Ep. #641: Albert Brooks, Rob Reiner, Donna Brazile, Fmr. Rep. Adam Kinzinger

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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, everybody?

Good to see you.

Thank you, people.

Thank you very much.

All right, thank you.

How are you?

Okay, all right.

I appreciate it.

Thank you, I know.

Very exciting.

Thank you.

It's our big Thanksgiving show.

Not really doing anything but.

Yes, it's Thanksgiving.

Excited?

A little program,

public service announcement, rather,

the turkey this year.

Make sure it's fully cooked, which means

people get sick.

It means setting the oven to 10 freeway.

Little local joke.

We burned our freeway down.

It can happen to any city, I think.

But no, Thanksgiving is really different these days.

I mean, everybody's either on their phone or on Ozempic.

So,

man.

Now it's just people taking pictures of the meal.

I mean, it's...

And politically, very different.

I mean, it used to be your right-wing uncle and your teenage daughter, they'd fight, right?

Now she's saying, you know, the problem is really really the Jews and he's high-fiving her across the table

yeah

from the river to the sea past the cranberry sauce what the fuck is going on in this did you see what's going on on TikTok

apparently not well let me tell you guys always forget you come here to get informed right

Well, it's the celebrities are involved.

It must be important.

No, they are.

Sasha Baron Cohen and Deborah Messing and Naimi Schumer.

This is where the anti-Semitism is coming from.

And the kids now have jumped on TikTok

from supporting Hamas to supporting Osama bin Laden.

Is this the Tide Pods?

Is this the

eating the Tide Pods?

Is this where this is coming from?

Are their minds literally poisoned now?

Okay.

No, they get, you know, half of this coming from where they're supposed to be learning from.

There's a teacher in Maryland, she had to go on leave because she posted on Facebook that Israel is trying to steal the organs of Palestinians.

That's why there's a war there.

They're stealing the organs.

Okay, kids, I just want to tell you, this is ridiculous.

My agent takes 10%, but it's nothing like this.

Wow.

So

over in the horse race, it's not looking too good for President Biden.

He's now losing to all three of the top Republican contenders, and there is some...

Okay.

We want all opinions here.

But, yeah, and there's something very bad politically looming for him next week, his birthday.

He would like to avoid this.

He's going to be 81.

We've never had a president who's 81.

Doesn't mean he can't do it.

I'm just saying.

I like the guy, but I'm just saying if Joe Biden was a balcony, I wouldn't step out on him for a smoke.

The way I took it.

So,

and oh, the Republicans, they spent the week threatening to beat each other up.

I'm not making this up.

Here's a new, I didn't know this.

I had never heard this name before this week.

Apparently, he's a senator from Oklahoma.

Mark Wayne Mullen.

Mark,

sounds like a serial killer, actually a senator.

Senator Mark Wayne Mullen was hearing

testimony from the head of the Teamsters Union, and at one point he stands up, takes off his ring, like, let's go, bro.

This is the Senate.

Mitch McConnell completely froze.

Then he heard about the...

All right.

You're way ahead of me.

But

can I recreate for you a little bit the actual dialogue that went on in the United States Senate between this man and a senator?

First guy says, you want to do it now?

I'd love to do it now.

Then stand your butt up.

You stand your butt up.

Again, this is a senator, Mark Wayne.

That's his Mark Wayne Mullen, his campaign slogan.

Mark Wayne Mullen, what the fuck are you looking at?

And then

another congressman claimed, former, recently former,

House Speaker head dude, Kevin McCarthy,

sucker punched him in the kidney.

And Kevin McCarthy said, hey, if I did that, he'd be on the ground.

It's so fucking embarrassing watching these pencil necks trying to act all hard.

Yeah, Kevin McCarthy, hard.

He's got a tear tattoo.

For the time he killed Medicare.

Anyway,

and

a little more congressional news, very sad.

The Ethics Committee report has come in on George Santos.

You know, our friend George Santos.

Apparently, I can't believe it, but the guy was crooked.

Apparently, he was, you know,

you're only supposed to use campaign funds on

campaigns.

Okay, he was using them for, listen to this, makeup he bought at Sephora,

Botox,

and an OnlyFans account.

Because you want to look good for the stripper on your computer.

I mean, I think we all.

But so, so Santis said he will not be running again, which means only one thing.

He will absolutely be running again.

All right, we've got a great show.

We have Donna Brazil and Adam Kinziger.

But first up, very exciting.

We have two of the funniest people who ever made some of the bestest and funniest movies ever.

And one of them just directed the other in the new HBO documentary, Albert Brooks Defending My Life.

Please welcome Albert Brooks and Rob Reiner.

There's the sunshine, boys.

How are you?

Allie, how are you?

You're looking very spelt.

I'm

so kevelt or whatever.

Kvelt?

That's not a Jewish word.

It's felling.

You're

felling.

That's what I, you know, Kvevelt is a hospital word.

It's four months to live.

I see.

Architect in 208 is kvelt.

Anyway.

But it's been, I mean, I've wanted you here for the longest time.

