Ep. #436: Ken Bone, Xiuhtezcatl Martinez

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

I know it's very exciting,

but we're thinking about we're thinking about Florida right now.

No, we are.

They are looking at a category five liberal hoax is about to hit.

No,

this is serious.

If you are watching me in Florida, stop.

Get the fuck out right now.

No, seriously, this is, you know, this is really serious stuff there.

And not just that hurricane.

There are three hurricanes lined up.

Irma in Florida, Jose in the Caribbean, and Katia coming to Mexico.

I'm just saying, if you're a Coke smuggler, take the weekend off.

This is not a good time to be out.

And

And these are like, they say this Irma's the most serious storm ever.

Like, I'm seeing colors on the hurricane maps I've never seen before.

Here's a little guide.

If you see yellow, like Trump's hair,

take extra care.

If you see orange, like his face,

shelter in place, and

red like his ties to Russia, just evacuate now.

But

now

it's about to hit Florida this dorm, but Trump says not to worry.

We are completely prepared.

The National Guard is in place.

FEMA is well supplied.

Melania has her stilettos on.

I call them flood meat pumps.

Got the flood meat pump.

But, you know,

the people in Florida can take solace in the fact that they will soon get a visit from Donald Trump, the comforter-in-chief, they're calling him.

Because, you know, when I think of comfort and empathy and warm, fuzzy feelings,

nobody comes to mind like Donald Trump.

He's a snuggie in human form.

This guy.

Did you see him in Houston?

He brought the first lady.

I've never seen a president do that.

He brought a date to a flood.

Honey.

And of course, his fans loved it.

They thought he was very brave to face his greatest nemesis of the last 30 years, Wind.

I'd say who did not look too good there in Houston was Mr.

Pastor, I should say, Joel Osteen.

You know this guy?

He wouldn't.

He's got a mega church.

He wouldn't let people shelter in his church during a storm, Mr.

Christian.

And this church, boy, talk about mega, it seats 17,000 people, and on Sunday he fills it up three times.

He preaches to 52,000 people.

The Catholics are like, wow, we're molesting the wrong people.

Speaking of molesting the wrong people,

this week, with North Korea exploding a hydrogen bomb and these weather catastrophes all over the country, who does Trump go after?

The DREAMers.

You saw this?

He threatened to end the program we refer to as DACA.

People don't know what that stands for: it's deferred action for childhood arrivals.

Says the same thing on my condoms.

I point it like I'm wearing one now.

I don't trust you people.

I'm wearing a condom.

No.

DACA is the program that President Obama started to allow the children of undocumented immigrants who have never known any other country to stay here.

They spent their entire lives in this country.

They're so Americanized, their car horns play Taylor Swift.

You know what I was trying to say.

It's the condom.

It's the fucking name.

No, but they're leading very productive lives, more than most people.

Over 90% are employed.

A lot of them are in the military.

They're very well educated.

They almost all believe in climate change.

Yeah, this is so interesting.

Climate change.

The deniers all have beach houses in the way of...

No, did you read this?

All in the way of the storm.

Trump, Russell Limbaugh, and Coulter, the Koch brothers, all have houses that are going to be wiped out probably.

I'm not bloating.

It's just an inconvenient truth.

I'm not trying to.

No, Trump has a $28 million compound on the island of St.

Martins, and it looks like it's going to get completely wiped out.

Today he said, Dorn, that's where I keep my tax returns.

But you know,

even though everything that scientists said was going to happen, that the waters were going to get warmer and this is going to soup up the storms, and that Irma's the worst storm ever, and Harvey was a 500-to-one shot, and they've had three years in a row with 500-to-one shots, the right-wingers are still, no, we can't blame climate change.

Yes, I agree.

My theory has something to do with Hillary's emails.

Really, I'm not.

Rush Schlimba has been telling his listeners all week that Irma is a liberal hoax to promote their climate change agenda.

But that he had to evacuate his house.

Which, for Rush, has got to be a tough pill to swallow.

But if anybody knows about swallowing pills.

All right, we've got a great show.

SC Cup and Adam Gottnick are here.

And a little later we'll be speaking with author and Earth Guardian Jotescott Martinez.

But first up, he went viral as the undecided voter in the red sweater who questioned both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton at the presidential debate last year.

Please welcome Ken Bone is back with us.

Ken,

great to meet you.

You want a sweater, thank you.

I couldn't not wear it.

I know, no, I requested you that that is your symbol.

And I know you, I've read your tweets this week.

I know you wonder why you're here.

Yeah, for sure.

I've wondered why this whole thing happened.

Well, you became sort of emblematic as the independent voter.

You were at that famous debate, and it was all independents who hadn't made up their mind.

And to me, you're a gettable voter.

I'll be honest with you.

I have a dog in this fight.

I want to convince you that you should have voted for Hillary instead of Godzilla.

Well, I didn't, I'll tell you that much.

I didn't vote for Godzilla.

I didn't vote for Jill Stein either.

Not Godzilla and not Jill Stein.

Are you going to reveal who you did vote for?

No, I'm waiting for my book deal to come through.

Is that true?

No.

Not at all.

I promised before the election that I wouldn't say who I voted for because, like it or not, we're obsessed with celebrities in this country.

And even like an F-list celebrity like me, people put stock in my opinion.

