Ep. #674: Tim Alberta, Laura Coates, Buck Sexton

Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO Late Night series, Real Time with Bill Maher. Thank you.
Hi! How you doing? Good morning.

How are you?

Thank you, people.

Thank you very much.

All righty.

Thank you, people.

I appreciate it.

Oh, wow.

Yes, you can. Thank you.
You're very kind. Thank you.
Great to be back here for a week off, I know. I can feel the tension in you.
You're just excited and tense. It could be anything.
Oh, fuck, it's 25 days before the election.

And I got to say, it's not looking that great for the Democrats.

I mean, this is not a good sign, you know,

when you have an African-American candidate.

You probably shouldn't be having to shore up your support among black men,

but that's what's going on.

Tim Walz is headlining a voter engagement event tonight with black men. Who better to connect with young black men than Tim Walz? Because apparently Michael Buble was unavailable.
Meanwhile, Kim Kardashian's like, hello.

No, Obama even came out yesterday to scold him.

And he was scolding.

Well, I don't know.

At the last month of the convention, he was no scolding.

Now he's scolding.

He was saying, you've got to vote for Harris. But, of course, for some young, especially the younger black men, it's a scolding.
Now he's scolding. He was saying, you've got to vote for Harris.

But, of course, for some young, especially the younger black men,

it's a tough choice.

Harris is African-American, but Trump has a sneaker line.

So, you know.

Oh.

And, of course, not just a sneaker line.

You know, file this under if Kamala did it.

What if she had a sneaker lie?

Or was saying they're eating the cats.

Or, you know, a million fucking things.

But Trump also was selling Bibles, the God Bless America Bible.

And we found out this week it's made in China.

Which...

Thank you. This week, it's made in China.
Which possibly explains why the Eighth Commandment is, thou shalt not ask for substitutions. That is a dead giveaway that your Bible...
How do you know your Bible's made in China? But, of course, most people's thoughts this week are not on politics. They were on the weather because we had two horrible hurricanes that recently hit the southeast.
We're thinking about those people for sure. And we found out that they didn't just rip off roofs from houses and cause flooding.
They also exposed how many people in this country are out of their fucking minds.

The conspiracy theories on the right about a hurricane?

Alex Jones said the government could have killed the storm in the Gulf of Mexico.

An idea so dumb even The Rock hasn't made it into a movie.

Marjorie Taylor Greene said

they control the weather.

They. I guess that means

liberals. Yes, liberals control the weather.
Well well it was kind of a beautiful day here today I gotta say it's pretty beautiful in LA okay maybe no I mean given her history with Jewish space lasers remember that thing you could be forgiven for thinking that when she says they, she really means Jews have a secret weather machine.

Okay, but what she cannot explain about this is,

if the Jews have the weather machine, why attack Florida?

Of all the places they would not attack.

Really, my whole life, I grew up around Jewish people. I know Jewish people.
They don't control the weather. Bitch about air conditioning? Yes, that happens all the time.
But not the weather. Oh, and here's a...
Here's a nice wrinkle in the weather story.

It turns out white supremacist groups are being allowed to go on and help with the search and rescue missions. The rare situation where you could be rescued from a storm front by storm front.
so this is

this is by Stormfront. So,

this is where we are in America.

The Jews control the storms

and the Nazis are doing the rescues?

Well...

At least we're working together, huh?

But all this conspiracy

See you next time. At least we're working together, huh?

But all this conspiracy theory stuff and letting the Nazis on their rescue,

we're ignoring the real threat.

If it keeps raining cats and dogs,

it's going to attract Haitian migrants.

We've got a great show.

We have Laura Coates and Buck Suxton.

But first, he is a staff writer at The Atlantic and author of The Kingdom, The Power, and the Glory, American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism. Tim Alberta.
Tim. How are you, sir? Great to meet you.
It's been a while. We've wanted you here, and now you're here.
And of course, we're at that point in

the election season where we start breaking down the electorate into the subgroups and who will control the election, and it is all about that. So it's a good time for you to be here to talk about evangelicals, because that is always a very important group.
And of course, the white evangelicals break huge for Trump, right? What is it this year, over 80 percent? Yeah, that's what we expect. OK.

And, look, we could do the obvious.

Why do they support the least religious men in the world, the most immoral men? I've done that... She's remembering some of the things I said about it in the years.
Yeah, I mean, that's boring to me because I did that editorial in 2017.

