Ep. #595: Nicole Perlroth, Laura Coates, Andrew Yang

Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

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

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was quick.

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

Now, Charlie's sober.

He's gonna tell you the truth.

How do I present this with any class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

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

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

Thank you very much.

I appreciate it.

How you doing?

Okay.

Wow.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate

you so much for coming, my maskless friends.

Thank you for coming and putting on a brave face.

I know we're all processing what happened at the Oscars.

And

I just want to say to Will Smith, look,

I got your back, bro.

Stay strong.

April Fools, you're a dick.

Oh, wow.

You're on my side for a minute.

Yes, it's April Fools.

Look, I'm not here to humiliate Will Smith.

He gets enough of that at home.

But

I will say this.

Every single person

in America this entire week was talking about nothing but the sucker punch heard round the world.

So the whole keep my wife's name out of your mouth thing didn't really work out.

Can we at least say that?

And the Oscars, wow, there was more action in that 10 seconds than the whole three hours of Power of the Dog.

Who would have guessed that the movie that comes out of the Oscars with all the buzz was G.I.

Jane?

And, you know, also,

I must say,

comparing a woman to Demi Moore looking her hottest is not exactly the worst insult I've ever heard in the world.

I mean, alopecia.

it's not leukemia, okay?

Alopecia is when it's when your hair falls out.

Appalachia, when your teeth fall out.

There are worse things.

And also,

I'm supposed to feel bad for Will Smith defending the honor of the woman who was fucking August El Cena.

I mean, I...

How...

Also,

the other thing that is very a little fishy about this is that when Chris Rock told the joke, you cut to Will Smith and he's laughing at the joke.

Right?

And then he sees that his wife is giving him the stink eye.

I blame toxic femininity.

I do.

So.

But now.

Now, of course, there's a controversy on top of the controversy, because the Academy says that they asked Will after that to leave, and he refused, and then got into a shoving match with Liza Minnelli.

So I don't know who's lying,

but the Academy's getting very stern now.

The Academy says from now on they may ban Will Smith from ever coming back to the Oscars.

My question, and what's the punishment?

So, all right.

Other things are going on in the world, but we don't care about them.

Anyway, no, but there are two interesting moves in the media this week.

Wow, did you see that?

Jen Saki is leaving.

She is the President Biden's press book, and she's going to join MSNBC,

part of their commitment to diversity.

Wow.

Now they have a redhead.

And Fox News, guess who's joining Fox News?

Caitlin Jenner.

Now they'll have two tuckers.

Okay, we've got a great show.

We have Andrew Yang and we'll have her coats.

But first up, she is the former lead cybersecurity reporter for the New York Times and author of This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends.

The cyber weapons arms race, Nicole Perlroth.

Hey,

how are you?

Bumper, Shaker, what are you?

Shaker, good for you.

All right.

Thank you.

Well,

that's a very

scary title you have there.

But, you know, I've been concerned, as we all have, about cyber war.

And I think people talk about it like, well, this is the coming war.

But it really is the present war, isn't it?

It's kind of underway.

I mean, hasn't Russia already gotten into our elections?

They've gotten into oil facilities, nuclear facilities,

and we hit their power grid, didn't we, in 2015?

So isn't the war happening?

Yes.

I mean, we've basically been in a digital Cold War since the Cold War ended.

And look at what I've covered.

I mean, I've covered hacks of the Ukraine power grid, hacks of our nuclear plants.

They didn't get as far as the controls, but they're heading for them.

And the question is, what is going to be the trigger?

for them to pull the access they already have.

And that's why anyone who's paying attention to cybersecurity right now is watching what's happening in Ukraine very closely.

Because the more we tighten the screws on Putin with sanctions and the ban on oil and vodka, the more likely it is that this guy is going to do something, right?

He's not the type to like sit back and chill about it.

So why wouldn't he?

Wouldn't he have already done it by now?

So this is interesting.

Some cybersecurity experts thought that he was going to go full gangster in the days leading up to the invasion.

And he didn't turn the power off, but there were actually some pretty serious experts in Ukraine.

In Ukraine.

Not here.

Not here.

Can he do it here?

He can.

What?

I mean, we have to do it.

He can turn the power off in America?

Well, the Department of Homeland Security put out a screenshot a couple years ago that showed Russian hackers with their hands on the controls of a U.S.

power plant.

They didn't pull the trigger, they didn't shut anything down, but we know they have the access.

We've seen them have the capability.

They got into all 50 states' elections.

They didn't seem to screw with them, but they got in.

What is that about?

They just want us to know they can do it?

We don't know why they didn't go further.

I mean, we don't know if it was John Brennan calling up his counterpart and saying, don't do this, we'll respond.

We don't know if this was sort of testing grounds for some future interference.

We really don't know what the deal was with the election interference.

