Ep. #488: Andrew McCabe, Andrew Gillum

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

Start the clock.

Right here with me.

Alrighty,

thank you.

Wow, what a

nice thing.

That is very nice of you.

Lift your eye now.

Thank you.

I know.

I thank you for putting on a brave face because really, this was a rough week in the news.

We had a horrible mass shooting today.

There were planes falling out of the sky.

Venezuela is on the brink of utter chaos.

So let's get right to the big story.

Aunt Becky from Full House

might go to jail

for cheating her kids into college.

And, you know, this is the college admission scandal everybody is talking about.

I have shocking news for everyone here tonight.

Rich people cheat and their kids are fucking stupid.

Cut it through.

If you hadn't heard about all this, how federal prosecutors on Wednesday charged 50 people in this massive, you heard that, right?

Okay.

Sometimes, I don't know, the pot, you know.

Never before the show.

Anyway, Anyway, always after.

Anyway, but 50 people have been charged in this massive scheme to bribe coaches and administration officials so their kids could get into elite colleges and the schools involved.

We're talking about Yale, Stanford, Georgetown, some of the most prestigious asshole factories in America.

And, well,

oh,

come on.

This scandal has been very very tough on the Hollywood community.

Well, really, the face of it is two actresses, Lori Laughlin, that's Aunt Becky, and Felicity Huffman, who they said on Wednesday woke up to guns drawn.

They woke her up in her house.

Nobody wants to see a gun before they've had their coffee.

And I thought celebrities.

would know better.

You know, if your kid's too stupid to get into college, you don't bribe and cheat.

You put them in Scientology.

But you know,

you look at

some of the athletic programs they were faking their kids into, water polo,

the crew team, tennis, sailing, you know, the street sports.

If this is not affirmative action for white people, I don't know.

You might as well admit students for bad dancing

and parking at Trader Joe's.

I don't know.

But yeah, they would bribe these coaches and make their kids, sometimes with photoshopping, look like star athletes.

Let me tell you something.

My parents wouldn't do this.

That generation would not have spent their hard-earned dollars trying to make their kids look interesting.

They would straight up tell you, you're pretty boring, you're going to go to community college.

And

Lori Laughlin's daughter, who got into USC, a double major of Red Bull and Vodka.

Here's the galling part.

This kid doesn't even want to go to college.

She said so a million times.

Doesn't even want to go to college.

And it interfered with her career of taking selfies in the bathroom.

She's what they call an Instagram influencer and a YouTube blue beauty

you say it three times.

A YouTube beauty vlogger, a YouTube blurty,

a YouTube beauty vlogger.

Anyway,

but now with the scandal, she hasn't been online in days.

In fact, when I was getting off the freeway today, I think I saw her by the overpass.

She had a sign that said, we'll offer lip glass tips for food.

I couldn't get that one out either.

All right, well,

but they

dug up.

yeah.

They dug up,

they dug up some of the, some of her, Olivia Jade is the name she goes by, some of her old quotes, like, I don't know how much I'm going to attend this school that I got into.

That's what she said.

I don't really care about my studies.

It's so hard to try, but you don't care about what you're learning.

Wow, this kid is too dumb for the football players.

She got into USC.

She thought their mascot was a condom.

For those of you not in California, it's the Trojans.

You see, that's the joke that we have.

The USC program.

But, all right, enough of that.

In our latest installment of This Week in Dictatorship,

this is really chilling.

You know, I've been on this theme for a very long time.

The president the other day said the worst thing ever.

He said, I have the support.

He's basically threatening us.

He said, I have the support of the police.

I have the support of the military.

I have the support of bikers.

So even they're going to go, yes, the Hells Angels, Altamont for the whole country.

The Hells Angels are going to get involved.

He said, I have the tough people.

And then he talked about how until they're going to be okay, until they, meaning us liberals, go to a certain point, and then it's going to be very, very bad.

Well, he hasn't counted on one thing.

Liberals, we have the support of NPR and the vegans and academia.

Yeah, that's a joke.

We're fucked, okay?

That's the joke.

They have the guns and

we have the millennials in their pajamas, for Christ's sake.

More scared than ever, but you know, we have a new candidate.

Betto got in the race, Better O'Rourke from Texas.

Now there's 15 candidates.

Trump is already calling them a caravan.

And I mean, so many options.

That's pretty, I feel like a stoner looking at the menu board at Taco Bell.

I mean, there's just so much to choose from.

But, you know, I must say, Betto

was pretty popular a while ago, and now it's all been greeted with a white guy.

Suddenly, the I don't see color people see color.

You know, white, black, who cares?

Let's stop orange.

And come on, think of the matchup, Betto and Trump.

Oh my God, Instagram versus Telegram.

iPhone versus PayPhone.

Note some interesting parallels between Trump and Betto.

As a teenager, this is true.

Betto belonged to a computer hacking group called the Cult of the Dead Cow.

And as an adult, Trump belongs to a computer hacking group called Russia.

All right, we've got a great show.

John Tester, Jessica Yellen, and John Heilman are here, and a little later we'll be speaking with former Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum is going to come out mid-show.

And first up, he is the former FBI deputy director and author of The Threat, How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump.

Andrew McCabe.

Andrew McCabe.

Great to meet you, sir.

No, thank you.

I appreciate you being here.

