Ep. #433: Richard Dawkins, Jim Parsons

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

Start the clock.

Thank you.

I think, wow, what a happy crowd.

These people are crazy.

I think I know why you're happy.

Because if Los Angeles gets nuked, we don't have to host the Olympics.

Traffic will be easy.

Now, are you nervous?

People are nervous.

People are nervous everywhere,

not just here.

Bill Cosby today sedated himself.

People are.

I mean, honestly, between the nasty tweets and the threatening statements and the escalating rhetoric, I mean, tensions are spinning out of control.

And that's just between Trump and Mitch McConnell.

But here's a little perspective.

Now, the nuclear age began, I think, this week, it was August, right around this time in 1945.

What did you think I was going to say?

When we dropped two bombs called Fat Man and Little Boy.

And this week, it came full circle with a different Fat Man and Little Boy.

Oh, yes.

Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un, if you haven't read about it, are trying to see who has the bigger micropenis.

I mean, that's what this is all about, isn't it?

I mean, this whole conflict could be resolved by two hookers willing to lie.

That's all I'm saying.

And,

you know, I just think someday these two assholes are going to bump into each other at the hair club for tyrants.

And they're going to realize, you know what, we're not so different, you and I.

We both get out of our golden bed in the morning and put on our elastic waistband pants,

one pudgy leg at the time.

But Kim Jong-un, if you're watching, and I know he's a big HBO fan.

Not the blockbusters, Tremay, he loved.

John from Cincinnati wanted to bring that back.

He's crazy.

Anyway,

I just want to say to Kim, if you're watching, Dennis Rodman lives here.

Here in L.A.

Dennis Rodman lives here.

He's your friend.

Maybe your only friend.

And he lives here.

He lives right at Newport Beach.

Don't fuck with the terrorists.

But

just to be safe, since it is Los Angeles and the crosshairs, the government is telling us, Angelinos, we should prepare an emergency survival kit.

Just the essentials, a week's worth of cronuts,

a selfie stick, and a

fidget spinner.

Just the essentials, ladies and gentlemen.

Okay, but you know, it's amazing that a week ago we weren't thinking about this on this level.

This all started because it was revealed that North Korea succeeded in miniaturizing a nuclear bomb that could be placed on a missile.

And now that they have mastered that, they're going to try to figure out how to grow food.

So, you know,

once that news got out,

Trump responded in his usual thoughtful, poisy way.

And he said, North Korea best not make any more threats, or they'll be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.

Hey, mother of dragons, we get it.

You're a badass with nuclear weapons.

Of course, knowing this administration, the launch code is probably password.

Also, they've changed the hats.

It says, make America glow again.

That was worrisome to me.

Wow, she says.

I tell you, only Donald Trump could start World War III while he's on vacation.

It's easy to forget that all this saber rattling is happening from a golf club.

It's Caddy Shaq meets Apocalypse Now.

And by the way, General Kelly, great fucking job keeping Trump under control.

That really worked out well.

General Kelly, oh, you did a great job.

No, it was left to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who

six months ago was head of ExxonMobil.

This is the guy now I'm counting on to stop the world from blowing up.

Left to him to try and walk things back.

Rex Tillerson said the other day, this is a quote, he said, I think Americans should sleep well at night.

I have no concerns about this particular rhetoric of the last few days.

Yeah, that's comforting.

In other words, nothing to see here, people.

President, what does this button do?

Was just talking out his ass again.

I mean, how close does this toddler have to get to the stove before the parents, the Republican Party, pick him up?

By the way, I love this.

While all this is going on this week, Trump from his vacation establishment got into the opiate debate.

He said he's going to end this.

He said the opiate epidemic is a national emergency.

And the opiate epidemic said, right back at you, big guy.

All right, we got a great show.

Fareed Zakari and John Meachim

are here at a Lillary speaking with the Big Bang Theories, incredibly talented Jim Parsons.

But first up, he's a neuroscientist, author, and atheist whose new book is Science and the Soul, Selected Writings of a Passionate Rationalist.

I am proud to call him my friend, Richard Dawkins.

Hey, Richard!

How are you, Professor?

Great to see you.

Oh, of course.

All right, first of all, I have to tell you, I love the title of this book, Science and the Soul, because you know it makes you go, what?

Well, that's the point.

Yeah, that's the point.

So tell us why you put soul in a book from such a famous rationalist and scientist.

And obviously, I don't mean soul in the sense of immortal soul.

Soul.

Well, we're Americans.

Nothing's obvious.

Soul is the catch in the throat when you look up at the Milky Way.

It's the swelling in the chest that you get when you listen to a Schubert quartet or read a Shakespeare sonnet.

I'm fed up with religion hijacking the soul in this sense.

They sometimes say to me, you're an atheist.

How can you appreciate Beethoven?

As though it has anything to do with it.

Really?

That's what people say.

I've had that, yes.

That's ridiculous.

