Ep. #519: Steve Bannon, 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.

Hey, how you doing?

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

Conserve your energy.

We had a rough week.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I needed that because we all had a rough week.

I feel like Nancy Pelosi's copy of the State of the Union.

I am all torn up, I tell you.

But look, you can't get around it.

This was Trump's best week ever.

I mean, acquitted, State of the Union, he walked in, all the Republicans were chanting, USA, USA,

to remind him of the country he works for.

But yeah, it happened this week.

No more rules.

Trump was acquitted by the Senate.

The Republicans got together and they said this was just too important not to get wrong.

One dissenting vote and it drove them fucking crazy.

Mitt Romney, Mitt Romney, the...

Yeah.

Shut up.

I mean, but there's this constant searching for some Republican savior.

But no, Mitt was pretty good.

He said, I don't need to worship Trump.

I'm already in a cult.

But this is how you know you're a guilty president.

When a guy who believes in magic underwear and that Jesus...

Jesus lived in Branson, Missouri, and that you get your own planet when you die goes, boy, that was some bullshit.

So

Mitt is being being banished from the Republican Party.

He's a traitor.

He is a heretic.

He is a suppressive person.

No, that's the other cult.

No, we are living in the age of revenge.

Today, John Bolton disappeared and his mustache came up in the mail.

I'm just saying, if you see Trump on Fifth Avenue with a gun, walk the other way because he can pretty much do.

No, Trump, boy, he was mango mad.

Mango unchained now.

Yesterday was the scariest day of ever with him.

There's been a lot, but he called in all the members of his extended crime family

for this unhinged victory speech.

Did you see this?

And whenever he starts bragging, you know, he winds up just incriminating himself.

He said, had I not fired James Comey, I wouldn't be standing here now.

Yes.

Of course, because he's a cop and you're a crook, exactly.

And then before that, he was at a prayer breakfast.

Nancy Pelosi was there.

And he said, I don't like people who say, I pray for you, because you know, she always says, I pray for you.

Well, I'm kind of with them about that one.

Atheists get that a lot.

I get that a lot.

I pray for you.

I always say, Thank you.

I'll send for you.

But hey,

let's not get down too much.

There is good news.

Antarctica is 65 degrees right now, which means we're all going to die.

Soon looks.

No, really, 65 degrees in Antarctica.

It was colder this morning than Beverly Hills.

The world is so upside down right now.

I was driving into work, I saw a polar bear with fake tits.

Oh,

speaking of fake tits, it's the Oscars on Sunday, huh?

Come on,

it's our big day out here in Los Angeles when the most fabulous, successful people get just a little more.

It's our version of a Republican tax cut.

And I tell you, the red carpet has really changed in the last two years.

Now the big question is: who are you accusing?

But I am looking forward to the Oscars, I must say, as a kind of a diversion from this week and everything that's going on.

I'm just glad that the voting wasn't handled at the Oscars by the Democratic Party in Iowa.

It'd be like...

And the winner is, we'll let you know Thursday.

You saw that, what went on in Iowa?

Boy, Democrats, ready on day one to trip over their own dick

you know not everything needs an app

they would fucked up the voting Democrats had this great idea let's give brand new technology to a bunch of 90 year olds voting in a barn

Putin was like, we're working too hard.

No, I think the lesson there is if you want technology that connects people in Iowa, stick to farmers only.

All right, we've got a great show.

Esther Klein, Andrew Gillum, and Sarah Isger are here.

And a little later, we will be speaking with our friend Fareed Zakaria.

But first up, he's Trump's former White House chief strategist and the co-host of the War Room Impeachment and War Room Pandemic podcast.

Steve Bennon has agreed to come by again.

Great man, Steve.

Thank you for doing this.

Thank you for being polite.

Okay, Steve, so, look, I'm not going to lie about it.

Your boy had the best week so far, don't you think?

Well, his last two weeks.

I think you see the culmination.

All right, I admitted it.

Don't gloat.

No, no, but I think this shows you the actions he's been taking the entire time.

It's not just the impeachment, it's the Middle East Peace Plan.

It's what he's doing on

opioids, it's USMCA, it's Brexit, one action after another.

Okay, but Steve, as a student of history, which I know you are,

nothing this week bothered you?

Like yesterday when he, we find out now that he's,

you know, the thing he said about Comey, we'll see what happens.

If it was Obama, people would be in jail.

Vindeman gets frog marched out.

Mitt Romney is a suppressive person.

This is very von Stoffenberg, isn't it?

After the coup failed.

You don't think it's an enemies list kind of situation?

That doesn't make you a little nervous.

You trust him with that power?

No, absolutely.

In fact, here's what I've argued from day one.

Should have had a longer impeachment.

We should have had Bolton.

You should have had Mulvaney.

You should have had all the OMB memos.

Witnesses.

Witnesses.

Let them get crossed.

But we get the whistleblower.

We get the second whistleblower.

We get Schiff as a fact witness.

Let's get it all out.

This is not, and Trump says this, it's just not about Trump.

This is about going forward, the office of the president.

If Bernie gets in and you're his advisor, trust me, the same thing is going to happen.

If you think the neoliberal, neocon national security apparatus is just going to sit there and let Bernie as commander-in-chief make the decisions that he's empowered to as commander-in-chief.

They're going to fight him every step of the way, and that's why this thing has to be vetted.

The abuses of the FBI and the CIA in the 50s and 60s culminated in the church commission in the 70s.

That's what we need today.

I think the Senate Judiciary Committee ought to start calling witnesses.

We've got to get to the bottom of the 40 subpoenas that were out there by the House Intel.

We've got to get, he ought to declassify this, crossfire hurricane, and let Bolton, let Mulvaney, let them all talk.

Let's get all the emails out there.

