Ep. #585: Fareed Zakaria, Chris Christie, Eric Adams

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

Start the clock.

Thank you.

Thank you, people.

You said it.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate that.

I, oh, please, it's our last show.

I know.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

I am a little overclimped.

It's our last show.

I will miss seeing half your faces every week

and the roar of muffled laughter.

Really,

I tell you, when I get back, the only masked people better be at an eyes wide shut party, okay?

But this is when we always take our break.

It's Thanksgiving, Thursday.

Are you excited about...

Well,

Thanksgiving.

Come on.

It's actually a huge anniversary.

400 years.

The first one was 1621.

Did you know that?

I know.

Why wasn't that a bigger story?

I guess.

Because it's bad now?

Well, you know, it's commemorating the first time that the settlers and the Indians shared a meal.

Of course, that's the white version of the story.

The

Indians remembered at that time that some undocumented immigrants

arrived uninvited and had anchor babies.

That's how they.

It's just kind of the truth of it.

Okay.

All right.

Okay.

All right.

We know you're good people who are on the side of the Indians, okay?

Let's just leave that shit at the door, shall we?

Speaking of liberals,

Thanksgiving, a reminder to all my liberal friends, remember to allow enough time to thaw out the baby.

If you're.

Because they eat babies, according to QAnon.

And if you're traveling, good fucking luck.

I tell you, there's a fight now every three days on airplanes.

I was traveling last weekend at the gate announcement.

The guy was saying, now boarding Welterweight to middleweight.

Members of the armed forces with PTSD and families beating small children.

It was ridiculous.

But we are back on January 21st, so that's a...

Wow, thank you.

Are you applauding the two months we're off

or that we're coming back?

But I am going to, that's a lot of time, but I am going to need all that time to get through the new Taylor Swift song.

This is all America seems to be talking about.

I don't follow her as closely as I should.

I remember she went out with Jake Jill and all

like 10 years ago, right?

And now I hear she's got this 10-minute song about how he did her wrong, and I'm like, he did it again?

No, she's the same from, wow, I thought Republicans were stuck in the past.

But it is, you can't deny your popularity, it is shooting up the charts with a bullet.

The same what Jake Gillinole dodged.

Now she's very upset about the nine-year age difference that they have.

Really?

Yes, he was old enough to be her father's stepson from another marriage.

You know what?

You kids do a lot weirder shit than that.

How about shake it off?

Wow, this is a...

But the big news today, serious news, the verdict in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial has come in.

Innocent.

He is,

I know, if you don't know the story, he's a teenager from Illinois who traveled to Wisconsin because, like all teenage boys, he watches too many comic book movies and thinks he can be the Avenger, which is a bad combination with guns.

So today Matt Gates said he's innocent.

He would like to hire him as an intern.

Well,

that's true.

Gates said he hadn't been following the story too closely, but he heard cross-state lines and teenager in this call.

President had a very big week.

Joe Biden had a three-hour long teleconference with Xi Jinping, the head of China.

And I'm not sure for three hours Joe was fully engaged.

At the end, the reporters asked him how it went.

And he said, a boring squid game is overrated.

And, but he got his big wish.

He signed the big infrastructure bill, yes,

this week.

And then, of course,

you know, it's nice to see, we're kind of back to normal in the sense that we have an infrastructure bill, which was important, and now the president's doing what president always did.

He's going on the road to sell the thing, right?

That's what you do.

Sell the people on the first stop.

He's going right after the signing one of the most structurally deficient bridges in America in the town of Woodstock, New Hampshire.

Oh my God.

And it was a little dangerous because this thing has been around for almost a century century and could collapse at any time.

And the bridge is in bad shape, too.

All right, we got a great show.

Chris Christie and Eric Adams are here, but first up is their special China's Iron Fist premieres Sunday, November 21st at 9 on CNN and CNN International and is the author of 10 Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World.

Fareed Zakaria.

Hello?

Oh, we can shake the Indian.

We can shake it.

All right, save her, but

No, I like this because it comes from India where I'm from.

I know.

And I liked it because I was never into shaking hands.

Right.

I love you.

I don't want to touch you.

It's just not in my thing.

It doesn't add anything to our relationship.

But you know what?

Now that we missed it for a year, I kind of like it again.

Because people do need that human touch, right?

And I think one of the things we've all realized is, yeah, we can get by by ourselves, and there's lots of great things about being able to cut back and things.

But we're social people.

I mean, Aristotle wrote this 3,000 years ago.

Man is a social being.

We like to share ideas.

We like to celebrate together.

We have mourned together.

We do all this stuff together.

And it's just great that we're able to do it

together again.

Okay, so time with you always goes way too fast.

So I'm going to get right to the things that we want to plug.

It's our last show.

You're one of our favorite guests.

You have a book.

You have a TV show.

Let's do the TV show first, because I'm sure it's going to be fascinating.

It's about China, China's iron fist.

So I've been hearing for a very long time who is going to own the 21st century.

Now that you've done that, I mean, you've covered China a lot, but now that you've looked at them again, what's the short answer on that?

I think this is the most serious competition the United States has ever faced.

Because it's right?

