Ep. #628: Noa Tishby, Andrew Yang, Rep. Elissa Slotkin

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Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO Late Month series, Real Time with Bill Ma.

Start the clock.

Thank you.

Thank you, people.

Thank you.

I love you back.

I appreciate that.

I see a lot of green.

Yes,

I know.

Thank you.

I appreciate appreciate it.

I know.

It's exciting.

I know why you're happy.

It's.

Thank you.

What did I do?

No, it's...

It's St.

Patrick's Day.

Or...

As it's for some reason become known, Alcoholics Christmas.

I don't know how it got to be that, but you know, this is the day they say everybody's Irish.

And it's true.

I see Vladimir Putin was poisoning a guy,

and he put a little green dye in it.

I thought it was a very cute.

But I also love it because the green, you know why it's green?

Because it's three days before spring.

Okay, that's why.

And California's green again because it rained, which

everybody's.

We have like this thousand-year drought, and then it rains.

Everybody's bitching.

So much rain.

Mudslides.

Mudslides.

So what?

Yes, the good news of the mud flight, they haven't caused any extensive damage.

The bad news is they also have not killed any bankers.

Well,

this bank thing.

See all these banks?

What's ooh?

This is kind of scary, right?

The Silicon Valley Bank went down and the Signature Bank and Credit Suisse, the Big Swiss bank and First Republic needs a bailout.

Now, I tell you, there's never been a better time to have no money at all.

That signature bank one, that was the one that was way into crypto.

And that's when you know you're a bad bank.

When you don't, you run out of imaginary money.

But

the Republicans have figured out why the banks went under.

They were too woke.

I'm not kidding.

That's what they're saying.

Now, look, I'm no fan of woke, but come on, even my dog has more than one bark.

It's not like they were having drag queen deposit hour.

Apropos of this sort of, you see, there's a 5,000-mile-long blob of seaweed.

Ooh, I know.

Heading for, it's going to hit the beaches in Florida.

And I'm just waiting for DeSantis to say, well, the ocean is too woke.

And

it's shocking what fish are learning in their schools.

I don't know how this country keeps going

with so much nuttiness.

Here's something that I found very interesting today.

New poll shows that two-thirds of Republicans, Republican voters, think that their own party, the Republicans, worked secretly with the liberals

to make Biden president.

I mean of all the conspiracy theories, that is the craziest.

Bipartisanship?

Goodbye.

I'll believe a lot of things, but.

And on the other side of crazy, did you see that what the San Francisco supervisors have done?

They are backing reparations, if you're a black person in San Francisco, of $5 million.

Really?

No reaction?

Okay.

All right, let me keep going.

You get $5 million,

elimination of personal debt, of all tax burdens, a guaranteed annual income of $97,000 for 250 years.

Wow, must be some health care involved there, too.

And a home that you get for $1.

And the,

let's see who's clapping there.

The first to comment on this was George Santos, who said, as a black man,

okay.

And if you thought I couldn't get any crazier with the virus, they think they know now what caused the origin of the Wuhan, of the coronavirus.

First we heard, of course, it was wet markets, then oh no, it escaped from the lab.

Now they're saying it's raccoon dogs, which

raises a couple of important questions like

what the fuck is a raccoon dog?

And do I get to enjoy the bat soup again?

All right.

We've got a great show.

We have Representative Alyssa Slotkin and Andrew Yang.

And first up, she is Israel's first special envoy for combating

anti-Semitism and delegitimization and the author of Israel, A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth, Noah Tishby.

Hey you!

I told you I'd get you here.

You did.

I did.

I've wanted you here for a long time, but I was waiting for the time when I really needed to understand what's going on in Israel.

Here we are.

And here we are.

And you're the one to explain this to me.

I mean, I have read some some really disturbing things.

I mean, usually in the past, okay, it was Israel against the people, their neighbors who are not big fans of them.

And that was the war.

Now it's internal.

Now Israel seems to be fighting with itself.

I mean, I see protesters in the streets, hundreds of thousands.

For people who are not following this,

please tell us why the president of Israel said civil war is possible.

He said the abyss is within touching distance.

Why is this?

Okay, this is, first of all, slightly dramatic.

Let's just be straight here.

What we're seeing in Israel.

It is.

It's great.

He's a great friend of mine and an incredible human being.

What's happening in Israel right now, what we're seeing, is literally democracy on full display.

It's actually quite extraordinary.

So let's backtrack for a little bit.

So a few months ago, Benjamin Netanyahu, whom you know very well, won the election.

And because of how the parliamentary system is built in Israel, he started this coalition, which is on the extreme side.

It's right-wing, more religious.

Very right-wing.

As it happens in the U.S., when new governments come in, they jump in to make sweeping changes quite quickly.

And that's what this government decided to do.

They suggested a judiciary overhaul, which is going too far.

And the Israeli people are basically rebelling against it now.

So

let me ask you this, though.

I've heard this, that that's the big thing, that he wants to somehow make it so that the Congress can basically overrule the Supreme Court.

It would be like our Congress, with a majority of one, could overrule our Supreme Court.

But I don't know.

Tell me, is the Israeli system the same as ours with three forms of government, checks and balances between three equal forms of government?

Not entirely.

And also the biggest problem within the Israeli system is that there's no constitution.

So right now what we're seeing is a conflict between the government and the Supreme Court.

