Ep. #490: Pete Buttigieg, Preet Bharara

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 Ma.

Start the clock.

Okay,

all right.

What are you so happy about?

I'm in bad shape.

I have a whole warehouse full of it's Mueller time t-shirts.

Does anybody I've got extra large, they're at a discount rate

And my Avenatti 2020 ones are completely tanking.

They are tanking.

But no, it has

been a week, right?

Been a week.

I think we're all a little confused.

I'm confused.

I mean, Mueller released his report.

It was a week ago tonight.

It was right before we went on the air.

And he did not draw a conclusion on whether Trump tried to obstruct justice.

But wasn't that what Mueller's job was, to

draw a conclusion on obstruction?

It says so right in in the report we're not allowed to read.

Yeah, we're not allowed to read the report.

We have a new faith-based justice system.

Yeah.

Trump's Attorney General, and I do mean Trump's Attorney General, William Barr, read the report for us.

You know, this is like trying to pick a restaurant and the only Yelp review is from the chef.

And

we can't see the report.

We can't see Trump's taxes.

Can't even see his grades.

It's like bizarro World Obama.

The only thing we have seen is his birth certificate.

And

the whole thing just, I don't know, it doesn't quite make sense to me at this point.

It's like one of those movies, you know, where they seem to be wrapping it up.

Seems to be over.

Case closed.

We caught the killer.

And then you click, wait, there's 15 minutes left.

Right?

I feel like there's a final scene where Mueller goes home and he puts his briefcase down.

He sits down to dinner with his wife, who is Roger Stone.

And

he's cooking a meatloaf while he's talking on the phone in Russian to Vladimir Putin.

You know?

So Trump also had a week now to absorb the new realities of the post-Mueller world, and he used it as a starting point to call for a renewed sense of unity.

I'm fucking kidding, of course.

He went apeshit and lied his ass off about how he was totally exonerated when the report specifically said it does not exonerate him.

Yes, the pregnancy test came back negative.

It doesn't mean you're a virgin.

So,

of course he immediately went on an I Got Away with Treason Tour.

He was in Michigan last night.

They were chanting four more years.

He did his greatest hits, you know, lock her up, trade in the swamp, build the wall.

He even went to...

No one thought I could get 270 electoral votes.

Here's one phrase you'll never hear from Donald Trump.

Stop me if you've heard this before.

And

then he launched into this thing:

I'm the elite one.

I have a better education.

I'm smarter.

I went to better schools.

This is the president of the United States.

I have a more beautiful house.

I have a more beautiful apartment.

He literally said, and I'm president, and they're not.

That's when I started chanting, four-year-old, four-year-old.

And then he went after Adam Schiff.

I don't know if you saw Adam Schiff's speech that he made in Congress.

One of the great speeches, I think, of all day.

It sounded like something Lawrence O'Donnell wrote for the West Wing.

I mean, it was pretty awesome, so obviously Trump is mad.

And he, of course, responded intellectually.

I'm joking again.

He

went right to the gutter, called Adam Schiff a little pencil, little pencil neck Adam Schiff.

He is the smallest, thinnest neck I've ever seen.

This is a burn to his base.

He's thin.

What a loser.

Who uses pencil neck?

It's 2019.

We didn't even use pencils in 2019.

It's like something a bully would say in a little rascals movie, pencil neck.

Now, Congressman Schiff is too classy to respond in kind, so I will.

I'll say it for him.

I'd rather be a pencil neck than a mushroom dick, okay?

But okay, so after all this madness, right in the middle of it, Trump comes out and tweets, the Republican Party will become the party of health care.

And the rest of the Republicans are like, we will.

And my favorite, he said this week, we're going to send humans to the moon by 2024.

Who wants to break it to him?

We already did this.

All right, we got a great show.

We have SC Cup, we have Representative Alyssa Slotkin, and Andrew Sullivan are here.

And a little later, he'll be speaking with author and former district attorney Preet Barara.

But first up, he is the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and author of Shortest Way Home: One Mayor's Challenge and a Model for America's Future.

Mayor Pete Bootig.

There you are.

Mr.

Mayor, how are you doing?

Good to do me too.

Wow.

You're blowing up, man.

You're blowing up.

Feels good.

Yeah, I bet you it does.

Now, did I get the name close?

Yeah, yeah, close.

That's it.

I read it's boot edge edge.

You got it, boot edge edge.

Yep.

Just like it looks.

Let's call you Pete.

Okay, so yeah, you are blowing up.

I mean, wow, I must admit, a few months ago, I was just, you know, who's this guy?

Young?

Yes, sir.

I'm not going to ask you the age question because, first of all, I've heard you answer it now, and I don't think it's relevant.

You're 37.

I know people who are, now, if you're 27, I would say yes, that's too young.

I mean, legally, it's too young.

But 30, I've known people who are 37, super mature.

You're one of those people.

I've known people who are 80 who are still idiots.

People are humans.

They're not numbers, correct?

And the same would apply to Joe Biden.

Okay.

So,

but why are you suddenly rising in the polls?

Well, I think part of it is that people are looking for something completely different.

And, you know, we're in this moment.

I really believe that all.

I thought we got that.

Well, in a way, we did, right?

I mean, each election in many ways produces somebody who's the reverse of what we just had.

And you could argue that it doesn't get more different from this president than a laid-back intellectual young gay mayor from the Midwest.

No.

You are

right.

I mean we hear the stories about you like you found a book you wanted to read, but it was not translated from the Norwegian, so you learned Norwegian.

I don't know what Trump is, but you're the opposite of that.

I mean, he's fat, you're thin, he's old, you're young.