But the worst case scenario, to me, at least, for election interference, is an attack on the registration rolls where they mark people who are registered as unregistered or dead, and they show up to vote and they say, we have no evidence that you're registered, and that person walks off and there's no trace of any interference at all.

It's basically voter disenfranchisement in digital form.

Right.

No fingerprints on it.

And what about banks?

Aren't you worried about that?

That they could get into our bank accounts?

I mean,

and where does like the future go with, I've heard people say we will have a totally digital currency sooner than you think.

Doesn't that make that situation worse?

So banks I worry less about just because they've gotten religion on cybersecurity for a very long time.

I mean if someone wiped out your bank account, everyone would freak out and move their money.

So they've built up many intelligence agencies to track these threats.

I worry more about pipelines.

I worry about utilities.

I worry about water treatment facilities that don't even have an IT guy on staff.

That is really where we are the most vulnerable.

But they do attack individuals.

I mean, I read in your book about zero days.

Tell everybody what zero days means.

So a zero day is, it's a hole in the software.

It's basically a vulnerability in the software.

Let's say it's your iPhone.

There's a vulnerability in your iOS software.

If I'm a hacker and I find that vulnerability and Apple doesn't know about it, that's called a zero day.

If I can write a program to exploit that zero day to read your text messages or turn on your camera without you knowing about it or track your location, that's a zero day exploit.

And you can see why that zero-day exploit I just described would have immense value for an intelligence agency, right?

It's like putting an invisible ankle bracelet on you.

So there's a whole market for governments for zero-day exploits.

The going rate in the U.S., I think last time I checked, was $2.5 million for that zero-day exploit I just described.

The Saudis will pay you $3.5 to $4 million if you want to sell it to the Saudis.

But there's this whole market around our software vulnerabilities.

And people don't realize that for years,

governments have been purchasing these holes, not so they can get them patched, tell Apple about them, leave us more protected, but so that they can exploit them for counterintelligence or maybe to plant themselves in a certain system for a rainy day.

And the reason I chose to call this out was because I was sitting in my little perch at the New York Times and I was seeing that all of our adversaries get that we have a really soft underbelly with cyber.

And they can do a lot of damage here.

And they don't have to go match us in terms of our military budgets and spending.

They can do a lot of damage to the United States.

And yet, even the United States was leaving these zero days open for its own operations.

And so the reason I wanted to call it out was to say, hey, cybersecurity is now national security.

And we need to start patching these systems and getting Americans to wake up to how vulnerable these critical systems are.

Isn't one of the reasons why we're not more alarmed is because it is not always reported.

The people who get hacked don't want to report it.

That's been a big one.

Okay.

You know, like China was hacking our intellectual property left and right.

Right.

And no one wants to admit that their intellectual property is now sitting at some Chinese state-owned enterprise institute in Beijing.

So everyone was covering covering this up for a really long time.

And actually,

what changed was when the New York Times was hacked by China.

And we wrote about it.

And we said, listen,

this is happening to every company in America.

Every company in America, journalists, are now basically

ripe targets for advanced Chinese, Russian, nation-state hackers.

But we don't act like it.

Okay, so what should we do?

What's the obvious thing the government should be doing that it's not doing?

I mean, I would guess when I read the stats, hire more people.

I know the Department of Homeland Security has like 140,000 people and only about 2,500 are working on this.

But I don't know, maybe more people would just be standing around

like I see places.

Yeah.

You know, I mean, they spend $10 billion on this.

Is that, it sounds like, given that we just signed a Pentagon budget for $813 billion, sounds like a little bit, but I don't know.

You don't have to buy equipment for this.

So I don't know if this is too much, not enough, just the right amount.

I don't know what we're doing and what we should be doing.

That's what you're here to tell me.

Right.

So

what people don't understand is that when it comes to cybersecurity, the government is not in charge of most of our critical systems.

85% of America's critical infrastructure, water, dams, pipelines, are all in private sector hands.

And after Snowden, we had this whole debate, remember Snowden, that guy in Moscow, we had this whole debate about whether we want the NSA in domestic systems.

And we all pretty much decided we didn't.

So the government's not sitting in these systems in real time defending them from advanced nation-state hackers.

It's basically the private companies themselves that are forced to defend themselves from these threats.

And any time there's been any effort to legislate that those companies meet some bare minimum standard of cybersecurity, lobbyists have come in and said, no, too difficult, too expensive, too much regulation.

We're not going to put up with it.

So the situation we're left with.

Who is this?

So this is the Republicans stopping it?

You know, sadly, it was John McCain, who was actually the one who filibustered that last attempt at a bill.

Because they think it's too much government interference?

It was just dirty word regulation.

Right.

That's what happens when it takes three years to get solar hooked up in your house.

Well,

regulation becomes a dirty word.

All right.

Well, thank you for doing what you're doing, exposing it, because, boy, this is a problem.

All right, thank you.

Let's meet our panel.

Okay.

