Ep. #582: Sean Spicer, Caitlin Flanagan, Sen. Chris Coons

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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 very much, people.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

How you doing?

I'm good.

Okay.

Okay, all right.

Thank you.

Oh,

you're humble, man.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

I know it's an exciting time of year.

It's Halloween weekend.

Is this your favorite?

Oh, I love it when it falls on a Sunday Halloween.

You know, you scare the kids with stories about evil demons and ghosts.

Then after church, you go

trick-or-treating.

Now, I do.

And I see you got your masks dirty on.

I do love Halloween.

I do.

You know, the one time you dress up and pretend to be something we're not.

Also known as Instagram.

But

this is a holiday.

Now,

I got so into this birth this year.

I went to see the Halloween movie sequel.

Have you seen that?

I tell you, Jamie Lee Curtis looks fantastic at 62.

She really does.

But in the movie, kind of a Karen.

Really,

she sees Michael Myers killing a kid and she goes, you're not from this neighborhood.

Certainly not seeing it the right way.

But you know, you know who Jamie LaCurtis' mom is, right?

Generally, starred in the greatest horror movie of all time, Psycho.

Psycho.

Now look, Psycho's been out 61 years, so I hope I'm not giving anything away at the ending.

But when Anthony Perkins shows up with that knife wearing his mother's dress and the wig, it just changed cinema forever.

And also Dave Chappelle was

affected by it.

Now, of course, out here in California, pot's been legal for a while, as in many states, not all stupidly, but yeah.

Okay.

So obviously this time of year, Halloween,

local news is just full of watch out for pot edibles that look like candy.

Like I'm going to waste my stash on children.

Children?

I don't even like children.

I put a sign on my lawn this year.

It said, no candy supply chain issues.

Oh, no.

I mean, there are supplies.

Are you having trouble getting shit you need?

I don't have all the shit I need.

This year I'm trying to get kids to put toilet paper on my house.

But you know where the president is?

He's overseas right now.

He was in Rome yesterday.

He met with the Pope.

Pope, I got to say, Pope gets along a lot better, it looks like to me with the Democrats.

I mean, look at him with Biden.

He looks like he's a pretty happy camper.

Obama loved him.

Trump.

I'm just saying.

But Joe Biden, Biden's a very at-home, let's put it that way at Vatican City, because it's a lot like Delaware.

It's a made-up, tiny little state that no one pays taxes in.

We have the senator from Delaware.

I'll just warm him up with that when I got it.

No, but there was one awkward moment at the Vatican yesterday when the Pope offered last rights on Biden's spending bill.

That was

because that, well, that thing that the Democrats still fighting with themselves over this spending bill is this process just will not end.

It's like a blinking contest between two people who have had too much Botox.

And, you know,

and the Democrats still trying to figure out what this Kirsten cinema wants.

I mean, I'm not even sure she's wrong.

I just know what she wants.

I was like, speak, woman.

She's that person in a relationship where she doesn't know where she wants to go to dinner, but she knows it's not where you want to go.

But

what is still in the bill that the Democrats are going to put forward, child tax credits up to $3,600 if you ever get universal pre-kindergarten, free child care for the poor, and subsidized child care up to $115,000 if you make that.

Yeah.

As always,

nothing for us people who are smart enough to wear the condom.

Nothing.

Never anything for us.

Just good stuff.

And finally, this is kind of big news.

Facebook is changing its name and its whole culture toward the virtual, changing the name to Meta.

It's going to be all.

Of course, I read this on Facebook.

It may not be true.

We've got a great show.

Senator Chris Coombs is here and Caitlin Flanagan.

Well, first up, he is the former press secretary to President Trump and author of Radical Nation, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris's Dangerous Plan for America.

Sean Spicer, give my hand up.

Sean?

Good to see you.

How are you?

No, no, no.

Are you a handshaker?

Okay, Joe.

It's so weird that we're shaking hands, they're all unmasked.

You know, it just, we'll get to that later.

Okay.

But I'm glad we're back to doing that.

And look, I've seen you on TV quite a bit.

First,

first with Trump.

I appreciate that.

And then on Dancing with the Stars.

Oh, that too.

Thank you.

Oh, see?

I'll get that.

Ironically, it's the same lot, you know.

What's that?

As you know, it's the same lot.

It's good to be back.

Yeah.

Now, I notice you have your book there over your nuts.

I'm not going to.

Don't worry, Sean.

This is not a hostile interview.

Okay.

I can always get it back.

No,

I've been here.

for a long time now.

I'm well aware of that.

I know.

And we're trying to serve.

We're politically incorrect.

We have to come together as a country with the people on your side and people on my side.

So I'm not here to kick you in the nuts.

Good to know.

Okay.

But we do have disagreements.

I just, first of all, I mean, Dangerous Plan for America, the name for the book.

Tell me what, now, I look, I've also said on this show that the 3.5 trillion seemed like a lot of money for a country that not that long ago never passed the $1 trillion mark.

And I'm not sure what's in it.

I don't think we spend money wisely.

So I had reservations, but dangerous plan for America.

It seems like all the conservative books are like, you're always playing this dangerous radical card.

Is it really?

Look, first of all,

I think it is.

I think you look at how we're dealing with China, how we withdrew from Afghanistan in the aftermath of that, what we're doing in the economy, inflation going rampant.

All of these things are a concern of mine.

Plus, if you can spend $3.5 trillion and not know what's in it, and all you're doing is shoveling out money so that's not a problem.

