Ep. #470: John Brennan, Kara Swisher

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Some people think nature is like this, but actually, it's like this.

That's why Columbia engineers everything we make for anything nature can throw at you.

Columbia, engineered for whatever.

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

Start the clock.

Right here with me.

Thank you very much.

Okay, I'm right, I know.

Thank you very much.

You can stop clapping.

I have no money for you.

But I know why you're happy today.

I'm happy for the same reason.

Because

the courts, the courts of law,

where real shit happens,

have

finally confirmed what a lot of us have been thinking for a long time.

I'm not crazy.

The president is an actual treasonous crook.

And

that's kind of a big thing.

Oh, yes.

We've heard of Black Friday.

This week we had Orange Tuesday.

They are rolling up the members of the Trump crime family.

Manafort, guilty.

Cohen, pled guilty, currently singing.

Alan Weisenberg, chief financial officer for the Trump organization, organization, singing.

We heard Don McGahn, the White House counsel, is singing.

Even Trump's old friend who buried all his shit in the National Enquirer, David Pecker.

Even Pecker is not standing firm.

Oh, I love this David Pecker.

Apparently, there is so much dirt on Donald Trump.

David Pecker kept a safe in a fucking vault

at the National Enquirer with all his shit in it.

That's how it took to keep all his.

And somebody figured out the combination to the safe.

It's the first four numbers of Trump's weight.

But

these convictions this week, this isn't even the main course, which is Russia.

This was just the stormy Daniels appetizer

Look, the campaign manager guilty.

The personal attorney, guilty, the deputy campaign manager, guilty, the national security advisor.

Cabinet meetings are now going to be held on visiting day

at Leavenworth.

I say all of Trump's lickspittle apologists on TV.

They're like, oh, now just being friends with Donald Trump makes you a criminal.

Apparently.

Yes, apparently that is the case.

By the way, one sign you might be a crook, your lawyer is going to jail.

That's a little hint.

Oh, Michael Cohen, Trump, boy, did he turn on Michael Cohen?

Trump tweeted out, if anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I strongly suggest don't retain the services of the guy I picked as my lawyer for the last 12 years.

And then,

it's just insane.

And then,

besides Manafort and Cohen and Flynn and Gates, all these people going to jail, the two Republican congressmen who were the first two to endorse Trump, Chris Collins, Duncan Hunter, they're going to jail.

So many Republicans

going to jail.

Who's going to be left to lock up Hillary?

No, if they lock up any more white Republicans, the white NFL players are going to start taking a knee.

So now we are in the time where Trump has to start distracting.

Speaking of white, he's deeply concerned this week, suddenly, about the plight of Africans, specifically the white ones.

Did you see this?

I have asked Secretary of State Pompeo to study the situation in South Africa with farm seizures and large-scale killing.

This is this bullshit idea that the blacks in Africa are killing the white farmers, a conspiracy theory propagated by white supremacists.

And when I say white supremacists, I mean Fox News.

This is something

this is something

he saw on Tucker Carlson.

And by the way, I always go by the rule: if you want to know what's going on in Africa, ask a guy named Tucker.

I swear to God, Trump, he's like a drug dog for white victimization.

He can smell it out anywhere.

If Trump traveled to the deepest reaches of space, he would say, why aren't there any white holes?

So that's distraction number one.

Distraction number two was always, you know, the hostage situation.

He said in an interview today: if they tried to impeach him, the stock market would crash and everybody would be poor.

Yes, just what every stupid boyfriend says.

You know, if you break up with me, you're going to regret it.

You're probably right, Donald.

We're making a huge mistake.

We're going to regret it for the rest of our life.

Heart emoji, crying emoji, delete contact in phone

and of course

on the distraction front when all else fails the go-to the bottom bitch of excuses

go to town on Jeff Sessions right

Every unfair thing that ever happened to Donald Trump is because Jeff Sessions would not recuse himself.

But Jeff Sessions fired back finally.

Yes,

He said, while I am Attorney General, justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations.

Finally.

Finally, answering the old age question, do elves have balls?

All right, we've got a great show.

David Torrance, Saru, Dale Rubin, and Rick Wilson are here in a little bit speaking with Greek Code's editor-at-large, Karis Wisher.

But first, he is a distinguished scholar at Fordham and the University of Texas and was President Obama's CIA director who, you may have heard, recently lost his security clearance, a true American patriot.

John Brennan.

John,

great to meet you.

Thank you.

Well-deserved standing up.

All right.

Yes, I don't usually say it's an honor to have somebody on my show, but it is an honor to meet you and have you here.

And I know, and I want people to know, we had this booking a long time ago.

This isn't just because of the events of recent weeks.

You were scheduled to come here, and I thank you for honoring it.

And,

you know, some people on the right have accused you of wanting to monetize.

That's their argument against you.

You're not here to monetize anything, are you, John?

No, I am not.

I didn't ask to keep my security clearances.

Former directors don't do that.

We keep those clearances because sometimes those in government want to be able to avail themselves of our experiences, our expertise,

our knowledge about certain issues.

So people serve on commissions, sometimes they serve on private sector boards, whatever, but this is the first time in 38 years that I haven't had a security clearance and the basis for the revocation is

bogus.

