Ep. #469: Preet Bharara, Adam Conover

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

Start the clock.

Thank you, people.

You can sit.

All right, all right, sit down.

We got a big show.

Thank you.

You're very kind.

All right, all right.

Okay, okay, all right, okay, all right.

Shut the fuck up.

I'll get you.

Geez,

I'm glad you're keeping your chin up.

What a depressed crowd, huh?

Well,

not such a good week for the president, on the other hand.

Man, he

lost his one black friend.

And

yes, if you have spent your life as an American refusing to know who Amarosa is,

well, now you're fuck out of luck because

she's got a book to sell and it's about her time in the White House, where she was there for 18 months.

I believe her official title was Assistant Secretary for Throwing Shade.

And

boy,

oh, and boy is she.

She has a lot to say about Donald Trump there today.

He said, she said, she said, boy, he is a racist and he suffers of dementia.

And he said, she's crazed and crying and a low life and a dog.

And Putin said, I can't believe I have to collude with these people.

You know,

let's not forget that Amarosa did defend Trump a million times, lied for him.

After the election, she said all his detractors would have to bow down before Donald Trump.

I don't care.

She's our asshole now.

I'll take anything I can get

gladly.

But really, this is where we are.

This is where we are where the reality show people are now the reality.

and you don't want to watch you can't turn away it's like watching earthworms mate or a hobo jack off in the alley

i don't want to look at it but

and we have to hear it marosa has tapes could you did you hear the one oh god did you hear the one where she's playing where she's talking to trump after she got fired and telling him about to play that tape

general kelly came to me and said that you guys wanted me to leave.

No, nobody even told me about it.

You know, they run a big operation, but I didn't know it.

I didn't know that.

Damn it.

Aside from everything else, what a pussy piece of shit he is.

Can't even.

Yeah.

I didn't know

they run a big operation here.

Boy, if I ever

find this president of the United States guy, I'm going to find out what he.

And so vain.

She says in the book that he immediately put in, when he became president, a tanning bed that he uses every day.

Oh, big mix-up one morning.

Rudy Giuliani was getting into his coffin.

Trump was getting out of the...

tanning bed and

luckily Melanie had just come out of her sensory deprivation tank So she.

Oh, yeah, that's it.

Melania, in the book, Amrosa said, Melania plans to divorce him as soon as the term is over, and she said she's taking the kid.

And Trump said, we have a kid?

She also says he drinks eight Diet Cokes a day, which cause dementia, which I think is probably true.

But Diet Coke, come on, it's working.

He does have the body of a Greek god.

I'm sorry, he has the body of a Greek diner.

But

here's my favorite.

She says, well, I'm a rosa that she had trouble once in a black church, and she got up to do so, and he grabs her arm and says, you can't leave me here with these people.

You know, Christians.

Oh, yes, he's got such a deft touch with race, this president, does he?

Aretha Franklin passed away, I'm sure you heard.

And of course, this guy says, yeah, she worked for me.

She worked for me.

A complete lie.

This guy cannot say, rest in peace without lying.

Trump said he was going to tweet his favorite Aretha song, Respect, but he couldn't remember how to spell it.

But

there's a couple of

actually important things going on.

Two Russian supersonic nuclear bombers did a flyby right over Alaska.

Of course, Republicans demanded an investigation into the radar that detected them.

And, no,

they were so close.

Sarah Penlin said she could see them from her meth lab.

And finally,

finally, I just have to bring up this story again because it's in the news.

Remember the baker in Colorado who would refuse to make a wedding cake for the gay couple, went all the way to the Supreme Court.

Right now he's back in court because he wouldn't bake a cake for a couple celebrating or somebody celebrating gender transition.

I got a couple of questions.

One, is there only one bakery in Colorado?

And also,

I see a big business opportunity here.

I'm going to move to Grand Junction, Colorado, and open a store called Bang Whoever You Want Cakes.

All right, thank you very much.

We've got a great show.

Jennifer Branholm, Jonathan Swatt, and Charlie Sykes are here.

And a little later, I'll be speaking with the guy who ruins everything, Adam Conover.

But first, he is the former district attorney for the Southern District of New York.

He hosts the cafe podcast.

Stay tuned with Preet.

Preet Barrara.

Yes, sir.

Hello, sir.

How are you?

Great to meet you.

Good to meet you.

Good to have you.

All right.

Such a silly monologue, such a serious person.

I enjoyed the monologue very much.

Oh, wow.

I can't say those things.

No, you can't.

Well, you can on

the other side.

Yes, now you can.

You're free from me.

You had a big job.

You were the U.S.

Attorney for New York.

I always said the U.S.

Attorneys are like the senators of the justice system.

There's about 100, right?

Yeah, sort of.

More like the governors.

Okay, but

masters of our domain.

Masters of New York.

Tell us why New York is more important probably than any other district.

Well, so there are four districts in New York, southern, eastern, northern, you know, following the directions.

I was he was turning the southern district of New York.

Wall Street.

It contains Wall Street.

It contains lots of businesses.

It has gangs like other districts have.

And it also is probably the greatest target in the country for terrorism.

That's where 9-11 happened in part.

So we're always focusing on those kinds of issues.

And also, it has probably the most media presence of any place in the country.

