Ep. #556: Megyn Kelly, Ezra Klein, Sen. Jon Tester

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 Maud.

Thank you very much.

Oh, thank you.

Great to see you.

Great to see people.

People, actual human beings.

Look at this.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

Great to see you.

We were.

We were off last week, in the words of Ted Cruz.

I'm back.

What I miss

Ted Cruz, Good for comedy, this guy.

Proof that shit can step in itself.

He's just.

And I'm not making fun of Texas.

You know, I go to, I used to, and I could travel.

That may happen again.

Go to Texas a lot.

And Texas is fun.

But boy, I tell you, it is.

It is a fun place.

Not used to the cold, though, there in Texas.

And men were showing up in the emergency room with their lips stuck to their gun.

Terrible.

Just, they had had a cold snap down there that you can't believe.

On the highway,

the truck nuts were shriveled on the vehicles.

It was.

And Ted Cruz, of course, you know this.

He bugged out and went to Cancun

and then blamed it on his kids.

He said, I was trying to be a dad.

Yeah.

Except when they lower the lifeboats.

Then I try to look like mom.

Oh, yeah, the Republican

Republican Party, they are struggling right now.

They need heroes because I'm sure you also saw this the week we were off last week, Rush Limbaugh died.

Oh, please, hold your tears.

His legacy will live on whenever a rube is yelling fuck yeah by a transistor radio.

So

I kid Rush.

He's gone now.

We can't hear him.

But

hey, there's scandals on the other side, too.

Andrew Cuomo in New York, you've read about that.

Now he's got a

sexual harassment scandal.

Some woman in the office says he shouldn't have done flirting.

I don't know, you know,

kissing that shouldn't have happened, jokes that were not good.

I know it sounds cheap.

It was actually very romantic.

He said to her, I want to grow old with you and then put you in a home and cover up your death.

But

American politics, it's so screwed, right?

I mean, the crazies are just in ascendant now, right?

I mean, the 22-year-old woman, did you see this this week, who part of the Capitol riot, who got in there and stole Nancy Pelosi's laptop?

There's a video now of her dancing to techno and giving the Heil Hitler salute.

And that stuff is very offensive, but techno?

That's.

And all the crazies are meeting this weekend.

You know what this weekend is for the conservatives down in Florida?

It's CPAC.

That's the Conservative Political Action Conference.

They have it every year.

It's the Woodstock of conservatives.

And oh, it is a big deal for them.

All the latest strains of COVID are going to be there.

It's really something.

And

they have

Orlando, Florida is hosting it.

They got a big banner over Main Street.

Welcome reality deniers.

It's really.

And I have sad news to report from that site.

Our break from having to listen to Donald Trump is coming to an end.

It was a lovely few weeks, which will be known to future historians as the Great Quiet.

But he's going to be the keynote speaker at the end, the final speaker.

And this is, look at this.

This was what they were doing in today,

wheeling in the golden calf.

Boy, Trump's party is stuck on him like gorilla glue, aren't they?

They just, we love this guy.

And I know what's going to happen.

He's going to get up there and say that he's the nominee.

And no one's going to object to this.

You know, they're already on this page, and he's not going anywhere, and he's going to return, and he's not going.

He already has a slogan for 2024.

Let's get done what we never started.

All right, we got a great show.

We have Senator John Tester and Ezra Kleiner here.

But first up, she is a journalist and the host of the Megan Kelly Show podcast, Megan Kelly, is over here.

Megan Kelly.

Oh, hello.

Wow.

Look at you today.

You're ready to be over COVID, huh?

Finally got dressed up and put my hand up.

I was going to say, you look like you got your old Fox News outfit on there.

That's exactly right.

I'm wearing more than I used to wear on that that show.

They encouraged you to do that, right?

Well, so I hear.

Come on.

No, honestly, they never did with me.

That was one.

Didn't you have to show yourself?

No, no, no.

No one ever told me that.

Really?

I have heard other women say that, but I mean, I was one of their principal anchors.

Yeah.

And in the 14 years I was there, no one ever told me I couldn't wear pants.

And if you look at my history, I was wearing them all the time.

Well, you know, I always thought of you as the Marilyn Munster of Fox News.

What does that mean?

Well, you know, she was surrounded by monsters, but she was pretty and blonde and normal.

You know, she, you never watched the monsters?

Thank you.

I did, but I was like four.

Who remembers the monsters?

Well, I wasn't four.

I watched them last night, I think.

No,

anyway,

what do you think about your old shop there?

I mean, could you even work there today?

Well, I mean, look, I'm focused on being in my own independent lane, which I like right now.

No, but I'm saying they have gotten crazier.

Look, there are personalities there who went hard right during the Trump administration, right?

Like Maria Bartaroma sounded very different than when I was there.

Lou Dobbs kind of sounded the same as he always did.

Lou Dobbs used to be on

CNN.

Yeah.

He was on CNN.

He was normal.

He had the highest rated show on Fox Business talking like that, right?

So there was an audience for that.

But when I look at him, that's not my brand of programming, but when I look at him, I don't think he's any more committed to his hard right partisanship than Don Lemon is committed to his hard-left partisanship.

You know, I mean, the cable networks are doing that now.

They're leaning into the far right and the far left.

Okay.

Well, I agree that there's crazy on both sides, but that's a false equivalency, don't you think?

Because what Lou Dobbs believes is that the election was stolen.

I mean, I don't agree with Don Lemon on everything, but

he's not.

He's not living in an alternative reality.

Well, I don't know about that.

But look at Rachel Maddow in Russia Gate, right?

I mean, she went totally down the rabbit hole and was embarrassed by that.

