Ep. #677: Rep. Jamie Raskin, Tim Miller, Michael Moynihan

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Real Time with Bill Maher. Hi, everybody.
How you doing? Thank you. Thank you, people.
How you doing? Oh, I appreciate it. Thank you very much.
Happy election weekend. Congratulations to the Dodgers.
Oh, it's all so exciting. I know.
All right. Thank you.
Thank you. Well, hey, we did it.
We made it to the finish line almost with the election. I think this says it all.
Gallup did a poll. They said 21% of people in this country want to leave.
I say good. I hope they all live between my house and this studio.
I would make my life a lot better. But no, people people are just very nervous about this election.
Each side thinks that the other side wins and the world is over. Today on The View, they were just eating ice cream out of the carton.
But I understand why the Democrats are nervous. But Kamala still has to be shoring up the vote of the people who should be in the bag.
You know what she did a couple of days ago? She went to a barbershop, a black barbershop in Philadelphia to get the black man vote. Wow.
Because, you know, if there's one thing black guys in barbershops love, it's when a woman stops by and monopolizes the conversation. Always a winner.
Oh, and they were very nice to her. And in honor of her campaign, they were offering a very special haircut.
The fade. I'm not making this up.
No, it's a dead heat. We don't know who's going to win.
You can flip a coin with a margin of error, plus or minus, Joe Biden's ability to shut the fuck up. Well, for those of you who don't know what I'm referring to, let's back up a little to the beginning of the week.
Okay, Trump had a big rally at Madison Square Garden, and then MSNBC called him a Nazi, because Madison Square Garden,

they did have a German 1939 sympathetic rally, and nothing's happened at the garden since. it's just not to your alley

it's so stupid. Yes, look, Trump, a fascist? I think I was the one who first said that.
Fascist is not synonymous with Nazis. Okay? Two different things.
Yes, all Nazis are fascists, not the other way around. And the bros, the Trump bros at the rally were not Nazis.
They're nothing like Hitler. For one thing, Hitler had a girlfriend.
But what the Trump people did at this rally, it's so Trump, they hired an insult comic.

Really, he went up there and did very insulting things.

I mean, this is his act.

I'd never heard of him, but this is his act that he does all the time.

And he told a really demeaning joke about Puerto Rico, said there's a floating garbage in the ocean.

It's called Puerto Rico.

Didn't even go over with the Trump crowd.

They said, look, we didn't come here to hear vicious remarks from an insult comic.

We came here to hear it from the candidate.

For God's sake.

But, of course, that joke infuriated millions of Puerto Ricans.

And that was just in the Bronx.

That joke is not offensive, by the way.

Yeah, oh, no. Bad Bunny is now Mad Bunny.

But, okay, so

this is where Joe Biden comes in.

So they asked Joe Biden about this

and his response was, the only

garbage I see out there,

floating out there, are Trump supporters.

Okay, in fairness,

he was on a video call and he thought he was just yelling at the TV. But now, of course, of course, Republicans are using this.
They're doing everything they can to remind voters that the president of the United States called them garbage. Yesterday was Halloween.
For example, Don Jr. went out

dressed as garbage.

Which,

see, you know,

because he's owning the libs

and confusing

the raccoons.

But you've got to give it to Trump. He eats shit.
He sells shit. He says shit, but don't call me garbage.
But then... Yes, this will always be remembered as the garbage election.
Because then Trump's big troll on this was he got a garbage truck and he tricked it out with Trump on the side. And then he got in the truck.
Get it? Biden called him garbage and then he got in a truck of garbage. Today Biden said, geez, I wish I'd called him a piece of shit.

All right, we've got

a great show. Tim Miller and Michael Moynihan

are here.

First up, he's a congressman from Maryland

and a ranking member of the House Oversight

Committee who led the second

impeachment of Donald Trump, Jamie Raskin.

Jamie?

Jamie? Good sir, congress, how you doing? Good. All right.
Well, you look very smiley and happy. It looks like you're feeling good about your chances Tuesday.
I mean, I've been out to 27 states, and the Democrats are on fire everywhere. Well, where you go, they are.
Yeah. Okay, so that says nothing, does it? No, even where there are no surrogates and Kamala and Tim Walz can be, I think there are huge people turning out for rallies and for canvas kickoffs and the whole deal.
Well, it's always about turning out the people who like you. We used to go to the middle in elections.

