Ep. #481: John Kasich, Marshawn Lynch

Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

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

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was quick.

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

Now, Charlie's sober.

He's gonna tell you the truth.

How do I present this with any class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

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

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

Start the clock.

Right here with me.

Thank you very much.

You're so kind.

It's great to be back.

I love you too.

Great to be back.

Not much has been going on.

It's been kind of a slow news period, but we've been off for almost two months.

Let me put things in priority for you, okay?

That's my job here.

Okay, the big story, a lot of things happened.

The big story was the FBI, we found out, was investigating the President of the United States for being a Russian agent.

If you remember one thing about the last two months, that's it.

And spoiler alert, he is.

Well,

I mean, there's been a lot of evidence for this, right?

I mean, he did nothing when they told him that Russia was meddling in our elections.

He fired Comey when he was looking into that shit.

He wants to get out of NATO.

He met Putin five times.

That's a lot of times in just a couple of years.

Always with nobody around.

Nobody can ever know what they're doing.

Forget collusion.

I want to know if there's penetration.

Nobody can ever know.

Sorry.

Last week when this story broke, I saw Janine Pirra.

You know her on Fox News,

the ultimate ask like for Donald Trump.

And she's like asking him the question, like, I have to ask this ridiculous question.

She says, Mr.

President, are you now, or have you ever worked for Russia?

And Trump said a lot of words after that, but none of them were no.

He said, that's the most insulting thing anybody ever said about me.

Really?

More than when Stormy said you had a mushroom dick?

I would think.

And then they send Rudy Giuliani, oh my god, this guy, out there to go, he said, I never said Trump's campaign didn't collude.

Yes, you did.

You said it dozens of times.

It's on video.

Just because you're invisible to cameras doesn't mean you don't show up in mirrors.

No, the other way around.

But we still have.

Thank you very much for carrying me on that one.

But

then today, now today this big story came out.

Look, we are a little at a disadvantage here.

We're live.

Live live.

It's Friday night.

Hi.

We may look crazy in a couple of days because they're still vetting this story.

But BuzzVeed says that Trump wanted to build his

tower in Moscow.

So he told Michael Cohen, his lawyer, who briefed the Trump crime family on this like 10 times

when Trump was running for president, to lie to Congress about this.

And Trump, of course, for the whole two years, we've been looking.

I have no deals with Russia.

Nothing.

Nothing going on with Russia.

We stayed away, nothing pending, no deals, no nothing, period.

It's Putin, I got to take this.

I love it when they ask Rudy Giuliani about Michael Cohen.

What do you think about the lawyer before you who was told to lie?

They all lie.

Trump and Rudy, they lie so blatantly before the next news cycle.

The lie has been disproved.

And then when they're asked about Michael Cohen, the man's a liar.

But you can't trust a man like that.

For you, he's a liar.

That's what his lies were for.

My favorite legal defense of all time is, you can't believe my lawyer, he's in prison.

And this

is

not just Trump, by the way.

It's Ivanka and Don Jr.

got regular updates on this shit from Michael Cohen.

Yes, this is the family that needs to be separated and put in cages.

But on the bright side,

you have a three-day weekend coming up.

That's pretty good.

Just what federal employees need, another day off.

Well, it is the 28th day of the government shutdown, and boy, we are really filling it here in L.A.

I mean, between the furloughed government workers and our L.A.

teachers are on strike and the usual army of out-of-work actors and screenwriters,

that coffee bean is crowded.

And by the way, speaking of that, my sister is a teacher.

Our teachers are on strike here in LA, and I wanted to show my support.

So, in our audience tonight, fighting for the right things, is the head of the LA Teachers Union, Alex Caputo-Pearl.

Would you take a bow?

Alex.

Okay, that's all right.

I said he should stand.

You can't see him.

But I hope you guys get back to work.

I hope everybody gets back to work.

You know, air traffic controllers, TSA agents, Coast Guard, Border Patrol, they're all working without pay.

or what Trump calls running a business.

And now, you know, this whole pissing match has escalated in some sort of East Coast, West Coast rap war between Trump and Pelosi, which she's kicking his ass, by the way.

And he, as you know,

he won't reopen the government till he gets his wall.

So she said, okay, then you don't get to come into my house.

and do the State of the Union in the usual televised way.

No TV until you do your homework.

That's what she told me.

Of course, Trump was not having that.

Nobody puts man baby in the corner.

He was like, I'm not going to let some woman push me around.

Is Ann Coulter okay with that?

So

to retaliate to Nancy Pelosi, you saw this yesterday, he canceled Nancy Pelosi's military plane.

She was going to go to Afghanistan to visit the troops.

Meanwhile, as he's canceling her military plane, Melania gets on a military plane to go to Mar-a-Lago.

Now, I don't want to get into Trump's sex life, but he also called on Melania to end the shutdown.

And, well,

let's speak.

Let's be charitable of heart to the Trumps.

It's their wedding anniversary this week, and Trump says he remembers the first time he ever laid eyes on Melania and clicked add to cart.

All right, we got a great,

great show.

Barney Franks, Catherine Rampell, and Eric Erickson are here, and a little later to be speaking with Beast Mode himself, Marshawn Lynch, is backstage.

But first up, he is the CNN contributor, an ex-two-term Republican governor of Ohio, who just might challenge President Trump in 2020.

Please welcome back Governor John Kasich.

Governor.

Okay, there he is.

How are you doing, Governor?

I'm doing well.

I see you are.

I hope you are.

Doing well.

I hope you're doing more than well.

I hope you're ready to get out there.

