Ep. #559: David Shor, Nick Gillespie, Heidi Heitkamp

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

Thank you.

Wow.

Look at this.

Thank you.

Oh, I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Oh, spring is strong here, huh?

Oh, I appreciate it.

Thank you very much.

I could see the happiness, the enthusiasm, the love, because thank you.

And we are getting back to normal.

I see it everywhere.

The traffic is heavier.

Restaurants are open.

Republicans pretend pretend to give a shit about the dead again.

I feel like any minute Pam Anderson could remarry Kid Rock.

Things are just

returning.

And listen to this, to the CDC, they said that, you know, the distancing rule they have for kids, school kids, which has been six feet, now three feet.

Moving in the right direction.

In Florida, the students are hopeful that by fall they'll be back inside their teachers.

Oh my good Florida.

But of course with us reopening it brings other issues.

We have a surge of migrants at the border and the authorities say we cannot take any more, any more unskilled foreigners who don't even seem like they want to work.

We already have Megan and Harry.

And, oh,

that's a good crowd.

Good crowd.

Good crowd.

She gave out treats when they

laugh at the politically incorrect ones.

Good.

But here's something interesting.

I read about the pandemic that we're hopefully coming out of it.

During this last year, they say, this surveys found the average single person has been masturbating three times a day.

I don't know who this is exactly.

I assume it's the guy in the Zoom meeting who claims he's petting his cat.

I assume.

I, now, well.

Of course, this doesn't really reveal anything about human nature we don't already know, but it does explain why Costco is always at a Kleenex.

But hey,

Biden's kind of kicking ass.

You know, they've

well, you know, his big thing was, I'm going to get a hundred,

that was his big thing.

I'm going to get a hundred million vaccines out in a hundred, he's way ahead.

97 million vaccines have gone 2 million a day now.

Trump said, oh, sure, if you want to show off government that tries.

No, Biden promised 100 million in 100 days, way ahead of that schedule.

Of course, you have to understand this is a guy who eats dinner at 5 p.m.

So,

but one reason why they're doing so well with that is they expanded the list of who can give shots.

Dentists.

Did you know that?

You're getting for

medical students, midwives.

Midwives?

I didn't even know I had those.

Veterinarians.

And I went to my vet.

Oh, it's fine.

It's a little different.

He gave me the shot and he put a cone on my neck.

I don't know.

but it's fine.

I mean, yes, it was

a little, okay, it's a little weird going to the vet for a shot.

I had to trick myself to get into the car, but other than that, it's a

but you've read this: people are figuring out ways to jump the vaccine lines.

Oh, yeah, at Berkeley now, you can get it if your spiritual advisor says you're an old soul.

That seems wrong.

In LA, you can get it if your facial filler is still under warranty.

Speaking of facial filler, the Oscar nominations are out.

Are you excited about that?

Yes, the leading contenders for best picture are Nomad Land, Minari, and the Sound of Metal.

So for theaters who are trying to figure out how to reopen at 15% capacity, I think we found the answer.

All right, we got a great show.

We have Heidi Heidkamp is back here.

Oh good, and Nick Gillespie.

Good show.

But first up, he's a former

a former data scientist with the 2012 Obama campaign.

He was now the head of data science at Open Labs, David Shore.

David?

Hey.

How are you?

Hey, I'm good.

Good to see you.

Now,

let's...

Let's set you up for the people who may not know who you are.

Data scientist.

I hadn't heard that term before.

What exactly is a data scientist?

Statisticians who, I think the joke is it's data, it's programmers who are bad at statistics or

statisticians who are bad at programming, right?

Well, whatever it is, you must be good at it because you did it for Obama when you were 20, right?

That's right.

Wow.

Because, and you were able to do that because you graduated or started college at 13?

That's right.

Me too.

So, so, okay, so boy genius, let me ask you this this then.

How did you do with the 2020 election?

Did you, were your predictions close?

Because the polls were way off, were they not?

The polls were wrong.

You know, this was a really terrible year for polling.

You know, 2016 was a bad year for polling, but

2020 somehow ended up being worse.

And I think, you know,

at least for me, I'll say, the election was closer than I thought it would be.

Though I think the joke is, you know, everyone predicted going in that Joe Biden would be president and the Democrats would have 50 or 51 seats in the Senate.

It's kind of what happened.

But I'd love to talk just a little bit about why the polls were so wrong.

I would love to hear it.

Yeah, so there's a tale of two errors.

I'm going to start with 2016.

So, you know, the big fundamental reason why polls are wrong, you know, everyone likes to talk about the undecided's breaking or turnout, but it's actually just that survey takers are super, super weird.

That's like the big, the big problem.

Weird, like, creepy?

I mean, a lot of them, I'm sure.

No, I know, there's a real problem.

Like when people get the call, they think it's a weirdo?

So the biggest thing, you know, with looking at 2016 is something called social trust.

So the way this gets operationalized, social scientists, they ask, do you think people can generally be trusted, or do you think people should keep to themselves?

Most people say that people can't be trusted, something like 60, 70% of people.

But the few people who do trust the people around them, kind of unsurprisingly, way more likely to answer phone surveys.

Yeah.

So you're getting trusting people.

You're getting trusting people.

You're getting nice people.

We've done personality tests.

People are way more agreeable.

Like the kind of people who just stop what they're doing and they say, oh, a contemporary researcher wants to know my views on contemporary events.

Oh, my God.

Yeah, I'll help him out.

Yeah.

Which is not what I would say about that.

You're right.

Yeah, definitely not.

