Ep. #616: Benjamin Netanyahu, Michael Smerconish, Neil deGrasse Tyson

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

Thank you.

Thank you, people.

I appreciate it.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

How are you?

Good to see you.

Thank you, folks.

Okay, all right.

You know,

thank you.

We got a big show.

It's a very exciting weekend.

yeah, I know you're excited because Biden is here in town, or he just laughed over.

Oh, that excited about Biden.

Great.

No, Ella is.

I mean, people were lined up on the sidewalks, not to see him.

They live there.

Well, I'm excited about the fact that the midterms are finally here in three weeks.

Are you going to vote?

I mean, voting is what we hopefully do here in America.

I'm really excited that the political ads on TV will end.

These,

it's just enough, right?

I mean, they're everywhere.

I was watching

stepmom porn the other day.

And at the end, the mom says, yes, yes, yes, on Prop 27.

I mean,

ridiculous.

Well, the Democrats wrapped up their case about January 6th this week.

They think that that's going to affect the midterms.

Hopefully, I don't know about that.

We'll talk about it with the panel.

Liz Cheney, as usual, was terrific.

Did you see Liz Cheney there?

She at the end?

Liz Cheney getting applause here in Los Angeles.

It's an amazing world.

But at the end, she kind of said it all.

She said, without accountability, it all becomes normal and it will recur.

And the Republicans said, finally, some good news.

And did you see the new footage of Nancy Pelosi, like in their little bunker there?

I mean, you could see these people were desperate.

I mean, she was calling at the Army, the National Guard, anybody who would come to help.

Finally, she called the Uvalde Police Department.

It was

very touching drunk.

And did you see on video where she's talking about, she says, I hope Trump comes to the Capitol.

If he does, I'll punch him out.

Nancy Pelosi's got a fight.

And don't be so sure who would win that fight.

Beneath that hair and makeup is a total badass.

And Pelosi's tough too.

So, this says it all.

They sentenced a family of five for storming the Capitol.

Families are doing this now.

Apparently,

some guy and his wife said, let's storm the Capitol and bring the kids.

It's the first family trip where before they go, the dad said, if anybody has to go to the bathroom, hold it.

We're going to need those.

You're way ahead of me.

Look at that.

He's several.

We're going to need those feces to smear on the walls.

Too late now.

But the big bombshell was at the end of the last hearing.

They said they are going to subpoena Donald Trump to appear before.

The odds that he will answer this subpoena

are the same as the odds that Brittany Spears will make a video where she's not holding her tits with their hands.

I'm just saying

those are the odds.

You be the judge.

But of course when he got the subpoena Trump was furious.

He said you will be hearing from my lawyer as soon as he graduates from law school.

But

here's some good news.

We're not going to be killed by an asteroid.

Neil deGrasse Tyson is here.

I'm always excited when he's here on the show.

We talk about scientific things.

I'm sure I'll have an opinion on this, but I thought this was pretty amazing.

Last week, NASA, there was an asteroid, no, it wasn't headed for us, but they wanted to do a test.

So they

fired a satellite seven million miles.

It took 10 months to get there.

It hit the fucking thing right on the nose, drove it off course, which was the intent, and now NASA says their next project, they're going to try to send a smaller asteroid and try to knock some sense into Kanye.

Oh yeah, Kanye, he was.

He was not there this week.

He was talking under his new rap name, Crazy.

And

on the heels of his white Lives Matter t-shirt,

then he was talking about the Jews.

Not so flattering about the Jews this week.

And he got locked out of Twitter, got locked out of Instagram.

On the bright side, he is now the head of the L.A.

City Council.

And finally, did you see what happened to Alex Jones this week?

Alex Jones,

who said that the victims of the Sandy Hook killing were just faking it.

Okay.

Well, the jury said it's a defamation case.

He has to pay a billion dollars.

Now, did you see Alex Jones during and after the trial?

His broadcasting career may be over, but he has quite a future as a crisis actor.

All right, we've got a great show.

We have Neil deGrasse Tyson, Michael Smurconish.

But first up, he is the longest-serving former prime minister in Israel's history and current opposition leader whose new memoir, Bibi, my story, is out on October 18th.

Benjamin Netanyahu.

Baby, how are you doing?

You're in

Tel Aviv.

I know this is going to be a bit of a delay, but can you hear me?

I hear you fine.

I missed part of your monologue, but I'm sure I'll make it up later.

You didn't miss a lot.

My first question, Kanye West this week has said, I'm a bit sleepy tonight, but when I wake up, I'm going DEF CON 3 on Jewish people.

Will Israel retaliate?

You know,

anti-Semitism is the longest hatred in history.

It goes back thousands of years.

We've dealt with bigger problems than

these stupidities.

But, you know, the communists blame the Jews for being capitalists.

The capitalists blame the Jews for being communists.

You have a problem?

Blame the Jews.

It's old stuff.

It shouldn't have any place in civilized discourse.

