Rob Reiner | Club Random with Bill Maher

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What would you say to a white person?

What do you mean?

Don't order that pumpkin spice latte.

Get out of here.

Whatever that thing is.

We're talking about a man running for president that has that sensibility.

It's just

disgusting.

I said my piece.

I hear somebody.

Rob, I hear a voice that I recognize.

Your wife's already mad at me.

What, for what?

She said, you've got a great place.

I've never been invited here.

And which has got to, I've been to your house.

Yeah.

I just don't have, you know, when you're a bachelor, you don't really like have your house.

I know, I know.

You say it was such a bad thing.

Well, I used to be.

I know.

At one point in my life, never had a party when I was, yeah, never did that kind of party.

Well, not that kind of party.

No.

When you're single, you tend to pall around with single people.

And when you're married, you have couples in a relationship.

You have couples.

Exactly.

Exactly.

And when you have children, you gravitate towards couples that have children.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, I'm so glad you're wearing the spinal tuff.

Well,

it's

a shameless promotion.

I've had half a chubby ever since I've heard that this is coming out.

I mean, I am one of a legion of people who have been waiting for years for a spinal tuff.

You've been waiting 41 years.

I understand.

Nobody's ever done a sequel 41 years after the first one.

It's great that they're all still here.

Yes.

It's a plus.

It's a plus.

Although

we have a bit in the second one, which I hope you'll see at some point.

First day.

Yeah, and there's a bit where the guy who's a promotion guy says to one of them,

listen, it will help your legacy if at least one of you were to die during the concert.

Because the, you know, that.

That's so true.

Yeah.

I mean, it's the best career move anybody ever made.

Right.

And yeah, and then, of course, they say, well, Chris, you know, as Nigel says, well, I don't want to die.

And then McKean, as

David says, will you settle for a coma?

And he says, ooh, well, that's very good thinking

outside the literal box, actually.

Oh, that's fun.

So what are you drinking here?

That's tequila.

Yeah.

This is sparkling water.

Yeah.

And is that your drink of choice?

Yes.

I mean, I only, and this is Jing, which makes the sparkling water into diet soda without chemicals.

Really?

Yeah.

I'm very into health.

And that's why I know that.

No, I know who you are.

I know who you are.

You look very spelt.

Well, I'm trying.

You know, I'm getting older and I don't know.

It's a smart thing.

I'm trying.

It's a smart thing.

But, you know, you lost the weight, but your face looks great.

Some people who are heavy, they lose the weight and they look bad.

I have a fat face.

It's good.

It didn't happen to you.

You just look healthy.

The other thing a fat face does is it keeps the wrinkles.

You know, the fatness takes the wrinkles away.

It's not all bad being a fat face.

No, no.

But can I ask you an inside the...

You can ask me anything about a baseball question.

Sure.

What percentage, I mean, you just told me a really hysterical scene from the movie.

Was that written?

Was that all in the script?

Is that part?

No script.

No script.

No, just no script.

All that.

Both movies, the first one and this one, all the dialogue is improvised.

Now, we did have a, you know, we had an outline and we knew what we were going to, you know, where the tour was going to take.

We have a basic outline, but

every bit of dialogue is in, is improvised.

And this is a good little story.

So when we did the first one, we put a billboard, you know, you know, a chalkboard or whatever.

And if you had an idea for a scene, you put a card up.

Harry, Harry Shearer, who plays Derek, he was dating a woman who worked at ABC ABC News at the time.

And do you remember Roger Grimsby?

Do I remember him?

Of course.

Okay.

Because I grew up local New York.

Yeah.

He was

Roger Grimsby, Hear Now the News.

Okay.

That was his catchphrase.

That's right.

Hear Now the News.

And so

I don't know how he got a hold of him, but he had a stack of promotional cards that had a picture.

of Roger Grimsby on the front, and the back was empty.

So if we ever came up with an idea that we thought, hmm, this could be a good, interesting idea for a scene, we'd say to each other, does this warrant a Grimsby?

In other words, should we put it up on the board?

And so, and the second time we did it, the second movie, McKean comes in with a sack of Grimsby.

So that's the way we do it.

That is a name that if it wasn't his real name, someone would have had to invent it.

Just perfect.

But that's so interesting.

The way you just described.

making the movie, no dialogue is written in the script.

You just have this outline.

Right.

You invented that, apparently.

That's not, I mean, I think people think Curb Your Enthusiasm was the show that started that.

Apparently, this,

you know, you're talking about 20 years before.

Yeah, yeah.

This is in 1984.

I mean, that's your method.

Yeah, and what's interesting is people have asked me over the years, they say, you know, it's your first film.

Why would you do, you know, you make a film that has no script?

I mean, this is no.

And I said, yeah, that made more sense to me than the other way because,

you know, I mean, if you, if you,

what Chris Guess used to call schnadling, when you schnadle with somebody, you can either do it or you can't do it.

And so you get people who can do it.

It's like jazz musicians.

It would not make sense if film wasn't cheap.

I've been on sets before back in the million years ago when I did acting.

And I remember more than one director, you know, should we do another take?

Film's cheap.

And this is even cheaper.

Right.

Because, well, for film, you got 10 minutes.

This, you got an hour

in a little chip.

If you don't get it the first five times, do it five times more.

Yeah, yeah.

So it's just, and then you just pick the best.

Yeah.

You have

the best of both worlds.

You have the spontaneity.

Yes.

What's interesting about it, and this I learned in the first one, is.

We shot each scene maybe two or three times.

And Chris Guest, who's brilliant,

he's in the moment and he never remembers what he did before.

So it's new every time.

So you have to figure out how do I stitch all this together to make it make sense.

And what you discover is that you cut the audio, not so much the video, not so much you cutting to make sure that there's no mismatches.

If the audio tracks and they sound like they're, you know, talking in some kind of rhythmic thing that makes sense, the audience will forgive all of the visual mismatches.

And that's what we discovered.

So you're essentially writing with the pieces of film.

Isn't that every film to a degree?

Well, made in the editing room.

Well, some of them are, some aren't, but usually the editor has a script, you know, has a story, and there's this scene that goes into this scene, goes into this scene.

We would move scenes around.

You don't know, you know, take, or there's a whole element, oh, that doesn't work, get that out of there, you know.

Right.

But I'm saying, you know, if you shoot, I mean, how many hours of footage did you shoot to make

a movie that runs for what, an hour or two?

An hour.

Actually, they both run 83 minutes.

An hour, 23 minutes.

I mean, you're just, you're doing the audience such as you're squeezing out all the stuff that isn't awesome.

That's right.

And I would always say, have in your mind you're sculpting an elephant, whatever.

Right.

Then anything that doesn't look like an elephant, it goes, even if you love it, even if it's a funny bit, but it doesn't attach itself,

you get rid of it.

But you do realize that even that idea, which people of our generation take for granted, that is not the way the younger generation necessarily looks at entertainment.

And the proof of that is so much of what they watch.

on TikTok and so forth, YouTube, is just people doing ordinary things.

And I've said to younger people, like, how could this be more interesting to you?

Everything is available.

You could watch any movie, you could watch any TV show,

shows with great acting, great writing, and that's not what they want.

Yeah, no,

they watch these, what they call, it's supposed to be reality, but in a weird way, it's not.

Because they know they're putting themselves on TikTok.

They know they're doing something on Instagram, and they're doing something to perform to do that.

Well, but I mean, there was the stage of a reality show, which is different than what we're talking about

with scripting and good writing and acting.

That at least was entertaining because it was never, of course, really a, you know, they were put up to it.

You're going to have a fight.

Yeah, yeah.

And then they do.

Yes, it's not real.

But this is a step removed from that.

This is like watching people take their laundry out.

Yes, yes.

And here's what's in the world.

Well, what is your analysis of that?

Okay, well, here's the thing.

I don't know if you ever saw this documentary.

It was years years ago.

It was called We Live in Public.

Did you ever see it?

It was about the guy who created MySpace, which was the precursor to, you know, Facebook.

And he says at the beginning of the documentary, he says,

Marshall McLuhan had it wrong.

Marshall McLuhan said, Everybody wants their 15 minutes of fame.

No, that was Andy Warhol.

Marshall McLuhan

is the way.

Marshall

said TV is a cool medium.

A cool medium.

Cool medium.

Right.

Warhol says,

right, you're right.

