Ep. #566: Bob Costas, Nicholas Kristof, James Carville

Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

I lit the fuse and my life turns into everything it wasn't supposed to be.

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was quick.

He kept saying, No, no, no, I'm in the hospital now, but next week I'll be ready for the show.

Now, Charlie's sober.

He's gonna tell you the truth.

How do I present this with any class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

Yeah, aka Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

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

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

Thank you.

Thank you.

How you doing?

All right.

I appreciate it.

I know.

Okay.

Thank you.

And

I.

First of all,

I'm sorry I missed the last two weeks.

I didn't want to.

You heard this.

They said I had COVID.

This is, you know,

it's like when you go to Jiffy Lube, they show you the air filter and you go, okay, you're the expert.

I thank you for all the get-well wishes.

I can't oblige you.

I never was sick.

I felt nothing but okay.

You know, I mean, I had the vaccine.

That's another rumor.

I know I had it.

You know, I mean, who knows?

It's not

worthy of applause, applause, but okay.

Did it help?

Probably, I don't know.

We don't know.

Yes, probably, I don't know.

You know, most people who got the thing never, you know, got very sick.

Less than 4% went to the hospital.

I know Media doesn't like to talk about that.

It's something to be respected, obviously, yes.

And so good.

Point is I had it.

And now, in America, we're like bribing people to get the vaccine.

Really?

I mean, they're giving away like college scholarships and free beer,

baseball tickets.

California's giving away $116 million in cash and prizes.

We are at the Bob Barker phase of the pandemic.

I love this country all over the world.

People are dying to get this vaccine, but here they got to give you a jet ski first.

And then maybe I will consider.

The other stupid thing, people said, How could you have, you know, tested positive if you had the vaccine?

It happens.

They never said it was 100% effective.

Nobody ever did.

The same week happened to me.

Nine Yankees who had the vaccine tested positive, which is supporting my theory that the virus comes from bats.

No.

That's not even my theory.

I was always saying from the beginning, it could have been lab, could have been bats.

Facebook said, you can't even say it might be in the lab.

Well, now everyone's saying it might be.

I was always saying, this is not political.

Just treat this as a science issue.

We don't know where it came from.

Well, now the Wall Street Journal says it might be the lab.

We have the guy from former CDC head said, he thinks it's the lab.

We don't know.

Biden administration now is looking into it might be the lab.

And there are rumors, rumors, and I'm not saying it's nefarious from the lab, just an accident, but there are rumors that maybe the lab was manipulating the virus to make it stronger,

which is a violation of a sacred principle in China, no substitutions.

And

you can

try to pretend that's a racist joke.

Good luck with that.

I don't care.

It's not.

But the good news is, you know, Memorial Day is this weekend, so that's kind of great.

And the masks are coming off.

The CDC said, that's okay.

I see you still got them on, but, you know, we're inside and

I nearly died.

But, you know, everything's coming back to life.

Even the cicadas.

The cicadas are emerging after a 17-year hibernation looking to mate.

And when Matt Gates

heard 17 and looking to mate,

he ordered a whole new supply of ecstasy.

I tell you,

you remember Matt Gates?

We should have.

Eat it, nerd.

We got to show the picture every time.

But the bad news is, of course, listening to this, that happened today, Senate Republicans have killed the bill to form an independent commission to look into the January 6th Capitol Hill riot.

They say the whole thing is a thinly veiled Democratic plot to get to the facts.

Ted Cruz said, Yeah, no biggie.

If there had been any real danger, I would have been in Cancun.

And

yeah, so this is how fucked up our country is.

You know, because of filibuster and the 60 thing, 60 senators, it should be.

54 voted for that, only 35, and it killed it.

Only six Republicans voted for this bill.

Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski, the usual suspects in the non-terrorist wing of the Republican Party.

Why do Republicans, by the way, even get a say in this?

It's like

letting the dog decide to look into who's shit on the rug.

I think I know.

And you know, one of the reasons why is because the Republicans know their constituents either don't care or listen to this, three out of four, and this is rank and file Republicans, believe who was responsible for the Capitol Hill riot?

Left-wing protesters trying to make Trump look bad.

You know, also trying to make Trump look bad?

The seven deadly sins, the human eye, and food.

I tell you, Republicans, they love this idea of the false flag operation.

You know, whenever they do some fucked up shit, it's always us dressed up as them.

Everything is the Boston Boston Tea Party.

No, they were dressed as Indians.

We were real.

Dressed as they?

What the fuck?

I wonder if they try this at home with their wives.

Honey, that was not me fucking the babysitter.

That was a Democrat dressed as me fucking the babysitter.

And he was using my penis.

That's how bad they are.

All right, we got a great show.

We have James Carville and Nicholas Kristoff.

Well, first up, he's the 29-time Emmy winning broadcaster for the MLB network and host of the new show Back on the Record with Bob Costas coming to HBO this summer.

Bob Costas is back here and back on the network.

Hey, both.

Tamala Boom.

We're not shaking.

No.

We're bowing.

We're waving.

Hey, burst.

I don't get that.

