Ep. #649: Ann Coulter, Van Jones, Dr. Jean Twenge

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

Thank you, people.

How you doing?

Hi, down there.

Thank you.

Thank you, people.

How you doing?

Thank you for coming out.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

You sound fantastic.

Please, we got a big show.

Finally, some good news for Joe Biden.

No, really, I mean, forever, the Republicans have pushing this story about him and Hunter, and they were in some sort of bribery scheme.

They're even going to impeach him over it, right?

Well, now the FBI apparently arrested the informant.

He made the whole fucking thing up.

Sean Hannity.

Sean Hannity did 85 segments.

about this guy, this informant, and the retraction, still waiting for that, I guess.

A lot of integrity over there on Fox News.

I guess you heard this is horrible.

Alexei Navalny, he's Putin's biggest critic.

He put him in prison.

Now he's dead, died in prison.

And Tucker Carlton today said his health would not have declined if he had just tanned his balls.

And Rick Tucker was.

Yes, Navalny was 47 years old.

Putin said the cause of death was being outspoken.

Good news for, but more good news for Joe Biden is that Joe Manchin, you know Joe Manchin, the senator from West Verde, he was going to run as an independent for a bit, he said he is not running now.

He said he went on a listening tour and apparently most of what he heard was, you're kidding, right?

So

we don't have to worry about that.

And

Biden's getting in with the group.

He really needs to win over the young kids.

He's on TikTok this week.

He joined TikTok.

I'm not kidding about this.

Well, it beats the old way he was communicating with the young people by smelling their hair.

But he's

really trying to be a part of the whole TikTok thing with the challenges and everything else.

It's sad, though, someone today had to cut up his Tide Pod.

I don't know.

Look, I like Joe.

I keep saying it.

I would vote for his head in a jar of blue liquid

if it was against Donald Trump.

But the Democrats, I think, do need a younger candidate.

I mean, Joe was in East Palestine the other day.

Now, this is where the terrible train derailment happened a year ago.

Okay, it looks horrible.

Joe walked around and he said, boy, Israel really did a number on this place.

I mean, I

but yeah it was

a tough week for America.

I mean it started out good.

I'm sure you all heard that Taylor Swift won the Super Bowl

which drives Magan Nation crazy because the one thing they cannot stand is a blonde billionaire with a cult following.

And then there was a shooting at the parade.

We can't have a Super Bowl parade in this country without a shooting.

And, you know, and now it's always the same thing.

Every time there's a shooting, every identity group is like, please hope it's not one of us.

Even trans people were like, I hope this guy has a dick.

Meanwhile, Trump is running around the country trying to balance his big,

talk about a busy schedule.

You know, he's running in all the primaries and he's got four trials going.

Today he had to do his makeup in the car.

That's probably actually true.

But the first tribunal trial is going to happen.

It's going to be in March now.

That's the one with Stormy Daniels, the hush money trial.

Only Trump could pay hush money to someone who was too embarrassed to talk about it to begin with.

And Trump's, but the other ones, I mean, this is just bugging me so much.

We may not get to see any of these other trials.

We're not going to have to vote blind on this.

I don't know where all the time went.

We had a lot of time to do this, but that's Trump's tactic: to stall and delay, and to stall and delay, to try to get out of it.

Same tactic Melania uses in the bedroom.

This sounds like I'm making, this is the joke, it's not, this is the true part of this.

He used Valentine's Day, Trump did this year,

to give a message to his wife in a fundraising letter.

And he said, Melania, love you, because even after all the indictments, all the arrests, and the witch hunt, you never left my side.

Check your side.

Because

I never see you there.

But okay.

And of course, the good news is it's a three-day weekend we have a president's day we celebrate the birthdays of george washington and lincoln boo terrible people i know uh

and then we have mattress sales i never understood that what is the point of having

it makes no sense johnny depp's birthday that would make sense for a mattress sale

all right we got a great show we got van jones and then culture but first up She's a professor at psychology at San Diego State University and author of Generations, Dr.

Gene Twangi.

Right over here.

there.

Doctor,

great to meet you.

How are you?

Pleasure.

Pleasure.

I read your book with great interest.

I talk about age a lot.

Sometimes people say to me, you know, why are you so worried about age?

I'm not worried.

It just fascinates me.

Age and generations and how we're different in different phases of my life, because I've lived a few now.

And your book sort of covers, well, you say there are six generations that are living.

Now, we're kind of leaving out the greatest.

now i know there's not many of them left but we should give them a bit of a shout out they are the greatest right okay so okay so they're but they're not probably going to be around too much longer not many of them so you're saying there's silence that's biden right okay those those are people when are they born like in the 20s 1925 to 1945 for the silence okay silence then we go up to the boomers that's me

then we go to the gen x generation x right i would call them the silent generation because we never.

Nobody ever fucks with them.

I don't understand it.

Okay.

We're just ignoring.

I'm a Gen Xer myself.

We're the middle child of generations.

Right.

Nobody even knows we exist.

And we like it that way.

We want to fly under the radar.

Right.

I call you the last sane generation because then we go to the millennials.

Yep.

And then we go to the Gen Z.

Yep.

Okay.

And then I wasn't even aware of this because, but of course there are people after

this shocked me because I think a Gen Z is like very young.

