Ep. #565: John McWhorter, Rick Wilson, Rep. Elissa Slotkin

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.

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 Ma.

Thank you very much.

How are you?

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

How are you?

Okay.

Thanks for coming out.

Thank you.

Thank you, people.

Thank you very much.

Please

sit down.

Thank you.

It's nice to see so many familiar masks.

But I think I know why you're happy today.

We are in the yellow zone in LA County, the yellow zone.

Whatever the hell that is, we're in the yellow zone.

I know it's good.

It's good.

It means that soon all Californians will be able to do the things that all Californians want to do, like eat in a restaurant indoors.

visit a museum, run for governor, the things all of us do.

No, we did, hey, a little pat on the back for us.

We did good out here.

Los Angeles County has had several days now this week without anyone dying from COVID.

Although,

although quite a few were crushed to death by their Peloton treadmill.

I just have to.

Do you have one of those?

Wow, the Peloton finally relent.

They're recalling 126,000 of these treadmills.

Apparently they're dangerous to small children who can get sucked into them

and also to parents because they create the illusion you can run away.

And we don't want that.

But

you know what you cannot apparently run away from?

Did you see this?

There's a friggin' 23-ton Chinese rocket rocket booster.

What are you doing this weekend?

That's coming down to Earth

this weekend.

You know, people,

countries send up satellites and shit, and they got to send them up on a rocket.

This thing is 10 stories high.

Usually, I guess they just orbit.

This one's, no, going into what they call an uncontrolled re-entry this weekend.

China said it's very unlikely to cause any harm.

And I believe them, because after all, when have they ever let something get?

oh there you go

no go on to the next joke they're way ahead of me they're way ahead of me I think good crap I even have to finish that joke but

it is Mother's Day Sunday you excited about that

and you know

There's always a heartwarming story about spawning on Mother's Day that I never find heartwarming.

This week, guess what it is?

This week in Mali, the country of Mali in Africa, a woman gave birth to nine babies at the same time.

Take that, Octomom.

Octomom tired.

Molly, wired.

Nine babies.

Mom is resting comfortably.

Dad walked straight into the ocean with his clothes on.

Nine babies.

And for Mother's Day, Hallmark has a special card they made for QAnon moms.

It said, roses are red, violets are blue, you're the best mom.

Biden eats babies.

Oh, QAnon.

I have to say you, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the problem in the Republican Party is not going away.

It is not going away.

Mitt Romney,

Mitt Romney, you know, I was pretty much against this guy nine years ago when he ran.

Now he's like the voice of moderation, went to Utah where he's a saint to make a speech.

They booed him off the stage.

This is like Lindsey Graham getting booed on Fire Island.

I mean

And Mitt Romney, he said to the crowd, aren't you embarrassed?

And they were like, we're 300 pounds.

There are crocs on our feet.

We're wearing a Trump flag as a cape.

What do you think?

No, they are, you know,

the cuckoo wing is in control.

Liz Cheney, another one.

Liz Cheney, daughter of Dick Cheney, could you have deeper Republican roots than Liz Cheney?

She's about to lose her leadership position in the Congress because she will not embrace the idea that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump.

And the Republican Party truth will set you free from your job.

Not really a joke, but a fine idea.

Was totally not expecting a laugh there.

Thank you for not giving it to me.

Would have just encouraged the writers.

But, you know, the problem is that Trump is still out there and he's got a new platform, even though he was thrown off Facebook again.

Facebook, by the way, this week,

they voted, they had a big conclave there.

They were going to keep the ban on Trump for another six months off Facebook because, you know.

Because, you know, in the next six months, he'll probably change.

But no, Facebook said if Trump wants to spread his misinformation and his propaganda, he's going to have to buy ads like everybody else.

And

finally, a little sad news in the marriage department.

I guess you heard about Bill Gates and Melinda Gates.

They are getting divorced.

Thank you.

That is the exact appropriate response to that.

But, you know, they lived in a 66,000 square foot house.

It's so hard to keep a long-distance relationship together.

And, you know,

they were having problems and Bill Gates said they were having problems connecting and he called his IT guy in and he said

they just weren't compatible.

All right, we got a great show.

We have Representative Alyssa Slotkin and Rick Wilson are here, but first up he is a professor of linguistics at Columbia University.

His new book is called Nine Nasty Words: English in the Gutter of Bend, Now and Forever.

You can find his commentary on Substack.com, and I don't mind saying he's one of my heroes.

John McWhorter is over here.

John, I mean that.

Come.

We don't touch anymore, John.

I'd like to touch you because I'm such a fan of yours.

I must tell you.

It's good to hear, Ben.

Oh, I am.

I hope some of your friends who were mutual friends have told you that over the years.

That, you know, I admire you so much, not just because you're a voice of common sense, but it takes guts these days to be a voice in common sense.

I think.

I suppose, you know,

I don't think of myself as brave because what I really am is a failed lawyer.

And my issue is just that if things don't make sense to me, then I just want to try to make sense of it and I want people to understand what I mean.

And this is the thing.

