Ep. #661: John Waters, David Axelrod, Ken Buck

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

How you doing?

How are you down there?

Thank you very much.

Thank you, people.

All right, we got a big historic show.

Historic.

All right.

Well, I guess you heard the news.

That's right.

In New York, a jury of his peers found Donald Trump guilty on 34 counts.

That will come up.

Trump,

were you watching that?

Trump was incensed.

He shot out of his chair.

He said to his lawyers, do something.

What do you think I'm not paying you for?

So, yeah,

he's pretty distraught and pissed off these days.

But I got to say, Don, if there was a silver line to this, you finally did something that made Stormy come.

Hey.

You know what they say?

Don't do the porn star if you can't do the time.

That's

an old saying.

Now,

of course, course, the Democrats are trying not to gloat, but

it's hard.

Hillary Clinton today tweeted, lock who up, bitch.

She did not tweet that.

She thought that.

She did not tweet.

But of course, this trial is not really over because

I can't believe I'm saying these words, but Trump is appealing.

Yeah, there's going to be an appeal.

And their big talking point today is: if they do it to me, this could happen to anyone.

Yes, of course.

I'll have to remember that next time I'm cheating on my third wife with a porn star to pay her off when I'm running for president.

So this morning, Trump.

Oh my gosh, did you see the press conference outside of Trump Tower?

He went off.

Everything was fixed.

Everything is rigged.

Everything's unfair.

Everybody's out to get him.

It's the worst day in the history of the world.

All these

crazy leaps.

The Associated Press said it was completely disjointed.

All I got to say is he's still got it.

He's still got it.

Nothing gets it down.

But

MAGA Nation is distraught and spitting mad.

Oh, did you know

over on Fox News, Judge Janine Pira was drinking straight out of the bottle.

I mean,

it's

his

now,

of course, Trump's fans, the MAGA Nation, they're trying to buck him up.

Did you see when he walked out of the trial after the verdict?

They're all out there singing, for he's a jolly good fell, and for he's a jolly good fell.

And all those, remember all those Republicans who were dressing like him?

Yeah, now they're all in orange jumpsuits.

I mean, it's very weird.

It's getting weird.

Oh, and this was a touching scene in the courthouse, right after they announced the verdict, all guilty, guilty, guilty, 34 times.

And they started to take him away.

Lindsey Graham stood up in the back of the gallery and screamed, I'll wait for you.

So

yes, it is funny and we can laugh, but let's not lose perspective here.

This is actually a very sad day in American history when a former president and possibly future president is now an American felon.

And yet on the other hand, I feel like tonight I'm the guy who should be dancing jerking off two guys.

Okay.

All right.

All right, we got a great show.

We have David Oxlerad and Ken Buck.

And first up.

First up, he's America's cinematic master of the outrageous.

His cult classic musical Cryberry baby starring Johnny Depp was just released in 4K ultra high definition Blu-ray this week.

John Waters is over here.

There he is.

The ageless John Waters.

All right, now

somebody told me that you had never seen this clip I just showed of him.

Well, he's doing the monkey.

That was that dance.

And that's from his era.

Really?

He just went up and down.

He forgot.

He's climbing sideways.

It looks oddly specific to monkeys.

Yeah.

Well, monkeys, you know, they puke and eat it too and jerk off in public.

So.

All right.

So

now I remember when you were like a trial groupie back in the 70s.

You liked to go to trial.

I used to, but now I get recognized.

I don't go.

Right.

But did you watch this on TV?

Of course, and the thing I keep thinking is for sentencing, if he gets home detention, you will hear Melania scream all the way from Trump Tower to the White House.

And do you think he should go to prison?

Well, I only want to see that one shot in the shower when they louse you down and that one piece of hair is hanging there.

That's the one I want to see.

Then they let him out because otherwise,

you know, in jail

in jail, you pay the guards to sneak in cell phones.

He's going to have to sneak in just for men, honey blonde.

Oh, that happened.

Okay.

But, I mean, I felt like so many of the details that came out in this trial were like spec, just like perfect for you if you wanted to.

The mushroom shape of his dick.

They didn't have that in the trial.

She said that earlier.

Yeah.

Well, she had said that earlier, right.

But

I mean, look,

I don't know that much about dicks, but

what?

Maybe you know.

What would cause a...

What would cause a diploma?

Well, it would be, I don't know, just some kind of deformity or something.

I don't know.

Maybe their dicks are all go pointed different ways and everything.

That's why when I was younger, there was clubs called the Glory Hole where people just went in.

And I remember I heard somebody.

I heard somebody say, God, I hope I didn't blow Rex Reed.

And, you know,

he wasn't there.

He wasn't there, but you didn't know what was going to come through.

Rex Reed, the film critic.

Yes.

Okay.

I didn't know that much about his private life.

Well, me either.

But you didn't know when you were in the booth and one came in.

You don't know what's upstairs.

Yeah.

