Ep. #567: Rep. Ritchie Torres, John Kasich, Chris Matthews

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

Thank you.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

That is real American enthusiasm.

You can't develop that in a Chinese lab.

Look, I'm just glad they let me be here because this week I tested positive for spring fever and

hey everybody's got it because the nation is opening up again.

We're still, I love this, we're still giving people a lollipop if they get the shot.

You know, they get all this free shit.

You get Super Bowl tickets,

you get trips and cash and prize.

Budweiser says if Biden's vaccine goals are met by Independence Day, July 4th, free beer for everybody,

which I think is great because when you're out in the sun on the 4th of July, it's important to drink water.

I kid Budweiser.

It's a fine product if you like beer, which I don't.

Anyway,

have you seen this?

The

UFOs.

I love this.

Now, this story is obsessing me lately.

Have you been following this?

I mean, this has changed my whole life.

There have been all follow those crazy people.

Well, now there's too many Navy pilots who say, no, we see things we cannot explain.

So they said they're going to look into it.

Even 60 Minutes looked into it.

And they came back with the report.

Can't rule out that it's aliens.

They say, we don't know if it is, but we can't rule out it's not.

It's in the category of unexplained phenomena with Bigfoot and the Bermuda Triangle and Britney Spears' appeal to gay men.

That's

where we are with that one.

Boy,

like we don't have enough to worry about.

Hey, speaking of that, it's gay pride month.

I know that's why you're very, oh, God, look, an entire,

an entire gay audience.

That's fantastic.

But look,

whether you are L, G, B, T,

Q, or I, that's intersex,

or A, that's asexual, or P, that's pansexual, or NB, that's non-binary, or GQ, that's genderqueer.

That's all the time we have, ladies and gentlemen.

Thank you for coming.

No, but I mean, no matter what you are, you've got to be impressed how far this issue has come.

I mean, the President of the United States Biden issued a stirring proclamation of support.

That didn't used to happen.

And of course, Biden, you know, this is not really his generation.

He doesn't quite get the, you know, he tried a little too hard to panic

as me, myself, and Irene, which was not.

They also noted Gay Pride Month in the Senate.

Lindsey Graham said, what's everyone looking at me for?

And

oh,

Former government employee Donald Trump is in the news.

A little slow tonight, but they're getting it.

Get them a little coffee and they'll come around.

But they,

first he shut down his blog, which had been up for like a month.

It was an embarrassment because no one was interested in reading it.

It had fewer visitors than the Wuhan Buffet.

Nobody even went to the site.

See?

That's all you got to do.

Yes, and of course now the Pollyannas in this country are all, oh, see, he's losing losing his power.

No, that's not what it is.

It's just that his fans are not readers

He's not going anywhere

He's more powerful than ever.

He's telling this is the big story this week Trump was telling friends that he will be reinstated in August

Really because he follows this nuttiness that's going on for real in many states like Arizona is still recounting the ballots from the election.

A process that involves adding.

I'm not sure we're ready for Space Force.

But

that is not what Americans are worried about.

They're worried about their meat.

I'm just reporting it as that's true.

Right.

America's where at first the prices went way up

like a month ago and stayed up.

I noticed 7-Eleven is now selling even slimmer gyms.

And then this week, Russian hackers

hit JBS, one of the biggest meat packing, meat selling, whatever,

in America.

Like a lot of the meat didn't get...

I tell you something, Russians.

Go after our elections, our nuclear plants, our electric grid.

Don't fuck with the meat.

This is America.

People will go nuts.

And

this after last month, when hackers, you saw that, they shut down the colonial gas pipeline, which brings half the gas to the East Coast.

No meat, no gas.

It's like a war on Chipotle.

No, I can't.

All right, we got a great show.

We've got Chris Matthews and John Kasich.

And first up, he is the Democratic Congressman representing New York's 15th district, who at 25 years old became New York City's youngest elected official and the first Afro-Latino LGBTQ member of Congress.

Please welcome Representative Richie Torres.

Hey, how are you, sir?

Good to see you.

Great to see you.

I recognize you.

All right.

Well, I'm very impressed with you, I must say, not just because of your impressive resume, but you do things that take a lot of guts because politicians are usually political.

Like you say, your goal is to be the champion of the poor.

Politicians never talk about the poor because they don't vote.

It's always about I'm working for the middle class, but you represent a rather poor district, right, economically.

The poorest congressional district in America.

Is that right?

And they vote,

you got them out to vote.

Yep.

for you.

So what do you make of that, where politicians, is that just it because they don't vote in the numbers that the the middle class does?

Look, poor people have no lawyers or lobbyists, no PACs or super PACs.

You know, for me, it's deeply personal.

You know, my life has been a journey from poverty in the Bronx to the House of Representatives in Washington, D.C.

And I'm a product of public investments, like public schools and public housing and public transit and public hospitals.

You know, I would not be where I am today.

were it not for those public investments and the opportunity and stability it gave me and my family.

And so the central mission of my life is to fight for the poor, is to fight for the social safety net.

And how's Biden doing with that?

How's Biden doing with that?

I mean, I know he's passed a lot of things, the child tax credit.

Does that not deposit money right in the bank account of everybody who has kids and makes, I think it's up to $150,000, which seems a little high.

