Ep. #460: Rep. Duncan Hunter, Ethan Hawke

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

Start the clock.

Right here with me,

okay,

lighting, thank you very much,

thank you, ladies.

Okay, all right, calm down, calm down.

Here's a strength.

I know I'm

only one man, Calm down.

You know things are going bad when the only good news is coming out of North Korea.

That's what I.

According to Trump, this week, though, is one you will be telling your grandchildren about.

Because three Korean Americans who you never heard of and didn't know were gone are safely home, ladies and gentlemen, and that's good.

We like that.

But

Trump met the airport at 2 a.m.

Did you see that out in the dark?

And he was very thankful.

He said, we'd like to thank Kim,

who really was excellent to these three incredible, really excellent.

He took them hostage and forced them into a labor camp.

What we here call an Amazon warehouse.

Excellent.

Kanye tweeted today, they only thought they were slaves.

North Korea Korea is in your mind.

But it was actually easier to get them back than we thought.

They wrote a check to Michael Cohen, good to go.

But now they're famous, very famous.

In fact, two of them have already been Me Too'd.

Wow.

Oh, you heard?

Me Too got another big fish.

Eric Schneiderman, you know who this guy is?

He was a big liberal hero.

He was the attorney general in New York, going after Trump, big champion of Me Too,

accused by four women of violent physical abuse.

This one took everybody by surprise.

Even the Me Too folks were like, you two?

And

his excuse was he was role-playing.

Yes, that's every woman's dream, isn't it?

I'll be Tina Turner, you be Ike.

I swear to, this is how sad this is.

This is the one area where we have bipartisanship, misogyny.

Really, the big political news this week is that Trump's amateur lawyer, Michael Cohn,

had a slush fund where he would take money in from people who wanted access to Trump, like ATT and pharmaceutical companies and the Russians, and then pay the money out to people Trump fucked at a golf tournament.

You've heard of a rainy day fun?

This is a stormy day fun.

This Michael Cohen is such a bad lawyer, his Jewish mother called him today and said, Michael, why couldn't you have grown up to be a lawyer?

Yeah, the name of this slush run was Essential Consultants.

I love this.

Essential Consultants.

There was only one of them.

They were an essential, and they did no consulting.

And their slogan was, there are some things money can't buy.

The president is not one of them.

But I'm burying the lead here.

The big story, the sad news, is that Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal.

I'm sure you heard this.

Here's who wanted to stay in the deal.

His defense secretary, General Mattis, his old national security advisor, McMaster, 63% of the American public, the Republican head of the Armed Services Committee, all our NATO allies, the UN Security Council, 94% of the experts on foreign relations.

Here's who wanted to leave the deal.

And that's America under trial.

So already

Already, Iran and Israel have traded missile fire, and Iran says they are going to restart their nuclear program on an industrial scale.

So that concludes tonight's episode of The Art of the Deal.

Kim Jong-un must be saying, tell me again why I'm meeting with this clown.

So Iranian lawmakers in parliament, this never happened in their parliament yesterday, burned the American flag and were chanting, death to America, death to America.

And Republicans here were chanting, already on it, already on it.

That's all.

All Trump does is pull out a shit.

If he was a game show host, it would be called No Deal.

Wait, he was a game show host.

Fuck are we screwed?

But no, why did he pull out?

Because of his obsession, of course, with undoing everything Obama did.

If he could bring bin Laden back to life, he would do it.

He,

oh no,

he hated this Iran deal.

He said he was sick and tired of foreigners not fulfilling their end of the bargain.

But enough about my sex life with Melania.

Anyway,

we got a great show.

We got Robert Reich and Killer Mike, and a little later we will speak with Ethan Hawk as backstage, ladies and gentlemen.

First up, he's a Republican who was the first combat veteran of either Iraq or Afghanistan to be elected to the United States Congress

three tours over there.

He's now serving his fifth term from California's 50th, Duncan Hunter.

How are you, sir?

Well, hey, how are you doing?

Happy with you, Britain.

Glad to have you back.

I'm very impressed that you showed up.

Thanks for having me.

No, well, you're a Republican.

You were a Trump's first supporter.

But a Bill Maher fan of a Washington.

I really appreciate that.

No, and I'm going to make you a deal.

So

I know you have a little campaign finance trouble of your own.

Sure.

Okay.

And most hosts would ask you about that.

I'll let that go.

Okay.

Because campaign finance is tricky business.

It is.

The Department of Justice is tricky business.

Here's my deal.

I'll let that go, but you've got to answer honestly about Donald Trump.

Okay.

Don't bullshit me about Donald Trump.

Okay.

So you're a veteran.

I am.

Right.

Three tours, right?

Three tours.

Afghanistan and Iraq.

Right.

Okay.

Okay.

As it should be.

The way they're treating McCain,

this came from Trump originally.

It's pretty tough.

He didn't like people who get captured.

And now we saw this week this guy on Fox News say, torture works.

We know it because it worked on McCain.

That's what they called him so.

That's pretty rotten.

Yeah, I'm not, now the torture thing is different, but those are bad.

You shouldn't make fun of people when they're dying.

But when you and I pass away, I'm sure some people are going to tweet bad things about us.

I think with the oversensationalism and everything being on the 24-hour news cycle and the tweets, you're going to have bad people say things.

You're going to have people say bad things about everybody that dies.

Everybody that dies.

I'm asking you about you're a veteran.

But Trump didn't say this about McCain.

Trump said originally about McCain, and then somebody in his White House said a rotten thing about who cares what his vote is, he's dying anyway.

Come on.

This doesn't bother you and other veterans.

No.

John McCain, the guy who was five years in a project.

