Ep. #431: Dan Savage, Richard A. Clarke

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

Start the clock.

Right here with me.

Thank you, you're very kind.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Thank you very much, please.

I know, I love you too, but there's so much, there's so many important things going on, but never mind all that.

Morning Joe is in a Twitter feud

with the real housewife of Pennsylvania Avenue.

So

let's get right to that.

Oh, yes.

It all started yesterday when President, what the fuck?

Poop tweeted another gem.

We've got to get him off the shitter.

That's where the Twitter.

I think it's the shitter and the Twitter.

I think they're connected.

But, you know, he's been seething over the criticism that he's been getting for months from Morning Joe and Mika and, you know, who he now calls low IQ crazy Mika and Psycho Joe.

So he tweets, you know, if they hate me so much, then how come they came to Mar-a-Lago around New Year's Eve and insisted on joining me?

And then the leader of the free world writes she was bleeding badly from a facelift

that that slapping sound you heard yesterday was the entire country going

yes

once again Donald Trump has taught this nation a valuable lesson you can never be too rich to be white threat

You know,

a little advice, Mr.

President, a good rule to live by.

If you're going to go after a woman's appearance, first make sure you're not a fat old man with orange face paint for kids.

Pretending to be a blonde at the age of 71.

Who's a blonde at 71?

Mika Brzezinski, you do crazy things to delay aging,

says the man who glues dryer lint to his head.

Oh,

come on.

Donnie, you're so unattractive, Milani, you won't even touch your hand.

Remember that?

And

about the Twitter thing, if I could make one suggestion to Steve Bannon or Jared, whoever's doing the babysitting lately,

get the president one of these.

You know what these are?

The toy cell phones?

This way he can tweet all night long and

nobody will really see it.

And

plus it's rated for 18 months and up, which means...

Means there are no small parts he can choke on.

But to be fair to the president, he does have some traumatic traumatic memories from plastic surgery.

One time he went in for a weave reduction

and the surgeon accidentally implanted three chins.

So that's

dramatic.

And

he also gave him a boob job in the brain.

So that was not fair.

But that's not where the story ends.

Now we have yet another scandal, which is that White House

AIDS are engaged in what looks like extortion on behalf of the president, because Joe Scarborough said today, in response, that three people from the top levels of the administration threatened him with a bad story in the National Inquirer.

Which I pointed out last week is totally controlled by Trump, unless he apologized, to which Trump tweeted back, Psycho Joe called me to stop Inquirer Story.

I said no, thereby confirming he does control the Inquirer.

No wonder he can't focus on health care.

He's editing the Inquirer.

Today he took Iran off the axis of evil and put them on best and worst beach bodies.

you know which is all great for comedy but you know the business of ruining America goes on the Republicans all condemn the tweets but they still vote with him

his stupid wall they're starting to build that his stupid travel ban went into effect.

As of last night, people from the Sudan, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, and Iran can forget about that dream vacation to Dollywood.

And yet Saudi Saudi Arabians, on the other hand, are free to board any plan and fly into a building of their choice.

But yes,

Donald Trump says he will not have foreign nationals coming here and killing innocent Americans.

That's what the health care plan is for.

Oh yes.

Oh yes, there's that one too,

repealing Obamacare.

I mean the Democrats are all excited that this is stalled now in the Senate, except it's not dead.

It's like the slasher movie

where the babysitter thinks she's killed the serial killer, but we can see he's getting up behind her.

These are Republicans and now they're talking, I love this, they're talking about forget the replace part.

Let's just repeal first.

So people have nothing.

They had a big meeting this week with Trump and all the Republican senators.

One of the senators came out and said, I didn't think that Donald Trump had a grasp on some of the basic elements of health care.

For instance, he thought Medicaid was a sports drink.

Basic grasp.

And if all that doesn't scare you, this week, going into the 4th of July, happy 4th of July, everybody.

Is it too late to have England take us back?

But okay.

But next week he's meeting with Putin.

Oh it's a big day.

Will he get a rose?

Well

It's supposed to be a very short meeting, just long enough

for Trump to say, Geppetto, am I a real president?

All right, we got a great show.

Michael Steele, Katie Kaye, Dan Abrams are here, and a little later we will be speaking with counterterrorism expert Richard Clark.

But first, he writes the nationally syndicated column Savage Love, host the Savage Love podcast, Dan Savage.

Great to see you.

How are you, sir?

I'm good.

How are you?

It's great to see you.

I wanted to talk to you about so many things, but let's start with the tweet.

I mean, I didn't, when I saw this yesterday, I just thought, oh, a disgusting, obnoxious tweet from Donald Trump.

Sexist-bullying asshole reveals himself to be sexist-bullying asshole.

Right.

And then

everybody went apeshit, and I just don't understand it.

Why?

Why is this the camel, the camel, the straw that broke the camel's back?

I mean, this is the guy who talked about grabbing pussies uninvited.

This is the guy who's

before he was president.

Is that what it is?

The Megan Kelly thing happened before he was president when a lot of us were like, this is not going to happen, right?