Not in New York City.

$150,000.

The rent is too damn high in New York City.

I should be giving money to people with kids who have $150,000 coming in a year?

So it is disproportionately benefiting those in greatest need.

So the American Rescue Plan expanded the child tax credit for a year.

The President is proposing an expansion until 2025.

I'm advocating for a permanent expansion because I believe a permanent child tax credit would be to families with children what Social Security has been to senior citizens.

It would be part of the American Social Safety Net.

And just like FDR never put an expiration date on Social Security, why should we put an expiration date on a permanent child tax credit, which is essentially Social Security for our children.

And what about, I mean, the idea of a universal basic income?

Andrew Yang, who's running for mayor in New York, he made that a big issue.

That was his signature issue.

And people talk about it a lot more.

I don't think people realize even Richard Nixon was for it way back in the day.

Back when Republicans were sane.

Yeah.

And even liberals sometimes.

That was pretty liberal.

This was pre-Marjorie Taylor Greens.

Right.

Because,

oh,

it was pre-Sarah Palin.

It was pre-a lot.

Yeah.

It was good old days.

Sanity.

But the idea being that it's actually probably

cheaper and more efficient than the way we do welfare now.

It is welfare, of course, but instead of slicing and dicing between different people, married people and single people and old people and young people, just one basic income.

Is that where you are?

Look, I think we are as close as we've ever been to securing a basic income.

We have Social Security for senior citizens, we have the earned income tax credit for low-wage workers, we have the child tax credit for families with children.

You know, the best way to end poverty in America, to stimulate the economy, is to put money in the pockets of people in need because people in districts like mine are going to spend those dollars locally, which will not only create income for businesses but for the workers employed by those businesses.

So it's not only good morals, it's also good economics.

So, as the first

Afro-Latino, right, that's those your words.

Is that the right saying?

Afro-Latino, Afro-Latinx.

Okay.

Intersecting identities.

I just know the words are.

I have to pay more dues in Congress because of all my identities.

It's very easy to get the words wrong.

It would be less expensive to be a white male in Congress, I can assure you.

Interesting.

But you could be insufferably woke.

And I think you're just perfectly sane and a old school liberal.

And,

you know,

you

like you're

you want police reform, as I think everyone knows there needs to be some, but you're not for defunding the police, which is a lot of your party uses that phrase.

Some of them even talk about abolishing the police.

That's not where you are.

Part of the reason is I'm a college dropout.

And George Orwell said there are some ideas that are so stupid only intellectuals can believe them.

Yes.

And so I'm an organizer who has my feet planted in the ground.

I represent the people of the South Bronx and the people of the South Bronx, like most rank-and-file Democrats, are practical, not ideological, and want us to focus on the bread and butter issues of health and housing, schools and jobs.

And that's where my focus lies.

And the police.

What people want is transparent and accountable and constitutional policing.

The central challenge affecting American policing is a lack of accountability.

Officers are rarely, if ever, held accountable for abusing their power.

Part of the problem is culture, the blue wall of silence.

But part of the problem is the doctrine of qualified immunity.

It's become a license for police officers to abuse their power with impunity, which is why I support the George Floyd Justice and Policing Act, which would abolish the doctrine of qualified immunity.

Okay.

And

the other way I think you've been incredibly gutsy is on Israel.

And it's interesting, we're talking about the police.

Somehow the Israeli war that we just had got conflated on social media among the woke who are people who actually fell asleep during history class.

With our racial problems here in America.

And I just want to say, kids, what's going on in Israel has nothing to do with George Floyd.

It's not about racism.

Less than, I don't think they would know this, less than half of Israelis are white.

You know, the reason why they're bombing buildings is not because they're racists, it's because there are rocket launchers in those buildings.

And

I think you're the only Democrat who has been forthrightly

standing with the country that seems to be more aligned with our liberal values.

You know, for me, the progressive position is the coexistence of a Jewish state and a Palestinian state, not the

existence of one to the exclusion of other.

For me, there's a difference between.

There's a difference between promoting peace and inciting hatred.

And most of the words and ideas and memes that I've seen amplified on Twitter are aimed at inciting hatred for Israel rather than promoting peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

And my concern is that the hysterical demonization of Israel has set off a global wave of anti-Semitic violence and vitroil.

And hate is never going to bring us peace.

It's only going to bring more violence.

And that's my basic concern.

Right.

And then to your point,

there's a wonderful writer, Maddie Friedman, who warns against the danger of Americanizing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

We as Americans think we're the center of the universe, and we tend to apply an American perspective where it doesn't belong.

This is not a black and white conflict.

As you said, 20% of the Israeli population consists of Israeli Arabs, Israeli Palestinians, and a majority of the Israeli Jewish population consists of Mizrahi Jews from North Africa and the Middle East, Sephardic Jews who are Spanish Jews, or Ethiopian Jews.

This is not a black and white conflict.

This is a brown versus brown conflict.

Only about 44% of the Israelis look like your dentist.

And so I feel like we have to be

careful not to reduce everything to an overarching narrative.

You know, every country, every conflict has its own history, its own particularity, its own complexity, and none of that should be ignored in favor of an overarching ideology that purports to explain everything.

