Ep. #671: Al Franken, Alex Karp, Kristen Soltis Anderson

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Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO Late Night Series, Real Time with Bill Moff.

Start the clock.

Hi,

hey, everybody.

How are you down

Hello down there.

Everywhere.

Hi, everybody.

How you doing?

Thank you very much.

I know.

Thank you very much.

Hey.

Wow.

I appreciate it.

Oh, it's dot.

Okay, wow.

I know why you're excited today because

Trump's in L.A.

today.

That's, yeah, can you feel it?

Doing some fundraising.

Also, he's going to meet with the studios.

He's got a great idea for a remake of The Truth About Cats and Dogs.

Oh, man.

Did you see the debate Tuesday night?

Wow.

Now, I'm just going by what CNN had 25 independents who hadn't made their mind before the debate.

She won 23 to 2.

So that's pretty, I haven't seen a woman beat an opponent that bad since that Olympic boxer with these suspicious high levels of testosterone.

Wow.

It was pretty bad for him.

But halfway through it, he had a look on his face like, boy, where's a sniper when you need one?

Oh, we kid.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, nobody thought he did good.

His teenage son Baron

was

watching with some other kids in his dorm.

And at one point he jumped up and screamed, that's not my dad.

That's not my dad.

No, I thought, I mean, she made Trump look so much like a bitch

that a Haitian migrant tried to eat him.

Well, that's

well that's this is this is what he's basing his campaign on now.

That in Springfield, Illinois, Springfield,

always the name of the town when the invasions come, whether it's body snatcher, now it's Haitian migrants, he says, are eating

eating the dogs.

And that's when the Korean migrants went, whew.

I was close.

But I'm enough.

No, but today

I couldn't make this shit up.

Today, I can't.

How could you top this?

Today, Trump is walking it back.

He says, no, I'm sorry, it's not the not the

cats and the dogs that they're eating.

It's the ducks and the geese.

They're going to the ponds.

They're going to the ponds

and they're taking the geese to eat them.

And this is what Trump supporters are doing now, trying to prove that this Facebook meet, this insanity that he's basing the campaign on is true.

They're literally on a wild goose chase.

It's so important.

As the list of animals keeps growing and growing,

like Noah's Ark, if Noah was a fat asshole.

And

to me,

I gotta say,

the most ridiculous part of this whole thing is Trump defending dogs.

Trump hates dogs.

He's the one guy in the world who hates dogs, the only president who didn't have a dog.

Everything bad, he's like a dog.

Look at dogs.

Look at dog.

Dogs, they're rapists.

And they bring drugs and some, I assume, are good boys.

And where is he getting this from?

Well, he's got a new bullshit whisperer

named Laura Loomer.

Of course that's her name.

Laura Loomer.

There she is.

He's with her everywhere now.

For MAGA people,

she's like for people who find Marjorie Taylor Greene too intellectual.

I mean,

you name the crazy shit she believes in at.

Birtherism, she's a 9-11 truther, crisis actor, Pizzagate, rigged elections.

You've heard of Florida Man?

She's Florida woman.

Did you see this?

She ate dog food.

Am I making that up?

Do you saw that, right?

Like a Haitian.

No, I'm kidding.

But listen to this.

Now there's a bitch fight within the Republican Party.

I love this because, yes, Marjorie Taylor Green, the voice of sanity,

has come out against Laura Loomer.

Says she's too far right.

Says she's a racist.

Now Loomer has accused Marjorie Taylor Greene.

She says Marjorie Taylor Greene is an anti-Semite and she cheats on her husband and she said, hmm, I can't believe I have to report this.

She said her lady parts resemble an Arby's sandwich, which is

so offensive to Arby's.

And then

And then Lindsey Graham,

the other other real housewives guest member,

got involved and he's attacking Laura Loomer, says she's toxic.

And she posted back, we know you're gay, Lindsay.

Well, let's see David Muir fact-check that.

All right, we've got a great show.

We have Al Frank

Kristen Felters-Anderson.

But first up, he is the co-founder and CEO of Palantir Technologies.

Alex Karf is here, Alex.

All right.

Hey, nice to meet you.

How you doing?

All right.

Now, Alex, usually first guest here, people have some idea who that person is.

These people don't know who you are.

That's

not an insult.

They should, and we're going to fix that tonight.

But say you're on a plane, you probably own your own plane because you're a rich guy.

But say you're on a plane today, and they say, hey, where are you going?

And you say, I'm going to do the Bill Maher show.

And they go, I love that show because that's mostly what would happen

and and they say to you

why does Bill Maher want to have you on the show what would you say

I'm a funny guy

that's not a good supply

no well it the palanteer was first of all that's your company yeah my company I co-founded it there's a cultural element we were the first anti-woke pro-American pro-defense

successful.

We went public company, so there's a cultural element.

