Ep. #700: Dave Barry, Rep. Wesley Hunt, Paul Begala

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

Start the clock.

Happy Friday.

Happy summer.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

Welcome to our show.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate it.

Okay, so much to get to.

I know you're excited.

It is the first day of summer, and you can tell, because, you know, there's still Marines here in town.

What?

And

they've changed from their camouflage greens to the floral khaki for summer.

It's really.

And why are they still here?

I'm not sure.

I guess to protect the immigration agents who are...

Did you see this yesterday?

They tried to pull off a raid on Dodger Stadium.

I'm not kidding.

Dodger Stadium.

One thing we will not stand for for in America, it is Latinos and baseball.

Yeah, and

the National Guard is still here?

A lot of security here in LA.

A appeals court ruled that Trump can keep them here pretty much indefinitely.

And I think the National Guard is, I think the LA lifestyle is going to their head.

I notice now before they take a, put a raid on Home Depot, they call TMZ first and they

tell them they're coming.

But, of course,

the really big news is that this is our 700th episode of World Sun.

I know.

It's hard to believe.

I know.

I,

of course, started as a child child star.

But 22 years ago, 2020, wow, back then, by the way, if the Arabs wanted to surprise the president with a plane, they flew it into the Pentagon.

I'm just saying things have changed a lot.

Well, maybe they haven't changed so much.

It's still all about the Mideast, isn't it?

I mean, there's a war going on now between Iran and Israel.

And it's interesting, it's really split the MAGA coalition, the Trump people.

Half of them want to bomb Iran, they always did,

and half of them want to just stay out of all foreign wars.

And everybody there just wishes that

it was something morally clear-cut, like deporting five-year-olds.

Irony, that's what we do here.

I don't know.

Not really for.

You know, 22 years.

But talk about a cliffhanger.

I mean, we're off now for the next month, our summer break, and we, you know, boy, season-ending cliffhanger, this war, we don't know what's going to happen.

I mean, nobody wants Iran to get a nuclear weapon.

And of course,

the Israelis took out everything in Iran except the facility that can can build the nuclear weapon because it's

well, because it's inside a mountain.

And listen to this, America is the only country that has a bomb that can reach it and it weighs 30,000 pounds and can only be flown there by Tom Cruise.

To make it even more of a cliffhanger, we can't just give the bomb to Israel because we also are the only country that has the plane that can deliver this fucking thing.

And it is quite a plane.

Pete Hegseth has already given it a name, the Enola Strait.

Oh, Pete.

Pete Hegseth, Pete's in hot water, because did you see the parade?

He's in charge of the Defense Department, and Trump had his big military parade last Saturday, and it was kind of lame-o, and

Pete was in charge.

And you know, well, you put on a military parade, at least do it right.

The whole point of it is to kind of scare the shit out of people that were a big

more Americans were frightened by Kendrick Lamar's Super Bowl halftime show.

This did not look.

Oh, listen to this.

Yesterday was Juneteenth, right?

So Trump,

President Trump,

tweeted, or truth, whatever he does there on the phone,

here was his comment on Juneteenth.

There are too many non-working holidays in America.

Now stop honoring the end of slavery and get back to work.

Trump once called himself the least racist person in the world.

I gotta say, the runner-up guy must be a doozy.

But,

way, it's...

But of course, it all balances out because the Trump family, proprietors of shitcoin, cryptocurrency,

Bibles that they sell, watches, and mail order meets, now have...

In addition to all that, they this week announced they are selling a gold cell phone.

I have never seen a presidency with more commercials.

I was just going to say that.

And

if you'd like to, you can order this phone now.

Operators are standing by.

All sales are final.

You just can't get it because it doesn't exist.

When you go to the website, they just have a drawing of a phone.

They don't have a phone, they have concepts of the phone.

I gotta say, when P.T.

Barnum sold tickets to see the bearded lady, at least there was a bearded lady.

All right, we have a great show.

We have Paul Bogala and Congressman Wesley Hunt.

But first up, he is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist.

His new book is called Class Clown, The Memoirs of a Professional Wise Ass: How I Went 77 Years Without Growing Up.

Dave Barry is over here.

Dave Barry,

how are you?

Great to see you.

Great to see you too, man.

Been too long.

Wow.

You always look the same, 77 years old, and you still have the Dennis the Menace haircut.

They worked on this.

They worked on it backstage, man.

That is unbelievable.

Yeah, well, I mean, I thought about going, you know, straight back.

Don't.

No?

Have you ever thought about bangs using bangs?

Me bangs?

Yeah.

No, I'm not.

You have no credibility at all.

No, no.

You know,

we're just different dudes.

You know, like, that works for you.

It wouldn't work for me.

But I don't know that it really works for me.

I think my wife kind of revealed to me after 30-something years the other day that she would like it better if I slicked it straight back like you.

She didn't use your name, but

she did sort of say that, you know, so I don't know, man.

Well, I got to tell you, the fact that you wrote a memoir is just good news for all of us who have always enjoyed your writing so much.

Thank you.

It's just so much fun

because, you know,

you wrote about everything else for your whole life.

You know, you wrote about a guy who married an alligator or whatever the fuck was going on in Florida.

But this is about you.

I'm going to ask you the same question I asked a few people who have been here with memoirs of a certain age.

Barry Diller was here recently.

It's like, when you're 77 and you write a memoir, this is why I don't want to do it at some point.

Because doesn't it feel like I'm saying my life is over?

But it is.

I mean...

Yeah, okay.

Well,

77 is, it's not, I mean, it's the new 74.

