Ep. #656: Jillian Michaels, Jon Meacham, Jane Ferguson

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

You're doing, thank you, Paul.

All right.

How you doing?

Thank you very much.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

Okay,

please.

We have a big show.

I think I know why you're happy.

It's a holiday tomorrow, 4.20.

Right.

Hold on.

Jeez.

I've got to start my baking.

I'm kidding.

I started earlier.

Anyway, it's a very special 420 because it's 42024,

which is

the same backwards and forwards.

This only happens once every hundred years.

Like

Arizona updating its abortion laws.

But

there is just so much going on this week, I I tell you.

A new Taylor Swift album and a Donald Trump trial.

So something for the Swifties and for the not-so-swifty.

Yeah, the album, you have it already.

Oh, it's amazing.

It's called

Tortured Poets Department, and everybody loves it already.

The tweens love it, the teens love it, the millennials love it.

Dick Cheney said, you had me at tortured.

But this trial is really wearing on Donald Trump.

I've been watching him, oh my god, because you know, people get to talk about him, and he has to sit there for hours without saying anything.

Kind of like he did on January 6th.

And

he keeps falling asleep.

And of course, denying it,

he says he's just resting his eyes, right.

And he's not drooling.

His head is having a wet dream.

But

I tell you, this race is getting quite interesting.

Did you see Bobby Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, RFK?

He is now polling at 11.7%.

Not nationally, just with his family.

I kid.

Well,

a lot of his family came out and said he should pull out of the race.

And he said, please, I'm a Kennedy.

We don't know the meaning of the word pull out.

But he will...

He will be right there next week, so we're very excited about that.

Okay.

Now,

of course, if you've seen a lot of news from the Middle East, I'm sure you saw a few weeks ago, Israel bombed Iranians in Syria.

Then this weekend, Iran fired 300 missiles and drone strikes at Israel.

Doesn't hit anything.

Make a bet of you will.

And then Israel now fired back today.

And I tell you, when you get bombed in Iran,

it's very tough for the women there.

They have to run for their life without showing ankle.

Now,

hopefully, this is all calming down because Israel

says they have no plans now to retaliate to that.

And I think that's great because, look, I know it's possible for Persians and Jews to coexist.

I've been to the Beverly Center.

Now the big issue in Congress is funding.

Should we be funding Israel and members of Congress?

This is, we have crossed the Rubicon here.

This is actually a big story.

I don't think they're covering it that way, but I think it's big.

Members of Congress are now trolling each other within legislation.

They're writing the trolling into the legislation.

Marjorie Teller-Green, remember when she, because she's QAnon, she thinks they have Jewish space lasers, whatever the fuck that is.

Jewish space.

So she wrote into the legislation,

an amendment that Israel has to be funded for space laser technology.

Oh, Lord.

You know what?

I think it's good that she can laugh at herself because I'm exhausted.

And

now then there's the people who don't want Israel to get any money.

That's the pro-Palestinian protesters.

They have been out this weekend.

They were

closing down bridges in San Francisco, Francisco, New York, several other cities.

That's their new thing, bridges.

Get on the bridge and stop people from getting across the bridge.

And the people are all saying, I'm trying to get on the bridge, where is a drifting cargo ship when you need one?

And

finally, Joe Biden made some news this week by

revealing that his uncle was eaten by cannibals.

Good night, everybody.

No, I'm not kidding.

Did you see this story?

Joe was kind of riffing, and he was talking about his uncle was shot down.

This is World War II, in New Guinea.

Apparently, there are cannibals there, and they never found the body, so ipso facto, he was eaten by cannibals.

I don't know if this is a true story, but I think it's a great metaphor for the times we live in, because if you want to continue living, you're going to have to swallow some Biden.

All right, we've got a great show.

We have John Meacham and Jane Ferguson, but first up, she is a fitness and nutrition expert and host of the podcast, Keeping It Real.

Please welcome Jillian Michaels.

There she is.

Look at that.

I love you.

How are you?

Thanks, Alan.

Oh, okay.

Getting a lot of cat calls here.

Oh, I like it.

Oh, I know you do.

I think they're for you, though.

No, they're not for me.

No, no.

Well, you're a fitness person.

You always look amazing.

And that's where you made your bones in this business.

And people know you very well from what you have to say about health.

I've always admired you because it's not easy to talk about health.

People,

they want to be healthy in theory, but when you talk about it, it gets personal.

They take it personal now.

And political now.

Which is shocking and brand new.

Right.

But they kind of have a love-hate relationship with good advice.

I mean, we know you from the shows you were on where you told us how to live, diet and exercise.

I wanted you here to now because everyone is talking about Ozempic.

I know.

And I need to, what is your take?

I mean, diet and exercise is the old-fashioned way.

We all said, well, there must be a short site.

Exercise is the only way.

The only way.

It is the only way.

I was reading your new book.

Thank you for sending that to me, by the way.

Oh.

It's fantastic.

Everybody, pre-order your coffee.

I got an early galley.

Oh.

You mean what this comedian said will shock you out May 21st?

