Ep. #462: Bernie Sanders, Charlamagne Tha God

Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

I lit the fuse and my life turns into everything it wasn't supposed to be.

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was quick.

He kept saying, no, no, no, I'm in the hospital now, but next week I'll be ready for the show.

Now, Charlie's sober.

He's gonna tell you the truth.

How do I present this with any class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

Aka Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

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

Start the clock.

Thank you very much, folks.

I'm so glad you're here.

I hope you're in a good mood.

Thank you very much.

We're hoping for a good show tonight.

It was a tough, tough week for the line.

You know, the line, the one that comedians sometimes cross that

tough week for the line.

Got a lot of work to line.

Half the country wants Roseanne to go away forever.

Half the country wants Cement the B to go away forever.

So so much for wanting more female voices and television.

Yeah.

Now, Roseanne will always be my friend, but her world came crashing down.

this week.

A series of tweets she put out on Tuesday that were just so full of racism, conspiracy theories, and personal attacks, they were described as abhorrent, bordering on presidential.

I think this is instructive.

The tweet that sealed the deal, I think we all saw it on television, and I'm sure when you first saw this, you had the same reaction I did.

I don't have a decoder ring.

I have no fucking clue what you wing nuts in your bubble are talking about.

Now, my friend Roseanne admitted that she had been admitted to a mental institution.

She has said she has multiple personalities, and unfortunately, one of them is quite a racist.

But it's also not a mystery to me how a person with mental illness could be taken in by a party that has lost its mind.

And the VJ in the tweet is Valerie Jarrett, who was one of President Obama's key advisors, and she took the high road.

She said, this is a teaching moment.

Oh, what a day for Trump supporters.

First, they lose their favorite show.

Then they get threatened with learning.

That was tough.

But, you know.

Trump responded in kind, the way he always does, by focusing on the real victim, him.

This guy could tweet about the Hawaii volcano.

He'd make it about him.

I'm orange and gassy.

Where's my headline?

Oh, yeah, he was, of course, such a whiny little bitch.

He was complaining that ABC

never apologizes to him.

Yeah, because no one in ABC ever compared you to an ape.

You're thinking of me.

And yes,

the snowflakes on the right, and yes, there are plenty on the right too, tried to drag me into this, saying I should be fired because I compared Trump to an orangutan.

Okay, obviously this is another day where we have to do explaining jokes to idiots.

Okay.

Here's why that's a dumb analogy.

It overlooks four key facts.

One, Trump is an orangutan.

Two, white people have not been subjected to a racist trope,

comparing them to apes for hundreds of years.

Three,

my offering Trump $5 million to produce his birth certificate in 2013 to prove that he was not half an ape,

which I'm sure you remember he then actually did.

Sued me, went to court to get that $5 million.

But I did that because it was itself a response to his birtherism racist bullshit.

So

that's three.

And

four, I've already been fired by ABC.

So

now of course the other person who was in hot water this week, Samantha B, apologized for her joke, which called Ivanka Trump a feckless C-word.

And Trump was furious.

He said, I am the only one who gets to talk dirty about my daughter.

Boy was he mad about that word.

Not cunt, feckless.

He has no idea what it means.

He's like, Ivanka.

Luck is not loaded with feck.

Ivanka, loaded.

Maybe in the whole history of the world, nobody has more feck

than Ivanka.

And I say that very strongly.

Yes, the man who put grab them by the pussy into grade school history books is very upset about the coarsening of the culture.

You know, Trump had much bigger things on his mind this week.

He held historic talks with Kim Kardashian.

Really,

at the White House.

This really happened.

There's a picture of it.

You can find it online if you Google When America Died.

But when you think about it, it was probably a good meeting.

They have a lot in common.

They both come from reality TV.

They both have their own brands.

They both screwed a lot of black black people.

There actually was a high-level talk today.

Kim Young-chul, who is the North Korean spy master, he was in Washington, hand-delivered a letter to President Trump trying to get the Korean thing going again.

Trump says first to the reporters, it's an amazing letter.

You'd pay me to see what was in it.

Nine minutes later, he said, I have not read the letter.

Really?

Is he Roseanne Trump?

I mean, crazy is crazy.

But apparently the letter was very polite,

but direct.

It said, if you ever want to see Milani again, place $50,000 in small bills by the base of the Washington Monitor.

Yeah, no one has seen the first lady in 22 days.

Wow.

She'll turn up.

She will.

And aren't we all going to get a good laugh?

And it turns out she ran off with the Mexican gardener.

All right, we got a great show.

Paul Magala, Natasha Bertrand, and Brett Stevens are here.

And a little later, we'll be speaking with iHeartRadio's Charlemagne Bagat is backstage.

But first up, he was the runner-up for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016.

You might remember the senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders.

You are more popular than Stormy Daniels' lawyer.

Sounds like they want you to run again.

We'll get to it.

But there's an election before 2020, and I think.

Yes, there is.

I know you have been going around saying, and I couldn't agree more, it's the most important election ever.

I'm going to ask you why, but first, a little bone to pick with you politicians.

I have been hearing since I was 18 years old, every election is the most important election in your lifetime.

