Ep. #703: Thomas Chatterton Williams, Molly Jong-Fast, Walter Kirn

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

Start the clock.

Thank you very much, people.

Great to be here.

I appreciate it.

How are you doing?

Okay.

Well,

I know.

Exciting political times.

Thank you very much.

Well, this is one of those Fridays very exciting because it's literally breaking news.

I know you see that everywhere.

Breaking news, it's never breaking news.

Actually, it could be tonight because Trump and Putin are up in Alaska.

They're having a bros before a hoes weekend.

Doing a whole mountain head thing up there.

And

it's happening right now.

They're about to do the press coverage.

So while we're on, maybe we'll get some information.

But

of course, what it's all about is trying to end this horrible war in Ukraine.

It's been going on for too long.

And Trump and Putin, they finally said, look, let's just meet thug to thug.

Handle this and burst.

So they've already met.

He got off the plane.

They drove in the car.

Just them and the translators.

Very romantic.

Well, we'll see.

And then they had a working breakfast.

And then

what they call a bilateral lunch.

That's where the chef comes out and carves up Ukraine.

But no, they've already lowered expectations.

Hopefully, we'll hope something good, but you know, because they both know they're going to piss each other off.

I mean, Putin is going to try Trump's patience with going through all this stuff about how Ukraine is really historically part of Russia.

And of course, Putin is going to have to sit there while Trump goes on and on about his fucking ballroom.

Oh,

thank God for the ballroom, huh?

Yeah, because

Trump could not have been happier to get out of Washington, D.C., which he has discovered is crime-ridden.

Well, he did.

He discovered that.

Discovered it this week because,

well, you know, I would say this about him.

Like many Republicans, let's just say they're anecdotal in their thinking, you know.

When anecdotally things happen, it really is.

So

somebody in the Trump administration got mugged, Big Balls.

Remember Big Balls?

He was part of Doge.

He's a teenager.

And he was mugged, carjacked, I think,

by two other teenagers.

Ironically, when they were kicking the shit out of him, he was curled up in a big ball.

Not funny.

It's not funny.

He got...

Well, you know,

it's a little embarrassing to the bro squad

out there who think of themselves as such tough guys because he got beat up by two 15-year-olds.

This is true, and one was a girl.

And

they were brutal.

They hijacked his car and then they made fun of his playlists.

Really,

really terrible stuff.

But Trump has had it with Washington, D.C.

He said this is a city full of crime, bloodshed, bedlam, and squalor, also the name of his law firm.

And

job one

goes into this.

He's going to clear the town of the homeless.

We're going to get them off the streets and into the programs we just cut.

And

so,

yeah.

So, look, if

homeless in D.C.,

hear me now.

Oh boy, if you're pushing a shopping cart and muttering to yourself, it better be because you can't believe the price of beef.

Oh yeah, beef.

Beef,

ground beef is the new eggs.

Yeah, inflation, it's happening, people.

It's happening again, and you didn't hear it from me

or anybody else, because we don't have real statistics anymore.

You know, you saw that.

Last week, Trump got numbers he didn't like from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and he fired the person who was head of it.

Now he's got a new guy.

I'm not sure this guy is really that objective.

He said to Trump today, I can give you September's numbers if you want them now.

And

oh,

and listen to this: Melania says she's going to sue Hunter Biden.

No, that's not the joke part.

That's real, right?

She says she's going to sue for a billion dollars.

That's kind of funny.

But because something Hunter said, you know, he said the way that Melania, this is what Hunter said, met Trump was through Jeffrey Epstein.

Ooh, you don't say that.

So, you know, if Hunter loses, it's going to be weird for him

writing a woman a check because she's not a prostitute.

But

I saved the best story for last.

Marijuana.

You've heard of it.

Okay.

Well, it's forever it's been a Schedule I drug, which all us potheads and any reasonable person has realized it's such a stupid thing.

It's in there with the worst sort of horrible drugs like heroin.

Okay, Trump is considering reclassifying it as a much less dangerous Schedule III drug.

And they say it wasn't smart to have dinner with them.

Okay, well,

we've got a great show.

We have Walter Kern and Molly Jung-Bass.

But first up, he is a staff writer at the Atlantic.

His newest book is called Summer of Our Discontent: The Age of Certainty and the Divisive Discourse.

Thomas Chatterton Williams, who I always call Sir Thomas.

Sir Thomas.

How are you?

All right.

Now, I do call you Sir Thomas Chatterson.

You're not actually a sir, but it sounds like it should be, doesn't it?

Sir Thomas Chatterson.

I mean, my dad loves that you call me that.

I hope everyone does.

You deserve it.

The book is terrific.

I think you have exactly the right subject here.

You're writing about the year 2020.

20, some dates are red-letter dates.

You know, they call them that in history.

They just stand out.

Obviously, 1776.

Kids don't even know what that is anymore, but I promise you it's important.

Thomas Friedman Oris writes about 1979.

That was a big year in the Middle East and affected everything going on today.

2020, I think you got the right year, but you tell us right away just why you think this is such a red-lettered date of a year.

Yeah, I mean, I think that there's been a lot of cultural amnesia about this really tumultuous summer.

