Ep. #454: Mitch Landrieu, Gina McCarthy

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.

Okay.

All right, you're embarrassing me.

Please.

Please.

Sit yourself down.

Thank you.

Oh, wow.

What a crowd.

Thank you very much.

Of course, I love it.

I'm in show business.

But let's get, there's so much news.

I mean, if it's a week, week, and it is a week, there has to be, and there was, more departures of key people from the White House.

First one this week, his lead lawyer, Trump's lead lawyer on the Russia investigation, John Dowd.

I didn't even have him in my bracket.

But he's gone.

And then Trump's second National Security Advisor, H.R.

McMaster,

He's out, and John Bolton is in.

Remember John Bolton?

Yes, you remember him as the

ambassador to the UN for George W.

Bush.

So he has experience with incompetence.

And,

you know, he's.

He's been here.

John Bolton came here.

We talked to him.

He's another one of those hawks, you know, those super militaristic hawks who never served in Vietnam.

The only person, by the way, in military history who was classified 4F because of his mustache.

That's very rare.

But, you know, he was all gung-ho, John Bolton was, for the war in Iraq, wants now to mix it up big time with Iran and North Korea.

He's what they call an asshole's asshole.

And

you'll never guess where he has been working for the last 10 years.

Fox News.

Who guessed it?

I can't.

Or as Trump calls it, the home shopping channel.

What the fuck is with this?

Meanwhile,

meanwhile, I love this story.

Housing Secretary Ben Carson said that he needed to spend $131,000 of taxpayer money, or maybe it's $31,000.

What, it's too much money.

Taxpayer money for a dining room set for his office because he said the old table, these are his words, was actually dangerous.

You mean compared to John Bolton?

Dangerous?

I mean,

so let, but come on, let's not bury the lead.

Let's get to what people are really thinking about.

Everyone is pissed off at Facebook, right?

We may have to go back to boring each other face to face.

This is serious, people.

Facebook got caught sharing private data with people who are using it to help elect Donald Trump.

And users say this is the worst thing to happen on Facebook since their mom sent them a friend request.

This is.

No.

There's a hashtag delete face.

People are deleting their accounts.

Cher did it.

I mean, what's going to happen if you don't post 88 pictures of your toddler?

How will I know that you've stopped having sex?

But don't worry, Mark Zuckerberg, he's on it.

He's going to crack down, he said.

Oh yeah, he's going to crack down.

Of course, he said that before, but he is so determined that we take him seriously this time that he promised to stop dressing like a 12-year-old.

So I,

that.

Oh, and

I must parenthetically say, speaking of 12-year-olds, you know, one thing I love about America, if I have to use one word for America, I would say, mature.

Very mature, this country, right?

I think maturity.

Okay, well, add to that file this week in the maturity case.

The former vice president of the United States and the current president of the United States

threatened to fight each other.

Two septogenarians.

Joe Biden, did you see?

He said, if I was in high school now, I'd take Trump behind the gym and beat the hell out of him.

And then Trump tweeted back, Biden would go fast, gun, fast and hard, crying all the way.

And then the vice principal came by and said, where are you two supposed to be?

It's a dream, right?

It's not really happening.

I trust it.

Anyway,

what happened with Facebook is they let a company, Cambridge Analytica, mine data from 50 million users, and they used it to build what they call psychographic profiles of potential Trump voters.

That's who they're after.

So they were trying to find out all this information.

They wanted to know where they lived, what kind of car they drove,

what books they liked to burn.

All I know is they better fix this shit quick.

Because Facebook is a great way to go online and check out your old girlfriends.

like like Trump does with Pornhub

in this week's episode of restoring honor and dignity

okay this is so much

first there's a former apprentice contestant who says she was the victim of Trump's unwanted sexual advances she's suing him Playboy Center fold Karen McDougall said said they had an affair.

She's suing to tell her story.

And of course, porn star Stormy Daniels revealed a lie detector test this week about the time she was fucking Trump and passed the test.

It also came out this week that Don Jr.

apparently having an affair with an apprentice contestant.

This must be the breakdown of the family that conservatives warned about if we allowed gay marriage.

Don't you think this

is what they want?

And, you know, in the Don Jr.

case,

his wife allegedly found out about the affair because, listen to this, so cliché, checked his phone when he was in the shower.

And one of the techs said, we can't keep meeting like this.

Turns out that was from the Russians.

anyway, this

you see now, Karen McDougal, the Playboy Playmate, went on Anderson Cooper last night and talked about she had a 10-month affair, had apparently sex, she said dozens of times with Donald Trump, always the same.

It was always the same.

Yes, Donald, you're so big, Donald.

I love you, Donald.

Then she would talk.

But there was a poignant moment.

Karen McDougal,

she said she was sorry for what she did to the other woman in the equation.

But Ivanka said, it's okay.

She figured it out.

And someone asked Trump about Karen McDougal today, asked if they had unprotected sex.

And he said, no, we had a non-disclosure agreement.

But what we're all waiting for, right, Sunday?

60 minutes.

Stormy Daniels is on 60 minutes.

I can't wait.

And

Stormy says she's not going to go into details about sex with Donald Trump.

She's saving that for another show.

60 seconds.

Anyway, we got a great show.

Great show.