I feel like we don't do that anymore. Each side just goes to its base and tries to get them to come out.
Well, at this point, we're looking for anybody who hasn't voted yet. Right.
And, you know, the undecided people. And I feel Donald Trump is doing a good job in the last week or two of the campaign reminding everybody what life would be like if they were actually to restore his attempt at dictatorship and authoritarianism.
Yeah. You yourself might be in trouble.
I mean, you. Well, I mean, you know.
Don't tell my wife that. Well, I'm sure she knows.
I mean, because you were the lead impeachment manager. Yeah.
The second one? The second one. The second one.
That was the insurrection. Right.
The one after he'd left the White House. Boy, how big an asshole do you have to be where they go after you left the job? I mean, that's...
But, okay. That never happened.
But, I mean... Well, also, I was on the January 6th Select Committee, and of course...
Right. ...he's called us top most wanted and so on.
But Liz Cheney's at the top of the list right now. Top of the charts.
Well, okay. But let me ask you this, because, I mean, I mentioned in the monologue fascist, I mean, I said slow-moving coup before he took office the first time.
So I think I've been on this page. My question to you is these things he says he's going to do, put people like you in jail.
I mean, he says it. Say he wins.
What are you going to actually do? I asked this of Jared Polis last week. I was not totally satisfied with the answer.
What are you going to actually do? I mean, are we just going to knit pussy hats? You know, I don't know what the plan is. And it reminds me of the first time when I kept saying to Democrats, you know, he's not going to leave.
And they would laugh and say, I smoked too much pot. And then what are you actually going to do? I'm going to wake up and go to work.
I'm not going anywhere. I'm not going anywhere.
I mean, you know, Donald Trump has never won the popular vote. The Democrats have won eight of the nine last presidential elections in the popular vote.
Even when Trump won in the Electoral College against Hillary, she beat him by three million votes. Joe Biden beat him by seven and a half million votes, 306 to 232.
And the vast majority of the people in America reject fascism, authoritarianism and racism and want to get back to what the real American story is by the way um but it is tied it's not that it can't be the vast majority because it's tied well look the way i see it is um like i'm a i'm a big john dewey fan he said the only solution to the ills of democracy is more democracy.

I agree.

And what we've got is a series of impediments and obstacles to democracy. We've got gerrymandering of our districts.
Look what's happened to us in North Carolina, which is a 50-50 state at best. It's really a democratic state.
We're going to beat their self-proclaimed Nazi candidate for governor. OK, but we are likely to end up with, you know, seven to three, something like that in the congressional delegation.
And it's because of the gerrymandering of our districts. Look at the voter suppression tactics.
And then we're stuck at this point in our constitutional architecture with the Electoral College, which has given us five popular vote losers in our history twice in this century alone. The Electoral College can get you killed these days, as we saw on January 6, 2021, but it's 2024.
How about it's time we start electing the president the way we elect governors and senators and representatives and mayors. Whoever gets the most votes wins.
So I I think if we had non-gerrymandered districts and if we had a national popular vote for president, this thing would not be forced. And if we had beer and nuts, it would be a hell of a party.
That's why I came to the bar show. I mean, I agree with everything you said, and it's a great applause line, but what are you going to do? How are you going to get rid of gerrymandering? I mean, if you could, wouldn't we have done it by now? No, we passed it in the House.
This was the For the People Act. Number one article of it was to require, get the politicians out of drawing districts.
So the voters choose the politicians instead of the politicians choosing the voters. And it didn't go anywhere in the Senate.
So we're stuck with another anti-democratic mechanism, which is the filibuster on the Senate side. So we've got to deal with that, too.
But I think that's what this campaign is about. When we say we're defending democracy against the autocrats, the plutocrats, the theocrats, the dictators and the despots, it's a little bit deceptive because it implies that democracy is just a static collection of institutions and rules.
Actually, democracy, as Lincoln knew, is an unfinished project. It's always in motion.
And so, you know, we've got millions of disenfranchised people in America, starting with 3.5 million U.S. citizens in Puerto Rico who should be a state by now so they can defend themselves against Donald Trump.
We saw in Hurricane Maria that the people of Puerto Rico got cheated out of hundreds of millions of dollars and Donald Trump threw some Scott paper towels at them. And so we need statehood for people in Washington, D.C.
It's the only nation's capital on planet Earth where the people are not represented

in their own legislature.

And we passed that in the 117th Congress.

