Episode #370 (Originally aired 11/6/15)

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

Start the clock.

Good afternoon.

Afternoon.

Time will be

real time.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

You're very kind.

All right.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

Oh, what's it on this?

Boy.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Boy, let's.

Let's see Donald Trump call that low energy.

That's not low energy.

All right, let's start with the good news.

Keep you in the good mood.

Unemployment is now down to 5%, which economists consider full employment.

That's pretty amazing,

considering where we used to be.

Now, this doesn't mean everyone is working, but if you are a college-educated white man and you still can't get hired, your name is Jeb Bush.

Oh, poor Jeb Bush.

What a bad week now.

His father's got a book out.

Everything's going bad for this guy.

I'm not kidding.

He came up with a new slogan.

This is not a comedy slogan.

This is actually his new slogan is, Jeb can fix it.

Well, if you don't think Jeb can fix things, remember the election in Florida in 2000?

We can fix things.

Well, speaking of elections, this was election week, off-year, not many places, but still a good indication of what's going on.

Bad week for liberals.

Weed legalization went down in Ohio.

In Kentucky, they elected a teabagger governor who's going to try to repeal Obamacare there.

In Houston,

equal LGBT rights went down the drain.

Bad week for liberals.

What is next?

A kale shortage?

We find out that hipster beards cause lupus.

It was a terrible week.

Now, the Ohio thing, I got to say, is very complicated.

People have been asking me for the last couple of days about that because they think I smoke pot.

I gave that shit up when I got saved.

You know that.

But it was, no, it was.

It was very complicated in Ohio.

This was not a simple matter.

On the one hand, it is too bad because Ohio and sobriety is a bad combination.

But you know what?

It's also a good thing because under this proposal, it would have been legal weed, but it would have created a monopoly of just a few corporate growers.

And one of the great things about pot is that it's one seed that Monsanto hasn't screwed with yet.

Once corporate America gets a hold of it, they're going to put sriracha sauce on it and and wrap it in bacon.

I don't want that.

Now, in Houston, Republicans in Houston got voters to vote against this LGBT equal rights bill by calling it bathroom ordinance.

Yes,

they scared people into thinking that it would allow men dressed up as ladies to go into a ladies' room and listen to Texans pee.

And now we can't do that.

So there go my holiday plans.

Is this really the most pressing problem America has?

You know, I've spent a lot of time in Houston.

Houston is like the number one party town in America.

Okay, when a man in Houston goes into a ladies' room, the thing he's going to pull out of his pants is cocaine.

So on the political front, Ben Carson, now the absolute frontrunner and getting the scrutiny that the frontrunner gets.

And the more we find out how crazy he is, the more the base loves this guy.

They love their black friend.

Sarah

Sarah Palin said, liberals just don't get it.

Real Americans have always loved Ben ever since his face was on the box of rice.

He doesn't understand.

But I gotta say, of all the crazy shit Ben Carson has said, his latest is a doozy.

Ben Carson now saying that the pyramids,

you know, the actual pyramids in Egypt,

not the vaguest one, the actual pyramids in Egypt, not tombs for the Pharaohs, as every archaeologist in the world says.

No.

Joseph, in the Old Testament of the Bible, he says, he built the pyramids to store grain

and made the Egyptians pay for it.

By the way, just to get clear, okay, the Pharaoh's real.

That actually happened.

The pyramids, real.

You could actually see them.

Joseph, character in a comic book

called the Old Testament,

Joseph.

Yes.

Joseph, by the way, lived to 110 years old, the Bible says, in ancient Egypt, when the main cause of death was puberty.

The real seventh wonder of the world is how Ben Carson never got out of medical school.

So, now the other big story this week, I'm sure you saw the Russian airliner that was brought down over Egypt in Sinai, right?

Okay, now they say it's probably ISIS who did that.

That is one theory that brought down the Russian airliner.

The other theory that could have brought down a Russian airliner, it's a Russian airliner.

They recovered the black box, and there was an empty bottle of vodka in there, right?

But Ben Carson has a theory.

He said the plane was heading for the pyramids.

They had to protect the grain.

All right, we got a great show.

We have Anthony Wiener, David Crumb, and Jillian Melker.

And here a little later, we will be speaking with Quentin Tarantino is backstage.

And first up, he was MSNBC's first star.

He is also one of the great sports analysts of all time.

Keith Olbermann is over here.

There he is.

How are you, sir?

Always.

Great to see you.

Now, you don't mind me saying that, do you?

That you're one of the great sports analysts of all time.

I know you're known for politics, too, but...

One of?

I got to feed the cliche at some point, right?

I consider you our generation's Howard Cosell.

Thank you, Bill.

Is that a compliment?

Yeah, I used to listen to him all the time.

And in fact, at our shared alma mater, I used to introduce his radio show on the radio station at Cordell.

And

the influence that he had on me, I'd never really appreciate it.

I'm glad to hear you say that.

But now, politics.

Also, he's self-destructed a lot, too.

Yeah.

Well, come on, Keith.

You haven't self-destructed.

You just can't keep a job.

