Ep. #456: Brian Schatz, Andy Cohen

Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

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

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was quick.

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

Now, Charlie's sober.

He's gonna tell you the truth.

How do I present this with any class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

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

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

Start the clock.

Thank you.

How are you doing?

Thank you very much, folks.

Okay, you get sick one.

Thank you very much.

Wow.

What a,

I love you, too.

Thank you very much.

Glad you're in a yelling mood.

Well, look, I hate to disappoint you, but not much happened this week.

All right, let's go over what happened.

The offices of Trump's personal lawyer

were raided.

He had a meltdown over Jim Comey's book.

The Homeland Security Advisor quit.

The Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, out.

And we're attacking Russia in Syria as we speak right now.

So things are really quieting down.

No, it looked like Trump was backing off his threat to attack Syria, but apparently he got the go-ahead from Fox and Friends today.

So

I don't want to say this raid is meant to distract from his other problems, but it's called Operation Desert Stormy.

We knew he was getting serious about Syria because he gave Assad a nickname this week.

And, you know, when you get the nickname, you know, Crooked Hillary Lion Ted, he calls him Gas Killing Animal.

By the way, Gas Killing Animal also headlining Coachella this weekend.

Have you seen Gas Killing Animal?

Yes, this is The Art of War by Captain Underpants.

But how about that?

The FBI, wow, moved on Michael Cohen like a bitch.

They raided.

They raided

it.

They broke down his door, you know, his office, his hotel room, his apartment.

It must mean they have evidence of

Cohen using illegal means to cover up Trump's affairs with porn star Stormy Daniels and playmate Karen McDougal.

Watergate was follow the money.

This is follow the implants.

Because remember, Michael Cohen is the guy who said he paid Stormy Daniels with his own money.

The legal term for this is pro boner.

I don't know if you know that.

But yeah, this Mueller, he ain't playing.

I mean, they took his door off at his office, at his apartment.

It was like six in the morning.

They banged on the door.

They said, are you decent?

He said, I work for Donald Trump.

What do you think?

But,

oh.

Trump was furious about that.

He said, this violates attorney scumbag privilege.

But I love this.

I always say this, I'm not dirty, the news is dirty.

A new term I learned this week, taint team.

You heard this one?

Yeah, because this is not part of Mueller's probe.

Dirty again.

So he sent a taint team

to Michael Cole.

That's what they call it, because they don't want to taint the...

Why is it called a taint team?

Well, Trump is the asshole, and

Mueller is the balls, and you do the math.

Okay, so

taint team.

I can't write this shit.

Anyway,

but

that was just the prelude to getting him angry, because then Jim Comey's book is coming out, and I guess they already have it at the White House, and Comey compares Trump to a mob boss.

I don't know about that, but I do know the 2016 election fell off a truck.

And apparently in the book, Comey says that Trump is just obsessed with the P-tape.

Now, if you haven't been,

I'm telling you, I'm not dirty.

The news has been.

If you haven't been following this in the Steele dossier, which is where a lot of this comes from, he says that Trump was in Moscow with the Russian hookers and some ping bum ba-ping.

So Trump was obsessed every time he would talk to Comey.

He would ask about the pee ticket.

And Trump at one point said to Comey, there's no way I would let people pee on each other around me.

No way.

I let Putin shit down my throat, yes, but peeing, no.

And then I love this.

He says to Comey, Jim, can you imagine me hookers?

Yes!

Yes!

I can imagine you murdering hookers.

I can imagine you naming hookers to the Supreme Court.

I can imagine you asking a vunker to dress like a hooker.

Really?

Drawing the line, are we?

Drawing the line?

Good luck.

There's no part of Hooker plus Trump that I can't imagine.

But

just to show he's not a hard-hearted man,

he said, Twomi says it bothered Trump a lot that he was worried that Melania would think those rumors were true.

And you know,

that breaks a wife's heart when she finds out that the man she loves is pissing on someone else

or watching someone pee on someone or whatever it is you do to make America great.

Or even worse, what if it got back to Stormy?

You know, so

but I love this excuse that Trump gives to Tacome about why it couldn't have been him with the P-tape.

He says, I'm a a germaphobe.

Now, most guys would say, you know, I would never do that.

I'm married.

No, Trump's excuse, I'm a health nut.

Look at me, my body's a temple.

Jim.

Being in bed for Christ's sake, that's where I eat my cheeseburgers.

All right, we got a great show.

Maya Wiley, Jason Cander, and Jonathan Chait are here and a little later.

We'll be speaking with Andy Cohen.

His backstage.

First up, he's the Democratic Senator from Hawaii and Chief Deputy Whip of the Senate Democratic Caucus.

Brian Schatz.

Senator.

Hello, Senator.

Great to meet you.

Great to see you.

And

you're here on a very slow news day.

My goodness.

Yeah.

So, look, you're a senator.

I've got to ask you right off the bat.

What do you think about us going into Syria like this sure well first of all we don't exactly know what the operation is but the first thing we need to be concerned about is we've got about 2,000 American service members so we pray for their safety

the second question that I have and I don't think we know the answer to that is that the way it was phrased was that this may be an open-ended commitment in which case they have to come to the Congress and get a new authorization of the use of military force.

As of now it is just an air war though, right?

Right, but they're talking about the willingness to sustain this over time.

And if they do that, there is no way that this is authorized by the 2001 AUMF.

