Ep. #696: Stanley McChrystal, Scott Jennings, Peter Hamby

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

Start the clock.

Thank you.

Thank you very much down there.

Thank you, people.

How you doing?

I appreciate it.

Thank you very much.

Well,

thank you.

Thank you so much.

So much news,

people.

All right.

Calm down.

Calm down.

Right back at you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much.

Please, but there is so much news to get to.

Big Supreme Court ruling just happened.

We're going to talk about on the panel.

Breaking news.

Always very exciting when that happens on a Friday.

And of course, the president's big trip.

You know, he was in the Middle East this week.

A lot of stuff happened.

He's in Saudi Arabia.

Boy, they have a bromance going on over there.

Well, they do.

I mean,

bromance diplomacy, I call it.

But, you know,

Trump has a unique bond with the Saudis.

They both reshaped the Manhattan skyline.

Yeah.

And that was the first joke of the night.

I mean, you can imagine where this shit's going.

Okay, but no, but I'm telling you, Trump loves these rich Arab guys.

He said to

Crown Prince MBS over there, and he said, I like you too much.

He did.

And now Putin isn't returning his texts.

But no, they.

They love him over there.

They camels, they had a perera.

Teslas, they had horses, they had dancing girls.

They had a purple carpet.

I guess it's like a platinum card.

You know, it's like purple, not even red.

And they also, listen to this, they set up a mobile McDonald's there.

A little different up there than McDonald's.

The happy meal toy is a little bone saw.

Well,

and then,

I love this.

As Trump is leaving Saudi Arabia, shakes hands with MBS, and then they play YMCA.

In a country where you could get the death penalty for being gay, I know they say, village people, that's not a gay anthem, but people think it is.

Okay, so

to put that, play that while he's in Saudi Arabia, but you know, that's Trump.

And then it was on to Rome to meet the new Pope to the tune of wet-ass pussy.

So

I'm kidding.

He didn't go to Rome.

Then it was on to the country of Qatar.

Oh, yeah, where he got an eye.

You know, when you travel, you like.

You like to leave with a souvenir, right?

So he got a $400 million plane that they

gave him, they gave him a $400 million plane, which he accepted.

Now, this has to be the ultimate if Obama did it, I think, you know, because if Obama did it, Fox News would be endlessly calling it A La Force One.

So I think I will call it that A La Force One.

But it's moot anyway, because it's not going to be ready to be that if it was going to be Air Force One, so it would have to be private, which then it would be illegal.

But you know what?

It doesn't matter.

Trump says he will not be using it when he leaves office, and people don't believe that.

Not the using it part, the leaving office part.

But okay, so Trump now has four planes.

He's got the two Air Force Ones that the government provides.

Then he's got his own plane.

Now he's got this one.

Four planes.

Yet everybody else, still only $3 and 10 pencils.

I mean,

I feel like this was an interesting sign of the times today.

I saw in the paper there's a man named Glenn Rogers in Florida.

They put him to death.

He's a serial killer,

like all serial killers.

He's a white man from Ohio.

But listen to this.

His last words before the shit went in the arm were, President Trump, keep making America great.

And you know Trump, he said, what am I supposed to not take the compliment?

But of course what everybody is really talking and gossiping about is, I'm sure you know, the rapper and mogul Sean Combs.

The trial is going on in New York, and oh my God, his ex Cassie testified this week, and according to her testimony, this shit is even sicker than we thought.

I mean, he really puts the P in P, did he?

Well, again, according to her testimony, she says he brought in other men to have rough sex with her, including urinating on her.

I mean, say what you want about R.

Kelly.

He did his own urinating.

And

I

don't know, but I just don't get these freaky people.

I mean, I'm so glad I'm not freaky like that.

I mean, I don't, because, I mean, I don't get this being so jaded, because Puffy, he wasn't even participating.

He wouldn't participate.

He would just sit there and tell his girlfriend and hired prostitutes what to do.

But then again, he was always a better producer than performer.

But, okay.

But it may not be so bad for him after all, Puff Daddy, because Shuck Knight said this week it's going to be okay because Trump is probably going to pardon him.

Well, I don't know, maybe.

You know, Diddy's a terrible guy, but he does have a lot of oil.

All right, we've got a great show we have here.

Scott Jennings, but first up, oh my gosh, he is a retired four-star Army general.

How about that for a transition?

And best-selling author of on-character choices that define a life.

Stanley McChrystal, general.

Sir, how are you?

It's a pleasure.

It's a pleasure.

Thank you for your service.

I mean not sincerely.

Well,

thank you for being here.

I'm sorry you had to see that monologue.

You're such a serious guy.

I mean, you ran our war in Afghanistan.

I mean, you were head of the Joint Special Operations Command, which is our elite commandos when there's something terrorist going on.

What do you think of the Puff Diddy trial?

No.

No, I

I want to know, because all we've been hearing about lately is this Pentagon is kind of in a meltdown.

Pete Hegseth from Fox News took over, and twice now he's been caught being talking on a signal, which is an app, which is not safe,

according to the book.

And people in the Pentagon, I've read, are upset about this.

I've even read the word meltdown.

You must know people still in the building.

What's going on inside the Pentagon?

Well, thanks for asking.

