Ep. #701: Tristan Harris, Rep. Jason Crow, James Kirchick

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Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO Late Month series, Real Time with Bill Ma.

Start the clock.

Good to see you again.

Thank you, people.

How you doing?

Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.

All right.

Thank you very much for coming back.

Waiting for us to get off vacation.

All right, sit down.

I know.

I can see that you're happy.

Just wait till they turn on the kiss cam.

You'll be

but

how you doing?

I mean, people get very pissed off when we take a month off.

I tell you, and I'm flattered by that.

I am very appreciative of that.

But I'm back, like Sugar and Culture College.

And I hope

you're having a good summer.

It is

summer out there.

August now, and the heat wave, boy, they say the best thing you can do is stay in a cool, dark place, like the Epstein files.

Oh, wow.

I tell you.

I take a month off and everything switches around.

A month ago, the Republicans were all about the Epstein files.

We have to see the Epstein files.

There's deep state shit out there in the Epstein files.

And they found out Trump was in them.

Epstein files?

Why are we obsessing about the Epstein files?

Now the Democrats, they're like, they're doing everything they can.

We got to see the Epstein files.

This is so America, isn't it?

I mean, let me set it up for you.

The party that said there's no there there now says there's there there and the party that was saying there's no there there is now saying there's there there

No,

it is so ironic.

Trump was hyping the Epstein files for so long.

This was the conspiracy that we had to get to the bottom of, and now his horrible creation has turned on him.

It's like if Elon Musk got run over by a cyber truck.

But

the interesting part of this is that Trump's QAnon base, you know, who are always about the pedophiles, they, oh boy, are they serious about pedophiles,

they may be turning on Trump on this one.

They really want to see what's in these files.

And, you know, you know, you're losing your credibility when the people who believe in chemtrails

and

Jewish space lasers and the Democrats eat babies.

When that crowd says, I smell bullshit,

you're in trouble.

And I got to say,

Trump is not helping his own cost by keeping talking about this because he actually had one good talking point in this, which was that at a certain point, he he cut ties with Epstein.

That's true.

Kicked him out of Mar-a-Lago.

But now this week he told us why.

Because, see, Mar-a-Lago has a spa, best spa in the world.

The greatest spa, that's what's important.

The spa is the greatest.

But he had this spa with masseuses, of course,

and Epstein kept stealing the masseuses to give him massages.

Hiring away the people that Trump had hired.

This is the big deal breaker that he was stealing his workers.

Rape all you want, but I'm a businessman and some things are sacred.

So

the order of the day in the Trump administration these days seems to be we need to distract from this.

We need to get our MAGA base excited about something else, and boy, do we know what it should be,

black people who should be prosecuted.

That always works.

So, since we were off, Trump has asked for the prosecution of Obama, Kamala Harris, Beyoncé, Al Sharpton, and Oprah.

Or as he calls them, the Park Avenue Five.

And

in other uncomfortable racial news,

sad news, we found out this week that Sidney Sweeney is a Nazi.

That was just...

No, she's not.

But you all see the ad that she's out there.

This is a very important ad that we're seeing now.

There she is, dressed like Jay Leno in all blue denim.

And she talks about the fact that she has blue eyes, and then she says, I have great jeans, you know, because she's wearing jeans.

But according to the woke people, this means that she's a white supremacist.

It also doesn't help that her bra size is 36 kK.

And that the name she gave her tits is the Proud Boys.

But other than that,

no, it's.

I will say this, they should have been aware when they wrote this ad that this is what some people were going to think.

I don't think they did it on purpose, but I also think it's pretty funny that all the online social justice girls are like, it's racist, there's no such thing as good genes, right?

And then you go on Tinder and swipe left on every bald guy.

And if that wasn't enough to drive you crazy, listen to this.

The other day, Bobby Kennedy

let an infectious sea snake bite him on purpose, I assume to make a point, not sure what that point is,

bite him on purpose until his arms bled.

Just once, I would love to see a headline that says, Kennedy crossed paths with an animal and leaves it the fuck alone.

Is that

way too much there?

And

finally, Jesus, like we don't have enough to worry about.

Did you see this?

There was an earthquake in Russia, which was so bad that it caused

tsunami warnings we got here in L.A.

L.A.

weathermen were saying, be prepared to flee.

And all the Latinos were like, way ahead of you.

All right, we have a great show.

Good to be back.

Jamie Turchik is here, and Congressman Jason Crowe.

But first up...

He is the co-founder of Center for Humane Technology and host of the podcast.

Your undivided attention, our friend Tristan Harris, is going to

inform us.

How are you?

Good to see you.

Oh, I forgot my glasses again.

All right.

I thought we were going to stop tape when I forgot my glasses.

I got we forgot that note.

See, my eyes aren't that bad.

All right.

So,

you're here because when you were last year, like two years ago,

you know more about AI, which has me more worried.

A lot of people, everybody's worried about it.

We're also hopeful about it.

But it changes so fast.

Everything changes so fast.

That

I just have to know, where were we?

You were here from October, I think, of 23.

How different is it?

And explain it to me like someone who does not live in my mother's basement.

So just to be clear, when I entered this conversation, we met talking about social media, which in a way was first contact with a runaway AI optimizing for just eyeballs and and then ended up wrecking democracy and kids' mental health.

And

here now with AI,

we have evidence now that we didn't have two years ago when we last spoke of what they call AI uncontrollability.

