Ep. #640: Sen. Ted Cruz, Pamela Paul, Jordan Peterson

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

Start the clock.

Hi, everybody.

Thank you.

I'll take you.

I suppose we're whooping now.

All right, all right.

This is a very

thank you very much.

Very hyped up crowd tonight.

Yes, I know why.

Wow.

I know.

It's because

we're in Hollywood and the actor strike is finally over.

See you younger people watching, the actors are the people in the movies pointing at the CGI

But no, I worry I mean with the actor strike over who's gonna figure out the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on Twitter's where we are

Here's where we are with that the Museum of Tolerance here in LA the Museum of Tolerance

They had a showing a movie about this and fist fist fights broke out.

14 people were treated for irony

at the Museum of Tolerance.

That's where it is.

Well, and they were showing 43 minutes of the Hamas attack on October 7th in Israel and without any editorialization, just the footage that they themselves, Hamas, took and wanted the world to see.

But the pro-Palestinian people did demonstrate they did not like this.

The college kids especially, think that

they prefer to think of the Hamas people as just a kind of a rag-tag bunch of underdogs, kind of the bad news bears of the Middle East.

This was

a big topic at the Republican debate last night.

I don't know if you saw that.

Oh, I guess not.

I didn't either.

I didn't, I can't lie.

I wouldn't.

Please.

Well,

they're down to five candidates on the island now, and

all of whom Trump is beating by 40 points.

The only reason to be in this is to be there if Trump, for some reason, can't run.

That's the one thing Republicans and Democrats have in common now.

They're both waiting for their nominees to die.

But there was

a good news, bad news week for the Democrats.

Bad news in the six battleground states, Trump is beating Biden in five out of six of them.

And Biden's support among non-white voters dropped 33 points.

And Democrats cannot win with just white people.

Although it hasn't hurt Taylor Swift.

But

the good news for the Democrats, they do have kind of a kryptonite issue, abortion.

America loves abortion.

Even in the red states, seven out of seven times, it's on the ballot.

People are saying, no, read my lips, no new babies.

Abortion wins in counties Biden lost by 20 points.

If he was smart, he would run as a Borton Joe.

I know things are tough, but

a Borton Joe feels your pain.

Give a hug to a Borton Joe.

But this is the cognitive dissonance in America.

Okay, so on the one side, the people are like, no, this is where we are socially.

We are are basically pro-choice.

And then the new Speaker of the House for the Republicans, Mike Johnson, turns out, this came out this week, he has an app, you can buy it on your phone, called Covenant Eyes.

It's basically AA for masturbators.

It's for people who don't want to masturbate, God knows why.

You get on this app and then you have an accountability partner who monitors you if you look at poor and gets a notice.

This isn't even the creepiest part of this story.

You know who Mike Johnson's accountability partner is?

His 17-year-old son.

Yeah, my dad just took me fishing.

You know, there's lots of ways to bond, but

and

I mean,

so this 17-year-old kid is sitting in class.

Oh, dad's watching Anal again.

This is his life?

And also, I think this is a much better deal for the father than the 17-year-old.

When I was 17-year-old, it never stopped.

So one last,

again,

last social note, see where the world is moving.

The Vatican, This is big news today.

The Vatican said they will now baptize transgendered people.

So, you know, this is pretty revolutionary for the Vatican.

Well, they said the priest is a gay man wearing a dress.

We're practically there anyway.

All right, we've got a great show.

We have Jordan Peterson and Pamela Paul.

But first up, he's the Republican senator from Texas.

His new book is Unwoke, How to Defeat Cultural Marxism in America.

Senator Ted Cruz is joining us.

Ted Cruz.

I didn't think we'd really show up.

Thank you, Mr.

Club.

Thank you.

I'm thrilled to be here.

Well,

I'm very appreciative that you'd come.

You know,

I'm sure you know this is a show where you have to be up for everything.

That sounds good.

Yeah, I mean,

well, let's put that to the test.

And I'm sure you get a lot of guff from people just to be seen talking with me, and I get it talking to you.

They call it platforming.

This is a terrible place for America to be, right?

Where half the people hate it, that we're just talking.

You know, look, it really is, but I'll tell you something.

I actually really appreciate what you do.

And

listen, you are an old school liberal.

And

number one, you're funny as hell.

I feel so bad about all the jokes I've done about you.

I know.

I mean, wow.

But two-thirds of of them were really funny, and I laughed at them.

Right, I hope so.

But listen, number two, you believe in free speech.

Yes.

And I got to tell you, look, I appreciate and enjoy your monologues.

I've probably tweeted out your monologues at least a dozen times, and I'm not sure which one of us is more frightened at how often we're agreeing.

Well,

we are agreeing on free speech.

Yeah.

And that did morph a lot toward the left.

I mean, certainly the right right does it too, but that's, look, I get a lot of shit from people who say, oh, you're so Republican.

Just because I don't get on the crazy train with you.

I am, you know.

I don't bend the knee.

Well, and look, there's another thing that you have a show where right and left talk to each other.

Yes.

I don't know of another show in television that does that.

No.

I mean, we live in these separate echo chambers.

And it's a terrible thing.

If you watch Rachel Maddow and Sean Hannity, you're in like parallel universes.