Lou Dobbs, same thing on the crazy election claim.

So there's plenty of blame to go around.

I think at this point in

our universe, you have to decide on a personality you trust.

You know, at Fox, if I'm going to watch television news, I'll still watch Brett Baer.

He's a straight shooter and I trust him.

But when I'm trying to find my own news, I just read as much as humanly possible on the right and the left.

Go to realclearpolitics.com every morning, read one from the left, one from the right.

Sadly, you got to work at it if you want to find straight, factual media these days.

Okay, so I want to talk to you about the schools because I really just wanted you back here because I read this that you took your kids out of the school in New York, and I have been hearing anecdotally

very much the same thing from many parents.

You know,

parents confide in me, I guess, because I don't have kids.

It usually starts with, you're so lucky you don't have kids.

And then I hear about their problems.

But just tell us

why,

basically, you did this.

Yeah.

Well, we loved our schools.

We were in the New York City private school system.

Our boys went to an all-boys school and our daughter to an all-girls school.

Our teachers loved the students and the faculty and the parents.

And they were definitely leftist.

I mean, we're more center-right, but that was fine.

You know, my whole family are Democrats.

It wasn't like I was bothered by the fact that they leaned a bit left.

But then they went hard left.

Then they started to take a really hard turn towards social justice stuff.

And at our boys' school in particular, it started with when our son was in third grade, they unleashed a three-week experimental trans education program on these eight and nine-year-old boys.

And it wasn't about support.

It was about,

we felt like it was more about trying to convince them, like, come on over.

And the boys started to get confused, and they had to implement this system where they raised their hand.

If you're really confused, put up a one.

If you're just a little confused, too.

How old are they now?

They were eight and nine at the time.

And we objected and so did a lot of other parents to the point where the school had to apologize for that one, which they very rarely did.

Then our kindergartner was told to write a letter to the Cleveland Indians objecting to their mascot.

Now he's six.

Like, can he learn how to spell Cleveland before we, you know, activate him?

He lives in New York City.

We got buses, we got subways, we got crime.

He's got things to worry about other than social activism.

And if he's going to be activated, Doug and I should do it.

Not a kindergarten teacher.

didn't run by.

This is what I've heard from parents.

And these are all liberal, by the way, people

who say

my kids are not ready to be told they're white supremacists.

That's right.

And I'm not ready to be told they are supreme.

I'll tell you, Bill, on this, we're not left and right.

We're not black and white.

This is a question of reason and unreason.

But you talked about this letter that the school put out.

So this is on the racist.

Can I read some of the things that are from this letter?

Unless people think I'm losing my mind.

This is in the, this is a

there's a killer cop sitting in every school where white children learn.

White children are left unchecked and unbothered in their homes, one sentence starts.

Well, how old do you have to be before you can just be unchecked and unbothered?

You know, what age do you get bothered?

I'm tired of white people reveling in their state-sanctioned depravity, snuffing out black life with no consequences.

You know, go reform white kids.

You know,

it bothers me so much that I have to be on this side of this issue.

Yeah.

Because I've always been a civil rights advocate.

You know, and don't make me Tucker Carlson.

You're the fucking nuts.

This is insane.

As black bodies drop like flies around us by violent white hands, there is racist problems in this country, but this is hyperbole.

And this is making people crazy.

And children, what is, I mean,

this is not the way we get to the promised land.

Absolutely not.

It's divisive, it's racist, and it's having exactly the opposite effect of the one they intend.

And it is not that all the black people in our school or other schools are in favor of this kind of talk.

My friend Coleman Hughes, who's 24, he's a liberal, he's a Biden voter, you know Coleman, he's been speaking out about this as a black man saying, How dare you presume to know how I feel to try to, I mean, it's pejorative to him.

Like, the whites are the ones who understand, who are arrogant and in control and work hard, right?

These are all the terms now associated with white supremacy.

And then the white people feel bad and feel judged because they're told they're white supremacists because of a pigmentation over which they have no control.

It's so divisive and counterproductive.

And it wasn't just our school in New York.

And it's not just New York.

I mean, all over New York, New York privates, New York publics, there was no place to move them in New York to get away from this.

So it wasn't just our school.

There's a a public school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan that just got in the news because they gave out this panoply of eight categories into which all white people fall.

And on the one end is white supremacist, and on the other end is,

it was white traitor, basically, white abolitionist.

And they're really encouraging you to be more of a white traitor.

It's like everybody gets divided into oppressed or oppressor, right?

On racial identity, on sexual identity.

Cooper Teener, California, they did the same thing.

They took eight and nine-year-olds and made them deconstruct their racial and sexual identity to figure out whether they were an oppressor or the oppressed.

Eight-year-olds, right?

I mean, this is really damaging.

And as you get older, what the studies show is these sort of implicit biased education efforts bring out racism.

So if somebody's having racist thoughts in the back of their head, it brings it to the frontal lobe, and more people act on their latent racism than they otherwise would have.

Did you read about Smith College?

Oh, so I I interviewed Jodi Shaw.

Okay, if people don't know what's going on, this is one of the most liberal colleges in the country for many decades, I think it would be safe to say.

Yes.

And there is a black student there, and she accused someone of, I think it was a janitor, was it, of racial profiling because she was eating in a dorm.

But it turned out that she was just someplace where she shouldn't have been.

She was not supposed to be in the location.

This janitor had been told, this custodian, if you see a student in there, you got to remove them.

They're not allowed to be in there.

So he saw somebody.

He called to the security to say somebody's in there and she was removed.

And from that point forward, the student who was black kept saying,

I'm sitting while black.

