Ep. #624: Malcolm Nance, Kristen Soltis Anderson, Paul Begala

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 any class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

Yeah, aka Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

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

Start the clock.

Hey, everybody, how you doing?

Thank you very much.

How you doing?

Thank you, people.

I appreciate it.

Okay,

that's a close.

thank you.

Hey, thank you.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

I know.

It's very exciting.

It's Super Bowl weekend.

That's probably what you're excited about.

The game is in Arizona this year, so don't be shocked if the Republicans don't accept the result.

And the game is on Fox with aerial coverage by China.

Wow.

I'm just looking.

We shot down something else over Alaska today.

What if suddenly the sky is full of balloons?

And this one we shot down last week.

I mean, this day, apparently, this was no weather balloon.

They were monitoring all our communications.

From this thing, they could see where we live, what we buy, where we travel, what websites we visit.

This thing was scarier than Google.

And a few days ago, there was another one, another balloon over Latin America.

They shut it down and candy fell out.

I did Latin America.

But it was a big week.

Politically, the State of the Union address.

Don't worry, you don't have to say you saw it.

I didn't either.

It's fucking ridiculous, this thing.

The state of our union is uncivil.

That's what it is.

I saw the clips.

Oh my God, Republicans, you know, Biden's trying to make a speech.

They act like it's a bachelorette party at a comedy club.

Marjorie Taylor Greene screaming and shouting and yelling and heckling and bowing every bit.

It's the fucking state of the union, not the Rocky Horror Picture Show you.

Dumbass.

And today,

James Carville, Democrat James Carville, he gets in trouble because he said it was white trash on display.

So the people who are always about your snowflakes got a little snowflaky about it, and they were like, oh, that's not fair.

You don't use that term.

Yes, it's very insensitive.

We don't use the term white trash anymore.

We call them poorly tattooed Americans.

Yeah,

did you see Marjorie Tallegren?

She wore a fur collar.

She said to send a message.

What's the message?

I'm a pimp?

She wore a white dress, white coat, white fur collar,

picked out at her favorite department store, Dullard's.

It's from the Ku Klux Klan's new couture line.

And the other big brew ha-ha at the State of the Union, the Republicans, they can't even get along with themselves.

George Santos and Mitt Romney, did you see that?

Mitt Romney said to George Santos, you're an ass.

Which is kind of like Mormon for each shit, motherfucker.

And Santos said, it's not the first time I've been told to shut up, especially by people from privileged backgrounds.

Oh, fight the power, Brenda.

Santos said, this is the whole reason he started Black Lives Matter.

All right, we've got a great show.

We have Paul Magala and Kristen Saltis Anderson.

But first up, he is a U.S.

counterterrorism expert who originally served in the Ukrainian Foreign Legion and is the New York Times best-selling author of They Want to Kill Americans.

Malcolm Nance.

Well, my friends,

how are you doing?

Did I put that smile on your face?

Oh, good.

I love to make you laugh.

How are you doing?

Tired.

Of me?

No.

Yeah, well, you were in Ukraine.

That's got to be tiring.

It is.

It's very tiring, but refreshing in a way.

Yeah, I would not find it the same way, but, you know, I'm not as brave as you.

Well, it's not too often that you get to, you know, defend democracy straight in its face.

Look, you impress me all the time, but going to, as you did, to, when did you get back?

November?

How long?

November.

How long were you there for?

About 10 months.

Ten months.

And you were just with the regular troops there?

I mean,

how does it work?

How do you...

You apply?

Is there a direct flight?

I have so many questions about the mechanics of how this works.

Well, there there is a force there called the International Legion for the Territorial Defense of Ukraine, or an element of the Ukrainian Army.

These are not guys who just run over there and do that.

You have to join the Ukrainian Army.

So I was a private essentially in the Ukrainian Army for 10 months, and they bring you in.

I was a little bit special, right?

A little bit funny because of my media background and my intelligence background.

So I worked for their version of the CIA, which is Defense Intelligence Directorate.

Imagine you're also older than a lot of the other recruits and darker.

How many black guys go to Ukraine to fight?

I mean, six.

And I know them all.

And

so you're on the front lines?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And you're shooting at the bad guys?

Yeah.

And there's a lot more than just shooting at the bad guys.

First off, you're right.

I was age 60 when I passed the commando course that I went through.

And

what's even funnier is that I knew that to get past artillery, I had to beat that 36-year-old ex-marine former Marine that was with me.

But you know, when you go there, there are a lot of different components to your job.

My first job was doing intelligence work, then my second job was an infantry intelligence officer on the front line, and then my third job was a special operations

operator.

Well, Tucker Carlson also is fighting the war.

He's fighting it from his studio and on the wrong side.

So

you're not the only pun.

What do you make of that, that Fox News is on the side of Russia in this one?

Well, it's absolutely fascinating because we watched Russian state TV almost incessantly to try to gain information and glean information.

I was on Russian state TV three times.

Well, that's not true.

One month month I was on every day for two weeks as the face of the NATO, what they called the NATO officer invasion.

And you could tell they were NATO officers, according to them, because they were black and they spoke English and they were on the battlefront and they were trying to use it to say that NATO was fighting the war and the Ukrainians weren't there at all, which was laughable, right?

Because that's what happens when you get your ass kicked.

You lie.

But

the one constant they had was Tucker Carlson.

They would bring his segment on all the time.

