Ep. #477: Stormy Daniels, Jonathan Haidt

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.

How are you?

I appreciate it.

I know.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate it a lot.

Thank you.

I push you.

You're very relaxed for such a scary time in America.

No, I want you to relax.

We had a security sweep.

I've been assured there are no bombs in the monologue.

And

ladies and gentlemen, we got him.

Okay, so that's the good news.

The man who sent bombs, pipe bombs, to 12 people in an attempt, this is what happened in this country this week, an attempt to decimate.

the upper ranks of one of America's major political parties.

And it turned out to be he is exactly what you thought, an angry asshole in a red hat.

Not a false flag operation, not a hoax.

He thinks Trump is the greatest human being ever to live.

And of course, he's from Florida.

And I couldn't make this up, a stripper.

A bomber who also strips.

Experts call this Peak Florida.

It's Florida.

No, it gets worse.

Lives in Plantation, Florida.

Right?

I know.

How is that still a name?

What was Slave Ship Florida taken?

Okay, so here's what we have.

We have a racist male stripper.

He worked under the name Stormy Trooper Daniels.

I don't know if you know, I'm kidding, Stormy.

Daniel Tony's ass.

His

name is Cesar Sayak, like

most of Trump's friends.

He's white, over 50, a registered Republican, and has a long criminal record.

He's also bankrupt, has a creepy van, lives with his mom, and

last May the NRA named him Loaner of the Month.

But

he's been arrested eight times.

Eight times.

Battery, fraud, drug possession, threatened to bomb the van, the creepy van he had, had pictures of Trump all over it, make America great, and then pictures of Hillary and other Democrats with their faces in crosshairs.

Is it okay to call this one deplorable?

Or would that...

Or would that hurt Republican feelings?

Because he was also a prolific hate tweeter, sometimes sending threats to Democrats.

And he was frequently at Trump rallies, where he was known as a moderate.

No, he's a typical Trump loser, blames everybody else because his life sucks.

That's That's who he is.

That's the profile.

Trump's biggest supporters are always some middle-aged guy whose package doesn't work.

This guy,

0 for 12 with the bombs.

Also, I'm guessing I'm a big believer in science.

In his petition for bankruptcy in 2012, there was a handwritten note attached which said that he lives with his mom and has no furniture.

And we know whose fault that is, Eric Holder and Hillary Clinton.

Hillary.

What is this upset?

Why do you want to blow Hillary up?

She's not in office.

She lost.

She has no power.

She's a grandma.

That's it.

In fact, when the bomb squad was opening the packet, she said, save the wrapping paper.

It's the grandma.

But

make no mistake, what happened in this country?

This guy wanted to wipe out the top Democrats in America.

All the major players got a bomb.

Obaden, Obama,

Obama, Biden, the Clintons, Eric Holder.

Poor Tim Kaine is waiting by the mailbox.

Nothing today?

Bernie Sanders issued a statement.

What am I?

Chopped liver?

No.

Anybody on Trump's shit list got a bum.

CNN got one.

George Soros, John Brennan, Robert De Niro.

Meryl Streep was snubbed.

Me, nothing.

But, you know, look.

No, that's good.

But I heard he was thinking about it, and

it's an honor just to be nominated.

You know, Trump is mad at the bomber, too, not because of the bombing, because it hurt his momentum.

He actually said this out loud.

It hurt his momentum with the midterm election.

Because before we were talking about my great caravan, the caravan.

You know, of the 7,000 of these desperate Honduran people who were coming here, only about half now are still going.

If there's anyone left by the time they get here, they should get a trophy.

I mean,

if this was white people, it would be on NBC Sports.

I mean,

they'd call it the Iron Man migrant race.

I mean,

can't we be a little kinder?

Their goal is a simple one.

They just want to make it to Dodger Stadium for game four.

But, you know, I got to say, Republicans, what a bunch of panicky, fear-based babies.

Trump's whole closing argument is, what was that?

Caravan,

brown shirts, brown shorts is more like it.

I mean, they're on foot.

They're over thousand miles away.

They're mostly women and children.

On Fox News, they're tracking them minute by minute like they're on an Uber driver coming up.

Look at this, 27 days away.

I can see.

But let's not forget, the bomber has been caught, and it's Halloween weekend.

I hope you...

Yes, absolutely.

We take it seriously out here.

I've got a great costume.

I'm putting a tiny orange dick in my mouth.

And going is Sean Hannity.

Anyway,

Stella Mucci Betchy Woodruff and Max Wood out here.

And a little later, I'll be speaking with psychologist and author Jonathan Haidt.

But first, she is a dancer, a director, a Trump nemesis, and author of the new memoir, Full Disclosure.

Please welcome warmly Stormly Daniels.

Stormley Daniels.

Stormy Daniels.

Stormy Daniels.

First of all, do you prefer Stormy or your real name, Stephanie?

Oh, you went there.

Why?

Is that bad?

Stormy.

The only people that call me Stephanie is my mother and the IRS, and I hate both of them.

Okay, well, Stormy it is.

Well, people might think it's a little incongruent you're here on such a desperate news week, but actually you have quite a connection with what happened this week because you yourself were targeted.

And, you know, I think people have to understand that this bomber,

he didn't need to get instructions from Donald Trump.

He just went after everyone on Trump's shit list because he knew

that's what's expected.