If you are a good black person, you're often told that when it comes to certain race issues, you're supposed to not quite make sense and that you're supposed to deal with a certain kind of word magic.

I have never felt it.

I've always thought I'm black, and I would like that to make sense, too.

And that's where I end up looking brave when really I'm just obsessive.

Well, what I get so much from listening to you and reading you is that you feel condescended to,

which I feel like that is

especially lately.

Yeah.

Right.

And I see, I see that all the time.

And I don't know wonder, I do wonder why that's not more in the dialogue we have with.

It's the strangest thing.

Like you read a book like, and yeah, we're going to have to be specific, White Fragility, which basically says that black people are these hot house flowers where everybody has to tiptoe around us.

And, you know, we're always crying and we're always angry.

And we're just so very, very, very delicate.

I don't feel like that person.

That book is talking down to me as far as I'm concerned.

It should be used.

It really should be called Black Fragility, right?

Yes, yes, it should be used to keep tables from wobbling.

That is the only use use for that book.

And yet,

you look on Facebook and you have people saying, I'm doing the work and reading this book.

And I think to myself, they are doing the work of making me into a perfect idiot.

And yes, why don't more of my fellow black people feel that way?

And it's because of a very human thing, which is that it is a very human thing to take on the victim identity.

All people do it.

We've all known people like that.

A way you can do it, if you're a black person, and all of us need to grab onto something sometimes, is to read a book like that and think, yes, I need to be treated that way.

And I am going to start actively parsing it that way, because I don't think people realize what silly babies books like that make us look like.

So something needs to be said.

Right.

But

I mean, to be fair, I think most black folks do agree with you.

It's just the ones, the people, black and white, who are on Twitter.

Quite frankly, yes.

I know when I say these things, it's not just me and Coleman Hughes and Glenn Lowry and two or three other people.

If it were something like that, I wouldn't say, hey, look at the way we weirdos feel.

It's that I've been black.

pretty much for 55 years and I know how black people feel.

And I always think this certain sliver of people in the media and in academia,

they're often much smarter than me, but that is not the representative view.

And so, for example, if you're gonna read How to Be an Anti-Racist, that is not the general black view of things.

That should be read, it's like the Bible.

That book, if you must read it, should be read as literature rather than as scholarship.

That's not general.

And yet, we're told that somehow we have to accept these sorts of things as the black view.

And you'll see it on Twitter.

A black person will write on Twitter, you have to listen to the black people who are the real black people, the black people who black people listen to.

No, no.

There is a great deal of diversity in the black community and I can tell you it is not the default in the black community to think of ourselves as pathetic.

Yes, we can't has never been the slogan for black America and it's not now.

I remember when

Trump was running in 2016, remember his pitch to the black community was,

what do you got to lose?

You walk out your door, you get shot.

And I thought, what an insult.

Most black people live in the suburbs.

Almost two-thirds are middle class.

Yes, I'm supposed to say that.

Some are not in the middle class because they're doing very well, for example.

And that's not to say that there isn't still racism in this country, of course, and there aren't still big problems and big differences in equality and wealth and health.

Terrible things, yes, which, of course, should be addressed.

But if I may just

amend one thing you said.

Those people you mentioned are not smarter than you.

I made a noise on TV.

And one thing that I love you say, because once in a while over the years I have criticized religion.

I don't know if you know that.

Every now and then, yes.

But the fact that you characterize some of this wokeness as a religion appealed to me.

And when we talk about religion, we're talking about things like, of course, original sin, white privilege,

just

whiteness.

I never heard the term whiteness before.

That's right.

You sinned when you were a baby, when you came out.

And you will never get rid of your white privilege no matter what you do.

You're going to die with it.

The only good thing is to put yourself on Facebook saying, I'm doing the work.

And that way, you are atoning for your white privilege.

Okay.

Well, can I read some of the...

I just made a list, because I think you call yourself a cranky liberal, a cranky Democrat.

I am all of those things.

Yeah, me too.

And I just, I just, for people who are watching this and are...

How dare they?

And there are just a few, yes.

There are a few, but I just want people to understand, liberalism has changed.

especially as racial matters go in the last five years.

And here are some new ideas ideas that are new to me, and I don't agree with most of them.

Penetrating insights.

One, it's never been worse.

It's terrible.

It's 1850, and now it's worse.

1966, it's gotten so much worse.

These are people who either are too young to remember the way it was, or frankly, it's the victim complex, which feels good in the moment, but it has nothing to do with reality, and it's defeatist.

Well, I think it's a lot the first thing you said that

there is a ge the younger generation feels like if something didn't happen while they were alive, it didn't happen.

And I can understand that.

I can't.

Yes.

And let's face it.

It's stupid.

It's called history.

I've heard them say it on this show.

Like, I wasn't around for it.

Yes, I wasn't around for the French Revolution, but I know about it.

Yes.

But.

I sympathize a little bit because there's so much technology.

I think for a lot of people, and I would say, frankly, frankly, you can be as old as 40 at this point.

You figure the way it used to be, it looks so very different because it's in black and white often.

You know, after things are in color, they look realer.

