Episode #363 (Originally aired 9/11/15 - New Version)

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Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO Late Month series, Real Time with Bill Maher.

Start the clock.

Good afternoon.

Afternoon.

Time will be

real time.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

How are you?

Thank you very much.

Oh, hey, Oh, thanks.

Smith, thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

What a crowd.

What a crowd.

All right, okay.

I know, I know.

Well, I say this every week, but I'm going to say it again.

I think I know why you're happy tonight.

Because, well, because you love me.

That's where I was going to go with that.

But also, Senate Democrats delivered President Obama a major victory by blocking the Republican efforts to screw up his Iran deal, which is a no-brainer and it's going to go through.

Or maybe you're just glad to get out of the heat.

I don't know.

Maybe that's why you're happy.

But no, you know, the Republicans never let anything go, even when they lose, as they did.

So they had a big rally the other day on the Capitol against the Iran deal, and the lineup of speakers, very impressive.

Here's who smoke: Donald Trump, Ted Cruz,

Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Michelle Bachman, Louis Gohmert,

and the Duck Dynasty guy.

It was a virtual Woodstock of the mentally impaired.

It was.

And Donald Trump said, if you elect me, we will have so much winning, you're going to get bored with winning.

You know, Charlie Sheen used to talk like this, but he was on crack.

I mean, there was an excuse.

Oh, Donald Trump.

Donald Trump.

I hate love talking about Donald Trump every week.

So this week he picked a fight with Carly Fiorina's face.

Have you seen that?

I mean, we've had Carly on.

I don't agree with her on a lot, but I have nothing against her.

She's a nice face.

Donald Trump said, look at that face.

Would anyone vote for that face?

Two questions.

One, has Donald Trump crossed the line finally?

And two, has he seen Scott Walker?

Because

if you're gonna pick on a face,

this guy looks like he died in a fireworks accident.

And then

Donald Trump says, I didn't mean it about the face.

I'm just an entertainer.

That's what he said.

Don't blame him.

He's just Trump, the insult comic dog.

Today he called Obama a hockey puck.

No one remembers Don Rickles?

Okay.

No, just an entertainer.

Well, you know know what, Don?

I agree.

And my question is, when is the show over?

I mean,

there has to be some line that he can cross, right?

Something that will turn people off.

And yet every week he seems to dare us.

This week, I swear to God, he said something so creepy about his own daughter.

He said, quote, what a beauty that one.

If I weren't happily married and you know her father,

what does this man have to say to be disqualified?

John McCain, pussy.

Megan Kelly on the rag.

My daughter, I wish I could have sex with her.

There are schizophrenics with Tourettes who have more control of what comes out of their mouth.

So when he said that thing about his daughter, his polls in the rural South went through the roof.

They were like, finally, someone who gets me.

But forget Trump.

Today, right now, as we speak, is the 14th anniversary.

Can you believe 14 years have passed since 9-11?

Teachers in Florida have boyfriends who weren't even alive then.

And you know, everyone remembers and commemorates in their own way.

Miley Cyrus today was wearing the black pasties.

Mr.

President and Mrs.

Obama had a moment of silence at the White House.

George Bush wore the pants that he peed in that day.

So everybody has their own.

And last night, listen to this, on the eve of 9-11, a rainbow, did you see this, appeared emanating from ground zero, which sent an unmistakable message to the nation.

Jesus is gay.

Oh.

Down in Kentucky, Kim Davis just went, no, he didn't.

No, he.

Oh, yes, this was the week of Kim Davis.

You know this name now.

Republicans have a new hero, Kentucky County Clerk Kim Davis, the Rosa Parks of homophobia.

The woman who went to jail for five whole days rather than issue marriage licenses to gay people.

She was released on Tuesday, greeted with a huge rally led by Mike Huckabee, the white Al Sharpton.

And

They all got up there and said, God's law supersedes the courts, which actually is a very strong legal argument.

In Saudi Arabia, but not here in America.

What country are we living in?

And you know,

I don't want to say that these super-religious types are always hypocrites, but here she is, standing up for traditional marriage, and then we find out she's had multiple affairs, conceived twins out of wedlock, and has been married four times.

That's why she can't give marriage licenses to gays.

She's used them all for herself.

All right, we got a great show.

Simon Rushby is here.

Linda Chavez is here.

And Michael Moynihan, and a little later, you're speaking with the very talented actor Wendell Pierce

from not one but two HBO shows.

But first up, she is the Emmy Award-winning documentarian whose latest film, San Francisco 2.0, debuted September 28th on HBO.

Former real-time real reporter Alexandra Pelosi is over here.

Look at you running out.

How you doing?

Great to see you, as always.

Happy to be here.

We're always happy to see you.

Wait, you know, we need to have our HBO moment because if you think 9-11, HBO is putting you on TV.

Think about this.

That's right.

We both

are at 9-11.

Right, and

not every network has the backbone.

Right.

protect to put you on the air.

What they had was not just backbone, but lack of sponsors.

Okay.

That was a key thing.

But But free speech is something we want to celebrate, and HBO has given us the platform, and we need to be grateful to them for.

This is enough ass-kissing of the network.

Okay, Alex.

Yeah, we're happy to be here.

Let it go.

Okay.

So you have made a very interesting film, as you always do.

