Ep. #430: Maajid Nawaz, Richard Painter

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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, ladies and gentlemen.

How are you?

Alrighty.

Oh, stop it.

Thank you very much.

Oh, what a crowd.

Thank you.

Please.

Sit your asses down.

Thank you very much.

Hey, hey, please, please.

There's a lot of show to get to, a lot of news.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I think I know what.

Thank you.

I love you back.

I think I know why you're so excited tonight because a Democrat almost won an election.

How about that?

Were you following this, Mr.

The excitable John Assoff down in

Georgia?

Thank you very much, sir.

Like in the theater, I need my line.

I know he's from Georgia.

I know where this happened.

The Democrats poured a ton of time and money into this election, and he came so close.

Party leaders are calling it a terrifying brush with success.

Oh,

so

yeah.

Now you know this.

Donald Trump is the worst person ever.

And he's a Republican and he's president.

And yet, since he's been president, there's been four special elections.

Democrats 0 for four in the Trump era.

Democrats are so lame, the Russians are like, we were going to hack this election, but why bother?

Sergey, take a day off.

We don't even need.

And of course, the big excuse is, well, we weren't supposed to win.

What election are you supposed to win?

If you can't win this one, you know, Georgia's sixth district where this election took place, the sixth most educated district in the entire country.

This is affluent, college-educated.

It's the upscale part of Georgia.

You can't get into the Waffle House without a reservation.

It's the upscale.

Oh, it's

guys marry their sisters just for the tax credit.

Really?

Really?

Now, folks, I have to tell you, Democrats have to stop losing elections because,

sorry, Republican viewers, I love you, but the wrong people are in power.

And they are not afraid to use that power.

And let me tell you, they are full of good ideas.

This week, a Republican congressman introduced a bill to make it legal for senators and representatives to carry firearms at work there at the Capitol, which sounds like a good plan until John McCain's cell phone rings and he answers his gun.

And of course, the real bad idea and the real bad news this week is the Senate unveiled their super secret health care bill.

Like me, after the show, it was hashed out behind closed doors.

And you know that everybody's saying it was unveil unveiled unveiled is not the right term you unveil a sculpture.

Nobody goes behold a turd

This is more like something that was excreted.

I mean

Health care bill more like a manifesto from the zodiac killer.

They should have published this by cutting out letters from the newspaper.

It phases out Medicaid, the safety net for our oldest, poorest, and most vulnerable citizens.

It lets states drop the Obamacare protections like pre-existing conditions.

And just for spite, it defunds Planned Parenthood.

No more gynecological exams, although Trump says he is still available to grab pussies.

Now, of course, I'm being one-sided and leaving out the good part.

There's a massive tax cut for the top 1%.

Yes, the guiding principle is, rich people, if you like your money, you can keep your money.

And even still, I love this, a small group of Republicans, thank you, one person.

A small group of Republican senators say they can't vote for it because it's not mean enough.

A group led by, not surprisingly, Ted Cruz,

who has been studying health care from top to bottom, up and down.

Ted says, who knows more about making people sick than I do?

But

do not kid yourself.

This will pass.

Republicans get shit done.

Mitch McConnell says he wants a vote before the 4th of July, when Trump voters traditionally blow their hands off.

Oh, the 4th of July.

Hey, summer's here.

Boy, it was real beach weather in Phoenix the other day.

Did you see that?

It was 122.

122.

Planes could not take off.

Hey, climate deniers.

If melting ice caps and rising oceans and pandemics aren't enough to scare you, not being able to leave Phoenix, that should.

And

yeah, and then of course, right on cue this week, Donald Trump has a rally in Iowa where he's bragging about bringing back coal jobs in a state where there are no coal jobs.

At Iowa, the state with by far the most wind power.

So

Trump

shits on wind power in Iowa.

He says, quote, I don't want to just hope the wind blows to light up your homes.

Yes, because that's how wind power works.

Your lights go on and off depending on whether the wind is blowing.

It's the same with solar.

The sun goes behind a cloud, your cable goes out.

But

speaking of solar, Donald Trump broke some news at the rally that the wall, you know, the wall between us and Mexico, is going to have solar panels on it.

He said it was his idea, solar panels.

Okay, so the wall, which is never going to be built, which Mexico is never going to be paying for, which now has

imaginary solar panels on it.

Because if it's one thing Donald Trump hates, it's fake news.

All right, we got a great show, Bradley Winford.

Leonardo Rodriga and Charlie Sykes are here.

And a little later, we'll be speaking with law professor Richard Painter.

But first, he is the founder of the world's first counter-extremism think tank Quilliam International.

Majid Nawaz.

How you doing?

Always great to see you.

I mean that.

I need you here more, sir.

I really do.

How often do you get to the United States?

Not enough, right?

I'd like to come more.

Hope to, if I'm not banned from the country.

I know.

It's amazing.

Well, I mean, there's so many things I could talk to you about, but you're such a great writer.

I'm just going to quote you on some of of these things.

Are you going to quote me back to myself?

I'm going to quote you back to yourself.

Like, I love you that you talk about the Voldemort effect, and I don't even read Harry Potter.

That's a book for children, I understand.

So, you tell me, I know what it is, but tell me what is the Voldemort effect.

Well, you see, those who are familiar with Harry Potter will know the bad guy in these novels is somebody called Voldemort.