To be honest, let me tell you to be honest.

We make fun, I mean, because we're in the military.

So it's hard to ask somebody who's been in the military and has made every crass joke known to man as bad as you can get, worse than you make.

I mean, really bad jokes.

Meaning, not bad jokes, but crass jokes sometimes.

You're right on both counts.

We get really dirty, right?

I've made the same John McCain joke with my friends, who are other Marines, right?

If I was a pilot as opposed to a ground pounder on the ground, I'd be a better pilot.

I wouldn't get shot shot down, right?

I've made that joke, but I make it to my friends on our national TV as the contender for the U.S.

presidency.

But how about

Donald Trump is a draft dodger?

He supported the war, let other people go for him.

I mean, to make fun of a guy who was tortured,

how long do you think Donald Trump would last under torture?

Not very long.

He'd probably torture his torturers talking about the election.

You know, nobody thought I could get to 300.

Kill themselves, please.

It's all right.

So, torture.

I mean, this is a big topic now because we're about to, or maybe we did already, what happened with Gina Haskell, Gina Haspel.

What's her name?

I think Haspel.

Haspel.

Okay.

She's up to be the head of the CIA.

She'll be confirmed.

And I'll tell you.

It probably will be confirmed.

I differ with McCain on torture.

But she did oversee torture back in the day when it was the Bush administration.

When it was needed.

I think when you're talking about Al-Qaeda and you're talking about ISIS,

and I don't call it torture,

let's call it really mean interrogation techniques.

We're not

on the media.

Oh, no, come on.

Our deal is we're not going to bullshit each other.

They're not on the medieval rack.

It's

braveheart.

Oh, stop.

Oh, of course.

People were in stress positions for a week.

No, I'm not saying these are all good people.

Look, if somebody was part of 9-11, yeah, they get what's coming to them.

But when we torture people, then you're a veteran.

But we don't.

If you were captured, they would torture you.

You want that for Americans?

We interrogate terrorists.

We don't do this to if we're, if those Russian mercenaries that we killed, we killed about 100 Russian mercenaries in Syria about two months ago.

That's a different thing than people that are going to put you in a cage and burn you alive.

They're going to chop your head off on TV.

That's what ISIS does.

And if they have nukes, they're going to use them here.

You're better than ISIS.

Use whatever

I'm going for way better than that.

That's what we have necessary, or that we have available to make sure that we don't get a nuke in this country or get hit again like 9-11.

I have no problem with that.

Truly, none.

Okay, well this was after 9-11 and they didn't get any valuable information.

It doesn't mean that guys still aren't trying to do the same thing now, right?

Okay.

Moving on.

Not easy to get down, are you, Congressman?

Okay.

So the military budget?

I know you're a big fan of it.

Do you go through it line by line?

You are a Congressman.

Yes, we go through it line by line.

And you think, because a lot of, I read it line by line, and a lot of this stuff, the Pentagon asks for like, we want 70 planes.

That's That's what the Pentagon is asking for, and Congress gives them 90.

Isn't that socialism when you're just making things just to give jobs to people?

No, because that's not why we're doing it.

But wait, the Pentagon, let me give you an example.

Congress is giving more than that the Pentagon is asking for.

Let me give you a great example.

In the late 90s, the Air Force did not want this crazy thing called an unmanned aerial vehicle.

Why would pilots who run the Air Force want an unmanned aerial vehicle?

So they said, no.

Congress said, you're going to have it.

It's the future.

And they foisted the predator, unmanned aerial vehicle on the Air Force.

We made them take it.

So that's an example of how you're in the military, so you're in the box, and you have no other perspective but that military perspective.

That's why we have civilian control of the military.

That's why we have a Congress.

It's why you have secretaries and you don't have generals running thing, but a civilian as the president, a civilian as the So the Congress knows better than the Pentagon what

needs.

On some things.

Yeah, absolutely.

Let me tell you one too.

We have one icebreaker that breaks ice, right?

That's important for the Arctic.

We have one.

The Russians have 45.

The military doesn't always do the acquisition stuff very well

because they only do two years at a time.

They're a northern country.

We're not at the North Pole.

We are.

We're an Arctic nation, yeah.

Okay.

But, you know, in the first six months of this year, the national debt went up to $1 trillion.

And of course, on Fox News, they're saying, wait till the Republicans take over.

That'll end.

How do you explain this?

I mean, you guys run on fiscal sanity and how everybody else

is a spender, but then when you get into office, the money just flies out the window.

So here's what happened on this.

It's pretty simple.

You had just under four times the deaths last year, last calendar year, 2017, January through December, you had almost four times as many deaths training in the military than in combat.

You had 23 or so combat deaths, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Philippines, places all over where we have people.

You had over 80 training deaths here in the continental United States.

That's crazy.

The Defense Department was chronically underfunded for eight years under Obama, period.

And you had massive training casualties now that showed how bad the equipment was, especially the airplanes, because all the good stuff's going forward and all the training stuff is getting worse and worse and worse, right?

So we had to plus up the defense budget.

And in order to get that past the Senate, that giant budget that was not funded to to vote for except for the military part, that was what we had to do.

And that's what I had to do.

So it was to save lives.

Yeah.

It was for the military part of the budget.

Yeah.

And

the Senate exacts a very high cost to get anything done.

Otherwise, they'll do nothing.

The Senate does nothing anyway.

I hate to tell you,

the budget could be a zillion dollars, which it probably will be next year.

There still will be training deaths.

But not as many.

This was getting pretty massive.

You had a massive spike in training deaths due to a lower budget.

So you are glad that Trump pulled out of the Iran deal?

Yes, I am.

Let me tell you.

