time. what can be more of a preposterous waste of our time than that. alec baldwin, outspoken, unapologetic, and very, very funny. >> but i must ask you, piers, have you ever been properly in love. i was instructed by your staff to pose this very question. >> alec baldwin, piers morgan interview starts now. if you're alec baldwin, than life is pretty damned good right now. the man's at the top of his game, starring in "30 rock," making movies, have been hosting the new york philharmonics radio show. he's so busy, he apparently doesn't have time to run for mayor of new york city. he's also a man who's never afraid to say what he thinks or to leave a plane when he feels he's being annoyed. it's time for me to have some words with a friend, alec baldwin. alec, 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 news anchor market like myself, you have been the standard-bearer of how not to live in the gym all day and be on camera. now i see this svelte new alec baldwin in front of me. you've ruined everything. >> well, you know, it's interesting, because earlier this year, i realized that i worked out all the time and i wasn't achieving 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 eat as it is about exercising. so i gave up eating sugar and that was a really, really big thing for me. >> well, we're going to come to this extraordinary transformation a little later, that's unsettling for me, because i will now try to have to do something about it. but let's talk about the state of the union. president obama made this big speech last night, and some core things, really, that came out of this were that america remains a great country. that america remains a country that is revered around the world still, it can still be strong, but it must go back, perhaps to basics, to manufacturing things. president obama said the following in the speech. >> during the great depression, american build 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, prosecute workers who built them to the businesses that still use them today. >> alec, that, surely, is the crux of the problem here, isn't it? america has been in 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 way 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 that the united states, and i've said this kind of broad banner -- i've waved that 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 who our enemy was and that they were people who needed to be stopped from their aggression and so forth. in the last several decades, through the '60s and '70s, and now during this period in the middle east, i'm not quite sure that the wars that america were fighting were the best idea in 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 troubling to me. >> do you think president obama has the gumption, i guess, to carry through what he said in this speech. do you think he's going to start commissioning those kind of dreamy, inspirational projects that will get the whole world gasping 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 then in their next term, they kind of let it rip, they let it fly on a philosophical basis, because they don't have to worry about running for office again. >> when we look at the republican candidates, down to four, i did a little montage that i thought might bring a smile to your face of some of their greatest moments. >> the sacrament of marriage is based on a man and a woman, is at the core of our civilization, and is worth protecting and upholding. >> any type of sexual activity has no place in the military. >> we can start with his idea to have a lunar colony that would mine memories from the moon. i'm not in favor of spending that kind of money to do that. >> how many people here would use haeroin if it was legal. 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 think, 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 kind of a nonpartisan way. i think the the republican party is in a tough place. they seem to be mimicking the way the democrats were 30 years ago or so, when 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 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 they went home. the republicans seem to be running that program now. i've listeninged to gingrich on fox to say things about romney that are going to be very, very hard for gingrich to retract if romney is the nominee, which i still assume that romney will be the nominee. gingrich said the phrase "dishonest." he characterized romney as being a dishonest man, which is the worst thing that either party can say about their own nominee and the other person, but let alone a member of your own party. if romney is the nominee, how gingrich is going to back away from that statement, i don't know how. >> i think that's a very interesting point, isn't it? and 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 the 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 beat the president in the race is a dishonest man. as you say, i couldn't imagine a worse slur. >> well, what's happened now in the primary period, and you have a very, very kind of a strident group of people seeking the nomination for the republican party now, and 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 until the convention. but then that's going to end, and then you'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 see obama listing in his commercials. at no point obama really running any advertising. now, let this sort itself out. and then you're going to have an opponent, and obama will begin to categorize for everyone what he's accomplished. and when you look at what obama's accomplished in office, there are quite a few wonderful things that he's done. >> yeah, 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. >> well, 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, 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 hornets next that we kicked and we'll have to stay there, unfortunately, for probably an indefinite 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 look at the republican party and i look at men who are the standard-bearers of wall street. not that obama is someone who is, you know, abjured wall street money in his campaign, but i look at these men like romney who are just -- they might as well put romney's picture on monopoly money, he's so pro-wall street. and you look at the dow, the dow is in the high 12,000s now, and they'll never give this the guy credit for it. i think obama has done some wonderful things for this country. >> there'll be people watching this, alec, saying, look at this guy, he looks razor smart tonight, he's lost a bit of weight, and he's talking like a president. yet when you were given the chance to confirm if you would run for new york city, you finally said you wouldn't. and there are people like me going, well, why wouldn't you, alec baldwin? let's take a break and find out the answer. 