That was designed to go after al-Qaeda and affiliated groups, and Bashar al-Assad, bad guy, awful dictator, murderer.

But it's not authorized until you go to the Congress.

And the last thing I'll say is that, you know, we all saw those images of those kids being gassed, and I think it touches all of us.

But the thing that the American government ought to do is what we've always done, which is take refugees in.

I was on this.

How many?

Well, we should take in as many as we possibly can.

Look, these are children.

How many is that?

Germany took a million.

Well, listen, I'm not sure how many we need to be taking in, but I was on the Syria-Jordan border at the Zatari refugee camp, and these are children, these are families.

They are no threat to America.

What is a threat to America is the idea that we reject these people because they don't look like us.

So, if we're committed to taking care of these children, a military operation may be necessary tonight, but our commitment to refugees is what we need to focus on.

If you were running for president, would you say that was one of our priorities, to worry about refugees?

I think we should worry about refugees.

I'm not running.

What I'm saying is a priority.

I mean, I'm talking about the people in America who are thinking, well, we have other issues and other problems, right?

Well, I think we can walk and chew gum at the same time.

I really think that

at some point, one of the things that people are really frustrated with Democrats about, I think, is that we have pollsters come to us and tell us how, in what rank order to talk about things.

And if refugees poll number 11, then we stop talking about it.

And I think as a matter of principle, we're going to...

What about Russia?

And I've heard a lot of Democrats say, well, people really aren't concerned about Russia that much.

And therefore, I don't think Democrats prosecute the issue so much.

And I don't know.

If you can't make treason an issue, I don't know why you're even a party.

Well, I agree with you on that.

I think that,

listen, there's no way when you pull something and you ask a person whether they care about their own health care or their own tax situation or their ability to afford college, whether, you know, Russia is not going to penetrate that top two or three.

But that doesn't matter.

What matters is that.

It isn't your job to make it.

Well, I'm agreeing with you.

I think we have to be the party of the rule of law because the other party is not the rule of law, is not the party of the rule of law.

And I think it's really important for us to just occasionally do something because it's right, even though right now it doesn't poll sort of high on our little priority list.

But one of the things that happened, I think, in the last election is Democrats paint by numbers.

They get told what to say, and they say it in the fashion that they're told to say it, and in the order that they're told to say it.

And I think what people were frustrated by in terms of Democratic leadership is that we don't look like we're working from our gut.

And I think the operation of law and the rule of law is something we ought to run on.

We also have to run against their attempts to repeal health care.

We also have to run against their terrible tax cut, which is the only major tax cut in American history that's still unpopular.

And we also have to run on making college more affordable, but that doesn't mean we can't prosecute the case around the rule of law.

So, if this bombing campaign in Syria, now the President, I just saw him, he spoke only about half an hour ago,

said it's going to go on in a more sustained level than the one he did before, which is only one day.

Is there a time when you would say time's up on this?

I think he gets a day or two to run a couple-of-day campaign, and after that, he has to come to the Congress and ask for an authorization of the use of military force.

There is no scenario, either legally or in terms of our geopolitics, under which this should be authorized by the 2001 AUMF.

We've got to go back to the Congress.

We've got to get back to the role that we used to play in terms of prosecuting foreign policy.

One thing that he said, which I liked, which I'm sure was written for him, was that

he was going to use every instrument of American power, including diplomacy.

And I think that to the extent that we have a theory of the case in the Middle East, it has to include staffing up the State Department and understanding that we are strongest when we use our diplomatic power.

Okay.

I know that you were on the committee this week that was interviewing Mark Zuckerberg.

Yeah.

How did you find him?

Seemed,

looked like a real nerd to me.

So I thought he did fine.

I think there's kind of two ways to look at this.

First of all, they did not recognize that their platform was used by a foreign government to kind of hijack at least a portion of our election.

But that's kind of, to me, separate and apart from the broader question around Facebook, Google, and these tech companies, which are so ubiquitous and so large that we really have to think about what kind of federal regulation that there's going to be for these tech companies.

I'll give you an example.

Google and Facebook consume about 61% of all online ad revenue, and that number goes up and up and up.

And everybody uses all of these tech platforms, whether it's aviation or shipping or cars or telecom, we all have a separate statute to govern how they operate.

These guys are operating in the wild, wild west, and that just can't continue.

Well,

that's my next question.

Can it continue?

What is the Congress going to do?

Because it looked to me like you talked to him, he gave you a lot of the answers that you wanted to hear, and I don't know what's going to happen next.

But you're right.

Not only are they a media company, they're the biggest media company by far.

Well, I think what we ought to do is two things.

First, what the European Union does is give individual consumers a right to their own data, to control their own data.

And I think all tech platforms ought to adopt the EU approach to that, to basically say, if you're going to monetize my data, I have the ability to see what you have on me, and I have the ability to delete it, it because it's my data, it's my information, and it's a right to control the data that people are using about you.

The second concept that I think is really interesting, and we're pursuing it right now, is the idea of an information fiduciary.

So, just like a financial advisor is supposed to put themselves in your shoes, I think tech companies ought to be able to put, ought to be required to put themselves in your shoes when they're controlling your data.

They are monetizing our data, they are watching you online, they're making lots of money.

I think it is incumbent on them to utilize that data in a way that takes care of our privacy.

That is not something they're going to do voluntarily.

That's something we have to pass a law for.

