Ep. #573: Martin Short & Steve Martin, Donna Brazile, Michael Moynihan

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

Thank you. How are you? Okay.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. You look great.

Appreciate it.

Great to be here.

Okay, all right.

Okay, we got a big show.

Please.

Please. You don't want to take time away from Martin and Martin.

But listen, our national nightmare is over. Andrew Cromo has resigned.

This was,

well, it's a long time coming, but it finally happened this week. He said he didn't want to do it, but he felt he was forced to.
And all the women in the office went, yeah.

But it's interesting. He said he needs two weeks to get out of town.
He's going to be governor for two more weeks.

Well, he says there's a lot of things, a lot of loose ends to tie up, you know, administrative duties to fulfill. He also wants to take one more shot at Teresa at the zoning board.

But

the other scandal that the Democrats are facing, even though I don't think it's a scandal at all, but Obama had a big birthday party. Yes, because he's successful and he's 60.
This is America.

We don't want to punish success, do we?

No, we don't. Anyway, but yes, it's true.
In the pandemic, with everything going on, the optics were terrible. And they should have known that.
The DJ they hired was named Tone Deaf.

And it was, whoa, what a talk about an A-list crowd. Oh my gosh, Jay-Z and Beyonce, Spielberg, Don Cheadle, Tom Hanks,

Bradley Cooper, John Legend. This was a swanky party.
A lot of them were tipping the valet in Bitcoin.

But it is bad optics because, first of all, a lot of them flew in on private jets, and we got a climate report from the UN. Horrible news, as it always is.
Nothing you even need to read, right,

about the climate. Just walk outside.
It's hot. Oh, it's hot.
I saw Hunter Biden putting ice on a hooker's nipples, and she was paying him.

That's hot, ladies and gentlemen.

Poor Hunter Biden.

They keep releasing these videos of him. Have you seen this? Always with the hookers and the blow.
It's sad. Wait, sad? Yeah, sad.
I'm sorry. Yes, sad.
Very fucking sad is what I meant to say.

But really, I mean,

does Hunter Biden ever have sex when he doesn't put it on his laptop?

Most people, when they have an orgasm, they say, oh, God, oh, God. He says, like, comment, and share.

But, yeah, it's.

But, yeah, against all the horrible things that are going on, I'm sure you saw the Taliban have now pretty much taken over. Why?

We knew it would happen.

Not quite this fast. They're taking over Afghanistan and Biden, I'm telling you.
Look, you know, he's the one who did this. I think it'll look good in the future.

But right now, he's under a lot of heat.

So many things, COVID spreading, and this,

he doesn't want to talk about this shit. He had a press conference today.
First thing he said was,

so how about all that crack my kid does?

But

no, it's sad. Afghanistan, 20 years we were there, all for nothing.
It's like when Sean Hannity went to high school.

It's terrible.

But yeah, no, we'll be living. I just want to say, you think Albany is a hostile workplace? Yeah.
Wait till you see Kabul.

A hostile workplace for women. I think I left that part out.

Either way, it works. But you're right.
I should have mentioned that. All right.
So the 2020 census is out. Listen to this.

White people have fallen for the first time as numbers in this country since 1790.

I blame country music.

You just can't fuck to it, you know.

But a lot of people see the writing on the wall, Cracker Barrel. They

change their name to just Barrel. All right, we got this great show because Donna Brazil is here and Michael Moynihan.

And right now, they are actors, comedians, and of course, legends who co-star in the new series Only Murders in the Building, premiering on Hulu on August 31st. Martin Short and Steve Martin.

Oh my gosh.

Hey, thank you.

Thank you, everyone.

Thanks for remembering.

Oh, my God.

Oh, my God. What have we done to deserve that kind of reaction other than provide decades of quality entertainment?

Exactly. And this is the first time I've done your show, and I love your show.
Thank you. And I think that you've moved to HBO, which is fantastic.
I mean, that was, yes, 20 years ago.

I get it. But I'm a little reclaimed.
Two legends at the same time. I mean, it's an embarrassment.

I'm embarrassed. It's an embarrassment of riches.
It's an embarrassment of decline.

No.

No, you two have

now revived the concept of the comedy team, which I think is... When I was a kid, I loved the comedy team.
I loved them. Right.
Abbott and Costello. Burns and Schreiber.
How about the lesser ones?

Burns, yeah. Remember that? Monteith and Rand.

Because we're here, you go with the lesser ones?

Yeah, what's that about? Stiller and mirror. Oh, I love the Birmingham.
Still in Mirror, yeah. Laurel and Hardy.

Burns and Transformers. Jane and Jerry.

Who?

That's what a lot of the kids are saying.

Jerry and Bob. But you're saying that.
Yes.

That's right. Well, I'm going to get to that because you have your own Dorothy Lemour now.

Oh, yes.

Now, I've got to tell you something. That's for me to go now.

But usually, comedy teams are.

You are both huge stars and then became a comedy team at, I guess we would say, the September of our years. Yes.
As Mr. S.
was saying,

that's polite.

December.

No.

You know, it's weird for me because when society deems you timeless, you don't kind of know where you fit in.

How do you work work with an egomaniac? That's for either one of you.

Are we a comedy team? Is that the way you think of us?

I like the idea of being a comedy team.

Well, you work together on stage. I watched your Netflix version.
No, no, no, no. We have worked together a lot.
Say we did five movies together.

