Ep. #484: Chris Christie, Eric Idle

Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO late night series, Real Time with Bill Ma.

Start the clock.

Ladies and gentlemen, please.

So much news.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Let me just first say the state of our union is fucking ridiculous.

It's just,

I don't even know where to start anymore.

But I'm going to start with Jeff Bezos' dick because

it's in the news and we don't know how big this is going to get.

The story, I'm talking about.

But did you see this today?

Jeff Bezos, richest man in the world, owns the Washington Post, which attacks Donald Trump.

And the National Enquirer works for Donald Trump and attacks Robert Wagner.

But also Jeff Bezos.

And

so it's a real billionaire with a real newspaper against a fake billionaire with a fake newspaper.

And the Washington Post's motto is, Democracy Dies in Darkness.

And the Inquirer's motto is, Jennifer Anniston has twins, but Lonnie Anderson ate them.

You're following this so far?

The Inquirer got hold last week, did you see these?

Oh my God, they're pretty embarrassing, of texts from Jeff Bezos showing that he is having an affair with Lauren Sanchez, a TV personality.

I don't know what that means.

So Jeff Bezos said, Hey, the inquirer did it on the orders of Trump.

They're working for Trump.

And the Inquirer said, Shut up about that.

You shut up about that.

Or we're going to show everybody your dick.

And they'll know it's your dick, Jeff Bezos, because under the dick, it will say, There are some other dicks that you might enjoy.

I know, it's insane.

But Bezos' dick is hanging tough because

it said, not it said, he said,

he fired back today.

He said, go ahead, show my dick to the world.

You can't blackmail me because I'm telling you on you first.

So I applaud that.

And don't lose faith in democracy, people.

This is how it works.

So, but I think

isn't the larger question, have dick pics ever worked?

I mean,

Jeff, I know you're rich, but there's something you should know.

There is something in your pants that makes women want to fuck you.

Your wallet.

And I think that closes that chapter.

Okay, now, if anybody is from Virginia, I feel so sorry for you.

This is the rat fuckiest state I've ever...

A third Virginia politician now has admitted to wearing blackface.

I mean, this is the Republican now, Thomas Normant.

He was the managing editor at the VMI yearbook, and there are photographs in there of blackface.

Also slurs against African Americans, Asians, and Jews.

Of course, Republicans handle this differently than Democrats do.

He has been answering calls now to step up.

And the governor of Virginia, this guy is just an idiot.

I'm sorry, this Ralph Northam, how did he ever get through medical school?

He has been trying to tough it out after admitting to wearing blackface in the 80s to enter a dance contest as Michael Jackson.

And now, ironically, everybody is telling him to beat it.

And he's just,

he's just,

I'm sorry, but he's just an idiot.

I've interviewed a lot of politicians.

Sometimes they just are.

I mean, he was at a press conference trying to to explain this away, and a reporter, Pulitzer Prize in the offing, I'm sure, here, asked, can you still moonwalk?

And this idiot governor starts looking around, like,

do I have enough space to bust a moon?

And his wife, thank God the wife, whispers, inappropriate.

Where was she 30 years ago when he came out of the bathroom as Michael Jackson?

I mean, so Democrats,

Democrats in Virginia are in big trouble because the lieutenant governor may go down for sexual assault allegations and now rape allegations.

And the third guy, another Democrat, also wore blackface in the 80s to impersonate Curtis Blow.

Guys, in Virginia, two words, Phil Collins.

Go as Phil Collins.

Go as Sting Billy Idol

wings Bachman Turner overdrive there are choices choices that don't involve black face

the Russians are like do we even need to meddle in this democracy it's so fucked up

Speaking of the Russians, Trump gave his State of the Union speech on Tuesday.

He lied his ass off for 82 minutes.

Nancy Pelosi, I love this picture of her behind, just, she had her no fucks left to give face.

And

today, Donald Trump had his physical, his second physical as a president, close call during the rectal exam.

No, this is serious.

During the rectal exam,

the doctor thought he felt something.

It was just Sean Hannity.

Okay.

We've got a great show.

We have Jack Kingston, Natasha Lautran, Malcolm Nance, and a little later be speaking with comedy legend Eric Idle is here.

But first up,

he is the former New Jersey governor, my home state, and New York Times best-selling author of Let Me Finish, Trump, the Kushners, Bannon, New Jersey, and the power of in-your-face politics.

Governor Chris Christie's over here.

Governor, Bill Horn, how you doing?

Thank you so much for being being here.

My pleasure.

I really appreciate it because I'm sure you know in the past I may have done one or maybe two jokes.

Yeah.

But you're in second place still behind Letterman on the fat jokes, so you'll be fine.

Fat jokes, I hadn't thought of that.

Can I tell you the best one?

Sure.

Chris Christie Kim, right?

He has skeletons in his closet of cows.

That's a pretty good one.

And I think Letterman's best one was he said on Super Bowl weekend, and he came back for Super Bowl, he said,

this weekend,

he said, two million pounds of chicken wings were eaten, and that was just at Governor Christie's house.

Yeah, ours is better.

Anyway,

well, maybe that's why he's off the air now.

Who knows?

So why a book?

I mean, usually people write a book, and the title, Let Me Finish, makes it sound like you have more to go in your career.

Right.

Is usually when people write a book, it means they're setting the table to run again.

Now, see, I couldn't write a book when I was governor.

