Ep. #642: David Mamet, Dave Rubin, James Carville

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

Start the clock.

Hey, everybody.

Thank you very much.

Hi.

Thank you, people.

Thank you very much.

Great to be back after a week off.

Hey, thank you.

It's okay.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

It was

quite a week we had.

A big week for death and

politics.

In one week, Rosalind Carter, Henry Kissinger, and the first woman on the Supreme Court, Sandra Day O'Connor, all went to their reward in the sky.

And we also lost George Santos.

But he just went to Abercrombie and Fitch.

But yeah, Congress finally did it.

They kicked him out.

He'll be fine.

If it's one thing we know about him, he knows how to write a resume.

No,

he was something different, that George Santos.

A gay man and a compulsive liar.

I called him a fabulous, fabulist.

And he did not,

he did not go quietly.

When they kicked, oh, he said, Congress, you want to know about Congress?

He said, this place is full of felons galore.

By the way, felons galore is also the name he uses when he does his drag show.

Felons galore.

It's a great name.

No, he was mean.

He's called the head of the ethics committee a pussy.

He said.

And he also said, Congress, I'll tell you about Congress.

He said, there's people in here of all sorts of shisty backgrounds.

Sheisty.

And Marjorie Taylor Green says, shysty, I'm not sure what that is, but it sounds anti-Semitic.

I'm in.

Well,

let's see what's going on in anti-Semite news.

There's so much of it, you know, with the kids today,

the progressives who love Hamas.

Yeah, they protested this week Rosalind Carter's funeral.

I don't know what that had to do with it.

Also, the lighting of the tree, the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center.

The pro-Palestinian people protested that.

No Christmas trees.

That'll teach the Jews.

But the big thing that I got excited at, did you watch the debate last night between.

Okay,

I guess it got higher ratings here because we had one of the participants in it.

It was California Governor

Gavin Newsom against Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

And boy, did they take the gloves off.

Ron DeSantis kept saying, you know, California must be bad because people keep leaving it.

Have these people ever tried to park here?

I don't think people are leaving.

Not enough.

No, he said California is a failed state because of the leftist ideology and Newsom was having none of it.

He said, no, no, no, no, no, no, we're just a big tent under the overpass.

No, I'm telling you, Newsom is good.

You can't get him down.

I mean, he turns everything into a brag

about California.

At one point, did you see this?

DeSantis took out a map of San Francisco showing where all the shit in the street is.

I'm not kidding.

That really happened at a debate.

And Newsom was like, well, that just means California has the most fertile pavement in the nation.

Very impressive.

But,

you know what?

At the end of the day, nobody's mind was changed about anything, right?

These things never do.

What's going to make the difference?

I'll tell you what's going to make the difference.

Gavin Newsom is 6'3 ⁇ with a smile like a movie star.

And DeSantis is 5'10 in heels

with the forced smile of a serial killer.

Okay, so.

So you may not think that that's what's going to make the difference, but I'll tell you this.

At the end of the night DeSantis' wife left with Gavin.

All right, we've got a great show.

We have James Carville and Dave Rubin.

The first of

he is the Polisa Prize-winning playwright, screenwriter, and director who wrote and illustrated his newest book, Everywhere, an oink, oink, an embittered,

dyspeptic, an accurate report of 40 years in Hollywood.

A true literary lion, David Mammet is joining us.

Well, Dave.

Pleasure, such a pleasure.

Thank you so much.

What a pleasure.

Oh.

You had a pleasure.

I always have this experience when I read your books.

I learned something.

I've told you this before.

I learned something on every page.

I thought I was a learned person, and then I read you.

Wow.

Men stopped wearing hats in 1959.

Yeah.

Yeah, no, I know.

I'm just saying, all the two-thirds of the movies ever made are gone.

They're gone, yeah.

Lenin took a lot of his philosophy from the Jesuits.

Gandhi had 31 different loincloths, one for every birthday, or for every day of the month.

For the day of the year, of the month, that's right.

How do you know this shit?

Where is this coming?

I make it up.

My good friend with Shell Silverstein, of course, wrote the Where the Sidewalk has blah, blah, blah.

One day he said, what are you doing, Dave?

I said, I'm writing a movie.

I got to do research.

He said, don't do research.

When you do research, you're just reading something written by somebody who didn't do research.

You don't don't really believe that.

You do a lot of people.

You kind of do, yeah.

Really?

Well, I mean, you said, what I got you, I have to ask some of these things that I'm curious about.

You say movies don't really need dialogue.

Yeah, of course they don't.

Well, now come on.

What the fuck does that mean?

We wouldn't want to go back to silent movies, would we?

Yeah.

Here's why.

Look at, we watch movies in translation, right, that are dub, so we don't know what the dialogue is, right?

We watch movies in translation that have subtitles, so we don't know what the dialogue is.

Also, we'll watch a movie with the sound off on the airplane.

You're watching the next guy's movie, you can't hear the dialogue, right?

You have no idea,

you have no trouble following that movie.

Some movies.

What?

Some movies you have no trouble following.

Yeah, French movies you can follow them, but who cares?

Okay.

Well, you know, and you bring up in the book that, you know, everybody has a great idea for a movie.

The hard part is the end.

Well, the hard part is the hard part is actually writing it.

I did movies for 40 years with my wonderful pal and colleague, Barbara Tulliver, who just started to write.

And she said, I've just realized writing is just making shit up.

Isn't that great?

It is.

Again, no.