It was a different time.

The one in L.A.

was called Basic Plumbing, and the booze were clear, of course.

I'm learning so much tonight.

But also,

I mean, you know, you cast people in a way most directors have not.

I mean, you cast Tracy Lords once.

She was a porn star.

Stormy Daniels is a porn star.

Well, but the difference was nothing happens good when you're a porn star at underage.

And those movies are all kitty porn.

She's over that.

She has a whole other life.

Stormy Daniels actually took credit.

You know, she produces her own movie.

Jeff Stryker's my friend.

He was the greatest porn star ever.

Why do you think there's never been a crossover porn star who...

There was Marilyn Chambers, and there's a good new book about that.

But she was not a crossover.

Yeah, she was in a David Cronenberg movie.

Yeah, she crossed over some, yeah.

A little bit, but not like a star.

Well, Tracy Lourdes was in a movie with Johnny Depp, so she did pretty well.

Yeah.

And that's a great movie.

Thank you.

Thank you.

It's about juvenile delinquents.

In the 50s, they called white kids that, but blacks were criminals.

Right.

You know, if you were a teenager.

So juvenile delinquent was kind of sexy.

And then I'm an adult delinquent now.

I mean, it's amazing.

It's amazing the way, you know, what they said about horrors and old buildings or something.

If you wait around long enough, everything becomes respectable.

Well, yeah, I've been around a long time, definitely.

And the movies and everything are doing better today than they ever did.

I mean, Pink Flamingo was banned.

Oh, everywhere in the country.

I never, I lost every obscenity case ever.

Right.

We just pled guilty.

It was easy.

But then it's on, it's on.

It is obscene.

But I think it's in the, in the, in the

Library of Congress's.

And we didn't even have intimacy experts.

Imagine if we had, you know, they make you have them now.

Oh, you intimacy.

Is it going to be our right to eat shit?

Do you have breath mints?

Right.

You mean

they call them intimacy coordinators.

Yeah, they're on set if you have sex or something.

Right, if you're about to have a sex scene.

Yeah, do you have any problems with saying the line, do my balls, mama?

I mean, no.

Right.

But it's, do you think it's really needed?

Because I've never once heard any actor talk about doing a sex scene in a way that it was sexy.

No, I hate filming them.

It's embarrassing.

And it's embarrassing.

I just want to get it over with.

Right, yeah.

So why do you need somebody to look over your shoulder?

Just one other person to, you know, watch.

Right.

You know, yeah, some other voyeur hanging out.

Right.

I think, I mean, I don't know if this is true, but I think it was George C.

Scott who was attributed to this line.

He was about to do a sex scene with the woman, and he said, the actress, and he said, I apologize if I get an erection, and I apologize if I don't.

Exactly.

I had,

yeah.

In a dirty shame, because this was before, we had extras that had to make out and French kiss each other all day in the background.

They didn't complain.

Right.

They had fun.

You know, it was fine.

It's an amazing job where you can be.

Somebody, I heard one extra, that little fucker got a heart on.

I thought, well, no wonder.

And you can be doing it at 8 in the morning.

This was 6 in the morning sometime.

Right.

We shot early, get that morning shot.

Get out of bed and you have some.

I didn't even mean that.

Well, so

it's Pride Month tomorrow, the beginning.

I don't have a date yet.

But the Pope, right on queue,

against faggots.

He ought to be against child molesters.

That's what he ought to be watching out for.

But I,

well, I'm for

beyond the gay thing.

Because it's so accepted now.

I want new minorities.

I want strags.

That's straight guys who only sleep with fag hags.

And there's...

There's nothing wrong with the term fag hag either, by the way.

They're in our community.

There's also trag kings.

That's trans who go further and get in drag is what they were before more exaggerated

and

there's not beatniks, but neatniks, the cleanest people alive, who snort Ajax and

vacuum their front lawns and hang out in laundromats.

I'm trying to come up with new perversions.

Yeah.

I don't think you have to work that hard.

Well, and I feel sorry for young people.

They never had crabs.

Our pubic past is something we have to remember.

So I think that we

people my age should all get crabs again for nostalgia.

Right.

But

I knew a girl once that had crabs in her eyelashes, and I was talking to her, I thought, what the hell is that?

And she's like,

oh,

that even got me.

But if people don't know the story we're referring to, the Pope

the other day

was speaking to a group of his own.

He said faggotry or something

faggotness yeah something like that he was decrying it i mean he's he's bitched about this before because i feel like look i think they call sometimes they call him the woke pope i think in some ways he is he is not anti-gay no yes he is here's the thing he says

he's a fucking pope you got rid of

who are you what do you mean at one strike they had no more eaten meat on friday they got rid of limbo so say it's legal who cares he can do it in one second okay but i think the

That's true, too.

Don't convince me.

I'm the guy you made religious.

Okay.

I'm an atheist.

Okay.

But

my friend went to the atheist convention.