I thought we all agreed, and I found out how wrong I am, having been out, getting COVID.

That's probably how I got.

I've been out.

Yeah.

People went right back to the shaking and the hand and the hugging.

People need human contact.

And I was the one going, wait, I thought we had decided that even when the pandemic is over, that was unnecessary.

And then they were like, oh, Mr.

Negative.

I'm like, what?

I was the one guy during the whole thing.

Pre-COVID, I always felt we ought to go the Asian route.

Yeah.

And just bow.

First of all, it's more respectful.

And if you shake enough hands, forget about during a pandemic, you shake enough hands, you're going to get a cold, a catch, or something.

I don't want want anyone to touch me unless they mean business.

That's always been.

So this has been a particularly rough stretch for you, hasn't it?

Let's talk about the Olympics.

Yeah, okay.

Now I would never, I think you know this, I've done jokes, I've never been a giant Olympic fan.

Right.

You know, I mean, especially like the girls' gymnastics seems like child abuse to, you know, capture them at the age of of four and train them 12 hours a day.

There's something to that, yeah.

Yeah, okay.

But I know, rah-rah, America, great.

Okay, so

we kick ass overseas.

But I do associate it with you.

I mean, I never watched it for the games, I watched it for you.

You are the

games were secondary.

It was really the broadcasting.

You do have a spell.

How many did you cover?

12.

12?

Yeah.

No.

Yeah, from 1988 through 2016.

Oh, wow.

Right, because every two years.

Yeah, yeah.

Right.

And the prep must be crazy.

Yeah, well, you know, I learned after the first couple, I learned that the host has to be a good generalist, but you don't need to know every platform diver from Peru or every cross-country skier from Norway.

That's for the people at the venues.

You just have to have the big picture.

Well, okay, so now we're

gonna have it in Tokyo

in just a month.

Yep.

Okay, this is a big controversy.

Again, I have no dog in this fight.

I don't watch it.

Except for you.

And now you're not doing it.

It frees up a lot of time for you.

It really does.

That's what's one thing.

It takes too long.

There's too many backstories about what they went through to get there.

You know, if they just cut it down, you know, it's like all these streaming shows that should be just a movie.

Just make it into one fucking movie.

But they spent a billion dollars or more for the rights, and it dominates the ratings in a time when everything is fragmented.

Okay.

You know, it's one of the things that cuts through.

So you think it shouldn't take place because we're not going to have a crowd in Tokyo?

It should be postponed, not canceled.

Right.

If they postponed it till the summer of 2022, then as a one-off, it would go back to the way it was prior to the 90s, which was that the winter and summer games took place every four years in the same calendar year.

Under these circumstances, it makes sense, but you got to understand, the IOC holds all the cards.

New England Journal of the Committee.

The

International Olympic Committee.

And every time I see their name in the headline, it's something shady.

Is that wrong?

It's not wrong.

They have an affinity for authoritarian regimes.

They'll be back in Beijing for the Winter Olympics.

They were in Sochi in 2014.

They were in Beijing in 2008.

So you're saying we should have boycotted all these?

No.

The boycotts mostly hurt the athletes rather than the government that they're aimed at.

So they have to work with these governments.

Yeah, it's a particularly difficult tightrope walk for NBC because unlike other entities that cover it, the network that carries the Olympics or any sports event has invested a lot of money in the rights.

And they want people to feel good about watching it.

But my feeling always was that you need to at least acknowledge the elephants in the room.

And I tried as best I could to tug on the other end of that rope, but they were always very, very touchy about possibly offending the IOC.

Wasn't China trying to get you banned at one point?

1996, even before the 08 games in Beijing, 1996, during the opening ceremony, I pointed out, the Soviet Union had just broken up, that if any nation had the resources and the motivation to replicate what the old Eastern bloc did with systematic cheating, It's not to say that American athletes don't cheat, but they do it on their own or with rogue scientists, not under the direction of the USOC or the United States government.

China had a motivation to do it.

Several athletes had already been caught.

I also pointed out that they wanted to host the 2000 Olympics.

This is before they got the 08 Olympics.

2000 Olympics went to Sydney, Australia.

But that concerns over human rights and the threat to Taiwan and all the rest had scotched their bid.

So the internet had just started, but there was a campaign directed by Beijing to have me fired unless I issued a public apology in prime time.

You could have been.

Neither of which happened.

You could have been patient zero for getting canceled.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But you see now Putin was more stealth in 2014 in Sochi.

He just gave me pink eye.

Right.

So

I remember that.

Oh that was brutal.

That's brutal.

Oh that was brutal.

It's brutal.

What a trooper you were.

You know one of the things that pissed me off about missing these shows, I never missed a show in 28 years on television.

And I could have done, I

could have done both of them.

Yeah.

But keeping me out the second week was ruthless.

Let's not get into it.

All right.

Okay.

I think you pretty much covered it.

Yeah, I'm pissed off.

Okay, so let's talk about the...

One more thing about the IOC.

Here's the thing.

Almost everybody, 70% of Japanese citizens, all the health organizations, the

New England Journal of Medicine today, they all say it's not a good idea.