Well, they do know what's in it.

No, they don't.

There's not a a single member of Congress that's read that.

Well, they don't.

Yeah, no, because it's 1,000 pages.

But we do know what's going on.

1,400.

Okay, every, Sean.

I'm just saying, Bill,

but we've not ever spent 3.5 or 200,000 of the clip.

I just said that.

But nobody ever knows what's in a giant bill like that.

So let's just talk real talk and not go to talking about it.

But it's what it's being spent on.

Okay, but like I remember you guys saying the exact same thing about Obamacare.

It was going to be the end of freedom.

It's been over a decade.

It wasn't, was it?

Was it end of the freedom?

For Obamacare, just to be clear, I think we're still dealing with the aftermath.

But number one, Obamacare.

The aftermath.

Obamacare was just healthcare.

What I'm talking about isn't related to just one stimulus bill.

It's how we're dealing with everything in this country right now.

They want to do things like negotiate drug prices.

I'm fine with it, but that's

a state.

They want to pack the court.

All of these things, I think, will radically.

And here's the thing.

It's not my words.

The president on Friday said that I want to transform this country.

Three Fridays ago, he said if we pass my legislation, it will fundamentally transform the structure and nature of the country.

Those are his words, not mine.

Your side is always saying they're out of office.

No, he's saying it.

I know, but like, you're out of office two days, and the country is an irretrievable shithole.

Really?

I mean, Trump,

I mean, it's amazing to me how fast it works.

Because Trump's slogan is make America great again, again.

I couldn't have written that.

Let me ask you a a question in all honesty.

Tell me, what is 10 months in office?

What is one thing that

is going well that this administration has done?

One thing.

Well, we did get out of Afghanistan.

Now, he did not stick the landing on how it was done.

I will agree with that.

But unlike his predecessors who talked about it and didn't do it, it was a big thing that had to be done.

Oh, I think we are going to regret how we've done that for decades, if not generations.

The fact that we've lost all forward presidents.

I know this kind of stuff doesn't mean a lot to you, but they also did lift a lot of children out of poverty

with

the pandemic really.

Okay.

I mean,

that does matter.

I mean, another thing they want to do, dental for seniors.

You know, a lot of ill health comes through the mouth.

Yes.

No joke, Sean.

I'm just saying.

Maybe we need it earlier.

It's a portal to, it's like the kind of thing that's pennies on the dollar if you take care of seniors and their dental.

But I think the one thing that, and you started this at the beginning, there's a lot of things that there's a shared goal, but it's how we do them.

Yes.

Right?

And too many times the answer is a government institution that is not well run, is not efficient, and we end up for decades and generations looking back and saying, oh, too bad.

So we're just talking about the numbers.

We're just talking about the numbers.

Well, no, we're talking about how, how to do it.

Okay.

But I think that you look at all of the systems of government in terms of especially healthcare, the VA, Medicare, Medicaid, none of them run well.

and now we want to say hey let's have a look I have to get back to this type of negotiating where we're talking about I think this is a reasonable discussion somewhat as opposed to

QAnon believes Democrats eat babies you know how do you negotiate with that person it's like we'll bend a little on the corporate tax rate if you stop eating babies but I don't think you are negotiating but you're not

a big part of your constituency no it's not oh are you so QAnon is not so you renounce QAnon of course I do oh great I don't I don't eat babies Not anymore.

No, that's the other.

They're accusing the other side.

Oh, they're not.

QAnon's not eating babies.

Sorry.

They're saying the Democrats eat babies.

Okay, well,

so you get that's lunacy.

What about the election was rigged and Trump really won?

Is that the case?

I think there are some serious problems with the election.

Here we go.

No, no, no, time out.

Hold on.

When you look at Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada, the idea that we changed rules running up to an election in terms of how a ballot was counted, when it was counted, do you think Pennsylvania, the law signed by a Democratic governor in 2019, Act 77, signed by Governor Wolfe, said that all ballots had to be in the middle of the middle AM?

There was a pandemic.

That's why they were.

So changed the law.

Okay, there was no time to do that.

No, there's never a time.

So you should just never have to.

Well, you would have.

No, there wasn't.

There wasn't.

There's plenty of time to pass legislation in all of these other areas.

This is a rabbit hole you want to go down to avoid the question: did Trump win or lose the election?

I don't know.

Well, there you go.

Because the world does.

No, wait, first of all,

tell me how many votes that got cast illegally and not according to the system.

Who did it ever for?

This was litigated in every courts.

Even Republicans who were in charge of the vote came down on the side of this election was fairly adjudicated.

You yourself said right after the election, they asked you about fraud.

They asked me about

fraud.

They have seen no evidence.

Correct.

I haven't.

But what I have seen is a state.

There's a difference.

So imaginary evidence.

No, no, no.

There is a difference.

What Pennsylvania's Supreme Court did, what Wisconsin's clerks did, they let people, Wisconsin does not have a provision in their law to let people vote early in person.

It has an absentee ballot provision.

People set up

tables in parks in Madison, Wisconsin, and allowed people to come without identification.

In Pennsylvania, they were allowed to vote without identification, no postmark on the ballot, in violation of Act 77 signed by a Democratic governor in 2019.

And the answer is, well, then don't worry about it because it was a pandemic.

Well, what's the next thing that you can just blow away?

A law is a law until it's changed.

You don't get to pick what you want to follow depending on what's happening outside.

Okay, this again, this was looked at exhaustively.

That's not true, though.

