Episode #371 (Originally aired 11/13/15)

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 Month series, Real Time with Bill Maher.

Starts the clock.

Good afternoon.

Afternoon.

Time will be

real time.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you very much.

Wow, what a crowd.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, all right.

Well, hey,

we're here.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

True fans.

I know, I know.

But I appreciate that.

And they're going to have a lot of hilarity tonight.

But before we get to the hilarity, we hope,

I just want to say one thing to the people of Paris.

Allo la patria.

And I'm not a very good singer, but that's my way of saying we're with you.

Okay.

Aloha.

Of course, in this country, it's Friday the 13th, and Donald Trump had a meltdown.

That shows you the difference between, did you see the Trump meltdown?

This is what we have all been waiting for.

Apparently, coming in second to Dr.

Ben Carson is really getting under his skin.

Donald Trump used to begin his speeches with, you know, I'm the greatest guy in the world.

Now it's all about, I can't believe I'm losing to a black guy.

He went totally Charlie Sheen.

Seriously, on Dr.

Ben Carson, he called him pathological, compared him to a child molester.

Donald Trump, the

man who could be president, did an elaborate pantomime for quite a few minutes,

making fun of the time that Dr.

Ben claims when he was a teenager, he tried to stab somebody, you know, with a knife, and it hit the guy's belt buckle,

saving him from going to jail.

So Trump acts this out and then says, it can't happen.

A belt buckle wouldn't do that.

Does anyone in the audience have a knife?

Try it on me.

And the

Secret Service agents were like, this isn't in the manual, is it?

And then Donald Trump said, how stupid are the people of Iowa?

There's a great way to get elected, huh?

That they would fall for this story.

You know what, Don?

We've had our differences.

I remember when you sued me, that wasn't cool.

But calling evangelical voters fools and idiots for believing in that Jesus redemption bullshit, that's my shtick.

Okay.

And by the way,

by the way, Dr.

Carson's story may not be all that bullshit about a belt stopping a knife, because we got a hold of the belt that the guy was wearing.

Look at, see,

that could stop a knife.

This happened to be the belt.

But I love

Dr.

Ben's response to Donald Trump today.

He said, pray for him.

I love that.

Like he's one of his patients who needs brain surgery.

Okay, Dr.

Ben, I will pray for Donald Trump.

But then, when he's still an asshole, can we agree prayer's bullshit?

Okay.

All right.

But you know, in fairness, almost nothing in Dr.

Ben Carzon's 10 books turns out to be literally true.

I'm beginning to wonder if he ever really performed brain surgery at all.

I think he just puts you under and then wakes you up a little later and says, there, there, all done.

Kind of like when you take your car into Jiffy Loop and they claim to change your oil, but nothing really happens.

Oh, and Dr.

Ben, Dr.

Ben Carson, I tell you, he's mad too.

He is tired of these claims

that

everything he says is bullshit.

He says he has undergone unprecedented scrutiny.

He actually said this.

He said, Obama was never vetted.

Talk about being in the Fox.

Obama was never vetted.

Obama was vetted more than anybody else.

In fact, the fact that there never was a personal scandal with Obama proves that his personal life must be completely squeaky clean, right?

Because they were looking for that.

Although,

I heard a a rumor a few weeks ago, Michelle got so mad at him, he came home one night stinking of booze and cigarettes with bronzer on his collar.

She knew he'd been out with John Boehner.

But there was another Republican debate this week.

Did you see it on Tuesday night?

It was about the economy.

It was on Fox Business News channel.

I didn't see all of it, I'm not going to lie, but apparently the gist of it was that the plan to make America great again is to round up and deport all the Mexicans,

which will free up all those sweet slave-wage strawberry-picking jobs for real Americans.

That seems to be the plan.

Also, all the Republican candidates agreed on the minimum wage that it can't go up.

Carly Fiorina said the, she said, the secret sauce of America is entrepreneurship.

Unfortunately, the minimum wage employees are peeing in the secret sauce because they're very fish off.

But the line of the night belonged to Marco Rubio, who, well, of course, Marco Rubio, first, of course, every time he talks, has to tell you his personal story.

Came from Cuban immigrants.

My mother was a maid.

I was in Menudo.

Okay.

Okay,

we get it.

But he said something the audience just loved.

He said, welders make more money than philosophers.

Not close to true.

But the crowd loved it because it sent a powerful message.

Knowledge is stupid.

And they loved that message.

But actually, a welder makes on average $37,000 a year, and a philosophy grad makes over 80.

For you, Republicans, let me clarify, the second number is bigger.

And also,

you know who is the philosopher?

Jesus.

But if he'd been a welder, he could have cut himself down from the cross and

gotten out of there.

Finally, remember Jihadi John?

The sadistic, how brave of you, sir.

To boo jihadi John.

Let's give this man a hand for his courage.

Thank you.

Yes, he was the sadistic executioner you see in all the ISIS videos.

Well, today, Obama smoked him in a drone strike.

So remember that, ISIS.

Remember that, ISIS.

Do not cross a black cat on Friday the 13th.

All right, we've got a great show.

Jay Leno is here.

Michael Steele is here.

Dylan Radigan.

And a little later, I'll be speaking with such a funny man.

Paul Reiser is backstage.

