Ep. #508: Samantha Power, Sarah Haider

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

Start the clock.

Thank you so much.

I

appreciate you.

I appreciate you putting on a brave face.

I know you must be crestfallen because Bill de Blasio was dropped out of the presidential race.

He said, I'm married with two kids.

I can stay home and not be taken seriously.

Also, Brett Kavanaugh's penis is back in the news.

Oh yeah, the New York Times kind of tripped over his dick on this one.

They reported about a guy back in his Yale days, a long time ago, who Brett was at a party, took his penis out, and his friends pushed it into a girl's hand,

as friends do.

The problem is, the woman, the victim, has absolutely no recollection of this ever happening, which is not exactly a ringing endorsement of your penis.

More on that later.

But

President Trump was here in L.A.

this week,

wasn't that great for secret meetings with donors.

I love the Republicans out here.

They always say that they're not ashamed to be associated with Trump.

And yet when he's here, they come and go by tunnel.

You know, that you never.

Now, Trump came to California really for two reasons, raising money.

And also, he's made a big issue of the homeless.

Right?

We have a homeless problem out here, worst in the nation, and Trump is going to do something about it.

He says the homeless destroy cities.

Okay.

It is a problem.

They don't destroy cities.

A Starbucks restroom, yes, I've seen that.

I've seen

Whitley destroy that.

And now for this week's, if Obama did it, he'd be impeached by now.

Okay,

he's following.

This is all over the news.

Say the whistleblower scandal.

We have a whistleblower scandal.

Some as yet anonymous member of the intelligence community

was apparently so alarmed over the summer when he saw Trump do something, say something to a foreign leader, that he reported it to the Inspector General.

That's who you'd go up the chain to.

And it was labeled of urgent concern.

That's a designation.

And of course, when it's that important, they take it up to the Director of National Intelligence.

And under federal law, The Director of National Intelligence, it says, shall deliver this report if it is of urgent concern to Congress.

But the director of national intelligence

says he's not going to do that, citing the old statute, go fuck yourself.

Now,

there are a lot of facts we don't know about this, like who the whistleblower is.

We don't know that, but we just know that it's someone who finds Trump's behavior a threat to America.

Which narrows the list down to everyone everywhere.

We know

we do know the country, that is the country that Trump was talking to.

Apparently Trump was talking to the president of the Ukraine and he was threatening this man that he would withhold military aid, which we've been giving them, unless this man investigated Joe Biden.

Because Biden's son was there doing some business on a bogus charge with Joe Biden's sons.

So here's what we have.

A U.S.

president now is using taxpayer money to pressure a foreign government to smear his political opponent.

It's not enough that Trump has Russia meddling in the election.

Now we've invited Ukraine in for a three-way.

And

let me save you some time and an emotional investment.

in this scandal because I can tell you how this is about to go down.

Okay, right now we are at the denial stage.

We didn't do it.

Then we go to, okay, he did it, but it wasn't bad.

Then we go to, okay, it was bad, but it wasn't illegal.

Then it was, okay, it was illegal, but not when Trump does it.

Then we go to the, we're going to subpoena you stage, and then the aforementioned, go fuck yourself, finally landing at the Democrats, oh well, we tried.

The end.

Trump, Trump actually tweeted this today.

He said, is anybody dumb enough to believe that I would say something inappropriate to a foreign leader?

Is anybody dumb enough?

I think we have found the new chant for the rallies.

Is anybody dumb enough?

Do you think I'd do something crooked and stupid?

Yes, but you lost us at Think.

And I love this part of it.

The president of the Ukraine, recently elected, is a comedian.

Did you know that?

He is a comedian.

For five years, he was doing a comedy show called Servant of the People, where he played the president of the Ukraine, and he waltzed right from that job into being the real president of the Ukraine.

Imagine that.

What a fucked up country that must be, huh?

Yeah, for once America, though, this week, not the only country that's embarrassed, Canada.

Any Canadians here had a very,

very rough week for you folks.

Breaking news we have here tonight, someone has found a picture of Justin Trudeau not wearing blackface.

Yeah, it started, I think, Tuesday.

They found an 18-year-old photo of Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada, in what they are calling brown face, because he was dressed as as Aladdin for an Arabian Nights theme party, and now he is on the Liberal Party's shit list and on Trump's no-fly list.

So then Justin Trudeau, of course, started apologizing to everyone, brown people, black people, Muslims, genies.

But it's like every time he went to a party, you know, the shoe polish would come out.

It was his version of Brett Kavanaugh's dick.

Finally, a friend of his said, you know, you can also use that on shoes.

But yeah, no, Trudeau said, this is, this does not look good.

He said he can't really say how many times

he got into blackface.

I mean, as political excuses go, that's right up there with, I thought she was 18.

And now everybody, you know, is just looking through their yearbook, you know, fine.

And I must say, I'm going to get this out in the open.

I did something terribly embarrassing that is in my yearbook.

My yearbook quote is from Peter Frampton.

I just want that out there.

No, I tell you, folks,

I am playing it safe this Halloween.

I am going as a self-loathing albino.

All right, we've got a great show.

We have Andrew Sullivan, Heather McGee, and Timothy Naptali.

And a little later, we'll be speaking with human rights activist Sarah Hayter.

But first off, she is President Obama's former UN ambassador and a Pulitzer Prize-winning author whose new book is The Education of an Idealist, a memoir.

Samantha Power.

Hey, Samantha.

Great pleasure to make your acquaintance.

You too.

There are so many interesting things about you.

