Ep. #421: Jelani Cobb, Chelsea Handler

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

Start the clock.

All righty.

Thank you very much.

Okay, set your asses down.

Sit down.

Thank you very much.

Oh, my gosh.

Such a warm welcome.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you, folks.

I feel like a woman who works at Fox News.

I'm touched.

But I'll get to that.

But I can't lie to you.

Usually I say I know why you're happy.

I don't know why you'd be happy.

Today is a day Republicans are happy.

They got their two favorite things, a right-wing asshole on the Supreme Court

and Trump finally blowing some shit up.

I don't know what what we're applauding, but okay.

But yes, that's what happened.

American cruise missiles blew up an airfield last night in Syria because the dictator there was using chemical weapons, which he has done many times.

In 2013,

98 Republicans signed a letter saying bombing Syria in response to a chemical attack was unconstitutional without congressional authorization.

But this is different because Obama was president then.

That would have involved bombing Wall Black.

And you can't

do that.

This is.

Now this is very tricky for Donald Trump because the Syrian regime, of course, is propped up by Russia, and Russia does not want us bombing there.

If Trump does the wrong thing, Putin might not re-elect him.

So.

But you know what?

The temptation to use his new toys

was too much.

Of course, you know, he's new at this.

The brass told him they were going to launch tomahawks, and he said, wouldn't missiles be better?

But, you know,

in America, you're not really president until you bomb something.

You know, even the liberals were all over this last night.

Everybody loves this fucking thing.

Cable News loves it when they show footage of destroyers firing cruise missiles at night.

It's America's money shop.

Of course, Trump made clear that the cruise missiles were a last resort.

The first idea was sending Kendall Jenner with a can of Pepsi.

Interesting side note to this, no change in the Trump policy on Syrian refugees coming here.

Republicans feel about Syrians in Syria the same way they feel about the fetus in the womb.

When it's a beautiful baby in Syria, it's sacred, precious gift from God.

Once it leaves, you're on your own.

And you know,

speaking of protecting fetuses, the Republican Senate has confirmed Scalia clone Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court, proving that in America, cheating still works, ladies and gentlemen, cheating still works.

No, conservatives were elated.

Bill O'Reilly was so excited he groped himself.

Oh, Bill, Bill O'Reilly had a rough week.

We learned at the beginning of the week that he has settled harassment suits from women for three more, in addition to the two that we already knew about and another two.

who weren't suing but are speaking out.

Bill says he's a target, but that's seven.

That's kind of a lot.

Not to everybody.

Bill Cosby said, call me when you get to 30.

Seven.

Bill's other defense is that he says over at Fox News they had a sexual harassment hotline and nobody called it.

Well nobody knew it was there.

And also it wasn't a really great one.

They would answer the phone, Fox News sexual harassment hotline, what are you wearing?

And, you know,

this is in addition to Roger Ailes, you know, losing his job because I think 20 women accused him.

So, you know, something I think is going on over there.

In fact, the cleaning lady at Fox News said she was there late one night and she heard moaning and groaning and grunting.

Turns out it was just Steve Doocy trying to do math.

But

it could have been.

Yeah, I mean,

one accuser of Bill O'Reilly says he would call her and she could tell he was masturbating.

Possibly because he said, I'm masturbating.

And, you know, apparently Bill does not take rejection well because there's this woman, Wendy Walsh, who's speaking out this week.

And she said after he refused to, she refused to go up to the hotel room with him, he, you know, he didn't like that.

And he first thing he did was he insulted her handbag.

You won't fuck me?

Well, all I have to say to you is your purse is a lesbian.

I mean,

all these women, their stories vary a little bit.

The one constant is no one wants to fuck Bill O'Reilly.

That seems to be the big thing.

Poor Bill O'Reilly.

I mean, whether he's offering you a job or threatening the one one you have, it's never worth it to fuck Bill O'Reilly.

And,

you know, I have to say, conservative sex to me is just weird.

It's just different.

I don't even get, I'm very proud to say I don't think I have ever had sex in my entire life with a Republican.

It's just, well,

it's just too much work.

I don't mind fucking somebody's brains out, but fucking them in.

All right, we've got a great show.

We got Ted Liu, Anna Navaux and Evan McMullen are here and a little later our good friend Chelsea Handler is gonna come out here

but first up he is a professor of journalism at Columbia and a staff writer for the New Yorker where he writes about race politics and culture please welcome Jelani Cobb back with us

sir

great to see you how you doing

okay

well there's so much going on in the world but we thought we would talk about one of the things that gets buried, you know, because the Obama administration,

it's like a swarm of bees.

You know, there's just so much shit going on that you don't realize.

Okay, but this is kind of important.

Our Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, said this week, it's not the responsibility of the federal government to manage non-federal law enforcement agencies.

So these are the local cops.

He says, you're kind of on your own.

We don't need any outside agitators.

And the consent decrees that Obama was working on, first of all, tell us what that is and what you think about this.

Right.

So

the kind of thumbnail sketch of it is that consent decrees came out of the 1994 crime bill.

And it's one of those things that people didn't know about because it was a very unpopular piece of legislation.

