Transcript: ‘Quite a Shock’ Trump and Mamdani ‘Bro Up’ in Oval Office – Piers Morgan Uncensored

Don’t mind.

VIDEO CLIP ENDS:

PIERS MORGAN: Well, Trump and Mamdani do, of course, propose very different treatments for the problems they’ve diagnosed, but the big picture point remains the same. All of the experts, all of the pundits and all of the pollsters will always argue that both sides need to move to the center.

Well, voters are clearly a bit sick of it, and maybe the new center is actually where right and left meet in the middle.

Panel Discussion

Joining me to discuss all this is Riley Gaines, host of Gaines for Girls on Outkick, Dean Obeidallah, the host of the Dean Obeidallah show on SiriusXM, Mike Nellis, host of Endless Urgency and former senior adviser to Kamala Harris, and Jack Posobiec, the senior editor at Human Events, who was actually in the room when that was all going down.

PIERS MORGAN: Let me go to Riley. Riley, welcome back to Uncensored. Great to see you. It was a pretty jaw dropping meeting, wasn’t it, in the Oval Office? I don’t think anyone expected these two, who had been branding each other communist and fascists to come out like they were walk on parts in Brokeback Mountain. What was going on?

RILEY GAINES: Yeah, you’re right. I think this was a shock to me. But truthfully, after watching the encounter, watching the press conference, taking some time to think about this, honestly, Piers, I think this is where Trump is best.

One on one negotiations, he’s done it his whole life. He knows exactly what he’s doing. And so I’ll say this, I trust President Trump. Again, he knows exactly what he’s doing. He knows exactly who he’s dealing with. He could deal with Mamdani, I believe, in his sleep.

So I didn’t really view this necessarily as Trump getting soft or changing. I more so view this as the Democratic Party continuing to unravel. Despite Mamdani’s big and decisive win, I think Mamdani is smart enough to realize that his party as a whole has abandoned common sense voters on law enforcement, on border, on crime, on immigration, on gender insanity, on economic security.

So I think he used this, Mamdani, I think he used this as a photo op that works in his favor really to both sides. On one hand, it makes Mamdani appear as if he’s reaching across the aisle, but I believe on the other hand, to his fringe radical base, they view this as him owning President Trump, if you will.

So, I’m giving Mamdani approximately zero credit because despite his efforts to rub elbows with the president, he is still a freaking communist.

The Fascist Question

PIERS MORGAN: Well, Mike Nellis, here’s my question really. If Donald Trump really is a fascist, Mamdani said before and after their meeting, why would he give him the time of day? Why would he go and be his best buddy in the Oval Office? Surely that’s the last thing you do with an actual fascist. Could it be that he doesn’t really think that Trump is an actual fascist?

MIKE NELLIS: I think the federal government has an incredible amount of control over the resources that heads to New York City. So of course, he’s going to go build a relationship with the guy.

I think Riley’s spin there is sort of interesting to me though, because the Republicans for the better part of the last six months have been talking about how their entire midterm strategy for the Democrats is to call him a communist, to paint Zohran Mamdani as this evil boogeyman, tie every Democrat to them. And Donald Trump blew that up in one meeting.

Trump is sort of a classic bully to me, a classic Internet bully. He’ll laugh at your face. He’ll make fun of you on the Internet. But the minute you’re in a room with them, he’s going to be all lovey with you.

So to me, this meeting was entirely predictable. And I do think it was smart of Mamdani to go because now the next time Donald Trump or someone in his administration is trying to f* with the city of New York, they’re going to think twice or Trump’s going to step in and help them. It’s the same thing that Governor Gretchen Whitmer did in Michigan and it’s been used to great effect for her.

Inside the Room

PIERS MORGAN: All right. Jack Posobiec, you were in the room when these two were putting on this extraordinary show of camaraderie. First of all, were you stunned by what you were watching?

JACK POSOBIEC: Well, Piers, we had actually been in some kind of communication with some of the White House staff. So we had heard going in that President Trump was planning to be cordial. So I wasn’t really surprised, perhaps surprised at how friendly they both were to one another.

And, you know, I think really that President Trump perhaps is reading the room a little more in terms of the affordability crisis, the cost of living crisis, economic conditions crisis that’s going on, not just in New York City, but in so many places across the country.

We’ve got Biden inflation that’s still rampant throughout the system that the administration has been working on and they’re fighting. But I don’t know if I was expecting it to be quite as bro-y as it was.

PIERS MORGAN: I mean, same question for you, Jack. If Trump really believes this guy’s a communist, he’s going to wreck New York, why would he say he’d be very happy to live in New York under him? Again, it doesn’t really make much sense.

JACK POSOBIEC: Well, I think he’s given him an opportunity to work together, and that’s what we are told over and over that the message is we want to work together. We don’t want to start this from a confrontational antagonistic standpoint. Obviously, during the campaign, both sides, as President Trump is during many campaigns, quite belligerent.

