Ep. #699: Sen. John Fetterman, Ian Bremmer & Rutger Bregman

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

Thank you very much.

Hello,

Thank you, people.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate that.

Thank you.

You look great.

Thank you so much.

Welcome.

Welcome to LA, where something is always on fire.

Why always us?

I guess we've had a little unrest, you know.

A little, you know, let's not overdo this, okay?

And it all began, well, it all began when Trump got elected.

Okay.

Well, because,

well, because

he said, look, he's just doing what he said.

He said, I'm going to round up all the illegals.

So now they're doing it.

ICE came to town and they raided a garment factory.

You know, I got to say this to Magination.

Make up your mind.

Do you want things made in America or don't you?

But

it's so interesting, you know, people get their news from either one side or the other.

If you watch the national news, this city is under siege, either

on Fox News, under siege by illegal immigrants,

on MSNBC, under siege by, you know, jack-booted thugs.

And

99% of us just want to know: is it safe to pick someone up at the airport?

Is that.

No, it's.

I mean I've lived here a long time.

I've seen some shit.

Okay, this is

it's a few blocks downtown.

It's downtown.

We've been downtown.

The authorities told the people who live there in that area just to be on the safe side.

Remain in your tents.

Oh I get LA.

You know, here's

Here's how super dangerous this situation is.

Within the area where it's happening, the little curfew area a few blocks, the LA Opera is located, and they're still going on.

Rigoletto is still playing there.

So, little tip: if you're planning on looting, wear a tuxedo.

Okay?

I mean,

this is this is such a minor crisis.

Mayor Bass didn't even leave town

Week 10, gently.

But, you know, it is getting chippy out there.

Did you see the press conference the other day?

Christy Noam, our Homeland Secretary,

was here, and one of our senators, Alex Padilla,

I don't know if they knew it was him, but he stood up to ask a question and confront her, and they fucking frog-marched him out of there and

threw him on the ground and started to cuff him.

And Gavin Newsom said, now do me.

I tell you,

if anyone is ready for his close-up, it's Gavin.

I think this is his moment.

I do.

Okay, but we'll get to that on the panel.

But, you know.

But, you know, it's getting a little tense out there, you know, and you know, it's tense in LA when you read news about the Middle East to relax.

Which,

oh, yeah, that's, oh well,

that is the other giant story that just happened today.

We tape on Friday.

Okay, it's Friday the 13th.

Woo!

I don't know if that's why Israel did, but Israel has had it up to here with fighting Iran's proxies.

And this time, okay, Netanyahu said, okay, I'm going after Barzini, okay,

I'm taking care of all family business.

And they have a giant raid on Iran, on their military facilities, on their nuclear facilities, killed their top three military commanders.

I'd just like to say to the president, that's what an invasion looks like, not six guys hanging out of Home Depot, okay?

So now we have another war, and out of habit, today Trump said, this would never have happened if I was president.

And

of course, predictably, Hezbollah, that's one of Iran's proxies, they condemned the attack and they said they were awaiting instructions on how to respond.

Check your pagers, guys.

Now.

As for why Israel did it, of course, they wanted to knock out their nukes, but I don't know if that happened.

But also an Israeli insider said the ultimate goal is regime change.

Yeah, join the club.

But,

well,

I tell you,

Trump is having his big parade tomorrow.

You know this, right?

I'm going to be glued to the TV.

I don't think this is a good idea to have tanks in the streets, but

that's what we're doing.

So, of course, a lot of people don't like this.

2,000 cities are having an uprising.

We'll see if it's an uprising, but a demonstration called No Kings, because, you know, he is acting a little king-like.

It's called,

tomorrow is called No Kings Nationwide Day of Defiance.

Real catchy.

I say, if only liberals had brought this level of enthusiasm to Nationwide Day of Voting.

It's always after.

And finally,

I got to say, this did look a little kingy.

Trump unveiled this week, oh, I love this, this man,

a Trump card, of course it's gold,

for foreign nationals can purchase for $5 million to become a citizen.

Yes, we're so against any foreign national getting to this country.

We're going to send the fucking Marines, but you know what?

We're not animals.

We can be bought.

Okay, we've got a great show.

Ian Blermer and Russia Regman are here.

But first up,

there he is.

He is the badass Democratic senator from Pennsylvania.

John Vetterman is here.

Well,

there he is.

Good to see you.

Oh, my God.

How are you?

Thank you.

See?

See, they still like you here.

Oh, yeah.

I know you've been getting a lot of shit out there, and we're going to get to that.

But first up, I mean, this is one of my easier days because there's so many things going on, and you're a sitting senator.

So I just want to get your take, first of all, on Iran, Israel.

They finally did it.

What do you think?

Sure.

Well, I mean, I think you and I agree a lot of the things about Israel and things like that.

So I absolutely, I think I was maybe the only one that said we really have to fully support him taking out Iran at this point.

We can't ever allow Iran to

develop a nuclear weapon, but also as well too,

after Israel was able to destroy the proxies like Hezbollah and Hamas as well too, they have a really once-in-a-generation opportunity to take the nuclear facilities out.

So for me, right now,

I think they did absolutely the right thing.

Okay.

And what about the war in Gaza?

Now, both of us, I think, have taken a lot of heat because we support Israel sort of forthrightly, and a lot of people don't.