And it's not fair to the democratic process if I tell them what to believe.

Now, like,

you're an informer.

That is your job to inform people, educate educate them, entertain them.

I'm a random dude that works at the power plant.

People don't need to be informed by me.

Who did you vote for?

That was a wonderful speech, Ken, but who did you vote for?

I'm not letting you leave here at the...

You're not getting out of California, my friend.

It's only an hour show, Bill.

Really?

Okay, but you didn't vote for Trump.

So you voted.

You didn't vote for Jill Stein.

You didn't vote for

fucking Aleppo dude, did you?

I voted for either Johnson or Clinton or Trump.

You know, one of the big three.

Well, the big two and then the one.

Okay, all right.

Well, you keep your secrets, Ken.

But I wanted to have you here because you are what I call a gettable voter.

You're not totally in the Trump camp at all.

I think there are things that you don't like about him at all.

And yet it puzzles me that you are still undecided that late and you still don't want to tell us who you wanted to vote for.

And you're the person we need to get.

And when I say we, I mean the Democrats, the liberals, and we want to turn this country around because I think it's on a very, very bad path.

What path do you think the country's on under Trump?

Well, one of the weird things about being undecided is they ask you, like, who are you going to vote for?

And that's the last human being I've ever told who I was going to vote for, was this person doing the survey to determine if I could be at the debate.

And they said, how likely are you to change your mind?

And I said, I don't know, you know, like two.

Probably not going to change my mind, but I want to keep an open mind.

They said, well, in this super polarizing election, a two out of ten likelihood of changing your mind mind is still undecided.

So there was nobody on that stage that was above a four.

But I wouldn't be like two in a million

if it was Donald Trump.

I can totally understand that.

But one of the reasons why I wanted to wait and make up my mind, you know, make my final decision, is in Canada, you have an 80-day election campaign and they complain that it's too long.

Right.

Ours started on November 10th, and it's already going again.

And people are like, who are you going to vote for in 2020?

I don't want to feed that fire because that turns our political process into TMZ.

It creates people like me and it creates nothing but sound bites and sniping back and forth and it doesn't help solve the issues.

All right, Ken, but we

But we paid for your aphor out here.

You're going to answer my question.

I've been exposed enough to politics to know how to not answer.

Okay, so just tell me this.

What is it about Hillary?

Because Hillary Clinton's book is coming out this week, and she made a statement this week, which sounded a lot like something I've said about her in the past, which is future historians, I feel, will be very puzzled at why people hated her as much as they did.

I could see not liking her terribly much because she's not a great politician.

But, I mean, I've said it before.

If you really hate Hillary Clinton, you were molested by a real estate lady.

I just don't get it.

She's a bland centrist.

This is not Shea Guevara in a pantsuit.

What about her irked you so much that you were willing to just be independent until the last minute?

Well, I never really hated Hillary.

Like, I was, you know, I'm willing to wait until the investigations come out on any charges against anybody because we're supposed to have this presumption of innocence, especially if you

look like you're part of the right demographic in this country.

What does that mean?

You have a presumption of innocence if you're white people, basically, according to to our justice system.

It's supposed to be for everybody, and we're working on it.

But

I try to give that benefit of the doubt to everyone.

And we have trouble extending that to polarizing figures like politicians.

And even someone who has moderate or centrist opinions relative to the Democratic Party, like Hillary Clinton, is going to be a polarizing figure, and people just want to...

want to jump on her.

And Donald Trump was the master of getting people to look at her instead of look at him.

Did that work on you?

I try to dig a little deeper.

You know, I don't believe anything that I hear the first time.

So did you think the emails were very important?

It was never really a big issue to me.

I was willing to let the investigation play out.

Okay, well it did.

James Comey got up there and he said we looked at it, he scolded her a little bit and he said no prosecutor would bring charges.

And then 10 days before the election, he brought it up again.

Yeah, I thought that was a really weird move, especially since it looked for all the world like she was going to win at that point.

They're like,

what are you doing?

Why are you bringing this up if you don't have anything?

And then it turned out he didn't have anything.

So I still don't see the sense in it.

Well, what about, okay, so what about Russia?

I saw this, we were off last week, and there was a big story about a focus group that somebody did.

And they had voters, even the ones who voted for Trump, very disillusioned with him.

And then the guy said, what about Russia?

And you can say about Russia, you think it's something big, you don't think it's something big, or you can say, I don't know.

And every one of the Trump people said, I don't know.

Because when you watch Fox News, you don't know.

Yeah, that's true.

They just don't report it.

Where do you get your news?

I try to dig as far as I can on everything.

I'll get the sound bites from Fox News, and then I'll think, okay, what's wrong with this particular one?

And that puts you on the track that what are we ignoring?

And then you can watch your MSNBCs and kind of get, you know, you have your Trump, or you have your Fox News way over on the right, and then you have your center, and then you have your left-wing news.

You know, they're not quite as far-tilted.

But they give you leads, things that are, what are we trying to ignore on both sides of the world?

So, do you think there is something to the Russia story?

Oh, absolutely.

Foreign governments have been messing with each other's political processes since we invented governments.

And by sniping back and forth across the aisle on this, we're putting tools in their tool belt.

If we think that Russia wasn't trying to influence the election, we're crazy.

And if we think they're not going to come back and try to do it again, we're even crazier.

