Ep. #639: Rep. Dean Phillips, Fareed Zakaria, Ian Bremmer.

Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

I lit the fuse and my life turns into everything it wasn't supposed to be.

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was quick.

He kept saying, no, no, no, I'm in the hospital now, but next week I'll be ready for the show.

Now, Charlie's sober.

He's gonna tell you the truth.

How do I present this with a class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

Aka Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

If you thought goldenly breaded McDonald's chicken couldn't get more golden, think golder, because new sweet and smoky special edition gold sauce is here.

Made for your chicken favorites at Participate in McDonald's for limited time.

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

Start the clock.

Hi down there.

Oh, look at this.

There's my spot.

Hi, why are you?

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

Please.

Thank you very much.

Okay.

Thank you.

Love you too.

Thank you.

I know why you're happy.

Halloween is over.

I know it's fun, but it's just exhausting.

Kids.

Fucking kids.

You know.

I do this ending every year.

I dress up as a priest, and then they just run away.

But oh, I kid the Catholic.

But yes, it's also the time of year where we set our clocks back.

This week, yeah.

And after electing Mike Johnson as speaker, this is twice in one week for the Republicans.

You've seen this guy, ooh, super.

I mean, there's Christie, and then there's Christie.

This Mike Johnson guy.

And listen to this.

This is just weird out of Left Field.

We found out about him this week because we don't know this guy.

Has no bank account.

I'm not making it.

They cannot find any trade.

No bank account, no savings account, no stop.

What is he, a pimp?

No.

Who in this world, what is he doing?

That's what we need, a speaker of the house who's off the grid.

That gives me a lot of confidence.

So the first thing he wants to do is, you know, we voted all this money to beef up the IRS, which we need because there's a lot of tax cheats.

He wants to take some of that money away, $14 billion, take that away, which they did the score and they found it actually adds to the debt.

So, you see, Mike, this is what happens when you use only Christian accountants.

Oh yeah.

Speaking of that, the FBI director, Christopher Rehy, testified at the Senate panel on anti-Semitism.

It is at historic levels.

The threat level, they say, has gone from Mel Gibson to Kanye.

No,

it's not funny.

And especially in a city like this, we have a lot of Jewish people, a couple here today, I hope.

Okay, all right.

Well, we see it.

I mean, Cantor's Deli, it's right down the street here.

You saw this, the vandalized people wrote on it, things like Israel's only religion is capitalism, and how many dead in the name of greed, they wrote.

Of course, that one was just about the pastrami.

Oh, we make what it goes.

But yes, the ground war has now started in the Middle East, in Gaza.

The Israeli troops are going building by building, hoping to root out Hamas-supporting radicals.

And if it works there, they're going to try it at Cornell.

I never liked it there anyway.

You know what?

And this is big news, trial news.

We're following the crypto con man,

Sam Bankman Fried, found today guilty on all counts.

Yes.

Well.

So

that should should really put a damper on all this anti-Semitism, huh?

Well, and it's hard to get outrage for his victims, right?

You know, that magic bean salesman took my money and never came back.

Big news in the world of birding.

I never thought I'd say that on this show, but there it is.

Big news.

Yes, the 80 bird species that are getting a name change.

I didn't realize this.

I read some of them.

I didn't recognize any of these, but apparently some of these names that the birds are named after are racist or problematic.

They said that, named after Confederate generals and segregationists, and of course there's the red-tailed, emotionally distant sparrow.

But look, I'm all for renaming the birds.

Let's get that straight.

I get it.

I totally get it.

On the other hand, it's a fucking bird.

Okay.

I'm going to just end both sides.

And

finally, for the first time in seven months, Donald Trump and Melania Trump were seen together.

So there is hope for Israel in Gaza.

Okay, we've got a great show.

We have Farid Zakaria and Ian Bremer.

But first up, he is the Democratic congressman from Minnesota's third district who last week announced his campaign to run in the primary against Joe Biden for the 2024 presidential nomination for the Democrats, Dean Phillips.

Dean Phillips.

I saw you run out here.

Is that a slight hit, Biden?

Is that like...

I mean, come on.

I get the subliminal message there.

I think it was just a coincidence.

Okay, I know.

I can run, everybody.

I'm unlike certain other people I won't mention.

Now, you said when you said you endorsed me last week.

Yeah, I, well.

Sort of.

It was a little bit of a kind of a.

Well,

I could.

You know what?

I endorsed really, I never heard of you before last week.

You and 300 other Americans.

Right, I know.

300 million Americans?

Yes, okay.

So I endorse the idea.

Oh, the idea, okay.

Of,

because I did an editorial a couple weeks ago calling him Ruth Bader Biden.

I saw that.

And I, look, we both struggle with the same thing.

We like Joe Biden, right?

Absolutely.

And we think he's done a good job.

A wonderful job.

Okay.

And Ruth Bader Ginsburg did a good job.

But

did not know when to quit.

Yes.

And that's that's why you're here.

That's why I'm here.

Okay.

So

I read the polls like you do.

That's what's alarming.

I mean, Trump is winning people under 30.

People under 30, thank God they don't vote.

80.

Right?

Right.

83 percent of Democrats under 30 want a different nominee.

