Ep. #615: Chris Wallace, Chris Christie, Katty Kay

Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

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

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was quick.

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

Now, Charlie's sober.

He's gonna tell you the truth.

How do I present this with any class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

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

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

Start the clock.

How are you?

Okay.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Okay.

I love you back.

Thank you very much.

I know.

Believe me, today.

Okay.

All right.

And now we start.

Now I say this every week, but today I really do know why you're happy.

Because Biden pardoned everyone who has been convicted of simple possession of marijuana.

Yeah.

And this is very smart because a lot of people in this country, I don't know who they are, I don't know any of them, but

a lot of people do smoke pot and they do show up to vote.

Not on the right day, but they do show up.

And I want to remind you, all you ageists out there, who did this?

Yes.

The old president.

Obama didn't do it.

And more credit to him, because Joe really doesn't know anything about pot.

He thinks THC is that channel that shows the old movies.

So, that's the good news.

Here's a little bad news

because the war in Ukraine is going so badly for Putin.

Biden said the other day that the risk of nuclear Armageddon is the worst since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

So, you know, good news, bad news.

And that war is going badly.

There are videos, have you seen this, online that have gone viral, of Russian young men who so don't want to go in the Army that they're breaking their own arms.

Finally, a TikTok challenge I can get behind.

I can't, of course.

Yeah, no, that is very worrisome.

I mean, you got to root for Ukraine, but the worst Russia does, you know, Putin, who knows, he had a birthday this week.

He went to his favorite restaurant, TGI, whatever day I say it is.

And

it did not turn out to be a good birthday because the next day he was confronted personally.

Who has the balls to do this?

Some guy in Russia in his inner circle confronted him with how bad the war was going and how he was mismanaging it.

That takes balls.

And then the guy said, don't get up, I'll show myself out the window.

So

here in this country, they're cleaning up.

In Florida, our friends in Florida from, in several states from Hurricane Ian, but it's not over.

Thousands of people in South Florida are still without cocaine.

So it has really disrupted.

But, you know,

in this very troubling, decisive world, I thought it was rather encouraging to see, did you see President Biden and Governor DeSantis of Florida who have nothing in common and hate each other, I'm sure, but they worked together and they were cordial.

Nothing, people.

Okay, I mean, come on, give me something.

But

I mean it did not last.

Biden got back on Air Force One and it was filled with Venezuelan migrants.

That was a dirty trick.

But of course what everyone's talking about is this picture that emerged of Governor Santis down there and you know

what's with the go-go boots?

I mean,

but in Florida, I can't even say gay.

Wow.

I just got to say, somewhere in Dallas, there is a cheerleader performing in her socks.

I'm just going to say

all he needs is a wig, and he can do Drag Queen Story Hour.

Oh, Republicans, they're just like us.

No, not really.

Well, our friend, oh my gosh, they do run some buttes.

Herschel Walker, have you seen this down in Georgia?

You know, a former football player, Herschel Walker, who has been running, I mean, he is a hard right on abortion.

No exceptions.

He is like...

rape and nothing, no abortion.

We criminalized pregnancy in this country.

Turns out his ex-girlfriend, one of his many ex-girlfriends, came forward this week with proof that he paid for an abortion for her.

She had a signed check from him, a receipt from the clinic, and a sympathy card.

She had everything but the fetus in a jar.

I mean.

And Herschel, it's just not that bright.

He signed the card, glad to hear about your loss.

I mean.

So

this story breaks on Monday, the ex-girlfriend coming forward with all the evidence, and Herschel said it's a flat-out lie.

Then it came forward a few days later.

This woman, who he said is a liar, had a child with him.

And then Maury Povich came out and said, Herschel, you are the father.

I mean, all right, we got a great show.

We have Chris Christie, Patty Kay.

But first up,

he is the CNN anchor and host of Who's Talking to Chris Wallace with episodes available to stream Fridays on HBO Max and airing Sundays at 7 Eastern on CNN.

Chris Wallace,

Chris.

How are you?

Great to meet you.

Great to meet you for the second time in two minutes.

Welcome to HBO.

Can I show you around the commissary?

Sir,

we're going to have lunch with a dragon.

You're going to love it here, Chris.

You actually are.

And

have you found it so far?

Great company, right?

It is a great company, and this is a very exciting hybrid because on the one hand, as you just said, I'm on HBO Max.

Three interviews a week drop each Friday.

We have three that just dropped today.

And then the best parts of those three interviews on CNN, prime time, 7 o'clock Sunday night.

So

it all can be done.

My family is here in Forest tonight.

Well, I can't think of anybody better to talk about the news business with.

I mean, who is more steeped in it?

Obviously, your father was Mike Wallace.

You worked for, I think your first job was for Walter Cronkite?

Well, job is a little bit of an overstatement.

I was his gopher, go for coffee, gopher pencils at the Democratic,

at the Republican convention in 1964, the Barry Goldwater Convention.