And in a way, that's what happened to you when you got busted in

Hawaii.

I wish.

I'm thinking about, my mind is on vacation

in Ohio.

Because,

you know, that person who was obviously gleeful to arrest you,

I don't think Trump called that cop and said, do it.

They were just Trump people and they knew it would be

great.

So tell us what happened.

There was actually four, and the craziest part about this is that it was women.

Right.

It was three undercover

women and one male.

And so you're working at a strip club?

I was at a club.

which one

sirens but I don't

I don't advise to go there

and I was on stage doing the same show in what city Columbus Columbus Ohio I like the platinum lady in Columbus but

I name for every strip club I defend strippers by the way one of the last group of people who it's okay to shit on in America Men won't admit they know them and women think they can look down on them.

I like strippers.

I don't care who fucking knows it.

I like strippers.

I love strippers.

So, go ahead with this one.

Oh, anyway, so I've danced in Ohio many times.

I'm very well aware of what the law is.

And so, I was on stage, I was doing the show I always do.

There were people at the stage putting dollars in their mouth, which I think is entrapment when they told me to do it.

I think it's disgusting.

Oh, yeah, they're like, yeah.

Strippers are okay, but dollars have a lot of germs on them.

Do you know there's more fecal matter on a dollar bill than on a toilet seat?

I do now.

You're welcome.

We could have a morning show.

Anyway, so I did my show.

Then the officers, who I didn't know were officers, actually stood in line and paid to get photos and buy DVDs from me.

And then they came back and arrested me.

And they got you for something called motorboating.

Is that right?

Would you like me to demonstrate?

I would not.

Oh, yes, the

politically correct LA crowd wants you to show us your tits.

Okay.

But what is that exactly?

I put my boobs in their face and took the money.

Okay.

Which I know is normally just if you happen to do that someplace where it's illegal, they just write you a ticket.

It's never something you get hold in for strip searched, photos.

The officer, Shana or Shana Keckley, who took part in this raid, she sent emails right after you got arrested, giddy about it, talking.

She said,

you're welcome.

I work for ViceNow.

We arrested Stormy this morning.

She's in jail.

You know, this is not death squad stuff, but this is not what America is.

We don't target.

You had to go to jail.

We don't politically target the people we don't want.

And that's what we're seeing happening in this country.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Okay.

And by the way, they said it was a long-term investigation into allegations of human trafficking.

Bullshit.

Like you were hiding refugees in your tents.

Exactly.

Well, they probably could, but, you know.

Store me.

We'll be right back after this word from Del Monte.

No.

Okay, so let me ask you about Donald Trump.

Now that we've got the important stuff out of the way.

Why did you fuck Donald Trump?

I have no idea.

You have no idea.

I have no fucking idea.

No idea why you fucked Donald Trump.

No.

He's got that kind of a, well, he has a spell on a lot of people.

So, I mean,

so it wasn't money.

No.

I was not paid.

He offered after.

No, he never offered to pay me.

Oh, he never.

I thought.

Oh.

Okay.

Would you have accepted?

No.

No.

No, I would have been like so offended.

But you get paid to have sex on camera.

That's different.

I get paid not by the person I'm having sex with, I get paid by the company to film it.

It's a technicality.

Yeah.

I don't think he could put a motorboat between that.

But

okay.

You're still thinking about it.

Yeah.

And, you know, look, I don't want to think about drumstick any more than I

trust me, you're not the only one.

Already have.

But I mean, I mean, I was the first package.

I got the first package, and sadly, mine went off.

But what?

Let's go right to the cooking segment.

No,

but he didn't use a condom.

No.

But you are partners to that.

You let that happen.

I know.

I am guilty.

But I thought Pornstar is supposed to guard that's your moneymaker.

How can you raw dog a sleaze bag like that?

Oh, God.

Yeah, I don't know.

It's a hard-hitting interview, Dormy.

It is.

He said hard.

Okay, but you say it's not a Me Too case.

It is not a Me Too case.

What do you think of the Me Too movement?

I mean, you certainly could have thrown in with that.

No, I couldn't, because that would be a lie.

Okay.

I mean, I wasn't assaulted.

I wasn't attacked or raped or...

coerced or blackmailed.

And I think that the Me Too

movement was a very important thing for opening this dialogue and it was very powerful.

And I think that when I first sort of came out and was telling people what had happened, the truth, that they tried to shove me in the me too box of further their own agenda.

And first of all, I didn't want any part of that because it's not the truth, and I'm not a victim in that regard.

See, I think that's more of feminism.

But the most important thing is it's

not you had the agency.

Yes.

You did what you wanted.

Yes.

And now you say you regret it, but we all have regrets.

Exactly.

Of course.

Everybody here in this audience, fuck somebody they regret.

They're lucky if it was just one.

That guy, like many people.

Somebody said he's going to do it tonight.

I guarantee you, someone's doing it tonight.

Okay, so.

But, like, at that moment where you said, Ugh,

here we go.

Ugh, here we go.

You know that that's like the greatest title for something ever, right?

If somebody does not write a book about the Trump years called, Ugh, Here We Go.

I think it should be my musical.

Your musical.

Okay.

Well, that's, I was going to say, you're working at strip clubs.

You've got to be able to think of a better way to monetize this than shaking your tits at sirens.

