Episode #380 (Originally aired 03/11/16)

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.

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 Ma.

Please.

Please.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Oh, wow.

What a crowd.

What a...

Okay, I...

Please, I.

I.

I think I know why this crowd is happy.

Because Bernie Sanders had a huge upset victory on Tuesday in the Michigan primary when

Bernie Sanders?

No?

Okay.

Maybe I'm in the wrong building.

I don't know.

Usually we got a big Bernie contingent here, but he kills it with the young people.

Bernie won 83% of people under 30.

Apparently old Jews

are the new trucker hat.

That's what I was thinking.

And this despite the fact that he had said ghetto in the debate up there, he used the word ghetto.

This is one of those rules, you know, that I didn't know was a rule until they tell you it's a rule.

Can't say ghetto, which is so ghetto.

But he did well there.

Now the race moving to Florida.

Both parties had their debates down there.

Hillary and Bernie had their debate for Univision.

Did you see that?

Yeah, they were pandering to that Latino audience, I gotta say.

At one point, Hillary said that her private server ran on Mac and didn't do Windows.

I thought that was

a little.

And did you see the beginning of the debate?

What appeared to be a Latino teenager came out dressed in a mariachi outfit to sing the national anthem.

So it's good to see Marco Rubio getting worked because he's...

Yes, and Morning, we won't let out Hillary on the email stuff.

Jorge Romo said to her, if you get indicted,

Will you drop out?

Okay, just can we review this here?

First of all, she had a private server, which all her predecessors as Secretary of State had.

All the government officials have.

None of the things she did were illegal.

All the emails were not classified at the time she sent them out.

But the question we have to keep asking her is, will you be taken alive?

And can you guarantee that your DNA is not on that knife they found at OJ's house?

We don't know until we ask.

Now, on the Republican side, Trump also won Michigan, had a huge,

huge night.

Really?

Okay.

No, no.

We won all types here.

Well, your boy's doing very well.

He had a huge night on Tuesday.

So good.

He did so good on Tuesday.

He is now pivoting to the general election, asking the other Republicans to unite behind him and talking about how he's very presidential.

He had a press conference after his big victory Tuesday and said, I am the most presidential one since.

And he went, I got to go back to Abe Lincoln.

I'm not, I can't make this up.

That's what he said.

He was so presidential.

He felt the need to refute, product by product, the allegations that his opponents had made, that some of his business ventures had failed.

So he stood there.

You saw this, right in front of a table full of Trump water, Trump wine, Trump vodka, Trump steaks.

Who advises this man, Kanye West?

What the?

You know, and

it's working.

That's the thing.

It's not stopping him.

Everyone comes up to me these days and says, Bill, could Trump really be president?

Yeah.

Fuck you.

Although, here's a little bit of hope.

You know, I know, nothing seems to stop this guy, whatever you throw at him.

Do you ever see the movie War of the Worlds, Tom Cruise movie?

Right?

That gives me hope.

Because

if you remember the movie, the space invaders are just totally kicking our ass.

I mean, they got the tripods, they got the force fields around them, nothing can stop them, and then they just die.

They just die.

Nobody does anything, just fucking die.

I mean, it's like

they got to page 100 in the script and went, fuck it, they just died.

Just

have Morgan Freeman come here and do a voiceover.

They get the flu or something, and that's my fantasy.

Trump will be up there one day.

I am the greatest.

He just died.

That's it.

So that's the fantasy.

Say what you want about Donald Trump.

He has made sucker punching great again.

You saw this yesterday?

This, oh man, is this ugly.

This guy sucker punched this guy.

A Trump supporter punched a protester, sucker punched him.

And he said, why did he do it?

Because he was not acting like an American.

And he was deliberately going out of his way to be black.

And then the police arrest the black guy.

Did you see that?

And they charged him with resisting assault.

What the f?

And

Trump asked about it, basically excused it.

He said his supporter, this is his quote, he said his supporters have anger that's unbelievable.

He said they love this country.

They don't like seeing bad trade deals.

They don't like to see bad, higher taxes.

And naturally, the answer to bad trade deals and higher taxes is punching black people.

I think that's obvious.

I mean, this stuff doesn't happen at anybody else's rallies, punching and shoving and spitting and kicking.

Although at a Sanders rally this week, a man was warned about ketching.

Not exactly an equivalency, but.

So, but again, it doesn't seem to stop him.

You know who endorsed him?

He announced it last night.

Today, Dr.

Ben Carson has endorsed Donald Trump.

He gave a whole speech about it.

Unfortunately, the speech was cut short when a Trump supporter punched him in the face.

And

we should note a sad passing this week.

Nancy Reagan, former First Lady, was

lovingly laid to rest today beside the remains of the Republican Party.

President Obama did not attend the funeral, which of course made Republicans furious, although I thought he had a good answer there.

He said he was paying homage to Nancy Reagan by just saying no.

And

to give Nancy her credit,

you who are too young to remember the 80s, Just Say No was a huge campaign.

It was on everybody's lips, a lot of media coverage, very successful.

And for us stoners at the time,

it made getting high a little more fun.

It did.

And

I'll just say this.

Something spooky.

a little bit spooky is going here going on here at real time because two weeks ago I mentioned Antonin Scalia and he died later that night and last week I mentioned Nancy Reagan and she died the next day.

So this is a reminder life is short.