All right, Senator, thank you so much for your state's hospitality.

I spend every New Year's there, and I wouldn't miss it for the world.

Thank you.

Senator Brian Schatz, ladies and gentlemen.

All right, let's meet our panel.

Hey, how are you?

Okay, here they are.

He is a columnist for New York Magazine, the author of Audacity, How Barack Obama Defied His Critics and Created a Legacy That Will Prevail.

Jonathan Chait.

Jonathan, how you doing?

He is the president of Let America Vote, whose new book, Outside the Wire, 10 Lessons I've Learned in Everyday Courage, is currently available for pre-order on Amazon.

Jason Kandor.

Remember to introduce you this time.

Thank you, I appreciate it.

And she's senior vice president and professor at the new school.

Maya Wiley back with us.

Hiya, Maya.

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

Okay, as always, on Friday, Trump makes news just before we go on the air.

And I don't know what's happening, but obviously we're bombing Syria.

And he can read.

And he can read.

Well, I can read.

Because he read the teleprompter.

He read the teleprompter.

He said Russia must decide if it will continue down this dark path or if it will join with with civilized nations as a force for stability and peace.

I can imagine Obama saying that.

What I can't imagine is

Obama like colluding with Russia or what I think this guy might be doing.

I don't put past him to start a war and mix it up with Russia just to make people think, oh, I guess there is no collusion.

You know, I don't put anything past this guy.

There's no bottom.

There's no bottom.

There's no bottom.

And I would say that the rationale he gave for this action is completely at odds with everything he's ever said about foreign policy.

He gave a humanitarian rationale.

There's no national interest that he articulated.

And that could be good.

I mean,

I could support a humanitarian action if it can help people.

But his whole position is we don't care about the rest of the world.

We're only doing stuff if it helps us and makes us rich.

So now he's saying we're doing this to help other people.

It's very weird to hear him.

He's never.

And in 2013, he had tweeted that actually Barack Obama, who tried to seek authorization from Congress to actually have airstrikes in Syria.

And he actually tweeted hashtag bad idea.

And he also said must seek congressional authorization.

And he's done none of those.

And the timing is very helpful for me.

So not like him.

Well, so I think the thing about

be hypocritical like that.

I don't know where you're pulling this from.

Well, I mean, this is sort of one of those times where we're all going to sit around and kind of try and discern what the strategy is.

And in this case, national security strategy.

And that's sort of the problem I see here.

Like, we don't know enough at this point, just like Senator Schatz was saying.

Like, we don't know.

Maybe we don't have enough information.

This could be exactly the right tactical choice.

But what we know is that the president thinks that a tactical choice is a substitute for a strategy.

And he thinks that the fact that all the time when his strategy seems to be just get to tomorrow, whatever happens, just figure out, say something, get to it.

I mean, two weeks ago, he gave a political speech in which, in order to get an applause line, he announced a new foreign policy decision that we're leaving Syria, he said.

Basically leaving it to Putin.

He said we're going back to the TP

yesterday.

Next thing he said was raping America.

We're going back to the raping.

And those 2,000 soldiers, those 2,000 troops that are over there that Brian mentioned, you know, they deserve to know what the commander's actual intent is overall in the world.

They deserve to know that it's not going to change day to day day based on how he woke up that day and that he has an actual vision for how to lead the world as opposed to

always about Russia.

Here's what he tweeted the other day.

Much of bad blood with Russia is caused by fake and corrupt Russia investigation.

Track that if you will.

Sure.

Assad gasses people.

Russia protects him, and it's the FBI's fault.

It's the Washington Post's fault, apparently.

He's what he's saying, right?

It's not, it's, it's so it's not the fact that they're gassing people, it's the news stories.

Okay, so that the Russians use.

I just, I want to know how he's actually going to go because I don't see it.

You know, I saw the news today also in Big Story.

Michael Cohen, the lawyer, apparently was in Prague in 2016.

Okay, this could be the smoking gun collusion that we've been looking for, meeting with Russians.

Another smoking gun.

I was just going to say, we actually have a few.

Yes, but this would be even more like his smile.

This is his consigliary, his mall lawyer, his idiot fixer, is meeting directly with Russians.

Okay, this would be a bigger smoking gun.

I still don't understand how, even if they impeach him,

Bill Clinton was impeached.

You have to convict.

For that, you need 67 senators.

And at most, the Democrats, if they win the 2018 election, are going to have, what, 54 senators?

So that means

you'd need 13 Republicans with a conscience.

Good fucking luck.

I actually think.

I think we don't know what Republicans will do because as the story develops, I think what we're seeing and what we saw when we saw Republicans saying

he will not fire Mueller, and the reason they were really saying that was to say, don't fire Mueller, right?

That was really their public way of saying, we don't want you to.

They won't take action legislatively because that would be embarrassing to the president, and they're hoping that they've they've done enough by signaling to him that they would.

It's hysterical.

They constantly significantly.

They say, Why are you even asking the question?

He would just never do it.

Other than the fact that he's constantly thinking about it, talking about it, tweeting about it, and tried to do it once.

It could never happen.

And then they turn around and go, sorry, we weren't prepared.

We just didn't think he was going to do it.

It's too late now.

Okay, so this is my point.

I feel like the Liberals, the Democrats, we've got a whole panel of them here.

Okay, they're always one step behind this guy.

It's It's going to happen.