Now,

Sunday is St.

Patrick's Day.

McCabe, that sounds Irish.

Those are your roots?

roots, my roots too.

All right.

Now, if you're in the FBI, you can't get shit-faced, right?

Which means I have a good day coming up.

Right.

Right.

First time in years.

Well,

so many disturbing things.

The thing I was just quoting the president in the monologue today, I've been sitting here trying to tell people for a long time he's not going to go away.

And now I hear a lot of people talking about that if he loses.

And this I thought was the most chilling example of it.

To say, I have the police on my side, I have the military, I have the people with the guns and the bikers

it's getting very close to saying don't force me to have a coup don't force me to start cracking skulls is that how you read that you know it's very it's very disturbing and concerning I think he may be overestimating a bit how much support he has from people in law enforcement and the military but really Bill the thing that concerns me the most about statements like that is not what he means, but what that audience actually hears.

Which audience audience are we talking about?

So those folks who are looking for the dog whistle, the coded language,

they receive those wildly inappropriate and irresponsible texts and messages and statements, and it concerns me how they interpret what they're hearing.

Do they see that as some sort of call to action?

You know, it's so funny, the FBI, I have seen just in the space of a little over two years, batted back and forth like a tennis ball politically.

I had never seen that before in my lifetime.

Before Trump was elected, I was afraid of the FBI.

They called it Trump Landia.

You remember that?

They said there were factions in it that were extremely supportive of Donald Trump.

And, of course, Comey released the letter that pretty much sunk Hillary's campaign.

I thought they were in the tank for him.

Now you're our heroes.

First of all, was it Trump Landia ever?

No.

Never.

No.

You know, the FBI is a big place.

We have almost 37,000 employees.

Many of them are conservative.

They all have political opinions in one direction or another.

But FBI people really leave those political opinions at home when they come to work.

It is work that is not done based on politics.

I always thought so.

And that's why I never really,

I blamed Comey.

for releasing that letter.

I don't think it was a wise thing to do, but I didn't think he did it out of a bad place.

I didn't think he did it out of partisan politics.

But it is strange when you look back at that situation, situation, at that era in our history.

You guys knew at the FBI that Russia was meddling in the election and you knew they were backing Trump.

Why in the world so much about Hillary and her inconsequential emails?

Weren't you one of the people who was going through those emails to see if there was something nefarious?

Sure.

Yeah, I was.

What was the worst thing you found?

Well,

hands-up orders?

You know,

Jim related pretty specifically in his announcement on July 5th what we found and what we found was clearly insufficient to base a request for a charge on.

I understand how people see the way we handled those cases as very different, but I think the important thing to remember is they were incredibly different cases.

The Hillary Clinton email case was public before we even got it.

So there was really no end to the Clinton email case that wouldn't have involved some sort of statement from the FBI or the Justice Department about what we had found.

All right.

So I know you cut your teeth in the Bureau in the 90s, right?

I did.

Working on the Russian mob.

That's right.

If people remember the era, the Soviet Union had just collapsed, and who took over it became sort of a kleptocracy right away.

And that's what you were working on.

And I know, I don't think this has been talked enough about because of other things that people talk about in your book.

But those people you were coming across, those names in the Russian mob back in the 90s, you've seen them come up again in the Trump situation, have you not?

We have, we have.

There's one gentleman I relate in the book, Ilanzim Taktihunov,

was a guy we investigated.

Say that three times fast.

He's a guy we investigated for trying to fix the Olympics.

And he did, in fact, bribe judges to alter the results in the Olympics in Salt Lake City.

the Winter Olympics.

He surfaces again years later, connected to a gambling ring that was run out of Trump Tower.

He surfaces again shortly after that indictment as a guest, a special VIP guest at the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow.

And the Russian mob, almost a paramilitary unit of the Russian government.

It's not like the Russian government as it presently is, is trying to stop the Russian mob.

They work hand in glove with them, right?

They are one and the same.

Russia doesn't function without a thriving organized organized crime community.

And they used Trump in that era to launder a lot of their money.

First of all, it was the only place he could borrow money was Russian banks.

And didn't they also launder money through Trump Tower?

Because they were such crooks, they stole from everybody in Russia.

They had to launder it somehow.

It's entirely possible.

I can't sit here and confirm that for you tonight, but it is entirely possible.

People who had large quantity, high-dollar dealings with Russian oligarchs from the 90s to the present day, that is concerning activity.

Why do you think the Russians chose Donald Trump and the Republican Party at large to do what they did to this country?

You would have thought it would have been the Democrats, right?

For years, the Democrats were the ones who were accused of being soft on Russia.

They were the soft party.

And yet it came through the party, and you're a Republican.

That's right.

Are you still a Republican?

No, I think they probably cut my card in half at this point.

But, well, first of all,

what went wrong with the party?

That they would see the Republican, the Russians would see the Republican Party as the corruptible party, the party you could do this through?

I'm not so sure that the Russians were focused on the party as much as they were focused on the man.

Yeah.

It was our conclusion, the intelligence community's conclusion, that there's no question the Russians meddled in the 2016 election.

They wanted to sow confusion and discord.

Their greatest goal on earth is to destabilize the United States.

And they wanted Trump specifically.

Putin hated Hillary.