I mean,

that's the talk.

You might run for president.

Now, first of all, are you going to break some news on this show and tell us whether you are?

And if you are, is it going to be as a Republican or as an Independent?

Well, I mean, first of all, Bill, I don't want to run if I'm not going to win.

And secondly, all of my options are on the table.

I mean, I happen to be a Republican, actually a Republican with a lot of ideas.

But, you know, it's.

Republican classic is what I call you.

Well, I think the problem that the party's had is that they've been too much into the no.

So if you take the way that I, I mean, when I say the no, I don't mean K-N-O-W, but N-O, okay?

And so being governor, if

there was a way for me to expand Medicaid, get people more health insurance, but I could also control the costs.

So I didn't say no to that like some have done.

That's what you did as Governor of Obama.

Yes, I did that as Governor of Ohio.

Most Republican governors did not.

No, but if I cut taxes, I made sure we also created an earned income tax credit for people at the bottom.

So they would get tax relief as well.

So you've got to take care of everybody.

Sounds like you are running.

Well, no.

No, you know what?

You're already giving us your bill.

No, though.

What I want to tell you is the interesting thing, because I think in a way both parties are broken.

And I think we have to have ideas.

And there's another element to to this.

You know, our political parties are important and all of that.

But what's more important are these folks here.

So I saw Marshawn Lynch, you know, he was beast mode in the

getting ready.

And

he's doing so many things in Oakland, from what I understood, to rebuild neighborhoods.

We're going to celebrate Martin Luther King Day here in a couple days.

Martin Luther King drove power from the bottom up.

It wasn't top-down.

It was bottom-up.

He rose from the churches and he made his case across the country and changed history.

Same thing with women's suffrage.

You know, the men weren't going to give the women the power, so they drove it from the bottom up.

Environmental awareness, bottom up.

And what we have to realize in this country if we want to restore the soul is that we matter and what we do where we live to change the world is what's key.

So we all sit around, you know, some people wring their hands, oh my God, we got Trump, and then somebody else says, oh my God, we got Pelosi.

Do they really affect you?

I mean, they do affect the mood.

Well, yeah.

But we need to get our spirit back and have the mojo to believe that we make a difference and drive change from the bottom up.

Well,

so

that's a.

My party has been too much with that idea.

But that's a speech no one could disagree with.

Let's get to the things people could disagree with.

Well, but you never hear that.

I mean, you don't.

You should never hear that.

You don't hear that?

No, you don't hear that.

You never hear.

Who do you ever hear talking about?

I've heard that.

I've heard that.

I've heard that.

It's your show, so I'll.

No, I mean, I've heard that we have to take power from the bottom up.

Because who's going to fight you on that?

Ah, boo, the people.

Well, you know what?

No, you know what?

When you kiss the ass of the people, you get a blaze.

No, no.

The problem is, people tend to think that they don't matter.

I mean, this is a critical thing that we need to talk about in this country because when people in neighborhoods are solving problems, they don't care whether somebody is a Republican or Democrat.

Feed the hungry.

I feel like we're drifting from

what the essence of the problem is.

First of all, I have to take a little issue when you said both parties are broken.

One party is broken a little more.

I think right now the Republicans are too negative.

Right.

Negative?

I mean, is the Republican, I mean, we started to talk about whether you're going to run.

Is the Republican name even salvageable?

It's the party of Steve King and Donald Trump.

Hello.

You heard that, right?

Yeah, I did.

Oh, good.

Thank you.

I'm so glad that

it wasn't just for liberals.

But

how can you even have that name?

You really think you can take back that name?

Well, I think there are some very good Republicans out there who have not put forward ideas.

I had a talk last night with a bunch of you.

Why are they good?

I said if they haven't put forward ideas.

I'm saying that there are governors like Brian Sandoval, the governor of Nevada,

even Bob Corker from Tennessee.

These are people who have Susanna Martinez from New Mexico.

The key is get some new ideas because when Republicans say we're going to kill Obamacare, but they have no solution, so what they're saying is we'll just take health care away from people.

My view is there is a better alternative than that.

You've got to have a proposal.

I don't really think there

is a great need for new ideas because we've been around the same problems for decades, so we know what the ideas are.

It's the political will to put them into play.

I don't disagree with you.

I don't disagree with that.

But let me ask one more question about Republicans.

Now, Republicans took over in 2011.

That was the revolution of the Tea Party, which was all about reducing the debt.

We spend way too much money.

Since they have been in office, since 2011, they've increased the debt by almost $8 trillion, almost $1 trillion a year.

That's their big issue.

That was what the Tea Party was about.

It was taxed enough already.

Then there's defense, the other Republican big issue.

Trump is, in my view, a traitor, and I think that will be proved.

But we know he wants to get out of NATO.

He's not good for our defense.

Morals don't even make me go there.

What are Republicans good at?

Well, what are we voting for?

First of all, why this party?

I always say that the Republicans and Democrats are very similar because they all want to spend.

It's just that Republicans tend to feel guilty, but they spend anyway.

I was the chairman of the budget committee when we balanced the budget.

We had the government shutdown.

I negotiated with Bill Clinton, Senator Dominici.

We got to a balanced budget in three or four years.

We paid down debt.

Got a special business.

And the economy was booming.

And here's what I like to say.

When the debt goes up, jobs are not as great.

And when the debt comes down, jobs are, you know, they get created.

And that's our greatest moral purpose.

Now, on defense, look,

we spend so much money today in America blowing ourselves up if we took a fraction of that money and gave it to the National Institutes of Health and did research.