I want to know what do the evangelicals must see a bigger picture than we see in Donald Trump. What is that? Well, look, I think, Bill, there is a persecution complex at work here that may seem silly and overblown to a lot of people from the outside looking in.
right? But for folks inside the church who believe that the country is slipping away from them, that they no longer recognize the Christian America of their youth, and they believe that Donald Trump is an imperfect vessel for God's perfect will. And they look at him and say, well, the barbarians are at the gates.
Maybe we need a barbarian to protect us. And I think in many ways, there's almost a mercenary relationship here where Donald Trump's bad behavior almost reinforces their support because they look at him and say, well, no good Christian man is capable of protecting us in the way that he is.
Right. And so in a way, it almost liberates him to behave badly and to say whatever he wants and sort of just creates this ongoing relationship where whatever he says and does, his support remains steadfast.
He's the badass gunfighter who becomes, they give him the badge to be the sheriff. Even though who he is, or he's Cyrus.
I've heard that comparison. Can you explain that one to us? Who is Cyrus in the Bible? Yeah, Cyrus is the Old Testament Persian king who allows the Jews to go back and rebuild the temple, right? And the idea being that he's not one of them, but he protects them.
And that Trump, in his own way, although certainly you do have a subset of these folks who believe that Trump actually is a Christian, that he had a born-again experience in the White House, that Mike Pence led him to Jesus in the White House. Which would make the events of January 6th.
I mean, if someone had led me to Christ, I feel like I'd probably try to help them if they were, you know, in danger at the Capitol. But set that aside.
But most folks, I think, are pretty clear-eyed about who Trump is. They're not under any illusions about him being a, you know, Bible school, Sunday school Bible reading guy.
It's just that they view him as someone who's capable of protecting them from a culture that has slipped away in a country that they don't recognize anymore. Right.
And they do, I mean, you said persecution complex. That is part of the parcel to Christianity.
There is no Christianity without that. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.
And of course, Christ himself suffered and all that. They love to suffer.
They like that. And the fact that they're, you know, they're not so much under siege as they're losing customers.
Each generation gets less and less religious. You're welcome.
But my question is, as we get less and less Christian, I think the country is 65% Christian. The Republican representation in Congress, 99%.
Even the Democrats, 78%. How do you explain that? Well, look, I think it's important to distinguish real persecution from manufactured persecution, right? So you have Christians all around the world, in China, in India, in sub-Saharan Africa, who could never conceive of having political power, of cultural influence, of any sort of privileged status conferred upon them because of their faith affiliation.
And in some way, that helps the Christian movement in these areas to thrive and to be sort of organically strong and authentic. And when you look at the American church, it's obviously a very different story, in part because privilege and status and power is all we've ever known.
And so now when you see the demographics beginning to shift slowly, but they are shifting. And when you look at the prospect of what does a post-Christian America look like? What does it represent? I think to a lot of these folks here in the white evangelical movement, certainly the world that I came out of, they perceive it as a very real threat to them.
And they're desperate to sort of hold on to what they have. But I think the story of Christianity, to your point, is about real persecution and how your faith is strong enough in the face of whatever those challenges are to persevere.
But we are at a stage now where we're sort of manufacturing these threats in order to justify the ways in which we treat people who are not us. And manufacturing the history itself of this country.
I mean, this is one of the things I thought was so great about your book, which is very compelling on this subject, all of it, but especially on the idea that they really have almost the exact opposite. And they've been doing this for years about how this country was founded, a Christian nation.
I mean, you know, and they will say it outrightly now. They didn't used to say it quite outrightly as they do.
The Speaker of the House, you know, So separation of church and state is a misnomer, he says. Lauren Boebert, I'm tired of this separation of church and state junk.
It is the very foundation of this country. It's the most prevalent thing that makes this country different.
We were founded by people who wanted to get away from religious dogmatism. That's what the pilgrims were.
Well, Lauren Boebert also said, rather famously, that Jesus didn't have enough AR-15s to keep the Roman government from killing him. That's a real thing that a real member of Congress said.
I'm not making this up. Oh, I know.
So you do suspect at a certain point that some of these people use evangelical or use Christian more as a sort of cultural identity than a doctrinal theological identity. Setting that to the side, what you're saying here is really at the root of our problems.
Everyone has a different definition for Christian nationalism, and that's part of the problem because we don't know exactly how to define it. To me, Christian nationalism is really just the marriage of bad history and bad theology.
And one is a prerequisite for the other. Once you've gone around to the school boards and the legislatures, once you have changed the curriculum, once you have rewritten history, literally rewritten history books to convince people that, in fact, this was born to be a Christian nation, that, in fact, the Establishment Clause and the First Amendment, that those things were sort of an elaborate three-dimensional wink and nod from the founders, that they really did want for us to be an explicitly Christian nation governed by European Christian men, and that they were fine with an eventual theocratic takeover of our governing institutions.
Bill, once you get to that place where you accept that piece of history as being true, then suddenly the way that you read scripture is very different. And it becomes very easy for you to distort basic theology, the ways in which Jesus commands us to look forward to a kingdom that is not of this world.
You begin to think that actually that kingdom is in this world, that it is here, it is now. But you believe in that kingdom of the other world.
I mean, this is, I mean, you're talking about get to a place where you can't believe people believe this. That's what I think about you, quite frankly.
But anybody who's still, I don't understand how you could write this book. And also, I know you were brought up in an evangelical house.
Yeah.

I was also brought up as a Catholic, you know. Believe me, I put in my time.
You know. I mean, they also drilled mercury into my teeth when I was a child.
But I had both things drilled out of my head. how do you maintain that sort of cognitive dissonance that you can criticize him so logically, but you still believe in the central, what I would call, myth? Well, a couple of things.
First, you know, C.S. Lewis wrote that the only reason we can recognize a crooked line is because we've seen a straight line first, right? So the criticisms we have of Christianity institutionally, I think, can be quite easily divorced from a sort of clear-eyed look at the historical figure of Jesus of Nazareth and to understand who he was, what he represented in the context of his time.
But that's different than think, but you go, you believe him as a God. Absolutely.
Okay. Well, I think he was probably a historical figure.
Well, but once you've crossed that threshold, once you've come to believe that he is indeed a historical figure, you can either believe that he was a madman and a maniac and the worst sort of liar who would pretend to be God. You can view him as someone who was vile and contemptible historically,

or you can view him as exactly who he said he was.