I got to be the floor leader, and I said,

you know, I wanted to thank the people of Washington, D.C.,

713,000 tax-paying, draftable American citizens

who have a real bona fide grievance

against the U.S. Congress

and didn't come down and beat the hell out of our police officers, storm the Capitol, drive us out of our chambers. They've done it the right way.
They had a statehood constitutional convention. They're asking for admission like the last 37 states, and we should admit the people of Washington, D.C.
is a state into the union. I agree.
I won't hold my breath, but I agree. Well, you know, I mean, everything in democracy looks impossible until it's inevitable.
So we've got to cheer people up. Most of the states that have been admitted into the union thought that it couldn't happen.
For many of them, it took decades for it to happen. And, you know, it was said of different states, you know, Utah, they're too Mormon, New Mexico, too Catholic, California is too big.
I mean, things that take a constitutional amendment take two-thirds, and you would agree that that's very far away from where we are. Yeah, but you don't need a constitutional amendment for statehood admission, just a majority vote in the House and the Senate.
But to change the electoral college, you would? Yes, eventually to change the electoral college, we would. We do have a plan in place.
This was my first bill I introduced in Annapolis when I was a state senator for a national popular vote interstate compact. And we have more than 200 electors in a coalition.
We need 270 electors to trigger it. And what it says is we states will cast our electoral college votes for the winner of the nationwide vote rather than the winner in our state.
So we're two-thirds of the way there. I mean, Trump used to denounce the electoral college.
He said it made us the laughingstock of the world. Then, after the 2016 election, he discovered some heretofore mysterious virtues to the electoral college.
We know one thing on Tuesday. It'll either be the most beautiful election ever or completely rigged.
I mean, that's the only two ways he goes. That's right.
But, you know, you were asked by Axios, you know, if you would accept the election results. And you said if he won a free, fair and honest election, of course, we would accept it.
Yeah. But that's what he said.
Well, right. I copied them.
I said exactly what they said. Is that a good thing? Well, in this respect, it is because...
He does cheat, so yes, I get why you'd say that. The reason I said it was this, okay? We've never seen an election like what happened in 2020.
Everybody thinks about January 6th, but that was the culmination of a long process. I agree.
They tried to get the state legislatures to avoid out the popular vote and just deliver electors to Trump. He still hasn't conceded that one.
That's right. He calls up Secretary of State Raffensperger in Georgia and says, find me 11,780 votes.
I mean, I'm a politician. Find me 11,780 votes, right? That's not Donald Trump.
That's not him trying to stop election fraud. That's him being caught, ran-headed, trying to commit election fraud.
They unleashed the mob against his own vice president. So when I say we will support a free and fair election, no, we're not going to allow them to steal it in the states or steal it at the Department of Justice or steal it with any other election official in the country.
If it's a free and fair election, we will do what we've always done. We will honor it.
So, finally... Yeah.
And that is the Democrats' history. They honor it.
That is the big difference between the parties. One of the big...
Okay, so... And on that point, I'll tell you, the political scientists have told us the hallmark characteristics of a fascist political party.
Number one, they don't accept the outcome of democratic elections that don't go their way. Yeah.
Right? Number two, they embrace political violence as an instrument for obtaining power. And three, they're not organized democratically.
They're organized top-down as a cult of a personality around a charismatic or allegedly charismatic figure, right? I mean, and that's a fascist party. They also don't put issues before the people for meaningful discussion and debate.
This whole campaign's been wasted. What do they do? Scapegoating.
Racism, anti-Semitism, immigrant bashing, and gay bashing. They got mad at, you know, our great president, Joe Biden, because he said there were semi-fascist currents running through the Republican Party.
But I'm sorry, if the shoe semi-fits, you semi-wear it. And that's what they've done, you know? So what's your...
So the election is Tuesday. What's your prediction on when we will have a winner? Give me a date, a prediction date in the office pool.
Um, well... Because it's not January 5th.
I mean, it's not December 5th. It might even be January 5th.
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Well, let's see. So by December the 11th, the governors have to render the certificates of ascertainment, which means it goes through the election process.
The state settles everything that needs to be settled, and then the governors will deliver the certificates of ascertainment.

And then on December 17th, the electors will meet, and then they will send in their votes. Now, this is a very arcane, antiquated system, as you know, to the archivist, to the national archivist, then who, one week after that, will send it in to Congress.
Well, let's hope it goes that smoothly. Yeah.
That's the theory. That's why I say, why don't we just have an election, you know, and count the votes? So the Electoral College is filled with all of these booby traps where you've got a strategic bad faith actor like Donald Trump, and he will use each phase to try to revisit the results.
I mean, is there anybody in the country who believes that he will accept an election that doesn't go his way? I said that first. All right, thank you very much.
Thank you, Jim. All right, thank you, Congressman.
Let's meet our panel. Hi, guys.
All right, he is a former GOP communications director who now hosts the Bulwark podcast, Tim Miller. Tim.
And he co-hosts the weekly podcast, The Fifth Column, Michael Moynihan. Michael, great to have you back.
Okay, let's just go through all the factors that could be affecting this election. I want to get your opinion on each one of them.
I made a list here. First one is what happened this week with the garbage.
Now, the result could be Puerto Ricans in Pennsylvania win this election for Harris. Right? That's possible.
You're doing this.

Possible.

Yeah, it's possible.

Or it could be the other way, because, I mean,

I think it's a bigger gaffe than people think.

It's so funny, Joe Biden, his whole career, he was like Mr. Gaff.

And then here at the very end, he's like Aaron Judge in Game 6.

Just, he fucking muffed a fly ball at the end of the thing and blew the whole... Yeah.
Because I feel like it epitomizes everything that the Trump people hate about the Democrats. They look down on us.
It's like, it's like deplorables times ten. Bitter clingers, that whole thing, too, that Obama said, no, I mean, this is an unbelievable own goal.
And to have this argument about where the apostrophe is, who is he referring to? It's clear what he was referring to. And obviously they're running away from this.
But yeah, I mean, when you talk to Trump voters, and I've spent far too much time of my life doing so, is that the assumption is that the media hates you, the elites hate you, they think that you're garbage, and they think that you're bitter clingers, and they think that all these things. And any sort of hint of that that seems to prove that is just not a net positive for Democrats.
I don't think it's very, very difficult to point that out. But yeah, no, that's a bad thing for them.
I don't know if it's a net positive, but having the elderly president give like a marble-mouthed answer, yielding, and elderly competitor dressing up as like a Oompa Loompa garbage man sex doll, that's kind of a wash for me. I don't know.
Like, is it a huge win for Trump to go out there on stage dressed up in his dad's dumpster truck outfit? I don't know. I hear what you're saying.
It was a gap. It was dumb.
But I don't know if Trump took advantage of it as much as some people might want to think. Okay.
What about the remark itself? Did the Democrats look weak because they can't take a joke? Because I think that's another Achilles heel that they have? People just gravitate. What was the joke? The joke that the guy told it.
But I mean, what was the funny part of the joke? Well, it was insulting. Look, I have to defend my profession.
I'm a comic. I'm a free speech.
You did some good Puerto Rican jokes in the intro, though. That's why I laughed.
But they weren't. They're not offensive.
This was offensive. But, you know, this guy's an insult comic.
Why he's at this particular... It's like bringing cocaine to a funeral.
Yeah, yeah. Why would...
Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, I've been at the comedy cellar when I've heard comics do political material, which veers off into a lecture and it's just nobody's interested.

