Ep. #493: Adam Schiff, Bob Costas

Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

I lit the fuse and my life turns into everything it wasn't supposed to be.

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was quick.

He kept saying, no, no, no, I'm in the hospital now, but next week I'll be ready for the show.

Now, Charlie's sober.

He's gonna tell you the truth.

How do I present this with any class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

Aka Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

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

Start the clock.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

gentlemen.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Well,

thank you very much.

Oh, that makes me feel fantastic.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Please,

let's not kid ourselves.

I know why you're excited tonight.

Biden is in.

I know.

Finally, a fresh face.

And this brings the number of Democrats running for president to everybody.

Joe made the announcement on his social media platform, Western Union.

You know what?

I am going to do old jokes, because I do everything kind of jokes.

That doesn't mean that I don't think he should be president just because he's 76.

That's ageism, which is a form of bigotry like the others.

Okay,

but having said that, he does have hair plugs that are older than Pete Buttigieg.

And

two things can be true.

And I strongly disagree with those people who say Joe Biden doesn't have a vision.

He doesn't have night vision.

He has vision.

But no, it's obvious.

The woke left is not excited about this.

They're like, oh great, another white guy in the race.

So today Joe announced he is transitioning.

And

the woke people love that, but then he fucked up his own gender pronoun.

Now they hate him again.

Now, of course, the other complaint about Joe Biden and his rollout was that it's a little light on policy, which is true.

You know, he didn't offer anything like free college.

But if you are stressed out about your student loans, he'll give you a shoulder.

But now he was,

hey, he's brave.

He went on the view today.

All those huggable ladies.

It's like sending a drug addict to Burning Man.

I mean, it was.

But I like Joe's message.

His message is different than the other candidates so far, which is there is only one issue.

That's what he is saying.

Donald Trump must be removed.

This

kind of resonates with me because just as he was saying it, this was what was going on.

Yeah, those two.

Imagine what Trump thinks when he sees this.

It's like being at a party, seeing your wife talking to your mistress.

But I can tell that Trump is a little worried about Biden because he already got a nickname, Sleepy Joe.

He's attacking Biden for being old and unfit.

Donald Trump, who is built like a melting port-a-potty.

This guy,

he is,

you've got to give it to Trump.

He's an unbelievable politician that he can be that and attack.

He said today, I swear to God, these are Trump's exact words, I just feel like a young man.

I'm so young.

I can't believe it.

I'm the youngest person.

I am a young, vibrant man.

He can talk himself into anything.

Well, we'll see how vibrant he is tonight because it's Melania's birthday.

Well,

the Trumps do birthdays a little different.

She looks like a stripper, and he jumps in the cake.

No, it was lovely.

She made a wish and blew out the candles, but he was still there.

Thanks for that, Robert Mueller.

That's the big thing.

We were off last week for Easter, and that was the big news that we weren't here for.

The Mueller report, the full one came out, and if you haven't read it, spoiler alert, hope dies in the end.

It was like all the president's men meet Al Capone's vault.

What the fuck?

I'm going to talk about it at the end, but I did not feel good about this Mueller report.

I mean, I feel different about everything around.

I learned a lot.

Two weeks ago, I thought laws were almost like rules.

Now I know if an idiot does it, it's not illegal.

Yeah, there was no prosecuting from the prosecutor.

But he left breadcrumbs.

Because that worked out so well for Hansel and Gretel.

Anyway, we got a great show.

John Avlon is here.

Zelina Maxwell and Grover Narciss.

And a little later, I'll be speaking with my old friend Bob Costas backstage.

But first up, he is the U.S.

Representative for California's 28th District and the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

You know him, you love him.

Adam Schiff is over here.

Deafening applause for coming to the year.

Well, a lot of people get standing O's, but I must say you deserve that standing O

for your not-okay speech.

Thank you.

When you made your

great, I got to ask, maybe it's impolite, was that an ad-lib, that whole speech, or did you have that ready to go?

Well, I knew the points I wanted to make, but I didn't write it out because

I wasn't sure what they had in mind.

But look, you know, this has been reaffirmed now by Giuliani and the rest of the crowd.

They think it's perfectly fine to take help from a hostile foreign power, to welcome it, to build it into their communications plan.

They don't view that as collusion.

They view that as just smart politics.

I think it's unpatriotic.

I think it's scummy and wrong.

I think most of the people do.

But,

I mean, the Mullah report is, at the end of the day, you know, that firecracker that goes up and then the one that fizzles.

You know, oh, look, nothing.

Do you think you guys relied too much on that?

Look, I was always of the opinion, number one, that the Office of Legal Counsel opinion that you can't indict a sitting president was wrong.

Oh, good.

That in fact, you can indict a sitting president.

I think there are prudential reasons not to try someone who's the President of the United States, but particularly when there's any risk of the statutes of limitations running, if the President commits a crime, they should be indicted and you should stay prosecution.

But frankly, I had no expectation that that would be the course Mueller would take, even if the evidence supported it, because he is fundamentally conservative, and I don't mean left-right conservative, but he was going to follow the established policy.

He was not going to make new ground.

So I didn't think it was realistic to expect that he would indict the president.

And those that did, I think, were unrealistic in their expectations.

But I do think he laid out what we needed to see, which is that the Russians were engaged in a systemic effort to interfere in our election, that the Trump campaign welcomed it, embraced it, built it into their plan, made full use of it.

lied about it, covered it up, and then obstructed the investigation into it.

