Ep. #459: Jon Meacham, Michael Tubbs

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

Start the clock.

Right here with me.

How you doing?

All right.

I appreciate it.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, folks.

Making me blush.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Absolutely.

I'm overwhelmed.

And welcome to this week's episode of I Don't Even Know Where to Start.

That's what I'm renaming this show.

Well, I'm sure you've seen the news.

Trump has two new best friends,

Rudy Giuliani and Kanye West.

It's, really?

It's like he...

He joined a new dating site.

Okay, stupid.

So Rudy Giuliani, as you know, replaces Michael Cohen, that was his lawyer.

So Rudy's in for Michael Cohen.

He's traded a lawyer who carries a bat for a lawyer who turns into one.

And Rudy had a pretty rough beginning.

It seems like weeks ago.

It was only yesterday.

The lies turn over so quickly.

Rudy was all over Fox News.

Admitted that Trump fired Comey because of the Russian investigation.

Admitted that Trump reimbursed Cohen for the Stormy Daniels payoff.

Admitted that Trump knew about the hush money to Stormy Daniels.

I think the person who needs money to hush is Rudy.

This is a...

This is a brilliant legal strategy called confessing.

So

according to Rudy, here's what we're supposed to believe, that Trump has a default arrangement.

with his lawyer that if any porn star anywhere in America that I banged at a golf club

says she did, you don't have to check with me, just pay her.

So

Trump sees this on TV, of course, what he does all day, watching, sees what he says this on Fox, and tweets, you know that hush money that I don't know anything about?

Yeah, that came from my personal, completely normal, automated porn star payoff slush fund.

Just like we all have.

I don't know what the fuss is about.

What is the fuss about?

It's simply a donation to Stormy for some charity work she did on my penis.

These guys, it's like improv comedy, except it's not funny.

So it's just like improv comedy.

No.

So today, of course, both of them completely reversed everything that was said yesterday.

Virtually everything that was said.

Rudy said that he had been said incorrectly.

He's been...

What the fuck am I trying to say?

That he got me tongue-tied.

Trump said that everything Rudy said was said incorrectly and has been said wrong.

And that's Sarah Huckabee Sanders' job.

You know,

you know, hit rock bottom when Trump is cleaning up your quotes.

Well, that's not what Rudy meant to say.

Hero Explain is the monkey from Rampage.

So lost in this incestuous Fox News loop.

You know, they don't even know who's talking to who because of what.

It's like, did I send you out on Fox to talk to me?

Or did I go on there to fool the American people?

Rudy and Trump, first of all, they're both senile.

They're both fucking senior.

Guys, you got to write your lies down.

You know how it is at that age.

Sometimes you walk into a room and you forget what lia came in there for.

You know, it's.

But Trump has it under control.

He told reporters today that the FBI should really be going after someone named Hillary Clinton.

Apparently she hid 30,000 emails.

Oh fuck, it's 2018.

She lost.

Shut up about the damn emails.

He's like a parrot playing a drinking game on Groundhog Day.

And

listen to this.

If this was any other presidency, this, what I'm about to tell you, would have been a giant scandal.

Apparently, Trump raided his own doctor's office to steal his own medical records.

Do you know this?

He's got this doctor for 35 years, Dr.

Vinny Boombat.

No, Dr.

Dr.

Harold Barry is Dr.

Harold Bornstein.

Wouldn't you want to go for him to get a prostate exam?

They raided his his office, and I love this part, raided his office, took the medical records, and Trump's portrait was hanging on the wall in the waiting room, ripped that off the wall.

First of all, if you're going to a doctor who has headshots in the waiting room, that's not a doctor, that's a dry cleaner.

But just when you think Trump can't be more thin-skinned, apparently the reason for this raid on his doctor's office is that he was so mad at his doctor for revealing to the media that Trump takes propecia, you know, the hair drug.

Trump shouldn't be embarrassed that he takes propecia.

Propecia should be embarrassed that they're responsible for Trump's hair.

All right, we got a great show.

Matt Welch, Sally Cohn, and General Michael Hayden are here.

And a little later we'll be speaking with the mayor of Stockton, California, Michael Tubbs.

But first up, he is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian whose latest book is The Soul of America, The Battle for Our Better Angels.

John Meacham.

John Meacham.

There he is.

How are you?

I'm good.

And I just want to say, first of all, a lot of people know you from TV now, but you also write books, apparently.

I do in my spare time.

I see.

I bet you a lot of people are not that sure about that.

But I want to tell you, if you like John Beacham on TV,

read his books.

This guy is an amazing writer.

And

even if he was wrong about this stuff, it's a pleasure to read.

And the book is is called Soul of America.

Right.

My first question.

Do we still have one?

We do.

This is

important.

We do.

But the soul,

full disclosure, is an idea that's not about what's just best about us.

Socrates, all the way through the Hebrew and the Greek, always argued that the soul was the essence of life.

It was breath.

And so in the American soul, for instance, it's not just that, oh, 4th of July, everything's great.

The soul of the country has room for Dr.

King, but it also has room for the Klan.

And every era is determined by which of those two forces wins out.

And see, here's the thing.

The Klan didn't used to be this close to the White House.

That's why I worry about your

optimism.

No, it did.

And I am optimistic.

Well, not in the modern era.

Yes, Andrew Johnson certainly was a Klansman.

