Ep. #612: Trace Adkins, Julia Ioffe, Jon Meacham

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

Hey, thank you very much.

I appreciate it.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, people.

Thank you, everybody.

I really appreciate that.

Okay.

All right, we got a big show, and

thank you.

I know.

Thank you.

I know why you're happy.

You're not in line waiting to see a dead body.

Jesus, I've been

watching the Queen's funeral.

Don't tell me how it ends.

I'm only on season three.

Can we get this lady buried?

I mean, I've thrown out bread twice since she died.

I'm telling you, this has been.

But I said this last week.

The British people do not fuck with them with the queen shit.

They take it seriously.

Did you see David Beckham stood in line for 13 hours?

David Beckham.

Really?

And they said, how did you prepare to do something so long and boring?

He said, I played soccer.

But we had a death in this country, too, this week.

Ken Starr died.

Ken, remember Ken Starr?

Little different reaction, yes.

Ken Starr, remember he prosecuted Clinton for the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

But the joke's on him because now that Roe versus Wade has been overturned, blowjobs are more popular than ever.

Oh, it's.

That abortion stuff is getting real out there.

West Virginia, just, I think it was yesterday, banned all abortions except for rape and incest, which is actually a step forward for them.

Well,

just to admit that incest is bad.

I'm kidding, Trace.

No, but there is a war between the states that is going on now in this country.

Our governor has set up billboards in all different states saying, you know what, if you can't get an abortion in your state, come here to California.

Get the abortion.

And then you saw the governors of Texas and Florida sending their migrants to blue states.

DeSantis in Florida sent all these Venezuelan migrants.

Did you see this to Martha's Vineyard?

He wanted to send a message to those migrants: like, if you come here, you will get a free plane ride to a wealthy island.

All the Democrats are mad.

Biden said he is using human beings as props, and all the Marines lined up behind him agreed.

No, and the guy who's running against DeSantis in Florida, Charlie Crist, we've had him on the show.

He's the Democrat there.

He said,

all the immigrants in Florida, the 4.5 million immigrants in Florida, are now wondering if they're next.

Again, not wondering, fingers crossed.

Please send me to this lovely island that's modern, that has abortion services, and likes us.

The migrants, first they went to Martha's Vineyard, and then today they sent them to Cape Cod.

Just throwing a stop in Nantucket, it's the same cruise I got my parents a few years back.

I don't.

America doesn't see anything the same, right?

Right and left.

The right, they see Venezuelan immigrants, they say, oh, axe murderers.

The left sees that and they go, oh, someone to raise my kids.

But listen to this, Sleepy Joe, I got to tell you, this guy comes back.

His approval rating is now 49%.

He's right up there.

And you know.

And you know who raised him up?

Gen Z.

The kids love Biden now.

And to show his appreciation to Gen Z, today he made a TikTok video of him doing the mashed potato.

All right, we've got a great show.

John Meachiev and Julia Yaffe are here, but first up, he is the multi-flatten and selling country music artist who stars in the new series on Fox Monarch Trace Atkins.

All right.

Hey, pal.

Great to see you.

All right.

That's funny.

Thank you.

Sometimes you have a good one.

I appreciate that.

We're indoors.

You can take the hat off.

Anyway.

No, you don't have to.

Yes, I want to see your face.

Okay.

All right.

Oh, is that shit on your shoes?

Anyway,

no.

Because we love each other.

And you're a big TV star now, I got to tell you.

Monarch, I watched the pilot.

Fucking juicy.

I loved it.

You're awesome in it.

Right.

And

I think people know they're calling it like the country empire, but yes, I mean, everything is like something else.

It's just entertaining.

You play a guy who's the king of country music, and your wife is Susan Sarandon.

Could not be more politically distanced.

Please tell me you and Susan Sarandon got to be fast friends.

We did.

I think.

I mean,

yeah, there were no issues.

I mean, we just, we went to work and we did our work and we stayed away from everything else.

And, you know, a couple of times, maybe, you know, a current event, something would happen that morning and she'd be watching the news and she'd say something to me about it.

But it was very brief, and we just didn't go there.

We just stayed away from it.

What's the point?

Exactly.

And isn't this the model for how we fix America?

I've been saying this for years.

Stop picking on what we don't agree.

Come on.

Yeah, well, I mean,

the grievance junkies, though,

they have to do that.

I mean, they have to have something to whine about.

And I don't get up in the morning looking for something to whine about.

just,

you know, my old man wouldn't tolerate it, and I don't either, really.

You know.

So

I'm confused because, I mean, in the, I hope I'm not giving away too much, but it already aired.

She's dying in the pilot, and it seems like at the end of the first episode, she's,

we don't see her dead, but it seems like it's going there.

