Ep. #440: Billy Crystal, Russell Brand

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.

Yeah, aka Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

Tires matter.

They're the only part of your vehicle that touches the road.

Tread confidently with new tires from Tire Rack.

Whether you're looking for expert recommendations or know exactly what you want, Tire Rack makes it easy.

Fast, free shipping, free road hazard protection, convenient installation options, and the best selection of BF Goodrich tires.

Go to tire rack.com to see their BF Goodrich test results, tire ratings, and reviews.

And be sure to check out all the special offers.

TireRack.com, the way tire buying should be.

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

Start the clock.

Get out.

I'm glad you're in a good mood.

Let's get right to the disasters.

Gee, right?

I mean, Puerto Rico, Las Vegas, Donald Trump.

We had a rough week, and he does not make it better.

You know, you've heard that term, first responders.

He's got a new thing, worst responder.

He finally went to Puerto Rico a week after the storm.

He said he would have come earlier, except his hairdresser told him it was too dangerous.

You don't want the wind to do that thing.

And he

lands on the island like Ponce de Leon, and you know, the natives immediately said, Can we have the hurricane back?

And then he has this meeting.

He says, The first thing he says, I hate to tell you, Puerto Rico, but you've thrown our budget a little out of whack.

We spend a lot of money here in Puerto Rico.

Oh, that is so Trump.

I know you've had the worst time ever in your whole life.

Let me just pull up your account.

Then he calls the mayor, who's just asking for help, help, a nasty woman, and throws paper towels to the crowd.

And then he says, it's not a real catastrophe like Katrina.

And they said, well, you're not a real president like Obama.

So are you...

Are you starting to see a pattern that the most important thing that has to happen when there's a disaster is Trump being praised.

The other thing he said, as soon as he hit the ground at Puerto Rico, the governor says, giving us very high grades.

If we could just somehow harness his ego, we could power the entire island.

Today he said he's really starting to question whether the people of Puerto Rico fully understand and appreciate the extent of his suffering.

You know, like a joke.

But uh,

what happened to that one?

Never mind.

So then he goes on Twitter to whine how the no-good, mean, fake news media spoiled his great day in Puerto Rico.

Yeah, they pulled that fake news dirty trick they always do where they videotape him doing exactly what he does and says and then show it on TV.

You know that dirty trick?

So

So the next day, his no empathy tour

rolls into Las Vegas where he tells them that they're lucky that it's not worse and more people didn't die.

You know, first of all, I'm so sick of all the reactions.

I'm so sick of thoughts and prayers.

First of all,

thoughts are the opposite of prayers.

A thought is what should I do?

A prayer is wishing on a star.

Thoughts and prayers are the Republican way of saying tough shit.

You know, I hear this a lot on TV this week.

You know, what do we tell the children?

How about we're moving to Canada?

Nah,

we're still here.

Don't forget that.

No, Roger Stone, you know, Trump's albino assassin.

Oh, Roger.

He said if Trump even thinks about doing something about gun control, the quote, base will go insane.

How will we know?

Is my...

How what is

Oh, and

if all that is not enough to make you shit your pets,

dear leader had dinner the other night with the military chiefs, and at the end of it, he said, this could be the calm before the storm.

And people, what are we talking about?

And he said, you'll find out.

Yes, tune in next week for the next exciting episode of The Edge of Madness.

Will North Korea get a bomb or a rose?

We don't know.

Calm before the storm.

It could mean anything.

Either he's about to start a war or he ate too many prunes at dinner.

Rex Tillerson is so right.

Did you see that?

Rex Tillerson, the Secretary of State, our top diplomat, called him a moron

and won't deny it.

He's not denying it.

In fact, he won't deny it until they dug a little deeper and found out he actually called him a fucking moron.

And now,

this country, now they're debating that, whether he said moron or fucking moron.

I say ask Melania if anybody knows about fucking morons.

All right, we've got a great show.

Harold Ford Jr., Olivia Newtsie, and Steve Schmidt are here, and a little later we'll be speaking with Russell Brand.

I'm a big fan of his.

First up.

Oh, talk about a big fan.

I love this guy, the actor and comedy legend who started City Slickers.

Analyzed this when Harry met Sally.

His memoir, Still Foolin' Him, is now in paperback.

Mr.

Saturday night here on a Friday.

Billy Crystal, ladies and gentlemen.

Billy,

how are you?

Stanny.

Very funny.

Oh, please.

No, no.

But

look, there's so much bad stuff in the news that I said, you know, usually I'm talking to an expert about it.

I said, no, I want Billy Crystal.

Yeah, good times.

And, you know, a first thing I want to talk about is: I know you tour like I do, and I have been in restaurants where people have guns.

Texas, not just Texas, but yeah, that's one state.

I've seen it in lots of places.

And boy, you really realize that we live in a little bubble out here when you see that, right?

Oh, yeah.

I was, I did this tour and it was great, but San Antonio, Houston,

there's guns in the audience.

So I thought cell phones were a problem.

Right.

That's a heckle.

But you see them on a coat rack in a restaurant.

You see them on a table.

People with holsters.

Back of a truck.

Very well-behaved waiters, though, I have to say.

But

it's the culture that we have.

And

we love our guns.

Yeah, that's the problem.

That's the problem.

It's the psychology, I agree.

And it's in our culture.

The language of guns is in our culture.

What do we want from a politician?

We want a straight shooter.

