Ep. #534: Susan Rice, George Will

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Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO late night series, Real Time with Bill Ma.

Start the clock.

Hey, how you doing?

Thank you very much.

You're a great crowd.

You look great.

And I think I know why you're happy.

The Supreme Court, can you believe it?

Has started to do the right thing.

DACA today, the president wanted to get rid of the DREAMers Act, and they shot him down.

Early in the week, the Supreme Court said: if you come out as gay or transgender, you cannot be fired from your job.

And all of America said the same thing.

What's a job?

But that's pretty big: that a biological male can no longer get a pink slip for wearing one.

But yeah, all the experts agree this could lead to a much more inclusive and diverse workplace.

In fact, someday they're thinking maybe even a straight male flight attendant.

No, everybody's celebrating.

Today, Lindsey Graham said this was a great day for no reason at all.

In other news,

President Trump was walking,

and that made big news because he was going down a ramp and he looked like a downer cow trying to get into a walk-in bathtub.

Started people talking about whether he's like up to the job physically, mentally.

I mean, he did have a birthday this week.

He turned 74, doesn't look a day overembalmed.

But yeah, they had a big celebration at the White House, of course.

They had ice cream and cake, and then they remembered it was his birthday.

Some more ice cream and cake, and Trump is, of course, bragging about how robust he is, and I agree.

Nothing says America's strong like a painted fat man lifting a cupcake with two hands.

But he did some business this week, also, of course.

The president, always busy, he signed an executive order on policing.

He said he has never been a cop, but he knows what it's like to wrestle someone who's resisting.

Oh, cops, not a good time to be a cop.

People are mad at the cops these days.

You know what?

They're even retitling, did you see this, the old police shows?

It's now Car 54, How Dare You?

Murder She Committed.

And

Law and Order, WTF.

And finally, a little sad news: the Oscars are going to be delayed.

Yes, of course, because of the pandemic and they're not making any movies.

So they're putting it off.

And the Oscars are going to be in April now for the first time.

The committee was very reasonable.

They said we just need more time to not get it right no matter what we do.

All right, we got a great show.

We have Susan Rice, Malcolm Nance, Andrew Sullivan, and George Will.

What a lineup.

I spoke to them all yesterday.

Let's get right to it.

Okay, my first guest is the former U.S.

Ambassador to the U.N.

and former National Security Advisor whose New York Times best-selling memoir is Tough Love, My Story of the Things Worth Fighting For.

Please welcome from Washington, D.C., Susan Rice, Ambassador.

Great to be with you, Bill.

Thank you for joining.

Well, not joining me, but joining me remotely.

I want to start off with two people who had your job.

The first, John Bolton, his book hit the, well, I guess not the stores this week, but the excerpts came out.

And

the theme is very similar to what we heard from other people who are high up in the Trump administration and left, which is basically, if you think this guy is nuts in public, you should see him in private.

But

he does go into detail about the corruption.

And I think one of his big themes is that the Ukrainian impeachment over Ukraine really was not unique to what was going on.

And he used the phrase, he said, obstruction of justice as a way of life.

Do you think if he had testified in the impeachment hearings, it would have gone differently?

You know, Bill, I don't know because the Senate Republicans were so determined not to hear evidence, whether written evidence or oral testimony.

It was as if they were just putting their hands over their ears and screaming loudly so they couldn't hear anything.

So it's really hard to know.

What I think would have been beneficial, though, would for John Bolton to have had the

courage and the timeliness to bring forward to the American people his very disturbing observations when you understand what he has to say, which is that, you know, not only only was the president prepared to sell out our national security for political favors from Ukraine, but he was willing to do it with China and perhaps other countries.

The most extraordinary thing about the book, at least what we know about it so far, is that it makes absolutely plain that Donald Trump pleaded with Xi Jinping of China to interfere in our elections and tip it in his favor.

And in fact, as you'll remember, he actually said the same thing out loud on the White House lawn when he called on China before the press corps to give him dirt on Joe Biden.

So the corruption is through and through.

It's really extraordinary.

And to hear it coming from somebody like John Bolton, whose conservative credentials are hard to impugn, makes it even more

really phenomenally powerful.

Okay, let's now talk about the other guy in that old job of yours, the one you briefed, because he he was outgoing.

I mean, you were outgoing.

He was coming in.

That's Michael Flynn,

recently sprung Michael Flynn.

And

I understand you left a detailed playbook for a pandemic,

should that happen.

And I guess he just tossed it?

Well, I spent 12 hours over four different occasions briefing General Michael Flynn, my successor.

President Obama was determined that we do our utmost to be responsible in our handoff to our successors and leave them all that we could to enable them to be effective.

Little did we know quite how they would perform.

But we prepared 100 different memos on all different topics.