Mr.

Trump and his administration didn't adhere even to the process that they reaffirmed last year.

And the politicization of security clearances, either the granting of the revocation, is a real threat to national security, which is why so many people came out and opposed his action.

And so I certainly hope

came out for you.

Admiral McRaven

said,

please revoke my security clearance.

It would be an honor, considering what you did to Brennan.

Yeah, so everybody with a brain is on your side.

It's interesting, Jared and Ivanka still have clearances.

You, one of the guys who was the architect of getting bin Laden, does not.

Well, it seems as though Rand Paul was the one who put this idea in Donald Trump's head.

Dead to me, Rand Paul.

Yeah, well, Rand Paul has never served on the Intelligence Committee.

He knows not of which he speaks, but yet he has this impression

that

I'm monetizing security clearances.

So he continues to spout out on these issues.

But again, I believe very strongly in the principle that national security is one of the most sacred and solemn professions in this government.

And every American citizen deserves to have national security professionals, intelligent professionals, who are not going to be political, not going to be politicized, and no president ever should take that capability away from them.

You know, I've been having a hell of a time here on this show trying to get my guests to say the word treason.

I think the president is guilty of that, and you used terms like that.

You said after Helsinki it was nothing short of treasonous, which sounds to me like treasonous.

And then I noticed this last week some people tried to get you to take it back and you wouldn't.

And again,

I don't understand why people are so reluctant.

I get it, it's a scary word.

It's like, you know, don't break this glass case unless you need the,

but

When it's time to break the glass case, don't not do it just because it's a glass case.

Yes, and I'm not an official of the Department of Justice where I'm issuing an indictment of Donald Trump on treason.

But there are two principal reasons why I use that term.

One is that I think I exhausted all the other adjectives in the English language to

describe Donald Trump's failure to fulfill his responsibilities as President of the United States, number one.

Number two, but when I saw him on that stage in Helsinki, failing to be able to say to the world and to Vladimir Putin, Russia tried to interfere in our election,

it never should have happened, it never should happen again.

And if it does, Russia's going to pay some very severe consequences as a result.

But he didn't do that.

And so, treasoness is defined as a betrayal of trust, as well as aiding and abetting the enemy.

And so, that was the word that came to my mind.

Now,

I wasn't expecting Vladimir Putin to say, okay, you caught me.

He's going to continue to deny this.

But this was an opportunity for Donald Trump to fulfill his responsibilities: to say, Russia, cut this out, don't do it again, and if you do it, you're going to pay a cost.

And be able to say to everybody

and if he said that he could have said now though we have to work United States and Russia to be able to try to enhance stability and security around the globe there are important things for the United States and Russia to do I am very much supportive of trying to get relations between the two countries back on track critically important the two largest nuclear superpowers in the world but we cannot ignore what it is that the Russians try to do.

And so when Donald Trump failed to do that, I was irate because I know how hard that professionals here in the intelligence community work to try to keep this country strong and safe.

And for Donald Trump to be up there and to fail to say that.

He takes their side and not ours.

That's a traitor.

He calls you a lowlife.

You, who spent your life defending this country, especially after 9-11, when we had all sorts of problems.

And it could have gone way worse than it did.

He said about General Clapper.

Is he a general?

Yes, he was.

Yes, he is.

That they got to him

like you could get to a guy like that.

It's not on our side.

You're not on our side.

You are a traitor if you're attacking our generals and admirals and people who keep us safe.

It's not that much more complicated than that to me.

And I'm proud to stand with Bill McCraven and Jim Clapper and Mike Hayden and all of others, the ones who are speaking out.

I didn't want to speak out after I left the government.

I wanted to be able to retire and be able to spend time with family.

But this is a very abnormal time.

This is a very abnormal presidency.

And the stakes are so high.

That's why I've decided to speak out and be outspoken.

And I can see it's not easy for you.

It's not.

I see it.

Believe me, I've been talking to people on TV for 25 years.

I can see when it's not easy.

And people don't generally go into the CIA for publicity.

So,

but what do you but the let's let's take the opposite and that Donald Trump who confesses everything openly what do you make of this strategy that seems to be working so beautifully like this week he just said right on the air I hired Jeff Sessions as the attorney general totally because I expected his loyalty.

I mean

To me, that's impeachable.

The thing he said about to Lester Holt, about he fired Colton.

He said it out loud.

He said, Russia, if you're listening, I hope you can find Hillary Clinton's emails.

I feel like if these things were things we hacked, if we found surreptitiously, if you got a hold of his diary, oh my god, look what he said.

We'd be like, we got the smoking gun.

But because he says it blatantly and out front, people seem to just explain.

Well, he's trying to normalize all this behavior.

Normalize.

And he's also trying to undermine the institutions of government and those individuals who he believes threaten him.

And so therefore he's trying to undermine the intelligence community, the law enforcement community.

He's taken a page out of the playbook of autocrats and authoritarians around the world who try to co-opt judiciaries, who try to delegitimize the free press, who try to use intelligence security services to go after their rivals.

So Donald Trump is the typical authoritarian who's trying to control power.

