Ep. #618: Richard Reeves, Maggie Haberman, Fareed Zakaria

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Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO late night series, Real Time with Bill Ma.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

How are you?

Thank you very much.

Glad you're here.

Thank you very much.

I know why you're

excited today.

All right.

I know you're excited because the Powerball lottery

is up to $1.6 billion.

Well, the odds of you winning this is one in 300 million.

Still better chances than the Democrats have on Tuesday.

That's the

bad news to me.

Well,

this.

Are you excited about Tuesday?

This is going to be a fun election.

Oh, it's a lot of fun out there.

You see, in Arizona now, there's the poll watchers, there's armed men in hoods who are watching people drop off their ballots.

These used to be normal people, and then Fox News and the Internet came along, and now their idea of a good time is to dress like ISIS and watch mailboxes.

This country is cuckoo.

Here in L.A., we're going to elect a new mayor.

I don't know if you're excited about that.

Apparently not.

Yes, the Democrats are very afraid of the issue of homelessness, that's going to drive the people to Rick Caruso.

And

I don't know if the homeless are helping them, because I saw a guy today under the overpass with a sign that said, we'll read children's stories in drag for food.

Also,

this is probably just an LA thing, but we have a lot of ballot propositions, right?

And it seems like half half of them are about dialysis.

Look,

people,

my heart goes out to anybody who needs dialysis, but why is this such a political issue?

Every other ad is some poor lady saying, if you vote no, I'll die.

And then one guy comes on right after

yes, I'll die.

I can't take the,

I don't want to have this power.

I don't want to be in the voting booth.

Well, which old brought am I going to off today?

Now, the races that most people are watching closely here in America are Pennsylvania, where John Fetterman can't talk, and

Herschel Walker in Georgia, who can't think.

So

it's a great election.

And Herschel

gave his closing argument.

He wants people to understand his redemption story.

He hopes they are sympathetic to what he, you know, he's very pro-life, but keeps having abortions paid for.

And he closes his end by looking right into the camera and saying, hey, it's not like I aborted you.

It's a crazy election.

But yeah, this is the time of what they call the closing arguments at the party.

The Democrats' closing argument seems to be vote for the Democrats or else we'll lose democracy.

And the Republican closing argument seems to be, vote Republican or we will hit your husband in the head with a hammer.

Thank you.

Well, I mean, this is getting really chippy out there.

I mean, you saw this, if you missed the story, the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, was out of town and somebody broke in to try to get her and attacked her husband.

The good news, Paul Pelosi is out of the hospital, so I think that's good.

Not as bad as we thought.

But this guy, this nut, broke in and he wanted to kidnap Nancy Pelosi, and then he wanted to interrogate her.

And if she told the truth, he'd let her go.

And if she lied, he was going to break her kneecaps.

This is terrifying.

On the other hand,

it did give Fox News an idea for a new game show.

Fox News.

Oh, I kid Fox News, but really the way they're downplaying this, now they're saying it was just a trick or treat that got out of hand.

I mean.

And

of course it brings out all the conspiracy theorists.

Some of them say, because Paul Pelosi, he was going to bed, so he was in his underwear.

So now they're saying they were gay lovers.

The attacker and him were gay lovers.

That's their theory.

They're like, come on, it is San Francisco, and he didn't come in the back door.

They have no shame, these people.

Okay, well, in anti-Semitic news,

which is now apparently a whole department,

Kyrie Irving of the Brooklyn Nets, he was suspended for tweeting a link to a very anti-Semitic movie.

It's called Yeezy Rider.

And my favorite story of the week, I think this is charming, it turns out, I guess it was the Miss Universe pageant.

Did you see this?

Miss Argentina and

Miss Puerto Rico met and fell in love and are now getting married.

And today Mike Pence said, don't get up, fellas, I'll hang myself.

All right, we've got a great show.

We have Fareed Zakaria and Maggie Heberman.

Well, first up, he is the senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of the book of Boys and Men, Why the Modern Male is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It.

Richard Reeves.

Richard?

Wow.

It looked like a model of the modern male.

Thank you, you too.

Oh, I appreciate that.

So the first thing I want to ask you about this book, reading about it and then about it, the book itself, and then about it, is that just broaching this subject, which is really non-controversial in the sense that it is really happening.

The modern mail really is in trouble.

We have statistics and data.

But just covering this is somehow dangerous for the author.

Could you explain that?

Yeah, that was the fear.

That was what people said to me before writing it, is if you just write about boys and men, people will assume that you're Josh Hawley, effectively.

That you're just part of the manosphere, you're on the alt-right.

And the more that people said that, the more I thought, I really do need to write this book, because I think it's an axiom of political life and cultural life that if responsible people don't address real problems in a straightforward way, irresponsible people are going to exploit them.

And I think that's just a lesson of history.

And so I

lead with the facts, let's get to some solutions, and also

let's do ourselves the favor of assuming we can think two thoughts at once.

