Episode #413 (Originally aired 2/3/17)

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

Thank you very much.

How you doing?

Okay.

All right.

Thank you very much.

You're very kind.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

I love you too.

And

hey.

Look at you all

keeping your chin up, huh?

Good for you.

And welcome to this week's edition of He Did What?

What did Donald Trump do now?

Well, I'll tell you something.

He did the impossible.

He made going to the airport shittier than it was.

Just before we came on, we got news that Muslim ban he instituted, a federal judge knocked that out until the higher court said, Good for it.

Yeah.

So if you missed this, I mean, there's so much news this guy creates, but

way back after our last show, which was only a week ago,

he instituted this Muslim ban, which he called a ban, and then his press secretary, Sean Spicer, called a ban, and then there were protests, and they denied it was a ban.

And then Trump tweeted, well, you can call it a ban if you like.

So they're really on message, and the message is we have no idea what we're doing.

But hey,

hey, you Muslims, don't think you're special because our president picked a fight with a lot of people last week.

A lot of.

Finally, a president has shown the balls to stand up to our arch enemy, Australia.

Right?

He had a call with the Australian Prime Minister, longtime poodle dog ally

of America, and he finally said to him you know what I had five calls today this is the worst and hung up

well he didn't hang first he said we're building a wallaby and you're gonna pay for it

knows about Australia

no I mean it's interesting just in a week he's threatened to invade Iran Mexico Chicago today

Today we declared war on La La Land.

I mean,

this can't be going well.

I mean, it is starting to look like that our only hope is penis enlargement surgery.

Really, I.

Oh,

and no one's seen Melania

for like since the inauguration.

I don't want to say we have a mad king who has his wife locked in a tower, but it's literally called Trump Tower.

I mean, it's.

She's like a Slovenian Rapunzel.

Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your extensions.

So turning to domestic insanities.

Donald Trump, okay, this week announced his Supreme Court pick, but he did it like a reality show with an unveiling of finalists.

That actually happened.

Then, for Holocaust Remembrance Day,

the administration said: it is high time on this day we stopped mentioning the Jews.

Really?

Other people thought it was an oversight.

No, no, we did this on purpose.

Why?

Because other people were killed too.

Yes, the Jews have been hogging the Holocaust.

Fake news.

And then it was time to insult black people.

So

I'm telling you, he's equal opportunity because

this was the beginning of February, which is Black History Month.

So Trump gathered all the black people he knows in one room.

He was like a kid showing off his Pokemon cards.

You know,

this is Amarosa.

Her special power is sass.

and this was great he called it a listening session and he did all the talking

all about himself and the election and how unfair the news coverage has been only Trump could take the occasion of Black History Month and make it about how he's oppressed

And then he outdid himself, really, even him, started talking about Frederick Douglass,

someone someone who's done a terrific job,

terrific job, and is being recognized by more and more people.

Where are you, Freddie?

Stand up, let the people see you.

Fred Douglas, tremendous guy, tremendous.

And then someone told Trump Frederick Douglass is dead, and Trump said, oh no, gang violence?

And finally, to cap off the week, yesterday at the National Prayer Breakfast, the National Prayer

Breakfast,

the president opened the proceedings by saying what tremendous success Celebrity Apprentice was when he was the host of it.

But now that it's Arnold Schwartzeneger, it's a total disaster.

The ratings went right down the tubes.

Amen.

Okay, we got a great show.

Tommy Larin, Jason Kander, and Rick Wilson are here.

And a little later, we'll be speaking with our good friend Michael Eric Dyson is here.

But first up, he's a neuroscientist and author and host of the Waking Up podcast.

My friend Sam Harris is over here.

Hey, that's a good sign.

No argument, my friend.

Oh, hey.

That's a good sign.

They like you.

Yes, well.

Yeah.

Give them a minute.

So I thought it was time we had a talk because I knew early on in Trump's administration he would do something stupid about Muslims.

Yes.

And he did.

I think we both agree his ban, I've always said it's stupid, it's counterproductive, it's un-American.

But let's get that right out of the way first, that we both think this is a dumb idea, the Muslim ban, right?

Yes, I mean,

he is, first of all, Trump is like

Chauncey Gardner's evil twin.

I mean, if he does something right on this issue, it will be by accident.

Yeah, yeah.

So, and the ban itself is just the sort of idea you'd think he would come up with and press enthusiastically.

It's a terrible idea, even if your only concern is security, right?

And that's not our only concern.

I hope we get to that topic.

But

I mean, we have to win a war of ideas with the Muslim world, and we need allies.

It's not about immigrants, it's about ideas.

Yeah, and we want, yes, the ideas cross borders.

I mean,

immigration is just one part of this problem.

But

we should be desperate to have moderate Muslims in this society.

We want moderate Muslims.

We want modern MRIs.

And ones who speak out.

I thought it was great when London elected a Muslim mayor, because when you elect someone mayor, then they have to say out loud our Western values.

And he has.

He doesn't even like it when women cover their face.

Yeah, and when you view this as a war of ideas, you see that we need to empower the actual reformers in the Muslim world.

And the way to do that is not to put up a blanket ban.