She said they were all drunks.

No, we are not all drunks.

I know.

When she went to the convention, she said most were.

Oh, please.

We have less reason to drink than the.

I'm for atheists.

Madeline Murray was from Baltimore.

She had bumper stickers in her.

She said prayer is begging.

Begging?

Yeah, it is.

Yeah.

Okay.

Anyway, we're not drunk.

We're not drunks.

We're potheads.

Anyway,

I think that what bugs the Pope is that he's not, I don't think he's against gay people.

In fact, he's made some moves that were very helpful and said you can get into heaven and so forth.

What?

Okay, but you can't.

That makes him think of it.

Hey no, but he's a liberal.

He's still saying about Thaggary and you can't get married and it's not.

Okay, but

I think what bugs him is that

I think he's saying, I'm not against gayness, but I'm ahead of this organization which is all gay now.

They're not all gay, they're pedophiles, that's different.

They're not all pedophiles.

No stars.

Let me tell you,

I used to think it is a constitution.

That's an insult.

Who chooses to be a pedophile?

Nobody.

Right.

It's reckless.

But the people that know they are and hide them, they're more guilty morally.

Yes, of course.

Yes, obviously.

But I think you're conflating gays and pedophiles, and that's a dangerous conversation.

No, it is, because they're not, there's nuns that are pedophiles, they're all everybody.

Yeah, okay.

Anyway, I'm going to drop this.

I can't.

I'm just saying.

I think what he's just trying to say is: like, this organization used to be about something other than gayness, and now it's all about gayness.

I don't, I'm not against you, but this used to be about a different thing, this guy, Jesus Christ.

And anyway, let's move on to another subject.

All right.

So

it's Pride Month.

It used to be called

Gay Pride.

And now you wouldn't ever say that because it has to include L G B T Q and all those other things.

I'm sorry, I don't remember all the letters now.

But are you for that?

Do you think?

I'm not for it, but

listen.

My parents never asked me if I was gay.

They feared it was something worse.

To me, I think gay is a good start, but it's not enough.

But isn't it wrong to lump all these different people?

To me, if I was with these people, I would not want to be lumped in with this, like, okay, here's the heterosexual people, and here's every other one of you people who many times don't have a lot in common.

Well, they don't.

I mean, like the, you know, I mean, I say I'm from a generation of gay men.

We don't know how to jerk off to them.

Right.

It's something they have to teach us.

Right.

All right.

Well, good luck with the glory of that.

I'm glad you recovered from your accident.

It's always great to see you, John Waters.

Thank you.

Thank you.

John Waters.

All right, let's meet our panel.

Okay.

Well.

Okay, he was President Obama's chief campaign strategist, CNN political correspondent David Axelrod is with us.

And

he is the former Republican congressman who represented Colorado's fourth congressional district, Ken Buck, out of Congress now.

Great to see you.

Thank you.

I want to thank you especially for keeping the booking here.

I know this must have been a tough day for you yesterday.

And all Republicans, I did not like what happened.

I'm not sure where you are with who you're voting for, but did the verdict yesterday

might change your vote that he's found guilty?

I am not a Donald Trump fan and I am not a Joe Biden fan, so I'm still looking for that alternative out there.

Well, that's, wow, that's optimistic because it's, you know, almost June.

So you're not going to vote for either one of them.

Right now, I'm not voting for either one of them.

We'll see what happens when we get closer to election day.

Okay, I want to read some of the statements that people made for the Republicans because I just want to ask this one question about that.

Here's like Laura Ingram.

The Democrats are showing what real power is, the type of power we usually see dictators exercise in China and Cuba and North Korea.

Pretty strong words there.

Sean and Tucker said, the foundation of our constitutional republic is literally dying before our eyes.

Tucker, anyone who defends this verdict is a danger to you and your family.

This was a jury.

This seems to be lost.

on the people in your party.

I don't get this stuff about dictators and,

you know, we're losing our way of life.

This is our way of life.

This was a jury.

Does that not have any resonance?

Any meaning?

So, from my perspective, I don't blame the jury.

I think the jury was given instructions.

They followed those instructions.

They looked at the facts.

The problem I have is I prosecuted for 25 years.

I never ran for office and said, I'm going to get somebody, number one.

Number two,

I never tried a case or handled a case or supervised a case that didn't follow a very specific pattern.

The police are called.

There's a dead body.

There's four bullet holes.

There's a robbery.

There's a burglary.

And

the what happens before the who.

Then the police go out and investigate and determine who.

In this situation,

the police, the prosecutor said, we're going to go, I'm going to hold Donald Trump accountable.

And he did.

And that's what people are objecting to, is if they can hold Donald Trump accountable, they can aim at one person, this is a dangerous situation for our country.

What's wrong with holding people accountable?

I guess that's what the law does.

Accountable.

You and I and David have all committed crimes if we want to take a magnifying glass and

it's legal now.