He's going to fire Mueller.

Let's assume that.

What happens then?

We put on the pussy hats and Marks.

Well, he fired me.

He fires Ronnie Steve first.

What's the plan, Stan?

Well, number one, I still have my pussy hat.

What's it?

I still have my pussy hat.

So yes, we put on the pussy hat.

The focus has got to be on making sure the special counsel is allowed to do his job.

And if the president of the United States gets in the way and fires him and makes it so he can't do his job, that's obstruction of justice.

And obstruction of justice is an impeachable offense.

It's that simple.

And let's be clear, we are.

He's impeached.

Right.

But he does have to fire Rosenstein first.

Well, look,

that's a Saturday.

Let's move past that.

That's all going to happen.

Let's focus on that.

I agree.

I agree.

Let's even say he's impeached.

Impeached.

Clinton was impeached.

I think it's just moving to a place now where people are going to go, well, it's a partisan world.

They all get impeached.

But was he convicted?

I want to answer.

Is he still president?

I promise.

I'm going to answer your question.

Which is, the underlying question here is, is Congress ever, and is this Congress going to do its job and be a check on the president?

Whether you're talking about impeachment, whatever you're talking about, the answer is no.

So the question is, what should be done about the way that this president behaves, regardless of

the behavior?

The answer is win the November 18 elections.

That's the answer.

And it doesn't have to do with impeachment or anything else.

It's just, but in order to get a check,

you're not going to take the Senate.

That's the same thing.

But you're asking about impeachment.

I'm talking about just a check on the president.

That's what I'm talking about.

Well, and I think this is the point about the politics of it, because, first of all, people will be in the streets.

They will be.

So there's what the Democrats do in office.

Well, because that becomes part of our bully pulpit that says exactly the point that Jason's making about the check on power, because one of the things that happens is the Senate is actually saner than the House.

So we actually really have a meaningful opportunity to take back the House.

We do.

We have a meaningful opportunity.

No, I'm here.

I'm wondering about the part part where who was senior?

Senate.

You know, I mean, big thing.

No, and what I mean by that is.

Susan Collins is the big moderate.

She votes with them 81% of the time.

She fortunately did some good things on health care reform.

But my point is that when we have a different House, which we really can have in the November election, we can also have a different Senate.

We can have the balance be different in the Senate.

It's going to be tougher.

It's a lot, lot harder for the Senate.

But that does change the power, particularly when and particularly if we insist that

they not just give him a green light and a pass like Paul Ryan did on the tax.

He's going to be there until 2021.

I mean, unless the cheeseburgers might take him out, but the Republicans and the Senate, I don't know.

I mean, he's either going to die or he's going to be there until he's going to releunch him.

I've said a couple of times that it's going to get to that place, like I've seen in many movies, where they go, seize him, seize him.

And I think people are actually,

they used to laugh at me.

And I think it's actually coming coming to that point because

who's going to go and knock on that door at the White House and make him go?

And then he's got the Secret Service around him.

I don't see him leaving willingly

for any reason.

If the Republicans decide at some point, which they clearly haven't yet, that it hurts them enough

because what comes out, what Mueller is able to put out publicly, is bad enough, and that's what we don't know, right?

We don't know just how bad it will be, there is a possibility that the Republicans go to Trump and say,

you're going to get a line or you're going to resign.

And that is a possibility, and that's something that we will only know if we know what.

But it is like if you got pulled over by the police and then you were able to fire the police.

Some of us do get pulled over by the police.

And you can't fire them.

Oh, true.

That's the difference.

No, no, that is the difference, absolutely.

I mean, is it fair to say?

Actually, I can't fire the police either.

Right.

But is it fair to say that the only way Trump survives as president is if we become not a nation of laws, in essence, a fascist dictatorship.

I mean, Madeline Albright had a column in the Sunday New York Times saying, fascism is a lot closer than you think.

Yes.

And when I saw him, what he said about Michael Cohen, the raid on Michael Cohen's office, he says, it's an attack against our country.

Now, we've read the list of the many ways in which he is a banana republic dictator, the family who has key jobs and the missile parades, the list goes on.

Having meetings and getting loans.

Right, exactly.

But an attack,

when the leader says an attack against me is an attack against our country, there's nothing more fascist than that.

That actually hints at a different way in which it is that I think it's very likely we have a chance to win in 2018 in the House and in the Senate.

And that's because a lot of folks, I've talked to a lot of people who have voted for President Trump who say now, they say, look, I never liked the guy.

I never liked the way he treated people.

But he said, you know, the way I've made myself really personally successful, I'm going to do that for the country.

And he hasn't done that.

He never stopped making it about himself, which is your point, right?

Which is why I absolutely think we can take the House, we can take the Senate, and then we can

take the Senate.

Look, first of all, one, I'm out of the prediction business.

Yeah, you're the only person who thinks that.

No, I don't think you're true.

I can see it.

See, there's two people.

See?

Jane John.

I mean, dude.

I wouldn't get that.

That's a bad act of people up here.

They're not going to get actually losing.

They're not going to get 67.

No, we're not talking about it.

They're not going to get 67.

He's not a fascist dictator because fascist dictators don't lose re-election.

Fascist dictators go out of the country.

Well, we have re-elections because that's how you get them out by their feet hanging by their feet head up.

That's how you get them out of the country.

That's after like many countries sent their whole armies over there.

