honor to be nominated but you really do want to win. >> and that little problem he had with "words with friends." >> we can be playing a smart word game rather than watching reruns of nbc sit-coms all the time. what kris osborn could be more of a waste of our time. >> alec baldwin, unapologetic, and very, very funny. but i must ask you, piers, have you been properly in love? i was instructed by your staff to pose this very question. >>al an lek baldwin, piers morgan interview starts now. if you're alec baldwin, life is pretty damn good right now. the man's at the top of his game, starring in "30 rock," making movies even hosting the new york philharmonic radio show. he's so busy, apparently he doesn't have time to run for mayor of new york city. he's not afraid to say what he thinks or to leave a plane when he feels annoyed. it's time for me to have some words with a friend, alec baldwin. welcome. >> thank you, good to see you. >> now, we're going to come to that remarkable moment of you live tweeting your own ejection from an airplane a little later and also your dramatic new appearance because for all the slightly chubbier end of the cable fuss anchor market like myself you have been the standard bearer of how not to be in the gym all day and be on camera. now i see they svelte new alec baldwin in front of me. you've ruined everything. >> you know, it's interesting because earlier this year i realized that i worked out all the time and i wasn't achieving the results i wanted to. and i became aware of the fact that it's as much about what you eat and what you don't as it is about exercising. i gave up eating sugar. that was a really, really big thing for me. >> we'll come to this many transformation later. i'll have to do something about it. let's talk about the state of the union. president obama made this big speech last night and some core themes were that america remains a great country. that america remains a country thatis referred around the world still. it must go back to perhaps bakes. president obama said the following in the speech. >> during the great depression, america built the hoover dam and the golden gate bridge. after world war ii we connected our states with a system of highways. democratic and republican administrations invested in great projects that benefited everybody from the workers who built them to the businesses that still use them today. >> and that, surely, is the crux of the problem here. is that america's been. tough times before. you know, we're not in the great depression now. we're in a recession. it's not as bad as it was in the '30s. and the a that america got itself out of that hole before was to build big things, to i guess inspire people at the same time as creating jobs in its own country. >> well, i think the united states, and i've said this kind of broad banner i've waved this banner before in this kind of conversation where i say america is great in direct proportion to when we do great things and when we fought wars it was clear lo our enemy was and that they were people who needed to be stopped from their aggression and so for the. in the last several decades you know, since through the sixts and '70s and now during this period in the middle east, i'm not quite sure that the wars america was fighting were the best idea and the amount of money and the amount of american lives and the amount of innocent civilian lives abroad that were killed, especially in the middle east is troublesome to me. >> do you think that president obama has the gumption i guess to carry through what he said in his speech? do you think he's actually going to start commissioning those kind of dreamy inspirational projects which will get the whole world gaspinging in awe? >> well, i'm hopeful that he will, and that hope is based on the notion that presidents, regardless of party, have more flexibility or a perceived flexibility in their second term because there is no possibility for re-election. many people play their cards pretty close to the vest and they play a rather conciliatory game if not a kind of a zero sum game, if you will, especially when the other party is in control of the congress in their first term, and in their next term, they kind of let it rip. they really let it fly on a philosophical basis because they don't have to the worry they're running for office again. >> when we look at the republican candidates down to four now, i've done a little montage which i thought might bring a smile to your face of some of their greatest moments recently. watch this. >> marriage was based on a man and woman, has been for 3,000 years, is at the core of our civilization and something worth keeping. >> any kind of sexual activity has no place in the military. >> we can start with his idea to have a lunar colony that would mine minerals from the moon. i'm not in favor of spending that kind of money to do that. >> how many people would use heroin if it was legal. >> i bet nobody. oh, yeah, i need the government to take care of me. i don't want to use heroin so i need these laws. >> quite a good time to be a comedian, i would have thought, alec. >> well, my friends who are comedians are certainly spelling it out that way, but listen, i think the republican party is in a tough place. i want to say this in a kind of a nonpartisan way. i think the republican party is in a tough place. they seem to be mimicking the way the democrats were 30 years ago or so where the democrats were sorting out who the nominee was and they were battling in the primary period. when it was over, they took their ball and they went home. they didn't share the remaining coffers that they had from their campaign and donate it to the national party and donate it to the winning candidate. when they didn't win, they got a little petulant and went home. the republicans seem to be running that program now. i've listened to gingrich on fox say things about romney which