You're right.

You're right.

You're right.

Warhol says everybody wants their 15 minutes of fame.

No, he said they'll get it.

He said, in the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.

Right.

So here's the thing.

It's not that they want 15 minutes of fame.

They want 15 minutes of fame every day.

It's not, you know what I mean?

It's not like, oh, they're going to know me.

No, I want to be known every minute.

They want people to, hey, look at me, look at me, look at me.

That's so exactly right.

They want it to continue.

And,

you know,

we live in this

medium, this medium culture now where

everything is so dispersed.

Everyone almost has their own channel or their own place to sell something.

We came up when there was like you went on Johnny Carson or you went on Merv Griffin or Dick Kapp.

That was it.

And you got noticed.

Well, of course you got noticed.

Because everyone was channeled and funneled into one of these two or three silos.

Right.

And now you couldn't watch any.

I mean, it's not like you now you do, you know, whether it's Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel or, you know, Stephen Colbert.

They don't watch the whole show.

They watch little bits and pieces of it on YouTube.

Well, one of those shows doesn't even exist anymore or is going off.

Well, Steven, yeah.

Yeah, the other two, I mean, yet you can, they still exist and you can still do it that way.

But the reason why they're going off and they're just watching clips is because everyone has their own talk show.

It's like if Johnny Carson was competing with Merv and four million other people who have podcasts.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, that's what, and so like when you try to get a guest for this podcast, very often it's like, well, you know, they're doing two other podcasts.

Who are they?

Well, their brother and their best friend because everybody, either they themselves or someone they know or they're close to.

It's very hard to find somebody who doesn't have a podcast.

That's what I want to find.

Who doesn't?

In our world, it really is.

Yeah, yeah.

This is something that I've been thinking about for a while.

And

you hit on it a little bit.

When I was on this All in a Family, and by the way, Young people, they don't even know All in a Family.

They never heard of it.

They don't know what it is.

I mean, this is a show that was number one for five years in a row every single week.

Not just number one at the time, but a culturally groundbreaking show.

It was a show.

Again, I'm saying this for the people who are.

Yeah, no, I'm telling you, young people, they don't know what to do.

But I'm not sure if I've already set it up for them.

They know what we're talking about.

We're not just talking about a show that was a hit show on a grand scale.

We're talking about a show that changed the game.

It wasn't just a difference of

form, it was a difference of kind.

Right, right.

And that was that meant a lot.

Yeah, but think about this.

Here we were, a country of, at that time, 1971, about 200 million people, around that number.

Every single week,

40 to 45 million people would watch All in the Family.

So a quarter of a country.

And

they had to watch it when it was on.

There was no DVR.

There was no TiVo.

There was none of that.

You had to watch it when it was on.

That meant that you were having a shared experience with 40 to 45 million people.

That has an impact.

You then talking to people,

the water cooler thing and all that.

Now, we're a country of, what, 340 million or something like that?

If you get a show that gets 10 million viewers, that's a big hit.

And they're not all watching it at the same time.

The 10 million is already out of date, Rob.

There's no show that gets that.

I mean, those are numbers that you get for like special events, sports.

Sports is the only shows that get that.

That gets nobody else gets it.

But think about a show, you know, some series that, you know, White Lotus.

I don't care what it is, a hot show.

If it's six million, five, whatever the number is,

that's in a country of 340 million.

And they're not all watching it at the same time because you go to a dinner, you can't talk about the show.

You go to dinner, you say, don't tell me,

I only saw the first two episodes.

I'm only on season one.

What?

I don't don't talk.

So you can't even talk about the show you're on.

You know?

No,

it's just so different.

I was having this friendly argument with my friend Harvey Levin recently because they showed a clip on TMZ of Popstar.

I can't remember her name, which says a lot because I should, because everybody in her world knows.

She knows she's a big, because she was on the make,

I was going to say, make room for daddy.

Not make room for daddy.

Call me daddy, pop.

Call me daddy.

Oh, well, that's a big one.

Make room for daddy, wizard.

Danny Thomas.

And we don't want to go there.

And if you don't remember all in the family, you're really not going to remember that show.

Make room for daddy.

Was your father friends with Danny Thomas?

Oh, yeah.

Danny Thomas was from.

Yeah, Danny Thomas and his production company in Sheldon London produced the Dick Van Dyke show, which was my dad's show.

Of course.

Did you know Danny Thomas?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

I mean, I was friends with, you know, I mean, Marlowe, I'm friends with, you know, Tony Thomas

dated my sister in high school and stuff like that.

Yeah.

Was that true, the rumor that always went around about Danny that he was a plate man?

You know, I don't want to go there, Bill, because

I don't have hard evidence or loose evidence.

Or evidence that makes you hard.

Evidence that makes you hard, certainly.

Okay.

Okay, but that was always the rumor.

Yeah, who knows?

You know, he had, you know, he was.

Yeah.

back then,

Jerry Lewis, all those guys, it was a different era.

People were weirdos.

Yeah.

You know what people are great at?

Avoiding their problems.

Oh, I'll just power through.

Sure, until you're huddled in the corner of the shower having a meltdown over something trivial like your partner buying oat milk instead of almond milk.

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Anyway, what I was saying is she was saying

to the,

I think Alex Cooper is the host that she did not know who Joe Rogan was.

James Joe Rogan.

He doesn't even know who Joe Rogan is.

Right.

Who's a big deal now?

Very big deal.

I mean, in podcasting, he's number one.

By far.

You know, he was one of the first to it.

And, you know, I think Joe does great.

I don't always agree with him, and that's okay.

But, but not to have heard of him.

Yeah.

And, you know, I said, that says a lot.

And Harvey said, oh, no, she knows.

I said, then why is she lying?

And then he brought in two guys from his staff who were young, like 18, 19, but they were male.

They weren't quite sure who Joe Rogan was either.

And I thought,

if they don't know Joe Rogan,

you know,

we are all in our own silos.

Right.

And by the way, it's very humbling because it means that when we go, nobody's going to remember any of this stuff.

I mean, you know, I was walking out of a Beverly Hills Hotel one day and I run into Warren Beatty.

Warren Beatty was as big a star in America as there ever was.

And my kids, they're young kids, they don't know.

They don't know what it is.

I said, Bonnie and Clyde, you know.

But why would they have seen?

I mean, they may, how old are the kids?

Well, now they know who he is.

But they were young.

Right, but of course, like there were great movies that when I was 12, I wasn't aware of.

And then I got to when I was younger.

Yeah, but eventually you would watch them.

Well, I also think when I was, when we were younger, we looked up to older people, whereas now I think there's a tremendous kind of ageism in the country.

Well, there's always been ageism.

There has always been ageism, but I feel like it's more hostile.

Maybe it's just because I am older.

People being hostile to you.

Yes.

Of course.

You think it's because of your age?

Or do you think partly is it?

Yeah,

it is your opinions or something.

Well, that's obviously part of it.

But they will attack me not on the merits of the argument.

That's what I object to.

I've said it many times.

I've said it publicly.

I've said it on the air.

If you have a problem with this, don't say you're old.

Yeah, what is that?

That's not an argument.

In fact, that's a prejudice.

It's an observation.

It's a prejudice.

It's an observation.

Okay, but

for the people who think that they're the most liberal, who absolutely hate any sort of prejudice, that is a prejudice.

Why should I even listen to you?

Or, you know, oh, he's just get off my lawn.

Well, again,

that's just to cut off the debate.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Engage with the argument.

So you don't want to do that because they'll lose.

So they just say, you're old, and then immediately you're just, you don't count what you have to say.

You can't imagine doing that to any other group.

No.

I mean, we are the last acceptable group, which you can mock, make fun of.

But you're a lot younger than me.

Not a lot, but a little bit, a little bit.

But we,

until there was the children of, the baby boom generation is the biggest chunk of

people in, you know, in the population.

So, you know,

we have strength in numbers, even if we're losing our strength.

Yeah, I saw this article when they canceled Stephen Colbert, and it said, 10 years ago, the average

Colbert viewer was 58 years old.

Today, they're 68 years old.

I was like, yeah, it's the same guy.

He's got loyal fans.

Take a wild leap that this guy's going to be 78 in 10 years.

I mean,

and,

you know, I am always open to everything anybody of any age says.

When I criticize ideas that I think are dumb,

if they come from young people, it's not because they're young.

