Ep. #505: Congresswoman Katie Porter, Kevin Williamson

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.

Yeah, aka Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

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

Start the clock.

Thank you.

So I needed that, ladies and gentlemen.

I've had so many shitty weeks, but this is a shitty week.

I'm telling you.

Really?

The one bright spot I can find is that Trump finally found some white people to fight with.

Denmark.

Really?

He's fighting with Denmark because, you know this, he's been wanting to buy Greenland.

By the way, today Puerto Rico said, you don't take care of the islands you already have.

Okay, so.

But as I've said, it's not a crazy idea to want to own Greenland.

Other presidents have suggested it, but they took no for an answer.

Not this guy.

The prime minister told him not for sale.

And he said, that's what Melania's parents said.

Gentle good humor.

The prime minister of Denmark, nasty woman,

said his offer was absurd and Trump said, you're nasty and you've insulted America and he wanted to talk to the manager.

He's crazy.

He is off his rocker.

He's giving hour-long press conferences on the White House lawn.

Brought to you by Adderall.

The President of the United States stands in the driveway every day and screams at people.

I mean,

I know a lot of old guys are like, get off my lawn.

He's like, get on my lawn.

The suit saves it.

It's all about the suit.

Really, if he wasn't wearing the suit, ordinarily people who do that are wearing a bathrobe with the garden hose in their hand.

Hey, let me tell you something.

The president is the inflatable arm-flailing toot man outside of the car dealership.

That's who he is.

I don't want to say he has the mind of a child, but today Jeffrey Epstein's ghost tried to fuck it.

Gentle good humor.

That's what we do here.

Gentle good humor.

Now, do you see now why I say we need a recession?

I know it's going to be painful, but we have to get rid of this guy.

And recession Trump now says, not to worry.

He says the economy is going fantastically.

And other than always, when has he ever lied?

Yeah, he says not to worry about a recession.

He says he always finds a way to win and that he wrote the book on surviving financial catastrophe, specifically chapter 11.

And this is a bad sign.

Today, Greenland offered to buy us.

And now some funeral news to report.

Yesterday David Koch of the Zillionaire Koch brothers died please

of prostate cancer.

I guess I'm going to have to reevaluate my low opinion of prostate cancer.

He was 79, but his family says they wish it could be longer, but at least he lived long enough to see the Amazon catch fire.

Condolences poured in from all the politicians he owned.

And mourners are being asked in lieu of flowers to just leave their car engine running.

As for his remains, he is asked to be cremated and have his ashes blown into a child's lungs.

Now,

I know these seem like harsh words and harsh jokes, and I'm sure I will be condemned for them

on Fox News, which will portray Mr.

Koch as a principled libertarian who believed in the free market.

He and his brother have done more than anybody to fund climate science deniers for decades, so fuck him.

The Amazon is burning up.

I'm glad he's dead, and I hope the end will come.

All right, what a great show.

We've got a great show.

Michael Sverkanish, Heidi Heifkamp, and Eric Kleinenberg are here on Little Labor.

We'll be speaking with columnist and author Kevin Williamson.

But first up, she represents California's 45th congressional district and is a professor at UC Irvine School of Law.

Katie Porter!

Katie,

are you going?

Yes, sure.

Of course.

All right, so

we're going to talk about the Amazon later.

It's depressing me.

I'm sure it's depressing you.

Let's talk about...

The company or the forest

well that's what I want to get to I think the company should buy the forest

I think we should buy the Amazon money talks right well like we would with Greenland well if we're gonna buy Greenland we might as well buy the Amazon too

Bezos has a hundred and thirty billion Ted Turner used to do this he used to buy giant swaths of land because he said nobody else is going to save it I will where are all these cheap billionaires when you need them these environmentalists put your money where your mouth is.

Money is the only thing that talks to you.

That's the only thing.

Yeah, exactly.

So,

but there is a billionaire named Jamie Dimon who was head of what bank?

J.P.

Morgan Chase.

J.P.

Morgan Chase.

Okay.

And you sort of became famous because you shamed him.

You were grilling him about why in his...

I think, to be fair, Bill, I think he shamed himself.

Well, you helped.

I mean, you.

I mean, this is like the student who would tell me that they were really upset that I asked them a question to which they didn't know the answer, to which I would be like, well, that sort of...

Well, apparently he's never thought about the answer, because that's what he kept saying to you.

You kept saying, you know, someone who works at your company in a secretarial position only makes this much money, and that's hard to live on, but, you know, your company does quite well.

And he said, gee, I never thought about that.

But the other day he was talking, and a lot of business leaders were, about how they've changed their tune a little bit.

That they say companies should be responsible in the way Henry Ford was.

You know, make the workers solvent and maybe they'll buy your product and other products.

So it looked to me like shaming works.

I've said for a long time, I don't think we shame enough.

You shamed him.

Don't you think we should do that?

Well, I do think holding people accountable works.

And I think it works in multiple ways.

I think it obviously worked to push the business roundtable toward this new definition of a corporation.

But it also works in giving the American people people confidence in our Congress.

So those hearings, they're not for me.

Those hearings are for the American people.

So this is not my five minutes.

This is our five minutes.

And so the goal is...

Hey, I want to, but you're not going to be.

A lot of my colleagues, like, a lot of my colleagues don't get this.

And so they'll say to me, like, wow, Katie, like, you're a freshman, but you're so good at asking questions.