The government wants to take too much power, basically, and overrule the Supreme Court decision by a simple majority.

But the Israeli people are rebelling against this.

This is quite a matter of time.

You yourself have spoken out against it.

I have.

And you never really spoke out against anything, any Israeli politician.

I never have.

And I must say, a lot of people, like I think I would put myself in this camp, have been supporters of Netanyahu, even when many others weren't.

And people have said to me, well, he's so conservative.

I'm like, but we're a different country than Israel.

Israel is a country that is perpetually at war.

In that country, I'm not against somebody who was a little more conservative being at the helm.

But he seems to be losing even his supporters.

I can't think of anybody.

Over 60% of the Israeli public public wants to stop this overhaul.

54% of the coup voters didn't know that this would be the first line of item for this new government.

And I do believe that it's going to stop.

It's not going to pass in its current form.

It shouldn't pass in its current form.

And what we are seeing, though, it's incredible what's happening.

Nearly 10% of the Israeli population is out on the street.

And there are no riots, there's no violence, there's no blood.

One person got hurt, but that's about it.

So it's an extraordinarily creative demonstration.

Israeli people are speaking up.

They don't want to.

It's more than just the court, right?

I mean, it does seem like they're at a point where there's sort of a battle for the soul of this country.

I mean, you mentioned the cabinet he has, which is extremely right-wing.

And I think it's really all about the settlements.

There is their view, the hard right view, is that, look, when Israel was founded, we were willing to share the land.

We gave you every opportunity.

All we got was war.

We gave land back.

That doesn't happen a lot.

They gave Gaza back.

And what did they get for for it?

Yeah, they use Gaza's staging.

So they're saying, you know what, we tried this for a very long time.

We've been around three-quarters of a century.

And now our side, we just want to take it.

We're just going to take this.

That's what the settlements are.

And the other half of Israel is saying, that'll never work.

Where are you on that?

I'm on the fact that if we knew that we had a partner on the other side, I'm pretty convinced that this would have been solved by now.

The question of whether there is no, why there's no Palestine, is a question that shouldn't be laid to the forefront of Israel only, because Israel had offered Palestinian state over and over and over again, and the other side is engaged in

refusing, consistently refusing.

And I would never say that Israel is a perfect country, obviously.

No country is a perfect country.

But what we're dealing with is a mentality of, for example, pay for slay, okay?

So whenever there's an attack in Israel,

the Palestinian Authority is paying martyrs, so paying people who kill Israeli children and women and children, pay them to the tune of $300 million.

That's something that is unheard of.

So if you live within the Israeli borders, you get paid more.

If you live in Jerusalem, you get paid more.

If your mother is willing to come talk on TV, you get paid more.

This is institutionalized terrorism that we can't live with.

We can't live with.

Thank you.

I bet you a lot of people in America don't know things like that.

And of course there is, we don't have time to go.

I'm sure there are other people who are saying, Bill, why don't you say the other side?

There is two sides to every story, and this one is about as complicated as it gets.

What's interesting here in this country is that your side is losing with the liberals.

I mean, there was a poll that came out just, I think, this week, and it's something like the question was phrased, are your sympathies more with the Palestinians or the Israelis?

For the first time, the Democrats are with the Palestinians.

I think it was like 49 to 38 percent.

Now, are your sympathies with, my sympathies are certainly with the Palestinians.

That doesn't mean I don't agree with you that it's mostly their fault.

I, well, yes, I believe one guy.

Yeah.

So I'm not sure what sympathies mean, but I think this means that, yes, you're definitely losing,

for right or wrong, I mean, but the fact is you're losing the liberals in this country.

You're losing the younger generation especially, to the Palestinians, who, you know, consider, I mean, the young people who consider themselves extremely woke and extremely liberal.

And I would say that if they spent one day in Gaza, they would see what liberalism is.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Exactly.

And by the way.

Yeah.

And by the way, the poor people of Gaza are under siege by Hamas.

So here's the thing, first and foremost, these two things are not mutually exclusive.

I'm pro-Israeli and I'm also pro-Palestinian.

Okay?

Let me just get that thing straight.

Now, what's happening to the Democratic Party, unfortunately, with this particular poll, it's not the leadership.

Because in the leadership, I can point out to my friend and yours, Richie Torres, who is an incredible supporter of Israel.

And this is not something that's happening with the party, but what's happening with the actual voters is some sort of a wocification of the Democratic Party that started listening to the fringe voices and actually lost the plot.

Because the fact of the matter is this, again, Israel is not a perfect country.

But if you're a person who supports democracy, freedom of speech, human rights, women's rights, LGBTQ rights, any kind of rights, and you don't support Israel within the context of the Middle East, you're an idiot.

Yeah,

I don't think they go that deep.

Yeah, I know.

I mean, that's the problem.

Yeah, you're right.

They don't know a lot.

It's also the perceived underdog.

It's trying to

put Israel into the prism of intersectionality.

They are losing.

They have been losing since the beginning.

I mean, I don't mean that as a put-down.

They just are.

They have much less power, and they're the ones who are occupied and so forth.

And they're poorer, and they're browner.

And to people who only see the world through like this one lens because that's all they're taught or all they care to learn about that's what it is so so Jews are now like the worst kind of white people

the Palestinian people deserve responsible leadership that's what the Palestinian people deserve and if they're gonna yes

and if they're going to

and if they want to find a solution which includes a prosperous and safe Israel side by side then we're gonna find a solution but if it's gonna continue being this chant that Bela Hadid chants and other people people, from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free, we're going to keep having this problem.

