Ep. #645: Gavin Newsom, Ari Melber, Andrew Sullivan

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

Start the clock.

How are you down there?

Thank you for coming.

Thank you, everybody.

Welcome to 2024.

I know.

Thank you.

I missed you too.

Great to be back.

All right, please.

We've got such a big show.

Please.

I appreciate it.

Thank you very much.

I know.

It's exciting.

It's exciting.

All right.

Please.

All right.

Thank you very much.

No, really.

I appreciate that.

I know why you're excited.

We're back on the air.

It's a new year.

It's a leap year.

Did you know that?

It's a leap year.

We get one extra day.

I thought, I heard that day.

I thought, oh, that's great.

Then I remembered, oh, one more day of Trump versus Biden.

Fuck no.

Thanks, but no, thanks.

Yeah, I guess that that race is kind of over.

Trump won big in Iowa.

They had the Iowa caucuses.

They had it on Martin Luther King Day.

What better way to honor Martin Luther King than the whitest state in the nation voting for a guy who's going to take you back to the 1950s?

Well, I mean,

come on.

Well, you saw

Nikki Haley came in third.

You saw what she is.

She's a history buff, Nikki.

She said this has never been a racist country.

Never?

I mean we can argue, never, really.

I mean this is someone who goes by Nikki

because she used her real name, no one in her party would vote for her.

But it's not

and

the other

Indian American in the race, Vivek Ramaswamy, he dropped out, dropped out of the race and admitted he is Sasha Barron Cohen.

So that's.

I thought back,

he was the youngest candidate at 38.

Now it's going to be, you know, 82 versus 78, the oldest combined number of years we've ever had running.

Although Trump was bragging this week, he said he feels like a 35-year-old.

He said this,

he owes it to his fitness routine.

Really?

He says every morning he does a hundred brain farts.

Well, he does.

You see, he has a new,

this man has a new random obsession, magnets.

Did you see this?

Magnets?

He says, you know, magnets are in everything mechanical.

Trump says they don't work if they're wet.

He said he could personally cripple an aircraft carrier with just a glass of water.

And Putin said, me too, I poisoned the captain.

But here,

this is what the internet is very upset about today.

There's a picture of Trump holding his hands waving after he gets out of court, where he always is,

and he's got red on his hands.

Okay, now James Carville, who I love so much, but he's, I think this is right.

He said that syphilis.

Okay, we don't, we

don't know that it could be anything.

We don't know that.

But just to be safe today, Trump told Ivanka to get tested.

Well, here's some good news for Biden.

Consumer sentiment, you know what that is?

Consumer sentiment.

That's when we feel good about spending money we don't have for stuff we don't need.

That's way up because gas prices are going down and are down.

Mortgage rates going down.

Food is still expensive.

But with Ozempic, who needs it?

Hey, this is.

Do you notice?

Do you notice over vacation a lot of people looking slim here in California?

Yeah, we love it here.

Well, we do.

Come on, the weather, I mean, you've seen the cold all across this country.

Yeah, it's rough.

I mean, Washington, D.C.

got a bunch of snow the other day.

Lauren Boebert

was

caught on tape trying to jerk off a snowman.

Marjorie Taylor Greene,

she actually likes the coat.

She gets to show off her coat made of 101 Dalmatians.

And finally,

little pop culture.

I thought this was interesting.

I don't know what it says about the times we live in, but Kanye West

maybe removed all his teeth.

Maybe didn't.

I don't know.

The internet is arguing about that.

But he put this in a,

he wanted to look like Jaws in the Bond movies.

A titanium grill.

So it's just he has just, that's what he looks like now.

I think this shows: if you pick on Jews enough, you're going to get bad advice from a dentist.

All right.

We've got a great show.

We have Andrew Sullivan and Ari Melber, but first up,

he's our governor.

Gavin Newsom is over here.

Yes, sir.

Look at that.

Hey.

Aren't you glad you came out?

Good to be here.

Yes, thank you.

Take it down.

See?

Unbelievable.

Better than when I was recalled.

It's been too long.

It has been too long.

They missed you.

This is a California show.

Look at this.

A lot of abuse.

By the way.

Thank you.

Legit.

I'm grateful.

I'm grateful.

I was always a California show when most of the shows were in New York, right?

Always a booster.

Okay.

Always.

You have me on.

I was a lieutenant governor and you have me on.

I mean, who has lieutenant governors on?

It's amazing.

And I said then you're going to run for president one day, and we know it's not this year.

I'm not going to even go there.

No, I'm glad we're not going there.

No.

Okay.

Here's the first thing I want to ask you, because this is one of our big industries.

Yes.

All right.

All right.

I'm sitting up.

I'm looking forward to this.

Come on.

I'm just asking.

I'm used to Hannity, so I mean,

I got to lean forward.

Okay.

And I think it's great you talked to Hannah.

I appreciate it.

Okay, so the strike.

We were at for five months.

And during that, I was asking, why doesn't the governor get more involved?

And maybe I just don't know how it works, but I remember exactly.

No, in terms of just, I mean,

in terms of the public facing in that respect.

Well, in terms of the politicians do do jawboning.

Certainly presidents do it.

Why couldn't the governor say, this is an important industry in our state, one of our most important, you knuckleheads are going to find a number that you agree on at some some point.

It always happens.

Instead of putting these people out of work for all these months and all the suffering and heartache, can we just get it done today?

