Ep. #429: Alex Marlow, Eddie Izzard

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

Start the clock.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

Oh, my gosh.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I think I know why you're happy tonight.

Say that everybody, but I really know this time because it came out today.

Just today, Amazon is buying Whole Foods.

You will be getting kale delivered right to your door.

It's liberal Christmas, everyone.

Liberal.

Now, the other reason you're probably happy is this Donald Trump.

Have you been following what this guy's up to?

For months, he has been absolutely obsessed with harassing every single law enforcement official in the federal government who tell everybody I'm not under personal investigation.

Not personal investigation.

Tell everybody.

Well, now now he's under personal investigation.

That's the big story that happened this week.

The charge is obstructed of justice, and it was the typical pattern we have seen with the news.

The Washington Post, acting on leaks, broke this story around 5 p.m.

a few days ago.

Fox News spent all night trying to debunk it, and then Trump himself confirms it

during his 4 a.m.

poop tweet.

And

then the other news outlets were all tried to confirm this, but why?

At 3.55 a.m.,

Trump tweeted, now they go for obstruction of justice.

Nice.

This is like Watergate if Deep Throat was Nixon.

Usually, these federal investigations go slowly, not this one.

Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller has already hired 13 lawyers with plans to hire a lot more.

He is so far up Trump's ass,

he had to ask Putin to scoot over.

Mueller and his team have already found a clue that Trump fired Comey to stop the Russia investigation.

It's the time Trump went on TV and said, I fired Comey to stop this Russia investigation.

But the clue, boy, he's a master criminal, this Trump.

So, you know, panic

is the word that they're using about what's going on at the White House.

Everybody is luring up.

Trump's lawyer hired a lawyer.

I'm not making that up.

Apparently, the only person who has no use for lawyers is Donald Trump.

They say all he does all day, he watches TV stewing about this.

He was so upset about all this this week he called in the entire cabinet for an emergency flattery meeting.

OMG, did you see this?

Did you see?

Did you see what went on at this cabinet meeting?

I did, and I immediately called an emergency meeting at my liquor cabinet.

Oh, my God.

Oh.

This is...

I can't believe this is really happening.

Trump started things off by blowing himself.

He said, never has there been a president who's done more things than I have.

Then they all took turns around the table, verbally filleting the dear leader.

Reince Priebus said, We thank you for the opportunity and the blessing you've given us to serve your agenda.

This is how Scientologists talk about L.

Rod Hubbard.

These are, what?

These are cabinet members.

These people used to have dignity.

They were Republicans, but they had dignity.

And now they're going around the table.

Pardon me, sir, if I avert my gaze.

As you shine with the power of a million suns.

Your enormous brain casts a great shadow.

I am but a mushroom who grows in its shade.

Rex Tellerson said, I don't want to say your dick is big, Mr.

President, but I'm standing on it.

And then the next day, Trump turned 71.

So if you're wondering if this is the year he settles down, no, you're thinking of a golden retriever turning three.

So yeah, it turned 71.

They had a big birthday celebration at the White House on Wednesday.

They brought out a cake.

Trump closed his eyes, made a wish, blew out the candles, and Ivanka's dress fell off.

Well, I.

Oh, I kid.

I kid the Trump family.

Come on.

Melania moved into the White House this week, not into Trump's room, in the trophy room.

Hey,

speaking of trophies, there was a moment of healing this week after that horrible mass shooting we had that wounded a Republican congressman.

Okay, that was a practice for this game they're going to have.

They went ahead with the game and the Republicans played the Democrats and the Democrats won the game.

But after the game...

After the game, they did a nice thing.

Even though they won, they took the trophy and they handed it to the Republicans, just like they did with the last election.

All right.

We've got a great show.

Ian Bremer, Malcolm Nance are here, and a little later we will be speaking with the hilarious Eddie Izzard.

But first up, he is the editor-in-chief of Breitbart News.

Be nice.

Alex Marlow is here.

Alex.

Hey, Alex, how you doing?

Nice.

No,

thanks for having me.

Because you are the head of Breitbart News.

Steve Bannon used to head Breitbart News.

Now he is Trump's concigliary.

I want to say, first of all,

I want the Democrats to have a little bit of what you guys are drinking.

Because

you have balls and you fight better.

You're here on my show.

I can't get Democrats to come here.

Thank you, Bill.

It's a super high compliment, and it's one of the reasons why I'm here on the show with you is because you have a reputation of actually letting conservatives speak their mind and speak their full piece.

So, compliments to you, hats off.

But I think that actually a lot of our inspiration at Breitbart has been following Democrats and people on the left over the years.

I'm from Los Angeles, I went to Berkeley, I've witnessed, I live in Washington, D.C., and watching the left fight effectively, fight tooth and nail for their values.

That's what Breitbart was founded on.

Those principles that we believe what we believe, so we're going to fight for them with all we have.

Oh, wow.

I didn't expect you to say that.

I don't think the left fights tooth and nail.

They didn't even defend Obamacare when Democrats gave Americans health care, not herpes.

Okay.

Anyway.

So you're also honest about being a right-wing organization, which Fox News is not.

Okay.

But you do ignore stories.

Would you not agree to that?

I mean,

by design.

Yeah.

By design.

Yes, I'm honest.

At least that's honest.

Yes, I appreciate that.

And I try to be consistent as we do at Breitbart News, and we're not going to cover the exact same stories the exact same way as all the other outlets.