I can't go with you.

I don't know what that, of course it is, but you know,

that's facile.

But let me get back to this part of the ending, because you quote somebody, I forget who it is, it says, a great ending has to be both unpredictable and inevitable.

Yeah, that was actually Aristotle, who was a Greek, ran a coffee shop in 53.

Aristotle, but that's so true, and that's, I think, what most people can't get.

You, I mean your movies, I have to say, and I'm reading your book, it shows it, you care more than anybody I've ever read about the audience and not boring them and making sure they care what comes in the next scene.

Why am I hanging on to this?

Yeah.

You know why?

Because I prefer being a playwright to when I used to be a cab driver.

And I had my own little theater company with Billy Macy and Joey Montagna a million years ago, and it was in a garage.

We all had other jobs that we were doing.

We put on plays at night.

The only way one can learn how to write a play is to sit with the audience and say, wait a second, just like you and the comedy writers, right?

You're writing for them.

You aren't writing because some suit had a good idea.

You realized you got their attention until you lose it.

And if you put in an extra syllable in the joke, you lost their attention.

And if you put in an extra joke, you can't get them back.

So you would say plays do need dialogue.

No, listen.

Listen.

Okay, okay, okay, okay.

Consistency is all right in its its place.

You know, like

the French fries at McDonald's, right?

They're never going to be surprising and inevitable.

They're always consistent.

Okay.

I happen to be able to write dialogue, so I write dialogue.

Some people are great with

composing shots, so they compose shots.

But the dialogue can only serve the purpose of interesting the audience.

If it doesn't, I'm back to driving a cab, right?

You learn this when you're working with an audience, because you can feel, just like you can, when they lose their attention, when they start to drift.

You go back and say, guys, you know, I don't think this quite works, let's try it again.

So when you're writing for the audience, you learn to write a play, and it's shameful.

because you said, oh my God, I thought this was the best thing anybody ever wrote.

Yeah, it's funny, you say in the book that

nobody ever liked the stuff you wrote except the actors and the audience.

That's right.

The studio heads never liked it.

Oh, of course not.

You got fired a lot of movies.

I mean, you mentioned a number of them.

One of them, I think, it's We're No Angels you're talking about.

It was De Niro and Jean Penn.

And this is by your recounting.

You say the director, I figure it was a big director who's coming off a big movie.

Yeah, he came off of The Crying Game.

Crying Game, yes.

Okay, so he said, you had the first, you said, you had the first meeting.

You go into his office and he says, Dave, I have some questions about the script.

And you said, then why don't you go fuck yourself?

I'm following, I don't understand your point.

Hey, wait a second, I'm going to prove it to you guys, prove it to you guys why dialogue is not necessary.

The next time you're sitting in your living room, whoever watching the TV, right?

Watching it, at some point, you might want to get up and use the facilities, right?

Has this happened to any of you?

Yes.

Okay.

But we can put it on pause now.

Well, you can, but here's my question.

How do you know what point to do that?

Because you know nothing's going to happen in the scene.

Right.

Right?

Okay.

Duh.

So you can get away with that when you're writing for these idiots and the studio executives because all they're doing, you know, is massaging each other's feet.

But if you're actually writing for an audience, you know that you better be right all the time because when the lights go down, you got their attention, but if you lose it, you ain't going to get it back.

But somebody must have liked your stuff because, I mean, you've had a number of giant hits.

The Verdict, Wag the Dog, The Postman only moved twice.

Well, it's interesting you mentioned those because those three were the three great directors, Sid Lumet, and Wag the Dog was Barry Levinson.

And what's the third one you mentioned?

Well, there's the Postman always rings to the first one.

And the Postman was Grapefelson.

And in all three cases, they said, we got an idea.

Can you write this?

They said, yeah.

They took the script.

They said, thank you, and they went and filmed it the next day, right?

Because, as Billy Wilder always says, keep your first draft next to you, because sure as hell, you're going to come back to it.

Because

as soon as the suits start messing around with it, one of them wants to add mayonnaise, one of them wants to put a little bit of salt, and the third one wants to piss in it and rub it all over his face.

I can't see why you keep getting fired.

Well, you mentioned Billy Wilder.

I read.

Is this true that he was once asked why this paucity of great scripts?

And he said, not everybody can be a mammoth.

He did.

That was the second greatest compliment I ever received in my life.

I was watching, Gunther Schlandor did an interview with Billy on German TV, and Gunther asked him that, and he said, not everyone can be a mammoth.

I didn't even realize that he knew my work, and he was an absolute genius.

And his command of the American idiom was superb, especially as he learned English when he was, I think, 30 years old.

And then this, you mentioned that you could have done Raging Bull.

Yeah.

I think you dodged a bullet on that one.

I mean, I'm a huge Scorsese fan, but not that one.

I never got that.

What is good about that one?

That's what I said, I said,

just fighting with each other.

I said, I don't get it.

I said, you know, okay.

I've been

incredibly lucky in this best of all possible careers.

And like anybody who's been doing it for a long time, I made some stupid decisions.

Okay.

Yeah, well, I mean, I don't know about decisions.

I mean, you recount, for example, you said you were once speaking to a class, a dramatist class.

No, you can't tell that story on TV.

Well yeah, I think I can.

Watch me.

And one of the kids gets up and asks you the question.

I mean, the great David Mammon is here, you know, talking to us.

And what is the best thing I can do to increase my chances of working in television?

And you said, cut your dick off and eat it.

