Ep. #572: Donna de Varona, Ben Shapiro, Malcolm Nance

Honey Punches de Votes la forma perfect in pasar el conto familia.

Cono juyas crujientes and

que los niños les encantas.

Ademas delicios estrosos de granola nuesces y fruta que todos vanadis frutad.

Honey punches de votes para todos.

Today albener para sabermás.

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

Start the clock.

Thank you, Bay Paul.

How are you?

Thank you very much.

Wow, that's a

simple uh

nice stuff.

All right, all right, thank you.

Very well, thank you, very much, thank you.

Thank you, thank you.

Jesus Christ.

I don't know what you're so happy about.

No, I mean, I know why you're happy.

I love it.

Rowdy Craig, like the old Arsenio show.

Wow.

But, hey.

Remember that?

Woo, I love woo-woo.

Okay, but that's enough.

But hey, first off, we should wish Obama a happy 60th he turned 60 years old

on Wednesday, big day.

And you know, they had a huge party, like 500 people planned, you know, the movers and shakers of the world, and then they had to scale it way back because of COVID, and it just looked too ostentatious and tough times, you know.

So now it's like, ooh, Jeff Bezos had to self-park his rocket.

But now this is turning into quite the disaster because, come on, a party for 500 of the top Democrats gets canceled at the last minute.

You know how much leftover baby there is?

They think they eat babies right now.

No, don't the Democrats have bigger problems?

I mean, this is day four of the Andrew Cuomo death watch.

Have you been following that story, the governor of New York?

Yes, the report came back.

Yes, sleeves.

Democrats are dropping him like he's made of gluten.

No, really.

He has no friends now.

Biden called on him to resign.

Nancy Pelosi called on him to resign.

Chuck Schumer, yes, called on him to resign.

Anthony Weiner called for a double date.

That's a different kind of guy.

And over.

No, I mean,

everyone is piling on now.

Over in New Jersey, Chris Christie said, you know, when I was governor, I pulled out my salami, it was actually my lunch.

A rotund man, but

no, the guy I feel bad for, Chris Cuomo.

I mean, Cuomo's brother, because he's on CNN.

He's got to report the news, and this is the news.

I mean, it's tough.

It's like if Steve Doocy had to report on his brother, Dummer.

So, yeah, no,

they say it's grim at the governor's mansion there in New York.

Cuomo is getting so desperate that he's alone in the mansion screaming all day long, I bet if I looked like Gavin Newsom, they would have liked it.

Well, Gavin Newsom, you know, this is the stupidest thing, California.

Maybe they'll get the hint.

This is the most over-regulated, too many laws, too many stupid laws, stupid regulations.

Number one, this recall bullshit, which we should not be doing.

Applause.

Thank you.

We got to invest in the applause signals.

It'll pay for itself in a year.

But this stupid recall, and because, you know, he's popular in the state, but the people are not going to come out to vote because they don't think it's that, you know, it's in the bag, and it's not.

Newsom's only up by three points, but he is up eight with matrix Ds.

But yes, our state, I guess like everybody else, everybody masked here today, we're following all the rules.

More places now demanding masks everywhere you go.

Disney now says masks are now required at their theme parks and requiring all their workers to be vaccinated.

They are taking all precautions.

Now

when the prince wakes Sleeping Beauty, he does it with an elbow bump.

It's terrible.

Terrible.

I couldn't get through this joke.

It's terrible.

Also the Pentagon, mandatory vaccinations for now, everybody serving, yes, in the Armed Services.

Navy.

You know, the Navy is the most vaccinated branch, which makes sense because when you're living on top of each other on a ship, it's easy to catch COVID.

And also feelings.

But you know, the media, they get everybody wound up about this stuff.

Not that it isn't real, but now they're worried about this variant of the variant.

Apparently this shit gets passed around like a Netflix password.

I mean, this.

Oh, wow.

And

they say if it is as contagious as the Delta variant, the CDC may recommend that when you go into a restaurant, now you're going to have to leave your mask on all the way through the appetizer.

But hey, it sure hasn't stopped.

Lollapalooza.

And you know what?

You know me, I'm always for life continuing.

I know there are bad things out there.

I'm for that.

Life going on.

Go on, life.

But they say, you know, La La Pauliza could be a super spreader event.

I mean, 100,000 people were there jam-packed watching Journey and Limp Biscuit.

Wait, when they said COVID ruined your taste, they weren't kidding.

Oh, no.

All right.

I kid Limp Biscuit and Journey.

That's fine.

All right, we've got a great show.

We have Malcolm Nance and Ben Shapiro.

But first up, she is a two-time Olympic gold medalist in swimming, my old job.

No, that doesn't really shit there though.

And founding member of the women's sports policy working group, Donna DeVarona.

Hello.

How are you?

It's great to see you.

Nice to see you.

I love your glasses, by the way.

Oh, thank God.

It hurt.

It hurt.

It hurt me.

But that's not what you're here to talk about, is my face.

But yeah, it's great to be able to see you, and you look great.

Thank you.

You look great.

You were, well, you're an Olympic champ.

You should look great.

And the Olympics are wrapping up, and we hear to talk about the trans situation.