Well, in 1925, you had 50,000 Klansmen marching down Pennsylvania Avenue without wearing their masks.

You had good.

But Calvin Coolidge wasn't sympathetic to them.

No, but the Democratic National Convention in 1924 had 347 Klansmen who were delegates.

You had an immense...

Wow, is that right?

Yeah, you had four million.

I feel better.

You had...

You had four.

You had four.

Tell me other bad shit about America.

Here it is, baby.

Now, I know you were on the air in 1866.

So

I think it was cable access then.

Yes, okay.

That's the Dumont.

But you had a president who was against the 14th and 15th Amendments, who, by the way, got impeached.

So we can talk about that.

And Andrew Johnson, you had, if we had been talking in 1919, 1920, you had Woodrow Wilson, who re-segregated the federal government, who cracked down 400 newspapers who disagreed with him, and who

launched his attorney general

for non-probable cause raids all across America.

But they were reflecting feelings in the country that were much more prevalent than they are today.

I don't think about the Klan, about race.

Well, the Klan was a refuge, the second Klan in the 1920s was a reflection.

See if this sounds somewhat familiar.

They were worried about a changing economy.

They were worried about the culture shifting on them.

They were worried about demographic changes.

They were worried about immigration.

There was a governor of Georgia who was a member of the Klan who called for, guess what, building a wall of steel to keep immigrants out.

So if you think of the 1920s, it's too far back to look at this.

All right, let's go to the 1950s.

For four years, Joe McCarthy terrorized America.

He did so with the help, in many cases, of the press.

The Hearst newspapers were kind of a Fox News of the era.

In the 1920s, one out of every four Americans read the Hearst newspapers.

And Hearst supported McCarthy.

There were very few voices against McCarthy early on.

A woman, Margaret Chase Smith, who was the Republican senator from Maine, came out against him early.

It took the men, as usual, four years to catch up.

But what we ended up...

Hey, hate men, hate men, men suck.

Always an applause break in America.

Men suck.

But, and again, I'm not Mr.

Rogers on C-SPAN here.

I'm not arguing that everything is always great.

But the point is, in my lifetime, in your lifetime, in my native region of the South, we had apartheid.

Women have not voted in this country for quite a century yet.

We are not yet at the third anniversary, it's coming up next month, of the marriage equality decision.

American history, by fits and starts, has tended to get better.

Why has it gotten better?

Not just because of presidents, not just because of the Congress, but because of protest and resistance and people saying

the country we want is not a country that closes its fists, it's one that opens its arms.

But here's the difference.

In the cases you cite, I mean, Joe McCarthy was censured by the Senate, right?

Yep, four years in.

Okay, the Senate's not going to censure Trump.

They love Trump.

I mean,

what's frightening now to me is that the Republican Party has so quickly lined up behind this fascist, and they're in on it.

And I think that's a fundamental difference.

And I also think it's a flaw that the founders did not see.

Oh, I think the founders saw all this coming.

You think they saw Donald Trump coming?

I think they would have been stunned that it took this goddamn long for us to get one.

The whole Constitution was.

And how do you think we're going to un-get one?

I think we're going to.

I think we're going to un-get.

My own sense, we're going to un-get one by, I think, a pretty wave election in the midterm.

I think the courts and the rule of law is going to prevail.

And I think the people themselves, and this is not a populist argument on the other side, but how did we break down Jim Crow?

How did we break down functional apartheid?

How did women get the right to vote?

They protested, they stood up, they had conversations like this, and ultimately those better angels did prevail.

To the point where, what is the immigration issue in this country?

The immigration issue is that people want to come here.

So, for all of the having a mad king, which we do,

who, as I've said to you before, if he knew who King Lear was, it would be like King Lear.

For all of that, if you have enough of these forces, the people, the press, the Congress, which is, as you say, not in great shape right now, or the presidency, the courts, if you have enough of those forces working, then we will survive the crisis.

But I don't know if we do.

I mean, we definitely don't have the Congress.

You talk about a wave election.

Yes, we could impeach him.

I think the Democrats will take the House.

Don't get giddy.

Because

what I have to say is not.

Yeah, no, I'm sorry I have to be the skunk at the Garden Party here.

It's fine.

You've done well with that.

But

yeah.

Yeah, somebody has to.

Somebody has to.

Yeah, because

thank you.

But this is a...

But

let me say the skunk point.

Even if we win the wave election, that's the House.

They will impeach him.

Then you need 67 senators to convict, or else he's there.

Clinton was impeached.

He stayed there.

Now you have a wounded animal, but not that wounded, because he'll just say fake news.

He's more of a martyr than ever.

You know that his approval ratings went up this week.

I do.

The crazier he acts.

I'm not worried about a mad king.

We've had presidents who didn't know shit before.

I'm worried about someone who wants to be a dictator.

I mean, look at this.

Read this statement from, I'll read you this statement from this week on the Justice Department.

A rig system.

This is his own Justice Department.

Did any other president talk like this about their own Justice Department?

Why such an unequal justice?

At some point, I will have no choice but to use the powers granted to the presidency and get involved.

Well, first of all, I don't think he doesn't know what those are.

He doesn't know what those are.

No, he doesn't know what those are.

He thinks he's a king.

I mean, that's a direct threat.

Is that?

If he can get off Twitter and to Google, he might find it.

