Ep. #526: Rep. Dan Crenshaw, Fareed Zakaria

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

Start the clock.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

As usual, a great crowd.

This is week three for my home.

I'm Bill Maher.

I'm putting the home and home box office.

And, you know, I love my home.

Oh, home.

I love home, sweet home, home, home.

But enough of home.

I never thought I would miss traffic.

You know, like my commute today, brutal.

There was a two-dog pileup in the kitchen.

One was overturned, the other one was leaking leaking gas.

Thank you.

Yeah,

it's lonely.

I'm not going to lie, it's lonely around here.

I'm like one of those old widows who just waits for the mailman to come so I have some sort of human contact.

Lately, I've been leaving homemade cookies and lemonade.

It's sad.

Last night, my dick said it wanted to start seeing other hands.

Well,

it's rough around here.

A few days ago, I was watching the movie Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, terrific movie, and that scene where Brad Pitt answers the door and it's the Manson family.

And I thought, ooh, company.

Really,

I am afraid I am losing it.

I am this close to writing a manifesto.

Last week I took mushrooms and FaceTimed with future me.

And you know, I'm not the only one.

I know I'm not.

Some of my sober friends, I know they're drinking again.

I was FaceTiming with this guy last week.

I saw it in the background.

He had a bottle of scotch, which he tried to pass off as 12-year-old hand sanitizer.

But, you know,

there's help on the way.

I don't know if you saw it this week, but former President Obama made a video endorsing Joe Biden, and Biden says he cannot wait to find a kid to show him how to play.

Trump, of course, had a week that even by his standards was off the rails,

including flirting with the idea of firing Dr.

Anthony Fauci.

I mean, Trump said, look, it's hard enough navigating this crisis without someone interjecting facts and science.

And, you know, Americans now are, of course, waiting for their $1,200 stimulus checks, which perhaps have been delayed because Trump had to put his name on them.

I mean, is it really necessary to see his name on the check to know who it's from?

Aren't we going to know when it bounces?

And

he has apparently started a feud with the World Health Organization, which has not been perfect, but I mean, it is the World Health Organization.

We probably could use it right now, but he's threatening to stop funding them because he says the World Health Organization has mismanaged the spread of the coronavirus.

The World Health Organization has mismanaged it.

He also says the World Health Organization has outrageous hair and wears way too much orange makeup.

All right, we got a great show.

We have Fareed Zakaria, Andrew Sullivan, and Congressman Dan Crenshaw, all of whom I spoke to earlier.

Let's get right to it.

Okay, he is the host of one of my favorite shows, CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS, and of course, a columnist for the Washington Post.

Please welcome Fareed Zakaria from his home.

Fareed, how are you doing there?

Are you holding up okay at home?

Yeah, I'm holding up.

Look, I like to read.

I like to watch movies.

I've got my kids here.

For me,

I can work at home.

So professionally,

it hasn't been that different.

I mean, it's obviously incredibly challenging, but I miss social life.

I miss my friends.

I miss human contact.

I grew up in Bombay and now live in New York City.

Big, noisy, dirty cities full of intensity.

I like that.

I miss that.

Oh, gosh, yes.

I mean, they're talking now.

I guess we've decided the governor's May 15th seems like the day that we're going back,

you know, with with restrictions.

I hope I can go to a restaurant.

You know, I'll wear a mask, I'll throw away the menu, whatever they want.

But you're right, we got to get back to life.

So, one month

from about now, so I mean, at least we can see the end in sight a little.

Your column, which I read this week, I read it every week, of course, about testing.

And,

you know, we did this shutdown to bias time to get some information.

And your point is that without testing, and we are still way behind, we're flying blind on this.

Exactly.

The single biggest piece of information we don't know is how many people are infected with COVID-19.

We think, we know that 650,000 roughly in America have been tested and they've tested positive.

But we now know there are at least 50%

in some studies of people who are asymptomatic, who have no symptoms.

Then there are people who think they'll handle it at home.

They don't go to the hospital.

They don't go to clinics.

So what we have to do is get a test that tells us how lethal is this virus, how many people are infected, which is the denominator, and how many people die of it, you know, which tells you the fatality rate.

The studies that we have, Bill, which are really fascinating, which are truly random samples, where they don't just test the people who come in and show up at a clinic.

There's two, one done in a German town in Iceland.

Both of them show about 13 to 15% of the population has COVID, much more than we think, right?

Many, many hundreds of thousands more people than have it, millions more.

And the fatality rate in Iceland is 0.4%.

In the German case, it was 0.37%,

which is way lower than the initial estimates.

that we had, you know, orders of magnitude lower.