The same thing is true in the other direction.

If you have an insult comic opening up this entire thing.

But the thing that annoyed me about Biden's response to that in as marble mouthed as it was,

he said a speaker at the Trump rally said this.

Well, okay, it was a speaker, but it was a comic.

And is it a joke?

Yes, it was a joke.

Was it a bad joke?

Absolutely.

And I talked to another comic,

I talked to a comic about this the other day

Thank you. Okay, it was a speaker, but it was a comic.
And is it a joke? Yes, it was a joke. Was it a bad joke? Absolutely.

And I talked to another comic, I talked to a comic about this the other day,

and he said that, you know, the problem with this was the joke wasn't funny.

It's like it just wasn't a good joke.

It does nothing to further...

I don't know why he was there.

He didn't do a good job.

And as you point out, the crowd didn't like it either.

I mean, the Trump crowd kind of, you know, like, just gasped at it.

Here's the thing, though.

The joke was the exact same point that Donald Trump makes when he's speaking seriously.

Right?

Like, the joke...

Thank you. I mean, the Trump crowd kind of, you know, like, just gasped at it.
Here's the thing, though. The joke was the exact same point that Donald Trump makes when he's speaking seriously.
Right? Like, the joke... Right? The joke was...
The joke was the Puerto... The Puerto Ricans...
The Puerto Rico is an island of garbage. Trump on the stump says, we are a trash can for the world's garbage.
It's the same point, just an inverse. So it wasn't like, it'd be one thing if it was a random insult comic

who happens to be a surrogate who said something

at some random thing. That's not what it is.

It was him speaking to the same insulting stuff

that Donald Trump says at Donald Trump's

closing argument speech when he didn't have to be there.

Had they just had Kid Rock play a song

and then Donald Trump talk, we wouldn't be doing this.

They didn't have to have a whole lineup

of deplorable weirdo freak circus people before him don't know. When Jeff had events, we didn't have random media personalities and three insult comics and an angry businessman and his three kids talk.
That's not standard behavior. They chose to have those people.
I mean, I used to say Trump was born of an orangutan, and did he sue me? Bad example. That's right, he did, because they are just as big snowflakes.
They are. I mean, if I did that joke in reverse, and instead of Puerto Rico said Staten Island, they would have had a shit fit.
They would have found that completely unacceptable. Well, that was the whole point of the first question, right? They're deplorables.
They're bitter clingers. Like, they all geters they all get so it's so touchy when it goes the other way around but people, the culture does like insults I mean do you ever see a rap battle? 8 Mile? Beat Rabbit? yeah I mean it's just all, I can insult you I can make you my bitch with words that's just who we are as a culture do we want that in the presidential election? no no we don't I know it is where we are as a culture.
Do we want that in the presidential election? No, no, we don't. I know it is where we are as a culture.
But kind of segment those things off. Look at a certain place.
I'm not a historian, but did the Romans do this? I mean, was this in any other culture that they found this so amusing that we just take each other down? Hamilton and Burr. They shot each other.
They didn't insult each other. Not in the musical.
All right. So Kamala was caught off mic the other day saying to Gretchen Richmere, we need to move ground among men.
So, you know, we know it's true because she didn't know she was being recorded. And that's the other big factor, I think, in this election is gender.

I mean, the numbers are just completely reversed.

The men, especially young men even, much more for Trump, the bros, the women.

So who's going to win this?

Are the women going to come out because men are still pigs and abortion?

