Ep. #653: Kara Swisher, Beto O'Rourke, Sarah Isgur

Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

I lit the fuse and my life turns into everything it wasn't supposed to be.

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was quick.

He kept saying, no, no, no, I'm in the hospital now, but next week I'll be ready for the show.

Now, Charlie's sober.

He's gonna tell you the truth.

How do I present this with a class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

Aka Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

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

Start the clock.

Hey,

thank you, people.

How are you?

Thank you.

Thank you down there.

And down there and up there.

Let's pretend it's a bigger old.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

Yes.

We're here.

Thank you, people.

Thank you very much.

Oh, I appreciate that.

I hope I can live up to it.

I know why you're happy.

It's spring, spring is sprung.

That always makes people feel good.

But I tell you who's got a tough couple of days ahead is Donald Trump.

I know you're worried about that.

Well, you know, he has a few trials going on.

I hope you've heard about that.

One of them is in New York because he exaggerated his net worth and how much his property was worth.

Isn't that amazing that he did that?

So there's a bond he has to pay, the fine, $454 million, and Trump has the weekend to come up with it.

Really?

He's like Garfield now.

He's a fat orange pussy who dreads Mondays.

I kid in a

good-hearted manner.

But it's so funny because all week long Trump's lawyers have saying he cannot possibly come up with this money.

So of course on Truth Social, his media platform, He bragged today that he had $500 million in cash.

He wants you to know he has the money.

He just doesn't think he should use it because it's not there.

The Trump family motto is Latin for, my wallet is in my other pants.

But I mean, this is pretty interesting stuff.

Donald Trump, the great billionaire, the great businessman, he could lose, as of starting next week, his businesses, his properties, his money.

Today, Melania was seen wearing a coat that said, okay, now I do care.

No, New York,

New York State can start seizing his assets.

This is pretty amazing, including Trump Tower.

Trump today said, look, take anything, just leave me my boxes of confidential documents.

That's all I really care about.

But he keeps

Trump keeps floating new people for the vice presidential slot.

It's so sad we don't have a primary season, right?

But this is the, look, let's not get into that.

This is the race we have.

So we're now down to picking the vice president.

He mentioned Marco Rubio, then he mentioned Tulsi Gabbard, then he mentioned Tim Scott, then Nancy Mace.

It's like he's making his own March Madness bracket.

And what a great job to be vying for.

You get to kiss ass and defend the indefensible for four years.

And at the end of it, a mob tries to hang you.

Great job.

I sure see why they all want it.

Yeah, who wants to, I mean, who would really want to be in this government we have?

I mean, it is so ridiculous.

The House voted.

Again, we keep doing this.

The budget to run the government so it doesn't collapse.

Okay, so they finally did it today.

Another six months.

We get to go to September.

And half the Republicans mutinied about it.

You know, we're the biggest superpower superpower in the world.

I mean, run this country like when I was broke and I just bought enough gas to go home.

So, yeah.

The hard-right Republicans are apoplectic about this.

Marjorie Tellegreen asked for a motion to dismiss House Speaker Mike Johnson.

He's only been in the job four months.

Even Taylor Swift gives a guy a little more time than that.

I mean,

didn't they just do this with Kevin McCarthy?

Did I dream?

No, they did.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, the last time she was satisfied by a speaker, she was sitting on it and it was playing Leonard Skinner.

Oh, my kid.

But hey.

What a great week to have Kara Swisher on the show.

She'll be out here in a minute because so much tech news, big antitrust suit against Apple.

Have you been following this?

Oh, this is very important.

You see, I told you.

Very important to that guy.

No, it's all about Apple, you know, abusing their power to have a monopoly.

The Android people can't send a message easily to the Apple people.

I mean, I'm not from the generation that built its personality about what phone you own.

You know, people, kids come up to me, like, you're still using iPhone 11?

Yeah, and my vacuum cleaners from 2019.

Should I drown myself?

And of course,

we're getting very close to the decision that's going to have to be made about TikTok.

We are looking, you know, China owns TikTok and we are threatening to ban it.

So the kids who like TikTok, they're sending threatening messages.

to congress people saying they're going to shoot them and cut them into pieces.

On the bright side, it's good to see the young people interested in government again.

But yeah,

I think that could come down this week.

China either sells it to an American or we ban it.

I got a better idea.

How about we trade it for Boeing?

All right.

We've got a great show.

We have Beta LaRourque and Sarah Isgar.

But first up, she is the host of the podcast on with Karis Wisher and Pivot, whose new memoir is called Burn Book, a tech love Story.

Karis Wisher's over here.

Hey,

how are you?

Wait to see you.

SP.

And we'll see you in Ashburn in June, right?

Why don't we both get that book?

Okay, I can't wait.

How you doing?

I'm doing good.

I'm with an iPhone 11.

I'm normally speak to you, but.

Well, you're the one person in this country who can say that to me.

Yes, it's true.

That's fair.

Because you were out ahead.

I mean, this book, you earned this book.

Thank you.

You really did.

Because nobody was more out ahead on tech, where it's going, how important it's going to be in the 21st century.

Correct.

So you deserve this victory, lab.

Well, thank you.

And it is a fascinating book because it weaves sort of your personal story in with what so many of the things we're all interested about.

I mean, just the title got me.

Yeah.

Because tell them what a burn book is.

Well, it's the, you know, from the movie, from the movie Mean Girls, but people do it in high school.

You write the book of what you really think people are like.

Or a letter, right?

No, it's a burn book.

It's a book.

It's like a diary, but

it's for you.

Instead of writing about you, you write about everybody else.

Like, this is what I really think about Bill.

But you never show it to them.

You never show.

Well, it gets out in that movie.

Yeah.

Well,

yeah.