And there, he is the founder of the new political third party Forward and author of Forward Notes on the Future of Our Democracy.

Andrew Yang is back with us.

Thank you.

Thank you all.

And she's a senior legal analyst for CNN and author of the best-selling book, Just Pursuit a Black Prosecutor's Fight for Fairness.

Laura Coates.

How you doing?

I'm good.

How are you doing?

Hi, guys.

Okay, so

you know what we're going to talk about?

Because

it happens once in a while that there's like a national moment.

right, where the whole country is paying attention to something.

It doesn't happen that often.

Very often a tragedy like Kennedy assassination or 9-11, but it could be the OJ verdict or, well, we just had another one.

And

it exposed, I thought, a lot of aspects of this society we have which are not terribly positive.

Toxic masculinity, victim culture I could go into, and I might.

Liberal hypocrisy, I think, was the big loser.

I mean, what did you think when Will Smith got a standing ovation from that crowd?

I couldn't believe it.

Could you?

I mean, the idea that, I mean, first of all, I think Jim Carrey made the comment, spineless, came to mind, but it's one of those ideas of how inertia was like, well, this is what we always do.

We're supposed to stand when somebody wins an award.

So you do it this moment in time.

And the amnesia was instantaneous.

And I just thought, First of all, why is he even there to be able to get the award at the end of the evening, number one?

Because

I remember as a prosecutor prosecuting quite a few assault and batteries, and they didn't stand by to go, no, no, I've got the rest of my kids' soccer game.

I got to stay for this.

So the fact that he was there to be like, well, here's my award, was shocking in and of itself, let alone a standing ovation.

It doesn't happen.

I think a lot of it is just because it was Will Smith.

If it had been anyone else, they're probably ushered out of there very quickly.

I do feel like it's part of the job of a world-famous celebrity attending an award show to absorb mild insults directed at you and yours?

You know, I ran for office and people said things around me I didn't like and I didn't get up and smack anyone.

But if you want to, did you actually want to?

Well, you'll never know.

No one will know.

That's the point.

Just like we shouldn't know if Will wanted to.

No.

I mean, it does look like those people, these are the very people who are always talking about microaggressions in the workplace and how you should be, you know, not have to face an uncomfortable moment or, you know, people shouldn't touch you unwantedly.

Suddenly they were okay with this.

It just seemed to show to me broken morals.

Like you really have no principles.

When it's a star that you like in the service of some vague principle of intersexuality and sectionality, like

your wife shouldn't be insulted even in a mild way, then it's like, well,

too bad.

That's what I like.

It made me feel good, so I forget my principles.

Now.

A part of me is concerned that that was the first moment you realized there was no principles in Hollywood, though.

No, that's not the first moment.

I know it's not.

I know it's not.

But a part of me thinks the threshold of the fact that you're not.

No, I'm just saying it was a bad night for liberal hypocrisy.

True.

They look bad because here's the thing.

The Oscars, whether they like it or not, it's not fair.

But they kind of are a representation to a lot of America of the Democratic Party.

Andrew, you talked about, I read your quote on the air a couple of times about

when you were running for president and you would start to talk to people, sometimes in a place where they didn't know much about you, and they seemed to like what you were saying, and then you would say you were a Democrat.

And it'd be kind of like this.

And it's like the toxic D.

Why is the D so toxic?

Because they look at the Oscars and it represents sort of like pandering.

It represents sort of like we're not connected to everyday people.

You know, look at the every year the winners, I mean, this year it was a disability, gay, and race, which there should be movies made about these topics.

They're important topics, but it looks like the Oscars only do those topics.

Bill, I wouldn't get a sigh from people when I said I was a Democrat.

I would get like a recoil, like I just, you know, turn another color.

And a lot of it is around the places I was campaigning in Iowa or Ohio.

They associate the Democratic Party with this kind of insincere moralizing that condescends to them.

And I think when you describe what happened to the Oscars as exposing how some rules seem to apply more to some figures than others, I think that's part of the frustration

from the folks that were reacting to me when I was on the trail.

Yeah.

And what about, what do we make of

what's going on with violence and the word violence?

Because it's a common word among the woke.

They seem to have broadened the definition.

You know, silence is violence, and words can be violence, but then actual violence, not a big deal.

You know, it's like

violence is not an answer except when I fucking feel like it, and then it's a great answer.

I mean, you know, your assessment is probably violent to them right now.

Just the idea of trying to figure out how to synthesize it all, and it's true.

But you know, it's the idea you're talking about: convenient compartmentalization.

Right.

The idea of saying, you know what,

I have my preferences, I have my standards, but I really just want to do what I want to do in the end.

And I'm going to figure out a way to work backwards from the answer that I wanted, and I'm going to make everything else make sense.

And you see this in politics, you see this with issues around lobbying, especially we were talking about just now.