Or is it going to be the men who are like, you know what, Donald Trump, we like him because he talks the way we used to be able to talk anywhere. He swears in front of the Cardinal in New York, and he talks about cocks.
And, you know, he says, motherfucker. And it's like, when he's back on the island, we'll just be able to speak freely.
And I kind of get that, too. I mean, people are...
Yes, I mean, it seems like people are... You're speaking freely.
We're speaking freely. Joe Rogan's doing great.
Theo Vaughn's doing great. That's the thing I really don't get about the bro grievance, right? Which is like, I don't...
Our society is so PC these days that, like, the top ten podcasters are all, like, bro podcasters who like to talk about boobs and dick. But that's...
Which am I... Which am about, they're fine, they seem to be doing fine.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, but we're talking about guys in their homes. We're talking about what can I say at the office and what can I say in front of the wife.
It's like. That seems like a personal problem, I don't know.
I'm gay, so we can say whatever we want in the home, so I guess I don't know. But I don't know if Donald Trump's going to fix that problem, though.
You know, it's like, man. Those are the most popular podcasts because of a backlash to that kind of attitude.
And we have to acknowledge that that kind of attitude did exist. I think it sort of peaked in a way.
And it's a different time. But no, we should not have that in politics.
And you literally said that. And I was like, did he talk about cocks recently? And I realized that, yes, he was talking about Palmer.
Oh, sure, lots of cocks. And this is a weird thing.
But as gender is big, but also we have to pay attention to ethnicity, race, if you want to call it that, in the number of male voters who are black and Hispanic who are moving towards Donald Trump. This has been happening from Republicans, Democrats to Republicans since 2012.
But it's really increased a lot. I've seen this very close up.
And we made this mistake for a very long time in assuming there was something called Hispanic, that everybody who was Hispanic was the same, right? So silly. And there's Cubans and there's Venezuelans and there's Nicaraguans and all of whom escape communism and tend to be a little more towards the right.
I went to Texas and I interviewed people there and they said, you know, we don't like immigration. We want the drawbridge.
And these are all Tejanos, like Mexican-Americans who said, yeah, no more. But we've thought about this for so long in the wrong way that these people are natural Democrats, right? And that's why it's like the right-wing idea of, you know, importing people to make them voters is insane in a number of ways.
But that's actually not even what Hispanics are like as voters now. And we see them moving towards Republicans.
And that's also true of black men. So, I mean, that is also a hugely important thing.
If Donald Trump wins, that movement is... You're saying they escaped communism, though, but didn't they also escape Caudillos? We're sitting here talking about this, and I do wonder, like, we're four days away from the election, and Donald Trump has a of characteristic traits with authoritarian Latin American leaders, certainly more than Kamala Harris does with communist Latin American leaders.
And so I think that we get down into this conversation where we're like, oh, these men are offended about the fact that they can't make the Arnold Palmer dick jokes that they want. And there are these groups that are worried about the fact that Kamala Harris might make us communists.
All of this is nonsense compared to the real tangible threat from Donald Trump that we saw in 2021. And I think that women get this because it's affecting them personally.
But I do think sometimes we're losing what we should be focused on. All right.
I'll say one more thing about this. I read in three different newspapers this week that November is no-nut November.
Was it? No-nut November? Did we do this? You brought a cage? It's like a cage situation? I'm going to tell you. Calm down.
I don't need to be told. You know what it is? I know about it.
No, we know what it is. I just didn't know I couldn't do it.
Oh, okay, go ahead. No Nut November, where men give up porn for a month, and I guess don't masturbate for a month.
Who comes up with this? It's not the man. I'll just say that to you, Tim.
It's not the man. What does that have to do with the election of Donald Trump? Well, you know, for guys who think that, you know, men have been in shackles for in certain ways.
And then somebody comes up with, no, you can't look at porn for a month. This is a decadent culture.
This is a culture that has no problems. We have no real problems in the country right now.
And we're like, you know what we're going to do? We're going to burn it all down with Donald Trump. No, no.
Because I'm annoyed. I'm not for that.
It's got to be a middle ground. That's not a real problem.
It's got to be a middle ground between No Nut November and Donald Trump. Okay.
All right. This election, though, this election I'm going to do is not just about the big stuff.
Obviously, it's the president and senators and governors and congresspeople. It's always, and I think California pioneered this.
We put a lot of stuff on the ballot, propositions. I think that was California's thing, and now everybody does it.
For example, coming up, Missouri will vote on legalizing sports gambling. West Virginia, about participating in euthanasia.
I can understand why that's popular in West Virginia. No, I'm kidding.
I kid West Virginia.

I love West Virginia. Massachusetts were born on regulating access to psychedelic drugs.
I think that's a good one. But they get really picky, Union-specific.
Would you like to see some of the other ones? I knew you would. I knew you would.
Okay. For example, Wisconsin's Prop 52 provides every resident one of those cheese hats, whether they like it or not.
Vermont's Proposition 35 requires all small bookstores to have a cat sleeping in the window. Alaska has ballot measure 8, which makes alcoholism mandatory.
New Mexico has measure J, which requires everyone to wear a piece of turquoise jewelry at all times. Oh, New York's Prop 3 requires all strange Chinese card games to be played within 12 feet of a chicken.
All right. I used to live in New York, that's true.
L.A., right here, is proposing Prop 45, which states no two actors playing family members can be of the same race. Oh, and under California's Prop 10, your car must be fully stopped before you flip off a Cybertruck.
And Missouri has Prop 1, which says that if anyone walks into you because they're on their phone, you're allowed to beat them with their own selfie stick. That's a good one.
All right, so... Let's continue with our...
I've been from West Virginia. That was a tough hit.
Yeah. I kid.
We just do gentle good humor. That's what we do on the show.
West Virginians are going to be pissed. Call them garbage now.
You know? They're going to be... Well, I think...
I'm not going to get into defending the... So, I think there's two ways that people look at Donald Trump.
One is, you know, I had Megyn Kelly on last week, and then I had Ben Shapiro on my podcast, and they're both extremely bright people. I don't think anyone would deny that.
Megyn was in a garbage bag last night. Was in a garbage bag? She put on a garbage bag last night.
So, I mean, I'm just saying, she might be bright, but I might be kind of just going a little. I think she's more right-wing than she used to be.
Anyway, the point is that, you know, both of them have this idea. Ben said it like, you know, he says a lot of shit.
Ben said, like, that's what will be on his tombstone. He said a lot of shit.
Well, some of the things that he just says are like, when I win, those people that cheated will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, which will include long-term prison sentences. He's threatened to put reporters in jail many times.
MSNBC should be investigated for its country-threatening treason. Jack Smith should be considered mentally deranged and should be thrown out of the country.
So these are the two views of Donald Trump. I think you and I are on different pages.
I think I'm with you on this one. That he says a lot of shit, and we should take it very seriously, as opposed to, yeah, his tombstone's going to say he said a lot of shit, but it was just talk.
We might not disagree on this. I mean, I have, my faith in the institutions are very different than saying this stuff doesn't matter.
We are actually in a place now that we actually have to have a presidential candidate that we're supposed to believe that what he says is not going to happen. I want the opposite of that.
I don't want somebody to say something and say, well, yeah, I hope that doesn't happen. I'm going to vote for him.
I mean, Donald Trump does things like... And the frequency of this stuff, by the way, it comes so fast and heavy that we didn't even notice that two days ago Donald Trump filed a lawsuit against CBS for $10 billion.
Literally. And then Austin Powers, like, because of an edited interview that he wasn't even a part of.
$10 billion. The people that, and I think we actually will agree on this, the people that have gone out there for years, people that I know that have been on my podcast, I've done their shows, who have talked about free speech and have nothing to say about the fact that he sounds like Hugo Chavez when he says we should take away the broadcast license of CBS because they were unfair to me during the debate.
Do I think that can happen? Well, no, because I think that America has those robust institutions. I worry about it, and he shouldn't be saying it, and it is something that is disqualifying for a president of the United States.
I agree with that, but I think it's way worse than that, actually, and I want to revise and extend my remarks from earlier about how those are smart people. These are the stupidest smart people in the world, and it's only in the context of politics where somebody as smart as Ben Shapiro would take a risk such as this on Donald Trump, right? In their personal lives, they would never put their kids in a school where somebody like Donald Trump was the principal of the school.
They would never do that, right? If there were two options and there was like a normal center left, kind of woke liberal running one school and there was an insane madman sundowning running the other school school saying random shit all the time, they would always go in the woke liberal school every time, all these people. They're only doing this in the context of politics.
It is an unbelievable risk. And the Wall Street Journal this morning, if you don't mind, I pulled this one up.
These are supposed to be the intelligent conservatives. This was their editorial today.
Mr. Trump was too undisciplined and his attention span too short to stay on message, much less stage a coup.