I briefed on pandemics in various different settings with General Flynn, along with many other issues of national security importance.

And yes, this Pandemics for Dummies playbook, as I like to to call it, was a 69-page guide.

It wasn't something that I handed myself to Flynn, but our staff passed on to the incoming staff to give them the wherewithal to

ask the right questions early on in the event of a pandemic, because as I wrote in my book, and as you've heard President Obama say, we knew that a pandemic was all but inevitable.

We didn't know when, we didn't know what form it would take.

And so as important as it was to be prepared with respect to China or Russia or Iran, in our estimation, it was to be prepared with respect to a pandemic.

And obviously, they weren't.

Now, whether Michael Flynn or one of his successors or somebody on their staff

put the pandemic playbook on the shelf to collect dust or in the garbage bin, I can't say for sure.

Flynn wasn't in the job long enough, probably, to unpack, much less to start throwing things away.

Okay, so you are now on the very short list for Vice President, should Joe Biden choose you.

And I love your answer because usually people play games with this, and your answer is, yeah.

If fast, I'll take it.

So let me ask you this about Joe Biden.

What would be your advice to Black Lives Matter about

what they go after him for?

Because they were pretty tough on Hillary last time.

when she surely would have been the better candidate on issues that are important to them.

And Joe's, you know, a lot of people talking about busing in the 70s and the 94 Crime Act, crime bill, which he supported.

What would be your advice?

Well, first of all, my advice is to understand that this is 2020.

And we have an enormous range of challenges on our plate that deeply affect the lives and the well-being of African Americans in this country, whether it's the COVID-19 pandemic, the economic recession, almost depression, and now what we are seeing with respect to perpetual police violence and many of the underlying manifestations of what remains systemic racism.

And we have a choice.

Either Donald Trump remains in office, who has governed in a blatantly

racist and divisive way with utter disregard for the concerns of many Americans, including African Americans, or we elect Joe Biden, somebody whose heart and soul understand that our country is stronger when we're united,

who understands that the African-American population is an integral and equal part of this country, and that

they have suffered enormously over generations, and that it's time to invest in health, in education, in housing, and in the environment, and so many of the underlying conditions which have

exacerbated the systemic racism in this country.

And also, obviously, to deal squarely with the challenges that we've seen on our streets with respect to the police and criminal justice system.

And so, you know, I understand that there are those protesting who may wish for a more radical agenda, but I think in Joe Biden, what we stand to get is somebody who understands and appreciates the challenges, is willing to invest real resources and real energy in them.

And it comes from a position of true passion.

I worked with Joe Biden, Bill, very closely for eight years.

I know him.

In fact, I worked with him before the Obama administration when he was in the Senate and I was at the State Department.

There's nobody that brings to this challenge a greater sense of the humanity that we all share and a commitment to make that manifest in reality and in policy, not just in rhetoric.

So I would urge

those that are questioning how they might vote in this context to be very mindful of what the choice is.

It couldn't be more stark.

Okay.

Now, where you're sitting right now is a place where there is

taxation but not representation.

And I learned a lot about D.C.

recently when President Trump called out the troops there, you know, because they don't have representation.

So, whereas other states have governors who make certain decisions, I guess

in that district, it's up to the president.

Statehood, I know, for D.C.

is something very important to you, is it not?

It is.

I'm a born and raised Washingtonian, and I've lived all my life, or most of my life, in a place where,

like every other one of the more than 700,000 citizens of the District of Columbia, we are, by the way, a population larger than two other states, Wyoming and Vermont, and comparable to Alaska and Delaware.

We pay more per capita in taxes than any state in the Union and more in federal taxes in the aggregate than 22 other states.

And yet we have no voting representation in either the House or the Senate.

And that is taxation without representation, but it's worse than that.

Because we don't have any measure of sovereignty equivalent to a state, Donald Trump can treat us as a playground, as he did when he called out federalized military forces to employ violence against largely peaceful protesters.

This has got to change.

It's long overdue.

It's a remnant of racism and and political expedience because Republicans understand that by virtue of the fact that the District of Columbia is

almost now still majority black and very Democratic, that they don't want any additional voting representation out of us.

But that's completely undemocratic.

And it's one more reason why

we need a Democratic House, a Democratic Senate, and a Democratic President in the White House, because that is what it will take to change.

We can fix this great iniquity through legislation that's signed into law by the president.

Great.

Well, thank you, Ambassador, and great good fortune if you are the VP.

I think you'd be a really good choice, and I'll be rooting for you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Bill.

Okay.

Great to be with you.

Okay, time for our panel.

He is a career U.S.

counterterrorism intelligence officer and an MSNBC contributor and a true hero of this country, Malcolm Nance from Richmond, Virginia.