But there's really no in-between.

Oh, come on. There's plenty of in-between.

I can view him as a guy who lived then.

He could have been a little nutty.

Sometimes nuts have manifestos that make some sense.

The Unabomber made some good points.

Well, uh, so...

I mean, and by the way, this is what Thomas Jefferson

Thank you. The Unabomber made some good points.
Well, uh, so... I mean, and by the way, this is what Thomas Jefferson and a few other people did.
They took all the miracles and the bullshit out of the Bible. They just wanted to give us Jesus as a moral philosopher, which, on that page, he was revolutionary.
The meek shall inherit the earth. This was new stuff, okay? And very often noble and admirable.
That doesn't mean I have to accept that a dove flew down and banged his mom. And he was born of this virgin and then died and went up to heaven.
And, you know, that, I can separate those two, no? Well, it doesn't mean that you have to accept anything. I think...
Why can't I accept one? Why can't I have just column A, moral philosopher, not God, B? Well, you know, Tim Keller, the pastor-theologian who passed about a year ago, he preached a sermon once on this, talking about how if you were to just view Jesus as a moral example, then you'd be missing the entire point.

That, in fact, only when you view him as a mediator and as ultimately a substitute for you and for your own depravity, for your own brokenness.

Bill, I understand fully that you and others here, that may sound crazy, right?

That it's speaking a different language.

It's not.

I mean, we're all crazy, too.

Well, some of us don't have it. We're all crazy in our own way.
Anyway, it's a great book. It's not...
I mean, we're all crazy, too. Well, some of us are the other two.

We're all crazy in our own way.

Anyway, it's a great book.

Thank you for coming.

I could talk about this all night with you,

but I've got to go to the panel.

Please thank Tim Alberta.

All right, let's meet our panel.

Hi, guys.

Hey, here's the anchor of CNN's Laura Coates Live and is CNN's chief legal analyst, Laura Coates. And he's a former CIA analyst who co-hosts the nationally syndicated radio program The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show.
Buck Sexton. Okay.
CNN and CIA. Okay, so I was mentioning in the monologue, there's some sobering statistics for the Democrats this week about the election, which is only a little over three weeks away.
I'm taking this from Andrew Sullivan's column. He says, at this point in 2020, Biden, with far fewer resources than Harris has, was ten points ahead of Trump.
And in 2016, Hillary was six up. And she is only 2.6 up.
Pennsylvania, Biden was up seven at this point. She's up one.
Michigan, Biden was up eight, and she's tied. Now, we're all in our bubbles, okay? And that's one reason I'm glad you're here, because a lot of

people are saying, I don't care about any of this.

How could anyone think about voting

for Trump? And that's why you're here, Buck.

Thank you. And we're going to get to that.

But it does not

seem like she is closing the deal.

This week she did a media blitz

of, she went

to Howard Stern and Stephen Colbert

and The View. Places where, you know, I would say the ass is pre-kissed.
Am I wrong? No. Did that help or hurt? No, I think Kamala Harris just had the worst week of her campaign so far, and it's been trending downward for quite some time now.
Donald Trump, at this point, I think is very likely to almost certain to win the election, and I appreciate the opportunity to tell people why... I'll remember that, by the way, why that is.
And I think there are two things that are weighing her down. First of all, what led up to her campaign.
Just, and I'll give a quick, I know it's four years, but I'll give a quick version of it. Kamala Harris has to explain, while she's a part of the Biden administration, second in command, you had some of the worst statistics you could possibly imagine as a politician.
Worst in, hold on, I'm going to get there. Worst inflation in 40 years while Biden is president.
First time you have over 100,000 opioid deaths while Biden is president. Probably the worst open border in the history of the country.
8 million at least. And that's not including the half a million a year that are gotaways.
So roughly 10 million people, you could call it, in four years, entering illegally, almost all of whom are going to stay.

Now, she doesn't want to throw Biden under the bus for this,

and she didn't want to tell everybody that he's a dementia patient,

so she decided that she was going to go along.

It's just the facts, everybody. You get mad at me.

She decided that she was going to go along with this until it was no longer possible because of the debate,

and that's what she inherited.

I haven't even gotten to her campaign yet, but I can't.