Like, do you have any tips?

And so it's really hard to figure out how you say politely, like, well, the first tip is ask a question.

Like.

An appointed one.

I mean, to be honest,

he looked like, I do not want to ever answer this lady's questions again.

No, like, that is my screensaver.

It's like the

But and you were pointing out something that came to light again this week because that ICE raid in Mississippi last week where they threw a lot of people out of work and probably now out of the country They're trying to replace those people and it was in the paper how much the jobs are these are horrible jobs, murdering chickens.

It's like $10 an hour, $12 an hour.

This is just what you were talking about.

How do, I've said this often, how do people live in this country?

How do you pay?

I mean, I've been dirt poor too, but I was single.

I didn't have to worry about kids, who I understand are vacuums for money.

How do you pay for all the things that you need to pay for?

Although the reality is $400 a week.

Families can't.

So what they're doing is they're going without.

They're going without prescription drugs.

They're going without dental visits.

They're going without savings.

They're going without emergency funds.

And they're borrowing.

They're borrowing on credit cards.

They're borrowing from predatory lenders.

I mean, this is the reality of not earning enough.

And so really what the business roundtable said and what Jamie Dimon said, I mean, Jamie Diamond's quote was, the American Dream is alive but fraying.

And I saw that quote and I thought, well, so nice of Elizabeth Warren to give such a great quote.

Jamie Dimon could have been Elizabeth Warren when he said, the American dream is alive but fraying.

I'm so glad Mr.

has realized what I was trying to tell him, which is for his own workers at his own bank in Orange County, California, they can't make ends meet.

They can't afford an apartment, much less save for anything.

And so the business roundtable said, look, shareholders aren't everything.

And that is the first time.

The first time ever I've been doing this.

I tell you, as someone who graded exams in corporate law, the correct answer to any question in corporate law until Monday was shareholders.

So who do corporations serve?

Shareholders.

What's the duty of a corporation?

Shareholders.

So what they said is, no, actually we should worry about stakeholders, which they said means workers, which means communities, which means suppliers, which means customers.

This is really revolutionary, and it's going to make my job questioning these witnesses so much more fun.

You mentioned Elizabeth Warren.

Elizabeth Warren was your professor.

I didn't realize that.

Also your mentor.

You named your daughter after her.

Correct.

But you're not endorsing her.

I have not endorsed anyone yet.

And I have a really hard time.

I mean, I got to tell you, like,

I have a little bit of a sob story here.

I have three children.

I'm a single mom.

So while I'm trying to get the tater tots unstuck from the

pan,

people are talking.

You really do.

I mean, there's no juice at dinner bill.

I'm sorry, not eating for you.

My children, I have a Booker voter.

He's 13.

I have a Kamala voter, who's 11.

And I have a, I'm named for her Elizabeth Warren voter, my daughter Elizabeth.

And as soon as I get the family vote consolidated and we come up with a candidate, then I'll be in the position to do more.

But I really want to tell people truthfully what I tell my constituents.

My vote and my choice isn't what's at stake here.

What's at stake is every single person's choice.

So we can't leave anything on the table.

We have to connect with every kind of voter.

Well.

I mean, you certainly do.

You're from Orange County, which until very recently, like two years ago, was all

Reagan County.

Still today, I represent a majority.

I'm proud to represent a majority of Republicans.

Right.

And those are Republicans who have good sense.

But all the districts,

didn't all the Orange County districts go blue?

Correct.

Okay.

So you have to be, I would guess, a little more in the center to appeal to your constituents.

Elizabeth Warren, I mean, I love her.

But I hear a lot of analysts say things like, we'll lose 40 states.

Elizabeth, that's a 40-state loser election.

What do you think about that?

I think that we should let the candidates run and win.

And in some cases, like the last couple days, run and lose, right?

But she's running in the primary, which is not the general election.

In a way, you're practicing against a team that resembles nothing like the team you're going to fight in the game that counts.

Fair point, but we also have an opportunity.

We also have an opportunity to add more players to our team, to turn out younger voters, to turn out people who don't vote consistently.

So our team is not a fixed thing.

And by the way, the game is not a fixed thing either.

So when you, like, and I say this as someone, like, the thing that bonds the freshman class together, everybody from Abigail Spanberger to Alyssa to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, from Max Rose to Rashida Tlaib, is that we don't take corporate PAC money and we understand that corporate abuse is harming our capitalist economy.

That's something Elizabeth understands.

And we won in Republican districts, in Trump districts, in districts that had had never had a Democrat before, because we understood that what Americans want is an economy that works for everyone.

And here, I'm surprised to find myself quoting Jamie Diamond.

But I.

Shocked, really.

But

Americans don't think that the economy that works for them is called socialism.

Now, I know Elizabeth says she's a capitalist.

She is.

I know.

But that's not the way she's going to be painted.

And some of her programs, let's be honest, sound pretty socialist.

I just don't want another George McGovern.

I wasn't born then.

I was.

Well, you're smarter than those kids who say it doesn't matter because I wasn't alive.

You weren't alive for the Civil War.

You know about that, right?

Yep.

Okay, great.

But I feel like things worked out better in the Civil War than they did for George McGovern.

Yeah, and we don't want that.

And he ran against Nixon, who I think people don't realize was

the Ted Cruz of his day.

And a product of Orange County.

