Ep. #451: David Hogg, Cameron Kasky

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.

Fiscally responsible, financial geniuses, monetary magicians.

These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds.

Visit progressive.com to see if you could save.

Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates.

Potential savings will vary, not available in all states or situations.

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

Start the clock.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

Thank you very much.

I know.

We're in it together, right?

That's the important thing.

We're in this together.

Because, I mean,

even by normal Trump weeks, this was, I mean,

so much crazy shit happened.

I'm just going to have to go through it chronologically.

First off, you heard Hope Picks was voted off the island.

And, you know, Hope Picks, this was Trump's, you know, his work wife, his emotional companion animal, whatever she did there.

And

this has really thrown him off because she was one of the few people he could work with.

They were a very good team.

She was a former model and everything he says makes you want to throw up.

So

and it's

very

ironic because he was very dependent on Hope Hicks and his whole presidency is about giving Hicks hope.

So it was

listen.

She is 29 years old, 29, the communications director for the president of the United States

of America.

A communications director, by the way, that no one in America has ever heard speak.

In Fire and Fury, he says her main job during the campaign was steaming Trump's husky boy sack suit

while it was on him.

She would sit in a chair in front of him and blow-dry his crotch.

Also on her resume,

she used to date Corey Lewandowski, who was Trump's campaign manager and married at the time.

Then she dated Rob Porter, who had to leave the White House earlier in the month in a wife-beating scandal.

You know, I'm not that familiar with soap operas, but I think in the next episode,

Trump gets amnesia and

Mike Pence reveals he's a woman.

I think that's gonna happen.

Okay, so

anyway, she's gone off to pursue other opportunities.

Yes, she feels she could be much more effective steaming the pants of

creepy old men in the private sector.

So now the prettiest deaf mute in the West Wing is Jared.

And

oh yes, another news from the Lancaster clan.

I mean the Lannister clan.

Shit, I should have have gotten the HBO joke right, shouldn't I?

The knives are really out for Jared Kushner.

He lost his top security clearance.

There's an Archie Bunker meathead thing going on with General Kelly.

And oh, it turns out that every inexplicable, fucked-up thing that's happened in the last year is really because Jared's trying to get $1.2 billion to pay for a building he shouldn't have bought.

He, really,

this is all making sense now.

He had meetings with two banks in the White House who gave him $500 million and his security clearance has over 100 omissions and errors on it.

I could say this because my mother was Jewish.

He's too stupid to be a Jew.

Really,

I want to see his birth certificate.

I do.

I think it's going to say birthplace, Alaska, real name Jared Palin.

So,

he is an Orthodox Jew and they're already setting up a prison for him, Unleavenworth.

But I love this.

Sources say that Trump is siding with General Kelly.

to try to get General Kelly to help get Jared and Ivanka out of the White House.

Finally, a Trump issue that real Americans can relate to.

not being able to get your grown kids out of the house.

And

so, okay, Hope Hicks is gone, Rob Porter is gone.

They say McMaster, the national security advisor, one of the adults, he's gone a few weeks left.

Maybe Gary Cohen, the treasurer's.

Who is going to be left?

Trump's going to be all alone in the White House talking to a soccer ball with a face painted on it.

And you know, all this chaos makes it very difficult for the NRA to run the country

Oh and they do I think we saw that this week

Oh Did you see Trump at the White House with that bipartisan meeting when he freaked out Republicans when he suggested raising the gun age from 18 to 21 and seizing the guns of people who pose a threat?

He said, this is the actual words from Donald Trump president.

I like taking the guns early.

Take the guns first, go through due process second.

That's right, Republicans.

Turns out there is a president who will ignore the Constitution to come for your guns, the ones you fucking idiots voted for.

Earmuffs, kids.

But of all the most, I must say, galling things that I've ever heard him say, maybe the most revolting, you heard what he said this week, I really believe I'd have run in there

even if I didn't have a weapon.

Of course, he was talking about the dressing room with the Miss Teen USA pageant.

Well, things are changing.

You know how?

Corporate America, Dick Sporting Goods, is no longer selling AR-15s.

That shows how much this debate has shifted, huh?

When a company says we're not selling assault weapons and we're dicks.

All right, we've got a great show.

Eric Holder and John Meacherman are here, and a little later we'll be speaking with Yale professor Amy Chillip.

First up, please welcome two students at Marjorie Stoneham Douglas High in Parkland, Florida, who co-founded the advocacy group on gun control, never again MSD, David Hogg and Cameron Kasky.

Hey!

Hey Darren!

What a pleasure!

Great to meet you!

David!

All right.

Wow.

How you guys doing?

Tired?

Tired?

Yeah, you're running around the country doing a good job.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Trying to make our voices heard.

Oh, you're doing that and more.

I mean, you've done a great thing in turning your grief into something positive.

And you have a march.

Let's first just talk about that and the future and what's going to happen with this movement.

When is it?

It's scheduled for Washington?

It's March 24th.

Okay.

A march in March on the 24th.

And what are the goals?

