Ep. #697: Barry Diller, Jake Tapper, Rep. Seth Moulton

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

How are you?

Thank you.

Great to see you.

I appreciate it.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate it.

All right.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

I do.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you.

I know.

I missed you too.

Sorry, I know we were off last week.

Missed you too.

Did you have a good Memorial Day?

The president tweeted on Memorial Day.

He said, Happy Memorial Day, everyone, including the scum,

really, who spent the last four years trying to destroy our country.

I, you know, stay classy, Mar-a-Lago.

He also said this.

He was speaking at the Kennedy Center, and he was bitching about, as he often does, you know, the 2020 election, the one he lost.

And he said, they rigged it.

They rigged that election.

He said, and you know what?

When they did, when they rigged it, I said, I'm going to run it again, and I'm going to win it, and I'm going to shove it up their ass.

That's the president who said that.

And Lindsey Graham stood up.

He said, it was me.

I rigged it.

No.

The kids.

Oh, we make little jokes.

But no, the president, actually, he has been in a foul mood lately because, well, first of all, he and Putin are kind of on the rocks.

It's true.

Well, because the war in Ukraine is dragging on.

And Trump remember when he was running, he said, I would solve it on day one.

He said, you misheard me.

I said, I'd solve it one day.

But he and Putin are now in a tweet war.

Really?

Trump said, you know, Putin, he's killing a lot of people.

He went crazy.

I don't know what the hell happened to him.

You think you know a guy, you know.

It just doesn't seem Putin-esque.

And then Putin shot back and tweeted out, the President of the United States is experiencing emotional overload.

And Trump said, you know what?

With that attitude, I have half a mind to start supporting our allies.

It's terrible, ladies and gentlemen.

So much violence in the world.

Russia on Ukraine, Israel in Gaza, Mrs.

Macron on her husband's face.

Well,

if you haven't seen it, did you see it?

Show it, you know, he's getting off the plane there in Vietnam.

Whoa, and the wife clocks him right there in the face.

Of course,

they didn't know they were on camera, and of course Macron tried to pass it off and play it off.

It's just a little marital play.

No one is buying that.

It's a huge embarrassment for the country of France.

What's even more embarrassing for France is he immediately surrendered.

Oh,

speaking of embarrassments, did you see what happened to RFK Jr.?

He's head of our health department, and they put out a big report.

Now, I'm with them on the big picture.

And you get into the details.

He put out a big report.

I was very looking forward to it, called Make America Healthy Again.

Turns out they let AI write a lot of it.

And AI hallucinates.

And they just included, like, they just made up a lot of studies that just didn't exist.

And now Bobby really is eating crow.

You know what I mean?

He's really eating crow.

Oh, you're way ahead of me.

I can't even.

No, it was a rough week for the administration people.

Elon Musk, a lot of news about him.

First, his Starship rocket, you know, that they said, again, fell apart.

And

every time it falls apart, the engineers at SpaceX call it a rapidly unscheduled disassembly.

We do.

No, I'm not making that up.

That's what they call it.

And they say the autistic don't have a sense of humor.

But.

But.

Okay, but, you know, Elon, wow, big story today in the New York Times.

It says his drug use was way more intense during the campaign that we realized.

Really?

It's like saying Biden was way more old than we realized.

But now this is according to the Times story.

Elon has or had a pill kit, you know,

like Puffy.

Like he had one.

I gotta get one.

It sounds like a...

And he had in it like ketamine, ecstasy, mushrooms.

He's got to be the first person in the world to take ecstasy and be overwhelmed by a blissful feeling that made him want to fire everyone at the National Weather Service.

And

they said he was taking so much ketamine that it actually impacted his bladder function, but clearly not his sperm.

But now, Elon is officially no longer part of the administration he was never really officially part of.

So they had a ceremony this week, Trump did, and Trump thanked him for being a special government employee.

He certainly was that.

And then Trump said he looks forward to the next chapter with Elon where he pretends they never met.

He told me to hire him.

I hardly knew him.

Never a fan.

And I gotta say, people are saying the pardons that Trump is giving out are getting out of control.

He pardoned a nursing home executive, get this, who stole employees' paychecks, and then the guy's mother has dinner with Trump, gives him a million dollars, and he gets pardoned.

I mean, you don't usually see corruption like this in countries that have paved roads.

You know, it's.

Today

a spokesman for Banana Republic said, you know, 20 years ago the name seemed cute.

All right, we got a great show.

We have Jake Tapper and Congressman Seth Moulton.

But first up, he is chairman and senior exec of AIAC, an excluding group, and one of the most influential innovators in entertainment history, now the author of the best-selling best-selling new memoir, Who Knew Barry Diller?

Barry Diller is on my show.

Why are you pale?

Good to see you.

Good to see you.

Barry Rock, Standing Ovation, Barry Diller.

All right.

That's a very...

That's a very hip crowd, I would say, that knows to give a standing ovation in Barry Diller.

Because some people, I mean, your book is called, what is your book called?

But how about why you?

Let's explain to the people who don't follow show business, because as I said, you are one of the biggest innovators in show business history.