What did you mean by that?

I meant that.

I mean, I don't know, what part is unclear?

Okay.

No, I meant that, listen, I was working, making a living for, I think, think, 15 years before I ever heard the term the industry, right?

When I was growing up and I was doing plays in Chicago, then in New York, it was the theater, the best place in the world.

Then I got into movies, blah, blah, blah.

And even then, the term was kind of newish in the 70s, right?

So the industry is sit down and shut up, and if you want your job, do as you're told, lick the boss's tushy, right?

And if you got a good idea, keep it to yourself, because we don't care.

Speaking of that, you do mention a lot pornography in the sense of like you compare the business to pornography, or it's heading toward that.

Yeah.

Well, it's not heading toward pornography.

Basically, it is pornography.

Let's see, here's the thing.

Here's the way a pornographic script works.

Oh, my goodness, the boss is coming over for dinner, and I have to make this cake, right?

Ding-dong, who could that be?

I hope it's the plumber because I can't make the cake because the sink doesn't work and I can't wash out the plums.

Ding-dong, who are you?

I'm the plumber.

Thomp, thump, pop, thump, thump, pa, thump, right?

Well,

I gotta ask you,

when was the last time you looked at porn?

They don't do it that way anymore.

That's the old way.

Oh, what's the new way?

The new way is just, they go right to the fucking.

I know what you're talking about the old when they actually made porn movies, which I always thought were a lot like musicals.

I remember the porn guys with the black socks.

Are you that old?

No, you weren't that old.

I don't remember black socks.

Oh yeah, it used to be that in the old days they had smokers where they had these 16 millimeter prints of the guy, and the guy was always wearing shoes, black socks, and garters and nothing else.

So those were the good old days.

Yeah.

Okay, so

before we run out of time, let's get to one serious subject.

You say in the book, it's interesting, you go, the good news for Jewish people is is the bad news.

In other words, when they're successful, things are going well, it attracts the attention of the Cossacks.

That's correct.

Is that what you, is that similar to what you see going on now with the incredible amount of anti-Semitism in this country?

The incredible amount of anti-Semitism in this country is a sign of

Oh, it's a sign of a hatred of the Jews.

I knew that there was, and there was something I wanted to tell you.

Listen,

the Bible says that in every generation, Amalek, which is the spirit of evil, is going to be with you.

The Bible also says,

I like the Bible because it's really not about God.

It's about humankind.

It's not a biography of God.

God has a couple of miracles, big deal.

It's about the Old Testament.

Well, creating the universe was big.

We know the jury's still out.

But the whole idea of the Old Testament is that the spirit of man is corrupt, so that we need things to keep us in line.

What we need to keep us in line, God, says, okay, I'll give you 10 real simple rules.

You obey them, the rest will take care of itself.

So the founding fathers come and they say, these 10 simple rules, right, the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments, I get it.

We're going to enshrine them in a set of modern laws called the Constitution.

Do these things, and we're going to be fine.

When you start saying yes, but, you're in a lot of trouble.

When you say there's a penumber to the Constitution, that means we aren't going to obey the laws, but we're going to obey our feelings, you're in a lot of trouble.

So the problem is we've got several generations of children who we educate to do what's right, right?

Do what's right, do what's right.

But we don't educate them to think what's right.

And to think what's right is sometimes very, very difficult.

And when you're faced with a moral decision, A moral decision is a choice between two bad ideas, right?

If it's a good idea and a bad idea, there's no moral decision, right?

Should I run over that little old lady or should I go get a cup of coffee?

That's not a moral decision.

Should I run over that little old lady or should I run over that infant?

That's a moral decision.

And we have the capacity to choose.

But when we,

so the question is not what's the right thing to do, but the question of the Bible and the Constitution is what's the law?

Because we can't trust our feelings.

Are you talking about the American Constitution?

Yeah.

Because, well, it has very little to do with commandments.

Only two of them are laws, don't kill and don't steal.

The first four are just kiss God's ass.

I mean there's very little

cross between the Constitution and the No, no, all of those guys who wrote the Constitution were the

men and the women of that era were biblical scholars because they all studied the Old Testament.

Not so much they knew the New Testament, but they studied the Old Testament.

And a lot of them knew the Old Testament in Hebrew, which is a hell of a punchy language.

I mean, I studied the Old Testament.

It doesn't mean I believe it.

Well, there's nothing, it's not a question of believing in God.

It's a question of understanding what those geniuses who wrote it had to say about human nature, which is you can't trust yourself.

You have to ask in every situation, what's the rule, not how do I feel, right?

What's the rule?

Of course, you don't want to send that kid

to prison, but did he break the law?

Because you can always say, let me be merciful, but it says in the Bible, and it's a pretty good rule: be just, then be merciful.

Because the question is, who's you being merciful to?

All right.

Well, I wish we could talk more about this, but I gotta go.

Oh, wait, before I do,

I brought you a present as the best thing that I can give you, that anyone can give anyone else on Christmas.

And I hope you enjoy it.

A pipe?

Thank you.

What is this?

A mezoza?

I'll show you what it is.

A mezoza?

It's a mezzoza.

okay

i'll make it into something useful thank you very much thank you for this day love that book all right david man let's read our panel

okay

welcome

all right he is the democratic strategist and co-host of the weekly podcast politics war rooms with james carville and al Hunt.

James Carville is back with us.

And he's the creator and host of the political talk show The Rubin Report on YouTube and Rumble.