We all have to go sometime.

And a quick story about Dick Cheney.

I did don't write.

No, no, no.

No, no.

Okay, okay.

I know.

I don't wish Dick Cheney dead, okay?

I can't control that anyway.

So you're going to write in.

All right, we've got a great show.

Bill Crystal, Monica Meta, Sam Steiner here, a little bit particularly with journalist and author Maria Konakova.

But first up, she's a staff writer for The New Yorker, and her latest book is Dark Money, The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right.

Jane Mayer.

Hey, Jane.

Nice to see you again.

How you doing?

You.

Nice to be with you.

Yes.

Okay.

So.

Say somebody hasn't really been following American politics like most of the American electorate.

how would you explain to them who are the Koch brothers?

Because that's mostly who you're talking about in the book.

Well, they are the fifth and sixth richest Americans.

They're brothers.

Together, they're worth about $90 billion.

$90 billion.

$90 billion.

And they...

Huge.

It's even huger than some other candidates are.

And even though they have never been elected to any office, they have huge influence over American politics.

They've put together a group of investors.

They're very conservative.

They've brought together 400 of the other richest conservative people in the country to pool their money, and they've got a kiddie now that they say is $889 million, which they'd like to spend in the 2016 election cycle to influence the outcome.

And what is their goal?

What do they want?

Well, so the brothers are Charles Koch and David Koch.

And Charles has said his favorite president is Calvin Coolidge.

And

they would basically,

which is sort of telling because the Kokes are really anti-governmental.

So they would like to bring the country back.

They see all regulation as tyranny.

They do.

Because they're in the oil and

gas and coal business.

They're a huge fossil fuel company with a terrible record of pollution.

They don't like government regulators.

They've been taken to court by them a number of times.

And they'd like to push the country back back to sort of where it was in the day right robber baron era.

And you see that in their background I mean you go into extensively about the father was one of the founders of the John Birch Society which was made the tea baggers you know look like hippies.

They were the originals, yes.

They were the originals.

They were.

And they both thought Eisenhower was too liberal.

Well they thought Eisenhower was a communist.

The John Birch Society believed that the government was being taken over by communists.

And so Fred Koch, the father, was one one of the founders, as you said.

He also was,

interestingly, someone who made his fortune partly by building oil refineries for Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union.

And then he went on and built one for Adolf Hitler, where he was a very good person.

So he was bipartisan.

He had to work for the left and the right.

Well, that's interesting.

It's interesting as a sort of source of one of America's great

families and businesses.

It's

a very secretive company.

It's Coke Industries.

Many Americans know its products, but they don't know they are made by Coke Industries.

And also, wasn't the nanny a Nazi?

The nanny was a Nazi in this family.

The nanny was a Nazi.

It was very interesting.

It sounds like a fun movie, doesn't it?

The nanny was a Nazi.

Well, Fred Koch, the dad, was in Germany doing business with the Third Reich, and he wrote home in 1938, which was not too long before World War II, saying there were three countries that were were great at that time.

Germany, Japan, and Italy.

The Axis powers, yes.

And so, and he brought home a nanny for his boys who was.

So he brought her from Germany.

Yes, she was actually a Nazi sympathizer.

And when Hitler invaded France in 1940, she went back because she wanted to celebrate.

So she left the family.

And this was the woman who brought up Charles Koch in his earliest years.

She was apparently a horrible disciplinarian, and it was a kind of family that has incredible problems that you really could not make out.

One of the brothers is gay, right?

I mean, these are the two

four brothers.

The two that are in politics and doing all this evil.

They're not the only ones.

There's a gay one, right?

The oldest.

There are two missing brothers from the Koch brothers general picture.

And the oldest one, Fred, he says he's not gay.

Three of his brothers accused him of being gay and in fact said they were going to tell dad that he was gay unless he turned over his shares in the company the family company to them

and so they tried to blackmail him with this he lives in New York he's a fantastic backer of the arts and they he sounds gay

he's from a generation backer of the arts the Koch brothers hate him

he's from a generation that doesn't discuss that so much but this family had epic fights.

They went through

two of the brothers sued two of the other brothers for 20 years.

They all inherited about $300 million from their father, but they still sued because they wanted more.

And they wanted control of the family company.

And two won, and that's the ones we think of the Koch brothers as, Charles and David Koch.

And they're very involved in American politics.

So there's a Trump supporter in our audience tonight.

And by the way, none of the liberals are punching her.

So I'm sure she and many other conservatives watching this are saying, well, what about

the left?

They have sugar daddies like George Soros.

Could you address what I would consider to be a false equivalence on that?

Because I hear that a lot of people.

You asked me that.

I'm glad I did, too.

So I wrote a piece for those who think that the New Yorker doesn't write about liberal money too.

I wrote a piece about George Soros.

At his height, he put $20 million into American politics in 2004.

This year, 20 million.

This year, the Koch brothers and their group of friends are putting $889 million into American politics.

That kind of gives you something of the scale.

And there's really never been anything quite like what we're looking at this year.

One group of unelected, incredibly rich people who've almost formed their own plutocratic party in order to try to pick the next leader.

And this is why I gave Obama a million bucks.

A lot of good it did me.

To get the left billionaires, because there are lots of rich people on the left, to realize, you know, you've got to get in this game.

The game has changed since Citizens United.