What's that?

What's in it for me?

Exactly.

There's a lot of voters just like you.

And so, you know, the big problem, this has always been true.

People with low social trust have never answered phone surveys.

But it used to just not matter.

It used to be that, like, politics was a fight about whether taxes should be higher or lower.

Right.

And Donald Trump changed that.

You know, Donald Trump changed what it meant to be a Republican.

And so suddenly, like if you look, among people who trust their neighbors, you know, that group swung toward Clinton by like five or six points.

That's what the polls captured.

That's the polling we saw.

But there was this silent, hidden majority of people who didn't trust the people around them and weren't answering phones.

And those people, disproportionately working-class white voters who lived in the Midwest, and that's the big reason why also why all of these Midwestern polls were wrong.

So will they fix this next time when they start to do polling?

Will they adjust for that?

Can they?

Well, I mean, there's a different polling story, which is in 2016, you know, the states were wrong, but at least, you know, the national polls were about right.

2020 was way worse.

You know, the national polls were off by like three or four points.

And the reason I think is kind of funny.

It's basically coronavirus.

That like, you know, we actually, when we do our surveys,

we actually joined them to the voter file.

And so we could see, starting in March, the percentage of people who answered surveys who were registered Democrats just shot up.

And the reason is that Democrats were stuck at home.

You know, they respected the lockdown.

You can tell with creepy cell phone data that Democrats really were staying home and Republicans were out partying and doing spring break.

And

those Democrats were just desperately answering every survey they could find.

And that's actually why the surveys were wrong.

It's kind of funny.

Okay.

So,

yeah.

What was the biggest surprise, though, of the 2020?

I mean, for me, I don't know if this is what the scientists said, but the fact that Trump did better with minorities.

Yeah.

Okay, so

what happened there?

Yeah, I think the big surprise, I mean, in 2016, you know, Trump did do better with non-white voters than

Barack Obama did.

And I think a lot of people weren't surprised.

They wanted to write that off.

They're like, oh, well, you know, Barack Obama, there's a lot of reasons he would do better with non-white voters.

But in 2018, this really should have been a warning sign.

You know, non-white voters trended, you know, trended against Democrats, Democrats while white voters trended toward.

And this was really consequential.

You know, we lost the Florida Senate race, if the Georgia governor's race.

If Stacey Abrams had done as well among black voters as Hillary Clinton did, she would have been governor right now.

But 2020 was a continuation of that trend.

And I think that was the thing that was most surprising to me, because it's something that a lot of the polls also didn't see coming.

Just to run through it, Hispanic voters swung something like nine percentage points against Democrats, and that's percentage points.

That means roughly one in ten Hispanic voters switched their vote from Clinton to the United States.

And that's a group the Democrats count on.

Historically, yes.

And you know, with black voters, it wasn't as large, but still, there was a 2% to 3% shift

among Asian voters.

You know, the data, the jury is still out, but it seems like there was at least a 5% or 6% shift.

So this is really

a really big difference.

Well, I've read that you've said

most voters are not liberal.

Yeah, I mean, I think that...

Even most Democrats.

You know, among Democrats, it's roughly 50-50.

But I think the big difference, you know, when you look at ideology is that among white people, about 90% of white liberals vote for Democrats and about 80% of white conservatives vote for Republicans.

But with non-white voters, it's not like that.

And the reason, and this is just like arithmetically, ideology doesn't vary very much by race.

Roughly the same number of black, white, and Hispanic voters identify as liberal, moderate, or conservative.

But partisanship varies a lot.

And the reason for why is that Democrats historically have done really well with non-white conservatives.

And the story of 2020 is that Democrats used to win Hispanic conservatives by double digits, and this time Trump won them by double digits.

Would you say that there's a woke and liberal are now

really two different, at least wings of the party,

people who consider themselves classic liberals like I do.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I mean

yes.

And that's why I think they lose, the Democrats have been losing votes that they should be winning.

You know, I think the big, the big thing

defund the police.

Could you come up with a more drive-away the voters phrase than that?

For example.

You know,

crime is really unpopular.

If you're going to give political advice.

You know, I think that the core problem here is that as the party has become more educated,

educated people have increasingly defined, you know, the brand of the Democratic Party.

And like one thing I like to say is a lot of people will say it's like a truism in politics that Democrats are too wonky, you know, we're eggheads, you know, we talk too much about issues, we need to communicate our values.

But you know,

the median voter doesn't share our values.

Our values are weird and alien.

If they had our values, they would be liberals.

The only way Democrats historically won elections was by talking about concrete issues that people agreed with us on.

It's how Bill Clinton won.

It's how Barack Obama won.

And I think that was one of Joe Biden's strengths.

What are these values you think the average voter doesn't share?

Well, just to go back to to the polling thing, you know, like social trust is a big one.

You know, liberals actually trust government, they trust society, you know, they really believe in positive sum change, you know, and

the potential for positive sum interaction.

But also, you know, racial resentment, attitudes toward gender, what kind of societies people want to live in, you know, what kind of neighborhoods people want to live in.

Liberals like to live in like exciting, tightly packed cities.

From a personality perspective, you know, scientists like to study this five-factor personality model, openness to new experiences, useful Useful word to know is just this idea of how people respond to novel stimuli.

And, you know, it's highly correlated with liberalism.

Some people, you know, when they see something new and exciting, there's like a new ethnic restaurant or something, they get really excited and energized.

But a lot of people, the majority of people, you know, see novel stimuli and it drains them, it makes it freaks them out.

