Episode #387 (Originally aired 05/06/16)

Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

I lit the fuse and my life turns into everything it wasn't supposed to be.

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was quick.

He kept saying, No, no, no, I'm in the hospital now, but next week I'll be ready for the show.

Now, Charlie's sober.

He's gonna tell you the truth.

How do I present this with any class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

Yeah, aka Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

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

Afternoon, time will be

real time.

Thank you very much.

Sit down.

Thank you very much.

Oh, stop it.

Sit down.

You'll tire yourself out.

Awesome.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Oh, what a.

Thank you very much, folks.

You are, let me tell you something.

You are.

You are surprisingly fresh for a week that included a lot of heavy drinking.

It was Cinco de Mayo yesterday.

And also Trump is going to be the Republican nominee.

So

they don't make Corona strong enough for that.

That's right.

Did you see Donald Trump yesterday?

For Cinco DeMayo, he tweeted out a picture of him eating a taco bowl and said,

happy Cinco DeMayo.

I love Hispanics.

And they love him.

Oh, they love him.

He's at all the children's parties here in L.A.

as the piñata.

But you know, they said it couldn't happen.

They said it wouldn't happen.

It happened.

Donald Trump is going to be the Republican nominee for president.

You know, I have taken a lot of crap over the years for saying this is a stupid country.

I should have trademarked it.

Everybody keeps saying it's a reality show.

Yeah, Fear Factor.

I feel like I know how Dracula got to run Transylvania.

They had primaries, there were debates, and then the other vampires just couldn't stand Ted Cruz.

I mean, yeah, that's what happened.

It all ended Tuesday night in Indiana.

Ted Cruz bit it bad.

I mean, the Republicans, all they had to do was come up with one motherfucker who was more popular than Donald Trump, and they couldn't do that.

If you're wondering why even Republicans could not stand Ted Cruz, he said in his concession speech, I am not making this up.

This is why we hate politicians.

He said, just a few days ago, two young kids, four and six, handed me two envelopes full of change, all of their earnings from their lemonade stand.

Right, a four-year-old is concerned with the direction of the country.

Here, Mr.

Cruz, take all my money, use it to defeat Donald Trump.

He's not a true conservative.

The six-year-old said he would have done it sooner, but he was waiting to see if Bloomberg got in.

Now, I am beginning to think this whole election is taking place inside the mind of this disturbed child.

And that child, of course, is Dr.

Ben Carson.

Yes, gentle Ben was, he's been appointed to find Trump's vice president.

We're at the point now where the crazy people are appointing each other to do jobs.

And

so on the short list of course is Chris Christie.

He was the first on the Trump train, Trump and Plump.

It'll be

quite a campaign

and

Chris Christie has already assured Donald Trump that he does not have any skeletons in the closet.

Baby back ribs in the bed, yes.

Listen,

I mean,

this is the reality we're living in.

They're talking about Trump's vice president.

He's already talking about what he's going to do in his first hundred days.

He said, by the end of his first hundred days, the wall with Mexico will be designed, immigration ban on Muslims will be in place, and the repeal of Obamacare will be in motion, and all of us will be in Canada.

And by the way,

there may be quite a few Republicans with us.

The party is split in a way I have never seen before.

The Republican establishment is not necessarily going along supporting Donald Trump.

He's racist, he's sexist, he's belligerent.

There are also some things about him they don't like.

Oh, I can't.

Nope, it's true.

The last two Republican presidents, Bush Sr.

and Bush Jr., they're not going to the convention.

The last two nominees, Mitt Romney, John McCain, they don't want any part of it.

They're not going to the convention.

Lindsey Graham says he won't go, but that's just because he has nothing to wear.

And that's nothing to do with politics.

No, I mean,

Paul Ryan.

He is the leading Republican in the country, the Speaker of the House.

He is the chairman of the convention.

Yesterday said he will not endorse Donald Trump.

He said he wants to.

He hopes to.

He said he's not there yet.

He doesn't want to rush into it.

This Donald Trump, tell me more.

I've not heard enough about

who is this Donald Trump.

Like Trump is going to change.

This is what magical thinking gets you.

When you believe in a talking snake, you believe an orangutan can transform into a statesman.

I mean,

I almost feel sorry for them, but you know what?

This is what you get.

Republicans spent years whipping their voters into sexist, xenophobic, self-righteous frenzy, and now they're stuck with Donald Trump.

It's like finally convincing your wife to have a threesome, and then she brings home a guy.

All right, we got a great show and culture.

Dan Savage and Nick Gillespie are here and the little every sticking with the immensely talented Brian Cranston is backstage.

But

first up for the last 11 years he has run one of the most successful drug treatment clinics in America.

Please welcome the founder and CEO of the Cliffside Malibu Treatment Center and co-author of Ending Addiction for Good, Richard Tate.

Richard,

how are you, sir?

Good, thank you.

Great to have you here.

Thank you.

I think you know why you're here.

Sure.

It's an intervention for me.

No, I'm kidding.

No, it's because there's an epidemic in America, and it is about drug abuse, and you know more about this than possibly anybody because you yourself were an addict, and then you started a treatment center.

You're like the hair club for men guy,

but with heroin.

So tell us about your drug days and why you didn't find them fun.

I did actually find them fun, okay?

Right, drugs are fun.

