Ep. #432: Former Vice President Al Gore, Ralph Reed, Jr.

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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 very much.

I love you too.

Thank you.

And I know why you're happy because we're back from vacation and Trump is on his.

It's amazing.

No, we were off the whole month.

The day he come back.

He goes, it's like we're lining up our cycles.

Donald Trump.

But I mean, just the concept of a Trump vacation.

I mean, he spends all his time golfing, eating cake, watching TV, tweeting stupid shit.

What's a vacation?

For him, lapsing into a coma?

And you know, usually we've seen this over the years.

When presidents go on vacation, they always, the White House puts out a list of the books they're going to be reading,

right?

You know, like always something fun but respectable, a Tom Clancy novel, and then, of course, a book of poems by a black lady

and ten books about Lincoln, with the Trump White House not even trying to put out this list.

They were like, we are the most full of shit people in the history of the world, but there are limits.

We're not even going to trust.

But he's going partly on vacation because the White House needs a renovation.

It is an old building.

Of course, there are eight people, says a Sports Illustrated writer, who heard Trump say, the White House is the real dump.

I mean, can you imagine, we'll get to that later in the show.

I don't want to tip the ending, but it just balls me.

A real dump, to call it a dump, I mean, maybe it needs some work, but a dump.

When I think of a dump, I think of a place that's full of rats that's leaking.

Oh, wait.

When is Trump going to learn that everything he says now, he's the president, is going to get out there?

This week he had a very bad phone week.

Very bad week with the phone.

First of all, he claimed claimed that there were two calls that happened that plainly never happened.

One with the head of the Boy Scout.

Oh, did you see that Boy Scout thing?

That speech?

That speech, which is the creepiest thing I have ever seen a Republican politician ever do to the Boy Scouts.

And Dennis Hastert used to fuck them.

But yet, Trump claimed that after that speech, which the Boy Scouts had to apologize for, apologies for the president's speech, he said the head of the Boy Scouts called him and said it was the greatest speech he'd ever heard.

And then they got hold of the head of the Boy Scouts.

He said, no.

No, never happened.

Don't have his number.

Wouldn't say that if I did.

And then Trump said the president of Mexico called him to praise.

his immigration policies.

They got a hold of the president of Mexico.

No.

Not at all.

Wouldn't do that.

We keep records.

Ridiculous.

Why would the president of Mexico praise Trump's immigration?

Because they had a big new immigration policy proposal this week.

Trump wants to cut legal immigrants in half.

He wants to cut immigration in half, but don't give him any ideas.

They want to change the policy to bring in immigrants only with skills that America needs.

You know, engineers, doctors, Slavic lingerie models.

Just

and then, you know, his conversations with foreign leaders, they were leaked this week.

I don't know if that's a good thing, but he tells the president of Mexico at one point, I won New Hampshire, which he didn't.

I won New Hampshire because it's a drug-infested den.

Okay, this is so fucking ridiculous.

I have been to New Hampshire.

It's not a drug-infested den, and I would know, because at my house, I have a drug-infested den.

I actually have one.

It's my man cave.

But then at the call, you saw this one to the Australian Prime Minister.

This one takes the cake.

First of all, Trump doesn't know the word for refugee.

He doesn't know the word for dairy, apparently.

He's talking about the fact that there's 1,200 Australian immigrants who are coming here.

We promised to take them.

The Australian Prime Minister is patiently explaining to this idiot that

they've been vetted by both the Australian and U.S.

security officials and Trump.

No, I guarantee they are bad.

He says, they are not going to be wonderful people who are going to work for local milk people.

Local milk people.

This is when the Australian Prime Minister says, put mommy on the phone.

Local milk people.

But,

you know, let's catch you up.

I've been living off a month.

Christ.

Oh, thank you very much.

Let me catch you up on what happened with some of the lot of changes at the White House in one month.

Sean Spicer, the press spokesman, out, right?

Reince Prievis, he was the chief of staff.

He's out, replaced by General Kelly, who was the head of Homeland Security, who's out there, and now Rick Perry, they say, is going to be in.

Also, Eric has been demoted to Tiffany.

Jared is now married to Kelly Ann, and

to no one's surprise, Ivanka is replacing Melania.

Also, Jeff Sessions is still hiding under his desk

and Rex Tillerson will now be reporting directly to Putin.

Okay, so those have been

changes.

Steve Bannon's position is still the same, bent over,

sucking his own cock.

Okay, that's well that's not my.

Those are the words of Anthony Scaramucci, who I never even got a shot at.

This guy was in and out faster than Taco Bell.

It was like an episode.

It's like an episode of the Jersey Shore where the situation moves to Washington for a week.

But, ladies and gentlemen, all that chaos is over now because Trump has called the military and General Kelly.

is on the case.

He's the chief of staff now.

No more of this erratic, unhinged bullshit that's been going on.

He's going to find out who's responsible for that.

Who could have?

Yes, the White House has a new sheriff.

He is kicking ass.

He is taking names.

Everybody's got to look right now.