And that's the reason we established the Jewish state so the Jewish people would have defense against

these absurdities, and sometimes they're coupled with violence.

We don't let that happen again.

I just want to read a few quotes from American congressmen just to congress people rather just to show that Kanye's West is Kanye West's comment is not really out of order with some things that are said by people in more official positions Here's one Israel has hypnotized the world May Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.

Ten years ago, if you read that to me, I thought that would be from Hezbollah.

That's an American congressperson.

Another American congressperson says the reality of Israel's apartheid government goes on to say the occupation and ethnic cleansing Palestinians live with every day.

Another one says Israel targets media sources so the world can't see Palestinians being massacred.

I have three questions for you.

Are you massacring Palestinians?

Are you ethnic cleansing?

And are you an apartheid state?

No, no, and no.

I mean, these are all ridiculous charges against the one democracy in the Middle East, the one democracy that upholds human rights, that defends freedom, and is America's best ally.

So I think these people should

wake up to reality, but I think that's

a far too great a hope.

It's not going to happen.

We just have to defend ourselves against these people because they purvey lies.

You ever hear the word fake news?

This is fake old news.

It goes back thousands of years.

We're not impressed by it.

Okay.

But could you become an apartheid state?

The critics of Israel here in America and some in your own country

talk about the fact that Israel is kind of a population time bomb and that if 51% of Israel would become Arab, because you do have Arab citizens who are actually treated better in Israel with more rights and more freedoms than they are in their own and other Arab countries,

but if 51% of Israel became Arab, then you would have to become an apartheid state.

Is that something that you think about as much as your critics do?

Because I think they don't have the facts right.

I mean,

about 20% of Israel's population is Arabs, and they're really the only Arabs in the Middle East to enjoy full and equal civic rights in the Israeli democracy.

And I've also made it an effort to incorporate them in the tremendous success story that is Israel.

And I'm happy to see that that is happening.

But the demographic balance is maintained.

The most important thing is the democratic balance is maintained because everyone has a right to be part of the Israeli democracy and the

Israeli success story.

I don't think that's a real issue.

I think it's a bogus charge.

And especially a bogus charge that's coming from the Palestinians who oppress gays, oppress women, and are in league with Iran, Iran which is tormenting its citizens, suppressing women there.

And if I have to say anything, the place where they should

direct their fire is at the Iranian regime and they should support the brave women of Iran that are showing the world what courage is.

That's where I am.

I'm supporting the people of Iran and standing up to militarism.

Okay, so what about a two-state solution?

This is something we've heard for decades, that this was the hope of the problems that are so entrenched in the Middle East, a two-state solution.

But now that there are settlements of Israelis that are numbering close to 700,000 in the West Bank and Jerusalem, is that really

a realistic solution for the future?

Look, the main problem in the Middle East,

in the Middle East, I mean, the main problem with

Israel and the Palestinians are not the settlements.

It's the persistent Palestinian refusal to recognize a Jewish state in any boundary.

And I would tell you that

there's another problem that people always said, you know, you really have to solve the problem with the Palestinians before you can get peace with the broader Arab world.

Now understand that the Palestinians constitute about 1% of the Arab world.

So you can't get to the 99% unless you solve the 1%.

The problem with that was that the Palestinians don't want peace.

They don't want a peace with Israel.

They want a peace without Israel.

They don't want a state next to Israel.

They want a state instead of Israel.

So for the last quarter of a century, they put a veto on having any more peace treaties between Israel and the Arab states.

We had peace with Egypt, peace with Jordan, and then nothing for 25 years.

I said look the way to get the peace is to go to the 99% and then we'll get back to the 1% and see if we can get, you know, stop this Palestinian rejectionism of a Jewish state.

And people said it couldn't be done.

I mean John Kerry said you can't do that and he got standing ovations when he said that.

Well, I thought differently.

So I went to the Arab states and within four months, we had four peace treaties with four Arab states, with the United Arab Emirates, with Bahrain, with Morocco, and with Sudan.

And I think this is the way to go.

We can complete the expansion of this peace.

And if I'm elected in a few weeks, I intend to do that, solve the Arab-Israeli conflict with a broader Arab world, and then see if we can make...

get some headway with the Palestinians for a realistic solution that we can both live with.

And when I say live with, I mean not die with, but live with, with security and with peace.

And I think it can be done.

But the way to do it is not

inside out.

First solve the rejectionist 1%, but go to the 99% who realize that Israel is their ally, their ally in technology, their ally in solving the water problems, the energy problems, the medical problems,

on the one hand, and also protect them against Iran.

That's where you really have the breakthrough.

And I write about it at some length in my book, how we got the Abraham Accords, how we changed things around.

And the people who are talking about going into the Palestinian rabbit hole, basically you're going to wait another quarter of a century before anything moves.

I don't want to wait a quarter of a century.

I want to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict and then solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in that order.

And there is no doubt that

Donald Trump as president was good to Israel, got the capital moved to Jerusalem, which had been on the table for a very long time.