And as he becomes more desperate, and I think that's what we're seeing now, because the walls are closing in on him, as all the people who used to work with him are now cooperating or testifying about what happened.

So I've been angry because we have somebody in the Oval Office who has really

denigrated the office of the presidency.

His dishonesty, he's unethical, he doesn't have principles.

And I am very concerned, though, more than angry, I'm worried, because now we are in a crisis.

And unfortunately, the Republicans,

John McCain, a national treasure and hero, I got,

and

our thoughts and prayers go out to John McCain and his family.

I got into some real Donny Brook fights with John McCain over policy.

I never once questioned his integrity and his interest in doing what is best for this country.

But since John McCain has left the Hill, the Republican spines have gone with him.

And there needs to be some some reckoning in the Republican Party that we can't allow this to go on.

And we have an election coming up and I'm trying to convince people, and it's hard because, you know, a lot of us in the past said this is a very important election and blah, blah, blah.

This is the one.

I think we are in a crisis that is the third great crisis in American history, more than the Depression.

First, of course, the Revolutionary War, whether we would even become a country.

Then the Civil War.

People usually say then the Depression.

I don't think the Depression got at what is most fundamental about this country.

It was economic.

But I don't think it threatened the rule of law as we do, as we have now.

Would you rank the crisis we're in now that way?

I would, and I think it's going to get worse before it gets better.

Because don't forget, Donald Trump has the authority of the President of the United States in his hands in terms of what he can do domestically here as well as what he can do internationally to try to distract attention, whether or not he's going to pursue some type of foreign adventure, military or otherwise.

But fundamentally, though, what he's doing to this country, he's dividing us.

We Americans, as you pointed out, Revolutionary War and Civil War, we fought hard for the freedoms and liberties that we have right now.

And so he's dividing Americans.

And so I'm really concerned that as he continues to play to his base, he's further dividing us.

And I'm really concerned about whether this could spill over into the streets.

And so I don't know what the principal protagonist in this drama is going to do, but I surely hope that those adults and those people in the White House and in the Cabinet and in the Congress are going to recognize that they need to act before there's a real disaster.

And by act, I mean whether it's going up to Donald Trump and saying, this has got to stop, you are ruining this country, and we're not going to tolerate it any longer.

They cannot turn a blind eye to this.

They have to forget about the political affiliation.

They need to do the right thing.

John, thank you for everything you've done for this country and what you're doing now.

It means a lot to all of us.

John Brennan, thank thank you.

Let's greet our panel.

Okay.

Well

I hope we have a good time.

Okay, here's our panel.

His number one New York number one New York Times best-selling new book is Everything Trump Touches Dies.

A Republican strategist gets real about the worst president ever.

Rick Wilson's over here.

Rick Wilson.

She is the co-founder of the Restaurant Opportunity Centers United and author of Forked,

a new standard for American dining.

Zaru Jayaraman, great to have you back with us.

And he's the Washington Bureau chief for Mother Jones and co-author of Russian Roulette, The Inside Story of Putin's War in America and the Election of Donald Trump.

David Korn with us.

Hey, David.

All right, don't forget to send us your questions for tonight's overtime to answer them after the show on YouTube.

Okay, so you heard all the news this week.

Obviously,

Mar-a-Lago is not sending us their best.

In light of this, do you think the Democrats are being too timid about impeachment?

Because the only one who brought it up this week was Donald Trump.

That's telling.

He wants the Democrats talking about impeachment.

He wants his base mobilized.

He wants a fight of that sort.

I actually think the Democrats would be smart if first they managed to win back the House.

That's step one, right?

And then there literally are, you know, if you give me an hour, I could go through two dozen different investigations that need to be started now.

Virtually everybody in the cabinet, right, Wilbur Ross, $120 million, go back and do the Russian investigation that Devin Nunes wouldn't do.

And

literally, many, many others.

They're kind of getting in the weeds with the voters.

But you know what?

That will pin Trump down.

But

what if the show was on the other foot?

Wouldn't they be making impeachment an issue that

I mean, this Democrat idea always of like, oh gosh, let's just sit on the lead.

Don't put me in the game, coach.

The guy was committing impeachable offenses from the moment he was sworn in.

That's when we should have been talking about impeachment.

I mean, the moment he was sworn in.

We were involved in a lawsuit against the president for violating the emoluments clause of the Constitution.

Just that.

Exactly.

Which was an issue from the moment he was sworn in.

He did not divest from his businesses.

He was violating the Constitution by being a sitting president accepting money from foreign dignitaries.

What would they have done if Obama appointed Amarosa?

She was wandering around the White House with the tape recorder.

Exactly.

It's crazy.

Rick, what do you think?

I get that the Democrats' sort of tactical caution about not firing up the Republican crazies, but at this point, that's all he has left.

Exactly.

Those people already believe that Hillary Clinton's going to have a cannibal ceremony on the White House lawn the minute the Democrats take power again.

Yes, that's the thing.

And it's why he's this daily explosion from him of tweet cocky every morning going insane every second of the day.

This guy's on the edge already.

I say you poke him and you push him and you speak him until he loses.

You're not going to win those people.

I call them the lost boys.

They're just gone.

But I mean, there's some, even for him this week, just some of the things he claimed.

