Ep. #503: Terry McAuliffe, Richard Engel

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.

I don't know why you're happy tonight, but I.

You are, that's good.

I know.

You're proud to be an American because it's been five days without a massacre.

How about that, ladies and gentlemen?

How about a hand for ourselves?

Oh, what a shitty week, right?

Poor El Paso and Dayton still reeling from two disasters, a mass shooting and a Trump visit.

Just

every, you know,

but not.

Every city in the country, everyone is asking the same questions.

Why?

Why?

Why?

Why does his hair look like that?

Well, the president is off for a well, well-earned two-week vacation, which will be different from working.

How?

They want you to know, president will be available at all times if there is an emergency that needs to be made worse.

He is completely

good on that.

Well, we know.

Well, we know now this pattern that we have always seen whenever there's a tragedy.

It's all about how he's feeling.

Right?

It's like, is he okay?

This week,

after the massacres, he attacked the media, Obama, Google, Jared Brown, the mayor of Dayton, Betto, California, Sleepy Joe.

He's the only president who thinks consoler-in-chief means you console him.

And also, he's a whiny little bitch.

But seriously, Mr.

President, don't console us.

Really?

We don't, I know, well intent.

Don't console us.

And mostly stay out of hospitals.

I mean, we have seen what he does in these situations.

Like, you know, he threw paper towels to hurricane victims.

What does he do in a hospital?

Throw Tylenol?

I mean, these poor people, imagine waking up from surgery and

standing over you is this grinning, gaseous blob and his

scowling trophy wife.

People are like, shit, I must have died and went to hell.

They're like, I'm in the hospital.

I've had enough orange jello.

But of course, you can't tell him he's unpopular.

His new press spokesman drank the Kool-Aid, said, oh, yeah, Trump went to the hospital.

They they treated him like a rock star.

Yeah, R.

Kelly.

None of the eight patients in the El Paso hospital would agree to meet with Trump.

Isn't that something?

They were all asked, would you like to meet the president?

And they all said, El Paso.

here's a sobering statistic.

Gun violence has paralyzed 535 people in this country this year.

They're called the United States Congress.

Come on, stay with me a little faster than that.

No, Americans have made it clear.

They will endure school shootings, they will endure church shootings, but they draw the line at their shopping trips to Walmart.

That is too far.

So,

well, the shooter in El Paso did it because all the things that Trump says all the time, he took to be true, like Mexico is invading us, that kind of shit.

He took all that to be true.

But in his manifesto, he wanted everybody to know that he wasn't getting this from Donald Trump.

No, no, no.

He was getting it from Lou Dobb, same as Trump.

But what he did do, this guy, this shooter, he wanted you to know, nothing to do with Trump.

Although in the manifesto, Trump does get a story-by credit.

But

it's scary the way

some of this stuff is going so mainstream.

Tucker Carlson of Fox News says, white nationalism is a hoax.

You got to love Republicans.

Global warming is a hoax.

Russia, that was a hoax.

White nationalism is a hoax.

Hillary Clinton runs a pedophile ring out of a pizza parlor, Completely true.

That one we know is true.

And Tucker's evidence that white nationalism is a hoax, he says it's because he never met one.

Oh, come on, Tucker.

Yes, you have.

Okay, we got a great show.

We have Anthony Scaramucci, Catherine Rampel, and Tom Nichols.

And here a little later, we'll be speaking with

NBC and MSNBC chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel is backstage.

Well first up he is the former Democratic governor of Virginia and author of the New York Times best-selling book Beyond Charlottesville taking a stand against white nationalism Terry McAuliffe

how are you governor?

Good job

see you how are you great

all right

So you're very apropos for this week.

You're talking about Charlottesville was almost exactly two years ago.

Is that right?

August Two years ago, Monday.

Right.

Okay, so

what happened in Charlottesville was they were out loud and proud.

They came out of the shadows.

You bet.

Came out from under their rocks.

No masks.

Right.

No masks, right?

These were office park Nazis.

Yep.

Okay, some of them got in trouble for that.

Yep.

Now it seems they've gone back underground.

Which is better, to have them out in the open or in the shadows?

Out in the open, get them exposed.

Friday night, if you remember, they came out on the grounds of the University of Virginia.

hundreds with their torches marching onto the campus screaming, Jews, you will not replace us, blood and soil.

A lot of what you heard in 1933, 1934, Nazi Germany, and then Saturday, a thousand neo-Nazis, white supremacists, their swastikas, Adolf Hitler ideology, and just the most vile things I've ever heard in my life.

So if Trump is a white nationalist, as a lot of people are saying, and he has a 42% approval rating, what does that say to you?

It's not a good place for our country to be in.

I mean, I wrote this book.

I called him out that day.

He came out as a full-fledged racist and white nationals during Charlottesville.

I talked to him that day.

I told the president what was happening.

I begged him to come out.

This was his opportunity to heal the nation.

He didn't.

He came out and said there were good people on both sides.

Bill, there were not good people on the neo-Nazi and white supremacist side.

I think we could all agree on that.

Except for Trump.

I mean, he refused to do it.

Yeah.

Okay.

So

do you think this next election is going to be on the up and up?

Oh, I'm very concerned.

Russia is going to be as active as they've ever been.

You had bills introduced in Congress.

Mitch McConnell won't bring them up.

I'm very concerned.

I mean, I can tell you, in Virginia, when I was governor, I had to replace all the machines because I remember when I first voted, when I went to Richmond, moved down as governor, I remember I kept voting in the Senate race, kept voting for the Democrat, Republican name kept coming up.