Today, General Kelly knocked on Steve Bannon's door.

He said, hey, quit sucking in there and get back to work.

All right, we got a great show.

We got Kristen Folkis, Anderson, Josh Green, and Michael Weiss.

And a little later, he'll be speaking with the Faith and Freedom Coalition's.

Our friend Ralph Reed is here.

But first up, he is planet Earth's most tireless champion.

His sequel for the Oscar-winning An Inconvenient Truth is out now.

It's called an Inconvenient Sequel.

Truth to Power.

He's also the author of the companion book, Truth to Power.

Al Gore is over here.

Al Gore,

look at that.

You do love this area.

Thank you.

Al Gore is here, ladies and gentlemen.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That's all.

All right.

Okay, so

I didn't mention.

Oh, you got your cowboy boots on.

Yeah, they're

for the tour.

We forgot you're from Tennessee.

I didn't mention you were the vice president.

You were the vice president of the United States.

Yep.

Okay, great.

I took that out of the intro.

I thought they knew it.

Anyway, so I want to ask about this movie because back in 2003, James Hansen said we are approaching a tipping point.

If we don't do something in 10 years,

it's too late.

Well, it's past 10 years.

Your first movie came out in 2006, similar kind of predictions.

Are we kidding ourselves about the tipping point?

Are we moving the tipping point?

Well,

people mean different things by the phrase.

The most important meaning is, have we crossed a a point of no return where this thing spins out of control?

And the scientists still tell us, no, we have not gotten to that point.

We can still avoid the most catastrophic consequences if we start acting boldly now.

And we have begun to start.

But some tipping points have unfortunately been passed.

I'll give you an example, a very large part of the West Antarctic ice sheet just years ago.

They said, okay, that's crossed the tipping point.

It is now going to be gone no matter what we do.

And that actually hit me pretty hard when that news came out because it does mean that there's going to be considerable sea level rise no matter what we do.

But we still have the ability to control the pace of that disappearance and sea level rise, and we still have the ability to stop other ice sheets behind it from crossing.

Now, there's some other tipping points that are kind of uncertain.

We're taking huge dangerous risks now that we should not be taking.

So when the sea levels rise,

obviously we could lose, like Venice,

we could lose Florida.

Yeah, I just.

And who would know better about losing Florida?

Actually, I think I carried Florida.

That's right.

Okay, there you go.

I think so, too.

That's another

thing.

We won't go there.

There are a lot of coastal cities that are going to face a real danger.

And I went to Miami in the making of this movie.

I saw fish from the ocean swimming in the streets just because it was high tide.

And by the way, this week, they had more than six inches of rain in two hours, and it flooded again for a different.

reason connected to the climate crisis.

Norfolk, Virginia, the largest naval base in the world, is going to have to be moved because of sea level rise.

Galveston, you can go down the list, but the big danger is for poor people in places like Bangladesh and Calcutta and Mumbai.

Right.

And, you know, when you talk to Republicans about this, they seem to have a couple of talking points that they always go to.

One of them is, why should we do anything?

Because China isn't.

That's not true, right?

Not anymore.

So address all these.

Yeah, China is doing something.

Another one of them is it's going to cost jobs.

It's bad for the economy.

That's not really true.

And the other one is the science isn't really settled.

All these are bogus, are they not?

Yeah, they are.

China is implementing a cap-and-trade program right now, closing hundreds of coal-burning plants, building more solar farms than anybody else by far.

India, by the way, has done a U-turn since the Paris Agreement, and they're moving.

You personally negotiated that with the Indian people.

Well, there are a lot of people.

A lot of people there.

But the solar part of it, right?

Well,

I was happy to be asked to help by Cristiana Figueres and the other leaders of that conference, and I like to think it did some good.

But India just announced that within only 13 years, 100% of all their new cars and trucks are going to have to be electric vehicles.

That's more than we're doing on the transportation side.

Now,

as for jobs, solar jobs are now growing 17 times faster than other jobs in the economy.

The single fastest growing job is wind turbine technician.

The real bright spot for creating jobs and higher wages is in renewable energy and the sustainability solutions.

We ought to be investing in that to put more people to work.

But, you know, Trump was in West Virginia again the other day.

I guess it was yesterday.

You know, whenever he's he's down,

they put him in front of one of these rallies, usually in a place like that, and he promises them they're going to go back into the mines.

He said, are there any Russians here?

In Russia, when they said you're going to go into the mines, it's a threat.

Here, it's a reward.

I don't understand why people want to go back into the mines.

It has to be the worst job in the world.

Well, the coal companies themselves eliminated most of those jobs with mechanization, and then cheap natural gas from fracking came in and finished off most of the rest of the industry.

It's not coming back, but we have an obligation to those miners.

They and their predecessors did help to build this country.

They ought to be getting the training they need and getting the opportunities that are opening up now.

Okay, so why can't

Democrats sell that to them?

that we could retrain you for a job that you probably would like better than being in a dark hole where the life expectancy is about 15 years less than everybody else

for probably a better wage.

