Ep. #516: Nancy Pelosi, Andrew Yang

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.

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

Start the clock.

Hey, it's great to be back.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

I missed you too.

Mr.

Two.

It's it's uh

No,

we are back.

Thank you.

It has been a very long eight weeks, but I finally finished the Irishman.

So

I

that's a long voice.

De Niro looks great.

I age 40 years.

But yeah, we've been on vacation for two months, and I tell you, when I'm on vacation, you know, I have to.

I have to recharge the batteries in my vape.

And I

don't follow the news, but of course, now I'm back to work.

I was following Trump all week, and I just got to say, I need a vacation.

so it's one week

but we have

we have an amazing show to come back with our bookers outdid themselves Nancy Pelosi is here tonight

and Andrew Yang is here tonight

You know, and of course his supporters, his supporters are called the Yang gang, and Bernie's supporters are called the Bernie bros,

and Trump's supporters are called Russians.

Speaking of Russians in the news, did you see this week the return?

Previously on real time, I feel like I should do one of those.

Remember this character, Lev Parnas, from last season?

Yo-oh, yeah, looks like the Uber driver who says to you, you want girl?

I get you, girl.

But

wow, did he come out of hiding in a big way?

He's on every show.

He started with Rachel Maddow.

She did a great job interviewing him.

Apparently, everything he says he told that he and Giuliani were doing in Ukraine came at the direct direction of President Trump.

And of course, Republicans are saying that Parnas is making something out of nothing.

I say cheap shot, leave his hair out of this.

Trump, of course, denies even knowing him.

He always does this.

Someday, I promise you, Don Jr.

is going to get indicted, and Trump will say, I knew him very briefly.

He was my son for a short period of time.

I had my picture taken with a lot of people.

But this impeachment trial is happening.

The Republicans, of course, are...

Republicans are desperately trying to to keep any witnesses from testifying, as you do when you're completely innocent.

Mitch McConnell says, we will leave no stone turned.

But it's, you know, and

we know he's going to get acquitted.

I mean, trial, please, we shouldn't even use the word.

It's a few minutes of rote formularities followed by Trump getting off.

Or as Melania calls it, sex.

And this was the most amazing thing today.

Trump announced some of the people on his dream team of lawyers, did you see this Ken Starr?

Yes, that Ken Starr.

The guy for whom the blowjob was too much.

He's defending this misimpeachment guy and also Alan Dershowitz, who has defended Weinstein, O.J.,

and now Trump.

Wow.

Think about that.

Trump, Weinstein, and O.J.

Flabby, Grabby, and Stabby.

I'm kidding, ladies and gentlemen.

Sometimes he goes a little low.

You don't care.

But the trial will begin on Tuesday, and you know, this is in the Senate, where they take their decorum, right?

The Senate, very seriously, not those animals in the House.

No, we have decorum, so there's going to be no phones, no talking.

So expect a lot of tension, a lot of angry glares, a lot of dirty looks.

And that's just between Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

Oh.

Did you see the debate?

That got nasty.

The Democratic debate, as you know, Elizabeth Warren a couple of weeks ago played the woman card and said Bernie in a private meeting a couple of years ago said a woman can't get elected president.

And then at the debate Bernie was asked about this and he said no I didn't

and he said and besides that the fact that he would say that is just like a woman.

So after the debate, Elizabeth Warren went right up to him, you saw this moment, and he went to shake her hand and she said, don't touch me.

If you haven't seen the movie Marriage Story, this is like that movie in Seven Seconds.

She's like, you called me a liar.

And he's like, why are you bringing up old shit?

You've called me a liar.

Let's not do this here.

No, I want to talk about it in front of the whole restaurant.

So maybe the most important thing that happened was a new book came out by two reporters from the Washington Post where Trump called America's top generals, the military people who we always say, you know, we thank you for your service, said they were dopes and babies, said this right to their face.

This is in a meeting a couple of years ago, and he said, I wouldn't go to war with you.

And they were like, Yeah, we know.

We were in Vietnam.

So

I'm ending with that to remind you: this is it.

This is the year.

This is 2020.

This is where it's going to have to happen, where we desperately need to get rid of this man.

He needs to be removed.

There's only three ways he goes, impeachment, election, or fried chicken.

And I don't have faith in the first or the third.

So we are going to have to make that happen.

Okay.

We've got a great show.

John Meacham, Kara Swisher, and Joe Walsh are here.

And a little later will be speaking with Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang.

But first up, she is the representative from San Francisco.

She's also the 52nd Speaker of the House.

She's just finishing impeaching President Trump.

Please welcome Nancy Pelosi.

Thank you so much for doing this,

Nancy Pelosi.

First of all, thank you so much for waiting till we got back on the air before you started the impeachment.

That deserves a fist down.

Thank you.

And also, before we forget about that applause,

you know, it was only a year ago that you were fighting just to be the Speaker of the House.