I like shaking my tits.

They do too.

The PC crowd loves strippers.

I love it.

Okay.

Okay, so last question.

Porn today.

It's different than even, I think, when you did it.

I still do it.

Like I say, you still do it.

But when you start it.

Right.

Okay.

What year did you start?

What time?

2002?

2002.

I don't think it's benign.

And, you know, I'm a pretty liberal guy.

But I don't think the porn is benign.

I think it's rapey.

It's gross.

It's demeaning.

I understand why this generation of kids is fucked up.

If that's what they're looking at on their phone when they're 14.

Oh, no, I agree.

There's some seriously disturbing stuff.

It's pushed its limits for sure, but I mean, all of it's not bad.

I think there's a place for it in healthy relationships.

It's a way to explore sexuality, open dialogue.

I'll always be a fan, I think.

But just like anything,

there's good and bad in every industry.

And is it something that should be consumed a lot, like alcohol or blunts?

I'm going to talk to Cake.

I think Cake is great.

You make a good case.

You did a good thing for America, and I hope you have a good life.

Thank you, Stormy Daniels.

Stormy Daniels, everybody.

All right, let's meet our panel.

I can see the look on your face from behind.

I could see the look on your face.

Okay.

I'll get it for you.

Thank you.

All right.

He's a columnist of the Washington Post and author of the Corrosion of Conservatism, Why I Left the Right.

Max Boot.

Hey, Max, great to have you back.

She is a Danielle politics reporter and NBC slash MSNBC contributor, Betsy Woodruff.

Great to have you back, Betsy.

And he is the former White House Communications Director under President Trump, the subject of the new documentary Mooch, which is on iTunes, and the author of the new book, Trump, the Blue Collar President, Anthony Scaramucci, the moose.

The moose.

Hey, they're chanting the mooch.

I know you only lasted 11 days in that job, but I got to tell you, I thought you did a better job than the other two they had doing it.

Thank you.

I appreciate that, Bill.

Well, it's a good thing my nickname rhymes with booing.

You can't tell the difference.

Okay, so we're going to talk about bombs and lies this week.

Let's start with bombs.

I think what I saw this week is the President of the United States using a domestic terrorist attack to threaten the American media.

Am I wrong about that?

Because he tweeted, a very big part of the anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting, blah, blah, blah.

Mainstream media must clean up its act fast.

That sounds like he's not condemning the bomber.

It sounds to me like he's partnering with him.

He's literally saying that it is CNN's fault that CNN got mailed a bomb.

Right.

You're not stretching any of his words to get the sense that that's the point that he's making.

And there's a really instructive comparison that I think we have to make when we talk about this.

About a year ago, a Bernie Sanders supporter shot up a baseball field full of Republicans, and I was covering it.

I was there at the baseball field that day.

I followed the story.

And within hours, Bernie Sanders was on the floor of the U.S.

Senate, decried it, disavowed it, said this is horrible.

I have nothing to do with this.

There could not be a bigger contrast between how he handled that horrible catastrophe and now how Trump is saying that it's somehow CNN's fault that this crazy guy is going after them.

It just couldn't be more stark.

And I think Sarah Sanders actually said something truthful inadvertently when she said that Trump, she said Trump could not have been more presidential, and that's exactly right.

For Donald Trump, he could not have been more presidential, but that's a tragedy for the country because we actually do need somebody who is more presidential.

And he missed a massive opportunity here.

If he had just expressed a little remorse for his own hateful rhetoric for calling the media the enemy of the people, for calling Democrats traitors and evil and crazy, if he had accepted a little personal responsibility, people would have loved it.

He would have gone up in popularity, but he just can't do it.

He can't help himself.

Tough spot for you.

You know, but I but you know, listen, you can be loyal to somebody and you have to be honest about the situation.

You know, I don't like sycophancy because that's like selfishness and self-preservation.

And so you'd have to tell the truth.

Max is making a point.

I tried to make the point in the White House, which is probably why I only lasted 11 days.

There was no reason to have a war with the media.

The first thing I did in the White House was turn the lights and cameras back on because I believe in the First Amendment and you have to hold people in power accountable.

The second thing you have to do

is end the war declaration because here's what happens is both sides get fired up.

Jeff Zucker sent out a missive and then the president sends out a missive and then Sarah comes out and says something.

And it's totally unnecessary because what ends up happening, if you really like the president, and some people may or may not, but he has an eight to ten point headwind as a result of the bellicosity of this rhetoric, meaning the economy is doing well, he's got a lot of things going correctly for the society as it relates to jobs, job growth, deregulation, et cetera.

But this sort of stuff is now a battle between policy and...

You're saying this is helping him?

Hurting him.

Hurting him.

There's an 8 to 10 percent headwind blowing in his face,

depressing his poll numbers and preventing him from getting to a higher ground that he could get to.

Well, and also, let's be honest, this is never going to get better because what he is asking the media to do is not criticize him.

See, I said this a few weeks ago at the end of our show.

It all comes from this one trait of narcissism.

This is a disease that we are not going to cure.

And as long as he has it, it's not going to get better because the media's job is to criticize him, especially now more than ever.

So that's going to keep going on and he's going to keep interpreting that as you're being negative to me.

And part of the reason that it's such a big problem for this particular president is that he's obsessed with the media.

