Ep. #483: Will Hurd, Bill de Blasio

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Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO Late Month series, Real Time with Bill Maher.

Start the clock.

I know, I know.

It's not a secret today why you're happy.

You're in California.

It's warm here.

I mean, this, did you see what's going on in this country?

We

People have never been this cold.

Millions are trapped inside for days.

I mean, it can make you do desperate things.

There are unconfirmed reports of a guy in Chicago who watched Roma.

No,

New York is so cold.

Today, Louis C.K.

was just describing his penis.

Very cold.

In Washington, Sean Hennedty's lips got stuck on Trump's ass.

It's a very cold...

What is it called?

All right.

But today,

I'm telling you, today the bullshit rose past eye level.

I mean, I've been worried before, but now Trump is saying he's already built the wall.

He said with cash on hand, then why did we just have this fucking government shutdown?

He said, we are building a wall, a lot of wall, let me tell you right now.

Right now we're building a wall, and we're getting ready to give out very, very big contracts with some money we have on hand.

But we will be looking at a national emergency because I don't think anything's going to happen.

You get that?

We're building a lot of wall, so we need a national emergency because otherwise we can't build a wall.

I can't tell where the lies end and the dementia begins.

He is basing,

no,

listen to this.

He's basing his wall policy now on the movie Sicario 2.

I'm not making this up.

In Sicario, I saw the movie.

They're like, yeah, people have prayer rugs on the border, you know, Muslims with, this is not happening.

In the movie, there is smugglers who are binding women with duct tape.

He cites this as if he cannot tell fiction from reality.

Today he announced we're putting a 50% tariff on vibranium.

Vibranium, what did I say?

Vibranium, yes.

He said trade with Wakanda.

Very unfair.

And then

he spent the week at war with our own intelligence chiefs.

Did you see this?

He says the southern border is an emergency.

They say it's not.

He says ISIS is defeated.

They say not true.

He says North Korea is complying with denuclearization and Iran is not.

They say the opposite.

He says Russia's meddling, is not meddling.

They say

Russia is meddling.

These are thousands of highly trained professionals who we pay to protect and do a great job to protect this country.

They have human assets on the ground all over the world and they're listening to shit.

Remember that we went through that with Snowden and the NSA?

We spent trillions.

What the fuck are we doing that for?

Except to get the intelligence.

That's what they do.

Versus Trump, who doesn't read?

doesn't talk to experts, doesn't even read the daily briefing.

He couldn't be less informed if his head was in a jar.

I'm telling you, it went

to a different level this week.

A different level.

I mean, besides the lies and the crazy, he is just aggressively stupid.

I mean,

it's Black History Month, so he went into the Rose Garden and pardoned a bucket of chicken.

I mean,

he knows nothing about black people.

Today he gave a shout out to Malcolm 10.

And then he sat down for a lengthy interview with the New York Times.

There were no survivors.

He said to the New York Times, I came from Queens.

I became president.

I'm entitled to a great story

from my hometown paper.

This is his big gripe with the press.

If they could just report how great he is, instead of obsessively focusing on the things he says and does.

But

just in time, a white knight has emerged.

You know this.

Starbucks CEO, Howard Schultz.

He is bringing the country together.

A week ago, no one ever heard of him.

And now we all think he's a giant asshole.

No, nobody likes him.

Democrats don't like him because we think he's going to help elect Trump.

And Republicans say you put the Starbucks guy in charge and people are going to be coming into this country just to use the bathroom.

And we can't allow that.

I mean,

why the Starbucks guy?

His running mate is a Nora Jones CD.

But

the Super Bowl and the LA Rams are in the Super Bowl, so I'm guessing you're happy.

That's this weekend.

And now, you know, that's the one thing we all still do together, right, in this very divided nation.

Everybody knows about the Super Bowl.

I mean, some people will watch it on TV.

Some will listen on the radio.

R.

Kelly will be streaming.

And

yes, sympathy for R.

Kelly.

Right.

Good instinct, people.

Oh, not about R.

Kelly.

Look, I don't care who wins as long as the Patriots lose.

Now,

I'm actually pulling for New England because if they win a couple of weeks from now, finally there'll be some Patriots in the White House.

All right, we got a great show.

Got John Meacham, we got Peter Hanby and Jennifer Rubin, and a little later we're speaking with New York City Mayor Bill de Blasios backstage.

Well, first up, he is the congressional representative whose

Texas district say that three times whose Texas district crosses the most land on our southern border from Texas's 8th district.

Will heard ladies and gentlemen

Congressman?

How are you, sir?

Thank you very much for being here.

And yes, let's talk about your district.

It's, I understand, 820 miles long.

With of the border, I represent 29 counties, two time zones.

It's larger than 26 states, roughly the size of Georgia.

There must be nobody in it.

It must be very sparse.

There's more cows than people in between San Antonio and to El Paso.

But I'm from San Antonio.

That's the biggest city.

And 820 miles of the border, it's a 71% Latino district, and it's truly the only 50-50 district in Texas, 50% Republican, 50% Democrat.

And I bet you the people think you're a Democrat.

But you're not.

Well, look,

I'm a proud Republican,

but I try to talk about things that make sense, like border security.

Since I have more border than any other member of Congress, I'm the only Republican that represents a part of the border.

There's nine members of Congress that represent the border.

All Democrats, all Democrats, except for me.