So anything that happens in Manhattan and the surrounding

suburbs gets a lot of attention.

Comey had your job.

Giuliani had your job.

Giuliani did have my job.

What do you make of Rudy Giuliani and, by a wider extent, the whole Republican Party right now?

I don't know what your politics are.

You're a serious public servant.

That's secondary to what you do.

But you must have seen

a different Republican Party until two years ago, as we all have.

Yeah, I mean, those are separate questions.

What has happened with Rudy Giuliani and the Republican Party?

I guess they sort of overlap a little bit.

Look, Rudy Giuliani was

both enablers for a traitor.

What's the difference?

Well,

Giuliani is supposed to be a professional lawyer.

And for six and a half years, I did it for seven and a half, he did it for six and a half years, was the U.S.

Attorney in Manhattan for the Southern District of New York.

Had a great reputation.

Some people thought he went too far in some cases.

But he was a trial lawyer by training and understood what integrity, I think, in in speaking about cases in court and outside of court meant generally.

But some of the things that he's saying, just viewing him as a former colleague, and he was very nice to me when I took the job, I had dinner with him to get some advice from him.

And in recent times, I think he's taken on an aura

of someone who doesn't remember what the truth is, doesn't remember what he said about issuance of subpoenas 20 years earlier, who doesn't remember that the people he used to work with, including folks in the FBI, who helped save New York and figure out, and people in law enforcement, who will save New York and find the bad guys.

He now calls them stormtroopers because he's trying to protect a particular president, not in the way that he was trained to do and not in the way that he trained generations of federal prosecutors to do.

So I gotta tell you, it's fairly disconcerting.

So I saw you, when I said traitor, you looked like you were uncomfortable with the word.

Tell me why we're not saying that word more.

Because, I mean, we are being attacked by Russia, even presently.

You would agree with that, right?

That's my understanding.

Okay.

Well,

if the president is taking the side of the people attacking, and he's certainly doing that when he goes after the people who are defending us from those Russian people, he belittles them, he criticizes them,

he threatens to arrest people like Jim Comey.

You're on one side or the other.

Why do you not shrink from that word?

Trust me, I've been a pretty vocal critic of the president in various forms.

I think he's leading a corrupt government.

I think he's doing a lot of things, both corrupting people, corrupting institutions, corrupting processes, corrupting even the people.

I could have said that about George Bush.

Well, no, I couldn't say that.

I could have said he was a corrupting guy.

I think it's an over...

But I would have said he was a traitor.

There's an order of magnitude difference.

I think the, yeah, look,

the words treason and traitor have particular legal meaning.

And so maybe I'm an overly careful recently former prosecutor

to be overly careful at this moment.

Maybe not.

And if people want to call folks traitors, I guess that's fine.

The worry I have sometimes, just as a private citizen now, not speaking as a lawyer, is

you can subject yourself to criticism if you are sort of overstating, and I'm not saying you necessarily are, but if you're overstating what other people have done.

And it allows folks to be dismissed a little bit more out of hand

when people yell treachery and treason.

Wow, they don't worry about that.

And they're winning.

I mean, he's purging

the ranks of the FBI.

He's going through them one by one.

It's like a, I keep saying slow-moving coup.

Some people said this week it was like the Saturday Night Massacre, but slowly.

He's slowly going through the ranks.

I mean he got rid of, I think, I saw seven of the eight people that Jim Comey had in his office to corroborate, as corroborating witnesses, what Comey was telling them about his meetings with Donald Trump.

What would your office look like if seven of your eight top guys were gone?

It would still be pretty good, actually.

Really?

Yeah, because you know what?

So that's a deep, deep state you got.

By deep state, if you mean professionals who are consummate professionals, my heroes.

Who understand what continuity means, who understand what the Constitution is, who don't care about party, who don't care about politics, who just do what's right and honor the law and honor the Constitution, then God bless the deep state.

But he's purging it.

Okay, so

you could lose your top eight people.

How many could you lose?

It would not be great to lose your top eight people.

No, I don't know.

It's good to have the top managers.

But what people need to understand is,

so by the way, I think that the new FBI director is an honorable and good person.

I think we accidentally got a great person to be the head of the FBI.

I think he could do better.

I think he could defend the institution better.

I think he could speak up about the kinds of things Trump is doing more.

But I think what you have happening here, both with Rod Rosenstein and with Chris Ray, who's the director of the FBI, and some other folks, and I don't necessarily love it, but they're sort of walking a line between trying to defend their institution and do what is right and also placating a guy who freaks out and gets angry and upset and could fire you on a whim.

So some people might call that, and I get it, some people might call that weakness and say you got to stand up to power.

Some people might say, I get that.

But for me being here,

then things would be a lot worse.

I think there are lines.

And I think, you know, when we had Admiral McRaven this week, who doesn't serve in government, I believe it, who comes out and says, says,

you know, is a quiet guy who wrote a book about how you should make your bed, right, and how little things are important.

When he comes out and supports in solidarity someone like John Brennan, who out of peak and

whim and anger and retribution by the president taking away his security clearance,

that's the kind of thing that matters.

And maybe we need to see more of that from not only people who are in government now and serving in the executive branch now, but also members of Congress.

I know you care a lot about norms, right?