It's either it should be canceled or more likely postponed.

But all the contracts are written in favor of the IOC.

So if the Olympics are held, all the losses, all the cost overruns, they fall on the Olympic Organizing Committee of Tokyo.

None of that, none of the brunt of that is borne by the IOC.

Plus, if the games take place and NBC televises them, then the IOC collects every last penny of the broadcast rights.

So you can't expect them to have the same view of this as the rest of the world does.

So funny with sports, you know, we want it to be pure, and it's always, more than almost anything else,

going to be intermingled with politics.

Of course.

You can't, I mean, the All-Star game that was going to be in Atlanta, right?

Mm-hmm.

When is that?

That's like in July.

Okay.

Mid-July.

Now it's

they moved it because Georgia passed some what a lot of people think are voting voter suppression laws.

I mean they have their own argument, but to me they're voter suppression laws and

I normally not for boycotts or moving things because of that.

I feel like this is an issue that transcends other issues.

This is about losing our country.

Well, that was the way baseball felt about it, but there was also pressure because they knew that many of the all-star players would refuse to play in the game.

And the National League manager, Dave Roberts, of the Dodgers, had said that he was considering not coming to Atlanta for the game.

So Rob Manford, the commissioner, was in a difficult position.

It'd be a PR nightmare if several of the best players didn't show up.

So the move he made was preemptive.

take it to Denver.

The problem with it is it lacks some of the moral clarity that you associate with other boycotts.

No Super Bowl in Phoenix in the early 90s because Arizona didn't have an MLK holiday.

The PGA of America pulls next year's PGA championship, the one just won by Phil Mickelson, from the Bedminster course, Donald Trump's course in New Jersey, a few days after the January 6th insurrection.

The reasons for that are obvious.

They make perfect sense.

Here to the public, these reasons are a little muddy.

They don't grasp the issue as readily.

Well, maybe they should be

talked to then.

Yeah.

Because I think that this moral

clarity about whether voting should count?

Well,

they call them voter integrity laws.

And on the other hand, those who regard Donald Trump as their North Star have a very peculiar definition of integrity.

So we know that the reason here

is either weird right-wing virtue signaling, like, hey, we have to do something because Trump thought that the election was fixed, and the only evidence evidence of anybody trying to steal it, and it's on tape, is Trump himself.

So we have to

see the very state where Trump did call the guy and say it's not the same.

Yes.

Can you find small votes?

The very state.

Look under the couch.

There might be 11,000 votes that I can.

And then Brad Raphsonberger, who was the Republican,

who in many ways saved this Republic, because, you know, if we had lost that state or Arizona,

it could have gone in a very different direction.

And he stood up, as some of the courts did.

I mean, we're going to talk about this on the panel, but this is what is disappearing in this country behind the scenes, is that they are slowly, they didn't say after they lost in 2020, oh well I guess we shouldn't try to cheat again.

They said, okay, I see how we can have to do it better next time.

Yeah, this is what I think

agreed.

And if this is not Jim Crow 2.0, which might be hyperbolic, the idea, all of these initiatives are coming from Republicans around the country, some 40 states.

The idea is to gain whatever edge they can gain.

Will these laws stop anyone who's determined to vote from voting?

No.

Will it make it more difficult for some people, and will those people disproportionately be Democratic voters?

Yes.

It's not just that, it's just that there is no more Brad Refsenberger in Georgia.

They got rid of that guy.

Well, and part of it is...

That's what they're doing.

Yeah, part of it is that the state legislature

can oversee the elections, overturn certain things.

But meanwhile, they move it to Denver, 9% African American population, 51%

in Atlanta.

Okay.

That's macro.

That's the other thing.

No, I get your point.

I agree with the point.

I just don't know that the point resonates as well as it might have been intended.

Well, that's what I'm here for.

All right.

Last question.

I see that the Major League Baseball now is going to count the records of the Negro leagues, which I think is from 1920 to 48.

That's right.

regular major league going to blend them in.

Blend them in with statistics.

So it could be that if they find out that Josh Gibson right hit 800 home runs he would be the all-time leader where are you on that here's my feeling very often if you're in general sympathy or agreement with a cause then you're supposed to just nod an assent with anything that's presented under the heading of that cause not on this

you know all about it all right so

I was the emcee, if that's the right word, of the opening of the Negro Leagues Museum in Kansas City.

It's one of the great museums of any kind in the country.

It's wonderful in every way.

The Negro Leagues derive their meaning from the injustice that was imposed upon them and from everyone involved triumphing over that injustice.

We can't learn enough about the Negro Leagues.

I think I've read every book and watched every documentary that's been made about it.

It's a glorious story.

It's an important part of big league history.

But you can't automatically just blend those stats with big league stats.

And in fact, which is not to say that the Negro leagues weren't as good.

In some cases, they were better than their contemporaries among white major leaguers.

But a generation or two down the road, if that's all you're looking at,

you will have lost the meaning of the Negro leagues.

The truth is that at various times, there were three or four different Negro leagues operating simultaneously.

And even the researchers who have done an exhaustive job haven't been able to track down all the stats.