Oh, look at her.

She's half-cocked.

You know, if a song is a hit,

it's number 10 with a bullet.

A bullet, yeah.

Right?

Watch a football game.

It's all guns.

They're in a shotgun offense.

You know, he's got a rifle for an arm.

He's got a lot of weapons in his arsenal.

He looks downfield.

He's got the receiver in his sights.

He hits him with a bullet right in the chest.

It's all in violence.

And

this horrible thing about, well,

we don't want to talk about it now.

It's not the time to talk about it.

Right.

Never when it happens.

I don't understand.

Do you understand?

No, of course not.

It's ridiculous.

I mean, when is the right time?

I mean, we have another hurricane heading our way.

When are we going to talk about that?

When is Scott Pruitt going to realize that he's the head of the Environmental Protection Agency?

Well, it plus

plus 33,000 jobs.

We had the worst job report in seven years because of the hurricanes.

So you'd think the party of business would get that in their head.

The one thing that might ring a belly money here.

Bill, this is a huge bell to ring.

Yeah.

You know,

this is a real garbage.

When you're in places like that, I always say this.

I'm curious if you find the same thing.

I like the audiences even better.

Yeah.

in a red state.

They are more surprised to see me.

I don't know about you because

you appeal to everybody.

I don't have that.

I don't have that luxury.

Oh, come on.

But no, I mean, you know, the conservatives don't come up, but there are liberal people in red states, and I find audiences are different in the Trump era.

Yeah.

A lot of more shouting out supportively, but they're just, they are crazy.

Burburs are a little crazy.

It feels like wrestling.

It feels like professional wrestling.

Trump feels like Vince McMahon from the beginning.

This is like, we're going to show up Thursday.

I don't care.

It's that kind of stuff.

Isn't he awful?

It's just awful.

So I was on stage and they're very emboldened because they love to yell at you.

That's it, yeah.

So I don't do a lot of political stuff, but I stumbled into a really funny thing.

I was talking about my old friend, Howard Kosell.

Oh.

And I had known Howard for years.

Did you know Howard Cosell?

And one year, one year Howard would voted the most loved and the most hated man on television in the same poll.

So he's very similar to the guy running the show right now.

Yeah.

You know, love, hate, love, hate, love, hate.

And so I said, you know, I loved him because he was smart, he was outspoken, he was brazen, he had contempt for society, and he just, as he would say, I told it like it is.

In sports.

Yeah, but wouldn't he be great covering the White House?

There's the guy I want.

So I started riffing on it.

Let's take a look at this cabinet up close and personal.

This is the cabinet of Dr.

Khaler Gari, if I've ever seen it.

Let's start with Betsy DeMas.

Education.

Once you actually have an education before you get that job.

Then there's Vice President Mike Pence.

This guy looks like one of the men who chased the von Traump family into the out.

So I'm scoring lefts and rights, right?

So I finish a thing.

And, you know, you finish a big hunk, then it settles, and you move on to your next thing.

Out of the dark, a woman yells at me, honor the president.

Uh-oh.

Crowd boos.

They boo.

And I went, folks, I'll handle this.

I went to college for this.

Let me do this.

So what does it mean?

Honor the president.

She won't stop.

So I said to her, listen, when he honors all Americans, then I'll honor him.

Big applause from the audience, right?

Honor the president.

She won't stop.

Now you feel like you could lose the show.

So I said to her, listen, I appreciate that you love this man.

I appreciate that.

I respect that.

So I'm going to use his own words on you.

Get her out.

I don't know if I would have been that nice to her.

I have trouble being that nice to a Trump supporter like that because he's so insensitive.

Of course, it bothered me that he got elected.

It bothered me more that so many people in this country would vote for somebody so vulgar and who's been so rotten to so many people in such such a personal way.

He is the most, I mean, what is your favorite insensitivity of Donald Trump?

There's so many to choose from.

Oh, well, it's when he doesn't say something that's also awful.

I mean,

all the comments about from the beginning of the debate, I hated the taunting, the little Marco.

Yeah.

I don't love the, you know, now the little rocket man.

I hate that.

I mean, I wasn't a, I'm not a big guy, so when everyone taunt me, I don't like it.

But, you know, this guy's got missiles.

Right.

Yeah.

Just shut the fuck up.

But

Holocaust Remembrance Day, he doesn't mention the Jews.

Right.

If any there's a day to mention the Jews,

it's Holocaust.

Remembrance Day.

Then when they march in in Charlottesville and they're screaming, the Jews will not replace us.

Jews will not replace us.

He's the grandfather of Orthodox Jewish children.

His son-in-law, who he loves openly, is an Orthodox Jew.

His daughter, who he loves suspiciously,

it's a Friday night.

I'm sorry.

Yeah, I was going to say,

he doesn't say anything.

He doesn't say anything except there's some very fine people.

Some very fine people who are yelling, the Jews will not replace us.

And that's what you, you just, if there was a God, Joe Lieberman would be vice president, so when this schmock is impeached, the Jew would replace him.

So

I had a show a few weeks ago with Simon Rushdie and

Tim Gunn and a friend Leibowitz is here, and four people over 60, and we got to talking about age, because I said, this doesn't often happen on TV.

And I thought, you're coming on.

You and I are both now rapidly approaching 40.

On my IMDV page, maybe.

And sad that they laugh so quickly.

I understand.

Yeah.