Yeah.

Right.

And Walter Cronkite, I mean, for those of people who don't remember, this was the last guy, perhaps, that everybody trusted.

I remember when I was a kid watching TV and he was the newsman, and when a comedian wanted to make a joke about somebody who had utter integrity, that was the go-to.

Remember, Walter Cronkite, because it was understood by everybody in America that this, when he said it, both sides sides agreed.

That is such a bygone world now that we could even have such a thing.

No, I completely agree.

And in fact, in 67 or 68, he went to Vietnam.

And, you know, he was a straight newsman.

He didn't give commentary.

He just reported the facts.

But we were in the middle of

this terrible and long and bloody war.

And he came back, and despite what all the generals were saying, he said, The war is not going well.

And

Lyndon Johnson, the president at the time, supposedly said, if I've lost Walter Cronkite, I've lost America.

Right.

And he did, and he did.

Didn't even run again.

That's right.

But today,

some side, probably the right wing, would just have attacked Walter Cronkite.

No, it has gotten so siloed, if you will.

You know,

you've got

conservative media and they have built up an audience and they only want to watch conservative media and what it is

you know supports their conception, their view of the world, and liberal media and liberals want to watch that.

And distressingly few people just want to get the news and make up decisions for themselves as to what they think the truth is.

Well, that's

the

That's a very small sliver of the country, I think, who even wants news.

I mean when I talk to people under 40 even and I ask them where do you get your news, most of what they say is like, well, what somebody posts on my Facebook page.

In other words, it's gossip.

Like, that's to me what gossip is.

Your friend is passing around a story.

They don't know if it's true, they don't care.

But, I mean, Walter Cronkite got 29 million viewers.

I mean, nothing, no TV show gets even a third of that, even the biggest hits, I don't think, anymore, in prime time.

This was the news.

if he got 29, Huntley Brinkley got 25 or whatever.

I mean, you had 50, 60 million Americans at a time when the country was a lot smaller who wanted to tune in to see the evening news.

I mean, in fairness, the world has changed.

And you don't get your news at 6:30 at night, you're getting it all day, and you can get it on your phone, or, as you say, Facebook or Instagram or TikTok or whatever.

But

the world has definitely changed, and not for the better, in terms of the desire

to get the straight facts and to have your preconceptions be challenged by what reality is.

People don't want reality.

They want their view.

And this really all came about because

news used to be a lost leader for a company.

It was in Cronkite's day.

Absolutely.

I mean, with the giants of television back in the day, and by that point, I mean the the owners, Bill Paley at CBS, Sarnoff at NBC, they viewed news as a public service and that

it didn't have to make money.

If it didn't lose money, that was okay.

But even if it lost a little,

that was all right.

And I got to be careful with this, because I know you're a huge fan of 60 Minutes, but I kind of feel that to a certain degree, 60 Minutes and my father were a little bit responsible for what happened.

Not that their journalism wasn't terrific, but when 60 Minutes went on the air in 68,

and then as it became more and more successful, and ended up being the number one show in America for a number of years,

it made money.

And suddenly,

the executives and television said,

you can make money with news.

And I think that led to the idea of not having an audience come to you, but chasing an audience.

And that led, I think, to more biased news coverage.

Mike.

Aren't you a bigger fan of 60 Minutes than me?

That's why I said that.

Isn't that what put food on your table?

Did it take your father away from home?

Is that what it is?

I'm sorry, Bill.

I'm sorry, but our time is up here now.

No,

I'd love 60 Minutes, and I think their journalism is first rate.

What I'm saying is it opened the Pandora's box that you can make money.

from news.

Right.

And that's the problem, because the media works backwards now.

They work backwards from what does our target demographic want to, how does it want them to filter us, filter this news for us, so that we're only hearing what doesn't upset us.

I mean, I don't know if they still have those dials that they use for like focus groups, but I think they do, where you can tell the people as they're watching it, oh, no, I don't like that.

I remember, you know, Tor, they have it during the debates.

You know, Obama was a little sarcastic, no.

That's right.

You'd have the blue line and the red line and then it's the whatever line in the middle of the independent.

And the people who are these anchors on these cable news shows, they know that those dials are somewhere.

They don't want to say something that makes the people turn the dial the wrong way.

So that's why they live in a bubble, except on this show, of course.

And by the way, you know, I've paid for that.

There are, you know, lots of woke people.

who used to watch this show, I know, who don't anymore, because like I will present.

I always did that.

It's just that the left went crazier, so I have to do it more.

And I would wish they would come back, but not at the price of not calling out both sides.

No, and I got to say, and I agree, I think that's absolutely true of you.

I like to think it's true of me as well when I was at Fox News.

It is.

You left Fox News.

But

on Fox News Sunday, I told it straight, and they never second-guessed me on a guest or a question.

