Ep. #540: Trey Gowdy, Wynton Marsalis

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

Thank you.

Hey, great to be back.

Please

sit down, nobody who's here.

Thank you.

Oh, I'm kidding.

What a great.

All right, we're back in the studio.

Nobody here.

We're back in the studio.

Oh, man, it's been a long time.

I was in my office today.

There was a family of raccoons in my desk.

But, oh, I guess we dodged a bullet there with Hurricane Laura.

It hit, but not too bad.

Boy, but it was a hurricane.

Did some damage.

I was thinking today, if only Jerry Falwell Sr.

was alive to blame it on his son.

But yeah, Jerry Falwell Jr., he's in trouble.

Apparently his wife was having an affair with the pool boy, the pool pool boy, and

allegedly, just allegedly,

he would watch.

He says he did not have sex himself with the pool boy.

He's an evangelical.

He's not a snake handler.

But he would allegedly watch from the corner of the room, so at least social distancing was maintained.

But I don't know if you're watching the Republican Convention.

It was a great week if you love reality shows but hate reality.

Boy,

did you see Trump's speech last night?

By the end of Trump's speech, there were three fact-checkers were taken into the concussion protocol.

I mean,

the people in the crowd were chanting, four more lies, four more lies.

But we learned a lot from watching the convention.

I did.

I think what we learned is that Donald Trump loves women and immigrants.

He's a humble but brutally honest patriot and he hates corruption.

And he has built the greatest economy since man began to walk erect.

And the proof of that is that the demand these days for coffins, plywood, rocks, bottles, and replacement plate glass has never been higher.

Yes, it's...

It's so bizarre that at the Republican convention, they just kept talking about rioting and looting and vandalism that you can expect under a Democratic rule, except that's happening now under Trump.

And yet their theme is that all of the rioting and the violence you're seeing now wouldn't be happening if somebody like Donald Trump was in the White House.

This guy is some salesman, you know, because in 2016 it was like, I will end American carnage.

And in 2020, it's like, there's only one person who can can stop what's happening under me, me.

And that's why we must elect Donald Trump so we can re-gratify America again, again.

Yes, some of these speakers that they had at the convention, they painted a very ugly picture of this country.

Kimberly Guilfoyle, you know, Don Jr.'s girlfriend, she's the Democrats want to destroy the country.

Wow.

And Matt Gates said that

Democrats are going to invite MS-13 to live next door.

I wouldn't do that.

And the McCluskeys, remember that couple from St.

Louis?

They said that the Democrats want to abolish the suburbs.

And

then Jerry Faubal Jr.

said, under the Democrats, you'll have to watch the pool boy fuck your wife.

I mean, it's,

boy, those Democrats.

Yeah, Kimberly Gofoyle, boy, did you see her speech?

She She was very, whoo, off the rails.

When they go low, she goes loud.

Yeah.

Be in bed with that girl will be like, say my name.

Why is she even speaking?

Why is she speaking?

Six of the 12 key speakers at the Republican convention were named Trump.

You know, we used to have former presidents and elder statesmen speak at conventions.

Now it's like, hey, dad, would it be okay if my girlfriend spoke at the convention?

Well, you know, Wally,

girlfriends don't usually speak at conventions, but I suppose it'll be all right.

Yeah, well, another week, another police shooting of an unarmed black man, and to protest this, which...

Yes, we should, and we need to.

The NBA and baseball players, a lot of them,

they did not play this week.

And boy, this is going to get people's attention because rioting is one thing, but forcing men to talk to their wives.

All right, we got a great show.

We have Trey Gowdy, Nina Burley, Rick Wilson, and later we'll be speaking to Wynton Marsalis.

Let's get it started.

All right, my first guest is the former Republican congressman from South Carolina and author of Doesn't Hurt to Ask?

Using the power of questions to communicate, connect, and persuade.

Trey Gowdy, Trey, thank you for being with us.

And I got to say,

you're out of Congress.

You look like 10 years younger than when I feel 20 years younger.

I'll bet.

So I'm sure you were watching the Republican convention all week.

Now, you were the chief prosecutor during the Obama years, watching everything the Democrats did if they went out of went out of bounds legal-wise.

Anything bother you there, like about using the White House maybe for political purposes the way he did last night?

Well, I mean, people are welcome to judge the propriety of that, the legality of it, Hatch Act.

I just have to trust Pat Cipollone, who's White House counsel, that he ran all the traps.

I get that it was unprecedented.

I get that it was unusual.

My understanding of the Hatch Act is you can do as you want in your free time.

You certainly can't force someone

to participate in the political process.

But I didn't watch as much of it as you may think I watched, but

I would need to ask Pat: you know, how does the Hatch Act allow the following?

You were not quite as charitable when the Democrats were in office.

You got to admit that.

You weren't just like, oh, I got to trust this guy.

I think he knows what he's doing.

But okay, we'll let that go.

What about when Trump said a couple of weeks ago,

the only way I lose is if it's rigged.

What do you think about a thing like that for America?

Good, bad thing?

Well, I got a lot of weaknesses, Bill, but I try really hard not to be a relativist.

I mean, I'm out of politics.

I'm much more in tune with kind of the prosecutor that existed for 20 years.

I don't like it when Republicans say that.

