Ep. #472: John Kerry, Steve Ballmer

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.

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

Start the clock.

I know, I know, I know.

Very exciting.

I know why you're happy to see

to see me.

I'm a guy on TV, not standing in the rain.

That's right.

These fools in the rain.

Aren't they fools telling you how dangerous the storm is?

Well, they're standing in the middle of it.

It's one or the other.

Millions could be without power.

Yeah, they're called Democrats.

Look, people in in the Carolinas are freaking out over Florence.

Not the hurricane, a trans woman who is using the wrong bathroom.

But

we wish the best for the Carolinas.

They can't hear me.

They have no power.

We wish the best.

But the president is on it.

He wants you to know that the government is ready.

He is monitoring the storm from the command center in his bed.

He has stockpiled tweets

and he is prepared to give himself an A plus

on how he handles it

and to dispute how many died in the last storm in Puerto Rico.

Did you see what this asshole did all week?

Obsessing on the one a year ago that he fucked up.

It was way less than 3,000.

And the ones who did die, it wasn't from lack of paper towels, I tell you that.

Yes,

Trump is saying that the Democrats inflated the numbers of dead to make me look bad.

And if one thing there is that Donald Trump hates, and somebody who falsely inflates numbers.

We can't stand that.

Three million illegals voted for, yes, okay.

Does everything have to be about him?

That's...

Yeah, yeah.

Exactly.

I mean, when he uses a condom, he wears it inside out

so that it's ribbed for his pleasure.

I'm joking.

He's never worn a condom.

But really, Clinton was the I feel your pain president.

He's the I am your pain president.

And I honestly think he didn't even know until a few days ago that 3,000 people died in Puerto Rico.

I think the staff is always hiding the bad news from him, like when you tell your toddler when you have to put the dog down that he's living on a farm.

It's like that with Trump.

It's like, hey, where's Michael Cohen lately?

He's living on a farm, Mr.

Cohen.

Oh, speaking of that,

speaking of that, all the weather buried the big news.

Paul Manafort flipped on Fat Donnie.

That's right.

That's right.

Fat Donnie got flipped on by his former consiglier, the campaign manager, Paul Manafort.

He is now cooperating with the Mueller team as part of a plea deal.

And Mueller has gotten plea deals now from Manafort and Flynn and Gates and Papadopoulos and Pecker, the

National Enquirer dude, Weisselberg, Trump's longtime lawyer, Michael Cohen.

I don't want to say Mueller is getting cocky, but he showed up in court today wearing an ostrich jacket.

I mean,

Trump's paranoia level level now is just off the chart.

I mean, is there anyone who wouldn't rat him out?

Today, when he was groping Ivanka, it was just to see if she was wearing a wire.

All right, we've got a great show.

S.C.

Cup, Richard Clark, and Martin Leibovich are here, and a little later we'll be speaking with the founder of USA Fact, Steve Ballmer, the owner of the Clippers.

Maybe you'll get Clipper tickets.

But first up, he was a war hero.

He certainly was, an activist, a senator, a secretary of state, and the 2004 Democratic nominee for president, whose new memoir is Every Day is Extra.

John Kerry.

Great to see you as always.

Thank you.

You notice when they were giving you the standing ovation, I just stood next to you, like basking in it.

Like some of it's getting on me.

Actually I noticed that you sat down very quickly.

But listen, it's always an honor to have you

talk to you, anything with you.

But I must say I read Trump's tweet about you today and apparently you're bad.

Very, very bad with big letters.

Look at that.

B-A-D at the end.

Bad.

What did you do, John Kerry, that was bad?

I don't know.

I think I told the truth.

Oh.

I don't know.

Well, he's mad at you.

He's mad at you because you're out of office and you're met with

the first president that I know of who spends more time reading his Twitter likes

than his briefing books or the Constitution of the United States.

But

he's saying that you're a bad person because you met with you're out of office and you met with the Iranian or talked to the Iranian.

But that's the problem.

Everybody does.

Well, Henry Kissinger, for 40 years, has been traveling to Russia, traveling to China, talks with the leaders.

There's absolutely nothing

unusual about it.

The conversation I think he really ought to be worrying about is Paul Manafort with Mueller.

It's giant.

I mean,

it really is giant.

And soon you will be hearing him say, that's the worst deal that's ever been made.

But,

you know, when you stop and think about it, I mean, it's gone from the art of the deal to the art of the squeal.

And it's really,

this is,

I've never seen, I honestly have never seen anything quite like it.

The anonymous op-ed,

the

Woodward book, the chronology of everything that's been happening.

And

it's tough, you know.

We've always relied on our democracy

surviving, getting better, being stronger when people tell the truth.

And we're based on the truth.

Democracy is based on the truth.

And unfortunately, we have a president, literally, for whom the truth and nothing but the truth, you know, the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, is three different things.

And you don't even know what they are.

He has.

I don't want to get into a real riff on this, but I got to tell you, he's the

John Rhed Kerry.

He is, he really is the rare combination

of a eight-year-old boy.