They let me do what I did, and I'm doing the same now at Fox News.

Now I always thought you were the canary in the coal mine at Fog.

I did.

I want to see how this metaphor ends up.

Well,

the canary gets out, the mine collapses.

That's my.

No, I mean, you got out.

I mean, it became, come on, isn't that why you left?

Because it just became too hard to be in that loony bin?

You know,

I am so excited about who's talking to Chris Wallace.

I am so excited

about CNN and just looking ahead to the future.

You just said you're a big straight shooter, but you won't answer that question or something.

You know, I have found message discipline.

I know you're going to be talking to Chris Christie in a moment.

Message discipline.

That's for politicians, not for us.

We're the other side.

We're the other team.

All right, I'll ask you.

All right.

Yes, I'm thinking.

We'll talk over in the comments.

Actually, I was thinking, Mitch McConnell, just repeat the line over and over again.

So, last question.

You

moderate?

Yeah, almost.

All right.

I'm having a good time.

I'm having a good time too.

It goes fast when you avoid questions.

Well played.

But, okay, so

I think you moderated both the Hillary Clinton Trump debate

in 2016, one of them in 2020.

And also Trump and Biden.

Yes, the first one.

I mean, it's just a clown show at this point, these debates.

Is it not?

I mean, Trump is going to, Trump, he's just this, you know, incredible guerrilla buffoon in the room who's going to break the furniture.

I mean,

it's pointless to debate him.

He doesn't know anything.

He doesn't care.

His audience doesn't care.

He doesn't know anything.

Biden, I mean, I'm getting more and more in love with Biden, but on a debate stage.

Just because of the marijuana?

That didn't hurt, Chris.

No, he's just, he's just, you know what?

He's too old for this shit.

That should be his motto.

He's just, he just gets things done.

I'm not sure too old for anything should be his motto.

I think it's working for him.

Lean into it.

Like Afghanistan, I'm too old for this shit.

Get out.

You know?

here's where I'll disagree with you about the debates.

The first debate of 2020, where Trump just went nuts.

I mean, we had somebody count how many times he interrupted either Biden or me 145 times in 90 minutes.

That's a lot.

But having said that, 80 million people watched that debate.

So there is a real hunger out there among Americans to, we want to see these two guys and size them up.

Okay, well, if I put porn on on that channel, I could get 81 million.

You know, it doesn't.

Anyway, I got to go.

Thank you very much.

Good luck here.

Welcome in-house.

Thank you.

Chris Wallace.

All right, let's meet our panel.

Okay.

All right.

Here they are.

He is the former Republican governor of New Jersey and a political and legal contributor to ABC News.

Chris Christie is over here, Governor.

Phil?

And she's a special correspondent for BBC News and host of the new documentary Trump, the Comeback, available to.

There was a question mark at the end.

There is a question mark.

That's right.

The comeback?

Stream on BBC Select via Apple TV and Prime Video.

Caddy Kay is our returning champion.

So I just want to start off.

I was watching these pictures from Florida and I thought of you because you're coming on this weekend.

The pictures of Biden and DeSantis together must bring back warm memories of when you were with Obama after another storm.

It was Hurricane Sandy, and there was the famous picture of you and Obama, and

they said you hugged.

That's as close as you got.

It was not a hug.

I'm from Jersey, that's not a hug.

No.

But I noticed that with DeSantis and Biden,

he must have had that in mind because the picture he got taken, there was a relative in between them at all times.

See, this is this is what relatives are for in politics get between you and the guy from the other team who you can't touch

silly so silly you you think that's why he did that I don't know why he did what he did but like when you have what we had in Sandy we lost 365,000 homes in 24 hours when he has what he has and what it looks like to me from here in the Gulf Coast, you can't think about anything else but those people.

I mean, their lives are not going to be normal for a very long time and they've lost everything they own.

They've lost their sense of who they are.

So you know for me it's not going to be 10 years ago at the end of this month.

I just said to all of our folks like president comes we're going to show him around we're going to make sure he sees everything and meets those people and I didn't worry about the politics and the analogies here are kind of a little bit misplaced too.

I mean this is five weeks away from a midterm election where DeSantis looks like he's going to win and Biden's not even on the ballot.

When Biden came to New Jersey or when Wayne Obama came to New Jersey, it was six days before the presidential election where he was on the ballot.

So

everything was heightened and all the tensions right now.

It was my job to get them focused on the job, which was rebuild the state, repair these people's lives.

Okay, I know, I know.

But it's true.

What you guys do, you do.

I know.

You're going to die.

But you do that.

And

I get it.

I took enormous shit for that.

I know you did.

Yes, you did.

So it's not like it was the easy thing to do.

Right, but it was the right thing to do.

DeSantis would be crazy not to welcome Biden, right?

I mean, yeah.

You're not Biden there.

You need money for your people who are going to vote for you at some point.

And then to diss him, that would be ridiculous.