I wouldn't hold your breath for that.

is there a precedent for that for a president warring on his own justice department the way he does his own FBI this deep state talk we hear about the hit well if you listen to the Nixon tapes yeah

and Nixon was convinced that the press it's the press was against him that the Justice Department was against him he had the Saturday night a lot of similarities there are similarities except he went but guess what there's this fabled moment everybody talks about how Barry Goldwater went to the White House.

A Hugh Scott, don't remember.

You know what date that was?

August 7th.

Yeah, he quit the next day.

26 months into the Watergate scandal.

Right.

Barry Goldwater left public life with a very high profile.

But it took 26 months.

Again, John, what was the message that they were bringing to President Nixon?

The message they were bringing was, you have lost the support of the Republicans in Congress.

Right.

That is not a message anyone can deliver right now to this president.

Not right now, but what do we know chiefly about politicians?

That they want to be reelected, that they are far more often mirrors than molders of public opinion.

And that's what's so scary.

That's why they won't turn on him, because the base loves him.

And they know that he has a connection with their voters that they do not.

That's true.

But you have to change those hearts and minds among the people.

But you really do.

Guess what Joe McCarthy's approval rating was after the have you no decency, sir?

I don't know.

34%.

You can get 34% of the country to say damn near anything.

This is a battle about the 20% who either aren't paying enough attention, who are beginning to be worried about the fact that Rudy Giuliani, after a pretty clearly liquid dinner the other night.

Yeah, I think.

Something.

Anthony Trollope used to say that he dined freely.

That was the Victorian code for that.

You have to get to the 20% who are accessible by, and my whole argument in this, again, is not that everything is going to be a fairy tale.

It never is.

There was never a once upon a time, and there's never a happily ever after.

But you can get, because you did it with women's suffrage, you did it with civil rights, we did it ultimately with the union of the country, we've done it with marriage equality.

Not this, I don't see him leaving under any condition, including people knocking on the door with guns.

But he'd be scarface.

He'd be watching on the security camera.

Say hello to my little little friend.

Okay.

I badgered you.

Don't you think he'd send Jared out?

Yeah, he should.

That's the joke.

All right, it's a great book.

Thank you for trying to cheer me up, John.

Everybody should read it and feel better.

All right, John Meacher, let's meet our panel.

Okay.

Hello.

All right, he is the editor-at-large for Reason Magazine and host of the Reason podcast, our friend Matt Welch, back with us.

She is the CNN political commentator and author of The Opposite of Hate, a field guide to repairing our humanity.

Sally Cohn.

Sally, great to have you with us.

And he's the former NSA and CIA director.

Talk about knowing where all the bodies are buried.

And the author of The Assault on Intelligence, American National Security, and an Age of Lies.

A true patriot, General Michael Hayden.

Great to see you, sir.

Don't forget to send us your questions for tonight's overtime.

It's Granson After the Show on YouTube.

Okay, I want to continue that discussion and find someone who shares my pessimism about, because I do, I see these people all day long on MSNBC and they're giddy like he's going to, like it's, and any day now, all these lawyers parading through saying, well, you know what?

If it turns out that the money was funneled through Michael Cohen, well, that's a campaign contribution.

It's like, really?

This was decided when he got in the White House.

I just don't see this man giving it up.

And I just think he has many cards he hasn't played yet.

I can pardon everybody.

I can take the fifth.

I have the army.

He can't pardon everybody because some of this stuff is happening on the state level and the president can't pardon that person, right?

The best way ultimately to make Donald Trump leave the White House in terms of a lasting impact, I think, as someone who's not a Democrat, is to vote him out of office by 25 percentage points.

That

right?

I mean if you want to if it's Trumpism that you want to

If it's Trumpism that you want to repudiate, if you want to say we've reached a level of populist, nationalist, authoritarian-leaning kind of behavior here, it's don't get him on a ticket-tack foul.

You know, don't try to get a campaign finance thing, which is, you know, we'll see how ticky-tack that comes, depending on how many times Rudy Giuliani gives more interviews here.

But actually, go to the 60 million people who voted for him and say we will not have another candidate like this again as president.

Yeah, I mean, all that depends on this still being America.

I know that sounds dramatic,

but we're at a place where I'm asking that question, and it's a valid question.

Well, I enjoyed your conversation with John, and you kind of stripped away back to the core identity of the nation.

That's the topic around which you were circling.

And what John suggested, my words now, not his or yours, is we are a creedal nation.

We are Americans because of what we believe in.

One of the serious threats I see in the current

event is this blood and soil story that wants to replace the creedal nation.

I thought we had settled that in 1865, and we've gone forward with the ideal being what it is that joins us.

One other thought, though.

While we're waiting for the election, how do we hold the ground?

And what I've seen, I agree with you totally, constitutionally, the Congress should be pushing back.

It is not.

It's actually abetting from time to time.

See, I don't say, actually, I share your pessimism.

You're welcome.

I'm here for you.

I mean,

as a professional optimist, and I look, I understand the aspirations that our nation has always rhetorically proclaimed.

And, you know, the history lesson is is useful.

Let's look at the present.

Our institutions that we are relying on to save us are the businesses that have created gender pay inequity and festered and fostered sexual harassment.

It's the military that has resorted to torture of people without due process.

It's the banks that have punished and penalized the poor and lined the pockets of the rich.

