Ep. #672: Bjorn Lomborg, Stephanie Ruhle, Bret Stephens

Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO Late Night series, Real Time with Bill Maher. How you doing? Thank you, Treyfell.
Hi, everybody. How you doing? Thank you.
I appreciate it. Thank you very much.
All right. Sit down.
We have so much. This fell.
I mean, unbelievable. The amount of news we have to cover, it's a good thing we've stopped clapping.

So let's not bury the lead. The big story this week, they tried to shoot Trump again.

That's not... Not funny.

Okay. I'm being serious now.

It's the second time this happened. I said this before.

There can be no fuzz on this. This is not funny.

Okay? It's not okay.

It's not okay to wish it happened.

Well, this is the problem.

Well, I mean, look, this happens too frequently. I'm sorry.
This happened on the golf course.

A guy was laying in wait.

And it happens too much. In fact,

besides the shooter, there were two other shooters beside him waiting to play through.

This has got to stop.

And, of course, the NRA had to come out with the statement,

this is no time to talk about gun control.

They said, guns do not kill people. Pagers kill people.

Yeah, that's the other big story

this week. The fight with Hezbollah is on

there in the Middle East, and the way

Israel did it, it's pretty amazing.

Terrorists know this

for a long time. First thing you've got to do,

get rid of your cell phone, because they can track

you there. So they've been using old school

pagers. And the Israelis this week made all the pagers blow up in what they call Operation 1980s Drug Dealer.
Yes.

Do not fuck with Israel, man.

They took the fight from their river to their pants.

They blew up a lot of dicks.

Oh, I'm telling you,

nobody's in the mood to take any shit these days.

Did you see Kamala with Oprah Winfrey?

Asked her about owning a gun, and Kamala said, anybody breaks into my house is getting shot. And Trump immediately accused her of turning even blacker.
Well, Trump is losing his mind. He's losing his mind, he's losing his cool, and he's going to lose the election.
That's it. I put down my marker on that last week.
Made my prediction. But this, I'm telling you, even for him, it's going off the rails.
He keeps saying now kids are undergoing sex change operations at school. At school? They're doing it at school? Wow, and I was nervous for picture day.
At school. Oh, and you know, in that case, girls who want to become boys, you've got to get them early, before first period.
And then... There is a Republican who is the candidate for governor.
Governor in North Carolina named Mark Robinson. He's a super Christy, Jesus-loving, hard-right conservative, African-American man.
And then CNN has dug up a lot of his past. That's what happens when you run.
Okay, he was on all these websites. He liked tranny porn, didn't care about abortion, he said, and he wanted to, intimated he would like to bring back slavery.
And of course, the Republican reaction to this is predictable. Awful.
Unforgivable. Continue.
Oh, yes. Yes, and he also referred to himself as a black Nazi who also posted that he spied on women in the girls' locker room.
So he's a peeping Tom and an Uncle Tom. That's...
That's something new. I've never...
I've said this for 25 years. When you think the Republicans can't go lower, they do.
I mean, a black Nazi, and I think it is, you know, on his website he referred to his penis as peewee German. And this is embarrassing because the Trump campaign has a rally scheduled for North Carolina tomorrow and they told Mark Robinson

you are no longer welcome there. Absolutely not.
This is for white Nazis only.

So,

now the Republicans want to replace him with someone less freaky, but

Diddy's in jail.

Well, I mean, come on.

That is

an American tragedy story.

I mean, Pete Diddy, I don't know if anybody's

Thank you. Well, I mean, come on.
That is an American tragedy story.

I mean, Pete, I don't know if anybody's fallen from that height.

I mean, this guy is worth, they say, over $400 million from basically three sources, owning a record label,

brand affiliation, and buying lube in bulk.

Did you see this? I don't want to judge a book by its cover. But they seized a thousand bottles of lube and baby oil in his house because he was having these parties they called freak-offs, which went on for days.

Sometimes people needed IV.

They were partying so hard.

And, you know, a freak-off,

I'm all good with it.

The one thing that always

bothered me about it is, do you bring a gift?

And, uh,

I would...

And then you're like, well, I'll bring baby oil. And then you get there.
Oh, everybody brought baby oil. Put it with me.
But I mean, I don't know if he's ever going to see the light of day again. He's in jail.
They wouldn't even give him bail. I mean, the charges, sex trafficking, forced labor, kidnapping, arson, bribery, obstruction of justice.
And you may say, arson, that's going a little bit too far, but you try putting out a baby oil fire. We've got a great show.
We have Brett Stevens and Stephanie Ruhl. But first up, he is a Danish political scientist, an author of the recently re-released book, False Alarm,

How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor and Fails to Fix the Planet.

Bjorn Lomborg.

Bjorn.

How are you, sir?

How are you?

Good for me.

It's been a while.

Thank you.

Okay.

All right.

I'm so glad you're here because we can talk about environment.

Every time we have a political campaign in this country, it becomes the forgotten issue.

People care about it, and they care about it, and they care about it,

and then they just don't seem to want to talk about it, maybe because it doesn't hold very well.

But, I mean, you are a skeptic of a lot of what goes on about what people say about how dire climate change is.

And I think that's good.

I think we need skepticism.

But I must say, I am skeptical of you.