He probably consumes more cable news than the average human being.

He's probably one of the number one most voracious viewers of cable television.

And because of that, because he's so obsessed with the way he's being covered, and because he's been obsessed with it for decades, going back to when he was a real estate developer and he he would call tabloid reporters in New York to pitch them on stories, because of that, the media has a much bigger impact on his mental state than on any other typical president.

And that's why he's so upset all the time.

He's also got this amazing sense of victimhood.

I mean, I think Chris Hayes put it best when he said somehow he is both victim and victor.

And somehow, even though he is president of the United States, he feels like he is being picked upon.

He feels like he's the real victim here, not the people who are getting bombs in the mail.

Having worked with him and been on the campaign trail and seen him in action, I see it a little bit differently.

I think that he has had these ingrained impulses to counterpunch.

Maybe Roy Cohn taught him that, or somebody taught him that early on.

And so every aggression, micro or macro aggression, he's made a determination over 45 years to hit five times harder.

And it's worked for him, Bill, because he's the president of the United States.

Start working for us.

Work for him.

That's what I was going to explain about.

Start working for America.

That's all I'm doing.

I'm trying to explain it, though.

But I don't care anymore about his psychosis.

He's being an emeraldist, being an observationist.

Okay, but I'm telling you.

I was going to say that, Bill.

This is an incredibly dangerous for this country to have an arsonist in the White House who is setting fire to our politics.

This is very, very dangerous.

This is not going to end well.

And, you know, he may be doing it for partisan advantage, but the disadvantage is to the country.

Our politics

is being shaken.

And so, what happened to calling things terrorism?

I seem to remember the debate with Obama and Mitt Romney when they were all up his

ass about you didn't say terrorism, which he did after Benghazi, or he said act of terrorism.

But this isn't an act of terrorism.

And God forbid we unfairly malign a particular group based on the activities of a lone wolf.

Right, yeah.

Well, listen, I mean, I mean, listen, there's an opportunity here to pivot.

And I hope he does, because if he pivots and he dials back the rhetoric a little bit, it'll help the country.

I think Max is right about that.

That's not going to happen.

He doesn't pivot.

He's not a pivoter.

He is sure he is.

I don't know, he might be.

He might be.

Really?

At age 73, it's all going to click in for him.

But

at age 71, he was using Twitter better than most 16-year-olds.

So at age 73,

he might be able to.

Is that really true about Twitter?

I don't know if that's actually.

Well, I mean, the reason why all of us are getting hit and shadow banned on Twitter is because he probably won the presidency using Twitter.

I will.

He was very, very effective with it.

You may not like what he was doing, but the whole point of my book is that the people that I grew up with happened to like what he was doing.

They have not had an advocate in the last 35 years in the Oval Office for the middle and lower middle class people.

He is

disagreeing with that.

He disagrees with that.

He is playing with fire.

Why did he win?

Why did he win all those states where those blue-collar people live?

Because they don't do it by policy.

People in this country are over policy.

They do it by a feeling.

And I'll admit, the axis of evil in this country is the media and its helplessness to pursue bullshit.

And his genius at manipulating bullshit in the media.

He is a media genius.

I will give you that.

So is him.

But the blue-collar people of America are not racist.

Here's a marketing.

Blue-collar people or some of them are racist.

Well, this guy was.

Some of the elitists are racist.

Well, the elitists are different.

I don't think racism is what their problem is.

I mean, he is a marketing genius, but he is helped along by the fact that he has no sense of responsibility or restraint.

He will stoop to measures that no previous president would have possibly stooped to in order to win votes, and he doesn't care what the cost to the country is.

I heard you talk about his lies, and I was admiring it because

we were on several shows, and you said- You want to say he's not lying?

No, no.

Well, that's what other people do.

I mean, that's what Sarah Sanders does.

Okay, but hold on.

I'm not an apologist.

I can't.

Well, you are.

Okay, well, I don't think I am.

I have pretty good self-awareness.

I call things as I see them.

I disagree with them on the child separation policy.

I told them that he ought to lower the flag after John McCain.

I can come up with 10 or 15 things where I don't agree with them.

You're one of the good ones.

One of the good ones.

But I'm not really trying to be a good one.

I'm just trying to call balls and stripes.

But go ahead.

Yeah, we've heard that before.

Let's leave that one out for this.

Here's what you said.

You said you agree.

You said, we both know that he's telling lies.

I'm not happy that he's a liar.

Nobody should lie.

But then you said, but politicians happen to lie.

But you know you're a politician now, so politicians lie when their lips are moving, and so these people lie.

That itself is a lie, because that is

trying to convince people, well, they all lie.

He's in a field with the others.

Can I just read what his lies were.

That wasn't the point, though.

But that's your quote.

No, I understand that, but there was a little bit more to the quote than that.

Okay, what I was basically saying.

Well, that's the part I'm interested in.

Okay, okay.

Benny Gala.

We used to have a good editorial this year, okay?

No, no.

I mean, that's important.

I mean, there's other things, but

you're trying to say he lies.

They all lie.

I just want to tell you this one week.

One week.

That means I'm giving an apology for the lie.

That's not what I was trying to do.

I was trying to explain to you what he is doing by embellishing those stories, by creating a lot of people.

The words stand for themselves.

I just want to say that.

