Episode #389 (Originally aired 05/27/16)

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Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO late-night series, Real Time with Bill Ma.

Starts the clock.

Good afternoon.

Afternoon, time will be

real time.

Thank you, thank you.

Oh, please.

Please, you're embarrassing me.

I

thank you very much.

I appreciate, thank you very much.

I appreciate all that energy because I know many of you are suffering from Clinton fatigue.

And

if you are suffering from Clinton fatigue, ask your doctor if Bernie Sanders is right for you.

So no, I know why you're excited, because Bernie Sanders is here and the tickets are free.

Just like health care and college, if he gets elected.

I don't just see it.

No, Bernie is backstage right now getting his hair undone.

But you know, we invite all the candidates.

We invited Trump and Hillary.

Trump did not come because he is a whiny little bitch.

Remember.

And remember to keep tweeting that with the hashtag whiny little bitch.

We need to brand him like he brands everybody else.

Whiny little bitch.

He's a whiny little bitch.

Whiny little bitch.

Okay.

So we invited him.

He didn't come.

And Hillary didn't come because she can't open her email.

Well, it's true.

I mean

an email report came out.

We've had many, but there was a lot of new this week about the email scandal, and we'll talk about it on the show.

But among other things, it turns out Hillary did not know how to check her email on a computer.

I feel like she's one of those people who pays for her groceries by check.

You know,

you're standing there.

But it looks bad.

All this email stuff looks bad.

But Hillary is an optimist.

She sees the evidence evidence as half deleted.

But it's bad.

I mean, you know, if she is the nominee, this is just what Donald Trump needs.

He's already, Donald Trump is already going to all the discredited slime from the 90s.

Anybody remember of Vince Foster?

That name?

Okay, I have barely remembered this name.

He was a Clinton friend who sadly killed himself, and the right-wing conspiracy tried to blame it on the Clintons.

Donald Trump this week, I swear to God, these are exact words.

He said, I don't know enough about Vince Foster to say anything about it, but I will say this, there are people who do know who will absolutely say it was murder.

I don't do that, but people say...

Five independent investigations cleared the Clintons, including Ken Starr.

You have to weigh that against what Donald Trump overheard at the beauty parlor.

I'm hearing,

I'm hearing,

and listen to this: 400 writers, including Stephen King,

put out an online petition trying to stop Trump.

What does this say when the guy who wrote The Shining and Pet Cemetery

says, this guy scares the shit out of me?

And you know,

you know, Donald Trump is in our state.

You know that, right?

He's lately been campaigning.

Yes, we covered that.

He's lately been campaigning around Los Angeles.

Oh, by the way, Los Angeles, good news for us.

We got the Super Bowl in 2021.

Yeah, how about that?

In a stadium that has yet to be built.

And if Trump Trump is elected and gets rid of all the Mexicans, never will be.

But it's a funny.

Donald Trump, he always says he thinks Hispanics love him.

I don't know about that.

They're sort of rioting now when he comes to the state.

Also, there was a fundraiser a few days ago in San Diego, and they were preparing snacks for the crowd, and the illegals in the kitchen had to send out for more spit.

All right.

We've got a great show.

Michael Moynahan is here.

Melissa Harris Perry and Wayne Allen Rood.

And a little later, I'll be speaking with the author and creator of Dilbert, Scott Adams, is here.

But

first up, there are three candidates in this race.

Only one of them has a positive rating with people.

Bernie Sanders is here.

Bernie, you packed the house.

Okay.

All right.

Bernie, Bernie, Bernie.

Okay.

All right.

All right.

What is your tour bus like?

I tell you,

so now you're in California, obviously, because the primary is coming up.

This is the biggest state.

I always say we should get a lot more representation in the Senate than

we do.

Do you think that you should have more senators than Vermont?

Exactly.

That's where I was going with that.

But we'll leave that for another day.

But what would it say to the Democratic establishment if you were to win, and the polls are about even now with you and Secretary Clinton, what would it say if you were to win in the biggest state?

I would think that it would say to the establishment that the people are sick and tired of establishment politics and economics, and they want real change in this country.

And if we can,

Bill, if we can win here in California, and I think we've got a good shot to do that, and if we can win in many of the other states that are coming up on June 7th,

we will go into the Democratic Convention with a great deal of momentum.

That's what it says.

Well, I think you'll also go in with, after this email

report came out this week, a little more than momentum.

Now, you famously said in one of the first debates with Hillary Clinton, oh, I'm tired of hearing about the emails.

And, you know, for a long time, I was tired of hearing about the emails.

And I still don't think she committed some horrible crime.

But that story has moved a little bit, has it not?

It has.

But this is what I also think.

There is enormous frustration on the part of the American people with the way we do politics in this country.

And what most politicians do is say, I'm great, you're terrible, vote for me, the other guy's the scum of the earth, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But you know what?

People are hurting in this country.

You know, our middle class is disappearing.

We've got a lot of poverty.

We don't have health care for all people.

People want us to talk about their lives and their issues and not just spend our whole lives attacking our opponents.

