Ep. #512: Chris Cuomo, Zach Galifianakis

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.

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

Start the clock.

Okay, I guess

always like this for our Halloween show.

This is our Halloween is coming up.

You're excited.

I'm going out this year as a quid pro quo.

But

I love Halloween in Los Angeles.

The women, they always say, I love dressing up, and then they go out wearing nothing but underwear and kitten ears.

That's

this is

truly noted, sir.

You're a bell.

But this is a very beautiful time here in Southern California, I think, mid-fall, right?

It's a lot like New England.

Our trees turning a beautiful shade of

red and gold.

Of course, that's because they're on fire here.

Yeah, we have

600 fires going.

It can be very confusing among the hipsters out here because

a kid said to me today, that's fire.

I didn't know he was complimenting my shirt or talking about something sparking up behind me.

So Trump.

Trump says he will send federal aid for the fires, but first we have to come up with some dirt on Joe Biden.

So that's

oh,

this impeachment inquiry is making a crazy person crazy.

The other day, he said the impeachment inquiry was a lynching.

Don't you love that about Donald Trump?

Even when he's fighting for his political life, he still is able to squeeze in a little racism.

You know, he's...

And his...

His level of self-pity, I don't think we could ever measure this.

You know, it's awe-inspiring.

It's like the depths of the universe that every day the President of the United States acts like a high school girl who is sopping into his pillow that everybody hates him, and all his fans are like, finally, a real man in the White House.

I mean, he's...

Oh,

he's not crazy or anything, but today he ordered the Justice Department, get this to investigate the Justice Department.

Yeah, no, he's been asking this for a while.

He's mad at the Justice Department for conducting, of course, the Russia Mueller inquiry.

So he's having the good people at the Justice Department look into those horrible people at the Justice Department,

which explains the new chant at the rallies, lock me up.

It's like so.

Well,

what sent him off the rails was testimony from this guy named Bill Taylor.

I'd never heard of this guy.

We shouldn't.

He's one of those deep state heroes you don't hear about, our top guy who was in Ukraine.

He gave the testimony, incredibly credible.

He's West Point, served in Vietnam.

All the credibility in the world.

The upshot was Trump did it.

He did exactly what he was being accused of doing.

There is nothing left for the Republicans to go to except physically disrupting the hearings, which they did.

A bunch of the Republican lawmakers barged into closed-door proceedings, because that's how you handle a lynching, by sending in a mob of angry white men.

And the Republicans were all saying, the Democrats are holding a secret inquiry.

Let us in, they were chanting,

let us in, you're already in.

There are Republicans on the committee already.

They are inside asking any questions they want.

And they claim they're being shut out.

Shut out.

It's like the Houston Astros saying we're being shut out of the World Series.

No.

No, you're just losing the World Series.

You're not being shut out of it.

Oh, speaking of the World Series, Trump says he is going to a game five if there is a Game Five.

He doesn't really like baseball, but he'll go anywhere where there's a chance a Latino might run into a wall.

But he says, no throwing out the first pitch.

You know, President, no, he's not going to do that.

He said he'd like to, but throwing makes his tits jig.

And

so it's

it's it's just getting so

mad king

out there.

Today, I'm not making this up.

Trump ordered the government, everybody in the government, to cancel subscriptions to the New York Times and the Washington Post.

He's like Louis XIV.

Don't show me anything sad.

I only want to see pretty things.

No, really?

You're in the government

and you're not allowed to have a newspaper?

Melania was pissed.

She said, no newspapers?

What am I going to use to line my cage?

And yet, what are people talking about?

They're talking about a congresswoman from right up north here, Palmdale area.

Anyone from that area?

Your Congress.

Katie Hill.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

No, her, going through a divorce, the husband, boy, divorce is rough.

Glad Impta did that.

The ex put out photos of her nude making out with a woman smoking a bong.

I

got to tell you,

I was shocked.

A bong in 2019?

Call me Katie, really.

No, I think it's great.

I don't care who knows it.

I think it's about time a congresswoman got down with another woman and it explains her slogan, I'm with her.

But this was apparently

she and her husband and the woman, this was a relationship, like a real relay, a thrupel, they call it.

Only millennials could ruin threesomes by making them monogamous.

I got to tell you.

Finally, I have important news, again, California news.

Felicity Huffman was released today after serving 11 of her 14-day sentence.

The good news for her is that she got out early.

The bad news is that she is now a member of the Aryan Brotherhood.

Got a great shout.

Donny Deutsch, Alyssa Slotkin, and Dan Carlin are here.

And a little later, he'll be speaking with Zach Galifanakis as a

backstage getting ready.

And first up, he's the anchor of CNN's Cuomo Prime Time and host of SiriusXM's.

Let's get after it.

Chris Cuomo.

There he is.

How are you?

To see you, Chris Cuomo.

You're not going to like me because it's.

Now,

there was a time when you brought on an anchorman and they would not get a standing ovation.

Anchormen are kind of having a moment.

Did you read that story?

They're a big popular

on talk shows and stuff.

Yeah, my.

The therapist has been talking to me about it a lot recently.

You have a therapist?

I was here with Howard Stern.

I have a whole team.

Oh, Jesus.

Am I the only one left in the control group?

Okay.

