Ep. #669: Nancy Pelosi, John McWhorter, Peter Hamby

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Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO Late Night series, Real Time with Bill Maher. All right, everybody.
Thank you, people. I appreciate it.
How you doing? All right. Wow.
Okay, all right. We've got a big show.
Thank you very much. I know.
It's a very exciting time of year. It's Labor Day.
Fuck, is the year already? It's Christmas already. It's Labor Day weekend.
And right on cue. This is always, they say, this is when the presidential race really starts, and it really did.
We finally had an interview last night with Kamala Harris. Did you watch it? Oh, wow.
That's a lot of people watched it. Not just her, with Tim Walls, her emotional support VP.
Well, I mean, it was a little odd.

He was just sitting there for a very long time without saying anything. He was just nodding while she did all the talking.
The women's focus group said he must be a wonderful husband. Oh, my.

Oh, my.

Really, I mean, like like it just kept going and he was saying nothing it was like watching jeopardy when one of the players can't work the buzzer you know i'd love to get in on this but i i was that guy once by the way but it's so funny the media has been furious that she would not give an interview, and now she finally does on a single question about abortion, Ukraine, the homeless, the opioid crisis, the national debt, and then they wonder why the kids get their news from TikTok. Including the question...

They always ask the stupidest question in the world.

What would you do on day one?

You know, it's not that kind of a fucking job, okay?

It's just not that kind of a job.

I'd cure cancer. What do you think I'd do?

I would just one time love to hear somebody go,

You know what I'd do? I'd unpack some boxes

and I'd get dressed for the inaugural party

like anybody else.

No, please.

Donald Trump, of course, had to shit tweet

while he was watching it.

He said, boring. Good.
I'd love some boring. Yeah.
That's what I want in this ticket. It's Harris Walls, not Deadpool Wolverine.
Yeah. At one point he said, she didn't look like a leader.
No, and then it was off to his monthly call with the probation officer. But here's something really interesting.

The first debate, maybe the only debate, is in 10 days, I think.

Okay, they're having a fight about the mics.

Now, in the last debate with Biden, remember, they turned the mics off

when the guy wasn't speaking, and Trump fought against that.

Now it's reversed.

Because they know he's his own worst enemy. So, so, so, she wants the mic on, and his team wants it off.
They also want him to wear one of those cones your dog wears. You don't want him to bite his own wounds? No, he's...
The fact that she is beating him now is just making him more unhinged than usual, which is saying a lot. I mean, he's talking about how hot he is.
He's just saying the most crazy things. Yesterday, he said he wants now a space National Guard.
In case there's an uprising by Black Holes Matter. And then he gets into a physical fight at Arlington National Cemetery.
Now, it was the third anniversary this week of when we pulled out of Afghanistan. It was a shame.
There was 13 of our troops died. And so he went to Arlington, you know, for the troops there.
And, you know, there's a law, as there should be, that at Arlington National Cemetery,

where our bravest and greatest are buried,

you can't take pictures,

and you can't use it as a campaign prop.

I mean, it's like when homeless people started to fuck in libraries.

You didn't think there should be a law about it,

but you have to, you know?

Sometimes you just need a law.

Okay, so, of course, when Trump

heard this, he was like, law's

right.

And they told him

to stop, and he was furious. He said,

you are ruining a perfectly good exploitation

of a tragedy.

And then he grabbed some flowers off somebody else's grave and said, send these to Melania. And then when the park people told him to stop, he just shoved them aside.
His goons just shoved them. Have you ever wondered what Donald Trump is like in real life? Tony Soprano without the introspection.

We have Peter

Hamby and John McWhorter, but first

up, oh wow, this is exciting.

He is the

Speaker Emeritus of the U.S. House of

Representatives, whose New York

Times best-selling memoir is The Art

of Power. My story is America's

first woman Speaker of the House, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi.

Thank you. Not bad reception there, huh? Nice welcome.
They could not wait to get on their feet. And your memoir is out.
But just because you have memoir out, you're not done, right? You're still in Congress. Well, it's not a memoir.
It's just a report on some things. I'll do a memoir later.
Well... It covers some important territory.
Yes. I mean, the big...
On my scorecard, you got the big ones right. And the big ones are Iraq.
You were against going in. The financial crisis in 08.
You bailed out the banks, even though that was very unpopular at the time. And then getting health care done.
A lot of people wanted to throw that under the bus when it got tough, and you kind of willed it into law.

Those are the three big ones.

It's a lot of history.

And there's a picture I saw in the book of you and Bush.

I'd like to show it, see if you remember it. I think it's when you broke history as the first woman in that position.

And

I show it because like

look, I was very hard on George Bush

for good reason.

Kind of an idiot.

No, but

he was better than that. I was

probably too hard. But that picture says a lot.
Because he looks like he's genuinely giving you congratulations. And even though you're on the other side, we're all Americans.
That Republican is gone. Am I right? That's unfortunate.
That was a surprise to me when he came out and said, I am the first president who will ever say Madam Speaker.

And that was a big applause and all that.