And the thing about George Soros also is that he's fighting for raising his taxes.

He's not fighting greedily and selfishly like the Koch brothers.

Well, and also for transparency.

And I think one of the most troubling things that you've got to keep in mind about the Kochs is that so much of what they do is in secret because they use groups that are supposed to be philanthropic groups that can hide their donors.

And they pour money through these groups.

So you can't really see who the donors are.

The group they have, 400, 500 people, they won't release the names of these people.

So people in the country can't see who's in it.

I mean, in my book, I write a lot about who they really are, though, and their tremendous fossil fuel interests, the biggest frackers in the country.

The man who started Home Depot.

I hope he's not an advertiser.

We don't have advertising.

Okay.

Jane, you're on HBO.

All right.

It's a great book.

You're a great reporter.

Thank you very much.

All right, let's meet our panel.

That's all right.

I'll be next.

All right, here they are.

He is the senior politics editor at the the Huffington Post, our friend Sam Stein.

How you doing, Sam?

She's a financial expert and a managing principal at 7th Capital.

Monica Meta back with us.

Hey, Monica.

And he is the founder and editor of the Weekly Standard and an ABC News contributor, our friend Bill Crystal over here once again.

Hey, Bill.

Okay, so

we saw the video of the guy sucker punching.

How much does Donald Trump really have their responsibility?

I think a lot.

I do too.

Go on, Sam.

I'm so glad you're jumping in.

All right, well, thank you.

First of all, Bill didn't like your monologue about Dick Cheney.

He was twitching in the back there.

I think when you tell your crowd that you yourself want to punch someone in the audience, that you missed the days when people were taking out in stretchers, you're kind of sending a signal to your audience that it's okay to do stuff.

It reminds me of the abortion doctor thing, you know.

How so?

Well, you know, there are like right-wing people who said if an abortion doctor gets killed, that would be a good thing.

And then some nut goes and does it, and they say, We didn't actually say he should do it, but you pretty much put the idea in some borderline guy's head.

Exactly.

And that's sort of what's going on here.

And again, this doesn't happen on the left or even among the other candidates on the right.

This is purely a Trump phenomenon.

Today he had to cancel a rally in Chicago because it was going to get too out of hand.

Doesn't this

I don't know if it was a good thing.

I think Trump is definitely fanning the flames, but there's a genuine frustration out there.

And it's emulated, and it's, you can pick up after looking at how much he's actually spent running for president.

So in early January, he had only spent about $12.5 million on his campaign.

So, but see the momentum and see the eruption from people.

There's definitely a tidal wave of angry people.

And he's tapped into this frustration.

Is he causing the anger though?

I don't think that you could cause this.

I think to a certain extent it was there already.

You can make it worse, absolutely.

There is a lot of anger there.

But can we just get to what he says?

Because a lot of the reason why people are angry is because he lies horribly, like they all do at the debates.

Nobody checks them on it.

There's that old saying, you know, dance like no one's watching.

He lies like no one is fact-checking.

And no one does.

Now,

like last night at the debate, he said our GDP was zero.

It grew 3.9%

last quarter.

All jobs are gone.

We added 6 million the last

two years.

We've had job growth for 72 months straight.

It's a record.

The military has been gutted.

They keep saying this.

Obviously, that's not true.

It's been steadily increasing through Bush, through Obama.

It doesn't bother you that somebody lies like this, that somebody tells the American people who without a viable media or without any means to check this.

Of course it's bothersome.

I mean, but he spouts 20 lies a minute that it becomes almost impossible to call light on a single one.

And so you end up trying to grab over here.

And that's not even getting to Trump's stakes, which are atrocious.

And he says that they're good.

They're terrible.

Trump also exists because there is this feeling that politicians are pre-fabbed phonies and their answers are all blow-dried.

Like, I would like all the time I've ever spent watching any debate ever back because there's just this genuine feeling that your lips are moving, but you're lying to me and I don't know what you're doing.

So, I mean, yes, he embellishes the truth, but I think it's embellishes.

He exaggerates wildly.

He exaggerates wildly, but I can see clearly why.

He's trying to get attention, and

he's trying to fund his campaign in a completely different way than everyone else is funding him.

But that's a lie itself.

If he says crazy things, the cameras will be pointed right there, and like monkeys, they are.

And this is a reason to support a candidate.

It's not a reason to support a candidate.

So you don't support him.

How are we supposed to be angry about the insane amount of money that it takes to run for office?

Bernie does it pretty well.

Well,

Bernie.

Donald Trump says if he is elected, he'll appoint a Supreme Court justice like Clarence Thomas.

So that's not a formula for getting rid of Citizens United.

That's a formula for keeping it.

Silence.

Look.

I mean, I loathe Donald Trump, and I hope we defeat him for the Republican nomination.

It's good that you yearned for the good old days when Dick Cheney was up there giving fact-based answers.

A serious, honorable politician.

Don't you agree?

Don't you agree?

No.

Why?

What?

Doc?

Dick Cheney.

Dick Cheney was honest.

Dick Cheney was straightforward.

Dick Cheney was straightforward.

Yeah,

he was so honest when he said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

And he was...

I believe.

I'm sure Iraq didn't have weapons of mass destruction, Bill.

I don't recall if that's true.

Well, the UN inspectors said they didn't.

That's not correct, actually.

But anyway,

anyway,

I will defend the other politicians.