This is a racist institution.

This custodian's racist.

Some teacher she passed on the way into the dorm.

She said she was racist too.

All that woman did was pass her and just wave.

That's it.

The assumption was that she reported her.

These people, the custodian, the teacher, had their lives ruined.

Ruined.

The one woman got put on administrative leave, or she got ultimately furloughed, trying to look for another job in a restaurant.

The restaurant owner's like, aren't you that racist?

They did nothing wrong.

Nothing wrong, but the student wasn't disciplined.

And we're seeing this more and more.

I just interviewed a girl from a school in the Midwest, St.

Louis, private school, Catholic, all-girls.

She was 17.

A black student there said that this 17-year-old girl had stood up in the middle of a class, looked at her, and said, black lives do not matter.

Now, if that had happened, can you imagine the uproar?

The girl said, I never did that.

The teacher said, she never did that.

No one other than the one accuser was claiming she did that.

And the tape, the class was videotaped.

And the videotape, according to the girl and her lawyer, does not reflect anything of the kind.

The school won't turn it over, but they're not claiming it shows that.

Did they discipline the accuser for ruining this girl's reputation?

She became the scourge of St.

Louis.

Nope.

They just kept looking at her saying, all white people are white supremacists.

Your family loves Trump.

You have a supportive flag for police on your laptop, and therefore you're in the wrong.

I mean, this is getting nuts.

We are dividing children from one another baselessly.

And at a time when teenage suicide is at an all-time high, you know, kids come into this world, these little boys in particular, white kids, they can't control that they're white, same way as we used to be doing to black kids,

treating them as less than because of their pigmentation.

And the answer to that racism is not more racism.

Yeah, the quote from this student was, all I did was be black.

It's outrageous that some people question my being at Smith College and my existence overall as a woman of color.

I don't think that's what's going on at Smith College in 2021.

Again, I'm with you.

Of course, we should all acknowledge that there is racism in this country, and we have a horrible, sorry history.

We don't have an exactly horrible, sorry present, certainly as much as it was in the past.

That doesn't mean there's not lots of work to do, and we should do it.

But we should all, but, but,

but,

but don't gaslight me.

Don't tell me things are going on that there, I just don't think, and I feel like this is beyond race.

I feel like it's a generational thing where So many people want their identity wrapped up in being a victim.

Right.

But it's funny because that's the push now.

Yeah, you can applaud that without going to hell if you agree with it.

There you go.

That's the push now is to lean into victimhood.

And it's not just a race thing.

I mean, I see it with some of my fellow women.

You know, it's not that the Me Too situation wasn't real, but we don't have to lean into victimhood, even when we might be victims.

I mean, I would say to you as somebody who's

in my life.

Many of them.

Well, listen, even if you are a real victim, which I have been in the past too, it isn't psychologically helpful to lean lean into it.

I always use the word target.

I was the target of certain men.

That didn't make me anybody's victim.

And the more you wallow in that mentality, the more you veer toward negativity and attract more of it in your life.

And what we're doing right now to children is encouraging exactly the opposite.

And then when it comes, when whatever comes their way, they see it through that lens.

We're setting them up to fail.

So it's very damaging.

Okay.

Well, I thank you for coming on and talking about this.

Not an easy subject.

I hope someday we don't have to talk about it.

But thank you, Megan.

All right, Megan Kelly, let's meet our panel.

Okay.

And there he is in the New York Times opinion columnist and host of the Ezra Klein Show podcast.

Ezra Klein is over here.

Ezra, how are you doing?

Good, how are you?

He is a Democratic senator from Montana who also happens to be the Senate's only working farmer and he's the author of Grounded, a Senator's Lessons on Winning Back Rural America.

Senator John Tester.

Senator, great to see you.

Thank Thank you.

The only working farmer, is that right?

Yeah, look, I think there's a lot of people involved in agriculture in the Senate, but I'm the one that signed up

for the FSA office, and we're also the ones that do the work, my wife and I.

And you're from Montana, of course.

So you're not from either Texas or California.

Let's talk about them.

Because it's interesting, those two states, my state and Texas, where a lot of Californians, by the way, have gone recently there is an exodus there to Texas

both having a lot of troubles you've written about California recently I was very sympathetic to what you were writing I think you maybe you were sympathetic to what I've been saying about it I have my days without waiting for solar chart we're going to get to that in a minute it's up to 1103

but it seems like What we have here is a case of one state that is terribly overgoverned and one state that's terribly undergoverned.

As sweeping generalizations go, is that true, you think?

Actually not.

So I think weirdly California is undergoverned.

Part of the point of that column is that it's really hard for a lot of California politicians to get anything done.

So in California, in LA, I talked about Eric Garcetti.

He got LA to pass a huge homelessness initiative, Measure H, passed a sales tax, the whole thing.

But then it took three years to open the first homeless shelter because in LA, every community would organize to keep the homeless shelter from coming into their area.

California's leaders did want to do high-speed rail, but like individual cities, individual places, individual lawyers stopped it.

So one of the weird things about California is as much as it seems really progressive, and this is the point I make in the column, a lot of people in it, a lot of folks who have like Black Lives Matter signs in their front yard and say every life is, you know, kindness is everything and no human being is illegal, they actually organize against anything that would bring more equity and create change in their individual lives.

And as you see there, there's a lot of folks at the top of California government who want to speed solar power, and then getting individual local governments to allow more building or change local regulations is unbelievably hard because how fractured and decentralized power is in the internal structures.

I think we're seeing the same the same thing under different terms.

Maybe I used the wrong term with overgo.