That tells us a lot.

Now,

if other studies find that it's different and it's actually much more lethal, that's also important to know.

But the more I'm learning about this, the more I think we need to figure out who is vulnerable, who is not.

How do you intelligently go back to work?

And for that, you need this crucial piece of data.

How many people have the virus?

Right.

And I mean, I've heard people on television say things like, we're all staying home because we're scared to death of getting this thing.

I know people who feel that way.

That just doesn't describe me.

I am not scared to death of getting this thing.

I don't want to get it.

Nobody wants to get sick.

What I'm scared to death of is that we wind up doing, or maybe have already done, what we did after 9-11.

We are overly influenced by dramatic death when something is a dramatic event like this, as opposed to everyday death.

You know, the 40,000 people a month who die from obesity.

That just goes by.

Opioids, lots of pollution.

After 9-11,

we overreacted and wounded ourselves much more than the enemy ever could have.

Do you worry that that's what's happening now?

Absolutely.

And I worry that we have the wrong reactions and we try to compensate for the things that we got wrong.

Maybe, you know, you start fighting the last war.

You're absolutely right.

9-11 happens, and basically, it's a bunch of guys with box scutters who get onto planes and then use the planes as bombs.

Locking the cockpit door essentially took care of that problem.

Instead, we spent something like $50 or $60 billion in the next three months.

ramping up our defense department, you know, which had almost nothing to do with protecting us from that kind of threat.

Then we built this enormous homeland security apparatus.

Then we went out and invaded Iraq.

I mean, none of it really related to our problem.

And so, in crises, in fear and panic, we do these things.

I will point out, you know, there are sort of three crises of the post-Cold War world: 9-11, the 2008-2009 financial crisis, and this one.

And the distinctive feature of the 08-09 one is we really didn't overreact.

And I do think that having a president who was Dr.

Spock helped in that regard.

You know, Obama is very calm, very cool, very rational.

and that some people

saw it as a kind of lack of emotion, Dr.

Spock.

But when you think about it in these terms, it was really helpful to have somebody who doesn't just go with the herd and who sits back and asks himself, what is the right rational answer to this problem?

Well, I think you mean Mr.

Spock.

Dr.

Spock was a pediatrician and

a pediatrician.

You're exactly right.

You're exactly right.

A pediatrician is definitely what this president needs.

But I mean, we're doing this, you know, we're doing this on the fly.

I know.

So it was tax day this week, and of course we forgave that.

And the tax day has now been moved to July 15th.

Who is even going to have money on July 15th to pay their taxes?

I'm sure.

And of course, we've also gutted the IRS because that's part of the deep state.

So I'm wondering if a lot of money is going to be coming in.

I mean, we were 20 trillion in debt before this, and Trump was just putting everything on the card.

Then we signed this $2 trillion bill.

I mean you mentioned the last crisis where

Obama asked for $780 billion.

The Republicans went apeshit, but he got it.

Now Trump signs one for $2 trillion like it's the dinner bill.

And

I just wonder how long can America, can our government, just keep printing money before we have a crash that makes the last one look like nothing.

Look, it's a great question.

And honestly, no one knows the answer because the United States, you know, I mean, at some level, the government of the United States has an infinite time horizon as long as people are willing to loan it money.

Interest rates are low,

but our interest payments, the debt, you know, that we have to pay every year, those interest payments get higher and higher.

But the real crisis, Bill, is local and state governments because they can't print money.

They don't have

piggyby, the endless piggy bank and the printing presses.

And in those places, remember, how do local governments sustain themselves?

Sales taxes, even more than income taxes and income taxes.

Who is buying anything right now, right?

So those, I think you're going to see an absolute cratering of state and local government.

And that's where, particularly for poor people, particularly for you lower middle class people, you know, you really are going to see a hemorrhaging for people, homelessness issues, you all the kinds of problems that local and state governments often deal with.

This is going to be very bad.

And I don't know if you saw Steve Mnuchin says that the $1,200 that the federal government is giving people, well, that should last them 10 weeks at least,

which is a kind of

startling theory.

Right.

Well, and also because of all the rest of the shit that's going on, people didn't notice that Trump fired the guy who is supposed to be in charge of overseeing this $2 trillion because he was an Obama appointee.

He also fired Michael Atkinson, I think is the man's name.

He is the inspector general who passed along the Ukraine whistleblowers whistleblowing to Congress, which is his job.

People are not noticing these things that Trump is doing.

And I got to say, I have buyers' remorse about impeachment.

I was for it.

Now that I know what I know,

as pundits always say, knowing what you know now, all I see is that Trump was exonerated and now he's inoculated and now he knows he can get away with anything.