They wanted to hurt Hillary because they did not want, they didn't like the prospect of a Hillary Clinton presidency.

No.

And when they found that what they were doing was working, they then wanted to support and promote the candidacy of Donald Trump.

Well, I agree.

They may have been doing this because they saw in Donald Trump someone who was everything you want in an asset, right?

He's corruptible, he's greedy, he's an egomaniac, he's very easy to get to.

Some people say that the director of active measures says this goes back to the 80s, trying to recruit him.

But what I don't understand is if you knew Putin hated Hillary so much, you seem to be doing things that hurt her and helped him.

You seem to be doing his work for him.

We seem to, I'm sorry.

Yeah, the FBI.

Yeah.

I understand how people see it that way.

But Bill, I think you have to put yourself in our position.

Conducting the Hillary Clinton email case, it was an unbelievably thorough and intensive investigation that was done without a nod to politics.

Jim's decision in October to notify Congress that we had found additional emails that we needed to look at was one that put us right in the center, right in the place that we never want to be, which is having a substantial impact on a domestic election.

Yeah.

So your wife is a Democrat.

She is.

And it seems like through this whole thing, I mean, Trump, without

any nod to decency, you know, that sometimes they compare him to a mob boss.

I did it here long ago.

Even the mob doesn't go after your family.

Yeah.

But they went after your family.

And I mean, there's no problem with a mixed-party marriage, is there?

No, it's not illegal.

It's not illegal.

It actually works.

Right.

It works well.

It works well.

And he talks about it like if you're a Democrat, you could not possibly be anything but a traitor to this country.

Well I mean this president vilifies and tries to destroy everyone who he thinks is pitted against him in any way.

He sees the world through a black and white paradigm.

You are either with me or you are my enemy.

I mean that's the that's the choice that he offered to me the first night I met with him, the night that Jim Comey was fired, when he laid out his false narrative about how happy the FBI was that he'd fired the director.

He was dangling that in front of me to see if I would adopt it.

And of course I did.

Yeah.

Well, I'm glad you didn't.

I think you were here also.

Thank you for presenting.

Thank you for seeing that.

All right.

Andrew McCabe, ladies and gentlemen, let's meet our panel.

Hey, John, how are you, Governor?

Senator?

Good old work.

All right, yeah.

He is an MSNBC National Affairs analyst and creator, executive, producer, and co-host of Showtimes, the circus, casually dressed John Heilman tonight.

John Heilman.

Heilman.

Maybe in one of those biker gangs.

All right, she's the founder of News Not Noise on Instagram, whose novel Savage News comes out April 9th.

Jessica Yellen.

Hey, Jessica.

And he's the Democratic senior senator from Montana and flat top icon, John Tester, right over here.

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

All right, let me mention this mass shooting.

We don't want to slight it.

It's tragic.

It's important.

But this is a debate show.

No one's going to stand up for shooting.

Let me ask this question about it.

Trump has yet to say terrorism.

We had that book I showed last week, If Obama Did It.

I remember when Obama didn't say the word terrorism and Fox News canceled news.

It was like the end of the world.

What's going on there?

And how come, you know, it seems like when a white guy does the shooting, it's not terrorism.

Well, I mean, from my perspective, it wouldn't be so problematic if he hadn't handled Charlottesville so bad.

And I think you call it for what it is, and it's terrorism.

And

I don't think there's any reason, and I don't see any reason

being an elected official why you wouldn't do that.

Because the fact is mass shootings are not acceptable, whether in New Zealand or in this country, we should be saying enough.

Prime Minister says our gun laws will change right away.

They have that response.

So different than America.

It's an atrocity, and our heart goes out to those victims.

I'd also point out the President refused to say that white nationalism is on the rise around the globe.

And right now, tonight, American mosques have heightened security for one reason, because there is a problem with white nationalism.

So the facts belie that.

And it is upsetting all these months after Charlottesville to still

see that we have an American president who speaks this way.

Okay.

John, you want to get in on it?

I just say one thing about this.

On the day that the President of the United States declared a national emergency over the border wall, which is not an emergency and deals with no real problem, was the day that we had a mass shooting in Illinois.

Right.

President, there's no reasonable President of the United States who would not look at the statistics of mass shootings in America and say that's the national emergency.

And this president

So

for a President who looks, who constructs fake national emergencies around non-issues and ignores the real national emergency here in America, does it really surprise us that he doesn't declare this mass shooting to be terrorism?

It doesn't surprise me at all.

It seems perfectly in keeping with his views about guns in general.

Okay, so can we get on to this college admissions scandal now?

I have to admit, I have issues about parenting in this country.

Not because I am a parent.

And sometimes parents say to me, well, you don't really have a say in this because you're not a parent.

Bullshit.

You're raising kids that that become the society that I live in.

You're raising the future leaders of this country.

And when I see these vapid, spoiled brats, yes, I think it does affect me.

And I must say, parents just seem to me to have gotten weaker and weaker and weaker as the years go by.

The fact that

these kids could not even know that the parents were cheating on their behalf, because I guess it would affect their self-esteem.

These kids had to think they were geniuses and they got into Stanford by guessing.

That's how brilliant you are, my little darlings.

And

what do you think?

What?

Go ahead, Jeff.

It's a tragedy of parenting.

I mean, the kids.

Thank you, yes.