This is

a president who doesn't care about norms.

If you don't write it down,

he'll just go ahead and say, I can pardon myself, or I can, no, he has ways of being petty nobody even thought of.

Nobody even, right?

Nobody even thought of withdrawing people's security clearances.

No,

the founders did not appreciate that there was going to be at some point, you know, they worried about a lot of things, and they worried about self-interest, and they worried about,

self-dealing.

But we're living under a king.

Yes.

He wants to arrest Amarosa.

And why?

I don't know.

We'll figure that out later.

Because she spoke out against him.

Because she embarrassed him.

But again,

this is not something we can just say.

Well, I'll lay all the facts to Kabuta.

I just think everyone's too calm about this situation.

I just don't get it.

Look, there's the old saying, right?

If you're going to go for the king, you you got to kill the king.

So it's fine to put it in the middle of the city.

You mean that metaphorically?

Yes.

I mean, I suppressed.

You mean that metaphorically, because really.

The Secret Service, please don't come to me.

Yes, they will.

Because they will do that, because they're crazy.

Well, I used to work with the Secret Service, and they're not all crazy.

But

not them.

Look, the rhetoric is fine, and I think there's an important role.

I'm a private citizen now, and I talk about these things.

You talk about these things.

There's an important role for anyone in the public sphere who has a microphone to talk about these things.

But the people who are going to make

a difference other than at the ballot box, which is probably the most important thing, so not to

downplay that.

But the Mueller investigation, Bob Mueller can't stand up and say treason in an interview.

He's got to collect the facts.

He doesn't say anything in an interview.

Yes, that's good.

That's my point.

It's up to the Democrats.

Rudy Giuliani is on TV every day.

They get their story out.

But we don't get our story out.

Does anyone listen to what Rudy Giuliani says?

Unfortunately, they do.

Yeah.

But it's all over TV.

Just because you're on TV doesn't mean you're believed.

Just because you're on TV doesn't mean you have credibility.

Just because you're on TV doesn't mean you're doing a service to your client.

But he muddies the waters.

Would you disagree with that?

That's what they're good at.

That's what they're good at.

Yeah.

We got to get good at something.

Yeah.

But I'm not sure.

I'm not sure that, I know you're not saying that if they muddy the water, you know, when they go muddy, we go muddier.

No, but I don't think, right?

No, but...

But we are bringing not even a knife to a gunfight.

We're bringing a covered dish.

And it's just got to stop.

Anyway, I'm glad you're around, and I hope you get back in the game.

Thanks very much.

All right, thank you.

Pre-ferrar.

Thank you very much.

All right, let's read our panel.

All righty, so continuing to get out for the Weekly Standard and host of the podcast, The Daily Standard.

Charlie Sykes is with us.

Charlie.

Now a big liberal favorite.

It's good, huh?

He's a politics reporter for Axios.

Oh, I see this guy on TV all the time.

Now we got him.

Jonathan Swan, Jonathan Malibu.

And she is the UC Berkeley professor who was the Democratic governor of Michigan.

A great tribune for your party.

Jennifer Granholm is here.

Don't forget, let's forget to send us your questions for tonight's overtime so we can answer them after the show on YouTube.

Okay, so I just can ask the question again.

Why can't we use that word treason?

We're under attack.

I mean, three Democrats this week, the opponent of Rohrbacher, Bill Nelson in Florida, Claire McCaskill, all said the Russians tried to get into their shit.

As I said, we're purging the FBI, pulling security clearances of...

former CIA directors and the people who kept us safe since 9-11 and for the last 30 years.

I don't get it.

If you're fighting the people who are fighting us, us, what do you call it?

I think it's treason.

I really do.

But I also think

I understand why Democrats who are running right now in swing states don't want to use that language, but I think that we have the remedy, as Preet just suggested, at the ballot box in November.

We saw this week that the number of the turnout among Democrats was much greater than it was among Republicans.

There is a wave.

I think it's a blue wave, but we got to work the wave.

I know, but we got to work it.

That's what I'm saying.

And this issue about this slow-moving coup that you describe is one issue, not the only issue, but it is a huge issue.

It is kind of the only issue.

It is kind of the only issue.

It's our country.

But let me just say, people in the Midwest, et cetera.

Make it an issue.

This is the problem with Democrats.

They don't make it.

They make make it an issue.

They are making it, but people are saying that.

What's more important to me is the fact that the Trump administration today is messing again with Medicaid and it's going to throw hundreds of thousands of people off in their second effort at it.

That affects them deeply.

And Trump has been very successful in suggesting that this is a hoax.

Let's go for both, but let me just tell you not to forget the meat and potato, bread and butter issues, too.

I don't know.

I hear Democrats all the time say, we have to know, people don't have to know what we're for.

How about democracy?

Yeah, totally.

How about standing up for the rule of law?

Look, I mean,

I think there's a danger in dialing up the rhetoric to 11 before we get all the evidence in.

Because when Bob Mueller comes in with all of the stories,

you want to have a word to say, okay, this is something new that we have learned.

But I mean, I don't know that this was a turning point this week, but when you saw those patriots and warriors,

all of the intelligence community step forward and basically call out the president.

This is one of those extraordinary moments.

Each and every one of them could kick President Bonespur's ass, every one of them.