I'm the only governor in America where there's a law that says you can't write a book while you're governor.

Yeah, and so people started asking me about writing a book after Hurricane Sandy, and I couldn't do it.

And so, I've been thinking about it for five years, it's been stewing up there, and I just decided once I got out, I wanted to write it.

I really billed it just for the money.

That was it.

Okay.

There's an honest, yeah, okay.

But

I mean, I remember in 2012, you were the guy that they were talking about.

Ann Coulter, who's the kingmaker now.

I remember she said, if it's not Chris Christie, I'm out.

You remember that?

Yeah, that's what discouraged me, actually.

But

I wonder if you have regrets, because I remember we did a piece here on the show saying, you know what, America always likes the new.

They claim they want the tried and true, but look at the people who run, like Bob Dole and Walter Mondale and Mitt Romney.

I could go on, John McCain the Pert, John Kerry, people who wait their turn.

They like the new one.

When Obama ran, they said, it's too soon.

And he said, no, that's what's good.

They don't have anything on me yet.

Do you think you missed your moment?

No.

Well, listen, obviously I did.

I'm not president, so I missed my moment.

But I wouldn't do it differently.

I was operating under what now is obviously an antiquated theory, which was I wasn't ready to be president because I'd only been governor for 15 months.

Obviously now that seems like a completely ridiculous notion.

But back then I really felt it, Bill, and I just felt like it wasn't the right time.

I didn't feel it.

So I felt like I couldn't go out there and be genuine and ask people for their vote if I didn't feel it.

So you can't second guess that because that's what's in your heart.

And

I understand the politics of it and what you said I think is exactly right.

And that was a moment.

But I think it would be worse to run and win if you aren't ready than to lose.

But I think you're going to run in 2024 and I think you're looking for Donald Trump to do to fall as he inevitably must.

You must know this man does not have the moral core to be president.

You must know that if Vladimir Putin came, remember when he said, well, he called me brilliant when they asked him about Putin the first time.

Well, he likes that.

You think?

Yeah.

Do you think if Vladimir Putin came to him and said, as it may have happened, I think you're brilliant.

Can I help you with this election?

Donald Trump would say, no, that's wrong.

Yeah, I kind of doubt that conversation actually happened, but I...

It didn't have to be a conversation.

What I would say to you, though, is that we've had a number of presidents over the course of our history who had some kind of, had a questionable moral core.

Like him?

Well, listen, we're going to see over the next couple of years how it goes from here.

But, you know, listen, I'm not going to defend everything that he does or says.

I haven't.

You see that in the book, and you see it when I'm on television talking about it.

I've known the guy for a long time.

I know his strengths and weaknesses and he's got some serious weaknesses along with some strengths.

Okay, but like Roger Stone now,

General Flynn,

both have sat here on this.

Michael Collins.

You really didn't tell me that.

That's right.

Bye bye.

No, you're not.

You don't want to get duckwalked out of here, you know, you're not in trouble because you were lucky.

They fired you.

Yeah, that's right.

Got while they're going to be.

You never know what's good or bad as it happened.

As it turns out, maybe it was a good move.

Very good move.

Good for me, bad for the country, I suspect.

Maybe.

I don't think you or anybody could ever convince Donald Trump to do anything he doesn't want to do.

That's been proven.

Nobody around him, not even his daughter, and we know that's the weak point.

Well, yeah,

but what I would say to you is, though, garbage in, garbage out.

And the more people that you have bad around him and who give him bad suggestions, you wind up with a bad result.

And what I was trying to do when I was around him was trying to put good stuff in front of him and trying to move him in another direction.

I know how hard it is to move him.

I've known him for a long time.

But part of why I did what I did was to try to give him better choices.

I get that.

And, you know, there were other people around him that didn't want that.

Okay, so I was saying Stone, Flynn, Manafort, Cohen, these are people very close to him.

They're all going to jail, probably.

Okay.

Is it really possible that you could have this many people around you who were doing shady stuff and the top guy not know about it?

Well, I think it's possible, but it doesn't matter because he's accountable for it.

Like if you put people in that position...

But you're accountable.

But they could say the same thing about your bridge scandal.

They could, and I said I'm accountable for that.

I'm not responsible for it.

There's a difference.

You knew not about it.

I knew absolutely nothing about it.

That's a lot of people who are plotting.

No, no, but it was three.

Excuse me.

Let's be clear on this one.

Okay, it was three people.

It was three people, and three investigations came to the same result, that it was three people.

And And so I don't want to get

into that either.

I understand, but the point is, though, I don't want to shorthand it and have people walk away with the wrong impression.

But I'm still accountable for it because two of those three people I put in place.

So you have to take accountability for it.

We see this play out every day.

Donald Trump, not every day, but a lot of days, he tweets horrible things about Mueller.

You know Mueller.

Yeah, you're a prosecutor.

Yeah, and I've said...

You're a normal Republican.

Yeah.

I don't know what that means coming from you, but I'll take it.

It means means you're, you know, I hope you are Republican classic.

No, no, no, no, no.

Don't say you hope you already committed that I was.

Right, you are.

You are.

I'm just saying.

What I call Republican classic.

Not the new Coke Republican classic.

Not the Trump.

Okay.

I like that.

So Robert Mueller, I've heard you say you think he's a decent, honest heart.

I think he's got honesty, integrity, a good man running a good investigation.