I think people are bothered by

a lack of seriousness.

And I'll say on a couple levels.

If you look at Signal Gate, we'll call it.

That was a bit amateurish.

That That was a mistake, and

I think people can say that's sort of people figuring out how to do their job.

Twice?

It happened twice.

But then after the fact, they went in front of media and testimony, and they said that the information wasn't classified.

And it was.

How could it not be?

It was about attacking another country.

That's right.

But the real problem is they knew it was, and they want us to believe them.

And that's a real issue there.

If you think of the Pentagon in general, we've got to defend the nation.

And that's very, very serious business.

It's expensive.

It's across the world.

And it requires every capability America can marshal.

And now we are locked in this argument about DEI.

And in reality, when I commanded the counter-terrorist forces,

it was the ultimate meritocracy.

I mean, you see the movies and you see the bearded commander with big shoulders, knobby knuckles, and I was part of that.

Now people can tell they're not all like that.

I would like to say I was bigger than, but

the reality is, it's a team, and that team that does it is communicators and logisticians and intelligence professionals, and it's people of every age, of every sex, of every gender.

If someone is transgender, someone, no one cares.

They want to get the job done right.

And so we sometimes make it two-dimensional in the idea that you've got to be a certain profile to be a warrior.

And I just have a different view of the military than Secretary Hague does in that regard.

I think we really are about what best defends us.

And I think what best defends us is everybody.

But I must say, this is exactly why these guys wanted to take over.

Because they think,

I mean, first of all, I do find it hard to believe that nobody in the military has a problem with trans people in the military.

Is that what you're saying?

No, I certainly would never speak for everybody in the military.

I'm sure some do.

But the reality is...

I mean, it's the same thing as what goes on in women's locker rooms.

There are some places people just don't want a penis.

I mean, there are.

I don't trust a penis no matter who has it.

Okay,

it's just not a trustworthy organ.

But this is why they want.

They say that Pete Hagseth says we have to restore the warrior ethos and that somehow this is in conflict with wokeness.

So you don't see that as a problem at all.

When you were there, there was nothing that you would describe as too woke.

Well, there are always superficial things that even at the time caused me to to roll my eyes a bit.

But the reality is it was a great service member on TV the other day who said,

we're too strong to participate in sports, and yet we are not strong enough to be in the military.

And that's the basic contradiction here.

I think anyone who has the desire to serve their nation, to put their life on the line, to bring their talents, I've just never seen, I never heard a discussion about transgender when I was in.

In fact, there was a big argument about women in combat.

And there was a certain percentage of the force that was against it.

And the thing that became

kind of funny about it is they were still arguing about it 10 years after women were already in combat and doing very well.

And so that had changed, the reality had changed.

And most of the people who are actually doing the military's business are very practical people, and I think that's still the case.

And

do you think, I mean

your book is about character and the phrase that stuck out to me is embrace the suck

that you talk about, which is, I guess you didn't coin that, but that's what they say in the military, which means that things get rough out there and you got to embrace it.

Does the military, you feel, still have that character?

I think they do.

But the suck may be different.

If we think of every soldier carrying a huge rucksack and walking 30 or 40 miles with it, that was never the reality.

That was always a subset of the force.

There were always people that did this other range of jobs.

And some of them work 18 hours a day, some of them work seven days a week.

I mean, they're tremendous things.

I remember mechanics in the cold when I was a mechanized unit.

It would be really cold and they'd take their gloves off.

and they would grab a wrench and they would be trying to tighten or loosen a bolt and it would slip off and they would bark their knuckles and you just you cringed when you watched that but they didn't complain and so everybody had a different way of contributing and kind of it all sucks at times but the reality is it's willing to say that sucking is part of it whatever my particular participation is isn't going to be something I like every minute of every day.

And the future of warfare isn't any of that anyway, is it?

I mean, I mean, now we have guys who sit in an

air-conditioned building in Las Vegas and operate a drone that it drops missiles half a world away.

We're not going to have fighter pilots in the future.

Even Elon Musk said that, although they did not go through with their plan to cut the Pentagon budget.

They should have, should they not have?

The Pentagon budget is an interesting one, and I'll just say that it's not a litmus test for patriotism.

A bigger budget doesn't mean you're more patriotic.

We should spend as much on defense as we need to.

It's always going to be expensive for America because we try to be prepared to fight around the world.

Many of our allies or even our opponents have a fairly narrow geographical area and mission set.

So they focus on that and they can be more economical on that.

We try to be able to do a wide range of things and that's part of America's role in the world.

So it's going to be expensive.

Could we cut the defense budget?

I think we could spend the money better.

I think defense acquisition is almost remarkably out of date the way we do it.

And I think most of the people who participate in that system understand that.

But it was going to take major reform.

If you want a Secretary of Defense to do something that I would be truly excited about, instead of focusing on DEI, they would come in and they say, we're going to reform defense acquisition in a brutally efficient way and try to produce something different.

So

one of the big military stories recently was that not one but two airplanes fell off an aircraft carrier.

I mean, sometimes the kids talk about falling off.

It means you're not

doing as well as you used to do, but these planes really fell off.

Yeah.

Why?

Well, I don't know.