And you actually pronounce it correctly, the T at the end is silent.

And the

people

of Harry Potter world are so petrified of this enemy that they are unable to name him.

And so for the duration of these six books, they refer to him as he who must not be named.

Now, of course, it takes a sm- he who must not be named.

You see where I'm going?

I do see where you're going.

So it takes a little child to say, actually, this person is called

Voldemort, whose real name is Tom Riddle.

And I use that, the Voldemort effect, to speak to our inability to name and shame and isolate Islamist extremism from the mainstream Muslim community.

Right, and you have almost unique credibility on this issue because 20 years ago, you were exactly who the British authorities were looking for when they talked about people who were involved in possibly terrorist activities.

After the Bosnia genocide in Europe and facing some severe domestic racism at home, violent racism and harassment from the police authorities as well.

I went went through a process of recruitment.

Some ideological recruiters from a group known as Hizb Tahrir recruited me, and I spent the better part of the next decade, my teenage years up until 24,

proselytizing for a global caliphate.

And I ended up as a political prisoner in Egypt, where I was sentenced to five years for membership of a banned organization.

Now, I must caveat: the group that I used to belong to remains legal in America and across Europe because we didn't preach violence, though we did lay the ideological foundations for what has now become known as a caliphate.

Okay, so that's your background.

I'm glad you spelled that out.

Let me throw another quote of yours back at you.

The poverty of expectations.

Now,

I know you're being sued, or you're suing the Southern Poverty Law Center for calling you,

it's funny, you're fighting extremists, but they're calling you the extremist.

Well, I wanted to make this announcement here on your show.

I've decided that I'm sick to death of well-meaning and I'm sorry to bring identity politics into it, but it's relevant because of what I'm about to say.

There's a bunch of well-meaning white men sitting in Sweet Alabama who have decided

who normally go after like the Ku Klux Klan.

They were created to defend people like me.

Right?

You know?

Defend people like me.

Like me, right?

Against people like the KKK, against the people that were chasing me when I was 15 years old with machetes and hammers and stabbing me and my friends.

they've decided to list me, along with Ayan Hurasi Ali, a Somali refugee, ex-Muslim, liberal thinker, as anti-Muslim extremists.

And I think, you know, I'm sick and tired of a lot of the well-meaning, because, you know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, well-meaning, liberal, and left-wing, usually white men, who decide that I am saying

what they don't agree with, don't allow for me to say about my own community, my own religious heritage, and as a result have listed me as an anti-Muslim extremist.

So I'm going to take them to court for defamation.

I don't think these lists are...

And you're crowdfunding it.

Yeah, I will be crowdfunding.

I'd like to be part of that crowd.

Thank you, sir.

Absolute pleasure.

And I invite you to also be part of that crowd.

I mean,

it's just insane.

Again, you have almost unique credibility on this issue.

Well, the funny thing is, Bill, I've memorized half of the Quran.

I'm a Muslim.

I'm born and raised a Muslim to a Muslim family.

I've learnt classical Arabic.

I spent time in prison as a political prisoner fighting for what I then thought was my religion.

I've changed my views as to the interpretation of my religion.

And along come these people in sweet Alabama and decide that I don't have the right to speak about my own heritage and critique it from within.

And when did criticism?

of a religion equal bigotry?

Well,

yeah, I mean, look, these guys,

these are the same guys who arrogate to themselves the right to speak out against the Bible Belt, right?

So the Southern Poverty Law Center is quite vocal against family planning,

you know, the sort of, sorry, the anti-abortionist movement, quite vocal against Christian fundamentalists.

In fact, they've listed some Christian conservative groups on their hate lists as well.

So they arrogate to themselves the right to criticize their own Bible belt, but don't want me to criticize our Quran belt within my own community.

And it's it's this hypocrisy that I call as a bigotry of low expectations.

Right, low expectations.

Right.

So, people who are called bigots, I mean, I have been called that, you have been called that.

I mean, I hope they accept it more from you.

Well, and the day, sorry.

But we're saying very much the same thing.

Yeah.

But poverty of expectations.

I always say, you know, if something that would not be accepted here, you don't make a stir about overseas, isn't that the poverty of expectations in your terms?

That is the same thing.

I mean, like Pakistan last year passed a law that was a wife-beating guide.

Not a law against wife beating, a guide of how to.

Now, if they did that in Kentucky, bad example.

But

I love Kentucky.

I love you, Kentucky.

But right, if we would not accept it here, but we don't raise a stir about it there, isn't that what you're talking about?

Absolutely.

That's the bigotry of low expectations when

the same causes that they fight for within America are somehow deemed illegitimate for people like me to fight for within our own communities.

The Quran specifies Fadribu Hunna, a passage that talks about husbands beating their wives.

This is something we speak about regularly within our communities that we've got to reform our approach to this scripture and that begins talking about the vodomor effect by acknowledging the problem exists.

Now if those vulnerable voices within Muslim communities, you know who else lists heretics who are deemed to be speaking against the accepted custom within Muslim Muslim communities?

The jihadists.

We know what happens when you list heretics among Muslims in this way.

They end up dead.

And it's no coincidence that you take the examples of lists.

In Bangladesh in 2013, jihadists listed 84 Muslims as, you know, persono non-gratas.

Within three years, 10 of them were assassinated.