You, I don't get to see enough, but it's always a pleasure when you're here.

Thank you for bringing him, for doing this.

What about the dog?

He's my service animal.

Okay.

Fund to went out the window.

And

I always knew you guys were friends until I saw this documentary.

I didn't know.

I know you went back.

I didn't know what you go way, way back.

Yes.

To high school, yes.

High school, is that?

We met in high school, yes.

Oh, my God.

Yeah, and we became instant friends.

We met, it was a class.

I think we were like 16, 17 at the time.

16.

It remains one of the most embarrassing moments of my life.

So it was a class the first day you stand up, you introduce yourself.

Now, I was given the name Albert Einstein and still using it at the time.

Oh, really?

Except I didn't like it in high school.

I had to use Al because I didn't want people to, you know,

confuse him with the guy who...

I mean, I...

you know people would say you know why did they name me Albert Einstein well Jesus Christ was taken that is

so I I stood up and I said my name is Al Einstein I'm from Los Angeles and Rob's way in the back and then 40 other people and then he stands up in the back and I don't I just hear Rob from New York I never heard any last name so after the class I choose to come up to him.

You're from New York, huh?

Now, two weeks earlier, I went to a museum of broadcasting just because I loved it, and I met Carl Reiner.

I shook his hand.

I said to him, So, what are you doing from New York?

What does your dad do?

Rob goes, he's a writer.

I don't know why, Bill, but I said, I know Karl Reiner.

And I said, So so do I.

And he said, that's my dad.

And I said, I'm a stupid fuck.

But your dad thought he was like the funniest kid.

He's not just the funniest kid.

He thought he was the funniest person.

I mean, Albert at 16 was a prodigy.

He could make my dad, Mel Brooks, people of the highest level in comedy, make them laugh.

So I heard that in the documentary and I'm curious if you could give me one instance of that that I can picture a 16 year old.

What did you say?

What did you do that made these comedy lions laugh?

Well I did a bit once for him and Mel and a lot of other comedians.

A bit?

A bit.

Yeah, well he came in and he came over.

I would come over to their house and do bits.

Really?

On the top of his head.

He didn't plan it.

I mean he just came up and he said, you know,

I've got this thing.

I'm the greatest escape artist in the world.

I can get out of anything.

And so we took a napkin and he says, tie my hands up.

And I draped the napkin over his hands.

He said, that's good enough.

I can't get out of that.

I can't get out of that.

And then he took a tissue and he stuffed it in his mouth.

And he said, okay.

And then he went behind a curtain and he said, he's going to get out from behind a curtain with this.

And we hear from behind the curtain, it's rustling.

We're hearing, I can't breathe.

I can't breathe.

I can't breathe.

Open the.

We open the curtain and he flies out.

He says, take it out!

Take it out!

Untie me!

And we untied him, and my father was screaming hysterically.

The worst escape artist.

So you

were not bad for 15.

No, I wasn't.

No, no,

he was a genius and is a genius.

Right, and wound up doing your stand-up career the same way, even on television, right?

Not really thinking about it before you went to the team.

Well,

I would work it out by myself at home,

and then I would go down and I would do national television.

I never went to a club ever until I had done like five years of national television.

So I never tried out anything, and it was fine.

It worked out.

Yeah, I mean, Chris Rock says in the documentary, he says,

the idea of somebody going on national television and not even trying it out, not even seeing if it would work, that's what he did.

He did it all the time.

He went on Carson 30 times, and he just tried up new stuff.

And so by the time you graduated high school, you were fast friends.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then what was.

And then what was the.

I'm curious about the time, like before you were married, when you were just two, you know.

Well, we had a house.

We had a house.

We had a home room together after we had to be here.

We had a house up off Benedict Canyon.

It had two entrances.

There was one below where Albert was, and then there was one above.

It was like a duplex.

We each had our own phones.

And whenever I brought a girl over,

you know, we'd, you know, have our

fun

in the bamboo.

He means he and the girl.

Yeah, I understand.

Yeah, no, that's.

It's HBO.

We can say anything.

Yeah, no, we're in the fun.

Yeah, we're having, we're making love upstairs.

Making love?

You could still say fuck.

Hey, we fucked.

We talked.

And the minute...

The minute we were done, the phone would ring, and I'd pick it up, and it would be Albert.

And he'd say, are you finished yet?

And I'd say, yes.

Now let me tell you something.

He said, do you want to go get something to eat?

Yeah, but

let me tell you something.

And I hope you'll take this as a compliment.

He was like the atomic clock in Boulder.

It was exactly 40 seconds.

No, I mean, literally.

I used to boil an egg to him fucking.

No, he'd hear the noises start.

He'd check his watch.

I'd call it 35 seconds.

He'd say, give me four seconds.

I mean,

it was amazing.

So, you know, if I room with someone that took two hours, I'd probably be thinner.

You talk to that.

But you were kind of a lady.

You were kind of a ladies' man.

Well,

I know you make self-defining remarks about that, but like you went out with Linda Ronstadt.

Yeah.

Right?

Okay, well.