But she's the star of the show?

Yeah.

Explain that to me.

Well if

oh I see.

If she dies.

Right.

There's a lot of flashback stuff.

Right everything nothing is in sequence anymore.

No, yeah, it's all just it's back and forth chronologically.

It's all over the place.

Right.

Well okay look speaking of Coming Back from the Dead you have a song on your new album

Even Jesus Was a Hippie.

I love this.

I mean, first of all, I used to say that.

Did you?

Back in politically incorrect days when you used to do the show.

Yeah.

Because we're always talking about you just being a hippie.

And you have a song with Snoop Dogg that's awesome.

By the way, that album, he's

an amazing album.

Thank you.

Let me plug it.

Yeah,

you made this during the pandemic, right?

Yeah, you know, like every other artist, you know, during the...

height of the pandemic or that whole year, you know, we didn't have shit to do, so we just stayed in the studio and just kept recording new songs.

And I think I ended up with 26, 27.

25.

Yeah, but we put 25 on the album because that was my 25th anniversary being in this business.

So I

the first one you say I'm a million miles away from who I used to be.

Yeah.

Which is something because we're both in our late 30s now.

So I very much relate to that point of view.

So what it puts some meat on that.

What are you talking about?

Who did you used to be that you are not now?

I was talking to somebody the other day.

I was doing an interview and they asked me about if I could go back and

tell the 25-year-ago me,

give him some advice.

I just would have said, just be patient, you know, and this is not going to go at the pace that you want it to go at.

You just have to be patient.

And I probably would have saved myself a lot of heartache.

But

I was in my my 30s when I got a record deal.

If that had happened for me when I was in my 20s, I would have blown it completely apart.

There's no way.

I mean, I didn't really have the maturity to deal with it

when it did happen.

But if it would have happened to me in my 20s, there's no way that I could have had it.

So I'm a million miles away from that guy that I was then.

Right, and you're sober?

Yeah.

Well,

not now.

Really, why is that synonymous with a plot?

I mean,

I don't know either.

I mean, I'm glad you are because I think you were a guy.

I mean, you've had a lot of stories.

And I feel, I've read a lot in the media.

I think the media is so negative.

I know you've been married four times.

I know one of your

wives shot you in the heart.

They never mentioned the three who didn't shoot you.

No, no.

No, they don't talk about that.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, you know,

I was never a happy drunk.

I just never was, you know, and, you know, 6'6, 260, pissed off drunk is not, you know.

People used to ask me, you know,

when I'd go to parties and I was trying to stay sober and they would try to get me to drink and I didn't really want to and they'd pressure me you know and I'd finally just go okay look here's what's going to happen if I drink I'm going to try to sleep with half the people in this room and I'm going to try to fight the other half and you can get in whichever line you want to get into because I'm going to have time

Doesn't matter to me which line you're in because I'm going to have fun with both of them.

Right.

And there is a line in one of the songs there where you talk about, which I found very gratifying because it's something I've also said for the longest time, but I hear very few people agree with it.

You say, I wish I could say I had no regrets,

but I got plenty.

And I hear people all the time when they're asked that question, oh, no regrets.

I'm like, who are these people?

No regrets.

Every day I have a regret.

Every day I could have done something better.

I don't get it.

I don't understand those people that say they have no regrets.

I feel like that's their insecurity, not to be able to admit it.

Yeah,

I got volumes of them.

How can you not?

That's what life is.

Yeah.

Well, there's another great song you have.

It's a duet with Blake Edwards.

I like Blake Edwards, Blake Shelton.

Oh, he's going to be mad.

What?

He's going to be mad at you.

Well, he shouldn't be.

I once did a little tribute to him and his wife on this show.

Oh, yeah.

Same thing I was saying about you and Sarandon.

Oh.

Saying that, like, if he could marry Gwen Stefani and they could make that work, that should be a model to America.

If she could marry him.

Well,

my point was if red and blue could come together, people who are not really of the same backgrounds, it could work in their house.

It can work in the house of America.

Anyway, I like him.

I do too.

I love him.

And he, you know, when they got married, it was a very small affair.

You know, it was COVID and all that, and they didn't want to invite a lot of people.

And I just called him and said, I wasn't going to come anyway.

You know, I didn't want to see that woman throw her life away marrying you.

I wasn't going to come witness that, you know.

So

I wasn't going to go anyway.

But

I know you're kidding, but

really.

But

the song you do with him, I love the title and I love the song.

It's If I Was a Woman, I'd Want a Man Like Me.

I'd love a Man Like Me, yeah.

When you were writing that, did you worry that the other 58 genders that are represented

on Facebook would be offended that they weren't brought into that, that it was not inclusive enough?