You can pre-order it now.

That's true.

But you said you're like, when historians look back on people in the 21st century, they will characterize them as anti-science.

And I thought, son of a bitch.

On both sides.

Truer words have never been spoken, especially when it comes to health.

Because the reality is that these drugs, they do work, but it's a devil's bargain at an extraordinary price.

And there's a solution, albeit simple, but not easy, that has no negative side effects and nothing but upside.

It's about eating a little bit less and moving a little bit more.

But what you're saying is not something I've heard a lot.

Really?

Yes.

Well, Oprah called it a gift.

People call it a miracle.

Well,

Oprah is incentivized to call it a gift.

This is why I want you here, because I don't think people are hearing this other side.

Why do you say it's a devil's bargain?

What are the side effects?

What's the downside?

What's it doing to you?

Okay, here's the deal.

If we look at the box, and I say this because it isn't my opinion, and I have no judgment.

It's not an easy way out.

If it was an easy way out, life is hard enough.

Take it, right?

So the side effects alone, 50% of the people that take it will experience nausea, vomiting, constipation, and a lot of people will get off of it because they can't tolerate those side effects.

Now, beyond that, there's pancreatitis, kidney failure, and it's like, oh, which is...

Wait, wait.

You're saying it's causing those pancreatitis failure?

Those are side effects on the box.

How much?

Okay,

you have a 400% increased chance of pancreatitis from taking this drug.

You've got thyroid tumors, vision loss, you've got muscle loss.

And now anecdotally, we're seeing articles on the daily, one that came out just yesterday saying that psychiatrists think it warps your brain because of how it impacts your body's ability to regulate dopamine.

Now there's suicidal ideation, there's lack of libido.

Okay, well, suicidal ideation, I was reading about that.

Yeah.

Europe says no.

We hear at FDA, first they said no, then they say, well, we're studying it more.

And they said, we do have, it was like 157 reported cases to whatever they report them to at the FDA.

There's a significant amount.

They did do a study, but they looked at people who committed suicide, not people who had suicidal thoughts.

Why would this drug

make you think of suicide?

You know, I've spoken to multiple psychiatrists about this, and there are different theories, one of which is that serotonin, right, which is our feel-good, one of our feel-good chemicals, is made in the gut.

And if you look at how this drug impacts the gut, which by the way, I forgot to mention stomach paralysis and intestinal blockage are also deadly side effects, it's arguably going to impact the way your body makes serotonin.

And now we're looking at dopamine, and they think that it's impacting the way our body regulates dopamine, but they have no idea how.

And if you want to get really afraid, the American Academy of Pediatrics is recommending this as a first line of defense for children now 12 years old, but they're testing it on kids as young as six.

It's absolutely pernicious.

Why with the metabolism you have at six,

you can't be healthy to begin with.

It's just crazy.

And look, I hear you.

Look, I'm basically on your page on all this stuff.

Like, when you talk about this, oh, it changes what is in your gut and your serotonin.

That's the kind of thing that I'm always talking about on this show, and people think I have two heads.

This is what I mean, but it's so hard to talk about health because it's like, oh, what are you talking about?

Serotonin in your gut, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But yeah, yaki yak.

And you know what it is?

That's what health is.

It's this interconnectedness that goes on in our body.

Absolutely.

And people do not want to hear it.

But it's not always evident or on the surface what causes one thing when you do one medical intervention, what happens downstream.

Like whack-a-mole.

Right.

And it begets these problems that require new drugs to treat those issues.

But again,

let's look at how it works.

And the reason I want to look at how it works is because I want to encourage people that eating less will work.

What is it doing?

But they know that.

Do they?

Of course.

I hear constantly all the time, I can't lose weight, nothing works.

This isn't magic.

But they know that would work.

What they're saying is, I can't stop eating.

But let's look at why the insatiable hunger, then that's really important.

And this is where big food comes into play.

So you've got the psychology.

A lot of people are utilizing food as a coping mechanism, a defense structure, on a Kinsey scale, if you.

And it's addictive.

100%.

They purposely make it addictive.

They have, food companies have labs where they do this all day.

Can't eat just one.

Well, can't eat just one.

Right, exactly.

I mean, they know what they're doing.

100%.

Yeah.

And so what happens is they're literally hacking your biochemistry.

Right.

When you look at what these drugs do, they mimic satiety hormones.

You realize that our bodies are designed to have what's called mechanistic homeostasis.

We are built to regulate body temperature, to regulate stomach pH, blood pH, which you and I talked about on Plub Random.

Right.

We're also built to regulate our appetite.

But the issue is what's going to do it?

Healthy fats, protein, fiber.

When you drink a soda, there's no fiber, there's no fat, there's no protein, no satiety hormones are being released, and in fact, hunger hormones get released when you eat these foods.

Plus, they hack the dopamine center of your brain.

They are chemically addictive, as much as cocaine and nicotine.

Okay, but first of all, I've read also that half the people who take Ozempic, or one of these three, has no side effects.

Okay.

Right.

Well, they will plateau.

They will plateau now.