So Trump, all right.

That's not what Trump says about him.

I know he's wrong.

So who's dirty?

Trump or Mueller?

One of them has to to be.

Bob Mueller's not dirty.

Thank you.

So my point, and

I've said this directly to the president, so I'm not saying anything to you.

I've said to him, it's wrong for him to be calling this a witch hunt.

It's dumb for him to do it.

And one of the things I said to him way back in February of 17 was there's no way to make this shorter, but there's lots of ways to make it longer.

And poking the bear and calling it a witch hunt and calling them bad people just makes it longer.

And it's a wrong thing to do.

I mean, the FBI, you still believe in them, right?

Yeah, most of them.

Okay, most?

Well, most of them.

Listen, I work with the- Well, no organization is perfect.

No, that's

as an institution.

And listen, I love the guy who runs the FBI now.

He's a good guy, smart guy, lots of integrity.

Okay, okay, but there are Republicans calling for the FBI to be disbanded.

Yeah, well, there's a lot of people who are.

Okay, but.

You can't, like, every party's got stupid people.

But that comes from the president.

Well, because the cops are onto him, so he's going after the cops.

But let me tell you something.

Just because somebody's doing something stupid.

My mother taught me this.

Just because someone's doing something stupid doesn't mean you have to do something stupid.

And so the president says that.

No, but you don't have to stand with the stupid people.

But wait a second.

But you can stand with people on certain things and be against them on others.

So when he says things about Mueller, I'm on TV almost every Sunday.

That's so funny.

And I'm saying it's wrong.

But when you attack the FBI and our CIA and our intelligence agencies, as he does over and over, what do other countries think?

It looks like we're divided, that we're fighting amongst ourselves, that we're weak.

You have to be a patriot and say, that's wrong.

I can't be with that.

Of course, but that's what I said.

But it also doesn't mean that the other side's all that enticing either.

So everybody makes choices.

Well, and...

But they're not.

Only Republicans get this patriotic immunity.

Yeah.

Explain that to me.

Explain.

Well, like,

if Obama did the things that Trump has done, if he said Comey was a nut job, I got rid of him, if he stood in the office with the Russians, if he stood in Helsinki and said, well, the intelligence agency says this, but Putin's a strong guy.

He said it very strongly to me, and I believe him.

I don't know why I wouldn't.

And then lies about the word would and wouldn't.

You don't think they'd have impeached him?

You don't think they get a pass?

Listen,

I think if he had done stuff like that, they would have impeached him, and the Democrats may wind up trying to impeach Trump.

But at the end of it, at the end of it, there is a different standard for this guy.

There's no question about that.

And it's been a different standard since the campaign.

When I ran against him, I mean, listen, the day that he said that John McCain wasn't a hero,

after a guy spent six years in the Hanoi

and was tortured and let and refused to take an early out because he was the son of an admiral, like I don't know how many boxes you have to check to be a hero, but it seems to me you checked all of them.

Especially when Donald Trump is a draft-dodging labor.

But let me tell you why I knew it was a different standard.

I mean, I actually talked to Jeb Bush that day.

The day it happened, Jeb called me and said, well, Trump's going to be out of the race now.

So

let's be civil to each other as we go forward here.

You and I are going to be fighting this thing out.

Let's be civil.

Let's not get this thing down in the dirt.

We both thought he was gone.

You can't survive that.

Right?

And then he did.

Yes.

All right.

So,

and we could go through a whole bunch of things that happened after that.

The American people have held him to a different standard than they have held other presidential candidates and now other presidents.

That's just the reality of it.

We watch it happen, and that's the reality of it.

So I know you can bemoan it, but it's not just him.

It's the fact that he's been held to a different standard by the media and by others when he was a candidate.

He was.

A lesser standard.

That's my point.

Yeah, okay.

So my point is like, I wouldn't have gotten away with saying that about John.

No.

Jeb Bush wouldn't have gotten away with saying that, John McCain.

Okay.

John Kasich, maybe.

He's not crazy.

You've answered my question,

and I appreciate that.

That's what I'm trying to do.

So you get one last easy one.

Okay, oh, really?

I love love the Mets and you love the Mets.

Yeah, I got my Mets cuffling stuff.

I know.

I'm ready.

Why do you love the Mets?

I love the Mets because I was seven years old in 1969 and they won the World Series and I thought, this is the way it's going to be forever.

And 50 years later, they've won one more time.

So, you know,

but

it's the only sports team in my house that all four children are required to root for.

In basketball, hockey, football, they can root forever they want.

You must root for the Mets.

My wife said to me, why don't you let them root for the Yankees?

Let them be happy.

And I said, no.

Life is full of pain and disappointment.

They need to learn now about that.

That's it.

All right.

Thank you, Governor.

Come on, watch a game with me sometime, will you?

I'm back.

All right, Governor Chris Christie.

You still got it.

All right, let's meet our panel.

Hey, Jack.

Really good politician, huh?

Yeah.

All right, here's our panel.

He is a former Republican congressman from Georgia and former Trump campaign advisor.

Jack Kingston is back with us.

Jack, how are you?

Very great, Mill.

Good to be here.

A brave man.

She covers national security and the intelligence community for the Atlantic.

Natasha Bertrand, great to see you again.

And he's the career U.S.

counterterrorism intelligence officer and author of The Plot to Destroy Democracy, How Putin and His Spies Are Undermining America and Dismantling the West.