And he is a writer-at-large for New York magazine.

Of course, our good friend Andrew Sullivan from Provincetown, Massachusetts.

Hey, guys.

Hey, Bill.

I'm here.

Okay, so let's start with the Supreme Court.

This is a big week for the court.

Wow.

And as always, they make news that changes this country.

Today, DACA, now we know this from 2013 when Obama passed.

If you're brought to the U.S.

as a child, it said you have protection from deportation, or you can apply for it.

Trump wanted to get rid of it.

They shot it down.

John Roberts joined the liberals.

And earlier in the week,

gay and transgender people, they ruled cannot be fired sexual discrimination because of that.

So,

and Neil Gorsuch joined that one.

What are we learning about John Roberts and the new Supreme Court?

Well, it remains one of the most amazing things that the two justices on the Supreme Court that have done the most for gay equality are Anthony Kennedy, nominated by Ronald Reagan, and now Neil Gorsuch, nominated by Donald J.

Trump.

So we can, all those people that thought that nominating those people would be death for all sorts of people were wrong.

Unfortunately, the ruling on the gay rights issue is really very narrow.

They kind of punt on discriminating against gay men, lesbians, and transgender people.

They just fit us into the already existing category of sex.

So the reason it's unfair and impermissible to discriminate against me is because

I'm married to a man and not a woman.

And that is sex discrimination.

Let me move on to a gay person who was fired this week.

And that is Erica Shields, the police chief in Atlanta.

And of course, there was another horrible shooting.

You know, a memo to police.

It always looks bad when you shoot someone in the back.

I don't know why that keeps going on, but okay, people have seen the video.

We don't have to go into that.

But the police of

chief of police there in Atlanta, a gay woman who was as progressive, I think, as you're going to get as a police chief,

was doing the things I think progressives want a police chief to do in a big city.

When there were protests, she walked into the crowd and talked to them.

If she's not good enough, who is for that job?

Who has this mystical power that they can control what every single person, what every single cop on a police force does.

I just think it speaks to this atmosphere of purging and purity that is unattainable.

Malcolm, what do you think?

You know, Atlanta's police force has always been a really, really progressive police force.

I recall when they had their first black female chief of police who was the chief during the Olympic Park bombing.

And, you know, they've always been on the cutting edge.

I personally don't see why she resigned resigned other than the fact that she took on personal responsibility.

And, you know, perhaps people saw it as

baked in dysfunction.

I train law enforcement officers.

I train Homeland Security officers in my state.

And, you know, these guys are 99%

very good people.

But what I train them in is counterterrorism.

ISIS, Al-Qaeda, dealing with terrorists.

This is day-to-day bread and butter policing that appears that there is a mindset within it that will defeat any progressive beliefs or legislation or training.

They have now locked themselves into this warrior policeman mindset.

Some of it comes from the, you know, the post-9-11 world, just the way it is.

Other, you know, most cops are not veterans, by the way.

They go to police academy.

They are not mainly military veterans.

So this belief that they, you know, are locked in a battle against the public, and they, along with police unions, they defy what the general public wants and sees.

And I think to a certain extent, they have just closed ranks now.

And we're still seeing abuse from abusive cops.

But again, the 99.9% of the cops who aren't doing that are just going to have to understand that the blue line can now

be broken and you will be prosecuted and you are going to have to open your mouth.

And how do you think morale is now for the police?

I mean, I read things like the Berkeley School College of Music said they were deeply sorry that they let the police use the restrooms during the protest and it wouldn't happen again.

You know, obviously a lot of work has to be done to reform the police, but you know, I don't know if we're going in the right right direction here when we treat police like that.

Exactly, Bill.

I mean, here's the thing: there are very practical things we can do to help police reform.

There's bipartisan support for many of those things.

But what's happened in this debate over the last couple of weeks is the fervor and the moral panic that has taken place has helped people lose their reason.

This is all emotion.

This is mob feeling.

This is occluding any kind of nuance, any kind of practical point.

When I hear the cops as jet in general, without any distinguishing between the good and the bad cops, being described as all cops are bastards,

when I hear the kind of rhetoric you're getting from some people on the left about defunding the police, treating the police constantly as the enemy, this is not how most Americans feel about the police.

They want reform.

but they don't want to hear this kind of rhetoric of really hatred of the cops who are doing a hard job.

And look, over the last 25 years, we have seen an extraordinary decrease in crime.

It's probably one of the most successful periods of crime reduction.

And no one gives them credit for that.

It seems that they can't win a lot of the time.

I'm not excusing in any way

the misconduct of the few, but the left has gone nuts over the last couple of weeks, and they need to calm down to realize there is a consensus in favor of reform and stop demonizing the cops, stop running a campaign on defunding the police, and stop this excessive rhetoric about we all live in a white supremacy and all white people have to confess their guilt.

