Ep. #609: B.J. Novak, Catherine Rampell, Noah Rothman

Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

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

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was quick.

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

Now, Charlie's sober.

He's gonna tell you the truth.

How do I present this with any class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

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

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

How are you doing?

Thank you, people.

I appreciate it.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

I

thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

All right.

Thank you very much.

Please.

You have a big show.

Thank you.

I know you're so, I'm happy to.

I don't know why.

I hate to ruin your summer,

but

it's my job to report the news.

And there's this terrible fight going on now in Ukraine.

You heard there's a war there?

Oh, my gosh.

And they're fighting near the biggest nuclear plant in Europe.

And if they break it, this could be bad.

Yeah, they say that it could, the fallout could spread to all these Eastern European countries, Slovenia, Slovakia.

It could threaten Trump's entire wife supply.

So we're looking at this situation right here.

Oh.

Trump.

When is this man not going to be in the news?

Now we're in like week three of Boxgate.

You know.

When they went down to Mar-a-Lago, the FBI to get his boxes.

And, you know, every week now we hear different stories about why he is okay to have taken these from MAGA land.

You know, it's like they weren't classified.

Okay, they were classified, but then they were magically declassified.

And the latest, they're planted.

The FBI planted them.

In a related story, Deshaun Watson today said that two dozen massage therapists planted his dick in their hand.

Rudy Giuliani, he has a thing.

He said, it's okay that Trump stole this stuff because, you know, they're in a place that's just as safe as the place they originally were.

And everybody knows that's the rule.

You're allowed to take shit if it's in a safe place.

I wouldn't try this in real life.

I didn't rob that drugstore.

No, it's just in my safe house.

There's stuff like this.

And oh!

And now it's funny, the Republicans, very against the FBI now.

They were always the law and order people, right?

Now it's like defund the FBI, get rid of the FBI.

The FBI,

am I the only one remembering this?

They're the squares.

They iron their underwear.

That's who the FBI is.

They're dull.

They're from the 1950s.

It's like bitching that there's nothing good on CBS.

I get CBS.

We're at CBS.

We love CBS.

See the fucking thing thing fall on my head.

But I tell you, this strategy is working.

We're coming to the end of primary season.

Trump has won 85% of the people he endorsed.

Liz Cheney got tossed on her ass in Wyoming by 37 points.

The Republicans there were like, who likes elections now, bitch?

But the truth is, most residents of Wyoming just relate more to Trump because most residents of Wyoming are cows.

And

the person who's taking Liz Cheney's spot there in Wyoming, named Harriet Hageman,

used to be an anti-Trumper.

Called him all the names that people call Trump, and then, of course, wanted a job, switched up, and Trump loves.

This is what Trump loves the most, when he flips someone who used to be against him, it's like a pimp turning out a virgin.

You know, it's like.

But

he's got four investigations now against him.

And the people he worked with are being rolled up.

Weizman is a moneyman guy.

He pleaded guilty this week, 15 counts.

Rudy Giuliani had to sit for six hours at testimony.

Lindsey Graham, a federal judge, said he must testify there in Georgia about Trump trying to fuck with the election there.

And Lindsey Graham said he is not going to cooperate, but he always wanted to be the target of a probe.

I don't know what that means, but

we make little jokes.

So, and it's so funny, this really says it all about America and the world.

Our scandals are about like coups.

undoing real elections.

You know what a scandal is in Europe?

They're all upset this week about the

Prime Minister of Finland, Sana Marin.

She's 36.

There she is.

And they got her on tape partying.

Yeah, this is the, that's the,

in her defense, it is still hot girl summer.

But

that's

the prime minister of Finland.

That is not fair.

They get that.

We get this.

But

people are saying, like, Margaret Thatcher wouldn't do that.

Yeah, Margaret Thatcher couldn't do that, okay?

I mean, she's a millennial.

Just lucky she wasn't doing it on her phone, you know.

Thank you, one guy.

That guy loved it.

And now, Prime Minister Marina is just an answer to this.

She's saying, well, you're drugs.

She said, I've never used illegal drugs.

And as you can see from the video, my hips don't lie.

Why is everyone in the world,

everyone has to weigh in on this?

In Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman said, I'll give you $10 million for the dancing girl.

And

they asked Biden about it.

He said, I have no comment.

He said, I've always had a good relationship with the Prime Minister of Finland, and her hair smells terrific.

All right, we've got a great show.

We have Noah Rothman, Catherine Rampel.

But first up, he is an actor, writer, and director of the new film Vengeance out in theaters now and available on demand.

B.J.

Novak is on the air.

How are you?

Hey, Don.

To see you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Look at you.

All grown up.

All grown up.

Thank

All right, I'm going to, let's not bury the lead.

I loved your movie.

I told you that two seconds ago.

Finish your thought.

That's my joke I stole from Carl Reiner.

It is great.

I love this movie.

So it's very hard to give a synopsis of a good movie.

It's easy to do it with the bad movies.

Okay.

But since the title is Vengeance, I don't want people to, it sounds like you're trying to be John Wick, you know, because people do that.

Right.