The Patriots, Patriot.

Malcolm Nance is over

Why are you?

Okay.

So

Virginia is changing its motto from Virginia is for lovers to I know this looks bad.

So I have many questions about this.

Let's just start with the political part of it first.

It seems like at first the governor he apologized, that's what Democrats do.

And then the second day he was like, you know, I slept on this and that wasn't me.

Right?

Which seems like the Trump way to do it.

Trump is always like, fake news, fuck you, nothing to see here, right?

That's his method of everything.

So what's going to happen with this governor now politically?

I can tell you this.

We as Republicans, we're enjoying every minute of it.

Just watching.

But Bill, he's got to go.

It was repugnant.

I ran for office the first time in 1984.

Nobody was putting on black faces and pretending it was fun.

That was sophomoric, uncalled for behavior.

And the only reason why we know about it now, unfortunately, is because of politics.

And it was really the aftermath of the abortion bill that somebody leaked it to the press.

But then you go to Fairfax.

He's got now two allegations against him on sexual assault.

Then you go to Herring.

He's got a problem.

And as you just pointed out today, now we've got another one.

But

they really need to quit.

But Republicans don't quit, like Roy Moore.

I don't think Northam's going to quit.

I really don't.

I talked to Congressman Tom Davis today, and he said he's going to dig down and just

learn from Donald Trump.

Exactly.

You've learned that you ride through this political scandal, especially when there are a number of other political scandals embroiled around you.

I mean, we just learned from the Access Hollywood tape and the dump of the WikiLeaks emails at the exact same time.

I mean, this is a very potent strategy.

Well, let's not act like he invented that.

There was this guy named Bill Clinton, and he had a scandal or two, and he powered through it.

So I think it's not anything new, but I think that

the legislators of Virginia have a big role here, and they can call for his resignation.

All I know is that, you know, coincidence takes a lot of planning.

Within a 72-hour period.

That's a little right.

In a 72-hour period, we have the top three Democratic leaders of the state of Virginia.

all under being called to step down.

And the next person in line of secession would be the Speaker of the House who's a Republican.

I wish they were that smart.

No,

you could be.

I mean, they've proven themselves to be really bad at APPA research up until this point, if it's all only coming out right now.

And that's the thing.

Governors have a lot of power.

Let me read something from Delene Glanton.

She writes for the Chicago Tribune.

I've read her before.

She's terrific.

And she says, I will not pretend to speak for every African American, but for many of us, there is simply no outrage over that blackface photograph.

Of course, it's racist and offensive, but many of us who live in blackface every day aren't shocked to learn that a white politician has racist skeletons in his closet.

What many African Americans care about is what has Northam done for them lately?

And she mentions Medicaid expansion.

Okay, this is something that affects real people.

Voting rights.

returning felons' rights to vote.

Governors decide sometimes who lives or dies by execution, whether the EPA does does its job or is handcuffed, ice.

You know, real people with real lives.

I think she's getting at the point that, you know, the chattering classes use these kind of things to pick at each other.

But people in real situations who need Medicaid, that's what's more important.

You know, I think it would be great if when you get to the point of black outrage, that every once in a while you talk to some black people about it.

Right, yeah.

When When I first saw the photograph, the first question I had was, which one is he?

Is he the guy in the Klansman or is the other one?

Or is he neither of the two?

He says that he may not have been either of the two.

And what is it on his page?

Yeah, well, you know, the thing is laid out.

White man, too.

I like this picture so much.

If that's the case, half of this nation at Halloween is never, ever, ever going to be allowed to run for office.

If this is a, you know, as I call it, a killing person.

Nobody was doing that.

You know, I'm from the deep south.

I lived in a college town where there was all kinds of

sophomore things.

I'm not sure how it's welcome, but

let me just say, real cute.

Bill, nobody's doing that kind of stuff.

And I don't know why you're apologizing for this guy.

I mean,

do you think he should resign?

I mean, nobody was doing.

Do you think he should resign?

Jack, I don't know because it really requires some investigation.

Did you think Kavanaugh was guilty?

But no.

I mean, are you so tempered on that?

Because that's one of the things that to me.

It's real interesting is that now we're hearing from Democrats, well, we need to learn more.

We need to really study this thing.

And by the way, Fairfax's attorney, same attorneys that defended Kavanaugh.

His accuser's attorney are the same ones who were representing Blase Ford.

It was kind of an interesting twist in Virginia.

When the Kavanaugh investigation started, or when the Kavanaugh scandal started, the first thing I said was, we need an investigation.

In my time in the armed forces, we had a rigid investigation.

And did you defend him publicly?

Because I didn't see it.

No, the thing that I didn't like about Kavanaugh was his attitude towards the world.

Oh, his attitude.

He was just disqualified.

Okay, so what, well, if you're not.

I just heard it.

If you just said Canada.

You said Kavanaugh should be disqualified.

Do you think Fairfax, Herring, or

Northam are disqualified?

I think what should happen is what should have happened with Judge Kavanaugh, which is an investigation using all the investigatory powers of the state.

There's an organization that I helped train in Virginia called the Bureau of Criminal Investigation down in Richmond.

They are the state investigatory body.

Give them the resources, time, money, and manpower, and let's get to the bottom of this rather than try to overturn an electoral.