And it's not good for America that we don't have conversations with each other.

Okay.

Well, let's say this is the beginning of a friendship then.

There we go.

Okay.

So

let's, and, you know,

one thing friends do for each other is plug.

You've got a book.

I do.

It's called Unwoke.

And this is, I was listening to the

highlight reel we played before the show.

I heard Amir I am doing jokes about wokeness.

Yeah.

Because that is something we have both recognized.

I think I think of it differently than you do.

I think you think of it as a conspiracy.

It's what I'm getting from the book.

I think it's just the natural result of a society that becomes more effete, more successful, where they lose perspective, and they just go crazy.

about a lot of stuff.

So how do you define woke for the people who say, you know, I hear that term, it's kind of new, everybody seems to have a different idea of it.

If you had to like very quickly kitchen table it for, what would you say woke is?

So what I'm talking about in the book, it is very closely intertwined with what I call cultural Marxism.

So the full title of the book is Unwoke, How to Defeat Cultural Marxism in America.

And it discusses major institutions that have been captured by the extreme left.

And I start with universities.

You know, if you look at what's going on right now, the rabid anti-Semitism at universities.

that's the manifestation of cultural Marxism.

And I trace the history going back to the 60s and 70s when just plain vanilla Marxists began becoming tenured professors and administrators at schools.

And Karl Marx laid out a worldview that everything was an inevitable conflict between oppressors and victims, and he viewed it socioeconomically.

So the oppressors...

were the owners of capital, and the victims were the proletariat.

And his solution...

And sometimes that was true.

And sometimes that is true.

I mean, there is conflict, sure, and there is oppression.

I mean, that's real.

His solution was the worst.

It was the violent revolution of the proletariat to forcibly redistribute from the oppressors.

Fast forward to where we are now.

I was talking recently with a tech entrepreneur who's a man of the left.

He's been a Democrat his whole life.

And he was asking me, he said,

where did all of this vicious anti-Semitism come from in the squad, in the House of Representatives, on campuses across the country?

And what I said said is: look, for the extreme left, they have coded Jews as oppressors.

And they've coded the Palestinians as victims.

And that's why they are cheering for what they see as the violent overthrow of the victims overthrowing the oppressors.

That's why, look, Harvard, 35 student groups at Harvard, my alma mater,

signed an asinine statement.

Fair enough.

And

by the way,

you know how many Harvard graduates it takes to screw in a light bulb?

I don't.

Just one.

You hold it up.

The world revolves around you.

Oh,

you were so close to nailing that joke.

Yeah, I screwed up the class.

I do it too, and I've been doing this for 40 years.

Well, you've got remedial classes afterwards?

Okay, no.

No, that's one thing politicians should not do is try to be funny.

It doesn't work unless, you know, there are certain.

By the way, for what it's worth, I agree bad comedy is painful, but I disagree with you.

You can't do this job without laughing and enjoying it.

Too many politicians take themselves too damn seriously, and they act like they've got a stick up their ass.

Well.

Okay.

And just laughing.

Look, I'm on Twitter.

I mean, I've never seen this side of you.

I'm thrilled.

You know, you know, your reputation, and again, I don't believe anything.

I always say this to everybody.

I don't believe anything because, first of all, what I do here that I think might be true is only ever half the truth.

So when I say I've heard just endlessly that you are a very disliked person in Congress, you must have heard this a lot.

Yeah, maybe once or twice.

Okay.

Where does that come from?

Why is that the rumor?

Is it true?

Look, it varies.

It's true with some.

Listen, Washington, I think, is dysfunctional, and I'm pissed off at Washington being dysfunctional.

And when I got in the Senate, I tried to fight very hard to say, let's do what we said we would do.

And that is not a popular position in Washington.

I think both parties bear a lot of the blame for that.

I think Democrats bear a lot of blame, but Republicans do too.

And I've spent my time, I tell Democrats all the time, you know, Democrats in the Senate have a herd mentality.

They all take orders.

They all, they vote for terrible things and block.

And I tell Democrats, I'm like, it's not the end of the world to stand up to your leadership.

I do it all the time, and you can survive.

And so I have a lot of battles in Washington.

Do you?

I mean, look,

we're having such a good time, but

now you're going to have to answer for Sonny on the causeway.

Okay.

So

I'm just saying, because stand up.

You're one of 11 senators who voted not to certify the last election.

Okay.

One of 11.

Do you think Biden didn't win?

Look, Biden was clearly the president.

Well, that's not the question or the answer.

Do you think he won?

Was it a fair election?

No, those are very different questions.

Okay.

Did he win and is he the president?

Yes.

Was it fair?

Look, there were lots of things that were unfair about the last election.

But it's been combed over more than any election ever, even by the people on your side, and they say it's not.

This is from your book.

You say, Democrats, whose capacity for shamelessness never ceases to astound me, were no longer willing to play by the rules of democracy.

Now, I know you're funny now, but is that a joke?

The Democrats don't want to play by the rules of the one.

What was the context before and after that?

I'm sorry, the one sentence I'm not remembering.

Well,

I don't know, but you wrote that.

The Democrats are no longer willing to play by the rules of democracy.

I wanted to read it because I feel like it's the exact opposite of what I think, which is that the Republicans, including you, January 6th, et cetera, are the ones who are no longer willing to play by the the rules of democracy.