Well.

Does that make me a ladies' man?

He also went out with Linda Carter.

Only went to the name of Linda.

No, no, no.

No, that's not true.

That's not true.

No, I did.

I went out with her for a little bit.

And then your leading lady in modern romance.

Catherine Harold.

Wasn't she your girlfriend at the time?

Yes, we went out.

Yeah.

She was very nice.

You're allowed to say you fucked her.

All right.

All right.

Yeah, all through the the 80s, all the young comics we would all do the lines from that movie without any setup, because we all know the movie.

Yes, Petey, Ellen,

get away from the box.

Yes.

You know, you're trash.

You'll live in the trash can.

All those great lines.

And I mean, I always wondered, now you're here, I'm going to ask, that is your life?

I mean, that situation that we all can relate to.

I was wondering.

I'm someone who you, if people haven't seen the movie, like the one you can't live, you can't without.

You keep breaking up and getting back together.

both things suck but you keep going back and forth and and it's the epitome of jealousy the character that he plays you're like he's it was my life in my early 20s i had lived that and uh i uh

it fortunately i eventually i met a woman that made sense and I didn't have to live that way anymore.

But when you're going out with somebody and you're young and certain things are great and certain things that aren't, you're stupid because you think you can change the other thing.

And that's what you keep trying to do, but you can't.

Or you just like the sex more.

Well, I'm saying, but if they let you know.

It's more frequent and prevalent, so it takes a bigger place in the book.

But you may not agree with it, but even if the sex is wonderful, if you can't talk,

eventually, you know.

Well, and then he's got a great line where Bruno Kirby plays the assistant editor.

He's an editor, and he says, we had great sex all the time, but we just could never talk.

And Bruno says, do you have to talk?

Christmas, all that.

And

I also learned from this documentary that you were like asshole buddies with Steven Spielberg, that he would go around filming you, asshole buddies?

What does that mean?

That means you're close friends.

Yes, never heard that term.

Not that close.

Yeah, I do.

Yeah,

early on when we were in our very early 20s, he would drive around with his 8-millimeter camera and film me, and I would go into stores and make up characters.

It was great.

And you kept up with him?

Why didn't he ever use you?

I don't know.

Why didn't he?

Why didn't he ever use you?

I don't know.

I asked you.

I asked you.

Are you...

Bill?

Bill?

He's losing me now.

And also, if people don't know, you were supposed to be the permanent and only host of Saturday Night Live.

This is fascinating.

And this is all, all shows are not the shows they become.

The Dick Van Dyke show, the pilot does not look exactly like what the show became.

We all have to try things out.

So at the beginning, they thought, oh, instead of what they have, of course, for the last 50 years, a different host every week, we'll get this genius comic.

Yeah, they offered me that show, but I, at the time...

To be every week the host.

Yeah, you're the host.

And then you actually never were the host.

No.

Not even once.

Because you turned it down.

It was everything on nothing.

You're like the guy who turned down the Beatles.

Being from Los Angeles, the idea of live in New York meant nothing to me.

Because I said to them, if Ed Sullivan farts, I'm never going to hear it.

And

he was known to fart all the time.

So

I suggested that maybe the show be done

live at 4.30 and live at 7.30 like the tonight show used to be done and edit it.

But they were intent, and I can understand why, because it became a huge thing to be live at 11.30.

But I knew that if I did that it would be bad for me physically I would probably and you wanted to make films and I wanted to make films so I said no and then they came back to me and I hope you have a few more in you I mean I'm so glad you're finally getting a victory lap but I mean you guys you both look fine well thank you you could you could work tomorrow

so

I had the tea in the cup before I came out here so call me in two days and tell me if it's okay All right.

Well, it was beyond a pleasure to finally get you.

I hope I see more Albert Brooks movies in the future.

Thank you, guys.

Great.

Good luck with the doc.

All right.

Thank you.

And Rob's podcast.

I should mention that.

I will.

All right.

Thank you.

Let's read our panel.

Okay, she is a Georgetown University professor and an Emmy and Peabody Award-winning media contributor to ABC News, USA Today and the Hill.

Our friend Donna Brazil is back over here.

And he is a former Republican congressman from Illinois and author of Renegade Defending Democracy and Liberty in Our Divided Country.

Adam Kinziger, great to see you, sir.

And I should mention as I was going to...

Rob has a great podcast going on.

I heard the first two episodes about the JFK assassination.

That really should be heard by everybody.

Also, another program note, we are, this normally is our last show of the season.

We've never been on in December, but because of the strike this year, we're going to do three shows in December.

We've never done that.

So

we're off.

We are off next week and then we're on December 1st, 8th, 50th.

We could do a Christmas show.

I think we will.

I'm going to bring on my wife and my eight homeschooled children, and we are going to do a Christmas show.

Okay.

My birthday is December 15th so celebrate me.

Oh really?

Okay.

You look amazing.

You always do.

You seem to age backwards on this show.

I don't know.

Well there's something about you that brings out everything.

Okay here we go.

I've been working in David.

Oh come on honey you can handle this.