Well, we are,

with the march, we want Americans to stop being afraid of demanding our politicians to take action.

They work for us, we don't work for them.

And the march is us.

The march is us coming out and saying to our employees, you guys suck at your job.

Right.

And

with the march, we want everyone to come out, bring their parents, bring their kids.

Everybody in the nation is either a child or a former child.

And that's what we want to do: is say, this isn't about red and blue, this is about protecting the kids.

Okay.

And I also also have a boycott, right, in mind for, and I think that's a great idea.

Yeah, so what we're trying to do with that is we essentially, we met with some of the legislators in Tallahassee, and we felt like we didn't really get far enough because they wouldn't even discuss assault weapons there.

What they did discuss, though, was porn as a public health emergency.

Which just goes to show you, it's porn.

Related shooting issue.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But sadly, that's the only one that these lawmakers seem to care about.

Is that really?

That's what they said to you?

They said, let's switch the subject to porn?

And how old are you guys?

17?

17.

It's not going to work with you.

Yeah.

I remember 17, and boy, I'll...

I say they stop looking at that stuff and they actually start looking at our lives, you know?

Right.

So

with

that, so with the economics, with all of that, we felt like, at least I felt like we weren't getting enough movement.

So I decided if the only thing that these politicians care about is money, we'll go after their money.

That's very smart.

You know, I gotta tell you, watching, besides the service you're doing to the country about guns, you know, I don't have kids.

And I only see what I know about them from television.

I avoid them in life.

With good reasons.

But watch, I mean, you're so together.

And all of you, not just you, the other people from your school I've seen on TV, calm, articulate.

I honestly thought kids were a lot stupider.

You have really

given me faith that the kids today are actually very bright.

And I'll tell you why.

Way brighter than we were.

It's only because they locked up the Tide Pods.

In all seriousness, I think the good thing, one of the best things about our generation, sure, people think we're lazy and on our phones all the time and sure, you know, that's me.

But

we don't respect people just because we have to we don't respect you just because you have senator in front of your name right and uh mr rubio if you don't believe me watch you know the news and um we we don't just stand for we we don't let people steamroll over us we have voices and we use them sometimes unfortunately sometimes for good and that's that's why i think you're doing very good and and i i want to know how long do you do you think you will keep doing this how long will this keep going well to be quite frank with you we're millennials and we love complaining more than any other generation.

So

ask the stage manager.

Why?

Were you bitching about something yet?

No, look,

a lot of people are trying to take us down quickly.

They're trying to discredit us.

They're trying to say, we don't know what we're talking about.

Well, until you've been on the receiving end of...

Well, I am an actor, actually.

I'm in Spring Awakening right now at the Barclay Performing Arts Center.

It's a great show.

What I'm saying is, you know, you could say that we don't know what we're talking about because we're 17 years old, but until you've been on the receiving end of an AR-15, until you've been locked into your class, look, Wayne Lapierre, Dana Loche.

Right.

I don't know.

I don't know if you guys have ever had to deal with that, but as far as I know, that's not the case.

We've been locked in a classroom.

We have seen our friends text their parents goodbye.

We are the experts.

We know exactly what we're talking about.

How dare you tell us we don't know what we're talking about?

I'm friend.

Friend.

Friend.

And let's take that again.

Cameron, scene two.

Yes, agreed.

What I'm asking is, like,

in six months, say, if you haven't gotten the change you wanted, you're going to graduate high school at some point.

Yeah, I might not.

Would you see doing this as a career, blowing off college?

Because honestly, guys, college is a bunch of bullshit.

Kidding, kids, kidding, it's great.

Yeah, college.

You probably, you know, would learn more, or just as much, you know.

I mean, you already have this great platform.

We'd certainly learn more than our politicians are willing to take action on.

Well, I do think you're going to get something done.

I really do.

I mean, we have never quite seen change like this, or at least people receptive to it.

And I think part of the reason for that is we've kept reminding people that this isn't about us.

This isn't about Democrats or Republicans.

This is about Americans and those 17 individuals that lost their lives that day.

That's what this really should be about.

We're not targeting people's guns.

My father's a police officer.

His father's former FBI.

We have guns in our houses.

We're not trying to tear apart the Second Amendment.

We are just kids begging for our lives, getting murdered in our classrooms.

But honestly, I think that's part of the problem in this country, is that nobody goes out to the Second Amendment.

Nothing is really going to change unless somebody talks about that.

The reason why this country is different is because we treat guns as a right.

Other countries treat it as a privilege.

And every debate begins with with even

the liberal side,

you know, just bowing down to the Second Amendment.

And

I don't know if that's the right approach.

The Second Amendment is a very, very good piece of rhetoric defense that I've seen a lot because

they put it as if we're attacking a right that you're born with.

And at the end of the day, a 19-year-old...

But it is, if you're an American.

If you're an American.

A 19-year-old bought a weapon that you don't need to keep robbers and bears out of your house.

And if that kid had seen a professional for five minutes, they wouldn't have said you need a gun.

They would have said you need a counselor.