Drugs are fun.

What's the problem?

Right.

No one admits that.

Drugs are fun.

Drugs are fun.

Thank you for being here.

But like anything else, it stops working after a certain period of time.

Especially drugs.

There's always this honeymoon period.

That's right.

Some drugs have, like, liquor always works.

Sure.

Pot always works, but it does diminish.

But there are some drugs, like opiates, we're going to get into, cocaine, where it's like you only get like three months, it's a balloon payment, and then

it falls right off the chart, right?

Right.

Well, the thing about

the prescription drug epidemic, it's so bad.

When Cliffside Malibu opened

in 2005, about 20% of the people that came to us had a problem with prescription opiates.

Today it's 90%.

Right.

Right.

Yeah.

I mean, you know how I knew it was bad?

I was watching the Super Bowl this year, and there was a commercial for opioid-induced constipation.

Right.

I said, wow, because a Super Bowl commercial, the most expensive thing in the world, I said, if this is this widespread that on the Super Bowl, they're doing ads for people who can't shit because they're on.

And when we talk about opioid, what are the actual names of the drugs we're talking about?

Oxycontin,

Percocet, Percocet,

codeine, fentanyl, right?

And these constipate you, apparently.

Yes, but here's the thing to know.

So you've got the heroin over here that's enriching the drug cartels, and then you've got all this litany of pills that are enriching the pharmaceutical companies.

So what they say is don't use this, use this.

Same thing, by the way.

Same thing.

Just legal heroin.

They're always called oxycontin, hillbilly heroin.

It certainly is.

I mean, I've done heroin, I've done oxycontin, and they're the same thing.

Same thing.

So I don't think I, you know, I don't think I know, I know I know, I've done it.

Right.

So

and then you get off that and you get on to heroin light, which is suboxone.

They call it harm reduction.

And then...

Like methadone?

Absolutely.

It's modern day methadone.

And then they say, oh, wait a minute, you're not going to be able to defecate, so you've got to use this pill.

I actually took a picture of that commercial and put it on my Facebook.

It was blown away by it.

Too much information, man.

Okay.

No, I'm kidding.

That's the least of the information.

But yeah, I mean, we see this on the news every day: that

white people are doing heroin.

And then when you read the background to this, it's because they started on the prescription drug pills because no one wants pain.

And of course, who wants pain?

Nobody wants pain.

But then they can't afford it, or they get cut off by their doctor.

So what do they do?

They go to the drug that, as you just said, is the same thing, which is heroin.

Right, but the thing about this, and I get your point, and it's well taken,

the thing about it is you can be black or white, rich or poor, straight or gay.

This thing, this epidemic that we've got right now, doesn't discriminate.

Right.

It's killing everybody.

Prince was all of them, and he was on it.

Right.

And look, I mean, look,

people get very emotional when their rock stars die.

I mean, I was a big Prince fan.

We all were.

And we're not talking out of school.

The autopsy report is not back yet, if there ever's going to be one.

But it's pretty clear that he was on,

I think it was Perkis, that he had it on his body when they found him in his house.

I've done a lot of drugs too, Doc.

Let me tell you something.

When you got the drugs on you in your house, it's one thing when you go out of the house.

When you don't think you can make it to the next room,

it's like, I don't know,

that coffee table is far away.

Let me just put these in my bathrobe.

That's a serious drug problem.

So

here's the important takeaway, right?

We know that he was probably on those opiates for hip pain.

We also have reports that he had sleep problems.

Sleep medication with prescription opiates is a disaster.

It's lethal.

You can't take those two at the same time.

Why did he die?

Because the opiates slowly sort of suffocate you, they suppress respiration, is that right?

Right, but they're not made.

These opiates are not made for long-term care.

So the CDC just came out and offered up a report and last, I think, 30 days.

And what they said was

three days to seven days.

That's it.

So the FDA comes out and says, we like what you just said.

Why don't we get all these doctors together and start coaching them up and nip this epidemic in the bud?

Sure.

And what happened was, the pharmaceutical industry, the lobby, came out and pushed back against it and said,

right?

Like all of a sudden, they're the AMA lobby.

Right?

I mean, they were really concerned.

Well, I mean, it's important to note that America's 5% of the world's population uses 75%

of the prescription drugs in the world.

That's a pretty amazing statistic.

At least.

And what's even more important is that right now you've got

27 million people in the country who are abusing these drugs, but only 2.5 million were able to get treatment.

And every candidate, the president, the drug czar, everybody thinks we need more treatment.

And then there are these local communities,

even in California, a liberal place like California.

They just introduced a bill, AB 2403, that's going to decimate, I mean, take away thousands of treatment beds that we need.

Let me ask you one last question that's a little broader about society.

I mean, I was a kid in the 60s.

The drugs were LSD and marijuana, psychedelic, stuff like that.

In the 70s, you moved into cocaine and qualudes.

In the 90s, it was ecstasy.

And now it's opiates.

What does the fact that opiates is the drug of choice say about our society now as opposed to our society in other decades?

So I think that

we are a society that is depressed.

We're a depressive society.

I don't know if it has to do with Trump.

It all comes back to Trump.

Right, for sure.

I don't know if it has to do with income inequality or the lack of opportunity

or just life on life's terms because it can be hard sometimes, right?