Absolutely.

Every single study illustrates that between weeks 68 and 72, the drug stops working.

Build a tolerance to it.

So it becomes inevitable that you will have to figure this out organically anyway.

And in addition, we really don't know what this looks like in perpetuity, Bill.

People cannot get off of it.

And when they do, all of the medicine now.

You have to be on it for life, right?

For life.

You will gain it all back, and then some.

It's yo-yo dieting on crack.

But people are, wow.

That sounds pretty good.

Not in a good way.

It's very weekly.

But people are on lots of drugs, Philip.

And look, I always say this.

You know, medicine is playing the odds.

And it's always about what is the least bad option.

If you really are one of those people who can't stop eating, and I understand that, because that's not my thing.

But if they said to me, stop smoking pot.

No, it would be.

It would, I mean, not

All joking aside, it'd be very hard to live the kind of life.

And I don't even smoke every day.

I'm not the kind of pothead people think I am.

I am not.

But when I want it, I want it.

Okay.

But, okay, so...

There's a line in the sand, okay.

And I know it's 420 and everything, but I've never lied about it and said, oh, it's health food.

I mean, it's not.

I'm probably hurting myself to some degree, not like I did with cigarettes and liquor, which was really stupid.

But it's a trade-off is what I'm saying.

And people, what's wrong with saying, look, I'm going to eat.

I just know I am.

I've tried everything.

It's not going to happen.

This is the least bad option because otherwise I'm going to have a heart attack.

Otherwise, I'm going to have high cholesterol and all the other things that you can get.

I would play that out with you all the way to the part where the drug stops working.

Okay.

And my mother is a psychoanalyst and she's taught me for years that people who utilize food as a coping mechanism or a defense structure, this food is providing them with something so significant that at one time or another it meant their psychological survival.

So I'm going to say if you're struggling on that level, take the 800 bucks a month you would be spending on Ozimbic and get a fantastic therapist to help you work through it because you're going to be here in 68 to 72 weeks anyway.

And now you're all the way behind the eight ball.

So you think it's about it's in the mind.

You think you can cure this in the mind?

You said therapist.

Well, I think that it's twofold.

So food companies are absolutely addicting you on a physiological physiological level, but they're also exploiting your psychological hungers.

And the truth of the matter is that there's so much shame around this because people who are overweight or obese have experienced discrimination for decades now.

So what happens is we then turn around and we say, okay, what narrative is going to make them feel the best?

So big food says, ah, we're going to push the anti-diet narrative and you can be healthy at any size, which is a message that actually meant health equity.

We should provide equal access to health care for people at any size.

But now it's don't even worry, go crazy, no food chain.

Healthy at any size.

And then they

will buy off and register dietitians to get them to say these things.

And again, I've never been a foodie, but it's not my advice.

But there is a connection with the pot thing because when I smoke pot.

You want to eat?

Oh.

I mean,

not right away.

First it goes to my head.

Okay.

Then it goes to my dick.

And then it goes to my stomach.

And when it goes to my stomach, I understand what it's like.

I mean, I really feel sympathetic with these people who can't stop eating because I know I am ravenous.

But I have a simple solution.

I don't keep shit in the house.

So I'll eat a lot, but it's not terrible stuff.

Anyway, we got to go to the panel.

It's good to see you.

Dilly and Michael, very enlightening.

Love you.

I'll see you after this show.

Okay, thank you.

Let's meet our panel.

Hello.

Okay.

There they are.

He is a Collinser Prize-winning historian and author of And There Was Light.

John Meacham is here.

John?

She's an award-winning journalist and author of No Ordinary Assignment.

Jane Ferguson.

Oh, boy.

Everybody has a book and now I have a book and I already plugged it.

It is available for pre-order now.

What this comedian said, which Jacquio and John, thank you.

You gave me a blurb for this and I appreciate it very much.

Memorial Day is not going to be the same because of the sales.

Okay, shall we start with the Trump trial?

I was thinking today,

it's years now since we started to say, boy, if we could only stop talking about Donald Trump.

And that day just never comes.

So let me start with you as a historian, because it is unprecedented.

I'm not going to be for a criminal trial of a former president.

And I definitely think he should be tried for the one in Georgia and the one for trying to overthrow the government of the United States.

I think that's a trial.

Tell me as a historian, haven't presidents not been put on trial in the past for doing worse things than this one?

No, I don't think so.

No?

Offhand?

No.

Nothing was worse than paying hush money to Stormy Daniels?

Well,

nothing ever did anything worse.

Nothing's quite as vivid as that.

I think that

I have found this week to be somewhat reassuring.

He's sitting there.

He's obeying the rule of law.

It's a low bar, okay.

All right.

But you've got to get over it.

And it is actually the prosecutorial discretion.

The prosecutor brought the case.

There's a trial by jury unfolding, an ancient

right and check and balance going back to Magna Carta.

Donald Trump and Magna Carta in the same sentence tells you something about 2024.

But

I think this is the beginning of accountability.

Is this the one you'd want to start with?

No.

But you can't have everything you want.