But at least starting from this conversation, look, he’s going to be mayor for the next four years. President Trump is going to be president for the next three years, so they are going to have to work together. We also saw President Trump work together with Gavin Newsom during COVID, during some of the wildfires, with Andrew Cuomo when he was governor of New York during COVID. So it wouldn’t necessarily be out of turn for him.

The Muslim Superpower

PIERS MORGAN: Dean Obeidallah, welcome back to Uncensored.

DEAN OBEIDALLAH: Thank you.

PIERS MORGAN: How long is this going to last, this friendship, do you think? I mean, I’m giving it about three weeks.

DEAN OBEIDALLAH: Look, Piers, what people are missing is, and I can say this as a Muslim, we have a special superpower. We can make people like us, Piers, and that’s what Zohran used. It wasn’t expected. His cologne was a combination of cumin, cardamom, and ecstasy. It brings people in. We hypnotize you. We mesmerize you. Before you know it, you’re giving us all the aid we need to run our city. That’s what happened.

All right. So that’s one angle of it. Piers, the other angle is Donald Trump likes to be with the winner. Donald Trump’s approval rating is the lowest in his entire second term, even the first term on the economy. Fox News polled last week, seventy-five percent of Americans view the economy negatively.

He’s at the bottom. He got crushed in the election a few weeks ago. It was embarrassing. And now here comes a big winner. Young guy, charismatic, New York City. Trump does have a place in his heart for New York City. There’s no doubt about that. And he’s like, this is the guy I’m going to align with here.

And I don’t care if I piss off my base because he doesn’t care about his base anymore. He’s got the wealthy oligarchs on his side. So this was a win-win for both of them. It served both their interests. Zohran gets the support of the president for what we need in New York, where I live in New York City. We don’t have troops here occupying our streets. Trump gets to stand next to a winner and smile.

The Right’s Dilemma

PIERS MORGAN: All right. Riley, here’s some sort of bizarre point of this. Almost every pro-Trump person in the media, every member of MAGA that I’ve seen on social media and so on, were all spending the weeks before this ever since Mamdani won, going absolutely nuts about this guy, that he was going to be the worst thing that’s ever happened to New York, potentially to America.

If the Democrats followed his path, obviously it would be devastating for the country. He’s a communist. He’s a terrible socialist, all of these things. And then suddenly their guy, Donald Trump, is not just being magnanimous with him, but being openly supportive. Saying, follow my conversations with him. I think it’s going to be great for New York.

I mean, there’s got to be a lot of head scratching going on, isn’t there, on the right?

RILEY GAINES: Yeah, look again, Mamdani, he is very charismatic. He’s very charming. He promises free things. That’s appealing to a lot of people. And President Trump, he has a special affinity for New York as previously mentioned. So, again, this really wasn’t too much of a shock.

I believe it was maybe Winston Churchill who said something to the effect of a communist is like a crocodile. When it opens its mouth, you can’t tell whether it’s trying to smile or preparing to eat you up. We don’t know what was said behind those closed doors.

Hopefully, this is again, it’s a good sign. Two people representing two different bases, but both working for the American people, working together. I mean, I see this as a win. So despite what you see on social media, people coming after Mamdani or Trump, I see this as a win and excited to see how the city of New York, the direction it goes, hopefully with the help of President Trump.

PIERS MORGAN: Right, but nobody on the right was excited about this before this meeting. Everyone on the right was saying, this is going to be the worst thing that’s ever happened in New York City. I was there when Mamdani won, was in New York and everybody on the right was like, this is going to be an absolute horror story, right?

This guy’s going to come and rape and pillage our people economically. And now suddenly the same people are having to kind of eat their words a bit because Trump’s been so ecstatically supportive of it. I mean, it’s a weird thing, isn’t it?

RILEY GAINES: I don’t think there’s, I think time will tell, right? I don’t think there are a ton of people yet eating their words, or at least I’ll certainly speak for myself watching this interaction. Again, I think it’s a good sign. I think there’s feelings of optimism and feelings of hopefulness.

But I don’t think I’m eating my words or other people like me who have said people like Mamdani, not even just Mamdani himself, but people who embrace a socialist regime. I wish we had examples of where this was not successful, where this failed, like Venezuela or Cuba or the Czech Republic or North Korea. I mean—

PIERS MORGAN: Right. I noticed that I heard all this rhetoric and, yeah, I kind of agreed. And then I’d see Donald Trump who branded this guy an awful communist basically say it’s going to be great. And I was scratching my head. I’m just surprised that so many on the right have just sucked this up.

The Left’s Confusion

Mike Nellis, I’m equally surprised that people on the left seeing their guy in the Oval Office with the fascist, which just to be clear, Mamdani has carried on calling Trump since that meeting, sucking up to a fascist in the Oval Office. Again, I find it totally perplexing.

MIKE NELLIS: I mean, they’re going to have to find a way to work together even though they disagree on stuff. What I think is most interesting is I follow Riley on social media, I follow Jack on social media. Jack and I have tussled on this show before.