And that was just allowed to happen.

Okay.

So one of your classmates, I think her name was Samantha,

and Trump called her, and the first thing he said to her was, I heard you're a big fan.

That sounds about right.

I didn't even know about that.

Oh, really?

That sounds about right.

Do you know who I'm talking about?

I think so.

Yeah, and she said, I was never so unimpressed with someone in my life.

Yeah, I actually hung up on the White House the other day.

You hung up on the White House?

Yeah, because they called us the day before.

They actually got through.

Well, no, they called me.

And

they actually called me the day before the listening session and asked if we were going to come.

And I said, I'm not coming because we expect President Trump to come to the CNN town hall, which he never declined the...

invitation from.

And the fact that they called us the day before, I found very offensive, considering the fact that there were funerals the next day, there was mourning we still had to do.

And I ended on this message with them.

I said, President Trump, we don't need to listen to President Trump.

President Trump needs to listen to the screams of the children and the screams of this nation.

Well, listen, I want you to know something about President Trump because you haven't been around long enough to see a lot of presidents.

Who's the first one you remember, Bush?

I was at my first Obama rally when I was seven years old.

Seven years old?

You barely, so you don't even remember Bush hardly.

I remember hearing a lot about Bush.

Yeah.

I'm sure all good.

Anyway,

but Bush, Obama, Clinton, they all go in one basket.

I happen to fall with the Democrats usually, but

not surprisingly.

But they're all in one kettle.

And then there's this thing that happened, this virus from outer space.

that took over.

I just want you to know how much this is not like anything that's ever, ever, ever happened before.

And hopefully it will not be in your future.

And

I mean this sincerely, I really do.

To all of the generations before us, we sincerely accept your apology.

And

we appreciate that you are willing to let us rebuild the world that you fucked up.

Good luck, trying.

I mean it.

Thanks for doing what you're doing.

Thank you.

All right, David and Cameron.

All right, let's lead our panel.

All righty, he did.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He's madder at me than he is at Trump.

All right, he is an NBC contributor and Pulitzer Prize-winning author on our show, whose forthcoming book is The Soul of America, The Battle for Our Better Angels.

John Meacham.

John Meach.

Meach.

And he was the 82nd at United States Attorney General, who is now chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee.

Eric Holder.

Thank you for being here.

Good to be here.

All right.

Now, don't forget to send us your questions.

Tonight's overtime, so we can answer them after the show on YouTube.

With the amount of insanity this week, there really should be.

This week?

Well, this week more than others, I think.

I was going to say there should be a third panelist just to handle the load.

But I'll say this about Donald Trump.

When he doesn't know something,

it stays unknown.

You know, and that is consistent.

There is like a list of things like he that he just refuses to learn, like climate is different than weather.

A trade deficit is not necessarily bad.

Basic things.

And one of them, he doesn't understand what the Attorney General does.

And I thought since we had the last one here, I'll read his quote about you.

He said, Eric Holder Holder protected President Obama.

Totally protected him.

When you look at the things that they did,

and Holder protected the president, and I have great respect for that.

I love it.

He says, you broke the law.

I respect that.

So,

did you protect President Obama?

And what did you guys do?

Well, my brother called me up and said, hey, you know, Trump said some really positive things about you.

I'm thinking to myself, what?

And then I heard this whole thing.

And the difference between me and Jeff Sessions is that I had a president I did not have to protect.

Right.

And

so, you know, this notion that somehow I was protecting Obama from things that he had done inappropriately or illegally is simply not true.

And where does he get this idea in his head that that's the job of the Attorney General?

He also said, comment on this, if you would, Mr.

Historian.

He said, I have an absolute right to do what I want to do with the Justice Department.

Is that true?

No, no.

Right.

I should answer no.

I defer to my lawyer.

But remember where Trump learned about the legal system from Roy Cohn.

Yeah.

Right?

I mean, usually you have to sort of make a joke about, oh, he's like McCarthy.

Jesus, he is McCarthy.

Yeah.

Right?

I mean, he has the same lawyer.

Yeah.

And I don't think he has any clue whatever.

I mean, there have been all kinds of attorneys general.

John Mitchell was Nixon's campaign manager.

Bobby Kennedy was the president's brother.

You know, there's a whole panel.

Reagan had his lawyer.

Well, you know, the great line.

Kennedy appointed, JFK appointed RFK to be attorney general, and he said, well, we thought Bobby needed some experience before he went out into the workforce.

But he just, this is all about, it's also a very Fox-centric view of the world.

Somebody said that

they hope Hillary watches Fox now because it's the only place where she's president.

Right, yeah.

And

there was so much of the churning about the Obama administration and all these manufactured scandals through the years that I'm sure that's kind of an ambient noise in his head.

I mean, I think he actually believes that there were things that were done wrong or illegally by Barack Obama.

And I think you're right.

He comes from the Fox blogosphere.

It's simply, as I said, it's simply not true.

And we couldn't have Hillary as president because with the emails,

she was just too great a security risk.

Right.

A security risk.