Now he knows the Republicans won't stop anything and ah, gee whiz, I wonder what's next, you know, trying to defund the post office

because he doesn't want mail-in voting.

You know, panic times are very prone to exploitation by people who want to seize power.

Certainly, you have written about that subject a lot.

Yeah, it's sad to watch, you know, in countries like Hungary and even in India, where the government basically is taking advantage of these emergencies to arrest journalists.

I mean, in Hungary, the guy basically just suspended parliament and said, I'm just going to rule by presidential decree, and this process goes on

until I say the emergency is over.

Trump must be watching that and salivating.

I I have to say,

what Trump is doing is, you know, it's the smaller American version.

It's exactly what you say, which is he's taking advantage not so much of emergency powers to become a dictator, but of the news cycle, which he understands better than, frankly, the Constitution and emergency powers.

He understands the media and he understands the news cycle, and he knows no one is covering the things you're describing.

No one understands.

Nobody's paying attention.

And so I suspect we're going to see a lot more of the kind of thing you've just been talking about, which is all these little scores he's wanted to settle,

all kinds of smaller appointments.

Because

if we look at the pages of the newspaper, look at the newscasts, it's all COVID all the time.

Who has time to notice a little abuse of power here and there?

Well, I hope that changes soon.

I hope I see you soon, Fareen.

Don't get too used to this, please.

I hear people saying, oh, maybe we can keep doing this.

It's not so bad.

It's terrible.

And we need to have dinner in person.

I totally agree.

Aristotle says man is a social animal.

And I think Aristotle is right.

Glad you feel that way.

Thank you, sir.

I'll see you soon.

So the first week we were doing it from my backyard, I thought, oh, I'm going to do new rules from this tree.

And then I saw Jimmy Fallon a couple of nights earlier and did his opening from the tree.

And I don't like to repeat.

But then I noticed Jimmy really was only like three feet high in the tree.

So I love Jimmy, but let's have a little contest.

Whoever can get higher in the tree gets to own the tree for whatever bit you want to use.

So I just got to beat three feet,

and then it'll be on you.

Okay.

Okay, Jimmy.

I don't know what this is.

Trust me, me, we'll measure it.

But whatever it is, you get higher, you own the tree.

Until then, tree's mine.

It's on, bitch.

Okay, my next guest is a Republican congressman from Texas and author of the new book, Fortitude, American Resilience in the Era of Outrage.

Please welcome Dan Crenshaw.

Congressman, thank you for doing this.

I must tell you, I first became aware of you, as I think many Americans did, when Pete Davidson of Saturday Night Live made that joke about you.

And I have to tell you, I am such a fan of what you said, because you never hear that in American life.

You said, look, it was wrong, but let's just forgive each other.

I know you've done much better things for this country.

Five tours you did overseas.

But thank you for your service in calling out victim culture.

Well, I appreciate that, Bill.

And first of all, thanks for having me.

I know we had planned to do this in the studio in Los Angeles.

Unfortunately, life took a different turn.

You know, the phrase I used after Pete Davidson said that, which I think you would love this phrase, is try hard not to be offended or try hard not to offend, but try even harder not to offend or be offended.

Peace, I'm really screwing this up.

Try hard not to offend, try even harder not to be offended.

And I think that'd be a way to live for all of us.

No, and we both share this disdain for victim culture and for lots of stuff, trophy syndrome.

I hope I have some credibility with you because, you know, I did a show called Politically Incorrect, which started in 1993 when I think you were about 10.

And I was onto this shit a long time ago, and it hasn't gotten any better.

I think you do have some credibility for sure.

In conservative circles, I don't know how often you test or do focus groups amongst conservatives, but we generally think of you as a real liberal.

And, you know, and that means something.

And there's a difference between liberalism and leftism.

And we can disagree wholeheartedly on the best way to govern our country or the best way to perceive a problem and the framework with which to approach problem solving.

But open-mindedness and the ability to debate should be a key tenant of liberalism.

and at least in the classical sense.

And so no, we do appreciate it.

Okay, so let's debate a little bit.

I mean,

you say in your book, I'm going to quote you, you call out automatic assignment of blame outward.

That's what we were just talking about.

Help me understand how someone who calls out the outward assignment of blame can be such a supporter of a president who does nothing but pass the buck, lie,

finger point.

shirk responsibility.

Tell me how you can support someone with your background, someone like that.

Yeah,

it didn't take long for Trump to come up.

You know, I would say I support the country, right?

And the president's success is certainly tied to the success of the country.

I support his policy agenda.

