Ep. #471: Jack Bryan, Jim Carrey

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

Thank you, thank you very much.

All righty.

Okay,

Thank you very much.

I love you too.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you so much.

I know why you're happy.

This is the week that Trump found out that everyone hates him.

And

I don't mean people like me.

I mean the people who work for him.

Bob Woodward's new book came out, or the excerpts did, and it's called All the President's Men Think He's an Idiot.

I mean, boy, Bob Woodward, first Nixon, now he's doing Trump.

He has brought down more Republicans than gay sex in public restrooms.

I tell you.

But it's been a real double whammy for the president because first the excerpts came out from the Woodward book, and then the day after, then anonymous, you saw this, this anonymous op-ed was printed in the New York Times from a very high-up White House official.

And both the book and the op-ed say basically the same thing, that there is a resistance from inside the White House.

The anonymous author said many senior officials are working very hard to protect America from Trump.

And Trump started to suspect something was going on.

He went into a cabinet meeting and they were all wearing pussy hats.

Everybody wants to know who this anonymous,

a senior official who wrote in his piece that

he or she finds Trump to be amoral and impulsive and ill-informed and petty.

So suspects include everybody.

Because it turns out that everybody in the White House is living in this bizarro world where they are not who they say they are.

And today, Melania said, oh, I thought I was the only one faking it.

Well, you know what?

She even had to deny it.

They even asked Melania, and she said, no, it's not me.

If I have something to say, I'll write it on my jacket.

That's me.

But Trump is so pissed off.

What, a turncoat right in his presence?

A traitor?

Who would betray the Russians like that?

He's pissed off.

He says the New York Times must turn over, turn over or not, turn them over.

What fucking country does he think he lives in where we turn people over for national security purposes until we catch this guy?

He says the threat level is going to orange.

But still white around the eyes.

You know it's a warning sign when the president looks like a warning sign.

Everyone's debating whether he's crazy.

I'm still getting over the fact that the president dyes his hair platinum blonde and paints his face basketball orange.

He sounds like a drunk and looks like a tequila sunrise.

And after these two things came out, this latest, it is very hard, you'd be hard pressed to find someone who worked in an administration who hasn't at some point called him an idiot or some version of that idiot moron.

That now we have the defense secretary, Mattis, saying

working with him was like working with a fifth or sixth grader.

And Trump, he was so mad when he heard that, he spit chocolate nose, chocolate mouth.

All right, well, it worked just as well.

You know where I was going.

Let's do it again.

Oh, no, we're live.

But the paranoia level in that White House, because as soon as the anonymous came out, then Trump, of course, Detective Trump,

went to 27 high-level people have now denied it.

Mike Pence denied it.

Mike Pompeo, Coates, Mattis, they all said it wasn't me.

Lincoln had his team of rivals.

Trump has his team of shaggy.

It wasn't me.

Nobody remembers that.

But they're even talking now about how everyone in the White House has to take a lie detector test.

A lie detector test for the Trump administration.

We don't do that in America.

We don't have enough electricity.

But who wrote it?

Detective Trump wants to know who is the author, who is anonymous.

Is it Kelly?

Is it Kelly Ann?

Couldn't be Sarah Huckabee Sanders, not like her to lie.

Rick Perry said, write it, I can't even read it.

Ben Carson said, anonymous, anonymous, do I look Greek?

But I will leave the last word on anonymous to the president himself.

An anonymous William.

Anonymous.

Build the wall.

I think the drugs are still getting in.

All right, we got a great show.

We got David Axelrod, Michelle Goldberg, and Charlie Bent are on the panel.

And a letter writer, you know who's backstage?

Jim Carrey's here for the next show.

But first up, he is the director, co-writer, and co-producer of the documentary Active Measures, now playing in theaters and on iTunes.

Jack Bryan, Jack.

Hey,

thank you so much.

Oh, yes.

I think you did a great service with this movie.

Now, it's out today.

People can see it?

It's out right now.

It's on iTunes and TV.

Wherever you can see this, because I think this is so great because it pulls together.

We've been hearing so many things.

You watch the news and every day it's a different scandal and a lot of it has to do with Russia.

You pull it all together.

And when you see what...

Putin's aims were from the beginning, ex-KGB, wanted to get Russia back to be superpower status, and you see who Trump is, it's almost inevitable that they would figure in each other's lives like this, the stooge and the puppet master.

Absolutely.

And it had happened in other countries before.

And so the playbook was the exact same.

And when you look at the sort of the sphere of people that Trump is hanging out with, starting in the 80s and dealing with, and the type of people that Putin is going after going back to the late 90s, it does seem completely inevitable.

He's the perfect mark, is he not?

I mean, this is, like you said, the playbook goes way back with Russia and the KGB.

Who do they look for, and how does Trump fit that?

Yeah, so intelligence officers, when they're looking for somebody to flip, they have an acronym they use, which is mice.

And it means people that are susceptible to money, ideology,

compromise, or ego.

And those are the levers they try to pull.

I see three out of four right away.

He has no ideology.

No.

None.

But you don't need all four.

No.

Three out of four must be, they must be like, we hit our guy, right?

You only need one.

You only need one.

And he's totally three.

Okay.

And

that's what I love about you, Phil.

It goes back in time to, I mean,

this didn't happen just in 2016.

Where would you put the beginning of this story?