We'll leave that to the rest of the establishment press.

We're very much anti-establishment, trying to highlight stories that we don't think get their fair day.

Okay, but there's anti-establishment and then there's anti-truth.

If you are not covering Russia, which you are not,

we checked.

It's kind of a big story.

I mean, even if there is no collusion, it's still a big story.

All of our intelligence agencies, which right-wing patriots used to admire, they all say it happened.

You don't cover it.

How do you justify that, really?

As I said, we don't cover it because every other outlet in the world, particularly the left of center outlets, which are the vast, vast, vast number of news outlets, are obsessed with this story, covering it round the clock for nine months.

The story really dates.

Not at all, Alex.

Come on.

No, we cover it a little if there's something big, if there's something that breaks, that is a big, important story.

But we don't have any evidence of collusion.

We don't have any evidence of

destruction of justice yet.

But you would agree with the 17 agencies, I'm asking.

Do you agree that Russia did meddle and try to fix this election?

Russia absolutely was trying to interfere according to those agencies.

I have no reason to doubt them.

I have no extra insight beyond that.

But is this something that is news to anyone?

Do you think Russia tipped the election?

I don't know if Russia tipped the election or not, but we know that what they released was true statements by Democrats that were incredibly embarrassing.

And it's the sort of thing where the Democrats can look at.

But wasn't that enough to tip the election if it was only 77,000 votes in those three states?

Well, they did lose 30 states.

The Democrats lost 30 states.

I don't know that.

Oh, I'm not saying that the Democrat.

I'm not saying the Democrats don't have problems.

Look at it this way.

You saw Titanic?

Yes.

My wife loves it.

I love it.

I'm okay with it.

Maybe I should be with your wife.

Okay, but

I'm saying this because in Titanic, there's a point where the spoiler alert.

The ship hits an iceberg, it's not going to go well.

And the architect says, you know, there's nine compartments below.

If four of them flood, we're okay.

If five of them flood we're fucked okay yeah so I would agree there are many compartments of this they had a bad candidate the Democrats Hillary I think she would have been a good president bad candidate the electoral college is fucked up it was a year for the outsiders and liberals sulking about Bernie and bullshit about Hillary's the lesser of two evils that's four compartments but come on Russia is the fifth compartment you cannot claim to me that they did all this shit with the hacking and the emails and it didn't tip the election.

There's no doubt about it that Russia wants to sow discord in the United States.

They want us to lose faith in our institution.

But what's happening with this story is that we're nine months in, no hard evidence of collusion.

If you present evidence of collusion, Bill, I'll come back to you.

Okay, forget them.

I'll eat some forget for you.

But in the meantime, I want to cover the president's agenda more than I want to cover the Russia

collusion that does not exist.

I'll get off this in one second.

I'll just read what Angus King said, because Jeff Sessions, he testified this week.

And Angus King, who I'm starting to really love,

said, the question he didn't answer that really disturbed me, have you looked into what the Russians did?

It's the Attorney General of the United States.

Do you ask for any briefings?

Do you understand the magnitude of what was done to us?

And the answer was no.

He said, Comey essentially said the same thing last week about the president.

They had nine interactions, never asked how the Russians did it.

This is the most serious attack on our country since September 11th.

An adversary is aiming an arrow at the heart of our democracy, and these guys are just shrugging it off.

If the commander-in-chief won't defend the country against an attack by a foreign adversary, isn't that the most impeachable offense there is?

If the suggestion is that it's impeachable because he hasn't defended the country adequate since then, then I don't know what the precedent is for that.

If there's collusion, then we can have the impeachment conversation, but there's no demonstrable evidence of collusion.

And you guys continue to talk about the story in the establishment press instead of talking about the president's agenda, which is by design, because you guys won't apologize if it turns out there's nothing.

No one will come out on MSNBC.

They'll just move on to the next hysteria.

And that's a huge advantage for people like me who are covering the rest of the news.

I don't think that's fair.

But okay, let's move on to some.

Let's go to free speech.

Sure.

Because that's something we both care about.

Very much.

And I think it's under attack from so many quarters in this country.

You say you went to Berkeley.

Absolutely.

I didn't know that.

I was the keynote speaker at their graduation a couple of years ago.

I'm surprised they let you on campus.

Well, they disinvited.

They did disinvite me.

Okay.

And then

there was an uproar, so they disinvited me.

And then there was another uproar, so they re-invited me.

But it's under attack on campuses.

It's under attack by Donald Trump, who threatens reporters reporters all the time.

And it's under attack, as I'm sure you know, by corporations.

There's this play going on, Julius Caesar.

Yes.

Okay.

And there's

the guy who is portraying Caesar is dressed as Donald Trump.

It's plainly Trump.

Red tie down to his knee.

Crazy hair.

It's Trump.

And of course, Caesar gets stabbed.

Now, I'm fond of saying to Republicans all the time, if Obama did it, but really, if Obama was Julius Caesar and he got stabbed, I think the liberals would be angry about that.

Oh, absolutely.

It would be bedlam in the media.

The same thing with the Kathy Griffin thing with holding up President Trump's head with blood on it, which was not funny.

I mean, it's bizarre performance art.

And I really do think this stems

with what...

Okay.

And I disagree with that too.

I mean, I think what it is the president there is this.

I don't think they should have Trump playing Julius Caesar and getting stabbed.

I don't.

I mean, if a conservative comedian did that with President Obama, would anyone say it was funny?