Ayan Hursiyali, who's on this list, The last time her name appeared on the list is when Tia van Gogh, the film director that she was working with in the Netherlands, was murdered by a jihadist and they pinned a list on his body with a dagger.

Ayan was named on that as the next person they were targeting.

Hope Not Hate, a UK-based organization in 2013, produced a similar hate list.

Lars Hadegard was listed on that.

He was subjected later to an assassination attempt.

So when I'm speaking in this way and a bunch of well-being.

You're brave.

Well, no, I'm just saying these guys are

indemnified Muslim reformers.

You're getting it from both sides.

Yeah, absolutely.

But who do you fear more?

What I grew up fearing.

The people who would actually kill you.

I grew up.

Southern Poverty Law Center are being assholes, but they're not going to kill you.

Right.

One would hope not.

Let's see how successful this law seat is and see what happens.

Well, you mentioned Ayan Hirsi Ali.

I mean, she was before Congress the other day, and I have some of her statements that she made.

She wrote actually an op-ed in the New York Times.

And she said, when it comes to the pay gap, abortion access, and workplace discrimination, progressives have much to say, but we're still waiting for a march against honor killings, child marriages, polygamy, sex slavery, or female genital mutilation.

She was calling out the four Democratic woman senators who would not even bring her issue to the fore when she was testifying before Congress.

This is a real problem.

I'm clearly, by my accident, somebody from the United Kingdom.

And if we, if we, and we've done this with polls, I know you talk a lot about data.

We have surveys that look at British Muslim attitudes to homosexuality, for example.

One was in the Guardian newspaper, a left-wing newspaper, reported that 0%,

Bill, 0% of British Muslims said homosexuality is morally acceptable.

Zero.

And then a later poll, ICM, came along and said, okay, let's try this again.

Hopefully, we'll get a better result this time.

If the statistics are not...

We do that here.

Just try and repeat.

52% of British Muslims said that they would ban homosexuality.

You know, this is what we're dealing with.

And yet, at the same time, you've got leftist activists who are very concerned about gay rights within white communities.

We're dealing with, there are gay Muslims who need our help.

There there are feminist Muslims who need our help, liberal Muslims, ex-Muslims, you know, apostates, right?

They have the right, they have the freedom to choose the religion they want and the freedom from this is what I'm always so confused about.

These are liberal issues.

Liberal principles.

On the show last week, I mentioned what's going on in Chechnya and a number of people said to me this week, what's going on in Chechnya?

Well, this kind of a Muslim part of Russia.

And there's kind of a pogrom going on and let me read what the

lead the spokesman for Chechnya's leader said he said if such people

existed in Chechnya meaning gay people if they existed because you know and they don't even exist law enforcement would not have to worry about them as their own relatives would have sent them to where they could never return yeah and were the problem yeah you see and and and here this is where the link between these attitudes and ISIS throwing gays off the top of buildings must be recognized.

When you talk about hate speech, right, there's a Southern Poverty Law Center listing people that they deem are hate speakers or anti-Muslim extremes.

This is the problem here.

This is the hate speech.

If you have these attitudes towards gays or women or ex-Muslims and you see what ISIS is doing to them, that's the link we need to be making.

Saudi Arabia lists atheism as a terrorism offense, believe it or not, right?

And so when ISIS seeks out heretics and kills them.

They're all sorcerers.

Yeah.

And so these are the sorts of links we've got to be making.

And that's why the work I do is to challenge these ideas, try to at least, within Muslim communities.

But I know people out there are saying, well, that's ISIS.

Most Muslims are not ISIS.

And of course, most Muslims are not.

What I like about what you do is, you know, you involve math.

Math matters.

Size matters.

I think that's something you coined the term regressive left, another great term.

I think they somehow ignore this

fundamental fact that

you know

it matters how much, how big something is.

Talk about how big what with the number who are what you call jihadists, people who are actually violent, versus Islamists, right?

That's another level of it, versus just conservative.

So let me talk you through the United Kingdom the last four months.

We've had four terrorist attacks in four months.

We began with the Westminster attack, then the Manchester attack, and then the London Bridge attack, and then the fourth one has just happened at a mosque where an anti-Muslim terrorist attacked Muslims in the same way ISIS does with a van mowing passengers down.

We've had these four attacks, but after the first three, which were the jihadist ones, people began holding the Prime Minister to account.

Why has nothing been done?

How were we not able to stop these terrorists?

And the security services said, we only have the capacity to monitor 3,000 suspected jihadists at any one given time.

They said, we're at full capacity.

Now, that would be worrying enough, Bill.

Then they went on and they said, However, though we're at full capacity at 3,000, we really need to be monitoring 23,000 because that's how many there are out there in the United States.

23,000 jihadists.

Jihadists.

People who actually want to commit.

Who are ready to attack?

This is according to our security services in the United Kingdom, right?

That's 23,000 that they wish they could monitor because they need to be monitoring them to make sure they don't attack anyone.

So around those 23,000 jihadists, imagine how many more will be ideological bedfellows, the Islamists.

how many right so what is that level right so if we're gonna go by talking about people who are not going to attack yeah but when there is an attack they go yeah so let's give them let's give them the benefit of the doubt the majority of islamists are not jihadists so there will be far many more islamists who are not jihadists around them right so let's triple that number okay let's say most of these people aren't violent they are just ideologically committed to theocracy and then you've got the hardcore violent ones in the middle that's only out of a population bill of four million muslims in the UK anyway.