We defined Silicon Valley's reversal from I sell you something that makes you dumber, slower, stupider, and I tell you some platitude you don't believe.

You know, I don't believe it, but you still, somehow you get to be rich.

So we got rid of that.

Yes.

That's good.

That's good.

I've been,

so there's also a cultural element.

I've been the most vocal about the pagan religion that's infected our colleges.

I've been most vocal about getting rid of the carcinogen TikTok.

So there's a lot of cultural stuff.

But then from a technical perspective, we were the first people to, we had the biggest impact on anti-terror of any company in the world.

Europe, if you were European, the only reason you're not cue-stepping in your streets is because we stopped the terror attack that would have led to a change in government to the far right.

Okay, so

if you one more thing.

If you are in favor of America defending its allies, whether they be Israel,

Ukraine, and others, those allies are being defended by our product on the battlefield if you want to find a bad person and use our product to do it.

Well, okay.

I think I asked the right first question.

I got that all out.

And by the way, I'm going to agree with you on all this.

That's why I wanted to have you on, because I think people should know this and I'm with you on all this.

But what do you actually do, Alex?

I mean,

I understand a little bit, but I want you to explain it because Palantir Technologies, I've heard it's been called the AI arms dealer of the 21st century.

That sounds evil.

But

you're using.

You're using who you're selling to.

You're using your power for good and not evil, right?

If you are pro-West, pro-America, you think that Ukraine and Israel should defend themselves, you love us.

And the reason you love us is because the way in which you find the adversary on the battlefield, so if the adversary is in the desert or in Ukraine, whether it's a general or terrorist, and the way you do it ethically before you take them out is you use our platform to use huge, huge, huge sets of data to drill down on the one person who's hidden and take them out.

And you also use it, which is very important.

And

that sounds like bin Laden.

Were you involved in getting bin Laden?

We are not allowed, obviously can't discuss specifics.

Oh, come on.

Well, in any case,

we're on television.

Come on.

But Palantir is central to every conflict now where America is involved in finding adversaries, organizing our troops, bringing our troops home safely, and it's faster, cheaper, and better.

And I'll tell you something else.

The central advantage the U.S.

has over China, Russia, Iran is our ability to produce weapons-grade software and use it on the battlefield.

You go back.

Okay, so.

So this is your actual business, weapons-grade software.

And then because it's weapon-grade, a lot of commercial people buy it.

So like we have, I mean, we have massive growth in U.S.

commercials.

So people use it to drill oil, people use it to organize their fleets, people use it for manufacturing.

You can use our various products in the civil, civilian.

I know you're involved with the Defense Department, the Intel agencies, ICE, Border Patrol, the FDA, the IRS.

What do you do?

What are these people buying from you?

So, for example, Operation Warp Speed, which arguably saved $3.5 million.

The vaccine.

The vaccine.

how do you just so that the civilian use cases are like, how do you distribute a vaccine to the whole country?

How do you distribute masks when you don't have enough?

How do you do that overnight?

The military use cases are: where do you place your troops?

How do you find somebody?

And the civilian use cases is: how do you make your business more efficient?

How do you do it in a way that's cheaper?

How do you get the car to the right place, the doctor to the right place at the right time when you have huge regulatory oversight?

Could you do something here in the state of California this weekend?

We could really use some of that.

And I know you

asked him what helped to get it.

I mean, you left California, like

another guy who's involved in some of this kind of stuff, which is Elon Musk.

Yeah, we are the two biggest companies to leave California early.

And the two biggest that are involved in the defense of our country.

I mean, Starlink is very important.

Well, I feel like, look, I owe California a great of

gratitude.

I went to school here.

I built a company here.

Obviously, California has gone in the past way too far on this kind of hyper-woke, we can get nothing done, but

it doesn't have to work because we pretend it works because we're good people thing.

And

I think, and there are real consequences.

So

something like 87%

of

the most important tech companies in the world are American.

And if you look at what should have happened, Germany and other places should have a tech scene, but you have to have rigorous thought, meritocracy, truth to build these companies.

And that's what we have to, we are, we've been fighting to preserve because if you want to have Palantir or SpaceX or whatever you're going to build, you need to have a system where people can build things.

It's rigorous.

They keep the value of what they build and they share it with society.

Okay.

Agreed.

And I'm certainly with you on the overwoke stuff.

But if it is that constraining, how come, what did you say, 86% of the Americans?

87%.

Okay, then how come we have been so successful if we're so successful?

We have the best immigrants, we organize people the best way, we have a sense of fairness, togetherness.

We bring the most creative people here, and that's why the companies develop here.

But you say we could be even better.

We could be even better.

Right.

And what I also love about your philosophy is that you're not afraid to say America is still the good guys, even though we've done horrible things.

Everybody has.

We're human.

But have a little perspective.

I feel like that is what is so lacking today.