Anyone, one comedian.

So we're agreeing that there are some places where free speech does pause.

Well, it's bad strategy, certainly, to put that out there, because we all look like hysterical lunatics.

And so, again, helpful for Breitbart, not as helpful for the Democrats.

But what about this thing where corporations now are getting in the act, and if you do something they don't like, they pull their funding.

Yes, absolutely.

They pull their advertising.

And I'll tell you that this really started, in my view, in the modern era with Breitbart, where a lot of people are boycotting Breitbart.

And what they're doing is there's a lot of anonymous people online, cowardly people.

We don't know who's funding them.

We don't know who they are, who are putting out all of this misinformation about who we are and what we stand for.

And they're trying to round up corporations to boycott us.

And so what's happened is that corporations are now deciding what's free and fair speech, who can make a living, what opinions you can make a living saying now.

And of course, now you're seeing the right fight fire with fire and one boycotts of when the left takes it too far in their Trump hatred.

So it's a very dangerous path we're on.

And I really do think, Bill, and I appreciate you giving me this opportunity, people on the left and the right who are free speech advocates need to come together right now and say the corporations are not going to define the First Amendment and free speech in this country.

Yeah, I mean, I'm worried about it's also under attack with religion.

I mean, I think now there are certain things about terrorism that you and I do agree on.

I think criticizing a religion, whatever religion it is, is not bigotry in itself.

And I have to argue that on this show all the time.

But

come on, Alex.

You don't really think a Muslim ban is a helpful thing, do you?

I mean, that's a stupid approach to the problem, isn't it?

Well, the stupid approach, the strategy part, I think, is interesting.

I think a lot of where the ban comes from, and again, it's not literally a Muslim ban.

It is only highlighting countries that are not even necessarily the countries that have the most Muslims in their country.

But I think the design is that people have lost faith, particularly the people in the Trump inner circle, that the government has the ability to effectively vet people coming in and out of the country.

And until we do have faith that they can vet people properly, there needs to be extreme measures.

Most of the recent attacks have been from people who have been here, American citizens.

Yes, but they got radicalized somewhere.

They didn't get radicalized in the world.

Exactly.

But not, they weren't coming from another country.

I think a lot of it is that people don't realize that American Muslims are about four or five million people, right?

And in the world, it's a very different situation.

It's a billion and a half people.

And I don't think the problem is here in America among American Muslims.

I think we have to get them on our side.

There's this ad I remember seeing over Christmas.

Remember the Amazon ad

where the Imam and the priest send each other knee pads?

Yeah.

You remember that?

Yes, yes.

You know, and the idea is that, you know, they're buddies and we send each other knee pads to pray because there are many ways to God and one is not better than the other.

I think that actually happens in America.

But I don't think it happens in most of the Muslim world.

I don't think the idea that, oh, you know what, there are are many ways to God, they're all valid, let's agree to disagree.

I don't think that's a thing you find in Pakistan a lot.

Right.

But I think it is true of America.

So why can't we get the American Muslims on our side instead of alienating them?

Well, you know, I host a national radio show for Breitbart and Sirius XM every morning, and I love highlighting Muslim voices who are progressive and reformist and want to take out some of the misogyny and some of the hatred associated with radical elements of it.

And and I think it's an important place to start.

But to bring back what Breitbart does, different than anyone else, is we cover stories the establishment press doesn't want to cover.

For example, many people don't know that as many as half a million people in the United States have undergone female genital mutilation.

That's a story broken in the USA today.

Breitbart highlights those types of stories.

I don't see those stories on CNN because I'm too busy hearing about the latest non-Russia story.

But, okay, the non-Russia stories are actual stories, Alex.

Come on.

I'm heckling a little bit.

All right.

Last question.

Do you think Breitbart, with the politicization that it is involved in, has any responsibility for the kind of violence that we see in our society, including what happened this week?

Absolutely not.

I mean, as you know, the guy was a Big Sanders supporter.

I actually happen not to blame Bernie Sanders for it.

But when you have a climate where you have CNN, for example, calling Breitbart the number one platform for the Nazi salute over a video we never played and CNN played, when you have the New York Times accusing Breitbart of putting racist dog whistles out, when the media lies so much about people calling Trump supporters racist, despicable, deplorable, all of these things over and over and over again.

They have been racist, despicable, and deplorable.

Okay.

I mean, they have been.

I mean,

the President of the United States has retweeted what right.

It's absolutely right.

I encourage everyone to go to Breitbart.com/slash people.

You can meet some of the Breitbart reporters.

The Breitbart editors are the most wonderful, diverse, influential journalists on the planet, and no one is interested in their real story because they're so quick to want to call people racist.

And it's not working.

That is why so many Democrats are losing across the country.

They lost 30 states.

They're losing the governorships, the state houses.

And so if you want to play that game, Bill, if you want to keep calling us racist, I don't think it's going to work for you.

So please have at it.

When you do, we will.

Alex, thank you very much for having the balls to come here.

I do appreciate it.

All right, Alex Marlowe, let's meet our panel.

Okay.

Here they are.

Okay, it is.

I've said this before this season, another night where we have a two-person panel.

We've done this before.

Don't adjust your sets.

He is the president of the Eurasia Group and author author of Superpower, Three Choices for America's Role in the World.

Ian Bremer.

And

he was a U.S.

counterterrorism intelligence officer and author of The Plot to Hack America, How Putin's Cyber Spies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election.

