Ep. #607: David Duchovny, Matt Taibbi, Lis Smith

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

Start the clock.

Thank you for your fall.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you, people.

How you doing?

Good, thank you.

All right, I know.

Look at this.

Happy, happy, people.

I appreciate it.

Thank you very much.

Oh, oh, it's getting embarrassing.

Thank you.

Please, please.

Thank you.

I know why you're having.

I don't know why.

No, you know, listen to this.

Biden got COVID again and had the best week of his presidency.

Really?

I don't know.

I don't know if this is related, but today Kamala Harris was seen rubbing herself with a coughing monkey.

Well, they just, no, not funny.

They just declared monkeypox.

Really, now we have to do monkey butts in national emergency.

And listen, this, in New York City, they found one case of polio, but the health guy says, well, this is just the tip of the iceberg, and we found it in the wastewater.

You know what?

I've had it with viruses.

I really have.

Polio in the wastewater in New York.

First, okay.

First, I couldn't have unprotected gay sex.

Then I couldn't eat at a Chinese wet market.

And now I can't play in wastewater.

Well fuck this.

But no, honestly, Biden had his best week in a very long time.

Jobs way up.

I mean, like crazy up.

We've cutten all the jobs back from the pandemic.

Unemployment is 3.5%.

Gas prices way down.

And he got...

and he got his big climate bill today.

Kristen Kirsten Sinema from Arizona, you're familiar with her.

She's a okay, all right, well, she joined up.

It's good.

It's good to see the

Democrats can be bipartisan with themselves.

But she,

this was me, she was holding this up for something called the carried interest loophole.

This is very important to her.

And they gave it up.

It's something only hedge fund managers care about.

Do you care about this?

But

she looked around Scottsdale and said, it's about time someone stood up for the wealthy.

This is, again.

This is a tax loophole that only involves hedge fund managers.

You know, I've seen many campaign ads in my life.

It's just firemen, farmers, you know, welders,

a kid pulling a dog in a wagon.

It's rarely

hedge fund managers.

I've never seen one with a guy, it's morning in America, and I've been up all night snorting blow off a hooker's ass.

I've never seen that.

And not

me.

Thank you, Mom.

But this is the big climate bill.

Not one Republican voted for it.

It's going to be 50 plus the vice president passing this thing.

You know, they just, environment, they're just not into it.

There was just some way to get the Earth pregnant.

Oh, that's

that

is the big story this week.

Kansas

had an election.

Kansas.

Kansas had an election, and abortion rights was on the ballot, and it won big in Kansas.

You know who spent a lot of money on this?

Trying to get it go the other way against the Catholic Church.

Spent millions, millions that have could have gone on to pay off kids they raped.

It's just a shame.

But look, it was a mixed day, Tuesday, election day there.

A lot of election deniers won in Arizona and a bunch of other states, but probably the worst one of all on the Republican side, Eric Grichton's in Missouri.

He lost.

He was the governor.

Yeah, no, he's not well known, but

he had to resign for a sex scandal.

Now, they allegedly was coercing his hairdresser into giving him oral sex.

Apparently, he tied her up, tore her clothes, spanked her, took nude photos of her without her permission, what we in Hollywood call casting.

The other big win this week for Joe Biden was we got, I'm on Al-Zawahiri.

I know you kids don't know who that is

but I'm gonna tell you there was this thing called 9-11

and he was the mastermind he was the real planner bin Laden was a pimp that was Al-Zawahiri all along okay they got him

with a

drone yes

it took them 21 years

who was the kill squad the Uvalde police squad

And

what I listen to this, this is how badass our military is.

They got him standing on his balcony, didn't kill anybody else because it wasn't a bomb.

It was a Hellfire R9X, which is not a bomb.

It has six rotating blades and a strip of soothing aloe.

And just shivved him to

In two weeks, this will be,

your eight-year-old will be using it on Call of Duty, you know, this weapon.

And of course, they got him on the balcony there.

And ironically, they would never have known it was him if he was wearing a burqa.

But, you know, that's just.

The other big international, Nancy Pelosi, went to Taiwan.

A lot of people didn't want her to go.

She said, fuck that, I'm going.

It infuriated China.

And out of habit, John Cena apologized.

But Nancy said, I had to go.

I had to go to make the case for preserving democracy and rejecting authoritarianism.

And if it works there, I'm going to try it on the Republicans.

All right, we've got a great show.

We've got Matt Taibi and Liz Smith.

First up, he is an award-winning actor, director, musician, and best-selling author.

His latest book is The Reservoir and Novella.

David Dukovny is on here.

Dave,

how are you?

A little while.

Great to see you.

All right.

Dave,

you look great.

People love you.

I don't know when I last saw you.

It was a long time.

It is a long time.

