Overtime - Episode #444: Gerrymandering, Conservative Comedians, Bobby Kennedy

The summer sun hums,

and all you crave is something cold and crisp. So you pour it.

An icy cocktail made with tequila donjulio. Crafted with 100% blue weber agave, born under the Mexican sun, and ready to be shared when the day runs long and the light gets golden.

Shop now at donjulio.com. Please drink responsibly Don Julio Tequila, 40% alcohol by volume, imported by Diago America's New York, New York.

Baking Hershey's Kisses peanut butter blossoms is the perfect way to celebrate the holiday season with friends and family.

With their classic, rich, creamy milk chocolate taste, there's no better way to heartwarm the holidays than by baking with Kisses chocolates.

Find Hershey's Kisses holiday chocolates at your favorite retailer.

Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO late night series, Real Time with Baron Michael Fusion. On Overtime.

Michael, why do you think Trump was so provoked by your play? Okay. I saw your play.
I was in it a little bit.

You had guests in your play. It's fantastic.
You made your Broadway debut with me. No, I'd been on Broadway before.
Virginia Theater. Oh, that's right.
Your own show. That's right.

But Trump did really go ape

and was tweeting about it. What's the deal?

He waited till it was over, so I thought that showed discipline.

He didn't didn't sell any tickets for it.

I think Trump's had a complicated relationship with me, the way that he's tweeted at me in the past and danced around without trying to get too angry because I am his base.

I am his demographic, and I am an angry, middle-aged white guy from the Midwest.

And

I then am his, hopefully, worst enemy. Because the battle is to get as many of the people I grew up with to go with me and not with him.
And we lost Michigan by two votes per precinct. That's it.

Two votes per precinct. That's right.
And

so I'm on a mission to make sure that doesn't happen again, not just in Michigan, but across the country. And he knows that.
And he,

well, I've got this, I'm making a film about him too right now. He knows that.
And

he was on Fox News during the election last year, bragging about how he and I have had dinner a couple of times. And Michael Moore, he's a great guy, he's a great guy.

And I'm like, and he's doing this because he knows that that crossover where I live, those 8 million Obama voters that voted for Trump are also people who listened to me.

And so we're in this battle for that group that will probably decide the next election. He needs to come after me.
And I say, bring it on. Okay.
Bring it on.

So,

Donna, how can Democrats effectively battle against gerrymandering, Republican gerrymandering? We got to do what we did on Tuesday. That is, we have to win gubernatorial races.

Next year, there are 36 gubernatorial races, including here in California, 10 of the top largest states. If we want to have veto power over bad maps, that's number one.

Number two, we need more citizens. It's the legislature? Well, yeah, it's the legislature.
But remember, the governors can veto. That's why it was so important to recapture that gubernatorial race.

So once again, we got to get out there. We got to vote.
Next year is the key, because if we control state houses in 2018, we'll be able to reconfigure these districts in 2022.

The new saying is, when they go low, we go local.

Sarah, do you think a conservative comedian would ever travel around the country and meet people with radically different beliefs like you did?

I don't know. I haven't met one.

Oh, yes, you know conservative comedians. Who? Dennis Miller.
Yeah, I actually, he was one of the first people I wanted to get on my show because I interview people who have been changed. Right.

And I didn't want to only, you know, and but I got a hard no. I really don't know him though.

I was a huge fan. I loved his black and white special.

Yeah. No, no, he's a.

Who else? Can I say something?

Another.

I didn't know there were any.

Well, I bet you, I don't think the, like the who are the, you know, the guys who,

the redneck Torah, what do they call it?

Jeff Foxworthy, and what is it? But they're not political at all. I don't think,

if anything, they know to hide any political beliefs. Like we see and touch the music happening.

If you scratch

not Joe the Plumber, what's it?

Yeah, Dan. His name is

that Larry the Apable guy.

Yes. I know that's true.
He's a nice guy. They're funny, but I bet you that they're conservative.
They're very conservative.