No, we don't worked a lot together, but up until seven years ago, we hadn't done anything long. That's what I'm saying.
It never usually happens that way where they get together at the end.

Usually they're a comedy team and then they split up.

They're doing it the reverse. I see.
Oh, I see what you're doing. Oh, that's interesting.
That's interesting.

Yes. Steve Martin.

Well, I think we're an interesting team because,

you know, Marty's a crooner. He sings beautiful, beautiful songs like Sinatra.
I play the banjo, there's no fit there.

He does characters. I don't do characters.
He does voices. I don't do voices.
And he

has a certain something.

I'm sorry.

And, you know.

Sorry.

Well, so I kind of carry this act. Yeah, yeah.

But I

notice you also.

If you call carrying me dragging you,

you insult each other, which seems to be the way comedians show affection. Like in the beginning of your show that I've seen, that's a lot of the beginning is you.
And of course, no one is buying it.

You know, we know you love each other. But don't friends do that, all friends? Not all friends.
Your friends. No.

My friends. Don't you think? I don't think all friends do that.
Insult each other? Will they rag each other on each other? Bust each other's balls. There you go.

There's the language we're going for.

All right, so I want to talk about your show, because I know you want to talk about your show. It's fantastic.
Couldn't care less. No.

Only murders in the building.

Why is murder funny? And it is so funny in your show, because it seems like it wouldn't be because it's murder. Well, you know, there's a huge history of crime.

going back even before this this show. I mean it goes back

you know

I mean even Adam Costello movies were about you know somebody getting murdered by a Frankenstein you know and and and there's so many podcasts about murder. Right.

And that's what I think is interesting about the show that it combines the obsession with crime and murder and podcasts.

Well you know the show actually came up like like two years ago and then podcasts in that interim grew and the podcast was always a a bit a part of it, and now we're sort of riding a wave of podcast delight.

What do you make of that?

I don't understand how people under 40,

it seems like their attention span is either three seconds or four hours.

I can tell you why.

Because the podcasts go on too long for me.

Well, I can tell you.

Podcasts are perfect for doing two things at once. Yes.
For example, I have a bicycle and exercise and have a podcast. So I'm doing two things at once.

But if I were going to sit and listen to a podcast, I wouldn't be able to do it. And what do you think about that? And also, you know, you listen to a podcast while you're talking to your child.

Or when I'm talking to Marty. You know, I say, Marty wants to say something, I put it in front of the podcast.

Let's talk generations because your co-star, and this is Selena Gomez, who's fantastic. Yes.
I know. Do you know her music? Yes, absolutely.
I want to love you like a love song, baby.

I mean, I'm always looking for new music that sounds like it could have been a hit in any decade. That's one.
It's a great record. Well, I agree.

She's so good in the show, too. And she's fantastic, and we get along great.
She's a great actress. And she puts out her pills in the morning.
Yeah, nice.

She didn't make a big fluba the first day of shooting. She went into Steve.
You know, I don't know if she knew. She came and said, I'm such a big fan, Judy Dench, she said.
So

See what I mean with the insults. Yeah.
But I mean, I love the dynamic that a millennial and two boomers, because these two generations always seem to be feuding.

Somehow the Gen X, which are in the middle, they get a pass on this. But the boomers are always hearing it from the millennials that we ruined the world, we took all the jobs.

But hasn't it always been that way? I mean, in the 60s, you know, you were talking about doing the Smothers Brothers show here. Oh, that's right.
This studio.

No, it wasn't this studio. This is Carol Burnett.

Not the same studio. Smothers Brothers is across the way.
That's why my heart broke when I came in because they said they're on the Smothers Brothers stage. I went, that's the Carol Burnett stage.

Anyway.

No, when I first started writing here, I was 21 years old. Wow.
And the reason I got hired at 21 years old is because the mantra of the day was never trust anyone over 30.

So they wanted young writers. And, you know, the writers they had were great.
They wrote for Jack Benny. And of course, they looked at us sideways, you know, these kids coming in.

But, you know, they were tolerant. And they were great writers.
And that show, I don't know if,

do you remember this Mother's Brothers show, anybody in this? Oh, okay, good. It should be.
I mean, they should have a legacy greater than they have.

It was not only funny, but it really kind of changed the discourse

in this country. So, okay, so I want to ask about ageism, because you guys are old and I'm old.
And, you know it pisses me off that this is the last acceptable prejudice.

You know, people can always say if they don't like anything you do, well, you're old.

Are you saying that because I'm starting to look like the guy from up?

No, you.

It's the glasses.

No, no, it starts with the glasses. I got new frames and I realized as I was about to walk out here, I look like the guy.

As in so many things, you were so ahead of your time and prescient because you because you had the white hair when you were three so now you never really I never thought of dying my hair once you still look like glad you look like Steve Martin yeah like he always looked yeah that's that's a trick do you think I look like him ish

But do you think we should lean in? I mean, to me, the only answer, because we're not getting younger,

is to lean into it. You know, kids, you know, when they, that's what they attack me, you're old, and I'm like, yeah, but you're stupid.

Maybe that's why I know some shit and you don't.

It's like us backstage.

No, I think you're absolutely right. I don't think you try to hide anything.
First of all, you can't. And you should.
Then why did you go into makeup? Because.

Because on the way here, I had smiled and a hunk of button stuff I put on

fell off and I caught it and they had to patch it up. But that's not the point.