It's one thing for

the president to diss John McCain, but now Trump world now has to try to discredit

people who are

heroes who have served this country for decades.

Now, before we use the word treason, and we may get to that word treason, just wait for for the evidence because there's going to become a moment.

Don't burn through it too fast.

Okay, I watched this documentary this week called Active Measures.

Yeah, no.

You've seen it.

It's coming out next week.

I think we have the director on soon.

And there's also a book out called House of Trump, House of Putin covers the same territory.

I'm sorry, but it's super obvious already.

He is a Russian asset.

This has been going on since the 80s.

They were targeting for this.

And Bob Mueller's report is just going to be what this movie and this book is.

Yes, we are.

are so.

With even more, it is.

It's going to be foolproof.

I'm not saying that's going to get him out of office, but it's pretty clear to me that he couldn't get money anywhere else because, among his other fine qualities, he's a deadbeat.

He was in with the Russian mob for, so you know all this stuff, and cut to the hookers peeing in the bed.

There's a very good chance that this Moore report is going to disappoint you.

I disagree.

Well, I know that

what you expect is this clear line between Trump and the Kremlin, and that there were quid pro quos, money for this, favours delivered, you know, signed, sealed, and delivered.

I think there's a good chance you won't get that, that it won't be such a clean document.

It's fine, but the Trump towers were money laundering operations for all these Russian oligarchs.

So it's

you do this and you know this.

You see this reporting.

So there's no question that most of the big money that was coming for these people buying the condos were Russians.

But what you're, what the missing piece of the puzzle is, what did he promise, say?

What commitments did he make privately?

And I don't know about you, but I want to know the answer to those questions.

I want to know what he said.

And so far we have a meeting that Don Jr.

took in Trump Tower set up by some sleazy music entrepreneur.

We also have everybody around him, Manafort, Flynn, all these people were all huge.

Rex Tillerson.

Why did they all

Republican the

whole

platform?

Why did they do that?

But all these people around him were people with massive Russia connections who were into Russia.

Well, that's what it does.

I'm just saying, I don't think we're disagreeing.

I'm saying there's clearly a lot of of smoke there, and what I'm saying is the final report may not deliver you the kill shot that you want.

It's going to be a political process.

And don't underestimate

the president's possible success in obstructing this investigation.

I mean, the one story that is playing out in plain view is we're not speculating, is the president trying to obstruct this investigation?

Of course he is.

He's been doing it all along.

And what he is doing right now is he's creating an enemies list.

And one of the interesting things about this enemies list is how many witnesses, corroborating witnesses, to this criminal investigation are going on right now.

So, yeah,

at some point you may get to the you know, get to the word treason.

But right now, what you're seeing is this fundamental attack on liberal constitutional democracy, the rule of law, and the obstruction of the government.

You're keeping this obstruction in plain sight.

Then why is there no Republican with a backbone in Congress that would fight?

That's easiest.

I mean,

let me take

I mean, let me take you inside that this is all I do every day is talk to Republicans on the Hill.

They are shit scared.

They are shit scared because they see the poll.

And they should be shit out of office.

So what they should do.

Like,

we can all, like, everyone can feel good about themselves in class.

But all I'll tell you is Trump is the most, let's just deal in reality.

He is the most popular president among Republican voters in the last living memory.

More than Bush after 9-11 now.

So, like, we're talking like 65 million people voted for him.

But you know what?

There is a moment where you have to stand up even with the pleasure.

Thank you, Charles.

We are not.

Thank you to you.

We are standing.

We have a constitutional potted plant.

This is a historic moment, and history is going to look back on this.

And when people say, well, you know, what did you do when the Constitution was being undermined, when this investigation was being obstructed, when the President of the United States was engaged in these dealings, well, I was looking at the polls.

It's not going to be a tremendously compelling.

And also to just the rank and file Republicans out there.

This is your guy, a guy who is willing to decimate America's security apparatus

because they're on to him.

That's why he's doing it.

They're on to him.

So he's willing to throw them under the bus, the people who keep using it.

I mean, Jonathan had a story this morning in Axios that said that basically what Trump may be doing is pulling the security clearances of the entire Mueller team, effectively completely disabling them from doing their investigation.

So Mark Warner, Senator Warner is going to be introducing some legislation on Monday saying that the president should not be allowed to willy-nilly pull away security clearances.

And let's just see how many Republicans will support.

Exactly.

So what the hell if that's not creating an enemies list where you are trying to silence them and then Republicans being quiet and accomplices to this slow coup.

I don't know what it is.

And by by the way, a few days before the election in 2016, Representative Michael McCall of Texas, Republicans, talking about Hillary's email server, he said, now we find out, very likely that foreign adversaries from other nations got into her private server, a lie, of course.

This is, in my opinion, quite frankly, it's treason.

So her email server was treason.

They're not afraid to do it when it's bullshit.

We shouldn't be afraid to do it when it's real.

I just want to.

I want to show the Andrew Cuomo tape.

Andrew Cuomo stepped in political shit the other day when he said, We're not going to make America great again.

It was, show the tape.

He says it better than I could.

We're not going to make America great again.

It was never that great.

Yeah, that's how Democrats handle patriotism.

Here's how Republicans do it.