That we can think there are problems for boys and men, especially working-class boys and men, and black boys and men.

There are still many issues still facing women and girls.

And guess what?

We can hold both those thoughts in our head at the same time.

Of course.

But I must say, just anecdotally, as someone who, you know, never been married, never have children, but the P, you know, I certainly know most of my friends did that, and their kids have grown up, and I've seen that.

And I've heard over the years, especially when they got a little older, a lot of times I hear, you know, I worry about my boy.

The girl's doing fine, but the boy, I can't get him off Pornhub, and the grades are bad.

And

I've heard that a lot.

Yeah.

What changed?

What?

I mean, when I went to college, it was

unfortunately almost all men.

Certainly where I went.

Right.

Where did you go?

Cornell.

Okay.

It sucked.

I believe you.

Yeah.

and you know,

now it's flipped.

Now,

colleges are majority women.

Yeah.

In fact, 50 years ago,

there was a gender gap of about 13 points in favor of men.

Now there's a gap of 15 points in favor of women.

So there's more gender inequality on college campuses today than there was in 1972.

It's just flipped.

It's the other way around.

What's the short answer for why this happened?

I think the education system actually suits girls and women better than boys and men on average.

And we didn't know that that because previously we weren't encouraging girls and women to go on to college.

So under conditions of sexism, actually their natural advantages in the classroom didn't really show up.

But since we've taken the lid off women's educational opportunities and aspirations, they've just blown right past the boys in high school, in college, etc.

And so

it turns out that a level playing field exposes who are the better players.

And in our current education system that rewards sitting still, turning your homework in, paying attention, looking to the future, et cetera.

Those are all skills that on average girls just have in greater abundance than boys.

That's a fact that we're going to be able to do that.

I'm sure it is, but I must also say, I've heard this forever now.

Not forever, but for many years, that your boys are at a disadvantage because they have a harder time sitting still.

I'm sure I did too.

But when I went to school, they didn't give a fuck.

It's like, sit still.

And we did.

You know, you're a boy, so what?

Yes, you're a little more antsy.

But you still can be told to pay attention and told to study and do all the things we were told to do.

Isn't it more that parents are just too indulgent?

No, I am.

It may well be that that's true in the classroom.

I have to tell you, my experience is similar to yours, is that most of the parents I know are not really indulging their boys.

They're worrying like hell about their boys and trying to help them out in various ways.

And increasingly, I think parents are coming to realize that the current way that classrooms are run and the current structure of education just isn't suiting our boys very well.

So currently, almost one in four boys in the US have been diagnosed with a developmental disability.

Almost one in four.

I suggest that might be less about the boys and more about the system that we're trying to force them through, which it turns out doesn't suit all of them very well.

And so, rather than blaming boys, I think we should be reforming the education system so that it's as male-friendly as it is female-friendly.

Now, how do you do that?

Well, I mean, how?

Well,

one thing we could do is reverse the tide which has seen male teachers basically leaving the classroom.

So it's only 24% of K-12 teachers now are men.

It was 33% in the 1980s.

Almost no early years educators are men.

And so the teaching profession has become steadily more and more female.

We've also retreated almost entirely from vocational education, technical high schools, apprenticeships, etc., which on average suit boys and men better.

But we've retreated from all of that.

And so let's bring some of those back.

Technical high schools, more male teachers, more recess.

And by the way, if it's true that boys find it harder to sit still,

sure, you could tell them to sit still, but it might also be a good idea every now and again to run them around.

So let's have more phys ed, more extracurricular activity, and so on, rather than saying there's something wrong with them.

Right, no, I agree, but

at some point, you just have to sit still and pay attention.

And by the way, for me, maybe we should have more male teachers.

But when I was in sixth grade, the only reason I paid attention was Mrs.

Hill.

Well, I don't know her, and I'm afraid.

No, if you saw those sweaters she wore, wore, you would understand.

She sounds pretty scary.

No, she was not scary.

No, she wasn't scary.

No, she was sexy.

Oh, I'm sexy.

I'm sorry.

Mrs.

Hill was not scary.

Which grade was this?

This is sixth grade.

You know, the beginning of Bonerville.

Well,

it comes at different ages for different boys.

Right.

It's not an area of expertise for me, but sixth grade is quite early, Bill.

Thank you.

I'm here for you.

Coming from an expert like you,

I'm blushing.

Okay.

Anyway, but one thing I love that you get to in the book is that this, and it's terrible that this is going on, but it's a cycle because if the boy doesn't do well in school, okay, then he gets bad grades.

Then he can't get a great job.

And if he can't get a great job, he can't get a great girl.

Right.

You know, women grads,

college grads, don't marry guys who aren't college grads.

Yeah, well.

And that's one of the big problems we have.

And women suffer, I think, from this as much or more from men because I've heard many women say, you know, there's just slim pickings out there between these porn-addicted incels.

You know, it's almost like wartime, you know, where there's just no men.

There's no available men.

Well, they're there.

They're just in their mom's basement.