So you all cried wolf on this one, and a lot of people are not going going to believe it but this one really is the most important.

Please tell us why.

It's the most important

because

we have a president who is a pathological liar.

We have a president

who has strong authoritarian tendencies, who wants to every day undermine American democracy.

You know, and in my state and all over this country, you have men and women who have fought and died to defend American democracy.

And this guy looks all over the world and he kind of likes all of these authoritarian leaders.

He attacks the media every day, trying to make it harder for them to be critical of him.

And we have a president who is a billionaire himself, who has surrounded himself with billionaires, who gave huge tax breaks to the wealthiest people in this country, and then brings forth a budget

that would cut Medicaid by a trillion dollars, Medicare by $500 billion, cut nutrition programs for hungry kids, cut Social Security, disability, a president who told the American people

that he was going to provide health care to everybody.

Remember that bill?

Cheaper and better.

Cheaper and better.

And then he supports legislation to throw 32 million people off of the health care that they have.

So when does that sink in with his people?

Because gas prices are going up because he shelved the Iran deal.

People do not have as good health care and some have been thrown off.

He's going to lose jobs because of this tariff trade war he's starting.

When does the cult of personality wear away in favor of, wait, you're actually hurting me?

What we need to do is a couple of things.

Frankly, from a political point of view, it is not good enough to simply attack Trump every single day.

What we need to do is is bring forth an agenda that working people all over this country are going to respond to.

And let me be very clear, and I've said it before, in 2016, it's not that Trump won, it's the Democrats lost.

And for too long, the Democratic Party,

the Democratic Party has been dominated by wealthy campaign contributors.

They got to open the door to people who work with their hands, people who take showers at the end of the day, not at the beginning of the day.

Open the door to young people.

And we have a generation out there of some of the brightest, most decent young people in the history of this country.

Beautiful young people.

And what we have to do, Bill, let's not forget this.

Four years ago in 2014, we had the lowest voter turnout for a midterm election since World War II.

37% of the people voted.

If we increase that voter turnout by 50%, Democrats win the House, win the Senate.

And that's what we have to do.

Okay, so.

Right.

So you mentioned the Democrats lost last time.

But your agenda won.

You may not have won the nomination,

but you talk about an agenda.

They're all behind that now.

I mean, Medicare for all.

Yep.

You know, all the people who are running for president, we kind of know who they are.

And

income inequality, all those issues.

But an agenda is not a message.

They are different.

Trump is better at messaging.

His voters don't seem to care about an agenda or anything except build a wall, lock her up.

What's the Democrats' message?

If you had to boil it down to something that would fit on a hat, which is about all people can take in at this point,

what is the Democratic message?

The Democratic message is that we need a government that represents working families, not billionaires.

An agenda that says that health care is a right, not a privilege.

An agenda that speaks to the young people and says that we should make public colleges and universities tuition-free and lower student debt.

That's an agenda that we have.

Okay, but Trump has shown that the American people, they elected him.

I understand he didn't win the popular vote, but he got a lot of votes.

And his popularity rating keeps going up, not down.

It's almost in the range of like a normal president, which is really scary, because he certainly is not that.

So they obviously don't care about so many things they used to care about, like decorum, or policy, or democracy, or freedom of the press.

So in this new arena, and he is brilliant at controlling the debate and controlling airtime.

What does a Democrat have to do to compete on this new stage?

This is a new stage.

That's a fair point, and the airtime issue is very difficult.

People say, why aren't the Democrats talking about issues?

Well, you know what?

In many cases, Democrats are, but we're overwhelmed with Trump's tweets and the absurdity of the day.

So I think what Democrats have got to do, basically,

is

go into Trump country

and talk to people who are now living in desperation.

You know, the truth of the matter is, one of the reasons, in my view, that Trump won is that he sensed that there were millions of people in this country who were ignored by the political establishment.

They are ignored by the elite.

They're working longer hours for lower wages.

They're scared to death about the future facing their children.

And he said, and he lied, I hear you.

Our job is not to lie, to have the guts to deal with the serious issues that they face, and to take on the people who have power in this country.

And

let me just mention, if I might, Bill, I'm here in LA today.

Tomorrow, you know where I'll be?

I'll be with workers in Disneyland.

who are working for one of the largest corporations in America that gave their CEO a $400 million compensation package, but are paying their workers starvation wages.

And I'm going to stand with those workers, getting decent wages and forming a union.

And later in the day, we're going to be dealing and working with folks from Black Lives Matter, addressing a broken criminal justice system, which more and more people understand needs fundamental reform.

Okay, so

you sound like you're busy.

I'll let you go with one more question.

It sounds like you have a big agenda.

And by the way, you don't look any different than the last time you ran.

So if you don't run, don't do it just because of age.

Don't let them intimidate you about that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

But

the Democratic Party is traditionally pulled apart by this battle that we saw in 2016 between the left and the center.

Hillary Clinton's a centrist.

You ran a whole different kind of campaign.

How do we unite them?

Because that's the path to victory is to unite them.

The last one to do it was Obama, who was really more of a centrist, but people saw him as a leftist because they wanted to.

I think we are coming together around a progressive agenda, as you indicated, Medicare for all, raising the minimum wage, climate change, et cetera.