But

what bothered me so much about it, among other things, was that it seems like the progressives, or the people who think they're progressive, have aligned themselves with a place, Gaza.

I mean, the war was between Israel and Gaza, that is so against liberal values.

I mean, Gaza is a theocratic state.

They have no political democracy.

They haven't had elections in 2006.

They're never going to give up power.

They run it like a mafia.

It's a kind of a thugocracy.

I mean, women are treated worse than in porn.

Do you want me to make the progressive case for Hamas?

Is that the question?

No, no, I don't.

I'm not looking.

No, I think we're on on the same side

on this one.

I'm just wondering what your thoughts are or why, how progressives, I mean, they have honor killings there.

I mean, how progressives could have gotten into their head, and this is not just in the recent history, but in the last 15, 20 years we've seen this, with these kind of values that are not liberal values?

Look, it's inexplicable to me.

Israel is held to a double standard.

You know, I ask people, ask yourself a simple question.

If you and your neighbors were the target of 4,000 rockets, what would you expect your government to do?

Would you expect your government to do nothing?

Now, having said that, once hostilities break out, it is critical for a third party like the United States to immediately intervene and negotiate a ceasefire and end the bloodshed.

Because as you said previously, there are no winners in war, right?

Everyone loses amid the wretchedness of war.

But I do feel like Israel is held to a double standard, and there is an undercurrent of anti-Semitism in the disproportionate scrutiny of Israel.

Well, Congressman, I really appreciate your guts.

And I hope you come back and visit us soon

as you ascend up the ladder in politics, which I know you will.

All right, thank you.

Let's meet our panel.

Hey.

Hey guys, okay, he was the host of Hardball on MSNBC for 20 years and his Zoo book is called called This Country, My Life in Politics and History.

Chris Matthews is over here.

And he is the former governor of Ohio.

Wow, and he is now senior commentator for CNN.

You know John Kasich.

Okay, John, good to have you guys here.

It's like an old school hardball episode, isn't it?

I must start with Mike Pence today.

He came out of hiding.

He said he still supports Trump.

And he won't, quote, let the media use one tragic day

to discredit the aspirations of millions of Americans,

which were to kill him.

I can't make this shit up.

He said he and Trump are never going to see eye to eye on the Capitol riot on January 6th, which is, you know, that happens to all of us.

You know,

you're friends with somebody, but there's this lingering awkwardness because they wanted to kill you because

you wouldn't help them overthrow the government.

So

I.

Since Trump sort of went away, but I don't think he went away really,

a lot of people on the show have said, you know, once he's gone, Biden said it too, you know, once he's gone, you'll see the Republicans change back.

It hasn't happened.

John, you said that there was a fever in the Republican Party and it would break.

It's not a fever.

It's a tumor.

Fevers break.

This just seems to be getting worse.

I think, Bill, it's not going to get better until we have a nominee for president.

And then we have to see whether they are going to have like a normal agenda.

Because, believe it or not, I think it's likely, I think Chris might agree with me, that the Republicans could actually win the House with no agenda whatsoever.

relying on things like attacking the Democrats for dismissing Mr.

Potato Head and stupid things like that.

I mean, it's unbelievable.

There's no plan on prescription drugs.

There's no plan on what we do with entitlements.

There's no plan on what we do in immigration.

There's just no plans at all.

And they're using cultural issues to try to win the majority because, Bill, it's all about power.

In Washington now, it's about power.

I want to be in, and I want you out, and it's a tragedy.

So it has to fix itself, or the party, I think over time,

will begin to disappear.

I don't think it's cultural issues.

That was 10, 20 years ago.

They eat babies.

That's a cultural issue?

That's where they are.

This is why nothing can get done and why we're stuck.

I mean, Biden wants an infrastructure bill.

He keeps lowering the number.

It was 1.7 trillion or 2.3, then it was 1.7.

Now it's even trillion.

It's like charming that he still thinks it's about money.

They think he's a satanic pedophile.

Bill, you know, look, I mean, I didn't support Donald Trump from the very beginning.

I didn't even know our convention.

I've been against him all along.

I've been very clear in what I think Republicans are not doing and what they ought to be doing.

They have no agenda,

and it's a tragedy.

But what should Democrats be doing?

Chris, you're a Democrat.

I mean, Biden said Memorial Day, democracy itself is in peril, and we are doing what?

It is in peril.

This is real, and I've never seen anything like it in my life.

It's like invasion of the body snatchers.

When you look at a a guy like Mike Pence, what happened?

They don't speak about logic.

In my day, real politics was we'd fight over infrastructure on the Hill.

Right.

And what I would do is call up the chief engineer Imperia, the local town of the Republican leader, and ask how many bridges are below safety code.

I want that list.

So Tip O'Neill goes over the floor of the House, and he lists all the dangerous bridges.

in the Republican leader's district.

that are, if the school bus goes over, who knows if the school bus is going to make it.

Those kind of arguments used to be good, aggressive, aggressive Democratic or Republican politics.

You take the fight to the enemy and you take it to his home turf and you beat him on it and you scare the hell out of him.

I don't think this crowd cares.

I think you could tell them in their districts, every one of your bridges is below the safety code.

Everything is falling apart.

It's all going to hell.

And they go, oh, yeah, but I'm with Donald Trump.

