Ep. #438: Fmr. Congressman Barney Frank, Bob Costas

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.

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be.

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

Start the clock.

I love you too.

And what die.

Ah!

My name, get it out of your assist.

I know, I know, it's the first day of fall

when Trump's colors are at their peak.

No, really,

the way his hair explodes and a riot of golds and reds and his face is a rich umber and

it just makes you want to get out of the city and go antiquing in his chins.

But can you believe the years almost shot again?

I don't know how this happens.

I mean soon the temperatures will be creeping into the teens.

Oh wait, I'm thinking of Anthony Weiner.

Wait.

He was...

Well, he was...

I feel bad he's been a guest, but yeah, he got sent up the river this week.

Anyway, what a week we had.

So much destruction.

The earthquake in Mexico, the hurricane in Puerto Rico, the health care bill in Congress.

I mean, you watch the Senate go after health care.

Just month after month, they never give up.

It's like, don't you have some interns to harass?

This was their third attempt now since Trump has been president to do this.

This one was written by Lindsey Graham, and it was, it's still, as we speak, it's still a few votes short.

They don't have it to pass this monstrosity.

And today John McCain,

again, yes,

said

he said

he would not support Lindsey's bill.

So it is a good day for health care and a bad day for gay marriage because

Lindsey Graham said, I know one Maverick who's going to sleep on the couch tonight.

That's all I'm saying.

But no, John McCain, I got to give it to him, he said, I cannot in good conscience,

good conscience, vote for such a vague, irresponsible piece of legislation.

And all the Republicans at once said, what's good conscience?

No, I mean

but they're learning.

You see, the problem with the other plans that they had was that they told the voters what was in them.

So they didn't do that this time.

They kind of kept it all a big secret.

In fact, the CBO, that's the Congressional Budget Office, which scores these things, they haven't had it long enough to what they call score it.

So they said they can only give it a partial analysis.

And the partial analysis is it's a piece of shit.

And

but hey, if you think

McLindsey are at odds this week, boy, Trump and Kim Jong-un,

fat man and little boy, as I call them,

they are feuding again.

And it meant, I love Kim.

He called Trump a dotard, which is one of those words that people have stopped using,

like presidential.

But, you know, it's

a dotered.

It's from Shakespeare.

And Mr.

President, if you're watching, Shakespeare was a guy a long time ago.

He wrote plays.

Plays are like a movie, but the people are really there.

I don't know what to do anymore.

No, I'll tell you something.

North Korea is not the country.

that is on Trump's mind.

That would be Russia.

This Russia investigation, I know I say it every week, but it is heating up.

Robert Mueller says he is very close to figuring out who in the Trump campaign was not a Russian spy.

And

I mean.

The things we find out every this week Paul Manafort who was the Trump campaign manager I know they try to deny it oh he just came by a few times he he didn't even really have a desk here yes he did he was the campaign manager and apparently he was giving private briefings to the Russian oligarchs who were connected to Putin.

And Trump says, I know that sounds bad, but at no time during the campaign was he ever aware that he was running for president.

He said he only found out about it after the election by watching Fox and Friends.

Otherwise.

But you know,

they could pretend all they want that the Russian interference didn't affect the election, but of course it did.

It did in a big way, in many different ways, including these ads on Facebook.

Have you seen this shit that went on?

And now Mark Zuckerberg says he has agreed to turn over over 3,000 election ads that were bought by a Russian troll farm.

And, you know, I hope we can at least all agree that foreigners should not be influencing our elections.

If only we had thought of that 20 years ago when an Australian started Fox News.

All right, we've got a great show.

Martin Shard is here.

Catherine Rampell and Rick Wilson.

And a little later, my friend Bob Costas will be out here.

But

first up, he was my favorite congressman.

Now he's my favorite retired congressman.

Please welcome Barney Frank, the still honorable.

There's Barney Frank.

How are you, my friends?

Great to see you.

Okay, Barney, so

Healthcare Week, once again, they tried it again.

It seems like I was talking about this last week on the show, the Republican love of turning things back to the states.

And it seems like, without getting into the weeds on this latest plan, what it does is it makes it into a program that would go back to the states.

They love to say, oh, the states can handle things better.

Tell us what would really happen if the states handle things.

First of all,

there are problems with Obamacare as it exists.

specifically in those states where the Republican governors refused to cooperate with it.

In states where the governors were prepared to be supportive, it's worked well.

But there's a method to this.

I've got to go back.

Senator Bob Corker, supposedly a reasonable Republican, when the UAW was trying to organize at General Motors, at Volkswagen in Chattanooga, and the company said, okay, we work with unions in Germany.

We're not unionophobic the way the Americans are.

Corker and others threatened the company that they would deny them funds they were supposed to get if they recognized the union.

He was asked, well, what do you care?

The company's okay with it.

He said, look, if they get a union at

Volkswagen, that'll raise wages.

And if wages go up there, they'll go up throughout the state.

And if wages go up for working people in Tennessee, we won't be able to wooer businesses down from other states.

The purpose of sending things to the, and this is, you know, he didn't deny this.

It's a long way to go to fuck poor people.

The thing, yeah, but yeah.

No, but this is that basic strategy.

First you send things to the states.

Then the states compete to get businesses.