Well,

there's...

I mean, they are more likely likely to be in the mum's basement than the women for sure.

I do think there's a danger of a vicious circle here, which is actually boys raised in poor households or single-parent households do worse than the girls raised in those households, which means they struggle at school, they then struggle in the workplace.

And the fact that most American men earn less today than most American men did in 1979

means that the only reason that middle class families have seen any increase in income at all is because of the increased employment and earnings of women.

That is, of course, a great thing, a wonderful economic achievement, but there are very few women out there who actually wouldn't be happier in a world where the men were also succeeding, where the men were also flourishing, also doing well in the labor market, so that they could share some of the responsibilities of raising the kids together.

So it is not in women's interest for men to suffer.

And I don't know any women who actually believe that it is.

They wind up suffering even more.

Working a double shift.

And they want men.

Most people suffer.

They also want partners, Bill.

They also want someone to raise the kids with them, do their share, not necessarily in a traditional way, can be in a new way, but they do want someone shoulder to shoulder with them.

And I know we're all fluid now,

but

there's still...

It doesn't sound like you were fluid in sixth grade.

I'm not.

I mean, I know I keep coming back to that.

Oh, I could make a joke there, but

I wouldn't.

No.

But there's still just, you know, a lot of people have not changed a lot.

And women still want men.

Women are communicative creatures.

They want you to talk to them.

Yes.

And this dating by screen has fucked everything else up.

Because

men, that's their, these incels, you know, involuntarily celibate, I'm sure.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I know you're right about that.

And

I think the problem with that is that it takes some of the agency and risk that comes out of doing it in real life.

Yes.

And so I've raised three boys myself and actually what I've tried to raise them to do is to have the courage to ask a girl out if they're interested in the girl and the grace to accept no for an answer

and perfectly respect that as an answer because you're going to get a lot of no's in life.

And then finally, regardless of the answer, make sure she gets home safely.

And that seems to me, that's the model, right?

And

we don't have to become androgynous to be equal.

And I think that's an incredibly important message to get across topics.

And then there'll be some people that are more fluid, and that's fine.

Right.

But in general, I mean, I think the phone is just terrible for both parties.

I mean, men don't like it because

if you're dating by Tinder, like two-thirds of the people on it are men.

So the odds are against you.

That's horrible.

And then some of the men get all of the dates on Tinder.

Right.

I've read that too.

Like, if you're not six foot, swipe left.

Right.

How tall are you?

Doesn't matter.

I was.

And I'm not on tender.

Because I'm six, two, so, but I'm not on tender.

I'm happily married.

That was hard in sixth grade.

Let's get back to the book.

Let's get back to the book.

The point is, like, the guys can't, like, what's up

and a picture of my dick is what they think is talking to a girl.

No, no, it's.

And that's never going to cut it, and they're going to be alone, and then they're going to be mad, and then they're going to vote for Trump.

But

that's basically the oldness.

All right, Richard Reeves, let's meet our panel.

Hi.

Okay, he is the host of CNN's Fareed Zakaria, GPS, whose special supreme power inside the highest court in the land airs Sunday, November 27 at 10 a.m.

Eastern on CNN and CNN International.

Fareed Zakaria

is over here.

And she's a senior political correspondent for the New York Times and author of Confidence Man, The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America.

Maggie Haberman, great to have you with us.

Okay,

so

here we are.

A few days before the election, I see the big story demographically is somehow the Democrats lost white women.

It's funny, it looked so good for the Democrats like after the Roe versus Wade ruling.

It looked like abortion was going to be the big issue, but that seems to have fizzled.

They lost 27 points, a swing of 20.

That's unheard of.

Like they were going to, the Democrats are going to win by 12 and now the Republicans are going to win by 15 or something.

Why?

How did they lose that demographic?

I think the biggest issue is the economy and inflation.

So if you look at, if you ask people what they think of the economy right now, The pessimism is about as strong as it was in the depths of the 08 financial crisis.

And inflation is particular, you know, we've lived for so long in a period of low inflation, we don't realize how spooky inflation is to most people.

Unemployment affects the people who are unemployed and their families, 10, 15%.

Inflation affects everyone.

And it robs middle-class people of their savings.

It makes people, every time they go to the gas station, every time you go to the grocery store, you're reminded of it.

I mean, there's a reason why inflation is what causes political revolutions.

If you think about the inflation of the 70s, this is what ushers in Reaganism.

It breaks the back of the New Deal, basically.

It brings in Thatcherism.

Iran had very high inflation right before the Iranian Revolution.

And of course, the iconic example is Weimar and the 20s, hyperinflation in Germany.

Venezuela, Reith.

Exactly.

So, I mean, inflation is much more corrosive than I think people realize.

So I think that's probably the biggest explanation.

I do think Democrats sometimes forget

how to, they learn strange lessons from

politics.

So, if you look at the Democrats who win, who succeed, it was Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, two Southerners, and Obama was actually quite centrist in many of the ways, particularly culturally.