When I disagree with his policy agenda,

I openly disagree with it.

This isn't,

you know, Republicans always get asked this question, and there's this demand that we always have to answer.

What do you feel about him?

Well,

don't you want to comment on his latest tweet and his latest out and his and his way he lashed out?

And no, I don't.

I can't defend everything.

I can't, he doesn't have the same style as I do.

I don't consider him my spiritual guide by any means, but

you know.

Let me tell you a quick story.

When I was blown up, sitting in my hospital bed, President Obama was doing the rounds at Walter Reed, just like President Trump does now and just like President Bush did before him.

It's a really neat thing.

It's a really interesting connection that the president gets with these wounded active duty soldiers that is never publicized.

And even though I may have disagreed with so many levels with President Obama, I made sure to get up and I was excited.

I was genuinely happy and to shake that man's hand and have him sign the American flag on my wall.

You know, even though we disagree on political things, and

I think I would like us to get to that point with this president as well.

Okay, but you do what a lot of Republicans do.

You talk about his tweets and his style.

I'm not talking about that.

I'm talking about the person who is the leader of the country at a time of crisis.

And we have to go through what he actually has done.

This is important stuff.

It's about life and death and it's about our economy and everything that's really important.

It's not tweets and it's not style.

Let's just go through the timeline, okay?

Because he was warned.

This did not have to happen.

Alex Azar,

his his health and human services guy january 18th he warned him about this and again on january 30th trump said he was being an alarmist peter navarro somebody else who talks to trump a lot told him directly january 29th you got to get ahead of this february two days later he and two days later he implemented a restrictive travel ban from china which he was widely criticized for now that same day on january 31st nancy pelosi proposed the no ban act which would be congressional limitation on what president Trump's actually able to do with that travel restriction.

Okay, but that

lies about that.

First of all, he did.

What does he lie about?

What do you mean?

He said he stopped people coming in from China.

He did not.

He said he was ahead of it.

43 countries did it before we did.

There are still people coming in from China.

He only stopped foreign nationals.

Okay,

let me address that because I know that's what people are saying right now.

But the reality is, yeah, it was about 40,000 people came in after that.

These are U.S.

citizens and green card holders and passport holders being repatriated.

U.S.

citizens.

So you have to make the argument then that we shouldn't allow them in.

And it sounds to me like you're fully agreeing with President Trump on this when everybody else disagreed with him.

And if you're saying that you wish that that travel restriction had been more extreme, okay, fine.

I mean, you apparently had the foresight back then, but when nobody else did.

But the fact is, you know, if Joe Biden was in charge at that moment, he's already said he wouldn't have done it.

He criticized it at the time.

Nancy Pelosi actually proposed legislation to stop it.

Okay, but

people are still coming in from China.

It wasn't just foreign nationals, but let's get off that.

Let me just go back to the timeline for a minute.

February 10th, after these warnings, he says it's going to go away in April with the heat

because he had a hunch.

February 25th, he goes to India.

This is four days after the White House Coronavirus Task Force said we're going to have to lock down the country.

And Dr.

Nancy Messonier, who's in charge of the Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, wait a second, let me just finish.

She announced this on the 26th,

on the 25th, that we're going to have to lock down the country.

He said the next day, 15 people have it, and it's soon going to be close to zero.

March 6th, he said anyone who wants a test can get it, which is still completely wrong.

I'm going to stick to February

to go forward because you mentioned February 25th.

The day before, February 24th, that's when the administration requested $2.5 billion from Congress to fulfill CDC, NIH, and FDA funding to combat the virus and the potential spread of it.

What happened right then?

I'll tell you because I was in Congress and I know what happened.

Did we vote on a supplemental funding bill?

No.

Did we wait days to vote?

No.

Still didn't vote on it.

You know what we voted on later that week?

Nancy Pelosi, the only thing she would put on the floor to vote on was a bill to ban flavored tobacco.

That's what actually happened.

It was only a week later that we actually voted on the supplemental funding that the administration requested.

Your criticism appears to be based in one thing: that Trump was overly optimistic.

That's his style.

You know, again, you can criticize it.

That's fine.

But it doesn't, but it's not connected to the actions that were actually taken.

Because if I back up even further, you know, February 14th, CDC announces ongoing work with five laboratories to perform community-based influenza surveillance and study the spread of the virus.

We're trying, we're in a fact-finding mode in February.

People forget this.

We were.

We started calling February this lost month.

It's really not.

There's just, that's an easy and cheap accusation because there's no big, bold moves taken like there was in January or like there was in March.

But the reality is our government was working to create that test.

Now, did they work as fast as we would have liked?