It's not like,

it is old, and you can't like, you can't pretend it's not old.

Right, you know, so, I mean, when am I going to write it?

When I'm dead?

No, you know.

Well, you cannot write it at all.

That's what I'm saying.

I'm always about tomorrow.

But I mean, when I look back at your life, what a life.

I mean, you're a guy who, a comic, really, because you're just more than a humorist.

They say that, but when you laugh out loud, which you make people do, and me, that's a comic, okay?

A comic who's won a Pulitzer Prize,

had a sitcom about him that was on for quite a while with Harry Anderson as you and has been in a band with Stephen King for your whole life.

But

not a good band.

We play our genre, we call it hard listening music.

I should stress, there's a lot of good authors in this band, Stephen King's in it, Amy Tan, Scott Terot, Mitt Mitchell, a bunch of them, and we raise money for charities, but no charity ever asks us to come back.

You know what I mean?

Even

the trick.

Well, one thing I loved reading about in your book, because

bits of your life would come through in your columns, but this is really about your life.

I never knew that much about your childhood.

Anybody our age, you know, I'm almost 70, our childhoods were so interchangeable.

I feel like that's something that kids today don't have.

Like, we could, I mean, you grew up in Armonck, New York.

So did I, even though I didn't.

But we did.

Your house was my house.

I'm sure it was.

I'm talking about, first of all, I'm talking about the white kids.

Let's be was your town all white?

Yes.

So it was mine.

And this is this is the East Coast.

This in Alabama.

Yeah.

These were the liberals of the day.

So don't get too, you know,

snooty.

We were the good white people.

Yeah.

But you know, you went to a high school called Pleasantville.

Pleasantville?

So did I, even though it wasn't.

Were you elected class clown of your...

I was not a...

I felt I was more the class wit.

A class clown would like throw spitballs.

No, no, no.

No, but I was a wise ass, I will say.

A wise ass?

But did you do anything physical?

Never.

Well, then you were a wit.

Okay.

But I was disrupt.

I got told more than once, like, that's very funny, but you can't joke joke your way through life, which turns out to be inaccurate.

Very inaccurate.

No, no, you, you, uh,

once you caught on with a newspaper, and that's another thing I must say that is so great when I was remembering that era when newspapers were king.

Kids, do you know what a newspaper?

I mean, it's, you know, they get their news on TikTok now.

And of course, we're talking about the heyday, the 80s, the 90s.

Is it just made, or was the time really a lot gentler than it is now?

Much, much.

I mean,

everybody has gotten more vicious.

Everybody has gotten more

determined to savage the other side.

And the days when

a guy like Art Buchwald was the beloved humorist and Johnny Carr, I'm sound like old farts here, but it's true.

They were laughing at both

everybody, and everybody laughed, and people they were making fun of laughed at him.

And it wasn't like, oh, you scored points against the wrong team.

You can't do it.

So we've lost.

I don't remember anybody using the word existential

about the other side.

No, right.

How many existential crises have we been in?

And nobody, right?

And, you know, I remember we spent maybe two whole years

obsessing about Clinton's blowjob.

Good times.

Good times.

Good times.

I miss those blowjobs.

I mean,

not the way it sounds, but you know.

I just want to point out to you.

Maybe if you see that.

The biggest round of applause we've gotten so far is for blowjobs.

Maybe if you slick back your hair, you'll start getting them again.

But do you, I mean, you stopped the weekly column in like 20 years ago, something?

2005.

And it is a demanding mistress.

Yes, it's a TV show.

I mean it's a mistress I love.

But we didn't get hiatuses for like 14 weeks in our country.

Not 14 weeks.

We will be back August 1st.

Oh, okay.

But you must miss it on some level.

I did, and I started writing a sub stack, as did every other ex-journalist in the free world.

But

I was glad to get out of

the rat race for at least a while.

Yeah.

And what about running?

I mean, you ran as a libertarian.

Oh, yeah, I ran for president multiple times.

Multiple times.

And it used to be considered kind of a joke, but not so much anymore.

I'm thinking,

I'm looking pretty good right now.

I think I have a genuine shot next time around.

Thank you.

Long time.

I'm a natural.

I see you are.

Well, you're only 77.

Biden proved age doesn't matter.

Doesn't matter at all.

Doesn't matter at all.

But what else?

I mean, you must, you got to look forward in life.

Podcasting, maybe?

No.

I'm doing a sub-stack, which is the other thing that everybody's doing.

Yeah.

And this show, this is pretty much the highlight for me.

Boy, why not podcasting?

You seem like you'd be a natural.

Because I mean, you have to talk.

And I'm better when I'm sitting down, you know, coming up joke, joke, joke, than I am.

Well, if you're asking me questions, it's okay.

But if I had to think of what to say.

I mean, look at all the fucking laughs you got here today.

Damn.

All right.

Well, whatever you do, I will remain your biggest fan.

I appreciate it.

Dave Bowery, everybody.

All right.

Thank you.

Let's meet our channel.

Hey guys,

all right.

He is a Democratic strategist and CNN political contributor Paul Bagala back with us.

And he is a

Republican congressman representing the 38th District of Texas.

Congressman Wesley Hunt, Congressman, great to see you.

Yes, sir.

All right, I'm not going to have a big lead-in question today.

I'm just going to say we're thinking about bombing Iran.

We're thinking about joining that war.

The the Republicans are split over it, so you can imagine what the rest of the country is.

But let's let me just get a yes or no answer.

No, screwing around.

Should America bomb the nuclear facility in Iran or not?

Go.

Oh, come on now, Bill.

We've got to have a little more big of a debate than that, sir.