And if we had any doubt before about about this president's fitness for office, there is no doubt remaining he is unfit for the presidency.

Well,

but this was our big gun.

Now it just looks like you're stalking him.

I think in the eyes of the people who don't follow it that closely, which is most of the country, was here's the thing about Bob Mueller.

He's like the last person, maybe the last thing in America that left and right agreed on.

Left and right basically agreed, this is a guy of honor, this is an honest guy, this is an honest broker, whatever he says goes.

Americans are not into details.

Don't read it to me, Bob.

Just give me a thumbs up or thumbs down.

The fact that he was like,

I don't,

if you couldn't impeach before, how are you going to impeach after?

Or should you?

Were you on that?

Yeah.

I'm not there yet on impeachment.

I may get there.

He may get me there.

But

here's the awful dilemma that we face.

If we don't impeach him, that sends a message that this kind of conduct, this obstruction of justice, this kind of willing use of the help of a foreign adversary, all the lies and cover-up, that this is non-impeachable.

At the same time, if we do impeach him, and he is acquitted as he would likely be acquitted, then the message is those are not impeachable offenses.

At the end of the day, Bill, there's only one way to deal with this problem, whether we impeach him or not, and that is to vote his ass out of office.

I do think that,

I also think there's one thing that the country

is united on, at least the majority of Americans, even if it's not Bob Mueller or in the report, and was summed up by my 91-year-old father, who said that if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, he's probably a crook.

And

I think people recognize whether he could be indicted or not,

that his conduct is unethical,

probably

criminal in terms of at least the obstruction of justice.

And we have in our power, even if we don't have it it legislatively because the GOP in the Congress will do nothing to stand up to this man.

There is no patriotism left in Trump's GOP.

But we have it within our power, we have it within our numbers to turn out and vote him out of office.

And

we showed the power of that in the midterms.

And the bigger the repudiation of him at the ballot box, the more it says to ourselves.

Well, okay, so as the only Democrat not running for president.

Yes.

Well, what time is it?

I still have time.

You're talking about you.

No, no.

You would do well.

I mean, you jump

close to the head of the pack.

But so what is your advice?

Because all week what I heard was basically two ideas,

especially after Joe Biden said what he said yesterday.

Now, Joe Biden's view is Trump is the issue.

The other ones are like, let's stop talking about Trump.

We talk about him too much.

We want to tell people what we're going to do for them, healthcare, environment, those kind of

issues.

For example, you, I've seen you on TV a lot in the last couple of years.

I know everything you know or that you tell us about the Russian situation.

I don't have a clue what you think about health care.

I've never heard it.

I don't know whether you're for Medicare for all or improve Obamacare or get a chicken.

I don't know what.

I don't know what.

Here's what I was telling my colleagues,

and particularly these wonderful candidates we had running in the midterms.

Don't talk about Russia.

You're not going to persuade people to vote Democrat or Republican based on Russia.

But what about Trump?

Well, I get asked about it because, you know, our investigation for the last two years was the only investigation into what Russia did.

And people ask me about it.

But what I urge the candidates and what I urge our nominees to talk about is how are you going to help American people put bread on the table?

How are you going to help them provide for a secure retirement in an environment which people don't stay in the same job their whole life, in a job with globalization and automation?

How do people get health care?

How do they keep health care when they go from job to job?

How do we help young people afford college?

Those are the things we need to be talking about.

We are in the midst of two revolutions right now, either one of which would be phenomenally disruptive.

The two put together are just producing this cataclysm of xenophobic populism around the world.

And it's the revolution in the global economy through globalization and automation when millions are losing their jobs through no fault of their own.

And it's the revolution in communication, which is every bit as significant as the invention of the printing press, but it happened overnight, where lies travel faster than truths, where hate goes viral, and you put those two things together, and it is a combustible mix.

And addressing those challenges, talking about how in this environment we're going to put people to work, we're going to deal with this yawning gap between rich and poor.

We're going to make sure that whether you have one job in the morning and you drive an Uber at night, that you have health care at the end of the day and retirement at the end of your career.

That's, I think, what we need to be talking about.

And I'll tell you who I'm behind in 2020, and I'm behind them heart and soul.

Any living adult 2020.

Anyone who gets the nomination, we all need to get behind, whether we were forum or not for him.

And I'll let you go, but

I see you going on Fox News.

Well, I had some good encouragement from someone working together.

Everybody's going on Fox News now.

All right.

Love it.

Adam Schiff,

it's okay.

It's okay when you're here.

All right.

Thank you, everybody.

Let's meet our panel.

Hey, how you doing?

Hey, Robert.

All right, here they are.

He's a CNN senior political analyst and author of Washington's Farewell, The Founding Fathers, Warning to Future Generations.

John Avalon's over here, John.

She is the director of progressive programming for Sirius XM and co-host of Signal Boost on Sirius, Darlena Maxwell.

And he's the president of Americans for Tax Reform.

Your credit never changes.

Year after year, Grubber Norquist, the president of Americans for tax reform,

is just a message.

All right, don't forget to send us your questions for tonight's overtime so you can answer them after the show on YouTube.

I want to ask that same question I asked Congressman Schiff about

Joe Biden's taking a different tack.

He is taking the tack.

Trump is an existential issue.

to our country.

And let's talk about that.

I think that's the right issue because it is the same as what are you going to do for people?

Get rid of Trump is what you're going to do for people.

I don't see how that's a different issue.