I'm going to start at the beginning, which is you're an immigrant to this country from the country where my ancestors were immigrants from, Ireland.

you still got a bit of a brogue I bet

I when I got to this country yeah you do

I love a brogue when I when I came it was not a political act to be an immigrant it wasn't controversial we arrived we were welcomed and I moved to Pittsburgh when I was nine from Ireland and I did have a thick Dublin accent and I put big league chew in my mouth and fell in love with baseball and imitated all my neighbors and I worked on losing my American accent so I I could fit in

and became a big sports fan and I figured that was the lingua franca in this country and dedicated myself to that and probably would be a sportscaster today.

But while I was once taking notes on an Atlanta Braves game as an intern the freshman year, my freshman year in college, I saw the footage from Tiananmen Square and the tanks kind of rolling over young people my age.

30 years ago, yeah.

Yeah, maybe, maybe, maybe I should have been a little bit more than a hundred years ago.

And that's when you became a war correspondent.

Because you were a war correspondent.

You were positive in the 90s.

I wish I, I mean, as epiphanies work, you tend, I think,

as you remember them, you think you had some grand epiphany and you decided I was going to become a human rights lawyer and change the world and be UN ambassador someday.

But in fact, I just said to myself, I need to watch less sports.

I need to study.

Study a little bit and figure out what the hell is going on in the world.

And so I went back to college and I worked at it.

And then just as I graduated, I had another one of those kind of moments.

And I opened up the newspaper and there were concentration camps in Europe 50 years after the Holocaust.

And it was that that made me think

there's something I can do.

I tried to be an aid worker.

I had no skills.

And I had covered the women's volleyball.

Right.

And you were very critical of America.

And that really got the attention of somebody you have a lot in common with, which is the man you worked for, Barack Obama.

I mean, you both lived in a...

few different countries when you were little, right?

Yeah, I mean, it was something.

It was a troublesome father, a very enlightened mother who was ahead of her time.

Hey, I never thought of those parallels,

quite that number of parallels.

But definitely, I mean, one of the things that drew me to him and maybe him to my writing was the ability to see America from the inside and push American interests, but also to be able to step back and say, what do we look like also to others?

Do we have credibility?

Do we have legitimacy?

How can we build that store of capital so we can draw on it when we need it?

And I know you say, and this of course is in a joking way, but he used to say, I'm glad you are in the the room because it's good to have your voice to find out what values we are betraying today.

And he meant that in a funny way.

But it's interesting because, like the song says, you've kind of seen life from both sides now.

From first you were a critic on the outside.

And then you said, wait, I can be on the inside and maybe do some good.

But of course, on the inside, you have to make compromises.

Nothing gets done.

without some sort of compromises.

And that was difficult for you.

I mean, it was an adjustment, certainly, but I felt as a reporter, I was waiting for somebody to read my articles, or I'd write an editorial about something we should do, and I was hoping somebody in power would do something about it.

In government, you just get to try to push the agenda you have, and my values were aligned so much with President Obama's.

He was trying to build global coalitions to deal with threats to our people, but also he was trying to promote human rights where we could, recognizing the limits of our influence, but also recognizing that sometimes we underestimate how much we can achieve.

So, I mean, the hardest was it was a little bit like moving to America, and I write this in the book,

when I got into government, suddenly people were using all these horrible gendered metaphors.

You know, they'd say, when we go into this negotiation, we've got to go in open kimono.

And I'd be like, open kimono?

Yeah, I never heard that.

Yeah, this is like there's a whole bureaucratic language.

David Bowie had that open kimono.

I remember that.

That's a good thing, yes.

But there was a lingo, there was learning how to build coalitions.

I mean, you know, I've written a book called The Education of an Idealist, and it suggests the arc would be one from idealism to realism to realize.

But landing at the UN, I mean, the UN, you could not find a place that was, in a way, more inappropriate for an idealist.

What is more compromised than the UN?

I mean, right now, on the Human Rights Council, there are six dictators, including that madman in the Philippines, Duarte.

Yeah, six new ones.

There were actually a few who were on from prior terms, so there's even more than six.

Yeah.

Iran is on the Woman's Council.

Yeah.

How do you square that circle?

Well again let me say that in my time at the UN I became more, not less idealistic, so bear with me.

It is compromised on one level in the sense that there are more non-democratic countries in the world than democracies and they comprise the global institution that is the UN.

So there are 193 countries and which one are we now?

Very fair question.

We are, I mean the most backsliding that is happening right now in the world is within established democracies like this one.

And the freedom is in decline, but it's also a venue to challenge those countries in terms of their treatment of women or in terms of their inability to deal with extremism in their midst and to urge them to do more or they're looking the other way from the recruitment of child soldiers and other things.

One of the concepts that I tried to introduce to my team was the idea of shrinking the change because even when you're in the government and you're in the cabinet of the President of the United States, as I had the privilege of being, you feel small next to the abusiveness of these governments or the refugee problem, the 70 million people who are displaced today, or the warming planet.

But it was really important both at the White House and at the UN, it's really important for me now as a citizen to think: okay, what is the narrow slice of this problem that I can actually do something about?

So I can't deal with the freedom recession around the world or the backsliding as a whole, but let me see if I can get 20 female political prisoners out of jail

and build a coalition to do that.

And the person who is there now, Trump's appointee, somebody named Kelly Kraft, she was a big Republican donor.

Now, it's not unusual to appoint a Republican or a Democratic donor, but usually they do it to some ambassadorship where it's not a big deal.

