Piers Morgan on polling day in America | The News Agents

The pollsters are so bruised during the Trump era that this time I think they've all gone lower than what their numbers are actually telling them. They're underestimating what they think is going to happen. And I think the blue wave is real because if those two guys win, then it is an earthquake politically for the progressive left. Winning in places nobody thought they could win. What happens to the MAGA movement, to Trumpism? It's going to be a very big night for the Democrats, a bad night for the Republicans, and a night of big self-reflection for the Republicans and for the guy in the big White House behind me. The News Agents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK, opening up a world of opportunity. We'll be right back. This is a global production. It is polling day in America. The sun is shining. It is warm in Washington, D.C. It is absolutely stunning autumn day. And already 50 million Americans have voted early. Say it quietly, there is talk of a blue Democrat wave. The Democrats are taking nothing for granted. But if the pollsters are right, what happens to American politics, not just next week, but in the next two years? Could this spell trouble even the end of MAGA? Welcome to the News Agents. The News Agents. It's John. It's Maitlis. And I slept absolutely terribly last night. Not that you're interested in whether I slept well or badly, but I think I was just a bit revved about today and the excitement of polling day and what is going to unfold. Because as you said, Emily, this could be really momentous stuff that we're witnessing. And Donald Trump yesterday, he sounded a bit downcast, I thought, when he gave a speech at the Reflecting Pool, the The most weird, final day bit of messaging from a president you could possibly imagine but I kind of sensed that he looked knackered and that he was downcast and that he doesn't think this is going his way. Yeah, look, Democrats are all neurotic. They were neurotic before the polling came in because they thought that it wasn't going to go well and now they're neurotic that the polling is in because they think it's looking too good and they'll probably be neurotic afterwards trying to I'm trying to work out what on earth it means If things go well for the direction of the Democratic Party, which is something that we can presumably discuss in the hours and the days to come. But I think that what is inescapable is the lack of noise and lack of energy surrounding Trump and many of his acolytes. I mean, Trump spent The last few hours of polling day behind us at the reflecting pool and the most memorable line that came out of that press conference was him saying this is one massive piece of pool. Now look it is not a kind of end message that you would give if you were rallying the troops. It's not the kind of end message that you give if you felt you were going to go out and absolutely storm the country with your candidates and with your results. It was, as you say, just slightly low energy, slightly downbeat, slightly missing the target, quite frankly. And he's not the only one. You listen to other Republicans who have been not the candidates themselves, who obviously have a clear message. But those who've been sent out to rally for them, and they're not spending very much time on the ground. They're not glad-handing voters in the same way that they were two years ago or ten years ago. There is something missing in terms of the MAGA energy this time. And I guess we've still got to find out whether it comes through in the polls, in the votes anyway. Look, as we sit here now, the polls are very much in favour of the Democrats. But we have all got the scars. of going to Hillary Clinton victory rallies only to watch Donald Trump win big. And the pollsters have got it wrong before. And so let's put all those health warnings out there now. Yeah, look, the polls are open now. So we are actually starting to see people going to the votes. We're starting to understand, you know, there's already, as you said, 50 million or so votes in early voting already. There was one piece of news that came out from Trump this morning, which I have to say I really wasn't expecting. And that is an announcement that he is going to end money funding $4 billion to Israel by the end of the year. And why that is so interesting is because it suggests that something in the way the Democrats have been campaigning has got through to Trump. And it feels very last minute to be saying this on election day, almost like a plea to voters to say, I'm hearing this too. I get this too. Don't abandon this party yet. We're joined now. by another little-known podcaster, Piers Morgan, who has, on the introduction, said, I can do the introduction. Welcome to a much higher rating newsagents than normal. Was his gag offering to help us. Well, by the time I give you my social media love, I mean, you guys will be basking in the glory of a much, much higher audience. Yeah. This will be the one episode that will even make it to the top. The words you're looking for are thank you, Piers. Piers, I know you spent a long time in print, but it would help if you held