I know he rang the bell.

And

Dave Rubin is over here.

Dave.

That's pretty good.

You rang the bell.

All right.

So did you guys watch the debate last night?

I know you're Florida.

Oh, I watched it.

Okay.

All right.

Watch it.

I'm living it, man.

All right.

Because you're from Florida, you're saying?

Yeah, well, I was here at the time in Florida.

Okay.

Oh, you mean you moved to Florida?

That was,

okay.

Here's my takeaway.

First thing I thought was, this is the election we should be having.

And then I thought, I didn't want this one either.

Look, I like our governor.

I've been trying to get him to run for president 15 years.

I remember being at a fundraiser at John Penn's house, and we said to him, Gavin, run while you still look like a movie star.

Wait, you like Gavin Newsom?

I'm going to to have to smoke from that Mizuza.

Okay.

But here,

I thought he was the winner because

playing what I thought was a weak hand, California does have a lot of problems, I thought he fought him to a standstill.

And also he went into enemy territory and did it.

Every question was started with, oh, here's some statistics showing that California sucks.

What do you say, Governor Newsom?

I mean, when you can do that, when you can go into the enemy lair lair and fight to a standstill, I think you won.

James, what do you think?

Yeah, I hate to say this because it's not good television.

I agree with you.

And the thing that Democrats like is somebody that goes, so you go to the Deep South, you have Sean Hannity moderator, you debate DeSantis.

and people like that.

It looks like you're ready to stand for something.

You're ready to fight.

You're ready to breathe.

I like Governor Newsom fine.

If I were his consultant, I would have him dressed more like a Louisville banker than a Hollywood guy, but I guess he's not going to change the way he looks.

What was Hollywood about his dress?

He had a suit and a tie on.

He looks like he's from Hollywood.

Bitch, I don't know.

I believe.

Do not underestimate Dreamy.

I don't underestimate.

I don't underestimate Dreamy.

Like you, I'm trying to agree with you.

The fact that he went there and took it to him, and he wanted to fight through the bill.

When they wanted to go to Bright, he said, Oh, no,

let's keep this little scuffle going here.

I know.

I give him great credit for that.

He's slicks.

Good.

I'm glad he's slick.

You know what they said something about Bill Clinton, the guy you got elected, slick, and he won two.

You know, let me tell you something.

In the United States of babies, you have to be a little slick because they can't take the truth.

Now, what was your take?

I know you like the sentence.

Well, I suppose that he is slick and that he is a lizard person,

but everything,

every single,

what does that mean?

Well, lizards are slippery, but every single thing that he said was a lie.

Everything he said, I mean, this place, California, and come on, Bill.

This place, did you see the homeless encampment right outside this studio?

Right outside this studio.

I actually brought some fentanyl together.

I talk about...

I got some.

I talk about California's problems a lot, which is probably why Governor Newsom has not been on the show in six years.

Yeah.

So I don't pull my punches on that.

I understand that.

Oh, no, I'm not saying you pull your punches, but the fact is, every number that Hannity pulled out there, whether it's homelessness, whether it's the amount of people that left California to move to Florida, whether it's what's going on with all the woke stuff that I know you do care about and all the rest of it, Florida is flourishing.

This place is falling apart.

Everyone knows that.

You could have framed it differently.

Sorry.

You think if Rachel Maddow held the debate, she would have put up the same statistics.

You're not debating the statistics.

No, but you could use others.

I'm sorry.

I come to California.

Everybody's moving out.

Why am I always stuck in goddamn traffic if no one's here?

I know.

And

people say, well, the problem in California is homes are expensive.

Well, if homes are expensive, that tells me one thing.

There's demand for them.

And it just didn't follow.

Let me tell you about Florida.

Did you see the story about the Florida Republican chair and the wife who was the head of the Sarasota School Board, Mom Celebrity?

Those people make Hollywood look like Provo Utah.

Okay?

There's this,

there's this whole kind of myth where you just gang up on California.

Oh my God.

How many patents, of all of the patents that are issued in a year in the United States, how many do you think come out of California?

I thought you were the great political strategist.

What the fuck does that matter to the working class?

How many patents come out?

This is what.

How many working class people you think are watching this show?

But it doesn't matter.

We're talking about the argument that I'm in the middle of some hellhoe.

Well, I don't feel it.

Yeah, because we're in a studio with security.

You know, if you go outside, I'm going to go out.

You go outside, go outside, I'm not going to be doing that.

There is tents two blocks from here, absolutely, on the sidewalk.

We get it.

I'm just saying that I thought, like, this was Newsom's problem last night.

He kept saying things that the average person is like, what do I care how many patents you have or how many Nobel Prizes you have?

But he's also talking about the history of California, not the California of today.

If you went through all of the things,

immigration, taxes, do you know that you would save a lot of money if you moved to Florida?

Did you know that?

I do.

A lot of money.

I understand that.

A lot of money, Mark.

And I'm still not doing it.

The one thing, you have flying cockroaches.

It's not going to happen.

So I have, here's a, let me ask you one last question about this debate, and all debates.

Like, the way we do debates, could I just, a few recommendations.

One, cut the mic of whoever is not supposed to be talking.

This yelling, you know, it turns into,

I can't stop talking first, because that'll look weak.

So I will just keep talking when you, if you stop talking first, you're the weak one.

That's what the debate is?

It's really, and also, how about in real time fact checks?

Because

what I really hated about this debate was that it just makes us look like we're two completely different countries, that we live in two different universes, red state, blue state, each with their own facts.

