Ep. #422: Hanna Rosin, Arwa Damon

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

Thank you very much.

Thank you, ladies.

Wow, what a

sounds like you people.

Oh, thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Sounds like you people have not stopped celebrating from 420 yesterday, aren't you?

It was 420 yesterday, or as you know how I call it, Christmas.

But,

you know, everybody was celebrating.

And over at the United Terminal, they had dragged a guy off Jefferson airplane.

Now, it's a hard day for Republicans.

They have to decide which they hate more, medical or marijuana.

I mean, what.

We've got a plan

for the health care plan.

Trump.

Did you see him the other day?

The health care plan.

He said this word for word.

He said, the plan gets better and better and better, and it's gotten really good, and a lot of people are liking it a lot.

And then Ivanka gave him a lollipop.

So, I mean,

these people,

I don't want to say their head is up their ass, but they misplaced an aircraft carrier this week.

That's kind of hard.

Did you see that?

Trump,

like a week week ago, said, you know, because we're about to go to war with North Korea.

No biggie.

Trump said, we'd have an armada heading towards North Korea.

Actually, it was heading in the exact opposite direction, halfway around the world.

Who knew maps were so complicated?

Who knew?

Nobody.

Nobody.

Nobody knew.

It's okay.

We fixed this.

Trump put Jared Kushner in charge of figuring out which way is east.

Well,

he's new to confrontations with North Korea.

His first idea was to make Hawaii build a wall.

I mean, look there.

Did you?

Speaking of Hawaii, did you see what our Attorney General Jeff Sessions said about Hawaii?

This guy is from Alabama, by the way.

He was bitching about Trump's travel ban being struck down by a court in Hawaii.

And he said, again, word for word, I really am amazed, he said, that a judge sitting on an island in the Pacific

can issue an order that stops the president.

Yeah, what do they think they are, a state?

What would Hawaii know about national security?

What have they ever been attacked?

Forget the wall.

We need to build a blackboard because these people are stupid.

Trump's whole MO,

if I can get this right after almost 100 days, seems to be plan A is just talk out of your ass.

Oh, we can have much better health care, way less money.

We can get rid of the debt very quickly.

Wipe out ISIS very quickly.

Okay, then he finds out that's all bullshit.

Plan B, develop a policy based on whoever you just talked to.

He said this week that he found out that Korea was complicated because he was talking to the president of China and he said, and I quote, after listening for 10 minutes, I realized it's not so easy.

These are the parts I'm not making up.

Our president is getting his talking points on Korea from China.

Wasn't Amarosa around or some other expert?

What about?

Did you see who he had to the White House yesterday?

He had Sarah Palin

and Ted Nugent.

Sarah Palin and Ted Nugent, or as their fans call them, the slow and the furious.

And

oh, and I'm sorry, and Kid Rock to complete

to

complete the axis of redneck.

And

there they are.

There's a picture of them.

You see?

This is them just prior to heading out to the Rose Garden to shoot some varmints for lunch.

But I know what you really want me to talk about.

Bill O'Reilly.

Well, you know.

You've been following this story for a while.

It has not been going well for Bill.

And apparently, this week at the last straw, a black woman who worked at Fox News came forward and said he used to call her hot chocolate,

which I find shocking.

Fox News hired a black woman?

Shocking.

Shocking.

Oh,

there was universal condemnation.

Sean Spicer today said, come on, even Hitler didn't call black women hot chocolate.

But yeah, Bill O'Reilly gone.

That is the end of an era.

First, Lawrence Welk died.

Now Bill O'Reilly is gone.

My question, how is the Kraftmatic Adjustable Bed Company supposed to reach its customers now?

And now the big man at Fox News is Sean Hannity.

And amid all the troubles over there, I want you to know Hannity remains completely free of any sex scandal, unless you count the nightly on-air blowjob he gives to President Trump.

All right.

We've got a great show.

Congressman Seth Moulton, S.E.

Cupp, and David Milliband are here.

And a little later, we'll be speaking with CNN's Arwen Damon.

But first, she hosts NPR's Invisibilia podcast, and she is the author of The End of Men.

And the Rise of Women.

Hannah Rosen.

Hannah.

Hey.

Great pleasure to meet you.

Okay, well.

Wait, can I say something?

Please, you're here to say things.

I think the black woman was a temp.

Oh, is is that right?

Yes.

That's so you don't, you know.

So we don't think Fox News is more enlightened than they are.

Well, let's start with Bill O'Reilly because,

you know, a lot has been said.

Let's broaden this out because I wanted you on specifically because your book is The End of Men, and we saw the end of that kind of

end of man this week.

Yes, but he seems to me to be the epitome of something that's going on bigger in the culture that you have tapped into, which is that men just seem not to be able to navigate the modern world where this world has gone.

I feel like there is a tragic element of Bill O'Reilly, which is that he, you know, could not get laid in a whorehouse with a

whorehouse with a million dollar bill.