I mean, this is the first year that trans athletes have been allowed in the Olympics.

Just now, as they're wrapping up, What I read is they didn't do too good.

Well, I mean, it's an emerging issue within women's sports.

But first of all, I just want to shout out to our women Olympic athletes that right now would finish fourth in the medal count.

Fourth.

And

we do.

And I'm going to get to the transgender athlete discussion because this is really important.

And thank you for giving us the time to talk about what our group is doing.

Yeah, I mean, it's a big issue now.

And of course, the reason I say it's surprising they didn't do well is because a lot of people are saying, okay, if someone is, now I may get the terminology wrong, please don't like send me a bomb.

It's all changing.

We're trying our best, but born like with a penis, like a man, testes and testosterone and all that stuff, and then transition.

I mean, there have been certainly situations where that has happened in other sports and the person has had a tremendous advantage.

Well, here's the deal.

I think, first of all, the nomenclature is confusing.

And if you talk about a transgender athlete like

the Canadian star player that just helped Canada win the gold medal,

she's not born with the penis.

No, no, but she identifies now as a bad person.

Okay, but we're talking about biology.

We're talking about what would make someone stronger, faster, have more endurance.

I mean, we have seen situations like I think it's Tori Bowie is one of the fastest women in the world.

Yes.

Right?

Okay, I think she's been bested by 15,000 men and boys in her record.

Which is not an insult to her.

It's just saying there are differences.

I think Veronica Ivey was a cyclist.

Yes.

Okay, was

not doing well as a man and then was the champion as a woman.

Fallon Fox

is a MMA fighter.

I think she cracked the other woman's skull.

Cece Teifer, I believe.

That's the Connecticut case where Cece Teifer, a high school athlete, competed as in the women's category, said

she was mitigating her testosterone,

suppressing it,

but dominated that category for a long time.

So in Connecticut,

you can't discriminate on gender.

When she competed against men, she came in like she was 350th, and then she was the champion.

This is just the argument.

And what you're trying to do is find a middle ground, I really think.

That's what our groups are.

How can we be fair to, let's say, women classic.

Right.

But also allow a place.

We don't want to discriminate against trans people.

No one wants that.

No one's smart.

We don't either.

But we're saying there's a way to accommodate.

So what's that middle ground?

Well, the middle ground, according to us, is that there are sports that do accommodate.

Equestrian doesn't matter, male or female.

Most of the British teams.

So you're saying they can only play some sports?

That's right.

And you can handicap.

If you look at the sports community, it has accommodated a range of differences.

Paralympics, Special Olympics, they didn't exist in my time.

We opened the door and we, even in the Olympics, you have weight categories.

Heavyweight wrestler isn't going to wrestle a lightweight wrestler.

So there's ways in which we can accommodate this, but neither side wants to have the discussion.

And it's very important to have this discussion, especially in schools when young kids need exercise, you know that, need help, and need to participate.

And you're so right, we need to have the discussion.

And if you even broach this, see, this is part of the problem, is that you get called transphobic.

That's right.

And it's not trans

phobia means fear.

Right.

And yes, I'm afraid you're nuts.

If you think just having a discussion means we're afraid of something, we're not afraid.

This is all very new.

It is.

This is new stuff.

So listen, in the guidance on the Olympic coverage that Fox Sports put out, not to use the word, two-word phrase, born male, to describe Laurel Hubbard.

She competed as,

she is truly trans.

She is.

Right.

Laurel Hubbard was...

Right.

She competed as a man until he was 35 years old, then started to transition and qualified under the Olympic Committee rules and even our NCA rules because he mitigated his testosterone levels and had an operation, got rid of the family jewels, and they let Laurel compete in the women's category.

Okay, at age 43.

That's right.

And did not meddle.

That's right.

But at 43

seems very old for a weightlifter.

I seem to remember at 43 a couple of times just pick.

picking Oh, shit.

picking up a big piece of shit like that.

I passed that age, Geelong.

And you know what's happening now?

The International Olympic Committee went ahead and made these policies and now they're saying, oh, wait a minute, we have to review this.

Maybe we made a mistake.

Maybe we made policy before we really thought about biology versus fairness.

Okay, so but listen to the statement.

No one is born with a gender identity.

I don't know about that.

Everyone is born a baby and their gender is assigned to them by doctors.

Now, again, this is not anything against trans or denying that that happens,

that things don't quite match up.

But this attempt to make, to overturn the whole world and pretend that this is something that we just, you know, a penis?

Well, it could be an indicator of anything.

You know, like, let's, it's, it seems,

that seems too big an ask.

And what we're finding out in the sporting community, if you look at track and field where they're trying to balance this out, is that policy's gone too fast ahead of research and fairness and opening it up so you can accommodate transgender athletes in the right place.

For instance, Quinn, who helped Canada win soccer, the gold medal.

Again, born a woman.

Born a woman, decided I don't identify as a female.

I identify as transgender, non-binary, and please call me they.

But we're talking about what gives you strength, speed, and endurance.

There's no question about biology.

That's why we want to protect Title IX.

But let me, then this is the American Medical Association.

We'll advocate for the removal of sex as a legal designation on the public portion of the birth certificate.

So again,

we see a penis or a vagina.