So people have been enjoying what your work has been for a long time, maybe without knowing it.

I mean, you saved ABC with the movie of the week.

There was no movie of the weeks before that.

You went to Paramount and put out things like Saturday Night Fever, which changed the game in movies.

It's like an obituary.

Yeah.

Well, honestly, I think a memoir is,

I don't understand.

I see all these people like 80.

I read Streisand's, loved it, Woody Allen's, loved it, Cher, Al Pacino.

But it does seem like you're saying goodbye.

Well, there's not going to be a part two.

There's not going to be a part two with the next 80 years.

Well, you know, we don't know.

They're making advances in medicine all the time.

Honestly, I say the same thing.

You know, I mean, are you...

I hope so.

Cryo?

Yeah.

Whatever.

But, okay, so

I'm glad we're on to that because, like I was saying, you're at Fox Network.

You started that when nobody said there could be a fourth network.

You've always been ahead.

Then you were ahead on QVC and home shopping and all that stuff.

Travelogue.

I mean, travel, what is it?

Travelocity.

What is it?

We have so many companies.

I don't know.

It's called Expedia.

Expedia, that's it.

And dating online, all this shit.

Tell me what you think about AI.

Where is this going?

Because I think the robots, I see them, they're already starting to rebel and they're going to kill us.

Well, before they kill us, they're going to give us a happy ending.

Nobody, of course, knows.

The only thing that we do know, and it is for certain, it's coming sooner than anyone ever thought.

I mean, general intelligence, meaning true beyond genius intelligence.

That's in the next next year or two.

It's going to,

all of us, all of us are actually going to live, well, maybe not me, but live through in the next few years a complete radical transformation.

Complete.

Unknown consequences, some good, some horrific, but we're going to live, we're going to be there for it.

I mean, you know, this has only happened probably two or three times in civilization, the Renaissance, you know,

this is, I think,

that

consequential.

I think it's a thousand times more consequential.

I think the Renaissance.

What I just said?

I mean, the Renaissance was nice.

It was more consequential.

But the Renaissance wasn't even new.

It's right in the word, Renaissance.

It was a reawakening of something they already had.

They just dug it up because that's.

Okay, well, this is not that.

Oh, no, no, no.

This transcends.

Anyway, I can't go beyond, or you can, a thousand times, but.

So, what do you think about the tech bros taking over show business?

I mean, well, I mean, I think it's a, you know, I get criticized for saying, you know, Hollywood is over, and I don't mean that movies and stuff that people make are over.

I just mean that once Netflix came, Hollywood for almost 100 years, it subsumed everything that came to confront it, whether it was video cassettes or whether it was any kind of technology, Hollywood subsumed.

They bought the cable companies, they bought the networks, they bought everything until Netflix came along.

And now they can't buy anything because the tech overlords Netflix and Amazon, which has a completely different business model than anything anyone in entertainment ever heard of.

I mean, so.

I see Netflix as more part of the old guard because they are only in the business of entertainment.

I mean,

how can these companies compete?

They've just begun, Netflix.

They what?

They've just begun.

They're going to get into everything.

Okay, but they don't have the cash reserves.

Apple makes phones, and Amazon makes hair scrunchies, and

19 million other products.

Yes.

So

the media companies they have, they're just a flex for their girlfriends.

Netflix, there's no way, nothing can dislodge Netflix.

It won about five years ago.

Yeah, I understand.

And no one will come near it.

And it is a tech company, primarily, as is Amazon, as is Apple.

And

they now control the entertainment business.

And that's, you know, given that Hollywood major studios controlled it for almost 100 years, that's a development.

Well, with, I think, not the greatest consequences, but.

So you're a guy with fuck you money.

Depends how many fucks.

Who would you like to say fuck you to with the money you have to say fuck you?

Because a lot of people are jealous of people with fuck you, money.

I understand that.

Well, the one thing that I love, my family loves, is building public institutions and parks.

In New York, we built the High Line and then we built an island, and we're doing one in Franklin Canyon in West Los Angeles.

I love,

I'm always amazed, amazed, that people built something.

You know, you come across something, Central Park 150 years or so later, and you say, how did it happen?

Or you come across a statue or a public, something that was built for public enjoyment.

And it's 50, 80, 100 years after it happened.

And it only happened probably because of someone a little crazy.

who had the will and resources to do it.

And so that's what we're doing, and I want to do more.

I mean, listen, I'm lucky.

You know,

I'm lucky, my family's lucky.

What do you do with that good luck?

You do something with it.

Right.

And you did it all while being gay.

All these.

Well, no,

it's a huge theme.

Not technically, but go on.

It's a huge theme in your book that, you know, when you were young,

you say, you know, we wouldn't know how to explain to a young gay person today what you had to go through because the central issue of your life, really, was keeping this secret.

You said...

Well, it was like having an anvil over your head that was on a kind of thin clippable wire.

And it kind of subsumed everything.

So there was a great good thing that came out of it.

Because if you have one big fear, you're really not afraid of much else.

So it allowed me in business to take all sorts of risks.

So yeah, but it was a time, and

thankfully that time is over.