And also, black history was relatively quiescent in the 1970s and into the 80s, and so it's easy to miss how different 1965 was from 1985 because you don't have interesting events to chart.

So I can have some sympathy for it, but no, anybody who thinks that now is just as bad as the way it was in 1970, except that manners have changed, no.

There were people who said that in 1990, about 1970.

That was kind of true.

But time passes.

It's easier to believe that change doesn't happen, and in a way more tempting and more fun, because you have a reason to get angry, than to allow that change happen slowly and to watch it happen and to applaud.

You're supposed to be happy that things change, but we're taught that the authentic black position is to pretend that it never does.

Right.

Yeah, we're not saying there isn't still a great deal of work to be done.

Not saying it at all.

Not saying it all.

You know, that's on Twitter.

Right.

Don't they know about systemic racism?

Yes, I know all about it.

But the point is, it's about degree.

Why is it un-black to address degree?

Is it supposed to be that it's sophisticated?

Because it's like quantum physics where everything is on and off.

No, that's not how it goes.

When you're dealing with social history, there's the issue of degree.

And if that makes me a white supremacist to say so, then I, John McWhorter, am, you can put this on Twitter I am a white supremacist because I embrace degree right and nuance I tried yeah I mean

all right

other things on the new ideas about race that white people can't talk about it you're not supposed to I but you know you don't have the experience

but it doesn't rob me of being a sentient person being white it robbed me of many things but not that okay you can say nothing and that makes me feel good because that means that I'm the only one who gets to talk.

You can see where that comes from, because you get to express yourself, and you get to never be told that you're wrong.

In other words, it's childish.

And it's sad enough when a black person says that that's the way it's supposed to go.

But then when a white person says that that's progress, that that's enlightenment, to pretend that a white person has nothing to say, that dialogue will never advance anything.

Talk about not understanding history.

All of that is a lot of fun in the present.

It makes for great Twitter.

It makes for very cathartic discussions.

But nothing will ever change.

Because when you tell people they can't talk, what they do is they think and they get angry.

Nothing will change that.

You don't get rid of what they're thinking.

And so you have to engage.

I mean,

you've mentioned Twitter, and I've got to go back to that for a second.

Are you as disappointed as I am in the liberal half of America for not standing up to Twitter.

I mean, I feel like Twitter has completely made liberals their bitch.

Like, I mean, just,

I mean, you look at the Oscars.

The Oscars was a show completely organized around the principle, don't do anything to make Twitter mad.

And of course they still did by not giving the Oscar.

This is a scary time in that way because it's the weirdest thing about social history, and this is an example of why it's complicated.

In the 70s and 80s, thinking America and Beyond learns that to be a racist is a terrible thing, and so everybody thinks that to be a racist is almost as bad as being a pedophile.

In itself, that's great.

Most people, talk about not knowing history, don't understand that that's unprecedented in the whole 300,000-year history of the species that a society would come to that realization.

So then you've got that.

Then social media comes along and you can shame people.

So you have a whole group of people.

It's not just woke people.

I don't have a problem with woke.

It's woke people who are mean.

The woke people people who are mean, if you don't do what they say,

they put you on social media and they say, You're a racist.

And the problem is that most of us are deathly afraid of being called a racist on Twitter.

And so, what it means is you have all these people who understand everything you and I are saying, who are walking.

This is indelicate, but I can't think of another image.

Everybody is peeing in their pants.

This is a nation which, especially since last summer, has smelled like urine all the time.

There is so much mendacity.

And I must say,

as someone who has lived through a few decades now, I see this as so counterproductive, so different than the way it was 10 years ago, 20 years ago.

I feel like the race relationships were better because people were, first of all, they were intermarrying more, mixing more.

Those taboos went away, joking with each other more.

How do people bond?

They joke.

They talk.

And now we're all on eggshells.

Who makes a joke?

It's difficult.

One is afraid to do it in certain places, and it's becoming almost everywhere.

It's scary.

It's odd.

My sense, you know, people say, well, he's conservative.

No, but I am beginning to think that I miss 2004, 2005, because race relations were difficult then, but I was already writing about them then.

It was at least a little more honest and a little more progressive than what's happened, especially since last summer, but a lot of it started creeping in around 2014.

And yeah, there's something that's gone really wrong, and I think the catalyst is this weird thing called social media.

It used to be that if you said something terrible, then people would write about it in articles.

People would send you nasty mail.

It would be discussed.

But there was no Twitter where it could be discussed and you could have people just dogpiling upon it.

Once you've got that device, where you're being called a something on this thing that everybody has on their phone, that's wonderful in many ways.

I'm as addicted to this as everybody else.

But it means that you can be seriously hurt in a way that you couldn't before.

I used to get hate mail in an envelope, and I'd open it and read, you suck, and only I knew, and then I'd throw it in the trash.

Now you don't get those anymore because it's on Twitter and it'll say, you suck, and you said you were a white supremacist on TV.

And everybody sees it, and it gets liked by 10,000 people.

That's hard for most people, unless you're weird like us and you don't mind being hated.

But most people are not going to have that disease, and so we're stuck where we are.