It seems like, wait, wait,

it seems like your idea has switched in the Republican Party to elections only count if we win.

And then we will endlessly litigate them, even though your own, it was laughed out of court, like 60 different courts.

I mean, we have the secretaries of state, even the Republican ones.

Everybody said Trump's own election people said it was one of the most fair, well-run elections ever.

Why won't you let it go?

So, Bill, you're the one that's not letting it go.

You're the one that's asking about it.

But let me be clear about something.

I'm asking about your history.

Listen, I believe passionately in democracy, and I also believe voter fraud is a real and persistent problem.

And it's weird that Democrats have taken the view that...

It's been studied.

Okay, so you don't think it is, but you know what?

I have never once seen you or any other host ask Hillary Clinton why she said in 2016 that Donald Trump was an illegitimate president.

I've never seen you asked Democrats why they objected to the presidential certification in 2001, that was George W.

Bush, in 2005 that was George W.

Bush, and in 2016 that was Donald Trump.

And so I don't think we should be

have a double standard here.

Okay, well, there is a double standard because there's two different things going on.

One is a remonstration, a mild protestation of something.

Al Gore

was the head of the Senate at the time.

He had to pass the baton in an election.

He knew he won.

And his

other denying the election.

Are you an election denier?

You just said Al Gore won that election.

Well, he okay, he did not win the election.

I'm sorry, you're right, you're right.

I meant to say he won the popular vote.

But that's not the case.

Yes, I understand.

I understand.

But the other candidate's brother stopped the count.

Okay, that's not accurate.

The Supreme Court stopped the count.

His own brother ran that election in Florida.

His brother was the governor of Florida.

You know, they counted the country.

Well, hold on, hold on a second.

I mean, facts matter.

They counted the votes four times in Florida.

George W.

Bush won all four times.

I was part of the legal team litigating that case, so I was intimately involved in Bush versus Gore.

Every time they counted the votes, Bush won.

The bigger point is that Al Gore took one for the team.

He came out and said, okay, you know, this was a really fucked up election, but this is America.

The jewel in our crown is that we pass power peacefully, and I'm not going to be the first guy not to do that.

Nixon let it go in 1960.

That could have been a

screwy election.

And Hillary came out in her goddamn purple suit.

So she did it.

Before the sun rose,

she did it.

Before the cock crowed three times, she came out and said Trump is the president.

That's what you guys will not do.

Joe Biden is the president.

What do you mean we won't do it?

I'm fighting him every day, and he's screwing up the country and the world.

So I'm quite aware Joe Biden's the president.

I wish he wasn't, but it's not lost on me who it is that caused a war in Europe with Ukraine, that gave $100 billion to Iran and the terrorist attacks.

He caused a war in Ukraine?

Yes.

Do you want to know how?

No, but next time.

Thank you.

It's like edible.

All right, thank you.

That was spirited.

Come back and see us.

I look forward to it.

All right, I'll see you on overtime.

We can finish it up.

Ted Cruz.

All right.

Hi.

Well,

you can't say he's not willing to engage.

All right.

He is an author and professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Toronto, whose online education platform, Peterson Academy, will avail in early 2024.

Jordan Peterson, the very dapper,

Jordan Peterson,

and she was the longtime editor of the New York Times Book Review and is now an opinion columnist for the New York Times.

Pamela Paul, welcome to our show.

It's about time we had you on.

Okay.

So I feel like this week was dominated by political news.

There was that big poll that everybody thought said was a very, very steam poll that said Trump is beating Biden in the, we only have elections in like six states.

I mean that's the whole country.

It's Michigan, Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, Nevada, Pennsylvania.

That's the whole country.

Everybody else is just watching.

So those matter and Trump is beating him in almost all of them.

Then we had an off-year election and abortion was on the ballot as I mentioned in the monologue.

This is the kryptonite, I think, that Democrats have against the Republicans.

People really did not like having that right taken away.

So I guess my question is,

these two things playing out against each other, can they hang this issue on Trump if he's the candidate, since it's the most, because he did brag about appointing the Supreme Court that overturned Roe versus Wade?

I mean, I think that abortion is like the defund the police for the Republicans.

I think it works against the Republicans more than it does for the Democrats.

Certainly when it comes to a national, you know, to a presidential election.

I think it's really tempting tempting to overread the tea leaves in terms of how much the Democrats' success in this off-year election, which is undeniable, will then affect the presidential election in 2024.

But that issue, I feel like that got to something.

I'm talking about red states.

They've had, this has been on the ballot in seven states.

Now, you would guess, California, of course, we went through this, Vermont, Kansas, Kentucky, Montana, Ohio.

Even red state people

say,

you know what, life begins when you can afford it.

Yep.

And we can't.

I mean,

yeah, I think that abortion is as much an economic issue as it is a moral issue, and I think kids are pricey.

No kids are pricey.

And I think most Americans.

It's like buying a boat.

Right?

I mean, it's always something we got to repair.

I think

it'd be convenient for the Democrats if abortion could be the primary issue in the election, but the fact that Trump is so popular seems to indicate that that's not going to work very well.

There's a mystery here, right?