I wasn't concerned about it at all.

I don't think about that.

You know, I actually wrote that with Cherie Austin, a young lady, great songwriter, wrote that with Cherie and Jeff Bates and my dear friend Kenny Beard, who's passed away now.

But yeah, no, I didn't think about that.

I just thought it was funny.

It was just funny.

No, it's very funny.

Who won the last election?

I'm sorry.

But I sneaked that.

Joe Biden won the last election.

Oh, there you go.

And this, and you know,

what did you think I was going to say?

I don't know, but you know, I thought Joe Biden made a bit of a mistake in the speech he made a couple of weeks ago when he talked about MAGA nation, because MAGA, I've said this for years, you can hate Trump, you can't hate the people who like him or voted for him.

It doesn't mean they're all crazy, it doesn't mean they're all racist, doesn't mean they're all bad people.

The people who think that Biden didn't win the election, yes, they're a little crazy and they're not factually based.

But we have to come together.

We have to be able to do shows with Susan Sarandon and marry Gwen Stefani

and love each other like you and I do.

That's what I'm talking about.

Yeah, that's what you're talking about.

All right.

Susan Saranda's adorable, man.

I love it.

All right.

It's a great show.

I'm so glad you got a TV show and you're a big TV star now.

Don't forget your little people that you love.

All right.

Trace Atkins, everybody.

Thank you, pal.

All right, let's see each other soon.

All right, let's meet our panel.

Hey there.

All right, he is is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and author whose new book is And There Was Light, Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle.

John Meacham is over here.

And she's a founding partner and Washington correspondent for the media company Puck.

Julia Yaffe is back with us.

Okay.

So, John, your book's about Lincoln.

I use the phrase, the war between the states.

Yep.

Or war between the states.

I don't know if they use that phrase anymore.

They did when I was in school.

The Civil War is sometimes still called the war between the states.

It depends on where you are.

Right.

War in the South.

Yeah, yeah, the war of more than aggression.

But I feel like, more than aggression.

But I mean, but it was the states against the states.

And I feel like with some of this stuff we're seeing now, the billboards in other states, the sending migrants to other states, I feel like the states themselves are clawing out territory and fighting with each other in a way we haven't seen,

Which is, I think, rather disturbing where this might be heading.

It is.

So maybe it's a war among the states, which is a little different.

But I think what you're looking at here is, I thought this was like the 1930s for a long time.

Dictatorship on the march abroad,

democracy under assault here,

and

great tensions,

radios changing everything,

more people living in cities than on farms the first time, all the kinds of things that sort of echo now.

I fear that the evidence of the last couple of years is that this is more like the 1850s, where we don't simply disagree

about the

ends of politics.

We disagree about the understanding of reality itself.

Politics is seen less as a mediation of differences, which is what it's supposed to be, and you come up with a solution to a given problem for a given period of time, and instead it's total culture war.

And I think that

the

rot at the core of the American struggle right now is that not enough people are willing to sacrifice their short or middle term interest for the long-term interest of the good, of the whole.

And I think that's what we're called on to do.

And they see their fellow citizens as the enemy.

That I feel like is the problem, is that the fellow citizen is the enemy.

It used to be Russia or somebody else.

Yeah.

Martians, somebody.

Now it's...

If we see each other, yeah, if we see each other as rivals and enemies instead of as neighbors, then the democratic lowercase D covenant is at risk.

And it's, look, if everybody loved their neighbor, Jesus wouldn't have had to command it.

You know, if everybody already does something, you don't think to make a law about it.

So it's always counterintuitive.

Julia knows this in her world better than I do.

Democracy is very counterintuitive.

Why on earth do I want to love my neighbor as myself?

I don't want to do that.

I'm fine.

But

practicality tells us, experience tells us, that I lend a hand so that when I need one, I might get one back.

And if democracy were easy, everybody would do it.

The Civil War, in many ways,

it's about slavery, it's about power,

and it's about whether popular government can long endure or whether an aristocracy of race was going to prevail.

That's what that was about.

What's your world he's talking about?

He said, Her world.

Russia.

Oh, Russia.

Russia, the transatlantic world, you know, Europe.

Your world is our world.

It is, yeah.

I mean, but we're just living in it.

Yeah.

Welcome.

But I mean, it is true.

And I think what we saw on January 6th, and this is what drove me nuts about the commentary on that day, which was so much of which was,

this is America.

This is not who we are.

I'm used to seeing this in Russia or in Burkina Faso.

Well, guess what?

Look out your window.

It is happening here.

And Americans are not genetically different or genetically superior to other people.

It is a human trait.

It is a human trait.

John and I were discussing this backstage since Adam and Eve to be drawn to strongman leaders that have very simple explanations for why things are wrong in your life, that it's not about anything you've done.

