Ep. #569: Nikki Glaser, Paul Begala, Jane Coaston

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

Thank you very much.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

I know why you're happy.

This is

day three of California reopened.

It reopened on Tuesday, as did New York.

Lots of other places around the country.

I'm watching the basketball.

Everybody's out there in the whole stadium pack.

No masks.

Dodger Stadium had 52,000 people.

No masks crammed together.

Why am I still working the open mic at Cedar Sinai?

That's what I want to know.

Maybe this is, we have one more show after this, before our July break.

Okay, maybe when we get back, I think we could have the full crowd.

In the meantime, America is.

Yes, it's over.

Come on.

I know, pandemics are fun, but you got to give it up at some point.

People want to live again.

Nightclubs are open.

Strip clubs are offering bonuses to get women to come into the stripping.

I'm not making that.

Look, people just want to catch something that makes it burn when they pee.

That's.

Boy,

speaking of burning, half of this country is burning.

It's like 125 in places.

This is like almost your dead weather.

We are getting hot here.

It's that hot in some places where you don't even have an appetite, you know?

That kind of hot.

I was at dinner with a bunch of liberal Democrats the other night.

Nobody even touched their baby.

They were just

pushing it around on the plate.

You know, they just

more lemonade, please.

Well,

liberals were one and one at the Supreme Court this week.

They won a big one.

Obamacare was upheld.

This is the third.

This is the third time it has survived an attempt to kill it.

It's the 50 cent of progressive legislation.

But

on the other side of the ledger, the court sided with the Catholic Church, big surprise, most of the court's Catholics.

They sided with the church.

who believe it is their right not to work with gay parents to help adopt children.

Church says their position has always been very plain.

If children want to be around gay adults, they can become altar boys.

Oh, I kid the church, always with love.

And of course,

the big international news, we finally had our summit with Putin and Biden.

They met in Geneva, Switzerland.

Did you see that this week?

Switzerland,

they wanted it to be in Switzerland.

They needed some place that doesn't pick a side between the U.S.

and Russia, and Mar-a-Lago was booked.

But,

you know,

it was good to see the American president siding with America.

That was a change.

And it was.

And also,

these summits, you never know what really is said in the room, as it should be.

But the pictures, it's like the tabloids.

The pictures tell the story.

They can bullshit whatever they want.

You look at the pictures, you can tell.

This was tense.

You saw that picture of Putin and Biden.

They look like the married couple who had a fight in the car on the way over.

And then, of course, they all have a press conference afterwards.

Putin, I mean, imagine negotiating with this guy.

This is what Putin said.

I'm not making this up.

He said, there is no happiness in life, only a mirage of it on the horizon.

Which I was going to jump all over and then I remembered that was the theme of this year's Oscars.

So

who am I to talk?

There is no happiness, just mirage on the horizon.

Lovely guy.

Anyway,

so anyway, Putin, Biden gets back.

The Republicans while he was overseas were very respectful.

I'm kidding, of course.

They shithole over everything.

They always forget their own rule about the president being overseas.

He gets back.

13 House Republicans signed a letter today demanding that Biden take a cognitive fitness test.

Biden, yes.

He imagines he's president because he got the most votes.

They want to know his IQ.

IQ.

is what Marjorie Taylor Greene says when you ask her, who are you?

IQ.

Oh, yeah.

Well, that little rump bunch of Republicans are very upset this week because tomorrow is Juneteenth.

Joe Biden's, you can applaud that, no?

We don't vote Juneteenth.

We're making it a holiday.

Biden signed a bill, this is what these Republicans are mad at, making Juneteenth, which is, of course the celebration of the end of slavery a federal holiday.

And of course being

It went better in rehearsal.

They were right on the

I don't do a rehearsal, obviously.

But it's

being the very newest of our holidays, white people, I must say, are very confused.

Do we barbecue?

Is there a mattress sale?

What is the right time to start drinking?

Two, wouldn't it be out for this?

And here's my favorite story of the week.

It came out that DC Comics, big fan, you know me,

loved the superhero stuff.

No.

Remember when they wanted to kill me over this Nan Lee thing?

Okay.

But DC Comics cut a scene in an upcoming HBO Max animated series series with Batman in it where Batman performs oral sex on Catwoman.

Wait, well.

Don't get excited.

You're not going to see it.

That's the whole point of the story.

DC Comics told the producers, get this.

They told the producers, heroes don't do that.

I don't know.

If you do it in my house, you're a hero.

But also, my favorite part of this, they also said, we can't have show that because it would hurt toy sales.

And Catwoman had a great response.

She said, you know what, if you'd let Batman eat me, I wouldn't need toys.

All right, we've got a great show.

We've got Paul Magala Jane Coston.

But first up, she's a comedian who hosts the Nikki Glazer podcast and the HBO Max reality series out this summer.

F-Boy Island Nikki Glazer is over here.

Hello.

Hi, Bill.

How you doing?

Good thing.

All right.

Hilarious show so far.

Thank you.

So we're still distanced?

Is that going to change?

Because you know, you look healthy.

I had the vaccine and the disease.

I couldn't give it to you if I wanted to.

How was it?