Remember his caution on gay marriage.

So, these guys always tried to balance not being seen as too radical, particularly on cultural issues.

Somehow, the Democrats have decided we need to be very, you know, we need to really

embrace the left on those kinds of issues.

And it turns people off.

I mean, I think that Americans are,

Tony Blair once said this on my show.

He said, if you lose people on culture, if they start to think you're radical on culture,

they stop listening to you on economics.

And Philippe Biden, he's done so much.

for people, you know, in terms of spending money programs.

But what does Ron DeSantis say?

Cancel culture, critical race theory, transgender.

And people go for it, unfortunately.

There's another piece of it, too, I think, though, which is that I think that Obama really did figure out in his 2012 campaign, not 2010, which was a terrible midterms for them, but 2012, he figured out he needed to message differently on the economy.

Remember, unemployment was 8 percent throughout that entire campaign.

But he found a way to tell people, I'm fighting for the middle class, I'm fighting for you, not just claiming credit for everything he had done.

And that's where I think this White House is really, really struggling.

But

you're basically saying it woke scares people.

It does.

And I think, you know, there's a funny thing that happens when people get in uncertain economic times.

People move right culturally more than they move left economically.

They start worrying about like, what's my country going to look like?

You know, it's those issues.

And it scares people.

And it's not unfounded.

You know, I think a lot of it is school closings.

People did not like that schools were closed as long as they did.

They thought there was a lot of COVID overreach.

And they don't want their kids coming home from school trying to suss out ideas that they're not sophisticated enough to understand.

Stuff about race and gender.

They want education, not indoctrination.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's what the tragedy is,

the 800-pound gorilla in this election is

the fate of democracy because you do have a majority of the of the Republican candidates.

I think the Washington Post did a survey on this, are election deniers.

These are people who are essentially contesting the, you know, real

free and fair elections, the trappings of liberal democracy.

And the party doesn't rein them in.

The party doesn't perform the role that it used to of gatekeeping.

And I worry a lot about this because I feel as though, you know, when I talk to my Republican friends, they say, oh, but, you know, the system worked, you know,

look at Laddie at the last election.

Well, it worked because, to be fair, a lot of good Republicans stood up, like Rafsenberger in Georgia, and a lot of Republican-appointed judges.

But many of those people have been neutered or defeated, or those offices have been, you know.

So we have a really dangerous situation here.

And

I find it hard to get through through to some of my Republican friends that

lowering your taxes is not worth lowering the quality of our democracy.

And that's not all Republicans, but if you find that there are Republicans who are systematically abusing democratic norms, democratic processes, democratic culture,

that's

unfortunately isn't, but that should be a big issue on the ballot.

But it's not something Democrats are consistently talking about either, what you just said, not even close.

It comes up in some races, not in others, and it goes back to how there has not been a consistent way that Democrats are trying to approach what is an enormous issue.

But they are all over the map depending on their races.

But again, it's abstract.

It is abstract.

Like the impeachment of Trump for Ukraine, it was like people, I don't think they, when they heard the facts laid out, if they did, I don't think they thought, oh, well, yeah, that probably isn't what a president should do.

But it's Ukraine.

It's really far away.

And democracy, oh, that's so vague.

But my kid

coming home.

You know, this woke stuff, it scares the whole world.

I mean, Putin plays on this.

Did you see the speech he made like a week ago?

It could have been something that

a politician here on the right says talking about, I mean, some of these quotes, do we want children from elementary school to impose with things that lead to their degradation?

They're taught that instead of men and women, there are supposedly some other genders and to be offered sex change surgeries.

Now, I think traditional liberalism, which I align myself with, would say, well, Vlad, there are other genders.

That actually is a thing.

But, you know, he strikes a chord because America is kind of an outlier.

with how we're treating these kind of issues.

The UK, Sweden, which are not exactly right-wing countries, have said, no, we're putting a little bit of a break on this, where we're doing surgery on children.

That's the kind of stuff I think that's scaring people.

By the way, Macron in France, who's pretty much the opposite of Putin and a pretty liberal country, he said the same thing about a year ago.

Not exactly about this, but he said, We are getting progressive stuff from America that I want to stop infecting France.

I mean, you got to pay attention a little bit as to why the Democrats are losing.

They've got to take a little responsibility on their own.

Yes, there are.

But,

I mean, I'm amazed that Russia is somehow now the hero of Fox News.

Well,

no,

it's not as surprising as because, as you say, Putin has often styled himself very much as a right-wing populist.

You know, it's not just repression and power.

He tries to construct a kind of ideology of power, and the ideology of power is all anti-Western liberalism.

It's basically he embraces the church, he embraces traditional family, patriotism, and a lot of it is

this issue of cancel culture and the kind of excesses of liberalism

in the West.

And it plays very well for his domestic politics.

And it's really affecting what the Ukraine policy is in this country.

I mean, it wasn't that long ago when the entire country was completely behind the idea that we got to back Ukraine no matter what, no matter how much.