Let's see the whole thing.

Okay, when you say crossfire hurricane, the liberal audience doesn't have the decoder ring for that one.

That's just the thing.

Well, that's

it.

It's an FBI.

It's the FBI.

It's not a sign, right?

But no.

If they don't know it, they shouldn't.

Listen, this is about civil liberties.

This is about protecting the office of the president.

Your audience should know that.

And that's why it's got to be official apparatus.

Okay, Steve.

I can't even.

But

let's go back to history.

Because he used words like scum,

horrible people, evil people.

He has a different house style.

Okay.

But he's right on the street.

But

we've seen this house style before.

When you talk about people like that, when you're a cult leader like that who has thousands, millions of people.

Wait a second.

He has millions of people who would obviously do anything for him, and now we only have loyalists in the government.

Okay.

So when you talk.

That's not true.

Well,

that's where people were terminated today.

Many of the people on that list like that.

Because they're just not loyalists.

They're good people.

No, it's not loyalists.

Remember,

a commander-in-chief has the rights.

The whistleblower and other guys like that were on the list that people that worked around me put together in April of 2017.

These detailees, a commander-in-chief, whether it's Bernie Sanders, AOC, or Donald Trump, have the right to have people around them that believe in their policies and their programs.

It's not that loyalty.

Okay, these are people who we didn't even know existed.

They were deep state people, deep state meaning competent people who actually make the government work, who are not non-functional.

I'm not a believer in the DT.

Steve, let me get to question two.

Because we only have so much time.

Okay.

We've seen this in other countries.

When you talk about people like their scum and they're evil, we've seen it in Rwanda, cockroaches.

We've seen it in Germany, vermin.

You don't think that when you talk about people like that, your side, the people who hear those words, you don't think eventually it translates into action they see people on our side

as less than worth

it.

Absolutely not.

But why?

Because we have the precedents I just mentioned.

Why is it not like a

cockroaches, scum?

No, no.

Listen, you'll see any actions.

You don't see any actions of the deplorables or people doing that.

Listen, for the last three years, Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic Party have sat there and said we have to protect the country,

Donald Trump's a clear and present danger against Russian oligarchs.

The Democratic Party today is looking to be saved by an oligarch.

This thing is total hypocrisy.

Tomorrow Bloomberg.

I'm talking about Bloomberg, an American, immoderate Republican rich guy.

$71 billion,

a super rich guy.

And he's going to put billions of dollars to destroy Donald Trump.

He's going to run against him.

He's not running against him.

He's not running against him.

What is he doing?

It's a leverage by the Democratic Party.

He's already said, I will put $2 billion of capital in the back of any candidate to defeat Trump.

Okay, one side always has more money than the other.

This is not about more money.

It's not about more money because the last time Trump had way less money and he won.

Absolutely.

You know why?

Because Trump.

All right.

But

it's, hold on.

It's that mentality that has you in this place today.

And the place today is Trump is about to run the tables.

You have a totally divided district.

Oh, I agree with that.

No, because nobody sat there after 2016 and said, why do we lose?

The same arrogance you saw in the people in Brooklyn that would not send Hillary Clinton to Michigan.

And remember, Michael Moore always makes the point.

I think there's 70,000 down-ticket votes in Michigan that didn't vote for a president.

The reason is Trump reached out to these working-class people and connected with them, okay?

And Clinton did not.

It's the same arrogance you see in Iowa about this app.

Yes, there is that.

But we mostly lose because a senator in Wyoming represents 290,000 people, and a senator here represents 20 million.

That's mostly why we lose.

The Electoral College.

It's called a Republic, sir.

It's called a Republic with a very flawed foundation.

Okay, not the right thing.

Is it really Democratic for one person to run?

That's what I love about you guys.

You've got to whine about everything.

Whine?

The game, hey, the game is, hey, it's match play, not metal play.

No, I went at match play.

I understand what the rules are.

No, you know what the rules are, and you can't win.

You're right.

You've had a winner.

You're right.

Hillary should have gone to Wisconsin because it's an electoral college game.

I've admitted that many times.

That's not the point.

You said, why do you win?

You win because the game is rigged for you.

I get it.

It's absolutely not.

It's absolutely not.

The electoral college.

Okay.

All right.

Steve.

Halt.

Halt.

With this attitude, if you don't know the beauty, we're going to keep winning.

No, we're going to keep winning.

I love this.

I know you do.

You guys.

I know you do.

How can you sit here and have an oligarch, a Republican oligarch, that is going to be the salvation of the Democratic Party?

Okay, it's outrageous.

You guys have screwed.

Well, Bernie's been screwed by the Democratic Party.

Look at the last week.

They wouldn't allow the poll to be released where he was up for.

Then they do this thing as soon as the whole debacle.

about the count.

As soon as he starts closing in, the Democratic Party says, hey, let's have a recanvas.

Okay?

The Bernie voters are to do what they did in 2016.

We've had a belly full of the Clintons come either don't vote or come vote for Trump.

I understand why you're against Bernie.

Yes.

I mean, he has

too much socialism.

I like Bernie.

Really?

You want socialism?

No, no, no, no.

He's a populist.

I don't think he's a socialist.

I don't agree with his solutions.

I think a lot of people are.

That's kind of a big part of politics.

No, no.

The biggest part, one of the biggest parts is identifying the problem.

I think Bernie's identified the problem.

Trump and Hamloo shared some voters because they both kind of go after the same problem.

You're right.

Exactly.

I'm just saying.

The Bernie people are going to help make Trump president

again.

Even if it's valued by the Democratic Party.

Even I don't want that amount of socialism.

I agree we need, well not agree, I think we need some amount of socialism.

I call it capitalism plus.

We already have a lot of socialism.

But

we don't have a good form of capitalism.

