Overtime – Episode #678: Michael Douglas, John Heilemann, Sarah Isgur

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30 seconds of carefree bliss.

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Spit toothpaste on the faucet.

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He nut butter on the light switch.

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Nisprit spritz.

Clorox, man. Clean feels good.
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Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO Late Night series, Real Time with Bill Maher. Okay, we have a two-time Oscar-winning actor and producer who narrated the documentary America's Birding, available on Apple TV.
Michael Douglas, like I have to tell you, came back to see us. And he's Clark's chief political columnist and national news analyst for MSNBC and NBC News.
John Heilman is here. And she is the senior editor of dispatch and host of their legal podcast, Advisory Opinion, Sarah Isger.
Okay. I'm going to hear right to the most important question people asked.
Michael, what's been your experience with intimacy coordinators? There it is. Now, if you don't know what it is, what is an intimacy coordinator? Intimacy coordinators came along.
The Me Too movement was to have, in terms of sex scenes or intimate scenes, somebody there to control. You can say fuck on this show.
No, we can't. It wasn't just that.
But we never had that when I was... And was there any problem? No, there wasn't.
I've never had any problem in that at all. But it's a little...
It's a little weird. I mean, we were weird things out.
I remember with, like, fatal attraction, you know, we had Glenn close up on the kitchen. I remember, yeah.
Yeah, and on the kitchen counter and this and that. And Adrian said, do you have any ideas? And Glenn said, well, what about I lean back and turn the water on? Yeah.
And then my fingers to the water, get my fingers all wet and stick them in your mouth. That might work.
That might work. The secret I always found is you just don't surprise the actress, the leading lady so if you tell her before, I'm going to touch you here kiss, kiss, I'm going to touch you here do you ever learn one of those things like the water thing and then bring it home? and every chance I get because every time I hear an actor

talk about sex scenes, they always say

the same thing. It's the least sexy thing

you could ever do. Which makes sense.

You've got all these bright lights, all these people

watching. I mean, Georgie Scott

had the great line. He supposedly said to

the actress, I apologize if I get an erection

and I apologize if I don't.

No, I agree with you.

All right.

Do the Democrats need a social media platform,

this is for you, John, of their own,

to combat the Republican influence on Twitter?

Well, I mean, I don't know, but Twitter, it's funny,

it used to be completely left.

Then Elon said, I'm going to take it over so it's going to be 50-50 right down the middle.

He didn't do that.

It just switched completely.

So I don't know.

It's terrible that I think that we have our own media silos.

We need places where, like this show, but there's not enough of them,

where everybody comes and everybody hears everybody else from all points of view. I'd like to steal a line from Dave Chappelle, who said at some point how he doesn't know very much about what goes on on Twitter, because he doesn't go on Twitter because Twitter's not a real place.
That's sort of how I feel about Twitter. And not only is Twitter not a real place, but it's become a toxic cesspool filled with nothing.
Not about right. It's not about conservative.
It's just filled with misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theories. So I would rather not have the left replicate that if there was, if that's what's required.
I think the deeper question that the question's getting at is that if you look at the data in this election, the amount of reach of all of these alternative, I'm talking about the whole podcast space mostly, but also social media, the interviews that Trump did, not starting with Rogan, but Theo Vaughn and all of these other things he did, incredible reach compared to old mainstream media, right? Where, you know, a number of people that Kamala Harris reached by going to talk to Brett Baer is a tiny fraction of, if you look up the, and they'll look at the average, not just the number of downloads, but then the social media plays on YouTube and other places that Trump did by hitting all of those mostly bro-friendly male, skewing young male podcast platforms. I think the issue is not so much that the left quote needs a platform.
There are a bunch of people on she went on Harris went on call on call her daddy. Right.
All the smoke. A few of those things.
What the left has to what the Democrats have to figure out is the fact that the way to talk to voters who are not our age and the large swelling number of of the segment of young voters and middle aged voters is that they have to start talking to them on platforms that are not 60 Minutes and Fox News or MSNBC

or any of these, I hate to say it, dying legacy media platforms,

when the way to reach the growing parts of the electorate is through...