You know, we had the pandemic, we had the racial reckoning, we had the specter of Trump hanging over everything, and we've kind of just wanted to move on.

And then there's also this argument that, you know, with Trump back in office, is it really necessary to relitigate the past and think about what went wrong before?

We should be thinking about the emergency right now.

But I think it's like if a plane crashes, you actually really need to find and examine the black box, you know?

And so some of our discontent is really trying to do that for this moment and try to understand what actually was so unattractive about when the progressive movement, the social justice movement that we call wokeness, dominated the culture to such an extent that what Trump was offering really seemed more attractive to an increasingly multi-ethnic coalition of American voters.

So you're saying that basically because there was an overreaction, both about COVID, I think a lot of people would say, and also about racial stuff, which obviously everybody was appalled by what happened, but then we went to a place where people were saying looting is cool.

Just stuff that was just too far.

You're saying that paved the way for the second Trump administration in a lot of ways?

I'm saying it really turned off a lot of Americans.

The way I think about wokeness and the aspirations that that movement had for how the country should operate, it's disproven most powerfully by

its successes, not by its failures.

So you look at what wokeness achieved when, you know, if you look at Lowell High School up in San Francisco, the idea that merit itself was racist, and the answer to that is to abolish a merit-based entrance exams.

And then you suddenly have a school that was one of the best in the nation with failing freshmen, the number of freshmen who are failing skyrocketing.

Or you look at what happened in Minneapolis after George Floyd died,

you have the idea that you should dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department and replace it with the Department of Public Safety.

And you immediately have by November of that year, homicides skyrocket by 50%.

So wokeness actually did, it attained a certain type of power and it was just proven in its actual dominance.

It often does wind up hurting the people they want to protect.

Absolutely.

I know, I think it was in Minneapolis where, yeah, they did fire a lot of the police, or at least enough of them, so that what happened was then the richer people hired them back as private security.

Yeah, and

it's just, there's a new book about COVID also, which talks about how, you know, the people who just absolutely hate privilege were the ones who instituted this lockdown and who was getting their food delivered to them

and by who?

By the people who were most at risk.

Exactly.

The poor people, probably more minorities, were out there delivering the goddamn grub driver or whatever you buy your food, whatever that shit is.

And the people, you know, the elitist class was sitting home in their pajamas getting food delivered to them, writing emails about how terrible privilege is.

Absolutely.

I mean, I think that's the kind of stuff you're getting at here.

So are we at a better place now?

Are we at a different place?

Well, part of what I was getting at is that the people that actually dismantled the police department didn't suffer its consequences.

The people who actually came out and voted to bring the police back were the people who live around violence in a more than theoretical way.

Are we at a better place now?

I'm not so sure.

I think that what we can do now is to understand what went wrong and to try to understand why Trump presented a vision of America that was more attractive than what had been presented prior to that and try to correct for that, not to double down on wokeness.

There's this kind of idea that real wokeness hasn't been tried yet and that if we just do it more, then the country will finally come around to that vision.

But I don't see that as happening.

You do write a lot about in the book about the you thought when Obama was president we had reached a kind of a post-racial phase in this country.

I think a lot of people did.

But we really hadn't.

Anytime he talked about race, it it all came back.

And you kind of have to blame that on the conservatives.

I mean, they were not really ready, a lot of them.

I'm not saying every conservative is a racist, but certainly in that era, if you were a racist, you were a conservative.

Probably mostly true.

But still today.

They were not ready to give something up.

And of course, you know, we all keep talking about backlashes from one to the other.

Certainly just Obama being president caused a backlash.

Yeah, I think that the the presence of this elegant, meritocratic black family in the White House, it did excite in the American racial imagination something that was unacceptable to some portion of the population.

But also, there was at the time such goodwill.

It really, it was a moment when much of the country was proud of a kind of milestone that seemed to have been passed.

The idea that we might actually be able to put behind us these past oppressions that had defined the country and the society up until then.

And perhaps we could actually start afresh.

And, you know, I was in Europe for the past 15 years, and I traveled back and forth prior to that.

And the way that the rest of the world regarded us was really something.

There was a sense that America was doing something that the rest of the world hadn't figured out how to do, have a multi-ethnic society that de-emphasized identity differences and actually came together to have a common nationality, regardless of superficial characteristics.

That was lost.

And I don't know if that was only the conservative racist.

That was also this disillusionment that his election didn't solve all of our problems led to a kind of fetishization of identity on the left that I think has been really, really backfiring and is part of what has excited this kind of backlash that we have now, this populist backlash.

Yes, I would agree with that 100%.

We were heading toward at least the goal of a

colorblind society.

That was the goal.

It doesn't matter.

You know, we see it, but it doesn't affect us.

That went out the window, and

we went a completely different direction.

We have to see race first and foremost as the most important thing.

It's funny because you say something about how you think race is a social fiction, which is very similar to what Kendi said, and he is the exact opposite of you.

He said he thought race was made up.

How do you square that between you and a guy who is very different from you on race?

Well, I think we both would acknowledge that racism certainly exists, but we have different ideas about what should be done to counteract that.

What Ibram X-Kendi did that I think was the conventional wisdom of this time when the social justice movement, I keep calling wokeness, peaked in power around 2020 was he said that every aspect of society, every idea, policy, is either racist or anti-racist.