Now, if these figures don't indicate insurgency levels, and that's just in the United Kingdom, and that's four attacks in the last four months, if we're not in the middle of a global jihadist insurgency, I don't know what is if that's not the case.

We are in a serious crisis mode at the moment across Europe, and the figures are telling this.

We have to recognize the problem before we can begin to deal with it.

So, what can we do to make people here in this country?

Because when you talk about England, it's not the same as America.

That is not the situation here in America.

I think the problem with Americans is they hear this and Americans tend to only think in terms of America.

And they say, well, you know, the Muslims here, that's not the situation.

But again, we're talking about four or five million Muslims out of a world population of over a billion and a half.

What can we do to get Americans on the side of traditional liberalism?

Yeah, well, the first thing, you're right, by the way, American Muslims are more liberal than the European Muslims that we're talking of here, but that doesn't mean you're immune to problems.

Of course, you've had attacks here, you've got radicalization is a growing issue that everyone's worried about.

But also we've got to remember that this last attack, the fourth one, was by an anti-Muslim extremist against Muslims.

And we cannot understate the importance of recognizing in Europe there has been a genocide against Muslims.

in Bosnia.

Europe also has a history of with Nazism, of entire societies going totalitarian.

So when you ask how can we address this, we have to be aware of what I call the triple threat.

And that that is from the left the the the either you know the regressive left is a phrase we use for the cultural relativists who don't call out this bigotry when it comes from brown people on the right with the with the rising populism on the right and then from the heavens above the theocrats the Islamist theocrats and so we have to be aware of this triple threat when dealing with this as civil society but the only true long-term solution will come through civil society pushback.

And you have a great history of this with the American civil rights movement, with gay rights.

Within one generation, I mean when I was 15,

I grew up on hip-hop, by the way, based here in LA, that the whole hip-hop scene that came from.

Who didn't?

Yeah, you did.

I noticed, by the way, you had

Ice Cube on your show just, was it last week?

Well, yes.

I grew up on.

I know that's sensitive.

It's idiot.

Go on to the next thing.

But

if you'd come to me when I was 15 and said to me, Magid, within your lifetime,

you'll see an African-American president and one of the most prominent rappers will be white, and a conservative prime minister in the United Kingdom will introduce gay marriage equality.

I never would have believed you.

But that's how much change can occur within one generation.

So we need a civil society movement that has everybody standing together in solidarity against all of these bigotries, against the

populism coming from the right wing, the control totalitarianism coming from the left wing.

I mean, you've got leftist attackers now attacking Republicans, James Hodgkinson, in the name of leftist activism, and he liked the SPLC page on his Facebook.

You know, you've got the riot at Barclay College, you've got Charles Murray attacked at Middlebury College, and the Democrat professor suffered concussion because she had the audacity to invite somebody that the leftists didn't agree with.

So we've got to push back against all of this through a civil society movement.

And I often say, Bill, I say you don't have to be black to challenge racism.

You don't have to be gay to challenge homophobia.

And you don't have to be Muslim to challenge Islamist theocracy.

I need you to hear more.

Rejeev Nawaz, thank you very much, sir.

Let's meet our panel.

Hey, how you doing?

Hey, everybody.

Welcome back.

Okay, here they are.

He's an MSNBC analyst and the author of a forthcoming book, How the Right Lost Its Mind.

Charlie Sykes.

Charlie,

that'll get you a big round of applause here.

He's an an activist, an Emmy Award-winning actor who's currently shooting Steven Spielberg's The Post with Tom Hanks and who I loved.

And get out, Bradley Whitford's back with us.

And she's an actor at Yahoo News and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Bianca Goladriga.

Said it right.

I'm bad at names, but I practice.

Good job.

Thank you.

All right, let's talk about health care first because that's what actually affects people up close and personal, although it won't until 2021 because they're cowards.

But first off, I want to say this is a done deal.

Anybody who thinks that this is not passing, Democrats constantly underestimating Republicans.

Oh, they couldn't steal a Supreme Court pick.

Yeah, they could.

Oh, and entitlement has never been taken away until it was.

We never had a mental patient as president.

It's not possible until it is.

So

I'm just going to assume this is a done deal, and they're repealing Obamacare.

My question is,

what happens

when it happens, when they do repeal it, when it becomes law?

We go back to the good old days when people go to the emergency room?

People are going to die.

That's true, too.

We're not supposed to say it.

Well, okay, then we'll separate the sin from the sinner.

But

people are going to die

if this is passed.

If people don't have access to health care,

don't ask the PINCO Liberal, ask the American Cancer Society.

They will die.

And we have the president who himself says that this bill is mean.

And if somebody who brags about assaulting women and mocks the disabled says your bill is mean, it's really fucking mean.

Well, look, the rollout,

the rollout alone says it all.

I mean this wasn't a bill that Republicans and Mitch McConnell ran out and said, look, look at what we've come up with.

Everyone should embrace it.

This was done in secret.

They rolled it out at 10 a.m.

on a Thursday morning.

You saw other Republicans angry, especially some of the moderates, at the process that went into this.

And that's going to account for a lot, the process itself.

But you look at what's in the bill, it does mirror the House bill in many ways.