Here we go again.

You can handle this.

Okay, let's talk politics a little bit.

Okay, everybody, I see you're very excited that Nikki Haley is now only 35 points behind Trump.

We finally have a winner for a distant second.

And I want to try a theory out on you why Trump is killing it.

Not just within the party, but he's beating Biden handily, too.

Because Xi, President Xi of China, came to our state.

this week and met with Biden up in San Francisco.

And they had a little summit, and they did something very interesting in San San Francisco.

I mean I have done many many jokes as many comedians have about stepping in poop in San Francisco and you know just it's a city that needs to be put under control.

So they did because G was coming.

Put aside the fact that you only clean up when company coming over.

Okay, so they cleaned it up.

The vagrants off the street, the homeless, you know, God forbid the guy who sends us the fentany sees somebody on fentanyl.

You know.

So, you know, it's like,

this to me is why Trump is winning.

Because he talks about, I'm going to open up the mental hospitals again.

I'm not saying these are necessarily the good solutions, but he talks, I'm going to put people in camps, the immigrant, all this kind of stuff.

And people just see a place that, a country, especially in the cities, that looks out of control.

And the fact that the Democrats could control it for three days, how about making it permanent?

What do you think?

You used to be the DNC chairman.

Well,

first of all, you're right.

We do clean up when company comes.

We clean up when the Super Bowl is in our neighborhood.

We clean up when we have the World Series.

We always clean up when something different happens.

The question is: can we keep it clean?

Can we all pull in together to ensure that homeless people are not forced to sleep on the street?

Look, most Americans do.

And, you know, I worked at a homeless shelter when I was was much younger, about your age.

And

back then, when you were fighting, Ronald Reagan was president, and you were fighting for affordable housing.

Nowadays, people are being priced out of their communities.

They're being priced out of their homes.

So we need to solve this problem.

Yes, clean up the streets, clean up the suburbs, clean up the cities, but let's find a way to find more decent and affordable housing for all Americans.

The problem is, it's a,

Donna makes a great argument.

It's a very nuanced argument.

And populism, what populism does, and it does it effectively, is it takes a problem people feel, and it says, look, here's a counterexample of what's happening.

You know, you talk about the border, for instance, and so many times I tell Democrats, like, you guys got to talk about the border.

You've got to figure it out.

Because in the Midwest, particularly, there's real angst, and it's just like, sometimes I get scoffed at.

Why are you trying to help them?

But it's like, I get scoffed at.

Well, because they have to win.

Like, I think in 2024, the Democrats have to win because the Republicans are such a danger to this country right now.

Well, that's true.

That's it.

That's it.

Yeah, for a Republican former.

That's a very non-tribal thing to say.

I appreciate that.

Well, I mean, we've got, look, we have to have two healthy parties.

We don't have two healthy parties.

We have one healthy one.

Only one that actually is defending democracy right now.

And plus, I want these problems fixed.

There are real issues out there that we need to be talking about.

Okay, so Donna, here's something you said about talking about the party.

You said the biggest challenge we face as Democrats is that young voters, young black and Latino voters, they're not ready to come back to the party and they have left in droves.

Biden is winning under 30 by one point, under 30.

Bill, maybe I should come on the show more often, but I keep saying that.

I'm like.

You definitely should.

I mean, I'm going to tell you a little dirty little secret, and it's not as bad as my gumbo, but I had my gumbo, and I went out and got a half a gallon of Tito's, whatever you can get at Costco for cheap.

And I called all my nieces and nephews, all 17 of them.

And this was December.

And I was celebrating all of them.

And I said, are you going to vote for Biden?

Oh, no.

Why?

Well, we don't want no old man.

I said, your papa was old and he had two girls.

They didn't want Biden.

Okay.

So, and I said, what about Kamala?

She's a ghost.

I spent the next...

couple days at home in New Orleans trying to convince them about what Joe Biden is doing for them, what Joe Biden has done for them, and why you want somebody who likes you versus somebody who dislikes you.

By the way, half of them are coming back, but there are a hell of a lot more of them that we have to convince.

No, he's lost a lot.

I mean, Biden has lost a lot.

I mean, the numbers are just startling.

It's scary.

And black people are.

Black and young.

And Hispanic young people.

You know what they're doing?

They're flirting.

They're flirting.

Okay, well.

And they're shopping for something new.

And there's nothing new under the sun, not unless you run.

Okay, but

come on, baby.

I'll put my dress on.

I might tune for that.

All right, let's get back to the politics, shall we?

We were going somewhere.

Okay.

We are going somewhere politically.

I think part of the problem is that the Democratic Party, I think, is obsessed with race.

And when you look at, like, this is so interesting, structural racism or systemic.

This is the problem with the under-30s.

They learn a word and then they know nothing about it.

So they learn the word systemic.

This is a survey, a recent survey.

Is racism built into our society, including its policies and institutions?

Or does it come from individuals who hold racist views?

Okay.

The vast majority of the college-educated crowd, they say it's institutions.

They say yes, systemic racism.

Non-white working class, only 39%

say that.