Well, I know people say to me all the time, why can't we reconcile science and faith?

And, you know, we went through this with George Bush when he said we should teach evolution as well as creationism side by side.

Teach the controversy, yeah.

Right, that's what they call it.

You really can't have it both ways, can you?

Faith is the very opposite of science.

Faith is belief in something without evidence.

Science...

insists all the time on evidence.

It's based upon evidence, logical reasoning from evidence.

Faith and science are completely incompatible.

You'd think that would be non-controversial, but I know throughout history you have people who don't care for science, don't believe in science, have no use for it.

It seems like nowadays it's seen as something that is actually threatening.

People are literally hostile to it.

Well, very much so.

And you see this in the climate change debate

example.

And you see various Trump is very Catholic churchy.

Various intellectuals who are more or less anti-science and extolling the virtues of personal opinion, subjective opinion, as opposed to objective truth.

And that's

being given a sort of stamp of approval by some academic disciplines.

Yeah, I know you are fighting this with something, I think it's called the Teacher Institute for Evolutionary Science, where you actually are teaching people how to go into schools and teach evolutionary science.

Well, that's right.

It's run by a marvellous woman called Bertha Vasquez in Florida, who is a teacher.

And

the rationale is that middle school teachers

have to teach science and they can teach other parts of science.

But when it comes to evolution, they meet hostility from parents, from children, and so they don't dare do it.

And so they need to be taught how to teach evolution.

So what Bertha does is to run workshops for middle school teachers and prime them, arm them with how to teach evolution, how to answer the various ridiculous objections that they're going to meet, for example.

But when you meet ridiculous objections, they come from ridiculous people.

I know.

And I don't, I've never seen a case where logic swayed them.

No, but

these.

There's that.

I once got into trouble, and indeed I was sued for $51 million

for saying that people who don't believe in evolution are either ignorant, stupid or insane.

Now, that was taken as an insult, but actually, of course, it's a simple statement of fact.

It really is.

Because by far the most important member of that little trilogy is ignorant.

We're all ignorant of something.

We're all ignorant of...

We're all ignorant of most things.

We're all ignorant of most things.

I'm certainly ignorant of baseball.

And it's something that I would like to remedy, and somebody can tell me about it.

I could.

Let's start with the infield fly roll.

Okay.

Okay, so another one of your projects, I know you rescue bloggers, secular bloggers.

This is mostly...

Yes, this is something done by the Center for Inquiry, which is the organization that my foundation has just merged with.

It's called Secular Rescue.

And there are a number of people in mostly Islamic countries who are in danger of their lives because they are blogging secularism, free thinking, atheism.

Bangladesh, Pakistan, places like that.

And what the Secular Rescue Program does is we don't actually do a Scarlet Pimpernel.

We don't go rushing in with sort of chariots and seize them.

But we do provide money and we do provide documents and find them places to go in Europe or America.

And that's something that's actually happening.

I mean, that's something that we can't,

people can't argue with.

There is an underground railroad, basically what you're providing here, for people who just want to blog about secular thoughts in the Muslim world.

And yet you, like I, was disinvited for an event.

We have that in common.

Yes, we do, we do.

A badge of honor.

At the school that 50 years ago was known most for free speech, Berkeley.

Yes.

Now, it was.

Let's not get into that.

I don't know whether he's for us or against us.

Let's not ask.

But I don't want to give them too much publicity because they don't deserve it.

But a radio station, you are going to do an interview to promote your book.

And I won't name them.

They don't deserve it.

They're horrible.

But here's what they said.

We canceled the book event.

We didn't know that Hugh had offended and hurt in his tweets and other comments on Islam so many people.

We don't endorse hurtful speech.

We emphatically support serious free speech, obviously fucking not.

But we do not support abusive speech.

They don't know what the word abusive means.

And obviously they don't understand the concept that sometimes the truth hurts.

What is

all places, yes.

And not the only only one in this country that's going crazy like that.

That's right.

It's an epidemic that's going on

of people running scared from open speech, running scared of anybody who might come along and say something that poor little diddoms find offensive.

What do they think a university is for?

I know.

So what is the.

How are we going to shovel our way out of this mess?

Because these are the people who are on our side.

That's the problem.

That's what I wanted to say.

I think that this radio station and these universities, they're on our side.

We're on their side.

Now, I was deplatformed specifically because of what I was alleged to have said about Islam.

I think that the reason they did it was probably a laudable motive.

They are on the side of oppressed minorities.

They think that Muslims are an oppressed minority, oppressed by people like us.

Actually, of course, Muslims are oppressed by Islam.

Exactly.

That's right.

Yes.

And criticism of a religion

is not the same thing as bigotry.

You know, I went through this with the Catholic Church ten years ago.

They wanted to throw me off television, and they were like, you're anti-Catholic.

I'm not anti-Catholic.

I'm anti-child fucking.

And I'm going to point out who's guilty of that.

And I'm not.