Well, we tried to find the beginning, and it was a long trail back, but we really started it with the first clear...

act of illegality, which was 1984 when Donald Trump personally sold five condos in Trump Trump Tower to a Russian mobster named David Bogodin.

And that, with the state attorney general, ruled that was money laundering.

And that relationship continued at first sort of casually.

There were a lot of Russian mobsters that lived in Trump buildings.

There were tons of Russian mobsters that were buying Trump properties and hanging out in the casinos.

But between the early 90s and around 2004, Trump goes through a series of bankruptcies.

And he starts losing the ability to get seed capital.

The casino.

The casinos, yeah.

Atlantic City, his property, his three casinos.

He's the only man to lose money in the casino business.

Yeah.

Yeah.

People give you money for nothing.

Yeah.

Indians make this work.

Yeah.

And

it was destined to, I mean, Steve Wynn.

Not exactly in their heritage, running casinos.

They can do it.

Yeah.

And even Steve Wynne, the casino magnet, we show this in the film, describes why he lost.

And it was that he built a casino that was twice the size of any other casino at Atlantic City.

It was never going to be successful.

But this thing that's fascinating to me is the Russian mafia.

The fact that, explain this to us again, that the Russian mafia is really an arm of the Russian government.

So it's a little disconcerting to find out America is now sort of a

subsidiary of the Russian mafia.

Yeah, I think that's a really important point.

And I think when we as Americans think about the mafia, we think about the godfather, Tony Soprano, a character that's sort of doing battle with the government.

Whereas in Russia, that's how they launder money out of the country.

That's how the corrupt officials, starting with Putin and his inner circle, get money from Russia to safe judiciaries, to safe areas where it will be protected.

Go back to why their money is dirty to begin with.

Putin and his,

we always hear the term oligarchs.

Those are the people around him, right?

Yes.

And they're all thieves, right?

They're stealing from their own people.

Absolutely.

They say Putin is the richest man in the world.

Bureaucrat's salary.

How do we know that, though?

I mean, was it the the Panama Papers?

Is that what it is?

That was a huge part of it.

But also, just the assets he controls.

I mean, the fact that he, and it's hard to quantify what kind of money he has, in part because it's rubles, which is not as steady a currency as dollars, but also because it's so opaque.

So they're taking it from Russian industries, from just the coffee.

It's like any dictator does.

And it's not just Europe.

I mean, it's not just Russia.

It's also Ukraine.

They steal tons from the gas trade.

And it's throughout, especially the energy trade.

So they want to park it in the West where it's safer, and they have to hide it somehow, right?

Yeah, and real estate.

And that's where Trump came in.

Yeah, because real estate is the easiest way to do that.

Even in the Patriot Act has a cutout for real estate transactions.

So unless there is a bank loaning money, which there isn't because they don't need a loan, there's no government body looking at that transaction.

They use their own brokers, which known as nodes, which are these points of intersection between dirty money and cleaning it out.

And those brokers are always Russian mob people.

And so there's no government entity.

And listen, at Trump properties all over the world, they are laundering money and have been, the Russians, for decades.

Yeah.

Great.

Okay.

So like the hooker's peeing is like the least of it, right?

Not illegal.

Not illegal.

No.

What they know he's committed to.

Maybe should be.

Maybe.

Yeah, in some places it might be.

But they know he's committed financial propriety.

And now they know that he's worked with them during 2016.

And that is the ultimate conference.

So when Paul Manafort, who was Putin's man in Ukraine, when he came on board,

you see that, I do, as let's install our guy right.

I mean, they don't even have to catch them, right, in collusion, they keep talking about collusion, because the collusion was so baked into the cake from so long ago.

Yeah.

And not only that, I mean, it's an essential component of the operation as well.

I mean, these operations, when you look at what happened in Ukraine, or you look at what happened in Georgia, play by play,

the same operation.

One of the components in each of these, and not just the ones we show in the film, but other elections throughout the world, is the candidate that they are supporting, they accuse, or the social media lets out the opposing candidate, they call them criminals online.

And then the candidate that they're supporting repeats that line, calling them criminals.

And so an audience has heard it in this independent format they think.

And then the one guy saying it on stage is that candidate.

So it sounds like he's the only guy telling the truth.

So Putin basically franchised.

Yeah.

And Trump was one of the McDonald's owners who bought the license.

And frequently they use billionaires that have never been in politics before because they have no track record, but they're known.

Does Trump know he's this much of a Russian asset?

I think so.

I think it would be very hard for him to act in line with the historical precedent just one for one without knowing what he was doing.

And also, people, I think, assume that because Trump doesn't know anything about policy, because he doesn't know anything about government or law or the world, basically.

Or words.

Or words.

That

Come on, you were.

More words.

Keep going because

you were getting to something the President of the United States knows, and I want to hear it.

His organization.

His organization.

Thank you.

He knows what is going on in the organization.

He knows the people.

And everybody you talk to says he knows.

Well, I think this movie's doing a great service.

See this movie.

Not that you need to, but you need to.

Some of you.

All right.

Thank you, Jack.

Thanks for making the movie.

Thanks for being here.

And let's meet our panel.

Hey.

Hey, everybody.

Okay, he's a senior political commentator for CNN, host of the Axe Files on CNN, and the former White House senior advisor under President Obama.

David Axelrod's over here.

She is a fantastic colonist, even though her paper is failing.

The New York Times, Michelle Goldberg, is over here.