Well, look, of course America, like every great nation, has done some really fucked up things.

Right.

Right.

So that's obvious.

Right.

But look, but we know they're messed up because we hold ourselves to a high standard.

And if you're going to compare us, which at the end of the day, morality has to be slightly compared.

You're going to compare us to China, Russia, Iran?

Who else even aspires to these standards?

And by the way, look at how our lives have changed.

We're roughly the same age.

When I was born, half, you know, people had gays, blacks,

people didn't have the rights you have now.

Look at the progress we've made.

It's like in one lifetime, it's like magic.

It's amazing.

It's literally, it's literally like magic.

And no other society,

I spent half my life in Germany.

It's a very interesting, very developed society.

You do not have the integration, You do not have the innovation.

You do not have the fairness.

You don't have meritocracy.

Most of the companies in Germany that are big are owned by families that owned them 50, 100 years earlier.

This is one country that produces this.

Part of the problem and part of the reason why people don't stand up for America is they don't understand how magical it is to get these things to work.

And no other place does it at our scale with our diversity and different kinds of people and different kinds of thought.

And in my case,

I was viewed as the Frankenstein monster.

I don't come from wealth, and I get the opportunity to prove myself.

No one in this country cares how crazy you are if you deliver.

So true.

Yeah.

And

I also like that you feel that, you know, you're helping America have the biggest swinging dick in the world.

Absolutely.

And size matters.

It does.

And you're not afraid to say if somebody has to have that, it should be us.

And it should be us.

And you're not afraid to say we should scare our enemies, right?

Well, you know, one of the things I've been on kind of a mantra about is, as a lefty,

our foreign policy should be, if you touch an American, we are going to make you and your friends' life hell.

We do.

We do that.

Not enough.

Not enough?

Not enough.

You don't think we do that enough?

Because that's what we're doing.

I mean, we had

the anniversary of 9-11.

Yeah.

Okay.

Look, I mean, we attacked an entire country that had nothing to do with it.

I would say.

Well, there are many things we did that make no sense.

Right.

So, okay.

Yes, and there, but also we have not had another 9-11, partly because of Intel services, and partly because of what we did, and partly because we scared the living shit out of people.

Yes.

And that's why.

So, and then, so this is like you either,

you either have to show action and live safely, or you can talk a lot and live very dangerously.

All right, last question, and I'll let you go.

I think we've covered a lot here.

You say we will soon have Terminator robots.

Will they have the Austrian accent?

Well, you know, I speak German, and it's a nice flare.

But what does that mean, Terminator robots?

Well,

there's a question, say the modern warfighting, we're going to go to peer-to-peer warfighting.

I think the more interesting thing we're going to have very soon is drone-on-drone warfighting, especially if we have a near-peer, meaning China-Russia adversary.

You're not going to be fighting as much with these big instruments.

You're going to be using software to control small instruments, and there's going to be hundreds of thousands of them.

And they're going to be somewhat autonomous.

Okay, well, I certainly hope you stay in the cause of good and not evil, because you're a very powerful guy.

Thank you.

Alex, great to meet you.

I'll see you after.

All right, let's lead our panel.

Interesting guy.

Okay, she is a conservative pollster and the CNN contributor Kristen Saltis.

Anderson is here.

And look who's here.

Writer, comedian, former Democratic senator from Minnesota, who now hosts the Al Franken podcast.

He's good enough, he's smart enough.

And doggone it, we like him.

Al Franken is over here.

Been too long since I had you on the panel.

All right,

I'm going to make this a very momentous night with a prediction because I...

And I think I have the credibility for this prediction because I have been called a Trump alarmist for a very long time.

They were wrong.

I was right.

He wasn't going to leave power.

Okay.

But ever since then,

and since the Hollywood access tape where he said, I'm going to grab him by the pussy, and he survived that.

Every time he's been done crazy shit and gotten himself in trouble, I said, no, no, it's not over.

I've said that.

I've argued with people.

Brebrett Stevens, my good friend, he's on the show next week.

He said at one point a few years ago, the Trump thing.

I said, no, no, no.

Tonight I'm saying, I think it's over.

I just want to bring up an analogy to one person.

Even before we were around, there was a guy named Joe McCarthy in the early 50s, and he had a hold on America.

And it blew out in about two years, right?

Two, three years.

He was the biggest thing.

And then it was just...

And I feel like eating the dogs, we're at this point.

I feel like we're at the Captain Quig with the strawberries.

We're at Denzel at the end of training day.

I'm King Kong at the end.

I just think he's going to lose.

I do not share your confidence in knowing how this is going to go.

I mean, I know people don't think that the polls are very accurate.

So setting all of that aside, the reality is that people have known Donald Trump and known who he is for a very long time.

And when you ask people, do you need to know more about these candidates?

With Kamala Harris, they say yes.