No.

You know,

it's because I think your ideas are stupid.

You know, I mean, giving communism another try, to me, is a stupid idea.

Yeah.

Because people of our generation remember.

how evil and horrible communism was.

But now we're at a different time.

Now we're at a different time because it's not about like during the 60s, you know, with the Vietnam War.

That was the whole idea was the creeping communism.

And in the 50s, was McCarthyism, that there's communism under the bed.

Everywhere you look is a communist.

And what we didn't want was to be like the Soviet Union.

We were basically saying, you know, protect America for democracy.

And we fought against...

Hitler, you know, to win the Second World War.

Fascism.

Fascism.

Not communism.

No, no.

We fought against fascism.

Matter of fact, the Russians fought on our side during the Second World War.

So we fought against fascism.

And now that's the argument.

Do because America, as

ugly as it's been over the years, fits and starts, it moves towards hopefully better things.

I mean, women couldn't vote, they can vote.

Blacks couldn't marry whites, they can.

Gays couldn't get married, they can.

So

we had a black president.

I mean, things move along very slowly, and we certainly have an ugly past, slavery, and all of that.

But this is the first time that we've had another type of government, a form of government,

taking away that slow and awkward progress.

And that is, we're looking at authoritarians around the world, and we have a guy who wants to be one of those guys.

And so

it's tough.

It's a very tough thing because I don't know.

Maybe you can tell me.

You may be able to tell me.

Because right after the First World War, Germany was

a democracy for a minute before Hitler came in.

And then he said, no.

The Weimar Republic.

Yeah, yeah.

So we're going to the Third Reich and all that.

And Hitler was elected.

Yeah, yeah.

But he was only, he never had more than 25% of

the electorate, but he figured out a way to do it.

Well, in a parliamentary system, very often people don't.

Yeah, that's true.

There's many parties.

Yeah, that's true.

So, but so he becomes a fascist state, and they do what they do, which is the horror.

But and after the war,

Germany moves back towards a democracy.

slowly becomes a democracy.

One of the best, strongest democracies in the world right now.

But here's what's uncomfortable for us right now, where we are.

My wife,

her mother was in Auschwitz.

She was the only survivor of her whole family.

Her whole family died in Auschwitz.

My uncle Charlie was a part of D-Day and fought in 11 major battles and

liberated camps.

My second father, Norman Lear, flew 52 bombing missions over Nazi Germany, all in service, and millions and millions died, all in service of making sure that we would never become an authoritarian fascist state.

And here we are, 80 years after

that war, and we're moving towards that.

It's scary.

It's very scary.

Very scary.

And, you know,

on the...

I said this on my show a few weeks ago.

I think I was the first guy to use the phrase slow-moving coup.

I I did it before he won the first game.

I never stopped.

My big criticism of the people who were on my case or having dinner with them was, just wait, see what I say after.

If I change, if I start being complimentary or let it, no, I never changed.

Never stopped saying what I've always been saying.

Now it's not so slow moving anymore.

That's what I said a couple of weeks ago.

I said, this is act four of it.

Like the point I was making, and I don't remember anybody saying this before, I did see it get picked up a lot, so I don't think so, was that this thing about stopping crime by putting troops in the streets?

Of course, you can stop crime with more troops in the streets.

The problem is, troops in the streets, once you get used to that, and once you have them in the streets, especially of our nation's capital, if there is a disputed election, you already have the private army in the streets.

They've been there for three, four years.

This, to me, is textbook what you would do.

Textbook.

And, you know,

this is pessimistic, but I honestly don't see the Democrats getting power back, not for a very long time.

You don't think there's any chance that the Democrats could take back the House?

They could win the vote.

So what?

Congress, I was saying

today we should do something in January about let's get rid of the State of the Union address because it leads the country into a very bad thought, which is that the president is the one who suggests what should be done.

That's not what the Constitution says.

Congress does that.

The president just is supposed to execute the laws.

We have switched it completely where people think he's the fucking leader and because they don't know anything because the education system fell apart.

And

most people are not

directly,

at this point, directly affected.

We have people who are thrown out of the country.

Those people are directly affected who shouldn't be.

Many cases, there's no due process.

We understand that's a horror.

That's a horror.

But they, but the, you know,

most Americans don't feel the pain of it yet, whether it's economically or their rights being taken away.

And they will feel it.

And the time they'll feel it,

unfortunately, might be too late when it's already taken over.

Now, here's what I think.

I think it's already too late.

Well, I just don't.

You may be right.

You may be right.

But this is what I'm thinking.

You could slow the thing down to a point where you might be able to

stop it because there's still going to be, hopefully, an election

in 2026.

There's going to be an election.

Well, wait a minute.

Russia has elections.

No, no, I'm saying

a fair election.

We don't know if there will be.

If there isn't, then you're right.

Like the Vegas guys do, like that, it's over.

But if there's an election where the Democrats are able to regain the House, then they have the ability to hold hearings and stuff like that.

And not going to change everything overnight, but it slows the thing down.

Yeah.

It slows it down.

Yeah, that's possible, but it's not.

You don't think

there will be a fair election in 2026.

First of all, the way the Democrats are now,

I just don't think they, I don't know if they would even win an election because they're very unpopular and for very good reason.

Now, I didn't vote for Trump.

As I always say to my woke friends, we voted for the same person.

You're just why she lost.

I'm not saying that to you.

I'm just saying that's my line to them and I will stand by that.

And

everything Trump is doing, and by the way, a lot of the things that he would say he's straightening out, almost all of them, I would say he's doing it in the wrong way, colossally wrong, but not wrong about like a lot of things that did needed straightening out.

The border, for example.

Yeah, but he's not really straightening out.

out i just said that yeah he doesn't do it in the right way but but the you know that instinct and and i and there was a there was a bipartisan bill that called for stronger border security all of that and the republicans said yeah we don't want that and by the way it was it was uh developed by uh a bipartisan group in the senate and they're you know

very conservative republican senators who were in favor of it anyway yeah we're we're far gone from that now i mean we're so far from that.

Right.

I just don't see them, you know, giving up power.

They

have all the levers of power, and power begets power.

You know, once you have it, it's easier to get more of it.

Yep.

It's like rabbits breeding.

Well,

especially if

you have no compunction for thumbing your nose at a...

at a court ruling or the rule of law

if you don't care about it and if the people

don't like the Democrats, again, often for very good reason,

they don't seem connected to reality in a lot of ways,

and they don't seem to be

on the same page common sense-wise with a lot of people.

So

there's a lot of people in this country who just go, yeah, I don't love Trump.

He's crazy, but these people are even crazier.

They have to get rid of that first.

They don't even have a chance unless they do that.

And they themselves are saying that now.

I see that

third way is at the group.

It's a left-leaning thing.

During the Clinton years, they had the third way.

I mean, that's what it's named after.

Anyway, they put out a list trying to help the Democrats of 44 words and phrases they should never say again.

Yeah.

That like just lost people, patriarchy and privilege and all stuff like that.

Yeah, which bathroom you go into doesn't shouldn't be at the hill that you die on.

Right.

Right.

And for people who are our age, you pee a lot.

Yeah.

Really, I just more

room I can open it up and go in.

I have that joke.

I put it in bucket list.

You know, I was making this movie, American President, and

they had

a consultant on it.

He was

a retired Secret Service guy.

And he was telling me, because he was an older guy, he said, the three things you got to remember when you get old and i i put it right in bucket list i had nicholson say it says

never pass up a bathroom

never waste a heart on

and never trust a fart

so that was that was the three so yes if there's a bathroom there we want to be able to access it see there's one you could redo the bucket list no the american president oh the american president yeah i mean

god when you think of it now this is michael Michael Douglas in 1990 something.

1996 or yeah, something like that.

Okay.

I mean, that's 30 years ago, and you think about what the presidency was.

Yeah.

And, you know.

And, you know.

And the issues are still the same.

We still have a gun.

We still have too many guns and people getting, you know, murdered every day on the streets.

And we still have problems with the environment.

Those were the two issues that we focused on.

Right.

She was a lobbyist.

She was a lobbyist for an environmental group.

And, you know,

that was the thing I was interested in at the time.

And Aaron Sorkin, who wrote the screenplay, he was interested in gun control.

Yeah.

And, you know, it was the,

as I remember the film, the crux of it is like politics is about making deals.