We used to play basketball together at Gary Shandlings many years ago.

Yes, good days.

Good days.

So I have so much to catch up with you on, but since we have limited time, I'm going to jump right into your book because I feel like that's actually the best way to get to know who you are

because the character in this novella,

I'm not going to say it's you, but it's a guy your age.

It's a middle-aged white guy.

Yeah.

Living where you live at the time.

He does live where I live.

Right.

Doing what you were doing during the pandemic.

Yes.

Look, I wrote a novel once.

It's fucking awesome to novelizize your life because you can edit out the shit you don't like, create the shit you do like, or maybe even exaggerate your bad points.

Whatever, it's fun, right?

It's, but that's the art part.

I mean, I think it was Neil Simon who said,

you know, he was asked what's autobiography in your work, and he said, it's all autobiography, even the parts I make up.

And so that's the way I feel.

I mean, it all gets filtered through whatever consciousness I have.

And

when I land on a character, even though he looks, resembles me and all that, I get the slant of it, and then I'm off and running when I'm writing that way.

So it is and it isn't me.

And the amazing thing about the process of writing is, as you come to it day after day after day, and you're a different person.

I mean, I'm not schizophrenic, but I'm a different person

every day.

I sit down with a different consciousness in a way,

and it kind of builds like a sedimentation in a way, and it becomes its other thing, and it's not me in a way, even though it came from me.

Do you write high?

That's such a not unreasonable question.

It's not at all.

So many artists and writers have written high.

I revise high

yeah that's I like I like I like to get up very very early when I'm writing I I because I it's not high but I feel like if you're coming out of sleep you're not quite in that conscious realm so there's you're trailing you're trailing your unconsciousness with you a little bit so 435 in the morning a little coffee and then I go a coffee is your high

no no that's that's just to get up and go to the

Well, what's your...

I was just giving you more of my autobiography.

Right.

Well,

what gets you high?

I mean, you said you revise, because I have the same thing.

I've said this before.

I have like a bicameral mind.

Yes.

It's like Congress.

I have two houses.

I have the sober.

Who's got the gavel?

Well, I have the sober and then the stoned.

They have to come together on legislation.

When they both agree, I will sign it.

Is that what you're talking about?

Have you ever read Julian James's bicameral mind?

Have you ever read that?

No.

You'd be very interested in that.

No, it's probably the same.

I mean, he says, I might get this wrong, so forgive me, but he basically says that God, as we have come to know it, is actually one half of our brain talking to the other half of our brain.

And that we mistook it for God.

But anyway, be that as it may, Bill.

I think that's giving a lot of credit to people who don't even have half of the brain.

They told me that was.

But

to answer your question, gummies.

I'm a big fan of the gummies.

Gummies, there.

I love a gummy.

Okay.

I mean, they're nostalgic.

They remind you of being a six-year-old.

Right.

And the other thing is.

They put vitamins in it, and now they put pot in them.

It's fantastic.

What I love about also when I wrote my novel is you're omniscient.

You're not that way in any other art form, really.

You can't be that in a movie.

A novelist,

the character was thinking this, and he wanted to do this.

It's so much fun to be omniscient.

That's godlike.

Yes, it is godlike.

And I think that

you point out an interesting thing, which is that's why it's hard to make a good book into a good movie.

It's often easy to make a bad book into a good movie because

it's plot-oriented.

But that omniscience, that consciousness is very difficult to get through just on a flat screen.

Of course, the thing that's not fun about novels is that no one reads anymore.

I mean, we're going to sell some here.

Well, I hope so.

I remember I called my publisher and I said, How did we do the first week?

And he's like, Great.

And I was like, fantastic.

What did we sell?

He's like, 4,000 copies.

Right.

4,000 copies?

You know, that's fun.

I mean, I must have bought bought 2,000 of those.

That's what always deterred me from doing it again.

Was just that like so few people.

You can see it as liberating though, because it's just for you.

It's something you're doing for yourself and 4,000 friends.

So, well, it's going to jump to 5,000 after tonight.

And it's a good book, you know, and I love it.

I think it's very clever to make it a novella, because in a land where people don't read, at least they're going, oh, that means short.

Yes, I know.

And short's good.

I like short.

Painless.

This is how I advertise it.

Not homework.

You know what it reminded me of?

Did you ever see Eyes Wide Shut?

I did see it a long time ago.

You know, that's a novella.

Is it?

Yes.

I didn't know that.

You never read the book.

No, I haven't read that book.

I'm not shaming you.

But you know the movie with Tom Cruise.

I know the cruise.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking of.

I didn't know it was a novella.

It was a novella, and it's kind of like yours in that when the guy leaves his apartment in New York, you kind of don't know what's real and what's not.

Right.

Right.

As soon as Tom Cruise goes out of the house, you're like, is he dreaming this?

