Ep. #525: Bill de Blasio, Al Gore

Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

I lit the fuse and my life turns into everything it wasn't supposed to be.

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was quick.

He kept saying, no, no, no, I'm in the hospital now, but next week I'll be ready for the show.

Now, Charlie's sober.

He's gonna tell you the truth.

How do I present this with any class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

AKA Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

Tires matter.

They're the only part of your vehicle that touches the road.

Tread confidently with new tires from Tire Rack.

Whether you're looking for expert recommendations or know exactly what you want, Tire Rack makes it easy.

Fast, free shipping, free road hazard protection, convenient installation options, and the best selection of BF Goodrich tires.

Go to tire rack.com to see their BF Goodrich test results, tire ratings, and reviews.

And be sure to check out all the special offers.

TireRack.com, the way tire buying should be.

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

Start the clock.

Thank you.

Thank you, everybody.

Yeah.

Hi, I'm Mary Poppins, and this is real time.

Wow,

I couldn't have predicted this.

Here I am, doing the monologue in the rain.

What am I in, a John Cusack movie?

This is...

Okay, so

like I have to tell you, things are getting very weird.

Very weird.

I was out driving in LA this week, not going anywhere, you know, because you can't go anywhere, but just had to get out of the house.

And I tell you, it's a little eerie out there.

It's like a movie where all human life has been wiped out except for the gardeners.

And I noticed that the gas prices, they're advertising way low, like one was like under a dollar.

Just like them, dangling an offer we can't take advantage of.

It's like when the wife says, I was horny last night, but you were asleep.

Am Am I right?

Am I right, guys?

Am I right, audience?

Great crowd.

What a crowd today.

But no, LA, I tell you, it's a weird thing here.

I mean, I've known people in this town who like locked themselves inside for three weeks, but it was always because they got a nose job.

And last week.

I sounded like Rodney Dangerfield.

Last week, I tell you,

I was so lonely.

I had a home invader.

I said, look, you're already here.

Stay for dinner.

I mean, what else can you do?

I tried to start new hobbies, you know.

I'm doing a lot of baking.

Some days as soon as I wake.

But

I don't know what else to do with my time.

I'm home.

I waste a lot of time on the internet.

I binge watch TV.

I have food delivered.

Oh, God, I'm becoming a millennial.

Geez, now I see why they're so depressed.

Oh,

and they are pretty depressed this week.

This a rough week for the millennials.

Bernie Sanders, I'm sure you heard, dropped out of the race.

And his supporters are taking it very hard.

They did not expect Bernie to quit.

They say it just proves that he is part of the conspiracy against Bernie Sanders.

Oh, an older crowd.

Yeah,

so Joe Biden's the man.

That's right.

The fate of the earth rests on Joe Biden.

The forces of light will be represented by Mr.

Joe Biden, or as the Jedi call him, Obi-Wan, where am I?

Yeah,

Joe keeps doing these video updates from his basement.

It's not encouraging.

One was just him down there for 45 seconds going, What did I come down here for?

Meanwhile,

Trump, of course, does these daily briefings for like 90 minutes.

And I got to give it to this guy.

He will stay up there until it is clear that he has absolutely no idea what he's talking about.

He's like the toddler in the car with the plastic steering wheel who thinks he's driving.

and Trump I love this no masks he says he doesn't see himself wearing a mask no I threw other people

no he will not wear a mask he says it's enough work putting on my face

but

but we have to that's you know in LA we have to wear a mask now oh yeah that's it that's required that's not a request anymore you have to wear a mask if you go out and get this in New York the health department says they strongly recommend masturbation instead of actual sex.

We're not just going to flatten the curve, we're going to spank it.

I'm good, it's letting up.

And finally, we want to give good wishes to Boris Johnson.

That's right, he is one of the people who we know has the coronavirus, but he's out of the ECICU, and he's doing better there in Great Britain.

But until he returns returns to work, Great Britain is without a leader.

Join the club.

All right, we got a great show.

We have Mayor Bill de Blasio, Al Gore, Ian Bremer, and Nikki Glazer.

That's pretty fucking good to my backyard.

And right now, I spoke one-on-one yesterday.

Oh, no.

Just let's go to the first interview.

Thank you for coming.

Well, my first guest is the mayor of New York City, one, of course, the hardest hit in this crisis.

If you want to help, newnyc.gov slash help now is where viewers can do that to help the people in New York.

Please welcome the Honorable Bill de Blasio.

Great to see you, Mr.

Mayor.

I know you are busy like you never have been before, so I'll get right to it.

Is it fair to say that things are looking a bit up in that hospitalizations are declining and maybe leveling off very soon?

I'd be a little more cautious than that, Bill.

I'd say hospitalizations were growing intensely.

They're growing less.

The use of ventilators was getting sky-high growth each day.

It's actually slowed, but we're still seeing more cases each day, of course, than the day before.

So what is a positive sign, a really important bill, is that New Yorkers, you know New Yorkers real well, that they would have probably been the least likely to socially distance of any people in the United States of America.

But what we've seen is amazing compliance, amazing support for this idea because it is life-saving.

So folks in this city, even though it's been really tough, it's been emotionally tough, it's been logistically tough to figure out how to socially distance in the most crowded place in the country, but people are doing it.