Obviously, there's a lot of horrible destruction and loss of life on both sides.

Obviously, Hamas started that war.

Israel has prosecuted it, and some people say too far.

Now, one of their ex-prime ministers, Omart, this is an ex-prime minister, is now saying Israel is committing war crimes.

I keep saying, you know,

do you think Hamas needs to be destroyed?

And people say yes.

And then the next question is, well, how do we know when that is?

Now, we may find out that Netanyahu has gone too far.

What do you think about this?

Does this change your thinking at all that an ex-prime minister would say this?

No,

I really do think.

Absolutely, absolutely.

I don't believe Israel has occurred any kind of war crimes.

And then I also think we've seen a lot of language been cheapened as well, too.

There was never a genocide.

That was never part of that conversation, conversation after all.

I mean this is a 20 month, a 20 month war.

If Israel's goal was to eliminate as many Palestinians, they could have done a lot more of that.

They were forced to fight,

you know, fight through where they embed Hamas embeds in the hospitals and in the schools and the camps as well.

So for me, where we're at right now,

where they are, People are putting Israel to a double standard.

Now, Hamas could just simply just, you know, you have human beings underground for over 600 years, held against their will.

Send those people home, you know, and disarm, and there would be peace, and we could all move on right now.

So, for me, now it's really for me, you know, Israel was not starving people.

You know, there was no kind of a genocide, there's no war crimes, it just was an existential war.

And now, we all have to be honest.

You can never have to rebuild Gaza, which we have to rebuild Gaza if Hamas is allowed to be in force.

It's just, you know, you just have to be honest.

And I think that's really the truth.

And our party, the Democratic Party, has lost that argument.

And they've taken side with

the regime that doesn't have the kind of values and live the kind of ways that we want here in our country.

I think one thing that people forget a lot, because they only read stuff that's happening now, is that this has been going on for 75 years.

That's pretty much as long as Israel has existed, a little more.

And throughout the entire time, they have been constantly under attack.

So it's not just what happened yesterday or last year,

this attack against Iran, what's going on in Gaza.

This has been brewing for the better part of a century, and it could all end tomorrow if everybody would just come to the peace table.

Now, Israel has done that.

I know they didn't like what was offered.

But that's sort of the history that I don't think the young people seem to want to learn.

They seem to only want to see what happened yesterday.

And what happened yesterday, of course, was tragic.

Yeah, no,

absolutely, of course.

So for me,

absolutely, right now, we have to push this through.

And Israel, I think, it's also a reminder everybody now, Iran, we can't ever allow for the region to allow them to acquire a nuclear weapon.

So here we are right now.

It's going to continue until Iran is, Israeli just acknowledged that they're not able to defend the regime anymore.

Do you think this is the issue that made people sort of turn on you?

I see, I saw recently reports you had, I think, your chief of staff quit on you and start talking shit about you.

Yeah.

And we know you made no secret of it, but you...

purposely publicized it so that people would take inspiration from it, that you had a stroke, you had issues with depression.

And it seemed to me like they were sort of weaponizing that, to say you'd gone crazy.

And I did smell kind of a rat here when I read that you were driving recklessly and too much time on Twitter and like, you know, megalomania.

I'm like, hmm.

So defend yourself here, John.

I mean, I don't think you're crazy.

You don't seem crazy.

And I have certainly seen people who refused to go all the way with the purity lovers on the left suddenly castigated and cast out

and attacked like this.

So, is that what's going on?

Yeah, absolutely.

Parts of my party just wants to turn me into a Colonel Kurtz, you know, and just claim that it's like, oh, like I'm just like a part of the colours.

You look like you could play the part.

So

really, that would happen after Israel and at the border, and some of the times I might have to disagree with my party.

And that's really, we brought us to that place where, you know, just that kind of a canceling was a little bit of a different thing, but now we've all moved on from that.

But absolutely, that's

the truth.

Some of the things they said were that you weren't showing up, and then I read further and read what you said about it, and it seemed like you weren't showing up for bullshit, but a lot of what the senators are required to do just doesn't matter.

You don't really have to be there.

One of them is called bedcheck.

What is that?

Yeah, bed check vote.

It's like these votes really doesn't matter.

That's why they're called bed check.

It's just like you had a choice.

It's like they were just a procedural thing.

And I just I took the opportunity to spend an extra day with my young children and that.

So now that's the mat, and I've made 90% of the votes.

So none of them were determinative.

So for me,

people in the Senate have missed more votes than I did.

But

they weren't breaking the kind of rules that I've been.

So they kind of used that to weaponize that in a very cynical way.

They also seem to go after you because you will talk to the other side.

You talk to Trump.

We all know that's bad.

Well, yeah,

we're one of the few people that actually have dinner with Trump.

Yeah, and you also, I think, I don't know if you had dinner with Steve Bannon, but he was at your table or something at a restaurant that manga people go to.

It's like, what are we?

In high school now?

You can't sit at the same lunch table with these people?

I wasn't even having dinner with him, you know, with Steve Bannon.

Drop by the table?

Well, no, he lives close by.

And the guy that I was having on a beer were, the guy, Steve said, hey, I'd like to come over and just say hello.

And sure, that's fine.

He just sat down.

We weren't having dinner, doing anything like that.