I wasn't there, but let me paint a picture of a nuclear aircraft carrier for everybody.

It's about 5,000 young Americans, average age, like 18 years old.

You wouldn't lend your car to them.

But we've given them a nuclear aircraft carrier, and they do a splendid job.

They wear different colors, sweatshirts, they launch and recover aircraft, and they just do the nation's bidding day after after day.

Do people make mistakes?

They do.

It's probably amazing that it doesn't happen more often.

Exactly.

And landing a plane on the aircraft carrier, I've seen enough movies to know what a bitch that is.

It's insanity.

It's insanity, right?

At night or something, you have this little matchbook cover that you're trying to hit from

coming down at crazy speeds, and then you have to stop on a dime.

It's kind of amazing that they pull off what they do on a regular basis.

And they do it day after day and their day.

Year after year.

And so that's.

As you did.

And we thank you.

People say thank you for your service like it's a thing.

But when I say it, I mean it.

I think most people do.

Thank you, General.

I appreciate you being here.

General McCrystal.

All right.

Good luck with Good Luck.

All right, let's lead our panel.

Hey, guys.

How you doing?

All right.

He hosts Good Luck America on Snapchat and is a founding partner at Puck News.

Peter Hamby back with us, Peter.

And

he's on the other network.

I'm also on CNN.

He's a senior political contributor whose forthcoming book, A Revolution of Common Sense, is available for pre-order on Amazon.

I used to call him Lonely Scott Jennings, but he has some help now.

Scott Jennings.

How are you?

Okay.

Well, I'm always excited when there's breaking news right before we come on the end.

And this is Friday at about 4 o'clock here in Los Angeles.

And the Supreme Court today just said they are denying, 7-2, the Trump administration's request to swiftly resume deportations of Venezuelan nationals.

If you've been following this story, Trump used something from 1798 called the Aliens Enemies Act.

It depended on you believing that we were actually under invasion, that this was a war.

Because there are gangs, there are gangs from Central American, South American countries here in this country.

whether this was an invasion by any reasonable reading of that word.

A lot of people question this.

And interesting, we could talk about the Supreme Court not always backing him up as people thought, but let's just get to this right away.

What do you think about this ruling by the Supreme Court?

Will this be important?

Yeah, I mean, I think the court here is standing up for due process.

Donald Trump doesn't like it.

It's not over.

They're just sending this back to a lower court to make a decision as to whether these Venezuelans in Texas can be deported and sent to this mega prison in El Salvador.

Most, the interesting thing about Donald Trump saying, I think he posted on True Social, you know, the courts are trying to stop us from fighting this invasion of illegal alien criminals or whatever language he used.

88% of Americans, I think, according to Pew, think that Donald Trump should abide by whatever the Supreme Court says.

The Supreme Court's not popular, generally,

but

as the president is, you know, pushing back against the courts, expanding executive power, and the courts are pushing back on him, I mean, 78, I think 80% of Republicans in the same poll agree that the Supreme Court is the final word.

But again, like, we'll see what happens.

This is a procedural decision.

Yeah, well, I mean, it's a good thing that most people believe that because Donald Trump also believes that.

He's repeatedly said that they'll abide by what the Supreme Court decisions are, but that's not going to stop them them from pulling all the most creative levers they can think of to repel what I think they rightfully believe has been an invasion.

It's not just these gangs.

It's illegal immigration in general.

And the last administration allowed it to happen.

They got elected largely on a mandate to correct it.

So they're trying creative things.

Maybe they're stretching the boundaries of what a 1798 law was intended for.

But most Americans know it was a crisis.

Most Americans know the previous administration caused it.

And most people voted for Donald Trump largely because they they thought he would do what was necessary to fix it.

Now, if the court doesn't agree with him, I'm sure they'll go back to the drawing board on it.

But I think he's got a lot of political leash to pull as many levers as he can.

The curious dynamic that's going on, I think, is that they're trying to have it both ways, claiming there's an invasion, pushing the courts.

What the Trump White House is doing, using all of the levers of the federal government, is working.

I mean, Joe Biden's policies at the border were a disaster.

Democrats need to admit that.

In February 2023, I think there were 200, and a quarter million apprehensions at the border.

In March of this year, there were 7,000.

So like fentanyl deaths are down in this country.

Crime, violent crime is coming down.

So it's working.

They're arresting and deporting 65,000 people so far.

So like the invasion is being stopped, but Trump is still saying we need the courts to push back the invasion.

But it's the people who already are here.

Take the Abrego Garcia character that we sent back to El Salvador.

He has been in the country or was in the country for 14 years.

He came in in 2011, and it's 2025.

And there's plenty of evidence that he was a pretty bad dude.

And most people are looking at this saying, how did he come in and stay here for this long?

Why shouldn't we be trying to pull levers to get people like that out of the country?

So your view is that bad dudes could be sent to a foreign prison?

That can't be.

In the country where they are a resident or a citizen?

Sure.

Okay, but that's not a problem.

But that's not what the Constitution says.

I mean, our friend Byron Donalds, who has been on the show before this week, said, due process is reserved for American citizens.

But that is not what the Constitution says.

I mean, maybe it should.

But that's not what we're talking about.

We're saying, what does it say?