And

we were teased with something that was going to be an amazing show, I thought, earlier this week, which was a Bernie Sanders Donald Trump debate.

That was brooded about

what?

I would have loved.

Oh, I know.

And

let me just say this.

And Mr.

Macho chickened out.

Donald.

First he said he would do it.

Then he said he wouldn't do it.

Then he said he would do it.

Then he said he wouldn't do it.

So I would hope that if he changed his mind four times in two days, change it a fifth time.

You know, Trump claims to be a real tough guy, pushes people around.

Hey, Donald, come on up.

Let's have a debate about the future of America.

Yeah, I mean, I think

a lot of us, and I count myself who have supported you, even if you're not the nominee,

we would like to see what a clear choice would look like.

Now, I would like it in the election.

but minus the election, I would at least like to see it in a debate.

Because when you see the Republicans debate among themselves, which is all we've seen so far, they live in the bubble, okay, where global warming doesn't exist and where President Obama doesn't exist.

Oh, he exists.

He exists, and they have spent eight years trying to obstruct everything that he has tried to do.

Right.

Okay, so

I think you have about 46 percent of the voted delegates at this point.

Okay, so very close.

But you are always in polls winning against Donald Trump, where Hillary Clinton now is either tight or losing.

If those polls got to a point where Hillary was maybe 10 points behind Donald Trump, what I'm trying to get to is what is the tipping point in your mind where delegates would actually go, oh, you know what?

Because they want a winner.

They want to win a winner.

They want a winner.

Where they would say, you know what, we are backing the wrong horse.

Well, here's the weird thing about this process.

400 or more superdelegates actually supported Hillary Clinton, came out publicly before anybody else was in the race, before the first ballot was cast.

And I think your point is a good point.

A lot has happened since that point.

And what every person at the Democratic Convention wants to do is to make sure that Donald Trump never becomes becomes president of the United States of America.

And I think,

you know, and I think your point is an interesting point.

These delegates, even if they have supported Clinton from day one, they're going to have to take a hard look and say, look,

if Bernie Sanders is beating Trump in many instances by double digits, not only in national polls, but in many state polls, I think we're 17 points ahead of them here in California.

If that's true, and if there are states where Clinton is actually losing to Trump, where Bernie is winning, shouldn't we make sure that the Democratic nominee defeats Donald Trump?

And that is the issue that they're going to have to deal with.

Yeah, I...

What I don't understand about this race is that on the Republican side, it seems to be okay to say, well, Donald Trump, as much as we may think he's a crazy person, well, that's...

And I do.

I mean,

let me just say that.

No, I do too.

I I mean, this is not just the.

I have a lot of Republican colleagues and friends who I disagree with.

They're not crazy, they're honest people.

This guy is a pathological liar.

And again, I don't mean to be malicious, but that is just the damn truth.

And he would be

not only an embarrassment, a real danger to this entire world if he would have become president.

So,

well,

that's that's coming from someone he calls crazy Bernie.

So,

and I've been trying to get this answer out of everybody who comes on the show.

What is the right strategy to run against Donald Trump?

Because obviously Hillary Clinton doesn't have it.

What would be your strategy?

That is a good question, and I would not be honest if I told you that I figured it out yet, because he is so unpredictable, because he lies all of the time, because he changes.

No, not a joke, right.

Because he changes his mind all the time.

But he said yesterday is no longer a valid today.

How do you deal with that?

And more importantly, he's not held accountable for that, as other politicians are.

Absolutely.

Well, that's just Donald Trump.

He changed his mind 14 times in a day.

So

it is not easy.

I think for a start, probably

one of the effective approaches against them is to really point out to what I think most Americans understand, is that we are proud deep down of our diversity, the fact that people come from all over the world, become Americans, and contribute to our country.

And some of them marry Donald Trump.

And I honestly think that the vast majority of the American people are not happy with these vicious attacks.

on Mexicans and Latinos and Muslims and women.

That's one way I think you can make the case against them.

The other thing also, he is primarily a showman.

He is a very good manipulator of the media.

But the truth is he has no ideas on public policy.

And the ideas that he has are absurd.

Giving hundreds of billions of dollars of tax breaks to the top two-tenths of 1% is not particularly good public policy.

But you know that if he runs against you, the big word is going to be socialism.

And at the risk of annoying you, because I talked about this with you before, I'm going to take another run at this.

Socialism,

it's not a bad word to your crowd.

It's so funny.

There's such a generational divide in this election.

The people under 40, next to Adderall, they love you the most.

Because

they don't even remember the Soviet Union.

And capitalism has not really worked for them.

And, you know, you are not a socialist in the sense that everything has to be socialist.

You're, like every other modern, intelligent country in this world, quasi-socialist.

Capitalism works for most things, but some things should be off-limits to the profit motives.

Exactly.

Health care, prisons.

I would say covering the elections, elections themselves.

So can't we just make that case that capitalism?

Sure we can.

Look, number one, I mean, I don't...