But what it did was that looking back at what happened two years earlier in Los Angeles with the Rodney King riots, was that created a mechanism for the Department of Justice to give oversight to troubled police departments.

And there's a range of things that can happen.

It can go all the way up to right disbanding a police department.

But what most often happens is that...

Troubled meaning racist.

Right, meaning racist, meaning excessive use of force, meaning corrupt, meaning all the sorts of things that we've seen people protesting about recently.

And so

what most often happens is that something called a consent decree is worked out with the DOJ and the local department and the communities that are affected.

And they say, this will be a kind of reform agreement.

These are the terms that we will have to move forward, kind of best best practices for this police department.

What Jeff Sessions has said, he's never been a fan of these, is that they're essentially walking away from them.

And the irony here is that the Department of Justice is saying that they are not invested in police reform.

Meanwhile, the police departments themselves are very much invested in it.

And so in

Ferguson, for instance, it sounds like just a big fuck you to Black Lives Matter.

Oh, that's pretty much what it is.

It is.

I mean, they just don't like, they never liked that.

They They always saw it as somehow either or.

You're either with the cops or with the black people.

Right, and one of the more disturbing things that Jeff Sessions said, and he said this on a number of occasions, is that he doesn't really believe in the idea of there being systemic problems in police departments.

So say there are a few bad apples or a couple of actor people who have tarnished their badges and so on.

But when we look at Chicago, for instance, one of the places that will likely not get a consent decree now, and the incident that sparked these concerns, LaKwan McDonald, the 17-year-old who was shot 16 times by a police officer who lied about the circumstances under which he shot him.

Walking away, is that he was walking away, right?

He was abetted in that lie by other police officers and then covered up, defended by their supervisor, by the police superintendent, and then a cover-up that implicated all the way up to the mayor's office.

If that is not systemic, then there's no such thing as a system.

Yeah, these guys want to bring back Giuliani time.

Yeah, that's pretty much.

You remember Giuliani?

I remember Giuliani.

Yeah, of course.

That was not a good time.

It was not a good time.

Not if you were a minority.

Yeah, no.

But I mean, this is going, it's going on with,

you know, illegals rounding them up.

People at the border, people at the airports.

It's Giuliani time.

It's like he's emboldening the people with the guns and the nightsticks to do what you have to do.

To make America great again.

Yeah, yeah.

I think

the main problem that you have when you talk about that way is that the police departments themselves, at least the people who have to run these police departments, are not in favor of this kind of behavior.

Because in Ferguson, in Chicago, in Baltimore, it was the departments themselves that requested the DOJ to come in and say, what are the terms that we can operate under in the future that may help us win back some of the respect and loyalty of the people we're supposed to be serving?

And also, how with this are we ever going to get police departments back?

to what I think they used to be.

I mean, they used to handle things with a flashlight and a nightstick, and now they empty their clips.

Well, you know, I remember this amazing statistic from a few years ago, maybe it's five or six years ago, that the whole country of Germany one year, the police only shot like 90 bullets.

Right.

90 bullets.

That's a slow.

That's a weekend here.

Weekend.

That's one incident.

They all seem to fire every bullet.

This kind of shit has got to stop.

This is training, right?

Police need to be retrained, I feel.

It's partly that.

And one of the best examples of that is the LAPD.

Like, you and I remember what the LAPD was like in the 90s when the Rodney King situation happened.

And as a result of their consent decree, they got different training.

They demilitarized the department.

They diversified it.

It's now majority officers of color.

And they then started doing innovative things like sending out social workers with police when they had to respond.

to calls that involved a mental health crisis.

So now, looking at what LAPD was under Darrell Gates, is now a department that people are actually looking at as a success story and saying, this is a very important thing.

It's an awesome police department that I love very deeply.

Especially on my way home from work.

But let me read you this.

This is the University of Chicago does a survey.

They've done it for many years on race.

And 55% of white Republicans say blacks are worse off economically, which of course is true, I could cite the statistics, because most just don't have the motivation or willpower to pull themselves up out of poverty.

And I've always said this was the argument about affirmative action.

When you are talking about affirmative action, you have one view, this,

or there's a reason why they're behind,

which might have been Jim Crow and slavery and, you know, they weren't allowed to get an education for many decades, that kind of stuff, or this.

And this is, these, of course, I bet you almost every one of these white Republicans who says that would say, I'm not a racist.

Sure.

I believe blacks don't have the motivation to pull themselves up, but I'm not a racist.

What do we do about that problem?

The other part, I don't know what's how to fix racism.

It's been here for a really long time.

But this problem specifically, which is the, I always say, the new racism is not knowing you're a racist.

Right.

Well, I think there's.

How do you get into that head?

I mean, it's hard because, you know, we have this kind of a la carte approach to reality now where you can actually believe whatever it is that you want to believe.

Right.

But the thing that was also disturbing from that same survey was that I think it was 26% of Republicans felt that black people were less intelligent.

So there were 55% who were saying that they lacked the motivation and the other quarter they were saying they didn't have the smarts to do it anyway.

