Ep. #545: Fareed Zakaria, John Leguizamo

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

Thank you very much.

How you doing?

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you very much

for

thank you, people.

I appreciate it.

Braving all the protocols, the masks, the separate.

Thank you so much for doing all this bullshit.

I mean, necessary bullshit.

But, geez, I was disappointed.

It was supposed to be a debate last night, right?

And then, you know, Trump got COVID, and then they said, you have to do it on Zoom.

He said, I'm not doing that.

So they had good grandpa and bad grandpa

had dueling town halls.

It was, I had a flashback to the 70s when the only choice on TV was Barnaby Jones or Matt Locke.

You know, it was.

Did you see that Trump was on NBC, Joe was on ABC, I was on THC.

It's the only only way I could get through this.

And of course the Democrats, you know, they always fuck up the optics.

Oh, shit.

As I say, as I fall off the riser.

I fucked up the optics completely, these morons.

I'm going to fix that shit.

But Biden's questioners...

were above him, so he was always looking up, you know, and squinting.

He looked like Clint Eastwood trying to decide to change a light bulb.

But the Trump one was just amazing.

Trump defended, retweeting this crazy conspiracy theory, did you see this?

About how bin Laden wasn't really killed by Obama, because of course Obama never could do anything good, so he didn't even do that.

It was a body double.

And then Obama had SEAL Team Six murdered to cover it up.

Trump said that, defended this, which led to an undecided voter from Bridgeport, Connecticut, to ask a follow-up question, are you on bath salts?

And the moderator, Savannah Guthrie, this was great.

She actually said, you're the president, not someone's crazy uncle.

Apparently, she has not read the book by Trump's niece called My Crazy Uncle.

I mean, there's actually a book about My Crazy Uncle.

So, you know, it's getting so crazy.

The October surprise that the Trump people have now, have you seen this?

It's Hunter Biden's laptop.

Joe Biden's ne'er-do-well son, Hunter, has this laptop which apparently had incriminating evidence with you know, maybe stuff about influence peddling on it that was contained in his emails.

And apparently, you know, according to this, Hunter was trading on his name, selling access to his father, accepting money for nothing, what Don Jr.

calls living the dream.

And here's the part that gets a little squirrely about the story.

How do we know about these emails?

Well, apparently Don Jr., not Don Jr.

Hunter,

took his computer, which wasn't working, to a computer repair shop, as we all do in 2020.

Do we?

Okay, maybe.

I don't know.

The computer, and left it there and forgot about it because, says Rudy Giuliani, I won't even get into how he's in this, because he was drunk.

And

the computer repairman is blind.

I'm not making that part of the story up.

No, I swear to God, it's in the paper, legally blind.

So, how the blind man knew Hunter was drunk,

how you repair a computer if you're blind, I don't know about that either.

But in the process of repairing Hunter's computer blindly,

he read, again, don't ask,

Hunter's emails and turned it over to the FBI.

Is that how you fix a laptop nowadays?

You read somebody's emails?

It's like the plumber saying, well, the problem with your pipes is you have cocaine in your underwear drawer.

And also on, apparently, again, we haven't vetted this, on Hunter's computer,

a picture of him passed out

with a hooker and a crack pipe in his mouth.

So many questions.

First of all, how do we know it was a hooker?

Could it just been a crack enthusiast

whose legs got caught in a fishing net?

You know, I.

You know, fishermen.

Also, who passes out on crack?

Is my other big question.

I always thought heroin, yes, but crack?

I thought that was more of an up drug, but, you know.

So anyway, amid all this, the hearings have been going on with the Supreme Court, with Amy.

Coney Barrett, have you seen her this week?

Oh my God.

You know, all these hearings are the same.

They're all the same.

You have a brilliant legal mind.

Can I ask your thoughts on a legal question?

No, you're in.

And you know,

I did call her a nut a couple of weeks ago, and the Trump administration put it in an ad.

They were very mad.

But come on.

I'm going to talk about her at the end of the show, but I got to say this part.

She was in this cult, Catholic Church.

No.

I mean,

a cult within a cult.

And I read this week, they thought large belt buckles

were a sin because they draw attention to the crotch.

Well good luck on the Supreme Court because you know what else draws attention to the crotch?

Clarence Thomas going, look at my crotch.

But Trump, they think this is helping them with the Supreme Court.

I don't know.

Trump is bleeding support with suburban women.

He was begging them.

This is not a paraphrase.

This is what Trump said word for word the other day in Pennsylvania.

He said, Suburban women, will you please like me?

He's so desperate.

It's like one of those desperate husbands.

Honey, I can change.

We'll take a trip.

He's ending his rallies by playing YMCA.

I'm not kidding.

A gay anthem about hooking up at the Y.

This tells me two things.

Trump doesn't know what the song is about, and Lindsey Graham is in charge of the music.

That's what this tells me.

And you know, it's not just among women he's losing.

Among all white voters, this is becoming a very unpopular ticket.

Flies have stopped landing on Mike Pence.

Oh, they asked Kamala about that this week.

She said she did notice during the debate that the fly landed on him.

But she said it was very confusing because during debate prep, they told her, if you want to make Mike Pence nervous, stare at his fly.

All right.

We've got a great show.