He just, even though he was very successful at his career, what he really wanted was a woman, any woman to like me, like me, just somebody like me.

You don't even have to fuck me, just like me.

And he could not, he's a dinosaur like this.

And what does that say about the future of our society?

Oh, I never thought of Bill O'Reilly so rich that I have trouble putting him in the same category as the, you know, the angry white men.

You know, there's this yearning for the time when men were men and women were women, which is, I think, what Fox News is all about.

And the yearning is even greater now because men are, you know, less traditionally men.

Like they don't, the jobless rate is insane.

Like the number of men not working who are of working age is huge, like sad, dismal, preposterous.

Sad.

Sad, like a generation ago it was like, you know, now it's one out of five men who are not working.

That's a lot of men.

And also not getting married.

That's the real thing.

Working class men.

I read this in your thing.

Working class men.

I didn't realize it.

Not getting married and getting divorced at astronomical rates.

And not living with their kids.

And so they don't have the provider role that they used to have.

And so that kind of leaves them loose.

And then on top of that, there's like uppity women like

Hillary.

Me.

I was going to say me.

You know, telling them that they have privilege.

And they're like, I don't feel that.

But one reason Hillary lost is, let's be honest, that a lot of these kind of men, they didn't want some woman smarter than they are telling them they have to change.

They get enough of that at home.

Or from their girlfriends.

Or from their girlfriends.

Exactly, yes.

But I mean men are really losing their place in the workplace.

I mean that that's what's the problem is that women have the skills for the 21st century more than men do.

They cooperate better, they communicate better.

Is that a man who's

that a woman or a man who starts the clapping?

It must be a matter of time.

I mean, they...

Give us some of those statistics.

So a lot of this has to do with school.

You know, these days it's really hard to have an easy, good, middle-class life if you don't get a college degree.

I'm not sure that's a good thing or a bad thing.

It just is a thing now.

Where women have got the memo,

women have got the memo on that and men have not.

Right.

They do better in college.

They do much better in college, so they get more degrees.

And,

you know, they just, the economy changes and they kind of make the change.

So I did a lot of reporting in this town in Alabama.

The only jobs there are health care and government work.

But American men don't like to work in health care.

Right.

And they definitely don't like to work for the government.

Of course.

Of course.

So there you go.

Right.

Because they're whiny little bitches.

You know,

this is.

I mean, when I used to, all through the campaign, I called Trump that, the whiny little bitch, and the people loved it.

That really caught on.

But don't you think, can I just say one thing about that?

The white, it feels like they're the only ones who are not allowed to wine.

It's like everybody else's pain counts, but they're not allowed to complain

because they're the white man.

So the white man's got no problems, even though the white man feels like he has problems.

And then somebody comes and says,

I feel your pain.

Right, and that's how that election was won by Donald Trump.

I feel your pain.

Because the Democrats

pretty much created this idea of identity politics, and white men never thought of themselves as a minority, but they kind of were made to feel that way.

And then they turned to this sea list wrestling villain

as their champion.

And every time, it's so ironic because, you know, men, you think, oh, macho, we're so strong and sturdy, that's what they're, but really they are whiny little bitches.

And every time, I mean, who is more of a little bitch than Donald Trump?

He never

takes responsibility for anything.

That was the old way a man proved he was a man.

Never.

Everything is, I inherited a mess.

Everything is somebody else's fault.

Also, you know, this guy, never mind, let me, I, I, I, I, I,

I, excuse me, you know, I,

no, because this is the problem, is that he makes us crazy.

And we can't let him do that.

I mean, it becomes usual what happens.

Never let it become normal.

That is my message.

Anyway, but.

Have you ever gone a day without thinking about something?

No, not for a very long.

One day, are you kidding?

One day.

I get up in the morning like most people.

I look at my phone.

What did the mental patient do now?

Okay, well, here's, tell the truth.

Did you become disappointed in the last two weeks when it slowed down?

When the news became more normal?

It never slows down for me.

It never slows down, okay.

But don't you think it is ironic that these people who are thinking of themselves as macho,

they're just

the same reason why Bill O'Reilly can't get laid.

They're just too lazy to figure out.

It's not that hard.

Bill O'Reilly, the only way he thought he could get laid was either threatening your job or promising you one.

Right?

Just either a carrot or a stick.

As opposed to just, how about talking to a woman like a human being, being nice to her?

Maybe some woman would like you, Bill, if you tried that approach.

It takes time.

That's difficult.

It takes time.

It takes time.

So what do you think about this latest rash of

news stories we've had where men

kill people because women, you mean kill women?

Well, one guy killed a random person, the Facebook killer they're calling, not exactly fair to Facebook, but

killed a random person

because his girlfriend dumped him.

And

some other guy went and

kids got involved because he was mad at his girlfriend.

I mean,

what is that?

What are we going to make of that new development?

That's the worst, non-funniest part of the end of men problem, is that there are whole corners of the internet dedicated to I hate my wife so

much, and

that world has exploded in the last five, ten years.