I didn't like it.

when Democrats said that, that the President would not trust the election results in 2016.

I did not like when Secretary Clinton gave advice to Joe Biden.

Wait, no one of either party has ever said anything like that.

No one has ever said, if the only way I lose is if it's rigged.

That's what he's saying.

You don't think this is a recipe for

something we've never had in America, which is people not accepting the results?

Well, I would say two things.

I would want to know what he means by rigged.

If he means I have a strong media headwind that I can't fight through, that's one explanation.

But, you know, Secretary Clinton's advice to Joe Biden this week was

don't contest.

I mean,

don't concede.

So, I mean,

a Republican would view that comment in the same ilk that you or others might view the president saying that the only way I lose is if it's rigged.

I don't believe that.

I mean, Republicans have lost six out of the last seven popular votes for president, and those weren't rigged.

So I don't believe that.

I do think that there is some rhetoric on both sides that could be

up.

Okay, well, you're not completely out of politics, I got to tell you that.

So let's talk about your book for a minute, or a couple of minutes.

It's your book, and you're here to sell it, and I want to help you.

You say you left politics because you didn't see anybody's mind changed.

in eight years, like any debate, any committee hearing.

Nobody ever changed their mind, which I find to be one of the most depressing but honest things I've probably read about politics in a very long time.

Does that include you?

Are you part of that problem or did you ever change your mind?

No, I mean there were times that I didn't vote with the majority of the Republicans.

There are times that I, you know, got a bad ding from Heritage or one of the other scoring agencies.

Tulsi Gabbrick changed my mind on something.

We offered an amendment together.

I think the story that illustrates that the best, I was sitting beside Joey Kennedy on the floor and he was giving me, which I will forever be grateful to him, both sides of the argument.

And he concluded by saying, but I think in your district you should vote this way.

And he's right.

I mean, the only way I could lose is in a primary, in a Republican primary.

And the only way most members of the House can lose is

in a primary, not in the general.

So

when I say persuasion.

Well, yes, when people ask me what's the the number one problem, I cite redistricting, not money, which may be a problem too, but redistricting

means the only person.

You are talking about gerrymandering.

So that you are a very important person.

Yeah, I mean, that's a pejorative way of saying it.

Well, both parties do it.

I mean, I think the Republicans do it a little more, but they both do it so that there are safe districts and so that you are right.

The only way you could lose is by someone who is even more of a conservative than you, and you are pretty conservative.

Not in my district.

I was criticized a lot for not being enough enough.

Well, I know, and then in your book, you're talking a lot about bipartisanship and reaching across the aisle now and, you know, speaking in good faith.

And I got to say, when I was reading this, I'm thinking, you, the Benghazi guy?

The guy who prosecuted Benghazi for two and a half years.

I'm not saying Benghazi shouldn't have been looked into.

Of course, an ambassador was killed.

We should look into that.

But

this bipartisanship, it seems to come over people the second they leave office.

Where was that when you were in office?

Well, I mean, you mentioned Benghazi.

The first hearing we had was praised by Dana Milbank at the Washington Post.

And he's hardly a conservative.

The very first hearing we had, he wrote.

What about the hundredth one you had?

Yeah, but we only had, what, three public hearings, Bill?

I mean, and that's kind of my point: is we had very few public hearings.

I was getting a lot of pressure from the right to have more public hearings.

They're not conducive to real investigations.

The executive branch investigations being done behind closed doors, those are conducive, not congressional investigations.

We had two and then we had Secretary Clinton, but Leon Panetta, everyone at General Hamm, everyone else we did was behind closed doors.

So, do you think Trump in his time, his first term here, has done anything that would rival Benghazi as far as impropriety?

I mean, I don't want to play the if Obama did it game, but you were the chief prosecutor of the Democrats during the Obama year, so if I'm going to play with anybody, you know, the Jeopardy category would be things Trey Growdy would be looking into.

Anything in mind that comes to mind that Trump has done that might rise to that level?

I don't know that I

it's your show, so I'm gonna let you frame it however you want.

I don't know that I was the chief prosecutor against President Obama, but let's accept that that's how I'm characterized.

There were Americans killed in Africa, and I think Democrats

had an opening if they wanted to to have multiple hearings on that.

There was an armed and armed forces

event that did not turn out well.

So, but impeachment, I mean, I mean

impeachment consumed, just to get, what, one Republican juror to switch his vote, impeachment consumed the country for how long?

So

I think both sides do it to the other, and they will continue to do it until there's a consequence for these quote investigations.

But you would have to admit that Trump has done some things that you probably would have looked into.

I made a small list, like they broke the law with security clearances and using unsecured phones, which was a big thing when Democrats do it, the Chinese spies walking around Mar-a-Lago.

There was no security there.

He leaked Israeli intelligence.

He sided with Putin against our American intelligence agencies.

I'm wondering if that was something you would have looked into.

He didn't do anything when the Russians put bounties on our troops in Afghanistan, paid money to a much money to a porn star, invited the Taliban to the White House or to the Camp David on the anniversary of 9-11.

The Hatch Act, the emoluments clause,

none of these things you think you would have looked into if it was the other side?

Oh, sure.

I mean, I started off our conversation by using the word relativism.

I mean, both sides do it.

They treat the other side differently from the way they treat their own side.