So

what about Donald Trump who has admitted to Lester Holt that he fired James Comey because Comey was looking into this and he doesn't believe it's a real story but he's been caught lying about it time and time and time again.

I mean every week we see stuff more that shows that yes they were colluding with Russia.

They were colluding with a foreign adversary to influence the election because it helped them.

Isn't that a deal breaker?

I mean, well, at this point we have the president that we have.

You can't go back and make Hillary Clinton the president.

And I'm willing to let the investigation play out, but you also have to keep your eyes open because foreign governments are going to try to get in, and they're going to try to influence every election.

Like, if they could come in and pick the dog catcher in my hometown in Belleville, they will.

What are your, when you look back on President Obama, even President Bush,

are you nostalgic for a time when when you maybe weren't so nervous every day?

I liked President Obama very much.

Oh, you did?

I voted for Obama once, one of the two times.

So I don't have any problem telling all your folks who I voted for in past elections, if you want to come ask me after the show.

So you voted for Mitt Romney, you voted for McCain?

I voted for McCain.

I wasn't really a big Sarah Palin person, but in the scheme of things, it only matters if John McCain was

ill at the time, and he wasn't.

So I was willing to overlook what I thought was not the greatest choice for vice president.

And I like John McCain.

You know, he's a more moderate-leaning Republican.

And what about, like, this week, I saw this quote from Donald Trump.

He's talking about his new tax plan, you know, and he said, it will be the greatest tax reduction in the history of our country.

Everything is always in the history.

Have you noticed that?

Greater than ever before.

You'll see a rocket ship.

You will see something happen like you've never seen before.

It will be greater than ever before for me is if, like, if the government wants to come and take my money, they're going to.

But if I had to label myself, I'd be a libertarian.

But I don't care about if everybody smokes weed or not, so I don't register with the party.

But if you want to

live your life the way you want to live it, go ahead.

If you want the government to stay out of your life, that's great.

But when the government comes and takes our money, and they're going to, let's spend it a little more responsibly.

Let's not worry about giving tax breaks to the very richest people who aren't missing that money in the first place, because we've proven that that money doesn't trickle down to me and the upper middle class.

It doesn't trickle down to my mom who's unemployed.

So maybe we keep their money and we use it for something good.

You're a confusing man, Ken,

because

to listen to you talk, and I said, you know, this is an intelligent man.

This is not somebody who I don't disrespect.

I think this man, you know, he may be independent thinking, which is good.

He didn't know who he wanted to vote for up until the last minute, but he's a smart guy.

I don't see why it was that difficult a choice.

I'm going to let you go.

I'm going to ask you one more time

why it was such a difficult choice because it seemed like this one man is preposterously unfit for office and the other lady,

maybe not the best candidate, but certainly would have put us in a better place.

Well, I promised myself I would wait until after the

the debates to lock in my choice because there's where there was news coming out every day more about one than the other but there was news coming out every day and by the time I cast my vote I was very confident in it I was no longer even a shade of undecided that's about as much as I can tell you

thank you Ken Bone Ken Bone the voice of independent America I appreciate you coming out here all right thank you Ken let's meet our

guy's harder to get down than some clothes.

All right, Let's greet our panel.

He is an award-winning staff writer at the New Yorker's latest book is At the Stranger's Gate Arrivals in New York.

Adam Gopnik back with us.

Hey, Adam, how you doing?

And she is the host of SE Cup, Unfiltered, which airs Monday through Thursday at 7 Eastern on HLN.

We saw her grow up on this show.

SE Cup, ladies and gentlemen.

Okay, so I want to remind people, people forget, we are live, like live live.

It is a little after 7 here on the West Coast, Coast, a little after ten on the East Coast.

So this storm has not really hit Florida yet.

And as this show re-airs over the next few days on HBO,

we're going to see some horrible pictures there from Florida, and people are going to die.

So we are taking it very seriously.

We have sympathy and we have seriousness for this.

But I also hear a lot of the Republicans say,

It's funny to say, they say

after a shooting, they always say, not the time to talk about guns.

And after this, not the time to talk about climate.

Well, I'm sorry.

This is the time to talk about climate.

And

I have a simple question.

If you're going to accept federal aid for a storm, shouldn't you also accept the science on climate change?

The audience says yes.

A dissenting opinion, SECO.

Look,

I feel like the word denier is a bit loaded.

I think you have to be allowed to ask questions, the basis of scientific inquiry, asking questions about stuff.

And so to say, well, I don't know if hurricanes

are caused by climate change.

Every scientist I read this week said they don't cause them, but they're probably making them more intense.

We just don't actually know yet.

I think it's okay to say that.

I believe in climate change.

I believe it has human causes.

But I still want the right to ask questions.

And I think when

people shout down.

What question are we asking, though?

What question is still out there?

What part of the human roots of climate change are responsible for creating intenser storms?

I think that's a question that is unanswered by science.

All the scientists I read this week do not have that answer.

The basis of

scientific.

No, it is right.

They don't.

Jason Stamenell,

I can tick off climate change scientists

easily, I'm sure.

Easily, I'm sure.

But here's what I worry about.

Here's what I worry about.

When you say that's not true,

you are only emboldening irresponsible blowhards like Rush Limbaugh.

You don't want to do that.

Wait a second.