They get to a certain point in their career and they're like, I need a franchise where I'm a badass killer.

This is not the beginning of a franchise where you're a badass killer.

Probably not, yeah.

But give a shot at just, because people say, what's it about?

Whenever you say, I saw a great movie, what's it about?

Well,

I saw your segment about the obsession with movies that have the word vengeance in it.

And

I smiled at thinking that maybe you would see this title coming up, but it is in a way about that.

It is, why are we obsessed with vengeance?

And it's about a sort of journalist and podcaster played by myself, kind of a shallow guy, a little lost, and he finds what he thinks is the story of a lifetime, his big break, when this woman has died of an opiate overdose, a girl he was kind of hooking up with.

The family thought they were more serious.

It's kind of an awkward comic beginning in a way.

And he goes to this small town in Texas where the family thinks, A, they were very close, and B, she was murdered and need to avenge her death.

My character wants to not be involved in a vengeance plot, but does want to talk about why do these people in this red state feel they need vengeance about something that doesn't need vengeance for.

And it becomes sort of a, his social thriller story becomes more of a personal surprising journey.

And it's funny.

And it's a comedy.

Yeah.

But I mean, it's the good kind of comedy, not a jokey comedy.

They're all the lots of laughs, but I think it comes out of character.

That's one reason I liked it so much.

I also related a lot because I'm a blue guy who goes to red states all the time, and I love them.

Right.

And this is, I think, what I got from it, something that your character goes through too.

How could these people, who I really don't agree with politically, I love them so much.

I see that in the, right?

I mean, your character.

Are you speaking for yourself or my character?

Both.

Well, sure.

I mean, I think what's great about exploring something through comedy or through drama, which in my opinion are basically basically the same thing with different writing.

That sounds like completely different things.

Let me start again.

Great comedy comes from playing the drama and finding the funny situations.

So I do think that when you play anything with that, you need to feel for the characters.

And you need to, every actor needs to love their character.

A director needs to love the characters.

And so finding the love for the point of view of every single person in this movie, I think, was an important journey for me.

And I'm talking about the character too.

I'm talking about the character loving the redneck characters.

Oh, sure.

Well, that comes slowly.

But it does come.

Sure.

When you're not there that long in Texas, you go down there.

It's not that long before you're eating at the Waterburger or whatever that does.

Absolutely.

Well, I do think in my own experience,

even when I went down to research the movie,

the warmth I was shown right away.

when I expected, oh, they're going to see this blue state Hollywood guy who is probably super liberal and there to make fun fun of them.

I should be careful here.

I was treated with so much warmth and benefit of the doubt in person.

The same people that could have.

How about you, not your character?

It's hard to differentiate adult in this movie,

especially at the beginning.

But when I went there,

absolutely, and it's the same journey of the character that once you sit down with people in an actual room, it's 180 degrees different from who you think you are online.

So one thing I like about the movie is there is a character arc.

You know, I mean, we make so few adult movies these days.

It's different than ones where characters have rays shooting out their fingers.

Right.

That's not how you resolve the plot with.

So

What would you say to America, this prescription you have

for

the cognitive dissonance of I don't agree with you politically, but I like you personally,

that your character goes through.

What would you advise the whole country?

How can we do that on a national level en masse?

I think in my opinion,

it's about emotion more than

argument.

And I think it's about stopping ourselves from picking at the scab of everything that we disagree on, which is Twitter is

a sort of

drug for that.

And when we're separate behind screens,

we

pick the scab, we bite the canker sore of the things we disagree on.

And I mean, yeah.

And I think that if

we just all try to do that less and focus on things like comedy or sports or art or whatever or sitting down over dinner, I think that that is a start.

Would you ever?

All right.

Would you ever live in a place like Texas?

I mean, 49% of Texas is blue, right?

I mean, these places are very diverse.

Right.

So sure.

Yeah, I like Texas.

You love these places.

I do.

And by the way, one funny part in the movie is you go to a rodeo with this family that you're living with.

Yeah.

Someplace you would never go.

And they,

something only someone not from Texas would not know when they yell out the name of, what is it, University of Texas?

Who here is a fan of the University of Texas?

Right, and you stand up thinking I'm going to be a hero with the crowd, not realizing that University of Texas is the one in Austin.

Right.

And Austin is not Texas to Texans.

Right.

And it is a very blue place.

Yeah.

And so when people talk about, when I saw that, I thought, you know, when people talk about how we're going to have a second civil war, we can't because we're amongst each other.

Yeah, there's no, the only way out is through.

Yeah.

Meaning.

Meaning we need to.

Yeah, there's no separating.

We're stuck.

We're stuck.

We're stuck at the dinner table.

So when are you moving there?

No.

To Texas.

So

they're interested in places like Texas.

Their big

cry is often freedom.

I want my freedom.

You know, the government is getting in the way of their freedom.

And we all have ideas about freedom.

My freedom gets in the way of your freedom.

You know, they want their guns.

Other people say, I want to be free from thinking I might get shot.

Right.

It's a tricky thing, freedom.

But lately, we've been talking a lot about, and on this show, we're going to talk about it tonight, freedom in the arts.