You've never done anything that isn't fascinating.

This one is about income inequality, which I think is one of the great issues of our time.

Even the Republicans agree with that now.

But I mean, you talked about something, and you use San Francisco in it to illustrate income inequality, and this is very personal to you.

I mean, your mother is the representative from San Francisco for many years, Nancy Pelosi.

You grew up there.

So this means a lot to you that your city that you know and love is not the city you grew up in because of income inequality.

And it's not just San Francisco.

San Francisco could be any city in America and in the world.

San Francisco is a microphone.

It's kind of the canary in the coal mine.

It is.

It's worse there.

I read that,

I think, or maybe I saw it in your movie, that the income inequality there is worse than in Rwanda.

Yeah, it's bad because it's a very small town and you had all the tech companies moving in

and they just don't have affordable housing.

And when you don't have affordable housing and you have this influx of all this new money, you're pushing out the middle class.

Right, the tech companies used to be out in the burbs, right?

And then the mayor did something, like gave them tax breaks, so they all moved into the city.

So the regular people couldn't afford to live there anymore.

Right, so now you have school teachers and firefighters and cops who can't afford to live in the city where they work, which is a real problem in America.

And, you know, this is happening in a lot of cities, but it's, to me, it's an example of how San Francisco is becoming like a gated community where only the wealthy can live.

And there are a lot of cities you could say that about, but it's a real challenge for the leaders of our cities.

How are we going to deal with this divide between rich and poor?

Are we just going to push the middle class out and make them live?

You know, we need them.

But it especially broke my heart to see it about San Francisco.

I mean, I've lived out here in Los Angeles for almost 32 years.

We go to San Francisco a lot.

I used to play the comedy clubs.

Now I play the theaters there.

It's always been a great town because it was a bohemian town.

When I think of San San Francisco, I think of, if you're going, where are some flowers in your hair?

I think of the hippies.

I think of the summer of love.

I think of people who are counterculture.

I don't think of the wealthy.

It seems like it's through the looking glass in this town now.

And now it's the land of the tech bros.

This is the new, this is progress.

This is,

well, I'm saying this is the conversation that needs to be had about how do we handle the progress without destroying the culture of a community.

That's the question that we need to answer: how are we going to make this city work for everybody?

That's the challenge.

It's like we can't just let all the rich people move in.

And the rich people want to be, I mean, the newly minted millionaires that made all their money in tech, want to be in San Francisco because that's where the culture is.

They don't want to be in Silicon Valley.

They don't want to live down there.

They want to live in the city.

And then by moving in there, they destroy it.

It's like when the douchebags go to the hip club.

And you douchebags know who you are.

I don't know who I'm talking to there.

So then the other problem you have is that San Francisco is grounds here of the so-called sharing economy, coming out of the bohemian concept of the sharing economy.

So we have the Airbnb and the Uber.

That started in San Francisco, right?

Airbnb, Uber, because we did something about this a couple of weeks ago on the show, the sharing.

I call it the desperate economy.

No one really wants to rent their apartment to a stranger for a a week.

Well, some people can't afford to live in the city unless they are.

Well, that's what I'm saying.

That's the only way.

It's a desperation.

It is desperate.

And it's Darwinian.

Because what happens when you go to a freelance economy is that there's no, you know, in taxi drivers, they used to have to earn the medallion and then they had some sort of, or hotel workers, they had some union that they had some support, some safety net.

There's no safety net with Uber.

You use your car and then, you know,

who knows?

And so that's the other problem with this new economy.

And San Francisco, really, really, everybody's looking to this progressive city of how are we going to solve these problems in the world?

Because every town is being, shall we say, changed.

Well, especially the most desirable cities.

I've read a number of articles recently about what they call ghost apartments, which are these very wealthy places where you can live that are...

empty almost the entire year.

New York City, I think they said almost 29% of the apartments, 44% in Midtown, are secondary apartments.

In other words, rich fucks

who are only there a couple of weeks a year.

So why can't people afford housing?

Because it's all going to people who aren't even there.

These giant areas in the sky filled with no one except the maid who comes in once a week to dust.

This is going on in London.

This is going on in New York.

This is going on in Paris, San Francisco, all these desirable places to live.

I hear people all the time say to me, you know, you can get a place in Dubuque for $100.

Yeah, but who the fuck wants to live there?

That's what I always say.

Well, and so the question.

Dubuque is awesome.

So then it's a question about community.

How do we get,

for example, San Francisco, how do we get the tech companies to start looking at San Francisco as their community and not just their playground?

And we have to figure out.

We were supposed to be the liberals.

We were supposed to be different.

I could understand if this was oil people or, you know, the bad guys, the big pharma, all the corporations we used to hate.

But I thought these were our folks, the tech companies.

I thought these were the liberals.

They turned out to be, meet the new boss, same as the old boy.

They became Big Brother, is what happened.

They became everything that they, you know, 1984 was about the, you know, the ruling class.

If you look at the whole concept of 1984, they became everything that they said that they despised.

And now they own us all because we're all hooked to this, right?

We're all.

I got to check my messages.

But listen, Matt,

you're always doing great work.

Thank you.

Alexandra Felosi, September 28th on this network.

All right, let's meet our panelists.

All right, there they are.