the microphone close to your mouth rather than having it around your waist. I don't use these old-fashioned things. He has to be able to do that. I do, yeah, yeah. Do you want us to get somebody to hold that under your chin? I wouldn't mind. Cheers. Chins, Jesus. Are you fat shaming me? Wow. For a Wokie, that's really like, that's terrible. Off we go. And so it starts. And so it begins. Early fat shaming from Wokie Maitlis. Right. Moving on, having done the introduction, which should have taken five seconds, but it's now taken two and a half minutes. We've just been hearing Lewis in Texas. Do you think Tallarico is going to do it? I do. Yeah. Really? And it's going to be a bit of an earthquake when he does. And I think El Sayed is going to win as well. And that will be an earthquake. I think what's happened this time is the pollsters are so bruised during the Trump era. This time, I think they've all gone lower than what their numbers are actually telling them. And I'm picking up just that mood music from hearing the pollsters talking. I think they're underestimating what they think is going to happen. And I think the blue wave is real. Now, the one caveat I'd make is with anything involving Donald Trump, you can never be sure because there is a silent number of people out there who don't trust pollsters, who won't be honest, and so on. But I think notwithstanding that, if you look at his personal... popularity. You look at the price of gas right now. You put all these things together. It's the economy stupid. I think that it's going to be a big night for the Democrats. Morgan, you have the MAGA voices in your ear quite a lot. It's really interesting. And they're quiet right now. I mean, I've been watching some of the sort of lesser covered rallies, you know, Ohio yesterday with Vance, with Don Jr. The noise isn't there. They don't look like they've got the energy themselves. But I'm wondering, as ever, you don't want to underestimate. I think we get that by now. But I'm wondering what they, what are the private conversations they're having about? I think there's probably a lot of panic back there in the White House about the way this year's played out. I mean, Trump, when he got re-elected, got re-elected in a stupendous fashion. I mean, the idea he came back from four years in the wilderness to win back the White House with bigger numbers than first time was incredible. And his first... Flurry of executive orders, most of them were very popular, took on the woke stuff, he shut the border. All these things were big, big pluses for him. And I thought, wow, this is going to be very interesting. He could really rewrite his legacy, which was burnished so badly at the end of the first term. But then he just took this, I think, catastrophically bad decision. to go to war with Iran, having campaigned in 2024 by saying, I'm not going to engage in these pointless, expensive foreign wars. I'm going to focus on America first. I'm going to get cost of living down, inflation down. All those promises literally went up in smoke. And do you think there's anyone... Well, I think there are some, but interestingly, the ones who are telling him most loudly are the people on the Conservative right who were full-on MAGA, Tucker Carlson, you know, Megyn Kelly, all these big people who've gone into our world, the YouTube podcaster world, and they've all been telling him very vociferously, they've all fallen out with him over it. You know, I've made it clear what my views on it, I've known Donald Trump for 20 years He is, actually. I just found that decision incomprehensible in the moment. I said it the next day. Completely stuck, isn't he? Completely stuck. Completely stuck. Yeah. We're hearing about some... Huge and catastrophic with Israel. I mean, actually, we should just talk about the news that is coming through to us as we record, which is that, from all accounts, Trump is now ceasing donation of U.S. aid money to Israel from the end of this year. Yeah, the $4 billion a year which America gives Israel. Apparently, he said he's done a deal with Netanyahu where the Israelis have said, we don't need your money anymore, and they're going to stop that payment. Now, it's very interesting, the timing. Because the whole issue of Israel and Gaza and Hamas and all of what's been going on since October the 7th, that's been dominating American political discourse to a degree where for the first time in our lifetime, there is a majority negative view of Israel in America. I never thought that day would come. Well, he's seeing the way the wind's blowing. He's seeing that people like Al-Saeed obviously are gaining huge traction. I mean, what's interesting to me is a year ago, I didn't think the Democrats had anybody who could be remotely electable. Now you look at their bench of people, Tallarico, Al-Saeed, I mean, Mamdani can't run, obviously, but AOC can. But they're all on the progressive left. So there's a really interesting split in both camps. On the left, you've got the progressive left and the moderates. On the Republican side, you've got the MAGA crowd. And then you've got the disaffected ex-MAGA crowd who are saying the complete opposite to what