And I have the most, almost two-thirds of the border between the U.S.

and Mexico.

And you've called Trump's wall a myth, right?

The need for a wall a myth?

Well, I've said that when saying that this

hasn't been a problem problem for multiple administrations, that's a myth.

But I do believe building a 30-foot-high concrete structure that takes three hours to penetrate from sea to shining sea is the most expensive and least effective way to do border security.

But let's talk about what might be a myth in this area.

The fact that immigration is a big problem, I think is a myth.

Do you think immigration is even a top 10 problem in America, one of our top 10 biggest problems?

Last year, 400,000 people came to our country illegally, and that's a decrease of 80% since 2000.

But 400,000 is still a lot of people.

I actually think when you're at 3.94% unemployment, guess what?

You need people to work.

That's why we should solve the DACA problem.

There's 1.2 million young men and women who have only known the United States of America as their home.

These are people that are contributing to our economy, to our culture, to our society.

They're already Americans.

Let's keep them here.

Let's have a permanent.

So would it be a top 10 problem?

For the DACA kids or the drinkers, it's not a problem.

But for American...

It seems to me like it's not a problem.

It's almost a solution because people, there are a lot, most Americans will not do the jobs that the people who are coming over the border will do.

That seems like a win-win.

Look, I think it's an opportunity, right?

Immigration is actually an opportunity to make sure that we have people.

And when you're at 3.94% unemployment, guess what?

You need workers, whether it's agriculture or artificial intelligence.

So we should be streamlining our immigration process in order to make sure that we have the workforce that we need in order to keep our economy going.

So are you a Republican like through your parents historically?

I'm just asking why you're a Republican.

Like why anyone is any party?

I'm not.

I'm not being snorted.

Why are you a Republican?

I'm a Republican because I believe in limited government.

I'm a Republican because I believe in

law.

I'm a Republican because I believe in economic economic opportunity, right?

They don't do that either.

There are some warts

on the party, but also you can say the same.

But here's where I think we should get to, right?

Instead of talking about all the things that divides us, let's talk about those things that actually unify us.

Because I've crisscrossed 20%.

They don't do that either.

Both sides, right?

I'm just asking why you're a Republican, because they're not good at the debt.

That was their big thing.

You said limited government.

They don't do that.

They took over the Congress in 2011, and they raised the debt a trillion dollars a year.

They're not good at national defense.

The president's a traitor.

I just don't know what's in it for you.

What is in the Republican Party for you?

I will say this.

You were in the CIA.

I was in the CIA for almost a decade.

I was the dude in the back alleys at 4 o'clock in the morning collecting intelligence on threats to the homeland.

I did.

That's where they collect them, huh?

It is.

It is.

Wow.

I did.

By the Popeye's chicken.

But I did two years in India, two years in Pakistan, I did two years in New York City doing a lot of interagency work, and then a year and a half in Afghanistan where I manage all of our undercover operations.

Okay, so what do you think when you see the President of the United States this week belittling our intelligence chiefs?

It erodes trust in our institutions.

It makes our...

So.

Here's why.

What do you

guys think when they see us, we're not, we're airing our dirty laundry, fighting amongst ourselves?

What do they think when the president doesn't, they know our president doesn't believe the experts.

They know the experts are right.

They're not crazy.

New rule.

The president should listen to the intelligence chiefs, right?

And

so

I would agree with you.

But it does erode things because

let's take Russia, for example.

They did try to manipulate our elections in 2016.

Why?

Because he denies.

They're trying to erode trust in our democratic institutions.

Russia is not a global player.

They're a regional thug.

And they're trying to reestablish the territorial integrity of the old USSR.

And what's getting in the way?

A little thing called NATO.

What's supporting NATO?

A little thing called the United States of America, right?

That's why they're trying to go after us.

And

when our president makes this decision or goes on Twitter and criticizes the intelligence community, what happens?

When they're trying to do work in the Middle East, going against ISIS, going against al-Qaeda, which has metastasized to other parts of the Middle East and Northern Africa, when we have to work with our partners, it makes it more difficult for those men and women that are in those dark corners, in those dangerous places.

Right.

I mean, this came about because every year we get a threat assessment, right?

They were giving us what they say, and this is great that we do this.

And it's in writing.

Right.

It's in writing

and televised.

And he said they didn't say it.

Now, aside from the lies, the threats, I think they identified accurately.

You know, they said Russia is still meddling, ISIS is still around, all things which he denies.

But isn't the biggest threat, him?

Isn't the biggest security threat to America the President of the United States?

I think the biggest threat to long-term stability in the United States is actually China.

China is trying to surpass the United States as the global hegemony.

But I will say this,

when we erode trust in our intelligence community, in our federal law enforcement, that has an impact through the rest of the world.

The only way that we're going to continue to deal with China is by making sure we have allies.

When our allies can't trust us, where they don't know if they think there's a disconnect between what the executive branch says and what the the working folks whether it's in the State Department or the CIA that is a problem

that's why that's why I speak out that's why I try to articulate these concerns because there's only three of us that have ever spent time in the intelligence community and that are now in Congress and this is why I speak up and try to articulate what we should be doing but I feel like if you were really speaking up you would speak out against the president and you would break with him.

Do you think that

I do.

I wrote a little little op-ed about the Helsinki decision when he was standing up there next to Vladimir Putin and I said I never would have thought at all my time as an undercover officer in the CIA that I would see a U.S.

president getting played by the Russian KGB.