Who knows?

There's an article this week in Substack, Barry Weiss's Substack, Katie Herzog is an investigative reporter.

This is an unnamed professor, but this is what's going on.

She is claiming, I don't see it refuted, in medical school, professor, first of all, he apologized to the class for saying when a woman is pregnant, which implies that only women can get pregnant.

He apologized for that.

I'm on your page right now.

What's my page?

My page is you have to distinguish between gender identity and biology.

And that's that's why we want to protect Title IX, 50 years of law that absolutely condones separate sex competition.

And that's why we did so well in the Olympics.

And we want to protect that law.

Here's what I think is so telling, and again, I'm always on the page on this show about, you know, the Democrats lose elections because they strike people as the party with no common sense.

You know, apologizing when you say when a woman is pregnant strikes me as no common sense.

Here's the money shot for me.

A student in the class said, I still think there's a small percentage of instructors who are true believers of this kind of stuff that she's talking about, but most of them are probably just scared of their students.

I think that's so telling.

The children are running the asylum everywhere in America.

This is what the problem is.

Anyway, thank you for coming.

You were great.

I appreciate it.

And keep swimming.

All right, let's meet our panel.

Okay.

There we are.

All right, here's our panel.

He is a best-selling author, a career U.S.

counterterrorism intelligence officer, and an MSNBC contributor, and a great patriot, Malcolm Nance, is over here.

And he is the host of the daily podcast, The Bun Shapiro Show, and the best-selling author of The Authoritarian Moment.

He's taking over all media.

Ben Shapiro is over here.

Okay, great to have you guys here.

This could get to be quite a brawl.

But no.

But I just wanted to, I consider you both friends.

So, you know, just

gloves off, but

let's be nice.

I especially appreciate you being here because this is a tougher room for you to play.

But let's start with.

Maybe you're not.

Maybe you're people who infiltrated my audience.

But I thought, with Tucker Carlson in Hungary right now, kissing up to the dictator Victor Orban, I thought it would be a great moment to talk about your book, The Authoritarian Moment.

Which I must say, I'm not being snarky here, when I saw the title, I thought, oh, he's writing about Trump.

But you're not.

Your thesis is the authoritarian moment is coming from the left.

And I must say, I don't, when I read the book, I don't disagree with a lot of what you're saying.

I certainly have made that case myself.

I might have been doing some of it just two minutes ago.

I just wanted to know, where's the other half of the book?

It just, I mean, yes, I agree with you.

Woke Twitter has power.

People who think they don't have power, they have power in a million different areas.

It's just soft power.

I just find it perverse that you find that less alarming than the old school kind of authoritarianism that Trump and his ilk are going for.

I mean, ignoring elections.

He's only not president because it didn't work, not because he didn't try to pull it off.

And here's a new poll from Business Insider.

55% of Republicans say the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast we may have to use force to save it.

47% of Republicans say it may be time to take the law into our own hands.

That's not more alarming to you?

Well, I mean, clearly, that is alarming to me.

I think that when it comes to, you know, Republicans suggesting that it's time to take the law into our own hands, the answer is: we do have a democracy in this country.

We do have elections in this country.

And the point of the book really is that

for all of Donald Trump's attempts to overturn the elections, the institutions did not stand with him.

There was not a single major institution in American life that stood with Donald Trump.

When it came to the riots last year, every single major institution mobilized on behalf of Black Lives Matter from corporate America to people like Vice President Kamala Harris who is urging people to bail out rioters in Minneapolis.

The question is not whether authoritarianism exists on all sides.

I think there are plenty of authoritarians on all sides.

The question is where does the institutional power lie?

And if the answer is that Donald Trump tweeting and being a jerk is the essence of authoritarianism, as opposed to, say, Joe Biden, the president of the United States, saying this week that he doesn't care whether it's constitutional for the CDC to extend the eviction moratorium, he's He's going to do it anyway.

I mean, that seems rather normal.

It seems like only one side of this is institutional.

In other words, the power that comes from the left is all soft power.

It's all from social pressure.

It's like gossip in a village.

It's like

gossip in a village.

Gossip in a village is very powerful.

It can get you killed.

But it is soft power and it can change.

That's different than the guys who actually want to subvert the election, steal the votes.

He would still be there.

You say the institutions held by a hair.

What if a different guy was the Secretary of State in Georgia who he called up and asked to find me 11,000 more votes?

Help me.

Well, you know, it's a nice title for his book, and I think a lot of people who would assume that he's talking about real authoritarianism could be trapped into giving you $2,899.

But for those of us who actually.

I said be nice!

It only lasted two minutes that was pretty nice

But but let's talk about bare facts I mean you're talking about a guy Donald Trump who literally tried to suborn

You know

who has probably suborned perjury in order to overthrow a duly elected government and managed to mobilize 40,000 people right to lay siege to the Capitol where over a thousand or more entered the building destroyed parts of the building, fought physically, law enforcement there in order to stop American democracy.

Now,

I don't know about you,

but I've been around a little bit and I've seen some dictators and warlords and authoritarians.

That is authoritarianism.

You can't say some guys are writing on Twitter and they made, you know, Sean King want to sell his house.

That's, like you say, it's just gossip, right?