So

you can look at the Iran deal the same way you look at North Korea, right?

You had a lot of people poo-pooing unilateral action, moving our giant fleets to South Korea, moving people into South Korea, getting ready for Korea war, right?

That's what we were doing.

People put that down massively.

Now we see what's happening on June 12th.

I think you see the same thing with the Iranian deal.

I simply don't trust the Iranians.

I think they have enough truth.

That's what this deal was all about.

I mean, everybody who I listed in the monologue there has said that

including General Mattis, said, I read it three times.

I doubt if Trump has read it once.

Right.

That's the president's take.

Okay.

But

he said this verification is really robust.

I mean,

they have been many inspections.

Everybody has said, even the Israelis who are against the deal have said the inspections are working.

Iran is complying

except for those places in

Iran where you're not allowed to inspect

what places are those because military installations military installations they're like super deep underground bunkers where they have the centrifuges and you've got to realize they already have enough uranium now low low-grade uranium to put on a very large missile meaning the less enriched your your your uranium is the bigger the missile you have to have they already have that they probably already have the missiles right now right and and all the jcpoa did the joint comprehensive plan of action that Trump pulled out of, that just pushed them off 10 years and not being able to validate everything, but they came out of it in 10 years.

And we paid for it.

What could happen in 10 years?

In 10 years, we could bring them into the family of nations.

That's what the.

I think we can do that now the same way he just did.

Do that now.

You mean while they're chanting death to America in the parliament?

But North America is the same thing.

But you know, you did them such a big favor because

the country is really on the brink.

The economy is terrible.

And the people there were very furious at the government, and now they're furious at us.

I don't think so.

Of course it is.

I think they have seen what the Iranians have done with the money that they got from going into the JCPOA, buying arms, supporting Hamas and Hezbollah, doing very bad things with the money that we, as taxpayers, gave them.

That's what the Iranians have been doing with the money.

I think the people in Iran want their crazy religious government to go away so they can be more like us.

And they're happy to have us help them in any way possible.

And your method is to strangle them economically.

That's what's going to win them over.

Yeah, the government.

Okay.

Worked in North Korea.

I mean.

Okay.

So

why are there so many Russian connections with the Trump administration?

And do you worry about democracy being in trouble around the world and here at home?

I wish I had an answer for you.

It's strange.

And I think Trump had a lot of sleazy people working for him that he didn't necessarily know.

I don't think he knew that Cohen had all of these side deals i don't think that he knew that manafort had all of these side deals really because i i don't think trump's down in in their business dealing saying i want to know exactly what you're signing for but it seems like everybody had some connection with russians and all these meetings with russians and all the lies about the russians everything comes up russia russia russia russia like marsha marsha marsha

lots of money coming in from russia and i think that's what it is they have the money you don't think there's any connection there you don't think it's a little collusiony?

No, I think

not with Trump.

But I think you had...

No, not with Trump.

Not with Trump.

I don't think Trump is a good idea.

But would you turn on him if that was the case?

I mean, you're enough of a patriot to have joined up and fought for this country overseas in two theaters.

If it turned on him.

If you want to compare, though, all of these different things that we see in the media right now with the actual payments made to the Clinton Foundation.

Let's stop it.

Come on.

Let's go to the Russian state.

Just stop.

Stop the bomb.

That's not a talking point.

But that's not a talking point.

Those are real things.

You had

a investment in the Clinton Foundation.

Oh, for fuck's sake.

No, but we did.

I can't even.

I can't even.

Well, you know that's bullshit.

Talk about that.

You're breaking my deal.

You're breaking the deal.

No, don't.

You are breaking the deal.

Because you know that's bullshit.

You have nothing straight up with Trump and the Russians.

Nothing.

Nothing.

You had these kind of sleazy guys around him that are now getting

in trouble.

But Trump is not.

I don't think Trump knew what was going on.

Okay.

He's the smartest guy in the world.

What's the dumbest guy in the world?

But if he should he testify?

Bill Clinton had to testify for four hours about the blowjob.

Shouldn't he

shouldn't Trump have to answer questions about a foreign power meddling in our government?

No, I don't think he should in this case.

Really?

Yeah.

No, I think the DOI.

And that's not just partisanship.

No, I think it's a lot of people.

You used to be the rule of law people.

Remember the rule of law?

Until the law gets political and the Department of Justice has gotten political.

So it wasn't political under it wasn't political under Clinton, but now it is.

And Mueller's the dirty guy in Trump's.

It's an executive branch.

The Department of Justice is an executive branch

service, meaning it's not under Congress or anything.

It's under the executive branch.

It's not in the service of the president, it's in the service of the nation.

No, but it's in the executive branch.

He appoints the Attorney General, right?

So the Department of Justice is under Trump, kind of, right?

There is no oversight for the DOJ.

No, that's not the case.

The Attorney general who he appoints oversees the Department of Justice but it's a separate entity that's no true but it's in but it's in the executive okay like the Department of the Interior it's the same kind of thing

thank you Congress you're a brave man to come here

I think you're a great guy I really hope you lose your next election because I know you're wrong about everything

hunter but thank you for your service

all right let's meet our panel

I don't know what to tell you.

All right, here's our panel.

He is the former labor secretary, who is now a professor at UC Berkeley, and his new book is The Common Good.

Robert Reisch.

And he's the activist who raps as Killer Mike for Run the Jewels.

Michael Render is over here.

All right.

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

I'm going to start with this.

Almost 60% of the people on the latest poll in America say things are going well.

Now, you have to not care about democracy, Russia, corruption, the environment.

I can't imagine how many people would say things are going well if we didn't have a jerk in the White House.

I mean, 90% of Americans would think things are going well.