This kind of moral panic and indeed a sort of orthodoxy that's taking place is unhealthy for a democracy.

We need to have open debate.

We need to be able to respect one another.

And there's a kind of really McCarthyite feel in the air right now.

in which dissenting opinions are not respected.

To be honest, I really, I'm not sure if it's McCarthy yet.

I think there has been this big sway to

the extreme for some people.

The average person on the street, though, now understands what they've been missing.

Okay, I'm an African-American male.

You know, I have relatives who have been pulled over by police, who have been unnecessarily profiled.

It's just that there is a mindset.

within a very small fraction of law enforcement officers that they are engaged in this struggle again, you know, and when they go into black communities, they behave one different way, right?

Like they're going through the second battle of Fallujah, like everybody is armed, everything is bad.

Then when they go into a white neighborhood and they meet the exact same crisis, they assume, you know, they assume that even if you have firearms, you're legal.

Even if you're beating your wife, it can be negotiated out.

The public is now seeing for the first time real evidence of that.

And I think that the American public, couple it with COVID-19, whatever you want to say, they've just had enough of that.

But not the American public we're talking about here.

We're talking about a group of woke activists who are holding much of journalism and the media by the throat, really.

That if the op-ed editor of the New York Times can't run a piece making a case that if law and order breaks down entirely, maybe the military should be sent in.

If he can't make the case, if he can't run a piece saying that and not get fired, because the entire newsroom rebels against it.

There are all sorts of magazines and newspapers in which there are purges going on.

People are being put on lists.

This is incredibly unhealthy and toxic atmosphere.

And many of us are having a very hard time being able to make ourselves heard or

seeing so much of the mainstream press shift massively and suddenly to the left without any nuance at all.

This is not good for the Democrats.

It's not good for the left.

It's something that we, these problems have to be dealt with absolutely.

But take a breath and stop demonizing people who disagree with you.

And

I agree to a certain extent, but just remember, Twitter is not America.

It is not the world.

The stuff that we're seeing in parts of the media, even the people who are coming out with, you know, defund police.

What people want to see is they want to see a police force that protects and serves.

And I, you know, I personally, I want to see more of the cops who will who do deeper community policing uh a a a a very british uh way of policing where law enforcement is trusted and what's happened is we have had a breakdown of trust forget the extreme voices on both sides of the aisle we don't need militiamen and we don't need to defund uh entire police organizations what we need is we need a mindset change of the individual officer so that escalation of force is not a death sentence so that the escalation of force is reasonable and that it is equal opportunity.

So that if you pull somebody over who has a handgun and a concealed carry license and he's white and you look at his concealed carry license and you see his handgun secure, you're not going to shoot a black man with a concealed carry license.

This is where the disparity is happening is my skin color gets me treated like I am a threat.

And whereas, and we heard this in the Albuquerque protests, where white armed militiamen were called armed friendlies and the protesters were the enemy.

That mindset has to be changed and has to be changed across the board by all officers so that every American is seen as an equal person that they serve.

But my concern is that the most important thing for all of us right now is to make sure that Donald Trump is not re-elected.

The Democrats have to do virtually nothing, as I think Bill has often said, than be nuts.

If you set up communes in the middle of cities, if you call for defunding the police, if you tell people that this multicultural, multiracial society is no different than the antebellum South, is a white supremacy.

If you tell every white person in the country that they themselves are guilty

of being the equivalent of slave owners, you're not going to get a consensus.

You're going to alienate a lot of people.

You're going to sound extreme.

You're going to have to push Biden to disown you.

There's a consensus for reform, but the extreme rhetoric is unsettling that and it's alienating more people than I think liberals in their bubble understand.

And you don't want this to be another 1968.

You don't want to elect Nixon.

You don't want to re-elect Trump.

If I could jump in just for a second,

it does seem like there is a debate going on, certainly on the left, about whether we are irredeemable or whether we are savable.

I mean, you guys keep talking about defund the police.

The New York Times, you mentioned, Andrew, they ran a column this week

and the title, I'm going to give it to you, yes, we mean literally abolish the police.

They're not talking about defunding.

This is the New York Times.

It's not a fringe operation.

And as you point out, the one that just fired a guy and made him apologize and go to a labor camp in Mongolia for doing something wrong.

We literally mean abolish the police.

These are the folks, there are people who believe that things in this country cannot be saved.

Now, I don't think this was the view of Barack Obama or certainly of Martin Luther King, but that's sort of where we are, a place where I thought we were moving toward more integration five years ago.

People were intermarrying more,

true friendships between the races, which of course leads to more understanding, more dialogue.