Malcolm Nance, a true patriot.

Don't forget to send us your questions for tonight's overtime.

So we're going to answer them after the show on YouTube.

Let me pick up from where we left off there.

The The shooting this week.

It was a liberal.

It was a Bernie Sanders supporter.

I mean, it's odd.

We live in a strange country.

You know, we would never really think this would happen on the left.

We think of the right as the people who pick up guns and do crazy things like this.

Is it significant that this was a liberal, someone who watched MSNBC all day?

Not that they're to blame either, because they certainly are not.

And I won't hear it, that they're the equivalent of Fox News, because they're not either.

They're not the left version of Fox News.

They actually cleave to reality.

Let me jump in with something optimistic, which is that I've been surprised given the level of inequality,

given how easy it is to get guns,

given the extraordinary level of political polarization that exists between left and right historically in this country right now, and also given not just cable news and blogs, but most importantly, Mirror Mirror on the Wall from social media, you're the fairest of them all, just you.

I'm surprised there's been so little political violence so far in this country, and I think we should all be thankful for that.

I think we should recognize that actually this is not a daily problem for us, it is in a lot of other countries.

Including on the left, is this guy patient zero for something that

we're going to be seeing more of?

No, I don't think there is.

I don't think he is patient zero.

What I think it is, there is this bizarre point where the left and the right on the libertarian, far extreme libertarian ends, come over like this little cross-section of the Venn diagram where they

act out in the exact same ways.

And, you know, I get this all the time because people go, oh, I actually have had people say to me, you liberals, you better watch out because we have all the guns, you know, on the right, which is funny because I have guns.

But...

No, no guns.

You know, no guns for this guy.

I've got his.

But for the most part,

you know, I don't think this guy is a symptom of that.

I don't think he's a symptom of anything.

If he's a symptom of anything, he's a symptom of a system, certainly in terms of gun control, where he could abuse his wife, beat his daughter, and have the charges dismissed and still be able to go out and buy a gun.

Right.

Let me ask you this.

He was kind of mentioning this a little bit, that there's talk, and I heard this this week, people on the right said, well, you know, when you say things like global warming is going to kill people and repealing Obamacare is going to kill people and Donald Trump is a traitor, then this is going to happen.

Except what am I supposed to do as a commentator?

Global warming, denying it, is going to kill people.

Repealing Obamacare is going to kill people and Donald Trump is kind of a traitor.

So what

am I supposed to do?

I think the not my president hashtag hurts.

I never said that.

I didn't say you did.

But I'm saying if you ask me, you know, commentators, I see so much of that.

I mean, the guy was, you know, the Democrats conceded, Hillary Clinton conceded.

It was, you know, seen by us as a legitimate election, irrespective of the fact that there was hacks by the Russians.

You know, I think that it's important that the entire country recognize that he may not be likable, he may not be capable, but we as a country actually voted for him.

And by the way, the administration is not just one person.

We see that in our markets today.

We see that in the stability of the country.

I do think that the vitriol and the damage, the fact that the media frequently comes across as our hair's on fire about this guy that so many of us do not like is actively damaging.

And so many people that supported Trump do believe that when they hear that, it's not just an attack on their president.

It's also attack on them, their legitimacy, their voice, the person they voted for.

Yeah, and I don't think that the nation is as split as many people think.

When the election happened, it was a peaceful transitional government.

Some people didn't like it.

Everyone who voted for Hillary Clinton didn't like it.

But you didn't see people taking up arms.

You didn't see people saying, we're going to stop this.

You didn't see people saying the government is now illegitimate.

All right.

When we saw Barack Obama elected, let me tell you, I knew some guys who were on the Secret Service snipers team, and they were practicing every day because they were afraid that he was going to be the first president killed by a long rifle.

But we didn't see that here.

You don't see that on the left, where people are going out secretly into the hills and practicing.

But, Malcolm, what would happen if Donald Trump was removed from office?

Do you really think his followers would take that peaceably and say, well, that's the law working as it should?

We had that discussion.

Yeah, we had that discussion when it, you know, early on, as it looked like people thought Hillary Clinton would win the election.

There were all sorts of TV critiques of will they go along peacefully?

Will they go up in arms?

You know, I don't think that either on the right or the left, the average American is going to be taking up arms because the processes that have been in place since George Washington took power are going to remain.

Now, if he's removed from office, okay, there's always going to be disgruntled people, but that's why we fund SWAT teams.

The biggest surprise and the biggest travesty in the United States that's come has not been political violence since the election.

It's the fact that in the most important election of any of our lifetimes, almost half of the population didn't bother to vote.

The level of apathy, the level of people that, after decades, have said that none of these people represent me and I'm checking out, that should concern us so much more than the hatred and the vitriol we're hearing.

It's so interesting, though.

I mean, that's certainly true.

On the one hand, we have this ridiculous level of apathy.

On the other hand, we have the outrage industrial complex that makes everything that comes along an existential crisis.

And let's face it, that is part of this problem.

I mean, this guy watched way too much TV.

You know, I do.

I mean, look, I'm a fan of MSNBC.

And again, I will not let people say it's the quilt, because I hear that all the time.

Fox is the conservative.

Yeah, but Fox makes shit up and MSNBC doesn't.

I have quibbles with them, but they try to live in reality and propose solutions to real problems.

That's different.

But you know what?

This guy watched it too much.