The greed of Wall Street in corporate America is such that there is now a profound anger against the top one-tenth of 1% who appear to want it all and could care less about the middle class of this country.

But the second point that you're making is that I think most Americans understand that in the year 2016, it is not a radical idea to say that public colleges and universities should be tuition-free.

That the wealthy and large corporations should start paying their fair share of tax.

State universities used to be.

That's exactly right.

It's not like we're doing something that new.

No,

that's right.

We're going back to where we were 50 years ago.

Right.

Is it a radical idea to say that the United States should join the rest of the industrialized world, every other country, and guarantee health care to all of our people as a right?

I don't think so.

Is it a radical idea to say that we should not have a corrupt campaign finance system in which billionaires buy elections?

I don't think so.

So your point is well taken.

Look,

entrepreneurialship, etc., creates a lot of good things in this country and a lot of wealth.

But the American people are entitled to know that they're going to have health care, education, decent housing.

The basic needs of life should be there for all of our people.

Bernie Sanders, everybody.

Bernie.

Thank you so much for always coming here.

Appreciate it.

Keep doing it, Bernie.

Don't quit.

All right, let's lead our panel.

Hey,

how you doing?

All right.

Yeah,

that's what you call love.

All right, he is a Daily Beast columnist and a vice news contributor.

Michael Moynihan back with us.

Hey, Michael.

He's the ex-Libertarian Party vice presidential nominee who now supports Donald Trump and whose latest book is The Power of Relentless.

Wayne Allen Rood.

Wayne, thank you for being brave enough to come here.

And she is editor-at-large for L.com and professor of politics and international affairs at Wake Forest.

Melissa Harris-Perry.

Hey, Melissa.

All right, remember to send us your questions for tonight's overtime so we can answer them after the show on YouTube.

Well, I hate to talk about Donald Trump all the time on this show, but he seems to be a newsmaker, and I didn't think I could hate hate him any more than I do.

But yesterday, he put out his energy policy.

He went to North Dakota and talked about the fact that he wants to cancel the Paris climate agreement, which took so long and is so good.

Okay, wants to build the Keystone pipeline.

Wants to go back to burning coal and drilling oil as opposed to solar energy.

I'm guessing he hates Mother Nature because she's a woman.

So

what remains fascinating to me about Mr.

Trump is that he really is little more than a mirror

to who we are in so many ways.

So it's easy to have kind of all of this angst-filled, oh my God, how can he say these things?

But he's always just sort of a half-standard deviation beyond where the Republican Party and sometimes even where the Democratic Party is.

So to say, oh, coal burning, Keystone Pipeline, you know, drill baby drill, this is so dramatically different than us over the course of the past decade.

Even most Republicans now believe global warming is real and we should do something about it.

I would argue that the issue that matters in this election is jobs.

If you look at polls, no one even cares about climate change.

The very bottom of every list, people need jobs.

Doesn't mean they're right.

And by the way, that's changing.

No, unfortunately, Donald Trump is proving what I think a lot of us have realized over the past election cycles.

Americans believe a lot of stupid things.

And it doesn't mean we should indulge them in their stupidities.

And I mean, Donald Trump is, maybe he's saying things that a lot of Republicans believe, but he says it in that sort of inimitable Donald Trump style.

A tweet that has been circulating from 2012, where he said, well, global warming, the concept comes from the Chinese.

Yes.

And they do that to destroy American manufacturing.

But here's what it is.

This is an enormous thing.

He's not saying

Chinese.

He's not saying what Republicans are thinking.

He's saying what millions and millions of working class Americans are thinking.

Many of whom are Democrats and independents.

Okay, but why do you think he's doing so?

Let me say, when you do that, when you say Americans are dumb, Americans think dumb things,

and then when Mr.

Trump says, oh, I'm saying something and it resonates with folks, it really does generate this kind of sense that, oh, Mr.

Trump hears me and y'all elite liberals don't.

I think we have to be really careful about a discourse that sort of sets apart,

it creates a lane for him to drive right through.

I think we have to be really careful about that language such that we are making arguments in a way that don't say the question is though, but when do

you stupid people need to be told they're stupid.

And they're stupid and you've been saying it for years.

The one thing that no one commented, my comment about jobs wasn't to get off the climate change, it was that you can't have your climate change legislation and have good paying jobs.

Again, you can't talk

from the 90s.

There are way more jobs in solar now than in coal.

And they're low-paying jobs.

Low-paying jobs?

Killing middle-class people.

As opposed to great jobs going into a mine.

This is the murder of the middle class.

No, but you say, killing middle class people.

And it's raising energy rates to levels that no middle class person can afford.

This isn't a small point that jobs matter to people.

And so that rather than saying, well, folks are dumb, you say, okay, jobs matter to people, but so too actually does clean water, clean air, all of these things.

And so you do, in fact, package them in a way that's not a problem.

But the jobs are dumb.

The new jobs are with clean water, clean air.

I disagree.

In Spain, it's the green energy capital of Europe, and they've got no jobs.

They have 56% unemployment for youth and 28% of the people.

But you're doing a false inflation, though.