Well, keep fighting the good fight, John.

Look,

I know it takes a lot to get you out of your reading chair and your professorship.

I really

very appreciate you came out here to do this for us.

And I hope you come back.

And I should also say very quickly: Nine Nasty Words is a book that I wrote very recently, and unlike what you see me doing here, it's a book that's very funny because I laugh sometimes.

It was written to be a good time, and it's a tonic after after a difficult year.

So I wrote that so I can also be funny.

Right.

It is.

It's a great book.

You're a professor.

All right.

Thank you, John.

Let's meet our panel.

Hey.

Great to have you all back.

He is the best-selling author, media strategist, and co-founder of the Lincoln Project, Rick Wilson back with us.

Rick Wilson.

Hey.

And our returning champion is the Democratic Congresswoman who represents Michigan's 8th District Representative Alyssa Slotkin is over here.

How you doing?

Good to see you again.

Okay, so I'm not going to contain myself about the good news that we're in the yellow.

We're in the yellow.

That's great.

That's mostly for loading and unloading, but still.

And I just want to say, you know, you look around the world.

Some countries are doing horribly, like India, and some countries like Israel just killed it.

You know, they have like almost no deaths a week now.

And

we're looking more like Israel than India.

America.

Who to thunk?

And thunk it.

And I gotta say, you know,

it's like,

and Biden's only been in office five months.

And I'm like, what did this remind me of?

Where things were going completely to shit.

And then a Democrat got elected.

Oh, yeah, 2009.

When the economy was completely going into the shitter and then no drama took office and, you know, made the right choices.

Saved the auto industry when people like Mitt Romney said right in Michigan.

Okay,

passed a stimulus bill that looks paltry by today's standards, but did the job.

Because one party, I'm sorry, is a policy party.

They're wonks, and one party is trolls.

Would you agree with that?

It's trolls and wonks.

The party I helped build over 30 years has become a bunch of people who want to be transgressive.

They want to get out and swing their dicks around and have people yell at them and scream and say, You're canceling me for burning the house down.

Well, they're burning the house down for the most part.

Joe Biden is doing a good job, in part because Joe Biden doesn't get up every morning and think, How am I going to set the world on fire by tweeting some crazy shit?

And can I just say, I miss, I miss this idea that we can have an ideological debate between two healthy parties.

That is a good thing.

We should want a strong two-party system.

And right now, we just, I'm missing what the ideological center is of the party.

It's just.

We need it.

I mean,

there is no center.

Yeah.

It's all Trump.

I miss that.

And I think there are a lot of Republicans, I represent a lot of them, who are looking for a home and they feel homeless.

They feel like they have nothing to do with it.

It's not like Republicans didn't used to know how to do this.

George Bush I and Jim Baker were, you know, I wasn't really into their politics, but they were pragmatic people who handled problems.

The Berlin Wall fell, they handled it in a good way.

Okay, all right, so Liz Cheney, now let's talk about this, because 52% of Republicans in Wyoming, her state, Wyoming, has like nine people in it.

52% of them say they will not vote for her in the primary, no matter who.

runs against her because I feel like this is the problem is that it's not even the main Republican Party.

It's like in the state, on the state level, the people who it's getting primaried, it's the activists.

You know, she is on the wrong side of reality.

She's pro.

She's pro-reality.

One guy who's not our team won the election.

And they are not pro-reality.

So she's got to go.

She represents Bill something so dangerous to them because to be a supporter of the Republican Party, you are all in on the myth that Trump won the election.

You're all in on the lies that support it.

You have to build a scaffolding of lies every day.

Like the pyramid of bullshit has to get taller and taller.

And you have to always say, oh no, that was always the case.

And she won't do it.

She just won't do it.

And as a, you know, as someone who knows the Cheneys, these people, they don't fuck around.

They're serious people.

Whether you love them or hate them, they're serious people who live in reality.

And so...

The way I look at it, you know, she's going to lose her conference chair.

That's not about her.

She's going to lose her seat.

Yeah, she's going to lose her seat yeah it's not about her but she's not willing to swallow the poison and to say it tastes like Kool-Aid it's not it is it is killing this party it is killing this country if we allow this myth of Trump's you know alleged victory with bamboo fibers and whatever other fictional horseshit they're gonna pull out you know today

And she represents something that is a vanishing species.

I mean, it's like watching the last woolly mammoth wandering the taiga.

It's not going to, you know,

those Republicans aren't going to survive.

I hope that's not the case.

But

let me just say this as to a Republican.

Former.

Former.

Oh, you're not a Republican.

I re-registered an independent.

I voted against Trump in the primary and the general in the last election.

I had to be able to vote against that fucker twice.

But as they like,

then I re-registered.

But that's Trump.

I mean, yeah.

And look, you're talking to somebody who was very hard on George Bush and Mitt Romney and all the Republicans over the years, basically.

But I've come to understand that people like Liz Cheney and George Bush and Mitt Romney and Mike Pence, who could have done the wrong thing that January 6th day,

he didn't.

