Ep. #539: John Kasich, Oliver Stone

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

Thank you.

Oh, thank you, please.

Thank you.

You're a fantastic audience.

Thank you.

I know what I know why I'm happy today because this is our last show here from my man cave.

Going back to the studio next week and not a moment too soon because you know it was hot.

Boy, we got a heat wave here in California.

We got in LA, we got these rolling blackouts.

That's a little different rolling blackout in LA.

That's when you lose your electricity while you're high on Molly.

Yeah, oh, it's hot here.

Local officials are urging looters to stay hydrated.

And we got

a new thing.

I'm not making this up.

Fire tornadoes.

Don't you love California?

Always ahead of the curve on new trends in a fire tornadoes.

Boy.

Now, look, I know this sounds like something you don't want, but remember, you said that about podcasts and anal sex.

Oh, and speaking of on fire, did you see the Democratic Convention?

Hashtag sarcasm.

Oh man, that thing, how do you describe it?

It's like, have you ever tuned into the Jerry Lewis telephone at like two in the morning?

Yes.

It was a lot like that.

But it accomplished what it had to accomplish.

Joe Biden accepted the nomination this week in a high school library.

Oh, it gets worse.

An old lady came out and shirshed him.

Wednesday night, Obama spoke.

He killed it, took the gloves off against Trump.

He said, Trump has no interest

in doing the work.

And Trump was so pissed about that that he missed a two-foot putt.

Also, Joe, you know, he's going after the youth vote, so he was interviewed by Cardi B.

And yeah, she interviewed him.

And Biden said that his daughter gave him a nickname Joey B.

And he also has a rap name.

You know that, Joe Biden?

Yes, it's the Fresh Prince of Smell Hare.

Yeah, and Joe asked Cardi, you know, as politicians do, you know, what are the issues that are of interest to you, that matter to you.

And Cardi said she wants free health care, she wants free college, and she wants racial justice.

And Joe said, hey, whatever, get your pussy wet.

But no,

it was a very, very nice interview, and it ended well.

At the end, Cardi said, this is why I will vote for you.

And Joe said, and this is why I picked you as my running mate.

Joe is

kid, Joe.

But hey, big news out of the Senate.

The Senate Intelligence Committee this week released their report on Trump and Russia.

And big surprise, yes, there was quite a bit of collusion.

Trump's campaign manager Paul Manafort, get this, was using 10 different encrypted messaging apps like Wicker, Signal, Threema, Fiber, Voxer, Hushmail.

Sounds a little fishy.

Thank God he wasn't using a private email server.

But let me just reiterate, finally, next week we are back in the studio.

Now there are some trade-offs there.

Yes, there's a slightly greater risk of infection, but a much lower risk of stepping in dog shit after new rules.

All right, we've got a great show.

We have Oliver Stone, John Kasich, the Reverend Dr.

William Barber II, and Thomas Frank.

I spoke to them all yesterday.

Let's get to it.

Okay, my first guest is the former Republican governor from Ohio who spoke on the first night of the Democratic National Convention this week and endorsed Joe Biden for president, our friend John Kasich.

Governor, I know they say politics makes strange bedfellows.

Did you ever think in your wildest dreams that you would be at a Democratic convention opening for Bernie Sanders?

Well, it seems a little bit, you know, kind of out of the ordinary, Bill, but you know, my whole career, I've had great relations with people in the other party.

One of them is a guy named Ron Dellums.

You might recall, he was a very liberal Democrat.

He was a congressman.

He was the mayor of Oakland.

And he and I became very, very close.

And yet, I did things with, actually, with Ralph Nader on corporate welfare, with Tim Penny on balancing the budgets.

So, you know, this is not, even though it's, I would have never kind of imagined this, it's not that I'm uncomfortable seeing people in the other party as somebody that I can work with and help in some ways.

But speaking at a Democratic convention, obviously

it's something out of the order.

Yeah, that's a lot bigger.

It's a lot bigger, but

yeah, but I got to tell you, at the time, with some of the things I did with Dellums, which was to limit the production of the B-2 bomber, I mean, I was actually in a meeting with Republican leadership, and a guy there accused me of being a traitor.

I mean, those were big things.

I mean, that was big time when you start taking on major weapon systems, and we limited the production of it.

But this is big time, you know, to be at the convention.

And when they asked me to do it, I had to search my conscience, as you would expect.

And

I thought about it, and I thought this is the right thing to do.

And I hope you kind of felt as though it was a classy talk as I, you know, I tried to talk about what's important in our country.

Yeah, it was.

Got good reviews and it should have.

But I'm just saying, this is endorsing, telling people to vote for the person who is not in your party.

Let me ask you this a little bit tougher question.

Would you have done it if you were still in office?

Because I see a lot of Republicans doing this.

Colin Powell spoke there and a number of others, Susan Molinari,

Meg Whitman,

all retired.

And you don't see it a lot from Republicans in office.

In fact, Justin Amos.

That's a good question.

Only one.

That's a good question.

Yeah, but you can remember that I expanded Medicaid, right?

It was very controversial at the time.

I was the only major Republican governor in the country that did that.

And I was heading into re-election.

And I went ahead and did it, you know, because I thought it was the right thing to do.

And not only did I hide from it, I went out and explained to people why I was doing it.

So, you know, Bill, life is so short.

You know, it's just so short.

And when you feel really compelled, and it's a matter of conscience, you got to do what you have to do.

And, but I can't project back.

I can just give you an example of what I did that went against the grain.