Yes.

But lots of talented, creative people have that same problem.

Everybody who's good, they will say he's difficult to work with.

Yes.

And they've said that.

That's your story, and you're sticking to it.

Everybody who's ever worked has said I was difficult to work with.

Right, so

fuck them is what I say.

Fuck you, Bill.

Do you miss politics?

Do you miss commenting on everything?

I live in a Trump building.

You do?

What do you mean a Trump building?

The building that has Trump on the side of it.

Well, there's so many.

Let's leave it alone.

One of the ones in New York, I'd prefer to keep the address secret although you can probably find it online.

Right.

But it says Trump here and Trump that, and the neighbors and other residents of New York like to throw things at the sign, which is literally true.

And so I feel like I'm involved with politics because this guy is screwing with my property values.

So

I'm in it whether I like it.

Do you ever see him in the building?

I do, and this is the scary.

I have seen him, I have talked to him, and obviously he'd be more interested in whether or not I'm happy with the experience than the average guy living there because I have something of a public personality.

But every conversation I ever had with him there or when we worked together at NBC, simultaneously at NBC, was polite,

calm,

was about you, not him.

I agree.

Was rational and solicitous and all I keep thinking is, which is the real one, this crazy guy on TV, who sounds like, as somebody said, an internet comments section is running for president.

For the longest time I thought, well, which one is it?

And then I thought, it doesn't matter.

He's one of these things is a character.

That scares me a little bit.

I've had the same experience.

When you meet him in person, right, he knows how to do that.

He's just, it's all about your needs.

Right.

Well.

Like we are to everybody.

But you have to admit, he has his finger on the pulse of that base.

And as a political observer, I wanted to ask you, this base,

you know, and all the liberals, of course, we all call them crazy, and they are crazy.

I mean, I don't apologize for that.

Thank you.

I don't either.

Do you think they were always crazy?

Was there always this base out there?

Like when we were kids, and it was Nixon as the president,

the base, were they just crazy but they weren't given this platform, or did they become crazy?

I think if you go back through history, there's always been a 20-25% part of the population will do or support the nuttiest thing you can imagine.

I mean, you know, who's John Birch.

John Birch,

right.

But how about 1940?

The Republicans said, we're not getting involved in this thing in Europe.

We're not doing any of that.

We're never going to be involved in that.

Those people are on their own.

And, you know, in 1860,

the Democrats were willing to let the South go and settle the Civil War.

So there's always a nutjob constituency out there.

And that's the point about what's going on now.

When you watch the debates, you say, oh, now Carson is ahead of Trump in the polling.

The greatest Twitter account is the Washington Post past Frontrunners account, which every day puts out who was leading in the polls at this stage of the 2003-04 cycle, 2008-9, 2011-12.

The leader in 2003 among the Democrats at this point, having just taken the lead from Wesley Clark,

was

Howard Dean.

The leader in 2008 among the Democrats, Hillary was up by 20 points.

Rudy Giuliani was still up by 10 among the Republicans.

And in 2012, Herman Kane was the leading Republican at this stage, having wrested away from

the lead from the guy who obviously would never be heard from again, Mitt Romney.

So

this is nut job season.

This is base season, and they're trying to find if they can possibly find a way to get to the nomination.

That's true.

On the other hand, everybody always said that Donald Trump was just promoting himself.

I always said absolutely not.

I think he was, I always thought he was sincere about it, and now I'm glad he's borne that theory out.

What's interesting to me about Donald Trump is the way he is able to, well, I guess Republicans do this routinely, put out an idea that nobody's ever heard before as if everybody should already know it.

Right.

Like, you don't talk about America's foreign policy when you're in England.

Oh, yeah, right.

I forgot that rule that we never heard of before.

That's actually, those are actually the rules of the Trump condo board.

I don't know if you, that's what he's running on, and you're all supposed to have memorized.

And now his things are like, you know, I'll be a great president because I'll make great deals.

Yes.

Like, he's America's personal shopper or something.

When did that...

Mr.

Trump?

Volume, volume, volume.

But if you notice,

this is where I think why the air might be coming out of that thing, because in the last debate, he didn't make any headlines because he didn't do any of that stuff.

When they said, well, how are you going to improve the economy?

I'll get jobs from China.

I'll get jobs from Mexico.

And by that, I mean from Mexico, we will get jobs.

And then from China, we will get jobs.

And so that's how we will get jobs.

Next question.

That's a great strategy.

And then most of the the reporters go, thanks.

Yeah, here's my microphone.

Oh, here's my microphone.

Thanks.

He also says he will make Mexico and China behave like they're a supermodel at a party who's had a few too many drinks.

He doesn't realize that they're sovereign nature.

Well, then he's going to marry them.

Well.

You bring out.

You bring out the best in me.

Or the worst.

Or the worst.

So now, MSNBC, there's a big debate tonight on your former network.

Did you spell that again?

MSNBC.

Okay, thank you.

Rachel Maddow is hosting the three Democratic candidates, probably.

Just happened a little while ago.

So

what happened to MSNBC?