First of all, claimed that he could take over the Mueller investigation.

I can go in and I could do whatever.

I could run it if I want, but I decided to stay out.

I'm totally allowed to be involved if I wanted to be.

What?

We live in a world of novel legal theories with this guy.

Gave himself an A plus.

Did you see that when she asked him what your job rate for no room for improvement?

He's grading on a curl.

Sessions I said about the attorney general.

The only reason I gave him the job is because I felt loyalty.

What if Obama had said that about Eric Holder?

The only reason I gave him the job is...

You think Fox News would have been upset about that?

Well, I seem to recall Republicans, including myself, were worried about Eric Holder being too close to the president time and again.

And now suddenly it's, Jeff Sessions didn't come over and kiss my ring this morning, therefore, you know, I'm going to insult him all day on Twitter.

Right.

So the phrase that jumped out of me this week, for the principal purpose of influencing the election, that's what Michael Cohen said in court.

And he didn't have to say it, did he?

No.

No.

Yeah.

For the principal purpose of influence.

It's what the Russians did too.

You have convergence here, right?

You have Donald Trump now being alleged to have been involved in a criminal conspiracy to corruptly.

influence the election and we know the Russians are doing it from their own side as well.

So whether it's a porn store or hacking, it's all becoming one unified grand conspiracy that it's actually true, unlike what Trump is pushing when Hillary Clinton.

It is illegal what he did, right?

Because, I mean, I see his people.

First of all, he went and had a rally, of course.

It was a felony.

At the rally, the people were chanting, lock her up and drain the swamp.

They were chanting, drain the swamp to the swamp monster.

Irony is not their strong suit.

And also, he's the chief of this country, and not one word about the crimes that were committed by Manafort or that Michael Cohen pled to.

He didn't say one word about, yeah, I'm the guy who's supposed to uphold the laws.

Donald Trump believes tax evasion is a crime.

That's a great.

I mean, I mean, to him, I mean, but he's also, people forget.

People forget.

He is the chief federal law enforcement officer, and yet he's out there saying, hey, if you cooperate with the feds, you're on my shit list, right?

Encouraging illegal crime and violence.

You know, he was the one who said, Rough them up in the back of the police car.

That's illegal.

And I'm thinking of a pardon.

I'm just thinking of a pardon if you don't cooperate with the prosecution.

So, all right, so his argument now is, well, you got to keep me as president.

I may be worthy of impeachment, but it's all up here.

It's all up here, and if you got rid of me, the stock market would crash and everybody would be poor.

So it's interesting.

He said that just on the day when we had the longest bull market ever, 3,453 days.

But my question is, is this economy going to save him?

Because CEO

average pay last year went up 17.6%,

wages

0.3%.

No, wages haven't gone anywhere, and housing costs have risen double the rate of wage and inflation increases.

So people cannot afford to live right now, and the Republicans know it.

Why aren't the Republicans running around talking about the economy in elections?

It's because they know people are still struggling.

You know, I got a letter today from Newt Ginnerich, along with probably one million or other people

on the Republican solicitation list, and he talked about the two issues in this campaign, immigration and socialism.

That's what they're running on.

It's fear.

It's fear of brown people.

It's fear of socialism.

And and it didn't say anything about the economy, the tax cuts.

They know that's not playing, so they're going to go into November trying to whip up people's deepest, darkest fears.

And that's really what Donald Trump is pretty good at.

Or they're going to keep people from the polls.

Right now in Michigan, actually restaurant workers mobilized and they got the minimum wage increase on the ballot in November.

And the Republicans in the state legis legislature are brazenly saying, well, maybe we'll just increase the minimum wage to make sure it doesn't get on the ballot to keep people from going to the polls.

And after the elections, we'll go ahead and repeal the minimum wage.

They're brazenly, openly talking about corrupt practices to keep people from the polls because they know the economy is not doing well for working people.

All right.

So does everybody agree that this election coming up is the most important election

we've seen in our

city?

I like what you say because we say that every two years.

But this time, it's...

Well, and that's why, you know, this donation I made.

And by the way, you know, this hurts me.

People think, you know, oh, these, you know, Alex Jones says I have $100 million.

I don't.

But Alex Jones wouldn't say that if it wasn't true.

But, you know.

He's a journalist, right?

In 2012, I did this, and this is different.

I mean, that was for my country, and I thought it's very important that the first black president get a second term.

And all the Republican, all the money in the country was going to the Republicans.

This time, it's a little more personal.

I'm worried about this country and really what's going to happen to it on a very existential level, including my own ass.

And, you know, I got a lot of messages from people yesterday saying, good for you.

And I just want to say for the ones who are rich who said that, not enough.

Not enough to say that to me.

I remember when I first came out here, I was just amazed at how many, I mean, we call LA a town.

It's actually an amalgam of towns, how many whole rich towns we have here.

Not every city has like a rich area, Cleveland Heights.

LA has like Beverly Hills and Bel Air and Brentwood and Malibu.

It just goes on and on.

Pacific Palace state.

There's a lot of rich fucks.

This is the time to step up.

These liberals.

Think about this.

If the Republicans, you know, Trump's not on the ballot, but if the Republicans retain control of the House, it validates everything that's happened in the last two years.