And I think, frankly, that at the end of the primary season,

every person in the Democratic community will understand that we have infinitely more in common

than our differences are, and that we got to unite, we got to bring our community together to take on the most outrageous president in the history of this country.

Good luck, Bernie.

Thank you for coming by and making time.

I'll be with you if you're room again.

Okay, thank you very much.

Bernie Sanders from Smooth Out Panel.

Okay.

Hi, everybody.

All right, he is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist who now writes for the New York Times and contributes to MSNBC.

Our friend Brett Stevens is over here.

Brett, how are you doing?

He's a longtime Democratic strategist, Georgetown professor, CNN contributor, Paul Bagala.

And she is a staff writer for The Atlantic, contributor to MSNBC and NBC, Natasha Bertrand.

How you doing?

Great to see you here for the first time.

Don't forget to send us your questions during tonight's overtime so you can answer them after the show on YouTube.

Okay, so I'm going to pick up from that discussion and let's talk about never-Trumpers.

You were a never-Trumper, I guess still are.

Still am.

Right?

You actually voted for Hillary.

I did.

And

you are now a member of a party that no longer exists.

That's right.

Well, in theory, it exists.

In theory.

But

what I read this week is only 5% of Republicans have a negative view of President Trump.

So I guess my question to you is, do you then work for Democrats?

in 2018?

You've called Hillary a survivable event.

I think Paul and I would think it would have gone quite a bit better than that.

But

do you actually work for Democrats?

I work for the New York Times.

Some people say it's the same thing, but it's not.

Look,

what I'd love to see is the Republican Party rebuked by the electorate in such a way that it causes some kind of, excuse the expression, come to Jesus moment for the party.

Because

the alternative is a Republican Party that's going to continue to drift drift in the direction of France's National Front and other not just populist but bordering on fascist parties that we're seeing rising in Europe.

And we can't let that happen.

I think we're ahead of them in some ways so far.

Was anybody surprised at how quickly this party was overtaken by the Trump people?

Yes.

Yes, I mean my whole life the Republicans, you know, were the corporate party and they were for free trade, the president slapping tariffs so far mostly on our friends and allies, allies, which is an interesting thing.

Nothing can make Putin happier, by the way, than for him to be attacking the Europeans, Canadians, and Mexicans, who are our best friends.

The Republicans stood for a whole set of social and cultural values that they like to pretend to oppose on everybody else.

He's upended the entire thing.

What's been shocking to me is how quickly

the Republican establishment in Washington, by which I mean Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, all the big shots have knelt before Zod.

And Brett, it's easy for me to hang on Trump.

Brett, Bill Crystal, a few others, Jeff Flake and Ben Sass in the Senate, Senator McCain, there have been some who stood up and it takes an enormous amount of courage.

It's not really surprising to me.

It's not fun.

to be in the minority in Congress.

And the Republicans, they rode the Trump wave.

They knew that Trump excited his base so much.

And they saw the kind of, the way that he animated so many people in the way that Democrats with Hillary Clinton just couldn't.

And this goes back to kind of the shift in strategy that we are starting to see from progressives starting to run on very, very progressive platforms like Stacey Abrams in Georgia, for example, just being unapologetically progressive and liberal and not trying to pander to the conservatives in a way that Donald Trump never did.

This is the person who might be the first black woman governor, right, in America.

She won the primary in Georgia.

She beat another woman who

took the opposite approach, was going after the

maybe the people who voted last time for Trump, the working white class, maybe, you know, you've had your trip to crazy town, come back home to the Democrats.

And she got her ass kicked.

And this woman, Stacey Abrams, says, no, I'm just going to go for the base.

Just minorities, young people, fuck the rest of you nuts.

But then

something happened.

And I've worked in Georgia.

By the way, I supported Stacey Evans, who got beat by 53 points.

So this is an instructive thing for me.

But

Stacey Abrams, who won, what she said on election night, first off, Stacey Evans, the woman who was defeated, endorsed her right away.

So you're seeing party unity.

And then Abrams said something remarkable.

She said, I want to ensure that all Georgians, from farmers in Montezuma to mill workers in Dalton, know that we value them.

She went out of her way that night, actually, to put forward not wedge issues, but web issues.

I thought she did a great job of trying to stitch things back together.

By the way, it's just like Bernie did here.

I think that the distance between the

factions and the Republican Party is extraordinary.

The distance between the factions of the Democratic Party is not very great.

I mean, we were trying to pass national health care under Bill Clinton 25 years ago, and he's supposed to be a moderate.

Yeah, but if you're nominating very progressive Democrats in very red states, you're going to lose.

And I don't want the Democratic Party to seize from the Republicans

the mantle of being the stupid party.

You know, the point is to win, right?

That's the point of the election.

So, you know, Democrats think, oh, if we just turn out our base, if we turn out minority voters who didn't show up last time, we're going to win.

Guess what?

Two can play that game.

Republicans can turn out large numbers of voters that also get winners.

Yeah, but there's more of us than you.

That's what you think.

No, that's true.

And we just don't vote.

I mean, I agree.

You might be right.

We don't know.

But in Georgia, it's interesting.

