Ep. #475: Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jeff Bridges

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

Start the clock.

Right here with me.

I appreciate it, thank you.

Oh, come on, stop.

Thank you, thank you, I appreciate it.

I love you for that.

Thank you.

That's wow, that's uh

that applause lasted longer than the whole FBI investigation.

Well,

we got to bite the bullet.

They're going to do it.

They're going to confirm Justice Red Solo Cup.

He's going to the Supreme Court, and I'm going to join the Beach Week Ralph Club, I think.

I've got it.

Now, the big question is: where does beer go to get its reputation back?

That's.

But

I say

only time all week I got cheered up was today when I saw that video of Trump walking up onto Air Force One with the toilet paper on his shoe.

Is that

Yeah, how you doing?

Two things about that are very sad.

One, the toilet paper was very embarrassed.

And two, that is the FBI report on his shoe.

Well, I mean, it was, look,

it was a total sham.

You know, there's some things about this that we will never know.

I account for that.

But you know what?

I think what bothers a lot of people, bothers me, is that

for sure, this guy is a liar, also was a huge drunk, maybe not now, but and the FBI report was a sham.

They had no time to do it.

They interviewed all of nine people.

Trump said, can I get these guys to do my crimes?

And the FBI allowed no walk-ins.

No, no walk-ins.

Is this the FBI or a beauty salon?

What the fuck?

The part I loved is they issued their report.

The FBI did it.

So, so secret, so sensitive, that the way that it had to be read, senators, one at a time, went into a little secure room,

lined up, got in, read the report, and went out.

This is how you run a train on democracy, ladies and gentlemen.

And my favorite detail of the whole thing is, according to a police report when he was in college, Brett Kavanaugh started a bar fight after going to the UB40 concert.

He thought he saw the UB40 lead singer, and the guy said, no, I'm not, and Brett Kavanaugh threw ice at him.

By the way, UB40, also what Trump says when he dumps a wife.

That's just a coincidence.

But you know.

But you know, I have to tell you something, Trump and a lot of Republicans already running on this.

The base loves Kavanaugh.

They love this guy.

He drinks beer.

He's a judge.

They're like, I wear a robe all day and drink beer.

What's not to like?

But not to worry.

I don't know if you saw, but Susan Collins, the moderate Republican, made a speech today.

I didn't know Brett Kavanaugh was that liberal.

Wow, I was really enlightened by her speech.

And then Brett Kavanaugh himself wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal this week, and he admitted, he said, I was very emotional last week.

He said, I know my tone.

was wrong, and I said a few things I should not have said.

Wow, it's really comforting to know that your next Supreme Court justice sounds just like an abusive husband trying to talk his way back into the bedroom.

Honey,

I said a few things I shouldn't have said.

Yeah, Judge Kavanaugh, he said he was just doing the best he could.

He said, it's just that I've never acted before.

And the name of this editorial, I love this, was, I am an independent, impartial judge.

In case you didn't get the point, then he wrote right in the article, I believe an independent, impartial judiciary is essential to the constitutional health of this republic.

Oh, and also, fuck the Clintons.

So,

okay, we got a great show.

Andrew Sullivan, Silverto Brian, and David Jolly are here.

And a little later, I will be speaking with the incredibly talented Jeff Bridges.

But first up, Jeff Bridges is here, I said.

Haven't seen a movie in the last 35 years.

But first up, she's a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner whose latest book is Leadership in Turbulent Times, America's Historian-in-Chief, Doris Kearns Goodwin.

Hey,

what a great pleasure to meet you.

How are you, Doris?

All right.

Thank you for coming on.

It's great to see you.

I won't burden you with all the Supreme Court talk on this show tonight, but I just want to ask, because we often hear from historians that, oh, we've seen this before with congresspeople who have acted lousy in presidents.

The Supreme Court, I feel, was always kind of on a pedestal.

Is this a low or were they acting like idiots before?

I don't know.

I think it is a low in my lifetime, which is not short.

I mean, the partisanship that we saw, two alternate realities during the Kavanaugh hearings, one and the other that had nothing to do with each other.

But I can go back as an historian, because I've lived with guys in the past.

There were lower moments.

Just imagine this.

In the 1850s, there was a congressman from South Carolina and he came into the Senate floor and he hit the Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner over the head with a cane.

Falls into unconsciousness.

But the most important thing is in the South, he's made a hero, just as Kavanaugh has been made a hero now.

They all had canes.

They gave him a golden cane.

But in the North, here's the positive thing.

It mobilized the anti-slavery sentiment in the North.

They got stronger.

The Republican Party, the party of Lincoln then, produces Abraham Lincoln.

So if we can awaken from this new low and the citizens can get active again, we can make something from this moment.

I believe it.

Well,

I'm glad you're optimistic.

We've got to be.

There's no choice.

There's no choice but to be optimistic.

What's the other thing, to just wallow in it?

We can't.

No, we can't wallow.

Wallowing is no fun.

You'll get toilet paper stuck in your...

I don't know what that meant, except that was some of the funniest things I've ever seen.

You're on HBO.

Let it fly.

Okay.

Well, you know, when you said he was a hero in the South, it reminded me of the guy who heckled Obama and said, you lie.

And then he was a hero in the South.

Right.

Maybe the South is the problem.

Well,

maybe we should have let them go.

Oh.

No, no.

No.

No, no.