That's not the best.

That's what killed the economy.

It's a libertarian study in Spain.

For every one job created in the new energy economy, three jobs are destroyed in the energy business.

and that's why they.

I haven't read that study.

It sounds like bullshit, but

I'll look at it after the show.

But you know, Donald Trump,

speaking of

his war for coal, he was in West Virginia campaigning when that trauma was going on and he said, you know, you're not allowed to use hairspray anymore because it affects the ozone.

He said this.

He said, hairspray is not like it used to be.

It used to be real good.

Today you put hairspray on, it's good for like 12 minutes, right?

He's basing his environmental policy on what it does to his hair.

Now, I just...

To be fair,

what if Hillary Clinton did that?

What if Hillary Clinton said, you know what, I'm against this because it affects my hair.

See, you know what you need?

You need a black girl president.

We don't use hairsprays.

Bill, Bill, I gotta tell you.

Is that your hair?

If I pay for it, it's my hair.

I think we all know the end.

Bill, over the years, over the years, liberals have always had great personality candidates.

And I think everyone's jealous that we now have a great personality president.

And

that's what matters.

Fun and personality, but it's running the...

Politics is a very important thing.

Wait, wait, wait.

Okay, now you're entering entering this thing I started last time we were on called Red Flags.

I think we made a graphic for it.

I don't know.

I didn't like it the first time.

It hasn't gotten that much better.

But okay.

So just

there are so many.

I could read a list of 20, but just how about the fact that he gets his information from I'm Hearing.

Yeah.

And also the Inquirer.

He quoted The Enquirer

about Ted Cruz's father being with Oswald, killing Kennedy.

They were right about John Edwards, though.

They were right about John Edwards.

I mean, I'm just saying.

They've been right about a lot of things.

By the way,

we had entirely different editorial staff at the time, just to point that out.

But

he is literally saying, I'm hearing from the Enquirer, okay, tell me more, that Raphael Cruz was involved in the assassination of President Kennedy, but I'm just hearing this.

And then, of course, the numbskulls on Fox and Friends nod approvingly, and then it just goes away.

This is a conspiracy theory campaign and let's hope it's not going to be a conspiracy theory presidency.

The idea that global warming is some thing of the 4,000 plus studies of people that agree that man-made climate change is man-made is some sort of vast conspiracy theory to destroy business.

You know, but no, I mean, I'm not a scientist.

I'm not a scientist.

I'm not sure what I'm saying.

I'm not arguing that

climate change, a global warming doesn't exist.

I'm arguing that to treat it with the regulations you're treating will put everyone out of their jobs.

It's like chemotherapy for the business.

Okay, that's fucking wrong to begin with.

But we're off that subject.

Now we're on to the subject of, is it not a red flag to you, sir, where Donald Trump gets his information?

Because not only did he quote the Inquirer, but he was indignant that other people weren't lit.

He said, I read it in the Enquirer and no one's talking about it.

Because it's in the Inquirer.

I think it's not true.

The reason Donald is popular, on the way over here, right?

You have a car, bring me from the hotel to here.

The driver is Israeli.

He came here 42 years ago.

So he starts talking politics with me.

This is where I get my politics.

I like hearing what middle-class people say.

And he says, I can't live anymore.

I can't survive.

Only Donald Trump is the one who gets it.

I'm getting destroyed.

I used to live in Laurel Canyon.

I came to America 42 years ago.

A middle-class person can't live a decent life anymore.

What is Donald Trump going to do?

Well, I believe he's like,

I believe.

I believe.

But

what I think you're on to, though, and again, so I think it's a lot of people.

Real people I'm on it's not real people.

All right, so I mean, so I think we can we can rail against it, but I think there is a thing, there's a thing to be asked here, which is to say, okay, so how do we get there?

How do we get to a place where so many of our fellow citizens are interested in voting for a candidate who makes the argument, I get my information from the inquirer.

And so I do think that that's part of a much longer trajectory of a kind of anti-intellectualism that did emerge in part out of arguments, in part largely directed, for example, at this president.

This kind of language about, oh, he's an elitist because he went to Harvard, right?

And so I think we, yes, it is Mr.

Trump, but it is not exclusively Mr.

Trump.

Or

he is emerging out of a.

There's nothing wrong with going to Harvard.

My daughter graduated Harvard.

I graduated Columbia.

And guess what?

But I don't think all the answers in life are in Harvard and Columbia.

No, I think the answers are

finding jobs for middle-class people.

But the idea of the problem.

By the way, under Obama,

jobs, under Obama, I know you're going to say, Mathematics.

I'm going to quote facts.

Yes, Mathematics.

Crazy person.

So could I quote facts?

Crazy, nutty.

So here are the facts.

Here's the facts.

Sit.

The facts.

Here's the facts.

In 2007, 1 million jobs created in America for women.

All 1 million went to foreigners.

That fact's from the Labor Department.

I didn't make it up.

That's illegal alien jobs.

They're all American jobs.

That's not what?

Who are foreigners?

They said right in the article.

What?

