Episode #411 (Originally aired 1/20/17)

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

Thank you very much, Lady Cloud.

Welcome home.

Thank you.

Okay,

thank you very much.

Oh, it's so good to be back.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, folks.

I know.

I appreciate that.

Thank you.

I know.

I know.

I know.

So much.

So much happening on this same day.

No, I heard you.

Trust me, I know.

Thank you.

I have to tell you guys.

All day long, everybody's been saying to me, oh, poor Bill, you got Trump for your birthday.

What is every kid one for his birthday?

A clown.

No, come on, we got to get used to it.

It happened.

It really happened.

We Americans have a new leader,

Vladimir Putin.

But also,

this guy Trump took some sort of oath today.

And also, let's not forget this.

We have a new set.

Beautiful.

They did a beautiful job.

Such a beautiful job.

No, did you notice things look different?

That's because I'm coming to you now from an undisclosed location.

In fact, I'm not even Bill Maher.

I'm the new Pope.

Now, the Trump supporters are saying this election is a reckoning.

And I, yeah.

As in, I reckon we're all fucked.

But you know what?

We did it.

This thing happened.

They have to own it.

Now, let's get on with it.

This transition went on too long.

It was like waiting for your dog to take a shit in the rain.

This sword of Damocles hanging over my head.

Let's have this happen and see what happens.

Did you see it all today?

You didn't watch?

No.

Many watched on TV.

I was streaming in my pants.

Oh, you can tell we're living in a completely new era.

It was when he took the oath of office, Donald Trump, Chief Justice, what's his name?

Roberts Roberts.

Roberts, yeah, thank you very much.

I knew it was.

It's all fading from from me quickly, but

he said, raise your right pussy grabber.

Which I, I mean,

right there.

And

Trump, did you know this is true?

Trump used two Bibles in case the first one burst into flames.

But, you know, then it was then it was time to make the big inaugural speech.

And, you know, all the pundits were, before he was going on, were saying, oh, it's going to be classy and uplifting and unifying.

At what point are people going to realize that there is no normal president inside the Trump fat suit?

That's it.

That's who it is.

First of all, the speech was 16 minutes long.

I know that sounds short, but that's over 100 tweets.

And it wasn't

classy or unifying.

It was joyless and ugly and divisive.

And the theme,

if I could find a theme, was, once you go black, you can go back, mic drop.

And by the way,

for all you racists out there,

have you saw that shot of the new president standing with the outgoing president and their families?

The one with kids by three different women was the white one.

But then it was on to the inaugural balls, and oh, what entertainment.

They had Lee Greenwood, Kobe Teeth.

Did I mention Lee Greenwood?

It was like Night of 100 Stars if 99 said no.

And

the closest thing they had to a rock band was Three Doors Down, and they were joined on stage by Dr.

Ben Carson, who sings under the name Two Eyes Closed.

And

oh no, and

they also had the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, you know, for diversity.

And 16-year-old Jackie Ivanko, she finished second in the voting for America's Got Talent.

Or as Trump says, she won America's Got Talent.

Well, yeah.

Yeah.

Let's not forget, amid all this hoopla, that this is happening in the shadow of continuing investigations from five intelligence agencies in the United States as to whether the Russians were blackmailing or still are blackmailing President Donald Trump.

Now,

yes, as to the most scurrilous of those allegations, I just want to say right now about our new president, I do not believe that Trump paid Russian prostitutes to pee on each other.

I believe they did it.

I just don't believe he paid them.

All right, we got a great show.

John Meacham, Heather McGee, and former Labor Secretary Tom Perez are here.

And a little later on, we'll be speaking with our friend Keith Oberman.

But first up,

you know, my producers came to me last week and they said, you know, you're getting Trump for your birthday.

What can we do to make up for that?

I said, could you get Jane Fonda on the show?

She is the two-time Oscar winning screen icon who stars on TV's Grace and Frankie.

She also co-founded the Women's Media Center and will keynote tomorrow's Los Angeles Women's March.

Jane Fonda.

Hey.

Oh.

Oh, it's good to see you.

You too.

Thank you.

You're my birthday present.

You really are.

Jane Fonder.

Wow.

I got to tell you.

Thank you very much.

You are.

I needed that today.

Happy birthday.

You are the most gorgeous old lady in the world.

Well, thank you very much.

Yes, no, that's not bad yourself.

I know.

We have new furniture.

You look like you're sliding, right?

We all want to do that today, right?

We just want to fucking forget it.

No, but I'll tell you something.

I have never seen so many people mobilizing.

Right.

Everybody, people who've never...

Who've never been active in their lives are starting to organize and come together.

I mean, it's like we've hit bottom, and now we're going to come up.

Well,

it's only day one of the bottom.

You know about hitting bottom.

Yeah, no.

No, movies are always better when there's a credible villain.

Who would know that better than you?

You've done many movies.

Yeah, it's not.

It's true.

It's true.

I won't call him by his name.

I call him the Predator in Sheath.