What do you think?

Look, that is the big issue.

And he's saying, look, you go values first.

He believes Donald Trump is disfiguring our democracy.

You need to stand for return for decency.

And then you can get into policies later.

Where I think folks get in trouble, folks on the far left are starting to play into Donald Trump's reelection playbook.

You know, who can out-radical, out-socialist the other guy?

And that's a recipe for getting Donald Trump reelected.

So I think it is the right way to approach an opening bid.

I think there's an argument to be made that strategically,

the big picture, it's not a good strategy long term.

But in the short term, it is because he baited Donald Trump.

And today, Donald Trump came out and defended, saying Nazis were very fine people.

And so I think, in retrospect, Joe Biden did the smart thing by leading with Charlottesville and essentially baiting the president into doubling down on the fact that Nazis were fighting.

Whose mind is changed by that?

Well,

we knew he said that years ago.

Sure, it may not change the people in his base's mind, but the midterm elections are a reflection of the fact that the American people, the majority of us, are not okay with the president's.

Well, he did win the Senate in the midterms.

In red states.

Okay, well, we have to win some of them to win the election.

Sure, but I would say that if you are a person who is trying to get racists to vote for you, then that could be your strategy, and maybe Donald Trump is the person for you.

But I would say the vast majority of the country, and certainly people that are not white, do not think that's a great idea.

I think they're already in the camp.

Yeah.

Hillary ran on not Trump, and it didn't turn out as well as she might have hoped.

If Biden has two choices, either to say, vote for me, I can win, or to move steadily to the left to compete with everybody else, it's better to go with the I can win.

The challenge is whether the Democratic base is willing to hear that, whether he just gets pushed further and further into gasoline taxes and middle class taxes and other things that he'd rather not

be terrified by that problem.

So let me ask about the women issue.

You know, it was a lot about Anita Hill in the news the last couple of days.

And you know, I'm a guy who is always saying that the Democrats apologize too much, because mostly they do.

The Anita Hill one, I think, is the exception.

That lady deserves a real apology.

Oh, yeah.

And it took him 28 years.

And he didn't do it.

I don't think it was.

Why?

Why don't I get it over?

Because it's going to happen.

They're going to torture it out of you.

They always always do.

I think it may have been pride in this instance.

Maybe he just didn't want to go there.

And I think it is a bad look that right before he announces, he calls her.

So why aren't the women in the race doing better?

I mean, I looked at some of these polling results.

I mean, Joe Biden has twice the support from women, 37%.

in Iowa, I think, than all the women combined.

Yeah, I mean, he's also leading in the African-American vote with two African Americans running in the race.

Look, I think it has less to do with sexism than the fact that Bernie and Biden have run for president before.

They've got established bases in the party.

And, you know, you've got, you know, Elizabeth Warren's running an energetic campaign focused on policy, but she's not even popular in her home state when it comes to running for president.

I think Kamala Harris is in a very strong position down the field.

I think she's in the top tier of the candidates, but she came out of the gate really strong, and she's false a little bit.

She's the retail politician of it.

I think Corey, you know, this is going to be worked out, but I don't think it simply can be written off to sexism.

I think it's about know it's name ID right now I mean Biden's up there as you said and

Saunders has run before even with the kids the millennials like Uncle Joe what what what has he got I mean I want him to beat Trump if he's the guy but I I don't feel this fuzzy toward him I think people you know think of him nostalgically because he was Uncle Joe in the sunglasses you know the sidekick to the cool president Barack Obama so there's a little bit of that but I but I would say that while it's not true that it's only sexism I think there is a lot of sexism sexism at play because there's no reason why pete putigudge as great as he is um should be ahead of qualified senators who are putting out policies and actually are energetic i i think that the narrative that the women are not exciting on the stump and they don't have charisma that is sexist as well because only men have won for president we only have one example of what that looks like why is pete great i'm just asking

you

well i think he's authentic i think that people really are resonating with some of the things he's saying.

I think he's taking it to the Christian right in a way that we haven't seen from the Democrats before.

And I think that's refreshing.

But he doesn't have the experience to be the president of the United States.

Let's just be real about that.

I agree.

A little young.

Typically, mayor of the fourth largest city in Indiana, not going to be surging in the polls.

But look, he has authenticity.

He also scrambles a lot of the definitions.

And it's important, right?

He is a pioneering candidate to the extent he's, you know, the first openly gay, married candidate running, but he's not running as a gay candidate for president.

You know, he's running as a campaign.

So far, it's a lot about that.

Right, well, no, but I think that's actually a lot of people projecting on him.

He's much more likely to talk about service in Afghanistan.

And I think that speaks to a real unmet need in the country to bridge a lot of the divides.

Because right now we do have parties who are divided by religion and race and region, and that's really dangerous for Republic.

So we got to heal those divides.

So Bernie Sanders got booed.

He went to the She the People Forum,

okay?

And they asked him about demagoguery in the Trump administration.

He said, I will do everything I can can to help lead this country in a direction that ends all forms of discrimination.

Boo.

Really, not good enough.

Then he said, I was actually at the march in Washington with Dr.

King back in 1963.

Boo.

As somebody who actively supported Jesse Jackson's campaign in 88, as one of the few elected white people who did.

Boo.

Only fucking Democrats do this.

I swear to God.

I'm going to push back against that a bit.

Really?

The women in the audience wanted to hear specifics, and Bernie Sanders did not answer the question.