What was looked at, so for example, in Wisconsin, the court ruled four to three.

Okay, Sean, I get it.

You know what?

I get it.

You accused me of the same thing.

You said your piece.

You said your piece.

I haven't looked at this.

You're like that kid in school who.

Who's right?

No.

No,

who

has to answer about the book reports or reads one page very carefully that nobody else read and then does a thing on that and then we don't know what you're talking about.

You do.

But we know that what I do know.

It's your child.

What I do know

is that this was looked at by people from both parties and they that people have come down on the idea that Trump lost this election and you won't say it.

And if you're

part of the big lie if you're not,

it is not a big lie.

The Wisconsin State's Audit Committee just released a report.

I have it here for you.

I'm not afraid of anything, Bill.

You're afraid of Trump.

No.

You're afraid of being

a freedom.

Yes, you are.

You're afraid of being.

Time up.

You said I've not seen, I have not, then again, I wasn't on the campaign.

I did not see evidence of widespread fraud.

What I did say, and what I'm telling you is, is that in certain states where they sent out ballots that were not requested in violation of a law, that should concern everybody.

But he still lost the election.

Okay.

Okay.

So worry about Biden.

Okay, so he he did lose the election, Trump.

Biden's president.

See,

this is all about,

you work in the conservative sphere of media.

I do.

If you say what I want you to say, what I think you truly believe, you won't get your job.

Trump will start attacking you.

I think I'm good.

Well, they may, they could pay you, but they'll take you off the air, and you want the attention.

I don't blame you.

You know, you have something to say, but this is the problem with our country.

We can't move forward because two-thirds of your party is beholden to this idea that is not true and when when a country goes from a place where elections are not about the issues in the elections but about elections themselves then you're then you're in trouble no no here's the answer that if if you don't think that states changing rules leading up to that's different There is a difference between looking at

the same thing.

Okay, but that's, but you, you say, you're seeing

that because it's a pandemic, you can do anything you want.

It's interesting that everything is

all about Democrats.

It's bullshit.

You know it's bullshit.

It is not.

You know what is.

I'm sorry.

I'm telling you that.

Literally, I just cited three states and the reports that have come out of them, not by me, not by Trump, by those states.

So tell me where they, let's argue that.

Tell me what you found right about what any of those three states did in violation of their own laws.

I haven't looked at it as closely as you have, Sean, but a lot of people more qualified than me have, including people in your own party.

Courts looked at it.

This was litigated over and over and over again.

And what they came to say is that hold on.

No, no, no.

The Wisconsin court ruled four to three.

And the reason that the I tried to get you to say,

what do I talk about courts?

And then you go, let's not talk about courts.

All right.

I appreciate you coming on.

I know it was a hostile place to do it.

I hope we're still friends.

Sean Spicer, everybody, let's meet our crime.

All right, there's

your six-staff writer at the Atlantic.

Caitlin Flanagan is back here with us.

Thankfully, Caitlin Flanagan's here, and he is the Democratic Senator from Delaware.

I was just making a little joke there before.

And a member of the Judiciary and Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Chris Coons, is over here.

Okay, so Senator, I saw you yesterday on TV and you said that there is a deal with the Democrats.

You said they asked you, and are Manchin and Sinema on board?

And you said I just spoke to both of them.

So there is a deal, and if so, at what number?

1.95 trillion.

Oh, 1.9 trillion?

I hadn't heard that one.

And Bill, it's great to be on.

Thank you.

And that's a done deal?

So the Senate's going to vote for this at that number and pass it.

So

Manchin has insisted on getting some deficit reduction into this package.

So the framework that we all received, we all got text over the weekend.

We got text that we're looking at over this weekend.

He wanted $200 billion in deficit reductions.

So the revenue side comes in at $1.95, the spending at $1.75.

I'll remind you, this is one of the big things about this Build Back Better package, is that it doesn't add to the deficit in debt.

And you just reminded folks of what are the big pieces of it.

It just doesn't add to the deficit?

Because we're raising more money than we're spending in this package.

And it does some really big things in terms of daycare, health care, pre-K.

It makes

significant investments in the

climate change.

Where are you getting that $2 trillion?

15% corporate rate minimum.

So something I think is broadly supported.

There shouldn't be companies that make billions of dollars and pay zero in taxes,

a surcharge on millionaires and billionaires.

That's one of the most popular pieces of the package.

And IRS tax enforcement.

We have a huge tax gap in this country, folks who don't pay the taxes they owe.

So the big three revenue pieces, surcharge of billionaires, IRS tax enforcement, and a minimum quarter.

I was told, Senator Manchin, you felt like you were just about to lose him, maybe to the Republican Party.

Is there truth to that?

Well, there was an interview saying that he was really frustrated and he felt like if you push me any any further, I'll leave the caucus.

Wow.

He then publicly said, no, no, no, I might become an independent.

The larger point here is that

we have a really big tent in the Democratic Party from Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren all the way to Mansion and Cinema.

And one of the challenges we face is there's no Republicans helping us do this.

There are no Republicans who are at the table helping with daycare and child care and health care.

So we've got to come, all of us, all 50 of us, in the same place.

I see what got thrown under the bus bus was family leave, community college, prescription drugs.

But what stayed in, and

I'm giving you an attaboy in this, is the climate stuff.

Yes.

550 different.

That to me is the right priority.

Absolutely.

And of course, the president is going to, at the end of his opinion, he's going to Glasgow.

That's the 26th different, 26 now we've had climate summits.