It's about that person down the street who looks different than you, that worships a different God than you.

We can blame him and we'll fix everything by kicking him out or killing him.

There was a poll that just came out recently that a third of Americans would prefer a strong unelected leader to a weak elected leader.

We are not different from Russians.

We are not different from Hungarians.

The only thing that is different is that we've had this framework for over 200 years that we have all collectively bought into.

this collective experiment that we've bought into, but it's something you have to keep going.

You have to keep pushing those pedals.

It is not a natural thing to do.

I mean, I'll tell you some of the other things that were in that poll.

Yes, a third of Americans want a strong, unelected leader, would prefer that to a weak, elected one.

And this is, by the way, bipartisan.

42% Republicans say that, 31% Democrat.

So more Republicans, but it's not like the Democrats aren't in this.

35%.

Yeah, 35% say president should be able to remove judges.

34% say they should prosecute, should be able to prosecute members of the news media.

I say

where this comes from is lack of education.

They don't know what America is supposed

to teaching history and we stop teaching civics and we teach bullshit.

So they don't know what America is supposed to be.

So when America veers off from what it's supposed to be, judges, get rid of judges.

Nobody taught them about the separation of powers, that the checks and balances are the fundamental part of our country and why we are America.

If you don't know that, what do you care about?

You just care about the immediate.

But guess why we stopped teaching them history?

There are a lot of people who don't want to teach our children real history.

All right, that's the end of my show.

So don't blow it now.

That's the end of what I'm talking about.

But go?

I mean, look, look, John Adams tried this, right?

We passed a sedition act to prosecute printers, publishers he didn't like.

Every president since then has wanted to do it, but haven't been able to.

We passed an Alien Act to deport people.

This has been going on since the 1790s.

These forces ebb and they flow.

At our best,

we can make them ebb.

But it's really, really hard.

And we also have to be careful about, I'm uncomfortable with the language about we need to get back to something, we need to restore something.

As a multiracial democracy, this country is 57 years old.

We were not a

in my part of the world, in the South, we lived under functional apartheid until 1965.

So when you say you want to make America great again or restore something,

what are we talking about exactly?

And so the first truly integrated presidential election we had was in 1968.

Perhaps not coincidentally, in that election, Richard Nixon wins barely, George Wallace got 13.5% of the vote and carried five states in the Electoral College on a Jim Crow platform 50 years ago.

So this is all, we're always five minutes away from chaos if we don't decide that it's not just the letter of the Constitution, but the spirit of the Constitution.

You seem more alarmist than you.

I feel like we've had this running argument on the show for a few years where I was the alarmist and you were like, please, I'm the historian.

Things have been bad before.

Okay, so.

John Tyler once said.

Yes, so I know that somebody can some asshole in the Senate.

Okay, so Maggie Haberman, the star reporter for the New York Times, she's got a new book with some quotes from Trump.

And I just wanted, these are some things I've said on the show

about Trump.

I didn't see him leaving.

I don't think he's going to leave.

I don't see this man giving up.

He's not going to leave until he wants to leave.

I don't think he would even leave if he lost the election in 2020.

People have been saying I'm an alarmist and I'm crazy, but I'm saying he's not going to leave.

Here's her quote from Trump.

I'm just not going to leave.

And you were always arguing with me.

Everybody was like, oh, Bill, you smoke too much pot.

Well, apparently I smoke just the right amount.

But this is, anyone, this is important.

This is important.

Because, and also when you quote yourself, it's like the preacher who said, as our Lord said, and rightly.

So there's that.

And I know that's a vernacular you like.

You were right.

The important thing and what we have to try to save is that he had to leave.

It was as close a goddamn run thing as you can possibly imagine.

But the system did hold just barely.

Well, okay, but we're only halfway through the movie.

Because he's not gone.

Yes.

Okay.

Here's my question now.

We're almost to the midterm election.

The primary has just ended.

No more primaries.

There's not going to be any legal action.

Even though Trump is vulnerable in a number of places now.

In Georgia, they're going after him.

Certainly Certainly, the January 6th Committee could turn into the Merrick Garland.

Okay, now we're actually going after him legally.

New York State.

Okay, so no one's going to do anything before the midterms, right?

What happens after the midterms?

And does what happens in the midterms affect what they do legally to Trump after the midterms?

Can I just say, if we're going to quote ourselves here on this.

Oh, Jesus Christ.

It was just as you can.

There he is again.

You're the only one allowed to tell jokes?

No, I'm sorry.

Go ahead.

I went on the Daily Show back in January 2018 and I said you're going to have to scrape him off the walls even if he loses.