And so...

So isn't the next thing you say is we have to impeach this president?

We have to somehow get rid of this president.

Do you honestly think this president puts country first, which is what you did in the CIA?

I mean, more than anybody, because you guys do it anonymously.

My job, I agree when I agree, I disagree when I disagree.

And this is, for me, making sure the men and women that I served alongside with that are still fighting wars.

You know, we've been fighting the global war on terrorism for 17 years.

These men and women, I speak out on behalf of them.

And ultimately, there's going to be an election in 2020 where the American people

decide

all these issues.

I know that in your first two years of the Trump administration, you voted with them most of the time, but in this year, you've not voted with them at all, right?

I think 0 for 12?

Well, that number is a little misleading, by the way.

Last Congress, we had almost 1,000 bills.

I think it was like 9,967.

And guess what?

All but 15.

were done in a bipartisan way.

Nobody talks about that number.

You've probably never heard that number.

And so that stat is cherry-picked certain

pieces of legislation that you may or may not have voted on.

It's not the entire...

I'm just trying to give you an out.

I'm not really with Trump.

Why do you want to be on the side of this asshole?

I agree when I agree.

I disagree when I disagree.

And we're going to continue to ultimately do that.

And this issue right now with border security, I think, is a perfect example of that.

Making sure that we're supporting DREAMers is another area that we're going to continue to to support and I'm going to always make sure that I have the the backs of the men and women in our intelligence community.

All right, well thank you for your service.

You're also a brave man to come here and I appreciate it all.

Thank you Congressman.

All right, let's meet our panel.

Okay, here they are.

He is the host of Good Luck America on Snapchat and a contributing writer for Vanity Fair, Peter Hamby.

Peter Hemby, how you doing?

Good to have you back.

Thank you.

She's an opinion writer for the Washington Post and a contributor for MSNBC.

Jennifer Rubin, how you doing?

And he is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian whose latest book is The Soul of America, The Battle for Our Better Angels.

John Meacham over here.

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

Okay, so am I wrong or did it get worse this week?

It seems like we keep saying that week after week, but it really did.

It did.

It did.

Okay, thank you.

I'm not just, you know, imagining it.

Right, I think exactly.

We're so in it every single day that it's a useful exercise to go back to like YouTube and watch how Donald Trump talked even two years ago, let alone 10 years ago.

Really?

He just doesn't seem there.

Right.

Right?

Tragically, he is.

I think he's like

the Admiral in Mary Poppins, right?

The guy who thinks he's got a ship.

Sighting off the cannon.

Yeah, right.

Admiral Boone from Mary Poppins.

And it's just sort of this reality.

It's actually unfair to the Admiral

in many ways.

I think the distortion of reality is the scariest thing.

My favorite part now is that he makes up these conversations.

So he is embarrassed because his security people, his national security people, go on live television and they testify that the president doesn't know what the heck he's talking about.

So then he realizes, oh, I'm being criticized.

So he invents, I think, a conversation in which they say, no, we were misrepresented.

Misrepresented?

They were on live television.

How can you misrepresent someone who's on live TV?

I know.

And then they say, he says, well, they said we were really all in agreement.

I don't know how that's metaphysically possible.

I think the border...

the border wall government shutdown sort of you know undercut his create your own reality you know strategy in a way because he kept saying there's an emergency at the border, there's an emergency at the border.

The media, for all of its faults, actually did a pretty good job of illuminating the reality.

I just think that this fake reality he's creating has its limits.

It's that

39 to 42 percent of the country that believes him it believes in him at all costs, but I think most of the country realizes the things he says aren't true.

But I think that Nancy Pelosi has become the Joseph Welch of this drama.

Remember,

he was the lawyer who said, have you no decency, sir, at long last to Joe McCarthy.

And by holding him to account on the wall during the shutdown, she forced him into doing something he really hadn't done before, which was break with that base.

And presidents get in trouble for two reasons.

One is when they think they can put one past us,

Johnson and Watergate, Nixon and everything.

And when they break with their base.

And so when we look back on this, you know, sort of like the planet of the apes, how did the statue get to the beach,

I think this could be a big moment.

Can I I read something from the National Enquirer?

Because I read the National Enquire.

I have for 30 years.

My friends and show business are, how dare you?

How could you?

I'm like, fuck it.

This makes me laugh.

And sometimes I need to laugh.

Okay, this page one last week, they obviously had to do a retraction.

Because sometimes, you know, usually they'll print anything, but sometimes they got him and then, you know, they don't want to get sued.

This is exactly what it says.

It says, on November 26, 2018, the National Enquirer published an article concerning Michael Strahan Strahan and his new afternoon spin-off from Good Morning America.

The headline on the cover read, Michael Strahan Fired.

The Enquirer wants to make clear to its readers that it did not intend to suggest Mr.

Strahan had been fired.

And regrets if any reader misread the article.

This

they were doing this forever, but now this is the President of the United States.

Right, right.

And he's apparently in some kind of ongoing relationship with them because he seems to be, they seem to be doing his bidding and doing his work for him.

You know, Sean Hannity better watch out because he's got real competition now from the National Inquiry.

The people who were testifying this week, and we're talking about Gina Haspel, head of the CIA, McCabe, head of the FBI, Dan Coates,

head of...

I guess the whole operation.