The kids, mostly, as far as we know, weren't aware.

I mean, you kind of have to question that a little.

I question that a lot.

But as far as we know, so far, they weren't aware.

And I think it's like this extension.

We used to call it helicopter parenting.

It's now the medivac in.

You have to like extract your kid from a problem and solve it for them.

Well, actually, they call it bulldozer parenting now.

Wait, is that a thing?

Yes, as opposed to helicopter, that's when you watch from above.

And these are rich parents.

Some of them actually have helicopters.

And bulldozers.

Bulldozing.

Bulldozing is when you just move out of the way all the obstacles.

I think that describes this much better.

But it's sad for the kids because how do you develop resilience?

And how do you learn to cope with situations that don't break your way if you don't have the experience?

It's sad also for society because these kids, the kid was an influencer.

That's what they all want to be.

They all want to be Kardashians.

That's the goal.

That's the role model.

Well, this is L.A.

Exactly.

And that's another interesting point.

There's a real liberal face on this scandal.

Now, we don't know all the people involved, and I'm sure there were some conservatives.

But it looks like coastal elites.

Have you ever wondered why so many people, how could you vote for Trump?

Or why do they hate Democrats so much?

This is exactly why.

Well, everybody wants what's best for their kids, but this is beyond the pale.

I mean, a total lack of character, total lack of values, and it shows you their tax code needs to be reformed because these folks have way too much money.

Right.

Well.

They also,

I looked up their political donations and there were Republicans and Democrats, so it turns out entitlement is a bipartisan problem.

It is a bipartisan problem.

But,

you know, you say it's the parenting.

If they had told the kids, instead of, we're going to get you into these colleges, you're going to have to buckle down and do the work, or you don't get into the college you want.

Or if you don't want to go to college, don't go to college at all.

But don't think influencing is something to be proud of.

You know, like you, I don't have any kids.

So, you know, when people say to me, if I have any kids, if I have anything about children, I say, I love children, but I couldn't eat a whole one.

But I do think there's a political, there's a political parallel.

Don't go there.

There's a political parallel there.

There's a political parallel there.

They will destroy you on Twitter.

They will just,

they are looking to do it.

I know.

If you think though about this, there's a perfect political parallel to it, right?

Because you think about kids who are basically kind of no-account kids who think very highly of themselves.

They have parents who spend hundreds of millions of dollars, break laws, lie, cheat, bribe,

get their kids into an esteemed institution where they spend four years fucking around and not accomplishing anything.

That's the story of Ivanka Trump.

Yes, absolutely.

This has been going on forever in a different way.

Jared Kushner's father gave $2.5 million to Harvard as he was applying.

And guess who got into Harvard?

Well, there is a question.

Jared and Ivanka are complicit.

Like, they currently know Trump messed with the security clearance to get them security clearance, and they're staying, they're not quitting.

So I do think if these kids didn't know, that's a difference.

But when it comes to the Kushners paying $2 million to get him in,

this scandal lays bare the inequity in our education system broadly.

Some of this is on a continuum.

These rich donations are taking the places of less privileged kids who can't get the slot.

And the other thing is you've got people working at the different universities, you name at the top of the show, that are out there gathering in money to do the wrong thing.

I hope they never work in education again.

It's ridiculous.

You have kids.

Can I ask you if you ever spanked them?

Have I ever spanked them?

Yeah.

No, but they always knew that was a possibility.

How did they know know that?

Yeah, that's a dodgy answer, Senator.

I mean, I don't think there's anything wrong with spanking your kids a little bit when they're young before they're old enough to fight back.

I think Twitter's going to go after me.

No, we're not talking about the belt.

Although when I was a kid, plenty of kids talked about the belt, getting the belt.

I was spared that, but I got spanked.

Didn't kill me.

I probably should have been spanked a little more.

We should start with parents learning to say no.

I mean, there's this whole philosophy of child-rearing now where you persuade the child to do the right thing instead of engaging.

Just say no.

They're breaking dishes around the house, and you're like, why do we just think about doing this differently?

Right.

What happened to parents?

When did they become such pussy-whipped

by their own children?

I mean, I don't know if it's a good idea.

I stumped the panel.

Sorry.

So many, such a minefield here.

Okay.

It falls on a lot of different fronts.

I mean, I see the family that I grew up in and the family of our kids and our grandkids,

and giving a kid a spanking was not the first thing you did.

Never the first thing, it's the nuclear option.

Some people, they may interpret it that way, and that's why it's a dangerous thing.

But don't you think we've gone too far the other way?

I mean, isn't this an obvious example?

When I just see kids, I think the parents need to

have a lick and identity.

Well, I mean, I rarely see children.

I've organized my life in such a way I never have to talk to or be around a child.

I get it.

But sometimes I see it, and they're always negotiating.

Right, that's true.

Hey, buddy.

Hey, buddy.

But don't you think that's a good idea?

You're ready to go, buddy.

You're ready to go.

How about get in the car?

I agree with all of that.

