My call with Donald Trump following Keir Starmer’s visit

Two months into President Donald Trump’s second term, the habitual liberal hysteria about his rollercoaster presidential style is reaching shrieking banshee levels again. But as always with my friend in Pennsylvania Avenue, I urge patience and a focus on what he does rather than what comes out of his inflammatory machine-gun mouth. I sense cold, calculating method to all the apparent madness, entirely in keeping with Trump’s election campaign pledges, and predict that – after the current bumpy ride – he will get the US economy purring again, America’s border under firm control and win the Nobel Peace Prize for ending the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. Oh, and he’ll annoy a lot of the right people in the process.

The morning after Sir Keir Starmer’s successful recent visit to the White House, I texted Trump to say I’d never seen more positive press coverage for the president in Britain, with front pages waxing ecstatically about our revived Special Relationship. He phoned me immediately, eager to hear more about his soaring popularity in his late mother’s homeland. (Ironically, later that day, he had the Oval Office bust-up with President Volodymyr Zelensky, which led to some of the most negative press coverage Trump’s ever had in Britain, much of it demanding an immediate end to the Special Relationship.) The president was very excited about his unprecedented second UK state visit invitation from King Charles, delivered personally by Starmer – a canny move, playing beautifully to Trump’s ego and genuine love of the royals – and especially when I pointed out that he’ll have been uniquely hosted by different monarchs. We spoke for 15 minutes about everything from Ukraine and Starmer – “He’s kind of the complete opposite to me, but I like him” – to mocking Joe Biden’s senility. “Can you imagine him ever calling you like this?” Trump scoffed. “He wouldn’t know how to work the phone.”

During our chat, I was in a black cab whose driver kept peering through his rear-view mirror with eye-popping incredulity. When the call finished, he said: “Piers, mate, I don’t mean to pry, but I couldn’t help hearing some of that conversation. Were you just talking to… DONALD TRUMP?” I laughed. “Yes.” “Bloody hell!” the driver exclaimed. “I’ve been doing this job for 30 years and never had anyone speaking in the back of my cab to the president of the United States!”

I turn 60 on March 30, making me the same age as Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, Kamala Harris, Sandra Bullock, Lenny Kravitz and Russell Crowe. Some have weathered slightly better than me, others significantly worse. My spirit animal is Dame Joan Collins, who is 91 but will garotte anyone who reminds her of it and has the energy of a 30-year-old. As she says: “I don’t look my age, I don’t feel my age and I don’t act my age. To me, age is irrelevant unless you’re a bottle of wine.” Joan’s secret is a ferocious work ethic (she’s about to start filming a new movie), strict portion control and keeping her brain firing on all cylinders. We had dinner with friends at the Ritz last week, and Joan was on waspish form. After three hours of verbal sword-fighting, she declared: “Piers, you’re the person I love annoying more than anyone else in the world.”

Dame Joan and I are both movie stars with expansive bodies of work, albeit in my case I’ve only ever played myself, appearing in nine films as Piers Morgan, including Flight with Denzel Washington, Criminal with Kevin Costner, One Chance with James Corden, World War Z with Brad Pitt, Men In Black International with Liam Neeson, Entourage with Jeremy Piven and The Campaign with Will Ferrell, the biggest political comedy in Hollywood history. I was only on screen in the last for 22 seconds, but because of its huge success, the residuals still pour in 12 years later, including $789.68 last month alone. As I informed an incredulous Dame Joan, surely this makes me, per second of airtime, the highest-paid movie star ever?

I’m writing a new book, Woke is Dead, about how we’ve finally found an antidote to the insidious woke mind virus that made Covid-19 look like a minor irritation. It’s called “common sense” and helped power Trump to victory against a Democratic Party that thinks men should compete in women’s sport. Nothing better illustrates the insanity than the row over Disney using CGI animated dwarfs rather than human dwarfs in the new Snow White, because they didn’t want to stereotype dwarfs. Desperate to signal its inclusive virtue towards marginalized groups, Disney excluded dwarf actors from the most coveted jobs in their community. Dumbo would be proud.