Why would this one be any different?

You can see why kids are so despairing, young people.

Yes.

You know, Silent Spring was published 60 years ago.

It was no surprise that we're poisoning the planet.

We've known it all of my lifetime.

And,

you know, these kids have grown up.

You know, a lot of kids were born after inconvenient truth, and they were looking to adults to say, there's a crisis, what are you doing about it?

And it's another meeting in Scotland, and what's going to happen?

And somebody's, oh, there's going to be some.

Greta saying almost what you're saying, but in the 19-year-old, I find this interesting.

19?

Okay.

Build back better, blah, blah, blah.

Green economy, blah, blah, blah.

Net zero by 2050.

Blah, blah, blah.

Net zero, blah, blah, blah.

Climate neutral.

Blah, blah, blah.

This is all we hear from our so-called leaders.

Words.

Words that sound great,

but so far has led to no action.

It's so easy to

get mad at the leaders, right?

And what I would like to say to little Greta and everybody else is that leaders are always a reflection of the people they represent.

Here's the latest poll: 69% of Americans, including a majority of Republicans, want the U.S.

to take aggressive action to fight

climate change, only a third would support an extra tax of $100 a year.

So if you can get it done around the $90

mark,

I am so good to go.

Save the planet for $90.

Right.

It's such bullshit.

And, you know, why don't you guys ever go for a carbon tax?

Wouldn't that be the ballsy thing to do for the Progressive Party?

Isn't that what has to happen?

Not just spend.

Oh, so you're for that.

So

Senator Jeff Flake and I introduced a bipartisan carbon tax bill in a previous Congress.

We are pushing hard for a price on carbon and a border carbon adjustment, but frankly, we don't have all 50 Democrats in position to do that yet.

But that is absolutely the most powerful thing we could do.

There will be between the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the Build Back Better bill.

a trillion dollars in investments in climate resiliency, in the transition to a cleaner economy.

I'm old enough to remember when a trillion dollars was a lot of money,

an amount we'd never spent before.

So that is bold.

And Bill, just briefly on the history, because Greta's critique there is a pretty painful one.

President Obama campaigned on and ran on combating climate change, and his administration did a lot.

And then we elected a guy who said that climate change is a hoax and we shouldn't do anything about it.

And his administration, the transformation of the United States.

I don't know if anybody's ever done a lot of

the three big oil, natural gas, and coal that we use has stayed the same.

Even during the pandemic, when we were inside hiding,

it went up the amount of carbon we put in the atmosphere.

So, we were on the edge in the 70s, you know, after Silent Spring, and after there were rivers in Ohio that caught on fire and they couldn't put it back out.

Remember that?

Yeah.

Cleveland, yeah.

Yeah, and right.

And then even under the Nixon administration, the EPA was started and things were really on track, and environmentalism was a very popular subject.

It was a bipartisan subject.

Nobody wanted the country poisoned that way.

And then, to say, Ronald Reagan came in, and there were lots of nice, easy places to cut and cut and cut.

And ever since then, we have been so far behind the eight ball.

And there's lots and lots of young people.

They don't want to have children for the simple reason that they don't believe there'll be a planet

that kids should be born into.

And it's just, God love you working on this.

But even that, I thought, sounds really slow, you know, given the severity and immediacy of this crisis.

But I'm not sure the young are doing that.

I think it's deniable that there is a climate crisis.

California is on fire.

We've had record tornadoes and hurricanes.

I don't see how anyone can credibly run for president saying that climate change is a hoax.

Well, we've got the most likely Republican candidate in 2024 still saying climate change is a hoax.

Well, I mean, I could give you like 10 reasons why I'm still pessimistic about it, including we only recently passed the 50 percent mark of people who believe climate change is caused by humans.

So, and then I just told you like how many people are willing to spend how much money.

We're so not serious.

The other reason I'm pessimistic is because we're so concerned about the past.

Let me switch over to that, because there's an election that's going on in Virginia in November.

This is an off-year election.

They're very rare, but Virginia has them, the Commonwealth, or whatever they call Virginia.

It's one of those weird,

we're still in the 18th century niche.

And Terry McAuliffe, he was the governor, he's running again, he should walk away with it.

Biden won the state by 10 points.

It has not gone statewide for a Republican since 2009.

He's neck and neck because

the issue became schools.

I said this months and months ago, that the issue in the coming elections is going to be what's going on in the schools.

Parents vote.

And they don't like what's going on in school.

They feel like they are losing control.

And this became the issue in this election.

Trust me, this is going to to be a huge barometer kind of election because Terry McAuliffe loses, people understand, yes, oh that's right.

It is going to be about that.

And here's what Terry McAuliffe said, and then we'll get into the backdrop of this.

He said, I'm not going to let parents come into schools, not a good idea.

That right there is

because Democrats are so used to talking to teachers.

This is a mic drop applause line with teachers.

Not someone with parents.

I'm not going to let parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decisions.

I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.

Just on a political level,

fucking, oh, excuse me.

I mean,

very stupid, right?

Very stupid.

I was a school teacher before I became a writer.

I taught school for 10 years.

There's nothing more incendiary than the idea that teachers want to teach something parents don't want their kids to learn.

And that's what this Scopes Monkey trial was all about, was it was illegal to teach, you evolution in Tennessee in the 1920s.

And a very brave teacher in this great act of civil disobedience said, I'm not going to teach about Adam and Eve in a science classroom.