You should be.

Exactly.

We all just need to be skeptical.

So, first of all, you've never been paid by anybody, right?

Like an oil company?

No.

No, we don't take money from oil companies.

And the important part here is to remember

that what we're talking about is really just saying, what does the science tell us and what does the economics tell us? Climate change is a real problem. It is one of the things that we need to fix in the 21st century.
But it's not this Amageddon that it's been made out to be. You hear on the news these catastrophic, calamitous climate stories all the time.
But these are very carefully selected, worst-case scenarios, often based on ultra-unrealistic scenarios. But I've seen you do the opposite.
Sorry? I've seen you do the opposite. Okay.
Well, it's a while ago. I'm not remembering what year, but maybe it's 15 years ago.
Are you saying that sea levels in the last two years hadn't risen? But if you look at the chart over time, they are. And if you cherry pick two years, I mean, that's what the climate deniers always did.
And I know you are not a denier. I wouldn't have you on if you were.
The point I was trying to make there was actually, and you can read the whole story, and it was in the Guardian newspaper. And the point I was trying to make was you constantly hear this thing is getting incredibly bad.
And then a couple of years later, it doesn't. On the sea level rise, it was actually such that those two years were going down.
But obviously, I even said it is going to go back up. But the point here is that we can't make these arguments

just to show here's something that's really terrible going on

and then scare people.

I agree that I really hate it when people want to manipulate me.

You know, try to move me to...

Just tell me the truth.

Okay.

But I feel like the title of the book, False Alarm, I don't like that. I think that goes way too far.
It's not a false alarm. Right? All right.
So it's false in the sense that we're being told this is the end of the world. A lot of people believe this is really the end of the world.
A new OECD survey of all the rich countries. And it could be.
Not tomorrow, but it could be. You know, Dick Cheney, when we were fighting terrorism, said if there's a 1% chance, this is their reasoning to go into Iraq, which is stupid, okay.
If there's a 1% chance, we should treat it like it could happen. I feel like this is more than a 1% chance.
Okay. I'm going to show you some of the data that actually indicates this is a problem, but it's not the end of the world by any means.
So there's two of the world's leading climate economists. One is Richard Tull, one of the most quoted climate economists from this year.
And the other one is William Nordhaus, the guy who got the only Nobel Prize in climate economics. They both made estimates across all the different estimates of how bad is climate change going to be.
By the end of the century at a three degree centigrade or 5.4 degree Fahrenheit temperature rise, the cost is going to be somewhere between two and three percent of GDP. But what will the ocean look like? I mean, I'm not talking about oceans rising.
I'm talking about oceans dying. And the world can't live without dead oceans.
And it seems like they're in bad shape between all the plastic in them. They're overfished.
I mean, there's very many places have no fish left at all. They're too acidic.
Coral reefs. I know you've talked about, oh, that's exaggerated.
Tell me about why you think the coral reef problem is exaggerated. That's just the data.
So can I just finish the other point I was trying to make before we go on to the coral reefs? So 2% to 3% of global GDP is a problem. But remember, by the end of the century, the UN estimate the average person on the planet will be 450% as rich as he or she is today.
So that means instead of being 450% as rich, we will feel like we're only 435% as rich. Yes, that's a problem.
No, it's not the end of the world. On the coral reef bit...
Rich. How does rich fix the ocean? No, so on the coral reefs bit, we have a situation where we have on Great Barrier Reef, so the world's biggest coral reef, the Australian Marine Scientific Institute.
Sorry, I can't remember what they're called, but they're the guys who do the data every year on the coral reef since 1986. And they have been assessing what is the total outcome of how good does the reef look like.
And in 2009 to 2012, we thought it was terrible. It was really dramatic.
The Guardian wrote the obituary for the great coral reef. And the point I've just been making is the last three years, they've been at the highest level, the most coral reef we've ever seen in those areas.
And so the point is not that there's not a challenge for a coral reef.

There is.

But most of the challenge comes from overfishing, from industrial pollution, from sea runoff.

And those are the kinds of things that we should fix.

But we're not being well informed if we're being told this is because of climate change,

so we've got to change our entire infrastructure and our global economy in order to save the oceans when it's not actually what's going to happen. Maybe.
Well. And why do we imagine, as we treat the oceans ever worse, that the coral reefs are enjoying it more now? Look, I don't think that they're going to enjoy this.
Why? But why are they doing better in the last three years? I don't know. It's not like we did anything.
I don't know. Oh, well, there we go.
All right. As long as we're in.
That's honest. We don't know.
I'm a data guy. I simply try to say to look at the numbers.
And what I love that you do is that you inform people of things that you know, again, the people

who just want to usher me to a point of

view would never tell me. Like, yes, we are using a lot more green energy, but it's not making the amount of fossil fuels we use go down.
Why? Because people just use more. That's a really key thing that I don't think Americans are aware of.
We just use more.

How do we fix that?

DAVID BROOKS, President of the United States, President of the United States, President of

the United States, President of the United States, President of the United States, President

of the United States, President of the United States, President of the United States, President

of the United States, President of the United States, President of the United States, President

of the United States, President of the United States, President of the United States, President

of the United States, President of the United States, President of the United States, President

of the United States, President of the United to? One of the reasons is because energy is incredibly good. Remember, you and I and most of the audience in here lives in an incredibly energy-rich world.
We have the opportunity. We can keep cool in the summer and hot in the winter.
We can get food.