There's no way in which it can just be neutral.

And so

he introduced, he ushered in a kind of emphasis on racializing all aspects of our public and collective life that I think actually

backfired extraordinarily and it made a lot of white people who maybe were thinking that it was disreputable to think of themselves as whites first and foremost.

I mean in a society when every other group is thinking primarily of itself as a racial bloc with political interests as such.

What was going to happen when white people were incentivized to see themselves that way?

And I think we see what is happening right now.

Yeah, I mean you're a professor at a college, right?

I mean it's odd to me that students who are 20 in that age range now seem in some instances, what I'm reading, a lot more bitter about race than people who actually faced more racism in years past.

Yeah, I think as society becomes more equal, even the smallest inequalities become more and more unbearable.

In societies, my father grew up in segregated Texas.

Microaggressions were not a thing back then.

Lynchings were a a thing.

My father was born in 1937.

Microaggressions were not in the vocabulary.

No.

No, they were not.

But as society becomes more and more equal, Tocqueville pointed this out in France.

Every small inequality becomes insupportable.

You can't bear it.

And so you see that people can even be

on Broadway.

And the

idea that there's racial inequality makes them protest for more inclusion on Broadway, or Oscar So White or Sidney Sweeney saying I have good genes I think you know she just her her saying I have good genes wasn't saying and black people have bad ones but that's kind of where we got to this place that you just say you have good it means

no not taking it away from you but maybe you know don't speak at all but I'm curious at what your students think of you because you are not as left as they are.

Probably not.

I'm probably not.

Do they hold that against you?

Do they don't care because you're cute?

I'm guessing that.

I'm going to tell them, Bill Marsa, that no.

I think that they understand that I have a vision of what it is to be a liberal.

They understand that I don't define myself as a conservative.

And then also, I have to be honest, in this day and age, a lot of them are

understanding what they think I want to hear via chat GPT.

So that's a different kind of problem.

They're not necessarily telling me what they think.

And I think

people are always falsifying their preferences on college

campuses.

So they see a professor like me and they orient what they say to me in class to try to anticipate what my views are as they do.

with each other.

You know, there's been research out of Northwestern recently about the kind of performance of progressive values that some 88% of undergrads don't actually hold themselves, but they perform in front of their peers and they have the idea that that's how they can succeed in school, in their social circles, and with their professors.

That's frightening and shitty.

I hope you can change that.

All by yourself.

Or ChatGPT.

All right.

Thank you.

Yeah, good luck with that.

The second word of Jack GPT doing all their homework.

Thomas Chatterson Williams, Sir Thomas Chatterson.

Good to see you.

Thank you.

Let's meet our panel.

Okay.

Hey.

Hello.

Okay, here's the best-selling author and editor-at-large of County Highway newspaper Walter Kern.

Walter, welcome back to our show.

She hosts the Fast Politics podcast and is the best-selling author of How to Lose Your Mother, a daughter's memorial.

Molly Chung Fast, welcome to our show.

Okay, here's the breaking news.

I'm just reading this cold, so you know

Japan has fallen into the sea.

Oh, no.

They took that, they had the press conference.

I guess that was quick because from the time I went on to do the monologue, it's over.

So I'm guessing this didn't go that well.

They took no questions, another bad sign.

Putin says they have reached an agreement to pave the path to peace in Ukraine, means nothing, without saying what the agreement actually is.

Says the roots of blah, blah, blah.

The removal of Zelewski government,

he's always wanted that.

Trump, we haven't quite got there, but we've got some headway.

There's no deal until there's a deal.

Wow, this sounds like

I went to Alaska in 2013.

I think I had a better trip.

I at least did a show.

Surprising, disappointed, what's your reaction?

I wish it had happened in winter because the only outfit I haven't seen Trump wear is a parka.

I mean, McDonald's uniform, garbage truck driver.

I also wish there had been more outdoor activities.

It being Alaska, they could have gone fishing.

But the world is divided between people who didn't want it to happen and people who don't want it to succeed.

You seem to want it to succeed, so do I.

Unless we're going to get rid of Putin, unless we're going to eliminate him, we could have dropped a bomb from that B-2.

We're going to have to talk to him at some point.

Who doesn't want it to succeed?

Everybody wants it.

There are people who didn't want to see Putin walk across that red carpet and didn't like it when Trump waved to him.

Oh, I see.

I mean, it crushed some norms having him walk across a red carpet while Trump clapped.

I mean, that generally.

Are we really going to go through this kind of bullshit?

Like it's when, like, you know,

Obama wore a tan suit and he's saluted with coffee in his hand.

Who gives a shit what he walks across the bank?

I mean, there's people dying over there.

The body language to me put the lie to the notion that we've had for 10 years that Trump is Putin's stooge.

Putin looked like his caddy.

I mean, he really did.

He's half his height.

He was sort of smiling uncomfortably.

I think we can lay to rest the idea that Trump is some Russian agent.

I actually wish that he'd been a little kinder to him.

I thought he was intimidating.

I mean that's my question.

Like he's clearly, because I've seen countries that he's made peace deals about and they don't look great, right?