So there's been actually a few of these, can we call them honor killings?

Are they the American honor killings?

They're like honor killings, and they work in that way.

And then you're getting signals in the culture generally.

Not that that's okay.

It's not like anyone in the Trump administration would say that's okay.

but there is a sense that you know women have gotten out of their place and there is a kind of woman-hating in the culture.

I would say more than there used to be.

There used to be a book called How to Pick Up Chicks.

Somebody needs to write a book, How to Make a Woman Actually Like You.

You.

You think Bill O'Reilly read the book?

All right.

Thank you for coming to enlightening us.

I really think you're

a terrific author.

All right.

Thank you.

Let's meet our panel.

Okay.

Hey, guys.

Here they are.

He is the president and CEO of International Rescue Committee, David Miliband, back with us.

David, how are you doing?

She's a nationally syndicated columns who will soon host an upcoming nightly program on HLN.

Our friend SE Cup back with us.

HLN.

Good place.

Thank you.

And he served four tours in Iraq as a Marine Infantry Officer, now represents Massachusetts sixth in the House.

Congressman Seth Moulton, Congressman.

Oh, yes, sir.

Okay, I'm going to start.

It's Earth Day tomorrow.

You're laughing.

You like it.

Well, in LA, it's very big, even though many of our residents are not biodegradable.

But there's a march for science in Washington and 400 cities tomorrow.

I hope you join that.

The Republicans have a competing march for ignorance that's going on.

Sorry, Essie.

But you know what?

It is the party of climate denial, and they have an awful lot to answer for.

And I think they're going to have a lot to answer for in front of their own people because it's starting to involve the one thing I know they care about, money.

You know, when Miami is half underwater, it's going to cost like half a trillion dollars.

But for the rest of the world, it's about life.

For the first time, the New York Times says four famines are going on in the world.

Somalia, South Sudan, Nigeria, and Yemen.

That's 20 million people at risk of starving to death.

Yes, we have always had droughts, but This is your area.

But do you not have any doubt that this is also part of global warming?

The climate change is definitely part of what's going on in those four countries.

We've got 2,500 staff on the ground.

You're right to say it's 20 million people in those four countries.

Actually, if you include Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, it's up to 30 million that are facing for the first time in six years the threat that famine will occur and be deemed to be taking place.

What's striking is this really is man-made not just because of the climate point.

Conflict in all four of the countries is an absolutely key part of what's going on, and misgovernance.

And this is not a problem that there isn't enough food in the world.

This is a problem that economies and societies are not being run in the interests of the people who live there.

And I think there's a real responsibility, obviously, on the local leaders, but also on the international community.

Remember, America has historically been a world leader in humanitarian aid, yet the budget that the government has presented offers a 30% cut in America's help to the poorest countries around the world.

And so it's a really moment of decision.

It's a moment of decision for organizations like mine on the ground.

We're trying to raise money so that we can send people into these areas.

But it's also a moment of decision for the international community, so-called.

Does it want to try and stand behind its own walls or is it going to reach out both for moral reasons, but frankly also for strategic reasons?

Somalia is the home of Shabaab.

Northeast Nigeria, where I was in February, the home of Bokahara.

There's a strategic element to this as well.

Our Pentagon gets it.

Mattis gets it, right?

Look, I worked with the Rockies, trying to get them to our side, who were planting IEDs, not because they really believed in the insurgency, but because they needed to put bread on the table.

And one of the great revelations we had in the Iraq war was we should pay them to guard the roads so they're not getting paid by the insurgents.

So these problems will affect us.

They will go over these borders.

They will affect Americans.

They affect American troops.

Syria.

Syria started with a drought also.

Right?

See, I mean,

making a moral argument for either of of these issues is is tough.

Not everyone shares the same

perspective on morality and America's place in the world.

That's why you have to make the practical argument.

Wait a minute.

The morality of what?

Well, I make the moral case for Syria.

Not everyone agrees that there's a moral reason to care about Syria.

You would make the moral case for

helping this famine.

I would make a moral.

What about the movement?

Not everyone would agree that it's America's position in the world to either police or get involved in that sort of way.

That's why it's crucial to make the practical strategic argument for why this matters for us.

And there is a reason that Syria matters for us, and that is because when it's easier to join ISIS than it is to flee from Russian aerospace, we're drifting away from weapons.

That matters to us.

We're drifting away from Earth Day.

You brought up Syria.

Because the Syrian problem started with climate change.

It did.

75% of Syrian farms failed.

A million and a half people migrated to the cities.

That's where it began.

And by the way, these people who are starving, which is, you know, whether you're bombed or you're sarin gassed or you're starving, death is death.

But, I mean, we talk about Assad gassing people.

We're gassing them too.

We're just doing it slower with CO2.

Well, my point is, if you want people...

If you want people in a domestic audience to care about something that's happening a world away, that's always a heavy lift.

I speak from experience on trying to beat the drum on Syria for years.

