Ep. #463: Michael Eric Dyson , Fareed Zakaria

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

Start the clock.

Okay,

all right, I'm awesome.

Let's get on with the show.

No, thank you very much.

And I know why you're happy.

It's not me.

It's because Trump's out of the country.

Yeah, he went to the big G7 meeting every year, our allies in Canada, and he didn't want to go.

And they didn't want him there, but he went right on schedule.

The turd showed up in the punch bowl.

And when he arrived at the border, the Canadians, they wanted to give him a little taste of his own medicine, so they separated him from his daughter.

The Canadians are furious with Trump because he slapped tariffs on their metals, and he said it was based on national security reasons.

So their Prime Minister Trudeau calls up Trump and says, you know, we are the most peaceable nation on earth.

And your closest ally, really?

National security reasons?

And Trump says, this is not the joke part.

This is what he really said.

Trump said, didn't you guys once burn down the White House?

And Trudeau says, are you referring to the War of 1812?

And Trump says, maybe, when was it?

But,

yeah.

In 1812, the British burned down the White House.

Trudeau tells him, he says, look, we weren't even a country in 1812.

Who told you that?

And Trump said, Frederick Douglass.

So

he's there now, in keeping with his new, wonderful tradition of alienating the countries who we share our values with.

He argued with them that Russia should be there.

And they said to him, You're here, what's the difference?

Then, like the bore he is, he left early, skipped the climate part.

Boring!

He said he was too busy with other bigger things.

He's got big deals to think about.

He said, I spent all last week preparing for his meeting with Kim.

Kardashian, not the Korean.

That's different.

As for North Korea, he bragged yesterday that he didn't prepare.

Didn't prepare.

Of course, when is he ever prepared for anything?

This guy didn't bring a condom to fuck a porn star.

So

we'll see what happens at the big summit.

But put me down for preparation is good.

I'm on that team.

I mean, we don't know much about North Korea, but we do know this.

Asians do prepare for the test.

So

let's see, who else did the president piss off this week?

Philadelphia.

You saw that?

The champion, Super Bowl champion Eagles were going to go to the White House, but Trump said, no, they're disinvited because they took a knee, even though none of them took a knee.

So he had his own big hoop law, he said, with real Eagle fans at the White House.

Real Eagle fans?

Because they look suspiciously like interns

who worked at the White House and congressional staffers.

In fact, a photographer went around and asked all of them, do you know who the Eagles quarterback is?

They did not know.

Another little giveaway, the only chant they knew was, lock her up.

Speaking of locking people up, yeah, don't get your hopes up that it's going to happen to Trump.

He tweeted this week, I have the absolute right to pardon myself, but why would I do that?

Because I've done nothing wrong.

I don't know, why even bring it up if you've done nothing wrong?

So

now I don't usually get excited about the space news, but this is pretty interesting in the paper today.

You see, the Mars rover, the rover we got up there, has found what they say are the chemical building blocks to life.

So they said they need to send another mission to investigate it further.

Melania said, I'll go.

Hey, they found Melania.

For a very good body double.

I don't know it.

But no, I told you she would turn up, right?

Everything's fine.

She was living in a safe house under the name Ivana, go home now.

All right, thank you very much.

You sound like a great audience.

We appreciate that.

We got a great show.

Sure, Michael Singleton, Linda Chavez, and John Heilman are here.

And a little later, we will be speaking with our good friend Fareed Zakaria.

But first, he's a Georgetown University professor whose latest book is What the Truth Sounds Like.

RFK, James Baldwin, and our unfinished conversation about race in America.

Michael Eric Dyson.

There he is.

How are you?

Good, my dear brother.

How are you doing, professor?

Look at that.

Hey, you still have, you still profess, right?

I still profess.

What is it like for the kids to have such a star in them?

Are they starstruck?

Oh, man.

You know, when you come to class, no, no, they're, you know what, they do say, my mother told me to come take your class, or my grandma's a fan of yours.

I said, but not you.

That's good.

I get a little of that, too.

Right.

So your book is so fascinating because, and you write so beautifully.

It reads like a novel always.

You're unbelievable.

But

what attracted you to this particular moment?

Because I was not aware of this, this meeting that sort of starts your book off about Robert F.

Kennedy, whose passing was 50 years ago this week.

That's right.

And he had a meeting in 1963.

He wanted to meet the black leaders who he wanted to hear really who blacks listened to.

That's right.

It was Harry Belafonte, right?

It was who, Lena Horn.

Lena Horne, Lorraine Baldwin.

James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry.

And he admitted, and I love how you start that I didn't know about that meeting.

That's the work of an author, right?

To bring a story that very few people know about.

Or if they do, it's episodic.

Read a couple pages here, a paragraph there.

But I was curious about it.

I said, boy, I want to read a book about it.

I couldn't find one.

I said, let me write it myself.

And this meeting was extraordinary because he met, he being Bobby Kennedy, who was then the United States Attorney General.

His brother was the president.

And he said, look, I see a crisis brewing in urban America.

There's a lot of rage going on here.

People are attracted to the extremist groups, and they're turning away from Martin Luther King Jr.

or Whitney Young, head of the Urban League, or Roy Wilkins, who's head of the NAACP.

But I I don't want to talk to the politicians, to Adam Clayton Powell or King as a leader.

I want to talk to, as you said, the black people who have the ear of black America.

He met with Baldwin at a breakfast meeting out at Hickory Hill, this place out in Virginia.

Baldwin's plane was late.

They didn't talk for about a half an hour.

He says, Look, the next day I'm going to be in, you know, New York.