But UN?

Yeah.

Her husband's a coal magnet.

She believes there are good scientists on both sides of the climate debate.

So I guess my question is, you know, this is a week when we're talking, or I'm going to be talking a lot about the stooges that Trump has put in place.

We see this now with what's going on with the whistleblower scandal.

Somebody at the head of the DNI is the head of the, it looks to me like a stewage.

Bill Barr plainly is that.

What about the UN?

What about the diplomatic corps?

Is that hollowed out?

How deep is the deep state?

I keep asking.

Well, I can say that one of the things that happened after Trump was elected, and it was shocking to many people, but you can imagine the people on my team who helped to negotiate the Paris Agreement or the Iran nuclear deal, or minorities or people with disabilities, people who'd been, you know, classes of people who'd been attacked by the candidate Trump.

It was an incredibly dispiriting event for some of them, and yet they all resolved to stay, basically, to serve our country, the career Foreign Service officer, the career civil servants.

But they found themselves so marginalized, held in such contempt at the highest level, and the key is that expertise is not valued.

You know, when everything is deemed an opinion and when science isn't valued and when language expertise or having lived in a country isn't held in high regard, it's been very hard for those people to stay.

So the hollowing out is real and part of what's going to need to happen if a Democrat, when a Democrat is elected to replace the current president.

But people who are skeptical of government and skeptical of our ability to do good are going to have to come and be part of the recovery.

We are going to have to rebuild institutions that have been ravaged.

And Obama's foreign policy doctrine was famously summarized as don't do stupid shit.

Trump's, of course, is do stupid shit.

Do a lot of stupid shit as quickly as possible.

What should a liberal foreign policy doctrine be?

Well I think it starts with the strength of our democracy at home, which is our number one priority.

It starts with strengthening our democratic institutions, not attacking the media, not attacking judges, not attacking minorities.

Obviously,

when we have a democracy that is the envy of the world, and we've always had major issues at home, of course, but we've still been a bit of a light and a lot of people around the world would love to have the freedoms that many of us get to enjoy here so starting there that's our foundation remembering that values are our comparative advantage especially when China is rising in the world and there really are going to be two competing models and understanding that there are very few threats to Americans that don't require global solutions, that don't require teamwork and cooperation.

That doesn't mean the use of military force, which has been overused.

Our foreign policy, now we have soldiers active in counterterrorism, counterterrorism, activities of some kind in more than 40% of the countries in the world.

And that militarization is not sustainable, it's not fair to those soldiers, and we have to change that.

But at the same time, U.S.

leadership is critical if we're going to catalyze the solutions that we need to the things that really matter, especially to young people.

Well, it's a fascinating book.

I hope you get back in the game.

I'd love to.

Thank you.

Thank you, Samantha Power.

Great pleasure to meet you.

All right, let's meet our panel.

He is an author and blogging pioneer who is now a writer-at-large for New York Magazine.

Andrew Sullivan, our returning champion.

He's a presidential historian at NYU, where he directs the undergraduate public policy program and the co-author of Impeachment and American History Timothy Naftali.

Nice to see you, sir.

And she is an

NBC analyst and distinguished senior fellow at Deimos.

Heather McGee is over here, Heather.

Okay.

Well, impeachment is in the news.

It's talked about it again.

All that media was talking about today was this whistleblower scandal.

I'm not going to go through it again.

I did it in the monologue.

It seems to me that every, certainly Republican candidate I've ever known, read about, has had some sort of dirty trickster, you know, whether it's Karl Rove

or who was the guy Bush had,

you know,

died of a brain.

Lee Atwater, Roger Ailes, Roger Stone.

Trump seems to want to make the president of Ukraine

this dirty guy to dig up dirt on his opponent.

And a lot of people today were saying, oh, we got him, you know, like I've never heard that word before, because this is different, because there was a bribe involved, maybe.

And

I wouldn't get my hopes up.

Is this going to turn?

Maybe you can convince me this is going to be different.

This we got him is going to be different.

Right now, I don't think so.

Well, I think it's up to the Democrats, right?

And I think we're seeing right now what happens because we didn't impeach.

This man in the White House encouraged a foreign power to help him win an election, in that instance with Russia, to attack our sovereignty.

And then he tried his best to cover it up.

And he had an opportunity to do it again because nobody slapped him on the wrist.

And I do think, I have so much respect for Nancy Pelosi, but I think it is a fundamental miscalculation to think that we should not impeach this president no matter what happens.

But is it too late?

Certainly.

Certainly that would be the right thing to do.

But it was the right thing to do like two minutes into his presidency.

It's not too late.

I'll tell you why it's not too late.

Because

you don't have to convict the president, because the Senate's not going to to convict this president, to set a proper tone.

You have to make corruption cost something.

That's right.

You have to, because this is not about Trump.

This is about future presidents.

If you let somebody get away with it, then you are sending a signal.

But no, no.

I was not an impeachment now person simply because I didn't think the Mueller report laid out a political case for impeachment.

I didn't think Americans would rally around the idea that obstruction of justice when there's no underlying crime was a reason to overthrow an elective election result.

Now, I know that

obstruction of justice is always a crime regardless of whether there's an underlying crime, but that's a legalism.

It's important.

But to basically say to the American people the 2016 election has been nullified, you've got to have something more powerful.

I mean, look,

Nixon made so many crimes, you could have, every day of the week you could have talked about his money.

But we did, but we had the Mueller thing.

I'm just asking about the vote.

I'm not politically.