The Democrats nominated moderates before, and they only got 25% of the vote, around 25% of the vote in Georgia.

And Trump's support among Republicans may be around 85 or 90%, but people who identify as Republicans are, it's shrinking.

People are leaving the Republican Party.

So if the

remember 10 years ago was the emerging Democratic majority.

Right, and Trump looked around and went, you know what, I still see a lot of white people out there.

America still has a lot of fucking crackers, and I'm going to go after each and every one of them.

But a lot of those white people who voted for Trump had voted for Barack Obama.

They are not lost to us.

Democrats do have to go after him.

I think Abrams will.

We'll wait and see.

44% of voters in America are white with only a high school degree.

How can the Democrats be the party of inclusion and exclude 44% of the country?

It's a bad way to govern.

It's a bad way to run.

And I believe this.

They have much more in common.

those working class white folks with people of color than anybody wants to let them know.

And I saw Senator Sanders tonight making a case.

I thought he did a great job.

But the issues that are the, you know, the

left issues, when you look at the polling, people don't care that much about the environment.

Even guns, which has certainly gotten a lot of publicity lately, you know, somebody like Conor Lamb walked away from that issue.

He wasn't going to touch that, the guy who, the Democrat, had won in Pennsylvania.

You know, income inequality, I know

Bernie's big issue, but voters want to be billionaires.

You know, they don't hate the rich.

I mean, I think the

mantra of the Democratic Party in 2018 or 2020 should be make America sane again.

Right, I agree.

And

why not put forward kind of purple state candidates?

Why don't we ask candidates, when was the last time you changed your mind?

When was the last time you crossed party lines on one issue?

Show us that you can get along with the other side.

I think that would be amazing, and I think it would be winning for Democrats, maybe winning or redeeming for Republicans if they could do it.

Because right now, our politics bends towards the fringe.

Healthy Democratic politics should bend to the center.

Look at Virginia.

This week, Virginia expanded Medicaid, one of the fondest dreams of progressives like Bernie, like Barack Obama, like me.

They expanded it with a Republican legislature.

Why?

Because elections matter.

The Democrats picked up 17 seats.

They almost got the majority.

And their moderate governor, Ralph Northam, cut the deal to expand Medicaid to 400,000 Virginians.

That's every liberal's dream.

So I just think that there is a way forward for progressives who also want to reach out to the white working class.

But Republicans are running on, it seems like, immigration.

That is their big issue.

That's what gets their base riled up.

They've already run thousands of ads, and it's always on that issue.

And Democrats are weak on that issue, are they not?

No, they're right on that issue, and they have to stay right on that issue.

They don't have to.

The ad should be, your next boss is going to be an immigrant and probably already is.

And it's shameful.

It's not working with the voters.

Well, but

that's a core values issue about what we are as Americans.

And one of the reasons I've said

I cannot see myself voting Republican again is this stand, this hatred, this constant bigotry against immigrants high and low.

Whatever hell is wrong with Republican Congress.

But, I mean, it's a con.

And I think Democrats should have, and probably still should, call out President Trump.

It's a con.

It's a con.

The net flow of Mexicans is from America to Mexico and has been for almost 10 years.

We've lost a million Mexicans.

We didn't misplace them.

They're going home.

Trump's wall will only slow down their departure.

If you look at what Democrats are winning on, it's what Bernie talked about.

Connor Lamb in a very, very conservative district ran on entitlements, more Medicare, more Medicaid, protecting Social Security.

He ran against that Trump tax cut, which 83% of which goes to just 1% of the wealthiest people.

And that's in a district that Trump won by 17 points.

So it's these economic issues, I think.

I do think they should call BS on the immigration stuff because it's, I think, a diversion.

Then you tell them what they're diverting you from.

I don't necessarily think that people that voted for Trump are paying attention to what he's actually doing with regard to issues.

I think that they're just focusing on the latest outrage cycle.

It's also so hard for there to be transparent reporting about anything that's happening at the border, anything that's happening in terms of real substantive issues, when you have a new tweet from the president every day and you're wondering, did he wake up?

Is he sane today?

I mean, it's just really, really difficult to keep up with all of the scandals.

And that is a major reason why he's been able to just distract everyone so much with every different thing that he has going on every day.

And that's what I think people are looking at.

Everything now about the Republican Party is about owning the libs.

It's about, you know, trolling people and distracting so that they don't see what the actual, the sausage being made.

Well,

last episode here on real time, previously on real time,

I was saying that President Trump wants to be president for life and that he literally is above the law, even though I hear every day on TV he's not above the law.

He's totally above the law.

But there's something even scarier than that.

His son, Don Jr., who I call Deutschbag von Fuckfeist.

He,

you know, I don't know if people.

I'm doing all my greatest hits tonight.

I don't know if people realize that he's being groomed already.

He's a huge star now in the Republican base.

And they're shopping a book.

I saw it in the headline today.

There it is.

Donald Trump Jr.

is sniffing around for a book deal.

I guess they don't remember that we showed the book he wrote last year, Donald Trump, kind of an introspective guy.

I read some of these, and now that we know he's looking for another book deal, I'm going to read some more.

Would you like to hear them?