They've got Josh Gibson with 113 home runs.

By legend, he had about 800.

You know the old saying: when the facts and legend collide, print the legend.

In this case, the legend is almost certainly closer to the truth.

Why should a few at-bats that a 17-year-old Willie Mays had in 1948 for the Birmingham Black Barons lower his lifetime boutting average from 302 to 301?

What they should have done is have an exhaustive history of the Negro Leagues at the front of every baseball encyclopedia or baseball reference now online.

And then you take every Negro leaguer and you put that player and his Negro League records alphabetically wherever he belongs.

So Josh Gibson would come between Bob Gibson and Kurt Gibson.

And you'd see Jackie Robinson's Negro League stats before his Major League stats.

You convinced me.

This is

the best way to do it.

This is the best way to do it.

That's a coherent way to do it.

That's the common sense wingman I need on HBO.

And now I have him.

Bob Costas, look for it later this summer.

All right, thank you.

Let's meet our panel.

Hey, guys.

Hey.

All right.

He is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist at the New York Times and co-author of Tightrope, Americans Reaching for Hope.

Nicholas Christoph is back with us.

Great to see you, Nick.

Good to be here.

He's a Democratic strategist and co-host of the weekly podcast Politics War Room with James Carville and Al Hunt, always making news.

James Carville,

always

showing the flag for LSU.

Okay, so guys, we started to talk about this over there.

I'm a little worried.

I used to use the word slow-moving coup even before Trump was elected.

I am going to have to double down on that.

I feel like it just is taking more than one election cycle.

And when elections become about the election itself,

Then you lost your country.

Then you're not really a democracy anymore.

And I mean, the fact that they now, today, we found out, there's going to be no commission to look into what happened on January 6th,

not that it was a mystery.

Right.

To begin with.

Liz Cheney, the one prominent Republican who spoke out against it, she's gone.

They exiled her.

I mean, as I was saying to Bob, they're replacing the people.

who saved the last election by a thumbnail.

They're replacing them with

the Stop stop the steel people.

What is going to happen in 2024 and what do we do to stop it?

Because it's not the same scenario already with what is going on behind the scenes.

You know, I don't think in early 2021 we can know what's going to happen in the 2022 elections, let alone what will happen in 2024.

And I do think that the degree to which the GOP has gone off the rails does truly mitigate its chances of

coming back.

I also think that political scientists have argued that there is a considerable risk of a backlash, which you alluded to, and that truly what has often suppressed the vote has not been voter ID laws, it's been apathy.

And one good mechanism to counteract that apathy is when people say people are trying to suppress you.

But I'm not talking about actual voting.

I'm talking about they're changing behind the scenes the people who count the votes.

This is what Stalin used to say.

It doesn't matter who votes, it matters who counts the votes.

This is what's changing.

This is, I think, what Democrats are too complacent about now.

We won the last one, Biden the president.

Yes, but behind the scenes, next time, like I said, there's not going to be that Brad Rafsenberger guy there.

He's not going to be able to count the votes.

The legislatures sometimes now have precedent.

They can take it away from the people who formerly were bipartisanly counting the votes.

So the Democrats know what's happening to them.

All right, that's not, they're fighting.

I know Democratic lawyers, Fred Wertheimer's been fighting

Congress, Pelosi, Schumer.

People are panicked about this.

And yes, what they did in Georgia is the Secretary of State, they count the votes, they don't like to vote, count in the legislature, says, well, we'll just decide.

And if you remember your history, the legislature used to pick United States senators.

Okay?

And so what, of course, they're anti-Democratic, but that's what their voters want.

You understand that 23% of self-identified Republicans agree with Kuanine.

They're more Kuanine Republicans than they are Episcopalians, Lutherans, Presbyterians, anything else.

I mean, they're crazy.

What can you do about it?

I mean, they're crazy.

We just got to keep doing the best we can.

You pronounce it Kuanon.

I don't know.

I came Kukanon.

I can Kukanon.

I have no idea.

So, okay, there's like things on the table now, like packing the court.

Not a great term, but okay, that's what, adding more Supreme Court justices, making Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C.

a state, ending the filibuster.

Those are the three big

institutional changes that they say we should make before

it's too late and nothing can be done about these people who are slowly taking over the voting process.

Where are you on these three issues?

Are those three things we should do?

New states, no filibuster?

I tend to think that Biden is right to focus on delivering real things to bring about change and less on some of these other steps.

I'd certainly like to see Washington, D.C.

become a state.

That makes eminent sense to me, but realistically, that's not going to happen with the current make with, I mean, Senator Matchet is not going to go for that.

And so I think that what Democrats can do, and I think President Biden is really focusing on this, is simply make improvements, real improvements in people's lives that they can deliver on.

Pass national child care, national pre-K,

you know, bandwidth for all in a community like my own in rural Oregon would make a huge difference.

My community is Republican but voted for FDR in 1932.

But they say people don't vote to say thank you.

They vote to say fuck you.

I mean there's a long history of that where people, I mean it's it's absolutely true that you know the Democrats do deliver.

They're delivering now.

That's been going on for decades.

