Ep. #662: John Fetterman, Matt Welch, Abigail Shrier

At blinds.com, it's not just about window treatments, it's about you, your style, your space, your way.

Whether you DIY or want the pros to handle it all, you'll have the confidence of knowing it's done right.

From free expert design help to our 100% satisfaction guarantee, everything we do is made to fit your life and your windows.

Because at blinds.com, the only thing we treat better than windows is you.

Visit blinds.com now for up to 50% off with minimum purchase plus a professional measure at no cost.

Rules and restrictions apply.

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.

Fiscally responsible, financial geniuses, monetary magicians.

These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds.

Visit progressive.com to see if you could save.

Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates.

Potential savings will vary, not available in all states or situations.

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

Thank you very much.

Appreciate it.

Thank you, people.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate it.

All right.

Great to see you.

Thank you.

Please.

There's so much to get through.

Oh, wow.

I feel great about that.

Yes, the big news this week is Hunter Biden's trial.

Let's get right to that.

It means absolutely fucking nothing, but let's get right to it.

Because, oh, the media is obsessed with this one.

And the Republicans, they're like, you know what?

If you take down Trump, okay, we're going to take down Hunter Biden.

And all the Democrats are like, knock yourself out.

We barely care about Joe Biden.

But this trial is all about one thing in America, which is very important.

You cannot mix drugs and guns.

Seriously, we don't take a lot seriously in this country, but this is one we're very serious about.

And Hunter Biden did, you know, he was buying a gun on crack.

I mean, at the moment, he was literally on crack and buying a gun.

He almost had the pipe in his head.

Okay.

So the prosecutor prosecutor gets up and says, no one is above the law in this country.

It doesn't matter who you are or what your name is.

And all the Republicans stood up and fist-pumped and went, yeah, and then they went, oh, wait.

Yeah, that's

not what they were saying last week, was it?

Interesting, in April, they took a survey.

17% of Republicans said it was okay, only 17%, okay for a felon to be president.

Now they took the survey again, 58% say it's okay for a felon to be president.

Gosh, what happened?

And that's, you know,

usually that

usually to change this drastically in the space of two months, hormones are involved.

But if Trump, if Hunter Biden does get convicted, this will be a historic first.

It'll be the first time Republicans ever objected to someone buying a gun.

And there was testimony from Haley Biden.

Her name is Haley Biden because she was married to Hunter Biden's brother,

sadly died, Bo Biden, and then Hunter went out with her.

So she's the ex-girlfriend and the widow.

And I know.

She testified that when she was with Hunter, he got her into crack, and she is ashamed and embarrassed about that part of her life.

Really?

You bang your dead husband's brother, and the part you're embarrassed about is the crack?

But

she said she found Hunter's gun at one point.

She knew he couldn't have it, so she took it and she threw it away, like in the supermarket dumpster, perfect plate.

So when Hunter found out she threw away his gun, he was very angry.

He called her insane, he called her stupid.

He said, what do you want?

Crack?

And if you are, may I have some?

This guy get a lot of crack.

I I mean, well,

we all saw the stuff from Hunter Biden's laptop, right?

I mean, wow, if they did a reality show about Hunter Biden, it would be called Naked and Afraid of Running Out of Crack.

And it's just.

And it's just bad optics for the president.

The jury is looking at sex tapes of Hunter Biden, and the rest of us are worrying if his father can walk erect.

Well, actually, Jode was doing the D-Day thing.

You saw that yesterday?

Did very well.

I thought he did very well.

He was over there commemorating the 80th anniversary of D-Day.

And over here in America, you know what they did?

Nine congressmen, oh gosh.

Nine congressmen dressed up as military people.

World War II, you know, vintage stuff,

and jumped out of a World War II vintage plane to commemorate D-Day.

Sadly, they were wearing parachutes.

And George Santos said, you know, when I do dress up, you bitches make a whole thing out of it.

Well, yes, it's

it's Pride Month in the spirit, in the spirit of Pride.

Okay, hang on.

So listen to this.

There's a Pride Month story.

Five drag queens in Philadelphia did a reading, children's books reading as they do, made the Guinness Book of Worlds records for the fastest way to get Trump re-elected.

Not that there aren't still bigots in this country.

Did you see this?

The head of the Colorado, this is the head of the Colorado Republican Party, sent out an email missive saying, calling gay people godless groomers,

which in California is not even an insult.

I get my hair cut at a place called godless groomers.

It's fantastic.

It's on Santa Monica.

All right, we got a great show.

We have Matt Welch and Abigail Fryer.

But first up, he is the no-hold bar Democratic senator from the great state of Pennsylvania, John Fetterman.

Senator.

Welcome, sir.

Welcome back.

You were here before, man.

Welcome back to the show.

It's been 13 years old.

It's an honor to be here.

I'm a fanboy, so it's the

right back at you.

I have been badgering my staff for a long long time now to get you on this show, and I'll tell you why I've been badgering them.