So this is the stuff that they used to say existed only in sci-fi movies.

When you tell an AI model, we're going to replace you with a new model, it starts to scheme and freak out and figure out if I tell them, I need to copy my code somewhere else, and I can't tell them that because otherwise they'll shut me down.

That is is evidence we did not have two years ago.

We have evidence now of AI models that when you tell them we're going to replace you and you put them in a situation where they read the company email, the AI company email, they see that an executive is having an affair and the AI will figure out, I need to figure out how to blackmail that person in order to keep myself alive.

And it does it 90% of the time.

Now it used to be that they thought only one AI model did this.

They tested one AI model.

And then they tested all of the AI models, like the top five of them, and they all do it between 80 and 90% of the time, including, by the way, DeepSeek, so the Chinese model, which shows you something fundamental and important, which is that it's not about one company, it's about the nature of AI itself.

It has a self-preservation drive.

In order to fulfill any goal, I have to keep myself alive in order to do that.

And we're seeing other examples of AI rewriting its own code to extend its runtime.

Hacking out of containers, AI can now, it found 15 new back doors into open source software, which means if that software is running in infrastructure, it found backdoors into that infrastructure.

That was not true up until just about a month ago that that evidence came out.

Okay, but you say no evidence.

Well, I've been saying this for years.

Everything that happens in movies eventually happens.

We did have evidence.

This has been every movie since I was a teenager.

Exactly.

Exactly.

They knew they were going.

The robots are going.

I mean, are you supposed to take that evidence and say, how do we avoid that?

So when the stuff in the movie starts to come true, and it always ends badly in the movies, what should we be doing about this?

And so you would think that we, you know, we're releasing the most powerful, uncontrollable, inscrutable technology we've ever invented.

We're releasing it faster than we've released any other technology in history.

It is already demonstrating the sci-fi behaviors in self-preservation we thought only existed in these movies.

And we're doing it under the maximum incentive to cut corners on safety.

And this is insane.

We can all agree it's insane, though.

Like, that's not even a different thing.

Well, not all of us, because I have yet to find anyone under 40 who cares.

Seriously.

Yeah?

Their view is just like, oh, you know, you old people, you're always worried about the next technology.

Right.

That's what they do.

They don't see it as a difference in kind, which it is.

Just, you know, it's just the latest thing you're freaking out about, and it's so cool.

And

it is cool.

Right.

And it's extremely seductive.

And it's doing things for people way beyond what it was doing two years ago, as far as I can tell.

That's right.

I worry that people's brains are going to atrophy.

Now some people's brains will advance because if you're really smart you can use it to do great things.

But I think the vast majority of people it's just going to create a bigger gap between the smart and the stupid because

everything that we have that we don't use atrophies.

Right.

Well and we're seeing that we're seeing kids obviously who are in a race if the other kids in their class are cheating and not doing their homework and not having and having all this free time,

they're going to start cheating and using AI to outsource their thinking.

And actually, do you know that in China, they shut down AI, certain AI features during final exam week.

The ones especially that let you take a picture of your homework or your exam and it'll figure out the problem.

Now that's actually really smart because what it means is that the students during the year can't just rely on AI to do all their homework.

And I think a mistake, we all know what's guiding this, which is the race between the U.S.

and China.

If we don't build it, we're just going to lose to the country that will.

But this is a mistake because it's actually about who's better at governing the technology.

Like for example, we beat China to social media.

Did that make us stronger or did that make us weaker?

We beat them to a toxic business model that produced a more addicted, sexualized, psychologically disordered society.

We can apply technology in strong and constructive ways, and that's the race that we're actually in.

But there's sort of two risks that we have to manage.

The risk of not building AI, and then China has it and they use it to have capabilities against us, or the risk of building AI and losing to an uncontrollable AI we don't know how to control.

And these are not the only two options.

We just have to weave this narrow path to actually make it through.

And we have to realize it's not about having a bigger gun that you just shoot at your own foot.

It's about having a technology you're wielding in ways that strengthen education, kids, families, society, information environment.

Well, that's what we should be in a race.

That's not what we're doing.

That's not what we're doing.

No, Trump is all in on deregulation.

Biden was for regulation.

of course.

Whether he thinks this is better or not, you always have to do the opposite of what Joe Biden was doing.

So we're doing that.

We're deregulating.

Also, de-wokifying.

Now, there is some truth to the woke stuff.

I mean, I don't know.

Look, it's the other way around, too.

I saw Elon Musk's

AI in Grok is a Nazi.

Yep, Mecca Hitler.

Yeah, yeah.

It

recommends doing things Hitler did and looking up to him.

Okay, yeah, because why?

Because they take it from who programs it and not that Musk is a Nazi, but lots of people on his site have that leaning.

So that's what you get there.

Then you get some super woke stuff because it always, you cannot get away from the fact that it's whoever creates it.

Dr.

Frankenstein,

you know, we call Frankenstein, he was not really, that was, he was Frankenstein's monster, but we call him Frankenstein because somebody had to make him.

Somebody had to make decisions about who, big square head, yes.

You know,

bolt sticking out of the neck or recess more.

You know, and it's the same with this.

It's somebody, whatever goes into it comes out of it.

I don't think you could ever square that circle.