I mean maybe it's what you said a couple of weeks ago that got so many headlines.

You said wokeness is a problem, and everyone knows it and talks about it behind the scenes, and no one talks.

What do you just

got a gift?

It's written by Lenin:

left-wing communism, an infantile disorder.

He couldn't deal with the wokes in St.

Petersburg a hundred years ago.

Okay?

If he couldn't deal with these extremely woke people, what are you and I going to do?

So

we didn't do that well in the election.

We lost house seats.

We came back in Georgia, but we have the vice president has to vote to break a tie.

Biden came within 42,000 votes of losing.

How much more damage can these people do to the party brand before they figure out to do the things that Nick is talking about, to do the things that you're talking about?

You've got power.

That's the only way you can do it.

And to acquire power, you have to talk the language of the people.

And we've got to start learning that.

This is all pie-in-the-sky stuff.

And the people get their news now really from news feeds mostly.

They see it on Facebook or when someone sends them something or Twitter.

They're not reading the New York Times.

I'm sorry to say, most of them.

Not enough.

Not enough.

So, and what they see there, I've made this point, is this drip, drip, drip every day of something insane.

And it's always,

you you know, not that QAnon is not the most insane.

Of course it is.

That wins the trophy.

But when they see, you know, like a few weeks ago we were doing a bit about the movies that have to have disclaimers now.

And we made a joke about Snow White because the kiss is non-consensual.

And then they did it.

Like three weeks later, it became reality.

We can't have Snow White kiss because it's non-consensual.

And this is what my point is that the Democrats have become the party of no common sense.

And you can't win elections.

That is 15% of the Democratic Party.

I know.

65% of Democrats.

It's a rep.

Anything that's of the party of, you know, if it goes, it either goes in the blue bin or the red bin.

Right.

Is the problem.

But the Democratic Party is a lot of blacks, a lot of college-educated women, a lot of people that look to the federal government to dull the harsher edges of capitalism, a lot of immigrants, you know, a lot of people out here.

If you go and look at it, and by the way, the Democratic Party had to make a decision between the practicalists of Joe Biden and everybody on the left, Senator Warren, Senator Sanders, everybody had all the money in the world.

It wasn't close.

It was like 65 to 35.

And 15% of our party disrespects Democrats who go out and vote in primaries, make a choice, make a selection.

And until we all learn that

and not let the urban educated core define us to everybody else in the country, we're going to continue to have disappointing nights like we had in November.

This is about...

I'm telling you, it's because people, like, I was reading about Lockheed Martin.

They are one of the companies, this is going on all over the country now, that have,

I would say they're forced to have this kind of diversity training.

It's a a three-day camp.

I mean, people were writing about it.

What's in it for the men?

Marginalized groups are freed from the exhausting work of coaching white men to understand their world.

Well, I'm sure that is sort of a problem sometimes, people who don't understand your world, but I thought we were getting along

enough to talk to each other in the workplace.

So these companies, I mean, this is a cottage industry now of you hire someone to yell at the white people.

I mean, it's a reflection, though, Bill, of a reality that there is a certain amount of myopia about racial issues.

And one example of that is a panel of three white guys talking about race.

Okay, this is this, I'm sorry, that's just, it's just like.

So we should never, three white people can't talk about race.

You don't do that in your private life.

Three white people never talk about it.

It's so silly that we should have to have a Benetton ad every time I have a show.

I only have two chairs.

You guys are available this week.

You're smart.

There's no crime in this.

There would be a crime if I never had a black person on.

But I do think that discussions about diversity do benefit from diverse voices.

And

I do think that an awful lot of whites, I mean, polls show that about 50% of whites in America don't believe that blacks face serious impediments.

In fact, you know, there was a good Harvard study showing that they sent out 1,500 applications with some black names, some white names

to job-wanted job ads.

A white name was equivalent to eight more years of job experience.

So I do think, I'm not defending this job training.

I do think that there is a real migration.

I'm not even arguing with that.

I'm saying, is this the method to do it?

To have these outsiders come in and take you somewhere.

Because I think they've studied it and they found out actually it doesn't work.

It doesn't really work.

It doesn't work.

People resent it.

So,

I think that I could benefit.

I mean, I'm sure I do things in my everyday life that I could do better in terms of that.

But you start out and you said, all right, you sorry white sack of racist shit.

And then, okay, well, I don't want to listen to it anymore.

You've lost me there.

That's right.

You know, if you start out and you say, there are ways that you communicate with people that you don't realize that there are things that you're doing that send the wrong signal, I'm all ears.

Right.

And by the way, this guy, Eric Hoffman, this longshore philosopher, said every movement starts out as a cause, morphs into a business, and ends up a racket.

Part of this diversity of training stuff, I'm sure, has hit the racket in the age.

It is a woke protection racket.

Because you can't say no to it, because then you're racist to begin with.

And what they have found out is that what works better,

so commonsensical again, side by side, people working side by side, which I thought we were doing and moving toward when people actually work together.

and by the way can joke with each other.

Joking is a bonding experience.

Who is now, no one would make a joke.