A lot of us believed then that he wasn't going to be president.

It has a different quality when the president does the exact same thing that he did when he was the candidate.

People keep hoping he's going to pivot to something more presidential.

How many times have we heard people on TV say, oh, tonight he became president?

Well, tonight he became the asshole he's always been, or yesterday, again.

And

I also think, you know, all women who are premenopausal menstruate.

And so talking, like what he said about Megan Kelly, blood coming out of her wherever,

wasn't as scalding as sort of the sensitive subject of like outing someone about plastic surgery because people sometimes have hang-ups about being out about that.

So it seemed even crueler than just referencing the bleeding that people generally do, women people generally do.

This is a different kind of bloody and a different kind of...

thing.

Let's move on to another subject.

Harry explored and you've answered my question.

I do write about sex, so I'm more comfortable.

Last week I was talking about how the Democratic Party can kind of get back in the game because they've lost all four special elections.

Okay.

And Bernie Sanders said recently the current model and strategy of the Democratic Party is an absolute failure, which probably is why he doesn't join it.

You think that's true?

And what do you think about what the Democrats should do?

Well, the Republicans lost all four special elections in 2009, and then they won in 2010.

So in 2009, there were special elections after Obama appointed Democrats from safe seats to his administration, and the Republicans didn't win any of those seats, didn't pick any of them up.

And then the Democrats got their asses handed to them in the first midterm.

So the fact that the Democrats haven't won any yet doesn't mean that we still can't hand them their asses in the midterm.

And

to your point,

no, no, we got to keep fighting.

And we're going to win, but we can't point to these losses as evidence we can never win because that just becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and then we will never win.

But what Bernie said, and you've said this a lot, the Democrats have to start fighting like Republicans, which may include cheating like Republicans.

Republicans win when Republicans cheat.

Yes.

Democrats, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote.

So did Al Gore.

So did Al Gore, but that was, I think, a theft.

But Democrats, Democratic candidates took a million more votes in House races.

But for gerrymandering, Democrats would have a majority in the House.

The system is rigged, like Bernie Sanders said, but it's rigged against the...

Well, partly it's rigged because Democrats didn't vote.

enough.

And so the state legislatures are controlled by Republicans.

Absolutely.

And that's who draws up the districts.

Right.

And Democrats need to get better at turning out their voters and inspiring their voters to turn out by actually having some positions.

Even for the little ones.

Yes, absolutely.

Not just the top of the ticket.

And also stand, you know.

Stand together, you know, support each other.

I was talking about how John Austoff really didn't support Nancy Pelosi when, you know, they were going after her, and he said, well, I haven't given it any thought.

I mean, that's not what Republicans would do.

No, Republicans are a gang.

Right.

Like a prison gang.

Like a prison.

Prison gang.

And that's where our politics are, yeah.

Right.

Republicans have brass knuckles on and Democrats don't.

And Democrats need to pick up the brass knuckles and play the game that's actually being played.

So many Democrats think that they're in Washington to set a good example for the GOP.

And we need to start fighting like the GOP fights and even fighting as dirty as the GOP fights.

Okay.

I'm glad you feel that way.

There's also the part of it

that so many people in this country, in so many states, would never consider voting for a Democrat.

It's not just that they're not the preferred party.

They're unthinkable.

Vladimir Putin, to them, is preferable to a Democrat.

Why do you think that is?

And how can we reverse that?

How can we make people in North Dakota go, okay, I'll at least look at the Democrat?

I don't know, but I will say that

I think that might be the wrong question.

Because when you look at the map, there's no such thing as a blue state.

There are red states with big blue cities in them.

Oh, I know, because I go to them all.

Right, that flip the state.

You know, Washington state where I live is a red state but for Seattle.

And what Democrats have to do is they have to unapologetically be the party of urban America the way that Republicans are unapologetically the party of depopulated America, the party of rural America, the party of the exurbs and suburbs.

Democrats have to be the urban party.

Republicans for 30, 40 years, San Francisco values and demonizing urbanites, people of color, and the elites that live in the cities.

And Democrats have to turn out more of those voters in the cities, and more of those voters will turn out in the cities if Democrats embrace them.

If Democrats say we are the party of the places where people are.

That sounds like you're saying we should write off the very people who won the last election for Donald Trump.

If more people turned out in the cities to vote, in all of the cities to vote, Donald Trump would not have won the election.

Democrats have to do a better job of turning those people out and stop chasing voters they're never going to get.

Sending John Kerry out with a gun to shoot something right before the election didn't win him any

votes in Knuckle Drag America.

Okay, let me ask you about this one.

According to the right-wing spin machine, the greatest threat to America now is that liberals are violent.

Can you show a little bit of this ad?

This played in the Georgia election.

I must say, this was not bought by the Republican Party down there, but a sympathetic arm of the Republican Party.

And this shows where they're at.

Now the unhinged left is endorsing and applauding shooting Republicans.

When will it stop?

It won't if John Ossoff wins on Tuesday.

Because the same unhinged leftists cheering last week's shooting are all backing John Ossoff.

And if he wins, they win.