I agree with you.

Trump is horrible, and he is partly responsible for the violence.

I agree with that very much.

Dick Cheney would not say, go ahead and punch people or whatever.

But let me just

come back to Dick Cheney one more time.

Look, I cannot make Dick Cheney die, just so you know about it.

I'm worried.

I'm worried.

I've made it.

I told you.

I don't worry.

You liberals in Hollywood are very powerful people.

We are very powerful.

No, no.

And by the way, Bill, even if I could, I wouldn't.

I don't like him, but I wouldn't make him die.

How about that?

I really like that.

And I knew you wouldn't, Bill.

I just want you to know that.

But

listen to this.

49% of Americans say the United States is number one in the world militarily.

49% say it is not.

That's half the people who are

so dead stupid, fucking wrong.

Who put this idea in their head?

I'll tell you who.

All the Republican candidates.

Let's go.

Trump said last night, we don't get any victories.

First of all, how is this not insulting the military?

Actually, our military had a pretty good week this week.

We smoked al-Shabaab.

We smoked ISIS.

Okay.

Here's Marco Rubio.

America's influence has declined while the president has destroyed our military.

Utter lie.

Ted Cruz, Barack Obama, right now, number one over seven years, has dramatically degraded our military.

Utter lie.

Donald Trump, we don't win with the military.

We don't win with the military.

We can't beat ISIS.

We don't win anything.

How come these guys are the patriots who the military likes?

They want to build up the military, which doesn't matter.

The military has not been degraded.

It has been cut.

It's way below what Barack Obama, Secretary of Defense, said it should be in 2011.

Well, anyway, but look at frustration, which was a bipartisan.

Yes, which was a terrible mistake.

Which was a terrible

No, it's a bipartisan problem.

The bigger problem here is that you end up having an electorate that thinks that we're on the precipice of total internal destruction, and they get really mad.

And now we're at this point where you're actually seeing images out of Chicago that are pretty grotesque and actually legitimately scary.

And you can easily imagine a rally down the road where this ends up in a pretty, pretty dark place.

I mean, violent, violent stuff.

And this isn't really how it's ever been, ever.

Okay, so let me ask another question about a lie at the debate last night.

The debate was in Miami.

21 mayors from around Florida asked, begged the moderator, which was Jake Tapper, last night, since the Fox News people will never even bring the issue up, to ask a question about climate change since Florida could be the place that gets underwater.

Okay, Marco Rubio went through the greatest hits of climate denial bullshit.

The weather is all with

and here are those greatest hits.

The weather is always changing, true of course, but has nothing to do with climate change caused by carbon emissions.

He said, is it changing because of something we're doing?

Like that's a question.

Even if it is changing, no law can change the weather.

Bullshit.

I've lived here for 30 years.

We used to have what they called ring around the city because the cars were had catalytic converters.

We don't have the ring around the city anymore.

You can,

first of all,

climate is not weather, but they gloss over that.

London used to be foggy.

They wrote songs about it.

It's not anymore because they stopped burning coal.

So yes, of course you can write laws.

It could be called a carbon tax.

Well, the funny thing was that he went through this whole spiel and then at the end he gave this very uplifting speech about his father coming to America.

He said, and America can do anything it puts its mind to

except climate change.

You know, they can't do that, you know?

Well, because

it would devastate our economy.

You know what devastates an economy?

Being underwater.

Yeah, Miami fish.

That's so terrible for an economy.

It's good that you have this wonderful faith in every liberal, you know, trope and verity.

So you don't believe in climate change?

I do believe that there's been climate change.

There's the little ice age 300 300 years ago, Holland's canals were frozen.

But I mean,

human beings.

Are you really going to that one?

That's a true fact.

What do you mean going to that one?

Well, you don't believe that there's been cycles in the climate over the centuries?

But that is.

Human activity has contributed probably to global warming over the last century.

It has.

Maybe it definitely has.

I'm not a scientist.

Oh, good.

But we can have a serious policy debate.

But you are, though.

They do study this.

I would like to have a serious policy debate.

Well, we don't because one party denies that it exists because the Koch brothers give them

a lot of people.

We waste all of our time talking about the wrong things.

I mean, we have to accept at a point that this is happening, and we can only come up with a good policy when we actually accept that this is happening.

And then we can focus on where the efforts, where the dollars can go so that we can make maximum investment.

The problem is climate change is sort of a gradual menace, right?

We don't see the threat imminently.

If Miami, for instance, were to be subject to a potential terrorist attack, I'm assuming the neoconservative wing of the Republican Party would do everything in their power and devote tons of resources to stop it.

But we don't see Miami under that type of threat when it comes to rising sea levels.

So you have to actually educate people about the severity of the threat if you want to get any action.

Okay.

So let me ask you this.

The cover of Time magazine today is a picture of Nancy and Ronald Reagan, and it says, what happened to this party?

I'm not making fun of Nancy Reagan.

She's like a very nice lady, and she made a fine president in the last two years of his administration.

That That is, and that is.

Poor Bill.

The last two years of Reagan's administration were extremely successful.

Maybe you're not aware of that.

Iran confused.

The Soviet UN.

Yes.

How about the collapse of the Soviet Union?

People like you were laughing about Reagan in 1981.

How ridiculous his foreign policies would be nuclear when there would be a nuclear war.

He would never defeat the Soviet Union.