Now, 30% of respondents say the administration is doing too much, and that's almost fully half of Republicans say that we are doing too much to help Ukraine.

And they're winning.

Not like we're backing a lost cause here.

This is going to be a real issue.

If the Republicans take the House, which they clearly seem poised to do at the moment,

Kevin McCarthy, who's expected to be the Speaker, is going to have to deal with a lot of tensions in his caucus because not everybody in the Republican caucus wants to pull this back, and it's going to create a real issue with what the White House does in the final months of this lame-duck congressional session.

It's not across the party that every Republican is against aid, but they are a very loud group of voices right now, and we're going to continue hearing from them well after next week.

And the stakes are very high internationally.

I mean, you know, you have a situation here where Joe Biden has actually done an extraordinary job.

He has rallied the world, a large part of it.

You know, it's not just Europe, it's Japan and South Korea and Singapore and Australia.

He's managed to take this David in the David versus Goliath story.

And the Ukrainians now have a better army, better armed.

They're beating the Russians.

It's an extraordinary story of success.

And the stakes, if Russia were to win, is that you're tearing up the post-World War II order that the United States helped set up, you know, with peace and prosperity and rules and some degree of stability.

The Chinese will take a look at that in Taiwan.

What Russia is doing is kind of naked naked conquest, old-fashioned imperialism.

And Biden has been able to

draw a line, hold a line, rally the world.

This should not be a partisan issue.

As Liz Cheney said when she saw the Marjorie Taylor Greene comments, she said, if Republicans had behaved this way, we would not have won the Cold War.

Except explaining to voters why they should care, again, goes back to your point about why they should care about democracy on the ballot, as some Democrats argue.

We care about dialysis.

Where you live, do you have this amount of, no, you don't.

California has

an advanced decided that the representative democracy is a bad idea, that we don't actually want representatives.

We want to make all the decisions ourselves.

I'm sure everybody here cannot wait for Tuesday to come so that the ads on TV will stop.

But

I just want you to know,

we are far from the only state that has all these kind of propositions.

Maybe they don't have as many, but like Arkansas and the Dakotas are going to vote on Tuesday on legalizing pot.

Like you're going to smoke pot in Arkansas.

They're so happy about that.

Colorado, this might apply, they're voting on legalizing mushrooms.

Again, do you need it legal here to do it?

No, of course.

But there's a million of them.

Like Missouri is voting Amendment 5 that the National Guard will get its own department in state government.

See, this is the kind of thing.

People get elected to these jobs, and then they just have to do something to fill their days.

And so we have all these unnecessary laws.

There's some other ballots on the docket here.

Would you like to hear some of the things that

other countries, I mean other states and cities have?

Okay, like Florida's Prop 52 will make couples counseling available to public school teachers and their students.

Alabama passed Prop 37, which lowers the age of consent for alien anal probes to 16.

San Francisco Prop 38 says stores must provide gender-neutral washrooms for the people looting them.

Vermont has Measure 12, which requires all bed and breakfast and the creepy

Victorian doll in every room.

Didn't get through that one.

Massachusetts has question seven, which bans racial discrimination against college professors pretending to be another race.

Kentucky has Amendment 2, which would ban abortion from the time the fetus starts to look like Mitch McConnell.

All right, so

the other bad news I had to say for the Democrats is immigration,

for all the pandering a lot of people would say they do to immigrants and illegal immigrants, and for all the insulting

that Trump has done.

Trump won 28%

of the Hispanic vote in 2016.

And then he insults them for five years, and he wins 38%

in 2020.

There's been a 27-point advantage for Democrats is down from 47.

Their advantage now in this election is down 20 points.

It's funny because the Democrats thought, oh, more immigrants, it's going to be great for us.

It's turning out that it may not be that way.

And there are reasons, I think, you wrote about it, I think, in your column today, why immigrants are sort of natural conservatives.

And how tell them that it's such an interesting point about how different it is in the UK.

Well, if you look at the UK, Britain is turning into a place where the Conservative Party is becoming the home, at least at a leadership level, of this astonishing array of ethnic minorities.

When Boris Johnson

quit, eight people put their names forward.

Four of them were ethnic minorities.

And, you know, these are practicing Hindus, practicing Muslims.

It's a sort of very different picture in many ways from the, I mean, the Republican Congress is 95% white, 95% Christian.

There's very little diversity on the right here.

And I think part of it is that David Cameron, the prime minister, really opened the welcome map to immigrants.

And guess what?

As you say, when you think about it, I mean, these are Indian Americans, Indian Brits.

They're often small business owners, often very sensitive to issues of taxes.

They're socially quite conservative.

So they sort of fit in.

It's because in America, the Republican Party has a much more kind of, there is an element of white racialist politics that it plays.

I think it could be much higher if they actually got sensible.

Exactly.

Except, it's not across the board in Europe at all.

Look at Angela Merkel.