See, DeSantis has it both ways.

I think he's a very clever politician.

On the one hand, he's...

White boots aside.

What?

The white boots were a bad look.

That was bad.

What makes a guy...

What happened to the police?

Kate, how can a guy so scared?

You would never accuse DeSantis of being elected purely on the basis of his charisma and his cool.

You know, I never see him.

I don't live in Florida.

I mean,

what I know is that he's great at political performance art, so he's ginned up the bass.

He's got them with the, you know, don't say gay shit and all that.

And then when something like this happens, he looks like, oh, I'm also a very normal politician who can get along with the president and do things done as a governor can.

I have a suit and a tie.

And my white boots.

So I think that's a very clever one-two punch.

I mean, he's definitely going to be the candidate.

I mean run against

Trump or join Trump.

Do you think he's going to run against Trump?

Possibly.

The

Republican polling likes him better to be at the top spot of the ticket.

Now that means you have to take it away from Trump, which is very hard to do from a baby.

That would suggest him as a low voice.

But what if they run, what if it's Trump and DeSantis as his running mate?

mates never happened?

No, why?

Never happened.

You can't put both of them in the same room on the same ticket.

Oh, never.

I've heard never so much in politics.

Much more likely it would be somebody like Carrie Lake in Arizona.

Okay, but

if it does, it's an irresistible ticket.

She could pull off the white boots, too.

All right.

So

it's odd because there's sort of this disconnect.

I mean, on the one hand, this looks a little encouraging.

Biden and DeSantis working together.

On the other hand, one of the big stories I saw this week was

like talk on the internet of a civil war has jumped like, I don't know, a zillion percent or something.

And, you know, a lot of this stuff, 54% of strong Republicans say they feel a civil war, a civil war we're talking about, is at least somewhat likely.

They seem a little hungry for it, which makes me ask the question, you mean you actually want to kill Americans?

You know, I know you've done a lot of reporting on this recently.

Yeah,

I always interview people who, an elderly couple in their 70s, who had clearly sat down and thought about how a civil war would unfold.

I mean, they took it almost like it was a sober, rational thing to do.

They saw it as their patriotic duty.

to take up arms and kill other people.

And they had a whole plan for this.

It was going to start.

The Democrats would start the Civil War.

They would respond by fighting back.

And it would be small village against small village.

And then it would spread to small town against small town.

And then it would be state against state.

And this couple were in their late 60s, early 70s.

The husband and the wife told me repeatedly that they would be happy to take up arms and they would do it to defend democracy in America.

That's the kind of level that people are talking about.

This is not young hotheads.

This is an elderly couple who are going to fight.

But actually, it is young hotheads.

This is from the Southern Poverty Law Center.

When asked people

who approves of threatening a politician, approves of threatening a politician who is harming the country or our democracy, democracy, which of course is what both sides think the other one is doing, 24% approved.

Slightly higher for Democrats.

And

driven largely by the approval of young Democratic men.

People over 50, only 9%.

So really, my generation are the ones who are fucked up?

Well.

But sure,

you're mellowed out by the pot, though, so that helps.

All right, well, we're going to talk about that.

You're going to have to answer that.

But here's another one.

41% of Democrats and 52% of Trump voters think it's, quote, time to split.

And I just want to know what this looks like.

When we split, how does that work?

And I asked the people who made the great movie, Gandhi, if we could use a little bit of that, because the only time I could remember a country splitting, and show that video.

This is from Gandhi.

It's a great movie.

This is 1947 when Indian-Pakistan split and that's the Hindus going one way

from Pakistan into India and the Muslims going the other way from India into Pakistan.

Of course they don't show the next scene there where they go into a ditch and start killing each other.

But is that what there's gonna be a line of cars from Arizona going into California and the four million Trump voters that we have in California are gonna be driving into Arizona.

Is that really what, what does that mean?

Like time to split?

Just describe that.

I don't buy it.

I just think it's anger.

And I think they're figuring out new ways all the time to express their anger.

And I look at it much differently, the Civil War part that you brought up.

I mean, I looked at the stuff that happened on January 6th, and instead of that inciting a civil war, what it did was force everybody in Washington to do their job and certify the election and certify that Biden had won it because he had.

And, you know, made

it made our democracy.

I look after January 6th and say that democracy proved how resilient it is not the other way around yeah except you have 200 odd candidates running as Republicans who say that Joe Biden shouldn't be president because Donald Trump won the election well sure yes

yes you're in the minority of your party at least for the people who are running of the major wait wait a second we have midterms in a month or something okay 299 of the Republicans who are running, this is for Congress and Senate, the major seat, 299, a majority

think what you just alluded to, they don't think the election was fair, and Biden actually lies.

That's an astounding.

Well, and we'll see how they do.

How they do.

We'll see how they do.

They're going to win.

A lot of them are going to win.

Well, some of them will and some of them won't.