Yeah, we ought to be able to, and we ought to get back to the kind of social contract we once had to recognize that some of these economic changes are not going to be under our control.

The world is moving on, but we owe it to people who are hurt by the transition to give them the opportunities that they need to find new and better jobs.

Absolutely.

They still love you.

So, okay.

So

Trump wants to pull out of the Paris Accord,

something which, you know, I always say the kind of people who would negotiate the Paris Accord, these are the people who should get the medals.

Because it just cannot be easy to get 190 countries or whatever it is.

Same with Kyoto, which you were very involved in in the 90s, on the same page.

This is tedious work that people should get a clap on the back for.

Okay, he wants to pull out.

We thought maybe when you went to Trump Tower and talked to Ivanka about it, she.

What?

Well, I.

You did.

Yes, I did, and I talked to the then president-elect, and that conversation continued after he went into the White House.

And I thought actually there was a chance he might come to his senses, but I was wrong.

And then then when he made his speech pulling out of Paris, I really was concerned that some other countries might use that as an excuse to pull out themselves.

But the very next day, the entire rest of the world redoubled their commitment to the Paris Agreement.

It almost had a

salutary effect, right?

Yeah,

it did.

You know, in politics, there's a law that comes out of physics that sometimes works.

For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction.

And it happened here in this country.

Jerry Brown in California, Andrew Cuomo in New York, other governors, mayors, business leaders stepped up to fill the gap and said, we're going to meet the commitments under the Paris Agreement regardless of what Donald Trump does.

Looks like the country is going to do that.

I'm all for states' rights.

States' rights, Al.

Environmentalism today, environmentalism tomorrow.

That's what I say.

Okay, so let me ask you about this.

You say, and I think you're absolutely right about this, that we have to, if we're going to fix climate, we have to fix our democracy first.

Now, when you won/slash lost the election,

you got 500,000 more votes than the guy who took over.

Hillary got 3 million more votes.

This trend is not going in the right direction.

This thing where we get the most votes and they get to be president, that's a pattern now.

And it's not going in the right direction.

How do we stop that?

Well, I do think it's time to get rid of the Electoral College and go to a popular electoral president.

But

going back to the Protestants, that's a constitutional amendment.

Well,

that's one way to do it.

There's also an initiative to have a compact among the states.

It started here in California.

It could work.

Even more importantly than that, we have to get big money out of politics.

The lobbyists and the fat cat contributors hacked our democracy before Putin hacked our democracy.

And we need to defend it

and put the people back in control.

And we can do that.

Okay.

And finally, you know, I think we're totally on the same page here that

we have to talk to younger people who think somehow that someone's going to come up.

with a great invention that's going to solve climate change.

You know, I did a long thing here one night about Mars.

Mars is not the backup plan.

No one wants to live on Mars.

And I got a lot of pushback from millennials saying, yo, you're anti-science.

I'm not anti-science because I don't want to live on a planet with no air.

We've got to make it here.

There's no backup plan, right?

Yeah, that's one of the points I make in this movie.

I'm all for exploring Mars.

That's an exciting prospect.

But like you, I'm against the illusion that we've got a backup planet and we're going to move to something.

We couldn't even evacuate New Orleans whenever it could print it.

All right.

Thank you so much for what you do.

You are the tireless champion of this cause.

You had it right all those years ago, and, you know, time has only proved you more of a prophet.

And I know you were on a plane, you're getting on a plane.

You never stop.

Thank you, Al Gore.

Thank you very much.

Al Gore, ladies and gentlemen, he should have been president.

Thank you.

See the movie.

See the movie.

Yes, go see that movie.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

All right, my friend.

I'll see you soon.

Let's meet our panel.

Okay, here they are.

Our panel tonight.

He is the national correspondent for Bloomberg Business Week and author of Devil's Bargain, Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the storming of the presidency.

Josh Green over here, Josh Green.

How are you, sir?

He's a CNN analyst for international affairs and co-author of ISIS Inside the Army of Terror.

Michael Weiss back with us.

Hey, Michael.

And our returning champion, she's a columnist for the Washington Examiner, host of the Polsters podcast, Kristen Soltis-Anderson.

Hey, how you doing?

Okay, so...

Like I said, so much happened while we were off, even though it was only a month, but let's not bury the lead.

For folks who turn off all news while we're gone,

the good people.

The most important thing that happened in July is that the effort to repeal Obamacare failed.

And

is it, yes, Lamar Alexander, Republican senator from Algores, Tennessee, he is actually now working with, it looks like, Democrats.

to,

instead of get rid of Obamacare, maybe fix what's wrong with it.

Do you think we're at a place now the Republicans know they've been defeated and that they realize that Obamacare really is the moderate, sensible, common sense solution to this problem?

Or am I dreaming?

No,

they don't.

But I think that

I think that people in states like Tennessee, like Lamar, Alexander, realize that if they don't do something to fix it, that the exchanges are going to collapse.

There are counties in Tennessee that look like they may not have health care coverage at all.