It's a bit more progressive.

It offers a bit more subsidy options.

But the people who are going to get hit hardest are the older people.

Middle class and poor older people are going to hit by having higher deductibles and they're going to be having higher premiums.

And it's going to be, judged by the CBO score next week is what we're hearing, but we're hearing an estimate of some 18 million people who may be off of insurance in 10 years.

The House version is about 23 million people.

So this isn't something that Republicans are fully embracing, but once it does get passed, if it does get passed, then this becomes a Republicans' problem and this becomes a president's problem.

Where would you be on this, Charlie, if you were a Republican senator?

Because you're a Republican.

We love you because you hate Trump, but like.

But let's not forget, I mean, you know, this is a Republican bill and this is what Republicans have always wanted.

Where are you on this?

Well, see, conservatives used to,

conservatives are bad at radical change.

It's not in our nature.

Secondly, conservatives used to be concerned about unintended consequences.

So, you know, as you asked the question, what will happen?

Nobody has any idea what's going to happen because they are rushing this through without any notion.

And they're going to be saying that it's worse than the status quo with Obamacare because you have the rising premiums, the deductibles, the lousy choices.

This bill will make all of those things worse.

So one of the things that

what you need to understand about this legislation for the Republicans in Congress, and the reason why it is, I agree with you, a done deal.

is frankly for them it is not about health care.

It's about getting a political win, anything.

And number two, it's about setting the table for major tax cuts.

This is really about the tax cuts, not the health care, which is why the actual implications for people's health care, their access to health care, they have pushed that off into the next decade and no one knows what the answer is.

But this is the extraordinary thing to me, though.

It seems to me, and correct me if I'm wrong, that the organizing principle in a lot of Republican economic theory comes down to this Orwellian idea that the rich are victims.

It's insane.

This is a huge tax cut in a health care bill.

And it's a tax cut that they're getting the money back.

The rich people are literally getting reparations.

Look, every

in this bill.

You know, you're right.

Your premise, your question was right.

You know, conservatives, you know, for the last 30 years have pushed for tax cuts.

You know, they've never met a tax cut they didn't like.

But here's where Bill Kristol, I think, uses the exactly correct term.

This is kind of like zombie conservatism.

That after a period where you have the working class and the middle class really taking it in the shorts, suffering, you have this massive wealth inequality in this country.

The first thing out of the box from the Republicans is sort of like, again, something like they've been in a time capsule for the last 10 years is let's cut the benefits for the poor and for the middle class with a massive tax cut for the wealthy.

It's not as if they are dealing with the situation as it exists right now.

It is imposing the ideology that they've had for 10 years.

Let's not forget it.

Fundamentally guts Medicaid.

It's a program that one-fifth of the country relies upon.

It's a country that many red states rely upon.

It's an issue that many governors have been pressing Republican senators on because their own constituents rely upon this.

So it's going to be a big hurdle for Republicans to get over cutting Medicaid.

And can I go back to why Democrats lose elections?

Because I heard Trump say the other day, as I've heard many Republicans say, Obamacare is a disaster.

I just don't hear the counter argument.

You know, Republicans are great at saying something that's completely untrue and then having Democrats just flinch.

It tries to.

Unions suck.

Okay, whatever you say.

Nancy Pelosi.

There's this big debate about Nancy Pelosi now.

Well, you know, maybe we should have new leadership.

But Nancy Pelosi did not have a reign of terror.

She did a lot of great things for this country.

And John Assaw,

this great Democratic hope, was asked about Nancy Pelosi, and he said, I haven't spent 30 seconds thinking about whether she should be the leader.

Well, first of all, that's a dodge.

It's a lie.

And I understand why voters go, if you can't even stand up for your own people, why should we vote for you?

Fucking Donald Trump said that Ted Cruz's wife was ugly and that his father killed Kennedy and Ted Cruz is out there defending Donald Trump.

The Democrats have to find a way.

No one can get away with Donald Trump.

The Democrats have to find that sweet sweet spot between hysterical opposition,

which Trump folks feed upon, and being boring and vanilla, as John Osoff was.

And they haven't really figured out how to do that.

And by the way, I mean, how many election cycles are you going to put up, a party led by Nancy Pelosi?

That is kind of the definition of insanity, isn't it?

I mean,

all the wonderful things she's done, 77 years old, what the Democrats missed.

They thought they were going to make this a referendum on Trump.

The Republicans made a referendum on Nancy Pelosi.

Look, every party needs some fresh blood, some fresh faces at some point.

I'm sorry.

I'm going to speak over you and say that I think there's some misogyny at work here.

I get what you just said there.

I get it.

Yeah, no, but the Democrats do

need to focus more locally.

I mean, they seem all about getting leadership at the top, getting a Democrat in the White House.

They need to focus on issues

that affect the USA.

That's the wrong debate.

Three years ago, three years ago, no Democrat would be seen in the midterms campaigning with Obama.

All of my progressive friends.

That's the problem.

We want a saint to come along, and then they have to govern a country filled with people who disagree with you.

And then I have friends saying,

you know, he's a Republican.

Other than Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, I don't hear them making a strong counter argument when Republicans say bullshit like the environment costs jobs.

No, it doesn't!

It creates jobs.

Unions are bad.

No, unions are good.