It's the media that has over-reported on Muslim terrorism when in fact most terrorism is committed by white right-wing extremists.

I mean we could go example after example example after example.

The courts are courts that supposedly can save us which are the same courts that have over-incarcerated African Americans.

So when we look at the reality of this nation and the institutions that we are supposed to rely on, they can't save us going forward.

They haven't even saved us yet.

I think that's

a list of grievances and a list of critiques here, right?

But think about this.

Donald Trump ran as the law and order candidate.

That's what he was saying in his convention.

He appointed appointed Jeff Sessions, one of the most retrograde authoritarian creatures in the American political experiment.

Jeff Sessions says, I am going to go after legal marijuana in these states.

I'm going to crack down on this.

Has he?

He can't.

He wants to and he can't.

The president wants him to or did.

He wants to and he can't.

We still have some institutional breaks on these things.

So I'm not worried that we're going to see the tanks rolling down the streets against him.

There's not enough people.

No, not against him.

No.

I was actually actually going to be more hopeful as well.

You've got the sound you hear from Washington is the institutions of government pushing back.

Congress is not, which is the constitutional plan.

So what you've now got are organs of the executive branch actually pushing back against the chief executive.

And weirdest of all things.

Who are we talking about?

I'm talking about the FBI.

I'm talking about the Department of Justice.

I'm talking about the intelligence community.

And what you've got now, and I've never seen this before, is rather than the Congress pushing back against the president, the president is trying to enlist Congress in order to get a grip on his own organs inside the executive branch.

Unbelievable.

Well, I've read this list three times now.

This is the list of things that you do when you're a dictator.

Ten things.

And the first time I read it, Trump was doing seven of them.

The second time, he was doing eight.

Yesterday in the paper, House Republicans are going to fund the military parade.

So we're up to nine.

Here they are.

You're a narcissist who likes putting his name and face on buildings.

You appoint family members to positions of power.

Your rallies are scary.

You hate the press.

He calls them enemies of the people, like Stalin did.

You want to hold missile parage.

You use your office for your own financial gain.

You align with dictators and strongmen.

You claim minorities are the cause of the country's problems.

And you lie freely.

The only one?

You dress in the military costume?

Let's see.

But

Mike, my question to you, I mean, I have never heard this term deep state until Trump got into office, and, you know, aka the government.

My line is career professionals governed by the rule of law?

Yes, I mean, and that is our hope, is the deep state.

He talks about it in a disparaging way, but my question to you is: how deep is the deep state?

Because it's not infinite.

At some point, it looks like they're trying to root out the people that they don't want and put the people in that they do.

That's why he's always fuming about Rod Rosenstein and what a dumb idea it was to have Jeff Sessions be the attorney general because he quit when he should have been protecting me and now we got Rosenstein.

He's from Baltimore.

I don't think there are any Republicans in Baltimore.

I mean he says he says crazy things.

I don't know if you heard that, but

how much can we?

I feel like he's restocking the swamp.

I feel like he's remaking it into his own deep state.

Correct.

Well, and this is where, and look, I agree with Meacham.

We can only expect government to do so much.

I mean, the sort of expecting the elites to save us from the elites is part of the fallacy and foolhardiness that Trump, in a way, exploited in his campaign.

And, you know, in this moment, I guess I take hope in, I think about in 1969 when the Cuyahoga River caught fire in Ohio.

I don't know if people remember that, but...

Of course.

There was a river.

You don't applaud for the river catching fire.

And the river caught fire, right?

And businesses had been dumping toxins into the river.

Businesses didn't do anything.

Government didn't necessarily do anything.

It was because the people said, this is crazy.

We have a river on fire.

We can't have this.

And they demanded that government create policies, Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, to rein in business.

And it's the same thing now.

We have

politicians, we have the media,

we have the elites

dumping toxins into our democracy.

And they're not going to stop it until we, the people, say

our country's on fire.

Do something.

The river catches fire.

That's when we've had enough.

Yes.

I think we're getting real close to a dumpster fire here.

Yeah.

Okay.

But we have to stop it.

They're not going to stop it.

The deep state or whatever the heck we want to call it.

What isn't going to stop it?

What do you think the Supreme Court does

if there is this moment when he is subpoenaed?

Because he's not going to voluntarily go and talk to Mueller as much as he says he'd love to.

He's going to get get a subpoena.

Then what is he going to do?

I'm not sure he's going to get a subpoena.

I think that there's a dance going on right now between Mueller, who says, yeah, I'm going to subpoena you as a sort of leverage, and Trump is saying no.

And I think they're trying to get to a negotiated state.

Giuliani in his media tour talked about like, oh, you know, we might try to get it down to two and a half, three hours.

That suggests to me that at least the president is thinking about some kind of narrowed thing, because nobody really wants to have a constitutional crisis.

I don't think Mueller does.

I don't think the Supreme Court does.

Maybe Trump does, but

those things are inconvenient.

That's when you start to excite the passions of Lindsey Graham and other people who have said, you don't cross this line here or else Congress is going to have, the Senate's going to have to get involved.

And so I think it's possible that we're seeing a negotiation play out in real time.

But it is the big question of the summer.

And it's not clear from a jurisprudence.

But I'm asking about the Supreme Court.

It's a five to four conservative court, but we have one swing vote, Anthony Kennedy, who sometimes votes with the liberals, right?