Like for the person who's been watching this for three years, I think there's a lot of Republicans who think, yeah, Trump did a lot of impeachable stuff, and they have no respect for Democrats for not holding his feet to the fire.

Democrats are this super indulgent parent who never disciplined the kid who now can get away with anything.

That's who Democrats are.

But now that all this time has passed and they didn't get him for this and this and this and this, it just looks like, oh, this is a roadshow version of Russia.

We couldn't get him on Russia.

We're going to try the next country over Ukraine.

That's what it looks like.

And people are like, This is a bigger deal.

You know, Mac Penn said this week in the last debate, Democrats didn't talk about the economy at all.

Didn't talk about the economy.

I think that's what the voter is going to say.

It's like, you guys are obsessed with this and you're fucking bad at it, and you're not talking about what matters to me.

I'm worried about the end of the month, not the end of the world.

I'm just.

But

at the same time,

we have a president clearly abusing.

Clearly, yes, he does.

I know.

I know.

And if the Democrats aren't involved, they would have him on the road.

The other problem is that when a president talks to a foreign leader confidentially, that is pretty close to pure executive privilege.

And if every president, if every presidential conversation like that were to be subject to exposure, presidents couldn't operate.

The trouble is we have a unique president.

We have a uniquely corrupt, crazy, unhinged president.

Yes, we do.

All right, I just want to mention this.

Somebody mentioned this in the press, and I thought I would repeat it.

I didn't realize this.

21 years ago, you know what the press was talking about?

Clinton should resign.

This was 1998, in the middle of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

115 newspapers, including USA Today, Philadelphia Inquirer, the president should resign because his repeated reckless deceits have dishonored his presidency beyond repair.

San Francisco, San Francisco, Liberal San Francisco, the examiner.

He's a liar.

He's an unfaithful husband.

He's tarnished the White House.

He's got to go.

Wow.

That's where we went from 21 years.

That's where we went to now.

Because we had a functioning liberal democracy in which people were not behaving the way they're behaving.

But I haven't heard of that.

But we have now.

Has any newspaper called for his resignation?

I think several people have called for impeachment.

But not like that.

The trouble is, we've all become what the torture apologists call.

We've developed into learned helplessness, right?

We know this stuff is outrageous and we know we should have, but how do we keep the energy up for that?

Unless we have leadership from the Congress.

And Nancy Pelosi is ultimately responsible for the continuation of the most profound corruption that we've seen in the presidency for a very, very, very long time.

But she doesn't have the votes.

That's what's her thing.

Is it not her thing?

Well, no, I mean, I think she's making a political calculation, something akin to what you just said, that basically, you know, voters want to hear that they passed a a $15 minimum wage, which they did, which no voter heard about at all.

That would have been amazing had the Senate taken it up, had McConnell not turned the legislative graveyard, right, the Senate into a legislative graveyard.

This is the problem with the calculus, that somehow if they just keep passing bills and focusing on bread and butter issues, which trust me, I completely agree are very important.

And frankly, I think the Democratic presidential candidates are doing a great job of actually talking about the vision for the world they want to see.

But I do think that the media is always going to cover the scandal, so they might as well be covering Democrats doing it right.

Well, speaking of scandals, and you said

if we had the Senate.

Okay.

Now, I get this from very high up in Democratic circles, and also it was in the paper.

Brett Kavanaugh.

No, I'm just saying it's not just inside, but I heard it in both avenues.

The Kavanaugh effect.

From 2018, now he's back in the news this week, his penis is out.

It seemed like his penis was out a a lot.

You know, he was at that age where the funniest thing you could do is bring out your dick.

Okay.

Not admirable.

But, okay.

In the 2018 election, it looks like Democrats could have won Indiana, North Dakota, Florida, Missouri, West Virginia, they did.

All five were home to Democratic senators running for election in tight races.

Joe Manchin, the only one who voted for Kavanaugh, won.

The other four lost, and they have polling on this.

People did not like after a guy for what he did in high school.

It looked bad, and now Democrats are talking about impeaching him again.

Well, one of the things is we got to remind people that being on the Supreme Court is not a right, it's a privilege.

And if there is a dark cloud over somebody, you know, there are a lot of

high school?

It's not a dark cloud.

He probably did some shitty things in high school drunk.

If the idea that everybody in public life is going to have to account for dumb things they did in their childhood, this applies to Justin Trudeau as well.

We are in an inquisition on people's PC-ness throughout their entire lives.

Give them a break.

And most people don't want to.

Please please speak about what this felt like to be able to do that.

Please don't play that card.

Let me make my point.

My point.

I think you've already made your point, Andrew.

You were going on about PC-ness.

We got it.

We don't know what it is.

No, no, no.

That's not.

That's kind of conversing.

I'm talking about drawing things off from people's childhood because you're on a crusade crusade to prove that we live in a patriarchal society.

That's what I'm worried about.

Okay.

More, 16, by a 16-point margin, the people who watched Dr.

Blasey Ford believed her.

Yes, it was about something from a long time ago, but it goes to character.

We are not talking about a job like we have.

We are talking about being one of the nine moral arbiters of this great nation.

A.

17.

So you're saying at 17, you have to have your fully formed character.

That's what he says.

You know what he didn't do when faced with that?

He didn't say, you know what?

I was kind of a misogynistic jerk.

I did get really drunk.

What do you mean?

Wait, wait, wait.

Can I?

He didn't say that.

He didn't apologize for it.

He tore the paint off the room and did something that no person, he basically lied and screamed his way in in a job interview for a job that he then got hired for that he can never get fired from.