Why don't you bring a few of your friends if you can gather them up and come on over to the house?

And when you're James Baldwin, your friends are Harry Belafonte, Lena Horn, and Lorraine Hansbury.

He really wanted to, Bobby Kennedy wanted to know what's the dilly, I mean, what's going on with black America.

Right.

And he asked.

At least he asked.

Look, contrasting what we have now, that's a huge, huge benefit and advantage in this country because he was actually curious.

And when he got to the meeting, let's be honest though, he's a politician, so he wants them to be grateful.

Be grateful for what we've done, me and my brother.

But his brother, Robert John Kennedy, was an extraordinary politician, but he was playing both ends against the middle.

He was putting on the bench people like Harold Cox, who was a right-wing bigot in his spirit, and

allegedly a liberal, but he's calling people horrible names from the bench.

He's also,

you know, telling the governor of Georgia when he placed a well-time call to Martin Luther King Jr.'s imprisoner there that, look, you let him out of jail.

He let King out of jail.

And then a few days later, there was an election and all the black people who could vote voted for him.

But he told that governor, we will not use federal forces to support integration when I come into office.

Then he's telling black people, hey, I'm going to support the civil rights movement.

So he was caught in between that.

And Bobby Kennedy thought it.

So Bobby Kennedy got an earful.

He got an earphone.

Oh, let me tell you what.

He thought it was going to be gratitude.

They said, nah, not really.

We're not here for that.

And they gave him, for lack of a better word, hell, and they really gave it to him hard.

A young man was there named Robert Smith,

Jerome Smith, I'm sorry.

And he was a

core Congress of Racial Equality.

He was one one of their freedom riders.

Next to John Lewis, nobody was beaten more than this man.

And he cut to the chase.

I'm not here for your BS.

I'm tired of all this talk you're doing, this party pit and patter.

Stop it.

Bobby Kennedy was shocked.

And then when James Baldwin said, well, wouldn't you go asking this young Mr.

Smith trying to ratchet it up?

He said, would you go to your, to war to fight for your country?

He said, never.

Bobby Kennedy was upset.

From there, it got worse.

Lena Horne said, don't turn to us respectable Negroes.

Keep talking to that man because that's who you need to listen to.

And for three hours, they lit him up and gave him a new perspective.

He got pissed.

He sicked the FBI on them.

He got the dossiers of many of these people who were there, including Clarence Jones, who was the lawyer for both Baldwin and Martin Luther King Jr.

But then he calmed down and then he said, if I were black, I'd be pissed too.

I'd be full of rage too.

And then he started telling his brother, start speaking about.

race as a moral issue, not just a political one.

And then he, in his own life, began to change and had a lot more compassion and insight about the nature of black suffering.

He thought that the black people there that night were too emphasizing on emphatic on witness personal storytelling rather than public policy.

But what he discovered is they understood that public policy without dealing with the anti-blackness that was afoot in the land would never do enough.

So it was a tremendous thing.

I wonder today if policy even matters to black or white.

I mean, I see the things that Trump is doing.

He has cognated the White House.

Today he was talking about maybe lifting the ban on the federal illegality of marijuana.

Right, right, I saw that.

He pardons,

I forget her name, but the...

Alice Marie Johnson.

Yes,

you know, and people are going to watch TV and they're going to see grateful black folks.

Thank you, President.

Right, right.

This anecdotal way.

I wouldn't be surprised if he goes up in the polls.

Oh, sure.

He's a master manipulator.

He's shrewd.

But the problem is this, you know, and as he challenged the football players, you know, tell me the people that you think need to be partnered and I'll partner.

Well, that individual approach doesn't deal with system, doesn't deal with structure.

There are too many people.

You don't know their names because they're nameless and faceless to you.

There are a bunch of people that you continue to consign to the dustbin of history and you don't think about them.

Instead of parting some dead black people, how about some living ones who are here now?

And, well, he did.

Well, Alex Marie, yes.

But

you can't do it individually on a case-by-case basis.

The system itself is producing the corruption and inequality.

But again, we live in a country where not everyone is a professor.

Right?

I understand that.

So everything you just said was what?

Yeah.

Well,

he let this beautiful black lady go.

Obama didn't do that.

Well, that's true.

He was in jail all that time.

I mean, there's a lot of low-hanging fruit that he's just wily enough that could make you popular.

Legalizing pot.

He could do that tomorrow.

He'd do it just to piss off Jeff Sessions.

Right, of course.

And he'd get a lot black and white.

I'd be his biggest fan for a day.

Well, he pardons.

He could be popular.

If he pardoned my brother who's been in prison for 29 years, I'd say, hey, that was a good thing.

Right.

But here's the point.

If what we do is get seduced by the belief that it's an individual thing and not a systematic thing.

I agree with you.

The problem is that you pick and choose.

You cherry-pick.

I like this person.

If you happen to know Kanye West, if you happen to know Kim Kardashian, if you happen to know somebody famous who can advocate for you, the problem is those who have nobody to speak for them, that's why you got to talk up for them.

I got to speak up for them.

In fact, I'm part of the ought right.

Ought to do the right thing.

Ought to do it time and time again.

I thought it was very eye-opening in your book when you wrote about Bernie Sanders and Trump.

You know, most people think of those two as opposites.

Yeah.

And you see a lot more of a connection.

Yeah, they're both older white men who are cantankerous.

Hey, hey, hey.

Nothing wrong with older white cantankerous men.

Well, and one is attracted to, of course, to rhetorical fluency.

The other one can barely speak.

But that aside, right?

I mean, one is a butth-hurt, brain-dead bigot.