Yeah, in a sense, because it's right up our alley, by which I mean they're good at technology.

They don't have a screwed up economic system.

They basically copied large parts of of the capitalist system.

They work really hard.

You're right.

The Soviet Union was not that hard to defeat.

Right, it was basically a basket case economy by the 70s.

All they could do was build missiles, not particularly well.

Whereas the Chinese are doing AI, they're doing quantum computing, they're doing biotech, they're going to dominate electric cars, high-speed rail.

This is

the industries of the future.

Now,

that makes me feel

we've got to take this seriously.

At the end of the day, I'm an immigrant.

I think this country is amazing.

I think that the openness, the innovation, you know, we got very worried about Japan in the 1980s.

We're both old enough to remember that, and everyone thought, oh my god, the Japanese are going to take over the world.

Well, you know what?

They didn't.

We invented the Internet.

We invented the, you know, the whole information revolution happened in America.

So I do think that there is an enormous advantage we have, but we kind of got to hustle.

We've got to work hard and we got to, you know, we got to take this seriously.

I must say I do not share your optimism.

Really, I think we're going to lose.

I mean, look what they're doing.

They're building all over the world.

We're thrilled we have this infrastructure deal at home, right?

It took us how long?

And can we even pull it off?

We couldn't build a rail in California from Bakersfield to Merced.

No.

We can't build in.

I mean, everything takes ten times as long and costs.

They built 500 cities in 40 years.

They're putting in the infrastructure for the whole world.

And they're an authoritarian government, which is not what we want,

probably what we'll get in five years.

But they can make things happen.

Whereas we are, I'm sorry, we're lazy, we're spoiled, we're uneducated, we're not in good health.

I'm sorry, I don't see us, I see us, and it's not the worst thing in the world.

Why can't we be like Great Britain?

They were the big swinging dick for a long time, and it's like, okay, we'll be number two.

Okay, so

what's it?

Why aren't we so I'll push back.

Okay.

If you look at the greatest technologies in the world, the U.S.

still dominates them.

Think about whether it's the 5G?

Well, 5G,

we still do really well.

They have one company that has managed to do it essentially more cheaply than we do.

AI.

But AI, we're doing very well.

I mean, look, as I said, they are a peer competitor.

But part of our challenge, I think, is we've got a lot of good stuff out there.

The best universities in the world are still in the United States.

The best research is still done in the United States.

We are demographically growing.

They're going to be demographically shrinking because of the one-child policy.

I think that

we need to run fast.

We shouldn't run scared.

We've got enormous advantages.

And look at the geopolitics of this.

As they rise, they're pissing off India,

Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Australia, right?

They've got all these neighbors ganging up on them.

The United States has 59 treaty allies in the world.

China has one, North Korea.

You know, we're, as I said, we should run fast, but we shouldn't run slowly.

And your special is called China's Iron Fist, which I'm sure there are people who object to that because it's racist.

You know, there's that view that just saying anything bad about China, which is crazy.

When people say, you know, like, woke, what does woke woke stuff ever really affect us?

Yes, it does.

Stuff like that.

Like, you can't criticize China, and China does a lot of bad things.

A lot of bad things.

The most important part about the woke stuff, and you know, because you've been

on this for a long time, is we are undermining one of the greatest assets we have.

If there's one thing we dominate in the world, it's college education.

Our colleges, our research universities, these are the best in the world.

Why?

Because they have been focused on quality, on merit, on education.

The more you turn it into this, you know,

I mean,

I don't have, it's not that I have any objection to any specific thing, but the whole focus is on the wrong thing.

We should be figuring out how to, you know, MIT should not be worrying about whether or not a professor can say this or that or the other.

They should be figuring out how to win the artificial intelligence competition.

Right, right.

I mean,

we're going to talk about, I hope Eric Adams is here.

He had a big controversy in New York about gifted programs for students, which his predecessor wanted to get rid of.

I think he's going to put that, but I don't put it back.

I don't think China would ever debate that, whether you want to advance your most gifted people.

I mean, if you're not going to do that, why don't you just say we surrender now?

One of the reasons why we have done as well as we have, despite the kind of problems you're talking about, Bill, is that

the best in America,

the people working at the best tech companies, at the greatest research universities,

they're working hard.

They're hustling.

You don't need all of the society to do it, but you've got to support the talented people.

You've got to support the people working hard because those are the people who are going to take you to the cutting edge.

They're going to lead the society.

And if you muddle it all up by saying, well, actually, there's no difference between all of us and we can all be computer science geniuses.

No, we can't.

I can't.

No, I can't.

So let me ask you about the other thing we're going to talk about, your book, which is about the pandemic, I think out in paperback now.

Okay, so

we're at a different phase.

Pandemic.

Can we say, should we say, that we're at the endemic?

It's still something like the flu.

It'll always be around.

But we should, should Biden put out a new policy that's sort of like...

I think he could own this ground somewhere between the Republicans, who sometimes seem too irresponsible, and the Democrats who seem too cautious.

Yeah, I think you're exactly right.

For people who are vaccinated, this is something that's closer to an endemic problem than a pandemic.

It's a little bit worse than a flu.