And so I guess it's just looking for that one 24% sliver of Republicans and trying to, I don't know, get them to proselytize for their breadth.

It's trying to get people to look a little bit below the surface.

I mean, like, Trump is always tweeting about Chicago because there is horrible violence in Chicago.

I mean, it's mostly gang black-on-black crime.

How do you explain, if I was a Trump voter,

how would you explain to me that it's not just black people or animals in the ghetto trying to shoot each other, that it goes back to

Well, say, I think he would start by saying, look at those great tides of empathy that we summoned for all the people who have opioid addictions and people who feel like they've been left behind and people who became

let's look at all those people who now imagine that they're black and say can we extend that same sort of empathy and then actually read about the history of this country and see that there are actual calcified legacies of racism that are responsible for where we are right now, heavily implicated in where we are right now.

Great to meet another dreamer.

Jelani, always a pleasure to have you.

Thank you for enlightening us.

Jelani Cow.

Okay, let's meet our panel.

Okay, hey, everybody.

All right, he is a former CIA operations officer.

Wow, and a 2016 independent presidential candidate.

Evan McMullen.

Evan, how you doing?

Good to be here.

Thanks, Bill.

She's a Republican strategist and CNN contributor, and one of our favorite guests, Ana Navarro back with us.

And he's my congressman, serving his second term representing California's 33rd Ted Lou.

Congressman, how you doing?

All right, don't forget to send us your questions for night's overtime so we can answer them after this show on YouTube.

Okay, let's talk about what everybody's talking about.

Trump fired off some missiles.

Everyone seems to be very jazzed about this on TV in the last 24 hours.

Let me add some facts to it.

First of all, I'd like to mention that he's really sliding on the fact that on Monday of this week, the Trump administration told Assad, you know what, we don't really care what you do, whether you stay, whether you go.

So maybe that emboldened him to do this on Wednesday.

That's number one.

Also, the Syrian regime has dropped 12,958 barrel bombs just last year.

I guess chemicals are worse, and they certainly are potentially worse, but I guess if you die, you die.

And the U.S.

in 2016 dropped 12,192 bombs of our own in Syria on the other side of the war.

Because now we're bombing both sides of a war.

What happened if we got to wipe out ISIS first?

Well,

I would love to respond to that.

It is a misconception that Assad is on the opposite side as ISIS.

They are part of the same side.

That's the truth.

You hear Assad saying that he's attacking ISIS.

That's not true.

He's attacking civilians, and that's what you saw with these chemical weapons attacks.

Now, I agree with you.

It's bewildering, and I've said this already, but it's bewildering that we have a president who was opposed to opposing Assad at one point, and then 24 hours later, he's bombing him.

That's incredible.

But they are on opposite sides.

Come on.

No, they really aren't anywhere.

Instead of bombing that airfield, which by the way is up and working today,

if we had bombed the presidential palace in Damascus,

Because he's such a horrible person who killed beautiful babies that we had to actually take him out.

That would not be good for ISIS?

Well, look, it's just more complicated than that, Bill.

But you're really, if you're buying into this idea that they're on opposing sides, you're really, you're buying into Assad's and Putin's rhetoric.

It's just not true.

It's just not true.

Any expert will tell you.

It is true.

It just is true.

They're fighting Ted?

It's not that complicated.

Assad.

What Assad did was horrific with the use of chemical weapons.

Yes.

But the Constitution does not allow the President of the United States to engage in unilateral acts of war without congressional approval.

Congress never authorized him.

And let's not forget, Obama begged them to do it.

When they say Obama did nothing about the chemical weapons, Obama did something.

He went to Congress and he said, give me the authorization.

And they went like,

so Obama tried to follow the Constitution.

What Trump did yesterday was illegal.

You can't just fire cruise missiles into a country that has not attacked the U.S.

without congressional authorization.

Look, this is,

I think it's a bewildering situation in every which way.

That Donald Trump changed his position should not be bewildering.

The man has had more positions in the Kaima Sutra on just about every

confusing to wake up today and hear folks like a John McCain, like a Lindsey Graham, like an Evan McMullen, like an Anavaro actually be in agreement with what he did.

It's even more confusing for those that supported him because he said he wasn't going to do it.

Now look, when he was campaigning, I thought he was a racist, misogynist, lying pig.

I still think he is a racist, misogynist, lying pig, but he's also my commander-in-chief.

And he just violated the Constitution.

I don't think so.

You know, we can argue about that, and we are a deeply divided country over that, but for too long, we've been looking the other way in the face of genocide.

And there's a large part of America that wanted action.

There's a large part that didn't.

What worries me is that, you know, we're in the phase now with Donald Trump of, oh, what does this button do?

That's not good.

And also, during the campaign, not just he, but a lot of his surrogates talked about, you know, what's the use of having this awesome military if we don't use it, including nuclear weapons.

I heard them say that.

Why have them if we don't use them?

Well, look, but I think your point about, you know, what do we do with this button?

The good news is that he, amongst a lot of bad people he surrounded himself with, he surrounded himself with a very good Secretary of Defense that was overwhelmingly confirmed by the Senate with Democrat and Republican support, and who does know what he is.