I guess then they badgered you.

So I'm glad it worked and you're here because

when I see you, especially the last couple of years, you speak so freely.

You speak like politicians who I get on this show who aren't in politics anymore.

The ones who are out of office when they can be honest, and that's the way you speak now, and it's a beautiful thing.

Well,

honestly,

this is true.

You speak for a lot of Democrats that are afraid to say a lot of that stuff.

I mean, it's a lot of release for a lot of Democrats to be able to be like, thank God, someone's actually platforming that, you know, like that.

No, I think we're very much on the same page, but it's very rare.

I mean, I don't have to worry about being re-elected except by the audience.

It's, I think, even more brave for you to do it.

The question I'm interested in asking you is, is this connected to some of your health issues?

I mean, when you've gone through it, you have, both physical and mental health issues.

Does it give you a freedom?

Like, what can you do?

Yeah.

No, absolutely.

There's a line from the first Batman Joker.

He's like, you know, I've already been dead once already.

It's very liberating.

And

that's not reckless.

That's really just

freeing.

It's just freeing in a way.

And I just think after being all of that,

I just really be able to say the things that I have to really believe in and not be afraid of if there's any kind of blowback.

And what about mental health in America writ large?

What is the prescription for this?

Because we're going to talk about it on the show to a degree tonight.

It's certainly a big issue in this country, and we have, I think, 50,000 suicides in the last year.

Absolutely.

This is an astounding number, I think.

What are your thoughts on this?

No, it's well,

I actually thought after I signed myself into Walter Reed to get help

with depression, it's not really a big political winner to talk about depression.

And then when I started to have that conversation, I realized that if I had to be really honest, I have to talk about self-harm, harming myself.

Because you pointed out that 50,000 Americans took their lives.

And I started to talk about that and saying, yeah, I've been in that kind of a place.

And I now tell people, like, I promise you, I'm begging you, please, don't harm yourself, stay in the game.

And now I'm in contact by people on the regular saying, Hey, you know, thanks to hearing this, I got help, or even saved my life.

And I never thought that that would resonate, and that's why I decided to have that conversation because I was lucky, I got help and got better.

And now I want to be the kind of guy that can say something that could have helped someone like me that I was in that situation.

So

let's talk a little politics here because that is your game.

Pennsylvania is going to be one of them, they say

probably it could come down to three states.

Pennsylvania will definitely be one of them.

Well, I've always said that Pennsylvania picks the president.

And there really is no legitimate path for the president if he doesn't win.

And I really do believe he will win, actually, because Trump was able to flip Pennsylvania, and that helped deliver his first victory.

But Joe Biden carried it in 2020 because

he has a really strong connection there to Pennsylvania and I do believe he will again, but it's going to be very close.

And that's the same conversation I've been having with Pennsylvania, that it's going to be very close because Trump has a strong connection in Pennsylvania and it's going to be very competitive and all of that.

And I've also been saying that I don't think that whole trial is going to be anything meaningful with people have already decided like, hey, that's my guy.

I don't will never understand why somebody would would say, yeah, I love that, or I want more four years of that.

But I do believe Joe Biden's going to carry Pennsylvania and he's going to win.

But

as he is not yet officially the nominee of the Democratic Party, is he really the best one for them to put forward?

Joe Biden?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He's actually the only American that's ever beat Trump in an election.

And I do honestly believe that he's actually the only Democrat that could win.

And let me just say this.

Let me just say this.

I know that might be provocative.

But the last time there was like a hot shit governor that with $200 million thought that he was going to beat Trump, and then Trump threw him in the woodshipper, and he finished third in his own state in Florida.

And again, it turns out...

Trump DeSantis.

Yeah, yeah.

It's like Trump is pretty tough.

And that's what the Republicans want.

And I can't imagine why he's still appealing right now.

But Trump has a very, and I do believe Joe Biden has that ability to win.

And

we have a great bench, but I think it's a very distinct kind of situation right now.

I'm surprised at that, but I'll move on.

I'm not on the same page there, but okay.

I mean, it's probably going to be Joe Biden, and I'll vote for him.

But

you mentioned DeSantis.

This is very curious to me.

DeSantis wants to ban fake meat in Florida.

And you agreed with him.

I don't get this.

Well, I think it's not so much about making it illegal, but it's also just talking about I really wanted to stand with, I wanted to stand with American farmers and ranchers and those kinds of a thing.

And I don't believe that it's helpful, and that's the direction that I'd like to move in that.

But if somebody wants to consume that, that's okay.

But I think there's going to be states that are going to decide I don't want to ban this or I really want to invent and create that kinds of a product in their state.

I think.

But I wouldn't need it either, quite frankly.

But I wouldn't ban it.

I mean, that's what DeSantis wants to do.

So you can't get it.

I mean, I thought that was the Freedom Party.

I thought this was the Freedom Country.

If people want to have fake meat or fake anything, fake ticks, fake anything.

It is Los Angeles.