I understand.

No woman could ever do that.

Nobody but somebody like him could ever get away with that.

But women,

if you win sales, you lose, right?

No, I think Justice Paul Stevens got a right.

This man did not show a judicial temperament.

And being on the court is not a right.

You tried to change your temperament when you're being accused of something, had no idea it was coming at you.

You came at the last minute, and that happened years and years and years ago.

This is an inquisition that has to be stopped.

Just for what he did on the Star report, I mean, he wrote that.

The Federalist Society could have found another conservative.

Of course, they could.

Live in reality, man.

That's who they put up.

We don't have the votes.

And now we lost seats.

Are we going to do it again?

Ruth Bader Ginsburg said glowing things about him.

I think he's an asshole.

I think he shouldn't be on the Supreme Court.

Sometimes you have to do a fight even if you can't win.

Okay, but not on that.

When on an impeachment.

What were you like at 17?

You know, yes, you're different.

You're a woman.

You mature faster.

Women mature faster.

I think that's a good thing.

I knew my husband at 17.

He was not like

I think that he should be one of the nine people to decide what he should do with my body.

And I think it's fine to hold him to a higher standard.

This is not hard.

I agree.

Okay, I'm just telling you what the hell is that?

You really were not holding him.

You knew you couldn't beat him, so you decided to smear him indefinitely.

And people don't know.

No proof of swimming.

No proof of it.

This is seeming very perfect.

People don't think you should go back to age 17.

It just strikes them as preposterous.

And by the way, it's counterproductive for Democrats winning.

Anyway, that was one story in the news this week where, you know, when it said Britt Kavanaugh had his dick out, I was like, I don't know it for a fact.

I just know it's true.

And I thought, oh, what a good week to do.

I don't know it for a fact.

I just know it's true.

For example, I don't know for a fact that the recycling and the regular garbage end up in the same place.

I just know it's true.

I don't know for a fact that this year's Kit Kats at the dollar store were last year's Kit Kats at Target.

I just know it's true.

I don't know for a fact that Felicity Huffman is trying to bribe someone else to go to prison for her.

I don't know.

Slow, okay.

Slow rising laugh.

I don't know for a fact that Trump's salt shaker is filled filled with crushed up Adderall.

I just know it's true.

I don't know for a fact that smoking crack is better for kids than vaping.

I don't know for a fact that the Elizabeth Warren who waits four hours to take a selfie with you is actually a body double.

I just know it's true.

I don't know for a fact that Justin Trudeau used to be in Blue Man Group.

I just just know it's true.

I don't know for a fact that if you drill on Willie Nelson's ranch, you'll strike CBD oil.

And I don't know for a fact that when shredded wheat

goes bad, Poe sells it as frosted shredded wheat.

All right, she's a human rights activist and executive director of ex-Muslims of North America.

Sarah Hayter, Sarah, how you doing?

Great pleasure.

Wanting to meet you for a long time.

Great to be here.

You are the head of ex-Muslims of North America, so congratulations on being alive.

I think that's terrific.

And let's show her billboard.

You got this bill.

What were the three cities this went up in?

Atlanta.

So

we wanted to be in many different cities.

Right.

And then we ended up just putting it in a few cities.

So we were in Atlanta, we were in Chicago, we were in Houston.

And I saw it, and I thought, wow, I didn't know that.

Nearly one in four Muslims in America are now atheists?

That's based on a pew poll.

So it's, you know, it's

it's an estimate.

But, you know, I think there's a lot of truth to it.

And it's really incredible to see the growth of people who are walking away from religion from Muslim communities.

In Muslim communities, there's a really deep stigma.

There's osteoarthritizing.

There's, right?

I mean, we hear about death threats.

But for the average person,

it's your family might never talk to you again.

Well, that's in America.

That's in the case of the American.

I mean, if you did ex-Muslims in your home country, Pakistan,

probably would be a little, the billboards would be welcomed a little differently.

Well, I wouldn't be, yeah, I would be treated very differently.

In about a dozen countries around the world, if someone like me was to show up, I would be put in, you know, there would be the death penalty that would be awaiting me.

And that's the reality.

And it's incredible that this isn't a bigger human rights issue.

This isn't something that we're talking about more frequently.

And why is that, do you think?

Well, I mean, there are a lot of reasons for why we refuse to look at Islam

in a way that I think would be really critical.

It seems like after 9-11, the liberals in America bent over so far backwards to say, let's not say all Muslims are terrorists, which of course no one was doing, at least no sane person, that they went all the way to, you can't criticize Islam at all.

Which is really ridiculous.

I mean, criticizing a religion is criticizing a religion.

It's not bigotry.

Certainly from someone who who was part of that religion.

Well, I think it's, I mean, it comes from, I think, for the large majority of people that engage in it, it comes from a good place of wanting to protect a minority, right?

Correct.

But it ends up in a place that is really harmful, I think, in the long run.

And I mean, an example that I like to give is something more recent.

In the Christchurch attack in New Zealand, we had the Prime Minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Arden.

What was the attack?

Remind people.

There was a really awful, a terrorist attack.

It was a white supremacist.

I mean, that's what it's

like,

who attacked a mosque, killed dozens of people.

It was absolutely horrific, almost as if they were in a video game.

It was just this terrible tragedy.

And the Prime Minister, Jacinda Arden, in a show of, I think, you know, a very well-meaning show of solidarity and support for this group, put on the hijab.