I'm not Islamophobic.

I'm anti-keeping women instead of second-class citizens.

Exactly, and throwing gay people off buildings.

Yes.

And of course, we're not saying they all do that.

No.

And the ones who don't are being persecuted by the ones who do.

That's where the persecution comes from.

So

these people have identified the wrong victims of persecution.

Right.

It's laudable that they're on the side of people who are victims of persecution, but they've got the wrong persecutors.

You know why?

No one reads a newspaper anymore.

No, that's true.

If it doesn't come through

on your

all right, what a great way to end.

Richard Dawkins, thank you very much.

I love you, sir.

I appreciate you coming by.

Richard Dawkins, get his new book.

All right, let's meet our panel.

Oh,

look who's here.

Okay, here they are.

He is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of American Lion, Andrew Jackson in the White House, available now in paperback.

I call him the Meach.

John Meacham.

And he's a Washington Post columnist and host of CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS.

You all know Fareed Zakaria.

Okay.

What an all-star panel.

It's like it's my birthday.

Okay, boys.

Now,

I know that right away we should probably talk about North Korea.

And by the way, Kim Jong-un, if you're tuning in late,

Dennis Rodman does live here in

Los Angeles, Australia, Adelaide.

He's very nearby.

You'd kill him.

You'd kill your only friend.

And so what you did to your uncle, so you know.

Good news is we're not in Guam.

No,

we're not in Guam.

Yeah, I'd be chitting my pants.

So everybody seems to be saying the same thing about North Korea.

So let me come out of Lefield and give the contrarian view.

Trump is a madman.

He's saying crazy things.

What if it works?

What if madman versus madman, I mean, we've had

no good policy toward this problem for 20 years through many administrations of both parties.

Well, if by it working, you mean that Trump saying what he's saying will get the North Koreans to actually denuclearize, I would give them the Nobel Prize.

I think that is highly, highly, highly unlikely to happen.

I think that the North Koreans, look, if you look at it from North Korea's point of view, they feel totally embattled.

They feel surrounded by

enemies or friends that don't care much for them.

The most powerful country in the world.

Sounds like like Trump.

The most powerful country in the world, the United States, has constantly said it wants to change the regime

in some way they'll destroy the country.

If you were in that situation, you'd want to buy insurance.

And in the world of international relations, insurance is nuclear weapons.

So Trump, by being more bellicose, by threatening more, is actually, to my mind, making them stick even more closely to these nuclear weapons.

Why are they going to give them up when he's making it clear, look, we're going to attack you.

And what they keep saying is, well, guess what?

We've got nukes.

And you don't tend to attack people with nukes.

He's incentivizing their hawkishness because why does someone want nuclear weapons?

They want to be members of a club that only has nine members.

From 1945 to today, so for 70-something years, we've basically averaged one country every eight years joins the club.

There are only nine.

United States, Great Britain, Israel, China, Pakistan.

I'm going to miss a couple.

Israel.

And

what we're really looking at here is

the elemental, primal drive of a regime to have the same amount of respect on the world stage as those other nine powers.

And so when you bait them,

and that was baiting.

I think he thought he was being Churchill, but he sounded a little bit more like a...

He doesn't actually know who he is.

I think he thought he was being Jean-Claude von Daim.

Well, there you go.

Look, and the chances, and

here's the danger, it seems to me.

Jean is exactly right.

I don't know which is worse.

Either he's bluffing or he's not.

The chances are he's not.

He doesn't know.

Right.

His whole life, he's made empty threats, right?

I mean, it's like I...

I'll forget it next week.

And in a way, he really thinks that nobody will remember.

I said, I'm going to tell you this amazing stuff about Obama's birth certificate, nothing.

I'm going to recognize Taiwan, nothing.

I'm going to get Mexico to pay for the wall, nothing.

And he just moves on.

But this is different.

But the danger is, what if he's not bluffing?

And what if, you know, one of the things I worry about is we know all he does is watch cable news.

What if he's watching us and he says, I'm going to show Belmont Farid Zakaria.

I'm going to go to war.

That's like I want to say, Mr.

President, if you're watching layoff, you know what?

Pay no attention.

I'd be happy to be humiliated.

Just don't start a nuclear war to prove me wrong.

The PGA tournament.

Or you could just say the PGA tournament's on the Golf Channel.

That's really good, sir.

Okay, so I must tell you,

my bigger fear,

I am afraid of North Korea attacking us.

Besides Armageddon,

my bigger fear is we're becoming North Korea.

Can I give you a few examples from this week?

Okay, Jeff Sessions, under attack, rose strongly to have a press conference this week about leaks,

media leaks, which no one cares about.

It was a press conference for one person,

Donald Trump.

When state government is functioning that way, when you're doing a press conference to be seen by just the dear leader, okay, we found out from Vice News this week that Trump gets a flattery folder twice a day.

Yeah.

At 9.30 in the morning and then at 4.30 in the afternoon.