But it sort of is the last group of people you can shit on in America, isn't it?

I mean, there's every sort of shaming,

slut shaming and victim shaming and fat shaming.

But if anybody screws up, who's even our age or older, immediately you go to not an individual, well, what do you want?

He's 80.

But, you know, Clint East was 85, and Woody Allen's 80-something, and they're still making movies.

I feel it's individual, but what do you think?

Well, I'm going to be 70.

See, I mean,

still pretty good.

That bothers me.

It is.

But it just, I hate that.

Oh, you're still alive.

Applause.

I know.

Fuck you.

We're still alive.

Yeah, we're still alive.

It's not a miracle.

You know, when you say I've been married 20 years, that's a miracle.

Well, I've been married almost 48 years.

That's a real miracle.

But the thing is,

you know,

I talk about it

in my show because that's where I'm at now.

I can't talk about dating.

No, yeah.

Hey, your oxygen ten of mine.

You know,

you can't do that.

Want to see some spider-veins?

But...

You're not helping.

I'm not helping you.

You know, but that's the way it is.

But it gives me, I think, a little perspective that I didn't have.

There are things that I know I would not do now that I might have done earlier.

And things piss me off more.

I'm becoming, you know, the guy in your neighborhood who don't hit it into old man Crystal's yard.

You're not going to get that ball back.

But you earned it.

You earned your cranky.

You know what I was really cranky for?

Embrace it.

Sean Spicer at the Emmys pissed me off big time.

Perfect.

Right?

All people we know taking selfies with him in the green room afterwards, embracing him, kissing his cheek,

this guy, this half-man, half-Jack Russell Terrier,

was the liar,

was the voice for this crap.

You know, I mean, Hitler didn't use poison gas on his own people.

Even Mel Gibson said, oy gevolt, what an asshole.

But yet, I would never embrace that.

And so that really turned me off.

Well, I hope you keep getting pissed off.

Well, I do

have a right.

Because it creates comedy.

Yeah.

But you know what else, Bill?

I know we've got to go soon because

I saw the

three horsemen of the apocalypse.

This is like doing the voice.

Are they going to turn around and look at me and go, I like him.

The one thing that is really important about the age I'm at and about where we're heading as a country that I feel really important about is

I have four grandchildren and they're 14, 11, soon to be 8 and 4.

What world are we giving them?

What

am I going to

help them live in?

What world are we going to do that?

Are we going to have enough fish?

Are we going to have enough air?

Are we going to have enough water?

Are we going to have people who believe in science so we can maybe turn this around?

What kind of world am I leaving in?

That's what at this age I think about more than anything.

Unfortunately, a world where all those questions are open.

Great to end on a down note.

Billy Crystal.

Nobody does it tight 10 late here, though, my friend.

Billy Crystal.

Okay,

thank you for doing this.

Let's meet our panel.

Hey.

Hey.

Hi, everybody.

Okay, here they are.

He is the vice chair of public affairs at Edelman Public Relations and former senior advisor of the McCain-Palin campaign.

Steve Schmidt's over here, Big Steve.

Hey.

She's the Washington correspondent for New York Magazine.

Please welcome for the first time Olivia Nootsi.

On our show, I see you on other shows a lot.

And he's a former Democratic congressman from Tennessee who is now a visiting professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Policy.

Harold Ford Jr., been too long.

How are you?

Great to see you.

Okay, so obviously we're going to talk about guns because we have to.

That's the law after a shooting, even though people don't like it.

And I'm tired of all the same old arguments because nobody ever moves out of the place they're already in.

Seems like every time one of these happens, people go to their corners, reinforce positions.

So I thought I'd read one quote.

I found one guy who changed.

He is a guitar player for a band that was playing that night in Las Vegas.

Caleb Keeter of the Josh Abbott band said, I've been a proponent of the Second Amendment my entire life until the events of last night.

I cannot express how wrong I was.

My hero, thank you.

Somebody changed their mind.

Somebody changed.

And all I could think of was, you know, was that so hard?

Reagan couldn't have said that when he had a bullet in him, Gabby Gifford, Steve Scalise, people get shot and they won't change.

Well, thank you, Caleb Keeter.

Your thoughts.

Well these are weapons of war that were used in Las Vegas and you look at the casualty statistics.

The 82nd Airborne when it jumped into Normandy had about 170 men killed, 577 wounded, another 700 missing.

You're looking at casualty statistics at a country music concert in Las Vegas.

Someone firing from 400 yards away, 300 feet down, wounding 600 people almost, killing 58.

It's extraordinary, and it raises a fundamental question.

What type of country do we want to live in?

What type of society do we want to have?

I own firearms, but I'll tell you, you can't own a tow missile or a Stinger missile.

So we do have restrictions on the type of weaponry you can own.

You can't go out and buy a.50 caliber machine gun.

So what category of weapons should not be in the public marketplace?

And we ought to start from a premise that these weapons, which are weapons of war, right, fully automatic weapons,

in the hands of a madman.

Listen, there's a lot of Democrats too, Bill.

A lot of Democrats have A ratings with the NRA.

This is true.

This is a much more complicated issue.

Where were you on this?

When you were in Congress.

I think you need, well, I was for restrictions and some restraints.

I just build on Steve's point.

The real takeaway from this is that for the first time in my lifetime, the NRA has demonstrated some support for some kind of restraint.

They're for blocking, or at least for a conversation, about blocking this chip that you can put on one of these guns and make it an automatic weapon.