It's about bargains.

And like, of course, somebody can always get butthurt about you're not pure enough.

Again, this is a big problem with the left.

Perfect is the enemy to the good.

Right, but that's why like Obama, he was great at that.

I mean, he was the, he was that guy who thought that and said that.

Perfect is the enemy of the good.

And let's get what can practic, what can be done practically.

But nobody's willing to do that now.

Nobody is willing to do that.

Both sides are not willing to

do anything like what is the old, you know, the days, you know, you talk to Chris Matthews, who worked for Tip O'Neill, and he said he, Tip O'Neill and, you know, and Richard, they would talk all the time.

Again, exactly.

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This is why it's this would make some sense for the Democrats if they had any power.

But the idea of we don't talk to you when we don't even have the power?

Of course you have to talk to people.

I mean, there was an article.

Somebody wrote, he was.

But here's the thing.

You're right.

But here's the thing.

Let's say we're going to have that argument.

You're going to try to talk to somebody and you have a point of view.

The other person has a point of view.

Before you have the exchange, you have to agree on certain facts.

No, you don't.

You can't.

Once you start down that way.

Well, no, no.

It's like these are.

You just have to talk to people.

No, no, you talk to people.

But if somebody says two plus two is four and the other guy says, no, it's not.

How do you begin the discussion?

Because it's, because, Rob, that's a slippery slope.

It just, I agree, there are certain things that we all think.

And then there are people, I'm sorry, everybody, I know this from doing this show.

So many people who've sat here, and they're like, oh, this is a smart person, this is a rational person, this is, and then there's like one thing, they don't believe we landed on the moon.

And you're just like, no, if you start down that road, if I can't talk to you.

If you believe this crazy thing, because maybe

let's say you're having a conversation with that person.

I don't believe

you landed on that.

Okay, so what do you do?

What do you say after that?

What do you do in a marriage?

No, but a guy says that and you say what?

No, I'm serious.

Same thing what you would do in a marriage.

And who would know better than me

about what to do in a marriage?

I'm an expert.

No, but in a relationship.

But he says that and you go, what?

I'm answering you.

It's answering in the way I want to answer.

Okay, go ahead.

It's very like a relationship.

Now, I have not been married, but I've been in long-term serious relationships.

And I know there are moments where the person

is believing something, and you just, every fiber of your being wants to be like, I've got to get this person not to see it that way, because I just think it's fucking nuts.

And if you want that relationship to last,

you're going to have to learn the three little words that are most important to any relationship, and they're not, I love you.

They're, let it go.

Sometimes you just have to let it go.

I mean, let's take our friend Bobby Kennedy.

Now, I think they should let him go.

I do.

I mean, I've had an extraordinary amount of patience with circumcision.

I think you

have to let him go and you pull out a

scissors.

And

what do you say?

He's not circumcised?

What are you saying?

Because he doesn't believe in it?

Because there's too much themerisol in

that scissors.

Exactly.

But we both like him.

We both know him.

I've known him for a long time.

I know him.

He married the woman who used to be our assistant.

Is that right?

Yeah, yeah,

Cheryl.

She worked for us for a couple of years.

He's still his wife.

Yeah.

Cheryl Hine.

Yeah, yeah.

She's not our assistant.

She's his wife.

Yeah, no, she's still his wife, but not our assistant anymore.

But she was your assistant.

Yeah, and she would, you know.

Before she was an actress?

She was an actress.

She was going out for jobs, you know, interviews, and she got Kirby enthusiasm while she was working for us.

So we had to let her go.

Oh, of course.

Yeah.

Oh, I didn't know all that.

Well, I mean,

look,

I tore Bradley Whitford a new asshole about this about a year ago because

he, this is, again, what I really don't like about the left, because he was just

so abusive in a tweet, yelling at her for staying with her husband.

Staying with her husband.

No,

that's not fair.

That's not fair.

It's a marriage.

You won't attack Bobby Kennedy for believing, you know,

let's put the bear in the trunk and drop him off at Central Park.

That's something you could talk about.

No, it's, look,

there's a great amount of disappointment I personally have, and a lot of people have, because I've always been on the alternative side, shall we call it, of Western medicine.

Not that I don't appreciate Western medicine.

I'm glad we have it but I think that the emphasis has always been on the wrong things like pills and surgery instead of prevention stuff like that that Bobby was all over the idea that well the what really makes us sick

eating bad food is the environment

I understand so we were that part of it's good exactly but we do know that and they eliminated polio

yes I mean that's I mean that's a thing it is a thing it's a little more complicated than just the vaccine It also had to do with, at the time, you know, there was bad sanitation.

Matt got better.

But look, I'm a vaccine fan.

I just don't want you ever to force one on me.

I'm sure.

So I was with him on that.

No, that's true.

But, you know, my wife's pointed this out many times.

I can guarantee you his children had to be vaccinated when they were little.

I'm sure they were.

I'm sure he was vaccinated.

He just, I gave him every amount of slack I could because I like him and because the general idea of it I thought was good.

But he just has proved himself to be someone who won't listen to any science.

He's just a kook now, and he's fucking up the CDC.

I mean, I could name, just by using letters, so many things.

CDC, EPA,

FDA, DOJ, FDA, the Department of Justice, the scariest one, going after your political enemies.

Well, there you're going back to the authoritarian playbook.

That's authoritarianism.

My list of things that are

good administration is a long one, and I get into it every week.

I also think the reason why Trump does so well is because he identifies places where the Democrats did fuck up, and I could go down that list too.

like the border, like DEI was out of control.

Colleges completely out of of control.

Elite universities where the kids are raised to be these

anarchist America-hating anti-Semites and there is zero diversity of opinion.

You know, the hypocrisy of diversity is the greatest thing in the world, except of what we think, which is where it's also.

But the point is you can't force people.

You know, it's a university.

What he's trying to do is force

the federal government onto the universities and forcing them to

withhold certain things unless you do this.

Well, I mean, if they're getting taxpayer dollars and they're supposed to be therefore in the service of this country to a degree, yes, I think then you have some right.

Now, of course, the way he does it is always a bull in a china shop.

He goes in there with a club and just starts breaking shit.

I mean, what does taking away cancer funding have to do with the anti-Semitism on campus?

But again, Harvard has an endowment of $50 billion.

Really?

They couldn't make that up?

They can't find that $500 million themselves somewhere.

So there's a lot of bullshit and hypocrisy.

Well,

right now,

the UC system is also going to be under attack.

And Newsom is trying to fight back and say, you know, let's hold your line here.

I mean, you know, and law firms are, you know, some cave.

And a good friend of mine, Ted Boutros, who, you know, is with a law firm that is holding firm.

Gets him done is holding firm.

So, you know, you pick your, you know, whatever.

I have been trying to make Devin Newsom president for 15 years.

People,

I'm still on that page that he'd be a great candidate,

even though he was a lot of California baggage.

No, but he would be.

It's not about California anymore.

It's about who is articulate, who is smart, who knows how to govern, and in this case, who is pushing, who's strong and pushing back.

So

I'm with you on him.

I mean,

listen, I've known him since he was the mayor, and I knew him before that.

He was supportive of ballot initiatives that I've done, and I like him.

I do.

That's what I say.

And I've had discussions with him to his face about, because Gavin's good like that.

He'll come, he'll talk.

He can take a punch.

Most of the Democrats can't.

They won't even come on.

We invite them every week.

They won't come.

The Republicans are coming.

What am I doing here?

The Republicans always come.

And they take take their beating like a man.

It's awesome.

But the Democrats, but not Gavin.

And I've said lots of things I think went way too far.

And that is going to be his biggest liability.

But as you say.

Well,

they're now the fourth large, California, the fourth largest economy in the country.

It just surpassed Japan.

So,

you know, not that you're going to if there's no secession or anything like that, but he's representing 40 million people.

Yeah.

And they're not all liberal Democrats.

Robbie's going to win the state.

No, no, no.

No, he's not.

He's not running anymore for the state.

He's finished.

No, I'm saying in the general, he's going to win the state.

Oh, no, no, no.

He's going to win those 40s.

No, I understand.

I understand.

But I think he can, when you look at

Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, which are the swing states,

too.

But in key ways, he has recently, in the last six months, moved to the center on different issues.

He's never been wildly liberal.

Yes, he was.