Capitalism, when you don't ameliorate it with, you know, some things, is pretty rough on people.

There's a lot of losers in society, and that's the way we want it here in America, apparently.

But yeah, I get your point.

Well, when you're depressed, you have this type of learned helplessness, if you will, right?

And when you take a painkiller, they call it painkillers for a reason.

And it actually works better on emotional pain than it does on physical pain.

So when you take the painkiller and you're depressed, you go,

okay,

I'm good.

And you're hooked.

All right.

I'll see you after the show at the parking lot.

All right.

Just a minute.

Thank you.

I appreciate you.

Thank you.

Let's meet our panel.

Terrible.

Terrible things, I say.

I don't know why I do it.

All right.

Let's meet our panel.

He is the editor-in-chief of Reason.com and Reason TV and co-author of the Declaration of Independence.

Nick Gillespie's back with us.

Nick, how you doing?

He writes the nationally syndicated column Savage Love and hosts the Savage Lovecast podcast.

Dan Savage is right now.

And she's the author of Adios America, the left's plan to turn our country into a third world hellhole.

And Coulter is over here.

Come on, give it up.

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

All right, I'm going to break format tonight and start with a clip.

This is from our overtime.

You know, we do overtime, which is something we do for the internet after the show.

If people want to like, they don't know why they do this, turn off HBO and turn on your computer.

But this is from the last time you were on the show.

This is when there were many, many, many Republican presidential candidates still in the race.

And here's the question that someone asked, and I relate it to you.

And here's what happened.

Okay, here we are.

And which Republican candidate has the best chance of winning the general election

of the declared ones right now, Donald Trump.

Well,

go ahead.

You gloats.

Eat crow.

You want to get your stock tips from me now.

Yeah, I.

No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.

Well, a lot of people apparently have, because a lot of people said he wouldn't even win a primary.

So last week, Rob Reiner, who I love, was here, and we ended the show by saying, I think Hillary's going to

win in a landslide.

And I said, don't say that.

So I'm I'm giving you credit for that, and I also want to use you to scare liberals.

But I ask you right now, can Trump win the general election?

It's possible.

I don't know.

Hear that?

Wait, you're.

She sounds a lot less certain.

No, I mean, what I would say about Trump is, and that's why I'm so glad it's Trump, I think he will do better than any other Republican could have as the result of this primary election show.

He does represent not only the Republican Party, but large segments of the Democratic Party that has been being ignored, ignored.

We have been asking for the wall.

We have been asking for a decrease in immigration.

And time after time, the people rise up, shut down amnesty, throw out Dave Bratt beats Eric Canter, and they can't learn.

Well, I think we know now the wall is popular.

We have a timeout on immigration.

We already have one because our economy sucks worse than Mexico.

So there's been net out-migration of Mexicans.

They're going back.

That is not true.

Our economy sucks worse than Mexico's.

There has been a money.

Why don't you move there?

Yeah, you know what?

He doesn't speak the language.

He's wrong about that.

Our economy is not worse than Mexico's, but we have one million fewer Mexican immigrants.

They even leave the country now than we did seven years ago.

But that's what the government says.

And the rest of the country.

The government says we have 11 million illegals.

They're wrong about that, too.

It's older than fewer.

Can the party win that is so split?

I mean, George Will is

somebody I've been reading my whole life.

I don't always agree with him, but sometimes he's persuasive.

He's an amazing thinker.

He hates me, by the way, which I love.

I wouldn't have it any other way.

Even more.

Right.

And he said, he is against Trump big time.

He said, this is a time for prudence, which demands the prevention of a Trump presidency.

He says, conservatives have two tasks.

The first is to help him lose 50 states

and keep Hillary to one term.

How can you win when a party is split this much?

The party is not split.

Trump has gotten more votes than anyone else running in a Republican primary.

You were talking about a few sore losers.

Not a few.

Now they know how I feel when McCain was running.

So I hope they're enjoying it.

And by the way, I wasn't as much of a little bitch as George Will is me.

But Ann,

Bobby Jindal says Donald Trump is a narcissist and he's an egomaniac.

I wouldn't want his fingers on the nuclear codes, but he's going to vote for him.

Peter King.

Wait, Peter King, a guy calls Trump a guy with no knowledge of what's going on, but he's going to vote for him.

Rick Perry calls him a cancer on conservative.

But he's going to vote for cancer.

Eddie offered to be his running mate.

He offered to be Cancer's running mate.

Is this the country first?

Okay, let's look at what Sanders said about Hillary, point one.

But point two,

Trump is crushing the primaries.

He got half a million more votes than Romney did in Florida.

He got half a million more votes in the Republican primary in Florida than the Democrats got.

He's the party.

Like, nobody is going to go, oh, I'm with Jindal.

Whatever Jindal wants, I'll do.

I mean, these are like loser candidates.

But what Trump is good at, and I dislike Trump because he is a perfect Republican.

Every one of his points, from the stupid wall to, you know, bombing countries, et cetera, all of the, he's just doing exactly what the Republicans have said that we should be doing for a long time.

Not at all.

Yes, what the base has been saying, they've been ignoring.

That's the difference.

And that's the problem for the Republican Party because they've reached a point where they need to, like Bertold Brecht said about East Germany, they need to dissolve the base and elect a new one.

And they can't.

The problem is the base.