Okay, but we have oligarchs and socialism.

That's true.

The millennials are like Russian serfs.

They don't own anything and they're not going to own anything.

We have to redefine that.

And that's the central part that we have to do.

But whose policies are responsible for that?

This bait and switch you guys pull all the time.

Just let me say one thing.

No.

It is a bait and of course it is.

No, no.

Wait a second.

Just let me say one thing.

Just let me say one thing.

Please spare me.

Your Democratic Party is owned by Wall Street in the corporate interest.

Look where they are.

The corporate interests.

Oh, God.

God forbid the corporate ever get their tentacles into the Republican Party.

That would be a bad day.

Okay, but let me ask you this.

Who's the real socialist?

You had four years of the world.

Who's the real divided?

Who's the real socialist?

Trump's bailout of the farmers, $28 billion.

Obama's bailout of the auto industry was $12 billion.

Why is it socialism when Obama does it, but not when Trump does it?

And why is...

Trump has run up a much bigger debt, much bigger deficits than Obama when the Tea Party was out there.

What happened to that?

Why?

I think that the solution to the rising debt is a white president.

Excuse me?

I think the solution to the rising debt is a white president because

it was a terrible problem when Obama was president.

And now it is no problem when it comes to the budget.

When Democrats get interested in deficits or debt, if you look at the modern monetary theory that underpins Warren, underpins Bernie, underpins AOC.

Trump's doing worse words.

You guys are looking at quantitative.

Trump's doing worse at it.

Trump's doing worse at it.

But here's the point.

Hang Hang on.

With no.

No.

With no

protestation from the right.

Where's the growth over time is going to bring down the deficits.

The growth over time.

I've been hearing about that

since I dream of Genie was on the street.

Pay for these tax cuts and pay for these tax cuts.

But you guys are always trying.

You're trying to change the topic.

Let's get down to the basics.

You taught Trump all these tricks, like to always turn it right or right.

Yes, you did.

I know you had him long before Trump.

You taught him a lot.

You taught him the word populist.

Ha ha ha.

You know, people who are against elites, like he was.

Well, look at the Democratic Party done to the populist.

Just a light remark.

Look what they've done to the populist stuff.

Steve, let me ask you this question.

Yes, sir.

I read today some of the things that he said about you over the years.

Just scathing.

I mean, like, you know,

the word dog figures into a lot of things.

And we see this.

Look, I come from an Irish Catholic family with five kids.

I've been caught a lot worse around the dinner table.

Okay, but this is the thing he has to say.

It's the signal and the noise.

That's all the noise.

Look at the signal of what he's done.

He's a bad person.

Because he does this constantly to people.

He just says the worst things about him.

They come back and eat his dog bowl.

No.

Why do they?

Because he's a transformative figure in historical.

Well, he is that.

He is that.

We're going right into dictatorship.

That's why the progressive left in 18 won a big victory because you went door to door.

They understand that Donald Trump, between changing the federal judiciary, deconstructing the administrative state, is going to be in their personal lives 10, 20, and 30 years from now.

That is why the left goes door to door to beat him.

And he's achieving his objectives.

He said, now comes the hour of action in his inaugural address, and you see the actions coming together.

And that's why we're sitting in February of 2020.

He's united his party.

He's got the economy on his side.

And if you get...

This is his best week ever.

That's what I said.

Okay.

I wish we had someone on our side as evil as you, Steve.

It's great to see you.

Thank you for doing this.

Steve Bannon.

You can't get him down.

Let's meet our panel.

Okay.

Wow.

That's scary.

All right, here they are.

He is editor-at-large and founder of Vox.com whose new book, Why We're Polarized, just hit number five on the best on the list.

Ezra Klein.

Ezra, great to see you back.

He's the former mayor of Tallahassee, Florida, 2018 Democratic nominee for governor of Florida.

Andrew Gillam back with us.

Hey, Andrew.

how are you doing?

And she's a staff writer for the Dispatch and a CNN political analyst, Sarah Isger.

Great to see you on our show.

All right, don't forget to send us your questions for tonight's overtime so you can answer them after the show on YouTube.

Okay, let's pick up with what I was saying to Steve.

I do think it was not only the worst week, but yesterday was the single worst day I ever saw.

He went full whiny little bitch in a way

that I thought was very scary.

He got acquitted.

49.

Gallup has him at his highest highest approval, 49.

80% of people think their lives will improve in the next year.

That would be the statistic that scared me the most if I was a Democrat.

You know, he's a conman, but con man can

work.

Convincing, you could say, well, the facts are wrong, but he's convinced people their lives are going to be better.

People don't vote on facts.

They vote on feelings.

The economy numbers, that number.

There was another Gallup poll that said 90% of people are happy with their personal lives right now, which is the highest it's ever been.

And he'll take credit for that.

Absolutely.

He fixed your marriage.

Like, he did everything.

He fixed his marriage.

He looks like he got Melania back.

You're holding hands.

She's smiling.

I'm going to be the contrary voice here.

I don't think this is such a good week.

If the best you can do during a great economy is your best week ever is you almost hit 50% in the polls in one poll that looks like an outlier and you got acquitted from impeachment, that's

a bit of a low bar for the most successful presidency ever here.

Yeah,

this is liberal.

This is why we lose.

I'm sorry, but I think that's why we lose.

Whistling past the graveyard.

First of all, I am still struggling to get my brain sales back after what just happened over here on that one interview.

I agree with Ezra.

This was not a great week for the president.

He has never topped.

He's never topped 50 percent by way of supporting this country.

I still believe.

I think it was higher than Obama's at this point.

No, Obama still is the most popular political figure in the U.S.

No, at his point in his second, in his first term.

Neither here nor there.

My point was...

It's not here nor there when it's the other guy on your...