Like three in 10 people say, I feel like I need to know more in order to make a decision.

But when you ask that about Donald Trump, only a fraction of voters say that they do.

And so people know who he is, and yet he's still competitive.

You look at these battleground states, they're still 50-50.

He's hanging in the bottom.

It'll be tied on election day.

As always, it will.

The polls will be tied, and then he'll lose.

That's my prediction.

We'll see.

I'm just saying things aren't until they are.

Yeah.

Thank God.

Don't you feel better, Earl?

Next issue, huh?

Okay.

You don't agree?

You don't.

I hope you're right.

Okay, all right.

All right.

So let me move on to the next question.

Since he is the guy who nothing he can do can deter about half the country from voting for him, I see that Democrats have two choices.

They can either say, well, he's such a monster, he's so crazy.

I mean, and this week was just above and beyond with the racial stuff with Kamala and this Laura Loomer person now, the dogs.

I mean,

you know.

You can either say half the country is deplorable.

They tried that.

I never believed that.

I don't think half the country is deplorable.

I don't think you did.

I know that you believe that, right?

No.

There are some

people who are deplorable.

Absolutely.

Okay.

Yeah.

We agree on that.

Well, obviously, it's a country of 350 million people.

Some of them are going to be.

But you can either say half the country is deplorable.

Anybody who likes them is deplorable, or the Democrats can say, why?

Why is this insane monster?

still attractive to half the country.

If not attractive, why are they willing to vote?

What are we doing that makes so many people go,

yeah, but this other thing is worse?

I mean, Alex was talking a little bit about it up front.

Yeah, you have, if you look at people who say they're voting for Donald Trump, 93% of them like Donald Trump, but like 7% of voters who say I'm voting for him really, really don't want to.

But they feel like they have to because they feel like, well, I agree with him on policy.

I'm not necessarily looking for someone that I like.

And that's like well-trod territory, right?

That he's got some voters who are going for him because they just think the alternative is worse.

And that's why I think Kamala Harris's strategy has been so fascinating over the last two weeks.

She's a blank slate to a lot of voters.

They have no idea what she stands for.

You've got a lot of these clips of really crazy positions she's taken in the past.

And they're going, is that who she still is?

And she gets up there on that debate stage and she says, you know what?

I don't even know.

2019, 2020, Kamala Harris.

I own a gun.

Dick Cheney likes me.

Goldman Sachs likes my economic policy.

I throw gang leaders in jail.

She's like begging Nikki Haley voters to come vote for her.

And she's going to be able to get away with it because progressives right now hate Donald Trump so much that she has like this unbelievably unlimited long leash to go and say that she is basically an RNC 20 or 2004 keynote speaker.

Please vote for me, Republicans, and it might work.

I would hardly say I own a gun makes you a keynote speaker.

No, but I do think that

if you add it all together, it's not just the gun, it is that at every turn, she is trying to make the case, my passion is small business.

I mean, she's really going after that slice of the Republican Party that left and said, Trump's not for me.

She really thinks that she can make them not just leave the top of the ticket blank.

Why does that have to be the Republican Party?

You know, that there are Democrats who own a gun, Democrats who like small business.

But I don't think that typically, when they're running for president, they're out there.

What's wrong with you?

Oh, no, no.

I apologize.

It's okay.

I apologize.

Oh,

I was a little rusty, you know.

Go on.

Do you think that Kamala Harris is as conservative as she is portraying herself to be right now?

Or do you think that she is more accurately described by the words she used to give her own issue positions back in 2019-2020?

Like, who is the real real Kamala Harris, do you think?

I think she really is where she is today.

In that debate, I thought it was a brilliant debate.

I thought it was one of the best I've ever seen.

And,

you know, and yeah, some of those positions are a little bit remarkable how gung-ho she is for fracking, but you know,

I still believe that

she's a politician.

Right.

She wants to win this election, thank God.

Yeah, and

also,

I want to push back on your assessment that that makes her conservative.

I don't think anything she's saying now makes her conservative.

She's actually conservative, let's be clear.

But that's the word you're doing.

She's trying to appeal to conservative.

But I just think this shows how far we've moved.

Where she was in 2019 and 2020 was super far left.

Yes.

Super what we'd call woke.

I know people don't like that term, but okay, that's where she was.

Now I feel like she's just like center left.

I mean I don't know that fracking, even fracking has to be something that we

demean this way.

I mean what we're trying to do is get the environment to its best place.

It's a difficult thing to do.

And we're not there yet.

If we could have 100% solar and wind, yes, but we're so far from there.

We have to use other things.

Germany tried this, other places have tried this, where they got rid of all the

coal plants.

They needed more energy.

They had to reopen them.

But they're back to over 50% renewable.

They are.

Okay, but we're still not even close.

And the thing that we, I think we have Bjorn Lorenburg on next week.

