Episode #359 (Originally aired 8/7/15)

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

Starts o'clock.

Good afternoon.

Afternoon, time will be

real time.

Real time.

Hello, everybody.

How are you?

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

How you doing?

Thank you.

I've missed you too.

Oh, thank you very much.

Thank you.

So great to be back.

Yes, we were off for the month of July, and I have been welcomed welcomed back by two Republican debates.

Thank you, Jesus.

Two, did you see both Republican?

How to describe this experience?

Have you ever taken ecstasy?

It was the opposite of that.

Okay.

And they should have spaced, I think, the two Republican debates out more because my brain was still trying to recover from the tsunami of stupid from the first one

when I was hit by another wave.

I mean, for a minute, I thought I was watching a Comedy Central Roast of the U.S.

Constitution.

And,

oh, yes,

the first one at the baby table, oh, my gosh.

The first one had Rick Perry, Carly Fiorina, Bobby Jindal.

Wow, you throw in carrot top.

It was a great episode of Politically Incorrect.

And then there was a little break break between debates, during which there was one awkward moment when Trump asked Rubio to bring his car around.

That was a gap, I will admit.

And then the main event, and as always at Republican debates, they first brought out Reagan's skull so they could all touch it for luck.

And here's what I think is the big story from this debate.

Now, this, you have to disseminate, this debate was on Fox News.

They did the polling to pick the people, and I am quite sure Roger Ailes, who runs that and maybe America, he doesn't like Trump.

The word came down, get Trump, kill this fucking Rosemary's baby monster in its black crib.

I swear, that's exactly what he said.

So they let Trump speak three times more than anybody else.

And and he did.

He revealed himself to be nasty, boris, sexist, ignorant, smug.

What they forgot is that's what the Republicans love about him.

That's why his numbers are double of the guy in second place, who's Jeb Bush.

But Jeb says he doesn't mind getting the second most votes.

He says that's how his brother got elected president.

But to understand today's Republican Party, and I know you want to,

you have to understand that despite the fact that they had on the stage five governors, three senators, a brain surgeon, First and foremost, they wanted to get the opinion of Donald Trump, a ham-colored cartoon character from I Love the 80s.

I mean,

once you accept that, the rest of the night makes perfect sense.

Mr.

Trump, your thoughts on war and peace, and then we will go to Morgana, the kissing bandit, on deficit reduction.

Dr.

Ruth on entitlement spending, and Mr.

T, what about abortion in the case of rape and incest?

Betelgeuse, you have 30 seconds for a rebuttal.

But you know who Republicans are actually mad at today?

The moderators.

They thought they were too tough.

I got to give them credit.

They were tough.

Especially Megan Kelly went right at them.

Wow.

Yeah.

No, she can be good.

She wasn't mincing words.

Ben Carson, you don't know a dick about anything.

What are you doing here?

Trump, you're a huge sexist asshole.

Marco Rubio, are you old enough to buy beer?

Scott Walker, what's wrong with your face?

You look like the kid who's carrying a dead bird in his pocket.

But you know what?

After all the fireworks and the name-calling and you hugged him and you hugged him,

the answers were the same as ever.

Muslims are coming to kill us.

Mexicans are coming to rape us.

And if you get impregnated by one, you have to bring it to term.

You know,

that's all they have to sell: fear.

Hope and change meet pee and pants.

I mean, the entire slate of them up there seemed completely unaware of the fact that women can now vote.

You know.

Megan Kelly asked Trump right off the bat about Trump calling women fat pigs, dogs, and slobs.

Trump's answer, I don't have time for political correctness.

He's like one of those construction workers from the 70s who got nice tits.

Oh, what, I can't compliment a lady anymore?

You know,

it's crazy.

They all want to get rid of Planned Parenthood, that's obvious.

I mean, they talk about vaginas like they're the northern lights.

You know,

I've never seen it, but my friend has.

I hear it's breathtaking.

All right, we got a great show.

You're a great crowd.

We have Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom of our state of California.

We have Mary Matlin and Steve Schmidter here, and a little later I'll be speaking with the Atlantic's Caitlin Flanagan.

But first, please welcome the distinguished professor of meteorology at Penn State University.

My old job.

Yes, we always have to say that.

And co-author of Dire Predictions, Understanding Climate Change.

Michael Mann, Michael Mann.

Hello, Michael Mann.

You're not the director, Michael Mann.

He's going to directly.

You must get that all the time.

There's a director.

He

last of the Mohicans.

No, I've never heard that joke before.

Okay, all right.

So

you're obviously here tonight because Obama did something substantive this week.

He got lost in all the horse race bullshit, but I mean he actually did something amazing.

He unveiled his climate plan.

We are going to be cutting emissions, power plant emissions, coal mostly, by I think it was 32 percent by the year 2030.

Okay, my first question, won't we all be dead by then?

No, the good news is, you know,

we're still at the point where we can make the sorts of cuts in our carbon emissions that we need to to make sure we don't get get irreversible, dangerous climate change.

So it's not too late.

It's not too late, but there's a.

But you'd have to say that anyway.

Well, what I will tell you.

What are you going to say?

It's too late?

Then you're gone.

I'm over to the panel.

It's a fair point.

It's a fair point.

But there's an urgency to acting on this problem, unlike anything we've faced before.

If we do not turn our emissions around within the next decade, then we do lock in those potentially irreversible changes in climate.