Just not a popular guy, not a likable, likable, attractive man.

A sweaty loser.

As far as popularity.

And he won 49 states.

I'm just saying.

Do you think something like Amy Klobuchar is actually more electable?

I know Elizabeth Warren has all the

vim and energy right now, but not going to answer that one.

I'm just going to tell you this.

I think energy matters.

And we saw that in 2018.

Yeah.

So we had wrecked.

I would not be in Congress if it were not for Trump being terrible.

Okay, that was a big help.

And my opponent making some critical mistakes,

like voting with Trump, who's terrible.

But also because we had a record turnout in 2018.

So we took our university from 2% voting to 30% voting.

That's how I won.

I wish we knew.

So,

like,

I cannot tell you, though, I think the reason I kind of react on this one is it's not so much about Elizabeth per se, it's that I have only had every single person tell me I couldn't win, run and win as a progressive in Orange County.

And here I sit.

I ran, I won, I'm working hard for the American people in Congress.

I'm asking again for their votes in 2020, and I think that's a model that people can look to.

All right.

Well, I thank you for coming by.

Thank you.

I'll see you again here, Very Still My Hill.

Okay, Katie Porter, let's be dark.

He's been worrying about that.

Hello.

Hi, Dad.

How are you doing?

Nice to meet you.

Okay, he he is a professor of sociology at NYU and author of Palaces for the People, How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life.

That's the whole book.

Eric Heinenberg is over here.

Eric, how you doing?

Nice to meet you.

He's a Sirius XM and CNN host and author of Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right.

Michael Smakanish, back with us, Michael.

And she's the former Democratic senator from North Dakota who is the founder of the One Country Project Initiative.

Heidi Heitkam, great to see you, Heidi.

Don't forget to send us your questions with tonight's overtime as we're going to answer them after the show on YouTube.

What about my idea to buy the Amazon?

Why can't...

Bezos has $130 billion.

I read today, Dave Gilmore of Pink Floyd sold his guitars.

Did you see this?

Raised $21.5 million for the environment.

But that's not going to get the job done.

I mean,

it's kind of a sign of how we've come to a crazy place where we're begging for American billionaires to save the world.

I mean it would be amazing if someone went out and purchased it.

I mean who would object to George Soros buying the Amazon?

I mean I can't imagine anyone not liking that.

I love the objective.

One out of five of every breath we take dependent upon the Amazon.

Bill, these are the things we look to government to do.

Here comes the GC.

But they're not.

But they're not.

And they're not, and the leadership normally would be provided by our guy or our female president.

And unfortunately, he's a denier on this issue.

Think if Tom Steyer took all the money he's going to spend promoting himself and actually

bought the Amazon.

He could do it.

He could raise it.

I think, though, you have to think about whether Brazil is letting this happen so that they can deforest the Amazon and therefore

develop it.

It's just land.

The people who buy land, foreigners do it in this country all the time.

The problem is it's land.

They're buying houses right now that you want.

It's Brazil, and then it's in Brazil, and then it's Indonesia, and then it's China, then it's the next place.

The world is on fire.

And you know, we're going to be able to do that.

But this is especially important.

This is a big one, no doubt about it.

But

what if we start with electing someone who doesn't think climate change is a hoax?

Okay, but that might not happen.

This we could actually get.

You see, this we don't have to worry and depend upon the electorate, which I don't have any faith in.

But look what you do.

No, I think that when you look at what Trump's seeing right now, honestly, he gave a speech on the environment and on energy.

Remember this?

It was like a.

No, he did.

He went out and gave a speech.

People didn't even notice.

And the reason why he did it

because he knows that he needs to change his tune to get suburban women and to get those swing voters back in the city.

First of all, he never changes his tune.

Well, no.

And he doesn't know anything.

He doesn't change.

Well, that's not the same thing.

He doesn't change his tune.

He's seriously stupid, but that doesn't mean

that he's not politically savvy.

I've never seen him go for, oh, I'm going to get a bigger base.

He goes for, I'm going to double down on my base of mouth-breathing.

Every act of this presidency has been predicated on getting the same 46% who came out and elected him to do likewise in 2020.

But here's what I think should happen.

He knows he's in trouble, but he always wins.

Always finds a way to win.

Said that today.

Okay, so there's a lot of talk that there's actually going to be a Republican challenger.

I think this is another good idea.

Who are some of the people?

Larry Hogan, governor of Maryland, talks of it.

Bill Welds, already doing it, right?

This is what I call Republican classic, the old Republicans before Trump.

Joe Walsh, not the rock god guitarist.

Too bad.

The crazy, yeah, Congressman, ex-Congressman Mark Sanford, the Appalachian Trail dude.

He's not.

That's what he's known for.

But who cares?

Jeff Flake, John Kasich.

I always said Mitt Romney could do it.

Run in the primary, at least this way, Republican.

Republicans are good at winning.

We're not.

They know how to win.

Okay, they're not going to beat Trump in the primary, but at least Republicans will listen to other Republicans.

They'll hear Republican classic.

And then whoever comes in second to Trump out of this field runs as an independent in the general.

he could take, there must be 5% of Republicans who

just despise all the horrible things Trump does.

I know there are, and they want to vote for Republican classic, but they won't vote for a Democrat, your state.

Very hard to, that you won there is hard to believe.

You must have done a great job.

I did.

I did.

And I kept doing a great job.

It didn't get me re-elected.