Well, is is it, I know it's always the economy stupid, but are we a people now who only care about money?

Because that is the only thing that's going well.

Rappers seem to care a lot about money.

Everybody cares about it.

Absolutely.

I think that we're caring about money to the point that we're just joining teams and we feel like our team is winning, so it's okay.

But overall, people aren't doing well.

People are having to get more jobs.

People are getting lesser payer jobs and double working and not spending enough time with family.

So I think people are

in the part of a relationship where they don't want to admit this chick ain't for me.

I think that's right.

Well, we'll see.

Bill, the official rate of unemployment is down to 3.9%, but that does not

include all the people who are working part-time, who'd rather be working full-time, and all the people who are too discouraged to look for work, and all the college graduates who are working in jobs that they're overqualified for, and all the part-time workers who don't know where they're going to get their next job.

I mean, it really is a very rough economy right now.

Is there going to be a reckoning?

I mean, what do you foresee in the next year or two?

You're a great economist.

I think

in October 12th next year,

you're really happy.

You're right on the date.

Watch out.

No, there are a lot of danger signs right now.

Stocks are way overpriced.

There are problems.

You know, every country, every major big boy country paid down their debt now that things are good.

Things are pretty good around the world, except this one.

And we just exploded the debt.

I mean, we're just talking about it.

It is something that is potentially a huge danger.

And Republicans, you know, they've been talking about this ever since.

You know, when I worked for Bill Clinton, all we heard every day was you've got to get the deficit down from the Republicans.

And you did, yeah.

We got it down to zero.

I want to talk about a subject that is.

I want to talk about a subject that is not in the news this week, which is guns.

Because you can never talk about guns when it is in the news.

Yeah.

You know, in those rare weeks when we're not having a mass shooting, this is the time.

We're in between shootings.

Let's talk about it now.

Yeah.

Okay, because you got into a little trouble when you were on NRA TV, and you said it was that walkout day when the Parkland kids were walking, we were having a demonstration all over the country.

Kids walked out of school.

And you told your kids, we're a gun-owning family.

Don't walk out of that school.

We're not doing that.

And I said the next week, that's perfectly your right to say it.

Okay, I'm not going to start on the PC nonsense of not being able to speak your mind and diversity of thought, but we should have diversity of thought.

And I think liberals are going to have to come to terms with the fact that there's a racial component to this debate.

Oh, yeah.

Please,

Amir Loggins and Christopher Petreller wrote about a week after my time on the Whipping Post about African American and gun ownership.

They wrote an article in the Washington Post that said killer might be right might be right.

And it specifically highlighted over the last three or four hundred years how gun laws were not only used against African Americans and indigenous populations, but created to control them.

Going back to the 1600s, if you had a gunsmith store, you were any type of metalsmith, you could not work legally on an Indian's gun.

Fast forward, they had slave patrols.

Well, no, not slave patrols, because slavery was over.

They had literally,

they deputized all white citizens in Florida to be able to go into black households and take guns out arbitrarily, which lends itself to

the guy, I forgot his name, who was over the Department of Justice saying that Anglo-American history was law enforcement.

So pretty much if I'm a white man in America, you're telling me that by owning a gun, I am a part of law enforcement.

What happens because of that?

You kill black children.

because

their music is loud.

What happens when you're in that involved?

You track a black boy behind a building, you engage him in a fight, you begin to lose, you murder him, and then you are let off the hook because of staying your ground.

At the same time, a black woman named Sawatu Solomon Ra, Solomon,

is in Detroit.

She is in an argument as people get in all the time in Detroit and Atlanta and towns and other places where cars and people are involved.

She feels as though she's threatened.

She's about to be hit by a car.

A car appears

about to ram her.

She pulls an unloaded pistol, makes a threat, same way they tell you to do this.

If you see a bear coming, just make, you know, make whatever is threatening scared of you.

She's now in jail for two years while seven months pregnant.

She didn't engage.

They were engaging one another.

She didn't track a child.

She didn't murder that child.

She's not free.

So what I was saying on NRA TV and any other TV that would have heard me is that for African Americans to align themselves with the gun law lobby, stop and have a conversation with your allies and say this.

These laws are going to affect us worst and they're going to affect us first.

If you put more police and chill in school, you're going to see more African-American children engaged by police in a violent manner.

The same way a little girl was slammed out of her desk, the same way a little girl was slammed at a pool party.

And I'm simply saying to our allies, wait and let's talk about it because laws that are introduced are going to affect my community worst than first.

And I'd be a fool as a black person.

Isn't it the case that the police?

don't always show up

in the poorer neighborhoods?

They're not going to show up in poorer neighborhoods.

They're not going to show up in rural neighborhoods because we underfund our police forces.

They lack the training they properly need, and we don't have the type of officers we need in the community.

I couldn't agree with you more in terms of equal rights.

I mean, let's face it, this is not a country that has distinguished itself with regard to equal rights on racial basis.

But there's a difference between that point, I think, and

maintaining that we have to get rid of assault weapons.

We've got to have universal background checks.

That's absolutely critical.

This is,

when you say this, absolutely.

Why is that critical?

Yeah, why is that critical?

Why is that critical?

Because one of the problems that gun people have with liberals talking about guns is that liberals don't know what they're talking about when they're talking about guns.

At all.

I'm not a gun expert.

I don't like guns.

I've said many times I have a gun because self-reliance.

Okay, and the police might not get there, yada, yada, yada, yada.

But I mean, there was, I think, only 400 deaths from all types of rifles last year.

Absolutely.

I don't know if that is the key issue.

It's a big applause break for liberals when you say assault weapons.