It's like a Snickers for the ego.

He foregoes the daily intelligence briefing, which he barely gets, but he gets the daily flattery report.

It's like something out of the Lion King.

Right.

It just has like good clippings, and then just pictures of him looking strong.

Okay.

Did you see Putin one-upped him with the picture of Putin bare-chested fishing?

I got that coming later in the show.

Yes.

It is government by Instagram and how many likes you get.

I mean,

the country is.

Okay, so then we found out almost half the Republicans in the country are willing to postpone the 2020 election if we find out that illegal immigrants are voting, which we know factually they don't, hasn't happened.

But he put that in the water the day after the inauguration.

And now there's a commission to find it out, so his drooling idiots will believe anything.

So, okay, we're talking about canceling elections.

We found out last week the voting machines can be hacked in less than an hour.

He thanked Putin.

Our president thanked Putin for expelling 750 American diplomats from Russia.

And the coup de grace, I thought, Fox News, op-ed by Chris Steyerwalt, not familiar with him, but I don't watch Fox News.

Would you even care if he was guilty?

There it is.

That's the headline.

He says, the stock market's up, unemployment's down, the economy seems to be picking up steam, streets are safe, nation is mostly secure.

Does it matter whether or not the president is a crook?

So we started with we had no contact with the Russians, then we went to, oh, okay, but no collusion.

Then, okay, collusion, but collusion isn't a crime.

Now we've come all the way to, is it such a crime to commit a crime?

Right.

Right.

You know, the.

This is what I worry about.

Yeah.

What I have called the slow-moving coup.

Yeah.

And the thing about postponing the election is, at the risk of self-parity, one of the greatest moments in American history, I think, is the fact that we had an election in 1864 with half the country in an armed state of treasonous rebellion.

And people said to Lincoln, you shouldn't do it.

And he said,

if we cancel or even postpone a free election, then those in rebellion will have already won.

And we therefore had

at

what Shelby Foote called the crossroads of our being, the great existential moment of American life, which I think we're living in another existential moment for all the reasons, the catalog of horrors, the basket of deplorables.

And that was just this week.

Oh, no.

That was Thursday, baby.

Yeah.

You know,

one of the great tells about Trump, you said, well, we remember it next week.

Whenever he says next week, you know he's making it up.

Because he was like, I'm going to have more on that next week.

The longest weeks in cosmic history.

You know, the thing that worries me is, as part of this, is

the polarization is now of a different kind.

So we did the special on Trump, Why Trump Won.

Right, yeah.

And what we found was that the voters, the Trump voters,

why were they sticking with him?

You'd say, well, he's not particularly conservative on a lot of issues.

It didn't matter.

Ideology was irrelevant.

He hasn't got anything done.

It didn't matter.

Competence wasn't important.

It was essentially a kind of tribal identification that said, we so hate these

urban, overeducated elites that tell us, yeah, exactly us, that tell us, you know,

exactly, exactly, exactly.

And

exactly that's right.

And

we are going to stick with this guy.

Luckily, Hillary wasn't that, right?

Exactly.

Exactly.

And we're going to stick with this guy no matter what.

We'll stick with him to the end rather than, there's never going to be a point where a Trump voter says, you know what?

The New York Times' version of Donald Trump was right, and I was wrong.

That ain't going to happen.

Well, speaking of the New York Times, here's Ross Dalthitt this week.

He was talking about our recent history, and he said, other than when Obama was on the ballot, because Obama was an exceptional politician, he said, a party that's terrible at governing, I'm guessing he means the Republicans, can still win elections if the other party is worse at politics.

And I feel like that's the problem we're in.

The Democrats are horrible at politics.

And the ideal, the ideal of the American experiment was that these would not be separate states.

They would be different realms with a very porous border.

Good politics is often good governing and vice versa.

And we have, really in the last 50 years, I'd say, certainly since the end of the Roosevelt era, we have managed to break these apart into where campaigning and the permanent campaign is a perpetual game of now cable news paintball.

It's just whatever, you just, whatever it is, you shoot them and you hope you hit them.

And

it is dissociated from the actual work work of governance.

Great politicians govern well.

Ronald Reagan, you can disagree all day long with what he did, but he understood that there was a connection between what he said and what he had to do to govern.

He understood there was a connection between his life experience, which was being a labor negotiator out here, and being president.

And so

with Trump, it's about entertainment.

I mean, we're all trapped on an an endless loop of the apprentice.

But he has.

But he has.

And I want to be fired, and nobody.

Or you really want to fire him.

As ever for each other, but better.

But I feel like there's one piece that Trump has tapped into, and Republicans do very well, which is this sense that they're

victims of this liberal elite that is governing.

And I think to myself, you've got the White House, the House of Representatives, the Senate, the Supreme Court, and almost two-thirds of state legislatures.

And you're

the oppressed minority.

You're running the damn country.