Everything that you've made fun of, everything that we talked about this week and every other week, they'll say, see, we can do this and more.

And as a Republican who values that old-fashioned Constitution thing, The members of my party in the House of Representatives have engaged actively to obstruct this investigation against Trump and Russia.

They have conspired with the White House.

They have obstructed justice.

They do not deserve re-election if it's a guy like Devin Nunez.

And honestly, the most disappointing person in my list here is the fact that Paul Ryan is such a coward to Donald Trump that he let these guys run buckwild throughout the entire process.

And they have, at every step of the way, put Russia and Trump ahead of this country and their vow to the Constitution.

It makes me furious.

And

we work for George Verse.

Okay.

I have said this before, and I'm going to say it again, apropos to this discussion.

I overreacted, like a lot of liberals did, to everybody else who was a Republican, because I didn't know a Donald Trump could have existed in this world.

But Donald Trump shouldn't have existed in this world.

He shouldn't have.

But you know what?

If you could go back in time,

when Dick Cheney's second in command, Scooter Libby, remember?

Oh, yeah, I know.

He was convicted.

And Dick Cheney went to George Bush and he said, look, you've got to pardon this guy.

He's my guy.

And George Bush said no.

And Dick Cheney basically broke up with him over that.

But George Bush, not my favorite at all.

But you know what?

This American stuff meant something to him.

And he wasn't just going to pass out a pardon.

All right.

So Rudy Giuliani was in the news this week.

He said, truth is not truth.

And

certainly nothing that comes out of his mouth is truth, but a lot of people got mad at him for that.

And to me, it sounded like some proclamation from a Zen you know, truth is not truth.

And sure enough, we look it up, and Rudy has written this book,

Zen and the Art of News Cycle Maintenance.

And I never knew Rudy was so Zen, but truth is not truth.

Would you like to hear some of the other ones in your?

Okay.

Learn to walk humbly, never cloaking oneself in lavish titles.

Take it from me, America's mayor.

Wherever you are, be there in totality, but tell your wife you're at the ball game.

An adult's eyes see the ostrich.

A child's eyes see the jacket within.

The happy man drinks in life.

The even happier man drinks in lunch.

Take time to sit, especially if you're the president, because a sitting president can't be indicted.

You see that.

What is less than the sound of one hand clapping?

Two hands, but they're so tiny.

A glint of sunlight is God.

A drop of rain is enlightenment.

A puff of smoke is me turning into a bat.

That's...

There is no path to happiness.

Happiness is the path.

Also, Obama's a Muslim.

The truth shall set you free.

Did I say truth?

I meant pardon.

And say less, listen more,

especially around Domarosa.

She is the editor-at-large at Recode, host of the podcast, Recode, Decode, and contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, Kara Swisher.

Hey.

Great to meet you.

How you doing?

Good.

Thank you for being here.

You do a hell of a job

keeping the tech sector honest.

And I read this week that

Facebook and Twitter, I guess, removed a lot of fake accounts.

Yeah.

Finally, finally.

Okay, so this is El Lama's question.

I am not very tech savvy.

I get a lot of my knowledge from you.

But, you know, you need ID to buy groceries.

Yes, you do.

We know that.

Why don't you need ID to prove who you really are on Facebook or Twitter?

Because it wouldn't make them so many billions of dollars, I guess.

I don't know.

I mean, it's a really problematic thing.

That's the only reason.

That's the only reason, is that this has been a thing that's been built from the beginning to operate the way it does, which is to do growth, growth, growth at all costs, and also take away your data privacy from you.

And that's what it does.

So there's no way we can shame them into doing the right thing?

Well, that's.

We're under attack.

You know, the country's under attack.

This is the modern way of warfare.

It's not artillery anymore from Russia.

Yeah, I wrote a column in the Times talking about this idea of values and standards and the fact that they had to get some.

They had to have them.

But what I thought was, I did a podcast just recently with Mark Zuckerberg.

And one of the things when we talked about it was the idea of what was going on and whether he had responsibility for the platform.

A lot of these people don't feel like they have responsibility.

He doesn't?

Well, it's a weird thing.

They do now.

If you notice when he was in Congress, he said, we have a broader responsibility.

And my question when he was saying that to all those various politicians was, why didn't he have it in the first place?

Why didn't they start by building these things so that they would be,

that they would evolve in a way that kept pace with humanities?

And what I realized when I was talking to him was that he didn't take humanities in college because he didn't finish college and instead became a billionaire.

So that they don't have a great sense of the impact of the things they built.

Well, also, I think we've romanticized nerds.

Yes, we have.

You know, back when I was in college, nerd was a bad word.

Right.

And then it became, though, this cute thing.

Right.

You know, hot girls like to say, I'm a nerd.

No, you're not.

You know, and I, and

it's not really always a good thing.

I mean, Mark Zuckerberg, I'm sorry, but that is a real nerd.

He looks awful.

He's his clothes.

Right, yeah.

His clothes are terrible.

He's awkward.

I mean, Bill Gates looks like Carrie Grant.

Really?

Right.

You know, and I wouldn't say that.

And that's not bad.

I'm just saying he's, you know, he's on this spectrum of dweebiness that I don't see.