But first up,

she is a Muslim feminist and the author of Standing Alone, an American Woman's Struggle for the Soul of Islam.

Usra Nomani.

Hey.

How are you?

Thank you.

What a great pleasure to meet you.

Thank you, thank you.

I don't often say this to the guests right off, but you are a hero of mine.

You really are, the way you stand up for the things that I've been trying to say, but

it means so much more coming from you because I'm not a Muslim and you are.

So can this be a mutual gratification?

Yes, please do.

Just pour it on.

Because seriously, you have honestly taken a position of moral courage.

I'm a feminist, liberal Muslim.

I know.

A lot of contradiction in terms there, head spinning.

But you have dared to challenge liberals to stand by their values.

And I'm winning a lot of them over, by the way.

You are.

I really am.

It's amazing how they used to boo me and now they don't.

I posted that I was coming on your show and got more likes than this cat video.

You know what?

I want to read this.

I was in Ames, Iowa.

I go on the road, you know, doing my stand-up last week, and somebody handed this letter to the stage manager.

I won't read the guy's name.

He might not want it.

He says, Dear Bill Maher,

watching your show, I have heard you ask, where are the moderate Muslims?

I am a former political prisoner from Saudi Arabia.

The moderate Muslims are in jail.

Right, right.

Because where did extremism get born?

It was born in Saudi Arabia.

It was born out of this theology of Islam that we don't want to accept.

And today, the sad testimony in Paris, we don't know completely what has happened, but AK-47s, suicide vests, targeted attacks.

It's probably not the Amish.

Right.

Right.

And so President Obama says that he's going to go after the terrorists.

Speculate who?

And he's going to go after the terrorist networks, but we don't mention what kind of terrorist networks.

It's crazy.

Yeah.

I don't understand that.

And I also don't understand liberals who don't understand this man who says the moderates are in jail.

How could liberals who stood for black people getting to go to college in the 60s, and then when I was in college, they were protesting apartheid in South Africa.

How can they not stand up against Sharia law, which is the law in so many Muslim countries, which is a law law of oppression.

Yeah, I don't understand it either, but what I have figured out is that they run scared.

They're afraid of the name-calling that you get targeted with, the name-calling that I get targeted with.

They don't want to look bad, they don't want to act like they are intolerant of a minority community.

But at the end of the day, they are on the side of the progressive Muslims, the people who believe in sexism and bigotry.

They're on the wrong side.

It must be even more frustrating for you because

for someone to shout you down, you've lived this life.

You've actually borne the pain.

I mean, let's get a little into your story.

You were born in India.

You lived in Pakistan.

You were with a boyfriend there.

You got pregnant out of wedlock.

And he left you.

Because, why?

Because they always blame the woman.

Yeah, well, the man can go.

The woman is left with the evidence of the crime, of having had the sex.

The crime.

Yeah, I was in Pakistan after September 11th to cover the war there, and I fell in love, took too seriously the Make Love, Not War patch of my youth.

Yeah.

Yes.

And then I learned I was pregnant and I learned I was pregnant four weeks into this other horrible moment that had happened when my colleague from the Wall Street Journal left a home that I had rented in Karachi, Pakistan, never to return.

Daniel Pearl.

Danny Pearl.

You were the last person to talk to him, right?

Yeah, and Danny, I waved goodbye to him.

I said, see you later, buddy.

And he didn't come back.

I learned later that the men who had killed him had done so in the name of Islam.

They had beheaded him, as you know.

They had wiped then the floor of the blood from his murder.

and then laid down their prayer rugs as if they had divine ordination for what they had just done.

done.

Well that's my problem with religion.

One of them is that they take something horrific and make it something sacred.

I am absolutely sure that ISIS thinks everything they do, every horrific crime, every atrocity, is an act of justice and an act for God.

Right.

And so when I was sitting there in Karachi and I learned I was pregnant, my boyfriend bailed on me and I was criminal according to the laws of ISIS, the laws of Pakistan.

Pakistan.

Yeah, the laws of Pakistan.

And, you know, I had this

existential moment of the kind that you talk about all the time.

Why bother?

You know, where is any good in all of this?

And for me, I didn't have the courage to tell my father, of course.

He's the patriarch in my family.

So my mom took him out to dinner, which she's never done in her life.

And they went to the crab shack in Morgantown, West Virginia.

And I got an email, and he said, Allah is Rahman, Allah is Rahim.

So I know your Arabic's not so great, but that means...

I know Yellah.

Yes, yes.

But that means God is beneficient, God is merciful.

And so my parents showed me a grace and the type of tolerance, compassion, and love that they had raised me with in Islam that made me a journalist, that made me a friend of Danny, even though he was a Jew, right?

This was the excuse that the murderers used to kill him.

And I don't think any of us who criticize Islam are denying that that element is there.

It's just not right now ascendant.

It doesn't seem to be where the energy is.

So when I get accused of demonizing Islam, Nicholas Kristoff, who I consider a friend, was on our show.

We had a big debate about this last year.

I saw him recently.

He said, you know, Bill Maher demonizes Islam because a small percentage of the faith are extremist.

First of all, I'm not demonizing, I'm characterizing.

How did we get to this place where just describing something is demonizing?

And I'm not so sure it's a very small percentage.

Maybe it's a small percentage who carry out terrorist acts, but it's not a small percentage, right, who believe in some of the illiberal ideas that support terrorists.