But then he talked about my father having served in Congress and having been there when Churchill spoke and other heads of state.

And he could never have imagined that his daughter would be.

So it was a beautiful personal thing that the president did. True.
Especially since up until that time, I had been fighting fiercely on the war in Iraq. So is there any way to get back to the great times of George Bush? I think so.
I think that it's necessary for our country, for us to move in a unifying direction, to try to take us back to a place where we disagreed, but we were patriotic and loved our country, as opposed to what's happening now. It's essential.
It's essential. Can we talk politics here? It's essential that Donald Trump never set foot in the White House.
So, I mean, they would say the Democrats have changed a lot in that era, too. Do you agree or disagree? No, I think we've been true to who we are.
We are the party of working class people. The kitchen table concerns of America's working families have always been ours.

They will take an example here or there and try to tattoo all of us with it. But we are a diverse party.
As I say, our diversity is our strength. Our unity is our power.
And that's why we have the team. Thank you.

Well, you're from out here.

You read the country. You're from out here.
You read the local papers. The California lawmakers just passed a law.
It hasn't been signed by Governor Newsom, but giving government assistance to undocumented immigrants to buy houses. That's kind of a different place than the Democratic Party used to be on immigration, is it not? I'm not going to say that's what the country's going to do, but that's certainly where California is.
Well, let me just say, immigration had always been a bipartisan issue. I refer you to the...
But not free houses. Well, that's not free housing.
It's the American dream, being available to more people.

But understand this about immigration.

The best speech on immigration was by President Ronald Reagan.

This is the last speech I will make as President of the United States.

I want to communicate a message to the country I love.

And he talked about the Statue of Liberty and the beacon of hope it is to the world and what America was preeminent in the world because our door was always open. And we will cease to be preeminent when we shut the door.
Now, that's, I don't do justice to the great communicator. Google it.
It's a fabulous speech. And George Herbert Walker Bush continued in that respect for the diversity of America and the rest.
California is always in the lead. Maybe others will follow that lead, but that's up to those states.
But we are very blessed here with beautiful diversity. So you'd vote for this law? Excuse me? So you'd vote for this law? Well, I don't...
I'm not

familiar with exactly what it is,

but making the

American dream of home ownership

available to all people

is something we have to do for people who are here now.

Before you were here. This is before you were here.

This is undocumented.

This is for the undocumented.

Well, what I would like to do is move

them to documented. The fact that I is move them to documented.
They've got to move them to documented. One of the best things that we can do for our economy is to pass comprehensive immigration reform so that all these people are participating more fully in our economy, contributing to it, contributing to it, contributing to Social Security, contributing in every way to it.
So the attitude that we have in California of openness is something we share. Whether that translates into particular policy, one place or another, is up to that region.
Okay. So there's some interesting stuff in the book about January 6th.
Yeah. Trump is going to have an award ceremony for the rioters coming up.
And there's some footage of you that just came out where you're talking about, you say, I'm quoting you, I take responsibility. Now, I think you're talking about the fact that there should have been more protection there.
No, what I'm talking about is that we didn't demand that the president. Well, first of all, who could have ever thought that the president of the United States would incite an insurrection against the Congress, the Constitution and the Capitol? Me.
I was saying it to you. I was saying it to you.

I'm not ever taking responsibility for Donald Trump.

Right.

But the only responsibility I will take for Donald Trump

is to make sure he is not re-elected.

I'll make you there.

What I was saying is that we had to get the National Guard there, but he resisted, he wouldn't do it. And what did he do? But I hate to use this word, but lie about it.
Lie about it. Oh, you can use that word.
Yeah, that is. I hate to use the word lie, and I hate to use the word hate, so that was a sentence that I didn't get to.

There's a lot of moving stuff in your book about an issue

that we've all read about,

and it has to do with

literally having physical fear

for what you do.

And you're amazingly

strong about it. I mean, you've obviously had that horrible

break-in in your house, and your husband

attacked. They tried to get you on January 6th.
There was a lot of, where's Nancy? And people are now going to jail for it. It was on that level.
And I just would like to say to the people who I, and I hear it all the time, who talk about, oh, we're moving towards civil war. Well, in a way, we're kind of already there.
You know, when people are literally fearing physically for themselves, do you still fear physically? Well, I... Let me just say, I signed up for this.
For that part of it? Well, I signed up for the public arena. As...
Note that I'm quoting a Republican president, Teddy Roosevelt said,

when you're in the arena, you're no longer a spectator.

And I've said to colleagues and people interested in running,

when you are in the arena, you've got to be ready to take a punch.

You've got to be ready to throw a punch for the children.

For the children.