Twitter will not kill you unless you use that social pressure in order to achieve an action on the street.

And believe me.

I'm going to address that in a minute.

But I want you to.

You can answer this first.

Thank you, I appreciate it.

A couple of quick things.

One, 40,000 people did not assault the Capitol.

Okay, that's just factually inaccurate.

There are maybe a thousand people that is not making light of the evil of those people who all will end up rotting in prison as they should.

How many people came to that rally?

Were all of those people assaulting the Capitol?

Is that your control?

They all marched on the Capitol, and then the leading people were.

They all marched on the Capitol.

It's just inaccurate Malcolm.

Yeah, it isn't no.

Yes, no, it is inaccurate, Malcolm.

Max Ben.

Well, well, yes, you're not mentioning them.

Okay.

All right.

Okay.

Let's just say some of them build around outside

and wait

and see.

I'll tell you it out.

Wait, come on.

I'll tell you why this is an important point.

I'll tell you what amount of time.

This is very quick.

I'll tell you why that's an important point.

Because, Malcolm, you have a terrible habit of conflating people who do actual violence activity with a broader rubric of everyone, for example, who voted for Trump, which was 75 million people.

And that really is ugly.

I mean, you've tweeted about me, for example, that I'm such a racist, I shouldn't be allowed in Washington, D.C.

That sounds rather authoritarian in attitude to me.

I've never called for you to be kicked off of MSNBC.

I've never called for anybody not to buy your book.

I've never called for anybody to censor you on Twitter.

I am talking in my book about the attitude that suggests that people who are outside the Overton window should meet with not only

a sort of social

ostracization, but they should meet with real-world consequences that do affect their lives.

Let Let me tell you something.

Two years ago, I was invited to Auschwitz for the Auschwitz Foundation, where they were holding a conference called...

Do you want to lecture me on the holiday?

No, no, no.

I'm going to tell you what the conference was called.

The conference was called, Never Again.

Really?

Now, when I have, we're at the point where people were talking about the rise of authoritarianism and autocracy around the world and wondering, are they going to have another Bosnia?

Are they going to have another Rwanda?

Or are Western states going to the point where they are embracing authoritarianism, real authoritarianism, not the book authoritarianism that you write?

Where people die, then we have to pay attention.

But you know what they're not doing?

They're not saying, Malcolm Nance said something bad about Ben Shapiro on Twitter.

That is not the reality of this world.

The attitude is the predicate for the action.

All right.

I'm going to get to both these points, but you brought up real-world dictators.

Chucker Carlson,

the leading voice on the leading conservative network in this country, is embracing Viktor Orban.

If people don't know who Victor Orban is, he is, well,

VDEM, which is the organization that assesses global democracy,

says Hungary, which is where he is the dictator,

lapsed into autocracy in 2018.

They're not alone.

This is widely seen as the truth.

Victor Orban elected, he was elected, so was Hitler.

Three times, I believe, right?

Right.

Orban.

Okay, it's a different kind of autocracy that he is practicing.

It's kind of dangerous.

And the fact that Tucker Carlson embraces this guy, that the Republican Party gets this sort of dictator immunity.

I mean, if a Democrat kissed up to a dictator like that, I don't know.

I mean,

if a Democrat kissed up to a dictator.

Barack Obama went and held hands with Fidel Castro's brother at a baseball game.

If a Democrat kissed up to a dictator like that.

Barack Obama said that he was going to

provide flexibility to Vladimir Putin.

All right.

Forget that.

A dictator that was dangerous.

Here's why it's dangerous.

I feel like Malcolm might have some words about Putin on that one.

Here's what

I was going to offer the Democrats that went to Iraq, you know, trying to stop the Iraq war beforehand.

You want a ballpark figure of people who may have sort of mollycoddled in that point.

But let's get, like, I'm sure you were about to make this point.

Orban used his democratic election to dismantle democracy.

Correct.

And that's how dictators get into work.

Adolf Hitler was democratically elected.

Yes,

what I'm worried about is that this looks like a dry run for what

Tucker Carlson would embrace him.

It looks like a Spanish Civil War for what Hitler did later, if I may use that analogy.

The kind of dry run that we are seeing where they foment fear of what the, and I would agree, are the

exaggerations of the cultural left to say, they are so dangerous that we cannot let them take over, no matter what.

Even if we have to get rid of democracy, it's more important than having these leftists with their ideas that will change our culture completely from the root.

It's more important, and that seems to be the argument that they are making here in America.

That's why you get these numbers of Republicans who say we may have to take the law into our own hands.

So, this thing of Tucker Carlson in Hungary, I think, is a big deal.

Okay, well, obviously, you know, anybody who says that would be morally wrong.

I think there is always an element when you poll Republicans of screw you to the pollsters.

And so they sort of tell pollsters what they think their pollsters don't want to hear.

But let's assume that all those poll results are accurate reflections of what people actually think.

I feel like I'm living in a bit of a parallel universe in the sense that right now, the House, the Senate, and the Presidency of the United States are all controlled by the Democratic Party.

It is the Democratic Party large-scale across the United States currently engaged in mask mandates, vaccine mandates, and lockdowns.