Well, my ass has never been kissed. Let me talk about from our perspective.
You know, when we... Let's move on, Bill, shall we? I said pre-kissed.
It's in pre-kissed. Okay.
It's funny, when you speak in hyperboles, I think the electorate begins to distance themselves because they cannot essentially believe that terms like this is the worst it's ever been when they have known the history of the country. It's difficult for the electorate to be behind it.
I think what weighs Kamala Harris down are two things that are obvious that distinguishes her from, say, a Hillary Clinton or a Joe Biden or even a Barack Obama. This is a woman of color in a society that has, as your conversation has talked about, has elevated white men historically, consistently, presently, and they believe in the future as well.
And I think those two things really can have an impact on how electorate sees her and the viability of a woman in office, a woman at the helm. So when going to talk about global politics.
People will say, what would another country feel about a woman leader if there's never been one? And so those two things don't give her wings. They give her anchors.
It's her job to elevate it. So I have a different perspective on how Kamala's campaign has been run thus far and the record that she's trying to run on.
First of all, it is there's a condescension and a dishonesty at the heart of what they were doing until really this week or until pretty recently. By the way, I thought she did well in the debate.
So I'm not just everything Kamala Harris does. I think I think, you know, calling calling balls and strikes here is important.
We're talking about the campaign. But she was hiding from the media.
You talked about the kind of interviews that she's been doing. She has been doing almost none until now.
Why is that? Well, because when Kamala Harris appears in public, unfortunately, and has to answer questions, we're all reminded why the handlers of the campaign and the Democrat Party have tried to keep her out of public view. And for the tranche of people that you're trying to win over, I'm not talking about the Democrats who have been Democrats all their lives are all set in, not Republicans either.
The people in the middle who will determine this election in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, who are still listening in, the first thing they can see is where's Kamala Harris? Why isn't she? Donald Trump's out there doing, you know, two-hour live shows all over the place, lots of interviews, lots of podcasts.

Kamala Harris shows up.

Kamala Harris shows up, and it turns into sound bites for my team, quite honestly.

So I think she's in a tough spot because we have to remember,

in 2020, Democrats essentially rejected her as a candidate.

She was like in 12th place or something, didn't even make it to Iowa.

But, Buck, don't you value, I think the electorate does, not just form over substance. Yes, Trump has been out there consistently for a lot longer than Vice President Kamala Harris as the top of a ticket in the forefront.
But to compare substantive conversations that provide granular detail about policy proposals, even albeit at the 10th hour, we're 25 days away, compared to two hours of spewing rhetoric that may or may not be grounded in anything factual, the electorate has to judge that not by how frequently I see you, but the quality of those conversations. Well...
So what I would offer in response to that is that when Kamala Harris has tried to address policy, first of all, there's been a lot of a regime of people in the media saying, oh, the campaign, she no longer stands for that. I mean, you've talked about this here.
I'll watch the show. No longer stands for fracking.
No longer stands for... She was talking about building a wall a few weeks ago, that kind of flittered out of the system.
I mean, this is madness. You can count about a dozen different things that Kamala Harris was very much in favor for four years ago that she is no longer in favor for now.
And when she's asked about it, which is rare, because she doesn't really appear in public unless it is to go on The View and have an amen corner, when she is pushed on it, when she is pushed on it, she says something like, I haven't changed my values. I mean, you know, this isn't like an 8th grade social studies lecture.
Okay, but I must... I must jump in as...
I must jump in as the ref here. There you go.
A little bit. And point out that you're judging her by the old standards that we've judged every other politician by.
And by that way, I would say you're right. We see her flip-flop on issue after issue, which all politicians do.
Trump's superpower is that he's so fucking insane and that he's such a... Wait a second.
And that he's been such an inveterate liar about anything he just pulls out of his ass at any time.

That that's just baked into the cake and people accept that.

Let me just tell you, this is just Trump this week.

First, there was the hurricane stuff.

Just making shit up about the hurricane.

That she's taking, he said he took her FEMA money.

Her FEMA, Kamala spent all her, said she took her FEMA money.

Kamala spent all her, like it's her FEMA money,

billions, as if she stole it from a bank and spent it on housing illegal immigrants.

We found out he calls Putin regularly,

that when there was only a few COVID tests here in this country, he sent one to his buddy, Putin. He said if Kamala's wrecked, it'd be the last real election.
I'm going to be your glue much. She went on 60 Minutes.
He said after that what she did was totally illegal going on 60 Minutes that CBS should lose their license for it and she should be forced to concede the election. My point is, this is his superpower.
You don't even notice the insanity because it is ubiquitous. There's a lot there.
I'll try to take some of these in order. First off, when you're talking about Trump and Russia, and I know that a lot of people still like to pretend like there was Trump-Russia collusion.
We had the whole report. We went through the whole thing.
It's absolutely insane. People want to believe this.
There was. But you had Boris Johnson, the former UK prime minister, come out today and say something that I think is very important for people to hear, which is, in his opinion, there's no question that there wouldn't have been an invasion of Ukraine while Donald Trump was president.
Now, you can say that Boris Johnson's in the tank for the UK. No, no.
But what's more important is that history proves that that is true, that it didn't happen when Donald Trump was president. He waited for some reason, even though he was supposed to be buddies with Putin.
He also, by the way, expelled something like 60 diplomats for Russian diplomats out of the U.S. while he was president, which was a big diplomatic thing at the time.
Why are we talking about Ukraine? Well, we're talking about Russia. You said that he's buddies with Putin and he sent him to...
You want me to talk about Trump? I know, but what does it have to do with Ukraine? You want me to talk about Trump when I'm trying to tell you border economy crime is all that matters, and are getting the floors being wiped with them on these issues. But here's what's wrong with your, excuse me, Bill, with your hypotheticals.
You could say exactly that same thing anytime the word yet belongs in a sentence. You could say well, we never had COVID when Bush was in office.
You could say it with Reagan. You could talk about everything going on right now

with Israel and Gaza.

