Ep. #650: Dr. Phil, Tim Ryan, Batya Ungar-Sargon

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Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO Late Month series, Real Time with Bill Ma.

Thank you, Speaker.

Hi down there.

How are you?

Everybody good?

Great.

Thank you.

Great to see you.

Thank you for coming out.

We're going to have a great show, and thank you you very much.

Appreciate that.

Did you have a good leap day?

What?

It only comes once every four years.

We've got to enjoy it when it happens.

Trump would not acknowledge it.

He thinks it's a woke plot to make a Black History Month longer.

So he was at the border yesterday, the border with Mexico, I mean.

And so was Biden.

They had like dueling press conferences there.

And they were very close.

They could see across the border to the people there, and the people could see them.

Boy, a scarecrow and a jack-o'-launched him.

If that doesn't stop them from coming, I don't think anything will.

But yeah,

Trump was in, Biden, no, Biden was in the city of Brownsville, which to me sounds like something Trump would call Mexico.

They're coming from Brownsville.

Coming from Brownsville, they're bringing crime, they're rapist.

Remember when he said that?

Remember when he first saw him, when he first came out?

They're bringing crime, they're rapists.

Turns out the jobs they were coming for were his.

Oh, I kid Donald Trump, always in a good-humored fashion.

But this is sad.

You know who Alex Navalny is?

He is one of the bravest people in this world who's gone now.

He was the dissident who stood up to Putin.

Putin went to jail for it, died there.

And they had this funeral today, and it was a good sign.

Lots of people came out in Moscow, defied the authorities, and came to this funeral, to the church, just to show a

show of defiance, which I think was great.

Everybody said it was a very moving tableau, and Tucker Carlson said, can you believe how clean the church was?

And President Biden had his physical this week, and

the doctor said he is fit to serve.

He is taking some prescription drugs, but so is every teenager in America.

But

here's the key story, the key story this week.

The polls show that Trump loses if he is convicted in any of his trials.

So his defense lawyers are doing everything they can to delay his trials.

And when I say his defense lawyers, I mean the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court, we're going to talk about it.

I mean, they made this ruling this week.

They're going to take his ridiculous impunity case.

And legal observers are befuddled.

They cannot figure out why they would even do this.

Legal expert Jeffrey Toobin was just making the jerking offs.

Oh, no, that's

something else.

Sorry.

Something else.

I got that.

But now the court rejected hearing this in December.

They're just trying to run out the clock.

This is so typical of that court, always protecting the baby.

Speaking of which,

I guess you saw what went down in Alabama.

Boy, the

retrofertilization, this is the issue down there in frozen embryos.

In Alabama, the Supreme Court says it doesn't matter if you were conceived in a lab or conceived in a slut.

A baby is a baby.

And a frozen embryo, frozen embryo that's waiting for implantation in a child.

No, no, we can't allow that.

Finally, someone is standing up for the rights of the unthawed.

And,

but,

on the other hand, this was also fairly big news this week.

CBS and Walgreens said they are going to be selling the abortion pill in states that allow it, and they have a new slogan, which is now that anything can be a kid, why take chances?

All right.

We've got a great show.

Bacha Ungar Sargon in here and Tim Ryan.

But first up, he is the author of We've Got Issues, How You Can Stand Strong for America's Soul and Sanity.

And he'll soon host Dr.

Phil in prime time on his new cable network, Merritt Street Media.

Dr.

Phil is over here.

Dr.

Phil,

finally, I get you here.

How are you?

You look great.

Thank you so much.

Look at that, a standing ovation.

I love you.

And

Dr.

I'll invited to come home with me tonight after the show.

What?

That's my line.

No.

Dr.

Phil, I mean, it's amazing when you're a one-name person in this country.

I mean, you're like Cher.

You only need one name.

That's pretty, you went pretty far up the ladder there.

Yeah, that's good.

I guess that's a good thing.

It's a very good thing.

And, well, I mean,

you've been America's shrink for a very long time.

And here's the thing.

I want to ask you about what you're embarking on now, because I feel like for the longest time, it was all on an individual basis.

We would see you with your guests, talk about their addictions, their behavior.

Now, you seem to want to be doing it for the country at large.

Do I have that right?

Sort of.

And yes, and

in steps, though, because what I've always done, and I think it's one of the reasons that I've been able to survive as long as I have, is that people

tell you what's important to them.

And if you'll just listen, they'll tell you what they want you to talk about, they'll tell you what they want you to address content-wise on the show.

And that's really changed across time.

When I first started in 2002 with Dr.

Phil,

you are Dr.

Phil.

Well,

I just started to say

that was a softball.

I'm glad you hit it.

I'm not talking about myself in the third person.

I'm talking about the platform.

I get it.

Try to keep up.

All right, sorry.

No, but really, think about how much things have changed since then.

The internet's blown up and

people, there are predators online that we didn't have before.

There's cyberbullying that we didn't have before.

There's all of these scams we didn't have before.