I agree with all of that, but it's such a difficult, I mean, it's such a fine line between spanking and domestic abuse, and there are so many parents engaged in

abuse of their kids that

generally when I see a parent hitting a kid, it looks to me like spanking them looks to me like a failure of parenting it's the point of the last resort thing if they're doing their jobs well it doesn't get to that point yep i don't know well okay one other thing i i had an incredible advantage because i grew up on a farm i would have taken a lick in any day over cleaning out a chicken coop and that's what happened you got in trouble you clean out the chicken coop and underneath those roofs it was psychonia somewhere along

Somewhere along the line, you must have known that if you didn't,

if your mother said, clean out the coop, she did something right to make you go do that, as opposed to these kids who went, fuck you, mom, and ran into their room and locked the door.

Well, you didn't do that to mom.

Good.

Okay.

So you may think you have problems, but we found some people this week who have problems you cannot believe.

It's the people who wear Make America Great Again hats, you know, the MAGA hats.

They are complaining that they are encountering all sorts of prejudice when they go out to eat

in restaurants, in taverns, airports, airports, wherever they go, people see them make America great,

and they judge them as some sort of knuckle-dragger.

I don't know where they're getting this.

So I'm not making this up.

They came up with a kind of a guidebook online, kind of a green book for where you can go if you're a MAGA hat wearer.

Come on.

And you will be welcomed by, you know, people who think like you.

So would you like to hear some of the things that are in the...

Okay, this is some of the

places you can go if you wear a MAGA hat.

Very White Castle.

This greasy hamburger joint is perfect for infuriating the left.

They serve only GMOs and so non-organic, it's barely food.

Extra-wide booths accommodate extra-wide customers at this MAGA-friendly spot that insists the link between cholesterol and heart disease is fake news.

The oxygen garden.

Ride your rascal scooter over to this trendy hot spot for the over 65 crowd.

Dinner served from 2 to 4 p.m.

with

late-night dancing until 6:30.

And the wait staff is trained to speak up so you don't have to keep asking, Why are you mumbling?

And yummy dessert, so don't forget the insulin.

Huckabees, the rest.

The restaurant chain that refuses to answer any questions.

When are we open?

We can't say.

Do you take reservations?

We don't have that information.

Do you serve meatballs?

Hey, leave Eric and Don Jr.

out of this.

LickDonald's.

Not McDonald's.

LickDonald's.

The menu for this Sean Hannity-owned suck-up joint

brilliantly conjures the sensation of actually eating Donald Trump's ass.

Make your stomach great again with the tiny finger fries,

peeping vat of orange jello, and aged mushroom dick.

Oh, you're going to love this one.

Goldie Splash House.

Located just off Avenue P,

Goldie Splash House is staffed with high-end Russian hookers who always aim to please.

It doesn't take a whiz to figure out why

so many consider this flushing-based watering hole number one.

All right.

He is the former mayor of Tallahassee, Florida, and the 2018 Democratic nominee for governor of Florida came this close.

Andrew Gillum is over here.

Andrew Gillum.

Hello, sir.

It's a great pleasure to meet you.

All right.

So, Andrew, now the Democrats are looking for a candidate.

There's only only 108 in the field.

Jimmy Carter is a soft no, and John Edwards is thinking about it.

So,

no, but it's interesting that you narrowly lost your race, so did Stacey Adrams, so did Betto O'Rourke.

And it's no longer a deal-breaker to have lost to go on to run for president.

I mean, I agree with you.

First of all, history teaches us that, right?

Lincoln lost, went on to become president.

But I wouldn't underestimate what was done, even though Betto and Stacey and myself weren't able to cross the finish line as the governors necessarily.

We both saw supercharged turnout in Florida, in Georgia, in Texas.

Stacey juiced as many Democrats as she could out of the state of Georgia.

And you also had the guy who was the referee also being the player on the field, right?

And next time, I mean, Florida is going to be a different ballgame because they passed the

Amendment 4.

Right.

That's right.

Ex-felons can vote.

That's right.

That's right.

That's right.

That'll make a big difference.

That's right.

1.4 million people.

And now Florida was one of the final few states that still had the Jim Crow era policy that once you committed a felony, you would have your right to vote permanently taken away.

I don't know about you, but I don't want to be judged forever by my worst day.

And luckily, Florida voters restored rights.

And now 1.4 million people can vote.

I sold marijuana back when it was illegal.

That's true.

Oh, you know it's true.

Okay.

How do you know it's true?

And actually some of the pot came from Florida.

So now 60% of the American electorate wants marijuana to be legal.

85% of people under 35.

How much political cover does your party need to just go, okay, let's make this shit legal?

Look, I ran as the governor of Florida for the governor of Florida, advocating for legalization of marijuana.

I know you did.

I don't have to be convinced on this.

I also know that the Florida legislature, even under Republican shared leadership, this week decided that you could do smokable marijuana for medical purposes.

So we're making progress, man.

We're making progress, and we're going to.

Okay, so.

So Nancy Pelosi this week, I'll read her statement on impeachment.

Unless there's something so compelling and overwhelmingly and bipartisan, I don't think we should go down that path.

Now let's break that down.

Compelling, it certainly is compelling.

Overwhelming, definitely overwhelming.

It's just not bipartisan.

I must tell you, I've been for impeachment, but Nancy Pelosi knows a thing or two.

We've got to get that issue right.

So when Betto announced this week, they said, well, he flip-flop.

He said we should impeach, and now he doesn't know.

Yeah, we got to think this through.

That's not flip-flopping.

Let's get this one right.

Where do you stand?

Well, I mean, I ran also on impeaching the president.