I hate to use the phrase fake news, but that's really was.

I wasn't like having, you know, like dinner with Steve Bannon, but I was just hanging out talking to the other side.

And now, if you break those kinds of rules, then you do have to pay a price for that.

And I know you have, too.

But you could have dinner with him, right?

It wouldn't turn you into a zombie.

Yeah,

well, I mean, it's like when I first got into my career, people assumed like I was a socialist or a Marxist, and now people think that I'm going to turn into a MAGA and I'm going to go this other way.

And I'm like, no, my values haven't changed, but I think in some cases, I think our party's values have changed.

And then there's been a lot of flux for me professionally.

I'm not going to change my party.

I see they're after you now because you condemned some of the violence that's going on here in this city and said it doesn't do the Democratic Party any good to defend that.

Now, I have to say, living here and having seen a lot of shit happen in this town, this is not one of the worst ones.

I mean, come on, POTUS, please.

Insurrection.

Oh, yeah.

You know, this is, but, you know, I agree.

When they see it in a campaign ad, when they see the guy with the Mexican flag and the Waymo burning behind him, it's going to be good for Trump.

Yeah, well, that's what I'm saying.

It's like, this is an amazing city that we're in here now.

And America, we don't want to see it on fire twice in just six months now.

And those optics, I just

run that through.

Like what's the people like in Scrant might see those kind of images and those kinds of videos that they so for me, it's like acknowledging that I absolutely was unapologetically free speech,

peaceful protesting.

Pro-immigration.

Yeah.

You know.

You're a Democrat.

Exactly, absolutely.

They got mad at you because they said, I'm not a progressive.

Well, we don't even know what these terms mean.

Woke, progressive.

Everybody has a different definition in their head.

I took it to mean, like me, I'm an old school liberal.

I'm an old school Democrat.

Exactly, exactly.

That's the thing.

It's like, your values, I don't think, have changed.

I know mine haven't really changed, but I think our party has changed.

And now, if you actually kind of point out and call out a lot of these things, you know, you do take a political price for a lot of those things.

Right, and it doesn't mean we're turning a blind eye to the worst things that are happening on the right.

I mean, for the people who think I had dinner with Trump and I changed, I kept my honor.

I'm here every week making the same jokes about him I always did.

It's not that hard.

It's not that hard.

And for me, you know, for me on my side, at least, like, where are my votes?

Where are my votes?

Like, for example, the big, beautiful bill.

I'm going to vote that down.

You know,

because,

you know, because

for me, I mean,

I could never support cutting Medicaid or cutting SNAP or those kinds of things.

But to me, I'm never going to be a part of the 40 trillion club and now that's going to push our debt up to 40 trillion dollars.

I mean it's incredibly dangerous.

A lot of the things that have been happening since Trump took the office, a lot of it's just a lot of it's professional wrestling, but for this, if they passed a big

yeah

If they passed a big beautiful bill and now that will change our nation and that's going to impact, truly impact millions and millions of people.

And now when you are going to look at the debt at that point, that's really, truly dangerous and that's why I use fewer words, because then when I call out something really something to be concerned, that bill is.

And it seems more and more likely that they are going to pass that, especially after Mr.

Musk had had his kind of a meltdown.

The Republicans kind of rallied around Donald Trump.

And now that makes it now much more of an imperative to pass that.

Well, John, you don't seem crazy to me.

Thank you for coming here and being not crazy.

We keep being not crazy in the Senate, will you, my friend?

All right, John Fetterman, let's read our panel.

Okay.

Hey, guys.

All right.

He is a Dutch historian and author of the book Moral Ambition.

Stop wasting your talent and start making a difference.

Rutger Bregman.

Rutger, great to have you for the first time.

Thank you.

And our returning champion, you all know, he's the president and founder of the Eurasia Group and GZero Media.

Ian Bremer,

back with us for the many time.

Okay, so let's

talk about the Iran thing because it's just happened today.

Now, I don't know when you're watching this.

Very few people watch things when they actually happen, although this show does pretty well with that.

But we are 7 o'clock Eastern Standard Time, Friday night the 13th.

I don't know what's going to

be like.

Now I'll give you what we have as the updates.

Israel intercepted two hostile aircraft, I guess, from Iran, that were coming over to southern Israel.

New Israeli strikes on the capital since the big attack.

They're not stopping.

Trump spoke in Netanyahu, and the injury count in Israel up to 40, but no deaths.

I guess I'll ask the big question.

The bigger war, who wins?

Oh, the bigger war, the Iranians are in huge trouble here.

There's virtually nothing that they can do militarily against either Israel or the United States.

It's pretty desperate for them.

You remember at the end of the first Trump administration when Trump decided to order the assassination of Qasim Suleimani, who was running the Iranian Defense Force at that point.

People freaked out.

Iran said a lot.

Iran was incapable of responding.

This is a much bigger deal for them, and they're equally incapable of responding.

And this has been coming for a long time because, what was it, eight months ago, Israel took out all their really missile defenses, so they had complete air superiority.

They took out their most important proxy, Hezbollah.

And took out the leader of Hezbollah, took out the leader of Hamas.

Now they took out their leadership.

Assad fell in Syria, so they can't get weapons to Hezbollah anymore.