I mean, the prediction was that she was going to sink politically because she allowed Syrian refugees to come in, and that didn't happen.

So I do think that there are case by case, depending on what country we are talking about.

I also think that Trump really was a, I think, a unifying force for his political brand in 2016.

It wasn't just about Hispanics or Mexicans when he did his kickoff.

It was about Muslims.

That was the big focus that he had.

He did not continue that after 2017 with the so-called Muslim ban.

He actually toned it down in certain respects.

He talked about the border wall, but it wasn't the only thing that he talked about.

And he would be an example of what you're talking about and what we saw in terms of a rise of far-right politics in Europe.

He came in the middle of that.

You know, part of the problem I think, and I say this as a legal immigrant, is I don't think Americans have any problem with immigration in general.

I think that, you know, obviously some small percentage do, but this is a country very welcoming to immigrants.

I've lived that life myself.

I think the problem is that they see a system that has collapsed, a breakdown of law and order, a breakdown of rules.

What's happening at the border is basically a whole bunch of people, large numbers of whom are not technically really asylum seekers, are just gaming the system and coming there and showing up.

And they're not standing in the normal regular line for immigration, they're standing in the line for political asylum because that gets you in.

And once you're in, it's very hard to kick you out.

And thank God for it.

We're not a police state.

But the result is that people look at this and say this whole system has collapsed.

It's not based on any rules.

It's not based on any, you have just millions of people showing up.

And I don't think legal immigrants like that.

I think that, you know, in general, I don't want to generalize too much, but I think most of us feel like we played by the rules, we did it the right way.

The idea that you can just show up and boom, you know, you're in.

And they fear more than anybody else the illegal coming in right after them.

Right.

But not the legal.

I mean, that's why I'm actually in favor of increasing legal immigration.

We need, we're at three and a half percent unemployment in this country.

We need, you know,

workers.

But let's do it right.

Let's bring in people in an orderly process using rules using laws not having people game the system have it break down and just you know walk in right.

But I think Democrats think that if we support as much illegal or just have that sense of open borders Maybe not completely but that's the idea that is sort of put out there that the immigrants who are here will love that.

It's interesting but they don't

all and it's funny because the the Democratic policies actually aren't all like that.

That's some of the

but if you actually look at what Biden has done, he's kept a number of Trump's policies in place.

It hasn't been a total clean break.

And I think that causes them a problem, too, because it's a whipsaw of what do they stand for and what can people believe in what they're saying.

You know, we're now at 14% foreign-born in this country.

Canada is at 20%.

And they're able to.

And Sweden.

And Sweden is at 20%.

And part of it is

if you do it right, if you do it using rules, using laws,

I think people are more welcoming than you think.

What they don't like is the idea that we have no control.

What they also don't like is that they see the left as being too negative about this country that they worked so hard to get to and compared to the country they came from is fantastic.

And they see this negativity always shitting on it.

It's horribly, irretrievably racist, and that our history is terrible.

And they're like, you know what?

It just, it's insulting to them.

It's it's like, you know, saving up 10 years to buy a car, and then you buy it.

What do you think?

That's a piece of shit.

I think there's a lot of Latino voters in particular and immigrants in particular, even if they're not registered, who feel as if they are taken for granted by the Democratic Party.

And you are seeing that in a number of states, in a number of races.

It is likely to play out on Tuesday.

You know, I sometimes think when people say, oh, if Trump gets elected, I'm moving to, I'm like, I'm not going anywhere.

I love this country.

I came 8,000.

I'm just fine here.

Whoever will.

We'll see.

We'll see about that.

So, my final question, why all this talk about Twitter when we really should be talking about TikTok?

I mean, everything is about

Twitter, Twitter, Twitter.

Twitter has, you know, so much less influence than TikTok, which is owned by China.

And there's nothing, is it just the hard-on that the left has for Elon Musk?

Is that really why this is all going on?

Because I don't think Twitter, I mean, something like less than 25% of Gen Z is on Twitter, and they're all on TikTok.

And that's the future.

And it's where the people are going to be getting all their news.

And again, China, and the head of China, I know he looks very corporate.

He's got the suit and just all his...

He's nuts.

This guy, I'm telling you, this Zhi guy went nuts.

I mean, between COVID lockdowns, which are insane in that country, and going back to basically a communist economy,

he's the one who's going to rat fuck China.

I mean, they were on their path to like passing us in every way.

And this guy, I'm good.

Okay, I want us to win.

Don't get me wrong.

But TikTok.

And could I quote the head of the, not the head of the, there's five members of the FCC Commission.

One of them says,

I don't believe there's a path forward through anything other than a ban of TikTok.

He said, there simply isn't a world in which you could come up with sufficient protection on the data that you would have sufficient confidence that it's not finding its way back into the hands of the Chinese Communist Party, where I don't want it.

Well, I have two teenage daughters, so I would vigorously support a ban on TikTok.

It would save me so much in so many ways.

I do think, though, that I want to understand a little bit what the argument is.