Like, I mean, he's been a very difficult person to make a deal with.

And I think it's, I mean, nobody, everybody wants peace in Ukraine, right?

This is terrible war that's going on and on.

But, you know, you have to be able to take Putin at his word.

Which I think he, I mean, I don't, look, I don't think he was exactly a Russian agent, but you know, Russia gate was not, you know, completely made up.

Well, Bill, there we disagree.

I think we're pointing out day by day that it was almost completely made up.

Oh, please.

Yeah, yeah.

It's on tape.

He's asking the Russians for help on tape, which he gave them that day.

They released those emails that day that they hacked.

He said, could you please hack some shit?

They did it and released it that day to help him.

So don't tell me there's no smoke.

Let's not get, let's not re-litigate that ear because I...

Well, we are re-litigating it because it's before a grand jury right now and we'll find out who okay.

But let me ask a broader question because first I take your point.

I think it's kind of a zombie lie that Trump is Putin's

bitch because I mean he certainly was over-friendly to him for a very long time, considering who Putin is, a thug and a murderer.

In 2015, Obama met him him and nobody said anything in New York.

He met him.

He didn't praise him.

He didn't say he's the greatest guy in the world.

I could read 20 compliments that Trump has given to him.

He said he's a fun guy to be with.

No, that's Epstein.

I think

the timing of this...

The timing of this, like, we're no longer talking about the tariffs.

We're no longer talking about those bad inflation numbers.

We're no longer talking about the consumer confidence numbers today.

We're no longer talking about Epstein or about Ghillan being in a different lower security prison.

I mean, we're talking about this deal, which may or very likely may not happen.

Well, we are going to talk about those things.

Right.

But I'm just saying we are.

But mostly.

Well, tomorrow they will be.

I mean, this is today.

I mean, it's not.

Look, I'll say this for Trump.

He's got this idea.

that America is still the biggest swinging dick in the world.

And we have not used our power as much as we should.

That's That's what the tariffs are about.

We have the power to change of these people's other nations' trading practices with us, some of which were out of line.

I'm surprised that people went along with it as much as they did.

So he wasn't completely wrong about that.

He said, look, NATO hasn't been paying their fair share.

I'm going to make them do that.

He wasn't wrong about that.

And I'll tell you this, one thing about him.

that I know, I'm not going to tell you how I know,

but a lot of people have seen the same thing.

He really does hate war.

He really does not like it when people die in war.

There's four different wars.

It's messy.

He doesn't like messy things.

I don't think Trump likes waste.

I don't think he likes chaos.

What?

Trump doesn't like chaos?

Isn't he a hand washer?

Isn't he one of those neat freaks?

I mean, he goes around the White House straightening out the paintings.

Molly, would you slap him?

I can't reach you.

Okay, but

pardon me, but you know,

it's funny.

I see that today is the anniversary of Woodstock.

This is a 56 years ago.

And the hippies, what did they hate more than anything else?

War.

What is it good for?

Absolutely nothing.

So if you're the kind of person who says, you know, you can find some good in anybody, this would be the good in Donald Trump.

He really does not like war.

Thailand and Cambodia were having a,

firing at each other.

Rwanda and the Congo.

Most people don't even know about these.

India and the Pakistan, Armenia and Azerbaijan.

He got involved in all of them.

He really,

he doesn't really, he wants it.

Now, the way he does it, as usual,

not,

you know, with Ukraine, the solution was, well, surrender.

Give Putin everything he wants.

And even that didn't work.

That's the thing.

He gave Putin anything he wanted, and it didn't work.

But again, let's not have the zombie lie that he's still backing Putin because, first of all, he bombed Iran.

That was a Putin ally.

He didn't get out of NATO.

No.

He mended fences with NATO.

And he put sanctions back on Russia.

So, you know.

You're really coming around, Bill.

I'm not coming around.

There's no coming around.

There's just what's true.

This is true shit.

Right.

I don't come around.

I'm not anybody's team.

I'm on what's right, right, what's true, what happened.

This is what happened.

He just doesn't like war.

Can I just add one thing?

Yeah.

I think that there is the public appetite for war is small now, and thank God for that.

But in the, because remember, in the, you know, in the 90s and the 2000s, we were in forever wars.

And that is something that is sort of a nonpartisan thing all of a sudden.

And I mean, I think it's very good.

But there really is not a lot of public appetite for war.

And I think he, and he, is where the Zeitgeist is on that.

Yeah, often.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But, okay, so he's given himself a lot of these jobs we're talking about here.

I mean, he's the guy who decides tariffs now.

That was never the president's job.

He's the guy who decides which prisons get opened.

He's the water commissioner for California.

I don't know if you know that.

personally

release all the water.

He's the world peacemaker.

He gets all the colleges to send the kids' grades to him.

He's looking at, really,

personally, he's looking at the grades from college, and now he's the D.C.

police chief.

You know, in an attention economy, he is the richest man in the world.

Also, because he's corrupt, he's going to be the actual richest man in the world.

No question.

But,

oh.

And he's not only the board chair of the Kennedy Center, he's hosting the show this year.

Where's he going to find time now that he's the D.C.

police chief?

Okay, so

you're never going to win an election, I think, by saying crime is down, even though it is.