I mean, if that's the charge, I plead guilty to that.

Okay.

So what is your prediction of what America looks like in November and December after the election if Trump does not win?

I mean,

if he doesn't win, I think we're going to have what we've always had, I hope, I pray, which is a peaceful transfer of power.

I really do think, I don't think there's any chance the president is going to stay in the White House after his term is up.

I just, I hear it.

I just don't think that's going to happen.

We'll have the peaceful transfer of power.

I'm sure it was difficult for President Obama to hand the keys to President Trump, but he did.

And I think if President Trump is not successful, he'll hand the keys to Joe Biden.

They're somewhat different types of people, but we'll see.

All right, final question.

You've been very good standing up to my prosecution.

As a former prosecutor, you see so many of the people around the president who have been convicted of crimes: Manafort, Flynn, Cohen, Bannon, Stone.

Stone.

Have you ever, as a prosecutor, seen so many people around a guy who were guilty of criminal activity and the guy in the center was not a criminal himself?

Well, Bill, as a prosecutor, I really didn't look at people.

I look at fact patterns.

So you take each one, Manafort.

Is there any evidence that the president was also in debt to Ukraine and did what Manafort did?

Is there any evidence the president was in cahoots with Roger Stone when he came and lied to Congress?

Is there any evidence the President and Michael Cohen, I think he was also charged with false statement?

So I look at fact patterns.

I don't think the president was well served in terms of who did the vetting for him.

When your lawyer is writing a kiss and tell book, that is not good vetting on your lawyer.

You will never hear me say we need to go investigate this person criminally.

You investigate fact patterns, and whoever's involved in that, you prosecute them.

Okay, Congressman, you're brave to do this interview.

I appreciate it.

Thank you for having me.

Congratulations for being out of Congress, and we'll see you down the road.

Thank you, Trey.

Thank you.

Okay.

Yes, sir.

All right, our panel.

She is a national political journalist and the author of The Trump Women, Part of the Deal, which comes out September 22nd.

Nina Burley.

And he's co-founder of the Lincoln Project and author of the New York Times bestseller, Running Against the Devil, a Plot to Save America from Trump and Democrats Democrats from themselves.

Rick Wilson, thank you both for being here.

Great to have you as our inaugural guests back here in the studio.

First time since March.

It's empty, it's gloomy, but I'm glad you're here.

I'm here.

So we just finished watching the Republican Convention.

A lot of talk today about the lying, and yes, of course, you know.

My question, though, is, was it effective?

Was this an effective convention for the Republicans?

Well, Bill, I think the convention was ineffective in a big fundamental way, which was the ratings were lower.

Donald Trump's going to lose his shit today when he sees that Biden got better ratings than he did, and he's going to act out because of it.

I also don't think it broadened the base at all.

I mean, Biden was talking to moderates, Republicans, swing voters, trying to invite people in.

Donald Trump was doing what he always does, which is trying to narrow cast to white non-college voters and, you with all the scare tactics that are involved in that.

All the crazy, you know, the Antifa anarchist communists are coming to make you get gay Sharia married, you know, the whole crazy talk.

Yeah, I mean, the ending was, I saw Trump's ending last night.

It was,

I thought it was fairly effective, you know, talking about, first of all, the people are there,

no masks,

you know,

which is somewhat dangerous, you know, in this atmosphere, but also

looks bold.

And it just looked, I mean, if you're selling optimism, which is what Republicans have always been very good at selling, and America isn't a shithole, except if Biden gets elected, it's going to look like some of it does now.

That was sort of weird.

I don't know.

You know, when he started talking about, you know, we've been the pioneers and we're the rebels and we're the the people that don't cut down the tall trees and you go as high as you want.

I don't know if that stuff doesn't sell, especially in a gloomy moment.

I thought it was effective

at points.

I thought the regular Joes were effective.

But then again, I don't know how many people were watching.

You know, how many people, how many people, I mean, you checked out the ratings, Rick.

I don't know how many people were watching.

And as I watched it, I wondered how many people had their computer screens tuned into this.

But for me, watching at the end, the end was

like watching a super spreader event in the

last, you know,

as he went on and on with his talk and they kept panning to the audience maskless.

And I'm in New York, and it's very unusual to see maskless people.

And it just, it was like, wow, it's like a game show on epidemiology or something where, you know, super spreaders are, uh you know well who's survived you know survivor covid or something with the game show

front end and i don't know i don't know how many people are i would love to see the numbers on that when that if that when they start coming down with it um but you're right it was it was selling positivity it was uh you know the fireworks nice fireworks chinese probably what do you make of you also had guys

yep i'm sorry you also had guys like wilbur ross and rudy giuliani in the audience right in the demo for COVID.

Wilbur Ross is like looking like he's always come, sweet angel of death and take me now.

Yeah.

Well, yes.

Wilbur is not a guy who should go out without a mask.

Right.

No.

What do you make of the attack on the suburbs?

I've never heard that tactic before.

They're going to destroy the suburbs.

You know,

what can destroy suburbs?

Crabgrass?

I mean, I grew up in the the suburbs.

I feel like I live in the suburban kind of area now.

I love the suburbs.

I've never was a person.

I lived in New York twice.

It's a great city, but I don't like living in a building.

I don't like knowing the people right on the other side of the wall.