And then we, day after day, there is stories like there is over 100 people in the White House.

Did you have anybody in the White House who didn't have their security clearance?

Certainly not at this stage.

I've been through, I guess, three, four background checks to get a security clearance.

The last one is Attorney General, which was compartmented.

The highest one to get probably took about six to eight weeks to do.

Simple as that.

What do you think of this Jared Kushner story this week, or the many stories about him, that there are at least four countries who we know were discussing how to manipulate him because he's so vulnerable, that he promised somebody a cabinet position?

I mean,

the level of how ostentatiously corrupt they are, they don't seem to care.

They don't, and that's mainly because everything they've done has led them to power.

That is,

one of the reasons you change your behavior is if you pay a penalty.

And there's nothing, is anything about the last, however long, America held hostage for 14 months, however long it's been,

is there anything about that that wasn't entirely predictable during the campaign?

No.

Ostentatiously corrupt is something that was self-evident in the beginning.

So why

Why can't the Democrats make treason a campaign issue then?

I mean, if it's that open, and I think it is,

I don't know why.

They don't seem to be making it an issue.

They seem to be shrinking from it as an issue.

The only one I see out there is that guy, Tom Steyer.

You know Tom Steyer?

You've seen that.

He's got an edit.

He lays it all out.

He says the Justice Department just indicted 13 Russians for sabotaging our election.

an electoral attack that the chief investigator called warfare.

What did the president do?

Nothing.

What is he going to do in the future?

Nothing.

It is the president's job, the chief job, to protect America.

He says at the end, why is he still president?

I kind of have to ask the same question.

Don't we already have it?

Yeah.

Well, I mean, I think that you technically have an obstruction of justice case that already exists.

And

I've known Bob Mueller for 20, 30 years.

My guess is he's just trying to make the case as good as he possibly can.

So I think we have to be patient in that regard.

But I think Steyer is absolutely right in the sense that Trump is derelict in his duties.

We were attacked.

We were attacked.

I mean, it wasn't a physical attack.

It was an electronic attack on the most vital of our systems.

And he's done absolutely nothing to prepare us for what is to come, because they're still coming.

They're going to come in 2018.

They're going to come in 2020.

And he's done nothing to hold the Russians accountable, in spite of the fact that in this dysfunctional world that we have, this dysfunctional Congress passed sanctions that he has refused to implement.

And that for me is breathtaking, unforgivable, and ultimately something the American people have to hold him responsible for.

You know, the

analogy for this, the analogy for what Putin did is the Third Reich.

In the 1940 presidential campaign, Hitler's government spent money in the American campaign.

They bought newspaper ads, which is the analog Facebook, I guess.

They paid for isolationist Republican congressmen to go to the Philadelphia Philadelphia Convention to try to keep isolationism alive.

They were spreading money around.

So, and that too was an act of war.

Dick Cheney said, Dick Cheney said, if the Russians did this, it is an act of war.

But we've done it.

We've meddled in people's elections.

Picky, picky, picky.

But really, I mean,

is there anything,

I mean, how many countries did we do that to during the Cold War?

Quite a few.

And it almost never worked.

So we can't even run their country's elections, much less our own.

Right.

And simply because we did it and it was wrong to do it doesn't mean that it's okay for people to do it to us.

I mean I would hope that we as a nation...

Just makes the argument from overseas a little harder.

Yeah, but I would hope that we as a nation are in a better place than we were at that point.

And

the reality is still, I mean, as John points out, this was as close to an act of war as you can possibly have.

And it is incumbent upon an American president.

It's the first thing you're supposed to do, defend the Republic.

Yeah, and I heard, you know, Admiral Rogers, who's the head of the NSA, was testifying this week, as have all our security people over the last few weeks.

And I see the Democratic congresspeople screaming at them.

I saw Claire McCaskill, what does it take?

Why is she yelling at him?

All he did was not get an order.

You know, they keep asking these people, did the president direct you to do anything?

No.

But here's the...

Here's the answer, I think, to the question.

The reason the president won't do anything is he believes that any acknowledgement that Russia was involved delegitimizes his election.

That is the distinction between a president devoted to the rule of law and a president devoted to personal power.

And

the reason the framers got together in Philadelphia to create attorneys generals and stuff,

helped the work,

was to have a constitutional republic, not a monarchical one.

And right now we've elected somebody who, if he knew who who King Lear was, would be kind of like King Lear.

Right.

If he knew, if he knew that.

Which might be unfair to King Lear, actually.

No, I think it probably would.

And I haven't even mentioned the fact that yesterday Putin said he had a doomsday weapon that would destroy America, besides Trump,

and made a little video, an animated video, like Rocket Man does now.

He's taking a page out of his book and making little films of blowing us up that lands in Florida.

And Trump says nothing.

He tweets about Alec Baldwin.

Right.

Alex Baldwin.

Alex Baldwin.

Alex Baldwin.

And it makes you wonder.

It makes you wonder, you know, and sometimes that which is most obvious is the truth.

And it strikes me that they've got something on this guy.