And he is a CNN contributor who was the seventh-term U.S.

Congressman from Pennsylvania's 15th, recently retired to spend more time with his sanity.

Charlie Britton, great to have you here, Charlie.

Thank you.

Okay, well, I'm sure our audience is very happy tonight because we saw President Obama speak for the first time today.

And

I wanted to ask, you might know more about this than others.

Is this because, was this planned for now, or was this

because of the events of the week?

I mean, I think people, the threat level in all of our minds went way up.

Is that why

I think his sense of urgency has been pretty high for a while here?

So this thing has been planned for several weeks.

He was going to get this award at the University of Illinois.

But whenever you're going to speak about this president and where we are as a country, you have to keep a sharp pencil in your pocket because you never know.

You're one tweet away from a rewrite.

And so I'm sure that, and you know that some of the lines in that speech reflected events of the last few days.

Can I read my favorite?

He said, people ask me, what are you going to do for the election?

No, the question is, what are you going to do?

Right.

Right.

Right.

Yeah.

Okay.

Anybody else on Obama or can I move on to the Supreme Court?

You can move on to the Supreme Court.

I mean, the Obama thing was just so heartbreaking, right?

I mean, it's this vision for a second when you remember what it was to have a president.

Yeah, but you know, Mr.

His point was not to remind people of what we had, but to remind people about who we are and what our responsibilities are.

And that's, I mean, he's looking forward and not back.

It's one of the reasons why he hasn't been out there because he thinks we need to act together, not wait for the Messiah.

No, right.

And I think he's right that people are out there doing that.

I mean, I am am in much more of a state of black despair and panic than Obama is, just temperamentally and by the situation.

But the one thing I agree with him is you do go out there and it is astonishing the amount of kind of civic revival you see.

I mean the amount, you know, the women particularly who just live in Trump's unique politics because they cannot tolerate this man.

Yeah, look, I think the president made some, President Obama made some fair points about the Republican Party, what's happened to it.

And it hurts even more as a Republican when a Democrat says it.

You know, just like, they don't like to hear lectures from me about what's wrong with the Democratic Party, but I think his points were fair.

You know, what happened to the party of Mitt Romney and

McCain, Bush, Reagan, Eisenhower, Roosevelt, I mean, Theodore Roosevelt.

So this is,

we've got some real soul searching to do in this party.

The party used to be about some ideals.

Now it's about loyalty to a man.

And that's what's particularly troubling to me.

Yeah.

Okay, so

and

what was more troubling this week is is this man

gets to pick, he's the luckiest son of a bitch ever.

I got to say this about, that is the one thing about him.

He is so lucky.

Would you trade places with him, though?

No, no, no, I don't think he's feeling lucky right now.

Okay, but like the fact that he got the second Supreme Court pick and he can pick a guy who can now vote not to have him answer subpoenas and he can pardon himself and the rest of it.

Yeah, I think it's less that he's lucky than we're cursed.

I mean, you know, because he, I mean.

It is pretty dark.

Right?

He's this sort of metaphysical kind of gollum figure, this like personification of all of America's sins who keeps stumbling into these positions where he obviously shouldn't be.

But the metaphysical twist is that he's always miserable and takes no satisfaction from any of it.

Because some guys are born six feet from home plate and they think they had a home run.

That's just the reality of life, you know.

So what's what's so

So disconcerting about what's going on with these Supreme Court hearings is that it's a charade.

He's going to get on the Supreme Court and power begets power.

That's the thing for everybody who was like, Hillary's just as bad, really?

Now, now that we see that the president's own cabinet, I mean, at first it was, you know, the Democrats hate me for no reason.

And then it was the media hates me for no reason.

And then it was the Never Trumpers hate me for no reason.

Then the FBI.

The FBI hates me.

And now it's my own people, the best people.

Remember it was the best people?

The best people turn out to be the leakers.

So

in that atmosphere, the fact that he is picking this person and this Kavanaugh who

can I read what Lindsey Graham says because since it's a fait accompli I just want to vent.

Lindsey Graham lecturing the Democrats you had a chance and you lost.

If you want to pick judges then you better win an election.

You can't lose the election and pick judges.

If you want to pick judges, you better win.

But we did win.

I mean, that's what's so insulting.

We did win.

Obama picks Merrick Garland.

Right.

Yeah.

But not even just that he picks Merrick Garland, that then Trump cheats his way to a minority victory, is an unindicted co-conspirator in one of the crimes that ensured this election, and now is choosing the judge who's going to, he thinks, I think, let him skate on all the crimes he committed to become president in the first place.

But I wonder how Merrick Garland felt watching Ted Cruz question Kavanaugh about all the times he agreed with Merrick Garland and holding up Merrick Garland as the gold standard by which a judge should be measured, a guy who they wouldn't even give a meeting, much less a hearing or a vote.

I know.

They wouldn't need coal if they could run the red states on hypocrisy.

It's just astounding.

But you're right.

It's a little like WWF wrestling.

It's kind of exciting to watch, but you know kind of how it's going to end.

The only debate right now is you're going to get 53 or 55 votes, and that's really the issue.

Okay, so this

anonymous

or however you say.

Now, I know that's not your.

Yeah, what's going on there?

We know he doesn't do drugs.

I wish he did.

I mean.

But

what was that about?

Really?