How do you destroy the suburbs?

I don't even know what they're talking about.

Can you decipher that for me?

This is a...

Go ahead, Nina.

I think that, you know, from the very beginning of the pandemic, their step, the way that they handled it, stepping back was really aimed at

chaos and bread riots and exactly what BLM has delivered to them.

And that is, that was their strategy to, you know, you hear him talking about suburban housewives.

It's like a Larry Flint hustler spread or something going through his lawn.

Suburban housewives, we've got to get those suburban housewives frightened.

And all they need is video.

They just need video like the stuff that was going on in Washington the other day of the BLM kids in front of the restaurants.

Oh, can I show that?

I have that piece of video.

If people don't know, it's Black Lives Matter protesters, all white that I saw,

who are harassing this.

They're harassing this woman who's eating, wanting to make her raise her fist in solidarity with their cause, which I believe she was in solidarity with.

It's just that she was eating, I think, and she's basically saying, look, I'm eating.

Show the video and then we can talk about it.

Yeah,

this is counterproductive, right?

It's obnoxious.

Wildly so.

Okay.

I mean, Bill,

if this election is a referendum on Donald Trump, Donald Trump will lose, Joe Biden will win if this is a referendum on woke heads yelling at people in public then it's going to be a much harder race and that's a technical term of art we use in politics woke heads right these people who believe that they're that these sort of performative stunts do something to motivate voters they don't because the states that are in play this year wisconsin michigan ohio pennsylvania those are not woke states liberal democrats in those states are basically moderate republicans right they don't love that stuff right they're not They're not crazy about that stuff.

Right.

And I keep saying

white people like that seem to be culturally appropriating

how mad they are at racism from black people.

You can't be madder at racism than black people themselves.

Then it becomes about you,

white person.

That's my take on that.

Nina, what do you think about the Karen phenomenon?

Is this part of that where we've named this new group that that it's okay to go after?

And it sort of has spread from just originally it was sort of a racial thing, the woman in Central Park, and now our Karen just seems to be any

white woman of a certain age you don't like?

Yeah, well, it

originated, you know, among the incels.

You know, it's a meeting

on Reddit or something where some guy was bitching about his wife, Karen, and then

it became the Karens, you know, all white middle-aged women or all uncool white women.

And what's interesting about it is it was the meme

in, I guess, around January, there were maybe 100,000 hits on it.

And by the middle of the COVID, let's say April or May,

there were 3 million

hashtag Karen.

I just think, you know, these people are really good at black ops and black arts, the social media platform, using the social media platforms.

And I don't want to sound like a

QAnon conspiracy theorist, but I think that it's to separate off white women, to humiliate and cow white middle-aged women at a time when they desperately need suburban housewives because they've fled this uh this president, this, you know, who as a game show host would have lost his TV show because of his 24 or and counting,

you know, me too things.

So

they need, desperately need these white women and perfectly timing time, geez, everybody is calling white middle-aged women Karens and dissing them.

And they're the backbone of the Trump resistance.

I mean,

there's research on how many white women are envelope stuffing and going door to door.

You know, they hate Donald and they're the backbone of this resistance.

And so they're, they're separating them off from the black, the black,

you know, I mean, it's, yes, the left is diverse and these things, you know, it's very easy to to wedge in.

And I know Rick has some thoughts on this because he's

there are a number of

Karens on the right, but they're Karens with a Q.

They merge QAnon and Karenism.

And some of them are the ones who go in these like hearings and say, we know that in county commission hearing about like water quality, they start yelling about QAnon and child cannibal pedophile rings in pizza restaurants.

It has become a weird sort of cultural hallmark right now.

And it's also a secondary artifact of, you know, everybody's got a phone camera.

Everybody sees everything now.

Social media spreads, you know, crazy behavior.

It's incentivized to spread crazy behavior because it's viral.

So where are the dicks or the you know, the steeds?

Sure, sure.

Where are the brads?

Yeah,

they're not acting.

I mean, you can easily find men acting badly, but many times they're armed.

So maybe you're not getting up close to

the,

what's that kid's name in

Kenosha?

Kyle.

Yeah.

You don't get up too close to those guys with their weapons.

Well, I mean,

nothing scares me more than that, that there are people on the streets from both sides now with guns because we are the gun country and you're allowed to carry guns.

And the combination of people in the streets who have guns, who hate each other, who think if the other side wins, it is the end of the world.

When is there going to be a Lexington and Concord moment and we're going to see a pitched battle in the street?

I'm talking about a gun battle between American citizens.

That to me is the most frightening prospect on the horizon.

I think they can't close no shot.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And look,

chaos is the friend of the people that would love to see this country go down in flames.

That kind of chaos, that kind of ratcheting of the tension, you know, there's a lot of similarities now between the way that

kids in Raqqa

were radicalized for ISIS.

They're told things like, unless you take action against these bad guys, then our culture will be destroyed.

your what your your families will be killed it's all over and these kids like this guy in in kenosha are hearing you know unless you take action against antifa you're going to be your family will be destroyed the suburbs will be burned to the ground you know it's going to be nothing but ms-13 and and all the terrorists are coming to kill you so they're hearing the same kind of radicalization language that iterates across

in the Middle East and in Africa and other places, where these young kids who are vulnerable are convinced that their actions are justified and that they're liberated from the rules about not shooting people.