And these accords that you mentioned happened into that administration.

But can you keep those two ideas in your head at the same time, that he was good to Israel, but he's also a dangerous demagogue who tried to have a coup in this country and does not respect democracy or democratic norms?

Well, you know, I've had enough with Israeli politics, so I'm going to leave that to you.

And I hear a monologue that I must have not heard must have addressed that issue, right, Bill?

I've been addressing it since 2016.

No one listens to me.

It's okay.

Anyway.

I thank you for doing this.

I know it is the 75th anniversary of Israel coming up.

A lot of people thought that might never happen.

I know U.S.

News and World Report lists them as the 10th most powerful country in the world.

It's an amazing success story.

I'm just going to say to you to conclude, Mazel Toff on that and all you have done to make that possible for your country.

Thank you, Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu.

Yeah, go ahead.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Thank you, Bibi.

Good luck in the election.

All right, let's meet our panel.

All right, no five-second delay with this panel.

He's the host of Sirius XM's The The Michael Smirkanish Show and host of CNN Smirkhanish, which airs every Saturday at 9 a.m.

Michael Smirkanish is back with us.

And he's an astrophysicist with the American Museum of Natural History, host of the award-winning podcast, StarTalk, and author of the new book, Starry Messenger, Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

is over here.

So I'm going to combine the news of the day with what I'm reading in your book because I know you want us to live in this world of rational thinking.

Well, good luck with that because

listen to this poll.

This is on my mind because I'm watching the last of the January 6th hearing meetings and they've had nine over the course of many, many months now.

and meticulously laid out this case against Trump.

And by the way, anyone who says it's partisan is just a bullshitter.

You're not watching it.

It's not partisan.

It's all Republicans, his own people, making the case against Trump.

It's not partisan.

Okay.

So,

and they laid it out.

I mean, it's just so obvious.

And then before it all happened, 34% of America thought it was a legitimate protest.

Now, 35% say it's a legitimate protest.

Trump is directly responsible before the hearings, 42%.

Now it's down to 38.

So they've moved the needle in the wrong direction.

What do you, Mr.

Rationalia, say about this?

That we can't, it doesn't really matter what you do in people's minds.

It doesn't change who they are or what they think.

I don't think we've fully come to terms with how much of a cult leadership that actually was.

If you interview people who are part of cults, their cult leader can do no wrong, and they have no understanding why everyone else is not already part of that cult.

And so, but if we don't see that as a nation, that's the unraveling of an informed democracy.

So,

and I don't, I don't know, I don't have a silver bullet for it, but I can tell you in kindergarten through 12th grade, are we trained to spot bullshit?

There should be a course, okay?

A course

in this is how the world actually

is put together.

And if things conflict with that, whether or not they agree with your your sentiment, your religion, your culture, that does not make it true.

And we don't have the tools coming out of our school system in order to combat that.

No, they don't want to teach bullshit.

They want prayer back in the school.

They want to put bullshit in the school.

For anyone open to hearing the evidence, obviously I agree with you.

It was a very compelling case that they made.

A mistake.

Donald Trump should have been the first witness subpoenaed, not the last witness subpoenaed.

I don't think he'll ever testify.

And I don't say that for an applause line.

I say it because he's going to run out the clock.

Republicans probably will take control of the House of Representatives, and this investigation is going to go away.

If they'd issued that subpoena nine months ago, it could have been litigated.

Also, the person who should have been subpoenaed is Mike Pence.

And the idea that he didn't willfully want to be there, 40 feet away was the mob chanting, you know, hang Mike Pence.

How could he not want to tell his story?

So that's a lingering frustration.

Final thought is this.

Two-thirds of Republicans running in the general election, according to the Washington Post, believe that the election was stolen.

So the idea that this was a one-and-done, and at least we're beyond January 6th, that's the most scary proposition of all.

Right.

And by the way, this stolen election concept,

in the first chapter of the book where I talk about truth and beauty and

one of the early chapters.

There's a kind kind of truth that I want to call political truth, which is it's that which becomes true because it got repeated so many times.

And it's a failure of the wiring of the human brain that when we see something repeating, we assume it's true.

Well, and it goes deep within us.

That's not just politics, people do it in their personal lives.

I know people who literally don't know how old they are.

Really?

And they're not that old.

It's a curious thing.

They're forever 21.

Yeah, well, not 21, but

they just

start telling a lie about their age, probably in their 30s or 40s or something.

And then at some point they're like, I don't know fucking how old I am.

Wait, wait.

But Bill, everything about

most of us is a lie.

All right.

If you're short and you wear high heels, like as Chris Rock has a whole routine on this, you're not that tall.

You got red on your cheeks.

Your cheeks aren't that red.

You know,

your hair color has changed.

Your hair is not that color.

If you have hair, sorry.

And so there's a whole, there's an entire,

there's an entire fiction that we put forth to other people.