Though I still think it's difficult, particularly for young people getting into their adolescence to, I think one thing

confused or same-sex sexuality does is it robs you of adolescence.

And I think that's kind of criminal, because that's such a great period.

Why does it rob today?

You think it robs you of adolescence?

Yeah, I think it does.

I still think it does to some degree.

I mean, I'm not the leading medical expert here, but I think it does because you want to be, if you're a guy, you want to be with your bros.

You want to be part of the crowd.

You don't want to be the one alone on the side.

Not necessarily, even if you have a secret, even if it's public or whatever, even if everybody knows, still you're not part of the group, the majority group.

And

that does pull you out of the effervescence of adolescence.

I mean,

a lot has changed.

I mean, if I came out gay right now, I would get a huge standing ovation.

Oh, oh.

Don't go in.

I said if.

That's bad.

What?

No.

No, but you know what I mean.

I mean,

it's not what it was.

Well, no, of course not.

No, there's been enormous progress.

I think that progress just keeps going despite any other any pressures against it.

I think it does keep going.

But I still think it's difficult for...

I mean, it's, of course, complete, the world's completely different.

I mean, people couldn't go to work in certain jobs, couldn't get security clearances, on and on and on.

All that's, of course, changed.

Yeah.

I mean, your point about adolescence, though, you had some line in the book, like you said, you ruined a lot of your life, like trying to make up for adolescence.

Well, you did use the word ruined.

I wouldn't use that word, but I so relate to that idea.

I feel like in the same way in my life, maybe not the same way,

not at all, but

in the broad sense,

the same way.

Yes.

How?

How did you do that?

Because

I was a shy kid who was very horny and couldn't talk to girls.

And I feel like I'm still trying to make up for that.

Well.

Thank you.

At least in your time,

they didn't have the word incel.

What's that?

At least in your time, they didn't have the word incel.

Right.

Now they take pride in it.

Right.

An incel is someone who takes pride that they can't be in.

What did it do to you?

Did it make you,

when you say it ruined your younger?

It didn't ruin.

It didn't, as I say, I wouldn't use the word ruin, but I would say that we are very often, all of us, trying to make up for the last era of our life.

And get,

like I would like, I did not have fun during the time of of life I should have had fun.

No fun in college at Cornell.

No girls in high school, barely anything in college.

You know, so like, it was like, I want to have fun.

And so then I was 40, like, wow, now I can't.

And now you can overcompensate, which is what, by the way, most people live their lives doing.

It's not a terrible thing.

You know, if I hadn't had the difficulties that I had, I'd probably be a ribbon clerk at Macy's.

I mean, that's,

you know, it's entirely possible.

All that adversity, all those things

I had to deal with then, were tools that I could use actually to kind of make my adult life better.

Well, for those of us who have enjoyed all the entertainment you've given us, we thank you that you are not a ribbon clerk at Macy's.

Barry Diller.

Great, good luck with the book.

It was fascinating.

I loved it.

Great to see you.

Barry Diller.

All right, let's leave our panel.

Okay,

here they are.

He is the anchor of CNN's The Lead with Jake Tapper and co-author of the best-selling book, Original Sin, President Biden's Decline, His Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.

Jake Tapper.

All right.

And he is a Marine Corps veteran and a Democratic congressman representing Massachusetts 6th.

Seth Molten, backwardness.

Good to see you.

All right.

Time out for one small small plug.

My book is out in paperback.

June 3rd, also audiobook.

It was awesome a year ago.

It hasn't gotten any worse.

It's great.

Okay.

Let's talk about the book everyone's really talking about, and that's Jake Tapper's book.

I have rarely seen, this doesn't happen much anymore in American society, where everyone is talking about a single book, and that is your book.

And you say, Joe Biden was old.

What's your proof?

No,

I feel like your book gave us closure because we were kind of wondering: are we making this up a little too much?

It's so hard to tell when people get to that age.

And then the seance began.

Jake,

I'm reading your thoughts, Jake.

You're saying,

get to a question, Bill.

Get to a question.

Here's my question.

So it gave us closure.

The question really now is just how bad is his reputation going to be in the future?

It was bad before your book.

Now it's worse.

Where is he going to land?

I mean, I can't speak to how history will ultimately judge him.

Obviously, his presidency had accomplishments and incidents that people criticized, too.

What my co-author Alex Thompson and I came to discover after the election, when we decided, okay, now we can get Democrats to talk to us who wouldn't talk to us before, because

if they said anything, there was this threat of, oh, you're going to help Trump get elected.

Suddenly, more than 200 of them were willing to talk to us.

And the question we had was, we all saw what we saw on debate night in June 2024.

How often did that happen before debate night?

And what we found out was quite a bit.

It happened quite a bit.

And as Congressman Walton can attest, he saw some of it a few weeks before the debate.

And I think the fact that he decided to run for reelection, even though there was this kind of implicit promise that he would be a one-termer, and the fact that he and his aides and family members decided to hide how bad it really was-not all the time, but enough-is is

going to be part of his legacy.

Well, yeah.

The cover-up is worse than the crime.

But that's actually the story.

It turns out a lot of people get old.

That happens.

But I don't even really blame Biden for that in the long run.