And

I'm comfortable with what I've done.

And let me tell you, this, I get a lot of heat for this too.

I get praise and heat all at the same time.

And I knew it would come.

That's life.

Yeah, and now that you want people to go out,

especially in Ohio, which is close this year, very close, you want people to go out and pull the lever for the Democrat.

Do you have any regrets about some of the things you did maybe when you were governor that really served to suppress the votes of Democratic voters, the use-it-or-lose-it law, which you pushed through, which says if you haven't voted in two elections in a row, they take you off the rolls, cutting down on early voting.

I mean, some of that stuff is what Democrats are always accusing Republicans of doing, which is saying the only way you can win elections is basically by cutting down the number of people voting.

Well, Bill, first of all,

we have more early days of voting.

It's easier to vote in Ohio than about any other state.

And secondly, that whole

use it or lose it was something, I didn't pass that.

That was something that was in effect.

But one of the things that I did do was tell the legislature that I was not going to go along with the idea that people had to have a driver's license ID because I felt that

that would be very unfair and it would hurt people.

So I'm satisfied with what I had to do.

And in terms of

that early voting, again, I think we have like 29 days of early voting.

It's more than what they have in New York.

So maybe people ought to catch up to us rather than we worrying about

how many days we have.

We've done a good job here with that.

Okay.

Well, listen, I'm going to read you what the president said yesterday,

which

I hate to keep being in, I told you so on this show, but Donald Trump said, the only way we're going to lose this election is if the election is rigged, which is basically saying, heads I win, tails you lose.

And then they asked Kelly McAninny about it, and she said, yeah, you know, they're in the we'll see what happens mode, which is, of course, not the answer you want to hear from a president about will you accept the results of the election.

Donald Trump also said we're going to win four more years and after that we'll go for another four

because they spied on my campaign.

We should get a redo of four years.

I mean he's doing my act for me, this guy.

I still think people are not taking this as seriously as they should.

What do you say, and what should we do?

Yeah, Bill, my concern is this.

So you have a guy out here already setting it up saying, well, you know, I think we're going to be ripped off unless I win.

And the problem with it, the deep problem with it, is if you get like 20 or 25% of the people in this country that don't believe in the legitimacy of a presidential election,

you have a real, real problem.

And that's when I first heard him talking about, that's

what went through my mind.

You can't have a situation where the president of the United States, and just think about it, there's precedence for this.

You remember Richard Nixon felt that things had not gone the right way when he ran against Kennedy.

He thought he had grounds of protest.

He didn't do it.

Al Gore, you know, I know Al very well.

Al, you know, Al was able to concede.

He said, look, for the good of the country, I'm not going to fight this.

So we have Republicans and Democrats who have put the country first.

And what you see with these comments, to me,

it's beyond deeply troubling.

Because if you get that number of people that don't believe in the legitimacy of the election, where do we go from there?

So I just hope it's going to be a sweeping victory.

But I think even with a sweeping victory, you're still going to have people that doubt the outcome.

But that's the mess we're in.

And that's why I spoke at the convention.

Because the things like that cannot be tolerated.

Yeah, I still don't hear what we're actually going to do.

And it's more than just, I think,

people who don't accept the election.

It's that both sides use this word existential about if the other guy wins, America is over.

When you have two camps like that who think that it's the end of the country, the end of our life as we know it, if the other side wins.

Now, in what world is Joe Biden the end of America?

I don't know.

But that's where they are.

Do you really think there's going to be a peaceful transition of power?

Well, Bill, I don't want to speculate that things could go negative there.

I don't want to feed that.

That'll have to be something you need to talk about.

But I will tell you that that's another reason why I spoke, because

the hatred through clenched teeth doesn't now exist just with politicians.

It's now down into families.

It's with neighbors.

It's with friends.

I mean, I have never seen a time, and it's been getting there, getting there, now it's been fed.

You know, it's like putting gasoline on a fire where, you know, it used to be the politicians didn't like one another.

But now when you have families being broken, people can't talk about this.

This is what really troubles me.

And it's so ridiculous because we're Americans.

And

it's that everybody's, they're in their own silos.

It's tribal.

And I wrote a book about this.

In fact, we talked about it before.

It's called it, it's up to us.

If you can't,

you fix everything from the bottom up, not the top down.

And when the public is divided, you can't get anything done.

And that,

I'm so upset about that because I see it every single day.

Well, listen, I commend you for speaking at this convention and endorsing Biden.

I think that was a really great thing you did.

And for those people who are hostile to you, you say you're getting a lot of heat.

You know, I know that sometimes comes from the left.

And I just want to say to those people, look.

This country, you're always going to be sharing it with some people, a lot of people, who just don't see the world the way you do.

And you have to accept that.

It seems like we're in this place where we want to own each other and obliterate each other.

No one wants to compromise.

And that's something that you and Joe Biden have in common.

You're two guys who

accept that people have differences.

You can't own them.

You have to work with them.

We have to coexist.

Anyway, I don't have any more time.

No, let me say one more thing.

You know, you and I probably disagree on this, and maybe sometime I could come on and talk about it.

But the fact that we have eroded religion, and what I mean by that is I mean not the don'ts in religion, but the do's.

Love your neighbor.

We're all made in the image of God.

You see, if we actually, if people thought about it, then they wouldn't be able to cancel people out.

They wouldn't be able to express all this bitterness and anger.

Because under that scenario, you must respect and care for your neighbor.

You must realize that when people are made in the image of our Creator, they deserve respect and you cannot cancel them.