And Clarence Darrow came down and defended him and said, if you can't teach it in the public school today, you can't teach it in the private school tomorrow, and you can't say it in the public square.

This was all back when we thought free speech was a good thing.

This is, it's just setting aside the very real issues that are undergirding this whole discussion.

just politically, it was such a stupid thing to say.

And the undergird is this.

There's a book that was being taught.

It's Toni Morrison's Beloved,

which now I think that's a book that should be taught.

Of course.

I think that's the, now it is full of stuff that's difficult.

But these, we're talking about 17, 18-year-old kids.

It has bestiality, it has sex and violence, all of which they saw on their phone when they were 10, when you locked them in their, let them lock themselves up in their room.

Okay.

You know, I think, beloved, I think that

Democrats are actually picking up on this beloved issue.

The issue here is like eight years ago, some woman's son read Beloved in AP literature, and he had a nightmare,

which is like you're supposed to.

It's, you know, it's a ghost story, so that was a good response.

But,

you know, it's not going anywhere.

Beloved's not going anywhere.

That's a national issue.

That's not a state issue.

The AP is a national test and organization.

And all due respect to this mother, truly, some kids aren't ready for AP, you know, so that's a cost of college class, you know?

It's not a high school class.

But I think the issue is, so it's been sort of, that's kind of people are looking at that as that it's a racist issue and race is all throughout this, this whole issue, but I think it's more complex than just than that book.

I think it's good that it's coming to the fore because we have to start defining what critical race theory means because it means something to everybody when they hear it.

Now, if it means you teach Tony Morrison, I'm for it.

It doesn't mean that.

But it means right.

Here's the thing about critical race theory in the schools.

Of course, you can teach it in the schools.

There's nothing you can't teach if you teach it in a Socratic method.

It can be in a government class.

It can be in a U.S.

history class.

It's the way you look at Marxism as a framework.

There's lots of different frameworks to look at history.

What you cannot do, and what is happening, is you can't set school policy by the findings of critical race theory.

You can't rewrite a curriculum because it and you really cannot treat children in a way that you're pulling them out by race and giving them different messages.

And that is what you cannot do.

It's happening.

Right.

If that's what critical race theory means.

If it means separating five-year-olds by race and telling some you're oppressors and the others you're the oppressed and giving up on a colorblind society and resegregation and racism is the essence of America, then I'm out.

Right, that's what it is.

I'm out on that.

But I'm in on Toni Morrison.

But of course, I'm in on acknowledging racism still persisting.

We don't need, obviously, Toni Morrison, we justify her on literary grounds.

This is a great American writer.

This is a great American book.

If people are putting together a literature program, who wouldn't include

a novel, at least one novel by Morrison?

And I think that's the one that speaks most loudly to young people.

There are all sorts of ways you build curricula that don't have anything to do with kind of listen Terry McAuliffe.

I'm a Democrat

He was just he's a and I love you, but he's a hacked politician and he was siding with the teachers union because he's like that's where his bread is buttered and he's a rich man who sent all of his kids to private schools and he's never in his life had someone tell him we're gonna tell your eight-year-old child something you don't want her to know and we're gonna keep her for seven hours to do it and you have no control over that.

So it's it's a big issue and if he loses it then Democrats are going to lose.

Learn.

Run some progressive candidates.

Run some people who stand for progressive ideas.

Don't run these retreats.

Where are we getting these, Bill?

Like, our whole country is supposed to be full of this vigorous young country.

It's like, James Biden, I mean, okay, at least he got in.

But then this Terry McCalla, there's got to be.

Thank God you're here.

We need you.

That's all I'm going to say.

You're for recycling, just not a politician.

Exactly, exactly.

I don't know if the Democratic Party is lacking for progressive politicians.

I think we seem to have plenty.

Yeah, you think you're a political.

What does it mean to be a progressive?

What does it mean to be a progressive?

It doesn't necessarily mean these wacky kind of new social ideas.

It means that you stand, this our party.

Whatever it is, Joe Biden signed on to it fully.

Right.

So

maybe he's 110, but he signed on to that.

We used to stand for the working man and woman.

That's who we were.

Yeah.

And that is the agenda that the president is moving forward.

The policies are definitely better.

It is not a radical plan.

No.

Look,

what we've been working on for weeks now, weeks and weeks, and we will, I believe, deliver in the coming week, is a plan that's going to deal with the costs that keep working families up at night.

Health care, daycare, pre-K, elder care.

These are the things that matter and really combating climate change.

That's not a radical plan.

That's simply dealing with the things that are right in front of us.

Yeah, okay.

So it's Halloween

Eve, Eve?

Yes, it's Halloween Eve, Eve today.

Friday.

Sunday is Halloween, and it's time for part two of our annual Halloween movies bit.

Last week, we talked about woke horror movies.

You know, that is an actual genre after Get Out.

Woke, and we had, you know, ones like, I know what you tweeted last summer.

But there's also conservative Halloween movies because, I mean, come on, who lives on fear more than the right wing?

I mean,

Fox's whole business model is fear.

Fear and London.

So these are some of the movies the conservatives are watching this Halloween.

These are things that scare conservatives.

Like Rosemary's Anchor Baby.

That's

very scary to conservatives.

The Critical Race Theory Seminar at the End of the Street is another

terribly scary

president evil well there you are

night of the living wage

the man in the ironic mask

Heather has two mummies.

Oh, that's a very scary Halloween

House of Vax.

Oh,

scary.

Those are scary to conservative.

Friday, the Juneteenth.