Carol, that's not true.

I'm sorry.

But Wayne Lawrence, you know, he's a pleasure.

Let me finish my point.

They're not for blocking.

But I'm not praising him.

I understand what I'm saying.

I'm 47 years old.

I served in Congress 10 years.

They've never expressed even a willingness to have this conversation.

Now, this doesn't mean that

we should follow their leadership.

The fact that we're even here, we shouldn't have these kind of weapons.

I would agree with Steve 100%.

But the reality is I think we're making some progress here.

And if Paul Ryan is true to what he said, he's going to bring this bill to the floor.

You're going to have Democrat and Republican alike supporting this.

I think the NRA did this.

We're talking about

the thing that allowed him to shoot the semi-automatic that goes to your shoulder.

Allowed it to make it an illegal weapon.

That's what it did.

Okay.

And that is what you're happy with?

No.

I'm saying it's...

No, no, Bill, you're listening.

Hold on, no, no, no, no, no, no, put words in the mouth.

This is the first time they've ever,

the NRA has ever stepped forward.

Now, this is not praising.

I'm not a member of the NRA.

I only understand why.

I think you're falling for their

own.

But if the Fedomino effect happens and we find ourselves

conservatives, you have

a guitarist saying what he said.

Bill, you started the show out saying that.

You now have the conservative.

We got the guitarists.

One of the guys you have coming on this show, Brett Stevens, who's a conservative Pulitzer Prize winner, has called for us to rescind the Second Amendment.

These conversations normally don't happen with conservatives.

That's the only point I make and we

make some progress.

Let me chime in with the pessimistic one.

If you look at what Wayne Lauffier actually said about bump stocks, he said that they would maybe look at the issue.

He had to then reassure his supporters, the supporters of the NRA, that they would not be banning these things.

They would not be confiscating them.

That's the very definition of nibbling at the outer outer world.

And they can't even move on that problem.

And they can't even move on that.

So I'm not hopeful at all.

Let me ask you another question about guns.

And I know it drives Republicans crazy when liberals say everything's about race and everything isn't about race.

But I feel like guns is the one area where if you can't see a giant difference between the way black and white are treated in America with guns, I think there's a little racism in you.

I mean, show the Roy Moore video.

Here's a politician waving a gun at a rally.

Could you get away with doing that?

And succinct no.

There you go.

And the Vegas shooter himself, you know, it seems like when the shooter is, if he was Muslim, certainly would have about, let's, we got to get the band going.

If it was a Mexican, it would be about the wall.

And I feel like when it's the white guy, it's like, we don't know how this happened.

But they don't,

you know, and we don't.

I feel like it never gets to be an isolated incident if you're a minority.

They always always drag in the, you know, and this guy was from a broken home.

His father was a criminal.

You know, that would be big on Fox News, I feel like.

I mean, President Trump would already be out there with his own motive for the shooter if the shooter were non-white.

I mean, he does this anytime that there is any type of attack perpetrated by someone who is non-white.

He doesn't take the whole, it's too soon to talk about it.

We shouldn't speculate before we know the facts.

He only does that in very specific cases.

No,

100% accurate.

I mean, there's an absolute absolute double standard on this stuff.

All right.

Let me quote Gary Wills because I read something on, he wrote in the New York Times on the 4th of July about the Second Amendment, which I had never been aware of this, and I feel like I was waiting for the moment when I thought people would be paying attention to this issue.

And it is apropos to this issue we're talking about because he says, the Second Amendment shows just how far the poison of slavery pervaded the Constitution.

It was intended to protect slaveholders who used militias to keep a firm grip on on their slaves.

It wasn't meant to let individuals prevent federal tyranny.

How could it?

It was meant to guarantee the legality of well-regulated militias to handle the state's internal problems, especially the problem of a large slave population.

Says a lot, doesn't it?

It does.

Look, I'm not going to quarrel with whatever the meaning might be.

I look at the moment, and the reason I'm encouraged by the moment is that this is the first time we might get some momentum around policy.

I served in Congress, so the only way you're going to make these changes is unfortunate we have these tragedies, it seems like day after day, week after week.

So if we can find a way to deal with violence in urban communities, and even some rural communities, but particularly the Baltimores, the Chicago's, the DCs, the Washingtons, the Memphis, the Atlantas, and this is one way in which to get more people on the side of keeping guns out of people's hands, I want to have this conversation.

Too, I think we should look at a bill that raises the price on ammunition.

We've heard people, comedians, talk about this in a joking way, but if you had to pay extraordinary amounts of money for ammunition, other than when you're at a range or when you're hunting, I think it might change

the outlook on some of this.

Because I think until you rescind the Second Amendment, which I don't think is going to happen, it's hard to imagine how you can stop people from owning guns unless you're talking about the kind of weaponry that Steve so aptly talked about.

I'm sorry.

I do think the founding fathers, though, they could no more conceive of an AK-47 or an AR-15 firing on full automatic than they could have conceived of a spaceship.

Okay.

These weapons were not conceived of, were not understood, were not imagined in the context of the time when the amendment was authored.

And we ought to have a real debate in this country about whether we want military weapons, military weapons, weapons of war, in the hand of every Joe who wants to go in and buy 30 of them.

It is harder to buy cough medicine than it is to buy an AK-47 or 50 of them.

So

I want to ask quickly about the cabinet, what's going on there, because it was a little nervous.