I mean, if you were the founding fathers and you were writing the Fifth Amendment or the 14th Amendment, because both of them use the word person, they knew the difference between the word person and the word citizen.

It says no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process.

That's the Fifth Amendment.

The 14th says no state shall deprive any person of life, liberty, property without due process.

So isn't it clear?

I mean, you talk about creative means, but creative can just

kind of morph right into, we're just going to do whatever I want.

And I don't think, as you said, those polling numbers, even among Republicans, I don't think they want to live in a country where a guy just goes, you know, you're a bad dude.

You go to torture chamber.

Well, well, that's not the country they live in.

They live in a country where this guy had been to immigration court repeatedly.

But the Venezuelan, he had to say, the Venezuelans they're talking about in this case, the Supreme Court spokes on today, Trump wants to send them to El Salvador.

They're not from El Salvador.

I mean, Trump was asked, do you have a duty to uphold the Constitution?

And his answer was, I don't know, I'm not a lawyer.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

I'm just asking.

But in the same breath, he said, on this case, we have the best lawyers, and we're going to abide by what the Supreme Court said.

I mean, that was what his full statement was.

Look, these people, these gang members are not coming here to be productive Americans.

They are coming here to rape, pillage, murder, steal, and wreak havoc on communities.

The president was elected to fix it.

I believe in what he says.

He's going to abide by Supreme Court decisions, but I don't think most people begrudge him creative ideas when it comes to getting them out when they've been allowed to stay here for so long.

They don't begrudge him a lot of ideas.

I don't even begrudge him a lot of ideas like that.

I don't want gangs in this country either.

Or, you know, was there bloat in the government?

Or USA aid, maybe there was some corruption.

It's the way he does it.

It's this, it's the wrecking ball nature.

You know.

When I hear people say it's the way he does it, what I hear is, well, I don't like the way he does it.

I would prefer he not do anything at all.

Let's just kick the can down the road.

That's what everybody else does.

He didn't get elected to kick the can down the road.

Really, there's no middle ground between doing nothing and doing it the right way.

Please.

What's the right way?

Well, I don't know.

Like, if you were gonna take, if you were gonna demolish a building, wouldn't you go in there and take out the valuable stuff first as opposed to just knocking the fucking building down

how many of the I don't know how many how many of the gang members would you consider to be valuable I mean the problem no I'm talking about I'm talking about Doge

the problem is that again speaking of polls most Americans agree violent criminals who are here illegally undocumented should be gone it's all the other people who get caught up in the dragnet who might not be criminals Or, I mean, Billy, you've talked on the show a lot about the protesters at Columbia.

Like, there might be a ton of bozos who were, you know, in those protests.

But the people who were arrested at Tufts and at Columbia and sent to an immigration holding facility in Louisiana,

they haven't been charged with a crime.

They were just like speaking, exercising their free speech rights.

All right, let's move.

I want, before we run out of time, I want to get to the

trip to the Middle East.

Because Trump, Trump, if anything, he is a disruptor.

You got to give him that.

Because he has mixed up the right and the left this week as I haven't seen in a long time.

I see lots of people on the right criticizing him for taking the plane and for being cozy with Qatar.

I see lots of people,

Democrats, centrists, people who you don't usually see saying nice things about Trump.

Let me read Freed Zakuria.

Trump reminded us that sometimes his willingness to take risks and think outside the box can shake up old tired ways.

He could bring a new level of peace and stability to the Middle East.

This is

Jean Shaheen.

She's the Democratic senator of New Hampshire.

She's down with it.

Sarah Jacobs, she's a congressman out here in California.

Here's Rob Malley.

He's in the Biden administration.

I wish I could work for an administration that could have moved that quickly.

It's hard not to be

summonously terrified, he says, by the things Trump does.

Also awed by his willingness to brazenly shatter so many harmful taboos.

Ben Rhodes, that's pod saves America, doesn't get more left than that.

It's so clearly the right decision.

He's talking about recognizing Syria.

So it's so funny.

You know, they want to separate somehow Trump's transactional, which is preposterous, some of this transactional bribery stuff that goes on, with his diplomacy.

You can't.

That's who he is.

That's how he sees the world.

You knew it the first time they re-elected him.

It's never going to change.

It's a bromance diplomacy.

The way he talks about these, he's a handsome guy.

I mean, I don't know what's going on.

The question is,

is the transactional part, is it possible that in the future we will say, oh, well, it was worth it because we got peace in the Middle East?

I don't know.

This is the big question of this week.

And you mentioned Ben Rhodes, him and Tommy Vitor on Pod Save the World, did say they like some of the things that he did.

He sidelined Netanyahu from these conversations.

He got rid of sanctions against Syria, and both of them said on Pod Save the World, I wish Biden had done that.

And he did.

And like, there's a thing that Scott and I both know from DC.

It's called the blob.

The foreign policy blob, the State Department lifers, the think tank people who think and still think that the post-war, post-World War II order is still a thing and you still need to do this and that.

Biden came out of that world.

If we have a, if we remove a Russian and Iranian proxy in Syria, you know, that's backed now theoretically by a U.S.

ally, we can always put sanctions back up.

Like, that's a good thing.

If we're getting hostages out of Gaza, that's a good thing.