We're already seeing negative impacts from climate change.

I don't have to tell that to Californians when you look at the wildfires, the droughts that you're facing.

We're already seeing dangerous climate change.

But if we don't get this problem under control soon, we are going to see, you know, we are looking at the veritable tip of the iceberg.

Right.

I just say that because I think it was in 2003 or 2004 that James Hanson, the famous NASA scientist, said, if we don't do something in 10 years, we've passed the tipping point.

Well, we've passed that 10 years.

Well, you know, and Hansen has been prescient.

He made predictions.

Well, that's not good.

That's terrible news.

But Hansen also is optimistic, as I am, that we can still, you know, prevent that from happening.

Or else no one will ask you on these shows.

No, I'm kidding about that.

So I noticed that the Republicans did not mention global warming once in the debate last night.

It doesn't exist in their world.

They've also moved on from the talking point of, I'm not a scientist.

That's yesterday's talking point.

Now it's, well, it's not settled science.

Just for the record, Doc, it's settled science, right?

Well, you don't have to ask me.

You can ask the U.S.

National Academy of Sciences.

You can ask any of the more than 30 scientific societies in the U.S., the American Physical Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Meteorological Society.

I could go on and on.

All are on record.

And they're not here.

You're here.

That's right.

And what they're asking you.

It is super, super settled science, right?

Yeah, I mean, absolutely.

The National Academy of Sciences was founded, people forget this, by a Republican president, Abraham Lincoln.

And they've said, look, climate change is real.

It's caused by human activity.

It's already a problem.

It's going to be a much worse problem if we don't do something.

There's still time to do something about it.

But, you know, there was a Pew Poll recently which revealed that they asked people, they named 23 different topics that they could say are the most important thing we should do, address.

Climate change came in 22nd.

23rd was getting cat hair off black pants.

You know, Obama's trying to do something, but the president in a democracy can't be that much better than the people.

They kind of have to be with them.

I don't know, that we're 10 years past an inconvenient truth when when we thought that might make a difference.

What do we have to do to get people to care?

Well, I mean, things are happening.

Again, there are reasons to be cautiously optimistic.

When you look, for example, at this historic agreement last year, the two largest emitters of carbon on the face of the earth, the U.S.

and China, have made

that I worry that the people think that someone's going to invent a super carbon-sucking machine.

That's probably unlikely, right?

Isn't that sold by Dyson, actually?

Who would be awesome?

Anybody.

That's just please tell them because I think that's one of the problems.

I was giving the commencement address at Berkeley, if I may just tell a quick story.

My alma mater?

My alma mater.

Is that your alma mater?

Oh, what a coincidence.

Okay.

And I went after the student who gave the student address, and it was a lovely address.

But at one point, she said, I'm 99% sure that someone sitting here in the audience today is going to solve, and then she said, you know, starvation and cancer, and didn't even mention global warming, by the way, which was not a good sign.

But this idea that someone, no.

I wouldn't say I'm 99% sure someone in the audience is not going to solve those things because people have to think they're going to do it themselves, not somebody who's sitting out in the audience.

Well, you know, it depends on the polls that you look at.

There are polls that, you know, present, again, a somewhat more optimistic picture,

upwards of 70% of the American people.

And, you know, it depends on how you frame the question, okay?

If you ask people, do they support an effort to decrease our carbon emissions, to move away from coal, embrace renewable energy, you get overwhelming support for that.

70, 80 percent of the American people say, yeah, it's a no-brainer.

Let's do that.

So it really depends on how you frame the question.

And what Obama did this week, I mean, the Republicans call call it a war on coal.

What if we actually called it a war on coal?

You might get McCain.

You know?

And what's wrong with the war on coal?

We should have a war on coal.

It's completely outdated.

Well, it's a way to try to marginalize that position,

when in fact, you know, the bottom line is we do have to move away from coal.

Coal is the dirtiest.

It's the most carbon-intensive source of power.

It's stupid.

And solar, I think there's twice as many jobs in solar now as coal.

We've got a pretty good source of energy up there.

Yes.

From the sun, and we need to be tapping that.

And we need to be tapping wind.

If you look at Germany, Germany right now is getting 30% of their power from renewables alone.

So you can do it.

It can be done.

The rest of the world has to get on board.

But you have to be German.

Thanks, Doc.

Keep doing what you're doing.

I appreciate you enlightening us.

All right, Dr.

Michael Mann, let's meet our panel.

Thank you.

All right, here's our panel.

He's an MSNBC analyst, Vice Chair of Public Affairs at Edelman PR, and former senior advisor.

We remember that well to the McCain-Palin presidential campaign.

Steve Schmidt is over here.

Steve, how are you doing?

You all know the lieutenant governor of our state, Gavin Newsom, is here.

Oh,

running for governor next time.

And she's a former assistant to President George W.

Bush and counselor to Vice President Dick Cheney.

Mary Matlin back with us.

Hey, Mary.

Great to see you.

Okay.

So obviously we're going to start talking about the debate last night.

We made it so that we came back on the air right after the debate.

It's very exciting.

They planned it for you.

We planned it on them, let's be real.

We're going to agree right off the bat with you you that it was ecstasy.

We loved it.

Oh, you loved it.

You thought they did well?

I thought it was a full-spectrum ecstatic show.

Yes, you're right.