You know, if you get it, it's not, it's not a problem.

Or not.

It depends on who you are.

It depends on who your profile is.

But what you really have is a pandemic of the unvaccinated.

If you are unvaccinated, you have a 12-time higher chance of dying from COVID.

If you are vaccinated, the risk of getting COVID or getting seriously ill is probably the same as the risk of driving on an American highway.

In other words, a risk that you should be personally allowed to monitor and deal with.

I don't think there should be mandates about things one way or the other.

I feel like we should get to the point where, once you're vaccinated, once you have your booster shots, you get to decide what level of risk you want to deal with.

Thank you.

Yes.

And

we not only have a vaccine now, we have a pill.

The government today bought 50 million, I think, doses of a pill from violence.

And that's going to be a game changer, by the way.

Well, if you have money.

I mean, the last thing I read about it was the pill cost them $17 to make, and they're going to charge $712.

So when people say, why are you so skeptical about, hmm?

That's, I could give you 10 reasons, but that certainly is one.

That's a lot of money.

It's a big cottage industry now, I noticed, that has grown up around people

tested.

I still get tested.

I had the vaccine, and I had the disease.

I mean, I didn't have any symptoms except the two days I couldn't smell, then one night I was in bed, I farted, I went, I'm back.

I feel like, why am I tested every week?

It's silly.

That might have been TMI, but I appreciate it.

I think that the basic thing we have to realize is we can't do what we did for the last two years again.

I mean, there is going to be another pandemic in the world.

We shouldn't.

Even the United States doesn't have the money to tell everybody to stay home for a year and a half and then print $6 trillion.

We didn't have the money then.

What are you talking about?

We didn't have the money then that we did it.

I think we're going to have to get more sensible about how do you live through one of these things intelligently, rather than saying, you know, lights out, close down the whole economy, and let's just print it, you know, know, $10 trillion and we're going to.

Well, it's great to see you, great to touch you, great to shake your hand, and I hope we do more of that in the future.

Wait, that came out wrong.

All right, Beretz Acaria.

All right, let's go.

Okay, there they are.

He is the former New Jersey governor, my home state, and author of the new book, Republican Rescue, Saving the Party from Truth Deniers, Conspiracy Theorists, and the Dangerous Policies of Joe Biden.

Chris Christie's over here, Governor.

And he is a retired police officer and the new mayor-elect of New York City, Eric Adams, is over here, Eric.

All right,

before I get to the issues,

Eric, do you have anything for me?

No, no wrapping paper.

I saw you give pot to Stephen Colbert.

What are you giving it to him for?

He's a square.

He has no use for it.

Give it to me.

I am someone who will use it.

Okay.

But something bad, I think, happened in this country today.

I think vigilantes got a signal that you can go out and do whatever you want, which I don't think is going to be good.

But for a talk show host who's about to go on vacation on a debate show, this is a dream.

Because all I had to do was read both your statements today, and we're off to the races.

This is you.

This decision is an indictment of irresponsible laws that make our society far more violent and unsafe under the guise of personal freedom and so-called self-defense.

Chris Christie says, okay.

Justice was done in the Rittenhouse verdict.

Renews our faith in the jury system.

Who wants to go first?

I think the real crisis here that we are missing.

In Brownsville, a 17-year-old can get an assault rifle faster than he can get a computer.

This young man, 17-year-old, it was illegal for him to purchase the rifle, but it was legal for him to carry it across state lines, going into a community looking for people that he wanted to shoot or in some way disrupt.

That is the real crisis.

What are we doing to our children that you have an access to these types of weapons?

Illegal for him to buy it, but okay for him to carry?

Yes, yes, yes.

That's as crazy as wear your mask when you walk into the restaurant, but take it off when you eat.

It's just crazy.

It really is.

Well, look, I don't think that our two statements are necessarily as different as you think.

What?

Well, no, because look, look, what I was talking about was I look at it as a prosecutor, and the laws are what they are.

You don't get to, as a prosecutor, to change the laws.

And in the end, the evidence they had did not prove what they needed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt.

So if you have an objection to the laws, and I think this is what Eric was talking about, if you have an objection to the laws, then change the laws.

But don't bring a case where you prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.

Okay, well, that's you're looking at from a very and that's what my statement was.

It's okay.

I'm a prosecution.

Let's pull back to 30,000 feet now.

What about the repercussions from this?

What about the message this sends to all the kids who, like I say, I think this kid watched too many comic book movies.

I think he wants to be some sort of hero, and I think there's lots of incels out there like him who will do the same thing.

And it's just, it's a tinderbox.

I mean, I read today, 46% of people in this country, according to the Zogbi poll, think a civil war is likely.

Half the country thinks a civil war is likely.

I don't think it's a great idea to say to people, you know what, if the police are not doing the job, as they weren't at that moment in Kenosha, the answer can't be then the citizens have full police powers.

That can't be the response, right?

No.

No, and look, I don't disagree with that.

The point, though, is that you can't use an individual case to send a broader societal message if the laws don't cover it.

So what you need to do then, if we're concerned about that and we should be, is then we need to go after the laws and make sure we make it very clear to people that you can't take the law into your own hands.