But as someone who has certainly run campaigns and seen Republicans run on law and order and win and studied historically campaigns that have been won on that issue,

that seems to be what Trump is running on.

He's the law and order candidate and

are the Democrats facing that right?

They seem to be hesitant in some ways, for example, to condemn the looting because they understand what causes people to have the rage that would make them loot, although I don't know why looting is always associated with the rage.

I mean, sometimes they're just taking shit, and it's not

people you would even think would need the shit.

What are the Democrats doing right or doing wrong in facing the law and order candidate?

Well, they needed to stomp down this defund the police thing the millisecond it started and they were slow and joe biden has now gotten ahead of it a little bit but they were slow off the mark on that that was a trap set by the trump campaign and by fox for them and and once the progressives took off with it i could have told you right away the group that hates that message the most are african americans They they need legitimate policing in their communities.

This isn't something that they take lightly.

And it was one of those areas where, you you know, as I said, the subtitle of the book is to save Democrats from themselves.

They don't have to follow the lead of every single progressive bad idea that comes down the pike.

That was a spectacularly bad thematic idea.

Then the only thing that sort of suppressed it from doing more damage was the enormous fuck up on COVID on Trump's part as things just kept building up and building up and building up.

And it kind of stepped on that message.

The Biden campaign is now ahead of that, I would say, but they need to be consistent that, you know, we're going to enforce the law.

We don't want criminality on the streets.

We don't want it in the White House.

We've got to go across the spectrum on this.

So I was watching his speech last night, and first of all, he seemed logie.

He seemed like Sleepy Dawn.

I was very surprised about that.

I wasn't surprised with Mussolini on the balcony standing next to Evita Perron.

I was waiting for that to happen in America.

But I was surprised at how slow he was with the reading.

But I was, and of course, look, as a comedian, I know I've done outdoor shows.

It's the worst.

Comedians, what we want is we want a rat scaler because the laughs bounce off the walls and it sounds great.

When you're outside, whatever noise people are making in the crowd, it kind of dissipates.

So it didn't, you know, that was a tough gig.

But I was noticing what got the biggest

applause.

I think the biggest applause when he said, free speech on campus.

Well, I thought it was judges.

The crowd went nuts when he said we need free speech on campus.

What do you make of that?

Nina?

That's part of, go ahead, Nina.

His people are,

you know, responding to this, you know, the perfect equipoise to the armed young groomed men that Rick has just talked about.

Are the, you know, the woke,

you know, college educated or call, you private school educated kids who've been, who you saw in Washington the other day rampaging,

who have been really

told to check their white privilege from an early age.

And it's part of their education.

It's part of their,

you know, I've seen it.

And that's what they, that's how they think.

And that's their side of the, that's their side of the story.

They're the analogue for the armed men which is you know they're like lambs to the slaughter um and and they you know they're the ones who are running the cancel culture they're the ones who are uh silencing uh dissent among their own they're and uh

you know that that is one thing that the right has

right and they've there's a problem on the campuses so but i thought i actually thought that the there was a loud uh

uh applause to the on the judges.

I know that they did respond well to the,

but the speech to me was,

you know, they're saying that it's plagiarized, was plagiarized from the first speech.

There are so many similarities.

It was a lazily written speech.

It made no sense when he, you know,

there were points.

So I don't, you know, again, I just felt like, I wonder how many people are even listening to this speech.

Maybe they tuned in for the fireworks, but

I think they don't care.

They don't, the speech doesn't matter.

No, it's a person.

It matters to us, but it doesn't matter to his people.

And Bill, a lot of the things in the speech were just

they go through a checklist now of what we call the cultural alamo, where they're playing to the insecurities of the Trump base and the insecurities that Republicans have built up inside their own political silo.

So Fox is always telling people they're going to cancel Christmas, they're going to take away your guns, they're going to take away your religion, they're not going to let you do this and this and this.

And so he was going through that checklist.

And yes, the speech was a hot mess.

It was written by three or four people.

As a speechwriter, you could see the inconsistencies in the tonality of it.

And it was all over the board.

And his delivery, as you said,

it was low energy, to use a phrase that Donald's familiar with.

It was dull.

He was not loving it.

And he was leaning against the podium like a drunk on a light post.

Yeah,

it was just not a good speech.

It was a tough venue to work.

But okay, final question.

I was mentioning in the monologue, Jerry Falwell, you know, no one hates to give religion a black eye more than I do.

So I'm not going to gloat.

But yeah, I mean,

Jerry Falwell Jr., the wife was having an affair and allegedly with the pool boy, I think that's known.

And allegedly, Jerry Falwell Jr.

was watching.

We heard this with Roger Stone, used to like to have the wife

with certain people and then watch.

And Paul Manafort, we also heard the same thing.

What is it with Republicans and cuckholdry?

I always

poke a poke a conservative, poke a rock-rib conservative, and the kink just oozes out.

But but why that kink?

Why

want to?

I don't get that.

You want to watch another man with your lady?

Listen,

this is something that I find richly ironic because the greatest insult in the 2016 election and since then that Trumpers use against anyone who's never Trump person or opposed to Trump is to call them a cuck.

Last time I checked,

these guys are the ones who are racking up the points.