And the mystery is, at least in part, why he is so popular, despite the fact that he's gone after constantly and he's in court and people are...

what would you say, ambivalent about his moral character.

Nonetheless, no matter what's thrown at him, he seems to continue to ride high in the polls.

And I don't think that's an issue the Democrats have dealt with seriously at all.

And diverting the conversation to abortion isn't going to change that one bit, as far as I can see.

Oh, I think it will.

I just think he is uniquely qualified, shall we say, because he's probably had a lot of abortions.

So it's even.

But

is there a moral dimension here?

I mean, I think a lot of the reason why this is so popular, even in states where you wouldn't think it is, where people supposedly have traditional values.

You know, they call it the red states and the flyover states in the middle of the country.

Even there, I think we've come to this place where women are of the opinion that the guy I fuck is not necessarily the guy I want to have a baby with.

I see that as progress.

Yes.

But maybe you don't.

It isn't obvious to me that it's progress.

And the reason for that in part is because one of the unintended consequences of the sexual revolution seems to be that the utility of sex itself seems to be increasingly questionable among young people.

I mean, in Japan, for example, I think it's 30% of people now under 30 are virgins.

It's about the same in South Korea.

And young people are less likely to have sex than they were 20 years ago.

And so there is a case that you can make for enhanced sexual freedom, but the real world consequences of that have been that sex has become, by all appearances, increasingly terrifying for young people because of its complexity.

I don't think that the freedom.

That's not why.

It's because the phone.

Yeah, but no, I think.

Wait a second.

That's associated with the same thing.

You know,

you made some comments about the new speaker and the app that he's using with his son.

I mean, it isn't the phone.

Well, it isn't the phone exactly.

It's porn on the phone.

And porn is part of the sexual revolution, let's say.

But what's happening is that the sexual revolution, as far as I can tell, is devouring sex.

And I think that making sex easier for people, we thought that that would, we thought, I suppose, especially in the aftermath of the pill, that that would open up a whole new world of sexual delight.

And I don't think it's turning out that way at all.

It certainly doesn't seem to be turning out that way.

35% of the time.

I mean, I'm trying at my house, but I think.

35% of internet.

I mean, but does it but is it isn't this the evolution of society?

I mean, can we really put this genie back in the bottle?

I don't think we can blame the sexual revolution, the fact that kids aren't having sex on the sexual revolution.

What would you blame it on?

I think that they are watching pornography.

They're on their phones.

I think that they're socializing less frequently in,

you know, in person, so there are less opportunities to do so.

I think that some of the fallout of the Me Too movement, which I think has largely been a good thing, is that there's a lot of fear among young people about ever having sex and having the consequences not just be an unwanted pregnancy, but also perhaps some kind of allegation.

And I think that sex has become frightening for a lot of young people.

I would say that I don't see a difference between that and the argument that I was making because even the onset of porn online on the phones is a consequence of the sexual revolution.

I mean that all is, you know that, you know perfectly well that emerged in a straight line from Playboy through penthouse to hustler to like 24-hour on-demand porn.

And that is a consequence of the sexual revolution because one of the things the sexual revolution attempted to, what would you say, facilitate was the idea that sex could be merely for pleasure.

And I don't think that's true.

I think the sex that's for pleasure will devour itself, and I think that's what's playing out.

And I mean, that's partly why young men, and I think the fear issue that you're discussing is also relevant, but I think it's related to the sexual revolution as well.

Sex for pleasure devours itself.

That's what it looks like.

I feel like you're talking for one type of person, and we're not all that way.

You know, I feel like there's a giant spectrum, and it's very rarely talked about, of levels of horniness, shall we call it.

I mean.

No, I mean, like.

But people, but people in committed relationships have more sex.

But is it better?

What?

No, I'm serious.

I mean...

Well, you clap, but

I think generally it is better.

For you, that's what I'm saying.

Well, it is for me, for sure.

Okay, but I feel like you're speaking

as if you are a representative of the entire human race, and I'm saying there's a very large spectrum.

There are people, I was just reading about their convention last week, who are, they're not anything.

They're like asexual.

They're asexual.

Yeah, they're like, just get away from me.

They're like A and L G T Q plus I A.

Are they part of that?

Yes, yes.

They're with the gays and feel very uncomfortable, and they're not necessarily associated, but yes.

Why do they want to lump everybody together like that?

You think if you were unique, you were celebrating your uniqueness, you wouldn't like, oh, and no, let's add the Z.

Because they have nothing in common, these people.

They do have one thing.

They do have one thing in common.

They have one thing in common.

And that's the attempt to define themselves in terms of sexual behavior.

Like, that's one thing that's in common.

And that's a big mistake, because

you can't reduce yourself to your sexual behavior.

Right, no, I agree.

Well, you shouldn't.

Well, but it doesn't work.

I mean, you would see that there is something called like a nymphomaniac, right?

I mean, that's a real thing.

In the imagination of adolescents, yes, but

they're pretty rare in real life, Bill.

Not in the porn industry.

Yeah, well.

That's where they go, you know, like, you know, priests.

Let's not go back.

Let's not go back.

Okay.

Well, okay,

but as a psychologist, what do you think about this?