Exactly.

It is engaged in the body study.

Bill, I was chairman of the budget committee.

and negotiated with the Clinton administration to get us absolutely to a balanced budget.

It was a different time.

But today, we're all in tribes.

There are two parties and there's tribal politics.

And you know what's happened in our country?

We live in an I culture today.

It's all about me.

It's all about what's in it for me.

It's no longer a we culture where we have to be concerned about everybody who's in this audience.

And we have to be thinking about what about the other person?

Maybe they're right.

And politics is about improving the life.

of other people.

If you're not dedicated to that, you shouldn't be in it.

It's not about power.

But it is.

And it is because we're in trouble.

We live in a life of compromise.

We're all married.

Man of us are.

Life is compromise.

It's compromise.

Not all of us.

Oh, not all of us.

Not you, Bill.

You won't get caught there.

You know, there is such a thing as a fact.

Donald Trump did okay in the last election.

He got

74 million votes.

The other guy got 81 million votes.

7 million more.

It's a fact.

Pat Moynihan has said he used to say, you can have your own opinion.

You can't have your own facts.

He lost the election.

He's a loser.

And he had to stand before his voters like Hillary Clinton had to do it.

John McCain had to do it.

Mitt Romney had to do it.

Al Gore had to do it.

When you lose, you got to stand up and tell your people you lost.

He lost this round.

You know, they were all laughing at me.

I was in.

Trump is never going to say he lost.

He's never going to go away.

I'm telling you, it just is taking more than one cycle.

That shark is not gone.

It's out to sea.

What's this reinstatement?

What's this reinstatement thing?

Reinstatement?

I've never heard of it.

It says he's.

Look, I think

Donald Trump is a malignant narcissist.

You can't break up with a narcissist.

It's Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction.

You know.

I think it's Freddie Krueger.

I will not be ignored, Dan.

And, you know, he's the ex-husband who thinks the wife is coming back to him, even though she's remarried.

But he'd rather she be dead than to be with somebody else.

And that's, that's except where the wife.

Bill, the scary thing.

And he's not going away.

And the scary thing is that there are a large percentage of Republicans, like, you know, over 75%,

who think the election was stolen.

Yes.

And the problem with this is you begin to build a subculture there of people who don't even believe in the results of our national elections.

That has a profound impact on the way this country goes going forward.

And we have to break the spell.

But how?

I'm keeping it.

You know, Bill, the answer to it is pretty simple.

We all need to realize that we need to live a life a little bigger than ourselves, and we can't be stuck in this I, again, this I culture.

So, if I'm in a tribe, it's all about what's good for the tribe.

It's not what's good for anybody else.

That has to be broken.

And people need to stand up and say that, yes, we can go forward, and we're going to reject this nonsense.

And there are Republicans doing it, and I'm one of them, and I'm going to continue to be.

I think you need

a code ring to figure out what Trump's talking about.

Trump's not talking about

this

infrastructure bill is too expensive.

That's not what they're talking about.

They're talking about the white people in this country are being outnumbered eventually.

This country is changing demographically.

And no matter what they talk about, that's what they're thinking about.

If you think about why these people are so pro-Trump, it's not because he's any good or he tells the truth.

He never tells the truth.

He never does anything.

But he says, I hate who you hate.

That's what it's about.

And that's why Trump's been successful.

He doesn't want demographic change in this country.

He doesn't want majority rule.

He's made that pretty clear.

He lost the first election by 4 million.

Didn't bother him anymore.

There is one issue for the Republicans, John, with all due respect to good Republicans out there.

There's one issue that you can't be wrong on if you're a Republican and want to get elected, and that is voter suppression.

You have to be for it.

Yep.

Very for it.

I mean, this guy in Florida, DeSantis, you know, some things, he's not an idiot.

Some things, you know, you think, oh, he's sane.

But on this issue, he's a fascist.

He's right with the crowd, and he's never going to give that up.

That is the one issue you have to get yourself right on.

Then, you know, it's.

Stopping people from voting.

And if the Democrats don't get some sort of national standards before 2022, I think the game's over.

Because the Republicans are going to do well in that election.

Well, I've held office for a very long time.

As governor, I expanded Medicaid when I was the only real Republican in the country to do it.

Let me just explain to you.

If you're in politics and you can't do what you believe, then get out.

Plain and simple.

In other words, let's just take this issue of voter suppression.

We spent all this time making it easier for people to vote.

Now they want to make it more difficult for people to vote.

It's outrageous and it's wrong.

And in my state of Ohio,

there has not been that.

John, this is a great speech to make here.

Try to make this speech and get elected in Ohio.

Guess what?

I might not win.

And get your ass kicked.

You know what?

I might not win this time, but you know what?

What a Churchill winning.

Well, time's running out.

Well, what Churchill said is in politics, you know, in war you die once.

In politics, you can die many times.

It's worth fighting for, Bill.

It's our country.

Okay, but I'm just telling you that.

You might not win.

So what?

Agreed.

I agree with that.

So what?

I'm just telling you that Rob Portman in your state of Ohio, he was a senator, right?

Retired.

So his seat is open.

So all the Republicans who are running for Rob Portman's seat, you know where they all made their first stop?

Mar-a-Lago.