Because you never know what is in someone's mind.

Do you remember

just last year, the Strasbourg cell that they broke up in France?

That's what they called it.

Okay.

I remember the headline in the New York Times a few days after said, terrorist suspects led mainstream lives unsettling France.

Because you don't know what's in, they were saying they're not, they don't have beards.

The guy was the,

he ran the grocery, he sold liquor.

He was not scowling, he was smiling at the children.

You don't know what is in people's minds.

Yeah, but also only, I mean, all these people are related to other people, right?

So only secular, liberal, and former Muslims, frankly, can police this for us.

I mean, this is a war of ideas, a civil war of ideas that has to happen within the Muslim community, and we have to help them win it.

But we don't do that by putting up a blanket ban against Muslims.

And I mean, you've had people on your show which are exactly the sort of people we want in power, like Azra Nomani, and Ayan Hurzi Ali, and I mean, my colleague Majid Nawaz,

Rahil, I think.

Yeah, Rahil Raza.

Rahil Raza.

But I mean, the reason why you should view this as a war of ideas and be

at least hopeful, but could potentially be hopeful about it, is that minds change.

I mean, so to Majid, who's been on your show, he was a former extremist.

He spent four years in an Egyptian prison for his nefarious activities.

He's now as reasonable and ethical a person as you're ever going to meet.

And yet he is now demonized by some subset of the Muslim community and the left as an Uncle Tom, right?

And so that's the kind of thing that only empowers Trump.

And I think, yes, right.

I mean, you talked about in your last blog the fact that Azra Nomani, who's been on our show

and who I think

is exactly what you're talking about, the kind of person we want to empower.

You said she voted for Trump.

She's a liberal.

She doesn't like him.

But she feels like for the issue that matters to her, you're empowering the wrong people.

You're the ones who are oppressing me, liberals, that's where they go.

And I think what we're trying to say is we're trying to find ways to disempower Donald Trump and the left is often not helping.

Yeah, well exactly.

So to take Azra's case, you know, in the immediate aftermath of Orlando, we have Clinton talking about gun control only and then admonishing the whole country not to be racist, right?

Now, you can't say that jihadism has no relationship to Islam, right?

And so people like Azra, who are fed up with this, and there are millions of them, said

this is just too galling to see.

And the president has been lying for eight years about this.

Now, it's not to say he hasn't been flying drones,

but

presumably he's not been bombing the Amish, right?

So he knows that this has some relationship to Islam.

Yeah, he said in his final address, he said, we've taken out tens or ten thousand

terrorists,

and I'm sure most of them, or if not all of them, were

ones who believed in the Koran.

That seems like an awful lot if you're just saying this is the fringe.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, it's not just the fringe.

The problem is it is.

The fringe is probably just the people who are actually violent.

Well, I mean, so there's, again, the last time we were here, and this is where

we'll begin saying things that will piss off people.

And if Batman were here, he would call us a racist.

But, I mean, yes, so

they're jihadists who will use violence immediately and who are expecting to get into paradise when they blow themselves up on an airplane.

And again, size matters.

I mean, there are entire terrorist armies.

ISIS, obviously, Boko Haram, Al-Qaeda.

This just doesn't, people talk about the KKK like it's an equivalent.

The KKK is not a problem.

That is a genuine fringe phenomenon.

But when you take jihadists and Islamists who want Sharia law, they just want to use the levers of a state to get it.

They're not committing violence immediately.

And then you just have a larger subset of conservative Muslims who, while they may not have any alliance with jihadists, they still have attitudes around free speech and the rights of women and the rights of gays that are deeply at odds with our own.

And we have to win a war of ideas with these people.

This is not a we don't fly drones to solve this problem.

And so this is why we need to empower real reformers.

I know you were having a bit of a Twitter spat sometimes with this woman, Linda Sarsor.

Am I saying that right?

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

She was at the march, and you mentioned that she tweets things like

sort of semi-supportive of Saudi Arabia, saying because they give women maternity leave more than we do.

Yeah.

They have some.

Well, this is the problem.

So the left has allied itself with Islamists and closet Islamists.

And

she's none too closeted, but she's a hijabi, the hijab was promoted as one of the empowering symbols of feminism for this march, right?

And she's one of the organizers.

That's not the full burqa.

No.

The burqa.

We have showed the picture of the burqa.

You see, like,

this is what I want liberals to understand.

That, like, there are some countries, I think France has banned this.

I'm not for banning.

I think that's not the right approach, is to tell anybody how they can dress.

But also, stop saying that's normal.

That's not normal.

If you think that's normal, you are so part of the problem.

There is a human being in there.

And you might want to feel the sun on her face or make eye contact or register a smile.

And most are not there voluntarily.

That's the thing.

I mean,

you're not for banning.

I mean, you should be able to wear whatever costume you want, but the subset of people who are wearing these things purely because they want to, without being coerced by their community, right?

Without having a level of misogyny.

Or brainwashed from centuries.

I mean, but no one wants to be that.

And also, I mean, why are they covering women like that?

Because

otherwise,

men might get aroused.

Right.

So they're blaming the women for the men's horniness.