When you go back and look at their Mamdani posts over the course of the last weeks and months, it’s going to be he’s a radical communist jihadist, he’s going to steal your women, he’s going to destroy America. Everything’s terrible. And that was the entire Republican game plan for 2026. Was to say that was the entirety of the Democrat party. And Trump blew it up.

And to me, as we see Riley and Jack on here right now, who are being much more, let’s say, demure in terms of their critique of Mamdani after Trump, it just goes to show you that they’re just going to float wherever the winds are to get the most social media information.

PIERS MORGAN: I pressed him in the Oval Office. The video is all over social media. To be fair to Jack, you did. Let’s play the clip you’re talking about.

VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:

JACK POSOBIEC: Are you clear you’re continuing this idea of race-based property taxes?

ZOHRAN MAMDANI: No. To be very clear, use of the term was a description of neighborhoods, not a description of intent.

JACK POSOBIEC: So you intend to tax the whiter neighborhoods more?

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The Fascist Debate and Oval Office Meeting

No. We intend to create a fair property tax system because we want a New York City that is not only fair and equitable, but also one that everyone can afford. I mean, again, you know, here’s what I’m just perplexed about. If you genuinely think he’s a fascist, as so many on the left do, how can you just stand there and basically endorse him in the way that Mamdani was doing?

MIKE NELLIS: I mean, look, I believe that Donald Trump is a fascist. I don’t think he’s a very successful fascist, but I think he is one. And I think the way that he uses power is to abuse it on his own behalf.

PIERS MORGAN: So would you go to the Oval Office if he asked you to come?

MIKE NELLIS: Yes, I would. I’d give him a piece of my mind. I’d try to find a way to work together. Like, look at the end of the day, Zohran Mamdani’s got millions and millions of people that he’s got a responsibility to help make a city more affordable. You take an opportunity to go to the White House, meet with the president of United States. I don’t care who it is. Donald Trump, Barack Obama, it doesn’t matter. You take that meeting, you try to get as much out of it as you can.

PIERS MORGAN: If it was, you know, the equivalent of Mussolini or Hitler, you’re going to do it?

MIKE NELLIS: I mean, I’m going to have to, because I’m going to try to deliver for my people.

PIERS MORGAN: Really? That’s the job. You would go and stand there if that was Adolf Hitler or someone with that mentality standing in the Oval Office?

MIKE NELLIS: I mean, I’d give him a piece of my mind.

PIERS MORGAN: You’d give him a piece of your mind? You’ve got responsibility to your people. I think my point being, by the way, this point applies to both sides. I believed everybody before this meeting. I thought that the right genuinely thought he was a communist jihadi. And I thought the people on the left thought that Trump was a Nazi stroke fascist. And yet here we are.

MIKE NELLIS: Don’t think he’s a Nazi.

PIERS MORGAN: Everyone is, all of you, hold on, hold on. All of you, hang on, all of you, and I say this very respectfully because I like all of you, but all of you are now expressing a very different sentiment to the one you would have done before this meeting.

DEAN OBEIDALLAH: Here’s you’re missing one thing.

PIERS MORGAN: What am I missing?

DEAN OBEIDALLAH: You’re missing something that we see on the left. We didn’t see Zoran kissing up to Trump. We didn’t see Zoran patting Donald Trump on the back. We didn’t say, I think he’s going to do a great job. I think he’ll do a better job in America. I can sleep better now. We saw Trump do that. We saw Trump look at Zoran the way we want everyone we’re in love with to look at us. It’s like a buddy cop movie. Like, heard Trump wants a new Rush Hour. It’s Trump’s law.

PIERS MORGAN: I didn’t hear, I didn’t hear Zoran Mamdani call him a fascist in the Oval Office.

DEAN OBEIDALLAH: Well, that’s because Trump told him he was talking good. Right? But if he genuinely believes it, I mean, afterwards, he did. So why didn’t he have the balls in the moment to go, actually, Mister President, you are a fascist?

JACK POSOBIEC: He did. He bottled it. The clip. He bottled it. He played the clip where he said he was going to say it, Trump said don’t say it. He didn’t say it.

DEAN OBEIDALLAH: To say yes. Trump just played him. I don’t, whatever you, it’s fine. The reason we’re not upset on the left is that we view Trump as being played. People on the right, you can go through your mental machinations, whatever you want to justify this. I thought Jack’s question was perfect. It showed the how the obsession with the right with race and identity, which is a losing proposition.

JACK POSOBIEC: My obsession, Dean. It’s what he says.

DEAN OBEIDALLAH: That’s what I’m saying. That is your obsession, Jack. I thought you had that solidity for him. I think it’s great. You’re doing the same thing. I think you guys are all about identity politics. Both of you play a king and queen of identity politics. And I’m not saying he’s the king or the queen. I’m just saying both of you are the king and queen identity politics. White based neighborhood. White based taxation.

JACK POSOBIEC: My job. He didn’t say that. That was in the writing, but when you, he spoke to you about it, he spoke on earlier in the campaign.