You could talk about the Mets

in a potential pennant victory.

Yay!

You could talk about it all in the yes.

Yes, we can.

Yes, we can.

Yes, you can.

See, stay quiet.

But, you know, when you think about this, Buck,

and that's why I think people get frustrated,

not with, you know, no one's trying to persuade, certainly end of the table at all about how you should vote. But I do think it's very toxic to suggest that you could say that because an invasion to Ukraine did not happen while an American president was in office, belies the fact that Putin, as a dictator, has done and will continue to do what he would like to do, irrespective of who actually is in office.
It might have nothing to do with us. Not everything's about us.
That I agree with you. That I agree with you.
But I just... Maybe his army wasn't ready.
The timing of these things matters, or else what's the difference when any president is commander-in-chief? They had a lot of tanks and a lot of ways to go into Ukraine beforehand. By the way, they started under Obama, and I know liberals like to talk now about the Woodward book, because there's some things, this is also true, an important history lesson, that was when they decided to take Crimea, that was when they took the Donbass region.
It was under Obama, who, by the way, refused to give lethal munitions. He was literally sending blankets and helmets.
It's interesting that you want to believe the Woodward book when other Woodward books were bullshit. No, I know that because I asked the national security director for Ukraine about it, and he told me that they wouldn't send it.
So wait, is everything in Woodward's books true to you? No, but I just think it's funny that there are some things that are true that nobody wants to talk about. I know, but for years it's been like, Bob Woodward, he has one source, but the reality is that Trump...
All right, I got to... I got, you know...
I got to go. All right.
So listen to this. Guess who...
No, we're coming back to you. Guess who endorsed Trump this week? Snoopy.
Yeah, Snoopy. I mean, this is true.
A fan account endorsed Trump. And, of course, to set the world aflame because this is America and we have to fight about everything.
So the people, Soupy would not be for drugs. Soupy would be for Kamala.
And now, of course, now all the cartoon characters have gotten involved with endorsements. Would you like to hear some of the other endorsements? I knew you would.
For example, SpBob is endorsing Kamala because she came out for pot legalization. Charlie Brown is all in on Trump because they both take a single strand of hair and make it cover their heads.
Pepe Le Pew is down for Trump because he's also a pussy grabber. Mickey Mouse is endorsing Harris because, you know, fuck DeSantis.

Hello Kitty.

She's endorsing Trump just in case that whole

microniation thing is true.

Doesn't want to become

goodbye kitty.

Bugs Bunny is endorsing Trump because he says he can relate to constantly being shot at by inept gunmen. And, of course, Bambi endorsed Kamala because Don Jr.
shot his mom. And Two-Face is supporting Kamala

because he loves her position on fracking.

There you go.

And Garfield is Team Trump

because they're both fat orange pussies.

Anyway.

Gentle good humor. That's what we do for gentle.
Speaking of

pussies,

this bro... You didn't go to me?

No, no, no. No, I did not.

Of course if you went to me.

No, no, no. It's a big issue in this election is that Trump is going for the bro vote.
I mean, obviously, there's a huge gender gap. And, you know, I've done this one to death, too.
But, you know, someone has to explain to me why people who love Trump see him as this icon of masculinity, this man who I used to... You know, who just never shuts up under two pounds of bronzer and always complaining and whining.
Why do you see this as an epitome of masculinity? And is it good if it is? I think that the gender issue that Democrats have is much broader than Donald Trump specifically. I mean, Trump also, there's the narrative, he's a billionaire who's married to a supermodel, who's become president on the first try, who, you know, I mean, look, people can say whatever they want about it, but there is that component of an alpha male who's ultra-successful and is probably about to become leader of the free world again.
But to the issue of where Democrats are on this, I mean, I don't think you would be able to get many Democrats, elected Democrats, for example, to come on, I don't know if any of them, honestly, to come on this show and say, I don't think that an 18-year-old who identifies as a woman should be able to play on a girl's team. Rather, I don't think that's a problem.
They do think it's a problem, rather. They won't say that they view that as an issue.
And so when you talk about the gender identity cult that the Democrat Party has embraced, and then you're like, why don't we have more people that are pro-masculinity on the Republican side? There's also all these total charlatans going around who basically hate men and are always talking about toxic masculinity. And it's a Democrat reality.
And really, the truth is there are very few efforts that are made, I would say more broadly in politics, right and left, but definitely on the right, to speak to men who are in a difficult position right now. You know, female earnings relative to men, female college graduation relative to men.
Women have made all this tremendous progress, and now we're in this society where, you know, very few men tend to have a lot of options when it comes to mates and a lot of guys. They're not going to start the next billion-dollar company, and they're wondering, you know, what's in it for me? And then when they're told, oh, yeah, by the way, like, we're putting immigrants up in four-star hotels in New York City who just got here yesterday.
Sorry that you can't pay your bills. I'm just speaking to what the reality is.
I'm so sorry that men have had to now endure the same inequities that women have. I mean, the idea that there is...
Think about this. What you're saying is...
This is why Kamala will lose, by the way. This is why Kamala will lose.
Why? Because in our ticket, let me make a point? No, because instead of addressing that men can have concerns that should be spoken to politically, especially working class men who are feeling the pinch right now economically, you know, the media on the coast, and look, I'm a part of it, I grew up in New York City, I grew up in Manhattan, I understand, just kind of mocks these people as though they don't count. And Donald Trump speaks to them and for them, whether he's of them or not, does not matter.
Buck, first of all, I do appreciate you trying to bridge the gap between what you think I'm going to say and what I actually said. But I'm actually going to tell you what I said.
What I said was, I'm sorry that men have to confront the same inequities that women. The next point I'm going to make, which is not the one you were going to make, is that when people are talking about masculinity, I do think the way it's being described is not the discussion you're having about gender and sports and gender identity.