I don't think that's going to happen here.

No, that was, well, I mean, you know,

if this was 1938, what do you think Donald Trump, if Donald Trump was president in 1938, before we knew about the death camps, okay, I'll give him that.

What do you think he would have been saying about Hitler and Mussolini?

America first.

Strong leaders.

Strong leaders.

Strong leaders, very strong.

Yes, he would love them.

He'd be saying America first, which is what the Nazis in the United States were saying in the 1930s.

Okay.

All right, let's do our comedy pieces.

It's such a funny night.

I don't know if you have you heard about Sinclair Broadcasting Group, folks.

This is really interesting.

People are saying it's a second Fox News, but it's actually a lot more insidious than a second Fox News.

Because when you watch Fox News, you know what you're watching.

Sinclair has 200 stations all over the country, and you don't know if it's a Sinclair station.

And they got caught a couple of weeks ago.

Somebody put this together.

It's very clever.

They made each one of the anchors at all these stations around the country read the same Trump propaganda.

Take a look at this.

We are extremely proud of the quality, balanced journalism that CBS4 News produces.

But we are concerned about Trump and Trinket and irresponsible, one-sided news stories plaguing our country.

Plaguing our country.

Scary.

That is really some creepy stuff.

Okay, so we thought as a a public service,

we would try to help you because you don't know if you're at a place where they have a Sinclair station, but you could tell by their programming.

So would you like to hear some of the programs that

might indicate that you have a Sinclair station?

Like if you're watching a show called Myth Trusters,

if there's a program in your area called to catch a predator when you should be looking for Hillary's emails.

How I Met My Daughter, if that's on in your area,

that is a, that's a Sinclair station.

Law and Order oppressed white people unit.

That there?

This is them.

Yeah, that's see right there.

That's...

That is...

If there's a show called Orange-ish, you know it's a Sinclair space.

Chico in the van.

That's all.

Mad About Jews.

Well,

and who's the boss?

And of course, real time with Scott Bayo.

All right, he hosts Fox's Love Connection and Bravos.

Watch what happens live with Andy Cohen.

Andy Cohen is over here.

And

Cohen the fabulous.

Andy.

How are you doing?

How are you, my friend?

Great to be seen.

Now, you're not related to Michael Cohen, are you?

You know what?

It's been a bad week for the Cohens.

It really has.

He had to be named Cohen.

Oh, well, there's a lot of Cohen.

I'm excited about real time with Scott Bayo.

And Chico in the van.

Chico in the van.

You're just excited.

There's a couple of shows you don't have to work on.

That's true.

I mean, you are like the gay Ryan Seacrest.

You just have your...

Wait, is that?

I don't know what you want me to do with that.

Debate it.

No.

No, I'm just saying, you're all over.

You've got your fingers in a lot of pies.

I do, yes.

So

when you see the reality, we're talking about how we're going to get rid of Trump.

I thought maybe I would ask you that because he's a reality show star.

Yes.

And you, above all, know how to get people off of reality shows.

What would be your advice to us?

Maybe you have the key to get rid of this person.

Well, I mean, I really don't.

I thought you were going to blame me for Trump, so I'm so glad you weren't going to get it.

That's my next question.

That was your next question.

No, no, no, I'm not blaming you.

Why would I blame you for Trump?

Thank you.

Good.

I mean, you know, you...

Well, listen, he knows,

he's been on a reality show for a lot of years.

He's on a horrible one right now.

But he knows how to communicate to the camera

without cutting through all the bullshit.

And people like that.

Yeah, but how do we get rid of him?

I don't know.

Okay.

But how do you do it?

I don't know how to find a Democrat to go up against him.

Well, you know that.

Well, okay.

But like on a reality show, I mean, forgive me, I don't see them as often as I should.

I'm busy.

But how did they, when you want to, I mean, you produce that, you manipulate that, you know who to keep into it.

Well, I don't manipulate it, but usually on the housewives,

usually though, for real, if someone turns into such a train wreck, they're usually off the show.

Really?

Don't you know?

Don't they get the more camera time, the more you know what?

Usually the viewers will turn on them.

There's a difference between.

That's what we want.

How do they get the viewers to turn on it?

You know what?

There's a difference between...

See, we're hitting on it.

We're getting to it.

There's a difference between being love to hate and hate to hate.

And when you love to hate someone, you stay on the show.

So maybe a lot of people love to hate this guy.

So you troll him on Twitter.

I do.

It's the only good thing about Twitter that's left.

Twitter is such a cauldron of negativity.

I'm very down on Twitter.

Yeah.

People are, and I don't understand why they didn't come to that conclusion so many years ago.

Well, actually, before the election, it was fun to share ideas and make jokes.

and here's a funny video.

I think so.

But it was mean from the beginning.

I don't know.

I had fun with it at the beginning, but it's so.

I still have fun tweeting out.

Right.

I just refuse to really.

Take it in.

I told you you're the gay Ryan Zara.

Yes, right.

I mean, and I want to.

You know,

it's unfair.

It's like when a couple of kids ruin it for the whole class because it's really probably not that many people.

It's true.

My relationship with Twitter changed at the beginning of the year.

I co-hosted New Year's Eve on CNN.

I know.

You got off the air.

Huge ratings, right?

Yes, I got off the air, though.

And Twitter, of course, the headline on Twitter was, Twitter hates Andy Cohen on New Year's Eve.