Now I think

people,

you know, we're so on eggshells

that

I don't know if that's going to move that in the right direction.

And I thought that was the right direction.

Well, if Democratic Party leaders are not calling for these things, Joe Biden himself came out and said, no, reform, sure, repair, reimagine, whatever you want to say.

But let's just put the New York Times into perspective.

This is the same New York Times that allowed Tom Cotton to write a kookie op-ed.

So I guess they decided that they would balance that out with another kookie op-ed.

No one is defunding the police.

No one is going to take away all all the money and get rid of cops and go around with community support officers.

It's not happening.

That is someone's pie in the sky and it's managed to make itself into a meme.

We are talking about doing common sense

reimagineering, right?

Reimagining, re-engineering, facilitating them, maybe increasing their budget.

There's a real difference between two positions here.

One is that America is forever evil, that it's constructed as a white supremacy built on slavery, that it's entirely a neo-colonial, wicked, imperialist venture that can never be saved.

And the other is that it was probably the most amazing place for human freedom and equality, marred and deeply undermined by its inheritance of the poisonous evil of slavery.

And that we have spent the last two, three, four centuries overcoming that in a way that we can talk to one another.

And not, if you make race totally central to your worldview, if all that matters about about someone is they're black or white,

you can't help, even though you're trying to end racism, but to perpetuate it.

We get along better in racism when we're not talking about race, when we're talking about things, other things that we love, that we have in common, that we share.

And I'm an immigrant, so I'm going to be naive about this country, but I do not believe.

it's evil in its DNA.

I do not believe it's a thoroughly racist country.

I think there are some awful inheritances, but I look at where we are now.

I look at where gay people are now.

Even when when you see the problems in the African-American community, you can also see huge success in so many fields of activity.

So I'm an Obama supporter.

I am not a supporter of BLM,

which is really an extreme left-wing organization.

Well, let me agree with you on one thing: is that I am a child of the American experiment.

I was born and raised in Philadelphia.

I believe in everything deeply, deeply in my heart that was written down at Fifth and Chestnut Street and ratified into the Declaration of Independence.

And I have spent my entire life defending every person in this country, regardless of race, creed, or stupid comment that they make on Twitter.

But I will tell you,

you are right on both parts.

We do have some evils in there.

My family, I don't even understand how every Nance since 1864 has served in the armed forces.

Everyone right now, I've got a niece who's still in the military.

We believe in the American experiment.

We know it goes three steps backwards, one step forward, but we want to defend that one step forward.

No, look, you're an immigrant, you're a Brit, maybe

you're American now, so you're one of us,

you know, a turncoat, but

your belief in this system is not as deeply ingrained as mine.

And to be quite honest, mine is literally skin deep.

Those

past oppressions, those past errors, I'm literally sitting here in Richmond, Virginia, the heart of the Confederacy, that must be recalibrated.

And to be honest, the Civil War didn't end.

We're actually seeing what could really is a 100-year reconciliation process taking place now.

We're finally getting rid of the statutes.

We need to rename those bases.

We need to understand and demonstrate to the African-American community that, okay, fair playing field now.

Just because we elected Barack Obama doesn't mean that racism is over.

Racism is rearing its ugly head and it has a national leader who, without any question to me, and I'm being fair because I've seen, you know, potentates and dictators around the world, is a white supremacist.

He will not rule the nation.

He rules a tribe who he has promised will dominate all other tribes.

I'm sorry, that needs to be recalibrated, and we are having that moment.

Were we in a 1964 moment?

Yes.

68 moment?

Yes.

Are we going to have to go through the Watts riots?

I don't like any of that stuff.

All right.

But the dialogue time is now.

But again, get rid of all those people.

Don't listen to those people who are extremists.

Let me ask you.

Think about Senator, the Jimmy Clyburns,

and the Joe Bidens.

Look, I don't even think most African Americans are anywhere near as extreme to the left as many of these white liberals.

In fact, the polling is showing that.

They don't represent it.

These white liberals are in a woke-off against each other to prove their own virtue, to shame and also get a score on their peers and their competitors.

This is an inter-elite strife going on, largely between white people.

And some of it just needs to stop.

Okay, we're running out of time.

Can I ask one more question?

Because you've mentioned the monuments.

We don't have time to really explain it.

I just want a yes or no.

How far does it go?

I think everybody's in agreement now we should get rid of all the Confederate ones.

Now people, some people are talking about, well, Washington and Jefferson were slaveholders.

Do those, do those monuments go as well?

First off, big fan of George Washington, right?

I've studied him my whole life.

You would think that Lincoln would be my favorite president?

I love Lincoln.

I love George Washington.

He showed us the way, the way of moderation.

He freed his slaves.

Look, Jefferson had kids with slaves, so you know he loved black people.