Okay.

What do you think, as someone who's not from our shores originally?

I think a lot of this is going to really come down to how it's covered.

You know, I mean, as a journalist myself, I know a lot of news organizations are still grappling with, you know, how much do they give a podium to Donald Trump?

If he steps out onto the steps of the court, you know, and just starts speaking.

Is this essentially free PR, free publicity?

You know, I mean, above and beyond campaign fundraising.

I think it's very risky if they lose this case.

It does hand him that sort of martyrdom card.

Because it probably will be the only one we see this year.

So if you lose it, it's going to look bad.

Then it's going to be hell the conquering hero in MAGA land.

Yeah, it is.

But that doesn't mean you don't proceed.

And then Lara Trump, who's the daughter-in-law, who's now head of the RNC, she said today, it's four years of scorched earth when Donald Trump retakes the White House.

So there's that to look forward to.

So it's good to not bitter about this case, and nothing's on the line.

Okay.

I want to ask about, here's another quote, Bill Barr.

Now, Bill Barr, not Bill Maher, Bill Barr, we went through this.

He's been here on the show.

I think he was here twice.

Former, he was the Attorney General under Trump, as conservative as it gets.

I mean, he's, you know, he's a Mel Gibson's dad Catholic.

But I also called him one of a small group who I called the good-as-it-gets Republicans.

This is what I'm trying to convince my liberal friends that, you know, half the country is not going to self-deport.

We have to learn to live together.

And people like Bill Barr, Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, Mitch McConnell, Mike Pence, they all full-throatedly said,

Biden won that election.

Stop the nonsense.

That's as good as it gets in the Republican Party.

You know, okay.

However, now Bill Barr says he's voting for Trump.

He said, I think it's my duty to pick the person I would think would do the least harm to the country.

The real danger to democracy is the progressive agenda.

Trump may be playing Russian roulette, but a continuation of Biden is national suicide.

I think this is sincere.

I don't think he's posturing.

I think this is what a good part of this country believes.

Discuss.

It is what a good part of the country believes.

It's also a good part of the country's wrong about that

as a rational matter.

Now, politics and rationality are not

complete bedfellows, which is part of the reason for the Constitution, is that we're going to give reason a chance to stand against passion.

What Barr is doing and what so many, I sometimes think of them as the Peter Millar Republicans, right?

These are Republicans who are not full MAGA people, they're men's grill types,

who don't want Democrats picking judges or setting tax rates.

They talked themselves into this twice, in 2016 and in 2020.

And then came December and January of 2020 and 2021.

And at that point,

I believe, and I say this with care, that it's become evident to me anyway that there's a patriotic duty.

to support President Biden against Donald Trump for this reason.

Patriotism is allegiance to an idea.

It's not just an allegiance to your own kind.

That's nationalism.

Trump is a nationalist.

President Biden is a patriot.

And

I'm lucky in that I don't have particular policy passions, particular issues.

I want the constitutional order to continue to unfold.

And President Biden is devoted to that constitutional order.

Donald Trump is self-evidently not.

And I would say to my Republican friends, and I live in Tennessee, so that's redundant,

that

it is, in fact, a moral question.

And I was disappointed by what Barr said.

You know,

he got religion for a little while.

There's a line in Tom Sawyer where

Twain says that an evangelist came through town who was so good that even Huck Finn was saved until Tuesday.

You know, Bill Barr was saved until Tuesday.

I do wonder, again, we're talking as though this was an inevitability that it would be these two.

I mean, more moderate conservatives who perhaps feel a little bit more homeless in the Republican Party, who might have been tempted to cross over

in the voter base.

I mean, they have now been presented with this choice where, you know, it was never an inevitability that it would be these two men.

I mean, what if there'd been a different option within the Democratic Party?

Well, what if, you know, if ifs, ands, and buts were candy and nuts, we'd all have a Merry Christmas, as we used to say.

You know.

But this is what we have.

And to me, the interesting thing about the Republican Party is if you are, in fact, going to put partisanship as your central organizing principle, if reflexive partisanship is the most important thing,

I would argue that you need to go back and read George Washington's farewell address.

You need to read the founders that otherwise, you know, they love.

You know, they love the founders when they sort of can move it around to agree with them.

It's very clear that if party spirit became the organizing principle, that that was going to be fatal to the Constitution.

And it's very interesting when Barr said it's suicide.

I mean, the idea that President Biden is leading us to national suicide, I'm not even sure what he's talking about.

But Lincoln used that image in his first major speech of the 1830s.

He said, if we ever fall, it's not going to be from a foreign foe.

It's going to be from someone internally rising up and mastering those passions.

And those passions about partisanship, that's what's ruined.

I don't disagree with anything you said.

I just think there's not a big effort on the left to understand what they are talking about.

Because I don't think it's insincere on their part.

I think they think we're going to hell in a hand cart.

And one reason I think that is because the story that came out this week about NBR.

NBR is to them what this country would be if it was a permanent democratic governorship.

And if you missed the story on NPR,

it's pretty interesting.

A guy named Uri Berliner came out.