Yeah.

Well, I mean, I felt that, and I think we'd all share this aside from being autobiographical for me, but during COVID, we were ingesting the world through our screens as we do now.

And we were seeing these images of what was happening in the world, and it was very intense.

But we had no contact with the outside world because we were inside.

And there was the sense when you went outside, you didn't know what to expect anymore in your world.

And that hasn't happened in our lifetimes.

That's why it was such a good, I thought, conceit to write a novel around.

So, before I lose you for time, I just have to ask you about your franchise.

Because I know you probably don't think of yourself as a guy who has a franchise.

Footlocker?

No.

But I just feel like your franchise, which is great to have a franchise, and yours is a great one because it was a great show.

You did it in the 90s, you rebooted it

a few years ago.

There's been two movies.

You're going to do it again.

And you should do it again.

Right.

Because it's

because

it's a great show, very entertaining, you're great at it, and it's ever more relevant.

There's not a day that goes by I don't read about some, now it's Congress looking into it, the Pentagon's looking into it.

They're all saying now, what do they call them, unidentified aerial phenomenon, because UFO wasn't good?

Yeah.

They're rebranding.

Why?

It's the same fucking thing.

Did I ever tell you my theory of the UFOs?

No.

You might like this.

I know we're out of time or whatever.

No, go.

It seemed to me, do you remember, you know the phenomenon of like ship of fools back in the medieval times?

They didn't really have prisons built or insane asylums built.

It was before that.

No, I didn't read that book.

So, well,

the idea was like sometimes they would take their criminal offenders or their insane people, put them on a ship and send them out.

Like, we don't want to deal with you anymore.

We're going to put you out on the high seas.

And woe be to you if you come upon this ship of fools.

That's what ship of fools is when you hear that.

So I think because people that have dealings with aliens

that tell us stories, usually they get their teeth drilled and their anuses probed.

So

my theory is that some alien, some advanced alien civilization has gotten fed up with their sex offenders and their dentists.

And they put them on an intergalactic ship, send them out into the great sea of the beyond of the galaxies, and sometimes they come around us.

Or it's just their dentist, and it's a very deep cavity.

But

perhaps their anatomies are different from ours, and they get confused.

Well, we know what they look like, because they all do look the same when people, you know.

So I don't know, but when Navy pilots are saying, I can't tell you what this thing is, and Neil deGrasse Tyson was here, and of course, I have the utmost respect for him.

He knows things I will never know or could never know.

I don't have that size brain.

Okay, so he poo-pooed the idea that it's aliens.

He did.

Yeah, he said, why did they just reveal themselves to Navy pilots?

Well, it took me a year, Neil deGrasse, but I figured out a distance.

What is it?

Oh, I forgot.

Because that's who they're worried about might be opposing them if they're casing us to attack.

What do they give a shit about?

Somebody guy in Peoria.

He's not going to fire a squirrel gun at them.

These are the people they might have to go against.

So they're seeing what they can do, what they can see.

That's why they reveal themselves to Navy pilots.

Dave, great to see you.

Congratulations on the book.

Hope to see you soon on the basketball court.

They've been decotting.

All right, let's meet our panel.

Hello.

Hey, you guys.

Okay.

He is the author of TK News on Substack.

Never Miss It, an author of Hate Inc., Why Today's Media Makes Us Despise One Another.

Matt Taive.

Thanks for the shout-out in your Tom Cruise column.

All right, she's a Democratic strategist, author of the New York Times best-selling memoir, Any Given Tuesday, a Political Love Story.

Liz Smith is over here.

Okay.

So I mentioned Kansas there in the monologue.

I think a big question

that we've been wondering about has been answered this week in Kansas because people were wondering after the Supreme Court got rid of Roe versus Wade.

Would this be a big motivator?

And the polls kind of said, no.

It shows polls are bullshit.

You know, people lie, or the questions phrase, whatever.

This is how they indicate what they really care about.

Kansas, you could not pick a more perfect state to test this in.

And they were working.

Will the Democrats come out motivated by getting rid of Robert?

Not only the Democrats, the Republicans too.

So I feel like

I thought the Democrats were going to get their ass kicks in the midterm elections.

I think this is a deal changer.

I think this is Juan Soto going to the Padres.

I do.

I I think it changes everything.

I think now the Democrats could win this election.

And so I agree with you.

If we had had this conversation two months ago, I would have told you Democrats are probably going to get creamed in November.

Dobbs does change everything, and it changes it in two ways.

We all know that there are a lot of Democrats who are disillusioned with Joe Biden.

He didn't cancel all of their student loans.

He didn't do everything that they wanted.

And they were going to sit on their asses in November and not vote for him.

But they can't do that anymore now that this is on the ballot.

So that's one.