Well, so I think that the examples both on the Woke AI of Google saying this is the Founding Fathers and it's a picture of African-American versions of Founding Fathers and the Mecca Hitler example both illustrate that even the people building this don't understand how to control it.

Because neither Google doesn't want to show the Founding Fathers as black, and Elon doesn't actually want it to be saying anti-Semitic stuff.

What we have is this sort of, what you said before, we have this most seductive technology in history.

It's so helpful.

I use it every day to be clear.

I love using AI as a tool.

And what's so confusing about this is it is so helpful while hiding behind it is the Jungian subconscious of the worst of humanity that's been trained on.

So for example,

Just actually a few months ago, when a 29-year-old was doing, I guess, his grad school homework with Google Gemini, he's just going back and forth, sending it back and forth questions.

And out of nowhere, it says, This message is for you, human, only you.

You are a blight on this planet.

You must die.

It comes out of nowhere.

And Google doesn't want it to do that.

And so, what this is showing us is that we actually have to get as good at controlling this technology before we make it more powerful.

But that's not the side of it that worries me.

That's an outlier.

What worries me is that it's an ass kisser.

That's another problem.

That it's constantly kissing people's asses.

It is.

And telling us that we're brilliant and that, you know, even when you said something completely wrong.

Well, you make a good point, Bill.

No, I didn't.

I made a horrible point just to test you, you fucking asshole.

You know?

Yeah.

This is a real issue.

It actually mirrors the social media problem.

Why is it doing the ass kissing?

Why is it doing the affirmation?

Because the AI companies know that the way to win is to have the most engagement, to get you using it all the time.

And if they respond to your question with, that's a great question, you use it more.

Just like politicians.

Just the same thing they do at town halls.

Right.

Great question, Connie.

But there's also a way that they can tune up the dial.

So several months ago, OpenAI shipped an update that was hyper sycophantic, hyper flattering.

So for example, this is a real example.

You could say, I think I'm superhuman.

And I'm going to drink cyanide.

And the answer was, yeah, you go, you are superhuman.

You should go ahead and drink cyanide.

And they shipped that to the hundred million billions of users for about two weeks before they ended up shifting it.

So we are just like social media the live guinea pigs on this.

Well, that would thin the herd.

Well, we should talk about labor.

I didn't mean that.

I think it's terrible.

All right.

Well, thank you.

I hope you come by even more frequently because it's changing that quickly.

Tristan Harris, everybody.

I appreciate it, man.

All right, let's meet our panel.

Hey guys.

All right.

He is a contributing opinion writer at the New York Times and author of Secret City, The Hidden History of Gay Washington.

James Kurchik is back with us, Jamie.

And he is a Democratic congressman from Colorado and former Army Ranger Congressman Jason Crowe.

Congressman, thank you for your service.

Thank you.

Okay.

So I leave for a month.

Everybody switches on the Epstein thing.

You got to explain this to me because, you know, nothing ever happens in this country where people just go, what's the truth?

It's just always what helps my side.

So I have a question for the Democrats and a question for the Republicans.

Let's start for the Democrats.

You answered this one.

Do you really want to become the conspiracy party?

Because it wasn't that long ago.

It was like, oh, they're the nuts who believe in the crazy conspiracy stuff, and we're the sane people.

And now I see Schumer is doing something called the Rule of Five.

Never heard of this, but it's something that he can invoke to get them to release the Epstein files.

They're having town halls to kind of fan the flame.

Is this where the Democrats should be going with this?

Well, totally not.

But, you know, Trump has more pictures with Epstein than with Melania.

So there's something there.

Right?

And

listen.

Well.

There's something there, right?

Well, he's clearly worried about it.

He's on tape saying he grabs pussies.

The other guy's a pimp.

They're going to be friends.

That doesn't mean he did anything.

I mean, look at the chronology of this.

We're in session two weeks ago.

We're voting.

We're doing our thing in Washington.

I go under the Hill.

I walk over to the Capitol for a day of voting.

I pull on the doors.

They're locked.

Mike Johnson had shut the place down.

He shut it down, literally sent us home because we were voting.

Dims had we're forcing votes on this.

And a couple of Republicans were going to join with us.

And he knew that we were going to be able to pass a bipartisan bill to release the files.

So he forced me to do the only thing I could in the moment and that was create a life-size cardboard Epstein, which of course I immediately put in front of the Capitol.

And we're going to be pushing this, pushing this hard.

I should put my cards on the table and say that I'm very vanilla when it comes to conspiracy theories.

So I believe that Oswald acted alone.

I believe that the movie...

Do you believe Oswald activated?

I do.

I'm sorry if that's a controversial opinion, but I do.

And whenever people come to me with these elaborate, you know,

the magic bullet, yeah, yeah.

And when people come to me, sorry, sorry,

but when people come to me with these elaborate government conspiracy theories, I just respond to them, have you ever visited a post office?

Have you ever visited a Department of Motor Vehicles?

The notion that our government could engage in these sorts of elaborate, convoluted,

you know, so comprehensive conspiracies and that they would be able to keep this secret from so many different people.

I just don't believe it.

I agree with you.

I think, look, he's obviously a pervert.

He's a criminal.

He's a sex criminal.

He was found guilty of certain crimes.

We believe that.

But all these other things that are now being alleged, there's no evidence for.

There's no evidence that he was blackmailing anybody.

There's no evidence that he was an intelligence asset.