Was it you leaving?

Is that why they went down the drain?

Because

they seem to have fired most of the people who work there.

They can't get ratings.

Is this a liberal conservative thing?

Let me get up on the cross here and say, yes, it was my leaving that did.

I don't know,

and honestly, and you've never heard me say this, it would be unfair to my friends who are still there for me to speculate as to what happened specifically there.

But there is one point that I think is valid, which is we just saw at my last most recent second time I was there, employer, ESPN, for instance.

They're victimized by cord cutting, as they say, where people are not

watching, they don't have cable anymore.

They get everything they want online.

And of course, liberals are going to be first in that because what are we talking about in a meta sense?

We're talking about new technology.

So it's science.

And we're the side that goes, yay, this was not sent to us by some sort of Vixen voodoo devil.

This is science.

It'll probably work.

Let's do the new science.

Let's throw out the cable box and we'll get the satellite.

We'll throw out the satellite and we'll get online.

So

I think there's that.

Plus,

you know, liberals have things to do.

No, it's true.

I know I do.

I got to go talk to a panel.

Always great to see you, Keith Oberman.

We missed you.

I know you'll be back.

All right, let's meet our panel.

Hey, there they are.

Okay, he is the former speechwriter for George W.

Bush, who is now senior editor for The Atlantic.

David Frum, our most frequent guest.

He's a reporter for the National Review and a senior fellow at the Independent Women's Forum.

Gillian Melcor, how you doing?

Nice to have you on our panel for the first time.

And you know this guy, the former U.S.

Congressman from New York in his shirt sleeves, Anthony Wiener.

Now you look like you're in campaign mode because you've got the sleeves rolled up.

Yeah,

I'm going to fight someone tonight.

That's what I'm going to do.

That's what we loved about you.

You were a fighter.

Okay.

So let's go with the big news today.

What I like about doing a live show show on Friday night is that sometimes people in government think they can do a news dump on Friday because that's when you tell the news that you're afraid that people might not want to hear President Obama today.

I loved what he had to say.

Keystone pipeline, dead.

Dead.

And I thought, you know, from a liberal's point of view, this encapsulated all the debates we've been having.

He calmly gave all the facts, like, it doesn't cost any jobs.

I have actually created more jobs here, like 35, than the pipeline would have created.

Gas prices are $2.22 a gallon.

I remember when Newt Gingrich had $2.50 on his podium.

Remember when he ran everywhere, like, let's get it down to $2.50?

It's below.

Independence, energy independence, okay, doesn't affect that.

And yet the Republicans hated it.

Why?

Well, I think we kind of loved Keystone, and for many good reasons.

The first being that the State Department reviewed this five times and found that the impact on climate change was negligible.

In fact, this is not going to stop taking oil out of the Alberta tar sands.

It's just going to make the transportation of it more carbon-intensive.

It's going to get to the market somehow.

And I think the other reason is that we're looking at things like the Lack Magantic disaster, where a train derailed, exploded, destroyed half a town, killed 47 people.

And we're looking at the State Department saying that, you know, six people will probably die a year from this.

If the pipeline is a safer way to get this.

That's really pulling it strong.

No, it's not.

Six people who are going to die on trains.

That's the reason why we should burn more carbon and destroy the planet.

Well, we're going to be burning more carbon by not building Keystone.

Well, I don't know about that.

One of the points the President made was we have to leave some carbon in the ground.

We can't burn it all or the planet will melt.

But this doesn't do this.

There's no way that this is going to affect the Alberta tar sands, how much they take out.

It's just affecting how it gets marketed.

But as a leader, the United States is a leader.

We have a big conference in Paris coming up about climate change.

Well, and the United States,

I'm really excited that you're opening the show with a discussion of the crisis in U.S.-Canadian relations.

This is something that just does not get enough airtimes.

You're Canadian on American television.

And it is a big wet mackerel in the face of the new Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau.

This is going to be an embarrassing problem for him.

But here's the thing I really don't get about this.

President Obama thinks of carbon as a global crisis, and he's right, it's important.

Where is the comprehensive solution?

Where is the tax on the emission of carbon?

Instead, he's got these kinds of ad hoc,

impulsive gestures that aren't going to make any difference and that are really kind of goodbye presents to his policy.

This is an ad hoc gesture that was impulsive that took eight years in the making.

You ask where the policies are.

Well, the policies are to do the best you can while you're president when you have troglodytes in Congress stopping anything that you want to do.

I mean,

look,

you know,

the point that needs to be made here is, you know,

something must be done, this is something, let's do this.

But let us make a larger point that we have to start.

You know, what if you can get gas prices down to, or oil prices down to 30 cents a barrel?

We have to realize that that notion of trying to make it easier and easier and easier and less and less expensive for us to use these fossil fuels is part of the problem.

And I think part of being a leader is to say, you know what, I'm not going to facilitate that anymore because ultimately it's killing our planet.

And even if you say, well, someone else will do it.

No, I want to make a

question because I think it's a little bit insane, frankly, to say that we don't care about energy prices.