They've been cranking up, gathering together every rube, racist, nutjob, sexist, homophobe in the country, calling them Republicans, and finally they voted for one of their own.

But wait.

But he's the lust.

He's the least.

But wait.

I just want you to be.

I want you to be the spokesman for Hillary Clinton without

going to be a big game for the American people who are overwhelmingly voting for Trump.

20%.

So the GOP base, which is overwhelmingly rubes, idiots, sexists, racists, are overwhelmingly voting for Trump.

The American people are not going to overwhelmingly vote for Trump.

I'm with you.

I'm a Catholic.

I'm very not into jinxing things.

So I'm not going to say Hillary's going to win in a landscape.

Look at Massachusetts.

20,000.

American people are not the GOP base.

Massachusetts is what you're arguing.

In Massachusetts, no, I'm not.

I'm saying in Massachusetts, 20,000 Democrats switched their registration to Republican to vote for Trump.

In Pennsylvania, 60,000 Democrats switched their registration to Republicans.

And how many of them were monkey red?

This is the country.

Hillary is widely disliked.

She's got like a 55% unfavorability rating.

The minute she starts talking, that will go higher.

She's awful.

I think she's as bad as Trump in different ways.

But what Trump has going for him, just as a tactician, he knows how, like, he knows next week you've got another episode.

And he's going to throw something out there and he's going to mix it up every time he was written off.

Next week.

Next hour.

Yeah, I mean,

I would not be honest with you.

That's not fun.

I mean,

it is fun.

The odds are against him, but I bet you he will run like the greatest, most entertaining campaign of all time.

But this is not entertainment.

This is supposed to be a country.

It is important to be entertaining.

Look at you.

Politics.

All the time you're there to discuss.

I know, but I'm not running for president.

No, I know, I'm saying that, but people watch you.

They start laughing.

In the case of Trump, you're watching because he's fun and entertaining, and then you start thinking, oh, wait, I agree with that.

He has 30,000 people at his rallies.

So what?

You know, I could let loose a zoo animal, and there would be people.

I don't think you could.

I couldn't?

I don't think there would be 30,000 people coming out and cheering every time he talks about the wall that zoo is.

Historically, a lot of people coming to your rallies can be problematic

like Obama okay okay but 20% of Republicans say they will vote for Hillary and there are Republicans like Kelly Ayot

who say she will not uh endorse him but she supports him which is a little like saying I'll fuck you but I won't be seen in public with you

Paul Ryan as I mentioned in the monologue, this is the titular head of the party.

No, he isn't.

He is the speaker of the hate.

He's not by the base.

He's not hated by the base.

He's absolutely hated.

He's the next Eric Cantor, who was the highest member of leadership ever to lose in a primary.

What you are seeing here, quite possibly within Anne herself, it's the implosion of the Republican Party.

You know what?

It is breaking down.

And by the way, as a libertarian, I can't wait for this to happen because the Republican Party for years has always talked a libertarian line out where you want small government, this and that.

And all they have done on every level on personal liberties as well as wars and on international regulation, they're terrible.

So I want to see it implode.

And I hope neither of the two halves come back to life.

And then I want to see the Democrats.

Let me ask you.

We're getting rid of the dead wood is all.

Does it matter to you that Trump is going to crash the markets?

Because let me tell you something.

What the markets hate, they hate volatility.

He is personification of volatility.

They hate uncertainty.

That's exactly who he is.

He threatened today to default on the U.S.

debt.

Exactly.

They hate trade wars.

They hate debt.

He is all those things put together.

Who but Donald Trump would threaten to default on our

bonds, the one thing that the world buys because they are known to be the safest thing in the world.

And he talks about them like he's negotiating with some guy who's putting in a stairway in a building up.

Because he doesn't know what they are.

Right.

he's the great businessman.

He doesn't know anything about money.

He thinks we can get rid of our debt in eight years.

If you're born with enough money, you don't really have to know anything about it.

That is true.

He knows about money.

And you're...

Well, he doesn't have 10 billion.

You misunderstanding.

Well, I don't really care, but he sure owns a lot of property that seems to be worth a lot of money.

Anyway, I think you're misunderstanding

what you're calling volatility.

He's saying unpredictability in foreign policy.

And yeah, okay, we're not going to tell ISIS what we're doing.

We're going to negotiate tough with China.

I don't think our foreign policy should be based on what Wall Street wants.

Okay, but he's already in a feud with the Speaker of the House.

This is not something that the market is.

No, he's not.

He's been very nice.

I think the problem is with the Speaker of the House.

But you also have to understand

the Republicans now, the leadership, they have like until the convention to kind of negotiate with him a little bit, they have no leverage.

He's run the table.

So they're going to be like, oh, you know, know, I'm holding off a little bit.

Paul Ryan has already said I'm not endorsing him yet.

You know he's going to.

Really do, you know, you don't want H.W.

Bush or W.

Bush at that convention if you want to win in the fall.

Just, I mean, as a straight strategy.

So he's doing a good job.

But okay, but we're past the part where we're talking about winning.

Now we're talking about what he's going to do, what this great businessman is going to do.

Okay, first we're going to deport 11 million people, so there'll be a lot of openings for nannies and their children.

Sure, and their children.

Right.

So, yeah.

Okay, that's number one.

Police force and the institution of a police state, unlike anything we've seen in this country during the year.