So the big question that everyone has to ask out there is if the Iranian leaders become desperate, because it's not like they're sympathetic to the rest of the world.

It's not like the outcry for the Palestinians, civilians who can't defend themselves and eat food.

This is an incredibly brutal, theocratic regime, exports terror, in breach of all these Security Council resolutions, ballistic missiles, supportive proxies, you name it.

But we need to understand the Straits of Hormuz, where a large amount of the world's oil tankers pass through, if they could do anything, it would be to stop that traffic.

And if they were to do that, oil prices are over 100, they're probably over 150, that's a global recession.

Now,

that's the end of Iran, but it's close to the end of Iran given what we've seen over the last 24 hours.

And that is, I think, what everyone is going to be concerned about going forward.

So what do the Dutch think about this, Rutger?

Well, Well, usually.

That's who I usually turn to.

You know, we Europeans look on and we're like, okay, we're going to bomb the Middle East again.

That usually doesn't end well.

So I'm curious, what do you think, Ian?

Is this like the beginning of a new period of destabilization in the region?

Or is this like another muller of all catastrophes?

The Germans came out, the French came out, the Brits came out, all in supportive of Israel right now.

And they're not supportive of Israel on the Palestinian issue at all.

But on Iran, they absolutely are.

So, I mean, the fact is, Trump wants to be a peacemaker, right?

I mean, that's in a sense the bigger story here is that Trump's 0-2 on peace right now, right?

He tried with the Russians, he failed.

He tried with the Iranians, he failed.

But having failed with the Russians, he pivoted away from Putin.

He's not acting like a Russian asset.

He said this guy went crazy.

And when the Ukrainians took out $100 million planes, Trump came out and said, well, that's what's going to happen.

He may have been part of this plan.

I mean, he may have been...

He knew.

He knew?

Of course he knew.

Well, but they made it look like he didn't.

It made it look like he and Israel were separating.

When he went to the Middle East, member, he skipped Israel.

That could have been part of this.

And he was having,

at the same time that Israel was planning on the bombing, he was having peace meetings about the nuclear situation.

Maybe he lulled them.

I think that the first person that Trump invited to the White House after Liberation Day was Nan Yahoo.

And unlike Zelensky's trip to the White House, you did not see any threat of suspending intelligence, suspending American aid.

Trump has been the biggest supporter of Israel globally, bar none.

No one's even close.

And over the last week,

it was the Trump administration that actually pulled all of the non-essential personnel from all of the American bases within ballistic missile striking distance of Iran.

The thing that surprises me is not that the Americans knew.

It's not that the Americans green-lit the attack.

What surprised me is having seen all of that, why were the Iranians acting like business as usual?

Why weren't their military leaders actually hunkered down and not together?

Because, I mean, the level of organizational incompetence here for me is staggering.

All right, let's talk about the shit hitting the fan closer to home.

That's LA.

Why is it always us?

As a longtime resident, I have to ask that.

I was honestly a bit disappointed, Bill.

Like, my mother said, are you going to LA is that safe

flying in a Washington high window like where are the fires where are the riots and I was honestly a bit disappointed like is this it like a couple of blocks like you call this mass protest this is nothing come this is nothing and it just makes me so sad because I feel like none of this would be happening if we had only been able to make the bargain that most Americans would have liked to have made all these years and it has been on the table it's sort of like the Palestinian thing it's been on the table many times something that was viable.

And that bargain is: we don't really want to throw out people, even if they're illegal, if they're working here and they're not criminals.

You know,

they're not invaders, they're working here, and obviously, we need them working here, and the people who hire them want them here.

And the people

we in LA know we couldn't live without the illegals here.

We'd all just die.

But

what Trump is doing is legal.

It doesn't mean it's right,

but if we could have just made that grand bargain, just, okay, if you're here, even though if you didn't get in, you know, exactly kosher, you're grandfathered in if you're not a criminal, and we will close the border.

It's such an easy, it seems to me.

And we did that.

The border is closed.

No, but the border's a win.

The border's a win.

That's an 80-20 issue for Trump.

And you talk about Trump always chickens out, not on Mexico.

He's hit the Mexicans hard, and the Mexican president, with 80% approval, has said, okay, I'm going to do everything I can, and those people aren't coming over.

That's a win.

I did find it interesting.

I know he posted lots of things, but when he came out and said, well, you know, I've heard from my friends in the hotel industry, I've heard from my friends in the agriculture industry, and maybe I need to let these people that are hardworking, I need to let them stay.

I'm like, why did it take you so long to figure that out?

It's almost like

you know?

Because, and that's

not to belabor the point, but that is why it's important that everybody you can talk to him talks to him.

Because he does listen to a lot of people.

What sticks?

I don't know.

What's he going to do the next day?

But I've certainly heard lots of stories like this.

You know, somebody, it's not going to come from the usual government.

It's not how he works.

He's not a government person.

That wasn't his background.

He's a business guy.

It's very often the last person he talks to.

But if it's something like this, yeah, it's the only hope.

You have no other power, Democrats.

You might as well try that.

Yeah, yeah.

It's the irony, right, that now that the border is closed, that the deportation numbers are way down compared to the Biden administration.

And then some Democrats started trolling Trump, like, hey, your numbers are so low.

And now we're with this shit show.

So it's just...