Stop them.

Stop them now.

Stop John Ossoff.

Stop Nancy Pelosi.

Vote Karen Handel for Congress.

Well, they stopped us.

Ossoff lost.

I guess it's over.

Right.

Well, see, that's what they do.

But this idea, this is not just this one ad.

I could could read, I have so many quotes here, I'm not going to read them all.

Sean Hannity, June Pierrow, all the people on the right,

the NRA ed, who are saying things like, liberal hatred towards President Trump and Republicans have reached a fever pitch, and now it is becoming violent.

Wait, I thought we were snowflakes.

We were snowflakes.

We were the...

And now, any minute, Kathy Griffin might be coming in with a head severed off.

We are trying to put this over that we are the violent one.

Right.

We used to be the latte-sipping, Volvo-driving New York's Times reading, sushi-eating, liberal elite faggots in the cities, and now we're this danger.

But the reason they're doing this, the reason they're cranking this up, gun sales plummeted after Trump won the election because the scary black president wasn't coming for your guns anymore, not that he ever did, and the shrill lady wasn't going to come for your guns.

And gun sales went off the cliff after Trump won the election.

This crazy NRA ad, all of this rhetoric, what they're saying is, hey, don't stop buying guns, go buy some fucking guns because Kathy Griffin is going to come and kill you now instead of Barack Obama.

It's a

transparent effort to scare people who are easily scared and to drive them into gun shops to buy guns.

But it also shows that when they want to get on a page,

that's what the Democrats don't do.

They meet in their underground lair.

They do.

Their volcano.

That's all about.

And they say, okay, tomorrow we are all going to say that the left is unhinged and violent, even though it's crazy.

And somebody of us goes, wait, the the left is not violent.

Yeah, but we're going to say that.

We're all going to say that.

And then it's going to come true to at least half the country.

Democrats need to do that, don't you think?

They need to have an underground lair

where they come up with it and they all say it.

They never do that.

They don't all say the same thing.

It's just one big gay bar.

We all meet once a year to make these plans.

That doesn't always have to be.

Because I want to feel comfortable there.

No, no, no.

Like, Democrats are terrible at messaging.

The example I always think of is a couple of years ago, a Republican strategist said, stop calling them entitlements.

Entitlements are bad.

People are entitled.

Call them earned benefits.

You paid into Social Security.

You paid into Medicare.

You earned it.

And Democrats couldn't make that switch.

And that...

Global warming.

Global warming.

Sounds kind of nice.

I used to say, call it climatia.

You know, the Democrats, actually, you know, the gay bar thing, they should look to what the gays did.

We talked about gay marriage, and people were like, ooh, yeah, because gay says sex.

Gay says sex.

So we all switched and we started saying marriage equality.

And even people who are uncomfortable with the gays doing the gay butt thing

could get behind equality.

And it really helped us achieve marriage equality.

And Democrats should look to the success of one of the biggest social movements in this country in the last 30 years and what we achieved in part by effective messaging with everybody on the same page.

For fuck's sake, stop calling them entitlements.

Make that switch if nothing else.

Republicans, you know, death panels, death taxes, they always, partial birth abortion, they repeat this stuff until we on the left can't even think of these issues without going to their rhetoric.

Democrats have the power to do the same thing if they will all unite and have one message, like you said.

Dan Savage,

good luck with marriage equality in the butt thing.

All righty, great to see you, pal.

Let's meet our panel.

Okay, what's up,

how are you, pal?

All right.

Hey, everybody.

All right, he is the chief legal affairs analyst for ABC News and founder of Media.com.

Dan Abrams over here.

Dan, how you doing?

She's the anchor for BBC World News America.

Katie Kaye, our friend.

And one of our favorites, a political analyst for MSNBC and co-host of Sirius XM Radio, Steele and Unger.

Big Mike, Michael Steele's over here.

Okay.

So I don't know what to say.

We're six months into the Trump era and we are still topic number one, whether we want it or not, seems to be his aberrant state of mind.

Joe Scarborough said today, the guy that's in the White House is not the guy we knew two years ago.

What the fuck is he talking about?

Two years ago was when the campaign started.

It started with Mexicans or rapists.

I think this is the same guy.

It is the same guy.

And that's, in fact, Republicans need to get off that screed right now about, you know, hope that it's going to be changed.

Stop being shocked when he says something crazy.

The reality of it is you bought and paid for this.

Now you own it.

Now you have to manage and control it.

And that's the problem.

And so the reality for the party right now is you've adopted the behavior, the language, the meme, the message,

and now the administration of someone who A is not a Republican, B, is not a conservative, and for the sake of the win.

And listening to Dan and others talk about what Democrats have to do, if we want to get to a space where we're effectively dealing with this, I don't know if the answer is necessarily raising the bar of ugly,

as opposed to taking down that bar and saying American values are not in the tweets.

American value is not reflected in the kind of policies that

demonstrably hurt the poor.

But rather American values are taking care of the

least of these and providing for the economic future and security of the country.

If you can't do that, then you're going to be prepared to take a hit in 18 and in 20.