Right.

So did you see the Fabelmans?

Ah!

I did.

I actually did.

Thank God I did.

My friend, when I saw the movie, the audience.

I only bring it up because it did not do too well at the Oscars.

But it was about anti-Semitism.

It's Steven Spielberg's life, and I didn't realize it until he put it on film.

Like, wow, he had a rough time in high school.

And of course, this is your special subject as an officer of the Israeli government.

Which I'm here in my personal capacity not as an official of the Israeli government, but yes, anti-Semitism is what I do.

And we see it all over the world growing more.

I feel like, yes, it is a problem, and I think it has increased slightly recently, or maybe a great deal.

Yes, I don't know.

Increased a lot.

Increased a lot.

Okay.

It still is way better than it was then, right?

I just think liberals have a tendency to forget about progress.

Anytime you acknowledge progress,

I just know that when I was a kid, I'm from a mixed marriage.

My mother's Jewish, although I was raised Catholic, and I just know how people reacted to that, how outrageous it was when they got married in 1951.

Jews used to have their own department stores

in this country.

We have definitely been a lot of people.

Just acknowledge it's yes,

but it is still a problem.

But it's coming back, and the problem is that it's coming back.

Not the department store.

Not the department store, no.

Not to my knowledge, at least.

I have no idea.

That'd be so weird.

But

not to that extent.

But it definitely is coming back.

The numbers are staggering.

So 82% of American people notice anti-Semitism, American Jewish population.

The Jewish population is 2% of the American public, but we are over 50% of religious-based hate crime.

Over 50% of college kids, of Jewish college kids, feel the need to hide their Jewish identity.

So there's something going on.

Yes, absolutely.

And they feel safe in Jewish spaces and they don't want to walk around wearing stars of David and be proud.

So there's something about being visibly Jewish right now.

For example, in New York City, you get beaten up.

Like you actually get attacked if you're visibly Jewish.

In New York?

Yes.

Okay, well, I guess it's worse than I thought.

It's pretty bad, but we're here.

This is not happening to a lot of the people in New York.

There's a lot of Jews in New York.

I don't think they're all getting beaten up.

I'm not saying that they all are, but the numbers, we have FBI said a rise in 16% rise in anti-Semitic attacks.

So not just like harassment and like flyers with a swastika.

But I think, I mean, hate attacks are going up against everybody.

It's just,

we're not in a good time.

No, we're not.

Social media has not helped us.

I hope your country does as well as my country does in the future.

Our country.

All right.

Yes, thank you.

Noah Tishbi, everybody.

Thank you very much.

You did great.

So glad we did this.

All right, let's meet our panel.

Okay, hey.

All right, he is the co-chair of the new political party, Forward, and host of the Forward podcast, Andrew Yang.

And she is the Democratic congresswoman from Michigan who recently announced her run for U.S.

Senate in 2024.

Representative Alyssa Slotkin is back with us.

Okay.

Two office seekers I have here.

All right, so let's say the banks are failing again, which gets people two things.

Angry, right, about the money going away and us having to cover it, if that's going to be the case, and scared.

I'm a little scared.

I've seen this movie before, and I hope it doesn't keep going.

Maybe they've put an end to it, but I don't know.

So you want to be president.

You want to be senator, and I assume president after that.

So how do you punish the people who recklessly recklessly waste our money without taking down the whole system?

That always seems to be the case.

Or do we just have to put up with it, that it's always a gun to our head, that if we really punish them, no?

No.

I mean, I think the Silicon Valley Bank is the perfect moment to take the head of that bank, who was selling off his stock and making millions of dollars in the days before the scandal happened, who is now like scuttled away to Hawaii and in his home in Hawaii.

It is perfectly reasonable, I think, to have a conversation about bringing him out and showing the world that you can't just fail and take risks with people's money and throw down the...

And that's the perfect time.

But what about, but that's just him.

That's just him, but it's just...

But I'm talking about all the,

they're paying

100 cents on the dollar.

We're talking about billions.

Yes, you can take care of this guy.

It's, what does it cost you, $10, $15 million?

I'm talking about making everybody whole.

That's what takes this.

Yeah, I mean, that's where the big money is.

This is easy to get him in Hawaii.

Well, we need a new term, Bill, because everyone says bailout, bailout.

Bailout means that the executives are still there, they're not, they're fired, the shareholders are made whole, they're not, they're zeroed out.

The people that got their money were depositors, people who just had their money in the bank, they chose the 16th biggest bank in the country.

So, them getting their money back actually was necessary for confidence to continue in the financial system.

Even with this backstop, there's a lot of fear.

You're not the only one, Bill.

There are people withdrawing their money from regional banks around the country and plowing them into what?

JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citibank.

Those mega banks are, we all know they're too big to fail.

And all the lesser banks now have to try and keep the confidence of their depositors.

So this backstop was the right move.

Yes, it's what adults do.

I mean.

But it is different.

I mean, this is different than what we went through in 2008, right?

I mean, I think it's, well, it's not taxpayer dollars.

I mean, I think we are not backing, we are not coming coming in to heal these banks with U.S.

taxpayer dollars.