Bullies follow people home because of the internet.

Kids can't escape it.

Parents think their child's back in their bedroom just doing their homework, but they're getting bullied on these chat rooms.

And also, things really changed, and I've changed with it.

And now...

It's changing again.

People are becoming really socially conscious and sensitive about narratives that are being pushed on them right now.

Words you can't use, words you have to use.

And I'm not just talking about pronouns and stuff.

I'm talking about even the Justice Department doesn't want to call a felon a felon anymore.

They want to call them justice-involved people.

So

your family member wasn't murdered, they intersected with a justice-involved person.

I smell a stand-up special for you.

And

I really wish it was a joke.

Well, no, and a lot of your book is about stuff that we share in common.

The idea that wokeness, which started out as a great thing, alert to injustice, all down for that, and it morphed into something else.

Yeah, weaponized.

And now it's where common sense goes to die.

Right.

And I think somebody needs to call that out.

But people, the percentage of people that are unwilling to speak out and say what they think has tripled since 1950.

People just say,

it's easier just not to say anything.

But you know what?

It's coming at a very high cost if we allow our narrative in America to be hijacked by these French factions on either end, either tail of the distribution here.

And you know I'm not political.

You try to sucker me into being political, but I'm not political.

And I'm going to do it again.

I'm going to do it again because I don't think you can.

Because I don't think you can.

What you're trying to do,

I don't think you can do it without being political.

You're trying to divorce these issues from politics, and you can't, because they're intimately involved with politics, and you can't avoid politics.

You talk a lot about this kind of woke stuff, which I do too, and I get it.

But I also attack the other side equally.

I don't think I didn't see that as much.

I mean, what Trump is doing with the rule of law, I know you say in your book you're no big fan of Biden.

That's as political as you'll get.

Well, a lot of people aren't, but I have what I call the blue liquid doctrine.

Do you know what that is?

No.

If it's Trump against Biden, I will vote for Biden's head in a jar of blue liquid.

So

that's a political statement.

You won't make statements like that.

No.

And it's not that I'm talking about political things, it's that political people are talking about cultural things.

What I'm talking about is, look, I believe that the basis of the strength of any country is

the backbone being the family.

I think families in America are under attack.

And some of it's unintended, side effects of like technology and all.

And some of it is intentional, that

the family is being eroded by the government trying to co-parent children with parents.

Not a good idea.

teachers getting involved with co-parenting children, not a good idea.

And teachers don't want to do that.

I'm I'm a huge fan of teachers.

Don't know a single teacher that doesn't get in their own pocket to bring resources into the classroom.

And

they're so underpaid.

They're so underpaid, I can't even look them in the eye.

But I said, I hate people that criticize and don't come up with an alternative.

And I see what's happening right now.

Since the advent of the smartphone in 08-09, we have seen the biggest spikes in mental health among young people since they started keeping records.

Anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, suicidality, and that started in 09-010, right after the smartphone came out.

And we've seen kids that stopped living their lives and started watching people live their lives and comparing themselves.

They didn't know those lives were fictional and produced.

And then COVID hits

10 years later, and our government, instead of letting us work this out among ourselves, they come in and shut the schools down.

And I said at the time, if you do this long term,

this is going to create more damage than the virus itself.

So you just walked into my trap.

Because how can

you do that?

Because how you didn't just walk into mine?

I can't.

There's no trap for me.

I'm not married.

But

we're going to get to that.

But you're talking about school closings.

This is a political issue.

It came from political offices.

It has to be decided on a political basis.

How can you say to me,

we are only looking for solutions, let's get to the real part of this, and then not get involved politically.

Did it, though?

Did we elect the people that shut the schools down or were they appointed?

Yes.

Of course we did.

No, we didn't.

We didn't elect Trump and Biden?

We didn't elect the people that made the decision to shut down the schools.

Well, they could have been overruled by Trump and Biden.

But they weren't.

Okay, but that's still politics.

Well, if your aunt had nuts, she'd be your uncle.

That's a big if.

That's okay.

I mean,

that's a real big if.

These people made the decision to shut the schools down without any plan for opening them back up.

These are bureaucrats, not politicians.

Okay, well, bureaucrats are politicians.

You got me there.

Okay.

But the other thing we don't, I'll give you that one.

The other thing we, you know, again, what I think we disagree a lot on is that you think family and faith are a big fix to the problems we have.

I mean,

I don't have a family, and I definitely don't have faith.

But you're definitely not part of the solution.

Maybe I am.

No,

here's the thing.

I'm just saying that you come from a family.

I come from one, true.

So don't tell me you don't.

Yes.

Don't tell me you don't have a family.

Well, they're all gone now except my sister, yes.

But I didn't start a new family, is what I'm saying.

And I'm an atheist, so I don't have religion.

And I think the country's moving in my direction, by the way.

More people than ever are single, and more people than ever don't have a religion.

Now, you may think that's a bad thing, and why we're going to hell in a handcart, but maybe it's also part of the solution.