Chris A's, Connor Sharon, and Malcolm Nance are here.

And a little later, we'll be speaking with with former EPA Administrator Love Her Gina McCarthy is here.

But first up, he is the mayor of New Orleans.

His new book is In the Shadow of Statues, A White Southerner Confronts History.

Mitch Landrew.

Hey.

How are you, Mr.

Mayor?

I'm great.

Good to see you.

Oh,

we're happy to have you.

Welcome to sunny Los Angeles.

I hear you're running for president.

I am not.

See, I thought I would get that right in.

I thought I would get it.

Very clever.

Very clever.

You're not running your

Sherman-esque.

I am.

Not running at all, Brent.

Okay.

Oh, my life's like it.

Okay.

Well, because, you know, it's about time we had a mayor.

Have we ever had a mayor who?

Never, never.

Never.

Never.

But mayors are the ones who are taking care of stuff in this country, right?

They're the ones who actually have to respond.

Because, first of all, people live in cities.

That's right.

85% of people in America live in cities.

Is that right?

85%.

Yeah.

Isn't that something?

Actually, mayors, you know, one of the things that all of the mayors of of America are doing, non-ideologically based, they're practical people.

They get things done

because they see, well, this is why.

Because they're in the carpool line, they're in the grocery store, they're at the cleaners, and if you do something wrong, somebody pops you, and if you make a decision, it hits the ground the next day.

And the most innovative things in the country are happening in cities right now, and it's just very exciting.

It's a good time to be there.

And we got a great crop of mayors across America as we speak.

Yeah, our one here wants to be president.

He sure does.

He's a good guy.

I think he's got a shot.

So you're supporting him?

I may be.

And then maybe not.

I'm going to keep trying.

You also have a great senator

who's running.

Yeah.

I think the Democrats have an actual good bench.

I think that there will be about 150 people who decide to try to do something.

Well, because a lot of them perceive the current president as something of a buffoon.

Well, I think they're right.

I think the country feels, I mean, right now, obviously, the president thinks that governing in chaos is a great strategy.

I don't think the rest of America thinks that it's a great strategy.

Right.

And it's interesting because,

I mean, you say 85% of people live in cities, and we are, of course,

a very divided country.

And one of the ways we're divided is city mouse versus country mouse.

And it does seem like Donald Trump is never on the side of the city mouse.

Well, I think that's.

He's always with the country people.

That's one way to look at it.

Which is weird because he's from New York.

Exactly.

That's one way to look at it.

But the truth is, for people even that live in cities, a lot of people that don't live in cities work in them every day.

And a lot of people in the cities depend on what people in the rural areas produce.

And the people in the rural areas depend on jobs in the cities.

So on the ground every day, if people don't notice this, that we're actually amongst each other and living in peace and harmony and actually doing a good job.

When we talk about President Trump, we are divided.

Yeah.

Now he's going after sanctuary cities.

Correct.

What is New Orleans' status there?

What is your position on that?

Well, interestingly enough, sanctuary cities

was a term coined by the church.

Don't jump out of your seat.

You know, to give, because I understand we can talk about that later,

but

to give comfort to those that

need of aid and afflicted.

President Trump has now turned it into a weapon that follows his theory that all Mexican are rapists, is that when cities are open and welcoming places, somehow they're harboring criminals, which could not be anything further from the truth.

So mayors across America and police chiefs have tried to communicate to the Attorney General, to the President, and actually they have it backwards.

See, when a police officer shows up at a rape victim's house, and the first thing they ask him is not, how are you, but like, what is your immigration status?

Generally, what happens is the rapist goes free.

And so, what mayors across America are saying, which is that our number one priority is to protect people

irrespective of their immigration status.

And so, what we need to do is we have to fight criminals where they are and not get confused that because people are not from here, that they might be more prone to crime than anywhere else.

And of course,

it follows right into the entire gun violence issue that we're having in America, which is catastrophic for us all.

And mayors in America are saying we know how to protect the streets of America.

We need police officers that are properly trained.

We need police officers that understand community policing.

We might need

another.

We need police officers who are properly trained.

I know, and I'm asking if they are, because we saw in Sacramento here.

Yeah.

That was another terrible episode.

A terrible episode that we've seen many times before.

And

I just want to know what you you think about, is the approach of the police correct to begin with?

Because it seems like this emptying the whole clip 20 shots into somebody who you're not sure of what they did, what they have, is crazy.

And I've never heard a, I'm not saying every policeman would do that, but I've never heard a policeman say anything but I defend my fellow officer doing that.

It seems to me at best, this is a horrible way to train police to do their job.

Let me put it in context for you, because the city of New Orleans, my city, on the first day that I came into office, invited the Justice Department to come in, and we are operating under one of the most intense consent decrees to hire the right people, supervise them the right way, train them the correct way, and actually begin to work with them on appropriate use of force.

Everybody knows, we don't have to say this, most police officers are really good folks that try to do the right thing.

There are police officers that have been poorly hired and poorly trained, and we're retraining our police departments as we speak.

So, for example, in New Orleans now, every one of our police officers has a body camera on them.

When there is a police-involved shooting, as soon as that happens, the scene gets shut down.

We have what's called an independent police monitor that goes out to the scene.

We have a team of investigators with the FBI embedded.

