Ep. #437: Bret Stephens, Tim Gunn

Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

I lit the fuse and my life turns into everything it wasn't supposed to be.

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was quick.

He kept saying, No, no, no, I'm in the hospital now, but next week I'll be ready for the show.

Now, Charlie's sober.

He's gonna tell you the truth.

How do I present this with any class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

Aka Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

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

Start the clock.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

Wow.

Very exciting.

Well, listen.

I know why you're

why you're happy.

We know we've

made it through the rain.

Not us personally here in LA, of course, but we weathered in this country Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma, and now we're back to worrying about shitstorm Donald.

It's

back to normal.

But hey, before we get to the politics, let's try to reach out.

The president has a new grandson.

Come on.

He's bald and always crying and wetting himself.

But he's very happy about the new baby.

So yes, there's another Trump in the world.

And, you know, well, there was a, I have to tell you, there was a little bit of a scare.

When the baby first came out, he wasn't smirking.

So anyway,

a lot of terrifying things going on in the world.

North Korea fired another missile.

These motherfuckers are not kidding around.

This was the longest one all the way over Japan and apparently Kim Jong-un was very pleased.

He awarded his scientist North Korea's highest honor, lunch.

But the big political news, you see this, Donald Trump this week announced a breakthrough on immigration.

The DREAMers can stay.

And by that means, he means they can't stay.

Or maybe they can stay.

Yes, somebody else.

He wants them to stay he wants you to want and by that he means get out

and we're building the wall and by that he means we're repairing the fence I mean he thinks

he thinks he's being bipartisan this is not bipartisan this is bipolar this is

he's he's

I don't know if he knows what he wants.

Today he said Selena Gomez has to go back, but her kidney can stay.

No,

of course with Donald Trump, it's always personal.

You know, he's fed up with his own party because he doesn't like Mitch McCoddle and Paul Riott.

So now he's like making nice with Schumer and Pelosi.

Again, this week he whined and dined, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.

Well, they dined, he whined.

And after the meeting,

the Democrats put put out a statement that said, we agreed with the president to enshrine the protections of DACA into law and work out a package of border security excluding the wall.

That's how they...

Wait,

that's how they remember it.

That's not how Trump remembers me.

What he remembers is we had cake, there was a fire truck.

It went vroom vroom, and then it was time for TV.

But it sure looks like it had some effect on him meeting with the Democrats.

I mean his thinking about the Dreamers seems to have changed because he tweeted something that I said was super supportive.

Donald Trump tweeted, does anybody really want to throw out good, educated, accomplished young people?

And his supporters said, fuck yes.

Of course we do.

We want to do it yesterday.

His base is furious at him.

Breitbart calls him Amnesty Don now.

And Coulter is calling for his impeachment.

Even Hannity and Rush Limbaugh turning on him.

The deplorables really think this is deplorable.

There are former Trump fans all over the internet who are burning their Make America Great hats, which is very scary because it means they've discovered fire.

And

tools could be next.

One of Trump's fans issued him a very stern warning.

He said, Mr.

President, don't forget who put you there.

And that's when Putin just laughed.

So

Trump, you know, he's had enough of this political bullshit.

He went back this week to the one thing he knows he can definitely get done as president, visiting hurricane sites.

He went back to Florida the other day for the third time.

They're like, enough.

And

he and the first lady served up food to the victims, or as Melania calls the program, meals on heels.

And

yeah, and she, no,

I could Melania.

She dressed more sensibly this time.

She was wearing a safari jacket.

And, no, it's true.

Apparently she was disappointed when they told her she was just going to be looking at poor people, not actually hunting them.

But here's the most amazing thing of all.

Amid all the destruction, in the path of that hurricane, neither Mar-a-Lago nor Trump's estate in St.

Martin's nor any of his golf courses in the path got damaged at all.

They all escaped almost completely unscathed, which just goes to show something I have always believed: there is no God.

Okay, we got a great show, Fred Leibowitz and Salman Rushby are here.

Wow, and a little later we'll be speaking with Project Runway's Tim Gunn.

But first up, he's a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the New York Times and a contributor to MSNBC.

Please welcome Brett Stevens.

Hey,

welcome back.

Thanks for being here.

Great to see you.

Okay, so you, last time you were here, were working for the Wall Street Journal, a conservative paper.

Now you moved over to the New York Times, which is considered a liberal paper, which I must say I admire very much.

You wanted to get out of your echo chamber.

How's it going over there?

Well, I guess it's too soon to tell.

I mean, readers take their views.

I think what the New York Times is trying to do is kind of extraordinary because I think most people look to a show like yours or an op-ed page like The Wall Street Journal, and they look for affirmations.

They want their views affirmed.

And I think the Times is making a conscious effort to have an op-ed page, which is more like provocations.

Use the readers, the writers you agree with, to reinforce your point of view, but use the writers you disagree with as like wedding stones to sharpen your thinking.