They're doing it very well.

They're sheltering in place.

They're really staying inside to a remarkable degree.

The NYPD has been out to do enforcement, but they really haven't had to do a lot of tough enforcement.

They've sometimes had to warn people, remind them, but people are actually following the rules.

So the real heroes, I mean, the healthcare workers are heroes, the first responders are heroes.

But there's also a truth that the people in New York City are heroes in this crisis because we asked them to do something almost unimaginable.

You know, 8.6 million people to kind of in unison pull off this shelter in place and social distancing.

And to a remarkable degree, they're doing it.

And that's why our health care leadership believes that some of these numbers are slowing down now.

We found out this week that there was a tremendous racial disparity in the way the virus affects people.

Why, in your estimation, is that, that it adversely affects minorities?

So we saw a real disparity here.

And the disparity in other cities in the country has been, and other states has been even worse.

And I think it comes back to the painful truth about America, that healthcare in America for generations has been based on how much money you make.

And let's face it, for most people of color, they've been on the short end of the economic stick.

And then add to it the reality of immigration and what's happened to immigrants in recent years in this country.

And I think this is an area where the way immigrants have been under attack has really been a piece of this unfortunate, painful reality because, Bill, a lot of immigrants started staying away from health care, staying away from hospitals, staying away from all sorts of places they could go for help because they feared, particularly undocumented folks, feared exposure, feared the possibility of being deported.

So what we're seeing is it's hitting the Latino community hard, it's hitting the black community hard.

I think that is, that immigration piece is a piece of it, but I think the underlying, the core piece is decades, generations of people not getting enough health care.

Folks with conditions like asthma, if you're in a more affluent community, your asthma, you know, you get support, you get the help you need, you get under control.

If you're in a poorer community, a lot of people's asthma isn't under control.

That makes them very vulnerable to the coronavirus.

Same with heart disease, you know, lots of things that if you're poor, if you haven't gotten the health care you deserve, if you didn't have the money to pay for it, you then are in a really vulnerable position when this ferocious disease comes knocking.

Okay, so let me ask you one political question.

I understand why Republicans were late responding to this.

They're not exactly the science people, and their leader is someone who, to say the least, lives in the moment and doesn't think about tomorrow.

But why were Democrats late?

Well, Bill, I think I don't know, you'd have to look sort of person by person more.

I wouldn't say Democrats across the board.

I think in Washington, Democrats were pushing really hard for the stimulus, and it never would have been as big as it was and inclusive as it was and about working people as much as it was if it wasn't for Democrats.

And we bluntly need that fourth stimulus immediately.

This is a city right now.

My city is billions and billions of dollars in the hole, and we're not going to be able to sustain basic services for people and fight this battle against COVID-19 if we don't get direct help in that stimulus bill.

So I think Democrats have actually been good on the federal level.

At the local level, I think everyone's grappled with this reality.

We never heard of this disease six months ago.

We have gotten a painful education in a ferocious disease that didn't even exist six months ago and has put everyone back on their heels.

What we've all been learning is that the things like shelter-in-place,

and when I called for shelter-in-place in New York City, I have to say a lot of people were kind of shocked and thought it was extreme, but in fact,

this is the tough kind of thing we have to do now.

because it's actually how you can not only protect people, protect the places that actually can save lives.

Our hospitals, until a week ago or so, we were worried our hospitals were going to get swamped and that it was going to be overwhelming and that people would come in the door and there wouldn't be a ventilator for them or there wouldn't be a doctor or a nurse for them.

It's, thank God, stabilized.

But you need to do the shelter in place.

You need to do the social distancing just to keep the healthcare system alive enough to save lives.

I think a lot of people have learned that.

It wasn't an easy lesson.

It wasn't a lesson that you would immediately make sense of given what a shock to the system it is.

But I'm telling you, everywhere around the country, you can learn from what we've been through.

Go to shelter in place fully, go to social distancing fully, and stay there until this is over.

Okay, Mr.

Mayor, I know you're very busy right now.

I appreciate you giving me even this much time.

Please get back to the important work that you're doing, and we thank you for joining us, and good luck in the future.

Bill, thank you.

And I know you love New York City, and thank you for at the beginning telling people how they can help.

We do need the help.

Absolutely.

It's life-saving for New Yorkers.

So thank you very much.

You're welcome.

Thank you.

All right.

I'm very happy to bring you our next guest.

He was the Vice President of the United States.

And I think, as we all know, he should have been the President of the United States.

Unfortunately, he's not the President of the United States now, but I wish he was.

Al Gore.

Al, how are you?

Hey, Bill.

Gosh, that thunderous applause is just so gratifying.

Thank you.

I do use a laugh track at parts of this show.

I'll have you know.

But are you okay?

I know you're a very social creature.

Yes.

I've thrown a few back with you.

Are you okay sequestering?

Yeah,

I'm okay.

Thank you for asking, and I hope you are too.

You look great.

Well,

doing my own makeup, I feel like Lawrence Olivier at the old view there in the mirror.

But

so the Pope, who I don't usually quote,

said today that this is nature's response, the virus to climate change he he quoted something from he said in Spanish we say God always forgives but nature never forgives

you see it that this way that this is sort of nature's way of saying you know you can go on killing the earth for just so long before you kill yourself

well we've been encroaching into these wild areas and reducing the overall extent of them so that the number of times when human beings come into contact with wild creatures that harbor viruses like the coronavirus,

those occasions are increasing.