Well,

I would say it was a full spectrum of ignorance, but okay, we'll get to that in a minute.

I want to.

It's very early, but I want to make a prediction.

After one debate, I'm going to make a prediction.

Who's going to be the ticket?

Rubio Carly Fiorina.

Because the Republicans cannot win without some some women and some Latinos.

There.

Now,

if this turns out to be true, I will look like a genius because it's only August 2015.

And if it's not, it's only August 2015.

You could be a genius for the wrong reasons.

It's not that we need a woman and an Hispanic.

We need a conservative.

Well, they're conservative.

They are.

That's why she jumped to the...

She's a superstar and she's brilliant.

She happens to be a friend.

She wanted to learn how to read.

You look Packard into the ground.

No, she did not run it into the ground.

Do you do any fact-checking?

Do you know how smart she is?

She is very smart.

She wanted to understand the Bible, so she taught herself Greek.

She's a very smart woman, and she.

Well, that's a dumb idea right there.

Yeah.

I want to understand a book written by Bronze Age desert dwellers who didn't know what a germ or an atom was or where the sun went at night.

Do you see you've never read it?

I have read the Bible.

I took a whole course in it.

It made a lot of impact.

It's stupid.

Anyway,

and wicked.

Can I just pick up, and we can talk about Rubio-Fierini, but I thought you brought it up just a moment ago.

I think it's profoundly important, the debate, what wasn't discussed last night.

Climate change wasn't discussed,

social mobility wasn't discussed, income inequality wasn't discussed, issues that matter deeply on policing, Black Lives Matter.

I mean, we didn't even have a discussion substantively about the economy.

It was an extraordinary debate for what we didn't hear hear last night from these candidates.

Maybe you should have been the moderator then, because they were answering questions.

Well, but

by the way, some were answering questions, others were.

We live in a state that's on fire all the time.

Fire season now is 78 days longer than it was in the 1970s.

To not even bring this up, I find personally insulting.

Do you not believe that climate change is real and man-made and happening and needs to be addressed?

Our two Republicans.

I believe climate change is real.

Well, then.

But I will say this.

If you want to impose a trillion dollars of cost on the economy,

what are the results?

What are the results?

Or is it all emotional sentiment?

You go to China, Bill, you step off the airplane, you'll be nauseous within 30 seconds.

Your eyes will be watering.

You can't breathe the air.

So you impose the cost on the U.S.

economy while nothing happens in China.

Nothing happens in India.

It's a global problem.

But we just made a deal with China.

And by the way,

they're ahead of the deal.

But Bill, I'm not sure.

Are you kidding me?

You go to Beijing

and tell me that the air is cleaner in Beijing than you can.

Then what is California?

You're having a bad night, Steve.

Apparently you didn't hear me.

It's not what I said.

Of course the air is bad in China.

I said they're ahead of where they have to be on the deal.

They're anxious to fix it.

But I think it's interesting.

We're denying it.

I think, Bill, this is really interesting, because Steve deserves a little bit of credit.

He worked for a guy that actually did some decent things on the environment, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

He set forth our our low-carbon green growth strategy.

And we've begun to radically change the way we produce and consume energy with our cap-and-trade program.

We're growing our economy as we're reducing our greenhouse gas emissions.

We're the tempo in terms of the comprehensive strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions for the nation.

And in many respects, what the president just tried to do was replicate the successes of California.

So this is not an ideological debate.

This is not about bankrupting the economy.

This is about growing our economy and being competitive.

Let me throw in a fact here.

This is fucking up your mic.

Or your head?

I'm just going to be a minute.

There you go.

The cross.

Sorry.

Sorry.

I'm mentally.

I'm menty.

It's under here.

Just know that it's there.

Oh, you've got me with your imaginary friend.

One.

Never has I've seen anybody work so hard to deny the existence of something.

You're dedicated to denying the existence.

We're going to get to this issue, but you know what?

Okay, but you have to back on climate change.

The number one reducer of emissions in the world, and we did it voluntarily, is the United States of America.

The richest countries are the cleanest countries.

And the bigger impact we could have on climate change is helping people in hot zones and

deltaic zones.

If we really wanted to help people who are going to suffer from climate change, then there are many more proposals and policies we could put in place than eradicating the energy economy.

I'm living in a state where in the fourth year of a drought, we have 138,000 acres that are literally on fire right now.

We have dozens of fires.

We have a serious crisis that exists today, fires and floods.

It's happening.

It's not ideological.

And with all due respect, I keep hearing all these fanciful alternatives to dealing with reality.

The reality is with us today.

It's not in the future.

It exists in the moment.

I think your forest policies and your reservoir policies and the other policies that have been put in place in California are less contributory to your fires and your problems than climate change?

I mean, I don't know how.

Are you running for governor and you don't know?

I mean,

it's such a, I don't want to.

I want to be respectful.

Well, let him answer and I'll show you why.

It's such a preposterous frame.

Yeah, the idea that somehow our policies are contributing to our forest policies.

Our reservoir policies.

residents are 33% because it hasn't been raining.

The hots are getting hotter, the driers are getting driers, and the wets are getting wetters.

That's time to get it.

You established a new reservoir.

We just passed a bond, a $7.5 billion bond, $2.7 billion for above-ground storage.

70% of your rain goes to the station.

And the existing storage facilities are 33%.

I don't understand your article.