But

honestly, you don't need a huge magnifying magnifying glass in this case.

I mean, this is, you've got to, Michael Cohen went to prison for his involvement in the thing that Donald Trump got convicted for

yesterday.

So

I don't understand

how that is taking a magnifying glass.

It was there for everybody to see.

The question is whether the guy who masterminded the thing would be held accountable, and now he is.

I think it's a good thing.

I think it's a good thing in this country country if no matter who you are, you are held accountable when you break the law.

The problem,

Ken,

you are such an honorable member of Congress.

You know this.

Democracy rests on rules and laws and norms, institutions.

It's dangerous when the guy in charge doesn't believe in any of those and doesn't think they apply to him.

That's really dangerous for our country.

So this kind of rhetoric is nuts.

Should he go to jail?

Over the top.

That rhetoric is over the top.

I'm not excusing that rhetoric.

I'm not excusing Donald Trump's language at all.

What I'm pointing out is that it's a...

I can't even understand his language.

I don't.

What I'm pointing out is that this is a dangerous precedent.

If you don't think Republican DAs and Republican Attorney Generals are going to turn turn this around, they will.

And what I saw in Congress was I saw two impeachments that were unwarranted.

And the Democrats talked to me about that after the fact.

Now we all of a sudden are impeaching my orcas and we're impeaching, we're trying to impeach Biden.

What one side does, the other side picks up on very quickly, and it's a bad slope for us.

That's right.

But that's a false equivalency as to who is committing the crimes.

I mean, there are bad things done on both sides, just not nearly in equal measure.

I mean, you're right, it's a convoluted case.

I brought in in what we had said.

I did an editorial about this way back saying, I don't know if they should bring this case.

People are just going to see it about a sex case.

Here's what we said: Joe Sixback is not going to take the time to wrap his head around how the statute of limitations applies to a misdemeanor of falsifying business records if it involves a violation of state election law in a second crime involving a federal campaign conditional on the residential status of the defendant.

That's kind of hard to put on a bumper sticker.

So,

But I always thought it should have been brought federally by Merrick Garland because it is that's really the case and that you know that's the weird thing.

It was a falsifying business records case in the state and yet the closing argument was all about hey, this is what got him the election.

This is what and it did it get him the election?

I don't know.

Did Russia get him the election?

I don't know.

And you can't relitigate all that stuff.

I never thought the Democrats were right to be talking about he's an illegitimate president.

He got the votes.

I agree with you on that.

And I agree with you, look, when they, this is not the case.

They keep saying, well, this is a Biden-orchestrated plot.

First of all, you can't say a guy is senile and incompetent, but he's the diabolical mastermind of this.

You got to take your horse, right, and ride it.

But I said from the beginning that nobody would have chosen this case.

There are four cases.

Some of them are very, very serious.

I mean, I disagree with Ken about January 6th and the President's involvement in overturning the election.

And many of the people who voted against convicting him in that impeachment said, well, it's up to the courts now.

And now the courts are being frustrated, or the public who wants action is being frustrated because the President wants to delay it past his election.

But I said at the time that this case was being contemplated that if you have to say porn star and novel legal theory in the same sentence, maybe you better think about it.

Yeah, I mean

it's early.

Today it's ding-dong the wicked witch is dead, but you know I've seen this monster

rise from the grave so many times.

I think anybody's nuts who predicts

what reaction, what the long-term effect of this will be, except for one bill.

I did a podcast earlier this week with Chris Christie, who knows him very well.

And he said, you guys are all thinking about how voters are going to react to this.

Think about how Trump's going to react to it, because the two things that he fears the most are bankruptcy and prison.

And he is going to become angrier and more paranoid and more apocalyptic if he is found guilty.

And we saw that this morning.

That was a batshit crazy press conference.

Not the first I've seen in the middle of the day.

No, no.

I mean, there's been many.

I mean, he sort of lives in that state.

I didn't see a big difference between normal.

But that's the ⁇ now here's the key question.

Is he going to go to jail?

Would this judge dare do that?

And should he?

I mean, I've heard some people say if his name wasn't Donald Trump, he would definitely get jail time.

But sending a former American president to jail, I don't know.

That's something I'm asking.

I don't think he goes to jail on a white-collar crime like this.

I just don't think that's the sentence.

If you look at the sentencing history for crimes like this in Manhattan, I just don't think it gets jail time.

And for some offense, and your point is right.

Listen, a lot of people in my tribe don't like it when I say this, but yeah, I think there is something about jailing a former president, especially on something like this,

that is,

to me,

worrisome for our country.

And

I would really be shocked if this judge

gave him a prison sentence for this.

I mean, MAGA Nation will go nuts.

I don't know if that's a reason to or not to do something,

but they will.

Yeah, but one of the things about this apocalyptic language that you hear from all of these, the amen chorus, is they really are inviting violence, and that's a big concern of mine.