Right.

But the fact that so many Democrats were frankly just not willing to be honest about what the American people could see with their own eyes.

That's the story.

But I think the point is it was worse than what we were seeing with our own eyes.

We all saw him age.

We all saw the gaffes and the trips and falling off the bicycle and this and that.

Those were clips that were aired on cable news and regular news and all over viral videos.

The question is, what is just aging or Biden who always had a proclivity for gaffes and what is something worse?

What is the non-functioning person that we saw the night of the debate?

The non-functioning person who didn't recognize you in Normandy even though you'd known him for more than a decade, like in a personal way.

Like that is different than just aging.

That's where it hit home for me because, look, it wasn't an easy decision for me to come out and be one of the first to say, hey, he should not run for re-election, because he's been a real mentor to me.

He was the first National Democrat to campaign for me when I won a tough primary against an 18-year incumbent.

It was new on the scene, no background in politics, and a lot of the establishment hated me for beating this guy who'd been there forever.

And Joe Biden came up and campaigned for me.

And he used to call me from the White House and give me tips when he saw me do an interview on CNN and screw something up, right?

So I really respect the man.

I respect him as a leader and as a friend, but then he didn't even recognize me when I saw him in Normandy.

So who you said blame before.

Who do we blame?

I feel like people are yoko-ing the wife.

I feel Joe Biden's getting the yoko treatment.

Maybe she deserves it.

But Yoko didn't break up the Beatles.

I think there were any number of people that were part of this decision to hide how bad it was, not only from the media, not only from the public, but also from cabinet officials, from people in the White House, from Democratic lawmakers.

I mean, there was a period 2023, 2024, Democratic lawmakers barely saw the president.

And yes, I think it was Jill Biden.

I also think it's Hunter Biden.

I also think President Biden has some agency here too.

We're not saying it was weekend at Birdie's.

He was aware what what was going on.

No, I'm saying he wasn't.

Like, he had moments where he was non-functioning, but he understood what was going on.

I mean, we saw him earlier today.

He can speak and talk.

If you're here right now, he could talk for 10, 15 minutes.

He'd be fine.

I think a lot of it is that the Democrats kind of

were too romanticized about the fact that he had a lot of tragedy in his life.

You know, and he survived a lot of it.

So every time something bad would happen, they were like, oh, he's so resilient.

They should have said, this dude is bad luck.

No.

I think one of the problems with the Democratic Party is we're just so scared of offending people.

We don't want to offend old people by saying that the president is too old.

Just like there's all sorts of other people.

We're so careful about what we say, so calculating about our language.

The language police are in full force in the Democratic Party.

And I think there is a degree to which, oh, you know, let's just be, let's be gentle.

Let's not offend him.

Let's not offend older voters.

And we just need to speak the truth.

But don't you you think also one of the issues for your party was the idea that Donald Trump, Democrats perceived him to be an existential threat to the world, and only Joe Biden had ever beaten Donald Trump.

Therefore, he had to be the nominee again.

And any word that deviated from that was helping Trump.

Isn't that part of the dynamic?

That's how the Biden people sold it to themselves.

That's how the people in the inner circle of aides and advisors would tell people,

you can't ask for another nominee.

He's the only guy that can do it.

What do you want, Trump?

Isn't that part of the Omerta that the Democrats had?

They have this, what are you going to help Trump there?

No, I think that's true.

I think people said anyone who goes out, that was a criticism about me.

Like, if you go and criticize Biden, you're just helping Trump.

But the idea that he was the only person in America who could beat Trump is ridiculous.

We have an incredibly talented party, and I was actually on Air Force One once with the president and one other colleague in Congress.

And this other colleague said, you know, you're the only one who can beat Trump.

And Biden himself said, that's ridiculous.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

I'm going to answer my own question about how bad the reputation is.

It really will depend on how bad the Trump administration is.

Or maybe some people are saying, how good.

But it doesn't look that good.

But don't you think that works both ways?

Because on one level, you could say, well, there are people today that would rather have, you know,

completely incapacitated Joe Biden over Donald Trump.

Yes.

And there are also people who can can look at the decision Biden made

to run for reelection and to hide his adlements until it could not be hidden at the night of the debate and say, well, this is how we got Trump.

Look, I just think that Democrats need to start winning again.

We need to win elections because there are huge consequences if we don't, as we can see right now, right?

And I think part of winning elections is just starting with a little meaculpa and saying, yeah, we were wrong.

We were wrong.

We've been perceived out of touch with a lot of Americans about not being honest about a range of issues.

There's not really a problem at the southern border, or inflation really isn't that bad.

And Biden's fine.

So let's just be honest.

Take this opportunity to say, hey, we were wrong about that.

And then we can move forward.

And by the way, there will also be a great time to talk about Biden's legacy.

Biden expanded veterans care.

more than any president in a generation.

That matters a lot to me and my fellow Marines.

So I got a call two days ago from a Marine in Michael too who's worried about getting care for a bunch of tumors that he's got, which is common among veterans.

And he doesn't have to worry that much because of Biden's PACT Act.

He's going to be okay.

He's going to get taken care of by the VA.