He wrote it.

He'd been there for a long time, 25 years.

This guy, by the way, went to Sarah Lawrence and was raised by a lesbian peace activist.

So he's...

Very, very Sean Hannity.

Yeah.

Well, very Sean Hannity.

He said, I've been at NPR for 25 years.

Here's how we lost America's trust.

And it's just about how this place, which, you know, the show was called, the big show was called, All Things Considered, it's not all things considered.

He's not wrong.

And he pointed out, for example, that of the 87 people working in editorial positions there, 87 are Democrats.

Even if you're a Democrat, you can't think this is good.

I think one of the saddest things about the increasing sort of row, you know, the NPR row is just the latest.

We've seen also within the newsroom and the New York Times.

And there's really no major news organization in the United States that hasn't had some sort of

newsroom uprising recently or critique.

The saddest thing about this is that he ended up quitting.

And, you know, back in the past, you know, there's always, I don't know which is better, what we have now, where people go public and talk about these newsroom issues and say, listen, there's not enough diversity of opinion, there's way too much pushback, this is not fair.

Or in the past, where what we've seen over the years is that people just quit.

They'll leave one news organization and gravitate towards another.

And so people just become siloed and the newsrooms become siloed and completely sort of tribal in that way.

And I think that's the saddest thing

to see that he had actually left afterwards.

Okay, so did you read the tweets from the person who is,

this never happened before on the show.

I have a namesake in the news.

Catherine Marr is her name.

I think that's how she pronounces it, although I kind of wish she pronounced it differently.

And Andrew Sullivan wrote a column today called Catherine Marr is Not a Liberal, and I agree.

I mean, she's a Portlandia character.

I mean, she's.

She says things like,

I mean, sure, looting is counterproductive.

But it's founded on treating people's ancestors as private property.

Yeah, I mean, come on, man, a long time ago.

I mean, this is just, she says, as someone with cis-white mobility privilege, I mean, it's the kind of white woman who says, you know, she's Beyoncé's spirit animal.

I just, I.

And

I'm going to continue this discussion, NBR, but I have to take a break because we're on CNN now, so I have to hit these marks.

So let's do the dust piece.

That was swift.

Okay, so besides the political implications with the Trump trial, we learned this week again, or were reminded, I think, of something very important about our civic responsibilities to try to get out of jury duty.

And,

you know, normally people can say, well, I'm a caretaker.

I have economic hardship.

You have to work a little.

Trump, because it's Trump, it was so easy for people to get out of it.

First of all, the judge right away said,

who has, you know, thinks they can't be impartial?

Lost half the crowd immediately.

Okay, so the other people, I mean, it's just, with Trump, it's just so ridiculously easy to, would you like to hear some of the excuses that people

said, it's a conflict of interest.

I also sell my own Bible.

This woman said, I used to be a hooker in Moscow when Trump peed on me.

Well, that may not be kids.

I never heard of this Trump dude, but he looks guilty as fuck, this guy says.

Look at this.

I'm already on another Trump jury.

Well, that's

a definite conflict of interest.

I'm totally into this trial because it's the one where the chick shits the bed, right?

Oh, this guy really wanted to get out of this.

He said, I'm dating a cicada, and this will be our first time to fuck in 17 years.

I'm still grieving over the death of O.J.

Simpson.

Well,

can't expect that guy to go to trial.

If Trump goes to jail, I don't get deported, right?

I can't serve.

I'm chained up in P.

Diddy's house.

And Dad, it's me, Tiffany.

Okay.

Okay, but let me go back to NPR for a second because this, I was reading this in their workplace.

He said race and identity became paramount in nearly every aspect of our workplace.

And she fired back and had her own views on that.

But I think reading today, what went on there, they had groups within NPR, MIGAPAC, Marginalized Genders and Intersex People of Color program, Migante, the Latinx employees at NPR, NPR Noir, that's the black employees, UMA for Muslim-identifying employees.

Come on.

You know, like, Trump divides us.

Yes, he does.

But you're doing it too.

Why do we need to do this?

Well, you're right about understanding why people are

supporting Trump no matter what.

And the people who should know better, we can sort of agree, are doing it as well.

And

to me, you have to take them seriously.

But just because they believe something doesn't mean it's right.

And so, for instance, I had a conversation with a Republican whose name you would know who said, yeah, January 6th was terrible, but you know, Biden wants to forgive student loans, and that's unconstitutional, too.

And it's like, you're just, that's not a commensurate response to what we're dealing with.

There is an illiberal force, and that's Trump, and Trump-ism.

And there is a conventional political one that has necessary fault, I mean, necessary imperfections because it's an imperfect world.

But this is, to me, this is not even really a particularly close call.

And people who think that President Biden is going to somehow create

Esperanto as a country, I just don't see it.

I don't understand.

But that's not what this was about.

I feel like you're making a point that's absolutely accurate, but you're not engaging with the idea that they're presenting.

Let me read what Andrew Sullivan said about it.

He said, this marathon, this marination in identity politics, now common in mainstream media, changes people.

