Episode #412 (Originally aired 1/27/17)

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

We're still here, here, here, here.

you very much.

How you doing?

All right, you can sit down.

Thank you, you look good.

Thank you, I know.

It's exciting.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, please.

Thank you, people.

Take your pussy hats off and sit down.

My God, there must be a million and a half people here.

I tell you.

Well, it's

day seven in the war on facts.

What the fuck is going on?

I turned on my iPhone today to check the news, and Suri said, Are you sitting down?

But hey, you know what?

We're still here.

There was a big women's march on Saturday.

Huge, you talk about huge.

Over 3 million around the world.

The largest gathering of women since the last time they collected the Bill Cosby victims together.

Very impressive.

Millions of women on all the continents hugging, crying, and moaning.

moaning it was like the whole world turned into an Adele concert it was awesome

because there's something happening and you can feel it finally we have our own tea party

except with more teeth and

no spelling errors on the posters

Now, of course, when President Trump heard right outside the White House window the women who were marching past him in greater numbers than his own inauguration, he took it well.

I'm kidding, of course.

He got a bullhorn and started pointing out their body flaws.

Hey, Chubby, you could lose a few.

You're a fool, not interested.

And that's the President of the United States.

And then we got down to the actual business of running a government, which Donald Trump apparently knows nothing about.

He spends all week signing executive orders in these super classy leather binders that look like the menu at Beefsteak Charlie's.

Let's see, I'll throw out the Mexicans and

bring back torture, and the lady will have the filet.

He keeps holding them up.

After he signs, I'm like, look, look.

Look, mommy, I

I finished my coloring.

Maybe we could put it on the refrigerator.

Problem is that, you know, executive orders are a real thing.

When Obama did them, he had the lawyers go over it.

People knew what was happening in the departments.

No one knows these things are going to work.

No one knows where the money is coming from.

They're just signed tweets.

You know, we're going to build a wall.

Done.

No more Obamacare.

Done.

I want a pony.

Done.

I mean,

you know, because he's a doer.

Everybody else is all talks.

So his first week was like, oh my God, it was like the last half hour of Goodfellas.

You know, when Ray Layota is just coked out of his mind and doing 10 things at once, he's dropping off a trunk full of handguns and he's making spaghetti sauce and helicopters are chasing him.

It can't

really go go on like this for four years.

Can it?

I mean,

I'm going to lose my mind.

I was watching CNN this morning and I thought for the first time in my life, hey, maybe I should ask my doctor if a bill of fi is right for me.

I mean, there is,

in just one week, a lot to be very alarmed about, but

I got to put it on the top of my list, the fact that the President of the United States sees multitudes that do not exist.

Twice he did that in one week.

First, he insisted the crowd size at the inauguration was the biggest ever, and that aerial photography is just a theory.

But we saw this, we saw these pictures, half them all covered in whiteness.

But enough about his supporters.

I mean, he can't stand it that when it comes to the size of the crowd, Obama's was bigger.

This is about cockwright.

This is about dick.

This is about a guy who never brought a woman to orgasm.

That's what this is about.

He probably doesn't even think it really exists in a woman.

It's rigged.

The vagina is very rigged.

And then we're told, you know, that there are such things as alternative facts.

That's what this week will be known for.

Alternative facts.

And Sean Spicer, his press secretary, about the crowd size, he just went, this is what the president believes.

You're on your own.

I think the difference between Scientology and Donald Trump is Scientology has better celebrities.

I do.

Here's how Sean Spicer explained alternative facts.

He said, it's like the weather report.

One weather report comes out and says it's going to be cloudy.

Another says there's going to be light rain.

No one lied to you.

Yeah, Yeah, you know, sometimes weathermen do disagree on what the weather is going to be like tomorrow, but not on what it was like yesterday.

And,

and, you know, then as if seeing a million people on the mall that weren't there wasn't enough, Donald Trump later in the week says that there were three to five million illegal aliens who voted for Hillary Clinton when they've studied this, this like four.

Five million, how do we know this?

A German golf pro

told a guy, who told a guy, who told a guy, and Donald Trump heard it, that the German guy was trying to vote in Florida and couldn't, possibly because he's a German citizen.

But he saw Hispanic-looking people trying to vote.

Oh my God, they must have been illegal.

How else to explain a Hispanic in Florida?

So we are

off to a great start with the Hispanics.

The president of Mexico was scheduled to visit here next week, but Trump tweeted, Well, if Mexico isn't going to pay for the wall, he might as well just cancel this trip.

And the Mexican president said, Okay.

Well, you know know what?

Trump said he would keep the Mexicans out.

There's one.

All right, we've got a great show.

Ivo Longari, Grover Norquist, and Tim Wyatt are here.

And a little later, I'll be speaking with the Daily Beast, John Avlon.

But first up, he is the president of the Council on Foreign Relations and author of A World in Disarray, American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order.

Our friend Richard Haas is over here.

Richard?

How are you, sir?

Always great to see you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, Richard Haas, you are the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, and you still do our show.

God bless you.

So you briefed in that capacity, President Trump.