But, well, when he married gay people when he was the mayor of San Francisco, he didn't

officiated it.

Yeah, yeah.

He wasn't marrying gay.

No, no, he wasn't marrying a gay person.

He wasn't an official.

He was officiating over gay marriage.

Which is great.

He was out ahead on an issue that even Republicans now agree with.

Some do.

Oh, well, they're trying to undo a lot of people.

They're not going to do that.

I don't think they can, but they're going to try.

They're not.

Sean McCrees just wrote a great article in the Times about how much of Washington now is gay Trumpers who are staff positions and so forth, but they're very, they're well accepted and they're and they are.

And you know what?

Again, you can't start not talking to people or hating people because part of them is something you don't like or don't agree with.

And he quoted Trump, had a great, I thought,

quote in the article about his view when he was asked about gay, and he said,

I go to a restaurant,

some people like the spaghetti with red sauce, I like a steak, that's why they have a menu.

That's why restaurants have menus.

And we have to focus on what to be worried about.

And that your story

is troops in the streets.

And we have to worry about destroying a democracy

of 250 years.

Oh, yeah.

That's what I mean.

And what is the plan?

There's this terrible asymmetry we have where when the Democrat loses the election, it's over in a matter of hours and we concede and go home and that's that.

And if the Republican loses, you just know it doesn't end that day.

It could be a landslide.

And it won't be.

It never is.

But if it's, if it's, it doesn't matter how close or unclose it is.

They're going to say they won.

Oh, that's what Carrie Lake did.

They're going to say they won.

She won in Arizona.

She did that, and she lost pretty bad.

She still said.

He still hasn't conceded 2020

publicly, anyway.

Wink, wink.

Yeah.

So

do you think there'll be a 2028

election?

There's always an election.

Even the

dictatorship is going to be elected.

No, I'm saying a real election.

Yes, I do.

I just think

that they will find a way when the votes come in, if they lose,

of contesting it, just like they did in 2020.

The only difference is in 2020, they had people like Raphsonberger in Georgia who wouldn't go along with the scheme.

Well, they've had all this time to replace those people,

the head of the FBI.

Now, all the people who you would need to go along with the scheme, and you already have the Army in the streets

are there.

I just, you know, I just don't see it.

I don't see it.

it.

You know, you may be right.

I just see it.

And if we do, and if you're right, that will be the end of

American democracy.

And I don't know of any country that has

had a democracy for as long as we have, has gone to authoritarian rule, has ever had a democracy come back.

I don't see that happening.

So we have to hold on to it.

We have to hold on to it.

I don't see on November 10th,

2028,

Donald Trump sending out a truth saying, I'd like to congratulate president-elect Klobuchar.

Do you think he'll try to run again

a third time?

I think he's going to do the Medvedev move, which is what Putin did between 2008 and 2012 when Putin was technically by their constitution at the time prohibited from running.

So he had his prime minister and him switch jobs, but nobody was fooled that he wasn't really.

I mean, if it's J.D.

Vance, you know, and Trump is still around, you don't think.

First of all, Trump can destroy anyone with social media.

So if the person who's running the country, quote unquote, gets out of line, he could just blast out his social messages.

That's where all the power is.

He does it now.

Yeah, well,

this is the thing that I.

But yeah, he might run.

This is the thing I talked about with some friends after we,

you know, we lost this past election.

And we lost 2016 by a very small amount.

It was 79,000 votes in three states.

It was Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

And what they did, and they were smart to do from an electoral standpoint, is they suppressed the vote in Milwaukee, Detroit, and Philadelphia, which is predominantly black populations in those areas.

And if you suppress enough, you know, it's not that many votes, 79,000 in three states states aggregate.

That's what they did.

And they knew because

Putin was playing with

the farm in St.

Petersburg and had all of that working.

But it didn't have to cost them very much money either.

And then we won and we lost again.

And I've said the only way we are going to

be able to compete

is to have the kind of grip they have on the media.

And it's not just the regular media, television, newspaper, social media,

AI, all of the stuff that they have control of, unless we have something to come up, bounce up against it.

You remember when

Air America came on?

Because at the beginning, when they talk

radio.

What became MSNBC.

Yeah.

Remember talk radio.

When talk radio first came into being,

the shows that got huge ratings was Rush Limbaugh and right-wing talk.

That was predominantly what there was, and the idea for Air America was to try to combat that.

And I was at a meeting at

when Clinton was in the White House, and they had a meeting at Jay Rockefeller's house in Virginia, who was a senator at the time, and Gephardt was there, and Tom Daschell, and Barry Diller, and all these people there, talking about trying to create some kind of

forum where we could compete

using media with them.

And the Democracy Alliance came out of that.

And Soros was one of the funders.

I funded, you know,

and what came out of it was the, you know,

Center for American Progress, CRU, which was a, you know, a legal group to,

and

Media Matters, you know, well, those are the big things that came out.

It's nothing compared to what they have.

They have a juggernaut.

You know, when you have, you know, American Enterprise Institute and you have American Heritage Foundation and you've got Cato and all these things, and they are behind you with

well-funded like crazy, it's hard to push your ideas through because our base, yeah, we have our

billionaires, but they have way more billionaires.

And our

most of our constituents are not as rich.

It's not the money that we're.

No, no, no, but you have to build something.

Listen, I ran into Rupert Murdoch, and I ran it to Rupert Merger.

I said, I want to, you know, thank you.

But you run into a lot of people.

Well,

who else did I run into?

Warren Beatty?

Oh, that, yeah, but they're 20 years apart.

Oh,

okay.

No, I'm not running him to in the same day.

Hey, Warren.

Hey, Rupert.

No, I'm not doing that.

I'm just saying you're a popular guy.

Anyway, I see him and I say, I want to, you know, thank you for standing up and letting your, you know, your network come out and say say these things but there's very little i mean you know he's who knows where he is at this point but we don't have the infrastructure we don't have a media infrastructure the way the other side does and we don't we don't that's that's bullshit it isn't

the new york times npr msnbc

nobody reads these things nobody reads the new york times no

no nobody reads the new york times and nobody watches msnbc and nobody anymore But people do read the New York Times.

Yes,

a small group of people read the New York Times.

Well, first of all, the New York Times has been doing very well

financially.

Also, they're a national paper.

I know they're doing well.

They're a national paper, and I would, in my view, they would do a lot better if they weren't so ideologically captured.

They're a very different paper than they were when, I mean, I've been reading it since.

Listen, I agree.

I've been reading it since I'm a little kid to.

A kid.

But here's the thing.

When I say Rush Limbaugh

and those kinds of right-wing shows dominated talk news, Fox is the one that does better than MSNBC, CNN on the cable side.

So that's what you have.

You don't have parody.

And then when you took a social media, Twitter, I don't know, you still on Twitter?

Well, it's called X.

It's X and X.

X, X, yeah.

Am I on it?

You know,

I have a

personally not really.

Okay, so

I was not on any social media.

My wife says to me, you know, when Trump first emerged when he was running for president back in 2015, I guess it was.

Yes.

16.

She said, you should talk.

Get out there.

So I got onto Twitter.

And I built a good following.

I had like two and a half million followers, whatever.

It's not nothing compared to

Dua Lipa or

whoever.

Dua Lipa.

I don't know if Dua Lipa

did and it was a perfect reference.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Or, you know, Selena Gomez or whatever.

But the point is, I had this following, right?

Then Elon Musk buys this, takes it over, and it changes and whatever.

And I'm saying, I don't want to be this.

I have enough of this stuff.

So I get off.

Now I can't get back on.

They can't get my name because apparently if you give it up, you can't get back.

So I said, I try to get back on and it says, you can't say Rob Reiner.

It says actual Rob Reiner.

What's the hell?

And, you know, from two and a half million followers, I had 48 followers.

And so it was, you know, it's like, but the point is they have all these followers.

They have Truth Social.

He has his own,

you know, platform.

What happened with X was Twitter was a mess.

My line about Twitter was always, anything I want to say on Twitter, I can't say on Twitter because because it was so full.

What did you say?

What did you want to say that you couldn't say?

I'm going to tell you.

Okay.

This is back, this is before Elon bought it.

It had got so overtaken by left-wing scolds that they were just looking for something to catch you on.

Another obnoxious trait of the far left.

They just, they don't look to uplift, which is what traditional liberals like myself believe in, uplifting.