I mean, he's got the maturity of an eight-year-old boy with the insecurity of a teenage girl.

And a mean girl.

A very good.

A mean girl.

Mean girls.

I mean, it can be mean.

But when you talk about truth, I mean, it's so interesting.

You're a truth-teller.

I mean, you're talking in glowing terms about the truth.

But people don't really like truth-tellers.

I know that too.

I mean, these people like me.

But not even always them.

Because when you really tell the truth, like you did about Vietnam, that's what they really hated you for.

When they, in 2004, which was kind of the beginning of fake news,

the campaign they ran against you.

That's correct.

A true war hero, and Karl Rove said, by the end of this election, they won't know which side he was on.

Right?

I'm sure you remember that.

I remember it clearly.

You told the truth when you got back from Vietnam.

I did tell the truth.

It's never appreciated in its own time.

Well sometimes

choices you make are not appreciated in their own time but I am very comfortable that I not only told the truth, I believe all those those veterans who came back from Vietnam, many of whom had very difficult time,

and they joined in telling the truth.

And I am convinced that we brought the war to a close sooner, that we saved lives by telling the truth.

And all you have to do is look and see Ken Burns' recent film that documents how early the lying began.

So I'm proud of that.

And I'm proud of the fact that John McCain and I then were able to come together.

John exhibited a kind of, you know,

large personality that could forgive and move on and knew the importance of working in a bipartisan fashion.

And so, John and I together decided we're going to end the war at home and abroad.

And we spent 10 years and we made peace with Vietnam.

And for the better part, not everybody, but for the most part, by bringing 700 remains of servicemen home from Vietnam so families could have closure, I think we went a long way to making peace here at home.

So

it seems a long time ago, and it was.

And you know, your book is a memoir.

It must be bittersweet when you, I'm probably approaching the memoir writing years.

Well, you've been here, but I just, I just was reminded you've been here for 16 years.

Yeah.

Yeah, here.

By the way, I was with your producer just before I came out, and I stopped him in mid-sentence, and I said, you want to know the stupidest thing that's on TV today?

And I pointed to the TV, and there was a weather guy out there getting soaked with the wind blowing.

I was going to.

Oh, I'm so glad you said that.

Because, first of all, it's a local weather story.

Also, it was a category five at the beginning of the week, which they were thrilled about because they love that.

Americans love to watch a palm tree swaying.

Like, that's,

you could show the footage from any year.

But when it got downgraded to a category one, they didn't downgrade the coverage.

No, it's true.

Well, there's so much consequential things going on.

But they made the commitment.

They had everybody out there.

If I wrote a book about cable news, it would be called Fool in the Rain.

Okay, so,

but I mean, you were in Vietnam, then, you know, 9-11, and that we've been doing that ever since.

Now we're back to the Russians.

It seems like we're always mixing it up with somebody.

Is it us?

Is it just being the biggest, baddest?

No, we're living in a very complicated world today.

And it's a world in which we play, I think, the essential role, normally.

This is not normal.

What I learned as Secretary of State, I knew it, but what I learned in a very personal, you know, tactile way, was the degree to which people all over the world look to us to help lead.

And we lead.

We're on the brink of having the first generation of children born AIDS-free in Africa.

That's because of our program.

We did that.

We are...

You know,

we faced Ebola.

I remember sitting in the situation room in the White House.

House.

We were told a million people are going to die in the next four months.

And President Obama said, no.

You know, we're going to send 3,000 American troops over there, which had its own risks.

We worked with the French.

We worked with the British.

And each took the country in West Africa.

We stopped Ebola in its tracks.

I mean, these are the...

You can run around the world.

I said during our administration that I believe that we dealt with more crises simultaneously with greater impact on behalf of our country than at any time in history, from the South China Sea to what's happening in Central Asia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, what was happening in Syria.

Now, it didn't all have the outcomes that we wanted to achieve.

And I write in my book, I mean, Syria remains the open wound.

It's a failure of the entire international community to make the peace.

But we tried.

We cared.

I always said to my folks in the department, don't be scared to get caught trying.

And that's what we did.

And the trying saved lives.

We got a ceasefire here, a ceasefire there.

For those people in that ceasefire for three weeks or a month or two months, they're alive today.

And they wouldn't have been if we hadn't done that.

But I always argued we needed some way of holding us out a little more accountable.

So what do we do when we only have two parties and when only one side plays decently?

You lost a very close election.

One state.

65,000 votes and one state changed.

You could have contested it.

Al Gore

could have went a lot further with his protests.

Well, Al Gore was elected President of the United States.

This wasn't counted.

Right.

But what I'm saying is

it's sort of a Hobson's choice.

We don't want to act like them, but we seem to be getting our ass kicked because we're the only ones playing by rules.

Al Gore gave that debate book back.

Remember?

When he got the debate book?

He said, no, this isn't cricket.

Do you think that if in 2020 Trump is running again and he finds out that Putin helped him, he'd probably asking for his help, but if he say he wasn't doing that, if he just, you think he'd report it?

Of course not.

No.