Jews.

And, of course, husband of Chucky.

Okay, so

I'm not sure what the latest Dr.

Fauci thing was on Halloween.

He changes his mind a lot, but I think it was go and do it.

I hope so, because it certainly has been my position since the beginning of this.

Just resume living.

You know, I mean, come on, the 15 of 100,000.

That's where we are at cases in California.

15 cases per 100,000 people.

I know some people seem to not want to give up on the wonderful pandemic, but you know what?

It's over.

There's always going to be a variance.

You shouldn't have to wear masks.

I should be able, I haven't had a meeting with my staff since March of 2020.

Why?

The state, the corporate, whoever it is, you're being fucking, sorry again.

Why is he apologizing about me?

I know, because you're a senator and you shouldn't hear bad language.

I forget.

I've never heard that word before.

I know, I know.

But really, I mean, also, vaccine, mask, pick one.

You got to pick.

You can't make me mask if I've had the vaccine.

I have broken up with COVID.

It's not working for me anymore.

I stayed home the first year.

I was a good girlfriend.

He was a little abusive.

Then I got the vaccine.

I walked out of the CVS.

I hadn't been that thrilled coming out of a drugstore since I got the birth control pill in 1981.

It's like, oh, yeah,

I'm back.

And

it was the same thing.

I knew.

It's like, okay, I'm not going to need this every day.

But when I do need it, it's on board.

And then I barely got there, and it was like, oh, it's Delta.

So I, you know, I just, I can't keep up.

And you know what?

I have cancer.

I'm triple vaxxed.

If it gets me, fair play to it, because it will put up a fight against me, but I'm not staying in my house again.

There you go.

Well, you're down with that because it's the Democrats who seem to be.

I mean, I travel in every state now,

back on the road, and the red states are a joy, and the blue states are a pain in the ass for no reason.

We are all tired of this vaccine.

We are all ready to take it.

No, you're tired of this vaccine.

You're not tired of it.

We're all tired of the pandemic.

There you go.

I save you, you save me.

And I won't swear.

One of the critical things that's being discussed right now by President Biden, one of the things we have to recommit ourselves to, is supporting vaccination around the rest of the world.

There's still a lot of countries that are very, very minimally vaccinated because

if a variant develops out in the world that is able to defeat the vaccine, we are all the way back at the beginning.

So in the United States, in most of the Western world, we're ready to be done with this, but we're not done until the world is safe and we're not safe as a world until the world's vaccinated.

Except the

The world recognizes natural immunity.

We don't because everything in this country has to go through the pharmaceutical companies.

Natural immunity is the best kind of immunity.

We shouldn't fire people who have natural immunity because they don't get the vaccine.

We should hire them.

Yes?

If someone tests as having antibodies, well, okay, but you know, people who've had it, I've had it.

Right.

You know, I mean, I shouldn't be tested anymore.

I had the vaccine, I got it.

If someone's willing to be a fireman, if someone's willing to be a policeman, if someone's willing to go into a burning building and says, I'm just not that afraid of COVID and I don't want to take the vaccine, that should be enough.

He shouldn't be losing his job.

He shouldn't be furloughed without pay.

The guy that saves lives because he doesn't want to take a vaccine.

It's ridiculous.

And just a little messaging.

I mean, I see it all the time.

I saw it driving in today.

People outside alone walking with a mask.

It's so stupid.

It's an amulet.

Yes.

You know,

a charm people wear around

to ward away evil spirits.

It means nothing.

I mean, can't we get people to understand the facts more?

I mean, listen to this.

For unvaccinated hospitalization risk, unvaccinated, 41% of Democrats thought it was over 50%.

Unvaccinated?

Oh, I don't have that.

Hospitalization rate for the vaccinated is actually 0.01%,

and the rate for the unvaccinated is 0.89%.

So in both cases, the correct answer is less than 1%.

They thought it was over 50.

How do people, especially of one party, get such a bad idea?

Where did that come from?

So here's the good news.

We've got safe, effective vaccines that have saved millions and millions of lives.

Here's the bad news.

700,000 Americans have died, hundreds of thousands of them needlessly.

So I'm willing to give President Trump and the previous administration and the Congress credit for Operation Warp Speed, for developing these remarkable, life-saving, world-saving vaccines, but I frankly think we shouldn't let up on the urgency of still promoting vaccination so we can enjoy reopening our society, getting back to normal life.

Thank you.

But there is no consensus really on that number of how many have died exactly from COVID or complications from COVID.

I mean just anecdotally when Colin Powell...

Yes, people died, but like Colin Powell died.

He had cancer and Parkinson's.

And all I heard was he died from COVID.

Right.

Complications.

Yes, if you're very sick, something is going to happen.

Well, there was a woman, it was all the, it was the New York Times, like, she's 113 and COVID took her out.

Well, I mean, she's 113, you know, it's like, that's enough.

That's enough of you.

Right.

You know?

And,

but I'm telling you, I have cancer a lot.

You can't run for office.

Yeah, no, you can't run for office.

I know a lot of people.

You'll lose the 113-year-old vote.

Exactly.

The centenarian demographic.

But, you know, because I look at numbers all the time, because of cancer, I look at this COVID stuff, and it's like, yes,

anyone I know with cancer would give anything for those odds, 0.89 or whatever.

And we're looking at people with complicated health histories a lot of the time.

We're looking at obesity as an issue, but no one wants to say it because it's body positivity.

And we're looking at poverty,

that's where we need to be focused as people who live really close together.