That's what the booze were for.

When does a politician ever answer the question?

But he was at the forum.

The other candidates, Elizabeth Warren, Carmela Harris, Julian Castro, all of them came out with specifics of, here's what I'm going to do to solve that problem.

When he was asked specifically what he was going to do for black women, he couldn't answer specifically.

He was like, I'm going to be great for black women.

It'll be great.

But how, Sway, how are you going to do it?

And he never gets to

the I think he needs to talk about specifics.

Like what?

What was the right answer?

Let's talk about pay equity.

Let's talk about discrimination.

Let's talk about making sure that families, no matter where they are, no matter what color, have quality education, access to affordable health care, all the other issues the Democrats talk about

and tailor it

to

lead this country in a direction that ends all forms of discrimination, gender, discrimination based on sexual orientation.

It sounds like you're demanding he say the exact words that are in your head.

No, I'm demanding that he speak in more than platitudes.

But his point was the reaction from the crowd.

Look, if you build a political party based on identity politics,

then you've got to manage that.

We don't know anything about that.

What about identity politics?

I believe identity politics, too.

Identity politics are essentially civil rights.

The political thinking gets shouted down at the same time.

The political system in this country has been the default.

What do white men think?

What do white working class men think?

And now now that we have more representation and the electorate, we're going to be a majority-minority country in 2046.

And so now we actually have to have representation that reflect the economic.

You're assuming talk about the issues and how they impact

people of color vote based on the color of their skin.

That's

kind of odd.

No, I'm saying that people vote based on the policies that will specifically target the issues in their communities.

And so issues affect different groups of people

differently.

Growth.

that doesn't work.

Donald Trump didn't win because of economics.

Donald Trump ran in part because he pursued.

And white unemployment is double white unemployment, even under Donald Trump.

Why is that?

What policy could we do to fix that?

Donald Trump, Donald Trump actually rallied around because he actually played a white identity politics card.

Exactly.

He actually is, in some ways, that move on the right.

And look, in terms of the larger issue, the Democratic Party, even LBJ back in the day, used to say, you know, the difference between liberals and cannibals is that liberals, cannibals don't eat their friends and family members.

There are deep divides here.

Okay.

Yeah.

Well, Obama said it a couple weeks ago.

Circle firing.

Circle firing squad, yeah.

So let me ask you this, Mr.

Tax.

Yes.

There's 20 Democrats running,

same as the Avengers,

you know.

And of course, we're still at the, you know, American Idol stage where they're just interviewing all the people and just singing 30 seconds for the judges, so you don't really know who's for real.

But they all seem to have, you know, I hate to say it because it's the thing around the Democrats, I think,

a lot of taxing and spending.

Now, I personally think we have a need in this country to completely realign how we spend money.

Like I would cut the military budget in half.

I think we would still,

you could cut that in half.

and still have the most ridiculous rock with your cock out mass murder machine in the history of the world.

And that would free up, what, $400 billion or something like that.

But short of that,

the only idea that Democrats seem to have is tax the rich.

Now, of course, the rich do pay too little taxes, don't you think?

Because we had this big tax cut and we have the biggest deficit ever.

Yeah.

A couple of thoughts here.

One is the Democrats are not just talking about taxing the rich.

That's what they said they were going to do do when Obama and Biden ran.

They promised they would never raise taxes on anyone who earned less than $250,000 a year, not a penny.

That was Biden's promise in the debate.

They turned around.

They put a $700 tax on every American who wouldn't buy Obamacare.

They put a $2,000 tax on every family of four that wouldn't do it.

Those were repealed by the Republicans.

But those taxes...

That wasn't really a tax.

It was a penalty.

Tax penalty.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Big difference to a family that's struggling.

Come on, Bill.

Well, a family that's struggling.

They're struggling.

How are they affording health care?

I don't understand this argument.

That's not the best example.

That's your best example.

Okay, well, they also put taxes on people's flexible savings accounts.

They raised a series of taxes.

Now they're talking about a tax, a gasoline tax for roads and a carbon tax on all energy.

These are taxes that hit the broad middle class.

But look, look.

Some people don't like the broad middle class.

Look, what we really learned right now as a result of all this is that it's just official.

Republicans only care about deficits when there's a Democrat in the White House.

That's right.

And yes, I mean

you guys, come on, he's right.

You guys, when Obama whispers it, you're wearing the colonial outfits with the tea bags in your face.

Just

what you know, what happened to that?

Where are the tea bags now that the deficit is bigger than ever?

Okay, and when the Democrats are in charge, the deficit's not a challenge to them.

And the reason is that the difference is not about the deficit.

The difference is on spending.

The Democrats want to spend more.

What's changed in America over the last 20, 30 years is not the amount of money that the government takes out of the economy.

That runs at about 18 percent.

What's changed is spending has drifted up.

The question is, do you want more spending or less spending?

And I would argue that.

Well, Trump wants more spending, but no raise in taxes, which is why.

Because what are you spending the money on?

Right?

I think

that's the question.

Right now we're spending it on entitlements, which are we don't have

votes on it.

No, but I don't call them entitlements.

Well, look,

We are in such a deep hole here.

And the military is the biggest entitlement.

They are the biggest welfare issues.

But the bill's going to come through, and the next downturn is going to be a bloodbath.

And Republicans are going to say, now's the time to cut spending, and Democrats are going to say, no, because we've got to find a way to invest and strengthen the middle class again.