If you look at who spends money on energy prices, gas, electric bills, all of these things, it is disproportionately affecting minority and low-income families.

A larger portion of their paycheck goes to this.

So I think it's pretty callous.

You know, frankly, you live in a penthouse.

I've lived in a studio where I've had to get into arguments with my roommates about who covers the energy.

The issue with me,

I'm just making a point about the globe here.

It's slightly the last point, though.

No, no, I believe that there is nothing elitist about the notion of saving everybody's planet.

That's not an elitist principle.

The notion that

the bottom line is it is not expensive enough for us to get into our cars and drive places.

That is fundamentally the problem.

So the economics of rooting the earth are profound.

And about that, President Obama is not going to do anything.

In fact, he glories in cheap oil and cheap gas, takes credit for it.

The reason I describe this as an ad hoc impulsive gesture is at today's prices, oil sands oil doesn't come to market anyway.

It has been priced priced out.

Keystone would probably not have been built at this point, no matter what the President said or did.

It no longer pays.

He delayed it to the point where it ceased to be cost-effective.

But the problem is still going to be there, because the oil prices come and go.

They will be high again.

When they are high again, Canada has the single largest collection of

energy units of petroleum on its territory.

That will be a resource for the United States unless America transitions to a different kind of energy.

And that takes not impulsive gestures.

That takes a higher tax on the use of oil and other carbon-based fuels.

But whose fault is that that has not been even proposed?

Of course they can't get that through the Congress, and I find it very convenient

that the conservatives are so concerned about the poor on the one issue where it benefits the Koch brothers.

Okay, so.

But let's give the Conservatives their due.

They won a big election on Tuesday.

Not a big election, a small election.

A little one.

Pot, they won that.

Okay, but you know, pot is not, even as a pot smoker, I say this, not the most important issue.

The bathrooms in Houston, not the most important issue.

But in Kentucky, in Kentucky, one of the few states that had a, southern states that had a Democratic governor, and Obamacare brought a lot of people to the insured roles.

A lot of people benefited from that.

And this was supposed to be a very close election.

And yet the Teabagger governor walked away with it because the liberals just didn't show up.

There are two Americas and only one of them votes.

That's the

they were like, yeah, we're liberals.

We're applauding for being bullshit.

Okay.

But really, when people say government is broken, people are broken.

Because, you know what, I get it.

Not coming out to the polls because you don't care what happens in the bathrooms in Houston, but when it's your health, this is a life in the health.

No, it's totally the case.

What we learned on Tuesday, once again, is Republicans are fired up about throwing people off insurance rolls.

That's like really gets them animated.

And our side, you're exactly right.

We do a terrible job, especially in these off-year elections, especially in places where you have moderate Democrats running.

We do a terrible job of turning it out.

Now, I don't think there's anything that really connects those three things.

But I have to tell you, before Republicans cheer too hard about the success in Kentucky,

if this governor goes ahead and does what he says he's going to do and shut down the Obama exchange, it was a very successful one in Kentucky, you are going to finally see the Republicans say, uh-oh, now we are going to really turn people where they would turn people away because we're going to start acting on this notion of rolling back Obamacare.

And you're going to have millions of people, maybe not millions, but hundreds of thousands of people in Kentucky who are going to lose health insurance because of that decision.

It is going to have ramifications around the country, ultimately, in a good way for people.

But explain to me the person, the liberal or the Democrat, who has this Obamacare coverage, and okay, now my copay for my diabetes diabetes is $20.

And if it gets repealed, it'll bankrupt my family.

But I can't find time in my schedule, my list of errands, to go out to the polls on Tuesday and vote against this guy.

That I don't get.

I don't get it either from that perspective.

But what I think is there's a real urgency among Republicans to get out and vote.

This is something that they didn't support to begin with.

And then I think, you know, this is a big government issue.

We're looking at in the last year what happened with the VA.

I spoke to a father who he had tried to get his son who'd returned from you know going overseas and serving in for a mental health appointment had been turned away the big government botched it and this this kid ended up hanging himself in a garage.

I think stories like that inspire conservatives.

Him, the six people on the train.

No, I think you speak for the real American.

I really think she does.

I think I do actually.

No, I

and I think this election kind of shows it.

But on that note, I think that there is concern about big government.

I think there's concern about it not handling health care well.

We couldn't even get healthcare.gov out quickly.

We finally got it together.

I speak for that part of Real America that comes from Canada.

But

whether you like it or not, the answers they've come to, Republicans have spent the last seven years agonizing over what is wrong with our party.

So I'm more probably on the left-hand side of the Republican Party, the Tea Party, whatever you think of it.

That was a critique of the way Republicans have done things.

Democrats do have this problem, and it doesn't help to blame the people who don't come out.

Why don't they come out?

Between 2008 and 2012, President Obama dropped something over 3 million votes.

Only about 900,000 of those votes went to the Republican.

The rest just didn't come out at all.

Isn't the question not what's wrong with you people?

What's wrong with us?

Why don't we get them excited?

And that kind of conversation that Republicans have had very rancorously and not always constructively, that's a conversation that Democrats would do well to have.