So,

there is that

connection.

But the real connection, in my opinion, is that

the scientists have warned us about the coronavirus and they've warned us about the climate crisis.

And we've seen the dangers of waiting too late to heed the warnings of the doctors and scientists on this virus.

And

we should not wait any longer to heed their warnings about what we're doing to radically destabilize the Earth's climate.

And perhaps that connection is obvious, but some things you think are obvious take some time to become obvious to governmental officials sometimes.

Yeah, you know, people brag at this moment, I notice, about how adaptable humans are.

I don't find that comforting because I don't want us to adapt to everything.

You know, we were never the masked people, and now we're just going to be the people who adapt that way.

The air in

Los Angeles has not been this good since it belonged to Mexico.

But people will do it for the virus.

They won't do it for carbon.

Yeah, it's interesting.

And by the way, there's there's a brand new study out this week that shows that burning fossil fuels and polluting the air with the exhaust emissions is, in effect, a pre-existing condition that raises the death rate from COVID-19.

And so it's odd.

Well, it's understandable.

We know the reasons why, but it's odd and strange and wrong that the president would pick this time to suspend enforcement of the environmental laws and tell the polluters they can just crank up all the pollution they want into the air because it kills more people.

We know that now.

And it's also, by the way, you've talked very eloquently about the racial disparities

for those who are suffering from COVID-19.

You know, African Americans and to an extent Hispanic Americans, Native Americans are way more likely to live downwind from the smokestacks and adjacent to the hazardous waste storage sites and flows.

And that's why, for example, Bill, for a long time, the death rate from asthma for African American children in the U.S.

is 10 times greater than the death rate from asthma for white children.

And so we see these disparities with COVID-19, and there are other reasons for it: access to medical care, economic inequality, the kind of jobs available, and other things too.

But the exposure to much more air pollution is one of the main factors.

It is a pre fossil fuels are a pre-existing condition for COVID-19.

Right.

So the political calculus changed this week.

Bernie Sanders dropped out, as you know.

The man who had your old job, Joe Biden, is now obviously going to be the candidate.

What would you think about Biden naming Obama coronavirus czar

right now?

He did really good with the Ebola virus.

You think that would excite people to get to the polls, knowing that Obama was going to be in charge of handling this disease as opposed to the way it's being handled at the top right now?

Well, he might want to check with President Obama first.

He might not want to take that position.

But of course, Barack Obama would be extremely capable at anything that he was assigned to.

I question whether or not

Biden would want to do that right now, but it's not a bad idea, Bill.

So

I don't know if you, I'm sure you saw this week what happened in Wisconsin.

It looked to me like a dry run for what the Republicans are going to try to do in the fall,

which is what they always do with elections, cheat.

People were standing in line.

It was their primary.

The Democrats wanted the election to be postponed.

The Republican-led state court would not allow that to happen.

So, for example, Milwaukee, where there were supposed to be 182 polling places open, there was only five open.

I mean, if that happened in the fall,

the Democrat could never win in Wisconsin, one of the key swing states, of course, that was very close last time.

It also looks like President Trump is touting the line that mail-in votes are somehow now fraudulent, which is pretty funny when you think about someone going to a polling place with a mask on.

It would seem like an easier way to commit fraud than doing it by mail.

But as someone who was cheated out of an election, what do you think about all that?

Well, you know, I think it's tragic that the modern Republican Party has become so committed to suppressing voter turnout.

And that's relatively, well, I started to say it's relatively new.

I come from the South where it's been going on a long time, but I think back to when Republicans like Jim Sensenbrenner and others helped to lead the way to a renewal of the Voting Rights Act, not that long ago, but now they're committed to suppressing the vote.

And, you know, their theory is that the wealthy and powerful and politically connected just know better and they ought to be in charge.

That's fundamentally wrong.

You've heard the phrase, the wisdom of crowds.

The real secret to America's success for two centuries is that we've made better decisions until recent, until the last couple of decades, by trusting in the judgment of the American people.

But you know, what happened in Wisconsin, you're right, is a warning.

I'd like to float an idea on your show, Bill.

We need mass testing to see who has the antibodies and who's free and clear of the disease, at least for a time.

We need to know more about who's infected and who's not because there's so many asymptomatic carriers.

What if some governors started the ball rolling by setting up testing sites at every polling place for the November election?

We've got

five to six months to mass a workforce and get the quick return test to do that.

We ought to start the testing even sooner than that.

That's been one of the many great failures in our country's response to this thus far.

But we've got to get on with the testing.

And we could supplement whatever we get done quickly by setting it up at polling places.

And if it became popular, red state governors might want to join in also.

It's a great idea.

You're still an idea guy, Al.

We appreciate that.

I appreciate you.

I thank you for doing this in this difficult time.

And I hope to see you on the Real Set pretty soon.

I hope so too, Bill.

And thanks for your long-term, faithful fight against the climate crisis.

Lots of people and me.

We really appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thanks, Al.

I appreciate it.

See you soon.

Okay, well, we're locked up in our houses, but commerce does continue in its fashion.