I don't think Trump cares that much about the Palestinians.

But there are lots of possible, very good outcomes here.

And I was amazed by reading some of these quotes from Biden State Department people who are like, man, I wish we could have done this stuff.

I mean, yeah, they're saying that because they wish their own president had been awake long enough to do anything like this.

I mean, that's the, I mean, mean, this is the problem.

People respond to leadership.

People respond to leadership.

The president is functional and capable of going to another country and saying, I represent the United States.

Let's wheel and deal here.

And on Qatar, I would just point out all the people who are upset about this plane.

We're already dealing with these people.

We've got the big military base there.

We sell them a lot of military equipment.

We have already crossed the threshold of deciding we have to deal with Cutter, even though they have clearly done things that we don't like.

And so the idea that we're going to be mad about having a relationship relationship with him now is that...

Well, that is the new, well, there is a Trump doctrine now.

You know, and if people have been followed in the past, our history, we have doctrines.

The Monroe Doctrine, back in the 19th century, was saying, anything that happens in the Western Hemisphere, in the Caribbean, that's our business, and we will fuck with you.

Then there was the Bush Doctrine.

The Bush doctrine was like, if you harbor terrorists, we will treat you like a terrorist yourself.

Now we have the Trump Doctrine, which is, I think, as much of a departure as any doctrine a president has ever promulgated.

Because what he is saying is, and I'll give you some of the quotes, is in the end, the so-called nation-builders wrecked far more nations than they built.

This is his speech in Riyadh.

Interventionists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand.

Now, I gotta say, this is something people on the left said about Vietnam.

societies we did not even understand.

We said it about Iraq.

What are we doing here?

But Trump is basically saying, we don't give a shit about what your morality is.

And again, it's a hard one for

people on the left to argue with because they're the ones who say America is so evil.

So his doctrine is basically, you do you.

We all love money.

We all love money and we're not going to lecture you or heck do you anymore about your morals.

You want to cut off somebody's head, a reporter's head with a bone saw?

You know, we all have our peccadillos.

That's his doctrine.

I talked to someone in the Trump administration yesterday about all of this, and they said literally what you just said.

They said, quote, this person, Trump isn't going over there to lecture.

He's going over there to do deals.

This person described it fully as realism.

He's transactional.

That's who he is.

That's who he is.

And again, maybe the American people will decide this.

The international community will decide this.

The blob might think about this.

Like, do we care about abandoning the traditional like morality of the United States, exporting our values overseas in service of of good outcomes.

It's a very interesting question.

He was a very important thing.

That's a very reasonable question because

the other way didn't really work.

I mean planting democracy in the Middle East was really, I mean they gave a lot of reasons why we went into Iraq, but that was really what they couldn't say it all the time, but Thomas Friedman would say it for them.

We need to plant a democracy in the heart of the Arab world.

And it didn't work because you know what, you got to get rid of the religion.

And that's not going to happen in our lifetimes before you can get to democracy.

They don't care about the same things.

Biden would not talk to MBS after he cut off the guy's head and then six months later when we needed Saudi Arabia he went over there and fist-bumped him.

Something about the Republican doctrine that is fascinating to me.

I've been in the party for 25 years working in it.

We've always been war and peace.

I think Trump has changed it to peace and war.

He talks about peace more than he talks about war.

He's still hawkish enough to bomb people that need to be bombed, like the Houthi rebels.

But I get the feeling he's responding to all these new inflows of constituents of the Republican Party.

Maybe they were Democrats before, maybe they weren't even political before.

But they would much rather hear an American president talk about peace.

And the banner in the Middle East at his rally this week said peace through strength, which is probably one of the most enduring slogans from the Reagan era.

He doesn't agree with him on everything, but on that, I think he's right.

But putting peace ahead of war, pretty popular with the American people, right?

Well, I was on this.

I was on the show with you last year talking about the

tour I had done of college campuses for my Snapchat show interviewing students about the election, just asking them open-ended questions.

I was shocked the amount of times I heard from young men on campuses, not like Yale or Stanford, like commuter colleges, Cleveland State, Clemson, Penn State, whatever.

And they liked that Trump was promising to end wars, however unrealistic that was.

He became the anti-war candidate and stole that from the Democratic Party over the years.

He does not like war.

I knew that from what people had told me and when I may have met him in the past recently.

How'd that go?

That

went great actually.

And that's one thing that comes across really plain, which is so ironic because it's sort of like a hippie view.

Like, I don't care what you have to do, we're just not going to war.

In his case, surrendering.

He surrenders to people.

When I worked at surrender, like to Putin.

He worked to just surrender because I hate war that that much.

And you know what?

If this stalemate in Ukraine was ever going to not come out the way it is, it makes sense.

But we'll see, because he does just surrender.

That's how much he hates war.

He had that brand even before he ran for president.

When I worked at CNN, Scott's current network back in the day, before he ran for president, when he was doing the whole birther thing, he would call into like Wolf Blitzer's show and, you know, talk shit about George W.

Bush and the war in Iraq.

Yeah.

He opposed it.

And like that was part of his brand even before running for president.

Attención equipo.

no se trata del resultado.

Sino del momento en el queras pas un scratchers y pienzas esto, me a legro el día.