Of course not.

And there's a lot of reasons for that, which I'm happy to go into.

By March 3rd, there was only 102 cases in the United States.

And yet I'm hearing criticism that we should have been locked down weeks earlier.

But would you think the American people would have accepted that with only 100 cases in the United States?

Italy didn't lock down until March 10th.

Spain, not until March 14th.

UK, not until later in March.

Places like Sweden never locked down.

And so I just, I provide all of that context as we try to basically accuse this man of,

well, he's being accused of having blood on his hands.

And context is so important here.

Well, it is.

And also, it's not just about being optimistic.

It's about being right.

The world was aware of this.

And since when does America take its lead from Italy and Spain?

Well, because those are where the outbreaks were happening.

I understand.

Well, I'm pointing it out again for context.

If we're going to criticize somebody's actions, we have to do it in the context of the facts they knew at the time.

And so I'm just trying to be fair here that I don't really care about defending him or his actions.

I just care about...

letting people know the truth.

And when people make these accusations, I have to ask them a question, is the goal to make Trump look bad or is the goal to get to the truth?

Because there's two different sets of answers for that.

Okay, but sometimes they converge.

Sometimes the truth is that somebody who says, I have a hunch.

I have a hunch this is going to go away.

Is that someone you would want to have served with?

I mean, my God, I don't understand again why someone with your resume, you were in Fallujah, for God's sakes.

Would you want someone,

a commander, to say that to you, to blame everybody else if something goes wrong, and then to say, you know, I have a hunch the enemy's not going to be in there.

Let's attack.

Sure, no, I understand that.

So here's how I would, I would describe my answer to that.

When bullets are flying past my head, I don't need to raise my voice.

And I wired about this in my book too, Calm Breeds Calm, Panic Breeds Panic.

You know, being an optimistic positive, you know, and exuding positivity and calmness and crisis is exactly how we ask our SEALs to lead.

And

now I'm not sure I see a lot of evidence for blaming others, maybe blaming China, although there's a lot of evidence for that.

So maybe that's a good place to lay blame.

But I did it last week.

I was blaming

Democrats here.

He's exposing hypocrisy, and maybe we're confusing that with blame.

But no, I mean,

again, calm breeds calm, and that's how we would lead in the SEAL teams.

Okay.

So in Texas, there was a six-hour line to vote a couple of weeks ago.

It does look like the Republican Party doesn't want people to vote, especially mail-in vote.

And there's going to be people now who are afraid to go to the polls because of this disease.

So let me explain.

Where do you stand on that indicator?

Do you think Republicans are trying to stop people from voting?

Do you really want to, wouldn't you rather lose an election than live in a country where we're not really getting our franchise?

So the lines in Houston here, those big six-hour waits you saw, Republicans aren't in charge of those elections.

The Democrats are in charge of our county elections here.

They run that.

The county clerk is a Democrat recently won.

That's why they're in charge.

They've taken full responsibility for those lines because basically what happened is a lot of machines went down and that's what caused the lines.

There isn't, so first of all, it's not Republicans, it's Democrats in these urban areas that actually run the election system.

And second, there was no ill intent, even I don't think ill intent from Democrats either.

There was mistakes made.

In Texas, you have two weeks to early vote from 7 a.m.

to 7 p.m.

for two weeks straight.

You can go anywhere in the county and cast your vote.

You don't have to vote on election day.

If you're elderly or sick and disabled, you can vote in by mail.

No, it's not the case that we don't want people to vote.

And of course, that's always the accusation, but it's not really based in evidence.

You know, mail-in ballots do have that, you know, there's a break of custody of a vote there.

If it's not fraudulent, there's at least the possibility for mistakes to be made.

And we see that often.

You know, I read an op-ed recently from a former Texas member who was going door to door based on voter registration, just knocking on doors, and would find, you know, a group of non-US citizens, but they're registered there, or an empty lot, but it's registered.

So if you start mailing all of these types of places ballots, well, then, you know, it's not ill intent,

but there's the possibility for a lot of bad things to happen.

And so the question we have to ask ourselves: do we really want to, especially from a national level, try to revamp our entire election system

with the potential for all these problems.

And for what exactly?

And so I don't know if your question is related to COVID-19 or just elections in general.

Well, everything's related to that these days.

And there, of course, is a lot to be said about your answer, which is a terrific answer from a press spokesman for that cause.

But I don't have time to do it now.

I hope you can come to our show as we planned sometime, and we will take up this issue of whether Republicans really are protecting your franchise or not.

But I appreciate you doing this.

I appreciate everything you've done for this country.

And I hope I see you in person soon.