And Trump, of course, with Elon Musk, is taking a chainsaw to the VA.

So in the long run, I think Biden's actually going to look pretty good.

But for Democrats, let's just be honest about what happened and then we can move on.

Yes.

But

he's not going to look good if we never really have another election.

What I'm saying is Biden's reputation is sort of tied to what Trump does.

If Trump, I know a lot of Republicans now who say, you know, when I confront them, do you really think if there's another

election that they're going to concede?

And their answer is, yeah, that was a one-time thing with Trump.

They conceded about Trump.

Yeah, Trump will never concede an election, but J.D.

Vance would.

I I don't think so, because the crowd won't accept it.

Maybe J.D.

Vance would like to go back to normal.

I don't know.

But the MAGA crowd does not want to go back to normal.

So if we never have another real election, or if all the pillars of democracy really fall down, I mean, this week I was reading about this guy, Ed Martin.

Never heard of this fucking guy.

Okay.

He was too radical for even the Republicans to make the U.S.

attorney in D.C.

They put him up for that.

Now he's part of something called the Weaponization Working Working Group.

What an Orwellian name.

Supposedly stop weaponization in the Justice Department.

He just, here's his quote.

There are some really bad actors.

Yeah, especially on CBS.

No, I'm kidding.

And

did really bad things to the American people.

How specific for an officer of the government.

And if they can be charged, we'll charge them.

But if they can't be charged, we will name them.

Okay, this is exactly the opposite of what the Justice Department is.

You go by evidence.

You charge crimes.

You don't charge people.

And they're just doing the exact opposite.

Some of the people they're going after, of course, the people who went after him, but that was part of what government does.

Jack Smith, Letitia James.

He's also going after Andrew Cuomo, who's running for mayor in New York.

Beyonce Bono, Oprah.

because he says they took money when they performed for Kamala Harris.

Money required, by the way.

You can't take gifts for free.

I know Trump doesn't really get that, but.

Print that back to law.

James Comey.

Comey, because he had seashells that spelled out, I don't know what the fuck that was all about.

Seashells, seriously, Chris Krebs, this is the guy who was part of his own government's cybersecurity department that said the election was conducted fairly.

It's not just Ed Martin who called for Chris Krebs.

President Trump did.

He signed an executive order saying we're going to go after him.

And it's again, exactly as you say, here's the bad guy, go find a crime.

And Chris is not a bad guy, he's a great guy.

And he upheld the rule of law and was an excellent cybersecurity czar.

Well, this is what will determine, I think, in the future Biden's reputation.

Anyway,

to your point, I want to get to something very important.

How many know what SAM stands for?

It's a new phrase.

It stands for speaking with American men, Sam.

This is the new movement by the Democratic Party.

They lost the men vote a lot last time.

So they had a meeting up at the Ritz-Carlton at Half Moon Bay, south of San Francisco.

I'm not making this up, where they served mini lobster rolls

and had heirloom tomato, cappaccio, and seared sea bass.

in their conclave to decide how to win back the American man.

Now, look.

That's because we used to have conferences at Harvard to figure out what the working class class needs, and so now we're

moving west.

You've got to own who you are.

I get it.

These are the mini lobster roll people.

But they had this symposium, and we got a hold of what was that.

This is speaking with American men.

This is a real thing that they're doing.

And they have these seminars.

Would you like to hear what was

these are ways that they want to

seminars that they had to try to win back the typical American male.

mail, like how to keep your liberal base while putting guns on your Christmas card.

That was one that

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All right, so

but

Congress, you are probably the perfect one to speak about this because right after the election, you were the first one to say one of those things that I have been asking Democrats to say for a long time, to just stop being the party of aggressive anti-common sense.

And you talked about how you didn't want your daughter to be in a football game or a soccer game or something where she was playing with a trans kid who was going to run her over.

And your campaign manager, Matt Chiliak, is that Matt?

Matt Chiliak.

Matt Chiliak, quit

because you said that.

And I spoke about this.

And I said, what the Democrats have to do is tell these douchebags to get the fuck out of the party because these people are the problem.

You're a guy.

Now, what is your relationship with this guy now?

Has he come back to the fold?

Is he still on the page?

Yes, your daughter should be run over by a man on the

soccer field.

He's not a douchebag.

He's a good guy.

But the point is, we can't have disagreements in the party.

And that was actually the latter half of my juicy quote to the New York Times.

I just said, I don't want my daughter getting run over, but as a Democrat, I'm not allowed to say that.

And that's the problem.

We can't even discuss these issues.

We can't even have a reasonable policy on trans people in sports because we're not allowed to talk about it.

So the Republicans just run away with the issue, and they're very extreme.

I mean, I appreciate you saying that, but I think it's got to go further than that.

You have to be able to talk about it.

And also, that guy's wrong, and you're right.

Yes, that's fair.

How about that?

You're right about this.

No, you're right.

And by the way, Gavin Newsom's on this page now.

There's a lot of Democrats.

That's a good company.

Well, he said trans women competing in sports is unfair.

He also, by the way, says we should get homeless do not have the right for the sidewalk.

He also is now not giving out free health care to undocumented immigrants.