He is a columnist for the Daily Beast and host of the business of life on Vice News.

I'm familiar with them.

Michael Moynihan.

Hey, Michael, how are you doing?

She is the chairman of the chairwoman, I would say, the center for the equal opportunity, what is it, chairman or chairwoman?

I don't care, chair, whatever.

All right.

Now, wait till I screw up your name.

The Center for Equal Opportunity, the nationally syndicated radio talk show host, Linda Chavez.

Did I say that right?

I'm bad with names.

And he is a literary lion whose new novel is Two Years, Eight Months, and 28 Nights.

Salmon Rushdie is back over here.

Okay.

Well,

Europe is having their worst refugee crisis since World War II, I believe.

And, you know, a picture is worth a thousand words, especially in a society that doesn't read.

Except for this audience, Sal.

That's why we get the great authors here.

These are readers.

But

this picture was all around the world, and I think everybody in the Western world saw it, and it is heartbreaking, and I think everyone, probably even on the right, agrees that we have to do something for the immediate to help these poor people who are so desperate.

The knottier question that I noticed the rest of the media avoids is, what about the long term?

I mean, I so understand why moderate Muslims are fleeing their homelands, but the answer can't really be that we empty out the Middle East of all the moderates and leave it to ISIS and the extremists.

If they just come to moderate, tolerant Europe to someday make it less moderate and tolerant, that isn't the answer, right?

Absolutely not.

And in fact, the real problem is it's a demographic time bomb.

Europeans, historical Europeans, are not having babies anymore.

And so the only people who are having babies in countries like France and Germany and England are the new Muslim immigrants.

And so what it is doing is having a huge demographic change.

And that's giving rise to a backlash.

You've got very right-wing nationalist parties in France, in the Netherlands, and you've got it, you know, it's going to end up being, I think, a political upheaval.

You're going to have a terrible backlash towards this.

And of course, you know, you want to be kind.

You want to bring people in.

I think it's great that President Obama decided that he's going to bring in

more Syrians into the United States.

six times more than we have over the last two years he's going to bring in over the next year.

I think that's great.

But we do a good job of assimilating people here in the United States.

Europe does a terrible job.

The Muslims who go to France, the 8% of the population there, they don't melt in.

It didn't happen.

Places like Birmingham, our concentrated Muslim communities, they haven't moved in.

They haven't integrated.

And a lot of the problem is the Europeans themselves.

To the political point, the backlash has already begun.

I mean, in Sweden, now there was a poll recently that the biggest party in the country is the Sweden Democrats.

When I lived in Sweden 10 years ago, they were 2%.

It would be an absolute fantasy that these guys would ever get in power.

They are based from a Nazi party.

They came out of a Nazi party in the 1990s.

They're the biggest party in tolerant Sweden.

Denmark is not allowing refugees in, and they're pushing them towards Sweden.

And they're actually taking out ads in newspapers in Lebanon saying, don't come to Denmark, because the Danish People's Party, which is the far-right party there, controls the balance of power there, and they're also the biggest party.

Imagine that.

In Sweden and Denmark, the two biggest parties are extreme right parties and this is a response to immigration.

Well let me try and say something maybe a little you might not expect that you say.

First of all I think that the solution to the problem is not taking in refugees.

The solution to the problem is to fix the reason the refugees are fleeing.

You've got this unending war in Syria.

Also you have you know Eritrea, Ethiopia, where that's where they're all coming from because they're they're running for their lives.

And the way to stop them running for their lives is to stop putting their lives in danger where they live.

One thing, second thing is I do think it's very weird that the countries where they share a language and a culture are the ones not letting them in.

That's to say the Gulf states.

Yeah, we've taken zero.

Taking zero people.

Five Gulf states.

My illustrious namesake, King Salman,

I think that's the wrong way around, isn't it?

It should be.

I mean,

Saudi Arabia.

Yeah, King Salman arrives in D.C.

to talk to the administration, and he takes over an entire five-star hotel for himself.

But he will not let in a single refugee into his country.

And these are Arab, you know, and it's not just Saudi Arabia, it's all the Gulf states, Bahrain, Ghadr, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait.

None, they will not let a single one in.

And of course, these are Arabic-speaking people who you would think would fit in a little better there than, say, Dusseldorf.

Well, that's right.

But they're Arabic.

They are, in fact, Arabic speakers, and they are Arabs, but they are Shiite Muslims.

And it is Sunni Muslims that are in Saudi Arabia and throughout the Gulf states.

And look, I mean...

Syrians are not Shiite Muslims.

You've got...

you have many Shiite Muslims.

Most of Syria is Sunni Muslim.

Am I right, Salman?

I think so.

But look, there's another thing, which is I slightly disagree with the view that there's no assimilation going on.

Because I think recent

research in France, for example, in the balliou where all the trouble is supposed to be, shows that very small minority of Muslims, young people, identify primarily as Muslims.

They identify primarily as French people.

And they feel, in a way, hemmed in by the religious people of their own community to have to declare themselves as Muslims, whereas in fact they want to be French people.

So I think it is possible to argue that the Europeanization of the Muslim communities will take place.

But the problem is in the meanwhile, there's this Nazi backlash.

It's disturbing too.

I was in Denmark right after the Charlie Hebdo shootings.