Well,

Kavanaugh had been vetted over and over again by the U.S.

Senate far before this nomination, and he was vetted again.

And then you had everybody running out.

and saying, I believe her.

Where are they now when it comes to Fairfax's accusers?

There are a few, but do you believe his accuser?

What I believe is, first off and foremost,

do you have a problem with his attitude?

Hold on, no, not at all.

I believe that every person should have the exact same standard held to them, including the president with 21 accusations against him.

It needs to be investigated.

I think we can rest assured that the president is being investigated.

Not those particular accusations.

Okay.

Can I move on to the State of the Union?

What?

It's ridiculous.

It was great.

It was great.

You loved this speech.

I did.

Okay.

Let me just.

Of course.

You're a Trump supporter, you know, and we appreciate you coming here and towing that line.

But he said the only thing that can stop it, he's talking about

the economic miracle in the country, which is basically Obama's miracle.

It's amazing the way he...

The way he gloms onto that as

if the economy wasn't humming along when he took office.

Well, Bill, under his watch, we've got 5 million new jobs.

There was actually more under Obama's last two years.

Do you know that?

Is that

fact?

No,

of course not, because it doesn't get on Fox News.

Well, okay, you know what?

I will give you that point, but what we do know is actually 5.3 million new jobs.

We do know that African-American unemployment, historic low,

Hispanic unemployment, historic low, 11 months of 4 percent unemployment.

No president in recent years can claim that kind of thing.

Americans are prosperous.

The point

I was getting to is he says the only thing that can stop this miracle are foolish wars, politics, or ridiculous partisan investigations.

And then he says, if there is going to be peace and legislation, there cannot be war and investigation.

Is that a threat?

Is he using the State of the Union to threaten the United States?

It sounded like he was trying to hold Congress hostage by saying if there is actually legitimate oversight done of my administration for once, which he has not experienced since taking office, then he is going to

stall any potential legislation,

anything that comes his way because

he's not accustomed to this kind of accountability.

And

the fact of the matter is that he has never been, I mean, what is it, like 60% of his time now is executive time.

So it's never been an issue of

the time that it takes or you know the fact that he has to sit down with Mueller.

It's all about the fear of having to be accountable for the things.

But this sounds like a threat.

It's like one of those sci-fi movies where people are watching TV and then it goes out, and a madman comes on and says, Do what I say, or

you will all die.

Do the very well I say.

Now back to your regular problem.

It was just very odd.

Actually, though, I think he was calling to a higher calling.

And I have to say,

I have to say, Jack,

I wish I had some award for you, the bullshit spin award.

I'm pleased, Bill.

What could I

give you?

I have been training for this for a long time.

I know you have.

But you have to remember that Richard Burr and Mark Warner in the Senate have done an investigation thoroughly, and they have done it in a very bipartisan manner.

And you and the media have said many, many times, why can't the House be nonpartisan and judicial as the Senate has been.

So to say that he hasn't been investigated is, you know, he hadn't been investigated by Adam Schiff, who has been calling him, and Adam's a friend of mine, but he has called him an agent of Russia.

Well, that's not exactly.

No, we were wondering why the House Intel Committee could not be functional like the Senate Intel Committee.

I mean, for the last year,

it was...

It was just the Republicans playing interference.

And I think it's a big misconception also to say that the Senate Intel Committee is running like a well-oiled machine.

Yeah, but I understand that there are people who aren't going to be satisfied until he's found guilty and that there's collusion.

But right now, the Senate committee that up until tonight was always being praised for being bipartisan and thorough, and they have come to the conclusion that there's no collusion.

All I know is this, is that all I know is this, is that clearly this guy has never heard, Donald Trump has never heard of Richard Nixon, who is fighting a war while under investigation.

Okay, I know he doesn't read, but he should at least watch the paint part of all the president's payments.

That's not what he needs.

And he can find out how the movie ends

because you can have both things happen.

Mouth not.

I'm sorry, I got to move on because the business at Trump Tower is down.

This is the bad part.

It is true.

A lot of his properties are people who don't want to be associated with that brand.

So I'm not making this up.

They have made a video, Trump Tower in New York, the flagship, the famous one, made a video to try to get people, this is it, to buy office space in this building, which has a lot of empty office space.

But honestly, who is this targeted for?

Who's gonna buy office space?

The Russians.

Jack, I'm doing a bit.

The only people who are gonna be interested are the Russians.

So this is the ad they made.

Are you Russian oligarch who needs to bribe Trump family?

Then I have deal for you.

Launder your money through Trump Tower.

Since 1983, Trump Tower has been building up joints for men in tracksuits to drive Ferraris.

Whether you need an entire floor for propaganda factory or just one room to mix poison.

The lobby is sexy.

All H's technology.

Look, stairs move by magic.

Much space in office to rat for collection.

Oh, and such big windows.

Keep open for sun or closed to murder journalists.

Floor, easy to clean.

We make murder this morning.

Leave big red stain like Gorbachev had.

Now, no blood.

And rugs, stain resistant, so if you have to have a pea party with hookers, no stain for Robert Muller to fund, yes?

Beautiful view of Fifth Avenue, famous street where Trump killed somebody.

You take journalist to balcony, you say, Look at city, journalist.

You push, no more journalist.

Trump Tower,

great place when you want to get away.

With crimes, haha.

Call now and have our people collude with your people.

All right.