The problem that you have is any credible Republican like Mitt Romney who seriously knows that this guy is going to lead the country to a place that, well, we might not ever recover from.

I mean there are serious Republicans.

They think, okay, if he loses, then I got a chance in four years.

They wake up and they look in the mirror and they see a president and it's not geared towards saving the country.

It's geared towards their political opportunity.

And it's going to be really hard to find someone who will put themselves out there like that to help the country.

Look, I've been waiting for years for some Republican of stature to stand up to this man.

And instead, to promote their careers, they're sacrificing the country and potentially their party as well.

I mean, we're heading for disaster.

Again, we don't have to do that.

Let's not use the things that keep not working.

Let's do the things that maybe they can work because they're in our control.

You can run a third-party candidate.

And third-party candidates siphon off even a small amount of the vote.

We've seen this.

Al Gore in 2000, right?

I mean, very little.

Trump won by how many votes?

77,000 in those three states.

A guy on the just somebody for Republicans who hate Trump to go, I can't vote for a Democrat because they're evil, but I can vote for John Kasich.

And I think that would...

This isn't the solution that you're looking for.

I share your desire for there to be a third choice on that stage, not to siphon votes, but to win the whole damn thing.

Well, that's not going to happen.

I'm convinced that so many of these people who get nominated are so out of touch, and then it's the choice of a less of two two evils.

Well, it's always a choice of a lesser of two evils.

Third-party candidates don't win.

They just ruin it for one of them.

Let's make that person Trump this time.

So

I've got two words for you.

Howard Schultz.

Howard Schultz?

Yeah, you don't even remember him, the Starbucks.

I know exactly who you are.

So the point is...

He's not a Republican.

Well, he's not a Democrat either, right?

So

if this were possible, then he would be doing much better than what he's doing.

He would have stayed in this and actually figured it out.

I mean, he's got billions of dollars.

Right.

Let him buy the Amazon.

Let Mitt Romney run against Trump or Kasich.

Okay.

The other thing I think that could change things is, I've said this for a while.

Michael Moore is saying it now too.

I love this.

We need a ballot sweetener.

Two years ago, we said, put pot on the ballot.

It's our liberal version of guns.

It's an issue that people feel.

You can get single-issue voters to come out of the house, turn potheads into single-issue books.

I'm not kidding.

I'm not kidding.

We can win this election.

If the Democratic Party tomorrow would come full-throatedly for full legalization, you could win this election because it's a personal issue.

Well, Pot and I were on the ballot at the same time in North Dakota, and we both lost.

But that's North Dakota.

And speaking of North Dakota, here we go.

I know you could, I've said this, and I was in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Saturday night.

Lovely place.

Loved it.

And I go there because I want to, of course.

They love me, and I love them.

Because they're so enthusiastic.

They don't think I'm going to come to a place like that.

It's fantastic.

But there should not be two Dakotas.

There just should not be.

And by the way, Rhode Island, you're part of Massachusetts.

That's Bishop.

Really?

And Delaware is Maryland, and Wyoming and Montana could be one state.

I mean, there are,

there are states with one district, one district, your state, South Dakota, Vermont, Wyoming, Alaska, Delaware, Montana.

One district.

Can we do a...

We have 53.

Yeah, can you do me a favor?

Can you put South Dakota and Wyoming together and then North Dakota can stay a state?

We could smudge them all together.

Wouldn't this be as big as San Bernardino?

If we could blow up the Electoral College while we're doing all that work, I'm all in.

Well,

that's another thing we can do.

But

there's a movement to do that because I think...

National popular vote.

Yeah, 15 states have voted that whoever wins the popular vote gets all your electoral votes.

We only need like six more states for that to happen, and we would sort of do a reach-around on the electoral question.

One reason why our democracy is in crisis and so many people see it as illegitimate is because we keep on voting for someone who doesn't win the presidency.

How many times in this country can we vote for someone, give them the majority of the vote for the presidency, and have them lose because of this anachronistic?

But it's also because the Senate is where

the Senate is where legislation goes to die.

The House passes all sorts of good stuff, and Mitch McConnell says, forget it, piss up a rope.

And that's partly, I'm sorry, because states like the Dakota Territory

have four senators, and we have 40 million people, and we have two.

You have 51 times the voice, a person, in your state, that we do.

There's no justification.

Well, I feel a real obligation here to defend my state.

I know.

Not to defend the Constitution.

I mean, when you look at when we were created, the Great Compromise is why we ended up with two two senators for

every state.

But here's an argument.

We're born with a good culture.

But here's an argument.

It's not a good shape.

It's not that way.

Here is an argument for it.

The argument for it is that we are one country, which is the name of the project that I started, that we all have to start working together and redefine what that American spirit is.

And when you simply say the coasts have the population and we can just fly over the middle, and the middle can just be on its own.

Not fly over them and be on their own, but don't get more of a voice than other people have.

But the country.

People, come on, take one for the team.

This is America.

This is what is ruining America, is that nothing happens because the Senate blocks everything.

And the Senate blocks everything because it's not fair.

I think in 20 years, like, I'm sorry.

So I will tell you this.

For two years, years that I was in the Senate, we were in the majority, and the House was in Republican control.

And you know what the House said?

The Senate won't take our bills.

They passed all this batshit, crazy stuff that was not appropriate and that was not good for the country, and we were able to stop it because it came to the Senate and the Democrats had control.