We have now the practice of releasing the tapes early.

So now everything is on tape.

And if it is a shoot that is in excessive force, the police officer is...

I guess I'm asking a more basic question.

It seems like the police have this idea in their head that it should be a completely no-risk operation.

And we know it is a job with risk.

By the way, they do keep statistics on this.

Policeman is the 14th-ranked risky job in America.

It's not the most risky job.

Well, we have had episodes.

But they seem to have this idea that if I feel my life is threatened in any way, I have the right to just take you out.

Correct that.

This guy was a thief.

I don't think he deserved to be.

Most police chiefs in America will tell you that that is wrong, and that now we're training police officers not to do that, to be discerning, to be very thoughtful.

We have had a lot of episodes where police officers have been killed as well, and so it's a really tough balance.

But in New Orleans, I think you're doing it in Los Angeles.

There are a number of other cities that I can't remember that are under consent decree where we're retraining our officers to make sure that they understand exactly when force is necessary and when it's not.

And now there are consequences to that.

And so they're getting better.

We have a long way to go.

The issue in Sacramento will play itself out.

We will investigate that, find out what the circumstances are, and hopefully they'll make the right determination about it.

All right.

So let's talk about guns now.

Yeah.

Because that's certainly, I mean, when you're a policeman in this country,

you have to figure that into the equation.

You should be worried about it every day.

Right.

And tomorrow is the big march that came out of the Parkland shooting.

Where are you?

Now, I've been critical of Democrats for always starting the argument with, well, I'm a big supporter of the Second Amendment.

Well, I'll end it there.

You are?

No.

Let me articulate it for you first.

Yeah, please.

I'm from the South.

All right.

First of all, I'm a lawyer.

I believe in the Constitution.

Written throughout the Constitution is a tension between giving people's rights, but we always forget that there's always a responsibility that attaches to that.

And you can be for the Second Amendment.

In other words, you can acknowledge an individual's right to own a gun to hunt and to protect themselves,

but you can also be in favor of thoughtful, responsible gun ownership.

I'll give you a phrase that I think everybody in America has got to agree with.

Not every American needs any kind of gun at any time to do whatever they want.

And so, as a consequence,

it's a good way to put it.

So,

as a consequence,

it's not unreasonable.

You could run on that.

It's, I could.

If you were running with that,

but I'm not.

So it is not unreasonable, and it's not an unreasonable restriction on the Second Amendment right to have universal background checks, or to outlaw weapons of war, or to have waiting periods, or to outlaw bump stocks.

That's not unreasonable.

As a matter of fact, the NRA used to kind of hang around that area.

Now they've gone to the extreme.

But let me just give you a number.

This will shock you, but it's true.

You can test it.

Since 1980.

Less than 38 years in this country, 630,000 American citizens have been killed on the streets of America.

On the streets?

On the streets of America.

That doesn't include suicide.

Well, no, it does as well.

But that's in homes.

So with gun violence,

that's more people than soldiers that have been killed in all the wars of the 20th century.

So when people say something really simple that they want you to accept, like guns don't kill people, you just have to stop there and say, well, no, actually, they do.

They were created to kill, and sometimes they kill animals, sometimes they kill people.

And then you can say, well, if we can't agree agree on that, we could agree on this, that people actually use guns to kill people.

That's true.

But you can't say that guns don't kill.

And I think reasonable gun restrictions make a lot of sense.

And I think if you pull it, if Congress really cared about this, most of the people in America believe in people having a right to own guns but demand responsible gun ownership.

And it seems to me that we can get there.

And these kids are going to demonstrate to us once again what we adults ought to be thinking about as we go forward.

Okay, last question, and then I'll let you go.

Your book

is about taking down the statues, the Confederate statues in your city.

I know you took a lot of heat from certain factions.

I did.

What has been the upshot, and if,

say a mayor did that and was running for president?

Let's just say.

Or not.

Not you, I'm saying hypothetical.

Asking for a friend.

Of course.

Just between me and you.

How would that issue, do you think, play out?

Well, the truth.

Considering what you you did.

The book is, it uses the prism of the statutes, which is really about race in America.

And it's pretty simple.

We need to stop judging people based on their race, creed, color, religion, nation of origin, and do what Americans always do, or what's supposed to do aspirationally, is judge people based on their behavior.

See, that's a really simple idea.

And we haven't done that.

And the book also talks about the speech that I gave that's called The Truth, which is like quit saying that the Civil War was not about slavery, or quit saying that the Civil Civil War was some kind of noble cause.

You see, it wasn't.

The Civil War was fought to destroy the United States of America, not to put it back together.

It was fought over the cause of slavery.

And for some reason, we have a difficult time dealing with that issue.

So when somebody says something like, I want to make America great again,

it's the comma again

that causes a problem for people.

And if you listen to African Americans, 60% of which run the city of New Orleans, they say that again thing really bothers me.

See, that's a dog whistle about where we want to go back to.

When do we want to go back to it?

Where were you back in 1950 and how was it for you?

Wasn't great for everybody.

And so that notion of racial reconciliation is critically important, but essentially it spans across the issue of immigration, guns and violence.

I mean, everything that you talk about, who lives in cities and who doesn't.

Let's not go to the urban center.

Can you hear it?