But you're showing it.

I'm showing it right now.

Right.

Yeah.

So.

Yeah.

And all the

big names from tech in this century, the Steve Jobs and Dorsey, and all of the Musk, they're all in there.

Bezos.

Who's going to not like this?

All of them.

But they like you.

No.

They respect you.

No?

None of them?

Some of them.

Some of them.

I think they're scared a little bit, I guess.

Some of them aren't.

That's good.

That's right.

Irritated.

Irritated for sure.

That's the job of that.

And, you know, in the back of the book, instead of, you know, you do blurbs on the back of the book, I put all the insults they had, like, Elon, you're an asshole.

My voice is so shrill, only dogs can hear me, and that my heart is seething with hate.

So that's what Elon thinks of me.

Which I'm like, look in a mirror, sir, but that's

he's a complicated guy.

Oh, okay, sure.

Why not?

Well, I mean.

How about he's just not a complicated guy?

He's just a jerk.

But go ahead.

Okay.

Well, you know what?

Go ahead.

He makes complications.

But so are you.

So are mine.

Okay, well, now you just debated with yourself and agreed with me.

Yes.

And I can easily prove he's a complicated guy because yesterday I saw on the news somebody who was paralyzed, who was giddy with happiness because he was being able to play video games with his mind.

Yep.

That came from Neuralink.

That's Elon's company.

And so did my car.

No, I get it.

No,

I like those Elon.

I like Tesla Elon.

I like Neuralink Elon.

I even like Hyperloop Elon.

It's Twitter slash X Elon.

I agree.

But in the big scheme of things, where do you think his legacy will be in history?

Because I've never seen anybody who has more articles written about him every day in the paper because he's got his finger in so many pies.

And then he does crazy stuff.

He is, come on, spectrumy.

So, like, you know, he just, I don't know why he needs to high-five these crazy people.

I understand why he wanted to, like, have a platform where you have free speech twitter was way too in one camp i get it but like why then embrace the worst people on it instead of diss it say okay i'm gonna let you talk but i'm not gonna you know go hey that was a good one bro right

that's where i don't get him so i

you know i think a lot of these guys a lot of these guys are hugely narcissistic um when you become the richest man in the world everyone licks you up and down all day and they're violently in agreement with what you say And so you start to really think of yourself as a god in a lot of ways.

And he already was tending that way in that direction.

I think one person told me, Ben Meserick, who wrote the Anti-Social Network, a bunch of other tech books, he said he thinks he's ready player one in a video game.

Now, you know, Elon loves video games.

And if you're ready, player one, nobody matters but you.

And that really, that's what happens with these guys, all of them, not just Elon.

As to the genius thing,

sure, but there's lots of geniuses.

And you kind of think more like Henry Ford, right?

You're like, what an amazing contribution.

At the same time, the anti-Semitism, you know, he was way down that highway and racist and everything else.

So how do you balance those things?

Just because you can land a rocket.

Yeah, if you can land a rocket on a surfboard, you can be anti-trans.

I don't think so.

Or say things that are so despicable.

I just don't think you have to choose or give someone an out.

Okay, so

there was a,

when you started on this path, there was a lot of hope, I remember reading about this at the beginning of the century, around that time, that this industry would be different and they would be better.

They were socially conscious.

They cared about climate and they cared about

poor people.

And it turns out it's almost a worse boys' club, right?

I mean, they're just as sexist,

just as greedy.

More.

More than coal barrels.

Because they kind of cosplay this idea that they're changing the world.

And you you don't have an investment banker that goes, you know what, we really want to do, bring everyone together.

They're like, I want to make that money and take it home to my giant house in Connecticut, which is fine.

You kind of understand those people.

The first line of this book really does say it, which is, so it was capitalism after all.

And that's what it is.

And they pretended they weren't, and they wore soft vests and they

walked around.

Why did they need to...

to be like that?

Why did they have to say they were changing the world when in fact they just wanted to make money?

And if we understand that and not put them in these sort of positions like they're magicians, that's great.

I just would prefer they would stop telling me they're so fantastic.

Well, I have this phrase that

I wish I didn't have to use so much, but I do, which is liberals in theory.

Oh, they're not liberals.

They never were.

Well, they say they are.

No, they don't.

They were libertarian-like.

They weren't.

That's a mistake about Silicon Valley.

They're tolerant of people, but in general, they're not.

They're very, I would say, narcissistic is their religion and their politics.

Okay, but didn't something like 98% of the contributions to a political party from Silicon Valley go to the Democrats?

Not among the top people, some of them, but not among the group.

It's San Francisco.

A lot of it is in the California area.

It's a Democratic state.

It's going to be like that.

That's where people live.

But in general, if you actually, like, everyone's like, how did they suddenly become so right-wing, so many of these people?

And there's a lot of them moving that direction.

They were always like this because they felt like, I remember when I met Bill Gates, he was like, why do I need any lobbyists in Washington?

Washington's stupid.

The same thing, they know better.

And I think when you get to a point where venture capitalists are opining about what to do in Ukraine,

I'd like them to sit down because they don't know what they're talking about.

And just because you're good at making money or building rockets or cars doesn't mean that you know other things.

And a lot of them aren't educated, they're not educated in a wider way.

They don't read widely.

It's the reason I like Steve Jobs because he read widely and he had other things besides what he was doing.

What about AI, though?

What about it?

Well, I mean, certainly

killed just you, Bill.

It's kind of.

Or it could save my life.

It could.

That's why I'm intrigued.

It is.

It is intriguing.

It's the greatest change right now.

There's been, you know, technology has moments like the graphical user interface, the mobile phone.

We are at a big one right now with AI.

It's essentially called strong AI.

There's all kinds of ways they refer to it.