These are some of Donald Trump Jr.'s deep thoughts.

You can tell by the pictures how deep he is.

Like, sometimes I like to get out into nature to pause and to reflect and to imagine where we'll put the casino.

There's a true satisfaction that comes from earning an honest day's pay and working your way up from the bottom, I would imagine.

You realize just how insignificant you really are when you look at all the stars in the sky or talk to your father.

Sometimes I worry that there is so much beauty in the world, I'll never have time to shoot it all.

People who say never mix business with pleasure haven't done cocaine off the back of a Qatari prostitute.

Stormy Daniels would be a good name for a cocktail.

If a genie ever granted me three wishes, my first wish would be, go back home, terrorist.

And we have met the enemy, and he is us.

I'm kidding, it's Mexicans.

Okay, he is the co-host of iHeartRadio's, the breakfast pub, and author of the New York Times bestseller, Black Privilege, Charlemagne the God.

Here he is.

Hey.

About time I got you here.

Hello, how are y'all?

What's going on?

Wow, it's about time I got you here.

I've been wanting you here for a very long time.

Oh, man, thank you for having me.

You are a great talker, so it always makes my job easy when I have that.

Absolutely.

I hate the fact that you out here insulting orangutans, though, comparing them to Donald Trump.

I know.

Come on.

Come on.

Come on.

Everybody in here has seen Planning of the Apes.

You know orangutans are smarter than Donald Trump.

That is very true.

Stop it.

And I think we have quite a lot in common.

One, we've both been fired.

Oh, I've been fired four times from four different radio stations.

Seven times in life, though, if you count like Taco Bell and stuff like that.

Yeah, I've been fired a few times in those places.

And it's not a bad thing, right?

I mean, it actually can be actually a blessing in disguise.

Oh, absolutely.

I believe in divine misdirection, you know, because,

you know, when they would call me in the office, they would always say, you know, we're looking to move in another direction.

And I got a homegirl, her name is Kendra G, salute to her.

She told me one time, it's not them moving you in another direction, it's God moving you in another direction.

I know you don't believe in God, but I do, so.

Yeah.

Right.

It's in your name.

Yes.

Maybe if it was in my name, I'd believe in them.

And I think we also would give the same kind of advice.

I've read in your book some of the things you would say to younger people.

I remember years ago, I got into all sorts of shit because I was taking on the idea that people in this country are always saying, live your dream, but it's always someone like at an award show.

And it's it's making kids like want to become musicians and models.

Yeah, and athletes.

Athletes.

And you have this great story about someone who is very important to you who said to you, fuck your dream.

Fuck your dreams.

Well,

I actually say fuck your dreams, you know, because, but I say, fuck your dreams when it's not actually your dream.

Because we do live in a country, especially when you, you know, you're from the hood and the people that look like you, black,

you know, that are successful are usually in entertainment or some form of athletics.

So everybody wants to run to those fields, but that can't work for everybody.

It can't.

It's just not possible.

So every now and then you need somebody to tell you, fuck your dreams, so you can figure out what it is you actually want to do.

But they told you you were not really a good rapper, right?

Yeah, and he was right.

That's why I say fuck your dreams if they're not your dreams.

You got to figure out what it is you actually want to do.

Right, and that's also something I think we both talk a lot about.

Social media, the fact that people don't really have their own opinions anymore, right?

They have to sort of check what everybody else is is saying.

Yes, they wake up in the morning, they do a temperature check.

Is it okay to think like this today?

Right.

Is it okay to like this?

Oh, this is what everybody's not liking?

Okay, I'm all right with this.

So everybody wakes up in the morning and we wait for social media to tell us how to think and that's whack.

Okay.

So let's get into the people who were fired this week.

Okay.

What do you, what did you, what were your, what was your reaction when you first heard about the Roseanne situation?

It wasn't surprising, not at all.

I mean, Roseanne has a history of racism.

She has a history of bigotry.

And I wasn't, I didn't feel sad for her or the cast or the crew.

Because when you get in bed with somebody like that, you eventually know you're going to have to deal with the consequences of their actions.

So when they go down, you've got to go down with them.

Like, they had to know that was going to happen.

Right.

Yeah, I mean, there's certainly no condoning it, but there is something about a person who is mentally problem, has mental problems.

We're leaning on that a lot nowadays, you know what I mean?

Well,

if she had just came out the day before and said, I have mental problems, I'd be like, oh, well, that's an excuse.

But this goes back a long time.

It does not excuse it, absolutely not.

No, I mean, I believe in freedom of speech, but I don't believe that people are free from the consequences of said speech.

Because...

You know, of course not.

You can say whatever you want to say.

But you can't tell somebody how to react to it.

And I don't think calling, you know, a black woman a monkey is smart when your boss is indeed a black woman.

Right.

That just doesn't make any sense.

It's horrible.

And I think what we have to also understand is that Donald Trump took great ownership of that show when it came out.

I remember him at a rally saying, this is great, Roseanne, she's something like, this is us or for us or represents us.

Well, you know, I always said about the Trump people, there's two things they hate, being called a racist and black people.

You know,

they make us so afraid to say, you are racist, because then they

get all up in arms.