Yeah.

I mean,

a lot of politicians lie, but the numbers don't.

And it's not like others aren't doing this in a sort of a shadow campaign.

I mean, Gavin Newsom, our governor, seems to be all over the world.

I saw that.

Yeah, and, you know, there's,

you know, they're going to the battleground states in the primary.

They're really doing it.

I feel like at least you are honest, and you're saying, no, I'm going to do it.

Just do it.

Just do it.

Just do it.

I mean, we still, by the way, there are 21 of us on the ballot in New Hampshire.

If you're 35 years old, you were born in the United States, you can go there, bring a $1,000 check, and become a candidate for President of the United States of America.

Thank goodness, you know?

Thank goodness.

Thank goodness.

But I mean,

you don't really want to do this for yourself necessarily, right?

You were just saying somebody needs to do this.

I spent a year encouraging, pass the torch.

So if you had the power to appoint someone to do this job of running as the Democratic nominee and getting the nomination from Biden, who would it be?

You.

Judgment counts.

So that was not a good, that was not a good start on that.

But come on, who really?

I called Gretchen Whitmer.

I think she would be an outstanding president.

Yes, exactly.

And she's one of those who's running a shadow campaign.

Look at it, Bill.

Everybody's waiting until 2028.

And I'm making the contention to all of you tonight that I'm not sure that we will have a 2028 election in the way that we expect them if the inevitable happens and it is President Biden against Donald Trump.

I mean, the numbers are astounding everybody.

And if we don't start to acknowledge that, there's this bizarre and very dangerous culture of silence

in Washington,

in certain political, industrial, and complex circles.

That is dangerous.

I mean, dangerous.

And we are putting blinders on.

It'll make 2016 look like a joyful year.

So

what about our governor here, Gavin Nissom?

Now, this state is a little too woke for me.

I sort of understand.

Anybody.

It's a little crazy.

But I like Gavin.

I really do.

I mean, I think he's a really smart, good politician.

If he ran, I think he'd, of course, have to move to the center, which I think would be great.

Also, may I suggest this?

The party, I like Kamala Harris also.

I'm not not a Kamala hater, but for whatever reason, it just doesn't seem to have worked.

No, sadly, the Vice President's approval ratings are lower than the President's, 33 percent versus 37 percent, which are historic lows to begin with.

And to answer your question,

the more the merrier.

It's still not too late to jump into this race.

I wish we had more competition instead of a coronation.

This is not that difficult, and I don't understand why people are so hesitant to do what the country needs so desperately.

And I know nobody knows me yet.

You will soon.

I promise, no, but you know what?

There's a great blessing in politics actually to be unknown because the baggage is awfully heavy for people, including your governor, including others.

But to answer your question, I called

candidates who I'd say are more approximate to the race.

They wouldn't take my call.

They had their political people take the call.

They asked me not to use their names.

You know,

when I say every, most of my colleagues talk about this every day in hushed tones in the hallways.

And then, but then it's it's saying the quiet part out loud, which might be right.

And part of the hushed tones is about Kamala Harris.

But here's the thing with Gavin Newsom: the Constitution says you can't have the president and vice president from the same state.

So if he runs, it can't be Kamala Harris.

So that's kind of a gentle way of getting out of that problem.

Yeah, that's which

I'm just putting there.

And

I have to say, I don't know if you you noticed, I'm being attacked a little bit.

You know, stones thrown and

by the Biden people, yeah.

And a lot of attacks, which, by the way, I don't mind one bit, actually.

I take the attacks easily.

The one that's really hurting badly is people are saying I look like you.

Especially, I don't know.

All right.

You're right.

But I'll.

You're right.

I'll overcome that when I think.

No, it's.

You're right.

And it's odd because I'm Irish.

Yeah.

And you're Jewish.

I'm Italian.

You're Italian.

No, I'm kidding.

I'm not.

I'm not Jewish.

Well, and see, this is the thing.

I mean, the Democratic Party, especially on the presidential ticket, I mean, they are limited.

You have to check certain identity boxes.

I mean, you cannot imagine, and maybe this is a good thing, a Democratic ticket without someone who's a woman, a person of color.

Republicans are free to pick just the two people they like the best.

Okay.

I mean, you are white, male, heterosexual, and Jewish.

Quite a combination of sex.

I got other things going for me.

Yeah, I know, but you know, that's

nowadays among the young.

Do you have a place in this party?

It may be a good question.

Yes, you all should have have a place.

And I got to tell you, Bill, that's why I'm doing this.

I'm doing it for two reasons.

A, President Biden, a good man, is going to lose the election.

And if anybody cares about American democracy the way I do, a country that has given me and my family so much,

we've got to do something.

And thank goodness we still live in a country where we can, even if nobody knows your name.

Even if nobody knows your name.

And

I...

Some have been contending because I've been in New Hampshire spending some time with white voters that somehow that is offensive to black voters in South Carolina.

That's so stupid.

That's all who lives in New Hampshire.

Well, yeah, but

when I go to South Carolina and spend time with black voters, that's not offensive to white voters in New Hampshire or Muslim voters in Michigan or Hispanic voters in Texas or Asian American voters in California.