I mean,

if you were, I mean, you couldn't create in a lab

a idea that should be more opposed by liberals.

Then we cover the women and blame them if men get horny.

And we have one of this woman you mentioned, Linda Saussure.

She's one of the organizers of the Women's March.

She has people like Bernie tweeting, I march with Linda, right?

But she's someone who has gone after Ayan Hersi Ali, who's a real feminist hero,

and she's

tweeted absolutely defamatory things at her, like she doesn't deserve her vagina, she deserves an ass whipping.

I mean, these are,

she's a theocrat, right?

Why is it that liberals here seem to just really want to, from a gut level, jump immediately always to we're just as bad?

Because we've been bad, we've done a lot of bad things.

But on this issue, especially right now, at this point in history,

not every culture is equally bad.

What is that?

Is that just self-loathing?

Well, there are two things.

I mean, so, I mean, one, just let's take that claim.

You know, take our, take our quirky religions, right?

If the Scientologists were practicing suicide bombings in dozens of countries,

if they were killing people for drawing pictures of L.

Ron Hubbard, right?

You know,

Tom Cruise would have more to answer for than he does, right?

And he's got a fair amount to answer for.

If the Mormons were trying to kill Trey Parker and Matt Stone over their Broadway play,

we would lose our patience for Mormonism, right?

So it's a massive double standard here, but this is the needle we have to thread, and this is the problem you and I have been getting into for 15 years.

We have to, on the one hand, acknowledge that

there are valid criticisms of misuses of American power and colonialism, and we want to help refugees, right?

These people in Syria are the unluckiest people in the world, right?

And if they don't pose a security concern, we should welcome them into our society, right?

We don't want to look at the Statue of Liberty and think.

But

also, you're not automatically a racist if you have concerns about

assimilation.

Actually, because of the ideas that we're talking about, there are sometimes assimilation problems.

I don't think we have a lot of that in America because

we've been lucky, but we have these two oceans, right?

And so we have to acknowledge that

it's America.

If a Muslim here in America wants to take off the thing, she can.

And

she can do that without fear of someone beating her for it.

I mean, if someone wants to come out of the closet here in America, if someone wants to marry a non-Muslim, these are not options available to vast amounts of Muslims in the world.

So let's address the question that they're saying now who hate us, which is you paint with too broad a brush, because we mentioned some of these things.

Right.

And let's just, we don't, I don't think, we paint with a brush.

It's neither too broad.

We're painting with statistics, right?

I mean, like, you're talking about 43% of this and 78% of this.

And on any specific question, these numbers can move around.

But the numbers are never consoling.

When you ask Muslims in the UK whether you want to live under Sharia law, or whether the Danish cartoonist should be imprisoned,

you don't get the tiny numbers you would hope to get.

And that's a problem that we have to speak honestly about.

And as you just said, you don't have to be a fascist or a racist or even a Trumpian to not want to import people into your society who think cartoonists should be killed for drawing the profit.

That's a totally rational thing not to want.

And the left has been demonizing anyone who will talk about this.

Right.

And I would say to you, finally, you know, asking you what is the proper liberal response?

And I think it begins with, yes, understanding that we are never going to defeat terrorism if we don't reform Islam.

And we are not going to reform Islam if we can't talk about it.

And if Muslims can't talk about it.

And Muslims can't talk about it.

If we don't encourage, empower, and oblige Muslims to talk honestly about this.

Yes.

Okay.

Thank you, Sam.

I appreciate you coming here and giving us the real deal, as always.

Sam Harris, everybody.

Terrific.

All right, thank you.

Let's meet our panel.

Uh-oh.

Excuse me.

Okay.

All right.

Thank Thank you, everybody.

All right.

I have to make an announcement.

First off, I was supposed to be in Dallas on January 22nd, and my plane did not leave the airport.

It could not because of engine trouble.

I never made it.

It's now going to be April 30th, everybody, at the music hall at Fair Park.

Thank you for your patience.

I will show up, and I won't take a dime for the show.

Okay.

Let me get to...

Oh, that's okay.

So let me get to what happened this week.

So much.

He's a busy guy.

And first of all, thank you for being here.

Thanks Thanks for having me.

Yeah, no, because you're a Trump supporter.

It's not an easy crowd.

I don't miss that.

Okay, so

what I,

there's something called the Congressional Review Act I was not aware of till this week, which says you can pretty much undo anything the last president did in the last 60 days.

So here are some laws we had that now we don't.

Now we can sell guns to the severely mentally ill.

Mining companies can dump their toxic waste into a stream.

That was against the law, not anymore.

Pastors can endorse politicians, or this is what he wants, Trump wants, from the pulpit, which we had gotten rid of.

Oil companies don't have to report the bribes they get anymore from third world dictators.

Thank God that's gone.

And then the fiduciary stuff, the fiduciary rule prevented financial advisors from ripping off their clients.

It actually said you have to act in the customer's best interest.

Thank God they got right to work getting rid of that.

I guess my question is, you know, it was all about we're helping the little guy.

This looks like special interest stuff.

How does letting

the coal company dump the sludge in the river help the little guy?