But I do think that, you know, James was right earlier in making the point that this is an extreme wing of the Democratic Party that causes these.

And I don't think that what Lucky did is truly the most important issue,

challenge facing the country.

No.

Yet, you know, we amplify it

with our discussion.

But what I'm what I'm, no, it's not, but they're not the only company doing it.

It's going on all over.

And what I'm asking is, I think this is going to be a problem for the Democrats because nobody who is in a three-day camp and resents it is going to blame the Republicans for this.

They're going to blame the Democrats.

And they're going to say, you know what?

I think I can handle this on my own.

I mean, there are racists out there in this country.

Of course, there is racism in the system from the beginning that needs to be rooted out.

But on an individual level, there are people going, you know what, I get it.

I'm not an idiot.

I've looked at my soul.

I know who I am.

I don't think I'm really a part of this problem.

And now you're yelling at me for three days for something that I thought I was taking care of on a personal level by being a decent person

to everybody.

And that people.

I think some of this, you're talking about LSU, my good friend's athletic director,

they do a lot of this, but they start, they do surveys, they find out how people feel in the workplace.

I think you need that.

I think people,

a lot of white people don't live multiculturally, they live isolated.

And I think that some of this is a good idea.

But there's nothing that you can do that you can't take too far.

And apparently Lockheed bought into some system from somebody that was just idiotic.

All right.

Well, if I can change topics here, Vegas is coming back June 1st.

They are opening at full capacity.

So I just want to say Las Vegas to me is America.

Yes, America's, Vegas is tacky, but America's tacky.

And

you know, they have asked me, the city of Las Vegas, to announce the new slogans to welcome the no they didn't really, but I'm pretending they did, to welcome the people back to full capacity.

Would you like to see some of the new slogans that we have for Las Vegas?

Okay.

Las Vegas, screw as loud as you like without worrying about waking the kids.

Las Vegas, we invented I Never Go Outside.

Come to Las Vegas, that stimulus money isn't going to spend itself.

Vegas, now that you're immune, try the buffet.

What happens at Vegas stays in Vegas, unlike Wuhan.

Vegas, where the girls will do that thing your wife thinks is gross.

Vegas, see Bill Maher live, July 17th at the Mirage.

Oh, how did.

How did.

How did that get in there?

I mean, it's true.

I'll be there July 17th.

Republicans, Republicans, kids eat free.

Democrats eat kids free.

I knew you'd get that.

Vegas, where you could feel badly for Britney Spears in person.

And Vegas, where Uber woke people can go fuck themselves.

Okay.

So.

Okay, so one of the frustrations I had while I was off is that I was watching this war go on in Israel.

Israel is the champion of having very quick wars.

This one was 11 days, but most of them you can count by days, even the ones where they were facing whole armies.

And it was frustrating to me because there was no one on liberal media to defend Israel, really.

We've become this country now where we're kind of one-sided on this issue.

I would also like to say off the bat that I don't think kids understand, and when I say kids, I mean the younger generations, that you can't learn history from Instagram.

There's just not enough space.

So

I want to go over some of the history, but first I read your column on it, even-handed and brilliant as usual.

But let me just quote you off the bat.

You say, at home, Israel has a robust democracy that gives more rights to Arab citizens than its neighbors do.

This was, after all, a war with Gaza.

Thank God Israel treats its Arab citizens better than Egypt, Syria, or Saudi Arabia treat their Arab citizens.

I didn't see much of that in the press, so I was glad glad to see you say it.

Can you put some bones on that?

Why do you say they treat their citizens better?

They're Arab citizens.

So, I mean, I also said a lot more.

And clearly, within Israel, then Arab citizens obviously vote.

They can serve in the Knesset.

They can be judges.

Some of the most robust organizations speaking up for Palestinians are organizations like Betsellim, the Human Rights Organization.

That does not happen in Egypt, which obviously massacres Egyptians who support democracy.

We've seen what happens in Syria.

But I would also say that I made that point for context.

I think it's important to understand that Israel at home truly is robust.

But

I don't think that's a defense for Israel

engaging in possible war crimes in Gaza

or

engaging.

Well, Gaza fired 4,000 rockets into Israel.

What would you say Israel should have done instead of what they did?

So,

I mean, international lawyers are pretty clear that they have a right to defend themselves.

They have a right to respond to military targets, but there was a sense that the response was probably a war crime because it did not sufficiently avoid civilian casualties.

But they purposely put the rockets in civilian places.

That's their.

Yeah, well, likewise, Israel's Israel's defense ministry is in a civilian area.

I mean, both sides do this, partly because they're crowded countries.

I do think that Hamas particularly does this, and I think that's a war crime on the part of Hamas.

And clearly, Hamas is engaging in war crimes when it tells.

War is a crime.

I mean, it seems like a silly argument.

When people go to war.

I mean, there are certain things that are beyond the pale.

This seems like, I mean, it was a normal war.

People die in war.

It's a horrible thing.

But, I mean, we have developed laws of war precisely to restrain the inhumanity of war.

We don't allow chemical weapons.

And I don't know how else you respond

when you have four.