If you watch it all day long, it's like eating KFC for dinner every night.

Well, early on, you know, we had several major, how can I put it, armed incidents after Barack Obama took president.

We had the shooter in Pittsburgh who took on a SWAT team and he killed three officers because he was told they were coming to take his guns.

You had the guy who watched Glenn Beck and drove to attack the Tides Foundation in San Francisco.

If his mother hadn't called the state police and they had a massive gun battle on the highway, he was going to kill everyone there and everyone at the ACLU.

There is just this small segment of people who they not only harness that anger, they act on that anger.

But it's not equal.

Not each group is doing it.

This guy who took this shot,

who shot the congressman the other day, he is a microcosm of one side.

And most liberals I know don't have guns.

They don't look towards violence.

They don't obviously really go around thinking they're going to punch.

Nor do most conservatives.

No, they don't.

And we need to harness the energy of that.

And by the way, I can explain the 50% that doesn't vote.

They've got to go to Walmart.

It's Tuesday afternoon.

They either got to go to work or they've got to feed their kids.

And if our elections were on Saturday,

we don't make it easy.

There are countries in the world

we don't make it easy on purpose.

Republicans win by cheating.

Never forget that.

There are countries in the world where you're compelled to vote, and if you don't, there's a small fine, and more people show up.

It wouldn't be so hard to do that in the United States.

You know, this is a very hard-earned privilege that this country has and we forget about that.

But I thought it was very interesting when the brother of the shooter in Arlington and he's interviewed on the day and he's like, well look, he was just really disgruntled and he was very angry about all these people but I didn't find anything particularly unusual about him.

I think that

it's so easy to just see that the level of, there's normalcy now in people that put on their Facebook pages that everyone on the other side is completely evil.

All of us have experienced the level of hatred and the trolls that, you know, our tolerance for that has just become so much greater.

And I think as a consequence, we've become inured to a lot of the trigger signs that would have put us, it would have said, like 10 years ago, someone would have said, you know, this guy's a little off.

Maybe I should talk to him.

The brother never talked to him, never was concerned about it.

The wife thought everything was fine.

He missed his dog.

He missed his dog.

He was never going to see the dog again.

That would make you miss your dog.

Well, if mental health care is now performed by the police, you know, and

he was terminally

cured of whatever was going on in his head, but he acted out.

And he acted out because he had simple access to weapons.

And also because there's this idea in the culture that you just don't confront or contradict your enemies.

You have to eliminate them.

Elimination.

Examinationist rhetoric.

Yes.

That's an intelligence community term.

Where you want to kill all your enemies.

Right.

Mark Sanford, remember him of the Appalachian Trail?

He did well.

Of Mr.

Argentina.

He said the president, a Republican, said the president is at least partially to blame for the demons that have been unleashed.

I thought this was interesting.

He said, I was at a senior center and people are saying F you and F you and F you to each other at a senior center.

The old folks are saying, fuck you.

And he's saying, you've got the top guy saying, I wish I can hit you in the face.

If not, why don't you and I, why don't you do it and I'll pay your legal fees.

If the guy at the top can say anything to anybody at any time, why can't I?

It starts at the top.

Trump has to take a little responsibility for what has gone on in this country.

It's true.

He's the one.

We have

We have a toxic political environment and a president who is unwilling and constitutionally incapable of apologizing for anything that he has ever done or considered.

That is obviously a big problem in our society, but I have to say, it was great to see the Republicans and Democrats hugging it out on the baseball field, praying together.

Great.

I have not, even though I heard about six hours of people saying, let's come together, aside from Mark Sanford, you picked Sanford, I couldn't find, I was with Eric Cantor the other day, you know, the former majority leader, and I mean, he also was making that commentary in front of a fairly large group.

But I haven't seen a lot of Republicans and Democrats in office today that are prepared to stand up and take any personal accountability.

I haven't seen anyone in the establishment media stand up and take any personal accountability.

And I think that is a serious, serious problem.

We have to start somewhere.

But

this week I found out where.

It's with Ted Nugent.

Ted Nugent went on radio and said, I have re-evaluated my approach.

I encourage even my friend/slash enemy on the left.

We have got to be civil to each other.

We have had heated debates, but we have to walk away respecting.

We're going to make the ultimate decision at the voting booth.

Never should any American

subject other fellow Americans to any kind of violence.

I'm not going to engage in that kind of hateful rhetoric anymore.

Ted Nugent, I used to be kind of friendly with him.

Ted, come on our show.

Let's start something right here.

Because I wrote this guy off a long time ago.

If he can say that, I can, we got to reach out somewhere, right?

I'm starting with Ted Nugent.

All right.

let's bring out Eddie.

Eddie Izzard is here.

Where's Eddie's?

No, I don't have an info.

He's an actor, political, activist, comedian, and author of Believe Me, a Memoir of Love, Death, and Jazz Chickens.

Please welcome Eddie Izzard.

Eddie.

Eddie.

It's been too long.

I know.

How are are you?

I'm very good.

I see you are.

You wore your good lipstick.

Yeah, I know.

Can I move this in on the panel?

Please move it in.

And listen, I think I'm talking maybe to a future Member of Parliament.

Yeah, no.

Maybe the Mayor of London.

No, no, I was going to be Mayor of London or Member of Parliament.

I wanted to run for Mayor of London or Member of Parliament, but

we have a very good Mayor, and he's a Muslim mayor, and it's been in Twitter wars with Donald Trump.