We can get transportation. I mean, I came from

Sweden. I wasn't going to

row a boat over here, right?

The whole point is

energy makes us much, much

better off, and it also makes us more resilient.

We can do a lot more things.

Most people in the world have virtually no

energy. They want a lot more energy.

They honestly... Most people in sub-Saharan Africa live on less energy per year than your refrigerator.
It's not just your refrigerator. And so the reality is we need much more energy.
What we do need to fix climate change is to invest more in green energy research and development so that... Let's get to Sorry.
So that we, in the long run, actually can make sure that Africans and Indians and Chinese can live an energy-rich life, but without the CO2 emissions. Yeah.
Well, I want to... I mean, that's, I think, the future.
Yeah. Because, I mean, I've said it here a couple of years ago, like, I don't know what will work to solve this problem.
I know it didn't work, and that's asking people to be good. Yes.
That I know doesn't work. It's just human nature.
And one of the things that we have been trying to do for the last 20 years in climate policy is basically tell people to be poorer, be less well-off, be, you know, uncomfortable. Would you mind being a little hotter in the summer and a little colder in the winter? That's just not going to work.
What is going to work is innovation. Remember Los Angeles in the 1950s.
Sorry, I don't mean to say you remember, but remember that... Sorry, I just made that worse.
It's okay. No, no, no.
It's all right. Anyway.
Anyway. I was alive.
I hadn't moved out here yet. Anyway, it was terribly polluted.
And the sort of standard climate way of tackling that would be to tell, would you mind walking instead of driving around in cars? Of course, that wouldn't work in Los Angeles or anywhere else. But what we did was instead we invented the catalytic converter.
It's a little gizmo you put on the tailpipe of a car,

and then you can drive much longer and pollute much, much less.

That's how you solve the problem both of air pollution

and the long run in climate change.

All right, so let's go through...

Let's go through some of these new things.

Just quickly, we only have a couple of minutes,

and I want to ask you if you ever run into Greta in Sweden. And how does that go, I wonder.
But, okay, giant umbrellas. These are the new things that would block a crucial amount of solar radiation.
And these are all things that they have in pilot programs or the beginning of. Iron fertilization, dumping iron into the ocean.
It makes photoplankton bloom. And when they die, they carry the CO2 they absorb down to the seabed.
Carbon capture. They already have something in Iceland that pulls 4,000 metric tons out of the atmosphere.
And they put them in underground caverns and then they turn into stone. Cloud brightening.
Sea salt aerosols into the sky that brighten clouds and deflect the sun's rays. So this is the future, you're saying.
This is what we're going to be... No, these are some of the things that we should be looking at because, remember, if we could come up with a way to suck out the CO2 of the atmosphere, that was what you were talking about from Iceland, at really low cost, we basically have solved the problem.
We could continue doing everything we do and get rid of the entire global warming problem at fairly low cost. We're not there yet at all, but this could be one solution.
And the point is, there are lots of these potential solutions. Now, most of them are not going to work, but if we invested a lot more into energy, green energy, innovation, and also these technologies.

So basically, innovation.

We would have a much better chance of fixing this problem.

Right now, we're spending trillions of dollars really badly on poor climate policy.

I'm simply saying, let's spend billions, but spend it much smarter on things I'll actually do.

Let's stay skeptical.

Thanks, pal. I appreciate it.

Good job.

Bjorn Lundberg, everybody.

Let's meet our crowd. Hi.
Hi. How are you? Great to see you.
All right. I was like Kamala at the debate.
You had to, like, reach out first and make sure I was okay. He's a columnist for The New York Times, Brett Stevens.
She hosts the 11th Hour on MSNBC and MSNBC and is the senior business analyst for NBC News. Stephanie Ruhl is with us.
Okay. So, two media people here today.
I thought maybe we would talk about rhetoric, because that's what's on Trump's mind. He got shot at again, and he says, their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at.
And then, of course, in true Trumpian fashion, always the most unselfaware person in the universe, goes on to say, when they're the ones that are destroying the country.

Which would be also the kind of rhetoric

that would make a borderline person shoot at you.

But, I mean, he's right.

Rhetoric has consequences.

But he is possibly the worst person to make this case.

Yeah, I mean, it's the pot calling the kettle black.

I think that's what the expression was basically born for.

I mean, he's used...

This is the guy who called the media

the enemy of the American people.

Scum, vermin.

I don't know. calling the kettle black.
I think that's what the expression was basically born for. I mean, he used...
This is the guy who called the media

the enemy of the American people.

Scum, vermin.

All these phrases.

Now, of course, he's absolutely right

that we probably should tone it down.

When we're calling our opponents the end of democracy,

the end of Western civilization,

we're not helping our arguments.

I disagree.

That's a dumb argument, I think, because you...

What?