We could be having Speaker Seth Moulton right now.

I never really was fighting.

I thought the press made more of it, but let them have their fun.

I knew what the outcome would be.

You always had it in the bag.

I knew what the outcome would be.

Okay.

All right.

Well,

so

you did delay this for a month.

And let me just review what happened in this month.

December 20th, new emails revealed that 91 minutes after the perfect call, perfect,

91 minutes, the order went out to the Department of Defense to withhold the aid.

Lev came forward a couple of days ago.

We saw all that.

He said Trump was personally involved.

The Government Accountability Office, that's an official branch of this government, declared Trump broke the law.

when he withheld the aid to Ukraine.

John Bolton announced he was willing to testify.

This all happened during the delay that people were questioning you about.

My question to you is, did you know all this was going to come about?

Or was this just a good guess because, well, let's just say sometimes it's good to have a lot of experience.

Well, first, let me congratulate you on your opening show now.

Well, thank you very much.

And I must say that your opening was, shall we say,

risque?

No, it was not.

Oh,

not so much.

Well, I'm sorry I disappointed you.

I'll try to work in some profanity during our interview.

I was cleaning it up for you.

Oh, good.

I appreciate that.

Well, no, the fact is, is that we knew we had a solid case for the impeachment of the president.

The facts were clear.

The Constitution

required it, and we wanted to make our case and go forward, so we put forth the articles of impeachment.

In fact, voted them.

We knew there was plenty of other, shall we say, information to come forward, but it wasn't necessary to impeach the president.

It would have been further incriminating, but not necessary.

And I didn't want to, in any way, weaken a case that had the support of my caucus and was more clearly understood by the American people.

You were rather reluctant to do it compared to a lot of Democrats.

You waited till it was inevitable where you couldn't turn away from a thing like this.

Well, he gave us no choice.

The president was self-impeaching almost every single day.

He really was, unfortunately.

There are some people who actually have said that he wanted to be impeached.

Just for the record, being impeached is a bad thing, right?

And you're impeached forever.

No matter what the Senate does, it can never be erased.

Now, President Trump may be accidentally watching the show tonight.

You know, he's made me part of his act because I always say he's not going to leave, even if he loses.

Yeah.

So you know he's woven that in because he's a comedian and he does his rallies.

You could talk to him directly because

if I knew that he,

if the president is listening, I would want him to know.

Accidentally.

I want him to know that he is impeached forever and he is impeached forever because

he used the office of president to try to influence a foreign country for his personal and political benefit.

In doing so, he undermined our national security.

He was disloyal to his oath of office to protect the Constitution, and he placed in jeopardy the integrity of our election.

And that, I mean, really, he gave us no choice.

Earlier on with some of the charges that came forward, which were violations of the law, I said, he's not worth it.

But once he crossed that bridge, it wasn't a question of his being worth it.

The Constitution was worth it.

He had to be

just in terms of how you began about the timing, the value of that was, in the period of that time now, over 70% of the American people want to see witnesses and documentation to come forward.

And that places a burden on those senators.

They will either come down down in favor of transparency and accountability to the Constitution, or we will hold them accountable.

It comes down to really only four senators.

I mean, from everything I've heard, maybe it's wrong, but there's really only four who are even considering it.

And I feel like we have been down this road so many times with that small group of moderate Republicans.

I'm sure you remember better than anyone else the Obamacare health fight when we were waiting and waiting for, you know, Lisa Murkowski, was it, and Susan Collins, and then the Brett Kavanaugh vote, and Mitt Romney.

And there's always like, maybe these moderate Republicans will come through, and always it's the Charlie Brown football, and they don't.

That's right.

So, what is your prediction about whether anyone will come through?

And we will have witnesses.

Well, it's all about public opinion.

Lincoln said public sentiment is everything.

With it, you can do anything.

Without it, practically nothing.

And the public sentiment in these states is very clearly in favor of witnesses and documentation.

And if those senators don't vote in favor of that, there is

a price to pay.

Now, if Mitch McConnell doesn't allow them to vote for that, that says something as well.

So they're in a very bad place.

But the fact is, this is so clear as far as defending the Constitution, honoring the vision of our founders for what that is.

the exquisite

separation of powers in our Constitution that makes us a republic.

I pledge allegiance to the flight and to the republic for which it stands.

A republic, that's what we are, that's what he is undermining by saying Article II says I can do whatever I want.

Well not just Trump undermining.

Mitch McConnell, you know, I mean you've tiptoed right up to the line

of basically calling him un-American and Moscow Midge.

Moscow Midge.

And, you know,

in a lot of ways, he's done more damage than than Trump has.

I mean, I know he's a strict constitutionalist who constantly violates the Constitution, most prominently, of course, by not allowing Merrick Garland,

Obama's Supreme Court bid, to even have a hearing.