The problem isn't the reservoir, it's the water that's not dropping in the middle.

Exactly, not dropping in.

That's why they're low.

Water needs to come down.

Yeah.

We have to built 100 new reservoirs.

Look, I think Republicans make a mistake being on the wrong side of science.

You have the overwhelming majority of scientists in the world that acknowledge this is the problem.

Republicans are politicians, not scientists.

But the point here where we ought to be able to find middle ground is what is the impact to the economy against the result we wish to achieve.

This should not be simply a sentiment of good intentions.

This ought to be a policy that achieves the stated goal of lowering global carbon levels in a way that does not make American workers pay for it, does not make our economy less competitive.

I just mentioned to the professor there, solar jobs are already twice as many as coal jobs.

But what would be the lowest emission energy solution?

Nuclear.

Are you nuclear?

No.

Because that's not good either.

Look what happened in Japan.

We don't need it.

We have the sun, as the guy said.

Anyway, the cost of solar is dropped, the wind jobs are being created, efficiency, all these things are proven, they're working.

Come to California so we can see the current.

The number one decreaser of carbon emissions has been the natural gas revolution in this country.

Right, another way to dig up

from the earth.

A bridge to a green culture.

Right.

So let me ask about one question about Trump.

He certainly gets all the press.

We're not going to give him that much.

But I hear a lot of people say, you know, it's just a bubble.

You know, it's going to go away just the way Herman Cain and Michelle Bachman and all these people did.

But, you know, you kids are a little young to remember it.

But that's what they said about Ronald Reagan.

I remember when he, I was 12 years old in 1968, when he first floated the bubble of running, and it was a joke.

Oh, come on.

He had a stupid television show.

He's divorced.

He avoided combat.

He's got weird hair and crazy face paint.

This guy will never.

So for all those people who say Donald Trump could not go all the way, I don't think they're right.

They didn't say he would get this far.

And obviously, I don't know what the results are from last night, but Fox tried to put a stake in him, and I don't think they did.

I agree with you completely.

Crazy to dismiss his chances to be the Republican nominee.

When you have 17 candidates in the race, he's polling at 25 percent right now.

He may collapse, but he may not.

And you can certainly be the Republican nominee getting 25, 26, 27 percent of the vote.

And his message is powerful, which is our leaders in Washington are incompetent.

The country is falling apart.

I'm going to fix it and make America great again.

He's not talking about policies.

A lot of what he says is nonsense talk, but he is saying

things.

Steve, listen, listen, listen, listen, listen.

He is saying

he is saying out loud what millions of people across this country are screaming at their television sets every night.

And the notion he can't win, I think, is dead right now.

Like take, for example, what he said about Obamacare.

I will repeal it and replace it with with something terrific.

Is that the

best way to describe it?

Something terrific.

That's the best way to describe his rhetoric and policy.

It has the form and substance of fog.

There is simply no there there.

There's no

nothing real about this.

But do people care?

I think this is wearing thin.

I thought last night was the beginning of the process of decoupling ourselves from him.

And I think once the media starts focusing on the other candidates, that's when he begins to shrink.

And I just see that as inevitable, respecting your example of Reagan.

This is no Reagan, and I'm not here celebrating Reagan, but there were a little more principles attached to Reagan's approach to governing.

Yeah, he was a little better than something terrific.

Here's what he is.

Here's what he has, and I admit he'd have a better chance at going all the way if he had hair like yours, possibly.

But he is

a message.

I'm saying, there's

when's the last time you saw James Carville's hair?

I like that that hair.

We know.

I like that hair.

It's been a long time.

Listen, here's what he has that speaks to Steve's point.

Which has been driving conservatives crazy, right-wing nuts like me, for two cycles now.

He has confidence, and he's not defensive, and he doesn't accept the premise of the question.

And conservatives want somebody who's going to stand up for what we believe in.

And he's at least standing up for the principles.

And why I think there was...

For what principles?

The principles are that there's a core competence of government that is missing.

And I know that government can work.

I'm not anti-government.

Republicans are not anti-government.

We've made New Orleans work.

You made San Francisco work.

Federalism works.

The federal government is not working.

But to his point earlier, it does seem like they don't have any specifics or they do not want to deal with reality.

It seems like the difference in the Republicans.

It looks like the Democrats at least deal with reality

and look in the mirror sometimes and ask you to as a country.

Whereas everything with the Republicans is it's the fault of China, Mexico, and Iran, and of course lazy takers who use their welfare money to buy drugs.

Well,

I think you saw any one of a number of Republican candidates last night with an aspirational message.

Marco Rubio is one of them.

Talked about the future, talked about the sharing economy, talked about the displacement of middle-income workers.

Amazon, the largest retailer in the world, doesn't own a single store.

Now, Donald Trump talking about I'm going to build a great wall with a great door in the middle, of course, it's all nonsense talking.

Rick Perry, Rick Perry, to his great credit, gave a great speech where he talked about Trumpism as a cancer on conservatism.

And he's exactly right.

But what does it say about your party that the guy who's leading, you keep saying is full of nonsense?

Well,

you're saying it.

I'm

What it says about the party and what it says about Washington is people in this country have completely and totally lost trust with their leaders in Washington.

Republicans have seen Republican leaders in Washington spend the country to $18 trillion in debt, abdicate their principles year after year after year, and they're angry as hell about it, and they are responding to the angriest messages.