There is a fund, $100 million fund, that is made out of bank fees and fines when they screw up.

And that is what's backstopping these depositors.

That's fundamentally different.

Right.

So, unfortunately, we're in the early innings of...

a disaster movie when it comes to the financial sector because you had interest rates go from essentially 0%

over 12, 14 years to 4.5%

in just a series of months.

So, Silicon Valley Bank, people have to understand, they went bust by buying treasury bills.

They did not buy something risky.

They bought the least risky thing on the table, and it became risky because interest rates spiked.

There's a 100% chance that a lot of other banks are doing the exact same thing, they have not hedged the risk.

There are landmines all over the balance sheets of the financial sector.

And interest rates spiked, right, because of inflation.

Yes.

That's why they had to.

Okay, so when Uncle Sugar was very generous during COVID,

right?

That was the result of that.

That's what caused the inflation, a lot of what caused the inflation.

You cannot put $6 trillion that you don't have in people's pockets and not expect some inflation.

That's what caused this rate.

So it's all connected.

It's all connected.

And the last time we were in this kind of buying was the 70s, which I vaguely remember, you might remember a little bit of a bill.

But

so they had no choice but to jack up interest rates because they were trying to tamp down inflation.

We're in that movie again, except the financial sector is a much bigger part of the economy now than it was in the 70s.

So, speaking of the economy, I mean, your big thing when you ran was UBI.

Yep.

Which is not a bowel problem.

It sounds like it.

I always think like.

I know, we had a branding thing.

Universal basic income, right?

Which is sort of what we did during COVID, okay?

So where are you now?

I mean, I see you're, I don't get your third party because I read your website and it's a bunch of mush.

I'm not trying to be mean.

I'm just saying it's not like specific.

It doesn't even mention this.

And why start a third party, which is a long shot anyway, if you're not going to be bold?

And what?

Oh, I'd love to dig into this.

Please do.

Yeah.

So what I determined was that our current political system is not going to address poverty or climate change or polarization unless you actually fix the incentives.

And it was a U.S.

senator who said this to me, and everyone needs to understand this.

She said, we're at a point in American life where an issue is worth more to us unaddressed than addressed.

Because if I lean forward to solve the problem, what happens?

I get beat up by my base, my job security goes down, I get attacked.

So we're in a no-compromise zone.

So if you wanted to, let's say,

alleviate poverty in America, you have to fix our democratic system.

This two-party system is not designed to deliver solutions.

I just have to say,

again, that's...

I just have to say, so I'm not 100% sure how a different party, I mean, you have to explain how that's going to change the whole system.

But here's the thing.

If you have a senator, as someone who's running for senate, if you have a senator who's saying, if you have a senator saying the incentives are wrong, so I can't do the right thing,

That's the problem, not the fact that we need another party.

It's that you have people who won't take risks.

You have people who are going to put their re-election over anything else, who are worried from a primary from their left or for right.

100%.

But if you put people who are brave in those places, if you put people who are saying, like, look, if I don't win my next election, no one dies.

I can go on.

I'll find another job.

Then you actually see the incentives change because then they want to do the right thing.

That is part of why our government doesn't work.

It sometimes is people.

So look, look, Alyssa, first.

I love what you're saying, but there was a guy in Michigan who bravely voted to impeach Donald Trump at great personal risk, Peter Meyer, and he lost his seat in part because Democrats boosted his extremist challenger because that challenger was going to be easier to beat in the general.

We have an incentive system right now.

If you step up like Peter did or Adam Kinzinger or Liz Cheney, you're out of there.

And so there are people that see this and say, okay, I get it.

But the way out is to do what they did in Alaska, which is why Lisa Murkowski is the only Republican senator who voted to impeach Donald Trump who made it back and was up for re-election in 22.

You know why?

Because they got rid of the party primaries in Alaska.

That's why Sarah Palin lost to Mary Peltola.

That's why Lisa Murkowski beat Kelly Shabaka, the Trump-endorsed loony, who would have beaten her in a Republican primary.

You get rid of the primaries, you fix the incentives, and that's what the forward party is designed to do.

I would just say that

I think it's...

It's one thing to have that conversation at a state level, and I'm not against having that kind of primary, right?

There's not

different party there, there's not a third party that they're a part of.

It's a different primary system.

But when you're talking about a third party, like I like math, right?

And I want to make sure that if we have a third party,

that if we have a third party, that it's not going to be handing the country over to people who are extreme, who have fascist leanings.

Like, I want to make sure that we do.

I'm not the last person to say that the Democratic Party is perfect, trust me.

But I'm just concerned that a third party means we're handing the party, the country over to people who do not have good good intentions for democracy.

And what about the issue, though?

I mean, if you're going to start the third party, don't you at least have to have one major issue?

And I thought you had one.

This UBI thing, universal basic income.

Everybody gets free money.

Whether you believe it or not, it's an idea.

When you look at the poverty levels, I mean, some big story came out last week, how the poverty levels haven't changed that much in 50 years.

from what they were something like 12.5 in 1970, now it's 10.8, or I don't don't know what it is, but it's very close.

After we threw like $16 trillion at the problem,

and it's only going to get worse with chat jacket.

Yeah, I saw this.

Listen to this.

Here are three jobs they say that were replaced by the new AI.

Financial analysts, advisors, and bankers.

We figured out the banking problem.

This is how we kill them all.