How can everything be going so badly if you're in charge?

Because the head guy is a whiny little

bitch.

Okay, I've certainly trained them well on that one.

All right, so you know, among the myriad things that Trump makes bad, bad, he knows two words, sad, bad,

is that he constantly emboldens the wrong people.

Certainly overseas, he loves dictators, but here at home, this is happening this weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Look at this, Readies for a white nationalist rally on Sunday.

Apparently, they're so emboldened, they are all meeting the biggest one they've had in decades, the alt-right, the KKK, white supremacists, neo-Nazis.

It's a veritable rainbow coalition of white trash.

And

we're calling it Crackercella.

And

they've got some great stuff lined up.

They've got seminars.

Would you like to hear some of the bands that are playing at Cracker Cella?

Okay.

Even Whiter Snake is playing there.

The talking hoods are terrific.

MZ Himmler is on the bill.

Mike and the eugenics.

Men not at work are there.

Blondie is playing there.

Oh, wait, that's Milo.

Earthwind and Führer are...

And of course, Ted Nugent.

And

they also have some seminars for the people people there like How to Be an Anti-Semite and Still Love Seinfeld,

the importance of spell checking your tattoo,

plastic surgery for supremacists, how to be genetically superior when genetics let you down.

Tracing the roots of American jazz all the way back to Kenny G.

Only you can prevent Forrest Whitaker

why penis size doesn't matter to women reserve early spots fill up quickly

and of course if we're the superior race why do we all work at Denny's

Okay, he is the supernova of the Big Bang Theory and executive producer and moderator of the new documentary series First in Human airing Thursdays at nine on Discovery Jim Parsons everybody

There he is.

How are you, sir?

What a pleasure to meet you.

Oh, yeah.

No, no.

I've wanted to meet you for a long time.

And I know we have a lot of serious things to discuss.

But first off, I just have to say your show, always funny, always on the plane.

Thank you.

Always on the plane.

Oh, yes, yes.

You cannot take a plane now to number one.

We have a captive audience on many airlines, and we have used and abused them for a decade now.

Well, you know, I just want to say, we live in an era where entertainment is so fragmented.

So to be part of something that is that much of a broad hip.

I agree.

I agree.

You agree?

You're great.

No, that's not what I'm saying.

I'm saying that it is fantastic that anything could be

shared amongst some people.

Not everybody loves it, that's fine.

But it could be shared amongst different generations.

It's funny.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's a hip show in an old format.

Yeah.

Thank you.

And that's quite a baller contract you have.

People have done worse.

It's a lot of money.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What do you do with all that money, Jim?

I'm here talking to you as an elite.

I don't know.

I don't know.

But I know you're, you know, you're really a very curious guy, and you do this podcast.

I've heard it many times, and it's called, you know, Jim Parsons is too stupid for politics, which is

not Not true.

Enough truth.

But why do you say that?

I mean, I get it.

I get for the premise of the show, so you can be explained stuff.

I wanted it to be, obviously, it's somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but look, when I really wanted to do it, I wanted it to be Jim Parsons is too stupid to vote.

And they were, it was coming right after the election.

They were like, we don't want to talk about voting.

But I kind of meant that.

And what I meant was really the level and the volume of the discussion is so loud that I realized how many things I really don't know what the hell we're talking about when you break it down.

Like, we recently had a show about NATO, and I still can't really tell you exactly what it is, but I know better than I did.

And I thought it was a good example of something that you hear about, and you're like, oh, your whole life you grew up with something like NATO, NATO.

And then you're like, wait a minute, what is that?

Why do we care?

That's the fault of the educational system.

I agree with you.

I agree that you're not.

And you are not even a millennial, right?

You're...

Oh, my, I'm nearly as old as you, Bill.

I'm sorry.

Finish your thoughts.

I thought it was a way to connect.

I didn't really know what to do.

Keep going with this.

No, I just.

I mean, I wish that were.

We're Xers, right?

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, that's right.

Xers.

No.

No, you are Generation X.

I was just reading an article about him in Vanity Fair this week.

It's pretty interesting about how they're saying that the last generation with

even a tollhold back to reality.

Really?

Yes, but look, even when I went to high school, the rot had already set in.

Like in history, they were teaching mini courses.

They weren't teaching, you will appreciate it.

They were not teaching like this happened, then this happened and this happened.

That's called history.

If they did that, you'd know what the fuck NATO was.

You're absolutely right.

You know, you'd be afraid of the fact that

it's not as basic as how people get elected and what it means to be on a school board and what it means to grow up from that and go to the city council and the what the hell ever.

Right.

See, exactly.

But, you know.

Do you remember this moment where Trump, when after the House of Representatives passed the health care bill, Trump held this big celebration in the Rose Garden?

Yeah.

And I think he thought the bill had passed.

I think he didn't know it has to go to the Senate.

He thinks

executive orders are

laws.

And he signs them on those Trump Tower Cafe menus.