In fact, that's the whole point.

And then this, I played the South all the time.

When you're in the cities, It's just like anywhere else.

It's really a, it's not a state thing.

It's a city versus country thing, isn't it?

Well, you know, that's what happened at the turn of the 20th century.

You had a very similar situation to now.

The cities were growing.

The people in the rural areas felt cut off from them.

You had a lot of new inventions.

The pace of life was speeding up.

The Gilded Age, gap between the rich and the poor.

But luckily then, a leader came along.

There was a lot of popular spirit, a lot of anti-elitism.

And Teddy Roosevelt came along and he was able to channel all that emotion into something he called the square deal between the rich and the poor.

I mean, he was like Trump.

He came in from a privileged background, but he learned empathy through politics.

He learned to go to slums and see what it was like for these other people to live.

So he's not like Trump.

No, he's certainly no.

Empathy is the most important characteristic in a leader and it's what's missing in the current president.

Well, somebody who could make it.

He's part of a whole menu of people.

And, you know,

I know

historians, and you are certainly preeminent among them, I would consider you primus inter paris of all the people.

Primus inter paris.

I'd love to be that.

you are thank you um first among equals for you non-latin speakers

like zeus was primus inter paris okay so all right zeus so here's the question but you all seem to say i guess you're all optimists that you know oh we've seen worse before have we did we ever have a traitor president because I really do think we have a traitor as a president, someone who plainly and

out and open sides with them, not us, attacks our Justice Department, our FBI, our CIA, says he agrees with Putin.

I could go on with the list of things that I consider traitorous.

Somehow his agenda and Putin's are exactly the same all the time.

Coincidence, possibly.

Did we ever have that?

I'll tell you, I don't know that we need to go to that direction right now.

The Mueller investigation will show us whatever is going to come forth on that.

Right now, we just have to understand that we have a president with no capacity to go.

Well, what could be more important than if the president of the United States is available?

No, what's more important is that we have to persuade other people of why we have to go against Mr.

Trump right now.

Because he's a traitor.

No, because using that language is not going to reach the people that you want to reach.

But what language would you use?

Here's what I'd use.

I'd use the fact that this man has no humility, which is an important part of every president.

That he has no empathy, that he has no resilience, that he says that the reason he's so humble is because

the Pope is very, very humble, just like Donald Trump.

I mean, you can't think that way.

You can't be a person who says that the most important thing is never to lose, that you always have to win.

Every Every president I've studied has gone through adversity and they came out stronger at the other end.

Ernest Hemingway said, Everyone's broken by life, but sometimes people are stronger in the broken places.

He says he's never experienced loss, and that's why he has the very, very best temperament of anyone who's run.

Use those ordinary kind of things, and that's what will persuade people.

They can see that this is not a leader.

This is not a man who's experienced any kind of empathy for other people.

That's what you have to do to persuade people.

Have we ever had a leader who was such a cult leader?

I mean I feel like more than any president I've ever seen, it's a cult.

No matter what he does,

they stay with him.

Well, you know what's interesting?

I mean I think when FDR came into the presidency, people believed in him so much, but the difference was that his word was his God.

I mean he made his promises real.

When he first got in, somebody wrote him a letter and he said, my roof fell off, my dogs run away, I don't have a job, my wife is mad at me, but you are there and now everything's okay.

But the point is that he made everything okay.

He gave those fireside chats, and people felt he was actually talking to them, and he made good on his promises.

That's the important thing, to keep one's word, which is what not President Trump has done.

People felt so close to FDR that they felt like he was actually in their living room when he was on the radio with them.

There's a story of a construction worker running home one night, and his partner said, where are you going?

He said, well, my president, he's coming to speak to me in my living room.

I have to be there to greet him when he comes.

That's the kind of president you need who can deal with a citizen.

They feel like he's their friend.

That is not the same thing as being a cult president where they just believe whatever you say somehow, but you're not giving them what they really hope for.

That has that gap.

So we never have seen this before, really.

We've never seen this before.

I don't think so.

I mean, we've had other presidents that have been pretty bad,

but not to this level of the relationship with the citizenry, I think.

And do you think if in 2020 he loses the election, he'll leave?

Because Hillary Clinton now is on my page saying, no, he may not.

Of course he'll leave.

I mean, we have to believe in the city of the world.

But we've said, of course he will about so many things.

And then he, you know, of course he's not going to leave.

Well, maybe they'll give him a room in the White House somewhere and he can move by himself,

surrounded by other.

No, no, we have to believe in the institutions of our country.

Oh, I believe in the institutions.

He will be carried out if he doesn't want to leave.

Okay.

Well, I mean.

I do.

I believe.

Do you do not,

you have to believe, you have to believe in the military.

You have to believe in the other institutions of the country.

The checks and balances will step forward if he's voted out.

If the people say he should be gone, and that's the answer.

We have to awaken the citizenry right now.

They can no longer be spectators.

You've got to believe in the people.

I'm not sure we're living in that era anymore.

And also, the people with the guns like him.

It doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter who has the guns?

No, it matters who has the guns, but you're being much too pessimistic.

I've got to do something with you.

I've got to make you more optimistic.

Honestly.

I've got to do something with you.

So you don't think it'll get violent?

It's possible it could get violent.

One of the things that Lincoln...

I think I'm bringing you around.

No, no, no, no.

Here's the thing.