And it's certainly just where people want to be.

I mean, when you say religion is the fix to this,

have you seen the Middle East?

I didn't say that.

Yeah, you did in the book.

No, I did not.

What do you say about family and faith, not the fix?

I said that for the first time in our country's history,

membership in an organized religion has dropped below 50%.

Now,

here's why that's a problem.

Here's why that's a problem, because that was one of the reasons that families got together at least once a week and spent quality time together.

The reason it's dropped below 50% is because the reason they usually joined the church was because they wanted to have their children christened or baptized or whatever the ceremony was in that particular church.

And our birth rate has dropped to 1.6.

We need 2.1 in order to sustain the infrastructure that we have.

So we need immigrants.

We just need to know who they are.

A very reasonable position.

I'm very pro-immigration,

as are you, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

And your position that you just said, very reasonable and a political position.

A political stance.

But

you did say in the book that the less religion we have, the more divorce and cohabitation become acceptable.

And

why shouldn't they be?

Why shouldn't divorce and cohabitation, cohabitation?

You sound like the Alabama Supreme Court.

Why shouldn't that be acceptable?

It's 2024 to just cohabitate without marriage.

Well, let me answer.

Okay.

The problem is, if you have a child and you have a non-biological male in the home,

the incidence of sexual molestation and or abuse for that child goes up as much as 33 times normal.

It goes up, you know, depending on what kind of abuse you're talking about, it goes up six times normal, ten times normal, all up and down the continuum.

But it doesn't happen if there's a biological parent in the home.

But now wait a minute, you can't do that.

But cohabitation is you're conflating two things.

You can cohabitate with someone and have children.

I mean,

the marriage rate in, I think, Sweden is very, very low.

They live together as man and wife, but they just don't get married and they have children.

That's a biological father in the home.

They just don't

fill out paperwork.

They're not cohabitation, yeah.

You're saying they don't fill out paperwork.

Correct.

But that's not what happens in a lot of situations that create this problem with a male being inside the home that is not biologically connected to the children.

And that is a big issue, Bill.

You can't write that off.

What do you mean when you say, let men be men?

I saw that, read that.

What did you do?

Pick a phrase and then go 50 pages and pick another phrase?

I think I just got my answer.

No, no, it's just that's an important.

I mean, I'm picking out things that I want you to have to address because when you talk about marriage and say let men be men, I'm curious as to what you mean by that

there's such a thing as toxic masculinity would you agree right here

I meant both of us not just you

so we've got in a situation now where we've got colleges which I have been quoted as saying are just fostering intellectual rot instead of critical thinking.

Agreed.

And we've got people in there that

are actually

preaching and teaching that we should have a quality of outcome.

I think that is a load of crap.

I'm happy to talk about equality of opportunity, but if you've got somebody sitting home in a beanbag eating Cheetos all day and you've got somebody out working 12 hours a day, you're not going to have a quality of outcome because you've got a quality of, you don't have a quality of influence.

I agree.

But to answer your question, what I'm...

And another absolute political stance.

Another huge political issue, equality versus equity.

Okay.

Which you took a political stance on.

According to you.

Now

it's true.

No, what I'm saying is, now in college, we've got a lot of these universities teaching this.

And so if you're saying, look,

I'm a man that wants to get out and take care of my family.

I want to be a provider, a leader, a teacher,

a protector, then, and I have entrepreneurial sort of things, then all of a sudden, that is masculinity that's toxic.

They used to teach there's toxic masculinity, and now just masculinity in general is toxic.

Women can be entrepreneurs, women can be ambitious, women can do these things, and nobody says anything, but now if a male does it, it's being labeled as toxic.

And that's not true.

They're just saying, we're just going to call it that.

You can't just rewrite definitions and say that's because I just decided is.

Right.

You know, we've got.

I couldn't agree more.

You know, if you go back 25 years, you had more men in college than women.

Now you have more women in college than men.

Right.

So.

All right.

Well, I wish you have a whole new network, not just a show, a whole network.

I wish you the greatest of luck with your completely apolitical program.

Dr.

Phil, thank you for being here.

I'll see you

next time.

All right.

Appreciate you.

That was fun.

All right.

Dr.

Phil, everybody, Let's meet our panel.

All right.

Completely apolitical, that guy.

All right, here they are.

He is a former Democratic congressman from Ohio and founder of the organization We the People.

Our friend Tim Ryan is over here.

And she's an opinion editor at Newsweek and author of the forthcoming book, Second Class, How the Elites Betrayed America's Working Men and Women.

Bachya Ungar Sargon is over here.

Thank you.

Okay, so

I'm apoplectic about the Supreme Court ruling.

They've been inching toward this, and I've been apoplectic twice before in the last two months, but I'm going to do it again tonight.

There's two issues that really bother me about this: one, the delaying, and two, the issue itself.

Let me just show you, throw it up there, if you would, what the Supreme Court said they would consider.