It is true.

Somehow we elected president the worst person in America.

And it is going to be a category five shitstorm,

But let me just separate the politics for a minute because of what you just said.

Because, you know, Michelle Obama made that speech about a month before the

election, yeah, where right after the pussy grabber tape came out.

Isn't that amazing?

You say pussy grabber and it's like, yes, that's accepted.

I know exactly what you mean.

Yeah, because he said it.

Yeah.

He said it.

And it always obsessed me that this wasn't a big enough, it obviously wasn't even a a deal-breaker.

I mean, for someone who has been in the forefront of the women's movement for a long time, this must be something you'll never get over.

Well,

it was a shock.

I must say I felt for a couple of weeks like I'd been hit by a truck.

But then I went to standing rock, and I tell you what, the best.

The best antidote for

depressive.

you're involved in...

We can't stand down.

We have to rise up.

And you're always on the forefront of it.

But I mean, as far as,

I mean, I would have thought that we would have elected a woman president before a black president.

If you ask me, in the 80s or something,

it's like we haven't really moved very far.

Oh, we have.

Listen, more people voted for her, right?

By

3 million votes.

She got more than him.

Yeah,

but he won white women.

That's complicated, and I don't think we figured it all out yet.

Who knows?

I don't quite understand it.

Part of it, it depends.

Some of the wealthy ones, it had to do with money.

But you have to understand it.

If you don't understand it, what hope is there for us?

No, I can't.

But you know white women.

You talk to them.

They're your people.

How could they get over that?

Because, I mean, let's not forget, when he said that thing on the bus to Billy Bush, and by the way, Billy Bush has disappeared.

He just heard it.

He was just.

Okay, but the other guy gets to be president.

All right.

So,

but this was not a hypothetical.

Donald Trump wasn't saying, oh, would that it were that I could grab pussies.

He's...

He said, this is what I do.

And if you recall, the debate was two days later, and Anderson Cooper asked the right question.

And he had to ask it three times.

Do you do this?

Poor Anderson Cooper has never been made to think about pussy this much his whole life.

I'll tell you one thing, though.

Trump should have more respect for pussies because

if penises could do what pussies could do they'd be on postage stamps

but you see a lot of people

a lot of people a lot of people are scared of pussy power yeah because when women unite I'm telling you we are a force to be reckoned with and we will unite

it goes back to Liz Estrada right you know that's

yes right look at that she has a pussy hat on her head right above the house.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

So, well, and

I only recently learned about this.

What is this pussy hat?

And

tell us about your pussy hat, people.

I don't know, but I've heard that people, men and women, all of that.

And celebrities.

I've seen like pictures of celebrities.

Right.

And if celebrities are doing something, it must be real.

Well, he's, you know.

Yeah, look.

They can't bad-mouth celebrities speaking out now because he's

a reality TV star.

At best.

So, yeah.

Yeah.

At best.

Yes.

Anyway.

So do you think celebrities help?

I mean, at these marches, you know, you will see.

Of course.

Well, wait a second, because there's a whole school of thought that says the Trump people are saying, you know what, celebrities, go ahead.

You'll get him re-elected.

Enjoy your speaking out because that makes the regular American out there go, why are these people who don't know anything about my life or anything anything like that?

Him and his fake news, the Predator-in-Chief and his fake news,

you know,

their tactic is to divide and conquer.

And so, you know, they don't want,

whenever a celebrity speaks out like Merrill did at the Golden Globes and gets, and gets, yes,

and gets the reaction from our president-elect, I mean, you know, it's ridiculous.

But you know that she hit a spot.

She's pushing his button.

Well, Well, it's not hard to hit a spot.

But yeah, that's true.

But look,

I have been a celebrity for a long time.

It's 50 years.

And

I have been told that I should shut up because I was a celebrity.

But what celebrities can do is that they can bring attention to things that wouldn't normally get attention, you know.

What do you say?

to the right-wingers who call us sore losers?

Because that's the other thing that sticks in my craw.

We are not sore losers.

It just so happens that we understand

that

because of climate change we don't have time to make mistakes.

Right.

We are facing an existential crisis.

This is never, it's never, you know, after he was elected and people said to me, well, you know, we'll have to put up for this for four years.

We don't have four years to lose.

Right.

We have to fight so that they stop extracting oil and gas from the ground.

That's what the 99% of the climate scientists say.

And that's why we're speaking out.

It has nothing to do, and because our rights are going to be

attacked and freedoms.

We're not sore.

He's a sore winner.

Right.

So the march is tomorrow?

Yeah, there's a march in Washington and here in L.A.

and all over.

Right.

And you will be leading it, as you always are.

I'm leading it.

I'm just participating in it.

Well, no.

Okay.

But you'll be there.

I'll be there.

And, you know, and another thing that we have to do, we have to organize in the grassroots, we have to get people elected.

Yes.

Let's hope at this march there's a voting booth every five feet

because otherwise it's just hot air.

And we have to include race and class in everything we do.