I would. So I'm not...
I wasn't fearful that day for me because as Speaker, your second line to the White House, you have security. I was concerned about my colleagues.
I was concerned about the press who were there. I was concerned about the custodians who keep the Capitol what it is beautiful for visitors.
I was concerned about the staff. I resented what they did to traumatize the staff.
I'll never forgive them for that. And same thing with my own situation personally.
They came to my home and to our home, made it a crime scene, attacked my husband, nearly killed him, and they were looking for me. So I certainly have guilt about that.
But you know what? We have to take our country back to where a place is you can disagree without being fearful for your life. And that of your family.
And that of your family. Many times when I'm encouraging people to run, especially more women, to run for office, nothing more wholesome than our political process and that.
Aren't we excited about... Yes, and sometimes you're discouraging people to run.
We're not going to get into that. No, people make their own decisions.
Absolutely they do. Absolutely they do.
And... But I just want to say from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much for what you didn't do.
Last question. But when Joe stepped down, did you want it to be an open convention as opposed to going right to Kamala? Well, here's the plan.
Kamala, it was open. Anybody could have gotten in.
She wrapped it up. You have to give her credit for that.
I do. Totally.
And the Democratic Party.

You know what? That's the smartest thing they did.

Because they just had a big internal fight.

They couldn't afford another one.

They would have looked like we always think, oh, they're disorganized,

and they just got their you-know-what together.

Thank you so much. I've got to go.
I can talk to you all night.

Fantastic. You're our iron lady.
Leslie Pelosiwhat together. Thank you so much.
I've got to go. I can talk to you all night.
Fantastic. You're our iron lady.

Nancy Pelosi,

everybody. Thank you.

Meet our panel. I appreciate

it. Thank you so much.

Hey!

Gentlemen.

All right.

He is a professor of linguistics at Columbia University, El Columbia. The kids are back to their encampments.
It's a joyous place. And an opinion writer at the New York Times, John McWhorter, is over here.
And he hosts Snapchat's Good Luck America and is a founding partner at Puck News. Peter Hamby, back with us, Peter.
Okay, so we obviously have a very astute crowd here because most of them applauded when I said, did you see the interview last night? I guess because, first of all, you know, supply and demand. There was no supply for a long time.
The demand built up. We wanted to see.
I want to know basically just what you thought of it. I thought she did great.
I thought that she did fine. We're going to get to some of the quibbles.
But basically, they got my vote. Okay, that wasn't a hard one.
And, you know, I mean, I don't know why we ever thought she was as bad as people thought she was. It was like Biden had that one bad night.
She had a bad three years. She did.
But she's fine. I mean, she's fine.
I agree with you, by the way. I interviewed her for my Snapchat show in March when she was vice president.
Last time I interviewed her, it was 2019. I came away impressed that she was much better on camera than I remembered.
In 2019, when she ran for the nomination, she seemed spooked, listless. She didn't have a campaign message.
Being vice president gives you batting practice. She'd done interviews.
She'd been in meetings with world leaders. But I agree with Donald Trump.
The interview was boring, and that's fine. That's all you...
Like, do no harm was what the campaign wanted to do. I know people are criticizing her for flip-flopping on positions.
I think the campaign just wants this election to be about vibes and not be Donald Trump. And that's what they're hoping, and I think that's fine.
Thank you. You have to listen to her in the right way.

She actually has learned a really effective way of speaking smoothly.

She does these triplets, and she'll say,

the ambitions, the hopes, and the aspirations of the American people.

Those three things are really all the same.

The reason she did it is not because she's stuttering.

It's because that is her way of not saying um.

She's avoiding saying um or hesitating.

Thank you. three things are really all the same.
The reason she did it is not because she's stuttering. It's because that is her way of not saying um.
She's avoiding saying um or hesitating. She wanted to say aspirations and then she'll give the synonyms as she waits.
That's a form of being articulate or if you watched her last night, then you could see that what she was really doing was she wanted to do two things. She wanted to talk about economic policy.
She had a list in her head, and she wanted to keep saying, you got the feeling she had been told and she agreed, that we can't look backwards. Anything else that Bash said to her, her thought was, how can I bring it back to that? And that meant that you couldn't listen to her like she was trying to write an article or something like that.
What you say isn't always what you mean. She speaks ritualistically like a politician.
If somebody asks you, do you have the time? Your answer is not, I do. Do you have the time? Yes, it's four o'clock.
You have to understand that words don't always mean what they mean. And when Tim Walz said like the American people, I talk like they do.
No, you don't. No, you don't.
You're a huge liar,

like all politicians are. I don't care,

by the way. I've always said this about politics.

They're all going to lie. It's what they lie about.

I don't give a shit what you

did during the Iraq War. You were in the Guard.

So I don't understand

why they just can't...

You're just insulting my intelligence.

When she said,

what did you say when Biden called you

and said he wasn't running?

Well, I immediately thought of him first.

No.

No, you didn't.

You know, I mean, fracking.

I mean, Dana Bash had her dead to rights.

It's like, you said this.

I have the quote.

I'm reading it to you. You said there should be a ban on fracking.
Why can't they just go, yeah, you know what? I got it wrong. I was talking to the wrong people.
You know, she's had this ridiculously high turnover. Like 42 of 47 people as vice president are gone.
Just blame it on them. You know why these assholes are gone? You gave me the wrong information on fracking.

I do...

I do think you have a point that...

There's a...