They went down there to kiss the ring

before, that's where the party is.

So this is a lovely speech that would not work.

I'd like to hear a poll question to the Republicans.

Do you believe everybody should vote?

Everybody?

Yes.

No.

Right.

They don't believe in it.

In fact.

No, everybody can vote.

You said should.

If you know nothing, you should stay home.

Bill, let me just tell you one thing.

If you were totally

right, when you run for...

If you're learning history from Instagram, please just stay out of it.

You know, the 15th Amendment, the 15th Amendment to the Constitution, which allowed the former slaves to vote, passed under Grant, it basically said not only can you vote, the Congress shall pass legislation.

to make this work, to get African Americans to vote.

So the Congress has a responsibility to go in there and make sure people are allowed to vote.

Souls to the polls, early voting, minority community, it's all established that that's a community that wants to be able to vote in its own way after going to church on Sunday.

What they're doing in these states is making sure this particularly

that black people don't vote.

That's what they're up to.

So again, the question keeps coming up.

What do we do about it?

Some people say we should get rid of the filibuster.

I would be one of these people.

I noticed that there are a couple of Democrats who won't go along, so

it's dead.

Well, the filibuster itself is really a change in the Constitution because what it's saying is the founders wanted to say 50.

If you have just one more vote, and that's the vice president, because we're at 50-50, who cast the decided, if you have just one more vote, you do not need a supermajority.

You just need 50 to pass legislation.

This is the way we always did it.

Then it became the filibuster, which was used rarely back in the day, but now it's for everything, which means you need 60.

So it's skewed what, first of all, the founders of the Constitution wanted.

And it's not Kristen Sinema said it encourages bipartisanship.

She's one of the Democrats who won't go along.

It encourages obstructionism.

It doesn't help.

It's got to go.

Especially now that the issue is elections themselves.

They're fucking with, it's one thing to have issues that are in elections.

Another thing when the issue is elections.

I mean, we've got to have a nuclear option here.

I want to, first of all, the filibuster.

You go ahead and get rid of it, and we've gotten rid of it partially now, and we've had things happen we haven't liked.

Get rid of the filibuster, the other side gets in, then they jam and reverse everything else.

Okay, that's why I'm not for getting rid of it.

But I wanted to back up.

I think if you don't get rid of it, the other side is never going to get in.

And I mean, let me just make two points.

The change in this country comes from the bottom up.

I've told you that it was civil rights, it's women's suffrage.

It comes from us pushing up and forcing those at the top to change.

Secondly, I reject the notion that you have to support any of this nonsense in the Republican Party to get elected.

I've run for office when no one ever thought I could win.

And you know, the fact of the matter is

when you will, when you believe in things deeply, it is amazing how you can turn other people on to your candidacy and you can win.

This is not some blue-sky hyperbole here.

Are you going to run again?

Are you going to run again?

No, I kind of like what I'm doing now.

It's great in theory.

Well, I mean, I was.

You're not too old to do it.

If you believe in this so much, do it.

Be that guy because you'll get your ass kicked.

No, well.

In the Republican Party, you will.

Would you help?

You wouldn't help me if I ran?

I don't think I would be of help.

Oh, you could be.

Believe me, trust me.

Oh, yes.

Campaign with me in a Republican district in Ohio.

You two fucking cramped.

No, no, no.

Well,

I think they have a strategy.

Mitch McConnell.

You know, you can say he's Elmer Fudd, but he's probably Bugs Bunny.

The guy gets away with everything.

I think they've got a strategy.

Make sure the Democrats and Biden get nothing through for the next year and a half.

They go to the polls next year on three issues, the Republican.

They love three negative issues.

They're going to complain about crime.

They're going to complain about the border.

And they're going to complain about prices.

They want to run an entirely negative campaign next year.

And the way they want to get away with it, the Democrats don't have any successes.

So make sure there's no successes.

They go to the Democrats.

The Democrats lack plenty of successes.

No, no, I'm talking about all they got to do.

Voting rights,

police reform, as you talked about with the Congressman.

They've got to do something on guns.

They've got to do something on immigration.

A lot of things the Democrats want to get done.

They want to pass laws that improve this country.

They want to do things.

Mitch Connell wants to make sure nobody does anything except blame somebody.

As always, you know, the Republican administration ends with the economy going off the cliff.

It happened with Bush.

Obama came in, straightened it out.

Biden came in, he straightened it out.

The economy's doing good.

People are vaccinated.

You know, they have plenty to run on.

Anyway, apropos of our discussion, three-quarters of Republicans think that the riot, the Capitol Hill riot, was not Trump supporters out there.

They think it was actually

liberals and Democrats dressed up as them, making them,

I'm not making this up,

trying to make Trump look bad, that we dress up as them.

So I just want to say to conservatives,

you got us.

You got us.

That's what we do.

We do it.

We do it.

We dress up like you.

There's a custom department at George Soros' house.

Tim Robbins and I do the sewing.

And

there's even a catalog now, false flag supply.

If you want to, as a liberal, dress up to make Trump look bad, just get the stuff here.

We have some of the things.

For example, you could get this, this distressed MAGA hat.

This is great because you want it to look like, you know, you've had it for a while.

But

if you really want to do well, look like them, get this Trump MAGA hat with the mullet,

with the mullet built into it.