Let me move on to something else because Donald Trump, between 2.30 and 4.30 last night in the morning, put out 30 anger tweets against Megan Kelly.

You know, Donald Trump sued me last year.

He is the most thin-skinned person in the world.

But what I find interesting is we were just off for a month, and I read, I was reading Hillary Clinton's tweets.

I had a lot of spare time.

Yes.

And apparently she gets it that Donald Trump is successful with this kind of blustery kind of going at people.

Because

look at some of Trump's tweets.

This is at Frank Luntz, because he was having an anti-Trump thing last night.

Frank Luntz is a low-class slob who came to my office looking for consulting work and I had zero interest.

Now he picks anti-Trump panels.

Frank Luntz, your so-called focus groups are a total joke.

Don't come to my office looking for business again.

You are a clown.

Wow, Megan Kelly really bombed tonight.

People are going wild on Twitter.

Fun to watch.

Hillary gets it this is what works would you like to hear some of her tweets that I okay

Bernie Sanders Vermont is a joke your maple syrup has no flavor and your forests are boring

I liked you better when you were sitting in the Muppets balcony

see she's she's getting it

Lincoln Chafee,

0%.

Who's your running mate?

The margin of error?

Seriously, dude, 0%?

Are you a candidate or a great rate on a car loan?

Harley Fiorina, you come off kind of cold, unlikable, and entitled.

And that's coming from me.

Oh, remember she stopped at that Chipotle in Iowa?

Oh, Chipotle.

I'm glad I didn't tip for that burrito.

If I want to throw my money at Mexicans, I'll buy Coke from Jeb Bush's kids.

Oh,

she's really getting me.

Lindsey Graham, me and the girls are getting together to see Magic Mike XXL.

You want in?

I don't even know what that means.

Oh, New York Times, though, she's got a big feud with them.

Here's a crossword puzzle for you.

One across, kiss, two down, my ass.

Bernie Sanders, I'll give you $5 million to show me your death certificate.

Elizabeth Warren, bottle blonde in a pantsuit who won't shut up about the middle class, been there, done that, bitch.

Oh, and of course, Monica Lewinsky, I'm still married.

How you doing?

All right, let's bring out Caitlin.

She is a contributing editor for the Atlantic Monthly, whose new cover story is, That's Not Funny, How Today's College Students Can't Seem to Take a Joke.

Please welcome Caitlin Flanagan.

Hey, Caitlin.

How you doing?

Pleasure to meet you.

Well,

what a time to have the name Caitlin, huh?

It is, really.

I'm going by fruits now.

It probably wasn't a problem for like the first 20-something years of your life.

I have other problems with it, but this is a new dimension.

I know.

Okay, well, we won't talk about that.

I really wanted to have you on because when when I read your article, I said, oh my gosh, this is the person who's going to continue this discussion.

I started, well, I didn't start.

Some other people did.

I've mentioned it before about how college kids have no sense of humor.

And then Jerry Seinfeld said something.

Chris Rock chimed in.

Larry the Cable guy said, I don't play colleges anymore.

They're too politically correct.

You delve into why.

So I really want you to explain that.

Why are the college students so politically correct?

Why they're so politically correct now?

Well, they're the inheritors of 30 years of identity politics, and that's part of the problem.

What is that?

That means that, you know, instead of saying we all have general principles by which we live and seek to sort of understand our lives, that I'm going to stand up for the feminist cause.

I'm going to stand up for a particular racial or ethnic cause, and I'm going to fiercely guard that and completely stand on the side of that issue.

Tribal.

Yes, it is rather tribal.

Tribal, aren't we?

And I think that, you know,

I don't blame the kids for this.

A lot lot of people really demonize the kids.

It's the parents, right?

I think so, because, you know, when kids come to college, when they come to any school, they are, you know, by definition, they're ignorant.

They don't know anything yet.

And it is the moral obligation of their teachers, of the adults who work in that institution, to teach them something, to relieve them of this great burden of ignorance.

But there are so many professors who have completely abdicated that position and have just cravenly ceded to whatever these poor kids who don't know anything yet, what they come and say, they're just reinforced by the professors.

And the whole system is now being run by these kids who are paying the tuitions that pay the salaries.

Well that's a great point that you make that our

probably our idea, you and I, of college is outdated.

We thought it was an institution where you learn and explore and it's really all about keeping the kids paying the tuition.

It is.

It's become a country club.

Right.

They spend a tremendous amount of money which many of them can't afford.

That's sort of an immoral aspect of it as well.

They kind of lure these kids in with their wonderful gyms and their farm to table dining and their idiot politically correct sort of you know humanities curriculum and the kids end up with these staggering debts that they have to somehow pay off and with this ridiculous sort of sense of you know I'm not saying that the ideas that each of them hold is necessarily a bad idea but when we were young you know I grew up in Berkeley and you know I saw my father was a college professor the kids who had you know really progressive ideas they had skin in the game they were getting estranged from their parents they were leaving school they were eating kind of brown rice in apartments around Berkeley they were paying a tremendous personal cost for these political beliefs.

But nowadays these kids, mom and dad, write huge checks.

They're extremely privileged.

They're extremely pampered.

And they run around complaining that they're the victim of these microaggressions.

Yes.

They need trigger warnings in case someone says something awful.