We're doing that in the Democratic side, but we got to vote.

We can't just talk.

Jane, I love you for coming on and doing this for me and everything you're doing for America.

Boom, boom, everybody.

All right.

Can you email you.

I haven't seen you in a long time.

All right.

Let's meet our panel.

Happy birthday.

Thank you.

Wow.

Look at this.

All right.

Very exciting.

Yeah.

Look at the way we are swimming.

They're moving everything closer.

Is there a water slide?

Yeah.

I said I wanted to be closer.

We're closer.

All right, let's meet our panel.

He's a presidential historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of American Lion, Andrew Jackson in the White House.

He's on our show.

John Meekum is over here.

She is the president of the public policy organization called Deimos.

Heather McGee, one of our favorites.

And this guy lost his job at noon today.

He's now running for the chair of the Democratic National Committee.

He was the 26th U.S.

Labor Secretary, Tom Perez.

Good evening.

All right, don't forget to set us your questions for tonight's overtime.

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

Okay, Jane mentioned global warming, and I wanted to start with that because, you know, this is our 14th year somehow.

And we don't take you for granted, by the way.

We do not get complacent here.

We're happy to be here, and we're happy with our new set.

Thank you.

You've been on as long as FDR was president.

Right.

That doesn't mean I'm going to die at Warm Springs tomorrow.

That was.

But one thing I've always tried to do is not bury the lead.

Now, I know today we inaugurated America's last president.

And

that's a very big story.

But the lead this week is 2016 hottest year ever.

beating out the last winner, 2015, which beat out 2014.

You see a trend?

And here's the most alarming thing I've ever read, and I've read a lot about this subject.

Heat extremes were especially pervasive in the Arctic, with temperatures in the fall running 20 to 30 degrees above normal.

You know, two is a lot.

So I would say this, and of course the first thing Trump did was take down the climate change website at, you know,

government.whatever it is.

But, you know, in some ways he's a different kind of guy and he doesn't agree with Republicans.

But when it comes to basic Republican ideology about turning Mother Earth into a toxic, unlivable shithole in the name of improving quarterly profits, he's right on the page.

And she's right.

That's the most important thing we have to keep in mind, yes?

Absolutely.

And that's what happens when he tries to install, and we'll see if he gets confirmed, but the CEO of Exxon, as the Secretary of State,

a guy who's made it his job to try to sue the EPA as many times as humanly possible to head the EPA and it's just this sort of sell-off of American assets and

our children are watching and the world is watching and it is honestly the scariest thing that's going on right now.

Well there's a pitch

Bill, there's going to be a lot of hot air coming out of the White House, so you may see global warming increasing in our nation's capital.

You know, there's a pitched battle

among our former countries.

Now that you're out of bonus, you're back.

I can say whatever the hell I want, right?

Yeah.

You're warming up those speaking fee lines, aren't you?

No, but I mean, you look at all the cabinet appointments and you look at what happened day one.

You mentioned global warming and taking climate change off of the White House website.

They immediately went into court.

in Texas in a voter ID case that I filed when we were in the Civil Rights Division because Texas's voter ID laws were all about one and one and only one thing, making it harder for African Americans and Latinos to vote.

And we won that case.

And now they've walked into court today and asked for a delay.

And the reason they want a delay is they want to change their position.

Also, the theme of his speech today was, you, the little guy.

That's who, this is, he, I shit on all the presidents standing beyond him.

These assholes, they didn't do it right.

They're inside Washington.

I'm here for you.

And then I read, can this possibly be right, that his cabinet is worth the same as the bottom-third combined of all Americans?

These are the people who are going to stand up for the little guy.

It is a Koch brothers cabinet.

Is it not?

I mean, that's what I mean by...

And by taking...

You know, by taking down the website and by questioning the science, as he's done, you know, he's basically we inaugurated Baghdad Bob today.

You know, missiles, what missiles?

You know.

Yeah, I remember that.

You know, and it's just,

it's the triumph of opinion over fact.

Right.

And not particularly informed opinion.

Well,

some of the people, you know, when you look at the list, you started to talk about this, they're there just when you see it, just to undo the department they now head.

I mean, Rick Perry could not even mention,

remember, remember the OOPS guy?

Remember the energy department, and his reward for that is he gets to head it.

And the labor guy hates labor, and the education lady hates public education, and the health guy hates health.

And after railing against

Goldman Sachs for the entirety of the campaign,

he installs Steve Mnuchin, right, this Wall Street CEO who foreclosed on a 90-year-old woman who got her paperwork mixed up and was 27 cents short on an insurance payment.

I mean, it's unbelievable.

And he still gets to go out there and market himself as a populist.

One of the problems, though, is it's not unbelievable because there was no difference between the June 2015 performance and today's performance.

The one press conference he had in the transition, which was his second infomercial,

where he was selling the vodka again.

You know, it's just not, character is destiny.

Character wills out.

There is no, if anyone says pivot or double down again, they should be taken out and executed.