But, you know, CNN, which is where you're at.

Yes.

I mean, you started at Fox.

I didn't know that.

I was reading about you.

What was that like?

Did Roger Ailes ever grab your ass?

No, but apparently I was one of the only ones that he didn't.

But I did start there.

It was my first job.

You fit in with the, they must have known your pedigree.

No, I left for a reason.

You know, the funny thing is, Roger was one of the only people who would hire me

because he took a chance on whether or not I would be able to be fair.

You know, at the time,

you couldn't come from a political family and have any hope in journalism, that you'd have to be an analyst, you know, or go into politics itself.

And I didn't want to do that.

So he gave me an opportunity to try out lots of different parts of reporting.

He really knew a lot about interviewing, in particular, but the idea of telling a story.

But eventually, I had to leave because I couldn't tell stories the way he wanted.

Already, there are people mad at you because you said some nice things, sort of, about Roger Ailes.

And this is something you and I both face, because we platform people, Chris.

In other words, we give people who we don't agree with a chance to speak.

And there's a lot of liberals who hate that because you should only talk amongst the people who already agree with you.

I mean, they hate you because you are friends with Kellyanne Conway and have her on.

I wish that were the only thing.

I feel like I'm so surprised when anyone is nice to me at any time, you know, including my kids, because everybody's got an opinion now.

They used to just not watch.

Now I wish they didn't watch.

Well, it's interesting because CNN used to be the neutral station.

I mean, there was MSNBC on the left, and you had Fox News on the right.

I mean, we all knew that.

Sometimes I would watch Fox News just to see what they're saying.

I couldn't take too much of it.

I knew what MSNBC was, but CNN was like, okay, these guys are trying to play it right down the middle.

Now you're getting sued by the president.

How do you play it down the middle, I guess is the question when the president is so far to one side?

Well, look, I think what has changed is the president and how he has decided to conduct his office.

There's nothing non-neutral about facts.

You know, if you want to talk about what's going on and test arguments, that is what it is.

It's not left or right.

Either you're telling the truth or you're not.

Either your argument makes sense or it doesn't.

I think what has changed is how this president is.

What we never had before was someone who would say, no, it's not that I disagree with you.

It's that you're a bad person, Bill, for asking me that question.

You're bad.

They shouldn't like you.

And it's fake.

What you said about me is fake.

Scum.

He said that about his own people.

I know.

He said that about people in his own party.

He didn't say it about me.

He said much worse.

Human scum.

But wow.

And then the press secretary, this is what's new.

So usually the press secretary comes in and says, no, you heard scum.

I heard thumb, which means they're just one part of the hand.

Now she comes in and says, yeah, that's how it is.

If you've been against this president, that's how we should speak about you.

That's the biggest problem I think we all have.

Well, and also, I mean, CNN,

the trust factor in CNN has gone way down from something like 64% 20 years ago to like 48%.

What is that about?

You saying it's just me?

No.

No.

I was nervous about this.

Now I know why.

Here's what I think has happened.

If we are honest with ourselves, people have been skeptical about institutions and the media for a long time.

You can get a sense of bias in the media, that it's only telling you certain stories a certain way.

And I think very often that criticism is well-founded.

However, I will tell you this.

This president is playing on every weakness in our social fabric.

I believe the book that will be written about him that will be most dispositive of what he meant is the luckiest man in the history of the game because he lies a lot and people suspect that they all lie.

He

says that he's going to do something, but it doesn't happen that way.

They believe it's the industry standard in politics.

He does things with Ukraine.

They believe, well, it must happen all the time.

He says the media is fake.

People have been suspicious of that.

So he's playing to people's prejudices as a demagogue does.

But I'll tell you this, Bill.

I've never had so many people say, I support what you're doing, as is happening right now.

But you get a lot of hate, as you said.

I do.

And

those were only my four cousins that clapped.

Right.

I mean,

you know, you.

Real hate too, by the way.

Not I don't like what you said.

Right.

Come to your house, find your kids on social media, talk to your kids in a restaurant

at nine years old, and say things that you should only say man to man.

That's new for me.

Yeah, no, I know you had that dust up

with the Fredo thing.

Oh, you heard.

I heard about that and I feel bad for you all that.

I mean, look, believe me, I get some of this too, but I don't have a family, so I don't have to worry about kids.

Thank Christ.

But it must be horrible.

I can't imagine what that's like.

But the Fredo thing, I just got it.

What bothered me about that is that liberals have this reputation for making everything identity politics.

And Fredo, I'm sorry, it's just not a thing.

It's just not a slur.

It's not an Italian slur.

It means dumb brother, which you're not, but you have a brother who's the governor of New York.

That's where that came from.

I'd like to see you call him that.

See how that goes.

I'm not going to call anybody that.

Where it came from is, I've dealt with this.

But it's not about ethnicity.

I think the context matters.

That is not my experience.

No.

They talk about, they call me Italian names

ever since he came into office.

They started identifying me by ethnicity, mobster this, godfather that.

I see it as an extension of it.

Your father had it when he was the governor of New York.

That was one of the scuttle-butt things they would say about him, like, oh, Mario Cuomo, he's somehow ended with the mob because he's Italian.

That's a slur on the Italians.

Fredo just means dumb brother.

Okay, we can agree to disagree.