And then China, there's going to be a trade war, so a dildo at Walmart will be $200.

But a small price to pay for making America great again.

Okay, may I answer these?

Yes, please do.

Okay, number one, there's not going to be a police force.

All he needs to do is enforce the law on the books.

We're going to have a wall.

So what happened?

How do you enforce the law on the books without a police force to enforce the law on the books?

They're not going to be able to do it for ICE.

They're being stopped.

Last week, ICE released

legal analysis.

How many hundreds of thousands of ICE agents will you have to hire to round up 11 million people?

We don't need to hire them.

Tell them they can do their jobs now.

That is some really important.

These are laws on the book, and ICT.

The only way that this happens is where every one of us at every time in every job hire, every job firing, every cross into a new thing, there's going to be a lockdown.

There has to be.

If our highest

level of the world is

why do we want to throw these 11 million people out of the country?

They contribute more to our economy than they take out.

They pay more in taxes than they receive in services.

They're

commit fewer crimes.

Illegal immigrants commit fewer crimes per capita.

Native born, American-born Americans, not native-born Americans,

are two and a half times more likely to commit a crime, two and a half times more likely to be in prison

than illegal immigrants.

They're not false facts.

They're facts.

If they are true facts, then you need to go and elect people who will change the laws.

And your rationale for building this giant

thing is that he's saying is he's going.

No, the rationale is he's the commander-in-chief.

He protects the borders.

Those are the laws.

All he's saying is, I will be the president who will enforce the law.

And I know you all want to pay your maids even less, but most Americans don't know what to do.

You know what?

I don't want to fucking path to citizenship.

I just want to give them citizenship.

Okay, all right.

I have to pay.

I'm glad that they're all low-wage workers.

That means our salaries go up.

There's

a path to shut up now.

So listen, we have a tradition here when a primary ends.

And obviously Kasich and Ted Cruz said uncle this week, so it is Donald Trump.

You get credit for predicting that.

But every time this happens here on real time, our tradition is we then say a fond goodbye to the people who made it so memorable.

And

so please help us right now say goodbye to the people who made this possibly the most fucked up election ever.

When I was a teenager, I almost stabbed someone.

A lot of people who go into prison go into prison straight, and when they come out, they're gay.

Police clap.

That's it.

Thank you.

Are you kicking me out the door?

My party is going fast crazy.

And you know what they say about men with small hats?

I hope the president's watching tonight.

Because here's what I'd like to tell him: we are going to kick your rear end out of the White House come this fall.

Nobody knows me.

It's Kasich.

It rhymes with Basin.

And the next President of the United States, Ted Cruz.

You know, the amazing thing is that basketball ring,

here in Indiana, it's the same height as it is in New York City and every other place in this country.

It's a tradition.

All right, he is the Oscar-nominated actor who reprises his Tony-winning role as LBJ in the HBO film All the Way, premiering May 21st.

Brian Cranston will go with you.

Brian Cranston, everybody.

Brian Cranston.

Hello, I'm Jay.

How are you?

Good to be here.

Look, they love you.

Wow.

You are.

I was giving out free oxycontinent.

Well, they love you because you are a great thespian.

I said thespian.

But it's true.

I mean, this movie, I was watching it.

First of all, all the way, it sounds like one of those teen comedies where they lose their virginity.

But it's really about LBJ.

And so you did this on Broadway.

I did.

Okay.

Your look practiced in the party.

I mean,

as far as historical dramas go, I mean, sometimes people get the accent, sometimes they get the look, and sometimes they get the essence of the person, and I felt you got all three.

Thank you.

I mean, you are LBJ.

I felt like

Brian Cranston disappeared like within the first 10 seconds.

Well, that's LBB.

That's the best thing that anyone could say.

Right, yeah, you know, it surprises me.

Two and a half hours in makeup, and they start putting it on, and I can see him start to come to the surface.

Right.

And it really helps.

So let's edutain the kids,

who are not quite as old as us, about LBJ because a lot of them, you know, those are just initials in a history book.

He came along, of course, he was Kennedy's vice president.

Right.

And then when Kennedy was shot, he took over.

Wait, what?

Yeah.

You didn't do the background.

I missed that part.

I don't know.

You just read your lines and stuff.

Wow.

My stuff, my stuff, my stuff.

Bullshit, bullshit.

My line.

Of course.

That's how actors are.

But I always thought that this movie, as I watched it, would be a great companion piece to Spielberg's Lincoln because they're both about presidents.

First of all, they're both entertaining about procedural matters, which is a very hard thing to do.

But they're both about presidents who saw a window, a brief window, to get legislation passed, both about our original sin of racism

and took that opportunity.

And that's what you played.

True.

And almost exactly 100 years after Lincoln, in 1964,

LBJ was able to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and he knew that he would have a honeymoon period after the assassination.

There was a period of time that the Congress and the citizens of this country would be all in.

We'll do whatever you want.

We need to heal.

Because of the sympathy for Kennedy.

The sympathy for him.

And so he knew it was, he had that window of opportunity.

And within six months, he passed this legendary.

But it was hardly easy.

Oh, no.

God, no.

That's the way I remember it, because I was only a child.

Oh, Kennedy died, so they did whatever he wanted.

Hardly.

No.