But really,

so

I'm just saying, let him fed.

We don't have to tear down their monuments.

They were flawed men of the Enlightenment.

They knew what they were doing was hypocritical, but they wrote and built into this brilliant, loving system.

I love the American system because they knew that their progeny would try to de-fornicate their own errors and move forward, as I said,

as men of thinking.

The problem is you hit a stone wall of Donald Trump where thinking goes out the window, tribalism and racism rears its ugly head back to the George Wallace era, and now the American experiment takes two steps backwards.

And then you have these murder, these shootings by cops, and now it's time for that next step forward.

But you don't have to tear down Confederates, all traitors.

Monuments go, all base names out, out of the Capitol rotunda.

They betrayed this nation.

Everybody else, founders of the country.

Here's a distinction I would make, that the statues that were put up in order to, and especially later in time, to defend specifically

the ideals of white supremacy should either go or have something attached to them explaining why and when they were put up there.

But that you can't go through a country's history, all its statutory, all its human beings, apply the standards of 2020 to everybody in the 18th century, and then tear down everything that represents the past.

We are the past.

We need to understand it and put up more statues

rather than tearing them down.

Guys, and if you are going to take them down, do it through the democratic process.

All right, I got to end it there.

That was really fascinating.

Thank you for both being here, and I got to go.

See you in person soon, I hope.

Thanks, Bill.

Cheers.

Hi, welcome back.

You may notice I'm lying on the grass because I'm just feeling the love right now.

I was reading about this new it couple in the news.

You'll never guess who.

Sean Hannity and Ainsley Anhart.

Yeah, the two Fox News anchors have fallen in love.

And look at this.

Somehow I got a hold of some of their emails back and forth to each other.

Listen to this.

Ainsley, has our secret gotten out?

I'm about to say something no man's ever said before.

I think Steve Doocy knows something.

I don't care who knows, Sean.

We have so much in common.

Like when we make love and both call out Trump's name.

I want to make thick-necked babies with you.

Yes, Ainsley, yes.

My passion for you burns like a police precinct torched by Antifa in a city run by cowardly Democrats.

Tonight, let's make like the average age of our viewers in 69.

I'm all yours, Sean.

If you ever left me, I'd crumble like the Berlin Wall under Ronald Reagan's courageous leadership.

I never will, Ainslie.

Yours is the face that could launch a thousand conspiracy theories.

My love for you is real, Sean, unlike anything on CNN.

Ainslie, you make me want to be a better liar.

Okay, my final guest is the Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist for the Washington Post and author of The Conservative Sensibility, George Will from Washington, D.C.

George, thank you for joining me here over Zoom.

Glad to be with you.

Over Zoom.

You had one of your biggest columns ever.

I think that's awesome.

And I've told you many times, you know, I read you forever and I thought you always kept my liberalism honest and you've confirmed my faith in you because as a man of great integrity, because you're one of the first Republicans to leave the party when they embrace Donald Trump and unlike some of the other cowards who did that, but then they wouldn't vote for Hillary, They wrote in their wife or something, you said, no, vote for Hillary.

That's a better vote.

Now, your column that got so much attention said, and Trump's enablers in the Senate, they have to go too.

You want to tell us about that?

Yes, I believe it's an old axiom that when there's no penalty for failure, failures will proliferate.

And when there's no penalty for the mismanagement of a political party, the party will continue to be mismanaged.

I think more important than control, say, of the Senate for two more years is to begin rehabilitating a healthy two-party system, which requires the country to say to the Republican Party that they made a wager, they sacrificed their principles such as they ever were, and their dignity such as it is,

all in the interest of serving a president who is unworthy of service, and that needs to be punished.

Okay.

So I want to get your opinions on what's going on with the government's reaction to the pandemic.

You're obviously someone who believes in limited government, but government has had a fairly heavy hand in this.

The governor of South Dakota, for example, said the people themselves are primarily responsible for their safety.

That sounds like traditional conservative thought.

Are you still on that page, or does this supersede that belief in limited government?

Obviously, a government acts when the activities of people are what the philosopher John Stuart Mill called other-regarding.

That is, my activities affect other people, and there's clearly a pandemic makes everybody into other regarding actors.

But in fact, the American people are ahead of the government in the sense that the government can issue these stay-at-home orders, but they're unenforceable in a nation of 328 million people.

They are effective only to the extent that the vast majority of Americans voluntarily do it.

And as I say, they are on balance more prudent than the government of the various states are right now.

They are driving this, and they are driving it by being more prudent, even than most of the political class.

How long can we do it, though?

I read this week that it was 722 new businesses declared for Chapter 11, and that 68% of people who are on unemployment are making more than they were making when they were working, which sounds like what goes on in Greece or did go on in Greece before they went through their economic troubles.