Talk about a guy who is so sorry he took this job.

He's like, fuck, I didn't know I had to like talk to people and

make eye contact and like

explain policies and have policies.

Or be second fiddle to.

I thought it would be a nice title, Secretary Tiller Smith.

Or listen, or be second fiddle to Secretary of Everything, Jared Kushner.

Right.

Right.

Who's now fixing Iraq.

He's now fixing the Middle East.

He's skiing in Aspen.

He's reinventing government.

And he's going to Galos with Ivanca.

At At the same time, all at the same time.

So let me ask our liberal here on the panel:

how does the fact that he went up against Russia, Donald Trump, fit into the Republican, the liberal idea that he was installed by Putin as a stooge to do whatever Putin wanted?

This is not what Putin wanted.

If you're facing possible collusion with Putin, you might just want to distract people.

Is this what you think this is?

I'm just asking.

It might be.

It might be.

We don't know.

I've learned to not predict Donald Trump.

But in this case,

what he did was not only unconstitutional, there's no strategy.

We don't know what we're doing in Syria, how long we're going to be there.

He's got U.S.

ground forces there now.

They're more at risk of being attacked because he just attacked Assad.

He has to tell the American people what we're doing in Syria.

He has not done that yet.

Well, I mean, his tweets before this, Syria is not our problem.

This is in 2013.

Stay out of Syria.

Do not attack Syria.

Prison Obama, do not attack Syria.

To our foolish leader, do not attack Syria.

If you do, many very bad things will happen.

That's right.

He should follow his own advice.

Okay.

But here's the other thing he said.

I learned something very important this week.

Babies are powerful.

He said, every...

Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this barbaric attack.

No child of God should ever suffer such horror.

And I'm realizing now with the Neil Gorsuch confirmation that it is a lot about babies, isn't it?

You know, I didn't realize what the strategy was in 2016.

They knew they had a loser candidate, but they kept that seat open on the Supreme Court for a reason.

Because there's a large part of this country, issues come and go, but the abortion thing, that stays with them.

That is the most important thing to them.

And it didn't matter who was president as long as he put a guy in the Supreme Court who was going to stop killing babies.

And I think that's what the Neil Gorsuch thing is all about.

And Mitch McConnell played us like Hyman Roth and the Godfather.

One of the smartest things

tactical that Donald Trump did during the campaign was put out that list of justices,

potential justices that he would nominate.

He actually stuck to it.

And you're right.

I know a lot of conservatives who held their nose, who were sickened by everything that Donald Trump stood for, but because of that promise, voted for him.

And,

you know, it hurts my teeth to give the guy credit on anything.

But to his credit, he was consistent and he stuck to his promise.

And, you know, talking about babies, look, I'm a Latina, okay?

I can hold a grudge till the day of my death.

So I get why Democrats are so pissed off over Garland, that this was the wrong fight at the wrong time.

Fight it out when, you know, Ruth Bader Ginsburg isn't around.

Fight it out when there's a liberal seat.

You're like if Charo died.

You've dated so many Latinas, you know I'm

dated Latina, so he knows what I'm talking about.

But she's right.

And I think...

Of course, well, I'm not going to question you on anything, Anna.

But the point is that this is something that I understand the history.

I understand that there's bad blood between the Republicans and the Democrats on this.

But this is something that will even backfire for the Democrats because it could be that Donald Trump is going to appoint yet another justice.

And now that the Republicans have gone nuclear.

Does it backfire?

That this, that, what has just happened now that the Republicans have gone nuclear?

So now the next time he appoints a justice, it's likely to be somebody who's even further to the right because he doesn't have to get over a 60-vote threshold in the Senate.

And this is not good for the country because there's no consensus necessary.

Well, this serious story will go away in a day or two.

It doesn't seem to be a follow-up strike.

And we're going to go back to focusing on Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia.

We should.

I hope so.

But Neil Gorsuch could be there for 40 years.

And this guy has never shown any empathy toward a human being.

Okay, and all the people...

Please.

Do I have to go back to the trucker in the freezing cold who was going to die if he sided with the corporation?

Right.

Okay.

But, you know,

this is what we're looking for.

So those people who said Hillary was the lesser of two evils, good luck with your back alley abortion.

Now,

I do believe in karma.

We're going to get a Democratic president and a Democratic Senate.

We will use those rules to our advantage as well.

So I don't have any conceptual problem

about

a short-term gain for Republicans, a short-term loss for Democrats.

The problem is that the precedent is going to stick around.

It's a long-term loss for for America and for the institution of the United States.

What we should do is get rid of the filibuster altogether.

It always helps the Conservative Party.

Here are some things we would have had if we had the filibuster gone when Obama was president.

Cap and trade, public option, minimum wage at $10.10,

background checks, equal pay for women, the DREAM Act, the Jobs Act, the Buffett Rule.

All of that would have happened without the filibuster.

Let's get rid of the whole fucking thing.

Okay, you do that, and then what do you think you're going to get now with the Republicans?

Things that you don't like.

I didn't say now.

Right, exactly.

And this is the point.