And of course, I think what makes me love this movie so much is that when you think of LBJ, you think of the consummate politician, the arm twister.

But what you find out here is that he really believed in it.

There was a moral

center to him.

He really wanted to be, and of course, as a southern president, had to be a southern president who would drag his part of the country out of the past, out of their racist.

For a hundred years, the Dixiecrats had

a lock on the South, and in 1964, that changed it all.

Right.

I mean, he tells that story.

I mean, you do it in the movie about, I guess, a black person who worked for him who used to drive back to his ranch

and

couldn't go to the bathroom.

Right.

Had to pull over to the side of the road.

Pee in the

field.

On the side of the road.

She had to pee like a dog.

That's just not right.

See?

Sounds just like it.

it.

You really.

He would use any means necessary to get what he needed to get done.

Back in his day,

politics ran on the horse trade.

He knew that if I needed something from you, I'm going to find out what you need and I'm going to make sure we do that.

The other thing that was different back then is they often socialized.

with senators and congressmen from the other side.

They knew their wives and the kids' names.

So that the next day, when it came came time to really iron out a policy, I'm not going to throw this person under the bus.

I like him.

He has a nice wife.

And so come on, let's, damn it, let's figure this out.

Right, that guy, Uncle Dick, who's

Richard Russell, Richard Russell from Georgia, right, who was his mentor.

But also a segregationist.

Right.

But they used to have dinner together every week.

All the time.

So that made a difference.

Yeah.

So I hear that you do, I mean, I've heard of a double take.

And once in a while, it's rare, but you see someone do a triple take.

I understand, Brian Cranzon, that you can do a quadruple take.

And I said, when I heard it, I said, this is not possible.

I mean, he's a great thespian.

But no one could

take it.

No one could do it.

I just did it.

You missed it.

No one could do a quadruple take.

What?

And a spit take at the same time.

Okay.

I did miss it.

Twice.

So the interesting part of this movie is that the people who

were having to, in their view, give up their way of life when the 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed felt that they were being discriminated against, that they were the ones who were being made to suffer.

And it reminded me so much of

the gay marriage argument.

So many, I think, people in this country who were against that, the Kim Davises of the world, were like, what about our rights?

What about our right to take away your rights?

Yeah.

And you see that these

things aren't new.

The biggest argument that the South had, the Dixocrats, were, take time.

We don't need to change things quickly.

It's only been a hundred years.

Oh, it's 100 years.

You know, and that's,

it was something that LBJ

needed to risk.

He knew he had to risk that.

And he did.

He risked it.

He lost the support of all the Dixiecrats come 1964.

Right.

Well,

what do you think about the fact that

bathrooms, because we were talking about the bathroom thing,

is again an issue in this country, that transgender people somehow have got risen to the top of the political charts about where they can go to the bathroom.

you know, groups are running.

The American Family Association has said it's collected over a million signatures online to

get back at Target for saying you can shit where you want.

And it's,

which is

really demagogue.

They couldn't demagogue anymore about gays and lesbians because too many of us are out and too many people know us.

So they took the same old script.

Oh, they're recruiting children, preying on children, threatening children, creeping in bathrooms.

That was the script, that was what they said about gay men 40 years ago.

And they're just taking that and applying it now to trans women.

And it's bullshit.

And trans women and men use bathrooms all over the country and have forever.

And they have actually no cases to point to where a trans person has exploited a civil rights protection to pray on a child.

There are lots of cases where...

Wait, is it about Mexicans?

It isn't.

Well, I can make it about Mexicans.

I will say.

Instead of building a wall, we need to build a stall that's beautiful,

tremendous, huge.

Maybe that's what Trump meant.

Yeah.

I built stalls all along the border.

And I'll make Caitlin Jenna pay for it.

No.

Trump said Caitlin could use the bathroom.

He's good on this.

Exactly.

He doesn't care about drugs.

That's right.

I think we're growing up as a society.

And there's even the nation prejudice.

No, I think it's a temporary respite.

I think that people hate Mexicans.

The Republican base hated Mexican.

It's more racist than they are transphobic.

And so Tom Trump won that, but it'll be back.

But the relitigation is a very important thing.

No, no, I just can't wait.

No, I can't make the alternative argument.

Yes, please.

We can get back to that.

First of all, I completely reject the comparison of either Mexicans, since you brought them up, illegal aliens or gays to the black experience in America.

And I think that's an important point that always needs to be made.

And I agree that.

They're brought here as slaves and discriminated against.

That is a special experience, and I hate that comparison all the time.

And I would say that the argument on the bathrooms, it's not that transgendered people are going to go and molest children.

It's that once you say men can go into women's bathrooms, men who are out shopping with their little daughters and don't have mommy to bring her in there, it's not that the trans are going to molest them.

It's that a child molester now has the right to go into that bathroom.

That's bullshit.

A child molester doesn't need to put on a dress to enter a bathroom.

You can Google

sexually assaulted in a restroom and you get thousands of examples of cisgender straight men.

You know who the child molester is?

It's Dennis Hastert.

Yes.

who is sitting watching boys shower year after year in a lazy boy chair because he wanted to make sure nothing weird was going on and so he watched the boys shower I saw in the paper today Joe Praterna was aware of Jerry Sandusky in 1976 this is the child molesting we

it's not about that that makes your argument against Republicanism doesn't make your argument for him that

men will not become

excited about me get back to the bigger, more important point, which is, and it's good, I think the Republican Party has gotten over their obsession with these web issues.