The problem is, the intergenerational mission we have to unfuck America is being more complicated because of the fiscal hole we're in, because of the political hole we're in, and because of the cultural divides we've got to deal with.

I love that phrase, unfuck America.

All right, calm down for a second.

I just want to say we were off last week, so I did Coachella.

Oh, not the actual festival.

I just followed it on Instagram.

And it made me realize, you know, Instagram, all social, but especially Instagram, it just pisses me off because it's always just people.

We have some pictures from Coachella.

There it is.

It's just always people trying to show that they're having a better time than you.

And, you know, when I'm having a bad day, I don't want to see people having a better time than me.

It's always beautiful people eating dinner at a fancy restaurant.

Fuck that.

I want to see two fat people eat crackers they found in the cap.

That's what I want to see.

And Instagram, like everybody is always under a waterfall.

Fuck you.

Show me a woman hosing dog crap off the patio.

That's what I want to see.

And all these buff, shirtless, post-workout selfies.

Here's what I saw yesterday when my water heater broke.

And Instagram, people are always at places like Joshua Tree.

How about I like a picture of you at the Dollar Tree?

I don't want to see people getting lucky at the palms if I'm home, only getting lucky with my palms.

On Instagram, of course, there's always a lot of those.

I woke up like this.

Fuck in life there's a lot of, I fell asleep like this.

And of course my least favorite, on Instagram, every meal is fabulous, especially brunch.

Really?

Here's the brunch I remember in my 20s.

All right, let's bring out Bob.

He is a 28-time ending winner and inductee into the broadcasters wing in the Baseball Hall of Fame, who calls games for the MLB Network and Host Studio 42 with Bob Costas.

Bob Costas, ladies and gentlemen,

there he is.

Bob,

how are you, my friends?

Good, Bill.

So great to have you here.

Thank you, thank you.

So great, by the way, to hear you do play-by-play of a baseball game.

There is no pleasure I love more than that.

Nobody does it like that.

You tempted me the other night.

I was

absolutely right.

Absolutely.

I listened to it because it's like, I don't know, Jack Parr announcing a game.

It's witty, it's elegant, there's jokes that your broadcast partner doesn't get.

Yeah.

I long ago decided that if you and my friends and people kind of in my

sort of orbit, yeah, if they get it and they laugh or they appreciate it, that's good enough for me.

Well, there's a lot of downtime in a game.

It calls for it.

Yeah.

So you are in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

So great.

I got to ask you, though.

do you feel bad that Pete Rose is not in, but you are?

That seems wrong, Bob.

You know, they messed that up at the beginning.

He should have been banned from baseball, but he should have been on the ballot for the Hall of Fame.

That's simple enough.

But subsequently, while that debate went on, he did so so many things that made it difficult to support him.

So many things that just were unseemly.

He's Pete Rose.

Yeah, of course.

You can tell by the haircut.

But

when you find out that he was dallying with an underage

and all that, you know,

it's hard to defend.

So let's talk about it.

It's nothing to do with all the basics.

Yeah, but nonetheless.

Exactly.

But look, whenever I have you on, I was like, oh, good, because especially a week like this, I was so depressed because of the Mueller thing.

And I was like, good, get Bob's on.

We can just talk about sports.

Except, you know what?

Sports, it always goes to politics.

As soon as it leads politics.

You know, Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali, Robert Kraft, making the happy ending an issue as it finally should be in America.

And Robert Kraft being in the same sentence with Jackie Robinson is rather disturbing, actually.

Well, no one defends Robert Kraft, and I feel like I should.

I don't like his politics.

Somebody has to take up the lost causes.

I don't like his politics, but you know,

he lost his wife of like many decades.

So he's getting a little love at the place.

And, you know, we have to...

Anyway.

Go with that.

So is anybody, you see anybody like today who's in that league with Ali and Arthur Ash and people who really changed culture, Kurt Flood?

LeBron James has tried to step up.

Malcolm Jenkins with the Philadelphia Eagles, Doug Baldwin,

they've been articulate and well-informed.

Colin Kaepernick certainly, yeah, Colin Kaepernick, hey, that one got applause.

Colin Kaepernick called attention to a very important issue.

And paid for it.

And paid for it.

Like Ali.

He did it with grace.

The reason I wouldn't elevate him to the level of an Ali or an Arthur Ash or Kareem, who continues to be a public intellectual, or Kurt Flood, whom you mentioned, is that every time he speaks, which is rarely, he says something that doesn't necessarily

allow you to vote your way out of your oppression, I guess it doesn't matter to him that when he first took a knee, Obama was president.

Right.

And when he was blackballed from the league, Trump is president.

He was not helpful in the election because he said, I remember like tearing him a new ass all about it.

He was like, oh, Hillary, she's a racist.

Trump's a racist.

What is it?

Okay, so we'll talk to him.

Yeah, I mean,

he did a good thing.

He's young.

He did a good thing.

But

I think others can carry it forward more effectively.

So football.

Now,

you've talked about, I mean, you were one of the first brave ones to talk about the fact that, okay, this is really organized brain damage that's going on here, and we love the game.

And look, I'm a libertarian on stuff like that.

These players know the cost, so if they find joint and are willing to sacrifice, we all do stupid things when we're young.

I'm sure I'm paying for some of them now.

But, you know, the answer, of course, always is, well, this was allowed to happen because football is just the ultimate cash cow, right?

Yeah.

Why is that?

Why of the sport?