There's a lot of this going on the Democrat.

Pete Buttigieg removed his pronouns from his social media profiles.

Uh,

bold move, baby steps, people.

It's got to start with baby steps.

Uh, I got in big trouble with uh, with the NPR crowd for saying a few days after the election: look, I mean, we're calling the Republicans weird, and we're the party that requires pronouns in your email signature.

And you know what?

If you look, if you want to be trans, go for it, it's a free country, and you can put your pronouns out there, but don't put that on me, right?

That's all,

that's all.

And

again, like, let's let's bring this back to winning, Bill.

We can't be always on the 20 side of 80-20 issues and expect to have a majority policy party.

You know, we gotta

actually be real with the American people, just be honest.

And it's okay if you disagree.

I'm fine with that.

But I get to speak as a dad.

That's legitimate.

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The Harvard situation.

Trump has declared full-scale war on Harvard, and like so many things he does, there's a colonel of a good idea there.

I mean, I've been shitting on Harvard long before he was.

Oh, you went to Cornell.

That's not why.

No.

It's because Harvard is an asshole factory in a lot of ways that produces smirking fuck faces.

Okay.

Thank you.

Are you from Harvard?

Yes.

He has three degrees from Harvard.

He has three degrees from Harvard.

So he is.

Present company accepted.

I think we'll.

That I've been indicted.

He's a fuck face.

That's three.

Well, okay.

So as the Dartmouth guy.

But I could name a lot of people.

You know who I'm talking about.

But the issue you raised is that there are issues there at Harvard in terms of how they dealt with anti-Semitism both before October 7th, 2023, and after, especially.

And what kind of ideological diversity is there?

Obviously, diversity is great in all its ways, but ideological diversity is also important.

But the question is, is the Trump administration actually trying to improve Harvard or are they just trying to go up to the biggest guy in the prison yard and punch him in the face so nobody else messes with them?

Do you know what I mean?

Oh, I do know what you mean, because what they're doing is they're

making it so no foreign student can apply to Harvard.

I mean, that has nothing to do with, I mean, some Chinese student coming over here is not going to be protesting, I don't think, for Hamas.

I understand why.

It's just pure reputation.

I mean, obviously Trump didn't get into Harvard.

He probably applied.

I'm not going to talk about you and Carnot.

But the bottom line is that this is just retaliation.

And yes, there are problems at Harvard.

I mean, we do have a problem with anti-Semitism.

I can say that as an alumnus, right?

We need to address that problem.

You don't address that problem by cutting off all the money they're putting into cancer research because it's going to save all of them.

Nothing to do with it.

Nothing to do with it.

But, oh, by the way,

This is interesting

when it comes to combating anti-Semitism.

If you're banning all foreign students, then you're also banning all Israeli students.

That's an interesting way to combat anti-Semitism.

But it is

odd to me that there would be so much anti-Semitism at the place that is the premier educational facility in the United States.

I mean, education was kind of the Jews' thing.

It's odd.

It's odd and it's wrong.

And it's wrong.

And we need to confront that problem.

That's not what Trump is doing.

No,

he's doing both.

I'm sorry, but there's parts of this.

They did, he demanded that they do a kind of audit, and

they did.

And it's kind of bleak.

Jewish students felt ostracized.

They were harassed online.

felt they were unsupported by the university in both rhetoric and actions.

Stuff that would never would have been tolerated if this was going on against people of color instead of Jewish kids.

But just to be clear, Trump demanded that audit after Harvard already started it itself.

So, Harvard, for right or wrong, and there's a lot of wrong there, they are trying to take on this issue.

They are taking it seriously.

A lot of places would not do that kind of self-examination.

And they have a roadmap, and I've sat with the president.

I think there are some reasonable steps that they are taking to fix this problem.

You don't fix the problem by cutting off cancer research.

You don't, of course.

We agree on that.

Yeah, absolutely.

One of the things, this is far beyond Harvard.

It has to to do with an academic theology of oppressor and oppressed.

Yes.

If you only look at the world as oppressor versus oppressed, you then have to choose in a conflict, this group is the oppressor, this group is the oppressed.

It's also why, for example, there have been conflicts on other college campuses

where gay students

have protested things that are going on in Muslim countries having to do with the LGBTQ community in those countries.

And the gay students are made to be be the oppressor because a lot of them are white.

And that's also what's going on when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Israelis are made to be the oppressor, the Palestinians, the oppressed, and on and on and on.

And that's part of what's going on at Harvard, that theology, that way of looking at the world, which you've talked about for years.

Yes, I mean, there is this idea on campuses: it's not just the Israeli thing, it's that all of Western civilization is suspect.

Exactly.

And,

you know, I'm not saying Trump is a guy reading historians every night,

but

to the average person, he seems to get the idea, Western civilization good,

that a lot of these kids don't.

I mean, there was two people shot outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C.

last week.

Outside the Jewish Museum, yeah.

Outside the Jewish Museum, right.

They were embassy aides, the Israeli Embassy.

Okay, and the guy who did it, Elias Rodriguez, doesn't sound like he has ties to the region directly, said, I did it for Palestine.