Amazon, unfortunately, is encouraging that right now.

Bid for Amazon.

Give me a tax break, which they really need.

And what they say is, let it be done state by state.

Then each state will be under pressure to do as little as possible because the businesses in those states, the businesses that they want to attract, will say, you're being way too generous to those poor people.

So it's not simply to get it to the states.

Would we have a situation where people are going to move to states where there is health care, that's more affordable and is done better.

It's harder to do.

Unfortunately, poor people in Kentucky aren't as mobile as Amazon setting up its headquarters.

But they are afraid.

No, it's not that they will move there.

It is that the states will spend, the states that spend more of what they get

will

not be able to reduce taxes as much.

Why is this such a priority with Republicans?

I read this week that this is still the number one, even more than the damn wall, the number one priority.

79% 79% of Republicans want Obamacare repealed.

It's irrational, isn't it?

Yes, it is.

You can see that because this is not just the fifth time they've tried to do it or the third time.

It's the fifth, different version, which are all different.

There's no consistency.

All they want to do is get rid of it.

They have been, they're going to do it this way.

They're going to do it that way.

They're going to give it to the states.

They're going to do it some other way.

Every one of those bills that they brought up, one in the House, one in the Senate, two others, they're all different.

And interesting quote today from Senator Charles Grassley senior Republican

I can think of ten good reasons why this bill shouldn't go to the floor but it was a major campaign issue for us so I'm going to vote for it they promised it they are committed and it's very clear they have no constructive notion of what they want health care to be there is no consistent Republican alternative it is simply let's get rid of Obamacare because well if one was here they would be saying I think that they believe health care your doctor is something that is a personal matter.

And therefore, it's something that the government should just not be involved in.

By the way, they used to say that argument.

Now they kind of say we're going to improve it, which is a lie.

They never used to try to say that.

They would just say, we don't think you should be, the government should be in the business of taking care of your problems.

They used to say that, of course, now they're letting it go to the state governments.

But in fact, that's not a consistent theme.

On the other hand, you're right.

They have benefited in the past from saying, don't let the government do it.

And that's why what they're doing is so unpopular.

It's the one encouraging thing about this.

What you now have is a large part of the American public, a majority, realizing that they want government involved in health care.

And the great gift that Donald Trump has given Democrats is all the damage he's done is that before he got elected, he got the votes of a lot of people who thought the government sucks.

And what he's been able to do is to prove to people that no government sucks worse than government.

And you now have support for a positive role.

Yeah.

What about the Democratic side, though?

Now, Bernie Sanders, not officially a Democrat even,

his bill, which is single payer, which is a horrible name for it, okay, because people think the single payer is going to be them.

Single payer, if you don't know, means government pay.

It's a husband paying alimony, it's a single payer.

And

why are you making that joke?

Is there trouble that we don't know about?

No, okay.

But all the Democrats who are thinking about running next time have lined up behind Bernie's single-payer bill.

He is strong for single-payer, and that is now catching fire with the Democratic base.

The problem there is that, you know, California wanted it.

They couldn't figure out how to pay for it.

Vermont tried it, couldn't pay for it.

You know, should we go down this road as Democrats of promising something that I don't think you can do it unless you cap what the medical people can charge.

And we're not about to do that in this country that adores capitalism so much.

Two things.

First of all, it would be easier to do it at the federal level than the state.

I mean, you have correctly cited it can't be done at the state level.

I think ultimately you can do it at the federal level if you were willing to find the money.

On the other hand, and even Sanders' bill...

His bill is more reasonable than his rhetoric,

because as I understand it, it phases it in.

I still think that there is a mistake to go that far.

What Democrats almost were able to get through in 2009 and Joe Riebman said no, he was going to be there, was to reduce the age of Medicare to 55.

That seems to me to be much more manageable.

It gets more people involved.

I think it helps.

It doesn't destroy the private insurance system, but it strengthens it by getting the oldest people in the private employer insurance out.

I think you could pay for it.

One thing, though, and I want to be very clear, and this is one of the things I want to hammer hammer to the Democrats.

Very sorry to see John McCain.

I'm grateful to what he's doing now, but he's just bringing out a military spending bill that says Donald Trump is a piker and we're going to spend way more.

Until we begin to reduce military spending,

we cannot do anything else, so we shouldn't pretend to attempt it.

And Trump,

that's another area.

That's another area where Trump, we could use him because he's the one who says America doesn't have to be involved everywhere all over the world.

And then, contradictorily, he spends all that money.

I think you could afford to bring Medicare down to 55 if you did it right.

And that's a demonstration to people and I would push for that and then if that works you think about where you can go next.

Okay.

So

Nancy Pelosi was giving a little speech the other day.

I'm going to read what the protesters said to her on DACA because I think she and Chuck Schumer pretty much saved their bacon a couple of weeks ago.

And she was interrupted by a bunch of protesters.

Apparently they weren't satisfied that she went far enough and they said Democrats created an out-of-control deportation machine and handed it over to Trump.

I don't know if I agree with that.

We demand accountability.

Democrats are not the resistance of Trump.

We are.

And it seems like we come across this problem often now with the Democratic Party where the people who are the purists, I guess is the kindest way to say it, are never satisfied and seem to always be attacking the people who are their best ally in a world that is not perfect and where compromises must be made.