This is as good as it gets, is what I would like to say to my Democratic friends.

for a Republican.

There are people in this world who just don't see the world the way you do.

They just don't.

It's a chip in our brain.

And you can't expect, I was always saying, what is the safe word, use that announcement for Republicans, when Trump was president, what is the one thing that he'll do where they will draw the line, where they'll say, okay, stop.

And they did have, some of them did have it.

Liz Cheney had it.

Mike Pence had it.

Mitt Romney had it.

They just draw the line differently than you would as a Democrat.

You have to accept that.

You can't hate the Mitt Romneys, the Cheneys,

the George Bushes.

You can't, I hear liberal people say, I hate them.

I want them to die.

I don't think that's great, but they're not self-deporting.

I don't think it helps a lot of people on the left to say, Mitt Romney's exactly like Donald Trump.

Because he's not exactly like Donald Trump.

No, he's not.

He's not even in the category of Donald Trump.

And I would just say, I think there has to be a distinction between people who have totally different views than you and people who are fundamentally not accepting of democracy.

That's it.

Who are literally trying to undo democracy.

That is different.

That's my line.

That's my line.

And I think.

And that's where these people, the Cheneys and the Bushes and the Mike,

they would not bend the knee.

Right.

It's exactly what we teach our kids, right?

You don't get to change the rules of the game in the middle of the game because you think you're losing.

And that is what they are trying to do at the state level, at the federal level.

And I think we have to draw a bright red line between people who may be fiscal conservatives or social conservatives, people like my in-laws who I love deeply, who will never believe in destroying the democratic system that we all love.

Never, never.

In-laws, huh?

It's an issue in a lot of household in-laws, I'm imagining.

Okay, so there's an interesting poll, though, this week that I don't know.

I mean, sometimes I think Trump is never going to go away.

I always call him the shark that's out to sea.

He's coming back.

Yep.

We need a bigger boat.

But this week there was, and this is a poll they've done a number of times.

Republicans, how many support the party and their policies more than Trump?

For the first time, that's a majority.

50% support the party more than Trump.

On the other hand, the legacy that Trump left us, the big lie about the election, that lives on.

70% of Republicans think Biden is basically,

however they want to phrase it, an illegitimate president because he didn't get enough votes.

I'm not sure what that really means.

It's a complicated thing about elections.

You have to get more votes.

It's a weird rule, but

to technicality.

But is it possible that Trump is fading?

The lie is not fading.

But Trump himself, do they want him as the face of the midterms?

I mean, is it possible that there are Republicans out there, a lot of them, who are like, you know what?

First of all, he's a loser.

He did lose.

Secondly, it's a lot of baggage.

It's a lot of drama.

Now that we've seen six months without the tweets and the mean girl shit and the craziness and the redrawing weather maps, and maybe, you know, they love this new boy, Ron DeSantis, in Florida.

If Ron DeSantis ran against Trump now, there he is, you know, Ron.

You know, he's Harvard, he's Yale, you know, Navy, you know, I mean, again, not my politics,

but if he ran against Trump, and these people who are in the wings, they do not want to wait for Trump

because he'll live to a million.

He's a complete city roach.

Nothing could kill him.

He eats

Belle COVID, couldn't take him out, the worst diet in the world.

Doesn't matter.

He's going to be there forever.

I don't know if Ron DeSantis wants to wait for Donald Trump's blessing.

And I wonder if Republicans don't want Trumpism without him and the drum.

They want Trump.

They are obsessed and addicted.

These are my former people, and I know the tribe.

They,

especially down at the grassroots level, look,

they may look at Ron DeSantis and think, oh, he could be somewhat acceptable.

But the minute Ron DeSantis goes to Iowa or New Hampshire or South Carolina and Trump sees it on Fox and loses his shit and says, weak loser Ron DeSantis, he should be hated.

You should, you know, he's not a tough, manly man like me.

It will absolutely destroy the guy's career.

It will destroy the guy's career.

Trump is the, right now, if Donald Trump is not eaten by an alligator, struck by lightning, or slapped in jail, he's the presumptive nominee for 24.

We just have to deal with that.

And I think not only do I think Trump is sort of waiting and figuring it out in the wings, the style of politics that he really mainstreamed is alive and well, certainly at home where I am.

It's basically no facts, no truth, no shame.

And you can do so much if you don't have any shame.

If you don't care what people say about you, you, if you don't care that they catch you in a lie, it's amazing what you can do as a politician.

And I think that style, I see a ton of people who are trying to be mini Trumps back home in Michigan who think that, great, I got it.

Populism, no shame, no facts, I'm in.

You do.

I don't know.

I hope you're wrong about that, but I would never bet against Donald Trump.

You're right.

They threw him off Facebook.

Okay, this week Facebook had an oversight board.

How brave.

An oversight board of activists, lawyers, and journalists to Facebook.

Everyone keeps passing this hot potato.

Totally.

Because here's the inconvenient truth, is that since Trump has been thrown off Facebook and Twitter, things got way better in this country.

I mean, it did enormous good.

That's, well, okay, but, you know, I brings up all sorts of really inconvenient free speech issues.