No, because you... What? No, that's their argument, which is that you guys are saying Trump is a threat to democracy.
But he is a threat to democracy. The answer can't be that we can't say what's true.
I want to say what's true. And the left has to do that, too.
No, I'm sorry, but every time the left calls Trump a threat to democracy, Americans remember that in 2016, guys like me were calling Trump a threat to democracy. And here we are.
I don't think he was then. And that dog is not going to hunt.
You have to say the case against Trump is that he's going to be a terrible president who's going to divide the country, that is going to accomplish absolutely nothing, that is going to embarrass us in front of the world and is going to conduct a miserable form. But those are policy questions.
You don't stop calling out the truth because people aren't listening. Right? When Donald Trump tells lie after lie, you don't say that nobody seems to care.
It's our job in the media, right? When people complain, Donald Trump tells lie after lie. You don't say.
But nobody seems to care.

It's our job in the media, right?

When people complain, Donald Trump got fact-checked way more than Kamala Harris did.

You're damn right he did.

You know why?

He told more lies. Trump has done nothing but benefit from a campaign that seeks to treat him as outside the borders of political respectability.
So if you want to help... He is.
But what you have been doing... He said he's going to be a bad president.
He's a bad president because he doesn't concede elections. Not the policy shit.
That comes and goes. Look, most Americans realize that here we are.
Joe Biden is the president of the United States. Kamala Harris is likely the next president of the United States.
But the reason that Trump has an enduring appeal on so many Americans is that so many of us in the media want to treat him, right, as absolutely beyond the pale. And you know how Trump supporters respond by saying, oh, yeah, he's beyond the pale, I'm going to vote for him.
We have done nothing but help Trump for the last eight years. So that's how we should organize our political views, by what the idiots will do? I mean, that...
And he is beyond the pale. And on this rhetoric question, I mean, they both have things that they say about the other person that are pretty bad.
That's politics. That's always gone on.
There's only one side. There should be no false equivalency here that uses the kind of rhetoric that they use.
Like, remember Trump's here. I dug it up.
The tough people. I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military.
And then he brings up the bikers. The support of the bikers.

Right.

I think if you have the military and the police, I don't know if we're going to need the bikers.

But okay.

I have the tough people, but they don't play it tough until the Democrats go to a certain point.

And then it would be very bad.

This is the Heritage Foundation president.

That's like the number one Republican. The king of Project 2025.

Okay. Well, that's kind of a bullshit talking point, 2025, but we don't have to go to there now.
But he is... The Heritage Foundation is the main conservative think tank.
We are in the process of the second American revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be. You don't hear that from the other side, this idea of, look, we don't want to have to kill you.
But if you keep winning, and the country keeps going your way, we will. Would you not agree that that is different? I absolutely agree, and look, I've been an opponent of Trump from day one, and I've suffered professional consequences for, no, I have.
No, I have. For that opposition.
You're here tonight. That's cool.
That is definitely... But look, the point is here, if we are asking ourselves how we want to best make the case against Donald Trump, constantly pressing the button that he is an existential threat to our democracy when we are here in 2024 having an election is not going to work.
Make the case that he was and would be a terrible president, and that's an effective case. Here's where I take Brett's point, that we really all could bring down the rhetoric.
Donald Trump was the one who started with the divisive, vile language when he went down the escalator in 2015. He has capitalized on it, he ran on it, he's benefited politically for it, and our country has suffered.
But what he did, he saw vulnerabilities and sensitivities

that the American people had,

and he saw that they were scared, and he told

them lies, and he freaked them out, and he made them

panicked. And what we need to

do, or what Democrats need to do,

is take a look at those vulnerabilities.

Look at the immigration thing. In the last

two weeks, all we're talking about is Donald Trump

with the dogs and the cats in Springfield, Ohio. And we're saying that's absurd and it's vile and it's idiotic.
However, there is something to talk about with an issue like immigration, with the country changing so rapidly. There are people in the country who are saying the country is moving so fast because of technology, because of demographics.
And instead of saying to those people, well, then you're old or stupid or you're xenophobic

or you're racist, instead, see where they are,

talk to them, and actually embody love thy neighbor

because you know what?

In Springfield, Ohio, it has changed dramatically.

You've got a huge influx of Haitian migrants

legally there for jobs,

but you also should give time and space,

maybe for an older generation that's saying,

my town is changing, I want to know about this or learn about this, instead of just saying, just get with it, the country's moving. So this is such an important...
This is such a terrific point that Stephanie is making. I'm sorry, I didn't hear you? It's a terrific point, as you often make terrific points.
The way in which demagogues succeed historically is not that they tell lies. Yes, they do tell lies.
But they traffic in half-truths. And the problem that we've had in responding to Trump is that we listen to the lie, like people eating cats in Springfield, Ohio, but we don't listen to the part of the argument that contains an important seed of truth, which is that mass illegal migration has had huge and often negative consequences.
And Trump's opponents have to, like, come to grips with the parts of the message that are resonating with tens of millions of voters. And Democrats will immediately say, but it's not illegal, they're here legally.
But hold on, even if they're here legally, and even if that is the fabric of the United States, since our country was founded, we've struggled with assimilating to immigrants, whether it was Irish people or Italian people, and take the opportunity to help educate people rather than just say, get with it or you're out of favor. Yeah.
I've certainly been preaching that for a long time. And, look, I think, as I said last week, I think he's toast.
I think Trumpism will go on after him. They will look for somebody else.
As long as there is, on the left left people, racial hysterics and Hamas lovers and

extreme socialists and gender deniers and people who want to keep the parents in the dark,

there will be another Trump. But this one, I think, is done.
You can just feel it. I mean,

here's some of the things he said this week. I'm the greatest of all time.
Maybe greater than Elvis.