And the Reverend Cuckwell

is the latest example of this thing.

But these guys, it is whatever it is in their heads

about that particular form of humiliation.

I'm not going to kink shame them, but I am going to kink shame them because they're so fucking hypocritical about it that they're the ones who are who lose their mind about gay marriage and everything else.

And yet, there's Jerry Falwell watching his wife get ridden like a carnival ride by her pool boy.

Well, allegedly, we don't know what happens.

All right.

Thank you both very much.

I appreciate you helping us inaugurate our

new day here in the studio.

See you soon.

Thanks, Bill.

Okay, well, as I mentioned in the monologue, poor Jerry Falwell Jr., you know, I feel for any guy whose wife has, you know, been stepping out on him.

I mean, apparently that's what happened, was she was

doing it with the pool boy.

I mean, it happens.

Pool boys are very sexy.

They've got that thing that they put in the pool and everything.

And, you know, was he watching?

We don't know about that.

Allegedly, he was watching, but we thought it would just be a good time to do 24 things

you don't know about Jerry Faldwell.

One of our favorite departments, 24 things,

completely original, 24 things you don't know.

For example, I call the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost the holy thruple.

I believe the Lord is present whenever two or more are gathered in my bed.

I'm a good tennis player, but almost anyone can lick my wife.

I can read that two ways, I feel.

The only thing I can't convince my poor guy to do is stop parking in the driveway.

My favorite food is sloppy seconds.

My wife's nickname for my penis is Plan B.

There's a sign in my bedroom that says

no cutoffs

around a pool.

You know, you can't.

My bumper sticker says, if this van's a rocking, it's probably my wife fucking the pool boy.

This poor guy.

Funny thing is, we don't even have a pool.

All right, he is a nine-time Grammy Award winner and the first Pulitzer Prize-winning jazz musician.

His new album, The Ever Funky Low Down, is available now on all digital music platforms.

My honor to introduce Wynton Marsalis.

Wynton, great to see you.

Are you in New York, sir?

It's such a pleasure.

Yes, it's a pleasure to talk to you.

Thank you.

Well, and to you too.

So, but now you

were.

I was worried that you might have been affected by the hurricane because I know you have New Orleans

roots, but

you missed New Orleans.

Yeah.

Were you there for Katrina?

No, no.

I was in New York.

I've been in New York since 1979.

Okay.

But, you know, my relatives were all there, so, of course, anybody from New Orleans, that was a definitive event.

Well, listen, I enjoyed your latest so much.

I love the music.

I love the narration, I thought it was a particularly

important album in the current moment that we find ourselves in because we are in sort of ultimate binary mode where everything is right, everything is in teams, Democrat and Republican and red state and blue state and black and white and you seem to be pushing back.

against that and I find that very refreshing in this atmosphere.

Do you want to tell me a little bit about your feelings about making that album?

Yeah, well, we're being hustled.

I think every decade since the 1980s, I've written a piece that deals with America,

our social life,

themes of class, race,

politics,

civics in general.

And I've been driving across this country.

I'm afraid to fly.

So I drive everywhere.

And I know people in all of the states.

And I've had good spirited arguments with people

all over.

And this piece is entitled The Ever Funky Lowdown.

And it provides a blueprint to show us how to rise above populist propaganda on either side in the hustle.

And it encourages all of us to have a much deeper level of communication and engagement with our largest possible community.

It's really the only thing that's going to save us.

It's a collective creativity.

And the music satirizes the things that divide us actually.

And it encourages us to see in ironic detail how foolish a lot of this stuff is and for us to inspect very closely what is going on and then fight for the world that we all can envision creating with and not against others.

Yeah, I completely concur with that message.

It's a difficult message to put across nowadays because people are on their teams and they don't want to hear anything different.

When I criticize the left, even though I'm a liberal, I hear it a lot.

Like, why are you saying that?

We're perfect, they're evil, and

I feel like that's not going to get us anywhere because that's not the way the world is.

It's not the way the world will ever be.

I know you signed the Harper's letter,

which was a letter in Harper's Magazine a couple of months ago.

It was organized by Thomas Chatterton Williams, and it was signed by 150 very impressive people, mostly almost all of them liberals, who were basically pushing back against cancel culture and saying, we feel stifled we do not want to walk on eggshells anymore we want to be able to speak freely think out loud and not have to suffer repercussions and you are one of the signers and i applaud you for doing so

well i didn't understand all about uh who signed it i didn't know everyone who signed it but i actually signed it because there were some some uh some black conservatives on on the on the letter and i just wanted to say yeah we should all speak to each other but then it was a you know cancel culture and all these things are a bizarre form of imitating other elite forms of oppression.

It's like blacklisting, McCarthyism, Salem witch trial, so on.

People who have been victims of a certain type of oppression tend to create that same victimization when they get the chance to get some agency.

It's not uncommon.

It's just different forms of attempting to keep people quiet.

When I was growing up, my mama, whenever she really didn't want to hear what you were saying, she would say, boy, why are you talking?

Now, what are you talking about?

Not what you're saying.

It's that you shouldn't be saying anything.

So the public space now is inundated with people trolling, people being paid to be on the internet, people dedicated to shutting everybody up.

And what we actually need is a deeper dialogue, a richer dialogue.

And as a jazz musician, that is our art.