All right now.

No, I just hang out, Bill.

What?

You shouldn't insult his looks.

You can insult his entire service in the way it's ruined democracy, but please don't insult his looks.

He's not watching.

You know, that's my thing.

They're not watching.

I know, you're going to say they plug him in at night and he's in the closet.

No, no, but I'm just saying when people are nerds, I think they just have, you know, that's what part of nerdiness is.

You just, you have trouble relating to humanity, and I don't think they very often have a great sense of humor.

Yeah, it's called an EQ.

They don't have an EQ kind of thing.

What I think it is, is that they don't, I try to talk to them in the language they talk to.

So I often try to use like Marvel comics and various things like that.

So

what I like to do is this idea, which is actually a Voltaire quote, but I don't bring that into discussion with them.

them, which is with great power comes great responsibility, which was uncle,

Peter Parker's uncle.

And so I keep saying to them, I said, you have abrogated your responsibility when you built these things.

And the way you built them made them so they would operate this way.

And so when you think about it, these sites were not hacked by the Russians.

They were used exactly as they were built.

Right.

There was no hacking going on.

The Russians just walked right in and did them.

So now they're finding.

Now they're finding.

But companies never just do the right thing because you ask them, you have to find them.

You have to threaten them.

You have to regulate them did you watch those hearings there's more coming up but did you watch it how do you think Mark did

well I you don't make me talk about Mark Duckerberg again because

I mean all of them they're all coming there what happens is it's a stupid low bar because politicians are absolutely brain dead when it comes to tech essentially and so what they do is they ask questions during that particular hearing it was about terms of service it was as if terms of service were the biggest national security crisis of our time like that you can't read them that they're super confusing didn't Facebook start out as something very sexist?

Wasn't it?

I'm going to say that.

No, that's the movie.

The movie.

Don't go with the movie.

It wasn't something where they were just raiding the women in the world.

It was one of the sites, yes.

It was sort of a hot or not kind of thing.

Yeah.

Well, that's horrible.

Yeah, but that wasn't what Facebook was then.

That was his first thing.

We don't want to be judged by our first things, Bill.

Come on, what was my first thing?

Just me.

I'm talking about me.

No, but I think, what I think, the thing you have to think about is when you think about responsibility, they don't think there's consequences.

So they don't think about the consequences of what they created and what they invented.

And one of the Facebook's biggest things that were on the walls, if you go to Facebook headquarters, first of all, all these headquarters are built as if they're for 12-year-old boys, essentially.

All kinds of slides and things like that.

And on the wall, one time they asked me to go down a slide, and I'm like, I'm not going down your fucking slide.

And I was like, I didn't like it when I was eight years old, so I'm not going to like it now.

But they have on the wall, they have this thing that said, said, move fast and break things.

I think you've all seen that.

It's the move fast, and they were all excited about move fast and break things.

And when you think about it, you go, well, you've broken a lot of things.

Now, what are you going to fix?

But their mentality was that.

Right.

Break things.

Break things.

Yeah.

So they broke democracy, but okay.

Yeah.

No, they didn't.

I mean, they're part of it.

I mean, the whole, all the things we were talking about before, what Donald Trump is doing, these are part of that.

But what social media does is it amplifies, and what I said in the Times was that it weaponizes everything.

It weaponizes the First Amendment, it weaponizes social media, it weaponizes social discourse, and it creates a disc, and it weaponizes discord, and that's the problem.

And that's what the Russians took advantage of.

Okay, so I want to ask a question for this whole panel, and it has to do with the new Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, because

Donald Trump admitted this week, and we just kind of blew by it in that interview, that he indeed did pay off

porn stars.

And, you know, before that, they were lying about it.

I don't heard about it.

Michael Cohen did it.

Although that's something you would lie about, right?

If you're paying off porn stars.

I mean if you had to lie about anything.

Yeah, but but I'm just making that point.

Okay, but but but I remember 20 years ago Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky I want those two years back because

we spent two whole years

talking about how did Bill Clinton get blown and who knew about it and where did he come and there was no question too creepy and this week he just admitted it and just we just went right by it like oh yeah the president fucked the key star of Target's the crazy thing though

here's the crazy thing the crazy thing if you think if you think that Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal are the end of this train that are the only two dalliances that Donald Trump's wandering penis ever encountered no no you know this guy this is this is gonna keep unfolding and we're gonna have American evangelicals every day saying, but Gorsuch, and they're going to keep making excuses for this guy until he just burns every iota of moral panic out of them.

It's just a lot of people.

If there's one porn star, there's a lot of porn stars.

There's a lot of everybody.

I'm guessing that Donald Trump is not a man given to fidelity to anything.

Basically driven by whatever gave him his last erection.

And

we're going to keep finding out more of these things.

And Cohen is singing like a book.

But to your point.

Brett Kavanaugh.

Brett Kavanaugh.

To your point.

Tell the people who what his well Brett Kavanaugh was involved working for Ken Starr.

Very much interesting.

Very much involved, and he was very interested.

Very interested.

Ins and outs.

That's the same thing.

Even that.

Even at that.

He wrote a 132-page memo for the Starr report, and he talked about 17 angry Democrats.