Well, I don't

actually think about it. But, you know, we're in a different situation.

You don't think about aging? Well, I think about it as a person,

but not as a celebrity or actor. But it's something that they attack you with.
And then they look, I mean, if anything you do that doesn't measure up, they will say, well, now he's too old.

Well, we we get that a little bit, but in friendly conversation with Selena, she'll go, uh-uh.

And it's even in the show a little bit, written in. Right.

But no, she's introduced us to a lot of things.

Songs. Yeah, but you reached us.

To do that, let's tell the story. When she was teaching you, reading all the lyrics to Wednesday.
Wet-ass pussy. Yeah, WAP.
Reading all the lyrics.

And I went to Wed-Ass Pussy.

And I was aware that

that kind of material was out there. I didn't know it was was the number one hit.

So that she's going in Surrogate, and she's reading him all the lyrics.

And then I'm called to the set, and then about 10 minutes later, Steve comes up to me, Marty, I just heard three new verses to Top Hat and Tail.

And what did you take away from what she taught you?

Well, it's just that what used to be

kind of a musician. No, I mean about

the pussy itself. Oh.

But

a long time ago.

So young comics,

what can we do to stop? Help them?

Where do you.

What do you mean? What do you mean? Well, I'm just saying, like, when we were strung up, there was a place to be bad. You know, where can a kid be bad now?

Well, they also have a shorter

presentation. I mean, they might be 30 seconds, you know, so you get a chance to test something and see if it works.
But, you know, I have a rule. I never say, well, when we were kids, we were

so much better.

I heard that when I was a kid, and I vowed not to do it, because look at all the talent that's out there.

I mean, just new forums.

There's not, I don't know, are clubs like

catch-wise, are they still popular? They still are, but people go in there with phones.

And if you try something and it's a little out of bounds, it can be on Twitter and you can be canceled before your career gets started.

That's what I mean about we could be bad in ways and test the boundaries and no one knew until we, like me, got higher up and then still did it and got in trouble.

I

was

did a bit with Chris Rock on the Oscars. And we were going to go to the comedy store and run it.
Right. We wanted to do that.

I said, yeah, but somebody's going to film it and then they'll post it and it'll be ruined. He goes, oh, that'll be great.
And I never thought of it that way. You mean

good publicity? Yeah, but except if they had heard the jokes before, not so much. Well, but

all the jokes we did. I could talk to you all now.
I just wanted to say, one of the great things about watching you is that I think audiences, I know I am one,

love it. No, when they're.

We love it when we see people who we love and then we can tell that they're genuine friends. You know, like we see it with bands.
You know, we hate it when bands break up.

Oh, I hated hearing about that the Eagles didn't get along. Well, you know, Simon and Garfunko, why can't you love each other?

Right up to

honest to God. And then what's with the Beatles breaking up? Right, exactly.

So I just

wanted to say I can see the affection, and it's contagious. I love this little white-haired guy.
I know you do.

Steve, Bill can see the affection on us.

All right, Martin and Martin, everybody. Thank you.

Hulu, August 31st. All right, let's meet our panel.
There you go.

They can make fun of me all they want.

That was great.

I'm going to get a job one day. I know, isn't it fun?

Well, I don't usually get that kind of star power here, but anyway, he's our Herz-Up panel. He's a national correspondent correspondent for Vice News tonight and co-host of the fifth column podcast.

Michael Moynihan is here.

And she's a columnist for USA Today and contributor to ABC News. Our friend Donna Brazil is back here, always looking younger, by the way.

Every time I, I don't know what.

Well, you know what it is. What it is it? Like Obama, baby, I turned that golden 60.
Really?

Wow.

You could pass for 40. Baby.
And I still, like Liz Taylor, feel like a cat on a hot tin roof.

That actually.

Yes.

That was not a good thing to feel like a cat on a hot tin roof. Well, you never know what kind of pussy you're dealing with.

Shells on leaf.

Nice as good as you can. Did you just hold my hand for a while? No, babe, but but I'm not going to do...
Look. All right, this is turning into a very awkward transition

into a discussion of Afghanistan.

But I must say, with all that's going on in the world, that is what is occupying my mind this week.

And, you know, I mean, we all knew there would be a collapse.

It just is sometimes it shouldn't be shocking because It happened in Vietnam, but at least in Vietnam, it took a couple of years, right after the United States pulled

The whole thing took less time, too. Yeah.
I mean, this is longer than Vietnam by

1975. This is a real don't let the door hitch in the ass.

And we were always destined to lose. I think a lot of people knew that from the beginning, or some people did.
The Taliban are like child molesters.

You can put them in prison for 10 years, 20, or 100. When they get out, they're going to do it again.

They burn down girls' schools because they like it.

Old school.

And

old school is a very charitable way to talk about that.

But I thought, why do we like it? And then I was reading about the money. Now, of course, the lives are the most important thing about what happened in Afghanistan.
But also, we don't lose wars.

I mean, we do lose wars. We don't lose profits.
The 10 richest counties in the U.S. are all, seven of the ten, I'm sorry, are the ten richest counties, all outside of Washington, D.C.

Loudoun County, Falls Church, Fairfax County, Fairfax City, Howard County, Arlington County. Why is that? It's because this is where the money is.