But that's what you need to do, not convict somebody who, under the law, was not entitled to be convicted.

You know what I believe we must take into our own hands.

My plea to America, we must take our country back.

We are allowing the fringe elements.

in both of these conversations to really hijack what everyday Americans want.

We want safe cities, educate our children, and to be gainfully employed.

When you have this division that is just

ripping us apart,

I'm really concerned.

There is a, I believe there's an anarchist group in this country.

The only desire is to continue to pull our cities apart.

When I saw police vehicles being firebombed, when I saw the destruction of property that's happening, we have a place place in Portland where there's a city in a city.

This is America.

There's only one country called America.

There's not multiple countries.

We're talking about a group on the left or on the right, or both.

Both.

Both.

Far.

Far or negative.

There's nothing wrong with

being pragmatic is progressive.

I'm progressive.

I want to close.

I want to deal with a criminal justice system that's unfair.

I want to close Rikers Island.

But darn it, I want to close the pipeline that feeds Rikers Island.

You have 30% of those children with dyslexia.

I think you just heard why he won.

Because I think that despite these divisions that we're talking about in the country, which are very real,

there is still a large section of this country that says, just talk common sense to me.

Right.

You know, and for instance, like, you know, he's talking about what do you want to do with Rikers Island.

When I was governor, we closed two prisons in New Jersey because we're not putting nonviolent people in jail anymore there and keeping them there because they can't afford $500 in bail.

The really violent people, they stay in jail.

The nonviolent ones, we put a bracelet around them, we make sure that they show up for court and they do what they need to do, but we're not filling jails with people who are really in debtors' prison.

And by the way, crime went down in New Jersey when we did that.

So, as two politicians who are, I would say, toward the center of your parties, right?

Wouldn't you agree with that?

You're what?

I would say.

More toward the center.

I don't like the titles that people try to define me.

I'm still defining myself.

I don't like...

I know people want to...

That's pretty vague to be in.

No, because

it's fair to say Bernie Sanders.

I would say you're more toward the center.

By the way, this is why we like you.

Stop apologizing for it.

I think it's fantastic.

I think it's it's imperative that and I just I just believe it's unfair to Americans because you have different views on different things, we want to say here's the litmus test.

And we have to break free of that.

Okay, but to someone,

I will say I'm more toward the center.

You know, I think I'm left, but more toward the center, but why I'm just fighting with the far left and the far right.

Okay.

But to someone like me, it looks like one side wants to demoralize the police.

to the point where they sometimes don't show up, and that does happen, and maybe that happened in Kenosha, right?

And the other side wants to make the citizens some sort of vigilante force.

Why can't we have something that's sensible in the middle?

And this is why you as an ex-cop is such a great, you know, this is a.

I would tell you, you know, when I was governor, when we had Camden, which was the most dangerous city in America at the time.

We fired the entire police force, whole force, brought them back in, and we trained them based upon community policing and violence de-escalation and involvement in the neighborhoods, out of cars, on bicycles, on foot.

And you know what happened?

Murders went down 75% in Camden because the citizens didn't see the police as the enemy anymore.

They saw them as partners.

And the police didn't see the citizens as enemies anymore.

They saw them as people worthy to protect.

That's where we've got to get with policing in this country.

And you know, we have to also, because what the governor said is so correct, we have to redefine the ecosystem of public safety.

We have not done that.

Traditionally, policing has always been just, or public safety has always been just the police.

And we call them for everything.

But if we redefine that ecosystem, community groups, crisis management teams, youth organizations, rebuild that trust, because the bad guys are looking at us and laughing.

And take some of the burden off the police who are doing things.

I watch cops.

They're always on the front porch for somebody's house telling them about their marriage.

You could have mental health professionals responding to those nonviolent jobs.

You could have a different relationship, and that's what we're going to do.

See, you said it, redefine.

Yes.

And yet the Democrats always fall into the trap of getting word fucked.

And they.

I love this show.

I do too.

I'm saying I love this show.

I could never get away with saying saying that.

Oh, yes, you could.

In today's.

I couldn't.

No, you know I couldn't.

Right, Chris.

You've never said, fuck.

Not you.

Not into that camera, I either.

No.

But instead of calling it defund, redefine.

What was so hard about that?

Because words are powerful.

Exactly.

Right.

So let's use the right one.

And I agree wholeheartedly that we should be defining.

So here's what Joe Biden said after Kenosha in 2020, when the riot for, he said, I want to be very clear about all this.

Rioting is not protesting.

Looting is not protesting.

Setting fires is not protesting.

It's lawlessness, plain and simple, and those who do it should be prosecuted.

Sounds like you.

I feel like that's why he got elected.

The perception now among many people is that that's not the guy who's in office, that he has swung left.

The narrative.

We need to...

Is that true or is that?

I think, no, I believe we need to reclaim the narrative.

When you look at the Build Back Better bill, the stuff in that that bill of universal child care,

when you look at the good things that are being done, we are not talking to

Americans with those kitchen table issues.

We're getting so complicated.

Let's zero in on what Americans, what New Yorkers, what we want.

That's what I did on the campaign trail.