This is no way to govern a country where we're shifting back and forth between

the ideal policies of the Democrats and the ideal policies of the Republicans.

This is not what this country is.

We are a divided country.

There needs to be some consensus building.

That happens in the Senate.

It's painful.

It means a lot of things that we wish would get done on both sides don't get done, but there's a reason for it.

Okay, there was news from the Russia investigation this week.

Devin Nunez, you work with him in Congress.

He's the head of the House Intelligence Committee.

Oh, yes, he's the, we call him the Sherlock Holmes of Fresno.

He is,

he, what a.

What a major thinker, this guy.

Well, this week he recused himself.

We didn't think this was going to happen.

He went for breaking riddance.

Yeah, for a long time.

What changed?

Why now?

Well, that's what happened.

The LA Times put this on the cover.

There's Devin Nunez's high school picture.

And nothing could stop that.

I would will for hair like that.

But I never quite wished.

I'm doing a bit now.

Sorry.

Go ahead, go ahead.

We'll get to your Latina answers in a minute.

Okay.

So we thought it would be

only fair, because that's so awful, to show his another Republican high school yearbooks from the Trump administration.

Would you like to see the yearbook?

Okay.

Well this is Devin Nunez, nickname Scary Seinfeld.

His pet peep was evidence.

Extracurricular future prison bitches of America.

That was

if that was too rough for you get out now because it's going to get a lot.

Jared Kushner, favorite quote, more money, fewer problems.

Activities, Middle East peace, peace, getting tough with Mexico and China, reforming the VA, reforming the justice system, reinventing the government, solving the opioid epidemic, and JV track.

I think that's the distinction.

Stephen Miller, you know, this psychopath in the White House.

Nicknamed Wedgie Bait.

Favorite quote, want to hang out?

No, okay.

Extracurricular, future snipers of America,

and solo dining.

That'd be.

God, I hate liberals.

Voted most likely to wake up with a dick drawn on his forehead.

Oh, that was okay.

It's so inconsistent.

Chris Christie, nickname Earthquake.

Favorite quote, if you think I hate teachers now, wait till I'm governor.

Ambition to button my jeans without lying on the bed.

Kellyanne Conway,

nicknamed Phibby Longstocking.

Favorite class, really creative writing.

Extracurricular debate club.

and drum majorette all four years.

And look, she saved the costume.

And finally, Sean Spicer,

nicknamed Sphincter.

And his favorite quote is, what does it matter?

Whatever I say will be distorted by the fake yearbook.

Okay.

He's a great comedian, and that's true, who hosts the weekly talk show on Netflix called Chelsea, starting its second season, April 14th.

Chelsea Handler is over here.

Chelsea Handler.

Hello, darling.

Thank you for going with.

Hello.

Okay.

Always great to have you.

Thank you.

This is my congressman.

Mine, too.

Yeah.

Nice to see you.

Lobby him after the show for our pet projects.

He's on board, don't worry.

Okay.

So we're talking about marijuana.

What a great week to have you here because with all this explosive news about Bill O'Reilly, we learned some interesting facts about sexual harassment.

Before you move on to that, may I interpose, please?

Please?

Sean Spicer, you know, when I think about him every day at these White House briefings, which I enjoy thoroughly, obviously,

I just pictured him down in Mar-a-Lago.

You know how they made that pitch tent today?

And they put him like in the, because they don't have a real skiff, so they made a fake one, and they were like, oh, yeah, we have a private room for security purposes.

Doesn't Mar-a-Lago sound like one of those water parks that was closed down because somebody swam in the pool with an STD?

You know, and he's like the lifeguard who's yelling at everybody, don't ask us any more questions by the pool.

Yeah.

I think so.

All right.

But

women out there want to know.

We learned this week, I guess, because Bella Raleigh's in the news, that 80% of women in America have experienced sexual harassment in the workplace and it's only down 10% since 1976 when it was 90%.

Have you, Chelsea Handler, ever experienced sexual harassment in the workplace?

I've definitely sexually harassed

people.

I mean Anna have you experienced it?

I think I'm in the same category as you are.

Well, I have to be very honest because I don't want to make up a story that's not true.

I haven't first, I mean, I don't know.

I'm sure it's happened behind my back, but I've never felt in a position where I felt uncomfortable.

I pitied a fool who harassed you.

Right.

You're right.

I'd like to go work for Bill O'Reilly actually for a day and a half, but I what about the fact that no one wants to fuck him?

I mean, do you have any girlfriends?

He's a very successful man.

Certainly somebody out there must want to fuck Bill O'Reilly.

Let's get Bill O'Reilly.

Let's try to reach out to the other side.

That is very, very, yeah, that is very friendly of you.

But if you think about about it, if you had to choose between him or Roger Ailes, I mean, those are the two people you have to choose from.

It's like, who would you rather?

I mean, it's really a shit show.

That's a Hopson's choice.

Who would you choose, Bill?

It's not up to me.

I'm not a homosexual.

But

Nancy Smith, who is representative of Gretchen Carlson, said going to human resources in a company like Fox is like going to the KGB to complain about Putin.