Like the vast majority of people agree, right, that

you need some control on the border, right?

And the Biden administration administration gave us up in that regard.

They did.

The vast majority of people also agree that immigration is pretty useful.

This is a pretty pro-immigration country compared to where I'm from.

We just, for example.

Yeah, just have the system.

We had no system.

But I also would like to say this to Christy Noam.

Now, as the longest-serving talk show host here in LA.

I've been in this studio since 1996 with Politically Incorrect.

I have the same phone number.

I don't know what it is, but I have it.

And I was just told, by the way, next, we have one more show before our summer break, and I'm told that is our 700th real-time episode.

We've been here a long time.

And I've been in L.A.

a long time.

42 years out here.

And Christy Noam, that's our Homeland Security Secretary, she said the other day, we are not going away.

We are staying here to to liberate this city from the socialists.

Well, Christy, honey, I got to tell you,

having lived here this long with some of the frustrations, sometimes I want to be liberated from the socialists.

But, honey, we will handle it ourselves.

Okay, we don't need you to come out from Washington.

We don't need

no outside agitators meddling federal government

coming in here telling us how to live.

Trump does well.

We will handle it ourselves.

Trump does well

when he's himself.

Right.

When Trump announces 2,000, then 4,000 National Guard members, when he announces 700 Marines, everyone knows that he has no interest in helping the great people of Los Angeles.

Everyone knows that he's doing it for performative reasons, that he's not trying to make a difference.

And I think that, and we've seen that play out in the numbers on immigration.

It's his single best issue.

It was one of the big reasons he was beating Biden that he beat Kamala Harris.

And the first time we've seen him go underwater is on his response to this.

Yeah, but in the campaign ad, as I was talking to John about, they're going to show the guy that says, you know, no one is illegal on stolen land.

Well, give me a fucking break.

Okay?

You know, we're not giving it back.

I'm sorry.

There's no doubt.

Sorry, Netherlands.

I mean, I'm sure it really

does belong to the Chumash people, but you know what?

You don't want that to be

not the pizza hut anymore either.

You want America, and it's just a silly thing, and that's what's going to hurt the Democrats.

I received an email the other day from someone who had this signature in her email saying, like, we want to apologize for the fact that our office is on Indigenous land.

And I was like, well, if you feel so sorry about it, give it back, right?

I mean,

imagine if

Vladimir Putin were to send an email, you know, to some Ukrainian saying, like, we want to apologize that our headquarters is on stolen land, right?

That would be pretty ridiculous as well.

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Well, I've loved the stuff that you have said about what it's a moral imperative to actually win elections,

and I want to get to that in a minute.

But first, I want to call up this idea of no King's Day.

Now, Democrats, they have a real problem focusing

when they have a demonstration, remember Pussy Hat Day, and that devolved into a lot of things.

And now they have

tomorrow is no King's Day because we don't want Trump to be a king.

I agree with that.

We don't be a king.

But as all these things, it starts out as one thing, and then it devolves into Palestine and green energy and

close-the-gun loopholes and everything.

I mean, look at some of the pictures.

These are from out there that are people.

This is the demonstration that started about ICE, and then it becomes no one's illegal on stolen land.

And it's there's some pro-Palestinian people out there.

And then this guy's shirt says, God bless abortions.

This dinosaur eats fascists.

Oh, now it's about fascists.

Oh, this is my favorite.

This lady thinks she's God and wants to do ayahuasca.

So, like,

it just becomes crazy.

But you know what?

Those are not the only signs that get off the track.

Would you like to see some of the other?

Because I'm telling you.

They just don't know how to stick to a single cause.

For example, there's globalize the enchilada.

Oh, that's just.

Look at this one.

Queers for burning Waymos.

That's.

I'm illegal and I vote.

Well, that's not helping anybody.

Free the nickel.

Well, for fuck's sake, that's.

Kendrick is better than Drake.

No, that is.

Vegetarians for eating the rich.

These are things that are not helpful.

Mothers against drunk defense secretaries.

Oh, well, fuckers.

More machetes for crazy homeless people.

That's not helping.

Fight the real enemy, my roommate Gary.

And

not a protester, got lost on the 405.

All right.

So,

but

you know what happens in movies?

As soon as there's a big problem, a hero will rise.

And I think we saw that this week because Gavin Newsom, ah, this makes me feel good because, you know, people make fun of me all the time.

Why do you stick with Gavin?

What do you, he sways too far left?

Yeah, but he's been moving to the center lately.

And he kind of had his moment now.

I mean, I did a joke in the monologue about it, but like

he's saying Trump likes this.

I think he might like this too.

Because,

you know, Democrats have been looking for somebody.

You know, Corey Booker stood up there for 25 hours.

That's not, you know, he did like one of those filibusters.

It was like, it wasn't sexy.

It wasn't.

Said he didn't go to the bathroom the entire time.

Right.

Didn't go to the bathroom the entire time.

Right.

That was.

Okay.

That's not going to get the job done.

But

Gavin Newsom going up there saying, arrest me, tough guy.

Show some of Gavin's tough guy speech there.

Come after me, arrest me.

Let's just get it over with.

Tough guy.

Okay,

please.

You think Trump Trump liked having his face in a mug shot?

This guy wants his face on a mugshot.