Well, the bigger issue is, you know,

there's a much smaller list of people who probably did not write that article as opposed to the...

Well, but who's your guess?

If I had a guess, somebody in the national security establishment, and I don't want to get my friend in trouble, but I'll say Dan Coates, director of national intelligence.

Your former friend, Dan Coates.

He's a great American.

But whoever it is, says that there's lots of people who think the same way and could have written the same op-ed piece.

So you think, Dan Coates, who do you think?

You know, I have a feeling, I like the John Huntsman theory, although I sort of have a feeling it's going to be somebody whose name we're all not super familiar with.

Yeah, I think it's murder on the Orient Express.

Really?

Someone we're not familiar with?

You think your paper's going to be that ballsy as to go this far out on the limb and then we look at it and go, who's that?

I think that, you know, John Kelly's second in command is a high-level person, right?

The staff secretary is a high-level person.

So there's a lot of people who kind of aren't in the news all the time, but are still, by any measure, senior government officials.

I think it's like murder on the Orient Express, where everybody got to write one sentence.

We're all part of this thing.

I think it's General Kelly.

I do.

First of all, I think the McCain funeral was the last straw for a lot of people.

And he's the kind of guy who, I mean, look, he's not been happy for a very long time.

Like I said in the monologue, the list of people who have called the president an idiot,

it'd be harder to find one who didn't.

And Kelly has been in there.

I think in the Woodward book, he says something like,

we're in crazy town.

There's no point to even trying to talk to him.

He doesn't understand anything.

I just think he's got the balls to do this.

Well, that's another question.

Do you think this is heroic or do you think this is a good idea?

Well, you know what?

My question is, what was the point?

What was the point?

If your message is, I'm going to stay inside and act as a guardrail against this crazy president, why poke the bear and make him crazier?

I mean, either come out and say, you know, declare who you are.

But it also, it wasn't a call to arms, right?

I mean, you could sort of understand if somebody said, I'm here to tell you it's worse than you think and Congress needs to exercise its oversight function, but that's not really what he was saying.

He was saying, there's people here who've got things under control, so it might look pretty bad, but you know, you've still got deregulation and we're handling things.

Or

give me dispensation for continuing to work for this wackadoodle.

Right, or kind of, yeah, or like go easy, go easy on me on the Mar-a-Lago trials for the first time.

Or glorify this guy.

I think the person's just simply trying to reassure us that, yeah, it's really bad, but there's some of us here who are, you know, who are adults.

I think that's what he was trying to do.

I hope this is truly a senior administration official.

I mean, it would be terrible for the New York Times if it were somebody we never heard of.

You mean my outlier?

I didn't find it calming.

Not calming, really.

But you know what?

My outlier opinion on this is this person, I would like to say to them, thank you for your service.

Seriously,

let me explain why.

The United States has made the same mistake overseas so many times.

We take out Saddam Hussein or somebody we don't like and not think about what comes next.

Right.

Yeah, Saddam Hussein was terrible.

What came next?

ISIS.

What comes next if these people who are preventing him from doing really crazy things go?

I think General Kelly would love to leave.

This has got to be worse than Iraq.

He said it.

He said, this is the worst job I've ever had.

He was in Fallujah.

But

the other side of that is that all of these people, Gary Cohn, all of them, who've sort of shored things up and made sure that for all of the president's manifest and competence, kind of the trains run on time proverbially, it has, I think, given everybody else a sense of false confidence or a sense that this whole thing is more sustainable than it seems, right?

Because people will say to you all the time, well, right after the election, I really thought that everything was going to fall apart, but now, you know, it seems chaotic, but everything's sort of holding together.

And as it holds together, the president amasses more and more power.

He gets more judges, he gets more loyalists.

And so, you know, if this had come out, say, three weeks into the administration, Congress might have been more willing to do something.

He's already just, you know, sort of been able to build his power base, even if it's fragile.

And that, and so, you know, at a certain point, they're not, they might think that they're protecting us, but really they're just kind of squeezing through a few of their Republican policy priorities and making it seem as if things are okay when they're right.

But Republican priorities policy-wise, we have lived through that before and we can survive those things.

We're part of them, quite frankly.

That's not the case with rule of law and the end of democracy and all that other stuff that he threatens in a way that we have never seen before.

That is what is so unique.

And if these guys are stopping that...

But they're not stopping it, or maybe they're stopping some of it.

But people like Mattis,

I'm glad that Jim Mattis is at the Department of Defense.

Good for the country.

I'm glad Coates is at the...

I wish Rex Tillerson was still there.

I never thought I'd be saying, where's the guy from Exodus?

The challenge that we've...

The challenge...

What does

the challenge, though?

Jesus, doesn't Chevron have someone who can step into that administration?

The challenge, though, we've never had a president who doesn't stand up full-throated in support of Western values.

Exactly.

I mean, you know, independent judiciaries,

judiciaries, democracies, free press, rule of law, and that's the job of the president.

Yeah, he thinks all races are suckers, honestly, to improve.

That's for suckers and losers.

Putin wants to undermine the order.

We created it.

We benefited by it.

This is why it's so frustrating to me.

Okay.

So, listen, I don't know if you've heard about Better O'Rourke down in Texas.

Anybody from down there?

This is one of the real rising stars in the Democratic Party.

He's going up against Ted Cruz.

And Ted Cruz, yeah, there he is, great looking guy, Ted Cruz.