The oldest, is that number, 29?

That's right.

Woo!

Wow.

Gen Z people could like own a house.

Wow.

Okay.

So then we go to the people who are now, they were born starting in 2013.

Yes.

Okay.

So they're tweens now.

Yep.

And you call them.

I call them polars after melting polar ice caps and political polarization.

A lot of people call them alphas with the idea that, okay, we have Gen Z.

It's the last letter of the alphabet alphabet that we're going to start over at the beginning, but we're going to use Greek letters this time.

I'm not a huge fan of the letters.

I think it's better to describe something about the generation's experience.

Right.

Okay, so one thing I loved in your book was you say every generation thinks the next one is softer.

And that's because they are.

Which is so true.

They thought my generation was.

Right, absolutely.

They thought we were soft.

Oh my God.

What are the polars going to be like?

I mean,

can you get softer than Gen Z?

Really?

Could you get more sensitive than that?

Or will there be a backlash?

And I think we don't know yet.

But they're spending just as much time or more with screens and with technology when they're very young compared to Gen Z.

They've never known a world without the iPad.

And you think that's the essence of why things change so much?

I mean, is that why

are they so extra about safety, about being scared of everything?

I mean, they're afraid of sex.

Anxiety, we always hear that.

They have so much anxiety.

I had nothing but anxiety when I was a kid.

Being a kid is the condition of anxiety, because you're small, you're powerless,

everyone knows more and can do more to you.

Of course I went to school with anxiety.

Nobody cared.

That's the difference.

It was just the condition of life.

And you say this is because of the technology.

I think that's part of it.

So a lot of traditional theories of generations focus on major events, like how old were you when World War II happened or Vietnam or the COVID pandemic or 9-11.

But that's not what has a big impact on values and behaviors in the long term.

It really is technology.

So not just smartphones and social media, but things like washing machines and birth control and better medical care and faster transportation.

And then that leads to things downstream like individualism, more focused on the self and less on others.

Then it also leads to something called the slow life strategy, that the entire developmental trajectory slows down because we live longer and healthcare is better and education takes longer to finish.

So kids are less independent and teens are less likely to do adult things like have a driver's license or a job or drink alcohol or go out on dates.

Young adults marry later, have children later, settle into careers later.

And then middle-aged people look and feel younger than their parents or grandparents did at the same age.

So it's 60 is a new 50, 50 is the new 40.

So it's affecting everybody, but we see it the most with the younger generations because their childhood and adolescence are so different from what especially Gen X

experience.

Totally agree with that about technology.

I've always said that many times talking to authors in this space.

It's people think people run the world, they don't.

People react to technology.

You know, I mean, fire

was very big

when it first came along.

You know,

Yuvalari puts this out in his book, when they invented fire, we could cook the food, which meant they killed all the parasites in the food we were eating.

Before that, our intestines were huge because they had to be.

Where did that energy go when the intestine shrunk?

To our brain.

And that's why we became the horrible people we are today.

A little history lesson there, kids.

A little prehistory.

Okay, so like, let's take my generation.

My generation was the one that had TV for the first time.

Yes.

Most of us were born like in the 50s, some late 40s,

some early 60s.

Obama is one of the later ones.

I'm right in the middle, 1956, TV, and then birth control.

That obviously changed a lot of how people just, I mean, reading.

I think TV was the first thing where the reading went down.

And every sort of big new technological advancement that we have, less and less reading, which is bad for me.

I I have a book coming out in June.

But, you know, I hear people today talk about how they don't, they would not even consider a book.

This is like a thing now, like a book.

I've heard comedians make jokes about it.

A book?

That's where we are.

So what about the polars?

Where do you think they're going to go with the education reading area?

Yeah, well, I mean,

the trend lines on this are really straight downwards.

So there's a big national survey of high school seniors, and they're asked how many books they read for pleasure in the last year that weren't assigned for school.

And it's very, very stark.

As it used to be, maybe 40% would read six or more books a year, and now that's around 12.

So it's not just a perception.

There's an enormous decline.

And with

so many more temptations with social media,

all of these things, just all algorithms being so sticky and drawing people in, where would they have time to read?

When today's teens, according to Gallup, spend almost five hours a day on social media if you include YouTube and TikTok in that total.

And also, every generation seems to think they deserve, and they get, and maybe they do, more choice about everything,

which kind of I think led to where we are today, which is something that never occurred to me, which is that people can go, oh, maybe I'm not a man.

I don't choose that.

Now, maybe that's the right way to go.

It never entered my mind.

But But I'm just saying, difference.

And can I ask you about the millennials?

I had always read over and over again how bad they were doing economically.

And then I read in your book, I really flagged this, because I thought, oh my gosh, this is, they're actually doing better comparatively.

So why did we all get bad information on that?

Well, give us the information first about how millennials are doing economically, because I did a thousand jokes about their living living in their basement.

Right.

So you know that narrative got started.

They did have a tough start with adulthood in the Great Recession.

But then we all know what happened with the economy.

It got a lot better after that.

And that was also true for young adults.

And if you look at young adult median incomes today adjusted for inflation, they're at all-time highs.

And anytime I offer that statistic, people say, well, it was, but was that adjusted for inflation?

Yes, I just said it was adjusted for inflation.

People are doing really well.