Yes.

Okay, good.

You heard that.

We've been hearing that.

And so the issue was to confront the issue of race in America because we are a nation that believes that everybody ought to have a shot.

All right.

I think you ought to have a shot.

You ought to have a shot.

I think you'd make a fantastic non-candidate, but you do what you want to do.

Mayor Mitchell Andrews.

Thank you, Mitch.

Mayor, you're both terrific.

All right.

Thank you.

Let's meet our panel.

He's not running.

That's all right.

That's not comfortable.

Definitely seven to seven.

He is totally not running.

All right, let's

meet our panel.

He's the host of MSNBC's Olin with Chris Hayes, author of A Colony in a Nation, now out in paperback.

Chris Hayes.

He is a former U.S.

counter-terrorism intelligence officer and best-selling author of The Plot to Hack America.

Malcolm Nance, up to a paper.

And she's a syndicated conservative columnist whose next book is Sex Matters.

Boy, Does It.

No, I edited that.

How Modern Feminism Lost Touch with Science, Love, and Common Sense.

Mona Charon, hey, how you doing?

Great to see you.

Thank you.

All right, don't forget to send us your questions for Tonight's overtime, so we can answer them after the show on YouTube.

But I want to ask about democracy.

There was an election in Russia this week.

Don't tell me who won.

I didn't watch you get over the leaf.

No.

Putin got 76%

of the vote, and 24% of Russians are now missing.

And

Trump called him to congratulate, even though he had the big card that said, do not congratulate.

And I heard Sarah Huckabee Sanders say,

well,

it's not our place in America to tell other people if they have a fraudulent election.

Since when?

We've done that forever.

And you know, you look at this and you look at President Xi in China saying he's going to be president for life and Trump making all these moves to surround himself with only the people who agree with him and admiring these dictators.

I mean, how much trouble is democracy in?

Some people say it's an alarmist view, but I think it's in trouble.

Democracy is being assaulted in the sense of the indecency of this president, the fact that he lies so promiscuously.

All of that attacks our basic values, but

the rub will really come when he does something that flouts the rule of law, and then we'll find out whether, for example, attempting to fire Mueller.

And then we'll find out whether the Republicans who thus far have been covering for him will actually stand up and say, bridge too far.

That really does offend the law, not just our values.

I have a spoiler alert on that.

For those binge-watching.

I mean,

I think that is going to be the test.

I mean, we're not getting -

I'm increasingly convinced we're not getting out of this without a crisis, right?

We're not gonna get out without some stare-down, some question of which institution holds, right?

So,

the Trail of Tears case where Andrew Jackson gets a ruling against him from the court and he says, Justice Marshall's made his decision, now let him enforce it.

And basically just says, Well, what are you going to do about it?

And it feels like we're heading towards a what are you going to do about it moment, and that's going to be a test.

Right now,

we haven't gotten to that moment yet.

Partly, we haven't gotten to that moment, frankly, because the man who aspires to be an authoritarian is also kind of incompetent in a lot of ways.

And a coward in a lot lot of ways.

Crucially.

Malevolence tempered by incompetence, yes.

Exactly.

Let me address your point because I think you guys are looking just way too far down the ladder here.

There is an existential threat to liberal democracy throughout the world right now.

Democracy is in retreat all around the world.

And you know what?

You can name a lot of countries besides China.

Well, let me tell you, I just wrote a whole book about this.

There is a threat going on right now in Europe.

They are owned.

Conservative parties are owned lock, stock, and barrel by the Kremlin.

They fund them, and they are all about destroying the Atlantic Alliance, globalization, and America's standing in the world.

They want an end to democracy.

They want autocracy.

And what we should be clear about, I think, which makes it scarier, is that there's also domestic constituencies in places like Poland and Hungary for this.

Putin is actually popular in Russia in spite of or because of the machinations he's gone through.

So it's not just that we're watching a backsliding.

It's that there is a constituency that is embracing it and that is what gives those movements their sort of dangerous position.

Well, but don't forget that Putin doesn't just support right-wing movements in Europe.

He also supports extreme left-wing movements in Europe.

He supports disorder and destruction and he doesn't care what label it wears because that's in his interest.

Well their old strategy of going after leftists and all that stuff, that's over and done with.

Maybe libertarians that come all the way around to the right, but they own the neo-Nazi movement in Europe.

Anders Bering-Brevik, the guy who mass murdered 69 school children in Norway, he did that because he was part of this conservative underground there.

He said he did it to eliminate the next generation of liberals in Norway.

These people exist everywhere

throughout Europe.

The United States and Charlottesville, that was to be the American alt-rights coming out to join that global network.

We're in trouble.

Yeah, so let me ask that question again that I think you broached.

Are the Republicans going to actually go down this road where they have to basically say Mueller is dirty, Trump is clean?

Because that's what's on Fox News now.

And it's scary how much Trump takes his cues from Fox News.

I mean,

Putin has state.

Well, Putin has state TV, but Putin's not an idiot.

So state TV does what Putin wants.

I think it's the other way in this country.

I think we're being...

America is being run by Steve Doocy.

Someone said this morning.

Someone made the joke this morning, and I think it was absolutely correct, that depending on how Fox and Friends covered the big omnibus spending bill was going to be whether he signed it or not.