I don't think wedge issues.

I'm sorry.

Because Donald Trump, they had their choice to pick Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee, Ted Cruz, all these people who prayed their way across the country, and they opted for the New Yorker with three wives who doesn't give a shit about any of this.

He doesn't care about gay marriage.

He doesn't care about where people go to the bathroom.

I mean, he says, nobody reads the Bible more than me.

No one actually believes.

Number two,

Corinthians.

Number two.

Number two.

I was going number two Corinthians at the time.

So this is good news.

I mean, I think it's a temporary.

I don't think you can attach that to it.

Yeah, let's wait three more election cycles and see what it is.

Because we're litigating access to birth control.

We thought that was a settled issue, that even people who opposed abortion were for birth control.

But suddenly...

Bobby Jindal made Plan B, or he wants to make a contraception.

He's a religious Catholic, or was a governor of Louisiana.

He wanted to make it over the counter.

I worry about some of the same issues.

I don't think this is temporary.

Only 26% of the population identifies this.

I was going to say, maybe it's time

for a viable third party that is socially conscious but yet fiscally responsible.

What happened to those people?

Those are called Democrats.

No.

No, they're not.

Right.

It's the Democratic Party.

That is kind of true.

It's a libertarian.

Okay, so the other

million.

But now that we're in a place where the only thing that

the only thing that perhaps stands between us and the end of civilization is Hillary Cooper,

what should Hillary's strategy be against Donald Trump?

Because I saw she was trying to trot out, and I think they're just testing things now, that he is a loose cannon.

I don't know if that's going to work.

I think that's what he says.

Certainly what his fans like about him, that he is a great Dane released into a toddler's birthday party.

He just fucks everything up.

So how do you go at this guy who is a walking brain for it,

who will say anything?

Because certainly the Republicans, the other ones, never found a strategy that even touched Godzilla.

What should be her strategy?

But the Republican Trump.

Republican, other candidates were competing for the votes of the batshit Republican base.

We're in a different place now.

You're voting for Hillary, right?

Of course I'm voting for Hillary.

Of course.

I mean, you know, this is, we don't have, you know, know, we have two bad choices as far as I'm concerned.

They're equally, and in their own way, the lesser of two evils is less evil.

No, but what I'm saying is

that.

And I don't think she's evil, but pivoting off the argument that she's terrible.

No, no, no.

But I'm saying, so what is her strategy then?

Because the minute she starts talking about stuff, people are going to be like, oh, I remember why I didn't vote for her in 2008.

Right.

I remember that she's an idiot who said that, you know, fucking, you know, that Libya, she points to the invasion of Libya in her latest book and still talks about it as a great moment of smart power.

It's like, are you fucking kidding?

We've destroyed the country.

First of all, it wasn't her decision.

She knows what she's defended it.

She's defended.

And by the way, we didn't invade Libya.

It was a humanitarian management when people were wrong saw.

Are you kidding me?

You know what?

First of all, Ronald Reagan would have done the exact same thing.

So what worse he was absolutely.

You're saying you are anti-war, right, in general.

What were we doing in Libya?

And And how can you say

if you're the citizenship?

How did it work out well?

It didn't work out well, but you're forgetting about why it happened, because people were about to be slaughtered by Gaddafi.

Yes, you conveniently forget that.

Yeah, no, no, I don't know.

What happened is that Obama made a speech that, again, if it was Ronald Reagan, you would have gotten a hard-on.

I absolutely agree.

Where he said the United States is not like any other country.

We can't just ignore shit like this.

The United States is different.

And they all got a tear in their eyes.

own.

No, that's exactly what happened.

Do you agree with

the true Reagan policy, not like these pretenders?

Cut and run.

No, do you agree?

Like you did in Lebanon?

That was the right thing.

Everything remembers.

That wasn't the right thing.

We shouldn't have been there in the first place.

Okay.

But he put us there.

But I'm just saying.

I'm still trying to find an answer to the question.

There were three military interventions.

There were 250 people killed.

That's the big cowboy, you know, Mr.

I'm going to go constantly bomb people.

There were three military interventions under Reagan in eight years yeah by today's Republican Party standards Reagan was

killed in Cornada and then there were amnesty for millions

want to go to war constantly and the Democrats Hillary should stay focused on on the issues and and take the high ground so it shows greater contrast to her

her opponent.

Don't get sucked into his energy.

If you get sucked into that vortex, she will swirl down the toilet.

Right.

I agree with that.

Okay, stay calm and stay confident.

I think her best move, I'm with the two of them, her best move is to get indicted so that no one hears her talk anymore because if she's just out of the picture.

She's going to scream on.

Indicted for what?

I'm coming up with strategies for her.

I'm not saying she shouldn't be.

You know what?

Nobody hates Hillary once she's in.

Everybody hated Hillary when she was running for the Senate.

Once she was a senator, everybody loves Hillary.

Everybody hated Hillary when she was running for president.

Once she was Secretary of State, we saw her all the time.

She did a great job.