So this is the other big issue that people are talking about this week.

He's all about D.C.

crime.

All right, let me give you the parameter, what's actually happening.

D.C.

does have high crime rates.

District of Columbia,

higher than Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, which is is right after them.

But Shelby County, Tennessee, Jefferson County, Alabama, Jackson County, Missouri have higher murder rates than D.C.

Why don't we send the FBI there?

Why don't we send the National Guard there?

Because

only Washington, D.C.

is called the District of Columbia, meaning the federal district of Columbia, allowing us to constitutionally administer it from the White House.

Those places have mayors.

Washington, D.C.

is kind of on permanent probation.

The federal government has a right to step in if it doesn't feel it's being used, you know, power is being used correctly there.

They claim crime is down.

Well, let's make it go down further.

I mean, if it's a good thing to bring crime down, which the D.C.

people have argued they have already, bring it down further.

By dragging the homeless off the street now, I mean, to me, this is another instance instance of Trump having an idea that's not completely wrong, like close the borders was out of control.

He takes advantage of when liberals fuck up.

Yes, go ahead.

Sorry.

So two things about this crime.

You know, nobody is pro-crime, right?

Crime is bad.

Okay, there's no, like, pro-crime caucus, we love murder.

No.

Nobody's pro-crime.

So, and look.

There is $1.1 billion of D.C.

taxpayer money that is still being held, right, that has not been released to the city.

And Congress was supposed to vote on that, but they went home.

You know why they went home?

Because of the Epstein stuff, right?

Mike Johnson sent everyone home a couple days early because his people wanted to release the Epstein files and he really wanted to prevent that.

So there is $1.1 billion and that $1.1 billion is supposed to go to cops and teachers and people who work in homeless services.

So if you wanted, theoretically, and look, nobody wants crime, you would give that $1.1 billion, which is already theirs, to them so that they could hire more teachers and policemen and homeless services, number one.

The other thing is these federal officers that are there,

so they technically cannot arrest people, right, because they are not D.C.

police.

Now, whether or not they are, that's another thing.

But they are holding until actual D.C.

police come.

So there's already a sort of, it's not working the way that you would theoretically want it to.

Plus they have checkpoints.

A lot of these checkpoints are in very nice neighborhoods.

They're not in, you know, I have a lot of friends who live in DC.

They're not in the really bad neighborhoods.

I mean, it's not a bad crime.

And checkpoints

remind me of East Berlin.

It really is.

And there's a question of the legality.

I mean, Stephen Vladic was talking about this: the legality of these checkpoints.

Because you can checkpoint for drunk driving, but you can't necessarily checkpoint for, like, you annoy me.

But the idea that the streets actually belong to the citizens is something that liberals have just gotten away from.

They made homelessness into a lifestyle.

And we don't really know what the answer is, but it has to be some version of, you don't have to go home because you don't have one.

We should do something about that, but you can't stay here.

You can't, because we see this in this city more than any other.

You can't just take over the streets of the city.

So, again, as in so many of these instances, like with immigration, he's got not an unerring idea,

a totally erring idea that this is a problem, but then he goes about it in such a cruel and unnecessarily capricious way, which just seems like what he's doing now with the homeless situation.

You know, we're going to get them into shelters or jail.

Or whatever.

California's solution is to spend more money on it every year and have the problem get worse every year.

Maybe they should put them on buses and just keep them on a constant tour.

But it sometimes feels like all you do with the homeless, it's like Mercury, is push them around and you never reduce the volume.

He's got to do something.

D.C.

is half a museum and half a city.

It's half a showcase, a place where the school kids of America go to learn about the Supreme Court and so on.

And I like them to see something of

civic order when they get there.

It's also the home to the embassies of the country.

All right, well, speaking of that, ICE is recruiting.

I don't know if you know this.

We talked about it last week.

There's going to be almost no age limits.

You can be as young as 18 or as old as you want to be.

Biden could join ICE.

They are looking for a few good men.

Obviously, their goals are to round up so many people that they need poor people, more people, to do the rounding up.

So they've come out with some, I mean, these are real recruitment posters they have.

I know they look like a gag, but they're not.

Defend the homeland, join ice, no edge cap, join ice now.

Those are not all the recruitment posters.

Would you like to see the ice

some of the other ICE recruitment posters?

For example, Join ICE.

It's like Starship Troopers, but with Mexicans.

Join ice.

It's time to take America back from the people we stole it from.

Join ice because Jesus and angels belong in the Bible, not your neighborhood.

Ice, like an OnlyFans model, we take all-commerce.

Yesterday I was choking the chicken.

Today I'm choking a guy at a chicken processing plant.

Thanks, Ice.

If you can read this, you're already qualified.

Also, if you can't read this,

join ice, the next next thing to actually having a big dick.

And if you don't join ice, we'll kill this dog.

Okay.

Remember that old national lampoon?

Dover.

Okay.

All right.

So let's get off politics for a minute.

Maybe we'll go back.

I do want to talk about the economy, but I, because your book is so good and it's about parenting, and there were two stories in the news this week about parenting.

I thought we'd get on to that.

I mean, your mother, if people don't know,

was Erika Zhang, and, you know, she was one of the last of a breed I would call a celebrity writer.