Wait, Melissa, tell me why you're giving that look.

Wait, yeah.

That's the labor department's quote.

Can I come sit over there?

The labor department.

Obama's labor department.

Obama's labor department.

Well, no, no, no.

Obama does not have a labor department, so that's not.

The United States government is the Obama administration at the moment, is it not?

Well, yet, no, that's not a fairly fair.

And one million jobs went to foreigners.

That's not how the federal government works, right?

There's no good middle-class jobs.

When you say foreigners, when you say foreigners, do you mean American citizens?

The labor department.

Where we find it.

And they said foreigners.

They're not born in another country.

But foreigners.

Born in another country.

It's a Trump term, not a government term.

But they used that term.

They said we do not distinguish

American citizens who were born in another country or illegal aliens?

I believe it means anyone born in another country.

They could be legal.

And they said, we don't distinguish between illegal and legal.

But we're the labor department.

So who do you think the jobs?

I don't care.

Do you think the job is to do that?

I don't know.

I literally don't know what's happening right now.

No, I don't think that's a good question.

And their jobs are not Austrians and Australians.

Is that what you think?

Okay.

They didn't.

So let's move on.

Did they play Canadians?

I just.

Has anyone been out to the airport lately?

Because I just...

What a segue.

I tell you, what a mess.

People are angry.

There are long lines.

In Chicago, there were lines for three hours.

450 people missed their flights.

This is on top of the TSA we found out last year, allowing 95%

of things that shouldn't get through, like bombs and guns, to get through.

So they fired their top security officer.

And needless to say, there's a morale problem there at the TSA.

So do you see this is why government sucks?

And we don't want more of it.

Okay.

We'll get back to the point.

Who wants more government?

The TSA is running.

It's going to be okay, Wayne.

It's going to be okay.

It's going to be okay, Wayne.

This is our little mid-joke comedy.

This is the part of the thing that's going to happen now.

The panel gets to take a breather.

It's like a a commercial.

I've been pretty relaxed the whole time.

Yeah, we're just going to be like, we're going to chill out.

So anyway, you know, there's these motivational posters that a lot of offices have.

You know, things like we've seen them all around offices, like excellence.

Some excel because they are designed to.

Most excel because they are determined to.

Things to get your morale up.

Above and beyond, when a team of dedicated individuals makes a commitment to act as one, the sky's the limit.

Now, the ones at the TSA these days are a little different.

We thought we would show them to you.

Would you like to see the TSA Motor Day?

Okay,

they have ones like, Dream Big, maybe one day you'll get to that Cinnabon in Terminal C.

Pride, percentage of bombs and guns that got through, 95%.

Shampoo over four ounces, none.

Satisfaction.

They may be rich.

They may be heading to exotic places, but they can't stop you from putting your hand on their nutsack.

Reward.

Seriously, what other job lets you touch people's nutsack?

Don't let work stress you out.

Most of the time, we're just watching reruns of Seinfeld.

Aspire.

One day you may get a chance to wan Nicki Minaj's giant ass.

And perspective, because when you used to do this in your old job, you got transferred to another parrot.

All right, he is the creator of the Dilbert Comic Strip and author of How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big Scott Adams.

Scott, how are you, sir?

Great to meet you.

Okay,

so now there's no one in this audience who hasn't read a Dilbert comic, right?

I think that means they did.

And I was reading that there are, it is in 2,000 newspapers, I was surprised there are 2,000 newspapers left.

Oh, yeah.

In 65 countries, it is truly one of the great everyman characters that obviously worldwide people can relate to, the guy in the cubicle.

And you kind of were that guy, right?

You worked for Pac Bell?

For 16 years, yeah.

I worked in a big bank, and then I worked in a phone company and I found out things were equally screwed up in both places and I thought, hey, there's something here.

I can write about this.

Right.

It really took off.

What I didn't know about you is that you are really an expert on persuasion.

So I've been trying to invite people on the show who could explain how we might defeat Donald Pumpkinhead.

And tell me your thoughts on that.

First of all, I'm a trained hypnotist.

You're a trained hypnotist.

Yes, I learned hypnosis in my 20s.

I actually went to school for it.

And I'm a...

May we have a volunteer from the audience.

Look at all these people wanting to.

And I've been studying persuasion for decades.

And when I saw Trump last summer displaying the tools of persuasion, I thought, oh my God, he's not a crazy clown.

Everything he's doing, including his complete ignoring of the facts, is persuasion perfection.

And I called him to be the landslide winner in the general election last year because the tools he's using, essentially he's basically taking a flamethrower to a stick fight.

There's nobody using the same tools he's using.

So his complete ignoring of facts are actually part of the persuasion because he doesn't give you targets.

He doesn't give you details of his policies usually.

So he's reducing the number of targets while making you feel good and focus on the things he wants.

So it's not about facts, it's about focus and attention.

He also seems to be a master of branding.

You know, we see this, this, he never ever says the word Hillary now without crooked before.

Crooked Hillary, crazy Bernie.

I mean this is like sixth grade level stuff, but that's the wrong thing.