Yes, and I'm totally backing him.

But in the future, you can be a big deal.

I want to be a member of parliament.

I do.

Al Franken's already done this, gone from the world of comedy.

He's your model.

Yeah, he's gone into politics.

I've just been listening to his book, and it's great.

I'm passionate.

I'm doing well for myself.

I want everyone to do well.

I've toured 45 countries now.

I know you play all around the world.

45 countries.

You do.

You went down to Europe, didn't you?

Yeah.

Oh, it was fun.

I loved it.

And the audiences were great.

Exactly.

Well, I've gone to 45, and I'm playing in four languages now.

And I'm trying to do this thing, which is different from Donald Trump, which is I'm proud of my country, and he's obviously proud of his country, but I'm reaching out to other countries.

I want to say, can we learn from you?

Can you learn from us?

I think that is the way forward for humanity.

And I think this century is a very key century for us, the 21st century.

This is the century we either make it fair for all seven billion people in the world or we're going to wipe ourselves off the face of the planet.

I think that's what's going to happen.

Oh, yeah.

That's definitely possible.

So, those are the stuff.

That's something it's interesting.

Now, you came out way back when.

32 years ago, yeah.

32 years ago.

What would that mean?

1985.

And what did you say back in 1985?

I just tried to keep my head down and walk around.

I didn't get a front page of anything.

And I just sort of, you know, came out.

And it wasn't very, it wasn't easy then in 85 or 90 or 95.

But I just thought it was the right thing to do.

I'm straight transgender, but, or want to be lesbian.

And I don't know what you thought I was.

I mean, I've heard you describe yourself as a male lesbian, as a straight transvestite.

You like women, yeah.

I fancy women, yeah.

But you dress as a woman.

Well, sometimes.

Oh, I do boy mode or girl mode.

It's a kind of superhero thing.

I just swabbed it about.

I wanted to play football.

I wanted to be in the forces when I was a kid.

It's a sexuality.

He's laughing with you, Eddie.

I know this is confusing.

You're from a different country.

You're much older than I am.

You're not kidding, Eddie.

How old are you?

61.

What are you?

60.

Okay, well, no, you're a little bit older.

Okay, great.

Different generation.

I just cut off.

I'm 55.

Oh, 55, yeah, that's a whole different kettle.

We 60s kids.

We just came up with a different thing.

Okay.

But what I'm saying is that it's interesting that you could, that this wouldn't even be an issue today running for Parliament.

Absolutely.

As an activist in Britain, I've been campaigning in different elections, and not one joke.

I got one joke, which is, I have to wear red lipstick, it's the colour of the Labour Party.

And they just go,

and then that's it.

That's it.

There's no, it's just not commented on.

So you like girls.

Which is beautiful.

You have sex with girls.

Yes.

But you're dressed as girls.

Not right here, but yes.

And you're dressed as a girl when you do it.

Or usually the clothes are off by that point.

So

I don't know what it is.

I don't know what it is.

I don't know what it is.

I don't know what this is.

I'm dressed as a human.

Okay, so look,

as a British person.

That's tricky for you.

That's a British.

I'm not, not tricky for me.

I'm very old school.

But

as a British person, maybe you could help us because we have a royal family now.

I see

that the king has dementia.

I saw the anointment.

You had the anointment, yeah.

I mean, you've had that.

It seemed very medieval where everyone was saying, we bestowed the great honor upon you.

Cabinet meeting.

Can we pay?

That has gone medieval.

So it's rather odd.

What do you make of that?

I mean, that really scared me.

Well, it's been scary from the beginning.

We hoped Donald Trump wouldn't get in, but it's an extremist kind of viewpoint.

I've found this in Europe as well, or anywhere.

There is a beguiling nature of extremist politics where they say it's a simplistic nature.

You say you do one or two things and everything will be fine.

Build a wall, hate the Muslims, everything will be fine.

We had Brexit, Brexit

in Britain, and it was the idea of leave the European Union and hate all the immigrants and everything would be fine.

It doesn't work.

Real politics is as complicated as it seems and that's the tricky thing.

We politicians of the center, center, right, center, left, we've got to get a direction through that and put that forward to people, to the electorate, because a lot of the electorates say, I can't work out what is going on.

This guy's got a very clear message.

It's a simplistic message, but it's beguiling and that's why I think people vote for the extremes.

They did it back in the 30s and we're doing it back again now.

Well, what do you think about, we're talking about there up front, and I want to get you guys on this to, the First Amendment being under attack.

Free speech, I think there is a generation coming up that doesn't have the same views as your generation, Eddie, the younger ones.

Or mine, or I don't know how old you guys are, but you know,

I come, and of course as a comedian, I come from, you know,

let's be free in our speech.

And I think there's this idea out there among some people that hurting people's feelings is more important than free speech.

And sometimes they bump up against one another.

Well, you know, people are upset with what they call political correctness these days.

And you heard that from the conservative side, where it was all, you know, PC this, PC that.

You know, you have a right to say whatever you want.

All right?

I've fought for my entire career in the armed forces.

My family, since the Civil War, every war, fought for people to have free speech.

That includes the Ku Klux Klan, that includes Stormfront.

You can say any stupid thing you want, right up to the point where you lose decency towards other people.

Right.

And that's where we're going across the line.

And a lot of these people have some real, like we said a little earlier, eliminationist rhetoric, where they want to see other people disappeared.