But that's what I believe.

And those are the things you have to fight for.

The problem with the Republicans right now, they don't want to stand up and fight.

It's like they're taking orders from their leadership.

When I was there,

And even as the governor, when I expanded Medicaid,

people in my party didn't like it.

I said, well, I'm going to lead.

And now we have sort of like the lowest uninsured health rate in Ohio that we've ever had.

So there's ways to do this creatively.

Do you see Donald Trump as a dangerous menace to America?

Well, I'm very concerned about a couple of things.

First of all, I didn't.

Do you see Donald Trump as a menu?

Can I just answer the question?

I feel like you were just a virgin.

No, no, no, I'm not.

I'm not.

Why don't you just explain?

I don't call names, Bill.

But here's...

Look, is he a dangerous menace?

I'm going to tell you that he's doing some things that I think are dangerous.

And that one of the biggest ones is retreating from our involvement in the world and all this friction.

And I worry about what happens when we have so much friction.

Look, look,

I didn't go to the convention.

It was in my state.

I didn't endorse him.

I didn't vote for him.

I've stood for two years arguing that his

dangerous menace.

Well, I don't need to call names.

Okay.

That's how we get in trouble.

We call names.

But they want to disband.

When they want to call you a name, I say, no, I like Bill Maher.

Don't call him a name.

Okay?

But they want to disband the FBI.

That's terrible.

Undermining the press.

Isn't that a menace when you want to disband the FBI?

I believe that it's wrong.

When George Bush I was president, remember, he quit the NRA because they said in a fundraising letter they called the ATF jackbooted thugs.

And he said that's a bridge too far.

That's just words on a paper.

This man is talking about disbanding the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Bill, the pillar of...

I'm worried about him eroding these basic institutions.

The one thing we do know in our country is these institutions, well,

outlast him or anybody else.

We hope.

We don't know that.

We don't know.

Now,

let me say something about guns.

Let me say something about guns because we're talking about bottom-up.

I proposed a bunch of gun reform in my state.

Okay.

And one of them was a red flag law.

If you know somebody in the workplace or in your family who poses a danger, you can go to a court and their guns can be taken from them.

I couldn't pass that.

And you want to know what's going on?

If I could put 10,000 people on the lawn of the State House, I would have gotten that done.

But we had one voice from the gun people who said, no way, no how, we're not going to do it.

And they pressured the legislators, and I couldn't get people to show up, to stand up, to say we need some common-sense gun control.

I'm for the Second Amendment, but my goodness, there's so many things that we can do to reform it and to put us in a position where we're safer.

And this is why I think you should run for president.

You're a Republican.

I'm not.

Will you run my campaign?

I will not run your campaign.

Okay.

Well, everybody wants me run.

What are you you going to do for me?

I'm going to encourage you.

Because I think you could do an incredible service to your country, but you have to know you are going to lose.

Because

if somebody like you and Mitt Romney ran, you would siphon away enough votes, there would be the Trump people and then the classic Republicans, and we would elect anybody but Donald Trump, which is the best thing a patriot can do for this country, don't you think, without calling names?

What do you think?

I told you I didn't vote for him, and the bottom line is if I can run, have an impact, and win,

I'm not going to run to just go and wound somebody.

I don't want to do that.

I don't ever get into anything where I don't think I can win.

So we sit back and we watch all these things.

And what's happening today, well, what's happening in this five minutes, it changes so much in the next five minutes.

We're just watching, and we'll see.

Good luck with your campaign.

John Kasich, thank you.

Great to have you here.

I really appreciate you doing it.

Governor John Kasich.

All right, let's beat our panel.

Okay.

All right, here they are.

He is the editor of The Resurgent and host the Eric Erickson Show.

Eric Erickson is back with us.

Thank you, Eric.

Thank you.

Very brave of you to come here, and I appreciate it.

She's an op-ed columnist for the Washington Post, and a CNN commentator, Katherine Rampell, is back with us.

How are you doing?

And he's a CNNBC contributor who for 32 years was my favorite congressman.

Barney Frank is over here.

Okay.

So I don't know if we have an update on the BuzzFeed story, but that's what was occupying the news all day today.

What's interesting is that the Mueller Report, which has never said anything, did put out a statement that said, no,

we're not backing this because it is a leak.

It looks like a leak from the Mueller Report.

BuzzFeed says they're standing by their story, which is basically that the President told Michael Cohen to lie to Congress, which is suborning perjury.

If that's true, is that enough to impeach?

It's enough to impeach if you want to.

I would say I would like to define the issue.

I don't have any doubt that Donald Trump told Michael Cohen to lie.

He admits that he lied about Stormy Daniels.

What's not clear, and the

Independent Counsel's caveat makes you think it's not clear it could be proven.

I mean, the key thing about BuzzFeed, I don't think it was to surprise anybody that Trump told Cohen to lie.

it is that BuzzFeed said it can be proven.

If it can be proven, that would serve as grounds for impeachment.

I would still not favor going ahead with impeachment at this point.

There are two issues here.

One, do you have sufficient legal grounds to do it?

Secondly, is that the best way to accomplish the public policy goals that you want to do?

That's sort of the camp that I'm in.

I think, did Trump commit the crimes?

Yes, he did.

Which crimes?

Probably all of them at this point.

Or at the very least, you could say there are so many things in his past that would count as high crimes and misdemeanors, starting with like the tax fraud in the 90s, what looks an awful lot like money laundering.

He admitted essentially to obstruction of justice on TV a year and a half ago.