Well, let me just say this, and that is, if they were to write the book, All the President's Men, as they did about the other impeachment,

it would be called All the President's Henchmen.

The Attorney General of the United States,

all these people surrounding the president.

But let's just take this to a patriotic place.

Isn't about politics, it isn't about partisanship, it's about patriotism, it's about our Constitution, and we don't want any president, Democratic or Republican, no matter who she or he is, to think that they could get away with this.

And he had to be stopped because he's, again, jeopardizing the integrity of the next election by blaming it on the Ukrainians and not giving any

accountability to the Russians for what they do.

You're a a lot more generous of spirit to him than I am.

I've heard you say.

Not to him, but to the Constitution.

Well, I've heard you say I don't hate him.

Oh, I don't hate anybody.

I wouldn't.

Right, I know.

And I believe you.

I can't go there with you.

But here's what I have told my audience, and people disagree with this.

I've told them, and I think this should be our mantra on the left.

You can hate Trump, you can't hate the people who like him.

No, I can't.

Because that's where we are, too.

No, but I'm unfriending you.

That way lies

literally civil war.

I completely agree with you.

Even the people I serve within the Congress, we have very little in common in terms of our issues, but the fact is, I respect the people who sent them to Congress.

Of course.

And so I afford them the respect that their constituents deserve.

You were never a scary radical, but that's how you were portrayed.

Yeah.

137,000 ads describing that way in the 2008,000 ads.

San Francisco liberal, which I proudly am.

That's not a radical.

Radical.

You know.

Left-wing.

What I found disturbing is that very often Democrats did not defend you.

Oh, no, no, you don't worry about that.

You don't worry about that.

But here's what I do worry about.

Our country in its greatness can absorb one term.

of the present occupant of the White House.

Not two terms.

What it does to the courts and the rest.

So what we have to do from right to left in our own party and beyond our own party is to elect a new President of the United States.

Whoever that is, whoever the nominee is, we all must embrace and advance.

And I have to say, as I travel the country, I do believe there's plenty of common ground in

a mainstream message that can take us.

Don't you think it says something about the Democratic Party and their inability to win key elections lately that

a lot of your accomplishments, instead of

standing shoulder to shoulder with you and saying, this is the person who saved the country, helped Obama from going into a depression by passing the stimulus and saved the automobile industry and got Dodd-Frank passed and got health care, got Obama passed.

You know,

you're kind of our iron lady here on the left.

You know,

I feel like the Democratic Party is very often the victim of their own purity tests.

Oh, don't worry about that, but I do,

in terms of me, because I'm in the arena, you go in there, you go in, and you have to be ready to take a punch, and you have to be ready to throw a punch for the children.

For the children.

So I don't worry about that.

I love the children.

But what I am concerned about for the children is the future of this country.

And we have to have our common ground and mainstream message.

Now, in the recent election, we won.

We showed in the House that we know how to win, disciplined, focused, cold-blooded in terms of just winning.

Good to have your cold-blooded self on our side.

Nancy Pelosi, everybody.

All right, thank you so much for joining us.

Stay in my seat.

Stay in your seat.

Let's meet our panel.

Thank you.

Oh, yes.

I want to talk to her.

Hey,

how are you?

Okay.

All right.

Let's meet our panel.

He is the former Republican congressman for Illinois and a primary challenger to Donald Trump for the Republican nomination in 2020.

Joe Walsh is over here.

Joe Walsh, not that Joe Walsh, but the Congressman.

He's a Pulitzer Prize winner, winning historian and author of the New York Times bestseller, The Soul of America, The Battle for Our Better Angels.

The Meach, John Meacham, is over here.

And she is editor-at-large at Recode and Economist for the New York Times.

Kara Swisher back with us at the studio.

Don't forget to send us questions for tonight's overtime so we can answer them after the show on YouTube.

All right, so let's talk about impeachment.

It's historical.

Now, it's bad for the country, but as a historian, John, you must be a little tingly about it.

It's

dork porn.

It really is.

If C-SPAN will pay per view, baby.

Yeah, no,

we've only done this three times in 240 years.

Remarkable.

Presidents, but I read 15 times overall and all had witnesses.

This is the only time we might not have witnesses.

Yeah, and during the John, and the Chief Justices are going to watch in this, the Chief Justice in the Johnson impeachment voted a couple of times to break a tie.

So

it was the ultimate sanction.

The key insight, the speaker just said it, was divided sovereignty.

That the founders basically had a pretty pessimistic view of human nature.

We've done everything we can to prove them right since then.

As Winston Churchill once said, you can always count on America to do the right thing once it's exhausted every other possibility.

And so the idea was make it really hard to do something.

And impeachment comes out of the English common law,

very hard to do.

I suspect with these lawyers today,

at least one of whom represented OJ, we may be seeing this again.

He's guilty, but he's going to walk.

That's possible here.

But

I have the hope that reason.

He's definitely going to walk.