And she was saying, I want to stand with the Muslim community, and what I'm going to do is I'm going to put on the hijab.

And

there was a wave of many Muslims, many women in New Zealand who were doing the same, putting on the hijab.

And okay, so that's, it's wonderful to want to show solidarity for this group.

And I think

that's an incredible thing to want to do that.

But the way that it happened, the way that she chose to do it by putting on the hijab, it is one of those things that at best it doesn't hurt, but

at worst, it actually does really harm the work of so many women across the world and in the West, Muslim women even.

It's becoming a

fashion accessory almost.

I saw the Toronto Raptors who are partnering with Nike, and oh, there it is.

They're selling this now.

And I mean, Nike's slogan is just do it.

But in a lot of Muslim countries, women can't just do it.

Right.

I mean,

a lot of things you wouldn't be able to just do.

Sure, yeah.

You know, I mean, I don't have high expectations of corporations.

I expect them to be pay moral agents.

I don't get my social justice activism

notes from corporations.

But it does say something about where we are as a society, about what they think they might be able to profit out of.

They think that even if they're not going to sell so many hijabs, they think that this is going to send a significant amount of time.

And you say it's not just a benign symbol.

I've read that it's actually, most women in the Muslim world don't wear it.

It's actually more of a symbol of conservative Islam.

It'd be almost like wearing a MAGA hat.

Absolutely.

Or a handmaid's bonnet.

Right, and this is part of the problem that, you know, and this is what Jacinda Arden was doing.

She was trying to show solidarity with Muslims by putting on the hijab.

But that's, as you you said, it's something conservative Muslim women often wear and sometimes have to wear.

And then, I mean, there are so many other ways that we can show solidarity.

I mean, she could have said, you know what I'm going to do is I'm going to give zakat, which is,

for those who might not know, it's just Muslim practice.

It's one of the five pillars of Islam.

And it's basically an obligation for Muslims to give to charity.

Sure.

So a certain amount of their income every year.

So what she could have said was, this year, in solidarity with the Muslim community, I'm going to give zakat.

I'm going to give to Muslim charities in war-torn countries, what have you,

people who really needed it.

And that way, she could have stood in line with Muslims who were affected.

She could have respected, shown or respected their faith without undermining our liberal values and principles.

And you're familiar with Princess Latifah?

Is it Dubai or Saudi Arabia?

She escaped.

I think you know her mother, Queen Latifah.

No, I don't.

But there's been a number of these women, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, and she she said, I don't know how I'll feel just waking up in the morning and thinking I can do whatever I want today.

And I read that and thought, that's really what it's all about, isn't it?

Just doing what you want today.

It's something that so many women in the world, not just Muslim women,

I think it's a problem in almost every country, but size does matter.

Right.

Well, and the inability to just, the inability to just speak, right?

And that's what the blasphemy and the death penalty for blasphemy and the criminalization for blasphemy, that's what it's doing.

That's what it really is.

Tell us about that.

What does that mean, blasphemy?

Blasphemy law is, I mean, it's interpreted different ways in different countries, but it's essentially a prohibition to criticize religion or to, or to,

sometimes it's just if they feel as if there's something that you're saying that goes against.

It's part of Sharia law.

It's part of the legal system, secular legal system of many countries as well.

Right, well they're married, aren't they?

I mean, the religious law and the

concept of separation of church and state does not exist in many Muslim countries.

In many Muslim countries, it doesn't.

And there's sometimes just an infusion of a little bit of Islam here, and then not in other places.

But what it ends up doing is creating this climate where, you know, I mean, it's not just people like me who are ex-Muslims and talking about, you know, who have left and who are talking about religion, but it's artists.

It's, you know, when he's writing, right, it's human rights activists of every single stripe that's being affected.

It's science educators.

and scientists in general who are being affected by this.

So it's a broad, you know, it's this thing that's hanging over society that's preventing progress in every way.

Okay.

Will you talk about Justin Trudeau with us?

Because I really want to get to this.

You mentioned it a minute ago.

Here's some things I know about Justin Trudeau.

Okay.

He has accepted large numbers of refugees into Canada.

Half his cabinet are women.

Four of his cabinet.

How brave of you.

Stunning and brave.

Four Sikh members,

four

members of the Sikh religion in the cabinet.

The immigration secretary is a Somali-born refugee, and he seemed to like to wear a black face a lot

up till 2001.

So I guess my question is, is he a racist?

And if not, why are we talking about it?

Of course he's not a racist.

Does anybody even begin to believe that Justin Trudeau is a racist?

No.

This is just another.

He wasn't the poster boy for a liberal leader.

Yes, he is the most piecey, progressive out there person who happens to be a flawed human being who did some stupid things in his life.

The idea that this is now the key issue we're talking about,

someone did in college or at some party, again, it's a complete distortion of reality.

Yeah, but he was in trouble, and one of the reasons they're talking about it in Canada is it's a very close election, and he was in trouble because he engaged in an obstruction of justice in a scant notice.

Let's not get into weeds on that one.

No, but it's a boring trouble.

I know.

He was in a little bit of trouble.

But it's a legitimate question.

It's a little poster.

It is, yeah.

I think it's what interests me about this whole story.

I mean, I was shocked.

I think everyone was shocked.

It was like, oh, okay, all right, okay, another one.

All right.

Here we go.

Is just how widespread this was.

I mean, I remember in eighth grade seeing a film called Ethnic Notions.

Everyone, go home, home, get it on YouTube.