There they are.

Okay, now in another world, maybe I would have not thought that these people were the right people on the job.

They're conservatives, but they're good people.

Yes.

What happens when they go?

What happens when he Matthew Whitakers those three?

Right.

And he just gets people who he doesn't have to have this argument with.

Because you know, he doesn't like to have these arguments with.

We're down to like the C team.

We're not even, the B team left like a year ago.

So we're down to the C team.

And each time he replaces them, they do get worse because who wants to work for this crazy person?

So, you know, in some ways, I do admire these three because they're hanging in there.

They are not enabling him.

They're actually.

Yes, Yes, and they're normal sane people who are trying their best to protect the country.

And they don't see it.

But, you know,

it's like what they say in the movies, the shit got real.

Because now it's about these security matters.

This week he did Putin another favor.

I know it looked like he didn't when he got he's pulling out of the

treaty with Russia about nuclear weapons.

Putin has wanted this for years.

He's going down the list of what

Syria, check mark, fighting with allies, check mark,

talking about getting out of NATO, check mark, creating confusion about democratic elections, check mark.

If he's not an asset of the Russians, he's doing a fine imitation.

I mean, the FBI, our FBI, actually thought he was so compromised that they opened an investigation, which we don't know if it's still going on, into whether or not he was a Russian asset after he fired James Comey.

Like, these things are staring us in the face, and if it were any other person, we would say this is obviously someone who is hiding something.

Literally half of the American people, according to a Monmouth poll, think that he has some financial entanglements with Russia, that Putin's dangling over him.

Slightly less than half of Americans think they have an actual P-tape.

Like half of the country literally thinks that he is being controlled by Vladimir Putin.

That's remarkable and outrageous.

So what do you think about your media?

How is the media handling this?

How should they handle this?

Because feel like the New York Times interview him this week.

I feel like I want them to be more in his face when they're actually talking to them.

I feel like they pull punches when they're in the room with him because they want to get access again.

But somebody has to just, whoa, whoa, whoa, sir.

That's completely not true.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, sir.

I think.

That's Nancy Pelosi, by the way.

Yes.

That was Nancy Pelosi, because she was the one who said, no, that's wrong, Mr.

President, you have your facts.

So all they have to do is be like Nancy Pelosi.

Or as he calls her, Nancy.

Yes, exactly.

Because tremendous nickname.

Stinging.

That's the thing.

Well, I got her on that list.

More pigtails.

I mean, what the hell?

Day-to-day beat reporters on the Hill at the White House, they have to maintain some veneer of access, so they do sometimes pull punches.

I do think the media writ large is asking these questions.

We're asking them right here.

But I'm talking about when they're talking to him.

Right.

I feel like he gets away with his bullshit.

He just, excuse me, and then he goes on with this, and they go on to the next question.

And he changes the subject and

do something more provocative that then piques your interest and you follow him down the rabbit hole.

It is true that when the obstruction case comes, not if, but when, he basically, Lester Holt, he's on tape saying,

I fired Comey because this Russia thing was made up.

So he just copped to it.

I mean, we don't even have to worry that much about it.

I mean, the two most important, the intelligence chiefs are important, but arguably the two most important public servants in the country right now are Robert Mueller and John Roberts.

Because Roberts is now the swing vote on the court, and whatever Director Mueller comes back with is going to be hugely important to see whether we can actually prove what seems to be self-evidently the case, which is that there is a relationship with Russia that has put the Republic at risk.

Do you have confidence that the media will handle this coming election better than the last one?

No.

I have my doubts.

Yes, doubts.

I think there's Twitter is the water cooler of the political media.

We retweet quickly, move on to the next thing.

I think that it's not going to get better.

We've had these debates for over 40 years that the political press doesn't cover enough policy, they cover too much horse race.

I think what's interesting if you're a candidate, because there's going to be 15, 20, 25 Democrats running for president, how do you punch through?

The media love scandal, right?

Think about Trump in 2016.

His scandals in many ways were his policies.

So can like build the wall, right?

Ban Muslims.

If Democrats can find a way to make their policies scandalous in a way, but also powerful to voters, they can get attention.

Think about AOC, right?

AOC is a master of attention.

She got people talking about a 70% marginal tax rate, talking about the Green New Deal.

You saw with Kamala Harris this week saying get rid of private insurance.

The media will cover policy if it comes off as sort of

scandalous or interesting, but they're not going to cover it otherwise.

Well, I look at it a little differently.

First, I think it's actually harder to cover a horse race when there are 15 horses because you can't tell who's in front of who, and the difference between 3% and 5% is not really

about it.

We're, what, 13 months from Iowa?

It's ridiculous.

So I hope what...

Yeah.

I think that you have a lot of people activated and interested in politics in the country who weren't before.

And these are the standard bears for half the country.

Oh, I do agree with that.

I also think that these people actually have stuff stuff to say.

We've had like a holiday from reality.

These people at least are talking about the issues.

You may have disagreements with them, but they are talking about health care and the environment and the rest of it.

My concern is something a little different, which is that the media loves conflict.

So that they will create conflict between non-differences or very tiny differences, and suddenly it's the Democrats in disarray storyline, which is trivial in and of itself.

And you're still not talking about the substance of what they're saying.

The problem with being against conflict as a narrative device, though, is therefore you're against Homer.

You know, I mean, this conflict is, in fact,

we're not a story.