Got John Avalin and Noah Rothman, and a little later he'll be speaking with the very talented John Liguazzamo.

But first up,

he is the host of CNN's Fareed Zakaria, GPS, and author of the new book, 10 Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World.

Fareed Zakaria is over here.

I was so tempted by habit to lunge at you

and embrace you.

From India, this is a perfectly nice substance.

Okay, so I read your book in one big gobble.

It's great.

Great read, quick read, and also like right out of the day's headlines.

I mean, it's about the pandemic.

Very gutsy to write a book before the thing is over, right?

And they call it post-pandemic world.

Well, yeah, because we see in Europe, it's the pandemic's coming back in the fall.

This thing is far from over.

Do you worry about that?

That

something's going to happen that, you know, be like, oh, boy, I should have waited.

Well, I think, no, I think I've got it about right in the sense that what I'm talking about is we now understand

these problems in a way that we didn't.

Because this is not going to be the last pandemic.

And one of the things I talk about in the book is this should be a wake-up call to realize we've been living in a way that is very risky.

You know, if you think about the way in which we are spewing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

And eating.

The way we eat the factory.

I talk about the factory farms.

Factory farms are essentially a Petri dish for the next pandemic.

You're just going to create larger and larger, more powerful viruses.

The way we subsidize people to live at the edges of forests.

So I feel as though we've got, you know, and it's like we're driving the fastest race car in the world and we're like, who needs seatbelts?

Who needs insurance?

But

what you're really saying is we need to learn.

Yeah.

I don't know if we're the learn species.

Really?

I mean, my question to you is,

I hate to say this because it sounds so pessimistic, but I don't think one is going to do it.

In other words, one pandemic.

I don't think we're going to change after one.

I think it's going to take more than one because people are just going to go, oh, that was a fluke.

Thank God 2020 is over.

We're back to normal.

I don't see less cheeseburgers being eaten.

Well, take a look at what has happened in East Asia.

Really, these are the countries that have handled the pandemic the best.

South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, more than any other country.

Also the thinnest.

Well, but so part of it is, yes, they don't have the obesity problem, which is, you're absolutely right, a kind of disease multiplier.

But they all went through SARS and MERS, and they did badly, many of them.

Taiwan actually handled it not so well.

It was a worse.

And

they learned from it.

And they revamped their public health systems.

They moved early and aggressively.

They figured out how to do contact tracing.

So you can learn.

Now, here's the tragedy.

Taiwan has handled this better than anyone else, in my view.

24 million people in the country, seven deaths, to give you a sense.

New York State, 20 million people, 34,000 deaths.

Now, what the Taiwanese did was they used, they never did a lockdown, though.

It was smart contact tracing, testing,

you know, occasionally very selective closures, but they used good technology, phones, but they used it well.

All this stuff was invented in America.

The technology was invented in America.

The software was invented in America.

The guy running the Taiwan response was educated at Johns Hopkins.

So they have taken our secret sauce and we're watching while they're getting it right and we're foundering.

Again, I agree with all that, but you're mentioning one half of the equation in my view, the external part.

There's the internal part, your immune system, fighting it internally.

Because viruses are everywhere and you can't avoid them.

And externally, you need to do both.

They were successful because of both, because they're healthier internally.

And what I object so much about what this country did, yes, Trump, of course, fucked it up.

We expect that.

But

the people like Dr.

Fauci and those folks who are the medical assistants, they never once had the courage to ask the people to get themselves in better health as the best way to ensure this.

They're cowards.

They are cowards.

They will not ask for that little bit of sacrifice.

I agree with you, but I'll tell you one part of the the problem is we have a healthcare system that is so broken and it is particularly broken for poorer people because I saw a really interesting study which pointed out that Germans were a lot healthier than Americans and even though Germans are very rich and

they have a diet that is not completely ideal, the big difference was in Germany, your annual visit to the doctor is free.

because you know it's it's universal healthcare.

And at your annual visit to the doctor, the doctor always tells you four or five things like don't smoke, don't be overweight, exercise, put your seat belts on when you drive.

Those just those constant reminders actually play an incredibly large role in your ultimate health outcomes.

But we don't have, we have lots of millions and millions of people who don't go to the doctor because they can't afford the food.

They don't have access to good food.

I mean, that has to be part of the solution.

And the other thing is about America, I hate to say this too, but it's true.

When you look at how other countries sometimes were successful and be realistic about America, we can't.

We're just not that bright.

We're lazy.

Can I show you a little video?

I was watching the baseball game the other night.

This is what, no, I'm glad the sports is back.

It's been a real lifesaver.

First, there was none, now they're all on at once.

It's pretty amazing.

The other day, you could watch basketball, baseball, and football all at the same time.

It was a husband's dream.

This is what they do after the game.

They used to do this all the time, and now they still do.

Look at this.

They're shaking hands.

They form two lines and they slap hands with every single person.

You could not design a system to make sure that every person got every other person's germs.

That's not integral to the game.

We don't need to do that.

I just feel America can't be Sweden.

We're just not that good anymore.

Well, I.

I mean, we.

I still think it's puzzling, isn't it?

I mean, as I say, we're the country that invented the internet.

We have, you know, invented

Amazon.

That was three people.

Three smart people.

I'm talking about the rest of them.