It's the idea of thinking, well, why don't we start from the place like we do, I don't know, in this country, the nation of laws, and then work forward, where we have this standard, and then we have a, at times, a problematic cookie-cutter approach, but the outcome is supposed to be you are treated in a way that the laws dictate.

Now, that doesn't always happen, you know.

But the idea that this happened on Sunday, that they worked backwards.

They want him in the audience to receive this particular award.

So let's work backwards to see how this can make sense.

Now, imagine a so-called seat filler.

The average person every day, imagine Laura Coates in the seat.

I would have been walked off like, I'm sorry, Ms.

Coates.

it's time for you to go home.

Thank you.

Your homes to Bel Air, okay?

I don't live in Bel Air, but the idea of working backwards is what frustrates people in politics.

The idea of, well, here is the result we'd like, so we're going to make everything contort ourselves in pretzels to make it make sense.

It's probably why people were recoiling from you, why people think about the idea of, I need the word violent now to make sense for what I want it to.

Somebody should grab that word seat filler

and use it like politically.

We're just seat fillers in this country.

The elitists do this and the seat fillers do this.

It's cut it through.

The country of seat fillers and stars.

Oh,

these are not seat zoners.

No, these are seat stars.

So can I ask about can I ask about Alopecia?

Because I must admit, when I first I saw the thing on TV, then I go to the Vanity Fair party, great party, and then I didn't hear about it till then, that she had, but you don't know she had alopecia.

And I had heard this word, but it was vague in my mind what it was.

So I went like, oh, well, that's a very different thing.

And then I found out what it is, and I'm like, oh, no, it's not that different.

I mean,

if you are so lucky in life as to have that be your medical problem, just say thanks, God.

It's not life-threatening.

You know, it's part of, for most people, 80% of men, 50% of women, it's part of aging.

Aging is, trust me, I know, it's the degradation of the flesh.

It happens to all of us.

And, you know, just put on a fucking wig like everybody else at the Oscars if it bothers you so much.

I mean,

we all, as we age,

You know, we look worse.

And you do things to deal with it as best you can.

You know, I got my hair did this week.

That's my thing.

My hair would be.

I know it's pretty personal here, Bill.

I know, but

my hair would be white, and it would look worse on TV, and people would think I'm older than I already am, which is already too fucking old for television.

So, like, you know, I'll do what I have to do.

Everybody else does.

Timothy Chalamet wore a tuxedo with no shirt because he can get away with it.

But

I wouldn't want to see Jonah Hill try it.

We all got to deal with who we are.

And am I wrong about this?

I don't know.

I woke up like this, so I don't really

know.

I mean, a little bit of Vaseline and cornstarch.

No, I agree with you.

I mean,

I agree with the sense of we all have to do the things we have to do to be where we are.

However, I can imagine at one point in just thinking about being in Hollywood as she is, the idea of how much we look at women as they age as opposed to Bill Maher aging or Andrew Yang aging.

There is a different standard for women and black women in Hollywood in particular about the idea of how we are expected.

I'm saying we like I'm in Hollywood, we in D.C., but you have to conform to certain aspects of it.

And I think there's probably a part of her that has been very, very empowered by being vocal about her alopecia and saying, look, I'm owning it.

I'm shaving my head.

I feel like I am going to take this by the horns.

And there's probably those quiet moments with her husband when he is seeing and hearing a more personal aspect of it.

But either way,

the idea that we could all assume that everyone was aware of her condition at the time the statement was made, I think, is a bit of an arrogance.

It's a condition.

It's a condition like life is a condition.

You know, yes, shit happens as you go down the path of life.

And physically, it's not all going to be roses.

It just isn't.

And again, like on the scale of what I need to worry about or feel sorry about, I can't get there.

Well, this episode does remind me of our politics, Bill, where we have these personalized narratives and this morality play.

Well, we all know we have many more serious problems to deal with than whatever Will Smith did to Chris Rock on Sunday.

Oh, what a political way to look at it.

What I'm suggesting, though.

All right, let's

treat politics the same way.

We treat politics as entertainment and sport, and it's like, oh, this person did this to this person, and isn't this person then a terrible person, where the real problems around us are just getting worse and worse, and you can feel the anger and frustration rising.

Regardless of your political party.

I know one of your big issues these days is

what's going on with men and boys in this country.

Yes.

It's so interesting.

Like just in this space last week, I was doing a thing at the end of the show about Zelensky and how women in this country are super hot for him.

And I was saying, for all the talk about toxic masculinity, when a guy acts in a traditional, manly, badass way, women seem to like it.

And then right on queue,

Will

Smith slaps a guy, and 56% of women were on Team Will.

This is the day after, maybe that's changed, the day after the Oscars.

So they liked it.

They liked it.

And I would say there was a display of manliness that night, but it was from Chris Rock.

Yeah.

It's interesting.

I told this story on TMG, but I'll tell it again on Tuesday, here on Friday.

At the party, I was talking to someone,

very well-respected.