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Okay, so listen, it is graduation season.

I have to tell you, parents out there, some of them are very proud now.

And what happens during graduation season, as we know, is the kids go out there and it became a tradition to put the message that you

want to greet the new world with on the top of your cap.

And now they're even having decorating parties where kids come up and there it is.

They put the messages on the caps.

And you've seen these messages.

They're all the same.

They're kind of like thanks, mom and dad, and hire me, and on to to the next adventure.

So, every year, it's sort of a tradition here that we show you some of the caps that we've seen.

Would you like this to okay?

For example,

I used

AI to write this hat.

I did it, mom and Elon.

We'll hate America for for food.

Oh, wow.

I want to see that on a hat.

Luigi, I'll wait for you.

Pronouns, they, them, job prospects, zero, zill.

Moving my tent from the quad to the sidewalk.

Wow.

MAGA the whole time and no one found out.

Wow.

Thanks, Bill Bellich.

And

this speaker sucks.

Where's Zendaya?

Okay.

All right.

Speaking of college kids, you both have been thinking a lot about young boys.

No.

Right.

Thank you.

That came out well.

That came out.

I think you may have me mixed up with the Lincoln Programme.

No, no, no, no.

What I'm trying to say is that this is an issue that comes up a lot.

People write books about it.

The stats show us that young boys are in crisis in this country much more than girls.

If you look at the numbers in the workplace, in college, how they do reading levels, all this stuff.

Boys are falling behind, suicide levels higher, all that kind of stuff.

So Mike Lee, who is the senator from Utah, thinks he has the answer to this, which is to ban porn.

He has a bill.

It's not funny to me.

Okay.

Maybe it's funny to you, but I'm taking this very seriously.

It's called the Interstate Obscenity Definition Act.

Now look, porn is different than when I was a kid.

Are you kidding?

I mean, Playboy was super tame.

It was some girl sitting next to a bale of hay, you know.

It was nothing.

And now it is nasty.

It really is.

I don't look at that type, but I know it exists.

Okay, so a couple of questions.

But, you know, drugs are also more dangerous than they ever were.

Pot is stronger than.

It doesn't mean that you should outlaw it for the people who want to use this stuff responsibly.

The other question I want to ask is, what is the connection here?

I mean, why does he think, and is he right, that this is such an important part of the problem that boys are having, is that they're hooked on pornography?

I mean, I think this...

Donald Trump has papered over the fact that the Republican Party still has a weirdo problem where they want to meddle in your bedroom.

That's real.

Like Mike Johnson...

No, Mike Johnson has said he uses an app called Covenant Eyes to monitor

his son's porn usage.

Like this is like a public statement.

Mike Johnson.

The Speaker of the House.

Yes.

Yes.

He and his son, they monitor each other.

It's like Alcoholics Anonymous with your dick.

No, really.

It is.

So just the way in Alcoholics Anonymous,

If you're tempted, you call the sponsor.

This way you call your dad or he calls you and says, talk me down from

the

porn hub.

I mean, it's great.

Also,

say Republicans, this gets through the Senate and the House.

I don't think it will.

Donald Trump would never sign this.

What's interesting to me, though, is the Supreme Court heard arguments in January

from Texas and people challenging this law, ACLU.

There's 18 states in the country, Republican states mostly, that have implemented age gating rules.

So if you live in Texas and you're under 18, you have to provide proof that you're of age to look at those websites.

And the court seemed open to upholding these laws.

Now that gets into data collection, it gets into other constitutional issues.

But that seems like it might actually happen.

And there is a reasonable debate to be had about the accessibility of porn for young men.

If you are our age, like at my summer camp, some guy in the cabin had the magazines, but there was some friction.

You have to go there, ask him for it, get the magazine.

Like now you can just pull it up on your phone.

We put all kinds of, I mean, we put the devil in your pocket every day.

Porn, sports gambling.

I mean these young men I think are somewhat in crisis because we put things in their hands that they had to previously work to get.

And

now

they don't.

And

so

it's easier to do that than to have a relationship.

See, you guys are saying nasty porn is okay if you work for it.

Is everyone getting...

is this

thing

I think back in the day had to earn it

But I think I think I think the

you know I'm I'm like you I tend to when you're an adult I I'm sort of a not sure I'd be in league with banning things for adults.

It's a hard thing to do.

However, there is something wrong with our culture on this front.

I mean look what we're teaching young women right now.

We're teaching a whole generation of young women that the best and fastest way to get rich is to have sex with people in front of strangers for money.

We're teaching

OnlyFans?

I'm talking about OnlyFans.

We're teaching young women that if you can have sex with 500 or 1,000 people in a short period of time, you're going to be a cultural icon, and that is corrosive for the culture.

And so, to your point, it's different than it used to be.

And we're, I mean, what are we teaching these girls?

It's not just the boys.

What are we teaching them about their own personal humanity and values?

Okay,

I don't think we're teaching them.

I think they're doing it because the economy sucks.

They don't want to...

Thank you.

So you're saying this is the only job they can get?

You're saying all these people are on OnlyFans.

I know.

Not all of them.

But yes, desperation leads people to do things just like that.

I don't think most of them would want to do it.

But I mean,

we know in this state, there's no way a person can live in this state on a normal salary.