I get your point about this element of creepy, but a guy who has an app with his son with his 17 year old son where they monitor each other and norc on each other for looking at porn isn't that simple well I think it I think it's a more complicated issue than that

it's an app every parent that there is now struggles with how their children use their phone and I don't know the specifics of what Mike Johnson is doing with his son to to to monitor his behavior i i it's not

It's simple.

I just say it's like AA for masturbators.

Like if you

it sends an alert to the other person's phone.

Well, okay,

how do you think for sex?

How do you think

schools to monitor kids

monitoring sex?

Well, how do you

but

I understand the satirical bit with regard to Johnson, but

the question is, what do you think parents should do to keep an eye on the behavior of their kids on phones?

Because the phones are very pathological, right?

Well, pornography is very hard on young men and on young women.

It's hard on them physiologically because it interferes with sexual function.

It sets a ridiculous and unattainable standard for young women, a crazy standard, and it's unbelievably addictive.

And so it's easy to make fun of someone for attempting to regulate that behavior.

But I don't know what the alternative is.

I'm not knocking completely regulating, but this is the case.

Okay, I can regulate, I can understand dad regulating teenage son, but son looking at what dad's doing?

That's the part I find.

Maybe that's a quid pro quo.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's fucked up.

First of all, kids and parents should not be equals like that.

Dad should be able to do some things that the kid isn't doing.

If he can't rub one out in the garage,

I don't know how this show

is usually a little

more highbrow.

I swear to God, you

came on an odd night.

Okay.

Okay.

So

I'm going to change the subject.

I started this season, I can't believe it, six weeks now since the strike ended for us, with my Ruth Bader Biden editorial

saying he's going to be Ruth Bader Biden.

He's going to be the person who stayed too long and really suffered his reputation for it.

Okay, now it seems like the drumbeat is getting louder every week.

I see David Axelrod, who was the guy who was Obama's main campaign guru when Joe was his vice president.

George Will, also, saying the Democrats are walking into a disaster here.

They just can't do it.

We all like Joe, and now we see he's losing in five of six states.

This is the battleground states.

Meanwhile, I read about this guy, Andy Bashir.

Now, I had Dean Dean Phillips on last week.

He was here and over there, and never heard of him.

Totally ready to vote for him.

Now Andy Bashir,

he's the governor of Kentucky.

Kentucky.

Talk about a flyover state, okay?

Democrat, and he's winning in Kentucky,

including places where Trump won by 50 points in some counties.

Why can't we have Andy Bashir?

Bashir Phillips?

Well, I mean, I do think that Democrats are finally at least saying out loud what they've been saying quietly for months, which is that there is a real concern about Biden's age.

And of course, people will then say, well, Trump is old too, right?

He's going to be 77.

Biden is going to be 81 in a few weeks.

But as the boomers say, age is more than just a number, right?

So you have old 75-year-olds and you have young

vigorous 75-year-olds.

Case-by-case.

Right.

So I think the perception, no matter what the reality is, that these are two old men who could easily die before

the election next year,

the perception, sorry,

but the perception is that

Biden is tired, that he seems to fumble.

And Trump may be manic and out of his mind, but at least he's energetic.

It's youth.

One of the points I made is I definitely think Biden can still be president, and I think he's done a pretty good first term.

He can't run for president.

Except for the wars.

The wars.

Well,

with Ted Cruz, he started that war.

Ukraine?

I think you can lay a fair bit of what happened in Israel on Biden's plate.

Because I can explain that.

I guess I should.

Bill,

I know that the Saudis were hot to sign the Abraham Accords two years ago.

And I I have more than a sneaking suspicion that the reason they weren't pursued more assiduously, because it would have meant giving Trump some credit for something that happened during his term.

And I know that the Iranians are fomenting dissent in Palestine through Hamas to pressure the Jews into doing something so, you know, what would you call it, military, that'll split the Arab world.

And I think you can put a fair bit of that.

of that at the feet of the Democrats who didn't bring Saudi Arabia into the Abraham Accords when they could have two years ago.

And I do think that's because they wouldn't give Trump any credit for what he accomplished with the Abraham Accords.

And I do think that's why we're in the position we're in right now.

And you know, Biden also alienated the Saudis the first time that he went to talk to them and pushed them into the arms of China.

And even despite that, the Saudis are still lurking in the background trying to ensure that the Abraham Accords won't fold.

And so that's not good.

That was a big mistake.

We had a chance there to make peace, and the Saudis were behind the Abraham Accords.

So,

well,

I'm surprised to learn that Biden has started two wars in Ukraine and in Israel because I was thinking it was Putin and Hamas.

Tell him.

I'm with you.

I mean, yeah,

I feel like you're making a very big bet on a side issue.

I don't think anything you said is wrong.

I just don't think it's not the main part of it.

I think it's a very important thing.

Well,

do you think it's not the main part with regard to Hamas?

Because Hamas looks to me like they're Iran's puppets.

They are.

And they are trying to split.

They're trying to split the Muslim world at the moment so that the Muslims line up on the side of Iran and not on the side of the Ibrahim Accord Sinees.

And they're doing that quite effectively.

And it could be disastrous.

And I don't think it has to happen.

But the Saudis were

silent partners in the Abraham Accord movement.

And they would have signed.

And look,

I was for Obama's proposal to bring Iran around.