Well, we did all of that except the knucklehead part was expressed

on multiple occasions down here on many, many different occasions.

But I don't remember you ever meeting with them personally.

Personally, meeting with both sides.

Absolutely.

Oh.

Not only meeting with both sides, meeting with individuals, phone calls, text messages, emails, working behind the scenes in the national groups, state groups.

So it's all part of the art of the possible in the deal, in the context of not showing your cards and showing a bias up front so you can be constructive behind the scenes when both parties call you, when you're needed.

And as a governor, I'm dealing with strikes all across the state, school board strikes, dealing with bargaining units right now in the state of California, and obviously the private sector as well.

So again, sometimes you're more public, sometimes it's done behind the scenes.

So

I want to

one of my,

you know, again, always been a California booster, but there are things that are frustrating about this state.

One of the things is I feel like unforced errors, and one of them is we're so over-regulated.

I want to permit San Francisco Housing.

A couple years ago, they only built like 2,000 units.

We have a housing shortage.

87 permits needed.

to begin development, 15 from the Planning Commission, 26 from Public Utilities Commission, 19 from the Department of Building Inspection, 17 from Public Works, 10 more for permits related to public spaces.

You remember the problem I had hooking up my solar.

Solar.

I know.

Yes, indeed.

Yes.

It was mentioned once or twice on the city.

Yes, it was.

Yes.

Why can't, wouldn't this even just be a good political issue?

Cut red tape.

You're not going to offend the...

But I've been suing these cities.

I sued Huntington Beach because they're out of compliance on their housing element.

We threatened to sue San Francisco.

They just came in compliance.

I created a new housing accountability unit to do exactly what you suggest we should be doing.

It's a completely new day.

We've been doing this aggressively.

We have three other cities in our sites.

As we speak and talk about convening, I convened 46 jurisdictions on this subject.

And we've also passed 32 reform bills, CECA reform bills, since I've been governor just in the last four and a half years.

So I couldn't agree with you more.

And we're punching hard to address these issues and address the original sin in California which is affordability supply demand imbalance in terms of housing and getting housing construction moving in the state of California so top priority and absolutely share that

well okay

great

I gotta say

and by the way

I hate to even bring this up I remember you were absolutely aware that 1.7 million dollar bathroom in San Francisco

a toilet yes 1.7 million dollars to taxpayer dollars for one toilet an outdoor toilet

And so I

saw screaming headlines all across the country, but none that next day when we killed that project.

And we forced them to come back to us.

But I get your point.

The point is this happens too often.

But we're policing those things and we're addressing those concerns and we're going back.

And I just, my frustration with the state, there's sort of a weaponization of grievance, which I completely understand.

And there's a propensity to focus on what's wrong, not what's right.

And those screaming headlines in terms of the attacks and the shots, shots, they go around the world, but the solutions and strategies to address them

and the pivots often.

You've got to get a better public.

I agree.

I agree.

Really?

Well, I'm glad to be on the show, bro.

Okay, yeah.

Well, I always said you make a great case.

You know, I saw you debating DeSantis.

I said, you know, I'm trying to get this guy to run for president for a long time.

He looks like he'd be very good at it.

What I liked with that also is that you're kind of mean, and we need that.

Well, you need to be, not over the top.

But I was on.

I appreciate that.

I was on KBLA the other day, yesterday, with my friend Tavis Miley.

I'm an investor and a supporter of that station.

And he said, who do you want to run for president?

I mentioned, I think you'd be good at the job.

Not this year, we know.

No, I know.

But he said, I don't think he could win.

I don't think he could win.

He's too progressive, coming from this state and what he's done in this state, to win in any southern state, any red state.

I disagreed, but

this is a progressive African-American-owned station, and I'm sure they like you, but he doesn't think you can win.

What do you say to that

if you could win the...

Look at the swing states.

There's only eight of them.

Right.

Well, I mean, California is an interesting case study, isn't it?

It's the size of 21 state populations combined.

Two-thirds of the state is very deeply red.

We don't need to be lectured on rural politics or border issues.

I mean, in so many ways, these are familiar issues, and the issues of the heartland of the United States are very much a part and parcel of the work we're doing in this state.

But look, I understand this notion that you're from the coast, you don't understand those things, you can't talk the language, you're not able to communicate, you're not able to actually encourage and find that conversation.

No, it's stuff like there's a new law in this.

I think we have way too many regulations and laws, as we've talked about.

And this one, I think, says if you're a department store with over

500 employees, you have to have a gender neutral

toy department.

Stuff like that.

Yeah, I get get it.

So do you think that's

silly?

Do you think that's a silly thing that

we're

too much government there?

Look, that's an interesting one because the department stores came to us supporting that.

And they're the ones making a case for that.

They're already moving in that direction.

Why don't you make a law about them?

Well, but they've supported the legislation.

It wasn't legislation that was enacted, that was initiated from my office, but it was legislation that came up with interesting support from the industry itself.

But I understand how that's exploited, and good people can disagree.

But that's not something we woke up and said, this is a top priority for the state when we know what the top priority is: homelessness, housing, the issues of crime, quality of life, and issues related to regulation and taxes, which are all top of mind.

But I get how those things went over.

All right.

So

why I got you here because I live here and I'm not going anywhere.

So I just want to make this a better state like everybody else.

And good job this year making it rain.

You're welcome.

That was.