The other one is an insightful critic of things.

But They're both older white guys who were slow to understand what race was about in America.

And after Trump was elected, even Bernie Sanders said, you know, we got to do something about this identity politics.

It's all right to deal with women.

It's all right to deal with African Americans and Latinos.

But let's get back to the politics.

From where?

The point is that white is an identity too.

And what Bernie Sanders didn't understand, if you subsume race under class, in other words, you think class is the big deal, race is something that's a consequence of that, you're missing out on the fact that even poor white people sometimes are bigoted against poor black people.

It's not like class overcomes those differences.

They want the Latinos out.

They don't want black people in their pipe fitter unions or becoming a police people environment.

So the point is that class has to always be intersected with race and gender and sexuality.

And Bernie Sanders was slow to that.

So I saw them as mirror images of the same kind of figure.

I'm not saying that Bernie Sanders is Donald Trump in terms of ideology, but certainly in terms of approach and ignorance about race, but at least he's trying to educate himself in a way that Donald Trump is allergic to.

Well, we could all educate ourselves better with your book.

Thank you, Michael.

Michael Aaron Dyson, my good friend.

Thank you, Michael.

All right, let's meet our panel.

Okay, Mike.

Okay.

Hey, everybody.

He is a national affairs analyst

for NBC News.

I was going to say MSNBC because they see you on both.

And the creator and co-host of the circus, John Heilman, is over here.

She's a syndicated columnist and the president of the Becoming America Institute, Linda Chavez.

Great to see you, Linda.

And he's a Republican consultant and former deputy chief of staff of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Sir Michael Singleton.

It's great to have you on.

All right, don't forget to send us your questions at tonight's overtime.

You're going to answer them after the show.

On YouTube, let's talk about where Trump is.

He's at the G7 meeting, still there, right?

He hasn't huffed out of the room yet, as far as we know.

Maybe we'll get a new update.

But he doesn't want to be with these people.

He does not want to be with the people who forever have shared our values, our European allies.

Little things, you know, like free speech and democracy and free and fair elections.

They don't seem to be on the same page anymore.

I guess my first question is, are we really still a Western democracy?

I mean, look, Bill, I think it's almost like a kid in a room and you say, oh, the kids don't want to play with me, so I'm having a hissy fit.

Look, these folks have been our allies for a very, very long time.

long time and I think what we're beginning to see is a shift that is very very dangerous for our standing in the world.

If we're not very careful, then you will see China step up and take a greater role.

You will see Russia continue to expand some of the things that they're doing in various parts of the world.

And so I think it's becoming upon Republicans to say, Mr.

President, you cannot jeopardize America's standing because if America isn't leading the world, then who will?

I don't know why he wants Russia there.

It came out this week that he talks to Putin.

Putin said in an interview, he talks to him regularly.

Why is the President of the United States talking to the man who who rat fucked our election and plans on doing it again?

I think possibly, possibly.

What you see as a bug, I think he sees as a feature.

Yeah.

That he's talking to Putin because he's the guy who rat fucked the election.

Yeah.

And it worked out to Donald Trump's favor.

I just think that Trump right now is trying to start his own G7, right?

He wants to get Russia, North Korea, Iran,

Saudi Arabia.

No, it's true.

In the Bush administration, they called it the axis of evil.

We're going to call this like the T7, the Trump 7.

I'm sorry.

There's an entirely reasonable explanation.

He's checking to make sure that Putin is not going to let out the golden shower tape.

That's all.

That's what he's there.

That's what he's worried about.

It could be.

Cookie.

I mean, that definitely could be part of it.

What's coming next is going to be the, and you know how cheap Trump is.

What we're going to get next is we're going to hear that he's offered Putin the lifetime complimentary Mar-a-Lago membership.

Then you're going to know the whole thing is over.

Well, in all seriousness, think about what this truly means for our country.

When you think about all the things that are going on around the world right now, the rest of the world has always, at least for the past 100 years or nearly, have looked to the United States for direction, for guidance, for leadership, and they're not getting that from this president.

No, I'm saying, I don't know if we're a Western democracy anymore.

Well, I mean, he's clearly eroding institutions.

So there's no question about that.

I mean, we are not the same democracy as we were even, you know, and he doesn't care about the same issues.

They're there to talk about climate.

One of their big issues is democracy.

It's in trouble.

And Russia is meddling in all of them.

These are issues he doesn't care about or is actively working against.

And also, he does not really appreciate multilateral organizations.

He doesn't want multilateral agreements.

He wants to be a lot more.

He wants deals, one-on-one, where he can make money.

I've been saying slow-moving coup.

I've been saying it since before the election.

It's not moving so slow anymore.

It's not moving.

We're fast-forwarding.

You know,

Macrone tweeted, nobody is forever about Trump today.

That was his burn.

I'm sorry, but dictators are.

He's going to meet with Kim.

Unless you're 80 years old, Kim has been the president of that country.

And Trump is growing his kids.

The difference is this is the most vicious.

regime in the entire world.

There are hundreds of thousands of people who are in a gulag there, who are being tortured, they're being worked to death, they're being starved.

He could care care less about that.

Well, he hasn't even prepared.

Sounds like Amazon.

And

it seems a bit outrageous to me that we have a president who is unconcerned about the matters of the world.

Does anyone agree with me that he is not going to leave until he wants to leave, including the 2020 election?

He'll probably be re-elected.

52%.

Believe it or not.

He probably will.

But if he's not, it's rigged.

He said that last time he was setting it up for the

he's already in there.

52% of Republicans would support postponing the 2020 election if Trump proposed it.