And the thing is, as brilliant as you are, all of us who have ever reported on or lived in

or studied the history of or the present of authoritarian regimes and how they start and how they grow roots and entrench themselves knew and recognized this flavor of leader.

And it was very clear from the outset that this very well might be, if

the institutions didn't hold, that this very well might be one man or one person, one vote, one time.

That this kind of man, once he's in office, does not leave voluntarily.

That was very clear.

And those of us who had seen this movie before many, many times were saying this from the beginning.

We're leaning on the alarm, and we we were all called hysterical and alarmist by people, mostly older white people, who said, Oh, but we're different and we have institutions and blah, blah, blah.

But institutions, as Mitch McConnell knows very well, are just buildings with people in them.

And it very much depends what kind of people you shove into those buildings.

Well,

here's who we're shoving in.

There's

118 people on the ballot, Republicans, who are election deniers.

And I read they have a 95% chance of winning, these 118.

But it'll be interesting if they will question their own election.

Will they doubt the result of their election if they're not going to be able to do that?

I can't do that.

No.

Why?

I know it's puzzling.

Yeah, we can work on that.

No, but that means, say, 100 out of the 118 win.

That means there will be 100 people

in Congress who don't think the president is legitimate and didn't really win.

That's an astounding departure from anything that I know of that's ever happened in America before.

Even, I don't know, John, you're the historian, but.

Even Franklin Pierce, yeah.

No,

the key thing is.

Yeah, of course.

That was for you.

Obviously.

That was for you.

That's the beginning of the end of the Constitutional Order, because the Constitutional Order requires, as Julia said, it requires character.

And the character of the leaders is vital, but the characters of the led too, because leaders both mirror and make reality the feelings of their followers.

That will lead to civil chaos.

And it's important that they're in the House and they're deniers.

It's even more important if they're in the states.

Because in a state, and there's important Supreme Court cases coming up on this,

it is a deeply, deeply problematic question of whether they would simply overturn the will of the people.

Maybe it goes into the courts.

This was what the chaos was the strategy.

I mean, they've said this, the Trump people have said this: we're going to create so much chaos out of January 6th and forward that it might have to go to the House.

And if it goes to the House, Trump would have won.

So, just quick prediction: what happens to Trump legally after the midterms?

Wait, this isn't Putin's America.

You can speak.

No, I don't know.

Do you have a magic eight ball like anything?

I don't have a magic eight ball, but we're on a show like that does.

I don't know.

I mean,

nobody knows.

That's why it's a prediction.

Do it.

My prediction is Merrick Garland does something.

Why?

Why?

Because he's guilty.

Because Trump is guilty, and you can't let this stand.

You can't.

But it's Merritt Garland.

Well, we'll see.

People were saying that about Joe Biden.

Joe Biden was the big loser, and it turned out he's not such a loser.

It turns out he found his.

Yeah, it just took a little while longer.

And we don't, and culturally, we're not attuned to that.

We're not set to actually wait, which is what we have to do.

And I think my sense is that General Garland will pursue, will follow.

It was an attempted coup.

For fuck's sake.

So why not charge him before the election?

Why wait till the party that sponsored the coup gets rewarded in these?

Because it probably would send the election in the other direction.

Because it would look like you were doing something just before the election.

Didn't we learn that lesson with Hillary Clinton and James Comey?

You don't do stuff right before the election.

We kind of had that rule.

Let's keep that one norm.

But we can't even do coups right in this country.

I mean, usually

when a coup fails,

the coup plotters go to jail or worse.

I mean,

that is one precedent

we need to set in this country.

I think Merrick Collin will come to that conclusion.

Yes, there are absolute reasons not to do it, but you can't set the precedent that you can try a coup and your only punishment is you fail.

Well, you're also, this is one of these moments where when you ask the question about Trump and his legal jeopardy, you have to ask which one.

Right, so you're talking about the coup.

There's also classified information, which is an unfolding investigation.

I think you're right.

I think one of the, you know, there's a really interesting revision going on about whether President Ford was right to pardon Nixon.

Right.

That in the fullness of time, the idea that a president is above the law was a dangerous precedent to set.

And this notion that you can't indict a president, all that, I don't, we don't have a monarch in this country.

That's the point.

No one is above the law.

European countries indict and

convict former presidents all the time.

Their democracies are doing just fine.

That's what I'm saying.

And the fact that we can't, okay, we can't indict presidents and then we can't indict former presidents.

So like they can do anything.

Right.

But the good news is that Biden is up to 49% in the polls and he's killing it with voters who are frustrated and barely give a shit.

I'm not kidding.

Look at this.

There's a new category of voter they're calling the meh voter.

They're not enthusiastic about either side.

Look at this.