But there's a lot of people within different poor communities who don't want to take it.

We just have to take our chances,

be thoughtful and careful, and go back out there and make sure that people who live in dense housing have complete access to the vaccine.

And if they don't want to take it.

Yeah, we got to get back to life.

I mean, look at the sporting events that are, all three sports are playing now, including basketball, which is inside.

Nobody seems to be having super spreader events.

I mean you know it's it was great.

It was so much fun having a pandemic.

But you know

bye-bye.

Okay.

Chance to improve our baking skills and walk our dogs away.

Right, exactly.

So I want to, I know your new article in the Atlantic is about toxic masculinity.

Well, it's about heroic masculinity.

Okay, but fighting the idea.

I mean, you know, there's another thing that parents, I think, around the country are concerned about.

I've read this in schools, is that boys are sometimes castigated for basically just being boys.

Just awful.

You know, we've had this wonderful change in our culture where it's, you know, we get it.

It's great to be gay.

We're, you know, we're way ahead on trans issues.

We're way ahead on women's issues and

feminism and all that.

But then if you get a little boy and he, you know, wants to run fast and he wants to kick things and he wants to jump,

toxic masculinity and he likes stories about heroes.

There was just a big article in the New York Times.

Some woman is saying, I'm really concerned about my three sons.

They like stories about saving the day.

They like playing video games where they can be a hero.

That's called heroic masculinity.

It's a real thing.

We need it.

It's been part of humanity since the beginning.

That's what ran up those towers, those 300 and something men who gave their lives for others.

That was heroic masculinity.

And there's just something sick and poisoned that this idea that boys are bad and that they have to be watched and that they have to be retrained, and that the people who are going to do the watching and retraining are women.

The people who raise boys, you need to have men very involved because boys want to grow up to be men.

And so I think that we're going to not be in a good place.

You know, if you want to make toxic masculinity to the extent that that's a thing, yeah, sure, of course it is.

If you want to create toxic masculinity, tell these boys from preschool on that there's something wrong with them and the things they want to do are wrong.

They might be right for this girl over here, but for you, they're wrong and you're dangerous.

And I know a lot of parents feel this way, and there's got to be a way to celebrate all the diversity of genders and of sexual expression, et cetera, and still say that there's a very large number of boys who are this way.

And

some of what's baked into the cake of us being men is not going to be perfect.

But I feel like it's still somewhat popular with women.

You tell me.

Caitlin and I were both parents of twin boys.

We both have twin boys in their 20s.

I also have a daughter.

And just one of the things we focused on, my wife and I, in raising our kids, was giving them a model that's positive for heroic adulthood.

So I'll tell you in Congress, whether it's Speaker Pelosi Pelosi or Senator Mikulski was a senator from Maryland, tough as nails, capable leaders, decisive, I would say, heroic role models.

But I identify both of them as women, do you?

Yeah, absolutely.

Okay, so I'm talking about masculinity.

It's a thing.

And we've decided it's not a thing.

And we've decided there's no difference between men and women.

And

Senator Pelosi, you know, God love her.

I'm not going to wait for her to come into the burning building and get me out of there when she was of age.

She's, and I believe me, I'm as strong a woman as you're ever gonna get

within the feeble world in which I work.

But I'm strong.

I know a lot of really tough women.

I know a lot of women are heroes.

It's different to be a man.

It's different, heroic masculinity.

Look, the ugly truth that nobody wants to admit is men are stronger, they're bigger, they're faster, they have a better sense of spatial objects, which is why they blow us out of the water with sports and women can't keep up.

That's just the truth.

And as a group,

a lot of boys are saying, What's the point of all this?

What's the point of my being faster and stronger and bigger?

It's to protect innocent people.

It's to be that person who goes into the burning building.

That's what I'm all about.

And there's plenty of great women firefighters.

There are

plenty of great women cops.

But no, Nancy Pelosi is not an example of heroic masculinity.

That's not what I was saying.

I know.

I was saying it's important for our children to have positive examples of the heroic.

Yes.

And for young boys to understand how to treat others respectfully and how to feel fully empowered to be heroic.

So is there a different kind of

heroism that you would model for your sons in a particular way than your daughter, or do you just think heroism is the same for degenders?

I think there's certain qualities, loyalty, decisiveness, commitment, a willingness to take risks, service to others, that are admirable in men and women.

And absolutely, I mean, you know, my boys wrestled and played football and played lacrosse, and I'm very proud of them.

But we also help them understand how to treat others with respect.

How to be positive over them.

I have to respectfully end it there.

Thank you very much, you guys.

Time for New Rule, everybody.

New Rules.

Okay, New Rule, the British activist who...

British activists who set up this protest outside Downing Street after Parliament voted against an environmental bill needs to be more direct.

People don't see this and think you're an activist and you're striking a blow for the environment.

They think you're a union and you're on a break.

New world, let's admit that a bomb cyclone is just cable news way of saying a storm.

The same way the Toyota Thon sales event is Toyota's way of saying you can buy our cards at the same price as you would any other time of year.

New rule, whoever keeps writing those articles telling us we're doing everything wrong, including this one that says we're walking wrong,

you have to show yourself.

That way we can write about you, everything you're doing wrong.

Like, you're probably contributing to the field of journalism wrong.

Here's how to fix it.

And

go fucking yourself.

You're doing it wrong.

New rules, someone has to tell the woman, the women who buy this sexy vaccine costume, which consists of a wet-look mini dress and a hypodermic needle sticking out of your head, it doesn't look sexy or like a vaccine.

