Controversial opinions are nothing new on Piers Morgan’s Uncensored. Recently, however, one comment about the Iranian conflict drew particularly strong reactions. During the discussion, Kansas MAGA lobbyist Matt Schlapp remarked Iranian schoolgirls that many viewers found especially divisive. Schlapp suggested that the girls would be better off dead than living while being forced to wear a burqa.
Before Schlapp’s outrageous statement, Journalist Peter Beinart, who was one of Morgan’s guests, was arguing that even if the missiles that hit the school were Iranian, the girls would still be alive if Israel and the USA hadn’t attacked Iran in the first place. Notably, the missile that killed 175 people, where the majority were innocent girls, was almost certainly American. Indeed, according to an analyst speaking with The New York Times, it was a U.S. strike that “most likely hit Iranian school.”
After Beinart’s statement, Schlapp argued that those Iranians girls are better off dead than living and wearing a burqa. “They’d be alive in a burqa,” he said. “It’s hypocritical to say that these attacks harmed women and children when those women and children, the young girls that you reference, would be…live a life in a barbaric, unequal society behind a burqa, with no ability to make career choices,” Schlapp later said, according to The Independent.
This outrageous statement made another guest ask, “So just kill them?” This was when Schlapp said, “No, that’s not what I’m saying either.” The same guest argued that this was exactly what he said. There is no other explanation for his statement. In his eyes, the Iranian girls are better off dead than still living in Iran. Who gave him the right to decide that?
Reaction to the Kansas MAGA Lobbyist’s Statement
Understandably, the comment drew outrage online. “Yeah that guy is a monster,” one person wrote. Another said, “This is how much people are being dehumanized.” The same person argued, “He said that, yes. Pure evil. Also, they dont wear burqas in Iran. Iran happens to have very educated women as well.”
Someone else wrote, “Yea, its just scarf on the hair. Also, moral policing is in some religious state. At difficult times they likely loosen up the morality police. You can check out vlogs, it aint in most places. Even i as a dude, head to carry a scarf because the climate is hot over der.” One Redditor also wrote, “He’d rather other people die than have to see a burqa.”
In the end, Schlapp’s comments sparked a wider conversation about how easily human lives can become abstract talking points during heated political debates. Reducing the deaths of young girls to a hypothetical argument about culture or clothing struck many viewers as deeply disturbing, especially when the discussion centered on a real tragedy that claimed the lives of innocent people.
For critics, the backlash online reflected frustration with rhetoric that appears to dismiss human suffering in favor of ideological points. Whether people agreed with Beinart’s argument or not, many felt that suggesting victims of a deadly strike were somehow “better off” dead crossed a line that should never be crossed in any serious discussion about war and its consequences.
As the clip continues to circulate online, it has become another example of how polarizing debates on international conflict can quickly escalate, particularly when commentators make statements that many see as dehumanizing those caught in the middle of the violence.