They even made a joke on one of the shows, Vladimir Solovyov's show, where he said, well, we should get rid of most Americans, except Tucker Carlson.

That's a quote from Russian state television.

So how is this going to end?

I see that the new offensive going on there, and they've probably lost 200,000.

Russia has probably lost 200,000 men already.

A lot of wars end because the country's just run out of men.

They die in the war, and then there's nobody left to fight, and they have to sue for peace.

Is that how you see this is coming to an end?

Well, not versus manpower with the Russians.

All right.

I took part in the largest counteroffensive and the largest defeat of Russia since 1944.

That's the Kharkiv Offensive.

We liberated over 300 villages and six cities, and we beat their ass in 72 hours.

Now,

that being said,

the reason that we beat them was not just because of the weapons that NATO gives us.

The Ukrainians have something, and I said this on MSNBC before I left media.

I said, these people have heart.

These people, they don't want to fight.

They're not here to kill, as the old saying goes.

They don't have the hatred of the man in front of them.

They have the love for the women, children, and elderly that are behind them.

They are fighting for their existence.

And that's why I joined them.

And

did you make good friends over there?

It's not like a reality show where you're like, I didn't come here to make friends.

No,

it's like that first 10 minutes of saving private ride.

Well, after you land at Normandy, it's that, we did.

We actually had a D-Day period there where we had three days of hundreds of armored vehicles parading by us.

But you get to know your friends.

I have very good friends there.

My battalion commander, Bogdan, everybody loves this guy.

Everybody thinks that half the people think he's crazy.

but he's competent and he wants to fight to liberate his country.

Santa, the guy who started as our logistics guy, he's now a trained sniper.

Elvis, our sniper, he was actually featured on 60 Minutes.

We have people from 52 countries.

My best fighters were from Colombia,

including number two of the six black guys that were in Ukraine.

So we were literally, you know, the only thing, by the way, the only thing we were missing was a guy named Brooklyn, right?

We didn't have that guy.

So

this body of troops that came there to fight alongside the Ukrainians, as Ukrainian Army soldiers, are

the embodiment of everything we ever thought that the United States fought for in World War II, fighting the good fight.

Amazing.

Okay.

So

you're an expert on national security.

What's going on with the balloons?

I never heard of balloons until last week.

And then we find out there were balloons flying over America when Trump was president also.

Is this an intelligence failure that we didn't know about this?

Or did we know about this?

And how dangerous is it?

What's your take?

Well, first off,

what we saw that we shot down was a high-altitude weather balloon type collection platform.

Based on the fact that it used solar power, had a massive three bus size long collection package in there.

Tells me two things.

One, I worked at the National Security Agency as my principal agency.

We collect intelligence through intercepting signals, cracking codes, looking at data links.

It tells me one thing, China doesn't have a lot of confidence in their spy satellites because they wanted to put a collection package lower, but above our capabilities to either, well, we can generally detect things at 100,000 feet, but to kill it, it's very hard.

It has to come much lower.

So China obviously wanted to see signals that were lower in the ground, take imagery that was clearer.

I'll bet you they have, that tells me their technology is probably in the 1980s for their spy satellites.

So they just said, what if we send this over to the United States and then the Americans don't know and they think it's a weather balloon?

Well, they apparently did it twice or two or three times before.

But they gave us something.

One, they probably had a data link that uplinked to the satellite.

We now know how to detect that and know when those things are taking off.

Two,

and this is how you win the spy game, we have their whole collection package, which is going to tell us, are they good at this or do they suck at this?

But we shut it down.

Why didn't they?

Now it's in the ocean.

We can get that thing back.

Really?

We reconstructed the entire space shuttle after it blew up.

U.S.

Navy EOD and recovery are going to get all of that thing.

And then the enemy exploitation units at NSA and other agencies are going to come there and they're going to go, this is 70s technology, which is why they're using a balloon.

But it was flying over America.

How much intelligence could it have gotten?

Not as much,

not as much as your joke at the beginning wasn't a joke.

Why don't they just make a subscription to Google, you know, add revenue and buy all that information.

TikTok is an intelligence collection platform and a place for stupid videos.

So,

but China gets all that for free.

Somebody in Chinese defense intelligence decided that this platform was viable, the Americans wouldn't do anything, and they probably, the first three flights were probably test flights, just went a little bit over the United States, and they didn't think that anything was going to come of it.

And this is what happens when foreign leaders underestimate the United States.

I think it's true.

I think

we got a lot, we're getting a lot more out of that balloon.

Now, here's one other thing.

They've just ruined balloons for Chinese collection, right?

And that's by Pinata joke, isn't it?

Good one.

So, all right.

So, I hope you stay here for a little while and rest up.

You deserve it.

Are you planning on going back to Ukraine if the war keeps going on?

Well, if I do,

I'm working with Gary Kasparov

at his Renewing Democracy initiative out of New York now.

And he works with Ukraine, works for future Russia.

So I hope they'll be helping in a much higher level.

I mean, you shouldn't be getting the ARP magazine while you're on the front lines.

You're a great patriot.

I've said it many times.

Thank you very much.

Welcome, Dance, everybody.

All right, great to see you.

Now let's meet our panel.

Wow.

Hey, okay, he is a Democratic strategist and a CNN political contributor.

Our friend Paul Bagala is back with us.

And she's a pollster and host of The Trend Line with Kristen Soltis-Anderson on SiriusXM's POTUS channel, Krista Soltis-Anderson back with us.