And Trump is completely unrestrained in suggesting that maybe that's appropriate.

I mean, he hints that all the time.

That's how he got in trouble on January 6th, and he's doing it again because I think he's more desperate now than he was then.

But if they put him in jail, I know it'll happen because the judge's name was Juan.

Yes.

Everything becomes racial in this country.

That's partly because of our horrible, despicable, racial past, partly because some of that racism lives on in the present, and some of it because the far left makes everything racial.

But that's what it's going to be.

I mean, do you see that movie Civil War that's out now?

I have not.

I've heard that I should.

Yeah, no, it sucks.

All right, could you?

I'm sorry.

You just saved me two hours.

Yeah, I did.

Well,

I'm sorry.

That's a harsh review.

The actors are great, but it sucks because they don't explain why we're in the Civil War, and it's just not realistic.

First of all, California and Texas are on the same team, and they never explain that.

The federal government is fighting the Western Alliance, which is us in Texas.

Really?

They're on the same side?

And like, you know, it's unclear who's on what side and for what reason.

And there's black people fighting alongside of white people.

I'm sorry, but you're not going to be able to do it.

No, I don't still have to see the movie.

No, you don't.

A civil war in this country, I'm sorry to say, becomes a race war.

That's the sad truth about this country.

And if they put him in jail, I mean, that's the first thing his supporters are going to say is, oh.

That's what it is.

Well, that's a black district attorney, you know, all these people who are the district attorneys, they're black.

The judge was not white.

This is what it is.

So which team are the Nikki Haley voters on?

I've got to figure this out.

Is she the one who shot the dog?

That's the other one.

I'm sorry.

All right.

Let me ask you this question because I'm worried about Biden, as as many people are.

And David, you've said things like, there is a lot of leadership talent in the Democratic Party poised to emerge, like cicadas.

That sounded like you wanted someone else at one point.

I mean, I certainly did.

I loudly said I thought he would be Ruth Bader Biden if he continued to run, but he is continuing to run.

But here's what I read in Politico.

A pervasive fear, sense of fear has settled in at the highest levels of the Democratic Party over President Joe Biden's reelection prospects, even among officeholders and strategists who had previously expressed confidence.

The debate is June 27th.

We never had one before the convention.

If Joe really shits the bed, would that be a good opportunity to make the switch then?

Yeah.

Listen.

That is a fantasy that I hear a lot.

Yes, I did raise, I like Joe Biden and I worked with him and and I was grateful to work with him and I think he's done a lot of very, very fine things as president for which history will be kind to him.

That's not the question.

The question is whether at this age he should have run.

But he did run and right now he is the nominee of the Democratic Party.

This is not 1968 where the convention's going to decide.

We change the rules.

Voters nominate a candidate.

They've nominated Joe Biden and he's not going anywhere.

And there's no delegation of elders.

I mean, how do you find elders anyway?

But

there's no generation of elders who are going to go to the White House and tell him that he can't run.

He is going to run.

And one of the reasons they wanted an early debate, I'm sure, is to focus people on this is the choice.

It's Trump and Biden.

I mean, you can take the easy way out and say, well, I'm not going to vote for either of them, but one of those guys is going to be president of the United States.

And people ought to focus on that and give up on the sort of fantasy that there's going to be a lot of people that puts that to rest.

All right, listen, I have a few thank yous to do.

This book came out this week.

It's my book, What This Canadian Send Basket.

And

it went straight to number one.

I've been saying New York Times best-selling author for a long time about all my guests, and now I get to say it about myself and the great people on this staff who helped me with this and the people who bought it.

I want to thank you, the people at the publishing company.

I have one quibble.

I was out in New York last week promoting it.

You may have seen me on every show.

Ruling selling a book.

But the title, you know, this was a funny title, I thought.

What this comedian said will shock you.

You see, it's a joke on clickbait.

I just can't sell the joke of this title, apparently.

But I thought it was funny because I never saw clickbait as a title.

And the truth is that we are getting to the point in this country where you're going to have to use clickbait for literally everything because people don't read anymore.

They don't read newspapers.

They don't know what's going on because they don't read.

And this is the only way you get them to read.

So we thought we'd show you some of the headlines we're probably going to see in the future.

If you want to get people to read, you're going to have to clickbait it.

Would you like to see some of these?

If you want to get them to read about Joe Biden, you'll never guess what this 80 celeb celeb looks like now.

Trump, fall asleep anywhere with this one simple trick.

We're talking about Christy Noam, pet training tricks veterinarians don't want you to know.

You want to get him to read about Mike Pence?

You won't believe what one boss did when this employee said no.

Lauren Bobert, this trick for getting a second date may surprise you.

You mentioned Chris Christie.

See what happens if you drink syrup every day for one month.

John John Fetterman, you won't believe where this man works.

And Marjorie Taylor Greene, baby born without brain, is now all grown up.

Okay.

Terrible.

Okay.

Can we talk about the Supreme Court a little bit?