Elvis had a guitar. I don't have the privilege of a guitar.
I mean, it's, first of all, when I think of great guitarist Elvis, like, you know, it's like Clapton, Hendrix, Joe Walsh, Elvis. It was a prop.
He never even played it. He also said, I really haven't been treated very well, but that's the story of my life.
Yes, born into crushing wealth. Inheriting a real estate fortune that he squandered.
I feel like it's just at that point where they've had enough. Trust'll trust me the polls will be tied on election day but uh the people will get in the booth and enough of them will be like yeah i'm glad this is private because i don't want people to know i'm turning my back on him but i promise you they will i feel like there's a third of america that's always with the trumps they used to call them the thechers and the Birthers or the Tea Party.
They go by many different names. They're the same people.
And then he moved it to, like, half the country. And it'll move back a little closer to the third, and we'll be okay.
We'll see. Yeah, we'll see.
But the State of the Union, the Fed lowered interest rates. So that's really good for people who want to buy a house and stuff.

Inflation is down.

Gas prices are down.

Crime down.

Border crossings way down.

Wages are up.

And the stock market is at record high.

And the candidate said, I hate Taylor Swift. And the Republicans are running a black Nazi in North Carolina.
I mean, I'm not worried. Democrats need to do a better job.
And the polls are dead even. I'm telling you, the polls will be.
And the polls are dead even. I promise you they will be.
And I promise you it's going to come out okay. Why isn't Kamala running away with it? Well, here's another reason why I think it's going, you can always tell when it's going south, when the ship is sinking.
It's because the person like Trump, the nut at the center of it, starts surrounding himself with, I mean, he normally surrounds himself with pretty crazy people. But this Laura Loomer, I don't know if you know anything about her,

but, I mean, this is, yeah.

I mean, I want to go through the list of conspiracy theorists,

but we thought this would be a good week

to get the audience to know her a little better.

She's the new groupie in Trump's circle.

That's my opinion.

So we do one of our favorites here,

24 Things You Don't Know About.

For example, my spirit animal was eaten by Haitians.

My biggest fear is immigrants taking my job as a right-wing hate monger.

As a child, I had two of my Bratz dolls deported.

I don't hate all brown people, just the brown ones.

Thank you. I don't hate all brown people, just the brown ones.
People think I'm all in on Trump, but some of the voices in my head like Jill Stein. My hobby is refurbishing vintage lawn jockeys.
I think Michael Jackson faked the moonwalking. If you say Beetlejuice four times, you get me.
And I believe the government puts something in the water that makes you pee. He is a bit of a knockout.
Okay. So, um...
All right, let's talk a little about the international scene.

The long-awaited second front in the Israeli war seems to have started this week.

Not just the Pagers, but they were bombing all over Lebanon yesterday and today.

Here's what Kamala Harris said this week about what we should do when the war is over.

No reoccupation of Gaza. No changing of the territorial lines of Gaza.
And an ability to have security in the region for all concern in a way that we create stability. I feel like if that's what you have to say, don't say anything.
Just shut up. I mean, everybody who talks about Israel these days is just so full of shit.
I mean, we're just not, you know, I don't want children to die. Duh, who does? None of us want children to die.
None of us want this war to go on. But it's not addressing what the problem is.
The problem is that one side wants a two-state solution, or at least always did. It's a little more right-wing now.
I'm talking about Israel, but that still has been their position. One side never did and still doesn't.
One side uses terrorism to get their goals. One side retaliates against terrorism.
One side is accused of genocide but doesn't do it. The other side actually would love to do it.
People keep saying Israel has the right to defend itself. And then whenever Israel does, they object to it.
Well, yeah. I mean, this is one of the astonishing things about the response to the Pager bombings.
I understand how people are upset about the sight of Gaza being bombed. They're being bombed because Hamas hides beneath and behind its own population to cynically exploit their deaths.

But then the Israelis turn around with the most astonishingly well-targeted attack in history,

like literally going off in the hands of any Hezbollah member

who has one of these pagers,

and you have people like Congresswoman AOC lambasting Israel, the head of the U.N. lambasting Israel.
So they say Israel's entitled to self-defense, but there's no conceivable self-defense that they're actually prepared to defend for the Israelis. I'm glad the Israelis are taking matters in their own hand.
They just took care of a terrorist who had the death of 350 or 300 Americans on their hands going back to 1983. He had a $7 million State Department bounty on his head.
If I were Anthony Blinken, I would pay the Israelis $7 million and say thank you for avenging the death of our Marines. To Kamala Harris's response, she is in a tricky position

because Joe Biden is currently the commander-in-chief and she's the VP.

So it's very difficult for anybody in her position to kind of thread this needle and say,

here's what we should do, here's our plan when he's the current commander-in-chief.

She's in this weird space of like an improv show of, a yes and, yes to what he's doing,

and I think we should do this.

So it's especially tricky.