This is something that we need to talk about.

I know it's tough because we've seen a lot of people who are preachers who've given religion a bad name, but for those best people who are of the faith, Jewish, Christian, whatever it is, Muslim, whatever it is, there is an element there of respect and an element there of accountability.

And so it is something that at some point I hope that we can talk about.

You remind me of the dentist who says something provocative just as he sticks the thing in my mouth, and I can't answer it because

I have to go up.

It's a lot I would like to say to that.

And you're right, we don't agree, but I appreciate you coming on and doing what you're doing.

Thank you, Governor.

Thank you, Bill, very, very much.

Okay.

All right.

He is the president of Repairers of the Breach and co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign.

His latest book is We Are Called to Be a Movement.

The Reverend Dr.

William Barber II.

Great to see you, Rev.

And he's the author of The People Know, a brief history of anti-populism.

Thomas Frank.

Okay, you guys, listen, you two have a lot in common.

I think you're both very well known for trying to convince the Democratic Party maybe that they have gone in the wrong direction in abandoning the

their traditional demographic of the the working poor in favor of what we would call the whole food voters, whole foods voters.

How do you think the convention so far has done in winning back those voters and achieving your goals?

Oh, man.

Who's going to go first?

Either way, Tom, go ahead.

So if you'd asked me a couple of days ago, I'd say that Biden is doing a superficially good job.

You know, he at least understands what went wrong in 2016 in some way and is, you know, one of the reasons he's a candidate is because this is a guy that

has a really good chance of winning back Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, et cetera.

But I want to,

you know, when you watch this convention, one of the things that really bugs me about it is that they,

look, this is a society that it is, you know, it is heaven on earth for the kind of people that you just described, the Whole Foods Democrats.

I live among these people.

They're very, you know, affluent.

They're doing great.

And it's a wonderful wonderful time for them.

For the rest of us, for like the vast majority of Americans, this is a failed state.

This is a society that is crumbling.

I mean,

evictions, we're about to face a mass wave of evictions,

foreclosures, the opioid crisis just finished.

Now we're in this pandemic, medical bankruptcies,

deindustrialization, on and on and on.

it it gets worse and worse and worse this is not this is not being discussed at the democratic convention basically at all.

You know, this, and this is the kind of thing that was the bread and butter of the Democratic Party, not all that long ago, Bill Maher.

I mean, within our lifetimes, this is the kind of thing Democrats would talk.

They would talk about nothing else.

Now they don't mention it at all.

But if you're one of these people, I'm sorry.

Okay.

I'll shut up.

No, I just wanted to jump in and just say, and here's the problem, Bill.

It's not just this convention.

I want to do something John Lewis did.

He supported Kennedy, but he criticized it.

Before we got into into covet we had 140 million people living in poverty and low wealth 62 million people making less than a living wage that's 66 million white people living in poverty and low wealth we had 80 some million people uninsured or underinsured and just did a study just before the convention started that said if you just have a one to 19 percent increase among poor and low wealth people of all races creeds and colors sexualities who voted on an agenda an agenda that was clearly and it talked about them and their issues, you could change all 15 battleground states and even the South, change the

Senate.

It's there.

The question to me is, how do you have, continue to have convention after convention and you don't even say the word that represents 43% of the nation?

And over, this is before COVID.

It's going to be over 50% of the nation now.

How do you do that?

you know superficially i agree with tom some of the things we're seeing but every one of those candidates promised at a a conference that we had in 2019 that they were going to call for a full debate on poverty and low wealth, and they're going to call for a full debate on what systemic racism really is, starting with race voter suppression.

They said that the poor people and preachers, once they get in convention, they go right back to the same language.

Republicans racialize poverty.

Democrats seem to run from poverty, get stuck in a neoliberal argument, and we leave out millions of people, 32 million people who could vote, vote, who are poor and low wealth, who didn't last time.

And real one quick step.

In Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, Trump won by 79,000 plus votes.

2.1 million poor and low wealth people in those areas didn't even vote.

And when I visit them, I go to Appalachia and to Alabama, and they say a lot of them say,

we haven't voted the last few years is because nobody talks to us.

We never hear our issues.

And it just looks like it's going to be the same.

Now they're starting to say, but we're going to stop making ourselves heard.

We're not going to wait on them anymore.

That's why we're organizing.

But it's ridiculous.

And we could do so much better.

We could expand the electorate and change the calculus of politics.

Otherwise, what we do, Bill, is we actually keep the door open for Trump.

Because if Trump just wins the southern states, he wins 168 electoral votes, almost 170.

One third of all poor people live in the South, one third of all poor white people live in the South.

If you just raise 19% of poor people in the south who haven't voted to vote around an agenda that you change the south you change the south extremism like his can't win in this country

can i throw out yeah two points here if you don't talk about this stuff trump will we saw that in 2016.

it's not like he's going to do anything about it he's a demagogue right but he will pre he will pretend to care and he did a you know a fairly decent job of that in 2016 for all his folly and his you know his buffoonery and he will do it again if you give him this chance now the the the larger question that we should be asking and i and i hope that you will ask us bill why why don't the democrats want to do this like what the reverend barber was was saying just now if you were to you know i in in in my new book i i write a lot about uh things that democrats did in the 1930s during the great depression which are like you know mind-boggling today we can't even believe they did it but the governor of minnesota for example did a moratorium on foreclosures and evictions.

What if Joe Biden did that today?

What if he actually didn't just promise it?

He actually somehow did it, contrived to do it as president.

You would have those voters for a generation.