Look, Bill, when we started this war, Operation Enduring Freedom,

we were spending about $200 billion in some change in the military. What is it up to now? $700, $800 billion? I mean, that's one part of the budget we have not cut.

There was a slowdown at one period, but we've been spending a lot of money. So when you look at those outlying counties, those are defense contractors,

lobbyists, et cetera. That's

$1 trillion.

And all the money that trickles down to all the pigs at the trough.

We may lose wars, but

these people are not losing money. Oh, they all know.

They don't know.

But

we're losing something else.

Because in addition to going into Afghanistan to bring some degree of of normalcy to a country that was never normal, we decided it was important to go after the people who attacked us on 9-11, right?

We decided that it was important to make sure that it was not a safe haven again for terrorists, right?

And what are we doing now? I mean, we also tried to do some rebuilding, train the Army, help women and girls humanitarian, we dealt with their humanitarian crisis.

At the end of the day, the Taliban just waited us out.

And when Donald Trump, former President Donald Trump, I'm saying his name, don't curse me yet, when he decided last year to sign a deal, he signed a deal with little preconditions. Little.

He gave him a date and a deadline. And Joe Biden hands a tie and he's saying, okay, we're out.

I never want to be in the position of defending Donald Trump. There's really not a hell of a lot you can do when you're negotiating with the Taliban.

I mean, remember, there was a time in which we kind of bifurcated, this is the good Taliban or the bad Taliban, Jamaristan, in Pakistan. They're all bad, right?

And so the second you actually enter negotiations with

seventh-century psychopaths, you have to understand that they're never going to abide by anything. They want the entire country.
It's

10 cities, 12 cities already, already. And I'm thinking this morning when I see the news about this, is what are the odds that on 9-11,

20 years after those attacks, where the people who launched those attacks were harbored in that country, are going to be retaking fucking Kabul.

20 years after that. And their mortar silk.
And that really rubs into your face. And their mortar cycles.
And their mortar cycles.

I mean, they're finally capturing all of the bases and all of the tanks, but they're riding a damn motorcycle.

And a lot of the warlords are basically saying, well, throw in the towel. And then I read somewhere today that the vice president of the country has already left and went to one of those stands.

Bring his ass back.

One of those Pakistani

stands. No, Tajikistan.

Tajikistan. Tajikistan.
You can tell I've never been there, Sheriff. Yeah, yeah.
I know it's one of those stands. We should go to the stand sometime, yeah.

Hell no, no, I ain't going nowhere, but they don't like women. I ain't going.
If I can't smoke a cigarette and drink, hell with you.

I mean, son of God Paulson.

And that's why I say they old school. And then they got back in town and told the girls that they couldn't go back to school and tell the women they cannot work.

Well, this is one of the difficult things about this:

this is the most difficult thing, is what they're going to do to the women.

And it was always going to be thus.

And that's, you know, Joe Biden, he was against this back in 2009. That's right.

You know, it was Obama and Bush who thought, oh, surge will surge. Like, that was ever going to change anything.
So, I mean, the choice was either stay there forever

to protect women or

this. And those things can work in the short term.
I mean, surges can work. They did in Iraq and the Anbar Awakening and things like that.

But the problem is, is that we can win wars if it just means beating bad guys and that's it.

But beating bad guys and staying around and keeping that infrastructure and actually making sure that it blossoms into a society, this is not 1945. That was never going to happen.

And you see these lists that people have made, and some of them are quite heartening and impressive of what has happened in Afghanistan over the past 20 years, the number of girls that go to school, et cetera.

Yes, but it's all gone now. It's all going away.
I'm glad that there was a generation for 20 years that grew up never knowing the Taliban, but they're about to know it again.

And it's never going to be a good idea. And you know, when they voted on this in 2001, there was one person in Congress.
Barbara Lee. Barbara Lee.

One person.

It's like the movie 12 Angry Men. You know, sometimes just one person is right, and everybody else is fucking wrong.
But I don't know.

What a woman. What a great woman of courage.
She voted against the war.

And look, the Afghan government has to shore up some of this responsibility. I mean, they are corrupt.
Well,

it's over. I mean, there is no more Afghan government.
And there never could be. I mean, it was never going to work.

A client state ruled 7,000 miles away from people with a different culture and religion. I mean, why, after Vietnam, why we thought we could just go...
We don't learn. We just don't learn.

Yeah, we'll learn.

And this thing about the money, I'm trying to, you know,

the money. It's like now we're...

Okay, we got a $1 trillion infrastructure bill. Look, we need to rebuild infrastructure.
On top of that, they want another, the Democrats want, and may get $3.5 trillion.

That's sort of the second infrastructure. I'm sure a lot of worthy things in there.
But if you ask me, like,

what confidence do you have that these numbers,

a billion, a trillion for the first bill, 3.5 trillion for the other bill, or what the shit actually costs? I would say none.

None. We just make numbers and pull them out of our ass.

We did it, so I'm saying, we did it in Afghanistan, we do it here. I don't know what, if the second bill costs $350 billion, still a a lot, as opposed to $3.5 trillion, would it be any different?

I don't know. It's meaningless.

Numbers are meaningless to people. Trillions of dollars

means nothing.

Is there a thousand billion? I just don't know. For that collapsed bridge and for having a 1973 rail system bill.

By the time I get to New York,

I know we need to do that. I'm just saying, but does it cost what they're saying it costs? Or is it all those people in those counties around Washington making those numbers up and getting that money.