And then Trump said that he should have settled.

He defended Bill O'Reilly.

He said, he's a person I know well.

Bullshit.

Trump doesn't know Bill O'Reilly well.

He talks to him on the air a couple of times a year.

That's not knowing somebody.

I don't think Bill did anything wrong.

Bullshit again.

How the fuck would he know that?

Yeah, but also he doesn't define that as anything wrong to begin with.

I mean, he doesn't think that is wrong.

He's like, you should be able to grab women who work for you.

That's fine.

But also, additionally, I mean, I like how many advertisers are pulling out of Fox News because soon they'll only have people that are representing people who have been sexually harassed by women on the commercials for Fox News.

So it's a perfect cycle for me.

All right, so in other sexism news this week, I learned about something called the Billy Graham rule that I wanted to ask you about.

Now, I learned about this because of Mike Pence, you know, is a super duper Christian.

Okay.

Well, we know about this, right?

I'm not making this up.

And he has these rules.

No eat, this is called the the Billy Graham rules.

No eating alone with a woman other than your wife.

No going to a party where they're serving alcohol if your wife isn't with you, because most women, they get a drink in them and they cannot control themselves from trying to jump on.

Yeah, exactly.

I mean, you've got a couple of drinks, did you?

Mike Pence was there without his wife.

You couldn't control yourself, right?

You'd be like, well, think about tomorrow.

I'm fucking you tonight.

That's what it would be.

Come on, not if it was a Friday, no way.

I wouldn't be able to control myself.

I'm thinking about, you know, the whole Steve Bannon thing, how Steve Bannon may be going away, or, you know, there's a rumor.

Right.

What do you think?

I'm like, well, they can't replace him with a woman because Mike Pence won't be allowed to be alone with her alone either.

Well, I mean, there is a serious part to this, which is that it affects women in the workplace.

If you can't even have dinner with your boss because, you know, you're not the wife, that affects you as a woman.

Then you can't get the boss's ear.

This is so Christian, it's Muslim.

What about women, though?

So does that rule apply to women who are also married?

He can't have dinner or meals with them alone if they're married?

That's a good question.

Yeah.

I don't know.

But, I mean, it's fucked up.

All right.

So

let me ask you about Jared and Ivanka, because we didn't elect them, right?

Did we elect Jared?

I mean, the list of...

I think it was a package deal.

Really?

Because the list of his,

Jared Kushner's responsibilities, diplomacy with Mexico, with China, with Canada, he went to Iraq to advise about the war against ISIS, brokering the Middle East peace.

He's going to do that.

In charge of trade deals, in charge of the White House Office of American Innovation, reinventing government, infrastructure plan,

modernizing the technology and data infrastructure for federal departments and agencies, broadband internet, reimagining the Veterans Administration, solving the opioid epidemic, spearheading criminal justice reform.

Then on Tuesday,

what the fuck, Telsey Handley?

I mean, we are totally fucked.

This guy better be.

Ivanka, first of all, Ivanka has sent a message to all, you know, powerful women across the world that if you work hard and you show dedication and time to your craft, that you can get an unpaid job as your dad's assistant.

But

why he gets all these responsibilities?

Why?

Why do we have to accept this?

I don't understand.

Please, someone.

Is there anyone who can explain that one man could do all this?

I mean, I remember.

Do not look at me.

Well,

I'll explain to you what the real purpose is, because this is something that I saw while serving overseas as a CIA officer, and that is authoritarians put their family members in critical positions because they want control over those things.

They don't want those issues to be accountable to the people.

And that's what the problem here, and that's

exactly what's happening with this administration.

But the good point is,

I mean,

you you know, Ivanika so far, thus far, hasn't shown any sort of, I mean, influence that everybody's been talking about.

Oh, she's going to influence him.

She's going to exert her positive and her women's, whatever she's talking about.

We have high hopes.

I did too, because she seems like a reasonable person when she's not sitting next to Donald Trump.

Right.

The problem is,

and if Steve Bannon, if the rumors are true that Steve Bannon is going to be removed from the White House and she has a part in that, then

maybe there is some good to be had by having her there.

If she is exerting her influence in that way, then I'm really, then I'll take it.

I don't care if it's a daily and a dollar short.

I'll put her clothing line back in Nordstrom's, whatever.

You know, maybe not the whole clothing line, maybe the belts and the shoes, not the whole thing.

But

if she can do a good thing like that, because Steve Bannon's the worst.

Apparently, I mean, Steve Bannon, who was

the Svengali a week ago,

and, you know, to the point where a lot of people who make jokes, like myself, were making jokes about the fact that maybe Steve Bannon is the real president.

I don't think Donald Trump liked that.

And he had a clash.

Keep making them.

Yeah.

Keep making the joke.

Right.

Well, but I don't think we have to, because I think there was a power struggle with him and Jared Kushner.

And Jared said that Steve Bannon leads Trump to have, you know,

gets his worst qualities out there.

So I support Donald Trump and removing Steve Bannon from national security.

Sure, I do too.

Yeah.

The president now needs to complete the job job and remove him in the White House.

Okay.