Now, if you have kids screaming on campus, globalize the intifada, bring the intifada home, this is what you get.

This is what they mean.

They have this idea of the war in Israel being just part of this global problem that we have with Jews and white people.

And so they're going to just randomly shoot people.

And this person is described as a leftist.

This is what leftism is now?

This is what makes you left, shooting people, innocent people down?

No, it's not.

And let's be clear, this is anti-Semitic terrorism.

It's domestic terrorism, and that's what happened, and we've got to be clear about what it is.

And do the campus calls for intifada for from the river to the sea, which means wipe Israel off the map, do they help?

No, they don't.

It also doesn't help when Trump calls for violence against federal judges, and violence over the last three months against federal judges goes way up.

But we do allow free speech in America, and we're not going to use that as an excuse excuse for murder, right?

And I know these people are saying, well, they're murdering people over in Gaza, but that's a war.

And that war could stop tomorrow if you would stop attacking Israel.

Give up the hostages and give up.

It really comes down to what is your position on this?

Do you think Hamas should be left standing?

Absolutely not.

Then we're just talking about tactics.

Right.

Military.

Hezbollah, which is another group labeled terrorist by the Israelis and the Americans, which is in Lebanon, Hezbollah allows when they're, they allow civilians to leave.

They allow civilians to flee.

And so there are far fewer civilian casualties in that conflict as it's gone on, although it's obviously a different conflict.

But Hamas doesn't.

Hamas embeds within the community of innocent civilians because they think it helps their cause.

They're very open about that.

They say it publicly.

Absolutely.

I think you've hit on something really important, which is that this is one of the biggest.

Sorry.

No, I knew I would eventually.

This is one of the most controversial issues in American politics today, and certainly in the Democratic Party.

Yes.

And we should start with just the things that we should all agree on.

Hamas needs to be eliminated.

You cannot have a terrorist organization running a country.

It's a really big problem in your party.

And we also can say that we should limit civilian casualties on both sides.

That's how you win a counterinsurgency.

I know a few things about that, having been on the ground in Iraq.

And Netanyahu's strategy is not working.

But the point is, let's establish the big points here.

Everyone deserves human rights.

We want to minimize civilian casualties.

And Hamas needs to be eliminated.

We should all agree on those points.

And then, like you said, we can have a serious discussion about tactics, how we get there.

Bill, did you see this story in the free press just a day or two ago?

It was really interesting.

It was about the Democratic Socialists of America and the debate within the DSA about whether or not it's acceptable to kill those two.

Right, I did see it.

Yeah, and it's fascinating because

it was just a debate.

Yeah.

Well, they're even talking about.

Is it okay to kill innocent civilians in the streets of Washington, D.C.?

This is the same mindset that led to the attempted torching of Governor Shapiro's house during Passover when his family was there.

Same thing, a left-wing pro-Palestinian activist tried to set it on fire.

And it's the same reason why Jewish public officials,

your colleague Congressman Lanceman from Cincinnati, Dana Nessel, the Attorney General of Michigan, they're hounded everywhere they go.

It doesn't even have have to do with their position on Netanyahu or Israel or Gaza.

It's because they're Jewish.

That's why they're being hounded.

And if we don't condemn that as Democrats, if we don't condemn that kind of debate, that kind of talk, we're going to be defined by it, by the Republicans, and we're going to lose elections.

But most importantly, we're not going to keep people safe.

So if we want to prove to America that we are the party that can actually keep you safe, while Trump is calling for violence, you don't like the election results, go attack the Capitol.

You don't like federal judges and what they say, go bother them or threaten to kill them in their homes, right?

If we're going to be the opposite of that, then we've got to keep people safe.

Great.

Thank you, guys.

Well said.

All right, time for New Rule.

Okay.

All right.

New rule, now that Costa Rican prison guards have apprehended a house cat with 230 grams of weed

and 67 grams of crack taped to its body.

They have to find out who tipped them off.

My guess, it's a dog.

My guess she rolled over.

I mean, look at this cat's face and tell me it's not thinking.

The bitch set me up.

New rule, the West Virginia cops who arrested Olympic legend Mary Lou Rutten for DUI have to tell us one thing.

How'd she do when you made her walk a straight line?

Neural, whatever you do, do not show this photo to every working mom who wonders what stay-at-home dad does all day with the baby.

But hey, nothing to worry about.

He remembered sunscreen.

New old Brendan Leow, the 27-year-old who's smart enough to be a three-time Jeopardy champion with a master's degree in political science, has to tell me why he still lives with his parents

and is unemployed.

He literally calls himself a stay-at-home son.

Is there something I'm not understanding about your your generation?

Really, just tell me, what is outside your house that is so scary?

Is it girls, remnants of the COVID virus?

Because, Brendan, I know why the caged bird sings.

What I don't know is why a free bird refuses to leave the cage and instead sits in the dark playing Minecraft.

New Rule, I know I'm the weirdo because I never had kids, but if it's really so great, tell me why we now literally have a product called Mom Water

that consists of putting vodka in a can.

Mom Water, because people stare when you take a bottle of Stoli to the playground.

And finally, New Rule, the Me Too movement, which turns eight years old in October, needs an actual new rule.

