On Wednesday afternoon, British media personality Piers Morgan posted a video clip from an interview that is set to air with former President Donald Trump next week that is generating controversy over whether it was deceptively edited. The clip appears to show Trump storming out of the interview, while subsequent reporting suggests that is not what happened.
“Turn the camera off,” Trump says at the end of the video clip that Morgan posted to his Twitter account. “Very dishonest.”
NBC News reported that audio provided to the network by Trump’s team appears to tell a different story about what happened.
“The two men laughed and thanked each other, the recording shows,” NBC News reported. “There are no signs of Trump’s storming off set.”
“That was a great interview,” Morgan says in the audio at the end.
“Yeah,” Trump agrees.
“Thank you very much,” Morgan responds. “I really appreciate it.”
It was at that moment that Trump apparently said, “Turn the cameras off.”
WATCH:
****BREAKING NEWS****
👇👇👇 pic.twitter.com/WdJnPJyMwG— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) April 20, 2022
The report says that Trump’s remark about the interview being “very deceptive” was in reference to the interview going longer than Morgan apparently indicated.
“Is that the last question? You’ve said ‘the last question’ four times now,” a spokesman for Trump told Morgan. “So I feel like you’re lying at this point.”
“I’m not lying,” Morgan said.
“Very deceptive,” Trump responded.
Morgan then proceeded to ask more questions.
“This is a pathetic attempt to use President Trump as a way to revive the career of a failed television host,” a spokesman for Trump said in a statement. “It is also another example of President Trump being right, as he told Piers Morgan that the host was dishonest to his face, and Piers, for the first time in his life, didn’t disappoint.”
Trump later released a statement claiming that Morgan “attempted to unlawfully and deceptively edit his long and tedious interview with me.”
“He wanted to make it look like I walked out on the interview when my time limit of 20 minutes went over by an hour,” Trump said. “The good news is that the interview was taped by us as a means of keeping him honest.”
“For those who want to make Piers look bad, compare his video promo and how it was doctored to the real thing,” Trump continued. “Hopefully they will now be doing some big changes to their final product. It just shows, however, what I have to deal with in the Fake News Media. He went out of his way to deceptively edit an interview and got caught.”
This report has been updated to include additional information.