In fairness,

things that people are against always animate them more than things that they're for.

And there is a sense among many progressives and many Americans that this system is not on the level.

We go out turnout for elections and then we turn to Washington to then act on what we voted on, and nothing happens.

If you want to really solve problems in America, you don't turn to Washington.

A lot of people happen.

President Obama has a frustration, no, but I'm just saying.

So it manifests itself with the right saying, throw the bums out, and the left is kind of like, what does it matter who we put in?

Nothing gets gets done in Washington anyway.

President Obama has passed more stuff.

Well, nothing gets done because they don't vote in the people who will get those votes.

President Obama has accomplished it's giving them an experience that they don't deserve.

I don't buy that argument.

But you know, you look at this, and 990 Democrats since Obama took office have lost their state or local level seats, their significant state or local level seats.

I think that's a response.

You know, Republicans are getting much more efficient at mobilizing on a seat.

Yeah, a lot of that is cheating.

People are seeing that this is an opportunity to do something.

They cheat.

They do cheat a lot.

President Obama has accomplished more for Democrats and his values

than any Democrat since Linda Johnson.

And it doesn't excite his party.

Let me bring up one more issue, which is pot, which is going to be on the ballot.

Well, this was on the Ohio ballot.

And by the way, as I mentioned in the monologue, this was a complicated issue where, you know, I had to go, gee, Wish, gee, Wiz, I hate corporations and I love pot.

This is a tough one.

But you know what?

I've been smoking pot for 40 years.

I can wait a few more years to get it right.

I'm glad it went down in Ohio.

I know,

it's

this

was amazing to me, this attempt to somehow shoehorn pot legalization right in with economic monopoly.

Really?

Can't we have stoner to table first?

Can't the hippies control it for a little while before Monsanto and R.J.

Reynolds put up Roundup Ready Joints?

It's not going to be a good thing.

If legal, it will not be an artisanal product.

It's like cigarettes.

It has massive economies of scale.

Marketing is going to matter.

It is going to be, if ever legal, a giant industry with very low levels of commercial ethics, and it will advertise to younger people because that's how you have to get people starting.

So if you don't like giant corporations, get ready, because you're about to have one of the most cynical giant corporations of them all targeting in some of the worst ways if this product is ever ever legalized, which I hope it will not be beyond the states that have already done it.

I'm pretty pro-legalization.

Great.

Yeah.

But I think that if you were somebody who did not want legalization, this is a genius strategy to not get legalization.

There's nothing that's going to make a bunch of stoner libertarians more upset than creating a big marijuana cartel.

So I think this is their strategy and we've got to call them out on it.

Well,

I think it was a mistake in Ohio to skip skip over medical uses of marijuana and go directly to recreational uses.

I think the first thing we've got to get in this country is wide-scale coast-to-coast medical marijuana use being legal.

We have to update our banking laws.

We have to update our FDA laws.

We have to get that ready.

But, you know,

it's interesting.

You cannot call yourself a libertarian on that stage of Republicans.

You cannot call yourself a state's

rights person and then say, I'm opposed to all these things.

Like, Chris Christie is a phony.

To say that that I respect what we did in New Jersey but I want to stamp it out everywhere else is a phony position.

And no one should call themselves a libertarian or even a conservative if they don't believe in letting people make those kind of decisions for themselves.

I call myself a conservative and I want to see marijuana stay illegal.

And

this is one of those things where people may have to learn from experience.

The way back in the 70s when the drinking age was lowered from 21 to 18 and there was then terrible carnage on the highways and it took it a decade and a half to learn that was not a good idea and the drinking age was then raised back.

It's the same drug.

Sometimes it's not.

It's not the same drug.

This is the same bullshit.

It's the same learning curve.

It is not.

Of course, it's not the same drug.

Alcohol kills hundreds of thousands of people.

Pot has never killed anybody.

Marijuana creates all kinds of different problems, but we will.

It doesn't.

It will happen.

This may be a case where people have to learn the hardest.

You guys are bumming my high.

Okay.

So,

how many remember the name Rachel Dolezal?

Does that name ring a bell?

No.

No?

Okay, well,

she was the head of the NAACP in Spokane, Washington.

She said she identified as black, even though she kind of looked white, and we thought she was white.

Well, this week she went on the show, The Real, and for the first time acknowledged that she is, in fact, a white bitch.

So show that.

Show the clip we have from The Real.

You weren't born black, so when you say you are black, it makes it hard for people to understand where you're coming from.

Right, and that's why I said I acknowledge I was biologically born white to white parents.

The black ladies love her.

Anyway,

so look, this raised awareness, which is the most important thing we can ever do and the least,

for white people who need to identify as black,

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All right, my next guest is a virtuoso director who also, I must say, as a character, is an American original.

He's an Oscar winner.

His next movie is called The Hateful Eight.

Quentin Torrentino is over.

Look at that.

That's what you get for making so many badass entertaining movies.

So we know why you're here.

You got in some trouble with the police.

And when I heard about it, I said, you know, I've known this guy a long time.