You see, there you go.

And then there's the

If you really want to seal the deal, you know, dress up like them, because it's all in the details,

Get these meth cues.

And then if you really want to sell it.

Okay, so you know, I mean, a lot of the people who are Trump supporters, they blow off their hand study off firecrackers and doing other hold my beard dares.

So you get this fake

rubber hand with the missing finger.

You see, then,

and then you got the, and then you.

And then

you're also going to need, you know, a lot of the liberals were too in shape.

They get the Trump gut.

You know, you put this right.

There's also, oh, this the, oh, you want, you want a misspelled hand sign.

This is,

oh,

again,

it's in the details.

You want your copy of the Constitution.

They always carry a copy.

Make sure it's still in the packaging because they've never read it.

That's very important.

And

finally.

Not to leave the ladies out of this, you want, these are terrific.

These are Mike Pence earrings where he's, you see he's hanging.

It's really seen Mike Pence hanging in.

Okay.

A little comedy break, fellas.

All right.

I want to talk about some other issues here.

One is the hacking that is going on.

You're too smart, guys.

What do you think about this?

I mean, we first had the colonial pipeline hacked, and Christopher, and then now the the meat didn't get through.

Christopher Wray, our FBI director, said there are a lot of parallels to 9-11.

He's talking about hacking in general.

He said, the average American is now realizing it can affect them when they're having...

when they're buying gas or buying a hamburger.

The scale of this problem is one I think the country has to come to terms with.

And I think he's right.

We're not just fighting the last war by buying fucking aircraft carriers.

We're ignoring the current one.

This is already the war.

And I guess the question is, if this is how warfare is now, are we still a superpower?

Bill, you know, the problem we have is this whole issue of cybersecurity.

It's spread out in about six and seven places inside the federal government.

So when you have all this bureaucracy, all of them having the peace, nobody's in charge.

And our opponents know that, number one.

Number two, That needs to be consolidated.

I did it, for example, in my state when I consolidated programs that needed consolidating, like health care programs, where we were able to cut the costs and serve more people.

This, you have to give up the turf.

This is, again, back to I.

I don't want to give up the turf.

You've got things in the, you know, in the Department of Defense, Homeland Security, NSA, all these, there's all this bureaucracy.

It never works.

And secondly, we have to have an offensive policy.

We have to have force.

We have to make it clear.

We're not going to put up with this much longer.

And that has to come out of the president.

Well, if you're talking about giving up on stuff that you've been selfish about, this goes back to Eisenhower in 1960 with his military-industrial complex.

That's right.

Too much sensitive to the business.

Shrink it down, get it focused, and have a policy.

We spend

$18.7 billion for cybersecurity.

That's nothing.

The Pentagon spends $750 billion.

How many times do we have to get cyber looted?

before we stop building battleships and submarines to fight the Soviet Union in 1979.

It's not because they're for our defense, they're for our defense contractors.

I was a defense reformer and was able to halt the production of the B-2 bomber because I thought it was excessive.

And in fact, you were right when you say at times it's a public works program in the Pentagon.

Totally.

Get rid of the stuff you don't need and focus on the threat of today and the threat of tomorrow.

And a big one is cyber.

A big one is cyber.

A big one.

Mobility, speed, and power.

And we could have so much more money for other things if we didn't build tanks we're never going to use and don't need.

We've been caught off guard before in our history.

Pearl Harbor was a shock.

We had all our ships lined up, perfect target practice for the Japanese Empire.

We had 9-11.

The guys were able to get on planes, use our, they got their training in Florida how to fly those planes, and we were totally vulnerable.

This time around, we're totally vulnerable.

And somebody said to me the other day, we need a Manhattan project.

We need to get serious about it.

We got it like we did with the bomb in World War II.

We got it figured figure it out.

But we've come through before.

Look how fast we got the vaccinations.

And it still works.

And it takes the private sector.

Because right now, one company, a meat company, gets hit, a pipeline company gets hit.

They're not sharing the information.

We have no air traffic control for these things coming in at us.

There's no united ability to know what's going on.

So it's going to be the private sector and the public sector, but it's going to take a leader to do this, maybe a constant, one czar, one person to do it.

This can be fixed.

But I think

the Russians have very few rich targets.

They don't have much we can hit them with.

We've got a lot.

We're living in a glasshouse of modern technology.

What are you talking about?

Like, they don't have electricity in Russia.

Apparently, they're not as easy.

You get into a back-and-forth fight with them.

It may not be the right way to go back to them against them covertly.

But only the United States government can attack them.

The businesses can't attack back.

Colonial can't go back.

The meat company can come back.

It takes the U.S.

government to do that.

Right.

Well, I mean, see, Bill, the problem is when you have a committee down there trying to decide what to do, you never get an answer.

Somebody has to be put in charge.

There has to be one place, and you take and you centralize this somewhere and then have an offensive policy.

Some sort of central intelligence agency.

Well, yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

Okay, but

you tell's good, Bill.

Knowing what's going on in the world, it's a good thing.

No, I agree.

I agree.

No, I've never been against them.

We need them.

But, you know, Israel did a hack, they think, this week of Iran, and they got an oil refinery to blow up, which I knew you could do things like stop the meat from coming through or turn off the electric.