How you doing?

Okay,

so

we have two real political pros here today.

So, you know, I usually try to avoid horse race talk because I think we're only on once a week.

We've got to rise above that.

But let's do it today because

you two know horses.

and a lot of people think one of them is ready for the glue factory.

But

I saw him at the State of the Union.

He looked pretty spry to me.

And, you know, I think there's a lot of ageism that is involved with

talking about Joe Biden.

The fact that Malcolm said he was 60 and he's fighting in Ukraine, I think we should throw that into the mix in the ageism discussion.

But

here's my take.

I don't think Trump can win a general election again.

I really don't.

But I don't think they can deny him the nomination.

And Biden, I think, can win the general election, but his party doesn't like him at all.

I mean, the numbers, one in three are enthusiastic about Trump in his party.

One in six

in Biden's own party about him running again.

How do we get out of this cul-de-sac

of another Trump-Biden election?

The fact that so many voters have just a visceral negative reaction to the idea of watching that movie again may mean that this is an election where you think you know exactly what's going to happen, right?

We know Joe Biden is obviously going to be the Democratic nominee and he's probably going to be favored in a general and we know that Donald Trump is almost certainly going to get the Republican nomination, right?

But when you have voters that are this mad across the political spectrum and just absolutely hate the options available to them, I think that's there's there's a little bit of chaos that can come out of that.

So you're saying it's going to be somebody else?

I'm saying it's possible to be someone else.

I think that you should not assume that Donald Trump will win the Republican nomination.

I think he's favored, but I don't think that's a guarantee at this point.

I hope you're right, but I think you're wrong.

I think there's about 35% of Republicans who, I mean, they're not just committed.

I mean, if we had a fully functional mental health system, they would be.

But they love Trump so much

they I spent most of my time I live in rural America and my county was 71% for Trump okay they don't have just bumper stickers they have flags some of them have tattoos you know make America G-R-A-T-E okay but their heart's in the right place

I don't see I don't see DeSantis stopping him.

Everybody in Washington is about Ron DeSantis.

And I admire his talent for winning Florida by 19 points.

He won the most Democratic parts of the state, Miami-Dade.

I respect that.

He got nothing against Donald Trump in a multi-candidate field where it's winner-take-all,

and Trump can't lose that 35%.

I just don't see it.

And for Biden, I think you're right.

I mean,

Biden has a secret weapon, the Republicans.

They make him look scry and smart and young, and he did all that in the State of the Union.

And by the way, in ageism, Joe Biden is exactly nine months older than Mick Jagger.

Mick Jagger's still touring, right?

He can rock it, right?

He tour Europe.

Oh, but that's who shows up.

I mean, so I watched the whole State of the Union from the very first minute to the very last minute of Sarah Huckabee Sanders' response.

And the first 30 minutes, I thought, I don't know if my Democratic friends are feeling very reassured by this.

It was a little bit rushed.

It felt a little slow.

It did not feel very high energy.

It was not until the combat with Republicans that he picked up.

Now, which could mean he'll be fine on the trail, but that's kind of important.

Now that the Republicans have made this the Maury Povitz show,

you guys want to make this a heckle battle, they brought it on, and he won.

He won the ad-lib battle, which tells me he's not senile.

I mean,

for people who didn't watch it, tell them what happened

when

Joe Biden said, you Republicans want to get rid of Social Security.

They all screamed and yelled.

Right.

He then tricked them into giving him a standing ovation.

Is that not true?

Is that not true?

Set the trap master plea.

They dove into it.

What did he say?

He sprung, he said just that.

He said some Republicans, and he later said it was Senator Rick Scott of Florida and others, by the way, including Ron DeSantis, have called for either cutting or sunsetting Social Security, Medicare, and other programs.

And they, yeah, they booed, they yelled liar,

and with the party of George Santos.

Santos, they heard liar.

He's like, I'm over here.

But they.

They gave him, first off, they gave him all of the attributes he needed, right?

He reassured his party, and I think a lot of independents, that he is fit and he's very mentally sharp.

But also, he put the most popular issue for Democrats back front and center, Social Security and Medicare.

When we're talking about that, Democrats are winning.

Well, Democrats better hope that that's who shows up because he's Plan A, Plan B, and Plan C for them for 2024.

I mean, right now, if Joe Biden doesn't run, who?

That's the big question.

Why is age a big issue for the Democrats with Biden, but it's not an issue at all for the Republicans with Trump,

who's close to the same age and certainly

10 times as nutty.

He's stupid and crazy.

Well, the age issue, when I'm talking to voters and I get that physical reaction to, oh my God, I can't watch this movie again.

Please tell me it's not going to be these two guys.

Age does factor in.

And it's not even necessarily

I don't think old men can do this so much as, is there really no one else?

Is there really no one else in this great, big, beautiful country?

We've got to keep going back to the same guys?

Well, okay, so there is somebody.

I mean, you mentioned DeSantis.

I mean,

for the Democrats, it's not obvious who that somebody else would be.

I don't know who that somebody else would be.

And I don't think they do either.

I mean, it's probably not the vice president who would be the normal choice, but she's not very popular in the party either and doesn't seem to have, it just didn't work.

It's like the Lakers last year.

It just didn't work.

Or the Dets, you know, I mean, the Durant thing.

It just didn't work with Kyrie.

But DeSantis, okay, so two developments this week.

One,

sources close to the inside of the campaign.