Right, because ultimately I don't even believe that a woman should get less inheritance than a...

brother, right?

But ultimately, what has happened is that the reporting that I've done is that there is this entire network of bloggers, activists, academics who are from the largest national Muslim organizations like this Council on American Islamic Relations, the highest places in the Ivory Towers of America, like Georgetown University and UC Berkeley, a favorite of yours, I know.

Where I was invited and disinvited just the way you were invited and disinvited.

Right.

And what has happened is that I call them the honor brigade and what they do is they smear somebody like you, somebody like me, for being witness to truth.

Because ultimately the truth frightens

them.

The liberals get on board.

And unfortunately, you've had the deniers and the deflectors on board.

And then you've had Sam Harris, Majid Nawaz, Ayan Hersey Elliot, Ishad Manji, and now the Honor Brigade comes after me because I'm with you also.

That's just crazy.

I mean, I find it a badge of honor to be disinvited, by the way.

And that's

we're at a place in history where we have to challenge what does it mean to be honorable.

Right.

It is not honorable to be able to do that.

And what does it mean to be liberal?

Yes.

And we have to stand up for the true liberal values.

In your book, you have a great thing.

It's the Islamic Bill of Rights for Women, right?

You wrote a Bill of Rights.

And some of the things in it seem like they, to us, shouldn't even need to be written down.

Right.

Like the right to say whether you want to have sex or not seems like it should be.

Yeah, it's a radical idea, right?

Radical idea.

What are some of the other things in the Bill of Rights?

Well, my first one was the right of a woman to have an orgasm.

Very radical idea.

A fraud.

I mean, in a lot of places, the right of a woman to have a clitoris.

Because that is ultimately, that's, you know.

That wasn't a joke.

Right, because ultimately this is very intentional because when you have this term of female genital mutilation, you remove the woman's right to pleasure.

So there's the right of a woman to say no because there is this idea that the angels will curse a woman till morning if she denies her husband sex.

And so these are just basic human rights.

And I ultimately believe that they are rights that Islam does validate because

while

many of the principles that are being practiced today are

unequal and sexist.

The religion came as a progressive faith in the 7th century.

We just stayed stuck in the 7th century.

So we need to fast forward to the 21st century.

Well, what happened in Paris last night, there last night, are tonight?

Will that change anything, do you think?

My mother says that it's almost like the world needs so much blood to be spilled to wake up.

And what I say is just what you're saying is wake up.

You know, we have to be honest honest about the fact that there is an ideology of Islam that is our war, of our generation.

And this is an ideology that we have to address, and we have to address it with moral courage.

And you do.

Guarantee tomorrow, bigot Islamophobe.

Right.

Thank you for doing what you do.

All right.

I'll see you again soon, I hope.

Okay, let's meet our panel.

Hey, look who's here.

All right, he's a former MSNBC host, turned sustainability entrepreneur Dylan Radigan.

Hey, Dylan, nice to see you back.

Nice to see you.

He is an ex-lieutenant governor of Maryland and former chair of the Republican National Committee.

You all know Michael Steele.

You back?

One of our favorites.

And he's the host of CNBC's Jay Leno's Garage.

I'm not a car guy, but it is an entertaining show.

Jay, you are still entertaining.

I think you remember Jay.

Jay was the host of the Merv Griffin Show for 22 years, and he was fantastic.

Listen to this.

Wait, he's going to be on December 11th in Oslo, Norway.

He'll be hosting the Nobel Prize ceremony.

Congratulations.

Jay, leto.

Well, you know,

the guy who puts it together used to run Chuckles in Cleveland.

So that's why I had an end.

I had an end.

That's very prestigious, Jay.

Congratulations.

All right.

Remember to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

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

Okay, so

we are Friday night here in L.A.

We're live.

It's about 7.15 on the West Coast.

Paris is 12 hours ahead, I think.

So we don't have every bit of information.

The last body count I heard was over 150.

When the Charlie Edbo thing happened in the week after, everybody said, je sui Charlie.

But not really.

They didn't really stick with them like usra and i were just talking about i asked her if things would be different i'm going to ask you this question that people asked after 9-11 because i don't think we still know the answer why do they hate us

i've stumped the panel again

because we finance the the capital flow into Saudi Arabia that then arms the population that has power in Saudi Arabia to oppress the population that does not have power in Saudi Arabia, which then is deprived of basic resources in Saudi Arabia, which is then radicalized inside the Muslim religion, and then lashes out irrationally, violently, murderously against innocent people who did nothing.

The United States' lack of

internal account.

We need to be accountable in our own government, in our own relationship with Saudi Arabia.

That's not what terrorists say.

Well, when you capture

when they leave a note, you know what they say?

Because you're there.

Because you're in Muslim lands.

I have a crazy idea.

Why don't we get out of Muslim lands?

That's a big part of it.

I think the idea of importing democracy, that concept that sort of emerged in the early 2000s, certainly part of the Bush doctrine at the time, to talk about sort of taking our values and transplanting them elsewhere, has wholly been rejected because now...

Even by the the Republicans.

Yeah, and that's a lot of the struggle you see within the party today, is that fissure that's growing

between big government republicanism, for example, and this idea that Rand Paul and others are talking about where, you know, let's be a little bit more common sense about how we project power.