And they think that we're sort of these these horrible, crass people who don't understand the great beauty of life that they do and that we don't understand when we're giving microaggressions against them.

But if you and I went to the South Bronx and we found some 19-year-olds there and we said, how much of your day do you spend worrying about microaggressions?

Right.

They wouldn't know whether to laugh or cry because they know that we live in a violent country with a gun problem.

Yes, you know who else doesn't care about them?

Doctors Without Borders.

Because they're actually doing something to help the world.

Right.

Not just sitting on the internet like virtual vigilantes pointing out the bad person.

Exactly.

And again, I don't hold them responsible.

It's the nature of youth that you don't know much yet.

But the people who teach there should be instructing them that they should have free speech, they should have an ability to inquire, they should be able to ask any question, they should be able to write anything and subject themselves to the academic or rigorous intellectual discipline.

And that's largely gone.

And the part I really related to directly was you went to something called the National Association for Campus Activities, where they hire comedians.

Exactly.

I was that guy in the 90s.

I was the comedian.

I played colleges all the time.

Right, how'd it go?

I don't remember because

I used to drink with the kids after the show.

I always say, if I ever write a memoir, it's going to be called Who Was In My Body?

Because I just always

like, Who Was In My Body?

Who was like drinking with the college kids after there?

But they'd say, You want to go out for a drink?

I'm like, fuck yeah, I'll go out with a drink.

I'll go out with a drink with anybody.

But it's interesting because you you talk about how, you know, these kids come and they audition.

This is a big thing because if you get the gig, you make a lot of money.

You go from college to college to college.

And of course, they never hire the ones who are the funniest.

One guy did a routine about a sassy black friend.

And the audience loved it.

They loved it.

And

the people who were deciding whether to hire said, no, that wouldn't work for us.

That's a stereotype.

Everyone was going crazy.

They thought it was hysterical.

There were several African-American, quite a few African-American young women in the crowd who thought it was really hilarious.

And then these two white girls sitting next to me said, oh, we would never.

And I said, why not?

And they said, because we're a very forward-thinking school.

And that's perpetuating a stereotype.

So,

you know, it's, but I, but I don't think that it's a war we have to worry about because we've already lost the war.

Right.

And I think that the culture war is over, the other side won, and at this point, free speech is nothing more than a nuisance.

Yeah, and it gets worse.

It was in the news this week that the University of New Hampshire, this sounds like a joke, like a parody on what we're talking about, but they're deadly serious, came up with a bias-free language guide.

Can't say senior citizens anymore.

Senior citizens was a

good thing, right?

Now you have to say people of advanced age.

Like, that makes a difference.

Poverty-stricken.

No good.

Experiencing poverty.

What the hell is the

rich?

Can't say rich.

Person of material wealth.

This obese.

Again, obese was the nice word.

All right, now what?

People of size.

Oh, hey.

I'm not making this up.

Tomboy.

Gender non-conforming.

Foreigner.

Out.

International people.

Homosexual, same-gender-loving.

I mean,

if this didn't exist, Rush Limbaugh would have to make it up.

And he's already gotten fat and rich off liberals.

I mean a person of size

and whatever, experiencing wealth.

Experiencing wealth.

Why do we have to play these tedious games in 2015?

Because it's over.

It's over, yeah.

It's over.

I mean, the things that you were observing 20 years ago and that you've been discussing in the last 10 or 12 years, they're letting America, they were at one point letting America know what would happen, what would the logical end of these things was.

We're there.

It is the logical end.

And who's the fool I am?

Because I, unfortunately, have two children who have this horrible idea that they should go to college.

And I have no one to blame but myself.

And so I'm going to be in the Ponzi scheme myself soon enough.

All right.

Thank you.

You're very good on this.

I,

of course, not just because you're here, but because it was the big story when we were off, want to talk about animal rights because you and I are completely sympotico on this.

And something very bad happened while we were off.

That there was a silver lining, too.

They shot that lion, murdered him in cold blood for no good reason.

But I've never seen as many people outside of our movement be as aware of it or care as much about it as now.

So this Cecil apparently gave his life for something

to wear a cross with Cecil on it.

Okay, fine.

Whatever it takes.

But let's use this as an opportunity to talk about, and I'm a carnivore and a fur-loving person, but wounded warriors, battered women, troubled children working with abused dogs and other animals, and let's talk about the

ag gag bill that you and I worked on.

Elephants are not being abused anymore in circuses.

NIHs should not be spending millions of dollars giving rabbits Swedish massages or teaching monkeys how to gamble.

So there's an opportunity.

Thank you, Cecil, for opening up this conversation where

it doesn't have to be political and you don't have to throw red paint at me.

But the next iteration of the conversation is a pushback from hunters that are making the case they're the true conservationists.

That incenses me.

They use terms like conservation hunting.

Like somehow we have to kill them to save them.

Because when we pay to kill them, we raise money.

Think about what was Seiso worth to the economy of Zimbabwe?

Millions of dollars.

How many tourists go down year in and year out versus the $55,000, $60,000?

And by the way, you know this, that $50,000 doesn't go in the hands of the local government, or if it does go in the hands, it goes into many hands of local government, doesn't go to conservation efforts.

So it's a specious argument.

And it's the one, sadly, they're perpetuating.

Ethical kill is another bullshit word they say.

And the conflation between this outrage and deer hunting is

completely specious.