In fact, there was violence in the 1830s and 40s, and Lincoln gave an amazing lecture in which he said that the rule of law was what had to be reinstituted in people's minds.

And he said that everybody should be reading the Revolution and the Constitution at night to their children, like you'd read the Bible to them.

And then if we remember our history, we will remember the ideals of who we are, and we will not allow these things to happen.

Did you think Donald Trump would ever get the nomination?

No.

I did.

Did you think he could win?

So you're a better predictor than me.

I'm telling you.

But it doesn't mean it's...

But you're a better historian.

If we ignore history at our peril, if we don't look back at these other times when a leader came, look, they got us through the Depression, FDR did.

Abraham Lincoln got us through the Civil War.

And LBJ, my LBJ, who I worked with when I was 24 years old, he had bipartisanship in the Congress.

Those two sides came together.

Civil rights, voting rights, Medicare, aid to education.

We've done this before, and we can do it again.

All right.

Thank you for making me an optimist, Darling.

I appreciate you coming by.

Jars Kearns-Goodwin, everybody.

Thank you.

Let's meet our panel.

Okay.

Here they are.

He is a writer-at-large for New York magazine, our returning champion.

Andrew Sullivan is over here.

Andrew?

She anchors the syndicated Sunday morning news show, Matter of Fact, and is a correspondent in HBO's Real Sports Soledad O'Brien.

Hey, good to see you again.

And he's a former Republican, U.S.

Congress representing Florida's 13th district.

No, we love him.

David Jolly's over here.

We used to not like you never.

Exactly.

We appreciate that.

Oh, and our special is on a week from next week.

We're on a live show on the 12th and then the 19th, our anniversary special in our regular time squat, 25 years of me on television.

This meeting is here on HBO.

You're going to enjoy it.

It's very entertaining.

There's a lot of great people.

Andrew is speaking in it.

We have a lot of wonderful witnesses.

All right, and don't forget to send us your questions for tonight's overtime so we can answer them on YouTube.

All right, so it's one month before the election.

We're going to have to just move past the fact that Brett Kavanaugh is on the Supreme Court because we've talked about it the last three weeks and I'm a little sick of him hanging and he's on.

So let's move forward.

Republicans have closed the enthusiasm gap.

In July it was 10 points.

Now it's almost even.

That's people who view the midterms as very important and are going to get out to vote.

So that's not good news for the Democratic Party.

And they say it is because of Brett Kavanaugh and this circus we've just been watching.

Why?

Why did that close this gap?

It was brilliant.

They created an aggrieved father and a grieved man who was crying and angry and they've moved the focus off of the questions of perjury, off of the questions, is this person suited for the Supreme Court, and really have put the argument in the court where people are interested and feel very emotionally about it.

So I do think that draws the Republicans into saying this is unfair, and they are very interested.

I think you're going to see that gap widen up again, actually, and I think you're going to see Democrats who are now, especially women, absolutely furious.

I would not underestimate the fury, the anger,

and the motivation to organize among women.

So I think...

Where do you mean Democratic women?

Among Democratic women.

I will tell you, the polling suggests that part of the reason for the thirming up of the Republicans is women in the Republican Party responding to the way the Democrats treated Brett Havana.

But women in the Republican Party,

the important part here about the enthusiasm spike among Republicans is that it is among Republicans.

It is not among independents.

Republicans are now more excited.

But among independents, you know what they learned today?

There is no moderate wing of the Republican Party.

That was the message they learned today.

Susan Collins is not a moderate.

Bob Corker is not a maverick.

And Jeff Flake is not going to be the next president of the United States.

There is no moderate wing of the Republican Party.

And so Republicans might be more excited over Kavanaugh.

There is, but it's sitting there every Friday night.

That's true.

But

the Independents are not going to trend Republican afternoons according to the past.

It was a lot of people who looked at this process and they didn't say they were creating a person offended as a nice father.

He seemed to be genuinely upset.

Wouldn't you be genuinely upset if something you really didn't believe happened was suddenly accused?

Would you not be genuinely upset if everything

was?

Let me finish.

If the media then went on, accused you of having gang rapes,

of reporters going out, asking anybody in his high school.

Have you got any dirt on

it you don't have any credence about

it okay but i but wait the question i asked was about the election and how they're going to use this and that's what i want to get to because that's what's forward and i think you're onto something here i think what they're going to be running on is the democrats we know they're socialists

because a couple of people in the party are

well because that word is scary right and then they're social justice warriors and there are social justice warriors who are crazy enough in this country i fight with them all the time,

who they lend enough credence to this to make people think, oh, you know what?

They're going to go after my high school record.

That's fair game now.

And it becomes sort of a privacy thing.

Look, what happened is that the Democrats, and I have to say the mainstream media, made this not about Brett Kavanaugh, but about all white men.

And how all white men are essentially wannabe rapists, how all white men are the problem, the way that ordinary, regular people...

Why do you feel that?

Because you're a victim.

Clearly, you're a victim.

I'm not.

You are.

You're a victim.

I'm not.

I'm saying to take one individual and use that individual to say all white men are this, which was the regular.

No one said it.

Actually, that's just.

Absolutely.

Everyone said it.

That's absolutely.

First of all, everyone did not say it.

That is absolutely untrue.

It's a wave of coverage about how this just shows

everything honorable about white male privilege.

That's what's on trial.

You're breaking my heart.

Absolutely not.