And

every week we see Betto kind of pulling up closer.

And so Ted is a little bit nervous now.

And one of the attacks he's made against Betto Rourke is that when he was young, he was in a rock band.

Or a folk rock band.

I don't know what it was, but it was in Texas.

I guess it was folksy music.

And we have a copy of the album.

Now, he was a liberal in Texas, so liberal folk music is a little different.

I mean, liberal country music.

It's called Teardrops in My Avocado Toasts.

And

here are some of the

liberal country songs.

I'm So Lonesome I Could Gay Adopt.

That's on the album.

Harper Valley THC is on the

THC, not

Kale Miner's daughter.

My wife's gone glamping at my darpie dog Adolma Zoloff.

That isn't

a they named Sue.

Thank you.

I shot a man in radar just to watch him use his affordable health care.

Mamas, don't let your fetus grow up up to be babies.

Now they're...

Oh.

Booing into applause.

You don't usually see that.

I fall to pieces when I forget my reusable whole foods bag.

And all my exes live in affordable public housing.

All right.

Jim Carrey, is he really here?

It took me 25 years.

I've been a fan of Jim Carrey since I first saw him in the clubs.

He's had a legendary career.

He's got a new series on Showtime called Kid.

Well, we don't usually get to plug Showtime.

That shows what an icon you are.

It's called Kidding.

It starts Sunday.

Jim Carrey, everybody.

He's really here.

Jim Carrey is really here.

Good to see you.

Look at that.

Wow.

Everybody loves Jim Carrey.

I love everybody.

Wow.

It's all good.

Wow, look at that.

Check this out, man.

I went out today and bought me some Nikes.

Oh, yeah.

Bought me some

freedom-friendly Nikes.

That's right.

That's a salute to Colin Kaepernick.

To Nike, congratulations on your fantastic voice.

Thank you so much.

It's good to be back.

It's great to be dystopian in America.

It's great to see you in front of a microphone.

Oh, man, I'm so happy to be here.

Really?

I love you so much.

Oh, I do.

Thank you.

I've been glued to this show forever.

I absolutely admire what you do.

Well, it took me forever to get you here, but I knew it would happen.

Well, I had to start reading.

Yeah.

You're pretty.

Thank you for waiting for me.

You're pretty, I would always wait for you.

I've been a fan of yours.

I tell you, since I saw you, the first time I ever saw you, you did an act and you didn't even speak.

You just did impressions with your face.

That's right, that's right.

And I said, this guy.

Yeah, it started early.

When I saw Golden Pond when I was a kid, I walked out of the theater and I was like,

you want me to pick strawberries?

I didn't know why I was doing it.

I saw myself

in a shop window and I went, wow, that's his face.

But it came from the inside.

Oh, by the way, I have to tell you the story.

I don't know if you know this story, but we auditioned the same night at the comedy store for Mitzi.

Oh, come on.

Years ago.

Years ago.

The night you auditioned.

Certainly it was years ago, Jim.

Okay.

I don't think we have to say that.

All time is happening at once, Bill.

Don't you know that?

That's right.

That's the new school of thought.

All time happens at once.

Okay, well, yeah, I never was, you were an act at the cover.

They didn't like it.

You were killed, and I sucked.

Why didn't I get past?

You were so tight, you got past, you were regular and stuff.

I got up there, and the microphone fell apart in my hands.

The first thing that happened, you know, it's going to be one of those nights, right?

And I ran past Mitzi back to Canada for two years.

You know, I've noticed, you know, we're both around the same age, you're a little younger, but as time goes by, I noticed your mind really moves the furniture.

I don't think that was me.

I think you're transferring that with me.

Oh, really?

Yeah, I don't think that's the Mandela effect.

Yeah, I never.

I never did that.

Is that all that works?

Yes, you're thinking of Greg Kinnear or something.

Oh, no.

You were a young, lovely Womar.

I don't remember ever doing well in with the comedy store.

I'm glad your memories of my life are better than my own.

You are beautiful.

But I must tell you, you know, I've seen you in so many movies, and one way I judge actors is by like, I look at a part and I go, yeah, he did great in that part.

Could anybody else do it?

And usually the answer is yes.

Sure.

With you,

a lot of times, Ace Ventura, no.

Nobody else could do it.

I mean, a lot of it, really, truly.

Yeah.

That is a way I...

My secret is making the wrong choices, but committing completely.

No, I don't think you have.

My favorite movie, and I love many of them, is Cable Guy.

Oh, thank you.

Cable Guy and Truman Show.

And I feel like they should be on a film festival together.

There's something about them that is very prescient about the way the world came to be.

Absolutely.

You think that...

We are parentless.

We are babysat by the television.

We're taught how to think by the television.

That's the dangerous I think, about what's going on right now.

There are generations growing up right now who are learning to lie, that lying is okay,

that this

you're supposed to hate half the country.

And if anything, if anything, we've got to get back to a place where we realize that a vote is not who you are.

And because you voted Republican, you're not stupid.

You're not different.

You're not worthless.

I could break bread with anybody who voted for Trump.

We could could find some common ground to love each other through.

You know?

So

just stop doing stupid shit.

Yeah.

That's all we expect.

All right.

So let's get it together.

So let's plug your show.

Yes.

Why this character?

This

show called Kidding.

Well, you know, these are...

Slightly like a Mr.

Rogers guy who...