And he hasn't even proposed it.

That's 52%.

That's next week's tweet.

Okay.

I mean, Bill, I have to re-register because I've just moved states and I'm deciding do I re-register as a Republican or not.

You've just given me a very, very difficult choice to make.

I mean, that is really astounding.

Look,

if you just think about it, not a difficult choice.

The most central thing here is.

I think you could talk about all these issues and you could talk about them all night long, but in the end we just went through a week in which the president basically came out and said, I am above the law.

I can pardon myself.

I don't have to submit to a subpoena.

I'll do whatever I want.

And as League, I mean, I'm old enough to remember when you went around the world to Western democracies and to less democratic, less free places.

And people looked at America and said, forget about Republicans, forget about Democrats.

What we most admire about the United States is the rule of law.

That these institutions were strong and stable, and that no matter who you were, you had a basic level of respect for them.

The President of the United States currently does not give a flying fuck about an independent judiciary, about an independent FBI, about his Justice Department.

All he cares about is self-preservation, and that is, to me, the biggest depredation of the entire administration.

Well, that's why it has a lot in common with Kim.

Yeah, I mean,

that's what Kim is all about, is preserving himself.

That's what Trump's all about.

And by the way, Rudy Giuliani said that he could have shot Comey.

Right.

Which is an absurdity.

That's what he's right.

And he could pardon himself for that.

And right?

What more do you think about that?

It's a scary fucking thing to be talking about.

The president's lawyer is talking about how the president could shoot the former FBI director who was investigating him and you couldn't prosecute him.

How fucking crazy is that?

Jeff Session.

Jeff Sessions had to be worried.

And the problem is that the Democratic politicians I see on TV, I mean, they mumble something about rule of law and let's wait till the facts are it.

It would be inappropriate to comment.

Not nearly the sense of urgency that you would need for this situation.

But where's Nancy Pelosi?

Where's Chuck Schiff?

So she can't show her face.

Where's the DNC?

I mean, you have Adam Schift, who's almost like a lonely guy out there for the most part, but alone.

And there's no way that you can't.

The real courage is coming from some of us on the right who are standing up to him.

You know who speaks best on this issue?

It's all those people, mostly on your network, Nicole Wallace, Stu Shu Sykes, Steve Schmidt, Rick Wilson.

They are all better than any Democrat I see because they talk about this Russia issue.

They talk about this Russia issue with a moral urgency.

You can see that they're absolutely apoplectic, that they're losing their country.

And also they do, it's in the Republican DNA to...

If they see a poll, they're not afraid of it.

They will change it.

Democrats see the poll saying the people don't care about Russia.

Yeah, because you don't make it an issue.

They can't make treason an issue.

But Republicans also really like to think, or I should say conservatives really like to think of themselves as patriots.

And patriotism is standing up for Russia.

We're not patriots.

You see a bunch of cowards because they're not saying anything.

The country is at stake here.

This is serious issues.

And we have Republicans saying that.

So it's a very tiny percentage of Republicans.

Right.

And the ones that are saying it are mostly people who are leaving Congress.

Here's the snapshot of our two parties at this moment.

This week, the president right now, President Donald Trump, has more support from his party than any president in the modern history of America.

His support among Republicans is higher than any president has ever had in his own party.

That's the Republican Party.

I love Steve Schmidt.

I love Nicole Wallace.

They are outliers.

They are oddballs compared to the Republican Party, which is now full in for Donald Trump.

On the other side, you have a Democratic Party that faced with this Republican Party, a Republican Party that up to the president of the United States endorsed, rallied around a child molester in Alabama in

December, six months ago.

When have you heard from a single Democrat since then?

That the Republican Party as a collective endorsed a child molester.

No one makes that point anymore.

We've forgotten

that.

Apparently it's in Russia.

I mean, one of the problems is we need two parties in this country.

And we have none.

But if people, I know, well, that's cool, but

we can't, for people like me giving up on the Republican Party, I am not going to declare defeat.

I am not going to be driven out of a party that I've worked for for decades.

But listen to me, that party doesn't exist anymore.

Well, but I want to bring it back, and I do believe there are people like that.

London, it's bigger than the party.

This is about the country.

The country we deserve will be no more or no less than our willingness to go out there and say this is not what we expect.

We elect people to do the duty of serving the people, not themselves.

And Republicans only care about themselves.

The people have enough of that, Bill.

But you see, Rudy's on TV every day, and he said it, and like he gets it.

He said, when we don't talk, we lose.

He said, he also came, he was very honest.

He said, this is being tried in the court of public opinion.

You see, Mueller can't speak.

The Democrats have to be the ones to be speaking now.

And they're not.

What are they going to say, Bill?

What are they going to say?

Treason is bad.

Where are your tax returns?

What do you want to do?

No child molesters.

No child molesters.

He wants to be a king.

This country was predicated on the notion that we're getting rid of the king.

Well, kind of basic.

I think there's a lot they could say.

Bob Mueller.

The fact...

I totally agree, it doesn't stick, and the fact that it doesn't stick tells you something about the lameness of the Democratic Party that they can't prosecute this case in a more effective way.

I will say, Bob Mueller's going to speak one day.

Today, Bob Mueller spoke.

He indicted Paul Manaford again.

He speaks in a pretty powerful way

through court documents.

And in the end,

he's going to bring some conclusions to bear on this president.

And we will see how much his silence weakened him when he lays the whole case on the table, which I think is going to be a lot more dramatic, a lot more devastating than anything anybody imagines.

But John, won't that matter if Democrats control the House, Republicans control the Senate?