So things change politically, and you have to be very careful when you change the rules.

All right.

So there is a high turnover rate at the White House.

I don't have to tell you, but the turnover rate is ridiculous.

You could be forgiven for not knowing a lot of it.

Like if you said to me, no, who's the Secretary of Defense?

I can't remember.

Who's the National Security Advisor?

Who was it yesterday?

Bolton.

Bolton, okay.

He's crazy.

But one guy who's always there is Stephen Miller.

33-year-old Stephen Miller from Santa Monica, right here.

Yeah, he's a great-looking guy.

And

he has been profiled this week.

He's the immigration hardliner.

Two of the major papers, the Post and the New York Times, both profiled him on the front page this week, so we thought it was time to do 25 Things You Don't Know about Stephen Miller.

We originally I used to give credit to Us magazine, but screw them, they never thanked me for it.

So I'm just saying, we're stealing it now, it's ours, I'm never going to mention you again.

25 Things, Bill Moore's 25 Things You Don't Know about Stephen Miller.

I'm currently dating a headless Nordstrom mannequin

In high school, I was voted most likely to comb my mummified mother's hair.

I think tacos are stealing jobs from hamburgers.

Oh,

that is ridiculous.

I would kill to have hair like Donald Trump.

Correction, I have killed to have hair like that.

I'm a cancer.

I don't know my astrological sign.

If I need time alone, I go anywhere.

The worst part about my car smelling like wet dogs is that I don't own dogs.

I use spray on hair, but not on my head.

In college, my style was dubbed Nazi Geek, which explains my nickname Peewee German.

And I can't get automatic syncs to turn on because I don't have a soul.

All right, he is a reporter and columnist for the National Review and the New York Post, and author of The Smallest Minority Independent Thinking in the Age of Mob Politics.

Kevin Williamson.

Kevin.

How are you, sir?

Bill.

Good to see you.

It's been a while.

Good to have you back.

Okay, so we're going to get to some of your history with the Atlantic.

I know they fired you after three days.

My favorite thing to talk about.

Three days.

Well, you had a rather outlier opinion there about abortion.

We'll get to that later.

Let's talk about more first, what I think we are more sympathetic on, your book, and I think the theme of it I would agree with.

It's sort of a call to arms against mob rule.

Right.

This is why you should like the Electoral College, by the way.

So you're wrong about this, because like me, you don't trust big masses of people because they tend to be stupid and easy to scare.

And all the best things about our Constitution are the anti-democratic things, like the Bill of Rights, which is America's great big list of stuff that you idiots don't get to vote on.

If we had put slavery up to a vote in 1960, it would have won.

It would have won 70 to 30.

If we put free speech up to a vote today, it would probably lose.

Okay, I don't see what that has to do with the Electoral College.

Because the Electoral College is how we ensure that the states actually mean something.

I know, but that's a stretch.

That's sort of like that logic that says, you know, free speech is, money is free speech, which is bullshit, too.

No, actually, I don't think so.

Well, free speech is, money is not free speech.

That's sort of the argument they're making.

You have freedom of the press, but if you want to buy a press and it's $100 million, well, you can't do that because that's big money in journalism.

Okay, but let's talk about what we like about each other.

Because we've got a long time about that.

It's a short list, and I really want to get to it.

But

I feel like you and I both feel like the individual thinker is being driven to extinction by tribal politics and political correctness.

I feel that way too.

I sometimes feel like a man without a country.

And, you know, this country, you talk about the history of the country, founded on individualism.

Yeah.

What's happened is that we've taken the normal sort of team sport aspects of politics and we've elevated that to the exclusion of everything else because our politics is no longer really about the boring questions like whether our top tax rate is going to be 39% or 34.5%.

No one's having sobbing fits in public over that.

Our politics has become about what kind of person am I, what kind of person are you, and this weird social media ritual of hating people together in public.

So it's, you know, we're the good guys, they're the bad guys, here are the awful things about them, here's all the awful, the great things about us, or the awful things about us.

I mean, I'm an anti-Trump conservative, so I feel a lot of awful things about myself and people around me.

But,

you know, it's a conflicted time for people like us, for Eisenhower Republicans.

And it's hard.

It's a hard time.

And you quit a weird world.

And you quit Twitter for this reason, right?

Oh, I quit Twitter because it wasn't really very good use of time.

You know, I'm a writer, and like a lot of writers, I tend to procrastinate.

And so when I'm supposed to be doing real work, it's tempting to get on Twitter and say, like, well, who's being stupid today?

Let me go find them.

And I end up smacking around some undergraduate from Lehigh College or something, which is not really the best use of my time.

I mean, I'm expensive.

You know, you don't want to pay me to spend my time doing that.

But I mean, you do write in your book about how social media,

which I think is a generational thing.

Would you say that?

Sure, yeah.

There is a generation of people who've grown up sort of as digital natives.

You know,

I was in college before I sent an email.

But there are people who've grown up only in that world, and so they're used to this instantaneous feedback.

And that's really the sort of devious underlying structure of social media is that we're all naturally insecure about our status.

And so they've taken this question of status and put a number on it.

You know, you've got this number of friends, you've got this many followers, you've got this many likes, that sort of thing.

And so people go to it for a quick little, you know, dopamine hit to make them feel better.

It's not really about politics.

It's about saying, please pay attention to me.