Well, no, no, no.

I mean, the truth is, is that, first of all, this president is where he is because he has caused most Americans to move to their tribal sides.

That's been the maniacal, I mean, what we just saw was quite maniacal, but obvious.

Every single point that you made, he reversed it

to his advantage.

This president, in my opinion, one, is a threat to humanity, not just to the United States.

Well, we all know this.

Humanity.

But that's not.

And we've got to work overtime in order to bring those 6 million voters.

Recall, 6 million fewer people voted in the race for president in 2016

than voted

in the Obama 2012 election.

We're going to bring those folks back in.

We don't know who won Iowa yet, still, somehow.

It's nearly been a week.

But we do know what the turnout was.

And the turnout was not

good.

It was the same as 2016.

It was way lower than 2008.

First-time caucus goers were lower than 2016.

Those are bad numbers.

I'm not as big on this being a great week for Trump.

It is a very bad week for the Democrats.

The way they screwed up Iowa is not something you can do.

You have to be able to run government decently if you're going to be the party that runs for the future.

A bad week for an app, okay?

And this is what really

is.

People judge you by how you run.

I don't doubt that.

And that was a colossal mistake.

Shouldn't have happened.

But guess what?

We weren't dealing with voter fraud here.

What annoyed me about this week was we made all kinds of hay about the fact that we didn't get the results when we wanted to see them.

But do you know how many people, particularly in communities of color and young voters, who show up to a precinct that they didn't know was moved from one election to the next one, who are facing voter ID and voter suppression, who are in my state 1.6 million former felons, who 65% of the voters in the state decided to give them the right to vote, and the Republicans have worked overtime to take it back from them.

The way they win is by cheating.

and they've been pretty obvious, pretty overt about it.

They can't win on the face and say they cheat.

So one good thing I thought that came, if we're going to talk about the Democrats, is that I feel like they switched out

Biden for Pete in the center lane.

I think they traded in the old Transam for a new Tesla.

But it still looks to me like we are

sort of hopelessly divided, not only between Republican Democrat, but among the Democrats.

These two wings of the party, if it's going to be, looks like Bernie has has aced out Warren for that, but it's still these two wings that don't agree, don't like each other.

And

who could unite them?

Well, they don't even agree on what type of race this is.

Is it a race about energizing the base?

Well, that's what I mean.

And if that's the case, then Bernie has real problems with those turnout numbers in Iowa.

Or is it a race about bringing in what Buddha Judge calls the future former Republicans or

independent voters, whatever, new swing voters.

If there's not agreement on that, then I don't know whether it's a problem.

I'll tell you what there is great thing about the Democrats.

The agreement is that we're going to get rid of Donald Trump.

That is what Democrats are absolutely united around in 2020.

This is part of the process.

Welcome to a primary.

Primaries are about making choices, but ultimately, and I would submit that some of the low turnout we saw in Iowa happens to result from the fact that many of these voters are actually agnostic on who the person is that goes up against Donald Trump.

Our one goal is to see him defeated.

What was striking about the Iowa results, though, if you're just watching the debate tonight, all the Democrats on stage, the Democrats are fighting each other on Twitter, the supporters are killing each other, snake emoji, rat emoji.

Ben Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are hugging.

Like the entire Democratic field likes each other and the supporters are at war, which makes me think that Andrew's right.

I'm not convinced that there's not going to be a lot of Democratic unity when all this is over.

There was a lot of my good friends so-and-so tonight.

Yeah.

And guess what?

I'm happy for it, right?

It is much better than going at each other over little, small, piddly pieces here when, by and large, we share much more in common.

We want to expand access to health care for more people.

There are different methods for getting there.

Compare that to a president who wants to take away protections against preexisting conditions for almost 100 million Americans.

And my state, if you are a pregnant woman, that's a pre-existing condition.

That's what this administration is doing.

But of course, he lied about that in the state of the State of the Union.

Of course he lied.

And again, here's the difference between, I mean, for me, between Republicans and Democrats.

State State of the Union.

I was surprised.

I thought I was watching BET.

The whole thing

seemed geared toward winning the black voter, right?

I mean, he had the little girl.

who is going to go to a charter school.

He called out the one black Republican senator, Tim Scott.

He had the Tuskegee airmen.

He cited a lot of stats about black unemployment being better.

All this stuff.

Wow.

The Democrats would, Democrats, like their weak point is the South.

They just write it off.

They don't even try.

Trump is like, what's my weak point?

Blacks?

I'm going to get them.

No, no, no.

I got Melania back.

I'm going to get them taxed.

I think there's a question, though, of whether politically he is trying to actually win black voters or whether he wants to appear to his voters as if he's trying to win black voters, which is different.

More specifically, I think he's trying to say, I got a black friend.

He's not trying to save everybody.

He's been a bad guy.

But he is trying to win that vote.

Every year we do this.

No, you don't think he was trying to win the black vote.

I want a teleprompter speech and everybody

is show suburban white women who have been fleeing the Republican Party.

Look at these recent elections where Democrats have won in places where we haven't.

I want to show those folks that he is not as abominable as he is, that he's not an overt racist, that he can have a black friend.

Because this isn't about saving, directing an agenda that actually wins.

Recall, this man, Barack Obama, had in the final three years of his administration, 35 straight weeks of economic

on average, 200 yesterday.

Do you actually agree that this is about winning urban women more than it is?

So let me ask about the Mitt Romney thing, because, you know, I was giggling when people were talking on TV this week about this Mitt Romney, this man of great integrity.

Great integrity.

Did I lose my mind?

I seem to remember him as being the picture of the weather vane,

right?

And here people are like Mormons.

They're better than us normal people.

So I looked it up.

Mitt Romney.

I believe that abortion should be safe and legal in this country.