Did you get any loss of smell?

No.

Yes, for a couple of days I lost.

That's pretty good here in L.A.

to have with the homeless issue.

It's good if you fart.

You know, you tested it.

So, listen, I wanted to have a comedian here right now, and you're one of my favorites because tonight is the eve of when I go back on tour.

I haven't been out there.

Yeah, this is a.

How long has it been?

March.

It was February of 2020.

It's the last time I've done stand-up.

Trump was president.

I have to write a whole new act.

I mean, it was good.

I love it.

I love it.

I can't wait.

I mean, I'm nervous like I haven't been since I was 23.

I know.

Well, that's exciting, right?

So exciting.

Have you been doing shows?

I mean, I was doing them during the pandemic

when I convinced myself it was safe enough to do.

I would go to these clubs that were half capacity.

Club.

And I would perform with a mask, which is so hard to do.

And I would have fans on the stage blowing the COVID back at the audience.

I'm just like, yeah, I really did.

I had them.

But then I quit doing them because I just felt like the crowds that were coming out for those shows were anti-maskers who aren't my, like, the people that enjoy me.

And I feel as comfortable performing in front of.

So now I'm excited to go back out on the road and everyone feels more comfortable.

Yeah.

Isn't that sad that there's an ideological component even to that?

So that was not your crowd.

I just felt it, you know, like it, the people that were like like rearing and ready to go and laugh like ready to laugh in september of last year were not people i uh we have shared a lot of common but that's why i love the that's why i love doing the red states because they are more ready to laugh and not go hmm that's not politically correct and you are not politically correct i mean you're the roast lady yeah i mean that's why i first saw you and fell in love with you because you are so hysterical on those roasts am i right

so i mean

yes going back out there is so, I'm so happy about it, but also it carries stress because of this age we live in, right?

Yeah.

So I want to ask you about that because are you afraid of that?

Do you have stress about, well, I want to riff and be the funniest I can be, but I don't want to get canceled.

I was really scared of getting canceled for a while, and then

COVID hit, and I moved back home with my parents for 10 months, and I realized, like, if I get, I've been canceled, like, that's getting canceled.

So if you cancel me, it's, I live the life that I would have lived had

hit the fan and it's not that bad It was kind of great, but you but you knew it was gonna end

if it was for the rest of your life back in the day

with the Star Trek wallpaper

I got out of there eventually and yes, and I do I don't fear being canceled anymore because I can't live in that state of fear because I just know at my core I'm a good person and I'm not racist or I try not to be racist.

I try my best to not hurt people, but I just know that.

So if I get canceled, I'll just be at peace with myself.

And I'm accountable.

I don't mind apologizing.

But if you're doing a roast for

I don't.

If I

don't have a problem being like, if I see someone get up during my show, because right now I'm doing, I'm doing like a, I'm working on this like molest, molestation chunk, which is the worst, but it's.

I can do those jokes because I wasn't molested, so I like, don't care.

But like, I,

it's like I can talk about that more freely because I don't have a lot of

trauma around it that I remember, right?

Like, who knows?

It could have happened.

I'm in therapy now to dig it out.

Let's find it.

It would explain a lot.

But

I'm serious.

But it is weird going there because I see people sometimes, I see people get up and go, you know what, I don't want to hear this because obviously something I'm saying is triggering them in a way that's making them have a panic attack.

And

I think about that and I go, okay, that one person is uncomfortable, but But the information that I'm putting out there by talking about it is more important, I think.

Even though I'm joking about it, it's still addressing it and it's talking about how it's an issue and everyone's been molested.

Besides me.

Then why apologize?

I will apologize to that person.

If they write me and they go, listen, I went to your show wanting to have a good time and I end up in the bathroom hyperventilating and crying.

And I would say, listen, I am sorry you feel that way.

Like, the sorry you feel that way, but I deeply answer.

I don't want to cause it.

I don't like to offend people.

It's really not fun for me.

Okay, I don't want to get eaten by a shark, but I go in the ocean.

Right.

No, I mean, if you're going to watch, you're a known commodity now.

But if a shark bit me, I'm not kidding you, Bill.

Like, if I got attacked by a shark and I punched it in the face and they killed the shark in retaliate, I would feel bad.

I would want to find that shark and be like, I know you were just being you.

Listen.

Like, you were just doing, like, I'm sorry, I would punch it, but I would feel bad that it felt bad.

Okay, well, I'm glad you brought this up because you're on the, what a perfect segue.

You're on my Hawaiian tour this year.

We're doing New Year's Eve together in Hawaii with

Christopher Kid Reed.

It's going to be an amazing show.

I can't.

And you're going to be in the ocean.

Don't punch the shark.

Okay, don't.

It doesn't work.

Yeah.

You're not going to kill the shark with a punch to the nose.

That's an old wivesal?

Of course.

It's going to fucking eat you.

No, it bites you, and then it realizes you're not supposed to wear sparkly jewelry and have your period in it.

But that's.

But all those might be wives tales.

I don't know.

All right.

We'll figure out.

You punch it, I'm going to run.

And then you have to pee on my shark bite.

No, that's jellyfish.

That's jellyfish.

All right.