Why do we love football so much more than the other sports?

Well, is it we're violent?

We're a violent people, you think?

Yeah, it's once a week, all right?

So every game feels like a big deal.

Sunday?

Yeah,

your team.

Thursday.

But your team plays once a week.

Your team plays once a week.

But we watch them all.

Yeah, and it's ideal for gambling.

Then you have your fantasy teams, and it becomes an obsession.

Look, when the NFL draft becomes a big deal, like it's some sort of quasi-national holiday, when more people watch the NFL draft than watch really exciting NBA playoff games on the same night or NHL Stanley Cup playoff games, something's warped.

But there is something about the violence.

I feel like

if you are a athlete or a coach and you are interviewed, I notice there is one word that comes up every time, over and over again.

If that is.

Well, pretend you're an athlete.

If I ask you, like, what can you do to get back in the game?

What do you have to do?

What haven't you been doing?

Taking them one at a time.

Aggressive.

Oh, aggressive.

That's every single, that's all they talk.

We've got to be more aggressive.

Aggressive.

Aggressive.

Aggressive.

Aggressive.

The new head coach at the University of Colorado made a big deal about The way I grew up with the game, it's all about hitting.

It's all about aggression, blah, blah, blah.

And two of the trustees trustees said they could not vote in favor of his hiring.

They could not, even though they knew they'd be outvoted, they weren't down with that.

They couldn't any longer justify the amount of money being poured into football when this is supposed to be an academic institution and maybe the values of football are no longer aligned with what should be the values of an academic institution.

All right, so let me, here's a sports question that is a, well, everybody can answer this one because it's really about the whole country.

Kate Smith.

How many don't know who Kate Smith is?

I don't blame you.

I barely remember.

When I was a kid, she was this old bag on TV.

I think I thought she was Ethel Merman.

Do we have a picture?

We probably don't.

Right, okay.

So I remember like Ed Sullivan.

She'd be like, who's this corny old bag on the bring on Gary Puckett and the Union gap?

What is,

you know, she.

Nice reference.

In their Civil War uniforms.

At least it was the Union, but you know, you never know back then.

But, you know, but Kate Smith, God Bless America.

Okay, so it's her turn in the barrel because they found out that besides singing God Bless America, which they play at Yankee games, she sang a horrible racist song in the 30s.

Two of them.

Two of them.

Okay.

But I don't think Kate Smith was leading the charge to oppress black people.

I think she was doing what every...

person did back then.

Rather than write her out of history posthumously, maybe it should be the proverbial teaching moment where you say, look,

this was not, from what we can determine, an overtly hateful person, but it's reflective of how insidious these attitudes were, that someone who didn't think or didn't mean any harm thought this was perfectly okay, and so did millions of other people.

That's it.

That's what I'm saying.

There's a Marx Brothers routine.

Are we going to stop watching Marx Brothers movies?

There's a Marx Brothers routine that is punctuated by, and that's why Darkies Were Born.

Well, that's the song she sang.

Yes, yeah, that's right.

Right.

But it was everybody.

And of course, we look at it now and we cringe as we should.

But I think people object when the attitude seems to be, if I was back then, I wouldn't have been acting that way.

Yes, you would.

Well, not everybody, but a lot of people.

Almost everybody.

I think we make the mistake of assuming that our cultural moment represents some kind of end game of sensitivity and awareness.

And the truth is that those wagging a finger today, if things keep going the way they are with extreme political correctness or extreme identity politics progressing at warped speed, then those wagging a finger today may be on the other end of it tomorrow.

It's more than that, though, right?

I mean, it's look, our grandchildren and great-grandchildren look back and think we were monsters or idiots for something.

That's inevitable.

And I think that's why you got to be real careful about projecting our values on the past, while still keeping a sense of moral clarity and teaching.

Like, I happen to think that she does a lousy version of God Bless America.

but I think the impulse to excise artists for any manner of sins gets a little Orwellian.

It gets a little bit writing them out of history.

We've got to confront our history, the good, the bad, and the ugly, especially the ugly.

But disappearing it seems really dangerous.

I mean, I think it's great when people realize the mistakes they've made and apologize for them.

I actually accept apologies.

No, so obviously this example is not a good one in that case.

But I do think that political correctness essentially is just don't be an asshole.

That's all we're asking for.

That's the best.

That's the simple rule.

That's how it used to be.

That's how it used to be.

Exactly.

I'm not saying that some people don't go too far, but that's the fundamental thing is like there are things you shouldn't say because that would make you an asshole and you don't want to be that.

But I mean

they took her statue down, which I don't care.

Again, I don't give a shit about Kate Smith or if you sing the song, I'm going to get a hot dog, because I don't even think they should be singing the song.

They used to sing, take me out to the ball game, and then after 9-11, we had to do that.

Can we give that a rest?

Okay.

But they took the statue down, and I think that Ralph Cramden, I've said this before, Ralph Cramden statue.

How long is that going to stay up?

Because there it is in front of the bus station.

He's a public court authority.

Yeah.

Every week he used to threaten to punch his wife in the face if she kept annoying him.

Yeah.

TikTok, Ralph Cramden.

Maybe soon.

Hopefully soon.

Hopefully, you think they should take that down?

Look, I think that, you know,

Come on, Ralph Crampton.

He's not even a real person.

Well, what I'm saying is that we should review, you know, our history and these historical figures that we put up on pedestals, like, you know, Robert E.