Yeah, yeah. It's always been the case.
Yes, absolutely true. I think more now than ever.
Probably more now than ever. There's more money to be had, but that's always been a case.

There are a lot of good people around that beltway, and I got to speak up for them because I live within the beltway.

Where do you live, Bill? I live in Washington, D.C., babe. I'm a city girl.
You know what I mean?

And by the way, I haven't lobbied. But Justin, you just gave me a good reason why I should.
Yes. Well, it's not just lobbyists, but it's...
I know, baby, I know. Okay.

Maybe you can come visit my digs once I get one of them gigs.

I think you should do a show with me.

He has the original hair.

I will fit right in with that.

Again, awkward transition to climate change.

I'm always hot, honey.

I'm always hot.

Come on, sugar. Come on, lay it on us.
Okay,

What's happening?

What's wrong with you? I mean, I have to.

Do you know how? I feel, you know what? Do you need your salts? Yeah, I do.

Drink some of that water. I got something to mine.
You know what I did in the back room? What? He had some liquor. Who does? This brother.

And

you do. Okay.

And I said, I'll give you my two clear bottles of liquor if you give me that brown liquor. We made a swap.
Yeah, you drank it, obviously. No, I haven't.

No, no. I would never drink before a show.
Okay. Okay, well, I do.

Now,

as I said,

and I'm not.

Look.

I'm going to wet my whistle.

I save my drunk for the people I really care about.

All right.

UN climate report.

It's so depressing. I'm glad we're laughing

because the world's dying.

Linda Means, senior climate scientist at the Atomic Research Center, is just guaranteed that it's going to get worse, she says. I don't see any area that is safe, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

Have a good summer.

But this latest report, this is what depresses me. 234 scientists, 14,000 studies.
I feel like, deja vu. I feel like I've read this story a billion times just on this show.

If we don't do it right now, it's too late. And we never do.

And it is getting too late. I'm not doubting that it is going to happen.
It is definitely happening.

I'm just saying, no one cares. No one cares enough.
We just as a society made it, as a world, made a decision to, like Telmo Louise, hold hands and drive over the Grand Canyon.

I think it also has the opposite effect, too. I mean, I've been, I spent five years, unfortunately, just out with people who are mostly Trump voters.

And when you talk about climate change, it's usually this that comes up, by the way. They've been saying this for so long.
It's going to be a disaster, and what has happened?

And sometimes people point back to you know the 1970s, they said it's gonna be global cooling, etc.

Those are the ones that have a few more data points, but it does have that effect because people can't, much like spending, can't get a sense of that

period of time and what could happen.

So, they say, you know, this is just the same old stuff we hear, so there's more government control and more government spending.

I mean, the earth is constantly telling us to wake up, right? I mean, I saw it in Katrina. Katrina just literally wiped my home city of New Orleans off the map.

Thank God we had a few levees that held up some of the neighborhoods. The truth is, Bill, is that this has been happening for a long time, and we keep ignoring the science.

And I'm afraid that we are running out of time. You know, I work for Al Gore.

Full story. He wrote The Inconvenient Truth.
Yeah. And he was right then.
I used to look at Al Gore and think he was absolutely nuts. We went to Harlem once, Bill, you would love this.

And I said, talk about education, you with black people. Talk about civil rights, you with black people he walked into the room drew a map on the wall I said oh

he said this is the worth the earth and it's warm and we're gonna and I'm like black people don't give a shit about that it's been hot all our lives we came out of Africa what are you talking about and he sat there and do you know why he got the endorsement he got the endorsement because it's going to be poor people and poor communities that are going to suffer most.

Right. All of us will suffer, but we need to pay attention to climate change is real.
And you know, last year, I'm going to say this bill, and then I'm going to shut up for a moment. No.

Look, last year, we had five named hurricanes. Five.
Now, it's one thing when you go through, you know, Alice, get your ass away. Betty.

But they start giving us those hurricanes named after the Greek alphabet.

And you know you're in trouble when they go in the Greek alphabet. That's why y'all better be clear about this delta variant.
This shit is bad.

If you think delta, wait till you get to ioda, eta,

epsilon, and what's the other one? Lambda. And if you get to omega, your ass is gone.
Bye. Bye.
All right. Okay, now, are we sure?

I'll get the balance of my time now, Bill. I'm so happy to see you.
I'm so happy to see you.

You're so funny. Don't stop drinking and don't stop.
This is actually water. You should see what I'm going to put in this glass when I get off this show.

Okay, so I was

mentioned in the monologue, Andrew Cromo quit. I was reading his book.
This is his real book, American Crisis, Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19.

And having kind of a chuckle because it's not aged well.

And I was laughing, and then I realized, you know what, a lot of people write books, and a lot of them don't age well. And we dug up some of the ones, you know, from years past.

You may have forgotten some of these books, but I'm telling you, a lot of books don't age well. Would you like to hear some of the ones?

I know you would.

Like

Anthony Wiener's tweet smell of success.

How do you use social media to silence your critics? Did not age well.

Michael Abinati's Clang, the next time I see Donald Trump, it'll be through prison bars. Did not age well.

Mike Lindell's Nowhere But Up, Reclaiming Your Integrity After Crack was a

never got a dinner.

Josh Duggar's child rearing the Duggar Way did not.

You know it didn't age well. Nick Cage, never do it for the money.