You know what I mean?

That leatherbound.

A wine list, sir.

A wine list for you.

They really are the biggest things I've ever seen.

They really are.

His video says a lot.

Okay.

So

I don't know what's happened to me.

I didn't want to come out here.

What's happening?

What's happening is I'm going to talk to you about one serious subject because I know it's very close to your heart and your show on the Discovery Channel.

Yes.

The secrets of Building 10.

Tell us what Building 10 is.

Building 10 is fascinating.

And this is something I didn't know.

Which is insane to me, which is one of the reasons I'm so happy to be a part of it.

Building 10 is a building that's part of the National Institutes of Health.

It's the largest clinical research hospital in the world.

We founded it.

Harry Truman, President Truman, was like, brought the cornerstone for it in the early 50s.

And this is a place where people with incurable diseases go, and they both obviously really hope for a cure that they'll find, but they're really volunteering themselves for study.

And they go into hospital rooms that right across the hall are laboratories where they're doing minute-by-minute research on these people and testing new things on them and monitoring them.

And

I was awed by the whole process and the bravery of people to put themselves in that position, number one.

But number two.

But they have incurable diseases.

Yes, and so

this is their last hope.

Yeah, no, I hear you.

I mean,

I never understood.

But it is a level of we're going to pinch and poke at you, but in a good way, they care.

Because you're going to die if we don't.

Okay.

Okay.

Here's the.

I mean, why do we have to always.

Is it the brain?

Is that the problem?

Yes.

You know, he bravely battled cancer.

What the hell?

Well, let me.

I give up.

You got me, cancer.

Hold on.

Hold on.

Let me tell you, break.

Okay, okay.

But it's a lot.

Listen, to be real friendly, there's a lot of doctors across the country that discourage their patients from going here because they think that they're volunteering to be poked in like a cynical way.

Cynical way.

All right.

Let me bring it.

Let me bring it up.

That's not right.

Can you help me?

You're a doctor.

But if they're doing it, ironically, that's wrong.

I don't like being here.

I've disappeared.

But you know,

I'm not watching anymore.

No, no, no, no.

Off the DVR.

Oh, no.

Let me be back.

Let me bring us together with Donald Trump.

The National Institute for Health is really one of the incredible jewels of the American science.

I mean, it's amazing what we've done.

The Trump budget has a $5 billion cut in it.

This is something we do that's a gift to science, it's a gift to the world, it's a gift to America, particularly for health.

But that's a huge job.

I think it goes from $31 billion to $26 billion.

It's the largest cut.

I mean, they would be decimated.

We spent more on golf carts for him this week.

Right.

That costs a lot to protect the golfing he does.

It's true.

Okay.

So let me ask about your, you're an American, right?

Very much so.

Okay.

Louise.

And did you ever do a podcast about immigration and that issue?

That where you wanted to learn more?

Because you're going to learn more now.

No, I'm happy.

We touched on it when the ban happened and when he first came into the US.

Okay.

So, yeah.

So you wrote an interesting article basically saying, and it gets at a bigger issue which I'm always trying to get at, which is how can Democrats ever win a damn election again?

And you talk about immigration, and you say there's a perfect example of an issue.

I think from 2012 to 2016 had the most flip, right?

Okay.

And that the Democrats are sort of absolutist on it and they're losing that middle ground.

So you can probably explain it better than I can.

Sure.

Look, first of all, there's the substance of the issue, which is there has been a lot of illegal immigration into the country.

There's no question those illegal immigrants do depress the wages of working men and women in the United States who are citizens.

I mean, it just stands to reason, right, if that's that's happening.

Secondly, there's been a lot of legal immigration.

In 1970, the number of foreign-born in the United States was about 4.5%.

It's now about 14%.

So it's a big shift to take in and to digest.

Worthy of a debate.

Worthy of a debate and worthy of talking about, well, how would you assimilate better?

What are the issues?

Democrats, I think, partly because they decided that they were going to chase this idea of the kind of the great Hispanic majority that is emerging, decided to become completely absolutist on it.

And I think they're missing the point.

There are a lot of Americans who are ready to listen to the Democrats on the economic message.

All the data shows this.

But they think the Democrats don't get them on some of these cultural issues.

This would be a perfect one to have some kind of a, you know, a reasonable open debate and talk about more assimilation.

I'm not sure I get them, and I do read the paper.

But yes, I understand why people who don't even read the paper look at the Democrats on this issue and just think that their policy is come one, come all, that they live in this cult of celebrating diversity, and also they think that, you know, oh, the more more Latinos who come here, and they vote illegally,

you know, if they don't check that out, we're going to postpone that.

Right.

Because of all

they're going to be at the incurables hospital.

But the

but it also plays into a perennial tendency.

You can pick and choose founders' quotes for these things, but even Alexander Hamilton, who apparently sang this at the Constitutional Committee,

said that you have to be careful about immigrants who might not adapt to the national spirit.