And by the way, most of them are immigrants.

Right.

But look at, you know, I mean, you've set up exactly, you know, how do you make sure that we can open up the economy?

Look at this show.

Like, I had to get tested before I got on the plane to come here.

I had to get tested before I got into the studio.

Everyone in the audience did that.

Everyone's wearing masks.

You still have social distancing.

If you do sensible things, you can get back to normal.

The vice president of Taiwan, this guy who ran it, said to me, a lockdown is already an admission that you have failed.

What you are trying to do, because

they had to isolate and quarantine.

250,000 people.

In other words, 1% of the population.

His point was, for 14 days, we inconvenienced 1% of the population so the other 99%

could continue business as usual.

No, I mean what we're doing here I'm so appreciative of and that you would go through this and you would go through this and I'm happy to do whatever I have to do.

I just don't see it happening on a mass scale.

Just bars.

In the video you showed it, of course, it reminds you part of the problem is we have this American exceptional idea that we're the best.

I mean, you're showing a baseball, right?

This is a game where basically there's one or two other

teams from outside America in the world, and we call it the World Series.

To me, that's a metaphor, right?

It's the World Series when it's basically the US and Canada.

But bars, I really feel like bars is a big part of it.

And look, I'm a guy who loves bars.

I've spent a lot of time in bars.

I hate to speak against bars, but I feel like that's, you know, once you get a little drunk, the masks are off,

you forget about the.

I feel like that's a big part of the solution is just restaurants, yes, we could do this.

I could be doing my stand-up acts, people could be performing, and that's ridiculous.

You can be on a plane, I think you could be in a theater.

But the bars, where there's drinking involved, I think that's just a recipe to fuck the whole thing up.

Bars, you're absolutely right.

Bars are the toughest.

Churches are also tough, and I'm sure that that pains you deeply.

All right, I'll leave it there.

Fareed, thank you so much.

Great book.

Please get it.

Fareed Zakari everybody.

All right, great job.

Let's meet our panel.

I don't want to get anywhere near you guys.

Bobby Disease.

Okay, he's a CNN.

God damn it.

Now they put these in a groove so that we make sure not to get too close and then it always falls out, the fucking thing.

All right.

He is a CNN political analyst and author of Washington's Farewell, the founding father's warning to future generations.

John Avlon.

Okay.

Thank you, John.

And he is the associate editor of Commentary Magazine and author of Unjust, Social Justice on the Unmaking of America.

Noah Rothman.

Noah.

Hey, guys.

Hey.

All All guys today, huh?

Yeah.

All right, so I want to talk about the court because I've been watching Amy all week and it's very depressing.

I mean like she doesn't know about global warming, she doesn't know about you know maybe we could recriminalize homosexuality.

I mean

we got to do something about how we pick the court.

I mean this Adam Schiff was here last week and I was asking him about doesn't the Constitution need a page one rewrite, which is a tough sell because you know a lot of people think Jesus brought it personally to the founding fathers.

But the Democrats are talking about packing the court, terrible messaging, but I think they should.

And by the way, we can.

It's not that hard.

You know, you just, there's no, it's not written down.

I was saying that last week, too.

You know, Trump does everything by, oh, it wasn't written down.

We should do that.

It's not written down.

We could add three justices, and I think Biden should do it,

and then have the just, then there'll be six and six, and then have those six and six decide another three, have a court of 15.

You got to do something to even the score because the thing is rigged.

It's rigged.

Look, I mean,

Republicans have invited retaliation because of the unforgivable hypocrisy of blocking Merrick Garrett and then applying a different standard.

But that said, we got to have a democracy movement in this country that goes way beyond election day.

We've got to strengthen a lot of the institutions that Donald Trump has run roughshot over because they were unwritten democratic norms.

And look, I'm fine with talking about term limits for Supreme Court justice.

Stephen Calabre endorsed that, one of the founders of the Federalist Society.

Biden's not actually

is an institutionalist, unlike Mitch McConnell.

He doesn't actually want to pack the court.

You can hear that

between the lines.

We don't know that.

Yeah, but before an election.

We've got to have so many reforms to sort of unfuck America after this experience.

And we've got to really...

Well, why isn't this one of them?

Look, I think it is.

I think we need to take on corruption in the executive.

We've got to restrain a president's ability to pardon.

We've got to have more election reforms.

But right now, we have appointment by fluke.

Whoever dies while you're president.

You know, Reagan and Nixon got four appointments each.

Carter got none.

Kuse.

You know, Trump gets three.

The Democratic plan was Ruth Bader Ginsburg doesn't die.

That was their plan.

Well, no, she was approached in Barack Obama's term, and she actually, I believe it was the Huffington Post, where she said, who would you want to see on the court then me?

Well, this is what you get.

If you want to strengthen institutions, you don't change them every cycle, which is precisely what will happen in the event that they wanted to pursue this court packing plan.

And I welcome the opportunity for them to do so because it would require blowing up the Senate and swallowing up Joe Biden's entire term, sacrificing just about every other incremental but achievable progressive reform you could get in the interim.

So go ahead and give that one a shot, because I think it's an empty threat.

But it's better than the messaging that they're getting around hypocrisy.

Hypocrisy, the Republicans were

hypocritical in 2016, inventing a standard for themselves that they then violated.