I don't know what that means.

Say he's definitely going to get in.

I personally think that would be a mistake for him because he's 46, I think.

He just let Trump

die.

Politically, I mean, or, you know, he is older.

It could happen.

I'm not wishing it, but okay.

He'd still only be 50.

If DeSantis got in against Trump, Trump will do to him what he does with everybody.

He'll just bloody him.

It'll be a battle in the mud.

And

all DeSantis has to do is wait, and he can be president.

I normally would say the opposite.

Get in early before they pick you apart.

But in this case, with Trump, it changes everything.

But, okay, Trump is already attacking him.

He went after him this week,

Trump went after DeSantis, that is, for being a groomer.

He got a picture of him

when DeSantis, I guess, was a teacher, and he's with like two or three students or something.

Look at this.

Here is Ron DeSanctimonius grooming high school girls with alcohol as a teacher.

Okay, I don't know who that is.

It could be Ron DeSanctimonius or somebody else.

It looks like

he's at a party with people.

I mean,

the idea that Trump would call him a groomer, right off the bat, I mean, we're two years from the election, and you're already a groomer.

The guy, Mr.

Trump, who bragged years ago to Howard Stern about going backstage at the Miss Teen pageant?

Russia.

Oh, yeah, of course, but that's pretty creepy.

But that's always Trump.

I'm saying that's how you know how threatening this guy is to Trump, because that's it's always the, I'm not, you are.

Oh, I'm not the groomer, you're the groomer.

Running against Donald Trump is like running into a wood chipper.

But if you don't have the guts to do it, then one of the things that Republican voters want more than anything right now is strength.

They want someone who will fight.

They want someone who is strong.

If you're Ron DeSantis and you say, I'm going to take a pass, when this is your moment, you don't get your moment all the time in American history.

It's going to be his moment in four years anyway.

In four years, he won't be governor of Florida anymore because he can't be.

He probably won't be in the U.S.

Senate unless he left to challenge Rick Scott somehow.

He's going to be kind of chilling, doing nothing.

And so this is his moment.

I think it would be foolish for him to take a pass on this.

Nixon wasn't anything when he ran in 1968.

I think he doesn't know what he's getting into with Trump.

For the young people, look up the YouTube video of Mike Tyson fighting Michael Spinks.

It was

90 seconds.

Yeah, 90 seconds, and Tyson hit him, and then he hit the ground, and that was it.

Because Trump, look at the, I didn't know about this thing.

He accused Ted Cruz's father of complicity in the Kennedy assassination.

That's insane.

Like, he'll never stop.

There's no bottom to this guy.

And I think that DeSantis won't be able to deal with that, particularly when Trump cannot, I think, be knocked below 30, 35 percent of his primary.

And what do you think of the little motto that DeSantis has adopted for himself?

Florida is where woke goes to die.

I noticed that you mentioned Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who gave the rebuttal, I guess is what they call it now.

She was picked for, she used to be Trump's press secretary for a while, right?

Is that the one I'm thinking of?

Yes, she's the daughter of Mike Huckabee, the Huckabee dynasty,

where nepotism meets cholesterol.

But she said,

she said her catchline was, it's not a choice anywhere between left and right.

It's between normal and crazy.

That's the way she characterizes politics in America.

What do you think of that?

It was a good line.

It stuck out to me because it's the sort of thing that I've heard in focus groups time and again.

Although, normally when I'm hearing it from a swing voter, it's the choices between crazy and crazy.

But the problem that she has is when she said, look, this is a choice between normal and crazy, it's true that that's how Republicans view this, right?

They think that Democrats have gone off the edge, that they are trying to change America too quickly, and that normal Americans must all naturally agree with them.

The problem is that Democrats feel the same way about Republicans.

They look at the GOP and they say, you guys are the crazy ones.

And right now, voters would like normalcy.

We saw saw that a lot in the midterms, that you had candidates who just the sheer force of partisanship was not enough to get them across the finish line if they were not perceived as normal.

So voters want normalcy, but...

oftentimes they feel like the choice they have is between crazy and crazy.

She followed a speech where the president of the United States said, I want more blue-collar jobs for folks without a college education.

I want more community college.

I want to take some of these junk fees off of your monthly bills.

Pretty normal stuff.

And the Republicans were unhinged.

So she followed a speech in which her party did look crazy and my party looked pretty normal and still framed it that way.

I thought it was just dumb.

She's got the party of the Jewish space lasers and whining about how the M ⁇ Ms are dressed in a cartoon.

And

like, really?

Oh, my God, wants to go just build some highways, you know?

Okay, so was it Mario Cuomo who was the one who said you campaign in poetry, but you govern in prose?

I thought that this week, I saw what I thought was the funniest story I've seen in a long time about the Taliban being upset about having to govern now.

And it's true.

You know, it's a lot of fun to be the revolutionary.

You know, it's a lot of, jihad is fun.

It just is.

But then you win.

They won.

And now they have to like govern this country.

So Vice News, which I used to be a part of,

they did this whole story on, they interviewed a lot of these Taliban commanders who are now living in the capital, Kabul, and they don't like it.

One of them said, I miss the jihad life

for all the good things it had.

I love this.

Husafa, a former sniper,

said, life was simple and free during jihad.

The Taliban used to be free of restrictions, but now we sit in one place behind a desk.

Don't you hate that?

Man, Su, great guy,

complained about the he's hatched up here with the traffic.