It's like when you watch Star Trek.

Kirk goes to the other planet and he brings democracy.

They don't want it.

They don't care about it.

We're violating the people.

Follow Kirk.

Do what what Kirk does.

And then he always says, what is this earth kiss you're talking about?

We're financing the oppressor bill.

We are financing the oppressor.

You know, I think you're seeing that a little through America-centric eyes.

I mean, that certainly is part of it.

I don't know if that's the main thing on their minds is the financing aspect of it.

Yes,

that's a good question.

I'm saying it doesn't exist without that relationship.

So there would be no...

What I'm saying is we politically,

the only thing we can control is our relationship and our accountability with our government.

And our government chooses to fund and be president.

I'm always amazed at the number of people who like Americans but don't like America.

Oh, we had some Americans.

They were very nice.

I mean, they all think we're like Donald Trump.

Loud, brash, making demands, we're going to do this, we're going to kick ass.

Well, that's exact.

If they watched the Republican debate

on on Tuesday night, that's exactly what they saw.

The biggest cheers were for Republicans who got up there and said, we have to kick ass militarily.

This nonsensical argument.

You mentioned it before.

And, you know, let's show a little bit of the debate.

This is the debate that

Ron Paul.

He actually...

Good for Randy Paul.

He sounded a little like his father.

And that's what we loved about him at the beginning.

This is a debate with Marco Rubio.

How is it conservative to add a trillion dollars in military expenditures?

You cannot be a conservative if you're going to keep promoting new programs that you're not going to pay for.

I know that the world is a safer and better place when America is the strongest military power in the world.

Can you be a conservative and be liberal on military spending?

Can you be for unlimited military spending and say, oh, I'm going to make the country safe?

No, we need a safe country.

But you know, we spend more on our military than the next 10 countries combined.

Yes, what a great thing to say.

Because all these other Republicans talk about rebuilding the military.

It's already built.

If we're already 10 times what all the other countries combined are, why do we have to keep adding to it?

That, for me, was probably a seminal moment in this presidential race, simply because it really exposed the fissure between the neocons who want to expand defense spending and engage militarily and the pure economic, rational thought about where do you get the money from?

How do you pay for it?

We just went through that.

We just spent trillions of dollars that were unaccounted for, that caused a lot of problems and a lot of pain.

Are you willing to repeat that?

And I think Rand Paul really pressed it, and I think you're going to see more pressing of that over the next few months going into the primary season in February, because that's got to get resolved.

And you cannot go forward with this idea that we're going to ramp up all this spending.

I mean, Marco's plan is a $2 trillion plan, a trillion dollars in defense spending and a trillion dollars in a government subsidy program for child care.

So Rand is asking: so, where are you going to get $2 trillion from?

You're complaining about the $19 trillion debt that we currently have.

And that's the rest of the world.

My seminal moment in the debate, you had Ben Carson calling himself a failed murderer and Trump calling him a liar.

When does this ever happen?

I tried to kill him.

I know you didn't.

When does that ever happen?

This doesn't.

never be too much.

You can never beat Tumacho.

You can never beat Tumacho in the Republican Party.

They always talk about, you know, I'm going to wipe out ISIS.

First of all, it's not possible.

Do you know that?

To wipe out ISIS, this idiot talk, we have to stop.

If we actually put boots on the ground, what would ISIS do?

They would melt back into the population, just like the last time we were in Iraq.

You can't wipe them out.

You can't wipe out all your enemies, Michael Coroner.

No, I agree.

I mean, I think this F Michael Corner.

But

that's part of the problem that President Obama is facing right now in looking at what he's going to do with the group of 50 folks that he's sending into Syria.

Again, you've got the problem with ISIS.

The country has to come to grips with how we want to engage militarily in the Middle East.

and recognize that we have partners.

I mean, look at the Kurds.

Why aren't we doing more with the partnership?

I think this is the place where I actually believe Bernie Sanders has articulated this the best,

which is

what about the rest of the world?

What about the money in Saudi Arabia?

What about the folks in Turkey?

Why are the American taxpayers the only government, the only person that's supposed to fund and

solve the Middle East?

I've been screaming at this.

Where are the Chinese?

Where are the Saudis?

What is this?

Where are all the other Arab countries who pretend to hate ISIS so much?

Precise.

I tallied up their armies one night.

There are over 5 million people under arms.

If you look at all these countries, Saudi Arabia and Jordan and Turkey, that could send troops to fight an army of about 25,000 assholes who have 1970 Toyota pickup trucks.

That's

the only thing in Springsville.

Those are good cards.

Very reliable.

What they've typically done is that

they rely on the United States to sort of fill out that card for them.

And that has been the role that we have taken going back a long time now.

But this is a different dynamic.

This is a different war.

This is different level engagement as we see in Paris tonight, as we've seen in Boston, for example.

It's a homegrown thing.

But bombing them over there is what is causing the Paris thing to happen.

That connection needs to be made.

Yes.

We don't have to be bombing them there.

We don't have to be bombing them.

Right.

It doesn't have to be us.

Remember after 9-11, Bush was all about...

We're going to not make any distinction between countries that harbor terrorists and terrorists.

And it was kick-ass shit.

Everybody loved it.

Because we had to wipe out the safe havens, right?