That is absolutely untrue.

And I understand.

Your message is that somehow white men are aggrieved here in America.

It's booze.

I'm saying that when you generalize...

It's not true.

I'm not saying that.

I'm not saying that.

I am saying that

when you make a negative generalization about it...

Let me finish, for goodness sake.

Carry on.

When you

take one individual and you accuse an entire group of people

both of their gender and because of the gender.

It wasn't done.

Yeah, and

it wasn't done.

Wait,

let's move past this point because I'm bored already.

I know, me too.

Okay, and we'll just leave it.

And what I'll say is I'm sympathetic to the point of view you're expressing, but not this exact point.

I don't think that

it was moved over to that level either.

But I do think that

when Trump said it's a very scary time for young men, yes, let's get out the world's smallest violin.

But I think, but wait.

Let me just ask a question first.

Okay, it does seem like things have morphed from listen to any woman who says she's been wronged, which is the right thing to do, to automatically believe.

Here's the new.

That's what scares me.

Here's what Republicans got wrong, Bill, and you're right.

Look, we all get to choose who we believe.

I choose to believe Dr.

Ford.

Other Republicans choose to believe Judge Kavanaugh.

We will never know, but you choose who you want to believe.

Here's what the Republicans got fundamentally wrong.

We now have Republican parents telling their Republican kids that this is a war on young men.

The message that Republican parents need to tell their sons is that no means no and don't sexually assault women.

And that is the fundamental point on November 6th that is lost in all of this.

That every suburban mom knows that what happened in Washington today is that Republicans did not believe Dr.

Ford.

That is the only translation that happened today.

They said it was credible.

They said we respect her, but they did not believe her.

At some point they say in the culture like us, there has to be some benefit of the doubt for people.

If a single accusation makes someone guilty, then our entire system is over.

But you know what?

It's not that they believed or didn't believe it.

They don't care.

They care about Brett Kavanaugh on the subject.

Absolutely.

And this was not...

It's not a trial.

It's not a trial.

And we can't.

It's not a trial.

It is a job interview.

So guess what?

If someone comes to a job interview and they have been credibly accused of sexual assault and then they sit in a chair and yell at people and cry and get hysterical and are very partisan, you could say as an interviewer for that person, maybe you're not right for this job.

There are

a trial, but there is a culture here in which you give people a fair chance.

And I think people felt there was an onslaught against this guy and they reacted defensively, understandably.

And look, look, when you do talk about white men in general, I'm not saying white men don't have a lot to answer for.

I'm saying when you generalize that way, you're telling every white man in the country you don't want their vote.

You're telling every one of them, you're making them feel like you're not going to be able to do it.

I don't think it's

a problem.

Again, I don't think it's about that.

I think it's more about high school.

Everyone can relate to, I was an idiot in high school.

When I was a, I remember when I was in grade school, all school, they had this thing they used to, maybe they don't do this anymore, but it was a big threat from a teacher.

This is the days when parents sided with teachers as opposed to now when they side with their brats all the time.

But

they would say,

this is going to go on your permanent record.

Ah!

My permanent record.

No, that was drinking Boone's Farm in the parking lot.

But I was never accused of sexual assault as a high schooler.

That's the issue here.

Are you telling me the best guy Republicans could nominate was Kavanaugh?

No, no.

Because if that's the first thing...

We've got a bigger problem if that's the issue.

Look, Steve Martin said, be so good they can't ignore you.

We failed that test as a Republican.

I hate Brett Kavanaugh too.

Okay.

Let's get to the more nuanced level of it.

We're all vulnerable, right?

We're all very vulnerable in this.

All our privacy is vulnerable online.

The next generation that's coming up is going to be extremely vulnerable.

Any politician that doesn't have a dick pic floating out there is going to be very vulnerable.

And

when we out people's private lives this way, we make them very vulnerable.

And I think people respond to that in the right way.

And I don't want to live in a culture where liberals used to say, we don't want you looking in your bedroom.

And now they say, we want to know exactly what you did in your bedroom, when and where.

And that's not a culture I want to live in.

He was credibly accused.

Come on.

Okay, first of all.

36 years ago as a teenager.

Yes, and he should have said, you know what, I drank a lot in high school.

Everybody did.

And you know what?

I don't remember.

He's a liar.

But again, the situation, if we're going to get back to that, and I guess we are.

I guess there's no avoiding it.

Okay, it is five minutes in a room.

We don't know what happened exactly.

It could have, on one end of it, it could have been completely premeditated.

He and his evil friend, Mark Judge, could have said, we're going to rape this girl tonight, and this is how we're going to do her.

We're going to get blind drunk, and we're going to blah, blah, blah.

Or it could have been two asshole 17-year-old morons who got blind-drunk and were like, let's scare this girl.

And they jumped on her.

I mean, it is a little weird that the third guy, the second guy, the third person, jumps on the pile.

I want to know why.

Why did he jump on the pile?

Was it to stop it?

Was it to join it?

I mean, it's a weird thing.

And then they all wind up on the floor.

This at least allows the possibility that this wasn't an intended rape.

Absolutely, which is why you have an investigation, an actual investigation.

Again, no one arguing with that.

No one argued with it.

But the accusation that accusations that he was involved in gang rapes, that kind of stuff, when it then became absolutely open court for anybody to make any accusation.

None of that happened.

I'm sorry.

He He faced senators.