Can I ask you a

time to stop fretting and start fighting?

And that's what James said, and

that's what today is about.

But this character destiny, you're a historian.

I'm very interested in this because we know what his character is.

Is there any way character is ever not destiny?

Because when I think of Donald Trump, if you asked me to say one word to describe Donald Donald Trump, that word would be id.

Yeah.

I've known people in my life like this, very few, but they're all id.

There's just no mechanism to not be juvenile and react immediately based on just id.

And it's the exception, not the, the rule is your character when you come in is going to be magnified, not transformed.

A couple of examples, there's one or two examples.

John Kennedy learned on the job from the Bay of Pigs to the Cuba Missile Crisis.

But by and large, who you are today is who you're, if you're sworn in, is who you're going to be all the way through.

And at a certain point, you have to take them at their word.

And their actions speak louder than their words in many cases.

And with Trump, I mean the idea that character is destiny, we didn't just make that up.

The Greeks did.

And they've been thinking about it.

And so it's been a reality throughout civilization.

What is going to happen with someone who is consumed by Vendettes?

Because whatever they've thrown at him so far.

You can answer this better than anybody.

You were in government.

It's going to get much worse.

Once you are the president, it comes at you every day.

It's the criticism.

For someone who cannot take criticism, and it's going to be all criticism from all sides.

What is going to happen?

Well, that's why we have to stop fretting and start fighting.

That's why the Affordable Care has all the power.

Well,

I don't agree with that, Bill.

Okay, but they have Congress.

Nukes.

Nukes.

Well, did I read that right, that Rick Perry just learned that the Energy Department controls the nukes?

He thought he was going to go lobby for the Texas oil business and just found out that he's actually in control of the most deadly arsenal in the history of mankind.

I wanted to go to the meeting where Ernie Moniz explained to him what a centrifuge was.

I thought that would have been very interesting.

Reagan used to say that the scariest words in the English language were, I'm from the government and I'm here to help.

How about I'm Rick Perry and I'm in charge of the meeting.

But Bill,

you know.

I come out of the civil rights movement, the labor rights movement, and I think we underestimate the collective power of we that we have.

Because I had the privilege of going with the president down to Selma a couple years ago to mark the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday.

And Bloody Sunday and the Voting Rights Act that followed was all about ordinary people who did extraordinary things.

And everywhere I go across this country, I see people who have, you know, they were in a crouch after the election, but they have gotten up and they said, I'm fighting mad and I'm not giving up.

And that's why you see rallies on the Affordable Care Act.

But one.

One historic.

I hate to be the historical guy here, but that is, it is absolutely true that the sacrifice of countless people whose names we don't know, people like John Lewis, Hosea Williams, the martyrdom of Dr.

King, they put it, they made it possible.

But it did take a president to push that legislation through.

Well, it also has a lot of people.

And I think it's important for us to knock that Congress off the hook right now.

No, but that president pushed that Congress.

Without Lyndon Johnson, that doesn't matter.

Yes, I'm not actually arguing about the past, but right now we've got a Congress, many of whom, you have to remember that the Republicans were leaving the Trump campaign like rats from a sinking ship a month before the election.

There were never Trumpers in the Senate, in the House.

And where are they now?

They have put love of power ahead of love of country.

They have.

Time and time.

And again, I mean, you guys are all talking about policy and government.

I'm just talking about there's a crazy person

who,

I mean,

if I could

send him

one thing, it wouldn't be anything to read because he doesn't read.

It would be that song, Shake It Off.

Because he just never knows how to just shake anything off.

And I'm just saying, everything is going to get derailed by that.

But I must interrupt because I did want to point out, here in our 14th year, 14 years, gosh.

Bernie's a kid.

We always try to listen to the audience as to what they like that we do.

And we started something many years ago called America's Stupidest State.

And

we had brackets.

People love the brackets.

They do.

The five finalists, Alabama, Utah, Kansas, Texas, and of course, Florida.

Sorry, Tennessee.

You made it off.

And then we did America's Craziest Congressman.

And we had people like Louis Gomert and Steve King and Michelle Bachman.

And we had a lot of fun.

And so we thought, because we're getting used to a new cabinet, we would try now Trump's craziest cabinet pick and see if we could.

There are 16 of them, just like in basketball.

Our first matchup comes from the Wack Job Conference,

a clash between two uniquely unqualified candidates, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, and Labor Secretary nominee Andy Puzder.

Puzder sounds like a nickname for penis, and

sure enough, he's a real prick.

He's the CEO of Hardy's and Carl's Jr.

or as your bowels know him, the cleaner.

Puzzer is best known for crass TV ads featuring near-naked models eating burgers and says they're a reflection of his personality.

Andy says, why have Chick-fil-A when you can have Chick-fil-A?

Don't start.

And Andy Buzner isn't going to be one of those namby, bamby labor secretaries who spends his time worrying about laborers.

He's against raising the minimum wage, against paying overtime, even against giving fast food workers breaks.