You went to Afghanistan, he dodged the draft, right?

There's a lot of rules.

We're very different people.

You're very different.

So how do you beat him?

Well, I think that's part of the idea.

I mean, look, the paradox here is in order to beat Trump, we've got to run a campaign that's not all about Trump.

You know, the more it's about him, I think folks at home are going to be saying, okay, who's talking about me?

Don't get me wrong, you got to punch back when you're punched, you've got to correct lies when he tells lies.

But then we've got to move on very quickly to how our ideas actually cash out in everyday life.

Because when we do that, we win.

Look at the political trajectory of Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act.

In 2010, when I was first getting into elected politics, it was a toxic issue for Democrats.

By 2018, it was the winning issue for Democrats.

And I think the reason is people saw what it meant in their everyday lives.

And we've got to be willing to talk not just at the highest level about our values, but at the ground level about how following our values cashes out.

And instead, a lot of the time we've been stuck at that middle level, which is about the policy designs, before we really win the day, either for the values that motivate those policies or for the results that come from those policies.

So you're still the mayor of South Bend, right?

That's right.

But are they mad at you because you're not there a lot now?

Because like, if you're a senator and you're running for president, no big deal because they don't do anything anyway.

Look, but I hear you say, look, I am actually in charge of a city.

I got to do stuff every day.

What's going on with that?

Yeah, look, most people running for president have very demanding day jobs.

And the city of South Bend is, that is my day job.

And people at home, thankfully, have been.

And you do tend to it?

Yeah, I have to.

I mean, at the end of the day, I'm on

the outside.

What if the sewers back up?

We got phones.

We got, you know, I mean, you know, a lot of the work that I do, obviously, is guidance, policy.

But also, you know, one of the reasons I'll be on a red eye is to get back home quickly and tend to some things there.

So, okay, so you're from the part of the country that the Democrats desperately want to win back.

I don't know if Indiana will be in play.

Used to be.

Yeah, that's right.

Could it be?

Again?

I think it could be.

It's not

written in stone that these states have to be conservative.

Matter of fact, there's a very deep progressive tradition in the industrial Midwest.

Okay, but

they used to ask this question after 9-11, why do they hate us?

But I want to ask it about Republicans and their attitude toward Democrats.

Why do they hate us?

Why is the D so toxic that we automatically write off 25 states?

Well, first of all, we've got to look at the media diet, right?

I mean, not only the Twitterverse, but if you're on a diet of Fox News and some of this conservative radio, you may literally never even hear our perspective.

And I think there's an echo chamber.

That's why you got to go on Fox News.

Yeah, which I was really surprised to discover.

I was the first out of the candidates to go on Fox News Sunday.

But if I didn't, a lot of viewers would have never heard what I had to say.

So I think we've got to penetrate there.

I also think sometimes there's a sense of condescension.

coming from our party, fairly or unfairly.

I think a lot of people perceive that we're looking down on them.

And if if we allow that to continue, it's going to be a real problem.

Look, if a wealthy coastal liberal professional goes up to a guy pumping gas in South Bend,

maybe wearing one of those red hats and said, you know, you're voting against your economic interests.

You know what that guy's going to say?

He's going to say, so are you.

Or if he says, you have white privilege.

Well, that's...

That rubs people the wrong way.

Yeah, I mean, look white privilege is real, and we should talk about these issues.

But we can't paint people into a corner where they have nowhere to go but the far right.

That's how radicalization works.

We need to invite them onto the right side of history.

Not by, I mean, don't get me wrong, we're going to give no quarter to things like white nationalism that helped animate this presidency and this campaign.

But I also think we have an obligation to be speaking to things like the loss in a sense of belonging.

I mean, exactly the kind of thing that opens people up to radicalization, whether it's here at home or in places like the Middle East.

That's Brexit.

Yeah, exactly.

And, you know, the same desire for belonging that might motivate an auto-worker in the middle of his career who's finding himself disrupted by modernity is also the sense of belonging that explains the fear of a dreamer who's afraid they might not belong in what they feel to be their own country, or a transgender kid in high school who just has to go to the bathroom like everybody else.

I mean, if we get it right, then talking about this sense of belonging can actually knit us back together instead of watching it turn into something that makes us so vulnerable to being divided against.

You just said transgender going to the bathroom.

How often does that really happen?

Is that a real problem?

Well, if you're going to have to be jailed several times a day.

What's that?

If it's you, okay.

But does it happen that often that that's an issue?

Often enough that.

It's easy to make them applaud.

I'm talking about the people who are going to elect the next year.

Let's just talk about it as how we take care of people.

I'm just saying that you have like eight minutes here.

And out of that, of all the things, you mentioned that thing.

I'm saying we're talking about how do we win back those people.

I don't know if that's the thing we want to accent.

It may be a fair issue.

What we've got to do is we've got to paint a picture of life in the future that my generation is living into.

It's one of the reasons I talk a lot about what the world will look like in 2054.

That's the year I would get to the current age of the current president.

And,

you know.

Fuck.

Not to put too fine a point on.

So you're a millennial.

Yeah.

Okay, so here's the thing.

Now I don't want to generalize, because I do shows all around the country.

A lot of millennials come and they know that this is not a safe space.

So they're not all fragile.

Right.

But in general, they're fragile.

And that is some, oh, you don't think so.

I mean, this is the generation that provided the bulk of the troops in the wars after 9-11.

We're not talking about, that's how many percentage.

We're talking about the people, I'm talking about people who need cry rooms and trigger warnings and safe spaces.

Harvard had an issue a couple of weeks ago.

Ronald Sullivan, he's a brilliant professor.