What do you do when one, only one side plays by rules?

Well, if you believe in America and you believe in the decency of our

democracy and our system, I don't think, I think Richard Nixon proved this.

I think other presidents have proven it historically.

Politics, life proves it.

If you sleep with dogs, you come up with fleas.

If you go down to...

They're bigger than all of us.

Well, but

we can win by offering Americans a better and real agenda that improves the lives not of the billionaires, but of all Americans.

If we do that, if we go out and show the ways in which they're attacking democracy.

I've always believed in the truth.

I believe believe in it now.

And I think if you hold people up to account publicly, that includes President Putin or little green men running around in Ukraine or wherever it is, shed light on it.

Push it in all the fora that are available to you.

But you've got to honor the rule of law because if you go outside of it, it won't have its meaning anymore when it needs to.

And I just keep it.

You're right about that.

Well, I believe it.

Yeah.

I believe it.

John Kerry, good luck with the book.

It's a terrific read.

You're a terrific guy.

I appreciate you coming here.

John Kerry, everybody.

All right.

Let's meet our panel.

Welcome.

Okay.

All right, here they are.

He was our national coordinator for security and counterterrorism under Presidents Clinton and Bush, who host the new podcast, Future State.

Richard Clark, back with us, Richard Clark.

He's the chief national correspondent of the New York Times magazine.

His latest book is The Big Game, The NFL in Dangerous Times.

Mark Liebovich.

And she's the host of CNN SE Cup Unfiltered, our returning champion, SE Cup.

Always great to see you.

Okay, so it was a bad week for Trump.

I know they said it every week, but Kabad, a man of fortune flamed and his Supreme Court nominee, was accused of sexual assault, and he denied 3,000 people today.

You know, it was a bad week, a bad month, and a bad summer, starting with Helsinki, like John was just saying, Helsinki, the McCain funeral, this thing with Maria.

I mean, it's just the Bod Woodward book.

I feel like, I feel better.

I feel like, really,

I feel a little lighter than I have in a very long time.

The polls for him are going down.

The people,

the looks on the faces, the people at his rallies, I think the magic is gone.

They're bored.

He hasn't written new material.

You know, they have a look like, man, it's a lot about you.

You know, and I just think a con man,

you know, con man traditionally skipped town.

He's working the same town.

And eventually even his people catch up.

I don't know.

Am I too optimistic?

Yes.

Really?

I'm never the one who's too optimistic.

So the last numbers I saw on the House races, 206 Democratic wins, 205 Republican wins, 24 jump ball.

It's still close, Bill.

Yeah, oh, I agree.

There's no inevitability about a blue wave that's going to be a good thing.

All right, give me a minute of being happy.

People got to get out and vote.

Yeah, I know that's true.

Democratic overconfidence is a problem every two, four years.

I mean, first of all, Democrats have performed abysmally in midterms for like the last two midterms.

Overconfidence was certainly a problem in 2016.

And I think Democrats forget at their peril the incredible hole they found themselves in a year and a half ago and still are in.

I think that's all right and fair.

But let me join you momentarily in your optimism, which, by the way, is unbecoming on you.

It really is not typical, but I felt like this week was typical.

The only thing that

would have me think Republicans should be a little alarmed is that his poll numbers are now where W's were in 2006 at this time.

And we all know what happened in 2006.

It was a bloodbath for Republicans.

Right.

So,

yes, traditionally, Democrats get overconfident.

People lie the pollsters about this guy.

But by the way,

saying they like him or don't like him.

No, that they like him.

No, they're ashamed to say they like him.

They're ashamed.

Right.

Right.

Well, they're right.

Yeah.

What's not to like?

Yeah.

But I also think.

But I also think, you know, they wanted an asshole.

You're right.

But not an asshole who was an asshole about 9-11 and John McCain dying.

Yeah.

Or 3,000 dead Americans in Puerto Rico.

It's a good thing.

It's something.

You know what?

Well, how many straws can you put on the camel's back?

I think also, there are a lot fewer Republicans now than there were in 2006.

And there are a lot fewer Republicans now than there were after Donald Trump was elected in 2016.

There's the same number of crazy people, however.

Maybe, maybe, but they're shifting around.

Some of them are less.

38% crazy people.

But there always have been that 38%.

That's right.

They used to call themselves Birchers and then Birthers and the Teabaggers.

they switch names, but it's the same people.

Do you think he's gonna like voluntarily leave though?

I'm gonna ask, see, that's why I was a little happy today.

Because I think for the first time, he with the Manafort thing.

This Manafort thing is big, right?

Okay.

Big fucking deal.

Big fucking deal that Manafort flipped on Fat Donny.

Okay.

So I think for the first time, Trump might be willing to...

Look, I don't, he doesn't, no.

I don't think he's going to to resign.

It's too honorable.

Well, exactly.

I think that that assumes a level of sort of

psychic normalcy, sort of shame level.

Just someone who plays by the usual rules of honor.

Not fear of jail level, biggest.

He would be more likely to go to jail as a non-president as he is as a president.