No, wait a second.

Hold on.

You don't want to do that.

I don't live my life by what I might make Rush Limbaugh get mad at.

The basis of scientists.

No, but you don't want his 20 million listeners to believe him more easily because you're over here saying

that you're not allowed to think.

those listeners are lost.

I'm working on Ken Brown.

I'm trying to help you out.

The basis of scientific inquiry is asking questions.

The result of scientific inquiry is having answers.

This is a subject on which we now have answers.

There you go.

As long ago as 20 years.

We have all the answers we need on climate change.

Yes, we do.

We do.

As long ago as 2006.

Let me talk about what scientists know.

In 2006, as long ago as that, there was in Science, one of the leading journals, there was a paper saying what will happen if this continues is that you will have an immediate

backflow between warming oceans and the increasing hurricanes.

They made a very highly specific prediction, which turned out to be absolutely true.

That's what we know.

That's supposed to be true.

That the prediction that as the oceans warmed, you would have more and more severe hurricanes.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

We just went through an unprecedented 12-year gap

of no Cat 3 hurricanes hitting landfalls.

See, that is bad science.

Good science is saying, what's happened?

This is bad reporting.

It's simply a fact.

It's not.

It simply isn't a fact.

What is the truth of it is,

what is true is that from 1970 onwards.

Yeah, I say that every week.

You've had an endlessly growing cycle of more and more severe hurricanes.

And science has not only made that prediction, they have a mechanism.

They have a way of explaining why that is the case.

And that's what makes science different

from ideology.

And there is no...

The science is settled.

Here's the mistake.

Science is never settled, but science can be extraordinarily strong.

And in the case of global warming and climate change, it can be settled.

It can be settled in the sense of...

No, no, no.

Science is never permanently settled because there's always new facts and new arguments.

But science can be extremely strong.

I don't think they're going to repeal the law of gravity.

But we understand gravity in no ways.

We understand gravity in no ways.

That's pretty settled, I suppose.

And evolution, I think, is kind of settled.

Evolution is settled, but evolution, but the theory of evolution is always open to amendment and to revision.

What is settled now is, sure, we didn't know anything about genetics as recently as 50 years ago.

We didn't understand how genetics worked.

So we added that to the picture.

Let me give you the here.

Just

this flood that we just had in Houston, a 500-year flood.

Now people misinterpret what that means.

A 500-year flood is an event that has a 1 in 500 chance of happening.

Okay, it's not once every 500 years.

1 in 500 chance.

Very slim.

Houston had one of those three years in a row.

This is like if you had a big wheel with 500 numbers and it came up on number 37

three times in a row.

But you also know that Houston's, the city planning and the flood, the floodplain makes flooding in Houston a huge story.

Right, but that has nothing to do with

it.

Nothing to do with.

We're talking about the storm.

How does not what happened when it happened?

Not what happened after the hurt.

That's a different.

It's what caused the...

So here's the thing I don't understand, S.C.

I really genuinely don't understand it.

There should be no more politics of climate change than there are politics of bubonic plague.

We recognize.

Who injustices?

We recognize.

You said a moment ago, and you have the entire Republican Party saying over and over again that we don't know the climate isn't a good thing.

We don't know everything.

That has nothing to do with economics.

We need to know everything to know what's vital to do.

We don't have to know everything to know what we need to do.

There shouldn't be a political debate about this.

It's not an ideological question.

Well good

because the way everybody knows, because the Republican Party and Donald Trump are all insisting that we don't know what the political issues are.

But the Republican Party and Donald Trump aren't sitting here.

I am.

And I don't raise politics.

All right.

All right.

But we're arguing about what's happening out in the actual world in which events are transpiring, right?

Not just about what's happening.

But only 9% of Republicans are confirmed believers in human climate change.

That's a pretty slim number for a major political party.

Should I start this conversation by saying I believe in climate change?

Yes, and then you hedged.

But okay.

I didn't hedge.

I'm allowed to have questions.

It is the antithesis.

You are allowed to have something.

I'm not allowed to ask it.

No, I couldn't agree more about that.

But some things are settled.

Some things you can't.

Got it.

But you know.

But here's the thing is:

this gravity evolution.

Gravity evolution.

Those three.

Let's put those three right in the bin.

Now I have the list.

Okay, great.

Gravity evolution,

climate climate change.

But here's the thing, is that you were saying a moment ago, look, we mustn't antagonize Rush Limbaugh's listeners.

That's not what I said at all.

Our job is to educate.

I antagonize them.

I antagonize them every day.

Our job is to educate Rush Limbaugh's listeners, and we can only educate them on the basis of evidence and argument.

And that's something that we should all agree.

I agree, but I think that

some of the emotion gets in the way, and my fear is that it makes it easier for his listeners to believe him when he fear-mongers on hyped hurricanes, something that I argued with him

about?

I don't think you're responsible in nature.

It's a bad idea to become emotional about the survival of the planet.

That's one of the things that we're doing.

We're not going to get anywhere.

We're not going to get anywhere.

In which you should really be able to do that.

But I mean, I hear, but this is an argument.

I know the argument you're giving because I hear it a lot, which is like, you know, Bill, it doesn't do any good to call those people stupid.

To which I always say, then stop acting stupid.

Right, right.

You know,

the chicken has to come before the egg.