MIKE NELLIS: But here’s the thing, Piers. Just to be clear, my own view is I love seeing people from different sides come together. Right? I just think it’s good. It’s healthy for democracy. I’m only holding people to account who’ve actually been expressing for weeks that the other one is a fascist, and this one’s a communist, and this one’s a jihadist, and this one’s a Nazi, and so on and so on and so on. And now suddenly, because they put on this buddy show, everyone’s like, oh, maybe I was a little hasty. Let’s give them time, these new friends. This is all good. Now, I like the way that the rhetoric is toned down, but it is quite funny to…

PIERS MORGAN: Really? What if you watch the new Rush Hour starring Trump and Mamdani as the two cops?

MIKE NELLIS: Hey. I’m into that. Right. That’s hey. You guys.

PIERS MORGAN: That’s Jack. Jack. Jack. It be, could it be, Jack? There’s another working theory that actually what you’re seeing here is what they call the horseshoe effect, where you have the left and the right basically converging together, right? Which is why Mamdani and Trump found probably to their mutual surprise more in common than they realized they had. Is that a possibility?

MIKE NELLIS: I’m actually, I reject the horseshoe theory. I don’t think it’s a real thing. I know that’s something that’s been brought up a lot. There’s a lot of people who, you know, kind of in the center who try to bring that up. I don’t think it’s a real thing. I think you can be critical of a current situation. You can also be cognizant of a current situation, like cost of living in many parts of America, which is a true problem, and we should be honest about that. But I don’t think the prescriptions necessarily are the same at all. I think the way people come to politics is differently. I just, I know I know there could be sometimes optically where it may look like people are on similar sides on a certain issue, but I just don’t think Horseshoe theory in, you know, in the end really really carries weight.

The Political Quiz: Testing the Horseshoe Theory

PIERS MORGAN: Well, want to have a bit of fun with you guys, because we’ve got a quiz here to test my theory that actually the horseshoe theory might have validity. So I think we’ll start with you, Mike, with the first one. I want to know who said these things, right? I blame the Republicans. They are slaves to all of the big industries of Washington, the military industrial complex, big pharma, health insurance industries, you name it, they are slaves to them.

MIKE NELLIS: I’m going to guess, I think you’re trying to trick me, so I’m going to guess Marjorie Taylor Greene.

PIERS MORGAN: You’re correct. Wow. But only because you smelled a rat.

MIKE NELLIS: I agree.

PIERS MORGAN: All right. Let me ask Riley. I read the statement. Let me ask Riley this one. Who said this? You may be happy with the state of the US economy, but many young people aren’t. The main problem, the reason capitalism is increasingly discredited and socialism increasingly popular is that for too many young people, our current system isn’t working.

RILEY GAINES: I’m going to say this is our friend, Charlie Kirk.

PIERS MORGAN: Actually Tucker Carlson said that, sounding a bit like Bernie Sanders. All right. Let me go to you, Dean. October the seventh in Israel was horrific and all hostages must be returned, but so is the genocide, humanitarian crisis, and starvation happening in Gaza.

DEAN OBEIDALLAH: I’m not going to say Trump. I assume it’s a Democrat that said that. Could it be Zoran?

PIERS MORGAN: Nope. It’s Marjorie Taylor Greene again.

DEAN OBEIDALLAH: Get out of here.

PIERS MORGAN: Yeah. It is. Yeah. Is she going to show up on the show now surprised? Well, I don’t know. I’m just going to keep going. We got a few more. It’s quite fun. So Jack, who said this? Nobody thinks legal immigration is appropriate. We need comprehensive immigration reform. I don’t think it’s appropriate for people to be coming across the border illegally. So we’ve got to work now on immigration reform.

JACK POSOBIEC: Barack Obama.

PIERS MORGAN: Bernie Sanders. Close. It’s interesting this, isn’t it? All right, let’s go to Mike again. The unfairness of a system drives people crazy. They are useless and they are rich. How do you come to a place where some of the least impressive and most useless people who have no actual skills become billionaires, leaving aside my committed socialism? Can you answer the question? My committed socialism.

MIKE NELLIS: I’m not sure. Zoran?

PIERS MORGAN: Tucker Carlson.

MIKE NELLIS: Tucker Carlson. Yep.

PIERS MORGAN: Riley, who said this about Zoran Mamdani? He really ran a campaign where he looked directly to the people. He was focused on their issues, focused on their problems, and talking to the people about his solutions. When we’re not talking to the people and not working on the people’s problems, we lose the people and the people will turn elsewhere. Tell me.

RILEY GAINES: I don’t know. Have a guess. Let’s say, JD Vance.

PIERS MORGAN: Marjorie Taylor Greene. Again. This is a salute to Marjorie Taylor Greene.

MIKE NELLIS: No, love this.

PIERS MORGAN: Dean, this is we meet. Sorry, this is all, we’ve a few more here. I’m enjoying this because it’s sort of proving my point as we go. Dean, you said this, young people must once again be able to afford a mortgage and a home, no tax on overtime, no tax on social security benefits, protect our workers, protect our jobs.