Well, I'll tell you what's interesting about, I guess this is social progress, that you can now have an opinion about what an Italian can find offensive.

You know.

I didn't say you couldn't find it.

Okay, goodbye.

Usually when we shake hands, you're gone.

I'm just a fan.

Well, thank you.

I mean, of course.

Well, it's interesting because a lot of times white men are not allowed to have an opinion about anything.

You know, political correctness has a great set of goals, and how we get there has been very uneven.

And I think it's a concern for us as a society because now you have a president that once again is playing to people's questions about political correctness and not in the way that you do with this razor-sharp scalpel on when it makes sense and when it doesn't, which is part of your genius.

And that's...

Finish your thought, Chris.

Let the man speak.

I would not have missed the show on phone all the way out here if I didn't think that you were the best at what you do.

Thank you.

But that's not what he does.

No.

What he does is he plays on all the prejudices that make political correctness necessary.

And

we have to be careful that you don't wind up punishing the people that you need to help protect your cause.

And I think we're still finding that.

Okay, so I watched you on the LGBTQ town hall the CNN had.

This to me says a lot about the Democrats.

Here are the Democrats doing a town hall just for the LGBT community.

Yes.

Liberal people supporting this liberal principle, and they were interrupted by protesters who, I guess, thought they weren't going far enough.

Betto

and Pete, who I believe has some credentials in the LGBT community,

were both interrupted by people

screaming, you know, trans lives matter.

No one was disputing this.

What did you make of that?

Here's what I made of it, because I was there.

I got to see it.

First of all, what I love seeing was not just the candidates, because they know they're being measured for how they deal.

with situations like that.

But I thought that Anderson and Don Lemon, it happened for Anderson Cooper and Don Lemon in both their segments.

I love that they respected the protest because the transgender community specifically feels so targeted.

I got where they were approaching.

But not by these people who are there to help.

Yes, but what they saw was a chance to get their message out.

And they really believe that they're being preyed upon.

They're being hunted.

And it was an opportunity for them to get a national audience to see that they're scared and they need help.

And I respect that.

Which is what the Democrats were doing.

Okay.

Listen, I'm happy to go after it and call things out where I don't like it.

That's what my show is all about.

But you know,

we need protection.

Okay.

So

three-fourths of the squad came out for Bernie Sanders.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes, they did.

I just, I laugh at that because I don't know how that squad thing actually happened.

Like, I don't know why we're calling a bunch of freshmen some kind of entity of influence in a system they just got into.

Because they do have a lot of influence.

They have a lot of social media influence.

They have political cachet.

The media loves to talk about them.

But I think you have to put points on the board if you're going to earn your office.

Get things done for your constituents, not just for your own profile.

Okay.

My question was.

Louis, I love you.

Imagine if that were his name.

That was so Italian of you.

I take no offense.

No, you shouldn't.

But is that the squad coming out for Bernie?

First thing I thought was, that's good for Elizabeth Warren.

Because?

Because it makes him to the left of her, and she needs to move to the middle.

And what always happens, it's not unusual in politics, you know this, I'm sure all of you do also, is that primary takes you to a poll,

a polar position within your party, and then you try to fight your way back to the center.

I think what's going on with the Democratic Party is a little bit more extreme than we've seen in the past.

We had a poll not too long ago that said if the person running against this president identifies as socialist or can be identified reasonably as socialist, they lose by six points.

So I think labels matter in politics.

They do.

I think the Senator Sanders has a tough time in defining socialist as a good thing to a capitalist society that doesn't like the idea of that kind of distribution of assets in general.

Even in his own party, I don't think it really goes.

I think they got a tough task.

Chris Cuomo, thank you very much.

Appreciate you flying out here at all your kind words.

All right, let's meet our panel.

Okay.

Here they are.

He is the host of the award-winning podcast Hardcore History, whose new book is The End is Always Near.

Apocalyptic moments from the Bronze Age collapse to nuclear near Mrs.

Dan Carlin.

Dan, how you doing?

He's an advertising icon and the host of MSNBC's summer show Saturday Night Politics.

Danny Deutsch is with us finally.

And she's an ex-CIA analyst and first-term Democratic congresswoman representing Michigan's 8th District.

Alyssa Slotkin, great to see you back here.

So

I've many times read the dictator checklist on our show, the things Donald Trump does that are like a dictator.

I'm not going to read the whole thing again.

You know, most of them points family members, scary rallies, says lock up my opponents, is in it for personal financial gain, loves other dictators, state-run TV, parades.

This week, though, wow, he added like five to the list,

calling people human scum,

physically disrupting hearings when it gets physical.

investigating the investigators.

He said, you people in your phony emoluments clause.

It's, you know, in the Constitution.

I'll get to the ethnic cleansing in a little while, but

I feel like this is the not going gently edition of the dictator checklist.

This is not, he is, it's going to get uglier.

You think he's just going to let us take him out of there?

No, human scum.

He is not.

It's going to be human scum and goons breaking up meetings, and I don't know what's next.

What are your predictions?

You know, we use the term authoritative tendencies.

Let's stop with that.

He is an all-out dictator.

You know, I took a lot of heat on my show going through Nazi Germany in the 30s and the parallels.

And what I will say is this: and I've known Donald Trump for 20 years.