I think Donald Trump is uniquely unqualified for the job that he holds.

I think the president has broken the law.

I mean, I'm not sure when it began, but we know for sure that he fired the FBI director because he wouldn't interfere with the future.

But we also know for sure that he wouldn't be convicted.

So it would just be doing it.

Listen, all I would say is that you're elected to Congress.

You're elected to the United States Senate to do your job.

All I want as a voter is for them to do their jobs.

Okay, What do you think about this question that all the Democrats are being asked now?

Are you a socialist or are you a...

Joe Scarborough asked John Hickenlooper, he would be one of your competition if you got in the race.

He said, would you call yourself a proud capitalist?

And Hickenlooper said, oh, I don't know.

The labels, I'm not sure any of them fit.

Is that hard to answer for you?

Are you a capitalist?

I am a capitalist, but I'm also conscious that the rules of the playing field are not leveled right now.

When you have the kind of wealth disparities that exist in this country, when you see small businesses and communities all across the country being snuffed out,

quite frankly, because of the rules not being leveled for them, there's something wrong with that.

And I think Americans know this.

Donald Trump's biggest fear is that we're going to recognize, those of us who are in the working class of this country, that we actually got a lot more in common than we have apart, and that he actually is doing the bidding of the top 1% and not the rest of us.

The candidate on the Democratic side who goes out and makes the case for working people around why it is they ought to believe in our party again, I think will be the one who wins.

And that's not a racial comment when I say working people.

I mean working folks who get up every single day to make a living for themselves and their families need to know that we have their backs first and foremost.

And

we certainly have elements of socialism in our system, as do all modern democracies.

But the system itself,

you can't be afraid.

I think if the Democrats are afraid to say, I'm a capitalist, first of all, the jury's in.

We had this debate in the 20th century.

Capitalism with all its flaws, and it does need regulation,

is still better than

the government owning the means of production.

We had this.

But I don't know anybody right now, and including Bernie, who is saying that the government ought to take

the

benefit of economic and otherwise...

But people hear socialism and that's what they think.

Well, guess what?

You can be the most conservative democrat running in this race for president and the republicans are still going to call you a socialist that's the that is the game plan and so what i would suggest

What I would suggest is instead of being afraid of those labels that our candidates run as who they are.

What do you believe?

What do you stand for?

What are you going to do for everyday working folks?

My mother was a school bus driver.

My dad was a construction worker.

He just passed

almost a week or so ago.

These are folks who got up every single day doing everything that they could to make a way for me and my six siblings.

They kept a roof over our head, food on the table, clothes on our backs.

We need to talk to those individuals around what we're going to do to make their lives better.

Okay, let me ask about this.

Better O'Rourke got in the race, and there was a lot of talk about we need another white guy.

In fact, I saw in some article it said, anybody but a white guy is a big

sign at

certain democratic rallies.

And Betto said, but I totally understand people will make a decision based on the fact that almost every single one of our presidents has been white and they want something different for the country.

And I think that's a very legitimate basis upon which to make a decision.

I don't.

I don't think that's a basis on which to make the decision.

What do you think?

You would give me the like anti-white guy question.

Well, no, I'm asking everybody that question, but I'm saying should we ever seriously?

I mean, I think, first of all, that is not a real litmus, right?

What I think people are really trying to say is that they want to see themselves reflected in the body politic.

And guess what?

It does make a difference where you come from, what your lived experience is,

as a way to what your sensitivities might be to these issues when you're governing.

And I don't think that's a good idea.

But that's not white.

I mean,

I agree.

Yeah, I mean, if we're not afraid of that,

if the litmus is white or not, right?

Like, I don't think that's where this argument has to come down.

For me, there's a faction on the left where there's pushing that idea that we just make that all our problems would go away if we just settled it with someone who wasn't white.

And like I said, I just want to get rid of orange.

Racists?

This is the most diverse field in history, right?

Yes, already.

So that is something to acknowledge and celebrate because you do want the candidates to look like the body politic.

It is not cause for being upset that a white guy feels slightly different because he doesn't match the rest of the crowd.

I mean, it's interesting we're having this conversation the one year that there is this much diversity.

Now, will Betto be judged for himself or because he's white?

I don't think the fact that he's a tall white man is going to be used against him by the American public when he's running for president.

I don't think when he's running for president, I just worry about the Twitter mob who seem to make all the decisions for us.

He can handle social media.

He can handle social media.

He can, yeah.

Not only that, but look at the way in which he's been covered up to this point.

I mean, we've seen a lot of people say that a woman candidate or candidate of color would not be covered in the same way in which he's a very good person.

Yeah, that's probably true.

So so there's a lot of privilege that comes with that but I'm not gonna I'm not gonna you know hit the guy on that what I want to know is what do you stand for what do you believe in this cult of personality is not interesting to me I'm mostly interested in what are your beliefs and how you're gonna make this country better for people

I don't know I spend a lot of time in out in the country talking to Democrats about what they want for their presidential candidate I think that there is

as a matter of political analysis the fact that Barack Obama was an African-American was a huge political asset to him in winning the Democratic nomination in 2008 because there were a lot of people who thought it was time for an African-American president.

And when we elected him, people were proud of that.

There are tens of millions of women in the country who think it's long past time for there to be a female president of the United States.