Thank you.

Hey, thanks, Bill.

Great to be with you.

Thank you.

Well, everybody knows that Google does the most popular searches, right?

Tells us what they are.

And of course, in this crisis, they're a little different.

They're things like, when is my stimulus check coming?

And, you know, how do I cut my own hair?

But we did a deep dive into some of the other most popular Google searches.

Would you like to hear them?

Of course you would.

You're at home screaming, Bill.

What are the other most popular Google searches?

I have them right here, luckily.

For example,

why do my grandkids keep asking about their inheritance?

is one of them.

How can you tell when Whole Foods is price gouging?

Popular.

Was Andrew Cuomo in Scarface?

Is it illegal to make a four-year-old live in the garage?

Oh, I love number five.

Sexy Anthony Fauci Halloween costume.

Popular.

Google search.

Does blue cheese go bad or does it get better

with sex?

Can I dye my roots with a Sharpie?

That was me.

I Googled that.

Where can I go to sell all my pants?

My pants.

All of them.

What month is it?

Can I use my water pick as a bidet?

And of course, can I get divorced on Zoom?

Most popular Google searches.

Okay, and finally today we have one of my very good friends, friend of the show, writer-at-large for New York Magazine, all-around racing tour, my old friend, Andrew Sullivan.

Hey there, Phil.

How are you?

I'm good.

I wanted to have you on because you are one of our best friends of the show from the beginning, a favorite of the viewers, and, you know, always give me a great show.

And I just want to check in with my friend because, you know, we're all suffering through this, but it's not equal suffering.

And some people, look, I just said earlier in the show that I'm not really scared to get this.

I don't want to get it.

Maybe I'm wrong.

It'll take me out, but I don't think so.

But you are someone who should not get this.

And you are taking it as you should very seriously.

No, I mean, I am a long-term HIV survivor, which is not a huge deal in this situation.

It just means that if I've survived 18 years or more than that with HIV, I don't want to die of this in a couple of weeks.

It's a bit of an anti-climax.

But I have bad lungs, that's the truth of the matter, and always have.

And I know that if I were to come into contact with this,

I don't think I'd do very well.

And so I've been really since early February, to be honest, wearing a mask and being being totally isolated.

It's been six weeks for me now of not seeing really in any close sense another human being.

And I live alone right now and that's been really hard.

And I'm not sure how much longer human beings can really do this.

Well, apparently you're going to have to do it for a while.

And apparently you're being so safe, it looks like there's not even anything in your house.

What are you in?

A rubber room?

Jesus Christ.

basically.

I was just going to say to you, you know, one thing that makes this easier for you than a lot of people is that you're a true intellectual.

So, you know, somebody as smart as you, there's a million books that you want to read that will engage you.

Whereas fucking dummies, you know, all they got is bad television.

And I know I'm insulting them, but they're not watching this.

They don't care about you and me.

The dummies are doing something else.

Yeah, but you know what?

After a while, we all want to Netflix.

We all want to

end up doing Angry Birds.

I end up just looking at my dogs for a while.

I end up smoking a lot of weed in the evenings to get me through this, to take the edge off the days.

I just really miss, to be honest with you, human contact.

I just want a hug.

I want some kind of company.

And

I can't.

And I think because I'm not going to be safe until there's a really good treatment or a vaccine, I'm looking at maybe a year of this.

And I'm beginning to figure out how to wrap my head around that

and how to live as a social animal completely alone.

And to be honest with you, I probably wouldn't do it if I weren't scared shitless about this actual.

Right.

And I'm advising you to do it.

You should be, and you should be scared shitless.

I shouldn't.

Maybe I shouldn't, but you should.

Some people should.

But let's see.

I mean, you mentioned being an AIDS survivor.

Just, I remember that period.

And there were some similarities as far as panic.

And certainly in the gay community, there was even more panic.

How would you compare and contrast them?

And what's your favorite plague?

You know, the thing that really resonates with me right now, and I think a lot of us who survived that epidemic have these almost PTSD experiences.

And the first is that you're just not aware or not sure of if you could get this.

This thing is stalking you and you don't know if or when you're finally going to get caught.

And that insecurity, that tension, I'm negative, I'm negative, could I be positive?

And then when you're positive, you're then like, am I going to get AIDS?

Am I going to get another?

And every day you live with the assumption and the assurance that you may not live for much longer.

So you have to develop an attitude of mind that lives, I know it's a cliche, but lives in the now.

that accepts that we take this one day at a time.

But in fact, living in a plague is really just an intensification of normal life.

We're all going to die.

We're all vulnerable to accidents, to illnesses, to all sorts of things.