Are we heading toward that fate?

I don't think so.

I think in putting together the Paycheck Protection Act, they somewhat overdid the unemployment compensation, which did make it for many people more

profitable to stay out of work than to return to work.

That said,

at this point, we don't know.

We're in completely new territory, and we're going to find out how long we can do this.

Because again, if you tomorrow, if the president said, or the 50, more important of the 50 state governors and the mayor of Washington said, we're all open for business, I'm quite confident that a large number of Americans, indeed a majority of them, would not rush back to the corner restaurant.

Right.

Well, Steve Mnuchin this week, you mentioned the PPP Paycheck Protection Program, said that the administration administration is not going to tell anybody who got the money or what they did with it.

That's between Steve Mnuchin and, I guess, Donald Trump.

And it's $500 billion.

That seems like a lot of money for us not to know where it went, don't you think?

I do.

And it's not clear to me how they can do that because we do have a Freedom of Information Act.

We do have a healthy resistance to secrecy, even in national security matters.

Secrecy of this sort, as my dear friend Pat Moynihan said in his book on the subject, he says, secrecy is government regulation.

Most government regulation tells you what you cannot do.

Secrecy tells you what you cannot know.

And I think if the administration thinks it's going to keep this a secret, it is yet again misunderstanding the system.

So I read in the paper today that the corona tests

are being, some people are charging $2,000 for a test that costs $100 or should and mostly does and probably could be done for way less than that.

And this is not new in the American health care system, that you can have an operation for a hip replacement in one hospital and literally in the same city, there's one being done for 10 times or 10 times, 10 times as much as the same operation in a different hospital, because the government doesn't control pricing.

And I'm wondering if, I know you are not a fan of Obamacare, but what is the answer to this problem?

Because it seems like healthcare is a very different industry than any other industry, and I don't know what else would fix it except pricing from the government.

Well, the problem with pricing is the government isn't very good at setting prices because prices and the whole price system is an information generating device.

That's what markets are.

To a certain extent, you want prices aimed high because there's an enormous incentive then for other people to go into the business of producing tests because there's a lot of money out there to be had.

And you will find when this competition sets in, the price will plummet.

So, George, I read in one of your recent columns how amazingly well the American economy really has done since 2010.

And you hear so much about China and how well they're doing, and maybe they're going to eat our lunch.

And, you know, as you so often do, you set the record straight there.

But Trump, on any given day, he's either very friendly to China or blaming them for everything.

And I guess this being Biden's race to lose,

what should his position be on that issue?

He should first of all say that the Chinese are not 10 feet tall.

That China's per capita income, after a period of rapid growth that cannot be repeated because it's going to age much faster than it anticipated because of the one-child policy for more than a generation, its per capita GDP is 15% that of the United States.

It's approximately that of Mexico.

So the idea that this is an irresistible juggernaut doesn't sell, and Mr.

Biden's quite right about that.

Mr.

Biden probably knows that as a general political rule, what the American people want in foreign policy is as little of it as possible.

They don't want to think about it.

On the other hand, Joe Biden For 34 of his 36 years in the Senate was on the Foreign Relations Committee.

When Donald Trump was saying of President Xi, who's perfecting a surveillance state and technological totalitarianism, when Donald Trump was saying of him that he's a, quote, very, very good friend,

less than four months ago, Joe Biden was saying, President Xi is a thug

who does not have a small D Democrat bone in his body.

Furthermore, Joe Biden can rightly say that he is the inheritor of an honorable democratic tradition of anti-totalitarianism.

Harry Truman and Dean Acheson put in place the architecture that led to the containment, deterrence, pressure, and eventually peaceful defeat of the Soviet Union.

Robert Lubbitt, John McCloy, Truman and Dean Acheson, Chip Bolan and Averill Harriman, and after that, Scoop Jackson and Hubert Humphrey, other impeccably liberal legislators who are also stern opponents of totalitarianism.

And Joe Biden's record on this is honorable, tough, and contrasts very favorably with that of Donald Trump.

Okay.

Well, I really appreciate you doing this, George Will.

You're always fascinating to talk to, and we appreciate your integrity on all these subjects.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

Okay, George.

Okay,

here it is.

You know what time it is.

New rules, everybody.

New rules.

New rules.

Waiting for it at home.

New Roll, the Canadian man charged with using a submarine to smuggle drugs across the Detroit River.

Deserves a lot of credit not only for creativity, but I can only imagine how painful it was to cross the border with a submarine stuck up his ass.

New Roll, the new trend of sound bath,

isn't a bath at all.

It's just a hippie banging on gongs.

You call it a healing ritual?

I call it a drum solo.

Do you feel better when it's over?