Yeah, that's true.

And if hypocrisy wasn't the water that politicians swim in, it would hit harder.

Yeah.

But

you know, but hypocrisy used to be the unforgivable sin in politics, and then Donald Trump normalized it and made it table stakes.

And this is what's so discussed what's going on right now.

We have normalized lying, we have normalized hypocrisy, we have normalized the idea that

might makes right, and that invites a powerful response.

What we got to do is find a way to reconcile as a nation without getting rolled

when it comes to negotiating with people who evidently are motivated.

Look, Donald Trump has shown that fear and greed is still a powerful motivator for people, even in the U.S.

Senate.

Those folks have rolled over for him and abandoned so many of the principles they said they once supported.

And so we got to learn, we got to really strengthen our civic backbone to get out of it.

But as a practical matter, wouldn't it be better to have justice's appointment to an 18-year term?

Yeah.

So every two years, a president gets a pick?

So you don't have to.

So draft a constitutional amendment, pass it in Congress, submit it to the states.

Does that mean an amendment?

I think it requires a constitutional amendment to what.

Because I've learned that states don't.

You can add states.

It's not that hard.

All you got to do is...

Yeah.

But there's a reason why we've only ever done that on balance.

Even in the antebellum period, there was a balance associated with adding states to the union.

But it was corrupt then.

Yes.

Two Dakotas.

This is a stone in my shoe.

I bring it up all the time.

They must hate me in the Dakotas, but I don't care.

There should not be two Dakotas.

Well, look, the problem we're getting, and it's structural again, is that you're going to have the U.S.

Senate have 50 members,

30% of the population is going to be represented by a majority of the senators.

That's not sustainable.

And so it's one of the many reasons that we're going to need to get.

You can't have Republicans winning the popular vote one time out of the last seven and apportion four out of the last six judges.

It's what's happened, but people are going to start to lose faith in democracy, and that's exactly what we need to stop.

We need to increase faith in democracy because we've got a whole bunch of folks overseas who want to.

I want to ask about

it.

Was Columbus Day, they ripped down the statue of Lincoln in Portland.

I mean, I got to give a shout out to Fred Armison.

When he did Portlandia, Portlandia,

he got it right.

Portland, I always loved playing Portland, but I guess I missed a lot that's going on in Portland.

The mayor there, Ted Wheeler, is about to lose to someone who's proudly Antifa.

And Lincoln?

I mean, he was pretty woke for his day.

I mean, look, I'm finishing a book on Lincoln right now, so I take this personally.

What?

I'm finishing a book on Lincoln right now, so I take this personally.

But if you can't figure out the difference between tearing down a statue of a Confederate general and Lincoln, you should probably sit that one out.

Well, I mean, this is so...

And by the way, they're cutting a campaign ad for Donald Trump.

All these cats.

This kind of iconoclasm is what we were afraid of when the movement started targeting people like Confederate figures who were odious and worthy of being torn down is there was no deliberative process at work here.

It was purely mob justice, and it will get worse because there's no limiting principle.

And now we're seeing that on display.

People like Ted Wheeler in Portland and Jenny Durkham in Seattle have been terribly permissive with this organization, with these groups, with this ideology.

But the conservative movement doesn't have a champion to attack it.

Republicans do not have a champion to say, this is not what we should do.

We should be imposing what the president says, law and order.

People don't perceive of Donald Trump as the law and order candidate.

They see him as an agent of chaos.

So conservatives, people like me, are very frustrated that we do not have an effective champion to say this is wrong and we should be doing this.

Yes, and to put perspective here, Christopher Wray, our FBI director,

pissed off Trump recently because he testified, he was talking about violent extremism.

He said the biggest chunk of that are individuals motivated by

some form of white supremac ideology.

In other words, most of it is coming from the right.

He said they are responsible for the most lethal activity in the last few years.

But then he added, he said, as a point of clarification, this year the lethal attacks we've seen have all been from anti-government or anti-authority types.

So I think what he's saying is, yeah, the white supremacists are still the biggest problem, but now we've got this other group, the anarchists.

And I was reading in the New York Times, which is usually pretty sympathetic to the Portland

left.

But even they wrote this article on the front page.

The marches in Portland are increasingly moving to residential neighborhoods where demonstrators with bullhorns shout for people to come out of your house and demonstrate your support, saying that sitting idly and watching a protest without participating nowadays is to show tacit support for racism.

I'm not down with that.

No.

When I'm home, I'm home.

Yeah.

Sorry.

And this is

a totalitarian streak that runs through all extremes.

And folks on the left need to understand, look, Democrats don't need to have Antifa hung around their neck.

You know, every time a couple of protesters do something insane, they try to associate it with the Democratic ticket.

Whereas radicals in the Republican Party, I mean, you've got your militias and you also have legit folks on the far, far right serving in positions of power in Congress.

It's not commensurate.

That said, if people don't appreciate how this is a feedback loop.

between each other, that the militia groups look at Antifa and use it as an excuse to try to bring guns into the streets.

And that's one of the things we've got to watch out for around election week is because they're all

going to do armed poll watching to protect the polls from Antifa and to crack down on mythical voter fraud.

And that's going to be a powder keg we've got to watch as a country.

The interplay between these extremes is really dangerous.