Why don't they do stuff like that?

Why does their imagination fail them?

Last night at the convention, they showed a video of a woman speaking in Spanish saying she came to the country illegally.

because she needed health care

for a party that's already being painted as for open borders, borders, which is not true, but a lot of people believe that.

Is that in opposition to the people, the very people you're talking about?

The guy who's out of work, can't pay his rent, mortgage,

can't even visit his mother now because of COVID,

and that guy is saying, yeah, but what about my problems?

It very well could be if you don't lift it all up and if you don't show to that person who came as all immigrants have come to this country looking

for a way up.

And the truth of the matter is what some people call illegal today, if they had the same viewpoint, their own great grandmothers would have been illegal too.

If you don't explain that, have a grown-up conversation, but then go further and say, let's deal with the fact.

that the people, for instance, who are against immigrants and fixing immigration reform, guess what?

They are the same people that push voter suppression.

and guess what the same people that push voter suppression targeted black brown people when they get elected they use the power they get to steal block health care and block living wages and and guess what in raw numbers they hurt more white people they actually hurt you so that lady is not your enemy we should be fixing immigration but you can't do that if you don't put the face of poverty on the screen if you don't talk about these issues and say if we get elected if we get elected we're not going going to give 83% of all this COVID care money to corporations and banks while we don't give the essential workers the essentials that they need.

I'm meeting with people who say they feel like they are going to their own mass murder.

I say, why?

They said, because we're being forced to go to work in lethal situations.

We got people who gave us a name change from service worker to essential workers.

They gave us a hand clap at six o'clock at night, but they didn't give us the wages, the sick leave,

the unemployment, and the rent forgiveness and mortgage forgiveness and the moratorium on utility cutoff that we need.

So if you just do, you're exactly right, if you just do that one side, but if you tell the whole story, if we have a grown-up conversation about poverty and what it's doing to us across the board and how it hurting 43%

of this country.

And then if people understand what can happen, Hans

Hanny Hanny Lopez just came out with a book and he says, we have been fooled into imagining the Trump supporter as a poor white person when it's just not true.

Many poor white people are not voting and they're not voting because of either voter suppression, issues like sickness and transportation, but mostly because of issues.

And if we talk to them, just like we talk to anybody, and if we get them all in the same room, what the Poor People's Campaign is doing, we're getting poor whites in the same room with black people, Latinos,

with Indigenous people, with gay people, with straight people, with war leaders, and saying, This is what's going on.

These are the policies that are destroying all of us.

And in my book, I wrote this called We Might Call to Be a Movement.

What we say is the rejected, if all the rejected people come together, those men rejected because of their race, their color, their sexuality, their poverty, their income, they form a power base.

Poor people are now 25% of the electorate.

And 700 people, poor and people are dying every day before COVID.

Can I ask another question?

Speak to them.

Let me ask a question about

the electorate.

Let me ask a question about the convention.

AOC was given 90 seconds to speak.

I just talked to John Kasich, who gave a longer speech.

Some people are not happy with that.

It's obviously based on a decision the party made that AOC, yes, she gets us a lot, but we are making the calculation that showing her, showcasing her, her,

we lose more than we get in this election.

Now, I see that Trump's support has not changed.

Like that 42 percent, it's a bad number for a president, but it is steady.

It's steadier than almost any president has had in decades.

They are not switching, which tells me, okay,

that means

Are they really going to switch because John Kasich is talking to them?

Or are they going to go, yeah, we like you, John Kasich, nice try, but I'm staying with my tribe.

It does argue more for

the AOC.

How about bringing in Colin Powell, you know, the architect of the Iraq war?

You know, that's going to persuade a lot of people.

Right.

I mean, the AOC strategy would be, yeah, let's excite our side.

Well, no, no, no.

I don't know.

I've said the reverse, too.

I don't know.

Politics is very complicated.

Well, it is, Bill.

It is, Bill.

And I'm going to jump frankly.

It is very complicated, but

some things are not that complicated.

You have an African-American woman on the ticket for vice president.

You're talking about bringing in an African-American base, and you know the only place you can expand the base is among poor and low-wealth people.

And you know, if you do by less than 20%,

you change 15 states, and you bring in somebody who's a voter suppressionist, not just Casey, who is an artist who's a voter suppressionist against black and brown people, who also passed the worst welfare reform bill that hurt poor white people more in raw numbers than it hurt black people.

That makes no sense.

And then you give ALC 62nd, and some people tried to argue that that's extreme.

But what was extreme about health care, higher education, living wages, and labor rights for all in addressing colonization?

The fact of the matter is, we brought in the extreme in Casey.

And he gets to laugh and he gets to be kind of colloquial, but he brings nothing

but if you bring folk in well wait a minute well you've got a whole electorate out there to explain well we'll see we'll see well wait the other the answer why don't they want to they're they're not interested in they're not interested in doing that look in some ways they are trying the same you know the same strategy that they used in 2016 with a few variations you know uh joe biden is obviously a more lovable guy than hillary clinton was and that sort of thing and you know he's a great guy and trump is such a scoundrel and Trump seems like even more of a scoundrel this year.

But again, they're not really offering a kind of positive vision of the sort that the Reverend Barber just described.

And they don't want to do that.

Okay, look, this has been going on for a long time in the Democratic Party bill, where the centrist wing basically came out on top of the liberal wing, and they're not ever going to look back.

You know,

they won.

They won the game and they're, you know, they're not going to let these people have the time of day.