There was a terrorist attack in Denmark.

Most people have sort of already forgotten about this.

An attack on a free speech event.

The guy who

shot up that event and then went to a synagogue and killed somebody there was a second generation Dane.

And he was shot down the following day.

Two days later, there was a funeral, and I was sitting in a pub, and all these people were looking at their phones.

There were text messages popping up.

There were 700 to 1,000 people that went to his funeral in Denmark.

And you can see the images of this, shouting, you know, God is great, et cetera.

This is alarming to Danish people and it should be alarming to anyone.

And if you look at the opinion polls, yeah, it is a minority, but it is a large minority.

I wouldn't say a large minority, but a minority that's substantial and incredibly dangerous.

And have dangerous.

Let's not kid ourselves.

There's a lot of young Muslim men in European cities who, even though they are newcomers to the land, really are not humble about adopting to the ways of the Western world.

They are, again, the newcomers, and yet they bridle at the fact that women walk down the street with a mini skirt and sleeveless dresses on.

Free speech is not something we see that they always agree with.

And

often their attitude is, we're biding our time until you will do things our way.

Can anyone really deny that, that that element is there?

That is a problem, and it is also a problem that you have, you know, in terms of assimilation.

It is easier to assimilate people ethnically than it is religiously, even in the United States.

Yes.

You know, we have certain enclaves of people who are unassimilated, don't even speak English.

You know, in the Amish community, you have people who are still speaking their language of their forefathers.

There are very, you know, religious communities in New York of

Hasidic Jews, Jews, many of whom speak Yiddish.

I would be more sympathetic if there was a better track record in the Muslim world of moderates standing up to extremists.

I've mentioned on this show before, ISIS is about 30,000 guys.

The countries surrounding ISIS that say they hate them have an army, if they put it together, of about 5 million.

If 5 million can't stand up to 30,000, I'm a little wary about this.

Yeah, I agree.

It seems like all the energy goes toward religion.

Saudi Arabia, as you mentioned, not taking in anybody, but they want to build, they're going to pay to build 200 new mosques in Germany.

See, all the energy goes to the afterlife.

But that's not how Europe rolls.

They're atheists.

No, it's very...

See, I think that's the issue.

As somebody who moved from European country to America, one of the big and obvious differences is that in Europe, religion is not a big public issue.

No.

Actually, when Tony Blair was prime minister, they had to work very hard to conceal his strong religious belief from the electorate because he would have lost votes.

You're right.

Whereas here, you know, you can't be elected dog catcher unless you go to church.

As our friend Kim Davis

showed us, and you know, I mean, Kim Davis, this is somebody who was out there saying, and by the way, a number of the Republican candidates agreed with her, saying the Supreme Court does not get to say what's legal.

What do we make of a country?

You know, Donald Trump says, other countries are laughing at us.

This is why they're laughing at us.

Because they say the Supreme Court doesn't get to say what's legal.

Yeah, I think they do.

That's exactly what the Supreme Court says.

You're right about that, but let's also look at the fact that you have a huge sea change.

I mean, it's been 15 years since the whole idea of gay marriage as acceptable and

a matter of law has been around.

It's been 10,000 years when it wasn't right.

Barack Obama, when he ran for president.

10,000 years what?

That civilization has had marriage as between two people of the opposite sex.

No.

In the Bible, it was polygamy.

King David had a thousand.

All right, all right.

But always, but always,

always

between people of the opposite sex.

We have not had the concept of gay marriage, Bill, until Sarah.

As long as it's the opposite sex.

As long as it's the opposite sex.

Because otherwise it would be weird.

Look, Bill, the point is, I mean, you can laugh at it if you want, but there are a lot of people who have to be brought along on this issue.

One of the problems with the Supreme Court getting involved, you had legalization moving forward state by state.

It's very similar to what happened in the whole abortion issue, where you had the Supreme Court intervene at the very time that states were liberalizing abortion laws.

What happened?

You polarized people.

And it was very, very difficult to get people brought along.

And I think that's what's happened here with the Supreme Court.

But

the case was brought to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court didn't go out.

Of course, but that's because activists decided we're going to use the courts rather than going to the Supreme Court.

And it's a conservative court.

If they said it's okay,

I think it's okay.

And

it's the law of the land.

And just to

connect this to our former discussion, if you say, as Kim Davis and Her Ilk and Ted Cruz and all those people say, that actually I can ignore the rule of man because

the rule book of God, then you are Iran.

I agree.

And you are Saudi Arabia.

You are Shuri.

I agree with you on that.

I am just saying...

that it is going to take time.

And you have a very substantial population that have religious views that differ.

And you're going to have to bring them along.

I don't think that's her intention here, is to sort of slowly bring people along to this idea of gay marriage.

She comes out of jail.

Every Republican is waiting to take their photo with her.

They have a shout-and-holler cletus ceremony.

Everyone's holding up crosses in Survivor's Eye of the Tigers play.

I'm glad we're all coming along very slowly.

And by the way,

if I may use a small area of expertise with religious bigotry.

What do you know?

What do you know about that?

You know, I mean, allow me to fake a little knowledge on the subject.

But one of the things that is a classic trope of the religious bigot is while they are denying people their rights, they claim that their rights are being denied.

Right.

While they are persecuting people, they claim to be persecuted.