By the way, it took them two weeks to write this one sentence.

This is what they will consider: whether, and if so to what extent does former president, does a former president enjoy, enjoy,

I would enjoy this a lot if I was, I'd enjoy the fuck out of this.

Whether and if so to what extent does a former president enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office?

First of all, is there any there there?

I think what they're saying is a president is completely above the law, and I thought we decided he wasn't.

Why did Ford have to pardon Nixon if that was the case?

Among other issues.

But I'll throw that over to you.

Is there really an issue here?

Well, it's obviously, it's obvious what's going on.

Like we, you can go back to Bush v.

Gore, and you can see how the political the Supreme Court can be.

My personal problem with this bill is that Democrats are going to say the Supreme Court didn't save us, right?

That

as wrong as this is,

we need a crutch to somehow help us win the election.

And I hope that this isn't a complete distraction where we just sit and talk about this for the next six, seven, eight months and say the Supreme Court screwed us, blah, blah, blah.

We got to go out and learn how to win elections as Democrats.

And the fact that these elections are even close, and I think you touch upon this from time to time, with the crowd that's insurrectionist, illegal, four different cases in 90-some different, in four different states, 90-some different charges.

You have to go out and beat this person.

The Supreme Court's not going to come in and save you.

And

that does not mean

you shouldn't do what you're doing and we shouldn't highlight it.

But if the political apparatus on the Democratic side is going to hope the Supreme Court comes in and saves them, it's not going to happen because we've been watching this shit show with the Supreme Court happen for damn near 30 years now.

It sounds like you're giving up on the very essence of what this country is about, which is the balance of powers between the three branches.

I'm not quite ready to give up.

I'm not ready to give up either, but I also don't want to spend the next seven, eight months fighting against a Republican-appointed Supreme Court that is going to have zero, our arguments are going to have zero impact from now until then.

The most important thing we can do is make sure donald trump isn't in the white house next year

and that means you got to beat him

well of course that's true

well um you're not going to like this bill but

i think there's two ways to look at 91 indictments okay you can either look at 91 indictments and say wow 91 indictments Surely this person has done one of these things, right?

You can also look at 91 indictments and say, wow, wow, 91 indictments, they are really out to get him, and they are not going to stop until something sticks.

Or could it be a little of both?

It could be a little of both, but what I think is happening is that with the same thing.

Manyone's alive.

With every additional indictment, people moved from the first group into the second group.

And each additional indictment had less and less purchase with the American people.

See, this is the problem, is that the only trial that may be going forward now because of the Supreme Court is the one that really we don't care about, I don't care about, the Stormy Daniels one.

That really wouldn't affect the election anyway.

But as far as the one that really matters, the Jack Smith one, where he's accused of trying to steal the American people's right to vote, which he was,

that one is what they're ruling on.

Now, back in December, his...

Jack Smith asked the Supreme Court, can you rule on this?

No, we're busy, or whatever.

Now they're doing it.

This is a deliberate delaying tactic, because now they're not going to come out with this until June, probably.

They have to think about it.

Then he gets to prepare for trial.

So it probably won't happen until the fall, if that.

Okay, but Bill, can I ask you something?

Like, as a person who's on the side that sees itself as like the defenders of democracy, there's no part of you that is made uncomfortable by this like

exploding, ever-growing lawfare effort to disqualify.

Not if the guy's guilty.

who won the 2020 election well obviously joe biden well that's not obvious to trump

he's

that's not a crime i mean that's well it kind of is when you're president it's not a crime to have a disagreement with you about who won't it's a crime to put up false electors so here's the it's a crime to call a guy on the phone and say i need to find 11 000 votes that's a crime

That is maybe a crime.

Maybe.

I mean, is he not innocent until proven guilty?

Is he not innocent until proven guilty?

That's the way I want the goddamn trials to happen.

And by the way, wait a second.

Two-thirds of Americans want this.

Over half of independents say the verdict in this trial is essential.

to how they're going to vote.

This is the thing.

His friends on the Supreme Court, now I can't look into people's minds, but it does look like they are running out the clock because you know that after he gets reelected, which is ever more likely, these trials will never happen.

Do you really think he would let the trial happen after he was re-elected?

I don't think he would let the trial happen after he was elected, definitely.

But I do, to Tim's point earlier,

I'm just going to.

To Tim's point earlier, like, Donald Trump is the most popular politician in America.

The side that claims to be the defenders of democracy should want that fight to happen at the ballot box.

I do.

Well, that's a different case.

Those are different cases.

Like, there are three states now that have said he can't run because he's an insurrectionist, which he is.

But, okay.

I still think you're right.

Colorado was the first one.

And by the way, his pals on the Supreme Court, that one they heard right away.

Yeah.

They were going to get an answer to that very quickly.

That one suddenly was an emergency.

But I do think he should be on the ballot because you're right, he is popular.

I agree.

He should be on the ballot.

I think that's a terrible idea.