And when a Bernie Sanders runs for president, they're going to see to it that he gets defeated.

The very same sort of opinion cartel that today is saluting Joe Biden for his brilliance and his wisdom.

And, you know, and then last week, every single op-ed, every single day was about Trump and his folly and stupidity.

These same people four years ago were, you know, with the same unanimity, were, you know, berating anybody who criticized Barack Obama from the left for being these liberal whiners.

And how can you expect him to do anything when he has to deal with the Republican you know Congress blah blah blah but let's do remember this it will never end but let's not forget can I give you a hope yes sir go ahead

I want to give you one hopeful piece that happened if Democrats would watch it Kentucky had an election this year for governorship the poor people's campaign we went in there we organized for three years from the hood hard from the hood to the hollow We put coal miners in the same room with fast food workers from Louisville.

We showed them they were being played against each other.

In fact, Bill, in one of our training, we showed them voter suppression and we showed them everybody who supported voter suppression.

And then we connected that on a map to the politicians who were blocking the health care for the coal miners and taking their unit rights.

And one guy got up and said, well, damn, Barbara,

Pastor, he said, they're playing us against each other.

I said, what are you going to do about it?

So they started organizing, never endorsed the candidate, but they started pushing issues.

The Democratic candidate started pushing those issues and hearing them and started talking about poverty.

And he started going to the Hollands and he went to the hood.

He

won the Democratic governorship in and off year in Kentucky.

And then the first week he kept his word on health care and fell into an ending, fell into disenfranchisement.

So we're not just talking hypothetical.

If you want to change the American politics, you cannot ignore 43, which is going to be now over 50% of the American population.

So Reverend Barbara, when you go into these places, I mean, you're talking about Kentucky, I mean, Appalachia, West Virginia.

This is the typical Trump voter.

Most people think of that, and Trump did very well in those states.

Certainly, West Virginia, I think, is his best state.

And do you find that the white, do you think that the white people are racist?

Because for years,

what conservatives complained most about liberals was, you say we're racist about everything.

We're all racist.

And look, I did many jokes myself like that, so I'm not going to say I wasn't part of it.

And look,

my honest opinion is that most of these Republicans are not racist.

They're just very blind.

They think racism has been solved.

They want to think that.

Even John Roberts thinks that.

So that's kind of where they are.

But I feel like it's now become kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy because we're in this land of white fragility, that book that's at the top of the book charts that a lot of the liberals are embracing, which seems to be saying to white people, you have two choices: you're either racist or you're racist and you don't know it.

Yeah, and I'm not down with that.

I don't, you know, I don't, just for your information, I don't like to use the terms left and right and liberal.

That's a whole nother conversation because I think we got to move to the moral center.

And I don't mean religious center.

You can moral foundation of the Constitution.

I think every piece of public policy ought to be asked this question.

Does it establish justice?

Does it ensure domestic tranquility?

Does it provide for the common defense?

Does it

Does it promote the general welfare?

And does it give equal protection under the law?

And if not, then it's constitutionally inconsistent.

It's morally indefensible and economically insane.

But what I can tell you from the people I've talked to from Mississippi to Maine, from Appalachia to Alabama, is that white liberals overestimate the racism of poor white people and they underestimate their own.

The reality is that what you need to do is just have a conversation with folk and show them the connection.

First thing, you've got to stop talking about racism as individual acts of meanness and personal feeling.

You know, Ibram Kendi has helped us on that.

He says the very fact that we have to say systemic racism and structural racism, we don't understand.

It really is redundant.

Racism has always been about structure and not just about individuals.

And then the issue of whether or not somebody is racist in their heart is a waste of time because clan members will tell you they're not racist.

The cop that killed George Floyd would tell you he's not racist.

You know, the Tea Party is going to say they're not.

That's not how you deal with racism.

Racism, you have to look at the policies that you support and what's the disparate impact.

What we find is that when we go into

these white communities and we have black people in the community in there with us, like in Harlan County, we teach and we say, listen, you know about voter suppression?

They say, yes.

People have told you there's all this voter support fraud.

Yeah, but let's just show you something.

And we show people the, as i said those who do the voter suppression laws and then we say did you know those are the same people that are blocking your health care and taking your living wages and then we say racism is targeted at black people and brown people and indigenous people but ultimately racism is anti-democracy anti-humanity and racism is a lie and there's something my grandmother taught me bill that i use in politics I didn't get it from Duke and all these other schools.

She said, boy, if you scratch a liar, you'll find a feet.

When you can show poor white people that racism is a lie, and when you scratch racist, you're going to find somebody that'll steal your health care and steal your living wages and steal your environmental protection and steal your clean water.

That changes the whole conversation.

You don't have to not talk about racism.

You have to talk about it the right way.

And then you have to connect it to the interlocking injustices, systemic racism, systemic poverty, ecological devastation, the war economy, and the false narrative of religious nationalism.

And when you connect all five of them, you can organize that 20%

of black and brown people who are poor and low wealth around their own agenda, who, when they vote, can fundamentally change.

So that's what we're doing.

We're not going to sit home just because they didn't mention us.

So, okay.

More people are saying we're going to be heard.

One final thing I want to bring up here.

Tom, you wrote the book, What's the Matter with Kansas?

I thought maybe this would be interesting for you.

Steve Bannon was arrested today.

I saw that

for for fraud.

He had an organization called We Build the Wall.

Now, of course, we remember at the beginning, Mexico was going to pay for the wall.

And then when they didn't, it was like, give me your donations.

Give us your donations.