But it's going to change everything.

Right.

And it seems like we went through this with the iPhone.

I mean, I don't think people even thought the iPhone would have the deleterious effect it has had on people

when it came out.

Right, right.

I think they were kind of blinded by that.

And I think we all see it now.

Yes.

AI is different.

We know.

the potential.

I mean, I read the quotes last week from people in our Homeland Security Department.

This could be an existential event.

Yes.

It could wipe out humanity.

I mean, that's just the high end of what's bad.

Obviously, things not quite as bad as that could happen.

And it just seems like we don't care, that it's just a race to

who can get to like what Google got.

There's always more than one when we start, right, in technology.

And then Google became the search engine.

Facebook beat MySpace.

And

it looks to me like these tech companies are controlling everything.

Well, they want to be the Google of AI, the one everybody uses, and so they don't care about putting it out before it's ready.

Right, they do that.

Well, it's called beta test.

Who can beta test things?

Can you imagine beta testing a car?

You can't beta.

Oh, sorry, it crashed too much, or whatever.

They beta test everything, and

we are the willing subjects, and they make things that are both addictive and necessary.

You can't operate in this world without technology.

You can't anymore.

And with AI, there's all these astonishing things, gene folding, healthcare, cancer research, drug discovery.

It's an astonishing thing.

At the same time, killer drones that will operate by themselves.

Or if someone says,

solve hunger.

Do you know what AI could do without the right guardrails?

Kill a billion people.

That'll solve it.

And so you have to be able to anticipate.

And the problem with the first part of the internet, which this book is about, was look what we did when we had no guardrails.

It's the only industry.

in big industry that has no guardrails.

And they're the richest people on earth.

They're the richest trillion dollar companies.

And our government has abrogated its power and they're doing it here with AI.

And that's, you know, I sound like a crazy Cassandra because I really have hope for this.

This could really change things in an astonishing way.

And it could also go completely south if we're going to do it the way we've done it.

And we can

beta test a car.

They just use crash test data.

That's right, crash test.

Well, we're the crash test dummies of the digital age, really.

That's the thing.

So I want to ask you about this

case that's before the Supreme Court.

Murphy versus Missouri used to be Biden versus Missouri.

It's a free speech issue.

Very interesting to me, interesting to me because I was always on the page during the pandemic that they should not be shutting down debate about medical matters.

Yes, correct.

I was a dissenter on many of these issues.

And as the years roll by now, we see that the dissenting opinions on a lot of these things were quite the right ones.

Okay.

Although we still don't know.

We're not going to know perfectly, but go ahead.

Okay.

But we should have been able to argue about whether it came from a lab, which we weren't.

Things like that, natural immunity, whether it was better to go to the beach and get sun and fresh air, as I would have said,

as opposed to sitting home and day drinking

and putting on weight.

They never mentioned that obesity was the biggest factor.

I get it.

They have a lot to answer for.

Anyway.

They do, but you're in the middle of a plague and a debate that people don't know.

And you're going to have to do it.

So you should be able to debate it.

This is medicine.

It should, but they don't know.

The moment was not.

People make mistakes, and science says it makes mistakes.

Well, what this is what the lawsuit is about.

Okay.

Because there were two doctors, Jay Battatiera and Martin Kaldorf.

They're from Stanford and Harvard.

Right.

And they said, you know, we were shut down.

Not always fully, but, you know, there are ways to do that.

And

they're not radicals.

They were saying things like, we're going too far with school closures.

Again, I think has been proved right.

My question was always, why?

Why are your doctors more important than my doctors, the ones I want to listen to?

And the social media companies were in the tank with the government.

As opposed to what you were just saying before about, you know, you're the watchdog and you have been,

they just did the bidding of the government.

That's what the lawsuit's about.

It is about that, but it's whether they can talk to each other reasonably and whether they can be coerced.

And I think the Supreme Court's going to go against it because social media companies also have First Amendment rights, by the way.

And so I think the issue is what is the government talking to these companies about?

Is it coercing them or is it just having reasonable discussions?

If the government knows, say, about a major threat and it doesn't talk to these companies, we get into all kinds of trouble.

So I think what's happened is reductiveness.

Like everyone's got to be, you were wrong, I was right, and stuff like that.

And what's happened in this culture, and I think it's because of three things, social media gerrymandering and Rupert Murdoch, I think pretty much if I had to pick three things,

whom I call,

I know it's an animating lap, it's an anti-clap, right?

I call him Uncle Satan in the book because he's a vuncular and yet bad.

But one of the things that's happened is social media has caused us to, we talk about our grievances with each other all the time and we don't tell stories about each other anymore.

And that's what's happened.

It's reductiveness so that you don't get a debate.

And someone has to top each other and dunk each other.

And this is why I have a problem with Elon Musk on X because all he wants to do is dump.

Right?

Instead of like Mark Cuban, who both you and I know, did an amazing series on DEI, right?

When he did it, I wrote him, I go, Godspeed, you're going over there?

Okay, good luck.

And he did it and was really smart.

And the response from Elon was, You're a moron.

Oh, that's debate.

Well done.

The highest level of Oxford.

Yeah, I'm not defending that, and it shouldn't be.

No, I don't, but I'm saying all of us do.

All of us do.

Thank you.

You could have been rich, but you did the right thing.

I appreciate it.

I'll see you in Astra.

All right.

Harris Richard, everybody.

Thank you.

Let's meet our panel.

Hi.

Hey, you guys.

All right.

There they are.

He is the former Democratic congressman from Texas and founder of the Powered by People organization.

Better O'Rourke is over here, Betto.

Good to see you back.

And she's the senior editor of the Dispatch and host of the Dispatch's legal podcast advisory opinion.