So it's a problem for people who actually have to govern and have have responsibility for citizens that needs to be fixed.

And I think that people like Alexander, and especially the Republican governors of these states, understand that, you know, we've tried for seven years, we've given you guys seven years of rope to try and get rid of this thing,

you've failed, and now we've got to do something to fix the problem.

The really conservative wing of the party has long promised we're going to repeal and replace Obamacare, and they've taken that message to the ballot box over and over.

When they had the opportunity to do it, you still had folks on the far, far right.

You had folks like Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, who every time a plan would be put forward would say, well, that doesn't repeal it enough.

And you had the White House not really engage at all.

I mean, Donald Trump is not going to be able to sway a Susan Collins or anything like that.

Somebody from a moderate threatens them.

But

the people he could have been threatening would have been, he could have made life really uncomfortable for Rand Paul, really uncomfortable for Ted Cruz, but never really went there.

I don't think the president ever really cared that much about repealing and replacing Obamacare, and I think it showed.

And not as uncomfortable as voters would have made for them.

I mean, if they're going to do this, it's going to be out of self-preservation.

You know, you get Lindsey Graham going up there and saying, well, I think this bill is a turd, but I voted for it anyway.

Well, good luck running for reelection on that platform.

You know, if you look at that moment, that seminal moment with McCain coming in at the last hour and giving thumbs down, and

there was clap, you know, applause and cheering on the Democratic side.

There were also looks of just absolute relief on some of the Republican senators.

Thank God John McCain did this.

He took another one for the team, right?

Because we didn't want to back this thing, but we did it out of party discipline.

But doesn't it look to you like the Republican senators anyway are pushing back against Donald Trump?

I feel like they finally are checking him.

They want to put their Frankenstein on a leash.

They,

you know, just bringing up this health care as maybe we're going to work with the Democrats.

They do not want him to sabotage it as he keeps talking about because they're going to pay for it.

They also, this month, they're going to stay in session so that he can't do a recess appointment for Jeff Sessions.

Okay.

They wrote a bill that says you can't fire Mueller.

Sanction, Russian sanctions.

He didn't want that, and they put that through.

This to me is positive that finally these Republican senators have had enough.

I think that's right.

But

Trump still, I don't think, has come to terms with the fact that he is failing legislatively.

Health care failed.

He's now going to try and move on to tax reform.

If you talk to people in the White House, they think this is going to be easier.

It's not going to be easier.

And at the same time, you have this encroaching

special counsel investigation with a new jury impaneled.

You have Bob Mueller, who has put together a team of federal prosecutors that's sort of like the golden state warriors for financial crimes investigations.

And Trump is feeling the pressure.

You can see it in his tweets.

You can see it in the way he reacts.

And that's only going to intensify.

I still think the dam has not broken yet because tax reform is this prize.

If there's one thing Republicans all agree on, it is they want to cut taxes.

And so I think that's the problem.

And the markets, the economy still does well.

The prospect of being able to implement tax reform, something so many of these folks have wanted for so long, is why I think many of them, they'll grumble about him.

him in private.

If tax reform goes down, if it doesn't work, I think that's when the dam breaks and things get really up.

But you notice also the intellectual strain of conservatism is now turning markedly against him.

Senator Jeff Flake comes out with a new book, the title of which is The Conscience of a Conservative, stolen from Barry Goldwater's 1960 Manifesto for Modern Conservatism.

In the book, he's saying that Donald Trump is basically a bigot, a bully, and a moron, unfit to be president of the United States.

Michael Gerson.

Michael Gerson, who is a former speechwriter for George W.

Bush, wrote a thing in the Washington Post today saying, this is one of the bravest political acts I can remember.

This is, I think, the beginning of a kind of fracture.

We saw sort of a hairline fracture with healthcare, but I think a lot of people are going to realize, again, when it comes down to their own re-electability, backing a guy who's got, what, a third of a popularity vote, the lowest in, I think, presidential politics at this point, six months in, that's not a problem.

Is Jeff Flake voting against Donald Trump?

Well, this is voting.

On what issues will they turn against?

It's easy to write a book, but he still votes with him.

But the other problem with Flake is his approval rating in his own state is lower than Trump's approval rating nationally.

There's a poll that came out that showed him at 18%.

So there's no guarantee that this is like the master stroke for Republicans to break the state.

Every time some of these guys do something where they stand up to Trump, I mean, it can make,

I like it, I like when they're checking the executive, but I understand that I'm kind of lonely within my own party in that regard.

Trump still has around 80% job approval among Republicans.

When you ask questions like, do you think that he's presidential?

He still gets very high numbers among Republicans.

he's still well-liked within his own party.

And so it's a big risk for a lot of these folks, even ones that come from purple-ish type states, to come out and oppose him.

And what do you think about the generals now taking charge?

You know, General Kelly in there.

General Kelly, who, by the way, the media loves, he's such a great guy.

A little research on General Kelly.

He was for torture, against women in combat.

When he was head of ICE, he was known as the deportation machine.

