Episode #351 (Originally aired 4/24/15)

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

Starts the clock.

Good afternoon.

Afternoon.

Time will be

real time.

Hey!

Hi, ladies and gentlemen.

How you doing?

Thank you very much.

Hi, Jerry.

America.

All right, sit down.

Let's get to the show.

Got a big show.

Thank you.

What a happy.

Happy crowd.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Well,

I

know I say it every week.

I couldn't say it again.

I think I know why the liberals are happy tonight.

Finally, the Senate has confirmed President Obama's choice for Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, after 165 days of stonewalling and history is made.

She is the first black woman Attorney General in the United States.

And

not a moment too soon.

She said her first priority in office will be to free Ben Affleck slaves.

And I think that's a great

silliest scandal I've ever heard.

But

a lot of women in the news this week.

Hillary is now not the only woman running for president on the Republican side.

Carly Fiorina has thrown her hat in the ring.

She is running as the junior senator from California, which is unique because she was not elected to that office.

Now, she comes from the world of business.

She always says, and it's true, that she turned around Hewlett-Packard.

Not in the right direction, but she did turn it in a direction.

And

another woman, oh, Bruce Jenner.

Bruce.

The big interview is that I think it's going on right now.

Please, no spoilers.

I TiVoed it,

which is ironic because sometimes my TiVo also cuts things off.

Please, what I meant to say is he's an inspiration.

An inspiration is to thousands of people who have male jeans but wear mom jeans.

It's an inspiration.

I kid the Kardashians, you know, they got political this week.

Did you see that?

It's the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide and they're Armenian of course.

There was a demonstration here today.

I couldn't barely get to work.

I'm like, why us?

What did we do to the Armenians?

But no, but there was a genocide 100 years ago.

They're right about that.

And, you know, they're pissed off.

I don't blame them.

That the United States will not use the word genocide because we're friends with Turkey, who did it.

And sorry, we're not going to upset Turkey, but you know who said it's a genocide?

The Pope.

Pope is like, fuck yeah, it's a genocide.

Pope.

There you go.

The Pope has huge balls.

You've got to admit that.

You would too if you were 78 and never had sex.

That's all I want to say about that.

But of course, the woman who's really dominating the news again this week is Hillary Clinton because of another

scandal.

The conservatives are saying this is the worst Hillary scandal since whatever the one last week was.

This one is about money.

Apparently there's a new book out called Clinton Cash.

It alleges the Clintons were using their charitable foundation.

They got money from that.

And then the foreign interests would somehow get Hillary Clinton to make decisions based on their needs as Secretary of State.

She was at the time.

Whatever the fuck.

I mean,

Hillary says she has not read the book, but it's on her computer and she can't wait to delete it.

I tell you this.

A couple more months of boring, vague Hillary scandals, we are going to be begging Bill Clinton to get blown by an intern again.

That's my prediction.

And I'm not saying that's not a scandal there, but you know what?

The author is a guy named Peter Schweitzer.

He's a former policy advisor to Sarah Palin.

He was the one who explained to her that the blue stuff on the maps was water.

I don't know if the Clintons are hiding anything, but if I advise Sarah Palin on foreign policy, I would concentrate on burying that.

It's like your resume saying, I also do Donald Trump's hair.

Donald Trump's hair.

You know what I mean?

Oh, thank you.

You're applauding me because I got that word out?

Thank you very much.

What a low bar we're working with tonight.

Well, what's going on, meanwhile, in the presidential race, I must say, is horrifying.

I mean, it was bad enough when two small states like New Hampshire and Iowa were making the decisions as kingmakers.

Now it's like we're down to like two billionaires who are doing this.

The Koch brothers, did you see this this week?

Okay, first they said it was going to be Scott Walker and then oh whoops sorry spoiler alert too soon

no no let's have a little more of it you know of an audition period so now they announced their five semi-finalists who got roses

Scott Walker, Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio.

Those are the five.

And Bobby Jindal's agent called and said, just meet with him.

And the thousand-year-old billionaire, Sheldon Adelson, he also has picked the candidate he wants to shower money on, Marco Rubio.

And people said to him, Sheldon, why Marco Rubio?

And he said, because Anna Nicole Smith is dead.

Sheldon is this weekend hosting his annual Republican Jewish Coalition there in Las Vegas at the hotel he owns there, the Benitian.

And George W.

Bush is going.

He's getting paid $250,000.

He's not even speaking.

He's just doing a DJ set by the pool.

And this is unfortunate for Sheldon.