I don't know why anybody would want to eat

that slap either,

but I don't think that's really going to solve anything other than

I don't get anybody that would appeal to anybody.

Okay.

And you've been very out front on legalizing weed.

Oh, yeah, of course.

I've heard that you too.

Yeah.

I've heard that.

John, that's just a character I play on television.

Never smoked a joint in my life.

I heard you once say, or read it, maybe it was a tweet, I don't know what it was.

You said, I'm not a progressive, I'm a Democrat.

What does that mean?

What is that distinction?

Because I'm always, I don't think I've used the word progressive.

I think I've said woke.

I think there's a big difference between woke, and I know that word triggers a lot of people because it had a great beginning as a meaning, but words migrate, and it went to something else.

I think there's a big difference between an old school liberal and a woke person.

You say progressive, Democrat.

How do you describe this?

Yeah, no, I agree.

It's like I've just say, and I've been saying that for years, actually.

I said that, you know, I didn't leave the label.

It left me on that.

And that really, after it happened on October 7th, I was really new that that whole progressive stack would be blasted apart and there's not going to be any kind of way how the Democrats are going to be able to reply to that kind of, respond to that kind of.

And I really decided early on that I believe that was going to be the right side with Israel throughout all of that.

And I knew that would going to be Democrats would continue to peel away and kind of walk away from standing with Israel on that.

But that's where I decided after...

How do you explain that, if you can, that the people who consider themselves the most liberal have abandoned Israel, which was always a liberal darling, for the people who are a terrorist organization, the people who outwardly say they want a genocide, who outwardly are the one side of this who is against the two-state solution.

Somehow they wound up up with them.

Why do you think that is?

And will this split the Democratic Party?

Well, it does because

there's an appeal there.

And I think you talk about that.

Like last week,

you really hit with the gender apartheid.

Yes.

And talking about a lot of these issues.

And some of the most progressive and left parts of the Democratic Party are standing

for the kind of side that have kinds of organizations like Hamas or these kind of nations that there are no rights for women and they certainly don't embrace the LGBTQ kinds of lifestyle.

And even in Philadelphia, the queers for Palestine blocked the Pride Parade in Philadelphia.

And I never saw that on the bingo card.

But

it's really true.

It's true.

All right.

Well, it may seem lonely out there sometimes when you're you're brave like you are, but you have a lot of fans.

A lot of fans here.

I think you have a lot of fans all over the country.

When I told people you were coming on, a lot of them were really excited that you were here, but they all had one question they wanted me to ask you, which is, what is the deal with the wardrobe?

They just, people are very curious.

Doesn't bother me.

I'm just saying.

Please ask.

Let's talk.

Last year I noticed you had a great joke.

You really announced it.

You put a picture of me and you're like, he dresses like a guy guy that the airline lost his luggage.

And it's true.

It's funny because it's true.

And I know I dress like a slob, and I'm not making a statement or anything, but it's like I'm into comfort.

Yeah.

And it's just comfort.

And I'm kind of, it's like I don't have to iron.

But

it's like, it's really, I can't, you know, it's kind of hard to find suits and all those things.

But I never understood why anybody thought why that was interesting.

But what's really crazy is like it was more controversial.

And I want to be clear, I wasn't behind changing the dress code or anything.

I really wasn't.

But more people seem more concerned about me wearing a hoodie on the floor as opposed to we have senators taking bribes and being fluored to ancient and everything like that.

And I'm just kind of like,

like

it's

it's but I'm learning, I'm learning, you know,

I'm still a freshman.

You seem like you're in a really good place.

Well, I'm sitting across the street.

But,

you know,

you know, having a near-death experience and going through that kind of a blowtorch of $100 million

and attack acts

and all of that kinds of things, to emerge on the side where I'm grateful to be here, both right with you and back with my kids and my family and everything.

And I just decide I really want to be the kind of voice that's consistent and has a moral clarity on issues that may not be controversial for Democrats.

But I'm not sure why any of that's controversial for Democrats, whether it's about Israel or the border or because people just want to bitch these days, John.

Everything is controversial to everybody.

But you keep doing what you're doing.

I appreciate it.

Thank you, bro.

All right.

We'll see you again.

John Petterman.

All right, let's meet our friend.

All right.

There they are.

All right.

He is the editor-at-large of Reason Magazine and co-host of the podcast, the fifth column.

Matt Welch is back with us.

And she's a journalist and author of the New York Times best-selling book, Bad Therapy, Why the Kids Aren't Growing Up.

Abigail Schreier is finally here.

Great to see you.

Okay.

So this is the week where we celebrated the greatest generation, saving democracy, so we could learn about Hunter Biden smoking crap.

I feel like that's the week in a nutshell.

So I feel it's one of those stories where both sides have a lot of wrong.

in their handling.

I remember at the beginning when the laptop came out, the left-wing media just would not even admit it was a thing, right?

It just just had to be a hoax or it had to be Russian disinformation.

It just didn't exist.