are going to be very, very hard for him to retract if romney is the nominee, which i still assume romney will be the nominee. i mean gingrich said the phrase dishonest. he characterized romney as being a dishonest man which is the worst thing i think that either party could say about their own nominee and the other person, let alone the member of your own party. i mean if romney's the nominee, how gingrich is going to back away from that statement, i don't know how. >> but i think that's a screw interesting point, isn't it? it's also about the state of political discourse in america right now, not just between democrats and republicans. but between republicans and republicans because once this battle gets for real, once one of these guys wins the republican race and takes on barack obama, all he has to play, assume it's mitt romney. all he has to play repeatedly is newt gingrich calling him dishonest. this man who wants to be president, wants to be the president in the race is a dishonest man. i mean, as you say, i couldn't imagine a worse slur. >> what's happened now in the primary period, and you have a very, very kind of you know strident group of people seeking the nomination for the republican party now. and you're having a lot of -- you have the fox news channel amplifying all these kinds of statements on their behalf. you have a lot of anyone but obama rhetoric, and you're going to hear this all the way to the end until the convention. and but then that's going to end. and they're going to have one man presumably a man, unless there's a brokered convention where we have a woman step forward on behalf of the gop, but you're going to have one man running against obama. and then it's going to become more real and you're going to start to seep obama listing in his commercials. no point of running any advertising right now. let this the sort itself out. then you'll have an opponent and obama will begin to categorize for everyone what he's accomplished. when you look at what obama's accomplished in office, there are quite a few wonderful things that he's done. >> there are. i get a sense that a lot of americans don't fully appreciate what obama has done for america's reputation abroad, for example. >> i agree with you. listen, the war for all intents and purposes is over. the war as we know it in which a large number of american soldiers, men and women,ings were in imminent danger by the tens of thousands on a daily basis over in iraq. that's over. there are still people there. and this is a hornet's nest that we kicked and we're going to have to stay there, unfortunately, for probably and i definite period of time. but i think that obama is responsible for finally bringing the bulk of our troops home. obama is responsible for stabilizing the economy. i mean, i look at the republican party and i look at men who are the standard bearers of wall street. i mean, not that obama is someone who has abjured wall street money in his campaign but i look at these men like rom who are just -- they might as well as put his picture on monopoly money, he's so pro wall street. you look at the dow, the dow is in the high 12,000s now and they'll never give this guy credit for it. he has done some wonderful things for this country. >> there will be watching saying look at this guy, he looks razor smart tonight. he's lost weight. he's talking like a president and yet, when you were given the chance to confirm if you would run for mayor of new york city, you finally said you wouldn't. there are people like me going, but why wouldn't you alec baldwin? 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>> now the conservative needs to know that rick perry stands with them 110%. i believe we need to lower the corporate tax rate, we need fewer regulations. all 10-year-old girls should be vaccinated for hpv so they can enter into meaningful sexual relationships. >> alec baldwin playing rick perry. obviously, it seems to me you get just a little more pleasure out of tormenting them comedically than you would from doing the stuff yourself, which is a bitter disappointment to political fans of yours like myself who would love to see you run for office. >> it's interesting you say that because i was at work today. we were shooting today and everybody is in this frame of mind now as we're coming towards the end of -- we have half the season to go and then we have presumably some kind of season next year which everybody thinks might be our last. we were all saying we're never going to have it this good again. i enjoy the opportunity to say that. that i will never ever in my life ever no matter what happens, never have a job as good as the job i have now. that's a part of what makes me think about running for office or not running for office. i have friends of mine, you know people in the political world and you know more of them and more intimately than i ever will by virtue of your many positions you've had in the media. the ones i know, very prominent people who i won't name but some of them have held very high elective office. nearly all of them try to dissuade meet from running from office. they say don't do it, you can have just as much influence in certain areas from your vantage point to you and so for the. i believe what i've been doing for the last 25 years, i've been heavily involved periodically, i mean intermittently because of my career with campaign finance reform and anti-nuclear power in this country and several different issues. most of them environmentally linked. and i don't have a government position. i don't have an office. i don't have a budget. i have to do all of this on my own and raise money privately from people to do that. it's been a dream of mine to hold office so i would have some of the power to do some of the things and try to create some of the reforms that i've wanted to do. >> from the way you're talking it seems to me this is not something you've