Two years later, I am firmly pro-life.

Signed a bill banning assault weapons in Massachusetts, and then I don't support any gun legislation.

The effort to impose new assault weapons ban is something I would oppose.

I'm proud of Romney Care.

It'll be a model for the nation.

Romney Care was crafted for Massachusetts.

It would be wrong to adopt this for the nation.

I believe the world's getting warmer.

I believe that humans contribute to that.

My view is that we don't know what's causing climate change on this.

I think Mitt Romney still wants to be president.

And he's betting that if Trump crashes and burns, he'll be the only one they can turn to.

Oh, no, I think that he's decided he's never going to be president.

And every quote you read there was him trying to be president.

Right.

And this was him recognizing he's got no future at that level.

Oh, so at 72 he changed.

Sorry?

At 72 he changed.

Yeah, at 72.

I mean, I would normally say 72 is a bit old to think you're going to run for president in the future, but then you look over at the Democratic side, so clearly that's not true.

But Mitt Romney, Mitt Romney is not going to go forward in this Republican Party, and he knows it.

It's possible he won't even survive a Utah primary in the future.

Bob Bennett lost one before him just because he worked with Ron Wyden on health care and voted for TARP.

So this is actually, I agree with you on Mitt Romney's record.

It's jumped around a bunch, but I think it's worth saying when people do something courageous, they did it there.

They don't do it every other time, fine.

But when people think

what if Mitt Romney offered himself as the vice president on a unity ticket on the Democratic side?

What if he said, whoever's the Democratic nominee, I will be your vice president, and we'll see if we can beat Trump that way?

He could probably get a lot of votes from Republicans who are the 10, 15 percent who are not so crazy about Trump.

This is the McCain-Lieberman idea back in the day.

Yeah, but this is a different era we're living in now.

That was normal life.

This is Trump life.

Yeah, but it's actually a harder era than even that one.

I mean as the parties get deeper into disagreement, and Mitt Romney himself, as you say all there, has become more conservative.

It's kind of hard to be part of it.

As you say, it's kind of hard to be part of an administration where you disagree with everything the president is actually doing.

The disagreements here are real.

That's part of why there is so much polarization, part of why Lamar Alexander comes out and says, after calling the vote for no witnesses, well, look, you know, he's a great president, but there's this one bad call.

Like, that is that level of rationalization that the other side is so dangerous you can't ever let them through.

That holds a lot of folks in place.

And whatever Romney voted for here, he's still a Republican.

He's not going to want to serve under Bernie Sanders.

I think what mostly holds these folks in place is the fact that they are in an unholy marriage all about the courts.

Every single decision, the complicity of Republicans that are happening right now in Washington are because they are getting judges through.

I'm talking about 32-year-old judges, no trial experience, are sitting on federal benches.

A historic number of judges that have come through the pipeline, and they're willing to roll over and let this this guy have it.

So, on the Romney piece, I'll applaud him for taking a bit of a profile in courage.

My real fear is

for this country is that there were not more Republicans who saw flat out the illegality of this administration.

Even Susan Collins going in so far to say, I think the president may have learned a lesson here.

The next day we have Victoria.

Ms.

Chasen twatted out the title.

No, the next day we have Trump say the call was perfect.

I mean, that was, I think, the embarrassing.

So, if I may interject, this Jared Kushner solved the Middle East problem this week.

That was great news.

He presented his Middle East plan.

So, we thought it would be a good week to do one of our favorite segments on this show, 24 Things You Don't Know About Me.

We Stole It.

And this week, it's 24 Things You Don't Know About Jared Kushner.

Would you like to see them?

I'm sure you would.

I first met Melania when she was the entertainment at my bar mitzvah.

I have less body hair than a dolphin.

My family owns 666 Fifth Avenue, which we bought because I worship Satan.

Whenever my wife has sex, she lets me watch.

Now that I brought peace to the Middle East, I'm going to focus on the view.

I'm such an observant Jew, I don't work from sundown Friday until sundown the following Friday.

I once dressed as a woman in college, but it was only to get a place on a lifeboat.

I'm the Orthodox Jew, but Ivanka's the one who insists on fucking through a sheet.

When I was a boy, I saw Rosemary's baby and realized I'm not alone.

And my SAT score was a check for $2.5 million.

All right, he is the host of CNN's Hareen Zakaria, GPS and the columnist for the Washington Post.

Fareen Zakaria is back with us.

Hey!

How are you, sir?

Great to see you.

Pleasure to see you.

Okay, now I know you've interviewed Steve Bannon before.

I have, and have a lot of.

It's rough, isn't it?

I mean, it's like...

like...

Well, he's very articulate, and he goes on.

But to me, the more important thing is you get a lot of shit when you do it.

I got a lot of shit.

And I think it's...

Because we're platforming him.

Right, and I think it's...

Because if you don't talk to him, it's not like he's going to go away.

Right.

You're just going to be surprised when they win.

Right, exactly.

No, I'm not.

So I think the important thing is to listen to what...

I mean, a lot of what he said was...

Right, and his big thing is about populism, and you were writing about it this week, and you were making a point I think he would agree with, which is that certainly in the current climate, right-wing populism is beating left-wing populism.

Yeah, it's odd.

You know, if you think about it, 10 years after a financial crisis that was largely caused by the irresponsibility of the private sector, if you look not just in America, everywhere, left-wing parties are doing badly, right-wing parties are doing well.

Why?

Because I think what happens in times of

France, the left has been destroyed.

In Britain, the Labour Party had its worst showing since 1935.

Sure.

Social Democrats in Germany have had had their worst showing since the founding of the German Republic.

What happens, I think, is in times of anxiety, the left always thinks people want to move left because they want more social, you know, safety nets, economic goodies.