There was an international group this week that monitors hot spots around the world, you know, where war might break out.

And for the first time, they said they're going to watch America on our election day.

Fun stuff, huh?

It's terrifying.

So Joe Biden during the debate said something about this antifund, particularly he'll mention Chris Wray, said, dismissed this organization as, because it's not an organization.

He said said it's an idea, man.

And it is.

But he mischaracterized those remarks to suggest that that made them less threatening.

Chris Ray's remarks were intended to scare you, because it's more threatening that they're not an organization that can be infiltrated, that can be monitored with finances you can freeze, that you can disrupt.

It's an idea.

And we don't police thought in this country.

What happened in Michigan recently is a good example.

If you're a white nationalist group, white supremacist group, going online and trying to drum up support for a terrorist plot, you're talking to the FBI.

The other person on the line is a law enforcement officer, nine times out of ten.

This is organic.

This is spontaneous.

This is something you can't police.

Interesting.

You know, I'm sure there's someone on Twitter right now saying, you know, three white guys

talking about race, that can't happen in America.

And, you know, almost always when we talk about anything racial, we have a black person on the show.

I'm just here to say, yes, three white people can talk about it too.

It would be wrong if I only talked about it without their, okay.

But having said that, I must, one other thing from that article I was,

it cited that the protests are increasingly, this is important, increasingly dominated by white people.

This is more, I always use this phrase, but more offended than the victim.

You know, and I don't know if the Democratic Party, which in the name of wokeness to racial issues, is actually not in line with black America so much because they are more liberal.

Blacks are are moderate, 44%,

moderate,

liberals, 28, and conservative, 23%.

Yeah.

That's, according to Gallup.

This is Joe Biden's strongest voting block during the primaries, wasn't it?

Correct.

And while everybody was racing to the left on social issues, on woke issues, Joe Biden cruised to the nomination behind the support of African-American voters who are progressive economically.

But don't go in for a while.

But also, you know, he did not over-index Twitter talk.

He did not over-index folks who are incredibly loud on the far left but don't represent the Democratic Party.

You know, only 20% of the Democratic Party identifies as very liberal.

You know, it's evenly split between moderates and liberals, but you've got a pretty small cohort there on the far left.

They're disproportionately loud.

And when it comes to race, yeah, it's true.

I mean,

I think 55% of whites identify as very liberal.

Democrats.

Democrats.

Democrats.

And like 39% of African Americans.

So

there is a gap here.

And this is when you get drawn into the Outrage Olympics, everybody everybody loses, but frequently you run headlong into an irony where you get a bunch of white protesters and people acting more extreme

in their politics than the African-American community that was the backbone of Joe Biden's support.

And I don't know if it's ever really that much about the African-American community.

I mean, many of them are sincere, but sometimes it just seems like, oh, you don't want to be coming in second in a, I hate racism the most contest.

You know?

Well, at least we have to have an honest conversation about race in this country, and I think we're beginning to do that.

I mean, you can't separate talking about American politics from race.

Well, that's not.

I'm not staked in the cake forever.

And that's what we all need to be able to talk about.

But some of that's not really honest.

I mean, when we're having a conversation, some of this critical race theory stuff, for example, that's now being introduced into federal departments where it's associated with diversity training.

Among the things that you have to do, one of these documents that I read.

Explain that first.

How would you define critical race theory?

Because that is the thing.

Yeah, you're right.

This is racial sensitivity training right that donald trump just found out about and boy does he hate it but they're not synonymous

but because he says they this is like i i saw this i'm sorry i'm gonna let you get back i just want to explain so people know what you're talking about i saw this uh phrase in the paper i've never seen before diversity consulting industry um i didn't know they had one and whenever i see consulting

I'm a little suspicious.

But

I certainly can imagine how racial sensitivity training could be good.

There are some people who do need that.

Like Donald Trump.

Like Donald Trump.

Exactly.

But he's saying,

and this is where I come back to you.

So that critical race theory saying you see race everywhere, would that be

an accurate?

This is a critical perspective, obviously.

I don't share this view, but it's a Marxian analysis that essentially posits that every facet of society is somehow related to race, racism, and the original sin of slavery.

And critical race theory posits, particularly people like Ibrahim X.

Kendi, who say that there is no not racist.

There is either anti-racist or racist.

It's a complete binary.

You are one or the other.

And being anti-racist requires a lot of action on your part to seek penance.

Well, isn't it also that you're either a racist or you're a racist and you don't know it?

Right, yes.

It's all of the above.

It's a very comprehensive theory, and it's beginning to work its way into aspects of our federal government, one of them being these diversity training seminars, which include some anti-racist elements.

And there was one document I saw, this was, I think it was Sandida National Laboratory, which is a premier nuclear research facility, required individuals who are participating in this seminar to confess episodes of racism in which you engaged in.

That's not something you can opt out of.

You have to confess episodes of racism because, of course, you engaged in racism.

That's so Scientology.

And if you did not know it, you must be educated on how you were.

That's so Soviet.

It is.

It's so Scientology.

Yeah, that's.

See, that's what...

Yeah.

Yeah, and look, and this is the blind spot on the left.

They don't understand how pissed off people get about extreme political correctness.

There were welly and extremes, no question.