I know it's funny that the Secretary of State calls the president a moron.

A fucking moron.

A fucking moron, exactly.

How did he not know, though, that ignoring that is job one

if you're going to work for Donald Trump?

Job two, try not to stare.

But I read in the, is it the Washington Examiner?

Okay, I'm not sure if this is true, but they talked about some sort of a suicide pact between the key cabinet members, that if one of them gets fired, a lot of them go.

So the people who we are depending on, sort of to keep things together, while the crazy man does what he does every day, Mattis, right, and General Kelly and McMaster, the generals, and Tillerson, and a few sane people.

What if that happens?

What if they all go?

What is the B team like?

This is only year one of Trump.

Seriously,

we could look back and be like, yeah, we were lucky to have those guys.

And now it's Secretary of State Scaramucci and Steve Miller and

just people, because all he wants is people who are loyal to him.

That's the only qualification that matters.

I think on a daily basis, when you step back and you consider just the abject stupidity, the chaos, the malfeasance, the incompetence, the lack of probity, the lack of rectitude of these people.

I think we have a real lack of imagination for how dangerous the world is and have a real lack of imagination for the immensity of the tragedy that could result.

from this president.

And as bad as it has been,

there's a lot worse.

And the one thing we know for sure about

Trump, what we know about Donald Trump is this.

No one has yet to accurately predict where the basement is with regard to his behavior.

And

I fear it can go a lot lower than it is.

Right.

Well, again, on that happy note.

Now, the joke,

you wanted to make sure that McMaster and Mattis and Kelly all had good gym memberships because you didn't want to see these guys face any health issues.

He brought brought him gym memberships all across the country now to make sure that they were going to be able to do it.

No, I pray for it every day.

John McCain's favorite quote, quoting Chairman Mao, is to remember it's always darkest before it's completely black.

Right.

And you would know that.

Yes.

So

we were talking last week about this Judge Roy Moore, the guy I just showed with the pistol.

And it made me think there is a trend brewing in America because this guy is like the ultimate cliché of what people all around the country think of as Alabama.

That's who Alabamans are going to send to the Senate, a guy who is an absolute, shit-kicking, gay-bashing,

just, and Donald Trump is kind of the same thing.

He is what people who don't like New York think of as the worst kind of New Yorker.

Brash, loud, egotistical, he's got an opinion on anything.

He's pushy, he's an asshole.

So I think this is what's going to happen, is that every state will be represented by the person who the rest of the country would envision as the worst person in that state.

Like California will be represented by Dylan Van Nuys,

an actor-waiter who just came from a porn shoot in the valley and didn't wash his hands.

New Jersey will be represented by Stephanie Spokoli, a gun-snapping mob daughter who financed her campaign by burning down a supercuts.

Texas will be represented by a cow with a gun rack.

Florida's rep is a 28-year-old teacher who has sex with her students and spent last month shooting at the hurricane.

Representing Idaho is Brian Flint, a firearms enthusiast and militia member who lists his profession as freedom and

his address as why?

Who's asking?

Tough crowd sometimes.

Washington State will be represented by

Li Zhang, a wealthy Chinese immigrant who owns a chain of coffee shops that only accept Bitcoin.

Colorado, we'll be represented by a professional snowboarder who lives on a mountain because he's too high to find his house.

And Utah will be represented by Mitt Romney.

All right, he is an actor, comedian, and best-selling author of Recovery, Freedom from Our Addictions.

Russell Brand is over here.

You look so surprised.

How you doing?

Sit down.

Oh.

I'm so glad you got the leather pants on.

You haven't abandoned all your rock star shit, right?

I thought at least one person on this panel should be wearing faux leather attire.

I didn't want to put you through it, Bill.

I have to say, I am a really big fan of yours.

That's so kind of you to say that.

No, no, I'm never kind.

I'm always truthful.

Oh, yes, because sometimes you are curmudginly.

Yes, here in America, I am.

And I must say, I feel like there was a time when I saw you a lot.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Maybe too much.

And lately...

You didn't have to hover by my window.

And lately, I don't see you enough.

How can I get the right amount of Russell brand in my diet?

This is the classic addiction dilemma.

Once we have a little bit and then we get carried away and we can't control it.

Our inability to moderate.

Well what happened was I think is I became immersed and engulfed in the intoxicating drug of celebrity, drank and drank from the cup like Icarus, flew too close to the sun, burned myself terribly, and then retreated to the British countryside to look at wildfowl.

Yeah,

I mean, you got interested in life, which is something a lot of people who are addicted to.

I mean, years ago, we did an issue: fame is the worst drug of all.

I mean, you see it the way people hang on on reality shows and stuff.

I mean, you used to be a star, and now you're on an island eating bugs, you know.

Like,

anything would be worse than giving up that fame.

And as you're an addiction specialist, would you concur with that, that fame is as bad as the other ones?

I'm a specialist in that I've experimented on myself quite ruthlessly and quite extensively.

Not in laboratory conditions, more's the pity.

I could have done with someone in a lab coat to give me a cuddle, and a Petri dish would have been useful.

But

what I do agree with, Bill, is these are times where we live on the outside.

External phenomena has stimulated us to a ludicrous degree, and that addiction is just the amplification of consumerism.

If you constantly broadcast at people that they ought to be afraid, if you constantly broadcast at people that they ain't good enough and that they can purchase somehow externally the feeling of well-being, then addiction for me is a natural conclusion of this phenomenon.