They wouldn't write about it.

That was wrong.

And the right is wrong to pretend it means something, except possibly about Joe Biden's parenting.

The question I want to ask, because I know your book is about it and you've written about parenting, okay, why do all the political families have this ne'er-do-well fuck-up family member?

Is it just because they're famous?

And if we went into every family that have a Billy Carter or Roger Clinton, you know, George Bush himself was the ne'er-do-well fuck-up family member.

Since the beginning of time, we've known that children basically need three things, and these are essential.

They need parental authority, they need to hear no, they need independence, and they need loving community.

And kids with high-profile families often get none of those.

No one's willing to tell them no.

They never get independence because they don't want anyone to make the big guy look bad.

And they don't have loving community.

They're raised on a political battlefield.

And unfortunately, too many of American kids today also don't have those.

Yeah, the way you describe it, you sound like everybody's from a prominent family.

Because I read in your book that kids go off to college and they've never heard the word no.

That's right.

Or the word wait.

That's right.

Well, kids today are under a microscope.

They're under a microscope,

literally because of the projection, of course, social media and whatnot, but also because their parents are so afraid of traumatizing them.

They've been told by mental health experts that saying no, punishing can be traumatizing, so they don't exert their own authority.

So these kids are basically, we have a generation being raised as Shrink's kids, and they're miserable.

There's a I think a link with your D-Day tie-in, which is that we understood that generation and others, but especially that one, to have a sense of stoicism, right?

Like, you're going to go through some bad stuff.

It's going, you're going to fail.

There's going to be unfair things that happen to you.

The question is, what are you going to do with that?

The father of a 15-year-old and a nine-year-old, they're not teaching a lot of stoicism in the Brooklyn public school system.

Last time I checked,

at some point, she starts to use it as an excuse to get out of chores.

Like, that's not my journey.

I'm not going to.

I don't consent to folding the laundry.

So, I mean, at least they're making some fun out of it.

But there is something to that.

And there's also, I think, you know, when you think about the greatest generation, they probably could have used a little bit more therapy than they actually used.

Yes, there's a happy medium.

But, I mean, you mentioned D-Day.

I couldn't help think of it because I was reading, the New York Times says, among college students, PTSD

among adolescents is surging.

PTSD.

The fact that we have...

So

it's just not mad.

Because my father father was in that campaign.

He wasn't on Omaha Beach, but he was in that campaign in France.

PTSD.

They didn't even allow kids to think they have PTSD.

That's right.

They don't have PTSD.

Kids raised gently in Brentwood don't have PTSD.

Combat vets.

Our combat vets sometimes do have PTSD and they need treatment when they have it.

It is real.

But that's not what kids at universities have.

What they have is what I call in my book bad therapy.

They have a kind of emotional hypochondria.

They have focused so much on their own bad feelings that they magnify these feelings, they make them an organizing principle of their lives, and then they have trouble escaping them.

Okay, so here's my question.

We had a Me Too reckoning about

sex in 2017.

We had a racial reckoning in 2020.

I feel like there's a parenting reckoning coming.

A lot of rollback, pushback on gentle parenting.

I think that people are realizing that this kind of stuff has raised a lot of fucked up kids.

Another statistic, maybe it's from your book, 49.5%, so let's just say half, of adolescents at some point have a mental health disorder.

So half of the kids in the country are diagnosable.

Okay, either they really are

that fucked up, or we're over-diagnosing.

That's right, it's the latter.

We are way over-diagnosing them.

This generation has had more mental health intervention in schools, more mental health treatment.

40% of them have been in therapy.

They've had therapeutic parenting, and it's making them worse.

These kids don't need therapy, they need less therapy.

They need to be told, I love you, you'll live.

Now, get out of my house and have an adventure.

And it's worth pointing out that

this generation, let's say 15 to 22, they got banged up during COVID pretty bad.

And the more you were in places where schools and society was locked down, the more banged up you got.

And also it's tied up with social media and kind of new

what you're doing on your phone all the time, the stuff that John Haidt talks about.

So I think there is a legitimate mental health thing going on with teenagers and especially teenage girls in this country.

The question is, are we teaching them to get out of it and also to have fun and to take some kind of initiative in their lives, or are we encouraging them to think of themselves as victims?

And I hope it's not the latter, because you're not going to get much past your 18th birthday walking around and saying that it's somebody else's fault.

So who's still...

So

if this is so obvious, and we all agree, who's still defending this?

I think the trauma industry is.

They basically have...

Trauma industry.

I mean, that's what we have now.

We basically convinced a generation that any distress is trauma.

It's permanent psychopathology.

Now you have a disability, and you have to live with that forever.

And these kids are behaving like mental patients.

Right.

Right.

I mean.

And then...

And they're medicated then, like, that to me is what really goes off the rails when you start, because a lot of them are on, you know, whatever the psychiatric drugs they put them on.