But let's not pretend that diversity training is anywhere near as big a problem in this country as racism and as its institution.

No, no one's saying that.

No, but

some people focus exclusively on the other.

Well, you know, the president does, and while at the same time, he's going to great lengths not to condemn white, you know, nationalist groups and defend QAnon, for Christ's sake.

I mean, you know, so, you know, he'll defend anyone who likes him.

Yeah, because he's that weak and needy.

Yes.

I never think it's that much about ideology.

But Joe Biden has.

Joe Biden does not get on with this.

He seems afraid to say as much, but it would serve him well, I think, to strike a more definitive position because we all know implicitly he's not...

he doesn't believe in a lot of this.

He doesn't believe in court packing.

He certainly doesn't believe that racism permeates every facet of society and that you need to confess your original sin.

I don't think he believes that, but he is afraid to alienate the members of his constituency who do.

Sure, but I mean, again, you know, Antifa's not a big Joe Biden fan, in case you noticed.

I mean, Donald Trump didn't want to run against Joe Biden.

That's how we got in the whole Ukrainian mess in the first place that got led to the impeachment.

But all these things are sort of distractions against larger backdrop.

We are 18 days out from an election and democracy really does hang in the balance.

I mean, we need to set a good example.

And Donald Trump has said out loud, first time in our history, a president said, I might not respect the peaceful transfer of power.

I mean, Amy Coney Barrett's saying in her Supreme Court hearings, well, I don't have an opinion on voter intimidation.

Well, guess what?

It's illegal.

Let's start there.

And this is a serious moment for our country.

And so I don't want to get distracted on stuff that we're going to have to deal with for a long time because Donald Trump's a symptom, not a cause.

We're going to need to find a way to reunite as a nation.

It's going to take time.

We need to strengthen our democracy.

But let's not get our eye off the ball about getting complacent or acting like this thing is over or acting like anything's more important than this election that we've all got to show up and vote for.

Whoever you vote for, show up because we've got to defend our our democracy big time.

Well

then why do you say whoever you vote for?

What the fuck does that mean?

What it means is nobody should be telling someone else how to vote.

What we do need to do is say, look, if you're trying to not count votes, if you're trying to subvert the vote, if you're trying to subvert the popular will if it's close, and that's what Donald Trump has basically said he's going to do, that's a dangerous moment for our country.

We are walking on a knife sitting there.

Right, so why pretend that we shouldn't tell people who to vote for?

Vote for the guy who plays by the rules, at least.

I mean, what are you talking about?

What I'm saying is...

It's okay, government.

No, no, look.

Look, it's not a real secret where I am on this.

It's just like we've got a bunch of contradictions in journalism.

It's not biased to call Donald Trump a liar.

No, no.

Right?

Because he's demonstrably a liar.

Right.

So you can say these things without worrying about it.

What I'm saying is people are going to show up, but we've got to play by rules and we've got to stand up and walk to the polling places or mail in your votes because this thing matters more than any other in our lots, people.

Yeah, no, it does.

And that's why there's really only one choice.

I don't know how we.

You're a Democratic donor.

I'm not.

Well, I mean, but why

would you say that?

I mean, you know, it's like these people who are like, oh, I hate Donald Trump, and I'm going to write in Abraham Lincoln.

Oh, Jesus Christ.

It's a binary choice.

All these people who work in the administration that always say, well, you know how bad it'd be if we weren't there?

And I'm like, that's not an argument for re-election.

If we weren't.

If they weren't working in the administration, we hear this all the time for people who work in the administration.

Well, it'd be so much worse if I wasn't there.

And then they're going to pretend to be members of the resistance when it's all over.

That argument worked for me during the Bush administration.

Colin Powell, I'm glad, stayed, but it doesn't do anything in the Trump administration.

Nobody can contain him.

Nobody can, not even Ivanka.

Yeah.

And we know he has a soft spot for her.

All right, let's bring out John he is an award Emmy and award Tony winning I'm giving him every award.

That's enough Emmy Tony award winning actor and comedian originally directed his first feature film Critical Thinking now available to watch on demand John Lucasamo is with us

John

Bill what a pleasure Great to meet you longtime fan first-time interviewer.

I was looking at you.

I'm a fan of you for forever.

Oh, thank you my friend.

I was looking at your IMDb.

You have done a lot of movies man.

You have really worked and I'm an immigrant.

Yeah

you work extra hard.

You worked three times as hard to get half as far

see you could do that joke

But I feel bad for you because you know finally you get a shot to direct your own movie Critical Thinking.

I saw it.

It's terrific and then the pandemic hits

it didn't get what it should have gotten because it should have been at all the festivals, which got canceled.

But it is on streaming.

I just wanted to say to you, it's a really good movie.

So people will see it because that's the thing about movies.

They last forever.

They're around and it will be around.

And people will see this movie.

And you should be very proud of it.

It's about chess.

Oh, thank you, man.

Thank you.

I had a great time making it.

I mean, it's a great story.

Thank y'all.

It's a true story about five Latin and black kids from the toughest neighborhood in Miami called Overtown,

who, you know, the schools were defunded.

You know, there's no trickle-down economy.

We know that's bullshit.

So these people had nothing.