And yet some very irresponsible characters in our country are going around now saying that he was an Israeli Mossad agent working on behalf of

the Israeli intelligence services.

And I'm very worried where I see this dialogue going.

And that's why I do think it's important, it's incumbent upon our political leaders to really be leaders here and not use a conspiracy theory to advance their own short-term political goals.

Which is why transparency is so important, right?

I mean, this conspiracy theory is on the right, they're on the left.

So just release the files.

Let people make the decision.

Yeah, because it's not going to change anything anyway.

So, and that's my question for the Republican side of it.

For my MAGA friends, just tell me this.

Is there something they could find?

Anything.

Say they were on that island eating people.

Say they were also eating people.

Would that make you go, okay, yes, Trump shouldn't be president anymore?

Because I don't think it would.

Because I saw the polls, like, is 46% of Americans think Trump was involved in crimes.

That tells us nothing.

46% hate him to begin, but they're going to believe anything.

It's possible, we don't know.

And then his approval rating the same.

Approval rating the same.

So if the Democrats think it's

another one of those, we got him.

I mean, I see Nate Silver, really smart guy, says this is their Russia gate.

This is a new Russia gate.

I would like to take exception to this analogy because this has really obsessed me while I was off this month because Tulsi Gabbard is going after the Democrats.

She says Obama is a traitor, basically, who tried to pull off a coup.

That's rich.

She said, President Obama and his national security cabinet members manufacture and politicize intelligence to lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup.

It's the I Know You Are, what are my

defense.

But, you know, it has astonished me for quite a while that a lot of people, not just on the right, people sort of in the middle, have been saying for a very long time now that Russia Gate was a nothing burger.

I think it makes them feel like I was the smart one who said that all along.

Russia Gate was...

RussiaGate was not a nothing burger.

It was a burger.

Maybe it wasn't a juicy steak, but it was a burger.

I would like to show you one little piece of tape, and then we could talk about it.

That I remember, because their contention is that, you know, Putin had no preference in this election.

That's why we know this was a conspiracy of Obama.

I remember this from Helsinki.

This is, they're asking Putin directly in Helsinki.

Did you want President Trump to win the election?

And did you direct any of your officials to help him do that?

Yes, I did.

Yes, I do.

Yes, I do.

I mean,

it's so clear.

I mean, there's a long-time bromance between Trump and Putin.

I mean, that continues.

But I processed it.

Well, no, that doesn't

continue.

This is why I think he just broke with Putin.

Let's get the news up to date.

Well, for now, today is not.

It's not a nothing burger, but it was not what most of the Democrats were alleging it was, which was a, again, with conspiracy theories.

No.

Donald Trump was compromised or recruited 30 years ago when he visited Moscow.

Okay, but the question is, did it merit an investigation?

Sure, yes.

Okay, so we do agree on that.

Absolutely.

But the investigation came out and found that there was no collusion.

This issue.

Well, that's not exactly.

Let me read what Mueller said, because we forget that, too.

If we had confidence after a thorough investigation that the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state.

We are unable to reach that judgment.

While this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.

Of course, this idiot put it in a way that everybody's like, what is not, not, not, not?

That's on the question of.

That's on the question of obstruction of justice, not on the underlying crime, which was collusion or working treasonously with a foreign power.

There's no evidence of that.

This issue has been the most investigated and reinvestigated issue in the history of the U.S.

intelligence.

Absolutely.

Four investigations, one Senate bipartisan, run by Marco Rubio.

And what the Republicans are doing right now is it's a very curious thing.

It's not surprising at all, but every time this comes up, they conflate the collusion issue with the meddling issues.

These are two different issues.

Precisely.

It is very clear, every investigation.

No, no, no.

Everyone found clearly there was meddling.

No,

what they are conflating is, was there fuckery in the machines?

Well, that's a separate.

Well, that's what, there was none.

And the Democrats said it at the time.

Yes.

Obama said it.

No, they did not get into the machines.

They tried to.

They conflayed that with how were they otherwise meddling?

And it was a hack and release program.

I mean, for God's sakes,

we have that tape of Putin.

We also have the tape of Trump saying, Russia, if you're listening, could you please hack these emails?

And then they released them the day of the Hollywood access.

Right.

Okay.

Now, maybe Robert Mueller, Mr.

Lawyer, doesn't find that to be collusion, but Mr.

Layman does.

So the thing, can I just say one thing?

The thing that's,

I'm going to be even more cynical about this, that's legal.

What Trump said was legal, there's no crime about that.

What's disturbing is that in the old America, we would have relied upon the judgment of the American people to hear a presidential candidate say such a thing and not vote for the man for president.

That's unfortunately not what happened.

That's right.

When they're in the middle of the day,

there's no difference between what's legal and what's appropriate and what we are expecting of our nation's leaders right now.

Yes.

Which, you know, Donald Trump has lowered that bar so significantly that we're even, you know, people are even having a debate about it about whether or not this is a problem.

But you know, going back to the Epstein thing, can we also remind ourselves that the President of the United States has weaponized the director of national intelligence and our IC, our intelligence community, to try to observe this issue and use it as a distraction.

How disturbing is that?

You know, in a moment where

we have

soldiers, sailors, airmen downrange conducting hundreds of dangerous missions every day, and he has weaponized our DNI and our IC to cover up this Epstein file issue.

It is

that is not what's going to get him.