I think the show is really interesting because first of all, I get to work with Michelle Gondry again, which is, you know,

was a dream the first time and a dream come true again.

What movie was that?

Eternal Sunshine and the Monday.

Okay, there you go.

I think they knew that without.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I assume everyone knows my bio.

That's really interesting.

But yeah, it was a beautiful experience.

And it's about a guy,

it's about

love being hit by lightning.

I mean, this is about a gentleman whose heart is so big and

his

approach is so authentic that it's undeniable when you come in contact with him.

That sounds like you.

Well, I always thought of you as a seeker.

Yeah.

Like you are always seeking something, right?

Yeah.

You're not always happy.

No, I'm not always happy, that's for sure.

Happy is the weather.

But I do.

You live in a sunny place.

Right.

Just have an opportunity to see.

But that is the seeker.

You have to let the flowers grow, bro.

You know, because it's hard to find what you're looking for, especially when it's deep.

Yeah, and basically, I've learned how to, and I am as angry and caught up in this stuff as anybody.

Outrageous is like a carpet bombing of outrage that's happening.

I see it in your art.

Absolutely.

You know, I first saw you.

I'm serious.

I didn't realize until I saw you on Jerry Seinfeld's coffee show when he was at your studio what a great artist you are.

And now I see it all the time on social media because it's a great idea.

Can we show you a few of these?

Sure, I'd love to.

Okay, show the, like, there's, I love this one of Trump.

It's

Now a lot of people don't know that that's Ryan and Nunes are the flying monkeys.

Okay.

Perhaps I wasn't detailed enough to

be able to do that.

I love that because Trump is always a president that actually, you know, had the worst tribulations our country has ever faced and brought us together.

Now the opposite is happening right now.

We have a president who started out when the country was together and had a wonderful leader and he is tearing us limb from limb.

Destroying every institution.

Let's talk about this Donald Trump, even though we don't want to.

Let's bring him on the panel.

He's a car salesman.

He's a humanist.

He's a Congressman.

Absolutely.

And

he didn't make America great again, but he did turn back the odometer.

So who knows what the hell is wrong with us?

But as I watched this.

We're in the back seat, right?

Right.

We're not in concern.

As I watched this week, what I kept thinking was, it all comes down to this case of narcissistic personality disorder.

We've all talked about it since you've been on the public scene.

But we see it in real time.

Somebody really unraveling, spiraling toward madness.

So I'm an asshole?

Is that what you're talking about?

No, no, no.

Oh, you're not talking about asshole.

You're talking about.

There was a tape of him talking to Bob Woodward, right?

We heard that this week.

At the end of it, he gets a little frustrated and he says, well, accurate is that nobody's ever done a better job than I'm doing as president.

He says, how can you...

What?

Job of what?

Demolition man?

Right.

There's nothing left!

That lot is clean!

Perfect.

A couple of weeks ago, he gave himself an A.

You saw that.

Even if you thought these things,

to say them out loud as often as he does about the money.

But that's his trick, right?

I mean, he kind of says these things that are so outrageous over and over and over again until eventually people think that there must be something there, right?

That even if it's not, you know, even if he's not worth $10 billion, he must be worth like $1 billion

as opposed to, you know, a few million or as opposed to being in debt a few million, right?

He reported $100 and he was worth $5.

Right.

So that's the ratio of truth to bullshit with Trump.

Basically, anything he says is like, it's 20 to 1.

Okay?

It's 20 to 1, man.

But when you have the disorder, you know, like when his, like I was saying before, his whole, his personal cabinet now has turned on him.

The person with this disorder is never going to go, maybe it's me.

No, of course not.

Never.

You want to see something interesting.

Everybody is saying, you know, you know, well, not everybody's saying, I sound like Trump now.

Everybody's saying.

and everybody's saying, God damn it here, Satan.

He's a guy in your hair, Satan.

The voices in my head are saying.

Yeah.

People are saying.

That's his thing.

I was on the receiving end of one of the tantrums.

I met with him twice.

What did you do?

Well,

I told him no three times to his face.

He took it well the first time.

It was the second and third times he didn't take it so well over the health care issue, and I tried to explain to him what I thought were the problems with the bill and Medicaid and the exchanges and Planned Parenthood.

And

the second time I told him, he said, well,

I told him I was opposed to the bill.

And he said, why?

I said, this is on a Thursday.

And he said, why?

I said, well, for the same reasons I told you on Tuesday, two days before.

And then I went through the issues, and he cut me off, and he said, you're going to destroy the Republican Party.

I'm like, well, yeah, it's your fault.

You know, the tax reform is going to go down.

You're going to destroy the Republican Party because he couldn't remember what you said on Tuesday.

No, because I wanted to vote for the health care bill.

He said we were going to take down tax reform.

I finally interrupted him after about, you know, it seemed like going on forever.

This was in the cabinet room

getting laid into here.

I said, Mr.

President, are you telling me that this...

You said, Mr.

President?

Yeah, of course.

I was expecting

it to be a fairly fair.

Yes, of course.

No, he said.

As an affirmation, sir.

And he kept saying the tax reform bill was going to fail if the health care bill didn't pass.

And I said, are you telling me if we don't pass this health care bill in this form, we're not going to be able to do tax reform because the baseline's not low enough?

That's exactly right.

When you lose, you lose.

And off he went again.

And then in the whole room, everybody says yes, lean, yes.