Well, the Forgotten American, I would say, because the coal industry has been attacked.

Obama went to war against the coal industry and they saw massive declines and they were on their way out the door and you look at these little towns.

They're killing people, yeah.

Look about the American worker.

I mean, it's it, we need to take a minute, take a step back and realize.

Even if we allowed coal, why allowed the company to dump the sludge in the river?

It's a more complex issue than that, though.

And some of this regulation was doubled up upon.

I don't think it's complex at all.

Well, I actually think what all these things have in common is that for the majority of Americans, it will either not affect their life or it will negatively affect their life so with the when the president signed it

when the when the president signed it he actually said in one case he said you know a lot of my friends are having trouble with this I'm operating under the assumption that President Trump's friends were already doing okay.

And this was not something that a huge change needed to be made.

And that's really what this is about.

It's about protecting rich people from the middle class and making sure the middle class pays for money.

The rich poll money.

This is also the...

what this is also a problem with is that we have this regulatory state.

And a lot of times the intentions are good about the regulatory state, but we end up having things that are, instead of passing laws that say you can't dump coal spillage into rivers, we end up saying the Department of Energy may regulate this, this, and this.

Instead of making it an out and out, clear-cut law where people are accountable and responsible as they should be for their votes and for what they advocate, we say some bureaucrat will do this, and then the outcomes aren't necessarily what you want, and then those outcomes

tend to be manipulable by this kind of law.

And

this thing is a narrow window to do these kind of regulatory rollbacks, but it does come across, politically, comes across looking like, you know, this was not great optics this week.

No matter whether these were good or bad decisions, the optics of it framed it out as,

you know,

in a way that looked terrible for the Republicans, frankly.

Is it possible he's a con man?

Why do you think, though?

Is that possible that

he sold something over here and he's doing this over here?

Because, I mean, I know there's a lot of crazy stuff going on over here, and then it seems like this is what's actually happening.

You know, while we do the crazy stuff, then we dump the shit in the river.

Oh, God, I'm doing a wake up, though.

And we're doing some other crazy stuff here.

I hope this is the crazy stuff.

Because if it's not,

we're in an existential crisis in this country.

But I don't remember anybody asking for this uh the

coal miners did coalition

about the coal miner situation though you know but

the screen gas because

there are five times as many solar workers now as coal miners you know that tell us to the coal miners that are out of business in West Virginia and Pennsylvania why do we have to cling to the worst job ever what

because that's all they know that's all they have well they could maybe be retrained Well, the president doesn't know any coal miners.

He knows CEOs.

Actually, no, I guess he does know them because they voted for him in Mass.

But this is

a kind of like hazy nostalgia for things like when Trump says we're going to have ironworks and shipyards and coal miners.

These are things, you know, we might as well get our buggy whip industry back together again.

It's this retrospective

fake past that doesn't exist anymore.

And these guys, God bless them, they worked their asses off for generations.

You know what?

Natural gas took their jobs, not Barack Obama.

Natural, tell them the truth.

But tell them the truth.

Fossil fuel is.

No, no, no, everyone's been in favor of natural gas for a very long time, left and right, because it's awesome.

And it's cleaner.

Yes, it's not the long-term answer, but it's certainly better than coal.

Okay.

Let's move on to the Supreme Court because he made his big pick this week.

Neil Gorsuch,

right?

I call him Neil Nosuch, because no such person is going to get on the Supreme Court if I had something to do with that.

I hear the Democrats like sort of mumble about, well, you know, he's too late on this.

I don't give a fuck about any of that.

The Supreme Court pick was stolen.

The Democrats better grow a pair on this one.

The only person I would accept is Merrick Garland.

Obama's bad.

The only person.

This is not about Neil Gorsuch.

This is about the Democrats stop bringing a knife to a gunfight.

I think that Neil Gorsuch should be extended the same level of hospitality as was Merrick Garner.

54% of the country voted for somebody not named Donald Trump to make this pick, right?

And so what ought to happen, a president who wants to reach out to the whole country, govern the whole country, would say, I'm going to put forward somebody that recognizes that.

But he's unable even to recognize that for himself because it hurts his feelings.

And so he has to go

and govern in a way that is as if

it wasn't 46% of the country.

Right.

Joe Biden didn't think so in 1992, though.

Well, he did.

Yes, you're right.

You're right.

Joe Biden said something really stupid, and liberals cannot disavow it.

He's the one who broached this idea.

Now, it was just an idea in a speech.

And it was Joe Biden.

And it was Joe Biden.

Well, that's.

Well, he does.

Whatever he says.

He says he says all that he means, and that's one of the issues.

He always says that.

Rick, did I forget to introduce you all?

You might have.

Yeah.

Oh, I'm sorry.

How you doing?

Look what Donald Trump is doing.

That's Rick Wilson.

That's Jason Cameron.

And that's Tammy Leonard, Tommy Larman.

I've got to cut down on the weed.

But Trump is president.

How can I cut down on the weed?

It's like, boy, I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.

But could I get back to the knife fight thing?

Because, you know, the administration this week launched the raid into Yemen.

It was started in the Obama administration, very much reminded me of Bay of Pigs.