He's afraid if he lets them use the bathroom, one of them might try to clean it.

All right, next, let's reach into the bottom of the barrel and scrape up Tom Price, a man who thinks abortion is murder, that gays shouldn't get married, and that this mustache was a good idea.

Tom is a congressman and Trump's pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.

He caught Trump's eye with his lifelong dedication to denying people health and human services.

He's a member of a crackpot doctors group who hate all forms of public health care, claim abortion causes breast cancer and HIV doesn't cause AIDS, which could be proven or not by a little experiment I call then you fuck Charlie Sheen.

As for the promise of draining the swamp, Tom, name your price, once bought stock in a company that makes hip implants and a week later introduced a law to benefit companies that make hip implants, which used to get you nominated for prison.

But this year, everything is different because if the crazy doesn't get all over the place, it don't belong in your face.

All right, he's a GQ professional

and host of GQ's the Resistance, and he's our friend Keith Oberman is here.

There's a step there now.

Thank you very much.

That's right.

All right.

So, Keith, you're right there.

I know what you've said, but you're remembering the old set.

Well, next week you're going to have another new set now, apparently.

Sorry about that.

So, what do you think about how the liberals are doing?

You're someone liberals look to.

How do you think they've reacted so far?

Actually, I am twice as encouraged now as I was this morning.

And I'm encouraged because we have managed to do something that Americans can uniquely do politically to great success today.

There was a protest during this

inauguration or coup d'état, whichever you prefer.

Yeah.

But the protest was ideally suited for 21st century America.

The motorcade coming back from the installation of the Russian puppet involved

a car going down streets and there was nobody lining the motorcade.

It was sitting room only.

And there's a shot of him at the White House, in the car, outside the White House, and a barricade with fewer people behind it than greeted me on the way in from the car.

So consider what this, but consider what this means.

This means that in 21st century America, we can protest Donald Trump by not doing anything.

This is a 21st century American political system.

Don't tell them that, or that's what they'll do.

But in some cases, it's more eloquent than, I mean, which was smarter, doing it that way or breaking windows at Starbucks for no reason.

Now, I'll give you

punching the Nazi in the face today.

I'm not a fan of gratuitous violence, but that wasn't gratuitous.

So I think it has a place.

But breaking windows at Starbucks is meaningful.

But I think what we should do is start doing what the Tea Party did in 2010.

I mean,

fight.

Fight at all times, interrupt everything.

Every day you scream Russia.

Every day you scream corruption.

Every day you...

And you remind every day who won the electoral vote again who did not get a mandate.

Right.

And when John Lewis said he was not a legitimate president, I assume you're on that page.

I am on that page because he's not a legitimate president.

I would agree with that, but.

But he is the president.

I mean, it's one of those, you have to keep two thoughts in your head at the same time.

We do have a president.

We are still Americans.

He is the American president.

I agree.

He didn't get there quite legitimately.

But here's the thing.

I think we're underselling how the non-legitimately part of this works.

Oh, not me.

Well, I agree.

But I spoke to a group of Democrats and liberals last night in Florida, and half of them were like this crowd, fired up and understanding, we were invaded.

is what it boils down to, just because there was not blood on the streets.

If the Russians had come in with Cossacks and put him in, I think we would have had a different kind of reaction to it.

That's the reaction we need now.

What I saw last night was a lot of people hooting and hollering correctly and getting fired up and going, we're going to resist this in every way possible.

And other people going, you really think it's that serious?

Yes, I do think it's that serious.

It's the same thing.

It's the point.

Well, but it's the point of a

The point of a war other than to gain territory is to put the guy you want in charge of somebody else's country.

And we're now only debating at this point after the story in the New York Times yesterday how much the the Russians decided our election.

And we came up with a timeline we want to show you here to maybe illustrate the point about Russia and the connection with Donald Trump.

Here's 1946 to 2015.

Trump knows nothing about and gives no shits about Russia.

That's 46 to 2015.

And then we move to February, okay, 2016.

Trump begins policy of consistently fallating Putin publicly wherever he can.

Keep on, move on.

Trump hires Paul Manafort, who we know had amazing connections with Russia.

Trump staffers soften language in the platform about defending Ukraine.

Moving on to WikiLeaks releases DNC emails.

Trump encourages more Hillary hacking.

And of course, Trump says maybe the U.S.

should lift sanctions against Russia.

So it does look like

I'm not saying he's a Russian puppet, like you say, but he's acting just like one.

He's acting exactly like a man who they do have a P-tape of.

It's an academic question.

I mean

for historians, for historians, it's important whether or not there is a P-tape.

But because he's behaving as if there's a P-tape, they're marked.

It doesn't make a difference.

Somebody will get a Ph.D.

for comedian.

That's the sad part.

There are businesses that will really benefit from Donald Trump's election, and we happen to both be in separate branches of the same one.

That's true.

And I'll give all of my money away for it not to be the case.

Let me tell you, that million dollars that I gave to Obama to prevent Mitt Romney from being president, I would give to Mitt Romney tomorrow if he could be president.