While they are behaving colossally offensively, they claim to be the offended party.

And it's an upside-down world.

Well, I mean...

But especially...

Especially Christians.

I mean, the whole thing is based on a persecution complex.

So when they say things like, they're criminalizing Christianity, really you're 70% of the population.

Everybody does this.

Everybody does this.

In India right now, the 85% Hindu majority, its leaders are saying Hinduism is under threat.

Well, in the Islamic world, the paranoia is routine.

The world is anti-Muslim.

And so this is just a trope that they're stealing from other bigots.

I got to say,

politicians, especially in this season, are are really winning the crown for bullshit.

But

the all-time bullshit line I've ever heard was Mike Huckabee when he got up there this week and he said about Kim Davis, if you're going to send her to jail, send me instead.

As soon as

possible, you can swap around.

If you could say, Judge, he's going to go in my place.

It's like saying,

I will take your cancer.

I know you have it.

All right.

So there was huge news this week in in paleontology.

Where are my paleontologists?

Because they.

Wow.

That's.

I don't think all you people are paleontologists, but I appreciate the support.

But they found a new species of human ancestor, Homo nalidi, he's called.

And it's just amazing.

Every time they think they have the evolutionary chain mapped out, nope, they find a new set of bones.

This one,

almost two million years old, they think, they don't know yet, but

walked upright two million years ago, used tools, but had a very tiny brain the size of a baseball, and a hat that said, make America great again.

But

the lead scientist on this, Lee Berger,

he worked for National Geographic.

He's the National Geographic Explorer in Residence.

I thought that was so apropos because this week we got the news, the horrifying news, that National Geographic has been sold to Rupert Murdoch.

Now, this has been around since 1888.

It certainly was around when I was a kid.

When I was a kid, there was no porn.

So we used to look at National Geographic.

I mean, that was, yeah, man, that was what we had.

No wonder we came out with jungle fever.

Anyway.

I hope National Geographic stays the same now that Rupert Murdoch owns it, but we've got a hold of some of the covers to come.

Look at some of these.

I don't think it's going to.

Look at this.

Space are Hillary's emails out there.

I mean,

the world's stupidest glaciers and how we get rid of them.

Contacting the lost Mashu Piro tribe.

Can we please make these savages put on some pants?

The Great Wall of China, 5,000 years without a Mexican.

Definitely Fox News.

Aborigines and Whiteface, where's the outrage?

The gay penguin agenda.

Happy birthday, dinosaurs.

And sluts of the rainforest, our experts rate their tits.

Okay, let's bring out Wendell.

He is the former star of The Wire and for May.

He's got a new book.

It's called The Wind in the Reeds, A Storm, a Play, and the City That Would Not Be Broken.

Wendell pierce wendell pierce

how you doing brother

man pretty good

okay now wendell of course it was the 10th anniversary of the katrina storm you are always going to be associated with new orleans you live there yeah

you're the guy who's helping the community and the fifth anniversary right of uh

I mean, 14th anniversary of 9-11.

So it was a really good week for the Bushes.

But what's going on in New Orleans?

I hear it's kind of a tale of two cities.

It is a tale of two cities.

It's the best of times and the worst of times.

And

we have to remember that

at the apex of the storm and the disaster, there were citizens who said publicly on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, this is going to be an opportunity for us to get rid of the people we don't want.

We're going to change this city demographically, geographically, and politically.

And if they don't change it, we're going to leave.

You believe that?

That's a conspiracy theory.

No, it's not a conspiracy theory.

It's put into policy.

I mean, they didn't cause the storm.

They didn't cause the storm, but they did make sure that the Hope 6 projects go out and so all public housing was torn down and only a third brought back.

They put the onus on my project of rebuilding, of only accepting low-income, so they can get them out of the city and into

the hinterlands.

But I can't sell my house to you.

I've actually turned away cash buyers in Puncher Train Park because they're over the 80% average median income.

So they're forcing the poor out of the central city so they can take over and build those ghost apartments.

I heard that your family had an all-state policy

since 1955,

and they wouldn't pay off.

And my mother and father received $400

after 50 years.

But these are the good hands, people.

Yes, those hands are around your nuts.

I'm sorry, Michelle Bay.

I apologize.

The truth must be told.

I apologize.

And you put on a production of Waiting for Godot.

I thought that was so appropriate since people were waiting for something that never came.

That analogy, I guess, was hopefully not lost on people.

That was the reason the presenters, Creative Time, the very arts presenters that are responsible for the two beams of light and Ground Zero in New York tonight, they did the production with Paul Chan down in New Orleans with me.

He said the Lord Ninth Ward reminded him of of every production of A Waiting for Godot that he had seen.

Two men out in the vast void with just a road and a tree looking for something to save them.

And then the playwright actually says, Mr.

Beckett says, find it within yourself.

You know, at this place, in this moment of time, all mankind is us.

Let us do something while we have the chance.

And it was the most cathartic moment in my life to remind me that we had it within our own power to exercise our right of self-determination.

So it was a call to action for me to come back to New Orleans and start to rebuild my neighborhood of Punch Atrain Park.

I love the way

I love the way you just summed up that play, Waiting for Godot.

Now, I never have to actually see it again.

It's really pretty boring.

Okay.