He should be on the ballot, and the people going to cast their ballots should have the knowledge of these trials.

Both things should happen.

So, and just let me say real quick,

it's not whether or not you think he's guilty, or I think he's guilty, or anybody thinks he's guilty.

The question is: is he above the law?

Right.

And is he getting preferential treatment because of who he is?

Because if you're Joe Shit the Ragman in Youngstown, Ohio, guess what?

Your ass is going to trial

and you're going to go to jail and it's probably going to happen rather quickly.

And so he is getting preferential treatment.

Every signal that the Supreme Court is sending is that he is above the law and no citizen should be okay with that.

And it's not just him.

It's the move.

What's so dangerous about this is the movement he is leading.

CPAC, do you know what that is?

That is the conservative

political action committee.

Political action committee.

Okay, it's their big convention every year.

This is like corporations have a big convention.

They have their big convention.

I've made jokes about it every year.

I can't remember the last time we did it.

It goes way back.

I remember once calling it the Woodstock for the mentally impaired.

And

it's, but in years past, it was like the most conservative commentators and senators and governors.

And, okay, this year, there's a guy, I've heard this name, I don't know who he is, Jack Prozobic.

He's doing sort of like a roundtable discussion.

You know, it's a convention, they have these things.

This is a quote, welcome to the end of democracy.

We are here to overthrow it completely.

We didn't get all the way there on January 6th, but we will endeavor to get rid of it.

Am I missing an irony here?

Am I missing a joke?

Or is it, as it seems now, they are saying

the quiet part out loud?

Yeah.

That they are not, this is SEPA, this is their big, this is Republican, conservative, their big convention, and you have a guy like this, and the crowd is loving it.

Welcome to the end of democracy.

We're here to overthrow it.

January 6th was good.

Now we're going to finish the job.

Thoughts?

It's scary.

Thoughts on that?

Bill, that was a joke about Trump making a joke about being a dictator day one in office.

That is an ironic take on how the liberal...

Well, that was my question.

Am I missing the irony?

Conservatives, I think so, yes.

It's a joke.

Really?

Yeah, and I think more, I mean, more to the point.

To you, Bill, and to...

Give your day job, Jack.

I think

to you and to most Democrats, Trump is an extremist.

But to Trump's supporters, supporters, he is a liberal.

And they like that about him.

Yes.

So, for example, if you look at his position on abortion, 16 weeks, okay?

That used to be like the Democrats' position on abortion.

I agree.

He just got $45,000 from the Teamsters Union, who gave to the RNC a week after meeting with Trump.

His position on immigration, that was the Democrats' position in the 90s.

He's pro-gay, and he's courting blacks actively, and all of this is stuff that his supporters love about him.

So we are in the on the on the liberal side, the liberal media is misunderstanding how he comes off to his supporters because of how they get.

I totally agree with that.

They don't get him at all.

They don't get him and they don't get the appeal.

I've said it a million times in this show.

You can hate Trump, you can't hate all the people who like him.

It's half the country, and there's so much crazy shit on the left that would I ever vote for Trump?

No, but I get it.

I can get it.

I mean, I read

it.

I read this week that

there's like 1,044 school districts now.

This is a good repost for the people who say, oh, Bill, you just pick on the fringe of the left.

Over 1,000 school districts, that's a lot, who will not tell the parents if the kid transitions.

So

your daughter's going to school and they're calling her Larry and you don't know it.

That's the kind of stuff.

All right.

I want to get back.

But

you can't apologize

for what Trump does.

Like, you can say he's pro-gay, he's pro-choice, all of these things, but then he nominates Supreme Court nominees that are from the Federalist Society.

And so he's

tax cuts for the rich.

He doesn't try to jam pro-gay rights legislation through the Senate and thrust arms and all that.

He couldn't do anything.

All he did was pass a tax cut, and then he nominated the extreme people to the Supreme Court that are now making sure that he doesn't have a trial.

So you can he he says everything like he's been on every side of everything.

Exactly.

I'm sorry.

You can pick up.

That's his genius.

I remember when

he was running in 2016, I think he was on Chris Matthews and the abortion issue came up and he said, well, I think you're going to have to put the doctors in jail.

I remember after one of the gun shootings, he was like, Mike, why don't we take away the guns first?

You know, things that if anybody else said, it would be anathema on the right.

But it's just Trump.

He's, you know.

Yeah.

All right, so I'll get back to this in one second, but there's a great story that I did want to mention that's going on this week that I think is bringing the country together.

We need more of that.

Beyonce has the number one hit song on the country charts.

I think this is fantastic.

And of course, you know, One of her big supporters was always Kanye.

I think we all remember when he grabbed the mic out of Taylor Swift's hand just to say, Beyonce had one of the greatest videos of all time.

So we know he's Team Beyonce.

So he's getting on the bandwagon now.

And Kanye's put out a country album.

It's called, oh, I have it here.

It's called Yeezys Take the Wheel.

