Piers Morgan shut down former US vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin during a heated clash about the 2020 US election result on Tuesday’s Good Morning Britain.

The former Alaskan governor was invited onto GMB on the same day that Trump’s second impeachment trial is set to begin, and was pressed for her views on the result of the election.

After Palin – a staunch defender of Trump – suggested there had been “shenanigans” with the vote, Piers quickly told her: “The vote wasn’t stolen, was it, Sarah Palin? Let’s be honest. Let’s be clear.

“The election was won… fair and square by a thumping win by Joe Biden. Do you accept that?”

Palin initially tried to skirt around the question, with a frustrated Piers telling the US politician: “Sarah you can’t filibuster us. Let’s go back to the question.”

Eventually, Palin responded: “Well, evidently Biden did [win the election] because he is sworn in as our president, but no one will convince me nor anyone else with common sense and a sense of justice… that there were not shenanigans going on.

“How many polling areas had to produce their voter rolls and they showed that there were more votes than there were voters in certain districts? Is that not a problem right there? What about all the dead people who voted?” 

Piers quickly shot down these claims, telling her there was no election fraud and that Palin sounded “bonkers”.

“I say this with utmost respect to you, you’re sounding totally bonkers,” he insisted.

“A part of the problem with the Republican Party is that people like you, high members of the Republican Party, are still perpetuating this utter load of nonsense that somehow there was fraud and that stopped Trump winning. Trump got hammered in this election.”

“You guys sound bonkers to tell you the truth because you won’t listen to your guest who is letting you know where some voter fraud may manifest,” Palin then responded.

At the end of the segment – which largely consisted of the hosts and guest talking over one another – Piers told Palin that while he usually enjoys having her on GMB, she was “talking nonsense” with regard to the election.

Piers previously counted the former president among his friends, after meeting him on the set of Celebrity Apprentice USA in 2008.

After staying in touch with Trump, Piers showed him support throughout most of his presidency, but later called him out due to his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and the deadly riots at the US Capitol earlier this month.

Piers eventually publicly ended his friendship with Trump after the US Capitol riots last month, saying at the time: “I can’t remain friends with someone who says he ‘loves’ a bunch of violent Nazi sympathisers and white supremacists who’ve just launched a deadly attack on the epicentre of US democracy itself and thinks they’re special people.”

During a subsequent appearance on Gabby Logan’s The Mid.Point podcast, Piers admitted: “Do I regret now, you know, being defensive of Trump when others were hammering him? Yeah. Because I think that he has shown a side to him in the last year that I didn’t see in the long time I’d known him.

“All the positives I’d found with Trump have been completely consumed and overtaken by his appalling leadership in the last year. And to the extent where, the way he incited that mob to do what they did, that to me crossed a line where I can’t be his friend anymore. I just can’t.

“There were white supremacists and people wearing Auschwitz shirts that he called people that were ‘special people – I love you.’ Well, sorry, then we’re done.”

Good Morning Britain airs every weekday from 6am on ITV.