And that's one reason why.

So you can either start OnlyFans or get a new governor or a new government.

Maybe you should try that.

I mean,

I'm not, I mean, you could change your politics, you know.

I don't know.

Trust me, I don't feel undertaxed here in California.

I've complained about the same thing.

Okay.

So speaking of that, the GOP has a bill

now before

today, I see, or maybe it was yesterday,

that a lot of the Republicans voted against because it adds $2.5 trillion to the debt.

I mean, they seem to want to have it always.

They want to give all these new tax breaks.

I know taxes on tips, stuff like that.

But they also want to give the tax breaks to the rich that they did in the past.

And apparently, the Democrats and a number of Republicans

voted with the Democrats to shoot this down.

What do you make of that, Scott?

Well, we have a split in the party.

This is Donald Trump's big, beautiful bill, and he wants...

And this is the second half of his agenda.

His executive actions and tariffs and everything he's done so far is what he can do.

But he is dependent upon the Republicans in Congress to do the next thing, which is make the tax cuts permanent, cut additional taxes, deregulate energy, and so on and so forth.

For the Republicans, in my opinion, failure is not an option.

But the party still retains some of the old DNA.

the cost-cutting DNA.

You know, we spend too much.

We do have almost a $40 trillion debt, so they're not wrong.

And so this is going to come to a head this summer.

My prediction is they will ultimately do something because Trump is the most powerful person in the party and he has that much influence.

But the new Trump DNA and the old Republican sort of Tea Party DNA, this is where the friction meets.

And you're seeing some of this debate play out in the reconciliation process.

I agree that Trump is going to be the one ultimately whipping votes.

Like that's what he does.

Like Speaker Johnson defers to him.

But I think you're right that this needs to get done very quickly.

Republicans admit this.

Like Mike Johnson thinks thinks they're going to send a nice bill to the Senate, and the Senate's going to say, yes, sir, we'll sign off on this.

It's the Senate.

They're not going to do that.

Like, the salt deduction.

There's no Republicans in the Senate who care about the salt deduction.

There's the Byrd rules.

What's the salt deduction?

The state and local tax deduction.

Your property taxes here in California.

Oh, fuck.

You're cross-salt deduction.

But

remember the Inflation Reduction Act when Biden and Manchin and Sinema were doing that whole dance.

That was introduced, I I think, in the early summer of 2021.

It wasn't signed until the fall of 2022.

So, like, that bill is smaller than this bill, and there's not going to be any Democratic votes jumping on board.

There were some Republican votes on that one.

I just don't think Republican individual members of Congress are going to wanna go home and say, I know you sent me there to support the president, but I was the one person who stood between him.

and passing his full agenda.

I think the political pressure on them from back home, they respond to him, not these individual members.

And so ultimately, Trump has the ability to move these Republicans to pressure these congressmen.

They need to find a way for the party and for Trump.

They cannot fail here because his whole economic vision doesn't, one doesn't work without the other.

He has to have the tax cuts.

He's also the deregulation.

He's a lame duck.

He has to do it.

I don't think any Republican believes.

In the Congress, they don't believe he's a lame duck.

They jump whenever he says jump.

Sure, but I'm saying he's got three more years to be president and then the midterms happen.

You can assume Democrats take back the House.

I did, in working on this book that I'm writing, I did talk to someone.

Good plug.

Yeah, I know.

Smooth.

If you have $30, order it right now.

But I talked to someone, one of his political advisors, who said the reason he's doing so much at the same time right now is because he knows time is of the essence.

He has a finite amount of time to do the things he wants to do, and it goes by quickly.

And so he's got a lot of balls in the air, but this reconciliation bill is a major part of it.

Okay, final question.

One minute.

I have.

The American.

Do you know what that is?

It's the idea of Christy Noam to have a new reality show where immigrants compete against each other to win American citizenship.

She said it's not like the Hunger Games, even though it sounds exactly like the Hunger Games.

What do we think of this idea?

Is this on YouTube?

Where is it?

No, this is real.

This is real, suggested by the Trump administration.

She is the thirstiest camp member of all of us.

She will do anything

to please Mr.

Trump, run TV Eds, do a game show.

She is so thirsty, man.

Well, I mean,

I mean, college campuses are running contests right now to see which students can hate America the most.

Maybe we can have a contest to see who loves America.

All right.

Thank you, guys.

It's time for New Rules.

Well, I'm with you on that.

Okay,

New Rule.

Someone has to tell Nikki Wake, who claims she had a three-way with another woman and her dead husband's ghost.

No, what you had was lesbian sex.

Which is fine, just don't drag your dead husband into it.

I mean,

if you really cared about him, you'd have had this party when he was alive.

Nural, the townspeople of Kimblton, Iowa, who are furious about their tap water having turned pink, must look on the bright side.

The rats in your sewer system are having a girl.

Neural Navit, this Wisconsin mother of two who went missing from her home in 1962 and was just found alive at the age of 82.

Everyone must stop pressing her to explain herself.

Can't a woman run a few errands?

Nero, the Greek woman who's divorcing her husband because she asked ChatGPT to read the grounds in his coffee cup.

And it said he was fantasizing about cheating, needs to wake up and smell the coffee.