It's like a dusty old PBS thing that went through all the different ways that black people particularly were dehumanized through menstrelsy and blackface and caricature and all the stereotypes.

And I just, I learned that because it was an essential part of our history.

And the fact that Justin Trudeau could say, I didn't know it was racist, he's not like some guy.

He was the son of a prime minister.

Like, he should have had an education.

Correct, he should have.

But then I think about the fact that less than 10% of American high school seniors can say

correctly that it was slavery that was a central animating problem that led us to the Civil War.

Well, that's the thing.

And then I realized.

That's just they don't teach kids anymore.

This is what I'm saying.

It's good to me that look at the Justin Trudeau or 90% of the people.

The Ralph Northern question, which was exactly the same, right?

And he's still in office.

And the people who really supported him were African Americans, because they have more balance and sense about this than woke white progressives.

And so they have a sense of reality about this.

They know these people are not file white

premises.

Whenever I see one of these pictures of a guy like this, and this was the latest one was 2001, but it was an Arabian Nights theme party.

What else do you go as?

I mean, you know.

And look, and by the way, the concern is...

I think we should stop theme partying.

Here's something about this, the guy who's like, I'm having a Motown theme party.

Say something about this Yeah, I'm going to come as vanilla ice.

I think he was tying to the label for a minute.

I think it's important to think about why black voters tend to do things like support Joe Biden,

you know, support Ralph Northam.

Black voters understand because...

We do the homework, we know our history, we know how pervasive racism is.

We could have seen Trump coming, and many of us did.

There's a conservatism that's not about what we want.

It's about what what we think the white majority will tolerate.

And that's why it was like Ralph Northam, I think he's better than the other guy.

Joe Biden, when people like you know, older people in my family say, I'm gonna support Joe Biden, it's not because they really love him,

it's because they think that white people, it's the same reason Obama selected him as vice president.

That that's the kind of person that white working class people who went for Trump will support.

It is a conservatism, not of their own ideals, but of what we we read the country to be, and we're often right.

But the polls show now that

the polling shows now that white progressives think there's more racism in this country than African Americans.

I did see that one poll, yeah.

How do you explain that?

I think there's a very long overdue conversation that's happening right now about racism, and I think that

I have some problems actually with the way that poll was done.

I think it's fine to talk about it because it's true that white progressives, the thing that has made them progressive is actually the reaction to Black Lives Matter and the reaction to the backlash to President Obama.

And I think that is a good thing because we will get to a place where we finally have some coherent conversation.

But don't you think they've overplayed their hand?

Who's overplayed which hand?

White progressives on seeing racism absolutely everywhere, white supremacy under every person's skin, seeing everything around us.

I mean, it is that it's, you're absolutely right, Heather.

Biden has been called a racist.

Hillary has been called a racist.

Nancy Pelosi has been called a racist.

Who's white supremacist?

And that's like

maybe everyone has racism in them to a degree.

But if Biden, Pelosi, and Hillary aren't good enough for you, I don't know who you're going to come up with.

I just don't know.

I just don't.

We're humans.

No, but white people have to have a certain amount of people.

No, and I agree with you.

I'm not saying that those three people are white supremacists.

I think they...

Wow.

I said racist.

You went all the way to white supremacists.

They don't use racist anymore.

No one's a racist.

They're all white supremacists.

No one's a sexist.

They're now a misogynist.

They've ratcheted up the rhetoric here in such a way that no one survives.

See what Trump has done?

By making white nationalism something that you can talk about without being embarrassed, he has pushed the debate in a direction that is making people make statements that are idiotic about racism in the sense that there is no way the people you mentioned are racist.

Nancy Pelosi is not.

It's not.

But they were called racist by other people on the left.

The challenge now is

to the people on the left would say that.

No, the problem, the term.

But AOC suggested that.

But she represents a lot of people on the left.

So I think that what you're referring to is.

So, for example, when Joe Biden went on that very strange rant.

Yes, the record player.

Yeah, ended up with a record player.

But what he was talking about, it wasn't just an anachronism.

It was basically saying, in response to a question about are white people at all responsible for the debt that this country owes,

he said basically that black people sort of didn't know how to raise their own children.

That's like

really old received white liberal wisdom.

And I think that the problem right now is that so much of our system has been structured, so many of our messages about black people's worth, about brown people's worth, has been so negative for so long.

It is very easy, and it's been structured in our politics, that I think white Democrats, particularly of a certain age,

are

instinctively still thinking that way.

They're instinctively still

thinking that they can't say really bold things about

black people's worth because there's a white conservative sort of box around the politics, which I think is a reasonable thing.

I just think that when

70% of African-American kids are born without a father or two parents.

They obviously have a biological father, but they aren't supported.

They aren't supported.

The idea has been refuted.

Just not.

Because if marriage doesn't happen, actually, African American men are more involved on a day-to-day basis in their children's lives than white men.

Look it up.

Look it up.

Look it up.

Marriage rates have gone down as they have gone down for non-college educated people.

The fact that the crowd applauded that says a lot.

Yes, Yes, yes, we hate ourselves.

I mean, I hope there are some black people in the audience.

Don't you think that marriage actually does help connect children to their parents?

Do you think that they have that same support?

There is a real problem in African-American society about bringing up kids.

They're failing in school.

In all of them.

It's a problem.

Yes.

No, it's much more acute in that community.

Okay.

I have to go to New Rules.

Thank you, panel.

But we will be over time if we don't.