Well, he'd do a deal with Pence.

Exactly.

Like Wilson did with Ford.

Exactly.

I'll quit if you pardon me.

And of course, Pence would go for that.

He has no morals.

A lot of his exposure, a lot of his exposure is pardon proof i mean there are state court things that you you could imagine that that man of york could get him on in new york i mean there's a lot there are a lot of variables here i think he's going to end up like milton in office space like just moving around the building he'll think he still works there and pants will like bring him right out stationary to doodle on

the office spaces in the end

what do you think about this brett kavanaugh thing where suddenly right before he's going to get the vote and i he's an ultimate suck-up and dick brett Brett Kavanaugh.

Well, he is.

And he's only there because he's going to, you know, vote with

pardoning Trump, basically, and letting him off the hook.

Okay.

But now they're coming at him with this accusation from someone anonymous that he was at a party, which I find hard to believe

in high school.

And drunk.

Oh, drunk, accuse.

Budget.

Which I find hard to believe.

But sexual assault in high school from an anonymous source.

I think it makes us look bad.

It's not going to stop him.

He'll get in.

It's sad, but he will get in.

Yes, he will get in.

But I mean, is this something that...

We need all to pray for Ruth Bader-Ginsburg.

Yeah, okay.

Okay, let me move on to foreign affairs at 9-11 anniversary this week, but let's talk about the legacy, which is the war in Afghanistan, which is still going on.

Although I don't know

how much we're actually fighting a war.

We have 14,000 troops there.

Look, I've always been against America having an empire.

But doesn't 14,000 troops in a country next to Pakistan, which has nuclear weapons, make more sense than way more troops in Germany?

I mean, Hitler, I think we got him.

We've had troops in Korea for 70 years.

We had troops in Germany for 50 years.

I made a promise after 9-11 that we would never again allow a country to become a sanctuary for terrorists.

And if we leave as much as we would like to leave, I came here tonight with a Marine veteran who fought in Afghanistan.

I asked him this very question.

He said, if we leave, it goes back to being a terrorist sanctuary.

And we can't have that happen.

We can't have that happen.

Also, Pakistan.

was once pressed on what keeps you up at night and he was like well everything that comes up

from my desk is already okay.

But what the guy pressed him, and he said, Pakistan, which is what all the presidents say, because they have nuclear weapons, and they have a large segment of the population who'd love to use them, and they have Islamic terrorists, and they have the Taliban.

And Trump may have done one thing, and only one thing, as far as I can tell, right, and that is to cut off the aid to Pakistan.

Because they have been serving as a sanctuary.

People who are in Pakistan come across the border, kill American troops, and then go back.

And the Pakistanis let them do it.

Fuck the Pakistanis.

Your hair is still on fire.

Can't you lay down?

What's left of it?

Well, you're the guy who said your hair was on fire trying to get people to understand the danger before 9-11.

Do you think the public's hair is enough on fire now?

Do you think the media's hair is enough on fire?

My hair's been on fire.

I taught a class last week at Harvard, graduate school class.

And these people are 25 years old.

They were in like seventh grade, you know, when 9-11 happened.

And I assume they know all about it.

And they don't.

This is graduate school at Harvard, you know?

People need to be reminded.

People need to get off their phone.

Well, that's hard.

That's why they don't read.

But Trump today, Trump this, you know, this week, we were thinking about Trump and 9-11, someone remembered what Trump said after 9-11, which shows his deep empathy.

He said, oh, the two towers have fallen.

Now I own the tallest building in Manhattan.

Right, yeah.

It's malignant narcissism.

It is, I know.

I always just want to say to his supporters, that's your guy.

That's the person you want to stand with.

That's your guy.

Okay, let's not get off on that.

Afghanistan.

It does seem like we are always fighting the last war.

I mean, here's Trump when he was talking about Afghanistan in the Bob Woodburg book.

He says, when are we going to start winning some wars?

And he's talking about the commander in Afghanistan.

I don't think he knows how to win.

I don't think he's a winner.

There's no victories.

You should be killing guys.

You don't need a strategy to kill people.

Richard Clark, you're an expert.

Do you need a strategy to kill people?

If you have a strategy, you don't have to kill people.

If you do it right.

There you go.

But that's the kind of war we're fighting, and we're always beefing up the Pentagon with stupid weapons programs that we don't need and don't use.

And meanwhile, how are the Russians, the real enemy now, getting in?

Facebook.

Right, right.

And they're still doing it.

They're still tweeting.

They're using the same Twitter identities.

They're still pretending to be African Americans.

They're still pretending to be Green Party activists.

They are still out there causing, trying to stir up the pot, trying to make Americans hate each other.

But also, you know, Afghanistan's been the last war for about 25 years now.

Not just the last Obama war.

I mean, it was the Bush War.

It was the Soviets' war.

It was, I mean, it's not like, I mean, you'd think that someone would have thought of this over like a whole century, right?

I mean, if you just killed people properly, you could end the war in Afghanistan.

But having said that, Donald Trump's base is very much in a just sort of knee-jerk isolation camp where you just bring everyone home.