He's a dean there, African American, who is defending Harvey Weinstein.

And there was a big protest.

These are Harvard students who don't understand that everybody gets a lawyer in this country.

They're saying we don't want to get our diploma from someone who was this closely associated with

violating the Me Too principles, no matter what his reason, no matter what his reasons, Harvard students don't understand.

Maybe they just think that's the right place to protest what they see as going into the toleration of sexual harassment.

But isn't the principle that everyone gets a lawyer in America more important?

You can still have a lawyer, but but then

when he shows up, you can also raise your voice to protest what he represents.

That's the whole idea of free speech and vigorous debate.

I'm all for that.

Look, I think...

I don't know if it's debatable that everybody gets a lawyer in America.

I agree.

Everybody ought to get a lawyer.

Sure.

But the decision is, you know, to what extent do you invite those people or or appear to be conferring honor on them?

So let me ask you one final question.

You've said that you

think the left should reclaim faith.

Yeah.

That's curious to me.

You're such an intellectual guy.

I guess I never understand how faith mixes in with that.

You know, I always identify faith as the purposeful suspension of critical thinking.

Look.

And

you're a brilliant critical thinker.

How do you align that?

Look, I believe in reason, I believe in enlightenment values, and I also believe that reason has limits.

Now, don't get me wrong, I mean, I think especially in our party.

But using no reason is a better answer?

Look, maybe you think you got it all figured out.

No.

No, I'm not saying that.

Neither do I.

I I don't know the answers, but when I don't know an answer, I don't make up a story about it.

I just think the important thing is to recognize God doesn't belong to a political party.

I mean, some of these themes, God,

freedom, patriotism,

these are not things that one party should be able to claim, but that's how it's worked out.

We've made it sound like the only way to apply, for example, religious values in politics would be through the lens of the religious right.

When I go to church, what I hear a lot about is protecting the downtrodden and standing up for the immigrant and being skeptical of authority sometimes

and making sure you look after the poor and the prisoner.

I mean, to me, that's the sort of thing that the religious left, often without much attention, has been arguing for my whole lifetime.

The same with freedom.

You know, this theme that we've allowed our conservative friends to monopolize as if government were the only thing that could make you unfree.

When the reality is, you know, your neighbor can make you unfree.

Your cable company can make you unfree.

Being poor.

Absolutely.

Makes you very unfree.

Absolutely.

So let's talk about freedom too, not just freedom from, and the way that you're free to start a small business if you have health care, the way that you're free to marry the person you love, if the law of the land is that a county clerk can't impose their religion on you.

So whether we're talking about faith, whether it's freedom, whether it's patriotism,

I think we need to assert that often those very values can point us in our progressive direction and that no party ought to have a monopoly on them.

Mayor Pete, thank you very much for coming up with your campaign.

Not that you need it.

All right, Mayor Pete Bungett.

Okay, I got it.

Let's meet our panel.

Okay.

Hey.

All right.

He is a writer-at-large for New York Magazine and author of The Conservative Soul, Andrew Sullivan.

She's the host of CNN's SC Cup Unfiltered.

SC Cup.

Hey.

And she's a former CIA analyst who is now the U.S.

Representative for Michigan's 8th Congressional District, Representative Alyssa Slotkin.

Great to have you here.

Don't forget to send us your questions for tonight's overtime so we can answer them after the show on YouTube.

Okay, so a week ago we were talking about it.

It had just happened.

The Mueller Report came out.

We still haven't read it.

And liberals, I think, feel like...

Charlie Brown with the football again.

And Teflon Don.

He's the real Teflon Don.

He just skates.

And the phrase I read that was quoted quoted from Barr,

traditional prosecutorial judgment, he said.

That's what he did not use.

Traditional prosecutorial judgment, I guess that means that the tradition would have been for Mueller to make a decision on this, on whether there was obstruction of justice.

Why not?

Why the Hamlet Act from Mueller?

I don't get it.

Because this

to enforce the law against a president is a matter of politics.

The Congress has to do that through the impeachment proceeding.

That's how you hold the President of the United States accountable.

You didn't know.

And so it's the job of the special prosecutor to explain, and we haven't seen it yet.

When we see the arguments that he lays out, these are the arguments that the president obstructed justice, and these are the arguments that he didn't.

And when we look at that, That'll be our decision and the Congress's decision to use that or not to impeach.

And that is the constitutional way of doing it.

And look,

what is that going to look like?

When we see,

we're probably going to to see it.

Barr made a statement today.

He said, we're going to get it.

We're just making the redactions.

He listed a lot of reasons why they might redact.

Material subject to federal rule of criminal procedure.

I don't know what that is.

The intelligence community.

I get that one.

You know, you want, I don't know.

Material that could affect other ongoing matters.

Stuff that would infringe on the personal privacy of peripheral parties.

There's a lot of reasons why we're not going to get to see this.

And it just looks to me, you know,

high-tech lynching, remember that phrase?

This is like a a high-tech coup.

I know Barr is an esteemed person, William Barr,

he's a stooge.

This is what third world countries do.

The dictator appoints somebody who exonerates him.

That's what happened here.

And

I think Democrats put too much faith in Republicans.

I really do.

Well, I think we haven't seen the actual report.

So you can think what you want about Barr, but I believe in Bob Mueller.

And I think that when we see the actual report, then we have a basis to have a real conversation.

Why didn't he even make Trump testify?

I mean, it seems like that would be the least that he could have done, would make the man sit down.

And this argument that, well, he couldn't because he can't help himself from lying.

That's our problem.

I think

this is the system we have.

It's imperfect.

We're probably not going to get, we're not all going to be satisfied and gratified by this.