That was Afghanistan.

Okay, all these years after 9-11, there's way more safe havens than there were then.

That we built, that we created.

And who's our best ally in Iraq right now?

Iran.

Exactly.

ISIS is

our big enemy.

Is fighting our other big enemies.

We don't need to, we just need popcorn.

Just sit back and watch this.

This is crazy.

It really is.

All right.

I want to ask about Donald Trump's self-deportation program.

Did you catch that part?

Yeah, that really,

you know,

Eisenhower, we like Ike.

You know what that was called?

It was called Operation Wetback.

What year are we talking about?

Oh, we're talking about 1955, something like that.

See, that was new to me.

No, I remember this because I'm not much older than you.

I was a little kid.

Now, I do remember that.

And you know, there was a guy named Brunel who was the attorney general at the time.

And you know what he wanted to do?

Shoot them at the border.

No, no, this is real.

He wanted to just go down there, kill a bunch of them, and that would stop.

He would have the nomination in a

time change.

I mean, when they rounded up all those people,

Trump didn't mention 88 of them died.

Most of them were round up and left in the high desert.

Some starved to death, and some died from joints.

That someone would hold this up, this pre-civil rights program,

as what we should be doing.

But Trump made it sound like Hitler.

Well, the Jews have so much.

We'll put them over here for a while.

Yes.

And then you can have his store.

He doesn't need the whole floor of Macy's.

Let's give a floor to this discovery.

But if you notice, the one question that was not answered on that debate stage was the one that John Kasich asked.

And so

where are you going to take him to?

You're going to actually pull up a van and grab grandma and granddad.

I like Kasich.

He looked like Howard Beale.

In other words, what are you doing here?

What are you crazy?

And put them in a van and then ship.

And so what are you going to do with the child that's left behind?

So that's the reality that no one wants to address.

You're not going to deport 11 million people.

Also, get over it.

You know,

you're just not going to do it.

And the other reality.

We're not going to do it.

It doesn't mean that we can't reform our laws.

But you're not going to do that.

If you're physically rounding people up against their will, it wouldn't be more than a week before there was some violent incident.

And somebody who's doing the rounding up is going to get hurt or killed by the people he's rounding up.

And then President Trump has to say, well, this won't stand.

You can't be hurting our deportation force, and then it's on.

And then we're having

a war against the people who are actually here helping the economy with a smile on their face.

I work over in

this is one bill where I look, I back up and look at it and ask myself, okay, before I get too sucked into the insanity of what's being discussed, what percentage of America actually is represented in this conversation?

And I remind myself that 85% of America, maybe a little bit more, is not in the Republican Party, and that a big percentage of the Republican Party is not for Donald Trump.

So as horrifying as some of these things are, you have to remind yourself that the Republican Party is a American minority and that Donald Trump is a minority of the minority of

the Republican Party.

But it's the minority

I know, but I also remind myself that you have a lot of people who are not voting for a good reason because they're smart enough to see that this is crazy.

Well, that's not a good reason.

That's a horrible reason.

Well, that's not a problem.

I disagree.

You know, I disagree.

You and I disagree.

Yeah.

I agree with you.

I don't even want you to

lose my airtime

to even talk about this horrible theory you have that they shouldn't vote.

Fair enough.

But you know, if they voted, by the way, we could.

It's the only way.

I was going to say, we went to Afghanistan, we did some shows, and we meet all these soldiers.

And it's Edriquez.

You're the U.S.

Melendez.

So

I didn't see one kid that had Trump.

Right.

I didn't see one Trump.

Yeah, right.

You know, and every one of these kids had the same story.

Their parents are immigrants.

This is their gateway.

This is their door to become an American citizen.

They fight for the country.

They fought as hard as any of the.

I got to interrupt.

It's just peacetime.

A couple of months ago, we did a new segment on the show called, I don't know it for a fact.

Oh, jeez.

I just know it's true.

Because I think everybody, don't you feel that way sometimes?

And I'm the first to admit that there is absolutely nothing provable about what I'm about to say.

These are mere assertions, and yet I know they're true.

For example, I don't know it for a fact.

This went so much better in rehearsal.

I don't know it for a fact that Queen Elizabeth's tea is 90% gin.

I just know it's true.

You see what I mean?

I don't know for a fact.

I don't know for a fact that Ben Carson has literally been sleepwalking the whole campaign and doesn't know he's running for president.

You know what?

I just know I'm doing a bitch.

Oh, I'm going to tell you what his website is called: Black Lives Matter.

Did I run out all the times I did your show?

Did I run out in the middle of small-time news and bring it down?

I don't know for a fact that Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen is actually Newt Gingrich and Drag.

I just know it's true.

I don't know for a fact that Lamar Odom can still beat the other Kardashians at Scrapple.

I don't know for a fact that Carly Fiorina has a coat made out of Dalmatians.

I just know it's true.

Ow.

I don't know for a fact that Obama ends every day with a couple of hits off the vape and a Miles Davis album.

I just know it's true.

And I don't know for a fact that Lindsey Graham has a huge Barbie doll collection.

I just know it's true.

All right, let's bring out Paul Reiser.

He is an actor, a comedian, a best-selling author, and a friend of ours.

Paul, a great friend of ours.

What a great comedian.

Paul Reiser is over here.

How are you?