And I noticed that American corporations are using the virus as a way to sell us stuff, as they always do.

They never miss a trick to do that.

So would you like to see some of the ads that are, oh, listen to the crowd at home.

Okay, well, here are some examples.

For example, Advil has here for you until your kids go back to school.

Pomalum dish soap, great for washing your mail.

Remington Rifles, the proven way to guarantee social distancing.

Chipotle, get sick the old-fashioned way, try our non-coronavirus viruses.

Crocs, you're never going to leave the house, why not dress like shit?

Doritos flaming hot flavored tortilla chips, because there's a decent decent chance one of the chemicals in this bag works on the virus.

Corona beer, look, we didn't do it, all right.

Spam, if not now, when

and Velveeta cheese, because you don't have to stress about toilet paper when you're constipated.

Okay, he is president of the Eurasia Group and G0 Media.

One of our favorite guests, Ian Bremer, joins us from what looks like a lovely home.

Bill, good to see you.

Very, very far away from you.

I am in downtown Manhattan, sort of epicenter for the global crisis right now.

Right, but not there in your living room.

Very, very cultured.

Are you missing cafe society?

You're such a sophisticated.

I'm missing people.

I'm missing my friends.

You know, I think social distancing does not come normal for me.

I don't know how I'm going to do after a couple more months of this.

Me neither.

You know, they talk a lot lot about how young people, they live on their screens.

I've talked to a lot of people under 40.

Living on your screens is great as long as it's not a directive.

You know,

it's their time when you're young.

You want to be out.

You want to be making your way in the world.

You know,

I think it's...

It's tough for, I mean, it's tough for everybody.

But look, you're a big picture guy.

That's why you're one of our favorite guests.

So

you study these things closely.

What do you see for the rest of the year?

Is there a return to a new normal?

Is that new normal bearable?

We can bear an awful lot.

We can get used to an awful lot.

It's obviously very different in different parts of the world.

Here in the United States, there's no question we can restart the economy.

But restarting the economy is a lot harder than shutting it down.

Because, I mean, let's say we get to, I mean, Trump, they're talking May 1.

I think it's more like June 1.

But whenever we start to see a relaxation of the shutdown, we're still socially distancing.

And a world where we're still socially distancing is a big problem for lots of pieces of our economy.

I mean, the two that I think about in particular that are going to be hardest are schools and airplanes.

Because, I mean, there's just just infrastructure that makes it really challenging for either of those to restart until we have real trust that people aren't going to be getting infected, getting sick.

In the case of schools, I mean, obviously, how do you tell a second grader that they have to second, to have to socially distance?

How do you enforce that?

And I mean, planes are planes, right?

They're just not going to be able to functionally run.

And so you've got to build a level of

incremental opening that has the potential to really squeeze the U.S.

economy, irrespective of all the other problems of global supply chain and the rest, that I think is going to be lasting into 2021.

And the impact that's going to have on the middle and working class in this country,

and how we're going to need to bail them out

and give them relief, even before we're talking about real stimulus, is of much greater magnitude than is reflected in the markets today, or that I think our government is really prepared for.

And that's really the question is what is the tipping point

when, I mean, I'm a utilitarian, I think I have the definition of that right,

making the most people, the welfare of the most people, your primary concern.

So

America seems to concentrate always on dramatic death.

No death is good.

We don't want anyone to die from anything.

But you look, of course, at 9-11, horrible, horrific.

but our reaction to it caused a lot more death, probably a lot more unnecessary death.

I mean, I hear a lot of dramatic talk now, you know, Pearl Harbor and

comparisons to war.

Don't you think we would be better off dialing back that drama talk a little bit?

I think that you're absolutely right.

When Trump said, you know, we got to make sure the cure isn't worse than the disease, he got pounded on by everybody.

And of course, that's because Trump has this manic genius to be able to say in his outside voice what other political leaders would never actually utter in public, but are all thinking.

I mean, every political leader I know is trying to make that calculation.

At what point is it worse?

to keep the economy shut down.

I mean, in a lot of developing countries, which by the way are a hell of a lot younger and they don't have the health care and they don't have the money to keep the economies going, they're making a very different calculation.

Part of that is because life is comparatively quote unquote cheap, and part of it is because younger population, if everybody gets it, not as many people are going to die.

I guess I'll deal with it differently.

In the United States, right, it's harder to make that calculation.

I think at the very least, we have to get past the point where our health care has the potential to get overwhelmed.

We can't have a situation where in New York City, in LA, in Detroit, in New Orleans, we could have the Northern Italian experience because then mortality is five to 10 times higher than it otherwise would have been.

But we can get through that, we will know in a few weeks.

That's not June, that's not September.

But I think how to get beyond that, you're going to need to do so much in the economy to give people the assurances.

We've got a bunch of governors and mayors that will be able to start opening the economy again.

But that doesn't mean that people are going to go out to restaurants.

It doesn't mean they're going to get in local Ubers or go on public transport.

How do you ensure that people can go to their workplace if they're not effectively socially distancing, if you don't have enough masks and hand sanitizer for all of them?

Can you give them tests?

Can you guarantee to all of them that their coworkers won't have them?