A totally plausible idea.

But I think to this question about what Republicans do when the chips are down,

what's crazy is Republicans have signed up for a cover-up without knowing what they're covering up, which is bizarre and reckless.

The problem for them, though, right now, is that they're sort of caught.

They're like a runner that's taken too big of a lead off first base, and they can't get back.

They just have to run forward.

So they're in this bizarre no man's land where it's like, well, what are you going to do?

You're going to throw them over now.

Like, what does that get you?

You can see they all think they got to take the plunge together.

They've also gotten into this trap of joining Trump in delegitimizing institutions

because that is the way he defends himself, right?

So they've joined this.

They've said, yes, there's a deep state conspiracy.

It's, you know, the FBI is corrupt.

The Justice Department is corrupt.

It's all this deep state stuff.

And, you know, it's almost reminiscent of the OJ defense.

You know, there was a vaccine, everyone knew OJ was guilty, but no, the defense said there was a vast conspiracy of the LAPD to plant the evidence and the bloody gloves and all of that.

And it worked.

And that's very similar to what the Trump/slash some Republicans, not all.

There have been a few brave ones who have spoken up.

But just this idea that he hires everybody from Fox TV.

He hired Larry Kudlow, right, last week.

And then he hired John Bolton.

And then this

Joey Five Pants.

What is his name, Joey?

Joey DeGenovo.

He was available because the mob finds him too ridiculous.

This is the guy.

I mean, here's a question about Donald Trump.

How can you be that stupid and still succeed?

Because he just hired a guy who has been on TV saying that the FBI is a conspiracy.

They had a brazen conspiracy to elect Hillary Clinton.

And now he's going to plead that case to Mueller, who used to be the head of the FBI.

You know, to tell you the truth, there is,

he understands the basest people in the United States.

He understands the people people who think professional wrestling is real.

Okay?

And remember, he used to be on professional wrestling with the big check.

Yes.

Right?

He knows what motivates them.

And this is political and propaganda warfare at their finest.

You know what's really funny?

Half of the attacks that he's making on the FBI, the CIA, and the leadership, they are literally written in a KGB manual.

that used to be there.

One, discredit leadership and personalities.

Two, destroy the morale of operators and operatives in the field.

Three, everyone is part of the vast CIA conspiracy.

What was that?

It's funny, that's how the left used to talk all the time, right?

And we was right.

Well, I mean, that's the point, right?

No, the left was constantly saying that everything was a conspiracy by the CIA.

And now you have the right to be a part of the people.

Not me.

Not you.

I was never, never again the

people.

I always defended this.

The CIA, right, was, shoving bags of cash in the Christian Democratic Party in Italy in the 1940s.

It was overthrowing democratically elected regimes.

That's not just somebody.

Did you buy into the whole conspiracy that they were responsible for the crack epidemic?

That was our big story in the middle of the day.

No, but my point is that

here's why this is relevant now.

The fact of the matter is,

he is hunting in easy ground because people have so much distrust.

It was true back then.

It is true now that the political valence has changed.

But the level of distrust people have issues

now.

if I may take your position for a minute, sometimes we learn, as with Iraq, now we had the 15th anniversary of the Iraq war.

And we learned that sometimes the bad guy in power is actually better than what comes after.

So sometimes what the CIA was doing was unsavory.

I'm not saying in every case it was the right thing to do, but that's a little more understandable.

And let me ask, as long as we're talking about Iraq for a second, 15 years ago, I remember I was against the war,

but once it happened, I said, you know what, we got to root for it to succeed.

Let's hope they're right, and this is going to bring democracy to the Middle East.

Well, that didn't quite work out.

Actually, we fought a war with Iraq, and as we know, Iran won.

And now Iran, they're in Syria, militarily as well.

Certainly, they're hegemonistic power of Iraq,

Lebanon.

So you have Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon.

I don't blame Israel for feeling very paranoid right now.

Yemen, they're looking to get into Yemen.

John Bolton is coming aboard now, who wants to go to war with Iran.

I'm not for that.

But how many countries do we let Iran take?

You know, they are in the midst.

If you look at the Middle East now, you can sort of understand it as a Cold War between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Iran, the Shiite power, Saudi Arabia, the Sunni power.

And the last administration tilted toward Iran very strongly, the Obama administration.

And that didn't work out so well either.

You know, one of the things that we have learned as a country since our whole experience in the Middle East is that the unintended consequences of policies are usually worse and more important than the intended ones.

And so we, as you say, you know, we overthrew Saddam Hussein and in the process we eliminated one of the bulwarks against Iran.

So you're right, Iran did win.

But that's the, so the right lesson to learn is that you have to be careful how

you overthrow governments, but it does not mean, which is what you're talking about.

Or don't overthrow them.

I'm generally careful.

It does not mean that.

So you're saying we should have left Saddam Hussein in Palestine.

And that's really kind of what this is.

But I'm going to tell you, you know what our problem is?

We have horrible consequence management skills.

And I think that's what

you're driving at.

Well put, yes, right.

You know, so in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq,

I was advising the Special Operations Command and Naval Special Warfare Command.

I met the person who created the shock and awe doctrine that, you know, he was professor of Colin Powell's, and he came and he said, what do you think about this run-up?