I hope.

I don't know.

There's just no argument to be made that any of these tweets are helping him in any way, shape, or form.

I mean you listen to Sarah Huckabee say, yeah, this is what they elected, right?

We elected a fighter.

We elected someone who's going to punch back.

But the reality is when you actually think about the impact, it's not helping in the way it did help in the campaign to say, I'm going to fight, I'm going to take him on.

It's crossed the line.

And I think everyone, almost everyone, seems to agree on that.

You asked Dan what the difference is between now and then.

And of course, we knew in the Access Hollywood tapes showed us, the difference is that he has punched back with a viciousness and a cruelty this time around.

And he's done it with the full Oval Office behind him and the presidential tweet stream.

He has understood what sadly the research shows us time and time again.

If you get people to focus on the way that a woman looks, they will not think about her abilities as much.

And he can do that, and he does it sometimes with a kind of benevolent form of sexism when he gets the Irish reporter over and tells her she has a nice smile.

But when a woman threatens her, he does it with a vicious form of hostile sexism.

And he did it to Elizabeth Warren, he did it to Megan Kelly, he did it to Carly Fiorina, and now he has done it to Mika Brzinski.

And it's when he is threatened.

He said he's attracted to his own daughter.

He did.

He did.

He said about a 10-year-old girl.

I'll be dating her in 10 years.

I just,

yeah, I just, you know.

Come on.

The outrage about the tweet about Mika Brzezinski to me is nothing compared to the allegation of the blackmail, right?

The idea that the president of the United States is- Blackmail.

Yes.

The idea that the president of the United States is having his senior advisors talk to cable news hosts about getting an article in the Inquirer killed if you call and apologize to the president about the way you've been covering him.

I mean, one thing is just awful, right?

Talking about Mika Brzezinski and sort of what she looks like, and that's just gross and awful and gross.

And sexist.

And sexist.

And a lie.

Can we understand that?

It's all horrible.

It's all horrible.

It's so baked in the cake that he's a liar that that sort of goes out the window.

But when you think about it from a macro perspective, the idea that the President of the United States may be sending out his minions to threaten people about National Inquirer articles is astonishing.

I mean, it's truly astonishing.

Well, the headline in USA Today was, angst in America growing worse.

42% of people are alarmed and 33% are uneasy.

That's three-quarters of the country who is either...

I guess this is good for the people who sell Xanax.

But,

you know, and also, let me read one other headline that says a lot about America today.

NASA has firmly denied that they they have a child slave colony on Mars.

I'm not making this up.

NASA had to deny they have a child slave colony on Mars because Alex Jones had a guest who said that was true, and Alex Jones, of course, went.

Yeah, maybe there's something to that.

But you had me worried because I thought it was Venus.

I'm sorry.

You had me worried, so I'm glad to know it.

But, you know, the president listens to Alex Jones.

That's why this is more than just a laugh-off.

Okay, this is also more than just a laugh off because there was a time where the world was thinking that Donald Trump was a joke.

Now they're sad.

And I have to say, I talk to diplomats and Europeans constantly, and there is a sense of dismay about the lack of American leadership and a real concern about has switched from the nature of the national security team.

They now think they've got McMaster, they've got Mattis, they've got Tillerson.

That looks solid.

What they're concerned about now is the character of the President of the United States.

And if you don't think that America's allies and its adversaries are watching what's happened here over the last 24 days, 24 hours, and the fact that we are talking about facelifts and women bleeding, and I'm happy to talk about women bleeding all night long, I have no problem.

I can do it.

If you don't think the world is watching that, I can't get any guests to stop talking.

I've lost control completely.

Okay.

They're watching.

But

can I just dovetail on that?

And that, I think, was reflected certainly in how people looked at,

European allies especially have looked at the last few weeks and the concerns that have arisen there.

But when you talk about people being concerned here at home, I don't know how deep that really runs.

Because there is a well, there's a reservoir somewhere that Trump is tapping into.

It's Trump voters.

Right.

That sustains that.

And that's a number that ranges at a strong 38 to 42 percent on any given time.

And that vulgarity is not a shame with them, it's a bond.

Right.

Well, they love that about him.

It's the pushback.

He doesn't make them feel stupid, he makes them feel smart, like Joey on Friends.

You know, he, no, really.

I think that's a lot of it.

He loses to aircraft carriers, he confuses historical figures.

He's just an idiot.

But for a lot of those voters.

Well, Michael.

You can get it.

For a

For a lot of those voters, though.

For a lot of those voters.

And, you know, I've had the good fortune to spend a lot of time talking to them.

It's hysterical to talk to my friends and others who say, well, my parents, I can't believe they're supporting Donald Trump, you know, that kind of deal.

But for the first time, those voters felt that they had someone who is actually going to go out and do something for them.

Take away their health.

No, I missed.

Oh, wait a minute.

But that's the rest of the story.

That part has not happened yet, all right?

So the narrative leading up to that, the narrative leading up to that, which is why Trump has been so effective at the distraction play.

Rachel Maddow, my colleague at MS, said something tonight, very, very important.