It is.

It's obviously legit for Democratic voters to weigh that as a factor.

Not the only factor, not a litmus test that eliminates white guys, but it is both legitimate and just unavoidable.

But for a lot of the women, the stakes are high.

They are.

This isn't the Oscar.

But

no one's trying to say that they want to vote for an unqualified woman.

I think there are a lot of Democratic voters who say, we have a great, diverse, qualified field of candidates, and among the things I want to consider, especially I hear this from a lot of women, is

the fact of it being time now.

And I think for a lot of these very qualified,

people who obviously class across the bar are ready to be president, the fact that they're women will in fact be a positive attribute for them, especially, not only, but especially with a lot of female Democratic voters.

That's just the reality of it.

But I don't think that's going to be a stigma that a qualified white male candidate disqualifies her from being considered as a Democratic nominee.

What I hear from Democratic Party elders more often than that is we really think we should elect a woman or another person of color, but not this year.

It's not worth taking the risk this year.

And I think that that's worth probing as well because

a candidate of diversity might mark change more profoundly against Trump than another white guy.

I think it should be noted that candidates of color, look at Stacey in Georgia and me in Florida.

In my case, we did better than the white candidates who ran for the last 24 years and got closer within a rounding era of being governor.

So there's a case for those who are saying we got to win and therefore

to be safe and don't take risks.

These are the folks who are also bringing people to the polls.

Absolutely.

Andrew, you touched on it when you sat at the table.

And I don't think it's as much about color or sex, it's about the candidate over the next 18 months that

connect up with the voter because they don't think they're being represented in Washington, D.C.

or in the governor's office or whatever race they're running for.

And who look like they could be Donald Trump, which ultimately is the main thing everyone says.

Well, that white, black, male, female, the main thing, the screaming thing the Democrats are saying out in the country is who's the person of whatever shape that race identity that can best take that guy off.

But that's probably Joe Biden, who is the oldest.

No, is it?

Well, yeah, it probably is.

Why?

Well, according to Joe Biden,

but he's not wrong about this.

Donald Trump won this election because somehow his people drew an inside straight in the Rust Belt.

And they got Wisconsin, and they got Michigan, and they got Pennsylvania.

And Joe Biden probably wins those states easier than any other candidate.

I don't know.

You look at all those places.

Hillary Clinton didn't go to Wisconsin.

Is the way to win by getting white working-class voters to come back to the party of Wisconsin or is it turnout more African-Americans in Milwaukee?

I don't know.

I mean, I just don't think it's a clear-cut case that in any of those states that there are different ways to win.

You also can't prejudge this.

You can't cook it up in a lab and decide.

This is when the Democrats make a mistake.

Everything's poll tested and market approved.

The candidate who wins is the single most charismatic person on the debate stage and the person who has a positive case for the future that they deliver with conviction.

That's the primary.

When you get to the election, people vote for the person they hate the least.

I think they vote for the most charismatic candidate.

I think it applies in the general, too.

Just what you're saying.

I agree.

I agree.

I went through a primary in my state.

We raised $6 million in my primary in a five-way race.

My combined opponents spent more than $90 million.

What I encountered all the time was, do you think you can win?

I like you a lot.

So those mechanations are being made.

That thought process is being thought through through the primary process.

The result is we moved in an election that was supposed to have 6 million, 6.1 million people vote, 8.5 million people voted in the state of of Florida and we reached near presidential level turnout in the state.

And guess what?

Had we been able to legally count every one of those votes, not just in Florida, but also in Georgia, I wonder what the outcome may be.

And one last thing, which is that one of the biggest problems that Hillary Clinton had in 2016 was the number of millennial voters, young voters, who just didn't show up.

So again, is it an old, again, I got nothing against Joe Biden, not like Joe Biden and think he could be, he may be the nominee, maybe the next president of the United States.

I'd be happy to be a United States citizen with Joe Biden as president.

But is that the guy who's most likely to create a wave of young voters who turn out in 2020 or not?

I don't know, but it's not a clear-cut case.

But nobody has ever turned out a wave.

Well, Barack Obama did.

No, he didn't.

We turned out a lot more young voters than anybody else

in our lifetime.

But it wasn't really still a lot.

We also doubled young voters in our state.

Same thing happened in Stacey's case.

And for the first time in the history of the state of Florida, black voters voted their share of the population.

So I do think, first of all, and I'm not counting Joe Biden out simply because of age or experience.

I think he could

very well reinvent himself, introduce himself, and be very related.

Bernie Sanders is the one that was winning young people.

Absolutely.

It's just early.

It's really early to make these judgments.

At this point in the Republican primary, Scott Walker and Jeb Bush were ahead.

That's right.

But this goes back to what Jessica was saying before, which is, is who's the most electrifying candidate?

The candidate who's the electrifying candidate who can bring out young voters, new voters into the system, black voters, Hispanic people.

We don't do that for six years.

If that's Joe Biden, in a perfect world, Joe Biden wouldn't even be, I like him, but he wouldn't be in my top 10, even on the field that's in now.

But I feel like the person who brings out young voters is Donald Trump.

If you can't get it up to vote against Donald Trump,

you know, I'm not that, I don't feel bad for you, the world you're going to be left.

But haven't we learned you don't vote against, you vote for?

That's exactly right.