But in the end, you've got to get out there and fight that.

I mean,

you know, you can't just expect this to be done.

Are the Republicans you don't do?

Yes.

Yeah.

But here's what's going to happen.

Is that what you're doing?

Well, I just said it, didn't I?

Right.

I mean, but I mean, isn't that.

But what do you want me to do?

I want you to do it.

Shit, bro.

Like, what do you want me to do?

I want you to do more.

I want more Republicans.

You know, this is what I call the as good as it gets Republicans.

Don't take that the wrong way.

Oh, how could I?

How about you're the pain-in-the-ass talk show host?

But don't take it the wrong way.

No, no, but I just mean, like, for people who are like,

but for the people who just are adamant about how they won't even talk to Republicans, you know, you want something that's not going to be Republicans see the world differently.

It's okay.

We have to have that.

But this is as good as it gets.

Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney and Kinzick,

I can never say his name, Kinziker, whatever that guy is.

I mean,

but even Bill Barr and Pence,

they both, and Mitch McConnell of all said this was a legitimate election.

That's as good as it gets, liberals, for Republicans.

Deal with that.

Don't hate those people.

Anyway, my message.

I think, you know,

what you raised about young Democrats, I think there's something there, too, because the young guy from Florida, Maxwell Frost, who's come out and said that DeSantis wants to impose a fascist state in the country.

I mean, America's not going to become a fascist state.

It's not going to become a socialist state.

I mean, is there a far-right tendency?

Is there, you know, are there conservatives on the Supreme Court?

Of course there are, but fascists?

I mean, I don't think that's not helpful either.

If you want to gem up, you know, violence and backlash in the country, you start throwing around words like fascists.

You're not helping the cause of not avoiding a civil war, particularly.

Exactly right.

All right.

So you mentioned Todd.

Yes, Biden did it.

You know, he finally did this.

He's pardoned people who just had minimal records with marijuana.

Also, SpongeBob is now the Secretary of the Navy.

I don't know if you're in that.

But I I seem to remember when you were governor.

Yeah.

You were very hard.

In fact, I have a quote here.

Go ahead.

This is after it started to become legal across different states.

And you said, I don't care, quite frankly, that people think it's inevitable, meaning inevitable to become legal in this country.

It's not inevitable here.

I'm not going to permit it, never, as long as I'm governor.

What are you the George Wallace of prohibition?

You stand in the doorway of the dispensary.

Well,

if you win, you get to make the decisions.

And I got elected twice, and I got to make the decisions.

That was the decision I made.

And I know you disagreed with it then, and I know you disagree with it now, but

you just said we're allowed to have different opinions.

Yes.

I have a different opinion on that.

I agree.

Okay, I'm not.

I'm just asking.

Even most Republicans don't have that opinion anymore.

I'm just asking why do you have this hard on for pot?

Because

they don't have it just for pot.

I know, but

go ahead, guys.

Next question?

No, no, no.

He's doing great tonight, isn't he?

All right.

You would say, mean for other drugs.

But pot is not like other drugs, and this is part of...

I understand you think that.

I don't think that.

Here's what we have.

Schedule one drugs, which pot, this is, I think, where Biden is moving to get rid of this insanity.

Schedule one, in other words, these are the drugs that they say are the worst.

Schedule one, one equals worst.

Pot, lumped in with LSD, heroin, ecstasy, and mushrooms.

You mean you see those all the same?

I don't see them all the same, no.

But that's the way the law puts them together.

So if you want to try to change it, I've always said the same thing.

If someone wants to pass a law to change it and you can get a majority of the people to vote for it, great.

If you ask me my opinion, I vote no on that.

That's okay.

We all agree, but I mean, they've studied POT a zillion times.

I don't understand that.

Look, we have a difference of opinion about it.

But I'm talking about...

I mean, there is an absurdity here that you have POT classified as a class one drug, which hasn't ever killed anybody, but then you've got fentanyl and methamphetamines, which are not classified as class one drugs, which are causing an epidemic of death.

And they should be.

Well, they should be.

But, you know, it should be open to occasionally.

And that's what I just said.

If you get people,

it became a Schedule I drug because people voted to make it one.

And if they vote to not make it one, it won't be.

Okay, but

the question is.

And I'm telling you that my view in it from the quote you read at the time was that I was not going to permit it to be a recreational legal drug in New Jersey.

I didn't permit it to be.

And now we have a new guy who came after me and he permitted it.

Am I like standing in the corner holding my breath saying, I can't believe you did that?

No.

He gets to make the judgments now.

He made the call he made.

Right?

I mean, like, that's the way it works, isn't it?

And that's the way it's supposed to work.

Yes, but the question isn't that.

We all agree on that.

Okay.

That laws matter and people make laws.

The question is.

Not everybody agrees with that.

You're right.

You're right.

But

this question was, why do you seem to be so adamant about standing up to

or ignoring what we have studied for so long?