I lost my dad two months ago from an accident, fell down a flight of stairs.

I couldn't even get to the burial because of this bloody disease.

But things happen like that.

And I think I was taught very early in my life, because of AIDS and HIV, that you can't trust anything.

And you could be gone tomorrow, and therefore live now and also learn to live with uncertainty.

We don't know the future.

We have no idea where this is going to end up.

We could get a good treatment soon, which would shift the analysis and the balance altogether, but we may not.

We may have to wait for a vaccine, in which case we're going to have to just correct our behavior.

But you know, I thought I was going to avoid HIV.

I practiced safe sex as I thought.

I still got it.

And that haunts me because I'm doing everything I should with this virus.

I'm wearing a mask.

I'm wearing gloves.

I'm staying by myself, but I still worry.

It's going to get me.

And if it gets me, it's going to get me good.

But you're right.

Something's going to get you.

None of us are going to get out of this alive.

And that's the case.

I could not agree with you more about the philosophy of life.

Live while you have it.

You know, go out strong if you have to go out.

We're all going to,

something's going to come for us.

I noticed that hookup sites are still very active.

I read an article about it the other day, Tinder and Grinder.

Obviously, people

share that philosophy.

Yeah, look, there's a difference between, however, there's a difference between risking your life unnecessarily and accepting that your life is fragile and precarious.

I don't think one has to go to the next step of reckless.

behavior or inviting this in.

And to be honest, when I look at, here I'm confessing, I look at Tinder or Grinder, I think a lot of it's just chat right now.

I really do.

I don't think a lot of it is actually hooking up.

I think that would change over time.

I mean, the idea of me going without any sexual activity for a year is, you know, that's not extremely encouraging, is it?

I mean, it's not exactly an uplifter.

But you do what you can, and I'm sure maybe at some point I will need to live some more.

And some of us are going to have to take those risks because we want to be alive when we die.

We want to actually have a real life rather than living constantly in fear.

And I think at some point in the next few months, a majority of Americans are going to say, you know, I just got to live.

I got to live.

I can't cower in the face of this anymore.

And that doesn't mean being crazy and reckless and ignoring everything.

It just means being extra careful and trying to live your life again as it used to be.

Right.

Well said.

Let me ask you one more question because you were always a great political commentator on our show and we forget there is an election going on and now it is Joe Biden.

I know you never liked Hillary.

You probably thought Biden would have been a better candidate last time.

What do you think now?

Are you hopeful about the election?

Do you think Biden is going to be a good candidate?

Do you think he'll win?

If he does, do you think Trump will go?

What do you think?

I'll be honest with you.

He'll do.

I think that's how I feel about Biden.

I'm not that confident about him because I believed all along he's just, it's not his fault.

He's just a little old and he's a little out of it.

And that's tough in this environment.

And even though I will vote for him and will support him and I'm happy that he's not being outflanked on the left too much so that they don't go too crazy and put people off in the middle about the Democratic Party.

At the same time,

you know, he should have run last time.

Now he's running.

I think he's got a pretty good chance.

The other thing I think, to be honest with you, as we're beginning to look at this, I don't know whether you saw the Gallup poll this week that just saw Trump's ratings drop a huge amount, 43%,

that he's not doing well in this crisis.

People can see he's out of his depth.

The bullshit that he puts out, the lies, and everybody sees this now as a show.

When your lives are at stake, you look at this more seriously.

And I think it's quite clear now that he's not up to this job.

He never was.

And not only that, at a crucial moment, he's dividing the country

in a very dangerous situation in a way that no president ever should.

And I think, I really do believe this time, and this is the first I've really believed this since he got elected, that people, it's running dry.

It's wearing thin.

And I think it may not be necessary for Biden to win this election because Trump will lose it.

I hope you're right.

I do too.

I hope I see you soon.

I'll leave you with this note of optimism.

A lot of times, with crises, I'm thinking of Y2K.

I'm thinking of the fires in Kuwait that Saddam said and they said would take two years to put out, and it took eight months, and the BP oil spill.

They often tell us it's going to be worse, and in that it's actually better, so we can be happy when it is better.

So, I don't think you'll be locked up for a year, and I hope I see you sooner than that.

Take care.

You know, we love you.

Bye, Bill.

Thanks a lot.

Thanks, Andrew.

And now it's time for New Rule.

Okay.

New Rule, instead of holding sporting events with no people in the stands, let each team have one fan, a single supporter to represent their city.

Like in Philly, a bald guy yelling, you suck.

In Cleveland, a divorced dad crying with a bag over his head.