Now, the board, whoever these people are, they ruled that he's off for six months,

Facebook jail for six months,

because he created an environment where a serious risk of violence was possible.

Yes, that's what he's trying to do.

Duh.

But, you know, I don't want the government doing this.

I also don't want Facebook doing this.

It's one of those.

Facebook's power in our society has become so untethered and it is so vastly beyond

what anybody could have anticipated.

But here's the thing.

Donald Trump has actually benefited from being off Twitter and Facebook.

And I'll tell you why.

Because it's like they locked the liquor cabinet and they slapped him in a straitjacket for six months.

And so his minions can remember the good things and not the crazy tweets and the shitstorms and the late-night keffevy bullshit.

And so

I think the reason, one of the reasons Trump will run, he is addicted to that sweet, sweet Twitter smack.

He loves that stuff, okay?

He will run in part because as a candidate, they'll have to let him back on the platforms.

Oh, yes.

And that's one of the motivating factors in his head, I think.

But look, Facebook is an open sewer of propaganda and insanity.

And if you seek out propaganda and insanity, you'll get more of it.

They'll shovel it into you as fast as they can.

That is a system.

Government can't fix it, but Facebook is not going to fix itself.

And this oversight board is a

market, their blue ribbon panel, whatever they're calling it, had made some new rules, to coin a phrase, if you will,

about,

and here's the thing.

Just the big things we throw you off for, like saying democracy doesn't exist in America anymore because the election is, you know, things that really all reasonable people can agree on and not mission creep, because

that's the problem with it.

I think, first of all, let's establish that Facebook has created a board so that they can punt to somebody else.

They're a private company.

Mark Zuckerberg could put on a policy tomorrow if he wanted to.

And after January 6th, they figured out, yeesh, that was pretty bad of us.

So

they swung the pendulum the other way.

But I think for me, on free speech, it is a slippery slope.

You have to be careful.

The thing that I think I can support with Donald Trump staying off of Twitter is that he had both the capacity to get to huge numbers of people and he openly incited violence.

Yes, he did.

He incited violence.

Anyone who is inciting violence should be kicked off.

That's where your free speech ends.

Anybody.

But

anybody, left or right.

The truth is that he incited violence

not from what not from that one thing he said.

That wasn't what incited.

Violence was incited by his entire tenure in office

when he said, if I don't win, it's a rigged election.

There's only two outcomes.

I either win or it's a cheat.

That's what incited the violence.

But what if somebody gets down there, a congressman could,

a woke congressman could say, we should abolish the police.

They have.

They do.

Okay, well, that sounds like it could cause some violence.

I mean, where do you draw the line?

This isn't about aesthetics of Trump, okay?

His aesthetics are awful, ghastly, whatever.

The thing that bothers me is that someday you're going to have a smarter version of Trump, a radical authoritarian populist, who's going to say, hmm, I know how to not say the few key words that will trigger Facebook to throw me off, but I'm going to use the amplification mechanisms of Facebook to make people think it's okay to load some people into boxcars if we don't like their politics.

Because that is what Facebook is designed to do.

It is designed to motivate people in a way that is almost mentally irresistible, and that is a dangerous tool, especially if someone more sophisticated than Trump comes along

in the immediate future, and there will be someone more sophisticated than Trump.

Okay.

So

it is graduation season.

And, you know, for many years, we have shown the audience the top of the graduation caps that the kids wear.

But last year, of course, there was no ceremony, so we couldn't do it.

This year, they're back.

And, you know, they always write a little message.

Sometimes it's very basic, like hire me, or, you know, thanks, mom and dad.

Sometimes they get more elaborate.

We saw one, the rose that grew from concrete.

You know, they kids like to big themselves up all the time.

But they're back now.

And of course, with the last year being so weird, they're a little different.

Would you like to see some of the caps that are?

I knew you would.

I knew they would want to see them.

For example, we saw this one: vaxed, waxed, and relaxed.

Call me, pornhub.

Hire me so I can report you.

I barely got a BA, but I identify as a heart surgeon.

Thanks,

fake water polo scholarship.

College Radical Future Karen.

If you can read this, you're violating my safe space.

Came for a degree, came harder for my professor.

Oh, no.

Terrible.

Who wrote that on the cap?

And my favorite, I never did find the library.

All right.

So,

look,

I hate to be the one who's always picking on Gen Z and the millennials, but frankly, someone has to because they're

fucking nuts.

And

there's a video that the CIA put out, and I thought you were here, you were CIA, and you did three tours, right, as a CIA analyst in Iraq.

That is some serious service to your country.

And I'd love to get your opinion on this.

I mean, it's a little longer.

We cut it together, so these are the main points.

But this is a recruiting video that was on YouTube.

It has been widely criticized.

I guess some people liked it, but let's just show you what it is.

This is real.

This ain't a joke.

It's the YouTube recruiting video from the CIA.

Take a look.

I am perfectly made.

I can wax eloquent on complex legal issues in English while also belting guayaquil de misamores in Spanish.

I am a woman of color.

I am a mom.

I am a cisgender millennial who's been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder.