Because Steve Bannon is crazy.

And what do you...

But Jared, right?

That long list that you read?

Yes.

I'd rather have Jared do that than Steve Bannon.

So, I mean, the president of China, we almost forgot about this this week, was there.

Maybe he left now, but he was there last night at Mar-a-Lago, and he had his meeting with Trump.

If it goes well, he's going to meet Jared.

Fingers crossed.

And maybe find some investors for some properties of his family in New York.

Well, Trump always was saying China, you know, they're laughing at us.

I was doing some reading about China.

They're building a national park that's 60% larger than Yosemite to save the Siberian tiger.

Meanwhile, Trump wants to sell off our parks to the highest bidder.

They have a progressive sex education curriculum.

that even says it's okay for men to love other men, whereas Trump has appointed this nutcase to be head of the Department of Education who wants to defund Planned Parenthood.

They're launching a cap-and-trade market in China.

Whereas this nuts try to dig up coal again.

Yeah, China's laughing at us not because of a

because of the brain deficit.

Do you think

no argument here, but let's remember that we still have the power to choose our own leaders here in this country, and that's something that people in China don't have.

And we need to work hard to make make sure that our leaders remain accountable to us over the next four years.

But do you think there's a chance that the president of China will leave him with a fortune cookie at the end of the weekend that says

I see an impeachment in your future?

But how often are those correct?

That's the problem.

So they're going back on health care.

What do you think about that?

I mean, I think this is an issue that could really trip them up because people pay attention, maybe, maybe not, with everything.

When it's your own health, I think that's one thing.

When you see a guy who's a clown who's just talking out of his ass, which is what Trump exposed himself to be on the health care issue, I think it's your health.

I think that sticks.

I'm on Obamacare, and I think a lot of people don't understand.

If you're a member of Congress and you want health care, you get Obamacare.

I like it.

It can be improved.

So I'm happy to work with the president.

It's more popular than ever.

It was down at 42%.

Now it's at 55%.

I think that's a a real microcosm of what's going on with the electorate.

They were like, you know what, maybe we overestimated how bad things were in 2016.

Maybe they could get a lot worse.

Donald Trump did what Barack Obama couldn't do.

He made Obamacare popular by the majority of Americans.

Right.

And

look, I would tell you,

you know, if you put a gun to my head and ask me to tell you a silver lining to Trump's election, I think something has awoken in America.

We saw it in the women's march.

We saw it in the impromptu protests against the Muslim ban.

We saw it in the town halls, people asking questions, demanding answers, demanding answers from their elected officials on health care.

People calling, being engaged, calling their senators and their congresspeople.

And this is not going to go away.

People have awoken.

Well, that's not going to be good for Republicans in 2018.

But it's good for democracy.

Yes, okay.

It's good for democracy.

And I know you have said that you would support, I mean, you're so anti-Trump.

You would support a a Democrat over someone who was pro-Trump.

I read you said that.

Yes, I would.

I mean, look, I believe that

if I were choosing between a Republican who wasn't going to hold Donald Trump accountable and the Democrat running Wood, then yes, I believe the right thing to do would be to support him.

What happened in Utah?

Utah looked like they could not stand Donald Trump, and they were ready to go for somebody else like you.

That's where you ran.

Right.

And at the last minute, they were like,

not so much.

Not so much.

What happened?

I was ready to love the Mormons.

Well,

stick with us.

We'll see what happens.

But you know, what happened ultimately is that, and people don't understand this, is that Utah was a never Clinton state, before it was a never Trump state.

And that was the reality.

And I went there saying, look, we need a better option than all the above.

But we'll see.

Right now, Donald Trump has an approval rating in Utah of 55%,

or 54%.

That's incredibly low for a Republican president.

It's still high.

Also, still too high.

Yeah, ridiculously

high.

Fair enough.

But okay, now, before we run out of time, last week, Rick Santorum, who you guys know, was on our show.

And this happened before when he was on our show.

He lied.

Rick, I appreciate you doing the show.

I like Rick Santorum.

But he said, if the EPA director under Obama said the Clean Power Initiative would have, he said the EPA director under Obama said the Clean Power Initiative would have no effect on CO2 emissions.

You could look it up.

We did.

Okay, here's what Gina McCarthy, that was the EPA director, said.

She said, I'm not disagreeing that this action, the Clean Power Initiative, in and of itself will not make all the difference, would not make all the difference in his world becomes, would have no effect.

Now, I don't think Rick Santorum is lying on purpose.

I think Rick Santorum's sin is most Republican sin.

They live in a bubble.

They only see shit on right-wing blogs and websites and Fox News.

But this alternative fact nonsense did not start with Trump.

It started a long time ago at the Sexual Harassment Network.

But they would argue, the right-wing would argue that people like us are also living in a bubble.

So we can say, but when people say something like CNN is fake news, that's just historic.

I mean, it's the oldest institution of cable news that we have.

There's no proof whatsoever that CNN is fake news.

I mean, these are choice.

There is truth and there are facts.

And they matter.

And they matter.

And this didn't start with Donald Trump, is the point I was trying to make.

