,’ ‘sucked up’ or ‘stuffed up.’
The hosts believed it was the former and apologized for Giuliani’s apparent cursing, which he denied.
The New York City mayor went on undeterred: “Don’t give me that stuff, I know who you are, you can say anything you want about me, but you’re defaming my president and helping to create violence in this country.”
Morgan, who was clearly upset by the personal jibes against his little-appreciated CNN show, then snapped back to Giuliani: “When I used to interview you, you were an intelligent, reasonable man and you’ve gone completely mad and you sound deranged. You’re abusive, and it’s really sad to see what’s happened to you.”
Giuliani, sensing he’d found Morgan’s weakness, went in: “It’s really sad to see the way your career imploded in the United States, Piers. If you think I have any respect for you after this, or maybe you don’t care, but everyone in America knows you’re a failed journalist.”
That was it—Morgan had had enough of speaking about his past failings and tried to shut down the interview. “You’ve come on here, you’ve been rude and abusive. You sound unhinged, you’ve been using profanity and you were somebody I used to admire,” he said.
But Giuliani wasn’t done—he wanted to make clear he hadn’t used profanity live on national television. “What profanity did I use, liar?” he said. “I didn’t use any profanity... You tell me the profanity I used. That’s exactly what you do to President Trump, it’s disgraceful.”
Giuliani was cut off and the two men presumably went on to enjoy the rest of their days both believing that the argument didn’t make them look ridiculous and that they absolutely, definitely won.