Come on.

Yes or no?

That's what Trump says.

He's spending two weeks.

It's always two weeks.

He's thinking about it for two weeks.

But he says he also is demanding unconditional surrender.

I mean, come on, this is what we're deciding.

Should we bomb Iran?

Should we get involved on Israel's side?

Trump is already using the word we when he talks about we, like we took out there.

We didn't do anything so far.

Should we get involved?

We were the only ones with the bomb, the only ones who can do it.

Yes or no?

Let me get to this.

So no, hold on, hold on.

Hold on.

This is a far more robust conversation than that.

Hold on.

Hold on.

What I really want to point out is the difference in the Republican Party that we had 30 years ago.

If Cheney were in charge right now, 30 years ago, we would already have boots on the ground in Iran and surrounding

Iran right now.

So at the end of the day, I want people to understand how far we have come as a party.

We want peace in the Middle East.

President Trump is the one that brought us the Abraham Accords.

He has said repeatedly that Iran should not have a nuclear weapon, and President Trump does not want to put boots on the ground.

No one, everyone agrees with all that.

So 60 days ago, he gave the Ayatollah warning.

He said, hey, look, you know, you got 60 days to wrap this up.

And if you don't, you're going to play stupid games.

You're going to win stupid prizes.

Look how well that worked with Putin.

We know what happened with our Baghdaddy, though.

And imagine waking up every day wondering if you're going to eat a missile for breakfast.

This is how this man negotiates, and this is exactly what we're going through right now.

This is a negotiating tactic to get peace.

No boots on the ground, and you cannot have a nuclear weapon, like Denzel Washington said in Training Day.

Do you want to go home or do you want to go to jail?

All right, well,

you get this season's award for best avoidance of the end.

Look,

I advise a president, and The most important thing with presidents isn't even answers, it's the questions.

The first question is, should we?

We don't want Iran to have a nuclear weapon, but have we exhausted every non-military option?

I think the answer to that is no, but I'm not privy to all the intel.

Second, can we?

Will this bomb work?

This GBU-57, this 30,000-pound?

Probably, but there are some.

I saw Admiral Mike Mullen the other day saying, not entirely sure.

No one knows.

Right.

It's a mountain.

But here's the point.

They're attacking a mountain.

But this is the question that the president has to ask.

And I know he's watching.

Mr.

President, ask your team, what happens the day after?

That's the question the president needs to ask.

What happens the day after?

And are we ready?

And I know the answer to that is no.

Right?

Why?

Because this president has diverted resources away from intelligence, away from counterterrorism, away from Homeland Security, and all toward deportations.

He seems to think the greatest threat to America is a guy with a leaf blower in Encino, not a guy with a suicide vest in Manhattan.

Because we are not ready for this.

militarily.

We might as well disagree a little bit on this, and that is as somebody that has fought in wars, as somebody that's a West Point grad.

My brother and sister are also West Point graduates.

They're six years of military service in my family.

We have to be very careful with how we handle this.

We have to measure once and cut twice.

Because if we don't handle this right, then we're going to end up putting boots on the ground.

And this is exactly what President Trump ran on for decades.

He has been saying we should not be putting our soldiers at risk unless it is absolutely necessary.

So that's why this can't be a binary conversation.

A lot of people would say Iran getting a bomb is about as necessary as it gets.

And that's why President Trump has committed to Iran not having a bomb.

Even today, the president was asked, your intelligence team says they're not very close to getting a bomb.

And he said, I don't believe him.

Well, if you don't believe your own intelligence team, get a new one.

I mean, what the hell?

You've spent billions and billions of dollars to try to give that man that answer.

And this is the problem is he says he's going to take two weeks.

I like that, by the way.

I'd rather take two weeks and think it through.

But who's he talking to?

You know,

at least in the first term, he had General McMaster, he had General Kelly, he had General Mattis, he had serious national security professionals.

I didn't support his agenda, but he had serious people with him.

This team, are you kidding?

Come on, seriously.

IKEA's got better cabinets.

Well, he's not.

I think he's talking to like four people.

One of them is the head of the Joint Chiefs.

I assume he's fairly serious.

One of them is John Ratcliffe, head of the CIA.

He's not serious?

Not terribly.

Okay.

I'm sorry.

He was a former Congressman from Texas, and I love Congressman from Texas.

Well, thank you.

I appreciate it, sir.

Thank you.

You can look it up.

But he didn't cut out Pete, Hegset, and Tulsey.

So the children are out on the kids' table.

Okay, so

they're not in the room.

So, but

let me ask you.

Go ahead.

Okay, and so why have them?

Why have a director of national intelligence you don't listen to?

Why have a Pentagon chief that you don't talk to?

Casting.

Right.

Casting.

Cast.

So

we're forgetting one thing, though.

We are still forgetting one thing.

That President Trump was president before, and we didn't have an issue with Iran.

And the reason why is because, well, Iran was broke.

And it is time for us to unleash American energy and continue to fight wars against our enemies by ensuring that our allies have the energy from us made in this country so they can't rely on Iran and Venezuela and Russia.

This is how we have to fight wars in the future.

So the reason why he can say this is because he's done us for four years already.

I know you love him.

And let me say, I think he's

one thing about this in defense of him, which is that he is hardly the first president to cut out people in his own cabinet.

Presidents have done this before.

They lose faith, and you just don't get in the room, even though you have a big title.

You're just he people can't get it.

Presidents have their kitchen cabinets.

Within one year, Bill Clinton fired his defense secretary.

It's first year.

Okay, let's ask

a bad job.

He put out his ass.

