Piers Morgan tells Tucker Carlson that Ben Shapiro and Mark Levin are “propagandists for a government that is making Israel increasingly globally unpopular”
Morgan on Shapiro and Levin: “The idea that you can't criticize that government means you're not actually journalists”
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From the June 17, 2026, edition of The Tucker Carlson Show
TUCKER CARLSON (HOST): I would just end by asking, do you have a message for Ben Shapiro and Mark Levin who've been engaging with you quite extensively online? What would you say to them right now?
PIERS MORGAN (GUEST): I'd say you can have all the ad hominem attacks you like. I've been trading ad hominem blows with people for about 40 years. I used to do it in my, I used to do it, Tucker, in my local pub in Southern England, and be regularly banned by the landlady, Mary, for getting too garrulous on a Friday night and arguing too vehemently and getting too ad hominem. I'm more than broad-shouldered enough to deal with what comes out of Shapiro's mouth or Levin's mouth, I don't care. I'm quite happy to trade those kind of blows, and I find it quite enjoyable actually, which probably says a little about me.
The bottom line I would say to them is, you're not winning this, you're losing, and you've put all your cards on the belief that everybody else is going to agree with you, that if anyone criticizes the Israeli government, then they're Nazis, or they are anti-semitic, or they hate Jewish people. And that has been one of the most insidious false claims widely repeated by people that follow the likes of Shapiro and Levin, certainly since October 7. And the idea that you cannot stand up to a government, even if it's a government you support, it's your own government in many cases, the idea that you can't criticize that government means you're not actually journalists. These people can't be journalists who look at these things with an open mind and have intellectual honesty about it. You are just partisan activists, and you're propagandists for a government that is making Israel increasingly globally unpopular.
And so my message to them, not that they want to hear it or that they will listen to me, but my message to them is, I'd stop the ad hominem attacks, stop attacking people simply for doing their job as journalists in rightly holding Netanyahu and his government to proper account, and maybe you should start doing that too. You would be doing Israel a favor, you'd be doing Israelis a favor, you'd be doing the world's 15 million Jewish people a favor if you just got off this ridiculous propaganda wall that you've been perched on for all this time and actually started calling out what the rest of us can see is increasingly unconscionable action.