The second thing is

there are these voters I like to call the Biden-Yunkin voters.

You know, the suburban voters who voted for Biden, then voted for Youngkin sort of out of dissatisfaction because inflation

for the kids who don't.

Okay, Glenn Yunkin.

Let's not talk in MSNBCE.

Let's talk for He was in the background.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm a junkie.

Right.

In the Virginia governor's race, you know, after Biden won by 10 points, Yunkin beat.

He won in Virginia.

Is that a lot of those suburban voters who had, who are sort of swing voters,

who went from Biden to Yonkin, the Republican in Virginia.

Well, don't insult them.

We're just

let's just be inclusive.

I thought Democrats wanted to be inclusive.

Okay.

All right.

What's your point?

But

I do not think that they will vote for Republicans when abortion is on the ballot now.

That's what I was saying.

So

I want to read.

I apologize.

No, don't apologize.

You didn't do anything wrong.

I want to read Gavin Newsom.

Now, you write about this too.

Newsom and dissenters.

I feel like Florida and California crystallize the two sides of America.

And man, it's so interesting.

Republicans, freedom was like always their brand.

But now, you know, abortion rights, taking away a freedom, it's kind of a new ballgame with that.

So this is an ad that our governor, Gavin Newsom, ran in Florida.

He said, freedom is under attack in your state.

This is...

This is Gavin Newsom of California addressing the Florida voters.

Your Republican leaders, they're banning books, books, making it harder to vote, restricting speech in classrooms, even criminalizing women.

I urge all Florida to join the fight.

Join us in California.

We still believe in freedom.

This is so opposite of what they used to do.

Freedom of speech, freedom to choose, freedom from hate, freedom to love.

Don't let them take your freedom.

So I guess my question is, who's got the freedom fight now?

Because I could see the Republicans saying, well, we stand up for your right to have your guns.

We don't, COVID bullshit mandates, you know, you have your freedom to be free.

I certainly don't always feel free in this state, I must say, and I have felt freer in Florida.

But who wins the freedom battle right now?

What do you think?

Well, first of all, I'm kind of an old school liberal, so I think if you don't believe in freedom for the people you really dislike, you probably don't believe in it at all.

And both parties have been bad about that in recent election cycles.

And

you see this with the very, very restrictive Republican laws that are being passed.

You had a North Carolina bill that would have required people to report kids for showing signs of gender nonconformity.

I mean, that's a really scary bill, right?

But then on the Democratic side, you have all this internet censorship.

The state of California has 396,000 regulations, which is 100,000 more than any other state.

so i don't think i don't think either party has a particular like stranglehold on freedom i think they're they're both weak on this issue

and this is where i disagree i do think that the democrats would go into november as the party of freedom because democrats are standing up for the freedom of women to make their own health care decisions

the the freedom of people the freedom of people to marry who they love

um and the freedom to know that they can send their kids to school without the fear of them being shot up.

And

to your point, and just to your point about the GOP argument about freedom is they were like, oh my God, big government, they're making us wear a mask, oh, the temerity, all this.

The people who said, okay, we want small government, now they want to make the most private health care decisions for women.

They want to put Mike Pence in the OBGYN exam room with women when their feet aren't stirring.

I'm glad, and we're all against that.

I certainly am.

But private health care decisions.

Be careful with that phrase.

I read in the front page of the New York Times this week, there is a new voting bloc, a new constituency, anti-mandate.

They said mostly parents, but these are people who are not going to vote based on Republican or Democrat.

They're They're going to vote based on COVID policy.

I'm one of them, and I don't even have kids.

You know, it's a medical issue.

I do not want to be dictated.

There is no the science, especially in medical science.

You can recommend whatever you like, but I must insist you don't insist how I handle my health.

I never was.

Yeah.

Okay?

No, I never.

Obama, Obama told me, if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.

Well, I did and I do.

And my doctors, I know many of them, say very different things because doctors are afraid to speak out.

You've written about this a lot, right?

Yeah.

And I want to listen to the ones who are sometimes afraid to speak out, although you can find them.

Yeah.

I think that's the one issue where the Democrats are really, really weak on the freedom topic is the freedom of speech issue.

That's become a very difficult and fraught issue for Democrats

You know, ever since the beginning of the content moderation era on the internet, there are a lot of people who associate the Democratic Party with people being taken off the internet and

people being afraid to say certain things.

And

that's not a positive, which is, and it's the complete opposite of what I remember liberalism being about when I was growing up.

I mean, you know.

Especially in medical science, which is eminently debatable, and they've already been wrong about so much in this particular

crisis that we've had, not to mention everything they've been wrong about in the past.

So, don't sit there in your white coat telling me we have all the answers.

You obviously don't.

I will find the answers with the people I want to find it from, and you will not tell me how to handle it.