So wrong.

No, so wrong.

That is

the best persuasion you'll ever see.

When I heard low energy, I called the...

Low energy, right?

Yeah, I called the end to Bush that day because that is a sticky

insult.

So these are not random insults.

I'm not saying they're random.

I'm not saying they don't work.

I'm just saying he brands people.

Low energy, crazy, crooked.

No, but there's something else to it.

He's working on confirmation bias.

When you see anything come out in the news that looks like maybe Hillary Clinton did something a little bit suspicious, you say, crooked Hillary.

So he's setting these up so that you're reminded of them.

It really comes into,

I mean,

it looked great this week when that report came out.

It fed right into the narrative.

Right, and Lion Ted, same thing.

Right.

He's a politician.

He's going to say something that somebody's going to call a lie.

And when they do, the nickname just pops in your mind.

I remember when he called Dr.

Ben Carson the sheriff of Nodding Off.

And by the way, he A-B tests this just like software people do.

So he says these nicknames in front of people.

He sees the reaction and then he uses them.

The brilliant thing he did recently was he came up with a second one for Clinton.

He said, well, is she heartless?

Is it a heartless Hillary?

Or is it crooked Hillary?

And he actually made people debate whether she was more heartless or more crooked.

And that's all intentional.

This is all technique.

And she's, conversely, so bad at it.

I mean, I used to say her slogan, ready for Hillary, was for me a perfect slogan because it described exactly how I felt.

Are you ready for Hillary?

Yes, I'm ready.

It was like getting a shot.

Am I excited?

No, just, I'm ready for Hillary.

Just

let me roll this.

you know.

But if you look at the technique that Trump has, you find there's none of it on the Clinton side.

For example,

one of her big slogans was, love Trump's hate.

Now, from a lawyer's perspective, remember that?

Love Trump's hate?

Yeah.

But the problem.

Well, that was one of her slogans, love Trump's hate, meaning love is better than hate.

Oh, love Trump's hate.

See,

now you've seen the problem, right?

I mean, oh, fuck.

But here's the problem.

It's that bad.

Not yet.

But here's the problem from a persuasion perspective.

People see the first part of a sentence.

Right.

They put all their weight in it.

And the first part is literally love Trump.

And she had another one she tried it this week, stronger together.

Which I guess, you know, intellectually makes sense.

Yeah, yeah.

But emotionally, it really doesn't.

If you're a lawyer and your campaign is run by a lawyer, you get that sort of thing.

What are the two words?

The first word is stronger.

Who does that remind you of?

Not her.

Because it's literally

it's literally Trump's brand.

Right.

She's the strong one.

And then together, is that a male and female word?

Not really.

Together is what you, you know, we're spring-loaded by society to think that women work together better.

Right.

And the guy is the guy who, and the guy is the one who doesn't stop to ask the right person.

But it just sounds corporate.

You know, it just sounds like something that's in one of those stupid motivational posters.

Yeah, there's no emotion, right?

Right.

And I have to say, you know, at the heart of this email scandal is something that is so relatable,

which is, you know, Dilbert would know, office inefficiency drives everybody nuts.

I want to read something.

This is from a 2011 email exchange.

This came out when they released a lot of her emails between a State Department official who said this would be a great time for someone to write an op-ed that points out that,

listen to this,

State's technology is so antiquated that no one uses a state-issued laptop.

And even high officials routinely end up using their home email accounts to be able to get their work done quickly and effectively.

This is, I mean, maybe there is a scandal with her, but the real scandal and the real threat to national security is that even our State Department doesn't have the right equipment to use in the 21st century.

You're making a conservative argument.

Government sucks.

Okay, but the answer to that is very competent.

But the answer to that is not to wipe out government.

Yeah,

it's to make it smaller and give more power to the people.

Well, not smaller, but better.

Sometimes that's smaller.

And maybe move it to the state level and the local level, get it out of the hands of the government.

Right, because they never, right, the states never did anything stupid.

Yeah, and that's not necessary.

I don't like any government, but I like it closer to the home law.

And that's not necessarily an awful lot of people.

I just like smaller government.

It works better under Reagan than it works under the government.

By the way, that's not what Trump is arguing for.

And bad laptops aren't a good thing.

How do you think small the government would be if we built the wall?

How many government workers would it take to build the giant wall?

I think if the Obama administration had not given Iran back $150 billion, we could have used it to build the war.

We never gave back Iran.

That's the problem.

It's chemical in the bubble charge.

We gave the money we've been holding.

No, we didn't have their terrorist probation.

Either way, it doesn't matter.

This is what in the Cold War.

I'm sorry, you were saying something

for ASA or 40 minutes.

I mean, so the question about

the quality of the email, I mean, the quality of the laptops, is the same thing we ran into with the VA, right?

So when the enormous sort of scandal about our incapacity to address the challenges of our veterans coming home, part of that problem was also that our VA was operating without...

Because government sucks.

No,

but their computers certainly do, right?

And so computers.

And that's a computer issue.

They killed people on purpose.