And you left out push-up bras.

Anyway,

but if you miss, if you

if you missed the hearings, I'm going to just give you the highlights of what we know now.

And it's interesting the way they spread it out.

They're kind of like the way the Beatles released the old stuff, you know.

Like

this video we saw of Pelosi on on the phone, we didn't see that for the first nine, but they wanted to save some shit.

Interesting.

But here we, Trump knew he lost.

That's kind of new.

Yeah.

We have that fact now, and we have people,

again, his own people testifying.

He absolutely knew.

At one point he said, I can't believe I lost to this fucking guy.

As the riot was unfolding and people were in more desperate shape, he knew it.

He did nothing.

He was watching it.

His excuse, I wasn't watching TV.

This is the most ridiculous thing of all the most ridiculous things.

From the beginning, as I've said since 2016, he was going to declare victory no matter what the outcome was.

Oh, this is the most scary part.

The Secret Service.

I don't, we always think of the Secret Service as the, you know, I'll just take a bullet for the guy, not partisan.

I don't know.

Maybe they've been infected with the disease like everybody else in America.

But apparently, they knew the crowd was armed.

They got a memo from the FBI saying that the plan of the crowd is to, quote, literally kill people, take this very, very seriously.

And we find out now that at least one of the Secret Service was in communication with one of the oath keepers who were, you know, kind of in charge of that riot.

Mike Pence didn't trust them.

Is this like another institution that we can't trust in America?

It's very different.

I think the biggest takeaway, at least for me, and I also paid close attention to the investigation and paid close attention even before there was an investigation, there's this tendency to look at Trump and those around him as the gang that couldn't shoot straight.

But in this particular case, this was a multifaceted attack.

I mean, you had a lot of different moving pieces, and he was leveraging all of them at the state level and trying to get recounts, through attorneys trying to convince Mike Pence,

through liaison with the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers.

And the question that remains unsolved is what transpired in the Willard Hotel war room the night before?

Because that's the one link that needs to get made.

Who was there was a whole group of Trumpites liaisoning with those who were the rioters the following day.

And also, it just, look, the committee did its job.

Now it's in the lap of Merrick Garland.

It just can't be the case in America that you can try a coup in every single way.

As you were just mentioning, he tried every single lever of power in the government and then when that didn't work, tried violence.

It can't be the case that you can try that and the only punishment is it didn't work.

It would be like if attempted robbery was just, well, you didn't get the jewels,

you go free.

So I don't know what Merrick Arlin is going to do, but if he.

I think there are any number of compelling cases that can be made, not the least of which, probably, the layup case, if he wants to bring it, is for the documents that have been.

Layout like in basketball.

Yeah, Easy shot.

So, I mean, the Mar-a-Lago case seems to be one that...

You watch some sports.

Don't you miss that.

We get it.

Your brain is bigger than ours.

Go on.

Okay, so the other issue besides the death of democracy that's sort of been on my mind this week is nuclear war.

So I want, of course, it's so great that you're here to talk about this.

This satellite, I mentioned it in the monologue, that NASA fired, a 10-month trip, seven miles, and they bullseyed this asteroid to knock it off its course, which, I mean,

it was either that or Bruce Willard.

And that's why they call it rocket science.

We can do that kind of thing.

By the way, we can do that.

And by the way, that satellite was launched to be where the asteroid would be when it gets there.

So it's not like you go and aim for it.

You find a spot in space where you go.

Well of course

also a quarterback doesn't throw where the receiver is.

He throws where the receiver is.

I just want to make that clear.

Yes.

Very good.

Well that's obvious.

Even I knew that.

Okay.

You don't fire the missile where the asteroid was.

Correct.

I get that.

Correct.

But rarely is the quarterback moving as fast as the receiver.

When the ball is.

I'm giving all props to NASA.

Okay.

But I think we need to make a bigger deal of this so that people, when they see the success of this mission, they don't turn around and say, well, I don't otherwise trust science.

Science does not work for me.

Look what it can do.

Look what it does do.

And it has the future survival of our species in its hands.

The problem, as with everything in America, is not that people don't believe in science.

It's just that they each have their own type of science that they believe in.

Their own personal truths.

Right.

I mean, the left loves to say the right didn't believe in science, and then I see them wearing masks outside.

My question was, if we can do that, if we can hit the asteroid, could we do that with nuclear weapons?

Because it's getting a little chippy out there with Putin.

And I don't, you know, I mean, I love Ukraine, but do I love them enough to get radiated?

But you can't do nothing, right?

I mean, if, in fact, there's a tactical nuke that's used by Putin, obviously there needs to be a response.

But plus modern nukes don't have the radiation problem, just to be clear.

Really?

You're still bloat to smithereens, but yeah, it's a different kind of weapon than the Hiroshima Nagasaki.

Nuclear weapons, if they're exploded, don't have a radiation problem?

Not if there's hydrogen bombs.

No.

Not in the way that we used to have to worry about it with fallout and all the rest of that.