There was one angry Republican, and it was not like constitutional.

It was just like he is a gross guy who's got girly germs on him.

But you know,

but it's not just him.

Mike Pence at the time said, you know, if someone's not faithful to their wife, they shouldn't be president.

Right.

Well, where are you now, Mike Pence?

Orrin Hatch voted for impeachment.

This week, asked about the news about the crime and the hush money payments to Pornstar.

He said, well, I'm not very happy about it.

And Lindsey Graham.

led the impeachment drive and said we had to morally cleanse the White House and get get Clinton out.

Did you hear what Mike Penn said today?

He said the best media is word of mouth.

I'm not, you heard this?

Nobody knows that means exactly.

Where are these mouths getting information?

Exactly.

The selling fire better word of mouth signals.

I mean, what is he talking about?

But I think you're getting to the point is, so the hypocriticalness is like, should is normal now, is normalized.

And what happens is you're using social media and Twitter just to keep

dating.

Yeah, and the double standard isn't just Democrats, Republicans, Clinton Trump it's there is a man who's lying and stealing and cheating the American people who is our commander in chief and he has committed at least 20 impeachable offenses and what is happening to him for working people if you lie or steal there's automatic termination that's what happens when you are working why can't that happen for the man who runs our country

I think the answer is because

in the Republican mindset, they're always, well, we're just going to get this out of him.

First, remember, it was the tax cut.

Well, we'll just get the tax cut.

Now it's like, well, we'll just get the election.

Because if we go against them before the election, and it's one after another, well, we're just a little more and we'll get this.

And by the time you get to the end of the day.

The only thing on the other side is how many times are you going to be shocked by this?

Like, I mean, do you remember Scott Pruitt?

I don't.

Oh, yeah, that guy, right?

Like, think about it.

Because what happens is we continue to stay in these levels of indignation, which is the whole point of it.

And that's the point of, that's why Trump is so good on Twitter.

He understands how to gin up the indignation, and then it goes on and on.

But you can't lose the capacity for outrage.

No, right?

You can't lose that.

So

it's a dilemma.

How do you keep that going?

It is.

How does Spiraltap play 11 for every song?

Right.

And you go, can you listen to that?

You're playing on his agenda, though.

But how do you get around that, Carol?

By viewing your own agenda.

If you want to know how to start a Twitter war, I'm very good at it.

I think we've all done it.

I've had a time or two of it.

That's your excellent.

But either for Twitter or for any kind of mobilization or movement building or winning the elections, you have to maintain outrage.

You have to be outraged at what's happening.

Again, if the shoe was on the other foot, the Republicans, if they had a Democrat president,

they would have been asking for a do-over election a year and a half ago.

Pitchforks and torches.

They wouldn't be allowing this person who shouldn't be there to be appointing a Supreme Court judge.

Exactly.

Well, they didn't let Obama appoint one that he had every right to.

If any of us committed a crime, would we get to select our judge or our jury?

How come he gets to?

It doesn't make any sense.

And Brett Kavanaugh, another Catholic on the court?

Can we give a rest to the Catholics on the court?

Because they seem very anti-scale.

The Catholics didn't have a good week this week.

No.

Yeah,

they have other problems.

All right, so I want to ask finally about the military because John McCain was in the news today.

He is not taking treatment anymore.

And I'm going to steal Chris Matthews' thunder here the other day.

I saw him say something I thought was so great when he was talking about how Trump says, I like guys who weren't captured.

As if John McCain didn't try hard enough.

He was shot down and fell in a lake

in the middle of Hanoi.

The locals were on him in a minute.

He had broken arms and legs.

Why is the military behind this man?

He tried to appoint a drunk as head of the veterans.

He always talks about the veterans administration.

He always talks about he loves the veterans so much.

He was going to sell the Secretary of the Army position.

Jared was like, I'm on it.

It's in the Manafort trial.

They were going to sell that.

They took away protections for predatory, against predatory lenders for veterans.

He hasn't visited the troops overseas once.

He's afraid to.

I mean, seriously.

He is afraid to go overseas, into Afghanistan, to any place, to any theater of warfare where our people serve bravely and at at some risk.

He thought the big risk of Vietnam, the Vietnam years, he said, my big risk, my Vietnam, was not getting STD in the 80s when I was at Studio 54.

That was the big risk that he overcame.

If you want to see a contrast of

the now, it's really a true risk.

He said that.

No, he literally said that.

Sorry.

David, to be fair, that is a big risk if you go to Studio 54.

The Battle of the Upper East Side was brutal.

It was

blocked by black.

If you want to see a contrast between

the Republican Party that was and the Republican Party that is, John McCain may have been cranky, iconoclastic.

He could be a bastard to people.

He could get really pissed off as you trust me, I've been in the firing line.

He could be all those things.

But that was a man who, unlike Donald Trump, answered the call.

risked his life time and again.

You know, flying on and off an aircraft carrier in the 1960s, that was pretty much rolling the dice every time you flew.

And And at this moment, we have got a man who, I mean, and John McCain faced torture in the Hannaway Hilton for five and a half years, and Donald Trump doesn't have the standing to lick his boots.

He is a low creature compared to McCain.