There's a way for her to talk... You're the linguist.

There's a way for her to talk a little bit

more like a normal person when explaining

these shifts in policy.

You know what? I got into the White House.

I worked with Joe Biden. Different

context. I figured out what could be

done and what couldn't be done. Right.
You know what?

People... Politicians change their positions all the damn time.
How should we be surprised that she's a politician? Don't play defense on it, by the way. She's playing to win, which is why they're just saying, you know what? I don't care about fracking anymore.
I don't support it. The only reason it seems odd is because we've been taught to think of her first as a god.
You know, there's the joy, and she's going to be on Mount Rushmore. And then we think about her as Mamala, and she has nieces, and all of that.
So you have this, and you have that. When really, she's here.
She's a politician like anybody. I can't wait to watch it.
Exactly. And I'm not mad at you for that.
No. Just know.
I do think you made a good point in your opening monologue about how we're so used to seeing them in these contexts of the big rallies for the last six weeks. And we see Tim Walls on TikTok and we see Kamala just surrounded by energy.
And it was very interesting to see them in a different context where Tim Walls is sort of sitting there quietly nodding. She was quiet.
And they do need to do a little bit more of that so we don't have these expectations. Can I ask about that? Hollywood, yeah.
Can I ask you about that? Because I feel like I was saying to Madam Speaker that I think the Democrats have been so smart from that moment when they got Joe to step down. Everything has been good.
This idea of... Thank you, one guy.
This idea... Why put her out there? It looked like when your dad goes with the young woman to help buy a car.
You know, when dad comes along. I mean, why? She hadn't done an interview in so long.
Or maybe that's the strategy. They look like a married couple.
They look like every interracial couple in every commercial. Maybe that's the...
No, but they messed it up because I'm not... They didn't do the optics right because she looked like she was only two feet tall and he was up front looking like Frosty the Snowman.
So it kind of failed. But I see what they were going for.
Right. They also kind of...
I mean, I worked at CNN for 10 years, and I know Dana really well. Sometimes they shotgun these interviews when they set them up.
They agree. You could tell.
They filmed it. It looked like in some, like, warehouse, and it was just sort of like a slapdash set.
So it's not always the most ideal setup. Not everything's going to look like a 60-minutes, like, two-day shoot.
It is. Right.
But I thought the best thing she did was, would not take the bait on the race question. Totally.
That was, that just was so great. And that wonderful, ironic statement.
It was just like, Donald Trump, you know, and of course, I mean, even for him, she has unhinged him more than, I mean, he's saying crazy by by his standards, crazy. Like, talking about how hot he is versus how hot he used to be.
And then, you know, she's not a smart person, maybe not even a black person. And when that got brought up and she was asked for comment, she said, same old playbook.
And Dana said, like, that's it? That's it. That's my answer.
That's all you're getting. That expression, that ironic just expression on her face was perfect.
It's more of this weird. She looked like he was weird.
That's needed. There's two.
I had two takeaways. I had two takeaways from that comment.
One, she doesn't... We all see her on camera.
She's a black lady. I see her right there.
She doesn't need to talk about her race. Black? Yeah.
Half black, half South Asian, from the Bay Area. We all know.
We see it. Like, you don't need to focus on it if you're running for president.
Hillary Clinton talks about identity all the time. It didn't work out for her.
And then that's related to the second takeaway I had from that comment, which is make this election not about identity, gender, race. Like, Trump can win on those terms.
You have to bend it back to I care about X, Y, Z values around abortion, around economics, around prices. And getting back to the prices and the cost of living,

I know she has to own a little bit of the Biden administration,

perhaps all of it, but talking about issues

rather than identity or academic issues

is what's going to get you into the White House.

Yeah, there's a little...