So for all the talk about Tucker Carlson, who, again, you mentioned, is not a governmental figure, or Donald Trump who's not been in office office since January last I checked.

It seems that the great threat that people are experiencing right now is from the soft institutions, right?

The institutions, the Facebooks, and the Twitters and the corporate world, right?

All those institutions on a soft level and on a governmental level, the people who are actually experiencing control top-down from the government, the people at the top of the government right now are Democrats.

And let me give you an example of what you said, it doesn't get anybody killed.

I think it does.

Defunding the police, I think, came from Wokeness, and I think it'll get people killed.

Here's an example.

Wait a second.

The spectator says that the New York Times refused to investigate what they call the biggest story of our time.

They're talking about where the virus originated.

Maybe it was in the Wuhan lab.

Because

they suppressed efforts to probe the virus's origins for among reasons because they thought it was racist.

You see, because everything is race.

Come on.

at the New York Times.

And so the paper of record is not reporting what I would expect the paper of record to report, the accurate news.

That is an example of the power of wokeness.

Yes, it does have power.

So it's not just one-sided.

It's just not as bad.

Well, let's stipulate that, all right?

Let's just stipulate that from time to time and on many occasions, the New York Times sucks.

All right?

They don't report things that are sitting in front of their head.

Look, they just called on Cuomo to resign.

Over four years, they never asked for Trump to resign.

All right?

And he's had way more documented problems with women than everybody else.

The New York Times never asked for it.

The New York Times Times has never called on Trump to resign.

That was just a clerical error.

That was not.

I think you missed the paper, though.

I don't think.

Can I just touch on something Ben just said there?

You know,

by saying, oh, the Democrats run the House, the Senate, and the presidency, that's like, that reminds me of the chief from the Penguins, right?

He has that secret power.

He goes, there's nothing to see, boys.

There's nothing to see.

The last freaking four years saw the descent of the United States into into almost sheer autocracy.

I've been on this show where we talked about it with one of my books where Russia was backing Trump.

Russia-backed organizations.

Russia-backed, hold on, Austria.

They brushed the government of Serbia to do a coup d'etat in Macedonia.

They backed France.

The entire Western world was teetering on the edge.

of turning into an axis of autocrats and to say, well, liberals do things on Twitter and that makes you bad.

That ain't autocracy, son.

What autocracy does is it destroys government.

No.

It's not autocracy, but it is anti-freedom.

There is a...

I'll give you that.

Yeah,

anti-freedom.

It is.

There is a chill in this country about what you can say, what you can do.

It's not a health.

Malcolm, I've noticed when you talk about how the last four years we're on the verge of autocracy.

When did your last book come out?

Two years ago.

Who was president?

Donald Trump.

Were you thrown in jail?

Was there any threat to do so?

Was I thrown in jail?

No, but you know, I was pulled off air from television for three weeks by express letter written from the Trump White House to MSNBC to pull critics off of air.

I wasn't the director of the CIA.

But Trump is off of Trump is off of Facebook and Twitter altogether.

Yeah, well, you know what?

Maybe we should all let each other speak.

We live in a

capitalist society and where private businesses can make determinations that their general counsel advises them to do in order for them not to lose market share.

Donald Trump was an anchor around these corporations by espousing insurrection and insurgency.

By the same thing, you can get kicked out of a Kroger's.

Let me interrupt with a little economic news.

They had some really good economic news.

I think they added almost a million jobs in July.

Well, I mean, we've just had a horrible downturn, so this is going to happen, and it's good that it is.

I hope it keeps doing it, and we know, you know, go fucking nuts about the new variant.

There's always going to be a variant.

Anyway,

companies are so desperate to get workers, they are giving out perks.

It's so great, I think, that workers now have a little leverage finally.

It's now the companies who are shitting in their pains that they can't get.

Okay, so like, look at some of these headlines.

100% of college tuition Target will give you in textbooks.

That's pretty good.

Another one says, like Christmas in June, more companies are dangling bonuses.

So some of these perks are pretty amazing.

Would you like to see some of them that at the company?

Over at Uber, we'll read your screenplay.

Goodyear, you can borrow the blimp to go to your high school reunion.

That's

pretty good.

Hooters, shifts.

Now count toward your degree at the University of Arizona.

That was always the case.

Baskin Robbins, employees are allowed to take up to four hits of nitrous oxide off the whipped cream canister.

I used to do that.

Oh.

Oh.

Pet Smart, every Sunday you can take home a fish to grill.

Oh, that's not right.

Toys R Us, now accepting sex offenders.

That's

really not right.

Walmart, you come to work dressed like the the customers.

IKEA, you can live here.

And Subway, we reversed our policy on employees touching the bread with their penis.

Go for it.

All right, well.

One too many.

It's always my rule.

One too many.

Go too far, far,

then you know you're done.

All right, so let's get back into

hard news.

I had it.

We're having such a good time, and now we're going to fight.

Now I'm going to make you fight again, but it's okay.

But I got to talk about that.

Muzzle laws, there's these laws that have been introduced in the North States to not talk about critical race theory.

Now, critical race theory, I must say, to begin with, I hadn't heard the term probably a year ago.

Now I hear it every day.

I think Americans are just starting to hear it.