He's a sociopath.

And whatever the worst tyrants in history were capable of doing, he is capable of doing.

We all keep saying it can't happen here, it can't happen here.

It is happening here, and people need to be frightened.

Did you go that far?

I mean, listen, I think for me, watching what's going on, it's just, especially as a former CIA officer, former Pentagon official, my husband served 30 years in the Army, it's just fundamentally unbecoming of the country that I served and that we all love.

And I feel that every single day.

It's the only thing that could have gotten me into politics.

And it's what I wake up every day and still feel.

I think that the president, for all he's talked about doing things for people,

should try and focus on issues that matter to people, their pocketbooks and their kids, and not just...

We're so past that.

We are so past.

Not in the district I'm from.

I'm not saying what voters want, but expecting this guy to do that

to serve any other God but himself?

I understand, but I think while the back and forth and the bickering are going on.

You're for impeachment now and you weren't for when it was about Russia and Mueller.

This is different.

That must be the fact that people in your district see it differently.

I don't know how differently they see it, but for me, that very, very basic idea that the president of the United States, most powerful man in the world, reached out to a foreigner, foreign leader, and asked for information on an American, to me, that was beyond the pale.

And that wasn't

Russia, if you're listening, that wasn't this.

One, because I think it's different.

Okay.

First of all, on Chris Cuomo's show, we have the president's lawyer and then later the president acknowledging what they did.

And it's also prospective, not retrospective, right?

It's not about what happened in the past, it's what is happening right now for 2020.

And for me, I'd always said, and a lot of people in my district still feel, like, you know what, I don't love Donald Trump, but let's let the election decide.

And then he came out and said he was trying to muck with the election.

So that ability to sort of stand back and say, you know what, I pledge an oath to the Constitution, but I'm just going to sit back.

For me and others like me with a national security background, we came out together.

It seems like there's a lot of Democrats.

It seems like there's a lot of Democrats with a profile like yours.

It used to be the Republicans.

You're

CIA.

I'm rep by CAA.

That's why I hesitated.

I'm not from the CIA.

And now like the Republicans are gym teachers, you know, it's the Democrats who seem to be the ones who are the warriors, and yet they still don't get the benefit of the doubt.

I ask this every week, but how do they get away, the Republicans, with doing this unpatriotic shit?

He lost Syria.

I mean, the Democrats lost one consulate in Benghazi.

You'd think the world came to an end.

Can you imagine if Obama had made the military or non-military moves that Trump just made?

What they would be doing to him right now.

And, you know, what's very interesting is what Donald Trump did last week, he made all of you less safe.

There are 100 ISIS fighters that were let out of jail.

Iran and Russia now have a foothold in the Middle East.

He is owned by Putin.

He made you and me and our children less safe.

It's as simple as that.

Let me look on the bright side here for a second.

There is another way to look at this, and that's, I remember after Watergate, people saying it was good that Watergate happened.

It was good that somebody went too far and you got a chance for the Constitutional Republic to bounce back a little bit.

I've been saying for years that the growth of the imperial presidency, along with a bazillion other people, is a problem.

But you almost have to get somebody in there who starts playing with the levers and the switches in such a way that's so irresponsible that everybody can go, yeah, you know, this is a problem.

This is a guy who runs an executive branch that's stronger vis-a-vis the other branches of government than we've ever had.

But they're not.

I mean, that would be great.

That scenario would be work out purple.

If his approval rating was 11%.

But it's not.

Moody's just came out and said he's going to win next time by our calculations.

And he could.

He did last time when no one thought.

But we run our socialists.

He damn well win.

And that's what Chris Cuomo said before.

We run somebody who he can label a socialist, he will win the election.

It's funny these labels socialists.

But it's unfortunate.

I mean, he's now investigating the investigators.

I mean, Bill Barr, he's the Attorney General.

He's going through Europe looking, hunting down conspiracy theories.

Is this what the Attorney General of the United States is supposed to be doing?

I thought he was supposed to be draining our swamp.

He's over there in Italy, in Australia, in Britain, hunting down this nonsense.

You left out something in your dictator list, beyond create an other.

Well, all of a sudden, the Justice Department is not an individual branch.

It serves not only at the pleasure of the president, but for and on behalf of the president.

You, by the way, you and I can end up in jail really easily.

Oh, I believe that.

I mean, we're not that far from that.

And that's one reason.

He's a doom and gloom guy, but I really believe it's this bad.

Believe me, that's why I don't eat pot anymore.

Which is the attorney general?

When I eat it, I get paranoid, and that's what I think of it.

Which is the attorney general, though.

That's the truth.

It's legal here.

I guess I'm trying to think of the Attorney General, though, that was really seemingly on the side of either the executive branch or the people or whatever.

I think of Edwin Meese, I think of John Mitchell, I think of all these guys,

all these guys that seem like their job is really to protect the president.

And then we think it's strange when this guy does what all the other

attorneys general does.

No, I'm sorry, this is different.

And I say this as a former CIA officer.

What leadership climate is set from the top?

This president from the very beginning has been attacking his own institutions, the CIA, the intelligence community, the Department of Justice, the FBI.

And one of the hardest things for me, I did a bunch of town halls after I came out for an impeachment inquiry.