Okay, so I get the argument about why we should, for example, Biden just did this really important thing where he's basically banned the ability of China to get access to the highest quality computer chips.

That's a big, big deal.

I get it.

And

we don't want China to have that because they use it for their military and they reverse engineer.

I get the Huawei one.

It's a little more difficult, but because with the network, you're not sure what difference does it make if somebody has

the underlying algorithms.

With TikTok, I'm not quite sure what the argument is.

First of all, it is owned by a private company, to be clear.

The servers are all here.

What are they going to do with these dance videos?

It's not just dance videos.

Yeah, it's not just dance videos.

No, Grandpa, you're behind.

That's what I thought, too.

A few years ago.

TikTok has changed.

Everybody's on TikTok, and it's got everything.

Are you on TikTok?

But apps are not.

Speaking of grandpa,

I am in the ⁇ I am ⁇ here's the thing, me and TikTok.

I haven't been on TikTok.

I didn't realize, I had for some reason, a guest account.

I was like, Bill Maher, some number.

And I'm like, why is that in my...

And I found out,

there's like 50 Bill Maher's,

which we are.

Please, TikTok, could you take care of this for me?

Could I just be the real Bill Maher?

I swear I am.

I'm trying to get me.

These people don't seem to be doing heart of bad things to me, but they're playing me and putting up just like videos of me and stuff from my past.

Okay, but I want to be me.

Is that too much to ask TikTok?

They have totally mastered the art.

of the addictive one thing leading to another, leading to another.

I've watch kids do it.

It's crazy how much time people spend on it.

It's mesmerizing.

But these apps can get your data.

That's the concern.

That is the main concern.

This came up under Trump's.

Let them have it.

Trump wanted to ban it.

Trump wanted to ban it, and there was an outcry, and other Republicans were against it.

Lindsey Graham intervened to get him to stop.

And this is now coming up again.

I think it was inevitable for this reason about the data.

It's not just about how time consumes.

But the serious question I have is: look, we are deeply interrelated.

You know, there's $2 billion of trade between China and the U.S.

every day.

Are we talking about a world in which all this unwinds and it all goes away?

If not, I think we have to figure out

a private Chinese company coming up with products, what are the rules?

I'd just like to understand

what are the boundaries?

Can they make stuff for Walmart?

But if Putin was able to seriously interfere in our election, as he was the last couple of times, right, with just like a building in St.

Petersburg with a bunch of guys named Boris,

what can the Chinese Communist Party do owning TikTok with all the resources they have?

Their ability to affect our elections through TikTok, I think, is something to take very seriously.

And they can do those deep fakes now?

I just worry that we're ending up in a world where

we will have no contact, no commerce, no trade.

Then we're back to the Cold War.

I mean, it just feels like we've got to figure out what's okay and what's not okay.

And I'd like to hear the argument made a little clearly.

As I said, to me, it does feel like it's a pretty commercial

thing.

It doesn't have a national security component.

You're right, there's data in everything nowadays.

And

you can steal data from anywhere.

You don't need to own the company to steal.

I mean, the National Security Agency, we steal data from all over the world.

We don't own those companies.

Right, but you wouldn't want to find one other way someone could do that, right?

And that's instigated.

All right.

Thanks.

Thank you guys.

Got to go to New Rules.

It's time for New Rules.

Okay.

New rule, now that a British theater has tried mounting a version of Romeo and Juliet, where, get this, Juliet is a Jew and Romeo is a member of the Hitler Youth,

they must go all the way and stage Feddler on the Roof starring Kanye.

New rule, David DePap, the guy who broke into Nancy Pelosi's house and assaulted her husband and who is both a pro-nudity activist and makes hemp jewelry and is registered with the Green Party and is a hate-spewing QAnon not who loves Trump, must be thanked for proving my point that there's nothing more annoying than an undecided voter.

New, if you get to dump all your unwanted Halloween candy in the office break room, I get to follow you home and scrape my lunch leftovers onto your coffee table.

Thanks for trying to look generous at absolutely no cost to you, but if I get a yen for stale and inedible, I'll drop by the dollar store.

New rule, if a great painting like this Mondrillon has been hanging upside down for 77 years

and nobody noticed until this week, it's okay to say a lot of modern art is something your five-year-old could do.

It's okay.

Not that every painting that accesses the artist's inner child could be done by a child.

For example, this is Basquiat's warrior.

Or is it?

Neural, now that he's passed, let's end the debate over whether Jerry Lee Lewis was rock and roll royalty.

He married his 13-year-old cousin.

You can't get more royal than that.

And finally, new rule.

Well, we had a good run.

I know that's not really a rule, but since everything in America is about to change in a very fundamental way, what the fuck?

Rules are about to go out the window.

Tuesday is election day, and I know I should probably tell you to vote in what, honest to God, is really the most important election ever.

So, okay, yes, you should vote.

And it should be for the one party that still stands for democracy preservation.