What he's been talking about, which is quite interesting, is that when we have new energy from renewables, the amount of fossil fuels doesn't go down.

People just use more.

We're Americans.

So,

anyway.

Well, there's also the reality that during the time that she has been in the White House, you had this moment where gas prices were going up so much that if she comes out and says, Look, the reason I've changed positions on fracking is because gas prices were really high, I realized we needed to produce more, that's great.

I'm all for people learning more and converting.

The problem I think she has is that she has so many positions from the past that she has changed a lot on.

And I don't think in that debate she got pressed nearly hard enough on why have you had this conversion besides this new position is really popular in Pennsylvania.

Nobody cares.

You know who should have pressed her?

It's Trump.

Trump, yes.

But he had a hard time in the debate.

Because all she did was talk about what she was for and then

end it by saying something that got him mad.

That was it.

That was her debate strategy.

And it worked.

The most predictable strategy in the world.

It's so easy.

It's like a cock fight.

Of course you can get the cocks to do it.

You just put them in each other's face.

And she did.

I mean, he's

one of so many reasons why he is unthinkable as a leader because he cannot control his impulses.

On an issue like immigration, that Donald Trump loves to talk about, she got him to start his answer by talking about crowd size.

Like, that is unbelievable.

That's like the slow pitch over the middle.

He should be able to just knock that out of the park, and instead it was like squirrel.

And he just

pounded.

Do it again.

No, I will not do it again.

They're eating the squirrels.

All right.

Listen, one day a year, I can never get to sleep at night, and people who know me know that night is the night before the Country Music Award nomination.

I'm excited.

I have

tried everything, gummies, melatonin, nothing works.

I'm just just so excited.

And this year was especially exciting because it was a big controversy, because this is the year that Beyoncé put out her big album, Country Carter, with the number one hit.

And it got completely shut out

of getting a nomination for the Country Music Award.

So I was looking into this.

And, you know,

it's interesting, not just this song, but this is the new vogue in music, is mixing country and rap.

It's a new genre called crap.

No.

It's not.

It's not.

It's actually great stuff.

I remember the first, remember Old Town Road, that was like the number one hit.

And then Post Malone now is a country singer.

And Jelly Roll and Beyonce.

It's the newest thing.

So some of this, if you're not aware, here are some of the other songs that were up for a country that are crossover between country and rap.

Real is All My Shorties drink from 40 is what it was uh

a big one and uh

oh this one was great bling of fire do you have that on your icon oh it's terrific um

uh the hennessy wall

the hennessy wall

uh in the sam's club i i think

to all the grills I've loved before.

Boys in the hoods.

It's really a movie, but we

two-horned it in.

I twerk the line is a very

moving.

I like

big buckles.

All these are just terrific songs.

The devil went down to Freaknik.

And of course,

I'm So Lonesome I Could Crunk.

Okay.

So.

All right.

So we're having a great time.

Let's talk about an ugly incident

that happened this week.

Tyreek Hill, he's a football player.

You may not be a football fan.

If you're not a fan, you probably don't know who he is.

I definitely know who he is.

Did not know what he looked like, okay, because they wear helmets.

So we'll get to that part of it.

But he got pulled over by the cops, and they roughed him up in a way I thought was not called for.

But I thought it was just a depressingly emblematic

part of what this country represents now, which is that everybody's an asshole.

I feel like everybody is just trying to trigger everybody else.

I mean, was Tyreek an asshole?

Yes.

Yes.

Both of them were.

I'm saying they were both assholes.

If you want to trigger cops, don't comply, act superior to them, be a wise ass.

That'll just roll up your window.

Twinkle windows.

Yes.

And if you're a cop and you want to trigger a black man in America after the history we have in this country, lay your hands on them when it's not absolutely necessary.

You know, cops, they act like it's a bar fight.

If I hear one more cop on the, it's the fuck, get the fuck,

fuck shouldn't come out of your mouth.

You're the pro.

You're the pro.

It's not a bar fight.

You're not in a bar.

So that's it.

Everybody's an asshole.

But I actually thought that Tyreex Hill's response was great on this because, in fact the only thing I didn't like about his response is I was playing against him in fantasy football and he ran for an 80-yard touchdown.

But everything else, I mean, because he came out and didn't say that I'm, he didn't say I'm blameless.

He came out and said, you know, I probably should have kept my window down.

I rolled it up because I was worried that fans were going to see me and start taking pictures.

But you know what?

I was wrong.

And I thought that was good of him to, because two things can be true at once, that he probably should have left his window down, but there was no need for him to get dragged out of the car like that.

But it also reminded me a a lot of a very different incident that happened this year with another athlete on the way to a sporting event Scotty Scheffler the number one golfer in the world he is a nice sweet Christian boy from Dallas his new dad that week and he gets yanked out of a car by the Louisville PD booked and his mug shot goes up before he even plays the round that day and it's just bizarre to me that we keep having these incidents and yet it doesn't feel like this has rallied any new sort of fresh push for any kind of action.