Now, I'd only worked in the Middle East 20 years.

I said, I don't see it.

I don't see what they're talking about.

They're making up drones coming to the United States and all this stuff, chemical weapons, Iraqis sorting through chunk piles to find it.

They wanted a war.

They got a war.

But what they didn't expect was that they would be giving Iran the entire Middle East from the Golan Heights all the way to Afghanistan.

They should have predicted.

It wasn't that hard to predict.

Iraq is a majority Shiite country.

Well, yeah, you know what?

Another thing they didn't do?

They wanted no experts from State Department or Defense Department who knew the Middle East war commands.

There were a lot of mistakes.

You don't think they lied us into war, do you?

Oh, hey, yeah.

Of course not.

Of course they fought this war.

Really?

You're still arguing they didn't lie us into the war?

No, they didn't lie.

What do you think

do you were going to be shown to be a liar?

Okay, well, let me ask a really scary question.

What do you think would have happened if Donald Trump was president on 9-11?

Because what's scary is you can imagine anything.

I can imagine him going, well, the building should have been made out of Trump steel sand.

Completely.

And I can also imagine him nuking Venezuela.

Yes.

But that is what is precisely so terrifying about the situation we're in, which is that everything holds until it doesn't, right?

And to me,

the lesson, one of the lessons we haven't learned, is just about the sheer horror and duration of war after 15 years after Iraq.

I mean, I think it has been largely memory-hold.

We still have thousands of troops in Afghanistan, the longest war in the history of the world.

Okay, but it's really important to make this point, okay?

There were mistakes made about Iraq, but don't forget, people made mistakes.

There was an

out there.

People People made mistakes.

But Barack Obama did the exact opposite, okay?

He had a problem in Syria, the world had a problem in Syria, and his attitude was: we're hands-off, and what did it do?

It destabilized all of Europe with the flood of refugees.

I'm going to bring out Gina now and switch the

topic to the environment.

She was the EPA

administrator under President Obama, who is now the director of Harvard Center for Health and Global Environment.

My old job, Gina McCarthy.

Hey.

how are you

I

always love having you on thank you you're a straight shooter and you are so missed in your old job I know don't I look good now you you look good now

and and I love the way you stick up for the agency and and I love the way you always put it in in context you know I read something recently where you said you know the EPA it's not about polar bears and I'm in love with polar bears.

I think we should save everyone.

But people just don't, I think, understand.

They somehow got this idea that the EPA is not for them, that it's working against them.

How did that?

Just because it has the word environment in it, it doesn't mean we do birds and bunnies and polar bears.

You know, although I love them, so don't send me bad emails about it.

It's really about kids, it's about public health, it's about safe drinking water, clean land, it's clean air.

Yeah.

And the man who took over, Scott Pruitt.

Yes.

That's not what he's about.

That's not what he is about.

How bad is it under Scott Pruitt?

It couldn't be worse, right?

It's true.

The only thing that could be worse is if he actually knew what he was doing.

But

I think he does know what he's doing.

He knows how to dismantle something.

Yeah, well, he's got an all-out attack on science for sure.

He's got an all-out attack on the agency.

You know, he's making some policy decisions.

But in the end, he's trying to get rid of a lot of rules that were put in place that would have done well.

And every time they've been challenged in court, he's going down.

And, you know, I hate to

drag religion into things.

But it is law.

I'm sorry, but a lot of these anti-environmental people are that way because they are religious, excuse me, nuts

who believe Jesus is going to take the wheel and

great song, but terrible policy.

And that we don't have to do anything because, as this

fellow guy from Oklahoma said, Inhoff, God's still up there.

What do we need you for, Gina?

God's still up there.

Case closed.

Well,

that is one way to look at it.

EPA tends to look at science because science isn't a religion, it's facts.

There you go.

And we

like to make decisions like that.

So

here's my problem with regulation, and I know we need a lot of regulation, and I think we probably need almost all the EPA regulation, but we have a lot of regulation that is really onerous.

Even Obama used to say that.

And it gives the whole thing a bad name, which brings me to my garage door.

Yeah, I just wanted to get a new garage door.

You know what you have to do in California to get a new garage door?

And it's my garage door, by the way.

If I want it to fall on my face, I should be allowed.

Maybe I want to commit suicide by garage door.

I mean, you need, like, I had to like three or four inspections, and it took months and months to put in a goddamn garage door.

I'm not asking for a helipad over my house.

And things like that give regulation a bad name, and that's, and it hurts the EPA.

I just wanted to say that about my garage.

You don't have to answer that.

We settle that.

Yes.

Okay.

So here's something else.

You know,

we're probably around the same generation.

Yes?

Okay.

So I read the obituaries.

I always have, by the way.

I always thought they were very amusing.

Now they're not so amusing.

They're more relevant.

Oh, my God.

They're like 93, young man.

What was he hit by a bomb?

But, you know,

I just see the word cancer.

I mean, every day, all the time.

And I remember in the 80s when people were dying from AIDS and they didn't know how to deal with it, and people were like, I see this name of this disease every week in the paper.

We've got to do something.

But I see this word, cancer, all the time.

I know we've always had it, although it was rare in the ancient world.

We've had it more as we go along.

Now it seems like we have, it's just in every obituary.