You see,

stop overestimating the intelligence of the American public.

Just hump the flag.

But

you should.

Send the memo.

Send them an email on that one.

Because that's not that hard, right?

Yeah, no, but he blew it.

I mean, he blew it.

I know what he meant.

Totally.

And when you go into the details, it's right, but this is a lot of people.

And he's apologizing.

Let's just be clear.

He walked it back.

It doesn't matter.

No, but that's the point, is it doesn't matter because they will amplify it no matter what.

I remember I was covering the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia in 2016.

I remember going, they have all these stands selling merchandise, and they had these t-shirts that had Hillary Clinton, and that said, America is already great.

I thought,

who the hell is going to vote for that?

It's just sort of like a lot of people.

But that's a lot better than Cuomo.

I mean, Cuomo's statement, and this is just weapons-grade political stupidity.

I mean, when you're doing this, it is like walking right into the White House and saying, you know, let me live up to every stereotype that you want a Democrat to do.

And one of the things the Republicans are very, very good at is weaponizing these quotes.

Yes.

I mean, remember when John Kerry said I was for it or I was against it?

Oh, this will have a shelf life of its own.

Obama just said, just said, remember, you didn't build this?

He's like talking about a highway.

Okay, but of the millions of words that you speak as an as a public official, I mean,

I've screwed up so many times.

Not like that.

You've never, I'm sure, screwed up in saying anything publicly.

It doesn't matter.

You're not a politician.

Right, right, it doesn't matter.

And I don't care about screwing up.

I'm trying to get at the truth, which is not what the politicians are doing.

Well, I mean, I don't know about that, but I do know that we screw up a lot and that those screw-ups end up being how you are defined.

Right, but the biggest screw-up would be to rally around and defend that and say, well, well, he's right about all of this, because that is exactly the debate that Donald Trump wants us to have.

But he did back it off and apologized, and it's not what he meant.

Not that we are not divided enough, but we found out this week that we're even divided at the movies because the Oscars are coming out with a new category called Outstanding Achievement in Popular Film.

Because apparently the films that win the Oscars, the art house films, like the fishfucker movie this year,

that was.

I never remember the time.

I always call it the fish gold water.

What is it?

The shape of water.

The shape of water.

God damn it.

Okay.

Anyway, no one goes to see them.

They go to the big

blockbuster movies, and so no one's watching the Oscars anymore.

So the Oscars are basically saying, okay, here's an award for the crap you babies actually watch.

And so they, but you know what they're going to do?

They're going to try to put a fig leaf on the popular movies and combine them.

I think that's what they, because they still want to have an Oscar kind of movie.

So we got a hold of some of the posters and stuff coming out.

Trying to have it both ways.

Like, look at this: Ernest goes to Brokeback Mountain.

That's not going to

fool anybody, is it?

No country for Ant-Men.

That's

free billboards outside Big Mama's house.

Shrekspear in love.

That's

Harold and Kumar go to the Dallas Buckers.

Medea kills a mockingbird.

One of the ones that...

Guess who's coming to dinner?

Hint, it's Thor.

Teenage mutant Ninja Gandhi is.

The gods must be crazy rich Asians.

All right, he's the writer, comedian, and star of 2 TV's Adam Ruins Everything.

Please welcome Adam Conover to the show for the first time.

Hello, Adam.

How are you?

What a great pleasure to meet you.

Oh, it's a pleasure to be here.

I had to have you on because now we've never met, right?

Never.

Right.

This is our first time ever speaking.

And that's why I'm doing this magic trick right now.

Oh, my gosh.

We've never met.

They always say that.

No.

But because I think the conceit of your show is really so smart.

Adam ruins everything.

And when you say ruins, I relate to that because sometimes I ruin things.

It's my job.

I tried to ruin Mars once because I thought going to Mars was stupid.

I also think it's kind of stupid, yeah.

It's very stupid.

It's just a little bit it's great in an abstract sense, but it's not like first on my list of things I want to do.

There's no air.

I'm out.

Oh, you just personally don't want to stop.

There's no air and no atmosphere and it's 300 degrees below zero.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'll stay here on Earth.

Okay.

But

yeah,

but I get that when you ruin things by telling the truth.

It's very hard to do both, to tell the truth and not be considered a meanie.

Well, that's what our show does.

You know, on our show, I dispel common misconceptions.

I tell people the awful truth about, you know, everything they thought they knew.

But,

you know, my character on the show is sort of like

kind of an asshole who everybody else hates.

And that makes it work comedically.

It's a character, huh?

Yes.

That is

what I tell myself that night.

You are such a good actor.

No, I don't.

But so let's go through some of the things.

Because some of them were things that I also had attempted to ruin, like labeling fish.

I saw you do one night, and I was like, oh, I must blew the lid off labeling fish.

People are not aware that fish fraud is a rampant problem in America.

It's true.

When you go out to a restaurant, especially sushi restaurants, like for instance, white tuna, when you see that on a sushi menu, that is almost never white tuna, because white tuna is a relatively rare fish.

And it killed them all.

Yeah, yeah.

And also, there's like very poor standards.

Almost no one's auditing these fish, you know, which is again, not first on my list of things I want to correct about America, but it's something you might want to know about.