That was

my legislative priority.

It was looking bad there for a while and we still don't have enough water in the Colorado River and all this stuff.

And then whenever I read, 80% of the water goes to agriculture.

Almonds.

No one ever asked you about almonds.

Oh, I'm going to ask you about almonds.

We grow a boatload of almonds.

I'm well aware.

You know how much?

How much water it takes?

90 gallons.

1,900 gallons to grow a pound of almonds.

Come on, man.

Take on big almonds.

Take on big almonds.

I mean, it's not like we don't have the water.

No.

But

you're right about it.

It's not that we don't have the water.

That said, you know, the last couple years were tough.

I mean, but it's also where the water is falling and we're not capturing it.

And we're not capturing in those extreme years with these atmospheric rivers.

Wets are getting a lot wetter, dry is drier, hot's getting a lot hotter.

And so we've got to modernize our conveyance system.

We've got to modernize our storage, not just above ground, but below ground.

And so that's a big part of our focus and frame, including desalinization plants.

We have 20 projects just on desale that we're working on today.

So we've been, we put out a detailed water strategy that includes, by the way, getting that Delta conveyance project back up and operational and includes the first above ground off-stream

storage facility in half a century in the state, which, by the way, is being aided by a regulatory package I pushed forward to reduce red tape in the state of California and address the permitting quagmires that you rightfully pointed out.

Say you're

you're good at this.

I'm telling you, you're good at this job.

Okay, but here's the

question.

But

here's,

I feel like the last couple of years you've like purposely picked this fight with the red states.

I mean, the DeSantis.

Yeah, but I don't want to live in the civil war country.

I agree with that.

You know what?

But you seem like you purposely want to set up this dichotomy between, oh, this is a blue state and that's a red state.

And I don't want to live in that country.

I like Florida.

I'm with you.

And by the way,

I like Florida as well.

I like all these states.

I completely agree.

I don't want to have a state of mind that's a constant fight or flight.

We've gone through so much.

We've been polarized and traumatized.

This has been a tough five, six years across the globe, not just in this country.

That said, I'm not going to sit back and watch.

You made the point just a moment ago in your monologue.

You've got folks out there trying to bring us back to a pre-1960s world.

America in reverse, rolling back voting rights, LGBTQ rights, women's rights, not just access to abortion, but contraception.

I mean, it's a profound and consequential moment.

And you could sit by and say, well, I really want to get along.

And these guys are rolling back the clock, or you can stand tall and assert yourself.

And the reason I started to go into those red states, the reason I started to take on DeSantis, and the reason I started doing ads in these red states, is I didn't feel my party was doing enough.

It was CRT one year, and then it's ESG and it's DEI, anything with three letters.

These guys keep coming, and they're shape-shifting.

And

they're traumatizing.

And so, but it's true, right?

And

so, and I just thought there was a little timidity in our party, and I thought we need to call this stuff out.

These guys are being on a banning binge across this country.

You want to talk about cancel culture.

Look at the Republican Party.

Ask Bud Light, Target, Disney.

That's just the private sector, banning speech, not just in the classroom, but in the boardroom as it relates to issues of race.

Look what they've done.

3,362 books just last year they're banning.

This is a serious and consequential moment.

It's the cultural purge that's going on in this country.

And so I just felt like we needed to call that out as Democrats and put them on the defensive since we're consistently on our heels as a Democratic Party, even though I think the facts bear out our case significantly better than the case on the other side.

But again,

Bill, I say all that with love in my heart.

With love in my heart.

And I mean that, man.

I mean, I don't talk down to people.

I don't want to talk past people.

Everyone wants to be respected, connected, and protected.

And we all want to be loved and need to be loved.

I'm with you on all that.

At the same time, man, when you're going after the LGBT community and talking down to people and humiliating folks, you're threatening to sue the Special Olympians.

When you're going after the black community and trying to rewrite history and saying slavery somehow was some workforce development program, damn it, we have to call that stuff up.

Off my high horse.

Can you teach that speech to Biden?

Thank you very much.

I know you're a busy man.

I really appreciate you doing this.

Let's not make it so long next time.

Gavin Newsom.

Thank you, buddy.

We'll see what's next for him.

All right, let's meet our panel.

Hey!

All right, he is MSNBC's chief legal correspondent and the host of The Beat with Ari Melver, which airs every weekday at 6 o'clock.

Ari Melver is here.

And he writes the weekly Dish newsletter and is the author of the essay collection Out on the Limb.

Andrew Sullivan, I think our...

Always our returning champion, I think our most frequent guest.

Are you not?

Yes,

I think you hold that title, Andrew.

All right, gentlemen.

So, as we were talking there,

it's going to be Biden and Trump.

I think when we came back after the strike in September, we were very much on the same page trying to get Biden to maybe step aside, and that didn't work.

And so here we are.

The primaries have started.

It's going to be him.

It's going to be Trump.

So the question turns to for the people, and we don't have ideological diversity about Donald Trump on this panel.

None of us want to see Donald Trump, and lots of people feel that way.

So they've gone to the courts.

Colorado is the first.

Washington State yesterday said Trump can stay on the ballot, but they are going to the courts saying under the Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which

may not be on the tip of everyone's mind.

I was a little foggy on it, but it says anyone involved in insurrection or rebellion cannot run for president.

That is what they're throwing against Donald Trump.

And it's interesting because, okay, wait.