It's just awful, isn't it?

I know.

The play is a reflection of the condition those two men are in.

Oh, it totally is.

It's painful.

It's painful to watch, is what it is.

It's just painful.

No, I'm kidding you.

It's a great play.

I'll be seeing it again soon.

Okay.

So let me ask you about James Blake.

He is the former tennis star who was roughed up in New York.

We saw the video this week.

Do we have that to show the folks?

I don't think they've seen this yet.

Standing there.

Yes, just standing there.

Here's a New York City cop who comes in and gently takes him down.

It was a case of mistaken identity.

They thought he was a non-famous black man.

Right.

You know that.

Hashtag Rich Black Lives Matter.

Right.

You know,

when I saw that, I thought of one person.

There was a guy named Patrick Dorisman who left work

going home in the middle of the night.

He was working at a restaurant with a buddy, and these guys came up to him and said, hey, we want to buy some weed.

And they accosted him.

And he said, get away from me.

They're in plain clothes.

So they got into a fight and they killed him.

They were New York police

NYPD.

And the fact is, if someone came up to me like that in front of a hotel and attacked me, luckily it was James.

If it was me, we would have been in a fight.

And then I would have been shot and they would have said it was justifiable he was attacking a police officer.

That police officer did not identify himself.

He comes there, plainclothesman.

He's just a big white boy attacking me in front of the hotel.

And by the way, the fact is, he should be fired.

And I hope James.

Well, he was.

I think he's been fired already.

So, you know.

I think Commissioner Bratton did the right thing with that.

By the way, it's important to note that the crime involved here was credit card fraud.

I know.

Not really a violent crime.

They thought he looked like a guy who committed credit card fraud.

But I don't know why you have to take down a guy like that for credit card fraud.

It does not seem like the kind of crime that would mandate it.

It's not something that you often see on Wall Street when Insider Trading is car.

All right.

You all see the.

So

running down the hole,

sending someone down in a headlock saying, I bought an IPO from you.

So we have some other breaking news today that happened on Friday.

Rick Perry is out, ladies and gentlemen.

We are down to a mere 16 Republican presidential candidates.

Rick said, some things have become clear.

I guess what he meant by that is the Republican primary this year is more mean crazy, and he was more stupid crazy.

But here's what I think is so fascinating.

He has a super PAC, right?

And the super PAC has said, it tweeted, well, first of all, they're still running ads.

He dropped out and they're still running ads in Iowa.

They tweeted, in it for the long haul.

This says so much about our political system.

Who needs the candidate?

We have the money.

And.

This is the least delusional thing about this primary, the fact that they're still running it.

But that's pretty crazy.

It's pretty crazy, but I did appreciate one thing about Rick Berry: he came out of this, and it was like a kind of a moment where he said, I could be honest, and he said he started attacking Donald Trump a little too late, and he called him a nativist.

And he's like, This is exactly what he is.

And nobody's saying this.

And it feels like when you're in your exit, you can actually say, Well, I don't need those crazy voters anymore.

And I can actually tell it like it is, which is really, really depressing.

You only tell the truth on your way out.

Yes, right.

But here's the interesting thing about Donald Trump, why it's a little hard to put him in a box, because on a few issues, he's actually pretty good.

And one of them is this issue.

He actually wants to raise his own taxes.

He actually wants to raise taxes on hedge fund managers and close loopholes on the super rich.

None of the others do because they're all beholden to the donors.

This is my point.

He doesn't have to do that because he's financing his own campaign.

Jeb Bush released his tax plan this week, nothing for normal people.

It was just for donors.

That's not true.

It's totally true.

He's doubling the standard deduction.

He's reducing tax rates.

He's going to have three tax rates instead of the seven or whatever they are now.

He had a whole plan that in fact.

That doesn't sound progressive.

That will, in fact.

Well, that's actually what Ronald Reagan did.

when I was in the White House in 1985.

And

he wasn't progressive either.

Well, I'm sorry.

I disagree.

We had a great economy then.

We actually had people, much, much greater job growth then.

We had much lower

job growth.

Actually,

people in the South Bronx.

Actually, we just had the 66th month in a row of the economy expanding.

We still have not hit 4%.

Wait a second.

The unemployment rate is down to 5.1%.

I remember when John Boehner was going out every week saying, where are the jobs?

13 million he created, more than Reagan.

I don't hear anybody saying, oh, yeah, we got the jobs.

Well, first of all, it's a bigger population, and there are fewer people in the labor force.

We've had actually a lot of people drop out of the labor force.

That's a big problem.

That is one of the reasons, by the way, that if Trump were to get his way, we actually need more people in the labor force.

We need immigrants.

This country needs immigrants.

They do jobs that Americans will will not do, both at the high end and at the low end.

So, I mean, I am very anti-Trump.

I think Trump is a disaster.

I think he's a vile human being, frankly.

You know,

he talked about.

Now, you know, you're going to get freaked out.

You can feel that Donald Trump tanks

turning toward you tonight at 4 a.m.

I know, I know.

I don't like your face.

And you're a good person.

I'm thinking you were bad at all.

And you know what I say about his face?

Look in the mirror.

You want to see a face that you want to have as president?

Look in the mirror, Donald.

Absolutely.

Forget about the hair.

Look below the hair.