That's what you do if you have a lot of money.

It's been a long year.

It's been five months.

It's a shit show.

It always is.

We are putting our lives in the hands of Pete Hagseth and deportation Barbie and Tulsi Gabby.

I'm sorry.

Let me ask you this.

Because I know, I think

of all the people in Congress, I think you're the one who is most always backing whatever Trump does.

Yes, sir.

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Okay,

with this decision about Iran, is it really predicated on how you feel about Trump?

In other words, whatever, because the Republican Party is split about this.

Ted Cruz and Tucker Carlson, who usually would be agreeing on everything,

had a real housewives fight the other day

about this, because Tucker Carlson is on a side which you were expressing before.

A lot of Republicans love Trump because he is like, we don't get involved with foreigners.

That's not us, America first.

And then there's a lot of Republicans who are like, oh no, we got to bomb Iran because that's the enemy of Israel and Israel is where you know who's going to come back to earth.

This to me is the difference between a political party and a cult.

Cults are by what the person does, and parties are what ideas.

I think, you know, I'm going to make my decision based on the ideas.

I feel like some people do it just by the person.

Whatever Trump does, you're going to go along with.

I think what you're seeing is...

They never disagree.

No, there's certain things we disagree on, but here's the thing.

What you're seeing is a healthy debate, but to your previous question, what you're seeing is a healthy debate between two pieces of our party, and I think it's actually a very good thing.

You know, I'm in the House of Representatives, and over the course of the past 20 years, the Democrats have had one Speaker of the House, and that was Nason Pelosi before Hakeem Jeffries.

We've had five.

People in our party actually will debate.

We will actually look at a person and say, you know what?

We don't like this.

Let's have a healthy debate, and let's move on.

You want to talk about no kings and no queens.

I mean, having one Speaker of the House for 20 years is something else.

So you're seeing this open up in our party again.

You have two factions, you have two pieces of the party that care about each other immensely.

Let's let this play out.

Let's talk about it.

And then let the president make the ultimate choice.

Was the fact that he had an assassination attempt and survived it?

And look, I've heard idiots on the left say to me, Bill, you know that was staged.

Yeah, that wasn't staged.

No, it was not staged.

That would be ridiculous because the guy behind him got shot.

Right.

And we don't really seem to care about that guy anymore.

But anyway,

they did try to shoot him, and he did survive it.

And I know a lot of Republicans think that is determinative.

They think God saved him and therefore he cannot make a wrong move.

Is that where you believe?

Well,

it wasn't just that.

It's just you guys had a really bad candidate in Kamala Harris.

And people also have to understand is that that was one of the most undemocratic things I've ever seen.

What you did was you took Joe Biden, you put him in a room, put on Golden Girls, gave him some chocolate, chocolate chip ice cream.

And then by the time he walked out, he was no longer running for president.

He had no idea what was going on.

So when you combine that with a candidate that not a single Democrat voted for in that primary, it creates a disaster.

That's another big reason why President Trump won is because the Democrat Party lost faith in the American people because they broke the process in order to get the right candidate to actually run for president.

I want to come back to this point you made about culturality because I think you're right.

When Donald Trump was the most against TikTok, And I try, I can't stand the guy, but I try, I thought he's right about that.

I think TikTok is Chinese communist.

I don't like it.

He was against it.

And every MAGA guy I knew was against it.

Then he met with a TikTok billionaire.

He's all for TikTok.

And they're all for it now.

It's like, come on, they're still Chinese communists.

But he will win.

Whichever side he chooses, his team will, his base will come along with him.

This is Mosu.

He's also in charge.

We have a leader in our party.

Who's the leader in your party?

Well, you just said it was bad for the family.

Hold on, hold on, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, but not for 20 years.

So we have someone that is absolutely our leader of the party.

It is Donald Trump, but we are actually behind him.

Who is your leader?

Is it going to be Bernie Sanders?

Is it going to be AOC?

Is it going to be Jasmine Crockett?

Are you kidding me?

Anybody who gets in the way of the dear leader.

I remember when Roger Ells and Fox News took him on, he crushed them.

I remember when Elon Musk a few weeks ago took him on.

Trump crushed them.

So whatever Trump does, and I guess if I was advising him as a political advisor, I'd say, sir, whatever you do, they're going to be with you.

So figure out what the right thing to do is.

In that sense, he's free.

It's only about 35% of the country, but it's about 65% of the Republican Party.

They will do anything the dear leader says.

And that's terrifying.

but for Trump it ought to give him some space to be able to do or not do what he thinks is best.

You know what my issue is with him?

I've said this and I said this way before I

had dinner at the same table.

Like

he does not always have bad ideas.

Sometimes he has ideas.

You agree, right?

Of course.

I mean like close the border or get order on the border and like get the gangs out of the country and make Europe pay for their own defense and

go back to equality instead of always equity and and universities are out of control a lot of these things but what I can always depend on that administration do is to reliably fuck up the execution

doge

you know like all these things I can all these issues I mentioned you know should we see if the government has too much bloat and fat in it yes but reliably like clockwork like you could depend on it they will fuck up the execution just like they did with the parade Like,

do I think it was a good idea to have a parade?

No, but if you're going to do it, if you're going to have a vaguely fascist parade, do it right.

In his first term,

he did two things that were great.

Honestly.

Two things that were great the first term.

Warp speed, he created the best vaccine in the world faster than anybody else for COVID, the COVID vaccine.

And then he now never talks about it, and his team all renounces.

He puts a guy in charge of the health department who's a vaccine skeptic, to say the least.

He never talks about the the best thing he ever did.