It's like, well, we got the body cams, but all the body cams are doing is showing us this bad stuff is happening.

Well, we need the body cams.

Yes, we do.

Yeah, right.

For both sides.

Thank God for body cams.

Yeah.

I mean, the cops fought them for a long time.

The cops fought everything, and they've lost a lot of those battles.

They never used to go to jail when they did horrible shit, and now they do.

Okay, again, progress.

But also, you know,

when he was sitting on the ground, and they shouldn't have dragged him out, it was horrible.

But he's sitting on the ground and he said something like, just being black in America, bro.

And the cop says to him, we're not white either.

Because they were Hispanic.

And like being black.

That was nice.

But I mean, being black in America is still a thing.

You still can get a lot of shit just for being black in America.

Which is why you should not roll up a darkened window.

I mean that,

but I

he didn't want his fans recognize him.

He was right near the stadium, right?

He was like a few blocks away.

There was a way he could have handled this and nothing would have happened.

Yeah, he had a bad attitude.

You know, and to say being black in America, that, again, it does happen still and shouldn't, and we should always be fighting it.

But it can't be a,

when shit goes sideways, an all-access card to just say, no, it's because I'm black in America.

No, you were also out of line.

Well, it's actually the reason

to

not roll up the window.

The added reason.

The mayor of St.

Paul, Melvin Carter,

his father was a cop.

And he said that

growing up, he'd meet all these other cops, go over to his house, friends of his father, and then when he got to be 16 and driver, he said, I met all the cops again.

But, you know,

it's me, it's Melvin.

And they, oh, hi, Melvin.

Yeah, sorry to assume something.

Yeah.

I mean, I think it's in some ways a sign of progress that black folks can now act like entitled assholes like white people always could.

That's the lesson.

All right.

Let's get to the big news this week.

Taylor Swift finally told people who to vote for.

And,

of course, immediately the response on the other side was, celebrity endorsements don't matter.

People are always so behind on these things, you know.

That's the conventional wisdom for a long time.

And many celebrity endorsements don't work.

Not in this case.

Okay?

I mean, just with the number of people who immediately were registered from that tweet.

And I'm sorry, but we live in star fucker America

more than anything.

I mean, George Clooney.

is the one who got Biden to step down.

I wrote the exact same editorial he did, and so many other people did too.

Nobody cared.

As soon as George Clooney said it, he's got to go.

I disagree with you there.

Okay.

Okay.

Let's debate.

It was Pelosi and it was

members of Congress.

It was a while between when

I feel like that's when the dam broke.

I feel like that was very key.

Well, I think you live here and

maybe

from some perspective

you have the wrong perspective.

What I think made the Clooney thing so impactful was not that he's George Clooney, the guy you know from ER.

What I think made the Clooney op-ed stand out was that he said, I was in Joe Biden's presence at a fundraiser and I saw him and he's not what you think.

I think it wasn't just the messenger.

I think it was also the message.

And that's why I think the Taylor Swift endorsement, I'll agree with you, it does matter.

And it's not the message of you should vote for Kamala Harris.

Because I don't think there are a lot of voters out there going, gee, I don't know who to vote for.

Let me wait for Taylor Swift to tell me.

But I think that in terms of turnout, to the extent that there are voters who are on the sidelines and they previously thought, I thought Hillary Clinton wasn't great.

I thought Joe Biden wasn't great.

They don't motivate me to turn out to the extent that she's getting people to actually get off the couch.

The couch is the enemy.

It was 400,000 the first day

of people who registered because she told them to go register.

And I must say, in George Clooney's defense,

those are the good people.

In George Clooney's defense, he's done a few things things since ER.

Well, ER.

But

this,

this,

let me know, your upholstery.

Tell me what this means, because this was the

most surprising part of it, was who she influenced.

Swift, it says, would have more influence over male voters.

27% of male voters say they'd be more likely to vote for a candidate endorsed by Swift.

I must have this phenomenon gauged all wrong.

I thought it would be women.

Another one.

What?

Another one.

Another.

That I got wrong.

Okay.

I see.

I get you.

That was cheap.

So that's all right.

That's fine.

So, Laura Loomer, may we talk about her for a

bring her

right she brought her to a 911 remembrance yes which is obscene

well she's a truther right a 9-11 truther and by the way yes in the 23 years since 9-11 at the beginning there was a lot of truthers I mean you know you don't know what happened at first people sent me a lot of videos I watched them all.

I said, you know, I don't trust anybody in the media these days.

I'm doing the deep dive.

Okay, even most of the people at the beginning who were 9-11 truthers have fallen away.

It's just not even a thing anymore.