I mean, the Schedule II drugs, which is the ones who are not as bad, Coke, meth, and Oxy.

I can tell you from personal experience, I've done all these drugs.

What?

All right, Coke and meth, and Oxy are worse than LSD, heroin, ecstasy, mushrooms, and pot.

I've never done heroin.

All right, so.

Tomorrow.

I think you've.

After this show, with Coke.

I think you've figured, I think you've given me the solution.

I'm going to leave here and try all of them.

And then

we'll see what happens, eh?

You know?

Obvious your experience.

At all.

Not all at the same time, though?

All right.

A tutorial from you, maybe?

All right, everybody.

So Kanye West is in the news.

Did you see the shirt he wore?

He's a fashion designer, too, makes, I think, a fortune from doing that.

And he, of course, bless his heart, loves controversy.

And,

you know, I can't not like Kanye.

You know, I've said it many times.

When he loves Trump, which of course we disagree on, but when he said, the mob can't make me hate him.

I just fucking love that.

We need more of that in this country.

Anyway, so he wore this t-shirt that says White Lives Matter, which, you know, a lot of people, we're not going to debate that whole thing, but there certainly was a reason why Black Lives Matter became a movement and

a saying and a cause, because obviously black lives have been disproportionately at peril in this country.

So,

but Kanye loves controversy, and we got up board.

This was not the only controversial shirt he wore in that show.

Do you want to see some of the other ones that he had?

Oh.

For example,

he had this one: Bring Back Asbestos, which that is just.

I don't get that.

He had mothers for drunk driving.

That's

Putin, bring on the nukes.

No, no,

no.

A clown's rock is not

a Hillary 2024.

Oh, for fuck's sake.

No.

Jesus was Asian.

I don't even get it.

It's so Kanye, isn't it?

Free Harvey Weinstein.

No.

Kanye, come on.

And George W.

Bush does care about black people.

Oh, so he reversed.

Anyway,

speaking of t-shirts, I want to put out a t-shirt.

I want to make a matter of fact, I think this would be a great t-shirt that would sell a lot of money.

I don't know if you saw it, but Joe Biden, when he was down there in Florida talking to people about the hurricane, was caught on a hot mic.

Oh, yeah.

And he said to a guy, no one fucks with Biden.

With a Biden?

Well, I'm going to change it to just Biden.

So I want to put this on a t-shirt.

I think we mocked up a little thing with Joe Warrington.

No one fucks with Biden.

I just want to ask you, as someone who once had the Republican Party eating out of your hands because you had that kind of confrontational, I don't take no shit from nobody attitude.

What do you think of this?

Of the t-shirt.

I love it.

I think the t-shirt's a winner.

I mean,

I don't know if Biden did this intentionally.

No, that's the beauty of Biden.

Like, he didn't do it intentionally.

He's like talking to that guy and thinking, like, he's my buddy.

I'm going to tell him.

Don't you worry, man, I got your back.

Nobody fucks with Biden.

And meanwhile, he could barely walk over there, right?

But he's like, so people are like, nobody fucks with Biden.

Come on.

If he wanted to do it intentionally, he'd have messed it up.

That's right.

That is Biden.

They would have put it on a car and he would have messed it up.

All right, well, if it wasn't.

Joe Rolls, with gladiators, the whole thing.

It's perfect.

The poppy land, but

I think he should go with that.

I think people love it.

I mean, profanity isn't a deal-breaker in politics anymore.

Not anymore.

And people like that.

Again, that's what I think.

We're thrilled about that in New Jersey, by the way.

For fact.

It makes you touchy-feely, right?

When you say no one fucks with me, it's like,

in New Jersey, that translates into, I love you.

That's the leg of a honeymoon.

Okay, so there's an interesting story in this paper this week about this Dr.

Maitland Jones.

You guys have kids, right?

Yes.

Ah, kids.

I love them.

Do you?

No.

Come on, crazy.

Anyway,

this is, so he's a professor.

He's like, not just a professor.

He's kind of like a big deal in the world of organic chemistry.

It's like he wrote the textbook.

Okay, he's semi-retired.

He was at Princeton for years.

Now he was at NYU, I think, as kind of a relaxed sort of professorship, but he was like the man.

I remember when I was at Cornell, there was a dude like that in the English department.

He had wrote the textbook and he was like very respected.

We thought he was a thousand years old.

This guy I'm sure is too.

Anyway,

his course is hard because organic chemistry is hard.

These are, and these are kids trying to become doctors.

This is pre-med.

You've got to know your chemistry.

So the course is so hard, they put out a petition asking for him to be fired.

And of course the school said, no.

I'm joking.

The school said, of course we will.

And they fired this guy for having a course.

And it's so interesting.

He said, after COVID, the kids came back.

He said, not only did they not study, they seemed to not know how to study.