How long ago was that?

About a year and a half.

We met for about an hour.

And tell me something reassuring.

My impact was modest.

But I mean, how did you find him?

That's a long meeting.

I mean, he must have had things to say and thoughts in his head.

Actually, it was a pretty good give and take.

We spoke for about an hour.

Did Russia come up?

Very little.

It was actually much more about immigration, terrorism, North Korea, China.

That's before Putin had the piss tape.

Okay.

So

we showed this.

It took you a minute.

We showed the timeline last week.

You know, 1946 to 2015.

Donald Trump never mentions Russia, doesn't give a shit about it.

Suddenly, it's all about Russia.

Somebody's got to take.

Okay, so

this thing with Mexico that happened this week, I thought was a horrible omen because to me it's Donald Trump's worst inclinations, which is my way or the highway.

And if you don't agree right away, I take my marbles and go home.

I mean, I don't remember this ever happening before, where there was a scheduled visit.

The guy didn't do exactly what you wanted at the beginning of the negotiations, so everything gets called off.

We can't run the world world like this, can we?

No, and it doesn't make sense from Donald Trump's own standpoint.

Now after the trade agreement have made Mexico better off, if what you're really worried about is immigration coming from Mexico, you should want them to do well economically.

Over the last few years, more Americans, more Mexicans rather, have left than have come in.

So this is working.

So why do you want to change it?

Plus, if you really do want to renegotiate, Bill, this is not exactly a way to get the Mexicans to show more flexibility.

He wouldn't come here.

Why do we think he's going to compromise?

And also, Donald Trump has a 3%

approval rating in Mexico.

And they know who he is, you know, unlike some presidents when they first take office.

They don't like Donald Trump.

My question to you, and you would know this, is do we have enough leverage?

I mean, I feel like he thinks it's 1945, and we can tell everybody in the world to do exactly what we want, and they will.

And I think if he tries to pull this kind of stuff, Mexico will become hostile.

Every country will become hostile.

And I don't think we have that kind of pull anymore.

We know.

One of the reasons I wrote this book about a world in disarray is that's exactly right.

What you've seen is a real spread of capacity.

North Korea now has real capabilities.

China obviously does.

Russia does.

We can't just insist on things.

Plus it's globalization now.

We can't just make things work ourselves.

We may do the right thing, but unless others also do the right thing, whether it's dealing with terrorism or cyber, you name it, alone we don't have a lot of options.

But we also learned this the hard way.

We learned it in Iraq.

We learned it in Vietnam.

We may be stronger than anyone on paper, but bringing that to bear in practice is something very different.

Right.

And if we make the world

live without us, they might find they like it better.

Actually,

I actually argue the opposite.

I think the world without us, it's not that anyone else replaces us.

It's not that it works itself out.

It actually begins to get really bad.

I actually think a world left to its own devices will not sort itself out.

That's probably right.

We're seeing it in the Middle East.

In some ways, the Middle East has much less of us.

They didn't do so well when they had a lot of us, but they're also not doing so well when they have very little of us.

Right.

Do you think conservatives, sane conservatives, will

start to line up against President Trump?

Because I feel like this is the only hope we have in this world.

I mean, we obviously know the Democrats are on one side of it.

And it's very painful for any Republican to ever be seen siding with a Democrat.

But George Will has

Lindsey Graham.

There are some, so far we've seen some profiles and courage about people who say, yeah, this is beyond partisanship.

Somebody like Henry Kissinger, who I'm sure you're familiar with, he saw Nixon go mad.

I mean, when he sees a guy who sees multitudes that aren't there,

Is somebody like that going to come out?

Oh, absolutely.

It's going to happen.

You're already seeing Republican unhappiness over trade, the killing of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade Deal, unhappiness with Mexico.

You could see it in the next few days.

If Trump moves, President Trump moves unilaterally to lift sanctions against Russia over Ukraine.

I think Senator McCain, Senator Graham, and others, Marco Rubio, will all push back.

And if he starts lifting sanctions himself, Congress could then introduce sanctions.

So I actually...

Do you think that's going to happen?

He's going to lift sanctions.

Well, I certainly hope he doesn't lift them unilaterally or unconditionally.

I think it's one thing to go to Putin and say, if you stop doing X, Y, and Z, we'll give you some sanctions relief.

But simply to do it as a kind of down payment in the hopes that Putin exercises self-restraint, there's no evidence that at all.

What do you make of these reports that our own CIA doesn't trust the president with secrets because they think he might pass them on to Putin?

I saw those reports.

Look, the president doesn't need to know, any president, that kind of granular detail about this or that agent.

He just needs to know the information and how confident

we are in it.

Is that true?

I mean,

your answer would seem to be

not going to tell him.

I wouldn't tell any president.

Certain levels.

I don't think.

We'll give him the broad strokes, but I mean.

That's kind of frightening when you can't trust your own president.

Well, I don't think

CIA works on a strict need-to-know basis.

No president needs to know.

I was hoping you'd come here and make me feel reassured.

Need to know, but the president isn't in that loop.

That level of detail about whether a certain person is an Asian, he doesn't need to know that.