We're reality.

Well,

yes.

But at this point, anything that's borderline in touch with reality is going to be an improvement.

So

the bar is fairly low.

There's also not a ton of policy differences in the Democratic.

primary and usually primaries generally there's not.

And so the fights become about personality, biography, messaging, stories.

And that's where you get those sort of conflict things.

I mean, there are some policy debates going on within the Democratic Party challenging corporate power, you know, criminal justice, those sort of things, but the media will, I think, fall back on those sort of personality-driven conflicts.

I'd argue that the biography is actually a good thing

because character is destiny.

And you never know what's going to happen when the phone rings.

And we knew, I mean, I think the country knew what the character of the incumbent president was.

It It was just that enough voters in the right states didn't care.

And so to some extent, and the other thing about the media is we're all the media.

Right?

This isn't as though the boys are on the bus or Cronkite is sitting there deciding what to put on the press, right?

And in fact, the press, like politicians, far too often are mirrors of who we are rather than molders.

And I think that's something we have to think about.

But I think the point about character is right.

We want to see, you know, do these people think?

Can they make a, do they have any record?

That's good.

Right.

Thinking would be good.

Reading would be good.

The candidates, yes.

It would be nice to see if these people have like the qualities to be a president.

Have they ever led anything?

Do they know stuff?

I mean, how about giving them like, you know, the SAT test or something so that we have them actually know stuff.

We don't have to go to the SAT.

My new theory, I want you to adopt this, we should give the citizenship test to every candidate and everyone who wants a driver's action.

Seriously.

You have less cars.

Do you think it could pass?

Do you think the president could pass?

Oh, the president, definitely.

No, no, no.

Absolutely.

No.

Right.

Because the test is rigged.

Right.

Exactly.

Right.

It was written in complete sentences.

Right.

Fake test.

Right, exactly.

Also, could we give a break to like asking people so early?

Can't we stop doing that?

They're always asking me.

Like, what do you think of this guy?

You're right, Pete.

People even know

who you are.

Who's this guy, Pete, in Budicich?

What is his name?

Pete Budichich.

He's the mayor of South Bend, Indiana.

Right, he's running for president.

Pete Budichich.

Yes.

Oh, yeah.

The other thing is.

He's 37.

Right.

And

so many people are in South Bend.

100,000.

But he's already had a more responsible position than Donald Trump did.

How do I have an opinion on him?

It's like when people ask me about a band.

I only know the one song.

Kamala Harris announced for president this week, and most people in California don't have an opinion of her and she's their senator.

I feel like the acid test on how the media is going to do is if they keep talking about Elizabeth Warren and the Indian thing.

That to me is Hillary's emails

of 2020.

If they let that go, you have matured, media.

If you don't, if it's like, what's the reaction to the reaction, to the reaction about the DNA test, then you're...

Again, to what I was saying earlier, Warren rolled out this Pokecohanis response video last year.

She got a lot of blowback for it.

Before that, she was one of few Democrats who was out there doing personal name-calling against Donald Trump.

She'd call him a two-bit crook.

She'd call him names.

When most Democrats weren't engaging in that, she's backed away from that since she's announced she's running for president.

And she's back out there in Iowa and New Hampshire talking about policy.

And remember, there is something in the American spirit where we bounce from guardrail to guardrail.

So you go from George H.W.

Bush to Bill Clinton.

You go from Clinton to W.

I didn't think I'd live to see a bigger, sharper contrast than W W to Obama until.

So

maybe we get Aristotle.

I don't know, but

we have someone who might be a presidential contender.

Should I bring him out and he can join this conversation?

Okay, we have right with us now, he is the

109th.

Wow, mayor.

That said he's been around a long time of New York.

Bill de Blasio, ladies and gentlemen.

Mr.

Mayor.

How are you, sir?

Great to meet you.

You know the panel, I'm sure.

Indeed.

Okay, so you're from the greatest city in the world, is that correct?

That is exactly right.

You know, I lived in your city twice.

And I miss you.

We're across the river.

I liked a lot of things about it, but I never liked that.

We're the greatest city in the world, Dick.

You know what?

Because it makes everybody else feel like, what's wrong with us?

Why can't it be just the greatest city for New Yorkers?

Why do you have to be the greatest city in the world?

We're big.

We're bold.

We believe in ourselves, but that doesn't mean we can't love everyone else, Bill.

It Doesn't mean we can't love everyone else.

I got Trump elected.

Okay, so

you are thinking of running.

I'm not ruling it out.

Not ruling it out.

Does it scare you that there's already so many people in this field?

It's a very crowded field.

No, it's democracy.

It's people with a lot of different experiences, views, people of a lot of different backgrounds.

It's actually the Democratic Party at its best.

I agree.

There's something good going on here.

You know, when it was the power brokers deciding who had a shot and who didn't, that's when we should have been upset.

This is actual open democracy.

It's anyone's ball game.

I know, but I'm not running for president.

You might be.

That's what I'm saying.

For you,

you got to ask yourself:

what do I got that the rest of these people don't got?

What do you got that they don't have?

I'm not here to compare against others, but I'll say what I'm doing in my city because I think that's the important point.

We believe in New York City that we have to be bold about progressive solutions, that we have to stop being apologetic.

I'm actually quite sick of Democrats who are afraid to be Democrats, who are afraid to be bold and progressive.