What?

Is there someone on this panel or in this world who thinks that

Trump could get convicted?

Oh, I think so.

I think so.

Look, look, don't even allow what is the case.

Wait, wait, wait, wait.

He's not president.

So anything can happen.

Anything can happen.

And Bill, start, again, start with our...

I smoke after the show.

After the show.

But

he's been doing dork all day.

I mean,

this is a bombshell to me.

Walk me through this where the Republicans, who have never turned on him, we we don't know why, those are good questions to ask.

Why this is suddenly, what knowledge do you have about?

We know that most of my former Republican colleagues in the House and the Senate, they can't stand him.

Bill, everybody knows what this guy did.

Everybody knows he did wrong.

I don't know how they're voting.

No, but I think there will be enough Republicans who will maybe demand a fair trial.

Hear from Bolton, hear from Lev Parnas.

And it's up to, Bill, it's up to the voters.

It's up to the American people to get in these senators' faces and say, damn it, put country before party.

I think there could be some pressure on that.

I'm with you, Bill.

Absolutely.

I don't know why.

We're going to cut this out of the show.

And we're live.

That's how much I don't believe in this.

But I do think it's funny that they're so afraid to hear from John Bolton, lifelong Republican hack, but they can't even hear from him.

How about this question?

Could it backfire witnesses?

Because then don't Trump get to call Biden and his near-do-well son?

It depends on how they decide this, right?

That's the whole thing.

Is it one, one gets one, one gets the other?

How could it go otherwise?

I mean, you have to do that.

Right, absolutely.

But there could be people that are, you could say, that are pertinent to the investigation.

But Biden needs a better answer about his son than I can do more push-ups than you, and I'm going to beat you up.

He's going to have to address it during the general campaign if he's the nominator.

I remember 2004, was it, with John Kerry?

Yeah.

War hero.

And they turned him into the war criminal and Bush, the draft Dodger, into the war hero.

So if this gets to a trial and they call Biden and his son, trust me, Biden and his son in Ukraine will be the bigger scandal.

Yeah, no, I think the American people will see through that.

Oh, I think

that's a good question.

Again, maybe I saw that.

I'm never going to be invited to not there.

Okay.

You heard her just say 137,000 ads, and those are probably all on Facebook, probably.

So, what they do is they flood the zone with ads, and they will do that here, and they will keep repeating and repeating the message.

Right, but it's not helping Trump.

His numbers, I mean, he's got his base of support that will never lose him.

Leave him, he's not gaining votes beyond that, especially on impeachment.

I don't know.

I think it works really much better than you think, and we don't know how it works is the problem.

But

the real conviction and removal will have to happen in November.

And so, the argument here has to be that you find the percentage of voters cold-bloodedly, as the speaker just said, and convince them that, okay, we've had our fun.

You know, it's always funny until somebody gets an eye put out.

And so we've been shot by the BB gun now.

It was a Russian mate.

And so just we've done it, okay?

You know, fun's over, and we've got to get back to the.

And that's the Biden case, right?

Biden's case is: I'm an oxygen tent.

You know, put the country in, and we'll take care of it for four years.

He may even need an oxygen tent.

He looks bad at those debates.

No amount of evidence matters here.

Like, look, this Lev Parnas thing just happened, and it's full.

It's like, literally, I was thinking of Rudy Gianni.

But that's not a credible.

I believe that's a good idea.

None of them are credible, right?

And they're all hanging around the Trump basket, essentially.

Okay, but what he said has jived with what everybody else said.

Yeah, no, I agree.

All that's true.

But wait,

he left a note to himself

that said, get Zelensky to announce that the Biden case would be investigated.

Right.

To himself.

Yet to remember.

We had to remember.

It's like a bank robber writing a note, remember to rob banks.

It strikes me as suspicious that you would do that.

But you have the Rudy Giovanni.

You have the Rudy Giuliani stuff here, right?

You have Rudy Giuliani with you.

He's like the STD of digital, essentially.

Right?

He's just constantly leaving problems.

Is

You get that after North Porn.

Okay.

So let me ask about the debate and the brouhaha I mentioned in the monologue we showed the video.

Is it wrong just to ask this question?

It's not that Bernie Sanders, whatever he said, whether he did say it or not,

she's not claiming that he said a woman shouldn't be president, just that a woman couldn't.

And we've always had these discussions.

We're having them now, quite honestly.

And it's not a crazy discussion to have considering the most qualified person person ever, Hillary Clinton, lost to the racist teletubby in

the last one.

It seems like the same people who were saying, well, Hillary Clinton lost because of sexism are now saying,

how dare you say a woman couldn't be elected president.

No, look, Elizabeth Warren brought it up herself.

That was the card card.

She played the woman card.

And I don't know if it was a card.

I hate that name.

Well, come on.

It's card, come on.

Well, she

was sinking like a rock.

and this is what politicians.