The other thing he did was the USNCA updated NAFTA, U.S.-Mexico trade deal.

What did he do the first time he comes back?

He blows that up too.

So even the stuff that he does that is good, you're right, he just destroys it.

I don't understand why it would take the entire staff of the Harvard School of Psychology to explain to me.

But I do want to say something about that parade.

I want to say something about the parade to offer

To offer another opinion from our side of this whole thing, and that is it was the 250th birthday of our United States Army.

As I said, thank you very much.

And somebody that served this nation as an Apache pilot, again, my brother and sister going to West Point, six years of military service, mostly in the Army.

My great-great-grandfather fought in the Civil War.

And you know what I saw?

I saw the president salute the Corps of Cadets as they walked past him.

I watched him salute the 75th Ranger Regiment as they walked past him.

I sat there and watched the fireworks behind the Washington Monument.

And you know what I thought?

Damn, that's absolutely outstanding.

And it's far better than Joe Biden checking his watch when bodies were being returned to Dover.

Okay, wait a minute.

This is a, hold on, this is a contrast that we were talking about in why you lost because we are talking about a man that's talking about patriotism.

And in parades like that, when I was growing up, I served because I used to go to these parades and watch my dad participate in them.

I saw the Blackhawks landing.

I visited my sister at West Point.

I said, by God, I want to serve this country too.

And so the dichotomy of what we're seeing with President Trump and his patriotism saluting the flag, actually making an effort.

And whether you like it or agree with the execution, the effort is is there as all you want to see.

Well, execution does matter.

First of all, thank you for your support.

Bill, I mean that, I say that to everybody.

I'm a million.

I've always had for 22 years.

I'm watching for 22 years.

Absolutely.

I'm always behind the military.

Nobody compares to the military.

Everybody says that they're brave, they're brave.

Oh, you're so brave.

Military, that's who's brave.

And cops and firefighters and people like that, but mostly the military.

But I got to ask you this, as far as like, again, good ideas.

Here's another thing I think is a good idea that he has yes we should love our country more the left is way too down on this country

but the execution as always i don't understand it i don't understand some of the things he does in support of that idea of america you know do you think it's right he's he had a a poster uh that we put out last week uncle sam wants you to turn in foreign invaders do you think that's right turn in foreign invaders he's talking about basically immigrants who come here and take jobs.

So you talk about

snitches like we're East Germany.

Let's get on.

You want citizens turning on each other like that?

You talk about big ideas.

You know what a big idea is?

Running for president in 2016 and winning, and then losing.

Do you want to know what even bigger idea is?

Oh, you say he lies?

Coming.

Coming.

No, no.

Hold on.

Hold on.

We can get on that.

No, yes.

No.

The point I'm making is the big idea, the big idea, and then losing that election, then coming back and then returning and then becoming the president again because he's the president as we live and breathe Those are some pretty big ideas Those are the biggest ideas that you could ever have in the in America That is in fact the American dream He's executed very well and he is one of two people in the history of this great nation to ever serve as president twice after not winning his and after not winning re-election.

Those are big ideas.

I want to come back to this notion about Trump in the military and about President Biden whose son served and enlisted something Donald Trump's son never did.

Donald Trump, Donald Trump went to a military school for high school.

Okay, but he didn't serve.

He avoided service in Vietnam.

He said he had bone spurs.

Then he said avoiding STDs was his Vietnam.

Then he said, John McCain was not a war hero.

Then he said, troops are suckers and losers and are war dead.

Yes, he did.

He was going to a World War I cemetery.

My grandfather fought in World War I and was wounded in Europe for this country.

That's to prove it.

And I honor your service and I honor his.

And Trump pisses on our veterans and

militarily does not.

No, yes, he does.

and and and and and i'm gonna ask you and i'm asking i'm gonna i'm gonna ask you a question if that if that is the case if that's the case if that is the case december january and february we've seen the highest recruiting numbers for the military than we've seen these years why is that the case you could say that all you want but i am somebody that has served and the people that are in my ranks overwhelmingly look at president trump and they say if i really want somebody that's going to defend us and put us in harm's way if necessary i would absolutely take president trump over joe biden why does he stab him in the background

well then if that's the case then why do we have have record recruiting right now?

All right, please.

This show is not about organizing.

No, really.

Oh, no.

I just want to.

No, it is.

And it always has been, and we love it.

And I'm going to start second hundred show.

I wanted to just pause to say, first of all, thank you to my incredible staff, who's here every morning, whatever.

Or incredible.

And to HBO, which has put up with me for all these years.

And to the audience who's been so loyal.

And we will be back.

We're going to take a month off, as Louise said.

We'll be back on August 1st.

And whenever we take a month off, what we do is we give you the future headlines because the headlines are so predictable these days with the way the news is.

This is what we always do.

We're going to take a break.

So, would you like to see the future headlines?

There they are.

Future headlines.

This is what you're going to be reading the next month.

Gen Z are shocked to learn their phones make calls.

Heartbroken Elon Musk stands outside White House with boombottes.

Oh, that's...

Ocean fish found to contain more plastic than plastic fish.

Travis Kelsey draws line at buying tampons.

America's Got Talent announces America officially out of town.

Madonna marries Mexican who stood on Flaming Waymo.

However, that's inevitable.

Diddy goes to prison, has freak off in cell block D.

And ICE mistakenly deports Marco Rubio.

All right.

All right, so I have to bring up a very unfortunate club that has formed in America, and that is Politicians Who've Been Shot At.

Because we saw this last week.

There's two more people,

and there are spouses, by the way, in Minnesota who were shot by somebody.