He s calls pot a gateway drug.

I know they deliver it to my gateway every week.

But, you know, now that the generals are in charge, shouldn't

job one be that our country was attacked?

Yes, it was a cyber attack, but you're generals.

And the commander-in-chief is still AWOL.

on this issue.

What are we doing about the next attack?

The thing is, appointing all these generals is good on paper, but every one of them, them, Mattis, McMaster, who abased himself by denying that Trump did what he did, which is give intelligence obtained by the Israelis on ISIS to the Russians when he met them in the Oval Office.

It's like all of these professional, disciplined, intelligent military officers, they're like washed up on the island of misfit toys.

They come in saying, we're going to write the ship, we're going to make everything organized.

Kelly, according to the New York Times, is not going to futz with Donald Trump.

He's not going to tell him to cut out the Twitter feed.

He's not going to try and manage the president, just the people around him.

If you can't manage a pathological personality disorder, and as the dearly departed mooch says, the fish rots from the head in the administration, guess what?

You still have Donald Trump running the White House and you still have the same dysfunction and the same incompetence.

But the fact that he would say that actually suggests to me that he's realistic about what he can achieve.

If you think you're going to come in and be able to take Trump's Twitter password and take his phone from him and run that, you are delusional.

So the fact that he knows

that that's off the table, I think the one thing that he can do to be positive, he can't change Trump, but he can change some of the information flow to Trump.

He's not going to be able to turn off the Fox News, he's not going to be able to take the phone away.

But this idea that people could just walk in and out of the Oval Office and leave whatever crazy memo on his desk, if that stops, there's a chance that that diminishes some of the all-over-the-place nature of this.

There's a chance, but there's also a general worship, and there's a trope in journalism that says this new guy comes in, he's the new Jesus, he's the star, he's going to fix everything.

And Trump has an unmatched capacity to he exudes a kind of dignity kryptonite where these impressive people in other aspects of life come in and they're just withered and diminished by proximity to him.

And maybe Kelly can break that mold.

He's a pretty tough guy, but I wouldn't bet my money.

He didn't even want the job.

It took, I think, weeks or months of cajoling for him to even take it.

He said multiple times in private to people, according to reports, he's thought of quitting his former job as well.

It is kind of like being the fifth wife of Henry VIII.

What could go wrong?

Okay, well, there's a new wrinkle at the White House, which is in the press briefing room, Sarah Huckabee Sanders is now reading letters from children.

I'm not making this up, right?

You guys all follow the new.

Okay, we witnessed it.

Well, that's the one.

She's read two so far.

The first one, yes, was this is this is the real letter that she read, not too dear leader here, reading children's letters to the president.

My name, Dylan.

My name, Dylan.

This kid is nine years old.

This is

more of an indictment of the educational system of America.

You know, this, I don't blame the kid.

They haven't taught him is at the age of nine.

They owe this kid an apology, whatever school system.

But everybody, okay, my name is Dylan, but everybody call me Pickle.

I'm nine years old, and you are my favorite, spelled wrong, president.

I like you so much.

I had a birthday about you.

My cake was the shape, S-H-A-P-C-M

here, villain.

Shape of your hat.

How old are you is spelled A-R.

You sure Trump didn't write this himself?

He's like to impersonate people before, you know.

How big is the white hose, H-O-S-C?

How much money, M-O-N-N-Y, do you have?

I don't know why people

don't like you.

You seem nice.

Can we be friends?

My pitcher is here, so if you see me, you could say hi.

Okay, so now what happened is it went to the kid's head.

Now he's writing every week.

He wrote another letter.

Would you like to hear a second letter to the president?

This is Dylan's other letter.

It says, Dear Mr.

President Trump, you are my favorite president and color.

Do you like your boss, Mr.

Putin?

When I drink too much milk, I get in trouble for Putin, too.

I like you so much, I had a birthday about you.

Over 3 million people attended.

We had a piñata.

It was fun.

When you beat up on real Mexicans, does candy come out?

My mommy says, you are what you eat.

Did you eat an orange?

How much money do you have?

If only there were some way to find out.

I like how you're always watching TV instead of doing your homework.

Me too.

You should see my mommy's face when she says bedtime.

And I say that's fake news, you're fired.

Okay, so

can I

before I talk to Rafio, could I ask about one more thing with Da.

I hate to, everything is about Donald Trump, but fuck it is.

This call that we saw the leak of, first of all, do you think it's cool that we are leaking the transcripts of calls?

Because I'm all for leakers because they are telling us valuable information, but I don't know how this helps a lot.

You know, he's on the phone with the president from Mexico.

You know, of course, he looks like the asshole on all these calls.

The other person doesn't, but it's still, there's going to be a guy, hopefully, after him in that office.

This is not the precedent we want to set, right?

No, not at all.

A president has to have space to have private conversations with foreign leaders.

But Trump has squandered what little faith and trust I think he had from the National Security Establishment coming in, and he's being punished for it.

Yeah, he declared war on his spies and people who were charged with protecting America, and now this is their way of getting their licks.