Okay, but say it comes down to they have to decide, is Trump a king or is he a president?

Does he have to answer this subpoena like Nixon did or he doesn't?

Because I don't think Trump is going to do it.

And then what happens?

And what does the court say?

Yeah, so I think it's 5-4, and they say he has to.

But you see the predicate for this already being established by the president.

I mean, all the language trying to discredit the Mueller investigation is designed to get to that point and then have the political support that even after he may have to testify, I don't think he indicts a president, then it turns it over to the political branch and he's already established the groundwork where the political branch can rely on a public view that the investigation is illegitimate and he walks.

But here's the problem with that approach that he's had and we're seeing this play out all the time.

People who are doing the legwork, who are the apologists for Trump, who are out there like Rudy Gilani this week, that's hazardous to your political health, right?

Because Trump says crazy things about the investigation all the time.

He makes up ideas about like, oh, you know, I just fired Jim Comey because, you know, Hillary Clinton emails or something like that.

So Mike Pence goes out.

It makes these people less electable and also less likely to want to even run for re-election.

It's not good for Devin Nunes to look like a clown on a daily basis.

And he does because he's been doing the president's dirty work for him.

So I think, yes, it can help in the short term, and it will play out in the impeachment proceedings or in Congress in that venue, but you're going to have less Republican congressmen because many of them, I think, have disgraced themselves by abdicating their oversight role.

Okay.

I'm just going to

read one quote.

It was from Axios, an unidentified source on Trump, who said, for the average human, nothing scares them more than legal

issues.

He does not care.

His whole adult life has been spent in litigation.

He's just going to start swinging and knocking people's heads off.

Anyway, moving on with the show.

There is another disturbing story in the news.

It's sort of getting to be a trend.

Twice now in the last five years, we have had a young man, the recent one was in Toronto, who went on a rampage because basically they weren't getting laid.

These, no, really, they call themselves incels.

Has anybody heard of this?

Incel?

Oh, we got a couple here.

Great.

Well, incel stands for involuntarily celibate.

And I believe the ancients called them creeps.

But I mean, there were times in my life I was involuntarily celibate.

I kept my mouth shut about it.

Not these guys.

They like talk about it.

It's like they have a social network.

It's a movement.

They're kind of proud of it.

And we got a hold of their putting out a new magazine called Incel.

Would you like to see

Stephen Miller on the cover?

And

here are some of the articles.

Five new grips that'll spice up your love life.

30 wet dream positions that will drive yourself wild.

Getting her to say those three little words.

Who is this?

New York City's hottest places to lurk.

Playing it cool, slick ways to smell the seat where a lady was just sitting.

See, you get them eventually, General.

Five gluten-free foods you should be having sex with.

The in-cell ethicist is stalking more than one woman at a time, cheating.

Going south, paw, how masturbating with your non-dominant hand can feel like it's someone else.

How to break up with a girl who has no idea she was dating you.

And the Statue of Liberty, one incel's amazing visit inside a woman.

All right.

He is the 27-year-old Democratic mayor of Stockton, California.

Please welcome His Honor, Michael Tubbs, Your Honor.

How you doing, Michael?

Great to meet you.

How are you?

So you are America's youngest mayor of a city over 100,000, is that right?

I tried to grow the beard so I looked a little bit older.

It's true.

And how's that going?

Now Stockton, California is where, roughly, near Sacramento?

It's between Sacramento and San Francisco.

It's the 12th largest city in the state, about 300,000 people.

300,000 people.

323,000 people.

You're in charge of that.

With other people helping, for sure.

Yes, of course.

And what's, I mean, I'm not familiar with the area that much.

Is it a conservative area?

Is it a...

It's actually a real mix.

The Christian Science Monitor wrote an article about how, in these parson times Stockton seems to be figuring it out.

So about 40% of the population actually voted for the president, and 60% didn't.

And the city is also incredibly diverse.

So we're about 40% Latino, 20% Asian, 12% African American.

So we have a microcosm of the country in terms of race, but also in terms of political ideologies, which makes governing very interesting.

We have to have very interesting.

And you're doing some interesting things in government.

I mean, you have something called Universal Basic Income that you, it's a pilot program, right?

UBI, they call it, but it's basically, it's a fancy way of saying we're going to give some people free money.

But what's interesting is...

How's that working out?

Do they like free money?

Well, in the studies that in Alaska, which has a permanent dividend fund with the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, of course, people are saying this is a good thing.

But what's been interesting is doing the research and finding out that this program, this idea is as old as this nation itself, that Thomas Paine was calling for this in the Agrarian Revolution.

Dr.

King was speaking about this before he was assassinated.

And this is in place of social programs, like instead of food stamps and stuff like that, you're going to get just money.

and in in my mind i i think we need to enhance the social safety i think right now with the programs we have it helps stabilize some people but people are still struggling i think the misnomer here is that it's rewarding people for sloth for being slothful but i would imagine some would take advantage but but

but the majority of poor people are working that's we have that term right now we have to do something i'm just i'm just my job to question yes sir

so i mean joe biden talks about how the fact that it's not just having a job economically it's it's dignity it's It's having something to do all day.

What do people do if they don't have jobs?

And that really is the crux of what we're going to have to deal with in this country, right, is that robots are taking all the jobs, automation.

You know, there's just not going to be enough jobs for the people.