They just, it's not about, there's this debate, this fake debate I think, about should the Democrats move left or right.

It's not about that.

It's about how you fight.

They're basically on the same page in how you fight.

Bernie and Hillary, when they were in the Senate, voted together like 93% of the time.

There's not a lot of daylight between the left and the center with the Democrats.

It's how you do it.

Have some balls.

Anyway,

we got some of the, to illustrate this, you know,

the Democrats have lost these four states, Kansas, Montana, South Carolina, Georgia, since Trump has been elected.

And we got some of the posters that they were using in these races.

I think it'll show you that they're less than inspiring.

For example, look at these posters.

Democrats, consistently one of America's top two parties.

Democrats, thank you, sir.

May I have another?

The Democrats will never make you sick of winning.

Meh.

Democrats, join the party of Bernie Sanders, not actually the party of Bernie Sanders.

The Democrats preferred two to one by non-citizens.

The Democrats, let us win one or we'll run Chelsea.

The Democratic Party, wait, we thought everyone got a trophy.

The Democratic Party, float like a butterfly, sting also like a butterfly.

Democrats going down the shitter in the bathroom of your choice.

And the Democrats, check us out on MySpace.

That one kills me.

All right, he was the chief White House ethics lawyer under President George W.

Bush.

He was now professor of corporate law at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities.

Please welcome Richard Painter.

Richard,

how are you, sir?

Thank you.

It is great to see you.

I see you on TV all the time, and I must say, I need more moderate Republicans in my diet.

I love it when I see you.

You give me a bad look, but I'm trying to tell you, I'm a big fan of yours.

Well, I'm more conservative than some of them.

I mean, people run around saying they're conservatives, they don't want to conserve the planet.

I mean, I don't know what's going on right there.

But

so we're going to talk about Russia very soon, but before we get to that, I know there's something else that's on Trump's plate that you're interested in, which is his business dealings.

And the fact that, okay,

you know, we have this bid we do on this show called, I don't know if it's true, I don't know if for a fact, I just know it's true.

And it's one of those kind of things.

I don't know it for a fact.

I just know that when Trump couldn't borrow money anymore in America, because he's a deadbeat, he got all his money from Russia, and they own him, right?

Well, I don't know where he's getting the money.

I don't know.

He won't tell us.

He won't give us the tax returns.

I mean, all I know is that he borrowed a lot of money in New York.

I was living in New York at the time.

And down in New Jersey and that Atlantic Casino, and he didn't pay it back.

And there's something about those New York banks.

They like getting paid back.

So he went somewhere to borrow money.

I don't know where.

I mean, I think they have him on money.

I think there's a P-tape.

I just think that this.

Oh, oh, yeah.

Well, I mean, it was the first thing he asked Comey about.

You're talking about the trickle-down?

Yeah, okay.

Wow.

So, I mean, you watch the hearings with,

I mean, Comey, and then we had the ones with people like Jeff Sessions and the two national security guys.

And they seem to, Sessions and the National Security guys seem to be invoking this sort of quasi-future executive privilege thing where they couldn't say anything about their conversations with the president because it was somehow vaguely inappropriate and I remember Angus King the senator from Maine saying to one of them who said I don't feel it's appropriate and King said your feelings are irrelevant well and I thought of you because you're such a serious guy I was like this guy yeah that's what you would say right your feelings are irrelevant.

What are the facts?

They are, but

if you're not going to tell the truth anyway, you might as well not answer the question.

But

what basis are they making this on?

I mean, to say that they're under oath there to testify before the committee, and they're just saying, I don't feel like it's appropriate.

How do they get away with that?

Oh, well, they have their loyalty oath to the president.

We all know about that.

And then the fact that the Republican members will not hold them accountable.

They ought to issue a subpoena and make them testify.

And they ought.

So

you work for President George W.

Bush.

We hear a lot about the deep state.

The people who are watching the other channel right now, who are watching Fox News now,

whatever we're talking about, it's just not even in their head because they never hear it.

They hear that Donald Trump is being persecuted by the deep state, these mysterious people who include like George W.

Bush's

Deputy Attorney General and George W.

Bush's FBI director.

And his cousin Billy Bush.

It's a big bass conspiracy.

It's an anti-Trump conspiracy that is being pursued by everybody who is a rational human being from the left to the right to the center.

I mean,

that's what's going on.

Okay.

But that's deep state.

Is there such a thing?

I never heard of deep state.

I just, when I went into the White House, I never asked, was there any such thing as deep state?

I don't know what.

Something strange going on in the State Department?

I don't know.

I never heard of that.

Okay, all right.

So let me ask, this was the big story from the Washington Post today.

It said, a source deep inside the Russian government discovered that Putin personally ordered a cyber campaign to help elect Donald Trump.

In fact, it was so secret that it was not in the president's daily briefing.

Remember when the president had daily briefings?

Oh yeah, yeah.

Good times.

Way back.

About five months ago.

But

they walked it over to the White House and there were apparently four people in the room beside the president, the head of the national, of the DHS, the director of homeland security, the head of the CIA, the National Security Advisor, and of course Michael Moore.

No, I don't know.

And this is amazing that Putin personally directed this to elect Donald Trump.

I mean, I got to think that

the ghosts of Brezhnev and Stalin and Lenin are all saying, wow, Putin did it.

We've always wanted to put a moron in the White House.