Because I see Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House, after the verdict, verdict said, I do believe the Supreme Court should step in obviously.

I don't know if it's that obvious.

He said, I think that the justice on the court, I know many of them personally, well, maybe you shouldn't.

I thought this was separation of church and state, okay,

and branches of government.

I think they're deeply concerned, blah, blah, blah.

First of all, I don't know if the Supreme Court should step in.

Second of all, I feel like the Supreme Court used to have such esteem, and now they're just a politician in a robe.

And

I mean, we see this with Alito, this

brouhaha about the flag.

Now, I want to ask about two flags.

The first story was he flew his wife.

He blamed it on the wife.

Okay, but it's his house.

Flew the American flag upside down.

I want to get your take on that, because flying the American flag upside down, and I'm not a rah-rah kind of guy, you know, I don't get a boner when the the blue angels fly overhead.

I don't give a shit what you do during the national anthem.

You know, you can kneel, you can sit, you can fuck on the 50-yard line as far as I'm concerned.

I don't care about any of that.

But

there's a chapter in this book called Patriotic Immunity.

And I don't understand why Republicans get away with doing things that if a Democrat did it, I mean, if Katanji Brown Jackson flew the flag upside down, would you be saying, would that be okay?

Well, I don't know if Judge Merchant's daughter worked for the Democrats, if Judge Merchant donated to Democratic causes, should he recuse himself?

I mean, that's what they are actually asking is for Justice Alito to recuse himself.

And Congress has the audacity to say we should impose certain rules.

George Santos has some free time right now, and maybe he could draft those rules.

And then maybe Bob Menendez can carry that bill in the Senate because he's certainly qualified.

Well, that is an interesting question I was going to get to, the recusal.

But right now I'm just asking about the flag and flying it upside down.

I mean, Trump called McCain,

you know, he said he's not a war hero.

He's called military people losers.

He wouldn't go to that cemetery in France because it was raining.

He said the other day, Memorial Day, this is his tweet, happy Memorial Day to all, including the human scum that is working so hard to destroy our once great country.

Don Jr., after the verdict, called this country a third world shithole.

I remember they went nuts when Obama didn't wear a suit coat in the Oval Office.

I'm just asking about this

weird double standard of who gets to shit on America and still be deemed patriotic.

It's bizarre to me, is it not to you?

I find it really offensive that on Memorial Day, President Trump would talk about this country being once great.

Memorial Day is all about those who died for this country to be great.

And the people who are wearing uniforms now and risking their lives to keep this country great, that's an insult to them.

It's an insult to the immigrants who want to come to this country legally and be part of this country.

It's an insult to the people who invest their money in our stock markets.

It's an insult to the police officers.

It's insulting to everybody.

We don't need to make America great again.

America is great, and it's the greatest country in the world.

I'm actually the son of an immigrant,

a refugee actually from Eastern Europe

who came here with nothing and I ended up as a senior advisor to the President of the United States.

I'm pretty grateful to this country.

I fly the flag right side up.

And I think everybody should.

We have problems and we ought to address those problems.

That's what democracy is all about.

We're perfecting the Union all the time.

But they're running down the country for their own personal gain.

And

that's unacceptable.

Good.

But you're still going to vote for them.

That's the weird part to me.

Okay.

All right.

So then there's this other flag, the Appeal to Heaven flag.

I had never heard of this.

I'm not, again, a flag person.

But this one,

it says appeal to heaven on it.

It's got a picture of a pine tree.

I guess because the air is very fresh in heaven.

I don't know what that, you know.

I hope so.

I hate to get to heaven.

It smells like the turnpike.

You know, it would be a huge disappointment.

But,

okay, but

I find out now, because you never get the full story from, you know, the first day or from only one source.

This flag flies a lot of places.

They're saying it, you know, Alito flew it as a, it's kind of a dog whistle to the stop the steel people, to MAGA Nation.

This is their flag now.

It means that we don't believe in, you know, the election was fair.

But it was flying over the city hall in San Francisco for 60 years.

And now,

because of this flap, Mayor London Breed there has ordered the flag to be removed.

And the

person who was the spokeswoman for San Francisco, the parks official,

said it's because since been adopted by a different group, one that doesn't represent the city's values.

What are the values of San Francisco?

Well, they have some good values in San Francisco, and some that go, and sometimes they take it way too far.

I would totally agree with you on that.

I would never vote for Trump, but I always say, when people do, I get it.

The left is cuckoo.

Yeah, there's lots of shit that makes people under,

go right where you go.

But let me ask you about this, okay?

Because I've seen the American flag, yes, the American flag, trashed by people who think that is somehow owned by MAGA now.

Nobody owns these flags.

Nobody owns patriotism.

I think it's a very bad thing for San Francisco to take this down and say, okay, that's you now.

No, it's not.

Why?

George Washington flew this flag.

They own George Washington now?