You know, you've written some episodes of one I can think of off the top of my head, of The Office, which they don't show now.

I see Jamie Foxx's new movie.

was shelved.

I guess he made it a few years ago, but they're not going to ever show it.

They make less comedies.

I mean, you found a way to make a comedy about something,

but I'm sure you have to be very careful about a lot of different things.

They're making less because it's not worth it

to even try.

Where are you on that?

I think that there's a difference between the gatekeepers and the audience, and I think you probably see this firsthand as a stand-up.

The audiences, I think, are pretty down for everything.

They're pretty smart people

and can be

Can be trusted can be trusted a lot more than the gatekeepers sometimes worry.

I think the gatekeepers are worried about the chatter in their own spheres, but I think audiences can be can be trusted to be pretty smart.

But it's not it's not in the hands of the audience.

That's what I'm saying.

So I'm saying I think the problem, I don't think the problem is that audiences are too sensitive.

I think the problem is that people are worried that other people are too sensitive.

Right.

So,

this is like

questions they really would ask you on other kinds of shows, but I'm a fan, so I have to ask it, is there going to be a reboot in the office?

I know.

But

I love that show so much.

Thank you.

I know you do, and I appreciate that so much, and I love it too.

It's not up to me.

I know, but I always think that just the relationship between Ryan and Kelly,

which I'm sure is nothing like your real relationship in in the world.

Is this People magazine?

We were so serious for so long.

We got an applause break for something smart.

I mean.

But what about just that as a show?

The Ryan and Kelly show?

Yes.

Just that relationship, I feel like would be very funny.

I will

bring it up.

You will?

I'll bring it up.

Sure.

I'd love to do something with her.

Remember when you were at my house and my dog bit poor Mindy?

I do remember that.

I feel so bad about that.

I will tell her you said that.

Is she okay?

She's recovering.

I should have asked sooner.

Anyway, thanks for being here.

It's a great movie.

You're going to make a lot more great movies with this.

This is my first one.

Glad you're in the game.

BJ Novak.

Thanks, God.

Thank you.

All right, let's greet our panel.

Hello.

How are you?

Okay.

He is an associate editor for Commentary Magazine and author of The Rise of the New Puritans Fighting Back Against Progressives War on Fun, Noah Rothman.

And

she is an op-ed columnist at the Washington Post and a CNN political and economic commentator, Catherine Rampel.

Wow, actual smart people on the panel.

So let's go right to your book because it fits in with what we were just saying, because your book is about how somehow the left you are saying, and I've certainly heard it before, I may have said it myself before, they're the ones who seem to have the stick up their ass now.

How did that happen?

That's really the question that I begin with, this mystery, because finding corrupting influences in innocent cultural affair was a right-wing thing for most of our adult lives.

All of a sudden, we're treated to moral crusades from the left.

And you're probably familiar with a lot of the arguments.

You mean like the gay teletubbies?

Exactly.

Remember that?

Remember when, who was it, Jerry Farwell?

The purple teletubby was gay.

Yeah, that could

corrupt you, corrupt your children, degrade society, and the left.

We're hearing some more echoes of that today with Disney.

I mean, those people are still out there.

They are.

The right are cultural revanchists.

All of a sudden, the left, which emphasized self-gratification, self-even hedonism, is somehow now decided that they have to emphasize their own moral code, a competing moral code, and remoralize society.

You're familiar with all these anecdotes, and rather than survey the landscape of crazy and say, this is all crazy, this applies a moral framework to it to try to tease out the puritanical strains that produced progressivism in mainline Protestant New England and has produced progressivism today that hates idleness, that which isn't contributing to the progressive project, even in innocent cultural stuff, is detracting from that project.

Okay, so you're saying if we're not helping, we're hurting.

That's their

That's generally the outlook.

There's virtues to this.

A lot of this is virtuous conduct.

If you're a conservative, for example, watching progressives rediscover the idea that when you're in a room with men and women who are single and it's bathed in alcohol, socially destabilizing things can happen.

This is a value that conservatives have understood understood since time immemorial.

That was not a progressive leftist left-wing value during the sexual revolution, during the 90s, even the early 90s.

It is today, increasingly.

I don't know.

We just had a vice president who couldn't be alone in a room with a woman without his wife named Mother.

That's what I thought.

Right.

I don't know.

I take your point.

I don't want to be scolded by left or right, but I'm still much more worried about original recipe Puritans than left-wing Puritans, particularly the ones.

Well, I'm not.

Particularly the ones who have power.

I mean, I don't know.

Actually, nuts, I'm not, because those people never affected my life.

I didn't care about the gay teletubby when Jerry Falwell attacked it.

I'm not into the teletubbies.

This is who controls the Supreme Court right now.

I want to see the Jamie Foxx movie.

That

affects my life.

Jamie Fox is great.

It's about time he got a director's job, make his own movie.

He finally did.

It's with Robert Downey.

He's great too.

I'm sure this movie is fucking fucking awesome.

It's funny.

And because a small group of people,

it's your opinion.