In supporting Trump, the Wall Street Journal's editorial position is he's too stupid to coup, so we're going to roll with him.

That is what you're saying.

He's going to be older than Biden.

At the end, he's going to be older than Biden.

We're going to have this elderly man with only crazy people around him in charge at age 82. Who would take this risk? No matter, even if you did agree with the policies or whatever, it is a ludicrous risk to take, and all these supposedly smart people have lost their mind to go along with it.
I agree with some of that. You agree with some.
Some of it. We do have to contend with the fact that 75 million people voted for Donald Trump.
Do we? We do. I mean, we have to figure out why that is.
Well, part of it is because a lot of smart people are telling him it's going to be okay, right? So part of it is that these people are abdicating their responsibility and that they trust Ben Shapiro, they trust Megyn Kelly, they trust the Wall Street Journal. I don't think the 75 million people are all Ben Shapiro listeners.
He'd be very wealthy if that were true. He's pretty wealthy.
But no, but at the same time, you have to see, like, if 75 million people figuring out why they would do that, the one thing is that they do believe in the institutions that, like, this happened before. And I get the counter-argument.
This happened for four years. He was reckless, but nothing bad happened in the way they said it would.

And then, of course, January 6th happens.

But he couldn't pull that one off.

That's the Wall Street Journal's argument. Wait a minute.

Nothing bad happened.

He's running again.

That's what bad happened.

I know.

Well, that's...

He can run...

As long as he's not in jail, he can run.

But why isn't he in jail?

That's a good question.

Because the institutions did not help.

Certain individuals held. Like Mark Mulley.
Well, no, the cases aren't done, by the way. Brad Raffensperger.
Yeah, right. Those people.
But I'm not sure those people are around anymore. I mean, it looks to me like the first time was a dry run.
And this time, it's going to be a whole different situation. And for those Republicans who said, well, we didn't impeach him because the courts will handle it.
Well, then the courts didn't handle it. And the Supreme Court has pretty much given him carte blanche to do anything with impunity, has it not? Yeah.
So where do you get the institutions held? I don't think the institutions... The argument that I'm making is that how 75 million people can vote for Donald Trump is that the presumption is that the institutions will hold.
I mean, there are very, very smart conservatives. George Will, one who hates Donald Trump, says, I cannot stand him, but if he becomes president, I believe in the institutions.
H.R. McMaster, who believes that he's unfit to be president, said something very similar this week, that I believe the institutions of this country are strong enough to withstand another administration.
I'm not saying this should happen. I haven't voted for the guy.
I will not vote for the guy. It's going to be the third time I haven't voted for him, and I never would because of the things that Tim mentioned and because of the things I've mentioned.
But I don't believe that we have a fascist here that's going to take over the country and put us all in camps. What percent chance do you think it is, though? Of what? That it's like that the institutions don't hold and that he becomes a quasi.
I mean, if you're more specific than that. Well, it becomes kind of some kind of quasi-authoritarian, like an Orban-ish kind of fascist.
Like, what's the percent chance of that? If he just does what he says he's going to do. Is it a 5% chance that he does that we don't have an election in 2028? Is it a 2% chance? I think it's a 0% chance.
0% chance? What about not a real election? Okay, well, right, not a real election. Russia has elections.
Everybody has elections. Everybody has a parliament.
It's a very dark vision of the future, yeah. For good reason.
It's a 2% chance. My point is, like, even if you think that it's a very, very low chance, a 2% chance, like, that's an insane risk to take.
Okay, let's just do Kamala Harris and we'll roll it back in four years. You can put up J.D.
Vance or whoever, Ron DeSanctimonious, or whoever the hell you want.