the president's doing. So, Piers, just going back to the Iran and the decision to, you know, launch this war at the end of February, why do you think he did it? Well, I know why he did it, because the New York Times did a massive deep dive on this about three weeks into the war, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. And if you read it carefully, there was a meeting several weeks before the war was started in the White House Situation Room. Netanyahu was there. The head of Mossad joined remotely. And they pitched basically a four-point plan to Trump. Now, Netanyahu tried this with every American president going back 30 years. But he pitched a plan where the Ayatollah would get taken out. They had information that they could do that. They apparently got a hold of all the traffic lights in Tehran so they could follow him around. They could take out his top people with him. And then they said, the Israelis, if we do that. Then the IRGC will collapse from within. The people will rise up, as they tried to do in January. And they will all be too distracted to talk about the Strait of Hormuz or worry about it. And only the top bit happened. Sure. It was a brilliant piece of reporting by them. And it explained what happened. I still kind of wonder why. Because isn't this a factor of Donald Trump having got rid of all the grown-ups that were there? The John Kellys, the Jim Mattis, all those sort of people from the first term. But no one was saying, no, you must be bloody joking. What are you entering into to get it? Well, I think some people were probably erring on the side of caution. I think that Trump was slightly consumed by hubris. I think that he was riding off the wave of the extraordinary Venezuela, you know, decapitation of Maduro and capturing him with no loss of life on the American side. He'd done, I think, even more significantly, there'd been the 12-day war. the year before with Iran, which had been very quick, very little retaliation from the Iranians, and apparently quite effective in causing a lot of damage. Now, I would caveat with if it was literally putting back their nuclear program three decades, why were they at war eight months later? So none of that seemed to be true. But the significance of it was the Iranians didn't do much in retaliation. And I think he thought this is going to be a piece of cake. I just want to ask you one other thing about Donald Trump. And as you say, As you say, you've known him for 20 years. The Donald Trump of the first term, Seems a very different character from the one we've seen in these rallies, where it's sometimes been incoherent. He's talking about men's bums. He's talking about, you know... Rambling, it really, there has been a lack of focus and a lack of cohesion. Now, do you think that age is catching up with him? Yeah, it's interesting. I last spoke to him a couple of months ago. I was in a restaurant in LA and I was with Steve Hilton, who's running, obviously, in California to be governor. I don't think he's going to win, but he's put up a very good fight. And he rang Trump, who was coming to California the next day and had a 15-minute chat with him. And then I had a 15-minute chat with him. And I've got to say... Trump sounded like he normally does. The rallies, they can be rambling. They can be outrageous. They can be shocking. They can be very funny, if you're being honest. And they can be outrageous and not funny. I don't see a lot of difference. I just think there's more focus on the rambling stuff. And I don't think he's losing it, as some people think. What I think is he's got himself with the Iran war. into the worst kind of quagmire and he can't get out of it because the Iranians have waged a very smart strategy of an asymmetric war with the Americans and Israelis where they don't respond to America and Israel. What they do is they shut the Strait of Hormuz, paralyzed the global energy market, and they attack their Gulf state neighbors. And the big question is what happens after these midterms? If they go and attack again, the Iranians have made it clear they will A, immediately completely shut the Strait of Hormuz again. And secondly, they will launch a load of attacks on the Gulf states, who are really suffering. I mean, the subtext of all this is, if you ask the Saudis, the Qataris, the UAE, any of the Gulf states there, they've all suffered enormous economic damage from the war so far. If there's to be a massive escalation of the kind we're reading about, I think it would be disastrous for the region. 