You think, I heard someone in TMG say, well, the movie looks bad.

It doesn't.

It looks fucking great.

Yeah, but there are...

I agree.

And why should your opinion control what I see?

I agree, but my concern is that this is much more widespread.

You know,

who's taking the books out of the libraries right now?

Who's taking out Tommy's Two Mommies and the Diary of Anne Frank?

If I don't go to the library.

I mean, this is a bipartisan phenomenon now.

I agree with that.

And to BJ's point, which is very relevant, is there's an element of condescension here.

Who has power in the commanding heights of culture?

It's not the right.

It is the left.

And it's they who have a condescending view of their audience.

And the city of the Supreme Court who can actually exert it.

The Supreme Court doesn't make movies.

Okay, but the Supreme Court, I mean,

Orwell had it a little wrong.

It's not the government that's Big Brother.

It's social media.

That's the Supreme Court has this, of course, certain powers.

I mean, I'm not.

Well, they're restricting people from having sex right now, effectively.

Well, they're restricting abortion.

I don't think they're restricting sex quite yet.

I mean, states are going to carry that through to restricting contraception access.

Well, we hope not.

Possibly.

Yes.

There's all sorts of nuts who want to do all sorts of things.

Let's stick to what's really happening.

We have taken away abortion rights.

That's right.

Okay.

But, again, it doesn't affect my life.

I ain't getting anybody pregnant.

Well, I don't want to de-emphasize that.

I mean, that does affect millions of people's lives.

Yes, it does.

And it's wrong.

But we're talking about a specific thing.

Why can't we just...

Why do we always have to go to the what about them?

Yes, we admitted in the first minute here.

There are still the teletubby people out there.

But this is a whole separate thing that's real and going on.

There was an Axios poll this week.

Self-silencing is what they're calling it now.

That most Americans are self-silencing.

Here's one example.

44% of Democrats publicly say that CEOs should get involved with making stands with their company about social issues.

Only 11%

privately.

I don't know how they got that, because it's private, but that's what they printed.

Okay, this kind of gap is not good for a country where people, there is this quiet resentment brewing.

And you're right, there is probably more important things going on on the right that are actually scarier.

But emotionally, these kind of things affect us.

It's obnoxious to be told what you can see and think.

I think the poll is disturbing, but we don't actually know that people are self-censoring more today than they were in the past.

I mean, that's always been the case that, you know, people have their inner monologue and their outer monologue.

People do vote with their wallets.

There's such a thing as moral merch, which is literally wearing your politics on your sleeve.

That used to be an expression that described trite and shallow political values.

It is now how you are expected to navigate society, to wear a uniform that reflects who you are, what you believe, to whom you're subordinate.

This is all sort of something that the left rejected.

I don't look at that.

Until turning out a way, I mean.

How could people not be self-censoring more?

Did you hear about the Station 19 story this week?

Okay, if you don't know what this is, I did not.

It's a Chandra Rhimes show.

It's about a firehouse.

Okay,

so it's one of the characters is racist, and they had the character in an outline using a racist term for Latinos.

I'm not going to step in it and quote it.

And it's a word I don't think people should use, but it's a racist character.

How else do you depict character?

I mean, all in the family, Archie Bunker was people were sophisticated then.

They understood that.

Why are we whitewashing the racists?

That's an excellent question.

Like,

how would you do World War II movies going forward?

Are the Nazis going to be nice to the Jews now?

It's like you have to portray the ugliness.

But wait a second.

So they closed the whole show down because of a single word

spoken by a character, not one of the writing staff, a character.

And here's this, we will not be meeting creatively.

This is their statement.

Nor should we email.

We will not proceed with business as usual until the recent harm and systemic issues have been addressed and healing has begun and closed the building.

Like it was a reactor leak.

Like they found legionnaires in the building.

They had to close the whole.

How can a country survive with people on the level of this kind of fragility?

Of course people are more aware of what they're saying and afraid to talk.

But I can't, I would put money down that none of them actually believes their colleagues in the writer's room are ticking time bombs of violent bigotry.

They're afraid that you might be, sap that you are, and you can't be permitted to be exposed to that cultural stimuli or it would trigger you.

It's a condescension in part, also a fragility, but a condescension about everybody else who might be exposed to this art and what they might think.

I think some of it's some virtue signaling too, right?

People want to show that they are offended to get, you know, kudos with their peers.

They want to show that they are offended on behalf of the people who should be offended.

But there's currency there, and that's part of the problem.

Yes, I agree.

I agree.

But it's like the only permissible reaction now is overreaction.

That's the only way you're safe.

Here's another story I wrote about.

There was a progressive summer camp outside of San Francisco called Hidden Villa.

Okay.

So they closed down.

Because of what they said was structural racism.

I had not heard that exact term.

You know what it it is?

A tile.

This camp was built in 1913 by somebody who was Buddhist and has the swastika in the tile, which was a symbol throughout history, way before the Nazis used it.

Obviously, there are reasons now why we wouldn't suggest using it.

But it was there from 1913, before the Nazis.

Okay, somebody saw it.

They had a shit fit.