And that's why there's all of this geographic sorting.

But we seem to be entering an era of resegregation that's coming from the left.

I mean, on many college campuses, you can have, there are separate dorms, separate black dorms, graduation ceremonies, stuff like that.

How will that affect elections in the future?

You know, I think there's a lot of, there was a great study in North Carolina that showed that, you know, racially integrated schools make people more liberal.

But, you know, I think just to go back, I think that the important thing is to just realize that most non-white voters are not liberal.

They don't identify as liberal.

We should take that really seriously.

And I think that when it

realizing that most voters don't share our values means that we should instead try to meet people where they are with the values that they actually hold and that we should talk to them about issues that they care about.

All right.

Well, thanks for coming on.

Very enlightening.

Let's see what you're doing when you're 40.

All right.

Thanks, Devin.

Let's meet our panel.

Okay, hey.

Here they are.

He's an editor-at-large at Reason and host of the Reason Interview Podcast.

Nick Gillespie is back with us.

Hey, Nick, been a while.

And she is the former Democratic senator from North Dakota and co-founder of the One Country Project, our returning champion.

Heidi Heitkamp is back here.

Great to see you.

Boys love to see you here.

Okay, let's get to the tragedy of the week.

Joe Biden, just before we went on, was speaking in Atlanta about the spa shootings.

He said, whatever the motivation, we know this, too many Asian Americans have been walking up and down the streets and worrying, waking up each morning the past year, feeling their safety and the safety of their loved ones are at stake.

I thought that was a great statement.

True statement.

Let's not bury the lead.

This is a

big crime.

Violent crime against Asians up 150 percent last year.

This is intolerable.

We have to address it.

However, this story is also instructive, and I think it says a lot about our tribalism and our inability to see evidence as opposed to what would fit the narrative that we already believe.

Christopher Ray says, it does not appear that the, that's the head of the FBI, it does not appear that the motive

was racially motivated.

And yet Marilyn Strickland, she is from Washington State, Congresswoman, racially motivated violence should be called for exactly what it is, and we must stop making excuse or rebranding it as economic anxiety or sexual addiction.

But what if it is that?

Everything I've read about this guy, Robert Aaron Long, conservative Baptist, he's an albino assassin.

He's flagellating himself because he feels bad about sex.

All the

sexual urges shouldn't be doing this, porn addiction, massage parlors, seeks treatment for sexual addiction.

This is

the roommate said, whenever he would talk about visiting massage parlors, it was in the context of God and his parents.

Wouldn't the roommate know if it was about race?

Now maybe we'll find out something that's not there, but it seems like people insist.

No, this is what I thought it was, and I'm just going to insist.

I think we're going to look at this through the lens of our bias.

But my criticism there is: how does Christopher Wray know it wasn't about race?

I mean, he criticizes jumping the gun, but he hasn't finished his investigation.

We don't know.

He said it doesn't appear to be.

Well, shut your mouth and say, I don't know yet.

Can you all just give us some time to finish the investigation?

I think that's what

I mean.

I think that that is basically what he was saying.

And I think it's important because we're in a supercharged environment where everybody is talking about racism and white supremacism.

The same survey that showed a 150% increase in hate crimes in 16 major cities also found overall hate crimes last year went down by 7%.

So, you know, we shouldn't be rushing to try to fit everything into a hate crime.

The history of Asians in America, they were the first people to be excluded from immigration.

And as a matter of fact, South Asian Indians were not, there was a 1923 Supreme Court case where an Indian tried to say why he should be allowed citizenship.

It ended up, not only did he lose, they ended up kicking out other Indians who had managed to get here.

They have a horrible history in this country, but it's also a great immigrant story in that Asian Americans now make far more than the median average family household in terms of income, in terms of education, in terms of opportunity.

So as we talk and try to fix racism in our society, we also have to look at bigger pictures.

The Asians are like Jews in America, where they face a lot of specific problems, but they also succeed very well, and they ultimately are accepted for that.

I think, you know, the problem in this country is we don't confront issues like what's happening right now with the Asians until we have a mass shooting in, you know,

at massage parlor.

But why not?

But you seem to be.

It's that.

You're insisting

that it was a racially bad thing.

But

I really feel like if it was Armenians who were manning the massage parlors, he would have killed Armenians.

We don't know that, Bill.

We don't know.

But you seem to be, what we do know.

I mean, the roommate, the roommate, that's what he was saying in the privacy of his home.

Wouldn't he have said it there?

I do think it's right to say, you know,

over the past year, and this is something that Trump and a number of people

were pushing the Wuhan flu type of thing and whatnot.

And this is odious, awful, racial, racist language that should be confronted.

And that's something Biden said.

When you hear something, don't put up with it, put it down.

I think that's true.

At the same time, I think turning this particular instance into something which it may not, that in the end does not help you you reach people who are racist.

That can be a very important thing.

But

my point is until there is something that is so heinous, we don't confront real problems.

But can I just point out that sexual guilt from religion is also a big thing.

It's been a big thing for

generations.

For millennia.

Exactly.

People feel bad because they're sexual beings and religion makes you feel bad about that.

I think there's a bad thing.

It likes to, so it can you.

The question here of what about massage parlors, what about legalizing sex work?

There are ways that we can change

how people interact and how they meet basic needs

in an open way, in a more constructive way.

There's many things that we can be talking about coming out of this.

And I do think it's right to

take a moment to look at the residue of anti-Asian racism in America and deal with it, but not necessarily to turn this into something that's not.

Is it that hard to keep two thoughts in our mind at the same time?