Hello.

Thank you.

Look, Jay Lena, remember him from the club?

It's confusing me.

I don't know what...

whose show?

Mike Douglas should be sitting there, and I'm all confused.

Oh, it's so good to have you.

You know, I've been trying to get you here for the longest time.

I got here as soon as I didn't realize you had a show.

Yes, I.

You know what?

I have.

It's been 22 years.

It has been awesome.

And you always have said to me, I'm too stupid to do it.

No, no, no, I didn't say.

You know, here's the thing.

I've gotten smarter because...

No, sadly.

I so admire you, and I love what you do on the show.

And I should say, and everybody,

and everybody, it's just this wonderful conversation.

And I just felt like I wasn't smart enough or informed enough.

And I saw you a while ago, and you said something that changed it.

And you said, I think it was a compliment.

You said, oh, are you kidding?

We have guests much stupider than you.

I said, well, all right.

That seems promising.

Wow.

Sure.

Those are the non-Michael Steele Republicans.

Anyway.

No, I don't.

I just like, like what you just had going here, these heated arguments.

I love that.

Well, we're not going to have have a heated argument.

No, but I don't know how to do it.

We can't do that.

Yes, we will.

And I insist.

Shay was here for the argument.

No, no.

It doesn't always have to be heated arguments.

Sometimes we don't.

Sometimes we don't even have a conservative on.

Sometimes the conservative, like Michael tonight, is very reasonable.

That's doing a very nice job.

Because they get intimidated by the audience.

Oh, no, no.

But you are back to stand-up.

I think this is awesome.

You haven't done it in how long?

I took a little break, 20 years.

20 years.

20 years.

Is it riding a bicycle?

It's not riding a bicycle.

It's like pushing a bike up a hill with your eye.

That's what it is.

It's a little harder.

That's how difficult getting back.

But actually, I have this gentleman to thank.

Because I didn't mean to take 20.

I was just polishing one joke.

I didn't want to go off the floor.

I want to get it right.

Wow, yeah.

That's a perfect one.

Well, there's an attention to detail that I have.

But no, so I didn't mean to, but I had just you know, gotten out of the habit, and I always meant to get back.

And a couple of years ago, I was thinking, should I get back?

I want to get back in the stand-up, and I bumped it.

I went to Vegas to see Jay, and Jay said something that just opened my eyes.

He says, Yeah, you should do it.

And that was it.

I said, Sorry, you like it.

You grew up there and do the whole thing yourself.

Or you can harvest three other little actors and have a little play.

Or you could do the whole thing yourself.

Because he's great.

You know, he's like, Yeah, you should do it.

Oh, you're very kind.

I'm having so much fun.

The big adjustment, having, you know, in the 20 years, apparently I got a little older.

And so it was a little bit of training.

You see, you guys have been doing it all the time, so you didn't have this drop-off.

But

it was just sort of me getting back into the mindset of being peaking at night.

I remember I called up the club, a local club down here in Amos, and I said, want to come down, try out some new material?

I'm thinking of going out.

And he said, anytime you want, come on by.

The show starts at 10.

And I actually went, at night?

Oh, no.

Oh, no.

Oh, you have gotten.

Wow.

Wow.

Yeah, come on.

I'm in pajamas 8.45.

I don't see how this is going to work.

That's what Seinfeld and I would talk about.

What if you took a vacation and you liked it?

That would really suck.

Yeah, but luckily we don't.

That's right.

We don't.

I'm having such a good time.

And you, of course, work very blue.

I've heard you're Iced.

It's all Prick Dick Cocksucker.

That's the name of my next album.

Prick Dick Cocksucker.

But it's all blue, so you don't know what it's saying.

But you know you can figure it out.

But there's enough asterisks in there.

No, you don't.

But like, comedians all complain these days that when you do stuff in the comedy clubs, the least little politically incorrect thing you say could wind up on Twitter.

A lot of them have been reprimanded.

No, well, I kind of, I don't step.

Do you run Twitter?

Do you?

I tweet occasionally.

Right.

But, you know, but yeah, you do.

You're a tech person.

I didn't know that about you.

I wouldn't call it a techie.

I see.

I think the techie stuff has actually made us dumber.

I think, I mean, with so much information, but what's happened, and I have this theory that we have put all information in our devices, so our brains are no longer necessary.

What's happening?

Because you used to,

yeah, that's brilliant.

You used to put information, somebody told us, right?

They go, okay, I got it.

Now you put it here.

So here is everything.

Here, nothing.

They could take it out.

It's like, it's like a useless, like tonsils.

Brains are the new tonsils.

You know what I mean?

They can take it out.

What do you eat?

A bowl of ice cream to be home the next day.

Not an issue.

What do you make of what's going on on campuses?

Let me ask everybody this.

Oh my God, it's all guys.

I just realized.

Shit.

I got to have a woman on the street.

Oh, it is unbelievable.

I did a college, and I just was telling a story, and I said, so I go in the house, and my wife's in the kitchen.

Boo.

I don't know why.

My house has a kitchen.

My wife was just in there.

But I

did not know.

No.

That's unbelievable, but still believable.

Yeah, yeah.

That's really hard to believe.

I got to say that.

You know, Newhart told me, Newhart has one of the most hilarious, but it's a driving instructor, and he did a college, and he goes, all right, this is Mrs.