The people at the camp went, oh, of course we'll take the tile away.

Not good enough.

They closed, every progressive camp counts their quit, and now this camp that was doing a lot of good for a lot of kids is closed.

It's insanity.

Or it's how you communicate your zeal for the cause.

I read about that in the Rise of the New Puritans.

You are.

You're promoting yourself as being most committed by cutting off not only your enjoyment, but other people's enjoyment.

You're contorting yourself most zealously for the cause.

And it gets you a lot of points, as Catherine said.

It does help you in a social dynamic, but it certainly does deprive us of something enjoyable.

Does anybody ever ask these people, who are you actually helping?

Because I don't...

So

what is your answer to fix this problem that you write about in your book?

Well, my very simple recommendation is for all of us to have the courage to laugh at that which is objectively hilarious.

Thank you.

Some of these anecdotes are just funny, and you're doing God's work here by actually laughing at them.

The second is real commercial pressure.

You're doing God's work, I get it.

That was unintentional, but I'll take it.

And the second is commercial pressures.

Among one of the anecdotes that I bring to bear in the book is the story of Band in Boston, Band in Boston in the late 19th century, was this advertisement against impure literature, and it was very effective, but it eventually destroyed itself by becoming an advertisement for really titillating literary experiences you had to have for yourself.

So publishers tried to get their books banned in Boston to get sales increase in the rest of the country.

You won't get this movie released in a major

distribution company, won't take it.

You release it independently.

It gets attacked.

And all of a sudden it gets much more play.

Conservative books banned on Amazon, banned on Facebook, what have you by really overzealous 20-something censors have wild commercial experi success that a PR campaign wouldn't justify.

It advertises this sort of thing and and breaks down the structures.

I mean, there are plenty of people who have gotten canceled who probably make more money post-cancellation than pre-cancellation for exactly this phenomenon.

So please cancel my book.

Like who?

There are a lot of people I can think of who I will not mention on

who have speaking careers, who are going around the, I mean, going back to like, again,

this predates exactly 2022, but like Milo Yiannopoulos, you know, right?

Like his career was built on people protesting him, saying that they didn't want him to speak, and college students, you know, interrupting speeches.

How does he drum up more business by getting attention to?

That worked for a time.

He was last seen, I think, trying to get away from the game.

And then he did this show.

And the next day, they canceled his book contract and his speaking tour.

He never worked again.

You're welcome.

Okay.

I'm rethinking the canceling the book.

Proving again that sunlight is the best disinfectant.

Okay.

So one of our favorite departments on this show is called 24 Things You Don't Know About Me.

And we thought we would bring it out this week because Alex Jones is in the news.

You know, he got.

He lost his little case there

and has to pay, I think, $45.2 million to the Sandy Hook victim.

So we thought this would be a good week to bring out 24 Things You Don't Know About Me,

Alex Jones.

Like, I oppose abortion because I like to see suckers born every minute.

I've been anally penetrated by aliens so many times I carry lube.

My theory is that the diary of Anne Frank is nothing more than a nasty Airbnb review.

My go-to snack is onions and a handful of unmarked medication.

I have a line of camouflage that works so well, I can't find it anywhere.

In high school, I was voted most likely to secede.

I believe the moon landing was real, but not landing was fake.

Not landing.

My drag queen name is misinformation.

All right, so I mentioned in the monologue the

primary season is winding down.

This is where we pick the,

you kids out there don't follow politics too closely.

It's a lot like sports.

You got to win in your conference

before you go on to the big game, right?

Okay, so this is primary season where we pick the people from each party who then meet in November when we have our big primary, midterm election.

So I mentioned this to 85%

of the people Trump endorsed won.

151 out of 178.

Say what you want about Mr.

Evil, but boy, what a politician.

I mean, that's impressive in an evil way, but still impressive.

And listen to this.

And there's 10 members of Congress who voted to impeach him, and he vowed to knock them off.

It's so Tarantino movie.

He's going to get all 10.

He got eight out of the 10.

Four quit because they knew they'd lose and four lost.

The two who won, the two who withstood this,

They were both in something called an open primary, and that's what I want to ask you two about.

An open primary.

The way we do it now is the Republicans run only with Republicans voting, so the biggest nuts come out and vote for the biggest nut.

And the Democrats have their version of that.

They're not as nutty, but it's, you know, you just wind up with people who are the most fringe of each side.

Open primaries, which we don't have much, but we have in these two places,

anybody.

from any party can get in and then you appeal, have to appeal to more moderate voters.

Is this not a fix for much of what ails us?

I think it's very helpful.

It's not going to fix everything.

You know, not just a vote.

It's not going to fix everything.

The people who show up to the primaries, you know, they're usually more of the more extreme voters.

Like, if you have enough crazy people running in the primary, you can still get four people who make it through the jungle, what's called the jungle primary and get to the general.

But yes.

Okay, that's got to change.

The jungle.

Why is it called that?

That's not a name that's going to attract people.

This is.

Democrats, so genius.

I don't know how it got that moniker.

I don't know either.

I'm very skeptical that this is going to be the panacea that a lot of its advocates think it is.