Lee, who today the president said was a great guy, and we don't, we know that's the only thing that's

Robert E.

Lee and Ralph Cramdon are kind of a family.

Obviously, figured out.

Sure, sure, of course, of course.

I think we should take the soldiers off.

Just leave the horse.

Okay.

Because the horse is never good.

All right.

So,

to, before we run out of time, I want to ask about paying for college, because this is one of Elizabeth Warren's and Bernie Sanders.

A few of them have the proposal college should be free.

A bachelor, if you, if you.

Okay, wait a second.

Let me test your liberalism.

If you have a bachelor degree, you...

on average earn 65% more than someone who doesn't have one.

If you have a master's degree, 100% more over the course of your lifetime.

So nothing is free, like a free lunch, no.

Neither is college.

Somebody will be paying for this free college and it will be taxpayers.

So are we really saying that someone who didn't go to college

should be subsidizing the people who went and got the benefit from going to college and made more money?

Is that really a liberal thing?

And that's an incredible transfer from lower income people to higher income people.

If you look at the beneficiaries of that proposal, it is a huge subsidy to higher income people.

And if you're out buying votes, you go with the people you think are going to vote.

That's what you call it.

Yeah, the sugar lobby is out there, too.

You can feed it all.

I mean, that's hopefully what we can get away from.

But unfortunately, that's not going to be a lot of money.

That's our version of just funneling the money to the rich people.

We've had a massive increase in the cost of college.

Debt has become crippling for a lot of folks, people profiting off that stuff.

Is it right to try to make it a little easier?

Sure.

But what I'd rather see is actually an expansion of the GI Bill and incentivize a broader vision of national service, not just the military, but parks, teach for America, and then you get a reduction in your loan forgiveness or your college tuition.

That's a kind of broader policy that can unite the nation, focusing on that rather than a free lunch.

But I'm just asking, it doesn't seem like something liberals should be for.

They should be for the poorest people.

Same thing with the mortgage deduction.

That hurts renters.

Poor people rent.

Yeah.

And yet we're subsidizing the people who own the home.

Well, I think in terms of the distinctions between the plans, like I don't like free college as a message because it makes it seem like everybody gets it.

And we know that when we say free and everyone, that means black people.

And so, usually, those kinds of plans die on the vine.

Seriously.

And so, I think that when we're talking about these college plans, it's more about the debt-free college piece of it.

You know, what are you going to do?

What taxes can you raise on the wealthy to pay for these things?

Because you have kids making a decision at 18 years old to take up $200,000 plus dollars in debt.

And basically, you can never own a house ever if you have that much debt.

You're going to be renting forever and ever.

That's why millennials, older millennials like myself, we have different plans than some of the older generation, and they don't understand why we won't have kids.

We're not getting married.

We're not because we have so much debt.

And I'm not saying that

you're not taking that on when you enroll in an institution of higher education.

But I did have a decision between going to a state school and going to a Tufts University, which was a better school.

And I chose the one I wanted to go to.

But somebody probably should have directed me towards a school giving me a scholarship.

And if you paid off, and if you spent 18 years or whatever paying off your college debt, and then they turn around and make it free for the next guy, you'll be okay with that?

Well, look, I think that what I, you know, if I if I choose to have kids or family members,

well, I wouldn't be pissed because I don't necessarily look at it as like, well, I didn't get that benefit, so the people coming behind me should not.

I don't think any of us, as true progressives, feel that way.

We're for changing things to make it a little bit better.

Final question:

Should this came up this week.

Bernie Sanders was asked if people with felony records should be allowed to vote in prison.

Now, this is not after they're out, which of course I think all right-thinking people think they should be able to vote.

This is in prison.

Someone even brought up the example of the Boston Marathon, Bomber, and Bernie,

you got to love Bernie.

He doesn't wilt.

He said, I think the right to vote is inherent to our democracy.

Yes, even for terrible people.

I assume terrible people means terrorists.

And this is not.

You don't want to run against that attack ad.

But what do you think?

I mean, you're setting up the attack ad.

This is the problem with sort of running into Donald Trump's playbook about Democrats as radical socialists who think the white working class are irredeemably racist.

When he gets that question and he says, yes, we just got felony voting passed in Florida.

We just passed the criminal justice reform.

Actually, you know, the Trump administration deserves credit for helping push that through.

That is so far afield,

you're doing the Donald Trump's work for him.

Full stop.

It's a simple distinction.

You pay your debt to society, you should be able to vote.

While you're still paying your debt to society, it's ridiculous to assert that you should be able to vote.

Except there are a lot of people in prison who don't belong there.

Right, and most of the prisons are in rural communities.

Not the Boston Marathon Farmer.

In rural communities,

and I think there's a lot of people.

You're talking about violent felons?

No, I'm not.

What I'm arguing is for non-violent felons having that right, and we shouldn't be counting them in all white communities.

communities so that those people can get all of the funding and the apportionment and the gerrymandering when the people who are from communities like inner cities like Chicago are not getting those resources.

That is what's wrong here.

And that's why this is

idea

that Bernie Saunders' idea that anybody who's in prison, including murderers, should be let out and then he actually returns.

Not let out.

I'm not let out.

Be allowed to vote.

Be allowed to vote.

Presumably,

that's what Massachusetts is.

He's not going to load.

I'm from Massachusetts.

We used to do that.

We pulled that back.

Actually, people in Massachusetts used, the felons used to vote in the middle.

Hurried, I gotta go.