I enjoy busting waders when they, you know, when they say, we have the Chilean sea bass.

I goes, no, you don't.

Yeah, it's tilapia.

It's whatever you fucking found down there and brought, dragged in.

It's fresh.

Fresh.

It was caught in Alaska.

You mean it swam here?

You look at that many.

Are you crazy?

You know, first of all, there was no such thing as Chilean sea bass.

They made it up.

It's true.

I believe that was,

I forget the name of that one.

It had a worse name.

There was a name called, I think, the Slime Head.

They renamed it to Orange Ruffy.

If you look at the menus now, it could just say tilapia, tilapia, tilapia, tilapia, pink tilapia, red tilapia.

Yeah.

The hell with treason.

This is what's important.

Yeah, for sure.

Another one, a topic we have coming up on our show this year is about how avocados, which are a hot new food in restaurants, or it's not, you know, they're not that new, but millennials.

They're on top of everything.

They're on toast.

They're on salads.

A thing people don't realize about avocados is that when you buy them, you're actually indirectly to directly supporting Mexican drug cartels.

Because the reason that we have so many avocados is because of the way trade restrictions were loosened.

But as a result of that, cartels got into the avocado business.

And now when you buy a Mexican avocado, some of the money is going directly to these brutal groups.

And since you can't get California avocados year-round, like if you want avocado toast, you're fucked.

There's nothing else to do.

It's like blood diamonds.

It more or less is, yeah.

And it just goes to show how we have a much more complicated relationship with those groups than we think we do.

We're supporting them in all sorts of ways.

Enjoy your brunch this week, hipsters.

See, this is why

people hate us.

You can't be liked and say this.

No, that's okay.

They like you eventually.

They may at the moment, but it's like a great teacher.

At the moment, oh, he gave me a lot of homework.

and then a year later, he taught me how to write.

Here's the thing I'll say about the show is that the superficial pledge of it is that I ruin things and that I bother people, but ultimately, our show makes me very optimistic because the reason our show has had what success it's had is because the audience really likes to learn.

Exactly, they really do.

Yeah, and it's when you hear that information, it's momentarily uncomfortable.

Exactly.

But then, after you've actually gotten it and it's changed your worldview, you're like, oh, wow, now I feel more empowered.

You want to go tell your friends.

I have learned things.

I like it when I can actually learn something.

And what I learned from your show that I never knew, it sort of applies, not to make everything about Donald Trump, but I never knew this before I learned it from you.

There is no such thing as the alpha male.

Yeah, yeah.

I always believed in the concept of the alpha male.

This is one thing.

Hoping to be one one day.

I mean, look,

this is one of the most pernicious pseudoscientific ideas that's out there.

Whole, you know, especially like, you know, internet, like sort of these crazy men's rights people have like made whole bodies of like philosophical thought based on well there's two types of men there's alphas and there's betas and like alphas get all the women and they have all the success and betas are you know me um but

there's no scientific basis for this concept.

The idea originated from wolves, from the alpha wolf, but the original wolf researcher who coined the term later realized he was wrong and he had just been observing parents and children and the parents were dominant, that there weren't actually, there wasn't an alpha beta hierarchy.

And he tried to get his own book taken off the shelves because he was like, this idea is horseshit.

I'm sorry for saying it.

But it had taken on.

What a stupid researcher.

Well, not.

I mean,

scientists make mistakes, right?

You can't tell the child from the adult wolf.

I'm not a researcher.

I think I could do that.

I think I could tell which is the cub and which is the parent.

All right.

So one of the things I've spent a lifetime ruining is religion, of course.

Sure.

And that's it.

I never used to get applause for that.

See what I mean?

Everything comes around.

Yeah.

A lot more people who believe that now.

And of course, this week we had some very bad news for the Catholic Church.

Are you Catholic?

Sorry.

Charlie, you're Catholic?

I have a pretty bad one.

Oh.

Well, not worse than me.

But

it's, you know, over 300 priests, over 1,000 victims.

This goes back quite a ways.

But I'm going to just say what I've said many times about this subject.

If it was anything other than the Catholic Church, if you heard this about Jiffy Lube, if you read in the paper, at Jiffy Lube, over 300 technicians were found guilty of molesting over a thousand children.

Would people still go to Jiffy Lube?

It's amazing how they get away with it.

It's like, well, let's go to church and straighten this out.

Let me just say,

there is

one way that is a surefire way of stopping this ridiculous cover-up and this tendency towards

the priest, right?

Ordain women and let priests marry.

That's it.

Why are we covering this up?

Well, there's actually another way we could stop it.

Make the priests wear body cams.

Put it right in the cross.

What on earth?

What do you want that footage for?

Well, I mean, you know, just like with the police,

they would think twice before they did something shitty.

Here's the problem, though, is that it's not as people seem to think that priests, for some reason, that the occupation causes them to become predators.

But what I've read is that what predators will do is they'll work their way into any social position of privilege where they're allowed to work with children and be sort of morally unquestioned.

And so, like, you know, football coaches are another example.

That has the same social characteristics.

Football coaches can get married, right?

It has nothing to do with religion there.

It's just, and the problem is the institution, if you create a situation in which

people have access to children unfettered this way, you have a responsibility to make sure that you're not allowing vermin like that in your institution to sit there investigate.