For example, Washington state has this primary system and Jamie Herrera

Butler, who was one of these impeachment votes, she lost.

The top two vote-getters are usually the incumbent and the challenger, Democrat and Republican, and it complexifies a process that doesn't need to be more complicated than anything that's not most votes wins is more complicated than that.

And the idea that it'll somehow rid us of the passions of the populace just isn't borne out by this primary cycle.

Well, there are problems in that, say there's an open primary with three Democrats and two Republicans.

If the three Democrats split the vote and all together got 59%,

none of them would make it to the final two because none of them got more than 20%,

whereas the two Republicans got together 41%.

So they each got 20.5%.

And that can happen in a Democrat district.

It can, but couldn't you make a law about that and say, but you can't have somebody who's totally misrepresenting the will of the people.

There's got to be a better way to do it than the way we're doing it.

The way we're doing it is not working.

I think

the other interesting thing that is the case, like in Alaska, is that in addition to the jungle primary, they're also doing ranked choice voting.

for the general, which basically means like whoever, if nobody gets a majority of the vote, then the person person with the fewest votes,

whoever voted for them, whatever they said their second choice was,

those votes get reallocated and things like that.

And I think that's also really valuable.

A lot of states are doing that now.

At least we're experimenting.

Since 1968, the parties have been sacrificing more of their influence over this process and giving it small D democratic reforms that make the voters have much more control over the process, and it's gotten much crazier as a result.

Broadening that process, maybe open primaries are part of it, but I also think the parties need to exert a lot more influence than they have been in weeding out bad candidates that maybe appeal to the populace but are otherwise unacceptable to a party that has one goal and that's to get people elected.

Well, that's not even the goal of the Republican Party.

They don't need to anymore.

In the battleground states, and again, we're almost at the end of the season.

There's a few more states to vote, but we pretty much can say what's happening.

In the battleground states, okay, the ones that are important, people who don't believe Biden won the election, who deny that he won the election, let's call them election deniers.

They won two-thirds of the time.

Problem?

Yes, absolutely.

Absolutely.

I mean,

I think actually the Liz Cheney example is a really instructive one, right?

Because she is a died-in-the-wool conservative.

She is far-right on social issues, on economic issues, on foreign policy.

The only issue on which she disagrees with other Republicans is, in an election, does the person who gets the most votes win?

That's the only issue in which she disagrees with the rest of the Republican Party.

And the rest of the party is more concerned about, you know, basically protecting Trump's criminal enterprise than protecting, again, small D democracy.

But what is the problem?

And that's why you see these other candidates winning in these other races.

It's not because they're conservatives.

It's not because they're running on conservative platforms.

There are no platforms.

They're running on Trump.

So what is the unspoken conceit of the 2020 election fraud idea?

Is that Republicans don't like to lose elections.

So they've erected this narrative that they didn't actually lose the election.

We could see a weakening of this a little bit, just hold that Donald Trump and the populist aspect of the Republican Party has over the primary voters.

If Republicans leave a lot of races on the table in 2022, there are a bunch of, as you said, 85%, a lot of those candidates are really unpalatable to a general electorate.

Arizona, Georgia, Ohio, Ohio is competitive.

Ohio shouldn't be competitive.

Ohio was always competitive.

It was known as the Bellwether Express.

Trump won by eight points.

Okay, but you said it was always the state.

No, it was never competitive.

It was always the state.

Whenever Wakefield kid, it was Missouri.

That's way outside the realm of any competitive.

Missouri is gone, but not Ohio.

Yeah, but

if Republicans leave a lot of races on the table that could have won,

the electability argument gets another look.

Okay, but do we really think that these people really think that Trump won the election?

I don't.

I think a lot of them do.

I don't.

I think what they think is, I can't let these crazy people take over the country.

Men can't get pregnant.

You can't take over the country.

That's what they think.

That's what they think.

I see.

But there's so much of this insanity that we were talking about a little while ago going on that they're like, yeah, I know Trump didn't win, but I can't let you take over the country.

That's really what's going on in their head.

And if I have to steal it, it's a little bit of a, if I have to burn the village to save it.

That didn't work for the village.

It didn't work for the village or Vietnam or us, but that's kind of where they're headed.

So, fear.

Yes, I have to destroy democracy to save it, to save America.

I think some people are thinking cynically that way.

I think there are true believers out there who actually think.

I think most of them live at Mar-a-Lago.

So, okay.

A little bit of news this week.

The president signed bills the other day extending statute of limitations for investigating the fraud from the COVID money.

Now, back in April, we did a piece here, a very long piece because it needed it, I thought, about how much money was stolen.

COVID money.

Because we did write checks for, I think, $5.7 trillion when the forever flu hit.

Okay, so we can argue about whether that was an appropriate amount.

I think it might have been a little high.

But what really pisses me off is that so much of it was stolen.

And that's what I was talking about in April.

Some of these numbers might have been, might be a little out of date since then, but unemployment insurance for people, $872 billion went out the door.

They estimate maybe up to half was stolen.

The PPP,

again, very unfortunate phraseology in that party.