Three times that happened.

What do you mean kept coming up?

So we had the touch screens.

I was voting for Mark Warner, our senator, and Ed Gillespie's name would light up.

Happened to me three times.

Finally, the fourth time.

Mark named and I quickly hit vote and I got out of there.

You know, all the cameras are looking at me like this guy doesn't know how to vote.

I mean, what's going on?

So then I had an investigation done, and listen to this.

I brought in some technology experts.

They were able to hack into our machines from off-site in about five or six minutes.

And within four minutes, they were able to change a vote.

I decertified all the machines.

Now in Virginia, we have paper ballots.

It's happening.

Yeah.

So how do you handicap this race so far?

I mean, obviously, the Democratic Party, which you've been a part of and influential in for a very long time, they're having a fight, as parties do, between the left and the center.

What is going to carry the day in this election?

First of all, I'm confident we're going to beat Trump.

I mean, I remember we lost three states.

But don't say that.

No, but I'm confident.

Yeah, we were confident last time.

It's not a good thing to say.

Well, not as confident, but listen, three states we lost by 77.

I'm not confident we're going to beat Trump.

So you better fucking be not confident.

Sorry, but.

I'm a glass overflowing guy.

But we lost three states by 77.

President West.

92 million people did not vote.

Okay.

We got to get them out.

We got to fire him up.

We've got to win those votes.

Well, then don't tell him it's going to go.

We're going to go to the Senate.

All right.

We've got to do it.

But on the Democratic side.

Okay, so what do you think?

Centrist or are you for Medicare for all?

Are you for expanding Obamacare?

And I hate these labels.

As governor, you know, I ain't going to.

That's a policy.

Got things done.

Created a record job.

That's policy.

Medicare for all or Obamacare?

Obamacare.

Okay.

Fix what fixes we have, take it to the next level.

Right.

Don't scare people with socialism.

But the idea you're attacking Joe Biden for President Obama's policies, who is one of our most popular presidents, doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

That is a dumb strategy.

So are you for Biden?

Is that who your person is?

Listen, I love them all.

I've known the vice president the longest.

I think he's got a great message.

I think he has the best chance of beating Trump.

But, I mean, this week he said a couple of things.

I mean, you know, he doesn't mean it.

You know, he said something about

poor kids are just as smart as white kids.

And then he said,

we believe in facts, not truth.

Truth, yeah.

No, truth over facts.

There's going to be some senior moments

with Joe Biden, right?

Don't we just have to get used to that?

Do you think it now, and people are going to try to link that to, like, can he actually do the job?

I don't think there is a realistic link there.

I don't think he's about to push the button or he thinks he's moving the remote and he blows up Russia.

I don't.

I don't.

Right.

And a guy who's lied, just certified 10,000 times since he's been in office, you're going to talk to me about Joe Biden.

You got Trump out there every single day and can't tell the truth.

I mean, come on.

But I'm just saying.

I'll take that band any day of the week.

We need to just.

Right, we're with that?

They're with us here.

Yes, of course.

If they're not with you here, you're in trouble, Governor.

I'll die.

Of course you do.

But I'm just saying, we need to get used to the fact that if he's the nominee, there's going to be some senior moments, and we can't lose our shit every time there's one.

I agree.

Okay, Okay, great.

It was a two-hour speech, I guess, in Iowa the other day, and he made one or two small mistakes.

But the bigger issue, we're running against Trump.

I mean, people got to keep their eye on the ball.

The one thing in these debates, though, Bill, I got to tell you, you know, I hate the back and forth, the negativity.

We need some joyful warriors out there, but we got to start talking about issues that the public cares about.

Lower prescription drug costs.

I haven't heard K-12.

I haven't heard infrastructure.

I haven't heard cybersecurity.

I haven't heard workforce training.

People at home want want us to talk to them about the issues of the world.

So,

and, you know,

we haven't seen much of Obama, which I think is good.

Because, you know, that's our big secret weapon, I think, at the end of the race.

People don't really pay attention until after Halloween of next year.

Yeah.

So,

okay.

And let's throw Michelle in there, too.

Yeah, and Michelle.

Yes, no, that's a little.

Maybe more.

Maybe more.

The other big weapon we used to have is your boy Bill Clinton.

Yeah.

But he can't do it now because we forgave him for 20 years.

And then I never saw this.

We unforgave him.

It was like, you're forgiven.

Oh, no, we forgot we hate you again.

What?

He's looking pretty smart now in the assault weapon ban he did in 1994.

Right, exactly.

Yeah.

So

and now it's coming back.

It's back in vogue.

I mean, you looked at mass shootings when that passed in 1994, and then Bush let it expire, mass shootings went back up again.

You know, there were some some good things.

I mean, this gun control, it is out of control.

So, how are the Clintons doing?

You got close with them.

Are they doing okay?

Yeah, sure.

I mean, they both have had spectacular lives.

I mean, he was a great president, left with the highest

approval rate of any two-term president.

You know, neither one of them ever did this show.

Well, that was a mistake.

Exactly.

Thank you.

Governor, Governor Terry McCullough.

That's all I wanted to hear.

All right, tell him to come now.

All right, let's meet our panel.

Thank you.

you.

Exactly.

That was a mistake.

I always said that.

Okay, here they are.

She's a USA Today contributor and author of The Death of Expertise, the campaign against established knowledge and why it matters.

Tom Nichols.