Here's the Monty Python comic icon.

Whose His new book is always Look on the Bright Side of Life, a sort of biography.

He is a pillar of comedy, this man.

He is on the Mount Rushmore of comedy.

He is in the Mount Olympus.

You can mount anybody in comedy that's not funnier than Eric Idol, ladies and gentlemen.

Hello, sir.

Eric Idol, everybody.

And myself.

Thank you so much for being here.

I know you don't need the money.

Spam a lot.

You're not luckily give us very much,

so it works out.

I have been reading your book.

I have been enjoying it so much.

It's like having sex with candy.

It's just.

Is that a good thing, or is candy a name of a porn star?

And, you know, you had a rough childhood.

I read that in the book.

And you call yourself a failed pessimist.

I love that.

It's so elegant.

Meaning, life started out rough, but it really came out in the wash for you, didn't it?

Yeah, I mean, I'm an optimist, at least by in the the mornings.

I'm a pessimist at night.

I mean

I see the glass half full and you've already drunk it.

And the song that the book takes its title from, Always Look on the Bright, always been one of my favorites.

When the first time I saw Life of Brian,

which is a movie that

I owe you a great debt because I made a religious movie called Religilist that

when Larry Charles and I pitched it, the studios were like, you can't make a movie making fun of religion.

And we said, there is one, Life of Brian.

And everybody went, oh yeah, I love that one.

So maybe.

Well, that's good.

Now

that was the first one.

Nobody really had ever done that before, made fun of religion in a movie like that.

No, but we examined it intelligently, I think.

We did.

You know, we gave it a fair crack.

And we didn't make fun of J.C.

No, you did.

He's been in it twice.

He is.

He's a baby, and he's in, you know, and the Sermon on the Mount.

It was a brilliant conceit to make it about J.C.

And that song was written to be crucified, too.

And

have you ever been crucified?

No.

Yes, you have, actually, by ABC.

You say it started out ironic and it ended up iconic, which is so true.

It's sung at funerals now.

It's the most popular song at funerals.

They sing it at soccer games.

This is true.

It's the number one song played at British funerals,

which is good news and bad news because they don't pay royalties.

But I wonder if the people who were singing it realized that it was a song sung by somebody on a cross.

Well, I think that's the point of the song, really.

You haven't got a lot to look forward to when you are being crucified.

But it's still very optimistic.

And it does say always look on the bright side of death, which is what are in the lyrics, which I think is very important.

And I think it's important that people do look on the bright side, because these are very grim times.

And people tend to laugh.

And that's what you give them that laugh.

That's why I keep reading this book.

And I want to...

Do you mind if I read a couple of passages here?

Because I was interested in your love life.

And you talked first about...

I can barely remember it.

Well,

you talk about your first wife, and you said, I had fallen in love with a beautiful Australian actress called Lynn Ashley, whose painted breasts I first saw on a poster outside my local cinema.

I guess that's the poster.

Yeah, I'll never forget what's his name.

Yes, that's right.

A Michael Winner movie.

Okay, then you're reading in the other chapter about your current wife.

You said there is only one edition of Playboy magazine from the 70s that does not have a full nude on the cover.

It features the beautiful dairy air of a lovely lady in blue cut-off jeans.

There it is, on a bicycle seat, and then you talk for a while about the ass.

And then you say.

I married that ass.

Right.

So,

Eric,

your first wife, you saw her on a poster with her tits.

Yes.

Your second wife, you saw her ass on a magazine cover.

No, no, I didn't see it till afterwards.

I saw her face to face and I fell in love with her at once.

She asked me the dance and that was it 42 years ago.

All right, well,

I was going to make a joke about it.

We're all spoiling your jokes, I'm sorry.

Maybe you should put you a sign when we do a bits.

But it is funny that you saw the one wife with the tits and the second wife with the S.

I mean, it just struck me in the book.

All right.

So the other song I love that you wrote, Galaxy Song, everything I know about astronomy is from the galaxy song.

And those numbers in it are actually quite accurate, right?

They were accurate, but the song's 30 years old.

So I get into trouble from astrophysicists nowadays saying actually the galaxy is much bigger.

There are more than a billion trillion stars in the universe, so we have to keep updating it.

But you are not afraid of artificial intelligence like a lot of people.

I'm worried about artificial stupidity.

It's Fox News that bothers me.

Right.

But

I don't, what do you mean by artificial stupid intelligence?

Because

that works fine.

Yeah, okay, but I worry about things that movies portray as bad in the future because they always come true.

And so in movies,

the robots always take over.

And I think that will happen.

Maybe it has.

You mean

like Dick Cheney is really a Russian robot.

I fuck up.

And what about Brexit?

You're British.

What's going on with Brexit?

It's a mess.

I mean, I live here, so I don't really, I'm not facing it every day, but they are so depressed and fed up because it's the same thing, you know.

It's the Russians, it's Cambridge Analytica, it's the newspapers controlled by people who don't live in the country and don't pay taxes, and a series of lies.

And they're about to run away from Europe again.

I call it Dunkirk II.

Only this time we're following the Nazis out of Europe.

Yeah, it is the same people, Cambridge Analytica.

I'm afraid so.

Yeah, but

what they're getting at, I mean, a lot of people in Britain, I mean, they compare them to the Trump people here.

They feel like they're losing their country.

I mean, is there any validity to people feeling that way?