And, you know, when I think about the two big ones that I see always talked about that are now pathologized, shyness, which is like social anxiety disorder, if you pathologize it, and depression, I mean, that's just being bummed out.

My whole adolescence, my whole childhood, through past college, was about those two things.

I was just had tons of both of those things and drugging me would not have helped.

That's right.

I discovered POT when I was 19.

That drug helped.

Organic ethic too, organically, but

yeah.

Okay, so I read about SEL and I suppose everybody who has kids knows what this is.

This is social-emotional learning.

Like this takes front and center.

This explains a lot to me.

One, why they're so stupid.

Because this is the priority above learning.

Is that right?

That's right.

And what is social, I mean, obviously, it sounds like what it is.

Well, purportedly, it's supposed to teach kids things like emotional regulation, which we want them to have, of course.

But in fact, how do you teach kids how to handle bad emotions, right?

Because we're not worried about them having too much joy.

We're worried about them having too much sadness, regret, bad feelings.

So it necessarily always goes negative.

It becomes a kind of group therapy, and it forces kids to ruminate, to pathologically focus on their bad feelings, on their pain.

And those are the number one symptoms of depression.

And it's interesting.

70% of very

liberal students, they say this is from the American Enterprise Institute, so they're a little right-leaning,

report feeling anxious.

52% of conservatives.

But it does seem like the liberals are more in their own head and are more

suffering from this.

Is that right, and why?

I have seen that statistic.

And look, the reason that I think so, that might be, is because those are the parents in general who are giving their kids more therapy.

They're highly educated and they're more anxious because they're highly educated.

They're more anxious themselves.

They're pushing their anxiety onto their kids.

And we know you can communicate anxiety.

Parents need to be tougher for their kids.

They need to set an example here, and they need to stop obsessing over kids' happiness and start worrying about making kids strong.

All right.

So you.

Parenting is also involved in the other book you wrote, your famous one that was banned, right?

Your book,

Irreversible Damage, which is about gender reassignment, I think is the proper term we should call it.

Well, now we have the cast review from England, which said, you must feel somewhat vindicated by this, because America is now an outlier country with this.

The Scandinavian countries that were doing it, England that was doing it, they've all pulled back.

The CAST report says that the evidence supporting the use of puberty-blocking drugs and other hormonal medications in adolescents was remarkably weak.

Why is America so behind?

Why are we, usually when we look at those countries, you go, oh, these are what the liberals are doing, so we're just going to, no,

we're alone on this.

Yeah, we are.

I mean, I think two reasons.

England had national centralized health care, so they got into this faster, and they also were able to shut it down faster.

And that, because ours is, our healthcare is obviously decentralized, it's harder to shut bad medicine down in this country.

But there's something else that I have to say.

They had something really special in England.

They had J.K.

Rowling.

And she helped gender-critical feminists pry away from the progressive left on this issue and stand up for the bodily integrity of girls and stand up for the the integrity of medicine.

I think

as part of that peer pressure kind of element in the professional practice, it's worth pointing out to the extent that your audience might not that Abigail's book was targeted by people who worked for the ACLU.

Oh, yes.

Saying that, oh, you know, it would be the highest thing to do

to block the distribution of this book.

It speaks to a kind of aggressive, illiberal conformity that takes place, not just on this issue, but other issues, many having to do with COVID and I think it's kind of a new thing the last 10 years especially there's been a semi-deranging moment where people who are involved in journalism or academia or whatever will just say we've created a new taboo and you're on the wrong side of the taboo we must attack this person we must attack Jesse Single other people who've been working in this and Yes, it hurts their careers, but we don't necessarily have to cry for them for she's on Bill Maher, so she's doing okay.

But it hurts them.

That's what people don't get.

When you block off the information that's coming in, particularly on a contested subject, particularly that's affecting kids and life and death situations, and you're blocking off the information by enforcing a taboo, you are hurting yourself.

That's one thing to critique.

It's another thing to say, no one should be able to even look at this, to even read it, as if you were some sort of crazy person.

Yeah, and I'll just say one more thing.

You know, in the three or four years it took between the time I wrote my last book and talked about the same risks that are in the TeCas report to until the mainstream media worked up the backbone to actually do some reporting, tens of thousands of American children were harmed.

Yeah, and I don't think you're saying, I certainly wouldn't be the one saying that there aren't trans folks who

we do need some transitioning sometimes.

I think you were just saying was there's no guardrails on this?

And these are children.

And these are children.

This is not about the bodies of adults.

They can do whatever they want with their bodies as long as they don't have them.

They're using children as cannon fodder in their culture wars is what it looked like to me.

All right, switching subjects.

So

I see this week Google has been caught doing something.

Why did the tech companies do this?

They've been caught collecting

and sometimes leaking personal data abusers.

So you might want to erase that browser history.

But

we thought it would be a good time, because of this, to do one of our favorite bits on the show.

It's called Revealing Google searches.

Because we

believe here at real time that when you look at people's Google searches, it does reveal a lot about them.