Tom, great to have you here.

The first time.

She's an op-ed columnist for the Washington Post and CNN political commentator.

Catherine Rampel, our returning champion.

And he's the former White House Communications Director under President Trump and author of Trump, the Blue Collar President, the Happy Warrior, Anthony Scaramucci, the mooch.

How are you?

Okay.

They're saying moots.

They're saying mooch.

I'm glad you're going to hear a boo, Bill.

Okay, so another grim week if you watch this show to catch up on the news.

I'll just tell you the brief: a 20-year-old white male in El Paso, who, as I said in the monologue, was taking his cues from Trump, bought his gun legally, and a 24-year-old white male again in Dayton, this guy had left-wing stuff

that we found.

This is a little more crazy, this guy.

He had kill lists and rape lists, and this is like the mental part of it.

That's what I'm saying.

I think gun laws, we can, I think we, let's just say from the outset, do we all agree?

Background checks, I mean, that's like 91% of the country is for that.

Let's not argue or talk talk about the things everybody's saying all week.

We all agree on that.

Block gun sales to mentally disturbed people, right?

Mandatory three-day waiting period.

Okay, so we're all on the, the country's on this.

Red flag laws.

Red flag laws.

Okay.

I think if you passed all that, it would be like when they stopped us from smoking wherever we wanted to and crippled the tobacco companies.

It would make smoking go down.

but people still smoke and die of lung cancer.

My question, let's go deeper.

Why are we so mentally unwell in this country?

Trump is mentally unwell, but he's not wrong when he says...

You know what?

I'm sorry.

First of all, Republicans love to talk about how they really think the real problem is mental illness.

I am all for greater treatment of mental illness, but if Republicans actually gave a damn about treating mental illness, they wouldn't have spent the last 10 years trying to repel Obamacare.

That's not the question I'm asking.

I'm asking why are so many Americans so unhappy?

Why is there so much frothing hate and frustration?

Opioid addiction, family addiction.

But that's a symptom.

Why?

What makes someone take opioids?

We're asking the wrong question because we need to think about why is this society producing so many angry young male losers

who are trying to kill people because you're right.

I mean, get rid of the guns, that'll cut down the body count.

But some of these guys have done things like plow cars into piles of people.

McVeigh used a truck bomb.

There's something else going on in the culture where we're producing these kind of angry, alienated losers that want to do a lot of violence to their own society.

And the Democrats go down the road of gun control, the Republicans go down the road of mental health, and nobody wants to talk about the larger cultural problem that's been going on for about 30 years.

There are mentally unwell people in Denmark.

There are mentally unwell people in Australia.

We don't arm them.

I said,

yes, but I'm sorry.

But if I think that's not that.

I don't think Denmark is like America.

I don't think there are that many unhappy, frustrated people.

It's because Denmark takes care of people, and this is a winner-and-loser country.

That's what it is.

You're either a winner, and if you're not a winner, you're a loser.

We can give a fuck what happens to you.

And people say, you know what, you leave me with nothing.

I'll leave you with nothing.

I am all for expanding the social safety net.

Look,

we agree on that.

I just don't think that that's going to be the cure-all for dealing with the people.

A guy in Japan just burned down a building with an anime factory with 33 people in it.

China has knife attacks.

Canada, Australia, and Norway have had mass shooters.

There's something going on.

We're in heated agreement.

We all agree.

Do what we have to do about the guns.

That's fine.

But in the meantime,

you're creating homicidal young men, and we haven't really thought about it.

The Ohio guy killed his sister.

I don't think bump stocks, whatever they are, is going to solve that.

But the larger problem is economic rent attribution, right?

Basically, profits in the society when they go 50-50 between capital and labor, we in general have a very happy period in the society.

Right.

If you look at capital and labor attribution right now, Bill, it's 60-40.

In the United Kingdom, it's 56-44, and they're voting for a Brexit.

And so, what ends up happening is you get the combination of family dysfunction, personal unhappiness, lack of opportunity, economic desperation, and access to weaponry.

And that's a very toxic mix of.

And let's bring the present.

it's look.

I know.

If you're going to go on and on about the division between capital and labor, I agree.

These are things we should address.

Then maybe we shouldn't have had a tax cut that transferred $2 trillion

to corporations and the well-being of the world.

You're talking about more of a social safety net, and that's not the answer because you need to put people and their lives in a position of self-determination.

Just giving

them taking away their health care.

I mean,

these aren't poor people.

These are are narcissistic young men with a serious sense of grievance and injury that is completely unrelated to reality.

I mean, these are guys, whether it's the Dayton shooter, the Dallas shooter.

I mean, these are guys that have a particular personality profile, and it's not economic anxiety.

That's not what's doing.

As long as we're talking about mental health, I must say about Trump.

Now, we did an editorial here a little while ago that said the narcissism.

I know everybody talks about it, but they talk about it like it's a quirk.

And what I was saying was, it's not a quirk.

Malignant, narcissistic personality disorder.

It's a real thing.

If he was a schizophrenic or bipolar, we would take it much more seriously.

And unfortunately, it makes him a great politician because he can do what politicians, what they need to do, talk out of two sides of his mouth.

Let me,

I think we can bring This is what I said this way, I think we can bring up big background checks like we've never had before.

Next day, the NRA's very strong views will be represented and respected in Congress like they're not.

Last year when there was the shooting, he said, remember this?

They had that big conclave?

He said, I like taking the guns early.

Take the guns first, go through due process second.