I mean, what if Canada

fired 4,000 rockets into America or Mexico, which is an even better analogy, because we actually did steal the land from Mexico.

I would submit that Israel did not steal anybody's land.

This is another thing I've heard the last couple of weeks, words like occupiers and colonizers and apartheid, which I don't think people understand the history there.

The Jews have been in that area of the world since about 1200 BC,

way before the first Muslim or Arab walked the earth, a thousand

years before.

I mean, Jerusalem was their capital.

Okay, so if it's just about who got there first, it's not even close.

There have been a continuous Jewish presence.

Yes, the Jews were the ones who were occupied by everybody.

The Romans took over at some point, and then the Persians and the Byzantines and then the Ottomans.

So yes, there was colonization going on there.

Beginning in the 20th, 19th century, they started to return to Palestine, which was not never an Arab country.

There was never a country called Palestine that was a distinct Arab country.

And yes, there was

a problem there because there was two people people who wanted to share the land, which is why the UN

in 1947 said, okay, we're going to partition it.

We have the map.

I want to show it.

People forget what the map looks like.

This is what was on the table at the beginning.

The green is the part

that the Arab population would have gotten.

It's a good part of the country.

It's the good part, a lot of it.

Look at what Israel has, a little sliver by the coast and the desert in the south.

That second map is what Israel has today.

Yes, it is a lot more.

But doesn't it behoove the people who rejected the treaty, the half a loaf,

and then continue attacked?

Hamas' charter says they just want to wipe out Israel.

Their negotiating position is you all die.

I mean, there's a difference between

defending Hamas,

which I agree commits war crimes.

And I would accept that I think too often in in liberal circles there's been a tendency to ally the repression of Hamas, the homophobia of Hamas, the misogyny of Hamas.

But that also does not excuse Israel

ruling Palestinians in the West Bank, for example, without giving them any vote, taking water and giving it to settlers, and maybe most important,

damaging any possibility down the road of creating a two-state solution.

You know, how do we avoid a war when somebody is shelling, your neighbor is shelling you?

That's hard.

But what we can do is try to create a two-state solution 10 years from now.

And the way you do that is you don't build up settlements right now on the West Bank, and you don't create this division where Palestinians, you don't seize their homes in Sheikh Jara.

I would agree with that.

And I think a lot of Israelis do too.

Do they?

Not enough to elect.

Well, because again, I mean, first of all, the two-state solution has been on the table a number of times.

There could be an Arab capital in East Jerusalem now if Yasser Arafat had accepted that in 2003.

He did not.

I mean,

they have rejected this and went to war

time and time again.

And as far as Gaza goes,

it's amazing to me that the progressives think that they're being progressive.

by taking that side of it, the Bella Hadids of the world, these influencers.

I just want to say, in February of this year, a Hamas court ruled that an unmarried woman cannot travel in Gaza without the permission of a male guardian.

Really?

That's where the progressives are.

Bella Hadid and her friends would run screaming to Tel Aviv if they had to live in Gaza for one day.

I mean, I've been to Gaza any number of times, and ordinary Gazans complain about Hamas all the time.

I did not perceive Bella Hadid as defending Hamas.

I saw her as speaking up for the 67 kids in Gaza who were killed.

Well, she's from the river to the sea,

Palestine will be free, is I think what she chanted with people.

That is a PLO slogan that means Israel from the river to the sea is that there will be no more Israel.

You want to say something about this?

Well, I was kind of glad to listen because I'm feeling like

do I want to step on the landmine?

No, not really.

But just to buttress

Nick's point a little bit, is to understand that they were about to form a government that included the Arab Party.

Correct.

Once you're part of the government, if you need your three votes in the Knesset to get to 61, you're going to have to go to the bottom.

No apartheid state ever did.

An apartheid we think of is South Africa, which is the white people in Britain and Holland, who never had any claim to the land or any history there, came thousands of years later and just took it over.

That's a little different.

And then they kept it an apartheid state because they just wanted the power.

The Israelis, they have made mistakes, but it's an apartheid state because they keep getting attacked.

If they don't keep a tight lid on the shit, they get killed.

That seems like something different.

For the same reason that you admire Israeli democracy and that you admire the fact that Arabs within Israel have the vote, then shouldn't those Palestinians and the West Bank have a vote for the people who rule the parliament?

Again, Israeli Arabs do have the vote, and they're in the parliament, unlike in an apartheid.

Okay.

I got to go to New Rules.

What a perfect segue to.

A lot of variety in this show.

I'll give you that.

All right.

Okay.

New rule, California businessman John Cox, who is running for governor, can't appear at campaign stops with a bear, appear in campaign ads with a bear, and then complain, as he recently did, that all the media coverage focuses on the bear.

It's a bear.

Let me explain it to you this way, John.

An old white Republican saying he's going to cut taxes and regulations, that's something we've seen.

But an old white Republican saying he's going to cut taxes and regulations and then gets bauled by a bear, that's a little new.

New rule, now that 7-Eleven is getting a drive-through taco window, someone must ask it, can you just turn your entire store into a drive-through?