But doesn't this, it kind of proves it to me, that Roseanne, you can't have it both ways.

She was your representative as the Trump voter, and now it is revealed.

as we've talked about on the show before, that the Trump voter was not really animated by economic anxiety so much as this, I want to have my country back,

i.e., a country that looked more like it did in the 1950s.

You know, it's interesting, and I tell people this all the time, when it comes to Donald Trump and when it comes to Roseanne, financially, they're going to be fine.

Even after this whole situation, Roseanne getting fired, she's going to be fine.

Some of y'all, y'all just too broke to be openly racist.

You know what I'm saying?

Right.

But sometimes you just got to, you know, just shut the fuck up forever.

Like,

if you know you can't afford to be openly racist, shut up.

Roseanne's going to be fine.

Right.

Yeah.

Well, I'm sure she's in hell right now.

And it's weird that she put herself.

So that's why it's weird that they let people like Donald Trump empower them.

You know what I mean?

Like, why are you following Donald Trump?

He's rich.

He can afford to be openly racist.

Right.

You can't.

Yeah, you talk a lot about anxiety.

Yeah.

That I found interesting that people of color live with a kind of anxiety.

You think?

Randall?

I'm trying to plug your book, man.

Okay, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I didn't say it was a shock.

I'm just saying,

I just said it was interesting the way you put it.

That way, like a kind of everyday anxiety.

Yeah, this is my second book.

My first book is called Black Privilege, Opportunity Comes to Those Who Create It.

That's out right now.

It's in the New York Times bestseller.

Thank you.

Hey, I appreciate you.

I appreciate you.

The second one is called Shook One Anxiety's Playing Tricks on Me, and that's what it's about.

It's about, you know, just me dealing with anxiety my whole life, you know, dealing with panic attacks, and now I'm going to therapy to try to deal with it all.

Because, you know, yeah, when you are a black man in America, you are constantly dealing with a sense of anxiousness.

Like even to this day, I don't leave the house without taking a shit because I don't know if I'm going to get pulled over and taken to jail for something stupid.

And if you've ever had to sit in a coal tank and, you know, needed the shit, you know why I take a shit before I leave the house.

I think it's great that you can make yourself shit on command like that because I definitely, I don't know if that's a black thing, but

I cannot.

I'm very regular.

My bowel movement is very regular.

Yeah, yeah, I'm very regular.

Really, let's pursue this line.

8:30 every morning.

I think the

Aerie explored.

So, and what about, let me ask the panel this, what do you think about the Roseanne situation and the Samantha B situation and the whole idea of people stepping over the line and being vaporized?

Well, we should be able to make intelligent distinctions between what Roseanne said, which was an example of hatred, and what Samantha B said, which was an example of outrage, her outrage at an outrageous policy towards immigrants.

So yes,

she shouldn't have used either the word she used or misused the word feckless, which is really almost as criminal.

But I get her point, which is she is furious that Ivanka Trump is participating but not suffering the moral consequences of an administration that is forcibly separating mothers from their children, something that should never happen in America.

I also think that there is a distinction to be made between what is a violation of free speech or what might be a violation of free speech and what isn't.

And for the White House to have come out and to have said immediately after Samantha Bees made this comment and said she should be fired, her show should be taken off air.

There's an argument to be made that that is a serious violation of free speech.

The administration

telling a president.

That's not fit for broadcast.

Right, that this is not fit for broadcast.

Whereas,

of course, the president was completely silent about Roseanne's comments and that was a company's decision to take her off the air for a racist comment that she made.

I don't like using the word cunt or the word pussy because I don't understand why it's an insult to call somebody something you enjoy.

I agree, especially, I mean, you know, and they keep check

and they keep changing the rules on it, you know, on all these words.

I mean, I mean, years ago you would never hear that word, and now you hear it on, I mean, Larry David has done episodes where it was all around the word cunt and so forth.

The British say it like the Queen properly says it.

It's not that bad a word.

She's like, hey, you little cunts, get over here.

She's grandkids.

You know, I mean, I just don't see it that horrific offense.

And I understand why it is a bad word and why, you know, women hate that word, and we shouldn't use it if they hate it like that.

But words do change meaning, I think, a lot.

They do.

So maybe it just changed because when Ted Nugent used that word about Clinton, Mr.

Trump welcomed him to the White House.

Roger Stone, a Trump ally, created an anti-Clinton superfact.

You know what he called it?

Citizens United, not timid.

This is Trump's close political ally.

And so that word was fine for Mr.

Trump until Sam B used it.

So spare me the self-righteousness, Mr.

President.

Right.

How many t-shirts were sold at Trump rallies that called Hillary Clinton that very word?

I mean, how many t-shirts did we have to adore?

How many times did we have to see Hillary Clinton called that word during the campaign, of course, without a peep from the Trump campaign?

So it's just all very disingenuous.

And it is, this is what we said, and it was a good joke, but how he made it about himself.

But it is about him in this way.

And Sharon, you pointed this out.

The president sets a tone, and there's a lot of social science research on this, about a social contagion that when the president says bad things about African Americans, about Mexicans, about Muslims, it increases.