And the thing that disturbs me most, and I think one of the reasons they leaked this, is with most presidents, there's a public face and a private face, right?

With Trump, you were hoping that there'd be some man behind the curtain who spoke in articulate, coherent English.

And instead, he sounds exactly the same as he did.

He called Mexicans bad ombres to the president of Mexico.

There's literally a line in there where he says, I swear to God, he says, I didn't want to talk to you.

I didn't want to talk to Mexico.

I didn't want to talk to anybody, but Jared Kushner made me take this call.

And by the way, pay for the wall.

Right.

And this is a guy who's trying to be a great negotiation.

And he also says that, you know, this is not really important to him.

Right.

The wall.

He maybe is the worst kind of person, an insincere racist.

When Donald Trump says that they're out to get me, the deep state is out to get me.

I came into the White House and now the government is out to get me.

When stuff like this happens, it proves his point.

And it gives him the ability to then, when he comes out and says, it's all fake news and they're all out to get me and I'm a victim.

Stuff like this is ammunition for him to use.

Okay, let's bring out Ralph.

Ralph Reed, where is my intro?

He's the chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition and my personal spiritual counselor.

Ralph Reed, please welcome Ralph Reed.

Ralph, how are you?

Great to see you.

Thank you for coming on.

All right, now, Ralph, I know you're praying for me, right?

I am.

Hate the sin, love the sinner.

Am I right?

Hate soul, Bill.

Love the sinner.

Okay.

All right.

So let me ask you a few questions about what's going on in this country.

First of all, there was a big brouhaha about the Johnson Amendment.

I know that's something you must care a lot about.

That refers to President Lyndon Johnson, something that was made back in the day, which said the churches, which are tax exempt, therefore the deal is, because they don't pay taxes, they should not endorse anybody from the pulpit.

And now they want to change that with Trump in office.

Isn't that unfair to have it both ways?

No, it's not, because I think what's happened with the Johnson amendment, first of all, it was put in the Internal Revenue Code in 1954, specifically because Lyndon Johnson, who was then the Senate Majority Leader, was trying to silence a radio evangelist who was being critical of him.

And I don't want politicians in Washington

telling us who can criticize them on the air.

I don't want that for faith leaders.

I don't want that for you.

I don't want that for news organizations.

That's what this is about, Ralph.

No, it's exactly what it was about.

And let me tell you what's happened, Bill, because I've lived this for over 30 years.

This has been used by the IRS to go in and persecute, harass, intimidate, and attempt to silence churches and major ministries.

No and

this martyrdom.

And

you'll have churches, mega-churches, with maybe a $60 or $100 million a year budget, racking up millions of dollars in legal fees.

Why?

Because a pastor said to a crowd once, I like this candidate.

Free speech is what made America great.

Okay.

And it applies to Christians and other people of faith to do it.

Then pay taxes, too.

Then just pay your taxes.

Because you know what?

Wait a minute.

Churches are selling a product like everybody else.

It's an invisible invisible product.

Nobody ever comes back from helping heaven and gives it a bad Yelp review.

Bill, that's not fair.

90% of the homeless shelters in America are operated by either churches or faith-based organizations or ministries.

And for the millions of people every day who go to a homeless shelter or go to a food bank in America, this is not an invisible product.

People of faith minister to people every day.

And if you want to tax that activity, because

part of it could be put apart, but that's not the whole reason for that.

But that's not what the Johnson Amendment Americans are doing.

Let me ask you this: why do you think Trump's support among the evangelicals is so solid, more than almost any other president?

Because he does.

Over 80 percent.

Over 80 percent.

Because he does does seem like the least Christian man ever

to me

I mean

he's a I I'm I'm a friend of his and I've not found that to be the case when I first got to

okay I no let me finish when I first got to know Donald Trump over seven years ago I'll be honest with you I didn't expect to like him I had a view and a caricature of him which was based on his public image.

And let me tell you what I found out about Donald Trump.

And in in my party, over the last three decades, if you ran for president, I knew you and I usually knew you personally.

Every time he told me he was going to do something, he did it.

His word was his bond.

And let me give one example.

He ran for president and he released a list of 21 nominees, potential nominees, to the Supreme Court.

He was the first nominee of either party to do that.

He kisses and said, if you vote for me,

if you vote for me, I will not choose someone like these 21.

I will choose one of these 21.

So what you're saying is...

He kept his word.

He not only got it done, he confirmed him in 100 days.

That hasn't happened since 1881.

He said he would do something.

Right.

As long as he keeps his word to you.

No.

But lies to everybody else.

No, Bill.

No, that's what you're saying.

No.

Because you can't deny that he's a giant liar.

No, because on October.

He's a giant liar.

On October the 10th, it wasn't just a promise to me.

On October the 10th, he looked into a camera in the third and final debate with Hillary Clinton, and he said the same thing.

It was a promise to the American people.

Huh?

That's what he said.

You're the puppet.

I'm not the puppet.

You're the puppet.

That's what he said in that.