Nothing's going to happen.

Donald Trump will still be in the White House creating a catastrophe for the president.

I'll take that bet right now.

59% of Americans don't know that Mueller has brought any indictments.

Yes, that he's found any crime.

Well, again, we're back to Democrats' money.

That's what's going on.

That's why we have Donald Trump as president, is because Americans don't know that.

I don't know what's happened to this country.

People, I mean, it is a big deal.

Well, people knew what they were voting for, Linda.

They saw what they were voting for, and they said, you know what, we don't care.

We're going to go to the city of the United States.

They saw some guy they recognized from TV who talked tough, and that's why they voted.

I disagree with that.

I think people made a conscious decision to say, we don't want any of these other Republicans.

We don't trust or like Hillary Clinton.

We're going to vote for this guy in spite of all of the issues and baggage that comes with him.

This is a problem that rests with us as individuals, with individuals.

And until we look in that mirror and reflect and critique ourselves, nothing is going to change.

Okay.

I am moving on to another topic.

I don't know if you saw this, but there was

a perfect merger for the Trump age.

Bayer has bought Monsanto.

Did you see this?

Two of the world's most evil companies.

Bayer, the German company that used to try to sell heroin as children's cough medicine and made Zyklon B.

And Monsanto, the people who made Aspartime, PCBs, DDT, Agent Orange, and of course, Roundup.

the weed killer that's killing us all.

So it's one company, same great toxins.

But they're just going to call themselves Bayer, losing the Monsanto.

And here are some of the new slogans they're trying to rebrand themselves with.

Bayer, our GMOs will make you say OMG.

At Bayer, we don't just make the aspirin for your headache, we make the chemicals that caused your headache to begin with.

Bayer, we've all got to die sometime, so squirt some of this shit on it.

Bayer, because your immune system is getting cocky.

We didn't cause your child's allergies.

We made the chemicals that, okay, we caused your child's allergies.

Notice you haven't been stung by any bees lately?

That's because we killed them all.

You're welcome.

The folks who make Roundup are teaming up with the folks who are good at rounding people up.

And if we were really evil, would we have this picture of a black woman in a lab coat?

All right.

He will celebrate the 10th anniversary of his show, Fareed Zakaria GPS, with a special this Sunday, The Two Faces of Kim Jong-un.

Fareed Zakaria.

There he is.

There you go, my friend.

How are you?

Is this for you?

Sure, you know all these people?

Of course.

So, 10 years.

Congratulations.

Time really flies.

You were just a teenager when you started, weren't you?

And I'm now, I think I have now been in every slot in this show.

Yes, you have.

Other than yours.

Well,

we will see how it goes tonight, you know.

But let's talk about the special first.

I was watching it.

Really interesting stuff on North Korea.

It seemed like it started out as something about two months ago, was it, that Trump impulsively said he was going to do this, and we thought we, wow, we may be denuking the peninsula.

Then it just seemed like it was a dinner.

And now I think it's just drinks, isn't it?

It's just kind of like, let's just have a drink and nothing too committed.

I think even Donald Trump has realized this is really complicated.

And

the North Koreans began working on the first site that is now part of their nuclear program 56 years ago.

Wow.

They have been working at this for 40 years in earnest.

They have built an extraordinary set of facilities.

The CIA estimates, there are about 100 different sites.

Remember, we used to talk with Iran that they may have three or four.

They may have 100.

They've got 60 nuclear bombs at this point, intercontinental ballistic missiles.

And Trump says he's going to do better than the Iran deal, which, of course, Iran had no nuclear weapons.

It had to ship 98% of its enriched uranium away.

There were cameras and inspectors in for 20 years, 25 years in the mines.

He's going to do better than that.

Remember, that has to be the standard.

Well, but he was going to give us health care that was cheaper better and covered everybody so it's you know he's a salesman but here's what here's what i think the point you were making earlier bill is is so important he is going to get a deal if he gets a deal that is going to be substantially worse than the iran deal yet he is going to claim this is the best deal in the history of the world and well he you know he deserves the nobel prize for it do you think that the will anybody understand i i don't see i don't understand that's what i don't get he's supposed to be the great deal maker now look we had the iran deal, which was basically you get your money back, right?

Right.

It was their money.

People think that they were.

The money was money.

He always lied and said we were just giving the money.

It was their money that we froze.

Exactly.

They got that money back, right?

Now, what did they do for that?

Allowed the inspectors in.

Now they have the money back, and the inspectors get pulled out.

Take that, Iran.

That's the great deal maker?

Well, or think about, you know, we have no new NAFTA.

He said we was going to get out of the TPP and he was going to do individual deals with all these countries.

We're going to be even better.

We don't have that yet.

He pulls out of Paris.

We have nothing.

You know, in every one of these cases, he promised he was going to do a great deal.

Even with the Congressional Democrats, I can't think of a single deal.

I mean, the tax cut was passed without the Democrats.

He's never actually made a deal.

He's just a deal breaker.

Right?

I mean, that's really what he...

And,

you know, on the nuclear tip,

for so long, we were able to be the one country, well, not the one country, but the main country with nuclear weapons beside the Soviet Union who was trying to get other people to give up their nuclear weapons.

And we were able to do that because it's kind of a hypocritical stance.

You can't have what we have.

Because it was sort of assumed in the world, we're the good people.

But now, I think a lot of these countries, Iran included, look at us like, why should we give up what you have?

You're not the good people anymore.

Look who your president is.

And I think that there, you know, the issue with the Europeans comes in.

The Europeans are sort of stunned to watch.

