PIERS MORGAN on Meghan, racism, and quitting GMB
FIVE-PAGE SPECIAL
Writing for the first time about his dramatic exit from GMB after saying he didn’t believe Meghan’s ‘truth’ on racism and the royals, our columnist makes an impassioned defence of free speech. And he says the huge support he’s had from the public proves the silent majority hate the tyranny of woke, too MONDAY, MARCH 8 A NUCLEAR BOMB DROPPED ON THE ROYALS
GOT to the Good Morning Britain studios at 4am to watch Oprah Winfrey’s much-hyped interview with Prince Harry and his wife Meghan which just finished airing in the US. Ninety jaw-dropping minutes later, I raced round to Susanna Reid’s dressing room and we exclaimed in unison: ‘My God…’
The duke and duchess of Sussex just dropped a nuclear-sized scandal bomb into the very heart of the royal family.
Their shocking claims of racism at the palace concerning their son Archie, and an alleged refusal by royal staff to let Meghan receive treatment for suicidal thoughts in case it hurt the royal brand, are so incendiary that they could inflict irreparable damage on the monarchy.
But were they true?
The longer the interview went on, the less I believed.
For example, Meghan said she and Harry got secretly married three days before their wedding, in a tiny service officiated by the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Really? So, the marriage we all watched was a sham? And Britain’s most senior clergyman was in on it, performing an illegal ceremony in a garden?
Equally implausible was Meghan’s insistence she never checked out Harry online when they first met or had much interest in his family (her old friends previously revealed how fascinated she’d been with the royals and Diana in particular), and her claim that her passport was taken away. How then did she make all her endless foreign trips?
But far more serious was the sensational implication that Archie was barred from being a prince because of his skin colour.
It sounded complete nonsense when she said it, and it is; he’s not a prince because, technically, the great grandchildren of the monarch are not bestowed with titles ‘prince’ or ‘princess’ unless they’re in the direct line to the throne. This rule applies regardless of the child’s mother’s ethnicity.
So, the most serious assertion, one that has already sent racially charged America into a tailspin of outrage, was a falsehood presumably designed to cause maximum harm to the royals.
And for all their guff in the interview about supporting the Queen, it’s the monarch who decides such titles so they were effectively accusing Harry’s grandmother and Britain’s head of state of being racist.
This was a disgraceful betrayal, as was Meghan’s attack on the duchess of Cambridge for making her cry (Kate’s never said a bad word about her sister-in-law in public), Harry’s bleating about his father supposedly cutting off his money supply and security, and their sustained bitter attack on the royal institution whose titles they greedily exploit for massive commercial gain.
I expected such disingenuous, self-serving, wrecking-ball stuff from a social-climbing Hollywood actress like Ms Markle, but for Harry to publicly shred his family
and the monarchy like this, while Prince Philip was seriously ill in hospital, is so out of character for a man who once bravely served his Queen and country in war. He can’t be happy doing this, surely?
‘I’m angry to the point of boiling over,’ I raged when we got on air. ‘I’m sickened by what I’ve just had to watch.’
‘OK,’ said Susanna, ‘but some people might be upset and moved by what they’ve just heard.’
She cited Meghan’s mental health claims, and replayed the clip of her saying: ‘I just didn’t want to be alive any more… I went to the institution and said I needed to go somewhere to get help and I was told that I couldn’t because it wouldn’t be good for the institution.’ This seemed utterly incredible to me.
We’re supposed to believe Meghan Markle told palace aides she was suicidal and desperately needed help, but was informed she couldn’t have any because it might be bad for the royal brand?
And if she was suicidal, then why didn’t Harry get her the urgent help she needed? He’s attached to some of Britain’s biggest mental health charities and has proudly spoken of getting discreet help for himself in the past.
‘OK,’ I said, ‘let’s have the names. Who did you go to, what did they say to you?’ Then I made a more general observation: ‘I’m sorry, I don’t believe a word she says.’
‘Well, that’s a pathetic reaction to someone who’s expressed those thoughts,’ snapped back Susanna.
But it was an honest reaction, not to whether she was feeling suicidal – only she knows how she felt – but to the idea that she was banned from getting treatment. It was also reflective of my general sense of disbelief about the whole interview; once you know someone’s lying about some things, how can you believe anything else they’re saying without hard evidence to support it?
I wasn’t the only one feeling this way.
Later in the show, black British army war hero Sergeant Johnson Beharry – the last person to win the Victoria Cross – said of the other racism claim, that a royal spoke derogatorily to Harry about what skin colour Archie might have: ‘I don’t believe that happened. If it happened, then why don’t they explain it? Who said it,
I said I didn’t believe her. That’s pathetic, snapped back Susanna