We agree sometimes, we don't agree.

But what happened to him so reminded me of what happened to me after 9-11.

People got upset with what I said, which is okay, but then they lied about it.

In my case, they lied and they said, well, he was denigrating the military, which I never was.

And in your case, what you said, and I'll read the statement, you said you were at a police brutality rally in New York, and you said, when I see murder, I can't stand by.

I have to call the murdered the murdered, and I have to call the murderers the murderers.

And the lie is that you think all cops are murderers, and that's not what the statement says.

Exactly.

Okay.

So go ahead, defend yourself.

Well, yeah, I mean, you know, these unions that are coming out there, Patrick Lynch and everybody, you know, if they were saying what I said and they had a problem with that, well, then now we're actually talking about the problem.

Right.

All right, but they're, but they're not dealing in a fair issue.

They're saying that I am a cop hater, which is slander because I didn't say that.

And they're saying, they're implying that I meant that all cops are murderers.

And

I wasn't.

But the thing that's really sad about it is we actually do need to talk to the cops about this.

We need to get to the problem.

We need to bring this to the table.

So you're going to continue talking.

Yeah, absolutely.

I'm glad they're not intimidating.

No.

Because they can be very intimidating.

I mean, they can pull you over.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, it is kind of interesting because the thing is,

you know, back when I was in my 20s

and broke,

I was a little scared of the cops, all right?

And oftentimes I had warrants out on me for traffic stuff that I never took care of and everything.

Jackie Brown.

Yeah, exactly.

No, no, I deal with that in Jackie Brown, and I knew what I was talking about then.

And you know, and what would literally happen, I would have, like, like I said, traffic crap and whatever, and then I'd have like $1,500 warrants on me, and I make $10,000 a year, so I'd get stopped, and then I'd have to do eight days in county jail because I couldn't pay for it to get rid of it.

But, you know, since the last time...

You were really not successful.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, no, no, no.

You never realized how much of a loser you were.

Oh, yeah, no.

In my 20s, I only worked for minimum wage.

And if you only work for minimum wage, you'd make $10,000 a year.

I had the same experience.

I know you did.

I did.

So it's interesting.

But it is actually interesting, though, to now all of a sudden I'm looking in my rearview mirror again.

I'm seeing the bubblegums again in a way that I haven't thought about in 20 years.

Right, right.

So I saw in the news last night.

There was a police incident in February in Pennsylvania.

A female police officer shot a guy, tased and shot a guy, and just was acquitted.

I thought we would show this footage.

I had not seen it before yesterday, so roll this.

Any swear occurs in the area of.

It's horrible.

Oh, my God.

It's so disturbing.

I I mean, the two shots you hear at the end are bullets.

Before that, the sounds you hear are taser.

But you actually even hear the guy say, he gets shot and goes, what the fuck?

Right.

And you're going to steal that dialogue.

But

I mean, there was no reason to shoot this person.

I mean, we're not saying all cops are murdering people.

No, no, no, no, no.

Of course not.

But this one is.

This is murder.

The guy is on the ground.

She's like, show me your.

It's very hard to show someone your hands when they're being shot with 150 million watts of taser volts So then she shoots him.

What danger is is this police officer in this I'm and the hysteria Hysteria in her voice.

I don't know what I don't understand about the cops.

They want us to think they're so brave

But then they don't always act brave.

Well, you know, it's funny that's not brave.

I mean look okay just use a crazy example.

All right

Okay, in today's world, if you got into some sort of altercation with, you know, we're on the same age, so think about back in the 70s or something.

If you got into an altercation with a cop, and I'm not encouraging any kind of altercation with cops, obviously not.

You could get killed doing that, all right?

And you could get killed doing that.

And we know, and it's not about that.

But just use it as a crazy example.

Say

you got into a scuffle with a cop and you ended up punching them.

All right.

In today's world, you'd just be shot for that.

I mean, absolutely shot.

If you grab their baton, you'd be shot.

You'd actually be shot for that.

Now,

when we were kids in the 70s and we watched Adam 12 they got into fights all the time and they didn't just take out the guns and shoot people when you watch the rookies they got into fights all the time but if they just actually took out a gun and shot the hippie we would have said whoa what's going on

all right but now it actually has become the new norm right well I don't know if it's the norm but it but we see

as far as like that kind of response there are enough videos where it's not just a few incidents it can't just be the people who have cameras.

It must happen all the time.

So again, we're not saying all cops do this or even most, but here are my, let me see if you agree with it.

Here are my issues with cops.

One, do a better job of weeding out the personality profile who becomes the bad cop.

Because we all know that kid in school.

Yeah, yeah.

Who had no friends.

wasn't popular and thought, hmm, if I was the hall monitor, I could lord it over people.

It's not that hard to stop that guy from becoming a cop.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Two,

be more loyal to right than to cops.

When a cop does a bad thing, don't always be the thin blue line defending the cop no matter what he does.

That's Serpico.

And that was a long time ago.

I actually think you're hitting right on exactly what the problem is.

I mean, this is a...