You're absolutely right.

I wouldn't call them purists.

I mean, I understand they think of themselves as purists.

They're absurdists.

They're fantasists.

Attacking Nancy Pelosi for this.

What she and Schumer did was to get Trump to agree to support letting these people stay here, which I very much support and have voted for, let them have jobs, and not insist on the wall.

And it is just unreal.

You know,

there is this tendency to fight with your friends because you're in a

tough

low-hanging fruit.

Yeah, and what I think

what they have to do, and I'm glad that Nancy stood up to them, and I hope Chuck Schumann does too, and say, you're dead wrong, and we're not going to allow you to do this.

What Nancy Possey and Chuck Schumann did was a great benefit for them.

And what you wonder is, would they rather have the psychic income?

of being told how wonderful they are and there should be no compromise.

By the way, what they're objecting to, again, is that they said, well, they'll have some border security.

Well, I didn't think liberals were supposed to be for no border security.

We're not for the war.

We're not for some of these bad tactics.

But I completely agree with you there.

This is self-defeating, and it is time to stand up to the...

It reminded me of when Black Lives Matter interrupted Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders last year.

And look, this is an organization I think you and I both support.

But to go after Hillary Clinton, I just wanted to say to them, you know, no white person is perfect, and certainly no white person could understand what it is like to be a black person, but

she's the best we got.

I feel like it's not going to get better than Hillary Clinton.

I absolutely love it.

Her first initiative when she ran for president was to end mass incarceration,

which is, for practical reasons, I don't know why I'm yelling at you, you brutalist.

Let me say that.

Here's the deal.

I agree with that.

And I think I can say this with some credibility because I filed the first gay rights bill in Massachusetts 45 years ago.

I am a gay man

and I have spent much of my, I have spent much of the last 45 years telling my fellow and sister gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people to get a grip, to be sensible, not to annoy people.

And I will say this to my African-American friends too, and I have a very good record on that.

And the point is this.

I want to say that all these groups, if you have people who want to get into public office so they can deliver public policy that's in your interest, why do you insist that they phrase that in a way that's most likely to piss people off?

Why is it not in your interest to help them get elected?

Why do you yell at them for trying to get elected?

And I think we need not to be morally intimidated and say, you're wrong.

We know how to do this.

We are making progress.

You are entitled to say what you want.

But it would, and I am particularly as I look at what's going on here now, every time I hear some of this, I want to say, by the way, how did you vote in the last election?

Because certainly if you didn't vote or you voted for Donald Trump, I really don't want want to hear from you.

Right.

I want you back in Congress, Bernie Frank.

Get off the couch and run again.

Bernie Frank.

Thank you, my friend.

All right, let's meet our panel.

Oh, who's there?

Oh, no.

There they are.

Okay.

All right, here's a Republican strategist and a columnist for the Dale Beast.

Rick Wilson.

Hey, Rick Wilson, how you doing?

She's a columnist for the Washington Post.

Catherine Rampell with us for the first time.

Great to see you.

And he is the TV star, movie star.

We may just put this in the prompter.

Comedy icon, whose scoring show with Steve Martin will come to Milwaukee on October 8th.

I love it.

You're working it.

And Des Moines, Iowa, October 27th.

Martin Short.

Thank you.

Working the small towns and the big towns.

Please hold your applause.

You know how competitive Bill is.

All right.

So listen, it was relatively speaking with Donald Trump, sort of a slow news week, and we covered healthcare with Barney.

So I thought I would take more of a deep dive here and talk about what's really worrying me, which is we seem to be losing the thread, I would say, with some of the bedrock beliefs and institutions that I always my whole life thought I was just taking, I took for granted.

I guess I shouldn't have.

Let me just read some recent polling.

These are are from different polls.

I won't bore you with all that they are, but just take this in and then tell me not to kill myself.

36% of Republicans think freedom of the press does more harm than good.

Only 61% of Republicans think it is necessary.

Only 30% of millennials think it is essential to live in a democracy.

Two decades ago, one in 16 Americans believed Army rule would be a good way to run the country.

Now it's one in six.

Among the young and affluent, it has increased nearly

sixfold to 35%.

A fifth of undergrads now say it's acceptable to use physical force to silence a speaker.

Remind me to work out more because they say specifically offensive and hurtful statements.

62% of student Democrats think

you should be able to shout down speech you don't like.

52% of Republicans said they would support postponing the 2020 election if Trump proposed it.

I want my country back.

Don't you?

That's, I don't know, and you notice this is not.

This is left and right.

Sure.

This is young and old.

This is a national problem.

What do we do?

How long has it been a problem, I wonder?

That's a great question.

These are reasons.

To the scope you're talking about now, this is a fairly emergent phenomenon.

This is a fairly new problem.

And I think, as you said, it's on the left and the right.

And we need to get back to a point where this country has some agreements and some fundamental values that we recognize that speech is contentious and it's problematic.

And sometimes it makes you feel uncomfortable, but tough shit.

It's how it ought to be.

That's what our country ought to embrace.

I totally agree.

I think if you go to Harvard and you sign that contract to go to Harvard, you have to be also told if you protest anyone, right or left, and you vocally try to stop their thoughts, you're expelled.