The hardest thing for me was hearing people say that the president had to go to foreigners to investigate his rivals because he couldn't trust his own FBI and his own CIA.

Do you know how crazy that is?

These people wake up every single day and protect the country and they do it like with their heads down, nose to the brinestone.

And it is one of the most difficult things for those of us who have worked in the service.

It is not normal.

A Republican senator

said that

last week.

Senator Ron Johnson.

He says Republican said,

Chuck Todd asked him, do you trust the FBI?

No.

It's like the coach of the team, exactly.

And when I saw this guy,

Bill Taylor, you know, he's just, I've seen so many of these guys, even Comey, who obviously rat fucked the election with that letter, but I don't think he did it on purpose.

I don't, no.

I think he's a straight arrow.

And Clapper and Brennan, all these straight arrows, and Bill Taylor.

And I just, what I worry about is how many more of them are left.

These deep state heroes, I feel like little by little, they're getting rid of all of them, and then it's just going to be the Bill Barrs and the Stephen Millers and the Lackeys

and the Goebbels.

Give a little sunshine.

To me, the fact, a little sunshine is.

It's contagious from him.

You get it, there's something that I'll call the global,

international, economic, military, industrial, cultural complex, the universe.

And he is basically shat on every institution you can shit, shat, shit, shit on, okay?

That basically, but you get the feeling at some point it's going to swallow him up.

You can't, nobody is bigger than the House.

And he is coming and said, and right now he has not been swallowed, but something tells you

when you

dump on the military, when you dump on Congress, when you dump on the FBI, when you dump on the media, when you, at some point, because who is he really good for at this point?

Exactly.

Who is he good for?

The other Republicans want him to go.

It's just,

the only thing that saves him is the base.

It's the people.

If he didn't have that 35%

of people who love him more than they love their own congressman, that's what keeps the Republicans in line.

That's who you have to get to.

And that's very hard when you have state TV, when they only watch Fox News and Rush Limbaugh and QAnon.

Anyway, the whistleblower thing is all the rage now.

I don't know if you see this, but you better keep your shit tight in this country because there are whistleblowers now everywhere.

You want to see a few of them that we found that I didn't even realize.

I didn't even realize they were whistleblowers.

Like, there is a whistleblower now coming out at NASA who revealed that they made up the planet Pluto when they were stoned.

There's a whistleblower at your old shop, the CIA, reporting that their truth serum is really just tequila.

There's a whistleblower at the U.S.

Forest Service who says Smokey the Bear's insistence on wearing jeans and no shirt

has created an uncomfortable workplace environment for the other rangers.

There's a whistleblower at Fiji Water reports they can't believe you paid $10 for water.

is a whistleblower at the National Association of Delicaticians that reports that when you don't eat your pickle, they just put it on someone else's plate.

There's a whistleblower at Pornhub that says that's not really that guy's stepsister.

It's Katie Hill.

And

oh, now I get booed about it.

You were cheering it like two minutes ago.

And then a second whistleblower came forward at the U.S.

Forest Service and reported that Smokey the Bear is actually a huge asshole who keeps everyone on set waiting while he does blow in his trailer.

All right.

He is the big-time movie star whose latest comedy in between

two ferns.

The movie currently is on Netflix.

Zach Galifinakis.

Zach Galifinakis.

Zach Galifinakis.

I'm setting a little bit.

I'm sorry.

It's the end of the season.

I'm a little.

Zach, how are you?

I'm really good.

I see.

Nice to meet you.

Yes, we would love to have you here.

And I hate to be that guy, that interviewer who, you know, the celebrity comes on and he's like, oh, I saw your movie, and it was so great and so funny.

But I saw your movie, and it really was great and funny.

Oh, well, good.

Do you hate me for being ecclesia?

I don't believe you, but

thanks for watching it.

Thank you.

Well, thanks for watching.

You never know what to say.

What do you mean?

Thanks for watching it.

You're welcome.

It was a chore, but I still loved it.

I've just never been this physically peaking before, so I'm a little bit nervous.

But, you know, this character you play, this Zach character, who interviews the people in between Two Fernandez.

I mean, this is the guy who said to Barack Obama, what's it feel like to be the last black president?

Right.

Right.

Is an asshole.

Yes, he's a jerk.

And

the dirt jerk was a movie by Steve Martin who played an asshole.

So many people.

We all love to do it.

I was on a series in the 80s called Sarah.

There's an ad and TV guide under my picture, The Office Creep.

I was the asshole.

It's fun to be the asshole.

Well,

it is fun to

make fun of jerks and to make fun of people that are not.

By being one.

By being one.

And I think rudeness is incredibly funny.

Not that I agree with it.

I'm laughing at it, not with it.

You don't believe that?

No, well, I mean, I,

you know, I once had a girlfriend who used to bust me on this.

I'd be like, I'd do something like that in the character of the asshole.

I'd be like, honey, that's my asshole character.

You're just being an asshole.

Yeah, but that.

And why do we like being an asshole so much?

Well, I wish I had gone.

Because we're certainly not assholes.

I wish I'd given him a different name than rather my own name.

I mean, that would probably have been helpful instead of just calling it myself.

Because I have had people approach me thinking that I'm kind of like that in real life, but I try not to be that way.