So

I forget what we're talking about.

Well, we're talking about getting canceled.

I just don't fear it.

I just don't care.

I can't.

I can't.

Oh, I know.

Please don't apologize, though, because there's too much apologizing in America.

We're going to talk.

I love apologies.

I love it.

You think?

No, no, no, no.

I love apologizing.

People feel so good.

When you mean it, I don't mean empty apologies.

I mean when someone really is like, I didn't even consider that someone could feel that way.

Like having empathy of like, whoa, that sucks that I made you feel that way.

But there's always going to be somebody.

We are organizing this country around what the most offended people.

Yeah.

The

most easily offended people will react to.

Yeah.

So.

Doesn't mean I shouldn't be able to say it.

Just don't go to my show.

If you are someone who is,

like, if I'm.

don't watch me

exactly.

Oh, good, they're coming around to me.

So, do you do, do you do colleges?

I do.

I mean, I'll still do them, even though I know they're

when comics don't want to do colleges, I kind of call bullshit on that because I don't think it's about the fact that they're all woke and they're gonna be groaning.

They're always like that, they just don't know how to react at comedy shows, they're kids, they don't know how to like laugh out loud and be a comedy show.

They're bad crowds.

But I also

don't want to do, it's easy to go, I don't want to do colleges anymore when you're like Jerry Seinfeld because I wouldn't want to fly into Syracuse and then drive four hours through cornfields to go to a student activities center and wait backstage and go to Applebee's.

It's like colleges are the worst.

They're the worst for so many other reasons.

Right, well,

that's not how Jerry does them.

But it's not just Jerry, I mean, yes, Jerry and Chris Rock and a lot of people said, but Pete Davidson, he's not even 30.

He said he won't do them.

He said, you're just setting yourself up.

For what?

For someone to be upset and then have to book you again at a school that won't book you for four years anyway?

Because

you know, like, I feel like when if I, because I've done colleges where they've written into the paper and said, oh my God, oh, one of the headlines after I performed was, Nikki Glazer leaves, uh, leaves mouths gaping, or like, Peep leaves gapers.

And I was like, I talked about gaping, but like, it was

like people were gaping.

And I was like, well, I did discuss that, but it was a whole lot of people.

That's what's great about comedy.

It makes you gape.

Yes.

And that's what we don't want to lose.

I mean, aren't you worried that roasts will go away in this?

No, I think that's a protected space.

I did fear that, but I think that that is just so,

we know the rules.

Everyone knows ahead of time what this is going to be.

But I will say that roast jokes, sometimes they've taken my roast jokes and they've made like an Instagram, like they've written it out.

And I come across it on my, and I'm like, the written version of that looks pretty, like, what it says, Blake Griffin looks like a black guy that was made by a printer running out of ink.

That in written word, not in a roast setting, out of context, looks like I was like, yikes.

You're going to get canceled just from this appearance.

You're not going to have to worry about this.

Well, good.

I'm glad.

Some people have a way to get away with it, and I think you do.

And I just hope you lean into that.

Thank you.

I can't.

And I mean,

come on.

I saw you host the MTV reality.

I mean, you had some really

on-the-edge stuff there, which was real damage.

Snookie heckled me.

You're now

cut it.

They cut it, but she heckled me.

And I just go, no, Snookie, no, not here.

No.

Snookie is the shark you don't want to punch in the nose.

But

your new show, which is on

HBO Max, is that it?

Our sister network or whatever we are.

Yeah, yeah.

Fuck Boy Island.

Well, I guess it's called F-Boy Island, but it's my island.

So I, first of all, you know, I'm a big fan of Temptation Island.

I've talked about that.

I'm so glad you.

I know.

So I can't wait to see it.

But the premise of Fuckboy Island is that there's three women and 12 guys who are nice guys and 12 guys who are fuckboys.

Yes, exactly.

And no one knows who, not even me, like who's who.

I am offended at this.

Yeah.

Good.

Because,

you know, a nice guy, I mean, a fuckboy can become a nice guy.

And a nice guy, if you're lucky, can become a fuckboy.

Yeah.

I agree.

And maybe we see that take place.

I agree.

I fall for fuck F-boys consistently.

And it's because I believe that I can change them.

And I, it.

And what is your record of doing that?

Never.

It's never worked.

And I never lose hope.

Because it will happen someday.

Someday,

I will remind a man enough of his mother that he'll fall in love with me.

All right.

Well, America has already fallen in love with you, and I'll see you in Hawaii

on the 30th of December.

All right.

Thank you, Nikki.

Let's meet our panel.

Hello.

Hello.

Okay.

Here they are.

He is a Democratic strategist and CNN political commentator.

One of my favorites of each.

Paul Bagala is over here.

And she is the host of the New York Times podcast, The Argument.

Jane Koston is over here for the first time.

Thank you for coming by.

Absolutely.

Okay,

so you guys, listen to this.

New Republican talking point.

You're going to love it.

You know the little attack they had on the Capitol on January 6th?

Okay, now it's the FBI who did it.

Right.

I mean,

I was here a couple of weeks ago making fun of the fact that they were saying just a few weeks ago it was liberals dressed up as them.