But

was it to, did even Putin think that Trump could win?

Did even Trump think that Trump could win?

Wasn't Putin trying to damage Hillary in her inevitable victory?

It ended up being like the perfect storm.

It was a relatively low-cost endeavor that Putin took on.

I think it was about $200 million, which is nothing for the Russian military.

Return on investment.

It was a great return on investment.

And to have this confluence of events here in the U.S., where you see such hyper-partisanship.

And one takeaway from this story is you see how indecisive President Obama was throughout this all.

Comey said that they first got wind of this back in 2015.

We didn't start hearing about it until 2016.

The president had been getting briefed about it in 2016 and September of 2015.

This was 1616.

Yeah, this was August of 2015.

August, September, October.

There had been multiple meetings.

The president, after the election, because remember, he thought that he didn't want to come across as being in Hillary Clinton's corner, though it didn't make sense.

He was already out campaigning for her.

Again, the Democratic disease.

Right, which is exactly what.

Just not taking, not going for the juggernaut.

And you're dealing with a thug, you're dealing with a bully and Vladimir Putin.

And the only thing that a thug and a bully appreciates is power.

And it seemed as though this president was too apprehensive to act on it.

And how did it become partisan?

Honestly.

You know, the line in this story is this was the crime of the century.

When you go back to what actually happened here, I mean, I am old enough to remember when Republicans actually cared about Russian espionage, when, you know, during the Cold War, when they actually would have thought this was a big freaking deal.

You know, and so you have two things.

Yes, I think Obama choked on all of this, but then you have to ask yourself, did we actually, I remember when the Manchurian candidate was a movie, you know, rather than the nightly news.

Did we elect the Manchurian candidate here?

And so, you know, this is where the lack of urgency, I do think the Obama administration took it seriously.

Right, but right now you have a president of the United States and Republicans in Congress that just do not want to engage with this because, again, this shouldn't have been a Democrat-Republican thing.

If there was one bipartisan issue, this should be it.

And it's not.

They must have watched the Oliver Stone documentary and sort of fed into the narrative that he was pushing and the tough questions that he was directing towards.

That's crazy.

I mean, I love Oliver, but he's crazy on that issue also.

People keep comparing this to Watergate, and I think that's really, really unfair to President Nixon.

I mean, you know, look,

it was a third-rate burglary.

It It was a third-rate burglary, inexperienced buffoons.

And what do we have here?

It was a break-in to the Democratic computers along with a bunch of other computers.

The Watergate job wasn't done by the KGB.

And Nixon was a crook.

Yeah, maybe he was a crook.

But at least it was our crook.

He didn't invite the Russian ambassador into the Oval Office or the Russian television crew.

And by the way, that's the happiest I've ever seen Donald Trump.

Right.

The most at-home, relaxed ever since I've seen him.

Or a Russian American.

No wonder they relaxed.

Yeah, this certainly.

Like, what would it take for Republicans to acknowledge that there was some sort of collusion?

I mean, would he have to, like, stare down the barrel of a camera and ask Russia to interfere in the election?

So, do you think?

He did.

Yeah, I know, I know, I know.

It's incredible.

Do you think Obama choked on this?

Look, I think it would have been much more powerful had he spoken out about this before the election.

Whatever the consequences may be, at least he spoke out about it and acted on it because Putin saw that he didn't and took the utmost advantage of it.

Okay, so you were talking about the Republicans.

Only 10 percent of Republicans did not vote for Donald Trump.

And they're still pretty much with him.

What do you guys have to do to get your party back?

Can you get your party back?

Do you have hope?

Less every day.

65 percent of the Republicans don't even believe that this took place, this Russian hacking.

I mean,

remember Linda Blair and the exorcist?

I honestly think that if Donald Trump came out and his head spun around 360 degrees and exploded with green projectile vomit, that 65% of Republicans would say it was brilliant performance art.

And

this is the challenge that we're up against.

And we were talking about

the alternative reality of Fox News.

The reality is that you have a lot of Republicans that do not read these stories, do not hear about this,

and quite frankly, have just decided that

they're going to dismiss all of this.

So this is the real challenge that that if you had Watergate with this media ecosystem, I'm pretty convinced that Richard Nixon would have survived.

You would have had Sean Hannity talking about it at Witch Schond,

they would have had all of that ear cover that would have allowed him to get away with the cover-up.

Also though,

it's very interesting to me.

The right falls in line.

I feel like the right is hypocritical about their notions of small government, but supposedly the left believes in government, but the right actually operates,

They know that politics is the way to create your moral vision.

On the left, we think it's, I don't know, culture, that's important, but we don't show up.

We don't, like I said, we...

We don't show up before Trump.

And

I remember when we would publish the show up for my character

elections.

And defend what we've done and what we believe in.

Stop flinching.

You know.

Can I just just add one thing?

The word unions should not be a bad word.

Environmentalists should not be a bad word.

I own it.

Health care own it.

These are things to be proud of.

I think Republicans understand that

their party affiliation is like a union membership.

Well, I may not agree.

I think a lot of them think Trump's an idiot, but

I'm going to stick on it.

No,

it's way worse than that.

I mean, it is.

It is.

No, it is.

It is.

I used to say it was, you know, tribal politics.

Now it is a cult.

It is a cult of personality.

And there's almost no other way to interpret it.