They don't think through a lot of, a lot of them don't think through the large geopolitical consequences we're talking about here about safe havens or any historical things.

So, I mean, I think politically he would love to just sort of get out.

It's also, I think, worth pointing out, just on the subject of Russia, I mean, there's cyber warfare that we are, I think, woefully unprepared for.

And there's also electronic warfare on the battlefield.

I talked to congressmen who worry a lot that Russian forces are jamming our communications devices on the battlefield in Syria.

And that consequently...

They gave our embassy people brain problems

because they microwaved them.

Right, right.

And we are not prepared for that.

Where's the outrage there?

Where's the response from the White House?

That's not an attack when they microwave our people.

Talk about heroin fire.

We had

last month the head of U.S.

intelligence say that Russians have hacked into the control systems for our power grid.

And he used the 9-11 phrase.

He said, the red lights are blinking.

Notice any response?

Huh?

The Russians are in our power grid.

Oh, okay.

Give me the Twitter machine.

All right.

Well, I have to interrupt this fantastic conversation

to do one of our favorite bits, which is called, I don't know it for a fact, I just know it's true.

Now,

the people want it because, you know, this always comes about because

as I go through my week and I'm reading people and listening to people, I'm always thinking, you know, I don't know this for a fact.

I just know it's true.

And here are some that we just gathered for this, only in this last couple of weeks.

I don't know it for a fact.

I just know it's true.

I don't know for a fact that LaCroix is French for tap water.

I just know it's true.

I don't know for a fact that when Serena Williams was yelling at that umpire, he peed a little.

I know it's true.

I can't prove it.

I don't know for a fact that Betsy DeVos thinks Ronan Faro is a Jewish holiday.

I don't know for a fact that I have a podcast isn't nearly the pickup line it used to be.

I don't know for a fact that Steve Bannon has sex with his shirts on.

I don't know for a fact that Stephen Miller hits a dollhouse

with a floor made from the teeth of dead teenagers.

I'm screaming for that.

I don't know for a fact that Ted Cruz's daughter has a giant poster of Betta Roourke in her bedroom.

I don't know for a fact that Lindsey Graham has a giant poster of Betta Roourke in his bedroom.

I don't know for a fact that Trump gets his blonde hair from the drain in Kellyanne shower.

I just know it's true.

All right, he is the former CEO of Microsoft who is now the founder of USA Facts and the chairman of the LA Clippers, Steve Ballmer.

Steve.

How are you, Steve?

Good, man.

Thanks.

Great to meet you.

Great to see you.

You bounded out here just the way I thought you would.

With a little energy.

Oh, my God.

And you're taking facts.

I love you.

You are a ball of energy.

Where do you get this energy, Steve?

What are you smoking?

Can you share some with me?

I even got off that caffeine stuff.

I'm all LaCroix all the time.

Okay.

All right.

So, yes, I love what you're doing, this USA Facts thing, right?

Tell the people what it is because it's sort of inherently anti-Trump because it's about facts.

When we started, I started about four years ago.

My wife said I'd retired.

She said, it's time to get involved philanthropically.

And, you know, we're focused on kids and kids in need.

I said, all we need to do is pay our taxes.

Let's be good taxpayers.

Government takes care of that.

And she said, dude, come on.

We can do better than that.

But it got me to say, I wonder really where the tax dollars come from and where they go.

It's so amazing.

Just the facts.

Right.

People will scroll through 100 Yelp reviews to find a taco stand,

but they have no idea where their tax dollars go.

And

you did a deep dive

like a businessman because you were the head of Microsoft.

You're a businessman.

I said, I at least ought to read stuff that's as good as you can read about any publication.

Find out where the money's going, what it's doing, what the outcome is.

Exactly.

And give us some examples like care.

Take health care.

Since 1980, health care per person,

inflation adjusted, is up 225%.

225%.

Okay?

Let's take a look.

People like to talk about life expectancy.

I'm not a life expectancy guy.

That's forecast and futures.

I just look at the average age at which people die.

That seems to be about actuals, not forecasts.

Steve, you're never going to die.

I have a feeling that nothing can kill this, right?

up here.

But in the last 20 years, average age at which people die has gone from 72.3 years to 72.9 years.

Wow.

That's it.

For all the money we're just hemorrhaging into health care, you'd think we'd be buying people extra life.

But obesity's up, a lot of these other factors.

So are we spending our health care dollars?

Well,

I'll leave it to you to decide.

Well, we need health care dollars, I think, a lot because we eat shit and we breathe shit.

Exactly.

If we had a healthier environment to live in, the tax bill would, I mean, the health care bill would go way down.

You've also studied the environment, right?

Absolutely.

I mean, the amount of disasters, as we're seeing another storm this week, right, hasn't that like way jumped?

Yeah, natural disaster declarations over the last 10 years or so have jumped, in fact.

And it's interesting.

You can't actually say

what's caused it, but you can see things that are going on.

You can look at the climate data.

I'm kind of a science-oriented guy.

I'll just tell you that at USA Facts.