But my question to you, it's an honest question,

is she just being vague because the political equities

are such that it doesn't pay to be specific?

Or does she simply have no idea?

And, you know, I am an undecided...

Okay, then that's not an honest question to me, because there's no way you think I'm going to turn and say, you know what, Brett, you're right, she has no idea. No, no, it's...
The question that Americans have, okay, the question... Look, I'm an undecided voter, I'm never going to vote for Trump, but I'm not sure I want to vote for Kamala.
And my fear is that she doesn't really have a very good command of what she wants to do as president. It would be great for her to sit down with you or George Stephanopoulos or you, Stephanie, and get a succession of...
As if she'd sit down with me. Why not? Ask her.
Ask her.

Ask her.

You know, look, George W. Bush, 25 years ago,

was asked if he could name the president of Pakistan and other people.

He had no idea.

And people said, this guy has no command of foreign policy.

And it turned out to be a pression set of questions.

It's not too much to ask Kamala, say,

are you for a Palestinian state if Hamas is going to run that state? Okay. Yes or no? And let's say you don't like her answer.
Are you going to vote for Donald Trump? No, I'm not. I just said I'm not going to vote for her.
Kamala Harris is not running for perfect. She's running against Trump.
We have two choices. And so there are some things you might not know her answer to.
And in 2024, unlike 2016 for a lot of the American people, we know exactly what Trump will do, who he is, and the kind of threat he is to democracy. So it's unclear to me how there could be an informed...
Stephanie, the problem that a lot of people have with Kamala is we don't know her answer to anything, okay? But you know his answer to everything. And that's why I would never vote for him and people shouldn't vote for him.
But people also are expected to have some idea of what the program is of the person you're supposed to vote for. You're just not supposed to say, well, you have to vote for Y because X is this, that, and the other.
Let's find out a little bit more. And I don't think it's a lot to ask her to sit down for a real interview

as opposed to a tough piece in which she describes her feelings of growing up in Oakland with nice laws.

Ben, I would just say to that, when you move to Nirvana,

give me your real estate broker's number and I'll be your next-door neighbor.

We don't live there.

I got it.

I got it.

Thank you. broker's number and I'll be your next door neighbor.
We don't live there. I can't.
I mean, I feel like you're the dog we're trying to get in the car to go to the bed. You know? Ouch.
We're going to put that calm down your head for the rest of the day. I say that as one of your biggest fans, you know.
I mean, I gobble up everything you write. I just don't understand how you get to this place.
But, okay, let's not badger. But do you know, for the last two weeks, I've been going on and on.
Like, I can't figure out where undecided voters are. Where informed undecided voters are.
I'm like, who's the person who has a list on their refrigerator of, like, well, she said this, and he said... I'm like, who is this person? And then I opened the New York Times three days ago, and it's you.
But I read it, and I enjoyed it. I appreciate it, but it's actually millions of Americans who Kamala has to persuade if she wants to win, including votes like mine.
You might not like the fact that I'm not in the car, but if you want to get me... If you want to get me in the car, okay? Feed me...
Okay. Feed me, Stephanie, a little treat.
I have some treats here that I think... Give it to me.
Pass it over. And the little treat is a substantive answer on real questions facing the American people on inflation, immigration, foreign policy, basic things that we used to expect presidential candidates could answer.
Okay, then I would just say this. Did you ever play the game, would you rather? Because that is what voting for the president is.
All right, all right. Let me move on to one other.
Get off this and pour Brett Stevens. We'd love to.
So this is kind of interesting. Again, I don't think a lot of people know this.
I didn't before a couple of days ago when it was brought to my attention.

Crypto.

First of all, Trump is getting into the crypto business.

I mean, right there.

Can you imagine Kamala saying, I'm getting into the crypto business?

I mean, it's just unimaginable what he gets away with. Okay.

So he's getting into the business with some guy who used to be in the colon cleanse business.

It's called shit coin. No.
Thank you. Thank you.
But almost half of the corporate political contributions this cycle are from crypto. I did not know this.
And now, here's the thing.

The Federal Reserve wants to make their own central bank digital currency, CBDC.

I don't know what that stands for,

but, of course, this is exactly why

the people who have crypto don't want what they don't want.

They don't want regulation of any kind,

which is why it's used completely by criminals.

And so it's perfect for Trump. He's a criminal.
But I also kind of understand why people are afraid of big governments these days. I mean, when Canada had that trucker strike, I mean, Canada, like, froze a lot of those people's assets.
That's a scary thing, is it not? When governments can freeze your assets, you have money and everything's online now, and they just hit a button and you don't have any money anymore because your politics were different? I mean, Justin Trudeau can try to bend this any way he wants. That's what Canada did, and that's Canada.
Look, I don't know about you, but I've never understood crypto as anything other than a Ponzi scheme.

It is.

So if Trump wants to put all his money into it,

so much the better,

because eventually he'll lose it.

Okay, but...

Yes.

And here's the thing.

Just like his publicly traded media company,

ticker DJT,

he's not putting any of his money in.

He won't lose any of his money,

but he'll stand to make an enormous amount.