And if you don't trust me, go back to your original contract.

And you don't have to come to our Harvard, by the way.

You don't have to agree to this.

There is no problem with peaceful protest.

I am all in support of peaceful protest.

We're not talking about peaceful.

No, I agree.

But I think that the differentiation is being lost on young people, on old people, right?

I mean, the real divide in our country today is not so much about left versus right.

It's about do we want to live in an open society or a closed society.

And that's about do we value free speech?

Do we value ideas that are different than us?

And people who are different than us.

And to be clear, this is not only an American problem.

If you look at the data from around the world, there's this thing called the World Values Survey, and it shows that around the world, around what we call the West, you know, Western values are disappearing.

And this is true around Europe.

It's true in the United States.

Wow.

I didn't know that was.

Yeah, it's not just U.S.

Okay.

When Western values disappear from Germany, that's really

a guess on to inform us of things we don't know.

But it's also based on the lack of reading, isn't it?

I mean, isn't it the breakdown of reading and the increase of tweeting?

Well,

I mean...

I would agree with that.

When I look at Trump, you know, I mean, it's very easy to look at Trump and go, oh, those Republicans.

But, you know, some of Trump is all of us.

And certainly the part where he doesn't read, he's in love with his phone.

That is all of us.

And I would agree with you.

When you don't read or when you read just what's on your phone or on the computer, what is just fed to you, what you already believe comes back to you, or you're just playing.

And a lot of it feeds exactly what you want to get from the course of the day, not what you care for the betterment of your man.

It's a long way from ask now what your country can do for you.

People,

the filter bubble that the internet creates for people, where they self-select what they're going to follow.

And so Donald Trump is looking for things that inflate his ego every day.

He's looking for things that make him heroic in his own eyes.

And so he's self-selecting all this stuff from

the lunatic fringe of the universe.

And that makes him feel good.

And then he goes out and tweets about himself.

The guy's never read a book in his life.

Donald Trump is, Donald Trump is only arguably literate.

And he's certainly not literary.

He is a man of such a

narrow scope,

You can't expect better than what you're getting.

I must say that, now I hear you on TV all the time doing this, and you're so great at it.

And I love it.

And I think all liberals have these new friends.

Our new Republican friends, because they're the sane Republicans.

They're the anti-Trumpers.

Everybody from you to Nicole Wallace and George Will, people who were for Bush and people who weedled, based it, Reagan, people.

Okay, but now we all love you.

But the elephant in the room, a little pun there, because, yeah, I heard it.

Is that

you kind of have to overlook the fact that Trump didn't just, he's not a virus from space.

Okay, he came from the Republican Party.

He's the kind of logical end of the Reagan Revolution.

He's not an anomaly.

He's not an aberration.

It started long ago.

All the things that are in Trumpism were there.

The racial

dog whistles, the anti-intellectualism, the anti-science.

He's just the end of the road for that.

And so when I hear the anti-Trumpers, I applaud, but at the same time I go, yeah, but there's something in there that we're not really saying.

Yeah, he's like the most Republican Republican who's ever Republican.

A little bit of

that.

Yeah.

But he's also a result of reality television and back-to-no reading.

He really doesn't represent, to me, a Republican or a Democrat.

He is a self-obsessed.

He wants to take away health care from poor people.

He wants to cut taxes.

Because it will possibly be a win.

So if he can't get that, he'll work up.

Martin's so popular.

He knows because he needs to win.

He is not a well-man.

Martin's exactly right.

He's exactly right.

But it's.

But it's not just that.

He is also a Republican.

I mean, Republicans somehow have become the party that doesn't have to pay for anything.

It's interesting, you know, we debate Obamacare and people say, oh, it's a failure and it has failed some people.

I don't see the Democrats being adequate to answer that charge.

I don't see the full-throated response to say, well, for most people, it has worked, but that's another story.

But it seems like maybe the sin of Obamacare was that he paid for it.

Whereas the Republicans, they don't pay for tax cuts.

They didn't pay for their

Bush's prescription Medicare program, the wall.

They just, they don't believe in paying.

They believe in talking about it.

They say that it pays for itself.

I will certainly say that as a Republican, I will certainly say that there has for a long time been a kind of fantasy bubble that we've existed in as a party where it's we're just gonna we're gonna have all these externalities that are gonna suddenly pay for everything.

And it's never really been a point of great responsibility inside the Republican Party to say, you know, oh, we're gonna pay for Medicare Part D because it'll do these magical things and help people.

And there'll be all these external economic effects that will emerge.

It doesn't work.

And the fact of the matter is, my party has talked a great game about cutting taxes and

cutting spending.

We do a terrible job.

We don't cut spending.

We've consistently just kept rolling more spending into the federal government every time we've been in control of it.

So there is, you know, going back to Trump being the end point of Republicanism, there is a level at which my party has been irresponsible with the match of our rhetoric to our performance.

And Trump is a perfect example.

When you have rhetoric a mismatch with performance, he's your man.

So.

A do think, Bill, though, that you cannot ignore, and I know that Fran Levo was talking about this last week, but you can't ignore it.

Last week.

It was like a lifetime ago.

You can't ignore the fact that Trump exists because we had an African-American president for eight years.