Remember?

Started under Eisenhower, and then Kennedy got in.

They were like, hey, there's this operation ready to go.

What do you think, new boss?

And Trump said, yeah, and it was a huge fuck-up.

Now, I'm not saying that was all Donald Trump's fault, although it doesn't look good.

I think, but here's the thing.

If it was Hillary Clinton, this would be the new Benghazi.

This would be all we would talk about.

This would be Benghazi times 10.

So we shouldn't talk about intentions, because that's

red.

And intentions.

Because you're right, on the left and the red.

What?

We shouldn't, because I would also agree that if Hillary did this, you're right.

There would have been a backlash from those on the right, and they would say it was a second coming of Benghazi, and I agree with you.

So we should stop talking about intentions and just go to the merit of the thing.

I agree with you.

I agree.

So, you're saying Benghazi was bullshit that they were.

No, I'm saying it would have been unfair to peg this on Hillary.

It was bullshit to blame Benghazi on Hillary.

We know that, right?

No.

It was total bullshit.

I mean, you pretty well used the people who died as political chess pieces for quite a few years.

And you're absolutely right.

I agree with you that if five days into her presidency, Hillary Clinton had made a decision over dinner with her son-in-law and Steve Bannon to conduct a rape, regardless of whether, you know, forget for a moment the fact that he didn't go through the usual interagency process.

Forget, I mean, from my perspective, I'm a former Army intelligence officer who served in Afghanistan.

Oh, quit bragging.

And I can tell you that.

We didn't even get your name.

It's gone.

No.

It's very much not.

But no,

I just think about what if when I were in Afghanistan, you had President Bush saying he wasn't interested in receiving intelligence briefings.

It just didn't interest him as much.

I mean,

I feel terrible for the guys on the ground.

But you also realize that the president is not in charge of actually making military operations.

It's brought to him.

And Hillary is not actually, and the Secretary of State is not actually in charge of checking the security at every consulate and embassy in the world.

That's what you're saying.

It's like, you know,

they acted like she should have been on the phone to all of our 200 embassies.

What's the back gate look like right now?

I noticed there was a bulb out last week.

Have you ever switched to the city?

A lot of cables, though.

A lot of cables.

What?

Crazy.

But no, on the Benghazi, like you all can talk about that, but what were the names of the guys who died?

Like, you don't know.

You know, Chris Stevens, the ambassador.

Okay.

Chris Stevens.

Glenn Gordy.

All right, good.

Good for you.

Good for you.

And the other guy the other day was Ryan Owens.

Ryan Owens, yes.

Good for you.

He's a Navy Space.

Good for you.

Thank goodness.

I haven't heard their names in years.

I know all their names, and thank goodness he went to do it.

You two have just proved absolutely nothing.

And it's time now for our final edition of Trump's Craziest Cabinet, Penn.

That's right.

You know, we've been trying to

educate the folks on because these are all new people in the cabinet.

The cabinet, I call it the insane clown's posse.

And we started with the Swamp 16, then it was the hateful eight, and now we're down to the terrible two.

Ben Carson for housing and urban development and Trump's pick to head the EPA, a man best known for his hatred of the EPA,

Scott Pruitt.

Now on his LinkedIn page, Scott calls himself a leading advocate against the EPA's activist agenda.

That's right, he's not just a jerk who loves pollution, he's a schmuck who uses LinkedIn.

He actually sued the EPA 14 times over regulations, raising the question, wouldn't it be easier to just not dump the chicken shit in the river?

Thank you, sir.

When Scott was the Attorney General of Oklahoma, he let the fracking company so ravage his state that it went from two earthquakes a year to a thousand.

The cows there give milkshakes.

So why would you appoint this guy head of the EPA?

Because you're Donald Trump and you don't just want to harm Mother Nature.

You want to tell her you're fat, you're overrated, and you're fired.

Now our final contestant is a real-life Dr.

McDreevy, and by that I mean he's a physician who's constantly asleep.

No one has ever taken a photograph of Ben Carson where he doesn't look like he's

where he doesn't look like he's trying to remember a list.

Ben is Trump's black friend in government and

as such he was right there for the Black History Month photo op

flanking Trump with Amarosa or as I call it the Oreo of evil.

Ben is a brilliant surgeon who's also a complete head case

who says things like, planned parenthood is a plot to kill black babies

because many planned parenthood clinics are in black neighborhoods.

But by that logic, Whole Foods must be a plot to kill white babies.

And Ben, of course, is himself new to government, but don't worry, he'll be working closely with a guy Trump speaks very highly of, Frederick Douglass.

All right, let's bring out Mike.

He's a professor at Georgetown.

His new book is Tears We Cannot Stop, a Sermon to White America.

One of my favorite guests, Michael Eric Dyson, is over here.

Michael Eric Dyson!

Great to see you.

Good to see you.

All right, let's sell some books.

Let's do that.

Now, the subtitle of your book, A Sermon.

Right.

For white America.

I'm a Baptist preacher.

You know, I've been a professor for 30 years.

I've been a Baptist preacher for 35.

I said, I can't do an analytical investigation of whiteness.