And I think no one knows exactly what it is.

They know it has something to do with race, and it's some kind of a theory.

Right?

How would you describe it?

And then we'll ask, how would you describe it?

What is critical race theory?

I will admit that I read a lot of critical race theory in law school.

So, you know, the work of Derek Bell or John or Gene Stefanius.

This is the stuff that no one knows but you and six other people.

Right.

But what matters is

what is it practically practically

being taught in schools or some form of

yes, there's a certain sort of crystallized version of it that is a lot less complex than what critical race theory actually is.

But critical race theory essentially argues that racism is baked into all the systems of American society and that any sort of neutral system is in fact a guise for racial power.

And so the argument is made by Derek Bell, for example, that Brown versus Board of Education, this is an argument he made in 1991, that Brown versus Board of Education was actually a way for the white community to leverage its own power.

It wasn't an attempt to end segregation in public schools.

Even things that are purportedly good in terms of race, so long as they uphold these broader systems, things like capitalism or things like the meritocracy, these things are actually just guises for power.

And so what that boils down to in sort of practical terms is all disparity equals discrimination.

If you can see any stat where black people are underperforming white people, this means the system was set up for the benefit of white people and that white people have a duty to tear down these systems in order to alleviate the racism that's implicit in those systems.

When it comes to schools, what this tends to boil down to is kids who are white have experienced privilege because the system was built for white people and we have to change the standards.

Right.

No?

Okay, well so Malcolm, you tell me your definition.

Oh, I agree with everything he just said.

Oh, oh, great.

And I appreciate you being honest in defining of what it's like to be black American, right?

That is, I mean, we're talking about a system.

That's unfair.

Well, no, I'm just saying I agree with all of those suppositions because they are grounded in truth.

Look, when

I'm,

you know, and the funny thing is, it's not just African Americans, right?

It's also

the Scalp Act of 1749, where for 300 modern dollars, you had to cut off the head or the hair of an Indian to prove that you got them out of the way so they could settle.

That's a little bit of American history that people should know about.

The Chinese Exclusion Acts of the 1840s.

These are things we don't talk about.

It's not true that people don't talk about these things.

We all did.

Doesn't want them talked about?

No, that's not true either.

You want to cancel them?

No, Malcolm I'm sorry, you're lying.

That's lying.

That's just the thing.

It is lying.

Not only have I personally talked about many of the things that you just mentioned, I define

critical race theory by citing the actual authors of critical race theory, and you seem to be a pretty good beneficiary of the meritocracy because you have merit, Malcolm.

So if you're going to criticize the meritocracy as an outgrowth of white supremacy, then you're going to have to tear down the system that you've succeeded in because you have merit.

You do not have merit.

You know, when my great-great-grandfather ran away from slavery to join the 111th U.S.

colored troops and fight against the South, keeping human beings as slaves, he didn't think, you know what?

In 150 years, my great-great-grandson's gonna have to sit on stage and argue with a guy who thinks all that's bullshit.

All right?

I'm gonna say it.

Malcolm, there is no controversy.

The controversy that's made up is people saying that this is being discussed, this is being taught in schools and that kids should be kept.

That's not true.

It's not even a real controversy.

Malcolm, the fifth largest school district in America, Clark County, just decided that they were going to lower standards with regard to testing because they wanted to alleviate disparities in outcomes.

That is an outgrowth of critical race theory.

Can you draw a straight line to it?

Yes, 100%.

Because when you say that the meritocracy is an outgrowth of white supremacy, and then you suggest that I'm somehow denying that slavery took place or that your great-great-great-grandfather was a hero because I'm saying that I want people tested when they are in school to see if they are good at school, then what you are according to push that is just nonsense.

It's sheer bullshit about them.

It's just bullshit.

But I think it's also a leap to say that he thought that was bullshit.

Because that's not what it is.

I mean, are we talking about 2021?

Are we talking about 1861?

The point is, can we talk about 1861 and 2021?

Yes, we can.

And

I don't know who's against talking about history.

Well, I mean, I understand that they want to, you know, in Texas, they're talking about removing references to the Ku Klux Klan.

They're talking about removing, I mean, come on.

That's Texas.

I mean, how can you watch Forrest Gump without even knowing who Nathan Bedford Forrest is?

Right?

I mean, these are people who are historical figures who did bad things.

No one is actually saying we want to go back and erase everything and restart and talk to you about these things.

Critical race theory is a subject because the Republican right has made it a subject.

No, no, no, no, no.

No real school organizations are mandated.

I hope every Democrat in America takes your perspective

and they will be shellacked at the polls.

Roy Teixeira just wrote a piece, the Emerging Democrat Majority, Roy Teixeira.

He just wrote a piece about what he called the Fox News fallacy, a tendency of people on the left to believe that just because Fox News mentions something, it can't be real.

The reality is, a lot of this stuff is taught in schools.

You mean like viruses?

Well, okay.

Can I?

right now I'm just

confused.

Can I just

what people are experiencing in their lives, in their schools.

Yeah.

Okay, you're right.

There are states like from the old Confederacy, I think, who do want to airbrush history.

That's not, I think, the majority in this country.

If you ask me critical race theory, if you say, does that mean teach history unvarnished?