Okay, but Trump exists because we chose to run for the first time a woman.

who was a perceived third-termer, was a perceived Clinton, and all these things.

A real point.

A real Clinton.

Yeah, that's true.

Right on you.

Thank you.

But it really is.

We've had all these things lined up, these stars, these real stars.

Right, but the stars about the erasing what the black president did, that didn't start with Donald Trump.

That started with Nixon's southern strategy back in the 60s.

Okay, where I mean, I'm amused at watching all these Republicans talk about Donald Trump and his racist ways.

Where did they think the racists were before this?

In the Green Party?

Well, and there are other things that I find Republicans somewhat disingenuously clutching their pearls about now that they sow the seeds for, right?

I mean, like voter fraud is a great example of this as well.

Yes.

For years you heard Republicans complaining about the fact that all, you know, that we need more voter IDs, which is really about repressing black, or you know, keeping black people from voting, basically.

And it was all about protecting the sanctity of the vote.

And now when Trump comes out and says, oh, there are three million illegally cast ballots, they're like, oh, that's crazy.

That's not presidential for you to say that.

You know, where did that come from?

Right.

Or climate.

Well, because it's crazy and not presidential.

There's that part.

Well, there's that part, too.

That's a feature, not a bug, of Trumpism.

But I mean, also climate.

I mean, Trump pulled out of the Paris Accords.

Oh, did he?

I mean, now he's saying he's not going to.

No, no, then he said he was going to.

Okay.

Have you checked Twitter lately, though?

No.

The point being that in Congress, 53 out of 100 senators are climate deniers.

And I'm guessing that that's all Republicans and one Democrat.

232 out of 435 in the House are climate deniers.

I'm guessing that's all on pretty much one side of the aisle, too.

So to me, that's the big issue of our time.

They haven't been right on that issue way before Trump.

Am I wrong about that?

I don't hear them complaining that much about the climate accord, though.

Unlike the other stuff we were talking about.

But where were you on climate before Donald Trump?

Look, I have a slightly different take on climate, is I believe that we can innovate

this problem.

I'm a big believer in American innovation rather than like a putative taxation structure.

Like I said, the bullshit.

I'm sorry, Rick, but that's bullshit.

How do you massive government?

Yeah, and how do you incentivize the innovation?

It's something like a carbon tax.

Look, there's a lot of things that we've been able to do as a country and a culture over time that solve technological problems.

I don't have the solutions on it, but I will say this.

I do believe the climate is changing.

I'm not denying that the climate is changing, but our endpoints of how we fix it may be different.

Like, I'd rather throw a shit ton of money into technological fixes than trying to just say, okay, everybody, freeze in the dark.

You know, I think there's a different

pathway.

I think there's a middle ground.

I think there's a middle ground.

Let me ask you this because I'm just curious, and then I want to hear all about you.

But,

well, you know, let's go to me right now.

Okay.

Because you said, talk about last week's show.

We're like a team.

We are.

We're like Evan DeGeneres and a vest.

Go ahead.

I want to be the vest.

Okay, so last week a friend was here with Sam and Rushdie and then Tim Gunn came out and I was saying, wow, a television show with all people of Root 60.

You You should have been here.

And

I was just saying, you know, I don't have a bucket list.

You know, not that I've done everything.

I've done very little, but I just mentioned, you know, I've never been to Asia.

I've been on Snapchat, never went skiing.

And I was saying, I don't care.

You reach a point in your life where you just don't give a shit about the things you didn't get to.

I can't believe the react people were mad at me.

It must touch something in their mortality to hear you say, oh, Bill.

So I'm like, Bill, you have have to have a bucket list.

So I made one.

Would you like to hear my bucket list?

It's not long, but

I want to get drunk and pee on the Great Wall of China.

Okay, I just.

I want to have

sex in an airplane washroom, but stop because it feels weird to do it in front of my comfort animal.

That's.

I want to watch Eric Trump take on a leopard without a gun.

That's what I'd like to do.

I want to confront Father Romalle and ask him why all the other kids got a ride in his Cadillac, but not me.

I want to get high with Obama.

I want to find...

I want to finally direct my passion project, an all-white remake of Soul Plane.

I want to get sued again for alleging that Trump's father was an orangutan, but this time by the orangutan.

And this is going to sound silly, but ever since I was a kid, I've wanted someone to sing to me, Oh, Danny Boy.

I guess it's never going to happen at this point.

I can, Bill.

That is, if you'd like me to.

Oh,

Danny Boy.

The pipes, the

pipes are calling

from glen to glen and down the mountainside.

The summer's gone and all the roses falling.

It's you, it's you.

Now I'm not going to do big ending like Tony Bennett.

Must go

and I must

hide.

Look, Australian or answer.

Oh my God.

Have you ever gotten that?

Oh no.

I have never gotten that for doing so little.

Anyway,

he is a broadcasting legend for NBC Sports and Melbourne.

The legend himself, Bob Costas, is over here.

Bob Costas.

Try to follow that.

Yeah, what comes next?

Adorable kids and animal acts?

I'm supposed to follow that.

All right.

Now,

okay.

Brain damage in the NFL.

Yeah.

No.

Another heavy topic.

I wanted to make it even harder for you.

But it is the topic, isn't it?