McGillicuddy, whatever the name is, let's take boo.

And he couldn't figure out why they were booing because, oh, it was an old lady driving.

See, that was sexist.

Okay, so what's going on at the University of Missouri, there's a lot going on on campuses.

Let's just tell people who are not caught up to this.

Some of it is good, some of it is bad.

The fight to cleanse America of our original sin of racism, you know, takes different forms, and that's progress.

It used to be about slavery, then it was about hanging people, and then it was about fire hoses.

And I said on this show some incident this year, I said, denying racism is the new racism.

And that's progress, that that's where we are.

But it still must be infuriating to black people in America because there is still so much racism when they hear the Republican Party's official position, which is it's over.

Racism is over, it's all in your head.

Come on, Michael.

It's not the official position.

Kind of.

It wasn't.

It's not the official It wasn't the unofficial position.

It wasn't the position when I was there, when I was running it.

However,

my question today is:

there was this at the University of Missouri, there's a clueless white guy, let's call him that.

But he's not a war criminal.

Who's the president of the university?

He was not sensitive, according to the students.

Is that Wolf?

Yes, Tim Wolf.

Actually, he has a new position.

What?

He's with Cracker Barrel now.

Yes.

Jay misses his job so much.

No, I side with those kids.

When I saw that, well, let me tell him who

okay.

He's the president of the university.

There were a few racial incidents on campus,

some yelling of the N-word.

Somebody wrote a swastika.

Not good stuff.

Somebody ran by with a pickup truck.

Okay, bad stuff, but I mean, this is America.

There's There's racism in it.

The question I'm asking is, do we purge even clueless people from their jobs?

Is that where we are with the battle against racism?

Maybe the answer is yes.

Sure.

It is.

I say yes.

Clueless kids.

You know why?

Because if you're president of the university, you shouldn't be clueless.

You know something?

When I see...

Right.

When I see those...

When I saw the faces of young African-American kids when they had won, they looked like Julian Bond in 1965.

They looked like all the black students that protested when I was in college, that did the sit-ins, that didn't think they would get whatever it was, to use the waterfront, whatever the segregation was.

So it's just a different version of that.

So I applaud them.

I mean, they look like they won something, and they look like one of those people could be a senator.

But they also do.

It makes you talk about it.

The conversation continues to permeate deeper into the system.

You have all this structural racism that we all know about and we talk about it, but it doesn't get talked about as much as as it should, and it doesn't get dealt with whether it's not.

But wait, then they turned on the media and said it was a media-free zone.

You know,

they characterize themselves as the protesters in Tiananmen Square, but sometimes they look like the Chinese army.

I mean, their right to never be offended

does not supersede the First Amendment.

But the attention that they're demanding, however irrational the response may be, the irrational response pales in comparison to the structural racism that still exists.

Those are rational response.

I will get national attention.

That has value.

You've got to put all of this in context because a lot of times people come to stuff late and they miss it.

And so you have to understand one of the things, the impetus behind the students' protests, was that for months, not a few days, not a few hours, for months, they had been ignored by the administration.

There was nothing done to mitigate or at least have the conversation about the concerns of racism and bad language and all that stuff.

This even goes back beyond a few months.

It goes back over a period of time that these students have had to live in this environment where they've had to deal with this by themselves.

And after a while, enough's enough.

And you would just say

that includelessness is no longer an excuse.

And it wasn't until the football team walked out.

If the English link department had walked out,

nobody would have done anything.

So let's talk about Yale.

Now, we did a funny thing on our show a couple of weeks ago.

It was the day before Halloween about Halloween costumes, and I was saying, lighten up.

You know, I mean, Halloween costumes, it's a day that you're supposed to be politically correct.

You know, there's nothing horrible about dressing up as a mariachi player.

Mexicans aren't mariachis.

That itself is a fucking costume.

Okay, so.

I didn't do it, man.

So look at you.

I know, I know, I know.

Okay, okay.

So, so anyway, so somebody, so at Yale, they put out a memorandum saying, yes, be sensitive to the costumes.

So a Yale lecturer writes an email just saying,

can't we, she said, is there no room anymore for a child or a young person to be a little bit obnoxious, a little bit inappropriate or provocative?

Basically what I was saying.

Well, the backlash against this, her husband had to go.

They were screaming at this man to get off the campus.

You're disgusting.

How do you sleep at night?

This is students.

Here's an op-ed in the Yale Herald.

He seems to lack the ability, quite frankly, to put aside his opinions.

Yeah, maybe he's allowed to have opinions long enough to listen to the very real hurt that the community feels.

He doesn't get it.

I don't want to debate.

I want to talk about my pain.

This is an editorial.

I have friends who are not going to class, who are not doing their homework, who are losing sleep, who are skipping meals about an email over a Halloween costume that doesn't even exist.

Yeah, but what happens?

Over an email?

Who raised these little monsters?

Well, what happens is...

But the pendulum.

What happens in any argument?

The pendulum is here, and this time it swung all the way to the other side.

And before it swung all the way to this side, you could use the N-word.

You could say whatever you want.

You could call a government Operation Wetback, and nobody's saying anything about it.

Okay, there wasn't a lot of...

So now the pendulum has swung back.

So now, oh, now the other side gets a taste of what it's like.