No, I mean, we're having this direction of the conversation.

I mean, that's...

Because I pointed out that 75 million people voted for Donald Trump, and he very well might win again.

I think, like, 40 million of them want him to be kind of a soft dictator, though.

Yes.

Like, 30 to 40 million of them, like, want it.

And what do you base that on?

Well, I mean, the primaries.

Like, the fact that...

I'm sorry. I want him to be kind of a soft dictator, though.
Yes. Like 30 to 40 million of them want it.
What do you base that on? Well, I mean, the primaries. Like the fact that...
And the polling. I mean, that's the thing about...
If you ask people, are they more of a Donald Trump Republican or more of a Republican, it's about half the Republican Party wants a soft... Well, let me ask that question about fascism, because that was sort of like a closing argument.
And I said in the monologue, fascism is not synonymous with Nazi. Yes, every Nazi is a fascist.
I don't think Donald Trump is a Nazi, but I've been saying forever, I think he's going to be a fascist. He wants to be that.
He says it. You don't have to look that hard.
So is that going to be just, as you would more say, campaign hyperbole? Is it going to be something that's going to swing the election to Harris? Or is it a case of a lot of people on the Trump side saying, yeah, he's a fascist, but he's our fascist? The fact that fascism is not unpopular with these people, because they don't really care about democracy. What they care about is getting their people in who want to run the country their way.
And I'm... Yes? No, I just don't think he's a fascist.
I think I have said this recently in a piece I did recently. I said he wants to be an authoritarian, but I don't think he's a fascist.
Well, he's on the waiting list. Yeah, he's on...
Well, but the thing is that fascists, you say, but as you say, not all fascists are Nazis. This is redolent of Nazis.
And what are we supposed to think when MSNBC is doing this thing? What are we supposed to do? That's what I would keep... I asked the congressman, the governor last week.
I asked Cisco. What are we going to do? I mean, he said, I'm just going to go to work.
Yeah. And what do they do when you show up at work and they throw you in...
This is why he can't be elected. and this is why it infuriates me, like the argument of, well, you know, I don't think we should be that concerned about it.
We shouldn't be that alarmed. That's why we're first at the Wall Street Journal.
Okay, well, but I'm not saying it's you, but there's a spectrum of people from like you and like the teetering edge of being critical of Trump all the way that are like, no, this is an emergency. This is an emergency.
No, but you're not out there saying this, right? This is an emergency. He has to be stopped.
And the people that know better need to say it. And why is it only Liz Cheney and Mark Cuban and you? Speaking of the...
It's too late to stop him if he wins. Speaking of the editorials in the newspapers, what about the ones on the left that just wouldn't endorse her? Right.
The Washington Post. Their saying was democracy dies in darkness.
What's their saying now? If democracy dies, it's fine. I mean, you can't have it both ways.
You can't live under this banner every day you had to put out the paper. Democracy dies in darkness.
And now, well, we don't know whom. Why should we get involved? We don't want to get involved.
He has less opposition now, after 6th than he did before. It's an insane state of affairs.
Like in 2020, if you look across any metric, business leaders, editorials, the rich people that are running the editorials, the Republicans within the party opposition, people have pre-submitted to Trump. And they know that he will go around the rule of law and they don't want to be on the target list like Liz Cheney.
That's what's happening right now. I think when billionaires are afraid to step out, because they see what happens in other countries.
Putin didn't get to where he was by not throwing people out of windows. Even if it's not throwing out of windows, you look at Orban, they know that there'll be retribution.
Yes. They know that Kamala Harris is not going to go in there and do retribution against Blue Origin or Amazon or whatever because Bezos didn't endorse.
Right. Trump will.
Bezos knows that. That's why he's acting.
So we're already too far down the path, I guess. All right.
I've got to end it there. Thank you, guys.
Good luck. I'll just say, everybody? Nothing to worry about.

Nothing to worry about. We got it.
We got it. All right.
Time for new rules. Ready for new rules.
New rule, the Orca whale that pooped in its tank at SeaWorld San Antonio and then splashed the dirty poop water onto the audience. Doesn't need to apologize.
He did it on purpose, and I love it. And don't say the audience members were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
They're in the wrong place? He's a whale in San Antonio. New rule, Nikki Haley has to enter a shelter for battered candidates.
It's painful to have to watch her making excuses for Trumpers like, I know they keep saying racist and misogynist things, but they have a good heart. Girlfriend, you sound like Rihanna when she got back with Chris Brown.
Throw some clothes at a suitcase and get out. Nowural, now that 49er Nick Bosa interrupted his teammate's interview so he could display his MAGA hat on national television, Laura Ingram has to explain why she didn't tell him to just shut up and play.
I don't get it, Laura. You told LeBron to just shut up and dribble.
You told Kevin Durant to shut up and dribble. Colin Kaepernick needed to go away.
Why did these three athletes all have to shut up, but this athlete gets to... Oh, never mind.
I get it now. New Rule, instead of giving oral contraceptive pills names like Nikki, Portia, and Yasmin,

name them after the guys you definitely don't want to have a baby with.