Let me just preach

as a minister to white brothers and sisters, not one of these down from the pulpit, I know the truth, but in the trenches with people to identify with the grief.

But that word sermon, how do you think that's going to go over with the Trump voter?

I don't...

I'm worried about that word.

When they say, a black man is preaching to me.

Yeah.

Yeah, a black man doing anything to

But I'll say that if they're interested in religion, let's give them the benefit of the doubt.

I mean, I'm a Baptist preacher who's preached in a lot of different places, a lot of different churches.

So I think that the Trump voters who are at least able to be open to hearing, quote, the word of God, though they won't associate it with the word.

So you're optimistically thinking they're going to see the word sermon.

Right.

And not thinking of

a black man giving the sermon.

Right.

They might mistake me for Ben Carson.

We're both from Detroit.

Okay.

So, and you mentioned reparations, which is, you know, the R word in a lot of America.

Right, right.

I call it a cracker tax.

That's not in my book, but those are your words.

But you don't really mean people would be

writing a check, do you?

Obviously not.

My point is that.

I could give you cash,

and I'll take it.

But theoretically, obviously, the redistribution of wealth based upon the unpaid labor of black people over centuries is real.

But I'm not even talking about that.

I'm saying before the government gets involved, you as an individual white brothers and sister, if you're inclined, I'm not asking every white person to give their money to every black person, though if you'd like to tonight, holla at me after the show.

Let's not pass up an opportunity.

But what I'm saying is that

I run into so many white brothers and sisters who say, what can I do to help?

Look, you can reach out and buy a computer for a person who's a person of color, a little blackhead that you know deserves it, or some school you can adopt through your company to tutor them or mentor them.

In other words, these are specific individual things that you, as an interested party, to try to restitute and really redistribute some resource through your own pocket, and not only just money, it's about time.

It's about giving of your own inner resource and your spirit and your soul and what else?

Your pocketbook as well.

Okay.

Did you see the picture?

It went viral.

Show it here, if you would.

It's a woman's march, and there's a black woman saying, don't forget,

white women voted for Trump.

And, you know, she happens to be in front of these three, you know.

I told my mother not to do the sick-hand man.

And, you know, they do look self-involved because they're taking selfies and stuff.

But, I mean, everybody takes selfies.

And I'm just, do you think this is helpful?

I mean, I'm kind of on the liberals about this sort of internecine warfare.

You know, like,

those white women there, they came to the march.

I was there.

I was at, I was there.

You know, they could have gone somewhere else.

Maybe we're not perfect, but is it the time to like be ⁇ to

just go against our own, the people who are on your side?

That's a good point.

Look, Bill, I think that in this day and age, when we feel all under siege, most of us,

by what's going on in Trump America, right?

Trump hometry, his vision that is perverted and narrow and I think vicious, it is true that we began to see that all the stuff we thought we had that were that we were against each other, we began to see that we have a greater unity.

But I think what's interesting, I'm at many places and book tours, and people say, What happened to the black people who didn't show up to vote and stuff?

And then I do remind them: I said, Look, 53% of the women who were white who voted did vote for Trump.

So it's not just black folk didn't show up, it's white women voting against their interests, it's white working-class people voting against their interests for ostensibly a blue-collar billionaire who has no investment in their lives.

Martin Luther King Jr.

was in jail, and the jailer came to him and said, you know what, what you're doing is wrong.

He said, no, I'm doing, what I'm doing is right.

And then Dr.

King asked the white guy, how much money do you make?

And after, Dr.

King said, you need to be marching with us.

And so the reality is, many white brothers and sisters have been sold a bill of good.

At least you're not a Negro.

So that overlords and captains of industry who exploit the working class who are white tell them, yes, we're screwing you, but at least you're not a black person.

If they would get rid of

the bigotry and the racism, and we could come together and forge a connection, we could turn this mother out.

You do give a good sermon.

And what do you think if Trump was black?

Say there was a black man, president, and he had

three wives and women, children by three wives,

and he acted like, you know, he was as sort of erratic as he was and belligerent as he was.

He'd be in prison.

He'd be brave.

I mean, it's still a possibility.

Do you think a black person could act like Donald Trump and be president?

Honestly,

yeah.

Do you think if a black person acted like that in America, it wouldn't matter?

I don't think it would matter, no.

I don't think it would.

I don't look at Trump and judge him on his character flies.

I judge him on his mind.

No, but if a black guy ran for president and acted just the way he did, you know, made fun of the handicap, said, I grabbed pussies because I'm a celebrity, if a black guy said, I grab pussies and they let me do it because I'm a celebrity,

you think that it would make no difference that he was black?

Not to me.

I can't speak for America.

Wow.

To me, it wouldn't make no difference.

He'd be starring in the Mac, in some black exploitation movie.

Two-thirds of Republicans agree that discrimination against whites has become as big a problem as discrimination against minorities.

That's a fundamental.

Do you agree with that?

I think that there's certainly an element of division that needs to be addressed, yeah, as evidenced at UC Berkeley the other night.

I do think that there's certain issues in society where we're becoming more divided, and it's not just blacks against whites, it's whites against blacks, it's all this against each other, and it's toxic.