I'll match it.

And

if I know Mitt Romney, he would take it.

Calling you right now.

Right.

So, okay, so he's not a legitimate president, but if we keep saying that, does it do any good?

Yes, because it crowds, it begins to,

this has to be approached psychologically in terms of what's in the public discourse on both sides of the, oh, no, you're fake news and we're real news.

No, no, we're fake news and you're real news.

To dominate this, one of the ways to do it is to, as you were talking about before, the buttons present themselves.

They're almost self-pushing buttons.

So we have to push the buttons on him personally, make this as unpleasant personally for him, since that is what decides everything he does.

So every time you see a tweet, sub-tweet him, swear words, send it right back at him, and if he doesn't see it, somebody who supports him will.

Ruin their day.

It's a psychological war and the other part of it is to keep saying

what we know is true, which is we don't know if it was

treason or espionage or violation of some of the Logan Act language.

We don't know which it was.

If the best case scenario is they violated the Logan Act and were

rewriting foreign policy long before this man was in office, that's the best case scenario.

Just keep mentioning it every day.

That's stealing from the Tea Party.

That's using their weapons, taking their hammers out of the conservatives, the Republicans, and the Trumpians, and hitting them over the head and chasing them to hell with it.

We don't seem to have a Trump defender here today.

Can I say we, yes.

To go to Keith's point about the legitimacy argument, today a man was inaugurated who came to national prominence

questioning the legitimacy of the man he was man-hugging

all the way down to the helicopter.

My own view when I saw that the Trumps brought the Obama's Etiphani box, which looked like a silver frame, was that I hope they put the birth certificate in the frame and put it in the library.

Somebody said that was they're giving uh they were giving the former first lady her speech back.

That was

So

I will not sit here and have our president maligned like this.

Oh, yes, I sure will.

So I want to ask about the Supreme Court.

Now I'm on record for the government functioning.

It's good for property values.

But when Justice Scalia died, Mitch McConnell reached into his ass and pulled out

a piece of paper that said, you know, apparently the presidents are supposed to get to pick the nominees if someone dies while they're in office, but that's just the Constitution talking.

So, I mean, if there's any way the Democrats can block it, Ted Cruz said there is certainly a long historical precedent for a Supreme Court with fewer justices, to which I say, great, I'll race you to one.

Well,

we should not, there can't be two rules.

There can't be this thing where the presidents pick and we each get a turn, that's out the window.

This is where the Democrats have to I think

start doing what they did even if

three I mean three quick points on that bill.

Number one if the choice of cabinet picks is a bellwether of what they're gonna do on the Supreme Court Katie barred the door which is why number two Democrats have to be strong.

They still have the filibuster on Supreme Court nominees and you shouldn't hesitate to use it.

And number three, you got to look back to Robert Bork.

That's why we've got to tell the story.

A woman's right to choose is at stake.

Dark money, the continuance is at stake.

And when Robert Bork was nominated, six Republicans ultimately voted against him.

And so that's why we've got to,

they're going to nominate someone who's way off to the right.

We've already seen it.

Let's not fool ourselves.

But even if they don't, Obama didn't.

Obama nominated Merrick Garland.

He was a centrist candidate who many of them were for

before Obama nominated him.

And they just kept up with their idea from day one, we're going to obstruct everything.

And until we get back to a place where both parties are playing by the same rules, I'm sorry, but the Democrats, I think, have to do that.

They have to be at the side of the state.

At the risk of total, total self-parody.

We need to go back to the Federal Judiciary Act of 1789.

You don't have to tell us about that.

John.

Republicans love original intent, right?

The first Judiciary Act gave us six justices.

Thomas Jefferson raised it to seven in 1807.

We've only had nine since U.S.

Grant.

So if you really like the way it was way back then, let's go to seven and see what happens.

And we'll vote them off the island to take the theme from the president

and make it into a show.

Okay, but on that score.

Justice Apprentice.

That's correct.

But on that score of

Arnold Schwarzenegger can be in that too.

Right.

No, no, John's got the John just did the beautiful voice.

You're not nominated.

That's not bad.

It is.

As a reminder, Donald Trump is still an executive producer on that show.

Yes, absolutely.

Well, don't bring up the worst.

Don't bring up the worst thing about him than that show.

Don't embarrass the man like that show does.

But that's an interesting thing, because I didn't realize that it wasn't always nine justices.

But there are some things that haven't been around that long, and we treat them like they are.

One of them is the Department of Education.

It's only been around since 1980.

So I'm not 100% sure we need a Department of Education.

I know we need good education, but how did we get along with it all the way up till 1980 and it seems like education has only gotten worse since.

I'm just saying I would have more respect, I'd have more respect for Betsy Devos, who obviously is just a billionaire nincum poop, who had a month, she obviously didn't know anything about the Department of Education.

She had a month to bone up on it before the hearings.

Couldn't even do that.

Okay, I would have more respect if she just had got up there and said, I don't think this department should exist.