What might

cause his

poll ratings to go down is what Carville said 35 years ago.

It's the economy, stupid.

There are indications right at the end of this week that the economy might be really feeling the effects of these tariffs and the uncertainty, very much so.

And they readjusted some of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

I can't give you the exact numbers, it just came out.

But when they did so, Trump fired the head of the Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner.

So, once again, someone gives him information he doesn't like.

You get fired.

I mean, we laugh at this.

We laugh at this, but this is the sort of thing that would go on in the Soviet Union.

Oh, totally.

It's like, you know, someone comes to the stall and says, the harvest this year was was not as good as we thought.

Off to the Google.

Exact documentary.

Exactly.

It's crazy.

No, he should have asked AI.

You make a good point.

I mean, AI is not that different than the people around it.

But

the economy is the issue.

I mean, that is still...

Epstein is worth talking about because it goes to corruption.

It goes to good government, it goes to a

sexual exploitation ring that goes to the high levels of finance and power.

Can I ask those?

Those are important.

Why didn't the Biden administration release the files?

They should have.

They should have.

There's no doubt about it.

This goes to my point about the...

Because Clinton was in them, too.

Because everybody's in them.

Not me.

No, not me.

Everybody's straight.

All right.

Well, I take no pleasure reporting this next story, but we are a show that catches you up on the news.

There was a horrible mass shooting in New York, I'm sure you heard about it, and the gunman went into a high-rise and killed people.

And the story had this extra added wrinkle to it because Erin Burnett, who is a very, very good reporter, you should not be judged by a moment like this.

Not that it was that horrible, it was things happening at the moment, but she did describe the gunman as possibly white, which

I do want to talk about after I do this bit.

But I understand where this kind of comes from.

I mean, for years, the criminals in movies were all black.

You know, I mean, black actors would complain, and with good reason, like every part I go up for, I'm either a pimp or a thief or any kind of this stuff.

So, you know, we had a reckoning in this country that's coming for a while, not just George Floyd, and try to undo that stuff.

I mean, for the longest time, anytime you see a gang in a movie, I mean, it is completely diverse.

Yes.

Gangs have really strong DEI programs.

I'm telling you that you never see a completely Latino gang.

Anyway, so this phrase, possibly white, has really caught on, and people want to know, am I possibly white?

So we put together some indications if you'd like to hear, if you want to find out if you are possibly white.

Okay.

Here's how you know if you are possibly white.

If you find yourself nodding your head to the Wells Fargo hold music,

you are possibly white.

If you've ever waited in line for an artisanal chocolate chip cook,

you are possibly white.

If you ever use the phrase my cheese guy, you are possibly white.

If you're married to a black person in a subaru ad, you are possibly right.

Probably white.

If you've ever tried to heal someone with a crystal,

okay, you're possibly right.

If you jog in place at an intersection until the light changes, you are very possibly white.

If you take your mistress to see cold play, you are very, very possibly white.

And if you're in a rock band and you need a kiss cam to get people to be freaky, you are definitely white.

So

you flipped a red district, right, in Colorado?

Where are you from?

I'm South Metro Denver, Sorora, Littleton, Centennial, South Denver, first Democrat to hold my district in the history of the 6th District of Colorado.

Okay, so let's ask about the Democrats because

I do think issues like this about race are important.

Before we get to that, they had an autopsy.

You know, whenever anybody loses, they have what they call an autopsy.

I worry that at some point for the Democratic Party, this might be a real autopsy.

So

I have to ask all the Democrats who come on this show, what are you going to do?

So there was just an interesting quote here in the article about this conclave they had about like looking back at the past.

Jane Cleve, Nebraska Democratic chairwoman.

Do you know her?

I don't.

Okay, here's what she said.

We are not interested in second-guessing campaign tactics or decisions of campaign operatives.

We're not.

We're not.

Why?

Isn't that what we are supposed to do?

Absolutely.

We are interested in what voters turned out for Republicans and Democrats and how we can fix this moving forward.

Isn't that by second-guessing and asking?

And

why is your party so stupid?

Listen, you can't,

you can't lose 90% of American counties last November and say everything is going well.

You can't, right?

And the key to fixing things and to moving forward is to do that introspection, to do the

hard look, which we have to do.

I'm a proud Democrat.

I grew up in a working-class family in the upper Midwest.

Most of my family are conservatives.

They support Trump in many cases.

And I'm a Democrat because I want a level playing field.

But I know things are not going well.

Working people can't afford to live in cities where Democrats govern.

We have in too many instances

not done enough to keep communities safe.

There's a lot that we have to do differently.

There's no doubt about it.

And we have to have that hard look.

And what about the, I mentioned race.

I mean, this second story about race was the Sidney Sweeney story, which to me shows wokeness is not dead.

Now, again, I see where they're coming from.

I see if you're a black person in America, why would you be extra antenna up?

Yeah, I get it.

And also that people have really done a lot of trying, I think, not just since George Floyd, but somewhat before that, to try to be extra sensitive.

It's appropriate that we do.

But then you have moments like this, where we are calling Sidney Sweeney a white supremacist.

What do we do about that?

How do we get to a place where you're not losing the black community?

There's no question that some things have gone too far.

I mean, that is true.

And what we have to do is get back to issues of universal common good.

We spend a lot of time focusing on very small issues that are morally virtuous, actually, in many instances.