Without, I mean, race is part of it.

They don't like immigration.

That's part of it.

But

if you feel like your cultural identity is slipping away, is that valid to recognize that?

I don't think it's true.

I think we were doing very well.

We were leading Europe, and now we're just going to crash.

We've dropped 10%, It's just going to go crazy.

And

it's just insane.

And it's populist politics.

And it's not based on reality, scaremongering.

And I think that's worked here.

And it's time we stop that working in politics.

And

what are your thoughts on Jeff Bezos' dick?

I think it's a pecker outing a pecker, isn't it?

That's David Pecker, you're right.

Can I read his...

It's better than a mushroom, Dick, isn't it?

You see what happens when you bring a pillar of comedy on.

The plays

breaks into laughter.

Let me read what Jeff Bezos said today, because he was being blackmailed.

He says, of course, I don't want personal photos published, but I also won't participate in their well-known practice of blackmail.

I prefer to stand up and roll this log over.

Yes, he really said that.

He's in the middle of a scandal about his dick, and he said, I prefer to stand up and roll this log over

and see what crawls out.

There is talk

there might be a government role because Trump is the head of the government in getting these texts.

Do you think that's possible?

You would know things like this.

That kind of collection is extremely hard to do.

I mean, I'm not saying that it's not

feasible.

Well, it was probably done by a close relation.

You have to, you know, the easiest way when you're doing clandestine collection like that is steal the phone for five minutes, clone it, and you have everything that's on board.

I mean, they have his text messages and his photographs.

If you want to do external collection of something like that, it's going to cost you a lot of money a lot.

Isn't the NSA doesn't can't they see anything?

Yeah, they can do anything they want, but that has to go through a watch section.

It's going to be showing those pictures around everywhere.

So it's not.

It can't be one guy in the NSA could have done that.

No, a rogue officer could not have done that.

No.

Okay.

Well, Bezos has, and his private investigator, they actually have someone in mind who might have had a role in this, which is the brother of his lover who has bizarre relationships with like Carter Page.

And I mean, they all kind of, all the scandals kind of intersect.

I just.

Right, and Roger Stone.

But, you know, I think that it's pretty remarkable how Jeff Bezos totally flipped the script on this.

I mean, he was in the middle of the divorce scandal.

He,

you know, he had a ton of problems, and then he comes out and he takes on this bully head-on, and he completely exposes the kind of extortion that AMI has been practicing for so long.

And I also just think it's amazing how scared AMI must have been of what Bezos was investigating to completely compromise the immunity deal that they had with prosecutors in the Southern District of New York.

I mean, the very person who was sending Bezos all the information about the photos had an immunity deal with the prosecutors.

So just the kind of risk they were taking is very telling.

So

when I was watching the State of the Union speech, I saw language used about abortion that I've never seen a president use, especially in that setting.

And I noticed today John Roberts has, for some reason, come over to the liberal side on the abortion issue.

He stood up for

The state of Louisiana only has three abortion clinics, and they were about to close two of them.

He stood in the way of that.

It may not last, but we'll see.

It seems to me like this is the issue that the Republicans are going to run on.

The wall and the womb.

That's what they care about.

And we all, I think, at our peril forget that a lot of this country votes on that one issue.

They don't follow politics as closely as the rest of us do on a political junkie show like this.

That's the issue they care about.

And it's and if.

Bill, I think, though, the economy is in the greatest shape it's been in many, many years.

No, it's not.

It is.

It's still basically in the same shape it's been.

The economy is up.

The stock market is doing well.

They had a little hiccups, but people are making money, Bill.

That's what he's going to run on.

And when you say what's going on,

it's money.

Well, I'll tell you one thing.

Two things that really matter are jobs and peace.

And we have both of them right now.

And that's not bad.

But Trump didn't even know.

I'm sorry to insert some economic reality in here.

But we are are at peace.

You are a lawyer.

You're paying to say other people's opinions.

I'm also the only one up here.

Actually, that's not true.

Actually, that's what you do when you act.

If I can do that.

We also run it first.

Let me say this.

Let me say this.

I'm the only one here who's been in elected office, and I know that the middle class is very interested in jobs because jobs are good.

And if we as the Republican Party...

And and Bill, I'm actually going to back into agreeing with you.

Moving away from some of the more lightning rod social issues and talking about jobs, which we did not do last November, that's what's going to help us win in 2020.

Jack, there were a million people almost out of work for 35 days because the president shut down the government.

I'm glad you brought that up.

I'm glad you brought that up.

The December jobs report, 222,000 new jobs.

The January jobs report, 304,000 jobs.

More new jobs were created in January

during the shutdown.

And I'm not saying the shutdown's good.

You just piggybacked on the accomplishments of the previous administration.

Well, at the same point, Bill.

It's the same.

At some point,

a lot of these Democrats are going to have to get over it.

I also have an economics degree.

You can't keep claiming that Obama did everything right and anything.

No, no, I'm just saying it's basically the same economy.

You know what it reminds me of?

It's like a rich guy who inherits, say, $400 million,

and then I turned that into $450 million.

Yay, you left it in the bank.

He has repealed some of these job-killing regulations that has unshackled private sector.

More women workers than ever.

You know what I'm talking about?

That, the prosperity, and

let me put this in NASCAR terms so you can understand this.

Let me talk about that.

Let me close my thoughts.

Let me talk about that.