And I hope we see a lot more of what's in this report.

But this is the system we have.

This special counsel, two years, hundreds of people being investigated.

And when someone like Adam Schiff, who I like, comes out and does exactly what we accuse Trump of doing, which is undermine the integrity of our institutions.

Trump does it with courts, he does it with elections, he does it with the media, he does it with law enforcement.

And when Adam Schiff, a member of Congress, says, I don't believe this report.

I believe

that's true.

He did.

He said, I believe there was collusion.

And this report found there wasn't collusion.

I believe there was collusion.

That's what I don't get.

Just from what I defense is not an attack on Trump.

He represents a defense of the rule of law.

Right?

And so what his job is to do and what he has done, it wasn't stymied.

It wasn't blocked.

It has happened.

We have it.

It's probably got a lot of detail in it.

We will be able to judge it.

This is a success for the system.

And Mueller plays Trump just right.

You know how you beat him?

You do your job impeccably.

You don't pay attention to him.

I don't even know how Robert Mueller speaks.

He is playing this by the rules so that when the rules finally get out, they will be fairly applied.

Okay, he's not sent from heaven, Mueller.

He's a person.

Another person in this job, I think, could have reached a very different decision.

I really do.

I don't think just because it's Bob Mueller, we have to take it on faith.

And let me read Jeremy Besh.

I thought what he said the other day was great.

The president requested Russian assistance, he received Russian assistance, he benefited from Russian assistance, and he rewarded Russian assistance.

And his son met with Russians who were selling him dirt.

And his campaign manager went and gave polling data to a Russian oligarch who was in tight with the Kremlin.

Tell me why that's not collusion.

Of course that's collusion.

I don't get it.

Maybe the law is written there.

I don't get it.

What Muller found that he couldn't prove that in a court of law beyond a reasonable doubt.

And the reason why they leave people's names out is it is not part of the rule of law to name people who aren't being charged, just slime them and smear them.

That's a correct thing to do.

In this Trump era, we have to stick by these rules.

And don't give up yet, Bill.

You haven't read the report.

And I think it could be devastating.

Yeah, I agree.

I think it will.

It could lead to a political revolution.

I think when we read it, we're going to go, wow, I can't believe Bard didn't tell us that.

And I think the whole point of what Bard did was to give Trump a month-long lead to get out there and do the end zone dance, put the bullshit out.

I'm completely exonerated.

Because then when we come up with the other stuff, it's a month later.

And then we're like undoing something.

It's the same thing like Gore in 2000.

He should never have conceded the election.

Because once he conceded it, then he had to unconcede.

And then we look like sore losers again.

Well, Democrats are free to now run against Trump.

They're free to beat him at the elections.

They're free to beat him with voters.

And that's where this next fight should happen.

It's going to give to them to say, let's move on to health care.

Let's talk about the economy.

Let them say, let's get away from the correct.

But there is a Trump.

But there's still a rugged officer.

I don't care about what it is.

I would just say that I'm from the middle of Michigan, right?

And my voters do not ask me about this.

They want to know that we are doing everything we can to protect our democracy.

That doesn't mean it's right.

But they care about preserving our democracy.

We have had all the intelligence communities say very clearly that the Russians attempted to meddle in our election.

That is not a question.

That is not.

The voting box matters.

But what my constituents talk about every day is health care and the cost of prescription drugs.

It's not about Robert Mueller and not about this report.

Right.

Just as long as we know that he may not be a Russian spy, that can't be proved, but he is a Russian asset in the vernacular sense of the word.

He is an asset to Russia.

Yeah.

Okay, so.

The other thing that was very disturbing about this week, not that we haven't seen this a million times before, but even worse, is that we now live in a country where you can just say anything,

just say anything.

As soon as the report said he was not exonerated, I am totally exonerated.

And he said Russia wanted Hillary to win.

Putin himself said he wanted Trump to win.

The wall is built.

I could go on, but the one this week, the Republican Party is the party of health care.

Just, it's like this is his MO from New York days.

Just say it.

And assert

a lot of people will believe it.

But this one, I got to think maybe we have a shot because his base needs insulin.

Yeah.

I think that the cost of health care and the cost of prescription drugs are our generation's problem to solve.

It's literally the single most important issue.

People are paying more in their health costs than they are in their mortgage in my district, for some people.

And the president has tried to sell this bill of goods that he's going to replace it with something else.

He wasn't able to do it for two years.

And I tell you, a lot of my Republican colleagues this week were saying,

I don't know what we're doing on health care.

And they were separating themselves from the president.

We have come to a point where we believe that if you have a pre-existing condition, you deserve care and not to be excluded, and that if you happen to get sick, you shouldn't go broke.

We as a nation have evolved to that, and the Republicans haven't quite noticed it.

Yeah,

going a little far to remake the Republican Party and

the image of healthcare advocates.

However, I would say it sounds pretty deranged for someone to say this administration isn't capable of solving a problem.

And if they attempt to, I'm going to oppose it.

Neither party has solved this problem.

They don't even have a plan.

No,

yes, yes.

Nor do they think.

We'll all need to see one, certainly, and Congress gets to write the laws, for sure.

But let's get real about the Republicans in healthcare.

The reason why they never have a plan is because they don't think the government's place is to have a plan.

They don't think that's just not a thing.

But I think we should listen to anyone who's saying we need to take a sledgehammer to this system, which is bankrupting families.

The cost of drugs can change 100 times over a day.

That's legal.

And anyone from Bernie Sanders to Donald Trump saying we need to change it, let's listen.

I think it's true.

I have never once had a constituent say to me, like, I'm really interested in a Republican or a Democratic plan to help my health care.