I did not sneak into CIA.

My employment was not and is not the result of a fluke or slip through the cracks.

I am tired of feeling like I'm supposed to apologize for the space I occupy rather than intoxicate people with my effort, my brilliance.

I am proud of me.

Full stop.

What is wrong with this generation?

Does every single thing about them have to be reported like they're the most interesting person in the world?

Do we want someone in the CIA this self-involved?

I have to say.

As the CIA officer in the room, I mean, I watched this a couple days ago, and I said, I think I don't know who they're trying to appeal to, because the people that I know who are interested in working to serve their country are interested in the mission that is bigger than themselves.

And so it's not about you.

It's not about you.

There is an indulgence about that kind of thing broadly where it's like your identifiers for whatever characteristics you have become more important than the work you're going to do.

And I think

the greatest generation is leaving us now.

But those were people that did not go and volunteer after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor or the Nazis swept across Europe.

And they didn't wait in the recruiting line to talk about their special individual characteristics.

They're like, let me go kill Nazis.

And sometimes you want to go kill Nazis and kill bad guys.

I think that

I have a lot of young people work for me.

I spend my time with a lot of young people.

And I just think that this misses the mark.

I think that they're underestimating the average young person when they make.

I couldn't agree with you.

I hope so.

Yeah.

I hope so.

Because, like,

even if this wasn't just about the CIA, if I can quote from it, the first line, I am perfectly made.

This is bad advice anytime.

I am perfectly...

This is why we have an obesity problem in this country.

This is why we have a lot of problems in this country.

But it's like, why could anything be wrong with me?

I'm me.

Right.

Terrible attitude.

Except you, Bill.

What is happening?

You're perfect.

You're perfect.

But I detect some sarcasm there.

Why do I get that?

Moving along.

Well, I'm not perfect, but I'm right about a lot of shit other people won't talk about.

Like this.

I am a woman of color.

I'm a mom.

I'm a cisgender millennial.

Is this a dating app?

Who's been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder?

Do I want that in the CIA?

I mean, they used to

throw you out of the Army for flat feet.

And this, you know, I did not sneak into CIA.

Well, thank you for that.

You said you did, right?

There's such drama queens.

I am tired of feeling like I'm not supposed to apologize.

Who's making you?

I'd rather intoxicate people with my brilliance, my brilliance again.

Who raised these jellyfish?

Okay.

Moving on.

So

here's another issue I'm right about.

Population.

The census came out last week, and we have the lowest population growth in like 100 years.

And

the numbers, birth rate, 19%

down since 2007,

4% down in 2020.

Now, all economists will say this is a terrible thing because every economy, no matter what it is, is built on this idea that you have to keep replacing workers.

I don't know how long we can keep pretending that we can keep adding people because it's good for the economy.

We already do not have enough resources for the people who are here now.

This is great news that the population is going down.

Great news.

Full stop.

This is happening globally.

We are not any,

the world population growth is going to peak around 2050, 2070, somewhere in there, and be on a long, slow decline to some other number.

You know, at the end of the day, the carrying capacity of the world is,

we've been able to do a lot of tricks and tweaks on it, but it's pretty close to carrying capacity in a lot of places in the world.

We don't have a lot of luxury on that.

I mean,

you don't want your population to crash out and zero out.

Japan's not going to exist in 150 years, demographically speaking.

What are you talking about?

Really?

It's going to disappear.

The demographics of Japan are such that they're way below population growth.

Population replaces.

Like you could predict what's going to happen in 150 years.

Well,

nobody gets busy like they did in the 19th century anymore.

They don't have 10 kids.

Too many of them are dating their phones.

I agree.

But

waifu pillows and phones.

There will be some new Japanese people.

Some.

Some.

I interpret it differently.

I know this is

one of your issues, but I read it as, wow, the thing I hear every day is people making the economic decision not to have children or more children because they can't afford it.

Because they're not doing as well as their parents and they can't provide for their kids.

I saw it as an economic decision in addition to people dating their phones.

Okay, but

you could have one kid or two.

Yeah.

You know, and still, that would, you know, as long as you don't have five or six, that to me is...

I just don't think we're going to get into that 1970s Malthusian vision of a world with 20 billion people.

We're not going to get there.

That number's already...

That's certainly where we're heading.

It's starting to taper off in a lot of the countries.

The more technologically advanced a country becomes, the less kids are.

Yes.

Okay.

Totally.

Anyway, thank you.

Time for new rules, everybody.

New rules.

My new rules, not the Republican new rules.

Okay.

New rules since Josh Duggar of the famed Duggar family used to work for the Super Christian Family Research Council and he just got arrested for kiddie porn.

Someone has to tell him that's not what we meant by family research.

And that's certainly not what anybody meant by 19 kids and counting.

New rule animal experts must tell me if regular dogs are afraid of police dogs.

When they see one behind them, do they shit their pants and think, oh fuck.

I know he's going to ask me, have you been drinking out of the toilet tonight, sir?

rule, now that scientists are making embryos out of humans and monkey cells, people can knock off having gender reveal parties.