Just yesterday now, we have a new one, the Memphis mayor.

Somebody came to his door.

The people go right to their houses now.

His statement was, the link between angry online rhetoric and real-life violence is becoming undeniable.

I would agree with that.

I mean, we saw member Gabby Gittford got shot, Steve Scalise, so it can happen

on both sides, Paul Pelosi in his home.

This is becoming routine now.

Do we say that both parties are equally guilty?

Because when I think about January 6th and pardoning all the people who were involved in that insurrection, or whatever you want to call it.

Insurrection.

How you have an insurrection with no guns, though, though?

That's like having...

That's like making coffee.

They brought tons of guns.

It's just a matter of time.

No, it's not.

Well, there's 400 guns currently in circulation.

There's 40 million guns currently in circulation.

One person was killed that day.

It was Ashley Babbitt.

She was a white unarmed person that was killed by a black Capitol police officer.

Imagine if that had been the other way around.

When I think of an insurrection as a war fighter, somebody that has seen some real nasty stuff,

hold on, when I think about that,

what people have to understand is that the summer of love leading up to that was something else.

We were talking about $2 billion in damage.

200 cities had to go under curfew.

22 people lost their lives.

And I understand.

I understand that January 6th was a Democrat's white and rhino, and they were going to run in that.

They're going to win the next election.

And Donald Trump is still president.

Last I checked.

Okay.

And I bring up these issues because...

But many cops were injured that day.

Many, many police officers.

They tased Michael Fernone.

He's a hero cop.

I know Michael.

Michael Fanone's a hero D.C.

cop.

He stood in the breach to defend our Capitol.

By the way, he voted for Trump.

And he stood there, and they tased him until his heart stopped.

They gave him a heart attack for putting on the uniform and standing in defense of our United States Capitol.

And then Trump pardoned him.

That's the difference.

The first thing Trump did was pardon.

Well, Biden pardoned his whole family.

Biden pardoned his whole family.

We're not talking about

the families.

By the way, both sides, it has happened on both sides when Steve Scalise got shot, it was terrible, and the guy did it because he was a Republican.

No question.

It's not an equal, it's asymmetric hatred.

This is what I mean.

The ADL, the Anti-Defamation League, did a study three years ago.

They looked over 10 years of political murders in America, and they found 450 murders, 75% of them by the far right, 20% of them by Islamists, and only 4% from the far left.

And I decry all of it on all sides.

But this is not it.

In the 60s and 70s, the political violence was mostly from the far left.

Today, it is mostly from the far right.

And you got to clean up your own.

Here's actually what I'll say about it.

Here's actually my response to that.

And that is, thank you both for bringing up that President Trump was shot and then he had another attempt on his life yet again.

And then when you have people saying that we are a threat to democracy, when you are calling him Hitler, when you call him Hitler, you're calling him

Hitler.

You're calling 77, hold on, a threat to democracy and Hitler.

You're calling 77 million people a threat to democracy.

And this is exactly where this fission starts.

So

I totally agree with you.

I want to condemn all violence.

I am a politician.

I'm the only one sitting up here.

I got three kids at home, and my wife is sitting up here right now.

I love her dearly.

What people have to understand is that we are all human beings first.

It all has got to stop.

Can I ask you one question about January 6th, though?

One question about January 6th.

Take the politics out of it.

I mean, look, they were there for a specific reason, and they attacked the Capitol, a specific place, on a specific day, at a specific moment, which was the exact moment that the votes were being counted, which to me makes it even worse.

But okay.

Let's just say they were there because they were, I don't know, furious about the price of eggs.

No politics.

They were just like, Congress has not done anything about the goddamn price of eggs, and we're going to, I don't care how many cops get hurt, we're gonna would it be any different well again we were talking about is it just okay because it was defending Trump defending

this wasn't necessarily about defending Trump okay but what if it was just before what if it was Billy what if it was

over a hundred cops getting hurt and people taking over a building over the price of the

price of the

summer of love no that's when people were actually really getting hurt well that's when 22 people died that's when we watched ham in our streets and even just a couple weeks ago here in LA we are watching people throw pieces of concrete at law enforcement officers and Carlsburg in the street in our cities.

You cannot have that anywhere.

Okay, let me go back to what happened in Minnesota because this is the last one.

This guy named Vance Bolter, of course it is.

He's plainly a Trumper.

Oh, come on.

No, go ahead.

He voted for Trump.

He was at Trump rallies.

He's a super duper Christian.

His big issue was he hated abortion, that we were performing abortions.

He had a list of 45 people.

The two people he shot were Democrats, state Democrats.

He had a list of 45 other people, all Democrats.

The fact that so many people in your party, Donald Trump Jr., Representative Derek Van Orden, I don't know who he is, but he's a jerk, I think,

he must be,

Senator Mike Lee, all pretended that this guy, who's plainly a Trumper, I mean, look, we just admit it.

It happens on both sides.

But the level of lying here, Donald Trump, the guy who committed these atrocities this weekend is a Democrat.

No, he's not.

Mike Lee, this is what happens when Marxists don't get their way.

Van Orden, this guy, he said he did it because the people he shot weren't far left enough.

You know these are lies.

See, I mean, you guys, I know.

The pharmaceutical CEO that was murdered was wrong.

The gentleman that did this is wrong.

And he's a Trump.

The person who said This one is a Trumper.

This guy is, this is right.

Can I rascally?

Don't let me.

Just don't mind me.

We are talking about people arbitrarily murdering people.

We are talking about the people

that are off the reservation.

They're crazy.

This man is crazy.

I don't care if he's a Trumper or not.