And the way the right wing just pretends he never said it because the expectations for this mental patient are so low.

Joe Biden says one little thing, and it's like, oh my god, Biden's senile.

And this guy, I saw him on the lawn today, frothing, and spitting, and sweating, and like

pacing like a caged animal and lying and going off his head on a million different things.

And that's okay because the bar is nowhere for him.

This is one of our big disadvantages.

What about defend your friends?

I try to defend him.

I mean, in a nice way, Mr.

Python.

By the way, I do try to defend him, but there are certain things that he's done that are absolutely undefensible.

And you've seen me, and we've talked about it.

I can't defend him.

No, I know.

And I've been very, very outspoken about certain things that he's doing.

But here's the one thing I would say to him.

I would really caution him, because he is going to break that rock.

If you hit the rock 50 times, it may not break on the 49th time, but the 50th time when it breaks, Bill, he's going to shatter the support that he thinks he has because it's a little bit like McCarthyism in the the following respect.

It burnt out in a supernova.

And once it burnt out, everybody woke up and said, oh, geez, I didn't really like Joe McCarthy.

And so what I'm astonished by is the lack of courage of Republican elected leaders not to pick up the phone and call them out or call them out on TV or say, hey, you know, we like a lot of your policies.

We like a lot of direction.

I'm not in love with the trade situation, which I know we're going to talk about.

But what are you doing?

Because what you're doing is you're making it almost impossible for us to defend and or advocate I think it's beyond that they need to pick up the phone and tell him to stop saying the stupid racist shit It's that they they need to distance themselves from him and so do you frankly I mean

I'm an American I love my country you can love your country and hate the racism in our white house and I spoke out against the racism But I'm also a loyal friend.

I'm gonna pick up the phone and talk to him and I'm gonna tell him the truth or I'm gonna say it on television.

But you act like this is a one-off slip of the tongue.

This is his slide.

I didn't say that it was an all-go, but I don't walk away from people, particularly people that are doing the toughest job in the world.

Okay, every single person in this room is an American.

We are united.

We have to figure it out together.

If he is going to fail, beat him at the ballot box.

But in the meantime, over the next 15 months, let's talk to him and say, hey, why don't you knock off some of this?

We can't talk to him because it's got that narcissistic thing I'm talking about.

And you know, and the dog is going to

rock in the break.

And when do it?

And when you cut it out, the rock and him break.

He's a misbehaving seventh grader who needs some kind of to remain with supervision.

He's the president of the United States.

He has the most powerful job in the world, and he wanted that job.

And now he says, feel bad for me because it's really hard.

If he didn't want the job, he shouldn't have run for it.

It's a disease that is.

And

I'm sorry, I can't get over the racism stuff.

It's not like this is a one-off thing.

It wasn't just Charlottesville.

It wasn't, you know, go back to where you came from.

I did hear him condemn that.

Yeah, but

this goes back to the 70s.

This goes back to, like, when the Nixon administration thought Trump was too racist.

Like, do you know how

racist you have to be for the Nixon administration to think you're too racist?

I think it's unfair.

He sued me in 2013.

That was because I was making fun of his racism, okay?

So I've been there.

We don't have to like put it in the middle of the day.

I know you.

I know.

Racism bad.

You good.

I think it's unfair to say walk away from your friend.

On the other hand, you can't say, look, I just don't support this president anymore and I can't be associated with this.

Friendship is one thing, but as a political matter.

Can I just demonstrate?

Tom, and I've said this on TV, I'll say it again here.

There's many people that have been inside the administration that have supported the president, cabinet officials, former cabinet officials, former military, that are ready to do that if he keeps it up.

And I've said that very publicly.

One more little thing to demonstrate.

You don't just walk away from your friends.

The guy's got the toughest job in the world.

Let's play it straight.

I don't know if the way he does it is the toughest job in the world.

He comes down to the office at 11, okay?

He's the toughest job in the world, though?

The way he does it, I don't think it's.

It's a pretty tough job right here.

He doesn't read, Anthony.

If you don't read, come on.

He doesn't read.

It's not like he's like, toughest job.

Give me those briefing books.

I got to lock myself in the residence for four hours and study this shit.

That's

how he does the job.

Toughest job in the world are the people who have to brief him.

Right.

That's the toughest job in the world.

That's right.

Or defend some of the nonsense.

That's a tough job, too.

But listen, listen, I'm with you on a lot of that stuff.

I'm very honest with you.

All right, let's stop arguing.

But I just

one more little thing to show, but I'm talking about the insanity that we just accept.

This is him talking about creating the jobs with the arms deal that we're selling to Saudi Arabia.

Okay?

March 20th to 18.

We're talking about over 40,000 jobs.

October 17th, it's 500,000 500,000 jobs.

I'm quoting here.

October 19th, two days later, 600,000 jobs.

June 23rd, 2019, it's a million jobs and probably more.

Okay,

either he's lying or he has no sense of reality.

Can't it be both?

It's got to be grounds for something.

So

ICE raided a food processing plant in Mississippi yesterday, right?

700 people, the workers.

This is what I don't get about his supporters, the blue-collar people you talk about.

They never get the bait and switch.

All the workers were arrested.

Nobody for management.

Isn't this a two-way street?

If you're hiring illegals?

Well,

but I mean, if he went after management, he'd have to go after himself.

Right.

That's the problem.

Or today, my newspaper, The Washington Post, had a story about how Trump is still employing undocumented workers on construction crews, at his golf courses, and at his winery.