And I was like, oh, great, they've put together 30 of the meanest tweets about me.

And so it kind of ruined 24 hours.

And then the ratings come out highest rated.

in the

but there's something wrong with anyone in this country caring that much about what social media says about them.

This is what I think is the sickness at the heart of this country.

And it is connected to why a guy like Trump could be president.

Why do we care so much about that?

And why do we want to put out on social media this version of ourselves?

No one ever...

Are you immune to criticism on Twitter?

I mean, do you not get irritated?

I'm totally not immune.

If I was immune, I would read it.

Right, okay.

But we're all sensitive, so we don't.

Yeah.

I just.

Who wants to read Fuckface?

Right.

You know,

you're terrible.

No, of course not.

I just tweet out my troll at Trump, and then I don't look at what comes back at me.

Yeah.

And then I move away.

Okay.

But

what was I going to ask?

Oh, yeah.

Why is it that people need to have this approval of strangers or someone they went to third grade with?

Well, it's human.

That's right.

But why put out this version of their life?

That's what I don't get.

No one ever puts a picture of them

taping the mirror back onto their car.

Their shitty old car.

You don't get a lot of likes if you post that picture.

Likes.

What do you give a fuck if somebody likes you?

That's what some people are.

People are like, why?

What do you care?

It's human nature.

Okay, we're getting excited.

All right, let me.

I have a question for you.

LGBTQ.

What is it?

It's gay open mic time.

I come out.

I know.

What do I tell you about?

Well, so many of the...

So many of the

gay guests on our show are not out of the closet, so I can't ask them.

Really?

Really?

So I, you know,

it's only the brave ones like you, Mr.

Bravo.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

What does the Q stand for?

What is the Q standard for questioning or queer?

People who are questioning or queer.

And

the younger generation of LGBTQ people have really embraced the term queer, which used to be a derogatory term about gay people.

But it's come to mean to encompass the kind of whole ball of wax.

But it's not included in gay?

You know what?

I don't write the letters.

I'm trying to explain it to you.

I don't.

You know what?

I'm queer, okay?

You have a problem with that?

No, I don't have a problem.

I'm just trying to find out why you need the G and the Q.

You know what?

It's a generational thing from what I can tell.

I was fine with it how it was, but I embrace it.

I'm good with it.

See, I'm getting on your nerve.

I know.

Paul Ryan, is he cute?

No, I'm kidding about that.

No, I want to.

I want to talk about Paul Ryan.

You want to talk about Paul Ryan?

Let's have a bottom of Paul.

I give him a seven.

That's not bad for a politician.

No, it's true.

No, okay.

So

he went away this week, and you know, it seems like, you know, when I looked at some of the things that people wrote about him when he was first out there, he's an ideas guy.

He's a wonk, he's a numbers guy.

Oh, please, is there such a thing in the Republican Party?

I mean, it's a shame we don't have a Republican to defend them right now, but honestly.

Well, he has figured out how many poor people to kick the ladder out from under.

He's counted that that quite well.

Yeah.

But this

Time magazine in 2012, Romney chose someone as deep as Palin was shallow.

A studious wonk known for his mastery of that most substantive of all issues, the federal budget.

His austere budget plans reflect the goals of the GOP's idea factory.

That's about as real as Willie Wonka's chocolate factory, the idea factory.

What ideas do they ever have?

He has an accident.

He's not an ideas guy, he's an idea guy.

His one idea is that the government takes too much money from rich people and gives too much money to poor people.

And he just wants to reduce that.

That's the only thing that's correct.

No, he has reduced it.

Right, and it's the only thing he's ever cared about in his entire career.

And he needs to talk about other things that are more popular than that, because it's not a popular idea, but that's what's driven him.

But it's actually worse than that, because one, the I is ideology, not idea.

And there's a difference, because an an idea is actually something that's worth talking about if you're only driving your ideology and your ideology is I just want to be say nice things about people who are struggling to survive and then make it very difficult for them to do it and oh and I will lie on my way to doing it because I will actually say that the poverty rate in this country is higher when in fact it's actually lower.

1959 the poverty rate, 22% poverty rate in this country, it's 13% now.

And a lot of the reason are the programs that he's cutting.

Of course.

Social Security is mostly.

In fact, Social Security is

cutting,

getting people helping.

But it was a lot of the elderly who made up that.

That's very true.

Yes.

So he really just was an ass kisser, I think.

I mean, he was the one person who could have stood, he was in a position to stand up to Trump.

But he was a true believer.

He was a true believer in the ideology of feed the wealthy more of their own money than starve everybody else.

That he's been very consistent on and he actually was, and that's what he's proud of.

He's proud of for people who earn $700,000 a year more in this country getting $85,000 back in taxes, while poor, if you earn $40,000, you're going to get $300,000 back.

That's what he's proud of.

We always sort of talk about this as, look, Paul Ryan made a deal.

He believes in these things that he thinks are virtuous, that I don't think are virtuous.

And so he made a deal and he said, I'm not going to stand up to the President of the United States because I want this stuff to happen.

First of all, that's not a virtuous thing to do.

But second,

he also had a job to do.

Like, he had a responsibility to stand up to a president who was trampling on democracy, saying things that weren't true, hurting our country in the long run.

And now he has an opportunity because there's this little club of Republicans in Washington who have decided they're not going to run for reelection.