Among voters who say they are somewhat disapprove of Biden, 33% point lead.

And you know, when you're on their list, the DNC fundraising list, which I am because I gave a million dollars to the Democrats a couple of times, so they obviously I get like eight letters.

No, no, please.

I get like eight letters a day.

I'm happy with one of those donations.

But so they're going after the meh voter.

Look at this letter.

I'm going to read it to you, the one I got.

Would you like to see the meh?

I thought you were.

This is their latest fundraising letter.

It says, William, are you mildly enthused?

William, there are times when hope unites a nation and the promise of a better day brings out the best in all Americans.

This is not one of those times.

But our democracy is in danger.

This is your chance to tell President Biden you've heard of him.

And you stand behind him 30 to 40 percent.

Now more than ever, we need Joe Biden in Washington doing whatever it is he does.

We're reaching out to you today because you haven't donated to the Democratic Party this election cycle, but we see you spend $6.50 on a Venti soy frappuccino every morning.

Can we count on you for a $2 donation?

How about 50 cents?

How about you pledge not to give any money to the other side?

Be a part of the growing number of voters who only somewhat disapprove of what we're doing.

There are so many good reasons to give Democrats your vote.

We could be worse.

There's no other option.

The other guy's a dick.

And William, we need your tepid support to

almost make it happen.

Can we count on your vote if it's not raining?

Remember, the Republicans want to cut taxes on billionaires, the same billionaires who refused to release the Batgirl movie.

Donate now and join Joe Biden and the Democrats in saying, I'm mad as hell and I'm going to take it anymore.

All right, so that's how we're going to do it.

So

I got to say, I've done my share of jokes about Joe Biden, but when I saw this poll last week that something like 73% of Americans think there should be an age limit, and I think 40% of them think that age should be 70.

i all i could think of is only a country as dumb as this one would think something like that

the reason why he's doing well is because he's old

thank you one guy

he's been around the block he has the experience every other culture gets this when you're young you're beautiful and then you get wiser and less cute

but you're wiser could we take advantage of the wiser part i mean he's killing it in a lot of ways, including Russia.

He was the guy who understood.

Everybody else was like, what are we throwing money?

Russia's obviously going to win.

And he said, let's see.

Maybe Ukraine can win.

And now Ukraine is winning.

They kicked Russia's ass this week.

He's my friend.

I help him when I can, so take this in that context.

I I believe that if you support American democracy, it is important to support this president.

And one of the fascinating things to me is there's this part of the Republican world that seems to think that there's this mythical universe.

It's like Brigadoon.

And there's a place where there is no Trump.

And it's just going to all go away.

And

what this moment requires, it seems to me, is support for

thoughtful support, reasoned support, not blind support,

but basically believing that Joe Biden, who has more experience in the Senate and his vice president than any other president in American history by far, he was in the Senate and vice president longer than, say,

Theodore Roosevelt, John Kennedy, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama were alive when they became president.

And so you have this moment where a guy born in World War II, raised in the Cold War, comes of age during civil rights, lives in an era that we now look back on as an era of at least workable consensus,

and who deeply understands the threat to these institutions.

and wants to rescue them, not for the sake of rescuing them, but because they beat any alternative.

And one of the things you have to ask: if you're on the far left, you know, and there are people who say, oh, Electoral College, Senate, all bad, you know, whatever.

Okay, fine, what are you going to replace it with?

And

basically,

what history tells us, experience tells us, is that as imperfect as this system is, it's still beating all the others.

I mean,

he got things done on climate

that nobody was

getting done before.

And again, this Ukraine thing.

I mean, I just, nobody saw this coming.

I think this is just another nail in the coffin about experts.

I mean, nobody thought that Russia was going to do anything but roll over Ukraine.

And of course, first six months ago, or whenever the war started, they were beaten back from Kiev, and then they thought, okay, well, they'll just take the East.

And now they're getting pushed out of the East.

And I think for a guy like Putin, who's a strong man, the worst thing that can happen is that you don't look strong.

Then you're just the Wizard of Oz after Toto pulls the curtain back.

Right.

Now,

I always thought, and I must say, I always thought Putin is

untoppable, not Putin.

But I thought Russia couldn't lose this war.

Is Putin not being untoppable,

the next thing that's going to be the shocking thing that we should have seen coming?

Well, I think it's still a little too early, William, if I may call you that.

So I think, to be fair, I think the Biden administration has done an absolutely amazing job on Ukraine from the very beginning, the way they've weaponized intelligence, the way they have,

by using that intelligence, prepared the American public and gotten European and international allies on board before the invasion even happened.

So that when it did happen, everybody was on the same page and sanctions were rolled out swiftly to the point where the Europeans themselves were surprised how quickly they were able to happen and how unified a front they presented.