So I'm going to get you guys on this.

First, the question of, like,

was it an insurrection or a rebellion?

Now, I think the second he did not concede the election, broadly that's an insurrection.

But they're talking about John.

Okay, all right,

okay.

Let's not make it a rally.

So, first of all, is there an actual legal case?

You could be good on this.

I think you have a law degree.

It's true.

And then, even if there is,

is it not social suicide to attempt it?

There's not a good legal case of precedent to kick a presidential candidate off the ballot absent a very serious conviction.

And while there's overwhelming evidence that Trump tried to overthrow the incoming president-elect's government, he hasn't been tried yet.

And if he's tried, he still hasn't been charged with insurrection, which actually is a federal statute.

So some Supreme Court cases are close and you wait on them.

This one, almost overwhelmingly.

obvious that the court will keep Trump on the ballot as legally it should.

Your second question is, what are are we doing here and is it a good idea to try to stop people from facing elections by finding a judge somewhere in some state to just say they committed insurrection?

I think it's a bad idea and I don't think it would work well.

It's a very strange look to say we are fighting for democracy and therefore we will not let you vote for the person you might want to vote for.

It's completely contradictory.

Secondly, the way you defeat Trump is the way you always could have defeated Trump, which is by going on the issues that he wins voters on.

Things like immigration, things like inflation, things like the sense that

there is no control over the global economy in which people are suffering and losing their jobs and have no idea what the future is.

That is how you beat Trump.

They keep throwing lawsuits.

The first thing they tried was this Russia stuff as a way to get out of Trump free card.

Let's find some gimmick, some Deusx mashioner that can get rid of him.

Let's try the Russia hoax.

Let's try this impeachment.

Let's try that.

Let's try and put him on a legal suit about paying off hush money to a porn star that we've got down to the fraud allegations in New York City.

People are noticing this, and what they're saying is one side seems to want to stop us having the choice we want, the other side doesn't.

And that is a terrible way for the Democrats to give up themselves.

I don't know.

I mean, you're giving the voters maybe more credit than they should get when you say go by the issues.

I don't know if people go by the issues.

I was reading this today in the paper.

One in three people in this country

will not accept the results.

One in three will accept the results of the election.

That's on both sides.

A quarter of the people have no confidence that we have free and fair elections.

Biden voters, one in three, not confident.

Of course, 70% of Trump voters will only accept a Trump victory.

46% of Biden voters will only view his victory as legitimate.

Why even have an election?

I mean, given numbers like this, you really think it's about issues?

It's not a problem.

It is why you have an election.

The only way a country that's divided can ever resolve its questions is to have an election with the candidates that both parties support with no constraints and have us actually decide who's going to be president.

That's why we do it.

That's what a democracy is.

There's no way around that.

There's no legal suit to kind of get rid of that.

And the attempt to disqualify him somehow on a technicality just smacks us.

It's a little more than a technicality, is it not?

Am I wrong about this?

Well, here's what I think.

If he is convicted of a coup, which is what he's facing a trial for in DC in the Jack Smith case then voters have to factor that in because if you vote for someone who by a jury of their peers in the justice system is a convicted coup leader that might be the last vote you ever you ever cast

a coup leader yeah

I don't know if you saw the insurrection was on television and everything you're talking about the Georgia case no I'm not talking about Georgia okay I'm talking about the

the federal case, which again, I'll go out of my way to say he's presumed innocent and there's going to be a trial, but yes, these issues aren't so cleanly cleaved because if he's convicted of trying to steal the election, voters have to look at that, right?

Because you might not be voting against

that person in power.

I think the problem is that January 6th is this shiny object that distracts people because it's murky.

He did say on that day, protest peacefully and patriotically.

All they have to do is present that in court and say, what are you talking about, a coup?

Again, the coup was from the beginning to this day, not conceding the election.

That is the crime.

That is the crime, because

that puts everything else in motion where we have this state where people don't accept elections anymore.

So I don't think that's a technicality, Andrew.

No, it's a statement that he made, which is a despicable statement.

He made statements like that before the previous election.

He's actually denied that almost any election that he didn't agree with was done fairly.

So the question is, does a lunatic like this, and I agree with you, he's a crazy person, he's a despicable person, he's a dangerous person, I do not want him anywhere, but you're not going to defeat him this way.

That may be the case, but I'm just saying it's a little more than a technicality.

Yeah, it's more than a technicality.

I think we have, it sounds like agreement on the ballot disqualification, and there's no precedent for it.

So I don't expect the Supreme Court to allow it.

And I don't think pursuing things without any historical foundation is a good idea in law.

But as for what he did, it was a lot more than statements.

There was a multi-pronged plot, at least six plots.

That's why so many of his aides are convicted.

They are convicted in multiple states.

His lawyers need lawyers, and many of them have pled out.

Giuliani is bankrupt and facing criminal charges.

Trump may ultimately be acquitted.

We have to support the rule of law, I think.

But they tried to have voter fraud lies and smearing people to get a pretext to steal the race at the state level, to have the states over.

turn the vote, to have Congress deny the certification.

There was a violent insurrection that his people were aware of, whether he planned it, we we don't know, and the case may help resolve it.

And we'll leave that one out of it.

So you can even leave that out, and you have these multiple plots.

He faked electors.

He also wanted the Pentagon to seize voting machines, and his aides stopped him.