No, no, and

you know what, I do agree with that, and we've seen that in the backlash, especially among parents with the education policies.

I know you're not a parent, parent.

I'm not a parent.

I don't have kids in school.

I'm a parent.

Okay.

But, you know, the

distance learning.

It's terrible.

It's just terrible.

I never hear a good thing about it.

Anyway.

But with the distance learning,

the masking, all of that,

went too far on that and alienated people.

So I do see your viewpoint on that, and I do agree with you on that.

So what, yes?

Just quickly, I mean, the Democrats are experiencing an unprecedented swing in approval numbers on the education issue.

As recently as the Obama years, they had like a 29, 30-point lead on that issue.

And now it's kind of a dead heat.

You add that to the swings among Hispanic voters.

And that's one of the reasons to be pessimistic about

the midterms.

And what if the freedom issue is,

this is what I hear from a lot of right-wing people.

forced change.

They feel like in the last, I don't know, five, ten years, there's just been a lot of forced change that they didn't vote for.

You know, I mean, some things I think most people are for now, gay marriage, but you know, there's just been a lot of pronouns and bathrooms and penises in the women's locker room.

And yeah, what, what?

You know what I'm saying?

No, I see.

Canceling people and six-year-olds who are oppressors.

And I think their view is: okay, you know what?

You're right.

Trump isn't for real voting, but we didn't vote for this either.

And that, to them, is a lack of trust.

Okay, so

what I would say about that is

when people say, oh my god, it's the Democrats who are so wrapped up in identity politics,

you know, it's not the Democrats who are obsessing over what bathrooms kids go to.

It's not the Democrats who are introducing bills in places like Ohio saying that school kids need genital checks.

That is creepy.

That is not freedom.

And the reason why we- Wait, wait, what?

What is it?

And I'm not familiar with the genital checks.

Oh, yeah.

So in Ohio, there's a bill introduced that if you suspect a kid on a sports team is of a different gender, that there can be a genital check of them.

And Republicans introduced that bill.

It said

it's creepy.

It's creepy also.

I don't even know why we have.

But shouldn't it just be obvious?

But it's not Democrats

who are introducing that.

So you're saying they're imposters, that they're people who are pretending to be of one sex?

I'm not saying that.

But that's what prompted this bill?

No, I think what prompted it is

there's a very creepy urge among the Republicans to invade on people's privacy.

But it's not a private thing.

Okay, but

it ceases to be a private thing if you're competing against other people.

I mean, there are many, many women athletes who are up in arms about this, who say, I'm actually competing against a man.

I'm competing against someone with different muscle mass who

may still have a penis.

And that's not fair.

I want to compete in the middle of the city.

And

with somebody?

Yeah, yeah.

I mean,

I want to compete against people in my division

because there are different physical attributes between a man and a woman.

Oh, absolutely.

So I'm not saying we should be checking under everybody's skirt, but

this was prompted by something.

It didn't come out of thin air.

So what I would say is that, okay, let's look at...

Thanks one guy.

Let's look at the state of

the state of Michigan, for instance.

There are, I think, four,

five kids who play in, you know, who play in a league that is separate from their birth gender.

This is the GOP

finding a problem and trying to do this to divide people.

There is not some big threat

of

men taking over women's sports.

Men have won sometimes in women's sports in recent years.

I mean, there are many examples of this.

And no, it's not a big threat at all.

It's not a big deal at all.

It's sports.

But it does matter to people.

Oh, no, I agree with that, and I think that there should be common sense regulations around it.

Okay.

So it is, as I said, kind of entering that political season and the jockeying for even president, I notice, has begun.

Josh Hawley, who was last seen running from the Capitol.

I love this.

He was running, and yet he has a new book out that is called, what is the name of this book?

Manhood.

I'm not making this up.

The masculine virtues America Needs, says the running man.

Very interesting.

And they're all doing this, the ones who are going to run Tom Cotton.

He's another guy, definitely going to be run for real.

Only the strong.

You know, this is always the Republican brand, is that we have to outmacho and be more manly, manly men than these girly people on the other side.

So we've got to hold us some of the other books that are coming out by the other people who want to be president.

Would you like to see some of these?

Boy.

Ted Cruz has American Fuckface,

the case for shoving liberals' heads in the toilet.

Jim Jordan has, are you there, sissy boy?

It's me, fist.

Lindsay Graham has power bottom.

No more

leading from behind.

Nikki Haley has, don't need a dick to have balls, my American American story.

Sarah Palin, I killed a mockingbird.

Ron DeSantis, uncocked.

Lessons from a state shaped like a big dick.

Think about America's schlong.

Kevin McCarthy,

the case against learning.

Real men don't need directions on how to drive America.

Brooke Scott, no clothes, no problem.

Touring the Red States naked on my Harley-Davidson.