I've realized that recently, that a lot of times things people are writing, they don't even believe.

They just know it'll get likes.

You know, I had a poster once when we have a vacation and we come back, we need a poster out there, a billboard, and they were showing me all these different ones.

And we've been on a long time, it's like hard to find something new.

And I could tell they were kind of scared to show me that I didn't like anything.

And it was me and it said, he's not in it for the likes.

And I thought, I am so proud to stand on that billboard.

That's really.

They're addicted to likes.

And it's for what?

What does that get you?

Yeah, and it's particularly bad for journalists, I think, because journalists have recast themselves as being a species of politician.

So you're no longer someone who writes stuff.

You're someone who's there to represent a constituency and to try to win elections and things like that.

I have people sometimes ask me, well, what is it you're trying to do to help get Republicans elected this year?

And I tell, well, nothing.

Ain't my job.

I mean, they don't pay me to do that.

No, and I like the way you say, you know, it's very rare to find anybody anymore who surprises you with an opinion.

But you did, and this is what got you fired at the Atlantic,

because your opinion, I mean, you're a Catholic, your opinion on abortion is pretty out there.

I mean, you said, I believe that the law should treat abortion like any other homicide, and then you yourself introduced the word hanging.

That's pretty out there, don't you think?

Yeah, that's not exactly where I'm on that because I'm anti-capital punishment, but I have argued in the past that if we are going to have capital punishment, it should be some forthrightly violent means of capital punishment.

One of the things that is really creepy about the way we do it now, it's the pseudo-medical thing where you've got someone on a gurney with medical

fetuses now.

That's a different issue.

You want to

kill people who have abortions or doctors.

No, I don't want to execute anybody.

Treat abortion like any other homicide and hang.

In the context of a different argument.

So the thing was, well, we don't think you take abortion seriously if you're not willing to treat it like a homicide.

And I think that if we're going to prohibit abortion, that's the category of things that it should be prohibited under.

Because if abortion isn't a homicide, there's no reason to prohibit it under.

What about the man who gets the girl pregnant?

Is he an accessory to murder?

Yeah.

Do you remember how I was just talking about cheap, stupid applaud lines that people give when they're in it for the likes?

Because the question of getting someone pregnant

is an entirely different thing.

So we're talking about if you believe that

part of a responsibility right and he should be made responsible for it and he should certainly have responsibility for the kid over the course of his life.

But it's not as though a man can stop a woman from having abortion.

I mean a man who performs an abortion, sure

as they do in radical, crazy right-wing places like France, where abortion is illegal after the 12th week of pregnancy.

And if you're a doctor and you want you lose your medical license and go to prison.

They go to prison?

Yes, for up to 10 years.

Is French people in prison for performing abortions?

No, because they don't perform them illegally.

Okay.

All right,

let's not get sadder.

Let's move on to something I think you'll more agree with, which is.

But let me just finish that thought, though.

Abortion, if it's not homicide, it ain't tax evasion.

It ain't littering.

If it's not homicide, there's no reason to prohibit it at all.

There's no reason to worry about it.

It's just contraception.

But if it is homicide, then that's.

Okay.

So

then we start talking about hanging.

Okay.

So

Sean Spicer is going to be on.

See how I lightened that up?

You know,

he's going to be on Dancing with the Stars.

And so

there has been a boycott called for Dancing with the Stars, and I am not going to watch Dancing with the Stars, just like the other 27 seasons when I didn't watch Dancing with the Stars.

But this boycott culture, now, Congresswoman Talib suggested that they boycott my show because last week I was talking about there it is, maybe we should boycott, this is when Israel boycotted her, so she said boycotts are terrible and then wanted to boycott me because I was expressing, now we've invited her on the show, I hope she comes.

But you know, if you come on the show, then you have to actually defend your point as opposed to this one go-to that so many people seem to have today, which is just go away.

Because then you don't have to argue.

You don't have to defend your point of view.

Just go away, boycott.

You're bad, too evil to talk to, and I'm too good to talk to you.

I have,

this is just a beginning of a list.

Conservatives want to boycott Ben and Jerry, Gillette, Keurig, Macy's, Nike, because of Colin Kaepernick, Nordstrom's, because they don't, remember they don't sell Ivanka's pantyhose or whatever.

Liberals want to boycott Equinox, Soul Cycle, Chick-fil-A, In-N-Out, Hobby Lobby, NASCAR.

Both lists, me.

I'm on both lists.

But here we are.

But isn't this ridiculous?

It is ridiculous.

Thank you.

The answer is whether it's you, Sean Spicer, Tucker Carlson, I've had to address all of these on radio.

The solution is change the channel.

If you don't like it, let the market decide.

Because the problem today is, this relates to what you were talking about with Kevin and looking for likes.

In the social media world, you know, to quote the president, a 300 300-person sitting in New Jersey in their basement can create an Astroturf, non-organic movement that creates the impression to advertisers that there's something going on out there, and they run for cover.

Let the market govern this.

Right.

I hope so.

Well,

what about the market for this issue?

It's kind of a good week to talk about this.

It's Me Too redemption issue because

Mark Halpern, remember him?

He

look, I always say it's a case-by-case, and we don't know.

He denied the worst of it, which was an accusation that he used to rub his heart on against women at the office.

He admitted to like immorally asking them out, denied the worst, but of course he's going to.