I ain't gonna fuck with that.

I wrote a book about it.

Yeah, I was gonna say, you did write a book about it, and you've had all the addictions, and you've done all the drugs.

Oh, beautiful.

And what was your favourite?

Well,

I'll talk you through.

Heroin is very, very relaxing.

Too relaxing.

You let go of your life in the end.

LSD is delightful.

To annihilate the concept of self, the construction of self, the

biochemical tapestry stimulated by a culture, formulated in memory, to see that thing bust apart by hallucinogen is a glory to behold, to experience oneness, to experience connection, to know that in truth we are all one.

The glory of the light, the glory of the Lord.

I know you're an atheist.

Don't recoil, Bill.

These chairs have got reels on them for a reason.

I liked LSG.

I'm glad you're...

Must I get a second drug?

I'm glad you're now so sane and healthy.

Go on.

I'm only describing one evening.

Yeah.

Still marijuana, which I believe you're well acquainted with.

Yes.

Cocaine, a little too upbeat for me.

Terrible drug.

I can't take that stuff.

And then turn it into rocks with bicarbonated soda just to do a bit of extra gel time based on pigment and bicarb.

That's no kind of deal.

So like

for me, the only drug that I'm interested in is the drug that we are pursuing in the first place.

The drug of connection, of unity, of love.

For me, all these things are placebos.

Every drug, every commodity, just a placeholder on the way, false idols, as we seek out some kind of truth and connection in whatever denomination, in whatever language, whether it's agnostically, atheistically, or religiously.

We're all looking for oneness, we're all looking for connection.

And I think in your country at this time, we're seeing tumult and rage bubbling up in the form of these peculiar figures, these ludicrous gargoyles that govern these comedic figures that even your parody cannot entirely do justice to.

Who are these people?

Yeah, you know, I mean this this shooter that we were talking about in Vegas is kind of a conundrum and he is it's kind of what you're talking about.

It's a person who they can't find a motive.

He just seemed to have a hole in his soul.

Yes.

He was rich.

He had a lot of money.

He had a life in Las Vegas, but there was something horrible missing.

It seems extraordinary that something so malicious and malignant and awful can occur with such frequency and it must be the result of systemic problems, not as the result of individual problems.

Certainly that kind of analysis wouldn't have been afforded a person of colour or of a different faith.

It would not have been based upon their individual conditions.

So, let me ask you about one more addiction.

You said you were also a sex addict.

Isn't there a difference?

A difference between all the drugs which you are physically addicted to and which have harmful side effects.

What is the bad side effect of sex addiction?

Smiling too much?

Well, I did do a wry grin there, sir, sir, because I'm juvenile and I'm on a television program.

But sex addiction and food addiction, these are necessary aspects of a healthy human life.

But I would say the definition of addiction is a behavior that you repeat, that is having detrimental effects and that you cannot stop.

For me, that is the definition of addiction.

Now, initially, if you are happy to say, it doesn't hurt you, why is that?

Well, it ultimately does hurt me and it ultimately hurts other people.

As a white heterosexual who's attracted to adult human females, you hit a bottom more slowly than if you had had more people?

I bet you hit a bottom a lot with a sex animal.

All right, one more thing.

I'm just saying that ultimately, sex addiction leads to the objectification and commodification of sexuality.

One more thing.

I love you, you're a beekeeper.

I do keep bees addressing.

And you know, the bees.

You must know, then, and maybe you're doing this for this reason, that they're endangered, and people should know that.

I've got 60,000 of those bees, and every single one of them is nothing but trouble.

All right, but in general, we need to save bees.

We do need to keep bees, you're quite right.

They are a necessary component of a healthy ecology.

I was making a joke just of

social pressure, really.

Yeah, no, it was.

Social pressure.

You should keep bees, except I can't take their honey bill out of pure bloody guilt.

Right, no, and that's great.

It's still in there.

It's great that you don't steal it.

Yeah, because you don't want to lift the lid off their house.

It's upsetting.

Right.

Excavating.

And you send them out to pollinate.

Well, I don't know if I send them out, Philip.

They seem to be governed by forces that I don't entirely entirely understand.

As you are sometimes.

All right.

I want to turn back to the panel for something very...

Segue, thanks.

Something very, very important.

The Supreme Court is finally hearing a case on gerrymandering.

Do you know what that term means here in America?

Gerrymandering means the manipulation of borders for political favor for one party.

I mean, I'm from England.

State education for free.

That's...

Well, I mean, this is why extremism reigns supreme in America, because people come from safe districts.

Why are they safe?

Because they are gerrymandered, because you almost can't lose.

Eight of 435 incumbents in 2016 lost their job in Congress.

Republicans don't fear Democrats.

They fear a crazier Republican who's going to primary them.

And vice versa.

Democrats fear Democrats too in primaries as opposed to Democrats.

But not as much.

No, but the phenomenon exists.

It doesn't change the point you're going to make.

Right.

I mean, okay.

So

I say if the Supreme Court can't get this one right,

what good are they?

This is exactly what we have a court for.

If it's not nine to nothing, it should be and it won't be.

I mean, in fact, we're sweating out with old man Kennedy again.

Please, old man Kennedy, you be the same one on the court.

But if we can't get this right, then the Russians might as well just hack away because it's gone anyway.