That's ridiculous.

We're never going to know the answers to this, but we should expect more of our political leaders than we expect of the principals of our high schools.

Yeah, okay?

We're never going to be able to solve this.

But why has the Republican Party thrust this upon us?

And you can say Democrats played all the antics in the world, and I will give you that.

But the higher honor would have been to withdraw Brett Kavanaugh and put another justice in without the.

And the answer to your question is because Brett Kavanaugh in 2009

wrote that the president cannot be indicted or investigated.

That's why, right?

That's why I oppose the nomination.

Wouldn't it be great if we were able to decide these issues on those relevant issues rather than having this really awful thing which no one actually won and which the country tore itself even further apart.

And to your point about what I call the hand-wringers caucus, Jeff Flake and Susan Collins and the same ones who are always waiting to do the right thing and they never do the right thing.

But you know what?

They feel bad about it.

It goes handling.

Fuck that.

You know what?

You feel so bad about it.

Either do the right thing

or don't do the right thing.

But you can't be like, and I feel so bad about it, but it's always Lucy with the black line.

That's always a thing.

And then they vote exactly along party lines.

They fall for it every single time.

This is the closing chapter of the moderate wing of the Republican Party.

There is not one, and let's declare that this evening.

Okay, so listen, I feel like Trump

has been trolling me lately.

A couple of weeks ago, I was doing something to the end of the show here, talking about him talking about Kim Jong-un when he said, Oh, he likes me, I like him.

Who knows what's gonna happen?

And I was like, What are you gonna fuck?

And

then this week, did you see what Trump said?

Look at it.

And we go back and forth, and then we fell in love.

Okay?

No, really.

He wrote me beautiful letters, and they're great letters.

We fell in love.

Well, we got a hold of the letters that

President Trump

and Kim Jong-un have been exchanging, their love letters, and I'll go back and forth.

It starts with Kim to Don, goes back and forth.

Dear Donald, I know I had it well, but in my line of work, murderous despot,

it's not easy meeting people.

But when I see you on my black and white TV, suddenly there's a missile program in my pants.

I think about you day and night.

I guess you could say I've got an orange crush.

And Trump responds:

Dear Kim, no one's less racist than I am, so don't take this the wrong way, but you had me at Haro.

Your giggle, the way you took Lyle Lovett's haircut and owned it.

I got a bigger heart on for you than I do for Jeff Sessions.

And then, Kim, dear Donald, you make me want to be a better tyrant.

I long to run my fingers through whatever that is on your head.

You're like no one I've ever met, fat

and alive in his 70s.

Dear Kim, or as I like to call you, my dear leader from behind.

I love the way we finish each other's sentences, like when I said, I want to destroy, and we both said, America.

Oh, Donald, that puppy dog look in your eye makes me hungry.

It's all too good to be true.

I never thought I'd be dating a blonde with big tits.

My dearest Kim, I'm just a dotered standing in front of a little Rocket Man

asking him to love me.

You are my forbidden love.

Two, if you count Ivanka.

All right.

He is the Oscar-winning star of Crazy Heart, the Mig Levowski, a million other great ones, and the upcoming bad times at the El Royale.

His documentary, Living in the Future's Past, opens today.

Please welcome Jeff Bridges.

There he is.

How are you?

You look fantastic.

Sure, now they're standing up.

Well, I know you don't come here unless you have something on your mind.

You're a busy guy and a private guy, and I appreciate that, but it's always something important.

And I know it's the environment because I watched your documentary twice.

It's fantastic.

And

I've heard you talk about it a little.

I know you got your interest in the environment first from your father, because

I used to watch that show.

Yeah, Sea Hunt, yeah.

Seahunt.

Yeah, he didn't know anything about the ocean before that show, and he got so involved with, well, the health of the sea and how important it was, and that he brought the whole family with him in that.

And this is about the environment, but it's different in the sense that you're trying to find out how can we be at such a dire place and still not have reacted.

Why are we hardwired humans

to not react to a slow-moving crisis?

I don't think so.

I think, you know, we're hardwired to breathe and, you know, grow fingernails and beat our hearts and stuff like that.

but being hardwired to fail I don't think that's really in our cards but don't we react only to things that are of a I mean doesn't the the history of our environmental reactions bear this out we react only to things that are immediate threats

that's the problem yeah well we're the frog in the pot yeah I just I just got an immediate threat you know I was rescued by a helicopter by the debris flow in Santa Barbara where you know 22 people were killed debris flow debris flow this is due to the

the fire there was a huge fire the Thomas fire in Santa Barbara oh yes and all the foliage was burned and here comes the debris flow the whole hillside where you know both

your house hit our house and we were yeah but that that was after the movie was made

you know but it brought it it brought it all home right but we you know we we when thinking about making this movie we didn't want to do a doom and gloom kind of thing you know there was enough enough movies about that.

We didn't want to downplay the seriousness of our situation, but we wanted to shed

new light on the thing.

And we thought, yeah, let's do something, let's kind of flip the hood up and examine what's making us tick as a species and why we are behaving the way we are in front of this enormous challenge we have.

So, why haven't we done more?

Well,

you know, to look that far in the future, is not, that's not what we're really wired for.

You know,

one of my,

you know,

it's such a tendency to kind of throw up your hands.

I know I fight my own cynicism with this whole thing.

You know, when you think of the

politicians and the news, and

you know, we often think, well, our politicians are going to save us.

