Precisely eight minutes before I was due to interview Donald Trump, my crew told me we had a problem, says Piers Morgan in the New York Post. Someone had gathered every scathing thing I’d written about the former US president in the last two years and delivered it to him. “The quotes are not good,” said one team member. “In fact, they’re really bad.” I hurried to Trump’s office to attempt damage control. “What the f*** IS this?” he snarled, reading out my quotes with “mounting rage in his eyes”. He ranted on, threatening to cancel the interview altogether, until I decided “it was time to change the mood music”. I congratulated him on his recent golf hole-in-one. “Trump sat bolt upright.” I asked if it was his first. “No!” he replied. “I’ve had seven!” And he clapped his hands together and agreed to speak.
The first hour of our chat bobbed along nicely – but things soured when I challenged his claims that the 2020 election was rigged. The 75-year-old repeatedly branded me a fool. He made a movement to leave but I reminded him we hadn’t discussed his golfing victory. Trump duly sat down again, described the shot, then jumped to his feet and barked to the crew: “TURN THE CAMERAS OFF!” I found the whole thing surprising. After all, Trump angrily unfollowed me on Twitter a few years ago, only to later ring me for a friendly chat. “I mistakenly assumed he didn’t really mind me verbally whacking him from time to time. Wrong!”
🕵🏻♂️📨 Who sent Trump the file of quotes? By an “extraordinary coincidence”, former Ukip leader Nigel Farage had dinner with Trump three days earlier. You don’t need to be “a rigged-election conspiracy theorist”, says Morgan, to work out who may have done the sending.