It was just catching people and putting a scalp on the wall because we caught something you said.

So I stopped tweeting, and it was too bad because it used to be fun.

You say, oh, I had a brain for it.

I could say it.

But then they would just...

So

if you say something that you really believe, and I've put a lot of things out there, if you look at my old Twitter feed, there's all kinds of stuff.

Yeah, but nothing that offends the far left.

Well, I don't know who it offends.

All I know is

they, you know, the right would call me a libtard, you know, which is, that's harp of the course.

But it got way worse than that.

They had me

living on Epstein's Island.

And

I took a summer home there.

And I'm, you know, Mr.

Pedophilia.

I mean, it's like crazy.

It is crazy.

It's crazy stuff.

Were you ever on the plane?

No.

Okay.

No, I never met the guy.

I don't even know the guy.

Some people were on the plane, but they didn't go to the island.

The island, I mean, the plane.

Were you ever on the plane?

No.

The island?

No.

Well, how would I get?

The island.

You got to get on the plane to get the news.

Yes, but the plane went all over the world now the island was like a hub it was it was kind of like you know what Atlanta is for Delta but

but it was still like Clinton was on the plane a lot I don't think he was ever on the island

but my point was that Elon took over claiming that what he was going to do was get rid of this one-sided and it was completely one-sided

and then he did the opposite he went the other way it just went

the other way and it's a perfect paradigm for the world we live in.

Nothing ever stops in the middle.

Yeah, yeah.

I call it pendulumism.

The pendulum just got, and all he did was turn it into a place where now nobody, unless you're super right-wing, feels like it's a good thing.

Yeah, then you can't be there.

So, like, how do we get back to a place where we do that?

And I would say, job one, don't stop talking.

Yeah, well, I agree.

You know, I agree.

I mean, I was going to tell you before, I was reading this article about a guy who was in the Obama or no, Biden administration.

and he cut off his brother who voted for Trump or maybe brother-in-law and then he wrote this article I forget for who and it basically said yeah you know what I re-looked at that issue he's my brother-in-law he's a good guy he voted for Trump you know there are I it's more complicated than that and then there was a backlash to that you know and they get mad at him for

New York magazine

well New York was like it is perfectly okay to unfriend and and cut off I forget the word they used for like disengage with your family.

Talk about family.

Like the advice is don't go to Thanksgiving.

And we just, that is just never going to make this country better.

And I know it's terrible to have to like suck it up and talk to people who, yes, hold views that

you think you're morally superior to, and sometimes you actually are morally superior to.

You still have to do that.

Yeah, no, you have to try to talk, but it is very frustrating when,

you know, truth is is

ephemeral for sure, but there are certain things that are true,

like two and two is four, like there's a man on the moon, like a man landed on the moon.

I know.

Those things, you have to at least agree to that.

How do you have the conversation then?

Okay, well, we had this discussion before, and I told you my answer.

And your answer is just let it go.

Let it go.

If you demand ideological purity about everyone you want to talk to, you're going to have a very small group of friends.

You can find...

I'm not saying ideological purity.

I'm just saying a basis for conversation.

You can come at it different ways, but you have to agree that

there are certain realities.

Okay, but, you know.

There are certain realities.

Like, for example, they would say, and one of them is biological sex.

So, you know, I was talking about...

Biological sex.

What do you mean?

Boys and girls?

Oh, yeah.

Penises and vaginas.

Yeah, they, yeah.

X and Y chromosomes.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Well, that wasn't the left position for a long time.

Certainly not the far left.

Now, I was, you mentioned Epstein.

I was having this discussion with somebody

about Epstein like a month ago when it first hit.

And, you know, we're talking about Trump and Epstein.

And I said, you know, Trump is on, I don't know what he did with Epstein, but he's on tape saying he grabs pussies.

that's on tape yeah

you know what his answer was he said okay he's on tape doing that but you want to talk about doing bad things to vaginas

and then he went into lots of facts and figures about transing kids who are younger than where they would do it anywhere else in the world based on self-diagnosis so if you want to get on your high horse about who's crazy

It's going to be a fight.

Yeah, but you don't want to get into a question of whataboutism and that we have to agree that it's not a good thing for a man to just grab a woman We do

we have to agree on that we have to agree on that he wasn't saying that wasn't a good thing.

He was just saying

What about this other thing that he first of all

just as we can say

that's not good either But it's the point is we have to but it's valid and what he was saying

it doesn't justify the first thing Trump saying that Bill, it doesn't justify the first thing no one's saying it justifies it.

Where's your sense of nuance?

What we're saying is what this person was saying, and it's a valid argument, was like, what Trump did, okay, conceded, wrong.

But it didn't actually, that comment itself, if he did it, it was wrong.

But is it actually worse than taking a child who perhaps shouldn't be having this kind of life-changing surgery?

Kids are very confused.

Should we really be this gung-ho?

We can have that discussion.

But we can talk about that.

But that is not

part of the discussion of this.

They're two different things.

And we can have both of those discussions, but we shouldn't conflate them and say, because he did, because this is

saying that that's okay.

No one is saying that.

I thought you were saying that.

I'm not saying that.

You're just missing the point.

I'm missing the point.

You are.

Not as usual, right?

Not as usual, but

there is a point to be made.

People who write into the show back me up on this.

No, we're not saying what Trump did was right.

We're not saying it shouldn't be condemned.

We're just saying if the subject is who's crazy about vaginas, the subject is vaginas and craziness is the issue.

We think that what you're doing in this area is crazier.

and actually affects people more

than him grabbing pussies.

I'm going to say

that may be true.

That may be true.

But that person isn't running for president.

And this

is something I didn't.

We're talking about a man running for president that has that sensibility.

It's just

disgusting.

I said my piece.

You either get it or you don't.

So you want that guy to?

No.

Can you not pause before running immediately right all the way over here?

This is not where the argument is, and Strawman didn't show up to this party.

That's not what I'm saying, and that's not what the issue is.

I don't want Trump.

I would have voted for him if I did,

but I didn't.

Right.

And I would, you know, have paused.

No, but what you're saying is you should be able to engage anybody in any discussion about something that they are passionate about.

And I agree with that.

Part of the reason why...

The right is so butthurt about the left, it's not always just policy.

It's like they feel very disrespected.

Like, I won't even talk to you.

I won't even sit down and break bread with you.

Really?

They don't like that.

Remember the deplorables comment Hillary made?

They just think that they're looked down on.

Well, that's a bad thing to be saying if you're running for president to call some people who are voters deplorable.

Even if you think that, you don't say that's bad politics.

But Trump doesn't have that problem.

He says whatever the hell he wants.

And nobody, he doesn't worry about that.

He doesn't worry about what he says about people.

He's such an instinctive politician.

You know, he talked about it back from the 80s that he was going to run.

He kind of knew that in himself and he

just flipped the script.

Everybody had become so press sex spokesman.

I just say the exact right thing and try not to offend anyone.

And he was like, I'm just going to let my interior monologue out.

I don't think he, I don't know if he can help himself.

No, I don't think he can.

He just says this is what he really thinks.

And that's in many ways refreshing, even when it's awful.

But it's also, you know, listen, I made a movie with my wife called God and Country, which was all about Christian nationalism.

I know, I thought it was.

Yeah.

And

the idea was that, and we had a lot of very

conservative Christians on the show talking about

what they feel was not only a danger to the country, but a danger to Christianity.

And because they felt that this Christian nationalism was going so far afield from the teachings of Jesus in their minds.

And

the idea that,

and this is something I remember back in 2004 when

Bush was running for re-election, he ran against Kerry.

And I remember Karl Rove saying that

we could win this election with just

Christian evangelicals.

If we get all of the, because

they weren't getting them all to the polls.

I mean, the Ralph Reids of the world and the turning points and all that had not galvanized at that point.

They've started to, and they were able to, and they've been successful since then.

But this whole idea that Donald Trump is the guy that they think is the second coming coming or is

sent by God to

represent them,

it can't be further from, I mean, if you read than the teachings of Jesus.

It can't be further from him.

But there's one word.

And they love him.

They love his dirty drawers.

There's one word that explains this.

Which is Cyrus.

Well, yeah, of course Cyrus.

Yeah, Cyrus.

I understand.

Can you explain to the people who Cyrus is?

No, you can explain it.

Okay.