DEAN OBEIDALLAH: Donald Trump?

PIERS MORGAN: Yes, Donald Trump.

DEAN OBEIDALLAH: I got it. You’re going to ruin your own show if we all get along. Do you understand that, Piers? You’re putting yourself out of business.

PIERS MORGAN: Well, not really. It would ruin my show if you all got it right. Because the point…

DEAN OBEIDALLAH: You’re renamed the show Kumbaya with your point being that the more you get wrong, the more it proves my horseshoe theory. Right?

PIERS MORGAN: So let’s go to, I think it’s Jack, isn’t it, next? Who said this, freedom is not about saying nice things or agreeing with those in power. It’s the right to express your point of view without government interference. We mustn’t allow anyone to take that freedom away from us.

JACK POSOBIEC: Josh Shapiro.

PIERS MORGAN: Bernie Sanders. Who said this, Riley? Young people are in hock to debt. They are completely indebted. They have student loans. They’re required to get a degree to get a job that no longer exists. Unemployment is out of control. They’ve followed every instruction dutifully, and they’ve been completely betrayed and shafted.

RILEY GAINES: Again, I’m going to say Charlie Kirk. I think until his final moments, he’s getting a little close. These were issues and concerns that he has…

PIERS MORGAN: He’s actually Tucker again, actually. All right. Mike, who said an unspoken secret in Congress is that much of the reflexive, blind, unconditional vote support for nearly any Israeli government action isn’t from actual agreement. It’s from fear. Reps are terrified of this, of AIPAC, so they don’t vote with their conscience. They vote their fear.

MIKE NELLIS: I’m going to guess Marjorie Taylor Greene again.

PIERS MORGAN: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Yeah. Right. Right. Three more. Let me go to you Dean. This is a problem primarily on the right. Nobody has sympathy for young people. Conservatives have been trained to blame the borrower, not the lender. It’s a feature of the mindset. Pay back what you owe. It’s not that simple.

DEAN OBEIDALLAH: Well, I’m going to say Zoran, although I think you want me to say Marjorie Taylor Greene.

PIERS MORGAN: That’s actually it’s actually Tucker Carlson? Zoran, not Zoran Mamdani. Okay. Let’s go to, I think it’s Jack next, is it? Who is worse? The guy who borrows the money or the guy who loans the money at some ridiculous rate? There are payday loans with six hundred percent annual interest rate. There is a moral obligation to say that is disgusting.

JACK POSOBIEC: Is that Tucker again?

PIERS MORGAN: It is. And finally, I think this is for who’s this for? I think this might be Riley. I’ll leave you with the last one. We need trade policies that benefit American workers.

# Trump and Mamdani’s Surprising Oval Office Meeting

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Tariffs can be a powerful tool. They can help level the playing field for American auto workers and steel workers. They’re outsourcing American jobs to factories abroad.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Let’s see. Let’s say President Biden.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Bernie Sanders.

PIERS MORGAN: So here’s my point. You’ve got about two or three correct between you, right? And yet that’s really interesting to me because it used to be that these kinds of statements, it would be pretty obvious who had said left or right. And I do think there is a bit of a horseshoe thing.

I mean, Mike, let me come to you about that. It is really interesting that a lot of these, you listen to say, Hillary Clinton talking about immigration ten years ago and compare it to the way Trump does now. There’s not much difference, right?

So there’s a lot of rhetoric here that is quite similar, whether you’re talking about the economy or affordability or immigration or Israel or whatever, you’re suddenly seeing a lot of convergence of thought and agreement between people on the right and people on the left. And that may explain using the horseshoe theory, why actually Mamdani and Trump, when they got in a room together and began to talk about stuff, found to their probably astonishment that they had a lot more in common than they realized.

Finding Common Ground Across the Aisle

MIKE NELLIS: I’m not sure that it explains the White House meeting between Zoran and Trump, but I do think there are a lot of areas where we could agree and what’s happening is we’re being pit against each other by social media algorithms and, you know, wealthy people that just, they are very, very, very wealthy people that just want to suck up what limited resources the rest of us have. And I think people are pretty frustrated with it.

The other thing too is, I think the way our politics and our media apparatus are set up is to kind of dehumanize one another. My guess would be if you locked me in a room with Jack or you locked me in a room with Riley and we had to solve ten of America’s biggest problems, we’d probably walk away with some real solutions.

The problem is you’ve got, you know, five, six hundred members of Congress who don’t want to fix anything because their rich donors don’t want to help them. And I think that AOC quote about AIPAC is really true is that people don’t fight for Israel because they genuinely believe in the cause of the Israelites. It’s because they’re afraid of super PAC spending in their primary.

PIERS MORGAN: Yeah, but I would say it’s not just the fault of Congress. When I do these panels invariably people take quite a tribal position they don’t like to deviate particularly, and they certainly don’t like to reach across the aisle or in this case across a screen and say, you know what? I totally agree with you.