I am not making this up.

He said, last year it was tolerable, but now it's become more congested.

We had a great degree of freedom.

These days you have to go to the office before 8 a.m.

and stay there till 4.

Cameron said, we are tested by cars, positions, wealth, and women.

Many of our Muhajuddina have fallen into these seemingly sweet but actually bitter traps.

Oh, yeah.

Connie from Accounting, she's showing a little ankle around the office.

Anyway,

I thought the complaints of the Taliban, so we looked into it a little further.

There are some other complaints the Taliban have about working at the office.

Would you like to hear some of their ally?

I thought you might.

For example, I keep getting my beard stuck in the copier as a.

I can't find wingtips that go with my suicide pets.

The snack machine is always out of opium.

I'm getting corporal tunnell in my beheading hand.

I tell coworkers I used to blow up statues of Buddha and they say, okay, boomer.

I'm used to working from Cave.

I was due for a promotion and who do they give it to?

The warlord's son.

No women are allowed to work here, but HR still makes us sit through a sexual harassment seminar.

And of course, you try running accounts payable without Jews.

Okay.

So you were mentioning some of the things Biden was saying he was going to do in his speech, and I thought that was sort of reassuring.

That reminded me of Clinton-era stuff, that return to the small bore stuff.

We're going to get rid of the fees, the resort fees, the stuff that make people go,

you know, and we do have giant issues that the government should be dealing with, but I think most of us are so cynical, they're like, they people can't do that they can't fix anything but you know what you could get me home for Christmas if you do something about the airlines or make them at least have the seat big enough to fit into

and I see

you know Amy Klobuchar had hearings on ticket master you know it this is kind of a winning thing for the Democrats don't you think to go to just make an issue of everything I don't know Andy Rooney used to complain about, you know, just every.

It wouldn't surprise me if there are a lot of single-issue Taylor Swift fan voters right now who are ticked off about that whole situation.

But I think one thing that worries me, I don't like resort fees.

I don't like airlines having extra charges.

But just because I don't like something doesn't mean I necessarily think the government ought to stamp it out.

I don't know that I feel comfortable with Joe Biden being the arbiter of what counts as a resort or not.

And I thought it was weird that that was suddenly a comment in the state of the union from the commander-in-chief of the world's greatest military.

It seemed small ball, and I get that for most people, they've heard so many politicians say, we're going to raise teacher pay, we're going to lower health care costs, and we're going to fight climate change, and we're going to do all these things, and then it never really happens.

So saying something small sounds possible, but it just felt like an odd note to hit in a speech that

could be about bigger themes than that.

Well, he had big themes too.

He talked about free community college, which would change the face of America, right?

If young people could get two years post-high school.

He talked about making billionaires pay more in taxes than their secretaries, which I think would be a novel idea.

Aren't those things that have been in tons of state of the unions in the past?

Didn't Obama say that in the United States?

But those are very big.

Just the reason they've never happened is because they're very big and they're hard to do.

And he's got some of the small things.

But I think he's showing us a very clear, and I think brilliant strategy.

He's laying out these very popular things that are not at all partisan.

You know, the hidden cable fees, Consumer Reports did an article on this, costs the average American American $450 a year in hidden fees.

So people care about that.

Now, the Republicans who run the House will either have to pass those things and give Biden an accomplishment to run on or kill them and give him an issue to run on.

I think either way, he's a winner, and Kevin McCarthy does not look good.

And I hear you about the, I have them basically in my gut feel the same way.

But who else is going to stop that, is my question.

Well, you can, it's something that states can pursue.

So like Pennsylvania, they've just elected a new governor.

Governor Shapiro, he was attorney general.

He fought Marriott over,

you know, these resort fees.

And Marriott backed off of it and said, okay, on our website, from now on, we're going to have the fees are loaded in when you first see the price.

So there are ways that government can put pressure for things like transparency.

And at the state level, that doesn't worry me as much.

But it's when you suddenly have politicians who are trying to do popular things, but they're things that just little by little take away bits and pieces of liberty.

And everybody says, well, who cares?

Because these companies that we don't even like.

But it just, it sets a precedent that makes me think of it.

Really, Liberty, I mean, I remember that woman who was killed in the January 6th riot that became kind of a martyr for the Republicans, Ashley Babbitt, I think was her name.

And she had this small business, and she got into trouble with it, took out a loan, was being charged 169 percent interest.

And she went to Washington to chant Stop the Steal,

which I found kind of ironic.

Wow.

And she was against, you know, Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats.

Now, I mean, the Democrats, they certainly have their issues and their problems, and I've certainly criticized them about lots of stuff.

But, I mean,

if exploitation economically is your issue and you're fighting against the party of Elizabeth Warren, you're not that bright.

You know,

there's a difference between a loan chart and do you want to fly on a spirit airline versus Delta?

But that's not the same thing.

I know, but a bank being able to charge you 169% interest, there is one party that much more than another party is trying to fight that.

And so I thought it was just...

This is a thing that you may not like Donald Trump, but this is one thing that he has actually changed in the GOP, is that that fervor for the

free market.

No, the fervor for the free market.

Business is infallible.

Business can do whatever.

That has really been curbed in the Republican Party.

And now Republicans are just as likely as Democrats to say that they don't like big business, that they don't like banks.

And this is a change that has happened relatively quickly.

And it's been during the Trump era of the GOP.

Really?

I must have missed that.