Embellishing is a nice way to say BS, Anthony.

This isn't slippery.

This isn't clippery, though.

This is literally.

He said the word lie.

I'm not really BSing.

I'm telling you why he's doing it, and I'm trying to explain to you.

I'm not going to beat him

calling him out on it.

Yes, we well, we shouldn't call it.

Okay,

I don't understand what's going on in the country.

Okay, well, I'm going to call out a few lies, just so people know, because there is an election coming up, and maybe I can persuade a few.

This is just one week.

His closing argument for this election

lies on a scale even new to him.

There are hordes coming here.

He calls this an invasion.

He calls this a national emergency, these starving Hondurans.

It's not a national emergency.

There's a few thousand of them.

We stopped 300,000 at the border last year.

He's saying Republicans are the ones who are for preserving the ban on pre pre-existing conditions

when it's the opposite.

He's saying that the caravan had had Middle Easterners in it.

I mean, I could go on.

He's not just disputing facts.

He's disputing the concept of facts.

When asked about Middle Easterners in the caravan, he said,

somebody said there's no proof.

He said, there's no proof of anything.

There's no proof of anything, but there well could be.

Okay, I made a list of things you can prove.

Obama was born in Hawaii.

CNN's ratings are not way down.

Climate is man-made.

Climate change.

Crowd sizes can be measured.

Brett Kavanaugh didn't graduate number one from Yale Law School.

Helium is lighter than oxygen.

There's no proof of anything.

We've passed a point here.

The thing that's important to understand about Trump and when he talks and says things is that he doesn't think about what he's saying in terms of truth or lie.

He thinks about it in terms of winning or losing.

And so he says what he thinks will help him win regardless of any notion of

connection to reality he has.

And a really good example of this is very recently he said an opioid bill that he signed, a bill designed to help mitigate a horrifying catastrophe that's killing countless Americans, he said Democrats largely opposed this opioid bill.

That's not true.

It passed 99 to 1 in the Senate.

He's the only president who would try to pretend that he didn't have bipartisan support for a major piece of legislation.

And it's because

the reason is because there's an election coming up and he wants to take this opportunity to shit out of the way.

No, and

it's an incredibly important point here to refute what Anthony is trying to say here, which is that somehow politicians lie and he maybe lies a little bit more.

No, this is off-the-charts lying.

This is a blizzard of bullshit.

For a lot of us.

No,

let me just finish the point quickly here because a lot of politicians lie a little bit.

For Donald Trump, lying is the default mode.

According to the Washington Post, he lies an average of eight times a day.

If he tells the truth, it's an accident, okay?

You're missing the strategy, though.

So that's the thing.

So calling him out on it is a lot like being the hall monitor in the elementary school.

Calling him out on it is like...

Elementary schools need hall monitors.

We should all learn American people.

If you want to listen, because I could really help you.

You obviously want to beat the guy, right?

Yes.

Okay, so if you want to listen, I can actually provide some insights.

Go ahead.

So what he is doing is he is galvanizing his base.

He has figured out that by mechanizing these words the way he has, and getting you upset and Max upset, and having 10 people at CNN read the lies, and I think the Washington Post has them up to 6,000 lies.

Let's say it's 10,000 lies.

It's record-breaking anyway.

Let's say it's 50,000.

Let me make the point and say it's 50,000.

What he's doing is he's got the volume up on something, and he's made it a calculated bet that the people that are voting for him don't care about that, and he's made a calculated bet.

Why?

I said, right.

Okay, but what is the so what is the alternative?

If you're saying don't call him out on the lies.

What did he say in the 60 Minutes thing?

He said, all of that doesn't matter.

We won and they lost.

What did he say?

I get that, but what is the alternative to not calling out lies?

We all live in a world where we're pretending what the mad king sees is we all see.

No, no, no.

If he says the sky is purple we don't call him out on that because it'll upset him

what's the strategy okay to call him out on it but you see how upset you're getting right now there's a group of people i should be upset everybody should be upset

these people these people are upset these people are upset but there's a lot of people in the country that feel they haven't gotten a fair shake from their government so if you call them out for the lies people think you're not being fair

you're going to lose again

and here's what's really important though here's what's really important though there's going to lose again and when you when you invite me back after the election and he's won again, I'll explain to you what he did to you.

You've explained it, but it's not really advancing.

At some point,

I like the explanation, but that's the strategy.

And it's working.

At some point in the next two years, there's going to be a national crisis.

There's going to be some sort of mass casualty event or recession or economic disaster.

And the American people will need to know that someone in a position of authority is telling them things that are true.

And every time the president tells a ridiculous, mythological,

magical, nonsensical lie, yes, there's a defense that you can make from sort of this political Machiavellian perspective.

But in the long term, for this country, it's laying the groundwork for shit.

All right.

I'm going to bring out Jonathan Haiti.

I know.

And it's going to help answer the question you're asking.

And you're going to like the second half of the show probably a little more than you like the first half.

I'm not asking a question.

I'm trying to explain you what he's doing to you.

And you're very animated about it, and a lot of people like that.

Maybe not these people, but there's a large group of people in the middle America that like.

I'm animated because we can't win.

We can't get animated about this assault on truth, Anthony.

And we can't even really see it.

It seems like we can't.

I've got a better strategy, Max, and I actually give you the playbook.