We're not partisan.

We're not partisan on the issues.

We're not.

And that's why we give you the data.

It's great because the second you take a side, people are going to then in this tribal atmosphere say, oh, I don't believe it, even though it's a fact.

So that's great.

You're just putting it out there.

We'll take government numbers.

We'll show you what they are.

I mean, you can take a look at the border thing.

Border agents are up.

Apprehensions are down.

Undocumented immigrant estimates are flat.

Well, you have to decide how you think about it.

We can't tell you.

We'll just give you the numbers.

So what about education?

Are our children reading good or

okay?

You got me there.

You can look at that number.

Education spend per student has about doubled.

over the class again inflation adjusted over the last 30 years or so About doubled.

And yet, still only about a third of our kids, third grade level, can read at grade level, are proficient in third grade reading.

A third of kids, and yet we have doubled spend.

Speaking of spending, let me ask you this.

I read the other day that you are worth $43 billion.

Is that the number?

Well,

of course, when you have that much, you're not getting the checkbook at the end of the month.

I can't read it on USA Back, so it must not be true.

Go ahead.

I think Chris Farley died and went into you.

I do.

But, I mean, does anyone need $40 billion?

Not to live on.

But should anybody have $40 billion?

FDR once proposed not just a minimum wage, but a maximum wage.

Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting thing.

Should anybody have have it?

No.

In our case, will we have it?

No.

We're trying to give away the money, focused again on kids in poverty.

All of it?

We give away as much as we sensibly can in our lifetime.

You can live on a billion, right?

Yeah, yeah, you can.

Plus the clippers.

I get to keep the clippers.

Oh, absolutely.

No, but you don't need it.

But the question is, can you do well with it?

Okay, but like I always base money on like what percentage of your money.

You know, like when I started, I would do any job for $30.

I did told jokes in bars with no stage with sawdust on the floor now they can offer me a lot not your kind of money but and I won't do it because it's a day of my life I don't want to go someplace and talk to corporate assholes I don't care how much you pay me you can't buy a day at the age of 62

So what I'm saying, Steve, is

I just gave a million dollars to the Democrats.

For me, that's a lot of money.

Because I think the most important thing to do in the world right now is get rid of Donald Trump, or at least check him.

But it seems to me,

because like, even though that's a lot of money, it won't change my life.

I won't have to drive an Uber.

I don't have expensive hobbies.

I'm not one of those dumbass celebrities who has, you know, fucking.

Let's not go into it.

But it seems like you could win this election by yourself

and not feel it.

And me personally, I would think that's about the most unethical thing you could possibly do for yourself?

You don't think turning an election is an ethical thing to do when the person you're running against is drum?

Then you get into the question of, you know, how you think about things.

No, for my morals, no.

I'm not.

buying elections.

I'm just not doing it.

Okay.

I tried.

All right.

Speak.

Well, you know who is back out on the campaign trail is George W.

Bush, which I,

you know, I was just starting to not hate him.

And this is the guy who said, and he's campaigning for Republicans.

And this is the guy who said, you're either with us or against us.

You'd think of all people, he would understand that if you're campaigning for Republicans, you are helping Donald Trump.

You are getting people who are going to enable Donald Trump and vote with him.

But news flash, George W.

Bush is a partisan Republican.

He governed as a partisan Republican.

And, you know, just because we have this gauzy nostalgia over anything pre-Trump doesn't mean that everyone is going to fall into line into something that could conceivably help or hurt Donald Trump.

I mean, George W.

Bush presumably believes in these people and what they stand for that he's campaigning for.

So, I don't know.

I mean, what's he supposed to do?

What was that side of the story?

I'm also not convinced about that.

Well, I love George Bush.

I always have.

I still do.

You couldn't, I can't count, I can count on one hand the Republicans I would go campaign for right now.

They're all named Ben Sass,

by the way.

But I just think you have to earn that.

And the job of Congress isn't just to pass laws.

It's to perform a basic check on the executive office.

They have shirked that responsibility.

They should not get the benefit of these kinds of endorsements.

And as a former president, I think you should care about those basic checks and whether these people are doing their the job they were elected to do, and most of them are not.

And therefore,

yes, sir, go ahead

and

if he in good conscience really believes that these are good people and will do the right thing when you know when

they won't do the right thing, they haven't.

Come on, no Republican member of Congress has done the right thing so far.

I don't think that's true.

And look, they are

people.

There are people.

There are all kinds of crazy stuff right now in the world.

I'm just going to go with that.

There's a lot of people who aren't, you know, alternate facts, fake news.

It drives me bullshit, to be honest.

On the other hand, that doesn't make everybody involved in this system not have good values, good morals.

There may be some.

In fact, there's some guys who don't use the facts at all I hear out there.

No,

they're good people, but they have had an opportunity to

be that check on power, to be good stewards of this Congress.

Well, then they're not good people.

And they haven't, and they haven't.

Yeah, so you can't have it both ways.

You are what you do.

My oldest motto, you are what you do.

And if you do bad things, you are not good.