But

if you don't believe,

you said that it's a little bit out in the science, but

three years ago, James Powell did a study of all the science papers written on climate change that year.

There was 10,853.

Two dissented.

So two out of 10,853.

You have to be some kind of arrogant to not be a scientist at all and look at a figure like that and go, what the fuck do they know?

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But

what about this other issue that you started to bring up, which is that these places that got flooded, like Texas, okay,

they have a low tax base, so the federal government bails them out.

They're governors, they're legislators, they don't believe in climate science.

It seems like the responsible folks in this country, the people with the pay a little more taxes and the people who believe in climate change, are bailing out the people who hate government except when they need government, when they're in trouble.

That seems a little unfair.

We all noticed how quickly Ted Cruz changed the politics of

hurricane rescue when it was his people.

Listen, suddenly socialism is not such a bad idea

when you're standing in toxic floodwater.

Exactly.

You'll take an umbrella from the government when you are being rained on.

It seems to me, here's the thing, is this whole situation makes a rational case for government that everyone can agree on.

They started building dikes in Holland a thousand years ago because they were constantly being inundated with floods.

And fortunately, they didn't have people saying, oh, well, we mustn't have dikes because those are big government projects.

They built dikes and they saved the country

and then allow them to go on.

So that's the kind of project that distinguishes our country.

If there's anything that we should be proud of, it's our tradition of civil engineering.

And civil engineering can go a very long way in reducing the consequences

these kinds of disasters.

And

that should not be, again, be an ideological controversy.

That should be simply a question of pragmatic politics.

Okay.

So anyway, there is a...

There is a big benefit concert that's going to happen in the next few days.

It's on a lot of networks, including HBO here.

Barbara Streisand and Beyoncé are on it.

So it's talk about an A-list event.

Big time stuff.

And, you know, whether it's a benefit concert or any kind of concert, whenever stars show up to give a performance, they always have what is called a rider, which means a list of things you want backstage.

Like I think it was, was it Van Halen that famously wanted the Brown M ⁇ Ms out of the, you know, M ⁇ M, but no brown M ⁇ Ms.

I have a rider.

Mine's very simple.

I need a bottle of tequila and

my glaucoma medicine

backstage.

But what I found interesting was that

Donald Trump was going to be at this event.

They talked about it for a while, and then they said, well, but if he comes, none of the performers will show up.

So he's not coming.

But they had to get his writer.

So we got a hold of Donald Trump's writer.

Would you like to see what's in...

He's got a rider, too, yeah.

For example, in Donald Trump's writer, two large ceramic panthers.

No.

No, I'm making this up.

It's a bit.

But it seems

it could be.

Okay.

One jar of Max Factor theatrical makeup in the shade Rotten Papaya.

See, this is Donald Trump's writer.

It's 12 cans Helene Curtis Ultimate Old Hair Cement.

That's not real.

Two boxes of Depends Adult Diapers, size 48, in case any incontinent fat people show up.

Cokes regular in diet.

Nazis, regular, and Neo.

Wow, that's...

he's got quite a writer.

A coffin filled with Melania's native earth.

Well, I mean, it's gonna.

One enthusiastic black man with crazy yellow eyes and a misspelled sign.

Well, that guy, he's with them everywhere.

A bucket of tic-tacs.

Oh, fuck, we know what that's for.

No brown MMs, and then he says Muslims and Mexicans.

He's obviously.

A heated toilet within reach of a cell phone charger.

He does poop tweet a lot.

One real red working fire truck that kind of goes vroom vroom.

And one dark corner for Melania to weep.

Okay.

He is a climate activist and author of Lurise, the Earth Guardian's Guide to Building a Movement That Restores the Plateau.

Texcott Martinez is back with us.

Sue!

Sue!

How are you?

Great to see you again.

Great to be here.

I know.

I think you're still our youngest guest.

You were our young.

You've checked this out?

Okay.

All right.

That's what they told me, anyways.

I think so.

Yes.

We don't have.

They're not a children's show.

And you were here last time.

You were talking about the lawsuit.

You and 21 other other young people filed a lawsuit.

I think it's a great idea saying, you know,

the right to breathe good air should be ours.

And a federal judge ruled in your favor.

It's going forward now, right?

So congratulations.

What's going to happen now?

So

I think one thing to note that's incredibly important is that I think one of the biggest problems we've made as a planet and as in the community is depending on our politicians to do things for us when as constituents we also have to be a part of that process.

Especially as young people, when our futures,

our futures are so directly connected to the way that we address climate change that we have to be at the forefront of the conversation, where we've traditionally been left out.

So, we are demanding the federal government to protect us from the adverse impacts of climate change.

There was a motion to dismiss, followed by the federal government and by the fossil fuel corporations.

After two different judges, federal judges reviewed the case, the motion to dismiss, they denied it.

So, now we are going to be going to trial on February 5th against the Trump administration, demanding that they uphold our constitutional rights as American citizens to a landfill.

And

where do you see this going?

I mean what is the end result that could happen from this?

So best case scenario is we win the lawsuit

and the top climate top climate scientists, we've worked with top climate scientists to put together a climate recovery plan that is science-based evidence that will shape the way that we address climate change in this nation, doing massive reductions of greenhouse gases annually until we get back to a safe level of CO2 and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that is no longer threatening and creating climate change.