But actually, what happens is people move right culturally because they have a sense of who am I, what is this country, and if you demagogue that issue, if you start telling people to worry about all these people who look different and sound different and worship different gods, what happens is people move right culturally, they move right on issues like immigration.

And, you know, if you look, if you think about it.

You've written about immigration many times and you've said, yeah, people can

absorb a society only so much change.

And we have had more immigration and more immigrants in our country than we have almost since, I think, in the early part of the 20th century.

Exactly.

And I think that, you know, so the numbers are something like this.

In 1970, about 5% of America was foreign-born.

Now about 15% of America is foreign-born.

So it's a lot of change to digest.

And I think that all you have to do is, I think America remains an immigrant society.

It remains very welcoming of immigrants.

But you have to convey that you understand that

there is a complexity here.

And if you listen to certainly somebody like Bernie Sanders, Basically, he is advocating an open borders

policy, which by the way would then give everybody

free health care and education.

It does seem like...

How could Americans vote for that?

the idea on the left is the more immigrants I want in America, the better person I am.

And that it would be insulting also to ask people to, as we used to, say, you're in a melting pot, melt a little.

It just seems to me if that's a good idea.

Right, absolutely.

If the Democratic Party could adopt Barack Obama's immigration policy, I would be fine.

You know who my favorite immigrant?

You remember Beldar?

Well, I'm your favorite immigrant.

Yeah, hold on.

But you remember Beldar Conehead?

Yeah.

He was from Remulak.

And he didn't fit in in many ways, but he wanted more than anything else to win that golfing trophy.

You know, he wanted the golfing trophy.

He wanted just to be an American.

That, to me, is

the good model.

You like immigrants as long as they're not from any particular real country.

That's not a good major.

That's not me.

A great pro-immigrant staff.

So, what did you think about killing Soleimani?

We didn't talk about that.

It happened when we were off.

I thought I would save it for you.

When you're on, he was the Iranian general who for years had caused a lot of mischief in the Middle East and made Iran a transcendent power in a way they never had been before.

If you look at the map, they have Iraq now, largely because of us, Syria.

They were always in Lebanon, Hezbollah.

Yemen, Yemen.

And a lot of that is because of Suleimani, and he's head of the Revolutionary Guards.

Is that what they're called?

Exactly.

And

that's exactly right.

He was the central figure, and he was a bad guy from the American perspective.

Trump has been very good, very effective at ratcheting up pressure on Iran.

But it's not clear exactly where it goes, because you have this situation where a president who says he's trying to get us out of the Middle East is ratcheting up pressure, ratcheting up pressure, and

there's no exit ramp.

There's no negotiation going on.

There's no new deal he's proposed.

He says he doesn't want regime change.

You know, I mean, a month ago, all I was reading was we're going to be in the war with Iran.

And then it's like, like, it happened in the 70s.

It just.

Yeah, but I think fundamentally he doesn't want that.

But he, no.

Here's what the thing is, Trump doesn't know how to close a deal.

So if you look at North Korea, he showers Kim Jong-un with praise.

He's like, we're in love.

This guy is amazing.

And clearly

there was a hope that he was going to get a Nobel Prize by doing it.

So that doesn't go anywhere.

The Iran deal, he's, you know, pressure, pressure, pressure, but no deal.

Even with the Chinese, they punted on all the big issues.

So I think he's the kind of guy who can, you know, he knows how to do the theatrics, but he can't close a deal.

I know he's a bad guy.

I just want someone to tell me how to beat him.

You know, how to beat him is not like, he's a shitty guy.

Okay.

I got that out of my system.

So

I'll tell you, I don't know.

There's got to be a better.

I'll tell you one thing.

You know, we all make a mistake.

People vote, and Ezra's book points this out.

People vote on the basis of gut, emotional, symbolic issues.

I think we always think, you know,

if we could come up with a really great 20-point program, which has all these itemized, you know, exactly.

Trump says, yes.

Exactly.

You know, and exactly.

Everyone's like, yeah, you know, you look at what he did with

Mike Bloomberg.

He says, you know, and again, because he's amoral about this, the fact that it's completely untrue doesn't matter.

He's like, he wants a box.

He wants a box to stand.

Now, all you can think about is Mike Bloomberg must be very short.

Yes, maybe I feel strongly about this because I'm 5'8, as Mike Bloomberg.

It's an average height, by the way.

It's not very short.

But it's brilliant.

That's right.

It's this kind of politics of symbolism,

which we always counter.

I mean, people on the center, the left, with 20-point programs.

Yeah.

So, how do you beat a guy?

And speaking of that, I mean, you saw the State of the Union, the stagecraft.

You know, like when he gave Rush Limbaugh the medal.

Now,

I think they liked it.

I mean, another president would have just announced that.

You know, Rush Limbaugh is here, he's suffering from cancer, and he's going to get the Medal of Freedom.

He has Melania have it right in her purse.

Does she always have the Medal of Freedom right in her purse?

You know, I mean, how do you beat a showman like that?

No, we're not going to say that.

Bacon was the first to bring guests into the

gallery, and this was like the reality television show version of that, taking it into into 2020, was the reunification of the father with his family on live television.

I mean, that was a big moment.

Although, she didn't look all that happy to see him a little bit.

I thought

that's incredibly thin.

I do think that's actually part of the argument for someone like Bernie Sanders at this point.

What Trump is good at doing is he does big things and often outrageous things and suck all the oxygen out of the media.

Everybody talks about it.

We talk about it.

You talk about it.

The thing that Sanders does, to Freed's point, is he's also, like Trump, a symbolic communicator.

He goes and says says Medicare for all, and

it's like a flytrap.

Everybody argues about it.

It's the only thing they argue about in every single debate.

The border policy, it's very big.

All of it is very big.