Wow.

Mike Pence has hung.

How to Be Your Own Man

as told to Mrs.

Pence.

And Christy Noam, a good woman in a cold beer, my plan to turn Pete Buttigieg straight.

That's.

By the way,

Christy Noam

was supposed to be here next week.

She was booked for quite a while on our show, but she chickened out.

So that's Was she busy trying to make Pete Publications?

I'm just saying that the tough Republicans.

They're so tough they can't even face me.

I mean, I understand when the Democrats do it, but come on, Republicans.

I thought you were tough.

I know, you're a little scary, Bill.

So, I mean, but your boy, Pete Budigej, I mean, you were the campaign manager.

Senior advisor, yeah.

Okay.

But you were the one, I mean, I read your book.

You're like, oh, I find, you found the golden boy.

I mean, and he does have remarkable political skills.

I mean, I'm a big fan of Pete Buttigieg.

But I feel like the Democrats have not done him a big favor by being associated with all this radical sexuality.

So I don't think that Leah Thomas winning a few swimming matches is going to...

Okay.

You're obsessed with that.

Okay, fine.

I know, but I don't get what you're saying.

But what you're saying is, if you look at his polling numbers,

he's doing extremely well.

Really?

Yeah, he is.

He got 8% in South Carolina.

No, no, no, I'm talking about the most recent ones.

And the more people have gotten to know him nationally, he has the highest approval ratings of anyone in the Biden administration.

And.

Well, that's not saying much.

Wait, wait.

When I get that question,

to me,

what is it that the Democrats are doing?

It's the Republicans

who are trying to rip away rights.

I'm just saying every time there's a picture of Drag Queen Story story hour,

I don't think Pete likes it because he's saying what he's thinking is okay, you know, this is a new thing to a lot of Americans.

Gay marriage, a gay man.

We've never had a gay president.

Well, that we know of.

I mean, I'm right, right, right, right.

I heard rumors about Buchanan.

Yes.

But yeah, so this, you know, you gotta tread a little gingerly.

And I think what it looks like to him as a clever politician is like, okay, can we just cool it on a little of this?

Because people are trying to get used to this and I'm trying to win an election in states that are already a little wary about the Democrats.

So I would argue that the issue with Pete Budicich, and I covered his campaign a little bit the last time,

isn't about sexuality, it's about class.

I remember seeing him in Keene, New Hampshire, and it was the first time I had seen him campaign.

And as you mentioned, he's got incredible political skills, right?

If you see him in person, you'll have this thought wow this guy's gonna be president someday he's so quick like you know he's so accessible seemingly and then I went outside and I interviewed a bunch of people from Keene and if you you know what new sort of New England townies are like you know they were like that guy was fucking weird you know

that's what I said

I mean and

the Democrats just have too many of these sort of McKinsey consultant Ivy League types who just they just don't know how you were you were talking talking about Joe Manchin,

about how

there aren't enough people who just who know how to talk.

Okay, but look up his numbers in Keene, New Hampshire, because I'm pretty sure he either won it or came in a very close second there.

So I'm glad he found some people who could criticize him there.

But

he did pretty well there.

Okay, but I mean, to your larger point, and I've heard you, I've read you on this, the Democrats, they kind of have lost their sense of humor.

That's not.

I agree.

Oh, you do.

Yeah.

I mean, I saw Dave Chappelle got kicked out of his venue a couple of weeks ago in Minneapolis, and I'm like, what the fuck is this?

And it just pisses me off because then you hear so many people saying, cancel culture isn't a real thing.

They just kicked him out of the venue.

That's, I mean, people who actually bought tickets, which is kind of an indication that they want to see you.

Oh, I see.

Had to go to a different venue.

And what happened to freedom of assembly in this country?

That we're free to assemble and speak what we want and hear what we want.

Yeah, so look, I, you know, it's not going to be popular with my friends on the left or whatever, but I am, I agree with you.

I'm like an old school liberal.

I am like what the ACLU used to be before it turned into whatever it is now.

And

my view, my view on comedy is that comedy has always been boundary pushing.

It has always been maybe a little bit offensive.

And I love Dave Chappelle.

The one thing I will say about Dave Chappelle is that I find comedy a bit funnier when you punch up at the powerful rather than when you punch down at the powerless.

And I find that, and then there's someone more powerless in the trans community in America.

Well, I'm not even going to get into that argument, although I reject it.

I don't think that's really what's going on.

But the bigger point is you're allowed to have that point of view, and Dave's still allowed to appear in Minneapolis

at the theater that hired him.

And they should.

Has anyone ever come out looking good because they canceled a comic?

I mean, like...

Yeah, it's genetic.

Would you introduce yourself to somebody and say, oh, I'm the guy who canceled Lenny Bruce or Richard Pryor or Dave Chappelle?