Okay, I guess that's out now.

Tucker Carlson's pushing this the FBI and I know how this goes.

You know, he talks about it for a day.

Now the My Pillow Guy is going to tweet it out.

And then before the month is out, Dinesh D'Souza will have a documentary, Biden's FBI and the death of liberty, and you know, Trump will be like, people are saying it's the FBI.

So I guess we're back to being at war with our own security forces.

You know, I see that the Capitol Police were given voted gold medals for doing that that day, for defending the Capitol.

And 21 Republicans, yeah,

would not vote for that.

For what, the police?

What is happening where we're...

And one Republican, a freshman congressman from Georgia Republican, refused to shake the hand.

of Officer Mike Mononey of the Washington, D.C.

Police Department, who had helped save the Capitol, refused to even shake his hand.

It's weird how this is becoming, this has been retconned multiple times, and there have been multiple versions.

It's kind of like, it's like a weird, complicated musical where there are three different versions of the same story, and everyone just keeps running through them.

Like, first, it wasn't that bad.

Then it was, well, it was Antifa.

But now it's like, oh, it's the FBI.

And then you see this weird Mott and Bailey argument.

Well, they're like, well, the FBI has infiltrated these groups.

And then Tucker Carlson went with, like, the FBI did it, which it would be bad.

So, but you know, we know that these Capitol police, these very brave people, were only about a minute ahead of the mob.

And this is a mob with a bloodlust.

We know this.

They smeared feces on Felosi's office walls.

When you're communicating in feces, that's my rule,

you are at a level where of

where you're not really rationally thinking.

So, you know, we know that we're talking about hang Mike Pence.

Would they have stopped?

My question to you.

What if they were a minute ahead of the police instead of behind?

What if they got to Mike Pence?

What if they actually had hanged him?

Where would we be today?

What would Republicans be saying today?

Somehow, some way, Democrats would be worse.

Some way,

somehow.

You're right.

They would have found it.

Or they did it.

Or, yeah, they did it, or it wasn't that bad, or there was whatever was needed.

Because it's interesting also how this is somehow becoming Joe Biden's fault, despite the fact that January 6th and January 20th are two different days.

But this is the Republican Party exists as an oppositional force.

So clearly, there would be a need to make this a story about actually this is

economic anxiety, and this really wasn't that bad.

And wasn't Mike Pence kind of irritating anyway?

So we're putting out

the Biden administration unveiled this national strategy for counting domestic terrorism.

We are finally acknowledging this shift from, I would say, it goes back to 9-11, certainly, where we were most worried about, and for good reasons for a long time, foreign terrorism.

That is really not the case anymore.

Since 2015, right-wing extremists have been involved in 267 plots, 91 fatalities.

From the left, they count 66 incidents and only 19 deaths.

So we're losing this battle badly.

But yeah, it's not foreigners.

It's pissed off Americans that are the problem now.

And so Merrick Garland made a statement.

He said,

we are focused on violence, not on ideology.

We do not

prosecute people for their beliefs.

There's a switch.

a welcome switch.

We do not prosecute people for their beliefs, because the last guy sure did.

Right.

And you remember

after 9-11, a lot of right-wingers were saying we should do racial profiling.

We should target Muslims.

We should target Arabs.

Well, the Anti-Defamation League says two years ago, 90% of extremist-related murders were committed in America by right-wingers.

Last year, 94%.

And in those two years, zero committed by Islamists.

So like I'm trying to tell my right-wing friends, it's no longer, I'm no longer worried about al-Qaeda, I'm worried about y'all Qaeda.

Well,

Al-Qaeda is still out there.

They are.

I wouldn't.

Forget about them completely.

We've spent a trillion dollars in 20 years.

We did it wrong and overreacted.

Right.

But that is now a much more diminished threat.

Because of the work we've done.

I think that that's in some ways curious because I think that one of the things that's challenging is that under federal law domestic terror is not a federal crime.

But the crimes you result in committing are crimes.

So for example, 34 states in DC have laws against terrorism.

Those are state laws.

But like, if you blow up a building, it's illegal to blow up a building.

It doesn't make like terrorism, how we think about this, a lot of times is determined by what the federal government decides to be terrorism.

And historically, the federal government has been like, we heard you wanted to go after domestic extremism, so we went after these people who are animal rights activists instead.

Or like, you know, you saw the FBI labeling people like, oh, we're going after the real extremists, black identity extremists.

And so I think this is a moment, I mean, we were just talking about the FBI getting involved in these.

And a lot of these plots break down because everybody talks about their plots on the internet, which is why you shouldn't talk about your plots on the internet.

But like, this does raise a lot of concerns for privacy.

Because like, it's not,

fortunately, it is not illegal to think terrible things and to even be a member of a white nationalist or white separatist or separatist separatist organization.

And it shouldn't be.

It shouldn't be.

You cannot have thought crimes.

You can't police this.

And I get concerned occasionally that liberals are like, hell yeah, let's police this.

And I'm like, no, you can't do this.

Please don't.

No, that's playing with fire on the other side.

I mean, these people are definitely playing with fire because the Republicans are embracing a sort of a

proto-paramilitary group in America.