And you're hitting on the most important part of this crypto exchange that Trump is now involved with. Yes, the old school Trump original bros are going to invest in this and they're going to lose their shirts.
The same guys who put $1,000 in DJT stock the day it went public and now now it's worth $200. And Truth Social.
Correct. And Truth Social.
You know, these original Trump fans, and they're going to lose their shirt. That's not why you should be concerned.
You should be concerned with what you said a moment ago. Half of Trump's corporate contributions come from the biggest people in the crypto space.
And they realize that he is a completely transactional guy. And so they said, great, we can't, he can't spell crypto.
He did it. I mean, he didn't.
And he doesn't know what it is. He doesn't know what it is.
He thinks it's like a commemorative coin. He says, no, he talks about we should have it in America.
We should do it. But they don't want any regulation.
And Trump's like, we'll get rid of the SEC chair. So they're like, great.
He doesn't know. He doesn't care.

We're going to buy him and get whatever

regulation we want, which is none.

And this idea from the American people that, like,

Trump's great for the economy because he's going to

cut taxes and we'll have no regulation.

Remember, it's not that no regulation

is what we want. We want smart regulation.

You want no regulation? Go drink the water

in Flint, Michigan. That's what no regulation looks like.

Yeah.

Here's the other thing. Here's the other big secret about crypto that nobody talks about.
This bugs me so much. We just had Bjorn talking about the environment.
All the progress that we're making with green energy is being sucked away by crypto. Crypto uses 8% of total electricity.
They're data centers. They're mining.
There's nonsense of finding a number. I can't even go through the whole thing.
It's so ridiculous what crypto really is. That's why it's, of course, this is like Trump's final business.
Of course he'd end up in crypto. It's a grifter's paradise.
It's comparable to putting 15.7 million additional gas-powered cars on the road. So as we take them off to go to electric, crypto eats it all up and goes the other way.
Okay, I have one minute to ask about Mark Robinson. Oh.
How is it that Republicans keep nominating people like that? I mean, I could go through a long list of people like that who are just crazy, who, I mean, Herschel Walker, was that, where was that? Georgia? I mean, before that, the, you know, remember the guy with unintentional rapes or whatever that... No, I think they were intentional.
Or what he would say. When I read about Robinson yesterday and I was like, yikes, black Nazi, and they saw on a porn site, I'm like, you have to be kidding.
But you can't expect the Republican Party to ask him or anyone else to step aside when the head of your party is Donald Trump. But don't they vet these people a little before? Who's going to vet them? I don't know, but before you went to the nominating process, he is the nominee for governor.
Why don't you look at the porn site? Because Trump picked him, and there's the expression that karma is a bitch, but for the Republicans, it might turn out that karma is a porn site chat room, and that'll be

a historical turn

in America, you know, in our history

of our Republicans. There are Republicans that could even help

Donald Trump win, like a Nikki Haley

is suitable to

so many Bret Stephens voters,

but Donald Trump doesn't want that.

She is. And she

meant that as a compliment. All right, I got to leave it there.
Thank you, guys. That was fun.
Time for New Rule. Okay.
New Rule. The people participating in the new trend of frid-scaping, where you decorate the inside of your refrigerator

by placing flowers and picture frames

next to the hot dogs and mayonnaise,

must be congratulated for their unique sense of tasteful expression.

I'm kidding, you people are nuts.

If you're going to put things in appliances that don't belong,

might I suggest your head and the oven?

New Rule, someone has to tell Jane's Addiction,

you don't get to cancel your tour just because you got into a fight on stage.

The guys in the band hate each other?

And?

Name a band where they don't.

The Rolling Stones, Van Halen, Guns N' Roses, Metallica, Fleetwood Mac,

The Eagles, The Ramones, Pink Floyd, The Beach Boys, The Black Crows, Aerosmith, Kiss,

Simon and Garfuckle.

Hoping to catch a fight on stage

is the only reason anyone's going to see

these guys.

New Rule, someone needs to explain

to wannabe assassin Ryan Ruth

that when you're being arrested, it's not the time for a thirst trap. All right.
Got a spit take out of Stephanie Rule. Thank you.
Well. Now that the U.S.
attorney handling the case against the guy who wanted to shoot Trump is a Haitian immigrant, everyone has to admit this season of the election is awesome. I mean, it had everything.
Plot twists, assassination attempts. We even killed off the main character.
And the animals. We've had dogs, cats, geese, bears.
And tune in next week when Trump reveals his dad isn't an orangutan. After all, it's Tonka from Chimp Crazy.
New rule, Scott Labado, the MAGA artist who created this painting of Kamala Harris maniacally eating a dead bald eagle with a nuclear mushroom cloud in the background, has to put down the brush and back away from the easel. It's time to find some other form of artistic expression.
Might I suggest frid-scaping.

And finally, new rules.

Someone has to tell me how Americans can keep becoming more alike, but also

hate each other more than ever.

I was made to think of this recently

when it came to my attention that

vice presidential candidate J.D.

Vance fucks his couch.

Oh, I'm sure you heard it, too. It was everywhere.

One guy wrote it on Twitter, and immediately half the country was all in.

Our hate for each other is so intense,

we all just immediately believe anything bad about the other side.

I mean, don't get me started on,

they're eating the dogs, they're eating the dogs, they're get me started on, they're eating the dogs. They're eating the dogs.