All I know is I had 11 people at my house on Tuesday.

Now, I've shown the shed.

This is the shed that took three years to build, and these are 11.

Now, these are, by the way, these are all nice people.

I talked to them.

They're smart.

They're professional.

It's not their fault.

It's just, this is like the answer to the joke, how many

state officials does it take to screw in a light bulb?

11, apparently.

And I'm appreciative that they even came out to the house.

But just like, really?

If that's not the definition of over-governing, I don't know what it is, but something is wrong that these people have to do these different jobs to just do something.

Very simple.

I'm just switching over to solar.

I'm not putting a helicopter pad on my roof.

You know?

That might work too, though.

1,130 days.

I would ask the question,

why?

I mean, the regulation should fit the risk.

And if you're willing to make the investment yourself to put up the solar panels.

Yeah.

And

who's really taking the risk here?

John, I took a year and three inspections to put in a new garage door.

And I said to the guy, if it falls on my head, that's my fucking problem.

Okay, so California has

395,000 regulatory restrictions.

In Walnut, you can't

fly a kite higher than 10 feet.

In San Francisco, you can't carry bread, cakes, or pastries in open baskets or exposed containers.

In San Jose, it's illegal to own more than two dogs or cats.

In Long Beach, you can't put anything in your car but a garage.

I'm going to read this quote from James Vanderbeek.

He was on Dawson's Creek.

Remember him?

Okay, he's one of the many people who left California.

Here's what he said.

He wrote this.

This is interesting.

He said, at the park in Beverly Hills near where we just moved away from, we were not allowed to fly a kite.

Also not allowed at any park, riding a bicycle, climbing a tree, throwing a ball against a wall, learning from an instructor, using weights, wearing cleats.

You couldn't use the batting cage.

Only the Democrats could suck the fun out of a park.

And

he said, this is why we're moving.

And then he goes to Texas and gets stuck in the cold and has no water.

So

I don't know what my question is.

Like where would you rather live?

Which is worse?

Well I think the problem here is you need to apply a little common sense, which is I think what you're trying to apply, Bill.

And when we have folks out there that say we want to do away with all regulation, we want to do away with all regulation.

Some regulation is actually necessary.

And the problem with these kind of regulations...

They give a bad name.

That's right.

They give a bad name to the regulations that are necessary.

But and here's what's going on in Texas, of course.

It's the opposite.

I don't think Ted Cruz is going to pay any political price for that.

I mean he's down in the polls now, yeah.

But when it comes time, you know, they all always think Texas is going to go blue or purple and it never does because they don't even think you have to govern anymore.

Right?

We're in this like post-performance era, at least in a place like Texas, where it doesn't matter how bad you fucked up the job of governing, because that's not what it's about.

It's about making an ad where you're firing a a gun and

mean tweeting.

Right?

I mean, that's what it's owning the libs.

So how do you,

I mean, there's a reason why that happened in Texas, but I don't think they will pay a political price.

Do you?

I don't know.

I mean,

he wants to be president.

I mean, that's what Ted Cruz wants to do, okay?

And it's four years out to the next presidential election about

and people may forget about it by then.

But I will tell you, leaving your dog home in the cold is an unforgivable sin.

I don't know if you actually did that, but.

But John, you said the way many of us Democrats tend to speak to Americans is broken, dogged up by self-righteousness and identity politics, and we're getting whipped in the messaging war.

You know, I mean,

this is what I always say about the underperforming Republicans, is that people would vote for the Democrats, but then it's like, oh, I don't like them, but these guys are, I hate these.

And the Republicans are masters at taking issues that are not mainstream and saying this is what Democrats believe in when that's not the case.

The problem is, Bill, is I don't think Democrats get out into places that they need to get out and tell their story.

And sometimes these are tough conversations to have.

But the truth is, as I always point out, if you walked into Pep's bar in Big Sandy and somebody said, John Tester, aren't you a Democrat?

What do you stand for?

And I'd say, you know what?

I stand for making sure we've got good public education, making sure our veterans are taken care of, making sure we've got an infrastructure for our next generation.

Everybody in the bar, and most of them would be Republicans, but everybody in the bar would give you applause.

And we, as Democrats,

tell our story.

Who doesn't say that stuff that you just said?

Who's against veterans and infrastructure and

leaving dogs?

When's the last time we passed the infrastructure infrastructure bill, Bill?

But that's.

But doesn't this go to the problem?

So, this is true in one way in California, but then it's also true in the Senate.

It's been driving me crazy the past couple days.

So they're going to cut the minimum wage increase out of the bill

because it can't get through budget reconciliation, this weird end run you can do around the filibuster.

And so now there's a bunch of ideas that maybe you'll tax companies that don't pay a $15 wage because that's a way of getting around the rules.

And the only reason you need to do all this is because Democrats, in this case, can't get 51 votes to get rid of the filibuster.

It isn't enough.

It isn't enough to want government to do good things.

You have to rebuild government so it can do good things.

Rebuild, meaning.

Yeah, like actually change the rules.

Like if you don't like how things work, you're 100% right.

They keep not passing infrastructure bills because things can't get 60.

And then I turn on the TV and Senator Manchin and Senator Sinema say, we will never change the filibuster and we will never vote to overrule the parliamentarian on budget reconciliation.

And so all those good things they say they support, like veterans and infrastructure, and they say they support all of it.

They don't support it more than they support leaving government exactly the way it is.

And if that's what you truly prioritize, they don't get anything done.

And needing 60 votes is a bastardization to begin with.

It's not in the Constitution, right?

No.

They didn't write the Constitution saying, yeah, to pass something in the Senate, it's got to be 60-40 or whatever.