But instead, the idea of how I think white men, and you talked about this on your show and others, feel as though they are disenfranchised and being left behind by either the progress that women are making or otherism or the browning of America because there is the notion that they are entitled to be in a certain position they're no longer in. But the reality is progress works such that everyone must go in the direction of it.
And so if some people are being left behind in part, in part because society is making equity more of a position that we favor, then that is a reflection of where we ought to be going, not a condemnation of progress itself. So, I mean, this is...
I'm glad... It was an eloquent point, and I'm glad you got to make the eloquent point telling working-class voters, who are men in particular, but white working-class male voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, sorry, bro, the progress means that no one can speak for you and no one can be in favor of your interests.
But aren't working-class people also people of color? Why is it just men? Women are working class as well, you realize. No, of course, but we're speaking about masculinity and why, right, the topic at hand is why is it that the Republican Party is the party of guys who are, you know, that talk about masculinity in traditional terms, that speak about courage, that speak about getting after it, that speak about taking risks.
And the Democrats are, announce your pronouns, let's have boys pretend they're girls in the locker rooms, let's put tampons in the girls. This is just reality.
You know, they call him, what's his name? I mean, those things happen. They don't happen everywhere.
Well, but they happen in enough places that the Democrat Party won't condemn it, and so you ask why. Why are they okay with all of this? Why is courage only a masculine quality? These are...
And see, here we go. It's not that it can't be a feminine quality as well, but then you get into this, what is the definition of masculinity that can be positive that doesn't upset the feminists? There's nothing, you say, oh, risk-taking, greater tolerance for, you know, for dealing with, like, long hours at work, whatever it may be.
Oh, that's terrible because you're disenfranchising women who have the same, well, okay, but the only masculinity is toxic masculinity? This is why Tim Walz, and it's not working, and he's going around telling everybody, look at me. They do more dangerous jobs.
Yeah, of course. That's just a fact.
Yeah, I mean, men do the more dangerous jobs. We do the more dangerous jobs.
We do most of the fighting in the wars. You're right.
Your job is very dangerous at this table. And I'll tell you what.
I'll tell you what. I did serve in two war zones for the CIA, so let's like chill that out a little bit.
I'm talking about... Well, I said at this table, and this is the issue that I'm confronting with this conversation with you, and that is there are...
Both can be true, that people can feel disenfranchised. It can also be true that progress is a good thing.
And in terms of how people are viewing and you compare what is toxic or which is passive masculinity, that's a conversation that most people are not having. I have a son.
He's 11 years old. I have a daughter who's 10 years old.
I recognize the difference in what the rearing takes because there are the notions of what is traditionally supposed to be qualities that both exhibit. But part of rearing is indicative of where we are as a society in that the qualities you're talking about and the feelings of being left behind and what success could look like for either of them, it ought to be more equal today in 2024 than it's ever been.
That's all fine. I think that people who are paying attention to where the culture is now have an understanding that the Democrats have, in broad spectrum, adopted a...
The genders aren't really different. You can identify as different genders.
Boys are bad. Boys cause more trouble in school.
You know, men are toxic. Men can cause all these problems in the workplace.
And then you see who the Democrat Party offers up. I mean, Kamala's ads that she, there was this ad that I saw where it's like, we're men for Kamala.
It's turned into a laugh line on the right. Who are the Democrat leaders who speak to masculinity and basically aren't afraid of just saying, yeah, I'm a man and I want people like me to be feeling comfortable in who they are and not apologizing and not cringing and not hearing my pronouns and all this stuff.
So it's top down. It's not just about Donald Trump and how people view him.
But, I mean, you know, you do look at Joe Biden and, I mean, the guy should have a blanket across his knees feeding ducks, not actually being commander in chief. It's just true.
I mean, like I read this op-ed in The New York Times this week for the people who say, oh, Bill, you just pick on the fringe. I don't just pick on the fringe.
This is the New York Times. This is central.
Well, I mean, this book called Boy Mom, I've never heard of the author, Ruth Whitman. Okay, reimagining boyhood in the age of impossible masculinity.
First, she goes after Tim Walz because he uses sports metaphors and gun references. Okay, then listen to this.

She's talking about being pregnant.

I was frightened, she says, both for and of the tiny piece of patriarchy growing inside me.

Yes.

Formerly known as a baby.

Yes.

This is why Democrats have a gender problem.