I mean, I've watched, I still, I've stolen this line, by the way, from Jonah Goldberg, that for me, the last year has been like watching Invasion of the Body Snatchers, where people I've known for 20 or 30 years, decent people who used to argue that character mattered and all of these things, suddenly they get them.

And they start figuring that, no, we have to follow the dear leader, whatever the orange Duce believes we have to go along with.

And so it makes it very, very difficult because the Democrats can come up with any line, but understand that for the right right now, you don't have to be pro-Trump.

You just have to hate the left and the media more.

Right.

That's where it's.

And just trying to make sense of all this Russia thing, look, I came to this country as an immigrant from the former Soviet Union.

I think that Americans, for whatever reason, and maybe rightly so, don't view Russia as enemy number one.

I was called a commie spy left, right, and center when we moved here.

All the bad guys in the movies were Russians, right?

I think that Americans view our relationship with Russia Russia a bit differently now, and maybe that's why they don't see it as big of a threat as they should be seeing, especially Vladimir Putin.

All right.

Thank you, panel.

It's time for New Rule.

Okay, New Rule.

Someone must tell me how come the same people who use sanitizer on their whole food shopping cart will hop on a bike seat that's hosted a thousand sweaty ass scraps.

New rule, I know he still has to pretend that he's blind.

But someone has to tell Bill Cosby his tie is too short.

That's not how an alleged sex offender wears a tie.

This is how an alleged sex offender wears a tie.

Neurule, it's time to realize you're too old for rock concerts when the drummer throws a drumstick into the audience during the show and you yell out, hey, that could have taken somebody's eye out.

Neural, if you happen to meet one of the 7% of American adults who believe chocolate milk comes from brown cows,

you must tell them that non-fat milk comes from skinny cows,

and condensed milk comes from constipated cows,

and skim milk comes from cows in the mafia.

New Rule, someone has to tell the people who make Barbie dolls.

Yeah, this is real

that they can go ahead and make a hipster Ken with a man bun, but they're not telling us anything about Ken we don't already know.

And finally, new rule, now that we've had Mother's Day and Father's Day, let's set aside this Sunday to celebrate people who are neither with a new holiday called I Didn't Reproduce Day.

And let me be clear, I am not saying there's anything wrong with having a small number of children.

After all, children are the leaders of tomorrow.

Sometimes they're even the leaders of today.

I'm just saying, where's the holiday for single people?

We don't have a day, only happy hour.

But we've spent a lifetime being the cool aunts and uncles, but while we celebrate everybody else, nobody ever celebrates us, and they really should, because you know what Mother Nature loves even more than electric cars?

Condoms.

There's literally nothing you can do that's better for the environment than to not produce another resource-sucking, waste-making human being, probably with a bad attitude.

I didn't bring a kid into the world to consume valuable resources.

Where's my breakfast in bed?

Where's my coupon good for one foot rub?

Where's my greeting card that says, roses are red, violets are blue, you help the earth by keeping a lid on your goo.

So, you know, you could do it all.

You can get the hybrid car, do the recycling, not throwing batteries in the trash.

It all adds up to a fraction of the good it would do to have just one less child because that child increases your carbon legacy by over 9,000 tons.

And remember, every time a single person does something to prevent pregnancy, they're creating more slots on college campuses for your kid.

Hallmark needs a card that says, It's not that you're gay, it's not that you're lesbian, but because you didn't have kids, mine got into Wesleyan.

So, you know, having kids or not having kids, there's not a moral dimension to it.

That's what I'm saying.

It's just your taste.

I don't have kids for the same reason you do, because that's what each of us wants.

I get it.

Lots of people love kids.

Although I must say, no one in the world ever looks happier than when Maury Povitch says, you are not the father.

You are not the father.

father.

You are not the father.

You are not the father.

You know, everyone is so used to married with children being the norm that nobody noticed that single people are actually the majority now.

In August 2014, the unmarried for the first time surpassed the married in sheer numbers.

And yet, you know, we still remain a somewhat suspect group, somehow incomplete.

Whenever we're at a party, people always feel free to tell us how good it would be to get married and have a kid.

But somehow it's rude if I say, and you know what, you guys should totally get divorced.

When you're childless, people love to tell you, you have to have a baby, but you don't have to.

You have to have car insurance.

Remaining single isn't for everyone, but it's a perfectly rational decision.

The science is in.

Singles exercise more than married people do.

Yeah, single women have better overall health and men less heart disease.

Singles actually have stronger social ties, less debt, and are more likely to volunteer for civic organizations.

Now, of course, a lot of this is to get laid.

But not all of it.

So stop asking a woman why she isn't married or why she doesn't have children.

She doesn't owe you an explanation.

You owe her 9,000 tons of carbon.

And stop describing not being married as shocking

or surprising.

Fuck, Jennifer Anniston had to tell People Magazine that she's been shamed as a sad, childless human.

Yes, like she's the pathetic freak, as opposed to these pillars of the community.

The Duggars with their litter of 19 children.

You know, call me anti-family, but I say you're overdoing it when your wife has to say, not tonight, honey, I'm giving birth.

All right, that's our show.

I want to thank Charlie Sykes, Bradley Whitford, Vienna Golden Green, Richard Painter, and Majid Lawaz.

Join us now for overtime on YouTube.

Thank you, folks.

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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