So you don't think we really want to be an asshole and we're just covering it with this fig leaf of a character?

No, I don't think that is.

I'm from the South, and being polite and nice is like, you know, you have to be that way.

So there's, and it's also.

It's also rebelling against politeness also in a weird way.

So where's the applause for that?

Well, yeah.

Well we do live in sensitive times and as comedians that we are always trotting a minefield.

I feel like it's always an argument between people going, you're not sensitive enough and me saying you're too fragile.

Yeah.

Where do you come down on that debate?

Well I think social media did that to us.

I think as far as

I think what happened is we used to just watch something, meaning the TV, and the TV would tell us things and we we didn't talk much back to the TV, but now we tweet at each other and this and that.

And I think as a comic, if you step back from it all, you go, okay,

there's a group of people that don't like this type of humor.

It's tricky.

It's tough to...

But we used to have an answer to those people, which was, don't watch me.

Right.

Turn it off.

Well, I mean.

I think, but going back to the social media thing, and I try to say this, talk about this in every interview I do because it's a book I read a long time ago, and it's called Amusing Ourselves to Death, and it was written by this guy named Neil Postman.

And in this book that he wrote in 1983, I think he made the claim, you will stop hearing the term big brother because we will do it to ourselves.

Yeah.

And I think that has kind of happened.

We're policing ourselves through social media and some of it is very justified, but we never pause to really stop

to discuss what that is social media it we never it just happened but it's also generational don't you think don't you I mean are you 50 yet

I'm in my I'm in my mid-20s

yeah I just turned 50 yet oh 50 fantastic

So you're old too.

Yes.

So I just feel it's a gener I feel like the younger generation is much more fragile.

I don't understand why.

Okay, so then if that is the case,

where are the anthropologists?

Why can't we study why that's the case?

We just want to get angry at each other and label each other and this and that.

There should be anthropology, social science looking at these problems.

I think they did, and I think we know why.

It's because their parents spoiled them and entitled them.

Oh, look, as a millennial myself, I can't really.

I mean, you have kids.

Do you like them?

I love, I yes because some people literally don't like their kids I love I love my I love my kids but it is it's one of those things they're young yet kids are so often young

thank you these kids of mine are young

thank you for watching

but

it's gonna be I I was in Venice the other day and I beach or

beach yeah

you're a movie star you might be

and I I heard

I kind of sensed these young ladies talking behind me.

I was walking on the sidewalk, and I heard one of them say to the other one,

ever since Claire talked me out of having a cell phone, my life has gotten much easier.

No, that's never going to happen, but it is worth

this onus we put on social media.

And being connected is false.

Do you often eavesdrop on people's conversations?

Is that a thing that you do?

I often do, yes.

Yes, yes, I was listening backstage.

And you live in Canada now?

Part of the time, yeah, I live in Canada, yeah.

So I could be self-righteous.

Is that better?

Is it worse?

What are the upsides and downsides of Canada versus U.S.?

In 10 seconds.

Jesus.

Well, I will say that I think Canada has, I think, at least in Canada, there's some faith in their institutions

that we have probably lost a little faith in down here.

It's very nice.

People are just nicer, aren't they?

They're very nice people out there.

They're very nice.

Yes, Canadians are nice people.

They're nice.

They take pride in nice.

Yeah, but I've been on an apology tour for years up there now, politically.

I mean, it's tough to be an American to visit.

So you keep bringing up social media.

I want to ask the panel about Facebook, okay?

Mark Zuckerberg's out there in the news a lot, and please you weigh in on this too.

Elizabeth Warren called Facebook disinformation a disinformation

machine.

Because they said the other week, Facebook said, We don't believe it is appropriate for us to referee political debates and prevent a politician's speech from reaching its audience.

And they were talking about out-and-out lies.

This was on Facebook.

A video that I guess the Trump people put out.

Joe Biden promised Ukraine one billion if they fired the prosecutor investigating his son's company.

I mean, it's just as you were talking about, an out-and-out direct lie.

And Facebook is saying, not our place to say, say, now we're free speech people.

I certainly am.

Where are we on this?

I got to tell you, I've got to.

Convinced me somebody.

So very strongly.

I come from the world of advertising.

And if I wanted to do an ad for a laundry detergent, I had to go through stricter regulation to get an ad on broadcast television than a political adventure decides our fate.

You know, I find it ironic about Zuckerberg and the folks there who are trying to do good and they're they're democratizing everything.

It's quite the opposite, to tell you the truth.

It is quite shame on them.

How dare you, when you come up that you're for the people, of the people.

You know, I used to, my old agency was in the Facebook, was in the Google building.

And I used to watch all of these Googleites, I would call, come up all dressed the same with their hoodies and their food.

And the irony is Facebook, Facebook is more the man in the gray flannel suit than the companies of the 50s ever were.

They get to sleep there, to look the same, to talk the same, and actually be numb.

to something like this.

So I think you're puts, actually.

I mean, that's where I come at on, Mark Zuckerberg.

It is interesting interesting looking at how Europe though takes on these companies a lot better than we do.

I mean the reason that sometimes you have to sign now and approve the cookies thing is because of legislation in Europe where I was in Europe watching them and Zuckerberg didn't show up if I recall.

There was like an empty chair or something.