So, for example,

we

last month I said, let's stop waiting for the things we should get from Washington, like Medicare for all, single-payer health insurance.

Let's stop waiting.

Let's guarantee health care for every New Yorker.

We're doing that now.

Every New Yorker will have a right to health care.

But

that's New York.

You know, I mean, look at some of the red state Democrats who win.

There's not many.

People like Sherrod Brown, right?

Amy Klobuchar,

Claire McCaskill until recently, Joe Manchin in West Virginia.

They wouldn't say something like that.

I don't think, would they?

Maybe they wouldn't.

Doesn't play all over the country.

Doesn't the secret to winning for the Democrat is you have to, the progressives and the centrists, and you have to somehow convince both of them you're talking to both of them.

I think that is a conventional wisdom we were all taught, and I think it was a lie.

Wow.

The centrists got us nowhere.

By the way, when it comes to the 2020 Democratic nomination process, centrists need not apply, in my view.

Wow.

The progressive wing

is what's ascendant right now for a reason.

Because progressives provide an idea of the Democratic Party that's truly identifiable.

The people will know.

If you say we guarantee health care, if you say we're going to ensure that people have a living wage, we're going to address this madness of the 1% taking all the wealth and power for themselves.

People know which side you're on.

They can identify.

The only reason Donald Trump had a chance in 2016 was that too many working Americans didn't didn't know if Hillary Clinton was on their side.

She tried to articulate a vision.

I don't want to take that away from her.

But people couldn't tell if she was a part of the elite that had caused their problems or if she was part of a process of change.

What we have to do as Democrats is be so bold and so clear that it's unmistakable.

Another example, in New York City, we are going to pass a law guaranteeing two weeks paid time off, two weeks paid vacation for every single working New Yorker.

People need time for themselves and their families.

Because people are working, they're working harder and harder.

You see what's happening in our society.

People are working harder and harder.

They're getting less and less for it.

We have to show people we're on their side and we're going to do something about it.

And this will, you think, change the view of people in the country at large about Democrats because just having a D by your name is so toxic in about half this country that they stick with a mad king like Donald Trump or anybody.

They will vote for anybody in at least 20 states if they are anything but a Democrat.

Why is that?

Why is the D so toxic?

Okay, what did the Democrats say?

Why are they so obnoxious to people?

Well, I think Democrats lost their way as part of why they're so obnoxious to people because it used to be the party of working people.

It was unquestionably the party of working people.

So when you think about the generations of Democrats, where did you get Social Security from, Democrats?

Where did you get the 40-hour work week from so you didn't

have to take your whole life and give it over to work six days, seven days a week?

Democrats created a lot of the actual decent benefits in our society, the way of living that people could have a middle-class lifestyle.

But then at a certain point, they started being afraid to pursue the next step and the next step.

Today, in this country, too many people are not living a decent life.

Working longer and longer, getting less and less back for it, paying their taxes but watching the 1% not pay their fair share.

And people are upset about it, and they have a right to be upset about it.

All right, let me ask you about something that

I care about: pot.

You, sir, are consistent.

Thank you very much.

I like what you said.

You said we have to make sure that those who bore the brunt of past burdens, we're talking about legalizing cannabis, reap the most future benefit.

That means that a majority of the opportunity generated in this new industry must go to people of color.

So,

this is like

the way the Indians got casinos?

I hope it's better than that.

I hope it's a good idea.

Yeah, it'll be quite an industry.

But that's what you're saying, is that we're going to,

can white people get in this industry or are they cut off?

No.

Everyone can be a business.

I'm going to start in the industry just a little bit.

Thank you for your contribution.

It's not just about race.

It is about an economic reality, too.

So here's what I'm trying to say.

For years and years, broken laws sent a huge number of Americans to jail.

Most of them were young people of color.

And we've got an industry that now is just licking its chops, waiting to come in and corporatize marijuana, to do exactly what the tobacco industry did with cigarettes, to do exactly what the pharmaceutical industry did with things like oxycontin.

And what we need is legalized marijuana without corporatized marijuana.

Well, I don't know about that.

I don't think that's possible completely.

But I like like the boldness of this.

You're saying this is a great way to do reparations.

It's a way to say we had an injustice.

Right.

Now let's get the very people who are the victims to the economic benefits.

So now that we're on a roll,

here's where I want to challenge you on what a lot of Democrats are, you know, suggesting a lot of big-ticket items.

Medicare for all, they're saying would cost $32 trillion in 10 years.

And it's always, well, then we're going to tax the rich more.

You know that's not going to pay for $32 trillion.

The rich already pay quite a bit.

They should pay more.

Yes.

Okay.

Why don't you guys ever say we should cut the military budget in half?

That's where the money is that's being wasted the most.

Okay.

Decouple defense, the defense contractors from actually protecting the country.

Okay, so I agree with you that there's a huge amount of waste in the military budget, and I agree with you that we can find a lot of money in the military budget, but let me make the bigger point about taxation.

There is plenty of money in the United States of America.

There's plenty of money in L.A.

There's plenty of money in New York City.

It's just in the wrong hands.

That is the reality.

And that means taxing the wealthy, repealing the Trump tax cuts and giveaways to the corporations and the wealthy.

But look, if you had Medicare for All,

then average Americans are not paying their premiums, their co-pays, their out-of-pocket expenses for health care, their deductibles.