Sarah Isger is over here.

How are you?

Good to see you back.

All right, so I want to start with what's going on in Texas because you're from Texas too, right?

Absolutely.

We are representing.

You're one of Texas' most famous citizens.

And I was just in Houston.

I love Texas, by the way.

I really hope they don't secede.

I mean that from the bottom of my heart.

I was just in Houston at El Paso.

I was with you in El Paso once.

Remember, you came to see the show there in El Paso?

Absolutely.

I met you on your last, you were there in early March.

I was just there, yeah.

Love Texas, wanted to stay.

They always say it's going to turn blue.

It's all, oh, I'm going to, oh, I'm going to turn blue this year.

I mean, you've tried a couple of times, pretty pretty hard.

Okay, just let me answer this, because I'm asking this as a genuine question.

I don't really know the answer to this question.

But if you had won, if there were like X more Latino voters in the state, you won them, I don't know what, by the percentage point, but you won a majority, you would have won that election.

The Republicans are always saying, well, the Democrats just want open borders because they want more voters.

Is that completely wrong?

It's completely wrong.

I mean, the people that they're talking about, the immigrants who are coming in, by law cannot vote.

They're in asylum application purgatory for six years.

But their kids can.

Their kids can.

That's 18 years down the road.

I mean, you know, you think the Democratic Party is able to plan 18 years down the road on anything?

I don't buy that.

But

it really is,

there's a real serious dynamic to this and a really dangerous one, this replacement theory that is trafficked by those who are talking about Democrats bringing immigrants in to to take the state or the country over politically.

Our governor trafficks in that, or our lieutenant governor.

And there was a guy in 2019 who came to El Paso and he posted before he walked into a Walmart, I've come to repel the Hispanic invasion of Texas, goes into that Walmart and slaughters 23 people because he believed what Donald Trump and Greg Abbott and all these people were telling him.

He was afraid that he was going to lose his power and that this invasion was really going to take over the state.

So I would love to see my party standing up and reminding this country who we are in the first place.

We're a country of immigrants and asylum seekers and refugees, and that has made us the leading superpower in the world.

And we won't be able to maintain that status without welcoming more people to this country.

Now, we've got to do it the right way.

It's got to be orderly.

It's got to be a good thing.

Yeah, no one would look at what's going on now, really, right, and say, this is the way an immigration system should work.

I don't think we need to work on it at all.

No one has that opinion.

We're basically funding these cartels that used to run drugs.

They don't need to run drugs anymore.

They run humans, $10,000 a pop, and you get three tries at the border.

They're running small children and then leaving them in the desert when they get inconvenient.

And then some of those children, they're ending up in places for sex trafficking, in child labor, in agriculture.

We are funding these cartels that are then corrupting the countries from where these people are trying to flee from.

We've set up the worst system that we could possibly have for immigration.

It is a crisis to not actually have a border.

Why is it so hard just to close a border?

I've seen other countries do it.

I mean, mean, you know, Hungary does it.

You may disagree or agree with whether they should.

Saudi Arabia, Canada, pretty good at doing it.

I mean, they don't have the situation we have.

But I did see that 60 Minutes episode where they're just walking through this hole in the fence, and there is a border guard there just waving.

There's a great many.

I mean,

am I wrong to say that isn't how we should do it?

Congress.

Congress is the reason.

We keep thinking that presidents can solve this problem on their own, that they have some sort of magic executive order wand.

They don't.

And Congress has benefited from not solving this problem in election after election from both parties who get to blame the other one.

Everyone gets to run on it, right?

Everyone gets to run it.

Sometimes I do think there's a conspiracy between both parties not to fix it.

Yes.

They like the open wound.

When a given party has the White House, the House, and the Senate, they fail to act on this.

Obama did.

Trump did.

Both failed to act on it.

Donald Reagan was the last president to preside over anything approaching comprehensive immigration reform.

But to your question, I don't think it's tough.

And I agree with Sarah that the current, the status quo is only enriching the cartels and giving them more power.

It's miserable for everyone else, including the migrants who are dying at a record number right now.

Six years ago, only six migrants died in the El Paso Border Patrol sector.

Last year, 149.

These are women, these are kids, they're drowning, they're dying of dehydration.

So what's the fix?

We need more legal pathways to come to this country.

And Sarah's 100% correct.

Only Congress can do that.

The president has done about almost everything that he can.

This DHS appropriations bill that passed the House today, it now, over the course of Biden's presidency, has doubled Border Patrol spending, which is five times greater than what it was 20 years ago.

He's added sections of wall.

He's deported more people than President Trump ever did.

That alone is not going to get it done.

You need ways for people to come here and work the 9 million jobs that they haven't filled, to join family, to flee persecution, and to do it legally.

And the Democrats did call their blow.

bluff of the Republicans.

They did give them a bill that actually does seal up the border much better than it is now, and they would not vote for it.

Because Trump wants to run the

problem.

He doesn't want the solution.

So now your governor down there, this is the big pissing match going on now.

He's saying if the federal government won't do it, I will.

This is Texas's Senate Bill SB 4, Senate Bill 4.

State and local police officers are allowed to arrest people suspected of being in the country illegally.

Judges to order the deportation of migrants, that's allowed.

And of course, the federal government is saying this isn't a job for the federal government, always has been.

And Texas is saying, well, but you're not doing it.

If you're not doing it, shouldn't it devolve to the states?

So there was that video that you might have seen this week where a bunch of migrants basically flood the National Guard that was there and overtake them, pushing past them.

You know, people were knocked down, et cetera.

And when the White House press secretary was asked about that, she said, go ask the governor of Texas, which is a really weird thing for the executive branch of the federal government to say when they're arguing at the Supreme Court that Texas isn't supposed to have anything to do with it.