It makes journalists representatives of various groups.

I do think that that is something that you can't overstate how much that does

that does really, really put off voters.

I mean, I understand that when we look at all of the issues, that you know, democratic issues and

the January 6th election denial, these are hugely important.

But I think that there's also on the left a massive underestimating of how much this puts people off, how much it really frightens them away.

It's a real own goal, I think, for a lot of Democrats, like the more extreme progressive elements that I think there's a tendency for the rest of the party to just sort of dismiss and say, well, you know, I mean, that's just a part of who we are.

These are the people on the bridge who are protesting for terrorists.

Okay?

I think this is a result of the kind of stuff that flows down from places like NPR.

Well, people on the bridge would say we're protesting for a ceasefire.

Well, okay, but you know, you've got to sort of take sides.

We started out with this, with, okay,

we're for Hamas.

Some of the people.

Okay, but that was the beginning of it, and a lot of people were unapologetic about that.

Then it went to, you know, the kids, they dug up some of Bin Laden's old quotes.

And they were like, oh, this dude, he's got some good things to say.

He hates America, too.

Because, you know,

I mean, everybody knows we're the worst country ever.

I mean, okay, now we're at the place where they're chanting some places, death to America.

And now we went, now we're for the Houthis.

Now with the Iran attack, they're for Hezbollah.

Okay, do they know what goes on in Iran?

John, you're a historian.

Could you please tell these kids they're being huge assholes

to do it with.

As long as I can wear a top coat, they'll do it at the same time.

The question in the election is going to be, do you, I think making a false equivalence between the extreme of the right and the extreme of the left, I think there's a false equivalence with the worst parts of what the right's doing and the parts of the left because of what the actual choice is.

It is, but it's not winning any votes or it's not convincing anybody.

It's not engaging anybody.

What do you want them to do?

I want to win an election.

I understand that.

But that doesn't happen by just going, you guys,

I agree with you.

I know.

They are worse.

I think you have to address the part that they're not getting,

that they're not seeing.

And that doesn't happen by, you know, academically saying, well, you know, according to the Constitution, they want you to address this kind of stuff.

And I think it begins with admitting, yes, some of it is crazy.

Some of it just strike me as crazy, too.

And it is counterproductive.

And I don't like it when I see college kids who don't understand anything about history.

And somehow now the Jews are the Nazis.

I know kids love to switch things up.

Hey, this is different.

Jews, the Nazis?

Now?

Hey, it's different.

That means it's automatically better.

On the college kids, though, on this, because this is, you know, in terms of

freedom of speech on college campuses, this has been a hot button political topic for years, especially as conservative voices

have been very much so marginalized on college campuses.

People, young people, or those who are tagging along on protests and saying anti-Semitic things and racist things and really stupid things about supporting groups that they don't understand are

rightly criticized.

But there are students

in Colombia who were protesting peacefully, who were

setting up an encampment and doing peaceful protests.

Columbia, the country of college.

Columbia University, and being arrested.

And I think it's worth, like, we have to have a conversation about free speech

being something that should be a bipartisan issue.

I mean, I see a lot of conservatives who quite rightly criticized very, very liberal, progressive college campuses for saying, you know, if you had had a protest on that lawn saying, you know, we don't want transgender people who will, you know, to be allowed to partake in women's sports, would that have been allowed to take place?

And then that would have been a freedom of speech issue potentially for them.

So I do think that like right now in America, you know, you can't really just, it can't be freedom of speech when I agree with what people are saying.

Hate speech, totally different thing.

I thought it was very interesting that in the questions that they asked the potential jurors in the Trump trial, one of the main ones was, what media media do you listen to?

What do you watch?

What do you take in?

Because that's the whole ballgame now.

All you got to do is tell them what you listen to, and they, oh, that's who you are.

And it didn't used to be that way.

I mean, 50 years ago, you could have said, oh, I watched Walter Cronkite, and it wouldn't have gotten you thrown off of any trial because it wouldn't have indicated anything about you.

I watched Johnny Carson.

Although

nowadays, less and less people are watching any of the shows.

I mean, a lot of the young people are going online.

It's a return.

You know, the period you're talking about, the Cronkite, sort of New York Times, Washington Post, Powers the Bee period, was the exception in American history, not the rule.

We had a partisan press, starting with Jefferson and Hamilton, battling it out, and it helped give us the Civil War.

So it's, you know, not a fabulous way to go about it.

It's absolutely true.

that, and I think this is a choice a lot of us are making, whether we want to admit it or not, and this goes to our food choices to some extent, if broccoli tasted good, there would be drive-thrus where you could buy broccoli.

Right?

If you wanted to stop by the news hour, you know, and pick up some vegetables, that would be fine.

They would taste delicious.

Instead, getting a frosty and a burger over on a partisan network is a guilty pleasure.

And people love being automatic warriors every day.

And when politics becomes total war every day, which is entirely the Trump vision of the world, he said that.

He said, I want the presidency to be like a reality show.

Every day is an episode.

When politics becomes entirely about entertainment, then we're in a particularly perilous place, and that's pretty much where we are.