The lawsuits that will come from that, if you can't do that, I think there are an awful lot of steps that need to be put in place that America's private sector is working on really hard right now, but it's going to be really challenging to get there and get there easily.

And Lord knows, Bill, I mean, I hope that by June 1, we'll have much better answers than we do right now.

Yeah, but

we're not flipping a switch.

No, and we shouldn't.

But again, you know, you have to look at it, I made a list of some of the things that can kill you

if the economy goes into a depression.

you could wind up with fascism, which has been known not to be good for people's health.

I mean, the depression led to a lot of fascism.

Loneliness.

I was shocked to see that the early death rate

goes up 26%

because of loneliness.

Societal breakdown.

What happens?

I mean, when people have no money,

they rob, things break down, people die from that.

Alcoholism, drug addiction,

kids not going to school.

I mean,

we're dumb enough.

People eat worse food.

You know, pollution, we were just talking to Al Gore.

Pollution kills

8 million people a year, they say, from particulates in the air.

This fire rises isn't going to probably get to that number, not close.

Just normal obesity.

approaches half a million Americans dead a year.

I mean,

what I'm saying is, like, when death happens slowly,

we don't seem to notice.

When it happens suddenly, dramatically, like this, or 9-11, it just seems out of whack sometimes if what we're trying to do is save the most number of lives, which are within the.

The 9-11 comparison is exactly apt, right?

Because, I mean, there wasn't really a national debate.

It was everything we can possibly do to ensure that we will never have another terrorist act like that again on American soil, we will do.

And if that means spending trillions of dollars, and if that means costing tens of thousands of lives, American lives, not to mention all of the countless more lives on the ground in these countries, creating more radicalism, there wasn't a debate about that because you had to be all in in that fight.

And I absolutely think that similar things are going to happen here.

And by the way, you're asking about the impact on the economy, where the potential that we overshoot is real, but also how about the impact on technology?

We are absolutely going to be prepared to give away all of our data to all of these companies just to ensure that we can be monitored effectively so that we're not going to be exposed to someone that has this disease like they're doing in China, like they're presently doing in Singapore.

Now, I mean, a few months ago, we were talking, we had Elizabeth Warren up there saying we should break up these big tech companies.

We had the Europeans saying these monopolies are dangerous and we've got to ensure privacy.

No one is going to be saying that in the next few months.

What are the implications long term of the fact that we're simply going to say you are the most strategically important companies for us to get back going?

We need geolocation on every American all the time to understand when we can bring you back into the economy.

What are the implications of that long term?

I suspect we're not going to to do enough thinking about that because we now know what our priority is.

We're fighting, Bill, we're fighting a war, a war against coronavirus.

And when you're fighting a war, everything else is not even second place, it's 10th place.

And so these are exactly the right questions to ask.

Okay.

So

it's interesting because now that Biden is the obvious nominee,

It turns out Trump was right all along when he was attacking and trying to get dirt on Joe Biden.

He knew he was going to be the nominee.

You know, I always say, as a politician, Trump is non-parai.

He gets that.

And

look, I was for impeachment.

I thought what he did with Ukraine was impeachable for sure.

But after this,

it just...

It just looks strange.

If I was the Democrats, just tell me if you agree.

I wouldn't bring up impeachment or any of that stuff.

In light of the coronavirus, Ukraine seems very distant.

I'll just say that.

It just, for a lot of people, it's going to seem ridiculous.

That's right.

But the politicians, I would not be bringing up the impeachment today or next month.

I mean, this is the election is going to be about this, but it's also going to be about the election.

It's going to be about being able to vote, right?

You saw what just happened in Wisconsin.

Trump understands that his base is much more excited about him than Biden's base is about Biden, which means low turnout is good for Trump.

So, you know, old people vote.

They vote more than young people do.

They also are much more vulnerable to dying and getting really sick from coronavirus.

By November, there's still going to be social distancing in place.

What are we going to do?

about the elections in November, especially in those swing states where the electoral mechanism will be determined by Republicans.

You're going going to do your best to make it harder for people to vote.

And I think that's going to be resolved in courts.

I think it's going to be incredibly contentious.

That's before you talk about the politicization of investigations about Biden.

That's before you talk about the Russians and what they might do in terms of external intervention.

Just the baseline of holding the election itself.

in the age of coronavirus has suddenly become the most politicized issue maybe of our lifetimes in this country.

Yeah, I didn't think he was going to go away without it.

I mean, with it,

I don't see it at all.

But it's interesting, when this happened, a lot of people, and when I say a lot of people, I mean me

among them, said, oh, well, this is the one thing Trump can't lie his way out of.

No.

No,

apparently there's nothing he can't lie his way out of because he gets up there every day and lies his ass off.

And certainly in the age of Fox News and when you have state tv

it just doesn't matter i find that the most disheartening thing that even this thing is not going to really expose him in the way we were expecting well i mean clearly his ability to take responsibility for anything is zero that goes wrong right and and his desire to blame the chinese and desire to blame obama for faulty tests when we didn't know coronavirus existed at that point i mean all of those things i take it but to push back just a little bit right there are a lot of people out there that were saying if Trump wins another election, we're going to have an authoritarian regime, right?

Democracy's gone.

Well, you know what's really interesting?

I mean, I look at a country like Hungary, where Victor Orban really wants to be an authoritarian.