But see, Bill, I mean, that's...

But that's not what I asked.

Right.

We're going to get to Berkeley.

But this says two-thirds of Republicans say discrimination against whites is as big a problem as whites against blacks.

Do you possibly do that?

As we sit here today, I do think that there is an element of racism against white individuals.

I do.

I do see it in the city.

Since I'm a conservative and not a Trump person, let me just say this.

That's absurd.

That's fucking crazy.

And let me say this as a black liberal person, that's absurd.

Okay, so you want to talk about Berkeley?

Because I know that there are, there's, there's unrest in the streets.

There's unrest in a lot of parts.

To put it mildly.

Yeah, yeah.

It's, well, people.

But you know what?

And you're saying what?

That this is not good?

No, I wouldn't say nothing happened at UC Berkeley the other night was good.

It was militant.

It was a riot.

It was not a protest.

Yeah, and they protested someone who I think we've booked on our show.

So I guess we'll be be putting on

security there.

I'm not against, believe me, I've been a longtime critic of colleges shutting people up.

That is a problem on the left that we need to deal with, very much so.

No question.

Free speech should be something we own.

Look, not only do I own it, I went to DePaul University where I used to teach, and Brother Milos had gone there.

And look, I'm an ardent defender of free speech because I don't want anybody telling me what book I should write and what speech I should write.

This is Milo.

Milo's

Greg.

And he is a provocateur.

He's thrown off Twitter.

That's how bad he is.

But let me tell you what.

At the school.

They rioted at Berkeley because this guy was coming.

They did, but I'm saying at the school where I visited, in the aftermath of that, in the wake of his visit, it wasn't just free speech.

If it was free speech merely expressing ideas that are even abhorrent to the masses of people there, that's all right.

That's the defense.

But many black students were called nigger.

They were called the N-word.

They were disrespected.

They were physically insulted.

That is the N-word.

Well, there's another one as well, as you know, nigga.

I use nigga, not nigger.

I don't use it.

I don't want to step in that.

By his book, don't say that bad word.

But my point is, this, Bill.

The point is, is that, yes, I understand people being against what happened at Berkeley, but also be against the inciting of a kind of riotous spirit where a guy goes around the country spewing the worst kind of venom.

And this is my problem with President Trump.

President Trump has amplified and magnified and indeed amplified some of the worst interests in racial disharmony we've seen in half a century.

And to have a white supremacist like Steve Bannon in the West Wing and to have a Jeff Sessions as Attorney General, it's a troika and a triumvirant of just transformative hate that we need to oppose.

So listen now.

Last week I was saying that, you know, what we want to do is reach out to Donald Trump.

We want to find a way to influence him and, you know,

step back from the brink of war.

And this week we sort of found out that if you want to get to him, don't put it in a briefing book, and God forbid, a regular book.

What you got to do is put it on TV.

Everyone is saying this.

He watches TV, so we're on TV.

So, you know, this is how we can reach him.

And of course, the thing that gets through to him is he likes to be complimented.

So we started this segment last week called, let's encourage President Trump.

Because there are some things he said that I do agree with.

In 2012, he tweeted, the Electoral College is a disaster for democracy.

Fucking yes.

Okay?

And

even after he lost the popular vote because of rigging,

he told Mitch McConnell, maybe we should go with the popular vote.

Yes, that takes balls.

How bad it for Donald Trump?

He's got a very good brain and he knows a lot of good words.

Look at this.

Headline today in the New York Times.

Trump reverts to pillars of Obama policies abroad.

That is so smart.

Yes, act like a nut to put people on notice and then revert.

He reverted to the Obama policies.

That's some next level shit.

Yes, President Trump.

And listen to this.

Last week, he had a bunch of union guys into the Oval Office.

He had carpenters, not just the heads, the carpenters, the welders, those guys.

And you know what they said when they left the Oval Office?

They told the papers, eight years of Obama, he never had us in.

Who's the asshole now?

I think President Trump is maybe the nicest man in the world.

Certainly the richest.

And have you lost weight, sir?

I decided to get that out.

Just clip that and show them that.

So what about the belligerence that we have shown our allies?

Does anyone worry that this is sort of a kind of setting the table if they want to have a war?

Because you know if you want to have a war, then everything they want to do becomes easier, because now I'm a wartime president.

Now I can really shut down the protests in the street.

Well, it's against the troops.

I mean, he went through a series of head of state calls this week that by all accounts, and the Trump White House leaks like a sieve.

And so, by all accounts, with our allies, they were testy and confrontational in many cases.

And mainly about the Electoral College.

Right.

And

about the size of his win.

And yet, it seems that on his call with Vladimir Putin, which they didn't record, he gave him a tongue bath and

they agreed they'd have a sleepover and pin each other's toenails.

I mean, this is a guy who obviously is willing to piss off our allies and to to diminish our status in the world and to reduce our ability to actually do things to make this country more secure, but he's, because Steve Bannon and Mike Flynn have this fantasy Molotov-Ribbentroff pact with Vladimir Putin against Islam,

that he's going to make sure that they're the allies to face off against Iran and Islam.