And I agree with you.

We just have to get enough people in the right states, because of the weirdness of the Constitution, to say, you know what, this is the least least bad option.

This constitutional order is worth defending.

And I do not want to live in Trumpistan.

I would rather live in the United States.

Well, we're all for that.

I think here.

I wonder how possible that's going to be after the Democratic Convention, which is in Chicago this year, coming up very quickly.

And I was 12 years old when they had it in 1968 in Chicago.

It was like my baptism into politics.

Like, wow, this is kind of interesting shit going on on TV.

I know this is politics, but because there was hippies in the streets and the cops were beating the shit out of them.

I mean, it was really quite dramatic.

And it's going to happen again because the kids are out, they're going to be out there in forest chanting about Genocide Joe because this is their new cause now.

This, they think, is the cause of their lifetime, Hamas, to be on their side.

So I'm just wondering how the Democrats are going to come out of that convention.

Because I remember the last time that happened in Chicago, they got bloodied by it, and Nixon won the White House.

And you know who won 13.5 percent of the convention.

George Wallace.

And Humphrey lost by basically a point.

And

the fact that we didn't fall apart in 1968 is a really interesting question.

Dr.

King is murdered, Senator Kennedy is murdered, Chicago.

And Wallace, on an explicitly segregationist platform, wins 13.5% of the vote and carries five states in the Electoral College.

20 minutes ago, historically.

Okay, I have one last question, Jane.

Last time you were here, we were talking about how you got punched in the face on the subway.

Now, I see in the paper.

It's trending.

Yeah!

Exactly.

It's a thing now.

A thing.

Okay.

I have one minute.

What the fuck?

What's your theory?

What's the theory?

Why are men randomly punching women?

And

increasingly,

it's coming out because a lot of the people that they're punching are influencers, you know, and so the first thing they do is immediately go on their phone and say, oh my goodness, look what just happened.

And they should be turning the phone around and like chasing them down, you know, and saying, who is this?

Is it one person?

Is it a group of people?

It's a very New York thing.

Well, that's why I moved.

But why influencers?

Are they particularly obnoxious?

Is that why?

Is that really what's behind this?

Honestly, it might simply be that there are so many women getting punched and that statistically there are also so many influencers out there these days.

Oh, God.

Okay, well, it's a crazy country.

Thank you for shedding some light on it.

Time for new rules, everybody.

Okay.

New rules, the non-binary Ontario man who last week succeeded in his quest to get the government to pay for gender-affirming surgery that would create a new vagina while not removing the old penis.

Must tell us, are you a former Boy Scout?

Because talk about always being prepared.

No real, you can't hate the Brazilian woman who wheeled a dead man into a bank and tried to make his hand sign the paperwork for a loan?

Although it works for Joe Biden.

New rules, since Donald Trump claims he stormed out of his latest trial, he didn't, he has to admit he fell asleep

and dreamt about storming out.

And he must tell us what he was dreaming about, or I'll just have to assume it was jerking off two guys at once.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Every week.

Every week, Donald.

New rule, if your last name is Methvin,

don't name your daughter Crystal.

This is Crystal Methvin,

who was arrested, of course, in Florida

for, of course, using Crystal Meth.

And she was with her friend, Mary Joanna.

And to make matters worse, they tried to hide the drugs in Anne Heiser's bush.

And speaking of Mary Joanna,

in honor of 420 this weekend, it's time to stop putting getting high sequences in TV and movies written by someone who has obviously never smoked pot.

Every time a character lights up a joint, suddenly the world turns into Willy Wonka Land.

Hi, I'm Bill Maher, and I'm...

Hi, I'm Bill Maher and I'm a professional marijuana smoker

asking you to help with a growing problem, harmful stoner stereotypes.

Too often in media, marijuana smokers are portrayed as lazy, dead-eyed dullards with hygiene issues who can barely dress themselves and form sentences, and it's just not true.

We're your neighbors who don't have a job, and so what are your plants when you're out of town?

We're the barista at your neighborhood coffee place getting your order wrong.

We're the guy from Boeing finding bolts in his pockets and going,

where did these come from?

We're the lifeblood of this nation.

That's why I'm asking you this 420 to give to the United Stoners Fund and end discrimination against weed smokers in our lifetime.

The United Stoners Fund, because a mind is a terrible thing when it's not wasted.

And finally, New Rule, as one of the few people in the public eye who's gone through life and never had kids, someone has to tell me, why am I always having to defend them?

I don't even like kids.

But I also think it's every adult's job to protect them.

Have you all been watching the Max documentary called Quiet Unset, The Dark Side of Kids TV?

OMG.

Nickelodeon, it wasn't a studio.

It was Neverland Ranch with craft services.

It is just scene after scene, clip after clip, of the child stars of their day being subjected to obviously inappropriate, highly sexualized degradation and quite a few pickles going through glory holes.

I was grossed out and I've gone camping with John Waters.

I kid you, John.

I love you.

So I don't know if this documentary is the talk of your town, but it is out here because it didn't just expose a dangerous workplace, it also exposed hypocrisy.