There's been studies of Reddit that shows that, which never was a very happy place, it's gone, hate and increasing

way, way, way up.

Absolutely.

Hate crimes against Muslims are up 17%

since Mr.

Trump took office.

He doesn't directly cause it, but there's a social contagion.

We all learn from others, but particularly we learn from our leaders.

It reflects the movement itself, because what the movement combines is this kind of feral nastiness with relentless juvenile self-pity, and that's the president's character

in a nutshell, which is, I'm aggrieved, and therefore I want to kick you out of my country.

I'm aggrieved, and therefore I want to put down your race or your religion.

How this came to represent the conservative movement is one of the great moral disasters of our time.

And that goes back to your earlier question.

One day we're going to want a healthy conservative movement and some of us are going to have to represent that 5%, that tiny sliver, so that sometime around 1945 or I mean 2045,

there's something to stand up against.

Well, wouldn't it benefit conservatives now to stand up against the racism and bigotry and the white supremacies that has infiltrated the conservative movement?

And that's why I don't think you should dismiss Never Trumpers.

We have to do it every single day.

It's why I'm not a Democrat.

I'm not going to become a Democrat.

I'm going to remain a conservative.

But someone has to stand up and point this out and say this cannot be the movement ever.

Yeah, and stop using 100%.

And stop using politically correct terms like alt-right.

Call them what they are.

Crackass, cracker, white devil, racist bigot.

Call it what it is.

That used to be the job of the president.

And particularly Republican presidents.

when when a Klansman burned a cross in a family's home in Maryland, Ronald Reagan went to their house that same day.

He saw it in the paper, he went over there.

He was no great progressive.

What, celebrate?

He did.

He called it out.

When David Duke ran in Louisiana, George H.W.

Bush called him out.

He disavowed him.

When the terrorists bombed us, George W.

Bush, three days later, went to a mosque.

to try to educate people that it's not about us.

Frank Reagan also started his campaign purposely in Philadelphia.

In Neshoba County, I know he has a complicated history, but in a moment of racial crisis, he did stick

Yeah,

this guy called John McCain, who jeopardized his campaign to rebuke a voter who wanted to insist that Barack Obama was an Arab.

That was an instance of political courage we should never forget.

Yeah.

I mean,

he could have phrased it better.

You know, I mean, she said he's an Arab, and he said, no, he's a good man.

That's not exactly the message we want out there, but I know what he was trying to say.

Give him the benefit of the message.

I do.

I do.

Okay.

So

where's Melania?

I know it's great question.

I know it's not the most important thing, and we hope she's okay.

We hope it's not a health.

I think her husband deported her.

Well, the last time she was seen...

I think the last time she was spotted was the day of the prisoner trade with North Korea.

Mr.

Curry.

And that means

I'm not going to criticize her.

I believe that woman could have suffered enough.

I agree.

Given who she's married to, I think that's enough for anybody.

Can you imagine Donald Trump on top of you sweating on you?

I can paint that.

Metal picture.

Oh.

Sorry, weren't you just saying you sleep in the bed you make?

Okay, so

pardons.

I only have a couple of minutes, but we should mention this.

Of course, Donald Trump ruins everything he touches, but this I thought was particularly sad because pardons is one of those cool powers that a president has, to right or wrong.

It's really an act of mercy.

And of course, he's turning it into just another partisan tool to undermine our democracy.

And he has pardoned so far Joe Arpaio and Escuder Libby and Dinesh D'Souza, any conservatives who were treated very unfairly.

The Department of Unfairly.

And now he's thinking about

Martha Stewart

and

Blaganovich, who were also, who used to be on Celebrity Apprentice.

He's using it for his political allies.

I mean, he's showing them

that this is a tool that if you're a supporter and you commit a crime, I mean, hey, it's a great time to be a celebrity felon because Donald Trump may or may not, if he likes to, he may pardon you.

And this is also, I mean, there's a pattern here.

He has said that these people were treated unfairly.

Well, guess what?

He has also said that Michael Flynn was treated unfairly.

He has said that, you know, he...

Well, yeah, but

this is the kind of tactic you expect from Maduro in Venezuela or places like that.

You pardon your political...

You pardon your political allies.

You know, there was a front page story in the New York Times by my colleague Rosie Goldenson about drug addicts who share drugs and one of them wakes up and the other is dead.

And the one who wakes up ends up going to jail on charges of homicide.

This is an outrage that this is happening

in this country.

Imagine if the president used his pardon powers to help those addicts, to help them recover, instead of

having them sent to prison.

That's the sort of thing a pardon ought to be for.

Those are the sorts of people it ought to be for.

So imagine that it's for Martha Stewart is another, I mean, how many times can we say it, but it's just the most extraordinary way of misusing the power of the presidency and debasing the entire country.

Why do we keep talking to this guy like he's a president, though?

He's a celebrity in chief.

So we shouldn't be surprised that a celebrity is looking out for other celebrities.

But it's not celebrities.

It's sending a message to the people who will turn on him in the Russia case.

Yeah, it's definitely a problem.

That's what it is.

That's the offenses he has focused on, lying to a federal grand jury, disobeying a federal court order, election law violations, perjury.

These are exactly the issues Mr.