The idea of Medicare for All is, yeah, tax the wealthy as part of it, but also take away from people all those other expenses in their lives.

If you ask them to contribute then to the costs of Medicare for All, it actually nets out in their favor.

But yes, the military budget is another place we can save money because, you know what?

We're not secure if people in our nation are not living a decent life.

That's the bottom line.

I want to ask about your big competition, panel two, for the job of president, and that is Howard Schultz, because

he threw his cup into the ring this week or he's thinking about it.

And it's so rare that I agree with the conventional wisdom.

And since everybody hates Howard Schultz, and I hate him now too,

I'm just going to enjoy talking about this.

And the first thing I want to say is that people have to get over this idea that because a guy is rich, he's that smart.

He had one good idea.

Boiling water and beans and coffee.

And tell you,

it's addictive.

It's a drug.

People are going to want to spend time in a nice place to be near their drug.

Okay, it was one good idea.

The fact that it made him a billionaire is a fluke.

All great wealths are flukes.

It's a fluke that you can throw a baseball 100 miles an hour and you get paid enormously for it.

It's a fluke.

He's not a genius.

In fact, he's not that bright.

They asked him in 2018, they were asking him about raising taxes to pay for the debt, his big issue.

He said, I don't want to talk in the hypothetical about what I would do if I was president.

Yeah, that's the whole point of running for president, is talking in the hypothetical about what you would do.

But this is the point.

Have we not learned the lesson that billionaires who have never served in public office are not necessarily qualified to be president of the United States?

You now have polling.

To back up everything you're saying, a liberal group put out a poll today and Howard Schultz's favorable rating among Democrats, among independents, among Republicans, 4%.

His unfavorable rating is like five times that.

Yeah, 40%.

He's deeply unpopular, but like,

the issue with him, like, it's funny watching Democrats freak out about him.

I get it.

They don't want to leave anything to chance running against Donald Trump.

But if you're running for president, you should probably have one of two things and hopefully both.

Big ideas or like you are a megawatt like personality.

This guy's neither.

He's like your pedantic uncle, and he didn't bring any like ideas to the table other than Unite.

He's reading off these cue cards, I think, that are written by political consultants.

And it's one cliche.

On the side of a cup.

Right, exactly.

And that's maybe where he got off, exactly.

And it's misspelled.

And misspelled, right?

But wait, no, wait, here's also the problem.

You have Howard Schultz and Michael Bloomberg,

two billionaires, telling people why they can't have health care.

Listen to this.

Two billionaires telling everyday Americans why we can't afford for them and their family to have decent health care.

That's bankrupt.

They're going to be laughed out of the race.

He weighed in when there were

Kamala Harris was asked to...

Bloomberg will love it hearing you say that.

Look, but Bloomberg has to come to grips with the fact you can't talk down to the American people and tell them what, despite the fact they're working extraordinarily hard, they don't get to have health care for their families.

Meanwhile, he has all the health care he needs.

I mean, come on, it's a contradiction that he doesn't have an answer for.

Right.

Kamala Harris was asked about this this week, and, you know, it somehow got in the press that she was for abolishing the private insurance industry.

And I don't think that's what she meant.

Jake Tapper asked her about, he said, I believe if we have Medicare for All, it would eliminate private insurance.

And she then just talked about how we don't want to go through the process of having to give the insurance companies your approval or they have to get their approval going through the paperwork.

I don't know if your insurance company is going to cover this, which we've all heard.

She said, let's eliminate all of that.

That's not wanting to abolish

private insurance.

Yeah, I think a lot of the conversation about Medicare for all is pretty silly because no one knows what they're talking about what is Medicare first of all is Medicare Medicare care advantage is that something else what are you buying into who's getting this are you going to keep it so it would be nice if they actually said what they were for rather than simply a bumper sticker but besides that you know can't they just go back to universal health care?

Is that like the point?

Forget about how you get there.

Doesn't everybody in this country have something?

There's a winning message.

Democrats have to figure out a way to talk about it.

You mentioned that Medicare for all would cost, what, $35 trillion over 10 years.

The current system would cost 50 trillion over the next 10 years, right?

And if Democrats can find a way to say, hey, you're already paying this much in deductibles and prescription drugs and co-pays and figure out a way to be like, it's going to be a tax, but it's replacing what you're already paying.

Well, but Democrats need to also speak from the view of everyday people's lives.

To the point Bill made earlier, why do they lose touch with people?

Because they didn't talk about their lives.

So what are most people dealing with?

They struggle to get the health care they need, right?

It's hard to navigate.

It's expensive.

We take about the deductibles, the out-of-pocket.

There's all sorts of discouraging realities that keep people from getting health care when they need it.

We have a system that makes it hard to get health care.

It's like, here's your insurance card.

Good luck out there.

Hope you can figure it out.

By the way, if you're talking about mental health, That's even harder.

People have no idea how to address the mental health needs in their families.

How about creating a universal system which is easy to use and actually gets people to health care when they need it?

That's what we're trying to do in New York City.

History tells us too, and you know this, Mr.

Mayor, bigger stuff in some ways is easier than incremental stuff.

Correct.

So the reason not to talk about universal health care is there are two political bodies on that highway, Secretary Clinton and President Obama.

Right.

If you try to reform something, that's harder than, what's the lesson of history?

Social Security, GI Bill, Medicare.

What did you get?