You have to make the practical case.

David, do you think that Brexit would have happened if not for Syrian refugees?

I think that

the Brexit issue was actually about European migration, not about Syrian refugees.

The reaction in the UK

was that there were too many Poles, too many Eastern Europeans in the UK.

That was a significant part of the story.

So I think that Europe now faces a real calamitous choice because there are migrants crossing the Mediterranean still, but also from North Africa.

We've got people in Libya, and there is a flow of people fleeing in desperation from the situation in sub-Saharan Africa, ending up in Northern Africa.

Let's get back to the main topic.

Why are Republicans so stupid?

That, I think, was our main...

No,

I kid, of course, but you know.

I actually get to ask this question all the time.

I do.

I guess, why are so many of your colleagues just stupid?

And look, to be honest, I don't think they're stupid.

I think it's kind of hard to get elected to Congress.

I think what's lacking in Congress is not intelligence, it's courage.

Because they all know the truth.

They know what's going on.

They can think of it.

Well, maybe the politicians, but let me give you some Pew Paul results on the voters.

Because there is a, you know, one thing that drives me crazy is false equivalency.

There is a giant difference between Democrats and Republicans.

And I go after liberals all the time.

And I will tonight.

But feelings about key issues apparently depend entirely on the party that is in power.

Republicans versus Democrats on the economy.

This is according to the Pew people.

For almost the entirety of the Obama presidency,

current economic situation is good.

Only 10 to 30%

of Republicans said yes under Obama.

Suddenly, with the same economy under Trump, it went from 31 to 61 percent

because the magic man took over.

Democratic views didn't change at all, 57 to 60.

On bombing Syria.

When Obama wanted to do it in 2013, 22 percent approval from Republicans.

Now, after Trump did it, 86 percent approval.

Democrats, same, 38 to 37 in 2013 versus now on bombing Syria.

Income tax.

Does the amount you pay seem fair to you?

At the end of Obama, Republicans, only 39% said it was fair.

They're paying the same thing a month later, 56% said it's fair.

They are more tribal, I'm sorry, and they are less concerned with observable reality.

That seems like there are facts in there that say that.

A couple things.

One,

I think there's hypocrisy to go around.

I'm not really sure where Democrats and liberals stand on leaks right now.

You know, I remember a little different treatment to Obama golfing than Trump golfing.

Two, I don't think that mocking.

Trump golfed a lot more.

Obama plays less golf now, and he's not the president anymore.

No, I

liberals thought us that it didn't matter that the president was golfing so much.

Now every story on the media is how much Trump is golfing.

We don't like hypocrisy.

When Trump criticized Obama for golfing, and now he golfs more than Obama, we see that as a problem.

I do too.

I do too.

Just let me finish.

I do too, and

that's my point.

There's hypocrisy to go around, but the hypocrisy on the right has been incredibly disturbing and obvious.

I don't have amnesia as a Republican.

I remember when we thought it was kind of a bad deal to do all these executive orders.

I remember then that was when that was the thing we had.

I remember

when we thought exploding the debt was no good, was no bueno.

I didn't forget all of that.

And to see this amnesia now that there's an R in the White House is deeply, deeply disappointing.

So you would concur with these fights that there is

hypocrisy?

Well, that the one party is more tribal.

and less concerned with what's real.

Well, no, as I said, I think there's liberal hypocrisy too, and a difference in the way that we're always hypocrisy everywhere.

Okay,

we agree.

We don't agree.

But we also just agree.

We don't agree.

We don't agree unless you say one party is way more tribal and way less concerned with reality.

Certainly right this moment, it definitely feels that way.

Thank you.

Let me also say,

well,

and to assess point, let me just say, mocking conservative voters as dumb seems like a very bad strategy.

But to win elections again.

I half agree with that, and yet.

You don't agree with that.

I know you don't, and that's okay.

No, no, I do, because I want the Democrats to win.

And by the way, they ran a Jewish teenager in Georgia.

Yes, they did.

He did really well, but he was John Osoff.

And he worked his Osoff, and

he almost

won

in a district without a runoff.

Democrats.

In a district with a war.

Losing by slimmer margins.

But

he had help from 11 Republicans splitting Well, let's be honest.

But the Republican incumbent had won by 24 points just five months ago.

Right.

So something's going on there.

But also, if you look at this guy,

and there he is.

Oh, did we show him?

That's me.

Sorry.

There he is.

Right.

He's 12.

And he's Jewish, and he doesn't have a southern accent.

And people are shocked.

I'm not shocked because I'm a stand-up comedian.

I'm always in the South.

I'm always around this country.

That's why I knew Trump could win.

I wasn't sanguine like the the rest of the liberals because I see this country and I drive from the airport into town and I go, wow, this town looks like shit.

Look, people are hurting out there.

And

you're real, every man will.

No kidding.

No, but people on the other side, that is a political chat up line is what I'm going to get you.

It's got to be true.