So even if this BuzzFeed article is wrong, you know, it still doesn't matter.

He admitted this on TV.

But essentially, impeachment is not a criminal process.

It's a political process, right?

And right now, he would not be convicted because the Senate does not, or Senate Republicans do not have a spy.

And if you come at the king, you best not miss because otherwise we'll get four more years of Trump.

In addition to the Mueller team coming out today saying that

the story is inaccurate now, the New York Times, Ronan Farrow, and others have come out and said they can't stand by it either.

In fact, their sources disagree.

But if it is true, yes, it's impeachable.

This is part of what Bill Clinton was impeached for, was directing someone to lie.

The key important point, though, is that in the paperwork Mueller filed about Michael Cohen, what he said was not that anyone told Michael Cohen to lie but that Cohen admitted he was

conforming his testimony to Congress to the president's pre-existing public statements.

In other words, the president didn't tell him to lie, he just listened to what the president was saying and mimicked it even though he knew it wasn't true.

Okay, can I give the other side of the impeachment debate?

Because I think they should go ahead with it.

Because I think the Democrats look weak if they don't.

You think the Republicans would not have impeached Obama if he did what they did?

That's not what it's about.

No, it's about doing your job.

And by the way, when you said high crimes and misdemeanors, you left out the first part of what's in the Constitution.

It's treason, bribery, and high crimes and misdemeanours.

Treason and bribery, we tend to leave that out because we don't think anyone's going to get there, but he's there.

But if he's impeached and the Senate does not convict, I understand, it's going to look like he's absolved of those crimes.

We don't know that.

Bill, let me say this.

First of all, I want to disagree when you said the Democrats look weak.

You just correctly gave Nancy Pelosi credit for kicking his ass.

She's the Speaker of the House.

She's the most important woman in the history of American government.

And finally, she's getting her due this year because people are seeing what she's like.

The Democrats are being very firm and very tough.

Proving that you're weak and not weak, let's get beyond that.

Let Trump worry about that.

Here's the deal.

For me, when I was in Congress and as an advocate now,

my job is to make public policy better.

And impeaching Donald Trump does not seem to me to be the best way to make public policy better.

I want the Democrats to focus on substantive issues that will appeal to some people who have been misled into voting for Trump and make those things clear.

Secondly,

having Mike Pence president doesn't advance my goals at all.

I would personally love to have Mike Pence president.

I'm sure you would.

Yeah, I think that's a good question.

I would too, by the way, as opposed to a person who is a Russian asset

and a criminal.

And also, this is not just about the past.

It's about what are you going to do tomorrow.

Yeah, but what if he gets elected to another four years

because he shored up his base?

Okay, we had a lift for today.

What if he starts a war with Korea tomorrow?

I mean, he is dangerous.

First of all,

he'll be dangerous for another four years if he gets away from the money.

First of all, if Trump starts a war with Korea, it will apparently be with South Korea because he has his love affair with North Korea.

But secondly, Bill Hill.

Why do we have it in the Constitution?

Why do we even have impeachment in the Constitution if it doesn't apply to him then who?

What has to happen?

He has to kill a baby on TV?

If an alien popped out of his chest, would we say, let's wait till 2020, let the voters decide.

It's a political process.

That's the flaw in the system.

I am worried about it.

It's not a criminal process.

We have this terrible problem, not just in America, but in the world, the Western world, where white people without college educations or high technical skills have been alienated from the very purpose of government.

And we have to deal with that.

I believe that impeaching Trump at this point, even on good evidence, will deepen that division.

I want to defeat him.

I think, and you're right, I want to, people said, well, what does that say for the future?

It's very rare for a president to be a one-term president.

We've only had a couple in the last 90 years.

I want Trump to be one of those, and I think it is very important for us to put the issues out there, to talk about health care, talk about infrastructure, talk about other issues that are important to people, and then defeat him for re-election.

And that's the way to re-elect.

But what if he doesn't belong there from the other election, the one he supposedly won?

People keep saying, well, we don't want to overturn an election.

But what if the election wasn't on the up and up?

It wasn't on the up and up.

That's not my argument, though.

I understand, but isn't that an argument?

By the way, he doesn't belong there in the first place because he had a ringer come in?

No.

First of all, let me say this.

Can we use China in the next election, the Democrats, if he uses Russia?

Can we get our own country?

Some jerks tried to do that in Alabama.

Unfortunately, they got caught at it, to their shame.

But here's the deal.

Trump did get more electoral votes.

Now, yeah, the election was an upsetting one, but that's because of the Constitution that you venerate, because of that stupid Electoral College, which was just a deal to get the Constitution ratified between the big and small states.

But we can't get rid of it.

But then given the Electoral College, no, unfortunately, he won.

Here's the deal.

It is true.

Russia apparently was putting out false information.

But, you know, one of the problems I have when people criticize is one of the culprits gets off the hook.

That's the voters.

Yes, Russia put stupid, misleading stuff on the Internet, but some fools believed it.

And, you know, they didn't, they did not, we have no evidence that they jimmied the count.

The problem was the gullibility of the people.

They did try.

They did try to break the internet.

Right, but they did not succeed in that.

As far as we know.

As far as we know.

There's no public evidence.

Okay.

Here's why I think the BuzzFeed story is true.

Here's what Newt Gingrich said today.

This is an absurdity.

Can you imagine any president being dumb enough to say to somebody, I'd like you to go over now to Congress and lie?

Yes, I can.

The other thing about impeachment I hear all the time is the Watergate comparison.