That was the paycheck protection program.

Okay.

This was small businesses trying to cover their employees who were now out of work.

Only a quarter paid wages that would have otherwise been lost.

And this is the question I asked back in April, and I'm going to ask it again.

It doesn't really make me a conservative, does it, that I don't want to be absolutely

blind.

Is there some number at which I go, you know what?

You are just taking my money and wasting it and letting people steal it.

I mean,

I get the idea that money can never be transferred except in a leaky bucket.

I accept that.

But this isn't a bucket anymore.

It's just a handle.

The issue is the bucket was designed to be leaky.

That leaky?

Half stolen?

Well, this is what I mean.

Government is as functional or as dysfunctional as we design it to be, and government was designed to be dysfunctional.

It was never this dysfunctional.

PPP stands for Paycheck Protection Program, like you said.

What that meant was it was supposed to keep people continuing to get their paychecks even as companies had to shut down or lay off workers or whatever.

The problem is the government does not know who is getting a paycheck from whom and who stopped getting a paycheck.

The government should know these things because companies pay taxes.

They pay payroll taxes.

But the problem is, yes, I know.

Let me finish.

Let me finish.

The problem is

government infrastructure sucks and they're using software that's from the disco era.

Like I'm not kidding.

I'm not kidding.

And so what happens is the databases can't talk to each other.

You know, the software is really antiquated.

So we have to rely on the honor system, essentially, where companies say,

look, government, I need this money.

I promise you, pinky swear, I'm going to use it to keep people employed.

And some of them did, but a lot of them didn't.

A lot of them are not real companies.

It's like,

we're Americans.

I'm sorry.

We can't be on the honor system.

We just can't.

Look, other countries are not.

It's just not real.

Other countries.

Other countries have figured out how to invest in good government and state capacity.

Germany didn't do this, for example.

Germany knows who works for whom, as our government should.

Of course, Germany did.

And they pushed out the money.

They pushed out the money through firms directly to employees.

They spent a lot less per employee and they kept more people employed.

If we wanted to, we could invest in good government, but we have systemically decided not to.

Partly because it's like not sexy to talk about government IT.

Okay.

And partly because that way, you know, the right thing to do.

But.

But

I thought the Democrats were the good government party.

Why don't they do it?

I get it, the Republicans want to strangle it in the bathtub.

But why isn't the other party?

And why aren't the Republicans are supposed to be, we're the mean old man to watch your money.

Why don't they do their part?

Nobody does any of their part that they shouldn't design.

So, you know, it makes me...

I agree.

I agree.

The problem is

government is designed to be dysfunctional, and then Republicans point to it and say, aha, it's dysfunctional.

It's a terrible advertisement for government.

Let's cut their funding so they're more dysfunctional.

This is the problem.

It makes me a little little less excited about the money they're planning to spend.

I can say a lot about the funding that we just gushed out of this country in March of 2020 and then subsequently again in 2021, February 2021.

You can't say that the consequences of rushing money out the door with very limited oversight were not anticipated.

They were anticipated.

We knew that this would be a font of fraud and abuse and that government would have to come back up and clean it up.

Prosecutors, this is the Prosecutor Paycheck Protection Act.

And Congress.

Congress has to engage in oversight here.

It's not enough for inspectors general to get engaged and say, well, this agency spent $75 billion on something.

We don't know where it went.

Congress has to go back and conduct its proper role of overseeing its own activities.

But the money's gone.

You're not getting the money back.

And my concern is when there is another crisis or recession, and there will be, the choice will be between,

I guess we shouldn't give people the help that they need because look at all the fraud last time, like we clearly didn't know how to get it to the right people, or let's helicopter drop more money money and hope that some of it lands in the right place.

Because, I mean, that's basically what happened before.

Because how did we get to be this shitty country that we can't do anything?

I don't know.

Okay, all right.

Well, I'll say that.

But the investigation into what Americans have very little tolerance for this.

The investigation into waste and abuse during World War II made Harry Truman's career.

Right.

This is the sort of thing that Americans reward.

We don't look rightly on people who abuse the urgent crisis.

We did used to be able to do it.

Okay.

Thank you, panel.

You were great.

Time for new rules.

Okay.

New rule, you know your dreams of Hollywood stardom are over when the only job you can book is the stock photo of a guy looking at his dick with a magnifying glass.

You can't even console yourself with the line, there are no small parts, only small actors.

New the people with giant outdoor chessboards have to tell me one thing.

Why?

How does that make chess better?

Now hurry up and make your move.

I want to go inside and trim my tree.

Neural, someone must make a monkeypox vaccine that you take with poppers.

You want to make gay sex safer?

Make it more intense at the same time.

And let's not be woke about this.

Rush this vaccine to the community whose sexual behavior obviously puts them most at risk, the clergy.

Liberal Michael Flynn must explain why he keeps grifting die-hard Trump supporters when he could be making more money on cop shows as the surly chief who says, McCoy, you're off the case.

I want your badge.

If anything, TV TV Starting will make you more relatable to Trump supporters since you'll also have your own trailer.

Number one, someone must tell everyday Vietnamese cuisine, thank you.