Part of the problem here is the asylum system.

We have this giant magnet.

You know, after World War II, we were very understandably and correctly embarrassed by what we did about Jews seeking asylum from Germany and Europe.

And so we have this asylum law where if you get to the United States, we are going to hear your asylum claim.

Well, unfortunately, that means there's just a huge incentive any way you can to get across that Rio Grande River because then we have to hear your asylum claim.

That's the other thing that only Congress can fix.

The president cannot fix that.

And as long as that's the rule that get here and you can stay, as long as you say the magic words, I have a credible fear of returning to my country, we're not going to fix the border.

Because it's the only...

It's the only way.

I agree with you.

There are people applying for asylum who should not, but it's because we've capped quotas from countries.

We don't really have a guest worker program to speak of.

There are people who want to come here to do jobs that nobody born in this country is willing to do.

Nine million of them unfold.

I bet if we paid them more, they'd be willing to?

It's possible.

And we could try that, but I've talked to cotton gin owners in Texas, and they say, it doesn't matter what I pay someone.

No one born in Roscoe

is willing to do this.

I know your clothes aren't made of cotton, but we're still using the cotton gin.

We're still using cotton gin.

We're still ginning cotton.

But the point is, you've got to create

pathways.

And to push back just on one thing you said about Abbott, this guy is an agent of chaos and confusion.

The busing, the drowning devices that he put in the Rio Grande River, involuntarily activating 10,000 members of the Guard who have prevented Border Patrol agents, who are trained to enforce the law, to apprehend and detain migrants, and to save the lives of those who are drowning in the river.

So he can't have it both ways.

He can't supplant the federal government, take over their job, and then blame Joe Biden for not doing it.

Now, where I think we may agree is I think the president now has to step up and he has to resolve this chaos and confusion and go in there and make sure the Border Patrol agents have access to the river, make sure that the governor's not complicating what he's doing, follow that Supreme Court decision where those agents can cut through the wires so they can get to the river.

And he's got to take charge there because if he doesn't, this is really going to hurt him in November.

I hate political antics.

I really do.

The busing was a political antic, but, boy, sure makes a big difference when all of a sudden Chicago and Boston and New York suddenly notice that we have a migrant problem.

Right.

No shit.

All right.

Can I ask you?

So, um.

When you ran against Ted Cruz, you beat him among 18 to 29.

You got 71%.

No, this is pretty obvious.

Ted Cruz, come on.

What kid is going to want to vote for Ted Cruz?

Look at this.

No, I know.

You're like,

he looks like the cool professor who has weed

against Ted Cruz.

But now, I mean, Trump,

what is with this guy?

Oh, he's gaining with the people he's supposed to be losing to.

Now he is up five points among 18 to 29.

He's been...

What the?

65% of Gen Zers say they believe Trump would shake up the country for the better.

See, this is the problem: is that there's two kinds of voters: voters who know things

and voters who just go by a feeling.

Vibes.

Exactly vibes.

So, I mean, and yes, Trump, I get it, he appears robust more than, you know, and you know, you could just characterize him with, I've seen just like the yellow hair and the red, it's like he's like McDonald's, red and yellow.

And,

You know, kids

love a brand.

It's a brand, I get, I don't know, but why and what, how do you explain this Trump up among the 18 to 29 that you did so well with?

I mean, part of it is what you're describing.

It's it's the shock value, it's the entertainment.

You're drawn to him.

He's a master of distraction and attention.

And you know, all of us to some degree are susceptible to that, maybe young people more than others.

However, let me say this.

The Biden administration, more than any that I can remember, is following the lead of young people.

You don't get the most ambitious climate program in American history without young people driving that.

You don't get the first success on gun violence, something that both of us really care about in like three decades without young people calling attention to that.

The forgiveness of

billions of dollars in student loans.

This is the agenda that young people pushed that Joe Biden is following.

I think it's incumbent upon him to remind young people of their successes, that there's more to do.

Immigration is a great one.

I haven't heard anyone talk about dreamers, making sure there's a pathway for those who are living here undocumented, contributing so much to our country.

And then just reminding America, immigration is a great thing for us.

That's going to resonate with young people who want to see us reclaim our values and do something that might be a little bit politically difficult and counter to the conventional wisdom, but the president has a chance to do that right now.

Okay.

Yeah.

Almost everything he named though is going to be so fleeting because they're not working with Congress.

These presidents pat themselves on the back for all the things they get done and then six months into the next guy they've undone it all.

I mean climate change is a great example.

Obama had a clean power plan.

Trump undid the clean power plan.

Biden has a different clean power plan.

You can't solve climate change four years at a time.

It's not going to work.

And young people, I think, are incredibly frustrated with the establishment.

If it were just that he was entertaining, they would have voted for him in 2016 or 2020.

They didn't.

It's this time because all of the attacks on Trump, the bloodbath stuff, they hear that and they see an establishment attacking the guy who's fighting them and they're attracted to that.

It's like rebellion, but for an authoritarian.

Okay, switching topics, I have to.

This country needs to have a debate about Ozempic, but not now.

I bring it up because

I am...

It's so funny in the last

four or five months, I constantly are seeing old friends of mine who are suddenly spelt in a way they never were.

You know, I've known them for years, and it's always this amazing coincidence.

And it just made me think of a bit that we've done for years here called, I don't know it for a fact, I just know it's true.

And so we thought we would bring it out tonight in honor of the Occentric Revolution.

For example, I don't know it for a fact that people who won't shut up about pickleball now are the same people who 10 years ago wouldn't shut up about CrossFit.

I just know it's true.

I don't know for a fact that you can get passengers to pay attention during the safety demonstration now by telling them the plane was made by Boeing.