There it is.

Would you like to hear some of the songs that are on

Kanye's country album has

All My Exes Have Big Asses.

These are all country songs some kind of I forgot to remember to forget to take my meds

Your cheating accountant

You don't bring me samples anymore

When did you stop loving me?

Was it around the time I started attacking the Jews?

To all the grills I've worn before.

I crossed the line.

I'm so loathsome I could cry.

And my favorite Kanye country song, Try That in a Hospital Gown.

So

let's come back to talking about this working man thing, because I know that's your big thing, and I know you write about it a lot in your book.

I feel like the election is going to be now, the Democrats want to run on abortion and, shall we say, other ick issues related, the embryos, that kind of stuff, contraception.

The Republicans want to run on immigration.

And I saw in a poll recently, and this is an issue they ask every

presidential year, like, who do you think supports you as like the kind of, I can't remember how they phrase it, but like the common man?

Who feels your pain, kind of question.

And it's true, the Republicans are encroaching on that.

And that should be the Democrats' turf, I feel.

My reading always was that what I was just talking about with the school thing, the Republicans always get voters on social issues.

They don't like that stuff.

They don't like, oh, I can't find out if my child is transitioning, those kind of issues.

The economic issues, you seem to say, and I don't get this, that that is friendly turf for the Republicans, because I feel that's where the Democrats are doing better for the real people.

And they don't advertise it very well,

but that should be their territory.

So before Trump, you had two parties.

You had the GOP, which was the party of the rich, the party of corporations, the party of tax cuts.

Country club.

Country clubs, okay?

The Chamber of Commerce.

Right.

Right?

Is what working class people will call it.

Party of business.

And then you had the Democrats.

Now, the Democrats used to be the party of labor.

They used to be the party of the working class 50, 60 years ago.

But they lost those voters.

to the college-educated elites and then the dependent poor.

So the Democratic Party now is bifurcated, right?

They cater to college-educated, credentialed elites and then to people who are poor and live on the government and cannot support themselves.

What that meant was there was no party representing 60% of Americans who are working class, middle class, working really hard trying to make it.

Trump showed up and he spoke directly to those people.

And I'm sorry, Bill, but he made a difference for them.

He changed the calculation.

Let me tell you why.

He spoke it.

Let me tell you why.

When he showed up, there was a handshake agreement between both parties on free trade.

You remember NAFTA?

That was the Democrats, okay?

That was the Democrats changing from representing the working class to representing the elites, right?

Now the Democrats represent nine of the ten richest counties in America.

Did you know that 65% of Americans who make more than $500,000 a year now vote Democrat?

Stop yelling at me.

I'm sorry.

I'm kidding.

I'm kidding.

I think it's an outrage.

I think it's an outrage that the Democrats lost the working class.

And what Trump did was he said, we're not doing free trade anymore.

We're going to have a trade war with China.

Why should we have any talk about that?

You think that helped the working class, the trade war?

They think it helped them.

And if you think people, sorry, I'm not going to do that.

They think exactly.

They think.

Let me just ask you: you think a person living on a shoestring budget who doesn't have $400 for emergency is wrong about which president is helping him?

I think so, because really?

Yes, Trump.

Look, Bill's right

the sentiment

that's all I gotta say now

the the sentiment the sentiment of Trump I'm from northeast Ohio I represent represented Youngstown Akron Rust Belt towns I watched what Trump did and he was able to connect But the fact of the matter is when he got in he had one signature legislative accomplishment and that was a major tax cut for the wealthiest people that live in those counties.

And that was the only thing he did.

And look, I've been very, very critical.

I've been critical of the Biden administration on things.

But the reality of it is, and this is undeniable, Joe Biden has reindustrialized the United States of America.

Between the CHIPS Act and

we're seeing it in Ohio.

You can just take Ohio as a microcosm, the CHIPS Act that was passed, which is bringing back chip manufacturing for the first time in 30 or 40 years, huge $100 billion facility just outside of Columbus, Ohio by Intel.

You take the bipartisan infrastructure bill.

We're going to rebuild this country.

Over a trillion dollars is going to be spent.

So why is he losing Ohio?

Well, let me finish real quick.

The Inflation Reduction Act.

We have battery plants being built

in Ohio.

We have electric car manufacturers expanding production.

We have bridges being built.

The union construction guys are going to work like crazy.

So he has done it.

But the reality of it is, one, it hasn't sunk in,

message-wise.

And two is, these people have been getting screwed for 40 years, so it's going to take a long time to pull the middle class back together that has been getting deindustrialized and losing their union jobs since the late 1970s, black mundane.

Why do you even need a message?

If you're actually going to the job that the guy created, I mean, isn't that the message?

Why do we need more?

Not everybody's working there yet.

The plants aren't open yet.

But the construction guys are building them.

They're moving dirt, you know, in the battery plant outside of Youngstown.

I think you have 700 people working there.

The other big issue, people.

But you have to take credit for it.