And they could have.

They thought about it.

The Federalist Papers thought a whole bunch of things from both Hamilton and Madison about why that would be a bad idea.

And the line is

to embarrass the majority.

That is where they come down on supermajorities.

And that's

the system we have.

It's exactly the system we have.

But I hate to be the bad person here, but I will tell you that I think parties, it's usually me.

I take over.

I'm trying to fill your shoes, Bill.

But the truth is, is that filibuster, I think, was meant to bring parties together so you had bipartisan bills.

Why is that important?

That's important because if you just have simple majority, every time Congress changes hands, what you did two years ago will be repealed and you go in a different direction.

And I think if there's one thing that the country does need that I think is important, it's predictability and consistency.

And I think that's where it's at.

Look, Ezra, you were exactly right.

It's being abused to the max and it's no longer about getting bipartisan groups,

bipartisan groups of senators together to pass a piece of legislation.

Now it's used to stonewall.

It's used to stop.

And for those reasons, I think we do need to go back and take a look at it.

But I think we ought to give give this Congress a chance to screw up before we change it.

That's my opinion.

John, what do you say to

I mean, you got, I think, I mean, Trump came hard after you in 2018.

He did indeed.

Trump really wanted to get your ass and he failed.

And you got, I think, 7% of Republicans in Montana.

Yep.

Pretty good in Montana.

That's pretty darn good.

Enough to win.

But

when I see this polling now, like 58%, I think, of Trump supporters think think the Capitol riot was Antifa.

Again, you know, I mean they think that, a lot of them think that the snow in Texas was fake snow from,

no, I'm not joking, from Bill Gates.

But, you know, two weeks before that, it was Jewish space lasers.

What do you say to win over a person like that?

Because, you know, we have to tread this fine line.

I do it myself.

It's like very often I'm preaching, like, we can't just insult these people.

You know, you just can't say you're stupid.

And inside you're going, oh my God, I just want to say that you're so fucking stupid.

How do you talk to someone who believes in things like this?

How do you win that person over there?

Well, I'm not sure you win over everybody.

You just got to win one more than the other.

So you just punt on those people.

No, I think you still have to talk to them.

You still have to talk common sense and what you believe in and what your vision is for the country moving forward.

I think that's really important.

And I think for some of those folks, it may trigger something in their mind that goes, you know what?

I might believe all this stuff, but I like that person.

And they'll end up voting for you.

That's a lot of people.

Can I try one weird argument on this that most people don't believe, but I do.

This is part of the reason I obsess over things like the filibuster, because when you can't pass stuff fast and make it so government is changing people's lives in a visible way, weird symbolic politics comes in to fill the gaps.

Stories, like nothing has any consequences.

So look, you might have people out there like, listen, I don't like the Jewish space lasers, but I do like that there's a new road near my house.

And for a long time in American politics, the way you build and rebuild and change majorities was governing.

People liked that they got health care through Medicare.

They liked the New Deal.

They liked the Reagan tax cuts.

But when government stops being able to move quickly, I'm much more worried about this than I am worried about unpopular things getting reversed because what we see is like when government becomes just people fighting, then like who cares what you believe?

Like believe space lasers, believe Antifa, believe the snow, right?

You don't they need the fair part

where they tried to get rid of

is it earmarks?

They're bringing them back.

Or basically, little bribes.

That's how things get done.

They're bringing them back.

What's Spielberg's Lincoln?

How did he get the 13th Amendment passed?

Bribes.

Little things.

What?

You're laughing, but you know it's true.

You've got to promise people little things.

Yeah, I agree with John.

Earmarks aren't bribes.

Earmarks aren't bribes.

Earmarks are congressionally directed spending.

Okay, so who's better?

Yeah, for like the Museum of Forests.

No, come on, Doug.

I mean,

it's often for nothing.

They have to be able to be debated.

They have to to be debated.

I'm with you, bro.

And I'm saying that.

But the point is, who do you want doing this?

Do you want somebody who knows their state saying, you know what, we need this bridge?

Or do you want somebody in a cubicle that maybe never been to Montana or California to see your solar panels?

All right, so I saw Mike Lindell is in the news.

You know Mike Lindell, show his picture.

He's the MyPillow guy, big Trump supporter, super Christian conspiracy theorist, former crackhead.

I'm not saying that as a slam or a slur, that he is very honest about it.

Anyway, he's getting

reformed his life.

Very good.

Look how easy it is to get them to applaud.

He's being sued by the Dominion Voting Machine Company for $1.3 billion because he keeps claiming that the election was rigged and phony and all that.

So apparently, he's not going to go away.

We thought it'd be a very good week to do 24 things you don't know about the My Pillow Guy,

Mike Lindell.

24 things.

I only switched over to My Pillow after Mike Cocksock didn't take off.

In high school, I was voted most likely to sell a sack of foam to idiots.

I no longer do drugs.

I just sound like I do.

Mike Lindell.

I took the mastermind out of Criminal Mastermind.

When I was a crack addict, I knew I'd hit rock bottom when I thought about selling my bottom for a rock.

It's just a joke.

I'm a Christian, and the Bible says homosexuality is a sin, but sometimes a guy's got to score an eight ball.

Again, we're just kidding.

He didn't do that.

We're just making jokes.

Mike Pence says my pillows are his favorite to bite.

I'm an evangelical Christian and if you were a dipshit who made $300 million selling pillows, you'd believe in God too.

All right.

We kid, we kid with good grace and humor and it's all it's all with it's all with love.

Okay

so I want to talk about COVID now.

Can we be a little happy?