What you really have to worry about is being vaporized, and after that, if you're not vaporized, blown to bits by the shockwave.

That's a way bigger problem that you're going to have.

Well, I'm not worried about that problem.

I'm not worried about that problem.

I'm not.

I mean, this is news.

Okay, this is why it's great to have a scientist.

Wait, wait, just to be clear.

No, yes, be clear.

Just because I want to just put on a table.

The nuclear weapons,

their very existence birthed the Cold War and all of the putting the world at as holding the world hostage for 60 years, okay, or 50 years it was,

that's a travesty in the history of civilization.

But what I want to say is, there's a reaction to nukes that is a little bit out of proportion with what they actually do.

Great, I want to hear this.

Well, well, because, for example, okay, we talk about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and you look at the death toll, and it was nuclear weapons, and everyone is reacting.

But wait a minute, a few months earlier in Tokyo, we had an overnight firebombing raid that killed more people than the sum of both of those atomic weapons.

And by the way, science went into that.

If you bomb a circle, a fire, then the middle of the circle is hotter than the outside.

That rises.

Air flows in, points all of

the fires inward, and

you can incinerate an entire area without having to actually blow up.

the area.

So there's a lot of tactical things.

But point is, the point is,

all I'm saying is,

why are we specializing a conversation, focusing our conversation on nukes when there's so many other ways war kills people?

And why aren't we paying attention to that?

I'll tell you why.

You're going to outlaw nukes?

Outlaw war?

Okay, okay.

Well, no one's going to outlaw war.

Well, then, then, then to say,

to not worry about what's going on now and say, now I'm going to worry about the nukes?

Calm down.

Sorry, sorry.

Here, try the decaf.

It's fulger.

No.

Okay, no, here's why I'm worried.

I wasn't worried that Putin was going to send his entire

ICBM arsenal over here and nuke America.

If he did, I'd just kiss my ass goodbye.

What I was worried about, and a lot of people are worried about, is, and I've heard this about India and Pakistan also, if they exchange their nuclear weapons, that the radiation in the atmosphere would come over here, would go all over the world, even if it was just a local exchange.

Now you're telling me that that is not...

If they use fission bombs, yes, that would be the case.

Oh, for fuck's sake.

Well, why?

Is that what they have or is it not?

Is what kind of.

All right.

I'm just going to move on.

You know.

But one other thing about war, do you know between 1939 and 1945, 1,000 people were killed per hour of every hour between 1939 and 1945 because of the the Second World War, which means in any random three-day period, more people died from conventional weaponry than who died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In any three days of the entire war.

Not really relevant to what I'm saying.

Okay,

it's just not.

I get it.

I mean, that's true, too.

But it's not what we're really focusing on now.

Is this Ukraine thing where Putin we found out his army is a paper tiger?

You know, it's so funny.

Like, it's such a roller coaster with Ukraine.

First, it was like, oh, he did it.

He invaded.

Bad.

Oh, but we found out his army sucks.

Good.

Oh, but that means he only has the nukes to use.

Bad.

You know, I mean,

and it is bad.

When the guy has nothing but the nukes, it's bad.

Unless the nukes are not harmful.

Which said yes and now no.

They're tactical nukes.

So that they're just bigger versions of what a conventional attack would be.

Okay.

All right.

Can I just say there needs to be a response to the extent he goes in that direction.

Obviously, we hope that that he doesn't.

But that sounds like escalating.

It is.

I mean, I don't know how you avoid that.

The alternative to just keep the powder dry, you can't do.

Biden's word would be completely worthless.

And I was thinking as you were.

And

NATO's word.

But I was thinking of this as you were interviewing Netanyahu.

To me, it's kind of reminiscent of a failure to bomb the tracks going to Auschwitz-Birkenau when we had intelligence that said, here were the atrocities that were being committed against Jews.

So if you saw nuclear weapons being moved into position and we have that capability and they were going to be launched at Ukraine, how could you not act?

Again, I'm just saying,

let's just hope you're right about they don't have radiation.

Because

if you start escalating a nuclear war, then I'm just saying maybe it's the right thing to die for the Donbass province being on one side of that border.

But it's going to be, I mean, is that what you want the average American to say?

No, I want the average American to say we've all professed never again.

Here's an instance that maybe is not predicated on religion, but it is that kind of a scenario.

So, do we mean it or not?

Okay, all right.

Well,

one of the things we like to do on this show is provide a service for people who don't get to watch the news all the time and don't know what the current trends are in America.

And one of the big trends right now is micro-dosing.

Now, I don't know.

I don't know about this because I've only done the regular dose.

Not really.

What?

What?

Not yet.

Not recently, but I've done acid and I've done mushrooms and I did the regular dose.

And when you...

What I understand is that this is a whole different thing because a regular dose is like, it's a trip.

I mean, you're just involved.

Micro-dosing.

I know plenty of people who have done this.

It's like they go to work, you know, you can function.