This is really important, you know?

Do you think that's a good idea?

And I love my brothers and sisters.

I hope they love me.

But if we continue to divide ourselves, by the way, Democrats are as divisive right now, I'm afraid, as a lot on the other side.

And it's really troublesome, and it's very disappointing, and it will be the ruin of this country if we do not start celebrating one another and stop fighting each other so we can fight for each other.

It doesn't go anymore.

It's difficult.

Well,

so we'll find out.

You're getting closer to that real endorsement.

I bet.

Oh.

But I was going to say, you know,

over the years, so many politicians come here, especially when they're either retired, when they can be honest, or when they're still nowhere, when they can be honest.

No offense.

You're in one of those honest zones.

I'm still honest.

Yes, I'm still there.

Now, if you started to be 50% in the polls, I don't know if I could even get you on the show, let alone get an honest answer.

But while I got you in the honest zone,

pursuant to what you just said, do you think the Democratic Party is too race-obsessed?

I've never walked in the shoes of my black brothers and sisters, my brown brothers and sisters, my Asian American brothers and sisters.

They have never walked in my shoes.

I love them all.

I do think that it is problematic.

I think that is why we may not be winning elections that we should be and need to be right now.

I think that we have to be more inclusive in the way that we talk about and we are actually not practicing.

And by the way, being a Jewish member of Congress in the Democratic caucus is very difficult right now, you can imagine.

And there is seemingly a lack of progressive love when it comes to our doorstep, and it's problematic.

I know I don't look like someone whose whose community might need support or affection or protection.

Oh, they do, right?

But let me tell you, let me tell you, it's a big deal.

And

I want to make this invitation on your show tonight, you know, to my black brothers and sisters, and to my Hispanic brothers and sisters, and

Asian American brothers and sisters, Muslim.

It doesn't matter.

Don't leave out gay.

Gay.

Well.

Now that we're in the honest zone,

I knew I would forget something.

My gay brothers and sisters and my

trans brothers and sisters.

And my brothers, brothers and sisters.

All of us.

But I mean this.

I want to invite all of us to start walking hand in hand again because, like I said, if we don't repair, literally,

repair this country, I don't care what your number one, number two, number three issue is, we're in big trouble.

And this is a real crisis.

I want to get serious.

We are in a real crisis right now.

You know this.

You all know this.

In our own country, wars overseas that could approach our doorstep at any time.

I believe one of the reasons Israel was invaded is because there is a morally bankrupt leader in Israel, I would say, of a very morally wonderful nation who opened the door to an attack because of the division that he has caused.

Not unlike a former president in this country.

who was also an immoral leader of a very moral country.

And we are at risk if we continue to keep fighting each other on any lines, racial lines, economic lines.

We got to unify, we got to take care of people.

I love my Republican brothers and sisters just as much as my Democratic ones.

By the way, that is the difference between me.

I want to see a team of rivals in the White House.

I want to see every voice in this country, every one of you, with a face, a voice, my ear in the White House.

I would have a.

I will.

Okay.

It is so.

It is so easy.

It is so difficult.

Thank you very much.

We got to go.

Yeah, we got to go.

Good alignment.

Thanks, everybody.

Hi, Karen.

Woody Harrison, so to say, say hello.

Okay.

All right, let's read our panel.

All right, there you are.

He hosts CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS and is economist for the Washington Post.

Fareed Zakaria, of course.

And he's president of Eurasia Group and G0 Media Ian Bremer back with us once again, gentlemen.

So,

Dean Phillips, what do you think?

Has he got your vote?

Has he convinced you?

What did he do?

Struck me as authentic.

Struck me as having the right reasons for having us pay attention at this point.

I'll tell you the thing I was most impressed with, watching it behind, when you asked him who he really wanted, and he gave you the OU, but then he said Gretchen Whitmer.

And frankly, that's an honest answer.

That's who most of the Democrats I know that are actually close to Biden would rather have run than Biden right now.

I want to hear someone who's running that actually is telling us more what they'd actually think.

All right.

So

let's move to the sad news.

I can't imagine two better people to talk about Israel than you guys.

And, of course, in diplomacy, there's only ever the least bad option, right?

So I think we're all wrestling with this situation.

Israel was attacked.

Everybody, I think reasonable people say they have the right to defend themselves.

They did for two weeks from the air.

Now the ground campaign has begun.

I guess the other option to that would be, you know, what people call the Munich option.

In other words, Munich.

We all saw the movie, what happened.

People said, I thought the same thing.

We should, after 9-11, have done that.

Instead of just attacking full-scale another country, just go after the targeted people, the target the killers.

Can you really do that, though?

with 40,000 Hamas

people in Gaza.

Can you do a Munich reaction to this?

It's a very good question.

And as you said, there are no good options.

And I think the first thing you have to start with is recognize just how traumatized Israel is as a country and Israelis are as people.

Because this is, as many people have pointed out, like, you know, 20, 9-11s, 20,000 or 30,000 Americans dead.

But also the feeling that right next door, this could happen, which means it could happen again, which means there is this desire to somehow, once and for all, you know, solve the problem.

The danger is when you make decisions in that kind of emotional moment, you know, Netanyahu says he wants mighty vengeance.