So it's a big dream and a big vision.

But I think that to even have that conversation and the fact that our lawsuit has gone this far is incredible because it's not just about the science, it's the stories.

Each one of these young people is being affected by climate change.

The youngest plaintiff in this lawsuit lives in Florida and he's going to be affected by the hurricanes that are coming through.

You know, so for us, it's more than scientists.

It's more than science, it's more than law, it's more than politics.

It's our stories and it's our future.

And you talk a lot about the fact that it is not just cars and planes that cause the pollution, it's the way we eat.

Definitely.

It's a lot about the food.

I've talked about it myself many times.

I don't think people realize cows do more damage than cars if you want to just put it on a bumper sticker.

Definitely, and people got to recognize that.

And so for something like,

for an example, when Trump pulled out of the Paris Climate Accords, that is something that everyday people don't necessarily have a say in, right?

You know, as far as a massive impact on the way that we move forward in addressing climate change.

But we eat three meals a day, and every single one of those is an opportunity to make a choice for or against our future, for or against a healthy climate.

You know, so for people out there, understanding the impact that eating meat and dairy has on our planet is incredibly critical to

explain a little why it's so bad for the planet.

So industrialized agriculture is.

Boy,

at first I felt like a parent.

Dad.

It's just so massive.

You know, so.

Okay, don't.

But do your homework and then check out the garbage.

Come on.

The book that I just wrote, We Rise, which is now going to people all over the country, has

a really good section about food justice.

So I definitely recommend you buying the book and reading about it there.

But really, I think looking at industrialized agriculture and the impact that we have as far as methane escaping from cows, they fart and they burnt methane, as well as the massive amounts of land and forest that needs to be cleared to grow soy and corn that they feed to the cows, the amount of water that is wasted, the amount of transportation that goes through.

It's a whole thing.

It's a whole thing.

Yeah.

All right.

So.

what did you think of Trump wanting to pull out of DACA?

From my understanding.

So you're a native.

You're partly, I mean.

Yeah, yeah, Mexican.

My whole family is Mexican.

Right.

And

for me, immigration has been an incredibly important issue.

Well, I mean, even more native than that.

You're partly Aztec, right?

Exactly, exactly.

You were here before any of these white motherfuckers got here.

True, true.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Before Spain came through.

For us,

I think it's looking at the demographic of people in this nation and saying, you don't have a right to be here.

When it comes to that, I think it's besides the politics, it's about our stories and it's about the youth.

It's about the young people here, the people that came through to this nation to seek a better life.

Even for them, it wasn't even their choice in a lot of instances.

So I think that we have this responsibility.

You see that after he made that decision,

people were furious all over the nation, taking to the streets, taking to social media, because we realized that our president isn't going to stand up for the rights of these people.

And in many cases, when we look at the action he's taken on climate change and the action he's taken towards minority communities, he's not standing up for the people of this country.

And that's something where we have to fight back in our streets and in our courts.

You and I have got to smoke.

We got to

smoke a bone with Ken Bone after the show.

I'll be talking about the business.

Okay, so you are.

You're 17, right?

Okay, so you're not a millennial.

No.

Okay, so you.

What?

No, I.

Discriminating.

I have great hope for your generation because the millennials, you know, I mean, a lot of them come to my shows, and I love these people because, you know, they're fighting against, I think, what is the tide of their generation, which is a lot about trigger warnings and safe spaces and microaggressions.

And usually one generation backlashes against the next.

So please tell me your generation is going to take a flamethrower to that bullshit.

Because I don't know how they got got so fragile, these millennials.

But you've got to put some steel back in.

We're going to have to be really resilient.

There you go.

Okay, so let's talk about this.

Also, Hillary's book is coming out.

I read this quote from her.

My first instinct, she's talking about the campaign

back when my campaign was hit hard by the Colmy, some of the Colmy letter, was that he had overstated his bounds.

My team raised concerns if I was confrontational.

We decided it would be better to just let it go and to move on.

Looking back, that was a mistake.

She said the same thing at the Ken Bone debate.

Remember she said, we saw that a few weeks ago, the little excerpt that said, you know, when Trump was stalking me, I thought about turning around and saying, back off, creep, and I didn't.

This to me is why the Democrats are in such a bad place.

They think of the right thing to do that would take balls and then don't do it.

And then write a book about it.

And analyze it.

And

I wish I had done it,

but I didn't.

And this is why these people...

Yeah, go back to the bottom.

The very title of Hillary's book, What Happened, is though it was some passive thing that happened to her, rather than the book should have been called, What the Fuck Did I Do Wrong?

Right.

That's right.

Hillary Clinton should have written.

And it seems to me that allowing that Hillary, this is stuff you say to your therapist.

It's not stuff you inject into

control.

She's simply a wonderful woman and a terrific Secretary of State and the world's most unskilled politician.

She has no natural political instincts.

And what's infuriating is

she should have learned that in 2008 when she ran against Barack Obama.

And if she'd had insight, genuine insight, she should have said, you know what?

I'm good at a lot of things.

I'm not good at this.

But it's not just her.

I mean, I feel like this is most of the Democratic Party.

This is why I despair so much about ever winning an election again, because I feel they have this recessive gene about how to play politics.

They have no idea how to go for the jugular.