They put them on waiting lists.

No, but no, but that is in part because they were doing it on paper and pencil.

But they did.

And so what I am saying is that point though.

But what I'm saying is always...

If you don't like government, you don't vote for for Donald Trump.

This man loves the imperial presidency.

If you think that he's going to be there to fight,

by the way, when the government has a 45% tariff on Chinese imports, that's a conservative position.

When a guy is- That's a negotiation.

Okay, okay, okay.

Let me

for the folks who tune in to get some information.

Yeah, it would be great.

It would be great to actually.

Let me just tell them what was new about what happened with the email scandal this week is that the State Department itself, which he worked for as Secretary of State, issued their report, and it wasn't good.

It said she never asked and that she wouldn't have been granted her own server.

She didn't let them interview her, even though she kind of said she did, ignored warnings that she was vulnerable to hackers, and was supposed to turn over the emails and didn't.

Now, like with all Clinton scandals, what they actually do is never that bad.

It's like, you know, when Reagan was president, they had a secret war going on.

That's a scandal.

It's always how they handle it.

And I think what the problem is, is that these two cut their teeth in Arkansas, and they got used to being able to fool Rube's, excuse me, Arkansas,

easily.

And it doesn't work that way in D.C.

No, and these scandals never really resonate.

I mean, the fact that Trump wants to bring about Vince Foster, he said a day later to Scottsburg that it didn't really play, and so he's backing away from it.

You know, you mentioned Whitewater, you mentioned the Rose Law Firm, you mentioned all this stuff, Travelgate.

Nobody remembers it.

It doesn't resonate at all.

The only thing that's slightly different about this is you have

to.

Donald Trump is already bringing up the

branding and all registers.

That's it.

Sex registers.

But it does work for the confirmation bias question, though, right?

It does work for all registers.

It does work for

it.

It works for a general sense of somehow.

But I believe that it's a very good idea.

But

he is bringing up this idea that Hillary was an enabler, which is relevant this week because Bill Cosby is going on trial.

That's something new.

All right, so here's the most important thing about that, is that people are not using any sense of reason for making most decisions.

In fact, to be a hypnotist, you have to learn that people are irrational almost all the time, or else you can't even do it.

Yeah, right.

That's necessary.

So when people start conflating in their minds the two bills and the two crimes that sound a little bit alike, facts will not matter.

Those things just got married in their heads.

Because Bill Cosby and Bill Clinton are the same thing.

Bill Clinton is the Bill Cosby of Washington, D.C.

He was going to Orgy Island.

What would you call that?

Well, he is.

First of all,

I know what you mean about that.

He is.

Okay, again, this is exactly what you're talking about.

No facts.

Yeah.

They don't matter.

Can we hypnotize them?

But let me get to the facts about Bill Cosby.

Okay.

So he gave a deposition in 2005 and 2006.

This is the trial he's been in.

They said, yes, this can go forward.

He admitted in the deposition to having sex with at least two teenage girls and said an agency, I guess his agency, oh no, well, modeling agency, would send five or six models to his studio each week, presumably because they were going to be on a sitcom which doesn't use models.

So obviously they were pimping for him.

And he used his agency, the William Morris agency at the time, to pay someone off.

This is offensive.

I can't even get my agent to return a call.

I'm changing agents.

So it takes a village

to be a scumbag.

You know what?

What about all these Bill Cosby enablers?

I also want to be careful about the words, because the word pimping also suggests potentially consensual sex work.

And these teenagers, as far as the depositions seem to suggest, were sent there thinking also that there wasn't sex acts that were going to occur and were drugged.

And so that is also something different.

And I think that is

very important.

Very different.

But explain to me the difference.

Explain to me the difference between drugging someone

and going to Orgy Island with young

people elitists.

You are

factually wrong.

Jeffrey Epstein, who you're talking about, the billionaire.

I know him.

Clinton was on his plane.

We have the logs.

And he went to Orgy Island as well.

Not in all the trips.

But

when Clinton went on the plane, they didn't go to Orgy Island.

Bill, five times he turned down Secret Service protection.

The president former president.

What do you think he was doing?

I have one final question.

The president, our president, our current president.

Are we done saying Orgy Island?

I don't want to say that.

Yes, we're done with Orgy Island.

Did something historic this week?

He went to Hiroshima.

It's been 71 years since America did something historic, which was drop an atom bomb purposely on human beings.

That's the only time it's been done, except for three days later in Nagasaki.

Now to Republicans, they're upset that he just went there.

Even though he did not apologize,

just going there is an apology and of course the worst thing you could ever do is apologize.

But shouldn't America apologize for some things?

Slavery, Indians?

Well,

let me jump in here.

One of the reasons that Trump doesn't apologize is that it's a bad persuasion movement.

Never.

You're right.

Always attacks.

Never.

As soon as you apologize, then everybody's going to look for the next apology.

And there's always a reason.

But apology isn't a sign of weakness.

It's a sign of strength.

It's a sign of weakness when it's a sign.

You don't think we should apologize for what we did to the Indians?