I think he's a great person,

celebrity, member of the African-American community.

I wouldn't say who it was.

But somebody in the crowd, it may have been me, said, what would have happened if Chris had hit him back?

And without having to think, he said he couldn't.

He had the whole race on his shoulders.

Well,

I thought that was kind of a brilliant assessment and kind of real and showed Chris Rock as a, you know, as a guy who can think on his feet.

It's also a reason why I think what Will Smith did is all the more Hollywood and problematic, knowing Chris Rock couldn't do anything back.

I mean, let's just play that moment back in our minds.

Exactly.

Right?

Hugh, you're going to walk up on stage.

Right.

You're going to not stand there and tell me what the problem is.

You're going to really, you know, sucker punch me with the open hand.

Then you're going to scuttle back to your seat, look at your perch, and then shout at me.

I mean, if it was in the real world, I can't imagine this is how it actually would go down.

But I thought it is restraint.

I got to tell you, I wasn't part of that 56% who saw manliness in what Will Smith did.

I see sexiness in restraint and foresight.

Amen.

And a husband realizing what are the consequences of me taking this action on our entire family.

That is sexy, and I'm very hot for that.

But the idea of trying to come to my defense, and as you point out, he only did so.

I mean, he laughed at first until he got that wife look from it that had the whole head go this way and he's oh this is my cue okay right I'll go up and that that's not masculine either well right and that it that really encapsulates cancel culture because that's what happens people laugh and then they go oh wait I'm supposed to be offended and then they overreact right

but are men in crisis I mean I know this is a big issue for you when you look at the statistics things like math reading admissions to college women are all leaping forward ahead of men In 2019, last year, I guess we had but 14% more women received bachelor degrees.

There's this idea in America that if you don't go to college, you're doomed, and more and more men aren't, and more and more women are.

Yeah, that trend's only gotten worse.

Bill, men were only 40% of college students in this last year.

And if you think about that, you could just see and say, hey, progress.

But then you have to ask yourself, well, what will millions of men without college degrees do for a living?

And a generation or two ago, you would have said well maybe they'll get a job in manufacturing though we've now blasted away millions of manufacturing jobs and those men haven't found steady footing since you're seeing them actually fall into internet rabbit holes and become alt-right extremists and there's actually a study that shows a direct correlation between losing your job and becoming unemployed and then adopting extreme right-wing beliefs.

So this is having profound impacts on our politics, on individuals, and our society society in a way that transcends this kind of individual situation.

And the case I want to make is that...

Are you saying we're creating Trump voters?

We 100% are.

Yeah.

We 100% are.

So you know I'm a data guy, and unemployed men volunteer less than employed men, even though they have more time on their hands.

So what are they doing?

They are playing video games, gambling, drinking more,

abusing more drugs.

And so you're seeing these social ills that include domestic violence, child abuse, self-destruction, and that is manifesting in our politics 100%.

All right.

So this is the

what we call

what we call award season out here.

We just had the Oscars.

We're going to have the Grammys on Sunday.

Okay.

And I noticed from the Oscars and a lot of the award shows recently, this sort of a

two-tier system, the ones who make the cut on TV,

and then the awards they give to people who you weren't good enough to get on TV.

And then they show a little clip of you like Thursday ago when you won your award in front of three people.

It's very sad.

I think they should.

So the Grammys do it too.

But they have too many categories.

These are real Grammy categories this year.

Best recording package.

They give an award to.

Best improvised jazz solo.

Aren't they all?

Okay.

I mean, best liner notes, best immersive audio albums.

So we did this a couple of years ago.

There are other categories even more obscure.

Would you like to hear some of these grand categories?

Okay.

There's, for example, best new song that makes boomers grumble.

Is that even music?

Is a category?

Best independent reggae CD handed to you against your will.

Best spoken word album not entirely about Obama is actually a category.

Best skunk singing can't touch this in an animated feature.

Most self-righteous folk song that almost makes you want to vote for Trump is an actual category.

Most irrelevant singer-songwriter to pull music from Spotify to protest Joe Rogan is a category.

Best duet with an old guy you assumed was dead.

Producer of the year, non-rapist.

Best country song that strongly insinuates if you have a problem with America, you can relocate elsewhere.

Best jazz album for driving stragglers out of parties.

And of course, the best boxed or a special limited edition package of the same old Beatles songs.

Okay, so.

I have two lawyers here.

Let's talk a little about the lawyer.

Monday, the Judiciary Committee is going to vote, I think, on Judge Jackson, right?

And I think that will, of course, go through the committee.

But then it goes to the full Senate where Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz will prove there are such things as racist babies.

But I just want to talk a broader thing about how lawyers in this country now are coming under attack because they attacked, I remember in the campaign, Kamala Harris and Amy Klobuchar when they were running against you in that race.

We're kind of attacked for doing their job as prosecutors.

You know, yes, it's a tough job.