I thought, she said, his tactic is distraction by disruption.

And I think that that is exactly what it is.

And so that disruption, he doesn't mind the bad headlines.

You know that.

He doesn't mind the bad.

He loves it when you come up here and you lay him for 15 minutes.

Because that works to further the narrative that, see, they're all out there against.

You guys come on a little bit closer.

I'm going to put my arms around you and take care of you.

But here's the proof and the pudding.

This time next year, when Republicans got to run out there and talk to moms and dads about why their kid doesn't have health care now, when Republicans have to go out there and start talking about why the jobs aren't there.

Or their mom in the nursing home.

Or their mom in the nursing home and has lost her Medicare or her Medicaid.

West Virginia, Trump's biggest state, also the biggest state that uses Medicaid.

I just want to know

what is the moment where those Trump voters go, well, they're telling me I'm gaining my freedom by repealing Obamacare.

It doesn't feel like freedom.

Yeah, and one thing we learned from the election campaign is that actually a lot of Trump voters don't adhere to conventional conservative economic ideology.

There was a guy who went out on the campaign trail and said, I'm going to save the social welfare net.

And they voted for him.

I am, at one point he said, I'm going to raise taxes on the rich.

They liked what they heard from him.

So if they then feel that they are being asked because conservative Republicans in the House of Representatives want to strict stick to strict ideology and repeal Obamacare and not replace it and give a big tax cut to the wealthy, I don't think Trump voters are going to like that.

That's not necessarily what they are.

I think the answer to your question, though, is that health care is really complicated.

I mean, it is.

I mean, this bill is...

No, it's really.

No one knew that, Dan.

What you're talking about.

You know,

when you actually have to, like, sit there and dig into the details of the balancing act that you're always...

You and President Trump both, right?

You and President Trump both.

No, but the reality is, when you ask the question of when are people going to realize, the answer is when someone feels it.

When they feel it and it impacts them,

but right now

we're talking theoretical, right?

They're going to give him a lot of leash because the power of cultural identity is very strong.

For the moment, they still very much feel he's their guy.

Okay, let me take a pause here because we are going to take July off.

Not the whole summer, just July.

We'll be back.

Thank you very much.

We'll be back.

I'm sure Trump won't do anything crazy.

Folks, I need it, really.

Six months of Donald Trump.

I need to recharge my batteries

in my vaporizer.

Whenever we take more than a week off, what we do is future headlines because people watch us for the news.

And when we're off, we're going to tell you what's going to happen in case.

So these are our future headlines.

We even have a graphic.

Oh, look at that.

Spend pennies on that.

Okay.

And these are very predictable headlines.

And these are, like, for example, study finds nine out of ten service dogs are bullshit this is you can tell this is going to happen this headline

coal miners go back to work remember how awful it is walk off job there you go that's that's

Pat Robertson claims new Ken dolls are gay that's just inevitable that

study says weed smokers don't read studies.

Yes, that's...

Taylor Swift, rumored to be dating New Kendall.

Oh, well...

College students demand even safer space inside designated safe space.

In last-minute maneuver, McConnell sneaks free chin implants into healthcare above.

You know, that's inevitable.

BMW promises self-driving cars will still tailgate, cut you off, and act like assholes.

Wow.

That's pretty.

Taylor Swift releases new song, I'm Breaking Up With You, You Stupid Doll.

Denied access to sedatives, Bill Cosby attempts to bore a woman into a coma.

And Prince Charles pushes Queen downstairs.

Fuck it, I'm tired of waiting.

All right, he is the former U.S.

National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure, Protection, and Counterterrorism.

His latest book is Warnings, Finding Cassandra's to Stop Catastrophes.

Richard Clark is back with us.

There's Richard Clark.

How are you, my old friend?

Great to see you.

Okay, so you are the man who is famous for the phrase, my hair was on fire.

Yeah, well, it was.

You see, it's all gone.

It's gone, exactly.

When you were going around right before 9-11 saying bin Laden's going to attack us, you were right on that.

But there was something else your hair was on fire about, which was cyberspace and the attacks that could come from there.

You have been proved to be prescient once again.

So I'm going to start with the question that's most on my mind, which is the election of 2018, the election of 2020,

Are you confident that they will be

back?

The Russians will be back.

Are you confident those elections will be on the up and up?

Because I'm not even sure about that Georgia election we just had, because he was ahead in the polls.

Once again, they're heading the polls, and then I guess something happened.

Look, after what happened in the last election, the U.S.

government should have instituted a very comprehensive program to make sure the Russians could never get involved in our democracy again.

And we've done nothing.

Nothing at all.

And

as Jim Comey said, they will be back.

They'll be back in 18.

It's harder at the congressional level, but they'll do it.

And they'll certainly be back trying to re-elect the...

But it seems like each time we hear about the Russia story, it gets a little worse.

At first it was just, well, they were just hacking Hillary Clinton's emails.

And then it was, you know, well, they were trying to get into the voting machines.

And then it was, well, they did get into the voting machines.