So he presents his facts, the other guy presents his facts.

I'd like, and then you can Google it later.

Well, I'm not going to.

Okay,

you're lucky I watched this much of it.

How about in real time having the fact in football they do it?

We stop the game and we look at the replay and we'll see what really happened.

I want to see,

because

there's got to be some objective truth.

Okay, so just to be real.

So you're in a campaign, Sarah, go with a fact-checker.

Who's going to be the fact-checker?

We're going to both agree.

The fact-checker is really going to be important, is who it is.

By the way, if you remember in the Romney-Obama debate that Candy Coleman hosted, and Romney said something to Obama, and she said, that's not true, and it wasn't true, and it was a giant eruption that it showed that if you try to fact-check somebody, then they'll go crazy.

By the way, if you worry about Galvin Muson shading the truth and you voted for Donald Trump or you supported George Santos, how does that square up?

That doesn't make any sense to all of me.

I think that's a great point.

That's a great point,

but the guy he was up there with was Ron DeSantis.

And did you hear one, did Ron DeSantis say one thing that either one of you guys thought was a lie, an outright lie or an untruth?

You have a difference difference with him on, say, abortion or whatever the policy might be, but the guy doesn't get up there and lie like most politicians.

Well, I don't know who was lying, and I wouldn't, I don't concede your point that Gavin Newsom was lying all night.

You can cherry-pick the statistics you want.

Well, he literally wouldn't admit that more people have left Cali than Florida.

Like, everyone knows that.

There's been about a million people out and about 700,000 into the California.

Well, you're remembering it wrong, and it was less than 24 hours ago.

That's not what happened.

He just said that on the reverse, he said, and this was kind of apples versus oranges, because what the point was, was that more people have left California for any other state.

And Newsom came back with more Floridians have gone to California, okay, than Californians have gone to Florida, which probably both things are true, because that's what debaters do.

That's why it's a big masturbation contest, because nobody gives a shit.

All right, let me ask.

So

let me ask you, what do you think the party's biggest vulnerabilities are?

I think for the Republicans, the biggest vulnerability is the candidate, is Trump.

They can't get away from this.

I mean, I thought Newsom's best line last night was saying to DeSantis, Ron, you're losing by 41 points.

What are you doing here?

I have more.

Newsom has more of a chance of being the nominee.

Okay.

So we got a look recently now, we have kind of a clear idea of what Trump's second term, if he gets elected, is going to look like.

Shoot shoplifters on site.

And I assume if he's the nominee.

I'm from Florida.

Don't look at me.

Well, no, I'm looking at you because I assume if he's the nominee, you will vote for this.

You can vote for the Republicans.

I want Ron DeSantis to be president.

I know, but it's going to be Trump.

We don't know.

Well, 41 points.

So he's going to make up 41 points.

41 points.

I mean, I look at these polls.

Like, the polls are from 700 people via text

in the course of two weeks.

Who's lying now?

You think DeSantis is going to beat Trump for the nomination?

Or Nikki Hayes.

I told you who I want to, and I don't know what's going to happen, but nobody knows what's going to happen.

I think if he wins Iowa, then anything possible.

So Michael, George Santis is having a better year than Ron DeSantis.

DeSantis is throwing spaghetti against the goddamn wall.

He's coming on Bill Moore.

He's trying to debate news.

Hey, wait a second.

Am I the wall here?

No, but

a right-wing Republican that comes on here, he's desperate.

You pointed it out, well, I've saw the clip of him on the show.

The fact that if you were ahead, you wouldn't be here.

Okay?

I mean,

he did exactly what we all want candidates to do, which is talk to the other side.

So I was here that day with you.

And I think it was for him to be here and lay out his case is actually what we all want.

Isn't it what you were just asking?

Taking advantage of desperate politicians is my business now.

Trust me on that.

Okay.

Let me get back to Trump's second term, because it's really interesting.

And again, you are going to have this choice.

You're going to have to vote for either Biden or Trump, who wants to shoot shoplifters on site.

A quick death penalty, quick, for

drug dealers.

He hints about using the military to fight crime.

Maybe we should put a guardrail in now against using the

Insurrectionist Act to declare martial law.

What else does he want to do?

Oh, Obamacare's got to go.

See, this is the advantage of Donald Trump, that nobody ever takes you seriously because you're insane.

Obamacare, very popular.

Okay, this would be a disaster, but nobody takes him seriously.

Remember that time there was some mass shooting and they were having some big brain session about it and Trump is spitballing and he goes, Mike, Mike Pence, maybe we should take away the guns first.

Right.

And nobody gave a shit because they were like, oh, it's Donald Trump.

Right.

You know, the young people might be like, no.

This is his big advantage.

He can say anything.

And nobody takes it.

It's a religious test for immigration.

We'd have to get rid of three-quarters of the physics faculty at Berkeley and MIT.

Right.

So if you have to be a Christian, be here, well, who's going to teach the kids physics?

Mr.

Smith ain't gonna be able to do it.

I guarantee you.

So in a weird way though, don't you think that's kind of why you shouldn't fear him that much?

Like even if Trump became president again, and look, I did not vote for him the first time, I did the second time, but who's he gonna staff himself with?

Who's gonna be around him that's gonna get any of this stuff?

Have you read the Heritage Foundation?

They're going through and they're planning and they're betting people to go in there

so we can be governed by Michael Flynn.

Okay?