And then there's Al Franken,

who I have defended many times and said, I don't think he did that shit.

Okay?

So it depends.

But

we need like a court, like a redemption court, because like like Mark Halpern, he's been gone two years.

He did lose everything at the time, but now he's got a book out.

So he interviewed a lot of Democratic strategists, and now they're all having to backpedal, saying, people are saying, why are you in his book, Mark Halpern?

And I'm asking,

who decides?

What is the point?

Does he never get to come back?

It's better than redemption court.

What?

Court.

Court.

There are people who do things that are illegal.

You can charge them with crimes or that are civil cases.

You know, Norman Mailer was really hard on women.

He stabbed his wife in the chest in public, almost killed her.

At a party with a penknife,

went to jail for it, spent some years on probation, it was adjudicated through the courts.

Would we be better off if they had canceled all of his book contracts after 1960 and no one ever read Executioner Song?

I don't think so.

There's a reason that we take these things.

It's a good book, do you know?

I know, but you can't justify stabbing with a good book.

No, you can't justify stabbing with a good book.

I'm not trying to get applause.

And he didn't go to court and say, hey, I'm a good writer.

You can't convict me of this crime.

You got to convince him.

I'm going to bring that into it.

Who cares if he was a

things that Mark Halperin's accused of doing are crimes.

And they're things that you can be sued for.

Right.

So take them to court.

Adjudicate it there.

Don't try to adjudicate it through Michael Show or through the HR office.

I will own this because

he re-emerged on my program.

My calculus as one who is privileged to have this platform.

And am I going to extend the invitation to him?

Was this.

Has he owned it and has he been punished?

You know that he wrote Game Change and Doubled Down, lost the deal for what he would have written about the last one, lost the HBO movie that would have been adapted by, lost all of his gigs, sat out for 500 days, and I thought had been punished enough.

And if not, then I asked the question, are we advocating a professional death sentence for someone like him?

Because I'm not comfortable with that.

Right.

And you said you regretted

helping push Al out.

Right, so it turned into groupthink, which is what you're talking about.

All of a sudden, there's a huge litmus test out there, and you're either peer or you're not peer, and you can't do any critical thinking, any kind of nuanced discussion.

And I knew at the time that I did it, and I'm not proud to say this, that it was wrong.

I mean, my parents taught me doing that kind of groupthink was wrong.

But we did it because we were in the panic of the moment.

And I told Al that, and Al said, well, you know, would you tell that to anyone who asked you?

I said, absolutely.

I'll own it.

And I'd own it even if I were in the Senate, because at some point, we as the accusers, we as the judgers, have to make a decision on when is enough enough.

And I think Helper, I don't think he's particularly going to enlighten me with any great political ideas.

I'm not going to read his book.

I don't care if he comes back.

Al Franken, I think, still has something to give in this country.

And I think.

Very different.

Right.

And so for me, and I'm not saying, I'm not criticizing Michael, but for me,

I made my decision on what part of this I owned that I needed to own up to.

And I think we all have to judge because if you look at the whole discussion, there but for the grace of God go all of us.

And if you're perfect, then you can throw the stone.

If you're not perfect, then maybe you ought to allow some amount of compassion and forgiveness.

The one challenge that we have in this country is we don't forgive enough.

But all of this stuff I still think would be easier if we would rely on the processes where we have things like due process and standards of evidence, when these things actually are, in many cases, legal questions.

A lot of this stuff is things: well, you have people come out and say, this happened to me 10 years ago or 15 years ago, and there are reasons for that.

And we should make it easier for people to file charges, and we should make it easier for women to pursue these things when they have been victimized in that way.

But when it comes up 20 years after the fact because someone's been named at the Supreme Court or something else, then you're way past the place where you've got useful standards of evidence and useful process.

Well, that's all fine and good if the criminal justice system and the civil justice system were equally accessible to everybody in our position.

That's true.

I think one other thing we've been reckoning with is that it's important for organizations where people work to take these things more seriously as well.

And one thing that's come out of this Mewtwo movement is that we're seeing employers, managers start to listen to women's concerns about violence in the workplace.

And

that is long overdue.

And there's one other thing that this conversation reminds me of, which is that one problem with today is that we try to resolve these issues in the worst possible place, which is Twitter, social media.

I mean, how much more meaningful is the conversation of a group of people sitting around a table who disagree with each other, but can be there face to face in real social infrastructure, having an interaction versus doing it in this place that takes us from zero to the next step.

And it's such a small sliver.

of people.

And it doesn't represent the vast majority even of liberals.

I don't understand.

Does that charity stand up to cancer?

I want to start stand up to Twitter.

Right.

People start, I have to say this doesn't represent any.

But if you think about these two conversations, we have a political system where the officials are not representing us, and we have a social media world that we spend all of our time in that doesn't represent us.

And I think what we're seeing is a real world of people who are spending their time day to day in this country, actually engaging each other and figuring out how to do a lot of things that you wouldn't quite understand if all you did is look at the catastrophe in the news.

Can I just say that it also social media brings out the beer muscles in everyone?

I pay close attention to the reaction to Halpern on my program.

The callers are overwhelmingly supportive of hearing what he has to say about the 2020 cycle.

But man, go look at social media.

Look at social media tonight after I say what I've said here.

It'll be ugly.

Don't kill me just for having you on.

I'm

platforming you.

Anyway, all right.

Thank you, panel.