The thing that they did that matters the most, gets the least attention, which is they had thousands, tens of thousands of fake Facebook and Twitter accounts.

And they were micro-targeting individual voters in individual swing districts,

shaping their opinion, psychological warfare on a grand scale.

They conducted the largest psychological warfare campaign in history and they won.

And

somehow

the president's going to meet with Putin next week.

His advisors will not even say that he's going to bring this up.

No, he won't.

Yeah, he doesn't.

Because he was the beneficiary.

Yeah, of course.

That's why he's not investigating it.

Right.

That's why he's not doing all the things we need to do to make sure it can't happen again.

That's crazy.

That's crazy that, like, so many of his voters think, you know what, when you're dealing with crooked Hillary in the deep state, what's the big problem with having Putin help you out?

That's

the 21st.

It's a fundamental change, isn't it, in how Americans think?

It is, and this is the 21st century equivalent of having the Russians land Marines on the New Jersey shore.

Right.

You know, they invaded our country, they invaded our political system, and they won.

won.

And he doesn't care because he won.

So there was a ransomware attack this week.

A pretend ransomware attack.

What is a pretend?

So it pretended to be ransomware.

Send us $300 in Bitcoin and we give you your computer back.

Actually, what it was doing was erasing all the files permanently on all of those computers.

So they weren't looking for money?

No, no, no.

Why did they do it?

No, they did it to things like that.

It was Russia.

They were attacking.

Definitely Russia.

It was Russia.

They were attacking Ukraine.

And it slipped and got out of Ukraine.

It was supposed to just attack Ukraine and wipe out all the files.

Now, look, we've done this too.

We attacked the Iranian nuclear facility.

It was supposed to just be the Iranian nuclear facility.

And our little worm got out and slipped and ran around the world too.

Yeah, well, the problem with these little worms is, you know, once you create them, they have a mind of their own.

Same is true of my worm.

Better than the bleeding discussion.

But here's my question of a real expert.

Like,

in terrorist plots,

what we know is that the ones that succeed are the ones we hear about.

But there are many other ones that were stopped.

All the time.

Is that true of these kind of hacking attacks?

Are we just hearing about the ones that succeed and many others are stopped?

No.

Or do they all succeed?

No, we're we're just hearing about a tenth of those who succeed.

Most of the ones that succeed, the companies that are attacked don't even know it's happened.

So what you're saying is they all succeed.

They don't all succeed.

But they have a high rate of success.

They have a very high rate of success.

And we don't know how to stop.

And we don't know how to stop it, and the people who do it never get punished.

Fuck.

Because they're all in Russia.

Well,

when my friends knew that you were coming on, my married friends, they wanted to ask this question, especially the men.

Is my internet history safe?

No.

Not at all.

As with all this talk of blackmail going around.

Google knows it all.

Google knows it all.

So you better be friends with Google.

Well, okay.

So Cassandra, that's your book.

For those who are forgetful of their Greek mythology, who was Cassandra?

So Cassandra was a woman who was blessed by the gods to see the future accurately.

As you have.

And cursed by the gods that no one would ever pay attention to.

Right, because people really don't pay attention.

No, they don't, especially if what you're predicting has never happened before.

So what should we be thinking about now, oh, great doomsday?

In the book, we looked at seven people who were right in the past.

Okay.

And seven people who are saying shit now, right?

And the one that's the most scary is sea level rise.

Sea level rise.

So the Cassandra's are outliers, they're experts, but all the other experts disagree.

So why should you pay attention to them?

That's the question, right?

Well, if you look at their data, if you take them seriously enough to hear them out and test their data,

they usually are right.

And now we've got this guy, Jim Hansen, who was the first one to say climate change is happening.

NASA.

Right.

Great guy.

Jim Hansen is now saying the UN model that says a meter of sea level rise by 2100 is off,

it'll actually be six to nine meters,

he says, by 2100.

Now,

if he's even off by a factor of 50%,

say goodbye to Florida.

Oh, yeah.

And Bangladesh and a lot of other things.

You know, like Florida.

But they all have summer homes in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh.

All right, so here's what I'm worried about.

This is the Cassandra effect I'm concerned about, is that Donald Trump is actually not losing.

You know, when you talk to people who are like you who are at our studio and the people I hang out with, he's a clown and he's a loser in the tweets and all that stuff.

He had a fundraiser this week for 2020.

He's now fucking around.

He's running again already.

And, you know, I made a little list of his assets.

Incumbency.

He's got the power of the government behind him now.

He didn't have that before when he was just a clown.

The Republican Party is still with him, including those state legislatures.

Gerrymandering.

He has basically Pravda in Fox News, in Breitbart, in Drudge.

You know, he went back on his pledge about the Dreamers last week.

None of those outlets even mentioned it because they're not in the news business.

They're in the Donald Trump promotion business.

Andy has the KGB.

And he has Russia hacking with him.

And the Supreme Court, maybe the best news this week was Anthony Kennedy isn't retiring, but, you know, he's

He's 80.

But he will.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 84.

He could get two more picks.

Then he has the court.

Democrats are lame.

The media is lame.

And he hasn't even played his war card yet.