Everybody gets it.

It involves, to think that George Bush could have planned something like that, just ridiculous.

So

to be a 9-11 truther,

this is what I mean about Captain Queen.

We're at that end stage, I really think.

Here's my question, because she said, Laura Loomer said, Taylor Swift, she believes, is in an arranged relationship with Travis Kelsey to influence the 2024 election.

I think maybe Laura Loomers in an arranged relationship to affect the election, because she's very close to Trump.

She's 31,

looks like his type.

We did an editorial here a few years ago.

You're remembering it already.

It was basically, who's Trump Trump fucking?

Because I said, you know, it's not nobody.

He's been a dog for too long.

And it's not Melania.

I think we may have our answer that's weak.

I think it might be Laura Loomer.

I'm just saying.

Well, I don't know what his...

I don't know what.

I don't know what he's doing behind the scenes, but I do know that a big part of why he was able to be so successful up until the kind of flailing of the last few weeks is that he had actually brought a really impressive team of operatives around him that had kept him kind of muzzled, kept him on message.

Susie Wiles and Chris La Savita, his campaign managers, they are good at what they do.

And the fact that he's now bringing all of these other people to Mar-a-Lago, I do think lends some credibility to your prediction that this could be the end, that if he's able to actually keep the pros in charge, he would be very formidable.

I really think it is.

And these people who are still undecided, I mean you can answer, this is your field, these people who are like the people who go to McDonald's every day and still

need to look at the menu for ten minutes,

what are they waiting for?

What who is

Harris Trump?

They get their information from

places that that we don't.

And so they

have a bias toward Trump, maybe, and that's why they

are undecided.

They're waiting to see if they...

What was wrong with that theory?

It wasn't good.

It was no good.

That was terrible.

It's the non-undecided who have the bias.

The people who are locked into MSNBC and that's all they see, or they only see Fox News.

These are the people who supposedly are outside those bubbles, who are weighing it.

And this is back to my point earlier.

Like, I don't think they are blind to what a monster he is.

They just say, yeah, but there are things going on.

And again, unless the Democrats start marginalizing some of the crazy people, you know, the Hamas lovers and the gender deniers and the, you know, men can get pregnant people.

Boom.

But I think.

I do think that if you want to win over the political center, getting rid of your extremes is helpful.

But I also think that for a lot of these swing voters, it's not that they love Donald Trump and it's not that they love Kamala Harris.

They're trying to figure out, is it even worth my time to go participate?

Or is this all pointless?

Are we just, is it just going to be a disaster no matter what?

There was a woman in one of my focus groups.

She was a moderate voter in Pennsylvania.

Her name was Kay.

And she said, look, I didn't want to vote at all, but I'm probably going to go out and vote for Kamala Harris because my friends have convinced me that if I don't vote, it's basically like voting for Trump.

But I'm not going to like it.

I'm not going to enjoy it.

And I'm going to need to.

Yeah, who told you you have to like everything and like vote for her.

All right, time for new rules.

Thank you, guys.

Okay.

All right, new rules.

New rule.

Now that Taylor Swift has saved democracy by endorsing Kamala Harris, she has one more mission.

Stop making Travis Kelsey dress like a douche.

douche.

I don't own a cat, but I know what it smells like when they mark their turf.

And

since cats are so on everyone's mind these days, new rule, the makers of Tablei,

the app that tells you whether or not your cat is happy, have to answer one question.

Doesn't that ruin the mystery?

I mean,

plainly that is the attraction of a cat.

If you want a pet that goes apeshit for you when you come home, we have that.

It's called a dog.

Some people like that and some people like when you come home and your pet glances at you like a Stepford wife in a loveless marriage.

I guess we're all different.

Okay.

New rule, everyone must recognize that when we say never forget about something, we always forget.

Not only have we forgotten 9-11, Ground Zero is now a shopping mall with a banana republic, Sephora, and Jamba Juice.

But on the bright side, to recap, the Galleria at the World Trade Center won Caliphate Zero.

Nerule, the college freshman, who's, I'll get her back with this one.

The college freshman who's been complaining on Reddit that his doormate sits in their room all day playing League of Legends and so he hasn't been able to jerk off for two weeks.

weeks.

Must be told, it gets better.

Hi.

Hi, I'm Bill Maher with a message to college freshmen with backed up sperm.

I know how hard it can be for you.

It's your first time away from home.

Your roommate barely speaks English.

Someone stole your weighted blanket,

your Ritalin prescription ran out.

And the From the River to the Sea chants outside your window are keeping you up at night.

But hang in there, as Nietzsche said, what doesn't kill us makes us stronger.

Also, you know, the shower right down the hall?

Use that, dumbass.

New rule, someone has to tell Chad Condit, who is suing California State Senator Maria Alvarado Guild because he claims she forced him to perform oral sex on her while she was his boss, including once in her car, and that it left him with three herniated discs and a collapsed hip.