She had to bring it up.

She had to bring it up.

Had to?

Yes.

To save her-you're campaign.

Just say it.

Just say it out loud.

Yeah.

Well, to save her campaign.

It was not an issue that needed to be brought it up.

It was an issue.

It was like, we're sinking in the polls.

This is what politicians do when they're on the trail for a year.

They get a little, she was rising.

Member, she was going to be the one.

Remember Bush in 2000 brought out black babies with John McCain.

He's like, I'm losing this thing, black babies.

That's all I want to hear about is black babies.

And they brought that shit out.

It depends on the candidate.

It depends on the woman.

I'm a conservative Republican.

Nancy Pelosi is a rock star.

I'd put her in the White House right now.

I mean it.

Why don't they?

The way that woman

against Trump has single-handedly defended the Constitution.

My God,

I'd want her in the White House over there.

Joe.

Considering three years ago you were saying if Trump didn't get elected, you were going to get a musket.

If Nancy Pelosi doesn't get elected, I'll grant you.

Well, you know, Joe is moving to my house in the Castro, and we're going to be living together.

Joe is

dork porn together.

Yeah, dork porn together.

It's going to be great.

Okay.

We're marrying a goat.

That's what we do now.

A thrupple?

A thrupple.

It's a thrupple right here.

Sexy, sexy, sexy.

Okay.

So

look what you started with.

You started it.

You started it with dwarf porn.

All right.

That was kind of a basic

joke.

Bill, grab this panel.

I will.

While we were off,

Trump did a drone strike against this guy, Suleimani.

And

part of the brouhaha was he said that he was going to attack their cultural sites.

Now, of course, Iran is ancient Persia, so their cultural sites are pretty awesome.

So, but, you know, every reaction causes a reaction.

Now we have to worry about our cultural sites.

But, of course, our cultural sites are like Graceland in your home state of Tennessee.

And, you know, we have the fountain at the Bellagio.

And

we have...

Oh, we have the Rocky Statue.

You know, ours are not as impressive, but there are some people don't know about.

For example, Winona, Mississippi has the International House of Mud Flaps.

In Ohio, there's the tomb of the unknown amphetamine-addicted long-haul trucker.

In my home state, Belmar Rock, New Jersey, this is the site where the Guidos first landed in America.

In Nevada, there's Area 52, where the Pentagon is said to be hiding evidence of the existence of moderate Republicans.

Washington, D.C.

has the wall of hunters shot by other hunters.

And in Mississippi, there's the highway that gave us the roadkill, which became Trump's hair.

So, all right.

Let's bring out Andrew.

He's a 2020-20,

20-20 Democratic presidential candidate, author of The War on Normal People, The Truth About America's Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income is Our Future.

Andrew Yang!

Andrew, now wait a second.

Wait a second.

I saw as you were coming out, you were doing this.

Is that a shot at Biden and Bernie that, you know, you can...

Come on, it's a subtle way of reminding everyone you let's sit.

Your audience can tell you he keeps the studio a little bit chilly, am I right?

Oh, okay.

That's, well, listen, I missed you at the debate.

You weren't the only one.

I did.

I think, you know, you have a different voice and a voice that needs to be heard.

One thing I like about your voice, you're the least Trump-obsessed.

of all the candidates.

Let me read your quote.

You said, if you turn on cable network news today, you would think he's our president because of some combination of Russia, racism, Facebook, Hillary, and emails.

Some of that is true, but you're saying it's other things, and I would agree.

Yeah, I'm heading from here to Iowa, and we blasted away 40,000 manufacturing jobs in that state.

And when you go to those towns, after the mill closed, the shopping center closed, people started to leave, the school shrank, and it's never recovered.

And that's the story that's played out in Ohio, Michigan, western Pennsylvania, Wisconsin.

That's why Trump won all of those key states.

And what we did to those manufacturing jobs, we're now doing to retail jobs, call center jobs.

30% of America's malls and stores are closing because Amazon is closing them and Amazon is paying zero in taxes.

So these are the problems that people in Iowa feel every single day.

And when I talk to voters, they do not obsess about impeachment the same way the folks in the media do.

Right.

America still makes stuff.

It's just that it's robots doing it.

I think I read in your article something like 88% of factory jobs that were lost from 2000 to 2010 were lost to automation.

That's the issue for you, right?

Yeah, when you go to a factory in the Midwest, you don't see wall-to-wall immigrants.

You see wall-to-wall machines and robots.

Yes.

And that's just speeding up.

To the extent that you do need more manufacturing workers, which you do, they tend to be educated technicians, people who are good on laptops and not hammering things into place.

And in our country, only 33% of Americans are going to graduate from college.

We're essentially a nation of high school graduates, and those opportunities are not keeping pace.

So, the other thing I like about you is that you are also the least identity politics obsessed, I feel.

Now, I don't see color.

My staff tells me you're Asian.