And they have grown like kind of like spines a little bit.

And he has an opportunity.

He's the Speaker of the House.

He could spend the next six months not just joining that club, he could lead that club.

And I'm very disappointed to know that he probably won't.

And his legacy will be nothing as a result.

He's actually not done, though.

He is going to lead that club.

He's going to lead it and he's going to try to actually tamper with Medicare and Social Security.

So he may be gone.

He's not gone.

Well, he's going to knock some stuff over on the way out.

He's going to knock some people over.

But can we stop pretending that he was ever bright?

He's the guy who, this is the guy who once said that the problem with Obamacare was that it was using the health of young people to subsidize the health concerns of older people, which is how insurance works.

That's the whole thing.

That's insurance.

That's just right.

That's just insurance in general.

That's not being dumb.

That's his values.

That's his idea.

He doesn't want people who can't afford their own health care to get it from other people.

He doesn't want healthy, rich people to subsidize other people.

That's what he believes.

He's not dumb.

He just has values that you and I disagree with.

But I don't know.

No, I think he just really didn't understand that.

I think he's dumb.

Very kind to him.

Yeah, I think what he's been brilliant at, though, is wrapping a lot of meanness in some kind words as he screws up.

That's what Reagan was great at.

Yeah.

So

I've been reading you about political correctness.

Would you preach a little bit about that?

Because I know you think it's a bit of a threat to

true liberalism.

Yeah, well, you know, it's a bad term.

I wish we had a better term because we don't have to use the same word that people on the right use.

Because I think when people who are liberals who are objecting something I wish we had some different way of expressing this concept because when people on the right use it they're just talking about you know like I wish we didn't have to like stop being racist everyone I you know I wish we could just go sexually harass all the women in the office like we used to back in the old days what do we used to

or still are right exactly exactly um

I think there's a way of talking about identity that's become more popular in the last three or four years on the left that basically assumes that you can't debate anything, that the truth is known, the truth is fixed, there's no room for individuals to disagree.

And no one wants to incur the wrath of the PC police.

Right.

So they just shut up.

Social media is,

it goes back to social media

culture of outrage that happens in social media where you used to post a video and it was like, oh, that's a cute video.

And it's like, no, they had a Confederate flag in front of their house last year.

Do your research.

Boycott.

Exactly.

I thought the video was cute.

Exactly.

I just want to say one thing, though, because I was really privileged to have the experience of

having a conversation with Sam Nundberg about whether or not he would cooperate with Mueller's investigation.

Never remind us who he is.

So Sam Nunberg used to work for Trump, actually had tweeted out some very basis things, including dropping the N-word about Al Sharpton's daughter.

And when I was going on the the set with him, I was really prepared to gut him and eviscerate him.

And here was this guy, he was a complete wreck, who'd been unraveling throughout the day, not making really any sense about why he wasn't going to comply with a subpoena that was going to land him probably in jail for killing him.

Oh, that guy.

That guy.

That guy.

He was for one day, he was just everywhere on the network.

He was tearing his way across.

There have been so many.

There have been

littered with this.

But the point was, you know, instead of being that person I thought I was going to be, I was actually just like, this guy's just a train wreck and someone just needs to talk to him.

I didn't plan it.

But what happened on social media was amazing.

All I got was praise.

All I got was praise on Twitter, which I love, I admit it.

But all I got is praise for being kind.

And I got that through social media.

So I think we don't want to, you're absolutely right about the bullying, the outrage, some of the nastiness.

But I don't think we want to just forget that there's actually a lot lot of kindness in this country.

President Obama used a good phrase about it.

He said

he's given a lot of speeches about this topic.

It doesn't get a lot of attention when he's talked about it, but he said it's a recipe for dogmatism when you approach a discussion like that, when you assume that we know what's true, we don't need to listen to anybody else if we can just shout them down and say

that's, I mean, yes, there is racism, and yes, there is sexism, and you have to listen to people, and you have to listen to your, look at yourself and say, am I being racist?

Do you have to be serious?

But you also

need to have some open process for dialogue where there's an assumption on both sides that people can get things wrong and can learn.

But it isn't part of the problem, though.

The media has actually been part of the problem on this, not just, so it's a really important point.

But, I mean, for instance, we are polarized even in where and how we get our news.

So if most Trump voters are actually getting their news from Fox, well, I don't even know why I call it news, because it's not, but from Fox.

Propaganda.

Propaganda machine, right?

So many people who have very few, very, and very little local news, and we're even more racially segregated.

We've seen an increase in concentrated poverty, so we're not even living together across class in this country.

So we are increasingly only knowing each other through media, and media keeps portraying us in stereotypical ways and actually makes money off of stoking the tensions.

I mean, that's the truth.

And that's the the same thing that Russia was trying to do.

Very well.

It's also bots.

It's Russian bots on Twitter.

That's right.

But the Russian bots do sometimes do the same thing as just American assholes.

And doing it well.

To put sort of just a bow on the uplifting comment.

The uplifting comment that you had, which is that, you know, I've been in 38 states since Trump was elected.

I've just...

met a ton of people and what I always come back to is that it's social media, cable news, all that stuff that accentuates our differences.

That is not the day-to-day experience in this country.

So true.

I couldn't agree more because I'm in those states a lot too.

Yes.

All right.

Thank you, everybody.

Time for new rules.

New rules.

Okay, you like this, bitch, huh?