And it's because of the environment.

It's the lead, it's the mercury, it's the water, it's the food, it's the oceans.

What don't people get?

I guess they just think it's going to be the next guy.

Well, I think what happened is because we're from the same generation, we remember when rivers were burning and smokestacks were spewing out smoke and it's just it's not as visible anymore.

But it doesn't mean it's gone away.

It means it's way more insidious than it used to be.

I don't think I need to say more than Flint, Michigan to remind people that kids are getting contaminated.

You know,

and

we just have to, scientists have to speak very clearly, and we have to let scientists tell the truth.

And we have to listen to it and base decisions on it.

You know,

one of my favorite things to say when I go out is, listen, this is all you really need to know about climate change.

Number one, it's it's real.

Number two, man-made emissions caused it.

And number three, that's why women need to rule the world.

Jesus.

Let's go, Get!

I'm sick of cleaning up after you go.

There's no topping.

All right, before we run out of time, let's talk about Facebook.

As I mentioned in the monologue, Cambridge Analytica, working for the Trump campaign, did some bad things and people are outraged.

I guess my first question is, do Facebook users have a right to be outraged?

I mean, this is a sharing app to begin with.

I mean, the whole point of it is that Facebook takes your shit and shares it with everybody because you want them to do it.

It's like, you know, it's like putting your stuff out on the front lawn and saying, this is my property.

Yeah, but we can see you.

That is true, but I will say this.

One of the weird things about the data set is that they were taking people's friends' data as well, right?

So I can give away my own data, but I don't have the right to give away my friends' data.

The other thing is you can now go and download your data from Facebook, and the data that they had is not data that I think people thought.

For instance, all the cell phone calls you were making.

Did anyone know that Facebook was monitoring your cell phone calls?

Like, that's in the data set.

People are posting it online and downloading it.

So there's there are absolutely

yes.

Oh, I didn't know.

So there, I agree to a point, right?

Like we all know.

Now you're outraged.

I'm outraged.

Yeah, exactly.

That's not.

No, I mean, I know, I'm like, I have a fan page, and fan pages are great.

Yeah, of course.

Don't take that away.

Don't take that away.

Don't regulate that.

But the rest of it is just such a fucking waste of time.

I mean, come on.

It's just, and I just don't have that much sympathy for people who are wasting their time all day.

This is why people don't read anymore.

Yeah, yeah.

That's all true.

That's all true.

But the

don't you think the freak out on the part of the press about how Facebook tilted the election to Trump is a little hysterical?

I mean, I think it was a factor.

You know what?

They claim that they had this secret sauce.

But you know what?

Ted Cruz used Cambridge Analytica.

Ken Cuccinelli, who lost to Virginia, used Cambridge Analytica.

They didn't have any magic ability.

No, Russia was much more the reason why Trump was in Russia.

Well, you know,

I think Facebook's getting sort of a bum wrap.

It's bad that we were too stupid to put all of our own personal data all over the internet.

But it shouldn't have to be, we shouldn't have to accept it to be weaponized.

Cambridge Analytica is the real evil villain here.

I mean, these guys are like James Bond Evil.

Okay?

That information is yours.

If you gave it to Facebook, it shouldn't be stolen, it shouldn't be weaponized, and it shouldn't be micro-targeted down to your uncle who orders X type of beer so that you can go out and say Hillary was stealing beer.

All right?

Which is what happened.

And then Russian propaganda was slingshot into the minds of every one of those 50 million voters.

And they weren't Hillary voters.

They were voters who were specifically targeted who would vote for Trump or get the emotions to vote for Trump.

That is weaponization of democracy.

That's against the whole premise of the platform.

Yeah, right.

I mean,

from a business standpoint, the ability to micro-target is why it's the world's largest and one of the most profitable companies, right?

Like, so the entire conceit is that you can say to people, like, we have this data, right?

You're not paying for it.

You're the product.

So we have this data.

And if you,

and we now all watch this, right?

This creepy surveillance state we built where like you search for something or you order something on Amazon, the next thing you you know, you're like looking at some other app and Instagram or Facebook and they're advertising that to you.

And you know that you are being watched at all times.

And it's to people, and what they're trying to do is put out information that people already agree with.

A kitten

videos.

Well, everyone agrees with those.

Right.

But I mean, you know, we're not really, news is, we used to read news to get our opinion.

Now we have the opinion, and the news is just there to reinforce it.

It's a serious problem.

It is a serious problem.

It is.

Glance left and right.

Yeah.

Yeah, no, no, the silos and having your own predispositions reinforced is a serious, serious issue.

I think the hype, though, about Facebook is overdone because it's very hard to get people to change their minds when you're having a face-to-face argument with them and saying, you should do this for this reason.

And they'll say, well, no, I just don't, I don't buy it.

And so what, seeing a commercial on Facebook is going to be the magic thing in the future?

Pull the lever.

He was saying he was monitoring and doing things that helped to protect that data?

Because he's given that implication and he did what?

He admitted something wrong.

The FTC fined them for this

back in 2011 and said, you should stop doing this.

If I was Facebook, I'd throw Cambridge Analytica under the bus.

I'd be on jihad against them.

Coming from you, that means a lot.

All right, thank you, panel.

We have to go to New Rules now.

New rules.