And the Bernie Sanders theory is that if you can make the fight about economics, if you can get all the Republicans running to their traditional space of trying to fight against socialism and higher taxes and Medicare, that you can pull the fight away from immigration, from the cultural identity issues that Trump is so good at using and put him on his back foot, which is that he's a plutocrat who keeps voting to cut taxes on people like himself and self-dealing for himself while in office.

So I don't know if it's going to work, and I think they've opened up some problems with our immigration policy and others, but there is actually a theory here that if you can go bigger than Trump does, you can get the small minds of the media to run towards whatever the biggest thing on the table is.

I think it's a reasonable idea, but I just worry when I look at what Jeremy Corbyn did in Britain, because that's exactly what he's paying.

If you're not worried, you're not paying attention to the Bible.

Let's explain.

That's a great point, but for people who may not know, Jeremy Corbyn.

So Corbyn was the leader of the Labour Party,

who looked just like Bernie,

the same age,

and very, very, very far left.

Yes.

Took the party way left.

Way left.

And the Labour Party got its worst showing since 1990.

Against a guy who looks and acts just like Trump.

And talked about immigration and control of borders and controlling your culture.

So I can see someone

in the future looking back and go, you idiot Americans.

We showed this to you.

Exactly how it looked in Britain.

The Bernie Sanders guy ran against the Trump guy and got his ass kicked.

Or

things are true until they're not.

Trump is also

defined the Republican Party entirely.

So to some extent, the Democratic Party is running against a party that no longer exists.

You talked about this, the State of the Union.

It didn't mention deficits.

It didn't mention debt.

It didn't mention limited government.

Trade has changed.

So as the parties realign, it puts Bernie and others in a kind of a tough situation.

But they haven't actually realigned.

That's the secret of Donald Trump.

Donald Trump would be a lot stronger if he's what Steve Bennett pretends he actually is.

But instead, what Donald Trump did, because he's distractible, is he came in, he wants to have a lot of Twitter fights, and he signed on to the entirety of the congressional Republican agenda.

So he's actually backed all these bills to cut pre-existing conditions.

His own administration is currently in a lawsuit trying to get the entirety of Obamacare invalidated.

So they actually haven't changed.

And because he's now, unlike in 2016, tied to an actual agenda,

not whatever it is he saw on the apprentice last week, it creates a record you can actually run against.

That's the main weapon Democrats actually have now, which is that Trump has a record.

That in some ways makes him scared of the fact that we're not going to be able to be really high-minded around how this election is going to go down.

I don't think it's going to be on the nuance of these issues.

I got to tell you, and I think it will come down to three or four states, and I would include mine as one of them, the state of Florida, where they are working.

We are a 1% state.

Donald Trump won our state by one point.

Barack Obama won Florida twice by one percentage.

The last four or five Democratic nominees for the state of Florida all lost by one point.

I lost by 0.4 percent.

Bush won by 500 votes.

530

54 Supreme Court decision.

But the point being, what they're doing in these states are working overtime through voter suppression.

In my state, last year alone, Republicans and the Republican Secretary of State removed over 360,000 voters, overwhelmingly Democrat, from the voter rolls.

We can't even get those folks back on quick enough.

They're changing voting precincts.

They're determining

your hunter's license is a sufficient form of identification, but your student ID is not.

If you go in and you sign your name on the ballot and the W in your signature looks different this year than the one from the year before, your ballot gets invalidated, right?

So they are actually not playing fair.

What we've got to do, and we've won something under Mark Elias, something like 20 or so lawsuits in states all across the country trying to rebalance the scales here.

But if we don't get it right in those states, I don't care what the policy is, unfortunately they will win not off of the merit, but off of voter suppression and attempt to keep voters from participating in the process.

Period, enough said.

So will someone here

someone explain to me the American economy?

Because I never understand it.

I never understand.

What would you like to know about it?

I would like to know how it can both be true when I read these polls and people are optimistic and they like the economy and it's doing great.

And then you read something like, half the country is $400 from the United States.

So my wife just wrote a great piece in The Atlantic called The Great Affordability Crisis.

And what you're seeing in the economy is two things.

You're seeing pretty good growth numbers, pretty good employment numbers, these sort of big macro statistics that look okay.

And at another point, that would have been good enough because it would have covered your cost of living.

The issue is childcare, housing, health care have become vastly more expensive in recent years.

And so the cost of living.

Even with Obamacare helping.

Even under that.

Obamacare helped a percentage of the population, but it definitely didn't stop health care costs from going up, and most people weren't all that affected by it.

So, what's happened is not that you've not seen any growth, even wage growth has gone up a little bit in the last couple of years.

What has not happened is that it has gone up as fast as the cost of living has increased.

And so, the lines are just not catching up to each other.

So, all those folks you're talking about, they maybe are getting a little bit of a raise, and by the way, not enough because even that GDP growth is going to the rich, but a little bit of it goes down.

They may be getting a bit of a raise, but not as quickly as possible.

But they obviously think tomorrow is going to be better, and that's what matters, I think when you're running for office you know it's like the stock market is never about what people are judging of the company now.

It's how it's going to do in the future.

There's companies that make no money and they're valued hugely.

It's like that in the future.

What?

I think it's

that.

Consumer confidence.

I mean consumer confidence.

Yeah, that's it's crazy every time those numbers come out.

So is this a bad year for socialism or a good year for socialism?

That's what I want to know.

The weird thing is that the basis for this whole recovery, because it is now a 10-year economic recovery, and you can see this again when you compare the U.S.

against all the other countries, is that the United States handled the Great Recession better than anybody else in the world.

And that was, to be fair, that was some of the outgoing Bush administration, but a lot of it was Obama.

They fired on all cylinders.

They did a massive fiscal stimulus, massive monetary stimulus.