The drugs driver

laps the field eight times

and the replacement driver gets in, drives 500 yards, and says, I won.

Thanks, Obama.

Let me put the fortune outside the beltway terms.

Not true.

It's just total elitism, Malcolm, for you to say that.

And to say that

how long are we going to be able to say, oh, this is Obama's doing because it was good.

All right.

Thank you, panel.

Time for new rules, everybody.

New rules.

Okay.

New Roll, you can give an 80-minute speech that puts everyone to sleep and end it by saying,

We have not yet begun to dream.

Oh,

believe me, some of us already have.

New rule millennials have to stop criticizing Maroon 5 for their Super Bowl performance.

You know what us old-timers had for halftime shows?

Marching bands.

Forming feet.

Pete Fountain playing the clarinet with Snoopy.

Up with people.

You guys are spoiled.

You get two halftime show nipples.

We only got one.

Neuroul, Baba Singh, the man with the 200-pound turban, has to let me go ahead of him in the airport security line.

That's all.

Neurul, the taxi industry, has to launch an advertising campaign touting the one single advantage that they have over Uber.

Cabbies, you don't have to pretend to like us.

New rule, Canada should stop denying Dave Assman's request to have his last name on a vanity license plate.

It's his real name.

But Canadian officials are afraid of the look on people's faces when they read it.

But as Dave said, I don't care about their face.

I'm Dave Assman.

And finally, New Rule, instead of saying both parties are equally to blame for the mess we're in, just admit you haven't really followed politics for the last 20 years.

Now, everyone is mad at Howard Schultz for thinking he can be the barista-in-chief, but nobody is attacking his central premise.

that we need an independent because both sides have become equally extreme.

Now, I'm not here to pick on Howard.

I don't believe in kicking billionaires when they're down.

And besides, there's some professional courtesy involved.

I also was once a drug dealer.

But

this idea of a pox on both their houses is just factually wrong.

There's a pair of highly respected scholars named Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann who've been analyzing Congress for half a century, always criticizing both parties in equal measure.

But then around 2012, they started writing something very different, summed up in their article, Let's Just Say It: The Republicans are the problem.

They wrote: The Republican Party has become an insurgent outlier, ideologically extreme, scornful of compromise, unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science.

Exactly.

Congress is not broken, the Republican Party is broken.

So.

So when I hear Howard Schultz say, we are sitting today with approximately $21.5 trillion of debt, which is a reckless example not only of Republicans, but of Democrats as well, it's obvious he just hasn't done his homework.

Bill Clinton left office with a surplus.

Obamacare

was paid for, and Obama's bank bailouts, necessary because of a Republican recession, were paid back.

Reagan,

W and Trump all ran up huge debt with tax cuts for the rich, and their party continues to practice trickle-down economics long after evidence has shown it not to work.

Yes, evidence.

Only one side generally trades in reality anymore.

Trump has made over 8,000 false or misleading statements as president.

Nothing like this has ever happened before.

Yes, all presidents lie to a degree, but Trump is in a world of his own.

He's Bob Beeman at the 68 Olympics

breaking the long jump record by two feet.

He's Babe Ruth hitting 59 home runs when the previous record holder had 27.

He's...

he's

Tom Brady winning six fucking Super Bowls.

But this leveling of truth is a war being waged on democracy by only one side.

51% of Republicans still believe in birtherism.

I once joked that Trump was the son of an orangutan,

and he sued me for it.

But it didn't become a foundational belief of the Democratic Party.

A majority of Republicans believe Hillary ran a pedophile ring out of a pizza parlor.

They believe 3 million people voted illegally in 2016.

They believe reverse racism is a bigger problem than racism.

If you drew a Venn diagram of insane and 21st century Republican, it would be a circle.

I'm always in it.

You'll get your shot after this.

And over time, you'll get a rebuttal.

Howard Schultz says both parties engage in revenge politics, but it wouldn't have even occurred to Democrats that you could simply refuse a president to fill a Supreme Court vacancy.

Mitch McConnell did that.

He said, I know it's in the Constitution.

I don't care.

Make me.

Both parties are not extreme.

That's extreme.

Al Gore conceded the 2000 election for the good of the country.

Would Bush have?

Would Trump?

Only one party thinks it's okay for presidents to have a side gig as a Russian agent.

Trump fired the head of the FBI for doing his job with the Russian investigation.

Then he had the Russians over and laughed about it.

That's not a bipartisan problem.

If Obama did it, he'd be in Supermax now trading cigarettes with the Unibomber.

And are you really going to tell me that both sides are equally to blame for the state of the environment?

One party trusts the science on climate change change, and the other asks, How can Earth be warming if I'm holding a snowball?

So, when you say they're both equally bad, just know that doesn't make you a sage.

It's a stupid person's idea of a smart thing to say.

It's a cheat that says you're above it all when you're really just too lazy to tell shit from Shinola.

And

it is the central fraudulent idea that allowed an outsider like Trump to get elected.

It's one step up from I don't vote.

It's like claiming that I don't read makes you smarter

and I don't shower makes you smell good.

All right, that's our show.

I'll be at the Mirage, 15th and 16th of this month.

I want to thank Jack Kingston, Natasha Bertrand, Malcolm Mann, Sarah Keidel, and Chris Christie.

Join us now for overtime on YouTube.

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

For more information, log on to HBO.com.