They just want it done.

I agree that it's, it, it, it is not as good.

The other surreal aspect of this is he does keep declaring things that are untrue.

Like we've built the wall.

There's a point at which we're testing whether this cult will believe anything.

Well, they will.

And each time he gets away with it,

the cult gets stronger.

This is 41% of the country.

It's very stable.

When you look at the polling head-to-head with the Democrats, they're neck and neck.

They shouldn't be neck and neck.

This is a disastrous presidency.

So we have a problem here.

And I hate to say this, but we've got to be able to talk to Red America in a way that doesn't insult them for being fat, for example.

All right, we'll get to that in a minute.

But

before we do, there's a segment we do on the show called, I Don't Know It for a Fact, I just Know It's True.

And we thought this week of all weeks, it was perfectly applicable because, you know, if they can't prove collusion, I don't know it for a fact, I just know it's true.

So would you like to hear this week's version of, I don't know it for a fact,

I just know

it's true.

I don't know for a fact that last Friday Robert Mueller's wife said, two years of missing dinner for this.

I just know it's true.

I don't know for a fact that when Donald Trump said, I've been exonerated, Eric said, is that good?

I just know it's true.

I don't know for a fact that sometimes the Fox and Friends team makes up a word just to see if Trump will repeat it.

I just know it's true.

I don't know for a fact that Lindsey Graham's ringtone is, it's reigning men.

I just

know.

I don't know for a fact that when someone tries to take a selfie with Joe Biden, he says, are you sure there's film in it?

I just know it's true.

I don't know for a fact that when a cop says, do you know why I pulled you over?

It's because he's high and he forgot.

I just know it's true.

And I know for a fact that every so often the Pope looks around the Vatican and thinks to himself, Jesus, there are fewer gay people on Broadway.

I just know it's true.

And I know for a fact that eventually the owner of a diner in New Hampshire is going to tell Betto O'Rourke, dude, people eat on this table.

Get your filthy shoes off of it.

All right, let's bring out Preet.

He is the former U.S.

Attorney for the Southern District of New York and author of Doing Justice, The Prosecutor's Thoughts on Crime, Punishment, and the Rule of Law, Preet Barrera.

Okay.

How are you, sir?

All right.

So can you explain to me the collusion thing?

Because you're a pro in this business.

And, you know, people say we didn't learn anything from the Mueller report, but I think we learned that you can get away with crimes if you do them in the open.

Yeah, well, that, you know, there's a point to be made there.

I think that there's a distinction between this thing that we have been talking about, that the president has done a very good job of instilling in people's brains collusion, collusion, collusion.

Collusion, based on my experience as a federal prosecutor for many years, is not a crime.

The crime that Bob Mueller was looking at was conspiracy to be involved in either hacking or other

working together with other people to interfere with the election.

Hacking, yeah.

He said, hack their hacker emails.

Openly, he said that.

Russia hacker emails.

Then they did that day.

Yeah, so.

I don't get it.

I just didn't.

I didn't get it.

I didn't get it.

The thing that Bob Mueller found is that, based on the criminal statutes, he could not prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, presumably, that there was a conspiracy, you know, before the fact, an agreement, a meeting of the minds, about doing those bad things.

Is it true, as Adam Schiff said in that great speech, and I agree with you, it was a fantastic speech, and I think it made a great point,

that the president did terrible things, and the president invited hacking, and the president invited the leaking of emails.

And his son and others met at the Trump Tower famous meeting because they wanted to have derogatory information about Hillary Clinton.

And was that unpatriotic?

Yes.

Is that collusion possibly?

But remember, the prosecutor's role is very narrow.

Then the law isn't really fucking.

If all that doesn't add up to collusion, then the law is fucked up.

I'm sorry, but that's the case.

Okay.

All right, we'll move on.

That may be.

So

your district, you're the southern district where he is still in trouble, right?

Donald Trump.

What I hear.

Okay, well we all know on the news, I mean there are things that are going on in Manhattan.

Yes.

Okay.

So

I guess my first question is, we found out he's a crook in so many ways, the charities and all the nefarious, the misreporting his income we heard this week, not filing taxes right.

How come nobody ever went after him from that district before he got to be president?

And he seemed to be quite the crime boss.

Yeah, look, in fairness to the president, and it's interesting for me to utter words like that,

he's not been charged with any crime yet by the Southern District.

And the things that they are looking at based on reports are things that happened in the last year or two.

I know it's hard for people to understand this, and people are disappointed in what Bob Mueller found or did not find.

People are disappointed in prosecutors all the time.

And I say this as a former prosecutor, the law has limits.

And there are limits on what prosecutors look at and limits on what prosecutors are able to do.

In other words, if you wake up one morning and you think that it's sufficient that, you know, I don't like the cut of somebody's jib or I don't like Bill Maher and I can investigate.

That's different.

I'm not sure what I'm saying.

And this is not Rebecca.

This is not what Mueller.

This is what I know already.

Let's just get that clear.

It's what we know already.

Okay, let's not obsess on this.

Never.

I'm sure you would never do that.

But it's a political, not a legal thing.

And

if the polity won't hold this man to account, the law cannot.

If he hasn't broken the law.

And that's the issue.

But he really, really wants it.

It's not about that.

It's not.

You know I'm right.

You know that these are illegal things or should be illegal things.

Are you kidding?

We have dirt on Russia.

I love it.

Let's meet.

Eight Russians show up.

Give me a break.

I've got polling data.

Hi, you know you're very close to Putin.

Let me give you the polling data.

We'll see if we can win this together.

What the fuck?

It's a lot of people.