It is a little odd. I heard some of these kind of lines at the convention, and I heard it from her.
The first thing out of her mouth last night was, we have to find a new way forward. It's an odd thing to say when you're in the present administration, is it not? It sure sounds good, though.
I mean, that's what politics is. We've got to move ahead, and ahead is better than backwards.
Although, it doesn't make sense that she's talking about the administration that she's in. Language doesn't mean what it means, and there can be a kind of a beauty in it.
Yeah. There's a bunch of attribute questions out there in polls.
Who will be a stronger leader? Who's better on the economy? Who's best at managing a crisis? Biden was getting smoked in all of those categories. Kamala Harris is now at parity with Donald Trump on all of those things.
Strong leader. Coming out of the convention where she was talking about patriotism, country first, a lethal American fighting force, all of these things.
I think Americans are just willing to look past the fact that she is Biden's vice president and she's just not Joe Biden and she's not Donald Trump, and that's working for her. She's even seen as, like, the candidate of change right now against Donald Trump.
She's sitting in the White House, the administration, and seen as the candidate of change. People are willing to look past that stuff right now.
It's a kind of music, and you have to listen to it in that way. She's new.
We love new in this country. I tried to tell Chris Christie this in 2012.
I said, do it while you're new. And then what happened? Bridgegate.
And he wasn't new. He was all tarnished.
Obama, they said, you're running. It's too early.
He said, fuck you. That's what's good about it.
They don't know I mean politics has not caught up to how all of the rest of society moves at the rate it moves so quickly I mean Trump got shot on July 13th I think okay then for the next week it was just like this race is over I mean we have a picture of him with blood on his face. Please.
I mean, just why are we even talking about this? Now, that picture, I haven't seen it in a long time, it's almost like corny now. Is that going to, like, make a reappearance at the end of the...
Are people going to be reminded of the fight, blood, Donald? Is that... Or is that just ancient history? No, because the music he should have made was becoming an at least slightly different person rather than, you know, that orange one that he is.
Right. After it happened.
But he doesn't have any sense of narrative in him. He has no sense of drama.
Have you ever seen him respond to any kind of music, for example? And so he just became the exact same kind of person he was, and so he lost the opportunity. And then all of a sudden, Biden turns out to be half dead during a debate, and everything changes.
It's been an exciting summer, but Trump could have made it different. I agree we have the attention, I agree we have the attention spans, like, of a goldfish these days, and people want to move on.
You know, we do, I think the popular media narrative right now, the conversation in our elite blue urban core is that Kamala's winning. She is winning the national vote in the average by three and a half points.
She's gone up a little bit since the convention. But this race is still tied in the battleground states.
Trump is winning in a lot of battleground states in the averages. And, you know, the assassination image and even the ear bandage thing.
People, like, Trump supporters have this messianic view of the guy. He is a demigod.
We might not be talking about or remembering the assassination photo, but that did supercharge, I think, his supporters in a lot of ways that they might remember. It must, because he's now having an awards ceremony.
I don't know if you know this. I mentioned it up front.
There's, yes, the J6 Awards. He's having it at his Bedminster Golf Club.
And this is to raise funds for the brave rioters on January 6th.

And here in Hollywood, we love any kind of an award show. We just love it.
So we are very interested in the J6 Awards, and we found out what some of the categories they're going at. Would you like to hear what the categories? Best supporting category.

Best supporting crisis actor,

for example.

Achievement in white grievance.

The Timothy McVeigh Patriot Traitor Award.

There's the Amber Heard Award for shitting where you're not supposed to.

Outstanding performance by a wife who just tagged along to keep her husband out of trouble.

Um, that's the new arsonist.

The hardworking American Award for people with no problem being free on a weekday.

Quickest exit by someone in a T-shirt that says, these colors don't run.

The Better Luck Next Time Awards are the confused Trump supporters

who went to the Capitol Records building.

Best pro-police flag used to attack police.

Outstanding achievement in misspelling And of course Best original lie Alright, so Okay So can we talk a little free speech? Because there's a lot of free speech to talk about. There's a lot of issues that are going on.
It was only last week that I learned the name of Pavel Derov. Did you know who this guy was? He's Russian.
There he is. Yeah, it's like the Russian Twitter.
I guess he's got Telegram, which has almost a billion people around the world. Fled Russia because of the heavy hand of a government.
And then, irony, got arrested in France, where he lives. And this is, you know, people said, this is just, again, just a week ago, this is how fast this is moving.
Is this going to happen in this country? Are they going to start arresting the people who have these platforms that people are on? Certainly when Elon Musk took over Twitter, he is on the same page philosophically with Mr. Durov of he is on the far right of free speech, the far right being very libertarian, like this is a bathroom wall and it's not my job to clean it.
So now, today, Brazil is blocking Twitter. I mean, he calls it X.
I'll always call it Twitter. But it's cut now.
There's two issues. One is, like, if you're having child pornography or terrorists or stuff like that.
But I think what Musk is upset about is that he's just blocking,

the judge is blocking Twitter because he wants to put the kind of people

that were on Twitter here.

Trump was off Twitter for a long time

before Elon put him back on Twitter.

It was a little like keeping Pete Rose

out of the Hall of Fame.

You know?

Do you want Pete in the Hall of Fame or not? I do. But that's, sports is a different thing.
Why, you don't want Pete? I'm a Reds fan. What? I'm a Reds fan.
So you want Pete in. Yeah.
Okay, I'm just saying. It comes down to, can you say, as if you're a Republican or a Bolsonaro supporter, can you say on the site, the election was stolen? That's my opinion.
And I think you can and should be able to. That's still opinion.
That's still free speech. You're down with that? You should, I think, be able to say it and with wit and even articulateness in a way that will convince people that we're sitting on the fence, that should be allowed.
What's at issue is whether, say, the shit on the bathroom wall is radioactive and might kill you. If we're talking about illegal sorts of things, or then the gray zone would be things that are actually so dangerous to the general polity that you might decide to make an exception.
I think there are things that you might make an exception for in any intelligent society, but it would have to be very, very few things, rare cases. Yes, I do think that Donald Trump was one of those things.
But in general, you can't stop what people are thinking. And if you censor, they're going to say those things elsewhere, and they'll still be thinking them and spreading the word around.
And to be clear, and look, Europe, France, in this case, they have, you know, they are cracking down on big tech. They want tech companies to, you know, pay to use journalism, for example.
Just a much more intense regulatory environment in Europe than here in the United States. But Pavel Durov, Telegram founder, the things he was arrested for and indicted for this week, it was for the fact that they were refusing to comply with French investigations into child sexual abuse, drug trafficking, terrorism.
I mean, the ISIS sympathizers, ISIS members who organized the Paris theater attacks in 2015 organized on Telegram.