It's very tough because when you're dealing with counter-terrorism or counter-insurgency, and that's why, Bill, the most interesting analogies might be the U.S.

in Iraq or in Afghanistan, where there were tens of thousands of insurgents.

Petraeus said there were two strategies.

You had to go after the bad guys, and it took a while, but you had to find as, you know, be as targeted and strategic as you could be.

But you had to separate them from the rest of the population, because otherwise, by killing so many civilians,

you were causing more problems.

He had a sign in his Mosul headquarters that said, Did our actions today create more terrorists than we killed, or create more insurgents?

And that's the challenge, you know.

If you have 20 or 30,000, as you say, but you are laying siege to a population of 2.2 million, half of whom are children, if the defense minister says no food, no water, no electricity, how are you separating the bad guys from

a million children?

So the level of anger, the level of trauma is

unspeakable that the Israeli leaders are going through.

I mean, every day, every evening, the air raid sirens that are interrupting every conversation that you have with them, the inbound calls they're getting from the families of those that have been killed and that are still being held hostage, not to mention 360,000 of their young men and women that have been called up, the reservists that are going to be sent to war.

That's 4% of the entire population.

Even from America.

Indeed.

You had to go back.

Flying to Israel, right, to actually fight and from all over the world.

That's extraordinary.

But the ability of the Israelis to defend themselves today, their military superiority is great.

There is no strategic reason why Israel needs to obliterate Hamas today.

They could actually reduce, we could wait and get humanitarian support, but it's very hard to say that.

For me, it's the equivalent of the guy whose daughter was just raped, and he's going to kill that guy.

that raped that daughter.

And you understand why.

But at the same time, if he goes to jail and he can't take care of his kids, what's going to happen going forward?

And I worry about the future of Israel given this perfectly justifiable demand for vengeance on the ground.

Okay, but here's the answer to why to do it.

This week, this Hamas representative is doing an interview.

He said, Israel is a country that has no place in our land.

We must remove that country.

We must teach Israel a lesson.

We will do it again and again.

He's saying it.

Listen to these people.

He talks about the October 7th attack is just the first time.

There will be a second, a third, a fourth.

The interviewer says, does that mean the annihilation of Israel?

Yes, of course.

So that's why.

I mean,

for people who wonder why they are doing it, it's because if they don't, their answer is, I get, and again, no good answers.

is that if they don't wipe out Hamas, they're telling you, we're going to do it again.

And I don't understand this proportion.

I mean, I've used the word proportionality, and I think there should be, but it doesn't mean this thing where like, Hamas is going to attack.

That's a given.

And then whoever many they kill, then you get to kill about the same.

You get to match it, and then the war's over.

That's not how wars work.

Stop attacking them.

No, the issue is how.

The issue really is what is the most effective strategy to destroy Hamas.

There's no question, and people who are, and it's sad and I think shameful to see people praising Hamas.

What people don't seem to understand is Hamas came to prominence with a series of terror attacks in 1994, 95, 96, because they were against the Oslo Accords, where the PLO and Israel made peace.

The PLO, you remember Arafat denounced terrorism, recognized Israel.

By the way.

Well, he renounced it in English.

He made a different but he makes different speeches.

He used to make different speeches in Arabic.

That's actually, that used to be true.

Look at the successor to the PLOs, the Palestinian Authority.

They have maintained relations with Israel, recognized Israel, want a two-state solution.

Who has been opposed to all that?

It is Hamas.

Hamas, right?

So if you say you want a two-state solution, and then you're saying anything praising Hamas, it seems to me you are contradicting yourself.

Hamas is the single biggest opponent of the two-state solution around right now, and they're opposing it violently.

But what do you do about people who, a group, these 40,000 people, let's pretend that this is an accurate number, we don't know.

And tomorrow's civilian could be denied.

Israel thinks it's 30,000.

Hamas says it's 40,000.

It's thereabouts.

And as Farid just said...

But what do you do about them who say they're going to do it again?

The intention is to destroy them without any question.

But you do it in a long game.

I think that's it.

You do it in a long game.

That's what I'm saying.

You don't do it by yourself.

You don't do it just with the Americans.

You have countries on board.

They're not only fighting a war on the ground with Hamas, they are fighting against others that want Israel off the map and replaced by the Palestinians.

Those are Hezbollah, that is the Islamic Republic in Iran, that is their proxies across the region in Iraq and in Yemen.

They're fighting information war against Muslims and those that support them around the world.

It's not like they're only fighting in Gaza right now.

Israel has a much tougher fight on their hands right now than just those 30, 40,000.

If that was it, then they could go go in, no problem.

It ain't that simple.

So

what do you make of this level of just gut-wrenching anti-Semitism?

I must admit, I don't think of myself as a naive person, and I've been surprised.

It was like a volcano that blew.

I mean, just the people in the United States with banners.

Fuck Israel.

You know, any means necessary.

I just...

I don't know where this comes from.

I guess it's ancient, obviously.

The hatred of the Jews goes way back.

But I was taken aback by this.

You can't tell me you don't think social media has made it much worse.

So you think that's the answer?