But

the Virginia Tech shooting was the biggest one ever.

I think.

That was a handgun.

And you're saying to a population of people, and I know you will understand the mean of this.

You're saying to a population of people, this guy's a tyrant.

You're living under the tyrannical times.

and you're comparing him to Adolf Hitler.

When you do that to my community, I must take it seriously.

I must take it seriously because not only am I seeing gun violence around crime and poverty in my community, I'm seeing officers of the state murder my children, murder my women.

So when we start to say tyranny could never happen, if you're African American, tyranny is happening now.

Not happening,

not potentially happening.

We are being murdered murdered at a higher rate and engaged by agents of the state.

And when we say assault weapons, we ignore the fact that the Second Amendment says, in case of tyranny, if a soldier or a cop can own a version of an AR-15, I'm not comfortable in a country where I'm being asked to de-arm and they are not.

Well, here's what...

Let me make this say.

In terms of assault weapons, I'm not...

There are no such things also.

There are rifles that look scary and they're weapons.

They were defined in 1994 in the assault weapons ban, which went into effect.

And I was there, and all I know is that for the 10 years from 1994 to 2004, when the Republicans got rid of the assault weapons ban, there was a 24%,

there was a 42% drop in mass killings defined as killings of five people or more at the same time.

Now, you can define assault weapons any way you want, but I am just telling you, we had a law.

Let's go back to that law.

But we come right back around to law and what law looks like when applied.

In 1994, we also had a crime bill.

That crime bill made five grams of crack, which is this big, equal to a half a brick of cocaine.

I saw tons of black men and women wiped off the streets with sentences they didn't deserve simply because the leaders in the African American community didn't say to their allies, stop, wait, let's see how that is going to affect me first.

So this is a nation of laws, but again, to African Americans, it is going to affect you first and worst if we simply jump on the bandwagon and say pass all the laws.

When you talk about tyranny, let me just say as an not an African-American

I've been saying for a long time that Donald Trump is bringing fascism to this country.

Madeleine Albright wrote an out-bed in the New York Times a few weeks ago saying the same thing.

She said fascism is coming.

Okay, you know, the shoe's on the other foot now.

If you really believe that Donald Trump is an authoritarian leader capable of using force to suppress the opposition, I wonder if liberals are going to be rethinking their feelings about guns a little bit.

Well, but, yes?

Bill,

I mean, you know, you've got bottom feeders like Roger Stone and some of the other people associated with Trump who have been talking about a civil war if there's an impeachment.

Well, I'm sorry.

If we don't stand, and I'm talking about progressives, liberals, people who care about this country, if we don't stand for the rule of law, we don't have anything left.

Right.

Okay.

I don't know why that's...

I'd like to say, please, for those who may be interested in the Sister Sawatu's case, free Sawatu.org, please go, please support her.

Let's get a pregnant woman out of jail and home with her family.

Okay, so I don't know if people realize, but the 2018 election is really underway because we had primaries this week, I think, in four states, was it?

Yes, the process has begun of really picking the people who will be on the ballot in November.

One of them in West Virginia was Don Blankenship.

You know who this is?

The billionaire mine owner whose mine killed a lot of people.

He went to jail for it.

So he thought, I should probably be a senator.

He didn't win, but I have to show you his campaign ad because this is real and it's just too fucking funny.

Politicians are running a lot of crazy ads.

They blew up the coal mine.

and then put me in prison.

Now they're running ads that say the coal mine blew up and I went to prison.

There's no surprise there.

But if you want jobs, if you want to end the drug epidemic and you want to protect the unborn, you need to vote for me.

Swamp Captain Mitch McConnell has created millions of jobs for China people.

While doing so, Mitch has gotten rich.

In fact, his China family has given him tens of millions of dollars.

Mitch's swamp people are now running false negative ads against me.

They are also childishly calling me despicable and mentally ill.

The war to drain the swamp and create jobs for West Virginia people has begun.

This is.

And

that's the one they put on the air.

Would you like to see the outtakes?

The ones that...

Okay.

Here's the one that didn't make it to the air.

Hi, I'm Don Blanketship, and I'm tired of Paul Ryan.

He stole my ladder one time.

Vote for me or I'll throw a rock at your house.

Maybe you heard that I was in prison, that I'm not crazy, but you know what?

I'm also stupid.

I love cold country.

My lungs are so black I once had the hiccups and a canary flew out.

Chinamen have been stealing our jobs and saucer men have been abducting our cattle.

Obama says when mine leaks into groundwater it can cause intellectual impairment.

But I drink mine water all the time and I'm fine and I drink mine water all the time and I'm fine.

Are you tired of hearing the word corruption?

Me too.

It's long and I don't know what it means.

Whenever I see a map, I put a line through Canada and write Pussyland.

I once hit a crackhead with my car.

I don't know if he's dead, but I do know I'm wearing his shoes.

I spent a whole year in jail, and one time when I woke up, I thought someone had drawn a dick on my face.

Turns out it was just somebody's dick.

Do not let anyone ever, ever, don't ever tell you how to vote.

Vote for me.

I'm Don Blanketship.

All right, he is a big-time movie star.

I'm a big fan.

His latest film is called First Reformed.

It's terrific.

Opens May 18th.

Ethan Hawk, ladies and gentlemen.

Ethan Ethan Hawk.

Hey.

Thanks for asking.

Finally got you.

Oh yes.

I finally got you here.

It took a long time.

I'm such a big fan of yours.

I would say I would see you even in a bad movie, but you don't ever do a bad movie.

Well I've done some bad movies.

Like what's a bad one you've done?

Well why would I bring it up on television?

I mean I like the way you think.

I was almost on the show for the movie Goodkill.