That I'm sorry, but this is the biggest humble brag in history.

I mean...

I mean, who amongst us hasn't tapped out because they couldn't keep going?

But

you're saying you stuck it out at the expense of your spinal cord

in order to get your boss to the finish line.

Good God, man, you're the greatest lover of all time and employee of the month.

And finally,

new rule, now that we've shown that it's possible to begin a campaign for president just three months before the election, let's always do that.

Now

they always say voters don't pay attention until Labor Day.

Well then let's start the election.

on Labor Day and end it on Election Day

when the Civil War starts.

But I'll get to that in a minute.

But honestly, what sentient person couldn't cast their vote right now?

Trump announced his run nearly two years ago.

Did anyone say, good, I need to hear more about this Donald Trump?

If he can support forcing a woman to choose whether to have an abortion in six weeks, we can choose whether or not to abort him in 12.

Americans are a funny people.

For most things, we have zero attention span.

Nearly half of TikTok users say watching videos that last over a minute is stressful.

37 states have no waiting period for a gun because if we order a pizza and it's not there in 30 minutes, someone has to die.

If you order a garden gnome when you're drunk on Amazon, it's on your doorstep before you sober up.

We have five-minute car washes, speed dating, 15-minute oil change, 20-minute facelifts.

A 2005 survey found that vaginal sex typically lasts three to seven minutes because we fuck like we eat.

And yet we do elections like we're fucking on cocaine.

When Joe Biden was still hanging hanging on to be the candidate, many of the pundits said that to switch him out this late would cause chaos.

Yeah, that was never my position.

And indeed, what happened was Kamala Harris said, oh, look, I guess it's my turn.

And the next day, a grateful nation handed her $500 million.

The only reason we stay stuck in permanent campaign mode is money.

It's estimated this year that $16 billion will be spent on political ads.

It's time we admit that the endless campaign exists only to enrich advertisers, political consultants, and what's left of the news media.

And the fact that we're just getting to know Kamala isn't bad.

It's great.

Great for her, great for the country.

People didn't used to get sick of the candidates because you barely ever saw them unless you happened to be standing at the back end of a train.

But now we never stop seeing them.

The winner in modern elections comes down to who we're less tired of.

They're just constantly on us.

TV, radio, the mail, on our phones, texting.

Hey Bill, Tim Wall's here.

You up?

They're everywhere all the time.

Jesus Christ, fuck off.

Let mommy put her purse down.

I don't get it.

Everything in the modern world moves so fast except politics.

It's the one exception.

Well, politics and streaming series.

People are always telling me I should binge watch a show that gets good in season three.

Season three.

What about my needs?

Every idea that would make one single decent movie is now a 10-part series, and the middle three episodes are just the old cop with a dark secret and the lesbian cop with the neck tattoo saying, are you as confused as I am?

Well,

I'm very confused.

Why the hell do we still need a ridiculous 11-week period between election and inauguration?

It made sense in the old days when it took that long to get from Illinois to Washington by horse, but

we have planes now.

We don't have to strap William Howard Taft to a buckboard and wheel his ass in from Ohio.

We talk of the intermission between election and inauguration as a transition period, like that's good and it makes us mature.

It's not.

It's a fetid swamp which breeds nothing but mischief.

When When other countries vote out their politicians, they throw their clothes right out on the front lawn within days.

Buh-bye, loser.

You don't get...

You don't get three months to sit there and think about rioting.

Where else in life does this ever happen where a person gets terminated and they just let you stay on for a couple of months?

No.

When you get fired at Google, you pack up your cardboard box with the sad plant and you're gone that day.

Canada elects a new prime minister and they take over in two weeks.

The French hit it and quit it in three.

Japan's season lasts 12 days.

In England, their campaign is 25 working days and the new prime minister moves into 10 Downing Street within hours.

In Mexico and the Philippines, campaigns last 90 days.

In Brazil, 45.

And these are the laid-back countries.

The ones where you ask room service for a bucket of ice and it comes as you're boarding the flight home.

And yet.

Yet they all manage to wrap up an election in the same amount of time that it takes a 90-day fiancé to say, sure, I'll fuck a fat guy for a green card.

If TLC can do 90-day fiancé, we can do 90-day commander-in-chief.

Because at this point, I feel like Melania in the bedroom.

I just want to get whatever's going to happen over with.

All right, that's our show.

I'll be at TAF here in Cincinnati.

September 29th and Majestic in San Antonio, October 12th, and Tulsa.

In Tulsa, October 13th, I want to thank Kristen Soltis-Anderson, Al Franken, and Alex Clark.

Go watch Overtime now on YouTube.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher every Friday night at 10, or watch them anytime on HBO On Demand.

For more information, log on to HBO.com.

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