I just know it's true.

I don't know for a fact that Katie Britt's kids pretend they're asleep when mommy comes in to say goodnight.

I just have a feeling it's true.

I don't know for a fact that every time Travis Kelsey fucks up around Taylor Swift, he thinks, oh man, I'm going to pay for that.

I don't know for a fact that Lindsey Graham is a big fan of Major League Baseball's new see-through pants.

I don't know for a fact that in 2048, when they make the nostalgic sitcom that takes place in 2024, that the ass-hole character will ride one of those bird scooters

I don't know for a fact when your doctor steps out of the exam room it's so he can google your symptoms just like you did

I just know

I don't know for a fact that when they announce that your subway is delayed due to a sick passenger, by sick, they mean stabbed.

I just know it's true.

I don't know for a fact that when the guy at the repair shop shows me a broken part, it didn't even come from my car.

I just know it's true.

And

I don't know for a fact that Trump stopped doing this at his rallies because I said it looked like he was jerking off two guys at once.

But it did happen.

All right.

Yes.

Last week I was sitting in the exit row and you have no idea how much people were paying attention to that safety of like, okay, but here's how the door really works.

Right.

Like you're like, no, wait, you pull it this way.

Just like, tell me one more time.

All right, so I have another question about the youth here because you mentioned why we were talking about why they do Trump is doing better.

I would say it's because he's a great liar.

And again, if you don't, if you're not able to check the facts, here's what he's been saying about food.

Food that costs 40, 50, 60 percent more than it did a few years ago.

Well, food is up like 20 percent since Biden became president.

Not all his fault, but not, you know, Trump says bacon up five times.

Well, it's up 12 percent.

See, this is a big problem when you don't know anything.

You can't compare it to what's said.

So

and what but what do you make of this?

I have a feeling Biden's going to lose this election because hot dogs cost more.

This is a great opportunity for him to tell the American public why this is happening.

You know, the fact that he's done better than any other leader on the planet in reducing inflation, it's just not catching on.

But if he points to the real culprits, to these

grocery store chains and these massive corporations, which the FTC just yesterday released a report on and said they're price gouging.

These are the Walmarts, the Amazons, the Krogers of the world.

They were jacking prices in the middle of inflation and blaming it on the economy or, you know, by implication, the president.

He needs to go after them.

And now that the FTC has made this finding, he needs to make sure that he gets money back for American consumers.

So you can't control Trump's lies or whether young people are going to read the facts behind that.

But you can draw people's attention to the real culprit and villain in this.

Young people, the Washington Post sent a reporter out to talk to people in Wisconsin.

Here are some of the quotes.

When Trump was president, there wasn't inflation.

We could afford food.

Trump, there was no inflation.

Prices really skyrocketed since Biden took over.

You see, we were just kind of lucky for 20 years and there wasn't much inflation.

So maybe you've never lived in a time when there was inflation.

So you think, oh, you know,

Trump, no inflation.

Biden, inflation.

Neva, Trump.

It's not just a big corporation,

babysitters.

So last time I was on the show, it just had a baby.

He's six months old now.

I have a three and a half year old.

For the three and a half year old, oh yay,

you're pro natal.

This is a pro-natalist show.

I love babies.

Yeah, I know.

I'll call you at 2 a.m.

Yeah, please.

Let me babysit.

How great would my three and a half year old turn out if that was his babysitter?

Babysitters were $15 an hour.

Now they are up to $30.

I mean, that is how it's actually hitting real families.

It's not just bacon.

And that's what they're thinking about.

And

I also think there's something to the effect of you don't have a party that's for limited government or limited spending anymore.

Gee, I wonder what's causing inflation?

Maybe it's pouring money into everything.

You don't want to feed the baby bacon.

He'll go broke in a minute.

But can I just read some stats?

This is from Reagan's

1984.

Reagan, of course, won in 1980, and we were in a terrible economic shape.

And he said he got the country back in the right way.

And morning in America was the slogan in 1984.

Inflation was 4.3 in 1984 when it was morning in America.

Now it's less, 3.2.

Unemployment, when it was morning, was 7.5, now it's 3.9.

The interest rate was over 10% in the morning.

Now it's half that, 5.3.

The S ⁇ P 500 returned only 1.4% in 1984.

In 2023,

it returned 24%.

A little bit is our expectations are different, is it not?

Expectations are everything.

And you add to that social media where we hear from the loudest, angriest, most outraged voices that are telling you who to be pissed off at and who to blame.

And you end up with this negative polarization where you have more voters, not that they're pro-Trump or even pro-Biden.

They're just voting because they hate the other guy.

And they've been told it's the other guy's fault.

That's why we can't have nice things.

All right.

So another question for

one more question about the youth.

Because the youth will be deciding.

I mean, I got to give it to them.

We made a lot of jokes about they don't vote.

In 2020, they voted 50%.

That's more than ever, up 11%.

That's a huge change in one election cycle.

Okay.

There are reports that President Biden's very angry that he doesn't get the credit he deserves, as you were talking about.

One reason is Israel.

It's a very big dividing point in this party.

It is a big headache for your party, for the Democratic Party, because they are split down the middle.

There are people like John Fetterman who are unapologetically supportive.

I am.

You were.

Okay.

I'm supportive of John Fetterman.

Like, where'd that guy come from?

Well, I agree.

Maybe everybody should go crazy.

Right?

I mean, a rare hoodie.

No, I mean, but the young people have it in their heads that the Israelis are colonizers and they have an apartheid state and they're trying to commit genocide because they learn these buzzwords and again, don't really do the work.

Maybe it's because we have an anti-Semitic authoritarian country controlling what's on their phones and all the news that they're seeing about Israel.

Whoa, wait a second, what?