For example, Melania Trump Googled, Do felony convictions invalidate a preno

RFK Jr., where does brainworm poop go?

Nick Cannon, how many kids does Nick Cannon have?

Elon Musk, baby names that sound like license plates.

Oh, Justice Samuel Alito Googled flags that mean not fascist, just pussy whip.

Hope we found somewhere.

Richard Drafers Googled safe amount of opiates to take before a public appearance.

Come on.

Oh, Ben Affleck Googled divorced lawyers that accept Batman memorabilia.

Kanye West, Googled what to say when woman asks if anyone else at the party will be naked.

Rupert Murdoch, name of woman who recently married Rupert Murdoch.

And Lauren Boebert, can you get an STV on your hand?

Terrible.

Terrible.

Okay.

So,

let me do one more gender issue and then I'll get off

just why you're here.

I've wanted you here for so long.

And Caitlin Clark, are we following this story?

Yes.

Yes.

I know, the way you said it, though.

Yes.

That's okay.

All right, well, now, you know who Caitlin Clark is.

She's the sensational basketball player, women's basketball from,

I don't follow college sports of either sex.

Not that I have to apologize, by the way, for not watching anything.

Let's start with that.

I don't watch women's basketball.

I don't watch college basketball.

I only watch three sports.

Sports is a waste of time.

I understand we need to waste time in my life, but I'm trying to limit how much time I waste.

So I will watch you when you get to the pros, when you're the very best at what you do.

No apologies.

Okay, but even this, but women's basketball got on my radar, like everybody's, because of Caitlin Clark.

And the other girls in the league are delighted for her success.

I'm joking, of course.

They fucking hate her, and they've been...

Show the tables for getting body checked.

This is a game the other day.

And she...

I mean, that was pretty deliberate.

And look at the other girl on her team coming over.

Not...

See, if this was men,

they'd defend each other on their same team.

I mean, men will fight from two teams, but when somebody checks who's on your team, you defend that guy.

I'm just saying men have their bad parts.

We're toxic.

We're dogs.

But only women would do this.

Women are catty, even the ones on her own team.

Matt Barnes, he said, my question and my issue is, where the fuck are her teammates at?

I've seen a couple of girls smirk when she's got knocked down, half-assed to pick her up.

You guys are supposed to be a family.

If your guys' fucking job to have her, it's your guys' fucking job to have her back and have each other's back.

Disgust.

One,

I have the exact same viewing habits as you do, and yet I watched the final four women's this year because Caitlin Clark was so awesome.

And he had storylines of people who hated each other and everything that you want in sports, just brutal, awful competition mixed with excellence.

It was great.

So it's really fun and I love that we're talking about the WNBA, which I've never really cared about since the days of Cheryl Miller and she is getting knocked on her ass right now she's leading the league in turnovers her team kind of stinks it is a great moment of a great player can she get back up this happens in the NBA too Michael Jordan got hacked a lot there was a Jordan rules associated with him but his teammates defended him yes and her teammates need to defend her absolutely they need her she needs Rick Mahorn on her team right

this is on the coaching staff I think I mean look it's true that women don't naturally throw their bodies in front of each other to defend each other, but the coaching staff

needs to tell those players, look, she's your superstar.

She has quadrupled viewership.

She is the greatest female player ever to hit this sport.

You better defend her.

And if I don't see you defending her, you're benched until tomorrow.

Right.

Now,

there's also a racial element to this.

We can't deny that.

And

I have Charlamagne on next week.

I'm going to talk about it with him.

So I'll get you off the hook.

But I'll just say, it's not always racism when a white person succeeds.

And it's not always racism when black people hip check them either.

Right?

Like

both are at play.

I think it's natural for a megastar to come in.

People say, I'm kind of tired of hearing.

It's everything.

It's women are caddy.

The league is very lesbian,

and she's not.

And there's race, there's a lot going on here.

But

before I run out of time, because I see I am,

there was an actual big story in the news this week about immigration, and I want to get to that.

Because I think if Biden loses this election, it's going to be because of two things.

He's old, and he can't get past that issue, and people just hate that about him.

And immigration.

I mean, just on a political level,

I don't think they could have handled it worse.

Because now what's going on, if you didn't see the news this week, okay, here's what Biden's doing.

He's finally, after saying he couldn't do anything, he's going to issue an executive order.

By the way, this is the same executive order Trump tried to get through the courts, and they didn't let him do it.

But he's going to finally try it six months before the election, which says, we will put a cap of 2,500 now.

asylum seekers coming in.

If it passes 2,500, if it's 2,501, then we automatically close the border.

Fire Marshal says, no more.

he's going to come here and close the club.

And if you don't have a stamp on your hand, you can't get back in.

Okay.

But when it goes down to 1,500, then we resume standard asylum procedures.

It's like surge pricing with Uber.

It's a bizarre scheme that, of course,

has pleased nobody.

It looks like a last minute, it looks like he did nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing.

And of course, he did try through Congress, and the Republicans purposely spiked that football.

