Tucker Carlson v Piers Morgan is pure Philomena Cunk

Why this national collapse? Because of an absence of posh people, apparently – “you know, half the class of Eton 1910, was killed in the trenches or whatever.” But now, even worse is happening.

Not only are “the people of Great Britain no longer as well kept”, but the country is being ruined by immigration, abortion, a lack of love for the flag, “state-sponsored suicide” and the death of free speech. 

“This is an authoritarian country where disagreement is no longer allowed, you go to jail for it by the thousands,” Carlson says. It is one more perplexing statement in a sea of stupidity (“everyone’s, like, bisexual” in the Middle East; “the lesbian thing is way overblown”; “history is just filled with examples of people who get invaded and clubbed to death and have their women stolen from them. And they’re fine. They’re fine.”)

There is one key difference between the Cunk and Carlson shows, beyond the fact that she is endearing and he is a sweaty, unfunny, charmless racist. It’s that when Philomena asks a guest, “How did Winston Churchill come to invent Tippex?”, they always gently put her right.

That isn’t always the case in this interview with Morgan, who tells Carlson that he despises those who play “the hate game” but says Tommy Robinson has highlighted some legitimate concerns, and is, after all, appearing on a Tucker Carlson show in the first place. He praises Graham Linehan as a free speech warrior before saying, entirely sensibly, “my whole issue with the whole trans debate, for example, is you don’t need to slide into actually saying derogatory stuff about trans people to make the point that women’s rights should be protected.”

But some things get the pushback they deserve. Morgan bristles when Carlson suggests that London is unsafe, and that Britain’s “native population” is being “invaded and replaced… eliminating indigenous populations is kind of a sin, I thought. But it’s happening here.”

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Morgan tells him: “That is people taking a decision about their own lives and not having enough children or as many as they used to have… No one’s telling the white population of this country you can’t have more than one child.” 

Carlson concedes that Morgan is right – but then suggests that white westerners are having fewer children because society is “aggressively encouraging homosexuality. If you encourage it and the rate goes up, people have fewer kids. Did you do biology?” 

An equally mindblowing section comes when Carlson suggests that Britain shouldn’t have got involved in world war two. Here is an edited part of the transcript:

TUCKER CARLSON: Did Germany attack Britain? Is that how you got into war with Germany?

PIERS MORGAN: Germany attacked Poland.

TUCKER CARLSON: So you voluntarily joined the war?

PIERS MORGAN: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: Okay, great. Not defending Hitler, of course, but it’s just a fact that you weren’t attacked. So when you say that Churchill saved Britain. Well, Britain got into the war voluntarily… I think you signed a treaty with Poland that locked you into a course of action that destroyed your country. I’m just saying.

PIERS MORGAN: You don’t honestly think the Nazis would have stopped at Poland?

TUCKER CARLSON: I have no idea. I’m just saying.

PIERS MORGAN: Yes, you do. Come on.

TUCKER CARLSON: Look, I’m just going by what contemporaneous sources said. I have no idea. Hitler invaded Russia, so obviously that’s deranged and incredibly destructive. So I don’t know, is the truth he was focused on communism? No one doubts that this was not a communist country, but I’m just saying Britain voluntarily joined the war. It was a war that you were not involved in and you got in.

And then there’s this exchange (again, edited from the transcript for brevity):

TUCKER CARLSON: There were three times as many people arrested in the UK last year for speech crimes as were arrested in Putin’s Russia. And you have half the population. So this is much more authoritarian than Putin’s Russia.

PIERS MORGAN: Oh, it’s not.

TUCKER CARLSON: How is it not?

PIERS MORGAN: That’s ridiculous…  The idea that we are living here in a more authoritarian state than Russia.

TUCKER CARLSON: Come on, those are the numbers.

PIERS MORGAN: You don’t believe that.

TUCKER CARLSON: Look, I believe in science. I believe in science.

PIERS MORGAN: England is more authoritarian than Russia?

TUCKER CARLSON: I think you’re more likely to be arrested for a speech crime in Great Britain. Indeed, three times as likely.

PIERS MORGAN: …If you went on the airwaves here tonight and you start abusing and hammering and mocking and criticising our prime minister, which, by the way, many people are doing… If you did that, what would happen to you?

TUCKER CARLSON: Nothing.

PIERS MORGAN: … And if you went to Moscow and you went on the airwaves and you did that about Putin, what would happen?

TUCKER CARLSON: You’d be in trouble.

How does Carlson get out of this tight spot? By telling Morgan that Britons are not living in a democracy after all but under “global homo… the authoritarianism of the present and future.”

Suggesting a surprising familiarity with the work of comedian Stewart Lee, Carlson continues: “People are arrested here and thrown into jail. And I’ve been to Belmarsh Prison. It’s awful…  you walk in, and there are all these signs about trans acceptance week, it is fascism wrapped in the Human Rights Campaign rainbow logo.” 

Yes, in the world of Tucker Carlson, the worst thing about being in Belmarsh Prison are the posters about trans acceptance and human rights. Not even Philomena’s mate Paul could have come up with that.