Can we be a little happy about where we are now COVID-wise as opposed to where, I mean, it's like

they really don't want you.

I think it's counterproductive.

I really do.

The constant gloom and gloom, and it's always a new strain from Satan is coming.

And

we're coming up on one year.

of shit.

And I'm sorry, can I quote Dr.

Marty McCarry, surgeon and professor of health policy at Johns Hopkins, says, at the current trajectory, I expect COVID will be mostly gone by April, allowing Americans to resume normal life.

I don't know who Dr.

Marty McCarry is, and I don't care.

I love him.

I think he's right.

I think he's a very, he's ghosted.

He's a professor, whatever, whatever the fuck he is.

I love him.

And look, okay, six weeks ago, there was 300,000 cases.

Now it's down to 50,000.

The vaccines are working.

Johnson ⁇ Johnson, there's coming on the market.

You get it right with your pimple cream, I guess.

And at the market,

by summer, they're going to be giving the shit away.

I'm telling you, they're probably going to be more than enough.

In five weeks' time, by the end of March, we'll probably have vaccinated 150 million people.

So

is that the wrong approach to say

let it because otherwise I think people go, oh, you know, what's the point of even trying if we're always going to be living with it?

Fauci, such a downer.

You know,

we're masks forever.

I don't want to wear a mask forever.

That's not healthy either, by the way, wearing a mask.

I guess we have to do it.

But breathing your stale air, not healthy.

Not healthy.

So I want to be, yeah, I don't want to wear a mask forever.

So I've been writing the most pessimistic columns for a year.

If you go back a couple weeks, you can see this piece I did on the strains in the New York Times about how these were going to be, this going to be potentially a period of hell before the vaccines come.

I think people are afraid to be caught wrong, wrong, optimistic, but I am feeling more optimistic and for three reasons.

One, when I wrote that,

when these strains were exploding in the UK, in Portugal, in Denmark, in South Africa, you looked at the numbers, like, oh my god, like between here and the vaccines is going to be just a period of unbelievable death and destruction.

And now the strains are under control.

Like they could, we could be wrong.

In three weeks, things change.

Like if the facts change, I'll change my mind.

But they're down in the UK, they're down in Portugal, they're down in South Africa, which is not vaccinating at heavy rates.

Meanwhile, the vaccines are unbelievably effective.

In the Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson-Johnson, and AstraZeneca Oxford trials, not one single person was hospitalized or died.

Not one single person.

Those are extraordinary vaccines.

And America, having done like everything wrong for a year, we did a terrible job on a lot of stuff for a year.

We actually have the best vaccination program of any major country, save maybe the UK and the world.

We could really be in an extraordinarily better place in 60 days.

There are always things that could go wrong, but we are getting to a place where if we get enough of 65 and over folks vaccinated, which is happening real quick, and people with comorbidities, the level of risk, you know, in 60 days, 100 days by summer can be pretty acceptable.

It's not going to go to zero.

Like,

there are diseases that are going to be a lot of fun.

And we can't explain.

And we can't expect that.

But it can go to something where you can have a normal life again.

And that's why, like, get vaccinated.

The supplies that you open up can't vaccinate.

People cannot expect numbers to ever go to to zero with anything.

No, there will be a lot of things.

It's like a flu, potentially.

Life's a rough game.

It is.

None of us gets out of it alive.

And things are moving.

No.

You don't die yet yet.

That's a fact.

But

things are moving very, very well.

And I think we need to recognize that.

But I do think,

to think from a medical standpoint, and I'm a farmer, I'm not a doctor, that could is the operative term.

There's things that can go wrong.

So what they're saying is just continue to wear the mask, social distance, use good hygiene.

We're headed in the right direction.

And I think that I don't know anybody that's not just sick of this virus and they want to get it behind us.

But there's good signs out there.

When I flew in today, the plane was two-thirds full and it was a big plane.

I haven't seen that since February of last year.

So things are moving in the right direction.

And I think we should applaud.

I don't know what they were doing on the planes, but something

I made fun of that when they were first, I said, why can't I get on a plane breathing right next next to the guy who is recycled coughs and farts?

And I can't go to a baseball game, you know, and sit outside where it's healthier three feet away from somebody else.

They must be scrubbing the air on those planes.

They are.

Because I never hear of something going wrong on a plane.

There have been a few, but why can't we do that everywhere then?

Why the plane?

It's magic.

It's a ventilation system.

Yeah.

Well, only available at 30,000 feet?

This ventilation?

The planes are small.

Like, the planes are small.

It's not that much airplane.

I know, but you could do do it.

It's beyond our technological capability.

No, look, this is to go back to where it's infrastructure spending.

I mean, a bunch of the money in that Biden bill, I think there's $130 billion in there to retrofit schools.

A lot of that is ventilation.

We could spend money to make the world safer.

Policy can do good things if we decide to do it.

The planes had a reason to do it and they had the money to spend.

Other places should do it.

We should have a lot more ventilated.

By the way, not just for COVID.

Like, air pollution is way worse than people think all the time.

We can actually make the world cleaner and kids' IQs will go up, people aren't going to get sick.

Yeah, let's spend some money on both of you.

Well, let's think of spending money, John.

And you are the defense subcommittee.

I'm the chair of the defense subcommittee.

Appropriations.

Okay, so appropriations.

So that's a big job.

A lot of money.

Very important about where a lot of the money goes.

Can I just military budget Congress just passed 50 percent higher than the Cold War average when we were in an arms race?

All told, the U.S.

military budget in in 2019 exceeded the next 10 countries' defense budgets combined.

Yeah, I've been on this for 25 years.

You're good at it.