All right.

But the point is people aren't so stupid.

People are hurting.

And that's why I think Democrats have to have this real plan.

I told you.

You can't just go out there and hate Trump.

But that's the problem.

It's like you can't deny global warming is happening and then say, but don't call us stupid.

That's the little dilemma I'm in.

It's like,

don't call me stupid.

Well, then don't be stupid.

I think that should be your campaign flow.

Okay.

All right.

So there was a story that really caught our eye in the news this week.

There was a woman who was at the deathbed of her

ex-husband and wanted him to die in peace.

So she told him that Trump had been impeached

so that she thought it would allow him to drift off.

She heard some good news.

You know, there's an old saying, dying is easy, comedy is hard.

Turns out in the age of Trump, comedy is easy, dying is hard.

But she told him this bit of fake news, so he would drift off, but it didn't quite do the trick.

So to finish him off,

she had to come up with some other bits of soothing fibs.

Would you like to hear the other things she told me?

So he was almost gone.

So she told him, United Airlines just beat the shit out of Chris Brown.

And then he was,

what, still alive?

Okay, so

she told him a shark ripped out Justin Bieber's vocal cords.

She told him Congress outlawed selfie sticks.

Oh, well, that was.

She told him Bill Cosby sipped the wrong drink, and when he woke up, his dick was in his own ass.

And it's still, no, he was still alive.

She said things went bad for the Kardashians, and they had to get jobs.

She told him they discovered Mike Pence's Grindr account.

Oh, my God.

She told him OJ found the real killer and it was Devin Nunez.

She told him Chris Christie's lap band came out.

His ass surrendered.

All right, I

could have said that better.

All right.

She is CNN's Emmy Award-winning senior international correspondent.

Please welcome Arwa Damon to Arwa.

Hey,

How you doing?

Thank you so much.

I've watched you and enjoyed you and really admired you because you go places that are really scary.

And it's all relative, isn't it?

Oh, no.

No, no.

You are braver than the rest of us.

Maybe not him, but the rest of us.

Thank you.

So you're based in Turkey?

Okay, so let's talk about Turkey because that was a huge story this week.

The president of Turkey, how long has he been president now?

Quite a while.

All over it.

Well, he was prime minister first, don't forget, and then he became president.

Ah, the old Putin way of doing it.

Okay.

So

he had a plebiscite this week and said, I don't know if it's true because I can't trust elections in this country, let alone Turkey.

Said the people gave him basically powers to become a dictator.

My question to you is...

Could that happen here?

Because I see a lot of parallels.

You know, Trump got elected too.

And it's different getting elected than once you're elected, you can do a lot of things you couldn't when you weren't in office.

And I worry, it's only 100 days.

I worry two, three years down the road.

Could Trump, you think, do this here, what Erdogan did there?

Look, what Erdogan did there and when he actually was elected, because he was elected, in all fairness, Turkey's elections are not really contested.

There's no allegations of fraud.

More than half of the population voted him into office.

More than half of the population has voted for these

constitutional referendums.

I mean, if we're going to begin looking at it from that prism, then we also need to look at what the other half of the population needs to be doing to try to prevent certain things, such as in Turkey's case, Erdogan becoming more autocratic, things like that perhaps being translated and being seen in parallel elsewhere in the world.

If one half of the population does not like what's happening, that half of the population needs to find and implement its voice.

So

you're okay that this election was fair.

You don't think he would

be above cooking the books on this plebiscite that he won by half a point or something?

We're going to have to wait and see on that.

But I mean, the thing is, these are issues that we really have to deal with.

And even if books were, even if there's allegations of fraud, there is a large portion of the world today that

its voice is not perhaps being heard in the way that it needs to be heard.

We are not really listening to each other.

We're not listening to the voice of the other in a sufficient way that we need to.

We're becoming even more isolationist and alienated in our own perspectives.

We need to begin listening to one another if we really want to talk about trying to move society in a more broader way forward.

What do you think people are not hearing?

I think it depends on the issue, but I think if we're talking about the polarization, the alienation, the fear of the issues that I deal with every single day when it comes to the Middle East and this growing rise of the right in Europe, this anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-Arab sentiment, there's certain core things that are being lost in all of this.

And I think to a certain degree, we're losing this very basic understanding that at the core of all of it, we are all the same.

We want the same things.

A mother wants her child to succeed.

Well, yes.

We don't all want exactly the same things.

I mean, there was a case in Pakistan this week.

I'm sure you saw the story.

A college student, a college student, was beaten to death by fellow college students because they said what he put up on the internet was blasphemous.

His professor said he wasn't even anti-religious.

Now, if he was beaten to death by a bunch of jihadis who lived in a cave,

no, he was beaten up by other college students.

So let's not pretend that we all want the exact same thing.

No, but there's certain core values that the vast majority of human beings, I would like to believe, the vast majority do truly.

Well, like to believe is a different thing than is true.

But there's certain basic things that we want.