AI is getting smarter while we're getting dumber.

It's true.

We can all see it.

A friend of mine, Tristan Harris, puts it this way.

We have primordial brains, medieval institutions, and godlike technology.

It's a very bad combination.

So if you look at what we can do to alleviate poverty, the biggest thing we did recently, Bill, was the Enhanced Child Tax Credit 2021, helped lift millions of American kids out of poverty.

And what happened?

It elapsed.

And that was in part because because the two parties could not come together and deliver it.

The incentive structure to get rid of poverty is what I'm hell-bent on trying to fix.

And 62% of Americans know that this system needs a different dynamic because right now the two sides are just going to go like this while we wonder what happened to the country.

How can it be that we have spent so much?

This

report says in when Reagan was president, we spent $1,015, I guess these are adjusted for inflation, for the 13 biggest anti-poverty programs in the country.

Now, the first year in Trump, we spent $3,419 a person.

We spend an incredible amount of money, and yet we're still somehow one of the least contributing countries to poverty programs of all the modern democracies in the world.

How can we be spending so much money, coming in last, and not solving the problem?

That is some real American ingenuity.

I think, you know, look, I think that it's also about what we're spending it on, right?

And I think, to me, I mean, the most expensive thing we have in our country related to poverty is generational poverty, where you have family member after family member who's born into poverty, who lives in poverty, who has kids that are then in poverty.

But is poverty even the same thing as it was when I was a kid?

I feel like when I was poor, wow, I didn't have shit.

You know, I mean, I didn't have really two nickels to rub against each other.

And now everybody seems to have a cell phone.

Nobody starves in America.

The problem is the opposite.

First of all, I do not think it's fair to say that everyone in America, all of our children, are getting enough to eat.

That's probably the same thing.

I don't think that's right.

I don't think that's right.

But there are places they can always go to get food.

Yeah, but this is the argument that people have.

And they don't starve.

So they have a cell phone.

How are you going to get a job today if you don't have a cell phone?

I'm just asking the question.

I mean, it just seems

standards do change.

I'm just asking if they have.

It's different to be poor in 2023 than it was in the 70s or 80s, but a lot of the elements of a good middle-class life are just getting more and more expensive.

Housing, education, health care.

Meanwhile, what Americans are getting paid, you know, it stayed the same.

Maybe it's inched up a little bit, but inflation's been eating that up.

Our economy has become this winner-take-all inhuman mess.

And it's why, unfortunately, I think we're grappling with some of the extremism that we are because people are looking for answers.

And is the answer the universal basic income to just give people a block of money?

I 100% am for enhanced cash relief.

Like the child tax credit, it lifted millions of people out of poverty.

I'm going to confess to you all.

I ran for president on universal basic income.

My goal was to try and drag the conversation in a particular direction.

I said to my wife, hey, baby, if I run for president, I think I can accelerate the end of extreme poverty in America by a number of decades.

And that was always the goal.

I know, but you drag.

I feel like you dragged the conversation there, and now you're avoiding it.

Oh, I dragged the conversation there, Bill, but now I figured out that this system does not care what happens to us, our families, our communities, doesn't care.

Poverty gets deeper and more entrenched.

So, how do we get it to care again?

And the way we get it to care again is to actually reestablish the connection between us and our elected representatives.

All right, we're all for that.

All right, so

listen, I hate to make this, if anybody who works for Forbes magazine is watching the show, you might want to turn it off now.

I always picture these poor people who are big fans, and then I do something that has to make them look bad.

But Forbes Magazine, I have to say, we looked, and this is apropos of this week with all the financial news, because they've been sort of the Bible, I mean, of the magazines I've ever known about financial matters.

And five days before the Silicon Valley Bank crashed,

look at their,

they had America's best banks list.

They made America's best bank five days before, and this is not the only time.

I don't remember if you remember WeWorks, which was valued at like, I don't know, $40 billion or something.

And this guy, Adam Newman, was the guy who was going to take it.

It was going to be the biggest thing, WeWorks, and that crashed.

Elizabeth Holmes was also on the cover of Forbes.

Salinos was her company.

That is, she is now going to jail.

She was sentenced to 11 years in jail.

Sam Banklin Freed was on the cover of Forbes.

I'm not kidding, and he's looking at like 100 years in jail.

So we went back through the files, and I could tell you some of these covers for Forbes over the years, would you like to see?

I mean, they have...

Now they are not the best at prognosticating, I gotta say.

Look at this one.

We've seen the future, and it's spelled Sears.

Yeah.

Restaurant Trends 2020.

Buffets, buffets, buffets.

That did not age well.

Prince Harry and Megan, the power couple that will save the monarchy.

The sky's the limit for Malaysia Airlines.

Oh, that was.

Investors Guide 1995.

We're all in on CD racks.

Going places with Jeffrey Epstein, all aboard the Flatfree Express with Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, and Donald Trump.

Yeezy Street, how Kanye West will help Adidas escape its German past.

And of course, MySpace.

Move over, Facebook.

Social media has a new boss.

Well.

So.

All right.

Can I, Andrew?

Can I ask you a question about Asians?

Yes.

I'm asking you because

if I don't, then it's like, why didn't you?

And if I do, then why did you?

You know, you can't win.

I got to say, man, when I was on the presidential debate stage, I was always a freaking question about China.

Well, China, we all have to.

I mean, that's one of the biggest issues in the world.