You know, we have a, ours is the art of listening and of co-creation.

So it's...

And we have a certain type of a live and let live culture.

I play with all the great musicians, Art Blakey, Sarah Vaughan Dizzy, you can name them.

And that's the main thing that they were teaching.

You have to learn how to listen.

Listening is a skill that you have to always develop and work on.

And improvisation.

Conversational improvisation, just letting conversation happen.

I think it's something that we are greatly lacking.

And also, I think people talk about, well, we have to reach across the aisle.

Yes, we do.

Republicans have to talk to Democrats and Democrats are Republicans.

But also, wouldn't you agree, we need more dialogue within our own groups,

within the group, within the left, within the right, talk to each other.

And if you don't agree, that's okay too.

Well, you know, groups tend to be like gangs.

Yeah.

And you know how gang works.

You with us or you against us.

Right.

And that's what the ever funky lowdown is about.

And normally with gangs, what they do is you have to commit a crime against someone who is innocent.

And that bonds you.

And, you know, this is actually the time to speak against

whatever we've been doing has not been working.

So, instead of us having a vision for our country, instead of us having things that we're actually working on that are constructive,

you know,

we're busy arguing and fighting with each other and trying to.

Now, you know, of course, stuff like police violence is a prime example of what we're talking about.

The Supreme Court in June didn't want to see

nine cases seven or whatever it was dealing with with uh with qualified immunity now it doesn't mean that that would have changed the state of things but it's just interesting that the country when everybody is in the street talking about it obviously it's a tremendous problem that went under the radar nobody said anything about it the highest court in our land saw it so you start to get a kind of anti-reason and uh

when things that don't have leadership which i'm in this moment we don't really need a centralized leadership in a strange kind of way the fact that we are decentralized is helping us survive not becoming like any other place this despotically ruled uh so you you do have a kind of a back and a forth but but you know this this stuff just being tough when was the last time a majority of 300 million people needed to call some police for something i've been up and down the country i'm saying if you get a get 400 people looting in chicago and they represent millions of people.

And it's not, I'm speaking of something that the right is trying to use in their campaign.

Richard Nixon already used this tactic.

Oh, you know, Willie Harden, these things work.

It's a part of the ever-funky lowdown.

You know, that's what Mr.

Games says.

You have to identify some other and then create a problem with them that's far beyond what that problem is.

And then you've got to defend yourself from them, Caesar, with the gauls that were not the togo wearing gauls, but there's some gauls all the way over here that we've got to go attack these people.

Y'all don't understand what they do.

They eat their babies.

They do stuff.

You don't want that stuff here.

So, you know, these people are going to be in your house next week.

When was the last time those people were in your house?

You know, how are you going to pick on the poorest, most disenfranchised people, the most under attack, and they're going to be the enemy of the United States of America?

Amen.

And it's,

you know, the question for this election is going to be, will the large group of white voters that have been manipulated down through these years with the fake lore of race and white supremacy reinforced by whites and blacks, and whoever else in Hollywood and the general media can't make enough products to sell to you, making you believe this stuff.

When is that large body of people who never owned plantations, who've been poor their entire lives, who've been struggling in this country to get ahead?

When are they going to finally wake up and realize that money and power is the issue?

And that the people they continue to be directed to attack have neither of the two.

And they don't have any,

they don't have the ability to actually do anything to you.

So focus your gaze on who is actually exploiting and manipulating you and those people exist on both sides of the coin focus on that you know it's not poor black people with no agency in the culture we have to remember you know racial discrimination has always gone hand in hand with labor and class and you know this is where black people and a large number of white voters have a common cause remember most of the lynchings were not because a black person looked at a white woman and whistled at her it was because somebody requests a fair wage.

That's the truth of

what the numbers are telling you about this.

So, you know, to the traditionally exploited mass of white Americans, the Ebel Funky says, keep your eyes on the cash register and don't look at the people staging the fight in the store.

And we're going to be all right if we can manage to get a very powerful coalition of those in whose interest it is to see new ideas about what our country is come to the forefront.

I am so glad I got you talking on that because that was just amazing to hear.

And more like that on the album, I recommend it highly.

I thank you for doing this.

It's an honor to speak to you.

Thank you, man.

And I hope to see you

someday in person

here and in Congress.

I can't wait.

Okay, thank you.

Can't wait.

Thank you very much.

We got a lot of promise out here.

Let's lead.

Thank you.

All right, time for new rules back in the studio.

Still not audience.

No audience.

Somehow you could sit on a plane with people, but we can't do it here.

New rules.

Okay, new rule after Kimberly Guilfoyle's speech at the Republican Convention this week.

Ladies and gentlemen, leaders and fighters for freedom and liberty and the American dream, the best is yet to come.

Well, yeah, Republicans can never again bring up the Howard Dean Dean thing.

Go to Washington, D.C.

to take back the White House.

Right?

Although, to all those Democrats who watched Kimberly and thought, how could Gavin Newsom ever have married this crazy person?

Well, come on.

Who among us doesn't like a screamer?

New rule, if your job is to show off the softer side of the Trump White House, then maybe don't deliver your speech dressed like Ilse She-Wolf of the SS.

It's vintage Hugo Boss.

Yeah, from 1936.

This look doesn't say message I care, it says check the attic.