I mean, the people who kidnapped or wanted to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer, I mean, they went on, they're in court now.

This was a real plot to kidnap a governor because

Trump had tweeted out, liberate Michigan.

And this is what happens with borderlines.

They take it seriously.

The Wolverine Watchmen, that's the name of their group, very clever.

And they said they were seeking to storm the Michigan Capitol and they sought a civil war.

They seek this.

You know,

they're right, they pretend that Antifa

and Black Lives Matter are the equivalent of these kind of militia groups, who we used to make fun of.

But I mean, I used to do the jokes about them.

They were playing in the woods, they were in Camo, it was a big eye roll.

They're not an eye roll anymore.

They're a real threat.

And Black Lives Matter and Antifa, yes, they pretend that they're their equivalent, but they know that when the civil war comes that they're really looking forward to, Antifa is no match for them.

They're better armed.

They're a lot of them ex-military.

They're going to win that one if it comes down to a shooting.

Again, they do have a habit of doing all of their planning on the internet and talking about it.

Like if you go through...

That's our ace in the hall.

If you go through some of these charging documents,

if you go through some of these charging documents, I live in DC and I was there in January 6th and it was very weird and very strange.

But you see people who are like taking a selfie after like breaking a window in the Capitol.

And then they're like, how could you possibly know it was me?

And I'm like, look, like,

come on.

But.

A guy also bragged about it on a dating site.

Yes.

And got

like,

we're not dealing with the most supreme white people here.

You're stupid and dangerous often together.

It's true.

And that's like, obviously, and that's the challenge here is that like,

we know that this can go terribly wrong.

And we've seen it happen before.

We saw it it with Oklahoma City, which before then you saw that with Ruby Ridge and Waco and a host of other events.

And the concern here is that how the FBI and how its security agencies do basically everything, which is to spend a lot of money, overemphasize invasions of privacy, and bumble along, is going to get us into a disaster.

So let me ask about the other crime issue, which is street crime, which is going on in a very big way right now.

49% of the people say it's a very big problem.

Homicides, their largest single-year increase since 1960.

And the New York mayoral race, which the primary is Tuesday, whoever wins that's going to be the mayor of New York.

That is the big issue.

And the leading candidate, this is fairly new, Eric Adams.

I'm just learning about him.

African-American, ex-cop, ex-Republican.

And I love this, strapped all the time.

This guy goes to church with a gun.

And he's got the issue.

Crime.

You know, it may be big blue New York, but they're worried about it.

And he is the one who was, when they were all zigging, he was zagging.

He's like, defund the police?

No.

And he's right.

He talks about how opposition to defunding the police, opposition to it, wins across everything.

Race, ideology, age.

So my question is, for the Democrats who are pandering to that, who is it for?

Who are you getting?

It's for 15% of the party who are the over-educated, over-caffeinated, over-opinionated, pain-in-the-scenes white liberals on Twitter.

And I guess we got to have them.

But I checked in with the pollsters, Democratic pollsters at Garren Hart Yang.

They say in Democratic-dominated cities, crime has now passed education and housing affordability as the number one issue.

So smart Democrats are listening to that.

Val Demings, a former police chief, is a congresswoman from Florida.

She's announced that she's running for Senate.

In her announcement, she talks about having been a police chief.

You're seeing that more and more around the country.

Here in L.A., Joe Buscayano is a former cop running for mayor.

I don't know how he's going to do.

But more and more you're seeing that.

Democrats have got to get on the offense on this because it's real.

You know,

Jeff Bezos is not going to get mugged.

It's the people who are in my party who suffer the most when crime goes up.

But I think that that's something in some ways.

What you heard from people and what you've heard from, I would say, middle-class African-American communities for years is that you have simultaneous over-policing and under-policing.

If you look at, say, homicide clearance rates in a lot lot of major cities, Honolulu, there's a 25% homicide clearance rate.

That means in one out of four cases, a homicide case is closed.

That doesn't necessarily mean solved.

It just means closed.

Like, what exactly are homicide police in Honolulu doing?

Who knows?

Who could say?

But I think that that's the thing here, is that when you heard...

When I heard people talking about defunding the police, I heard it in the way of like, wow, this restaurant sucks.

We do not want this restaurant to keep being like this restaurant anymore.

Right.

And so it was a poor choice of words.

I think that there's also a sense of

reforming what it is.

Right.

And I think that there's also a sense that like, look, among the people who was doing the biggest defunding of police in 2019 and 2020 was Donald Trump by trying to pull money from so-called sanctuary cities.

And so I think that there's a real issue.

I think that Eric Adams, and I think that there are a lot of people on the left who are left of him that are really concerned about this, but if you can thread the needle of like, when I call the police, someone should come, and the police should not sit outside my apartment waiting for something to happen so that they can bust me on something and then know that they can violate my rights and receive qualified immunity in court because the Supreme Court made it up, I think that's a needle that people are going to be into.

Yes, they are.

This defund the police thing, though, it's not just unfortunate.

It's like all world, they should give the Nobel Prize for Stupidity for whoever came up with that.

Because you're right, Jane.

The only political party that's defunded the police, at least in Congress, are the Republicans, not only Mr.