And this one teacher, Mary Martinez, that I played, took him to national chess champions in 1998 and then went on to win five more championships, five more years with other kids in his elective.

Do you play chess yourself?

I amateurally,

I suck.

I suck.

Okay.

Well, that's it's a level above where I am because I play Stratego.

I can act like I play it.

And I know

I know you're very outspoken on what you think is a lack of Hispanic, and I'm sure you're right, representation in show business and movies and television.

I've read quotes from you saying, and there's one guy applauding,

saying things like My Latinx brother.

If there's not, if there's not a Latino in it, what's what's the point of watching it?

Oh, yeah.

I mean, we're the largest ethnic group in America.

Come on.

I mean, we're 25% of the U.S.

box office and less than 4% of the faces in front of the camera, less than 2% of the crew, less than 1% of the stories, 0% of executives.

I mean,

it's just like living in a psychosocial erasure.

And what about the fact that voting-wise, I mean, that's what we're talking about, show business there, which is a category unto itself, but voting-wise, 32 million eligible Latino voters now, which is for the first time more than the African-American vote, which is 30 million.

So

my question is, why don't they have the same influence?

I mean, we were just talking about the fact that, you know,

Joe Biden got the nomination because of African-American support.

I mean, African-Americans really control that nomination, not that they demand a a black nominee, obviously, but it has to be black approved.

And if you have more voters, why don't Latinos have that same power?

Well, America is so binary, first of all.

You know, it's just, it's always, you know, just black and white, and the rest of us get forgotten.

But

I think part of the problem is that candidates don't reach out to us.

They don't talk about our issues.

They're not putting people that look like us in their cabinets early enough on.

So

we've improved.

I mean, since 2016, record numbers of Latinx people have registered to vote.

And they're registering to vote in record numbers right now.

And look, like people like AOC knows how to work Latin people.

You got to knock on their doors.

You got to stop.

You got to call, you got to talk to them.

Obviously, we're in COVID, so you can't be knocking on people's doors, but you got to talk to us about our issues.

Come at us, because we respond.

We're the friendliest motherfuckers in the world.

Just come at us.

Did you say Latinx?

I said Latinx, yeah.

Oh, because I read an article that said that only 3% of,

well, I can't, Latinx people know that word.

It's mostly a white thing.

Nah, nah nah it's a woke thing it's a woke thing well that's a white thing political thing it's it's latin people that one don't want latino to exclude women out because when you say quickly latino it sounds like you're just talking about dudes and you're not including our sisters in all the things they're accomplishing okay all right well i'll try to get on the page with that one um

There was an article I saw in the paper this week that talked about how, and I thought this was sort of trading on stereotypes.

It said that Trump is doing rather well with young Latino men because of the machismo factor.

And, well, I see you're shaking your head.

Is it bad?

I mean, Latin people for Republicans are like roaches for rape.

Let's just get real.

So

I just feel like

there's a level of self-hate or just lack of care for the rest of your Latin brothers and sisters who are in cages, who are

being demonized by this president.

I mean, hate crimes against Latin people are way up.

And how can you not, I mean, 23 people were shot in El Paso for just being Latin and

you don't care, so you're going to go for this braggadocio president?

I just feel like it's

self-hating and selfish.

When they do polling, it's interesting because

the concerns like what is most important to you of Latino folks in America is pretty much the same as everybody else.

Immigration comes in eighth

in their list of important things.

Well, surprise, the Atlantic people are just like everybody else.

That's what I'm saying.

I thought you were...

Yeah, jobs.

Everybody wants jobs.

Everybody wants a better economy.

Everybody wants to have the same opportunities.

That that's important.

I don't see how that's contradicting what I was saying.

Okay.

I'm just asking questions.

Ask away.

And what do you think about the scare tactics that Trump is

using?

I mean, he's talking about Biden's going to tear down statues of the Virgin Mary and that he's a communist.

And he's got all these buzzwords that I assume are used to try to scare that community into voting his way.

He's clever, man.

He's clever.

I mean, they're micro-targeting Latin people in Arizona through WhatsApp, because they know we're we're all on whatsapp and and they're spreading this stuff that that you know biden is about to steal the virgin mary first of all he's a super catholic come on i i'm a godless comic you know like like yourself

but he was gonna be like the grinch with a big bag stealing the virgin marys who's gonna carry those heavy ass statues come on He's taking the Virgin Mary.

And then in Florida, they're going after Colombians, telling them that, you know, if you vote for Biden, he's a socialist and he's going to turn Colombia into Venezuela because they know we got 400,000 registered Colombians in Florida that could help flip it to Biden.

So they're really clever, man, insidious, but we're working to get, we're going to figure them out

and blow out all that BS.

Okay.

Well, I wish I could have a drink with you on election day, but I'll do it virtually.

Thank you, John.

It's great to meet you even if you're by Zoom.

All right, John Leguzambo.

All right.

Thank you, John.

Time for new rules, everybody.

Okay.

New rule, if Supreme Court nominees get to be evasive and avoid straight answers in their job interviews, then so does the rest of America.

So, Ms.

Barrett, have you ever worked in retail before?

It's not something really that's appropriate for me to comment on.

Do you consider yourself a people person?

I've never expressed a view on it.

Can you operate a cash register?

I can't answer questions like that.

I'm sorry, Ms.