So the fact that you're really bad at robbing banks doesn't mean we want you to run our money.

Yes, we have.

Right.

Everyone has seen.

Everyone has seen this man does not respect democratic norms.

Everyone saw him try and get out of losing the last election.

They know this already.

There's no way you can better prove it.

The task then is for the democracy to say, are we going to vote this person back in or not?

And if they do, that is what we have to accept.

That is what democracy means.

Okay.

So, Roger Stone, one of his favorites,

this is amazing that it was not a big story.

I would think it would be.

Media reported it.

There's a tape.

He's talking about killing people for Trump.

Not saying with Trump's approval, but he says it's time to do it.

Let's go find Swalwell.

That's Congressman Swalwell.

It's time to do it.

Then we'll see how brave the rest of them are.

It's either Swaller or Nadler has to die before the election.

Let's go find Swalwell and get this over with.

That's not right, is it?

I mean,

I feel like we're spinning out of control a little here with stifling.

I just think what Trump set in motion and what the divisions of the country has done and what the Democrats have done in the last four years, which is respond to Trump by going even further to the left,

means that we are losing the legitimacy of the system.

And that is the critical thing.

When you lose that core legitimacy, you lose your democracy.

That's where we're really going to lose our democracy, because we don't believe in it anymore.

And you can see that the result of that, the way this works, is you start disbelieving in all the institutions and then you say, who do I want?

You want a strong man.

You want someone to come in and cut all the knots.

This is the classic case of how you lose a democracy.

And he's almost certainly going to be there.

He's going to win this election.

Almost certainly.

I think you make fair points, Andrew, but you sound a little bit both sidesy.

I don't know if that's on purpose or not.

Well, then you've just been complimented.

Thank you.

In your mind.

But

there's absolutely problems with the there's absolutely problems with the Democratic Party and the over your action to Trump.

We just spoke about the ballot case and its thinness, and we cover that all the time on the news.

But there's not equivalence here on the problems that you just referred to.

There's not equivalence on political violence.

There's not equivalence on responding to court cases.

Bush v.

Gore was very controversial, but there was no violent response, and there was not any mainstream response from Democrats about overthrowing the certification.

Al Gore actually showed up on Jan 6, remember it was that date, and certified it.

So there isn't a both sidesism to this decay.

And what Trump does, and I agree at times he may draw his opponents into messy, dumb feuds, but he is the one banking on a cynicism, an attack on democracy, and a complete rejection of the policy, democracy that you want because they didn't even have a platform.

So he's saying it's just me.

You don't even know what I'm going to do.

Just vote for me, no platform, and you've got a whole Republican Party that's basically codifying that.

You know what would be good at MSNBC is if you actually did think about both sides and weighed the arguments and make constructive arguments against that side while respecting them.

You don't do that.

It's standard all the time.

And by denying anybody.

What you just said, just describe my show.

It's like I had a Trump lawyer on this week.

I've had Steve Bannon on my show.

I've had Williams.

I watch him White House officials.

I watch him as a publication.

Right, so I'm learning.

You describing the goal that I'm achieving, I take that as a compliment.

In your mind.

Let's be nice.

It's the first show of the year.

Let's not tear each other's face off.

Face ripper monkey.

I mean.

Bill?

No,

we learned our media criticism from you, Dad.

All right, so, Dad, fuck you.

You're not looking right there.

Anyway,

it is the new year, and I see a lot of celebrities are making their resolutions there.

I see Megan Markle is going to stop swearing.

I didn't know this was a problem before.

I never heard her swear, but okay.

And Blake Shelton, he's going to stop drinking so much.

But these are not the only celebrities who have made resolutions.

Would you like to hear some of the.

I knew you would.

I knew you would.

Kanye West resolved that this is the year he finally quits eating lead paint.

Britney Spears resolved to only juggle safe knives this year.

Wow.

Nick Romney says he's going to quit fentanyl.

That's ridiculous.

Bad Bunny resolved to be a good bunny.

The Rocks resolution, start working out less.

Oh, Madonna has resolved to recycle old faces.

Nikki Haley resolved to buy a history book and find out what exactly was so racist about slavery.

slavery.

And Elon Musk resolved to find a way to implement Tesla tech into Twitter so it can drive itself into the ground.

Oh, Elon, we're just kidding you.

So

what did you make of that Nikki Haley comment?

I mean, it's one thing to argue, and you write eloquently about it, I think, race in America 2024.

I say very often, let's live in the year we're living in.

Things have changed a lot.

It's always a difficult argument to make because if you acknowledge any progress, the left is like, what are you saying?

We're finished?

No, we're not saying that.

We're saying, you know, there's a problem in the body politic.

Let's use the blood work from this year, not 1990.

Okay.

But.

I don't understand a politician in 2024.

I understand a politician saying racism very different, saying we never

have racism where, and she's supposed to be the bright one.

I don't understand.

This country, whether, it's just a fact.

It was built around slavery.

Its racism has been deeply embedded in it.

Yes.

But it's not entirely defined by that.

And it's partly defined by the battle against it.

By the fact that Americans sacrificed their lives to end slavery.

Hundreds of thousands of them lost their lives.

The fact that blacks and whites and all sorts of races have managed to make things so much better.

And the idea that you have to somehow exonerate everything in the past in order to defend the conservative point of view is insane.

And

I'm...

As someone who's conservative, I'm glad it's 2024.