And here's his moment.

He's getting rid of parliament.

He's getting rid of the journalists.

He's like, you know, he's saying five years in jail if you say something against me.

This would be the time, this is the biggest crisis of our lifetime since World War II.

And Trump is not centralizing power at all, right?

In fact, he's saying, not my decision, the governors have to decide because I need someone to blame.

He's so interested in avoiding any sort of accountability that he actually is acting as a fairly weak president.

Not my job, not the federal government's job to have testing on every street corner.

Well, if you wanted to be a dictator, you'd want to actually assert that authority.

And one other point, which is kind of interesting, is at least social media, which is run by engineers after all, are better at getting rid of fake news, whether it's Alec Jones or whether it's the president of Brazil hawking some fake cure.

When they hear that, they actually take those posts down because it's anti-science.

And as engineers, they kind of get that.

Where if you had a political leader calling for genocide, they wouldn't take that down because they don't want to mess with politics.

So I actually think that the American public is getting better information around coronavirus.

Yes, in part part because of Fauci, but also just in part because of the way news works these days than they are about almost anything political that's out there.

Well, if they listen to Fauci, if they listen to Trump, no.

I mean, look, I actually was believing him for the longest time when he said, because it really wasn't contested, or maybe we didn't know, when he said, you know,

I made a great decision at the beginning and kept Chinese people from coming here.

No, he didn't do anything like that.

Chinese people are still coming here.

That is a total lie.

So, you know, you're right.

He's too lazy to be a dictator.

It's pretty amazing that he couldn't even pull that off.

I mean, the one time

I wanted a let's keep foreigners out guy, and he can't even fucking do that.

Anyway.

He's too lazy.

And the power of the presidency is actually too constrained.

I mean, it's really hard to assert your authority over a bunch of governors and mayors that actually have budgetary control locally and have, you know sort of the school systems reporting to them and have sanitation reporting to them you know this this isn't um you know a country uh that is uh really a parliamentary system it's a federal system and you know ultimately that may be a bigger challenge for us over the next few months but it also is a strength yeah and my one optimistic note is something i read that you wrote we're very motivated Everyone is so motivated.

You know, when you buy a house and they go, oh, they're motivated buyers.

We have motivated solvers.

Nobody benefits from this.

Everyone wants to get it over with.

So anyway, I thank you for writing that and for always writing.

I love what you do.

Thanks.

I hope I see you on my real show soon.

Great to be with you, Bill.

Thanks.

Okay.

All right, my next guest was a very busy comedian.

She's still doing her fantastic show on Sirius XM, You Up with Nikki Glazer.

Please welcome one of my favorite comedians, Nikki Glazer.

Thank you.

How are you doing?

I know

you're holed up in St.

Louis, right?

Is that your hometown?

Yeah, I'm living with my parents back in St.

Louis, quarantined with them again.

It's freaking out.

And you made that choice?

I did make the choice.

I just wanted to be, I was already with them when this all started going down.

We were like, they were visiting me in L.A.

And then I just decided to go back with them just to make sure they stayed safe and didn't start start a TikTok account.

So

is this the room you grew up in that you're in?

Well, no, I'm actually in my dad's office right now, which is where I do my show from.

It's kind of his like man cave.

And this is kind of turned into my office.

Is this the house you grew up in?

It is.

It's the same house.

It's really triggering.

I'm,

you fall right back into old habits.

I'm 15 again.

I'm getting into screaming fights with my mom.

I'm sleeping till noon.

I'm developing an eating disorder.

It's,

I'm not coming, you know.

Do you

have any parents?

Can you hear them fucking?

I've heard your mom's a screamer.

I think she's a she does make noise, but now I've adapted.

Now I have a white noise machine.

I could have really used one of those in high school.

So you're a millennial.

Yeah.

Barely.

By law, you have to deal with depression and anxiety.

So, and you know, I've been hearing these reports and reading stuff about how this is affecting people psychologically.

I mean, we're going into like a full month of doing this.

I mean, it was cute for a few days and a week, but now I notice that

people are relapsing who have

substance issues and people are getting depressed and things are, you mentioned, triggering.

How are you holding up with all that kind of stuff?

I'm smoking pot all the time and

doing a lot of, I'm doing a lot of therapy and I'm going to like self-help and 12-step programs, not the one associated with marijuana, but I'm doing, I'm doing, now that I have all this time on my hands, I'm like, I just want to fix myself and stay on top of it.

So I'm kind of running a goop lab of sorts out of my parents' home in terms of self-help.

Like I'm, I did a

breath work class the other day.

I did a hypnotist session the other day.

I'm developing a candle that smells like my asshole.

It's really

wait, go back.

Yeah.

Go back to go back to candle.

Yeah, I was just, you know,

Gwyneth has like a vagina candle.

I was just going to say, my vagina smells like a candle, but I don't have the candle that smells like a candle.

One-upping Gwyneth Boltra.

Okay.

But I really am.

I'm like, doubling down on everything.

I'm just, all my money is going towards self-help.

I'm, I, hours a day, I spend talking to someone about my feelings because I just think, you know, I need to stay on top of it.

I'm scared.

And also, with like my meds, I'm on an antidepressant, but I'm worried about the future.

Will I even be able to get those?