And it was a complex scheme.

Well, actually, it was not complex at all.

It was like, you give me your donations.

I don't build the wall and I buy yachts.

Wait a minute.

There's a long history of this in conservative land.

You know about this.

All of these direct mail schemes in the 80s, you know.

When a comedian is told, okay, don't say these people are stupid,

and then they give Steve Batten all this money to build the wall and he buys a boat with it.

What is your advice to a comedian who can't say, okay, that's fucking stupid?

Well, that, wait, that, but that individual act is stupid.

Just don't call my Kansas stupid.

That's all I ask.

Can I say something about the last question?

Because

what Reverend Barber is doing is

absolutely critically important, trying to build a mass movement of working class people across racial barriers.

And for my money, that's a movement for economic democracy.

And for my money,

that's what populism was about, this movement in the 1890s that I've been writing about.

That's what was

successful for this country in the 1930s.

That's what Dr.

King wanted to do.

And when you talk about the

white fragility or

whatever it was, that is an idea that is obviously

extremely corrosive to solidarity, extremely corrosive and

deadly if you're trying to assemble an electoral majority.

But there is this, and this is what absolutely fascinates me, there's this large number of Democrats that don't care.

about those things.

And what interests them is what I call

my term for it, which is the utopia of scolding, where they get to live in this happy little world and they go to Whole Foods and they live in the really nice suburb and they have a professional white-collar job.

And in their spare time, they get to shake their finger at the people lower in the social hierarchy than them for their, you know, their vulgarity and their, and their, their tastelessness and their bigotry.

And that is enormously satisfying.

I got to end it there.

You guys were,

you guys are both great.

I want to hear what he is.

Well, I can't.

I got to go.

I got to show.

I got to do the two.

I got to keep this.

Let him say the 10 words.

Thank you.

You guys should pair up board.

You're a great team, and I appreciate you doing this.

Okay.

All right.

We'll see you soon.

All right.

Take care.

Thank you.

Okay, so there's a new voting demographic out there.

They're calling them rage moms.

You've heard of security moms and hockey moms and soccer moms.

Well, these are moms who think America's going to hell in a hand cart, which it is, and they're pissed about it.

They're not getting any help.

They're tired of being parents and caregivers and teachers and everything all at once.

And they're pissed.

This is an actual quote.

One of them said, I'm not making this up.

The rage lives in my hands, rolls down my fingers, clenching two fists.

I want to hurt someone.

That's a mom.

So we thought as a public service, we probably should give you some tips on how to know if you're living with a rage mom.

For example, all the news clippings on the fridge are about hunting accidents.

She drinks Merlot by the box, then crushes the box on her forehead.

The little note in your lunchbox says, fuck you.

When you tell her you'd like the crust cut off your bread, she says, and I'm like a duck that shits rubies.

The first rule of her book club is, never talk about book club.

During family game night, she wants to play Russian roulette.

The last month made her love Ellen more.

When you ask where babies come from, she says bad choices.

All right, he is the Oscar-winning director and screenwriter whose new memoir is Chasing the Light, Writing, Directing, and Surviving Platoon, Midnight Express, Scarface, Salvador, and the movie game, Oliver Stone.

And I was saying to you before, I could probably name about 10 other great movies you've made.

You are one of my favorite directors.

And what I learned from this book is, boy, making movies is hard.

Even with some of the movies that, you know, they were mainstream big movies and you were still fighting budgets, getting the money on the day you were shooting, shit like that.

Here's my question to you.

What movie could you not get greenlit today that you made back?

Well,

I think it's very hard to get a movie made today.

I think the subject matter has to be kosherd politically correct.

And it has to be, my movies were always ruffian, and they were personal points of view.

And I, you know, they were pretty controversial.

So I don't think that I would be doing very well today if I were out there as a young person.

The book is about, you know, the book is about those first 40 years of the life

and how hard I struggled to make Platoon and Salvador.

Salvador and Platoon were made in the same back-to-back in the same year, 85, 86.

And

they got me back in the game.

I had already been successful with Midnight Express and Scarface, but

then I fell out of favor.

And then I come back with those two films.

But you remember, Bill, that those two films were not financed by American studios at all.

They were not touched.

The subject of the Civil War in Salvador, no interest.

the subject of a realistic Vietnam movie, no interest.

It was so frustrating during those years.

And I think that's why motivated me to write the book, to get it out,

tell fellow young film students and young people how difficult it is to get things made and done, period, and to think for yourself, too.

And I worry, I wonder if you do also,

about what movies are not being made today.

Because we're not going to know what movies aren't made because we don't see them.

But it seems like, based on what you're saying,

that we're missing out on a lot of stuff.

What movies would you make today if you could?

If somebody gave you an unlimited budget and just said, yes, Oliver, I'm a huge fan.

You go make it.

What would you make?

I've had so many movies that went through the pipeline and didn't get made.

It's just,

almost 10 years of my life wasted.

I mean, I spent a lot of time working on the Meli Massacre for Pinkville in 2007.

We almost made it.

It was canceled because the financier got scared.

I worked on Martin Luther King, MLK, for twice, and they both didn't make it through because, again, it was controversial.

I showed

not only his wisdom and his love of God and his religious side, but also his sexy side, his love of women.

And that touched off a few.

I tried to make,

oh, Jesus Christ, I tried to make.

What was that movie?

It skips my mind right now, but it was a dozen of them you cannot make a movie now after 2001 you got into trouble you know very well firsthand oh yeah making a movie critical of the u.s foreign policy u.s military is off limits you can the uh pentagon and the cia have as we know cooperated with more than 800 films they give detailed instructions they give equipment it's a form of money They give men sometimes.