Could I read what Diane Feinstein, who is a fine senator we've had here since 1992, she said last week, she was asking about Trump.

I just hope he has the ability to learn and change.

She said this last week, and if he does, he can be a good president.

No, he can't, and he won't.

I mean,

she said, I think we have to have some patience.

No, we don't.

I mean, this level of civility was appropriate 30 years ago.

This is not the country we're living in anymore.

This is not going to cut it.

Mitch McConnell and the Republicans could be utterly refused any kind of compromise on anything with Barack Obama, a man of absolute centrist pragmatic instincts.

And the Democrats can't make the same kind of, hold the same kind of lie against Donald Trump.

We saw it this week with the Democrats going in and negotiating with Trump and imagining that they were getting something.

You can't negotiate with a sociopath.

The sociopath will always win.

You imagine Donald Trump has betrayed and lied to everyone who has ever negotiated with him from everything, from a hotel carpet

to a nuclear weapon.

And to imagine that you're going to be able to play him is totally delusional.

Well, I think, one,

I think Democrats did get something out of

this deal.

They screwed Republicans.

Right.

And that was a win for them.

And I think probably for Donald Trump, too, because he's pretty pissed with Republican inaction.

But I just,

to the Hillary, to the Hillary point, this book felt like

she was going back and saying, if I had just tweaked this one moment, maybe I could have sewn it up.

Like if I had just done this one moment differently, maybe

I could have gotten there.

And of course that's not true.

This was years in the making and years of failures here and there and years of the ascendance of Trump and all of that.

But I agree, it feels like it was like she's in the five steps of grief and we have to go through it with her.

And I don't want to go through

her bargaining and her anger and her acceptance and her denial and her depression.

That's something that should happen in private.

I mean, I think she would have been a fine president, but it is time to get at the Winnebago and visit all the diners on Route 66.

Yes.

Or whatever.

Yes, go to all the cracker barrels.

Listen, I agree, but let me just come back to one thing you said, Essie, which is, oh, it was a good week for Trump, the Democrats.

This is exactly the same thing.

I'm going to say that.

Stop putting words in my mouth when we use.

You said this was a good, the Democrats won something something here, and Trump won something as well.

And that's only possible to think if you see the world in this insanely narrow margin of who won the week, who did well, and you fail to see the scale of the national emergency that having a sociopathic liar like this.

Well, how about it?

I didn't vote for Trump.

I don't fail to see it.

But let me

emphasize the emergency we're in.

I'm aware.

But

you said Democrats didn't get anything from Trump.

I simply pointed out they actually did.

Yeah, that's a different show.

Let's talk about Russia while we have a few minutes.

Because I mean, just yes, was it yesterday?

The president's eldest son, Scott Dizzick.

I believe he's a Porsche dealer.

Met and said that he was having this meeting after he had said he did it because they wanted to talk about adoptions.

He said he was having this meeting now because he was vetting Hillary Clinton.

And

I just wonder when people are going to wake up to the fact that when the Republicans say, well, yes, we did X, but heavens to Betsy, we certainly didn't do Y, they always did Y.

Right, right.

And I don't know where it's going to end, but what we saw today,

the story in the New York Times today about this troll farms in Russia, you know, it was for a long time it was, well, at least they didn't directly affect the election.

They really directly affected the election in some ways.

Something like a 30%

market share that this reached, these ads on Facebook reached, because Facebook is so powerful and omnipresent.

And it really cuts to the

larger issue of the fake news and the mistrust, the distrust in all of these institutions from the press to the democratic process to Congress to elections.

It's a huge, huge problem.

And we have to fix it at its core because that's what lets someone like Trump come in, take advantage of the fear, the paranoia, the skepticism in all of these institutions.

If we had more faith in these institutions, there wouldn't be any oxygen for someone like Trump to come in and

fear monger

on all of that stuff.

So

it is absolutely crucial that we all, in whatever capacity we can in the press or in media,

and certainly for Facebook, number one job is to restore our trust and our faith in all of these institutions so that someone like Trump in the future can't come in and prey on all of those fears and skeptics.

Again,

here's the problem.

Here's the problem for you today.

I see.

You're on me.

Who wouldn't applaud with that, but it's so general.

You're making it sound systemic when it was totally specific.

It wasn't that there was some general malaise in our culture.

It was that Vladimir Putin sent his emissaries out to subvert the election, not out of general mischief, but on behalf of Donald Trump.

And that's exactly what happened.

And he did it as part of,

Putin did it as part of a larger ideological program, did the same thing in Britain during Brexit, tried to do the same thing in France when Macron was running.

It's because he has an ideological program.

People who watch Fox News, like I was saying to Ken, they don't even know this Russian thing exists.

There is a couple of ways you can lie.

One is outright lying.

One is by omission.

By just not reporting it.

yet.

When that focus group asked those people, what do you think about Russia?

Don't know.

Never heard of it.

Doesn't exist in my world.

Yes.

That's dangerous.

Thank you, panel.

I got to go to Neural Really.

Sorry, I realize I'm way over time here.

Okay, okay, hurry up.

Hurry up.

All right, Neural Popular Science.

Neural Popular Science has to ease up on the clickbait headlines.

Perfect segue.

I know you want people to visit your website, but you can't call a story, Uranus is probably full of giant diamonds.

And you know what?