Trump.

Every single Republican in Congress voted against Joe Biden's $350 billion aid to cities and states.

A great portion of that goes to the police.

So if I'm a Democrat running, I would say, no, you want to defund the police and you won't defend the police when those rioters attack them.

And by the way, we do need to de-escalate the violence.

Why not?

Some of the Democrats are talking about this in Washington.

There's all these grant programs.

There's a Burn grant, cops grant.

Cities get.

Make those funds contingent on you training your cops de-escalation so that they don't choke out a man like Eric Garner for selling loose cigarettes, for God's sake.

Also, selling forms.

Right?

No.

That's the overpolicing.

I used to sell loose joints.

I did.

All right, so Democrats are very frustrated with this guy, Joe Manchin.

You've heard this name a lot this year because they're 50-50.

The Senate is 50-50.

There he is.

And he's from West Virginia.

And he's a Democrat, but he's in a state that is the trumpiest state in the nation.

69% of voters in West Virginia went for Donald Trump.

So we thought this would be a great week to do 24 things you didn't know about Joe Manchin, because this is one of our signature things that we completely made up on our own here.

Okay, for example, Joe Manchin, I'm a Democrat, except on matters of policy.

When liberals call me a cocksucker, I say it's pronounced coke

To avoid being branded an elitist, I black out two of my teeth.

I always root for the overdog.

Lindsey Graham once accused me of being a closeted Republican.

I once actually peed on a a parade.

Before stopping a coyote from attacking a child, I like to hear the coyote out.

And I wish people would stop saying I really want to be a Republican.

I don't, but I wouldn't mind being invited to one of Matt Gates' parties.

So there's...

That is the

standard liberal way to look at Joe Manchin.

But there is another way.

I know you, of all people, are going to have something to say about that.

Am I right?

Yeah, Joe's, first he's a friend of mine.

He's a real Democrat.

And liberals should love him because he's an endangered species.

They should build him a safe nest.

My party hasn't won.

Because he represents a state with 55 counties.

Not one of which has voted for a Democrat in 12 years in the presidential time.

He's a Democrat who won in a state full of rural white voters, which they don't have anymore at Democrats Munchley.

He was a Secretary of State before that.

He has a real commitment to voting rights.

He has a good record as Secretary of State, and he's trying to put forward a proposal that can actually pass.

And I think he's onto something.

I don't think he's ever going to get 60, he's not going to get 10 Republicans, but he's going to die trying.

And then there will be, I think, an irrefutable case for reforming the filibuster and passing real voting rights without the Republicans.

I think that's the process we'll go through.

Yeah, I mean, the Democrats have a guy who votes with them half the time and if he wasn't there they'd have a guy who voted Like 80%

in baseball this wins against replacement war.

Right.

How would your team do with the average second baseman rather than what you have?

Joe Manchin has the highest wins against replacement of anybody in American politics.

Like I said, he's a great guy.

I get the bit.

So, well, let me ask you about, you're not from, are you from Texas where you are?

I am from Texas.

Texas, right.

I know you weren't from New Jersey.

Texas, okay,

this place is going a little nuts.

The governor's going to build his own border wall.

They're passing an abortion law six weeks.

Six weeks is before most women even know that they're pregnant.

You can have an abortion as long as you don't know you need one.

The governor says he's going to arrest people who come to the border, you know, who are trying to trying to get in.

He's going to do this.

And yet, they're losing Latino voters in Texas.

McCallan, Texas is 85% Latino, and it just went, voted for a Republican mayor.

Biden underperformed hugely in those border counties in the 2020 election.

What do you make of what's going on there?

I am from there.

I talked to a lot of people down there after the election, Republicans and Democrats.

And in that border area, the most Democratic area in Texas, We lost like 50 points.

Counties that Hillary won by 50 or 60, Joe won by one or two.

And what they told me was this.

It's the poorest place in America.

The only way out is to work in fracking, or work in the Border Patrol, or work in the police.

And you guys seem to be against all of that.

I think Democrats still should get on the offense.

This governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, can't keep the lights on.

I have a friend whose aunt froze to death during that storm in February.

He can't keep the power going.

And so we can't have a smart grid, but we're going to have a stupid wall.

That's not going to save anybody's life when the power goes out.

And I think Democrats ought to put him on trial for that.

Politically.

I also think, like,

we see a lot of, like, stupid positional signaling.

You see that with the Ohio Republican primary to replace Rob Portman.

You see that in Texas.

You have a lieutenant governor who's in the midst of legal problems that seem to go back a long way to.

Attorney General, not the lieutenant governor.

Attorney Governor.

Oh, oh, the attorney governor.

The attorney general's under indictment for fraud.

That's much better.

You know, you always think when your attorney general is under indictment, that feels good.

But, like, you see that

this is a positioning fight.

It's the kind of thing that's like, this is going to do so well on Twitter.

And you see that across the Republican Party of having moments and places where it's like, this is going to look great.

Am I going to deal with the fact that the power grid can't handle it when it's cold and can't handle it when it's hot?

Absolutely not.

But am I going to pass a bill that AOC is going to retweet and then Ted Cruz is going to retweet that?