So everybody that's made a war film or war-related film has had to deal with that problem.

So what did you think this week of the report from the Senate Intelligence Committee that came out?

It put a kind of a bipartisan,

that wave of your hand, is that your answer?

I mean, it put a kind of a bipartisan stamp on the idea that there was extensive coordination, and this is a Republican saying this,

between the Trump campaign and Russia.

I mean, this guy, Konstantin Kalemko, who we heard about, now they are naming him as a Russian intelligence officer.

He's GRU.

He was coordinating with Trump's campaign manager, Manafort.

And your namesake, Roger Stone,

organized the WikiLeaks dump 30 minutes after the Hollywood, the Access Hollywood tape came out.

You can't really think that a Russian president,

the one that's in there now, should be able to ratfuck our elections like this, can you?

Oh, Bill, I think you're,

I've known you too long.

I think you're sophisticated enough to know that, well, you have to question everything that comes out of our intelligence agencies.

If you haven't learned that by now,

you've got a long way to go still.

So you think, so they're liable.

Intelligence agencies are not reliable.

They've been screwing with America ever going back to the Vietnam War, going back to the Iraq wars, the

Afghani wars.

It's very hard to find out the truth from them.

And everything they published, the rumors and all the anonymous sources, the think tanks, the anti-Russian, it all adds up into this ball of wax that becomes enormous.

And then you and they have people like you who are skeptical generally believing it.

I would really triple check everything, every one of those sources.

What I read of it wasn't that specific.

It wasn't that specific.

And Manafort, you know,

they went after Manafort in a way that

it was bizarre.

And, you know, the fact is that he wasn't that intelligent and he didn't have that much to say or do about any of this.

He was trying to make some money in Ukraine.

What about the fact that this week,

yesterday, Alexey Novalny,

he's one of the main opposition leaders in Russia, was poisoned.

Well, we'll see.

Also, this requires investigation.

We're in a moment in time when anything, anything about China or Russia is being broadcast loudly to the American people.

We have a very effective Western media that does this all the time.

You have to go back, and you have been skeptical in the past, and ask, why do we need enemies?

Why do we need these enemies?

Why do we want to make this into an issue?

Why?

Well, listen, people...

Why do you think

people have associated your name with conspiracy?

I've never seen you that way.

I mean, the conspiracy theory really with JFK

is, I think most Americans would agree that it was not a lone gunman.

That's the conspiracy, is the Warren report.

But we seem to be in a place now where the conspiracy is hide in plain sight with Trump.

I mean, he's trying to take this election.

You know, even Bond villains only tell their

plot to James Bond.

This guy announces this to the whole world.

He said the other day,

basically, I'm screwing with the post office so that people can't mail in their ballots.

Listen, I'm not going to argue.

I mean, I'm not voting for Trump, and

he is

a sad figure, and he was the wrong choice to be president.

He can't handle the job.

He really can't.

And I think people are seeing through his personality.

But to make our foreign policy dependent on attacking Trump, to get rid of Trump and

creating a Cold War environment with China and with Russia and with other countries is crazy.

And

stigmatization is not a policy.

So they're looking for everything possible to build up this Russia, James Bond, Dr.

No scenario.

Do you think the Russians, I'm sorry, I've been over there a lot.

Do you think they sit around, think about Americas all the time?

They don't care.

They've got their own problems.

They have a country that is vibrant and they want to make it work.

They have a lot of issues like we do.

They're not thinking about our election as you think we are.

We're so self-obsessed with our own issues that we can't understand that other people don't look at it the same way.

They think about it.

But meanwhile, keep in mind, Billy, you know damn well how many elections have we interfered with in how many countries in the world, interfered with money and all kinds of dirty tricks.

Well, Oliver.

There's just a double standard here.

You are always one of the most fascinating people I get to talk to.

I just don't, you know,

you can't go with a group think.

No, I understand.

Believe me.

You can think for yourself.

Okay.

I'm trying.

All right.

Thank you.

I love the book.

I read it in one big gulp, and I recommend it highly.

Oliver Stone.

Yes.

All right.

New Rule.

Time for New Rules.

Final Backyard Edition of New Rule.

New New Rule, now that Fisher Price is making a home office playset so kids can pretend they've been forced to work from home due to a deadly pandemic, they need to create other coronavirus-inspired fun like the Fisher-Price Drive-Up COVID Testing Center and the Fisher-Price Grocery Store Mass Confrontation Playset available in toy stores everywhere.

Right next to these stands six feet away from Mielmo.

New Rule, since just about every Republican now appears heavily armed in their campaign ads, Democrats have to appeal to their voters in the same way, by holding up a bong.

That's right, and don't just hold it.

Hit that shit.

I'm Diane Feinstein and I

approve this message.

I know liberals are for everyone voting, but new rule, people who post comments on Pornhub aren't allowed to vote.

I'm sorry, but with civil society hanging by a thread, do we really need to hear from the guy who feels the need to share his thoughts on Milf's stepmom mistake, son for dad?

It's always the same thought.

I'd fuck that.

New rule, I don't want to tell clickbait writers how to do their job, but there is no nasal polyp treatment that everyone should know about.

Here, let me help you out if you want to write a headline about nasal polyps.

A doctor looked in this hot woman's nose and what he found will shock you.

Think this hot woman doesn't have nasal polyps?

Think again.