And I think if that, I mean, I think it's an experiment, but if it works, I think democracy is in better shape than we realize.

I hope so.

I mean, I think

what we have in common is that we both piss off liberals.

Now, I do it because.

I think we both piss off conservatives, too.

I definitely piss off conservatives, but that's accepted.

That's baked into the cake.

The pissing off, no?

The pissing off the liberals, I mean, I think you're doing it because you enjoy it.

I'm doing it because I want them to clean up their

rough edges and win again.

I want the liberals to win, and I think sometimes they're sabotaging themselves.

Yeah, look, that's right.

I mean, the problem is that the question isn't how Trump won.

The question is how did Hillary lose?

And I don't think liberals ask themselves that question nearly hard enough.

Let me say Trump won because there are all these deplorable ones.

What do you think the liberals' biggest flaw is?

I think it's, God, well, I could go down the list, but

look, I'll give you an example that will make you feel uncomfortable, but since we're here, why not?

I was last on the show January 2015.

And so I was looking at the show just to remind myself of how this works, and you had a segment about Joni Ernst.

You remember that?

No.

Well, no, I mean, no offense, but I...

You should watch it again because it practically explains the 2016 election in that segment.

Joni Ernst, it turns out, was so poor growing up.

Okay, well, let's...

But hang on, hang on.

I'm just telling him who Joni Ernst is.

The Iowa Senator.

Iowa Senator, Republican.

Right.

Right?

One in 2014?

That's right.

Okay.

And she would put bread bags on her feet.

as a child because she had one pair of shoes.

So she says.

So she says.

Let's assume she's telling the truth.

And so you mocked her for it, and it was funny.

Thank you.

It was funny.

It was funny to the people in your studio audience.

Ask yourself, if you're in Iowa or maybe

outside of Madison, Wisconsin, or in the middle of Pennsylvania,

how do you affected that segment?

You're telling me that Breg Bags on the Feet is off-limits for a comedian?

Bread Bags on the feet.

Making fun of the poverty in which someone like Joni Ernst grew up.

See, now you sound like a liberal.

This is what I get on the liberals case for.

You little snowflake, Brett.

This is snowflakeism.

You can't take a joke about bread bags on your feet.

Look, you asked me why, what is it about liberals that people don't like?

And I would say

the answer is condescension.

cultural condescension.

Yes, well, I mean, that's part of it.

But, you know, I went through this with

S.C.

Cup was here last week, and she was, you know, don't call people stupid.

And I don't want to.

But, like, if you, like,

I don't.

But, like, over a third of Americans don't know that Obamacare is the same thing as the Affordable Care Act.

That's your own health.

If you don't know

how to take care of your own health as an issue, What word would you use?

Well, look, I mean, we have a serious problem with like a politically educated public.

And this is one of the reasons I think we ended up with a guy like Donald Trump, in that people could be bamboozled and sold on, I guess I can say this on this show, bullshit,

and you could become president for it.

That's a real issue.

But you're not going to get that through by simply making fun of the way in which people are raised.

I know, but

it's not how they were raised.

Oh, come on.

You really are stuck on the bread bags.

Okay, I don't think anyone really takes offense at that.

I really don't.

First of all, I don't think half the people believe it's true.

I mean, bread bags on your feet?

What is the point of that?

Because you really don't have shoes?

Joni Ernst has shoes.

She had shoes.

Give me a break.

Okay.

So you called Hillary Clinton.

Now you're not for Trump.

So, okay.

Which, you know, that's one silver lining for this whole thing is that we found out that there are sane Republicans left.

Sane former Republicans.

Former Republicans.

You're not a Republican.

I have a hard time calling myself a Republican anymore.

I have a hard time calling myself a Democrat.

But

you refer to Hillary as a survivable event.

You voted for Hillary.

Yeah, I did.

And I think that's the mature thing to do.

And it's so funny because I call, that's what I call Mike Pence.

I'm very sure you're right.

But but go ahead.

I get very mad at liberals when they say Mike Pence would be worse.

He would not be worse.

That's a survivable event.

Will we ever get back to a place where we think of each other as something above a survivable event?

Yeah, you know, I mean, the reason I said that is that, I mean, you have to accept my perspective as a right-of-center person who was never sympathetic to Hillary's policies.

But the way I saw the election was the difference between risk and uncertainty.

If you're a finance person, if you see something that's a risk, you can price it.

You kind of know what's coming.

Donald Trump was uncertainty.

You couldn't price him.

You didn't know from one day to the next what you were going to get.

And that's actually the reality we've been in for the last six months.

Are we going to have war with North Korea or not?

Are we going to

deport the Dreamers or are we going to take them in?

And I think that's.

But he says both in the same sentence.

Yeah, I mean, what you said earlier, bipolar is right.