That

this epidemic of violence against Asians is horrible and we have to do something about it, and this probably isn't part of it.

But I think people get so frustrated that no one's paying attention that everybody jumps on something like this and says, see, there it is.

And then you get the attention, and that's the problem.

We don't give attention to problems that aren't catastrophized in this country.

That's a good segue to my issue about the border.

It's that crisis at the border headline on the news season,

right, every year.

And I thought it was interesting because I also read today, along with the border stories, that over at the White House, they've put people on leave and fired some for smoking pot.

I thought this was the new White House.

I thought Kamala had a come to Jesus moment on pot.

And we were all like

for as long as she was high

when she went back to being a cop okay well not cool anyway I think I'm connect I'm connecting these two issues here and I'll tell you why because the Democrats are putting forth legislation this week in pieces now they're trying to with the easy stuff to because immigration is the issue that keeps haunting them and that we as a country have to solve so they're dreamers stuff about that humanitarian aid farm workers these are the easy ones

biden also said we should address the root cause, and then he mentioned aid to

the Central American economies.

Excuse me, the root cause is drugs.

Drugs.

We like drugs.

Bangroad drugs.

It's illegal.

Those countries are going to be run by

narco-terrorists.

Can I

even go a little bit further and say the problem isn't drugs, the problem is the war on drugs.

Well, that's what I mean.

Yeah, no, but because we're not.

Trust me, I don't think the problem is drugs.

Drugs has never been able to get that.

The cartels aren't moving avocados, right?

They're moving weed, they're moving cocaine, they're moving other substances.

And this is where Joe Biden, unfortunately, is the most clueless person.

He's the worst person to have in the White House at this time.

This is a guy who over the past 50 years has been involved in every major,

you know, every major increase in the war on drugs.

I don't think if drugs is the issue, this is not the guy you want in the White House right now as it intersects with immigration.

You know, the problem is we can all say let's legalize it, but it leads to really some pretty serious consequences.

Like,

like total addiction, expansion of addiction.

I'm not saying about marijuana, I'm talking about what can happen.

Well, okay, so Portugal did it.

Portugal did that.

They legalized everything.

I think a couple of people.

They were criminalized.

And they actually saw lower use rates,

lower addiction rates, lower social problems.

Yeah, let's take a different run on this, the vast majority of people.

The vast majority of people in this country don't want to legalize drugs, but they also don't want to deal with consequences of not legalizing drugs.

The overwhelming majority wants to legalize weed.

Well, yeah, and that's where the Biden is

way beyond.

And in November,

if I may, in November, people in Oregon decriminalized all drugs, like for personal possession.

People in DC legalized electric mushrooms and things like that.

Everywhere you look, people are starting to say, we can have the war on drugs or we can have drugs.

You know, it's not a tough choice.

And by the way, all the bad illegal drugs, they have pharmaceutical versions.

It's not that they're not illegal.

You can get cocaine, they just call it Adderall.

You can get heroin.

And they just call it methadone or opioids.

This is the craziest story about POT, because it's scheduled higher than those drugs because they have a pharmaceutical reason.

This whole thing with marijuana, I don't know why the Biden administration would step into this because it is, they don't see the trend nationally, which is South Dakota legalized recreational marijuana.

South Dakota, right?

So if South Dakota is going to do it, my state has not yet, but we will.

Everybody will.

Eventually.

I'm worried that you're still quickly.

No, just kidding.

So the next time you come on this show,

there won't be all this arguing.

There won't be all this arguing.

No,

You know,

the challenge that you have with the border is that no one wants to tell the truth about what's going on, which is the cartels are doing very, very dangerous, horrible things.

These kids are coming to the border, basically advanced calls.

Well, no, they're coming to the border because they're economic migrants and they're going to come into this country and work and send remittances home because their parents cannot afford to live in that country.

And their parents work.

And they're living

The cartels are wooing these kids.

And so if you return these kids, they won't have the ability to pay and their families, they're going to get grave damage.

This stuff with the kids is really, really bad.

The president is finding out that kids in cages was horrible, but when kids show up at the border, you put them in some sort of a thing that somebody can call a cage.

But there is that larger question then, like, you know, they need to have like for surges, they need to have more, you know, facilities, they need to have more resources to deal with people humanely.

Most asylis come here, they don't get accepted, and they go back home.

But we need a broader discussion on immigration.

Donald Trump's greatest achievement was to turn everybody in favor of immigrants.

75 percent of Americans think immigration is a good thing for the country, 85 percent of Democrats, 65 percent of Republicans, according to Gallup.

Joe Biden should run with that immigration.

Then how did he get elected on I'm going to build a wall?

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

He got elected by getting the smallest percentage of votes that you could get and still squeeze.

He got elected because there's two different kinds of immigrants, the ones that have been here for years and are your neighbors and everybody's in favor of them and the ones coming to the border that they've been told are members of the cartel and they're going to rape your children.

Right?

And so when you're right.

And so when you abandon the border as a part of immigration, you lose.

So you've got to talk about border security in conjunction with what's happening at the border.

Yeah, but the way to secure the border is to let more people pass through legally.

Let anybody who wants to come here who's not infected with a communicable disease or has a violent criminal record, let them come through, let them work, let them live, let them pay taxes legally, and then you can start seeing the bad people will start coming in in other places.

And I will tell you, if that was Joe Biden's position, he wouldn't be president of the United States.

I'm not saying it's right or wrong.

He beat Donald Trump pretty handily, and unlike most Democrats, he was very pro-immigrant, because the Democratic Party has never been overwhelmingly favorable to immigrants.