He could become like one of the hot felons.

I mean, you know, they always have those hot felons and then this Adam Light for the next.

So

am I wrong about this?

Is he now the guy for the Democratic Party like I always thought he would be?

So

mixed feelings, I guess.

It's just like with this administration, like on the one hand, it's all very, very funny, right?

It's a very clownish administration in many respects.

On the other hand, you know,

I also think, you know, it's

genuinely anonymous sign that, you know, some of the best historians of fascism are now leaving the country, saying it's better to leave early rather than too late.

And, you know, as a European, the stuff that happens right now really reminds me of stuff that we've seen in Europe, right?

The crackdown on universities, on Harvard, for example.

Hungarians can tell us all about that, you know, what Orban did to Central European University, or take the crackdown on the independent legal system, the judiciary, same thing in Poland, right?

So,

got sort of mixed feelings.

I guess the one thing that relieves me is that it's also incompetent.

Like, if Victor Orban would be in charge right now, I would be much more worried because that guy is genuinely smart.

We know that what's going to win in the United States is someone that can take care of pocketbook issues, someone that can take care of local security issues.

Authoritarianism and fighting authoritarianism doesn't win.

We can talk about it, it doesn't win.

And when Gavin came up and he said, you know, this guy is trying to be a king, let's remember in 2024, almost no one voted on democracy, even though Joe and Kamala tried to make the election about that.

And the people that said that they were voting, that cared about democracy, most of them voted for Trump because they believed that democracy was already so stolen, so kleptocratic, so controlled, that they wanted someone that was going to shake things up.

Yeah, but this administration is different.

This is new.

There's a lot of new stuff has happened since then.

Trump 2 is not the same as Trump 1.

I agree.

In the first Trump administration, he said,

you know what?

Presidents can't order troops in without the governor say so.

What changed?

He said, well, you're an incompetent governor.

It's the same governor.

The governor didn't change.

What changed is that he's not surrounded.

Mattis isn't there, Millie isn't there.

Esper is not there.

It's just loyalists.

Right, so I think that is something the voter does notice.

Yeah, so here are a couple of basic lessons from history.

One, to prevent democratic backsliding, right, authoritarian takeover, you need a unified pro-democracy front.

You know, from the left to the center-right, we've got to try and overcome some of our differences, right?

No purity politics, and we even got to try and work with people when we find really annoying.

We can go back to dunking on them, you know, once democracy is safe, but that's really important for me.

The second thing is you actually need to have a positive agenda, you know, to your point.

Just saying, like, hold the institutions, that's really not going to work, right?

You've got to show that you're the party of building, of abundance, as they call it today, that you actually get shit done.

It's often said that we're now living through the second Gilded Age.

If I think about the first Gilded Age, you know, the late 19th century, it was an era with incredibly corrupt politicians.

But what came after that was obviously the progressive era, led by amazing politicians like Theodore Roosevelt, who famously said, and I'm paraphrasing here, that to complain about a problem and not actually do something about it is called whining.

And I think that should be the spirit of Democrats today, right?

Not just say about what you're against.

It's so often, you know, the left has become the party of nobody.

Okay, so long as you brought this up, because this is what you write a lot about.

Yeah.

And

I will not let a show pass without mentioning the robots are taking over.

So

it's just something I have to say every time.

But, you know, one way they're taking over, or AI is taking over, and I keep reading it every, every, almost day in the paper, there's another story about the jobs are being taken.

First it was the blue-collar jobs, and now it's the white-collar jobs.

Those jobs are going away, too.

AI can do almost everything.

And I was talking to somebody about this, and they said, why do you have to worry so much about if people have jobs?

And I thought, you know, I'm always saying, don't live in a past paradigm.

Live in the year we're living in.

Maybe having jobs itself is a past paradigm.

Exactly.

It is?

Yeah.

What's your questions are that?

How do you get money to buy food?

I mean, I'm all for like throwing the past away.

Universal basic income.

That's what we need.

So that's giving people money.

Yeah, yeah.

I think it's.

And what do they do all day to make themselves feel worthy of something?

This is the great challenge of the future.

You know, Joe Maynard Keynes, the British economist, in 1930, he published an essay saying that we're going to have a 15-hour work week in 2030.

This has been predicted many, many times.

Isaac Osimov in the 1950s.

A 30-hour

data.

No, 15.

That the great challenge of the future was going to be boredom, right?

This was always, I think, the goal of capitalism, that the machines would become so productive that we could finally figure out what life is really about.

And yeah, now it seems we're on track for, you know, browsing all day.

The political piece of this that I worry about, you know, Trump has, and many in Europe as well, in your country, in Germany, the AFD, former East Germany, all of these people that were part of manufacturing bases and suddenly, you know, because of trade, because of migration, globalization, they lose their jobs, they're pissed off, and so you've got this far-right populism.

The new populism that's coming politically in this country, because of what you just said, is not far-right.

It's on the left.

It's not undereducated.

It's not rural.

It's not industrial.

It's actually progressive.

It's urban.

It's educated.

It's white-collar, but they're not going to have jobs.

And a political entrepreneur in the United States or a bunch, it's not Gavin Newsom, it's whoever figures out how to speak to those angry people because they're going to be very different angry people than the one that Trump's speaking to.

I mean, so they're going to riot?