Look, he's a man who just had coffee, which means he's awake, which means he's fantasizing about cheating.

Let me put it this way.

You know how baseball seems slow?

That's on purpose, so we can use the time when nothing is happening to fantasize about cheating.

If you can't figure that out without AI, we really are doomed.

New rule, if you're a gay cardinal of the Catholic Church, hey, it could happen,

and during your time in the conclave, you met a cute guy,

and now you're wondering, how long should I wait before I call him so I don't seem desperate?

Stop overthinking this.

Pick up the phone.

And I mean pick up the phone.

Don't text.

If you're going to be in the shadows, undercover, and in the closet, at least be upfront about it.

And finally, new rural Americans must get over the fantasy they have that they are a people of core convictions and deeply held beliefs.

They're not.

They only care which side is saying something.

Let me give you 10 million examples.

This car used to be fire.

Now it's on fire.

Back when Elon Musk was presumed liberal, liberals loved electric cars and conservatives hated them.

Then Elon went MAGA and while the car market grew by 10% last month, sales of electric vehicles were down 5% and not just Teslas, all EVs.

Conversely, MAGA Nation used to hate EVs.

Two years ago, 71% of Republicans said they would not consider buying an electric car.

Trump said they were for, quote, radical left fascists, Marxists, and communists.

Now he's selling them on the White House lawn.

Everything's computer.

That's right, Tarzan.

Everything's computer.

Computer good now.

And Elon's Cybertruck?

That's now the official automobile of the Manosphere and the right-wing fuck you mobile of the year.

Sorry, Dodge Charger.

Okay, this is a crazy shallow way to make decisions that we all do too much.

A new book by David Zweig called An Abundance of Caution about the repercussions from keeping the schools closed so long during the pandemic has garnered a lot of attention.

And here's the author's takeaway line.

The American Academy of Pediatrics were very strongly in favor of getting kids into schools, but as soon as Trump came out in favor of reopening, they completely reversed their position.

Hey, if you find yourself suddenly hating something you loved five minutes ago, or vice versa,

ask your doctor if Ivermectin is right for you.

Remember that debate during the pandemic?

On the left, they were saying Trump and Joe Rogan took it.

It must be for animals.

Okay, it won the Nobel Prize in 2015 for what it did for humans.

But whatever, the point is, it's a drug.

It's not a politician.

Drugs don't have political parties.

Although I do suspect Xanax is a Democrat.

Do people really want to put politics ahead of their very health?

Let me answer that.

Yes.

I know they do, because when Michelle Obama adopted as her First Lady project to get America healthy again, Republicans went buckwild ape shit.

Real housewives throw drinks in your face crazy against it.

Because it was Michelle Obama who said it, and her program was called Let's Move.

So Republicans bravely took a stand against movement.

Sarah Palin made an ostentatious show of bringing sugar cookies to a school.

Because if these fat little boys can see their dicks, liberty dies.

Rush Lumbaugh wanted to know, are we supposed to eat roots, berries, and tree bark now?

Okay, but now that Robert Kennedy, leader of the Make America Healthy Again movement, is in the Trump administration, tree bark?

Good.

Fuck yeah, Make America Healthy.

Finally, somebody said it.

And when I say somebody, I mean not a black liberal lady.

Now it's coming from...

Now it's coming from someone more reasonable, a guy with a worm in his brain who believes in chemtrails.

Look,

I can do this with almost every issue.

Republicans used to hate Russia.

It was the red menace, the evil empire.

Now it's every Republican's dream country.

Tucker Carlson only shops there and at Gilson's.

Or take the economy, please.

When Jimmy Carter was president and told us we should live more within our means, turned down the thermostat, put on a sweater, Republicans said he was the worst world leader since Dr.

Doom.

But now that Trump is out there saying, you think $30, you think you need $30 and 100 pencils, go fuck yourself.

Crickets.

And he's not even wrong.

We do buy too much shit.

He's just so unfucking believably the wrong guy to say it.

Okay.

Let me give you one more example because this is exhausting.

Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Now, it would be easy just to make fun of Marjorie Taylor Greene.

And since this is week 16 of our season, I'm already tired.

I think I will.

Yes, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jewish space lasers.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, she once said Biden had Gespacho police.

She once demanded answers from Biden about something by June 31st, which is a date that does not exist.

Although to her credit, this is something she later acknowledged on July 44th.

Okay, so

not a genius.

However, however, when the Pope died this month and she said Catholic bishops are controlled by Satan, again, ha ha ha, but she was talking about the child abuse that's gone on for a thousand years, which is basically the same thing that Sinead O'Connor said in 1992 when she went on SNL and tore up a picture of the Pope.

And nothing compared to how great lots of us thought that moment was.

So don't be a hypocrite.

And that's the challenge, to not automatically rush to the opposite viewpoint based solely on who said it.

But until we get to where we can do that, I just hope the Democrats come out strongly next week for a dictatorship, coal mining, and making pot illegal.

All right, that's our show.

We're off next week, but back on May 30th, I want to thank Peter Hanley, Scott Jennings, and General Stanley McChrystal.

Rob Random drops every Sunday on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast.

Now go watch Overtime on YouTube.

Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.

Oh, thank you.

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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