He just needs to know how good the information is.

Okay.

Sorry.

All right.

So

final thing.

He said that he would start out trusting Angela Merkel, a key ally, the same as he would Putin.

Isn't this a horrible false equivalency to put out there for the world?

Does the world even know what side we are on anymore?

Yeah, this is like a game.

In the old days in the Cold War, we used to wake up and we knew who we were playing with, what team everybody was on.

Don't feel that so much anymore.

So allies in Europe, like the Germans, allies in Asia are not so sure anymore.

Donald Trump is a disruptor.

He is a disruptor.

He is coming.

Well, I know, but they say that like it's a good thing.

Well, it's a good thing if you're Vladimir Putin, because there you want to change the world.

Donald Trump has inherited a world which by and large has been pretty stable.

We've done pretty well as a country economically.

So this is a world in many cases we want to restore.

Obviously have to change, but you want to shore this up.

I don't understand why you'd want to come in and turn it upside down.

We've done pretty well over the last 75 years.

Richard Haas, I hope we're all here for your yearly visit next.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Richard Haas, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, and now let's meet our panel.

Oh, Daddy.

You're doing hard in.

Jump down.

Exactly.

I gotta.

This news set is gonna kill somebody.

All right.

Panel.

He's he's a seven-term U.S.

Representative from Ohio and author of The Real Food Revolution.

It's very slippery.

Healthy Eating Green Groceries and the Return of the American Family Farm Congressman Tim Ryan.

Hey, McGill.

Thanks for being married.

She's an activist, producer, director, and actress whose next film is Low Riders.

Eva Longoria is backwards.

And he's the founder and president of the political advocacy group, Americans for Tax Reform.

I've been doing this with Grover for over 20 years.

Grover Norquist is here.

Don't forget him to send us your questions at tonight's overtime so you can answer them after the show on YouTube.

Okay, so now you're probably going to say I'm paranoid, but I want to bring this up because I think Donald Trump puts out a thousand things you could talk about in a week.

No.

And we have to focus.

Before the election, I was saying there's a slow-moving coup happening, and fascism could come to America.

This week, the president talked about sending troops to Chicago.

He said, I'm going to send the feds in.

And by the way, Chicago, only the 18th worst murder rate of cities in America.

The idea of Donald Trump sending the private army into an American city, not a precedent I really want to see.

Talked about starting up black sites for torture overseas.

His chief strategist said the media should keep their mouths shut and just listen.

He muzzled agencies,

EPA, can't tweet or talk anymore in combination with this concept of alternative facts.

So, you can't get out the real facts, EPA.

So, the only facts we hear are the alternative facts.

I'm just saying, it's easy to get distracted.

I'd like to keep their eye on the big picture of all these things, which to me look like a strongman fascist country

coming into view.

one you're in favor of

okay my next question since you didn't answer that one

can a government really function on alternative facts

no

great

okay next question

well here's here's the issue with the alternative facts in the tweeting of whatever is on his mind at that moment is that it starts out with a tweet like, oh, there were three to five million people who voted illegally.

That just started as a tweet.

But now you're president of the United States.

That tweet now turns into an investigation.

Mike Pence is now out the next day saying, We need to keep going to find these people.

Right, but the courtiers have to pretend the king is sane.

It's like when there's a crazy king.

No, it happened like in the Middle Ages.

There would be a, you know,

in a a monarchy, when the king dies and the next one in line is six,

now a six-year-old is in charge of the country.

So when he says he believes in the Easter bunny, everybody starts looking for eggs.

That's where America is going to.

But I think Trump is trying to make the press and the media the opposition party, and he's doing a good job because nobody...

The media has a lower approval rating than Trump.

And so the fact that...

Well, only among Republicans.

Right, right.

That's what I'm saying.

That's an alternative fact.

I'm sorry.

It's a little.

Right.

It's a little free.

No, but the fact that she's a fake game she plays.

Yeah, the fact that he thinks the press should be compliant and at the service of the presidency is not in the tradition of American press, and it's not in the spirit of the First Amendment, which guarantees press be protected from

government censorship.

You can't censor the press.

And so I think what we do need, we do need somebody, we do need the press to be the truthsayers right now.

They cannot be reporting alternative facts.

Okay, can I quote Lamar Smith?

Do you know Lamar Smith, Grover?

He's chairman of something that he shouldn't be, right?

Science Committee.

I'm not sure what he's chairman of.

Yeah, okay.

Anyway, he's a moron from Texas.

Oh, my state.

He said, better to get your news directly from the president.

In fact, it might be the only way to get the unvarnished truth.

But the unvarnished truth, I mean, this is the IC Multitudes guy.

He said unemployment might be 42% at one point.

You're right, it's all anecdotal.

It's whatever he was just watching on Fox or Alex Jones.

Doesn't this scare the shit out of you?

Alex Jones believes in lizard people.

Really?

I mean, Donald Trump quotes the Inquirer: you must be scared by this.

I mean, if there's any hope in this country, I'm going to say it every show,

it's sane Republicans saying this is not normal.