And then everyone's going to have a dumb fight on the internet?

Absolutely not.

Right.

And I'm reading this survey of Latino voters in battleground states.

80% think the public schools are failing.

63% agree free market capitalism is the best form of government.

67% think Americans are losing traditional values.

66% agree cancel culture has gotten too far out of hand.

And

I was reading also about Lynn Manuel Miranda this week.

He of Hamilton fame and won a Pulitzer Prize for it.

He's got a new musical, The Heights, which is about Washington Heights.

I know that neighborhood.

My father parked in it every day of his life, going to New York, coming over from New Jersey, and then taking the subway down to Midtown.

And he wrote the music and lyrics.

His parents are Puerto Rican, came to this country from Puerto Rico.

The book is by someone who's half Puerto Rican.

It got 96% rotten tomatoes.

People loved it.

Great reviews, for which he has apologized profusely.

Why?

Well,

there's Latinx performers,

one black lead, but no Afro-Latinx.

The committee that makes note of everyone's skin tone discovered this and then Lynn Emmanuel Miranda had to say, I'm truly sorry.

I'm learning from the feedback.

I thank you for raising it and I'm listening.

I promise to do better in my future projects.

This is what I was talking about with Nikki.

Please stop the apologizing.

You're the guy who made the founding fathers black and Hispanic.

I don't think you have to apologize to Twitter.

For fuck's sake.

This is why people hate Democrats.

It's cringy.

Well, they can't seem to distinguish between an oversight and an outrage.

Okay, and let me help them.

As a white boy, I had to look this up because it's not my lived experience.

But if you're a black woman giving birth, you're four times more likely to die in childbirth than a white woman.

If you're a black kid, you're two and a half times more likely to be shot by a cop than a white kid.

If you happen to survive all that, you make less money, you have less wealth, oh, and you die sooner.

Those are outrages, and liberals ought to be focused on that, not the casting choices of, I think, a heroic guy who's making a film about a minority community.

Right.

I mean,

nothing is ever.

I also think though that like

this is one of those moments in which I kind of want to be like wait who's mad?

Like do we need to have a we need to have a dartboard that identifies like who is mad at who, like maybe like with a little chart or something like that.

Because I do think that these are those moments of kind of individualistic therapeutic deism where it's like, well, we're not going to deal with black maternal mortality, but if we get an apology from

Lynn Manuel Miranda, we might feel better, but you won't feel better because nothing will have changed.

We'll do this all again forever, as we've been doing this all again, forever.

Like, I remember in the early 90s, people were mad about Spike Lee movies, and we've been mad about things forever because being mad is a

We can, it's an irreplaceable resource.

We will never stop being mad about things.

But I think that it's time to recognize, like, sometimes when people are mad on the internet, you need to identify who is mad.

Do they vote?

Do they have power?

Do they have the power to vote on things that could change these real lived experiences of communities of color?

And if they don't, you're just kind of like, meh.

But what's different.

Yeah.

What's different is, yes, people used to get mad.

People didn't used to grovel and apologize like this for it.

I think that's different with social media.

I mean, I didn't read the criticisms of this because I don't think they're worthy to read.

I just read that was his reaction.

Obviously, he felt it was important enough for him to make this apology.

Do I think he really thinks he should apologize?

I don't.

He just wants to avoid the news cycle.

I don't blame him.

You know, I understand this.

But at some point people are going to have to stand up to these bullies because that's what it is.

It's just bullying.

It's, I can make you crawl like a dog and I enjoy it.

I mean, he's a Latino making a Latino movie with a Latino cast.

Not good enough.

Nothing is ever good enough for this people.

They're like children.

We don't raise our children right, and it's reflected in the media.

No one ever tells their children, shut the fuck up, sit down, listen to your elders, stop bitching.

Well, there's a simple answer for Lynn and everyone else.

Go on Twitter and to paraphrase George W.

Bush, turn on the off button.

Joe Biden is president because he never got on Twitter in his life.

And most of his advisors were not on Twitter and they didn't pay attention to those people.

I talked to almost every candidate when they were running in the Democratic Party.

And I can tell you, when they thought of their target voter in the primaries, they were thinking of an assistant professor of aromatherapy candlemaking at Iowa State.

Okay, and I would say to them, No, it's a church lady in Orangeburg, South Carolina.

That's the heart of your party.

Biden knew that.

He didn't need me to tell him.

That's why he won, because he didn't listen to those people because he didn't have a Twitter button.

All right, thank you.

You were great.

New rules now, everybody.

New rules.

Okay, New Roll, someone has to tell the far-right anti-government militia group who call themselves the Three Percenters, you sound like a low-fat milk.

It's confusing.

When people say you're intolerant, I can't tell if they mean you're racist or that you might cause mild to severe bloating and cramps.

Newroll, now that the European Union has recommended letting American tourists come back, they have to ask themselves, why?

Wasn't it nicer without us waddling around your cathedrals and our crocs?

Your streets are narrow, and we're not.

It's not a good fit.

You want obnoxious tourists with money who won't complain that everything's too small?

Try the Chinese.