And that's where, you know, the Hutus

in Rwanda, the Nazis in Germany started categorizing people as people who aren't part of our society and who need to be disappeared.

That's not free speech.

That's a plan.

What do you say?

Can I say this, please?

Why you're here?

I think the term political correctness, I understand why they came up with it, is the wrong term.

It should be positive attitude.

If you have a positive attitude towards things, then that's driving things in the right direction.

Political correctness blocks it in and becomes censorship.

And that is the problem with political correctness.

As a term, it implies a certain censorship.

And we want freedom of speech, but positive attitude means keep out hate, encouraging people to hate people to use force against others

students just aren't yet ready to have one perspective and the

students

are not I mean you need a diversity of perspectives and I mean as someone I remember when I was like teaching on the former Soviet Union and literally almost everyone in the field was from the former Soviet Union and they had an axe they had an attitude how many people that teach feminism actually aren't feminist this is a problem right I mean students are need to actually be exposed to the broadest breadth of diverse opinions so that they have the opportunity to actually think it through and come to some meaningful conclusions over time.

Safe spaces don't allow them to do that.

Academia with people that don't have real-world experience don't allow them to do that.

I think that's a real problem.

I saw this guy,

I don't remember his name.

He was speaking at a college.

I don't know who he is, so don't ask me about him, and I'm not supporting him, but he was being protested, and somebody had a sign that said,

queers against Islamophobia.

And I was like, wow, do you know what they're doing to homosexuals in Chechnya?

I don't think they read much anymore.

Can I ask about Megan Kelly?

Absolutely.

Because she is,

and I know you're NBC, so, but I'm going to defend her, so don't worry about it.

Because she's interviewing Alex Jones.

you know and she's gotten a lot of a lot of flack from this there's alex jones and uh if you don't know know what InfoWars is that's his group that's if if the Enquirer is Fox News and it is

this is that weekly World Report magazine that has like fucking alien babies on the cover I mean it's just it's total crazy shit okay that's Alex Jones I mean he's the one who says that Sandy Hook

was a hoax as a pretext for the government to take away your guns.

I mean, he says juice boxes have chemicals in it that turn our kids gay.

I mean it's just it's just batshit crazy blue label nuts-oh tinfoil helmet stuff.

But he's got a huge following, legions of followers.

Trump was on his show in studio.

Trump administration gave InfoWars, his group, credentials in the press room.

So you know, the question is, when you talk to crazy people like this, do you normalize them?

The left is saying don't talk to them, we normalize them.

But

I'm actually on the other side on this one.

I think that if I were Megan Kelly, I wouldn't want her interviewing Pepe the Frog.

I also didn't want her interviewing Alex Jones.

And I think,

not because I think he doesn't have a right to speak or that he shouldn't be able to be listened to, but Megan Kelly has one of the largest platforms in the country.

And, you know, this is a guy who, as you say, was trafficking in the worst kind of fake news and conspiracy theory.

And you talk to people, the parents of the kids that were killed in Sandy Hook, the amount of damage that's been done by them, if I were making the decision as NBC, I know they're getting the ratings, I know they knew that they weren't going to lose sort of any advertisers for a period of time.

They're making commercial decisions about branding.

I would have said I'd like to see values come into this a little bit more.

I would have liked them to avoid it.

But I do want to call you up.

I don't think Fox News is the National Enquirer.

I really don't.

I think Kennedy is, but I don't think, I mean, I've been on Maria Bottom.

That's exactly the enquiry.

I've been on Maria.

There's nothing like Maria Bottomarilla show and National Choir.

There's nothing like Danny Brown.

Maybe not every show, but they're basically in the tank for Trump.

Come on.

I really think that if you read.

Fox News is not in the tank for Trump.

I think that there's a greater diversity of.

I think the National Choir is trash rag.

My mother used to read it.

It was entertaining, but it's crazy people.

But now it's all about Donald Trump is a great president, and here's what he's doing.

He's catching the spies.

He's catching the spies.

I certainly see the opposite of that

frequently on CNN show.

I'm not saying they're equivalent, but I just don't think it's fair for you to say.

Here's what Megan Kelly told to Rutenberg.

She said, it's going to be very difficult for us to keep an eye on the more controversial figures of our time if we never talk to them.

And, you know, this is what the left says.

You can't give them a platform.

Remember the Huffington Post wouldn't even cover Donald Trump.

Look how well that turned out.

I feel like the left has this idea, we're in the castle, and we're going to keep these nuts outside the castle where they'll die.

Well, they just grew stronger outside the castle, and they got one of their people elected president of the United States.

We have to learn how to deal with these people.

I agree and you know what and I'm going to I'm going to support Megan Kelly here and it's not because I'm with MSNBC but because I spent my entire life warning of threats and I spent my entire life identifying things where people need to understand where they're coming from no matter what the ideology is.

You know InfoWars is its own bubble.

You don't have to see them.

They don't even have to listen to the program.

You can drive down streets and see stop signs in rural America like where I'm at in upstate New York with InfoWars stickers on it and people filling out cardboard and putting it in their car window saying do you know info wars they are in their own crazy space okay but for the most part if you don't know that they're 9-11 truthers I wear 9-11 on my ring every day I was at the Pentagon and saw the plane fly into the building for them crazy land there was no such thing it was you know bombs sandy hook truthers killing children the murder, mass murder of children in the United States.