I thought, you know,

because the Iranian people are not unsophisticated and not stupid and have a history of Western influence.

I mean, under the Shah, this was not like other countries in the region.

So I thought, okay, you know, they have a terrible regime, but that's not the people.

Maybe we can fix this.

Now,

I mean, to your point about being puppets, if Iran gets a bomb.

When, when, not if.

I think they're three months away chronically.

Well, I think they positioned themselves so if push came to shove, they could have a bomb in three months.

That's my understanding of the situation.

Okay, well, they were farther away from the bomb when we had that agreement.

When we had the agreement that Obama made, that Trump pulled out of.

They were quite far away from it.

So let's not forget that.

But my point was: if Iran gets a bomb, Hamas gets a bomb.

Right?

That can't happen.

So I don't know what to do now about Iran.

But I would say this: the axis of evil that George Bush used to talk about, where he just pulled three countries out of his ass that made no sense.

I feel like

actually there is an axis of evil now, and it's Russia and China and Iran.

It's like they all have lined up with each other.

They just don't like us and our way of life.

I hate to sound like George Bush, but this is a real axis of evil.

20 years later, I thought,

would you agree with that assessment?

I don't know if it's an axis yet, but it could become that, you know, because it isn't obvious.

Well, yes, it is.

Those countries can integrate their diverse interests.

They're doing it.

Gee, and Putin are always

in Iran also are

closer.

Putin is supporting Hamas

in this particular war.

But I also think that Hamas has its own agenda apart from Iran, and that they're very happy to accept the money and support of Iran, but they also have their own agenda to destabilize the Middle East, which is to get, you know, every

have Israel be alienated from all of its allies in the region.

Yeah, I must say, I am struggling with people's moral equivalency still.

I mean, Barack Obama, who has rarely disappointed me,

did so this week.

I mean, his statement, I mean, it's not a horrible statement, but he said, if you want to solve the problem, then you have to take in the whole truth, and then you have to admit nobody's hands are clean.

Literally, that's true, of course.

But just give you two examples where this is, I don't think, a helpful statement at this moment.

First of all, the attack was only a month ago.

ago.

A more savage attack than we've ever seen in reverse.

There's a big difference between collateral damage and what Hamas did.

Secondly,

okay, the Israelis are now allowing a four-hour pause for people to get out.

I'm sorry, people say, oh, wow, big of them.

Okay, but it is a war.

that the other side started.

So interesting.

When they fire at Israel, it's a war.

When Israel fires back, it's a war crime.

A little crazy.

So, and also, would Hamas do that?

Would they give four-hour pause?

No pausing.

And then, Israel's heritage minister was asked in an interview about using a nuke on Gaza.

And he said that's one of the possibilities.

He was fired, not allowed in the cabinet meeting anymore, disavowed by the prime minister.

Would that happen in reverse?

So enough with the moral equivalencies.

I mean, I think the only moral equivalency you can make there is that there are civilian deaths on both sides and that's tragic.

And no one wants civilian deaths in this scenario except for Hamas.

Iran probably wants them too.

Yes.

But who very deliberately set out to kill civilians whereas as you pointed out Israel is trying not to kill civilians.

But yes and also because and this minister said one thing that was true I don't think his nuclear comment was very smart but he said you can't scare them with death.

That's a big difference with this conflict.

Especially with other people's death.

With their own.

People don't care about other people in wars, but they do often mostly care about their own.

I think we are forgetting a little bit of the Islamic fanaticism part of this, because you're not supposed to talk about that anymore.

Because if you do, even matter how realistic it is, it becomes Islamophobia.

But it's true.

The people in Hamas who kill their own people think they're doing them a favor because they're becoming martyrs.

That's a different kind of situation you have to deal with that Israel has that most people don't.

Well, it's also in their charter basically to continue

this war until, you know.

So what do you think of this?

More than 750 journalists now, this is just today from Washington Post, L.A.

Times, Guardian, signed a letter.

condemning Israel's killing of journalists.

39 have been killed.

And they are urging integrity and Western media coverage of Israel's atrocities against Palestinians.

No mention of the other thing that happened.

You can imagine this will continue to mount.

And it's playing into the Iranians' hands as far as I'm concerned, because Israel is going to continue its victory in

Palestinian territory.

But as Israel's victory mounts, it's going to become easier and easier for the virtue signalers to denounce Israel as oppressors.

So if they win militarily, which they clearly will, they're going to lose in the public opinion sphere.

And I think that plays right into the hands of the Iranian propagandists, because they can cast Israel as the victims or as the perpetrators that way, and the Palestinians as the victims, and split again, turn the Arab world against the Jews.

It's exactly what they want to do.

Because then the focus isn't on them.

That's a continual trick of...

what would you say, totalitarian anti-Semites, is when the finger is pointed at them and people are saying, well, you're the tyrants, you're the oppressors, they point at the Jews and they say, well, those people are doing pretty well over there.

Are you sure they're not the real oppressors?

That's what happened in Vienna back at the turn of the century when the anti-Semitism got its roots, like got its development before it spread to Germany in Austria.

It's very convenient, and the Iranians are playing us like masters as far as I'm concerned.

And we're going to see them do a great job of that tomorrow in London, where there's a million people coming to march, you know, for the Palestinian victims.