I talked directly what New Yorkers wanted, and I think that's what the Democrats must do.

And this thing's all about guns.

I mean,

where are you on the guns?

I know you carry a gun.

You're probably strapped now.

But I want you to have a gun.

You're an ex-cop.

You know how to use it.

I trust you with a gun.

I don't trust Kyle.

He's a kid.

And I know this is coming up before the Supreme Court.

Whether the open carry includes a New York case, where do you stand?

I'm the first person I haven't carried in 15 years.

Oh, really?

I can't carry in California.

But

the Supreme Court is about to make an important decision that is going to impact us.

And I'm hoping that they don't allow the concealed carry.

We do a great job with our laws in New York, and I'm hoping that they consider not to make this decision.

Okay, good.

Yeah.

Because we don't want to be in the old West.

Well, no, we're not.

And I go back to the stuff you said about what President Biden said in 20 versus where he is now.

And I think that's the biggest reason why his poll numbers have gone down so much, is that he campaigned that way.

He campaigned as a uniter and a centrist who was going to bring the country together and return things to some normalcy.

That was his pitch.

And he got a lot of independent voters, a lot of Republican voters, who voted for him for that reason.

And now he's come in with a much more aggressive, progressive social agenda than he campaigned on.

And what people, what voters know is, if you govern different than the way you campaigned, they don't like it.

They They feel like, well, wait a second, I bought it based on what you were selling.

Now you're selling something different.

He did campaign on a lot of the things he's selling.

But not thematically, Bill.

That's the problem.

Like, you know, people thought they were getting this guy who was going to unite the country and instead, he's doing different stuff.

Put it aside.

And I think Eric is right that Democrats have made a huge mistake by not breaking down their bill and talking about individual things and just talking about the price tag and the rest.

Great for Republicans.

Keep doing it.

But for me, the problem is he has has governed contrary to the brands he sold.

And when you do that as a politician, you put yourself in peril.

And I am, I call myself,

I'm proud to call myself the Biden of Brooklyn when I was the borough president.

I like Joe, and I believe that what he has done during COVID,

the billions of dollars that were sent into our cities,

what he has done during the infrastructure build, now build back better.

I think what the Democratic Party must do, they must get on the ground and sell what they're doing.

They're doing an amazing job.

The resources, we would not have recovered from COVID if it wasn't for the COVID stimulus package, if it wasn't for the infrastructure bill, and now we're Build Back Better.

Okay, so listen, every year before we take our break, we have a tradition here because we take a very serious responsibility that we inform these people.

We are a news show.

Yes.

And so we're going to be off for a couple of months.

You're where I get all my news.

Exactly.

I know you do, and I appreciate that, homie.

We do future headlines.

This is the headlines that are going to happen.

See, we're not going to be here, but we still, that's our crack staff is so good.

They can tell you, would you like to see some of the future headlines?

We have, oh,

these are things that we know are going to happen.

Britney Spears found Newton Lion enclosure.

That is definitely.

Jeopardy House dumped over newly discovered problematic preschool artwork.

Racist Karen calls 911 on anti-mask Karen.

Cop Karen shows up and shoots Poe.

Oh, that's

an inevitable happening.

Putin Critic survives fall from building by landing on previous Putin critic who fell from building.

Fox News gives Confederate flag its own show.

In ultimate troll move, Biden changes name to Brandon.

Leaked Facebook memo admits the metaverse is just going to be guys jerking off.

Make it Markle to accept Bitcoin for whatever it is she does.

Bristol Palin announced his engagement to Kyle Rittenhouse.

That is inevitable.

And town that voted to defund the police wakes up to find everything gone.

Okay, so.

I think that Putin thing already happened.

So, Chris,

I'm going to read your quote about your future and Trump's.

You said, I don't know that he is going to run.

He is.

I don't know whether I'm going to run.

You are.

Right?

I mean, either.

This is future headlines.

This is, again, this is.

Future headlines part.

You know, I'm reading some of your statements, and look, I, if you could prevent Donald Trump from being in office, I said this about Mitt Romney.

I would take the million dollars I gave to Obama in 2012 and give it to you, or Mitt Romney, or anybody who can ensure me that you would get the Republican nomination.

Well, then it's been worth the flight out here.

Right.

That's it.

But if you can win.

But here's the problem.

You are trying to square a circle that cannot be squared, which is you don't want to completely renounce Trump.

I mean, this blows my mind.

You said,

let's see who he is.

You still might, you say support him.

You call him out for the big lie.

I give you credit for that in the book.

You call out the conspiracy theories.

You say he absolutely lost the election.

But then you say you might support him in 2024.

Let's see who he is and what he says and how he conducts himself.

This is not tenable for a guy like you who's like, I'm no bullshit.

You know who he is.

You think he's going to change at 75?

He didn't change when he became president?

This whole like Donald Trump might change theory.

Well, look, this is what I think about that, Bill.

That

people who want to win as badly as he does often find their principles to be flexible.

Right?

This is a guy who, when I first met him, was the most pro-choice guy and said, I'm the most pro-choice guy you'll ever meet.

And now he's the most pro-life guy you'll ever meet.