You are a sane Republican.

He tends to want to make the face.

He says,

he wants to go this way.

You can overstate.

You can overstate it.

We're fucked already.

Wait a minute.

You started by suggesting he was a fascist.

Sometimes people overstate whether you're doing it for comic effect or to try to make a point.

And it doesn't, well, it doesn't help to overstate, and it doesn't help when he does it either.

And he ought not.

And if you want to say that I think there were many people at my inauguration, say many.

Don't give a number or a comparison that may not hold up.

When the FBI is in the tank, as they were, for one candidate and they become politicized, and they're actually working with Russia to get them elected, yeah, that's fascism.

Okay.

But besides that,

let's get back to...

You know, this idea that Sean Spicer says that's what the president believes.

Don't there have to be Republicans like Lindsey Graham, and as I mentioned, George Will, people who will stand up and say, this is beyond partisanship.

We just can't have a country ruled by what the president believes, whatever shit

because he's proved that he believes things that are crazy.

But part of the problem is Democrats don't go where Republicans are.

That's been our problem.

We don't go to rural America.

If we think we don't go on Fox News, we don't go on CNBC, we don't go on Hugh Hewitt or Laura Ingram.

We're afraid to go out and get our own message out there.

I give Grover a lot of credit for coming on this show.

Yeah.

But

the bottom line is, the bottom line is, if we don't go where these people are, the alternative facts are the only facts they're ever going to hear.

That's right.

But

you had guys on the right reacting.

to Obama as strongly as you're reacting to Trump, and they would point out that Obama said repeatedly in the campaign, not once in a tweet, but again and again and again in speeches, he was never going to raise taxes on anyone who earned less than $250,000 a year.

That lasted 16 days before he did.

And then during Obamacare, there's a series of tax increases.

Those were not true.

True, but that's within the normal parameters of what politicians do.

Saying you want 3 million people that don't exist is not.

Okay.

That was not a lie told to achieve power.

The other was a lie told to achieve power.

We were all promised.

George Bush said, read my lips, no new taxes, and then raise them.

They all do it.

Wait a minute.

People can't accept the truth and the government needs money.

That's fascism.

That's fascism.

Let's get to that.

People can't deal with the truth and the government's going to steal their money.

I suggest that's fascinating.

Taxes steal their money.

You know, let's talk about the taxes, Grover.

Because

I'm going to take a look at taxes back.

Because Obamacare, Obamacare, yes, the Obamacare repeal, giant tax cut for the rich.

Free trade.

I thought Republicans used to be for free trade.

The proposed Republican budget increases the federal debt by over $9 trillion in 10 years.

Trump said today we are going to be cutting taxes massively.

Tax Policy Center says Trump tax plans will add $7.2 trillion.

This is voodoo economics.

Massive increase for the military, giant tax cut, and infrastructure spending.

And we've been going to the business.

Let's get into your set of alternative realities.

When Obama was president, we got no money, can't do anything, we're broke.

Oh, now we found it in another drawer.

No.

You said that weathermen don't disagree about the past.

But you just criticized the Reagan administration, which, when he cut taxes and deregulated and had some modest spending restraint, we grew at 4% a year.

Tripled the debt.

Two things.

No, we grew at 4% a year.

One moment.

I'm focused on economic growth and job creation.

Created 4 million jobs, 4 million jobs the first year.

In one month, October, he created more jobs than Obama did in his entire first year of his recovery.

It was a much

alternative fact.

Grover, that was not.

Alternative, those are other facts that are not answering the question.

You're running up a giant debt.

Of course you can do shit if you just put it on the car.

And then

which is always okay

when it's a Republican.

When a Republican spends money, that's the best.

What happened?

Reagan in 84, 85, 86, he went back.

They raised gas taxes.

When George W.

H.W.

Bush raised taxes in 1990, he said he wouldn't.

He had to.

He had to because of the deficits that we had.

It was an important economic thing for him to have to do.

If you look at supply-side economics, George Bush, and I was there, George Bush cut taxes twice.

They blew a big hole in the deficit, started two wars, didn't pay for a thing, did the Part D bill for Medicare, didn't pay for that, blew a hole in the deficit big time till the collapse of 2008.

That is supply-side economics.

We don't have to wonder what the hell will happen.

We know what happened.

And then, and then,

one last point:

the Iraq war supply side economics.

Two wars that we didn't pay for a damn thing.

We borrowed the whole thing, Grover.

So you should be very concerned with that.

And here's the problem with starting the war and not how you paid for it.

The problem is the war started on a lie.

You want to talk about alternative facts.

Trump budget numbers add up.

He's picking on Hillary Clinton.

How can we, excuse me, I thought your party and you especially were for, let's get that debt down.

How can we have, Trump cited today, massive, massive tax cuts, massive tax cuts, big military buildup, and giant infrastructure spending.

How can we

have this add up?

And I thought adding up was your thing.

Two things.

No, there's one,

the bulk of government federal spending are the entitlement programs, and you're not going to be able to

going to try and rein in spending as a percentage of the economy, you have to reform those.