No, you don't.

I think we learned the opposite.

You don't want to elect a Democrat because they're so bad.

You want to elect a Democrat because they have a message that works for this country.

You'd like to, but that doesn't happen every day.

I think we will elect a president who talks about the future.

And whether we agree or disagree with Donald Trump, he did talk about he casted a vision for the future that he wanted for the voters.

He was trying to convince them to go out and vote.

He used fear to do that.

His vision was the past.

He used fear to do that, but he also said we're going to make America great again.

That was his widecasting for the future of what he wanted.

We've got to also get out there and put our ideas out there, wide cast, be bold, be visionary, be unapologetic.

So you're right.

What's your answer?

All right, panel.

Gil and Maher 2020.

Gil Maher, I love it.

Oh, no.

All right, it's time for new rules, everybody.

New rules.

Lural economists who claim capitalism makes sense have to tell me why sunglasses cost $1,000 but reading glasses cost $1.99.

Because here's my theory.

Americans Americans are a thousand times more likely to stare at the sun than look at a book.

New Roll, to the makers of the device that allows fathers to simulate breastfeeding, please don't.

I'm pretty sure you're not going to fool the baby into thinking your giant plastic boobs are mommies,

unless mommies are also giant plastic boobs.

Very LA too.

New rule, the man who threatened to sue a magazine for using his photo in a story about how all hipsters look the same, only to learn it's not him in the picture,

must legally change his name to Captain Douche E-Bad.

Hey man, once you mastered the adulting skill of recognizing your own face, work on your ass and a hole in the ground.

Didn't they teach you anything at USC?

Your parents should get your bribes back.

New Roll, stop trying to get Americans to care about Brexit.

People in Missouri don't care if Arkansas disappears.

You think they care what happens to England?

Half of Americans think the United Kingdom is a theme park in Florida.

Maybe.

And that the prime minister during World War II was Monty Python.

New Rule, don't blame former NBA great Yao Ming for returning to his native China.

Maybe he got tired of all the fame and celebrity and just wanted to blend in.

And finally, New Rule, grow a pear.

Last week, the Democrats made a terrible decision when they announced that they had turned down Fox News' offer to host one of their 2020 primary debates, saying Fox was nothing more than propaganda.

Okay, so why not go on Fox News and tell them that?

You want to be in the big.

That's right, right on.

You want to be in the big leagues, but you refuse to ever play an away game?

You don't like the questions that Fox News might ask, so you're deciding to not take any questions at all?

How very Trump of you.

This is a fundamental problem with the Democratic Party.

They look weak, running from a fight when they should be in there throwing punches.

Republicans never shy away from coming on this show.

And they come with a smile on their face, despite knowing that the only people in the crowd cheering them on are the three campaign aides they brought with them.

The ones who eat all the food in the green room.

The audience is against them and they don't care because it's an opportunity to expose people to your side of the story.

So what if there are groans?

Groans won't kill you.

Political TV is full of groans and eye rolls and pouting and worst of all, Tucker face.

Never want to get Tucker face.

I used to think the reason I never saw prominent Democrats on Fox News was they weren't invited.

I thought they were banned from appearing on the network like I am.

But no, they're invited.

They just don't go.

Well, I shouldn't say all.

Here's a list of prominent Democrats who do frequently go on Fox News.

Congressman Eric Swalwell.

That's it.

Really, that's the list.

Last week, Swalwell tweeted, I've been on nearly every Fox show.

I don't go on because I accept the views of their hosts, but because I respect that some of their viewers are open-minded.

Exactly.

19% of all voters, Democrat and Republican, said Fox News was their main source of campaign news.

That's ahead of every other source.

It's more than ABC, CBS, and NBC combined.

Only 3% of voters said their main source was the New York Times, and they were lying.

Look, we all know Fox News sucks.

It's ruined Facebook and Thanksgiving and turned your grandpa into a dick.

He's crabby now and he only leaves the House once every four years.

But unfortunately, it's to vote.

You have to get inside the bubble.

You call yourself the resistance, then fight behind enemy lines.

That's what a resistance does.

That's the difference between blowing up a tank and tweeting about it.

Get out of your echo chamber and infiltrate theirs.

I noticed that the new tradition for Democrats who've just announced they're running is to go on Rachel Maddow.

Spoiler alert, you already have her vote.

Jesus, Democrats, they're like Mormons if Mormons only proselytized in Utah.

But Mormons for 100 years have gone all over the world with one goal, to spread their faith to people who don't want it.

To spread it to savages with their own weird gods, like the French.

But that's how you build a brand.

Look at Samoa.

15% of it is Mormon.

Do they look Mormon?

Was it an easy sell when the guys with white shirts and clip-on ties showed up?

You know, President Kennedy said, we choose to go to the moon, not because it's easy, but because it's hard.

Where's that kind of Democrat today?

So what if Fox News is fixed?

Life is fixed.

You want a fair shake?

Go get a massage with Robert Kraft.

All right, that's our show.

I'll be at the Mirage in Vegas April 12th and 13th at the Riverside in Milwaukee, May 5th.

I want to thank John Harmon, Jessica Yell, and John Tester, Andrew Gillam, and Andrew McCabe.

Stay tuned for overtime on mute, Susan.

Thank you, folks.

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

For more information, log on to HBO.com.