This is not a presidency.

This is a neurosis.

Well, let me ask you this then.

He sprung from the soil of Republicanism.

Could it have happened on the Democratic side?

I don't think so.

I don't think you could produce a Democratic Donald Trump.

Look, you can because populism, I mean, Donald Trump isn't just some sort of accident of American politics.

He represents a kind of trope in political life.

And if you go back to the 1920s in Europe or the 1950s and 60s in Latin America, you find people who are a lot like him.

And they spring from both sides politically.

These are the people who say parliamentary democracy is not a very important thing.

So you wouldn't have racism.

I mean, racism is a big part of it.

You wouldn't have that on the left.

Well, you have class hatred on the left.

That's what you have with Maduro and the right to be aware of that.

That's not nearly as deep as racism.

Look, I'm the last one to make excuses.

What Trump is doing is culturally so corrosive to the institutions of the presidency that I really don't think he's necessarily survivable.

He'll survive.

We won't.

Someone won't.

Well all right let me ask you a last question about I feel like his fans are not ideological especially.

We found that out.

He can pretty much go anywhere, and they seem to follow him, except the wall.

Oh yeah.

Except for that one thing.

What is it it about the wall?

Why is that I got to get back to Kansas for them?

You know I ask myself I grew up in Mexico City.

I speak fluent Spanish and I think there's something so ugly about everything that the wall represents.

The idea that we aren't blessed by the fact of having Mexico as our neighbor is insane.

We should thank our lucky stars every day.

And it's also, you know, it's more than that.

You know, my mother was a refugee.

She came to this country with $7.

And in the space of a generation...

What did she wear on her feet?

Breadbox.

And yet she had shoes.

Come on.

I'll check with her.

But it's nice to know that in the space of a generation, you go from refugee to, quote, elite.

And that's what this country ought to be about.

And people who don't understand that and want to build walls to the refugees, to the indigent, to the people who are desperate to come to this country, they're the ones who have no place in it all right we're building bridges thanks for coming by just knowing what you're doing rets stevens everybody let's greet our panel

there they are

okay

all right he is the literary lion whose 13th novel is the i started it i read about 100 pages it is awesome thank you salmon rushdie is over here

i cannot wait to get home and finish.

And she's a continuing editor for Vanity Fair, one of the greatest wits of all time.

Fran Leibowitz is right to my right.

Okay.

Don't forget to send us your questions for tonight's overtime so we can answer them after the show on YouTube.

I have two sophisticated New Yorkers here.

So my first question is, as we see Donald Trump pivoting there toward Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, people who all his life he was more comfortable with, I just want to ask, first of all, how do you see a New Yorker like Donald Trump having such an appeal to the heartland, getting such big crowds in Alabama?

Because that was never part of American politics.

When Clinton and Gore ran together, remember, it's like, well, if you're going to be elected as a Democrat, you got to have, you know, three E's in the word shit.

I don't think of Alabama as the heartland.

Well, Alabama is the heartland.

They think of it.

Alabama is the Confederacy.

Iowa's the heartland.

Okay.

Well, he's popular in both places.

But not in New York.

Not in New York, yes.

That's the thing.

He's, if you think about the thing called New York values, which the Republicans attacked throughout the campaign, Donald Trump is the antithesis of New York values.

He just happens to have a big yellow house there

in the sky.

New York City voted nine to one against Donald Trump, okay, because we already knew him.

Right.

And by the way,

there is no rule that a sophisticated, cultured city can't produce a bigoted, prejudiced ignoramus.

You know,

Vienna produced Adolf Hitler.

Right.

You know, so it's, it, it can happen, you know, but he is the exception.

He's the, as Franz said, America is finding out what New York has known for a long time.

I mean, in New York, he's not even considered a developer.

The actual real estate developers don't think he's a.

We know what he is.

He's a three-card Monty dealer.

He's a cheap hustler.

You know, that's what he is.

So, has he changed your life personally?

I mean, I hear all the time from people out here, I want to know if it's true in New York, that people sleep less.

You know, has it affected your mood, your erections?

I mean, what.

No.

Look.

What it it did do for a while is ruin my morning because I would wake up and feel obliged to pick up my phone and see what he had tweeted at 3 a.m.

And I'd really hated having to start my day with him.

You know, or uh and so that was bad, but I've got over that.

But what I mean seriously, what I think it did to me is that I feel now about my writing a little differently, because you've got so much fiction, so much fantasy, so much deaf distortion and untruth being propagated every day

that I think, you know, maybe not magic realism.

I think maybe

it becomes like the writer's job, paradoxically the fiction writer's job, to try and re-establish a sense of the truth.

Parody becomes harder.

Has he affected your life personally?

Yes, he has affected my life personally.

I mean,

I'm even angrier.

In other words, I have been engorged with rage since I was born, so it's not like, you know, I'm not blaming that on Donald Trump.