Because it's got to be something about the Jews themselves, because there are other people around the world who are oppressed.

There are other colonized places, not that Israel colonized anything.

But

why?

This one place, why does this arouse, especially among young people?

I mean, the young people who hated Trump because he wouldn't condemn the people with the tiki torches.

Talking about Jews who are...

You're the ones with the tiki torches now.

I don't think.

I think the race.

To answer your question, Bill, because I have also wondered about this.

The upsurge of anti-Semitism that you're seeing around the world and sadly in the United States itself is in a way the most powerful justification for the state of of Israel.

It feels, it must feel to Jews everywhere that they're not safe, that the one place they can be safe is the state of Israel.

It is the ultimate justification.

Why it happens is, sadly, it is the oldest bigotry known to man.

I mean it comes out of

the Christian ideas about

Jews still in Christ.

That's not what college kids do.

No, no, no.

College kids are not hating.

But I think

what happens is there's just this

upsurge and you you have all kinds of different people doing it for all kinds of different reasons.

And I think it just reminds you that I hear people saying well we should

ban this kind of speech and there is now laws in France, for example.

I don't know that that's the answer.

I think the answer is to educate people to understand this is this is gross ancient bigotry that civilized people shouldn't believe this kind of thing.

That, you know, that's the part that's most worrying.

I mean, but to your point about social media,

talk to me more about that because I think you say educate people, I think they're getting the opposite from social media.

Well, policy has actually changed.

We are in a materially different place right now because of social media and disinformation on this conflict.

President Biden going over to Israel and then going to see the Palestinians, the Jordanians, and the Egyptians.

And he cannot have that meeting, the latter meeting, because there is Hamas disinformation about a hospital that is hit by an Israeli missile that kills 500 people.

Except it wasn't a hospital that was hit.

It was a parking lot.

It wasn't 500 people.

It was more like a few dozen.

And it wasn't the Israelis.

Aside from that, it was absolutely correct information, right?

And the Palestinians...

The Palestinians, the Jordanians, and the Egyptians all cancel the meeting, and the Gulf allies of the United States all condemn Israel, and who walks it back?

It's just like when you when you delete that tweet.

Nobody pays attention to that, but it's already, the lies already gone around the world.

We are feeling and dealing with that.

And I was, you know, Fareed and I, I've known, we've known each other for about 25 years now.

We've never seen the kind of inbound hatred from both sides of the spectrum, the lies, the disinformation, stuff that we know doesn't reflect the community that we're talking about.

I think it's more basic than that with the phone.

I think the phone has just made a different kind of person.

I've said it many times.

The phone makes you shady, needy, fake, mean, passive-aggressive.

So, and if you make that kind of person, you know, they want to think of themselves as social justice warriors.

They don't want to learn anything.

But they want to think of themselves that way.

And they want to have a cause.

So it's just the, it's not about Israel.

It's about this cause, the Palestinians.

Like I said, there's many people around the world who could have similar causes.

This is the one that they latch on to.

They don't learn anything about the history of the region and who's right and who's wrong and where they'd be more comfortable.

Can you imagine how these people would feel if they had to move to Gaza?

How disruptive their life would be?

Well, to your point, Bill, I think you're very, you're absolutely right.

I think about all the times I've gotten hate mail and nasty tweets.

And really, the biggest spike was actually Trump.

when he first ran and the Muslim ban and all that kind of thing.

And I was flooded.

But all that said, in 30 years of doing this, whatever it is, only two or three people in my life have actually come up to me face to face and been assholes.

Same thing.

Right?

And the same experience.

It's so much easier.

It's so much easier when you're hiding,

when you're anonymous or pseudonymous, right?

People actually find it hard

to be that vulgar, rude, but all of a sudden hiding in your pajamas, you know,

in your mom's basement, that's easier.

All right, I have to talk about Mike Johnson here for a minute.

I mean, we're just getting to know him.

He is third in line for the throne here in America.

And, you know, he's a combination of an election denier and the preacher from Footloose.

He's got a.

He's in a covenant marriage.

He's told Sean Hannity that if people want to know his worldview, just read the Bible.

Okay, so we thought this would be a perfect time for one of our refillables here.

24 Things You Don't Know About.

We're just getting to know Mike Johnson.

So here we are.

24 Things You Don't Know About Mike Johnson.

I got my start in public service as Jerry Falwell Jr.'s pool boy.

I could have guessed that.

I carry an emergency stick in case the one up my ass becomes dislodged.

I'm what it sounds like when black comedians do their white guy voice.

The book of Revelations mentions me by name.

My celebrity crush is Kirk Cameron.

Okay.

He goes very, very crisp in that Kirk coming in.

The nickname I have for my penis is the fetus maker.

I like to ask non-believers, if humans evolved from apes, then why is there still Jim Jordan?

I find it awkward being around Lindsey Graham because the Bible says I have to kill him.

And I believe that life begins when a guy texts his girlfriend, you up?

So,

all right, before I run out of time with you guys, another issue you both have written extensively on, and I see it's in the news this week, because this is the time of years when we get a caravan.

They always call it a caravan.

These are the immigrants coming up from Central America through Mexico.

It sounds like a merry band of jugglers, but

it's, of course, desperate people.