I would say yes.

Then I'm totally for critical race theory.

If you say, does it mean acknowledging that racism persists today?

I would say yes, teach that.

Should we have remedial means?

That's like affirmative action.

There's lots of people who are against that.

I'm still for that.

I still think when you read the statistics, and I have some of them here, blacks earn 40% less, 90% less family wealth.

High poverty high schools, 72% blacks to 31% white, live six years shorter, half as likely to go to college, eight times more incarcerated.

These are real statistics.

The question is,

what do we do to address them?

These are real statistics.

You think we should address them?

You think we should address them, right?

The question is, what are we doing about it?

Because

if critical race theory means making children in school fixate on race, I'm not for that.

If it's about collective guilt, I didn't do anything to your great-great-great-grandfather.

I don't want to be responsible for that.

If it's about a toxicity of just from being born white,

if it's about dividing everybody into oppressor and oppressive, oppressed and oppressor, I'm not for that.

So there are things that are being taught and are going around that I'm not for, that if that was critical race theory, I wouldn't be for.

I agree with you, and I don't think that's critical race theory.

But it's being responsible for the fact that you're not.

I think what's happened here.

I think what's happened here is this terminology, sort of like defund the police, has been hijacked and been framed around the left as that they want to do all this, they want to rip down

the entire social fabric of America, and they want us to be guilty about everything.

I want you to teach history.

I had a lot of people in the military.

Hold on.

I had a lot of people in the military, senior officers who had to make life and death decisions who were total morons about the cultures and institutions

in countries we were going into, and people died because

I don't need that here.

If we agree that history should be taught, why are you defending critical race theory, which is not history?

Did I not just say a moment ago that I think that term has been hijacked and that's not what I'm saying?

Okay, so let's say critical race theory.

I'm going to go back and repeat that I didn't say that.

Okay.

You are literally defending critical race theory by redefining it as just teaching history, which is a cheap semantic trick, and you know it.

Is this what you do on your show?

Because it sucks.

I see.

Malcolm,

Malcolm, I appreciate that, but I will comfort myself tonight by sleeping on my bed made of money.

I'm sure we have an adult.

I'm sure we have another adult subject to talk about.

Well,

how about that Andrew Cuomo?

I tell you, he's

he sure is in a lot of trouble.

It seems like he's been a little sleazy.

Your thoughts on

how is he still there?

What does he think is going to happen?

I mean, why would you stay at this moment?

It's been a whole week since the report came out.

They're going to impeach him if he doesn't leave.

Wouldn't you rather go on your own accord than, wouldn't you rather be, you can't fire me, I quit, than get impeached in a week?

No?

No, I think all the incentive structures are for staying.

I mean, you have to at least take the Ralph Northam gamble, right?

I mean,

you at least have to take the chance.

Then maybe people will forget about it and move on.

Well, I think this is worse than Ralph Northam.

Yeah, that was Blackface.

Well, what's worse?

Blackface at a party in 1980?

Let me ask you, blackface at a party in 1980, not cool, or

actually sexually harassing women in 2021 and who work under you.

You know, I go on public radio in WAMC in Albany, and we have a roundtable with a great distinguished gentleman named Dr.

Alan Chartok, And

he knows Cuomo very, very well.

And the overwhelming consensus is you had a chance to walk away from this with your dignity intact.

You had a chance to say, I know the allegations are out there.

They have been investigated.

I maintain my position, but for the good of the state of New York, I, you know,

Andrew Cuomo, I'm going to eventually sit down from this, let my lieutenant governor take over, and maybe someday you'll name a bridge after me.

Right?

No, he has full Trump here.

He is burning himself down.

He may have an opportunity now.

You know, I'm imploring him to do it.

You know, when Joe Biden tells you to go, it's time to go.

Yes, that's what I'm saying.

It's time to go.

And he's not Donald Trump because Donald Trump is a city cockroach and nothing can kill him.

And this guy is not.

He should go.

You ain't getting a bridge.

I got to go.

Thank you very much.

Make up after the show.

All right.

New rules, everybody.

New rules.

New rules, if I asked to see a menu, don't hand me a QR code.

If I wanted to order through my phone, I wouldn't have come to a restaurant.

And if your menus aren't safe enough enough to touch my table, I don't know if I should be putting your food in my mouth.

Neurol, for those enjoying these new world's most expensive French fries, made with chipperbeck potatoes, blanched in den perignon, triple-fried in goose fat, and topped with shaved truffles and edible gold dust,

tell me what's more disappointing: the $200 price tag, or when you go to eat one and a seagull steals it.

Say, we're laughing at the same jokes.

Comedy brings people together.

New rule, if Joe Biden really wants $66 billion for trains, he should change Amtrak's name to Track Force

and say he wants wants to build stealth trains, invisible to radar, hobos, or cows.

Now, sign the check, Mitch.

Freedom isn't free.

Neural, just to make QAnon conspiracy nuts even more confused, Hillary Clinton has to try and take a bite out of Dub Aby.

Neruel, instead of going to Instagram to hear AOC take apart Marjorie Taylor Green and then to Twitter to hear Green answer back, we should just combine all of it into a reality show called The Real House Reps of DC.