But, you know,

I would not have imagined I could be angrier, but I am even angrier.

Yes, I take it personally.

You know, I yell at the television set.

Like him.

You know,

but I, you know,

I just can't.

It's unbearable.

It's as simple as that.

I find it to be unbearable.

It's out of the question.

It's not ending soon.

I mean,

people say, don't you think Richard Nixon was better?

Yes, Richard Nixon was better.

You know, he makes you long for Richard Nixon.

And please tell me.

Please tell me you would agree Mike Pence would be better, right?

Well, Mike Pence would be better because, first of all, he would never be elected.

He would never be re-elected.

That is a splinter of the Republican Party.

You know,

he won't have dinner with a woman who's not his wife.

Like, they're lined up to do this.

I mean.

No, no.

He got it wrong.

He won't go to a party where they serve alcohol

because once the bitches get a drink in them.

But, you know, my view, I think this whole

pocket of 95.

You know, we know that

if it's not Trump, it's Pence.

If it's not Pence, it's Ryan.

If it's not Ryan, it's Orrin Hatch.

And we know that, you know, none of that is good.

But my view is, let's just take it one asshole at a time.

All right.

So let me ask about the Democrats.

Now, I'm from, you're from New Jersey, like me.

Okay, we have a senator there, Bob Menendez.

He is apparently a little corrupt.

It's a law in New Jersey.

Yeah.

Anyway, he's...

Chris Chris is the governor.

He's got a...

Yeah, exactly.

He's got a trial going on, and they may find him guilty, in which case the Senate would get to choose.

I think two-thirds of the senators get to vote whether he gets ousted for being convicted.

But he doesn't have to be.

You can stay in the Senate as a convicted felon, apparently.

Well, because the rest of them are unconvicted felons.

Okay.

So,

but here's where it gets interesting.

Because in normal times, I would say, well, maybe the Democrats should vote, he's a Democrat, to vote against Bob Menendez and say you should get out of the Senate, except that in the post-Merrick Garland world, where the Republican view is, you know what, whatever you can get away with, I don't care if he's a Menendez brother.

He needs to stay in the Senate because if he leaves before Chris Christie leaves as governor on January 16th, then Chris Christie gets to appoint his replacement who would be a Republican, and one more vote could have switched the whole vote on Obamacare repeal.

So do you agree with that?

No.

I don't either.

I don't agree with that.

Oh, fuck.

I mean,

really?

I don't agree with that.

I mean, it would be enjoyable, yes.

But it's...

But you just said they're all crooks.

They are all crooks.

So what does it matter?

It matters because that was wrong, really wrong, what the Republicans did about the Supreme Court.

Like, unbelievably wrong.

And this would also be wrong.

So I don't think we should be learning from the Republicans.

You know what?

That's...

This is exactly why the Democrats will continue to lose, because they do not know how to go for the jugular.

Did you agree?

They do not know how to fight on their level.

No, no.

They are innate.

Did your mother never say to you, Bill, that two rogues don't make a right?

Yeah, my mother wasn't around when Trump was president.

No.

And I'm looking at bigger matters.

Look, I think this, I think the bigger matter here, it seems to me, is the midterms next year.

And the more corrupt the Democrats look, the less chance they have of winning that.

If they look just like the Republicans, you know, you're not going to flip California.

I keep hearing how California is going to flip the House.

Because there's like 13 seats here that can flip the House.

you know so that's not going to happen if people think the democrats are crooks too no they're not that's not going to happen because that's in the part of the state that's very conservative okay let me ask something else because it would make me mad to continue on this path

i was reading this week that uh the bernie and hillary supporters still hate each other with a great

Just the word hate, and they're applauding.

Hillary is out plugging her book.

She says Bernie's not a Democrat, which, you know, she says it's not a slur.

That's what he says.

And here's Bernie's answer as to why he's not a Democrat.

He says the current model and current strategy of the Democratic Party is an absolute failure.

I don't know about the strategy.

I know.

Okay.

Let me just ask this.

What do you think the Democrats should do?

to repair this or should they repair it?

Do you mean to repair the riff between...

Yes.

You know, I think we should stop thinking about Bernie Sanders.

I would really love to stop thinking about him.

I mean,

I know you found him kind of benign.

You know, I did not find him benign.

I found him to be an unbelievably irritating, narcissistic old man.

You know, and I also kept thinking, like, who leaves New York when they're 18?

Is that what he did?

I mean, that's who you have there.

Like, what do you look around and think, you know, no, I can't make it.

I'm going to Vermont.

I think we should please forget about Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton.

This is a battle that's over.

It's over.

I agree.

And I also think there's

this problem of the rift in the left,

where there's a section of the left that wants the purest,

more snowy than driven snow candidate.

Yes.

Snowflakier than the snowflakier snowflake.

That's what they want.