It's just like a good buzz or something.

I don't know, but one of the headlines we saw, this is so interesting.

Thousands of moms are micro-dosing with mushrooms to ease the stress of parenting.

And we found there's even a new magazine called Good House Tripping.

There they are.

And would you like to see some of the articles?

Okay.

good house tripping.

Kanye is making sense to me.

Have I overdosed?

There you go.

Is Mr.

Clean real, or did I just have sex with my neighbor's husband?

Dear good house tripping, if I'm transgender, can I still be tripping balls?

Five-minute meals you can make in six hours.

Is that your hand?

Our experts weigh in.

And of course, October Centerfold, Aaron Rogers.

All right.

So.

Let's get back to your thing with the take a different tack on this.

I mean, because you have made the point very often, Doc, that, you know, you tried to point out how our our reactions to threats are very often not rational and not proportional.

So I said from the beginning I thought we overreacted to COVID.

Now we're getting some information after a while, we have time, to find out just how bad the collateral damage has been.

Here's just a few cases.

The pandemic erased two decades.

of progress in math and reading.

See, right away, I got to say, this pisses me off.

I see these headlines all the time.

The pandemic didn't do that.

The way we handled the pandemic did that.

The pandemic certainly was a thing.

But let's not just say the pandemic, because it was not written in stone that we had to handle it the way we did.

Act scores are the lowest in 30 years.

Anxiety and depression way up.

The body mass index increase doubled for kids 2 to 19.

Drug

overdose deaths.

Murders way up.

Inflation at a 40-year high.

Domestic violence increased.

Oh, and my favorite, car crashes.

They couldn't figure this out.

They're like, way, way, way up.

And finally,

I love this.

This is the expert said, you know what it is?

People just went fucking mental.

They just went nuts.

They're like, I'm home.

The fucking kids are here all the time.

My stupid husband is here all the time.

I'm just going to take it out on the highway.

And they did.

There was a group, the Great Barrington Declaration.

Yes.

You know, these academics, and a lot of them are at Hoover, at Stanford.

Hoover.

Hoover Institute.

Hoover.

I had them on CNN.

I put them on regularly on radio, and there was always enormous blowback because they were saying many of the things that you're saying now, only they were saying it in real time.

That's the name of the show.

Yeah,

I guess what I would

add to that is I think one of the great injustices was the rush to judgment as soon as the shit hit the fan to clear out every college campus in grad school.

It never made sense to me that we sent them back through airplanes and car rides with relatives instead of keeping them right where they were.

And Bill, I have three for whom I'm still paying tuition bills.

They were so robbed of a year, year and a half, of all the exchange, the mingling that you talked about last week.

We're never going to make that time up is my point.

Can I put something in on this?

Yeah.

What you don't have is the benefit.

of the alternative scenarios to see how they would have come out to be able to judge whether what did happen was a lesser evil than other options that would have unfolded.

And so suppose

actually we do because other countries handled it differently.

Sweden didn't handle it differently.

Some of the places with the lowest vaccination rates turned out to have the best results.

With really low population densities.

Well yes,

there are different factors.

There are.

Yes,

that matters.

Yes, of course it matters.

That's sort of a different factor.

You just said.

You do an elevator in New York City with 15 people.

You just said that we can't make any judgments because we don't live in an alternative universe where America handled it differently.

And I'm saying other places handled it differently.

That does matter.

It's a legitimate, I think it's a legitimate conversation to have.

You remember there was talk of herd immunity and how we get there at the outset, and people were shouted down for even raising that prospect.

I'm not the scientist you are, but in retrospect.

You shouted down the idea that it might have escaped from a lab.

Right.

That was somehow racist, racist, as opposed to somehow if you believed that it came from the wet markets, you were a Democrat.

And if you believe it came from a lab, you were a Republican.

This is ridiculous.

It has no political dimension at all.

Where do you think it came from?

I don't know.

Exactly.

We don't know.

But it could have been either place.

It's not crazy to think somebody could have walked out of a lab with it on their shoe.

It's hard to keep things clean.

There's clearly weaponization programs, bio-weaponization programs around the world.

And not even intentionally.

Right.

Just because it's hard to keep bacteria.

I'm just saying if we had left all the elementary schools open and then kids become vectors to redirect the disease and then we have a death toll that rivals what happened in the 1918 pandemic, people would

that's an experiment that I don't know that I would have to do it.

Well, it was an experiment run in other countries and it didn't happen because kids don't get it very much.

Population density.

For that matter, you know,

it's not like Sweden isn't a modern country.

Population density.

That isn't.

I mean, there was a lab experiment of sorts when you take a look at Gavin Newsom's response in California versus DeSantis in Florida.

And in the end, was the data really all that much different?

And by the way, why not target the places with the great population density instead of having a one-size-fits-all approach to everywhere?

That would be a nuance of

laws and legislation that I don't know that the American public would buy into because we want everybody to be treated exactly the same.