You know, it's going to kind of trickle down.

But we can't wait for these guys to

understand the scientific

agree with that because I think the only people who can solve this are

government.

I don't think

this is like World War II.

We're not going to, yes, people can save tin and ration, but they're not going to defeat Hitler.

It's going to take the government to tell people we have a carbon tax.

They definitely have a role, but we have a role as individuals, not only in voting, that's very important, and to vote with people who are in alignment with your thinking of how the environment should go.

But here, let me just, can I say my thing?

No, that's.

Of course, you're here.

That's why we're here.

Don't you say your thing.

Well, here's the deal.

This is what I think about.

Just personal responsibility.

One of my heroes is Bucky Fuller.

You know, Buckminster Fuller.

Yeah.

You know, his most amazing invention was the geodesic dome.

Right.

But he made a wonderful...

observation with the huge ocean-going tankers that we see.

And he said the the engineers were quite challenged by trying to get this huge rudder to turn this big ship.

It took too much energy to turn that huge rudder.

It had to be too big.

So they came up with a beautiful, elegant solution.

Let's put a little rudder on that big rudder, and that little rudder will turn the big rudder.

The big rudder turns the ship.

And that little rudder is called a trim tab.

And Bucky said, this is a great metaphor for how the individual is connected to society.

You know, we think, well, we're just this one little individual, but we're connected, man.

I'm connected to you.

I do this shit.

I know,

but the little rudder isn't doing that.

It's buying an SUV.

Well, but that's what, this is what we want.

This is what the movie is encouraging people to do.

I know, but people don't give a shit.

You know, because,

I mean, and that's the problem is that if the government doesn't make all of us do it, people look, I was like one of the first people to have a Prius.

And, you know, after a while, you look around, you're like, nobody else is helping.

Why am I driving this shitty little thing?

You know what I mean?

You go like, why am I busting my balls and everybody else is?

And if we've all decided we're going to go over the Grand Canyon, let's just hold hands and go.

But I'm not going to be the one to deprive myself if everybody doesn't, including younger people who have more at stake than I do.

I've had my fun with the air.

Can you throw your hands up and do something?

No, not at all.

Not at all.

But I'm just saying, I think it has to be electing politicians who will make laws.

Yes, that's for sure.

But that can't be all it is.

It's also.

But individuals, all of us, all of us are trim tabs, man.

But we're all connected.

We can do, you know, connect ourselves to organizations, man.

You're a good hippie.

Yeah.

We're a good hippie.

The flower child up from your seed, man.

We're coming up again.

But there's organizations like the Amazon Conservation Team, you know, that works with 50 indigenous tribes in South America, protect 80 million acres of rainforest.

Deforestation is, you know, that's one of the things

that's just as bad as

just recent headlines from the last month.

Trump administration wants to make it easier to release methane into the air.

Trump administration wants to make it easier to release mercury.

EPA says a little radiation may be healthy.

This is why we have to just change the government, okay?

Hey.

Yeah, but the fact that the government is the way it is, that's kind of a wake-up call, man, isn't it?

Well, I mean, this is like, this is his.

This is more about the Republican Party, really.

It has become deranged.

There is no other right-of-center party anywhere in the world

that doesn't accept reality.

Like, the first person to tackle the ozone layer was Margaret Thatcher, for Christ's sake.

This is an empirical question, right?

Right.

So what is it that has got into their psyche that forces them to deny, well, you tell me, David?

Forces them to deny something that is so obvious right here and now.

If you want to conserve the world, if you want to conserve the planet, if you want to be a conservative, what are you doing vandalizing the place?

Two quick answers, the emergence of the Tea Party in 2010 and deep, deep, deep-pocketed corporate influence that control Republican voters.

And one other thing, I think, which is

we're so tribal that because liberals want to save the environment,

it's worth it to kill myself and die choking on bad air if it makes liberals cry their liberal tears.

It poisons everything.

Yeah.

So,

this other big story, this is sort of apropos to this: why we concentrate on one story and not the other.

To me, the giant story of the week was the New York Times printing this very, very long article about Trump's origin story.

He had always told us: I'm rich because my father gave me a small loan of a million dollars.

That was always funny to me that he thought that was a small loan, but

he was off by $412 million.

Apparently, his father

it was all daddy's money all along, all through his life, from the age of three years old.

It was all daddy's money and it was fraud money.

Fred Trump passed a billion dollars to his kids and should have paid 550 million in inheritance taxes on it.

That's the law.

Paid 50.

So they cheated the government out of 500 million dollars.

Why doesn't that

resonate with people?

That story is gone, right?

And we don't even talk.

It was two days ago.

It's not a surprise.

It's not a surprise, is it?

Well,

the size of it is a surprise.

I think, look, to Jeff's point, listen, we've always known this president as a con man, right?

And so he engaged in tax planning, but he also engaged in tax fraud.

That was in the New York Times article, Deliberate Tax Fraud.

I think the big takeaway from the New York Times story is what a terrible business person Donald Trump actually is.

The fact,

and here's what I mean by that.

This is a guy, this is a guy that we know was born on third base.

And the idiot, instead of stealing home, stole second.

This is

a guy who figured out how to lose everything his father gave him and then asked for a bailout.

This is an obvious,

obvious thing for them to use.

Here he is, bilking the working classes, screwing people, actually cheating on his taxes.