Well, that was what Ronald Reagan wanted to do.

So their hero wanted to get rid of it.

It started under Carter.

He wanted to get rid of it.

And by that time, as happens in Washington, you know, as President Reagan also said, the closest thing to life on earth is a federal program.

But I'm just saying, looking on the bright side, there is something to fresh eyes, even if they're sometimes ignorant, looking at shit.

Not everything has to be there just because it always was there.

Fine, and I have a fresh idea for education.

How about debt-free public college for all?

Like, that's the direction you need to be going in.

And you've got someone who's sitting up there, has never had any interaction with public schools whatsoever.

You've got Wall Street folks walking into pretty much every level of government who want to continue the same system of student loans for everyone.

Well, can I ask one question about, I understand each of these candidates is horrific and has been designed like anti-matter.

You're in charge of the Department of Education, make it disappear.

But let me look at it in that big sense.

Quote John Cleese, the great John Clees, who said as he was filling out this that this looks like his cabinet and his departmental heads, it looks like he's outfitting a pirate ship.

And

you don't need more detail than that.

They are all there to take as much money out.

They'll catch Trump in something that the Republicans have to bail out on him.

They will have to impeach him.

And we'll get a bad amoral president Pence for a while and then vote him out in 2020.

Yeah, I mean, the plan.

The other nautical metaphor, I spent an hour with Trump in May talking about books he had read.

It didn't take an hour.

You just talked for 59 minutes.

It was very brief, yeah.

But it was like interviewing, it was up in Trump Tower, and it was like interviewing the Admiral and Mary Poppins.

You know, he was shooting off cannons, he was wearing hats, you know,

and he was totally in his own universe.

And that's where, you know, it's going to continue to be that way.

He has this bubble, and it's going to be very hard to penetrate because of Bannon, because of Flynn.

He said he wants missile parades.

Oh, God.

Missile parades.

I mean, he's done so many third-world things, putting his kids in charge, not separating from the businesses, you know, jailing opponents.

But missile parades, this is one step from him wearing the uniform.

Yeah.

Yeah.

With the fruit salad.

And really, this is speeches on the balcony.

He's going to back down.

He's going to pivot from that.

He's going to pivot from that so that the missile parades will only be when Putin is here.

So

I just feel like we are, it's true, spending a lot of time talking about Trump and his character, but right now is actually a test of character for the American people.

It really is.

And

I am actually encouraged by it.

I think we need to all remember that 27%

of the voting eligible public voted for this man.

That is it.

The rest of us are organizing the march tomorrow, the women's march.

They're going to have 50 in other countries, one in every single city.

The one in Washington is going to be the biggest march that's ever been there.

What did you think about Hillary

showing up?

Because, I mean, look, I would like to say to Hillary and Billary, thank you for 30 years of service.

And now I never want to see either one of you ever again.

Listen, I think

I'm glad they showed up.

I mean,

that took grace to show up.

But I think what it really takes for the American people right now.

I'm going to put you in jail and then you show up?

Well, but it's a statement to the world that, you know what?

We're going to show up here.

And I respect that.

But what I respect even more is what I'm seeing across this country, Bill.

I mean, we're going to have more people in Washington tomorrow than we're there today.

I have no doubt about that.

There's no doubt about that.

By a lot.

And by a lot.

We can have this conversation.

And I agree with everything we've said.

But

Donald Trump,

we continue to underestimate him.

You know, I hear people say he's going to be impeached in 18 months.

I actually don't believe that.

And that's why they're going to overreach immediately.

And that's why we need to organize.

The way he set up America in the speech today as this horrible wasteland,

and people believe that.

Well, it's not true.

Then, whatever he does, looks, look, I fixed it.

You know, and he could just do what he did with buildings.

Pledge his name on it and take credit.

Look, ISIS is wiped out.

Well, it's mostly wiped out, but he'll stand in front of it and take credit.

I was connected.

Infrastructure.

Look, I finally got infrastructure done.

If only the black guy had thought of that.

Well, he did, but they wouldn't pass it when I was in the city.

When he talked about about carnage today, I found myself confused because Barack Obama inherited carnage unlike anything we've seen in our life.

And the unemployment rate was heading to 10%.

It's now down to 4.7%.

We have 20 million more people insured today.

That carnage he inherited, he fixed.

We have more work to do.

Thank you.

Next week, it's going to be all Trump supporters on the panel.

But for now, thank you, everybody.

But it's time for new rules, everybody.

New rules.

All right, new rules.

Stop saying Toby Keith at the inauguration meant Trump is in touch with real Americans.

It means he's in touch with drunk Americans.

Toby Keith has a song literally entitled Drunk Americans,

which sure is my plan for the next four years.

He also has recorded Get My Drink On, Get Drunk and Be Somebody, Loaded, Chug-A-Lug, Beer for My Horses, Beer's a Go, Cold Beer Country,

Grum is the reason, whiskey girl, I like girls that drink beer.

I love this bar.