And for millennials, it's often because so many more of them have college degrees.

Those without college degrees, median incomes are not doing that well.

But those with college degrees, so many more of them have that, that those incomes have gone up.

Now, that sometimes means they have some college loans, so there is that on the balance sheet.

But even with that, millennial wealth is on track to catch up to Gen X and boomers.

So, why did we get so much bad information?

I think.

Who's at fault there?

Right.

Millennials who are in the media?

Maybe.

I don't know.

Well, one thing is that in our modern era, social media and online news pulls for negativity.

Negative news gets clicks.

Right.

You know, nobody goes on Twitter and says, My income is fantastic, and everybody in my generation is doing great.

It's a complaint machine.

Okay.

Well, it's a great book.

It's a great thesis to get into, and I appreciate you coming by here.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, James Rengage.

Let's meet our panel.

Look who it is.

Okay, are you two getting along?

I hope you are.

He is a CNN political commentator, host of the podcast Uncommon Ground with Van Jones.

Van Jones.

And she's a conservative political commentator, author of 13 New York Times best-selling books, WoW, who now writes or call him Unsafe on Subtech, and Coulter.

Okay,

so

let's try to keep our heads about us tonight.

It was a difficult week.

I'm telling you, this Navalny thing, I think, is very depressing.

I also think it's really depressing that we cannot have a Super Bowl parade in this country without it breaking out into

gunplay.

It seems to me, well, I just want to read some stats for you.

The disparity between Missouri's gun laws, which I was rather surprised, I know some states have lax gun laws, and let's be honest, gun laws are kind of like abortion in this country.

It's really what state you live in.

But I just want to show,

I think we can put up on the screen the difference between what the laws are and what the people in Missouri want and the people nationally want.

No background checks.

That's the law in Missouri.

No background checks.

In Missouri, 79% support background checks.

Nationally, 87%.

No permit is required for concealed carry

in Missouri.

So anybody can grab one, put it in their pants, whatever they want to.

It's legal.

Well, yeah.

Well, I'm just, we'll get to this.

I just want to say the disparity between what people say they want and what the law is.

Missouri, 86% support concealed carry.

That's higher than the national, maybe because they have so much of it.

81% nationally.

No ban on assault weapons.

Now, this is the one where I might be more on your side.

I always thought we make too much of the type of weapons.

I think think only 39% of Missouri support banning semi-automatic weapons because they know guns in that state.

I don't think it matters a big diff big deal what kind of gun people have as long as there's so many guns and most guns are semi-autic automatic so okay and then no mental health restrictions in Missouri at all.

69% in Missouri favor requiring mental health checks, 88% nationally.

So are people lying about this or is is there another reason why there is such a big disparity between what people say they want and what the law is in a state like this?

Well, the disparity has a special name called the NRA.

That's the source of it.

There is an organized gun lobby that's not about the gun owners.

Gun owners, frankly, agree with some of those numbers.

It's the gun manufacturers that are the number one source of the money into the NRA, and people are still scared to take these votes.

Didn't the NRA just go bankrupt?

It's not the NRA.

I guarantee you'll see a difference going forward.

And by the way, these numbers would have been even worse, the numbers you're seeing.

So you're saying the NRA owns the Congress people?

Yeah.

That's why.

When you talk to any of the people who are in elected office and they have in their own districts too many funerals, they have in their own districts too many people who are coming to them begging for change, what they'll tell you is the money and the organization on the other side is too hard to overcome.

You might see it differently.

I totally see it differently.

NRA is bankrupt.

I think this is, you know, with all due respect to the people answering these polls, these are people who don't know anything about guns.

And so they hear some of the things that we're going to do.

80% of people don't know.

No.

But they're just answering some stupid poll.

They're not going to vote on it.

Whereas people who care about guns and know about guns know that.

Half of the people in Missouri own guns.

Right.

So the people in Missouri do own, they do know about guns.

I said that.

But you have a lot of people who are just answering questions.

They don't know what the law is.

And the law, for example, on background checks, we've been doing that federally for, I don't know, 15, 20 years.

You know what has happened?

A lot of minorities who should be getting guns are not getting guns.

They live in bad neighborhoods.

They need a gun.

They have like a rate of 97%

false positives.

What was the first one you had?

False positive, meaning?

They say you can't have a gun when you just have a name that's vaguely similar to someone who can't have a gun.

And by the way, a lot of minorities, you know,

Hispanics and blacks will have very similar names.

And you have to wait a year.

You know, you could be in a bad neighborhood.

You may need a gun.

What was the first time?

The Jim Smith Club has 250,000 members.

What was the first check?

You're saying some names are similar.

Background check.

What was the other one you had that I think was really stupid?

Well,

I mean, I think they're all very dumb laws.

Background checks.

It sounds better.

No permit is required for concealment.

No permit is required for concealment.

No mental health restrictions.

Mental health.

Okay, I'll do mental health and no permit.

22 states, including the one I live in, have no permit requirement, and there has been no increase whatsoever.

You still can't buy a gun if you're a felon, if you're underage, you're breaking the law.

And by the way, the gun shop will ask for that.

But it's accomplished nothing.

What was the other one?

Was it a woman?

I don't know.

But your thesis that, you know, the people are stupid.

I've heard you say, I've certainly

care.

Someone goes to.