And a vote for any Republican member of the House or any Republican member of the Senate is a vote for Donald Trump.

That's right.

That's all I'm saying.

Bush was a never-Trumper.

But now you're just know George W.

Bush.

You're now a Trump enabler.

But having George W.

Bush campaign for you probably won't help.

No, he's actually very popular now.

His popularity has doubled since he was in office.

That's what a short memory Americans have.

No, that's because of Trump.

I mean, that's a lot of Trump.

Right.

That's the ultimate.

People like Mitt Romney and George W.

Bush and Don McCain now all seem great to a lot of Democrats.

The ultimate soft bigotry of low expectations is.

Oh, I see what you did there.

You're better than Donald Trump.

Okay, I want to talk with the few minutes we have left about football.

It's about your book.

You're a team owner in basketball, but you understand the game.

What?

They're not the same.

I understand that basketball and football are, but they're owners.

Yes.

Okay.

They're all owners.

So owners.

All right.

Can I get to what I would do?

Thank you.

Thank you, bro.

Because I saw on my friend Brian Gubbel's fantastic sports show.

It's been on 20 years.

Always the best sports show, that they did a thing on cheerleaders.

They were, by the way, the first ones, like five years ago, did a thing about how cheerleaders are not paid.

Now they're like saying we should take away the cheerleaders.

Maybe the time has come.

You know, they took away the pageant bathing suits and stuff, whatever.

But I was like, Brian, why don't they just take away the militarism?

I kind of like the cheerleaders.

Maybe that makes me a sexist.

But

why do we have to mix football?

You know, the season just started with so much this patriotic bullshit.

You know, the flyovers and the flag on the field and the singing and the...

Baseball has two songs now.

Like,

they sing the national anthem at the beginning in the seventh inning, like, I forgot what country I'm in in six innings.

You know, that's great.

It still takes me a while to not start and sent Tate Theatre ball game.

Well, I love baseball.

Baseball is the best sport.

You know, this country is great because it allows us to criticize it all the damn time.

We complain about America all the time.

Exactly.

Can we not take a minute to express some gratitude to people who serve?

You didn't serve.

I didn't serve.

Isn't it nice to take a minute during a baseball game?

Is it that hard?

Okay, so you would say, okay, Colin Kaepernick shouldn't be kneeling before the national anthem because we have to take pop.

Okay, but one, many people have said, to quote the president, that Colin Kaepernick shouldn't be protesting the national anthem because we should take politics out of sports.

When, in fact, I mean, many NFL owners give money to Republican candidates.

Seven have given money to Donald Trump's inauguration.

There's, I mean, the owner of the Arizona Cardinals recently sort of came out in full-throated support of Brett Kavanaugh.

So basically, they're saying no politics in sports unless the owners want to do it.

So, I mean, don't you think that's like fundamentally hip-hop?

I mean, have you ever done that?

Well, I can't speak for the NFL.

I won't speak for the NFL.

I can't speak for the NBA.

Yeah, I'll speak for the NBA.

We believe our players should express themselves.

We are pleased to see our players express themselves.

Our players have found very constructive ways to express themselves.

Our players are free to, I encourage our players,

use your platform.

Let's speak.

Let's not forget how you got the team.

A guy expressed himself in his living room and lost him.

He was a horse's ass.

I benefited, and I'm happy about it.

Okay.

Got to get those earplugs that I just have.

But

to answer your question,

you know, the government pays for this.

$5.54 million in taxpayers' dollars was paid to 14 NFL teams between 2011 and 2014 to put on this recruiting show.

Would you prefer a mandatory draft?

No, no, I wouldn't.

But when you're saying, why should we, what's wrong with it?

It's like saying, what's wrong with prayer in school?

It's just maybe not we all, we're all at a football game to watch football.

Just like we're all in school to learn.

We're not there to pray, and we're not there to pray to

the culprit for us to stand and say thank you for your service.

And every veteran knows that's crap.

Who's making you?

The stadium says, thank you for your service.

Everybody stands.

Everybody applauds.

You?

You're free to sit down.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, right.

And first of all, who's going to arrest you for not standing?

That's absurd.

I learned this in your book that football is very, it's the most conservative sport.

That's glad I'm into baseball.

baseball yeah

no it is it's right it's about 75% African American is the workforce the every single owner except for one who's born in Pakistan is white and the fan surveys usually have about maybe 60 percent of the fans being Republicans the vast majority of owners are Republicans so yes it is by far the most Republican of sports

looks very very different than our sport right fan base is much more diverse our player base is at least as heavy a percentage of African Americans and Europeans,

to be fair.

We have both in the league, and you know, and we have a younger audience.

We appeal to what's going on going forward.

I'm happy people stand.

We do the national anthem.

I think it's right to honor our country.

That honors everybody in our country.

People who served and did well by this country, and other Americans who are trying to do well every day.

So I think that's fine.

So, Steve, how come you let the Lakers get LeBron?

All right.

Thank you, Patto.

We have to move on.

All right, it's time for new rules, everybody.

New rules.