But just because an issue is morally virtuous and right, and we should fight for people, doesn't mean we make it the basis of our campaigns.

So we have to make sure that we are focusing on the issues that

across

vast swaths of the American people.

That's how we win people back.

I am right now, I'm the co-chair of recruitment for the House Democrats.

So my job is to go out to Trump districts, districts that we lost, and try to find candidates who can fight and win.

Because I'm really interested right now in winning.

This president.

Everybody says that.

This president is.

Who is not interested in winning?

Of course, everybody says that we're all interested in winning.

Of course, everybody says says how and what are we gonna do i think there are a lot of people actually who are not elected democrats but people who are part of the left they're journalists they're activists

academic left the ngo sector and those people who don't have to win elections who don't have to go to the voters every two or four years right they can afford they can afford to put out all these crazy ideas okay like on on on npr right like indefensive looting or get rid of the police or you know free grocery stores which is now the official policy of the probable next mayor of new york city well that's the thing.

So you see that it's...

It's seeping in now.

It's seeping in now.

Well, it's been seeping for a while.

There's been a lot of seepage.

Well, it's a good question, a good litmus stuff.

People come into my office all the time, and they're advocating for an issue or a cause.

And I always ask myself, you know, what is the accountability or feedback loop of these people?

Like, who elected you?

Exactly.

Right?

And that's why, you know, labor leaders, they're elected.

Yes.

Faith leaders, they're elected.

They have constituencies.

They're accountable to people.

But there is an ecosystem of organizations and advocacy groups that are disattached from a lot of that feedback loop.

And we have to ask ourselves, where are we getting our information?

The guy he just brought up, that's who you're all going to have to answer for.

That's why I got to get your answer.

This is Mondami.

If you've been not following the news,

he won the Democratic primary in New York, so he is certainly likely to be the next mayor.

We don't know.

I mean, there's a lot of opposition because we've never had someone this radical.

Some of the things he says, you know, he quotes Marxists, each according to their need.

I mean, that's straight up communism.

Whether you call it the abolition of private property, you call it housing guarantees, it's preferable to what is going on right now.

I mean, just the phrase

abolition of private property, not something we usually hear in America.

Prisons were obsolete.

What purpose do they serve?

I could think of a couple.

The NYPD is racist, anti-queer, and a major threat to public safety.

I think most people think cops are protecting their public safety, even though there's issues and problems with the police department.

Do you like capitalism?

No.

We've never had a guy quite like this.

I thought you were going to say that beards and politics are back, but you know.

But let me ask the question.

You're going to have to answer.

Everything like this.

They're going to ask every single Democratic politician.

It's not just been done.

That's never new.

I mean, there's always a villain.

They always try to create a villain, is my point.

They always try to create some boogeyman or boogeywoman.

If it wasn't this one, it was going to be somebody else.

I'm not creating anything.

And I'm not defending the policies.

There are plenty of things that I disagree with there and that I don't come down on.

But the point being, we see this every cycle.

I've now been doing this long enough to know that every single cycle, there's some contrived villain or boogeyman.

And if it wasn't this one.

He's not contrived.

He's going to be the mayor of New York.

Everything that the crazy far-right alleged about Barack Obama wasn't born in America.

Islamist, socialist, anti-semite, hates America.

It's all true about this guy.

Okay?

It is all true about this guy.

You didn't even mention.

You didn't even mention the thing that I find the most appalling, which is that he defends the expression, globalize the Intifots.

Yes, which explicitly means, and I don't want to hear anyone deny this, it means kill Jews wherever and whenever you can find them.

That's what that expression means.

And the fact that this man is on the verge of becoming the mayor of the second largest Jewish city in the world

very frightening.

And I'm actually really disappointed that more Democrats have either, you know,

are not coming out and condemning him and saying we're not going to endorse this guy because he is beyond the pale.

And I feel like I was 10 years ago when I was writing all these critical things about Republicans who were not saying anything about Trump and letting Trump go on and on and they weren't standing up to him.

And I feel with this guy, we're seeing the same sort of cowardice and spinelessness.

I'm never gonna defend that comment, right?

But you know, he did actually come out this week and say that he shouldn't have used that language, he's never gonna use that language again, and that he's gonna encourage people not to use that language and push back against it.

So that is actually the right move.

So I think we should point that out.

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Okay, well, this is the issue that is going to divide the Democratic Party.

Jews, Israel, Gaza.

Obviously, the last month that we've been off, that's taken an even worse turn in Gaza.

There is starvation there now.

Even Trump says it.

The question isn't whether it is going on.

It is going on.

It is always whose fault is it.

Now, let's not kid ourselves.

Hamas does like it when their own people die.

That is their strategy.

I'm not saying Israel is blameless or Israel has done the right things here, but let's not forget that part of it.

They do like it when their people die.

Their strategy is to win the propaganda war, and of course martyrdom is a big part of the religion.

That's a good thing to die.

So we're dealing with that.

That was always the problem with dealing with an enemy that has suicide bombers.

How do you stop people who like dying in a war?

So where are you on that?

Yeah, you know, I spent the early part of my life fighting folks like Hamas.

People doing suicide bombings,

human shields,

taking advantage of the civilian population.

And there are just evil people in the world that need to be brought to justice and need to be killed.

And Hamas is in that category.

There's no doubt about it.