And he said, Bill, if I can remind you, is he said, if I become president, I will appoint someone to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Antonin Scalia who's like Scalia.

And he did it.

And it wasn't just a promise to the faith community.

It was a promise to the American people.

Like I said, you forgive all the other lies because the one you care about he kept.

No.

Okay.

So, but, I mean, it isn't just

that.

It's the fact that he said that he would work to reduce the regulations put in place by Obama, and he's done it.

It's the fact that we have a million new jobs since he became president.

It's the fact that

it's the fact that

we have the biggest stock market rally in 57 years after the election of a president.

I don't throw the term antichrist around lightly.

But.

Well, that's comforting to know, Bill.

When I think of Christ and then Trump.

Yeah, antichrist.

No, you don't think he's anti-Christ.

Because like, let's take the lying thing once more.

You guys call Satan, you believe in Satan, right?

No?

Yeah, of course I do.

I believe in God and I believe in an enemy.

Sure.

Okay.

I could make fun.

I'm not, because I like it.

Okay.

But don't you call Satan the father of lies?

Isn't that what he is?

Not like a little name you have for him.

Satan just father of lies?

It's not my name.

It's Jesus' name.

Jesus called him the father of lies.

Oh, my bad.

Okay.

Okay.

so Trump, giant liar, Satan, father of lies.

Okay.

What about the thing that Jesus was sort of, he was not really fond of egomaniacs or rich people?

Isn't Donald Trump a rich egomaniac who,

you know, everything is about money and doing well and winners and losers.

It just does not seem Christ-like.

You know,

I don't want to particularize this to you.

I think it's throughout the entire media universe.

There's what I like to refer to as selective moral outrage about things that Donald Trump says and does compared to those that they support.

First of all, Donald Trump never claimed to be a perfect man.

He said that he made many mistakes in his life.

He's lived up to that.

And he acknowledged that, okay?

But if you want to talk about lies, remember last November we had a binary choice.

It was a choice.

It wasn't just a referendum on him.

We had to choose between him and Hillary Clinton.

This was somebody who held a news conference and said she never sent or received classified material.

Oh, Lord.

Lie.

This is somebody who said,

I'm not going to litigate that electoral.

She lost.

Over 80% of the American people said they didn't trust her, they didn't think she was honest.

And of the 20% of the electorate bill that were

that some pollsters referred to as the nuns, they didn't like either one of them, Donald Trump won those voters over 60%.

They made a decision.

Why are they they lying to the potential?

They wanted somebody to go to Washington and shake things up.

Why are they lying

so much about Russia?

Donald Trump Jr., the subpoenas are out now.

They want to know about that meeting.

Okay.

When they first heard about the meeting, Donald Trump was just about adoption because we're big fans of Annie.

And

I don't know.

First it was, we don't know any Russians.

We don't know any Russians.

Okay, we know a Russian.

All right, we know three.

All right, we know eight.

There was one Russian at the meeting.

Okay, there was ten Russians at the meeting.

Stalin's corpse was at the meeting.

The Bolshevik ballet was at the meeting.

But it wasn't about the election.

Then it was about the election.

If they have nothing to hide, if this is a witch hunt, why are they lying constantly until they get caught?

Well,

we have 45 seconds.

We don't want to go over.

45 seconds.

I'm sorry.

First of all, everybody who is in that meeting, including Natalia Veselnitskaya, who was the Russian lawyer, says there was no discussion of any alleged negative.

Well, if we can't take her word for it,

and by the way, by the way, she told NBC News in an interview that they got with her in Russia that she never talked to any Russian government official about that meeting.

And I understand that there's a collusion delusion, and the media is fixated on chasing this story like greyhounds would chase a mechanical rabbit.

But I got news for you.

For the average American, they don't care, and they know it's a distraction.

Yeah.

You're a good man to come to the lion's den.

Ralph Reed, everybody.

It's not easy.

All right, it's time for new rules.

Okay.

New rules, everybody.

New rule, the internet must stop showing me this picture of the calf that looks like kisses Gene Simmons.

It's just a reminder to me that the internet is is ridiculous and a reminder to the calf's mom that Gene never calls.

Neurule, the naked mole rat seen here has to try to look less like a penis that could bite me.

Neurule, Anthony Scaramucci, and Anthony Wiener must open a pizza place in New York called Disgraced Anthony's Pizza.

Pizza.

That's right, Disgraced Anthony's, where you can find pictures of our sausage right online.

We hand toss because our wives left us.

But make sure you go to real Disgraced Anthony's Pizza and not the copycats like original Disgraced Anthony's Pizza.

Even New Yorkers know what I'm talking about.

Neural, now that we know 20% of America's baby food contains lead, the FDA has to find out if that's why babies are so stupid.

Seriously, I've ever played cards with one?

They're morons.

Neural scientists who caught this rare, faceless fish in freezing waters off Australia have to throw it back.

I don't like the way it's not looking at me.

Plus, it's giving an inferiority complex to the naked mole rat.

All right.