All part and parcel, I think, of Iran's

focus on destabilizing the West and turning the Arabs against the Jews.

Well, I want to talk a little bit about this particular petition because there have been so many of these open letters and petitions.

And I'm happy to say there was no one from the New York Times who signed that particular petition as we are not allowed to sign these things, these open letters.

But I bet you there's lots of people that work there who would, who would have wanted to.

Well,

I'm feeling a little left out.

I can't sign any of them, but I wouldn't anyway.

One of the things I want to say about that particular letter, because I actually go in deep and kind of look at who has signed it, is this is by 750 journalists in the same way that open letters.

I mean, you probably can tell if there's an open letter in the TV industry and you look down the names, you'd be like, that guy hasn't made a show in years, right?

Like, you can look at this letter.

A lot of them are not journalists, first of all.

It's similar to other open letters where they'll say contributors from the New York Times, and a thousand have signed it.

And you look, and someone maybe wrote a book review 15 years ago and was never hired to do a book review again.

A lot of the names on that list are not actual journalists.

I just want to make that clear.

But

they were journalists.

Some of them were, a lot of them didn't have any affiliations, so they don't have to worry about having any repercussions because this is not the role of journalists.

And that letter is couched in something that I do think is important to journalism, which is the opening part, which is to say that I think it's now 37 journalists or people who work in the media generally have been killed in this conflict so far, which is tragic.

And obviously, no one, well,

some people have established want that, but most people don't want journalists to die.

But then, in the substance of the letter, it then goes on to, and what bothers me is they use the Times's slogan, without fear or favor, but they go on to list a bunch of things that they would like the media to do to

reframe the conversation, which is essentially in a more pro-Hamas direction.

I couldn't be more pro-Hamas than it is now.

They're saying they want the newsrooms to adopt words such as apartheid.

I hear it all the time anyway.

It's wrong, and I hear it.

Genocide.

Again, wrong.

Israel not trying to commit genocide.

The other side blatantly saying we would love to commit genocide on you.

But, and these are

the same.

These are journalists or ex-journalists.

So that should just invalidate it right off the bat.

What's it?

Said people from The Guardian signed it.

So that should just invalidate it right off the bat.

What do you make of this strange psychosis, I don't know, that's going around where people just seem to be saying, don't show me.

I don't want to see it.

The posters that people have put up of the hostages and then other people just tear down the posters.

Why?

Like, what's behind that?

Or this

movie that they showed at the Museum of Tolerance the other night here in LA and there were protesters and the protesters said it's propaganda.

It wasn't propaganda, it was exactly what happened.

Yes.

And it was

just a what is it with the same thing?

TMI, you know?

There's a very simple narrative that is being applied to this situation, which is this decolonization narrative that divides the world into oppressor and oppressed.

And frankly, if you're talking about Jews versus Palestinians, like the oppression Olympics is pretty hard to judge.

These are both people who have suffered a great deal.

But what happens is that they are then saying that being oppressed is being...

Yeah, well, but this is the main issue.

I mean, part of the reason that you see all this foolishness on university campuses, too, is because people have bought this idiot meta-Marxism, which is that the way to look at every social relationship that people ever have is through the lens of power.

And that is, we can put that squarely at the feet of the universities as far as I'm concerned, is, you know, marriage is a patriarchal institution and business is nothing but oppression and you have to view every single situation that emerged historically as oppressor versus oppressed.

And then once you get that, which you can get in about two minutes if you sit in a course that teaches that sort of thing, you have a lens to moralize about the whole world through.

And then you see the situation is that the leftists have already decided the Palestinians are the victims.

And as you pointed out, if you're a victim, then you're morally righteous.

And even more conveniently, if you stand for the victim, then you're morally righteous regardless of what you do with your own life.

And that's pretty pretty much what university students are taught from the time they enter the university classroom, and that's how they orient themselves morally.

And that's at the hands of the radical left, too, Bill.

And one of the things the Democrats also have to pay the price for, I would say, is their absolute refusal to draw a line between the moderate Democrats and the extremists.

They're completely incapable of doing that.

Like I've talked to 40 senators and congressmen in the last five years.

I asked them all the same question, including RFK.

He wouldn't answer either.

When does the left go too far?

Well, we certainly bloody well saw it in the last month, didn't we?

Because they got the oppressor, oppressive narrative, a little mucked up, we might say.

And the consequences of that are gonna unfold pretty brutally over the next few months.

All right, before we lose your blood pressure,

I am gonna go to new rules, everybody.

New rules.

Thank you, panel.

Okay.

Okay, here they are.

A new rule.

Deshaun Brown, the man accused of masturbating in an Iowa Target and then claiming it was a dildo, not his actual penis,

has to tell us, and that's better how.

Better to just say, hey, we all have a lot of time to kill waiting for a manager to unlock the deodorant.

New rule, someone must tell me, what was the pitch for food trucks?

Was it, let's make a restaurant with nowhere to sit that runs on gasoline?

Or was it, what if the food delivery guy made you go to him?

Neural, the Atlanta woman who says her date ran out on the check after she ate 48 oysters,

has to answer a few questions.

One, if oysters are an aphrodisiac, how unfuckable would this guy be?

And two, are you a walrus?