And I think the kind of humane protections that we have now for people like me, for transgender people, for racial minorities are terrific.

I think that people are overdoing things right now and attempting to push things so far that they're beginning to discriminate against whites, Asians, Jews, and all the rest of it in favor of others in a way that actually violates the spirit of the civil rights movement.

So that I think is worth debating.

But though we have a racist past, though we need to overcome that, that's not debatable.

And this week poll, affirmative action, which the Supreme Court got rid of, okay,

most Americans think that was good.

Most Americans say, consider race when admitting people to colleges.

No, let's stop doing it.

We don't need to do that anymore.

A healthy majority of Hispanics agreed with that.

And a slight majority of African Americans agreed with that.

So a majority of all Americans agreed with that.

It seems like the only people still arguing for it, you know, mostly are the social justice warriors.

And I'm wondering sometimes if they care more about the worrying than the issue itself.

I'll do Haney at affirmative action.

I think you spoke eloquently about this battle and this American process.

For her,

we see that in a Republican primary, it's a litmus test to be able to lie through your teeth about history.

So that could be about racism, slavery, Jim Crow, or it could be about January 6th, which is recent history.

The Speaker of the House said he wants to shield the faces of people who broke into the Capitol.

So that means you have to either be for that or lying about what they did.

And so I think that's a big problem for them.

Affirmative action has had a rocky road, and the Supreme Court has now limited it, so it's not even all that available.

But the way that we pick the leadership of the country from the private to the public sector is not equal, and we haven't figured that all out.

So if you look at that actual process, it doesn't work.

Well, I brought some numbers because I know you like facts.

I do.

2009.

Why do you say that like like it's a joke?

Like I'm Glenn Beck or something.

I meant it.

No, I meant it more like.

I know you like facts.

I meant it more like, I want you to feel seen because you and I like facts.

Okay, all right, great.

But I can see it.

Because I do.

I love facts.

So in 2009, that's the first time America ever had a...

black woman CEO in any Fortune 50 company.

1987, first time you had a black male, one each.

Do you know how many black male CEOs there are on the Fortune 50 today?

Still one.

How many black women?

Still one.

Now, gender, which I think you go half the population in business or college or wherever.

In 2010, 94% of the Fortune 50 CEOs, 94%

were men.

Now, today, 2023, have we fixed this all?

Is the process working?

Is it a meritocracy?

Anyone want to guess how many are men today, Fortune 50 CEOs?

90%.

So either you look at that and say, it's working perfectly, right?

Never seen a better process.

Or you ask, and this is what civil rights lawyers are supposed to do.

They're not supposed to just have a pre-cooked narrative.

But when something is that shifted, you say, is this process not fair?

Is there something going on?

And you can deal with that with diversity recruitment.

Tim Cook was the first gay CEO in the Fortune 50, and that was in 2011.

And that number is still around two out of 50.

So if you look at that and you say, is it only that 10% of women can do this job, or is there something broken here?

I think that's a really fair question.

I mean, yeah.

There are countless reasons, very complicated reasons, why certain things end up in certain ways.

Racism is part of it.

Discrimination is part of it, but it's just a part of it.

Also, there's a question of difference in abilities, difference in cultures, difference in upbringings.

Whole things can lead into inequalities at the very top.

Does 90% male sound right, though?

Does that sound like it's working right?

I honestly don't

obsess about the gender or race or sexual orientation of people.

As they can do the job, I'm in favor of them doing the job.

I believe, believe it or not, in merit.

I believe in being able to do a job regardless.

of your identity as opposed to being hired because of your identity.

And when that happens, when that latter happens, when you fear you're being promoted because you're a gay person or you're a trans person or a black person, you rob people of the pride of ownership of their own success.

You create this doubt, this cloud of doubt over everybody of a certain race, which they don't deserve to be under because you've rigged the system from the get-go and people know it's been rigged.

So, may I?

I think.

Yeah, I just want to say one thing about you.

I mean, I'm sure you're right and your facts are right about CEOs.

I happen to know like board, like corporate boards, it's much different, at least with the women, because I looked it up after I saw Barbie.

Oh, really?

Because I think...

You can look at colleges.

Right, right.

I think we're at college, which is the key thing for future advancement.

And see, women are almost 60% now.

And in fact, this does take time.

It does take time.

Societies don't change overnight.

But if you rely upon the principle of merit and not on the process of racism, which is what DEI is, It is defining people by their race.

I'm not promoting them on that basis alone.

Let's tell people what DEI is who may not know those letters.

Well, it's something Gavin Newsom just disowned.

Did you notice that?

He's figuring it out.

I was interested in that.

Yes.

They realized.

DEI stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Like the word woke, started out as a noble aspiration, morphed into something else.

I mean, I I was reading today, Johns Hopkins, I think they took this back, but their DEI department had a list of privileged identities, white, able, hetero, male, middle-aged, okay,

Christians speak English.

I mean all these things, certainly traditionally in America, it was good to be.

Again, let's live in the era we're living in.

That is not always the case today,

and I think that's why this is under fire.

And DEI, I mean, some of these schools, I think the bigger problem is that that is part of administrations in schools, as opposed to the actual people who teach, who are very far left-wing also.

There's very little diversity of thought.

They love the idea of diversity.

As long as you will agree with me.

As long as you agree, right.

You know, it's like, let's have...

Can I reply to Anne?