It would never liberate the United States.

He did it single-handedly by himself.

It was a 40-year effort.

Lots of people defeated the Soviet Union.

He was there and presided at the moment when it collapsed.

Huge defense buildup was a problem.

Yes,

that's right.

And you're right.

He gets credit for that.

But it wouldn't have happened if he was the president in the 60s.

It had to happen when they were ready to fall anyway.

Anyway, the question I was going to ask is,

it's wonderful that we can decide after the fact that these things were inevitable.

Well, it was.

A New York City crime rate would have gone down by 50% if Rudy Giuliani hadn't had tough on crime policies.

Is that right?

It was inevitable in 1993

that the Dinkins mayoralty was going to lead to a reduction in crime policy.

This one took a a turn.

Yeah, that would take a lot of time.

Republican policy with people like you mocking tough on crime.

People like me.

Okay.

Your people.

You people too.

But Nancy Reagan consulted an astrologer.

That's historical fact.

If Michelle Obama

consulted an astrologer Would the Republicans be okay with that, you think?

What do you think you would say about it?

I would say it was foolish, as it was foolish of Nancy Reagan to do so.

And it didn't affect any of Ronald Reagan's policies, thank thank God.

Because they would impeach Obama if that happened there.

I died.

But anyway, she consulted in astrology.

She can consult whoever she wants as far as I know.

All right, so.

Well, and by the way, it did affect policy.

It affected lots of stuff, like,

should Ronnie go to this summit?

Oh, no, don't fly in a Thursday.

I mean,

this was like third world stuff.

Okay, but Joan Quigley was the name of the astrologer.

This is in the 80s.

She was consulting her.

She was from San Francisco.

But, look, I tease what we found.

We did a little research.

We found out, it turned out that Joe Quigley actually was right about everything.

We have some of her predictions, would you like to hear them?

Now, bear in mind.

Like she said, cars in 30 years will no longer require human drivers.

Passengers will be transported by lifeless automatons, known as Uber drivers.

She said three things will disappear in the 90s: vinyl records, the snowy owl, and pubic hair.

Wow,

this is spooky stuff.

That's a place called Whole Foods will stick a leaf in water and convince you to pay $12 for parsley juice.

Wow.

She said religion will lose relevance with adults, but the Catholic Church will still find a way to touch children.

Televisions will get thinner and brighter, and the viewers thicker and duller.

Johnny Carson will quit the tonight show, after which America will fall asleep to Bill Cosby.

They remembered Bill Cosby, bad guy.

That's right.

A great scourge will spread across America and sicken thousands.

It will be called Chipotle.

All right.

We got Maria.

She's a journalist and the author of The Confidence Game, Why We Fall for It Every Time.

Maria Kanakova.

Maria.

Hey.

Great pleasure to meet you.

How you doing?

Okay, so as someone who wrote a book called The Confidence Game, We Fall for It Every Time, what did you think when you saw Donald Trump

standing there in front of a table full of his products?

To me, that screamed.

They're a picture.

It screamed confidence man.

You know, I saw him and I thought, I'm a psychic.

Right.

Because I clearly predicted that this was going to happen.

I mean, the moment that they analyzed what his products actually were, they found out that they weren't his products.

Not his products.

He was blatantly lying.

And the hallmark of a psychopath

of a psychopath.

See, see, there you go, Freudian slip.

The hallmark of a psychopath, but also the hallmark of a con artist, is someone who deceives you for their own ends.

So they're trying to convince you to support them, to vote for them in this particular case.

And they're doing it by tactics that aren't actually...

Is this, I mean, am I reading too much into this, but standing there in front of a table full of steaks.

Now, I don't eat steak, but like most people love steak.

I thought this was like subliminal advertising kind of stuff.

Like people looking at that and going,

Trump, steak.

If I vote Trump, I'll eat steak.

I mean, they look juicy, you know, steaks look good.

People are like, hmm.

And

you know what?

Think of the voters he's trying to appeal to.

So he's actually going for that.

People who would like to eat steak but can't afford it.

People who want to eat steak.

Let them eat steak.

What?

Yeah, it's true.

And

I think that we see him trying to get the popular vote.

It's the same appeal that he makes all the time, that he is honest, he's a man of the people.

He's telling everyone exactly what they want to hear.

And he doesn't actually say anything.

So that's what confidence artists do.

So he's...

So he's a con man, but he is a good one.

He's a very good con man.

That's why they're called con artists.

Right.

The art of the deal right and you make the point that you know everyone is saying that donald trump has hijacked the party but a con man

doesn't take anything from a person.

You give it to him willingly.

Absolutely, yes.

We give them our confidence.

The origin of the term confidence game was a man who stole watches, but he never actually stole them.

He went up to people on the streets and said, have you confidence in me to lend me your watch until tomorrow?

And people gave them his watch because

they gave him their confidence.

And that's exactly what Trump is doing to the party.

He isn't asking anyone for anything.

People are willingly giving their trust and their confidence.

The more I read about this Trump University, the more it sounds like Scientology.

It does.

People.

It is.

People paying...

great sums of money to find out a secret that isn't really a secret.

And people being coerced to keep giving good ratings.

We have Scientology where you also have some of the same coercive tactics where people basically get brainwashed into saying that Scientology is wonderful.

Trump's university's 98% approval ratings.

I mean when we read about it.