Trump, Obama, wait, wait, wait.

So the idea that you both agree with is that there's a whole bunch of working class people in Ohio who have been given good jobs in the American dream by Biden, and they just don't realize it.

Like, that's the theory, really?

Well, some of the idea of

it.

He's done a hell of a lot more than cut taxes for the wealthiest people.

And the reality of it is, I just watched a speech by Bill Clinton in 1996, right?

The economy was booming.

He was saying the stock market was high, but he kept going back to the fact that there's still so many people that need to get into the new economy.

The reality of it is the Donald Trumps of the world, who, oh, by the way, when he was doing union contracts in New Jersey, didn't pay the workers.

So it's hard to make the argument that he's super pro-worker.

There's a lot of small businesses that got screwed by Trump filing bankruptcy.

But the reality of it is it's got to be we've made some huge investments.

We're reindustrializing the country.

I give a damn about you.

I understand.

But we got a hell of a lot of ways.

He was the vice president when Obama passed Obamacare.

That matters to people's pocketbooks more than almost anything, healthcare.

Obamacare did more for people, actual people.

Trump came into office and he was like, it's going to be amazing, terrific.

We got something, it's going to be, right?

It's going to be...

Am I wrong?

This,

you know, he stands behind that big banner that says, promise is kept.

What promise did he ever keep to the, who, the asbestos industry?

There was going to be healthcare for everyone.

It's going to be free.

No one will die.

Never even come up with a piece of paper.

They didn't even have a plan.

So that to me is exactly who Donald Trump is.

The con man who promised you something and then just gives you nothing.

Whereas Obamacare was real.

You really can't

put a straight face that we're doing better now than in 2018, like economically, in terms of this immigration crisis.

You think we're doing better now than four years ago, really?

Well, there was a pandemic in the middle of it, which we greatly overreacted to.

And recovered from.

And recovered from.

Well, who did that?

I What are you saying?

Do you think the country is better off now than it was four years ago?

I think after, I think there were these two crises.

I think there was

two major economic crises in this century.

One was the meltdown in 2008.

Obama came in, no drama, Obama.

People like Mitt Romney said, let the auto industry die.

Didn't.

The country didn't go into a depression, and it could have with the wrong president.

I also think the wrong president, we came back better for for the pandemic than any other big boy country in the world.

So yes, I do think it matters who the president is.

I'm just saying, do you think we're better off now than four years ago?

Four years ago was 2020.

Maybe 2018.

I don't know.

I was wearing a mask.

I hated my life.

2018, are we better off now than we were in 2018?

Here's the reality.

We're not worse.

How were we worse?

In what way are we so what's so terrible out there that wasn't happening in 2018?

Ask the American people.

I mean, inflation, immigration crisis, 8 million people here who

crossed here illegally, like we don't know who they are, crimes being committed.

I mean, well, I mean, crimes are being committed to the correctness of the people who are not.

People import homes because of the high rate, the

mortgage rates?

Well, immigration.

Trump was a built-all.

Maybe all these people wouldn't be coming over illegally.

Oh, so you support them to build the wall?

I'm just saying, you guys, you guys.

No, no, no, no, no.

What I'm saying is,

you guys want it both ways.

You can't have it both ways.

You're blaming Biden for immigration.

Trump said he was going to build a wall.

He didn't do shit.

That's right.

There's another one.

I can't really think that.

We're having a comment.

And here's the problem.

Lankford, the Republican senator from Oklahoma, is a great guy, right?

I don't agree with him on everything.

Very conservative.

He's a very conservative guy.

I served in the House with him.

He's a good dude, right?

He goes out of his way to put together an immigration package, works with the Democrats.

They have a package that's going to pass the United States.

It's completely hypocritical.

They said, right.

No, you can't vote for it.

Because they want it as a campaign issue.

They were screaming and screaming.

There's an invasion going on.

It's an emergency.

So the Democrats called their bluff and came up with this bill written by a conservative Republican senator.

And then it was like, oh, maybe we'll do that next year.

What did I say?

Emergency?

We got plenty of time.

Yeah.

Anyway, I have to cut it off there.

It's time for new rules that I enjoyed it.

Thank you.

Okay, New Rule.

Now that Alabama Supreme Court has ruled that frozen embryos are children, Kentucky has to go one better and declare that the tissue I used to jerk off into is an unlicensed daycare center.

New Roll Royal Caribbean.

Royal Caribbean can keep bragging endlessly about its new icon of the seas, the largest cruise ship ever built with its eight neighborhoods, seven pools, zipline courts, indoor theater, and massive water park, as long as it also mentions the toilet,

where you'll be spending 90% of your vacation after contracting the norovirus.

New rule, people who say I'll try anything once,

have to admit that's not true.

For example, I will not try Glory Hold.

Guess what?

Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer to have my relationships fall on that middle ground between marriage and having no idea who's blowing me.