It's just terrible.

The F-35,

we've spent $1.7 trillion on this thing for 20 years trying to make it a thing.

And now we realize it'll never be a thing.

the F-35.

We just bombed Syria and we didn't use it.

It was supposed to replace the F-16.

It's a turkey.

I mean, I feel bad about this, but that's not $1.7 trillion that we.

So

our

Pentagon budget is so bloated, and we conflate the term defense, I think, with defense contractors.

Like a lot of this money is going to defense contractors.

It's socialism.

for defense contractors.

It's not really making us safer.

It's not really up to date on what the threats are.

Are you,

Senator John Texter, going to be the one brave enough to abide by what Eisenhower said when he left about the military-industrial complex and take them on?

I think,

uh-oh.

Sure.

I think it's about accountability, Bill.

I mean, truthfully, there isn't anybody in this room or anybody that's watching this show that doesn't want this country to be safe.

They want it to be safe.

The question is, is there spending the money in the right ways to keep this country safe?

No.

And you say no, and you may be correct.

It's up to people like me, me and people like me, to ask questions and hold people accountable and make sure these dollars are spent in a way that truly is getting the biggest bang for the taxpayer.

Bill would say, we're wasting a lot of dough and we've been wasting a lot of dough for 25 years.

I want to be able to get these folks in front of me.

And by the way, I want to get folks on the outside looking saying, you know, this is is why they're right or they're wrong, that this money needs to be spent.

So that you make good decisions based on good information.

And if I'm able to get good information, we will quit the waste if the waste is there.

But do you think, just as a question,

we would be safer or less safe if we took half the money we spent on planes, took it out, and then spent 25% of that money on cybersecurity?

Like, they're not going to come at us from the air.

And it's so cheap.

And that's what I'm saying, is that we're not just fighting the last war.

We've all all heard that sort of thing.

We're fighting three wars ago.

We're fighting the Soviet Union in 1978.

And also, we never end any of the wars we are fighting.

We're still in Afghanistan.

It's wild.

That's what Trump says.

So I've had this chairman.

Oh, my gosh.

Listen, there's

once in a while.

Afghanistan.

Oh, he said it.

You must be wrong because it's the same thing.

No, let's just go by what ideas are right.

The truth is, I've had this chairmanship for two weeks.

And I think the point you make is absolutely spot on.

We need to be prepared for the next war, not the last one.

And I couldn't agree with you more.

We need to take a look at cybersecurity and make sure where we need to be in the world stage to be able to

keep the country safe.

So can I just, in the time we have left, talk a little bit about something I did not want to talk about this.

No, it's Trump.

Because, you know,

after he lost, you know, people would keep coming up to me and saying, are you going to, I said, he's gone.

Stop obsessing.

I don't want to talk about him.

But

I have to,

knowing what's going to happen this weekend at CPAC, I must bring this up about Ilduce in exile.

Because as I keep saying, the shark is not gone.

We did not, we need a bigger boat.

The shark went out to sea for a while.

It's going to come back and eat more people on the shore.

He is going to say Sunday that he's the presumptive nominee for 2024.

No one is going to oppose him.

There are nine panels at the CPAC Convention all about how the election was stolen.

None about why it was lost.

That's where they are.

If you think 2024 is not going to be a nail biter or that he isn't going to be the nominee, I think you're being naive.

I agree.

I agree with your assessment 100%.

He's absolutely the frontrunner right now and may well be their nominee in 2024.

I don't think there's any doubt about it.

Take a look what Mitch McConnell said right after the impeachment and then what he said again yesterday.

What did he say?

After the impeachment, he railed on him.

He tore Trump apart yesterday.

He said if he's a nominee, I'm voting for him.

I will say this forever.

Right.

Yes, first, yes, he said he was responsible for the riot and immoral and blah blah blah and now he's gonna vote for him.

I will say this forever.

The problem is not Donald Trump.

It is the Republican Party that enables him.

Yeah.

It is like

it is Mitch McConnell.

It is all of these folks who come in and don't have the courage to say even just like you are bad for the party at this point and have to go.

You lost.

Steve Scalise, right?

All these people who walk around D.C.

in a suit and tie and are the normal Republicans are the ones enabling him.

And at some point, and like this is what history shows over and over and over and over again, if the establishment of the right-wing party will not stand up to the demagogic players who want to take it over, your democracy will, like, is at risk of genuine collapse.

The two wings of the party that I can see are Trump and then the people who want to take his voters, who want to be his successor.

There's Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley and Nikki Haley.

They want to be the next nominee, but they're not about to get rid of his voters.

They just want to be Trump.

It's one thing.

I'm sorry, it was just one thing, like before the Jaguar ate your face to say, I think the Jaguar is not going to eat my face.

Right.

After, when you have no face and you've already gone through the Capitol insurrection to say, maybe next time it'll work out differently.

Like, they have no control over this.

Let's not, let's.

They can't keep it in check.

Let's not be insensitive to the faceless.

All right, it's time.

Thank you guys.

You were terrific.

It's time for new rules, everybody.

New rules.

New rules, the Colorado man who was feeding his kids lunch when a piece of a Boeing 777 landed in his kitchen.

Must promise the first thing he did after it crashed onto the floor was turn to them and say, see what happens when you don't finish your carrots?

New rules, since Americans love challenges, the ice bucket challenge, the cinnamon challenge, the Tide Pod Challenge, they must now take the redneck headline challenge.

All you have to do is come up with a headline that is more redneck than this one that actually ran in an Alabama newspaper this week.

Teen reunited with Pet Rooster lost an Alabama cracker barrel after Civil War reenactment.