So then they'll pass this stuff.

During the Trump era, the GOP, they passed a $2.3 trillion corporate tax cut at a time when corporate profits were already at a record high.

They didn't rush in and save some working person who was underwater.

They gave $2.5 trillion of our money to big corporations.

You can't really claim you're an economic populist, Mr.

Trump, if you're giving $2 trillion of our money to those corporations.

Okay, so if

quality of life issues is going to be what we're going to decide this election on, I saw this in the L.A.

Times yesterday.

What's the matter with Portland?

Which is a very democratic, I mean, almost all cities are democratically run.

And this is one of the big talking points on the right, is that cities in America are falling apart.

They're run by Democrats.

Why aren't we blaming the Democrats?

Okay, this is the L.A.

Times, a very liberal Democratic paper.

Shootings, theft, and other crime test cities' progressive strain.

And they go into the specifics.

The number of unhoused people jumped.

Shootings in the city have tripled.

Homicides are at a record high.

Lower-level crimes like vehicles being stolen.

The Democrat there on the Portland City Commission said, you don't have to watch Fox News to look around Portland and say, this is not cool.

This is a big Achilles heel for the Democrats, is it not?

Oh, they need to get out in front of it.

I want a Democrat to stand up and say, you know, some people belong in jail.

You know, the rapists, the murderers, the people.

One clap for that.

I'm sorry if you do that.

I think that's very interesting.

No, wait, wait, wait.

Let's just pause there.

One person is like, yes, some people belong in jail.

Everybody else is, no, they don't.

Nobody belongs in jail.

I agree.

I'm going to go out on a limb.

Some people do belong in jail.

And by the way, and it's not the 10-year-old girl in Indiana who got raped and needed to have an abortion to save her life.

That's who they want to put in jail on the other side.

Well, okay.

That's an extreme example.

It is.

They're an extreme party.

But I do think Democrats, first off, they do have a story to tell.

Bakersfield, California, hometown of Kevin McCarthy, voted for Trump, Republican mayor.

Much higher murder rate than Nancy Pelosi, San Francisco.

Why aren't Democrats talking about that?

Third way is a think tank.

They did a study.

Even if you take the cities out,

the seven states with the highest murder rate, all Trump states.

The 25 states that went for Trump have a 40% higher murder rate than the states that went for Biden.

In other words, the crime problem is in rural America too, and it's in suburban America.

And I do think,

look, I think the left doesn't want to hear, and the right doesn't want to hear it, that we need more cops and fewer guns.

Better training, better screening.

We'll never tolerate police brutality.

But those are the two things.

Some on the left are wanna.

That to me sounds like a grand bargain.

Remember when we we used to be able to have grand bargains.

Will we ever get back to that?

Because that would be, there you just said it, a grand bargain.

There was some bargain.

More cops, fewer guns.

There was some bipartisanship in Congress this week, and it is because the D.C.

City Council voted a couple of weeks ago to repeal and reduce some penalties on crimes.

In the midst of a crime wave, they've made it less penalties.

And the Congress, because D.C.

is the federal district, Congress has for decades not actually overturned anything the D.C.

government did.

And Republicans, with many Democrats joining them, voted to overturn this change and it happened on the day where Democratic Congresswoman Angie Craig of I believe Minnesota was mugged in the lobby of her building as she was leaving in the morning to go to the Hill.

Now thankfully she's okay but it's a real wake-up call to a lot of folks that this is not okay.

This is not normal.

It does not have to be this way.

Okay.

Yeah, and for Democrats and my fellow liberals, it's the people we supposedly care about who are the victims of crime.

Correct.

You know, Elon Musk is not going to get a stupid Tesla cart,

right?

It's poor people, it's working people.

They're the victims of crime.

And by the way, if you look at all the polling and the voting, it's those folks who are voting for more security, more safety, more and better cops.

And it's the white liberals who want to defund the police.

It's not actually the heart of the Democratic Party.

Okay.

Let me ask one last thing, because I saw this a lot in the news this week, and it scared the shit out of me.

Deep fakes.

Do you know what deep fakes?

I heard this a while ago.

Now apparently with the rise of this new generation of AI, it's back and we're going to see it in the next election, I guess.

These are, well, show them what, these are, this is a, we have one of Obama and one of O'Biden, O'Biden.

It should be O Biden.

But these are, it's not Obama, and it's not Biden.

Take a look.

President Trump is a total and complete dipship.

Even trannies who pass look uncanny and unnatural to a man.

That was not those two gentlemen.

What happens in the next election?

I mean, Americans

are not terribly savvy about politics to begin with when it's the real person.

What happens when, and these are just the famous people.

You couldn't have a somebody they don't know who it is.

It just looks like a newscaster delivering a newscast and it's not real.

And it's just something you put up there.

And of course, you know how stuff gets passed around on social media.

What is this going to do in the next election?

So there are a lot of exciting things about these new AI breakthroughs that it's going to make it more possible for people to do lots of creative stuff.

It's going to get a lot of drudgery out of a lot of sort of office jobs.

But there are a lot of downsides.

And politics is the arena where there are a ton of downsides.

So it's not just that you can make these videos that'll show someone saying something that they didn't say.

It's that now you'll also be able to have bots populate a ton ton of websites with very real-looking news articles that claim that speech actually happened.

Like it's one thing when people say, oh, I don't believe everything I see online.

I go looking for more information.