Well, I mean, it's so funny because whenever you're here, I always say, you know, Bob's here and we're going to talk about sports issues because there are these big sports issues, but he is so much more than just sports.

And then I look at the issues and I'm going, yeah, but sports somehow gets to all the big issues that really are bubbling up in our society.

It often intersects, despite the mouth breathers who say, leave it all out of sports.

I just tuned in to hear there's a ground ball to shortstop.

Fine.

Okay.

Wow.

Don't call the mouth breathers, Bob.

They're your bread and butter.

I've been told.

I've made that mistake before.

But I mean, look, we could start anywhere.

The big news that was all in the papers yesterday was Aaron Hernandez, who

was a great tight end for the New England Patriots, except for the fact that he murdered people.

And he killed himself in that.

And then went to jail for it, and that didn't end well.

But what they found out yesterday was that the CTE, which is, let's not not even try to say what it is, but it's the brain damage you get from chronic, traumatic, encephalopathy.

See, he knows things like that.

It means your brain scrambled.

It scrambled, and this kid had problems anyway, but they said for a 27-year-old, they never saw it that bad.

Yeah, it was stage three, and four is the worst.

At 27.

At 27.

And we know that even before dementia sets in, that brain trauma, even for active players, can have an effect on impulse control, anger, that sort of thing.

But you can't make the leap to connect what he did directly to that because he's just one person.

But this is more bad news and an accumulation of bad news for the NFL and for football in general.

And this comes from somebody who recognizes the drama, the excitement, the teamwork, the strategy.

That's all very interesting and appealing.

And it remains the most, not just the most popular sport, it's the most popular thing in all of American entertainment.

And it's difficult for people to give up that attachment and the generational connections, but evidence is evidence.

You can't turn your back on it.

You know what?

And as a libertarian, I've spoken out and said, and I'm kind of torn about it and said, look, these are young people.

When I was a young person, try to take the joint out of my hand.

Back when it was illegal, kids.

And now NFL players want to use marijuana to salve the pain.

And it works.

Yeah.

So we have a solution.

All right.

So, you know.

But, but you know it's hard to tell somebody because when you watch the

NFL on TV when they're not writhing on the ground in pain, they're having a great time.

They're celebrating.

They're fun.

They're young.

They're out doing their thing.

And to tell somebody you can't do that, we're going to take away your living, even though

it's different if they didn't know it was harmful for them.

We're kind of in cigarette territory.

Which was the case in the 60s and 70s when players may have thought, look, I might have trouble getting out of bed because my knees or my hips will be bothering me when I'm 50, but they didn't think they wouldn't know what day it was.

Now you do have informed consent.

Pretty much any football player who doesn't know what he's getting into hasn't been paying attention.

But there's also evidence that the earlier you start playing, you start playing peewee football, and participation is way down because parents are concerned about it.

If you start playing when you're 12, 13, 14 years old, then the long-range effects are apt to be even greater.

So the idea probably will evolve that they should play flag football, learn the game's fundamentals, and then when you get to an age of consent, get to be 18 or something, then if you want to play tackle football, play tackle football.

I mean, the commissioner is starting to sound like the mayor in jaws.

You know,

there's no shark, and

if we close the beaches now, we're going to lose a lot of money.

But it's going to have to change at some point, because I'm telling you, even as a libertarian, I was watching the game the other night, and a guy is just crunched, and you can see him in pain, and the guys in the booth are like, all right, let's go to the commercial as quickly as we can.

We're going to clean up the body parts after this word from Del Monte.

And, you know, they just kind of gloss over it.

But even I, the libertarian, I'm going, oh, God.

I'm feeling a little like I need a shower after watching the game.

Answer me this.

Let me get to the bottom line.

Where is it?

going to be in 10 years?

What is the NFL going to look like in 10 years?

It's hard to believe it's going to be the same.

They've changed the rules, which is only fiddling at the edges because the game is fundamentally brutal and violent, but they have changed some of the rules.

They're trying to change the culture.

They're trying to change youth football.

They say they're funding research, but unless they come up with some as yet unimagined technology that improves helmets to the point where it doesn't just protect against a skull fracture, but it protects the brain from rattling around inside the skull like a pickle inside a jar, which is really what happens, is somehow they can come up with some technology that disperses the impact.

Unless that happens, basically you're just going to have to sign a willing assumption of risk clause to your contract, and it may become like the Roman

circus, where people watch it, but they don't let their kids play it.

Well, it already is a little like that.

And it's also, I'm watching the documentary on Vietnam, the Ken Burns thing now.

It's a little like that, where,

oh, thank you.

The Vietnam vets are here.

Yeah, it's terrific.

But it's a little like that.

There's craft involved in both cases, man.

That's a draft.

And who goes?

You know, the people who are more desperate.

Yeah,

where the risk is justified by the reward.

Yeah, but I mean, who went to Vietnam?

You know, the poor kids, minorities, and, you know, that's what football is.

On the other hand, Tom Brady wants to keep playing if he can until he's 45 or 50.

You know, you watch Aaron Rodgers play, there's something exhilarating about that.

You can't deny not just the skill, but there are times when the athleticism is almost poetic.

You recognize all those things.

I wish there was a button I could push that would make the game rough, yes, tough, yes, but not life-threatening and brain-threatening, and then you could still enjoy it.