Yes.

You know,

well, early on in my campaign, some people told me that an Asian couldn't win the White White House.

And those people were my parents.

Is that true?

No, no.

No, my parents never even joked about me running.

It wasn't even like, you can't be president.

You should be president.

Well, they weren't excited initially

because Asian Americans don't really think about politics as a natural arena for us, honestly.

But hopefully I'm changing that.

You are changing that.

Yes.

Yes.

And I also love it that you make jokes.

But some Asians don't like that.

You get pushed about it.

But they're like jokes about being good at math.

They're positive.

It's like being kidded about having a big dick.

How dare you?

Now everyone's going to know, you know?

Oh,

well, math is an acronym.

It stands for Make America Think Harder, which is what we need to do.

Yeah, you do.

You got to get good at math.

So let me ask you about the China deal.

Not because you're Asian.

No, really.

Really?

Because

it was a big part of the week.

You know, we obsess about all these other things.

This is, again, I like your criticism of the media.

You say, you know, I always criticized Fox News all those years and still do because they just don't report the news that they don't want their people to hear about.

I feel the left is getting that way too.

Now, we did

finally sign a trade deal with China.

What do you think of it?

What's your take on it?

Well, the details haven't come out from this phase one.

I talked to a producer here in the U.S.

and they said that what's been signed does not actually protect them or address their concerns at all.

It's more about not slapping additional tariffs on imports that were coming into the country.

And I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm much more concerned about our exporters and producers, people like farmers in Iowa, than I am about the Chinese producers.

So to me, we don't know what's in this until we get some more information and details.

What about the technology stealing?

Do you know about that?

Yeah, I do.

Well, the technology stealing is one thing, but it actually.

Is that in there?

Did we really get it?

It's not clear.

It's not clear.

We don't have details.

But I think the issue is it's not facing what the future is, which is China is actually very innovative and is starting to manufacture all kinds of things, including those robots.

Those are immigrant robots in those

factories.

How come I keep reading that the Democrats are getting their ass kicked on the technological front as far as social media, as far as ads?

I remember in 2000, was it 12, Obama, their campaign was so technologically ahead, and Peggy Noonan said, I think we're going to win because I see so many yard signs.

And they were like, yard signs?

We're on the computer, lady.

And somehow, now.

It's not somehow.

The Republicans were using this very early on.

I remember Ralph Reed using it to great great effect many, many, like 10 years ago.

And it's because

before Fox News, most of the conservatives were zeroed out in mainstream media.

And so they started to use digital tools rather adeptly.

And now they use them in lots of ways.

And they're sort of aided, of course, as Andrew knows, by Facebook and others in terms of these tools and the ability to micro-target.

And they've gotten very good at it.

And the Democrats have just been a lot of people.

But

I thought the Liberals owned Silicon Valley.

I thought we were the ones.

were good at this shit.

The Republicans were supposed to be the old man who said, you know, talked about the machine when they were talking about a tape recorder.

If you want us to leapfrog the Republicans again, I should be your nominee, because I guarantee you, as your nominee, we'd be better at technology than the Republicans come the fall.

Yeah.

You personally could make that happen.

Sure.

Wow.

That's true.

I mean, that's a big promise.

I mean, and a lot of catching up to do, apparently.

Yeah, you know, what happened in 2016 is the Republicans did get very, very good.

And then at the time, Facebook went to the Clinton campaign and said, hey, you want some help?

And the Clinton campaign said, now we got it.

All right.

And that was not the right answer.

I have an important question for you.

If you are the nominee, you win.

You win the vote.

You are president-elect Yang.

Yes.

And John.

Sitting up.

Wait until you hear what I have to say.

You don't really think Donald Trump is going to concede to you, do you?

Could I let me read a few

quotes, and then you can answer this.

Sure.

Roger Stone, a couple of years ago, try to impeach him.

Just try it.

You will have a spasm of violence in this country, an insurrection like you've never seen.

Here's Trump, two weeks before the election that he won.

The whole thing is a big fix.

It's one big fix.

The process is rigged.

This whole election is being rigged.

That's when he thought he was going to lose.

Here's Representative Steve King.

Folks keep talking about another civil war.

One side has about 8 trillion bullets while the other side doesn't know which bathroom to use.

Yes, we do.

Here's Trump, June 10th of last year.

Asked the difference between him and Nixon.

He left.

I don't leave.

Big difference.

And Joe, I know you're a different guy now, but here's you.

November 2016.

You said, on November 8th, I'm voting for Trump.

On November 9th, if Trump loses, I'm grabbing my musket.

This is the world we're living in.

You don't really think that Trump is going to concede.

What's the plan?

This is my question for Democrats all this year.

What is the plan when he says it's rigged, we found irregularities, I'm hearing, I'm suspending everything.

And he's not leaving on January 20th.

What do you do?

I genuinely think that he'd make a lot of noise, but he would leave.