Okay, new rule.

If the tabloids are going to continue to call these two Kimye and these two Billery and these two J-Rod, they must refer to these two as Shitstorms.

Let's just end it there.

I'm not going to top that one.

Pretty good.

New rule, credit card chip readers have to stop sending me mixed signals.

One moment you're all like, yes, insert it.

Keep it there.

Don't take it out.

It's working.

And then the next moment you're like...

What happened?

Talk to me.

Now you want me to get out of your way for the next guy in line?

I don't get it.

Things are going so well.

Can I call you?

New rule, stop sending out emails that end sent from my iPhone.

It's not novel anymore.

We know where emails come from.

It's like peeing your name in the snow and signing it sent from my dick.

New rule, if you order a selfie Gino, a selfie Chino, which features a laser-printed picture of you on your coffee, you can't complain that Trump has narcissistic personalities.

And if you then Instagram a selfie of you holding the selfie Chino right before drinking yourself, congratulations, you have achieved peak millennial.

Neuruel, stop putting chia seeds in everything.

Maybe they're good for you, maybe not.

All I know is I don't want something in my stomach that does this.

If I'm going to have a stomach full of grass, it had better be because the cops just pulled me over in Kansas.

And finally, new rule, Republicans have to stop pretending they hate it when celebrities give their political opinions.

Please, you're the party that made Reagan president.

It's not our fault that your celebrities are Ted Nugent, Pat Sajak, and Donald Trump.

James Woods, his last credit was on a MasterCard bill.

Scott Bayo, the only thing he's been in recently that made headlines was his co-star.

Antonio Sabato Jr.

was an underwear model who all the other underwear models referred to as the dumb ones.

And after he spoke at the last Republican convention, he claimed he was blacklisted in Hollywood.

Blacklisted?

Blacklist would be an upgrade.

He wasn't on any list.

He'd be lucky to get on a do-not-call list.

You'd have to run him into show business.

And he's running for Congress now, as is clueless actress Stacey Dash, who was also in the movie Clueless.

At Obama's inaugural gala, he had Beyoncé, Springsteen, Cheryl Crowe, Bon Jovi, Mellencamp, Usher, Stevie, Wonder, Goth Brooks, Tom Hanks, Denzel, and you too.

Trump's inauguration had Jackie Ivanko

and the rock band Three Doors Down,

as in Three Doors Down from Fame.

And then there's Dana Lash, who America has come to know as the fiery voice of the NRA, blaming gun violence and all our problems on Hollywood and its liberalism.

They use their movie stars and singers and comedy shows and award shows to repeat their narrative over and over again.

Fight this violence of lies with the clenched fist of truth.

Yes, yes, I know what you're thinking.

Who hurt you, Danica Patrick?

What you may not

know about Dina Lash is that before her job as NRA spokesmodel, she was a show business wannabe, a homemaker in St.

Louis with a mommy blog and a radio show and dreams of TV stardom.

NCIS producer Paul Guillot says that 10 years ago, Dana pitched him a sitcom, starring herself as, quote, a hot young mom who does a far-right radio show.

Think Frazier meets awful.

And you know what?

If only they had made that sitcom, today she might be a completely normal person.

Instead, we're all getting the clenched fist of truth because show business gave her the raised finger of fuck off.

The same thing happened to both the founder of the right-wing Breitbart website, Andrew Breitbart, who admits he came to Hollywood with the hope that I'd eventually become a comedy writer, and to his successor there, Steve Bannon, also a showbiz reject who didn't have the talent to cut it here and so spent the rest of his life hating Hollywood and by extension all liberals.

In his memoir, Breitbart mentions Reagan six times and me 34 times.

True.

He called celebrities elitist pestilence with their cocktail parties on the west side.

God, I fucking hate them, he said.

Which is funny because, you know, for years, you know who I'd always see at cocktail parties on the west side?

Andrew Breitbart.

Oh, he.

He hated Hollywood, hated it, hated it, hated it, mostly from his home in America's heartland, Brentwood.

As for Bannon, George Clooney remembers him as, quote, a schmuck who

literally tried everything he could to sell scripts, including, this is true, a rap musical of Shakespeare's Coriolanus.

Think Hamilton, but instead of founding fathers Romans, and instead of cultural phenomenon, piece of shit.

Bannon lost his shirt on that deal, but luckily he was wearing three more.

But trust me, if Bannon could have sold a screenplay or Breitbart a sitcom, they wouldn't have ended up ranting and raving about cocktail parties on the west side.

They'd be attending them.

And in Bannon's case, finishing the drinks people left on the table.

including the ones with a cigarette in them and so

that is why I implore tonight all Hollywood execs next time a conservative comes to you with the really dumb idea for a movie or a TV show

just fucking do it

We need affirmative action for Republicans in show business.

They're not good enough to make it on their own, but if we give them a leg up, maybe they won't take their rejection out on the whole country.

All right, that's our show.

We're off next week and back April 6th.

I'll be at the Mirage in Vegas, May 18th and 19, at the Temple Hoyne Guill Theater in Denver, May 26th, and at Pike Speak Center, May 27th.

I want to thank Chris Hayes, Malcolm Mance, Mona Charon, Jimmy McCarthy, and Mayor Mitch Lander.

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.