As we grow up in this world, we want to be able to know that when we set foot outside of our homes, when we say goodbye to our children, there's a high likelihood that they're going to come back home.

We want to know that we can raise our kids in a society that we can be proud of.

Of course, not everyone adheres to these very same basic principles, but there is supposed to be certain unifying factors if we're going to talk about mankind.

So let's stop talking about global unity.

Well, let me ask about Syria then, because it seems that's a microcosm for so much of the problems we have in the Middle East, which is we looked for years and still apparently are looking for a moderate presence.

Because on the one side, there's ISIS, on the other side, there's Assad.

We want this moderate army, but they don't seem to exist.

You know, people go and join ISIS.

I never heard of anybody going to join to fight ISIS.

Where is that army?

Why aren't there is the where is this moderate presence?

There are a lot of people inside Syria within basically every single other fighting faction that is not affiliated with the regime is also fighting ISIS.

Do not forget in the very beginning when ISIS moved into Syria, they did not take territory from the Assad regime.

They took territory from other more moderate rebel factions.

They were able to then get fighters over onto their side to fight with them through coercion, through force, and through the fact that they offered weapons that the other side did not have.

ISIS came in as the biggest fighting force within the Syrian arena that initially claimed that they would help the other armed entities fight the regime.

And they forced those who initially joined them to try to fight the regime to then end up having to fight with them.

That's a very important distinction to make.

The rebels who are fighting have been fighting Assad and they have been fighting ISIS.

Let me ask about Paris.

Okay, there was another attack this week.

And, you know,

the people who argue with me about this kind of issue, I always acknowledge poverty does play a role, prejudice does play a role, absolutely.

But you hear when there's an attack, these are people who are somehow felt left out by society, and I think that's true.

But doesn't Islam bear some responsibility for the fact that they are left out by society?

It's a modern world, and it's not a religion that embraces modernity very well.

I read a report some years ago that talked about how there was only some few hundred books in a year that are translated into Arabic from the West.

Isn't that a problem?

Islam, in and of itself, does not preach the kind of despicable violence that we are seeing today.

And

is that the Quran?

It is a very complex, vague text that many

will argue, many of the scholars will argue can be interpreted in many different ways.

The key issue is everything you were mentioning there: the poverty, these other other factors, the anger.

And I think moderate Islam has a greater role it needs to play, and that Muslims do also need to rise up to a stronger degree and decry what is happening.

The thing is, is they are.

But those cries, those calls, those arguments do not resonate as loudly as the violence does.

And again, it's about who are we choosing to listen to?

Okay.

Let me

move it back to the panel, Anya, to talk about North Korea for a second, because we are worried about that, and I think we here in California are more worried than anybody, because

when he talks about an intercontinental ballistic missile, an ICBM, ICBM.

Oh, I'm just kidding.

But this is where it's going to land.

So, I mean, there are a lot of neocons who are talking about a preemptive strike.

I mean, that seems

an eventuality.

It's incredibly dangerous.

It's incredibly dangerous.

We can't take out all their missiles and all their artillery that they'll use to just obliterate Seoul in a matter of minutes.

And so it would kill an awful lot of Americans and South Koreans if we have a preemptive strike at this point.

And that's why Trump's bluster is really just a blunder.

But what do we do?

Because we have not been able.

I mean,

everyone has the answer for what we don't do.

But what happens when he has the nuke that can get on the missile, that can reach LA.

I bet you a lot of the liberals would not be so liberal.

Don't wait, would be my first piece of.

Don't wait for him to get the nuke.

First of all, what do you think?

What does he want?

He wants an end to the 60 years in which there has been no agreement between the U.S.

and North Korea about its future.

Remember, it's an armistice, not a peace treaty that exists.

So he wants regime survival.

And to that extent, it's too easy for us to say he's mad.

Actually, there's a rationality underpinning his pursuit of a nuclear weapon.

What do the Chinese want?

They want stability on the Korean peninsula.

What do we want?

We want a freeze on his nuclear ambitions.

This is actually a time for diplomacy and where Seth I think really speaks with the experience of someone who's been in the front line.

It's not just reckless to do a preemptive strike.

It's reckless to talk about one in a way that crosses the line from showing strength to actually being bluster to being provocation.

And that's where you end up with this ridiculous theory that somehow escalation can lead to de-escalation.

No, escalation leads to tragedy.

And this is precisely the time when actually you want all the forces there, the Chinese and the Japanese, actually agree about this.

They would also agree with us.

And I think there is room for some serious diplomacy here and to waste this opportunity would be a terrible error.

I think there's also

unpredictability,

which can be useful, and

unprepared.

And the problem is that Trump's unpredictability is married with a stunning lack of preparedness when it comes to foreign policy.

It's you know the level of someone who may have read a Tom Clancy novel but finished, couldn't finish it because he couldn't keep all the guys straight.

That's when it's dangerous.

That's why it's dangerous.