It got repetitive.

Well, only because I see in the polls that

the Asian community as a voting bloc is moving right.

This should concern you very much.

Since the 2018 midterms, Democratic voter support down

seven points with black voters, 10 with Latinos, and 19 with Asian Americans.

So

your concerns and why?

Well, I think, I mean, I can't speak for the exact numbers, but certainly

there's chunks of people that the Democratic Party has taken for granted for a long time.

And I think, you know, it sort of was this

commonly understood thing that the Democratic Party appealed more to minority communities of the United States.

And it turns out if you don't work hard to actually reach out to them, to engage them, to speak in Spanish, to appeal to the concerns that they have, they're not an automatic voting block, either voting for you or coming out to vote at all.

And I think the Democratic Party...

But don't you at least try?

I mean, compared to the other people...

I would think the other side is saying, are you kidding?

Ignore them.

They cater to them.

Well, I think at least I can say in Michigan, the other side is definitely seeing an opportunity.

The Republican Party and the African American men, I think, are some,

there is a relationship there that the Republicans are trying to build.

But I think

it's beholden to the Democratic Party to actually work for the voters we expect to come out and vote for us.

Okay.

If you look at Asian American voters in the Bay Area, they were a big part of the recall of a DA that didn't seem to be concerned with prosecuting certain crimes and school board members who were more concerned about renaming schools than reopening them.

And so if you talk to a lot of Asian Americans, they're very much concerned about crime and public safety.

They're getting beaten up, targeted in their communities, and for better or for worse in this two-sided system, they think, well, the Democrats aren't solving this problem, so I'm going to head the other way.

Isn't it also the schools that they've changed admissions programs?

I know when de Blasio was mayor of New York, he tried to do this.

The advanced placement programs to make it so that there are more black and Latino students in these programs, and it came at the price of Asians who, same thing.

This is why Harvard is being sued now.

I think it's one of the big issues.

It would be public safety, education, and the fact that many Asian Americans, in my experience, are very pragmatic and want something to work better.

They're not very ideological.

And what they're doing is they're seeing in both parties that there's this ideological war that they don't identify with.

But this is where merit hits against equity, is it not?

Are we going to admit the people who

earned it and did the best, or are we going to try to make it so that everybody is equally represented?

I'm just not sure it's that simple.

I think you're not going to be able to.

Well, that's what the Supreme Court case really is.

Well, that's what the Supreme Court case is.

But to me, I think you have to understand that A, being educated in college is not just about your grades and your classes and making sure everyone has the right sat scores it is about educating yourself about the world and educating yourself about the multiracial multi-ethnic country we want to be and and to me that means there's a whole bunch of reasons why college would look at a whole bunch of factors when they're letting people in and i have no problem with that it seems like what you described is is what they do more than anything else in college i mean did you well i think this racialized zero-sum game is exactly the kind of thing we have to to avoid as an asian american who did not get into harvard

And if you look at an institution like Harvard, they have an endowment of $50 billion.

They should be opening a satellite campus in Detroit, Michigan.

They should be doubling their class size.

Like, if they wanted to be a serious engine of social mobility, they could do much bigger things.

Right now, this is unfortunately

this window dressing that doesn't actually solve the nation's problems.

Well, that's a good avoidance

of the basic questions.

Let me go to the Stanford story then, because that is very relevant to what we're talking about.

If you haven't seen what's going on, it's a very big story this week, Stanford Law School.

And I think this is very worrying for anybody who cares about free speech or about our future justice system and who are becoming the lawyers.

Okay, so Stanford, like every elite college, is very, very, very liberal.

But they do have something called the Federalist Society.

This is a conservative society.

They don't like them, but they allow them on campus.

And they invited a federal judge who Trump appointed.

Now this guy is a very conservative guy.

I mean, half the country is conservative, okay?

I don't agree with his rulings, but he's invited to speak on campus.

Of course, we've seen this happen many, many times before.

He's shouted down, screamed at.

The difference here is he's being yelled at by the students.

We hate you.

You don't belong here.

These are law students, by the way.

So he says, could somebody help me out?

And the head of the DEI, right, is at this school, Tyrion Steinbeck.

She got up there, and we just showed the little video to explain it better than I can.

I look out and I don't ask what is going on here.

I look out and I say, I'm glad this is going on here.

Is the juice worth the squeeze?

What is it?

I mean, is it worth the pain that is causes and the dimension that is causing?

Okay, so we didn't see the part where they were screaming at him, but that is what she's reacting to.

And is it worth the pain?

Is free speech worth the pain?

And is it really painful?

Is it really painful?

If you don't like this guy, don't go to his lecture.

I don't get why everything is about pain and harm.

So

I represent a couple of universities now, including Michigan State University.

It should be a place of free speech.

It should be a place where all people, conservative, liberal, are allowed to come and speak.

I also have to say, as someone who is heckled all the time in public speeches, including this week when we were talking about gun safety on the steps of the Michigan Capitol and we had a Second Amendment group, you know, with bullhorns while you're trying to speak, I mean, the speaker is being a little bit of a fragile flower here.

Like, push through, man.

Like, just keep going.

And I.

It was impossible.

I mean,

from what I saw, it was kind of impossible.

Okay, but and the students, no one should ever be threatening violence.

That's never allowed.

That's not part of your First Amendment rights.