So, you know,

he's in a tough position here.

Is he going to arrest himself?

This is the great con that they've pulled on working people for so long, thinking that their way to the American dream is being blocked by immigrants and single moms on food stamps.

Instead of Jared Kushner and the Koch brothers, you know, where'd all the money go?

Not to these immigrants who are working at the

fucking chicken factory.

about the raver one second.

The thing that distresses me is the

harshness of it.

And it's almost like

it's horrible.

And so at the end of the day, just disgusting.

I don't care who you are, but if you have children or you have family members, you have to just think about what they just did.

So I find it reprehensible.

I have no problem speaking out against it.

But we have a very big problem, Bill, is that both sides are not willing to solve the immigration problem.

They're involved.

Both sides are willing to

both sides.

Well, he's talking about the bigger problem of immigration.

So, I'm talking about

she wants to have a fight, and I'm ready for the fight if you want to have it, but I'm just letting you know that the Congress is not moving, the president is not moving, and we're stuck here now.

But there have been many bills.

There was a deal.

There was a deal last year, and then Trump said that he ran out and said shithole countries on the guy.

He was ready to sign up.

No, that is false.

The problem is that the problem is that the problem is that it

He said he was ready to

deal with

legal immigration in half.

The problem with this conversation is

the president understands policy.

And he doesn't.

He doesn't understand a thing about this.

All right.

This is theater.

All right.

Let me just go on.

Whether he understands policy or not, what happened at this ICE situation is disgusting.

Yes.

Disgusting.

Yes.

Okay.

So we could talk about policy, whether he understands it or not.

I want to mention something that's going on in the big presidential race.

Elizabeth Warren is now in second place.

She's surging.

I mean,

I love Bernie, but Warren is the new standards.

That's just what the polls say.

And we have to concentrate on beating Trump.

Okay.

40-state landslide by President Trump if she gets the nomination.

Okay, well, maybe so.

But for right now, I'm just going to say she's got a plan for that.

You may even vote for Trump.

She may vote.

She's doing a bit.

Shut up.

Sorry.

So, yes, she has everything, but the Liz Barrows, always, she's got a plan for that.

In fact, that's her swag.

Oh, there it is.

Everything is, you know, Warren has a plan for that.

You know, I say to people, everything?

Yes, I was surprised.

I thought it was just healthcare and education.

No, she has a plan for everything.

For example, if you get stood up at a restaurant, she has a plan for that.

Pretend you're a food critic.

That's...

I didn't realize she had a plan

for everything.

If your eyes are red because you're stoned at work, she has a plan.

Put Visine in one eye, your boss will think you have pink eye and give you the day off.

This woman, I'm telling you, is fantastic.

I wish she didn't say that in front of my kids.

If you can't afford a plane ticket for your child, she has a plan.

Tell the stewardess he's your companion midget.

If you accidentally pee your pants, oh my god, you got a plan for that?

Yes.

Say someone spilled their glass on your crotch and they were drinking piss.

If you fart on an elevator, she has a plan.

Turn to the closest person and say, excuse you.

If you have a ghost in your house and you want them to leave, wow, that is really a plan for everything.

She has a plan.

Try talking to the ghost about Bitcoin.

And if there's a zombie outbreak in LA and you don't want to be eaten, she's got a plan.

Cover yourself in gluten.

Okay,

he is the NBC News chief foreign correspondent and host of MSNBC's unassignment with Richard Engel.

Please welcome Richard Engel who's over here.

Richard,

always good to see you safe.

Knowing what a dangerous job you have, where have you been lately that you're so thankful you're back from?

Iran?

I've spent a lot of time in the Persian Gulf.

Actually, you were talking about climate.

I just got back from Iceland, and I was standing on a glacier, and it was melting beneath my feet.

And I was watching the water just drain into the land.

I know somebody just went to Alaska and said we wanted to fly over the glaciers, and they said it's too hot.

Yeah.

So one glacier there in Iceland is dead.

It's gone.

And I spoke to the leading environmental scientists in the country.

He said all of them are going to go.

He said, even if we did all the things that are proposed right now, the inertia of what we've done so far is already too much that the glaciers there are all going to go.

Have a great weekend, everybody.

So,

yeah.

Well, no, we got to talk about that stuff.

But let's talk about where you have been.

I was at a white supremacist neo-Nazi rally.

Want to hear another piece of good news?

Yeah.

Related to the conversation earlier.

Covering it, I assume.

Yes, yes, yes.

No, I had a small booth there with selling t-shirts.

So I was at a neo-Nazi rally in Germany, of all places.

Oh, I thought they couldn't have them in Germany.

No, they can, but you're not allowed to display a swast sticker.

You can't do the open-handed salute.

Wow.

So all these people, this was a really ugly crowd, they had the swastika tattoos, but they cover them.

Or they take a magic marker and they fill it in so it doesn't look like a swast sticker.

And they do a closed-hand salute instead.

So the interesting thing related to this conversation is as I walked in and all the other people walked in they were handed a red baseball cap.

Oh yeah.

And I spoke to the

interdirectional symbol now.

And it said MAGA on it.

Of course.

Not MAGA, not the U.S.

make Germany hate again.

Wow.

And this was just recently.

Well, a lot of Europe has changed.

I know that's something you also cover.

We were talking about immigration a minute ago.

I mean, even Hillary Clinton said Europe has to get a handle on its immigration.

I mean many people who are not conservative people have made the same point that the reason why so many of these nationalist parties are rising as Europe is because the citizenry doesn't think that the liberals can protect them from a kind of immigration that would inundate them.