The United States that created this post-war world, after World War II, rule-based, free trade, open, you know.

The President of the United States is now actively hostile to that idea, so much so that he will not sign a statement with the European country.

So Macron has to say, well, we'll sign our own statement.

And you're in this extraordinary position now where the Chancellor of Germany is a greater proponent of human rights, liberty, and democracy than the President of the United States.

Who to thunk, right?

I mean that's a strange world we're in.

And I know you've been writing a lot about Europe.

You were there in Italy with Steve Bannon.

I saw that interview.

And Italy is just one of the countries now that looks like they're going far to the right.

And I think you accurately lay a lot of this on immigration.

They have a different immigration problem over there than we have in this country.

I don't think we have much of an immigration problem.

Europe, it's a different story.

And something like 55% in the last poll of European countries agreed that all further migration from mainly Muslim countries should be stopped.

That sounds like a Muslim ban that is above 50% in most of Europe.

You know, I think that the big difference is the United States is a country based on ideas and ideology.

Anyone can come in from here.

I mean, look at us around this table, right?

We come from everywhere, and if you buy into the American creed, you can be an American.

In Europe,

your identity is blood and soil.

It's all about the fact that your grandparents and your great-grandparents came from there.

So

that's what's so charming about Europe.

You go to these villages in Normandy and the same people have been the butchers and the bakers and it's wonderful.

Now imagine you're the Algerian who comes into that village.

What is the place for you in the world?

And they just don't know how to assimilate.

One of the ironies is in the United States, we do assimilation so well.

And yet there are a lot of people on the right who say, let's copy the French, let's copy the way the German.

No, no, no, you don't want to copy them.

They're creating ghettos of unassimilated people who will stay there for generations.

I don't think I've ever seen in America a woman wearing the full beekeeper suit.

No, exactly.

Exactly.

Even though there's no prohibition, you can do whatever you want.

You can do whatever you want.

In a way, you know, they're kind of lucky to live in a country where they're in the minority, because when you're in a majority Muslim country, there's a lot more sometimes laws that you have to wear something.

Look, I'll tell you, in America, assimilation works for the most part.

There are, you know, some issues, but it works so well that as an immigrant, I can tell you, my challenge with my children is to have them maintain some small piece of the old culture.

They just become so American so fast that they, you know, there's nothing, there's nothing left.

You're just desperately trying to get them to hold on to a few words, a little bit of the food.

That's the power of the American assimilation machine.

The European countries look at that with wonder.

They don't quite know how it works because it's not a government program.

It's a societal attitude.

This is a much more open country.

And what about our

immigration, and I would ask the panel of this too.

What do you think that we were talking about, the Democrats and how they should fight this battle in 2018 and 2020, and

I guess if there's still a country after that.

But it seems like Donald Trump, with his vile border tactic, and it really is vile to throw children into cages,

it's just unwatchable.

And he sort of baits the Democrats into the response of compassion, which is what that situation deserves.

But then that's all people hear from the Democrats, is compassion.

Well, and the danger, I think, is

the public, even in this country,

you know, there is a feeling that you have to control your borders.

You don't want illegal immigration.

There should be better checks on it.

Maybe there should be a slight shift between how many skills-based and how many family-based.

People feel like the system doesn't work.

And

if the Democrats keep

taking this very extreme position, I mean sanctuary cities, for example, what you're saying is that local officials should defy federal law.

You get painted in a corner.

And that's not where the public is.

I think the great danger for the Democrats is to not recognize, you have to diffuse this issue.

There are two center-left governments that are popular right now in the world, Trudeau and Macron.

If you can call Macron center-left.

The interesting thing about both of them is they are tough on immigration, which means that it's hard to get outflanked on the right on that issue.

We are to the left.

I'm sorry.

I mean, frankly, we are a 50-year low in terms of illegal immigration in the country.

We are losing more Mexicans.

We have fewer Mexicans today that are coming in than that are leaving.

But leaving the leaves in the middle of

a job of assimilation.

Well, they are facts, but they're important facts.

And part of the problem that the Democrats have, you use the word assimilation.

I've been using that word for 30 years,

and I will tell you, it's a dirty word in the Democratic Party.

We don't want to talk about assimilation.

We've got to talk about multiculturalism.

Let everybody keep their own language.

That does turn people off.

People expect that if you come here, you learn English.

Melting pots.

Yeah.

Melt.

Melt a little.

But Hispanics are melting.

Yes,

the Hispanics are perfect house guests.

You know, they're like a house guest when someone is first in our country.

And when someone is a house guest,

you know, watch what we're watching.

Don't demand that we turn the channel to watch what you watch.

Don't wanna be aware of that.

They aren't playing loud music.

They just want to work.

They just want to live here.

But immigration is not a right.

Immigration is not a right guaranteed by the U.S.

Constitution.

No, no, it is a privilege.

Yes, it is.

It is a privilege that we as citizens decide who we want to admit into our country.

And we need immigrants and we need more immigrants.

We need more legal immigrants in the United States.

We have a tremendous labor shortage right now.

And it's not just at the STEM workers.

It's people who work in poultry processing plants, people who clean toilets and buildings, people who take care of other people's people.

Can we not prioritize those jobs for our own people?

No, because our own people don't want them.

Trust me, they do not want to do it.

So Linda, then we should demand that our people take their jobs.

There are folks in rural America.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, Linda.

If I'm an employer, I want to hire the best person who wants to willingly want to.

There are folks in rural America, there are folks in urban America who need jobs.

And the fact that

you're going to tell me that we're going to prioritize other people over our own people, that's an absurdity.