I don't know if if we'll ever have another one because I don't know if people are ever going to read books again.

But she was not just a writer, but she became a celebrity.

She hit a nerve with the culture.

And your book is about growing up with her and how, let's just say she was a little distracted by being a celebrity from you.

But I saw these two stories in the news.

One was about a tennis match, the Cincinnati Open,

and there was a baby screaming during the match.

And you know, tennis is played in silence.

And one of the players said, Could you get that kid out of here?

And the and what are you oohing about?

She was right.

The umpire said, It's a child.

Do you want me to send the child out of the stadium?

And the crowd went, Yes!

Tennis is quiet.

Why are you bringing a baby to a tennis match?

And then

a Colombian rapper named Maluma, not that I have to tell you, Maluma, Maluma fans, where are my,

okay.

I don't know him, and I'm sure he doesn't know me, and that says a lot about society, but okay.

But he was doing his show,

and a woman had a

infant, and this is Mr.

Maluma.

He said, do you think it's a good idea to bring a baby?

He stopped his show and berated this woman.

I fucking love this.

He said, do you think it's a good idea to bring a baby who's a year old to a concert where the decibels are so fucking high and the sound is so loud?

That baby doesn't even know what they're doing here.

Next time, protect their ears.

It's your responsibility.

You're waving the kid around like you're a toy.

That baby doesn't want to be here.

Thank you, Mr.

Malomo.

All right.

That's my ranch, and now you.

I have a lot of children.

Now they're old because I had them when I was very young.

I have to say that.

But no, they, you know, I didn't take them places because babies are very annoying.

And I I didn't want to subject other people to them.

But it's a thing now.

It's not just at concerts.

I mean,

when a rapper from the country that gives us cocaine calls out your parenting, you're doing something wrong.

Right.

Well.

I don't know why we have to drag cocaine into this, but

why did only one of the tennis players complain?

It was obviously helping the other one's game.

I mean,

because she was serving at the time.

Oh, oh, oh.

I think it would have been either one.

I think they might agree tennis is supposed to be played quietly.

I mean, the good news is people are having children.

There is one baby there, right?

I mean, we're not having a ton of kids.

No, but

babies go to bars now.

Yeah.

I can't believe that's even allowed.

I'm assuming only beer and wine.

Yeah.

No, mixed drinks.

That would be out there.

And light cigarettes.

Light cigarettes.

On Apostena Island, babies can drink, actually.

Well, okay.

Ha ha.

But I mean,

I feel like parents, they just have this idea that it's the new parrot on their shoulder.

You know, the hipster parents are like, well, you know, we're the cool people.

We're not going to let having a kid change our lifestyle.

We bring the baby to the concert.

We bring him to the bar.

It's ridiculous.

It says something about where parenting is, I feel.

I mean, parents are very annoying, and babies are very annoying.

And I mean, I have a lot of children, but I agree with you.

I think this is all very annoying.

And by the way, if a rapper is yelling at you about your baby's hearing, you're probably not a very good parent.

Okay, so what are the things you said we're not talking about that I said I I want

inflation okay yes, but see here's this thing Epstein no one cares anymore

Inflation yes I you know

about I don't know maybe it was 2018 when Trump's first term

I made the right wing lose their mind once because I said you know if we had a recession it actually would be a good thing Not that I'm you know wanting people to like have less money and but you know no one starves during a recession.

We've had 47 of them.

In fact, every Republican president has had at least one.

I just now had three.

But I said the only thing that gets to people, the only thing they really care about is the pocketbook issues.

It's always the economy stupid, as James Carville said.

And the only thing that would save our democracy was the point I was making, is the only thing that would get people to not vote for Trump and lose faith in him is if the economy went in the shitter.

Now, I don't want that to be the only way to get rid of him, but that's what it does look like.

They don't care about Epstein anymore.

That went away like a mild flu.

They didn't care about it before.

Yeah, they cared about it for about two weeks.

Yeah.

But about three years ago, when I wrote a piece for the New York Times, the first op-ed about the stinking scandal of Epstein's supposed death, I was called QAnon or, you know, some sort of lunatic conspiracy theorist for caring about this.

The left took out the Epstein torch under Trump, and I am afraid it was not the burning concern for many years.

Yes.

How long have you been talking about Epstein?

Well,

I have certainly been talking.

I mean, I think what was interesting about the Epstein case was that you had people in Trump's world, the MAGA podcasters, who were interested in it.

And you also had people like Pam Bondi saying that it was on her desk.

Yes.

Oh, no, it's absolute betrayal.

I mean, mean, he said, when I get in there, I'm going to root out that deep state bullshit boy, that deep state, ooh, they are quick and in their boots.

And then when they found his name in it, and I don't think he was even, I don't know if he's the one who went to Epstein Island.

I really don't think Donald Trump and Epstein were more than just, you know, stupid buddies in New York, you know, bros, and that kind of stuff.

I don't think Donald Trump is the guy who was having sex with 14-year-olds.

I think he's a different kind of cat.

He was a legitimate player.

You know, he was a legitimate player, and he had a lot of ladies, and not all of them was he married to them at the time.

But it doesn't matter.