You've got to put people away.

And then Judge Jackson is attacked for defending people.

at Gitmo because she was a public defender.

It wasn't even her choice.

The government assigned this.

We have this principle in this country.

Everybody gets a lawyer.

John Adams, the second president of the country, defended the British soldiers at the Boston massacre.

We gave the Nazis a hearing at Nuremberg.

We used to understand this.

I feel like now we're forgetting it.

Your thoughts.

I mean,

I can understand and relate to, especially being a former federal prosecutor, a black woman.

I mean, people weren't throwing parties for me when I walked into the courtroom.

I can tell you that.

But I think there's this fundamental misconception.

When I would stand up there and say Lara Coates on behalf of the people of the United States, I knew that included the defendant.

I knew that before trial I had to honor and during trial honor and protect the rights of the defendant.

Guess what?

So did the judge.

The Fourth Amendment, Fifth Amendment, the idea of the Sixth Amendment.

All these principles are things that we know we're supposed to protect.

So if you're telling me that a defense counsel, whose job during trial and before, is to also honor and protect and defend those rights, let me tell you, it's not just defense counsel who are maybe soft on crime, men.

It's prosecutors, it's judges, it's the entire current Supreme Court who said, we're not going to take up the case involving Bill Cosby, who had a Supreme Court in Pennsylvania say you had to honor his rights.

So I guess we're all soft on crime when we're pro-Constitution.

That's interesting.

I think you can distinguish between a public defender who ideally should be doing everything in their power to defend someone from a prosecutor who does have some discretion.

I mean, you can take issue with some of the choices they make.

It's a very, very powerful position.

But to your broader point, I couldn't agree more that at this point, America is so polarized that you're just on a team.

And if someone says, hey, this rule goes against your team, then people will be like, oh, no, no, I don't need that.

I mean, you have 42% of both Democrats and Republicans who regard the other side as evil or corrupt.

And so if you come and say, hey, defeating the bad guys

means that you have to ignore this rule, a lot of people are very open to that.

And not to make everything about Hollywood and the Oscars, but

a Harvard professor named Ronald Sullivan, brilliant guy,

joined Harvey Weinstein's defense team.

And Harvard came after him.

And again, yes, Harvey Weinstein, bad guy.

Everybody gets a lawyer.

What is that?

It's in the Constitution.

Everyone gets a lawyer.

Being that lawyer shouldn't mean you get rocks thrown at you.

It means that you're stepping up to do something that we all would deserve if we were in that position.

Well, Harvey Weinstein also kept his Oscar, so keep that in mind when they decide about Will Smith.

Just saying.

Right.

Right.

That Oscar's for life.

That Oscar's for some time.

Everything else is on the table, but you can't take away somebody's Oscar.

You get that fucking Oscar.

Oh, that's some funny.

Okay, so

let me go back.

I mentioned the beginning of our Republic.

We used to have, in then John Adams' day,

different newspapers for different parties.

They actually had their own newspaper, like Thomas Jefferson had his newspaper.

And I feel like we're there now, aren't we?

Aren't we?

And here's what brought it home to me this week.

The New York Post, I remember reading about this a couple of years ago.

The New York Post came across.

Now, how they came across we need to get into because it is relevant, but Hunter Biden's computer, which he apparently left at a computer repair store.

I didn't even know they existed.

And if anyone should not leave his computer with other people,

it would be Hunter Biden.

Just for the personal stuff.

But it also had stuff about how, you know, this, come on, he's a ne'er-de-well.

I'm sorry, Hunter Biden, but you are.

And, you know, you made a living being a ne'er-de-well who was taking money just because you were the vice president's son and you had influence.

He got, I think, $4.

Yes, $8 million

from Chinese energy companies to sit on the board and consult.

Yeah, that was his passion in life.

Energy exploration.

Hooker exploration was his passion.

Okay, so the New York Post got a hold of what was in the computer.

And, you know, because the New York Post is a Republican paper.

And the New York Times and the Washington Post are the Democrat paper.

That's where we are again, kind of.

And the Republican paper, Twitter wouldn't

cancel their account, can't even report on this story.

And now, two years later, the New York Times and the Washington Post have come around to say, okay, there was something there.

Now, what I said at the beginning, how it came to them, it came to them through Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon.

So, yes, of course, when Rudy Giuliani says, I've got some evidence, you take that with a giant thing of salt.

But

not two years.

It didn't take two years.

It looks like the left-wing media just buried the story because it wasn't part of their narrative, and that's why people don't trust the media.

If you look at the trust in media bill today, it actually falls very sharply along party lines.

69% of Democrats still believe that media will report the news objectively.

That goes down to 15% for Republicans.

For Independents, it's at 36%.

So this is part of the erosion of institutional trust, where one side feels like the media is on their side.

And it does seem like this Hunter Biden laptop story did get buried because of the timing.