And one of the things that Ryan, Paul Ryan, you keep acting like

or discussing Trump as if he was a king.

He's not.

He's the president.

He gets to know.

You tell him that.

He gets

as he signs his decrees.

A bad habit he picked up from a previous president.

But what you have to do, the signing of decrees,

the pen and phone thing,

he didn't make that up himself.

But he can't spend any money that Congress doesn't appropriate.

He can't have any tax cuts or increases that Congress doesn't do.

And so

they will be working together.

What Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House, has said, is he's looking to block rent Medicaid, just as Bill Clinton did with aid to families with dependent children, and send out to the 50 states

money so that people can decide how to do it.

I think I'd rather have 50 states working on it than one government doing the same thing that hasn't worked as well.

Okay, it's time for Trump's craziest cabinet pick.

We noticed last week that there are 16 cabinet officers up for the job, and that seemed like it was too tempting to make a bracket out of it.

So

it is time for Trump's craziest cabinet pick, ladies and gentlemen.

All right, last week was the Swamp 16.

Now we're down to the hateful eight.

In this week's matchup,

ill-prepared meets ill-equipped.

As Energy Secretary Rick Perry goes head-to-empty head against Education

Secretary nominee Betsy DeVos.

Betsy DeVos, who never attended a public school, has never put her own children in a public school and does not support public education.

So tapping her as Education Secretary is kind of like making Ellen the Secretary of Penis.

Betsy DeVos, clearly she's the worst person to be around school books since Lee Harvey Oswald.

So

no surprise her confirmation hearing didn't go all that well, especially when she said that guns may be necessary in some schools to protect kids from grizzly bears.

An argument I've only heard once before made by a guy on mushrooms, and that guy was me.

Here's Betsy and her family, and by the protective way they're holding their hands, I'm guessing they're about to meet Trump.

Anyway.

You might think Dim Betsy had this thing zoned up, but not when you're going up against Rick Perry.

You all know Rick.

Here he is only months ago on Dancing with the Stars.

Now that guy

is in charge of the nukes.

A fact he himself did not know when he accepted the position.

As head of a department he previously had called for eliminating or would have if he remembered it.

Really, he thought the Secretary of Energy was kind of a goodwill ambassador for the oil industry.

In fact, his first question when he met energy officials was, how do you fit it into those little little five-hour bottles?

Obama gave this job to a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and then a chair of the MIT Physics Department.

Rick, on the other hand, has a BA in animal husbandry.

He may not know what a centrifuge is, but he can jerk off a horse.

Okay, let's

bring out John.

He's editor-in-chief of the Daily Beast and author of Washington's Farewell, The Founding Father's Warning to Future Generations.

John Avalon, John.

Oh, are you sir?

Careful, it's a dangerous threat.

Okay, so John, let's talk about your book, George Washington, one of my heroes too.

And I know one of his biggest concerns was foreign influence.

Yeah.

So I guess my question is, if they found a smoking gun about Russia, now that alternative facts guide the land, would it even make a difference?

Or would his followers just go, I don't see a smoking gun, I see a bowl of soup?

You know, as Senator Moynihan warned us, everyone's entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts.

But they changed that.

But we need to keep pushing back on it.

We're being entitled to our own facts.

But that's where we have to call bullshit and say, no, you're not.

There is a reality.

There's an objective reality.

Lies are lies.

And we are not going to put up with that that as citizens of this country and especially as journalists.

That's our job.

What do you think the Republicans would be making of it if it was the opposite, if Hillary Clinton had all this involvement with Russia and they hacked the RNC emails?

But if really Hillary got there.

Can you imagine, right, if a Democratic president was found to have Russia secretly working to electronic?

It's yeah, no, I mean, obviously.

They were going to put her in jail for the emails.

Look, we are so deep into somewhere between situational ethics and willful stupidity

that, you know,

that's a given.

But what's crazy about the situation we're in is

that Washington did warn us about a lot of this stuff.

This is received wisdom.

You know, when Washington wrote his farewell address, he was writing it as a warning to future generations about the forces he felt could destroy our Democratic Republic.

Hyper-partisanship and foreign wars and influence.

And these are ripped from the headline things.

I'll say to Grover too, also excessive debt make you feel better on the conservative side of the aisle.

But hyper-partisanship, you know, these political factions who hijack our democracy and make it so dysfunctional, Washington warned, that eventually people get so frustrated that they open the door to a demagogue with authoritarian ambitions.

This is one of the ways that democracy.

As a historical scholar, you must really appreciate the irony of the fact that the Electoral College was what was supposed to stop a mentally ill person.

From becoming president, right?

This was their genius.

That the electors have the final say.

And somehow it got to be the exact opposite, that over time we forgot what it was for and it became a rubber stamp.

So these electors who went there in December and put Donald Trump there and said, well, I've got to do my duty.

No, actually, your duty was the exact opposite.

Your duty as an elector was to stop this.

You know, look, I think we have gotten civically lazy.

I mean, Electoral College was one of many checks and balances, they imagined.

It's worth remembering, by the way, the Constitution didn't mention political parties.

It mentioned journalists, but not political parties.