Neural,

when I offer you cake, don't say just a tiny, tiny piece.

We get it, Gandhi.

You're better than everybody else.

Well, I'm taking an even tinier piece.

Who's a fat-faced cake hog now?

Oh, and happy birthday, Grandma.

New Rule ads on YouTube longer than five seconds must realize they're kidding themselves.

I watch the skip ad button with my finger ready to pounce like a game show contestant waiting to hit the buzzer.

My time is precious.

The less time I watch ads, the more time I can watch a dog lick a pizza on TV.

New rule, women have to admit the cucumber on the eyes thing is bullshit.

That's just something lonely moms made up when they locked themselves in the bathroom.

What are you doing in there, mom?

Getting rid of some stress.

What's the cucumber for?

My eyes, now go away.

Neural, now that this Saudi man has covered himself in bees from head to toe with only his eyes showing, his wife gets to say, how's it feel, asshole?

Neural, now that Paul McCartney has admitted that he once masturbated with John Lennon,

he has to tell us, is that when you guys wrote Come Together?

And finally, new role, someone has to tell me why all the best voices speaking out against Republicans are Republicans.

Nicole Wallace, Steve Schmidt, Rick Wilson, George Will, Brett Stevens.

Joe Scarborough, Richard Painter, Michael Steele, Jennifer Rubin, David Jolly, Ana Navarro, Max Boot, David Frum.

They're the ones who are out there with the gloves off, landing head punches.

Even Trump's own people tear him down better than any Democrat.

McMaster called him a dope.

Mattis, a fifth grader.

Steve Mnuch, idiot.

Reince Priebus, idiot.

John Kelly, fucking idiot.

Rex Tillerson, fucking moron.

Gary Cohen, dumb as shit.

Where are our potty mouths?

The midterms are 52 days away.

And we know what the Republicans are going to be running on.

Socialism.

You can't vote for Democrats because they're socialists and socialism is a work camp in Siberia.

And one thing Republicans are really good at is they get in a room together, They come up with a line of bullshit, and they all repeat it over and over and over until even Tommy Lyron can do it.

This year, they even taught it to Trump.

And they want to raid Medicare to pay for socialism.

He really puts the moron in oxymoron, doesn't he?

Remember back in 2009, the tea bagger at the town hall who shouted, keep your government hands off my Medicare?

Well, that dummy is now president.

But I still don't hear Democrats explaining that Medicare is socialism, and so are the other super popular programs like Social Security and the ban on denying coverage for pre-existing conditions.

Trump just gave farmers a $12 billion bailout to make up for his stupid tariffs.

We took tax money from some people, mostly in New York and California,

and gave it to fucking farmers.

I mean farmers.

That's socialism.

Socialism is the reason you don't have to bring your own highway when you want to drive somewhere.

It's why there's a fire department to show up when your burning Nike spread to the house.

The U.S.

military does more socialism by 9 a.m.

than Venezuela does all day.

We build weapons that even the Pentagon says it doesn't want.

That's a jobs program.

Socialism.

you're soaking in it.

Even Trump voters like their government goodies.

So why can't Democrats all get in a room and come out with a single answer to the scary socialism charge?

This is the attack on us.

And Democrats' response is,

I would say crickets, but crickets make some noise.

There is a wholly compromised Russian asset in the White House.

You can't make a little political hay out of that.

He's not on our side.

That's so hard?

He's not on our side.

Like, literally, when stuff comes up where he has to side with either our FBI and intelligence agencies, you know, from America,

or what Russia says, he goes with them.

Nothing?

Nothing to make out of that, even though he's constantly confessing it?

Trump's Twitter page is like that scene in every Bond movie where the villain tells Bond his evil plan.

He's the man with the golden shower.

Here's Steve Schmidt after the summit in Helsinki.

It's the musings of an imbecile.

Vladimir Putin looks across to the other podium and what he sees standing there is a fool who's doing Vladimir Putin's bidding.

Trump is what the Russians call a useful idiot, someone in service to the Russian Federation, either unwitting or wittingly.

Contrast that with Dianne Feinstein, who said last year, look, this man is going to be president most likely for the rest of his term.

I just hope he has the ability to learn and to change, and if he does, he can be a good president.

No, he can't do any of those things.

And Democrats' rhetoric does not nearly match the level of that crisis.

The Democrats, as usual, are making a molehill out of a mountain.

The FBI, the CIA, the Department of Justice, especially here on 9-11 week, let's remember these are the thousands and thousands of America's most dedicated public servants.

The straight arrows.

You too, the straight arrows who protect us.

He attacks them.

He's not on our side.

How about this for a slogan?

We're not socialists, you're traitors.

All right, that's our show.

I'll be at the ovens.

I'm coming to the Carolinas after the storm in Charlotte, North Carolina, to cheer you up September 22nd and at the Durham Performing Arts Center in Durham on the 23rd.

I want to thank Richard Clark, Mark Lieberman, Jesse Cupp, Steve Barmer, and John Kerry.

Join us out for overtime on YouTube.

Thank you.

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

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