All right laugh time now new rule as penance for his time in the Trump administration Sean Spicer must be sent to the border to welcome every illegal immigrant just like this

New rule you can't discriminate against porn companies when everyone is using their product this week the porn site Bangbros

submitted a $10 million bid to rename the home of the Miami Heat the Bangbros Center.

And I am all for it.

Because

I must say, I just saw Hamilton at the Pornhub Pavilion, and it was incredible.

And I can't wait to see Michael Bouvlé at the In-N-Out Center for the Performing Arts.

In-N-Out, you know.

Okay, new rule.

Someone must explain why 99% of businesses using barbed barbed wire have stuff nobody would ever want.

A mechanic who specializes in Pontiacs, you already have something that keeps people from breaking into your shop.

Pontiacs.

Yeah, I love that.

Neural, now that vaping is all the rage, someone must do something to help the makers of decorative roach clips.

There was a time when almost every rearview mirror had one, but those days are gone.

Hi, I'm Bill Maher for the Roach Clip Fund.

For just pennies a day, you can help a decorative roach clip maker turn things around with counseling and retraining.

This is Topanga.

She's a decorative roach clip maker.

So was her mother and her mom before her.

Help us help Topanga hold on to their way of life.

These pioneers helped pave the road to legalization.

So always remember: a waste is a terrible thing to mind.

New Rule, stop worrying that Apple CEO Tim Cook might be a little too over-giddy about the new iPhone 11's three camera lenses.

He'll come back down to earth when he realizes old people are trying to shave with it.

And finally, New Rule, American politics must be introduced to a new concept, catch-23.

Now, of course, catch-22 meant if you claimed to be insane to get out of combat, it actually proved you were sane.

Catch-23 is if Donald Trump never makes you insane, you are insane.

I bring this up because Republicans love to throw out the term Trump derangement syndrome to deflect any criticism from the dear leader.

And by that they mean that liberals are a bunch of sore losers who just can't accept the results of an election and they go mental at every little thing Trump does.

And there is a bit of that on the left, but have you watched this man over the last four years?

Let me call the Russians.

We want deal.

Bing, bing.

I don't want mosquitoes around me.

I'm wearing a jacket and a hat.

I don't like mosquitoes.

Tippy-top shaped.

We got a this, we gotta that.

Oh, I don't know what I said.

I said, let's go to Iraq.

Thank you very much.

And you came to the conclusion, yeah, that's how a president behaves.

And I'm the one who's deranged.

You know, when Republicans say Democrats never got over Trump's behavior, you're right.

We haven't gotten over it because no one should.

Anyone remember Otto Warmbeer, a college kid who Kim Jong-un killed, and Trump said, Kim tells me he didn't know about it and I take him at his word?

Same thing he said when the Saudis killed Jamal Khashoggi.

When the entire American intelligence community told him Putin had interfered with our election, he sided with Putin.

When they told him Kim was still testing missiles, he said, we're in love.

Nothing, Mitch McConnell?

This is what Trump derangement syndrome really is, pretending that all of this is perfectly acceptable behavior for an American president.

That's deranged.

That's a syndrome.

And it's coming from the right.

It's like body odor.

If you smell it all the time, it's probably you.

Look, I don't have time to go through all of Trump's greatest hits.

So let's just say, if you don't think a president doing this is crazy,

then I just want you to know that if Joe Biden rapidly declines and legit loses his mind, then I am going to pretend nothing to see here, just like you're doing now.

And I am going to encourage all Democrats to do the same and vote for him anyway.

And I'm not talking about the current Joe Biden.

Oh, no, no, no.

Not the mildly embarrassing gaffe machine who mixes up stories and waits till he's on stage for his eyeball to explode and

his dentures to fall out.

That guy would not be nearly broken and crazy enough to teach the Republicans the lesson they need to learn.

For this, I need Joe Biden to be full-on, forgot to wear pants,

crumbs in his hair, screaming at the toaster nuts.

And when Republicans say, wait a minute, how can you give unwavering support for someone who's clearly lost it, I'll say, I don't know.

You tell me.

And just like you do now in private, oh, we'll all admit, oh yeah, our guy's nuts.

But publicly, we'll say he's great.

Full denial mode, like you do now.

You don't believe he's ever lied?

He exaggerates and spins.

Okay, do you believe he's ever told the American people a lie?

No.

Wow.

With friends like that, who needs a Sharpie?

Donald Trump doesn't lie.

That's where they are?

Okay, fine.

But when crazy, senile, pants-pissing Joe Biden is president and gives the Medal of Freedom to the Pillsbury Doughboy,

I'm just going to say he's a different kind of president.

Trump humps the flag.

I want Joe to fuck it.

Because he's not a traditional president.

I want him always wandering off.

I want to see a headline, missing for three days, President Biden found sleeping in a mattress store.

I want him to have an extramarital affair with black china.

And every fucked up thing a celebrity ever did, I want to see him do it.

I want to see him eat a hamburger off the floor.

I want to see him interrupt Taylor Swift at an award show, lock a hooker hooker in a closet, shave his head, and attack a car with an umbrella.

I want to see him jump up and down on Oprah's couch

in a meat dress.

And after he plows the presidential limousine through a farmer's market, I will say, why so upset, Republicans?

That's just Biden being Biden.

All right.

And Charchelle I'll be at the Smart Financial Center in Sugarland, Texas tomorrow, September 21st at the Civic Center in Oklahoma City, September 22nd at the Orpheum in Memphis, October 4th.

I want to thank Andrew Sullivan, Timothy Noctale, Heather McGee, Sarah Hayter, and Samantha Powers.

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.

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