Wouldn't they know better

the working class

if there was this horrible systemic racism still going on?

No, of course there's some of it, but this is so interesting to me, that it's the people not close to the problem who think they know better, and apparently they don't.

Well, look, I mean, we live in an age of TikTok and all these other social media platforms.

I'm not going to name them all, but I should because I feel sorry for Elon Musk, poor thing.

I mean, he should get his ass whipped.

Bill, he should get his ass whipped for buying something and turning it into something that's not, and he's lost money.

You know, if he was my man and came home and lost $20 billion,

I would put him out on the street in San Francisco.

Sweep that shit away.

Sweep that shit aside.

I think part of the issue too, though, is so particularly in young men.

Young men have been told over and over that masculine traits are toxic.

And there's nobody out there talking about what is a masculine trait that's good.

What you have is Josh Hawley putting out a book, and you have Donald Trump saying that, you know, cutting people down and being mean is masculine, which it isn't.

But I think there's a lot of rebellion in young men against this idea of like,

you can't be masculine, you can't be you.

And I think there's a lot of counterculture rebellion going on right now.

And frankly, again, advice to the Democrats, because I want them to win this year because, again, they're the only democracy supporting party, is take a hand in this and realize that identity politics isn't winning right now.

It may win in certain areas, but young people aren't into it as much as maybe you think they they are, and that's where you're seeing this counterculture explode.

Yeah, I think the people who run the party don't understand the voters.

Like you mentioned, Kamala.

Now, what I...

Now, you know, Bill, we're going to fight on that one.

I haven't said anything yet.

I'm just

laying my cards on the table, Bill.

I'm just I'm asking a question.

I'm not.

All right, go ahead.

I'm going to keep quiet.

No, no.

You can't keep quiet.

There's only two guests.

Okay.

I'm just saying that what you usually hear from the party elite types is that they could never replace Kamala Harris on the ticket because people actually want to.

They whisper about it a lot because for whatever reason, I think she's very talented, very smart, but for whatever reason it just hasn't worked.

Sometimes things just don't work.

People just don't think she did a good job as vice president.

They don't really want her on the ticket.

And the idea is, oh, well, you could not throw her off the ticket because then black America would go crazy, ape shit.

I don't think so.

Name one Democrat other than the vice president, the current president, that has met with over 100 international leaders.

Not the question.

So we don't want a woman.

So she met 100 guys.

That means nothing.

And a lot of women.

But that's not the question.

It's not even the question.

But the question is,

is she confident?

Look.

No, it's not.

That's not the question I asked.

All right, well, ask your question.

The question was.

When I'm talking loud and saying nothing, huh?

Huh?

Well, you're not answering my question.

All right, Booth.

Tell me.

Because, I mean, you know, bitch.

How spicy is your gumball?

That's the question.

It's better than this damn cheap-ass water.

You got this somewhere there.

She cast me.

There's water.

There's water in New Orleans that's better than this.

I'll get you whatever you want.

But she's competent, she's strong.

And you look at where Biden is weakest, she's strong.

So there's a reason why you're going to see this electoral coalition come back together because it's a family.

It's a family.

We're dysfunctional.

Democrats are so dysfunctional.

You don't want them around your table at Thanksgiving because they all come in with nothing in their hands and they hungry.

But the point is,

we've got to bring the family back together.

And it's going to take time and it's going to take a lot of work.

And Adam, we need you on the front lines because the next 352 days is going to be crazy.

It's going to be

crazy, crazy crazy.

Let me...

Bring this up because this is I think a sign of the times.

Walmart in Georgia now has a police station, one of their stores, inside the store.

If you think crime is a concern for people when they're putting a police station inside of a Walmart, and we looked into this and you know police, they have those, you know, 187 means a murder, I think, and 5150 is a you know, mental patient.

They have all these, 213 is a robbery, I think.

They have all these.

So we looked at some of the ones that they have for the police station in the Walmart.

Would you like to hear some of the ones that I thought you were?

They have the, oh, a 1074, that's item in store being used by a customer as Kleenex.

That's

the 4120, rascal scooter jackknife blocking self-checkout.

A 1011, that's kid rock shooting beer.

1089.

1089, that's racist Karen in altercation with anti-mask Karen.

Yeah.

1470, shoplifter needs assistance.

And 1871 is Congresswoman giving hand job to store clerks.

1067 is an illegally parked home.

And a 1531 is Man in Candy Isle insisting Skittles is a pride display.

That's the police station in Walmart, Bill.

Oh, man.

Okay, so I want to ask about this.

You mentioned TikTok.

Okay, so the people Biden is losing, young and black, those are the people who are mostly on Team Palestine, Team Hamas, right?

So I think that's part of why they don't like people like Joe Biden.

They have a whole different view of the world, and it's fucked up.

So this is what happened.

Here's from the Washington Post.

Somebody put out this letter

or published this letter on TikTok.

It had been around for a long time.

Apparently it was Ahmad bin Laden.

We're not sure he wrote it.

This is after he went underground.

This is 2002, a little after 9-11.