But those two things cannot be separated.

Let me quickly ask you, because I can hear Martin's getting very antsy, but not

when the camera's not on him for five minutes,

I feel

he's sort of kicking me under the table.

I'm here too.

But Colin Kaepernick, I mean, again, an issue.

Race, that in sports,

you know, maybe this is the place where we should play this out.

Now, I think a guy should be able to not stand for the national anthem.

Even people who disagree with him

recognize that you'd be crazy to deny the right of expression that the people they rightly revere for having put their lives on the line to protect it and ensure it, that why would you deprive someone of that right, even if you disagree with that?

Right.

No, I understand Trump said something today at his rally.

He said something to the effect of, I'd like to see some NFL owners say, when someone does that, Niels or whatever, just get the son of a bitch off the field.

But in effect,

he never disappoints, does that?

He really doesn't.

Exactly.

He is consistently off the field.

Grotesque to the end of the edge.

Now,

you do have a lot of players who are presently under contract and players that their teams think are good enough to really help them that are engaging in that kind of protest.

But in effect, the owners collectively have told Colin Kaepernick to get the hell off the field because he doesn't have a team.

Now, is he Tom Brady or Cam Newton?

No, he's not.

But is he better than some starters in the league and better than many backups in the league?

Of course he is.

It's definitely because of that.

I wonder why more aren't doing what he did.

I'm only surprised when I see on the sideline it's only a few.

I think the possible reason is that they recognize that there's some complexity in this, that the anthem doesn't just represent the nation's flaws, or it doesn't just represent the military or the police, as admirable as most policemen are, even given the rogue cops, and as admirable as the sacrifice of the military is, but that it represents the nation's ideals as well.

That's what makes this a little bit complicated.

If I owned a team, which I don't, but if I owned a team, I would have the PA guy say, please stand for our national anthem and in recognition of the ideals it represents.

That would then encompass conservative, liberal, and everyone in between, and I think it would make it more palatable.

Well, I guess you didn't hear the first segment

because

half the country isn't for the First Amendment anymore.

Wow.

Okay.

What?

That whole list of stats is frightening.

But the other scary thing, of course, is this Russia story, which half the country does not even know exists.

This is the part of it that bothers me more than anything else, is that we live in this echo chamber now where you can tune out anything.

And I mean, I could tell these people what happened this week with Paul Manafort and this story and this story.

It just keeps getting worse and worse.

They, what?

Didn't hear about that?

They won't believe you.

They won't believe you.

No, it's fake news.

That's what this is about now.

So

that is the one brilliant thing, it's not intentional, that Trump has done.

Because what he has done is by creating this fake news idea, if he is in fact forced to resign,

he will be able to say, I fixed America, look at the stock market, look at the job rates, the rest, and don't believe anything you hear.

It's fake news.

See, I think it's intentional.

I think it's a very important thing.

It's very intentional.

In that he is intentionally dismantling every institution that can hold him accountable.

Oh, I'm sorry, I misunderstood you.

That's what I'm saying.

And the great thing, though, the beautiful thing about all this is no matter how many times Donald Trump tweets that it's a hoax or fake news, Bob Mueller doesn't care.

No.

He's going to grind and grind and grind and grind.

And there's never a better day for Trump on the Russia story.

There's never a better day.

There's never a day where they go, well, that cleared that up.

Every time it's worse.

No, he is not playing around.

Not at all.

It's not just for Trump.

It's for all of his supporters.

It's like an intellectual, permanent, get-out-of-jail free card.

You never have to address anything on its merits.

It's just fake news.

It's off the table.

Which is why I think until Rupert Murdoch personally turns against Trump, you know, his base is going to stick by it.

Can I read you

what Roger Stone said about if they tried to impeach Trump?

Roger Stone says, try to impeach him.

Just try it.

You will have a spasm of violence in this country.

An insurrection like you've never seen.

The people will not stand for impeachment.

A politician that votes for it would be endangering their own life.

And again, I got to say, not to pile on the Republicans.

No, that's not who you are.

Not what I do.

But it's just, there's one party that just goes there.

You know, one party that would nominate Donald Trump.

One candidate from the Republican Party, Donald Trump, who would say during an election, as he constantly did, it's rigged.

One party that would pull that shit that they did with Merrick Garland and not do their job and give the president his pick for the Supreme Court.

One party just goes to these places, the other one doesn't.

And until the Democrats, I don't want them to do this, but until they learn to fight, I mean, it's interesting that Robert Mueller, the one guy who's tough on Trump, is a Republican.

I'm pretty tough on Trump.

Yes, you are, but you're not in his position.

No, I'm not.

Although it'd be a lot of fun to do it.

Let me say this about the threat that Roger made there.

That's not

a bug, that's a feature.

These guys are seeking to signal to the Trump base and the Trump audience that anything proceeding against him is invalid.

That anything that is, no matter what the evidence, it's invalid.

And the fact that Roger is so reckless about that,

I get that Roger's a provocateur and a lunatic and all those things,

but the Botox has sunken a little too far now.

And

the guy needs to ratchet that back because

threatening to start riots in this country,

threatening to immediately go to that level, that's not Republican, that's not conservative, that's not American.

And if the guy's impeached, he's impeached.