That is where the...

He's president of the United States by 45,000 votes.

Never forget that.

What?

And 45,000 votes.

If Biden had, if 45,000 votes had switched in three states, Donald Trump would have been re-elected.

That's how he got elected.

Yeah, right, right.

Turn about his fair freight.

Right, so closer than what he won.

But

think about how crazy that is when seven million people in this country have been in the past.

Right, yeah,

you and I have had this discussion, Bill.

Yes, and it's about your state.

Yes, it is.

You've got to give that up.

Hey, North Dakota, we get to get three electoral votes.

You get four goddamn senators because it's the Dakota Territory.

It shouldn't be two states.

And California, with 40 million people, gets the same number of senators as.

The damn Constitution.

What are we going to do?

Oh, suddenly now,

now it's the Constitution.

All right.

I want to bring in a little economics here because I think,

look, we just passed this giant bill.

Okay, good.

There's some nice things that are happening here that we're all happy about.

You know, child poverty has been cut in half.

I don't know anyone who's for child poverty.

But just let me give you the economic recap because people don't follow.

Because I hear the economy is ready to sizzle again.

We're going to have the roaring 20s again.

Well, maybe, or maybe the depression 30s.

I don't know.

But market value is at 32 times earnings.

The The norm is 16 times.

In other words, it's 32 times what a company is really worth is what the market is valued at.

And that's twice what it normally is.

Okay.

Federal debt stands at 100% of GDP.

Only the second time since World War II, the federal debt is bigger than the size of the economy.

The debt is bigger than the economy itself.

Okay.

Between 1930 and 1940, when we had, you know, that's the Depression.

So they spent 6% of GDP on the Depression.

In recessions between 1945 and 2008, 1% of GDP we spent to get out of shit.

Now, we spent 26% of GDP in 12 months.

With all the, it's $5 trillion to fight the pandemic problems.

$4 trillion, this is just it for inflation, to win World War II.

We spent a trillion more on this than World War II.

Maybe this will work out.

I don't know.

But there seems to be this new,

there seems to be this new ideology brought on by the pandemic that you can just dream up any number.

I mean, I remember when Obama was bailing us out of

the Great Recession and it was $780 billion, and people were like, holy fuck, he signed a paper for $780,

and now they sign this like it's the dinner check.

So,

thoughts?

Well,

the first thing is the Democratic Party saw what happened during the Trump years, right?

Trump spent like a drunken sailor.

He gave away billions of dollars to major corporations who, by the way, we bailed out.

They are turning over the bar.

Right, right.

The Republicans definitely put us in debt way more than the Democrats.

Right, right.

They always do.

And then the Democrats have to come in, and the Republicans act like, I don't know who spent all this money.

They're like a blackout drunk.

And

the point is,

when is it the working class people?

The difference between these plans and the one that was just passed is I think it was appropriately targeted to the lower quartile and that it will, in fact, encourage economic growth.

And you could see economic growth that would help pay for it.

I'm not going to say it'll pay for itself, but it's like, when is it the turn of the lower middle class to actually get a break from government instead of seeing it always go to the richest in this house.

I don't necessarily disagree with you.

It would be great if most of this was going to deal with COVID, 5%, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

It's not going to lower quartile people.

In this are expanded

Obamacare subsidies that go to households making $585,000.

There is a lot of

max out at households making $400,000.

One of the biggest scams that has been going on in the entire 21st century, and I think it started with George W.

Bush giving free and reduced-price drugs to seniors who are wealthy back in Medicare Part D.

Now you are shoveling money at people like everyone at this table who don't need it, who haven't been hurt economically by the pandemic, and then we're saying, oh, but you know what?

We're helping those poor kids.

Check back and see if they're actually.

I feel like we got to this mental place where, like, we have been talking about how the debt is out of control since Ross Perot.

Like, for 30 years, like, oh, my God, this debt.

We got to this point where it was so out of control.

And then Trump just went, fuck it.

And, you know, he made it way worse just in a quick amount of time.

And then I feel like they're in this place now where it's like.

Like when you're at 4 a.m.

and you're drunk out of your mind, I might as well just stay up till the next

time you're at the bottom.

Why try to get to sleep at all?

I'm just going to try to pull this off.

We're at that place where two is too many and five's not enough.

Right.

It's just like, fuck it.

It's apparently funny money anyway.

Just leave it.

The reckoning is going to be brutal because the economy is growing.

In the last quarter, there was like something like 4% economic growth.

It's going to do well without this.

It's going to be supercharged, but it is like it's a Coke binge.

It's going to burn out.

All economists, even Marxist economists at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, say when you run this level of debt with no sign of stopping, it reduces long-term economic growth.

And that's one of the reasons why for the past 20 years.

So

so much of the budget is to pay off the debt, is just to pay bankers for lending you this money.

If interest rates go up for where they are right now, which is zero, we will spend behind, we may exceed in our interest payments what we spend on national defense.

So I'm not defending the debt.

I am defending that the prioritization that we've seen in the last four years has been way off the mark in terms of what the American people are doing.

No, no, no, no, that has nothing to do with that.

No, it does.

It does have something to do with this package, which is to try and balance this and then to set it right at some point into the future.

But you're like saying, oh, well, you know, Yale all bellied up to the trough when Trump was there, and now Biden has to have the policy of austerity.

Give me a break.

It's not austerity.

Give poor people people who are struggling most.

Let people who are doing well pay their own damn websites.

Right.

That's what it's like.