But

the problem is is I think we've taken democracy for granted a bit, right?

We've taken the discipline of self-government.

Liberty, as the founders used it, is different from freedom.

Freedom can be a state of nature.

Liberty requires a degree of self-discipline.

That requires taking responsibility and thinking generationally.

And we've stopped doing that.

And look, we are in uncharted waters here.

This is going to be a stress test for the American system.

We'll get through it, but it's going to be tough.

And we're going to have to remain vigilant as citizens, as journalists.

There's no substitute for that.

Well, as a journalist, what do you think of...

Steve Bannon?

Steve Bannon is Donald Trump's main advisor.

He was a populist from Beverly Hills, right?

Breitbart.

Is that from Beverly Hills?

Yeah, well, via Goldman Sachs.

And Breitbart.

Right.

He said the media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while.

I want you to quote this.

He said that.

The media here is the opposition party.

They don't understand this country.

Yeah.

As the Delhi Beast dude, you must be a little chilled by that.

I'm outraged by it.

I'm outraged by it.

Look, they're not at war with the media.

They're at war with the truth.

And, you know, the Constitution doesn't mention parties.

It mentions journalists.

It mentions freedom of speech.

And they may have the White House for a while.

But we've got truth and facts on our side and the Constitution.

And I'd remind them,

I'd remind them that a majority of Americans voted for somebody else.

So this misreading of a non-existent mandate, they have an obligation to reach out.

If they don't do that, we're going to have deep trouble.

But ultimately, truth wins that war.

Truth always wins that war eventually.

Now I heard you just say we as if you're a Democrat.

No, I'm an independent.

I know.

I'm an American.

I know you were very always adamant about it.

I'm an independent.

I am.

But he just made you say we.

No, we, no, we.

You did.

I heard it.

You were like, we have the truth.

That's actually the problem.

One of the things demagogues do throughout history, here's the telltale sign, us against them.

They always do us against them.

And this administration keeps doing us against them.

But here's the thing.

The real pushback is to refuse that.

When I said we, I meant journalists.

I meant citizens.

I meant Americans.

Right.

And I'm going to say it again.

The country is in the hands of sane Republicans.

They're the only ones who can save it, especially, by the way, Fox News.

Because the only way information gets in to that part part of the country that are Trump supporters, and we'll be to the end, is through Fox News, because they don't hear anything else.

It is a lot like Scientology.

It really is.

You know, they don't go on the internet.

I saw this in the Leah Remedy thing.

I hope we're trying to get her on the show.

I thought it was great.

She's exposing science.

The reason why Scientologists don't revolt is because they're too afraid to go on the internet and see what bad things are being said.

So most Trump supporters, I saw it today, they believe his inauguration was the biggest crowd ever.

so Rupert Murdoch our life is in your hands

partisan news is a big problem what do you think about the fact that he wants an investigation into voter fraud

not into Russia no but voter fraud which we have proved over and over and over again really doesn't exist in-person voter fraud right yeah I mean I think also you know he he wants to do this whole investigation into voter fraud which doesn't exist but the the thing about voter fraud fraud is voter we should be talking about voter oppression right and so

once the Voting Rights Act was gutted

it cut early registration, it cut same-day registration, it implemented new requirements for IDs.

And so once all of that happens,

it doesn't stop voter fraud, it stops voting.

And so

in Ohio, they purged 2 million people off the list in Ohio.

We got rid of...

2 million?

2 million people.

Got rid of Golden Week, which is a week you can come and register to vote and then vote at the exact same time.

Like the greatest thing ever to happen in democracy was Golden Week.

They got rid of that.

And the most obnoxious thing is in Ohio, you have one voter location for early voting per county.

So Cuyahoga County, Cleveland has one early voting location.

Franklin County and Columbus, one early voting location.

Even in Youngstown, there were long lines, hours and hours, people trying to get in because there was only one place to go vote.

That is a form of voter suppression because people don't have hours to sit there and wait to go vote.

They got a job.

You got a life.

You have the president, Trump, saying he thinks three or five million people voted illegally, okay?

And we just heard three people here say there's no illegal voting or

voting.

Minuscule, in-person voting, actual voting that counts.

Okay.

What we do have, not from crazy people, but from Pew,

the Pew Center on State Government, four years ago, they did a study and said 2.8 million people are registered to vote in more than one state.

Who cares?

But that doesn't matter.

One second.

It doesn't matter.

Voting counts.

One second.

Marjorie,

this is fair.

And 1.8 million people who are dead are registered to vote.

Not voting either.

Well, what we don't,

what Prent said, and what I think you guys missed because you just walked into a big problem.

They said many, you said none.

He said, okay, we'll look into it.

And now you're panicked because you can take state lists of voters and you can take lists of citizens and non-citizens.

Okay.

Cross-reference them.

One second.

And we will find out if it's big or little.

I don't know.

It's not zero.

It's probably not 6 million.

But I'm happy to find out.

And anyone who isn't happy to find out doesn't trust their numbers.

So you keep telling the emperor he has clothes.

I see which side you're on.