Neural, if you self-righteously announce that you're leaving Twitter or Facebook and then returned within a week, you must describe in great detail exactly what it was like the moment you realized you had nothing better to do.

New role books have to stop telling me there are no excuses.

There's the no excuses diet, no excuses detox, no excuses leadership, management, university, football coach, other football coach, football player, other football player.

No excuses, the true story of a congenital amputee who became a champion in wrestling and in life.

Living with no excuses, another amputee.

No hands and no excuses.

Yeah, you guessed it.

Apparently the

Apparently this title really sells books.

So pick up a copy of my new volume, No Excuses.

I'm not drunk, high, or having a bad day.

I just genuinely think your baby's ugly.

Okay, and finally, new rule.

If humanity can impose rules on warfare, let's do something really ambitious.

Let's try them on high school.

Because our public schools are no longer safe for the teachers.

A 15-year-old in Houston this year sucker punched his teacher for confiscating his phone after screaming, give me my phone, I told you to give me my fucking phone.

Hey, Sprint, you may have a new spokesperson.

In Florida, a high school student beat a teacher's aide unconscious for taking his Nintendo Switch.

Hitting the teacher?

I used to get sent to the principal's office for rolling my eyes.

Go online.

You can see endless videos of this stuff, of kids threatening and punching teachers.

What is this, jet blue?

What have we let our schools turn into?

A third of teachers in America say they've been harassed or threatened, and one in seven in this country has been physically attacked.

2023 kicked off with the story of a six-year-old boy taking a gun to school in Newport News, Virginia, shooting his teacher, and then declaring, I shot that bitch dead,

which would be a cool last line for a Mickey Spillane novel.

But a six-year-old, the librarian at the school added some context to the story saying, every day in every one of our schools, teachers, students, and other staff members are being hurt.

Every day, they're hit, they're bitten, they're beaten.

No wonder 50% of teachers express a desire to quit or transfer to something less dangerous, like walking Joe Biden's dog.

No wonder 86% of public schools have a teacher shortage, because 20 years ago, if you said American high school, people pictured this.

Now they picture this.

Only 8% of schools say it's easy to even find bus drivers.

A few weeks ago, some Oklahoma middle schoolers were acting up on the bus, so the driver pulled over and said he wasn't going to go anywhere until they quieted down.

So the kids immediately obeyed because he was the adult.

Unjoking, of course.

they went even more batshit.

And when school officials reviewed video of the incident, all those kids were punished.

I'm joking again.

Of course, the kids were given counseling and the driver was fired, arrested, and charged with child abuse.

And that is the root of our problem.

Moms and dads used to have the backs of teachers and authority figures, but now their precious progeny can never do anything wrong, so it's made education impossible.

And I know you're saying, Bill, what do you know about it?

You never had kids.

I know, jealous?

But I know this.

A teacher today looks out every morning and sees 25 phones distracting 25 kids, undeterred by any authority to pay attention or even be civil, and each kid represented by the high-powered legal defense team of mom and dad.

No, I'm sure there are parents seeing this and saying, that's not us, and this isn't our experience.

True, not all schools are violent and scary, but they are all diploma mills that allow students to graduate without demanding the kids know basic shit.

25 years ago, George W.

Bush asked, is our children learning?

Well, it's only gotten worse.

Only 33% of U.S.

children can read at a level of proficiency.

If you're attending an American high school now, that's about one-third.

So I'm not surprised that homeschooling is America's fastest-growing form of education, and not just with weirdo Christian families who make their daughters wear a bonnet.

To millions of parents, anything is better now than public education, and that includes Catholic school.

You know, in 1970, only 2.7% of the kids who went to Catholic school were not Catholic.

Now it's 22%.

Yeah.

Catholic school eighth graders are two full grade levels above public school kids because their school isn't a safe space for fucking off.

They're told, no, you can't be on your phone here, and your pronouns are shut up and sit down.

How fucked up is this country that to get a no bullshit education now, you have to go to the place that's completely based on bullshit.

What we need

What we need in this country is a chain of non-Catholic Catholic schools.

And

since many celebrities have opened their own schools, oh, yeah, that's how serious we are about education in America.

We let celebrities do it.

LeBron has one.

George Clooney, Pitbull, Tony Bennett had one.

Andre Agassi, Kanye had one.

Well, now I'm thinking of doing it and opening Bill Maher's Catholic School.

It's like traditional Catholic school, just without the religion and the molesting.

At Bill Morris Catholic School, we do school, old school,

with a curriculum called School Classic.

Rule one, no phones, all day, no exceptions.

Not just so the kids aren't distracted when they're trying to learn, but also because it forces hovering parents to leave them the fuck alone for eight hours.

You're the parent, not their probation officer.

Other rules include no making up a disorder that allows your kid to get more time on the test.

We call that by its original name, cheating.

No participation ribbons, no turning in anything late, no vaping, no emotional support animals, and of course, if a student doesn't maintain a C average or higher, absolutely no sex with the teacher.

That's our show.

I'll be at the San Diego Civic Theater January 27, the hobby at Houston, March 2nd, and Bill Moore Manning League, March 23rd.

I want to thank Jordan Peterson, Pamela Paul, Senator Ted Cruz.

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

Thank you very much, folks.

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

For more information, log on to HBO.com.