I loved that movie.

Yeah and that movie was it's a strange movie because it doesn't have any friends, that movie, because it's about the drone program, and I play a pilot and you know, doing all these drone strikes and the effect that it has on the pilots.

And the left hated that movie because it was anti-Obama, and the right hated the movie because they perceived it as anti-military, and so nobody cared about it.

But it's a very smart movie.

It's a very, well, that's the bigger problem: that smart movies of any kind don't have fans.

Movies, to me, there's only like two kinds of movies: the Blockbuster, Robots and Monsters,

and then movies like this that I see in a hotel room.

And you have to seek those movies out.

You really do.

And that's one of the things that is,

I've noticed more and more is that we're all actually only as good as our time period.

We're only really as good as our community and our surrounding.

When I think about the movies that I grow up watching,

take One Flu the Cuckoo's Nest or something, like a movie.

The movie's a great film, but it was made by a studio.

Studio put it out in the malls.

Everybody went to see it.

It got awards.

But now that's an art film, or I don't even know if they would make that film.

They wouldn't.

They wouldn't.

Because it's got a sad ending.

But

it's a strange thing.

The more they feed people popcorn, the more people just want popcorn.

Well, I guess it's either the robot movies or the ones that win the awards that people don't see.

I mean, I finally caught up to a fish called water.

No.

A fish called Gwanda?

That's a long time ago.

You finally caught up with a fish called Guanda.

The one that won the shape of water.

Shape of water.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Thank you.

And

the shape of what.

And I said on the show,

I said, I think I'm going to hate it.

I didn't hate it.

I thought it was kind of...

You like the fish better than you thought you would?

Well, I...

I mean,

first of all, it's an old story about a woman who falls for

King Kong, Beauty and the Beasts, Quasit Moto.

Men are so bad.

Women.

What was that?

Swamp movie?

Creature from the Black Road.

Yeah, Creature from the Black Road.

And it's always the same thing, that men are so bad that women will actually go out with a monster or an animal or quasimodo, a deformed person.

Anything regular than my husband.

Just be nice to me, and I will go out with you.

I will fuck a fish before I...

Okay, so, but

let's plug the movie you have coming out.

See?

It's called First or Fourth.

Yes, it's terrific.

I saw it.

I loved it.

Yes, because again, it's a movie.

You know, I love movies where the character, where you see why somebody changes and it's realistic.

Because that doesn't happen a lot, even in life.

So in this movie, you play this pastor, right?

I'm not going to give too much of it away, but you give counseling to a guy who is...

almost on the verge of being what I would call an echo terrorist.

I mean, he is very...

He is on the verge of that, yes.

He's in a serious discussion.

Very serious.

The fact that the planet's on fire.

Right.

He doesn't want to bring a child into this world.

How do I explain to my daughter that I brought you into a world that's on fire and nobody cares?

And your character, a pastor, and you know, religion very often is not on the forefront of fighting for the environment,

becomes an environmentalist of sorts.

I mean the movie's about more than that, but that part I thought was just terrific.

Well, it's written by Paul Schrader, who wrote Taxi Driver, along with many other great, great films.

And he's, yeah, he's...

What I love about it is every now and then a writer, a really fine writer, can give voice to something that we're all thinking about.

It's like an unanswerable question.

It's something, you know, when you have these thoughts in your head and you're upset and you're watching the TV and you hear people arguing and

you want to believe in God and you have faith and you're watching the world and you can't make sense out of it.

And art, a great song, a great piece of music, a great movie, can ask the question that will vibrate within you.

It doesn't give you an answer.

It just gives you access to your own voice.

And I think Paul did that with Taxi Driver,

and he's done that with many films.

And this

felt like an honor being a part of this movie because he's speaking to right now.

Where is our...

We call ourselves a Christian country.

You hear that spoken about a lot.

And what are we asking of ourselves in regards to leadership and stewardship of God's earth, right?

And that's a very,

it's a serious question.

Now, why did God bust his ass to make this beautiful planet for six days only to have us rat fuck it?

Really is the question he's asking and it's

it's a question and it's a question how that intersects with depression right how that intersects with love and hope where do we carry hope where do we carry despair what

what's worth fighting for one of the things that's super interesting about the movie is my my priest he's he's working in an old

parish that used to be a part of the Underground Railroad, right?

And he gives these little tours about the Underground Railroad and we all come to view social activism or even zealotry of what those, you know, the abolitionists were risking their lives and people thought they were crazy, the same way they might think an eco-terrorist is crazy now.

And it's an interesting, Schrader puts my character in a really interesting position because all day I'm talking about these abolitionists and how much with the benefit of time we respect them.

Well, what do we, you know, we were easy to write off these die-hard environmentalists, people that are willing to to hang themselves from trees or stand in the front of a tank that, you know, there's kids in standing rock that don't have good water.

You know, we all are watching this happen.

And what are we willing to do about it?

You know, and we're so grateful to those abolitionists now.

Well, what are we doing now?

It's a good question.

It's a great question.

The other movie I saw you in

is a documentary called The King.

It's about Elvis Presley.

I want to ask you about this too, because the question of cultural appropriation comes up.

I mean Chuck Deason and a lot of people are in it.

It's a really interesting movie about the life of Elvis Bright.

It's comparing the life of Elvis

the 50s to now, basically equating it with the American journey, starting as a spiritual beauty, you know, after the war.

Everything's beautiful, it's got hope.

Well, on the back of black music, makes a lot of money.

You know, then kind of joins the military, starts thinking like a military man, doesn't, you know, starts prioritizing money in such a way that he winds up in a jumpsuit, unable to go to the bathroom on a heart attack, you know, on the toilet, right?