Yeah, I wouldn't stand a chance on any of these college campuses.

I've been disinvited now for years.

Why?

Because I have ideas they want to suppress, people they want to smear, people they want to reject.

And Harvard was one of the worst of those universities.

Well, let me just

DEI, let me just.

DEI is not about opening up opportunities.

It is about systemically discriminating on the basis of race and sex.

So, what we heard from you is a very traditionally conservative critique of diversity recruitment, right?

Or any affirmative action.

It's a liberal, I think.

It's a liberal defense of individual rights.

What you said is a common critique of the program, and it imagines that recruiting for diversity is at odds with merit.

And that is very dicey.

So I go back to the numbers, not the words.

Either you think that only 10% of women are qualified to lead these companies, and this is an obviously just result and can continue forever, or you think there's something broken here.

I'm not saying there's only one way to fix it, but Andrew, when you have competitive

jobs that are highly competitive, there are hundreds of qualified applicants.

And so, trying to look at whether among the qualified applicants you have diversity of leadership, which is something the military filed a brief for affirmative action because they said, we keep an eye on that.

You have to be able to do the job.

We're the darn military, but we want to make sure we have as diverse a leadership core as possible.

The Supreme Court's made that harder to do, but that's necessary.

And if you automatically assume that's at odds with merit, then you should look around and who's at your table because that's not a place you want to be sitting.

Okay.

I just want to

see for mayor.

If it was entirely about merit, Harvard wouldn't have to do anything.

They just blindly.

And this is a problem.

And the people who did the best.

If what you just said is true, then you're assuming that the current system works completely on merit.

And there's a lot of reasons that it doesn't.

It certainly was better than actually Harvard, which is found guilty of openly discriminating against Asians deliberately.

Where the test scores.

This is what we know.

The test scores of African-American applicants are way lower.

But why do you assume

that why do you assume the current system has merit perfectly figured out when the history of political financial representation in this country in America has not been merit?

Because we have civil rights laws since the 60s, because we have made incredible progress through the free society, through the free market, through liberal principles, in people becoming much more able and prominent in the whole various fields.

We should not fuck it up now by imposing on these rigid quotas, attempting to make everything perfect, and at the same time toxifying our discourse, making people really angry.

The one thing we know about DEI

sessions, DEI

programs, is that they make people more racist.

We've seen study after study showing this.

Because if you're obsessed about people's race, I don't feel you.

I don't feel obsessed.

I gave you a real quick, I'll be quick.

And they did not defend the Jews.

I gave you.

The DEI works one way.

Let's get into that.

Jews are gave me the DEI.

Let's get into that, but I gave you numbers.

Quotas have been illegal since 1978 in the Bakke decision.

Quotas are illegal in America.

So we're not talking about quotas.

Hold on a minute.

You have the New York Times publishing the percentage of its staffing, that is this race, that race, this gender, that range.

And then they have goals for where they want to go.

Are you telling me that's all quotas?

No, a quota is a word.

They are deliberately attempting to.

Can I respond?

Carrisp.

A quota is a word and has a legal definition and it means setting aside and having limits.

For example, the university system used to have limits for Jews.

They had a quota of how many and it was a cap.

You can have any allotment that has a minimum or a maximum is called a quota and it was ruled illegal in 1978 and it's not used anymore.

Obviously what we mean is deliberately attempting to change the composition of your workforce according to race or sex, regardless of the merit of the people involved.

Can I just say one more thing about Barbie?

Because you'll bring this whole thing up, and then I gotta go for the new roads.

But

I know, I'm sure you're right about the CEOs, and we should do something about that.

But I went to see Barbie, and the big thing in the movie is she runs into the boardroom of Mattel, her creators, and it's all men, because it's a patriarchy here in 2023.

All men, the board, 12 men.

Well, I went home, I googled it, because it's a real Mattel company.

It's half and half.

I'm just saying,

and then I looked up

the last year they had available info in 2021.

What percentage of new women were, you know, what boards were made of women?

46%.

So, not quite half and half on the board.

CEO, a lot of work to do.

Boards different, at least with women.

Thank you guys.

We've got to go to New Rural.

Okay.

Neural true crime TV shows don't need to tell us that the reenactments are reenactments.

We get it.

Nobody's thinking, hey, how come the cameraman didn't stop the killer?

But the Emmys should add an award for best reenactment acting.

The nominees are Wendy Davis as woman lying in a pool of blood,

Nancy Karp as wrapped-up corpse dragged from house, Martin Gunnet as axe-wielding shadowy figure, and Ben Thomas as out-of-focus first responder behind crime scene tape.

New world, stop acting surprised that Oscar Meyer is having trouble hiring drivers for their Wiener Mobile.

The pay is low, the hours are long, and the job sounds too much like a euphemism.

Oh yeah, that guy, he drives a wiener mobile, if you know what I mean.

New world, now that funny billboards like, Santa sees you when you're speeding, and buckle up, windshields hurt, are about, those are real, are about to be banned by the U.S.

Federal Highway Administration because they're distracting.

Somebody has to tell me why it's still okay to have long paragraphs of small writing and pictures of big tits up there.

And God yelling at me.

I'm just saying, if a little joke is too distracting when you're driving, what about this?

New rural airlines must change their protocol for when a single passenger is acting erratically.

It happens too often, and there's no reason for everyone to be inconvenienced.