In a tough economy where restaurants will do anything for business, you're willing to say, yeah, nothing special here.

Everyday Vietnamese cuisine, located at the corner of whatever street and who gives a shit boulevard.

Come visit today or not, who gives a fuck.

And finally, new rules, since America is such an incredibly fucked up place right now.

Let's scale back our goal of making it great again and settle for, let's just make the mall great again.

just start with that and get a W and I'll tell you why it's actually a bigger win than you might think because online shopping is killing us psychologically and environmentally do you ever wonder why shopping through the mail didn't become so big until this century of course the internet and smartphones made it easier but the Sears catalog was founded in 1887 It was Amazon, just Amazon that never grew.

People could have been getting everything in the mail a century and a half ago, and often with a better reason to, because there weren't cars that made going to the store so easy.

Why didn't they?

I don't know, but lately I've been seeing a lot of stories about how isolated and lonely people are.

Maybe it has something to do with that.

In the golden age of the mall, it was often called America's town hall, as marketplaces have always been the center of society.

Yes, ours was a little tacky, but it was better than this.

Turns out ordering online is way more echo-unfriendly than driving to the store ever was.

How could it not be, considering that Americans now shop by the most inefficient means humanly possible?

Since we can't get our ass to go try something on and see how it actually fits and looks and feels.

We order nine and send back eight.

Do you have any idea the ecological shit show that's caused just by making people chauffeur your pants all over town?

You know, back when people still went out before brick and mortar stores were just for shoplifting.

People didn't shop every day.

No, no.

They made these things called shopping lists.

Words that corresponded to items they needed.

And then they went to the store or mall and gathered all of these items on the list at one time.

As opposed to how we do it now, where robots and humans who are treated like robots pack your little bag of scrunchies in a box the size of a doghouse and deliver it to your home along with three other giant boxes each containing one item.

How can you have a thousand types of shoehorns but only three sizes of boxes to put them in?

Where do we think all that packaging goes?

We stuff it in blue bins like it's a portal to plastic heaven, but

only 14% of it is is actually recycled.

The rest goes into landfills, incinerators, and the ocean.

In 2009, America's most successful investor, Warren Buffett, went big on railroads.

And everyone said, Warren, you must be senile.

Come on, we're living in the age of streaming and AI and Google Glasses and robot dogs.

Railroads?

And Warren said, yeah, but after all of you are done clicking to get your garden weasels and avocado slicers,

something has to actually get it to your door.

For some reason, people just don't trust a condom made by a 3D printer.

Good luck with Dogecoin.

So listen to this.

There's a vaping device for POT that I, I mean a friend of mine

uses which has a feature that allows you to turn it on from an app on your phone,

even though it has a button right on the side that works just as well.

Now, I'm not knocking this thing, I like it.

I'm just not naming it on TV because, well, if you want the benefit of advertising, I have a podcast, and the ad team would be happy to take your call.

Anyway,

the point is, anyone under 30 who sees the app feature thinks it's the eighth wonder of the world.

Because it doesn't work the old timey way by pushing a button.

It's so cool because it's on the phone.

Hey kids, get a fucking clue.

Just because it's on the phone doesn't make it cool.

We think we're super technologically advanced when we push a button, but every time you click buy it now, a tree gets its wings.

I know, we don't want to think about the kids that make it or the truck that brings it or the landfill where it ends up.

We just want that t-shirt that says mindful.

I know, it's all so easy.

You clicked on the picture of the hot dog toaster and it appeared at your door

ready for you to toss in the garage.

But it didn't come without a cost.

It came across the Pacific on a diesel-powered cargo monster spewing sulfur.

The most downloaded shopping app in the United States is a Chinese company called Xi'an, which produces 6,000 new styles a day and ships them direct from their warehouse in Guangdong to the 22-year-old in your basement who thinks they're an influencer.

Sheehan is part of a new industry called Fast Fashion, which specializes in clothing that will absolutely positively fall apart if you so much as look at it wrong.

And that's deliberate.

These clothes are made cheap, real cheap, out of the flimsiest materials because apparently now Gen Z and millennials like to buy clothes, wear them once, and throw them away.

The average U.S.

consumer now throws out 80 pounds of clothing each year.

I hear a lot about how my generation has ruined the environment.

I don't think it's my generation that's doing this.

And for what?

So you can hear someone say, nice dress.

Is that paper?

So,

look.

The CDC made it official last week.

We don't have to stay six feet apart anymore.

You're free to move around the country.

We're no longer on active sneezer alert.

And they've turned off the tighten your asshole sign.

Go out and play.

Go to the mall.

Our social skills are atrophying while we one-click ourselves into oblivion.

Amazon's in its prime, but you're wasting yours.

All right, that's our show.

I'll be at the Plinings Music Hall in in Buffalo, October 9th, the Hulu in New York City, November 12th, and at the Foxwoods Casino in Mashantucket, Connecticut, November 13th.

I want to thank Noah Rothland, Catherine Rampel, and Bijay Novak.

Now go to YouTube and join us on Overtime.

Thank you.

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.