I think tech companies, I work at Snapchat, we're one of the biggest tech companies, bigger than Twitter, slash X.

You can be proactive about content moderation, harmful content, getting rid of things that are hateful, racist, bullying, you know, without compromising free speech.

I think there is a gray area.

Unfortunately, that's up to the top. getting rid of things that are hateful, racist, bullying, you know, without compromising free speech.

I think there is a gray area.

Unfortunately, that's up to human decisions, that gray area.

Like, there's no black and white here.

That's what makes it an impossible issue in many ways.

But, yes, censorship of things that a certain crowd of people who think of themselves as the enlightened ones don't like,

that should not be censored.

You have to have a marketplace of ideas. Okay, well, let's go to England then.
Now, this is also a big issue. Now, what happened in England was there was a lot of rioting because false information, it was false information, went out.
I mean, the background they, a lot of people in England think there is too much

migration there from people who are changing

the character of England.

Okay, so somebody said

there was a stabbing,

that it was an asylum seeker.

It was not, but that it got out there.

Here's what people are now being arrested for.

Arrested and put in jail.

One person said,

every man and his dog should be

smashing fuck out of Britannia Hotel.

That's a hotel that's like

Thank you. for.
Arrested and put in jail. One person said every man and his dog should be smashing funk out of Britannia Hotel.
That's a hotel just like in America where they put up migrants. To me, that's an opinion.
A disgusting one, but an opinion. Another one said they can set fire to all the hotels for all I care.
Now, the phrase for all I care, I feel like is determinative. That, to me, says it's an opinion.
Now, it's different than we're plotting to actually blow up this hotel. That, to me, gets closer to fire in a crowded theater.
But if I say, you know, superhero movies are stupid, and I hope everyone who goes to one dies, that's an opinion, and a good one. No, not a good one.
Right? Human speech is about being vivid. You're always pushing the envelope.
When you talk about somebody who can't sing as being the baritone from hell, you don't really mean it. In those cases, it's ugly, it's hideous, but the chances that they actually are plotting in using those established expressions of English is so small that you have to just hold your nose and allow it, and frankly, you know, they'll get a hobby and go home in most of the cases.
That's what the nastiness of all of this is. We also, like, we are absolutists in this country about the First Amendment, and, you know, in a lot of ways rightfully so, but exporting that free speech perspective to other countries, it just doesn't...
Sometimes it's fitting a square peg into a round hole. The UK doesn't have a First Amendment.
I was in London this summer. There's surveillance cameras everywhere.
That would never happen here. There would be pitchfork mobs if people tried to put surveillance cameras

on every street in every corner of the country.

Are you kidding? You think you're not being watched

every second? You never saw the Bourne

identity?

You're being filmed right now.

Okay.

Let me go to the other one.

This is Mark Zuckerberg.

Now Mark's...

What?

No, he's a real boy.

Yes, he's carved out of wood.