And he, the Jarecki, the director, is kind of equating that to Trump.

But what about the question...

Yeah.

Who knows?

Why?

What about this question of whether we can culturally appropriate?

I mean, some people say it's okay, that everything is out there, and some people say it's not fair.

There are people in this movie who are not happy with Elvis Presley for stealing black music.

What do you think, Mike?

I think cultural appropriation, whether it be jazz, rock and roll, and now rap, according to any

people, it's going to happen because the largest society is, of course, dominant white culture.

But Elvis really let us down when he could have stepped up for things like the civil rights movement and he punked out.

And the reason I say he punked out is because people like the Stones, people like even Zeppelin and Sabbath, not only accredited black musicians, they brought them out on the road, and they stood up at times they deserved to be stood up for.

That's all he had to do.

You know, he stole, you know, Krudip's music for that's all right, Mama.

You know, that's Krudip's song.

And he could have given the guy credit.

He could have had black musicians play in his band.

He could have given Chuck Berry a bit.

That's why I listened to the mother.

So he let himself be called the...

Wait, that's why what?

That's why I listen to the Armin brothers.

Yeah, I was more into Johnny Cash and Elvis.

I have an uncle who loved him, but I saw him the same way even as a kid.

I was like, he's not, he don't like us.

And, you know, years later, it proves,

no disrespect to him, but I feel kind of like he kid rocked us.

Like, I thought Kid Rock was a totally different dude.

And then when he started taking some more conservative views that were directly against the guy that I thought I met, you know what I mean?

That's no diss to him.

You have every right to think like that.

But if you're going to do our music, if you're going to, say, for instance, do hip-hop or rock or blues, when the people who create that, the culture who creates that, when our ass is on the line, step up and be there, you know?

So you're a Bernie guy.

Yeah, I still am a Bernie guy.

I talked to him this morning.

But you talked to Bernie Sanders this morning?

Yeah, he called you and said, hello.

I said, hello.

Mike, this is Senator Sanders.

And I was like, I have you as OG Bernie Sanders in my phone.

Are you joking right now?

No, no, no.

I swear to God, I'm my children.

First call of the day.

First joint, first call, Bernie.

What was he calling about?

You know, we have races coming up in Georgia.

You know, we haven't had a Democratic governor in Georgia, you know,

since the state flag changed from a purely conservative, I mean, computerly Confederate flag to a Confederate light.

And

we have a strong chance of getting a Democrat in there.

And, you know, he was just asking and we're going back and forth.

That never called me.

I was for him.

You emailed me at three in the morning.

I also was smoking a joint den.

Thank you.

So, but after Bernie lost, I mean, you didn't really switch over to Hillary.

No, I did not.

And I'll tell you.

You tell me why that, because you must admit that she would be a better president than the person we got.

My aunt would be a better president.

Okay, so

why in a world when there are only two choices to make?

Well, there weren't only two choices.

But at a certain point, there were.

But I saw a guy get robbed, and for all that was moral and good about me, I couldn't unsee that.

Really?

I couldn't.

I swear to God.

And this is the thing.

He got robbed by Hillary?

Yo, he got robbed by the DNC.

Like, I saw that on the ground.

They would let other surrogates in, they would hold us out.

You know,

politics is a dirty game.

Gotcha.

People have played it a lot dirty.

I told people after the race, go home, go local, stay progressive.

Birmingham, progressive Democrat is now in office throughout the South.

Doug Jones ain't progressive, but he got in.

We did a great job on the ground of making sure that progressives who were Bernie Crats got in office.

If you look at Newark, I don't know if he supported Bernie, but you have Ros Baraka in office now, and activist is now the mayor of a city.

What I don't regret about not voting Hillary is since then, I have seen Bernie active.

He's been at Georgia Tech giving speeches.

He supported Senator Fort, who ran for mayor of Atlanta.

He has been active on the ground, and I guess Hill is still looking for the hot sauce.

Like, she ain't been on the streets.

She ain't been in the streets, bro.

You got to be in the streets, bro.

Let's hear from her old boyfriend.

I supported Bernie as well in the primary.

And that was hard because I worked with Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton, and I was part of that administration.

In fact, I even, when she was Hillary Rodham, He'd been among the

people.

I dated her once.

Yes, I said, her old boyfriend.

Yeah, I I know.

I'm not going to say any more about it.

But I supported Bernie because I believed in what he was saying.

But the minute he lost that primary, I said, look, we're in a winner-take-all system.

And anybody who doesn't vote for Hillary Clinton is in effect going to vote for Donald Trump.

And that's the thing.

All right, wait a minute, President.

I got one last question.

Cynthia Nixon is running, used to be on Sex in the City on this network.

She's running against Cuomo for the governorship of New York, and she has a plan for black folks to have the pot trade just the way we gave casinos to the Indians as a form of reparations.

Brilliant idea.

And I'll tell you what.

I like your thoughts.

Yeah, bad word usage and reparations because reparations is a sensitive word because I feel as though African Americans deserve real reparations from the United States.

The Connor Bill HB 40 should have been studied.

And we need land.

We don't need just education and health care and no shade.

But we need physical land, just like land lotteries were given.

But in terms of drug war reparations, we deserve all the drug war reparations because we have shouldered the burden of the drug war.

That's true.

Mike, I think that this is so, her idea,

with all due respect, it's so demeaning.

Why not if you're not?

I don't feel good.

No, I wouldn't.

But I feel bad.

If you want reparations, let's give black people a piece of Wall Street.

No, we'll golden this.

I'm not against that, but I mean,

I'm talking about drug war reparations.