If you lied to him, and then he comes back to me at the end.

He says, are you still a hard?

No.

I'm still no, Mr.

President.

He goes off on me again.

And then I said, well, Mr.

President, go on.

And he's, I'm talking to you.

I don't want to hear anymore.

You want to see a mushroom cloud?

You want to see a mushroom cloud?

Ignore Trump for a week.

You know, I had a girlfriend one time, long time ago, and we were having problems.

I went to therapy, and

the therapist said,

sounds like your girlfriend's a little bit borderline personality, and she's a narcissist and whatever.

And I said, well, maybe if I just find a different way to intellectualize or get used to what she's saying, and I could, you know, my comebacks would be different, and I could just accept the fact she's going to be a dick every once in a while and whatever.

And she said, please do,

please, please try for a week to ignore and not react.

to these buttons that are being pulled.

The thing is we actually don't want them to be able to support Twitter or something.

No, I know.

We don't want it.

But if you have to.

There's a little fly in that ointment.

I'm saying there needs to be people around them.

Okay.

That's

not all.

Yeah, that's it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

So let me ask about since we have the Democratic consultant here of the last successful election.

The Democrats seem to be getting their groove back a little bit.

And what I mean by that is that Alexandra

Octavio-Cortez, Ayanna Presley, Stacey Abrams, Carrie Evelyn Davis, these are all women who won in primaries, weren't supposed to.

And they did it with unabashed liberal proposals, Medicare for all, ending student debt, a different approach to the war on terror, ending mass incarceration.

It seems like if there is maybe a shining spot in this Trump tragedy, it's that it's made the Democrats sort of rediscover who they are.

And the voters.

Is that what's going on?

Look, I think those fundamental issues, health care,

job security, you know, and all of the things that are being addressed,

whatever form it takes, you're hearing this kind of

across the board.

Those candidates reflected their districts well.

They reflect their constituencies well.

You know, Connor Lamb in your state probably has a slightly different

slant on these things, but fundamentally the values, I think, are very consistent.

So you know that the Republicans are running with the word socialism.

They're trying to say

scare people.

It's communism.

Venezuela, Trump says.

We're going to be living in Venezuela.

I grew up in Canada, okay?

We have socialized medicine.

And

I'm here to tell you that this bullshit line that you get on all of the political shows from people is that it's a failure.

The system is a failure in Canada.

It is not a failure in Canada.

I never waited for anything in my life.

I chose my own doctors.

My mother never paid for a prescription.

It was fantastic.

And I just got back from Vancouver and I keep hearing this, like, Canadians are so nice.

Canadians are so nice.

They can be nice because they have health care.

Because they have a government that cares about them.

It doesn't say sink or fucking swim, pal.

Right.

Or you live in a box.

There are certain people in our society that need to be taken care of.

There are people without as many opportunities that need to be helped toward those opportunities.

There are people who are sick.

But that's the

mother got sick.

And look, I've always said the United States has been a quasi-socialist government for 100 years for crying out loud.

It's got plenty of subsidies for oil companies.

But also Medicare and Social Security.

Yes, of course.

There's nothing more socialistic than some of the Pentagon programs that are just jobs.

programs.

The Pentagon says we don't want these tanks and they build them anyway.

If that's not socialism, I don't know what is.

But that word, the Democrats need to get a plan to fight

this slander of socialism, you're going to be living in Venezuela.

And I don't see it yet.

We have to say yes to socialism, to the word and everything.

We have to stop apologizing.

I am interested to see if that works.

What I see now are Republicans madly, and the president himself madly pressing these buttons.

Hopefully he won't press that button, but pressing buttons to try and scare people.

And he is truly the sweaty man behind the curtain.

I mean, don't you think

they sort of used up the currency of socialism with Obama, right?

I mean, they pulled that line so many times with Obama that people, I think, you know, particularly younger people, people who are younger than me, have really positive associations with socialism.

But even younger people, even older people, I think, are so used to every Democrat being accused of socialism that I wonder for people who would ever consider voting for a Democrat in the first place.

But

get a strategy for the attack.

don't need a strategy right now.

This election is really not about the Democrats.

It's about the Republicans.

It's about the party in power.

It's a referendum.

It's all about the President.

It's a conduct of the President of the United States.

So the Democrats really don't have to be for anything.

They have to be against Trump.

I mean, that's the reality.

The Republicans' plan.

Look,

what they're going to do to their opponents, they're going to try to discredit their opponents.

And they'll use whatever they've got.

Good opposition research, and they're going to go, you know, the Republican Party that's become a farm system for the Russians.

I mean, that's how you...

Do you think that Trump is the only one being groomed?

No.

Well, they're enabler.

They're at it right now.

They're enabler.

Exactly.

They're an enabler of the guidance.

As a Republican, I'm frustrated by this point.

Look,

I'm very much opposed to Vladimir Putin.

I think most Republicans are.

I do.

I believe in NATO.

Keep the Americans in, the Russians out.

That was the whole idea.

This stuff should not be controversial.

controversial.

It's Trump who's in the wrong place.

We never even had to, like, we say, oh, I'm against Putin.

You know, that didn't used to be said by everybody.

Trump declared it against Putin, and then he had to quit the Republican Party to leave Congress.

I have to leave it there, Patrick.

It is time for new rules, everybody.

Okay.

New ruler, when the FDA tweets, get rid of the honey smacks,

you should probably get rid of the honey smacks.