But isn't that another way of saying Twitter is real?

The Internet is real.

Somebody just wrote a big article about this. That is where reality is now.
And this is perfect for the movie you're going to do. Thank you.
No, really, this is exactly... I hope you're taking notes.
I'm taking notes. In a place of bipartisan agreement, remember, Congress actually passed a ban, so to speak, that TikTok has to divest from China, for instance.
Basically, by the end of this year, it's withstood court scrutiny so far. But I fear that we're heading towards a real clash between, you mentioned, various social media platforms rat-fucking our kids' minds becoming incredibly addictive, and the First Amendment and free speech, which I know you also care a great deal about.
And how do we deal with this? We have not done anything to deal with it. We've just been like, it's partisan.
This science for me and that science for me. Forget all of that.
The problem is that we have kids committing suicide because they're on these social media platforms and AI that's talking back to them and they think it's a person. Right.
Yeah. Those are their relationships.
Those are their relationships. Yes.
I also think everything the candidates, especially the Democrats, do to get voters annoys them. The constant texting.
Did you get the text, like, from Tim Walz every five minutes? And, like, always begging for money. And knocking on doors.
We've got people knocking on doors. People don't want knocking on your door.
Who in this day and age wants someone knocking on your door? Kids don't even like it when you... A phone call? That's like too much of an invasion of their privacy, which they don't care about.
Who might emerge as the strongest Democratic opposition leader in the next Trump era? Oh, well, that's a good question. I mean, like Adam Schiff, he won, right, big and...
He won, but I like Wes Moore. Wes Moore's fantastic.
He's in Maryland. Yep.
But who's going to be the one? Gavin Newsom we have here in this state? He's already, like, called the legislature to... Trump hasn't done anything yet, but I understand the...
I understand the... This was the problem.
You know, there was a 2014 study that showed that Fortune 500 companies were more likely to pick a female CEO if the company was struggling, basically setting women up for the big job, but to also fail. If they did well, fine.
But if they failed, like, look, we have a female CEO while failing. And that's what I feel like they did to Kamala Harris.
When Biden refused to step aside and not run again, he was supposed to be that bridge. He backed off on that promise due to arrogance.
And then he drops out after a catastrophic debate performance. And they set Kamala Harris up to fail.
That was a three month campaign. And she she was supposed to introduce herself to the American people.
No wonder people were Googling, did Joe Biden drop out? And so... No.
No. You're saying three months wasn't long enough? I mean...
It was too long. I mean, it was long enough.
It was long enough, though. If they had a primary...
It's not that they didn't have time to introduce. They met someone and they didn't like them.
If they had had a primary, they wouldn't have picked her. And if they had, she would have been able to rough out those edges that then she basically has to start from scratch with a campaign team she didn't hire that didn't like her, right? It was his team.
And so I wonder if that next Democratic person, maybe someone's not even on our radar yet. Because, frankly, when you look at the history of who's, you know, there's two types, the one who waited in line, who was next in line.
And then there's the one who comes out. That's Obama.
That's Clinton. That's Reagan to some extent.
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Not available in all states. We had a strong bench.
It's a very strong bench. There's a number of people.
It could be possibilities. You're talking about people like Josh Shapiro, who would have been the vice president.
Senator of Connecticut. Pennsylvania.
Senator. Womenthal.
No. Oh, Chris.
Chris Murphy. Chris Murphy.
Yes. I want to side with Sarah about this one thing.
If you're the sitting vice president for a president who has, throughout his entire term in office, been sitting at about somewhere between a 35 and 40 percent approval rating, countries on people view the Biden administration as a failure. We could have a long discussion about whether they are right about that, about the economy, but the perceptions of the economy were that people thought inflation was too high, people thought we were on the wrong track, 75% wrong track numbers, and this huge inflation overhang.
You're the sitting vice president, and you get put on the, elevated to the top of the ticket 107 days ahead of the election. I think that that is a very high degree of difficulty to put on anybody.
And I do not think she is the perfect candidate. I tend to agree with Sarah that probably in a fully litigated primary, she probably would not have been the Democratic nominee, but we will never know that.
But I will tell you that there's never been anybody who's had the difficulty of that situation, elevated that late in the campaign. Why? A Democrat would have needed to run away from the Biden administration.
Bill, I don't know if you know this, but the Vice President of the United States has basically shoved in a broom closet for three and a half years. I know.
You couldn't... She was more popular in there.
Yes, well... I mean, this idea that in a mass...
The idea in a mass media age that 107 days is not long enough to know somebody? You are way overestimating the American people in terms of their ability. Someone like Donald Trump has become a universally known, understood, loved by some, hated by others over the course of being omnipresent for eight years.
Barack Obama becomes president of the United States after running for two years