And that's not only a problem in this country.

It's a problem in England where they want Jeremy Corbyn who represents that ideal of leftiness which can't possibly be elected.

Or in France, the Milencham people who don't want to vote for Macron because he's not purely left enough.

And what all this does is to drive a wedge through which the right can come.

And there's something you said on this show show a few months ago that I have to tell you, I have been quoting Bill.

Wow.

Yeah.

You said that we have to learn to distinguish between an imperfect friend and a deadly enemy.

Yes.

And I don't think we have it.

And the left had better learn that lesson fast.

Well, there is a deadly enemy, and it's in Russia.

You know, we saw these

Facebook,

what do they call them, bots?

These people

troll, troll farm.

Right.

Troll bots.

And Vladimir Putin basically has buildings full of people who work for him in Moscow, and all they do all day long is figure out ways to fuck with democracies.

And I mean, this is.

I think Silicon Valley of Russia.

And a different product.

Yes.

So, you know, and it all comes down to people read this stuff on Facebook.

I mean,

the Facebook chief security officer said it might have reached, they took out 470 deceptive accounts that might have reached 70 million people.

And you think about

the three northern states that went the wrong way in the election,

Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, the collective vote majority in the three together was 77,000.

So you're talking about 70,000 people with seven 70

million

million.

Yes.

So, you know, so the...

It reached 70 million people.

So certainly 70,000 people.

If you affect like one in a thousand, you affect one in 10,000, you change the election.

Okay.

All right.

So Melania Trump has been in the news a lot lately.

I was talking about her in the monologue.

And she's on the cover of Us Weekly with

this cover, My Side of the Story.

But they left out my favorite feature in Us Weekly, which is the 25 Things You Don't Know About Me.

Do you read about this?

All the stars do it.

Tim Gunn has done it.

If you have his, he'll be out here in a minute.

And I did it.

It's practically a rite of passage.

You have mine, there you go.

And we got a hold of Milania.

It's not in this magazine, but it's coming out soon.

Would you like to hear Milania's 25 Things You Didn't Know About Milania?

25 Things You Didn't Know About Milani.

In Slovenia, I was a catalog model, which is what you call a model you order out of a catalog.

I have no first language.

I hope I inspire little girls everywhere to marry for money.

Oh, that's

so sweet.

Every time I look at my husband, I'm reminded of the Slovenian national dish.

That fat, greasy sausage filled with cheese.

I once caught Mike Pence trying on my stilettos.

My secret service code name is that poor, poor woman.

I copied this list from Michelle Obama.

Well, it's.

Sometimes when I bounce light off my diamond, Donald Terry will chase it like a cat.

I wish I knew why I have a recurring dream I'm pinned beneath a giant orange sack of shit.

And if I could tell my younger self just one thing, it would be this.

If you catch a leprechaun and he gives you one wish, be more specific.

All right, he is the Emmy-winning host and producer of Lifetimes Project Runway, the Natty Professor, Tim Gunn.

Tim Gunn.

Hey, Tim.

Thank you, Bill.

How are you?

Pleased to be here.

Great pleasure to finally meet you.

I feel like in an age that is so crass, you are such an antidote.

Well, you're very kind to say that.

I have to say, though, that in this company, I feel like a mongrel at the Westminster Kennel Club.

Oh, you're so.

And I don't know.

You're being too modest.

And the first thing I want to ask you about is Donald Trump's suit, because there is a picture of him this week.

Look at this.

I don't know if you could see that, but he is wearing the pants from one suit.

and the jacket from another suit.

Now, this is not now.

We know what it's like to wear a blazer with pants that don't match the blazer.

This is not that.

This is a suit jacket with another pair of pants from another suit.

But Bill, even if it were a blazer and a pair of pants, one does not do that.

I mean, you just, and you're the president of the United States.

I'm always talking about the semiotics of clothes.

The clothes we wear send a message about how the world perceives us.

And this says, I'm a great big slob and I don't care and I get dressed in the dark.

But you know what else it says?

It says that the people around him were too fearful to say

the great Trump.

Right.

You need to change.

And you can change right upstairs.

It's easy.

It's mystifying.

But you know, of all, you know, we see a lot of changes in fashion because, look, they have to change it everywhere so they can sell it.

Absolutely.

Let's be honest.

Fashion

pendulum.

Okay.

So like over the years, we could have done this.

Somebody could have said, you know what we're going to do this year in fashion?

We're going to wear the pants of one suit

with the jacket of another.

We've done every other crazy fucking thing.

We never went there.

So you're going to be...

That is one thing.

This is the fashion forecast.

I'm just saying

that has never happened for a reason.

Owing to the fact that he's wearing it, it means it will never happen.

Because who wants to emulate Trump?

And

they don't have suits in the heartland of America.

I've learned that the hard way.

What do you mean?

That people don't get dressed up.