No,

you're on the side of.

You're not listening.

I just said.

I'm listening.

Because I don't agree with you doesn't mean I'm not listening.

You see, Steve Bannon said they don't know America.

Yeah.

Okay.

I know as a test of loyalty, you got a problem.

Sean Spicer was embarrassed to have to say, he seemed to be, that the president is a very important person.

I want to read what Sean Spicer said in the press briefing, because I think this is so important about what's going on in this country.

And this is week one.

We've got going to get through four years.

This is their mentality.

When he first, this is the first Saturday, this is right after the inauguration when the press said, no, the crowds weren't that big.

Sean Spicer.

It's not about one tweet or one picture.

It's about a constant theme.

It's about sitting here every time and being told, we don't think he can do it.

He'll never accomplish that.

He can't win that.

It won't be the biggest.

It's not going to be that good.

And that narrative is always negative, and it's very demoralizing.

so look did he really say that

that was word for word

and I just want to say this is this mentality is not going to change Donald Trump is not going to change the only way you can ever get through to this guy is with flattery we are going to have to use some of that and there are some things I do actually like that he's doing so I'm going to introduce a new segment tonight and I hope his team just starts the video now that you show him

called, Let's Encourage the President.

Let's encourage the president

because there's some things I do like, like the F-35.

He says that costs too much money.

The F-35 does cost too much money.

And he spoke truth to power.

Bully for you, Mr.

President.

You did it.

Yeah, wasn't that awesome?

And NATO, you know, he's right.

NATO gets a free ride about they don't pay the other other countries that we pay for all NATO.

You know what?

No one else brought that up.

You know who brought that up?

Donald Trump.

And infrastructure spending.

Absolutely.

Let's rebuild America.

Obama didn't think of that.

You know who it took to think of that?

Donald Trump.

So thank you, Donald Trump.

I think these are terrific things.

Okay, now back to the show.

You're going to get retweeted.

That's exactly what, you know, he needs

mission bias.

No, he saw Michael Moore had a movie that was not positive.

And it took out the

name.

He took out the one little line.

Donald Trump.

He goes, Donald Trump's great.

And then he was being sarcastic the rest of the way.

And he just took out Donald Trump's great.

And the funny thing at the inauguration was the two people that kissed his ass the most, Chris Christie and Rudy Giuliani, are sitting on the dais watching every secretary go by going, that could have been me.

That could have been me.

You know, it's only a matter of time to members of the cabinet are going to start doing what you do.

They're going to try to find a way to get on TV to have their points parroted to get to the president directly.

That's the way into his head.

That's it.

This is, we're through the looking glass.

All right.

Well, let me.

But we just got done saying the two guys who most took this approach didn't make it, which kind of counter to your point, but you did mention several things that he's doing

that you see as correct.

I think.

Could be, yeah.

I particularly like allowing permits to go through.

I mean, we have had eight years where the president fought against pipelines being built rather than getting them built.

That's a very important part of our infrastructure.

There are things I don't like.

But your major issue is these tires.

Oh, so you don't like infrastructure.

Well,

not oil pipelines.

We don't need to dig up more oil.

Oh, we don't need to build a wall.

But build a wall.

And let me get to that because the

counter structure.

Not that we didn't know that this is government by brain fart, or he has a brain fart, and then the courtiers act on it.

But, you know, it's one thing when you run to like be the guy at the end of the bar.

And that's why he won, let's be honest.

Because for years, decades, the real Americans have been saying, if only a guy talked like me, a guy who just sat at the end of the bar and went, you know what, we should build a wall and make Mexico pay for it.

And then a guy came along and actually got elected.

But now we have to do this, but it's not thought through.

So when it comes to reality he says we're gonna build the wall and then how are we gonna pay for it Mexico's gonna pay for it oh we're gonna impose a 20% tax

this was not thought through because who would pay that tax it would be American consumers right American consumers because they would raise prices

yes but also who

He got voted.

He was voted in because he said, I'm going to build a wall, Mexico's going to pay for it.

If he went on the stump and said, I'm going to build a wall and Americans are going to pay for it, he would not have got a lack of

we would if they impose this tax of 20 percent it's it's insane but this is progress if we all understand

tariffs no progress that you understand that tariffs are that taxes are tariffs and tariffs are tariff is a teachable moment it is a teachable moment

tariffs tariffs are not paid by foreigners tariffs American tariffs are paid by Americans.

Foreigners have their own stupid tariffs that they pay.

But we pay American tariffs.

It raises the price of everything that we import.

I mean, it used to be the way we funded the whole country, and

there was a great deal of unhappiness about it.

Yeah, but not only products are going to be more expensive, if we have a trade war with Mexico, it's going to cost 6 million American jobs that are affected by trade with Mexico.

Trump is right when he says wars are expensive and he wants to avoid wars.

He should just add, trade wars are also expensive, and we should avoid them.

Well, you tell him that.

All right.

Thank you, panel.

You are very enlightening.

It's time for new rules, everybody.

All right, New Roll, someone has to tell Trump's press secretary, Sean Spicer, who on Wednesday tweeted this.