And when I hear it, it’s so refreshing because I do think political rhetoric whipped up by social media has become overly tribal and toxic. And actually, you’re right. If you were in a room, say you went and had dinner together or whatever, any of right, from the left and right, I reckon you’d find a lot of things you have in common, things you might agree with you weren’t expecting and so on, but it would be a much more civilized encounter.

The problem with all political discourse in America right now is all of it is designed to be confrontational. And people accuse me of doing that on this show, but in a way I’m trying to be the antidote. I’m trying to bring people to a point where they will actually reach points of agreement. I think it would be really like empowering and refreshing if it happened.

The Power of Populism

DEAN OBEIDALLAH: Can I add one thing to that though? Is that I think being passionate in a disagreement doesn’t mean I hate the person I’m disagreeing with unless they’re bigoted. Right? And look, we even before this, Piers, look at polling. How many Americans support taking big money out of politics? Talking eighty, eighty-five percent.

Many Americans support the idea of expanding Medicare? Right. Give our seniors hearing, dental, vision, eighty-five percent. We have a bunch of things like that, but we have people in Congress who will have to answer to their donors that prevent us from getting old. We’re still going to fight on other issues and we should. This is America. I don’t want to agree with Jack on most things, frankly.

But on certain things, it’s called populism, and that every quote you read, Piers, was populism, economic, not bag of populism. Yes. Down the middle populism, and that’s where we’re going forward. And you might find some common ground on certain issues because people are struggling. It’s a real issue. Even Jack admitted prices going up. Trump doesn’t admit it.

This populism is the winner for the near term until something else becomes the but I’d love us to get along on populist issues to fight for the working class, the working poor. For all of us, we watch the wealthy get wealthier every single day, and we struggle to make ends meet. And I speak for everyone else who calls my radio show. That’s exactly how they feel.

So if it’s someone on the right or the left, giving them an answer that’s going to change their lives, really, not cultural bullsh*t, but really, like freezing the rent or giving free childcare with the second biggest expense in New York, they’re going to gravitate and vote for that person. That’s why Zoran won seventy percent of people under forty-five. That’s unheard of. Black, white, brown, seventy percent of them want a better life in the city.

The Affordability Question

PIERS MORGAN: The problem is, I think the problem is too, and we come to Jack. The problem is, I still don’t believe that Mamdani has got a cat in hell’s chance of affording ironically all these affordability maneuvers, right? He says he wants to get affordability, but the cost of doing that as it’s been proven time and again in places where they tried actual socialism is he can’t afford it.

We’ve got the same issue in the UK now. We’ve got a left-wing government that made all sorts of grandiose promises not to raise taxes, not to do this, to do that, to do that. And all they’ve done is chuck huge millions and billions at extra public spending. And now they’re just going to go and tax all the wealthier people and make them pay for it. It’s the old tax of envy and so on. And I don’t like any of that kind of politics.

But I mean, take for example here, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who we quoted a few times. She’s now said she’s not going to run for president. She’s third favorite with the bookmakers to potentially be the next president. She says she doesn’t want to do it. I never take people at face value when they say that.

But she’s split from Trump over some fundamental policy issues that she disagrees with them about. Are we seeing the inevitable fracturing of the MAGA movement as we head towards Trump being inevitably a lame duck president?

The 2028 Primary Has Already Begun

JACK POSOBIEC: Well, Piers, I wouldn’t say that Trump is necessarily a lame duck at this point.

PIERS MORGAN: Well, he will be after the midterms. Right? I mean, that’s just the that is the automatic thing.

JACK POSOBIEC: That’ll be a different thing because what’s really going on now isn’t a fracturing of the party. I think what’s happening is that the 2028 primary has already begun. And so it’s going to be a vicious primary.

Now we know J.D. Vance is in pole position, but there’s going to be a lot of people. I think you’re going to see Ted Cruz run. Ron DeSantis is obviously making noise again. Marjorie Taylor Greene currently making a play here, obviously making a play here for either that or one of the senate seats in Georgia.

And look, this is politics. I think politics is always going to move this way. I don’t think that Trump is going to come in and put his thumb on the scale. We know that he likes to do the apprentice thing, the celebrity apprentice thing. So I think that’s what you’re seeing with a lot of this. It’s a lot of the 2028 primary already sort of setting the table for what’s to come.

PIERS MORGAN: I mean, my experience when he does the celebrity apprentice thing is he normally chooses the standout candidate. He can, but you never know. I mean, he likes to do the competition.

DEAN OBEIDALLAH: Piers, mate. I won celebrity apprentice.

PIERS MORGAN: No. I know. Oh, right. Of course. I remembered you’re on. I remember okay. Yes. Right. That’s how I met Donald Trump. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

DEAN OBEIDALLAH: Trump’s going to endorse Zoran. That’s what I’m going to predict right now.

PIERS MORGAN: I know let’s not get into this conversation.

DEAN OBEIDALLAH: Can’t run.

PIERS MORGAN: Now we’re on here. I know. I know. Let’s stop putting the constitution aside. He likes that guy. I mean, let’s be honest. He knows the winners. Trump always knows winners.