Well, that's basically what.

Will it come back to the center?

I believe it will.

Okay, but this is crazy.

That is the opposite of what we see happening.

And that's spreading.

That's not just yes.

And that is a level of intolerance that really does infringe upon free speech and the opportunity to actually communicate, you know, whatever you think.

I mean, this is an op-ed.

Yes.

It's catastrophizing the die for race.

All of it is fueled by the failure to resolve the structural racism.

In other words, that's hypersensitive madness.

No question.

But the foundation for that hypersensitive madness is the level of incarceration.

It's the treatment of the cops.

And then we have cameras everywhere.

Now you can see the cops walk up and they see a black guy and they kill him.

But that cop just walked out.

I mean, think of all the things people said about women in the office play.

Hey, baby, grab her.

Oh, what's she so sensitive about?

Right.

She just grabbed her.

Well, now that wouldn't you,

but it's, I think it's the same thing.

Okay.

So I just one last question.

If the football team,

the college football team, which is always bitching that they don't.

And they're still not going to class.

If they they don't get paid.

If they were.

Right.

If they were able to force this guy to resign, why don't they go on strike and get themselves paid?

Yeah.

Okay.

That's a great time.

Time for new rules, everybody.

New rules.

All right.

New rule, if you hire someone like Ben Carson did to sandblast Bible quotes into the walls of your home, make sure they know how to spell proverbs.

Lest thou appear an idiot.

Thanks, fellas.

New rules, Los Angeles have to stop freaking out about the Navy shooting off ballistic missiles.

It hasn't rained here in four years.

Anything that falls from our sky and isn't Harrison Ford is a nice change.

New rules, the woman in this Australian wine ad who sets...

Who sets the wine glass there and says, taste the bush,

has to explain to Americans under 50 years old, what's a bush?

Nero, the magazine's wine spectator, wine advocate, wine enthusiast, wine and spirits, the world of fine wine and decanter.

It's to all merge into one magazine called Drunk Snob Geographic.

Nero, now that salsa has surpassed ketchup as America's favorite condiment, Donald Trump must build a wall around Isle 7 of Safeway.

Back to Mexico, Chili Conqueso and refried beans, and you too, Candle of the Virgin Mary.

You can come back legally, but for now, we need those shelves for mayonnaise and Mountain Dew.

And finally, new rules, someone must remind white Americans that even though other people are winning small victories and making slight gains, you're not losing.

You're still way, way ahead.

For example, before the recession, whites had four times the wealth of blacks and Latinos.

But since the recession, that's gone up.

Now they have six times as much.

So if anyone should be bitching about wanting their country back, it ain't you.

Now I bring this up.

I bring this up because last week the National Academy of Sciences reported that the death rate for white Americans, 45 to 54, and no college degree, had risen markedly in this century.

A time when an increase in the mortality rate for any large group is virtually unheard of in an advanced nation, or even in this one.

But middle-aged American whites are dropping like flies.

Overweight.

Overweight, depressed, poorly dressed flies.

Dropping from what?

Drugs, alcohol, suicide, and possibly trying to fit into skinny jeans.

The suicide rate for whites is now four times the rate for blacks.

And in the last decade, 90% of the people who tried heroin for the first time were white.

It's hard out there for a wimp.

And that's why tonight I'd like to remind white people of something very important they may have forgotten.

You're white.

Cheer the fuck up.

Jesus, look at history.

It's always a great time to be white.

Think of all the advantages.

Sorry, bro.

Think of all the advantages you have.

Cops don't shoot you for having your hands in your pockets.

When people follow you around a store, it's because they want to help you find something.

Major party presidential candidates aren't proposing to deport you.

You can walk through an entire wedding reception without anyone trying to order a drink from you.

And how about this perk?

If you're white, you're much more likely to be not in prison.

Blacks and whites use marijuana at virtually the same rate, not counting Miley Cyrus.

But blacks are charged with possession almost four times as often.

And crack cocaine will send you to jail for much longer than powder cocaine, the preferred brand of white people.

In fact, if the cops see a Caucasian man walking down the street with white powder under his nose, all they say is, man, that must have been a great doughnut.

Hell, you can be a cokehead and a nameless drunk until you're 40 and still wind up president of the United States.

Which reminds me of another great thing about being white.

You could be a complete fuck up and people still hire you.

Studies show white applicants with a criminal record are as likely to get hired as black applicants without one.

Prison time served by blacks?

Deal breaker.

Prison time served by whites?

Interesting water cooler conversation.

And whites are still first in line for legacy admissions to colleges and businesses and politics because the well-connected parents of white people tend to be white.

Also, you're much more likely to be the boss.

Fortune 500 CEOs are 97% white and 3% Oprah.

The median net worth of a single white woman, $42,000.

Of a single black woman, $5.

Because she spent it all on a weave.

Fuck you, you politically correct assholes.

One joke.

One joke about the blacks, Victor.

There you go.

Like the old joke.

Yeah, exactly.

In short, when you're white, you don't need to be that good.

There was a.

There was a popular band in the 70s called the Average White Band.

They admitted they were average, but it didn't matter because they were white.

All right.

I want to thank my guests, Hilligan Radigan, Michael Steele, Jay Leno, Paul Reiser, and Astra Nomani.

Join us now for overtime on YouTube.

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

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