TikTok.

TikTok has not been helpful.

Anyway, enter Chuck Schumer.

Chuck Schumer, about 10 days ago, made a big speech.

This was sort of unprecedented.

Now, I like Chuck Schumer.

He's a very thoughtful guy, and it was a thoughtful speech.

I want to see if we agree with it or not.

What he did was he criticized very roundly Benjamin Netanyahu, who has very few fans on either side of the aisle at this point.

And he let this attack happen on October 7th.

That was his main job.

Israel got complacent, the one place in the world that cannot afford to get complacent.

So he definitely should never be prime minister again.

But Chuck Schumer said, you should go now.

We should have elections.

We don't do this with other countries.

Nobody tells Britain when they should get rid of their prime minister.

So maybe he was right, maybe he was wrong.

He was saying we love Israel.

He's the only guy who could do this.

He's the top Jewish politician ever elected in this country.

If it came from anybody else, it would not have been allowed.

Okay.

So what do you think about this?

Should Chuck Schumer be allowed to do this?

And is it the right advice to Israel?

Should we be giving Israel advice?

So as you mentioned,

America's the greatest friend Israel's ever had.

Within America, Chuck Schumer's probably the greatest friend Israel has ever had.

And sometimes friends need to tell friends difficult things.

You know, the path that you're on right now is not going to get you to your goal, which is greater safety and security for the state of Israel.

We all want that.

We all care about that.

But this is not going to produce it.

America knows about this full well.

20 years in Afghanistan, our wars in Iraq.

Sometimes, with the best of intentions and certainly with the passion that follows an attack on our own country, we do things that don't end up serving our best interests.

So he's trying to deliver that message.

Okay, but the alternative to that is leave Hamas in place.

No, it's not.

No, it's not.

No one would argue that Hamas should be left in place.

I mean, the priority has to be the return of every one of those hostages.

It has to be the total defeat of Hamas.

And it has to be the safety and security of the state of Israel and the Palestinian people.

That's incredibly important.

And I think that's actually...

Well, you're asking for two things that can't exist at the same time.

Am I wrong?

This is the problem.

They want to skip to the fun part where, like, everyone's happy again.

Right.

Well, guess what?

I mean, that's not going to work.

And what Chuck Schumer did was something that worked well for domestic politics.

I mean, of course, he told the White House he was giving that speech ahead of time.

He knows what's going on with Biden's re-election campaign.

Can you imagine if Donald Trump said we needed to have an election in Mexico because they weren't supporting his Remain in Mexico policy?

And by the way, if they don't have an election, we may not have as much funding for Mexico next time around.

Because that's also what Chuck Schumer said.

He threatened the funding for Israel as well.

People would be up in arms.

In fact, it's not that far off from what Donald Trump was impeached for the first time around.

This idea of fixing your own domestic policy problems and political problems by messing with some other country's government and threatening them with funding.

Obviously, the hostages have to come back.

Hamas has to be defeated.

But if you think we do that by asking them nicely, I mean, that's a good idea.

I'm not suggesting that.

Tell me then how we address something that I think we all care about, which is 31,000 Palestinians have been killed.

According to Hamas.

If it's 29,000, does it make a difference?

If it's 28,000, does it make a difference?

Primarily, they are women and they are children, you know, definitionally, inherently non-combatants, not culpable, not guilty of.

They started a war.

They did not.

And they did not.

Hamas did.

And elected leaders did.

Elected since when?

Hamas has territorial control over Gaza.

Those people who are being...

So you're saying it's okay that this is happening.

It's not okay.

There's just no good choice.

That's, I think, think,

there's a less bad choice.

But

what you're suggesting is to leave Hamas in place.

I'm not.

But then how do you do it if you don't keep...

People are going to die in a war.

Either you're going to prosecute this war or you're not going to prosecute this war.

I don't understand how you can square this circle you're asking for.

There are ways in which you can prosecute a war.

It does not have to be the complete destruction of the power of the US.

And you know this better than the Israeli Defense Force.

Of an entire country.

Well, listen, it's the Israeli Defense Force.

it's the Prime Minister who allowed this to happen in the first place, who are pursuing something right now that I think is actually going to make Israel weaker in the long term.

I maybe care about the country, but I don't think this is the right way to ensure that their safety and security is not a good thing.

I'm going to have to end this, but I'll just tell you one thing

to wrap up.

Somebody I know who I trust very much, a very good reporter, was over there in Israel very recently, and he said, People don't like Netanyahu.

They want Netanyahu to go.

But what you don't understand in America is that the policy will continue.

Netanyahu will go, but they want this finished.

They've had to not want to have another after ceasefire, after ceasefire.

Israel has agreed to every single one of them, and Hamas has attacked them and broken the ceasefire over and over again.

And the percentage of people in this country who think that what Hamas did was acceptable, the percentage of young people who think that October 7th was acceptable, is a failure on our part.

All right, time for new rules.

All right.

Okay, new rules.

New rules.

Sex experts need to stop inventing fancy new theories to explain the basics of sex.

The latest buzzwords are stimulation, communication, and mindfulness.

What we laymen call a little higher, right there, and stop.

New rule, the next politician who gets weepy about how much he loves farmers has has to try farming,

which has a suicide rate three and a half times higher than everyone else.

No one loves farmers more than Willie Nelson, and he'd rather live on a bus.

Neural, the woman in the news lately who's on OnlyFans and has the genetic abnormality of having two vaginas,

and who also has two boyfriends,

each of whom is only allowed to be intimate with one of her vaginas.

Must tell me how she does it.

The last time I had to keep track of that many pegs and holes, I was building a bed frame for my Kia.

I have so many questions.

Like, do you ever shave one and leave the other one hairy so they look so they look like Paul and Ontario?