And in L.A., a celebrity who really isn't a fan and proves it by throwing the ball straight into the dirt.

New rule, you can't call it an endorsement when there's only one guy left in the race.

It's okay.

We can all admit it.

Joe Biden is nobody's first choice.

More like being stranded on a desert island with another guy and thinking, well, I guess I'm gay now.

New rule, someone has to tell me if it's safe to eat the tartar sauce.

I mean as an entree.

New rule, no more picking up produce at the grocery store and putting it back.

Those days are gone.

Find a come quat and commit to it.

And don't put it next to your ear and start tapping it like you're the fruit whisperer.

New rule, we have to start breaking the news to the dogs that we won't always be home.

But when we do walk out that door, Chico,

don't blame yourself.

It's not you.

It's me.

Oh, and I'm going to need that bandana.

And finally, new rule, now that we're starting to see some hope in all this, don't hope shame me.

You know, the problem with nonstop gloom and doom is it gives Trump the chance to play the optimist.

And optimists tend to win American elections.

FDR said the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

You know, as full of shit as he is, I could see Trump riding that into a second term.

And then there will be no hope left for you to shame.

So look, if this insanity happens again,

news sources have to rein it in.

Everyone knows corona is no walk in the park, because you literally can't walk in the park.

But at some point, the daily drumbeat of depression and terror veers into panic porn.

Enough with the life will never be the same headlines.

And stop showing us this.

You know, everything looks scary when you magnify it a thousand times.

Here's a pubic hair.

Boo!

Last month, the Washington Post ran the headline, it feels like a war zone with this picture.

This is not a war zone.

This is a man with a box of eggs.

And I've never seen a war zone with this much bacon.

Or how about this one?

Horrifying simulation reveals the dangers of jogging during the coronavirus pandemic.

Look, this virus is easy to catch, but if you can't avoid it jogging, you can't outrun much.

Two weeks ago, Inside Edition said 76,000 in the world had died, so some are making comparisons to the apocalypse.

The apocalypse?

Really?

Because most of us are sitting at home smoking delivery weed and binge-watching a show about a gay zookeeper.

Unless you're a frontline healthcare worker for whom the phrase above and beyond the call of duty doesn't even begin to cover it, this is not the apocalypse.

And I know, I know, you expect Inside Edition to be over the top.

But the New York Times, they used the same word last week.

braced for apocalyptic surge, New York avoids worst so far.

And this was an article about how much better the city was doing than expected.

Projections had them needing 58,000 hospital beds, and it turned out they needed a quarter of that.

Still bad.

But you don't have to put hot sauce on a jalapeno.

Geez, you sound like Lindsey Graham talking about ISIS when Obama was president.

This president needs to rise to the occasion before we all get killed back here at home.

Another recent Times headline was: It's terrifying.

Millions more out of work.

What the fuck is it's terrifying doing in a headline?

Granted, it's a quote, but who are they quoting?

Trump?

Fauci?

Stephen King?

No, they're quoting an event planner in North Hollywood.

No offense to the event planners of the world.

It's amazing what you people can do with pine cones and silver spray paint.

But why are you in my headline?

How about this?

Just tell me, millions are out of work without the flashlight under the chin, and I'll decide how I feel about it.

There was never headlines like this before.

There was no, it's terrifying, planes hit World Trade Center.

There was no, it's sad, Titanic sinks after hitting iceberg, or first atomic bomb dropped.

Ouch.

The media also seems obsessed with finding young people who've died of COVID-19.

The Washington Post says there's 759 under 50 years old.

Horrible, of course.

Then I looked up how many under 50 died of the flu last year.

Almost 3,000.

So all this misery from distancing did some good.

Can I be happy about that?

Death is terrible, of course, no matter how it comes.

I'm against it and I don't care who knows it.

But giving a proper perspective isn't a cover-up of the truth.

It is the truth.

Sudden dramatic deaths like plane crashes, shark attacks, tornadoes, mass shootings, terrorism, awful as they are, kill far less than seasonal flu or even hospital-acquired infections may very well kill more than coronavirus.

99,000 of them last year.

50,000 die of nephritis every year.

And I don't even know what that is.

22 million Americans have filed for unemployment, and many will lose their health insurance.

Studies show lacking health insurance kills people.

But it doesn't lead to pictures like this.

And it doesn't happen all at once.

We need the news to calm down and treat us like adults.

Trump calls you fake news.

Don't make them be right.

Okay, that's our show.

I want to thank my guests, Fareed Zakaria, Dan Crenshaw, and Andrew Sullivan, and we will be back next week.

You guessed it from my backyard.

Thank you.

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.