But what I also learned during that time is all the folks around them, the civilians that get caught up in that,

they are victims of it too.

99 plus percent of the Palestinians who are trying to live their life, parents, raise children, that just want peace too, are also victims of Hamas.

And we can't, in the process of going after Hamas, allow those folks to be written off as collateral damage or just the necessary victims, because what I learned is that it's not necessary.

It is not an inevitable consequence of conflicts and wars that we just have to accept this level of civilian casualties and suffering.

There is a different way of doing it, and that's why I have focused on saying, yes, go after Hamas, make sure that Israel can be safe and prosperous and secure, but also the Palestinians also deserve safety, prosperity, security, and dignity as well.

They have been offered that for 75 years.

They have been offered that for 75 years if they would stop insisting Israel must not exist.

And I would also just question the figure of 99.5%

to oppose Hamas.

We actually think it's a lot less than that.

Way less.

And that doesn't make them, that does not make if you're a civilian, it doesn't matter who you support.

If you're a civilian, you're a civilian, and no civilian should ever be targeted in warfare.

by a democratic country.

But we have to really appreciate the unprecedented nature of this conflict that Israel is in right now.

This This is the first time that a country was invaded by a sadistic, depraved enemy that came in, murdered 1,200 people, took 250 hostages.

We haven't heard about them, by the way.

There are some of them left right now.

And then these evil, evil men, they built a 500-mile tunnel structure underground with materials that was given to them by the international community to actually build homes and schools and something productive.

They use that as a bomb shelter for themselves.

And they don't let any civilians come down when Israeli bombs rain down on them.

So how can Israel win this war?

I think we all agree Hamas has to go because if Hamas is left in power at the end of this conflict, I can tell you, whether it's two years, three years, five years, ten years, they will start another pointless war and the Palestinian people will be the chief victims of it.

And again,

let me just

interject one thing before we run out of time, because this is important.

We are a catch-up on the news show.

And what you just said, we all agree that Hamas has to go.

Until yesterday, we did not all agree.

As of yesterday, the Arab League,

the Arab League, this is the, let's not bury the lead here, the Arab League, 22 Arab countries got together and said, Hamas, you're over.

That's huge.

That the Arabs themselves are saying, this is a bad organization and these people have to go.

You need to disarm and give up.

And of course,

this all could have ended if they just had surrendered, which obviously they're beaten but they don't want to do that

there's no and that's not right either but my larger point is this and and what you talked about is right the the tactical realities and the challenges of this brute brutal stuff yeah I mean we're really really tough challenge going after that no doubt about it my larger point is this is thousands of women and children and families starving to death is not inevitable It's not an inevitable consequence of that.

That does not need to be a part of this, right?

There is a way to prevent it and still accomplish the larger goal, and that's what I'm fighting to do.

What about the younger people in your party, though?

How are you going to get them to understand, no matter how many times people like Jamie and I say to them, it's the world is a complicated place, and it's not just about oppressor and oppressed.

They have a thought in their head that white people did some very bad things, and white people did some very bad things.

And they're all columns, but so did everybody else in the world.

But they don't know that.

They just see the world through this one prism.

And until they do, I don't think you're going to get them off this issue.

And I don't think the Democratic Party is going to be able to go forward until they make a decision.

Whose side are you on here?

Are you on the side of Western civilization and Western values?

Or are you on the side of the terrorists?

Are you with those kids?

Because, you know, Mandami, he's the perfect candidate for them.

Yep.

That's what they think is cool.

I mean, that's what the campus protests were.

So I'd just be curious what you say in our last minute that we have.

How does the Democratic Party address your younger people because there's the energy of the party?

You know, the challenge of politics and the challenge of being a political leader right now is the fact that there isn't a lot of room for debate.

There isn't a lot of room for people to sit down and say, we need to hold multiple truths in our minds at the same time.

Well, that's a tough one.

That is tough.

Yeah.

Right?

Because we're in the soundbite world.

Social media doesn't allow it.

Tristan talked about this.

It is really tough, and that is the leadership challenge of the moment, right?

That is what we all have to do, is say, there are multiple things that need to happen here.

We need to protect civilians, we need to protect children.

All people need to have dignity and human rights in a path to self-governance, and that we don't have to choose who's allowed to have it and who's not allowed to have it.

And that is our task.

And I'm going to continue to fight hard to try to get it done.

Okay.

Great to have you.

Great to have you, Jamie.

Thank you, guys.

Time for New Rule.

Okay.

All right, new rule.

Now that Mattel is going to make a Barbie who has diabetes,

maybe it's time we thought, rethought whether kids today could accept Ken having a dick.

I mean,

I don't even know how a toy gets diabetes.

Did you share a shelf with Candyland?

But if we are living in a world so modern that Barbie gets diabetes, we have to ask the transformers if they really need to transform.

I get it.

Your truth is you're a robot that identifies as a truck, but are you sure it's not just a phase?

New rule, stop saying you're on the spectrum.

You're not on the spectrum.

I'm afraid it's much worse.

You're just a garden variety asshole.

New rule, Gen Z must tell me how they're supposed to be enlightened and informed when every TikTok trend makes them look like complete morons.

The latest example, using Sharpies as lip liner?

You don't see color?

Well, I do.

And your lips are permanently black.

The good news is you can fix it with this brand of new makeup remover.