Army Hammers, the people's diet, did not

Siegfried and Roy's no bad cats, training tips from the experts.

Didn't these

didn't age well? Didn't age well at all. Didn't age well.

Rudy Giuliani's never let them see you sweat. Did not age.

All right, snow.

Fans down.

Fans down.

But don't you think, Cuomo, for me, if he had just admitted instead of lying about what he was doing, if he had just said, you know, you got me, I was trying to get laid. I'm a lonely guy.

Because he wasn't married. It wasn't like he was cheating on his wife.
I feel like this is a big problem in America. Men without game.

I think that's the issue. I do.
You think the lack of game was so important. Yeah, Cuomo's.
I do. I think it's a big problem.
You think he would have survived had he just laid it?

No, I just think I wouldn't hate him as much. If he just said, you know what, I'm a lonely guy.

And, you know, when powerful men can't get laid, it's a terrible kind of, I think, trap they're in because, like, I'm so powerful

and then no ladies like me. Yeah.

So they wind up doing horrible things. What?

What a shame.

What I said or what he did.

Both. Yeah.

I mean, he don't need game. I mean, the creek, the kind of toxic atmosphere and climate.
Of course. I am so glad that he decided to resign.
Well, I'm so glad. Not really decided.

He didn't really accept that. Let's just say James decided for it.

Hang on. Well, Curtis.

I don't think he would have survived if you look at what happened to Al Franken and people in his own party that puts him up pretty fast on the table. I mean,

11 women came forward. He was digging in.

He was playing a Donald Trump.

I'm in denial. This is not happening to me.

What it did was not as bad as Trump. Let's not put him in that code.
But it's still gross, and he should go.

I asked the staff to come up with a list of people in both parties who've had sex scandals since 1960. I crossed off all the ones that I didn't remember.

The name didn't ring a bell. But I'd like to scroll through and show you, here they are.

Both parties, Democrats and Republicans. It's quite a few men.

And of course, the winner, bisects the Republican Party.

But still a lot. That's 96 people.

Wow. And that's just the ones who got caught.

I'm sure there were others. That seems slightly low to me.
Discuss.

No. Power.

Power. It's about power.
And we've got to change the culture. It's toxic, and it has kept women behind.
Okay, so you said you were just 60? Yeah, baby. 61, to be honest.
Well,

you could take a year off. I'm telling you, you could take 20 years off.
I lost a year.

We all did that pandemic. Yeah, so there you go.

I got to meet myself for the first time.

Figure that one out.

I've never spent seven days a week at home. The first thing I say, what do people do all day? Right.
I had no idea. Seven days a week.
I miss traveling. I miss being out with people.
Me too.

I love you. Me too.

I'm late. naked.
Okay, so that gets to an interesting thing. So Obama's birthday party, right? I wasn't invited.

Neither was I.

It's okay.

Same way I feel. Well.
Thank you.

Okay.

But it's getting a lot of shit from the right wing because they're saying it was elitist. And I, first of all, I find this abhorrent.
He's a very rich, successful guy.

You know, Mitt Romney says, we shouldn't punish success. Exactly.
Let's not punish success. When you are that successful, you get to throw yourself a big-ass bowl or birthday party.

This is the new Republican Party. It's the populist Republican Party.

And

somebody got in trouble, or there was a lot of talk about. Erica Badu.
Erica Badu. Well, she apologized just a few hours ago to the Obamas, I guess, because she snapped the pictures and leaked them.

And then, but look. Well, so what? That's my question.

It was outside. They were having a party.
It was outside. It was in the tent.
This is the Fox News. Mainstream media is silent while Obama dances maskless in a crowded tent.

And then somebody at the New York Times, who I often have a lot of problems with, said,

this is a sophisticated vaccinated crowd, she wrote, and people jumped on that. And I would just like to say,

yes, that's kind of relevant. But she was so to someone, too, by the way, which is how disingenuous a lot of the conversation about this is.
No, this came out later.

Like they said, well, Lollapalooza. But Lollapalooza is not a sophisticated, vaccinated crowd.
It's a bunch of crazy kids who are not vaccinated on ecstasy. And by the way, it proves different.

But it proves the point. It was like 300 some odd thousand people that went to Lollapalooza in Chicago, which is kind of shocking.
And there were like 200 cases, maybe 300 cases.

And I don't think any of them required hospitalization. And people are attacking Obama purely for partisan purposes.
If Republicans want to be, you know,

kind of consistent about this, and they've been, you know, attacking lockdowns, and particularly in California Gavin Newsom covering these things upside this is the exact same thing why are you attacking them and all this stuff was outside and you're gonna be super sanctimonious about COVID which I'm not for but Gavin Newsom Nancy Pelosi Laurie Lightfoot and they all got caught being hypocrites yeah saying you know what everybody should be being careful but I want to live my life again we all want to live our life again you know there's lots of ways they set policy for their states Barack Obama lives in Martha's Vineyard

he had had a COVID coordinator. Everyone was vaccinated.
That was a requirement.

Plus, as you are well aware, both the former president and former first lady have spent countless hours out there warning the American people, encouraging them to get tested, encouraging them to get vaccinated.

They did that. Yes.
And so I think,

I don't like the criticism. I wasn't invited, but can I have to tell you something? You know, I went to every White House party when he was president.