But

it's also a waste of breath because anyone who believes that is already voting, and anyone who needs to learn that isn't watching, and no one in America can be persuaded of anything anymore, anyway.

The January 6th hearings, it turns out, changed nobody's mind.

Democrat Jamie Raskin said the hearings would tell a story that will really blow the roof off the house.

No, that was Hurricane Ian.

The hearings, roof not blown.

The committee did a masterful job laying out the case, but we live in partisan America now, so it's a little like doing stand-up when half the crowd only speaks Mandarin.

No matter how good the material is, it's not going to go over.

After all the hearings, the percentage of Americans who thought Trump did nothing wrong went up three points.

That's American now.

It's like trying to win an argument in a marriage.

Even when you're right, it still gets you nothing.

Ben Franklin said our country was a republic if you can keep it.

Well, we can't.

And unless a miracle happens on Tuesday, we didn't.

Democracy is on the ballot, and unfortunately, it's going to lose.

And once it's gone, it's gone.

It's not something you can change your mind about in reverse.

That's gender.

So here's what's going to happen.

Republicans will take control of Congress, and next year they'll begin impeaching Biden and never stop.

They'll impeach him for getting out of Afghanistan and getting into Ukraine.

For inflation, for recession, for falling off his bike, it won't matter and it won't make sense.

But Biden will be a crippled duck when he goes up against the 2024 Trump-Karry-Lake ticket.

And even if Trump loses, it doesn't matter.

On Inauguration Day 2025, he's going to show up whether he's on the list or not.

And this time, he's not going to take no for an answer because this time he will have behind him the army of election deniers that is being elected in four days.

There are almost 300 candidates on the ballot this year who don't believe in ballots.

And they'll be the ones writing the rules and monitoring how votes are counted in 24.

The facts, the policies, the behavior don't matter anymore.

Trump could be filmed throwing a baby off a bridge and still win.

Not to give Herschel Walker any idea.

really is the crossing the Rubicon moment when the election deniers are elected, which is often how countries slide into authoritarianism, not with tanks in the streets, but by electing the people who then have no intention of ever giving it back.

The Republican up for Wisconsin governor just said if he's elected, quote, Republicans will never lose another election.

This is how it happens.

Hitler was elected.

So was Mussolini, Putin, Erdogan, Victor Orban.

This is the it can't happen to us moment that's happening to us right now.

We just don't feel it yet.

We're the Titanic right after the iceberg hit.

And honestly, too many Americans just don't care and won't even care after it happens.

Because they never followed politics to begin with and were never taught in school what democratic government was supposed to look like.

So how sad can they be about losing something they never knew they had?

You can try and tell them that we will no longer have a system of checks and balances, but they will have an answer for that.

What's checks and balances?

Democracy's hard.

Athens didn't have to deal with Fox News or the smartphone that made everybody stupid.

And they only lasted 200 years.

So R-246 doesn't look that bad.

But before we do go, I'd like to say a little farewell to some of the things that really did make America great, that now we're going to lose forever.

Like the peaceful transfer of power, the jewel in our crown, that thing that so many other nations couldn't pull off that we always did.

Oh well,

the Bill of Rights.

When there is no accountability at the ballot box, there are no actual rights.

Look, General Isimo Trump is not going to bring back child labor or end Social Security or resegregate the water fountains.

He doesn't hate Jews.

Ivanka's a Jew and he loves her.

Now that she's 40, only as a friend, but still.

But make no mistake, it will be an entirely different way of life for many because our elections will just be for show

like in China and Russia and all the other places Trump says a very strong

free speech

Well, he's a man who's always taken criticism well

But I wouldn't count on that one lasting I wouldn't count on freedom of religion lasting.

QAnon and the other shock troops of the Trump takeover of the Republican Party are all quasi-religious quasi-religious entities who want a Christian government.

Oh, and the FBI might be replaced by an army of proud boys under the leadership of Michael Flynn.

Even something like POT, will it stay legal?

It probably depends on whether Snoop Dogg calls Trump brilliant one day.

I mean, that's.

That's how things will be decided, not by the rule of law.

Ah, the rule of law.

That one was a real jewel.

Yeah.

Maybe our finest hour as Americans was after World War II when we gave even the defeated Nazis a fair trial.

Justice Robert Jackson said that voluntarily submitting our captive, defeated enemies to the rule of law was one of the most significant tributes that power had ever paid to reason.

Well, power will very soon not be paying any more tributes to reason.

Not in America, anyway.

So, yeah, I urge you to vote, but I've always been a realist.

I'm afraid democracy is like the McGrib.

It's here now.

It'll be around for a little bit longer, so enjoy it while you can.

All right, that's our show.

It'll be at the Hulu in New York, November 12th, the Foxwoods in Mashantucket, the 13th, and the Mirage in Vegas, November 25 and 26th.

I want to thank Fareed Zakari and Maggie Haberman and Richard Reeves.

Now go to YouTube and join us on Overtime.

Thank you, folks.

Thank you, guys.

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.