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[ding] [fans whirring] announcer: chill raw and prepared foods promptly. one in 6 americans will get sick from food poisoning this year. check your steps at foodsafety.gov. will be giving away passafree copies of the alcoholism & addiction cure. to get yours, go to ssagesmalibubook.com. the question is, can you speak for ten seconds without alienating your base? >> now the conservative base needs to know that rick perry stands with them 110%. i believe we need to lower the corporate tax rate, i believe we need fewer regulations, i believe all 10-year-old girls should be vaccinated for hpv so they can enter into meaningful sexual relationships. >> alec baldwin playing texas governor rick perry on "saturday night live." i mean, obviously, it seems to me, you get just a little more pleasure out of tormenting them comedically from actually doing this stuff yourself, alec, which is a bitter disappointment to political fans of yours, like myself, which 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 -- you know, the end -- we have a half of this season to go, and then we have, presumably, some kind of a season next year, which everyone thinks might be our last. and we were all saying how we're never going to have it this good again. and i really enjoy the opportunity to say that, that i will never, ever in my life, ever, no matter what happens, i'll never have a job as good as the job that i have now. and that's a part of what makes me think about running for office or not running for office. i have friends of mine, i mean, you know people in the political world, and you know more of them and more intimately than i ever will, by virtue of the many positions you've had in the media. and the ones i know, very prominent people i won't name, but some of them have held very high elective office, and nearly all of them try to dissuade me from running for office. they say, done do it, don't do it. you can have just as much influence in certain areas from your vantage point now and so forth. but i believe, you know, 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. and 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. >> but the way you're talking, it seems to me, this is not something you've completely ruled out. i mean, you've not decided to go for new york mayor at the moment, but could that change in the future? >> that's a possibility. the only reason i say that is because right now, the timetable i'm on work wise, career wise, contracts i've signed, and obligations i have would make running for mayor, for example, very, very difficult. i mean, is it something i could do? possibly. and i see people running for mayor. to be very plain speaking, there are people who are running for mayor who i'm overwhelmingly indifferent about, most of them. there's a couple of them i think, if they made certain changes, they'd be okay. and there are certain people who are running for mayor that i'm appall eed that they're running for mayor, and i'm appalled they're raising so much money and appalled by some of their past actions. >> when you see someone like arnold schwarzenegger become governor of california, you must think to yourself, i could be at least as good a job as that. >> you would be reading my mind if you said that, yeah. i agree with that. but california, that's a very unusual place, where they have kind of a hysterical referendum procedure where they ousted davis. you know, the whole path that led, if you know the story, issa and the way that they deposed gray davis, that path and how it opened up the door for schwarzenegger was a very unusual and very anomalous set of circumstances. but, you know, 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 the political world, two years is an eternity. i mean, whoever thought in the new york political world that spitzer would resign? who ever thought that hillary would run for the senate? who ever 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 survey that again and think about, is there an opportunity for me? because in new york, for example, where i live, with we have safe democratic seats around the horn, so to speak. it's the governor and the ag and the two 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. >> well, a job that we love you doing. so there's no hurry on this. but 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, if you ran for public office, given the very well-known travails you've had in the past? >> i would be concerned about that. i would be. not so much for myself, because i've developed -- i mean, for x example, the most handy example is this phone message i left for my daughter. 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. my relationship with my daughter is normal. 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 his 16-year-old daughter. i mean, i'm trying to be funny here. but i worship my daughter. >> you tweet her. >> i worship my daughter. we get along fine. and that situation was something which a certain group of people, you know, wanted to, you know, create a very, very sensational news story there. but the truth of the matter is that i have two things. one is that i have worked in this kind of silly and childish 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 draw a line, and say, everything i was doing back there was, for the most part, for entertainment value. i'm on the record with some very, very firm, and 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 harbored -- 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 that i used to think about a long, long time ago. it would be a little late in the game for me, i think, to set my ship on a course that would lead to that ultimately. i mean, it's something -- 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 had no shortage of opportunities. and i really did it to -- for the money. i did it to support my money. but i'm not complaining. i'm very happy with the way it's gone. in this business -- you know, it's funny. you do this for a living, and you talk to people all the full-titime. i have my radio show, "here's the thing," and you see how you get in this zone with someone you really like and you are really engaged with and fascinated with, you could talk to them for two or three hours. you and i, we need to order some sushi and have dinner together. i wish you were here having dinner. it has become such a -- in this business, the real thrill for me, the real joy, the thing that