If you didn't know that's what Alex Jones stood for,

you'd be like, oh, InfoWars, that's an interesting bumper sticker on the back of that pickup truck, right?

And it might be legitimate.

You've got to call the enemies out.

What I don't call them enemies, I just call them, you know, mayor of Crazy Town.

Okay.

Thank you, panel.

It's time for new rules, everybody.

Give

All right, New Rule.

Hey, gas stations, it's a bathroom key, not the Hope Diamond.

Nobody wants to use your bathroom once, let alone steal the key for a return visit.

And by the way, Exxon, leaving your place a mess isn't disrespect.

It's payback.

New rule, there is no such thing as Jewish cuisine.

There's deli, and there's the crap you eat during Passover so that you may know suffering.

But not once in human history has a hungry human being uttered the words, I feel like Jewish tonight.

Neurol, stop criticizing Bill Cosby's defense team for their decision to rest after six minutes.

That's what happens when you let him mix you a drink.

That is wrong.

New rule, now that men in England are deep freezing their genitals to spice up their sex life, it's okay to ask: at what point is it no longer worth it to spice up your sex life?

Because I'm pretty sure the only thing your lover hates hearing more than not tonight, honey, I can't get it up, is not tonight, honey.

I have to blast my dick with liquid nitrogen.

New Rule, the makers of the world's first blue wine, must tell me, what took you so long?

I'm sure I speak for wine connoisseurs everywhere when I say, know what my collection needs?

That shit that barbers use to disinfect homes.

And finally, New Rule, this Father's Day, do the right thing and go out to the mall and get dad a polyester shirt with tin cufflinks and a nylon tie in a plastic box.

He'll never wear it because he's not the doorman at a Sicilian whorehouse.

But there is a greater cause to be considered.

Stores are going extinct, and they're taking millions of jobs with them.

Americans no longer shop till they drop.

They click till they're sick.

And when they want to buy a pair of pants, they don't have to put on a pair of pants.

Yeah.

So the folks who are really suffering in this economy are the people like the department store lady in the lab coat who sprays you with hooker perfume.

The sales dude who says, I'm not sure I can give you that price.

I'll have to ask my manager.

And the clerk at Victoria's Secret who says, Is this a gift for someone else?

How old are you?

61?

Yeah.

Shut up.

In the last two years, JCPenney has closed 138 stores.

RadioShack has closed 550.

Payless shoes, 400, and on and on and on.

But all we hear from President Man Baby is we must put our miners back to work.

No,

the jobs we're losing aren't in coal, they're at coals.

What is this fetish Trump has with coal miners?

Do they have a P-tape on him?

He said he was going to be the greatest jobs president God ever created.

Maybe he could start by waddling down to forever 71.

and buying a lighter shade of bronzer in a suit that fits.

Instead, he sends out his bizarro administrator to the EPA, Scott Pruitt, to announce.

We've had over 50,000 jobs since last quarter, coal jobs, mining jobs created in this country.

Oh, goody.

Now if we can just get the asbestos and lead paint factories back

and reopen the opium dens, like back when America was great, Bill Clinton's campaign song was Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow.

Trump should be the way we were.

And the way we were was not well.

Mining coal isn't very good for you, neither is burning it.

It's the reason why there's a billion and a half people in China, but you can only see four of them.

Why are we working so hard to preserve the worst job this side of deodorant tester?

That's a real thing.

Why are coal jobs so important that Scott Pruitt thinks he should lie about it?

Because when he says that we created 50,000 coal jobs this quarter, wow, that is something like coal itself that he just pulled directly out of a dark hole.

50,000 this quarter?

The American coal mining industry employs 51,000 people total.

There are more yoga teachers

just on my block.

It's worth asking why do Trump and his fans care so much about some jobs and not at all about others.

We know that coal mining is 95% male and 95% white, but I'm sure that's not it.

No, maybe it's Trump's view of the economy, being like a five-year-old child.

He only likes coal miners and truck drivers and construction workers, you know, the kind of jobs you see on Sesame Street.

And I hate to tell you, but those truck driver jobs, they're the next to go when driverless cars become commonplace.

Because whether you're in retail or in coal mining or used to work at Blockbuster,

it's the same story.

When someone comes along with a better idea, you get shit canned.

Thousands of Americans used to work as lamplighters, going around town lighting the gas streetlights at night.

Then Edison came along with his light bulb.

Why didn't President Grant do something to stop that?

Because you can't stop progress.

So

say goodbye to them all now.

while you still can, because soon it will be a civilization gone with the wind.

And then, then,

where will we go to eat oversized pretzels and hot dogs on a stick?

Where will our teenagers go to wander aimlessly

and our elderly population to get exercise?

Where will our children go at Christmas when it's time to sit them on a pedophile's lap?

Without GameStop, how can hipsters trade their old Xbox games for weed?

And without Brookstone, what will happen to women who want to publicly moan on vibrating chairs?

Where will zombies attack?

Where will I be able to see emotional support dogs pissing on an artificial bush?

Where will I be able to get the Christian rock CDs I play to make stragglers leave my parties?

And mostly, where will all the laid-off minors go to work?

All right, that's our show.

I'll be at the Mirage in Vegas July 14th and 15th at the Microsoft, right here in LA, October 7th.

I want to thank Ian River, Malcolm Minnes, Eddie Izzard, Alex Marlowe.

Join us now for Overtime on YouTube.

Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.

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

For more information, log on to HBO.com.