I mean, historically, you don't.

Historically, it's very, very unpopular.

And again, this gets back to

the same issue.

It's an image issue for the Democratic Party.

They're seen as the people who are behind this movement.

Okay.

I want to talk about Nancy Pelosi before we run out of time, because she had a big, we kind of dominated the news in many different ways.

Okay, first of all, she did go to Taiwan.

And, I mean, it's interesting that a lot of people didn't want her to go from both sides of the aisle.

Biden didn't want her to go, and Sean Hannity didn't want her to go.

But I I feel like she, 82, and Biden, 79, both look kind of smart and ballsy this week.

What?

Why?

I mean, I just want to know the answer.

Why defend you?

We've established that we're going to defend Ukraine just full-on.

There is no limits except sending troops.

Because

countries around the world have to understand when we say we're 100% behind you, we mean we're 50% behind you.

I mean, if you haven't gotten that from Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, you have not been paying attention.

But we're as much as we can be behind Ukraine.

But Taiwan, we seem to be like taking these baby steps, and I don't understand what that is.

I mean, it's...

If you're, you either believe that place is a country, which we do, it's kind of like when Trump moved the embassy to Jerusalem, which I thought was the only good thing he ever did.

It's like, if you believe Israel is a country, then they get to have, which it is, then they get to have their embassy where it is.

And if you believe Taiwan is a country, then anybody can visit from anywhere, especially our politicians.

So,

and look, Matt is the expert here, so Matt's the expert here, so I'm going to be.

So you're going to talk.

So no, I'm going to be brief.

No, no, no, no.

So

I'm going to be brief here and just say this, is that it's a little bit apples and oranges because Russia did invade Ukraine.

They're committing atrocities there.

They're killing civilians there.

They're doing war crimes there.

China is saber-rattling, but they haven't reached that place.

So I think it's a little bit of a different situation.

And now

to the expert.

That's a good point.

That is.

Well, again, you know, having...

I have kids, so my enthusiasm for starting shit with superpowers is usually kind of muted.

But, you know, I'll give Nancy Pelosi credit.

She's been very consistent, one of the few people in her party who has been against, for instance, most favored nation trading status for China going back all the way to the 90s.

So that reluctance that you're talking about to get mix it up with China, a lot of that is driven by donors who have commercial interests in China.

And politicians are wary of speaking out about all sorts of things involving that country because they're getting money from companies that are profiting over there.

So,

you know, in this one sense, I think, you know, it's important to remember that, you know, they are a human rights violator and

it's worth taking a stand sometime.

Well, who isn't, B.

I agree.

But the other thing,

I just want to say quickly, we just had this election

and

A lot of people on the Republican side who don't believe in the concept of free and fair elections won.

The whole slate in Arizona won, and three other swing states, people who do not believe in elections, who only believe elections count only when we win.

Right.

Interesting, if you happen to be following this, the Democratic Party, led by Nancy Pelosi, is supporting these people in the primaries.

Their theory is, let's support the radicals.

These are the Trumpers, and there are two wings of the Republican Party.

There are Republicans like Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney and people, even Mike Pence, who believe in elections, and then there are Trumpers.

And the Democrats in the primary are supporting the Trumpers, thinking they'll win, and then in the general election, they'll be so radical we'll beat them.

This is playing with fire, is it not?

Well,

just quickly.

Okay.

We've seen this before.

This was part of the Podesta emails.

Remember the whole Pied Piper candidates thing?

There was

exchanges between people in the Clinton campaign about trying to elevate the more radical

candidates in the Republican slate and look how that turned out right so I mean

it's a crazy thing it's a train of thought all right gotta go time for new rules everybody new rules

All right, new rules, someone must ask people who play a pluffle, who buy a pluffle,

the dog bed for humans, how is it better than a regular bed?

I never watched my dog curl up in one of these and thought, I wish I had a mattress so small it forces me to shove my nose into my asshole.

New Royal, stop making kids go back to school earlier and earlier each year.

Some schools in California start next week.

What is this, China?

Well, in parts of LA, yes.

But come on, give kids their summer back.

For students, it's too nice outside to pay attention.

And for the teachers, it's way too hot to dress up and drag.

The rule, now that Applebee's has launched Saucy Gloss, a line of lip gloss that tastes like their chicken wings, they have to discontinue it immediately.

Granted, for women, it's a tasty treat, but what about the poor guy who has to explain to his wife why his dick tastes like honey barbecue?

Neural, someone must tell me what's so romantic about a couple's massage.

It doesn't say let's connect on a deeper level.

It says, I don't want to touch you.

And you don't want to touch me.

Let's hire other people to do it.

Call me a traditionalist, but I think sex should be something between two people who love each other and Deshaun Watson.