You've all been platformed, but it's time for new rules.

Okay.

New rule, someone must tell me why all the overpriced restaurants have names with two words and an ampersand.

Faith and flower, pine and crane, church and state, and the most pretentious one of all, arm and leg.

A little starter joke to

build up to the new

rule to combat the skyrocketing rate of packaged thefts from porches, online retailers must open locations where customers can safely pick up their orders.

And while they're at it, they must store other products at these locations that people might also need.

In fact, they could call these locations stores.

New rule, this Greek farmer trying trying to save his goat from a wildfire has to explain why the goat seems so hesitant to go with him.

I'm not suggesting anything.

I'm just saying

it is fire.

You'd think the goat would be glad to go, but instead the goat is like, you know what, I'll take my chances with the flames.

It's odd, that's all I'm saying.

New Roll, horses need to stop having better hair than people.

Are you a herd or a boy band?

Isn't it enough that you're hung like a horse?

New Roll, the recipients of the hair loss tattoo, the tattoo that makes a bald head look like a shaved head, need to tell me exactly who they think they're fooling?

How about this?

Instead Instead of a tattoo of nubs on your head, tattoo a face up there.

That way when you look down at your phone, people think you're still paying attention.

And finally, new rule, if Donald Trump is looking for a legacy, don't buy Greenland.

Save Greenland.

That should be your legacy, Mr.

President.

And I'll tell you something else: if you get religion on global warming and become the greatest echo warrior we've ever had in politics, I'll vote for you.

I tweeted that last week.

I guess some people thought I was kidding.

I'm not.

I don't know if you are following the news about the environment, but it is definitely at the last chance, whatever it takes, moment.

And I know the president is hearing me because last week he tweeted this, saying he saw the show by accident.

He said the same thing a couple of years ago.

How do you watch an HBO show for an hour by accident?

When it was over, did you say, hey, that wasn't ballers?

Boy, that Bill Maher looks just like the rock.

But look, I'm glad we're talking, sir.

At one of your recent rallies, you called me a serious person, person, and I appreciate that.

You also called me third rate and a so-called comedian, and then a respected comedian.

I guess I'm complicated.

You also said I was wacky, which isn't really that big an insult for a comedian.

Side-splitting comedian Bill Maher.

But look, I'm not here to fight.

I'm here to offer my vote.

And so, Mr.

President, Your Excellency.

Least racist person in the world.

Let me address you directly

and try to win you over with logic because I know flattery simply will not work.

You're impervious to it.

It bounces off you like bullets from Superman's chest.

So I'm not even going to try that.

Not on a man as great as you.

I'm not that wacky.

I'd look foolish trying, and you would see through it right away because you're a stable genius.

And did I mention handsome?

When I see you and Melania together, I always think, which one was the model?

But sir, picture this headline.

Trump Saves Earth.

Feels right, doesn't it?

And all it would take is for you to undergo a sudden, profound change, like the Grinch when he saved Christmas.

How befitting a man of such power, of such great intellect, and large, completely un-mushroom-like penis.

Someone who has the most beautiful words and a slavish devotion to the truth.

I bet if you do this, the people will put your face on the hundred dollar bill, combining your two great loves, money and you.

And then I think they will put you on Mount Rushmore.

That'd be a switch, huh?

Someone chiseling you.

Wait, wait, no, no, no.

I was kidding.

I'm sorry, please, Mr.

President, before you change the channel and go back to your chess game.

Look,

I know,

I know we've tangled in the past.

It happens.

You sued me once, and we both have said some things.

You called me stupid, not considered smart, a dummy, not a smart guy, the dumbest man on television, fired like a dog, very sad, pathetic, bloated, and gone.

Dumbass, a rather dumb guy, a low-life dummy, dopey.

Dumb as a rock, moron, stupid guy, a very dumb guy, failing comedian.

And most hurtful of all, Rosie is smart.

And I called you a whiny little bitch.

But I'm just going to admit it right now.

I was jealous.

I always have been.

I mean, who's kidding who?

We both know you have the best brain, and everything you take on is an incredible success.

You won the trade war.

You built the wall.

You effortlessly solved the Middle East.

And Stormy Daniels is still basking in the afterglow of your incredible love making.

Women want to be with you and men want to be like you.

I know I do.

In fact, as a tribute to you, I've taken to wearing, I'll show you,

toilet paper on my shoe.

And I'm sure many would follow.

If you embrace the environment, think about the A-listers who overnight would become your biggest fans.

Brad, Matt, Clooney, the White House will be like Ocean's 11.

Taylor Swift will be begging to follow you on Twitter.

DiCaprio will love you.

Giselle will love you.

Ivanka will get invited to parties again.

You'll be a big hero in her eyes, and we know you love her in a completely appropriate way.

Look, sir, you're already the greatest president ever.

That's a fact because people are saying it.

So I can see why you might be thinking, why do I need to gild a lily?

I've already saved mankind from extinction once after Obama.

Do I have to do it twice?

Yes, sir.

I'm afraid you do.

Please, sir, lend your giant brain to work with the other lesser brains in the scientific community.

And if you save the planet, billions of children will be grateful, and one of them could be your next wife.

So please,

remember my pledge.

Become a pit bull for planet Earth, and you won't need Russia to hack my polling place.

I will vote for you.

I will take my paper ballot and put my prick next to your face.

All right, that's our show.

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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