I know.

You keep saying the same thing, but we're not having the same conversation.

So let's bring out Jonathan.

It's okay.

We're in two different levels.

We're like, it's like you ever get into bed and somebody's on the other sheet, they're under the sheets.

We're not under the same sheets.

I have it, but I hope

back together after this, but that's fine.

I just want you to know who's going to win again because you're not listening.

I say the same thing.

Okay, believe me.

He's a social psychologist at New York University's Stern School of Business and co-author of the New York Times bestseller, The Coddling of the American Mind, How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure, Jonathan Haidt.

Jonathan.

Okay.

Great to have you, sir.

Okay.

And let's get right to this and see how this all folds in together.

Now, the last thing we need in this country is another reason for democracy to be threatened.

But your book says we have one.

It's the darn kids today.

Explain that a little.

I'm paraphrasing.

You're an actual eminent professor.

You say it in better words than I just did, please.

Sure.

Well,

the book has its origins in an observation from my co-author, Greg Lukayanov.

He is the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, defends free speech rights on campus.

And in 2013, Greg began noticing that for the first time it was the students who were asking for protections from words and books and ideas and speakers.

Previously, students had protested speakers before, but they had never before medicalized it.

They acted as though if this person says something, I will be harmed, damaged, people will be traumatized.

And so this was something new, and when they put it in terms of safety, well, then administrators have to respond.

So this came in around 2013, 2014, and it brought with it a whole package of innovations, you might say, microaggression training, safe spaces, trigger warnings.

All this stuff appears from out of nowhere around 2013, 2014.

That's something I did not realize until I was reading your book.

I thought it went back further because I've been talking about the fragile stuff for a long time, but I didn't realize that this is a new generation.

The millennials stop at 1995.

1994, that's right.

Okay, so now we're into the iGen, you call them, or Generation Z.

Same thing, that's right.

And they're even more fragile.

Yeah.

Well, so this is something that people are going to be able to do.

Who can we blame?

Let's start blaming.

I want to blame.

Let's play the blame game.

Okay.

I say that.

Well, let's see if you get it.

Okay, we'll do all the parents and we'll do all the teachers.

So yeah, the basic finding, which I think surprised a lot of us, a lot of us assumed that the millennials were from 1982 to around 2000 or 1998.

But kids born around 1995 had a very different childhood from kids born a few years before.

And so research by

Gene Twenge and others show that kids born after 1985, they don't get driver's licenses as much.

They don't drink as much, they don't go out on dates, they don't have sex as much.

What are they doing?

They're sitting at home on their devices, talking with each other.

And this seems to be changing social development.

And we know this.

This is not just some perception from outsiders, because the rates of anxiety disorders, depression, self-cutting, where they have to be admitted to hospitals, and suicide, all of these rates are way, way way up, especially for girls, and it all begins right around 2011.

And so it's when this generation first enters college campuses and 2013, that's when all this new attitude about speech comes in.

Isn't another reason that they're sitting home instead of doing all those fun things is because the parents insist on watching them all the time?

Exactly.

I mean, we talk, I remember 20 years ago we talked about helicopter parents, you know, hovering over them, and now they call it bulldozer parenting.

They clear out any obstacles to concierge parenting, I've heard.

Right.

So that the kid doesn't have to ever face any difficulties.

How can that kid function in the real world?

That's right.

So the most important psychological idea in the book is anti-fragility.

That there are some things that are fragile, like a wine glass.

If you knock it over, it breaks, nothing good happens.

If something is plastic, you knock it over, it doesn't get damaged, but it doesn't get better.

But there are some things that have to be stressed or challenged, like the immune system.

If you protect your kid's immune system, use bacterial wipes, you're actually hurting the kid.

You're preventing the system from getting the information it needs.

Same thing with social life.

If you protect your kids from being excluded, from being insulted, from being teased, when they grow up, it's like the princess and the pea, a little tiny thing that they encounter on campus now becomes intolerably painful.

But it's not all over the country, really, is it?

I mean, it's

this is something when they talk about elites.

This is who we're talking about, I think, a little more in the heartland.

You know, The kids who are fuck you mom, you know, I call them the fuck you mom generation.

Yeah, I mean calling mom a bitch, turning their back on when their mother's talking.

If I did that, I would not be sitting here today.

And also the,

you know, the constant negotiating with the kids, you know, hey, buddy.

Ready to go?

That's right.

That's right.

Kids need structure and authority, and when parents try too hard to be their friends, yeah.

But on the point about whether this is everywhere, so this is such a new trend.

We only began to notice these things in the last couple years.

But what seems to be the case is that the anxiety and depression, the fragility, the mental illness, that's across the country, across social classes, across races.

And that's why social media use is beginning early, beginning in middle school.

That seems to be the most likely culprit of several culprits.

So that's all over the country.

But

the shout-downs, the screaming at professors, we've mapped that out.

That is almost only in the Northeast and just the coastal strip of the West Coast, and a little bit in Chicago.

But that's what gets the headlines, and that's what dominates media.

See, it's the kid who's screaming at the professor who then gets a job at the Huffington Post.

That's right.

And provides fodder for right-wing media to say, look how terrible it is.

And the problem with liberals in general is that they let those kids who are at the Huffington Post or whatever writing their insane woke shit.

they let them control the debate, just like the parents let the kid control when we're leaving.