That's what's going on right now.

Right in in the diet.

And not even a full winner.

People in power never have trouble attracting other people to come to the court and have power, too.

Well, he had trouble the first time, right?

I mean, they had trouble staffing.

That's a known thing.

He didn't have trouble staffing.

He just kept firing people for not being complete ass kissers until he found one.

Okay, so

I have to bring up

this story in the news this week.

It's not the biggest one, but it just kind of blew my mind.

There's an Australian model named Ellie Gonzalves who, I thought this was interesting, she's 33 years old, got tired of everybody saying, why don't you have kids?

So she put out a list of, she wrote down 117 reasons why she doesn't want to have kids.

I said, print this out, it's seven pages.

I mean,

you're tired all the time.

The world's already overpopulated.

They can turn into a serial killer.

Kids can be rude.

They're embarrassing.

The terrible twos, rapid pregnancy hair growth, don't even know what that is.

Body swelling, face swelling, it's easier to move without kids.

Children are noisy, pregnancy.

I thought I hated kids, business.

Really does not like kids.

And yet, with 117 reasons, she still didn't get all of them.

Would you like to hear the ones that she...

Everyone on airplanes automatically hates you.

Yeah,

if they fall down a well, they're hard to get out.

They can't roll a joint.

Every time they change their pronouns, you have to buy them a new wardrobe.

You only get invited to parties with clowns.

They never pick up a check at a restaurant.

Eric.

It's just one more thing to accidentally leave on the top of your car.

There's always a priest following you around.

And they're always texting Matt Gates.

Okay.

So,

but

if I can go back for a second to the vulnerabilities in the party.

I think

abortion is the big vulnerability in the Republican Party.

And James, I see your governor in Louisiana is threatening to withhold state funding for the city of New Orleans water infrastructure if the district attorney doesn't agree to prosecute women.

No clean water for whores is his slogan.

It wasn't that long ago when the Republicans would recoil if you said, you know, you guys, don't you want to like prosecute, no, we would never prosecute doctors or women.

Now this is the policy.

This is their surefire way to lose the next election, I think.

Right.

And they're losing every election except Louisiana.

Since Dobbs, the Republicans have literally not, and you say, well, no, Mississippi, actually the Democrat in Mississippi got a greater percentage than any Democrat in this century.

Every other place, they're losing elections.

That's the most important thing.

Not polling, not how people feel, who's winning elections.

And Democrats are running the table.

Well, these are off-year elections that are not really

indicative.

We don't count them.

Okay, well, we count them.

We count them, but it doesn't count.

It was a regular season NFL game.

It wasn't a playoff game.

It doesn't count.

That does matter.

That's not a bad analogy because they are different.

You know,

2022, Kentucky, Virginia, Pennsylvania, everywhere that we're running, we're winning.

We're winning.

So you can say, well, it doesn't count.

No, it does count.

And this is the issue.

I mean, in Kansas and Ohio, they amended the state constitution.

That's not easy to do, to say, oh, no, we want abortion rights here because everybody hates kids.

They really do.

They're feral, they're obnoxious, they're entitled.

Nobody wants kids, or if I have one, I don't want another one.

I'm telling you, this is what people do.

All right,

I got to say, I got to come here.

I got to defend parenthood.

You know what?

You suck up this audience, okay?

You love your audience.

You know what all of them have in common?

I promise you, they got parents.

There's not a single person in this audience that doesn't have parents.

I'm not saying parents suck.

I say kids suck.

Where do kids come from, the stalk?

I will say you're consistent on this because I became a parent this year, and you're the only person who said that.

Well, when I told you that you were the first person who said to me, oh, fuck.

Literally, but by the way, Bill, you know, I'm personally, I'm for, say, 12 or 14 weeks when it comes to abortion, which used to be the Democrat position.

And unfortunately, I think David.

You're pro-choice.

I would say I'm begrudgingly pro-choice, which was the same Democrat position of the 80s and 90s and everything else.

I would say the Democrats have gone off the deep end one way, and the Republicans have gone off the deep end on the other hand.

And even though I personally would prefer more Republicans in office in terms of limited government and everything else, I'm completely with you.

It's not a winner for them.

It is simply not a winner.

Whether you are for abortion or against abortion, a certain set of suburban women they vote on abortion.

So making an issue out of six-week abortion or whatever, it's just not a winner for Republicans.

So I can completely conceive that.

Well, also,

they're trying to have it both ways.

I hear them talking about we have a common sense solution where if you pick a number of weeks, any number of weeks, you're pro-choice.

I mean,

that's what pro-life means, conception.

First trimester, I think it's four times three, quick, 12.

So you put a 15-week ban.

Well, hello, Justice Blackman.

How are you today?

And the argument was you couldn't, it was a murder, it was a child,

it was passed,

you couldn't do it, conception.

What are you talking about?

Says, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, you misunderstood us.

We were already for 15 weeks.

No, you were not.

How many Republicans signed on to the Human Life Amendment?

How many of them signed on to that?

And what does that that say?

From conception, don't come, because I'm doing a book, and I'm going to call these sons of bitches on it.

Every one of them, I'm going to put their name.

And they're going to come back here and tell me, oh,

I'm at 15 weeks with exceptions, and maybe we won't do too much about it anyway.

They're getting their asses handed to them, off year or no off year.

Okay.

So let me bring up one more

plank.

I'm getting ready for the next Trump term already.

He says

under his administration, his next one, schools will teach students to love their country, not to hate their country like they're taught now.