I'm far more concerned that

these flags

became an issue because the upside-down flag, that flag were carried by the insurrectionists on January 6th.

I'm far less concerned about the flags than the fact that Donald Trump lionizes them as heroes and says he will, as one of his first acts, pardon all of them.

And that, to me, is more disrespectful to the American flag than

Ronaldo.

You agree with all that?

Look,

I don't get it.

I'm honest.

I just don't get it.

It's a flag.

It means different things to different people, and why San Francisco does that baffles me.

So here's what Alito said about this.

He said, my wife,

saying that she's flying this, which is okay.

My wife is an independently-minded private citizen.

She makes her own decisions, and I honor her right to do so.

Pretty funny from a guy who just made abortion illegal.

Well, I think he just changed.

I think he's pro-choice.

But that's.

Don't you think under that black robe he's got a shirt that says, you know, my body, my choice, at this point?

I don't know about that.

I don't understand Republicans with that kind of small government thing.

I believe them, and then they do things like DeSantis in Florida, he's outlawing fake meat.

Why?

I thought they were the small government people.

If I don't want to eat fake meat, I don't eat fake meat.

He's outlawing it.

He just passed, or trying to pass something that said, for the next like three months, bridges can only show red, white, and blue colors.

In other words, it's obviously a shot at Gay Pride Month, so that you can't show the rainbow colors.

But to make that a law is this is not the kind of republicanism you're for, is it?

Well, no.

I don't think that any form of government, any level of government has anything to do with fake meat, unless it's dangerous to the human body, and it's not.

So

leave it there.

No, but your point is exactly right.

It is weird to fly under the banner of freedom when you're constantly trying to take them away from people.

I mean, it's not consistent.

You get enough overbearing government from the left.

When the right starts to do it too, it's just too much.

Okay, last question.

The Washington Post says, nearly everything Americans believe about the economy is wrong.

So interesting.

55% think the economy is shrinking or is in a recession.

Could not be more the reverse.

Half think unemployment is at a 50-year high.

It's 4%.

Roughly half think the stock markets are down.

They're at all-time highs.

I mean, you're a strategist.

What do you do when you can't get information, and this from my point about clickbait?

You can't get information into people's heads.

How can Joe Biden, who's done well with the economy pretty much, how could he run on are you better four years ago than you were now than you were four years ago,

if people don't think they are, and the truth is they are.

Listen, Bill, we were faced with something of this in 2012.

We had come through this horrible financial crisis.

The country was recovering.

Unemployment was going down.

But we understood that we couldn't claim more than people were willing to tolerate.

And the fact is, you've got to link up with people where they live.

Everything you said is true.

And everything Biden says is true.

U.S.

is doing better than other countries

for sure in recovering from the pandemic, we had a soft landing.

Everybody said we were going to have a recession.

That didn't happen.

There's a lot to be proud of there, but the big but is cost of living, inflation.

Yes, inflation is coming down, but stuff is 20%

more costly than it was before the recession.

And that's how people are experiencing the economy through the prism of costs at the grocery store, their rents, mortgages.

And the problem is that Biden, I'm sorry, but he's too feeble to be the explainer-in-chief to get out there.

And you know, that's why we need somebody a little more vibrant to make the case.

All right, thank you, gentlemen.

Time for new rules.

Okay.

New rule, now that another billionaire is planning to take a two-person submarine to visit the Titanic.

Okay.

Knock yourself out.

Good luck to you, Larry Connor.

I see you've had some recent dental work, so

that's how we'll identify your body.

You know, there's got to be an easier way to reduce America's income inequality, but hey, if it works, it works.

New rule outraged conservatives upset about Peacock TV's new documentary, Queer Planet, about gay animals, have to calm the hell down.

It's not like your dog's going to see it and change his pronouns.

And it shouldn't be that surprising lions are gay.

After all, they do have a Broadway musical.

And they are called a pride.

And while we're on the subject, new rule, everyone must accept the Pope's apology for saying Catholic seminaries were already too full of faggotry.

I mean, it's not like he's infallible.

But if we do forgive him, then the Pope has to tell us, what is the right amount of faggotry in the Catholic Church?

And how do you measure it?

Because here in Hollywood, we generally use a ruler.

New rules, now that scientists in Switzerland have developed a substance that can prevent alcohol from getting you drunk, someone wants to explain to them that that's the whole point of alcohol.

Yes, I know it's aged in oaken barrels and has notes of cinnamon and orange rye, but that's all window dressing for the main thing.

It gets you fucked up.

The notes, that's the window dressing.

Getting fucked up, that's the window.

Neural, someone has to tell Bark Air, the new airline that allows dogs to fly in the main cabin with their owners, okay, but not for a red-eye flight.

We've all been there.

You're tired, you just want to get some sleep, and the bitch behind you won't stop yapping.

Yes, bark airlines, because even creatures that lick balls and sniff assholes draw the line at flying spirit.