And I don't know, this is the second, I read this today, second year in a row, illegal crossings have been over 2 million.

I think that's a record.

Now, this is broken down to asylum seekers.

That's a category that never used to be this high because the criteria to be a...

asylum seeker was a lot more stringent.

900,000.

And then what they call gotaways.

I had never heard that term, but I think I can guess what it means.

They got away.

That's 600, so that's 1.5 million.

So I guess we stopped

half a million.

And

we stopped one out of four.

I just want to say, if Biden has a plan for immigration, it's very subtle.

So

let's.

What are your feelings on immigration, gentlemen?

So first, I think it's important important to understand that the system has totally broken down.

We used to have a system where

people came in and they were illegal and it, okay, they managed to get in, but if you were caught, you were sent back.

Now, what a lot of these people, as you point out, 900,000 are doing is they come in illegally and they say, I'm applying for asylum.

which means you're not coming illegally.

You are now entitled to two court hearings, which take several years to happen.

You're entitled to stay in the country while the court hearings are being adjudicated and by the way about one out of every four slip into the country so the whole system you know if people are gaming the system i don't blame the migrants coming in they've gaming them and they're poor they're not stupid they figured out this is the right the most effective way to get in but it means we've lost control of the system.

So what I've been saying is President Biden should say, we're stopping this process now.

The asylum was meant, as you said, for a handful of people who faced personal political persecution.

Right, it wasn't just poor.

Right, it wasn't even fighting.

They were like gang violence.

Of course.

People fled gang violence from Sicily and

fought poverty from Ireland.

It was meant to be for people who were Jewish émigrés, who were scientists, who the Soviet Union was persecuting.

So we need a whole new system.

And the problem we have here is there's a pretty obvious rational solution to our immigration issues.

Do more border enforcement, end the asylum system as it exists, create a new one, increase skilled immigration, which we need.

We're at a 50-year low in unemployment.

You know, we need skilled immigrants, reduce some of the.

You just can't imagine it happening because Washington is so broken.

This is the easiest thing to fix.

The Canadians are actually beating us on legal immigration right now because it's much easier for them to get strategically targeted people they want while we force people to wait for years in this Kafka-esque process to actually get their visas done.

It's an enormous problem.

But,

you know,

as much as I want to say, yes, the system is broken, the Dems and Republicans don't want to sit down and they know what the answer is, let's also recognize we have a lot of inflation right now because we just went through this massive pandemic and enormous money was thrown at it.

We also have much higher levels of immigration because for two and a half years people weren't moving.

So some of this is actually pent-up demand and suddenly the pandemic is over, and yeah, there are going to be a lot more people coming over as a consequence.

Now, Trump also was willing to play hardball with the Mexicans on the southern border of Mexico.

And that was important, right?

Because they're not coming from Mexico.

They're coming through Mexico.

It's a relatively narrow border.

That's the place he should have built the wall.

He had the right idea of the wrong border.

Yeah.

And the Mexicans could have paid for that one, by the way, right?

Why does it Dean Phillips talk about that, huh?

Maybe on your next show.

But

I feel, I mean, the Democrats, they certainly have their bad points on this issue, but the Republicans are just flat-out hypocritical.

Shocking.

Because I feel like they could stop immigration, if they were, illegal immigration, if they would penalize the employers.

But they don't want to do that.

because that's cheap labor.

So they rail at, we shouldn't have all these people in this country.

But if you worked on it from the other end,

like if you really penalize people for hiring people who don't have their papers, wouldn't that really put an end to this?

You know, there's an underground economy, but I wanted to take issue with one thing you said.

Biden is actually not doing a bad job.

They have deported more people, if you think that that's why I mean, and I do, because you want a system of laws, right?

They have deported more people under the Biden administration than Trump did.

They've been hard in line.

The problem for Biden is, and this is a problem for Democrats, you can't take credit for it because then you're going to outrage that the progressive wing is going to go nuts.

And so even the things he does, it's like stealth enforcement.

You can't talk about it.

Biden is letting us produce lots of oil and natural gas, but he can't boast about it.

I mean, you mentioned Canada.

Why couldn't Biden just say, we should have an immigration system like Canada's?

And every woke person would go, of course.

Canada is the greatest.

It's the big blue state to the north.

Canada is

way to the right of us on immigration.

Their system isn't even based on come one, come all like this one is and family connections.

You have to prove that you can.

You can actually do something useful for the economy.

Right.

It's a very different system, much harder to get into.

So wouldn't that be the cover for Biden?

We just want to be like Canada.

Now that we know there's a possibility you might run for president, this might be changed.

There was never that possibility.

No, no, no.

That would be a threat to my lifestyle.

And And

we definitely cannot have that.

That's changing, though.

My lifestyle?

No.

Our tolerance.

Oh, our tolerance.

You're right.

Depending on the party, you just have to run as a Republican.

Well, that's definitely not going to happen.

Okay, so.

So listen to this.

The deficit is now $2 trillion.

Now, I remember,

maybe I'm dating myself here.

I remember when the debt was $2 trillion.

We thought that was a lot.