It's borderline treason.

Okay, all right.

I don't want to.

Let's.

So.

What else do you want to talk about?

Because that's what you were supposed to be here to do.

Look,

I agree with Andrew and others who say, I think Bob Mueller decided, I don't know this for a fact, but he's a very smart guy.

I put a lot of faith in him.

I agree with what you said, that he's not sent from heaven.

He's just an ordinary human being who's trying to do the best he can.

Can you see another prosecutor come to a different decision?

Yeah, possibly.

I think a lot of people expected him to make a decision.

I can see a prosecutor like Ken Starr seeking the limelight and politicizing all of this.

In this tribal culture, for Mueller to have done what he's done, we should salute that guy for the way he conducted himself.

That is the kind of Republican we need.

And instead of bashing him for not overlooking the law, we should be grateful that there are limits and that he applied them.

And now we'll find out.

So let's...

Yes, exactly.

But we may find out.

I think what he thought is the stakes are so high.

I'm one person.

The question is close.

I clearly found some evidence of obstruction.

I'm not sure that I would bring a case if it was an ordinary person, but you know what?

It's not an ordinary person.

It's a person who is

subjected in the Constitution to accountability from another branch of government called Congress, and he's leaving it to them.

And some people call it a punt, but sometimes a punt is a good thing.

So but we found there was no collusion, but there might be obstruction of a crime, which was not a crime.

Again, I don't get it.

Okay.

Let's move on to your thing about fat people.

Okay.

Should I go with that?

No, no, no, no, no, no, of course you.

What's your beef there, that I made a joke?

No, I laughed at that joke.

It's funny.

And I would defend any comic making any at anybody's expense forever, okay?

So that's great.

I'm just saying that insofar as one stops being a comic and one tries to be part of the politics of the country treating half the country as if they are bigots and dumb and didn't know what they were doing last time is not going to help win their votes that's all I am saying and and there's a way in which people forget that they are in the room they can hear you They can hear these insults, they can hear the condescension, and they are and their irrational response to that is driving this irrational cult.

And my hope is that we can unwind this irrational cult.

We won't do it by more of this polarization.

That's all.

Can I just say, I agree, we should not generalize Trump voters and we shouldn't villainize Trump voters.

But I don't think, especially my generation,

I don't think we should coddle people who think brown people are coming to take their jobs, who call the cops on black people for being black in public, and who think America was best 50 years ago when women knew their place.

I think sometimes the forgotten man was forgotten for a reason and should be forgotten.

Trying to get a job on MSNBC.

Can I just say as someone who

represents a district that went for Obama and went for Trump, right?

My district went for Trump.

I think this idea that somehow Trump voters are all the same, they're this monolith who just, they're racist, and it is just not true, right?

There are people in my district who voted Democrat their entire lives but there was one candidate talking about the things that affect their pocketbooks their kids jobs wages the future of work that is the stuff that is important in my district and there was one candidate talking about it they know that he's not suave and he's not acting presidential but they are voting their interests to their core and so I reject this idea that somehow every Trump voter is a bad person is someone that we should disrespect and I think conversations like this add to the perception that the middle of the country the places that everyone talks about.

But they're getting their economic interests answered?

I think that there was, no, but I think there's only one person who was even talking about it.

So you take the...

But talking and then not seeing the difference between the talk and the action.

I hope to point it out next time around.

Okay, we won't say dumb.

We'll say brightness challenged.

But if you can't see

that this con man got up and told you I'm going to be your voice and I'm going to take care of the little man and then passes a tax cut that's only for the rich people and then says this week the health care thing.

I mean he says we're going to become the party of health care.

How are we going to do that?

Well first we're going to go to court and try to abolish Obamacare completely, leaving 20 million people with nothing.

You can't put it together that that's not making health care better.

That's why the Republican Congress is absolutely aghast that he said that and had no idea it was coming.

They don't want to fight this election on health care.

And if they do, they will lose.

This is a fantastic development for Donald Trump.

Vote for me and I'll take away your insurance next time.

No, they will look at that.

They will look at that.

I just think if you are a person, I've literally had an auto worker say this to me in my district.

My life has been going downhill from George H.W.

Bush down through the presidents, right?

So I'm going the wrong direction.

And Trump is my like Hail Mary pass, right?

It may not work.

It may score a touchdown.

I may do really well.

It may not.

But he's the only guy talking about making my life better.

And we got to hear that.

Democrats have to hear that.

And immigration.

I hate to bring it up.

It's his major issue.

Yes.

This year we have a crisis going on.

We're going to have another one, over a million, maybe, people coming into the country here who do not have secure right to be here.

Over a billion coming in in one year?

It's the highest since the bush years.

Yes.

It's partly because, absolutely,

it's predicted by the CPB to be summing 700,000 Guatemalans coming and showing up legally for asylum.

I did not read that number.

Are they in a caravan?

It's a crisis.

There are lots of them in caravans, yes, but this is happening.

They are overwhelming.

Okay, but immigration, you know, it's a big political issue.

It's not really one of our big problems, is it?

People come here to do the work that Americans won't do.

I don't ever see someone passing a lettuce field and go, oh, those people, I wish I was out there.

Oh, I wish I could have a job in the lettuce fields.

And my kids, they want to get in the lettuce field, too, and they're blocked from it.

Look, if you're not afraid of the problem,

a little bit more, let's put it this way.

You worry about the ch-

you're disconcerted by the changing nature of your country.

It's much more multiracial, multicultural than it used to be.

You're a little awkward about it, and you realize that immigration is coming massively, and more of it's illegal, and you ask, can we just enforce the border?

And they say, bigot.