And finally, new rule, if you're out protesting for a couple of hours wearing this, you have to go all the way and spend an afternoon running errands wearing one of these.

You can't side with the people who ruthlessly oppress women without at least getting a taste of what you're supporting.

Well, now that summer is here and the Hamas-backing college protesters have dispersed back to their summer internships at Goldman Sachs,

I thought it might be a good time to say this.

I actually admire your youthful idealism, and our world would be poorer without it.

Much like your parents who just wasted 300 grand on that ignorance factory you call a college.

Not that I think it's your fault being this poorly educated and morally confused.

That takes a village, shitty schools, overindulgent parents, social media, that priest who rubbed lotion on you.

But three cheers to you for at least having the impulse to seek a cause in something bigger than yourself.

It's just that the one you picked, you missed the boat by a fucking mile.

But here's the good news.

You want a cause?

Because I totally got one for you.

Apartheid.

Yeah, apartheid, the thing you've been shouting about with Israel for months.

Never mind that Israeli Arabs are actually full citizens.

You learned that word from a two-chain song and discovered that protesting South Africa's apartheid in the 80s was a righteous cause, and so it was.

To this day, when celebrities are asked who is the person they most admire, one name is always the safest choice.

Nelson Mandela.

Nelson Mandela.

Nelson Mandela.

Nelson Mandela.

Nelson Mandela.

Nelson Mandela.

Nelson Mandela.

Nelson Mandela.

Nelson Mandela.

So naturally, when you heard that Israel was an apartheid state, it gave you such a boner you literally pitched a tent.

You knew how wrong it was when tens of millions of South Africans had been treated like second-class citizens just because of their race.

But here's the thing: today,

right now, hundreds of millions of women are treated worse than second-class citizens.

When you mandate that one category of human beings don't even have the right to show their face, that's apartheid.

And it goes on in a lot of countries.

For the last couple years, women in Iran have been saying, take this hijab and shove it.

Because in 2022, a young woman named

Masa Amini was arrested for wearing her mandatory hijab incorrectly and then died in police custody.

And now security forces have killed over 500 people protesting her death and this obvious human rights violation.

How about defunding those police?

Amnesty International says that Iranian authorities are waging a war on women that subjects them to constant surveillance, beatings, sexual violence, and detention.

What P.

Diddy calls a hotel stay

in Iran, Me Too isn't a movement.

It's what a woman says when another woman says, My life sucks.

Yasmeen Muhammad is a human rights activist who got married off to a Muslim man with fundamentalist views about women not exactly uncommon in the Muslim world.

He forced her to wear the niqab all the time, including once beating her because she took her hijab off at home because the apartment had a window through which people might see in.

And this was in Vancouver.

Here's what Yasmin said about veiling.

It just suppresses your humanity entirely.

It's like a portable sensory deprivation chamber, and you are no longer connected to humanity.

You can't see properly.

You can't hear properly.

You can't speak properly.

People can't see you.

You can only see them.

Just little things, passing people on the street and just making eye contact and smiling, that's gone.

You're no longer part of this world, and so you very quickly just shrivel up into nothing under there.

And that's my answer when someone says Islamophobe.

Really, feminists?

Come on, there's got to be a happy medium between a husband making his wife wear this and a husband making his wife wear this.

I know 1619 was bad, but this is happening right now, right under your nose rings.

And it's not just the clothes.

15 countries in the Middle East, including Gaza, have laws that require women to obey their husbands.

Laws, not just Harrison Butker's opinion.

And those societies societies also have guardianship laws, which means a woman needs permission from her husband to work, to travel, to leave the house, to go to school, to get medical attention.

Nothing?

Honor killings, where women are murdered by their own fathers and or brothers, happen so frequently they can't even have an accurate account of how many.

In 59 countries, there are no laws against sexual harassment in the workplace, and many have no laws against domestic violence or spousal rape.

20 countries have marry-your-rapist laws.

Multiple societies have laws about what jobs women can and can't do.

Make a Barbie movie about that.

30 countries practice female genital mutilation and 650 million women alive today were married as children.

Kids, if you really want to change the world and not just tie up Monday morning traffic,

this is the apartheid that desperately needs your attention, gender apartheid.

This is what should be the social justice issue of your time.

How about from the river to the sea, every woman shall be free?

But in reality, it's not an issue at all for one reason.

The people who are doing it aren't white.

I hate to have to be the one to break it to you kids, but non-white people can do bad things too.

Now,

white on black racism certainly has been of one of history's most horrific scourges, but also it's true that in today's world being non-white means you can get away with murder.

So good on you kids for following your instinct to protest social injustice.

Just remember, when it comes to finding a cause, pulling your head out of your ass is an important rite of passage.

All right, that's our show.

I'll be at the RP in Minneapolis July 13th at Riverside in Milwaukee on the 14th.

And I want to thank David Oxarod, Ken Buck, and John Waters.

Now go 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.