I would love to know. I mean, Mike Nellis, I would love to know what I’d love to know what went on between them in private and make them come out like that in the Oval Office.

MIKE NELLIS: I would too. I think it would be amazing. I tweeted right before the meeting. I was like, should have sold tickets to it. They could have paid down the national debt because people would have wanted to see it.

DEAN OBEIDALLAH: Yeah. I want to add one I outside I was outside the room, I’ll just add, you know, hear it was very much the same. I heard it was very cordial.

PIERS MORGAN: Yeah. Wow. That seems that seems consistent.

Moving Beyond Culture War Politics

MIKE NELLIS: I want to add something on the culture war stuff though, because I do think American politics gets completely bogged down in the culture war stuff. And maybe we’ve got an opportunity to reset with this Zoran and Trump meeting here.

But like, you know, like, look, I’m here because I’m one of the founders of White Dudes for Harris. It’s how I got a little bit of popularity on the internet with my people. Jack has done his stuff. Riley’s done a lot of stuff on anti-trans stuff. We disagree on those things, but it’s pretty clear right now.

Like Piers, you and I have thought about wokeism and stuff like that before. Like that draws attention, it draws clicks, you’ve built a huge audience for it, but we’re very far away from getting on the same page, talking about how to help people buy a house and put food on the table and retire with dignity and send their kids to college. I’d like to spend less time on the culture war bullsh*t and more time on—

PIERS MORGAN: Yeah, see, funny, it’s interesting how you always phrase the culture war stuff as bullsh*t. I say—

MIKE NELLIS: Well, for sure.

PIERS MORGAN: And I say the issues, and I’ll come to Riley about this in a moment, but I say the issues like trans athletes in women’s sport, they’re not culture war issues. They are a direct assault on women’s rights. And it’s astonishing to me, Mike, that you still want to dismiss that as something most Americans don’t care about.

MIKE NELLIS: You want to spend more time on that than you want to talk about the economy, things that actually have been—

PIERS MORGAN: I don’t want spend more or less time on it, but the more, I have to be honest, the more you guys on the woke left, and I’m afraid I do categorize you as one of the leading lights of the—

MIKE NELLIS: Oh, come on.

PIERS MORGAN: But the more that guys like you say nobody cares about that issue, the more nuts I think you’ve got and the less in touch with reality you are. People do care. That’s one of the reasons Trump won. It’s one of the reasons you blew up at the election.

MIKE NELLIS: I think Piers, I think a lot of people on the fringes of the internet care, but I think everyday Americans care a lot about—

PIERS MORGAN: Have you lost any parent with a daughter who competes in sport and they didn’t care? Most people don’t care about the issue. It’s not a salient issue that drives their voting choices. It drives a lot of social media engagement. And I made this point to you.

DEAN OBEIDALLAH: Oh, how seriously Mike, all due respect, you said you were white dudes for Kamala. How did that go?

MIKE NELLIS: Yeah. How’d that go? I mean, we raised a lot of money. It’s not bad.

DEAN OBEIDALLAH: Yeah. But they didn’t actually win. She did.

MIKE NELLIS: Hey. You’re I like that. She did marginally better with white men in the last twenty—

PIERS MORGAN: You were about the only white dude who thought Kamala should be president in the end, it turned out.

MIKE NELLIS: Well, no. She won forty-one percent of white guys, but all right.

PIERS MORGAN: Right. But does it suggest to you that maybe your political antenna for these—

MIKE NELLIS: Well, there we go. I mean, would do away with that kind of identity politics. I don’t like it. I’m not going to disavow the work that we—

PIERS MORGAN: You actually had a group called white dudes for Kamala.

MIKE NELLIS: Yeah. And in the context of the week that happened, we were a big cultural movement.

DEAN OBEIDALLAH: Were not. Black men for Harris and all the others, made sense.

MIKE NELLIS: But like, I am generally someone who doesn’t think that that level of identity politics literally took identity politics and you amplified it a million percent by calling your organization white dude.

PIERS MORGAN: Yeah, well we did it in the context of what groups were doing, Piers. I mean, whatever. Like again, we want to debate this, but we want to debate in the economy. You want an end to identity and pay on, just to be clear, you want an end to identity politics and culture war clickbait stuff and you called your group white dudes for Kamala.

MIKE NELLIS: Right, which again in the context of what was going on that week where there were other affinity group calls with black women and black men and Latino men, it made sense to call it that at the time. But I would encourage the Democratic Party to move on from what’s been going on for years.

PIERS MORGAN: Right. Well, Riley, the only reason that anybody knows who you are is because of culture war and gender politics.

RILEY GAINES: Actually, no.

The Reality of Women’s Sports and Trans Athletes

The only reason people know Riley is because she very courageously stood up to protect women’s rights when a six foot three inch biological male swimmer called Lia Thomas robbed her of potential glory. And that’s the reality. People can pretend otherwise. But again, entire Republican Party only wants to talk about that stuff and doesn’t want to talk about—

No, they don’t. They talk about social only now that Donald Trump’s in office and everything more—

You’re desperate to move off that topic because you know how damaging—

No, to move off of it. While simultaneously pretending nobody cares.