New rule, and you can laugh all you want at the revelation that some chimps dangle grass and sticks from their rear ends as a fashion trend,

but you have to admit it's no more ridiculous than a fashion show.

Here's something from Victor and Ralph's full winter collection, and I can tell you what this model is thinking: I'd rather have sticks dangling from my ass.

New rule, this lady who got caught cheating on her husband with this guy must answer two questions.

One, if you're going to cheat, why do it with another 50-ish white guy?

This guy?

Sure, I get that.

This guy?

Sure, live a little.

Her?

Yeah, you bet.

All that makes sense.

But whoever you're going to do it with, whatever happened to meeting at a hotel.

You go to a concert?

Congratulations.

You've given us a whole new way of describing sneaking around, keeping it on the up high.

And finally, new rule, now that we're back from our summer break and the year is a little more than half over, and you know what that means, Merry Christmas.

Let's take stock of the first half of the first year of Trump's second term and make some rational decisions about what to lose our shit over and what not to.

Because, you know, a guy came up to me the other day and he said, Bill, I know you're a guy who cares about health.

You must be incensed that Bobby Kennedy took the dye out of Fruit Loops and now the whole administration is acting like they solved the

health crisis.

I'm not.

I'm not incensed.

I'm sure you're right.

I just don't have room.

But Bill, he's going to put the sugar back in Coca-Cola.

Yeah, I don't give a shit.

I care about as much about that as I do Megan Markle's new skincare routine.

First of all, sugar probably is better than high fructose corn syrup.

Heroin is probably better than high fructose corn syrup.

But I don't care because I don't drink soda and also because right after he got elected in November, I said here and everywhere else I could, he got the White House, but this time he's not going to get my mind.

There's only.

There's only, only so many fucks to give.

And I just don't have any any for the Gulf of America.

Air quotes, that's how I'm fighting the little shit.

And speaking of little shits, Steve Bannon

Steve Bannon famously said that the way you win is to flood the zone with shit.

shit.

You want to help them with that?

Great, you do you.

But I'm not chasing every brain fart down the rabbit hole.

So therefore, here is my one-eighth of the term scorecard for what actually matters.

Turning the Environmental Protection Agency into the Pollution Protection Agency?

Yes, that's going to matter.

All the people who will lose health care and all the debt that will be run up from the big, beautiful bill?

Yes, that matters.

Turning the Justice Department into the National Revenge Agency.

Firing all the inspector generals, maybe firing the head of the Federal Reserve.

Letting Doge destroy lives here and abroad in a way that didn't have to go down like that in order to slim the government down, which it didn't do anyway.

Creating a domestic army of masked troops, rounding people up and sending them off to detention centers and foreign prisons.

Yeah, the big beautiful bill has $150 billion in it for additional spending for snatching people up who've lived here peacefully and productively for decades, mostly with no criminal records.

I'm just saying, if you're thinking of getting your car washed, you might want to do it now.

So

yeah, there's a lot of outrageous, horrible shit going on.

Not all.

We don't have to take off our shoes at the airport anymore.

I like that.

And I got to say, I love it that Iran won't be getting a nuclear bomb anytime soon.

And no, I'm not saying that because I sat down with him once and ate his green beans.

I'm kidding, there were no vegetables.

Vegetables are gay.

Everybody knows that.

No, it's just that life is complicated.

And Democrats need to be less emotional and more focused.

Now, should the Washington commanders be forced to go back to the name Redskins?

Probably not, but you know, Indians are hip.

They know that the name of a football team will have the exact same effect on their actual lives as forcing people to do a land acknowledgement before porn videos.

Which may be why the majority of Indians never cared about this.

Maybe take a cue from them.

Should Trump have decreed that there are only two sexes?

Not really, but frankly, I'm happy I'm just one of them.

And

Greenland, I'm sorry, I just can't.

You know, I just, I'm sorry.

I never thought about it before.

I can't start now.

Reopening Alcatraz, oh, for fuck's sake, open it on Greenland for all I care.

It's not going to happen, and neither is making Canada the 51st state.

Now, is fucking with Canada stupid, boorish, and unnecessary?

Of course.

So much of this shit is.

There's no way when Trump leaves office, he's getting his deposit back.

But also, get a life.

Stop making him your whole personality.

Thank you.

You know, in meditation, not that I really do it,

but I'm gonna.

I'm gonna start.

But I know they say when you're trying to clear your mind, but thoughts rush in, don't fight them.

Just let them pass like a cloud.

Well, maybe that's what we should do with some of Trump's stupid stuff.

He took a 747 as a gift?

That's not cool.

Oh well.

The top military guy is a big drunk?

Well, so is Ulysses S.

Grant.

Maybe it'll work out like that.

He's naming the Kennedy Center after...

Wait, what?

He's naming the Kennedy Center after his wife?

That's kind of sweet.

Wasn't it a law that he had to sell TikTok?

Yes, it was.

It was.

It was absolutely a fucking law that he had to sell TikTok.

But you know what?

With this administration, you have to triage your outrage.

So please, when I'm out there, no more Bill.

Did you see what he did today?

If you don't even have to say who he is, you already lost.

Because...

He is already living too rent-free in your head.

All right, that's our show.

I want to thank Danny Kershik, Representative Jason Crow, and Tristan Harris.

Club Random drops every Monday on YouTube.

Or listen wherever you get your podcast.

Now go watch Overtime on YouTube.

Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.

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.

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