I got to say, this one doesn't bother me so much.

Because I think that, I mean, this is what I see when I see kids demonstrating these progressive, progressives demonstrating for Hamas, the most illiberal people in the world, that, oh, good, we're going to give America its comeuppance, asshole America.

This is, they kind of have been indoctrinated this way.

And Chuck Schumer made a speech this week.

He said, anti-Sesemism is a five-alarm fire that must be extinguished.

This is the highest ranking Jewish politician we've ever had in this country.

He talked about when Jewish people hear chants like from the river to the sea,

do you understand that means wipe us out by any means necessary?

Vulnerabilities in the party, James.

The Democrats have a big split generationally on this issue.

The kids seem to be with the Palestinians.

And the older generation seems to be with Israel.

Well, the kids are with TikTok.

They're with whatever TikTok tells them to be for, basically.

Well, that is where a lot of people...

What were the

good people on both sides at Charlottesville?

I don't know.

Did I hear that?

Did I make that up?

That Trump said they're good people on both sides.

He didn't say that.

He did not.

He said that.

Well, he said it, but a sentence later, he said, I'm not talking about the white supremacists and the neo-Nazis.

Yeah, after.

He's like, you know, on Mars, I really don't know.

It was badly phrased.

I think we can agree on it.

It was inelegant.

Yeah, it was inelegant.

What is your point about this?

Well, first of all, the young people don't understand.

There was a great piece in because colonialism, Gaza is a lot of things.

It's a tragedy.

There's certainly,

it's a lot of things.

It's not colonialism.

They're not educated.

They're stupid.

Right.

Okay, that's fine.

But young people have been stupid for a long time.

What can I do for our students?

Why do you think I spend my time teaching?

I know, but

it wasn't always like this.

I mean, you've been in government a lot.

You understand how it works in the corridors of power.

I never saw this.

A couple of weeks ago, members of the White House staff protested against their own president.

We are congressional staffers on Capitol Hill also.

Also, these people did.

And we are no longer comfortable staying silent.

Well, you're staffers.

You're supposed to stay silent.

What are you talking about?

Yeah, you're a son.

My My boss is doing a shit job and I thought I'd go public with it.

I mean, this is hundreds of people in Biden's staff and on

congressional Democrat staff who are publicly going against them because they're not supporting Hamas enough.

You fire them, period.

You fire all of them.

That's it.

It's not up for debate.

If you had five staffers standing outside saying Bill Maher's the devil, what are you going to do?

You're going to fire them, right?

Of course you're going to fire them.

It's as simple simple as that.

You fire these people, but the inmates are running the asylum.

I'm not.

First of all,

they're decidedly not running the asylum.

Biden is the single friend that Israel had.

I'll ask you to put it back to you.

How in the hell am I still looking at B.B.

Netanyahu's stupid, crooked, ignorant, negligent face?

But,

is this guy still in power after the most greatest intelligence failure,

maybe

at least since 9-11.

Well we're in a war.

And what do you want to do?

The reason they're in a war is because it kept getting intelligent.

I mean you must have shit going on and he was trying to take over the judiciary with all your right-wing bullshit they're trying to pull out.

You did see the paper.

And they got rockets picked.

I mean

Israel knew about this attack in detail for over a year.

It's worse than our 9-11 and our 9-11 was pretty bad because they had Osama bin Laden planning to attack and the United States ignored it.

But, I mean, come on, this is for Israel to have this kind of intelligence failure in the neighborhood they live in where they could have never been able to afford to be sloppy.

Right.

Yeah.

No,

it's an extraordinary failure, and he has to step down at the end of this thing.

But I think what James was saying was, why am I looking at him now?

I don't know that he can step down in the middle of a war.

They have to clean this thing up.

He's been the leader of the country.

And by the way, I think he will.

You've interviewed him many times.

I think he will do the right thing because he loves his country.

And at the end, they have to get through this.

I mean, they're in an existential battle right now.

The idea that he's just going to step down and hand it to somebody, I think, is a little non-sorry.

I worked in Israel.

I've been there any number of times.

61 people in Knesset can do anything they want.

Why is this guy still there?

Why am I looking at him?

And always trying to stay in office saying he's going to kick his ass out of jail.

Okay, well, that is a good point.

They're in the middle of a war.

So, anyway, you know what they would do with an incompetent general in World War II?

They'd fire.

You don't keep if he was incompetent the last time you warn him.

He's not a general.

He's a president.

There's a big difference between a general and a president, just like the big difference between the playoffs in the regular season.

All right.

I got to go to New Rules, everybody.

New rules.

All right.

Okay, New Rule.

Whoever fact-checked Liz Cheney's new book needs to fact-check it again because NHG claims Kevin McCarthy told her that after Trump lost the 2020 election, he, Donald Trump, was so depressed that he stopped eating.

And we know that wasn't true.

I mean,

even if it were, clearly this man can make it through winter.

But really, check your notes because after Trump lost like a dog,

I'm pretty sure what he said was, I'm so depressed, I've stopped cheating.

It's not so controversial.

New, did you stack this audience with a bunch of fucking Trumpers?

Probably.

New rule, now that four members of BTS are beginning their mandatory military service, we need the same thing here.

Not for everyone, just for pop singer.

I'm telling you, there's there's nothing wrong with Takashi 6ix9ine that 10 weeks of basic training can't fix.

Neural, the media has to understand that when someone finally makes a public statement, that doesn't mean they're breaking their silence.