It's a hydra.

It's a snake with many heads.

But I actually think the biggest head that needs to be chopped off first is this blue wall idea.

The fact that they would protect their own as opposed to put themselves at the betterment of citizenry.

And I mean if it is just a situation, I actually don't think it's an issue of individuals, good cops versus bad cops.

I think it's inside of the institution itself.

And

it is.

As all problems are.

If they were really, really serious about this, they wouldn't close rank on what I'm obviously talking about, which is bad cops.

And I'm obviously talking about specific cases where it is murder as far as I'm concerned.

Walter Scott was murdered.

You have to call murder murder, even if it's from the cops.

They're not.

Okay.

Okay, now you're plagiarizing.

All right.

Yes.

All right.

Let me move on.

There was some really bad news for white people this week, so

I was depressed all week.

the mortality rate this is amazing from white people with less than college education 45 to 54 that's people born in the 60s rose dramatically they said the only comparable stats are from the HIV outbreak and when the USSR collapsed Wow they always say no they don't this is the the

theory, they don't really know the reasons, drugs, alcohol, and suicide.

So let me give Donald Trump a little credit.

His book, Crippled America, somehow this guy who sits in his giant tower on a gold throne all day has his finger right on the pulse of these are Trump voters, not college educated, white, and think America's crippled.

We don't win anymore.

We got to make America great again.

And

they're sitting there at the end of the bar, getting drunk, shooting up on heroin is hugely increased among white people and killing themselves.

To get a sense of how bad this is, during the Great Depression, life expectancy went up in the United States.

Americans lived longer in 1938 than they did in 1929, the greatest economic crisis in the country's history.

So this is something more than just the shock of economic pressure on that population, although the economic pressure is real.

When you look at what else is happening to those people,

they are much less likely to get married, and they are religiously disaffiliating.

That was the other big survey news of this week, the Pew Pole.

And

marriage,

non-marriage, and

these people are religiously disaffiliated.

Absolutely, on that, I spent some time looking into it because I found it fascinating that the Pew study and this study come out at the same time.

And the demographics of it match up pretty darn well.

You can look at different studies that have been done.

Non-religious are more likely to participate in drugs.

Non-religious, there's.

God.

Yeah, well, hot, yes, but heroin, no.

Non-religious, there's a higher correlation of suicide attempts.

I mean, I think, does that speak to the truth of it?

I don't disagree.

Maybe not.

But I do think that's a correlation that we have to pay attention to.

There's a sense of despair, there's a sense of hopelessness, and I think that is in large part because white America is losing its religion.

It's also a large part because of the economic policies of Ronald Reagan that have been followed through for all these years.

I think it's more, you know.

I don't think it's because people are less religious, although I will concede your point.

Yes, people who are religious very often put their head on the pillow at night with

a lot greater ease than those of us who know that nothing's going to happen when we die.

It's not, what matters.

What matters, and Julian's absolutely right about this, when you look at, and there's this, a lot of the studies on religion are kind of tantative, and so you have to be careful, but it's religious affiliation more than religious faith that seems to make the difference.

It's being part of a community.

People kill themselves because they feel alone and no one cares.

And then when there's a shock of bad economic news, and if they're not married,

they don't have structures to help them.

And

this began the most intense period of this rise in mortality, is many years after President Reagan left office.

But it's an accumulating problem.

And the policies are the same.

Also, can I read the quote from two Princeton professors who did this interesting study?

The preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.

And you can go down the list of issues, you know, like legalizing pot, most people want now, minimum wage raised, all those kind of issues.

Doesn't matter.

Doesn't matter what the people think because it's an oligarchy now.

Don't you think that has something to do with it?

it?

I wouldn't use that language, but I think something like that is very true.

Something like that is very true.

People don't feel effective.

And lives for many people are worse.

And that is one of the most disturbing things about the recovery from this recession.

Recessions make things happen faster.

That's what we saw in the 30s.

All kinds of new technologies that had been incubated, suddenly accelerated.

So what we see are a lot of trends that have been true before the Great Recession accumulating faster during this recovery.

And we are getting a glimpse of the kind of society that America is on its way to being.

And I think all of us need to have a kind of sober look at this.

It's going to be a society in which some of us are doing better and better and participating in a more globalized world and have more fantastic products to buy, but many more of our fellow citizens

are left behind and not just economically, because that's really the least of it, but isolated and alone and unmarried and without affiliation, without a feeling of, as you say, political power, and all of those things together.

It is just, it's a horrible thing that has been dumped on two-thirds of the people.

But the root of it is the greed.

The root of it is that we're not all in it together.

The root of it is, I want, like Glenn Beck once said, I want more of the pie for me.

I want more of the pie.

That's the sickness at the root of society.

And you know what?

Go ahead.

But I just think there's also a fundamental sense that a lot of Americans have, and maybe it's in this, this is tied into this, that things are not on the level.

They don't believe that politics is really on the level.

They don't believe that the media is really telling us what we need to know.

They think that big institutions are running their lives and they have less control themselves.

And that is a political failing.