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HSBC financing for growth lending is subject to status. Eligibility criteria and T's and C's apply. Let me bring you back to the midterms because the truism is that the day after the midterm results, the 2028 campaign begins and American politics is pretty relentless like that. We don't know how the vote will turn out. Who's up and who's down within the MAGA circles, do you think, depending on what results? I mean, it was put to us yesterday that a blue wave would actually be really good for J.D. Vance. Gets him out of the shadow. Yeah, it could be, it could be, it could be. I think the most impressive of the Trump team. Has been Rubio, actually. He's the one that gets all the cheers. I think Rubio would be a smart future move for them. But the question, we've never been in a situation of a lame duck president called Donald Trump. I don't think he would identify himself as a lame duck anything. So the question is, what does he do in the next two years if he loses control of Congress? Now, you know, the interesting thing about losing both houses of Congress, on the face of it, it's awful. On the reality side of it, it doesn't make a lot of difference to what he can do with executive orders, particularly on the foreign stage. So if he wants to go and attack Iran again, he won't need congressional approval and he wouldn't get it. He doesn't need it. So I think that people are slightly overstating, I think, how weakened Trump would be by it. And I don't think he's going to be a conventional lame duck president if that happens. One thing that could change if the Democrats take the House and the Senate is oversight. In other words, who they can call, how they can investigate, whether they choose to prosecute in the broadest sense. They try to impeach Trump twice. There are many in the Democrat Party who think you can't. Do that again, and there are many who think, actually, if you see wrongdoing, you have a duty to call it out. What would be the most sensible sort of... Well, I think the point about the impeachments is they're not going to work. So Trump is not going to be successfully impeached. Then it becomes a situation where, well, what's the point? You've already tried this a couple of times. Would you say the same of Hegseth? I mean, there are enough Republicans to be angry with Hegseth. I saw some interesting commentary this morning where people were saying, you know, it'd be quite a smart move by the Democrats to stop the cycle of endlessly going after each other and your families and all the rest of it, president to president. It would be quite good if the outgoing president doesn't have to pardon dozens of people to save them from being in prison because the other side wants to do that. I mean, there are obvious issues and things that should be investigated, absolutely. But if I were the Democrats, I'd be quite tempted to rise above the normal fray of partisan politics and say, actually, we hear you, America. We want to change. We want to be different. We want to focus on making your lives better. That's where all our energy is going to go. Will they do that? I think it's unlikely, but I have seen increasing mood music of, wouldn't that be a smart move? To just avoid the constant retaliatory tit-for-tat stuff. I can see totally the argument for that. But there has been financial corruption. On the self-enrichment of the president, his family, a lot of the people around and family members of other cabinet members who've got incredibly wealthy off the back of this presidency. Now, that is corruption because you're not meant to be in the White House, in the people's house to enrich yourself. I mean, enrich the American people, that's what you're there for. But there is a reality check, John, which is Even if there is, I would use the word alleged corruption. So, you know, it's not been proven to be corruption. It looks bad on the face of it. But even if it is, we all know what would happen is if they do go after individuals for corruption, Trump will pardon everybody on the way out, right? So my point being, I think you've got to pick your battles which can be successful. And I thought last time when they chucked all the, what he called the lawfare at Trump, the idea that in the end, they dragged an American president through a court In the most humiliating manner possible, overshuffling a bit of paperwork over a one-night stand with a porn star, I thought was really unedifying for America. When you say they, I mean, that was the court. Well, yeah, but Democrats skewed a legal system at the time, did something which I thought was unedifying for America. And so the question becomes, I mean, look, American presidents have done a lot worse things than that. OK, but OK, but I would say this. Barack Obama was never dragged through a court for waging illegal drone programs which blew up weddings. Right. So in other words, in the general scheme of criminal acts by American presidents, what's worse, an illegal drone program killing thousands of innocent people or a one night stand with a porn star trying to hide it with paperwork? Well, no, I'm talking about... When you get prosecuted for the job that you're doing, the decisions that you make as president, which is not the same. Well, no... You're receiving billions in corrupt money. That's different, and that would be on a different scale to what happened with Stormy Daniels. But the Stormy Daniels thing, I thought, was pathetic from start to finish. And the idea of dragging any American president through a courtroom in that way over something so pitifully trivial struck me as ridiculous for everybody involved. OK, let's go back to where we started, which is you saying that you think I think there is going to be If not a blue wave, then potentially even a blue tsunami