I don't know.

New rules, someone must tell me who's using Dwayne Johnson's new shampoo.

What are the directions?

Rinse, lather, pretend?

I don't know whose idea it was to greenlight this product, but they should know that if I'm going to take hygiene tips from a baldy, I'm staying loyal to Mr.

Clean.

Nural TripAdvisor has to admit their entry, the 15 best things to do in Haiti in 2024,

was probably written by a bot.

Even Sean Penn decided to vacation in Gaza this year.

Seriously, when you click on this link, it should read, Haiti.

I think you mean to Haiti, dumbass.

And finally, new rule, now that we're all recovered from St.

Patrick's Day, let's make it the last one.

You know, I never understood Irish pride.

or any pride in anything other than what you've actually accomplished.

And as holidays go, St.

Patty's is kind of malarkey.

You don't get presents like Christmas or candy like Easter or joyless appointment sex like Valentine's Day.

You don't even get a peanut special.

There's just a parade and what rights are we marching for?

The right to drink in the day?

Do we still need to

we still need to take to the streets in a public expression of support for Irish migrants?

I think now more than ever we need to stop talking about the things that make Americans different from each other and start honoring the things that make us the same.

So let my people, the Irish, lead the way.

Because again, the Irish thing, I don't give a shit.

But

I do give a shit who wins the next election.

And outdated racial pandering is one reason Democrats lose elections.

When Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi put on Kentic cloth, I don't think it earned them one vote for their powerful emotional ties to Ghana.

Here in California, we're now segregating kidnapping.

Really?

California doesn't just have amber alerts for missing children.

We have ebony alerts for black children and feather alerts for Native American kids.

What is that?

We look for them by listening on the ground.

Look, even if you like identity politics, this kind of thing is antiquated.

From 2010 to 2020, the number of people identifying as multiracial in America went up 276%.

One in five newlyweds now are in an interracial marriage, and that number goes up to 100% in ads for Subaru.

You couldn't do a remake of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner today because almost 100% of Americans approve of interracial marriage, especially with rich in-laws.

And 95% of white women would leave their husbands and marry Idris Elba.

Idris Elba, who says, as humans, we are obsessed with race, and that obsession can really hinder people's aspirations.

Actress Raven Simone agrees.

She told Oprah, I'm tired of being labeled.

I'm not an African-American.

I'm an American.

She says, I don't know what country in Africa I'm from.

My roots are in Louisiana.

And you don't have to agree with that.

But it's a point of view a lot of people have.

It should be respected.

Morgan Freeman says the way to finish off racism is, stop talking about it.

I'm going to stop calling you a white man, and I'm going to ask you to stop calling me a black man.

There's even a movement now to ban racial questions on the census, and many of its leaders are people of color, like Professor Sheena Mason, who says, to undo racism, we have to undo our belief in race.

The liberal group MoveOn.org formed in 1998 to urge Republicans to move on from the Clinton impeachment.

Today's Democrats should move on from identity politics.

It's not working.

It's not working for them or for us.

Democrats are hemorrhaging the very voters they think they're pandering to.

The Financial Times writes, Democrats are going backwards faster with voters of color than any other demographic, and suggests the reason is that a less racially divided America is an America where people vote more based on their beliefs than their identity.

Exactly.

Far-left liberals are living in an old paradigm.

Americans don't fit into neat little boxes anymore.

Who has the number one country song right now?

Beyoncé.

Lil Nas X won a country music award, and he's black and gay.

And a brand ambassador for the waspiest purse in America, Coach.

The biggest new star in country is Jelly Roll, who was a drug dealer, then a prisoner, then a rapper, and then a face-tatted country music star.

Not to mention a giant middle finger to the idea of staying in your own lane.

No.

In America now, you're allowed to be many things all at once, and that's a good thing, even when it's really stupid.

Look, we're all jelly roll now.

We're sloppy, complicated, and contradictory.

Two-thirds of Republican voters support weed legalization.

Yeah.

And 41% of Democrats own or live with someone who owns a gun.

Ms.

Marvel is Pakistani, and the winner of the last two NBA dunk contests is white.

The new Captain America is black, and Spider-Man is black and Puerto Rican, just like AI George Washington.

Latinos make up half of the Border Patrol, and the name of the coolest black dude on the planet is Lenny Kravitz.

RuPaul has a ranch in Wyoming that does fracking.

Really, and has a fortified compound with a bunker to die for.

And somehow the leader of the village people was straight.

Really?

He just went to the YMCA to work out.

And

the leader of the Proud Boys isn't an old white guy.

He's Enrique Torreo, an Afro-Cuban.

He burns crosses on his own lawn.

Caitlin Jenner is a pro-Trump trans woman who supports a ban on trans athletes competing in women's sports.

And there's even an LGBTQ organization called Gays for Trump.

And why wouldn't there be gays love drag queens?

Our black president was half white.

And our black vice president is half Asian.

And Tiger Woods is, oh, we don't even have the time.

My point is:

look,

you're still building your politics around slicing and dicing people into these fixed categories.

Democrats need to get the memo that you can't win elections anymore by automatically assuming you're going to get every voter who's not these guys.

The more you obsess over identity, the more you ignore the bread and butter issues that win and lose elections, the real issue is class, not race, and the real gap is the diploma divide.

And the real future of the party, and maybe democracy, depends on Democrats figuring that out.

Okay, thank you, everybody.

You were great.

I'll be at the Ruth Eckert in Clearwater, Florida, Sunday, March 24th, the Eccles in Salt Lake City, the 21st of April, and Morgata, Atlantic City, May 18th.

I want to thank Vetera Rourke, Sarah Isker, and Kara Swisher, and now go to 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.