Because in order to stay, you literally need the military on your side.

And the military, if it's a free and fair election, which it will be when I defeat him in November, then the military is not going to circle the White House and say, we're going to keep this guy in.

I mean, they're Americans, they're patriots.

They'll be like, he's the commander-in-chief.

He'll leave, but to your point, he's not really going to leave.

Because he's going to grab Sean Hannity, he's going to grab his billions of followers, and he's going to cause hell for whoever the next president is.

He's going to continue to try to divide things.

But he's going to make noise, but from the outside of the

world, absolutely.

That's going to fester the way.

My next question.

What happens if he does that?

Say you do get him out.

I don't think you will, but you tent the White House and you get him out.

It could be worse.

Then he's Caesar camped on the other side of the Rubicon with his army.

These people who you were three years ago with muskets.

You hear it all the time.

And he's agitating because he's not the kind of guy like most presidents who say, well, I congratulate my successor and I'm not going to speak about issues.

You know, that is not who he is.

But what does Twitter do?

See, I put this in a column in the Times, was what happens right now they keep him and let him stay on there and lie and say whatever he wants because he's a newsworthy figure.

What happens the day after the election where he promotes violence?

What did they do?

And I think that's like a big problem.

Twitter?

Right.

Did they finally throw him off?

Or did they say he's a newsworthy figure?

Let him do whatever he wants.

That's interesting of how he can, because Twitter has been his moticom of campaigning and now governing.

And so I think that's kind of an interesting question of what happened.

John, if he loses in 2020, he could run again in 2024, right?

Absolutely.

Oh, geez.

Yeah, in the 22nd Amendment trip.

Well,

what I think is, I think you're right, that it's a genuine concern.

I think during Watergate, James Schlesinger, the Secretary of Defense, issued an order saying any nuclear order, any military order that comes to the White House, I have to sign off on.

They were worried about the chain of command then.

It's not inconceivable.

Again, he's president, so we're living in an odd world, to say the least.

My sense of the effect he would try to have beyond the White House is there's 34 percent, 35 percent of the country that they thought Joe McCarthy was great after he was censured.

That Washington Post poll in 1955, 34 percent approved of Joe McCarthy even after it was all over.

40% of the country never voted for Franklin Roosevelt.

They couldn't say his name.

They called him that man.

But that's 34, 40 percent.

Right now we're closer to 48, 49.

And I think that the big battle has to be finding people who are actually persuadable and making this case.

We're never going to get some sort of Valhalla of bipartisanship.

We've never had it.

We never will.

But we've never need a reasonable majority.

We've never been here before.

We've never been here before, before, where the other side doesn't even hear the argument.

Did you see Martha McSally?

She used to be a fairly moderate by Republican standard

and not really pro-Trump in Arizona.

And do we have the tape we can show?

A reporter from CNN just asked her a reasonable question about there's new information about the impeachment trial.

Here's her response.

Senator McSally, some you consider new evidence as part of the impeachment trial.

You're a liberal hack.

You're not going to comment.

You're a liberal hack.

I'm not talking to you.

That's where we are.

I don't know how the other side even hears the argument you're making.

I'm actually really encouraged because I have, let's say, half a dozen events a day in New Hampshire, half a dozen events a day in Iowa.

Every single event, someone comes up to me after I'm done speaking and says, I voted for Donald Trump, and this time I'm going to vote for you.

And they say it like a secret, but it happens every single time.

time.

But that's at your event.

That's at Andrew's events.

But

still,

that's why I think it's really important that these sides come together.

Someone who, I mean, the people who voted for Trump voted for me.

Right.

Voices on this side need to stand up against them to avoid what you're talking about.

Okay.

And McSally turned that into a campaign attitude.

Because it's behind Mark in the United States.

But that's my point.

Nobody seems to think there's any value in going toward the center.

It's to John's point.

It's what is that number?

To me, if you can get that down to, let's call it like the low 40s, then we're going to win by a landslide.

You can't get it down to zero, Bill.

But I talk to people, and Joe does too, I sense, that are in that top 41 to 49 range that are looking for an alternative.

They're disappointed in the president.

They're seeing what's going on in their communities.

And if someone speaks to those problems, then we can win.

And remember, it's a a country that in the 32nd constitutional oath three years ago, almost to the day, we went from having Barack Obama as our president to Donald Trump.

I mean,

it's just a wild swing.

We bounce from guardrail to guardrail, so we might get Aristotle next time.

The opposite of Donald Trump is an Asian man who likes math.

This is where the pendulum's swinging, America.

I get it.

It's coming this way.

But just remember.

Remember

my words.

You can hate Trump.

You can't hate the people who like him.

All right.

Time for new rules, everybody.

New rules.

Near all the golden gloves.

Must stop patting themselves on the back for going vegan.

Nobody eats at award shows.

Some are too coked up.