I don't.

That should be the democratic position.

I was not a fan of the $2,000.

You know, I thought that wasn't targeted enough.

I thought we should have been much more clever about how we did it and where we made the investments.

We could have done great infrastructure investments with that money.

So, okay, I'll give you that.

But damn it, I'm tired of people sitting around and criticizing Democrats for tax and spend when every time we have a Republican president,

we go into the debts and deficit spending.

And somehow they,

when you ask, somehow, even though it happens every time, this pattern every time of the Democrats come in and clean up the room that Led Zeppelin just trashed,

and then they ask,

who's the party of fiscal responsibility?

Oh, it's the Republicans.

What movie are you watching?

Do you not understand we have tapes and we have numbers, right?

We have history.

I mean, Reagan did it.

Okay.

All right, so last week I was talking about, to change the subject completely, the Turner Classics.

They're the movie child.

I like Turner Classics.

I once did a thing for them.

And they, but, of course, in this new era, they had to reframe the classics.

So they have to have a guy come on at the beginning.

Yeah, see, there it is.

I'm not lying.

And give a little speech about why movies that you used to just enjoy, because you understood.

You understood that times change, people change, and mores change.

It's called evolution, but now it's called problematic.

Anyway, so we

Yes,

it's so obvious.

And Gone with the Winds is on the list.

Breakfast at Tiffany's.

My fair lady.

My fair lady is too rough for them.

It was too corny for me when I was 10.

My father wanted me to go see it.

I wouldn't.

Okay.

So, but those aren't just the only movies.

Would you like to see some of the other ones that they have to give warnings to now?

The classics?

Oh, I'm sure you would.

These are some of the other ones.

I don't think these really need warnings, but they have it.

Sleeping Beauty, a prince kisses an unconscious woman without consent.

See there?

The Wizard of Oz, a powerful woman of color, is murdered by a rural white girl.

Psycho inaccurately portrays the lives of the vast majority of transgender motel owners.

Rosemary's Baby fails to present Planned Parenthood as a viable option.

Jaws portrays white people as victims.

Wrong!

The graduate depicts a problematic age discrepancy that you can't blame on the man.

Oh, look, the greatest story ever told, yes, warning portrays in a positive light a power imbalance between Mary, a Palestinian teenager, and God, a more powerful man.

And of course, Braveheart, Warning, stars Mel Gibson.

So, look, I...

You know,

I swear to God, I don't want to talk about cancel culture culture and this nonsense every week, but I just don't think people understand how much this is a tsunami and how fast the goalposts change almost on a weekly basis.

I just literally off the top of my head before I came out, wrote down three things I could think of.

Not just what you do now,

what you do now, it's anything you've ever done.

And I'll give you examples of that.

Not just what you say, what you say.

It's now what you listen to.

They can get you for that.

What you order, who you say you like, any sort of association, if you retweet something, if you, you know, I like this picture, who was the woman in the Mandalorian?

What did she do?

She liked something?

She was a Nazi.

Oh, that's different, right?

I'm thinking of somebody else.

Well, she's not a Nazi.

She's a white hat.

And look at that.

You're calling her a.

She's called other people Nazis.

Right.

She's the Nazis.

Okay, everyone's a Nazi now.

She does hang with white supremacists.

It's like a Mel Brooks.

She does.

Yeah.

Hangs with white supremacists.

I suppose I'm not subject to defamation.

I don't know.

I mean, it depends on what your definition of white supremacist is.

So the goalpost there changed a lot.

Used to be a guy in a Klan hood who...

But

I think we have to be really careful.

There's two things the Republicans think they're going to get Biden on.

Cancel culture and this whole Dr.

Seuss stuff that's going on where they're reading green eggs and ham, proving that some of these senators can actually read.

And immigration.

And so we can't ignore the fact that we got Donald Trump was in part because of political correctness.

I mean, you did a whole show, Colin.

I did a whole correct.

And when people say tells it the way it is, the guy lied every day repeatedly.

And the reason why they thought he told it the way it is is because he wasn't politically correct.

And so when people think they have to parse every word, oh, and I can't think about this,

that is what's going to drive people crazy.

It's going to further divide culturally this country.

But I am so sick of the Republicans using the phrase cancel culture to somehow victimize the Republican party,

really unemployment.

You know, part of the problem, and I realize, Heidi,

you're a recovering senator,

but

let's not talk about this in terms of Republicans and Democrats and who's going to win a seat in the Senate or the House or anything like that.

Let's talk about it differently.

David Shur, your previous guest, he was canceled because he linked, he tweeted out a link to a Princeton political scientist who happens to be black who wrote about the effects of violent versus nonviolent protests in the 1960s on elections.

David Schur got fired because of that.

But

this is what we're talking about.

Data.

We need to

have a different kind of conversation, and it's not one where you're looking to bounce.

We're looking for the wrong

perpetrator, the wrong,

like you take Teen Vogue, right?

They shouldn't have fired her.

Fuck her.

Okay, well, it's people who don't know what you're talking about.

Oh, okay.

Well, the young woman who lost her.

Yes, her name is Alexi McCavind.

I've seen her many times on MSNBC.

And she's lovely.

She's 27.

Right.

Okay, she just got a great job.

Well, lost a great job.

Editor of Teen Vogue.

And because she tweeted in high school,

this is high school.

And I have a list of some of the tweets.

Now, you know, some of them, you bandwagoning homo.

Ha ha ha, you're so gay.

Laugh my ass off.

I mean, really?

Yeah, we're canceling people for this.