Even before the salmonella, they were basically heroin for kindergartners.

It's got smack right in the name.

It's what Keith Richards would eat if he were six years old.

New rules, someone has to break it to Colton Underwood, the first virgin bachelor on the bachelor who has also been on the bachelorette and bachelor in paradise, while waiting for the right one

your penis just isn't that special

it really isn't yeah i know you think of it as a trophy to be bestowed upon some lucky disney princess but

it's just a dick

every guy has one even mike pence probably

You know, Colton, maybe what you're searching for isn't out there, it's in here.

And by that, I mean go fuck yourself.

Sometimes it pays to not be clever.

Exactly.

Exactly.

New rule: never mind the anthem.

The league must address the most offensive thing about the NFL: that all the commercials are for beer, pizza, trucks, or insurance.

Is that all you think men are?

Drunk fat slobs who get in their trucks and crash them?

Well, we're not.

We also like chicken wings.

Neural, don't make your four-year-old wear a shirt that kisses your ass.

This doesn't tell people my parents are great.

It tells priests, I dig older guys.

Neural, now that we've found out that Kimberly Guilfoyle's pet name for Donald Trump Jr.

is Junior Mint,

She must come up with appropriate candy nicknames for the rest of the family.

Trump could be Whoppers.

Eric could be Goober.

Jared Kushner, Juju B.

And Ivanka, Blowpop.

And finally, new rule until Donald Trump is no longer president.

Don't talk to me about any cause except Democrats winning elections.

Sorry, partnership for a gluten-free America and

drag queens without borders.

You're going to have to wait.

We need Democrats to keep a laser focus on the one issue that really matters, finding out what is Trump's kryptonite.

I think it's ridicule.

The one thing that gets under his skin, besides red dye number two,

is being made fun of.

Remember how he seethed when Obama made fun of him at the correspondence dinner?

The hair on the back of his neck stood up,

which was fascinating to watch since it's been transplanted to the front of his head.

We need someone who can shred Trump like a stand-up takes down a heckler, because Trump is a heckler.

And to fight him, we need a comedian.

That is why tonight,

after serious thought and consideration, I am officially announcing that I, Bill Maher,

think it would be a great idea if Al Franken got back in the game.

He's good enough, he's smart enough, and dog on it, people still like him.

Now, of course, I can hear purists already saying, but Bill, what about the allegations?

You know what?

America always overreacts and then has Buyer's remorse.

We did it with 9-11 and Janet Jackson's Nipple and Bird Flu and Bill Clinton's Blowjob.

And certainly, one of the all-time overreactions was Al Franken's sex predator.

Can we break down what he did?

It started with that picture.

It's a joke.

He apologized for it.

No one died.

Then there's the sketch Al wrote to perform for the troops with Leanne Tweeden.

She says, Franken had written a moment when his character comes at me for a kiss.

I suspected what he was after.

Okay, what's been forgotten is that although Al was always careful to say women should be heard, he never said, yeah, I did it.

He said he hoped resigning didn't give people the false impression that I was admitting to doing things that in fact I haven't done.

Now Leanne Twedon is a favored guest of Sean Hannity and a Donald Trump Jr.

Twitter pal and somehow Roger Stone knew it's Al Franken's time in the barrel before she made her allegations public.

I believe Al.

I think that's still my right as an American to say.

Women should be heard always, and we should always keep in mind the vast majority of women reporting serious abuse are truthful.

But women also didn't completely lose the ability to lie in 2017.

Our crowd mulling that over.

Wait, I.

I feel like, I know it's not my place.

I have to say for the record, there was a lot of ass grabbing too.

I'm going to get to that and

it quite isn't your place.

Sorry.

Well, I mean, you have the whole show, and I have this one little time at the end.

I also find it very curious that in Hollywood, for two decades, parties at the Playboy Mansion, popular in the world of sports, the only guy who ever got out of line was Al Franken.

Seven other women, four anonymous, accuse Al of mostly hand-drifting while taking pictures.

Does it matter that at least two of these are ridiculous?

One said Al asked her to join him in the bathroom.

Another said he told her a kiss was his right as an entertainer.

This is not Al Franken.

Another woman said during a picture, Al, quote, quote, put his hand on my waist grabbing a handful of flesh.

Again,

our president now is Joan Crawford.

Are Democrats really going to permanently send away one of our ablest warriors for being a waist grabber?

He didn't drive her off a bridge and leave her to drown.

Can we get some perspective?

Does every infraction, no matter how small, have to be rehashed for an entire lifetime?

That's not politics, that's marriage.

You know, when you're a politician, being touchy-feely is kind of part of the job.

Campaigning is literally called pressing the flesh.

Have you ever met Joe Biden?

It's like meeting a great Dane who smells bacon on your clothes.

Some guys just aren't good at hugs.

That's why I always take pictures like this.

And here's me sitting.

We can have me too and Al Franken.

They're not mutually exclusive.

It's time to get Al off the bench so he could come back to doing what he does better than any other Democrat, taking down right-wing blowhards.

I want to see Al Franken debate Donald Trump.

And by the way, so do you.

All right, that's our show.

I'll be at the Mirage in Vegas tonight.

Tonight, yes, and tomorrow night, I want to thank my guests, David Oxerod, Michelle Goldberg, Charlie Dent, Jim Carrey, and Jack Bryan.

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.