Point is,

when Martin Richards, the eight-year-old that guy killed, gets to vote, then he can vote.

He took away that kid's right to vote for the rest of his life.

And I don't think that the person who killed him

and one other person.

New rules, everybody.

New rules.

Thank you, panel.

Okay.

New role, Joe Biden needs a logo that's more I have a dream and less off-brand footwear.

This makes me think of sneakers alone.

Only nurses wear.

Joe, your whole appeal is out of date but fun, nostalgic and a little goofy.

Like Tickle, the woman's deodorant from the 70s with the long shaft and the extra wide ball.

Ask your aunt about Tickle.

Joe Biden and Tickle, you don't have to masturbate with it, but you totally could.

New rules, these beekeepers in the Gaza Strip have to tell us which they find more irritating: having to work with bees all day, when you put on the outfit and your wife says, How do you like it?

New rules,

you don't salute the bunny.

New Roll, Kim Jong-un doesn't have to resume rocket tests like he did last week to scare Donald Trump.

He just has to throw his hat.

New rules, the Michigan mom, who won a $78,000 lottery jackpot by mistake after playing her kids' birth dates and ages, but getting the younger one's age wrong

mustn't beat herself up about it.

The important thing is that now you can buy a new home for your older daughter and also what's her face.

And finally, new rule: just because you have a stone face doesn't mean you belong on Mount Rushmore.

For over two years, America has had a crazy person in the White House, and for over two years, the Democrats have done fuck all about it because they were waiting for Mueller.

We all sat around waiting for prosecutor Jesus to turn in his big report.

And he came back with, ask someone else.

We needed Superman, and we got Clark Kant.

Trump calls the Mueller report the crazy Mueller report.

And in a way, he's right, because it's over 400 pages detailing terrible crimes by a corrupt president.

Yet, Mueller does not prosecute.

If Dostoevsky had written the report, it would be called crime and no punishment.

Mueller's report is full of buts.

Don Jr.

met with the Russians, but.

Manafort gave internal polling data to a Russian, but.

Trump obstructed justice every day, but

Robert Mueller, he loves big butts and he cannot lie.

Preet Barrara was on real time the week the bar summary came out, and I had one burning question.

Could a different prosecutor have reached a completely different conclusion?

And he said,

yeah.

that's all I need to know.

I get it.

Mueller's a Boy Scout, a straight arrow.

He played it by the book.

But you may have noticed for the past three years we're kind of been off book.

And greatness sometimes means not doing everything by the book.

Thomas Jefferson made the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, doubling the size of the United States, without any authority to do so.

But history called his name and it said, take the shot, Mav.

That's what Spielberg's movie Lincoln is about.

Even after the Emancipation Proclamation, black people were not free.

That required a constitutional amendment initiated in Congress.

And to make that happen, while he had a window to make it happen, Lincoln lied, bribed, freed prisoners, even fast-tracked an entire new state into the Union.

None of which Mueller would have had to do.

All he had to do is what people in the justice system do every day: use the law to come to justice, not be so restricted by technicalities that the bad guys win.

This is why Clint Eastwood never made a movie called Clean Harry.

Sometimes it comes down to you.

The Attorney General is corrupt.

The Congress is dysfunctional.

What good is leaving a roadmap for impeachment if you know a tribal party before country Republican Senate will never remove the president?

Bob, your trail of breadcrumbs isn't good enough.

We're not that smart anymore.

America is an aging shortstop.

You have to hit it right at us.

That was for you, Bob.

That was for.

Nice reference, Bill.

To me, this report is summed up in the words: Donald Trump Jr.

declined to be voluntarily interviewed.

So make him.

Was he too busy?

You couldn't work around his tweeting schedule?

And you, tough guy, couldn't get the president's taxes?

You didn't follow the money?

You didn't interview Trump, we're told, because he couldn't possibly testify under oath without perjuring himself?

And that's our problem?

It's one feckless punt after another.

Thank you.

Rudy Giuliani said this week, there's nothing wrong with taking information from Russians.

That's where we are now.

I lay that on Mueller.

From now on, you can meet with foreign governments, invite them to hack your opponents, break campaign finance laws, as long as it's by reason of duh, I'm plausibly too dun to know what I was doing.

For a guy who didn't want to break precedent by indicting a president, Mueller Scher created a lot of new precedents.

Because that's what law is, new precedents.

It's always evolving.

You can't indict a sitting president.

It's not in the Constitution.

It's not even a law.

It's a guideline, like drinking white wine with fish or not fucking your cousin.

It's a fucking memo.

In Watergate, the special prosecutor, Jaworski, faced a very similar guideline, but he understood the big picture and his role in history, and he sued a sitting president anyway.

Mueller could have done that, and the headline the next day would have been, Mueller breaks with precedent, indicts Trump, and then that would be our new reality.

And it would have been a better reality because now Trump goes into the election as a vindicated martyr and hell hath no fury like a whiny little bitch scorned.

Maybe we should have brought back Ken Starr as prosecutor.

At least he knew how to go after a dick in the Oval Office.

All right, that's our show.

I'll be at the Grand Theater in Foxwoods, Nash, Nentucket, May 25th.

At the Fox in Detroit, June 22nd.

At Devos Performing Hall in Grand Rapids on the 23rd, I want to thank John Atlant, Selena Maxwell, Gerber Northwest Blind, Costas, and Adam Schiff.

Stay tuned for overtime.

Thank you.

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

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