Barrett.

I just don't think you're right for Bath and Body Works.

Acting there, I.

New rule, I'm sorry, but lube and hand sanitizer must come in vastly different packaging.

Come on, it's dark, you're fumbling around your nightstand.

On the plus side, your cock now kills 99.9% of germs.

New Rule, if the face makeup is 30 shades darker than the hand, it's technically black face.

New Rule AAA has to merge with American Airlines and Alcoholics Anonymous and form a new company called AAAAA!

One-stop shopping for when you get drunk, wreck your car, and need a ride to the airport.

New Rule, if they can make single, double, triple, four, and five-blade razors, someone has to tell me why there are only two plies for toilet paper.

One ply, the kind at the gas station you don't want to have to use.

And two ply, so thick it can swab shit off a bear.

And finally, new rural Democrats have to stop talking about packing the Supreme Court because it's already packed with Catholics.

Roberts, Thomas, Alito.

Kavanaugh, Sotamaier, and Gorsick,

who I count as Catholic because he was raised Catholic and is now Episcopalian, which is just a Catholic who flunked Latin.

And once Mitch McConnell and company are done fedexing Amy Coney Barrett to the bench, seven of the nine justices will be Catholic.

And look, I have nothing against Catholics except my entire upbringing.

But they are only 20%.

of the population.

If seven out of nine justices were Jews or Muslims or Buddhists, would that be okay?

And if faith is this super important element of life, as Barrett and her Republican supporters say it is, shouldn't we have a healthier balance on our highest court?

The fastest-growing denomination in America is nuns.

No, not that kind.

I'm talking about atheists, agnostics, and people who, when asked what their religion is, say none.

Thanks.

We are 26% of the country, not anyone here, but of the country.

Where's our voice on the Supreme Court?

And atheists, thank you.

It's all right.

I know they're out there.

I know where you are, my people.

Fuck them.

We're just us.

And atheists actually make better judges because we don't have to work to separate church and state.

We're not torn between rational decision-making and what it says in the old book of Jewish Jewish fairy tales.

In 2006, Barrett told a graduating class of law students, keep in mind that your legal career is but a means to an end.

That end is building the kingdom of God.

No, it's not.

That's not the point of a legal career.

And you pundits earnestly debating whether she will vote to overturn Roe versus Wade?

Of course she will.

She's been groomed since birth to overturn overturn Roe versus Wade.

She's like the Terminator, a robot programmed to fulfill one task.

Except she wasn't sent from the future, she was sent from the past.

Because here's the truth about Catholics in America.

There's two types, scary and not scary.

The vast majority, not scary, not doctrinaire.

In fact, they're famous for ignoring everything the Pope tells them not to do.

They divorce, they use contraception, they have premarital sex, they have anal sex, sometimes all in one night.

But there's another strain of uber conservative Catholics who have an agenda, an enormous and growing influence to achieve it.

And it's really about pining for a return to the Middle Ages when the church was the state.

The Attorney General is one of these people.

So is the Federalist Federalist Society responsible for putting five justices on the court.

The Knights of Malta and Opus Day, whose members wear a little spiked chain around their thigh all day to remind them of UNO.

Now I know what to get Mel Gibson for Christmas.

These old school Catholics, they play the long game.

Amy Barrett has been on their radar since forever forever because she was raised in an extremist Catholic community called People of Praise, where a husband's responsibilities included correcting his wife should she stray from the proper path.

Uh-huh.

And where women were called handmaids.

Yeah, these are the folks who make Jehovah's Witnesses go, shh, don't answer the door.

They speak in tongues, otherwise known as babbling.

Isn't that something called a moshoko domazata?

Matato to motondoitiki, she kala kabocoto poto kala kamoshiki.

Kali shikoto mukoto, the bakotai, chakapo, chocolate,

I love you.

That wasn't them doing it, but that's what it is, and they do it too, and now it's on the court.

It's not wrong to call out nuts when shit is nuts.

Thank you.

I knew I'd get to you without you.

Last year, Pope Benedict, the spare parts pope,

the first pope to ever collect a pension,

he wrote a letter for the world where he decried the loss of morality beginning in the 1960s.

He wrote, this is his words, standards regarding sexuality collapsed entirely.

That is why sex films were no longer allowed on airplanes

because violence would break out among the small community of passengers.

Okay, one, what airline are you flying?

And two, what the fuck?

Yeah, I think we all remember those days in air travel when there was more leg room and they'd also show porn on the flight

until you got so horny you'd punch the guy in 32B.

Benedict also wrote his words that, quote, because of the revolution of 68, whatever the fuck that was,

pedophilia was then diagnosed as allowed and appropriate.

Really?

Is that what the who meant by the kids are all right?

You know, before anyone at the Vatican starts calling anyone else a pedophile, you might want to check the color of your kettle because we traced the call and it's coming from inside the belfry.

Amy Barrett said this week she had no strong feelings about climate change, but is very concerned about about large belt buckles.

Chuck Schumer said Democrats won't make Barrett's religion an issue, but they should, because being nuts is relevant.

Thank you very much.

That's our show.

I want to thank my guests, John Avilin, Noah Rothlin, John Leguizello, and Kareem Zakaria.

We'll be back next week.

Thank you very much, folks.

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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