And what I hear people say on TV is, well, when the people, when the people got a hold of the information, they finally turned on Nixon.

I don't think that's ever going to happen because there's something that exists now that didn't happen, that we didn't have in Watergate Times, which is Fox News.

Now, there was an ISIS attack

pretty much on the day that Mike Pence was bragging about how we defeated ISIS, and after Trump has been saying that for weeks now, killed four Americans.

If this was Obama as president, this would have been on the top of the Fox News feed.

Okay, we monitored this.

9:30 in the morning, here's the headline from the New York Times.

Here it is, the Washington Post.

They all have it.

There's the Reuters, U.S.

troops killed in attack.

Fox News had nothing

9.30,

10.30, 11.30, did not even report it.

We don't report, so you can't decide.

Finally, at 11.45, there we go.

Is it at the top of their feed?

No.

We heard about Catherine McPhee's wedding dress and Michael Jackson and Macaulay Culkin.

It was like way down at the bottom in small print.

There it is, see?

That's the difference.

Whatever he does, they won't hear about it about a third of it.

Well, they will.

Look, I agree.

And Fox News is a disgrace.

I like to turn on, whenever something bad has happened to Trump, I'd like to turn on to Fox News to see what else they are talking about.

They must have a top list of topics

to get.

It's usually Hillary.

It's usually Hillary or the characteristic.

By the way, in terms of what they would have done to Obama, compare this to the Benghazi issue.

Look at what they did with Hillary and Benghazi.

I think the same number of people were killed, sadly.

Exactly.

But here's the thing about Fox News is, yeah, they're they're a disgrace, but nobody has ever been forced to watch Fox News at the point of a gun.

Maybe at the point of something else for Marjorales, but not at the point of a gun.

Sorry.

But the.

I'm going to grant you a yellow with that.

The problem we have, this is why I don't want to impeach him.

I want to go on and defeat him politically.

There are people who have unfortunately become so angry that they are vulnerable to a Russian propaganda, vulnerable to a Fox News, and ready to believe nonsense, not notice the bias.

And that's what I think we have to deal with.

And I don't think you get rid of that by removing Trump from office.

If you do that without the election, I think you make it worse.

All right.

So in keeping with our theme tonight of saluting teachers, Karen Pence, she apparently is married to Mike Pence.

Mother.

She's a teacher, and she went back to her day job.

She's teaching school again.

It was in the paper this week at a Christian elementary school.

I don't know if this is a school I would actually approve of.

They are very conservative.

They explicitly prohibit gay teachers and gay students.

Other moral misconduct stipulated off-limits, premarital sex, cohabitation, and transgenderism.

This is a conservative school.

Anyway, we went to their library and got a hold of the books they have for the kids.

Some of these children's books, you could tell, like, you want to hear some of them, like

The Lion, the Witch, and the Sequin-Free Wardrobe.

That's

Where the Wild Things Learned to Tone It Down

The Girl with the What Would Jesus Do tattoo,

The Little Engine That Could But Didn't Until After He Was Married

Horton Fears a Jew.

The Hardy Boys and the Mystery of the Boy Who Doesn't Like Sports.

Well,

it's very difficult.

Nancy Drew and the mysterious feeling from the washing machine.

The masterpieces of Michelangelo.

Alexander and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad Tony Awards.

Where's Waldo?

Hint in a traditional marriage.

And Charlie wants nothing to do with the chocolate factory.

All right, let's

go have some continuity that apparently neither Donald Trump nor Newt Gingrich could teach at Kern Pension School.

To say the least, yes.

All right, let's bring out Beast Mode.

He is the entrepreneur behind Beast Mobile and Beast Mode, who in his spare time is an all-pro Oakland Raiders running back.

Please welcome Marshawn Lynch.

Hey man.

Pleasure.

What's going on, Chief?

All right.

Hello, everyone.

Marshawn Lynch is here.

All right.

So, so glad you're here.

It's that football time of year, only three games left.

The big conference championships are Sunday, my birthday, and it's going to be great.

Thank you.

And then the Super Bowl.

So somebody on my staff said, you know, why don't we have a football player on?

And I said, well, we don't really do that on this show, but if you want to do that, get me the most interesting one.

And that's why you're here.

Because I know you don't give interviews a lot, but you have a lot to say.

Right.

Well, I feel like the dose Ekish man up here.

The most interesting man alive.

You know what I'm talking about?

Well, I hope you are.

I hope so, too.

So how much longer are you going to play?

Because it's a dangerous game, and you're a very bright guy.

You don't want to, you know, every football player, they study the brains after they die.

And, you know, there's just not good things going on in the brain.

Do you worry about that?

I do.

I mean, that's why I hit everybody with my head.

I'm head first on everything.

You hit them with your head.

I do.

It's got to be the first thing to go.

You hit them with your head and the body will fall.

Don't know.

I think that's where this conversation was going at.

But you don't want to do that beach mode.

That will hurt your head.

Right, but it's been my best weapon.

And it's led me to.

I know, but let's think about the future.

Are you going to play next year?

I mean,

if it works out that way, then I will.

It sounds like Trump.

We'll see what happens.

So.

I mean, you've been in the news a lot, you know, talking about something.

You have, yes, I know.

I mean, do you talk to Colin Kaepernick?

We share text messages.

Okay.

So...

Just as a fan, besides what I think is wrong with that politically that he's not playing, you know, football is really only a good game when you have an elite quarterback.

Would you agree with that?

I do.

Okay, you can't really come back from, if you're behind, without a great quarterback.

It's just not interesting for the fans.