It looks like you've been swimming at Venice Beach.

Terrible.

New rules, now that Megan the Stallion has posted this photo of her boyfriend drinking from a glass wedged in her ass,

let's not make this a thing at Houla Hands.

I mean, look at that photo.

It's very unsanitary.

He's not wearing a mask.

And finally, new rule, instead of putting a Bible in hotel rooms, we should start putting a dictionary in there.

Because apparently nobody knows what words mean anymore.

George Carlin famously had the seven words you can't say on TV.

Well,

here's my eight words people need to stop redefining.

Hate, victim, hero, shame, violence, survivor, phobic, and white supremacy.

Comedian Hannah Gadsby characterized Dave Chappelle's controversial Netflix special as hate speech dog whistling.

Well, dog whistle refers to when someone puts things in code because they're afraid to come out and say what they really think.

That's what you get from Dave Chappelle?

He's afraid to say what he really thinks.

And it's not hate speech, just because you disagree with it, nor is it phobic.

Phobic comes from the Greek word for something one fears irrationally, like spiders or germs.

but now is used as a suffix for anything you just don't like.

I've been called commitment phobic.

No, I don't fear commitment.

I just don't want it.

Other people do.

Great.

I don't call them single phobic.

I don't like bowling.

I'm not bowling phobic.

And if I talk about how wrong I think it is to force women to wear a beekeeper suit all day,

that's not being Islamophobic.

I just don't like it.

And I bet bet they don't either.

I went as a ghost for Halloween once.

I lasted about 20 minutes.

Also in the category of we just don't like it, so we're pretending it's something else, is the word violence.

Last year there was a staff mutiny at the CBS drama All Rise when some of the writers

I'm sorry, I meant victims,

took issue with a scene where two women are in an elevator and a naked man gets on and they just continue talking calmly.

And if you think that's offensive, you should see how the guy pushed the button.

But the writers on this show found the scene objectionable and sent off an email saying, two women would not calmly continue a conversation with a naked white guy running into the elevator.

That is violence.

No, it's not.

Violence is when it hurts.

It usually involves leaving a mark of some kind.

Of course, innumerable things can lead to violence, but I'm sorry, you can't take that word and use it for stuff that's just scary to you or just verbal, which is something I literally learned in kindergarten.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but if you don't know how that one ends, you need to repeat kindergarten.

Social justice warriors who are fond of governing by hashtag like to say silence is violence.

And we know that because it rhymes.

The words victim and survivor have traveled.

a long way from their original usage.

The baby from the Nirvana album says he's a victim.

He's suing Nirvana for lifelong damages.

I never thought I'd have to say this to a baby, but stop being such a fucking baby.

You're not a victim.

There's no reason you can't have a normal, happy life just because people look at you and think baby penis.

It didn't hurt Trump.

In 2010, the New York Times used the term white supremacist on 75 occasions.

Last year, over 700 times.

Now, some of that, to be sure, is because Trump came along and emboldened the faction of this country that is truly white supremac.

It is, of course, still a real thing.

But it shouldn't apply to something like, as more than a few have suggested, getting rid of the SAT test.

Now, if we find the SAT test is slanted in such a way as to stack the deck in favor of Caucasians, if there are questions like, Biff and Chip are sailing a yacht,

traveling at 12 knots to an Ed Sheeran concert on Catalina.

If Catalina is 26 miles away, how many white claws should they bring?

Yes, then maybe.

Yes.

But of course, the SAT doesn't have questions like that, so it becomes a kind of ludicrous exaggeration that makes lovers of common sense roll their eyes and then vote for Trump.

Now, are there snowflakes on the right?

Of course, there's no whinier little bitch than Trump himself.

But this kind of stuff does tend to stick to the left a lot more.

Have you ever heard a parent call their child their hero?

What party are they probably in?

My kid is my hero.

Why?

He's six.

Did he pull someone out of a burning building?

My hero.

Look at the way he shares his riddling.

You do realize how stupid it sounds to imply you want to grow up to be your kid.

During the pandemic, everyone was a hero.

Now, for sure, frontline medical workers really were and are.

But then it spread to civil servants and then anyone who just went to work, postal employees, Amazon stalkers.

One day I found myself saying to the guy collecting carts at Ralph's, thank you for your service.

And then there's shaming.

That definition has been rewritten to mean anything that suggests I'm not 100% perfect.

I'm not fat shaming when I call bullshit on the idea that a person can be healthy at any size.

We're so through the looking glass on this that Weight Watchers changed their name to WW.

The weight loss people can't mention weight loss.

Adele was shamed for losing weight, like she was a traitor to, what, unhealthiness?

When I have reported the statistic that 78% of the people who died or were hospitalized with COVID were overweight, that's not fat shaming.

That's fat splaining.

It's what the CDC should be doing.

And this is the essence of why word inflation is a problem.

You can try to change reality by changing the words, but you can't.

It just stops you from dealing with it.

One of the bad guys in 1984 says, the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought.

Yes, it's Orwellian.

And you know what they say?

Orwell never ends well.

All right.

It's our show.

I'll be at the Tap Theater in Cincinnati, November November 7th, at the Mirage in Vegas, November 26th and 27th.

And at the BJCC Concert Hole in Birmingham, Alabama, January 15th.

I want to thank Caitlin Flanagan, Senator Chris Croons, and Sean Spicer.

Thank you, folks.

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

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