Is that true?

They really do have that high approval rating?

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Every single person stands behind that rating.

So they have people watching them and calling them.

We read stories of people who say that they've been called every single day to change their rating and finally they say, fine, I'll change my rating to 100%.

Now you call them a psychopath.

First of all, what is a psychopath?

We all throw that term around.

I'd be hard pressed to define it right now.

What is a psychopath?

Well there's actually a checklist.

Here's psychopathy

checklist.

Well I know you have a checklist for narcissistic personality.

I have lots of checklists.

Is that different than a psychopath?

Narcissistic personality?

It is, but they actually, both of those traits, yeah, there's a lot of overlap there.

Because here are some of your narcissistic personality disorder, exaggerated sense of self-importance.

I don't see that in Donald.

No, not at all.

Not at all.

Need for excessive admiration, again, coming up empty.

Sense of entitlement, where are you getting this shit from?

Lacking empathy, ha come on.

Believing others to be envious of him.

Arrogant, haughty, contemptuous behavior or attitude.

So,

yeah, it sounds like he might be on the edge of that.

I don't think so.

I don't think so.

I don't think it applies.

But a lot of these actually overlap with psychopathy, like the lack of empathy, like the arrogance and putting down of other people.

You don't, so he does this very funny thing where to his voters he says really wonderful things to their face.

And then behind their back, he says terrible things about the same groups because he makes the same statement, but opposite ways, depending on who he's talking to.

And so you end up seeing these two sides of him where the truth is a really fungible thing.

And there's no such thing as absolute truth.

The truth is just what's true in the moment to him.

And that's both a narcissist and a psychopath and those are two of the dark triad of traits.

The third is Machiavellianism.

Yes.

Okay.

And

I don't want to

make you psychoanalyze someone you never met too much, but last week before they had the nice debate this week, they had the nasty debate and they were talking about their penis size.

They were.

It seems like he also is a prime candidate for micro-penis.

You know,

no?

I mean somebody who's always, I'm the best, I'm the biggest, I got the greatest.

I mean isn't that obviously someone who does have a small penis?

Well I'm sure that Dr.

Freud would have something to say about that.

I'm sure there's a Napoleonic complex equivalence.

She didn't answer the question.

No, she didn't.

And we'll never know.

I mean, I wrote an an editorial.

I wish I had known about your book about Trump called The Confidence Man about two months ago.

And I do think...

He is a very skillful demagogue.

And he's dangerous for that reason, honestly.

And we all make fun of him.

And I myself thought, you know, he can't sustain this.

He'll fade.

It can't possibly work.

But it has worked more than I would have thought.

I feel like what's so dangerous about him is that we now have seen him for so many months and gotten so used to all this behavior, the incredibly ridiculous bragging and the insulting of everyone who looks at him the wrong way, that it's so baked in the cake now that he's a loon that he can almost,

there's nothing he can do that shocks us anymore, or people don't go, oh, well, that's Donald Trump for you.

And I think this Trump University, for example, I mean, only recently did people actually start putting up ads criticizing Trump.

The other candidates were idiotically attacking each other.

The Jeb Bush super PAC spent $20 million attacking Marco Rubio and Rubio attacked Cruz and they reached jockeying.

I agree.

I think when people, I don't know, I'm hopeful,

this way.

I mean, I think Trump University is particularly despicable because he's taking advantage of people who aren't very well off.

That's why they want to be better, who are credulous.

I mean I do think when people see that, it's one thing to sort of cut good deals against other rich businessmen.

If he takes advantage of them, tough.

But you're seeing this outrage because there's an exceptional frustration at the fact that the government accountability office, for example, will look at the Department of Defense and over the last 20 years, $8 trillion is missing from their financials.

That's $400 billion a year missing.

We talk about Social Security.

And which party wants to not look at that and just always say we don't need more defense.

No, but at the same token, like when we're talking about Social Security expiring by 2029, that's $67 billion.

Donald Trump wants to save

$400 billion that we could get if we actually just audited this.

McCarran-Ferguson Act 1945, insurance companies are exempt from

antitrust regulations.

They can collude together to set prices and share information.

How many Democrats, how many Republicans have been in office since then?

Why is this still here?

I looked at

health care company shares from 2009 to today.

Health care company insurance stocks are up 400% while the SP is up 200%.

This is a bull market.

Why is this happening?

If you were forming how it is.

So you're saying since Obamacare,

this is what's going to the insurance company.

I'm just saying why.

Okay, then you have to cut a deal with insurance companies.

Exactly.

Because one party would not even consider the idea that we cut the profit motive out of people sick and dying.

Which is what every other civilized country in the world does.

But also, let me just make one point.

Two points.

First of all, Donald Trump is not running on bringing in Social Security spending.

He wants to actually keep Social Security spending at...

its current state, which is not a very Republican thing to do.

But also, his rallygoers aren't mad because insurance profits are up.

They're mad because they think brown people are coming over the Mexican border and they want a wall.

That is the rallying cry.

That is the rallying cry.

The trade issue is what's resonating.

No, but I mean, middle class, rallying cry of all of his medical colours.

I know, no doubt.

But they think it's worth it.

And they're worried about cheap Mexican labor.

No, no, Bernie.

Sanders and Trump clearly are.

Cheap Mexican labor because politicians are passing all these trade agreements that do nothing.