I think these guys are living in an absolutely hermetic separate reality from ours.

Yo, can I say something very quick?

To me,

you know, we know this is not what affirmative action is, but a lot of people think affirmative action means giving somebody something they don't deserve

against somebody who otherwise worked for it.

I don't want to hear anybody else for the next four years criticize even the worst understanding of affirmative action.

This is the most incomprehensibly incompetent group of people who have ever been sent to government to run this particular country.

And on top of that, not let you talk about our president.

Wait a minute.

And then

they throw in, you know, Ben Carson, Dr.

Ben Carson, as you said, he's a great

neuroscientist, but as the head of HUD, I mean, that's the soft bigotry of bro expectations.

And what I'm just saying.

I'm just saying.

Thank you, unnamed panelists.

No time for new rules, everybody.

All right.

Neural, you can say what you want about the Muslim ban, but at least it'll keep out Lindsey Lowen.

Neural, don't be so sad that Messiah Nakamura, the father of Pac-Man, has died.

Celebrate his life, and instead of getting lost in grief, let's remember his last words.

New Roll, before launching into our next attack on alternative facts, liberals must admit they're living in their own fantasy world where Ryan Gosling can sing.

I mean, seriously, have you seen this fucking movie?

Neural, now that research on hamsters has found that a high core diet turns them into deranged cannibals that eat their own young,

someone has to tell me, when's the last time anyone saw honey boo-boo?

I mean...

Neural, let's call brunch what it really is, an excuse to drink on Sunday morning.

You're not having brunch, you're getting drunk.

Neural, stop asking me if these cannabis-laced dog biscuits are a good idea.

I'm not a vet, and I haven't studied chemistry since high school, but I do know this.

After a few weeks of feeding them to my accomplished, high-strung French prudal, she looks like this.

And finally, go Falcons!

Yeah, man, the Falcons.

For the first time in a long time, I really care who wins the Super Bowl, and I have a fierce love of the Atlanta Falcons because I'm from Atlanta.

Oh, wait, I'm not.

I'm from New Jersey.

I could give a shit about Atlanta.

But the Falcons are playing a team where the owner, the coach, and the star quarterback all love and support Donald Trump.

So I'd really like for them to lose by a score of a million fucking thousand and mark.

You love it when he drives us crazy, don't you?

And that, in microcosm, is what Donald Trump has done to me.

To us all.

He's made us into that campus nut who can't buy a chicken sandwich without making it political.

He's made me love the Atlanta Falcons.

That's like saying your favorite boxer is Mickey Rourke.

It's like saying your favorite singer is Ryan Gosling.

He can't sing.

But I don't care.

Here's what I'm going to look like on Sunday.

Because

I love the Falcons.

I love their running back.

What's his face?

And the guy who catches the ball.

But mostly I love them because Tom Brady was one of the first to display a Make America Great Again hat.

You know, because America has been so tough on Tom so far.

And back when Tom was asked if he thought Trump would be president, he said, I hope so.

That would be great.

Hey, Tom, fuck you.

Yeah.

You're a great quarterback and your political instincts suck.

Coach Bill Belichick loves Trump so much, he sent him a fan letter during the campaign which read, you have dealt with an unbelievably slanted and negative media and have come out beautifully.

Your leadership is amazing.

The toughness and perseverance you have displayed over the past year is remarkable.

Wow, that's some serious butt-licking coach.

Let me give you some advice for the big game.

Fuck you, Bellapshook.

Fuck you and your deflated balls, you joyless cheating fuck.

You see what Donald Trump has done to me?

I used to be pretty eloquent.

Now I'm just screaming, fuck you.

Is there anything this man can't ruin?

He took something beautiful, a game where millionaires give each other brain damage

and made it tawdry and cheap.

Even worse, every time he attends a sporting event, his hair does the weave.

I mean the wave.

The weave.

Look, I don't want to make everything political, but that's where we're headed.

Athletes are refusing to stay at Trump hotels.

People are unfriending each other on Facebook.

Siblings have stopped talking to one another, which makes it hard to get laid in the South.

There are even reports that some hookers won't pee on you until you assure them it's not a Trump thing.

One member of the LL Bean family supported Trump, and now we're all supposed to boycott LL Bean, which is not hard for me.

I've been boycotting LL Bean my entire life

because I don't like any store where it's hard to tell the mannequins from the customers.

Because they both got to stick up their ass.

But what about lesbians?

Where are they supposed to shop now to look like a lumberjack?

You know,

in 1960, only 5% of Americans had a negative reaction to the idea of marrying someone from a different political party.

In 2010, that number shot up to 40%.

For liberals, bringing home a Republican is the new guess who's coming to dinner.

Only it's more like guess who's coming to dinner and spending the whole meal bitching about Mexicans.

All right, that's our show.

I'll be at the Plaza Theater and I'll pass on March 19th at the Fox in Detroit, April 18th.

I want to thank Rick Wilson, Jason Kander, Tommy Laring, Michael Eric Dyson, and Sam Harris.

Join us now for overtime on YouTube.

Thank you, folks.

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

For more information, log on to HBO.com.