New Roll, you can spend your entire life repeating the same stupid insult the way Trump does with like a dog.

Like a dog.

Like a dog.

Like a dog.

Like a dog.

Like a dog.

But then you can't bury your ex-wife in the backyard.

Trump buried Ivana Ivana at his golf club in New Jersey, which is wrong on so many levels.

It's cheap, it's tacky, and when Eric sees it, he'll know she didn't go to live on a farm.

And finally, new rule, everybody should be allowed to let themselves go a couple of times a year.

Like now.

The dog days of summer, school's out, rules out, it's hot, vacation time.

No one should have to diet on vacation.

And the holidays.

That's the other, okay, I'll let myself go time of year.

And who can blame us?

It's the end of the year.

It's structured around feast days.

No one should feel bad about opening up the pants after Thanksgiving dinner and doing that thing where you undo the top button and try to hold it together with just the belt.

That's all fine.

But not all year round.

And that's what's kind of happened to America.

Letting ourselves go now as an all-year-round thing, doing the Thanksgiving pants thing every day.

They actually sell a business suit now with drawstring pants.

I saw this.

I swear, I saw this in the mall and I said to the salesman, this is pathetic.

It shows how much we've given up.

And he said, no, people love it.

Of course they love it.

You can have a mongoose for lunch and then give that big presentation.

There's a disturbing trend going on in America these days.

Rewriting science to fit ideology or just to fit what you want reality to be.

We've gone from fat acceptance to fat celebration.

That's new.

That is new.

To view letting yourself go as a point of pride,

we used to at least try and be fit and healthy, and society praised those who succeeded.

Now the term body positivity is used to mean I'm perfect the way I am because I'm me.

It's Orwellian.

how often positivity is used to describe what's not healthy.

Of course you can get away with anything bad for you when you're young, but let me ask you this.

Have you ever seen a fat 90 year old?

Scary, isn't it?

Healthy at any weight is an unchallenged lie.

that people tell themselves so they can go on eating whatever they want, which is fine.

I've done many self-destructive things too, but no one pretended there there was positivity in smoking.

Fat activist Ted Kyle, founder of Conscient Health, says the media and public needs to stop catastrophizing obesity.

Okay, A, they're not catastrophizing it, and B, they should be,

because it's a full-blown catastrophe.

Poor diet is the leading cause of mortality in the United States.

The The New York Times.

Of course we're talking about heart disease and cancer and diabetes, but also as COVID has taught us, obesity is horrible for the immune system, which is why those numbers were off the charts during the pandemic.

That's a catastrophe.

It's literally a national security issue now.

Military recruitment is down by the most since the end of the draft because mainly 17 to 24 year olds are too fat to fight.

At some point, acceptance becomes enabling.

And if you're in any way participating in this joyful celebration of gluttony that goes on now, you have blood on your hands.

Full stop.

You can make believe you're fighting some great social justice battle for a besieged minority, but what you're really doing is enabling addicts, which I thought we decided was bad.

It's not just the drawstring business suits.

Companies like Nike,

Sports Illustrated, Victoria's Secret, companies that are specifically about fitness, nevertheless promote people who are plainly not into fitness.

People like Adele.

face shame campaigns for losing weight.

This is madness.

There's a reason reason the first thing your doctor does is make you step on a scale.

Well,

it used to be.

There's a card now that you can give your doctor, and it says, please don't weigh me unless it's really medically necessary.

It's always necessary.

It's like asking your dentist not to look at your teeth.

There's a popular t-shirt that says, I don't owe no man a flat stomach.

Okay, no one said you did.

You do you.

But you're not a freedom fighter because you want to keep eating doughnuts.

USA Today actually wrote the sentence, science hasn't yet figured out how to solve obesity.

And Ted Kyle concurs saying, we don't know how to blunt the rise in obesity because we don't know precisely what the factors are that are causing it.

Yes, what could it be?

What's, what's, damn it, this is a hard one.

People say to me, oh, come on, Bill, people struggle with this.

Of course they do.

Everything's a struggle.

Life's a struggle.

But somehow, 50 years ago, this country looked entirely different.

You don't think it was a struggle for them?

You think cake wasn't delicious in 1969?

And that's the saddest part.

We can do this, I think.

But by lying about it and making excuses, psychologically it's telling ourselves that letting ourselves go is the the best we can do.

And I got to believe that as Americans, we can still do better than that.

All right, that's our show.

I'll be at the Kleinin's Music Hall in Buffalo, October 9th, at the Foxwoods and Nash and Tuckett, Connecticut, November 13th.

I want you to watch my podcast, Club Random, on YouTube and everywhere else where you get your podcast.

Thank you, folks.

I want to thank Mataibi, Liz Smith, and David McCovney.

Go to YouTube and join us on Overtime.

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

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