But I mean, here's what I think.

If one could, it's very difficult to take Trump seriously, but if one could just make an effort.

It seems to me that

a thing is happening around the world of which Trump is one manifestation, which is a disgust with traditional politics.

Yes.

That electorates around the world are very alienated from what they see as the machine, and they're turning towards people who seem just to be not part of the machine.

And that could be...

That's why Ben Carson is.

It could be on...

Yes,

that's like Clarence Thomas running for president.

But you know, in England right now, on the other side of the spectrum, you've got a far left-winger, Jeremy Corbyn, who is about to run away with the Labour Party leadership simply because the people don't like the traditional leadership.

This does not auger well for Joe Biden.

Or Hillary Clinton.

Right.

You know, really.

You're for Biden?

I kind of like Joe Biden.

I do.

I think that's actually an interesting point.

I talked to somebody about this today, and they kind of like Joe Biden, too.

Nobody knows.

He kind of likes Joe Biden.

Yeah, but it's the thing about American politics is nobody knows anything about policies.

I'm not saying Solomon is one of them, but it's typically, you know, Trump is somebody who who he's, you know, he just says what he means, and that's great.

It's like, I mean, half the things that he means are completely batshit crazy.

I mean, a guy, I mean, he could deny the Holocaust, but, you know, he's really

telling it like it is.

I mean, he's a, he's a, but it's.

And yet a lot of them believe the same thing.

Well, of course they believe the same thing.

It's so unrealistic.

The Republicans want to believe two things.

One is that Trump is a ridiculous, crazy man who's ruining it for normal Republicans, and yet somehow normal Republicans vote for him and believe the same things he believes.

It can't be both.

I mean,

they're right.

The voters are right about one thing, or Trump voters are.

The establishment conservatives are absolutely rallying the troops and trying to push him out of the tent.

Because, I mean, what you said is right.

I mean, Paul Krugman's supporting him.

I mean, that's not something that the Republican establishment likes.

I mean, he's somebody who does

like taxes on big businesses and taxes on.

This is feeling politics.

Jeb Bush is going to come out with a plan where you have to look in page 68 to figure out if you have it.

It's incredibly complicated.

People want to say the rich guys are bad.

It's a zero-sum game.

They're taking from me Bill Biggs.

I think they want to hear.

I'll build a bigger wall, the biggest wall.

I don't know what you're thinking.

What do you think of the Manchurian candidate theory?

Yes,

yes, you've got it.

That actually there's some secret deal between Trump, who's secretly a Democrat, and the Democrats, so that he can infiltrate the Republican Party and destroy it from within.

Bill Clinton involved in.

Bill Clinton encourage him to get in the race.

I don't know.

I'm seeing a conspiracy here.

So he's the Manchurian candidate.

I mean, to the point of...

In England,

Tories are desperate for Jeremy Corbyn.

Desperate.

This is on the par of, you know, the World Trade Center was an inside job.

And here we are on the anniversary of 9-11.

And by the way, speaking of the anniversary of 9-11, you know, people have been debating in the last few years whether we should remember or actually try to forget.

And I would counsel on the side of remembering.

Not that we should change our lives terribly because the terrorists win, we've heard that before.

But I've also heard a lot of people say things like, oh, you know, if you look at the statistics, more people die and then they can name almost anything than from terrorists.

More people die from antibiotic shots and more people die from distracted drivers.

Except distracted drivers are not trying to get a nuclear weapon.

And all the terrorists have to do is get it one time and those statistics go away.

So I would say we should keep that.

I mean I think some that it's good to be on both sides of this because I think yes we must remember and I think on this particular day of all the yes I think we should remember.

But I also you know as someone living in the city I really like it that that area which was fenced off under and under maximum security for so long is now the walls are all down.

It's just a plaza in the city.

It's gone back to being a part of New York City and I think there is that healing.

You know, it feels like the wound healed and the bandages got taken off.

But that's the grace of it all, is the honoring of all those people that died that day.

The fact that that is a plaza, a place of reflection where you can look on it and will never make the mistakes of the past.

So try to collectively think about how can we do the things necessary that this won't ever happen again.

Sometimes in New Orleans, our past commemoration, we wanted to look away from those 1,800 people that died and pretend that we're just going to look forward and everything is wonderful, but we should never forget the people that lost their lives on those those days because it was through no fault of their own.

But women can still do this on the balcony and show their tits and go, woo, can't they?

Yes, just not on that day.

All right.

I have one minute left.

I just want to correct the record on one thing.

Rick Santorum was here on our last show.

And, you know, I don't usually talk about people after they're gone.

And I like Rick, and I appreciate him coming on the show.

But you know what?

Republicans do this a lot.

They say something incredibly bullshit, knowing that this is a live show and I can't call them on it.

And Rick said, the most recent survey of climate scientists said about 57% don't agree with the idea that 95% of the change in the climate is caused by CO2.

And yes, that was complete bullshit.

PolitiFacts said we rate Santorum's claim false.

He not only uses a false statistic, but also mistakes

what he's allegedly disproving.

He got the 57% figure from a blogger who incorrectly assumed that every scientist who didn't offer an exact percentage of the amount of greenhouse gases was not saying it was a dominant factor.