You got those if you turned a certain age or if you explicitly served in a certain way.

That's right.

The history of the 20th century in terms of significant social policy is bigger works better.

And universal works better.

We have universal pre-K education in New York City.

The minute it was universal, every parent knew, I'm in, my kid's in, I know where to go, I know what to do.

The same as Social Security, great example.

And by the way, look at the buy-in, bipartisan, people of every region.

every background believe in Social Security.

When it's universal, it takes away all the mystery.

Obamacare and all those earlier efforts, people didn't really know what it was and how reliable it would be when you tell people it's there for you no matter what.

That's not only morally right, that's a winning hand.

I also think the Republicans don't get to talk about costs of things anymore.

Don't we think that's right?

After...

Right, they are no longer in the fiscal conservative business.

They never work.

Just take the $2 trillion or whatever it was that they gave back to very rich people and corporations and use it for this.

So really, cost, I don't don't think they get to weigh in.

There's definitely two rules, two sets of rules.

All right, thank you, panel.

It's time for new rules.

All right, new rule, stop hiring weather girls based on their bust size.

Who is this for?

Guys who like to spank it while hearing the Pollen Index?

If I wanted to get aroused by the forecast, I'll just look at the weather map.

Very, very sensitive crowd.

New rule, if you're saddened by the CDC's warnings that humans who kiss hedgehogs are at risk of salmonella, you must take a long, hard look at your love life.

I promise you, you can do much better.

And by the way, I'm talking to the hedgehog.

New rule, the man who is suing Gwyneth Paltrow because he says she crashed into him while they were both skiing in Utah, has to admit it doesn't get any whiter than that.

It just gets nice.

Neural,

a blowjob.

Neural, clients of the gay conversion therapist who announced that he's now gay

must admit the signs were always there, like how he ended every session by saying, now that I removed all your gay, can I have it?

And finally, America, Neural, America does need to build a wall, a sea wall, because the ice is melting and rising oceans are going to swallow Miami.

Hey, Marco Rubio, you're from there.

You're the senator from Florida.

In 20 years, you're going to be the senator from Atlantis.

What is it with Republicans and the environment?

They never waver in their commitment to do nothing.

The threat they see is a horde of rapey terrorists pouring over the southern border.

Here's a chart showing the trend in apprehensions along our southern border.

Here's a chart showing the trend in global carbon rise.

If you're not a chart person, let me summarize.

Carbon is killing us, Mexicans are not.

But ever since the 35-day silent treatment

came to an end last week, the master negotiator has been threatening to play his final card, declaring a national emergency.

But Republicans don't want another shutdown.

So they've come up with a reason why they can't go along with that.

Here's what Rubio said about that.

If today the national emergency is border security, tomorrow the national emergency might be climate change.

Yeah, God forbid we start declaring a national emergency about something that's an actual national emergency.

The right wing has a new boogie woman in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and she is being called a hysterical not ready for prime time crazy lady because she protested for a green New Deal outside of Nancy Pelosi's office and also said, the world is going to end in 12 years if we don't address climate change.

To which I say, thank you.

It's about time.

It's about time someone framed the issue with the appropriate level of urgency.

And when she cited 12 years, that wasn't a number she just pulled out of her ass like Trump does.

She was referring to a timeline.

from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

And they say, if we don't do a reversal of current trends by 2030, it will be too late.

Now, I don't agree with that because 2030 is optimistic.

Yeah, climate headlines in recent years have a definite theme, which is, you know, that pant-shitting fact we told you a year ago?

We'll shit more.

Ocean warming is accelerating faster than we thought.

Antarctica's ice sheet is melting three times faster than we thought.

Climate change is driving species out of habitats much faster than expected.

You see a pattern?

But here's a glimmer, a tiny, tiny little glimmer of hope.

Americans are starting to get it.

73% now believe global warming is happening, an increase of 10% from four years ago.

And more than six in 10 now accept that it's man-made.

Half of Americans say the science is more convincing than it was five years ago, which is fucking stupid, but I'll take it.

I'm placing my hope in how mad people are going to get when climate change starts killing not just monarch butterflies and all the bees and the whales, but stuff much closer to home.

We may be close to killing maple syrup

and wine.

The traditional wine regions of France, Italy, and Napa Valley could all be too hot to grow grapes by 2050.

And then where will alcoholics go on vacation?

With no more wine, men trying to impress their dinner dates will have to burn money at the table.

Priests will have to get children in the mood with music.

Hotter, drier growing seasons also make it harder to grow hops, which makes beer.

What is Brett Kavanaugh going to drink with squeeze?

And coffee, 60% of wild coffee species are at risk of going extinct.

Got your attention now, huh?

Without Starbucks, where are unemployed screenwriters going to sit around all day?

Where will millennials get free Wi-Fi?

Where will we find our next president?

And look at this.

The banana, as we know it, is dying.

I never thought this sentence would make sense, but yes, we have no bananas.

Coffee, bananas, maple syrup.

We're a breakfast item away from losing the Grand Slam.

All right, that's our show.

I'll be in the barrage in Vegas, February 15 and 16, the Sanger in New Orleans, April 6th, and the Marat Theater in Indianapolis, April 7th.

I want to thank my guests, Peter Hemley, Jennifer Rubin, John Meacham, and Bill de Blasio, and Congressman Will Hurd.

Greatest time for overtime on YouTube.

Thank you, folks.

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.