You know this. Of course.

I've slept with half of them.

I do. There is something.
You know how like

what your like foreign search words aren't necessarily who you are. It's just you can't help it.
Sometimes I do

think of pens. But

I hate him. I really hate him.
I try not to hate, but sexually I think about him because it... Why? Because I don't know, it seems like he holds his breath when he comes and there's something,

like, I'm a perverted fuck, and that turns me on a little bit to think about.

His wife will never let you out the house. No, I find him abhorrent.
I don't like people who don't look at the spirit of a thing.

Like when you decide to look at kneeling NFL players and decide to not hear what they're talking about and say it's about the military, that's bullshit. Right.
I hate that.

That's one thing I really hate about.

Somehow you got right from

not breathing during orgasm to kneeling for the end. Yeah, but I actually don't like him, but in my sexual fantasy, sometimes he appears.

Life is complicated.

And we don't know everything. Chris, did something about the Trump era make you want to revisit Bobby Kennedy's life and legacy? He's the opposite.

He's a man of heart who had empathy for people. Trump can't express empathy with a widow.
He doesn't have it. Bobby would go to a black community the night that Dr.
King was killed.

To show empathy, you have to make yourself vulnerable. You can't just walk in and be tough with all the armor on.
You've got to walk in and let yourself get hurt. And he walked into it.

The cops wouldn't come in with it. And he had, and I got the old tape, do they know yet? No.
He has to tell them.

And it was powerful. And he basically was, in his awkwardness, he was true.
And he ended up saying things like, we have to say a prayer for our country and our people.

But it was all like, my brother was killed by a white guy. It was awkward.

And yet here he's telling people that the greatest hero in history, of their history, certainly, and that he's dead and be killed by a white guy and a racist killing. And he had to tell them.

And he could do it. I don't know anybody else could do that.
In light of all these

sex scandals lately,

what do you say about the Kennedys? Bobby and Jack were both.

I don't don't think that's the important thing about them.

Okay, it may not be the important thing, but certainly

they did things back then that if he did fill me in.

Well,

just tell me, and I'll respond to each point. Well, I think Kennedy certainly was fucking a mafia courier.
Yeah, that was a problem.

But you know what? Now that you've opened it up, now that you've opened up, so Bobby's prostituted, no, let me get funny. This is really important.

Bobby's going after the rackets for three years of the rackets committee. He's going after the mobbed-up labor guys.
He's going after Giancana.

Okay, just a point. Just a point.

Meanwhile, the CIA is using Giancana to get castrill. Meanwhile, the old man's asking the Giancana crowd to give him money in West Virginia.
What else? It's hard to figure out anything else. I mean,

Bobby's working against this, against the family on this. He's working against the CIA.
He's working against his brother's girlfriend. Jack Kenny's having sex with Giancana's girlfriend.

This is a problem.

And Bobby had to stop him from doing it. And he had to stop the CIA from doing what they were doing.

So he was the good guy. Marilyn Monroe, I think they both got in there.

I don't think that's a big deal.

I mean, in that case, I mean, it's just, it's something. There's plenty of books written about that.
I want to write about his public life and what he did to the country.

Can I tell a quick Bobby Kennedy story? Please do. I was 11 years old.
My parents took us to Washington just so we could see the Capitol and our government.

And I was 11, and I got separated from them in the Capitol building.

And I went into the Senate elevator by mistake, and there's a man reading a paper there, and the door shuts, and the paper comes down, and it's Bobby Kelly.

And he says, What, young man, what are you, are you lost? I said, Yes, I've lost my parents.

And when the elevator doors open on the next floor, he took me to the Capitol Police so that they could put the radio out that there's a child.

And then he stayed there with me until my parents came, talking to me about Michigan and the senators from Michigan and all this. And that's why you're a liberal today.
And that's why.

That's him. All right.
Thank you, everybody. It was a great week for Odyssey.

Yes!

Great week! Bring it!

A great week for us!

That's all.

Give us a second.

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.