as President, runs a 50-state

primary, is on television, does dozens

of Democratic debates. And by the time at the

end of that, most people

knew who he was. Most people.

You put drop somebody into the

middle of the top of the table,

three days out, three months out,

you are going to have to spend a lot of time trying to

introduce yourself to the country while also

being in a steel cage death match with

Donald Trump. Okay, but I don't know if you've ever watched this show, but I had Michael Douglas on this week.
Yeah. And at the top, we were talking about this, and he made a very good point that every other country in the world can do it in months, sometimes weeks.
Why can every other country do it in that short period of time? Are they all so much brighter than America? I don't think so. Mostly parliamentary.
There's literal reasons, right? We don't have a parliamentary system. We also have a First Amendment.
We don't make people campaign this whole time. The American people want to give them 20 bucks, and so they can afford it.
I mean, small dollar donors are arguably the worst thing that's happened to our politics, as it turned out. Small dollar donors didn't make $20 billion.
No. A lot of it.
Some of it. A lot of it.
I mean, they represent about 2% of our credit. There's a few special packs in there that saw $100 million plus.
Those are bad, too. I think you can believe that you could have shorter elections in America, but it's not like we don't know in Britain, for instance, when you have a short election, it's not like you don't know who the leader of the party is for months and years before that.
You're either the person who's Googling the day before, did Biden drop out, or you know in a week. You know, did anyone in this audience not know enough about Kamala Harris pretty much after a week to make a decision? No.
Yeah. It's just, people, it's ridiculous.
They just, we just get sicker of them. So, so.
How are you going to tell people they can't talk about politics? How with free speech that I know you love, how are you going to limit people's ability to run for office? I'm not limiting. We're not making a lot of money.
Of course. Get rid of super PACs by making it no limits, full disclosure.
24-hour disclosure. We should have instant disclosure.

We could fix democracy in a minute.

Get rid of gerrymandering.

Get rid of money in politics.

Get rid of the electoral college.

No, none of that is.

We're going to keep working with this constipated system that we live with.