I mean, it's the true slopification of America, and it's getting worse.

And now with the athleisure trend, it legitimizes and validates all this slopification.

Have you ever gone to the People of Walmart website?

No.

I don't even know about that.

Is that a real thing?

They know.

Is it?

You'll never get an erection again.

It's yes, it's just people, you know, in their pajamas and in their, you know, Confederate flag bikinis.

And it's just...

Anyway.

Well, the world has become, or at least this nation has become, one big slumber party.

People just don't seem to know the boundary between bed and being outside.

And I'm always saying, if you want to dress to feel as though you never got out of bed, don't.

I mean, I know.

Trump looks like an unmade bed.

He should stay in it.

I know.

It's like people think they're invisible.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I mean, we did did something on this show once about this, and it harkened back to that time in the 90s when in New York City, you remember this, the broken windows theory.

The Giuliani administration, I think it was, that said, look, if we fix the broken windows in bad neighborhoods, if we cover over the graffiti, if we pick up the trash, people feel better.

We're going to feel better.

We're going to look better, and then we're going to be better.

And I think that's really true.

I think people dress slovenly because they're morally slovenly.

Well, because their education is slovenly, because everything about what we do is slovenly.

Well, I will say this.

I certainly see a corollary between

behavior and how we appear in the world,

our dress.

And I think that this erosion in dressing,

everyone's wearing sweatpants and tank tops, look at the correlation.

Look at all the bad behavior that's in profusion and that's escalating.

But now, where does obesity fit into this?

Because I know you said,

see, I mean, I've talked about this recently, and, you know, be fat shaming.

I wasn't fat-chamming.

What I was saying is obesity is a national epidemic.

It is indeed.

It is a health crisis.

So I saw recently Kmart is going to call their plus size now fabulous size.

And I think, you know, you wouldn't do that about any other health problem.

Call it fabulous.

Well, here's the conundrum as I say it.

And I'm coming out of a season of Project Runway where finally we're working with models who range in size from 2 to 22.

So I've been with a lot of larger women this season, and I've loved every single second of it.

The conundrum is

we can't fix it all simultaneously.

So we have a population of roughly 85 million women who are larger than the regular department of a department store.

They're larger than a size 12.

And there are so few options for them about what to wear.

And I think that's atrocious.

There are many so few options.

I can't believe that if there are that many people who weigh that much, there is must be billions of dollars to be made.

They must make clothes for them.

Absolutely right.

You are absolutely correct that there are billions of dollars to be made.

This was a primary catalyst for an op-ed piece that I wrote for the Washington Post last fall.

Why aren't the retailers on top of this?

Forget about the designers.

I at one point was working for a company that had 48 brands and no one wanted to design for her.

Well, I think maybe they are.

I think what it is that people say, why can't you make clothes that make me look good?

Because you're fat.

It's not the clothes.

You can't disagree.

Really?

Look at the automatic.

Oh, come on.

They're not dominion of women and they look fabulous.

But why, I mean, you know, you say you have models who are size 22.

Yes.

Okay, you'd have to page through an awful lot of vanity fares to find a fat model.

I don't disagree.

Okay.

Well, for some reason, I mean, I go where the money is.

That tells me what the truth is.

And the truth is, people, when they are selling clothes, sell it on skinny people.

And my point about all that is it's an unattainable body size and shape for most women in this nation.

Okay, but not being, but

that is, yes, but there's something in the middle, right?

But I believe that the fashion industry is complicit with media in general and how we portray the ideal of beauty.

And my belief is we need to show much more diversity in size and shape and show that,

forgive the term, but big is beautiful.

And I can look at it.

Well, I tell you.

And I'm also.

I guess that's, I mean, that is

one battle to fight.

The one I would like to fight, because we're all here now, and this is a rarity on television now, there are four people on television who are all over 60.

I say, isn't that not against the law?

Congratulations, let's celebrate.

Exactly, but this is an ageist country.

Would we not all agree with that now that we are no, you don't think it's ageist America?

I mean, I don't know.

I don't believe I don't experience it because I think that I'm not looking for a job and I'm not looking for a man.

Okay?

So those two things I know are hard to get, okay?

But I don't care.

So

I haven't experienced it.

It also seems to me like there are a lot more old people than there used to be.

Really?

Yes.

I don't see them out.

I never see...

Well,

I can't.

I do not see people out who are my age.

And I'm looking for it now.

When I drive to work, I'm looking at...

Is that guy...

No, no.

They're not in bars.

They're not in stores.

What are they?

Raptured?

What happened to all?

It's not that old.

I'm in favor of old people, and I'm older than you.

But I go out, I see, oh, there's an old person, and then I realize he's five years younger than me.

And

I'm just in favor of it.

I think many writers are old, fortunately.

Just can I just say in favor of slobs?

Oh.