I'm going to get dragged out of a Rage Rover by somebody hitting me with a doggy bag from Spagos.

A way more, much more likely.

Away more, much more likely.

But

again, just basic questions.

I'm all for like getting rid of drudge jobs.

I've had them.

Let's be honest.

A lot of this is the difference between a job and a career.

I've had both.

Careers are fun.

It's fun to have a career, and they're rewarding and usually well-paying.

And then jobs is throwing fish product into the vat at Arthur Treatcher.

I've done that, too.

Nobody should have to do that.

It is drudgery.

But then how do they get money?

Besides, if you're just giving them money, I read if you gave everybody $1,000 a month, which is hard hard to live on that,

it would cost the country $4 trillion a year, and we only take in $5 trillion in taxes, and I assume there'll be no taxes because nobody's working.

So I just don't see how this post-job world takes shape.

Well, look, Bill, I think this is by far the most important thing that is happening.

You know, all the other stuff we're talking about is really dwarfed by the rise of AI.

We're like in February 2020, you know, just before the pandemic hit, and most people are ignoring it.

But it is really going to happen, and it will have massive consequences.

We already see it in education.

Like many teachers now, it doesn't make sense anymore with ChatGPT.

It's like people writing papers and then the teachers use ChatGPT to grade those papers as well.

This is just the beginning.

We're going to need a completely new social contract, what you just said.

You know, the idea that you have to work for a living, that you need a job in order to be a good person, it was already becoming more and more problematic.

We have now 25% of people in the modern workforce that think that their own jobs are bullshit, right?

Society meaningless.

And I'm not talking about the teachers and the nurses here.

I'm talking about people who went to nice universities, the consultants, the corporate lawyers, the bankers.

So that's what we got to keep in mind here.

Because they do.

Don't underestimate bullshit in college.

That's why there's no jobs for you.

But when we're telling the kids five years ago, just five years ago, the smartest advice that we had for the kids was learn to code.

Exactly.

That is literally worse advice now than get a face tattoo, okay?

You can't do worse than learn to code.

Right, because that's the job AI can do most easily, yeah.

I think we shouldn't underestimate capitalism's extraordinary ability to come up with new bullshit jobs, though.

I mean, it's now

could be much more in the future.

I hear that, and I just always ask, what's the example?

I mean, if we can't imagine it, how could they come up with it?

What could be this job for people who are thrown out of coding and all these other jobs we're talking about doing what?

Like oiling the robot?

This is actually, I mean, it could be a good thing, right?

This could be our road to utopia.

It's a very narrow path, I would say.

We just got to realize that you just need a completely different social contract, very different.

You and I have known each other for decades.

Never in my life have I seen something where the people working inside the field, in AI, have a more radically different view view on what is coming literally in the next like two years from everyone else I know.

And we, from a policy perspective, from a government perspective, are not ready for this.

Are you saying they're more sanguine about it or less?

Oh, no, they're much less sanguine.

They think that the transition is going to be far faster, far more disruptive.

But some of them are for it and some are again it.

They're all in it.

And they're running so fast because they were like, well, if it's going to happen anyway, it might as well be me that's got my hand on the till.

Right.

And the conservative people say like, well, it's only going to be 2035 or something like that.

I don't like, 2035.

I mean, it doesn't really matter in the end whether it's going to take five or ten years.

What matters is that it is probably going to happen, and the consequences are going to be massive.

And this administration is probably going to have to figure it out, frankly.

Last issue, the parade is tomorrow.

Trump's parade.

That's why he's here, by the way.

I don't know if he's holding on to it.

He came to the parade.

Trump said, we're going to celebrate our country for a change.

Like so many things with him, like he very often has an idea which in the ether is not a bad idea.

I've said for years, done many editorials about it, the left does not appreciate America well enough.

They have no perspective about it.

They think we're irredeemably racist and horrible and colonialist, as if every other country in the world at one time or another wasn't like us or even worse.

So they...

So Joe, let's learn from the French.

No.

Why?

What do you mean?

That's where Trump got the parade idea from when he went over and Macron showed him.

He's like, ah, let's do something the French do.

No, but we don't need to learn from the French.

Bad ideas.

As always,

should we appreciate America more and in more perspective?

Yes.

But not tanks in the streets.

This really worries me.

I mean, I just feel like you're getting...

I don't even know if that's his grand scheme of thought out that much, but you're getting people used to a sight that we have never seen in this country before.

And there are Republicans who speak out against this, too.

Senator John Kennedy did, Rand Paul did.

Yeah, they're pretty forceful.

So it's one reason why you should talk to Republicans.

They're not all beyond hope.

So what do you think?

Am I making too much of this or is it just a parade?

Well, it's like what we talked about.

On the one hand,

it's almost a bit funny, but yeah,

it's a really bad precedent that you don't want to see in one of the oldest democracies.

in the world.

It's insecure.

I wouldn't have minded it after 9-11 when we were trying to to bring the country together.

Right now,

at best, it's going to be forgotten in a week, and at worst, it's going to be yet another thing that divides us.

We're not going to agree on it.

So, we need leaders, not winners.

Trump is a winner.

He creates losers.

We need leaders.

All right.

Thank you, guys.

Got to end it there.

Time for new rules.

Okay.

All right, new rule.