The only way you'd know if Uranus was full of giant diamonds is if you went to your doctor for constipation and he said, I've got good news and bad news.

Thank you, Chu.

New rule, everyone who was stunned when Joel Osteen refused to open his megachurch to hurricane victims has to tell me what they ever liked about Joel Osteen to begin with.

I'm not surprised that he locked his doors.

I'm shocked he didn't fight his way onto a lifeboat in a dress.

Here's how you know your minister is probably a con man.

If he makes this face, he's lying.

Either that or his anus is full of giant diamonds.

I don't know.

Neural, someone has to tell octogenarian Indiana couple Ray and Wilma Yoder, who recently completed their decades-long quest to eat at every cracker barrel restaurant in America.

We get it, you're white.

Neural, now that Hollywood actress Julianne Davis has come out on Fox News as a a conservative and Trump supporter, I'm going to need a few weeks to process this.

I'm shocked.

Julianne Davis, conservative?

The Julianne Davis?

Cynthia in the film House of Nine?

Polygraph expert in an episode of Unusual Suspects?

The voice of Sally Gardner in the focus on the family radio production of Little Women, that Julianne Davis?

Geez, you think you know a person.

New rule, someone has to tell the makers of the movie It about a painted-up clown who scares the shit out of everybody.

You're a little late.

And finally, new rule, fuck fees.

When did the American business model switch from honestly selling you a product to tricking the consumer who doesn't read the fine print?

Late fees, rebooking fees, restocking fees, roaming fees, overdraft fees, cancellation fees.

Fees because you forgot to say Simon says.

My credit card has a maintenance fee.

For what?

It's a piece of plastic in my wallet.

So like someone from Citibank comes by once a month to water it.

You ever wonder, why is my cell phone contract longer than a Stephen King novel?

Because it was written by Rumpel Stiltskin.

If you forget to turn off data data roaming and you go to Vancouver for the weekend, Verizon gets to keep your children.

This is the new way we do business, and it's all based on the cynical premise of you fucking up.

That they can wear you down, confuse you, or count on you to forget.

Take something as simple as gift cards.

They look like an easy and convenient way to say, I wanted to buy you something, but I just barely give a shit.

But almost a third of the people who received gift cards never use them.

It's a bet between you and Red Lobster that even when it's free, you still don't want to eat Red Lobster.

Same thing with gym memberships.

Only 18% of Americans who join a gym wind up actually using it.

The rest go twice a year, the way Catholics go to Mass.

And again, it's a bet between consumers of gym memberships who are saying, this is the year I get off my ass and get in shape.

I know I can do it.

And the owner of the gym.

who's saying, well, I know you can't, you lazy loser.

You'll come here three times in January and then I'm done with you for the rest of the year.

Thanks for the free money.

Enjoy your hot pocket.

Because in America, a fuck-up is our best customer.

Credit card companies are based wholly on that premise that you, the consumer, want something now, some crazy impulse purchase like gas.

And you think you'll be able to pay for it before the interest kicks in.

And for people who want want to get screwed even harder than the credit card companies do it, oh yes, there's payday loans.

The average interest rate they charge in Colorado is 129%.

If an actual loan shark charged that much, you'd break his legs.

And 129%

is the low end.

Yeah, tied for second highest are South Dakota and Wisconsin, where it's okay to charge 574%.

The highest is Idaho, where it's not even a number.

They just cut out your organs and sell them on eBay.

But hey, don't worry, payday loan victims.

As soon as Trump passes his tax reform,

you'll be cashing your checks at a casino in Monte Carlo.

I'm kidding, you'll be cashing them outside a casino in a Monte Carlo.

Now,

any discussion of fee-fucking,

a new term I'm coining, fee-fucking the customer would be incomplete without mentioning the airlines who are always bitching about their costs, you know, the price of jet fuel and unions and planes

as a justification for their fees.

You know what?

If I want to hear a crying baby never shut up, I'll fly your shitty airline.

Where you charge me a fee for checking my luggage now, and another one if it weighs too much, and a fee for wanting to talk to a human on the phone.

You want a blanket?

Fee!

You want to fly inside the plane?

Fee.

If Sully landed on the Hudson today, they'd charge a life vest fee.

It can cost $200 just to change your ticket.

Multiply that by the number of fuck-ups too hungover to make their flight out of Vegas, and you see how in America now there's no margin for fucking up.

And that applies to one other group, a group which very much depends on people fucking up in order to stay in business.

The Republican Party.

It's true.

Their whole game is making voting such a hassle for the people they want to keep out of the booth that those people just give up and don't vote.

That's true.

Now,

is doing that criminal?

Yes.

Should we have to jump through hoops to vote?

Of course not.

But life isn't always fair.

So until it is, just do it.

It's not impossible, especially if you're young, who vote the least and have the time.

If you can stand in line for a damn phone, you can stand in line to vote.

If you can find the after party,

you can find the polling place.

If you have time to get a tattoo, you have time to get registered.

Picture ID?

Yeah, it's a pain in the ass when you take pictures of everything.

All right, that's our show.

No overtime.

I gotta go to Vegas.

I'm at the Mirage tonight.

How is that possible?

I don't know.

And then again, tomorrow night, I want to thank Adam Gopnik, SE Cop,

Shuten Scott Martinez, and Ken Bone.

Thank you very much.

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