You know, he could start a war and get a lot of support there.

So, you know, I'm worried about a permanent Republican majority.

That's what I'm worried about for the future.

I don't know.

When you say a permanent Republican majority, you think about the fact that, in terms of popular vote, Hillary Clinton got more votes than Donald Trump in this election.

And laws.

Yeah, but still, in terms of, you know, that was a sort of unique situation based on three states.

Yes, it happened twice in 1690.

Yeah, but I'm talking about the trifecta he pulled off, I mean state by state, in terms of the narrow nature of each of those wins in those key states, just as an electoral victory.

But

I guess I'm not buying the idea that suddenly Donald Trump is in a great position right now

to get reelected, to get things done.

I mean, look at health care, right?

The bottom line is I think someone in his position who had the support of his party, who had the support of the people, they'd be able to get a health care plan done, for sure.

I think part of the reason that they're having so much trouble getting this health care plan done and bringing the two sides together within the Republican Party is Donald Trump, is the fact that there's not actually...

I agree with Bill.

I think, you know, if you look at the things that he has done that satisfy conservatives, the fact that they still believe he's their guy, and then add to that the fact that the Democrats don't have any sign of a competent, effective leader who can marry the cultural left and the economic left going into 2020, I think Donald Trump stands a pretty good chance of being re-elected.

majority.

2020, we have no idea who's going to be running.

Yeah, but then he gets the legislature, he gets in two more Supreme Court justices.

You've changed America to the hard right for the next 25 years, isn't it?

And I think Democrats are complacent.

They think, you know, Russia's going to save us.

That Bob Mueller is going to be able to do it.

Bob Mueller's going to save us.

Going to come in with a report.

Do you really think Democrats think that?

Robert Mueller's going to be the savior?

Yeah, I do.

Absolutely.

Because I think there's a chance Robert Mueller's getting fired.

So I would like to tell you this, that the talking talking points on Fox News changed this weekend from collusion, we don't know if there's collusion, to collusion, what's the crime?

Britt Hume said, well, sure, it's inappropriate, but colluding with Russia, it's not a crime.

It is a crime.

So did Greg Jarrett say, you can collude all you want with a foreign government in an election.

There's no such statue.

Geraldo Rivera said, what's the crime?

Sean Hannity, you see, this is what they do.

Like I said, they get on the same page, they get in their underground layer, and they said, this is the new talking point.

Even if he did collude, it's not a crime.

Since having been kicked out of that underground layer, I can tell you that

and having a hand in bringing that majority to power in 2010,

we are a light year plus away from that time and the kind of energy and the kind of messaging that the party was about, which for me has been the biggest disappointment.

As as someone who calls himself a Lincoln conservative who looks at the lens of politics through the eyes of people.

You know, we want to see and respond directly to people.

That's how the party was formed.

We now care less about that and more about the win.

We care less about how people are doing their walk every day.

But you're a Republican.

Yeah.

Okay, so say Donald Trump is not president, but they're still trying to repeal and replace Obamacare because there's a fundamental difference.

Democrats think it's a right, and Republicans think it's a product.

What do you think?

No, well, they don't think it's a right.

Is it a right or a product?

I don't think it's a product, but I don't think it's a right either.

See, when you say something is a right to me, I'm then going to look to the Constitution.

I'm going to look to the founding principles that have been outlined historically by the

country.

No, I don't see it that way.

But the CBO says this.

But, Bill, just because I don't say it's a right doesn't mean it's not right to get it right, to do something that takes care of the people who right now do not have full access to health care.

That's the, for me, the strength of the argument.

It's not, I mean, would you feel better if it's a constitutional right?

Let me tell you what's going to happen.

You'll still be in the muck and mire of the bullshit that you see going on in Washington right now.

That will change nothing just because you make it a right.

I mean we have the right.

Look, we have a Voting Rights Act.

This crew hasn't even renewed it.

So what does that mean?

But the CBO score said that if this passed, there would be over 200,000 unnecessary deaths.

So I get what the Republican position, maybe not yours, but the classic Republican position is, which is it's not a right.

It is a product.

It's your responsibility as a human being, as an individual, to get your own products.

But that's the price they're willing to pay.

Over 200,000 deaths.

That's a pretty high price.

Yeah, for a tax break.

For a tax break.

For a tax break for the rich.

Yes.

You know, Michael, the Republican Party is now in a situation where they're saying, take things away from the poor people to give to to the rich people.

And that's not the place they should be.

They're saying it blatantly.

When has it ever not been thus with the Republic?

It's always been that way.

It's exactly what Donald Trump ran naked and exposed.

It wasn't when they proposed Obamacare in 1994.

Right.

Well, see, I think they're so blind.

Well, that wasn't the place where they proposed what we now call

it.

That's the problem with their health care plan is they're so blinded by their hate

of Obama and the left that they forgot that they already have a conservative health care plan.

They already have one that left in the profit motive.

That's the conservative plan.

Yeah, you're right.

You're right.

And by the way,

the stocks of health care companies surged last week.

That's what's wrong with our system.