So, you know, you could get your information from over 200 worldwide scientific bodies, but he gets it from a blogger and then misquotes them.

So, sorry, Rick, but you can't come on my show and misrepresent the most important issue of our time.

All right.

Thank you, Carnell.

It's time for new rules, everybody.

New rules.

New rules, someone has to explain.

Fear God.

Someone has to explain to Jefferson King, the Florida man, always Florida,

arrested for publicly masturbating in a Burger King that have it your way refers to your food order.

Also, if you want to have any chance at all of acquittal, don't take a mugshot that looks like you're still masturbating in a burger can.

Neural Native Americans have to concede that rain dances don't work.

Look, the Southwest has no...

I love the way they were like, wait a second.

Are you making fun of Indians?

Bill, rain dances don't fucking work, people.

My lawn is now made of dirt.

I think it's time to admit that the only time dancing makes it rain is around midnight at the Spearman Rhino.

Unrolled now that the world's shortest man has passed away, after a good life at the age of 75, it's okay for someone to say out loud that the hat wasn't fooling anybody.

Exactly, man.

Neural, someone has to tell Kim Davis's husband, who showed up for her big release event looking like this,

that when people already think you're brainless, it doesn't help to dress up like the scarecrow.

Neural, rule, now that Caitlin Jenner says she's not offended by the call-me Caitlin Halloween costume,

she must share her plans for the rest of the holiday season.

For example, will she be going out on New Year's Eve or staying home and just watching the ball drop?

And finally, New Rule, someone has to tell me how the world can be so blind while conservatives here remain apoplectic about Mexicans crossing the Rio Grande and Europe freaks out about Syrian refugees flooding in from the Middle East, no one is paying attention to the ethnic group that's taking over this country while we blithely do nothing.

Fucking Australians!

Is anybody here in the audience tonight from here in LA?

Okay.

Then it can't just be me who has noticed that every single bartender in this town is suddenly some six foot four Australian dude with a great personality who's generous with the free drinks, and we're just letting it happen.

Wake up, people.

You cannot swing a dead wallaby these days without hitting an Australian.

And it's not just the bartenders.

Australians now make up 30% of America's surfing instructors

and an alarming 65% of our ski bums.

Ladies and gentlemen, Australia is not sending us its best people.

They're bringing drugs.

Yes, enough for everybody, but still.

They're rapists.

Okay, not rapists, but they do a lot of fucking.

And I assume some are good people.

Now, how do Australians get here?

No one really knows.

Some say the jet stream carries them over, but

we do know this.

You meet one and have a few beers.

Next thing you know, he's sleeping on your couch, borrowing your car and fucking your girlfriend.

And somehow you're okay with it.

It's like getting a golden retriever if golden retrievers fucked your girlfriend.

Did you know that in the whole history of the world, there are only four inventions Australians claim?

The disposable syringe, the long-wearing contact lens, aspirin, and penicillin, all created so they could party longer.

We used to think oceans could protect us.

because oceans were full of sharks and sharks eat a lot of Australians.

But now sharks are endangered.

There just aren't enough of them anymore and there are too many Hemsworths.

Does anyone remember when American movies were cast with American actors?

That seems like a long time ago.

Have we become so weak and a feat?

That no defense is mounted against an aussy horde that flawlessly mimics our American accent and then takes jobs that rightfully belong to Billy Bob Thornton.

Does America really need Simon Baker when Patrick Dempsey is sitting by the phone?

Now I partly blame myself.

First, the Australians came for parts in our cop movies.

but I wasn't an actor, so I didn't speak out.

Then they came for our action movie Blockbusters, but I wasn't a soulless studio chief, so I didn't speak out.

Then they came for the Tony Awards, but I'm not gay, so I didn't speak out.

But I'm speaking now.

And though you cannot build a wall on the ocean,

You can build a reef.

And I will build the greatest reef the world has ever seen.

A great barrier reef, if you will.

And I will make Mel Gibson pay for it.

Will it work?

No.

Do I care?

No.

Because I don't really hate Australians, but I'm an American.

And it's in our tradition to hate someone

and blame them for all our problems.

In the mid-19th century, it was my people, the Irish everyone hated.

Then it was the Chinese, the Italians, the Mexicans, the Jews, the Swedes, the Japanese, the Russians, and now the Mexicans again.

If Donald Trump really wanted to make America great again, he wouldn't build a wall, he'd build a mirror.

Then maybe we would see that no one can actually take a job.

Someone has to give it to them.

We could end our illegals problem tomorrow if we decided to stop hiring them.

But no, we talk of walls to protect us from people so dangerous that we can't stop ourselves from paying them to raise our children.

As Sarah Palin says,

you want to be in America when you're here?

Let's speak American.

Which begs the question, why are the people who demand that everyone speak English always the ones who can't speak English?

All right, that's our show.

I'll be at the Civic Memorial in Fargo, September 20th, at Chase in Buffalo, the 26th, and at the Auditorium in Rochester the 27th.

I want to thank Michael Moynihan, Linda Chavez, Salman Rushdie, Wendell Pierce, and Alexandra Pelosi.

Join us now for overtime on YouTube.

Thank you, folks.

All new episodes of Real Time with Phil Maher every Friday night at 11, or watch him anytime on HBO on Demand.

For more info, log on to HBO.com.