The left has spent years telling Americans they should be ashamed of their country.
Now one of their own got caught on camera unable to say three simple words.
And what she said instead about American pride will leave you shaking your head.
Eighty-Two Seconds to Not Answer a Yes-or-No Question
Briahna Joy Gray co-hosts the *Bad Faith* podcast and makes no secret of her contempt for President Donald Trump. She went on Piers Morgan’s *Uncensored* show recently, presumably ready to debate. What she wasn’t ready for was the most basic question a person can be asked about the country they live in.
“Are you proud to be an American right now?”
Instead of answering, Gray launched into a seemingly never-ending 82-second response that touched on the Civil War, the 14th Amendment, and part of her childhood spent growing up in Saudi Arabia and Kenya. Morgan, to his credit, waited her out.
“I think that it would be a mistake to stop endeavoring to make the country better and to live up to the promise of its ideals,” Gray said, before Morgan jumped in to get an answer to his initial question.
“That’s a very good answer, but I’ve noticed you haven’t actually answered the question,” Morgan said.
So he asked again.
“You know, it’s really hard, Piers, right now when our country’s synonymous with executing a genocide that has killed hundreds of thousands of people on the other side of the world,” Gray said. She was referring to the United States and Israel being allies; Gray has accused Israel of committing a “genocide” in Gaza following the October 2023 Hamas terror attacks.
Still no straight answer. Morgan pressed on.
“Briahna, were you proud to be an American under Barack Obama?” “Not in particular,” Gray said after chuckling. “Barack Obama had deep flaws and failings, including executing a drone war–” “So which president were you proud to be an American under?” Morgan asked.
She said her pride in the country “has less to do with our political leadership” and more to do with everyday Americans. Morgan wasn’t buying it.
Morgan kept pressing her to answer what time in her life she was proud to be an American. “Every single day of my life there are moments I’m proud to be an American–” Things kept going a little bit longer, with Gray saying only a “loyal slave” would have pride in America without having any reservations.
A loyal slave. That’s what she called Americans who love their country without asterisks attached.
The Poll That Makes This So Much Worse for the Left
Gray joined Morgan’s show just a few days after a Marist poll found less than half of Democrats are proud to be American. That timing is not incidental. It’s a window into where the Democrat Party’s base actually sits heading into America’s 250th anniversary year.
In the NPR/PBS News/Marist poll, 45 percent of Democrat respondents said they are generally “very proud” or “proud” of being American. Fifty-five percent of Democrats in the poll said they are generally “not too proud” or “not proud at all.”
In contrast, 93 percent of Republican respondents said they are generally “very proud” or “proud” of being American. Only 7 percent of GOP respondents said they are generally “not too proud” or “not proud at all.”
That gap is not a rounding error. It’s a chasm.
Marist isn’t the only poll showing Republicans are far more likely to be proud Americans. A 2025 Gallup poll had the divide at 92-36, with Democrats crashing down from 62 percent proud citizens the year before when Joe Biden was in the White House.
Think about that for a second. Democrat pride in America dropped more than 25 points the moment their guy lost the election. Republicans were proud when Trump was winning and proud when he wasn’t. For a lot of Democrats, it turns out the country was only worth loving when they were running it.
Gray’s performance on Morgan’s show wasn’t some outlier. It’s the logical end point of what the left has been building toward for years — a political movement so soaked in grievance that its members genuinely can’t bring themselves to say they love the country they live in, without immediately burying that admission under a pile of qualifications, historical grievances, and foreign policy lectures.
She spent a minute and a half trying to explain why the question itself was unfair. She invoked Gaza. She invoked the Civil War. She invoked her childhood in Kenya. And when Morgan finally cornered her into something resembling an answer, she reached for the most incendiary comparison she could find — suggesting that uncomplicated love of country is something only a slave would feel.
That’s not a slip of the tongue. That’s a worldview.
The country Gray lives in, works in, and podcasts from has given her a platform, an audience, and the freedom to say whatever she wants about it on international television. The founding documents she treated as historical footnotes are the same ones that protect her right to spend 82 seconds dodging a question about whether she’s grateful for any of it.
And none of that seemed to register as worth mentioning.
The Marist poll found that when asked to provide a single word or phrase that captures what best defines what it means to be an American, a plurality of Americans offered “freedom/liberty.” Not a policy position. Not a grievance list. Just freedom. That’s what most people think of when they think of this country.
But Gray and the left-wing media world she inhabits have spent so long marinating in the idea that America is defined by its worst moments that a simple question about pride reads to them as a trap. It’s not a trap. It’s the question every naturalized citizen answers on the day they take the oath. It’s the question every soldier answers when they sign up. It’s the question every kid answers when they learn to put their hand over their heart.
Briahna Joy Gray had 82 seconds and couldn’t get there.
That tells you everything.
Sources: Mediaite; NPR/PBS News/Marist Poll, conducted June 8-11; The Hill; Marist Institute for Public Opinion