Because it must be pointed out that when the evil governor of Florida was saying the exact same thing about kids and creepy stuff at Disney that liberals now find intolerable at Nickelodeon, he was dismissed as a hick and a bigot.

But why would a kids content factory like Disney be all that different than the one at Nickelodeon?

A 2014 CNN report discovered that at least 35 Disney employees had been arrested for sex crimes against children.

And in 2021, Disney child star Allison Stoner confessed she only narrowly survived the toddler-to-train wreck pipeline.

The next year, child star Cold Sprauss told the New York Times that young actresses at the Disney Channel were heavily sexualized from an early age.

You know, Willie Sutton said he robbed banks because that's where the money is.

And the reason we find pedophiles in the Boy Scouts and the rectory in kids' TV is that's where the kids are.

DeSantis wasn't wrong, but we're so tribal now, the left will overlook child fucking if the guy from the wrong party calls it out.

Sure, Nickelodeon messed up Amanda Bynes, but the Mickey Mouse Club was where Britney Spears got her started, and she's perfectly fine.

And get this: after Brian Peck, who was one of the lead creeps at Nickelodeon, served 16 months in prison for the molesting he did there, Disney hired him, naturally to work on a children's series.

Oh, for pedophiles in Hollywood, it's a small world after all.

And

not just Hollywood.

There are Instagram moms these days who are practically only fanzing their itty-bitty beauty queen daughters by having them wear skimpy bikinis and eat bananas to build social media stardom.

They're called charenters, a hybrid of sharing and parent.

I call them pimps, a hybrid of pimp and pss.

And people who believe in social justice have agreed this is wrong and this is bad in exposing kids to an adult world of lurid costumes and garish makeup borders on abuse.

Now, hurry up and get in the car.

We're late for Drag Queen Story Hour.

Not that there's anything wrong with being a drag queen, but maybe it's time to admit that sometimes Drag Queen Story Hour is more for the queen than the kids.

Sure, kids love a clown, but does the clown have to have tits?

And when I see a five-year-old tipping, tipping, at a bar under a sign that says it's not going to lick itself,

do I have to pretend that's cool in order to keep my liberal ID card?

Sorry, I can't do that.

If you want kids to be more tolerant, why not have handicapped people read them stories?

Kids are more likely to encounter disabled people than drag queens in life.

Geez, can't we just go back to the good old days when kids were read simple stories with simple morals like, if you're a lonely single man, just make a boy out of wood.

I've said it before, wokeness is not an extension of liberalism anymore.

It's more often taking something so far that it becomes the opposite.

Teaching kids not to hate or judge those who are different.

Great, proud we got there, all for that.

But at a certain point, inclusion becomes promotion.

And contrary to current progressive dogma, children aren't miniature adults wise beyond their years.

They're morons.

They're gullible morons who will believe anything and just want to please grown-ups.

And they don't have any frame of reference, so they normalize whatever is happening.

That's why endlessly talking about gender to six-year-olds isn't just inappropriate.

It's what the law would call entrapment,

which means enticing people into doing something they wouldn't ordinarily do.

For example, after 9-11, there were several cases of overzealous federal agents leading sad losers into terrorist plots, like the undercover FBI agent who got seven out-of-work dudes in Liberty City, Florida to sign on to a plot to bomb the Sears Tower in Chicago.

Oh, please, these guys didn't even have a gun.

But when someone said, wouldn't it be cool if we taught the man a lesson and blew something up, they said, yeah, that would be kind of cool.

Entrapment.

suggesting someone into something they wouldn't otherwise do.

And if you think that some of that isn't going on with gender in schools, you're not watching enough TikTok videos.

I pledge allegiance to the queers.

I'm not allowed to be out as trans non-binary at school.

So my response to this is to be as

obnoxiously queer as possible.

There's a certain kind of activist these days who wants to take heterosexuality, old school, old-fashioned, boring, minding its own business, heterosexuality, and lump it in with patriarchy and sexism and racism and tell kids, wouldn't it be cool if you were anything but that?

It also seems to be the theme of kind of a lot of kids' books these days.

I never used the phrase gay agenda because I thought it was mostly nonsense and it is, mostly.

But a director for Disney Television Animation did say after she was hired.

The showrunners were super welcoming to like my like not at all secret gay agenda.

Like I was just wherever I could just basically adding queerness.

No one would stop me and no one was trying to stop me.

Look, I'm all for adding queerness wherever.

I put some in my drink before I came out here tonight.

But maybe we should think about giving kids a break from our culture wars for a minute, or at least until the election is over.

All right.

Thank you very much, everybody.

That's all you snow.

I'll be at the Heckles Theater in Salt Lake City, April 21st, the Palace in Albany, May 19th, and at the David Copperfield at the MGM Grand in Vegas, June 21 and 22.

Thank you, John Meacham, Jane Ferguson, and Jillian Michaels.

Now go to overtime on YouTube.

Thank you very much, folks.

Appreciate it.

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

Demand.

For more information, log on to HBO.com.