Pfizer is making monkey people.

It's not that impressive that your baby has balls.

New rule, Joe Biden's infrastructure plan has to include money for a full-size Jimmy and Rosalind Carter.

My question for the Carters isn't, what's your secret to longevity?

It's, are you sure your caretakers haven't been throwing you in the dryer?

New rule moms everywhere have to admit that these goat photos perfectly illustrate what you want for Mother's Day.

For one goddamn minute, could you just get the kids off my back?

And finally, New Rural Republicans can't spend decades chastising liberals for being too permissive about sex and drugs and then be completely silent about Matt Gates.

I don't know if you've been following the whole Matt Gaetz saga, but he's the Republican congressman from Florida who always looks like he's saying, eat it, nerd.

And who has been embroiled in a sex and drug scandal the last two months?

Here's CNN on a night out with Matt Gates.

The partygoers, at times dressed in formal wear from a political event, a political event they'd just left, mingled and shared drugs like cocaine and ecstasy.

Some had sex.

Okay, wild hotel suite parties, that's our thing.

Democrats are the party of free love and fun and forgetting where you parked your car.

Republicans cannot be the conservative, stick-up-your-ass party, and then take our drugs and fuck our women.

American government works best like a mullet.

Republicans do business in the front, Democrats party in the back.

JFK used to have nude pool parties in the White House.

Now the politician who comes closest to carrying on that legacy is Matt Gates.

No.

And he's not the only one.

Former House Speaker and a guy who loved his liquor, John Boehner, now sells pot for a living.

My old job.

Marjorie Taylor Green is reportedly into polyamorous tantric sex.

And Ashley Babbitt, the MAGA warrior who died storming the Capitol, turns out to have been in a thruple with her husband and another woman.

And don't get me started on this guy.

guy.

Even their spiritual advisors are freaks.

Jerry Falwell Jr.

apparently likes to relax after a hard day at Bible college by watching the pool boy do the misses.

I know Republicans are lazy and they love outsourcing, but come on.

And here he is on a yacht, proudly posing with a friend

with their pants unzipped.

That's some friend.

This is a long way from when his father made a national issue that one of the teletubbies was purple, so duh, gay.

What happened?

Republicans.

Republicans always sounded like this.

Now, because Politico did an expose on his lap dance with the naked lady in a strip club, he's not the kind of person you can ask your sister to vote for anymore.

Naked lady, lap dance, sister.

That's the Republican Party I know.

So uptight they could grind diamonds in their ass.

Well, liberals used our asses the way God intended to smuggle drugs.

He could always count on Republicans to be the fuddy duddies, the wet blankets, the boars.

They were the moral majority.

The Book of Virtues.

Nixon, Nixon started the war on drugs.

And this lady never stopped spitting her catchphrase about it.

Just say no.

Just say no.

Just say no.

Just say no.

Just say no.

Just say no.

Just say no.

Her husband had a commission to root out pornography.

If it was fun, Republicans were against it.

They got apoplectic over Clinton getting a blowjob.

They invented abstinence-only education.

Mitt Romney has never seen himself naked.

John Ashcroft, I'm not kidding, once covered the tits on a statue.

Rick Santorum wears a sweater vest.

Newt Gingrich once said,

Democrats were the party of total hedonism, total exhibitionism, total bizarreness, total weirdness.

Well, on a good night, I suppose.

and frankly, Newt, knowing that you believe what I did on an average Friday night was morally reprehensible just made it all the more fun.

We need to restore the natural order of things.

I don't want to live in a world where liberals are the uptight ones and conservatives do drugs and get laid.

Once upon a time, the right were the ones offended by everything.

They were the party of speech codes and blacklists and moral panics and demanding some TV show had to go.

Well, now that's us.

We're the fun suckers now.

We suck the fun out of everything: Halloween, the Oscars, childhood, Twitter, comedy.

It's like woke kids on campus decided to be all the worst parts of a Southern Baptist.

And that's wrong because it's cultural appropriation.

If Democrats had always policed morality as hard as they do now, they would be down a lot of heroes.

No FDR, JFK, RFK, LBJ, Clinton, Martin Luther King.

Democrats are now the party that can't tell the difference between Anthony Weiner and Al Franken.

Or

Katie Hill, up-and-coming Democratic congresswoman from California, now resigned, who, like Ashley Babbitt, was found to be in a thrupple and pictured holding a bong.

And that was too much for our new puritanical Democratic Party.

Quite the opposite.

This should be our logo.

We're the thrupple people.

The the bung people the tantric sex gurus not fucking Matt Gates

us

We did fucking in the mud and bra-burning and turn on and tune in and drop out.

They're the party who bake wedding cakes for gay people

It's time to switch back because frankly, you're not good at being us and being you sucks

All right, that's our show.

I'll be at the Ruth Eckert Hall in Clearwater, Florida, June 19th at the Van Wasl Arts Hall in Sarasota, June 20th in Florida, and at the Mirage in Vegas, July 16th and 17th.

I want to thank Rick Wilson, Representative Alyssa Slotkin, and John McWhorter.

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.