Well there is this this theory.

It's actually a theory that unites all of these shooters that are across the U.S.

that are opening fire and the right-wing movements in Europe.

And they call it the Great Replacement.

There have been articles written about it in a lot of newspapers.

And it's a conspiracy theory that says that there is a plot by industrialists, Jews, and others to take all of the people from the Muslim world, from the non-white world, and send them up to Europe and the United States in order to destroy the existing system.

And this concept has been written about in the manifestos that have been published, and it is the same kind of thing that we heard at this neo-Nazi rally, and it's the same kind of thing you hear in a lot of mainstream right-wing politicians.

So it's about anti-immigration, and then you take it a little bit further and you say, ah, it's not just about uncontrolled migration or immigration, it's a plot to destroy civilization as we know it, and therefore we need to fight back and open fire and shopping malls and schools.

Well, there have been some...

I thought, positive things I've read in the news lately about the Arab world.

Three countries in North Africa, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco banned face veils, which six European countries have done.

66% of 18 to 24 Arabs say religion plays too big a role in the Middle East.

Wow, that's what I've been saying.

79% say the Arab world needs to reform its religion.

And last week in Saudi Arabia, they changed the law.

A woman does not need a guardian to leave the house.

I must say, the fact that that gets applause is the very definition of the soft bigotry of low expectations.

What I'm watching more closely in the Middle East at the moment is I think there's a real possibility that there could be some sort of low-level conflict with Iran.

And while there's some social changes going on in the Arab world, because there's more authoritarian regimes, frankly, returning,

there are also, there is this danger that the situation in the Persian Gulf, which is already dangerous, one could say we're already in a very low-level conflict, could escalate a couple of notches.

Because Iran feels it has been forced into a corner, the sanctions on it are

starving.

People are

struggling to survive.

There's shortages of medicines.

What do they have to lose?

And that's exactly what it comes to.

There are people, there are hardliners who want this conflict outside of Iran, and there are some even in Iran, particularly in the the Revolutionary Guard who say, we're dead anyway.

If we do nothing, the sanctions will kill us.

So we may as well try to, not, they don't want a war necessarily, but they want something that will change the dynamic.

And they look at history, they look at Saddam Hussein, Saddam Hussein's Iraq, and they saw what happened to, and Iran fought a war, a very bloody war with Iraq.

So they know what a tough enemy Iraq was.

And then they saw what a decade of sanctions on Saddam Hussein's Hussein's Iraq did.

By the time the U.S.

invaded, the army didn't work,

the weapons didn't work, nothing, the country folded in 21 days.

So they think, if we do nothing, we're dead anyway.

Look at what happens.

And now Iran has Iraq.

So let's talk about China.

You brought it up.

Trump says trade wars are good and easy to win, spoken like a true barfly.

I think if Democrats could stop talking about

1994,

they could make a real great campaign point out of this because trade wars are not good for anybody.

They're not helping the farmers.

They're not helping consumers.

It's a tax.

I think

Morgan Stanley says, well, first of all, they make the point that recession is usually brought on by a tax.

a tax raise, and that's exactly what tariffs are.

They said we would see the global economy entering recession in three quarters.

Perfect timing, I say.

I mean I've been rooting for a recession.

Sean Hannity says I'm able for that and I'm bringing it on.

Sean, if you're watching, I'm not a genie.

I can't make it happen.

I'm just wishing it.

If it happens, it'll be because of your Lord and the Savior, Donald J.

Trump.

The problem is that when you go to war, as Richard knows because he's been in wartime situations, you need preparation and planning.

And so what happened with this trade war is we dropped a bomb in the situation without full coordination with our allies, the Europeans as an example.

We could have teamed up with the Europeans.

It would have been 46% of the economic output of the world, 650 million people, and then we could have collectively bargained with the Chinese.

And then, Bill, rather than doing these unpredictable tariff roulette, we could have said to everybody, okay, here's what we're going to do, 2% tariffs a quarter until we get up to where the Chinese are taxing our goods going into into their country, and it would have to give everybody in the United States, business leaders large and small, the opportunity to adjust to the tariffs.

I think even Natalie.

Did you ever say anything like that to Trump?

Would he understand it?

Did he?

100%.

I wrote an op-ed about it in the FT last year.

But that would be reading.

Did you ever say it to him?

You did.

You actually said it.

100%.

And what was his term?

Did he look like he was absorbing that?

Seriously.

Well, this is one of the problems.

He wants to do it his way.

He took a machine gun, known as his Twitter account, and shot in a 360-degree circle and then dropped the gun.

I don't think Trump is really disappointed.

But we could be upset about what's going on right now.

I don't think they're supposed to be.

They're very upset.

By the way, Anthony's idea is not unique to you.

In fact, Barack Obama tried it.

It was called the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

It wasn't teaming up with the Europeans.

It was teaming up with our Pacific Rim allies.

TPP.

TPP.

And among Trump's first orders of business was to pull us out of it.

Yes.

To be fair, Bernie Sanders also against it.

And And also,

I think that's a good question.

Second

one against it.

But this was, I mean, this was an attempt to kind of put a wall, excuse the term, around China taking over the world.

Because kind of, you know this by anyway, China is kind of taking over the world.

I cannot pick up the paper one week without reading about them in some country, African countries, South American countries, building ports, the electrical grid, the roads, yes.

People in America don't know what it is.