I don't think it's likely, honest to God, I think the Republican chicken shit caucus is too prominent in the House.

But I mean, I think Donald Trump could be caught in the White House along with a dead baby, and the House guys would go, oh, no, we still got to do the tax cuts, man.

We can't impeach him.

Right.

You know,

let me ask you something.

What happens if Rick Mueller is fired?

What does Paul Ryan do?

What does Mitch McConnell do?

Not a damn thing.

I think they're too scared.

He doesn't even need to get to impeachment.

You know, they're too afraid of being primaried from the right to even criticize anything that Trump does.

Isn't it fun to be able to be funny about politics?

It's so damn liberating.

It is so fun.

But all those years, the Republicans never could could find somebody who was really funny.

Because, you know, it's not funny to make fun of Nancy Pelosi because she's sort of a serious person who does serious things.

But this is fun.

Oh, I'm having a ball, man.

All right.

He's one of us.

All right.

Thank you, panel.

It's time for new rules.

Yes, new rules.

Because you are very funny.

I'll give you that.

All right, new rule.

Whoever picks out furniture for the UN must tell me how they found a chair the exact same color

as Trump's hair.

I mean, look at it.

You can't tell where the synthetic, heavily dyed upholstery ends and the chair begins.

Not that we couldn't see it coming.

New rural millennials must stop saying they wished they grew up in the baby boomer era.

Take it from this baby boomer, you wouldn't have liked it.

The device we read our books on was the toilet.

Our podcasts were radio and they went to static when you drove under a bridge.

Our toys sucked.

The box was more fun to play with.

And back then a complete breakfast included a bowl of gluten.

New rule, this proud member of the Nazi Party riding the bus in Seattle must answer this.

If you really are a member of the master race, how come you're riding the bus?

New role, someone needs to explain to Donald Trump Jr.

that if he really wants to come across like a normal human, he should have the family photos in his office facing him.

You see, Don, the idea is that you enjoy looking at your family, not that you're offering them for sale.

Psycho.

New rules, stop telling me that Q-tips are only meant for cleaning the outside of my ears and should never be stuck in the ear canal.

I stick it in there and wiggle it around, and I don't care who knows it.

And I'll tell you another thing: everybody does it.

Jeez.

Next thing you'll be telling me, the loofah shouldn't go up my ass.

And

finally, new rule, if you want to understand why America is so divided, don't talk about Republicans and Democrats or red states and blue states.

Read the story The City Mouse and the Country Mouse.

Currently being sold under the new title, What Happened.

But

the original was about two mice who learn that you're either one or the other, city or country.

And the same really could be said for America.

When you fly over it, you don't see red states and blue states.

You see vast stretches of land where there's nothing,

and then every once in a while, a city.

Here's Missouri.

But every state looks the same, a sea of red with a few blue dots.

Now, I could joke about Alabama all I want, and believe me, I won't.

It's Trump country, but not Birmingham, because that's a city.

It voted for Hillary.

Something happens to you when you live in a city.

You get mugged.

But you also have a multicultural experience.

Cities are places with diversity and theater and museums and other gay stuff.

I have nothing against rural life, but I've seen farms farms on TV and they look dusty.

Republicans are freaking out lately because it seems Trump is pivoting from these two to these two.

Colluding with Russia, fine, but Democrats?

But really, it's not that complicated.

Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, they're city mice.

And that's who a consummate New Yorker like Donald Trump relates to.

Why is he always poop-tweeting at 3 a.m.?

Because he's from the city that never sleeps.

He's such a New York guy, he had his last wife delivered.

Trump's disillusion with McConnell and Ryan, it's not really political.

It's just that for the first 70 years of his life, he would never be caught dead hanging around with a traveling Bible salesman like Paul Ryan or a corny countrified goober like Mitch McConnell.

For Christ's sakes, the man is from Kentucky.

Jeff Sessions is from Alabama.

When he talks, all Trump hears is a tiny little earnest movie.

And Mike Pence?

It must be torture for Trump to be in the White House every day with that homespun, Christian, tightly wound human heart on.

He literally won't dine with an unchaperoned woman.

Meanwhile, Trump has spent his entire life posing with a shit-eating grin that says, Look at all the pussy I'm giving.

And this is the existential crisis of our president.

He's an asshole, but he's not a hick.

He represents one group, but belongs to another.

I hate to break it to you real Americans, but what Trump likes about Chuck and Nancy is they're not you.

And he's not one of you.

Trust me, when Trump watches the Beverly Hillbillies, he roots for Mr.

Drysdale.

And when he tells a crowd, as he often does, I love you, what he means is that in middle America, he found something he had long ago run out of in New York.

Suckers.

Trump voters

Trump voters were played for rubes by the ultimate fast-talking city slicker, who saw vulnerable people nervous about jobs and the melting pot getting too melty.

And he told them he'd build a great wall and get their jobs back at the mine.

And they said, where do I sign?

Folks, you didn't make America great again.

You enrolled in Trump University.

All right, that's our show.

I'll be at the Mirage in Vegas October 27th to 28th.

I want to thank Rick Wilson, Katherine Rampel, Martin Schuard, Bob Costas, and Bernie Frank.

Join us at Overtime now on YouTube.

Thank you, folks.

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

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