So I'm trying to wean myself off so that I can be okay in a world where you, you know,

you can do those kind of meds and smoke pot all day because I would think that they were conflicting or redundant.

Um,

yeah,

you're probably right.

What are you, are you?

So I know that you're doing just edibles, which I can't,

I don't know.

They just don't do it for me and they take too long and they don't make my lungs feel full of pot smoke.

Well, making your lungs feel things

during a pandemic that attacks them.

You know, it attacks the lungs.

I don't, yeah, that's much my thinking on it, but I could be wrong.

And, you know, we'll all find out.

And

yeah, I mean, look,

after 9-11, they used to say about the, you know, our brave people who protect us, the CIA and those types of people who Trump calls the deep state, but I say they're the thank you for being deep state.

They would always say about the terrorists, you know,

they only have to be right once.

We have to be right every time.

They have to be right just once.

And that's how I feel about the virus.

It only has to be right once.

You know, if I miss one time of, you know, not washing my hands or if I touch my face, and I can't live like that.

I mean, I'm doing my part, but you know what?

If I get it, I'll fight it the best I can.

I'm trying to win the battle in my immune system.

Everybody's got to deal with their own way.

Yeah, I completely agree with you.

I think that I cannot be

overly zealous about washing my hands and worrying about everything.

I'll go crazy.

I really am just like, if it's going to get me, it's going to get me.

I'll do my best.

But

it's,

yeah, and you don't know how you're going to get it.

And I just, I don't know, when I get an Amazon package, it's really hard for me to wait three days for the

I got to crack that thing open.

Yeah, wipe it down and crack it open.

Come on.

I mean, you can drive yourself nuts.

Okay.

So

what, have you come to any

realizations or epiphanies?

You say you're doing a lot of self-help, but you know, usually when we're driven out of our comfort zone, we don't like it.

It's our comfort zone, but we do find things out about ourselves.

Anything you can report?

Yeah, I honestly can't.

And it's interesting.

I'm about to be 36.

I've worked really hard my whole life and haven't really had relationships and have always been single.

And I just recently, before this happened, kind of arrived at the idea of like, maybe I want kids.

Like, it was the first time it's ever occurred to me.

And now I'm like certain that I don't because

100% will not have kids.

Oh, I thought you were going to say, I want a corona baby, but no, no, no, because you know what?

With when I wanted to have kids and I decided, like, I want to have kids, I was rich enough to afford people to take care of them for me and teach them.

And none of that fucking matters anymore.

I don't want to be a mom because I don't know how to teach a child how to figure out the area of a triangle.

Like, I don't, I'm not a teacher, too.

Like, you have to do everything now.

And I just don't, I don't have that in me to be around kids that much.

You're so preaching to the converted on that one.

You know, I've been saying that forever.

And look, everybody is, you do you, I do me.

I understand people love kids and kids are fun.

Yeah.

And they, and they've always said to me things like, oh, if you had your own kid, you'd change.

And I swear I would be the first one to look into the crib at my own kid and go,

still nothing.

yes uh and and it's the same thing you just said like i i don't people say oh i i like to learn again through my kids i'm no i'm over that i know the sky is blue it doesn't interest me to like re

okay

so um i could do mushrooms with my friends and talk about that right about how the the sky is blue yeah it's i went to my my um nephew at a birthday party the other day and it was like a social distance birthday party they stayed on the porch we put the presents up there they we walked away they opened them i couldn't hug my nephew i could he couldn't like play i couldn't play with him so um ideal

so what if they we were talking before with al go about the the environment what if they found out that you know cell phones were a big part of what causes environmental destruction and you had to you know if we're going to keep using cell phones this kind of stuff is going to keep happening would you rather be able to if you had to would you give up your phone or go to a bar?

You can only have one.

Bars and restaurants or phones.

So I would gladly give up going to bars.

But giving up your cell phone, I mean,

I know it will make me happier to give up my cell phone.

And you would know right away, I think, whenever I take just even a couple minutes off it, I feel better.

It's and even now when we're all connecting and we're feeling less alone because of it, I understand that, but I'm still feeling very triggered by people doing so much

or telling you that you need to do less.

Like there's never

like everyone making their own masks from bandanas.

It just makes me feel like, why don't I have cute bandanas?

Like I feel like I should go steal one from my neighbor's golden retriever.

I don't have anything.

People are doing home workouts.

with, you know, a broom handle on a backpack.

And so I grab a broom and my mom thinks I'm going to start cleaning.

I'm like, no, I'm working my arms.

It's just like, I just, I'm

completely feeling less than because of social media, even in this time.

Good.

And so I know that it would be better.

We would all be better off without it.

I couldn't.

Yeah.

So, so agree with that.

We're humans.

Well, listen, I'm such a big fan of yours.

You know, that's why I invited you and you graciously accepted to do my Hawaii junket this year.

I hope that still can happen.

It's December.

It's the end of December.

If we're not over it by then, I'll be very depressed.

It's all I'm looking forward to.

No, I was thrilled when you accepted because, you know, you are one of the hottest properties in comedy.

I mean, you are walking into stardom at just the right time.

And

this time, no, I know.

You're doing big theater tours and stuff.

I mean, you're really happening now.

This was bad timing for you, but it'll end and you'll get it back.