And I don't have to tell Seth this, there's this idea of commander intent, where on the battlefield, you know what the commander-in-chief's overarching intent is.

And in the moment, if you don't have the direct order, you still know what the mission accomplished looks like.

Without that commander intent, our allies are insecure about

what we believe and what we...

you know, would like the world to look like and how we would like it to take shape.

It's just a very dangerous, precarious way to navigate forward.

And I'll add add one other thing.

You have to have a strategy.

You have to have a plan.

Clearly, we don't have a plan.

It also has to be credible.

And when the commander-in-chief says, I'm sending an armada to North Korea, and it turns out it's going in the other direction, it's not credible.

But there's also, but this is, it's so strange for me.

I'm obviously, I live and work in New York, but I'm not an American.

I look at this discussion about unpredictability.

Unpredictability is for small nations who are weak and don't know what they're doing.

If you're the world's leading superpower, unpredictability unnerves your friends and it empowers your enemies.

And it's really important that this country, which is the most powerful country in the world, doesn't get itself into this mindset of perpetual humiliation.

No, you're not being humiliated by the rest of the people.

Everything else.

And so it's really important that when you're setting out a line as the world's superpower, SE is absolutely right about this.

Predictability is precisely what you want and consistency.

Different parts of the government saying exactly the same thing because when different parts of a government say different things, you're asking for trouble.

Okay, let me ask about, before we run out of time,

an issue that's always near and dear to my heart, the First Amendment,

because Ann Coulter ran into a little problem this week.

I know, we don't like Ann Coulter's views.

You do!

I like her as a person.

I never agreed with one thing she ever said.

That's different.

Okay, but she was, I was the speaker at Berkeley a couple of years ago, and they disinvited me, and then they got their act together, and I wound up doing it and apparently that's what's going to happen with her I think.

But Berkeley, you know, used to be the cradle of free speech and now it's just the cradle for fucking babies.

And I feel like, you know, this goes on all over the country on campus, is they invite someone to speak who's not exactly what liberals want to hear and they want to shut her down.

I feel like this is the liberals' version of book burning.

And it's got to stop.

Howard Dean tweeted today about this.

Hate speech is not protected by the First Amendment.

Yes, it is.

Threats are not protected by the First Amendment.

This is why the Supreme Court said the Nazis could march in Skokie.

They're a hateful bunch.

But that's what the First Amendment means.

It doesn't mean just shut up and agree with me.

I can't believe you have to remind liberals.

I can't believe it either.

It's a shame because liberals are creating a fantasy land on college campuses that does not exist in the real world.

In the real world, there are no safe spaces where you can and no one will offend you.

Life is offensive, especially at Fox News.

Right, all right.

You worked at Fox News, right?

Yes, I did.

Bill O'Reilly must have done something.

Oh, come on.

Fox News is the Catholic Church at this point.

I mean, they're just covering up left and right.

He must have said something.

I actually never met Bill O'Reilly when I was there.

And he still harassed you.

Still harassed.

No.

No.

But it's just, it's not preparing students for the real world, which is offensive.

Get used to it.

And better to figure out how to deal with that than pretend it doesn't exist and just go, la, la la la la la la la la la.

Well, you know, there was a book that came out this week about the Hillary campaign called Shattered Inside the Doomed Campaign.

You don't want doom in the title of your book, by the way.

And, you know, before we talk about how much Hillary sucks, I mean, she did win the election by a lot of votes.

Until Until she ran and was pissed on by the FBI and Russia, she was always the most admired woman in the country.

Okay, but she lost and she ran a shitty campaign.

What I wanted to ask, what were we talking about before

something a little important?

Something before it's what I know.

Oh, I know.

About reaching out to the, like we're talking about, the white man.

I mean, this is what the book says, like her main problem was that they only went after, you know, if you watched her campaign ad, it looked like the Kendall Jenner Pepsi commercial.

It was just these vaguely not white people, you know, I'm with her.

And she didn't reach out to like the old school white people who still live in the country.

Well, I think the point is that there are a lot of people, especially

in middle America right now, who are hurting.

And they're not just white, but there are people who are losing their jobs.

And by the way, a lot of people are standing on factory floors right now, not worried that their manager is going to replace them with an immigrant.

They're worried their manager is going to replace them with a robot.

And that's what you've got to be talking about.

And I think it's actually a huge opportunity for Democrats in the next election to actually have a credible plan to deal with this massive change.

Because Trump's plan is that we should all go get pickaxes and go to the coal mines.

And even the coal miners know that that's not going to work.

It's not realistic.

But also the war.

So, you know, when it comes down to it and they do the polling of the Trump people, it turns out that is still like the one thing.

He can do a 180 on everything else.

Currency manipulation, they don't give a shit.

The wall.

They love that idea that the Mexicans and the Chinese were stealing my jobs.

When you are right, it's not the Mexicans, it's the robots.

And if they ever come up with a Mexican robot, we are.

But right, I mean, it's easier to have a scapegoat than a plan, but only a plan is actually going to bring back jobs.