I don't think you can lay everything at the feet of politics, but it is a political failing.

And it's being reinforced by one side of the political spectrum that has us at war with one another.

That says it's that guy that's doing it to you, it's the Mexicans that are doing it to you, it's these guys, it's these liberals that are doing it to you.

And the more you reinforce that, the more people start to...

You can't turn this into a political commercial.

That's just not helpful.

I don't think anyone ever killed themselves because they felt that

they didn't like what was going on in Washington.

They kill themselves because they feel alone.

No, but what went on in Washington?

The conversation is getting skewed, though.

When you have a group of people in the political scene who are benefiting by having the conflict among us, yes, I think it is isolating.

And And I don't think, by the way, the progressives talk like that.

We do have this notion of lifting people.

You've never been averse to conflict.

There has been a lot of class warfare on the left.

But I think what religion does, why this is such an important component, is it inoculates it.

It says that your value is not from how much money you're making.

Your value is not from your political power.

You don't need religion.

Your value is for how God sees you.

You don't need religion for that.

I don't have religion.

I have that.

But you're super successful.

I just don't, yeah.

Thank you.

But you're an attractive man as well.

But I'll talk to you after the show.

Right now, I have to go to New Rules.

All right.

Time to New Rule.

All right, New Rule, now that he's released his new book with this tension-filled cover pose,

Donald Trump must show us the rest of the photo.

New Rule, this man must be congratulated for taking a stand in life.

Some are called to fight injustice, others to defend their country, but a rare few are called to make sure Caitlin Jenner pees standing up like he was born to.

Now,

whatever your name is, sir, I'm going to guess Dale.

It is my honor to present you with the first inaugural Urinal Cake of Freedom Award.

New Roll, Jeb Bush's campaign has to lose the exclamation point.

Sorry, Jeb, exclamation points are for closers.

Here's your new campaign sign.

New roll, since Hollywood keeps making movies about flawed but brilliant chefs, mountain climbing, and Steve Jobs, even though no one goes to see them, has to combine them into one huge bomb called Eat It.

Steve Jobs Restaurant on Mount Everest,

starring an actor with a production company, a tiny English actress half his age, and a trout.

New rule, stop criticizing Mick Jagger's ex-wife, Jerry Hall, for dating Rupert Murdoch.

After all, she's already made a grown man cry.

Now it's time to make a dead man come.

And finally, new rule.

If neurosurgeon Dr.

Ben Carson really believes that somebody with zero governing experience is qualified to be president, he must first let someone with zero medical training operate on his brain.

And given some of the shit that comes out of his mouth, I think someone already has.

Now, if you're following the presidential race, you know that 2015 has been the year of the amateur.

If there's one thing Republican voters can agree on, it's that the less the head of our government knows about government, the better.

John Kasich is one of the few adults in the field, and he's trying to buck this trend with his catchy slogan, Kasich, I know how a bill becomes a law.

But

that's not what GOP voters want anymore.

Experience?

Knowing things?

Republicans avoid that stuff like a gay son.

And that explains their two leading candidates, Captain Carnival Barker and Sleeping the Crazy Pants.

Like many of you, I've spent the past few months thinking you can either want Trump to be leader of the free world, or I can take you seriously, but it can't be both.

And Ben Carson, who says that the Ayatollah Khamenei and Vladimir Putin went to college together, which no one can even find a source for except perhaps Ambien,

he's now the frontrunner?

Of course he is, because 85% of Iowa Republicans say they find the total lack of government experience to be his biggest selling point.

But if their kid needed brain surgery, would they say, forget Ben Carson, he's a brain surgery insider?

Where else in life does anyone ever apply this thinking?

When their toilet is broken, do they say, get me anybody but a plumber?

The shit's about to back up in here.

What we need is an outsider.

So

it's this kind of thinking, or the lack of it, that has inspired me to change my view on an important aspect of American elections.

I used to say that our elections went on far too long, but you know what?

No.

Americans are dumb.

They need extra time.

I used to think we should do it like the British, where an election takes five weeks, or France, where the official length of the campaign is two weeks.

I've been to France.

It takes that long to get a waiter to notice you.

And these are people who will spend three days shopping for a cheese that goes with pears.

Their idea of a fast food is a snail.

When they cooked Joan of Arc, she was still pink in the middle.

Too soon for Joan of Arc.

Yeah, it was 1431.

But look,

we're not them.

We're not the French, we're not the British, we're Americans, and we're far too dim and distracted to responsibly make a choice in just weeks or even months.

We're like Lamar Odom at a whorehouse.

We don't even have sex the first couple of days.

That's just for letting the drugs kick in.

If our election season was only two months long, Trump would have won already in a landslide.

But time,

time is our greatest ally against idiot candidates.

Already you're seeing people tiring of Trump because he has three pieces of shtick.

I'm great.

Mexico's laughing at us.

Constipated toddler face.

That's our show.

I want to thank David Frum, Jillian Melcher, LBD Wiener, Quentin Tarantino, and Keith Oberman.

Join us now for overtime on YouTube.

Thank you, folks.

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

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