He was earning 200 grand a year at age three, and the Democrats can't use that

effectively.

He loves the military.

He loves his incredible police.

He loves the vets, but not enough to pay one dime in taxes to support them.

I know, but why?

They're proud of

the vulnerable.

They're proud of him for stealing from the government.

That's where the Republican Party is.

They are proud of him for stealing from the government.

That's interesting.

That's the system.

He worked the system, right?

He did.

He beat the system.

But it hurts.

And listen.

But in the end, just the way this tax cut that's running up the debt, that's going to hurt them in the end.

We're now paying more to service the debt than we pay for Medicare.

It's almost $500 billion a year just paying to banks who have lent us money.

When does that common man, the forgotten man that he said he was, when does that guy see that this is the Wizard of Oz?

Who's the toto who's going to pull back the curtain?

But the media helped sell that story from the 1970s.

They really

consistently, and things that were easily provable, let's check, does he own these homes that he's saying he owns.

Let's see, was he number one in his class at Wharton, which he was not.

Let's actually fact-check some of this, and they never did.

They like to believe this story.

I think it was Tina Brown when she ran an excerpt of her book.

She's like, I knew it was bullshit, but I actually liked the writing and I thought it was a convincing story.

And so, when you do that, people then buy into the myth.

Don't be surprised when they follow that story.

This means his whole life has been a constructed lie.

Yes, it's a Potemkin life

of something he wanted to be, but he knows deep down he doesn't have an ounce of the ability to be.

And he's managed to parlay this incredible Pandora scheme into the presidency of the United States.

And he's still doing it.

Right.

Now, whatever it is, it is an amazing spell he's able to cast on.

It is a salesman of unbelievable skill.

You're right.

Here's what it is.

Simplicity and cunning and absolute ruthlessness.

And I think we keep underestimating how dangerous this person is and this phenomenon is in this culture ever.

Okay, which brings me to my final question,

because

Mike Pence was out there today talking about China.

I haven't seen Mike Pence in a while.

I don't know what

he was laying low.

You know, sometimes people say this is the week Trump became president.

I thought last week was the week Lindsey Graham became vice president.

Well, he's auditioning for something.

He's an attorney general.

Okay.

But Trump said it at the UN.

He said, China has been attempting to interfere in our upcoming 2018 election.

They do not want me.

I thought Xi was his best friend.

There was another guy he said he was in love with.

What happened to that?

They do not want me to win because I am the first.

Yeah, you're bullshit, whatever.

Then Mike Pence today.

China has initiated an unprecedented effort to influence American public opinion.

The 2018 elections.

Trump's leadership is working.

China wants a different American president.

Everybody wants a different American president.

But this is so dangerous, right?

Because

move the rhetoric off of Russia, first of all, right?

And move it onto China, I think, is strategy number one.

And number two is when he loses the 2020 election, it's because China was meddling.

It's also this.

Setting this up.

Donald Trump declared a trade war that he's losing.

China's beating him.

And China's beating him in his backyard.

And China is smart enough to target the constituencies that elected Donald Trump, and he's terrified that he's not smart enough to compete with with China.

So he's attacking them.

They don't seem to think they're losing.

And Balton doesn't think they're.

What's interesting also on this front, let's give him credit.

You know, he did, this is an improvement on NAFTA that he did this week.

He is capable of doing these trade stuff.

Paul has been, I think, tougher on China.

And I think it's amazing how many people have said, you know, we should have been tougher on China for quite a while.

Don't, that's a strong point of his.

There are business interests, right, who would say, listen, China has issues in IP theft, China has issues with IPA.

Absolutely true.

Look, I'm not an apologist for China.

What's the problem?

What he's come up against in China is China has been smart enough to outplay him.

China is targeting in the trade war the very constituencies that got him the extra 90,000 votes that elected him to the White House, and he's terrified that he's losing to China.

That's the problem.

Well, they'd better do better than they're doing because those regions

aren't that false.

Can I quote you, Andrew, for our last question?

Journalists have begun to see themselves as vanguards of a cultural revolution rather than skeptics of everything.

What do you mean by that?

I meant particularly during this cultural revolution around gender and race,

in which newspapers and magazines, I felt this particularly during this period with the Kavanaugh nomination, in which really these journalists were attempting to fight for one side.

And now I'm not a Fox News viewer, but I have seen the mainstream media in the last two years shift to such a situation where I think they really are fomenting and agreeing with a very left-wing ideology that is coming through in all their articles and that is alienating a lot of regular normal people,

is alienating even younger people in some respects, especially young white men.

And they need, and Trump has done this to them.

Trump has evoked the same kind of mania and ideology in them, and everything has to be one that he demonstrates in himself.

And so I think that's an incredibly dangerous moment for our culture.

I mean, the media, I don't trust anymore.

And I've seen that nobody I saw in mainstream media for a second thought Kavanaugh could be innocent.

Just for a second.

In fact, they were eager to prove not only that he was guilty, but that everything he represented needed to be destroyed.

I think

that comes through.

And if you're afraid of the fact that

I've said that 50 times,

that's an overstatement.

And when you talk about regular and normal, we should all note you're talking about white men.

I get it.

That's your perspective on it all the time.

I'm talking about white women.

I'm talking about black men and black women.

Why do you think that everyone of one race has to think a certain way?

It's very diverse.

Which I did not say, first of all.