As for Putin and this being, we still have to see, but what we did see at this summit that just happened in Uzbekistan was a very different Putin.

The Putin who was late on purpose as a show of strength and as a show of importance, he made Queen Elizabeth wait.

He made the Pope wait 45 minutes.

That was his way of showing my time is more important than your time.

Well, Kanye does that too.

To be fair.

It's a show of

strength, right, in a very obnoxious way.

But this time, he was waiting for the president of Kyrgyzstan,

whom he probably does not even see as a full human being because he's quite a racist guy.

He also got smacked down by Modi of India.

China was very clearly not happy with him.

But I mean, when you're a little too fascist for Modi, you know, it's not a good thing.

Right, so he is vulnerable is what we're saying.

But it's interesting that

when he isn't strong,

when the others can smell the chum in the water, that

he's a wounded animal,

everybody makes him wait.

And nobody treats him like a strong man anymore.

Everybody can tell he's wounded.

So it's a little too early to talk about him being toppled.

Okay, but could it be the case that Russia needs a

I don't want to say a second revolution because we think of the 1917 revolution, but let's say that the revolution they had in 1991 where the the Soviet Union was toppled, that was their beginning as a free country.

As you were saying before, we've had a couple of revolutions.

I mean, your book is about Lincoln, Lincoln, you know, a second rebirth of freedom.

We didn't really finish the revolution just when you declare it.

You need like a second one and then maybe a third one, like you said we had in

the 60s with the Civil Rights Movement.

Maybe what happened in 1991 was the beginning, because it really didn't give Russia freedom, and now this will be their second revolution, like we had one.

I don't know.

I just keep thinking back to what

back in 2013, what Gliub Pavlovsky, who was the guy who helped engineer Putin's very first presidential election in 2000, told me.

He said, when this system falls, it'll fall in one day.

And the system that will replace it will look exactly the same.

Because if you look back over the last hundred years, no matter how many revolutions they had, the February one in 1917 followed by the October 17 revolution, the 1991 revolution,

every system

is one that at its center is a cult of personality surrounded by a bureaucracy and a secret police.

And the Russian people kind of seem to love it.

It's an element, look, we're in an elemental struggle.

And people really, people like me, God help them, will look back on this moment because there are two great perennial forces.

There is an authoritarian, totalitarian, Thomas Hobbes, I want to be strong, I want to run everything.

But there's also, I'm going to be free.

I'm going to make my family, I'm going to try to create prosperity.

And these two forces, democracy, autocracy, are

universal.

And right now, we have a president who's actually putting his money on democracy.

And by the way, I'll just wrap it up by saying:

let's not forget that

this Ukrainian victory would not be happening if Trump was president.

There is a 0.0 chance.

Trump is also over 70 and proof that age does not bring you wisdom all the time.

Of course not.

No one was saying that for a man.

But if Trump was president, he would have sided with his autocratic friend.

He would have rolled over to Russia like a dog.

All right.

Thank you, panel.

Time for new rules.

Okay, New Roll, the designer of the San Diego Padres new uniforms, has to admit, I was just fucking with you.

I can't believe you put them on.

Guys, you don't look like San Diego's baseball team.

You look like Del Taco's softball team.

This is the first meeting on the mound ever to discuss what shoes go with this shit

New Will stop trying to sell me the mood ring toilet seat

The toilet seat that changes color to tell you what your mood is when you sit on it

You know if you're in there for more than 15 minutes, I'll tell you what your mood is

You're in the mood to play Candy Crush while your spouse deals with the kids

New rule, somebody needs to break it to the British children leaving marmalade sandwiches for the queen that heaven probably isn't real.

But if it is, they're not serving British food.

New Rule, Alex Jones and QAnon must investigate my theory that Queen Elizabeth didn't die of natural causes, but was actually murdered by agents of Big Flower.

Think about it.

Who benefits from the Queen's death?

Florists.

Working in coordination with the Paddington bear industry.

And do I have to spell it out for you who produced the original Paddington movie, The Jews?

New Rule, now that Ryan Reynolds is the latest celebrity to make a public event of having a colonoscopy, someone must tell him, Ryan, no one wants to see your ass.

Well, except for most women.

And gay men.

And probably the straight guys who want to broad down with you.

All right, you got me.

I'll take two copies on Blu-ray.

New rule, the people at the hospital where Ken Starr died have to tell us if his last words were, Jizz Dane.

And finally, New Rule, you can get creative with a novel, a TV show, or a movie, but history books, that's not supposed to be fan fiction.

How we teach our kids history has become a big controversy these days, with liberals accusing conservatives of wanting to whitewash the past, and sometimes that's true.