Now, I don't know what it is, you know,

but

it's interesting if you look at all of the reports as they go on and on and on, the dossier gets more and more confirmed.

That which seems so implausible.

That would seem so implausible so many months ago is being increasingly seen as valid and factually accurate.

So

you mentioned Shakespeare and you're the historian.

I was a history major, not quite on your level, John.

But you'd read about Bad King John, and some of the rulers in history were so bad, it's right in their name.

Ivan the Terrible.

Right, right.

Bad King John.

Ethel Red the Unready.

Right.

You know.

So people do get past horrible leaders.

Absolutely.

And we will just.

We will.

You think so?

I honestly do.

Honestly.

Because, I mean, think about it.

So, where are we in the

60 years ago?

Gets applause.

We're going to survive.

We're all going to die.

In the lifetime of most of the people in this room, there was explicit apartheid in my native region in the South.

These,

I call them kids, these young men, who are now leading an extraordinary effort in terms of reform, I have a feeling may take their place with the children of Birmingham who went in the streets, who drew Bull Connor's wrath,

who bore witness that we made a promise at the beginning.

by

a powerful white guy who was wildly imperfect.

Thomas Jefferson wrote it.

It took us more than 200 years to live into it.

That's the story of the country.

It's the nature of history.

And

what happens is, and what's so tragic about this particular moment is

when we do best is when a president and a substantial number of the people are in sync and are able to push us to higher ground.

It was Lyndon Johnson in civil rights.

It was Franklin Roosevelt in World War II and the cause of the working person.

It was Lincoln ultimately and the Union.

Without a presidential actor who can embody and enact this, we are going to tread water.

But the water's there and the reformers are there.

And that's going to happen.

They're going to win.

I hope so.

You know, I mean, I think...

I think John's right in the sense that our institutions will survive, but after Trump is gone, Trumpism, I think, will have a continuing negative effect on this nation.

I think he has unleashed something

in us as a people that is going to take a while to tamp down.

But I would say on the hope front,

Trumpism is not new.

Trump is an iteration of a theme of George Wallace and Strom Thurmond all the way back.

But they never became president of the United States.

They did not, and this is worse, unquestionably.

But I think it will help us.

remain somewhat sane if we remember in context this is a verse in an unhappy poem, but it is just a verse.

As long as we don't normalize it, as long as we don't assume that what he's doing is consistent in any way with that which has defined this nation, that which is expected.

That's what I was trying to tell the kids.

And so I say it in my concert acts when I get, who are the young people here?

Just, you have to know, it was never like this before, even with the people I didn't politically agree with.

But the forces the president embodies and the forces that he marshaled and managed to become president are perennial ones.

The American spirit is not just about Martin Luther King, it's also about the Klan.

And the battle is between those two.

Well, we know that he's a great comforter, the president, because we saw him with a group of victims of gun violence this week.

And we saw in Puerto Rico before when he talked to the war widow on the phone.

Comforting is not his thing.

He had to have a crib sheet.

Look at that.

It's in his hand.

They actually wrote, look at the last one, I hear you.

They had to write on the bottom of it, I hear you, for him to be reminded to say that.

And we found out that in the Trump administration, everybody has these crib sheets, you know, like notes to self.

So it's a new department here.

It's called Notes to Self.

And we're going to show you what everybody in the

Trump White House...

For example, Donald Trump Jr., a food goes in mouth.

Jeff Sessions, it's African American, not colored.

These are things they have to remind themselves.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders has wife beaters equal bad?

Oh, I see.

Rick Perry, our energy secretary, don't call it electricity.

Melania, it's so big you're hurting me.

Yes.

Ivanka says, refer to Jared as husband, not co-conspirator.

Jared, find out what two-state solution means.

Sean Hannity, don't get any in your hair.

Ted Cruz, watch what humans do.

Act like them.

And John Kelly, unplug nuclear button, please.

All right, she's the ELF Law School Professor whose latest book is Political Tribes, Group Instinct, and the Fate of Nations.

Tiger Mom, Amy Chua is back here.

Hi.

You know I love to call you Tiger Mom.

How are you?

Great to see you.

And, you know, you're perfect to be on this panel because we were talking about why we can't get anything done between the people we don't like too much and the people we think are saner.

And your book is all about tribes, and that's why somebody can be ostentatiously corrupt in this country, right?

Because they are protected by their tribe.

Well,

we are all tribal.

You're very tribal.

All of us are.

It's hard.

Yes.

I like to think of myself as an honest broker, no?

We're actually hardwired to be tribal.

We humans, we need to belong to groups.

We crave being part of a tribe.

And once we connect to a group, group, the effect is like a drug, which you know something about.

It's

my tribe.

You want to cling to your group.

You want to think that everything they say is right.

And you want to defend it no matter what.

And the problem is when tribalism takes over the political system.

Because what happens then is that facts and arguments don't matter.

Right.

And you just see everything through your group lens and you can't have these important conversations.

But hasn't it gone off the rail?