Can we get back to Trump real quickly here?

The president said he was going to build a wall.

There's no wall.

We're not any closer to building a wall.

On the other side, the president never promised to rip families apart.

He didn't promise to trash the dreamers.

If I'm a Democrat and I'm looking at he's a big fat fucking failure on the one thing he promised and yet he's a thug on the other side that to me is a winning political issue.

He's not making the border more secure.

I agree with you Freed.

The Democrats should embrace toughness in border security.

The president has not done anything to make the border tougher or more secure.

All he's done is talk, which is all he ever does.

So it seems to me like this is an issue where Democrats can go on offense.

Show those pictures of unfettered cruelty and then talk about the abject failure that his immigration promises have been.

Yeah, but let's also.

Where is the wall?

We're not going to ever get that.

But breaking a wall is not going to get people out.

People come here to work.

And they come here to work because we need them and we need their labor.

And sure, Michael, with all due respect, I'm sorry.

If I'm an employer, I don't necessarily want to hire somebody who's been on disability, who hasn't worked in the last, you know, 15 months.

I would rather have somebody who's come here who sees the bottom rungs of the ladder as a stepping stone.

So you don't think Americans have seen the bottom of the ladder?

They don't take those structures.

That's proven.

You cannot get Americans to pay for the state.

I understand that, but I do not agree with prioritizing other individuals over people who live in this country who need jobs.

That's ridiculous to me.

Can I ask about the economy?

Because this economy is going pretty well.

We have to, what?

Why is that funny?

It is going well for now.

For now, right.

That's my question.

Thank you.

That's my question.

Is like, I feel like the bottom has to fall out at some point.

And by the way, I'm hoping for it because I think one way you get rid of Trump is a crashing economy.

So please bring on the recession.

Sorry if that hurts people, but it's either root for a recession or you lose your democracy.

Trump is doing everything you could possibly do to screw up the good economy.

It's like everything's going great.

And this is the great thing.

You watch Trump's rhetoric.

He stands up there and says, lowest unemployment ever.

African Americans doing great.

We're all doing fantastic.

Best ever.

But also, it's a disaster.

We've got to change everything.

America's getting robbed blind by the foreigners.

It's like, what the fuck are you talking about?

Do you have a good economy or a bad economy?

If you have a good economy, why not just let it ride?

If we have a bad economy, we'll have another conversation.

But he's making no sense, but then, of course, that is

a refrain of the Trump administration.

If you look, just I think a day ago,

Ben Bernanke

made a speech where he gave some testimony, which is really interesting.

He said, look, this economy is now the second longest expansion in post-war history.

It's at about nine, I think, nine years some.

At 10 years, it would be the longest expansion.

It's been slow but steady.

There are no great imbalances, so it's difficult to see where things would go wrong.

Economists are famously bad at predicting this.

There's this saying economists have predicted nine of the last five recessions.

So you have to be cautious.

But he pointed out, he said, the one thing you do know is when times are good is when you try to reduce the budget deficits, you pay down your debt.

you know, when the sun is shining, you fix the roof.

Every other country is doing that.

But instead, when you're in the business,

we've added a trillion and a half dollars to the deficit and we're starting a trade war.

And this is the wrong time to do it.

So he described, this is Ben Bernanke, conservative Republican appointed by Bush.

He said, this is the Wiley Coyote economy.

It's going, but at some point, these things

problems will accumulate.

So maybe you'll get your wish, but he sounded like it was more next to the money.

We have not gotten rid of the business cycle.

The business cycle still exists.

And you're right, we've been in a very long expansion.

But the fact that we have labor shortages is going to lead to either

wages that end up not just going up, but becoming inflationary.

So we need more people to get in and do those jobs.

And a trade war is about the worst thing that we could do for it.

When it's crazy, because the president, this tariff, it's going to hurt the people that voted for him the most.

Agriculture.

You talk about the trillion-dollar tax plan that they passed.

They still don't seem to hold it against the state.

No, they don't care.

But here we hear.

Because they don't care.

But here again, you have the anecdote versus the data.

No, they don't care.

Because for some of these folks, they see, okay, we got a Supreme Court justice.

Great.

He talks tough on immigration.

I think it's here's the data.

So they overlooked it.

It's the bigger problem.

It's the anecdote versus the data.

So look at the steel tariffs.

We're going to protect these steel manufacturers.

Now, the data shows that

there are lots of industries that buy steel.

So when they have to buy more expensive steel,

it has an impact on jobs.

And it's something like 20 times as many jobs will be impacted negatively as are impacted positively.

But the anecdote is

so worried.

What does that do to the overall unemployment rate?

It's easy not to care

when the unemployment rate is dropping and when GDP growth is going up.

But the moment they'll start to care is when the unemployment rate starts going up and GDP growth starts going down.

And suddenly people are going to be able to get away from the

forelike going, oh, it's all great.

I like the right thing.

They're also undoing Dodd-Frank and the Volcker rule.

So the banks are going to be let loose the way they were back in 2007.

You don't trust banks.

I don't trust banks.

And

this is not ancient history.

It was only 10 years ago that they crashed the economy doing this.

And we have a guy who's filed for bankruptcy multiple times leading this ship.

Right.

And

banks won't lend him any money, so that says something good for them.

My last question.

We only have a minute.

Ruda Giuliani says a porn star cannot be a woman of substance or a career woman.

Yes or no?

Panel?

It's a career.

What can I say?

Rudy.

That's right.

I think the

Rudy has a lot of familiarity with career women.

He's been married to three of them and had an affair with another one who was on the payroll while he was married to the second one.