What type of whack job wants to pay $50,000 to go shoot that magnificent animal, behead him, stick the head on the wall, skin him, leaving his carcass there?

It's just awful.

You know who goes trophy hunting?

Men who have trophy wives.

It says a whole lot about the trophy collector and not very good.

And would you like any man who had a trophy wife any more than you'd like any man who has a trophy skin?

It's just a trendy trip.

Look,

and I do think in this state, for example, the orca whales that are held in captivity and in Florida, this is another issue.

These are sentient animals that should not be held in captivity.

And so

the fact that

this is that

this has occurred hopefully is an opportunity for us to think again about how we relate to some of

these great creatures.

And I want to read just a few stats.

I read these back in October.

It was on that show with Ben Affleck, so nobody paid attention to it.

But the World Wildlife Fund reported that the Earth has lost 52% of its wildlife in the past 40 years.

We've lost half the animals in 40 years.

76% of freshwater life, wildlife, 39% of those living on land.

Those are incredible statistics.

Every 20 minutes we're losing another, we're going through this mass extinction period.

Every 20 minutes we're losing a species on this earth.

And we can't survive without other species.

It can't just be us and dogs and cats.

No, understand those.

Okay, so let's get back to what we started to talk about before, because there was a question last night in the debate from Facebook.

Somebody asked if any of them, meaning the candidates, have received a word from God he wanted to know on what they should do and take care of first.

And Trump heard God and went, over here.

Is that an appropriate question for a debate?

That was.

The idea that God is talking to the candidates.

Politicizing God, I don't think, is a healthy thing.

And that was, for me, the most cringeworthy and the most uncomfortable part of that debate.

But why?

And would they, have you ever heard a question like that?

And would there ever be a question like that asked in a Democratic

question?

No, because they're more rational.

And there was.

They were asked a question.

They were asked a question.

But they would never ask that.

They're right.

They would put aside all the cuckoo questions.

They wouldn't ask those questions because they'd be talking about global warming and real problems.

But also,

there's a

football player named Arion Foster, and I heard my email was filled yesterday.

It's like, Arian Foster, did you hear what?

What happened?

Well, there's an ESPN magazine that had an article called The Confessions of Ariane Foster.

Like, this is a deep, dark secret that he's secular and he may not believe in God.

And, you know, atheists, 7.5 million Americans.

Agnostics, 9.8.

By the way, they're the same thing.

People like to try to make a difference.

There is none.

That's 17.3 million people.

The last Pew Poll, Christians were down from 78% of America to 70.

Victory.

And

the nuns, people who don't, these are not all atheists, but they have no religion, 38 million people.

They're second now behind evangelicals in America.

It's about time we stopped pretending that this is a small group of people that coming out of the closet about it.

There's a lot of people out there, probably some in the audience here tonight.

You're conflating two things.

You're conflating a frustration and an anger with institutional religion, with faith.

They're two different things.

Many people are upset with the church, but that's not.

You're not conflating them, but they are two different things.

But atheism is a belief.

It is not a belief.

It's the absence of a belief.

But you have to be absent from believing that something is.

Okay, I'm a convertible.

It's like saying abstinence is a sex position.

It is.

But it's not.

You don't have kids in college or going into college.

If you have kids our age, abstinence is a sex position.

Yes,

no, it's the absence of one.

Okay.

So

you're familiar with Dana Perino?

Yes.

Okay.

We're all colleagues.

Right.

She worked for Bush, right?

She was the spokesman.

They asked her once about removing under God from the Pledge of Allegiance.

She said about atheists, I'm tired of them.

If these people really don't like it, they don't have to live here.

Can you imagine

saying that about Jews

or Latinos or homosexuals or anybody else

sound like Dana, does it?

Well, it's a direct quote.

Okay, maybe it's true.

I'm not.

I'm defending a person that I know, and I would say the essence of my faith, I'm a Catholic, I'm a convert, is reason and faith, and it's tolerance.

You can believe what you want, and I believe what I want.

How am I hurting you so much by being believing?

You're not.

But this is something you would not tolerate if it was directed at anybody else.

I'm just making a point about atheists in America.

And by the way, at the debate last night, the geniuses there think that ISIS and Iran are the same thing, even though they're bitter enemies.

We're back to where Bush didn't understand that there are Shiites and Sunnis in the Muslim world.

But look, we would have been much better off in the debate, right, asking questions that showed whether these candidates understand the difference between a Shia, a Sunni, and a kangaroo, as opposed to

my party.

I don't understand.

I know for sure that there are a couple candidates up there that have deep understanding of these issues.

And I'm pretty sure listening to some of the answers that there's some of those candidates who have no understanding of some of those issues.

And it's important as we go through this debate process at a dangerous moment in the country's history, in the world's history, that we understand who does get it and who doesn't get it.

Okay.

Thank you very much, Pennell.

I have to move on right now.

The new rule.

All right.

New rule, stop saying that the two-tiered debate format is turning the Republican presidential race into a reality TV show.

No, it's more like the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.

You know, where the dogs compete in separate categories, the big dogs that bark a lot and slobber

and the small dogs that wear sweaters and prints.

New roll, the makers of the pot of gold at the end.

It's real, folks.

It's real.

The makers of the pot of gold at the end of the Rainbow St.

Patrick's Day cookie cutter

have to stop wondering why the cookies come out soft.