Whose fault is it that she does?

It's vogue.

Could I just say something?

Talk shit in private.

We can't legislate that away.

I don't think this woman is a homophobic.

She's also a woman of color.

For fuck's sake,

people talk shit about each other in private.

Right.

I'm not disputing that.

I'm saying everybody's like, oh, all the people out there who are exercising their economic right to say, I'm not going to support that product because I don't agree with what you stand for.

That's your economic right.

Teen Vogue should have said, look, that happened a long time ago.

That's ridiculous.

High school.

I know, but they are so afraid of any kind of control.

It's like, buck it up.

You know, corporate America needs to stop buying into this stuff and just explain it.

Right.

That's the problem.

You're right.

Somebody has to have some balls.

Corporate America is not interested in doing that, but there is, I think we also have to look at the kind of ideology of wokeness.

And it really is like all of the fire and brimstone, all of the damnation of Christianity without any possibility of forgiveness or salvation.

It is a warped ideology, and I think it's taking the place of religion in many people's lives because

it's this total picture.

It is starkly right and wrong, and

it's delusional.

And it needs to be engaged at the corporate level, but also at the individual level.

This is the flip side of if you hear people making really stupid, shitty Asian American jokes, you also have to call out people who are saying everybody is a racist, everything is a racist, or what you said when you were in high school defines you when you're an adult.

And if you learned anything from the previous guest, the small sliver of people who are out there on Twitter causing this trouble, the wokeness is not a big political movement.

It is

getting exaggerated.

Like it's big in publishing, it's big in universities.

Well, that's because they're changing corporate America.

Yeah.

Right?

That's because they don't want to take a risk to actually publish something.

University presidents are the worst.

They don't want any controversy on universities.

You know, it's like, well, we can't have that person.

Well, you know what?

You're a university.

You should have all views presented.

and protect people when they come on your campus.

I feel like we're in.

This is a very nice, this is like the United Nations, and then the world outside doesn't give a shit.

So, I mean, we need to figure out ways to engage people who are like, no, I am hurt when I hear something or, you know, when somebody says something that offends me, then that's the equivalent of violence.

This is part of the problem.

Words are not the equivalent of violence, and we need to get back to

a robust understanding of

these things.

That the number of people who sit in that space are very minimal, and those people are exploited in the kind of era of we want to not

to

politicize how you feel kind of era.

So my argument.

You're not saying this is Republicans are just a message.

No, I'm saying, no, because I think it happens on both sides.

The war on Christmas is just like wokeness, right?

It is.

Of course, there's snowflakes, too.

Yeah.

But they don't control the media

the way these brats do.

That's the problem.

I don't think it was Republicans who got elections.

There's not a lot of Republicans at Teen Vogue or

I never thought I would live in an era.

I remember watching movies about the 50s and the blacklist era when people would whisper that you were a communist and all it took was somebody informing on you and saying, oh, they saw you at a rally or at some peace march and you were branded and your career was over or you were on the blacklist.

People go to parties now and they like, they don't want to talk.

They're like, can I talk?

I don't know your girlfriend.

She might be woke.

Really?

I'm not making this up.

People, this informant thing, this, it's not just what you do, it's what you don't report.

That's another way the goalpost moved.

I was reading about this guy, Winston Marshall, the banjo player in Mumford and Sons.

Okay.

I remember when they were a thing

for about the time it took to take a piss.

This guy tweeted out that he liked a book.

It's a book called Unmasked.

I never heard of it.

You never heard of it.

It's apparently not favorable to Antifa, so it's criticizing Antifa.

Okay, people write books.

He tweeted out, finally had the time to read your important book, You're a Brave Man, to the author.

Now he has to step away.

Everyone's always stepping away from the band.

Oh my God.

And this is his apology.

Again, so Soviet.

Over the past few days I have come to better understand the pain caused by the book I endorsed.

What?

Would you hit somebody over the head with it?

I have offended not only a lot of people I don't know, but also those closest to me, including my bandmates, what a bunch of pussies they must be.

And for that I am truly sorry.

It's so Stalin-esque.

It's so, you know what?

How about I can read what I want.

I'm a musician.

Don't worry.

It won't happen again.

I think that he would have said that.

And, you know, but this is also creeping into legislation.

In Texas, the governor and the Senate are poised to pass a law that would basically make

content moderation on social media illegal because they're saying that religious people are being banned from Twitter and Facebook.

In Colorado, people are trying to ban hate speech legislators.

This all creeps in.

It's not simply the private sector.

And we are in a paroxysm of a contraction of free speech.

And this is something you were talking about being a classic liberal.

I think this is something libertarians, liberals, and conservatives can all agree on.

You need free speech.

Last word,

last word.

South Dakota was going to sign.

Not South Dakota.

Was going to sign a- Of course!

South Dakota was going to sit down.

The governor, Christy Noam,

was going to sign a transgender bill.

And by the way, you know, saying they can't play in girls' sports, really.

Like, that's the biggest issue ever in South Dakota, apparently, because it's getting a lot of attention across the board.

Guess what?

Amazon came in, they were going to put a plant there, and they said, you know, we might not like, all of a sudden, Christy Noam gets religion, that maybe that isn't the right thing to do.

So let's see if she signs a bill.

And this is where that use of economic power can actually be used to the good.

It's a good time to talk about that issue.

But I don't.

Maybe next time.

All right, thank you, panel time, for new rules.

New rules, everybody.

New rules.

All right, new rules.