From now on, instead of turning the plane around, the flight attendants have to hand the unruly passenger a parachute and then

push him out that hole where the door used to be.

New rules, now that luxury design company Hermes is selling this paper envelope for $125,

let me be the first to say, thanks, I'll send an email.

Really?

125 bucks for an envelope?

For that kind of money, it better lick me.

And finally, new rule for 2024: America has to go back on its meds.

You know, over the holidays, I saw a lot of people, and I asked them all the same two questions.

One, have you seen Woody Harrelson?

He's my ride.

And two, if I said, let's make 2024 the year of blank, what would you say?

I was surprised.

They all said the same thing, sanity.

Let's make this the year of sanity.

Everybody thinks we've gone bonkers.

And

a lot of it is because the far ends on both left and right have gotten way too much attention, which begs the question, how do you suck all the oxygen out of the room and still not get any to your brain?

I feel like it wasn't that long ago when you could watch cable news for a day and not get the impression that this whole place was totally batshit.

That simply was not America.

Florida, yes, but not America.

So

let's examine what makes sane people feel this way.

Sane people who are, after all, still the vast majority and who are the ones who, I assume, just voted me the most trusted man in America.

That is a real headline.

Thank you.

Just call me Billy Fronkite.

Anyway,

what does strike a sane person as crazy?

I don't know.

If you can ask me, I would start with the fact that I still occasionally see someone driving alone with a mask on.

Who do they think they're going to get it from?

The lady in the next car putting on her makeup?

Or

maybe I would say it's the continuing debt ceiling debate.

Every time a Democrat is president, the Republicans threaten to tank the world economy by forcing us to take a vote on whether to pay back the money we already spent.

No other country does this.

It's like eating at a restaurant and then taking a vote on whether to dine in Dash.

And whoever the Republicans make Speaker of the House, if he doesn't vote for Dash, which he really can't do in the job they just gave him, they try to get rid of him.

Congress isn't a deliberative body anymore.

It's a rave without a permit in a burning paint warehouse.

Insane.

But

probably probably the first thing on my and most people's list of insanity is that this guy is going to be president again.

It feels surreal that we're in court every day trying to prove Trump wanted to overturn the election while he's on the campaign trail every day telling everyone they should have overturned the election.

It also strikes normal people.

as insane that Trump fans are perfectly okay with the fact that he was recently asked if he wanted to be a dictator, and he did not say no.

Neither did his lawyer say no when a judge asked him, could a president who was not impeached order SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival?

The lawyer's answer was a qualified yes.

Okay, these are not brain teasers.

Neither should it have been difficult when presidents of elite colleges were asked if it's okay to call for the genocide of Jews, and they couldn't just say, fuck no.

Can't anybody just say fuck no anymore?

Does anybody even know who to root for anymore?

A store manager at Lululemon tried to stop some shoplifters last year, and the CEO fired her, fired the person trying to stop robbers from robbing his store.

That's crazy.

But this is crazy too.

If you rob a store, you can fully expect to be shot as you are leaving that store.

Shot.

Really?

We can't come to some sort of middle ground on this.

On any issue?

Socially liberal but not stupid, woke, fiscally sane but not cruel.

Is this really that hard?

Trans people should be respected and protected, but no penises in women's prisons maybe?

Legalize pop and maybe stop giving drugs to hard drug addicts.

Nikki Haley says America's never been racist and social justice warriors say there's been no progress since Amos and Andy.

A terrorist organization in the Middle East that treats women like slaves invaded Israel last October and shot hundreds of young people at a music festival in the desert.

And now America's streets are full of parades in support of the shooters,

led by the exact kind of people who would be at a music festival in the desert.

That's the literal standard for involuntary commitment when you're a danger to yourself.

I mean,

the NRA are bad, but after a school shooting, they don't march against schools.

Thank you, one guy.

The far left's new crush is the Houthis.

Up until a week ago, everyone on TikTok thought a Houthi was what you get when someone hits your elbow.

Oh.

It gave me a Houthi.

Damn.

And the Houthi's slogan is, God is great, death to the U.S., death to Israel, curse the Jews, Jews, and victory for Islam.

Like, comment, and subscribe.

So, naturally, when the college kids heard that slogan, they said, please stop, you had me at death to the U.S.

Insane.

Insane that we're cheering for the terrorists now.

It's also insane to think that this

would ever come out well.

And it's also insane to feel that it's important to try and prove that Taylor Swift is gay,

which apparently is what the supposedly most esteemed newspaper in America feels is very important to do.

That's so insane.

I don't even get it.

If Taylor Swift is gay, what?

This is somehow a better country?

The far left now insists men can have babies if they just concentrate hard and don't listen to the haters.

Does that make us a better country?

No.

And neither does persecuting a pregnant woman who wants to get an abortion for a fetus doctors say will not survive.

Could everyone just stop being nutty, completely nutty, for five fucking minutes?

The battle for the soul of this country isn't right or left, it's normal versus crazy.

All right, thank you very much.

That's our show.

I'll be at the MGM Grand in Vegas, February 16th and 17th, at the Hobby Center in Houston, Texas, March 2nd, and the Plaza in El Paso, March 3rd.

I want to thank Ali Mober, Andrew Sullivan, and Governor Gavinoosa.

Now go watch overtime on CNN at 11:30 for Catch It Saturday morning on YouTube.

Thank you, folks.

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

For more information, log on to HBO.com.