They forced the banks to recapitalize.

No other country did it as quickly, as thoroughly, and as fast.

All the auto bailout, all the things you were talking about.

But can we address that?

And that footage of that.

Can we?

Yes, of course.

But this is what we're not doing enough.

Everyone wants to give Trump credit for a recovering economy.

The fundamentals of this were built under Barack Obama.

Donald Trump is taking credit for something he didn't do.

And the truth be told is we're kind of used to it.

In a way, that happens, right?

You get credit for what happens on your watch.

But I think given how long this recovery is, how steady it's been, it's pretty clear that it was largely those decisions that really were very, very hard and very difficult.

Have to wrap that up.

And go to new rules, everybody.

New rules.

Okay.

New rule.

Now that hookup apps like Tinder and Grinder are being blamed for a spike in STDs, someone must come out with a new hookup app for people with STDs

called Clapper.

Yes, Clapper, do you have a burning sensation to meet singles in your area?

Do you like long walks on the beach followed by a quick trip to the pharmacy?

Then get Clapper where hurting to pee never felt so good.

Near all, since Will Smith just made a new Bad Boys after 17 years and Tom Cruise made a new Top Top Gun after 34 years.

Clint Eastwood gets to make a new Dirty Harry movie.

Go ahead, make my soup.

New Role Billie Eilish either has to stop singing in that low, breathy voice or dedicate an entire album to baby boomers called, What?

Speak.

Speak up!

Why are you always whispering?

Featuring the hit single, Good Luck in a Job Interview with That Hare.

New Roll store clerks have to stop greeting customers with, how's your day been so far?

My dog threw up on the rug and I ran out of coffee.

What do you care?

I don't know what's more annoying, the idea that my day is any of your business, or the implication that now that I'm at the auto zone buying wiper fluid, things are really looking up.

New rule, the Florida man who pumped 30 gallons of gas into the cockpit of his boat

when he confused a notch to put a fishing pole in for the gas tank, must look on the bright side.

Now he knows why all boats are called she,

because she doesn't like it when you put it in the wrong hole.

And finally, new rule: Republicans have to admit they don't just hate Democrats, they hate democracy.

They hate the player and the game.

This is a real picture of Mitch McConnell last week

after he won the vote against hearing from witnesses at Trump's impeachment trial.

That's his o-face.

So stop saying Republicans don't have principles.

They do.

They are deeply committed to all things undemocratic.

Get this week.

Get this.

Last week, the deep red conservative counties of Virginia threatened to secede and join West Virginia, creating a new state called Patsylvania.

Jerry Falwell Jr., longtime Virginia resident and second generation religious con man,

said many counties in Virginia are taking a long hard look at escaping the barbaric, totalitarian and corrupt Democratic regime.

Wow, totalitarian?

Barbaric?

Why?

Because Virginia had an election and the Democrats won?

We used to call that an orderly transition of power.

And patriots don't secede.

They stay and participate as the loyal opposition.

A few years ago,

a Republican chair of North Carolina's redistricting committee said, I think electing Republicans is better than electing Democrats.

So I drew the map to help foster what I think is better for the country.

Wow, they don't even think they should play fair.

It's why they love the Electoral College and are constantly inventing new forms of voter suppression.

The Republican view is you have the right to vote unless you're likely to vote for Democrats, in which case we reserve the right to cheat to stop you.

In 2016, when Supreme Court Justice Scalia died, Mitch McConnell said since the seat had become vacant in an election year, the Senate would not even consider a nomination from Obama, which he found in Article 1, Section 4 of his ass.

Mitch said, even though I know the Constitution is clear that when a Supreme Court slot comes open, the sitting president gets to fill it, and it's my job as a senator to make that happen, that's the old America, a nation of laws.

We're living in the new America with only one law, make me.

Make me.

You know,

when a country slides into authoritarian rule, you don't get a text alert.

Things will look the same on the surface.

The buses will still be running.

The cops will still be patrolling.

You can still get your hair done.

Your favorite show is still on TV, unless maybe it's this one.

Americans are always worried that when we lose our freedom, it'll look like the movie Red Dawn with tanks in the streets.

That's not how our republic ends.

We keep the names on the institutions.

We just change what's inside.

We still have trials.

We just don't have witnesses.

And you still subpoena people.

They just don't show up.

There's still an EPA.

It just works for the coal companies now.

It's like the way TV channels sometimes completely change format but keep the name.

MTV, music television, hasn't had music videos for years.

The learning channel has no learning.

No.

The learning channel has honey boo-boo and America's worst tattoos and family by the ton.

That's us now.

When Rome stopped being a republic, it didn't stop having a Senate, and neither have we.

It's just more like student government now.

Because that's what dictators do.

Russia has a pretend parliament.

So does China and North Korea.

Just about every week here, I ask some Democrat, what's the plan for dealing with this new paradigm that I believe we're already living in?

And invariably, they just laugh it off.

Here's Mayor Pete last week.

You win, but Trump says there are irregularities and he can't give up the office.

What do you do?

Well, it's going to be a little awkward when Chasson and and I are moving into the White House, but at the end of the day, we still won president.

And I like Pete.

I'm a big fan, and I'm glad he sort of won Iowa.

But this is not funny.

Things are so bad.

What I've been thinking lately is the fact that Bernie Sanders controls an angry mob is actually a positive.

Because at least Sanders people will fight.

They'll fight Hillary, but it's a start.

All right, that's our show.

I'll be at the Mirage in Vegas, March 13th and 14th, at the Taft in Cincinnati, March 29th, and the Borgata, Atlantic City, April 10th.

I want to thank Ezra Klein, Andrew Gillum, Sarah Isgar, Fareen Zakari, and Steve Bannon.

Stay tuned for overtime.

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.