True.

And then on Thursday tweeted this.

Oh, my God.

There's got to be a better way to pass secrets to Russia.

It's gibberish.

Nero, the interracial couple that gave birth to twins, one white and one black, must admit they toyed with the idea of naming them Michael and Jackson.

I'm kidding.

Congratulations and good luck not rolling your eyes when your liberal friends pretend they still can't tell them apart.

Nero,

New rule, wait for your wife.

When they say behind every great man is a woman, they don't mean 20 feet behind.

New rule, now that American Airlines has added a new class below economy, basic economy, that doesn't allow carry-ons or choosing your seat or anything, and

they have to add a class below basic economy called fuck you

no food no drinks no entertainment the restroom is a bucket in the corner

and in case of an emergency instead of an oxygen mask a little sign drops down that says fuck you

New Roll, stop saying I have to see La La Land.

I'm skipping a movie, not denying the Holocaust.

If I want to see a musical about an art snob who comes to LA and meets the girl who inspires him to open a nightclub, I'll re-watch Xanadu.

And finally, New Rule, while the sting of defeat is still fresh and the horrors resulting from that defeat pile up, liberals must examine all the reasons why we keep losing elections, starting with Democrats have gone from the party that protects people to the party that protects feelings.

From ask not what your country can do for you to you owe me an apology.

Republicans apologize for nothing.

Democrats for everything.

Can't we find a balance?

You know, in 2016, conservatives won the White House, both houses of Congress, and almost two-thirds of governorships and state legislatures.

Whereas liberals, on the other hand, caught Steve Martin calling Carrie Fisher beautiful in a tweet and made him take it down.

I'm not making that up.

That really happened.

Here's Steve's offensive tweet.

When I was a young man, Carrie Fisher was the most beautiful creature I'd ever seen.

She turned out to be witty and bright as well.

How could you, Steve?

We thought we knew you, but this?

You noted her appearance first, and then that she was witty and bright.

You're a monster.

Liberals do this all the time.

They get offended for people who themselves would not be offended.

You know that whole controversy about the name Washington Redskins?

They did a survey.

Nine out of ten actual Indians don't give a shit.

Why would we?

Their ancestors learned firsthand that New England patriots cheat.

But that doesn't stop celebrities from groveling when they get caught playing dress-up on Halloween.

Here's Hillary Duff last year.

And then of course her tweet, I'm so sorry to people I offended.

It was not properly thought through and I am truly from the bottom of my heart sorry.

Chris Hemsworth was even more beside himself with self-loathing after he attended a Lone Ranger-themed party, dressed as an Indian.

He wrote, I was stupidly unaware of the offense.

I sincerely and unreservedly apologize to all First Nations people for this thoughtless action.

I hope that in highlighting my own ignorance, I can help in some small way.

Oh, for fuck's sake, you're Thor, grow a pear.

You didn't offend Indians any more than you offend gays when you wear a cape and hammer guys.

It was a Lone Ranger-themed party.

You could only be a cowboy, Indian, or a horse.

Just like if you live in Wyoming.

Last year, Justin Timberlake tweeted that an African-American, Jesse Williams, inspired him.

And again, had to apologize for the sin of giving someone a compliment.

I apologize to anyone that felt that was out of turn.

I have nothing but love for all of you and all of us.

Oh, good, good.

Because life knows no sin greater than the one he was accused of doing, which was cultural appropriation.

Cultural appropriation.

That's the idea that white people shouldn't adopt things from other ethnic groups.

How dare you mix and match cultures to produce something new?

Where do you think you are?

Some kind of melting pot?

You know, the majority of Americans are actually with the Democrats on the issues raising minimum wage, sensible gun laws, path to citizenship, abortion rights, pro-environment, you name it.

But we keep losing.

Now, there's a lot of reasons for that.

But the one we can immediately fix is that too often Democrats remind people of a man who has taken his balls out and put them in his wife's purse.

And please, someone tweet me right now and tell me how that was somehow inappropriate so I can tell you to go fuck yourself.

At the Golden Globes this month, Michael Keaton mixed up the titles of two movies that had a black cast, Hidden Figures and Fences, and said, Hidden fences

because he's a Klansman.

Cue the outrage, cue the retraction.

I screwed up.

It makes me feel so badly that people feel badly.

If someone feels badly, that's all that matters.

No.

That's not all that matters.

In fact, things like this don't matter at all.

What matters is that while you self-involved fools were policing the language at the Kids' Choice Awards, a madman talked his way into the White House.

What matters is that while liberals were in a contest to see who could be the first to call out fat shaming, The Tea Party has been busy taking over school boards.

Stop protecting your virgin ears and start noticing you're getting fucked in the ass.

Okay.

That's our show.

I'll be at the Smart Financial Center in Sugarland, Texas, March 4th at Tucson Music Hall and Tucson, March 5th, at the Sanger in New Orleans, March 18th.

I want to thank my guests, Congressman Tim Ryan, Eva Longoria, Glover Norquist, John Avalon, and Richard Haas.

Join us now for overtime on YouTube.

And thank you.

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.