Now that a new HBO documentary claims that the founder of QAnon, Q himself, is actually Ron Watkins, a 30-something incel who lives in Japan surrounded by comic books and a doll for a girlfriend.

QAnon followers have to admit they spent the last two years worshiping someone they would have beat up in high school.

Congratulations, geniuses, you made a god out of the Grubhub delivery guy.

Neural, this company that promises to deliver Viagra discreetly to your door has to tell me what's the alternative.

A marching band forms into the shape of a penis

and shows up outside my house.

It's a box in the mail.

What's not discreet?

The pharmacists at CVS shouting after you, remember if there's any problems with your erections, call me.

New rules, make sure your symbolic gesture doesn't just confuse everybody.

I'm sure the red face paint of these protesters in Chile has a deep meaning, but I can't help but think of my grandmother trying to put on lipstick in the car.

Neural, stop using the phrase plain vanilla.

Vanilla is a flavor just like any other.

It comes from the vanilla bean.

You know what other flavor comes from a bean?

Chocolate.

But you don't hear the mainstream media using the term plain chocolate.

But plain vanilla, that's somehow okay?

Well, it isn't okay.

I'm Tucker Carlson.

Good night.

Trying to get my Tucker face.

Neural, someone has to tell Lexa Voss, who teaches sheep cuddling seminars on her farm, it all might seem more appealing if this sheep didn't have a look on her face that says, oh boy, I know where this is headed.

And finally, new rule, if you believe in the philosophy of equality of outcomes, then you really shouldn't have watched the Grammys last Sunday.

Because the Grammys, aside from the usual award show virtue signaling, are still largely about the idea that certain people do music better than others.

and it's okay to reward them for it.

That's called meritocracy, and it's the opposite of guaranteed outcomes.

Equality of outcomes, as opposed to equality of opportunity.

We used to call that by another name, trophy syndrome.

A world that was

a world that was created back in the 90s, where everybody, every kid gets a trophy, no matter how good or bad they are at something.

Well, the result of that kind of thinking is that American kids now have a totally deluded and unearned belief in their charm, brains, and talent.

It's not only that the entire generation wants to be famous, it's that they think not being famous isn't fair.

If you think I'm exaggerating, let me quote from this article in Rolling Stone magazine last year lamenting how streaming has not given us equality of outcomes in the music industry.

Oh, the Grammys would look quite different if we followed this template.

The article tells us that more than 1.6 million million artists

release songs between January 2019 and July 2020, 40,000 tracks a day on Spotify.

And yet, Rolling Stone complains: today's streaming landscape looks a lot like the music industry used to.

A small class of artists see not just the majority of activity, but damn near all of it.

Yes, these are called the good ones.

I mean, yes, of course, an occasional big talent can fall through the cracks, but in general, it's simply a case that most people who try their hand at music write the songs that don't make the whole world sing.

Rolling Stone complains that quote, nearly all the streams went to artists in the top 10%, with the bottom 90% pulling in just 0.6% of streams.

Whoa, let me get this straight.

Talented artists people like are listened to more than untalented ones they don't.

Stop the presses.

Yes, that's meritocracy.

If people don't like your song, your mommy can't make them listen to it.

You know,

you know why 99% of artists aren't getting heard?

Because music is hard and most people suck at it.

For more details, Google Reality.

Rolling Stone actually writes the sentence, in a perfect world, the bottom 1% of artists would get 1% of activity.

No, they wouldn't.

That's a stupid world I don't want to live in.

Who taught you this nonsense?

And when you whine that streaming hasn't just upheld the gap between music's haves and have-nots, it's widened it.

You're making my case for me because streaming allows the public to sample everybody.

There's no more gatekeepers.

You can't complain no one heard your song because no label would sign you.

We tore that wall down, and the result was the same.

Some musicians are have-nots because, yes, they may have a voice, but we have ears.

It reminds me of the early audition rounds of the old American Idol where contestants are all attitude and image as if to say, can we not focus so much on the talent and just skip the part to wear the part I'm going to get to be an idol?

72% of Gen Z say they'd like to be an online celebrity and 54% of Gen Z and millennials say they would become an influencer given the opportunity.

You know, if it wasn't too much work like making a sex tape.

Speaking of which,

Paris Hilton just made

a return to the limelight, revealing that the Ditzy party girl we knew back in the day was just her playing a character, and that there really was more to her than sex tapes, tapes, driving drunk, carrying around a little dog and saying, that's hot.

I mean what about her work on the Human Genome Project?

You know what?

Any jokes I did about Paris, I don't feel bad.

Sorry, not sorry.

I just can't.

I can't be living in this time when we're madly on the hunt for anything with the slightest whiff of white privilege and then feel bad for Paris Hilton.

Quite the reverse.

Maybe Paris is the one who owes us an apology.

For being patient zero for today's vapid entitled Famous for Nothing culture, she kind of birthed the world where every 15-year-old with a phone aspires to be an influencer.

She's the face that launched a thousand little shits.

Paris led directly to the Kardashians and then to housewives and teen moms and Heidis and snookies and a generation of young girls who look up to the role models who manage to turn an unenthusiastic blowjob into an empire.

Young people who think talent, my talent is being me and you wanting to live my life.

Kylie Jenner is a billionaire based on her ability to sit near a pool.

For the generations who are always on and on about this is my voice and I have something to say, an awful lot of that something is about lip gloss.

All right, that's our show.

I want to thank my guests, Nick Gillespie, Heidi Heitkamp, and David Shore.

You were a great crowd.

I thank you very much.

We'll see you next week.

One more week, maybe.

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.