I understand that, but like like when we're supposed to still be part of the American tribe, you know, they always said if Mars attacked, then we and Russia would get together.

But as it is now, Mars hasn't attacked.

So we're still supposed to be against Russia as Americans.

It seems to have gotten a little out of whack here when the Republicans hate the Democrats, that tribe, so much that they're with the Russian tribe over the Democrats.

Yeah, I mean, we are at a point now where we look at the people on the other side who voted the other way.

We're approaching the point where they're not just people we passionately disagree with, but we are seeing them.

Yeah, treason is better than working with Democrats.

Well, I mean, it's part of the problem, you know.

So, look, we're

a little worse, aren't they?

Tyr mom.

I mean, I go after the liberals too, but come on.

I think that if you want to ask how we got to this mess, I think that both sides have been playing with fire and that both sides have made mistakes.

I really do.

I don't think Vox News exists on the left.

I really don't.

I got a lot of people.

There is a left.

I'll tell you.

Obviously, there's a left-wing station.

But they don't traffic in utter nonsense and made-up shit.

Yes, you're right.

But we are

at a point where we can't, Bill, we can't have conversations.

We can't talk.

You'll get this.

We can't talk to each other.

We can't speak.

We can't speak with other Americans.

So take immigration, okay?

This is, I am such a fan of immigration.

My parents, I mean, I'm a kid of two immigrants.

I've written two books about how immigration is the lifeblood of this country.

You're the tiger, Ma.

But

I think that people in this country should be able to express their anxiety about immigration and wonder about the rules and talk about it without instantly being called a racist xenophobia.

And I think that that's a real problem because we are having massive demographic changes and we're sort of forcing it.

Everybody has to be really happy that finally whites are no longer going to be a majority.

Even if we agree with that, people should be on the other side should be allowed to talk without being branded.

Because here's the problem.

If they can't express their views openly and then we debate and talk about it and maybe educate and reason, it goes underground.

And that's what's been happening.

It goes underground.

And that's where all this ugliness is.

And things extremism just festers.

So I think it's coming from both sides, you know.

These chambers.

That's the one thing that was really different about Donald Trump, I think, when he ran, is that he noticed, hey, there's still a lot of white people in this country.

And yeah, a lot of them are corny, but

they vote and, you know.

You're right.

They're in the right electoral college states.

They're right.

Yeah.

I mean,

that's true.

He marshaled a he he he made a majority feel like a oppressed minority.

Yeah, I mean he tapped into that.

There was definitely a racial dimension and there's this, you know, it's interesting, the book is really about a lot of developing countries.

I've studied democracies in other countries.

And we're starting to demonstrate a lot of the same dynamics that countries we think of as developing countries have.

You know, these populist, ethnically tinged movements, hate mongering, erosion of trust and electoral outcomes,

and actually elite.

backlash against this popular side of democracy, right?

Because we're seeing, oh my gosh, people voted for him.

But you know, so there's the racial side, but if you want to know how he here if you think of it in terms of tribalism this great mystery like how could these working class whites have voted for this billionaire you know and people will say oh my gosh they're so dumb they can't even see or they're so racist they they don't care and that may describe you know some Trump voters but I think that those reflections also reflect some of the condescension that got him voted in the first place.

Well, it's also because he acts like them.

I think you make this point in the book.

He eats McDonald's.

And he likes worldwide wrestling and NASCAR.

Right.

And you know, and every time.

He's tacky.

He's tacky.

And a lot of America's tacky.

I'm sorry, but it's true.

You know,

people go to Walmart in flip-flops and pajamas.

But it goes back to this kind of policing of how we speak.

You know, he constantly makes mistakes and says outrageous things, scandal after scandal.

And all of my friends, all of us are like, now he's done.

Now he's done.

And nothing happens to his base.

And that's because they actually relate to that.

They're constantly being called out in the workplace.

They're always being,

you know,

whatever.

You know, they can relate to the way he's acting.

So I think that explains he's he's more successfully

portrayed himself as a member of their cultural tribe.

And once you, now he's like their champion.

So when people attack him and do all these things,

they just want to, he may make them.

Yes.

Yes, they'll stand by him.

I think that's interesting.

But the only point I would take, I would disagree with is this notion of equivalence, that somehow or other,

progressives have done the same things that conservatives have done.

And that is not fundamentally true.

Yeah, I know.

That's just not fundamentally true.

And I don't think that's true.

That's not actually when I say that, when I say both sides bear some responsibility, because I'm thinking very pro, like looking to 2018 and 2020, right?

I mean, look.

People were surprised.

People were, I was actually somebody that was not surprised by the election because I heard so much that was just, even people who didn't vote for him, who hated him, talked about, you know, but I have an uncle, parents, grandparents.

Yeah, I think what you're saying, and I would agree with you,

is that even liberals very often don't hear the other side, and only, I hear it all the time here: that you clap for the blue team and you boo the red team, and it really doesn't matter.

And I've read quotes that sound like they're from the blue team, but they're from the red team, and it's, oh my god, I clapped for the wrong people because I didn't know who it was from.

Right.