Yeah, to say you live there so you have a different law than here.

Because there are different factors.

I agree.

And also,

I agree.

Florida did well like targeting because it's Florida, you know, God's waiting room.

So

that's what the Great Barrington Declaration stood for.

They said protect the most vulnerable and everybody else lead your life with precautions.

Right, but they were ostracized for that.

Okay.

All right.

Final issue.

Oh, and

solve that.

You caught COVID and I never have, just to put that out there.

Meaning what?

Meaning...

Well,

I paid attention to medical professional advice.

Okay,

first of all, you know nothing about what I did.

I'll tell you what happened.

I'll tell you what happened.

I caught everybody fucking caught COVID.

You probably did too, and you didn't even know it.

Oh, okay.

Because sometimes it doesn't affect people.

Okay.

Here's the thing.

By the way, by the way.

I'm like George Carlin, I swam in the Hudson.

Viruses are ubiquitous.

I don't know if you've heard about that.

Yes, they are.

Okay, so for 14 months, I didn't have the vaccine, all right?

And you're right, I didn't take any precautions because it didn't scare me, and I didn't get it.

Then I got the vaccine, and I got it three weeks later.

I'm not saying the the vaccine gave it to me.

I'm saying we don't know what happens, the confluence of things that go on in our body.

That's always my point about vaccines and everything else in medicine.

Medicine is almost as crazy to try to figure out as the universe.

They just don't know what's going on in there.

Do you know that,

I'm sure you saw this, last month they discovered a bacteria naked, visible to the naked eye.

That's scary.

They said it would be like finding a human the size of Mount Everest.

Yeah.

But really, you're going to just sit there in your white coat and tell me we have all the answers, we know everything, just do what we say.

I don't think that's a good question.

Well, sure.

However, there's the best available evidence at any given moment.

Who's best?

The 16,000 doctors who signed the Barrington Agreement or the political hacks who run the FDI?

I'm all for having the conversation.

I just don't know.

Right, have the conversation.

And isn't that what science is?

Isn't that what science is?

And you contest the evidence and find out which has the best foundations for why you would draw the conclusions.

But let's admit that we are in the middle of it.

There's no conclusions.

They said the vaccine would stop infection and they would stop transmission.

It didn't do either.

I'm not saying that's because they're correct.

Step people from dying, okay?

Look at the deaths

after the vaccine.

I'm not arguing that.

I'm just saying.

You kind of sounded like you were.

I'm not.

You interpolated.

I'm saying I just said the things they got wrong.

I didn't say, and also it means that it's not

on the front on the moving frontier there will be things that are wrong.

Right, so if it's moving, let's keep discussing.

Yes, right.

Of course.

It's it's indeed

The LA Times, I mentioned this in the morning like published this audio recording of the first Latina president of the LA City Council, and she makes Kanye look like Rachel Maddow.

I mean

and I love things that scramble the narrative, because the narrative is always that, you know, white equals oppressor.

Well, this is a Latino person talking to three other Latino people and very ugly racist things that she's saying about blacks, Indians, gays, and Jews.

In the context of, not that this makes it any better, but in the context of talking about redistricting of politics.

And at its core, it's a struggle for power between this group of Hispanics and their perception of people of color, of blacks.

I mean, one of the comments that she makes is about the progressive district attorney George Gascon and says, fuck him, he's with the blacks.

And what I think it represents on a larger scale is a looming potential conflict that could drive more Hispanics away from the Democratic Party and toward the Republican Party.

It's all tribal.

It's not R's and D's.

This time it's by ethnicity.

And I think it's a sign of a bigger issue.

Final thought is this.

There are 15 members of council in Los Angeles, and three of them, because of her resignation, resignation, are Hispanic.

And yet, 50% of the population in LA is Hispanic.

So, the minute you say to yourself, well, geez, then it doesn't sound like there are enough, you're kind of doing the same thing because now you're assuming that there needs to be proportionality when, in fact, there ought to just be good leadership, whatever they look like.

All right.

Thank you, panel.

Time for New Rule.

New rules.

New rules, stop acting surprised that someone blew up the 12-mile-long Crimean bridge after Russia spent two years building it.

Just admit what we're all thinking.

They built a bridge in two years?

In L.A., we'd still be putting out the cones.

New rules, the Catholic Church must stick by the old rules.

The rule has been to become a saint, you need to have performed two confirmed miracles.

Confirmed, no bullshit.

Well, now Pope Francis has waived that requirement of a second miracle so this priest could become a saint.

My God, is everything sacred?

New rule.

Someone has to tell this Thai man

practicing a Taoist purification ritual on his mouth, you know what else works?

Blystrene.

New rule, someone needs to tell Jenna Sims, wife of pro-golf star Brooks Kepa, don't ask the internet questions you don't want the answers to.

Jenna posted photos of herself and the groom on their wedding day with the caption, who wore it better?

Sadly, the winner was Mark Wohlberg.