So is you taking a shot at it?

No, no, no, no.

I mean, what I meant to say is running back.

That's what you needed, a great running back.

But no, you need a great quarterback.

And the fact that no one will give him a job is just disgusting.

Yeah, I mean,

it's real interesting just...

just seeing the type of shit that'd be going on with this kind of situations.

But at the same time, I mean, you look at

a lot of the guys that's been in the league that don't get to come back from

some other type of situations that's not as serious as his.

Like,

you know, got a couple guys who get suspended for marijuana, and you know, they don't get the opportunity to come back.

Have you ever tried it?

Have I ever tried it?

I mean, maybe once or twice in my life.

I mean, I'm 32.

You live and you learn.

I'm 34.

All right.

And I'm, I'm, you have to try it.

Thank you very much.

Okay, so, but you were caught up in that.

I mean, Trump tweeted about you.

He said that you were

pretty much unpatriotic because you were taking a knee.

What is your answer to that?

I mean, you know, that motherfucker say a lot of shit, but at the end of the day, like.

You call me unpatriotic, but I mean, you know,

you come to my neighborhood where I'm from, and, you know, you'll see me take the shirt off my back and give it to someone in less need.

I mean, what would you call that?

No, I know you do a lot for your neighborhood.

You wanted to play in Oakland again to be an example for the kids, to see someone who could rise that far up.

And you do a lot against gentrification.

Tell us what that is, first of all, for people who don't know what that means.

Well, I mean,

it's basically when, for me, slot white people could move into the hood and kick everybody out, does their...

That's what it is, yes.

I mean, that's what it is.

I mean, shit.

Basically, that's how it go.

I mean, and

I've been a witness of it since

I was a small jitterbug.

So, I mean, now that I'm growing up and now I'm seeing and I understand it a little more.

What do you do to combat that?

Well, now, I mean, you know, I got into the,

with banging my head against people.

I had the opportunity to make a couple dollars.

So therefore, I started.

Right.

So therefore, I started to go and,

buy up some

real estate in

the area where I grew up at in order to give people opportunity

for housing.

You're a man of the people.

I guess you could say that.

You're right.

But I understand

when people want a picture, you only take pictures with women and children.

I would rather it that way.

We'd all rather it that way, but a lot of the potential

looks bad.

Well, I try and force it that way.

You try to force it that way.

I enforce it that way.

Oh, enforce it.

Yeah.

With your head?

No, with my fit.

I'm just...

No, I just, I just...

But mostly dudes are going to be your fans.

They're football fans.

So that's where I expect it to be at.

But I mean, you know, it get get to the point where, you know, you got a lot of things going on.

Like, I think it's called like clout chasing or something like that.

It's a new term that.

you know, the people that's under 32 are using right now.

Under 34.

But

I can see you're going to start fucking with me now.

Let's talk about the government shutdown.

Let's get everybody in on this because if you haven't followed it, I guess people, we've been off for a couple of months.

Sometimes people don't follow the news, but it is a big pissing match.

And it looks like Nancy Pelosi, like you said, is winning this one.

Trump was very mad that he didn't get his

Lego wall set for Christmas.

And I just hope that the Democrats don't cave.

Because obviously people are hurting like we didn't realize.

And the longer this goes on, the more they hurt, the more pressures are going to be on to get some kind of a deal.

To me, I think the Democrats' position should be Trump is holding this country hostage.

You don't deal with terrorists.

Republicans, Republicans had two years of unified government to go go through a process and hold hearings and pass actual legislation, and they didn't.

Instead, what happened was Trump gave his blessing to funding the government without Money for a Wall, in case people don't remember, this was a month ago, told Mitch McConnell, have a vote.

They had a vote.

It passed almost unanimously in the Senate.

And then Trump got some angry feedback from Ann Coulter and said, never mind.

Like, why does he get to just hold everybody hostage because he changed his mind at the last minute?

To a degree, the president has gotten really bad advice from Republicans in Congress who did control everything for two years and kept telling him, wait.

And they would get to Christmas and cut a deal, and he would say, Well, we can't keep everybody over for Christmas.

I want to go to Mar-a-Lago, so let's cut a deal.

We'll do it in six months.

And then they say, Wait, wait, wait, six months.

So they finally got to the end, and he's like, I can't wait anymore.

And guess what?

There's a new sheriff named Nancy who's not going to go.

But you know what?

That tells you something.

That Republicans kept on telling him to wait because they knew this was an idiotic idea.

They knew this was an idiotic idea.

Republicans

who represent

border areas have said this is an idiotic idea.

It's a non-solution to a non-problem.

The Republican Party goes beyond that.

We talk again about the Constitution.

The Constitution has been amended in effect by Mitch McConnell.

This announcement that he will not bring anything to the Senate floor that the President has approved is the most radical change in the Constitution ever.

Because what it means is that Ann Coulter Coulter and Rush Limbaugh now have a veto, and they can't be overridden by two-thirds.

We've never seen this.

I voted to override vetoes by Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan.

Democratic Congress has overrode FDR.

This announcement that we won't even bring up a bill unless the president pre-approves it literally trashes the Constitution.

So the way out of it, I think, is to hold the people responsible, the Senate Republicans, who, as Catherine pointed out, already voted for this bill,

for a bill with $1.3 billion.

They did it unanimously by voice vote.

And now, when Trump said, because he was yelled at, I can't do it, they don't want to do it.

But this is an issue with Senate Democrats as well, because under the Senate rules, they only defer to Mitch McConnell because he's the designated leader.