tonight. Should the Democrats take that as a mandate to govern? Or is it because of hostility towards Donald Trump that they will have done so well? Well, I think people like Al-Sayed in Tallarica, they spelled out clear policies and they are progressive left policies. The interesting analogy, I think, for us in the UK is I remember when Jeremy Corbyn became Labour leader. You know, hard progressive left. I mean, we all know how that played out. So the question is, can a progressive left candidate, however successful they are in the midterms, could someone like El-Sayed then make a run for president? Or is the only way the Democrats could win a general election to go for a more moderate candidate? I suspect, as with all these things, moderation is the right way to go to get elected on a general election level. But, you know, there's a lot of... I mean, look, if it goes the other way tonight, say Trump holds the Senate, A, that's a complete, I think, career-ending disaster for all the pollsters. I would never listen to them again. Because they've all been understating what they think is really going to happen. They all think there's going to be a massive blue wave. So if Trump was to hold the Senate, that's a massive win. I think that's why they've said that the Senate is like 70% Well, most of them are now calling it... I don't think that... Actually, I think if they got it that wrong this time, the cliff is a good option. Well, most of them are beginning to say, yeah, I think the Senate too. Most of them. So I think it would be a disaster for pollsters. But I don't think that's going to happen. And then it's really who wins and how big do they win. If Al-Sayed, for example, becomes the first Muslim senator, then he's going to have a massive... Wind behind his sails, right? Leading up potentially to a presidential run. Could he win? Well, maybe. Yeah, maybe he could. And the question then becomes, who do the Republicans put up to replace Donald Trump? And that's the great, you know, imponderable that we're not really sure. Does the MAGA movement survive at all? Or is it over? If they get wiped tonight, is that the end of MAGA as a concept? Or do you take the argument of Tucker Carlson and others that Donald Trump has betrayed the MAGA movement by doing the opposite of what he said he'd do? That is another interesting part of the equation. Piers Morgan, we're going to be really unfair. You can stop talking to us and you can talk down the barrel. And you can tell us 12 hours out. This is Piers Morgan's prediction for what you think is going to happen tonight. Give us states, give us people. Give us numbers, give us waves, give us whatever you want. My prediction is a big blue wave bordering on tsunami. I think the Democrats are going to win both the House of Representatives and the Senate. I think it will be quite a comfortable win in both. And I think the key big wins to look out for are Tellarico in Texas and El Saeed in Michigan, because if those two guys win. Then it is an earthquake politically for the progressive left winning in places nobody thought they could win. And that, I think, lays down the two years that then run up to a general election in a fascinating political way. And it raises the question, as I said earlier, of what happens to the MAGA movement, to Trumpism. What do the Republicans do if they get wiped out tonight? And is the result accepted? I think the result will be accepted. I mean, look, people say Trump didn't accept the 2020 election. OK, but he left the White House. So the checks and balances that the American system has worked. So for all his bluster and all his continued claim that he was robbed, he did actually leave the White House. He wasn't, as some people think, a fascist dictator who remained in place and refused to surrender power. The same thing will happen here. He might moan about the results. I actually think the American system... on elections is very very good there is actually very little hard evidence of any fraud that goes on and they tend to catch it when it does so i think you can be confident in the system so for all the squealing that may come and look this is premature he may if he wins the senate the squealing will be one of joy and he'll claim victory and rightly so but i do think it's going to be a very big night for the democrats a bad night of for the republicans and a night of big self-reflection For the Republicans and for the guy in the big White House behind me. Piers Morgan, you should consider broadcasting. You know what, I'll think about it. Thanks, guys. Right, we're going off to get a bit of a break because we're doing a bit of a marathon tonight with the results programme. We'll be on from one in the morning until five in the morning. And I think you can find us on YouTube, on the Global Player app, and of course, on LBC. Yeah, we're live through the night, bringing you all the results and the analysis behind the results, joined by Miles Taylor as well. Hope you... Come and see us then. Yeah. All right. Bye-bye. Bye for now. The News Agents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK, opening up a world of opportunity. This has been a global production.