Look, if you ask me to vote on who's going to win the NFL, I'm stupid.

I don't know, but if you ask me, I'll give you an answer.

I don't think you have to be an expert to know that a mentally disturbed person shouldn't have a gun.

I don't know why that's so.

No.

Is that really?

No, because psychiatrists don't know who.

I'm sorry, just let me answer that one.

Psychiatrists absolutely don't know who's mentally ill, and I promise you a lot of people.

They're going to need one.

No, it actually has not worked very well.

Remember the Joker in Aurora, Colorado?

The Joker.

He was being, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the guy who's dressed up like the Joker shoots up the movie.

No, you meant the actual joker.

No.

He was being seen by shrinks, by a whole battery of shrinks.

And you know what she did?

She was with the university.

She said, this guy's nuts.

Don't let him in the building anymore.

And she looses him on the public.

Can I just...

It's the same issue.

Somebody.

I think Anne mentioned some of the tougher neighborhoods.

I do think we don't give enough credit to people who are at the grassroots level.

Maybe it's not a mass shooting, but there's way too many funerals every weekend in places like Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit.

And yet you have people like Pastor Carl Bay in Philadelphia, who is a hero, who goes and talks to the kids before they get in trouble, gives them opportunities.

Shootings in Philadelphia are down this year 30%

because people are doing good, hard work and they don't get attention, they deserve more.

We need more

from a lot more people than just that guy.

Agreed.

I mean, we don't know who did this shooting, by the way.

The Super Bowl shooting.

We have some idea.

What?

If it were a white man shooting, we'd know.

Well, we don't know.

That's how we know it's not a white man.

I can tell you that much.

But you think they're repressing that reporting?

They wouldn't tell us about that transgender woman that shot up the Christian school for what, like a year?

Oh, San Bernardino out here.

Remember the crazy terrorist Muslims?

That's when I first noticed.

Hmm, they're not telling us who it is.

It's not a white male.

The longer they go without telling you, it's not a white male.

Okay, well, we don't, for this one, for right now, as of Friday night, February 16th.

We know.

We don't officially know.

Okay, you know, you have special powers.

But

what we do know.

Here's what we do know.

We do know that for young black men, gun homicides are the leading cause cause of death.

And that leading cause outstrips the next 15 causes

combined.

That's how bad it is.

Also, black men ages 18 to 25 die from gun homicides at a rate nearly 19 times that of white

young men, same age.

Okay, and they're not being killed by white supremacists.

Exactly.

They're being killed by each other.

Absolutely.

That is the truth.

Absolutely.

Okay.

This is sort of what you started to talk about.

And given that this problem is

internal,

does it need to be more resolved internally?

I mean, I've often asked this question.

You can't say anymore that, you know, there was a time I did editorials about it when there was a legitimate gripe like blacks are invisible.

We don't, well, come on.

And that's changed, and that's great.

Mayor, I think the mayors of the biggest cities in this country are black.

Listen, seven of the top ten cities have black mayors.

We have an African-American vice president.

We've got two black senators.

And a president.

A governor.

Police chiefs.

And also leaders in the arts, culture, media.

Okay.

Where's the bully pulpit on this?

Where's the bully pulpit?

I'm really glad that you raise it because I think there's this myth.

that the black community only cares about a black kid getting killed if a white cop does it or white supremacist does it.

And it's just not true.

The media only cares.

Yes.

The media only cares.

But there are candlelight vigils every weekend.

There are teddy bears, there are balloons, there are crying mothers, there are marches.

Where are the leaders saying just, hey, it's coming from inside the house.

Cut it out, guys.

It happens every Sunday in every black church.

It happens every Saturday in every basketball program.

Kids aren't going to the church.

Well, some do and some don't.

But

when you have people like Pastor Carl Day, again, and others, they leave the church and they go out there and they get no credit, they get no support.

I agree with you.

The number, the amount of self-inflicted harm, there's a suicide crisis among young white kids and a homicide crisis among young black kids, and we're not doing enough about either one, and we should be doing a lot more.

A lot more.

And

it's the media who do not care.

about blacks killing blacks.

And this is the one time where I think, I mean, you always hear, pretty white girl, oh, they'll cover that.

No, the blacks killing blacks will not get covered by the media.

That's a huge media problem.

And

you'll all laugh at me, but I'm going to say it because I'm right.

Very right.

The cause of this

is illegitimacy.

All of these young men do not have fathers, and that is a huge, huge source of it.

Anything that could be done to reduce the illegitimacy rate, particularly among the black community, it would be astronomical, the changes you'd see.

Do you know just one fact?

If you take away the factor of illegitimacy, the difference in the black and the white crime rate disappears.

You know, that's an amazing fact.

It would be an amazing fact if it were true, but

look, well, I mean, it is a big part of it.

Listen,

I've got two very small children.

I've got

my eye on this problem a lot.

You know, I'm trying to raise black kids here in Los Angeles.

I'm not a part of the pro-crime lobby.

Far from it.

But what's really missing, honestly, when we really try to figure out what's going on, you know, you have all kind of different family structures.

What's missing is hope.

What's missing is opportunity.

What's missing is a sense that there's a tomorrow.

And what works?

And again, you didn't have a 20%, 30% reduction in homicide in Philadelphia because suddenly everybody got married.