But you'll now be able to create the more information that makes it seem like that's all too real.

And so if you think we are right now living in a world where people have two alternate political realities, this is going to supercharge it.

It's also going to mean that the kid whose job on the campaign is to send you the emails that says, Bill, it's the end of the quarter in five minutes.

If you don't send me money right now, socialism loses forever.

That kid's not going to have a job because AI can write those emails much easier and much cheaper.

Right.

But on these deep fakes, it's the technology way beyond my ken, but

go on YouTube and try to download or watch White Lotus.

Can't do it.

Why?

Because the corporations and the government have cracked down on that.

Right?

You can't pirate that stuff, and that's good.

I think that artists should be compensated for their work, and people shouldn't steal it.

We could do the same thing with these deep fakes.

We could disable them, we could label them,

but both the government and corporate America have to get out front of it, but also so do we.

We have to be savvier.

We have to like say, well, maybe that's a fake.

You determine that people have to be savvier?

They have to.

But also.

That's not going to happen.

But we can block this stuff, too.

We just don't want to.

Well, I worry not just about somebody making a fake Biden speech or a fake Trump speech.

I also worry about when this gets into the hands of average people, what happens when a teenager makes a video of a classmate they don't like doing something that that classmate would not have really done?

How is this going to affect teen mental health?

Like, there are so many ways that this can be really exciting, and a lot of ways it can be really scary.

That's such a good point.

That's right.

That kids are going to do that because kids are feral and horrible.

They are.

You have to teach.

You have to teach people to be good.

They don't come out good normally.

I mean, naturally.

You never read Lord of the Flies?

I have a seven-month-old.

She's real cute.

A seven-month-old.

I can't imagine her doing anything wrong.

I would agree.

The rot has not set in at seven months.

But at some point, it will.

Okay.

Final issue.

Biden called the voting in Georgia Jim Crow in the 21st century, but then they did a University of Georgia poll.

Basically, they had no issues, the people down there.

98.9, that's almost 99% of voters, had no issues, including people of color.

99% of voters felt safe in their polling location.

Is this because Biden made an issue of it that scared them into doing it better?

Or was it always, I mean,

was he crying wolf?

Well, some of this, you're a real pollster, but some of this is a sample bias.

If you stand at the finish line at the Boston Marathon and ask them, are you able to finish a marathon?

You're going to get a lot of people say yes, right?

But if you go two blocks away, you're going to to get a more representative sampling.

People say no.

So if you ask voters, did you vote?

Was that okay?

Yes.

But first off, the intent certainly was to hold down black vote.

That's why they targeted Fulton County, which is the only county that used mobile voting.

They banned mobile voting.

And the effect was to diminish black vote.

You had three of the top four candidates were black.

I would have thought black turnout would be way, way up, right?

Both the candidates were senate, one of the candidates for governor.

White turnout was up, black turnout was down.

And the differential, Brennan Center studied this, the differential between those two was 8.6%.

In the two previous midterms, it was half that.

So something, I can't promise you it's the, it might be the Democrats didn't do a good job turning out black voters.

I can't tell you certainly that it's the law.

So you're saying it was suppressed, but the people who actually got to the polls.

Did fine.

Did fine.

But the Brennan Center estimates 176,000 black voters didn't participate, had they participated the same level as whites.

That's a lot.

I see that poll, and I think we need to give Brad Raffensburger in Georgia a lot of credit.

He stood up up to Donald Trump when Donald Trump, he's the Secretary of State in Georgia.

He's the one that Donald Trump called and said, can you find more votes for me?

And he said, no, I'm not going to do it.

And he's faced death threats.

from Republicans.

And this law, it did things like it put two Sundays worth of early voting, enshrined them into law.

It did a lot of things that actually expanded voting access.

The one thing that it did is it made absentee voting a little more challenging.

You have to put a little more information on your absentee ballot.

And it did some things to roll back laws that were changed after COVID.

So pre-COVID, there were no Dropboxes that you could use.

During COVID, they expanded them.

This law rolled them back a little bit, said you can't access them 24 hours.

But overall, it was the idea that this was somehow world-ending, worthy of moving Major League Baseball's all-star game out of the state of Georgia and Titan.

It was just such an overreaction.

And I think when you have this crying wolf, it makes it harder to see when a law is actually being changed that will really have negative effects.

If everything's a crisis, then nothing's a crisis.

All right.

Thank you, Tim, for your expertise.

but it's time for new rules, everybody.

New rules.

Okay.

New rule, don't just celebrate the fact LeBron James is now the NBA's all-time leading scorer.

Also celebrate that he was able to do it right here in L.A.

I'm sure I speak for everyone inside the arena when I say we witness history and everyone outside the arena when I say spare a dollar,

I can't make a joke supporting the homeless crisis in LA.

New rules, if you're a liberal who won't buy a Tesla because you think Elon Musk is a conservative now, okay,

why don't you get a Volkswagen?

Or maybe a Fiat.

Or a Mitsubishi.

Or ask your Ford dealer how Henry Ford felt about the Jews.

Or fuck it, just walk to work in your Yeezys.

New rule, now that we know that our F-22 fighter jet has the weaponry to deflate a mysterious and frightening balloon, let's launch one at Madonna.

Please, Madge, we love you on vinyl, not made of it.

You know that song where you sang, don't ever tell me to stop?

Stop.