Ain't no party like a White House party because a White House party won't stop. Ain't no party.
I mean, I and when I didn't get my invite,

I know you got to hang out. You got to hang out with me.
You wouldn't believe that you don't care that you didn't get invited. Getting in kind of

a bunch of people. By the way, I've seen people.
Did you get cut like me and I? No, no, no. I was not like, I was, no, I would have been pissed.
They did cut people. Oh, hell no.

After I bought my dress and had my shoes,

I was not cut. But you know what? I would have used that moment to say, hey, Tom Haynes, come over here.
Cut a PSA for the people in ICU. Oprah, cut a PSA for the people in Mississippi.

I mean, I would have used it for that purpose had I gone. Well, Oprah didn't make it there either.
She didn't make it there. And Chet Hanks is doing stuff about vaccination.

Well, they've all been great.

If I could return this back to global warming for a second,

a lot of the people.

No, no. A lot of the people.
Stop reprimanding you. I just wanted to move it.

Going back to my drink. No, stop it.
it.

A lot of the people flew in on private jets. But there's, of course, these type of people.
And I just want to say this about the environment.

And there's nothing probably more selfish you can do than take a private jet. Yes.
And everyone who's going to that party is an environmentalist.

I've known, this is going on ever since the environment has been an issue. If you can take a private jet, people do.
I don't care how big an environmentalist they say they are.

I do it myself to get to gigs or else I wouldn't do the gig. I couldn't even get there most of the time.
Okay, but it's still, you couldn't make the case.

But how many people in America, if they could take a private jet, would refuse it? I think it's about 1%

because all these environmentalists do it. It's just not something you can resist.

People cannot resist it. They cannot resist a private jet.
They will make excuses. They'll say, I bought carbon off prints.

It's all bullshit. We're all driving off the Grand Canyon holding hands.
It's the decision we make.

Now,

I'd love to comment, but I don't have any pragmatism. Nobody likes me.
No, no. You should go.
Yeah, of course. You're going to go through Sioux Falls? No.
I'm going to go to Paris. Right.

Jay-Z did not go on Spirit Airlines at that point. Exactly.
He's not rapping about Frontier. No.
It's not as good.

Well, there's a great ferry over to Martha's Vineyard, but, you know. A ferry? Yeah, you can take a ferry.
You gotta get to Woods Hole.

That Swedish kid can take the ferry. These people came in on the private.
That's true.

Yeah, she did. You can hook up her sailboat.
Yeah, yeah.

All right. Last thing I want to ask you about.

There was a, what, it's your bailiwick. I thought we were going to go back to climate change.
No, no, we just did. To the present.
Nina Turner. Oh, my God.

Okay, if people don't know, there was a special election in Ohio. She was a firebrand.
She said during the president's election about Biden, you have a bowl of shit in front of you.

It's still shit. That was her.

So she lost, which is good.

They thought she was going to win. Her opponent came from behind.
Okay, but

quite a bit. Okay, but

the far-left faction, the squad type folks. Okay.
Okay. She's more in that group.
I feel like we're breaking down into voters and followers.

Certain people go by what the followers want and some people go by the voters. I think you're on the voter side, right? Well look, Nina's a friend.
Chantel is a friend. So I had two friends.

Chantel won. Chantel won.
Chantel came.

She's a moderate. She had the support of the quote-unquote Democratic Party establishment, Jim Clyburn, the majority whip, and members of the Congressional Black Caucus.
Nina spent more money.

Chantel spent less money, but she had more endorsements and more support. At the end of the day, you know what it's about? These low turnout elections? It's about your voter.

Nina spent a lot of her money on TV. She forgot to go and knock and drag people to the polls.

It's not cool to say voting for Biden is voting for a bullish shit. Well.

What do you mean, well? That's a little, come on.

Just as political.

And she also wouldn't endorse Hillary. This idea of like, I go on a political hunger strike and then we all win is not

a good luck for the general. She won five out of the nine black wards in cleaning itself.
And Cuyahoga County, she didn't do as well. You know, I looked at the stats.
All right, she lost the suburbs.

It was not about the bowl of shit, it was about reminding people that there was an election that's about politics, it's the art of the practical. We didn't even get the bad website.
We got so busy on

next time. All right, I got to go to New Rules.
Thank you.

Thank you.

Crazy people.

Crazy people.

New rules, country music has to admit it has a drinking problem.

Apple Music's today's country playlist includes the songs At the End of the Bar, Beer's on Me, Wishful Drinking, Cold Beer, Calling My Name, Drunk and I Don't Want to Go Home, Drinking Beer, Talking God Amen, Cold as You, which is about beer,

Can Down, which is also about beer, tequila on a boat and throw it back.

Which raises the question: if the heartland is so great, why can't they enjoy it sober?

Did it for you? Thank you.

New rules, stop making comparisons between this dildo sign in the town of Dildo, Canada, and our Hollywood sign here in LA.

For one thing, a dildo is a phony prick, and

never mind.

New rule, Joe Biden must let the Canadians back in.

This week, Canada reopened its border to Americans, but we didn't do the same in return. What is that a boot?

It's Canada. You know, America without the personality disorder?

What is the problem? What are they going to do? Take Take all the good-paying improv comedy jobs away from Americans?

Okay, they probably will, but still.

Neural, now that the latest issue of Batman Comics has Robin coming out as bisexual, someone has to get Batman's reaction because I'm pretty sure it's going to be: since Wendy, you like girls.