But also, I mean, to be the House dork for a moment,

this is, think about it historically.

We had eight years of a president whose election in 2008, many, many people thought they would never see someone who looked like him be president of the United States.

We've gone now, there's something in the American soul that manages to go from

one guardrail to the other.

I don't think it's possible to put two more different people in a room, perhaps, than Barack Obama and Donald Trump.

No.

And yet the same country.

No drama, all drama.

Yeah.

No corruption, all corruption.

Yeah.

But I think your point is it's partly a reaction to that, right?

I mean, it's really this fear of.

How did Donald Trump become a national political figure in the most recent period?

Yeah.

Birtherism.

Birtharism.

Absolutely.

He race-baited his way into the heart of the right wing.

And I see, I think that's the thing that's absent from the progressive side, from the left side.

To the extent that there were attacks on the president who I serve, a lot of it was race-based, a lot of it was factually inaccurate.

And the things that I think you see said about Trump are more fact-based and there's not a racial component to it.

It is a lot uglier, the things that President Obama has to deal with than the things that President Trump has had to deal with.

And

unless we admit that, we're not going to get to a place where I think we can make progress.

We've got to deal with facts.

Let me read a quote that is apropos to your book and what you're working on.

This is from North Carolina state legislator David Lewis.

He was working on gerrymandering in that state.

This is interesting because people didn't used to say these things out loud.

That's how bad it's gotten.

They used to just think this.

He said this out loud.

He said, I think Republicans are better

and that electing them is better than electing Democrats.

So I drew this map to help foster what I think is better for the country.

We've really lost the thread

back to thinking, haven't we?

They said that to justify the partisan gerrymandering they did after after a court struck down the racial gerrymandering that they had done.

He thought that was actually better than what they had been found, a court had found them to have done.

That was outreach.

Right.

So,

you know,

I have never let us reason together.

Right.

I have never been skeptical.

of my vote before.

I've been skeptical of the people I voted for.

I have never gone into a booth and thought, oh, this doesn't count or this is not going to be counted fairly, ever in my life.

But I don't know about next time.

What do you think about next time?

Should I have confidence?

Are you worried about hacking?

Is that what you mean?

Does that what you mean?

Yeah.

Well, whatever they did last time, and they're going to do it again.

And I don't trust the Russians or the Republicans.

And I think they worked together last time, and I think they'd do it again.

And I just, yeah, I just don't.

Yeah, I mean, I think those concerns that you have work on dual tracks.

You've got to be concerned about foreign intervention, because that's happened before, and we've done nothing to prevent it going into the future.

But you've also got to worry about the structural things that Republicans have done to the system through gerrymandering, for instance, where if you look at the

right time.

If you look at Wisconsin in 2012, Republicans get less than half the vote and get two-thirds of the state legislative seats and two-thirds of the congressional representation.

And you see that repeated.

Michigan, Ohio, Texas, North Carolina.

There are structural things that the Republicans are doing that make your vote less valuable than it once was.

Guess why, and there's an analogy here.

Guess why five of the first seven American presidents were either from Virginia or Tennessee

because of the Three-Fifths Compromise.

Right.

It was a structural decision of the Constitution to give more electoral votes to slave states.

Those slaves, of course, could not vote.

Jefferson was called by his opponents the Negro president.

because he would not have been president without that population factor.

So it's that if you want to talk about a rigged system, that was a rigid system.

I think those things are so important, but I also think that the Democrats maybe have to adjust their messaging a little bit.

A little bit.

Well, I mean, it's, you know, there's this aspirational side.

I think we're so, people are so angry.

I get it, you know, and it's let's not make the equivalency.

But

something that I've been thinking is that I think that the left is in danger of ceding the American dream to the conservatives.

Because people want hope.

So where I teach, you know, it's so important, progressives feel it's so important, and I know why, to expose the American dream as a sham, right?

To point out that, look, because of structural racism and this massive inequality and education doesn't work anymore, people really can't rise.

And that's true.

You know, our upward mobility rates are actually worse than many European countries.

So they're right, so we need massive institutional reform.

But you know what?

A lot of people don't like to hear that.

They want an aspirational message.

They want hope.

They love the American Dream.

A lot of minorities and immigrants love it.

And in a weird way, I think that there's a little bit of a misunderstanding.

You know, I think Trump in his really strange way has done a better job of channeling a kind of reality TV version of the American Dream, you know, better than people who are appropriately criticizing capitalism and structural racism.

It's not, the message isn't working.

And so I think, you know, it's most, many working class Americans actually don't hate wealth.

They hate the idea.

They think they're going to get it, yes.

And they hate the idea of a rigged system, but they're not going to be able to get it.

Temporarily inconvenience millionaires.

Yeah, being anti-establishment.

Yes.

You know, being anti-establishment in America is not necessarily being anti-rich.

So I think, you know, so in addition to these incredibly important reforms, I think also, you know, looking forward to 2018 and 2020, I mean, maybe a lot of things have to change.

Where do you think we're going to be in a year?

You think we're going to be better off?