It is a structural

issue.

It is a structural issue.

There's a few parts of the story that I think we're getting missed in some of the coverage.

One is that we talk about that number of 300.

That doesn't, that's not even in the universe of what the real number is.

I mean, that is the documented number when they subpoenaed.

I mean, we don't know the scale of what we're talking about.

And the other thing that really struck me is just the resources required to actually get to the truth.

I mean, the church stonewalled them at every step, and it required the Boston Globe, a full investigative team previously, and now we have an attorney general and the apparatus of the state.

The church is not making this easy.

It's still not making this easy.

And in fact, they apologize and they say how terrible it is, but they never say it before they're caught,

which is the terrible thing.

And then they say it after they're caught.

And I don't like the church.

The systemic coverage is under the correct.

Understand that if you are actually a Catholic,

this is much more horrific than if you're not.

I mean, trust me, I feel more passionately about this than you do because this is the church that claimed to be the body of Christ.

And

yes,

celibacy has failed.

Not having women in the church has failed.

But I'm saying that because this is Reformation-style scandal.

This is not something that can be dealt with by a commission, by an investigation.

This is a church that needs an enema.

And

I mean, it is, it is.

And

this is why I'm talking about...

There's a lot of people in that church who would enjoy it.

So it's.

Maybe that is not the best solution, right, Adam?

Okay, yeah.

All right.

I want to talk about...

I want to talk about.

I will never live that.

Okay.

No, it's it.

I will never live that.

That's your America is not that great.

I am now officially excommunicated.

All right.

So I want to talk about free speech for a minute because Alex Jones, who is not my friend and who tells crazy lies about me,

is thrown off Twitter, I think, and Facebook and a few other platforms.

I think he's going to...

Thank God!

Well, if you're a liberal, you're supposed to be for free speech.

That's free speech for the speech you hate.

That's what free speech means.

We're losing the thread of the concepts that are important to this country.

Either you care about the real American shit or you don't.

And if you do, it goes for every side.

I don't like Alex Jones, but Alex Jones gets to speak.

Everybody gets to speak.

Sure, but he doesn't necessarily get to speak on Facebook or Twitter.

No, I get that.

If a guy goes out, and this is not opinion, if he engages in vile slander and fabrication about

children who were murdered at Sandy Hook, and he harasses the parents of children who were murdered at Sandy Hook.

That's not, you know what?

Facebook, Twitter, none of them have an obligation to provide him a platform because they're not.

No, it's their private sector.

They understand that.

And even more importantly, you know, this is not the internet of 1996 where he put up a website and he's using like the public pipes.

Like these companies, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, these are the majority of time Americans spent on the internet, right?

We're talking, for the internet, this is ABC, CBS, NBC, right?

And they're making money off of him.

They're running ads against him.

So, you know, I agree with you about free speech, and that's of concern to me as well.

I also don't think those companies should be profiting off of what he's saying.

And so

we all agree on that.

That private enterprise does not have any obligation.

If you make a t-shirt that says your mother sucks cocks in hell,

they don't have to sell it at baby gap.

You know, we get that.

But I'm just saying.

It's pretty much the same thing we're talking about.

Yes, I understand.

But I'm just saying, as a concept, we have to understand that the way to get rid of hateful things is to, the sunlight best disinfected.

And a good example is, wait a second, the alt-right rally.

Yeah.

Alt-right too.

The Nazis, remember last year in Charlottesville, they had their rally again?

20 people showed up.

Okay?

Not because we outlawed it, but because we let it happen the first time.

And these mental midgets found out, oh, it's not so great when you do this in public, because then you go back to the office and people don't like you so much.

Yeah, but

Steve Bannon's on television tonight.

Yeah.

So I mean the alt-right hasn't disappeared.

And what the YouTube algorithm was doing was funneling people to Alex Jones.

Like the YouTube algorithm is the crossing guard saying, hey, everybody, there's a rally.

You know, let's all go to the rally.

And like bringing people to the Unite the Right.

The problem these tech companies are having is they don't know where to draw the line.

They know there are lines and they're scared of their own shadow.

I see them, the tech execs come to Washington, D.C.

with their tails between their legs, desperately trying to have these off the records with us reporters.

What can we do to

be more

feeling?

And they're squeezed from all ends.

They're scared of conservatives because conservatives have these things, oh, they're banning, shadow banning us.

And they're scared of the left, because the left's saying, you know, clamp down on anyone who says anything offensive.

And they're scared of their own shadow.

They're in a crouch and they don't know what to do.

Well, except for that they do need to act to at least uphold their own terms of service, which is what they're doing.

But they keep changing.

The bar keeps moving.

But here's

the concern I have to your point, Bill, about more speech, which is your point, right?

On these platforms, In 2016, 44% of people who identified as left of center did not post anything about politics on their social media feed.

44%.

On the Republican side, on the conservative side, it was only 8%.

Why didn't they post?

Because they didn't want to be trolled, harassed, or abused.

These platforms, yes, they are quasi-public squares, but they have an obligation to make sure that people are not harassed when they use them.

And that's why I think this is an important step.

It's only a week suspension for Pete's sake.

It's not like it was the end of the world.

What is it?

I mean, the Twitter thing is just ridiculous.

