Piers Morgan Slams 'Hypocrite' Stephen Colbert for His 'Pathetically Disingenuous' Apology to Kate Middleton

Piers Morgan slammed Stephen Colbert for fueling rumors that Prince William had been cheating on Kate Middleton with their friend Rose Hanbury during his March 12 monologue.

On the March 25 episode of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, the talk show host, 59, attempted to make amends with the royal family after Kate's shocking cancer diagnosis.

“You know, folks, I don’t know if you have noticed, but we do a lot of shows and I tell a lot of jokes, and I tell jokes about a lot of different things, mostly what everybody’s talking about," Colbert began. "And for the last six weeks to two months, everybody has been talking about the mystery of Kate Middleton’s disappearance from public life. And two weeks ago, we did some jokes about that mystery and all of the reporting about that. And when I made those jokes, that upset some people and — even before her diagnosis was revealed, and I can understand that. I mean, a lot of my jokes have upset people in the past. And I’m sure some of my jokes will upset people in the future. But there is a standard that I try to hold myself to. And that is, I do not make light of somebody else’s tragedy."

He continued, "Now, I don’t know whether her prognosis is a tragic one, she is the future Queen of England and I assume she’s going to be be getting the best possible medical care, but regardless of what it is, I know and I’m sure many of you, far too many of us know that any cancer diagnosis of any kind is harrowing for the patient and for their family. And... though I’m sure they don’t need it from me, I and everyone here at The Late Show would like to extend our well-wishes and heartfelt hope that her recovery is swift and thorough."

But Morgan, 58, wasn't pleased with the statement. "Awww … how thoughtful, how touching, how compassionate!" Morgan wrote in a column for the New York Post. "And yet in reality, how pathetically disingenuous. Colbert didn’t just crack 'some jokes' about Kate Middleton’s disappearance. He chose to deliberately promote an unsubstantiated piece of untrue tittle-tattle gossip about her husband, Prince William, having an affair with one of her best friends, Rose Hanbury, the Marchioness of Cholmondeley. We know it’s a lie because lawyers for Hanbury promptly issued a statement saying: 'We have written on our client’s behalf to CBS and various other reputable media organizations to confirm that the allegation is false.' But putting aside the fact that the gossip was untrue, why the h--- was Colbert choosing that moment to repeat it anyway?"

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"His pitiful excuse for a non-apology last night, in which he didn’t say sorry, suggested that it was only once Kate’s illness turned out to be cancer that his 'jokes' became something he should feel bad about," he continued in his rant. "Frankly, I find that claim rather hard to believe given that when I watched his taunting, vile monologue on March 12, it looked to me like he was deliberately pouring gasoline onto the fire of Kate’s misery as she battled a serious health condition. Yet despite widespread fury, he refuses to even apologize for it. What I find so odd about all this is that he knows better than anyone what it’s like for a family to endure pain, after losing his father and two of his brothers in a plane crash when he was just 10 years old. That horrendous incident doubtless guides his determination to 'influence public opinion for the better' and to 'not make light of somebody else’s tragedy.' Yet there he was, knowing a mother of three young children had a serious health issue, falsely informing the world that her husband cheated on her with one of her friends. It’s hard to imagine a more disgusting failure to live up to a self-imposed standard."