I mean, we have $400 billion of trade deficits, and it's always sold to the people as it's going to create jobs.

NAFTA did not create jobs.

The WTO did not create jobs.

No, but NAFTA did prevent a lot of Mexicans from coming over the border because it created jobs that were created jobs in Mexico.

And if you're a liberal and care about poor people around the world, you should be for more of the trade.

India, China, Mexico.

These trade agreements have cut $1,800 a year from

the United States.

You're talking about economics now.

The tech titans, you know this, met this week.

You were there, right?

It's an island off Georgia.

It's a place called Sea Island.

It's called the

AEI World Forum.

Tim Cook was there.

Apple, Larry Page, Eric Schmidt of Google, Sean Parker, Elon Musk.

They were all there to talk about how to stop Donald Trump.

They weren't there.

This is really ridiculous.

They would be very appalled.

Well, that's what we're part of a conservative conspiracy.

I mean, it's a think tank.

They have an annual conference.

A lot of people come and speak.

A lot of scholars.

So you're denying that it was about about stopping Donald Trump?

Yeah, totally.

It's scheduled a year ago.

I know, but what did they talk about?

Why did you say that?

Donald Roven, Mitch McClure.

No, no, they didn't mention it.

Did some of the Republicans.

They didn't mention it?

Donald Trump's name didn't come up.

No, I was at Eric.

I guess it's off the record, so I shouldn't say this, but I will say this.

I didn't know Eric Schmidt at all.

He gave a very nice talk.

He answered a million questions, and Trump never came up.

He talks about Google.

He talks about all that stuff.

But in the halls and in the, you know, were people talking about Trump?

Of course.

Of course they were.

Okay, in the halls.

No, seriously.

What do you think?

Well, the idea that this is some conspiracy is

the meetings in the hall.

I'm just saying, it's interesting that this is...

This is the think tank.

If I was getting a group of people together to stop an asteroid from hitting Earth, these are the people who are going to be able to get a hundred.

Yeah, but these guys are Democrats mostly.

Eric Schmidt can't stop Donald Trump.

Oh, yeah, they're Democrats who make a lot of money.

Trum Cook and Eric Schwarzenegger are not part of this.

It's a Republican effort to stop Donald Trump.

But Trump.

I would love it if they would help us out.

Here's what Trump said.

We're going to get Apple to build their damn computers and things in this country instead of other other countries.

I'm sure that went down very well with Tim Cook.

Incredibly disturbing.

Tim Cook and Eric Schmidt are big Democrats.

I mean, the headlines are very close to President Obama, and they would not be part of a Republican effort to destroy the United States.

And they sure don't want.

They're probably chortling at the idea that Trump will be the Republican nominee because Hillary Clinton will win the business.

So let me get this straight.

The two biggest companies in America are colluding with the political party to try to push out.

They're not colluding.

I wish they would collude with us and help us to save the Republican Party from bombing.

If Eric Schmidt is watching right now, send a check to the Stop Trump effort.

And if any Republicans are watching this show, scratch that, vote for John Kasich in Ohio and whatever.

All media companies are meeting with a political party to determine who is going to be the next president.

It's not just big business, it's media.

How inappropriate is that?

Eric Schmidt supports Hillary Clinton.

I know.

You know whose approval ratings are up?

Obama.

Now, I've said this before.

The 22nd Amendment that allows a president only to have two terms is really a mercy rule for Republicans.

Bill Clinton would definitely have gotten a third term.

And Obama, don't you think if Obama was running against Donald Trump?

Remember.

I mean, I worry about Hillary.

The one guy that put Trump in his place was

Obama during the White House correspondence dinner during that infamous moment.

But you know,

Bill's right that Donald Trump is probably a disaster for the Republican Party in the general election.

But also these approval ratings that you're citing really are good news for Democrats if you think about it.

The approval rating of a sitting president going into a general election, if it's high, generally bodes well for the party in power.

I think Democrats are...

I'm not so sure he's a disaster in the general election.

All right here is Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump.

The Democrats are talking about Trump.

The Republicans are talking about Trump.

I think Trump's talking about the rhythm that everybody is going to be.

Especially if there's a terrorist attack within two months of the election, then it's definitely going to be.

If you want to stop Trump, you get Bernie.

Yeah.

Well, okay, so let me ask this question.

Now, it could be that Trump's voters are, his people are locked out because they are trying to stop him.

If he doesn't arrive at the convention with their number of delegates, they're going to try to have somebody else.

And Bernie's people, Hillary's probably going to get the nomination.

They're pissed off.

That's a lot of people on either side who are now disenfranchised and pissed off.

And they're surprised.

Where do those people go?

Michael Bloomberg.

I want a sensible and Michael Black.

That's a good point.

I mean, in a way, it's a tribute to the American political process that it's open enough.

I mean, I don't like either Sanders or Trump.

I think both are terrible presidents.

Well, no, but they both get to run.

Sanders is much better than anyone explaining.

Actually, the Sanders people are pissed off because of the super delegates.

No, I agree.

It's so funny because...

Well, that's right.

The Democrats are not Democratic enough.

Right, I agree.

Republicans don't have to be.

It's so ironic, but they're the party that needs the civil bill.

I couldn't agree more.

Right, you need some people.

And this is what the founders wanted.

The founders' greatest fear was of Donald Trump.

This is why they did not want mob rule.