I mean, and for those who haven't studied this in class, the debt, kids,

the debt, kids, that's the accumulation of all the money we borrowed over the whole, you know, since George Washington.

The deficit's just this year.

It's just this year.

And even economists who have been like, oh, you know, we can have a lot of debt.

That's okay.

Even they're alarmed at this number, $2 trillion.

I i think when ross perot ran against the debt again not the deficit the debt the debt was like four billion and we were losing our minds and that was 30 years ago and ever since then somebody's always come along and saying this debt is unmanageable the sky is falling and yet it never does

my question to you guys is it going to fall at some point or can you just keep

doing this because i've been hearing this for 30 years the once mighty deficit hawk has been hunted to extinction

by

Trump and the MAGA wing of the Republican Party.

I mean, those were the guys that used to care about the debt, and that is gone.

Totally gone.

So, I mean, the big thing we're wondering about now is in the next administration, whoever's running it, are the Trump tax reductions actually going to be extended or are they going to be ended?

But, I mean, no one is talking about reducing the debt.

I mean, that is, that's a...

And we don't have to in the sense that right now, at least, the United States economy is still basically 25% of global GDP like it was when the Soviet Union collapsed, and the dollar is still roughly at the same global level.

That's what I'm saying.

It doesn't seem to hurt us.

I'll tell you where the problem is.

The interest on the debt is now getting to the point where it's about the same as the Pentagon budget.

It's higher.

It's $879 billion a year that we're just paying to banks to service the debt.

And that crowds out all the spending you need to do.

But you know, this is one of those cases where it's not about broken politics, it's not about Washington.

Let's be honest, the American people are really the villains.

Absolutely.

Americans have decided that they love Republican levels of taxation and Democratic levels of spending.

Exactly.

And

there's still that gap by borrowing.

And I mean,

we've had Republican houses and Senate and president and the Republicans just discovered, you know, it used to be in the old days they'd say the Democrats are tax and spend.

That's what they do.

The Republicans realized there's something better, borrow and spend.

Yeah, right?

That's the only difference.

The only thing I would add to this slightly different point is that when we invest in a company, we invest in stocks in our portfolios, we don't just look at their debt, their obligations, we look at their assets.

When we talk about the United States deficit, no one talks about the assets.

You know, a lot of the money that's been spent in the United United States recently has been going towards infrastructure, towards jobs and new technologies, the CHIPS Act, in new energy investment.

And I mean, this isn't just blue, it's red across the board.

Which company would

be a separate account?

It would be called a capital account.

You're allowed to spend on building

building factories.

But

to me, again, it's one of these things.

There's a simple solution.

We should have a value-add tax like most

Every other civilized, industrialized country in the world has one.

Chances of that.

Zero.

So,

first of all, what is it, and then why zero?

So, it's essentially a national sales tax.

And if you just.

Value-added, meaning as something goes up the production line, you build it.

They call it a value-added for complicated technical reasons because they want it.

It's a little different from a sales tax in that you collect it at every stage in the production.

Right.

So, you're not just shaving people right at the end at the retail, you know, at the counter.

You're shafting them all the way.

All the way through.

Well.

But

to give you a sense,

a 5% rise in the value-add tax would generate $3 trillion over the next 10 years.

Essentially, you would get the U.S.

back to a pretty stable place.

And just to remind you, I mean, you go to Europe, the VAT is 25%.

I'm saying something very modest, but it shows you, I think, the point Ian was making.

We have basically a very strong economy.

The best technology companies in the world are here.

We are energy independent.

The dollar is the reserve currency of the world.

Our banks dominate the world.

We have good demographics compared to

every other rich country in the world basically looks like Florida.

And compared to China.

I don't mean, you know, the Italians would be horrified that they look like Florida aesthetically.

I mean,

they look like it demographically.

We're saying we're younger.

We have more workers who are taxed.

We have more workers who can pay taxes.

The one problem

we have is we have this dysfunctional politics in Washington where we can't do something simple like this, which would solve the problem.

The economy is great.

The politics are horrible.

But compared to other economies around the world, we look so much more attractive.

I don't know if the economy is,

as always, it's two Americas.

I've been saying it for years, but

it seems like half the country can afford Taylor Swift tickets.

Maybe it'll throw it at this point.

And Beyonce tickets, which cost like, it's cost, I read like $1,300 is the average somebody spends.

I'm like, if I asked my mother for $1,300 to go to a concert,

she would think I had gone insane.

Wages are now going up.

I just don't understand the auto economy, and I know that.

Yeah, I give you one statistic from the FT to Ian's point.

So the FT did a piece on how the U.S.

has is now, it used to be that the U.S., Britain, Germany, we're all roughly the same in terms of per capita GDP.

We're now 60% higher.

And this FT journalist, John

Burns-Murdock, had this wonderful line.

He said,

A car wash manager in Alabama makes more money than the head of cybersecurity for Her Majesty's Treasury in Britain.

So we're doing something.

All right, I got to end it there.

It's time for new rules.

You guys are are great, as I predicted.

Okay.

New rules, someone has to explain why there's still a candy called Sugar Daddy.

Aunt Jemima had to go, but this is okay.

A A vaguely phallic lollipop named Sugar Daddy.

