Former US president Donald Trump claimed he hit not one, but seven hole-in-ones on the golf course while speaking to Piers Morgan ahead of an interview for his new show “Piers Morgan Uncensored”.
In a first-person account in The Sun, the former Good Morning Britain presenter gave dramatic details of the moments that led up to the interview.
Morgan, who joined the Rupert Murdoch-owned TalkTV to host his own programme, met the former president at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
Moments before the interview was to begin, Morgan was informed that the former president was angry as he had been handed a list of critical comments that the presenter had made about him.
Morgan then went on to meet the former president in his office in a bid to convince him to do the interview as promised.
He said he found the former president “livid”.
“He was almost foaming at the mouth and kept shaking his head slowly and menacingly at me, like Don Corleone when he felt he’d been disrespected,” Morgan wrote, adding that he had to think of ways to make him still do the interview, after Mr Trump called him “disloyal” and “fake”.
“‘I’d love to talk about your recent golf hole-in-one,’ I stammered. ‘Your playing partner Ernie Els was raving about it,’” wrote Morgan.
“He was? Where?” responded Mr Trump.
Morgan then said that he had read a newspaper interview. “He said it was a brilliant shot and you played really well.”
“I did, I did,” said Mr Trump.
When Morgan asked if that was his first hole-in-one, Mr Trump responded: “No! I’ve had seven!”
In golf, a hole-in-one refers to when a player hits the ball straight from tee to the hole.
While Morgan says that the claim seemed “implausible” he did not think it was the right time to fact-check him. Instead he congratulated Mr Trump and called his feat “amazing.”
Earlier, Morgan had been informed that the former president had seen a collection of quotes, including several dozen of his statements taken from columns about Mr Trump where he had been critical of his conduct in the last year of his presidency. Those comments included his handling of the Covid pandemic, his refusal to accept defeat in the 2020 presidential elections, and his role in the 6 January 2020 Capitol Hill riots.
The interview, according to Morgan, was “intended to be a blockbuster exclusive to rocket-launch my new global TV show, Piers Morgan Uncensored, on Monday, April 25”.
Morgan wrote that moments after claiming that he had hit seven holes-in-one, Mr Trump appeared to have decided to let go off his anger about the list of statements he had seen.
“OK, I guess I’ll still do the interview. I don’t know why, honestly, but I’ll see you down there,” Mr Trump said.