That's right.

Our cover this week is Alexander Hamilton

peeping over the perspective of Donald Trump.

He hated the people at that point.

It is good that Sanders gets to run against Clinton.

I hope he beats her, but I don't think he will.

I guess it's healthy.

I do think it is healthy that someone like Trump can make a case who's an outsider.

It's not just a bunch of career politicians, but he in particular.

It's not healthy.

But I agree, he in particular particular is a dangerous demagogue, and it's unfortunate.

He's just a demagogue in this country.

But what happens the first week in office when he tweets that Angela Merkel is a fat pig?

Because

that's not a joke.

He's going to do something like that.

It's kind of funny.

His presidential sport is waiting until it happens.

All right, I got to go.

Thank you, panel.

All right, new rule.

Donald Trump must admit he's he's not sharing his umbrella because he wants to see if rain, mixed with Chris Christie, creates gravy.

New rule, stop trying to make this a thing.

Nintendo tried it, and NASA, and this loser, and these schmucks, and this asshole.

It's like Marco Rubio over, we're going to catch on, it would have by now.

And besides, there's a much cheaper device you place on your head to escape reality.

New rule, next time you wash the statue of David, don't make the water so cold.

New rule, everyone must come together to help the little guy.

And by that I mean mean generic sign man.

I guess his childhood was okay, but his life hasn't been easy.

It's been a constant stream of slips, trips, electrocutions, chokings, and

getting hit with fallen objects.

It's time for generic signman to catch a break and meet a nice generic girl

and settle down, have kids, and then get chased back to Mexico by Donald Trump.

New rule, Mitt Romney, has to stop helping Marco Rubio.

This picture doesn't say winners.

It says scout leader and boy with a secret.

And finally, new rule, Batman and Superman, have to explain something to me.

Why are you two fighting?

You're supposed to work together.

I saw it on my footy pajamas.

It's unsettling to see two beloved mythical figures go at it.

It's like watching Jesus beat up a unicorn.

And I think the same thing when I see Democrats these days.

You two also need to work together so you can stop the greatest supervillain of all time, Orange Crush.

Now, it was an exciting week for us left-leaners, because with the win in Michigan, the Sanders campaign, which I have been saying is

Offering America a new kind of deal has shown that Americans Americans are still considering that deal.

But I feel I should say something about a growing movement called Bernie or Bust, where Bernie supporters pledge that if it's Hillary, they'll stay home or vote for the Green Party.

On their website, they say they're revolting against the plutocracy.

No, actually, you'll be helping elect a plutocrat who's revolting.

Elizabeth Warren recently disappointed Bernie supporters by staying neutral in the primary fight.

No endorsement for either one.

So thousands of Sanders fans hijacked her Facebook page and said things like, I'm disgusted by you.

Why not just throw the whole country under the bus?

It must be Karl Rove's money.

And those were the early comments before the Red Bull kicked in.

Really?

Elizabeth Warren is the enemy now?

She's helped more millennials than Adderall.

And the Hillary camp does it too.

In a race where no Republican candidate supports a woman's right to choose, and one of them calls women bimbos and pigs.

You know who the real sexist is?

Bernie.

Bill Clinton accused his supporters of online sexism, which is pretty rich coming from a guy who's been known to grab your tits in person.

So while Bernie fans attack attack Hillary for not being liberal enough and Hillary fans attack Bernie for not being feminist enough, Black Lives Matter is attacking them both for not being black enough.

Even though they both have a 100% voter rating from the NAACP, as opposed to Trump, who gets five stars from the KKK.

There are real enemies out there.

Have you seen a Republican debate?

The zombies are in the mall.

I'm telling you, this is going to be the death of liberals, this nitpicky, intramural attacking of friends for insufficient purity, compulsively cleaning up a little corner of the room that's already quite clean

while there are giant piles of shit everywhere else.

Last year, a social justice warrior swarmed on Matt Damon for saying gay actors should not be defined by their sexuality, which was interpreted as him saying gay actors should stay in the closet.

The Daily Beast screamed, shut up, Matt Damon.

Washington Post, he's got Damon's planning to do.

And Vach said, Matt Damon isn't a terrible person.

He's just ignorant.

Right.

The real obstacle to gays achieving equality is Matt Damon.

In fact, he's such a homophobe, he fucked Liberace.

Last year, Dulce and Gabbana got their gay tit caught in the liberal ringer when

they expressed one conservative view on artificial insemination and this week, oh, they fucked up again.

But luckily, the brave virtual vigilantes of the internet were there to condemn these two evil old queens

for get this crime, selling a shoe that they're calling a slave sandal.

But look at it, it's a happy slave sandal.

Now clearly they should update the name and call it an intern sandal.

But in this month, when we found out that 20% of Trump voters believed that the end of slavery itself was a bad idea,

This is what motivates you to write a scathing blog post, a thoughtlessly named shoe.

Well, hold on to your hats, guys, because right now I'm wearing black loafers.

All right, that's our show.

I'm at the Mirage in Vegas this weekend, March 12th and 13th, and I'm at the Comerica in Phoenix, April 10th.

I want to thank Sam Stein, Monica Mesa, Bill Crystal, Maria Karnakova, and Jane Mayer.

Join us on Overtime for YouTube.

I mean, on YouTube for Overtime.

Thank you.

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

For more information, log on to HBO.com.