I don't care if he's from the left or not.

That's crazy.

We don't murder people in this country.

That's not the way.

I hear your point, but I don't care if he's a Trumper or not.

It's wrong.

Crazy is a little different.

He is absolutely crazy, by the way.

I mean, technically insane.

Crazy is a little different.

This is political violence.

People commit political violence all the time.

It weren't like Clinton.

So

we agree political violence or not if you're going to go murder somebody you're wrong.

If this had been the reverse, I would admit to you so easily.

I would just say, yes, the guy who shot Steve's police, right, was left.

See, this thing, I know you guys, you like me.

You respect me.

You know why you respect me?

You've been consistent for 30 years.

Yes, and because when I make fun of the left, I I do it even better than your people do.

Because I'm honest.

Because I'm honest about it.

You've got to give it back to me.

You've got to give that honesty back to me.

I put myself out.

All right.

I got one more issue, which is this is a big issue.

The Supreme Court ruled the other day about

transgender.

Okay, there was an issue in Tennessee.

Now, the states can restrict minors from transitioning.

They were just saying the states have the right to regulate this.

Now, I think a lot of people, again, I'm critical when I think my side goes too far and they go too far often and they went too far on this for a long time, gender affirming, all this gender dysphoria, all these terms they use to try to just say that you know biological sex isn't a real thing.

It's all gender.

It's all a social construct.

This was always nonsense.

Not that there isn't such a real thing as trans people, there is, but it's rare and they made it unrare.

I think over a thousand,

over a hundred clinics opened in the last 10 or 20 years because this became a thing.

Well now, the blue states, by the way, will not be affected.

They are just saying states have the right to regulate this, and I think it's a great first step.

to getting the Democratic Party back to something that people can respect and normal people can vote for.

Thoughts.

So this is a sanity check.

If you can't tell me the difference between a man and a woman, then what happens is I don't want to hear your other argument because it's just that simple.

If you don't think that biological men should not compete against biological women, if you can't say that's not a good idea, that's ridiculous.

We saw the issue

with Riley Gaines and Simone Biles.

We saw that debate go

unfold and Simone got destroyed on this because again, this is a sanity check.

We had a Supreme Court justice, Kentanji Brown, that was asked, can you tell me the difference between a man and a woman?

And she said, I'm not not a doctor.

This is a sanity check.

If you can't answer that basic question, then how can you possibly tell me about policy?

And this is one of the reasons why the Democrats are losing on an issue like this.

Because again, if you can't definitively tell me,

I have a six, four, and two-year-old.

My six and four-year-old, they think that they're Ana and Elsa, and my little boy thinks he's like Name McQueen.

By the time you're 18 years old, if you want to change your body, you can live and do whatever you want as long as you want to pay for it.

I fought for the right for you to be able to do that.

But when we are talking about children and undeveloped human beings and allowing them to make decisions that are going to impact the rest of their life, we must protect them.

From whom?

From whom?

I think we're people of faith.

Bill's not.

We believe God gives

religion, that's fair enough.

We believe that God gives children to parents, not politicians in Nashville.

The Tennessee legislature doesn't give a rip snore about children, or they would address the chief cause of childhood death in Tennessee, which is guns.

Why do you think that politicians decide what parents do?

They're two completely different issues.

And by the way, the issue is quite the reverse.

Like out here in California and in New Jersey, it's the schools who are not allowed to even tell the parents.

That's crazy.

I'm consistent.

Parents should decide this

and not politicians.

And who's not being protected?

I don't understand your point.

I think they're not protecting the children from people coming in and taking advantage, I think, of young folks who don't know what's going on.

I mean, I didn't know what the fuck was going on when I was eight years old.

I was unhappy when I was a teenager.

If someone offered this as the solution, I might go for it.

And they have done studies since then.

That's why America is an outlier country with this.

All the other countries pulled back on this because they said, we don't know.

And sometimes they're just gay, and sometimes they're just confused, and sometimes they're just depressed.

But once you start taking off body parts, you can't reverse it.

Thank you very much.

I've got to go to jail.

All right.

Okay, new rules.

Someone has to tell ICE agents that we understand they have a difficult job to do, but we will defend these taco stands with guns.

You want to hit the car washes?

Bad idea, but okay.

Outside Home Depot, so stupid, but whatever.

But the people working the taco stands, they're on base.

Signed, everyone who walks out of a bar at 2 a.m.

You know, now that there's a movie called Bride Hard,

someone has to tell Hollywood screenwriters that it's not inherently hilarious to call your movie hard.

We've had spy hard, walk hard, love hard, get hard.

Please, I'm saving my money for Mel Gibson's sequel to The Passion of the Christ, Die and Come Back from the Dead, hard.

New rule, you can't call the cops if a stripper refuses to get you off in the champagne room.

That is what a Mr.

Sultan Al-Nofi, of course, a Florida man,

that's what he did recently.

And I'd like to say to him, come on, man, the cops have enough on their plates.

This issue can be resolved by a simple upgrading of bathroom walls.

Call Jenny for a good time, call Tiffany with an issue with your bill,

and call Jasmine to continue in Spanish.

I mean, it's very simple.

new.

The two women convicted last week of forced labor who are running a sex cult that practices orgasmic meditation have to admit there's no such thing as orgasmic meditation.

In the Venn diagram of orgasms and meditation, there's no overlap.

And if there is, you're doing it wrong.

I've seen a lot of Buddha statues in Thai restaurants and the backyards of actresses, and

not once is Buddha making the O-face.

New rule, if the Catholic Church wants to be seen as modernizing, they have to reconsider putting St.