And you say to yourself, is there a reason, and is it connected to our corruption and campaign finance and everything else, that we can't be as hard or as exacting on them and just say, listen.

But I don't want to live under British libel laws.

British libel laws?

Donald Trump would love that.

Would you want to control, though, a company, or do you want to have the company be able to do whatever it wants in your country?

I mean, there's got to be, somebody's got to be the superior entity.

I'm just saying, free speech is a different matter over there.

True.

True.

But applying the same laws that apply to TV and radio and making them applicable to social media, that's just progress.

That's not going to a British standard.

That's just like evolving with the time.

50% of people get their news from Facebook.

That's what they need.

That's their news.

Yes.

And that's scary.

And it needs some It's not that hard.

It's just going to take money.

They'd have to make it

$1 trillion next year.

And Trump was like, you people in government can't get the New York Times anymore.

It's like, really?

Do you really think that's where people are getting their news anyway, the majority of them?

And by the way, the irony of that, he doesn't want the people to see the New York Times.

It was the New York Times putting Hillary's friggin' emails on the front page ten times and

James Comey's letter that got her defeated.

The New York Times helped him.

Co-conspirators.

I will say on the Facebook thing,

I'm on the Homeland Security Committee.

So we have these companies come up and talk to us, usually about domestic terrorism and the spread of domestic terrorism, and how they're not doing a whole lot about it.

Same thing.

It's not my problem.

We're just a platform.

They are literally daring Congress to regulate them.

And there are more people in Congress who have never used email than who have a tech background.

So you don't want us regulating you, right?

The right thing to do for these social media companies is to say, this is a new era, we need to face responsibility, come up with some rules and guidelines across the spectrum of social media.

I know, but if not, they're literally daring us to.

I don't understand why the government is not more strident about this.

It's actually

technology too fast.

Is this one of the things where the technology is too fast

for legislators?

I mean,

for many of them.

It's going to be hard.

It's certainly harder than when you have three broadcast networks, but it can be done.

Well, it's just a lot of fun.

I'm just asking, though, aren't you just making an ad person's job more creative when you say, okay, you have to tell the truth.

There's lies, damn lies, and statistics, and so they're going to find a way to put the modular pieces together where it's factual, but it's completely misleading.

It's twisting.

They're going to put out and out outrageous lies, false videos.

But who's the truth?

Who's going to be the one exactly?

And that's the problem.

Inside Facebook.

Inside Facebook.

It's got to regulate it.

They're not.

But then they're not.

They're an international corporation.

They have other interests.

Basically.

Have you seen the profile of them on Frontline?

Yeah.

They're a bunch of young people.

They can regulate that.

It's a company that's worth three-quarters of a trillion dollars.

But you know, but it's internal.

How does that work?

How does that regulation work internally?

Basically, you basically any.

They've already lied to us enough, is what I'm saying.

Any ad that comes up goes through.

They've already lied to us enough, AC.

I'm not saying they're going to do it.

It can be done, though.

Absolutely.

Okay.

All right.

So you're going to be at the convention, I would imagine, next year for the Democrats?

I don't know.

Oh, come on.

I think that's what I.

Yes.

I guess.

Yes.

Yes.

I guess.

So I got to ask about

it seems like every few months Hillary Clinton bubbles up again.

And people are like, oh, she's thinking about running or she says something crazy.

You know,

she was, last Friday there was a news dump.

They exonerated her again about the emails.

You know, I'm not, it's not about that.

But the Clintons,

they got to go away.

They just, they funded.

I'm saying this now, a year out, or less.

They can't be at the convention.

Maybe on the video, waving or something

but I'm serious they they she is one of the biggest vote getters Justin Amash is that how you say that the one he said the thing we know for sure is that Hillary Clinton is a Donald Trump asset somebody said she's a Russian asset she is and Bill is damaged goods I just think they they got to go away they can't we can't be associate the Democratic Party as a branding guy I could be here four years from now yes you know even George W.

Bush has a different profile now when time goes by even people who we looked at as failures, ah, they're okay.

But his got worse.

But by those...

But we forgave Clinton, and then we unforgive Clint.

But at my point, at this point, it's too soon.

Step away from the convention's point.

If you give them the tool to say, oh, it's still Hillary Clinton's party, look at that, it's still her party, it's a losing proposition.

Okay, I got to go to new rules.

Before I do, I just, we didn't get to this as an issue, but I just want to say this.

The United States of America, led by Donald Trump, is now part and party to ethnic cleansing.

Donald Trump, here's one of his tweets.

Perhaps it is time for the courage to start heading to the oil region.

An American president is encouraging ethnic cleansing.

Bush, we went to torture where America was never associated with.

Now we're also on the ethnic cleansing page.

Wonderful.

Anyway, thank you, panel.

Time for new rules and a little laughter.

Ethnic cleansing into laughter.

That's how I do it.

All right.

Mural, a summit of the world's foremost graphic graphic artists must convene to settle once and for all what this emoji is.

I've said that so many times.

Is it hands praying?

Is it a high five?

Or is it two penises watching a sunset?

Nero, someone has to tell former Republican Congressman Trey Gowdy that his transitioning Meryl Street costume

is incredible, but Halloween isn't until Thursday.

I love when you blow milk through your nose.

New rule.