I'm just trying to be a little even here. Yes.
I mean, it's not that this stuff does not exist on that side. And my contention always here is that at some point Trump will go away.
Trumpism will not until they're not afraid of this kind of stuff. Well, I think...
A tiny piece of patriarchy growing inside of me. I hear you, Bill, but the thing is, I think there's a conflation between, you know, when we've been talking about toxic masculinity, or just masculinity as a term, the conversation you have talked about is gender identity and sports and beyond.
I think when people are criticizing what this perceived as toxic masculinity, they're talking about, well, assholes. They're not talking about...
They're not talking about it as a general term, as a synonym for men. I mean, toxic masculinity is not a synonym for men or a universal umbrella term that is applicable to everyone.
They're talking about those who are unapologetically, aggressively abusive towards the truth. That's what the toxic masculinity is.
And toward women. Well, and recognition for women as well, politically.
But I think it's very disingenuous. The danger of it is disingenuous to suggest that all Democrats are talking about, or even all Republicans are talking about, is a toxic masculinity.
We're getting to this, but the reality here is this isn't just my opinion about where the parties are in terms of the gender divide. This is very obvious.
This is why Tim Walz is on this like, I'm a man pheasant hunting blitzkrieg right now. And it's because the Republicans right now are probably up, in terms of all men, 15 points or something like that on Kamala.
I mean, it depends on... I mean, it's not even close.
So why is that? Nor, I think there are some... Nor is it the other way, on the other side.
And I think the Democrat Party spends a tremendous amount of time because it thinks it's a very effective issue, and traditionally it has been, on the abortion issue. Well, to a guy who, you know, works at the steel mill, who's like, inflation is killing me, I can't afford my bills, the abortion issue is not...
I'm just saying, it's not top of... Well, he can't afford his bills.
Wait till he has a baby he doesn't want. But fundamentally, this guy should be more pro-abortion than anybody.
As much as the Democrats believe that men can get pregnant, like, there are some issues that are specific to men. And the fact is that they don't speak to those very well, and they've taken, you know, the Democrat Party has sort of positioned itself as the hectoring wife of America politically.
And it's not playing well. And I think that's why you're seeing.
First of all, it is the Democratic Party. But I got to go to New Rule.
Thank you very much. I appreciate you coming here, both of you.
New Rule. All right.
There we go. That's America.
I love that. Yes.
We have to talk to each other. All right.
There we go.

That's America.

I love that.

Yes.

We have to talk to each other.

All right.

New rule. Now that Marjorie Taylor Greene is doubling down on her claim that the Democrats can control the weather, someone has to ask her, if that were true, would it be a pretty good reason to vote for the Democrats? I mean, if there are two parties, one that can't control the weather and one that can,

I'm going to go with the one that can. You know what campaign ad would really work on me? One that said, when a deadly storm hit Texas, Ted Cruz fled to Mexico.
Colin Allred has a different plan. He'll banish the snow and bring sunny skies and low humidity.
Colin Allred, he can control the weather.

Neural, now that it's been reported that Kanye West and Bianca Sensori are headed for divorce,

they must tell us who gets what.

Kanye will probably want to retain the beautiful house in Malibu.

And Bianca, I'm sure, will want to keep her extensive wardrobe.

Neural, now that Charmin is claiming they can make nine rolls of their toilet paper last as long as 54 regular rolls,

the church has to call this what it is, a miracle.

It's like Jesus with the loaves and fishes,

except it's toilet paper in your ass.

But as miracles go,

I'll take this over some statue that cries tears.

That just makes a mess on the floor, but this I can use.

New rule, the celebrities in Hollywood paying up to $3,200 a session to get salmon sperm facials.

Have to tell us, how do you know you're getting authentic salmon spice? I mean, at that price, I'd have to hear an actual salmon say, you like that, don't you, bitch? Neural Elon Musk must tell me how in the space of one minute

he can go from looking like a Bond villain

to a toddler whose parents just bought him a Power Ranger.

Elon, I don't know whether to fear you or tell your mom to lay off feeding you sugar. My advice, longer shirts and less jumping, but...
But, hey... At least you don't look like you're jerking off two guys at once.

Oh, he likes it.

He'll accidentally watch this, and he really likes it.

And finally, new rule, to mark the October 7th anniversary,

we must launch a campaign to educate young Americans about the Middle East.

And the way I'd like to begin that process is by addressing an open letter to Chapel Roan.

Now, to those viewers who aren't watching this

while also looking at their phones, let me explain.

Chaperone is not the name of one of Trump's golf courses.

She's actually a great new recording artist who, like a Hezbollah pager, is really blowing up.

In just a few months, she went from a struggling artist to getting three billion plays on Spotify, netting her almost 11 cents. But here's what caught my eye.
She seems like a Gen Z-er who can be reached, because I saw her on TMZ say... Like, obviously, fuck the policies on the right, but also, fuck some of the policies on the left.
That sounds like something I would say. She also said, I think it's important that people use critical thinking.
I think it's important for me to question myself, question my algorithm, question, is some person that tweeted something about someone else even true? Preach, queer ally, preach. But then we get to Israel.
And, Chappell, this is where we must put to the test your pledge to use critical thinking and to question whether what you're reading on social media is true, because it isn't. There's a whole history of the Middle East that you and your fans aren't hearing about.
So why don't you let me be your spirit guide through this? But before I do, let me tell you a little about myself, since you may have no idea who I am,

considering that when this show went on the air, you were barely old enough to be told you were in the wrong body.