And he wrote, you know, he did write a lot of screeds, you know, always about how we're the evil and we're Satan and blah, blah, blah.

We did everything horrible and that's why everything's fucked up in the world.

Okay.

By Wednesday night, the Post says the letter had become a point of discussion.

Some, these are the kids on it, saying its critiques of American foreign policy had opened their eyes to a history they'd never learned.

Yeah, they didn't learn any history is the problem.

So now you're going to get it from bin Laden?

Thank you.

And then you read,

it's like,

bin Laden?

Really?

A lieutenant colonel in the Air Force.

Thank you for your service.

You're on the front lines?

I refer to you.

By the way, thanks for paying taxes so I can fly your airplanes.

It was fun.

But yeah, I mean, look, you know, usually it takes like four generations after a very awful historic event like what you're seeing with people now kind of again denying the Holocaust for that to happen.

It's amazing to me that just 20-some years later, it is a failure of parenting.

It's a failure of the education system that to tell people how evil this stuff is.

And there's something with TikTok.

I mean, maybe it's social media in general.

Maybe it's a generational thing.

I don't know.

But something about TikTok that in just a day.

day, bin Laden's letter goes to every influencer.

Right.

And there's a viral, what is it, 15 million views by the time TikTok finally responded and took this down.

This is a serious national security threat when you have young Americans saying that bin Laden's getting it right and our own foreign policy is wrong because whatever reasons they've come up with.

This is a serious issue that we have to date.

Did Biden raise this with Xi when he was here this week?

I'm sure they did talk about that, among other things, of fentanyl and of course some of the other great issues.

But look, Bin Laden is a murderer.

And if you haven't figured that out, then they should talk to some of the survivors and some of the families who are still in great pain, not just in New York and Washington, but all across this country.

I'm surprised that social media companies have not gotten smart about how algorithms are used, Bill.

I mean, it is used to sort of like pipe up and amplify the most incendiary thing out there.

And the fact that young people don't know right from wrong, good from evil, anything.

They don't know anything.

They're the most optimistic generation.

We get 4 million Americans every year that turns 18.

So we have to reach, I say we, we have to reach them.

They're the future.

32 million of them have come into the vote and age population since 2016, that small election that Hillary Clinton lost.

They think America is the worst place to live.

Why don't you take a gap year in Abbottabad?

Yeah, exactly.

You know what?

What's scariest to me is that I don't even know if they care about the bin Laden letter.

It's all about fame.

And if all of a sudden one person tweets something about bin Laden's letter or TikTok something and they get a million views, then somebody's like, well, that goes viral.

So I'm going to do something that goes viral.

Remember when fame is the new currency?

Bin Laden used to put out the little video, little tapes.

And we used to get those back.

See, I'm old enough to know he had tapes.

Okay, he thought he was going to be on the charts.

And

that's why his ass is dead.

Okay.

But we,

I pray, and Bill,

I'm a believer, so

I'm gonna pray that we do a better job of teaching not just our young people, but teaching our citizens, you know, what happened on that horrific day on September 11th.

So do you think that the Chinese, and then this is the issue you were raising, I mean, TikTok is theirs.

Yeah.

And a lot of people are concerned that this is sort of a Trojan horse into the minds of our youth.

Do you think they're feeding them this stuff?

Because I don't think they have to.

I think they just have to let these idiots talk to each other.

That's what

they'll do it to each other.

Well, we don't, you know, we don't know, and I think the FBI is looking into this now, which they should have done a long time ago.

But the concern is, here's an experiment.

If I would tell a young person, which the NSA isn't doing, but if I said the NSA is reading your messages on Instagram, they're not actually, they would be outraged.

If I say the Chinese Communist Party is aware of what you're doing on TikTok, it's like, uh, whatever, don't ban ban my TikTok.

It's incredible.

How did the TikTok people and the tiki torched people wind up on the same side?

They should unite and be the tiki-tok tiktor people.

Tiki torched TikTok.

I don't know what.

I go back to this false equivalency, the way in which they are getting their news and their information.

And Bill, this is a challenge.

And now we have AI.

And the President did also talk to Mr.

Chi about that.

Again, I don't know the results of all of this, but I know the President raised all these issues.

Okay, so the other thing is, as if we needed this, Trump now sounds exactly like Hitler.

This has people.

This has what?

This has people.

Well,

but

I have something reassuring to say about this.

Okay, good.

Thank you.

Please.

Now, just so people know what we're talking about, this is like a quote from one of his recent speeches.

He refers to the radical left thugs that live like vermin.

Vermin is totally a Hitler word.

That's right.

Okay.

Then he said, he's talking about the immigrants.

They come from prisons.

We know they come from mental institutions and insane asylums.

It's poisoning the blood of our country.

And then he goes on, they're coming in with disease.

Okay, poisoning the blood, another hugely Hitler term.

If anyone thinks he knows this, you're wrong.

Right.

He knows nothing.

He doesn't know this.

It's just that,

It's just that temperamentally, I'm not saying he wants to do horrible things like Hitler did,

but he could.