Yes, it was sad this week that ICE agents were rounding up migrants picking fruit in Fresno, but foreign invaders can't just waltz into this country and steal the American dream.

The American dream of backbreaking manual labor in Fresno, where it's going to be 102 next week.

So, hey, American kids who just got a marketing degree from Penn State, good news.

There's opening now in the exciting field of field work.

Fieldwork, where quiet quitting means passing out from heat stroke.

New rule, for our friends in other parts of the country, when the shit goes down in LA, if you send us a text that says, hey, you doing okay out there?

Then we get to send you a text that says, no, not good.

How soon can you be here to help?

Yeah, I didn't think so.

Narul, if you are shocked to learn about Umaya Nelson, the California model currently serving life in prison after she killed, castrated, cooked, and ate her husband.

You must understand you're not alone.

Trust me, when I read about her, I had the exact same reaction.

A model ate something?

Neural Ozempic doesn't make your dick bigger.

That's what was reported in the news this week, that along with weight loss, addiction control, and reducing diabetes, Ozempic also makes your dick bigger.

It doesn't.

It's an optical illusion.

It's just that everything else is smaller, so your dick seems bigger.

Or you were so fat you just hadn't seen it in a long time.

I don't know.

New rule, now that nine women have come forward to say Jared Leto was creepy to them, it's time to admit, actually, it's always the guy you'd most suspect.

As long as we're 100% sure it wasn't Russell Brand.

And finally, new rule, everyone has to stop being mad at Elon Musk long enough to consider his latest idea.

Is it time to create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80% in the middle?

That's what he tweeted last week, and it's a great question and a great goal to shoot for.

Problem is, if the recent past is any indication, Elon is like the worst guy to do it.

Because he doesn't take anything to the middle.

He takes it to Mars.

Now, I still believe in Elon because he's an engineering genius who figured out how to do more vital life-shaping things than anyone since Edison.

And this is a resource I don't think we have the luxury of discarding, especially now that we're living in the future.

But as a guy to lead us to 80% land?

No, we had a pilot program for this.

It was called Elon Buys Twitter, which he pledged to bring back from the far left to the middle, but that's not what happened.

Elon, when you took over Twitter, I was right there with you.

It had become an awful place, nothing more than a hunting ground for left-wing scolds to find something to cancel people for.

As I used to say, the problem with Twitter is anything I want to say on Twitter, I can't say on Twitter.

So I loved it when you said it would become politically neutral and tweeted, I hope even my worst critics remain on Twitter because that's what free speech means.

Well, they didn't remain long.

You gave Don Lemon a show and he asked you one tough question and you shit canned him faster than Christy Noam took down Alex Padilla.

You just switched it from a place conservatives felt supremely unwelcome to the reverse, and that's not what it looks like to appeal to 80%.

Neither was Doge.

Did we all think that there was some bloat in government?

Yeah, sure.

But you acted like a doctor who always wants to pull the plug and harvest the organs while the rest of us are going, I just came in for a bikini wax.

That wasn't big dick energy.

That was being a dick energy.

And

until USAID,

you had a pretty great scorecard for saving, not taking lives, and making life better.

You made electric cars a commercial reality.

Giving Starlink satellite servers for free to Ukraine is what allowed them to survive against Russia.

Neuralink is soon going to allow a paralyzed person to walk.

SpaceX lands reusable rockets upright, which is so much better than the old method, crashing.

Even PayPal is kind of a wonder of modern life, making it possible for millions of Americans to sell their broken lawnmower on eBay.

And you got the biggest one of all right, before anybody, recognizing AI as an existential threat.

Although I have to say it did a pretty good job at writing the words I'm saying right now.

I mean, without you, these two poor bastards would still be up in space.

It's an incredible record.

But government work?

It's Chinatown, Jake.

It's not for people like you.

Was it worth a try?

Sure.

Kind of like when Michael Jordan tried to play baseball.

But Elon, did you really think you were going to fit in in Washington with that carnival of crayon eaters?

Congress people?

This is the job for people who are the opposite of exceptional.

It's corporate shills wearing flagpins.

It's ex-rexling coaches, CrossFit trainers, restaurant owners, football coaches, reality show rejects, bartenders, beauty queens, steak salesmen.

Dude, they literally shoot things in their campaign ads.

That's not you.

That's not you, and neither was this.

I get it, you were hurt in your previous relationship with the left, so you threw yourself into a bad rebound.

We've all been there, man.

I just want you to look at everything you developed before Trump.

The electric cars, the reusable rockets, the brain chips.

And then look what you developed after Trump.

A drug habit.

And now I see you're thinking of crawling back?

Don't do it.

Don't do it.

It's a terrible idea.

He's not good for you.

And

we need our boy genius to be more stable.

Come on, you're older now.

Pretty soon you might even start having kids.

Oh, yeah.

You know what?

You know what?

The kid thing?

Fuck the critics on that one.

Knock yourself out.

I mean, it's always funny when Nick Cannon does it.

All right.

Thank you.

I want to thank my guests, Ruther Gregman, Ian Dremer, and Senator John Cutterman.

Club Random drops every Sunday, soon to be Monday, on YouTube and wherever you get your podcast.

Now go watch Overtime on YouTube.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

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

For more information, log on to HBO.com.

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