Well, I think yes, both.

So on the idea of dignity of work, my mom's one of the most dignified people I know.

And she was single, and she worked extremely hard.

And I don't think there's anything inherently dignified of working 14 hours a day and still being stressed and having anxiety.

Right, but

there's got to be somewhere in between that and

sitting around watching card sharks.

But to your point, I think with the current, when one in two Americans today can afford one to $500 emergency, imagine what happens when there is automation and people are displaced.

So we're tiling this in Stockton because we're saying that right now we have to talk about the economic system whilst preparing folks for the jobs that don't exist yet.

And you also want to, as long as you're passing out money,

I'm trying to get some of yours before I leave.

Well,

it's happened before.

I was very scared about Mitt Romney.

That doesn't look too good now.

But no, you also have a program, I think, where you would give a stipend, right, to the people you identify as the most likely to commit murders in the city so that they are induced not to do that.

And there is precedent for that.

We did that in Iraq.

We bribed the Sunnis during the Iraq war.

Don't shoot us.

Shoot them.

And it worked.

People like money.

I resent being compared to stock to be compared to Iraq, but I would say the program...

No, I'm just comparing it to a program.

But the program is interesting because it's not just giving money, but the money happens after six months of intensive case management.

The program is called Advanced Peace, and it's based off the Office of Neighborhood Safety Enrichment.

So Sacramento is running the program as well.

We're starting this summer, and 40 other cities are looking at doing it because the idea is that we're paying $400,000 a year as cities for every homicide and every shooting,

not even measuring the amount of trauma.

But

you can identify who the most likely likely people, you know who the bad people are, the bad guys who are committing the crimes.

And they tend not to if they have a stipend?

Well, the stipend's a part.

So it's a stipend, but it's also intensive case management.

It's cognitive behavioral therapy.

So helping deal with trauma.

It's transformative travel, but it's really the crux of the relationship and seven days a week communication and also life mapping.

So sitting down with your coach and figuring out how they go from A to B.

And also the stipends after six months and it's a fellowship.

So you don't just get it.

That actually comes with strings.

You have to do things for for it.

So it's almost like a job.

Can you get the stipend money and the free money?

Can I move that?

No.

I'm just kidding.

So what is your biggest problem there in your city?

Because we see cities, you know, we've had mayors on this show before, and they seem to be the ones who, they're closest to real problems.

They're not like the people in Washington who can not do anything.

They have to deal with stuff.

What do you have to deal with on a day-to-day basis?

Well, the biggest issue in Stockton is poverty.

23% of our population is in poverty, but I would argue another 25% are at least one paycheck away.

And with poverty, you see things like violence and educational attainment.

And in California, with housing costs rising and wages not, we have folks who aren't able to afford housing.

So we're taking a long and short-term approach.

On the long term, we just launched a program called the Stockton Scholars, which would make CSU tuition free for the vast majority of students in our public, in our largest public school system.

Here's an issue for you, for any Democrat.

Why don't Democrats run on repealing the Trump tax cut, which is a trillion and a half dollars mostly to the rich?

You could easily afford college for every person in the country for that.

100%.

Let's do it.

Sold, huh?

Done.

Okay, so education.

I mean, that's a big thing because, you know, when people forget about how this country used to be, they don't read John Meacham books, then it's hard to convince them that it has gone off the rails so much.

This is the issue I'm always saying to younger people.

You don't seem to understand how different this is than it ever has been before.

Well, let's talk about the universal basic income, which, by the way, I think is phenomenal, and I love the experiment you're doing.

Congratulations, and thank you.

And the major, the last major national political leader who supported the idea of a universal basic income in the United States of America, was Richard Nixon.

So look at how much the Republican Party has changed, right?

I mean, it's, and interestingly enough, not that it's kept pace with where the American people are, because the American people still support the idea of a living wage for a full day's work and that everyone should have

universal access to affordable health care and affordable housing and all these basic things.

But the Republican Party has moved further and further and further away from what the majority of American people are.

There's a new Reuters poll that says they're losing millennials.

You're a millennial.

Why do you think that is?

Why are they losing millennials?

Well,

I looked at the poll, and they're losing mostly white millennials.

And I think if you look at party voting anyway, most Republicans are white people.

So that's actually in line with voting trend.

So I guess the trend is as white people get older,

they tend to move more conservatively.

Not us.

And that's why I'm here.

We're the good guys, right?

We're the good.

Okay.

Well, how about this?

Donald Trump said today, he was talking to the NRA,

that his approval with African Americans has doubled since Kanye West made his

remarks, his

BFF.

And speaking of education, here's a great quote from Kanye.

Kanye says, I am a proud non-reader of books.

Just like Trump.

I like to get information from doing stuff, like actually talking to people and living real life.

Yes, people who also don't read books.

Somebody has to read John Meacham's books.

That's what I'm saying.

But yeah,

isn't the joke on us with Kanye?

Isn't it ridiculous that we pay attention to what this man who is just off his med says?

I mean, he has so much, right?

I mean, he has so much power.

And that, I think, is a reflection of how shallow the country is.

I mean, don't we want Kanye to be crazy?

I don't necessarily want him to talk about slavery in ways that don't make any sense to anybody, let alone him.

But Kanye's been kind of weird for a really long time.

That's part of his art.

He's a really great artist.

Do you want Courtney Love to be normal?