But I don't have a problem if someone comes and speaks, and I don't have a problem if people in a civil and decent way protest.

And you don't have a problem if

the officer of the university gets up there and defends the hecklers and not the speaker, because that's what she did.

She defended the hecklers, not the speaker.

I don't know the circumstances here.

I just saw it.

But I mean,

if the university invited this person or allowed this person to come and speak, then they're hosting it.

And by the way, they have apologized, the university.

Well, there is a distinction between being someone running for office and an invited speaker.

And if you just reverse the situation, if you had a liberal speaker going to a conservative university getting heckled, you would hope the administrators would stand up and say, look, there's an invited guest.

We should hear them out.

But that should be the standard.

I mean.

The University of Michigan has,

I think, 142

DEI, that's diversity, equity, and inclusion, staff members.

That's a lot, is it not?

I don't know what 142 means, but I have no problem with organizations having a person who is there to look at diversity.

I don't either.

But has it become a cottage industry?

I mean, is it something where

these are jobs now?

Are these people ever going to want to give up their jobs?

I don't have any problems.

I don't have any problem with an institution looking at themselves and hiring people to do that.

I have friends who do it for Fortune 100 companies.

It's a good thing to do that.

I don't know about 142 jobs, but I don't have a problem with institutions reflecting and trying to do better in their own way.

I don't have a problem with that.

So,

when I was running for president, I was trying to figure out why college has gotten two and a half times more expensive, and it has not gotten two and a half times better.

Newsflash.

And it's because they've hired two and a half times more administrators.

So, there's bloat in a lot of different directions.

What about the reparations ruling in San Francisco?

Is that too far?

The $5 million?

I don't know much about it.

I'm not sure.

Well, San Francisco,

they are going forward with this plan to give reparations $5 million, I'd say it in the monologue, $5 million, which that's quite a lot.

To individuals?

Yes, to individuals.

They'd say what it would cost.

Even I didn't go this far.

$5 million total.

$5 million

and a house for $1.

They buy you a house.

I mean, it seems like,

you know, when people ask why you're talking against the woke craziness, because it's crazy is it not crazy they said it would cost every they said it cost and by the way San Francisco doesn't have a history of slavery or anything like that you know

it would cost every citizen left six hundred thousand dollars each

this is madness is it not

so that this is a proposal that's unfunded I mean it sounds like more of a political statement if it's going to cost but even if it is

what is this what

this is really the the point bill is that we have a lot of of people at various stages of public office who are putting out bills and policies that are more for the messaging and stoking the fires on social media than actually trying to get something passed.

That's what we need to talk about.

I feel like Biden this week is sort of pivoting to the center.

I mean, he said when he was campaigning that he would not drill ever, never in Alaska, and now he said he's going to drill in Alaska.

All right, it's time to get a little controversial.

I think that there should be a...

I was hoping you would come before the end of the season.

I think that there should be a competitive primary in the Democratic Party.

I think that Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan should run.

I think that Gavin Newsome here in California should run.

I think J.B.

Pritzker, Illinois, should run.

Joe Biden said, in 2020, I am here to be a bridge to the next generation.

That is what he should be at this moment.

And if he were to go down this road, he would be now this George Washington-level statesman.

He gets rid of Trump, he gets some great things done, and then he says it's time to give it to the next generation.

And then we would all be loving on Joe.

Joe, please head this direction.

If he doesn't,

if he does not,

then we are punting on this entire succession challenge, and it could emerge at a very inopportune time.

In my opinion, there are very, very real risks going down the road that it seems like.

But you're not even rooting for that party anymore, right?

You're the Forward Party.

You're not the Democratic Party.

I'm pro-civilization, Bill.

I'm pro-civilization and I'm anti-extremism.

And people who think that the Forward Party is somehow going to enable extremists have not dug into anything we've actually done.

We've endorsed good people, like frankly, Alyssa, against folks who want to do the democracy harm.

Pro-civilization.

Yeah.

So you're for good things and against bad.

Yep.

I knew I could find the specifics in your plan if I tried it hard enough.

All right, thank you, Till.

Very enlightening, but it's time for new rules, everybody.

New rules.

Okay, new rule.

New rule, now that lunchables, a pre-packaged lunch consisting of six rich crackers, three pieces of salami, and a block of cheese will be added to school lunch programs.

We must double down on cutting costs and just serve the kids dog food.

If you're going to say, fuck you to kids, you might as well do it right.

Don't hide behind rich crackers and mystery meat and pretend like you care about them or their health.

Get a can of Alpo, dump it on the tray, and tell them it's the breakfast of champions.

New rule, we must all applaud the Pope for starting a conversation about ending celibacy for priests.

Many are so excited that they already have an app now where you can meet priests.

It's called Grinder.

But good for Francis for pointing out that the church only demanded celibacy from priests beginning in the 11th century.

And when they did, it was so that instead of leaving their money to their own children after they passed, priests would give it to the church, who ironically, after after all these centuries, wound up giving it to children.

Number all, the researchers who say COVID can cause face blindness, a disorder that leaves you unable to recognize faces, have to admit that it also might have something to do with the fact that we were all wearing masks for three years.

Also, it doesn't necessarily mean you're faceblind when someone says, you wouldn't have caught COVID if you were more careful, and you say, who the fuck are you?

New rule, DJs shouldn't talk.