All right.

Thank you, panel.

It is time for a new rules, everybody.

Okay, new rule.

Donald Trump Jr.

has to answer this question.

Are you trying to be a douche?

Is this some weird Andy Kaufman-esque performance art piece where you try to act like Scott Bayo, crossed with Fonzie, crossed with a date rapist?

Or is this the real you?

Scott Bayo crossed with Fonzie crossed with a date rapist.

New rule, I don't want to see your sonogram.

What do you expect me to say?

He looks just like you.

Nice womb.

Can I get a copy of that?

New rule, if the Pope himself, the Pope, comes to your prison to wash and kiss your feet, at least try to look like you're into it.

Not like you're at the car wash.

Don't make the Pope do that thing where he waves the rag to show you he's done.

New rule, someone has to explain to the girl at every concert who gets up on her boyfriend's shoulders, yeah, better for you, ruining it for everyone else.

Excuse me, but you're blocking the view of all the rest of us who paid our hard-earned money to see this concert through our tiny phones.

Neural the mantis shrimp, which can reflect light off its body and wields two sets of lightning fast claws, has to become the new LGBT mascot.

I mean, the rainbow flag, it's nice, but this thing just screams, I am fabulous and not to be fucked with.

And finally, new rule tomorrow in honor of Earth Day.

Everyone has to shut up about Mars.

Shut up about Mars and how cool it would be to live there and start over someplace new, like with the Chinese moving to Vancouver.

This is a dangerous idea that our culture is already too taken with, that we can keep on trashing Earth because,

we got Mars.

This fun new happening spot.

Come on, Bill, don't be a stick in the solar system.

Red is the new green.

It's the party planet right next door.

Mars, more like Mars a Lago.

It's practically Eden if you don't mind growing dinner in Matt Damon's pool.

Well, I do mind.

We need to quash this stupid fantasy that Mars is a perfectly reasonable planetary backup.

Movies, TV shows, magazines, and this constant drumbeat to get to Mars, explore Mars, colonize Mars.

To paraphrase Jan Brady, Martians, Martians, Martians.

Budweiser announced they're investigating how to brew quality beer on Mars.

Something they can't even do here.

Billionaires talk about Mars like it's Margaritaville.

Amazon's Jeff Bezos wants to go, and so does Tesla's Elon Musk, who wants us to have a million people living there in 50 years, and says we got to be a multi-planet species.

Richard Branson says, I'm determined to be a part of starting a population on Mars.

Richard,

here's a picture of you on Earth.

Here's you trying this on Mars.

Even Donald Trump, who isn't a real billionaire but plays one on TV,

favors Mars over Earth.

His budget slashes the EPA, but last month he signed a bill calling for a manned mission to Mars by 2033, which NASA estimates would cost $450 billion.

Here's a crazy idea.

If we're going to take up the challenge to overhaul a planet, let's do this one.

Let me spell this out in terms simple enough for Steve Doocy to understand

so he can explain it to Donald Trump.

Mars is an airless, lifeless, freezing shithole.

It's Antarctica crossed with Casey Anthony's trunk.

I mean, just for starters, I'm a big fan of some Earth-only attractions, like breathing.

This is kind of a must with me when I book travel.

They almost always throw in oxygen which Mars has none of.

And if your spacesuit gets a small rip in it, carbon dioxide will mix with your oxygen causing your skin to dry up, your brain to shrink, your hair to whiten, and your eyes to sink into your skull.

You'll look like this.

It's true, your eardrums would rupture and the water on your eyes would dissolve.

So would the water in your mouth when you opened it to say, ow, my eyes.

The temperature on Mars at night runs a balmy 76 below to a quite chilly minus 225, so remember to bring a sweater.

Hey, you want to explore something cold and hard?

How about the facts?

Facts that confirm climate change is killing us, but completely doable policies could reverse it.

We hear a lot about putting America first.

Let's put Earth first.

Millions of years of evolution shaped us to thrive here and only here on Earth.

Earth, it's kind of essential.

Would you go see a band called Wind and Fire?

Ladies and gentlemen, Mars is a mirage, not an oasis.

Look at this scientific chart: Mars, no air.

Earth, air.

Earth, food.

Mars, Matt Damon's shit potatoes.

Earth, mostly water.

Mars, maybe a little water far below the surface or maybe not.

In any event, don't bother waiting for the bus boy to fill your glass.

Mars, eight months away by spaceship.

Earth,

you're here.

You're here.

You're home.

Stop looking for the Goldilocks planet.

This is it.

Mars doesn't have cool breezes or trees or mangoes or butterflies.

There's no kale for liberals.

No opioids for conservatives.

There's no waterfalls, no hot springs, no rainforests, no rainbows.

In the greatest song ever about the environment, Don Henley sang, there is no more new frontier.

We have got to make it here.

I don't want to be a multi-planet species.

Fuck Mars.

It's time to make Earth great again.

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