She was a very

why does she have a 55 percent unfavorable maybe there is a right-wing hit machine that's been after her for 30 years and that's not an exact right

that's exactly right so Hillary is there's nothing wrong with Hillary Hillary is the perfect

she's not even our first choice she well this is what I'm saying though she is unliked okay and she's who the fuck are you voting for what I am going to vote for Paul Ryan when he makes his decision I'm going to vote for the Libertarian candidate who the hell is that It's probably going to be Gary Johnson.

Oh, Bill Reagan.

Here, it's

a former two-term governor of New Mexico.

You got about a million votes left.

I love libertarians, but they never succeed in the libertarian market of getting votes.

Yeah, sure.

And there's a reason for them.

There's a reason for that.

All right.

Everybody, shut the fuck up.

It's time for New Roll.

New roll, now that Hamilton, a musical where black and Hispanic men play singing, dancing, founding fathers, has garnered a record 16 Tony nominations, someone has to write a show where boring white guys play slaves who just stand there and talk and call it 12 years a primary.

Neuro, the biomedical company that announced plans to bring dead people back to life through stem cell therapy, must promise to never use it on Abraham Lincoln.

Because if he saw what happened to his party, he'd he'd head straight back to the theater.

Neural Thai restaurants and Thai massage parlors must merge and offer a rub and grub combo stuff.

Oh, they'll do it.

Neural, the biotech company that wants to use drones to deliver organs to patients has to not do that.

Imagine telling a patient the good news is we found a donor.

The bad news is your liver is stuck in a tree.

New roll, this couple caught openly having sex on a subway platform have to hurry up and finish already.

It's frustrating enough wondering when the train is going to come.

And finally, new rules, since 80 countries in the world have elected a woman leader, but not the United States of us yet.

We must admit that when it comes to being progressive, we are often late to the party.

And if you need further proof, this Sunday, which is Mother's Day, think about the fact.

that when my mother was born, women in America could not vote.

My My mother,

not some far distant relative I discovered on Ancestry.com.

My mother, who was born in 1919, the year before women got the vote.

Of course, by the time she had me in 1956, things for women had really changed.

How much?

I'll leave that to Rex Harrison to explain.

He played Professor Henry Higgins when My Fair Lady opened on Broadway in 1956.

Hit it, Rex.

women are irrational.

That's all there is to that.

Their heads are full of cotton hay and rags.

They're nothing but exasperating, irritating, vacillating, calculating, agitating, maddening, and infuriating hags.

And he's the hero.

But that was how women were viewed in the 1950s.

Irrational, pouty, vain, thin-skinned, hysterical, and just not that bright.

Does that sound like anyone we know today?

Who?

Who?

Oh, Lord.

Him.

Yes, Donald Trump, who says that if Hillary Clinton was a man, she wouldn't get 5% of the vote.

And if Trump was a man, he'd stop whining like a little bitch.

This is a guy who actually brags about his prowess at whining.

I am a whiner and I'm a whiner and I keep whining and whining until I win.

Yes, it's the I Love Lucy School of Diplomacy.

Does anyone fit the stereotypical 50s description of a woman better than Donald Trump?

Any cringe-inducing line they ever said about a secretary on Mad Men is true about Trump.

And yet, he's the one with the penis.

And we know that because if you make fun of it, he'll be up all night tweeting about how great it is.

He accuses Megan Kelly of being menstrual, but for him, that time of the month is always.

Has there anyone, ever been anyone more thin-skinned?

I made a joke about his father being an orangutan once

and he marched into court with his birth certificate and sued me because he's a whany little bitch and if he's not suing you

If he's not suing you he's threatening to sue you or demanding an apology or threatening to spill the beans He did that a few months ago when he was still battling Ted Cruz and someone posted a picture of his wife he didn't like so he tweeted he'd spill the beans about Ted's wife and then literally told the press he started it

just like Teddy Roosevelt would do

yes a billionaire and a United States senator in the girls shower throwing tampons at Carrie

I sure hope this man gets elected so the world respects us again.

And I mean this in no way to disparage vaginas, but what a pussy.

I mean, who gets more hysterical than Lady Donald Trump, seeing Mexican rapists everywhere?

Oh, my salts, my salts.

We must build a wall, a giant wall, and ban all the Muslims.

He makes Lindsey Graham look like Vin Diesel.

This isn't presidential, it's Glenn Close boiling the rabbit.

And like the daffy typical housewife of the 50s, Lady Trump is the one who can't balance a checkbook.

Trump Airlines, Trump Casinos, Trump University, Trump Stakes.

He's got the Midas touch of every time Midas touched something, it exploded.

I could go on, but instead I'd like to turn it back over to Rex Harrison to sum it all up.

Why is thinking something women never do?

And why is logic never even tried?

Straightening up their hair is all they ever do.

Why don't they straighten up the mess that's inside?

So.

So never forget, Lady Trump, that Hillary Clinton was born a woman, but you chose to live your life as a...

Say it with me, won't you?

Whiny little bitch.

Which is why if Hillary is the Democratic nominee, I'll be voting for the only one who has balls.

All right, that's our show.

I'll be at the King Center in Melbourne, Florida, May 15th, and at the Mirage back in Vegas, July 22nd and 23rd.

I want to thank Nick Gillespie, Dan Savage, Ann Coulter, Brian Crenson, and Richard Tate.

Join us now for Overtime on YouTube.

Thank you, folks.

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

For more information, log on to HBO.com.