Every time I drink, I fall in love, drinks after work, red solo cup, walking off, Clancy's Tavern.

And nights I can't remember, friends I'll never forget.

I guess what I'm saying is: say hello to the new director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Fire.

New World The Polsters have found that nine in ten Native Americans are not offended by the Redskins name, must next poll gay men to see if they're offended by the Packers.

New Roll, you can wear your faith on your sleeve all you like, but you're not a true Christian until you've bought the Jesus Christ cheese grater.

That's right, it's real, because as I've always said, what better way to express your reverence for the Lord than by forcing mozzarella through his face?

New rule artist Alexandra Rubenstein

does not have to explain her new painting entitled, Thank You, Obama.

We get it.

When it came to women, the man put in a lot of hard work.

But it took me eight years to get him on the show.

How'd you get him to pose for this?

New Roll, stop trying to make me feel sad that Wringling Brothers is shutting down.

Good.

Don't let the door rip you on the way out.

Now let's build a wall with Quebec to keep out Cirque de Soleil.

Circuses should have died years ago.

If I want to sit in a tent and be bored, I'd go camping.

And

if I need to see a clown torment a dumb animal, I'll re-watch old clips of this.

And

finally, new rule, here on Inauguration Day, in the interest of new beginnings, liberals have to stop calling Trump voters rubes and simpletons and instead reach out and feel their pain.

The pain they insist we didn't see.

And there is ample evidence for that pain.

Did you know that of the 14 states with the highest number of painkiller prescriptions per person, they all went for Trump?

Trump won 80% of the states that have the biggest heroin problem.

And the counties that he won in Ohio and Pennsylvania that went for Obama last time are the ones that are racked by opiate abuse.

So let's stop calling Trump voters idiots and fools and call them what they are.

Fucking drug addicts.

Now, if that sounds like I'm actually not reaching out, I promise I will.

But first, I have to get something off my chest about this phenomenon of white conservatives on drugs.

And the numbers are phenomenal.

West Virginia was Trump's best state.

And in the past six years, folks there have downed 780 million hydro- and oxycodone pills.

That's 433 pain pills for every person in the state.

West Virginia's mascot is a dilated pupil.

In Wisconsin, another key Trump state, between 08 and 2014, heroin deaths nearly quadrupled.

I never thought I'd hear myself say this, but kids don't do heroin.

It's a gateway to being a Republican.

And the thing that sticks in my craw about this is that for decades it was us liberals who were accused of destroying the fabric of society with our drug use.

Remember the country anthem from from the hippie era that put the counterculture in its place?

Merle Haggard, Okie from Muskokie.

We don't smoke marijuana in Muskokie.

We don't take our trips on LSD.

Yeah, today Muskokie, population 38,000, has nine drug treatment centers.

They should change the lyrics to we don't share our needles in Muskokie.

We don't mix our smack with PCP.

Somewhere along the line, things changed for the real Americans in the heartland who were always chastising us for undermining patriotism by being stoned all the time.

Well, who's stoned all the time now?

Not us.

We've moved on to Kell Smoothies and

an occasional craft beer.

Meanwhile, you've got methmouth and

are taking your dog's arthritis pills.

Live, free, or die?

More like press down and twist.

But I'm not saying, Trump voters, that your pain isn't real.

I mean, it isn't, but I'm not saying that.

Because if this election has taught us anything, it's that anything is real if enough people believe it is.

And the good news is, if the problem is drugs, well, hell, there's something I can help with.

If it's one thing I know, it's how to manage a high.

I'm doing it right now.

You Trump voters are stoned, please.

We liberals invented stone.

This is common ground.

We get high and bid a thousand bucks for a Beatles lunchbox on eBay.

You got high and ordered a president from Moscow.

But that's because you're new to drugs.

So let me share

a lifetime of wisdom and experience in getting fucked up.

Things like don't mix pills and alcohol.

But if you do, oxycodone goes with white wine and hydroprotine goes with red.

Don't drive on pills.

Call Uber or Lyft and have someone on pills drive you.

This is very important.

Always have a wingman, someone to say, cooled it, or you shouldn't drive, or don't put that in your mouth.

Woody Harrelson once pulled me away from a long conversation with a Christmas tree I swore was Elton John.

Also very important, you're doing the wrong drugs.

Stick to the stuff that comes out of the ground.

Jesus.

90% of you are farmers.

You grow, fertilize, harvest, eat, and for all I know, fuck your own crops.

You never thought to smoke them?

most important,

ignore the asshole across the bar who keeps staring at you.

That's a mirror.

All right, that's our show.

I'll be at the Pope Joy Hall in Albuquerque, New Mexico, February 12th.

On the road again, oh, I'm back at the Mirage in Vegas, March 10th and 11th.

I want to thank John Meacham, Heather McGee, Tom Perez, Keith Ogleman, and Dane Fonda.

Greatest offer overtime on YouTube.

Great to be back.

Thank you, folks.

Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher every Friday night at 10.

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