I don't want you to just give me some of Wall Street because it could fall tomorrow, according to what you say.

I'm saying physical ownership

of an industry that's going to boom like alcohol, Mr.

Wright.

That's what I want.

I want to own the cup.

I don't want to be a part of the world.

I want the cup.

And we deserve it.

We are serving in the time we're serving alone.

We deserve to own 50% of the marijuana market.

We'll partner with you.

I just asked it for after the show because I know you're holding.

Okay, it's time for New Rules, everybody.

Thank you, panel.

I didn't get in my joke.

She said, she called me this morning.

I'm the man out here.

All right, New Rule hockey fans must admit there's a fine line between enjoying the NHL playoffs and watching homeless people beat the shit out of each other.

New Roll, since they're so close together, Cinco de Mayo and Mother's Day must be combined into one holiday called Cinco de Madre.

That's where mom gets breakfast in bed that consists of a pitcher of margaritas and then kind of gets flowers when she wakes up in the rose bushes.

Neuruul, someone has to tell these members of the neo-Nazi Nordic resistance movement, you look like waiters.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Heil Hitler, can I get a refill on the iced tea over here, please?

New rule, I don't want to watch you, DJ.

You call it performing, I call it pressing play.

Take away the lights and the smoke machine, and it's you making a mixtape.

You want to entertain me by pushing buttons?

Go make a frozen daiquiri.

New rule, someone has to inform Florida Congressman and Trump Askiss or Matt Gates that this isn't a selfie.

It's a go fuck your selfie.

And finally, New Rule, New York City has to stop exporting its garbage to the rest of America.

The infamous garbage barge, the train of sewage sent to Alabama.

And worst of all, now the city's most toxic trash has been carted off to Washington, D.C.

No, New York is not sending us its best people.

It's a great town, but it also breeds a certain type of obnoxious in-your-face meathead that used to be safely quarantined by the lack of decent pizza west of the Hudson.

But now they've gotten loose and taken over the whole country.

Trump, Little Trump, Giuliani, Michael Cohen, the Mooch,

the Mnuchin, big personalities, colorful characters, guys who eat on the phone.

Human steamrollers who would man spread on a life raft.

What the heartland used to call assholes.

And someone from real America has to tell me why you like these guys now.

How did the salt of the earth people get hooked up with the salt in the wound people?

It's like watching the country music awards hosted by Andrew Dice Clay.

What happened to your values?

What happened to good manners and monogamy?

You're the my word is my bond people.

These guys lie just to stay in practice.

You're all about an honest day's work.

Trump watches TV until noon.

You're frugal.

They spend like identity thieves who got a hold of your PIN number.

You're stoic.

Trump's a whiny little bitch.

Well, here's my theory.

You didn't like it that the country had been taken over by liberals and feminists and elites, whatever.

So you were feeling vulnerable and disrespected.

So you brought in some muscle from the East Coast for protection.

And now you're married to the mob.

Because that's what this administration is, a protection racket.

That's what freaked out Comey about Trump.

He had served Democrats and Republicans.

He never worked for childish Gambino.

He couldn't believe it when Trump said to him, I hope you you can let this go.

Like the health inspector just found a finger in the linguine.

People call this presidency a reality show.

It's more like a Scorsese movie.

Everything Trump does is modeled on the mob.

When he was accused of sexual harassment, he brought in Bill Clinton's accusers to sit in the gallery at the debate, just like Michael Corleone brought Frank Pantengli's brother into court.

Who does Trump surround himself with?

Disposable lawyers and idiot members of his own family.

Who's his worst enemy?

The FBI.

Where does his money come from?

He's in construction.

Forget about it.

He's so much like a Don, his name is literally Don.

What part of this isn't mob-like?

They're using a legitimate front business, in this case the White House,

to enrich the family.

He's got a consiglieri who says things like, men are disposable, but a fine woman like Ivanka?

Who's writing this dialogue?

Mario Puzzo?

Women and children.

They can afford to be careless.

But not men.

Trump had a personal Luca Brazzi-like bodyguard.

He's got the Jew bookkeeper.

He's got the up-and-coming good earner, Scaramucci, who's cut from the same cloth as the Don, Rayon.

He's even got the fat guy from New Jersey, who he keeps around to make himself look thin.

And Joe Pesci is the campaign manager.

Oh, and of course, Fredo.

Fredo, who they send to handle little things like peace in the Middle East.

And then there's the muscle end of the family.

Last week on Fox, Giuliani said, Michael Cohen did his job.

He made it go away.

Made it go away?

That's what a fixer does.

He makes things go away.

That's why Cohen always has the look of a rat that can't get out of the toilet.

And I must say, as someone who never liked Donald Trump even before he got into politics, his being president has been quite a revelation.

I always thought of him as an egomaniac and a blowhard.

But I didn't realize until this very year that he was a cheap hood all along, a common thug.

I never knew that.

Michael Cohen once said to a reporter, tread very fucking lightly, because what I'm going to do to you is going to be fucking disgusting.

You understand me?

And according to Stormy Daniels, Trump sent one of his goons to tell her, hey, that's a beautiful little girl.

Be a shame if something happened to her mom.

This is what you get when you get in bed with the mob.

And maybe that's okay with you.

Maybe you said to yourself, this is the business we've chosen.

But I got to say, if you sold your soul to get protection from these two grandmas,

the big pussy is you.

All right, that's our show.

I'll be at the Mirage in Vegas, May 18th and 19th, and at the Ryman in Nashville, June 24th.

I want to thank Robert Reich, Mike Redner, Ethan Hawke, and Duncan Hunter.

Join us now for overtime on YouTube.

Thank you, folks.

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

For more information, log on to HBO.com.