He just sounds like Hitler.

As a politician, it just comes out the same.

They have the exact same instincts to go for this exact kind of place, this demagogue place where you get people fearing the other.

The politics of fear.

Yes.

That's why it is.

But is he actually trying to sound like Hitler?

No.

He just kind of does.

Well, the scary thing, too, by the way, a lot of this is written by Stephen Miller, who does know this.

Yes, he does.

When he comes out with a term like vermin, Stephen Miller knows what vermin is.

You know, there's always this rumor, too, that Donald Trump had Mein Kampf by his bedstand, like instead of the button.

But he never read it.

He doesn't.

But he felt cool to it.

I know.

I know he never read it because his name isn't in it.

But apparently, Bill, he can't count.

Apparently, he can't count.

If you've been watching that trial up in New York,

he's been signing his name on a piece of paper that didn't know one plus one was two.

He thought it was three and a half.

Yes.

He can't count.

So here's something really scary.

Mike Johnson, he's the Republican Party new head chief over there in the House.

This came out.

He was talking to a prayer group.

He said, depraved America deserves God's wrath.

Came out there.

Exactly sounds like bin Laden.

Now the Republican guy sounds like bin Laden.

And Trump sounds like Hitler.

And the kids sound like Bitl.

I'm very upset.

And I've been reading a lot.

I mean, I know people from North Louisiana different from people from South Louisiana.

Like I told you, we like our rice dirty.

They like everything up there clean because they're so close to Texas.

But Mike Johnson.

Speaker Mike Johnson.

And, you know, I'll let the congressman speak to his friend.

But he may be quiet, but let me tell you what Trump called him.

MAGA Mike.

He's MAGA Mike.

MAGA, yes.

Right.

He's not my friend, by the way.

Okay, well.

Only interaction I ever had with him, the only interaction ever, he was trying to get me to sign on to this Texas lawsuit.

And I'm like, dude, you obviously don't know me because I'm actually the one that's saying that your lawsuit's insane here.

But the difference, I mean, honestly, Bill, when you look at who the Taliban is, and the Taliban is all about, hey, we want to take Sharia law, this thing that we believe in, we want to religiously implement this into our government.

There is no difference between Christian nationalism, which is what he's representing,

than the Taliban.

Now, maybe the end is different, maybe the means are different, but there's no difference in saying this is the government run on a race.

Again, here's something for the young people to chew on a little bit.

Yes.

The reason why Mike Johnson said depraved America deserves God's wrath,

homosexuality.

They don't like it.

But in our country, we don't actually kill them.

Even the crazy far-rights don't throw them off of roofs.

If you can't understand that, you don't understand anything.

All right, I just got one more question.

I got a little time.

Okay, this thing that's going on in Congress, because you were in Congress fairly recently, where these guys are standing up and threatening to fight each other and kick,

elbowing in the kidney, and Lauren Bolbert was called the whore by Marjorie Taylor Greene.

I gotta say, I hate to put it this way, there's such white trash in Congress.

I mean,

it's shut what?

Is that...

All I know is I leave Congress and this happens.

But it's just this, like, it's just all, it goes back to the TikTok thing.

It's all about fame.

That's the only currency in politics.

And I wouldn't say this to.

I wouldn't, the things that they were saying to each other, I wouldn't say on a television show.

And this is, I wouldn't say, stand your butt up.

Right.

Really agree with me?

Stand your butt up.

Take this ring off like a...

You got that right.

Take your

ring off.

Take my hoops.

Yeah, take my hoops.

Take my hoops.

You're going to throw down.

All right.

Thank you very much.

We ran out of time.

New rules, everybody.

Time for new rules.

Okay, new rule.

The New York prosecutors who questioned Trump's daughter under oath have to double-check that it was actually her and not some deep fake robot Ivanka.

I mean, look at the image in this photo: stiff, plasticine, hollow-eyed.

Yeah, that's Ivanka.

New rule, the credit card terminal at the grocery store has to stop being so bipolar.

Please insert your card.

Now take it out.

Take it out.

Oh, okay, sorry.

I thought we were having a good time.

Look,

I completely respect your right to change your mind, but I watched you do the exact same thing to the two people in front of me, and I'm starting to think it's you.

Neural, now that the QAnon shaman

is running for Congress, liberals must resist the urge to laugh.

Because we've seen this with Republicans before.

It starts with, ha, ha ha ha, you have got to be fucking kidding me.

But then someone shaves him and he wins.

Then he makes a lot of appearances on Fox News.

Then he's Senator Shaman, and then Steve Kornacki is declaring he just won Pennsylvania and he's the next president of the United States.

And you're looking at the TV like, oh shit, you've got to be fucking kidding me.

Number all, since smart watches can track your health and since the state of your relationship is important to your health, they should make one that monitors your relationship.

Introducing the Smart Heart Watch.

Just because your significant other is miles away doesn't mean they're not mad at you about something.

The Smart Heart Watch monitors your partner's blood pressure and sends you an alert if you're in the doghouse.