I mean, it was coming out during the height of the election in 2020, and they did not want that out in the mainstream.

I think it could also be about the idea of, you know,

One, the priorities that the media has about what stories to put forward.

And sometimes it's tied to obviously what is in the national zeitgeist, other times, it's according to what actually is there to report on, what is the new information that's going to better inform the population.

And of course, here we are in a world, as you well know, where not only do we have different slants for different media they are suggesting, but also you've got people who want these silos.

They just want echo chambers.

We used to say things like, don't preach, you're preaching to the choir.

Now it's, well, why aren't you preaching to the choir?

It's all I'm here for is to be preached to as a member of the choir.

And so you've got to balance the idea this is a consumer-driven consumer-driven business at times more than it can be an information-driven business, which, of course, tells a lot about where we are as a society.

You don't used to be an antidote to this, was local newspapers, because they tended not to be very partisan.

You can't really talk about high school sports in an ideological way.

But now the

local news business has been devastated, 2,000 papers out of existence.

You have local news deserts in most of the country.

If you wanted to restore some degree of

and faith in democracy, you'd actually invest in local papers and bring them back.

So when you ran, your big issue really was guaranteed income, right?

Wasn't that what you're most associated with?

Yeah, people still stop me on the street and say, Yang, where's my thousand bucks?

And I tell them, it's coming.

I'm still working on it.

It's coming.

Let me answer that question.

Anyone here live in West Hollywood?

Because here we have a, oh, nobody from West Hollywood.

Interesting.

Okay, well, West Hollywood is here in L.A.

It is, I think, a largely, not talking out of school here, a gay community.

Okay, so they have a pilot program.

A number of communities in this country are starting pilot programs based on this idea that you are the foremost proponent of, a guaranteed income.

So West Hollywood, I was saying they will provide 25 randomly selected people to get $1,000 a month over 18 months.

See how it goes.

Now, here are the qualifications.

One, you have to reside in West Hollywood.

You have to be 50 years old or older.

Not sure why that is.

Make $41,400 or less, and be LGBT.

Now, first, I don't know how they verify whether you're really gay,

would be my first question.

But

do we,

what what do we think,

panel, of having this a qualification to get money from the government?

So

I took a look at this.

It's in tandem with a nonprofit.

I have a feeling that there is a private donor who just said, look, I want to fund an intervention for this population.

And then the local government said, sure,

it's mostly going to be private money.

It's a small pilot.

So I get the sense that it was an individual's wish because I don't think the

the government would have devised this on its own.

With that said,

I don't like the idea of taking something that everyone would want, like, for example, a thousand bucks a month, and separating it based upon some kind of characteristic that some people share and some people don't.

When I moved to Los Angeles, that's where I moved, or it's where everybody moved at first, West Hollywood.

And I can see why that, if I, and I was poor.

So I can see why this would have been like,

How am I going to get this money?

Tell us more about what would have come next, Bill.

All right, that's enough.

We were great.

Time for new rules, everybody.

New rules.

We're good.

Okay, new rule, Harry Styles, needs to fire his stylist.

I get it, the whole I'm challenging gender norms thing, but this look doesn't say my identity is fluid.

It says I'm a serial killer who wears his victim's clothes.

New rule, Annie Rose, the English dog that has been voted this year's Cadbury Easter bunny.

Must be honest about the realities of show business.

Sure, it's a rush when you take home the night's biggest prize, but then the cocaine wears off.

then you're just a mop of fur on the floor and a pair of bunny ears thinking, what am I supposed to do with all this chocolate?

I'm a fucking dog.

Derrill, someone must tell me what's up with the new Maytag repairman.

Is he human?

Is he an android from the future?

Did he time travel and kill the previous Maytag repairman?

And

if that's the direction they're going, they should hire Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Maytag repairman.

Arnold has lived the role.

We all remember the time he put a load in the dishwasher.

Near old Chad Kempel, who set a Guinness World record by completing a half marathon in two hours, 19 minutes while pushing his quintuplets in a baby stroller, must not complain to his wife about how hard that was.

You think it's uncomfortable pushing five kids 13 miles?

Try pushing them out of vagina.

New rule, Colin Craig Brown, the man who thought he'd unearthed the world's largest potato until DNA tests proved it was actually the underground stem of a gourd and not a potato at all,

has to look on the bright side.

For one very brief shining moment in time, you thought you'd found a big potato.

And finally, new rule, the Fox News editors, who each week highlight one thing I say about the Democrats that fits their narrative and then completely ignores all the shit I say about Republicans,

might want to go ahead and turn the TV off right now.

Because

we are now only seven months away from midterm elections that are poised to make the Republicans much more powerful, so attention must be paid to where the Republican Party is right now.

You'd think, with the left going a little loony over the past few years, Republicans would have seen an opening to grab the sensible center.

But no.

Former Republican governor of Ohio, an anti-Trumper presidential candidate John Kasich, said of his party in 2019, Sometimes you've got to let the fever break, and I think we have a fever and it's going to break.