New rule.

The police in London who broke up a rave party at an abandoned Toys R Us store

should be ashamed of themselves.

It was the first and only time adults were in a Toys R Us store and didn't want to kill themselves.

Were there a few kids on drugs running around knocking things over?

Yes, but not as many as when it was a Toys R Us.

New rule, old sayings are usually wrong.

Take this Turkish tanker crashing into a historic mansion in Istanbul.

It proves two things.

Loose ships are way more dangerous than loose lips.

And also, the house doesn't always win.

You rule, now that we have a quiet place, the horror movie where no one utters a single peep, Hollywood must make a sequel, the Jared Kushner story.

The living answer to the the question, what if a nice Jewish boy made get out?

Neural, someone has to show me a single example in human history of a kid who got to this adult content warning

and clicked, yeah, you're right, I'm under 18.

Why even have this?

You might as well say, kid, shut the door and close the blinds.

It's titty time.

New rule Donald Trump has to try to not look so sad over the recent chilliness he's been experiencing with Melania.

Cheer up.

At least your hair's getting blown.

And finally, new rule, enough with revisiting things.

Stop being surprised every time you watch an old movie or TV show and find some of the ideas in it are old.

A recent article by Molly Ringwold got a lot of attention because she revisited The Breakfast Club and her other 80s movies and found them troubling in the age of Me Too.

She said she was taken aback by the scope of the ugliness.

Oh, please, they were teen comedies, not snuff films.

She said, it's hard for me to understand how John Hughes was able to write with so much sensitivity and also have such a glaring blind spot.

Oh, I don't know.

Should we dig him up and yell at him?

You can't.

You can't blame someone for not being woke 30 years before woke was a thing.

I remember the 80s.

Being woke meant you had too much cocaine.

I think we should listen to Lisa Simpson, who last week addressed the controversy around Apu, an Indian character who runs a convenience store, because we all know there's no such thing.

Lisa said, something that started decades ago and was applauded and inoffensive is now politically incorrect.

What can you do?

Exactly.

What can you do?

Labor all degenerates for not already being who we would eventually become?

20 years ago, the jokes on friends were just funny.

Now, some millennials, some,

I applaud the sane ones,

but some find the jokes sexist, transphobic, and fat shaming.

Okay, but if you spend your time combing through old TV shows to identify stuff that by today's standards looks bad, you're not woke, you're just a douchebag.

Obama was against gay marriage until his second term, but I don't think we need to pretend he never existed.

You can't enjoy any music, movies, or TV from back when for any length of time before seeing something we just don't do anymore.

But aren't we adult enough to separate what we like about an old movie from what we don't?

We can watch big

as a movie about a kid who becomes an adult and not as a movie about a grown woman who fucks a 12-year-old.

The most beloved and wholesome act in history is the Beatles, but even they wrote, She was just 17, you know what I mean.

Which today sounds a little Roy Moorish.

They also sang, I'd rather see you dead, little girl, than to be with another man.

And I used to be cruel to my woman, I beat her.

Geez, if all you need is love, how come they kept threatening everybody?

But that last lyric is from the song Getting Better, which is what we have been doing.

It's all you can do, because every generation could be called the what were you thinking generation.

In the early 1900s, heroin was a children's cough medicine.

In the 50s, amphetamines were sold to housewives as diet pills.

We used to drive without seatbelts and drink while we were pregnant and litter indiscriminately.

Just throw shit out the window.

We smoked on airplanes.

We would board an enclosed aluminum tube with old people and children and asthmatics and light up a chester field.

We had pageants where we paraded women in swimsuits and judged them on their appearance.

Oh wait, we still do that.

Yes,

yes.

And that's the point.

We're never finished evolving.

I hate to break it to you, but no matter how woke you think you are, you are tolerating things right now that will make you cringe in 25 years.

Beauty pageants, mass incarceration, putting our parents in old age homes, how we treat animals.

One day

your kids will grow up and ask you, what's Facebook and why were you on it all day?

What's a reality TV star and how did one become president?

We can't believe people in old movies smoked.

They won't believe we put the cell phone in our pocket next to our nuts.

I have a feeling young people look at the clothes we wore in the 1980s

and think, oh, they had to be doing it as a goof.

No.

We thought we looked good.

Let me show you a jacket I used to wear

this is real

I used to wear it I had it

no you got turn you gotta stand up and turn I'm leave me finish

I kept this as a reminder to all of us Never again.

Look at these fucking things.

Look like a villain in a Batman movie.

I know clothes aren't as important as racism or sexism, but it is the same principle.

We didn't know it was wrong.

That's what happens in societies.

They lapse into groupthink.

We all did this.

We walked the streets looking like this every day and it went on for years and years and no one said anything.

We turned away and we let it happen because we wanted our shoulders to look really, really big.

So let's chill out on busting balls for breaking rules that didn't exist at the time.

The arc of history is long, but it bends away from hammer pants.

Just remember, in the 80s, there were two top hairstylists, Vidal Sassoon and Voltage.

And don't even ask me about my mullet.

All right.

That's our show.

I'll be at the Mirage in Vegas May 18th and 19th at the Windstar World Cathedral in Thackerville, Oklahoma, July 6th at the Brady Theater in Tulsa, July 7th.

I want to thank Jonathan Chait, Jason Kander, Maya Wiley, Andy Cohen, and Brian Schatz turned 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.