Look, the history of this issue with the court is that this is a political matter.

You have politicians who decide how districts are drawn.

The courts have decided not to get in this have declared they won't be involved.

The fact that you have the court looking at this, they understand that the way we've drawn these districts has been injurious to our democracy.

Whether it's 54-63-72-80-8190, I just want them to make a change here.

They're going to struggle with trying to come up with the standard.

But Justice Kennedy, I got a lot of faith in him.

He's come up with the thorniest, the toughest social issues.

He's always found a way.

And we got to pray he finds a way this time as well.

I think it's one of the most important

Supreme Court cases of my lifetime,

47.

We don't want to live in a system where the politicians pick the voters.

We want to live in a system where the voters pick the politicians.

We want...

competitive elections and we need to see a reestablishment of a commonsensical center in American politics.

You look at Roy Moore,

one of the problems obviously in the Republican Party is the degree to which Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell have said that basically you have an R next to your name, it's like a Batman suit.

Makes you impenetrable.

There's no whack job who's too crazy.

There is no policy too pernicious to

the.

No whack job on that right who's too crazy.

No, no, that's what I'm saying.

Is that if you have that R next to your name, there is no level of ethical misconduct.

There is nothing that will bring about condemnation.

And that is a function of the lack of

competitive elections and the collapse of the middle of American life.

And so we have all these issues, not even in the business of persuasion anymore.

Politics is a game of incitement.

It's about inciting the fringes, the 15%.

That's how these health care bills get put on to votes when they have 13% approval or you have 85-90% of the country believes we should have common sense

regulation and they can't get it done.

It's why Trump is perhaps pulling out of the Iran deal or trying to, which even his own cabinet, again, the cabinet, the people who are still a little sane, they're for the Iran deal.

They know it's a good deal.

But he's trying to fulfill this campaign promise to these people who you are talking about.

Hopefully he will be blocked.

I mean, Mattis has made clear where he stands on this.

Others have made clear.

But even if he does this, we still have Congress as a backstop.

And you've got to hope that the McCains, the Murkowskis,

the Portmans, some of the others who've stepped up will say, no, the deal is working.

There were many people who were skeptical about this deal from the outset, and they had fair reason to be.

But the deal is working far better than people thought.

And I think if you poll some of those Republicans who were reluctant about it, they support it.

Even Corker would, I think, block him if he were to try to decertify this and go to the Congress for the vote.

So I have some, I know I've been scolded.

a little bit for having confidence in Congress, but I got a little confidence that some of these Republicans, they stand.

Sorry for being realistic here.

And you got to be optimistic about things because the only way we're going to change things, remember, he won the election.

I didn't vote for him and I since you didn't either from the way you're talking.

We have to figure out a way to beat him and we're not going to beat him by just riling ourselves up.

We got to go back to Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio and attract voters who did not vote for Hillary Clinton, did not vote for Democrats, and try to get them to vote for Democrats in 2018 and 2020.

You got to have something for people to vote for.

If you don't, we're not going to win just by saying he stinks and he he sucks.

If that's all it took,

we'd have won that special race in Georgia.

We need a message, we need a vision, and we've got to campaign on it.

This is about Georgia.

Not that this is about Georgia.

It sounds like we've got a candidate.

He said it about Georgia, but the problem in Georgia partially was that that candidate didn't talk about Donald Trump on the stump.

So I don't think it's as simple as saying that criticizing him is not enough.

I think it's about selecting stronger candidates.

So we're talking about...

I don't like Trump either.

You have written before that you had your reservation.

Were you taking a little nap there when I went back in the panel?

Were you meditating?

You look like you were very blissed out there.

I've had a lovely time during that.

But you have had reservations.

You have expressed reservations about voting itself.

Where are you on voting now?

Well, Bill, I think

the dominant political parties have a real obligation, as Harold was just explaining, to present the voters, by which I mean human beings like me,

real vision, real possibilities, and to transcend the idea that they are merely managers of bureaucracies whose role it is to prevent us being, I suppose, bludgeoned by lunatics like the current one.

So I feel that what we...

But you would agree that it would have been better if people had voted for Hillary Clinton, right?

I wondered if you would ask me that.

We're getting along with that.

Do you think

Hillary Clinton would not be pulling out of the Iran deal or the Paris climate deal?

It's really, you know, I respect you and I admire you very much and I think you are a courageous man.

One of the problems I have in instances such as this is that politics became so centralised.

Realistic opportunities weren't offered to ordinary people.

And when a candidate like Bernie Sanders emerged, he was not given the opportunities that he deserved.

I never voted in my country.

What do you mean he was not given the opportunities?

He was given every opportunity.

He ran ran in America.

People voted for him, not as many as Hillary.

I wonder why this occurs.

I mean, you're talking now about the manipulation of boundaries and borderism and the way that certain political figures are managed towards positions of power and authority.

That exists at a party political level.

The Democratic Party had preferences.

Their preference was Hillary.

You got Hillary, Hillary last.

And I don't think that this is not.

I think you can tell from a glance that I'm not a Donald Trump guy.

No, no, no.

I'm trying to come to common ground with you.

Let me give you one example from this week.

While all the craziness was going on, the Republicans did not reauthorize a program called CHIPS, Children's Health Insurance Program.

Appalling.

Yes, you know of it.

Okay, it's been there for 20 years, bipartisan.

Nine million kids now are not going to get, you know, what they need, the doctor visits, checkups.