Name them Brad, Greg, and Darnell.

Or better yet, name them after the guys who don't want you to have those pills in the first place.

Neil, Samuel, and Clarence. Your old horror movies have to stop telling me what to do.
Don't move. Don't breathe.
Don't look now. Don't look away.
Don't say a word. Don't answer the phone.
Don't look in the basement. Don't look under the bed.
Don't open the door. Don't go in the house.
Don't go in the woods. Don't blink.
Play dead. Let me in.
Get out. Watch me when I kill.
Drag me to hell. Jesus, it's like we're married.
Honey, I had a hard day at work. Just let me taste the blood of Dracula and relax.

And finally, new rule.

Well, here we are on the Friday before Election Day,

and at least one of my predictions was right on the money. It's tied, as it always is.

That's just who this country is now.

Two tribes united by a history, but maybe not a future.

I'm sticking with my other prediction that Harris is going to win,

but I can't say I'm not nervous that the election is in the hands of a small cohort

I'm going with my other prediction that Harris is going to win, but I can't say I'm not nervous that the election is in the hands of a small cohort of undecided voters, those curious few bisexuals of the political world. Oh, everybody loves to mock, but I see it as more of a personality thing.
I call them the Christmas Eve shoppers of politics. They know the big day is coming, but they just can't get themselves to do anything about it until the last minute.
My father was that guy with Christmas. He would do all his Christmas shopping on Christmas Eve night, an hour before the store is closed.
He would go to a single department store with no idea what he was going to get. But that's why a department store is great.
Oh, look, toys. I got kids.
They like toys. Done.
And actually, he was a great gift giver because he felt you had to be fully in the christmas spirit to go christmas shopping and being in the store at that hour with santa and the music and the tree and the whole production going on it served as kind of a muse for picking presents and i think there are people who feel the same way about the voting booth so let me me have a word with them. Hi, Christmas Eve voter.
Look, you obviously don't like Trump, or you'd be in that camp already, but you're still torn. And I'm the guy who keeps saying, I get why.
You wanted more reassurance that the Democrat isn't going to go along with every aggressively anti-common sense idea that comes out of the woke mind virus, which, yes, is a thing. And if she loses, that will be mainly why.
And part of that mind virus is progressophobia, Steven Pinker's term for the liberal fear of ever admitting when things are actually good. As The Economist puts it about America today, an economy with an unemployment rate of 4% and a per-person GDP of $85,000 does not have to be made great again.
It is great. And yet, the economy is the Christmas Eve voters' other big issue,

and they think it's terrible, when actually it's bigger and better than ever.

Makes Arnold Palmer's dick look like nothing.

When we were coming out of the pandemic, every economist predicted we were headed for a recession,

And I think that's a good question. When we were coming out of the pandemic,

every economist predicted we were headed for a recession

and all the horrible things that come with it. But much like Trump's girlfriends, those things never came.
the truth about America today, what Democrats should have been selling is everything that should be low and down is unemployment, low. Black unemployment, low.
Poverty rate, low. Gas prices, down.
And everything that should be up and high is manufacturing real wages the stock market personal spending personal savings oil production the u.s. now produces more energy than it uses which is saying something since we have las vegas where i'll be tonight.
But it's sold out,

so sorry.

Mississippi.

Mississippi is America's poorest state, but its residents earn, on average, more than Canada, Germany, or England. That's right.
We're beating the axis of beer. if trump was president with this economy it would be 24 7 if we have the greatest economy ever in the history of the world maybe the universe many people are saying it but trump isn't president now, so you get this.

Now you have millions and millions of dead people,

and you have people dying financially because they can't buy bacon, they can't buy food, they can't buy groceries. That's right.
In this reality, if you don't get bacon, you'll die. which is also what my dog thinks.
But here on Earth One, it's not actually like that. The vast majority of Americans make it to the Piggly Wiggly and back alive.
Yes, everything at the dollar store costs $1.50 now,

but Biden didn't invent food costs money.

And what caused the inflation was shutting the entire country down

and paying everyone $6 trillion to stay home

because a bad flu was going around.

And Trump and Biden both did that.

Everybody took the money, and I don't see anyone in this crowd handing back the checks. But who brought inflation down further and faster than any other country? The United States, bitches.
It peaked here in 2022 and since has dropped like a rock to 2.4%. Biden tamed it without causing a recession, which is like catching a SpaceX rocket with your butt cheeks.
The phrase I hear so much that makes me just want to unalive myself is, how's she going to help me? Like the president is your personal genie. It's Kamala, not Kazam.
And it's a government, not an insurance company.

I don't know if Kamala worked at McDonald's, but she's not Flo from Progressive.

You think you're living in the Second Great Depression because you can't buy a full foot of sandwich for $5? Maybe you're not looking at the actual numbers. Maybe your hat's too tight.
And undecideds, you should be voting, Harris, because of the economy.

But undecideds don't get that message,

because Democrats can't make the words,

things aren't so bad, ever come out of their mouths,

lest someone somewhere accuse them of not caring enough

about people who are struggling.

But even in a good economy,