I'm an optimist for the same reasons that I think if you...

One year from now, I mean, there's nobody left in the White House.

Stop right there.

He can't even.

There we go.

He's going to be there.

He can't even.

Well, that's my worry.

I mean, he can't even keep the family.

Right?

Can't even keep the family.

If you say McMaster's on the way out, I mean, I never thought McMaster and Rex Tillertson, please, like, can we get more people from Exxon?

Who's next?

The only people who are going to take jobs are the Stephen Millers.

I mean, the real, like, minefuhrotypes.

And I mean, I...

I mean, you have to really be careful.

I'm glad you guys are optimistic.

Well, no, as people are leaving, you have to wonder who are the people who will put their reputations at risk.

Who's the B team?

Right.

Who's the C team?

The C team.

All right.

Thank you, everybody.

It is time for new rules, new rules.

And we'll get you home.

Okay.

New rules, the people who most firmly believe in heaven have to explain why they always take so long to die.

Billy Graham was 99.

What part of leap of faith don't you understand?

They're so close to Billy Graham, my audience.

New rule, Robert Mueller has to investigate my theory that this Russia scandal runs so deep that Hope Hicks is actually Kerry Russell in the Americans.

New Rule, someone has to tell this Olympics streaker who wore only a tutu and a monkey penis pouch, man, if you're looking to embarrass your children, you're already there with the ponytail.

Neural, no more dropping the mic.

What is that?

What if you break the mic?

How do you think that's going to sound for the next person who has to use it?

In the room!

Neural, now that Michelle Obama has revealed the title of her autobiography, Becoming, Melania Trump has to unveil the title of her autobiography, Pretend to Becoming.

And finally, new rules, since so much of what passes for today's journalism is anything but, how about some rules for identifying actual news?

For example, when an internet headline reads, you won't believe, yes, you will, and no, it's not news.

When anyone is demanding an apology, unless they have hostages, that's not news.

And when the offended group are identified as the internet, Twitter, or people, it's nobody.

I guarantee when you click on the story, you find out the internet is three losers with a combined Twitter following of their mom.

I used to think something was news if a journalist reported it, but really I live in a world where it's news if Mariah Carrie's tit-flops out because Twitter will respond and then a journalist reports on the controversy.

If a boob flops in the forest and no one is around to hear it, it doesn't make a sound.

But if three jackasses tweet about it, it's news.

Here's an example from this week.

This is a picture from the premiere of Red Sparrow, which looks pretty good, by the the way.

Jennifer Lawrence plays a beautiful woman who uses sex as a weapon on orders from Moscow.

Its working title was Ayavanka.

You get away out of me.

Anyway, here's the headline from Elle Online and a hundred other sites.

Jennifer Lawrence's latest Red Sparrow photocall has Twitter calling out gender inequality.

Yes, see, see, because the men are wearing coats, but she's not.

And even though that was her choice, someone with 11 followers didn't like it, so the story was reported in the New York Times, the Washington Post, New York Post, Fox News, BBC, Vanity Fair, Chicago Tribune, The Guardian, The National Review.

Now, all these esteemed news organizations aren't saying they think it's a big deal because they're serious journalists.

They'd rather be writing about Syria and the oceans dying.

But oh, the humanity, Jennifer Lawrence, didn't have a coat.

Wrap her up!

wrap her up

You know

This is not an outlier.

This is a constant and prominent part of today's journalism Creating some bullshit non-issue that a few trolls will predictably go ape shit over and then reporting on those unrepresentative tweets like all of America's talking about nothing else.

Justin Timberlake used a projection of Prince for his Super Bowl halftime show show and people are furious.

No,

nobody cared.

People are really mad that Sean White dragged the American flag after he won the gold.

No, not even a little, you fucking liars.

Weight Watchers is targeting teens and Twitter is outraged.

No, it isn't.

It's the same three people.

And it's Not hard to find three people who are mad at anything.

I could say good morning on Twitter and three people would object.

Good in your privileged world, Bill Maher.

No wonder fake news resonates so much with Trump fans.

Because so much of it is fake.

Just nonsense made to keep you perpetually offended with an endless stream of controversies that aren't controversial.

and outrages that aren't outrageous.

Because places like the Huffington Post and BuzzFeed and Salon, they make their money by how many clicks they get.

Yes, the people who see themselves as morally superior are actually ignoring their sacred job of informing citizens of what's important and instead sowing division for their own selfish ends.

Hey, wait, isn't that what Russia was doing to us?

Yeah, it is.

And we have to stop both of them.

from using us as the cocks in their cock fights.

And so I conclude by saying to all those who are barely able to go on after seeing Kendall Jenner tweet the wrong color Remoji.

A bit of advice.

If you don't like what Kendall did with a brown fist and her tweet, do not watch her sister's sex tape.

All right, that's our show.

I want to thank John Meacham, Eric Holder, A.V.

Chilla, David Hogg, and Kevin Caskey, Drugestau for overtime on YouTube.

Thank you, folks.

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

For more information, log on to HBO.com.