He was totally against ethanol subsidies because he said they were a waste of money.

People don't give a shit about ethanol subsidies, Chris.

That's not what this is about.

But my point is

talking about New Jersey to New Jersey.

It's not about ethanol.

I know they don't give a shit.

I'm trying to make a bigger point.

God, we got them going.

Listen.

That word's a lot different than the other one.

My mother taught me that.

All right.

All right, so.

But when you have someone who's willing to change their positions like that, I've not been one who's been willing to do that, you never know what's going to happen.

And this is a trap, okay?

People want to get you in a trap to say things that are three years away, and there's no reason for me to say this today.

But what I am saying is stuff that no one else is saying, except for Rupert Murdoch, who said it yesterday.

Eric, help me.

You can't, my

help.

I do.

You can't both be a maybe on Trump and democracy.

You have to choose one.

He tried to steal the election, which you called him out on in every way possible.

He called the Justice Department.

He tried to get Mike Pence to do it.

He tried to get the courts to do it.

He did everything possible.

He just didn't cheat hard enough.

That's the only lesson he's learned.

You can't be, Trump's a bad guy and I know it, but I might vote for him in 24, right?

Listen, listen, he's a bad guy.

We don't need to go backwards

to

what happened,

we are still, they're still receiving the fallout of his presidency.

And we should not, and I am lighting candles, burning incense, doing Hail Marys.

We don't want him back in the White House.

And what makes you think you can pry the party away from him, which he owns, Lockstock, and

I think you're wrong about that.

We see what happened in Virginia.

We see what happened in New Jersey.

With two guys who affirmatively said, we don't want you to come and campaign here.

Both of them.

But they didn't renounce him.

Let me tell you something.

In politics, when you tell somebody, don't come anywhere near me, that's renouncing.

It's not.

It is.

It is.

Because if you don't want to be standing anywhere near somebody, that's what it is.

And there was a poll that came out three days ago in Iowa.

Iowa Republicans, who are some of the most conservative Republicans in America, they asked him, who is your greater loyalty to, the Republican Party or Donald Trump?

62 percent said the Republican Party, 26 percent said Donald Trump.

He absorbed all the oxygen in this political world for five years, Bill.

He's not even out of, he's out of office today,

10 months.

And everybody expects everything to be different within 10 months.

It's this instant gratification society we live in.

We are moving because he's forcing that movement because he won't let go of the past.

And if you won't let go of the past, you can't be part of the future.

I think it's really important.

I think it's really important what Chris is saying.

We allowed this man

to really just disrupt our country.

We woke up every day looking at his tweets.

We allowed him to just suck the oxygen out of our country.

While we are dealing with Trump, China is kicking our rear.

We need to be focused on our country.

And

what Chris is saying,

let's not fall into that trap again, America.

He's the past.

And everybody's asked me, I've been out all week.

Everybody asked me the same question you do.

I'm not going to fall into the trap of spending every minute I have on television talking about Donald Trump.

I wrote a whole book saying, look, the election was not stolen.

Joe Biden won fair and square.

I prove it in the book and go through the statistics of the election.

And I say, if we don't stop it,

we as a party are not going to be viable.

That's more important than talking about Donald Trump.

But it is.

Okay.

Donald Trump is that party.

I mean, Liz Cheney is now a non-Republican in Wyoming.

You're talking about Iowa?

I think Wyoming is pretty conservative.

It is.

Right.

So if they have declared Liz Cheney, the one person.

Listen, it's the state committee.

did, okay?

A group of politicians.

But she could not win

a local election in Wyoming.

Well, we're going to find out because she's running in a primary in 2022.

And I'm willing to predict to you right now, Liz Cheney's going to be renominated in Wyoming.

I think you're going to be a little bit more than a hundred.

They'll determine who the Republican, they'll determine the voters of Wyoming, because that's a statewide race because they only have one member of Congress, right?

So the voters of Wyoming will determine who's a Republican, who isn't, not a small group of people in the state committee who have a vote.

Now, I could wind up being wrong, Bill.

I know I've never been wrong before, but

this could be the first time.

But I could be wrong, but I think I'm going to be right, and I think Cheney's going to win.

Okay.

Well, I mean, I think you could have been president if you ran that year.

People wanted you to run.

The knock against you was, well, he's kind of a mob boss bully.

And then they found Donald Trump a much bigger mob boss bully.

That's what they do.

I know, really.

I mean, that can be good in politics.

You get things done.

I mean, he didn't.

Right.

You possibly would, because you can work with the other side.

And I I did for eight years.

I know, but you're running as the sane Republican in a party that's no longer sane.

I mean, QAnon is the lifebreath of that party.

I write about it in the book.

And once people read about it in the book, Bill,

they won't pay five cents worth of attention to QAnon.

That's why I'm here.

They'd better read the book.

I'm just saying the vast majority of Americans don't read books.

They're on their phone.

That's what the Democratic Party must do.

They must attach Donald Trump to the Republican Party.

They must attach them to their party.

And if they fail to do so, we're going to fail to really show the progress we're making in this country.

This is the only time I'm disagreeing with Eric all night tonight, I think.