But it didn't break.

And it's not a fever, it's more like a tumor.

And tumors don't go away, they get worse.

Normal, Republican crazy, where you just shoot guns at things you don't like in your campaign ads.

Even that shit doesn't even cut it anymore.

The new crop are such a bunch of foaming-at-the-mouth kraken releasers that Clarence Thomas wants to marry them.

I look back at the Republican class of 2010 because that year, I remember, has been held up as an example of Republican kookiness gone wild.

Remember Christine O'Donnell?

Whoo!

She had been a frequent guest on my old show, a very sweet, sincere, Jesus freak conservative,

who then ran for the Senate, at which time I played some highlights from her appearances on Politically Incorrect, and the media seized on Christine's statement that she had dabbled in witchcraft as if it was the craziest thing a Republican would ever say.

Congressman Todd Aiken around the same time caused a media firestorm when he said that in cases of legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.

And Indiana Senate candidate Richard Murdoch concurred, saying even when a life began in rape, it was something God intended to happen.

Both had to go away.

But if a Republican congressman said the same thing today, would they have to?

I doubt it, since now what they said is literally the party's active legislative agenda in multiple states.

And I used to think Rick Santorum was weird for wearing a sweater vest.

In 2009, it was a big deal when Congressman Joe Wilson yelled out, out, you lie, during Obama's State of the Union address.

But this year, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Bobart repeatedly, repeatedly interrupted Biden at his State of the Union.

Look at them.

Excuse me, Karen.

The president is talking.

It's not a black kid you caught trying to use the pool.

No, you can't have another skinny margarita.

And if you don't sit down, this flight is never getting to Orlando.

For all of you who get frustrated because Manchin and Sinema don't vote like true liberals, because they never were, or think Trump is as bad as it's going to get,

remember the first rule of modern Republican politics.

They always go lower.

Because this party has no bottom, unless you count Lindsey Graham.

The kooky Republicans of the 2010 era wouldn't even make the cut today for extremism.

And the ones today aren't even as bad as the ones in the wings.

Where do you see the incoming group of Facebook uncles, crazy Karens, and submental shit posters coming up?

Herschel Walker, Senate candidate in Georgia, who freely admits he has a dozen personalities, none of whom you'd want to sit next to at a wedding,

recently came out against evolution,

saying science said man came from apes.

If that's true, why are there still apes?

Think about it.

You first.

And also think about this.

If honey nut Cheerios came from Cheerios, why do we still have Cheerios?

Think about it.

Alaska Senate candidate Kelly Chewbacca speaks in tongues, otherwise known as jabbering senselessly.

This is her.

Take a listen.

Pathetic.

Pathetic.

Like the people of Alaska would even vote for some dim-witted religious nut.

Nevada State Treasurer candidate Michelle Fiore is called Lady Trump and has some interesting policy ideas like, quote, arming young hot little girls on campus so they can kill rapists.

Maybe they can start a sorority in Delta Bosta Kappa.

On the topic of Syrian refugees, Michelle Fiore said, I'm about to fly to Paris and shoot them in the head myself.

I'm okay with putting them down, blacking them out, and ending their miserable life.

What was Bush's catchphrase, compassionate conservative?

Former Missouri Republican governor and now Senate candidate Eric Gritons is a sociopath whose

whose ex-wife says he beat her and the kids and who resigned the governorship after being charged with tying up a woman he was having an affair with in his basement, taking nude pictures of her and threatening to blackmail her if she told anyone.

As governors do.

And look at these two Neanderthals almost coming to blows during a debate.

And they're both Republicans.

It was so over over the top the crowd filed out in disgust.

I'm joking, of course.

They couldn't have eaten it up more if it were deep-fried.

And my favorite, the Republican running against AOC in the Bronx, is Tina Forte, a self-described viral political influencer who's happy to sell you a t-shirt that says, I could shit a better president.

That is, when she's not busy campaigning on her way to the gym.

Give the balls to debate and we can do an old fucker paper, you bitch.

Huh?

How do you like that motherfucker?

Fuck out of you.

What are they serving at the Republican Convention these days?

Bath salts?

If the GOP still had a platform, which they don't, but if they did, it would be fuck you.

You think the Republicans of 2010 were kooks?

This crowd looks at those people like pleas.

They've never even masturbated on a subway.

All right, that's our show.

I'll be at the Miracle Theater in Indianapolis, June 5th, at the Soaring Eagle Casino in Mount Pleasant, Michigan, June 18th, and at the New Jersey, my home state, Performing Arts at Newark, July 8th.

I want to thank Andrew Yangler, Okotsa, and Nicole Perthron.

Pearl Wall.

And go to Overtime now and join us on, I mean, YouTube and join us on Overtime.

I don't know what I'm saying.

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

For more information, log on to HBO.com.