New rule, now that a group is spending a billion dollars on the He Gets Us campaign of billboards, internet ads, and even a Super Bowl ad to promote Jesus, they need to go fuck themselves.

You've got a billion dollars.

Feed some poor people.

Because Newsflash, we've all heard of Jesus.

Americans may not know who their senator is or what's the state above South Dakota.

But we've heard of Jesus.

Go find some tribe in the Brazilian jungle and bug them.

New rule, let's celebrate the finalists of the annual Close-Up Photographer of the Year Awards, which honors photographs that bring the nearly unseen world to vivid depiction.

Like Catherine Salinas with this close-up of a frozen bubble, and Andrei Savitsky with this close-up of a salt crystal, Ragum Anadana with this close-up of stink bug eggs, and of course Raphael Steinlisberger, who won with this close-up of Madonna.

And finally, new rule this year for Valentine's Day.

Let's celebrate the fact that in-person meetups are finally making a comeback.

Yep.

Yep, that's what I've been reading, that after years of being conditioned to search out prospective mates by swiping our phones, singles are putting on pants and heading out to places like grocery stores, parks, and of course for Republican congressmen, the old reliable truck-stop restroom.

At the upscale grocery chain here in L.A.

called Air One, also known as Shop and Shag,

it's reported that they purposefully make the aisles narrow so that as you squeeze by, you feel people's energy.

In-person energy, so retro.

Apparently even Home Depot has become quite the pickup place.

The Home Depot dating trend on TikTok has 3.6 billion views of women who I guess regarded as the perfect venue to find eligible men willing to work with their hands.

Who cares if they're mostly illegal aliens?

As one woman wrote, I'm headed to Home Depot to look confused in the lumber aisle.

Ah, a damsel in distressed jeans.

And why not?

Even a not terribly bred guy can figure out how to respond when a woman or a gay man says, Excuse me, I'm looking to get some wood.

Can you help me?

But here's a little life tip for the men.

If you want to get with a woman, try this trick.

Talk to her.

In person.

Because here's what's happened in the last 10 years.

The phone ruined dating and porn ruined sex.

And women have been left with men who don't know how to actually talk to a woman anymore and who think first base is anal and second base is choking.

So

it's not surprising that women are finally revolting against the superficial scroll and swipe form of dating that of course works for men who are oversexed and disgusting and biologically designed to seek the maximum orgasms for the minimal amount of work.

Dating apps took the worst inherent traits of men and exacerbated them by a multiple of infinity.

Let's see, I'm horny, I'm lazy, I'm a coward, and I suck at honest communication.

Is there a way I could have an electronic harem right in my hand

where the only answers are ever yes or next?

As far as effort goes, it's one notch above sticking your dick in the vacuum cleaner.

Don't get me wrong, technology is a wonderful thing.

I was just saying that the other day to my Japanese sex robot.

R2, me too.

But just because something is on your phone doesn't mean it's better.

And that's the lesson women should have taken away from all this.

Dating from the phone took away any incentive for men to cough up the two things women want from them, courage and communication.

The courage to step to her for real and demonstrate your desire enough to risk rejection.

And communication.

Women are communicative creatures.

Even when they're breaking up with you, they say, we need to talk.

We are endlessly hearing about girl power and being a girl boss.

Please.

Ladies, you let the technology play you, and you got punked by your phone.

Of course, Tinder is every guy's dream, a hookup Rolodex, but it's the opposite of what you want.

Intimacy.

emotional availability and being seen as a full human being.

I know we're all fluid and non-binary and totally free and super brave now, but here's the thing, we're not.

Not mostly.

Women haven't changed that much.

You know how I know this?

Because The Bachelor is still on.

And so is The Bachelorette.

Bachelor in Paradise.

Are you the one?

Perfect match.

Joe Millionaire.

Farmer Wants a Wife.

The courtship.

The real love boat, cosmic love, love in the jungle, love on the spectrum, love is blind, love island, temptation island, and MILF Manor.

Okay, right.

Not MILF Manor.

Take that one.

That is some sick shit.

But the other thousand shows where women still want the roses, the romance, and the commitment should tell you something.

They don't want an eggplant emoji and a text at one in the morning.

What's up?

They want you to compliment their hair, notice what they're wearing, and hear about their day.

I know, it's a fucking nightmare.

But it's still better than the incel life of having a fake girlfriend on OnlyFans and paying rent to your mom.

So let's build on this budding trend of doing it in person.

Let's harken back to that time when the mirror wasn't just for selfies, but to make sure you didn't look like shit when you left the house.

Let's remember that at one time stout-hearted Americans roamed this continent and mated face to face.

And that's why so much of America today is named after these intrepid horndogs.

Places like Romance, Arkansas, and Intercourse, Pennsylvania.

Bumpass, Virginia, and Moorhead, Kentucky.

Ball play, Alabama, and Threeway, Arizona.

Cornetown, North Carolina, Boneville in Georgia, and

Ramtown in New Jersey.

Spunk Creek, Minnesota, and Hump Mountain, West Virginia,

to name just a few.

We did it before, and we can do it again.

Happy Valentine's Day, everybody.

All right, that's our show.

We'll be at the MGM Grand in Vegas, February 17 and 18, the Hard Rock Live in Wheatland, California, February 25th, and Valleys Lake Tahoe, March 11th.

I want to thank Paul Bagala, Kristen Solvis-Anderson, and Malcolm Mance.

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

Thank you, folks.

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

For more information, log on to HBO.com.