Take Grammy-winning DJ Diplo, who recently said, I'm sure I've gotten a blowjob from a guy before.

I don't know if it's gay gay unless you make eye contact.

It is.

Geez, and I thought bankers got to make their own rules.

New ruler, now that we know from his texts that Tucker Carlson passionately hates Donald Trump, Trump must rethink their time together.

Because Don, if you read those texts, you must know Tucker, when he was sitting right next to you, was thinking to himself, look at this pathetic fat fuck, bottle blonde

with no brains and no class, a clueless, clownish, orange-faced, jerk-off, tub-of-shit moron.

I mean,

I mean, Don.

You know me.

I think you're great.

But are you really going to let Tucker Carlson talk to you like that?

And finally, new rules, since it's St.

Patrick's Day, let's recognize that as great a country as Ireland is, you can't really think about the Irish without thinking about division.

And I can't help thinking about us right now when I think about that.

The Irish island is still not whole, and Northern Ireland, the part that is still part of England despite its majority Catholic population, went through a period where political hatred born of religion turned into something called the Troubles, which meant the hatred got so bad it could not be contained by the usual means of disagreement.

So people lived with bombings and sniping and urban warfare, what Tucker Carlson calls sightseeing.

In America, our warring factions aren't Catholics and Protestants, but that same level of hatred, of otherization, is happening between Democrats and Republicans.

We've grown less religious, but that's because politics has become our religion.

We used to pray for the nation.

Now each side prays the other side doesn't destroy the nation.

On one side, the Church of Woke wants to cleanse us of our past, and on the other, the cult of Trump wants to resurrect it.

Trump is often depicted as some kind of religious warrior, and now he's talking like an end times religious nut.

He speaks about an epic battle against sinister forces and says, I am your warrior, I am your justice, and for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.

Oh, Jesus, thanks, Batman.

To get any closer to smite the infidels, you'd have to be standing in a cave with a Kalishnikov and a turban.

We will expel the warmongers, he says.

We will drive out the globalists.

We will cast out the communists.

We will liberate America from these villains and scoundrels once and for all.

Big talk from a guy who can't even shut up his girlfriends.

But that's where we are.

Your fellow citizens who support the other party aren't just wrong.

They're heretics who have to be destroyed.

Political identities have become stronger than religious ones, stronger even than racial.

94% of adults are now cool with interracial marriage.

It's inter-party marriage that's a deal-breaker for a majority of Republicans and Democrats who don't want their kids marrying someone who belongs to the other.

America's national leprechaun, Marjorie Taylor Greene.

She didn't invent our country's polarization any more than she could spell it, but

she's playing with the kind of fire that made Northern Ireland a living hell for so long when she says, we need a national divorce.

We need to separate by red states and blue states.

We're done.

And then she threw Biden's things out on the lawn and said, I'll be at my mother's.

But a full third of likely voters agree with her and approve of a national divorce.

With Texas the most enthusiastic, 66% of all voters there are ready to split, including 59% of Democrats.

But you know, just voicing this idea is dangerous.

Because it reinforces the belief that you can't even talk to those people.

You just have to somehow nullify their very existence by by creating a country only of your type of people.

It's always such a tempting thought, isn't it?

If we could just keep the assholes out

of where we,

the good people, are,

this would be such a great place.

But where do you draw the line as to how much someone can disagree with you before they're an asshole too?

Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert seemed pretty joined at the hip for a while.

They both loved God, guns, and gas stoves.

But they reportedly had a bathroom fight in January, of course, over a guy, Kevin McCarthy.

But Marjorie, does this mean that Lauren doesn't get to live with you now in the new free republic of Jesusippi?

And what about your own state of Georgia, which has a Republican governor and two Democratic senators?

What are you going to do with the two and a half million Georgia residents who voted for the Democrats?

Put them on a plane to Martha's Vineyard?

What about the 43% of Republicans who are for gay marriage?

Does that make them rhinos, Republican in name only?

And do rhinos get to live with you in dumbassistan?

Or do they all have to report, deport to Oklahoma?

What about the 11% of conservatives who want strong borders but think the wall is stupid?

What about the 12% of Bernie voters who listed their second choice as Trump?

Sounds like this new red state country is going to have to itself split into two, or maybe more.

since there are many Republicans who want to legalize POT.

What I call the good ones.

And same on the blue side.

I assume abortion won't just be legal in Newsom Land, but encouraged.

But what about the 25% of Democrats who oppose abortions?

What I call the bad ones.

Or the 28% who have a gun.

Seems like we're going to need a lot more new countries than just the two.

Or we could just stick with the one.

The one.

The one where everybody gets to disagree on everything except for one thing.

You have to want to stay in the marriage.

You can't call yourself a patriot of the United States and not be for the whole United part.

So this St.

Patty's Day, let's take that whole we're all Irish on St.

Patty's Day thing and replace it with we're all Americans every day.

All right, that's our show.

I'll be at the Schnitzer Concert Hall in Portland, April 2nd, Mystic Lake Casino in Prior Lake, Minnesota, May 21st.

And Club Random has some amazing people coming up on the podcast.

You can get it on YouTube or wherever you get podcasts.

I want to thank Andrew Yang, Alyssa Slotkin, Go It's History.

Now you can go to Overtime on CNN.com.

No, CNN

Or catch it Saturday morning on YouTube.

Sorry.

Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher every Friday night at 10.

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