We've let the kids take over.

That's like job one you don't do in civilizations.

No, that's right.

You respect the elders.

That's like every civilization before this one, because they might be wiser.

But

can I,

to connect it to this point of why we lose, I think that's relevant.

I think people in this country don't anymore pay attention to policy so much.

It's more this personal stuff.

It's anecdotal.

I don't know about global warming or what causes a recession.

But you know, I saw that mother at the soccer game or in the supermarket and her five-year-old was screaming at her and she was apologizing to the five-year-old.

I'm not going to let those people take over the country.

I think that's the level it works on.

And

to give Donald Trump his due.

I think he understands that because he's a guy who thinks that global warming is is a Chinese hoax, but he knows how to attach derogatory nicknames to people, and that's a lot of his success in politics.

The sanitization of the social media sites, you know, you have a kid puts beautiful pictures of themselves on the site, and then another kid looks at it and feels that their life is less than that beautiful sanitization.

Is that affecting them as well and creating a lot of this anxiety?

Absolutely, and that's probably the main reason why it's affecting the girls so much more than the boys.

Because if you imagine all of the kids in America

around 2007 to 2009, you suddenly just drop millions and millions of iPhones all over the country and kids pick them up, what are the boys going to do?

Oh, video games.

And it turns out actually video games aren't that harmful.

That's porn.

No, really.

That's not a joke.

Motor business.

That is.

Yeah.

Oh, Doc.

But wait, but just to finish up here, so the boys are mostly doing video games, which aren't so bad.

Even if they're running around around imaginary worlds killing people, as my son does with his friends, it's really cooperative, there's teamwork, they're talking.

But what the girls are doing.

What the girls are doing is putting something out and then waiting anxiously while people comment on it.

And so it's the social comparison, it's the fear of missing out.

Also, girls' bullying is relational, boys' bullying is physical, so social media doesn't really affect it.

But girls can never get away if they're being bullied.

So this is why we think

the suicide rate is up 25% for boys, but it's up 70% for girls.

Okay, a couple more issues before we run out of time.

We're talking about why they lose.

I think the Mueller report, I know he's non-political, but I don't know, should have come out by now

because it's going to come out after the election.

We've somehow completely forgotten about the fact that the president colludes with Russia and let Russia help him win an election.

That's not even an issue.

And, you know, today

is 10 days before the election.

In 2016, you know what happened 10 days before the election?

Call me.

Call me about Hillary's emails.

Somehow they always get the breaks and we don't.

And it's going to come out after the election.

And then it's not going to be a lot of time.

And these are Mike Mueller isn't making decisions based on part of political gain for Democrats.

I understand that.

No.

The opposite of what you're doing.

Somebody could have let him know.

All right.

Last thing we're talking about, the media.

You know, if the media is liberal, I got to say, they're doing Donald Trump's bidding, especially with this stupid fucking caravan.

You know, it's a lie that this caravan is a problem of that magnitude.

Then why cover it so much on all your networks?

You are doing Donald Trump's dirty work.

I want to help you because I could really help you.

You said something in your monologue, and my wife said it to me the other day, there's a lot of women and children in the caravan.

And so you have to ask yourself the rhetorical question, would a woman bring their babies or their young children hundreds or thousands of miles to the border if they weren't afraid of something?

And so that's the mistake.

The mistake is that you're covering it up here, but you're not covering it down here at the human level.

And this is what the president's very, very good at.

He's got people covering it up here at this level, that it's a national disgrace.

We're going to stop it.

We're going to have an executive order on it.

But it's actually a human story.

And I think the media is doing a disservice to the human side of the story.

The media is not a bioethic though.

media.

I mean, with his demagoguing

the Central American caravan, I mean, Donald Trump is really showing that he thinks that his core supporters are nativists with memory loss because nobody seems to remember.

He did this in April.

We had another caravan, and this was not hordes of people invading and raping and pillaging America.

It was a big nothing, basically.

It was about 400 people who applied for asylum, which they are legally entitled to do.

They were not breaking the law and doing that, just as these people have a legal right to apply for asylum.

And to pick up on what Anthony was saying, let's show a little empathy for them.

Let's not demagogue them.

Let's not demonize them.

Understand these people are suffering and they're trying to get a better life.

They're not terrorists.

We agree.

But here's the thing.

Please just listen to me because I understand the guy, okay?

He's using that methodology and he's using what you wrote in your book, sir, to get the story up here as opposed to the human side of the story.

He's getting the story as low as he can to scare people on his side into voting.

Then I'll put my hands down here then.

That's where it is.

It should be way down there.

I don't know if it's that far down, but let me...

He doesn't care about that.

He understands what I'm saying.

There's symbolism and totems here that he's using, and it's distorted the way the media is reporting it.

And they could be doing a better job reporting it from the human side of it, and all of a sudden American people would look at it and say, wait a minute.

Our values are that we want to take care of these people.

That's not the problem.

I could answer for this.

So, you know, I was watching from off offstage, and we're all trying to figure out how can people believe this?

How can this be happening?

How can

it seem as though the country has completely lost its mind?

One thing I can contribute from social and moral and political psychology is that if you look at how much left and right disliked each other and you go back to the 70s and 80s, it wasn't actually all that much.