Others can't chew because of the Botox.

And it's award season.

Come on, the meals that do get eaten will just be thrown up.

You're so sensitive about actresses throwing up their dinner at an award show.

New role, people who participate in the new fat of perennial sunning.

You know, this is a thing.

I knew you were waiting to come back

where you expose your anus to solar rays.

Is it real?

It's real.

Must never ask me to the beach.

You've not only ruined sunbathing, you've ruined the phrase, stick it where the sun don't shine.

New roll, this zookeeper must tell us exactly what she's afraid this pelican might say.

And Mitch McConnell wants to know, are you available to work in an impeachment trial?

New Roll, if you're a suburban liberal who puts up one of those immigrants are welcome here signs, random Guatemalans get to take you up on it.

Let's see how welcome the Coopertons really are when they come home from yoga to find Jorge Sosa and his family spread out all over the restoration hardware and the Spanish subtitles on the Netflix account.

New Roll, this Oscar season, the Academy must not forget Harvey Weinstein's performance in I'm Too Crippled to Go to Jail.

Talk about convincing.

Does this look like a guy who could chase Gwyneth Paltra around a desk?

And finally, New Rule, if Megan and Harry can quit their family, you can too.

Not that I've got anything against families in general.

They come in really handy at times, like when you need a cosigner for a car loan.

But the downside of families is they possess a gravitational force that gets you to do stuff you don't want to do and continue traditions you don't really believe in.

Families like drugs.

You get high off them, but they make you do stupid things.

Princess Diana famously said she felt like a prisoner, but many people can get trapped living their family's life and not their life, captive to the same old jobs, politics, region, customs.

You know, every New Year's Day, my family used to serve pork and sauerkraut.

I don't know why.

My parents did it and their parents did it and I did it until one year I said, I hate this shit.

Just because I share DNA in a bathroom with you people

doesn't mean I have to live by your rules forever.

So do it.

Fire your family.

Harry gave up a castle.

What do you got to lose?

An air mattress?

Break the cycle.

Think outside the crib.

There must be 50 ways to leave your mother.

You don't have to do what your folks did.

You don't have to get married and have children if you don't want to, or go hunting, or work in a coal mine.

You don't have to be the religion you were born into, or any religion.

You can explore an alternative way of looking at the universe called not batshit crazy.

So

I give Harry and Megan some credit, but not a lot.

Because they want to be seen as this modern couple, way upper than the other stuffy ones in the family.

Okay, then go all the way and say it.

Say, we're not just taking a step back from royalty, we're renouncing the whole outdated, racist, anachronistic lot of it.

We're saying loud and proud, what is this bullshit that some people are royal?

You want to be modern and woke and all that?

Want to get rid of politically incorrect words?

How about your highness?

What could be more antithetical to liberalism than calling another human your highness?

I got to say, the social justice warriors who never tire of pointing out old behaviors and bygone attitudes that just don't cut it anymore.

Where have they been on this one?

Seduced by the pageantry, were you?

I think the woke have been asleep.

Surprisingly forgiving about the idea that some people are born exalted above the rest of us to be bowed to and carted around in golden carriages.

Are you people who wake up offended?

Where's the outrage for you?

I want an apology from the people who always want an apology.

Did you know the queen has a grand carver,

currently the Earl of Denby, whose sole job is to carve the queen's meat?

And at dinner, when the queen finishes eating, Everyone else has to stop too.

Yeah, when the old bat puts her spoon down,

that's it.

we're all done.

I thought being born into privilege was public enemy number one now.

But you're happy to be lorded over by a bunch of inbred twits who happened to win the 23andMe lottery?

Megan and Harry, you want to be remembered for greatness?

Then burn your boats completely and say, it's 2020.

I hereby decree this birthright nonsense from the Middle Ages is stupid.

And the next time someone curtsies or bows and scrapes before you or calls you your highness, stop them and say, we feel ridiculous being called that.

I'm an actress.

He's a nice guy.

We're not highnesses.

No humans are higher by birth.

It's gross.

And to those who say the monarchy is too important a tourist attraction, I always hear that, can't abolish it, guess what?

You don't need live people for it.

They still go to Stonehenge and the aliens who built that left a long time ago.

The palaces, the guards, the carriages, it's practically an amusement park already.

We could call it the Magic United Kingdom.

Fill it with rides like Caucasian Mountain,

Diana's Wild Ride,

and the tunnel of incestuous love.

Just, you know, keep the kids away from Prince Andrew.

All right, that's our show.

I'll be at the Belk Theater in Charlotte, North Carolina, February 15th, at the North Charleston Performing Arts Center in North Charleston, February 16th, and at the Comerica Theater in Phoenix on the 22nd of February.

I want to thank Joe Walsh, John Meacham, Gyra Switcher, Andre Yang, and Nancy Pelosi.

Stay tuned for Overtime on YouTube.

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.