But this notion that there's a master list of everyone who went, you know, who's on that list?

Stephen Hawking.

Stephen Hawking went to Epstein Island.

Scientists from MIT, Harvard, all sorts of places went.

And a lot of Democrats.

But the point of this is that when Trump's administration started, they handed out these binders to MAGA influencers that were like Epstein files B is one.

So you're concerned that Trump voters aren't getting what Trump promised them?

They're not.

Why don't they release it?

Well, I have a feeling they will.

And I have a feeling that when they finally do, there are a lot of people who are going to be sad that they called for it, frankly.

I think it might be a big surprise that we are

calling for only because Trump seems not to want it.

You know, in Trumpside-Down world,

everybody suddenly who knows that Bill Clinton went there 25 times knows that, you know, Very...

No, no, no, no, no, he was on the plane.

Well, what did he do?

Jump off over the ocean?

I mean, he...

No, no, no, no, no, that's a bullshit talking point.

That's a bullshit talking point, and you know it.

The plane went a lot of places.

The plane didn't, there wasn't just a way.

No, Epstein Island was the hub.

Right.

You had to go through there to get to Atlanta.

Your connection.

To get the connection.

To Saudi Arabia.

But

why doesn't Trump, if he's so innocent there, and maybe he's not innocent, why doesn't he want it released?

See, I don't think that...

It's like Tom Sawyer with the, you know, with the fence.

You know, by keeping it in his pocket, he's making everybody want to see it.

And I'm telling people, be careful what you wish for.

But, I mean, even if, say it was chaka block with Democrats from the 90s and 2000s, okay.

Right, yeah.

You know, then they stink and they should face either, you know, if they've done something really wrong, they should face it on the side.

My point is being on a list is not the same as partaking.

I don't think there's any actual physical list.

The guy was a pimp.

I don't think pimps write it down.

They got it in their head.

You know.

But also, why did Pam Bondi say it was on our desk?

Who knows?

As I say, Trump, when he goes against something or withholds something, causes people to cry out for it.

And it's a trick that he's used before.

Okay, but that dog won't hunt.

But the economy, I'm sorry,

I read this week,

he passed the, signed the Genius Act a few months ago.

This is basically saying crypto is now part of the system, which means when it goes under, we're going to have to bail them out like we did in 2008.

There's also

$4.7 trillion now in crypto, interest payments now alone comes up 20% of all federal spending.

The debt,

1.7 million jobs in the clean energy sector, because we're not fond of that anymore.

They went away.

Then there's the big beautiful bill.

And then there's the fact that AI is basically about to take everybody's jobs.

And then the tariffs are finally kicking in.

Now, about a month ago, I said, look, I had to own it.

I said, I thought by July 4th, the economy would be in the shitter, and it wasn't.

I was wrong.

But maybe I was wrong just by a matter of time.

And I think I was.

I just don't see this economy surviving all of this.

And when it doesn't, that is the only thing that's going to get people to turn on Donald Trump.

And the tariffs are really like a flat tax because they're paid for.

I mean, Trump wants companies to eat the tariffs.

We all want companies to eat the tariffs.

And that would be, by the way, a corporate tax.

And they did for at the beginning.

Republicans don't tend to love corporate taxes.

But okay, I like a corporate tax.

I'm a liberal.

But what I think it's going to be is more like a flat tax, right?

So if, because, I mean, the Yale Budget Lab estimates that an an average family will pay about $2,400 more a year because of the tariffs.

We're already paying more.

They say cars are going up $5,000.

I mean, people are going to feel it.

And when they do, I mean, Trump can say, no, I got my new statistic guy.

He says it's not happening.

You can Baghdad Bob this just for so long.

And then people know what's up.

I'm sorry, Walter.

I got to go to New Rules.

Thank you, everybody.

It's time for New Rules.

Okay,

New Rule, all the MAGA faithful who have been posting, we're so back because TikTok has been overrun by hot white sorority girls posting dance videos

have to remember something.

You know who else is back?

The football team.

New Rule, in the future, let's make sure someone is really gone before taking out their organs for donation.

A woman in Albuquerque just woke up from a coma minutes before they were about to take out her organs, and now some haters are saying she must have been faking it the whole time.

No, women don't pretend to be asleep when an organ is about to be taken out, they pretend to be asleep to avoid an organ being put in.

New Roll, someone has to ask the cryptocurrency investors who've been throwing sex toys onto the court at WNBA games, how irresponsible you can be?

Getting involved in crypto?

And why throw a dildo at a WNBA game?

Half of that league wouldn't know a dick if they tripped over it.

Neural, if there's an ass kisser of the year award, they must give it to J.D.

Vance, who, when asked what three people, living or dead, he'd invite to dinner, he said, Isaac Newton, Trump, and Lincoln.

Oh,

really?

Not Cleopatra, not Jesus, but the guy down the hall you see every day.

You know,

it sounds like a great party, though.

Trump would tell Lincoln, I could end the Civil War in a day.

And he would.

And he would say to Isaac Newton, I know more about gravity than anybody.

And then both of them would be thinking, wait, am I in hell now?

New role, Roll, the people now asking us to be on Team Sweeney or Team Beyonce Jeans Ad need to go work out their shit from high school.