That's not what changed.

What changed is is there was a push to get more opportunity to the kids out there who everybody was scared to talk to.

People talk about those kids, they don't talk to them.

You talk to those kids, they listen and they move.

That's what needs to happen.

That's the reality.

That's the only one.

And end the drug war.

Well, hey, brother.

We've been on that one for 20 years together.

No, I just think ending the drug war.

That would be, yeah.

Because a lot of these shootings, isn't that what it's about?

It's about...

Well, you know what?

It used to be.

It used to be that it was about drugs and turf or whatever.

That's a generational difference.

It turns out that the drug trade has changed.

It's now pills and Percocets.

The margins are not there.

This is about clout.

This is about TikTok disses.

This is about Instagram.

This is about people feeling so hollow on the inside that someone putting something bad about them on TikTok feels like a threat to their existence and they pull out a gun.

So it's not even about money anymore.

It's about wounded pride and lack of opportunity.

It's almost sadder.

It's a lot sadder.

It's almost sadder that they're killing each other over, you know, what

bullshit insulted by sneakers.

It's gone way, way worse.

I'm not arguing with you, Ann, that fathers don't matter.

I agree.

Dads matter.

I am a dad.

But whether the dad is married to the mom or not married to the mom or whether the dad is across the street or whether that is important, it's vital.

But it becomes an excuse not to put those programs in place that help kids who got dads and kids who don't.

That's all I'm saying.

I think it's easier.

I mean, it's easier to put the programs in place than to reduce illegitimacy.

It's a much harder problem, but it's a much more powerful and determining problem.

I mean, you see it.

And this wasn't always a problem in the black community, was it?

I mean, like 50 years.

Correct.

It's gotten much worse.

I think you have family structures changing across the board.

I agree with you that the African-American family structure has changed the most, and I think with mostly bad outcomes.

But I don't want to blame, honestly, single black moms who right now are going to their second job trying to put food on the table and say it's their fault that these kids are doing what they're doing.

It is,

if you do the work, it just turns out that some of the stuff is a lot more simple.

When a kid has a shot and has some hope and has some opportunity, they act better than when they don't.

And we all can take care of that, not just the missing bag.

Okay.

So I was

pleasantly surprised this year to see that the Super Bowl commercials were actually funny again.

It It took quite a few years.

And then there was one ad that would just shock me, show it a little.

It's the Kennedy ad, now Robert Kennedy running for president, Robert Kennedy Jr.

And he basically did the ad that his father ran in 1960 and just put his head in it.

Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, William, Wenny,

I mean, he says it's the super PAC.

He had nothing to do with it, wink, wink.

But I read today, 200 million Americans alive now were not born when JFK died, so they don't really know that much about the Kennedys.

So we thought today we would do the 24 things you don't know about the Kennedys, one of our favorite.

We call them refillables.

For example, JFK's book, Profiles and Courage, included the bartender who had to say last call to Ted Kennedy.

When Oswald shot JFK from the Texas School Book Depository, it was the event that kicked off the war between Texas and school books.

The Kennedys are the only family in America that's triggered by the film Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.

After her lobotomy, Rosemary Kennedy was an avid Fox News viewer.

The Kennedys were Catholics, but unlike most of history, they weren't dicks about it.

Jackie Kennedy set the standard for all future first ladies who have to eat it while the president bangs other women.

When American college kids found out Sir Henry Sirhan was Palestinian, they started calling him a good guy with a gun.

And Boston figures so prominently in Kennedy history that Joe Kennedy's nickname for his penis was Whitey Bulger.

And Rose Kennedy lived to be 104 and today would still be considered too young to run as the Democratic nominee.

Okay.

So

I think the biggest political news that happened this week was that the Democrats have successfully flipped the immigration issue.

I know you're going to yell at me.

So let me just explain this to what I mean.

Immigration is now the number one issue to voters.

Number one, ahead of the economy.

This doesn't happen often.

I think Chuck Schumer, I think he played them.

And Mitch McConnell, who used to be the guy who played everybody else, he's lost his step.

He's a little glitchy.

So if you haven't been following it, the Republicans have been saying for quite a while, you are prominently among them, that there's an invasion going on.

We've got to do something.

So the Democrats called their bluff.

They came up with a bill that gave them almost everything they wanted.

I mean, I could read you the quotes from Lindsey Graham and other people, prominent Republicans, who said, We will never get a better bill than this.

Republicans did not want, well, Trump did not want the Democrats to have a victory, so he told them to vote against their own bill.

Now we have this guy, Tom Swayze.

He won the

seat vacated by, vacated, he got his ass kicked out

Santos, George Santos, now on cameo.

And this guy won the election in a state and outside a suburb of a city that is reeling from the migrant problem.

And he won it.

Here's Tom Swayze.

He said, what we need are strong, outspoken, pro-Israel Democrats that will stand up for Israel and will stand up to the extreme left.

Hello, Tom Swayze.

And he just said, look, we have to close the border.

We have to, he ran to the right.

So I think that this is very good news.

If you are a Democrat, this,

to me, leads the way for them to win on the issue that looks like it's going to be the most important issue.

Look, you know, it turns out there is a conspiracy to keep the border open, to flood the country with undocumented people, and it's led by Donald Trump and the Republican Party because down their open border.