Yes, this is dramatic.

So I think for those people, voting matters.

You are quite right.

It's easy to say, oh, voting and Nahuka, they're all bad, but for those people downstream, it would have mattered if he wasn't president.

I entirely recognise I had a comparable problem in our country because I'd advocated not voting.

I said, well, don't vote until they give you

realistic opportunities until there are politicians that speak directly to you, that speak for ordinary working people.

Until then, why would you participate in this spectacle?

You're being invited to participate in something that doesn't offer you realistic opportunities.

The candidate for the left at that time was,

I would say, a comparable candidate, someone that was a neoliberal centralist politician that didn't oppose the corporate interests and elite interests.

This allowed hegemony to continue.

Now, I think that if the left isn't brave enough to occupy the space where ordinary people whose lives are in difficulty and in trouble, if a politician on the left doesn't say, we are interested in representing you, we want to take care of you, ordinary Americans, then the bizarre lunatic rhetoric of a man like Trump is suddenly appealing.

We have witnessed this.

The alternative is in the United Kingdom that Jeremy Corbyn, a genuine socialist candidate, has come to the front and I voted for the first time and people cared for.

What were you like on cocaine?

We're going to go over it.

I want to hear more, but I have to go to New Rules.

All right, new rules, everybody.

New rules, stop saying the Trumps need to do what all first families do and get a pet.

They have Rex.

He's such a dog, his name is Rex.

And he he thinks his owner is a fucking moron

Which sounds to me like they've got themselves a cat

Neural prunes have to stop calling themselves nature's best laxative nature's best laxative is looking in the rearview mirror and seeing this

Neural Catholics upset that Pope Francis dresses too casually and just just isn't popey enough should consider a move to the Russian Orthodox Church.

Their Pope has more costume changes than a Beyoncé concert.

Here he is thinking, is two candelabras too much?

Ah, fuck it.

People are coming to see a show.

I'm going to give them a show.

New role strangers on hospital elevators who see me carrying a bouquet of flowers have to stop asking, are those for me?

No, they're not for you.

And neither is comedy.

New rules: since the new Blade Runner stars Harrison Ford as a 75-year-old who hunts robots, and the next Terminator will star Arnold as a 72-year-old robot, Harrison Ford has to hunt Arnold in Alien vs.

Pensioner.

They're not too old for this shit.

They're too old to shit.

And finally, new rule, my dashboard doesn't need any more indicators.

Is your seatbelt on?

Are your tires inflated?

Is your oil changed?

Geez, if I wanted to be nagged this much, I'd get married.

And right now in Washington, Democrats have introduced federal legislation requiring car manufacturers to install a motion sensor that would remind drivers that they left their kid in the back seat.

Really?

It's called the Hot Cars Act because turnaround dipshit was too on the nose.

But if someone's too high to remember their kid, you think they're going to see a little yellow light?

There were over 17 million new cars sold in America last year.

Are we really going to require them all to install sensors, the cost of which will be passed on to the consumer, to prevent something less likely than being struck by lightning?

And should reminding you not to forget your baby really be Toyota's problem?

Where does this stop?

Chunks of toilet ice, yes I said it, toilet ice.

fall out of the sky from airplanes all the time.

That's going to kill some unlucky fucker someday.

Why not the Piss Ice Act requiring all vehicle roofs to be reinforced to withstand a urine iceberg drop from 30,000 feet?

Here in California, we make just about every business under the sun put up this sign that says, warning detectable amounts of chemicals known to cause cancer may be found around this facility.

No shit.

We live in LA.

It's called air.

Honolulu recently banned looking at your phone while crossing the street.

But wait, what if I'm getting an important message like that I've left my baby in a hot car?

And here's where someone always says, but if it saves one life, oh fuck, you know what?

You could put kids in bubble wrap all day and it would save some, but would it be worth it?

We're never going to get this down to zero until we get rid of kids altogether.

And I keep signing the petition, but it never happens.

Until then, all this will accomplish is to feed into the Republican message that Democrats don't want to help people, they just want to micromanage.

their lives.

It makes people hate us.

It makes me hate us.

And it prompts kickback.

That's how you get an environmental

protection agency headed by a man who cares nothing about environmental protection.

And I hate to tell you, but we are all in an overheating vehicle.

It's called Earth.

That's why I say to Democrats, either go big or go home.

No one is for leaving babies in hot cars.

It's just that common sense tells most people this is an issue of personal responsibility, especially when the liberal solution to your human frailty is me paying more for shit that can break in my car.

Thanks, government.

We'll get to gun control later.

And that's the point.

We do need regulation.

Oh yes, for big things, real things, like guns.

and carbon emissions and banks.

But when Democrats get to regulating everything,

regulation itself gets a bad name.

And I don't want to let the right wing own freedom.

People want to drain the swamp, not ban big gulps.

Yes, I understand.

You have a thousand good ideas for how I should live my life, check my privilege, and sort my recycling.

And we'll get to that.

But first, we need to get some Democrats elected.

And that's hard when the movement to child-proof the world has made Republicans the party of freedom and Democrats the party of poopers.

All right, that's our show.

We're off next week.

I'm at the Microsoft here in town tomorrow.

We're back on the 20th.

I want to thank Steve Schmidt, Olivia Nootsi, Harold Fall Jr., Russell Brand, and Billy Crystal.

Join us now on Overtime with you two.

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.