Yeah, that

your argument that slobbish dressing is a sign of a slobbish interior would come as news to most novelists in America.

Yeah, but that's a job.

But Mr.

Rushdie, I come from academia.

I agree wholeheartedly.

And the message is we're too smart to worry about this appearance.

And I will repeat, the semiotics of clothes.

I mean, it sends a message about how you're perceived, and in this case by your students, and by

how you navigate the world.

Okay.

Old stuff, old people are cool.

I certainly agree with that.

We should all agree.

I just want to add, I wouldn't go back a single second.

And the longer that I'm here, the more confidence I have, the more maturity I have, the more experience I have.

Yeah, I couldn't agree with more.

The problem is the less days you have.

have.

And

that is all.

No, it's true.

And that is always the trade-off.

I'm happier now than ever myself, also.

And that's the...

But that, you see, I mean, that

point about the fact there being less time ahead than there is behind.

Right.

It teaches you a very important lesson, which is you don't have any time to waste.

That's right.

That is exactly what you do at this age.

You eliminate all the bullshit that you used to put up with.

When I think of the bullshit I used to put up with.

Yeah, and now you don't put up with it.

I think I've just got to have this time going to do exactly what I'm doing.

And I have no bucket list.

Like, not that I've done everything, I've hardly done anything.

But like, anything I haven't gotten to, I could give a fuck.

Yeah, I've heard the same way.

You know, like...

Like it's no accident.

I've never been to Asia.

Too bad, Asia.

Nothing personal.

But it just didn't happen and now it's not gonna.

I've never seen a Star Wars movie all the way through.

I don't know how anybody has.

I've never went skiing.

I've never done a million things.

I never had anal sex.

I mean, these are too personal.

Too personal, too personal, too personal.

Too much information.

Too much information.

I don't know why that's popular either.

Anyway, let's...

Let's connect it to someone.

Moving on to.

Let's.

Jesus.

Oh, my salts.

Jim, can I use this for a second?

Sorry.

But what was I going to.

What was I?

Oh,

Yeah,

I don't know what.

Yeah, I don't know what.

Talk about.

Let's talk about.

Let's talk about race.

You've written about it many times, and I saw Donald Trump this week sort of doubling down on his Charlottesville comments.

And I thought, wow, this topic just won't go away for this man.

And of course, it won't go away for this country.

And they did a little study.

I forget who the sociologists were, but they showed

an ad where a guy was standing in front of a house.

It was a foreclosure thing, a program to help people who were in foreclosure.

And when it was showed to Trump voters, and it was a black man,

they were very unsympathetic to the program.

And when it was a white person, they were much more sympathetic.

There it is.

And all that changed in the ad was the race of the person there.

And with Hillary voters, it didn't seem to make a big difference.

So it seemed to be a little bit of proof that there is racism on that side of the fence.

Well, I don't know why one would need that proof.

Because

it seems pretty goddamn obvious that what happened on November the 8th was a racist backlash against eight years of a black man in the White House.

Partly.

Well, but you're not saying that all Trump voters are.

No.

But they're saying that

all Trump voters.

Trump's entire appeal is racism.

It's not, come on, it's not his entire appeal.

You think every single Trump voter, that's not true.

Okay, maybe two, maybe with a two-note, okay?

Yes.

Those rallies, you know, for someone our age, what did they remind you of?

George Wallace rallies.

That's exactly what they were.

You know, I mean, I don't think that, you know, when they say, how do these people believe Trump?

I don't think they believe him.

I don't think they thought, yes, it's going to be 1955 again.

Yes, they're going to open up the coal mines.

He allows them to express their bigotry.

And that is the thing, that's why they're so ecstatic of those rallies.

You see,

I want to know,

I would like,

when we were talking about being more specific, I would like to, on the subject of making America great again, I would like to know when it was great.

Exactly, when was that moment?

February 3rd, 1945.

Well, you know, the point is, was it...

when there were slaves?

No.

Was it when women didn't have the vote?

When was the moment of greatness?

Yeah.

Those are two moments.

Yeah,

what are we striving towards?

But they do seem to blame.

With these hats made in China that say make America great again.

Right.

Well,

they do seem to blame the wrong people for their problems.

I mean, for example, I don't expect them to be that sympathetic to globalization, but

the big story on globalization is that in the last like 30 years, we have decreased extreme poverty in the world tremendously.

It's one of the big unsung stories that you don't hear about.

Like a lot of people used to live on a dollar a day and now $2.

Well way less.

Way less.

Because they got jobs in factories in Mexico and China and lots of places and that's where the money went from some of the jobs we had here.

And the big story.

So they should be blaming the people, the white rich guys, who sent those jobs overseas.

But they don't.

They blame the Chinese and the Mexican worker who now doesn't have to defecate in the street.

And as an Indian writer of mine had an op-ed in the Times a couple of weeks ago in which he pointed out that there are lots of job opportunities in expanding economies, like, for example, India.