It just means they had better things to do than talk to you.

It means you've been camped out on their front lawn for the past two weeks, and this is the only way they could tell you to fuck off.

Neural, stop criticizing Melania Trump for not wearing black to Rosalind Carter's funeral.

The important thing is, she was there, and besides, in her country, wearing black means you're a vampire.

Although,

although I do question her choice of entrance music,

Neural, you're officially too much of a joke to stay in government when someone cares enough to make a giant, unflattering balloon of you.

And Santos is kind of like a balloon.

His resume was inflated, and his career just popped.

And when you pull out his butt plug, it makes a farting noise.

And finally, new rule, praise Jesus, it's a Christmas miracle.

For the first time in the 21-year history of this show, we are on in December, which gives me a chance to explain to everyone something I've always wanted to expound upon in this show.

You know that whole thing about Jesus being born on December 25th?

Well, it's a crock of shit.

Now, this is not an attack on Jesus, although he was a Nepo baby,

but also a revolutionary philosopher with a beautiful message.

As to whether he's a god, that's up to you.

But if the subject is gods born on December 25th,

we have enough of those for an entire Jeopardy category.

He was the Egyptian god who took the form of a falcon.

Who is Horace?

He is the god from ancient Persia born bearing bearing a torch.

Who is Mithra?

He is the Greek god of rebirth.

Who is Adonis?

He was the fertility god in Cleopatra's time.

Who is Osiris?

This Greek deity was known for having a good time.

Who is Dionysus?

Well, yeah, we wrapped up the Emmy with that one.

So you may be asking, oh, those are all real, by the way.

I think that was the problem.

They think I'm making this up, but I'm not.

Why do all the gods want the same birthday?

Well, because December 25th was a pagan holiday, coming a few days after the shortest day of the year, when primitive peoples noticed that the days were starting to get longer again, and so a cause for celebration.

Cut to

the story of Christmas.

A holiday I love, by the way.

The tree, the presents, the music, the Christmas memories with my sister and our cousins, filling the bong with eggnog.

It's the only time of the year it's okay to put alcohol in milk.

Christmas is fun if you just accept it's pretend time, time, like a Hollywood wedding.

Yes, I love Christmas and always have.

Just don't try to make me take it seriously.

And that is what has been going on a lot lately here in America.

We have a new Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, who says America is actually a biblical republic and that he's even got a flag picked out that hangs outside his office and which also could be seen in the mob on January 6th.

Mike also says the separation of church and state is is a misnomer and Congresswoman Lauren Boebert concurs saying she's tired of the separation of church and state junk.

So too Marjorie Taylor Greene who says I say it proudly we should all be Christian nationalists.

Now I know it may seem like this is just a few crazies but I got to tell you dumbass Republicans who believe horrible ideas are like ants.

There's always more that you can't see.

And in fact, these ideas are no longer the fringe.

According to a recent survey, over half of Republicans are either adherents of Christian nationalism or sympathetic to it.

And they agree with statements like, The U.S.

government should declare America a Christian nation.

And being Christian is an important part of being American.

And God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society.

I'm sorry, but I don't want anyone exercising their dominion over me unless I pay them and we've established a safe word.

Boebert says the church is supposed to direct the government.

The government is not supposed to direct the church.

Well, no and no.

Neither one is supposed to direct the other.

That's what separation of church and state means.

Republicans, Jesus fucking Christ, first you stop believing in democracy.

Senator Mike Lee said it, among others.

Trump lives the idea every day, and here we have the Speaker of the House saying it.

And now Republicans also don't believe in the separation of church and state.

Does anyone in that party remember what fucking country you're living in?

We're the place that stakes so much of our greatness on being the first to specifically prohibit having a state religion.

There are dozens of countries that have an official religion.

There's 13 where being an atheist is punishable by death.

Four

Islamic right in the title of the country.

And maybe that warms the hearts of the TikTok crowd who lately have found heroes in Hamas and Osama bin Laden.

But that's not us.

That's not what we do here.

I get it, you kids like to switch things up.

But I can only handle one side at a time being ridiculous about religious fanaticism.

And right now I've got my hands full with Mike Johnson.

Because

Mike Johnson

because Mike Johnson has the power to actually make laws.

And I don't want my global warming policy decided by someone who is rooting for the end of the world so we can get on with the rapture.

And who once filed a legal brief before the Supreme Court arguing that what he called deviant same-sex intercourse should be a crime.

Even the lesbian stuff?

Mike thinks God personally chooses, raises up our leaders, which is a very dangerous thought, because then when you lose an election, you think it's just another of God's tricks to test your your faith, like fossils.

Mike says, We began as a Christian nation, we didn't.

Did you miss that day in homeschool, Mike?

If you don't know that the pilgrims came here to get away from the Church of England, then you don't know literally the first thing about our country.

Mike

Mike says being a Christian nation is our tradition and it's who we are as a people.

It's not.

We're the people who have a First Amendment which says Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.

And we have an Article 6 which says no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office.

So I take these people at their word when they say that they think we should be Christian nationalists,

but then they have to take John Adams at his word when he wrote, the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.

But I still love Christmas.

All right, that's our show.

I'll be at the San Diego Civic Theater January 27th, the MGM Grand in Vegas, February 16th and 17th, at the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts in Houston, March 2nd.

I want to thank James Carville, Dave Rubin, and David Mammet.

Now go watch overtime on CNN at 1130 or 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.