PIERS MORGAN: Riley, let me bring you in here because you’ve been—I mean, you were back in the news in the last few days, but a new relentless attack on you. So for those who missed it, tell me, tell us what happened there.

RILEY GAINES: Honestly, Piers, I didn’t even read it, because it’s so baseless and filled with, like, total falsehoods. There’s a guy, I guess, by the name of Pablo Torre. I’ve never—I never truthfully heard of him. Not meant to be a knock at him. I just had no idea who this man was. Says he did a six month long investigation, deep dive into my life.

And what did he find? He found that I have a job. I get paid for certain things that I do just as everyone on this panel does, just as you do, Piers. He found that my coach, my collegiate coach of my team is accused of sexual misconduct towards swimmers, which I very quickly, when I learned about this, took to my Twitter to release a four paragraph condemnation of this saying that any person who engages in sexual misconduct is bad, especially a person in a position of authority such as a coach. So, again, a total nothing sandwich is what this man found.

But nonetheless, I just want to make a very quick point. You say that people don’t care about this cultural stuff by also telling me that the only people or the only way that people know who I am is because of this issue. Don’t you realize the irony in that? I did not ask to be where I am. Quite frankly, this isn’t where I want to be.

Even still, I was in dental school prior to all of this. I think I would have lived a very fine life, happily married, pursuing dentistry. Okay? I did not ask to be where I am, but people cared. People cared enough even still to continue to, I mean, listen to what I have to say. Lord knows why. Right?

So I think it’s disingenuous to say that in one hand, no one would know who I am without this issue. But on the other hand, people don’t really care about this stuff. I have millions of followers. I think one point six or one point seven on X, one point five on TikTok, over one point two on Instagram. It’s not because I’m posting constantly. Gosh, I live a very normal life. I never asked to be where I am. So let’s make that very clear.

The Debate Over Children and Medical Procedures

And secondly, I think there are few things more sinister than for someone to suggest that we stop talking about children who are getting healthy body parts cut off of their body. I mean, few things more sinister than that. And when we’re talking about populist ideas and these eighty twenty issue—

No. It’s literally what you just said. And we’re talking about the eighty twenty issue.

RILEY GAINES: What I said, Riley, and that’s what you do. Twist other people’s words so that you can make money on the Internet. They’re going to get a real job.

It is literally what you said.

It’s not what I said. It’s not literally or figuratively what I said.

Crazy to me. Maybe you’re having some audio issues over there. Just showing your ass. You guys, like, resounding—I didn’t hear what you—that last part was. Say it again.

I mean, you’re just—I mean, to me, you’re embarrassing yourself. Like, what you do is you twist other people’s words. You’re claiming I said something that I didn’t. And what you’ll do is you’ll crop this later for social media and it’ll look good for your audience.

RILEY GAINES: We’ll let the American people decide who embarrasses themselves. I guess. I mean I guess.

The point that I was making, Riley—common sense standard default position on virtually everything on virtually everything. Like, the position that I take on—I do believe, maybe this makes me a radical, that abortion is up there with, like, child sacrifice, especially in the way that the Democratic party celebrates and has a vocal—

You think abortion is, like, child sacrifice, and you think that’s a common sense issue in the United States. That’s crazy.

Finding Common Ground on Controversial Issues

RILEY GAINES: Well, allow me to jump in there and say conservative party. On that—on that—say that I had the very standard default position of everyone—I mean, two decades ago, even. So, all you in—

Well, Mike, let me end by saying, on the issue of trans women in sport and trans women in women’s spaces, I’m one hundred percent with Riley. On the issue of whether women who have an abortion are engaged in child sacrifice, I couldn’t be further against Riley’s beliefs. But you know what? I respect her right to her beliefs.

RILEY GAINES: In a way that the democratic party celebrates it.

PIERS MORGAN: Yeah. Well, look. Look. I love it. Like, nobody celebrates abortion in the Democratic party. Like, so great. We’re having a right to be whole abortion debate. But boasting of the numbers they got. I agree and disagree with all of you about various—

We’re all getting along, you see? And the thing is, we were all getting along. Now at it. Now you’re back. You’re a bit like Al Pacino in Godfather three. You sucked me back in. There was me trying to find a nice, happy we’re all friends together. Mamdani Trump kind of vibe. And look at us. Look at us. We couldn’t even last on the five years.

Anyway, the battle goes on to find points of agreement. Thank you all very much. I appreciate it.

Thank you. Thank you, Piers.

PIERS MORGAN: Piers Morgan Uncensored is proudly independent. The only boss around here is me. To enjoy our show, we offer only one simple thing. Hit subscribe on YouTube and follow Piers Morgan Uncensored on Spotify and Apple Podcast. And in return, we will continue our mission to inform, irritate, and entertain, and we’ll do it all for free. Independent, uncensored media has never been more critical, and we couldn’t do it without you.

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