An amendment, if you will.

Now, I'm sure with all the important world-changing news that's going on lately, very few of you have had time to pay attention to the P.

Diddy trial going on in New York.

I'm joking, of course.

The moon could crash into the earth, and that trial would still be the first thing I'd click on, and I'm sure you're no different.

I gotta say, this Diddy is a really hard guy to figure out.

He's allegedly so jealous of kid Cuddy just dating Cassie that he firebombs his car, and it wasn't even a Tesla.

But then he pays another man so we can watch the guy fuck her right in front of him.

Love is complicated.

And that's where we must start.

We need to keep two thoughts in our head at once.

One, Diddy is a bad dude, really bad, like the worst thing in rap since Hammer Pants.

A violent, sick fuck.

I'm sorry, I mean an alleged violent sick fuck.

And we should lock them up and throw away the baby oil.

And two,

things have changed enough so that moving forward, the rules should be, if you're being abused, you've got to leave right away.

Now, I completely understand why in the past women often did not do that.

I understand, as counterintuitive as it seems, why an abused woman would send complimentary texts or emails to her abuser after the abuse.

In an era where women felt for good reason that OG predators like Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein would never be held accountable, why not at least get something out of it?

These men were surrounded by all sorts of enablers, skeptical cops, assistants who lured women into unsafe spaces, cowards who knew what was going on but didn't dare expose the person who signed their paycheck.

In that scenario, it was not illogical for an abused woman to say, well, if I can't get justice for my pain, can I at least get a receipt, a coupon?

But a lot has changed.

Cosby and R.

Kelly went to prison.

Harvey Weinstein is going to die in prison.

Larry Nasser is serving 175 years.

Jeffrey Epstein was murdered in his jail cell by Hillary Clinton.

Post-Me Too, reporting of sexual crimes is way up, as is the percent of women who say they're now more more likely to speak out if victimized.

And many states have changed laws, making it easier for victims to come forward.

We're not in the no one listens to women or takes them seriously era anymore.

Operators are actually standing by to take your calls.

And I'm aware that it can be difficult to leave an abusive relationship.

Most of what I watch on TV is the Lifetime Channel.

But this should be society's new grand bargain.

We take every accusation seriously, but don't tell me any more about your contemporaneous account that you said to two friends ten years ago.

Tell the police right away.

Don't wait a decade.

Don't journal about it.

Don't turn it into a one-woman show.

And most importantly, don't keep fucking him.

Your only contemporaneous notes about what he did should be the police report.

It's not victim shaming to expect women to have the agency to leave toxic relationships.

Quite the contrary, to not expect that is

infantilizing them.

If Diddy walks free, it will be because his lawyers can point to an endless stream of texts from Cassie expressing what's often called enthusiastic enthusiastic consent to their sex life.

If you're me tooing someone, it doesn't help your case if you texted him, me too.

I just want it to be uncontrollable.

If you want us to think you weren't always ready to freak off, don't write, I'm always ready to freak off.

Or wish we could have FO'd before you left.

You know, one sign you're pretty comfortable with something something is when you call it by its initials, like Trump with KFC or Johnny Depp

or Johnny Depp with B.O.

I get it.

Part of the allure of the music industry is you want to be a star.

It's why someone moves to Miami from Kansas.

It's why they built a freeway from Orange County to LA.

It's why someone might run away from their small town pastor into the arms of Father Funk.

And music is, to begin with, highly sexualized.

Magic doesn't strike at the office.

It strikes in the studio at 3 a.m.

when you're high as a kite and horny as a youth minister and

everyone is sexy as shit and you're working on a song song called Slut Up My Goo Machine.

Of course a freak off breaks out.

Final.

But if we're going to have an honest conversation about abuse, we also have to have an honest conversation about what people are willing to do for stardom.

If you want a number one record on the chart so bad you'll take a number one in the face,

some of that is on you.

And if you're doing it for love, well come on.

Oprah and Dr.

Phil and every podcaster in the world have done a million shows by now about how abuse is not love and abusers don't change.

If it happened once, there will be more of it.

To pretend otherwise is like seeing one ant in the sink and thinking, oh, it's probably just the one.

The singer FKA Twiggs is suing Shia LaBeouf for their relentless abusive relationship.

Now I have no idea what Shia LaBeouf is like, although I've never read one single story about him or he didn't sound like a dick.

But by her own account, she said, the whole time I was with him, I could have bought myself a business flight plane ticket back to my four-story townhouse in Hackney, London.

Really?

Then why am I reading about this?

Then do that.

Buy that plane ticket, even if you have to go coach.

If you're literally being held captive, that's one thing.

But if you're putting up with whatever, for love or for your career, then you need to have a little more honesty and accountability about that.

Ike Turner was a psycho, just like Diddy.

But in an era where there was no movement to help her, Tina Turner somehow got away, and she did it with 36 cents in her pocket and a mobile card.

All right, that's our show.

I want to thank my guests, Jake Tapper, Congressman Seth Molson, and Barry Diller.

Remember, what this comedian said will shock you.

Out in paperback and audiobook, June 3rd.

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.

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