No, you don't.

You want it to be a little bit off the rails.

As a Kanye fan, though,

it's heartbreaking to see

this past week.

But I think to your point, I don't look to Kanye for my political commentary, but I do look for people I respect to be, at least understand history, like what happened that...

Slaves didn't have a choice to be slaves or they wouldn't have.

We've got this fault within the broader society of equating celebrity with legitimacy when you come and express these kinds of things.

And we have an outrage culture that fixates on the outrage of the second rather than the deeply outrageous things that are happening in our cities, in our states, at the national level.

We don't talk about the kinds of things that are in books anymore or the kinds of things that are in the policies that are passing.

We just get outraged for five seconds on Twitter.

Can I say one more thing about Kanye?

You could say all the things you want.

Thank you.

That's why we love having you here.

No, no, so I'm interested in that poll.

Double from what?

Zero times two.

First of all, it's Trump talk.

So,

yeah, yes.

You'd like to know where the poll came from.

I think I got it right.

Well, there's the poll, right?

He said it went from like 11 to 22.

But was not a data-rich statement.

Right.

It was a rectum-derived statistic.

Let's put it that way.

Okay, so there was talk this week about the controversy at the Correspondence Center.

Did you see that, Michelle Wolf?

I thought you did a great job talking

truth to power.

And by the way, they should get rid of, every year, these people have Groundhog Day syndrome.

They don't understand.

Every year they're like, let's hire a comedian to tell jokes.

And then the day after, like, why did we hire a comedian to tell jokes?

I did this in 1996.

They were doing the same thing, getting mad at the comedian for telling jokes, which they get a juggler or

something non-controversial.

The media has trouble with long-term anything right now, in fairness.

Okay, that's true.

Okay, so

they're talking about getting rid of the correspondence, but I think they should get rid of the press briefing.

Because

I heard from people in the press this week that they're just fed up with Sarah Huckabee Sanders at this point.

I mean, we know this is the lionest administration ever.

I mean, I think it was the Washington Post this week who said he passed 3,000 lies.

Trump did.

He's the Pete Rose of lying.

But what is the point of going into this room every day and having this Baghdad Bob person just tell you this bullshit that you know is bullshit and she knows is bullshit?

They should walk out en masse and make a statement.

I guarantee you they should.

So

I think there's two problems to that, which is that the media is in a new role and kind of doesn't know what to do with itself in that role.

And the idea of the media being organized in any kind of way is new to it.

The other dynamic here is, let's be clear cognitively about what's happening, right?

So this is like Dan Gilbert's done the research, did the early research on what happens when we hear a lie.

And there are actually two stages cognitively.

The first, the lie has to actually land in your head.

And you have to kind of give it a plausibility for a second.

And then the second stage is you weigh, all right, is that true or is that false?

but when you have what's called cognitive overload when you're just getting lie after lie after lie after lie you're getting inundated by small lies and big lies and all this news

then you actually don't have the cognitive capacity to determine whether the lie is true or not so you just the lies just land and they sit there and that's what then airing these briefings that's the effect it has on you have an interesting idea in your book about rating news like we do rotten tomatoes rotten tomatoes right isn't that a great idea rotten tomatoes for news.

Let the people do it.

And so the government's not, you're not suppressing anything, the government's not closing off or judging anything.

But, you know, I've gone to movies with bad ratings, but I knew what I was getting into.

And so if we have these kind of rotten tomato ratings for these overwhelming number of sites that flow news at us with seemingly equal authenticity, here's a way to begin to filter it.

Okay.

So as a general,

I'm going to read you this.

It's not happy.

Nearly three-quarters of Americans age 17 to 24 are ineligible for the military due to obesity,

other health and drug issues, and criminal backgrounds or lack of education.

Exactly right.

That's

what as a military man.

It comes back to this is a broader question with regard to our society.

I mean, we've got this post-truth, we've got this trend towards autocracy, and we want to go back to our basic principles to defend ourselves.

And unfortunately, we maybe have a generation in change who don't have a deep understanding of our basic principles because of the dynamic.

But the military was always like the last line of defense.

I guess the first line of defense also.

But I mean, as far as like a pillar of society, it's the one thing we all could still believe in.

And now three-quarters of the people are not even eligible to join.

It used to be like, anybody can join.

It's like, well, I can't get a job anywhere else.

I can always go in the military.

No, you can't, you fat drug addict.

Get in the job.

That's the pre-1975 military.

The post-professional militaries, we actually, this may be a problem.

We get the pick.

We get the best of America.

It is a pure meritocracy, and we may have harvested America's talent to a degree we've denied it to some other aspect of life.

Right.

We've over-farmed.

We have too many...

people in too many engagements in the world.

Our military is too big.

What we do with it is too much.

We've been, I mean, I would not disparage the last couple of young generations at all because they've been serving triple tours in Afghanistan and Iraq for no reason that I can see at this point.

That's right.

That's the point is we've lost.

Look, there's an issue here about why is it that generationally so many people are turning to drugs and why we are so unhealthy in our country.

And that's a problem that extends beyond the military.

The other issue is, is that

the legitimacy of the military is under threat because of the things the military has done.

And that is the issue, not, you know, who's qualified or not.

I'll let you two talk in the green room.

Yes.

All right.

Thank you, panel.

It's time for New Rules.