But he's a real boy. Anyway, he's a real boy who wrote to Jim Jordan and kind of did a mea culpa on what happened a few years ago.
He wrote and he said that his team was repeatedly pressured by the Biden administration to bend over. He didn't say that, he said, but that's really what it was, repeatedly pressured our team for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including satire and humor.
Now, this is what you were talking about a minute ago, John. You said, well, if it's some sort of an emergency, or I forget your exact words, but that's where it's in the eye of the beholder.
To be honest, frankly, when it comes to that particular subject, there was room for other opinions. Now, it's hard to think about how difficult that was in 2020 and 2021.
But from this vantage point, I think we can see that there were different ways of looking at how things were done, how long children were kept out of school, how long they had to mask in school, for example. And so, yeah, the marketplace of ideas.
If it were a different kind of pandemic, where, frankly, things were happening that we don't even want to think about, where there really clearly was very much less room to maneuver, okay, that would fall on the other side of that line. But that's not what COVID was like, even at its height, I would have to say.
I agree. The moment when public figures, politicians, companies panic and make mistakes and are reactive are when there's a large public outcry, there is conventional wisdom, and a person or a company doesn't have a coherent set of values or North Star.
every single story that's involved a hot button issue and Facebook slash meta since 2016, Zuckerberg and the company have been reacting to something because they have just been scaling for scale's sake as a company ever since they launched, like content moderation, hate speech, the Hunter Biden laptop story, just reacting to news cycles. And this letter to Jim Jordan to me, too, is just Zuckerberg to me with his finger in the air saying Trump might win.
So we want to be on the right side of Republican politics heading into the next election. And so I can see during COVID when we didn't have all the facts about how this infection was spreading.
But, you know, the popular narrative was you must work with the administration. I can see how they would just react rather than being proactive.
I've got time for one more topic very quickly. MIT just came out with some interesting information.
It's the first year we've had the results of the Supreme Court saying affirmative action. We don't use that anymore in schools.
We just go blindly by merit. Okay.
Hispanic Latino enrollment dropped from 16 to 11. Black dropped from 15 to 5%.
Whites basically are steady. Asian Americans jumped from 40 to 47%.
So basically the whites were steady and at the expense of the blacks and the Latinos, Asians did better. But, you know, I certainly understand the Asian point of view here also.
They're 6.4 percent of the population and they're 47 percent of MIT. And they're like, yeah, you know, my tiger mom made me study.
I'm the bad guy? Same here in California. Like, we banned, with Prop 209, banned affirmative action back in the 90s.
You know, the percentage of Asian students relative to the actual population, way over indexes in the UC schools. But this is interesting.
John and I were talking about this before the show. Most Americans opposed affirmative action and race-conscious admissions even before the ruling.
I think there are ways that universities can work around these issues and create a more representative student body focused on class and income and background without just checking a box for race. So two examples today.
Wait, wait, before I run out of time, let me have John's on there. Well, it's pretty simple.
It's just a matter of the passage of time. When our orthodoxy on affirmative action was settled, starting in the late 70s and into the 80s.
In an oversimplified way, you could say that there are white people and black people and some other ones kind of scattered around. For example, I was in college in the 80s.
I think I knew three Asians, and that includes South Asians. And I think that was ordinary.
Things started changing, especially in the late 80s and the 90s. And now we have many Asian American students.
And to say to an individual Asian American family, your son, your daughter didn't get into school X with incredible qualifications because we needed to make room for black people because of conditions that recede ever more in time. Nobody has ever found a slam dunk argument there because, frankly, there just isn't one.
So you have to change it, and what you do is you adjust. Instead of doing it about what color your skin is, you do it about opportunity and disadvantage, and it becomes about class, and if that means that there are a few more underclass white kids than black kids, well, still, nobody would have any problem with that.
We would solve the problem if we made affirmative action. You keep it.
It's fine. But you make it about disadvantage rather than your suntan.
All right. Here, here.
All right. Got to go.
Thank you. Thanks for coming in last minute.
And time for new rules, everybody. New rules.
Okay. Okay.
Okay. New rule.
So cars have to leave me the fuck alone and... Stop pre-installing a lot of shit I didn't ask for.
Heated steering wheels, pedestrian detectors, rear seat reminder systems, lane assist. New cars should come with only one thing pre-installed.
A french fry stuck in the seat crack at night. Makes your car smell like a fat kid's bed.
You're going to get one sooner or later. Just have the factory do it.
Neural, stop acting like it's weird

that Bobby Kennedy chainsawed the head off a dead whale

and brought it home

and scraped up a dead bear and brought it home

and said he ate a dead dog and got a worm in his brain.

Hey, I don't like it when I'm in a restaurant

and someone tells me how to order. Give him a break.
He's just naturally attracted to putrid flesh and bloated, rotting corpses. Gentle good humor.
That's what we do. New Rule, don't get mad at the four-year-old who broke a jar at a museum this week from

2000. Gentle good humor.
That's what we do. New Rule, don't get mad at the four-year-old who broke a jar at a museum this week from 2000 B.C.
Make it a learning opportunity. And here's the lesson.
Don't drag a four-year-old to a museum and make him look at decorative pots. Let him break decorative pots

where all the other kids do it

at Marshall's

Nooril, someone has to explain to me

the point of tagging

where you slap your name on something

immediately decreasing its value

That's not being an urban artist

you're just a dick with a spray can

Thank you. to me the point of tagging where you slap your name on something immediately decreasing its value.

That's not being an urban artist.

You're just a dick with a spray can.

You mark something and then someone else comes along and marks

where you marked.

Yeah, I know someone else who does that.

My dog.

New rule, before Hellman's releases their new mayonnaise-scented

men's fragrance.

Yes.

It's real. Called Will Levis

number eight. They have to tell us exactly

what occasion is this for.

The nights you don't want to get laid?

Will Levis number eight.

Just a dollop between your buns and she'll be saying,

Oh, get off of me.

You smell like mayonnaise.

And finally, new rules. Someone has to tell me why.

We love taking the piss out of lawyers with lawyer jokes, but not doctors.

Two lawyers are standing on the curb.

They see a gorgeous woman crossing the street.

One says, boy, I'd like to fuck her. And the other one says boy i'd like to fuck her and the other one says yeah out of what but never doctors and yet doctors killed matthew perry just like they killed Michael Jackson, Prince,

Tom Petty, Elvis Presley,

doctors have killed more rock stars than twin-engine planes.

It's okay, you can.

I give you permission.

The medical-industrial complex says there are just a few,

these are just a few bad apples, but are they?

From 2006 to 2019,

over 145 billion oxyanhydrocodone pills were prescribed,

resulting in over 210,000 overdose deaths,

and they weren't prescribed by the opiate fairy.