He said they were misreading exam questions at an astonishing rate.

So we can talk about COVID in a minute and whether we handle that right.

But for now, I just want to ask about the kid question and what's going on in colleges question.

Because it does seem to me that the inmates have taken over the asylum.

Okay.

What if?

What if this isn't the kids, this is the parents?

And actually what's happened is that American universities have become so expensive, it's like, what, 60,000?

By the way, you can go to...

Cambridge University in the UK for 20,000.

So if anyone's looking for a bargain, head over there.

But

if you are a parent, and they referred to the parents, the people who pay the tuition fees, is what the email firing this guy referred to.

And actually, it's all these parents saying, hold on a second, this is a crappy deal.

I'm paying $60,000 a year, and little Johnny just failed organic chemistry.

I want a better product.

And I'm going to put this as much on the parents as on the kids, that they're the ones that are starting to say, you know, we have to have our kids pass everything.

Your kid doesn't pass.

He shouldn't pass because he probably shouldn't become a doctor.

I mean, this is doing no favors to the children.

And by the way, bring down the cost of American university.

This is the absolutely foreseeable result of the participation trophy society that these kids started.

They were all on the winner.

When they were playing six and seven year old soccer, everybody had to get a trophy, right?

Now those six and seven year olds who are all getting the trophies are now at NYU.

And they're like, what the hell are you talking about?

I've got to pass organic chemistry by studying.

Just give me my grade and let me go on.

And it is, we've done this, and I agree with Caddy, the parents who are running the soccer leagues set up this thing where, oh,

I don't want my child to have disappointment.

I don't want them to be, fail at anything.

And so my remedy for this, Bill, was I've made all of my children New York Met fans so they know pain and disappointment from the very beginning.

Yeah.

And send them to a university that does not cost an obscene amount of money, so if they fail, you don't feel like you've bought a crack.

It's ridiculous.

I have two children in college right now.

My oldest son's at Providence College in Rhode Island.

It's GoFriars.

It's $74,000 a year.

And I have a daughter at Notre Dame, and it's $72,000 a year.

It's insane.

And you'll pay more than a lot of people.

And now we're going to forgive loans, and we're going to do all the rest of this stuff so that there's no price pressure at all on colleges.

And then they're going to fire professors.

Why are we even bothering going?

You think they're lowering the standard of exams in places around the world?

You think China, they're saying, oh, let's make our organic chemistry exams easier so that our kids don't have to pass them at such a high level?

No, we're competing with kids around the world.

You have to pass organic chemistry.

Maybe the answer is better Adderall.

I'm not.

We could add it to the drug list.

I don't know what schedule it is.

Maybe we could make a deal on that, you know, trade the pot and the adder all.

We'll try Chris on that tomorrow.

Someday I'm going to get you high, and you're going to thank you.

Can't wait.

You know that hip's coming up.

But

there's always talk these days about anxiety among the younger generation.

And I think what you're alluding to, I think, is exactly where it comes from.

They have not been prepared for a world that does not revolve around them.

I keep reading about the way, and now this is celebrities, so it's celebrities, as we know, are not like us.

But I don't think it's that far from the way a lot of parents treat their children.

So I wouldn't mention the names, but I was reading about one celebrity couple who, their daughter has changed her name.

like five or six times.

She's like ten.

Like not even a gender thing.

Just let her do anything she wants.

Change your name.

How about you have a beautiful name?

We'll call you that.

When you become 18, you can change it if you want.

Another couple talked about how they don't ever have doors that close in the house, including the bathroom.

They've just given up on having any privacy because the kids will just walk in.

You know, how about...

Yeah, no.

Now that's it.

I know, but.

This is why you've never had kids, because you read all these stories.

There are some upsides to having kids.

That is...

Well, I mean,

maybe it's the Victorian in me, seen or not heard, but

I have daughters.

But that's not the only reason I don't have kids.

It's not just the stories.

I see children when I.

I do.

When I'm out in the world, I see them.

Look at you.

Like you're at the zoo.

Is that just saying, Bill?

They should be at the zoo.

They're out of control.

They're feral.

They look feral.

And

what?

And nobody is doing anything about it.

They're running wild.

This is what I see.

I also see,

okay?

I'm ready.

I watch television and movies.

Now, the way children are portrayed in every television show and movie, they can't all be lying about it.

And

they talk back to their parents.

I mean, including cursing it, you know, I call it the fuck you, mom generation.

I see it on, I've seen it in dozens of TV shows.

Fuck you, mom, and they storm out of the room.

You've just done a whole segment with Chris Wallace on fake news and like misinformation.

Do you think that's fake news?

I think that's drama.

You don't think, oh, really?

You don't think kids in this country say fuck you to their parents?

I think some always.

I think some always have.

But here's our day.

If any of my kids have been in the house,

not in the house I grew up in.

No, exactly.

Nobody did it in our house.

And by the way, you can stop it now, too.