They have the opportunity to close it.

People, you know, we've been hearing from the right that there's a political agenda here.

That's why we have all these undocumented people here.

Well, it turns out there is a political agenda here to not just solve the problem, but to weaponize it and use it against Democrats.

And I think we have a healthy party.

You could break with Biden and not get beat up on Twitter or X or whatever they call it.

You could run to your own district.

You can talk about these issues and get elected.

The problem that you have is on the other side.

If you don't march lockstep with everything that Donald Trump says, you will get destroyed by Donald Trump, which they keep nominating bad folks.

But I'm very curious to hear,

how ashamed are you that

the Republican Party just got its own history?

The people who should be ashamed at this table is anyone who believes that was a good border bill or that the Democrats care about the border.

You have,

you have, well, that was a good response, so I take it back.

You have the governor of Texas putting up razor wire on the border, and what does Joe Biden do?

He sends federal agents to cut it down.

Yeah, that's a guy who wants to get tough on the border.

Exactly.

The Mallorcus and Biden are violating the law.

This idea that the president needs new powers to keep people out, no other Congress ever thought of that.

No, it's the law right now.

He has the powers.

It is the law to detain every illegal coming across, including asylum applicants who have a credible fear, which none of you do.

He's violating the law.

And what this bill would have done is preserve the violation of the law, allow 5,000 illegals in, no detention.

And by the way,

Lindsey Graham and anybody else you're going to cite, half the Republican Party is open borders.

Okay.

Lindsey Graham's one.

Okay.

Let me give the facts.

Let me give the facts, because some of that is not factual.

Sir, it just isn't.

You're right.

Biden does, you have certain things that the president can do by executive action.

Absolutely.

There's certain things he can't do by executive action.

And this bill, here's Lindsey Graham's quote, to those who think you could ever get a better deal, you won't.

To get this kind of border security without granting a pathway to citizenship is unheard of.

The National Border Patrol Union, they're very pro-Trump, very anti-Biden.

They supported it.

It's a family.

Because

it's their lives.

It's just not a political football.

No, we hear this all the time about police unions.

They're government unions.

They're very liberal.

Nobody else is for this.

It's all under political.

Let me just tell the healthy people.

And we're not talking about executive politics.

You have one of the most right-wing rights.

We're trying to pass an amnesty as soon as he got to the bank.

Can I tell people what the fuck we're talking about before you are going?

And you talk in your Washington East.

Yes, the bill, the Republican bill, written by Jim Langford, he is a Republican senator from Oklahoma, very conservative.

That was not good.

This is what's in the bill.

It would move asylum from where it is now to the Department of Homeland Security, which means no more lawyers involved.

You have to prove persecution now to get it.

This would be new.

For the first time, you could be rejected outright for having a criminal history.

This has never happened before.

It shortens the asylum claims, which is years now, which is real problem.

Six months.

So it moves the,

I mean, and

nobody ever gets everything you want out of the country.

This isn't that at all.

There already is a persecution requirement.

They're releasing them into the country.

They're not supposed to be releasing them into the country right there.

That's a big problem.

And I'm sorry.

The reason I supported Trump, and I hate him now, was because everyone he was running against in 2016 was for open borders.

This is a big change for the Republican Party.

And Lankford tried to push through an amnesty bill.

His second year in the Senate.

So did Lindsey Graham.

Their names attached to these.

So don't tell me they're not open borders.

Well, they're not open borders.

They're a system.

You would allow that we need some immigration.

That is the lifeblood of this country.

And actually, it's one reason why our economy...

Can I?

For a few years, yeah, get our house in order.

Yes, I'm sorry.

Well, Well,

I have a few things to say.

First of all, what you're calling an amnesty bill was a bipartisan bill that you guys got a bunch and we got some stuff.

You call that an amnesty bill.

So now we gave you a bill where you just get all your stuff and you won't take yes for an answer on your own stuff.

I got none of it.

So, no, you got literally, literally everything you were asking for six months ago, you got in the bill and it turned out.

You literally just read it.

I just read it.

That's what we were asking for.

We're asking for a wall.

Can I say something, though?

You know what I would like?

I would like a viable economy.

That's what I would like.

And

it turns out that all of the big economists now have had to revise their figures for the American economy because we've had the surge of immigrants, which is costing America.

No, actually, they say we're going to have a $7 trillion bigger economy, a trillion more dollars in the federal coffers, because when young, hungry people come here and want to work, it helps the economy.

It doesn't hurt it.

Immigration is good for America.

It's positive for America, and I don't let's not say that.

Not the way we're doing it.

No, no, the way we're doing it needs to be said.

And you would also allow, I would imagine, that the sanctuary cities, the hypocrisy was exposed there because when they started to send the immigrants to those cities.

Never mind.

I mean, Chicago.

Sure, New York.

Yeah, they signed.

The most liberal people are like, oh, this doesn't work for us.

Listen.

You're right on that.

But

let me just say something here.

People have been coming here and gaming our system.

That is true.

It's like somebody figured out a quasi-legal way to jump the turnstiles into the subway, and suddenly now the subway is full of people who didn't pay.

That's what's going on at the border.

People are jumping the turnstile, and you need to fix that.

But to say that Joe Biden could do it unilaterally is just not, in fact, true.