So Rudy has a lot of familiarity with the virtues of career women.

Very good.

All right, time for new rules, everybody.

Rules.

Okay.

New roll, this this woman caught on video shaving her legs in the hotel pool

must show a little more consideration.

Think, lady, there are kids trying to pee in there.

Neural, someone must tell this participant in Brazil's hemp parade that if you wear the marijuana leaf costume, you don't have to mime that you're smoking a joint.

We get it.

You're a stoner.

Don't push it.

Everybody loves a guy in a weed suit.

Nobody likes a mime.

New world, President Obama has to open a restaurant,

Barack's barbecue barn, so sports teams will have a place to go when they win a championship.

And the white sports like NASCAR hockey and bass fishing can go to Trump's restaurant, Planet Peckerwood.

New Roll, people who want to mark Gay Pride Month by reading to their kid Worm Loves Worm, the heartwarming story of two earthworms who fall in love, shouldn't be surprised when their kid says, why are you reading me this shit?

And since there is now a cottage industry of children's books meant to teach little kids about LGBT issues, like the one about two male penguins who like each other, and the one about a boy teddy bear who wishes he were a girl teddy bear, and the one about a girl who likes wearing boy clothes, and a boy who likes wearing girl clothes, and a red crayon that's really a blue crayon inside.

Jesus, someone has to write a book that's more direct.

These books mean well, but kids, they're kids, they don't get allegory.

You need to be more obvious, like this book.

Uncle Steve Likes Cock.

Let's see.

I've got something to tell you.

It shouldn't be a shock.

Everybody likes something.

Uncle Steve likes cock.

Some say men are from Mars and women from Venus.

But your uncle is different.

Uncle Steve likes penis.

It's perfectly natural, nothing about it is sick.

It's just the way God made him.

Uncle Steve likes dick.

Okay, so

and finally, new rule: don't call for me to be fired for doing Uncle Steve likes cock.

Well, look,

I'm not saying there aren't some instances where people have to go, but really, geez, for free speech, this has become a terrifying time in American history, like when Canada burned down the White House.

Last week started with the removal of Roseanne and ended with the President of the United States, which used to be a real job,

tweeting, why aren't they firing no-talent Samantha B for the horrible language used on her low-rating show?

Yes, the president's right.

What kind of shithole country would this be if we just allowed people to let fly with horrible language?

Listen, you motherfuckers.

I'm going to bomb the shit out of them.

Grab him by the pussy.

Get that son of a bitch off the field.

Political bullshit.

They're ripping the shit out of the seat.

He's a pussy.

You're not going to raise that fucking price.

But you know, Fat Donnie is

not the only one who demands that everyone gets fired all the time.

We've all become too comfortable with playing the clean out your desk card.

So many things about Trump fans make me think, ugh, that doesn't make America look good.

That's not who we are.

But that is also true of the joy liberals also seem to take in vaporizing people and making every offense a hanging offense.

Yes, you disappeared Roseanne, and it sent a strong message to all the other racist Republican TV stars who suffer from multiple personality disorder.

After Roseanne was fired, snowflakes on the right and the left published full lists of everyone they've ever been offended by who should also be fired immediately.

I was the only one who made many lists on both sides.

To all those who thought to include me, it's an honor just to be nominated.

I'm often surprised how often liberals I talk to think that we're winning.

We, who control nothing.

Winning?

And I think it's because there are so many headlines that celebrate hollow victories of who we fired and who we swarmed on social media, who we slammed and blasted with our tweets.

Jim Carrey bestows Scott Pruitt with a savage nickname in latest painting.

Oh, that'll show him.

The world is healed.

Mila Kunis expertly trolls Mike Pence every single month.

Okay, Mike Pence thinks Mila Kunis is a Greek dessert.

He doesn't know who that is.

He's still going to be Mike Pence.

Ice Cube destroys Donald Trump with just one tweet.

Really, just one?

Because I checked, and Trump is still there.

Maybe you're thinking of the Environmental Protection Agency or the Individual Mandate or the Paris Accords, the Iran deal, or abortion rights.

This country is in quite a pickle.

Conservatives govern without shame and liberals shame without governing.

We have lost, liberals, the House, the Senate, the White House, the Supreme Court, Kanye.

Our symbolic victories are the only victories we get now.

They get to cut their own taxes, rip up the safety net, and make coal a vegetable.

We get to banish actors.

In 10 years, the Tea Party went from nothing to controlling Congress in the White House.

We made TripAdvisor stop advertising on the Laura Ingram show.

Liberals control the culture, yes.

But right now, wouldn't you rather control the border?

During the Obama years, Republicans converted over 1,000 seats at state and local levels.

While we were putting vaginas in formerly male movies, they were putting dicks in state houses.

The Republicans put nine new senators in office in 2014.

That was their victory.

We took Al Franken out.

They succeed in suppressing the minority vote in 34 states.

Meryl Streep got off an epic burn at the Golden Globes.

Our current and possibly permanent president can appoint Scott Bayo to the next Supreme Court vacancy.

He can pardon himself, and I wouldn't put it past him to try and cancel the next election.

But if he does, oh,

he's going to see a lot of this.

Don't, don't, don't, don't, don't.

All right, that's our show.

I'll be at the Mirage in Vegas again, June 15th and 16th.

And at the Brady in Tulsa, Oklahoma, July 7th, I want to thank John Heilman, Linda Chavez, Sir Michael Singleton, Fareed Zakaria, and Michael Eric Dyneth.

Dyson, join us down for Overtime on YouTube.

Thank you.

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

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