But you know what it means?

Yes.

It means doing something.

But they don't.

I understand.

But we can't give into that, Bill.

No,

I'm not saying we should.

I'm just answering the question: why don't I have children?

Because when you have children,

you can't raise them in isolation.

Maybe no one wanted to have children with you, Bill.

What happened?

Maybe no one wanted to have children with you.

That I promised you.

Don't answer.

Don't answer it.

It's not good.

I consider it one of the great accomplishments of my life that I was able to.

Do this.

Right.

All right.

Time for new rules.

New Rule, now that there's a Scooby-Doo show that makes it official that Velma is gay, we have to talk about Fred and Barney.

They vacation together, go camping together, and their wives hate their guts.

Because whenever they walk in on them, they're not wearing pants.

New Rule, if you want to impress me with sports memorabilia, forget about showing me Aaron Judge's home run ball.

Show me your Herschel Walker autograph abortion card.

New rule, as tragic as it was that a riot at an Indonesian soccer match resulted in 125 people being trampled to death, soccer fans must look on the bright side.

Nobody used their hands.

New rule, Germans must resist the urge to explain to Americans the storied history and cultural significance of Oktoberfest.

Trust me, you had us at three-week festival of giant tits and unlimited beer.

New rule, now that author Helgard Mueller has written a book called President Donald J.

Trump, The Son of Man, the Christ.

Someone has to tell all the other sycophant Trump cultists, hold your cards, we have a bingo.

Although I think Helgard is ignoring the one glaring difference between Jesus and Trump.

Jesus took his beating like a man.

And finally, new rule, you can't be in charge of counting the votes if you think the votes from one of the parties don't exist.

Normally in a democracy, this is not something you'd have to say, but let me introduce you to Mark Fincham.

He is the Republican nominee for a Secretary of State in Arizona, and I'm guessing the bartender at an OK Corral theme party.

If he wins, it'll be his job to count the vote next time.

And Mark not only believes Trump won the 2020 election, he literally can't conceive that Biden could have.

Why?

He says, I can't find anyone who will admit that they voted for Joe Biden.

Yeah, forget the meticulous audits, the hand recounts, the independent verifications run by Republican officials.

This guy has never personally met a Biden voter, so they don't exist.

You know, I've never been to a BTS concert, but I believe K-pop exists.

And I got to say more than anything this is what is wrong with this country.

Our real division isn't between red and blue, it's between the people on both sides who aren't willing to mingle with Americans outside their political tribe and so have no idea what they're really like.

and the people on both sides who are willing to do that.

Of course Mark Fincham never met a Biden voter and probably thinks Democrats eat babies because everybody

because everybody he knows voted for Trump because he never leaves his hermetically sealed right-wing panic room.

And I could say the same of many liberals who would never even talk to a Trump voter.

I asked a friend of mine recently if he wanted to come to a little party I was having, and when he found out one of the guests had voted for Trump, he told me he wasn't coming because, quote, I wouldn't breathe the same air.

Okay, there's a word for people like this, assholes.

When we confine ourselves to bubbles, alternate points of view become not just objectionable, they're unfathomable.

This guy Fincham thinks Biden voters are literally a fiction, like wizards or the female orgasm.

When he was pressed on this and asked, isn't it possible that lots of people you don't know personally did vote for Biden?

He replied, in a fantasy world, anything's possible.

Mark, have you ever been to a Whole Foods?

Or talked to a woman under 50?

You know, in a nation based on pluralism, it's very dangerous that Americans are so in our silos.

And it's largely because we've stopped living amongst each other.

The latest census data revealed that Americans have hit the lowest rate of moving since they started tracking it in 1947.

And while some of that is economic, much of the reason Americans don't move anymore is they just wouldn't feel welcome.

in too many places in their own country.

Would anyone ride the New York City subway wearing a MAGA hat?

Would anyone go to a NASCAR race in a Biden t-shirt while they chant, fuck Joe Biden?

That's where we are now, where other parts of the country are seen as scary no-go zones.

America's like a prison now where the inmates think they need to join one of the gangs to survive.

And we dare not walk on the wrong side of the yard.

In January of 2021, the New York Times published the headline, they can't leave the Bay Area Fast Enough, and followed it up that July with the headline, tech workers who swore off the Bay Area are coming back.

Yeah, they saw all the red hats and were like, fuck this, I'll take the wildfires.

And the same would be true if an evangelical preacher showed up in West Hollywood.

Once he was done blowing all those guys, he would hate it.

All right, I'll be at the Fox Theater in Detroit tomorrow, October 8th, at the Klein in Chisico in Buffalo on the 9th.

The Mirage in Vegas, November 25th and 26th.

I want to thank my guests, Chris Christie, Caddy Kay, and Chris Wallace.

Now go to YouTube and join us on Overtime.

Thank you, folks.

Thanks, guys.

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

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