How was your trick-or-treat, honey?

Great, I can't wait to suck on my Sugar Daddy.

You might as well sign her up for OnlyFans Now.

You will now that airports are competing to woo workers by offering on-site child care, parents who drop their kids off must remember the following when picking them up.

Many children look alike, so please check your child's tag

to make sure you're picking up the correct one.

When removing your child, keep your hands away from the carousel and please report any unattended or suspicious-looking children.

New rules, someone has to explain why in every American workplace you can't look at someone wrong, critique them in the slightest, or raise your voice even a little bit without HR getting involved.

But if you work at a restaurant kitchen, you can scream, where's my port wine reduction, you ignorant fuck twitch?

And all they can do is say, yes, chef.

Neural, you can go ahead and buy ZQuiet, the anti-snoring device, so your snoring doesn't keep your partner awake.

But be forewarned that once he sees you wearing it, neither one of you is going to get any sleep.

Terrible.

Terrible.

I don't know who approves this stuff.

New rules, someone has to tell these fans attending a performance of BTS's Young Cook, if you move your phone, he's standing right there.

You're so busy getting it, you're missing it.

Call me Boomer

all day you like, but at least after we attended an artist concert, we were able to say, I saw them live.

live.

And finally, new rule for all the progressives and academics who refer to Israel as an outpost of Western civilization, like it's a bad thing.

Please note: Western civilization is what gave the world pretty much every goddamn liberal precept that liberals are supposed to adore.

Individual liberty, scientific inquiry, rule of law, religious freedom, women's rights, human rights, democracy, trial by jury, freedom of speech.

Please, somebody stop us before we enlighten again.

And since one can find all these concepts in today's Israel and virtually nowhere else in the Middle East, if anything, the world would be a better place if it had more Israels.

Of course, this message falls on deaf ears to the current crop who reduce everything to being only victims or victimizers, so Israel is lumped in as the toxic fruit of the victimizing West.

The irony being that all marginalized people live better today because of Western ideals, not in spite of them.

Martin Luther King used Henry David Thoreau's essay Civil Disobedience to help shape the civil rights movement.

The UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights owes its core to Rousseau and Voltaire.

Cleisthenes never showed up for a sexual harassment seminar.

But without him, there's no democracy.

The cop who murdered George Floyd got 21 years for violating his Fourth Amendment rights, an idea we got directly from John Locke, who no one in college would ever study anymore because he's so old and so white and so dead.

So Western.

Yes, that's how simple the woke are.

It's never about ideas.

If it was, would they be cheering on Hamas for their liberation?

Liberation?

To do what?

More freely preside over a country where there are no laws against sexual harassment, spousal rape, domestic violence, homophobia, honor killings, or child marriage.

This is who liberals think you should stand with.

Women there should be so lucky as to get colonized by anybody else.

And for the record, the Jews didn't colonize Israel or anywhere ever, except maybe Boca Raton.

Gaza wasn't seized by Israel like India or Kenya was by the British Empire, and the partitioning of the region wasn't decided by Jews but by a vote of the United Nations in 1947 with everyone from Russia to Haiti voting for it.

But apparently they don't teach this at Drag Queen story hour anymore.

Now

it is true that for too long we didn't study enough Asian or African or Latin American history.

But part of the reason for that is, frankly, there's not as much to study.

Colleges replaced courses in Western Civ, boo,

I roll, dead white men, am I right?

They replaced that with world civilization classes, which is fine in theory, but what it meant in practice is you read queer poetry of the African diaspora instead of Shakespeare.

And I'm sure there's value in both.

But as usual, America only ever over-corrects.

And so we're at this place now where the words Western Civ became kind of a shorthand for white people ruined everything.

But they didn't ruin everything.

No, they didn't live up to their own ideals for far too long and committed atrocities.

But people back then were all atrocious.

Not just the white ones, depending on who had the power.

But it was the Western Enlightenment that gave rise to the notion that the law of the jungle should be curbed.

Henry David Thoreau, John Stuart Mill, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, three-named dudes.

It is all about three-name dudes.

Three-named dudes like that were the OG social justice warriors.

The ideas that came through Athens, Rome, London, Paris, and yes, Philadelphia are what make life good for most people in free societies today.

That the individuals have value and even the powers that be must submit to the rule of law.

That punishment should not be cruel and unusual.

That the accused

people get a trial.

That there is such a thing as a war crime.

Why is it that every other culture gets a pass, but the West is exclusively the sum of the worst things it's ever done?

You think only white people colonized?

Historians estimate that the very non-Western, Mr.

Genghis Khan

killed 40 million people, and that was in the 13th century.

He single-handedly may have reduced the world's population by 11%.

On the other hand,

he kind of made up for it because he was such a prolific colonizer of vaginas.

that today an estimated 16 million people are his direct descendants.

So, stop saying Western civilization like it's a contradiction in terms.

It's not.

You're thinking of moderate Republican.

That's our show.

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

The San Diego Civic Theater, January 27th, and watch Club Random, my podcast on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast.

I want to thank my guest, Fareed Zakaria, Ian Grimmer, and Representative Dean Phillips.

Now go watch Overtime on YouTube.

Thank you, folks.

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