Neural, if you're doing a concert and your band hasn't had a hit since the 80s, and you say, This next song is from our new album, You Can't Look Hurt When We Go to the Bathroom.

For one, your fans are older, and now they have to go to the bathroom, too.

And two, what's an album?

Neural, you can honor your husband for being a good father on Father's Day and get him a tie, but you can't make the joke that you didn't know what he really wanted.

He wanted a blowjob.

What he got was a brightly colored silk arrow pointing to where it didn't happen.

Numeral, someone must tell Hong Kong that their new anti-drug campaign that features the phrase YOLO is stupid.

Surely, Hong Kong, you must know that YOLO stands for you only live once,

which is what people say when they want to do drugs.

People don't say cocaine.

no thanks, YOLO.

They say cocaine, fuck it, YOLO.

And

finally, new rule, you can't call it a drought if it happens all the time.

In a story I'm getting tired of reporting, California is running out of water, and this time, just when we started showering again.

19,000 acres of forest have already burned this year and 72% of the entire West is in severe drought.

Turns out hot girl summer is for reals.

The Bay Area was just placed under a water shortage emergency with mandatory restrictions.

Except here's the thing, there isn't, even with the drought, really, a water shortage problem.

It's more a where the water is going problem.

California agriculture accounts for 80% of our water use, even though California agriculture is less than 2% of our economy.

We actually have enough water.

We just give way too much of it to farmers who get their water subsidized by the government because we still act like it's 1890 and farmers are small and independent when they're really mostly part of big ag.

Old McDonald is now EIEIO Incorporated.

And corporations get what they want in America.

We have spent the last two decades in perpetual drought here, yet almond farmers in California have doubled in that time.

Despite the fact that almond production alone uses more water than all the humans and businesses in San Francisco and Los Angeles Angeles combined, even on days when your teenage son spends two hours showering.

Look at this chart of how much water it takes to grow different crops.

Oranges, tomatoes, strawberries all take about 11 gallons to make one pound.

Almonds, 1,900 gallons.

That wasn't a problem back when it rained, but now there simply isn't enough water to go around, and we have to make a painful choice, getting it to the people or getting it in the nuts.

And listen,

I don't have some personal vendetta against almonds.

They're just not more important than the entire ecosystem of California.

So when I hear that our state grows 81% of the whole world's almonds, the world's thirstiest crop, while our reservoirs run dry and giant fires burn out of control, I have a few questions, starting with what the fuck?

This is...

This is life and death.

And almonds are just not crucial.

No one has a t-shirt that says, don't talk to me until I had my almonds.

They're fine in salads or in a gift basket for someone you don't really care about.

And an almond joy is nice to have, but it's really just a mounds bar with tits.

There will still be almonds in the world, even if they're not grown in places that never get rain.

If we can direct coal miners in West Virginia to another line of work because coal is killing us, we should be able to tell almond farmers, you can't grow almonds where they don't grow anymore.

You're boguarding the water.

And

because, you know, it's not like California doesn't know how to regulate.

Oh, they know.

They know.

We are the most regulated state in the nation with more than 395,000 regulatory restrictions.

It is a constant nightmare of inspectors and permits and fees.

In this state, if you get to your car 10 seconds after the parking meter expires, it's already gone and you'll never see it again.

California has rules about every nitpicky thing you can imagine.

If you don't believe me, try parking in Santa Monica.

or starting a business or getting your solar power hooked up.

You can't fly a kite in a park in Beverly Hills or ride a bicycle or climb a tree.

But for 30 years, Nestle took water out of the San Bernardino National Forest under a permit that expired in 1988.

and Coca-Cola is somehow allowed to take water from municipal water supply, stick it in bottles, and sell it back to the taxpayers who own the water to begin with.

395,000 regulations would somehow that slip through the cracks?

For a state that just loves to be up everybody's ass all the time, water management might be a better place to direct that instinct.

I mean, where is the heavy hand of government when you need it?

Californians can live without nuts.

Just ask Caitlin Jennett.

But not water.

California to stop thinking about how to get water on almonds and start thinking about how to get it on fires.

It's basic logic that the more water we don't waste by giving it to Nestle or using it to grow trail mix,

the more we will have for the important stuff.

China would probably figure it out how to install a sprinkler system in the fire-prone areas and they'd do it in 10 days.

I wish we lived still in an era where the water flowed like water.

I like green lawns and big fountains, and while I don't play golf, I always like golf courses because they keep douchey white people off the street.

But global warming isn't in the future.

It happened.

And now I want government to deal with it.

When it comes to regulations, either go big or go home, or I'm going to find a new home.

Because my house is one gender reveal party away from burning down while I'm asleep.

California, I love you.

I've been here a long time.

I was a booster for you when it wasn't fashionable.

I don't want to go, but I'm not going to breathe ash for the rest of my life.

You make me very happy, California, but I can be happy without you.

Thank you very much.

That's our show.

I'll be at the ACL Live at the Moody Theater in Austin, August 1st, at the Pabs Theater in Milwaukee, August 14th, and the Ryman in Nashville, August 15th.

I want to thank Paul Bagala, Joan Kosten, and Nikki Glazer.

Thank you very much.

They'll be back next week.

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.