Whoopsie, your relationship screen time was down 30% from yesterday.

Time to send more Red Kissy among you.

Smart HeartWatch also assigns points to how present you are in conversations, reminding you when to text, I was just thinking about you.

And the Smart Heart Watch will let you know when your points are too low.

Hello, you've been broken up with.

You were all the people who forecast the weather have to stop trying to scare me for ratings.

You know, it used to just be: it's going to rain.

Now it's, dear God, an atmospheric river.

It's going to be cold out.

It's now a polar vortex.

A storm is now a bomb cyclone.

Oh, please.

I just want the forecast, I just want the facts, and I just want the science.

And that's why I tune into meteorologist Mammarie Mellon.

And

finally, new rule, there's nothing wrong with not having an opinion on something,

especially if you don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

And if you're getting your facts from TikTok and Instagram and Facebook, I don't want to hear your hot take on asymmetrical warfare because there's a term for someone who gets their news from Facebook: mom.

You know, among the worst things that social media ever did was it made everyone feel they had to weigh in on every controversial issue or breaking news story, and that's my job.

In the olden days, people would watch the evening news and then, well, nothing.

They went on with their lives.

But today, everybody's got to share their theory on everything, whether it's trans women on the swim team or whether dwarves should play non-dwarfs in the Snow White movie.

Hey.

But has anyone noticed that the more time everyone spends telling everyone else their political position at everything, the more we've been at each other's throats?

Here's a trend I would love to see on Twitter.

No opinion.

Where people take issues like the debt limit and climate science and post, I don't know shit about this.

Thursday is Thanksgiving, the cherished yearly celebration when distant friends and scattered family members gather together to fight about Donald Trump.

The other butterball.

But not just Trump.

We'll also argue about abortion and critical race theory and guns and prisons and schools.

And this year we're fighting about Israel.

But here's the thing: you're not actually legally obliged to have an opinion.

Do you know why the Indians and the pilgrims were able to sit peaceably through the first Thanksgiving?

Because nobody brought up politics.

Even though I'm sure the Indians had strong feelings about immigration.

Back in the 90s, Michael Jordan famously said he stayed out of politics because, quote, Republicans buy sneakers too.

And then Kanye said, and don't forget Nazis.

But the days when when someone could say that and keep their opinions to themselves, those days are gone.

Big Brother says that having no opinion is not an option anymore.

You must participate in this online circle jerk, or you'll be

seen as an insensitive prick who's single-handedly obstructing much-needed progress in the world.

Did you post a black square?

No.

Well, that's why there's still racism.

You see,

here's what it is.

The younger generations were raised wrong.

So they can't stand for a minute the idea that other people have opinions different than their own.

59% of consumers now will buy a product or boycott a product based solely on the political stance a company takes.

Huh, Gen Z consumers need to know if their spermicide condemns cockfighting.

Disney didn't want to get into a big pissing match with Ron DeSantis about sex in grade school, but its employees sure did, so they had to.

Now one side thinks Disney said too much, the other thinks it didn't say enough.

We see this pattern over and over.

We saw it with Bud Light when they did ads with a trans influencer and Magination thought it was a plot to use beer to turn them gay.

Pride Month is now a minefield for corporations.

This year, Target put up special rainbow displays, which presented Christians who oppose gay marriage with an impossible choice: either support a gay lifestyle and go to hell for it, or shop at Kohl.

And why did I ever need to know that Chick-fil-A is chicken?

That's Christian?

Can't it just be chicken?

This is unsustainable.

It's unsustainable.

To politicize everything means we're always fighting because we don't all agree and never will.

And most people don't want to be forced to say anything.

Kylie Jenner posted, We stand with the people of Israel, and then deleted it, which is pretty much the opposite of standing with.

One executive who was interviewed about the pressure companies have felt to make a statement about the Hamas war said, we're not historians.

A lot of us didn't understand the issue very well, didn't understand the history.

Exactly.

And I bet you still don't.

So why not just shut the fuck up?

I don't need.

I don't need to be reminded that Spanks' stretchy pants are against racism.

I don't care who Frito-Lay stands with.

You make bean dip.

Just do that.

Stop making everything about some other random deeper shit.

When I hear Astroglide, I want you to know that they support stop.

You lost me.

I don't want.

I don't want to.

I don't want to live in this annoying world where they can't drink Bud Light and we can't eat Chick-fil-A.

I'm sick of all of it.

This Thanksgiving, I'm going to make beer canned chicken with Bud Light and Chick-fil-A.

And anybody who doesn't like it can go fuck themselves.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.

Happy Thanksgiving.

All right, that's our show.

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

We'll be at the Ruth Eckert Hall in Clearwater, Florida, March 24th.

The Center for Performing Arts in San Jose, April 20th.

And Club Random, it's not like the other 5 million podcasts.

It's on YouTube wherever you get podcasts.

Thank you, Donna Brazil, Adam Kissinger.

Rob Reiner and Albert Crooks.

Now go watch us on CNN on Overtime at 11:30 or on Saturday morning.

Thank you.

Catch all new episodes 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.