Yeah, but listen, but your characterization is not fair.

You've got two Republicans here who I am sure think that blacks are not less intelligent or less motivated or less anything.

They are equal.

We are all equal.

Just don't equal.

And

we do believe in climate change.

But I'm just saying

when Republican and white, blue, and black.

We can't say that we're not a bubble conversation.

We live in a bubble.

So we can't use bubbles.

And there is some bubbling going on with liberals, but not the same.

That's a false equivalency.

And when people lie, we have to call on them.

Absolutely.

It's a live show, so I can't do it at the moment.

All right.

We're out of time.

Thank you, panel.

Time for new rules, everybody.

New rules.

All right, more

Stop merging things that should be allowed to die.

Yahoo and AOL are merging into a company called Oath, which is like merging Stephen Hawking's body and Sarah Palin's brain.

But it did give me an idea.

Let's merge Sears and JCPenney into a new store called Crappy's.

Neural, and

the new study in the Journal of Sex Research that says men bring their partners to orgasm more out of a need to satisfy their own ego than out of a desire to please their partner, has to be reprinted in the New England Journal of Now You're Just Splitting Hairs.

And really, as long as the bus gets you to your stop, ladies,

who cares what the driver's thinking?

New Roll, now that Rachel Dolezal has released her new memoir in full color,

Hollywood has to make a movie version.

Oh wait, they already did.

New Roll, the makers of vegetable chips must make them look less like potpourri.

I mean, I can tell the the difference, but think of the poor stoner who sees the potpourri and says, great, snacks in the bathroom.

Nero, somebody has to tell the Chinese engineer who built himself this female robot and then married it that there's some weird shit even by Asian standards.

The great part is he never has to wonder if she's in the mood because when she gets turned on, he always hears this.

And finally, new role, Republicans have to learn the difference between being conservative and just being a dick.

So much of what they have done since Trump took over isn't moving the party in a more conservative direction.

It's also not a libertarian move.

It's just a dick move.

Take, for instance, the bizarre decision to reverse the ban on lead ammunition.

For over a decade, we've been moving away from lead bullets because when a sportsman experiences the exquisite joy that comes from blowing the head off a chipmunk or a wolf and leaves it to rot, bald eagles eat the carcass and when it has lead in it, it poisons them to death slowly and painfully.

If it doesn't have lead, eagles,

you know, the symbol of our fucking country

before they were replaced by a trucker hat.

If it doesn't have lead in it, they don't die.

Why not leave that rule alone?

Because hunting is a sacred sport.

Is it even really a sport?

Is it a sport if one team doesn't know the game is going on?

Were voters in 2016 asking that we poison eagles?

Does it get anyone a job?

Does it save money?

Does it do anything conservativism is supposed to be about?

No.

It's just about some warped idea that the way to show strength is by being a dick.

And that in a nutshell is what republicanism has become, looking at any problem and saying, what would a dick do?

What would a dick do if there was a pesticide that was found to impair cognitive development in children?

Use it, of course.

Last week, our new anti-EPA, EPA,

okayed the use of chlorpyrifos, which the Obama administration was in the process of banning because they had a no-tolerance policy on substances that can cause brain damage in children.

But President Trump says, whatever, I ate paint chips as a kid.

And look at me, I as president.

But really, not even children in the mix stops you from the prime directive of being a dick?

No, they see a chance to be a dick and they grab it.

Same way they lost their minds when Michelle Obama tried to get kids to eat vegetables.

Vegetables?

What is this, a high school or a Whole Foods?

And school lunch programs?

That just encourages a dependency on food.

No more free ride, you lazy six-year-olds.

You want to eat?

You do what kids in China do, so ties for President Trump.

I understand, or at least I thought I did, Republican principles, greed, fear, racism, sure.

But why bring back asbestos?

Yeah, asbestos, another dick move on their agenda.

Who the fuck is still in the corner of big asbestos in 2017?

When was the last time you heard someone say, yeah, we just bought a house, can't wait to move in, but not until we install the asbestos?

Finally, what possible reason other than spite could they have for killing the agreement Obama made with the car companies to get all cars up to an average of 55 miles a gallon in eight years?

This was a done deal.

An industry that we taxpayers bailed out and is now making record profits already agreed to it.

It makes the air cleaner.

It makes us more energy independent.

It saves people money that they can spend on other things.

It was a win-win-win-win.

That's called a no-brainer, which would lead you to believe even Republicans could get it right.

All they had to do was nothing.

Their specialty.

No,

no, no, no.

It goes against the prime directive of, of, let's say it together, being a dick.

Very good.

They know carbon is killing the planet.

They don't care.

Because the main purpose of a car is to piss off liberals.

Good gas mileage is for Europeans and lesbians.

And a Republican drives a Chevy Suburban and always parks it in a space marked Compact.

That's our show.

We're off next week.

We're back on April 21st.

I'll be here at the Microsoft in October.

On the 7th, I want to thank my guests, Evan McMullen, Anna Navarro, Ted Lu, Kelsey Handler, and Joanni Cobb.

Join us down for overtime on YouTube.

Thank you, folks.

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

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