Yes, because the hippies stopped banging on gongs.

New rules, someone has to tell local news directors, you don't have to show us the whole police chase live.

Tape it and edit it down to just the parts where the guy almost loses it and then runs a red light, narrowly missing the kid on the bike.

The other 35 minutes is just me watching driving and what kind of brain-dead idiot would...

Oh,

never mind.

New rule, squirrels either have to piss off or come down out of that tree so I can bite them.

Now, I know that may not mean a lot to you, but my dog just went, yes, finally somebody said it.

New rule, the folks at New York City Health who advised anyone having casual sex during COVID to, quote, be creative with sexual positions and physical barriers like walls that allow sexual contact while preventing close face-to-face contact

have to tell me,

are you saying fuck through a wall?

Because that is some kinky shit.

Look, we want you to survive the virus with dignity, but please stick to glory holes.

And finally, new rule, three cheers for the millennials who've signed up by the tens of thousands for human challenge trials.

Yeah, volunteering to be injected with the coronavirus in order to expedite a vaccine.

What a great way to fight that generation's reputation for being safety-obsessed scaredy cats.

Same with the recent street protests, proving young people will will risk going out for an important cause.

And here's another, stopping us from falling into a depression.

You know, restaurants are open again, but too many are still afraid to go.

We need someone to lead us back to a life not dominated by fear.

And millennials, you have just the immune systems to do it.

You know, the greatest generation wasn't great before World War II.

The war made them great because they rose to the challenge.

This is your challenge.

And I'm not asking you to storm the beaches at Normandy.

Just storm the beaches and the stores.

Go to the mall and buy some pants.

Remember pants.

Be a hero just by living your best pre-corona life because you are the least likely to die from it.

Can it get you?

Of course, as so many other things that are still very unlikely can as well.

I'm looking at you you texting while driving.

So wear the masks, do the precautions, but live.

This,

this is a result of a generation that was helicopter parented, which made you crazy.

It's not your fault.

But this is your opportunity to conquer your big nemesis, anxiety.

and show the world you're not scaredy cats.

And you shouldn't be.

You know how many people in Japan under 30 have died of COVID?

One.

And he was a sumo wrestler.

You know how many people of any age have died in all of Taiwan?

Seven.

In super dense Hong Kong?

Four.

And that is in large part because they are simply healthier to begin with, as young people are in general.

Think about the places millennials and Gen Z would normally go, like clubs.

People who are in clubs have incredibly strong immune systems.

Ever go to one of those daytime pool parties in Las Vegas?

It's a pool full of people at noon who haven't slept from the night before, a bunch of rolling, roided up dudes getting way too much sun after unprotected sex, snorting Coke through a $20 bill that has germs on it, the coronavirus is scared of, plus a boatload of alcohol, which they're still drinking at noon.

and they're fine.

People always say, the young think they're invincible.

Yeah, because they practically are.

At that age, you're like a bowling ball.

You get thrown in the gutter and you pop right back up.

And also, you let a lot of strangers put their fingers in you.

Now, if you're young, but not healthy, I'm not talking to you.

You stay home.

Same goes if you're a millennial who hangs out with octogenarians.

You know, one of those typical young people people who says, I only came here to do two things, drink beer and visit grandpa, and I'm all out of beer.

Okay, not you either.

By the way, the grandpa issue was well addressed recently by London journalist Janet Daly, who said about lockdowns.

All this unquantifiable speculative social intervention is being done in the name of that small proportion of people who are known to be, in truth, the only ones in real danger from the virus.

So as someone who just about counts because of my age, as one of those being protected by everybody else's sacrifices, I assume the moral right to say this.

Please don't.

Don't give up the freedoms and the opportunities that are proper to your stage of life for my sake, and do not go meekly into that imprisonment to which the government has sentenced you.

I think she's pretty right.

Millennials should should say to the vulnerable, We love you and we'll help protect you, but this is our time.

You had yours.

This is our time to set up our lives, make our mark in the world, get our careers going.

I got people to do and things to see and fun to have.

And if this 103-year-old lady from Boston can beat it, and this 103-year-old from Italy, and this 113-year-old from Spain, I'll take the odds.

I'm I'm here, no fear, get used to it.

Safety is a virtue, but if it was the only one, nothing would ever get done.

When JFK ran for president in 1960, his slogan was, let's get the country moving again.

No one knew what it meant, but he was young and cool, so we were like, fuck yeah, let's go to the moon, let's get the country moving again.

Doesn't that feel better to you than sitting on the couch playing video games and masturbating to incest porn?

Don't answer that.

All right, that's our show.

I want to thank my guests, Susan Rice, Malcolm Nance, Andrew Sullivan, and George Will.

We'll be back next week.

Thank you, folks.

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

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