But under the Senate rules, any senator from any party can get recognized and bring this legislation up.

But as a practical matter, under the Senate rules, the leader has the authority to really force it to a vote.

Exactly.

But anyone could bring it up by a motion.

Yes,

but it can't pass over the objection of the majority, unless now it is true.

If enough Republican senators were ready to break with Ann Coulter and Rushman Moore and say they'd vote for the bill, then a Democrat could bring it up.

But as of now, they're all paramased.

By the way, Ann Coulter is on next week.

Yeah.

That's called a newsmaker.

Nobody is more important now than the Democrats.

Policymakers.

Absolutely.

Trust me.

So we have on policymakers.

You'll have to suck on that.

But it really is this announcement.

But what is going to happen if this is going on in a month?

Because

he's apparently got a press conference tomorrow where he's going to, I assumed he was ready for his emergency, which I'm totally opposed to the president of emergency.

But now apparently he's going to make some compromise offer.

The president's in this weird situation as well with his base where if he caves, the people who went with the guy who got the best deal, their big issue is the wall.

Right.

And so, of course, the Democrats aren't going going to populate.

They're a minority of the American population.

Who are they going to vote for?

They're a minority of the American population, but you would be surprised by the number of people who call them black people.

Who are they going to vote for?

Who are they going to find crazier and meaner and angrier that's going to make them happy?

That's a good point.

Well, but I think your question was...

Your question was, what happens if this goes on for another month?

Yeah.

Look, we could eventually fall into recession.

Yeah, which is better than that.

Oh, we're going to recession.

That's the biggest pressure on Trump.

It's destroying his economy.

Yeah, the economy is the only good thing he has going on right now, and he's screwing it up.

Let me ask a question about the Democrats.

Bernie Sanders got into some trouble the last couple of weeks because apparently there was sexual harassment that was reported on his campaign.

And he said they asked him about this, and he apologized, and then said they asked if he was aware of it.

He said, I was a little busy running around the country trying to make the case.

which I had no problem with.

That's right.

Just like Hillary wasn't responsible for Benghazi

as the Secretary of State, it's not his responsibility to know everything that goes on.

And it didn't seem like it was the worst kind of sexual harassment.

I don't know what went on in that campaign.

But if the Democrats are going to keep killing their own Al Franken, Elliot Spitzer, Gore didn't support Bill Clinton through the blowjob horror.

I don't know where it ends.

Are we going to.

Well.

Mejan.

Mejan, he was just getting ahead.

How many?

hey, hey, wait,

oh man.

Well, first of all, Bernie's not a Democrat, to be clear.

He ran as a Democrat, and he could have won the primary.

He could have won the nomination.

Look, I don't think Bernie is responsible for every bad actor in his campaign, but it wasn't just one bad actor.

I think we should make that clear.

If you look at the New York Times story about this, there were lots of problems in that campaign, including major pay inequities between men and women, where men were earning more than the women that they were reporting to.

And I don't think that Bernie directed it that way, but he ran on a message of equity, right?

And if he can't enforce it in his own campaign, it's way harder to do that nationwide.

But is he really the problem with

Bernie Sanders?

Is that where we should be going at?

Well, I'm just saying the buck stops somewhere.

This wouldn't be a story if he wasn't thinking of running and a bunch of younger people wanting to run.

He was running for president of the United States.

He designated people to manage a campaign, having been a campaign manager.

I I understand that the candidate nine times out of ten has no clue what's going on in the office.

Bill, here's the problem with Sanders.

He has held everybody else to such an impossible standard that there were some people who are saying, well, it turns out you're not perfect either, and that's a part of it.

The other thing is, and obviously you don't know everything, but the notion that you're too busy making speeches to know what's happening to your campaign, I don't think it's an acceptable excuse, particularly as Catherine said it wasn't an isolated incident.

I do agree with you that we have an overreaction to, I mean, it's not a capital offense if you were guilty in some ways of sexual action.

In fact, I think there's a little inconsistency with some of my liberal friends because I agree with them that we should be revising the criminal law so that people who committed actual crimes are forgiven.

And I think we ought to extend a little of that principle to.

Pay disparity is an issue.

But that doesn't just happen in the Bernie Sanders campaign.

It's something that obviously should be addressed.

I read that story, too.

What I read was one of the females on the campaign said a guy got a little out of line.

I guess he took the signals wrong and asked if he could touch her.

There were no signals, Bill.

There's no sign there or signals.

Well, what signals?

There was no suggestion that she signaled him.

Well, okay, I don't know.

We weren't there.

I don't know what I'm saying.

That's a bad thing to say.

But she signaled him.

I didn't say she signaled him.

Well, who signaled him?

The railroad?

Apparently, when people are flirting, okay,

have we gone completely mad?

That everybody has to flirt or make a move in the exact right way or you're a monster?

He touched her hair was the bottom line of what I read.

And of course, if someone touches you in any way and you don't want it, that is wrong.

But

is it worth destroying Bernie Sanders over?

And what about just saying, hey, get your fucking hand out of my hair?

See, that's the thing.

I think that's what it comes with

the situation of why

You know, I don't like taking pictures with males because they get really friendly and they like like want to hug me and the males too.

Yeah, like want to put their face next to mine and everything.

Oh.

And I'd get uncomfortable with that.

Yes.

Well, I'm sure you could stop it without writing a blog.

You're right.

That's why I told you I used my hair.

Well, look.

I started using my hair.

I shocked you an icy-eyed eye on the side.

I think it's easier said than done if you are not in a position of power, first of all.

Second of all, it was not that one isolated instance.