completely ruled out. you've not decided to go for new york mayor at the moment. could that change in the future? >> that's a possibility. that's a possibility. the only reason i say that is because right now, the timetable i'm on workwise, careerwise, contracts i've signed, and obligations i have would make running for mayor, for example, very, very difficult. i mean, it isn't something i could do, possibly. i see people running for mayor. to be very plain speak. there are people who are running for mayor who i'm overwhelmingly indifferent about most of them. there's a couple if they made certain changes they'd be okay and there are certain people running for mayor i'm appalled that they're running for mayor and appalled they've raised so much money and pauled they're taken seriously considering some of their past actions and records. >> when you see arnold schwarzenegger become become governor of california, you must say i could do at least a job an as that. >> you'd be reading my mind if you said that. i would agree with you there. yeah, i would agree with you. but california, it's a very unusual place where they have that kind of very kind of hysterical referendum procedure and they ousted davis and you know, the whole pathing that led, if you know the story, of issa and the way that they deposed gray davis, that path and how it opened up the door for schwarzenegger schwarzenegger was a very unusual set of circumstances. but for me, i do want to run for office one day, but what it would be and when and how is still something that i'm trying to think very seriously about because a, i'm not done doing what i'm doing now. i've got at least a couple more years of this kind of work i want to do on the drawing board. and b, in political -- in the political world, two years is an eternity. i mean, whoever thought in the new york political world that spitzer would resign? whoever thought that hillary would run for the senate? whoever thought that hillary would leave the senate to become the secretary of state of the obama administration, obama who had vanquished her in the primary? there's so many different things that happened in the political world over the course of two years, that in that amount of time, maybe the not too distant future i'll think is there an opportunity for me. in new york, we have safe democratic seats around the horn so to speak. it's the governor and the ag and the two the senate seats. so what i would run for and when would be something i'd have to give a lot of thought to. but in the meantime, i have a job i love. >> and a job we love you doing. so there's no hurry on this. when you look at somebody like newt gingrich and indeed arnold schwarzenegger and you see personal stuff being used to hammer them into the ground, would you be concerned about that? you ran for public office, given the very well-known trevails you've had in the past? >> i would be concerned about that, i would be, sure. i would be very concerned, not so much for myself because i've developed, for example, i mean, to me the most kind of handy example of that is this phone message i left for my daughter. and that's been thrown at me by political opposition and people who want to do that kind of diminishing of your political opinion by bringing in these other things. i mean my relationship with my daughter is normal. i mean, by that, i mean i'm a father who has a 16-year-old daughter, and i communicate with my daughter as often and as effectively as any 53-year-old man can with a 16-year-old daughter. i'm trying to be funny here. i worship my daughter. >> you tweet. i read your tweets. >> i worship my daughter. we get along fine. and that situation was something which a certain group of people wanted to, you know, create a very vet sensational news story there. and but the truth of the matter is is that i have two things. one is that i have worked in this kind of silly and childish and purile world of comedy and saturday night live" and all of it's been very, very funny but the day you run for office you have to kind of draw a line and say everything i was doing back then was for the most part for entertainment value. i'm on the record with some very, very firm and very, very what i think are well thought out political opinions that i have, but a lot of what i've done has been kind of nonsense for entertainment purposes. >> has part of you always -- and be honest here. has part of you always harbored the possibility that you could one day run for the presidency? >> well, i think that that's something i used to think about a long time ago. it would be a little late in the game i think for me to set my ship on a course that would lead to that ultimately. that's what i wanted to do my whole life, and quite frankly, when i got into the business i'm in now, it was a very on a personal level. this is a very personal thing and i've said this on a couple of occasions. it was a job that i got and i wasn't even quite sure that this is what i wanted to do. i still had this hangover of wanting to do something else in public policy or to go get my graduate degree or to go to law school. there was a whole menu of things i was contemplating. but then i got a job in this business and i started to work and i got the sense that i was on a bit of a roll, that i would always have work and i was, i had no shortage of opportunities and i really did it to for the money. i did it to support my family. i'm not complaining. i'm very happy with the way it's gone. in this business, you know, what's funny, you do this for a living and you talk to people all the time. i have my radio show "here's the thing," it's called on wnyc. you see how when you get in this zone with someone that you really like and you really are engaged and fascinated with, you could talk to them for two or three hours. you and i, we need to order some sushi and sit here and have dinner together. i wish you were here, we