Though the interview doesn’t air until next week, the controversy getting kicked up by the promos for Piers Morgan’s sit-down with Donald Trump has managed to pull yet another former reality star into the fray: Caitlyn Jenner.
The former California gubernatorial candidate announced on Twitter on Thursday that she won’t appear on Mr Morgan’s new show, Piers Morgan Uncensored, after viewing the teaser trailer for the much anticipated 75-minute interview the host conducted with the former US president.
The clip, which includes several grimacing shots of the former US leader while Mr Morgan interjects with lines like, the 2020 election was “free and fair” and his administration “never produced the hard evidence” to the contrary, has been outrightly disavowed by Mr Trump, who labelled the footage as “doctored” in a recent statement.
Ms Jenner, a former backer of Mr Trump in the 2016 election, seemed to once again align with the former president’s assessment when she took to Twitter to announce her cancellation of appearing on Mr Morgan’s show.
“This is a pathetic attempt to use President Trump as a way to revive the career of a failed television host," @TayFromCA …couldn’t agree more,” the Olympic gold medal-winner wrote while quoting Taylor Budowich, the director of communications for Mr Trump. “@piersmorgan I have just had my management cancel my appearance with you for this Wednesday because of your repulsive misconduct today.”
Late on Wednesday, Mr Trump issued an official statement rejecting how he’d been characterised in the chaotic 30-second teaser, saying: “Piers Morgan, like the rest of the fake news media, attempted to unlawfully and deceptively edit his long and tedious interview.”
“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. The interview was very strong on the 2020 election fraud, with me calling him ‘a fool’ if he truly believed those results,” the one-term president’s statement read.
“For those who want to make Piers look bad, compare his video promo and how it was doctored to the real thing. Hopefully, they will now be doing some big changes to their final product,” Mr Trump concluded.
Mr Morgan, who shared the promo that has now been viewed more than 3 million times on his own Twitter account to advertise for his new TalkTV programme, took to the same social media platform to call out Ms Jenner’s public admonishment of his new show before it’s even aired.
“Hi Caitlyn, I thought you hated cancel culture?” he wrote in a reply to the former Olympian’s tweet. “I did a 75-minute interview with President Trump, why don’t you actually watch it before deciding how I behaved?”
Though Ms Jenner has had a flip-flopping relationship through the years in terms of supporting Mr Trump, it appears that with this recent tweet the former president is back in her good graces.
In 2016, she spoke at the Republican National Convention (RNC) and defended her support for the then-Republican candidate, noting that she believed he’d make good on his promises to support women’s issues.
“I think he’d be very good for women’s issues. I don’t think he’s out there to destroy women or take things away, or do any of that kind of stuff,” she said in her TV series, I Am Cait, before calling Hillary Clinton a “f***ing liar.”
Later, however, the former reality star retracted her support for the president.
Writing in an op-ed for The Washington Post in 2018, she said that her views about the controversial former president had shifted as his policies on LGBT+ community failed to deliver on what she viewed as “fertile ground for change”.
“Following Trump’s election as president, I saw fertile ground for change within the Republican Party on LGBTQ issues,” she wrote. “Sadly, I was wrong. The reality is that the trans community is being relentlessly attacked by this president.”
But then as recently as July 2021, in her bid to replace Democrat Gavin Newsom in Sacramento by running for governor of California, Ms Jenner was seen to once again flop in her stance on Mr Trump.
When appearing on Jeanine Pirro’s show on Fox News, the 72-year-old was asked whether she’d support Mr Trump if he were to make a run for president again in 2024.
“If I was governor of the state of California, obviously I would support him,” she said in response.
In California’s recall election, held last September, Ms Jenner received approximately 1.1 per cent of the vote.
Mr Morgan’s 75-minute interview, which took place at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, will be screened on TalkTV on Monday at 8pm.