That's what happens.

But he's not just talking about illegal immigration.

I mean, I'm a proud immigrant.

I am too.

And the amazing thing about the fact that a guy with my name, not as complicated as Peep Booted to Judge, but pretty difficult,

can become the chief law enforcement officer in the Southern District of New York is an amazing thing.

And I want people like me to feel welcome into this country.

You know, my mother brought six of her brothers to this country.

They all pay taxes.

They all contribute to society.

They're hugely patriotic Americans.

And I listen to the words used by the president.

And it's not just about the border.

It's about people coming in through JFK as well.

People like my own family that he makes feel unwelcome.

And I think that's a problem.

And I think that's a terrible thing.

And I think we should talk about it.

So this week,

Betsy DeVos, our

children.

We know her well.

An education secretary who is herself mentally challenged.

It's a really, it's a very interesting administration we have here.

Anyway, she wanted to cut all the funding from the Special Olympics.

Then Trump heard about it and said the next day, no, I like the Special Olympics.

But they are cut.

Well, he did.

I know.

He did.

He lit the fire and then congratulated himself when he put it out.

Yeah.

Exactly.

But

they do want to cut the education budget by 10%, which is kind of a lot.

It's many billions of dollars.

And, you know, I was asking around, I don't have kids, as we know, but other people still do.

It's something that's popular.

I mean, you know,

even celebrities do it.

There must be something to it.

Anyway,

and they were saying that, you know, among the ways people get squeezed, the middle class, you were talking about that, and we do get squeezed and squeezed more and more over time,

one of the ways is schools.

They said half the parents now spend their days raising money for the schools, which I thought was supposed to be taken care of by our tax dollars.

You know, I'm old enough to remember when Republicans, when they would talk about things like cutting education funding, they would say, well, you know, we've got to make some tough.

tough decisions, tough cuts.

They at least had the decency to pretend that it was a hard call.

And you don't get that from this administration.

This administration is sort of giddy about the cuts that they want to make and giddy about detaining migrant children and giddy about some of these policies that are just so hurtful to the weakest and most vulnerable.

And so when you say, oh, you got a problem with this tone, who cares about tone?

I care about tone a lot because of the reasons you mentioned, being an immigrant, being a mother.

Not me, but if you're a mother of a child with special needs, and feeling like the president of the United States with his bully pulpit and all of his resources and influence is putting the target on you.

And I think to be honest, she's getting at a great point which is, you know, I won in a Republican district.

Republican women absolutely helped me win my election, right?

They ran my campaign, they got devoted.

And it's not because they're going to...

Because they hated Trump?

Well, it's because they feel like they want their government to be empathetic, right?

You can be an empathetic Republican.

You can.

Right.

But Trump is not empathetic.

And I think that is a core value for people in the Midwest, that the government is supposed to be doing the thing to help people, and it should show some empathy.

So, cutting our education budget, we're very familiar with Betsy DeVos in Michigan.

She has used us as a Petri dish for her experiment and helped really devastate our public schools and just a war on teachers.

So, it's not surprising, but it just reflects this lack of empathy.

And we want two parties with empathy.

So, let me ask you a question.

The first primary

is in Iowa.

Yeah.

For a party that's so proud of being diverse, why have the first primary in Iowa, one of the least diverse states in the nation?

It seems to send a different kind of message.

I think it's just tradition.

I don't know that anyone's looked at it.

I don't know.

I think we're going to have plenty of candidates for lots of states to be involved.

I think we're going to have, everyone's going to have their shot at deciding who's our next nominee.

Why not have the first primary in Queens?

It's the most diverse county in the country.

Is that your home base?

No, it's not, but it's the most diverse county.

If you're thinking about diversity, I mean, there's an argument.

Poor California.

Yeah, lots of places.

So,

a couple of minutes left.

George Clooney is in the news because Brunei, thought you'd be interested in this, Andrew, Brunei has declared or passed a law that you will be stoned to death if you are gay or committed adultery.

And here we come back with the

call from Hollywood celebrities to boycott the Beverly Hills Hotel.

We went through this before.

George Cluny, he says, if we are putting money directly into the pockets of men who choose to stone and whip to death their own citizens, when you stay at this hotel.

And,

you know, this really bothers me because it's...

chicken shit tokenism.

What about Saudi Arabia?

If you really want to get back at them, stop driving.

Right.

Don't use oil.

And the nice thing about a free society is that you can have a political life and then you can have your actual life.

You know,

love and sex and friendship and activities.

And you don't have everything has to be political.

Not everything, not everything you buy has to be filtered through this political lens.

The whole point of a free society, we don't have to be that way.

We can put politics in its place, and we shouldn't be dictating our lives like a religion according to the dictates of wokeness.

It kills the vitality of a society.

It's also, as you say, totally hypocritical.

I wrote about this the first time they did this back in 2014.

And it's not just Saudi Arabia, it's UAE, where Hollywood does a ton of business.

It's Sharia law.

Yeah.

Which is some form isn't the law of most Muslim majority.

And if you want to be against that, you know, speak openly and honestly about standing up for liberal principles.

And don't go to a cocktail party with MBS, a torturer and dictator.

Hollywood

sucked up to him incredibly, as if there was no worry worry about a dictator who is currently sweeping his own family of possible enemies.

I mean,

yeah, and making movies in Dubai and Abu Dhabi and

taking a lot of money.

George Clooney's a really smart guy who made a movie, Siriana, which is about the Middle East.

I mean, he knows the problems that.

Oh, I thought that was facetious.

Because he made a movie about it, that he knows about it.

I thought you were joking.

I mean, it's all tourists.

He's all in the right place.