It's called the Belt and Road Initiative.

It has a terrible name.

It's a whole member.

It's the Towering Road Initiative, yes.

They are building infrastructure all around the world.

They are constructing a new Silk Road in order to establish a new modern trade route that leads back to the United States.

That's the nation.

And it is happening now.

At this moment, I don't believe that the president understands what a tariff is.

And that's part of the problem.

This is what happens when every policy is merely an attempt to kind of push a button to get a narcissistic jolt from the base.

And so that's why he's

undoing the Iran deal is the same thing as undoing Obamacare.

Let's just blow it up.

We know it was bad because Obama did it.

And then LCPP.

Well, he must know what he's doing.

I guess they're just going to have to keep touching this hot stuff.

I'm not wishing for a recession, but if the farmers want to keep touching this stuff.

Well, you should wish for a recession because that will definitely get him unelected.

Okay, but Bill, you don't really want a recession.

I really do.

You're going to not have to.

We have survived many recessions.

We can't survive another Donald Trump term.

We're going to take lower-middle-income people out of work.

lot of work.

I do.

Get him at the ballot box in the intellectual marketplace that I've abused.

You don't want to knock those people out of work.

But to Tom's point, the tariffs are not.

You have to pay short-term payment.

Remember, everybody has long-term rights.

Thank you very much.

The tariff is a regressive tax.

Lower middle-income people pay it.

Yes.

Small business people pay it.

The Chinese are not paying the tariffs.

Right.

Yes.

We have four studies to prove that.

I wish you would stop saying that.

I have a cousin in the autoglass business, $10,000 bill last month.

If he raises the tariffs again September 1st, he's going to take his business out of business.

He's not going to be able to afford the tariff that he wants to do.

The other issue is it's not even clear what the Chinese have to do at this point to appease Trump.

Trump does not know what he wants.

We have legitimate grievances against China, but those are not the things that he's picking on them for.

So how do you negotiate across the table with someone who can't even define what victory is?

I mean, how do you even know what concessions to make?

You could call Fox and friends and tell them to do it.

He had a deal on the table that he thought, Catherine, honestly, he had a deal in April.

They thought they were very close to the deal, and the Chinese pulled back on a few things.

They have a culture of retrading situations, but then we let the thing get out of control.

Because what do you know about wars?

They're not easy to win.

And without a lack of preparation, a lack of planning, you get the doctrine of unintended consequences, what we have right now.

Okay.

So I see.

Which is now a currency war, by the way.

I saw a report you did last night on Brian Williams.

No, he didn't.

Brian Williams?

Yeah, he showed your report.

Oh, okay, fine.

It was on nightly news originally.

Okay, well, I can't, you know, when times are this tough, I can only take.

You're watching it night.

I can only take my news from Brian Williams.

I swear to God.

He's the only one I can hear at this point when it's this bad.

Gotcha.

So, okay.

So they showed your report about how, this is really interesting, how Russia is exploiting our racial problems.

Russia has historians too, and they understand that the original sin of this country and the still bleeding wound is racism.

And so the report was about how they made, you know, you've seen these viral videos of everyday racism, a white lady photographing black people just doing nothing, but she's freaking out about it.

It was Russia who made those go viral.

They know this is the way to get us to hate each other.

So exploiting an adversary or an enemy's divisions, internal divisions, is a classic strategy, right?

Divide and conquer.

You want to focus on your enemy's weaknesses and put pressure on them.

And in the era of social media, that's really easy.

So there are these videos, legitimate videos.

Yes.

They're real videos.

A woman comes outside, a white woman, and she's furious because there's a taco truck right in front of her house, and somebody films her saying, I'm going to call ICE

on the people who operate the taco trucks.

And everyone gets hysterical.

Look at this racist white woman attacking two people, just a few people selling tacos.

So these videos get posted, everybody shares them.

But there are actual algorithms to make a video go viral.

They don't happen, it doesn't happen by accident.

And that's right.

Somebody has to push it.

And this study that I focused on last night said that in a variety of these videos, dozens of these videos, which people have all seen, it was Russia pushing them,

promoting them, Russian bots to make them pop up into your Twitter account.

This is an old Soviet line.

This is an old Soviet line.

This is the Soviet line, and it's terrifying because Soviet propaganda was really ham-fisted and stupid and not that effective.

They've taken the Soviet line that America, I spent a lot of time in the Soviet Union at the beginning of my career, and if you talk to ordinary Soviet citizens, they say America's on the verge of a race war every minute.

But that was the Soviet government pushing that.

Now you have the Soviet line pumped on steroids through social media, and it's aimed not just at us, it's aimed at the Russians as well to say, you know, look at this

utopia we've created here of white Christians, don't be like the Americans.

I mean, this is an attack on all fronts and we're just not doing anything about it.

How do you stop it?

Is there a way to stop it?

I think you have to educate people.

You have to educate people how to interact with the media.

I think you have to work at trying to reduce some of the rage in our society.

You were talking earlier.

Why is our society so angry?

Why do people drive on the streets with their white knuckles and they're so mad all the time?

And I think it's because we're not taking care of each other and we're not taking care of our family.

We're not taking care of our medical care.

Look at our policy.

We have no industrial policy, no infrastructure policy, no education policy.

The Chinese were talking about 25 to 50 year policy.

I thought he was going to fix everything.

I'm the one who can fix it all.

You know, ILO can fix it.

Nobody can fix everything, but John Kennedy had a 10-year plan to get to the moon.

That seemed to work out.