But listen, at the end of the day, what people saw, it was not a trial.

This is what you're wrong about.

All right, we have to stop fighting.

It's time for comedy.

Thank you, panel, but new rules.

Okay.

Okay, new rules, stop making such a big deal over the Instagram trend of women painting their rear end like a pumpkin.

What I call the crack-o-lantern.

I hate it when we're late for a party because she's still putting on her ass.

I say it's Halloween.

Do whatever you want.

Just don't call me Peter Peter.

New role, people with comfort animals, carry-on guitar cases, and special dietary restrictions must all fly on one carrier called Pain in the Ass Airlines.

We'll be cruising at 37,000 feet and none of those feet have their shoes on.

New Rule, whoever installed these three crack pipe vending machines on Long Island must be told, thank you for your service.

Really, with everyone ODing on opiates these days, isn't it time you took a second look at crack?

Hi, I'm Bill Maher for Crack.

How many times has this happened to you?

You try heroin, but it's not cut right, so you almost die.

Well, now there's a better way.

Come back to crack.

It's been under your nose the whole time.

New rules, someone has to reassure the lonely incels of America that while they may never get a girl like Kim Kardashian, they can get pretty close.

New Rule, Melania must admit she's a lot happier when she's halfway around the world from her husband.

Here she is in Africa holding a baby's hand and here she is in Washington DC holding a baby's hand.

And finally, New Rule, liberals must stop chasing conservatives out of restaurants.

They've done it to Sarah Huckabee Sanders, they've done it to Kirsten Nielsen, they've done it to Stephen Miller.

And last Monday, it happened again when Ted Cruz and his wife went out to dinner and were bombarded by a chant of, We Believe Survivors.

So I'm guessing the restaurant was Chipotle.

But this is the new deal.

Conservatives get to run America, and we get to ruin their dinner.

And listen, I get it.

Nobody wants to see Ted Cruz when they're eating.

Ted Cruz is what baseball thinks about when it's trying not to come.

But we need to get people like Ted Cruz out of power, not out of restaurants.

This is something Republicans understand way better than Democrats, that real power isn't about making a scene or what makes you feel good.

And power, it's a lot like owning rabbits.

The more you have, the easier it is to get a lot more.

Power begets power.

Texas has very similar demographics to California, but one reason they're red and we're blue is we want every citizen to be able to vote, and they don't.

A federal court has ruled seven times that Texas Republicans drew their congressional districts with racial discriminatory intent.

But our federal court won't have the final say on this.

That's the Supreme Court.

They will, which is why Republicans so desperately want to get Schlitz Kavanaugh confirmed.

Even though he doesn't have the temperament to be a judge on American Idol.

Because,

like the rabbits, the more justices Republicans get to pick, the more those justices protect unlimited campaign spending and voter suppression laws, which helps more Republicans get elected.

Power begets power.

Trump loves to say the system is rigged.

Yeah, it's rigged.

You're president.

He leaves out the part that it's rigged for them.

The Electoral College helps Republicans.

The fact that every state gets two senators helps Republicans.

Mike Enzi of Wyoming represents 287,000 people.

Kamala Harris represents 20 million.

Why is Wyoming even a state?

There's not even a river.

or any other kind of natural border separating it from the other square states.

It's just a square.

It's like they copy-pasted Colorado Colorado and then forgot to put people in it.

I know I have asked this before, but do we really need two Dakotas?

It's like when there's a Starbucks right across the street from another Starbucks.

It's greedy.

You're greedy, Dakotas.

Four senators for you?

It's like a little person going up to the buffet and taking half the food.

We all failed to notice that as more Americans moved to coastal cities in pursuit of high-paying jobs as Uber drivers,

rural red states became overrepresented.

Which is why every election year we have to hear what's on the mind of everyone in a diner in Iowa.

Meanwhile, nobody ever talks to the loser at the coffee bean in West Hollywood.

Does America's vast army of unemployed screenwriters not count?

I see you.

I see you.

The Constitution is not on our side.

Bush II and Trump both lost the popular vote.

They shouldn't be picking Supreme Court justices at all.

Had the Democrats

had the Democrats who actually won the popular vote been in the Oval Office, we'd now have a 7-2 liberal majority on the court.

Instead, as usual, we all ought to pin our hopes this week on Senator Susan Collins of Maine, population Stephen King, two lobsters, and a bear.

When the deck is this stacked against you and the other party cheats,

Democrats have no margin for error or bullshit, you know know who you are,

or complacency.

Republicans in Texas were able to draw those districts with racially discriminatory intent because they won the state house.

Democrats lost a thousand state legislature seats in the last 10 years.

Can't do it.

We just can't do it like that.

We need to win elections so we can protect voting rights so we can win elections.

Next month,

next month there is a referendum on the ballot in Florida, the state that so often decides our elections, to restore the voting rights of 1.4 million ex-felons who currently cannot vote.

It could turn Florida blue, which turns America blue.

So next time you want to scream at a politician, Move to Florida and help change that law because power begets power and we got to beget some for ourselves.

All right, that's our show.

I'll be at the Mirage in Vegas October 26th and 27th.

I want to thank Andrew Sullivan, Shola Dat O'Brien, David Jolly, Jeff Bridges, and Doris Kearns Goodwin.

Join us now for overtime on YouTube.

Thank you, folks.

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

For more information, log on to HBO.com.