Did you ever, wait, wait a second.

Did you ever see Siriana?

Yeah, no, it's very

smart.

I don't think you could make that movie if you didn't really know what was going on.

And he's done a lot of work in Darfur.

I mean, I know he's a very engaged person, but this, as you say, is not the solution.

It's not going to hurt the Sultan of Brunei.

It's not going to impact him.

And there are other ways to say that.

I mean, this idea that the Sultan of Brunei is going over the restitutes from the polo lounge.

Oh no, we only sold two soups today.

What the.

It's.

You know, people can smell it too.

It's just virtue signaling.

That's what it is.

It's so fucking great.

Right.

That's what it is.

It's like that whole Rachel Maddowski mug thing.

And it's just like, no, you're not.

Let's just take down one liberal at a time.

Okay.

All right.

Time for new rules, everybody.

Thank you, Battle.

New rules.

New rules, someone must ask the men who purposely get their vasectomies during March Madness

so they can watch basketball while they recover.

Can you really call anything else madness when you're sitting there on Vaikoden with a bag of frozen peas on your dick?

I guess it was more complicated than I thought.

Great in rehearsal.

All right, new rule.

Instead of continuing the art world debate over whether the figure in Edvard Monk's The Scream is really screaming or is in fact hearing a scream, let's all just agree that either way, this dude is a drama queen.

The people behind him don't seem that upset.

In fact, let's resolve the whole matter by renaming this painting Gender Studies Major, Here's a Joke.

No, since there are male versions of deodorant, moisturizer, and body wash, there also has to be a male version of toilet paper.

None of this ultra soft, blossom soft, angel soft for this man.

You think my ass can't take the hard stuff?

That's why I've created Bill Maher's Rough and Ready

for men

with a porcupine on the front.

Rough and ready, the toilet paper that doesn't take any shit.

Neural, don't be surprised to learn Tom Brokos smokes medical marijuana.

I'm sure many news anchors do.

Judging by this picture, I'd say at least half.

Neural, the people who buy this puking kitty

gravy boat

have to answer two questions.

Who exactly is supposed to be delighted by this?

And why aren't you on the mailing list for Bill Maher's Doggy Dump Cupcake Froster?

That's my other question.

All right, and finally, new rule Republicans have to explain.

If socialism is such a one-way ticket to becoming the nightmare of Venezuela, then why do all the happiest countries in the world embrace it?

The UN just came out with their annual World Happiness Rankings, and the top ones are all socialist-friendly places, like Finland and Norway, Denmark and Iceland, Switzerland, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Canada, and of course, Wakanda.

The right has a hard time understanding the concept that we don't want long lines for bread socialism.

We want, you don't have to win the lotto to afford brain surgery socialism.

Socialism.

Socialism as an economic model replacing capitalism is bad, but socialism as a supplement to capitalism, good.

Kind of like how...

Kind of like how gin and tonic are terrible by themselves, but mixed together, delightful.

Now as for the United States, we should be happier than ever.

Unemployment is low, crime is low, and free people can say Merry Christmas again.

And yet we've dropped five spots on the happy list in just two years and are now at number 19 behind Belgium and the Germans, of people who don't even look happy in their porn.

So it's a conundrum.

We look at the rankings of the happy nations and see that we're getting our ass kicked by people people in wooden shoes.

Christ, there's no sun half the year in a lot of these places, and they're still in a better mood.

How can that be?

You mean this Norwegian guy is happier than us?

His car is a bicycle,

and his dinner is canned fish again.

The women in this country look like Tilda Swinton,

and the men in this country also look like Tilda Swinton.

But he's happy.

He's happy because he's not constantly sweating a mountain of student debt or what would happen if he got sick.

Happiness isn't only about what you have.

It's also about what you don't have to worry about.

All the top countries on the list are ones with some form of universal health care.

All have free or almost free higher education.

All have strong unions, pensions, and social safety nets.

Turns out, freedom from the fear of ending up at a tenth below the overpass is a really great freedom.

It's called peace of mind.

Conservatives like to push the canard that unfettered capitalism makes you more free, but actually, it's the right kind of socialism that makes you the freest.

In fact, let's not even call it socialism.

Let's call it capitalism plus.

Because that's what it really is.

It's a plus when you get sick and you can focus on getting better instead of not going broke.

It's a plus.

when you get pregnant and can think of anything besides what's this little shit going to cost me.

a knowing smile

Bernie Sanders tweeted recently that in the U.S.

it costs $12,000 to have a baby while in Finland it costs $60,000

and supposedly smart Republican Nikki Haley responded with comparing us to Finland is ridiculous ask them how their health care is you won't like the answer actually it's Nikki Haley who didn't like the answer because it turns out they have Twitter in Finland too

And

a lot of Finns gave testimony about how much they like their health care.

For example, in the U.S., the maternal death rate is almost seven times what it is in Finland.

Isn't that odd?

They only pay 60 bucks to have a baby, yet they don't die.

It's almost as if our system kind of sucks.

You know why we can't have nice things like Finland has?

Because we're ruled by corporatist nincum poops like Nikki Haley, who write books with titles like, Can't is not an option, when in America can't is not only an option, it's usually the only option.

Does.

Does pure, unbridled capitalism work?

I guess that depends whether you're on the board of Boeing or on board of Boeing.

All right, that's our show.

I'll be at the Mirage in Las Vegas, my favorite place, April 12th and 13th.

And at the Riverside Theater in Milwaukee, May 5th, I want to thank Andrew Sullivan, SE Cup, Alyssa Slotkin, Creek Marara, and Pete Boudig.

It's one of my worst things.

I cannot.

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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