Betting on people dying and being sick is good for business.

Well, and you talked about the Congressional Budget Office report, and that sort of used to be viewed as sort of the gold standard.

And yet I heard Newt Gingrich the other day on TV saying, well, it's a left-wing organization.

And I'm thinking, now the CBO can't even be trusting.

The director who was put in place by a Republican.

There's nothing we can trust anymore with regard to objective truth.

You can trust me.

All right.

Time for new rules, everybody.

New rules.

Okay.

New rules, someone has to explain to the elderly Chinese woman who delayed a flight for five hours because she tossed coins into the engine for good luck.

That's not how it works.

The airline nickel and dimes you.

That's it.

New rules, now that a new study finds that men who play too many video games are bad in bed,

We have to ask the next logical question, just how good in bed are scientists who do studies about guys who play video games.

And by the way, you know your man is way too into gaming when you're just about to reach orgasm and you hear...

Pretty sure.

New Roll, someone must tell me why a dollar's worth of water costs $5 at the airport.

We're just drinking the water.

We're not asking Sully to land on it.

New Roll, since it seems like the two most shared images on Snapchat are dick pics and those funny face filters,

someone must invent an app that puts a funny face on your dick.

Look, there's nothing more jarring than an unrequested dick pic, but if you have to get one, wouldn't it be better with bunny ears and glasses?

New rule, Sarah Huckabee Sanders has to try to look a little less like the roommate who comes to the door and says she doesn't want to see you.

And finally, New Rule, someone has to tell me how summer, the time of year when we traditionally give our brains a rest, can retain its specialness if stupid season now runs all year round.

How can you feel good about earning a vacation for your mind if we've retired from the job of thinking altogether?

You know, it used to to be that you worked hard and behaved responsibly for most of the year, and then when June came, school's out, brains out, no reading except for trashy novels on the beach, no studying, no thinking, no dress code, the movies were all stupid, it was great

because you'd earned it.

Even if you got a summer job, it was a weird gig you did for a few months, or as it's now called, a job.

No, we have now ruined summer because America insists on being peak stupid at all times.

Our president is Donald Trump.

He's on vacation all the time.

Everything he does is trivial.

How is my guilty pleasure time of year supposed to outdo that?

How can you enjoy casual Fridays when everyone already dresses like shit all the time?

Flip-flops used to be a summer thing.

Now they're a year-round disgusting thing.

It's not special to wear a swimsuit all day when your everyday pants have an elastic waistband.

I saw a guy at a funeral in February wearing cargo shorts and a whoo-farted t-shirt.

May he rest in peace.

I mean time was that even casual conversations in the summer adhered to an unwritten code.

Keep it stupid.

It's summer.

We earned this.

Don't be an asshole and start talking about serious stuff.

Keep it to, is it hot enough for you?

When do you think the ice cream truck is coming back?

And what's the best way to get sand out of your ass?

And speaking of sand in your ass, who can forget summer romances?

All of us, that's who, because that was the point of a summer romance.

What happens in August stays in August.

It was sudden, exciting, and brief, but now with apps like Tinder for straight people and Grinder for Republicans.

I'm sorry.

And the songs that you made love to in the summer, summer songs, they're just different.

You can do the moody stuff in the winter, but summer, you had to keep it light.

Do, do, do, da, da, da.

Stuff like that.

The deepest a summer lyric ever got was, I like big butts and I cannot lie.

But now, all year round, half the songs have no lyrics.

It's just noises people make during sex and odes to the booty.

And the situation with movies is even worse.

You know, we used to keep the sequels and the superhero bullshit confined to the summer.

That was the deal.

No, really.

And then when September came, the serious movies came out, films.

And we accepted that.

We'd had our fun with robots and car crashes, and then in the fall, we knew it was time to go see the one where Meryl Streep teaches gay Holocaust survivors how to box.

But now, all year long as robots and talking raccoons because I'm telling you we are at maximum stupid.

We don't read.

It's one thing to take the summer off from heavy stuff and just bring to the beach utter nonsense like romance novels and who done it and Scientology.

But

at least it was a book of some kind.

Now educated people spend their spare time on the phone matching pretty colors in order to break imaginary candy.

You know, before the internet, the only escape from work was a summer vacation.

But now escaping from work, it's as easy as closing the office door and typing the words pornhub.com.

So I don't know how this happened or when exactly, this stupidifying of the whole year.

Maybe it was the advent of Fox News.

Maybe it was when we made stars out of the Kardashians.

Maybe it was the day John McCain decided to let an ill-advised summer fling with a Ditzy moron last all the way into November.

Whatever it was, we have got to get summer back.

We've got to be able to enjoy stupidity again.

Hard-earned, respectable stupidity.

That's what my goal is in the age of Trump.

Thank you very much, folks.

That's our show.

We're off next month and back on August 4th.

I'll be at the Mirage, July 14th and 15th in Las Vegas.

I want to thank Dan Abrams, Caddy Kay, Michael Still, Richard Clark, Dan Savage, Jordan Stuff.

We're over time on YouTube.

Thank you.

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

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