New rule, the Alaskans, who hold an annual fat bear contest, have to explain why they're fat-shaming bears.

Trust me, he knows he's eating too much salmon.

He knows he could hibernate a little less.

And it doesn't help that all the social media influencers he sees have perfect bodies.

And finally, new rules, someone must explain Herschel Walker

and how in a supposedly sophisticated country a person with his resume could ever be elected to office.

Although the answer might be a little more complicated than you think.

For the past month, there's been a lot written about how how Republicans standing behind a guy like Walker means they've lost all sense of integrity.

Really?

Just now?

Integrity died a long time ago after a long battle with tribalism.

Integrity is survived by hypocrisy and fear of the other party.

Now, of course,

of course, I could make a long string of jokes about how unfit for office Walker is, and I think I will.

Because if you haven't,

if you have not been following this story, you need to know where to begin.

Well, first of all, he's just a fucking idiot on a scale almost impossible to parody.

Although we did once present his book called Herschel Walker's Science Talker.

Because he says things like, if man descended from apes, why are there still apes?

Then there's the lying and the crazy and the violence.

Not only did he write a book about having 12 different personalities, he wrote it with two other people.

He admits that he used to play Russian roulette.

He used to threaten to blow his wife's brains out a lot and seems to have never met a family member he hasn't threatened to kill.

He threatened to kill his girlfriend and he stalked a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader.

But that was just to get Ron DeSantis her boots.

He has threatened to shoot cops.

He claimed to be a cop.

He wasn't.

Claimed to be an FBI agent.

Wasn't.

Claimed to be valedictorian of his high school, wasn't.

Claimed to graduate in the top 1% of his class, never graduated.

Claimed to have once supervised six hospitals, which is amazing given the job he had with the FBI.

When the pandemic hit, he tried to sell a dry mist COVID cure that would, quote, kill any COVID on your body

because one of his personalities is Dr.

Oz.

And just since the campaign began, three secret children have been unearthed and one of his kids says of Herschel, he has four kids, four different women, wasn't in the house raising one of them.

Yeah, he's very pro-family, just not his.

He's 100% against abortion, no exceptions, but his girlfriend has proof he paid for hers.

Then he got her pregnant again and tried to get her to abort that one.

His campaign slogan is, stop me before I kill again.

If you're thinking, where have I seen this man before?

You have.

President Dwayne Elizondo, Mountain Dew, Camacho, from the movie Idiocracy.

So,

why do Republicans stand by him?

Now, the easy answer is they're deplorables, ignorant, and bad, and yes, there is some of that.

But I'm sorry, if I'm going to stay in America and America is going to stay America, I can't write off half the country that easily.

Also, I talk to deplorables.

So let me try to translate, not endorse, but translate for liberal America.

Part of the appeal of a Herschel Walker or a Donald Trump or any number of egregious assholes Republicans have backed is, in their mind, the worse a candidate is, the more it says to Democrats, do you see how much we don't like what you're selling?

All that socialism and identity politics and victimhood and oversensitivity and cancel culture and white self-loathing and forcing complicated ideas about race and sex on kids too young to understand it.

Literally anything would be better than that.

That's their view.

That's why you can be a really bad dude in Republican politics.

And it's not a deal breaker.

Judge Roy Moore was in his 30s when he was still going to the mall and picking up teenage girls.

Eric Graytons was Missouri governor.

then this year a Senate candidate, despite the fact that his ex-wife says he beat her and the kids, and he was charged with tying up a woman he was having an affair with, taking nude pictures, and threatening to blackmail her with them.

I mean, Andrew Cuomo was creepy, but there was no begging to be untied.

Al Franken took a gag picture, but he didn't go Phil Specter on anybody.

This is a clear difference between the parties.

Democrats also think the other side is an existential threat, but their response is not to nominate Sickos to make a point.

If it was, they have a guy who'd fit the bill.

But they don't nominate him because that would just be trolling.

Here's a question.

Is this person trolling?

This is a transgender teacher in Ontario who made news last month when the school supported her right to come to school and teach children with these tits.

Her name is Kayla Lemieux, and I'm not so sure she isn't doing this to make a statement that anyone can do absolutely anything in the name of wokeness and the left will never stop them.

And that's when Republicans say, well, then we'll have to, no matter who we have to elect to do it.

The fact that Republicans have no shame in their game and will vote for any monster with an R by his name is their way of signaling how serious they are about blocking this shit.

They're like the bad guy in action movies who shoots one of his own men.

And then he's like, I liked him, but I had to make a point.

All right, that's our show.

We're off next week and back on the 28th.

I'll be at the Hulu Theater in New York City, November 12th, at the Foxwoods Casino in Mash Nantucket, November 13th.

The Maori

Coarts and Cultural Center, December 30th, and the Waikiki Show on New Year's Eve.

I want to thank Michael Sperkanish, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Benjamin Netanyahu.

Now go to YouTube and join us on Overtime.

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.