And

finally, new rule Republicans have to tell us, now that you've made facts optional

and changed the status of truth to unknowable, what's next?

Hypocrisy used to be a thing.

Is it still?

Take a look at Paul Ryan at the State of the Union when President Trump suggested suggested we create jobs by investing in infrastructure.

The time has come for a new program of national rebuilding.

Yes, an idea worth standing and applauding for.

Here's Ryan when Obama suggested the exact same thing.

Take the money we're no longer spending at war, use half of it to pay down our debt, and use the rest to do some nation building right here at home.

Yes, either Obama forgot to say Simon says,

or clearly the term Republican principles no longer has any meaning.

Since Trump got elected, they have pulled utter 180s on infrastructure, free trade, reducing debt, family values, the Constitution.

When Obama signed executive orders, it was proof we were being governed by a lawless tyrant.

Now Trump does it, and he proudly displays them like he's the price is right girl.

Trump tweeted 27 times about how Obama played too much golf.

Now he plays twice as much.

Suddenly, the problem of presidents playing golf too much disappeared faster than a Russian journalist.

And even when you say, as I often do, oh come on, wouldn't you be furious if Obama had said, you know, the White House is a dump or whatever ridiculous thing Trump said that week?

No, they never admit it.

We'd be cool with it.

We're consistent.

So I got to thinking, what if I could actually show Republicans what it would look like if Obama had said some of the things that Trump has said.

So, here to help us with this little experiment, please welcome on his birthday today, the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama, ladies and gentlemen.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Buddhist.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, so it's not the real Obama.

Who could afford his speaking fee?

This is, of course, our friend Reggie Brown, and he's here to help Republicans.

He's here to help Republicans test their theory that they'd be cool with it if some of the crap that's come out of Trump's mouth was said by Obama.

And I stress, this may not be the real Obama, but these are really Trump's words, every one of them verbatim.

So let's begin with one we all know.

What would it look like if if Obama had said this about John McCain?

He's not a war hero.

He's a war hero because he was captured.

I like people who weren't captured.

Not only would he have not won the election, but the screen would have gone black, and when we came back, Wayne Brady would have been there.

One of the big Republican complaints about Obama was that he didn't respect the military enough.

What if they had asked him how he came by his military strategy and he said

I'm speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain

and I've said a lot of things

I have a very good brain.

That was another complaint about Obama.

Oh, he's too full of himself.

Too full of himself.

What if Obama had

Sorry, losers and haters.

But my IQ is one of the highest, and you all know it.

What if he had said, I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose voters.

Headline in the New York Post, black man threatened shooting spree, gunned down by police.

And no matter how much scripture Obama cited, Republicans never believed he was really Christian.

Imagine if Obama had said,

Why do I have to repent or ask for forgiveness if I'm not making mistakes?

When I drink my little wine and have my little cracker,

I guess that's a form of asking for forgiveness.

My little cracker?

you mean

Jeff Sessions?

Another one of Obama's unforgivable flaws was that he didn't find America exceptional enough.

Okay, so if Bill O'Reilly had asked Obama about Putin being a murderer, it would have been okay if his answer was.

There are a lot of killers.

We have a lot of killers.

You think our country is so innocent?

Yes,

Sean Hannity's reaction would have been.

Now, no politician ever tells the whole truth always, but what if Obama was so blatant as to say?

I got to know Putin very well because we were both on 60 minutes.

And then a few months later said,

I never met Putin.

I don't know who Putin is.

Yeah, who are you going to believe, me or me?

What about just sheer dumbness?

Obama wasn't the most experienced president ever, but What would have been the reaction if he kept claiming that things everybody knows were just being discovered,

nobody knew healthcare was so complicated.

We have to prime the pump.

Have you heard that expression before?

I came up with it a few days ago

and I thought it was good.

Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who's done an amazing job and is getting recognized more and more.

And we haven't even gotten to the Access Hollywood tape.

Republicans, you're really going to tell me you would be okay if Obama had said.

I moved on her like a bitch.

I just start kissing them.

I don't even wait.

And when you're a star, they let you do it.

You can do anything.

Grab them by the pussy.

Grab them him by the pussy?

They blew a gasket when he said, Cling to your Bible.

And you're going to tell me you would be okay if our first black president used debate time to brag about the size of his dick?

He referred to my hands.

If they're small, something else must be small.

I guarantee you, there's no problem.

I guarantee you.

Look,

I don't know the exact definition of white privilege, but being able to talk about grabbing pussies and how big your dick is and still getting elected president, that's got to come close.

All right, that's our show.

How about a hacker Reggie Brown?

All right.

Reggie's going to be one of the comedians with me this year on my annual New Year's Eve in Honolulu, New Year's Night in Maui, Hawaiian Tour, along with Bob Sagett, and I will be at the Mirage in Vegas September 8th and 9th.

I want to thank Josh Green, Michael Weiss, Kristen Saltis Anderson, Ralph Reed, and Al Gore.

Join us for every time on YouTube.

Thank you, folks.

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

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