There are things he can do, but our asylum laws were passed by Congress.

They were signed by the president.

The courts have ruled.

There is a chance to change it.

I would love to see a smarter, better asylum process.

I'd love the six months.

I don't want people waiting in vain with no ability to work.

We could fix it.

But here's the thing.

Democrats gave up almost everything we care about to get something done, and Republicans slammed the door in our face.

It is now the Republicans.

No, I said, that's why I think this guy won this race.

We need more.

People get that.

And if I could just correct, and now, obviously other Congresses have said the president can stop illegals coming in.

But I do want to correct one, Kennard, because this is a big argument on the pro-open border side.

And that is that the economy is better.

The GDP goes up because we have more.

No, that's because there are more people.

That doesn't help us here.

So, for example, say I move into your guest room, I won't be contributing nothing.

Your cable bill is going to go up, your water bill is going to go up, your heating bill is going to go up, but the GDP of your household is going to go way up because that's all an economy is, more people.

So, immigrants coming in and taking health care services, food services, welfare, buying things, even if it isn't much, that drives the economy up.

That doesn't help the people already here.

It's bad for you,

bad for Anne.

Well, like any big issue, there's winners and losers.

It's true.

The people who are just above immigrants on the economic scale, they always get fucked when immigrants come into the country.

But that's the thing.

No, everybody, all taxpayers.

Not everybody.

It's not true.

Let me just say.

Well, okay, rich people don't have to care about it.

If you want to do metaphors, let's do this one.

Why is America the number one country in the world by a lot of standards?

You always remind us to be a little bit more humble.

It's because we get to cheat and bring in all these amazing people from all these countries.

When you go to the Olympics, when the China team comes out, God bless them, but they're all Chinese.

When the Kenya team comes out, God bless them, they're all from Kenya.

When our team comes out, it looks like the Muppet Show.

We've got everybody

from every country here whooping ass.

I like that.

I want more of this.

You know what the home team looks like, native talent?

It looks like the people you went to high school with.

You don't want those people going up against the world.

You want help for those people.

So the reality is that when high-tech folks come here, when hard-working folks come here, it's good for America.

And I think what's going on right now, 100 years ago, you know who they didn't want here?

They didn't want Italians here.

They didn't want Irish here.

They didn't want Jews here.

They didn't want Poles here.

And 100 years later, now it's these other folks.

And guess what?

America's better.

because those Italians came and those Jews came and those Poles came and it's better because these people are coming today.

That's the truth.

That's That's the truth.

And we can do it smarter, but that's the truth.

I agree with you.

Tell Kanye about the Jews.

I've tried.

I agree with you on getting better immigrants, but when we're just, when the only requirement is must live within walking distance, that isn't getting the best athletes and the best scientists.

And as for earlier immigrants, you know, 30% of Italians went home.

30% of all immigrants went home.

Now we have a welfare state.

Nobody goes home.

So of course we got the best people for the rest of the world.

I guarantee you, you don't know any of the immigrant people that you're talking about who come here and sponge and sponge.

Every immigrant that I know works harder than I do, and I work pretty goddamn hard.

And they give a damn about their families, they give a damn about their communities, and they're amazing people.

And I'm frustrated with the way that we assume that, look, I love the tech guys coming here, but you know what?

People came here with nothing in their pockets.

100 years ago and 100 days ago and 100 hours ago, and they're going to be as good Americans as anybody else here.

We need to honor that.

Yeah, most of the people who get here are the ones who are most ambitious.

Well, it isn't, I just want to say it isn't a guess.

We know how many immigrants, legal, illegal, non-immigrants, are on welfare.

We know that.

Yeah, we do.

The government produces that, and immigrants are accepting, which they never did before.

It used to be the immigrants outperformed Americans.

Now,

let's end on a cordial note.

We all at this table hate Trump.

Right?

You hate him?

You hate him.

It's going to be a long year.

You hate him and we hate them.

We all hate them.

Maybe for slightly different reasons.

All right.

Thank you guys.

Time for new rules, everybody.

New rules.

Okay, new rules.

Someone must tell me how there can be an Ozempic shortage, and yet nobody will admit to taking it.

It's kind of like when you come home to find garbage strewn about your kitchen and your dog looks at you like, I don't know how it happened.

Why are you looking at me?

Neural, the Florida father who fought off a man trying to abduct his four-year-old from a Miami CBS must be given a special commendation, not only for defending his son, but for being the first person ever to stop someone from stealing its CBS.

Neural, someone has to tell the group of pro-Palestinian Harvard students who participated in a joint 12-hour hunger strike that there's no such thing as a 12-hour hunger strike.

Oh,

what dedication to the cause.

Until Palestine is free, we will not eat a meal between dinner and breakfast.

Congratulations, Freedom Fighters.

You just did about half of what every high school girl does to fit into her prom dress.

New rule, enough with the foot washing.

From the Bible to the Super Bowl, it's the 2,000-year-old kink that makes Christians go, amen, but the rest of us go, yuck.

As religious rituals go, it beats throwing virgins into a volcano, but just barely.

And if foot care is such a Christian thing, how come all the professionals are Buddhist?

That's all right.

I don't need your pity.

Wait, I may need your pity.

New rolls, since a study just found that those men, that men who use Viagra have an 18% lower, lower risk of Alzheimer's.