They're coming for the pets.

They're eating the dogs.

Now,

look, I think J.D. Vance is kind

of a giant asshole.

Still would love

to get you on the show, J.D.

But,

Thank you. of a giant asshole.
Still would love to get you on the show, J.D. But he doesn't fuck the couch.
It's not in his book, as the rumor suggested. What goes on between a man and upholstery is none of my business but...
In this case, it just didn't happen.

But, what is in that book is a much more interesting

passage where Vance recalls

how at age eight, he thought he might be

gay. This really resonated

with me, because when I was eight,

puberty was still a few years off, so

I hated girls at eight. They had

cooties, and I only wanted to be with

boys. Well, that does sound gay.
So the eight-year-old Vance goes to his grandmother, who he calls Mama, and who has 19 fucking guns stashed around the house, in case German's army comes back, I guess.

And he asks her if she, a woman born in Kentucky in 1933,

thinks he's gay.

And she says, J.D., do you want to suck dicks?

And he says, no, Mama. And she says, then you're not gay.
And even if you did want to suck dicks, that would be okay. God would still love you.
But stay away from my makeup. I made that last one up.

Get rid of that one.

I'm in.

But other than that, I feel like this is a teachable moment.

Maybe the hicks are not as hickey as they used to be.

I know it's a cliche that the coastal folks just fly over the flyover states,

but they mostly do.

So they're stuck in a time warp where, I don't know, farmers look like this.

But farmers use iPads now. They believe in climate change.
They went to college and majored in ag.

It's a science to grow food. Could you do it? Are there still prejudiced people in small towns in

the former Confederacy? Of course. Some of those places are as bad as Boston.
Have you ever been? But Kansas last year voted strongly for abortion rights, and they have a woman governor, whereas California is a state that has never had a woman governor, America's complicated.

We talk about red and blue states, but every state is purple.

47% of Texans voted Democrat in 2020.

Yeah, because Texas is a giant state, full of people with different ethnicities, philosophies, cultures,

and forms of shit-kicking.

Many rural traditions have even crossed over to become

quite mainstream. Look on Pornhub.

Now everybody's banging their sister.

I've played

all the cities of the Deep South, and they're

not that different. They have Starbucks,

just like up north.

They've even got that thing where you can

Thank you. I've played all the cities of the Deep South, and they're not that different.
They have Starbucks, just like up north. They've even got that thing where you can tap your card and tip 22% for no reason.
Sure, it sounds funny when you hear, order ready for American Patriot. American Patriot, your decaf mocha latte is ready.
But that's the thing.

America is a funny, mixed-up place now. Belfouche, South Dakota, has a biker bar that's LGBT-friendly.
And nearby Rapid City has a rooftop sky bar that sells $18 cocktails, just like the assholes in L.A. do.
Eureka Springs, Arkansas is home to a 70-foot-tall statue of Jesus and is also the place the advocate called the gayest small town in America. The third largest statue in the whole country is in Sugarland, Texas,

and it's of a Hindu monkey god.

Yeah.

Well, a hundred years ago, there was a trial about monkeys in the South,

and it really triggered people back then.

But things change.

Nobody in Sugarland, Texas, cares now about Hindus or monkey gods, and they don't seem to be scared by Indian Americans either.

There are too many people's doctors. Now, the food never really caught on, that's true.
But an Indian American is going to be president, and another one might be for the other side someday. And J.D.
Vance, for all his insanity, is married to an Indian American. And despite what Laura Loomer said about curry, Mrs.
Vance was welcomed warmly at the Republican convention. And no one but the truly deranged is thinking about curry.
Although that may be why the food never caught on. I'm just...
I'm just saying, it's not all bullets and mullets out there anymore. Just look at the music.
Maybe that's the best analogy for where we are culturally. I used to hate country music for a very good reason.
It sucked. But it changed because the people making it changed.
It's not some picking and a grinning bumpkin in a rhinestone leisure suit vaguely longing for the return of segregation anymore. Mostly.
A lot of it's good now. It sounds like the Eagles in 1972.

The number one song on the country chart this week is by Shaboozy.

Does he look like an Oak Ridge boy to you?

Post Malone is a country star now,

and you need a bookmark just to make it through his face. Snoop Dogg and Willie Nelson both have the same hobby.
At this year's Grammy Awards, Luke Combs performed a duet with Tracy Chapman, a queer black woman,

and no one ran screaming from the building.

In fact, they all loved it.

The big hat people and the big hair people, they don't hate each other.

They like and respect each other.

They want to work together. We can't duplicate this on a grander scale in America.
Why don't we just resist our worst impulses? And next time we're tempted to be hateful and just want the other side to die, stop,. Stop and think about J.D.
Vance's cocksucker-loving grandma. If she's told of it, maybe we're not so different after all.
All right, thank you very much. That's our show.
I'll be at the Orphan in Memphis, September 28th. The David Copperfield Theater at the MGM Grand in Vegas, November 1st and 2nd.
And watch Club Random, my podcast on YouTube, or listen wherever you get your podcasts. I want to thank Brett Stevens, Stephanie Ruhle, and Bjorn Lomborg.
Now go watch Overtime on YouTube. Thank you, folks.
Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher

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