Just forget about what system is, the right system. Your contention is that no people were late deciders in the election.
No, they were. I talked about them last week.
Christmas Eve shoppers, I call them. So those people apparently needed longer than 30...
No, they would have been undecided. They always would have been.
Exactly. They were always undecided.
That's why I called them... I called them...
John, I said this last week. I called them Christmas Eve shoppers.
My father was one. People who don't buy their presents until the Christmas Eve night he would go into the store.
And he wouldn't feel like he could do it until he was fully in the spirit. He had to be in the store on Christmas Eve with Santa and all the fucking elves and everything that was going on.
And then he would make his decision. You can give those people ten years.
Really. Okay.
I'll tell you, the Lego store already has their Christmas ornaments out. I went today.
I've got them. Not a Christmas Eve shopper.
Why do you have to make all these excuses for her? Like I said, all this was this week was people who said, oh, she ran a flawless campaign. How ridiculous.
Or it's sexism. It's racism.
This is an old playbook. I didn't say any of those things.
I know, but I've heard a lot of these things. And, like, I think America's perfectly willing to elect a woman.
They just didn't like the last two that were put up. They're willing to elect a woman.
I mean, there's some sexism. They're willing to elect a woman or she's the best candidate that they're offered.
That's that simple. I think they are not, I think they were very unlikely to elect a, whether the vice president to Joe Biden, who had a.
Yeah, that's it. That's what they didn't like.
The vice president to Joe Biden, whether it was a male, female, black, white, or anything else, was going to have a giant political albatross around their neck. And they could perform perfectly or perform imperfectly.
But that person was going to be at a disadvantage. She didn't make a good case.
She didn't denounce the past stuff that people didn't like. She just tried to ignore it.
What would you do differently than Joe Biden? I can't think of anything. And she was offered a redo on that.
That was terrible. That would hurt.
That would hurt. The focus on democracy was a little high, thinking that the abortion thing was the thing, but Trump neutralized the whole abortion thing, so the women thing didn't make a difference.
And then the guys, the men, geez, it was unbelievable the debt that Trump put into them. Several female voters said they were actually pleased that they could divide the decision.
They could vote for Trump and vote for a ballot measure that was pro-choice, so they felt like they could have their, you know, Trump cake and eat it too. That metaphor went off.
Does anybody on the panel think that given the size of Trump's victory, right, he won, he improved his performance in almost every county in America, right, improved from what we saw before as a 47% ceiling, he's now said he got like 50, 50, 50 and a half, 51. Does anybody think that a better anybody else, if you had had a different candidate replacing Joe Biden in August, that that person would have turned back that tide on election night? Would have suddenly, all of those Trump gains would have gone away and they would have won the election? Yes.
If they had been a change candidate who ran away from Biden and could distinguish themselves from Trump and had said, Joe Biden's administration has been a disaster for you and I'm going to have a a third way. Yes, a new voice could have done that, but Kamala Harris could not, because she could not, would not, distance herself.
She wanted to have it both ways, not lose to woke people who have the energy in the party. One more question.
In the wake of Donald Trump's victory, some American women say they are turning to a movement that advocates no sex, dating or marriage with men and no children. Wow.
No sex, dating, marriage or children. Then the conservatives will outbreed you.
Right. Good plan.
That's the dumbest fucking thing I've heard. But we are getting to this place where, because of politics, the men and the women are moving further and further apart.
And if they don't want to be together, what's going to happen to the species? We can replace y'all so easily. Why? Well, I don't know.
The men and the women seem a little separate there there. The women always say the men are going off dilly-dallying around with one person or another.
Yes. Well, the men are all gay there, aren't you? That's right.
No, they're not all gay there. There's many very strapping heterosexuals like Hugh Grant.
Great leading man. Not such.
Right. I know.
Well, I'm just going to remember, since we have a movie star here, that it was a movie star, George Clooney, who really affected this election. I mean, Biden might still be in there if George Clooney, you know, talk about celebrities and how important they are.
I don't think they're important in getting the voters to do something, but they sure were important in getting the party heads to finally do that. This was another part, I think, of why people didn't trust Harris, because at the same time she's saying, hey, these things I said in 2019 that were kind of like left wing crazy, I don't mean them anymore.
Also, Joe Biden was totally fine and I have no idea why he dropped out and I never saw any problem the whole time I was in the White House. Either you weren't in the room, you weren't paying attention, or you were lying to us, and the gaslighting is so frustrating.
Right. And, you know, I called him, I said, you know, like a year before he dropped out, I said, you're going to be Ruth Bader Biden.
That's what I kept calling you. You're going to be the Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the party.
And people just would come up to me, you know, the liberals, the ones who I'm not good enough for anymore

because I'm just too good.

Bill, stop making jokes about Biden's age.

You're going to help Trump.

Right.

Like if I didn't mention it,

no one would have noticed.

All right.

We've got to go.

Thank you very much,

Michael Douglas.

Thank you for joining us.

Give me a nice surprise.

Okay. Oh, I forgot to plug my bit.
Oh, well. Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher every Friday night at 10.
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