Viagra needs a new ad campaign.

Use Viagra and be hard to forget.

Ask your doctor if Viagra is right for you.

And if he says, I'm not your doctor, I'm the mailman, and I just fucked your wife,

try Viagra.

And finally, new rule: there's still nine months to go before the election, and my nerves are already shot, so everybody has to stop turning the hyperbole knob up to 11.

Sean Hannity says things like,

Every single thing you can think of is worse under Joe Biden.

Oh, for fuck's sake, Kimberly,

stop being such a drama queen or go change your pad.

Right, the American dream is dead because Mars bars used to cost a dollar and now they cost $1.25.

Yes, everything is worse under Biden.

The flowers don't smell as sweet, the Wi-Fi is slower, IHOP tables are stickier, boners aren't as stiff, and

even the fentanyl doesn't hit like it used to.

You know, it's just

gets so dull constantly hearing the same talking points you know they would be making no matter how things were going.

Congresswoman Nancy Mace said, To be honest, it's been a complete shit show since Trump left the White House.

So the shit show came after the hand-to-hand combat inside the Capitol.

Now, would I choose Joe Biden as my partner in the squid games?

No.

But facts are facts.

For months, we've been treated to a steady stream of very good economic news.

Unemployment is low.

The stock market is high.

We're investing billions in a green energy economy only minutes after it was too late.

Every single economist thought we'd be in a recession by now.

No, job growth keeps going up.

Everyone who wants a job can find one, except Nikki Haley.

Inflation is down to normal levels.

Home ownership is up, GDP way up.

Our economy came back from the pandemic and outperformed all of our peer nations by margins that are not even close.

Or as the American Enterprise Institute says, Joe Biden and the Fed have completely ruined the U.S.

economy.

It's boring.

You're boring me.

I know what you hacks on both sides, yes, are going to say before you even say it.

Biden has decimated the military.

Yeah, like you said, Obama did and Clinton did, even though Biden's military spending went up from Trump's, just as every military budget goes up under every president.

Senator Marsha Blackburn says, Joe Biden has destroyed U.S.

energy independence, apparently by producing record amounts of energy of all kinds and more than at any time under Trump.

There are numbers for this stuff.

Biden's environmental left hates him because he auctioned off 73 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico for drilling and approved the Willow Project on the north slope of Alaska.

We pump more oil than Russia does now, more than Saudi Arabia.

Or as Lauren Boebert explains, under Biden we are back to being dependent on the Middle East again.

With all due respect, Congresswoman, don't jerk me off.

And

is it really healthy to blame every problem in your life on Joe Biden?

I can't find a job in this historically low unemployment economy.

Thanks a lot, Joe Biden.

The price of milk in France has gone up.

I blame Biden.

My wife hasn't had sex with me for months.

Damn you, Joe Biden.

You know, a record number of Americans identify now as independents, making them the largest political bloc by far.

And I think the reason for that is this kind of mindless partisanship, which isn't just making it harder to get things done.

It's boring.

For a while, liberal media was full of headlines and quotes about how not only was Ron DeSantis just as bad as Trump, he would be worse.

More dangerous than Trump.

Who's Hitler?

Okay.

Okay, Donald Trump is not Adolf Hitler, just a big fan.

Does everything have to go to DEF CON 1 right away?

Can't you just not like DeSantis but concede he's not Trump?

I think if he lost an election, he'd concede.

He served in the military.

He didn't weasel his way out of it.

He works with the other team when there's a disaster.

And when he does, he even supports, signals his support for the gay community.

Look.

This is going to be a long, grueling, and mostly pointless campaign since everyone already knows which of the two elderly candidates they prefer to barely tolerate.

The one who can't walk upstairs or the one who can't walk down ramps.

But that's where we are.

Can we please not make it even more tedious than it already is?

I don't want to hear any more about how somehow Joe Biden has the energy to completely destroy America, even though he can't open a package of nuts with his teeth.

And I also don't want to hear about how detention centers on the border are concentration camps, or cancel culture isn't real, or there's a war on women.

Okay, there is a war on women, but it's in Afghanistan.

Really?

That doesn't reach you?

No, you're right.

That's the thing we should be doing.

Weird crowd, I blame you.

And as for there being no such

thing as cancel culture, tell that to the Jeopardy guy, the bachelor guy, the Dilbert guy, Louis C.K., Garrison Keeler, Chris Hardwick, Chris Matthews, Ellen, Sharon Osborne, Dr.

Seuss, Kevin Spacey, and the actress from The Mandalorian, which I assume is a hotel.

And you do know that Army Hammer doesn't actually eat people, right?

If there were no such thing as cancel culture, I'd still be on ABC.

Al Franken would still be in the Senate, the Connors would still be funny, and Colin Kaepernick would have just won the Super Bowl.

All right, that's our show.

We're off next week and back March 1st.

I'll be at the MGM Grand in Vegas this weekend.

The Hobby Center in Houston, March 2nd, the Plaza in El Paso, March 3rd, and my Club Random podcast drops every Sunday.

I want to thank Ben Jones, Ann Colter, and Dr.

Gene Flanky.

Now go watch Overtime on CNN at 11:30 or catch it Saturday morning on YouTube.

Thank you, everybody.

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.