If you have

data from the American National Election Survey, but it's been rising steadily since then.

And as we begin to hate each other more and more, motivated reasoning gets gets stronger and stronger.

We're desperate to believe anything that will make the other side look bad.

And these tribal processes, in which the enemy of my enemy is my friend, or any variation of that.

So, partly what's happening is like the temperature is rising, turning up our ancient psychological circuits for tribal warfare.

And then we say, How can those people be like that?

How can they believe anything?

And the same conversation is going on on the right about the left.

All right, thank you, panel.

It's time for new rules, everybody.

Okay.

New rolls, someone has to tell Jamie Lee Curtis she gets no sympathy from me.

She had 40 years to install some bars on those windows.

New rolls, stop saying this $990 Fendi touch of fur shawl looks like a vagina.

What

kind of a deviant mind do you have to have to look at something as

to look at something as

never mind all right

new rule if you're a former NFL player who writes a book saying the science behind CTE is a sham and a plot to destroy football you have CTE

Although we're looking forward to reading your future books why did I come to this grocery store

and the nurses nurses are stealing from me.

That's

new rule.

The Department of Motor Vehicles has to explain why I have to get a smonk jack every year and drive a car that turns off the engine at every stoplight to save gas.

But Leno gets the tool around Burbank in a 1917 fuck you mobile that gets three feet in a gallon, and everybody just smiles and waves.

New rule, now that Crest has introduced gum detoxify toothpaste to join their gum and enamel repair toothpaste, their baking soda and peroxide toothpaste, and their 3D white toothpaste, they need to introduce a new toothpaste called It's Just Fucking Toothpaste.

And

finally,

New Rule, for the sake of democracy, we have to move Halloween.

Move it far, far away from election day.

Why?

Because it's a reminder of everything conservatives hate.

Fun.

Imagination.

Paganism.

Walking.

Gay pride.

Women dressing provocatively.

Kids demanding free handouts.

That's socialism.

Look.

Republican voters are scared enough as it is.

When they hear the doorbell, they think it's one of three things.

MS-13,

Antifa, or a false accusation of rape.

The last thing they need to look out there and see is Black Panther.

Think about the things that angry up the Fox news base.

What's the single overarching message of that network?

Weirdos are coming for your shit.

Well, that's what happens on October 31st.

People dressed as pims and hookers walking up your driveway, people in chains who aren't Hillary.

Witch cackle doorbells that sound like Hillary.

Men dressed as women, women dressed as men, adults dressed as Harry Potter, and everything is slutty, slutty nurse.

Slutty pirate, slutty pizza rat,

slutty Bishop Desmond Tutu,

slutty Saudi assassin, it never ends.

The only thing conservatives like about Halloween is the appearance of Nasferatu.

But I'm telling you, Halloween, they hate the socialism, they hate the paganism.

The Bible specifically condemns witches, vampires, wizards, ghosts, you know, all the fun people at the party.

And then it also became gay Christmas.

How gay.

How gay is Halloween?

It makes West Hollywood gayer.

It's like making Utah whiter.

And then there's the trap we walk into every year.

Now, I personally don't care if you go trick-or-treating, dressed as 0.01% of Elizabeth Warren.

But the Office of Scolding Justice Warriors has decreed no hula girls, no Indian chiefs, no southern bells, no Daniel Boone, no geishas, ninjas, gypsies, mobsters, terrorists, no Cleopatra.

Pirates offend one-eyed people.

You can't dress as a hobo because it makes lie to the homeless.

You can't dress as quasimodo because it offends hunchbacks.

You can't

dress as an escaped mental patient.

It offends Kanye.

The sexy handmaid's tale costume

The handmaid's tale costume has already been pulled from the shelves and an apology issued lest someone be offended by the ironic take on a character that doesn't exist from a fictional world that never happened

You know

not everything that merely alludes to another culture is racist or cultural appropriation Really?

Imagine there's no countries.

It isn't hard to do.

Halloween was always fun because it wasn't PC.

Not being PC is almost the whole point of the holiday.

But now everything has to turn into a federal case of snowflakes versus humor.

And then some cultural studies professor will go on TV to try to explain his outrage, and Tucker Carlson will look at him like this.

The majority of America is with the Democrats on the issues.

They just find the woke people irritating as hell.

In a new poll, 80% of Americans find political correctness to be a problem, including 75% of African Americans, 74% of Americans under 30, 82% of Asians, 87% of Hispanics, 88% of Native Americans.

If you're not a statistician, statistician, let me break those numbers down for you.

Nobody likes you,

including the so-called marginalized groups whose feelings you've decided need protecting.

Because trust me, somewhere right now, There are three clueless white girls in Texas who are planning to go as a mariachi band.

And when they do, liberal Twitter will lose their shit and the rest of America will go, oh, for fuck's sake, when did liberals become the fun police?

Does anybody remember when conservatives were the ones with the sticks up their asses?

We went from, yes, we can to, oh, no, you didn't.

Thank you very much.

That's our show.

I'll be at the Mirage in Vegas tonight and tomorrow.

And at the Catholic Theater, Kalalui, Hawaii, December 30th at the Blazedale in Honolulu.

New Year's Eve, as always, I want to thank Max Boot, Betsy Woodruff, Anthony Scaramucci, Jonathan Haidt, and Stormy Daniels.

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.