You're not going anywhere.

A month ago, I had two TV shows in development and a sold-out theater tour.

And this Saturday, I'm throwing a a Taylor Swift dance party on Zoom for charity.

So

things have taken a turn.

It'll come back.

All right, Nikki.

I'll see you in Hawaii.

See you there, Belle.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Okay, time for new rules, everybody.

New rules.

Here we go.

New rule.

To show some respect for the quarantine, The Weekend has to change his name to I Forgot What fucking day it is.

And Daft Punk has to tell us where they got those masks.

New Rule, now that the employees of a strip club in Portland, Oregon have pivoted from pole dancing to delivering food from the club's kitchen, the next time a reporter asks Dr.

Anthony Fauci how bad things might get, he has to answer, bad enough that people get food delivered from a strip club.

Because here's something I never thought I'd hear.

Let's be safe tonight and order in shrimp from the titty bar.

New rule, if we still have to visit Grandma, but we're not allowed to touch her or even go inside, she has to put her tits on the glass.

Oh, you're bowing at home now, but give it another month.

New rule, people must stop pretending Sphinx cats are cute.

They look like golla made out of a ball sack.

I don't know whether I'm supposed to pet it or ask it to tell me a riddle.

All I know is keep that fucking thing away from me when it's giving the evil eye.

New rule, now that Bernie's dropped out and the hashtag never Biden, never Trump is trending on Twitter, someone must invent a way for me to bitch slap people virtually.

I would do it in person, but I can't leave the house.

And finally, New Rule, you can't yell at someone for breaking a rule you just made up.

Scientists, yes, scientists who are generally pretty liberal, have been naming diseases after the places they came from for a very long time.

Zika is from the Zika forest, Ebola from the Ebola River, Hantavirus, the Hantan River.

There's the West Nile virus and guinea worm and Rocky Mountain spotted fever and of course the Spanish flu.

MERS

stands for Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome.

It's plastered all over airports and no one blogs about it.

So why should China get a pass?

Congressman Ted Liu tweeted, the virus is not constrained by country or race.

Be just as stupid to call it the Milan virus.

No, that would be way stupider because it didn't come from Milan.

And if it did, I guarantee we'd be calling it the Milan virus.

Jesus fucking Christ, can't we even have a pandemic without getting offended?

When they named Lyme disease after a town in Connecticut, the locals didn't get all ticked off.

Ticked off.

Seriously, it scares me that there are people out there who would rather die from the virus than call it by the wrong name.

This isn't about vilifying a culture.

This is about facts.

This is about life and death.

We're barely four months into this pandemic,

and the wet markets in China, the ones where exotic animals are sold and consumed, are already starting to reopen.

The PC police say it's racist to attack any cultural practice that's different than our own.

I say liberalism lost its way when it started thinking like that and pretended that forcing a woman to wear this was just a different way instead of an abhorrent human rights violation.

It's not racist to point out that eating bats is bat shit crazy.

In 2007, researchers at the University of Hong Kong wrote, the presence of a large reservoir of SARS-CoV like viruses in horseshoe bats, together with the culture of eating exotic animals in southern China, is a time bomb.

Dr.

Fauci says we should force a global closure of the wet markets because the current crisis is a, quote, direct result of them.

On Monday the UN's acting head of biodiversity said the same thing.

So when someone says what if people hear Chinese virus and blame China the answer is we should blame China.

Not Chinese Americans.

But we can't stop telling the truth because racists get the wrong idea.

There are always going to be idiots out there who want to indulge their prejudices.

But this is an emergency.

Don't we have bigger tainted fish to fry?

Jesus, if the sun was exploding, Twitter would pile on the first guy who called it a dwarf star.

Sorry.

Americans, we're going to have to ask you to keep two ideas in your head at the same time.

This has nothing to do with Asian Americans, and it has everything to do with China.

We can't afford the luxury anymore of non-judginess towards a country with habits that kill millions of people everywhere, because this isn't the first time.

SARS came from China and the bird flu and the Hong Kong flu, the Asian flu.

Viruses come from China like shortstops come from the Dominican Republic.

If they were selling nuclear suitcases at these wet markets, would we be so non-judgmental?

And isn't this pretty close to what they are selling?

And the next one could be even worse.

If the Chinese military had purposefully infected this country with corona as a bioweapon,

we'd be at war with them.

We're always griping about how China manipulates their currency.

Well, I'm no monetary expert, but I think you would agree this one hurt our economy a little more than the currency manipulation.

And China can do this.

China once built a 57-story skyscraper in 19 days.

There's been a pothole on my street for 19 years.

They're not like us.

They can actually get shit done.

This is a dictatorship that for decades enforced a one-child per family policy under penalty of forced sterilization.

But you can't close down the farmer's market from hell?

They need to use that iron fist and pound it down like the whole world depends on it.

because it kind of does.

And I hope that if someone told Americans that eating hot pockets could cause a worldwide pandemic, that we would have the good sense to stop doing it.

Although I wouldn't bet on it.

Okay, that's our show.

You're a great audience.

I want to thank my guests, Bill de Blasio, Al Gore, Ian Bremer, and Nikki Glazer.

And we will be back next week from my backyard.

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.

For more information, log on to HBO.com.