It says, we're going to have Alex Jones off Twitter for a week.

so he thinks about what he's done.

Right.

I mean, what?

Like he's some sort of a nine-year-old who is, you know, you say, hey, I'm really sorry about that.

Yeah, the kids really are dead.

I mean, okay.

All right.

Well, I am Q.

Just don't forget that.

All right.

Thank you, panel.

It's time for New Rules, everybody.

New rules.

Okay, new rules.

The people at the White House who let a reality show villain bring a recording device into the White House situation room have to answer the question, you do know that that room is not named after the situation.

Neural, stop telling me that this or that video game has a great story.

Really?

Because if Tomb Raider were a novel,

it would read like this.

I find myself in a jungle.

I look to the left.

I look to the right.

I walk forward.

I come to a ravine.

I think I can jump over it.

I jump over it.

Now I'm on the other side.

I look to the left.

I look to the right.

I walk forward.

See, not really a great story.

New Roll, France needs to stop getting so worked up about their new open-air urinals.

Our country has had these for years.

They're called phone boots.

New rule, if you take part in the Lachona challenge, the viral video craze, where you get out of your moving car and dance alongside it, I have to thank you for making an otherwise bleak summer a little more fun.

I'm kidding, you're a fucking idiot.

New New rule.

If Fox News is going to run, as they did, a tribute to Aretha Franklin featuring a photo of Patty LaBelle,

they did that.

BET must run this tribute to Barbara Bush.

And finally, new rule.

Someone else explained how one side sees this man as the most prolific liar in history, and the other side says, I like him because he's authentic.

President Pinocchio averages seven and a half lies a day, and yet his followers all say the same thing.

He tells it like it is.

He speaks what's left of his mind.

We have never seen anything like this.

A man totally insecure, yet supremely confident.

Not a politician, but also the most politician ever.

Bald, but with a full head of hair.

Trust me, Trump is not concerned that Amarosa has some recording that will blow his cover because he has no cover.

He's like the water supply in Flint, Michigan, no filter.

And the damnedest thing about that is it's actually kind of refreshing.

Because in an age dominated by the professionally offended, we secretly envy the man who is able to speak his mind.

Trump saw a nation exhausted from political correctness and said, you want warm and fuzzy, stick your dick in an ug boot.

Whereas the rest of us really live two lives.

There's the real us, the person in the kitchen or a bar who speaks like a human with trusted friends.

And then there's what I call our avatar.

Our avatar looks and sounds like us, but it's not really us.

It's the persona we adopt in any sort of public sphere, which now includes your followers on Twitter and Instagram and thousands of friends on Facebook.

And, you know, bad things go viral, so everyone fears any misstep that that could cause America's pearl clutchers to point and scream at you like the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Think of all the people who've lost job offers because there's a picture of them that got posted holding a bong or having a dick drawn on their face when they were passed out.

Which I think should get you more job offers because being passed out tells employers when I do something, I do it 110%.

Now,

Americans today crave any kind of authenticity because our avatars are just so full of shit.

A few weeks ago, the actress Amber Heard forgot to turn her phone on avatar mode and tweeted what was actually good advice for actual people.

Just heard there's an ice checkpoint in Hollywood.

Everyone better give their housekeepers, nannies, and landscapers a ride home tonight.

No, so offensive, because we all know there's so many Jewish gardeners out here.

I wonder if there was a Hispanic man that night sitting in the back of a paddy wagon thinking, at least no one assumed because I'm a gardener, I'm Latino.

That would be the real tragedy.

Isn't it ironic that we elected Trump because we were so sick of politicians who were inauthentic, who were all avatar?

Isn't that why people hated Hillary?

But then we became the politicians.

Everyone's social media persona now is like a candidate running for office, holding babies, doing photo ops, making sure every statement is carefully sanded down so as not to upset anybody.

Facebook should be called to Facebook.

It's funny, in movies, avatars are more interesting versions of ourselves flying around doing whatever they want.

But your avatar on Facebook isn't better or stronger or faster than you are.

It's just pressier.

Its great superpower is it remembers birthdays.

Folks, if you want to know who someone really is, ignore their avatar and check out their web browser history.

There's a book out called Everybody Lies that's about what we search for on Google.

And according to the author, quote, 30% of people exclusively watch stuff that you would find disgusting.

Look at a list of popular porn categories.

Cuckold, cheerleader, stepmom, double penetration, cream pie, tentacle sex.

Sounds like we're playing password for perverts.

Things your husband wants, but you don't.

On Facebook, women's top terms for describing husbands are the best, my best friend, and amazing.

But when women type in my husband is on Google, the top three results are mean, annoying, and gay.

You have to wonder if the more bland we make our public avatars, the more weird we want to be at home.

Anyone who works that hard to appear moral in public is usually a freak in private.

It's a theory I don't have much evidence to support except for every evangelical pastor ever.

All right, that's our show.

I'll be at the Cross Heinz Theater in Syracuse October 7th.

I want to thank my guests for putting up with this dirty show.

Charlie Sykes, Jonathan Swan, Jennifer Granholm, Advanced Conover, and Crete Marrera.

Join us now for Overtime on YouTube.

Thank you, folks.

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

For more information, log on to HBO.com.