Piers Morgan is driven by a near-insatiable appetite for attention

Slate

"The requisite comparisons to Donald Trump are easy to make, not least because Morgan has enjoyed claiming friendship with Trump since winning Celebrity Apprentice," Imogen West-Knights says of Morgan, who made in headlines in the U.S. for losing it over Meghan Markle on Good Morning Britain, leading to his resignation. "This claim has looked a little weaker, however, since Morgan conducted a sycophantic interview with the former U.S. president, in which Trump demonstrated that he didn’t know how to pronounce Morgan’s name. Like Trump, Morgan is a conservative-leaning populist who tweets compulsively and enjoys name-dropping his celebrity friends and hearing the sound of his own voice. But Morgan is a more difficult man to pin down because he’s so inconsistent in his political maneuvers. He was one of few newspaper editors in the U.K. to vocally oppose the war in Iraq. He campaigned for gun control on CNN. He’s anti-Brexit. He called conservative Prime Minister David Cameron a 'soulless weasel,' which he is. Morgan also made himself surprisingly popular with progressives over the last year in his no-holds-barred confrontations with conservative government ministers over their handling of the coronavirus. What does Piers Morgan really believe? It’s hard to say. And because he can claim to be playing a character, he doesn’t have to say either.... Does he care about gun control? Probably. Is he angry about Brexit? Could be. But it all seems secondary to his need to be in the spotlight. He’s a chameleon, and he can be charming and self-effacing when that serves him well. His actions are not governed by a political ideology or directed by a personal moral compass. Instead, he has a keen eye for the angle that will generate the most noise, and that seems to be what he is ultimately driven by: a near-insatiable appetite for attention, of any kind. His desire to be thought of well is second only to his desire to be thought of at all. This is why Meghan Markle has made him so furious—because she had the audacity to stop caring about him. Morgan and Markle went for one drink in 2016 when she was in London for the Wimbledon tennis tournament, after which, in Morgan’s own words, she 'ditched' him 'like a sack of spuds.' He has tweeted about her voraciously since, working himself up into rages on his show about her and Prince Harry being 'grasping, selfish, scheming Kardashian-wannabes.' And so, when GMB’s Beresford called Morgan out on his obsession with Meghan and remarked on her lack of interest in him, it hit him differently than being called arrogant or irritating—those are qualities he cultivates. This time, his ego was bruised."

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• Piers Morgan calls himself "the latest 'victim' of cancel culture that is permeating our country every minute, of every hour, of everyday": “Though of course, I consider myself to be neither a victim, nor actually cancelled," he wrote in a lengthy post on Friday, adding: "And now I’ve lost my job at Good Morning Britain because I chose not to apologize for disbelieving Meghan Markle’s claims in her interview with Oprah Winfrey."
• How Suits fan Piers Morgan befriended Meghan Markle -- and became her biggest hater
• Despite quitting ITV's Good Morning Britain, he'll still remain with the British network
• So You Think You Can Dance's Nigel Lythgoe urges his fans to "Save Piers Morgan" by signing a petition