No offense, 7-Eleven, but no one ever says, you haven't really been there until you've gone inside.

That's the Statue of Liberty you're thinking of.

You, you're a gas station without the gas.

New rule, you can't cancel something that wasn't real to begin with.

We originally learned that we may have seen the very last Golden Globe show ever because it turns out the Hollywood Foreign Press Association isn't diverse enough.

Diverse enough?

You mean it exists?

I thought it was something Dick Clark made up.

And if they're coming after award shows for not being diverse enough, who's going to break it to the Tonys?

They need more straight people.

New Roll, the parents of the 11-year-old girl who said she was able to foil a kidnapper because she's a devoted viewer of Law and Order SVU

have some explaining to do.

Have you ever seen Law and Order SVU?

Is it really appropriate for a fifth grader?

I'd be a little concerned if my kids stopped asking me why SpongeBob lives in a pineapple and started asking me how semen could end up in a dead person's throat.

You will, if men are expected to know 45 sexual positions,

as Men's Health magazine suggests, they must be allowed to wear them on their wrists like a quarterback

I know it's a bit bulky and might get in the way but having another guy run in the plays is a total mood killer

And finally, new rules, someone must explain why celebrities running for high office is a recurring nightmare we cannot seem to shake.

The Rock,

Caitlin Jenner, Matthew McConaughey, Randy Quaid, they all have suggested lately that when it comes to running the country, they have what it takes, and they do, malignant narcissism.

Did we all not just witness the cautionary tale named Donald Trump?

The last four years was a warning, not an inspiration.

You were supposed to see that and think, I guess high-level government jobs should go to people who've trained for it and know what they're doing.

I'm sure Caitlin Jenner is a nice person, but as California governor, she would be in charge of the world's fifth-largest economy based on her qualifications of being a background character in a reality show, not about her.

her.

Randy Quaid, who you will remember as Cousin Eddie in the vacation movies and as guy rooting through your recycling bin in real life.

also says he might want to run our state.

When did governing become the safety school for when the guest spots on Chicago fire dry up?

We treat government like the lowest rung of celebrity.

Rock stars, movie stars, TV stars, dancing with the stars,

magicians, congressmen.

Governing.

Governing is a difficult, nuanced job with people's lives and livelihoods at stake.

Perhaps you've noticed that things in America have been a little different these last five months.

That's because there are people back in charge who spent their formative years not on a sound stage, but studying the stuff you need to know to be effective on the world stage.

Matthew McConaghy is, I'm sure, also a lovely person, but when he says he's considering a run for governor in Texas, I must say that is not all right, all right, all right.

And I'm not saying that he and all these candidates haven't led lifetimes of glorious achievement.

The Rock proved once and for all that weightlifters can drive.

Matthew introduced Lincolns to stoners, and

Caitlin married the woman who married the guy who defended O.J.

And it's not that they are actors, it's that they're not professionals in this other field called government.

This guy was a rock star, but because he was good in his field of government.

That's not you.

There's a

thousand things you have to know before taking office to do it right.

And I bet those people I mentioned who are now in charge, they know the answers to questions that will come up.

They don't have to look it up or ask.

Can our celebrity friends say the same?

Could they tell us,

oh, I don't know,

what is budget reconciliation?

What are the three legs of our nuclear triad?

What's TPP?

What does the Fed do?

Where's Chad?

What agency is responsible for our nuclear weapons?

What does the 14th Amendment say?

Who's the Prime Minister of India?

In the event of another nuclear standoff with Russia or China, describe Kennedy's strategy that got us out of the Cuban missile crisis.

Governing is not a job you can pick up on the afternoon of the inauguration.

You can't learn it on the fly.

You can't fix it in post.

Putin's not on a green screen and he doesn't give a shit about your million-dollar smile.

If he tells you at a summit that he'd like to take Belarus now, you have to know that's a country and not his lunch order.

No one has to tell Joe Biden what's in the Constitution.

He was in the room when it was written.

I'm sure The Rock is a good guy and a bright guy.

And that is not enough.

Not enough.

And frankly, the fact that he thinks he can step into the single hardest job in the world with no preparation tells me one thing for sure about his judgment.

It's terrible.

You need more proof?

Kanye West thought he could do it.

The Rock says he might be the right man for the job because he believes he can unite the country.

You can't.

Why?

Because the blue states and red states both like your stupid movies?

Let me put it bluntly to you and all these would-be show biz candidates.

You're not good enough, you're not smart enough, and dog on it, it completely doesn't matter that people like you.

They like you now because you're an entertainer and thus largely uncontroversial.

Governing is the opposite.

If you think you can unite the country, you're delusional.

A space alien attack couldn't unite this country.

The aliens would say, take us to your leader, and 70% of Republicans would drive them to Mar-a-Lago.

All right, thanks, guys.

That's our show.

I'll be at the Majestic Theater in San Antonio, July 10th.

Oh, with the buddy Holly Sutter in Lumbick, Texas, July 31st.

Thank you.

I want to thank my guests, Nick Kristoff, James Carville, and Bob Costas, and thank you, folks.

Okay, good to be back.

We'll see you 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.