You had moments after

the revolutions of 1848, which I know you want to talk about at length.

I do.

There was a crackdown.

After the Bolshevik Revolution, there was a crackdown.

We have just been ambivalent about the numbers of folks that we've wanted to allow in at different times.

And so

it's it's not racist to debate immigration.

And unfortunately, because I think the rhetoric on the Republican side has gone so far, it feels that way.

Yeah, I think that's right.

And you also quote this guy, Samuel Huntington, in the article,

who says, That's a great quote, isn't it?

Would America be America if it wasn't founded by British Protestants, if it was founded by the French, the Spanish, or the Portuguese?

He says,

if America were founded not by British dissenting Protestants, but by French Catholics or Spanish Catholics or Portuguese Catholics, would it be America?

He says, no, it would be Quebec or Mexico or Brazil.

That it's not just the ideas.

There is a kind of culture that binds us together.

And it's important to try to ask, how do we make sure immigrants buy into that?

So if we ask questions about Muslim immigration,

we would like it to be people like Dr.

Dawkins and myself, not to just looked upon as, well, there has to be a racist reason for that.

First of all, it's not a race, it's a religion.

But we're talking about those shared values.

Right, I think anyone coming in, you'd want to say, how do you make sure that they, and part of what has happened is on the left, there's been a kind of multiculturalism that says everything is equal, all these other cultures are equal.

And look, I can say as an immigrant, if I wanted to maintain Indian culture, I could have stayed in India.

The reason I came to America was because I admired American culture.

Right, right.

And

I used to.

The first things I said on my old show is: if you're going to come to the melting pot, melt a little.

Yeah, you've got to melt a little.

That is more electric.

Yeah, you can't take a driver's license photo in a burqa.

We have to see your face.

I feel that way about leaving Tennessee.

But

anyway, but they have Jack Daniels, you can cross the state line.

But the point is, no, there was

someone who agrees to some degree with Huntington's argument is a historian we both know, Gordon Wood, who pointed out, at least for the first time in my reading experience, that America is not an ethnic nation.

It's not a religious nation.

It's not a tribal nation.

It is devoted to an idea.

And an idea that was best articulated in one of the most important sentences ever written in the English language by a man who lived in Charlottesville, Virginia, where that awful rally is taking place, that all men are created equal.

He did not, Jefferson did not include everyone in that sentence.

But the story of America is the expansion of that sentence, the ever-unfolding, however slow, however tragic, inclusion of meaning.

And that's the American story.

We actually have made progress.

A lot of other nations have not.

And the other problem about immigration, interesting thing about immigration, is people aren't trying to leave, for God's sake.

sake, they're trying to come in.

And so we have to be doing something right.

Right.

Okay.

I have one more question before we run out of time, which is some Democrats now are saying that the Russia story does not test well for them.

No, I'm not kidding.

Gavin Newsom is here next week.

I'm a big fan of his, but he is one of the people who said it, and I want to argue with him about it.

Because this to me is the problem Democrats have to get to your larger issue about Democrats.

They chase polls.

Republicans don't do that.

Republicans change polls.

They're never intimidated by them.

Russia doesn't test well.

Make it test well.

Because it's not over.

It's an ongoing story.

I don't even know why we need Bob Mueller.

Don Jr.

took a meeting after he got a memo, an email, from the Russians saying, we got dirt.

Let's work together on this election.

I don't, you know, the Democrats act like,

unless it would hold up in a court of law, you can't, and the Republicans are like, fuck that.

This is the court of public opinion.

How about Don Jr.

is a traitor already?

You know, they sent him this email.

Look at me getting all excited.

I'm quiet.

That's really inspiring.

But they sent him this email, if you don't remember, that said, we have dirt on Hillary Clinton.

And he sent back, I love it.

That's the crime already.

If you sent me an email that said, I have child porn, and I wrote back, I love it.

I'd love to see what you have.

That's already the case.

Keep me.

I don't think I'm holding it.

No, I think you're going to be fine.

Are you going to work through this?

I like the pounding.

That's good.

And the defense is, it turned out they had nothing.

So, in other words, the defense says, so often in the Trump administration, it was total incompetence.

We couldn't even manage the pollution.

Oh, Donald Trump.

It turned out there was nothing.

I don't know who was in my office.

I feel like the guy coming to you and you're saying, oh, I didn't like this, this is a good one.

I'll bet you a bottle of Jack Daniels before it's all over.

Donald Trump says,

it was the greatest meeting ever.

Only we could have done this meeting.

But I mean, isn't it amazing the Democrats cannot keep a real scandal going?

When we heard about Benghazi for four years.

I'm sorry.

No, no, no, no, no.

Preach, Bill, preach.

I heard you say this.

Amen, brother.

That was your amen behind it.

Amen, Penn, amen.

No, it's true, though.

We've been through, all we do is investigations.

All we've talked about for the past three presidents is investigations.