It's not you, honey.

It's St.

Patrick's Day.

A guy is a little too much to drink.

It could happen to anybody.

Have a cookie.

New rule, let Bill Cosby keep his Medal of Freedom, but maybe put a bell in it.

Neural experts must assure the conservatives who think this video of President Obama in Kenya shows a demon racing across the screen.

Let's see that again.

Oh.

Oh, definitely.

That was absolutely a demon.

That was...

That was not an out-of-focus boom microphone.

No, it was a hideous demon right from hell.

And And friends, the only way to get rid of a demon like that is by sending your prayers along with a check to Lighthouse Ministries, Care of the Reverend William Moore.

That's Lighthouse Ministries, Care of the Reverend William Moore.

Remember, the more you give, the quicker that demon will get nuked.

God bless.

New rule.

People posting emotional, tearjerker videos on Facebook have to come up with a more original tagline than get your tissues ready.

Sure, it warns women that they're about to have a good cry, but when a man sees get your tissues ready,

he's thinking of something else to entirely.

And finally, new rule, when a dentist has 60 grand to drop on a safari, that's when we know there's too much sugar in the soda.

You know, I don't mind it when really rich people act like assholes.

Well, actually, I do mind.

I mind a lot.

But what can you do?

Of course, it wasn't right when Donald Trump's asshole son, Doucheweche von Schitheel Trump III,

snuffed out the life of another beautiful animal to forget about his tiny dick, but

I understand it because he's really rich.

But a fucking dentist gets to do this?

Your office is in a strip mall next to a Korean nail salon.

You make a living scraping plaque off people's teeth.

And by the way, if you're a dentist itching to travel to another continent to kill something, next time grow some balls, go to Syria and take on ISIS.

You know,

we do have a moral crisis in America, but it doesn't come from saggy pants or gay wedding cakes or Hillary's emails.

It comes from worshiping obscene wealth, so much that posing next to the carcass of an endangered species is a way of saying, hey, look at me.

I'm a soulless prick, just like the super rich.

This wasn't even about the lion.

Next year it'll be buying a bottle of wine for 10 grand or crashing a sports car into a Chuck E.

Cheese or hiring a Sherpa to lug your fat ass up Mount Everest.

You see,

you see, in America, being filthy rich is the greatest good.

But if you're a dentist, you're not rich like that.

But if you save up a couple of times a year, you can splurge on something ridiculous and at least look like it.

Because in the game of America, where money counts for everything, this is how you let other people know you won.

Because you did something horrible and stupid that only rich people can get away with.

We always hear about the sick culture of poverty.

What about the sick culture of wealth?

Last Halloween, there was an anonymous letter printed in slate from a wealthy homeowner who complained about trick-or-treaters from other neighborhoods knocking on his door.

He said, Halloween isn't a social service or a charity in which I have to buy candy for less fortunate children?

Wow, save some Scrooge for Christmas.

Or take the example of what's going on here in California, where we're having a little problem with water.

There isn't any.

When James Taylor comes here and sings, I've seen fire and I've seen rain, he just says, fire.

We are living through the worst drought since the 1800s when Jerry Brown started keeping records.

But when Governor Brown asked everyone to cut water usage by 25%,

water usage in the wealthy enclave of Rancho Santa Fe went up.

Local douchebag Steve Juhas said, we pay significant property taxes based on where we live, and no, we're not all equal when it comes to water.

People should not be forced to live on property with brown lawns and golf on brown courses.

Yes, the only brown thing allowed on Steve's golf course is the caddies.

What are they booing me for?

And now they applaud me for giving them the finger.

And interior designer Gabe Butler chimed in, what are we supposed to do?

Just have dirt around our house on our four acres?

Yes,

that's what land is.

It's dirt.

What did you think was under the grass?

Tile?

Here's what my lawn looks like now.

Who gives a shit?

Didn't change my life at all.

And by the way, if there really is an interior designer named Gay Butler, somewhere there must be a gay butler named Interior Designer.

Now,

I'm sure that the majority of very rich people have always been greedy and selfish, but this crowd today takes it to a whole new level.

Somehow it's not enough to spend lavishly on themselves.

They have to actively take from others their water.

their benefits, the last bits of beauty in the world.

In his non-apology apology, dentist the lion hunter used the word legal over and over.

What he did was legal.

Sure, because the rich buy politicians to write laws to say that whatever they want is legal.

Like our elections now, more than half the money given to presidential candidates so far has come from just 400 families.

Perfectly legal.

But you know, for that kind of money, the rich shouldn't just get to tell politicians what to do.

I think they should get to hunt them.

That would be the ultimate trophy to go with your trophy kill and your trophy car and your trophy wife.

What could be better than a trophy Republican candidate's head on your wall?

Scott Walker's...

Scott Walker's eyes already look like cheap taxidermy, and

Chris Christie's leg would make a lovely umbrella stand.

And if that sounds wrong, we'll make a law that says it's legal.

Thank you very much.

That's our show.

I'll be at the North Charleston Center in North Carolina August 8th, at the Durham in Durham August 9th, and at the Bergland Theater in Roanoke August 22nd.

All right, that's our show.

Thank you, panel.

I want to thank Steve Schmidt, Gavin Noosa, Mary Matlin, Caitlin Flanagan, and Michael Mann.

Join us now for overtime on YouTube.

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

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