That's real.

Okay, here's my entry.

Humping cousins knock over Tiki Torch, set Confederate flag ablaze, cause meth lab explosion in trailer park.

Your turn.

New rule, now that Daft Punk are breaking up, they have to prove that they were ever together.

Because all we ever saw was two helmets.

This could be the dudes who recorded Get Lucky, or it could be Tim Allen and Kenny G.

We just don't know.

In fact, all we do know is that they were broken up by robot Yoko Ono.

Dyrule, someone has to break it to every man who lived between 1850 and 1950 that his wife was a lesbian.

I'm sorry, Mr.

Dudley, but I've seen all 87 of these movies, and while I know you're thinking, oh, rubbish, she's just gone out riding.

Well,

not exactly.

But in a way, yes.

Nural, now that a pack of stray dogs with blue fur have been found near an abandoned chemical plant in Russia, let's pretend it's a new designer breed called a smurfapoo

and sell it to white families in the suburbs.

They'll love it.

Your youngest child will have a trusted companion, and your depressed teen can lick its fur and hallucinate.

And finally, new rule: liberals need a stand-your-ground law for cancel culture.

So that when the woke mob comes after you for some ridiculous offense, you'll stand your ground.

Stop apologizing, because I can't keep up anymore with who's on the shit list.

Now, lately, Republicans have been trying to appropriate the term cancel culture to describe what happens to them when they get adjust comeuppence for actual crimes.

And this muddying the water is unfortunate because cancel culture is real, it's insane, and it's growing exponentially.

And it's coming to a neighborhood near you.

If you think it's just for celebrities, no.

In an era where everyone is online, everyone is a public figure.

It's like we're all trapped in the hills have eyes and Wi-Fi.

Take Mr.

Emmanuel Cafferty.

He is, was,

a San Diego gas and electric worker, but he got fired because someone reported him making a white supremacist hand gesture outside the window of his truck.

But he's not a white supremac.

He's Latino.

And he wasn't making a hand gesture.

He was probably just flicking a booger.

Is this really who we want to become?

A society of phony, clenched asshole avatars walking on eggshells, always looking over your shoulder about getting ratted out for something that actually has nothing to do with your character or morals?

Think about everything you've ever texted, emailed, searched for, tweeted, blogged, or said in passing, or

even just witnessed.

Someone had a Confederate flag in their dorm room in 1990 and you didn't do anything.

You laughed at a Woody Allen movie.

Andy Warhol was wrong.

In the future, everyone will not experience 15 minutes of fame, but 15 minutes of shame.

And 62% of Americans say they have opinions they're afraid to share.

80% of Americans, young, old, rich, poor, conservative, liberal, white, minority, all hate the current atmosphere of hypersensitivity.

Yet everybody hates it and no one stands up to it.

Because it's always the safe thing to swallow what you really think and just join the mob.

So if someone asks you if Justin Timberlake owes Britney Spears an apology for not being a perfect boyfriend when they were teenagers.

Just say yes.

Easy.

As Justin did, issuing an abject apology and then vowing to return sexy back to where he found it.

Now,

you may be asking, why are we even talking about this now?

Well, the New York Times did a documentary about Britney Spears.

Really, the New York Times.

What do you see, the searing expose they have coming up on pebbles?

Anyway, in it, we find out that teenage Justin hadn't become a perfect person yet, and when asked if he had sex with the girl whose big hit was called I'm a Slave for You,

said yes.

What a cat.

Although I truly believe any guy willing to wear matching outfits can't be all bad.

Now, as for a song called I'm a Slave for You, nothing?

Is this something?

The Mandalorian's Gina Carano is a person I'd never heard of and resent that I have now.

She's some conservative wrestling chick who kicks ass on a show I wouldn't watch if I was in prison.

And she made some Nazi analogy.

Who doesn't these days?

You're like the Nazis is the new I don't like you.

It's always okay when Trump's the Nazi.

That disqualifies her for marching around planet who gives a shit in a helmet.

By the way, you can't work in Hollywood if you don't believe what we believe.

Yeah, in the 50s, that's exactly what the left complained they were being told.

Now the week before it was Chris Harrison's turn in the barrel, he's the host of The Bachelor and is stepping away.

Stepping away.

To educate himself on a more profound and productive level than ever before.

Oh, good.

Good.

Because all my life, I've looked up to the host of the fuck a Stranger show.

And if I thought I couldn't count on the bachelor for moral guidance, I don't know if I could go on.

And of course, he's not stepping away because he's the host of a televised snake pit where 32 female contestants are trapped in the Sahari house from hell.

It's because he wouldn't throw one of them under the bus when it came to light that in college he attended a dress up like we're in the old South party, which is not a type of party we should be throwing.

in that it winks at a civilization built on slavery, yes.

But apparently in 2018, millions of people were still doing it.

And mature people understand humans are continually evolving, as opposed to Wokeville, where they're always shocked we didn't emerge enlightened from the primordial ooze.

What's Chris Harrison supposed to do?

Build a time machine, go back to 2018, and knock the mint juleps out of their hands?

Maybe while he's time traveling, he can have a word with that asshole, Abraham Lincoln, who's now canceled in San Francisco.

And they're thinking about it in Illinois.

Yes, the land of Lincoln might cancel Lincoln.

Memo to social justice warriors.

When what you're doing sounds like an onion headline, stop.

All right, that's our show.

I want to thank Ezra Klein, Senator John Tuster, and Megan Kelly, and we'll see you next week.

Thank you, folks,

for being tested in every way.

Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher every Friday night at 10, or watch him anytime on HBO On Demand.

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