Mueller is looking at.

So this is like, he's sent a message.

This is three billboards outside the White House.

And every one of them is going to drive by and go, oh, yeah.

On that note, I have to move on to new rules.

Thank you, panel.

New rules, everybody.

Okay, new rule.

Donald Trump doesn't have to produce those 1,500 immigrant children he lost, but we are going to need to see Melania.

Just proof of life.

A photo of her holding up a newspaper.

An ear.

Here's a bad sign.

When the last time anyone saw you, your husband was holding a shovel.

New rule, these golfers who chose to keep on playing during a volcano eruption have to take a serious look at their marriages.

Let's see, hot lava, toxic gas, or an afternoon with the wife.

What do you think, Bill?

The forewood on this one?

I would.

Neural, Islamic terrorists have to come up with a new attack phrase besides Allah Akbar.

We get it.

God is great.

That's clear from the way you're jabbing that knife into people.

But why not freshen it up with some other tired catchphrase like dilly-dilly or

can you hear me now or no collusion?

Neural, if we as a society cannot get the boarding group thing right,

let's just give up.

You have a number.

Is it one?

No?

Then sit the fuck down.

We can't even get this right.

Everyone has to try and push their way up front.

For what?

It's the United Gate Agent, not the last helicopter out of Saigon.

New rules, someone has to tell Illinois, which fears fears legal marijuana will force them to retire almost 300 drug-sniffing dogs, I'll take them.

This is exactly the kind of dog I need.

Loyal, trained, and able to answer the question, where the hell did I hide my weed?

And finally, new rule, conspiracy theories have to go back to what they used to be.

Fun little stories we would tell each other when we were high.

Space aliens crashed in Roswell, Hitler escaped to Argentina, Elvis is alive and working at the IHOP.

That's what conspiracy theories used to be, but now they're the ideology of the Republican Party.

Conspiracy theorists used to be called crazy.

Now they're called senator.

Fact.

It used to be an unwritten rule of both parties that you can't just make shit up.

The old, you're entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts thing.

But that was before Republicans discovered: yes, yes, you can just make shit up.

You can have your own facts.

In fact, we just pulled a fresh batch out of the oven.

And by the oven, I mean our ass.

You know,

I never liked Rush Limbaugh, but I would take a return to 90s Eridido heads any day, because it turned out that Rush was really just a gateway drug

to which they eventually built up a tolerance and then needed something stronger.

That was Glenn Beck,

which led to Alex Jones.

And now, Republicans, you're the Alex Jones Party.

There is literally nothing too stupid and conspiratorial that you will not swallow.

Hillary, running a child sex ring out of a pizza parlor.

Sounds right.

Obama's birth certificate, fake.

Jade Helm, absolutely.

Trump Tower, the crazier it gets, the more they like it.

That's their jam.

They believe anything.

So we can stop sending reporters to diners now to figure them out.

They're not there for the breakfast.

They literally think there are clouds in the coffee.

This week we found out that 83% of Republicans either definitely believe or are unsure whether 5 million people voted illegally in the last election.

Something Trump just completely made up.

He even appointed a voter fraud commission based on his own fraud.

Hey, you remember that bullshit I made up?

I want you to get to the bottom of it.

This isn't about ideology anymore.

Trump has none, anyway.

When he decided to run, he didn't brush up on conservativism by studying Buckley and Reagan.

And his only experience with Goldwater was in a Russian hotel room.

And this isn't about actual Republicans either.

Those guys are gone.

George Bush I quit the NRA in 1995 when some gun nuts called the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms jackbooted thugs.

Bush said it deeply offended his sense of decency and honor.

But when Alex Jones says children fake their own deaths at Sandy Hook, it doesn't deter Trump from telling him, Your reputation is amazing.

I will not let you down.

They're soulmates.

You say twisted crap to crazy people?

So do I.

We should grab a pussy sometime.

The latest thing Trump pulled out of his ass is this nonsense about the FBI spying on him.

There was no spy.

It was just the Bureau checking out whether someone on the Trump campaign was communicating with Russia based on the tiny fact that everybody in the Trump campaign was communicating with Russia.

It's what the FBI does, investigation.

It's in their name.

Even the folks who believe that the world is secretly run by an alien race of shape-shifting lizard people,

They have a video to back it up.

Can't argue with that.

But Spygate, there's literally nothing, and that is so alarming because one way we measure the health of a society is by how conspiratorial it is.

Communist countries, Arab dictatorships, those places you could always

sell anything because there was no trust in the institutions.

Republicans, that's what you're doing to this country.

And

so

the only answer is that more sane people have to vote than insane people in every election.

So

tell your sane friends that the midterms are the most important election of their lives and tell your conservative friends that climate scientists are working with the Clintons to slip a chemical into the air ducts at polling places that will turn everyone who votes gay.

All right, that's our show.

I'll be at the Mirage again, June 15th and 16th, Heinz Hall and Pittsburgh, July 15th, and Oakdale and New Haven, August 12th.

I want to thank Brett Stevens, Paul McGala, DeHans Revertrand, Charlemagne Lagarde, and Bernie Sanders joining us down for overtime on YouTube.

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.