And suddenly, it's like, this is a waste of time.

I think I know why this, I think I have a theory about why this is.

I think the Democrats do have a long historical memory, which is not always a great thing.

And I think they remember McCarthy.

And I think that McCarthy,

not Charlie, although that's what Trump would think,

is

Jenny.

Well,

exactly.

But we're living in a Roy Cohn era, right?

McCarthy's lawyer, we don't even have to make this up.

Joe McCarthy's lawyer was Donald Trump's lawyer.

It's not even a jump over a Donald Trump.

And mentor.

It's a mentor who was the master of inventing a headline and saying, we're chasing a witness.

Right.

May never find that witness, you know, but they did, of keeping,

it was a tabloid sensibility.

And I think that for a long time, say if you agree with this, Democrats have been worried about investigative stories because they think of it as a McCarthyite undertaking.

What they have not learned is that, guess what?

Watergate all turned out to be true.

Yeah.

Right.

And so I think they jump over Watergate in a way that's not helpful.

You're not crying wolf if there's a wolf.

Exactly.

Got to go to New Rules.

I wish we could stay all night.

You boys are a lot of fun, but New Rules, everybody.

All right, New Rule.

If North Korea's generals get so many medals they have no more room on their jackets,

their worst threat isn't starvation.

It's great inflation.

Guys, you had one war 65 years ago and it was a tie.

You don't look like a noble warrior, you look like a gay elevator.

Could someone press eight for me?

Thank you.

New world restaurants must tell me how giving me this when I ask for pepper is any better than just saying, fuck off.

Even packages of airline pretzels are like, really?

New Rule Uber has to stop running those ads for recruiting drivers that say, get your side hustle on.

It's not a side hustle, it's a part-time job with shitty pay, lousy benefits, and no future.

You could run virtually the same ad for recruiting prostitutes.

Need some extra cash, girl?

Get your side hustle on with Pimp Daddy Leah.

New Rule young people thinking of buying the new stripper scent air freshener

Have to think again.

You're smoking weed in your room.

There's a knock at the door.

Are you kids getting high in there?

No, mom, it's just strippers

New Rule Vladimir Putin has to admit he doctored He doctored this vacation photo and not just to make your stomach look tight or flat.

You airbrushed out out whole parts of the original.

And

finally, new rule, it's time to change the symbol of the Republican Party from this to this.

Because that's all they are now, trolls.

People who get off on provoking other people who are trying to have an adult conversation.

Americans keep wondering, why is it that all this White House seems to do is pick childish fights when we have so many big problems.

Why is Trump still attacking Hillary?

She's not in office.

All you have to do, drive her out of the woods?

Republicans had seven years to come up with a health care plan.

Why don't they have one?

Oh, snowflakes.

Trolls don't have health care plans.

They write, lazy live moochers want health care?

Try getting a job.

That is their health care plan because they're not well.

If the other side is shedding liberal tears, it doesn't matter if you crash the health insurance market or the prisons overflow or Putin takes Italy.

Look at all those snowflakes whining.

We did that.

That's why Trump made Scott Pruitt, the EPA's biggest critic, head of the EPA.

Republicans used to be against lead in the drinking water.

Now they're happy to poison their children if it'll make Al Gore sad.

Why does Trump love coal?

Same reason there are people out there now intentionally modifying their trucks to produce more air pollution.

Republicans aren't an opposition party now, they're the Democrats' crazy ex-girlfriend.

And job one, job only, is to make liberals freak, like carrying assault rifles into a restaurant or a snowball into Congress, or suddenly tweeting for no reason that transgender people are now banned from the military.

You think Trump cares who serves in our military?

As long as it's not him, he's good.

People say, why does Trump tweet so much?

Those tweets are a distraction.

No, the tweets are the whole point.

Governing is the distraction.

You remember this picture?

Trump, right after he fired Comey, welcoming the Russian spy master into the Oval Office to give our intel to him, a move that left most people stunned.

But not his people.

Their reaction wasn't, OMG, what a traitor.

It was, LOL, what a troll.

Puppet, you're the puppet.

Anytime you see that shit-eating grin, you know it's troll time.

Here it is again a couple of months ago when Trump invited to the White House the Axis of Stupid

Kid Rock, Ted Nugent, and Sarah Palin, the denarius stillborn of the House of Pancakes.

And Sarah Palin perfectly defined her party's transformation that day when she said of liberals, it's really funny to me to see their sploaty heads keep sploating.

Ha ha ha ha, Sarah, sploating, just like your meth lab.

Ten years ago, Trolls weren't even a thing.

Or if they were, we had a different word, sadist.

Now they run the country.

And by run it, I mean can't and won't.

That's our show.

I will be at the Microsoft right here at LA October 7th.

I want to thank John Meacham, Fareen Zakaria, Jim Parsons, Richard Dawkins.

Join us now on Overtime on YouTube.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

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

For more information, log on to HBO.com.