I didn't know you could blow something up.

Yeah.

Well, look what they did to the nuclear program.

Right.

They put that back five years.

Right.

But apparently you can overheat a nuclear plant and make it so like pack our dams, pack our utilities, show up.

Some power in New York.

That's why we have to be on this.

If a country had done that to us, and if they had sent a bomber over to do it, if they had literally bombed, we would obliterate them.

But when it's through a computer, apparently it's different.

But should it be different?

And what is the deterrent?

I get it in the old warfare what the deterrent was.

I mean, nuclear weapons are horrible, but they sort of kept the peace between the big boys because we didn't want to use them on each other.

What is the deterrent here?

How are we deterring the next one?

Because so far, our policy, again, private companies, right, but is pay in Bitcoin.

Our government, Bill, has not a strong and consistent policy on this.

You know what?

Way you're talking here, maybe Biden ought to think about putting you in that, and then you can leave this show.

I'll take it over.

Go ahead and in all seriousness.

Look, Bill, I don't know if you understand.

There are several reasons why this plan wouldn't work.

Well, one reason the Republicans weren't exactly upset about the Russians hacking the Democrats.

We weren't united on that.

Why didn't they jump in and say, I don't care

who you're doing it to, you're doing to us Americans?

But, Chris, we can't worry about the Republicans and the Democrats on this.

This is a national security issue that

should have no partisan involvement at all.

What you have to have is reform in Washington.

And when a president says, we're going to consolidate, all these bureaucracies will say, oh, yeah, wait, how long will he be around?

And he's got to consolidate them.

And we have to have a policy, just like you said, a strong policy that actually can impose damage and hurt on those who hack us before it affects all of us here and begins to undermine the government.

What's the bigger threat right now?

Is it the hacking, or in fact, we have an ex-general calling for a military coup against this government?

That's a little more dangerous.

You're talking about General Flynn.

Yeah.

General Flynn, who was on the show once.

I don't know why he did it, but

we have the footage.

I know.

Genosi, that's a Bill.

That's the one thing that made you laugh today.

That's a real thing.

Bill, Genosi,

I like that.

This thing, nothing.

But then, General Flynn.

But yes, General Flynn.

It was, by the way, General Flynn, if people don't know what General Flynn, who was our National Security Advisor under Trump before he lost his job for lying to the FBI, he said maybe what happened in Miranmar, which is the former country of Burma, where there was a military coup, should happen here.

I mean, this is a former National Security Advisor asking for the overthrow of the government.

Again, Biden saying democracy is in peril, but what are we doing?

Really, we just let this pass?

We whistle past this graveyard?

Yeah, it's like it's the story of the day, and then we move on.

But you know, there's a natural transition here.

Trump says President Obama was a fake.

He snuck in the country from Kenya, some weird theory.

Then he said Joe Biden's a fake.

In other words, he has called for an overthrow of the government in many other ways, like go into the Capitol on January 6th and

get rid of all the paper and kill anybody who stops you.

So this guy follows suit and says, okay, why don't we just have a coup?

It isn't like Michael Flynn is a creative writer here.

He's following the script that Trump wrote.

Right.

And again, this is the problem that I think,

with all due respect, you are fighting the last war over.

We are not in this place where, I mean, if this was 10 years ago, you would have been the perfect panel for any issue because a reasonable Democrat, reasonable Republican.

We're not there.

It's one side thinks that the other side is an existential threat.

They got it into their heads that we're satanic baby eaters.

I don't know why.

I mean, 18, yes, 18 people are running now for Congress who are QAnon.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is about one mood swing away from getting naked in Target,

is going to be the leader of a caucus.

I mean, there's going to be a QAnon caucus.

How do you negotiate with Marjorie Taylor Greene?

Well, you don't.

She should have been thrown out of of the party.

But she should have and would have.

I would have done it.

I would have done it.

But, Bill, look, let me also tell you that something that can't be unsaid here, and that is Biden walks a tightrope.

Because Biden goes too far and gives too much to Republicans, the left goes crazy.

Then he's worried, oh, the whole thing comes tumbling down.

Look, we are gridling.

No, he's not being worried about that so far.

Oh, I think...

Well, no, because he's making proposals, but he's not able to negotiate an infrastructure bill because he knows he can only go so far.

You can't let them off the hook.

The hard left is a threat to Joe Biden and makes him very angry.

Biden never ran like this.

The guy endorsed the guy.

He never ran with this.

He said he was going to bring us together, and they're not having any kind of a good negotiation.

It's wrong.

No, the cuckoo left is an albatross.

I could not agree more.

You know,

back in the 50s, Bill, in the 60s, the Republican Party had the John Birch Society hanging on their necks.

That was their albatross.

They had anti-Semitism in the conservative movement all over the place.

And And a guy named Bill Buckley came along and said, out, out of that crap, out of here.

Today, the media, there's no media star on the right that's wanting to talk to these people and say, no more QA, no more anti-Semitism, no more this stupid blaming immigrants for everything that's wrong in our country.

It's over.

Who's going to do that?

No.

Okay.

Time for new rules, everybody.

Thank you guys.

Okay.

New rule.