And we will not see McCain's like again, and that's a shame for this country.

And you just want to say to the Republicans who like Trump after knowing this, they know this, they know this.

This is your guy?

This is your guy?

The guy

who says this about John McCain?

He's not McCain.

They are just doing a disservice to McCain from the very beginning.

Yeah.

By getting behind Trump and ignoring his insults against McCain, but against other veterans and against everybody else.

Okay.

Thank you, panel time, for New Rule.

Okay.

New rules, stop telling me that the man who was lost on Mount St.

Helens for six days survived on bees and berries.

No, he survived because nobody starves to death in six days.

So congratulations, Doofus.

Not only did you get your stupid ass lost, you ate a bunch of bees for no reason.

New rule, stop criticizing Madonna for making her VMA tribute to Aretha Franklin all about herself.

According to surgeons, erratic behavior is a completely normal side effect.

You're in the middle of transitioning to a gypsy wind chime.

I don't know what that means, but I keep laughing at it.

I don't know what that is.

Neurule, and this goes out to the kids in that school bus I get behind every day.

Just because my car is behind your bus doesn't mean you have to give me and the other commuters the finger.

What did we ever do to you?

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

Neurule, if you're one of the men who needed the recent CDC warning that people should not wash and reuse their condoms,

you may be too stupid to fuck.

And

ladies, one sign that you've thrown in with the cheapskate is when you say, I want you to do me right here, right now.

And he says, I can't, my condom is in the dryer.

Neural, men who wear these new

cowboy boot sandals have to answer one question.

How do you get your horse to stop laughing?

Guys, the whole point of boots is protection.

So if you...

Oh, screw it.

Can I interest you in my new line of fishnet condoms?

And finally, New Rule, in today's merger-crazy economy, everybody needs a partner.

That's how we got the likes of ExxonMobil, GlaxoSmithKline, JPMorgan Chase, and it's why I now work for the phone company.

That's right.

Time Warner, itself a giant merger which owns HBO, got bought by ATT.

Have I noticed a difference?

Not so far.

No interference, but also no, hi, how you doing?

I mean, they could have called.

They are the phone company.

But I get it.

We live in the age of get bigger or get eaten.

In fact, I look forward to the brave new day when there will be only two companies, Apple's on

and Goldman Google Mart.

At Goldman Google Mart, I only have to imagine the words, I think I need more dog food, and seconds later a robot drone shoves it in my pants.

The Republican Party certainly understands the concept of merging to survive.

In recent years, they were facing a serious demographic problem.

America was becoming younger and browner, and they were becoming whiter and deader.

They had lost the popular vote in six of the last seven presidential elections and realized they couldn't win by themselves.

So they did what any smart corporation would do.

They merged with a giant oil company.

That's right, the Republican Party and Russia have merged.

They're the Trumpkusha Group.

Two great corporations now operating out of the same evil lair.

Oh, sure, Republicans used to hate Russia as much as they hated taxes and welfare and sexually active women, but

fettle-faddle, 40% of Republicans now say they either approve of Russian interference in our elections or don't object strongly.

They're even wearing, I'd rather be a Russian than a Democrat t-shirts.

See, it's funny because we're traitors.

I guess the news saying is better read than well read.

And this fall, the Trump Kusha Group has a strategy to win the next election using cheating, hacking, rigging, rat fucking, vote.

Voter rolls tampering and disinformation campaigns.

So my message, Democrats, is get with the times.

There are, to borrow a phrase, new rules.

And since we now accept that it's okay to merge your party with a foreign power, I'd like to be the first member of the resistance to say, China, if you're listening,

I hope you can find Donald Trump's tax returns.

That's right.

If they get to bring in Russia as their ringer, we get to bring in our own country, and I pick China.

DNC, meet MSG.

Walk the vote, baby.

When they go low, we go low main.

Who better to hack voting machines in the country whose children assemble them?

If you're going to turn over your party to a foreign power, at least pick the right one.

Russia?

Are you kidding?

It's like the Republicans looked over all the companies they could merge with and pick Sears.

China is the future.

Russia is a mobbed-up, has-been petrostate run by men in purple satin shirts.

Their main exports are blood doping and car crash videos.

The male life expectancy in Russia is lower than North Korea.

Their GDP is smaller than Italy's.

It's like merging with a Halloween store.

China is building giant ports and highways all over the world.

They're going to overtake America as the world's largest economy in a year now.

And unlike us, they can actually build a wall

in Hong Kong.

They put on a light show every night for free.

And China has a mall so big it has an indoor beach.

Ready to merge now?

I thought so.

And President G,

very strong leader, very strong, unlike what we got in this country.

Wouldn't it be better if we got along with China?

That would be a good thing, not a bad thing.

A good thing, not a bad thing.

A good thing, not a bad thing.

All right, thank you, folks.

That's our show.

We're off next week.

And back on September 7th, I'll be at the Fox Theater in St.

Louis tomorrow.

August 25th at the Kansas City Music Hall in Kansas City, Missouri.

August the 26th, I want to thank Rick Wilson, Zaru, Jaya Rahman, David Corn, Kyra Switzerland, and John Brennan.

Join us now for overtime.

Thank you.

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

For more information, log on to HBO.com.