Nuru, now that China has agreed to loan two giant pandas to the San Diego Zoo in a gesture of goodwill, America must reciprocate by sending China two of our rare and exotic creatures.

Okay, so it's not a perfect apples-for-apple swap.

One country is offering a pair of reclusive mammals that subsists exclusively on bamboo, and we get pandas.

Newer, now that MAGA nation has the hats and has the flags, they must get it over with and come up with a Trump salute.

You know, some sort of hand signal that he does for you, and then you do it back to him to signify that you're all part of the movement.

And again, might I suggest the jerking off two guys at once?

And finally, new rule, if the Democrats want to win the next presidential election, they need to find a way to make the Biden age issue work for them.

Because you know what's really getting old about Joe Biden?

Complaining about his age?

Yes, we're all worried Joe is not as quick as he used to be, but when did we start insisting that our presidents be smart, like these assholes?

Instead of trying to refute all the too old to be president slams, Joe must embrace them.

Stop with the, I'm sharper than ever.

Nobody's buying that.

Don't try to deny the age thing.

Lean into it.

Lean in.

Lean in like you're eating soup.

And just admit it.

Say, yes, I'm bad with names.

And I walk like a toddler with a full diaper.

But I believe in democracy.

Because Joe's problem is not a new one for Democrats, not the age thing specifically, but the idea of letting the opposition intimidate you into being defensive about who you really are.

Yes, that we've seen before.

John Kerry pretending to be a duck hunter.

Hillary carrying hot sauce in her purse.

Americans hate that shit.

Be yourself.

And Joe, yourself is old.

That's who you are.

Old.

Old.

You're the guy who thinks an app is the sound a chihuahua makes when it comes.

You once fell down the stairs at the Underground Railroad.

You're so old, you're a bad kid with a drug problem, is 54.

Take a page from your old Kyle John McCain, who ran for president as a senior citizen and said.

I'm older than Dirt.

I have more scars than Frankenstein, but I've learned a few things along the way.

Exactly.

Own it.

Own it.

No one cares if you can ride a bike and trying to do stuff like that is only setting yourself up for failure.

You recently joined TikTok to win over the kids?

Get off that shit right now.

It's inauthentic and it won't work.

You're not following the demographics.

In 2020, A record number of eligible voters under 24 came out as gay,

but came out to vote?

Not so much.

Less than half but almost 72 percent of people over 65 voted those are your people Joe the Matlock crowd reach out to them

reach out to them reach out like it's a wrong number at dinner

Take all your ads off Twitter and put them on CBS

Tell America I feel your joint pain

Let them love you.

Let them love you as a relatable figure in a way only you can.

You think you're the only old geezer who ever called L.O.

Cool J, LOJ Cool J?

So, next Thursday, when the President delivers the State of the Union, I say he should let his old fart flag fly,

And the address he gives should look something like this:

Mr.

Speaker, the President of the United States.

Mr.

Speaker, Madam Webb,

members of Congress, my fellow denture wearers, and all the folks gathered around the radio,

I come here tonight to report that the state of our union is regular

And to ask one question, what are you all doing here in Scranton?

And to those who say, I'm too old to serve a modern-day America, I say horse feathers.

Why, under my administration, America is now taking the lead in producing high-fiber optic state-of-the-art semiconductors.

Does that sound old to you?

I have no idea what they are,

but I know they help with our plan to expand internet access to rural America so farmers can FaceTime with their cows.

Of course, my opponent would like to take us back to the past, not the good past of bobby socks and copping a feel at the drive-in,

but the bad past of racism and denying a woman's right to choose.

I remember once in 1950, I was playing stick ball with corn pop, and

he hit the ball into the back of an alley, and I went in to get it and walked right into an abortion.

Thank God for progress, ladies and gentlemen.

Just last week, a special screening was set up at the White House, and my wife Diane and I

watch the movie Maestro.

That poor gay Jew had to marry a woman.

We must do better.

And no more tiny words on the menu.

It's bad enough the cashier girl makes a face when we don't know how to use the gizmo.

My friends,

when I first came here as a senator, Washington welcomed me with open arms.

Not the place, the guy.

And that is a virtue.

You don't want a young person in charge of our defense.

We need a president who can stand up to Russia and say to its current president, Mr.

Gorbachev, get off my lawn.

In conclusion, let me remind you that I have not forgotten the hardworking small business owners who are the backbone of this great country, which is why I invited here tonight in the gallery Jack Wilkins, whose pet training business was there for the Biden family when we needed help with our beloved dog commander.

Thank you, Jack.

Thank you.

And thank you all.

Good night.

God bless you.

And God bless America Ferrara.

All right.

That's our show.

I'll be at the Hobby Center in Houston tomorrow, the Palazzo in El Paso, Texas, March 3rd, and the Equity Scheder in Salt Lake, April 21st.

I want to thank Tim Ryan, Bacha Ungar Sargon, and Phil McGraw.

Now watch Overtime on YouTube.

Thank you.

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

For more information, log on to HBO.com.