Because that's what Terry McCoff,

that's what Terry McCoff tried to do.

He tried to attach Donald Trump to Glenn Young, and most of his campaign money was spent on ads that were trying to connect Donald Trump to Glenn Young.

And a majority of the voters of Virginia just said, I see Glenn Young, I don't see Donald Trump, and so I'm going to vote for this guy.

So

I understand, but I think you've got to be careful because unless the person is acting like Donald Trump, it's very tough to make them Donald Trump.

Is the three-quarters of your party that thinks he won the election and it was stolen, are they lying to a pollster or do they really believe that?

I'm asking you.

I think there has been an absence of anybody else in my party saying anything different.

And when all, the only voices being heard.

There have been Mitt Mitt Romney Adam Kensinger Liz Cheney and they're all non-perfect.

But look each one of them approached it in a way that I think was not the best way to approach it.

So I think

look when this week I have a book that comes out that talks about that and Rupert Murdoch comes out and says the same thing two days later things are changing because nobody can call me a never Trumper.

I helped him.

I prepared him for the debates both times.

But so when people who actually supported him and no one could say Rupert Murdoch didn't support him either, we're now saying enough.

But you have to admit that, you know, to say, to call out a guy and all the horrible things that Donald Trump did and say, I still might vote for him in 2024.

In 2024.

Guess what?

It's because you're scared of him.

No, it's something I said to Sean Splice.

You're scared?

No, because when he attacks, when he goes after you,

you're just toast.

He attacked me last week, and I'm still standing here, and I'm sitting right in front of you.

Here's why I won't do it, because guess what?

If Bernie Sanders is the nominee of the Democratic Party, I cannot cannot vote for Bernie Sanders.

I will not vote for a socialist.

He's not going to be the nominee of the Prime Minister.

So say you.

Next time?

Next time.

He's a two-time loser, and he's 89 or something.

He's not 89.

Okay, but he's not running.

I mean, trust me, it's not going to be Bernie.

It could be.

Listen, Future Headlines is good.

It ain't that good.

Okay, it's not going to be Bernie Henry.

It's not going to be Bernie Smith.

Well, if it's somebody like that who's an avowed socialist, Bill, that's why I won't fall into your trap.

Right.

Because then I've got to vote for Bernie Sanders.

I tried to get him in my trap, I reckon.

In your clutches you tried to get me, but no.

But I mean, you call out.

You know what I wish tonight?

What?

I wish I had worn Eric's coat.

I feel like.

Okay, but let me ask you one more thing.

You call out, I love this, that you do this, that you call out all the conspiracy theories in the Republican, that most of the Republicans believe now, the Berthergate and the QAnon, and okay.

But then you say we should not permit the Democrats to turn our country into a mail-in voting society.

There's zero proof that mail-in voting encourages fraud, so aren't you encouraging another kind of voting?

No, no, no, no.

What I'm saying is that it should not be the only option.

I'm saying it should be the only option.

That was the statement, Bill, that there are states in our country right now who are only mail-in voting.

Oregon is only mail-in voting.

Washington State is only mail-in voting.

I don't want it ever to be...

You cannot vote in person in those states?

No.

It is all mail-in voting.

You are not allowed to vote in person anymore in those states it's all mail-in i said so that's why i said that that is wait a second did he say i was right no i didn't know that i didn't know that all right all right i'll give you the last word you got me on that one somebody got me at the very end of the season all right thank you guys it's time for new rules new rules

okay

New rules, the fashion police upset that Kirsten Sinemo wore a denim vest on the floor of the Senate, need to get a life.

The Senate has an annual Searsucker Day

when they all dress up like Matlock.

I think we can handle one of them dressing like Jay Leno once.

Besides, a vest can't decide if it's a shirt or a jacket, and if she can't make up her mind, why should her clothes?

New Roll, Redefined Meat, the company that invented a method of 3D printing meat in any shape or thickness you want, has to admit that every guy they showed it to asked the same thing.

Would it work for a penis?

Way ahead of me, good crowd.

New Roll, let's end the tradition where one of the football teams on Thanksgiving Day has to be the Detroit Lions

for a very important reason.

Pretending that this is a must-see game is key to how we avoid talking to our families for three hours.

It's hard to tell Uncle Phil, you know, I'd love to learn more about how the Rothschilds are microchipping Trump supporters, but the Lions are on.

I mean, he's gullible.

He's not that gullible.

New rules, someone must tell Josh Hawley, you're free to do this when you discuss election irregularities all you want, but it won't stop your nose from growing.

New Roll, someone has to tell me how America can only support two political parties when there are four different coloring books about cat butts this Christmas.

There's Cat Butt Christmas, Cat Butt Christmas with an explanation point,

Cat Butt Christmas with four explanation points, and of course, Christmas Cat Butts.

Two questions I never want answered.

Where do you get your ideas?

And what else do you do with the crayons?

And finally, new rule Democrats who one year from now will be licking their wounds and asking themselves how they could have lost the midterm so badly must instead ask themselves that question now.

Now, you know, now, like

while there's still time to do something about it.