We don't have plans to do that.

The actual policies that he is pursuing are exacerbating all of those inequalities.

There's that little thing, yeah.

You know, taking away health care, giving more tax cuts to the rich.

And we're spending a lot of time listening to rage entrepreneurs, and the president is the first among them of people who just tell us all day long that we ought to be mad at each other about everything, that everybody's screwing us over.

And that comes right from the top.

The president is the master of that message.

It's an angry country right now.

That's what I'm saying.

I come back, you know, since I'm a foreign correspondent, I come back episode.

You notice, I notice it.

You can feel it.

It's an angry place right now.

I'm not happy now.

Thank you, panel.

It was very enlightening.

But it's time for new rules.

Let's have some laps.

Laps, laughs, laughs.

oh hello

you feel that too

okay new rule the best way to prevent shark attacks is by not going in the ocean the ocean's their turf you'll never be attacked by a shark on land sharks don't come onto land because they're afraid they'll get shot

New rule, the Louisiana woman who was arrested last week with $6,000 hidden in her vagina

and also a gram of meth in her vagina has to do whatever she damn well wants.

She had a vagina full of drugs and money.

What was in her butt?

Rainbows?

Neurol, someone has to tell me how I've never seen a fast and furious movie, but they still make me bored.

Show me something I don't see every day, like a really expensive sports car, but the driver has hair.

New rule, don't make the catchphrase for your movie for anyone who has ever wanted a dream, because that's an awfully low bar.

It's not even for dreamers, it's for people who have considered dreaming.

You might as well make it for anyone who goes to a movie for the air conditioning.

New rule, Trump has to stop whining that Fox News isn't loyal enough to him.

If they're any more loyal, be called Fox and friends with benefits.

He's like that guy in porn who keeps saying, suck that dick while she's sucking that dick.

I hear.

And finally, new rule: if the Democrats are going to continue to debate stuff that happened in the 1970s, they have to dress in 70s clothing.

If we're going to talk about busing, do it right.

Even though nobody under 55 knows what you're talking about, you may as well be debating debating denture cream.

But why bring it up at all?

Does anyone really think today's helicopter parents would be into bussing little Harper

90 minutes away to the poor side of town?

But this is the new trick in democratic politics.

Dig up something your opponent said decades ago that looks bad by today's standards and pretend that that's a mic drop evidence of your awesome moral superiority.

Kirsten Gillibrand tried to pull some of that woke liberal time machine bullshit on Biden, calling out something he wrote 38 years ago about women working outside the home.

For more details, visit the National Archives.

It's on microfiche.

Liberals are funny.

They believe in evolution, except when it comes to people.

Kamala Harris was our attorney general here in California in 2010, and I contributed to her campaign.

And I was disappointed when she opposed legalizing marijuana.

Well, now she's for it.

That's all that matters.

We don't need to beat her up about 2010.

That's called learning.

We used to to want that in a leader.

Obama was against gay marriage when he became president, as was most of the country.

But then...

I've been going through an evolution on this issue.

And do you recall who got him to evolve?

Biden.

Humans evolve.

You could be against gender-inclusive bathrooms and then one day change your mind because you have to take a wicked piss

People need to stop pretending that if they were alive back when they wouldn't have been the same asshole as everyone else Yes, you would

I know your parents told you you're exceptional, but not to the point of seeing the future You would have driven without seatbelts and drank when you were pregnant and hit your kids and hit your neighbor's kids.

They did that shit.

Yeah, it's a member of the neighborhood.

Because woke sight is not 2020 and you don't have ESPCP.

Extrasensory politically correct perception.

If you were around in the 1980s, you would have worn those horrible colors

and the big shoulder pads.

you just would have.

You're not Nostradamus.

And if you were around in the 1780s and you were rich and white, you likely would have had slaves.

The first abolition society in America was founded in 1775 and it had 24 members.

24 people in the whole country thought slavery was wrong the year before we declared independence.

Stop being surprised.

We used to be dumber than we are now.

The humans of tomorrow will be horrified by us.

They won't believe we used to sexualize people during sex.

Millennials seem to think they came along right as society met perfection.

Do you really think future generations will look at what you're doing?

The man buns and the

the giant stupid ear-stretching earrings and say

that was the moment civilization peaked we can add nothing more

you're not morally better than your grandparents you just came later

You're just the next upgrade.

You're the iPhone 11.

Yeah, it's funny.

Nobody has trouble grasping technological evolution.

Nobody writing a love note with a quill ever said, why can't I send a dick pic?

Nobody in 1975 asked, why is it my TV flat?

Why is my A-track not satellite radio?

Nobody speaking into that Kleenex box that we had at first was mad at it because it wasn't a smartphone yet.

Things get obsolete because we grow and improve, including us.

Can we please stop pointing out people breaking rules that didn't exist yet?

And just grandfather in the shit, you would have done if you were alive then.

I'm sorry, Joe Biden had to get along with segregationists, but when he first entered politics, he had to get along with Aaron Burr.

All right, that's our show.

I'll be at the Smart Financial Center in Sugarland, Texas, September 21st, at the Civic Center Music Hall in Oklahoma City, September 22nd.

And at Madison Square Garden in New York City, November 9th, I want to thank my guests, Tom Nichols, Catherine Rampell, Anthony Scaramucci, Richard Engel, and Terry McCauley.

Stay tuned for overtime on YouTube.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher every Friday night at 10, or watch him anytime on HBO On Demand.

For more information, log on to HBO.com.