All leading up to a tense moment of AOC saying, we need to be friends if we want to make legislation, and Green yelling, I'm not here to make legislation.

And finally, new rule: Joe Biden has to admit that when he said about Republicans, with Trump gone, you're going to see things change because these folks know better.

They know this isn't what they're supposed to be doing.

He was wrong.

And he has to come to terms with why that was wrong, which I'm going to explain to you tonight.

Now, I'm sure most of our viewers have had the same thought I've had since January 6th.

How can they do it?

Republicans, come on.

Different policy positions, okay, sure.

Even life philosophies, fine.

List of priorities, yes.

But this,

sticking with the lie that an impeccably run election was was really stolen, what makes them do that?

What is so great that it can make you, the big patriot with the flagpin on your lapel, sell out your country on its most fundamental principle?

And the answer is the title, the office,

the staff,

the good table,

all that attention, and being the big cheese around the office.

Congressman is literally the only job in the world you can get with so much prestige and so many perks while being a complete doofus with absolutely no skills, knowledge, or qualifications.

Name only almost any job.

Dental hygienist, rodeo clown,

dog walker, mall Santa, chicken sexer, tilt a whirl operator, they all demand some kind of definable skill set,

not Congress.

You can be in jail and get this job.

You can be deranged and get this job.

If you have a heart attack, They just let your wife start doing the job.

All you need is a smile and a tie.

I'd say you need a pulse, but dead people have been elected to Congress.

Much more is required of an immigrant taking the citizenship test or the average voter than the person who represents 750,000 voters.

In 48 states, you can't vote if you're in prison, but in every state, you can run for Congress from prison.

Unremarkable people can get a remarkable life in Congress, and that's what keeps the average Republican backbencher in Fatso's thrall.

Sticking with Trump guarantees them something that's bigger than faith, family, country, or objective reality.

They get to keep the best job they could ever get with absolutely nothing to recommend.

They're lazy, ignorant ass for it.

College degree?

You don't even need a high school degree.

Lauren Boebert didn't get one and she sits on the budget committee.

If she wasn't in Congress, she could probably get a shift at a truck stop dusting the jerky.

But then she wouldn't have two paid-for offices, one in D.C., one in her district.

She wouldn't have a staff that answers the phone for her and kisses her ass all day.

No one would put her on TV and ask her opinions.

She couldn't go on exotic paid-for trips.

Sorry, I mean fact-finding missions.

A Congress job is just so much better than racking the weights at CrossFit, which is what Marjorie Taylor Greene did before she set her crazy eyes on the prize.

And once you've got the gig, It's yours for life.

The re-election rate in the House for incumbents in 2020 was 95%.

That's better job security than a pedophile priest.

Devin Nunes, I guess, could mop up puke at the Sonic,

but it would take him all day.

Would you hire this guy?

But in Congress, puke mopper Devin Nunes is a big deal.

A man of respect.

When he walks in and asks for the best table, you know what they say?

They say, sir, this is a pet smart.

The Cheesecake Factory is next door.

Last year, a video went viral of a Walmart employee quitting her job over the PA.

Fuck this company, fuck this position, fuck that big, lazy bitch, Chris Price.

I fucking quit.

And here's Texas Representative Chip Roy telling Congress to take this job and shove it.

This institution is a sham, and we should adjourn and shut this place down.

Yeah, the difference is the Walmart employee actually quit.

I love this chick.

Can we look at it one more time?

Fuck this company, fuck this position, and fuck that big lazy bitch, Chris Price.

I fucking quit.

But Chip Roy, he'll never quit because there's no other jobs where a moron gets paid to ride around in a limo.

Chip gets paid $175,000 a year, free medical, great pension, with half the year off, plus a million and a half dollar a year allowance for decorating the office and sundries.

Oh, also, lobbyists blow him.

And he gets to be on TV for doing nothing, which as we all know is the American dream.

And by doing nothing, I mean that literally.

Once you get elected, you don't have to actually do anything.

There's no year-end performance review.

Nobody calls you into an office and says, I don't think this is working out.

You have essentially no boss.

Well, except the voters.

That's the one thing you got to do to keep all these perks coming.

If your district is full of people who think the election was rigged, or vaccines have microchips in them, or Democrats eat babies, you have to agree and then repeat it in Congress.

And they do.

Nancy Mace is a new House member member from South Carolina, the first woman to graduate from the Citadel.

After January 6th, she was outraged and stood up to her party, giving a dozen interviews in a single day condemning Trump.

Now, she won't even talk about it.

She voted to oust Liz Cheney for making the exact same case she herself had made.

A lot of people in America think she's a patriot, but she looks to me like a traitor for the coroner office.

She supported an insurrection for the likes.

Oh, and one more thing, this Chris Price guy over at the Walmart, he is a fucking lazy bitch.

All right, that's our show.

I'll be at the Silver Legacy Casino in Reno, September 5th at the Temple Hornbuel Theater in Denver on September 11th at Marin's Letter Memorial in San Rafael, California, September 25th.

Thank you, Malcolm Nance.

Thank you, Ben Shapiro.

Thank you, Donna Day Verona.

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.

For more information, log on to HBO.com.