Or Rebel Wilson has a perfect reaction to this hot woman's nasal polyps.

New Rule, I don't care how long you've been into politics, you have to admit you've never seen anything like this before.

A lady with three boobs.

And finally, New Rule, now that Republicans have begun welcoming QAnon into the political mainstream, it's time Americans learn what it is.

QAnon is a growing movement within the Republican Party that believes the world is being run behind the scenes by a small group of elitist liberals and Hollywood celebrities who are both Satan worshipers and pedophiles, who eat babies and wear red shoes to signal their membership in this group.

A group that includes Hillary Clinton, Tom Hanks, Ellen the Pope, and every president since Reagan.

And that there are two heroes who will put a stop to this, President Donald Trump and Q himself, the anonymous leader who founded QAnon, with one overarching theme, that you're being lied to and everything you think you know is really the opposite.

What you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening.

That's why it makes sense within QAnon that Trump, who most Americans see as a sex creep who walks in on half-dressed beauty pageant contestants and tells underage girls he'll be dating them in 10 years, actually is the Christian savior who will destroy these sex fiends.

It is also why it makes perfect sense that I,

libertine, atheist, pot-smoking, Trump-hating Bill Maher,

am Q.

I am, which I revealed on this show two years ago.

Which is why it is true.

I am Q.

You don't believe me?

Just ask yourself: is there any non-evidence that I'm not Q?

Well, it's two years later, and I'm going to tell you again.

I am Q.

I am.

And true Q followers know it's the truth because it makes the least sense.

Think, people.

That's all I'm saying.

Take what you thought, flip it, and then assume the opposite of the opposite of what you know is not true.

Then and only then are you thinking like a true QAnon.

And if you need any more proof that I am Q, just remember that after I was revealed as Q in 2018, this old picture came out of me wearing red shoes, which of course I wore back then for the same reason Trump acted like a disgusting pervert for the last 30 years, because I knew this day would come where I would have to prove that I am what I'm not.

And don't be intimidated by the so-called sane people who say we're stupid and gullible and lonely, aimless losers.

Oh, you can make fun of us all you want.

But the joke is on you, because QAnon is now so mainstream that 71 Republicans running for office this year have espoused QAnon beliefs.

That's more Republicans than believe in evolution or vegetables.

And we're very proud that one of our candidates, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has been brave enough to say publicly that Hillary likes voodoo dolls and plans parenthood, performs human sacrifices, she just won the House primary in Georgia.

She's going to be in Congress.

Deal with it.

Trump calls her a future Republican star, and she has called his presidency a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles out.

Exactly.

So laugh now if you want.

But just remember that in the Republican Party, today's lunatic is tomorrow's mainstream representative.

Yeah, sure.

Call call her crazier than a shithouse rat today.

In four years, you'll be calling her the winner of the Iowa caucus.

Same with Joe Ray Perkins.

She could be the next Republican senator from Oregon, and she says,

I stand with President Trump, I stand with Q and the team.

Stand with Q and the team.

Hmm.

Thank you, Joe.

Yes, we've made great progress in the two years since I revealed myself.

I don't take all the credit.

But attention must be paid.

Q merchandise is now a staple of Trump rallies, and President Trump himself has just this week now embraced QAnon publicly.

We're blowing up, bitch.

Get on the Q tip.

Michael Flynn was the national security advisor of this country.

And here he is taking the QAnon oath.

Where we go one, we go all.

We're for real, motherfuckers.

And what's so great now is that I can speak to my people, my cute people, with complete freedom.

Because the liberals just think I'm doing a comedy bit here.

Such idiots.

These libtards actually believe Donald Trump doesn't like me.

That's what they said about Robert Mueller.

That he was Trump's big enemy.

When cute people know Trump feigned collusion with Russia in order to enlist Mueller to join him in exposing the ring and preventing a coup by Obama.

Mueller was his work wife, not his enemy.

Last week, these morons actually thought Trump was insulting me when he tweeted about me.

He's totally shot, looks terrible, exhausted, gaunt, and weak.

If there was ever a good reason for no shutdown, check out this jerk.

Yeah, check out this jerk.

He's saying, check out our movement.

Don't be fooled just because in various tweets and at rallies, Trump has referred to me as dopey, not smart, a dumbass, a lowlife, a dummy, a moron, a crazy maniac, stupid, failing, pathetic, bloated, third rate, insane, wacko, sick, stone-cold crazy, and the dumbest man on television.

That's his way of saying, I'm with you, bro.

So look, if you're thinking of coming over to Q, or even if you think you might be Q-ish,

Here are some tips for voting in this vital upcoming election.

First, continue to follow blindly every single thing I say.

That's most important.

Second, don't believe Election Day is really on a Tuesday.

It's not.

They try that trick every time.

In fact, this November, if you really want your voice heard, boycott the election by not voting at all.

In fact, let me remind you of the key instructions for Election Day that I gave you two years ago.

Do not leave your house on November 6th for any reason even to buy vape juice.

If you have a basement go there or better get in the trunk of your car close it and don't leave for whatever reason.

Just stay in the trunk of your car until you hear from me.

Stay in the trunk.

Stay in the trunk.

Stay in the trunk.

But if you do somehow get to the polls, my fellow QAnoners, of course, go with pride and pull the lever for the one man that can make America great again.

Kanye West.

Okay, that's our show.

I want to thank my guests, John Kasich, the Reverend Dr.

William Barber II, Thomas Frank, and Oliver Stone.

We'll be back next week from the studio.

Good night.

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.