It's in the Bible, and

it's a 45th chapter, and he was the 45th president.

So, I mean,

you can't argue with Cyrus.

You do the math.

But Cyrus was a king of Persia, or he fought the Persians.

No, he was the king of Persia.

Anyway, he freed the Jews accidentally.

He was like going to war against

the menu.

Like,

as a sideshow, it turned out very well for the Jews.

That's who they think Trump is.

He's a Cyrus figure.

In other words, he's very faulty.

He's flawed, he's faulty,

but he's our guy.

And we're the Jews in this area.

And

most of these Christian conservatives, like David French and

Russell Moore, they feel that

this movement has gone so far afield from, you know, love thy neighbor and do unto others and all of those things that are part of the Jesus thing.

So,

and if you looked at what happened in nine,

you know, January 6th, there was a lot of Bibles and crosses

and they were all storming the capital.

QAnon and Christian nationalism are

merely a mathematical diagram that looks like a circle.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

No, it's all part of it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because it's scary.

That's scary.

You know, Bush, you mentioned Bush.

He was a super duper Christian.

Yeah, yeah.

But he didn't push it on.

Exactly.

I mean, I remember reading.

There was a separation of church and state at one point.

There was.

And that's what I'm going to get to.

I want to ask you, because I do remember reading that

a sly

dig during the Bush administration was a mischievous Bible study.

Yeah.

So they were full in on the Jesus Ethan.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But do you think, given what we now see in the Trump administration and things that are just so unprecedented, do you think we were too hard on George Bush?

He was, I wonder, and it's hard to remember because it was 20 years ago.

To me, the biggest thing.

I was very hard on him, and I'm still not a huge fan of the Roman Republic.

No, no, but it was a normal sort of Republican.

Yeah, yeah, he was, and so was Reagan.

And yeah, I understand that.

But to me, the big thing with Bush was going to war in Iraq.

And that, to me,

made him somebody that I

still

like when we went into war in Vietnam and the Spanish-American war.

They're lies, and we understand how they get people galvanized to go to war.

That's when I had the problem with me too.

Reagan didn't do anything like that.

I also think Bush going into Iraq, the reason they gave to get people behind it was a lie, true.

But I think it was sincere, him thinking that was the correct response, even though it wasn't Iraq who did it.

He understood.

Forget it wasn't Iraq who did it.

Iraq didn't have weapons of mass attacks.

I understand.

And they knew it.

They knew it.

We had,

and I made a movie about that too, shock and awe.

There were, you know, observers on the ground.

We had

a no-fly zone around it.

And it was contained like crazy.

I agree.

Look, I was not for the Iraq war.

But I do think Bush, this guy, you know, he's not a genius, he's from Texas, and he was like, you know what?

When they punch you, you punch them back.

Doesn't have to be exactly who did it.

Well, then you're a big thinker, big picture, but then go figure out where.

Go get bin Laden then.

No, I understand.

I'm not.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm not arguing with you on these points.

I'm just saying, I wonder if...

looking back, if I was too hard, because, for example, I could think of two things that Bush did that I

three, if you count, sitting with Michelle Obama and them seemed to get along well.

But he also had the opportunity to pardon Scooter Libby.

And he didn't.

No, no, listen.

He didn't.

I don't.

And

he was like his bottom bit.

Which was the right thing to do.

I'm saying.

But this guy we have is pardoning people who beat the crap out of cops.

Exactly.

I understand that.

That's what I'm saying.

Yeah, there's a bad thing.

And then the other thing I love the moment with Bush is that when Obama took office, they had all the ex-presidents there, and Bush stood next to Obama and said, we want you to succeed.

Yes.

I mean, it's just

such a different time.

And Trump did not do that.

Of course,

he still hasn't conceded the election.

Again, these are people who we didn't vote for 20 years ago, and yet when they took over, we we just didn't have the worries we have now.

It just wasn't where we are.

It wasn't at this existential way.

It was like, okay, when the Democrats are in office, for us personally, for example,

how are we affected?

Well, the top bracket goes from paying 36%

under Republicans to paying 39% under Democrats.

Yeah, no, no, you pay a little more.

We switched.

We've had giant election over 3%.

Yeah, no, no, I understand.

So it just wasn't that sort of like you go from here all the way over to, you know.

Yeah.

I mean, you have to.

Well, that's why it's really scary because, you know, you talk about Bush, but I was, you know, I campaigned like crazy for Al Gore, went all over the country with him.

And,

you know, I was actually with him.

the night that the Supreme Court ruling came in, and I was having dinner at this place,

and we were working on an op-ed piece

that was supposed to be in the New York Times the next day called the consent of the governed.

And

they came down with this ruling, and we're all sitting there watching CNN.

And the guy on television says, I'm on the phone.

He says, oh, he says, I understand that the vice president is in his residence and he's on the phone talking to his advisors, trying to understand this ruling along with the rest of us.

It was like a Truman show moment, where, because he was on the phone with David Boyes and Ron Klain, trying to, because basically what the Supreme Court said was, we want to remand this back to

the Florida Supreme Court, but there's not enough time because of the

December 12th ruling to be able to change and make it one way of counting all the votes so we can't do it so

Bush is president.

And they said that.

And I see, I'm sitting right next to him.

And Gore says, all this is, he says,

bullshit.

That's all he said.

Just one word.

And his daughter was there.

His son, Albert, was there.

And the daughter started crying, hysterical.

And he says, over.

And

she started crying.

He went and hold her.

He'd give her a hug.

And he said, don't worry, it's going to be okay.

It's going to be all right.

And at that moment, I said, wow, we lost a great man that could have been great president because

he had the decency and he had

the calmness to be able to say that.

And then, of course, he conceded right away.

He took one for the team.

He did, yeah, conceded right away.

Think about

20 years jump on climate change.

Think about no going to war in Iraq.

I mean, the things that change when you do things like, and, you know, that was 500 and what is it, 34 votes in Florida?

We don't know how he would have handled 9-11.

I mean, Hillary voted for the Iraq war.

Yes.

No, no, I agree.

How he would have handled 9-11?

We don't know.

No, no, but I don't think he would have gone to war in Iraq.

I don't think so, but you just don't know.

I don't think so.

No, I don't think so either.

No.

I don't think so either.

But the point is, we're at this point now with a guy who's so far off the charts in terms of normal governing that it's frightening so how do we get the democrats so united

because you know

you and i can't keep arguing if we're gonna like ever well we're we're trying you know we're no it's good to talk isn't it i guess yeah it is i mean it is i'm listen i'm happy to talk to anybody more information is always better than less information is how i look at it listen i had dinner with uh jd vance years ago over at uh

um

david Frum's house.

Ran into him.

No, no, he was invited to dinner.

I didn't run into him.

He was there.

You're just always running into dinner.

No, I didn't run into him.

So I'm having dinner with him, and he had just written this book, Hillbilly Elegy.

Yeah, which is pretty good.

Rod Howard made it into a bill.

I thought it was pretty good.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And talking with him and

couldn't be more reasonable.

Couldn't be, you know, we didn't agree.

I mean,

he's, you know, what he is.

He's a nice guy.

Yeah.

Couldn't have been more reasonable.

And then he becomes the sycophant, and they all are.

Yes.

All of them.

Oh.

So what am I going to do there?

I mean, what are you, you know, this is like, you know, this is insanity.

What you're going to do there is make them hate you less.

Their whole policy is based on make them cry their liberal tears.

They think they're so fucking superior that they won't break bread with us.

Just break the hate.

No, you're not going to convince them to go against Trump on an issue.

But Trump, famously, is like a guy who sort of like follows whatever the last thing he hears.

Now he's surrounded by askers.

The last thing he hears is usually something stupid.

He got out of the meeting with Putin and

he said, we should get rid of mail-in voting because Putin thinks mail-in voting is why our elections are rigged.

Now, that's just...

Well, he's always been saying that.

I know.

Trump's been saying that for years.

But the fact that he was like quoting Putin on electoral politics?

Well, listen to it.

He sat in Helsinki next to Putin and said,

I don't think he did it.

That's not the point.

The point is, he just sort of listens to and repeats the last thing he hears.

So let's get more people in there who are saying things.

Because I'm telling you,

he didn't object to any time I contradicted him.

You know, I said to him, You're scaring people.

They're your people.

Why do you want to scare people for?