New rule, if you're so desperate to lose weight, you'll have a dentist implant this clamp on your teeth that prevents you from opening your mouth wide enough to eat solid food.

Maybe just try salad?

I mean, what's the point of achieving a great body when the only way you can brag about it is by saying, check out my Chai Dash.

And finally, new rule, someone has to tell me, why is this guy always in the doghouse with the online hall monitors of righteousness?

It is a phenomenon that truly fascinates me that every couple years, Matt Damon, one of the most likable guys in Hollywood with impeccable liberal credentials, is again flailing around in cancel culture quicksand.

It happened again this month when Damon revealed that he used to use a gay slurb. I won't say the word, but it's the one your teenage son greets his friends with when they meet up at Chipotle.

It's not always meant as a slur, but it's wrong, yes, of course.

And Damon owned up saying that while coming of age in Boston in the 70s and 80s, that word was thrown around without any thought put into it. And now,

now he's put some thought into it, and he's going to stop using it. One might say he became woke.

Okay, he was late to the party, to which we could say, welcome, glad you could make it.

Or we could say, you came later than I did, die.

There are too many people in this country who are motivated not by what they really believe, but by what will get Twitter to react to them with likes and retweets. That's called bad faith.

It's why every couple of years I'm reading headlines like USA Today, I wish I could cancel Matt Damon.

Washington Post, Matt Damon has more Damon Splaining to do.

Daily Beast, shut up, Matt Damon.

Vox, Matt Damon isn't a terrible person, he's just ignorant.

Really?

That bad, is he? We're talking about Matt Damon? I don't know, he's got a clean water charity and delivers food to Haiti. What have you done, Vox headline writer?

And yet he is always getting pulled over by the woke police for something. He's got a woke rap sheet as long as your arm.

On the reboot of the Project Greenlight series, he was booked on obstruction of social justice for maintaining that a director should be chosen on merit first.

But merit first is not synonymous with racism.

Thinking that it is, that's kind of racist.

In 2015, Damon did a hard time in Twitter jail on two counts of accessory to homophobia for saying that actors do well when they keep their private lives private so that audiences can watch the character on the screen without thinking about the caricature.

from the tabloids. And that includes your sexuality.
Which is true. One of the the reasons I love Daniel Day-Lewis is I'm not sure he even exists off-screen.

But in Wokeville, somehow that became gay actors should go back in the closet, which is not what he said, but the verdict was in, and he was sentenced to appear on Ellen.

But here's how un-homophobic Matt Damon is. He fucked Liberace.

2016, the movie The Great Wall opened and Damon was brought up on charges of whitewashing in the third degree.

Whitewashing being when filmmakers cast white actors for parts meant for people of color, which is exactly what he was not doing. His role was never meant for a Chinese actor.

In fact, it was a Chinese-made movie targeted primarily to the Chinese audience that was purposefully using his white ass

so the movie would have crossover appeal here.

Nevertheless, when I heard about this, I immediately replaced Matt's poster over my bed with Chris Evans.

2017, in the early days of the Me Too movement, Damon was locked up in Wocatraz

on a charge of aggravated mansplaining during a reckoning

and was sentenced to not less than one year of having to shut the fuck up.

See, what happened was during an interview where Damon called the Me Too movement wonderful and a watershed moment, he added that sexual misconduct involved a spectrum of behavior and that there was a difference between patting someone on the butt and rape.

True, undeniable, and unforgivable,

even though the legal system has always differentiated degrees for crimes, even murder. Oh, Matt, always getting in trouble for saying perfectly reasonable things.

And now,

And now he's done it again by breaking Liam's law.

Yes, that's the law that refers to the time a few years back when actor Liam Neeson recounted a story of personal growth involving racist thoughts he had as a young man,

but then realizing the error of his ways, expunging the racist element from his anger.

But of course, in so doing, he committed the cardinal sin of admitting he was not born perfect and did not emerge from the womb completely enlightened like Buddha.

And now Matt's done

it with his gay slur admission: committed the crime of not always being the person you would become.

You know, I'm so tired of bad faith arguments, and it's all we do now on both sides of our divide. Two weeks ago, Nancy Pelosi called Republican House leader Kevin McCarthy a moron.

Oh, that's not the bad faith part of the story, that's the true part.

But a few days later, McCarthy was speaking to a group of Republicans and said, jokingly, but he is Kevin McCarthy, he said that if Republicans took the House in 2022, quote, I want you to watch Nancy Pelosi hand me that gavel.

It will be hard not to hit her with it.

Pelosi's office called it a threat of violence. Hakeem Jeffries said violence against women is no laughing matter.
And Eric Swalwell said McCarthy was a would-be assailant who must resign.

Shut up.

Shut the fuck up.

This is what bad faith is.

You don't really think it was a threat of violence, or that anyone thinks such violence would be a laughing matter, or that Kevin McCarthy is a would-be assailant, any more than anyone thinks Matt Damon's a homophobe.

And Matt, my advice to you, stop hunting for goodwill. You're not going to find much in this country.
That's our show. Thank you very much.

I'll be at the Paps Theater in Milwaukee tomorrow night, August 14th. At the Rive International, Sunday the 15th.

I want to thank Michael Marnahan, Donna Brazil, Steve Martin, and Martin Short, and you. Thank you very much, folks.

Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Ma every Friday night at 10, or watch him anytime on HBO On Demand. For more information, log on to HBO.com.