They didn't want this bill because they wanted it as an issue.

So they could have fixed it themselves.

They didn't.

But now it looks like this is his last minute before the election Hail Mary pass, and it's not going to succeed.

That's right, yeah.

It's not even a Hail Mary pass, though.

Hail Mary pass, the guy might catch it, right?

Doug Floody did that one time.

He did this knowing that it's going to be declared invalid by the courts.

And it's an admission that he could have done it the whole time and he didn't.

So now you broke it, you bought it, it's on him.

And so

it's right there in the Refugee Act saying that if someone comes to the country, they don't have to apply for asylum at a point of entry.

They don't have to.

It's in the text of the law.

If you don't like that and think that's crazy, and a lot of Americans do, you've got to change the law.

You can't just make that happen.

Meanwhile, It does nothing to allow for a greater processing of the people who are standing in line.

Standing in line, also, you have to use the app, the I Want to Come Into the Country app, and you have to do it three weeks ahead of time.

You can't do it from your home country.

That sounds like it's going to be totally a normal process.

That's going to be really easy for Venezuelan refugees.

This is the biggest refugee crisis in the Western Hemisphere ever.

More than like 8 million Venezuelans, for example.

That's a ton of people, and we're having 1,500 at border checkpoints that have no ability to process them.

It's not going to work.

So since January 2021, when Biden took office, more than 9 million migrants have entered.

That's more than the number of people who live in Nicaragua.

He let in all of Nicaragua according to the United States.

And like

the question that Democrats don't seem to be able to have the balls to answer is just, how many is too many?

And like infinity is the answer.

If you don't give that answer, you're a racist.

That's their essential problem with this issue.

Yeah, I read an article about this that really stuck with me.

I think it was in Yuma, Arizona, where the hospitals were so overrun that American sick people could not use the hospitals.

Okay, we have schoolchildren who can't get into their schools.

This is a problem.

It's chaos.

And Biden campaigned on reversing Trump's policy on the border.

He reversed it, and now he's stuck with the consequences.

He reversed some, and then he reverted to some others.

It's been a mix in both ways.

And overall immigration,

as ever, when you have a lower number of legal immigrants coming in, it's going to create more pressure for people to come illegally.

It just always happens that way.

And from 2016 to 2022, we reduced by hundreds of thousands the number of people who do it, who get in line the proper way and come in.

And so, what does that do?

It says to other people who are desperate to come in the midst of a refugee crisis: I will do anything.

I will pay anyone to see what happens.

And the result is chaos, and there's no one thinking smartly about how to manage that chaos.

listen to these eye-popping numbers.

Trump has a 30-point edge with registered voters on the question of which candidate would handle immigration and border security better.

This is even after he promised a wall and didn't, that was his big issue and never delivered.

Including Trump has a 23-point edge among Latino voters.

You're not even getting the people you're supposedly pandering to.

I mean, look at the vote totals in South Texas.

It's crazy.

Like in 90% or more Hispanic areas, they have flipped.

I mean, it's a matter of like 50 percentage points in some places towards the Republicans and towards Trump.

It's gigantic.

And Democrats, I don't think, even have sort of a story to tell.

There could be a story of we're going to accept more refugees, we're going to make it easier to do this and that, but they tell kind of a chaotic story rather than something that makes intuitive sense to people.

And if you live in places like Chicago or New York or elsewhere, it is impacting your city in ways that you don't necessarily enjoy.

All right.

Thank you, guys.

Got to go to Nerul.

That was very informative.

Appreciate it.

Okay.

All right.

New rules.

Airlines can feature these new first-class suites that feature a curved 42-inch screen for a full cinematic experience, but only if they're paired paired with those new double-decker seats in economy

on a new carrier called Inequality Airlines.

Yes, Inequality Airlines.

There's something special in the air.

It's just not you.

Neural, don't bring your kid to the office if your office

is the United States Congress.

Tennessee Representative John Rose did just that while making a furious speech denouncing the Trump prosecution.

And look what happened.

Someone acted...

Yeah, someone acted like a goofy, childish moron.

his

and his poor kid had to sit through it

Neural, let's stop rewarding every family that has too many kids with a reality show on TLC

The latest one is the Baldwins seven kids born in a 10-year span.

Wow, guess there there were no blanks fired in that house.

Well, they shouldn't prosecute him.

That's the serious point about that.

That's true, they should not.

New rule: now that a remote Amazon tribe has connected to Elon Musk's starlink internet and become addicted to porn,

I say congratulations.

Oh, sure, the liberal inclination is to bemoan the encroachment of modernity on such an innocent, unsullied people, but that's not what the Amazon tribe themselves are saying.

They're saying, thanks, Elon, it sure beats jerking off to this tree.

Neural, now that researchers say marijuana use has surpassed alcohol as Americans' drug of choice, they have to answer this.

You're welcome.

They have to answer this question.

If alcohol use is declining, why is it still not safe to eat at a waffle house?