It's a sign of weakness if the other people did

horrible things to you and they deserved something in return.

Okay.

Oh, you don't think World War II.

No, but that's happening.

But we're not talking about terrible apologies.

But wait, wait, he didn't apologize.

So we're not talking about.

His going there was an apology.

Do you know the Japanese?

Why just going there?

The Japanese prime minister refused to come to Pearl Harbor and reciprocate.

If he would do that, I'd say that's a negotiation that a Donald Trump could arrange.

Without the reciprocation, you don't do it.

My blood pressure is rising.

We're going to have to end this discussion.

Thank you, everybody.

But it's time for new rules.

New rules.

Neural, Bill Cosby has to admit the real reason he's liked jazz all these years is it puts people to sleep.

Neural, the guy with this bumper sticker on his car has to tell me what I'm supposed to do with this information.

Do I hop out of my car in traffic, knock on your window, and when you roll it down, say, so you like kayaking, huh?

New rules, the Taliban, has to promote a more diverse workplace environment.

This week, the Taliban named its new leader, and you guessed it, another heterosexual Muslim man.

Well, we think heterosexual.

It's hard to be sure when coming out of the closet gets you thrown off a roof.

But come on, guys, isn't it time for a bearded lady?

Neural, the guy who figured out he could unlock his Samsung smartphone with his penis

instead of his fingerprint, has to have never explained to me why.

But it just goes to show how technology comes full circle.

We've gone from using the dictaphone to using a dictaphone.

New rule, boarding groups C and D have to back the hell off.

Oh, everyone knows what you're doing, boarding group C and D.

You're trying to infiltrate boarding groups A and B

until the gate agent says, screw it and accepts any old boarding pass.

Well, not on my watch.

This is an American airport, not a Japanese subway.

And finally, new rule: now that college grads are decorating their mortarboards with messages like, thanks, mom and dad, and proud of my BS,

parents of graduates must also wear mortarboards so they can send messages back to their kids.

Like, your old room is now an Airbnb.

Empty nesters have the best sex.

And hope you like ramen.

Well, it's graduation time, and with that comes the ritual of commencement addresses, when America's overrated gas bags and wisdom-free celebrities are invited by star fucking universities to come to their school and tell a bunch of spoiled, stone, debt-laden brats things like, Your only limit is your own imagination, and the world will be a better place for having you in it.

But I say, why not level with the kids for once?

Kids, you're not the future.

You can't be anything you want to be.

And the only way you can follow your dreams wherever they take you is if your dreams involve the grease trap at your potlet.

Your parents just spent a quarter million dollars to send you to drinking camp.

And the average student who takes loans now owes 37 grand in debt.

Geez, if you'd spent that on a minivan, at least you'd have somewhere to sleep.

But cheer up, kids, because if you think it's bad now, take solace in the thought that in 25 years, it's going to be so much worse.

Can you imagine what a commencement address will look like in 2041?

Graduates

my castle now.

Graduates of the class of 2041, parents, faculty, distinguished guests, masculine identifiers,

feminine identifiers, and cyborgs,

let me first say what an honor it is to be here today at the University of California Goldman Sachs.

And to join you in celebrating such an exciting time to be alive, 2041!

this could be the year that Flint, Michigan's tap water becomes drinkable again.

Now of course it's easy to get nostalgic for how things used to be under the first President Kardashian.

Back before Canada built a wall to keep us out.

And back when a person starting out in life could still get a studio apartment in San Francisco for only $2 million

a month.

Well, now that same apartment is unaffordable for all but the top executives at ExxonGoogle and Huffington porn.

So yes, we have problems.

The leading cause of death in our country is going outside.

Driverless cars still won't pick up black people.

And 90% of America's wealth is owned by Katy Perry.

But as former President Kanye West once tweeted,

yo, sometimes stuff just be like that and you got to deal.

So true.

So true.

Look, I'd love to tell you kids that the world is your oyster, but the oysters are all dead.

Along with almost all species.

But when that happened, did we give up and just start eating jellyfish?

Well, yes, of course we did.

What else could we do?

I mean, we can't all afford plankton.

My point is, we are resilient.

I believe it was former Miami Dolphins coach Don Shula who said, success is not forever and failure is not fatal.

Miami was a city that once existed in Florida.

And when it sank, did we panic?

No, we didn't panic because we don't panic.

Did we panic during the Zika epidemic of 2018?

No.

And many of the pinheaded babies born that year have gone on to become fine Republican congressmen.

Did we panic when Jesus returned to earth, took one look at us and said, fuck you, and left?

No!

We rallied around President Gaga and

took solace in the words of

Chief Justice McConaughey.

All right, all right,

all right.

Hats in the air, everybody.

All right, that's our show.

I'll be at the Connor Palace in Cleveland, June 4th, and at the Mirage in Vegas, July 22nd and 23rd.

I want to thank Michael Mynihan, Wayne Allen Root, Melissa Harris-Perry, Scott Adams, and Bernie Sanders.

Join us now for Overtime on YouTube.

Thank you, folks.

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

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