All right, New Rule, someone has to tell the guys at this Staten Island bar that features this image of a jacked-up Trump with bulging arms and a tight muscle t-shirt, your beer goggles are gay.

New Rule, homeowners in Victorville, California have to quit bitching about tumbleweeds.

Don't call it a problem.

Call it a hipster beard for your house.

New Rule, don't call a bank bank of hope.

It doesn't instill confidence with my money.

Is my money safe here?

We hope.

It's like opening a restaurant called Probably Chicken.

New Rule, there needs to be a conspiracy theory section of the bookstore.

I asked recently at a store where their conspiracy theory books were, and they said, well, some are in New Age, some are in political science, and some are in history.

Really?

You're just going to hide the conspiracy theory books all over the store?

It's like they don't want you to know the truth.

New Rule, if Robert Mueller is going to ask President Trump 49 questions under oath, at least a few of them have to be about sex.

I mean, come on.

Give us something.

Remember Clinton's face when they asked about the cigar?

If Monica Lewinsky says that you use the cigar as a sexual aid with her in the Oval Office area, would she be flying?

Well, now it's Trump's turn.

So ask him, is it true you never wear a condom because they get tangled up in your necktie?

And.

And finally, it's time for another edition of Explaining Jokes to Idiots.

The segment where we explain to idiots jokes they missed because they're idiots.

And tonight I'd like to examine the reaction to Amy Schumer's new film, I Feel Pretty, which the professionally offended have decided that even though it's a movie by women filmmakers presenting a pro-woman message, it does it the wrong way.

Amy helped wrong.

Even though she really just remade the nutty professor.

Where someone not thin and not cool magically sees themselves as better looking and gains confidence.

Except when Eddie Murphy did it, he didn't have the Purity Police up his ass.

The Hollywood Reporter wrote an article dissecting I Feel Pretty and its questionable message of empowerment.

Rolling Stone called it fat shaming.

The Independent, reviewing the trailer, Because why wait for the actual movie when you can start your hating two months early?

Wrote that I Feel Pretty seems so so offensive, it's frankly exhausting.

Exhausted by a movie trailer.

I think we've reached peak snowflake.

The LA Times asked: Wouldn't a bolder, more progressive version of the story have cast a woman of color?

Oh, for Christ's sake, can't it just be funny?

Can't we just sit in a movie theater, unclench our assholes for two hours, and laugh at what it is instead of dissecting it for what it is not?

Movie reviews, they're not even reviews anymore.

They're just, how come you made the movie you made and not the one I would have made?

If I had talent, which I don't.

Some reviews noted that casting Amy as the ugly fat person undermined truly ugly fat people.

Bad Amy, not fat enough.

Others asked why her self-esteem had to be linked to her physical appearance.

And yes, why wasn't the role given to a woman of color?

I don't know, maybe because they thought since it's an Amy Schumer movie, they ought to have Amy Schumer in it.

Yeah, who wound up, by the way, apologizing for appearing in her own movie.

On The View, she said, I recognize that I'm Caucasian.

I would love if this movie were starring a woman of color who's had it way harder than me.

Yeah, because all goofy comedy should also address the black experience.

Like that one where Jennifer Garner grew up overnight.

You remember that one?

13 going on 30 years a slave?

Life is too complicated to reduce everything to real problems on one side and white problems on the other.

You can be white and still have a life where you pray for death.

Just ask Melania.

Oh, but being white is hardly the only thing Amy did wrong.

The New York Post says the film is tone deaf for casting a straight, white, able-bodied blonde.

And the Independent concurs, noting the film was flawed because Amy was still blonde, able-bodied, and well-dressed with all the trappings of Western beauty standards.

Yes, she's a traitor to feminism because she wears clothes, has all her limbs, and is hotter than Predator.

Comedian Sophie Hagen also noted Amy's able-bodiedness.

What is it with this?

Adding that she's femme.

And yes, thin.

She is society's beauty ideal.

No, she's precisely not.

That's her act, you idiots.

But you know,

you know who is society's beauty ideal?

This one.

The one feminists love more than life itself.

A six-foot supermodel in hot pants.

News flash, people just like the physically attractive better.

Sorry.

The taller candidate usually wins the election.

Studies show the better-looking person, other things being equal, usually gets the job.

Even babies prefer to look at attractive faces.

Oh, wait till you see the blog I'm going to post tomorrow tearing them a new asshole.

Babies.

Models are tall and thin because that's what sells clothes.

The answer isn't to insist that everyone in society love you exactly the way you are.

It's to learn to tell the ones who don't that you don't need them.

Which is exactly what Amy learns in the movie.

Just the way at the end of The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy realizes she didn't have to go on that big acid trip

to appreciate what she had at home.

When will liberals learn that barking at nothing makes people not want to listen when you actually have something to say?

It's no talent to endlessly bitch about what isn't there.

Although, I'll tell you, Black Panther should have had more Puerto Ricans.

All right, that's our show.

I'll be at the DAR Constitution Hall in D.C., July 14th, Heinz Hall in Pittsburgh on the 15th.

I want to thank Matt Welch, Sally Cohn, General Michael Hayden, Michael Todds, and John Meacham.

Join us now for overtime on YouTube.

Thank you, folks.

Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher every Friday night at 10.

Or watch him anytime on HBO On Demand.

For more information, log on to HBO.com.