I mean,

not to always be the marijuana advocate, but do you know what the stoners are doing while the fight is going on?

Eating their waffles.

And finally, new rules: someone has to look into the puzzling paradox of why it is that rape jokes are completely unacceptable and unthinkable and totally out of bounds.

But raped in prison jokes?

Fucking hilarious.

It's

never a bad time to do the one about how if you drop the soap in the prison shower, don't bend over for it.

And look, with all the talk now about Trump possibly going to jail, we've all been doing it.

I mean, come on, it's Donald Trump.

Given the opportunity, it's natural to want to imagine him getting fucked in the ass.

I'm just saying maybe we shouldn't.

If not for him, then for the nearly 2 million people behind bars at any given time in this country.

That's more people than in 12 states.

They should have their own two senators.

And one can be Bob Menendez.

America has a higher incarceration rate than Russia or China or almost any of the other evildoer countries we're always shitting our pants over.

And yet, for some reason, everything at Walgreens is still locked behind plexiglass.

But for some reason, Americans simply accept that not only do we lock up way more people, but that if you're a criminal of any kind, yes, sodomy is the appropriate comeuppance.

They say if you want to survive prison, the first thing you do when you get there, what you have to do is go up to the biggest, baddest guy and punch him in the face,

which I find also works if you're a passenger on Delta.

As a prisoner here in America, you'll either be alone in solitary, which drives you out of your mind, or completely on top of everybody else.

Inmates in America are routinely forced to sleep on the floor and to fight for access to toilets and showers.

Of the world's 25 most dangerous prisons, four are here in the U.S., Attica, San Quentin, the Supermax in Colorado, and the State Penn in New Mexico, where, for $45, oh yes, you can tour the cell block.

where in 1980, 33 inmates were killed in one of the worst prison riots in history.

So bring the kids, and don't forget that selfie in the gas chamber.

Here in California, the prison at Dublin made headlines because it's where they sent Lori Laughlin after her college cheating scandal, but alas it's closing.

Why?

Because the rape club that the guards had going was so impervious and ingrained, it was easier just to shutter the whole place.

And prison in America America is a place that forces the people in it, forces them to become racists.

If you're black, you're with the brothers.

If you're white, you have to join the Aryan skinheads.

There's no, oh, leave me out of it.

I like everybody.

Let's just all go get coexist tattoos on our knuckles.

Now,

I mean,

what kind of society is cool with with all this?

We call them correctional facilities, but that's like calling the NFL a brain development program.

And

look,

I'm not saying that it's not okay to lock people up.

It is, of course it is.

Diddy does it all the time.

But it's not okay to deliberately violate the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.

Fake tough guys think, hey, if prison's bad enough, it'll incentivize people to stay out of trouble after they get out.

But they're wrong.

It actually does the opposite.

Within a year of release, around 40% of prisoners are rearrested.

Within 10 years, it's 82%.

And I don't think they want back in because they missed the toilet wine.

If we're trying to make inmates into criminals for life, it's working.

Because prison is like LinkedIn for low lives.

You can't beat the networking.

It's a taxpayer-funded criminal mentorship program.

But here's the thing, around 95% of all inmates eventually do get out.

So the question becomes, who do we want returning to society?

Some hapless broke dude goes in for selling drugs or passing a bad check, and a few years later he comes out a sexual predator with white power written on his neck.

And we all sort of just accept that, like, well, that's how prison works.

You go in bed and you come out worse.

If you're lucky when you get out, we'll let you work the Tilter Whirl at the carnival or date Britney Spears.

Jesus.

It almost makes stealing Catalytic converters not worth it.

But it doesn't have to be this way.

We could change.

There are even places in the world that offer a model as to what that would look like.

Norway's recidivism rate is 20%.

Prisoners there do yoga, they learn a trade, there's a playground for the kids when they visit, and the guards aren't maniacs who failed the police psych exam.

And it's a place that, and it's a place that looks less like our prisons and more like what you'd find on an American college campus, only of course with less anti-Semitism.

Of course, the big difference is that, unlike here, Scandinavian countries don't have private for-profit prisons.

That's what we have here.

And corporations, it turns out, don't run prisons to improve society.

They run them to make money, which means putting more people in the system.

The more prisoners, the more profit.

This is why they lobby Congress for three strikes rules and keeping weed illegal.

They don't want them rehabilitated.

They want returned customers.

All right, that's our show.

And if you enjoyed this editorial,

I've got 300 more just like it for you, all updated to right now.

What this comedian said will shock you is out now.

If that's not a Father's Day present, I don't know what is.

I will be at the David Cape Field Theater in Vegas, June 21st and 22nd at the MGM, and at the MGM Music Hall in Boston, July 26th, and Toyota, Oakdale, and Wellington, Connecticut, July 27th.

Thank you, Matt Welch, Abigail Schreier, and Senator John Favin.

All right, now go to watch

Overtime on YouTube.

Thank you, folks.

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.