New rules, someone has to create a porn site called Crucifux, where the categories are what famous evangelical leaders and conservative Republicans are into.

Sexual humiliation by a gay hooker?

Well then Ted Haggard, that's the one for you.

SM?

Click Jimmy Swaggard.

And for incest, incest, click Josh Duggar.

And if watching your wife get railed by another dude is your thing, well, we've got a full menu.

Neural,

if you've had your dog more than 10 years, you can stop telling me it's a rescue.

That's like if Trump was still saying, this is my son Eric.

He wasn't planned.

Neural, the elephant shrew that has emerged from the lost species list for the first time in 50 years years has to tell us, why now?

You know the world's a shit show right now, right?

In the 70s, the environment was still pretty good shape.

In the 80s, you had all that cocaine lying around.

Why the year 2020?

Oh, yeah, right.

And finally, new rule, democracy isn't a spectator sport.

And if Trump's going to try to scuttle the post office, we need to fight back.

Now, I must admit, of the ways I'd always imagined Donald Trump would try to steal the election, fucking with the mail never occurred to me.

But I didn't think he could take the money Congress gave the Pentagon and redirect it to the wall, and he did that.

I sure wasted a lot of time in civicus class with those note cards.

Since April, the president has launched a two-front campaign against the Postal Service, first undermining trust in mail-in voting by calling it corrupt, so later he can challenge any results he doesn't like, and then by undermining the Postal Service itself, eliminating overtime, firing leadership, reducing sorting machines, so that when the surge of mail-in ballots starts coming in in October, the Post Office will be too gutted and strapped to handle it, and ballots won't get counted.

He wants it to fail.

It has to fail for his scheme to work.

It's like a postal postal version of the producers.

And there's all sorts of anecdotal evidence now that the system is starting to crack, people not getting their mail, getting it very late.

Last week, I got an issue of Rolling Stone with Bob Seeger on the cover.

There's a never-ending well of creativity on the right to keep people from voting.

And this is the latest dirty trick.

But maybe there is something we can do to fight back.

If Trump is going to reduce mail processors, it is in our power to give them less mail to process.

Yeah.

In-person absentee voting begins in two weeks on September 14th in Pennsylvania.

Two weeks.

So I say you have two weeks to use the Postal Service or everything you normally do, and after that, hashtag free up the mail.

Other than essentials like receiving paychecks, prescription drugs, and of course course the Victoria Secret catalog, don't use the mail for anything but ballots until the election is over.

You know how we pull over for fire trucks?

It's time we do the equivalent for mail trucks.

Let this be our October surprise for Trump.

So that means get all your Amazon crap now.

all the shit you don't really need, candles and fucking driftwood art and elbow moisturizer.

Get it all out of your system now, and then lay off the add to cart button for a month.

Same thing with the rest of the mail.

Letters,

I guess there's a certain charm to an old school letter written out in cursive, but go back to charming after the election.

It's not essential.

The last person to send a letter that mattered was the zodiac killer.

Dinner with the humorous yet vaguely insulting birthday card that you send to your aunt every October.

Getting older is like driving a classic car.

The rear end sags and the fluids leak.

Yeah, we'll say that over the phone this year.

Yeah, call her up and say, Aunt Gertrude, you are now like a car.

Your rear end sags and your fluids leak.

I'm sorry you had to hear that over the phone, but I may have just saved democracy.

I'm sorry, but we need to give our besieged and intrepid postal workers the time and space they need to deliver nothing but ballots.

So fruit of the month club, cancel it.

Wine of the month club, get drunk on something else.

Sea monkeys, ransom notes.

No, everything.

If you're still paying your bills by mail, good time to join the new century.

No save the date cards, no get well cards, postcards, please, please.

We have Instagram now.

You're embarrassing yourself.

If you're still sending postcards, it's like watching a movie on Netflix in 2020 and then trying to send it back.

If you want to hex toys by mail, sorry, get your ass out to the Perv store and buy your disgusting devices and jellies in person.

And of course,

what mostly would free up the mail would be getting rid of this shit.

Capital One, I don't know what your politics are, but somewhere in your evil bankers' hearts, you must think we should all at least get the chance to vote.

So next month, don't send me an application.

You can throw it in the trash for me.

All the businesses that fill up our mailboxes every day, really, take a little break.

Bed Bath and beyond?

It's like a shark.

It has to mail me a coupon every week or it dies.

Those postcards that look like they're from someone you know but are just real estate agents bragging, hey, I just sold this shitbox for 1.2,

out.

Letters with pennies taped to them to guilt me into charity.

The circular from the grocery store.

Look, we have hot dogs.

Yeah, we know.

Ads for $99 LASIC eye surgery.

If you only want $99 to fix my eyes, I don't want you touching my face.

And here's something no one has ever said.

Hey, gather around, everyone.

The latest penny saver is here.

If the post office wasn't so overwhelmed with the mountains of hot garbage that flow through it every day, we might stand a chance of foiling the fat man's plans.

I don't want to lose this election because of the mail.

This is something we can do.

Okay, that's our show.

I want to thank my guests, Trey Gowdy, Nina Burley, Rick Wilson, and Witten Marsalis.

We're off next week and back on the 11th of September.

Good night, folks.

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

For more information, log on to HBO.com.