And again, I'm not saying Bernie is like is personally responsible.

I'm not saying he's a bad guy.

I think he has good values.

Let's keep it in perspective.

All of that, all the sexual harassment, making anybody uncomfortable is wrong.

But we're humans.

Some shit makes it.

There's no difference.

And we separate the really bad things.

Catherine made the point.

A superior-inferior relationship is qualitatively different.

Doing this to somebody who works for you and whose life you have some control over, that makes it very different.

With that, nobody's saying Sanders can't run, but I do think his is a man who's held every other publication.

He's usually wearable.

Everybody else is.

Al Franklin could have run too, but they wound these people and then they can't.

Can I touch your hand?

Anyway, we gotta go to new rules.

New rules, everybody.

It's time for new rules.

All right.

New rules: before you buy a donut costume, try it on.

It could look good on a hangar at the store, but it might just make you look like an asshole.

New rules, stop telling about the show where the Japanese lady tells you to throw out everything in your house that doesn't spark joy.

If I wanted to make half of what I own disappear, I'd use the Bezos method and fuck around without a prenup.

New rules, ladies, before you buy Malibu Betty, the hair product to dye your pubic hair blue,

you must consider that your boyfriend might think your vagina isn't getting enough oxygen.

CPR.

And then he'll feel compelled to perform CPR and then, oh, I see what you're doing.

You a beast.

I think we found a new beast mode.

You rule, all the men who found out Bradley Cooper can also sing and thought, how am I supposed to compete with that, have to realize you already weren't competing with that.

He's a good-looking movie star.

That's why he gets the Russian Zuber model.

You're a Doey conservative who goes to gun shows.

You get Maria Butina.

Urul, don't be too hard on the incel kids who defaced a real-time billboard to make my face look like Jack from Jack in the Box.

Yeah, they did.

They obviously haven't tried my new jalapeno chicken strips.

And finally, new rules, someone has to explain.

If our economy is doing so great, how come everyone is broke?

To me, the real lesson of this government shutdown is that we found out that federal workers, quintessential middle-class jobs, can't afford to miss one paycheck.

I must have seen a hundred stories about furloughed workers that look like this.

I literally don't know how I'm gonna

provide for my kids.

Furloughed interior worker Mallory Lorg rationing her insulin.

First of all, if I can't pay my mortgage.

It's a matter of life and death for me.

I guess this is what Fox means by getting tired of winning.

When did it get this desperate?

One day you're a lineman for the county, you miss a payday and you're Ratzo Rizzo making coffee in a saucepan.

This shutdown is not about the wall.

It's about the wallet.

And it's more proof that the great American middle class is disappearing faster than R.

Kelly's Facebook friends.

That is the story here: that our economy no longer creates a middle class, it sucks it dry.

Thank you.

All middle class means now is that you're poor, but you don't do meth.

And remember, this is the good economy, where 40% of Americans can't afford a $400 emergency expense, and 50 million have nothing saved for retirement.

Sorry, but it's not middle class when your retirement plan is a lotto ticket.

When I was a kid, being a middle-class family meant only one breadwinner, two cars, a vacation in a paneled basement that smelled like cigarettes.

College was affordable.

Getting sick didn't mean going bankrupt.

And you can go out to dinner once a week.

You could have a dog, and when he got older, your parents could afford to send him to live on a farm where he was happier.

What?

But little by little, the middle class got squeezed.

Now middle class means two breadrunners and one car.

And the only reason your daughter can afford college at all is SugarDaddies.com.

Vulture capitalism has done to our middle class what the airlines did to their customers.

Because we didn't lose the comforts of being middle class all at once.

They took it away from us an inch at a time, like legroom.

Back in the day, flying was a joy.

The seats were roomy, the chicken looked like something that was once a chicken.

And the bathrooms were large enough to enjoy the Mile High Club.

Contrast that with today, where there's first class, business class, premium economy, economy, and fuck you.

This was coached as recently as the 90s.

Here it is now.

I remember so vividly.

I was 37 when I

blew that up.

When I flew first class for the first time and it blew my mind.

They were literally carving a roast in the cart in the aisle like it was friggin' Thanksgiving up there

Now your food comes in a box.

You used to get good stuff on a plane, a meal, drunk.

The seat in front of you could recline without starting a fist fight.

And just like with the economy writ large, they squeezed incrementally though.

First they took away the pillows, then the free booze, the free headset, free luggage allowance, leg room, the whole can of Coke, the blankets, blankets, putting an end to in-flight masturbation.

You lived in the good days.

Who was I flying at?

But on the upside,

the flight safety films are funny now.

So porn parodies have something to look down on.

But here's the thing about squeezing people and keeping them insecure.

It virtually ensures that our long-term major problems never get fixed.

Because reducing the debt or repairing our infrastructure or most importantly halting climate change requires long-term thinking, which is something you can't really do when the wolf is always at the door.

Bangladesh will be underwater in 20 years.

I'm underwater today.

Whole foods?

I just want to get some food in my hole.

And that's just how the Koch brothers like it, to have people so caught up in today's problems,

we never have time for tomorrow's.

Thank you very much, everybody.

It's so great to be back.

Thank you for coming back.

Our show, I'll be at the Arlington Theater in Santa Barbara, January 26th, and back at the Mirage in Vegas, February 15th and 16th.

I want to thank Eric Erickson, Catherine Rampel, Barney Frank, and Marshawn Lynch, and John Casey.

Drive us down for overtime on YouTube.

Thank you.

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

For more information, log on to HBO.com.