Sometimes they do.

But plenty of liberals also want to abuse history to control the present.

And last month, a scholar named James Sweet caught hell for calling them out for doing just that.

He criticized a phenomenon known as presentism,

which means judging everyone in the past by the standards of the present.

It's the belief that people who lived 100 or 500 or 1,000 years ago really should have known better.

Which is so stupid.

It's like getting mad at yourself for not knowing what you know now when you were 10.

Stupid me spending all that time raising sea monkeys and

playing with slot cars and jerking off to a Playboy in the barn.

Who doesn't have moments from your past that make you cringe?

Who hasn't said, I can't believe I said that?

I can't believe I wore that.

I can't believe I thought that.

I can't believe I did that.

You ate dirt.

You wanted to be a ghostbuster.

You shoplifted gum.

You tried to be a white breakdancer, you

wanted to marry Scott Bayo.

I read Anne Rand.

I smoked.

I was into numerology.

Yes, because we hadn't then grown into the persons we would become.

And humanity writ large is just the collective version of that.

Did Columbus commit atrocities?

Of course.

But people back then were generally atrocious.

Everybody who could afford one had a slave, including people of color.

The way people talk about slavery these days, you'd think it was a uniquely American thing that we invented in 1619.

But slavery throughout history has been the rule, not the exception.

The Sumerians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, Romans, the Arabs, British, the early Americans, all the way up through R.

Kelly.

The Holy Bible is practically an owner's manual for slaveholders.

The word slave comes from Slav, because so many Slavic people were enslaved, and they're as white as the Hallmark channel.

Who do you think gathered the slaves from the interior of Africa to sell to slave traders?

Africans, who also kept their own slaves.

We're a species prone to making others of our species our bitch.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again.

Humans are good people.

And the capacity for cruelty is a human thing, not a white thing.

That's the truth, even though it doesn't jibe with the current narrative.

But in today's world, when truth conflicts with narrative, it's the truth that has to apologize.

Being woke is like a magic moral time machine where you judge everybody against what you imagine you you would have done in 1066 and you always win.

Presentism.

Yeah, this professor is right.

It's just a way to congratulate yourself about being better than George Washington because you have a gay friend and he didn't.

But if he was alive today, he would too.

And if you weren't alive, if you were alive then, you wouldn't.

Portland Public Schools has a plan now to teach kids that the idea of gender being mainly binary was brought here by white colonizers.

The curriculum guide says: when the United States was colonized by white settlers, their views around gender were forced upon the people already living here.

Not even Star Trek would try that story,

Where they discover a planet and give them separate bathrooms.

It's like they finally discovered a unified theory of wokeness, incorporating all their ideas about race, gay, gender, and colonizers, like the New World was a great big diverse dance club and the pilgrims were the bridge and tunnel crowd who came in and ruined everything.

There's a play called i Joan currently being presented in London, written by Charlie Josephine, who identifies as non-binary and uses they, them pronouns.

And it portrays Joan of Arc as, surprise, non-binary with they, them pronouns.

Which, if you think about it, makes even less sense because Joan, being French, spoke a language where every noun is masculine or feminine.

Joan says in the play, I'm not a girl.

I don't fit that word as if she's a character on euphoria.

Now, it's true Joan of Arc did wear pants, but that's what the soldiers wore when she was soldiering.

But in the retelling, Joan would rather die than stop wearing men's clothing.

Okay, Joan of Arc wasn't executed by the fashion police.

Her trial went on for over two months.

We have the transcript.

And not once did she complain about being misgendered.

She had bigger fish to fry, like herself.

Too soon, it was 1431.

Which is not to say that there isn't truth to the old rubric that history is written by the winners, and it is subjective.

Napoleon said history is just a fable we all agree on.

And he should know because he was a deaf woman named Diane.

But it's also true that much of history is indisputably factual because we have artifacts and coins and birth records and archaeology and somebody in Mesopotamia kept a record of how much grain they ate.

It's not all up in the air.

to change or delete or make up based on what makes you feel better today.

A couple of years ago, they made a movie called The Aeronauts about the scientists who broke the record for the highest altitude in a balloon.

In fact, they were both men, but the movie made one of them a woman because, as the director explained, representation is important.

So true.

Women never get enough credit for the things they didn't do.

I think Meryl Streep should play sea biscuit so every girl will know she too can grow up to be a racehorse.

All right.

That's our show.

I'll be at the Fox Theater in Detroit, October 8th.

The Hulu in New York.

November 12th at the Maui Arts Center in Hawaii, and December 30th and 31st in Honolulu, 31st.

Check out Club Random on YouTube.

Good night, everybody.

I want to thank John Meacham, Julia Yati, and Trisa.

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.