Teresa on display, as they have done periodically over the years since her death in 1582.

The church says it's practically a miracle how well preserved she is.

Well,

here she is as Bernini sculpted her in 1652, and here she is today.

Ageless, I mean,

just look at her.

Amazing.

Bernini,

reality.

And

that's why Saint Teresa is the patron saint of the photos on okay Cupid.

And

finally, new rule, let's make the Father's Day we just celebrated the last one that takes place in a culture where dads have become such punching bags.

Literally the last demographic group that TV, ads, and movies can still depict as clueless, useless dipshits.

Basically, just another child that mom has to look after.

Every sitcom is: tonight on ABC, Larry burns down the house.

And the tagline in the commercial for every household product is basically, because your husband is a moron.

Moving in together, it's a big step.

A test.

A test that Jeff

failed miserably.

You know, I'm not sure when this trend started, but I'm going to blame the 1987 movie Three Men and a Baby.

The premise of which is that three grown men can't manage to keep a baby alive.

The same year gave us Married with Children with its idiot shoe salesman of a father, followed by an endless parade of eye roll short bus dads, Homer Simpson, family guy, modern family, Malcolm in the middle.

Everybody loves Raymond, home improvement, according to Jim.

And it's not just the old school broadcast TV sit comes, it's everywhere.

It's highbrow streaming stuff, it's major motion pictures, it's minor motion pictures, it's in everything.

And look, I know I don't have any kids.

I made a different choice in life and decided to have money.

You're not lying.

But all these shows, they can't all be lying about what it's like to have kids.

Your EQ is off the charts, Nick.

Uh-huh, Nick.

I'm Nick now.

What happened to dad?

Well, I don't know, Nick.

What happened to dad?

Asshole.

Hey, come in here.

Why are you acting so dickish?

I mean, it is only $10.

Do you hear how they talk to me?

Do you hear how- you gotta say something.

Whoa, hold on.

When are you guys planning on coming home?

By 11 or 12?

Yeah, see him.

You know, you both have school tomorrow.

Oh, that's true.

We do.

Yeah, he's right.

Solid parenting, Dad.

Kids today, they're like Trump.

They think the rules don't apply to them.

And mom.

Mom is always the smart one, the good one.

He's just lucky to be in her orbit.

And I get it that this is a correction to centuries of women being deemed the weaker sex.

But how long does the correction last?

And when will men stop making me throw up in my mouth

with the way they pander so nakedly.

Ryan Gosling says, I think women are better than men.

They're better than us.

And Harry Stiles' t-shirt agrees.

Terry Cruz believes it.

He says women are smarter than men for real.

Even Barack Obama says about women that, what I can say pretty indisputably, is that you're better than us.

Really?

Because I don't remember Michelle taking out bin Laden.

And here's Will Farrell's quick human history recap.

Men,

we've been running the show since, what, 10,000 BC, something like that?

And we're not doing so good.

Isn't it just time for women to run the planet?

Yes, a sentiment Leonard Cohen concurs with, saying, I wish the women would hurry up and take over.

Well, you know what?

Many of them have.

And it wasn't that different.

Queen Mary burned 300 people at the stake just for being Protestant.

Cleopatra, Catherine the Great, Golden My Ear, Indira Gandhi, none of them were any less violent or hard-assed than men.

Hillary voted for the Iraq War.

Marie Antoinette let them eat cake.

So besides being historically naive, this cringy pandering is why teenage boys flock to jerks like Andrew Tate.

Now, if you don't know who he is, your teenage son does.

He's an accused rapist turned influencer whose videos get billions of views where he says things like women should bear responsibility for being sexually assaulted.

Yes, he's a huge asshole and your kid thinks he's cool because that's the choice of role models that an American teenage boy has, either performative pussyhood or the manosphere.

Jesus, can't the pendulum ever land in the middle in this country?

Can't we have something in between a complete cuck who dares not open his mouth for fear of mansplaining and owning a tiger?

The Democrats are always asking, how do we win back men?

Just be real.

Not a monster and not a doormat.

Is that so hard?

And as far as the last 10,000 years thing,

well, who invented the wheel and figured out fire?

I don't know.

No one knows.

Totally could have been a woman.

And women throughout history undoubtedly would have contributed more if men had taken them more seriously, like those African-American math wizards at NASA who helped put a man on the moon.

But

let's not pretend, my fellow humans with a penis,

who are so down on yourselves that your convenient, pleasant, cushy lives would be anything close to that without a few little things that men did contribute, like electricity and batteries and movies, microphones, the plow, the compass, the clock, the alarm clock, the printing press, the internet, the toilet.

The telescope, penicillin, planes, the Magna Carta, the telephone, the smartphone, rockets, the theory of universal gravitation, refrigeration, air conditioning, the theory of evolution, the computer, AI, oops, sorry about that one.

And the George Foreman Grill.

You know,

men built the railroads and the roadroads, not to mention democracy and the Bill of Rights, and oh yeah, dying by the tens of millions to end slavery, defeat fascism, and face down communism.

When your power goes out and comes back in 20 minutes, that's because a man in a raincoat went out in the wind and the lightning and climbed a pole and fucked with live wires.

I'm just saying, men were not completely useless.

So if you want to...

If you want to know what to get dad next Father's Day, how about a little respect?

All right, thank you very much, you are.

We're off the month of July.

I want to thank these guys, Dave Barry.

I want to thank my guests, Paul Vagala, Wesley Hunt.

And our club random drops every Monday now on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcast.

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 watch him anytime on HBO On Demand.

For more information, log on to HBO.com.

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