Someone has to ask Boris Johnson after celebrating a secret wedding to his fiancé at 10 Downing Street, what day would be special enough for you to comb your hair?

New rule, just because weed is increasingly legal in America, drug-sniffing police dogs shouldn't be forced into retirement.

We should hire them to find the drugs we lose around the house.

And that's why dogs are better than cats, because dogs can hold a job.

It's true.

Police dogs, guard dogs, hunting dogs, service dogs.

You try to give a cat a job and they're like, screw you, I'm off today.

That's right.

Once every like 20 years, I do a dog and cat joke.

I don't believe in them, but it's like Haley's comic.

You'll see it.

New rural Gen Zers must admit that if shoving a long stick all the way up your nose wasn't already the test for coronavirus, they'd be doing it as an Instagram challenge.

Neural, now that the Atlantic has published this article, America Has a Drinking Problem, which claims there's nothing moderate or convivial about the way Americans drink today,

they can go ahead and cancel my subscription.

I'm sorry, but I won't stand idly by while you besmirch a whole nation whose only crime is passing out before they can finish masturbating, then waking up next to an empty can of Pringles, having texted you up to seven different ex-girlfriends.

Actually, maybe the Atlantic has a point.

Neural, try not to read too much into the story about the Pennsylvania woman suspected of driving under the influence and slamming her SUV into a substance abuse treatment center.

Sure, it could have been a cry for help, but maybe she just needed a place to crash.

I know.

Not every week, I can't.

And finally, Neurule, now that graduation season has ended and we won't be spoiling anyone's big day, let's talk about what higher education in America really is.

A racket that sells you a very expensive ticket to the upper middle class.

President Biden's American Families Plan asks the taxpayers to pony up hundreds of billions so that everyone can go to college.

and billions more for a subsidized child care so our kids can go to school while we go to school.

The theory being that all this education trickles down and eventually gets to Florida.

Now the right is calling Biden's plan social engineering, which is over the top, but Biden's plan is an endorsement of a particular idea.

that the more time humans spend in classrooms staring at blackboards, the better.

Liberals see more school the way Republicans see tax cuts as the answer to everything.

We imagine going to college is the way to fight income inequality, but actually it does the reverse.

If you have a bachelor's degree you make about 65% more than someone who doesn't and with a master's degree it's more like a hundred percent more.

And the unemployment rate of college grads is about half what it is for high school grads.

I know free college is a left-wing thing, but is it really liberal for someone who doesn't go to college and makes less money to pay for people who do go and make more?

I'm asking,

especially since colleges have turned into giant luxury daycare centers with overpaid babysitters anxious to indulge every student whim.

The University of Missouri has a river grotto inspired by the Playboy Mansion.

Texas Tech has one of the largest water parks in the country that includes a 25-person hot tub, tanning deck, water slide, and a lazy river.

A third of students now spend less than five hours a week studying, and when they do, it's for their onerous magnum cum bullshit course load of sports marketing, history through Twitter,

advanced racist spotting, intro to microaggressions, and you owe me an apology 101.

Why is China kicking our ass?

Because in 2019, we issued more undergrad degrees in visual and performing arts

than in computer and information science or math.

Say what you want about Lori Laughlin.

At least she understood that one good scam deserves another.

And in the immortal words of her daughter, Olivia Jade,

I don't know how much school I'm going to attend, but I do want the experience of like game days and partying.

Yeah, I'm not fucking paying for that.

In 1960, colleges awarded A's to 15% of the students.

Well, now it's 45%.

And it's not because they got smarter.

It's because of Adderall.

Yeah, I got it.

But also, colleges are businesses selling a consumer product.

for hundreds of thousands of dollars and they want to give the customers what they want, a magical piece of paper called a diploma.

But that's only the beginning of the scam.

A wannabe librarian needs a master's degree just to get an entry-level job filing books.

You know, I've heard this from so many nurses and teachers and administrators rolling their eyes when relating how they needed to take some bullshit course in order to advance in their field when really they already learned what they need by working the job.

But in the

grift that is our higher education, when you want to move up, hold on there, not so fast, toll booth ahead, you need to pay for more education before we decide if you can do what you do, fuck, this is what Scientology does.

Makes you keep taking courses to move up to the bridge of total freedom.

In the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church famously sold indulgences.

which were just tickets to heaven that you could buy.

Well,

now another priesthood of academia sells a different ticket to heaven.

And because it's so necessary, colleges can charge whatever they want.

Since 1985, the average cost of college has risen 500%.

What are the businesses?

It doubles every nine years.

Every year it increases at four times the rate of inflation.

And yet no one knows how to change a tire.

The answer isn't to make college free.

The answer is to make it more unnecessary,

which it is for most jobs.

So that the two-thirds of Americans who either can't afford to or just don't want to go don't feel shut out.

Because the system we have sets up this winner-loser dynamic and breeds resentment that working hard has less value than sitting around in this thing

and that

that in turn feeds into our widening political division or as one recent politician put it I love the poorly educated

All right, that's our show.

I will be at the Majestic Theater in San Antonio July 10th and at the Toyota Music Factory in Irving, Texas July 11th.

And at ACL Live at the Moody Theater in Austin, August 1st, I want to thank Chris Matthews, John Kasich, and Representative Richie Torres.

We'll be back next week.

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.