And so, if there were lots of Americans who don't have jobs, maybe they could go there.

Go where the jobs are, which is what we're always being told.

But I wanted to say the thing about globalization, as far as Trump is concerned, is that without globalization, there would be no Trump, because all his money comes from Russia.

It It comes,

we know this in New York.

He doesn't know anybody from Russia.

I'm saying that.

But he knows German bankers who launder Russian money.

Oh, absolutely.

And that's what happened in New York.

It's what it's about is saying we know about Trump from old times.

The Trump Soho was built with Russian money coming through German banks.

That's what it's all about.

I mean, I don't know what's going to be in the Mueller report, but the bottom line is at a certain point, because nobody else would lend Trump money because he's a fucking deadbeat who doesn't pay his debts, the only place he could get money was Russia.

And instead of paying them back, he gave them America.

All right.

New rules, everybody.

Thank you, Benna.

You were amazing.

New rules, Ted Cruz and Martin Shkarelli must tell us their secret to only taking pictures that make you want to punch them in the face.

Neural, now that we have cockapoos, Yorkipoos, schnoodles, labradoodles, and golden doodles, no one should feel bad about coming right out and saying it.

Poodles will fuck anything.

Neural, if you want to depress yourself, spend the day playing a game I call, Would You Rather They Were President?

The guy guy who hangs out at Starbucks with his cockatoo?

Yes.

The world's least convincing Superman impersonator.

Yes.

Any of the members of the kick-pop group Red Velvet?

Yes.

The Bears fan who takes her shirt off when it's 10 below?

Yes.

Carl Lagerfeld?

Yes.

Gene Simmons?

Yes.

The cow who looks like Gene Simmons.

I'm considering it.

New rules, someone has to tell bin Laden's son, Hamza, that going into the family business is kind of a Jewish thing.

Hamza, you're not the new lion of al-Qaeda.

You're the Jared Kushner of terrorism.

New rule, Pope Francis must drop the phony cover story that he got his black eye in a Pope Mobile accident.

Just admit the truth.

He mouthed off to Chris Brown.

That's...

And finally, new rule, now that Governor Jerry Brown of California is signing separate climate treaties with China in defiance of our federal government, conservatives...

Conservatives can't complain.

They can't complain when when our local law enforcement refuses to cooperate with Trump's deportation squad.

They can't grouse about California cities threatening to deny contracts to any firm that helps build the border wall.

They can't get mad because we're just following in a long and hallowed conservative tradition called states' rights.

It's just that now we're the state that wants to be left alone.

Mississippi didn't like what Attorney General Bobby Kennedy was doing in the 60s.

Well, I don't like what Jeff Sessions is doing now.

The script has completely flipped from 50 years ago when progressives ran the show in Washington and it was Alabama Governor George Wallace who physically blocked the door of the University of Alabama to prevent black kids from enrolling.

He was always screaming about states' rights, which he used as justification for this.

Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever.

But that was then.

Now the white supremacists are the federal government.

And it's liberal states that are under siege from federal overreach.

We're trying to defend our way of life here and what we believe in.

We believe in sanctuary cities and pollution controls

and legalized pot and gun control and Obamacare and a woman's right to choose.

And we're going to defend them.

We're the rebels now.

We are the rebels now, and now we get to talk like this.

Let me tell you something.

We don't much cotton when the federal government thinks it knows better how to do things than we do here in our own state.

The butt flaps on my electric car, say, coexist.

You know what, we don't need no outside agitators

with their Make America Great Again cabs coming in here to our clean state and telling us to take down our solar panels

or how to treat our interns.

Here in our state, we use tiki torches the way they're supposed to be used for lesbian weddings on the beach.

Farm to table ain't just woods around here.

That's our heritage.

We proud there ain't no pesticides in our organic broccolini.

We proud of gay sex and hot yoga.

We proud of pioneering colonic irrigation.

You can have my Botox injection when you pry it from my cold dead hands.

Vaginal rejuvenation today, vaginal rejuvenation tomorrow, vaginal rejuvenation forever.

That meddling federal government in Washington even wants to tell us who we can marry and where we can pee.

They want to come in here and segregate our restrooms, telling us who can pee where.

Well, my daddy was transgender and his daddy before him

and his daddy before him.

Here in LA County, we wear our ball gowns over our balls if we choose.

One more thing.

He got damn in a tenant general up there in Washington by the name of Jeff Sessions.

And he said, and I quote, good people don't smoke marijuana.

Well, there are good people here, Mr.

Tenant General.

And sometimes we just want to sit on our porch and watch our grass grow.

All right, that's our show.

I want to thank my guests, Rusty Brad Leibowitz, Tim Gunn, and Brent Stevens.

Join us off for overtime on YouTube.

Thank you, folks.

Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher every Friday night at 10.

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