Look, I accept that our politics will be really, really stupid, but not this stupid.

Do I prefer my big tits be the color of cream or the color of coffee?

Please, I'm an American.

You had me at big tits.

Thank you.

And finally, new rule, Democrats need to get their shit together because we need two parties in this country, and we desperately need the one that still concedes elections, doesn't sell the office, and doesn't want to completely switch out democratic rule of law for a rubber-stamped autocracy.

But that party is so fucked up right now, and nothing to me symbolized that more than this video.

Why do I say that?

Well, let me put it this way.

I don't know for a fact that this couple are Democrats.

I just know it's true.

First off, the man is at a Cold Play concert.

And while Republicans could like cold play, they don't, but they could,

it's unlikely that this guy is a Christian conservative because he was having an affair with a woman.

No, no, I knew they were Democrats for the same reason I knew this was a Democrat.

You can't hide from the Kiss Cam and you can't hide in the Oval Office.

Damn, if only the lady at the Cold Plate concert had brought some folders with her, maybe she wouldn't be in hot water today.

Now, am I saying that only Democrats run and hide?

No.

Josh Hawley ran from a violent mob on January 6th, a mob that formed because people like Josh Hawley pretended Biden lost the election.

But it was a violent mob.

But Democrats seemed to be afraid of everything.

They were petrified of COVID, masking two-year-olds who never would have died from it and keeping schools closed for far too long.

They're definitely afraid of their kids, who from time immemorial have always come up with bad ideas.

They're kids.

Thinking up stupid shit is what they do.

But parents used to tell them, that's ridiculous.

The world doesn't work that way.

Not today's parents.

They say, you're right, honey.

Gender is just a social construct.

Please, sometimes your mother and I forget which one of us has the dick.

I know she has my balls.

I mean, I don't know if we're still banning TikTok.

That was before we changed the rule in America to Trump decides what's a law.

But I know it wouldn't even be an issue if parents would sack up and tell their kids to get off the fucking phone.

Democrats are still afraid of the mean girls who police their far-out far-out fringe.

Massachusetts Congressman Seth Moulton had a perfect score on LGBTQ issues from the human rights campaign.

But when he said, I have two little girls, I don't want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, his own campaign manager quit.

And the chair of the Salem Democratic City Committee, Liz Bratt, accused Moulton of being, quote, what is known as a cooperator in Nazi times.

Yeah, I think the word you're looking for, moron, is collaborator.

And I'm guessing everything you know about Nazi times comes from TikTok, but

imagine that, a congressman merely stands up for the liberal principle, the one we used to call, we do still call Title IX,

that women get an equal shot in sports, and now it gets you labeled a Nazi.

The reason Gretchen Whitmer looked like a toddler playing peekaboo in the Oval Office is she's afraid of the Liz Bratz of the world and the 12 social justice warriors on the internet and what they might tweet to their seven followers.

Alyssa Slotkin calls her party weak and woke.

She's right.

People vote on instinct.

They can smell fear a swing state away and they'd rather have strong and wrong.

Having sex with Stormy Daniels was wrong.

But Trump didn't hide from the camera.

Quite the opposite.

It looks like he said to the photographer, widen that out so you can get these tits.

He's got his mugshot hanging outside the Oval Office.

He's literally got a guy working for him named Big Balls.

It's like if Gavin Newsom had a henchman named Perfect Hair.

Hey, at least Gavin comes here.

People ask me all the time, why haven't you ever had Hillary or Bill Clinton on?

Why didn't you have Kamala on during the last campaign?

You think we don't ask?

We ask these people every week.

They say no.

It took eight years and a petition to get Obama on.

And these are people, all people I voted for.

Think about that.

They're afraid to come on the show of a guy who voted for them.

The Republicans, they show up.

And when they do, they take their beating like a man.

How do you do?

You went down to Mar-a-Lago and kissed his ass after that.

When the Mueller report came out, I feel like you mischaracterized it, and I feel that was shady.

But you campaigned for election deniers in 2022.

This I do not forgive.

The Republicans, including you, January 6th, et cetera, cetera, are the ones who are no longer willing to play by the rules of democracy.

Amendment 22, no person shall be elected to the office of the president more than twice.

And yet you keep talking about Trump's therapy.

Maybe you should have this.

Look,

I would love to have AOC on the show and Mondami and Elizabeth Warren, but I can't subpoena the guests.

And I can't can't fix that what the Democrats are scared of more than anything else, I mean obviously besides gluten,

is being primaried from the far left even though most Democrats are not far left.

They're mild-mannered and moderate at least at my bathhouse.

If there is one practical thing that Democrats can do right now that would help them regain power, it's never speak to Trump in person.

No, I'm kidding, that's stupid.

No, it's this.

Inspire your moderates to vote in the primaries.

Get that base excited.

You have the numbers.

After Congressman Moulton made his comment about his daughter not getting run over, he added, but as a Democrat,

I'm supposed to be afraid to say that.

Well, then change what you're supposed to be afraid of.

All right, that's our show.

I want to thank my guests, Walter Kern, Marley John Fest, and Thomas Jatterson Williams.

Club Random Dumps Every Monday on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast.

Can't go watch Overtime on YouTube.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

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

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