A couple of weeks ago, Amy Klobuchar was here, and when I suggested the Democrats need a messaging czar, she offered me the job.

Well, you need a messaging czar in your party.

Are we to be you?

Amy, I'm flattered.

But after careful consideration, I must decline.

The hours it would take me away from home would make it very difficult on my family.

But I will tonight once again break out my coach hat

and try to point the Democrats in the right direction.

That's all I can do.

Point you in the right direction.

I'm like deep throat.

Because the way this party is running for office is making me gay.

Now, Now,

I know liberals think this country is full of dumb white people, but in our democracy, dumb white people make up a substantial portion of the vote.

The median voter is a white person in their 50s who didn't go to college.

Their favorite TV show is NCIS.

And their pronouns are: what?

I don't know what the fuck you're talking about, and get away from me.

In 2008, Republicans only won four Virginia counties by more than 70%.

This month, in the governor's election there, they did it in 45 counties.

And this is what a lot of Democrats were told was the reason for that.

Glenn Yunkins' win proves white ignorance is a powerful weapon.

Racism still works in Virginia.

It's not the messaging, folks.

This country simply still loves white supremacy.

Well, I haven't worked up an official Democratic campaign slogan for 2024 yet, yet, but I tell you what I have ruled out is vote Democrat because white people suck.

It's like trying to get laid by saying, you're ugly, you want to dance?

You're alienating a whole lot of people, particularly whites without a college degree, which is most of them.

in a country that's still 70% white.

I'd say do the math, but math is a form of white supremacy.

Yes, I know.

I know every fiber of your being tells you the people you really want to reach are Guatemalan teenagers and bloggers in Gaza, but they can't vote.

To a lot of folks in America, you come across as the cares about everybody but me party.

And it doesn't have to be that way.

You can find ways to stand up for these folks without being David Duke.

This month, when the Democrats finally passed their big trillion dollar bill to rebuild our roads and bridges, six Democrats voted no because it didn't go far enough to address climate change, which I'm sure is true.

What does?

But this was free money from the federal government that would actually improve their constituents' lives.

I can see a voter saying, you know, squad,

I agree with you on climate change.

But as long as it is happening, we also need money for getting the water pumped out of the subway.

Can we do that before we build the workers' paradise?

One of the first things Biden did in office was getting through a COVID relief package that sent $1,400 to, well, everybody without a single Republican vote.

And today, Trump is leading him in the polls.

You can give the people all the goodies Joe Manchin will allow.

And it doesn't seem to buy their love.

Why?

Why is the party that supports so many issues that benefit the middle class still considered out of touch by 62% of Americans?

In plain English, nobody likes a snob.

Hillary Clinton didn't have anyone on rural research or outreach when she ran in 2016 until the race tightened just before the election.

Then they hired one.

And where was his office?

Brooklyn.

True story.

Politics is local, not locally sourced.

It's not artisan, it's art and stan.

Your microaggression culture doesn't play in the Rust Belt.

If a staffer hands you a speech that says menstruating people instead of women, don't say that.

Say

women.

Don't put anyone fresh out of college in charge of the campaign.

They've been given participation trophies their whole life.

They don't know how to win.

James Carville knew how to win, and he blamed the Democratic losses this November 2nd on stupid wokeness, to which AOC fired back that wokeness is a term almost exclusively used by older people these days.

So that should tell you all you need to know.

What?

This is a term folks like you brought out very recently and have been proudly displaying it every March since.

Just last year, the Guardian declared woke the word of our era.

I guess they didn't get the memo from the Mean Girls Club.

We don't use that emoji anymore.

Woke, please.

We say fetch now.

What a great strategy, never missing an opportunity to remind voters how lame and clueless and hopelessly uncool they are, especially since those are the ones who actually vote.

But okay, fine.

What word would you like us to use for the plainly insane excesses of the left that are not liberalism, but something completely different?

Because you can't have that word liberal from us and think it should cover things like canceling Lincoln.

and teaching third graders they're oppressors.

That's all your new thing.

A more pertinent question to ask about the word woke might be, why in such a short time has it gone from a rallying cry to a pejorative?

If the word only made you think of rational, deserved causes like teaching a less whitewashed version of American history, AOC would still want to own it.

But it's a joke.

because it makes you think of people who wake up offended and take orders from Twitter, and their oversensitivity has grown tiresome.

That said,

that said, I would love to have AOC on this show.

There's so much to admire there.

I was one of her first supporters for the Green New Deal idea.

But that will probably never happen because Democrats don't go anywhere these days where they're not pre-adored.

And that's my last bit of advice to them.

Go where the amen corner isn't.

Do Fox News.

Be brave.

Come here.

Go everywhere.

Winning is about expanding the electorate.

Okay, that's our show.

We're off till January 21st.

Till then, I'll be in Vegas at the Mirage for 26th and 27th of this month.

Marriott Center, December 30th, Blaisdell and Honolulu, New Year's Eve, BKCC Hall in Birmingham, Alabama,

January 15th.

I want to thank Chris Chrissy, Eric Adams, and Kareem Zakari, and thank you for a great season of showing up in your masks.

Thank you, folks.

Okay.

Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher every Friday night at 10.

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