Oh, Jesus.

New rule, be thankful for the Thanksgiving you have.

Consider that this year this guy will be at someone's Thanksgiving table.

And he won't even get the joke when they tell him he's mishandling turkey.

New rule, if you're that friend who keeps texting every update from the impeachment inquiry with the subject line, did you see this?

Stop.

I already have 24-7 cable news.

I don't need 24-7 you.

Let's go back to the friendship we used to have, not talking for months at a time.

Then you text, how are you?

And I text back, who is it?

New rules, stop scaring parents with reports of neighbors giving out pot candy for Halloween.

One easy way to tell if a house is giving weed candy, it looks like this.

Gentle humor, that's what we do.

And finally, new rules, someone must explain to Democrats what binary means.

In America, we've got dozens of flavors of pretty much everything, Doritos and Gatorade,

Oreos, Pepsi, Triscuits, Pop-Tarts, but we only have two political parties.

Most democracies have a parliamentary system with many parties.

We don't.

We don't.

With us, it's always plain or peanut

cream or suppository.

That's what

That is what binary means.

Trump gets it.

If you really like Donald Trump, that's great.

But if you don't, you have to vote for me anyway.

Whether you love me or hate me, you've got to vote for me.

The question Democrats must ask themselves is, what would make a voter say, Trump's right, I don't like him, but I have no choice?

Well, let's go down the list.

Bernie Sanders says we should let the Boston Marathon bomber vote.

Why?

Is there a great clamoring to give deranged serial killers more of a voice in civil society?

Is Hannibal Lecter thinking, I love Trump for his narcissistic personality disorder, but Sanders really gets voters like me?

Now, I'm sure you can make an argument for this, but we're trying to win an election here, and this just feeds into what Trump is selling.

Democrats are now the party of crazy politicians.

Crazy Democrats, they're crazy.

They're crazy.

Hey Democrats, don't make him believable on that and you win.

Elizabeth Warren has not come out in favor of imprisoned serial killers voting, but she does want taxpayers to cover their sex change operations in prison.

Which brings up the question, if you tried, could you come up with a policy with more third rail buzzwords in it?

Let's see, taxpayer-funded sex change for prisoners.

No, I don't think you could.

And

again,

where are the votes in this?

You know how many transgender people there are in federal prison in America?

473.

And they can't vote.

So we're taking this position because

it makes a great campaign slogan.

Commit a crime, get a free dick.

Commit a crime and your new vagina is free.

So let's imagine a slightly different scenario.

You're a progressive voter.

who likes Elizabeth Warren.

You drive a Prius, hate guns, and buy kale in bulk.

But you find out that Warren does not support taxpayer-funded gender reassignment surgery for convicts.

So that's it?

Deal breaker, you're voting for Trump now?

Of course not.

This is the binary thing Democrats don't get because apparently they never saw the movie An Officer and a Gentleman, where a drill sergeant forces Richard Gere to admit the same truth that Democratic voters need to face.

I got nowhere else to go.

Yes.

You hear that, Bernie and Elizabeth and Betto and the rest of them, they got nowhere else to go.

So you can stop wearing your most divisive issues on your sleeve.

Target sells condoms and lube, but they don't call it the condom and lube store.

They hide that shit in the back in a locked case and call themselves Target.

Which, frankly, is not much better.

Point is: instead of trying to make the people on the far left double-dog like you, make some good people in the middle not hate you.

People talk a lot.

People talk a lot in this country about identity politics.

Here's some identity for you.

Only 46% of Democrats identify as liberals.

Yeah,

life doesn't end east of La Brea.

Better O'Rourke wants to tax churches.

So do I, but I'm not running for president.

Betto wants to take away the tax-exempt status of any church that opposes gay marriage, a position I doubt goes down well among black churchgoers, and try winning as a Democrat without them.

I'm sure Tyler Perry would vote for Bedo.

I'm not so sure about Medea.

I'm not sure why Kamala Harris felt the need to start off a recent town hall by saying, my pronouns are she, her, and hers,

as opposed to Trump's, which are me, myself, and I.

Now, for some, I guess that makes her the Rosa Parks of pronouns, but there's a much larger group thinking, why is this important?

Why in the first debate did Julian Castro feel the need to take a brave stand in favor of trans female abortion rights?

Trans females can't even get pregnant.

They don't have a uterus unless they're in prison and Elizabeth Warren buys them one.

This should be easy.

Just be less crazy than Donald Trump.

Are you guys seriously struggling with this?

69% of voters say they dislike Trump personally, and there's no sign anything can change their minds.

But Democrats' reaction to that is, okay, but let's try.

Let me help you.

You don't need to be 100% Twitter approved on every issue.

Twitter is not America.

Most of America

Most of America, all they want is to vote for someone who's not weird.

Play to them and stop worrying that you're going to lose social justice warriors to Donald Trump.

What is it again, Richard Gere?

I got nowhere else to go.

All right, that's our show.

I'll be at the San Diego Civic tomorrow, tomorrow at Madison Square Garden in New York, November 9th, and at the Blazedlle in Honolulu, New Year's Eve.

I want to thank my guests, Dan Carlin, Donnie Deutsch, Alyssa Swatkin, Zach Elephantakis, and Chris Crobo.

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.