What did he say to that?

I don't remember, but it wasn't...

I don't.

I don't, but it wasn't.

So it was...

It was a good conversation.

It wasn't.

It made an impression on me.

Well, did you watch my report on it?

No, no, but I want to know what he said to you.

I don't remember, but it wasn't all stop, because I would have remembered that.

Okay, from now on, I don't think that.

And I didn't expect it to be.

But just the fact that something gets in there.

Yeah,

it's not the worst thing in the world.

It may be the best thing in the world, or best you can do, but you know.

Racist, there's a blind spot they can't see.

Yes, of course.

They can't see.

How do you discuss?

How do you talk about that?

There's also blind spots on the other side with race.

You think everything that comes out of the left on race makes sense?

Like, give me an example.

Anything in Robin DiAngelo, Tanahese Coates.

But Bud Boyd, give me specifics.

For example, I mean, he says, or maybe it's Ibram X.

Kendi says,

I'm not quoting word for word, but it's very close to word for word, the only solution to past racism is future racism.

In other words, being racist in reverse.

Yeah, well, that's ridiculous.

Okay, then

that's what a lot of people.

But that's an argument.

That's not saying,

you know, a black person could say, I don't like any white people.

That's racist.

White person says, I don't like any black people.

That's racist.

You can't argue with that.

How do you argue

You can't discuss that.

Who's arguing?

No, I'm saying you can't discuss those things with somebody like this.

I mean,

if the issue is Trump and racism, I think it's more nuanced than that.

I mean,

I'm not saying him.

I'm just saying, generally speaking, you know, a racist is somebody you can't really argue with.

It's hard.

But, I mean, I could show you like many TikToks of

what?

I don't know.

I know where you're going to go.

You know, I know.

Of like young, usually black women saying

some variation of, I just can't deal with white people today.

And you could hardly imagine that in reverse.

No, I'm not mad at it.

I'm just saying

we can understand

what is built into a black person's experience, why they would say something like that.

Maybe not that person in particular.

Maybe.

I don't know that person.

I don't know that person either.

But it could be possible that they're just somebody, who was it?

Oh, Thomas Tatterton Williams is on my show a couple of weeks ago and was talking about microaggressions and the idea.

I said, let's, it's funny because there's, there's sometimes it seems like there's more anger now

racially, and yet things were so much worse then.

You know, you and I.

Yeah, yeah, it is worse.

And he said, yes, he said, there's an interesting human psychological factor where like the better things get, the tinier the offense

makes people angry.

That's right, that's right.

And you also forget where you were, and you forget the progress that's been made.

Because you're only

because you're only focusing on the

inequity right now.

And again, to your point before about they don't know anything in the past, like they don't know your show,

they also don't know about

the civil rights

pioneers who actually endured horror.

And died to try to get the right to vote.

So, you know,

could it be that

a 20-year-old goes out in the world today and has a terrible experience with white people?

It could, but,

you know,

I don't think if you're in Los Angeles and you're black and you walk into a Starbucks, they're going to say, we don't serve your kind here.

No.

You know,

okay.

So, you know, I don't know what the white, I don't know what the white people out there are doing that you can't deal with today.

I'm just saying you could never say that in reverse, and you shouldn't say say that in reverse.

What would you say to a white person?

What do you mean?

Don't order that pumpkin spice latte.

Get out of here.

Whatever that thing is.

Well, it's the season of pumpkin spice.

I can't believe it.

I'm getting there.

I can't believe how fast the time goes.

So the movie opens

September 12th.

September 12th, okay.

So in theaters around the town.

And

I wanted it to be in the theaters because

you got to watch a comedy with people.

You want that shared experience.

If it's a comedy or it's a thriller, horror, you want people to be there and enjoy it with them.

It's not sitting at their home, going to the bathroom, getting something to eat or whatever.

You are not the first director

who's been making this argument.

And it's a valid argument, and it's just really a horror argument.

You're fighting against it.

No, no, no, I know.

It's very hard.

I mean, it's very hard.

I don't often get my ass out to the theater either.

Yeah.

No, no, I mean, I've only gone a couple of times.

But this one I would.

Oh, good.

This one I would.

Well, I like to see.

I cannot wait to see.

I can't wait.

You'll like it.

There's some good laughs in the middle.

I mean, what I loved about it.

There's some good laughs in it.

Besides what I loved everything about that was in the first one, which is LOL, like ultimate LOL kind of movie comedy, was that there were people who did not understand what was a comedy.

A lot of people at the beginning.

They came up to me at the first screening

in Dallas we had, and they said, Well, I don't understand.

Why are you making a movie about a band nobody's ever heard of?

And one, you know, why did you make it?

What are you doing?

And I felt bad because we got the worst cards.

You know, they sign these cards and they give you the thing, the worst cards ever.

The only thing I felt good about is I counted five different ways they spelled the word movie.

Really?

Yeah, there was M-O-V-I-E,

there was M-O-V-E-Y,

There was M-O-V-Y,

M-O-V-E-E, and my favorite, M-O-V-E.

Move.

So you're saying that.

So I'm saying maybe they weren't geniuses.

I don't know, but it took a long time for people to catch on to the movie and like it.

Well,

I don't think that's an accurate appraisal.

What it is, was like, and look, this is going to sound like I'm making fun of half the country.

Half, or however many,

I'm sorry, but people are nuance impaired.

This is a movie that's a mockumentary about it.

Yeah, and you don't have to be a genius to get the satire and the parody of everything about rock and roll that is so paradiable, if that's a word.

Yeah, yeah, but we're not going to play it.

We played close to the bone.

It was satire very close to the bone.

Yes, but I just got to say you're a little fucking dim if you're one of the people that spelled it.

M-O-V-E.

The M-O-V-E person

is not going to get it.

You didn't get that.

This was parody.

They took it seriously.

Yeah, I know.

They did it.

But some rockers.

Some rock and roll people took it seriously and they got mad.

Like Stephen Tyler was upset.

Really?

Yeah, oh, yeah.

And then Axel Rose from Guns and Rose.

And, you know, God bless them.

You know, musicians are.

Ozzy Osborne didn't love it too much.

They're so talented, but thinking ain't their thing, Rob.

No.

You know,

it's not high on the list.

No.

Well, we try to make fun of that, too.

Of course.

That's part of why it's so funny.

You have this built-in.

And the thing is about musicians, especially rock stars,

what it is about music that gets to us, gets to us on such a deep level.

Yeah, it's on the passion.

It's on the emotional level, yeah.

I remember when I visited Amsterdam and I had a friend who lived there, and I said,

what's it like here?

And he's telling me everything about it.

And he said, and I said, the people are,

they're polite, but they're not warm.

He said, right.

He said, they don't get excited about anything except pop stars.

Just like everywhere else in the world.

When Michael Jackson was there, they went fucking nuts.

It just gets to us.

It does.

It's a very,

the people who are the rock stars get to live in this world of their own.

And we see it, I could mention a million names, and just who've lived in this bubble of just like, I'm the greatest.

I don't have to know anything.

I have assistants and everyone's glory.

And, you know, that's what you're doing.

But most rockers did get it eventually.

They all got it, and they dug it.

It was like a staple on the tour bus.

It had the thing.

Because Sting, when the first time I met him, he said, I've seen this movie a hundred times, 50 times.

Every time I see it, I don't know if I should laugh or cry.

Because he's smart.

Yeah, there's millions of smarts.

Paul McCartney's in the movie.

Yeah, he's in the movie, and he's really funny, too

so what do you have in the you as far as like the the cameo

Paul McCartney Elton John

Garth Brooks there's

Questlove you know there's a whole thing where they're trying to find a new drummer because the drummers are always dying you know they had 12 drummers which is true yeah it's true it's true the last drummer this guy Skippy Scuffleton he he died uh because he he sneezed himself to death he couldn't stop sneezing and he had a fit and he dropped dead.

So we have to get a new drummer.

And

they put out a word to try to get a new drummer.

And they talked to Questlove.

They talked to Chad Smith from Red Hot Chili Peppers and Lars Ulrich from Metallica.

And they all turned him down because they'd rather stay alive.

They don't want to die.

They love them, but they don't want to die.

All right.

Well, thank you.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

I had the time of my life.

I hope you did.

I had the time of my life

and I owe it all to you.

Okay.

All right, buddy.

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