So, my name is Bill Maher. I'm 35.

I've been to all of Diddy's freak-off parties, and I...

Thank you. I've been to all of Diddy's freak-off parties, and I...
And I work at the same place as Euphoria. In fact, she's right down the hall.
My TikTok handle is BeNasty, and I go live every Friday night with the anime filter on. And I...
I once won a smoke-off against Willie Nelson, Woody Harrelson, and Snoop. Okay, that one's true.
But no. Look, truth be told, I'm a baby boomer.
I remember phone booths and cars with ashtrays and vaginal sex. And I didn't learn about the Middle East from TikTok, which is a Chinese company whose totalitarian government would just love to have America's youth hating America.
That's some of that algorithm stuff you say you want to look into.

Now, first off, the fact that you don't know much history isn't your fault.

You live in the United States, where the schools stopped doing that whole teaching facts thing

a while ago.

But getting all your history from TikTok is like getting all your calories from Hostess.

I know you're moved by what you see on there.

We all are, the dead Palestinian bodies.

But it's odd that your generation didn't seem nearly as moved by the Jewish bodies on October 7th.

You killed at Coachella this year. But when Hamas kills at a music festival, it's a whole other thing.
Doesn't the sight of so many young women raped at a music festival make it a little personal? My guess is that Gen Z hearts are hardened by the propaganda you see on TikTok, which likes to call the Jews colonizers. But colonizers are intruders who have no history in an area, like when Spain conquered the Mayans, or when your mom took over Facebook.
When the Dutch took over South Africa, they had no history to the land. They just wanted it.
But Israel is the Jews' homeland. And Jews have always lived there.
I cap you not. You can look it up.
It's in this book called The Bible, which is horribly wrong about sex ed, slavery, science, and cooking, but the archaeology checks out.

It says the Jews built a temple with a really big wall seven centuries before Muhammad or Islam ever existed,

and sure as shit, you can still go there and touch it.

Calling Jews colonizers in Israel

is like calling Native Americans colonizers here.

It's ridiculous. Chappell, did you know that for 2,000 years, Palestine was like an Uber driver with a three-star rating? Nobody wanted it.
And there was never any Arab country called Palestine. It was an orphan province.
And if you ask people what they thought about it back then, they'd say it gave them the ick. But after World War II, and after the Jews were very nearly wiped out by an actual attempted genocide, they decided it was time for their historic homeland to be an actual country,

so that for once they could defend themselves. And the UN, we like them, right? Yeah, they agreed and voted a country for each of the indigenous peoples.
One side agreed to that. But the Arabs had a slightly different proposal.
They said, how about we keep it all and wipe you out? Chappell, if you think it was repressive growing up queer in the Midwest, try the Mideast. You're a female drag queen, and you sing, I fucked you in the bathroom when we went to dinner, your parents at the table.
Yeah, that wouldn't fly in Gaza, although you would straight off a roof. The same goes for knee-deep on the passenger seat and you're eating me out.
Yeah, my guess is the morality police would figure out that one's not about the drive-thru. And kill your feather boa-wearing ass.
You know when you sing that L.A. is where boys and girls can all be queens every single day? You're welcome, but offer not good in the West Bank.
Chapel, you're not wrong that oppression is bad, or that Palestinian and many other Muslim populations are oppressed and deserve to be freed. You just have it completely ass-backwards as to who is doing the oppressing.
Hamas is a terrorist mafia that took over Gaza. The Revolutionary Guard is a terrorist mafia that took over Iran.
ISIS is a terrorist mafia that took over Iraq. The Taliban is a terrorist mafia that took over Afghanistan.
These are the oppressors. And when you make it all about Israel, you take the pressure off of them.
You enable them. The Iranian regime has killed 600 protesters after a 22-year-old woman died in police custody following her arrest for the crime of wearing her head covering incorrectly.
Just to be clear, that's your team. Iran is who sponsors Hamas and Hezbollah.
Are you sure this is who you want to throw down with? Meryl Streep spoke at the UN recently and said this about the Taliban, who are only slightly more conservative than your heroes in Hamas. She said, Today in Kabul, a female cat has more freedoms than a woman.
A cat may go sit on her front stoop and feel the sun on her face.

She may chase a squirrel into the park.

A squirrel has more rights than a girl in Afghanistan today.

A bird may sing in Kabul, but a girl may not.

You're a singer, and you're advocating for a place and a culture you would never want to live under.

Gender may not be binary, but right and wrong kind of is.

Thank you.

Thank you. and a culture you would never want to live under.
Gender may not be binary, but right and wrong kind of is.

Thank you. That's our show.

I'll be at the Majestic Theater in San Antonio tomorrow night,

the Tulsa Theater in Tulsa Sunday,

and the David Copperfield Theater in Vegas,

November 1st and 2nd.

I want to thank Laura Coates, Buck Sexton, and Tim Alberta,

and I'll go watch Overtime on YouTube.

Thank you, folks.