Seriously, could you be any more irresponsible?

Fentanyl is a drug 50 times stronger than heroin that no one heard of 10 years ago, and now it's killing thousands of people who probably started on Oxy first. I've been railing against the Western medicine approach to healing for a very long time, and a lot of people hate me for it.
They hate me for being honest about obesity, for questioning how we handled COVID, for lots of stuff. Because it turns out medicine is a lot like religion.

It has to do with your mortality, so it's super scary,

and people just want to believe in some kind of priesthood who tells you they know what you couldn't possibly know,

and only they can keep you safe.

But if doctors really were so infallible,

then why are there so many TV shows about an eccentric genius doctor

constantly proving that all the other doctors are idiots? Did you know that only two countries in the whole world allow prescription pharmaceuticals to be advertised on TV.

One of those countries is us

where over a billion dollars a month Two countries in the whole world allow prescription pharmaceuticals to be advertised on TV.

One of those countries is us, where over a billion dollars a month is spent on ads that have three recurring messages. One, no one in America can piss or shit except when they least expect it.
Two, active old people love tennis and fucking.

And three, there's no problem you can't fix with a pill.

Even if your problem is you take too many pills, we have a solution to that, another pill.

We're so numb to drug ads, we don't even question the logic of, ask your doctor if it's right for you. How incompetent is my doctor if I have to let him know that the best remedy for what ails me is a drug he didn't even think of.

What else doesn't he know?

I'm starting to wonder if there's really no better way to check for cancer than through my ass. Matthew Perry asked his doctor, is ketamine right for me? And his licensed and trained legitimate doctor texted another doctor and wrote, I wonder how much this moron will pay.
Let's find out. Apparently the Hippocratic Oath now means first do no harm to your bank account.

Sometimes it takes a village to kill an addict. Matthew and I weren't super close, but he was enough of a friend and enough of a good guy to make me very angry when I read about all the enablers.
I mean, done in by your assistant? To a celebrity, that's the cruelest blow of all. Matthew's last rehab was at a pricey clinic in Switzerland where instead of weaning him off the drugs he was on

which is how we naively assume rehab works, they simply gave him a different drug which accomplished the goal. If the goal was getting Matthew Perry addicted to a new drug.
It's like if he had stopped by the firehouse and they set him on fire. I'm not a doctor.

Again, just a comedian who couldn't possibly know what they know.

But here's a thought.

If the world's single most famous living drug addict,

the one who had just written a book with the phrase

the big terrible thing in the title,

the guy who more than anyone on earth came pre-advertised

to be weak to the allure of drugs,

if that guy comes to you for help, maybe you don't give him more drugs. Ketamine clinics are now a growth industry.
There's over 500 just in America. It's what always happens with Western medicine.
The insistence on pretending that they're respectable drugs aren't the same as street drugs. But they are.
One is paid by insurance and gets you into rehab. One isn't and you go to jail.
But Oxy is heroin, Adderall is meth, and Ritalin is cocaine for kids. Ketamine was an illegal club drug in the 70s, but then it got approved as an anesthetic by the FDA.
These same folks who brought you the opioid crisis. What could go wrong? There was a hit song in the 80s called, I Want a New Drug.
Who doesn't? Life can be tough. People have been arguing forever about what the real gateway drug is.
It's whatever is the first one you do. Beer, pot, or with kids today, the pharmaceutical shit their own parents and teachers put them on.
Parents, teachers, and doctors. Drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, food that tastes great but slowly kills you.
Everybody needs to know going in

that when it comes to resisting anything

that makes a profit in America,

you're on your own.

And now there are companies like Mindbloom,

which prescribe ketamine after a virtual appointment

with one of their doctors,

and they had advertised right on Reddit and TikTok.

It's an at-home ketamine therapy,

which, yes, that's a psychedelic medicine.

You have your journal, you have a sleep mask,

your blood pressure monitor,

and there is your prescribed medication.

Sleep mask, horse tranquilizer, same diff.

It's all in the kit.

This is the exciting new frontier in American medicine.

Doctors prescribing dangerous substances to patients they've never met over Zoom.

It all makes me kind of nostalgic for the days when your drug dealer was someone you actually knew.

Someone in your college dorm like, well, me.

That is pot in my hand.

Yes, I know something about addiction

because I smoked cigarettes for 20 years.

That's an addiction.

When the drug tells you when to do it, yeah.

I'm not addicted to pot because pot never does that,

and I've never been an everyday smoker.

And to those wise asses always

asking me if I get high before the show,

the answer is no.

Well, not right before.

Thank you very much.

That's our show. We have a team

at the Theatre in Cincinnati, September 29.

The Majestic at San Antonio,

October 12th in the Tulsa.

Theatre in Tulsa, of course, October 13th.

Thank you, John McWhorter, Peter Hanby, and Nancy Pelosi.

Now go watch Overtime on YouTube.

Thank you, folks.

Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher every Friday night at 10.

Or watch him anytime on HBO On Demand.

For more information, log on to HBO.com.