He picked a bad weekend to do this because he wanted all the presidential hopeless to come by.

But they're all in Iowa because in Iowa this weekend, like I have to tell you, it's the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition Spring Dinner.

Oh yeah, it's a big event, very prestigious.

Rick Perry was told that it was black tie only, and he said, won't we all get cold?

We've got a great show.

Liz Mayer, Christopher Caldwell, and Ana Marie Cox are here.

And a little every speaking with celebrity chef, Eddie Wong, is backstage.

First up, he is a lifelong champion of the environment who appears in the documentary Trace Amounts, available now online, and is the editor of Thomerisol, Let the Science Speak, a book on the same issue.

Robert F.

Kennedy Jr.

is back with us.

Robert, it's been so long.

How are you?

You look great.

Well,

okay, so I saw you have a full-page ad that you printed in USA Today about this issue, Thimerosol, which is the preservative, the mercury-based preservative in vaccines.

We'll get to that in a second, but I want to put it in context.

You are one of the greatest environmental crusaders we've ever had, so I'm assuming.

I don't think anyone would dispute that.

So your history with mercury goes back a long way.

I mean, you're into the vaccine thing now, but you've gotten it out of rivers, right?

Yeah,

I got dragged into the

vaccine as you're kind of kicking and screaming because I was going around the country suing coal-burning power plants and talking about the dangers of mercury coming from those plants.

And almost everywhere I stopped or I spoke,

there were women there, very eloquent, articulate, grounded people who were saying, look,

you have to look at the biggest vector of mercury in American children now is coming from vaccines, and we need you to look at the science.

And I resisted for a long time, but I started reading the science after a while.

And I am very comfortable reading science.

I've brought hundreds and hundreds of successful lawsuits.

Almost all of them have involved scientific controversy.

So

I'm comfortable reading science and dissecting it and discerning the difference between junk science and real science.

And when I started looking at it, what I saw was very alarming, which we were giving huge amounts of mercury to our children.

A lot of it has been taken out of vaccines, but there's still an extraordinary amount still in the vaccines, and particularly the flu vaccine.

But then why, if that's true, why is everyone lined up against you?

Why are you so alone on this?

I mean, a lot of people say, I mean, the book is called Let the Science Speak, and so many people say, well, the science has spoken.

We have studied this over and over, not just in America, other countries.

And we say that it is not the mercury.

Well, there's a difference between the bureaucratic regulatory establishment and scientists.

And if you look at the scientific literature, we were able to find for this book, we spent three years looking at the scientific literature and the scientific literature is virtually unanimous, Bill, about the dangers of thimerosol and the links between thimerosol and the an epidemic of neurological disorders that are now afflicting American children, ADD, ADHD, speech delay, language delay, hyperactivity disorder, ASD, and autism, all of which began in 1989, which was the year that they changed the vaccine schedule.

And we've seen animal studies, toxicological studies, clinical studies, cadaver studies.

They all say this.

But you're not anti-vax.

You vaccinate yourself.

You're very pro-vaccine.

Right.

You just want to get the mercury.

I had all my kids vaccinated.

I want to see government policies that promote full coverage vaccines.

The only way to do that is to have safe vaccines and to have

a credible regulatory process with regulators with integrity.

And we don't have that today.

Yeah, I mean a lot of the movie that I saw is about how the CDC is corrupt.

But even if the CDC is corrupt, why is the World Health Organization and the National Academy of Sciences and the American Pediatrician Society and scientists from other countries, why are they lining up on the other side of the issue?

CDC really kind of controls the field.

And CDC,

and you know, there's a,

well, let me explain what's happening at CDC because then you can see

how it is pervasive in these other bureaucratic institutions.

So there's been four separate scathing federal studies about the CDC, and all of them by the

United States Congress, the Inspector General of HHS, and the the Office of Research Integrity last year.

They paint a picture of CDC as a cesspool of corruption,

as an organization that's been completely taken over by the vaccine industry.

And there's two divisions at CDC where the corruption is most important.

The first is the division that chooses which vaccines to add to the schedule.

So when you and I were kids, we got three to five vaccines.

My kids got

57

inoculations from 16 vaccines.

Why did that happen?

Why are new vaccines added to the schedule?

And there are 271 new vaccines in the CDC pipeline that are due to be added to that schedule.

In 1989, it suddenly became very, very lucrative to put a vaccine on the schedule.

Because the year before, Congress made it illegal for Americans to sue vaccine companies, no matter how badly injured they were from the vaccines.

They gave them a shield against any liability.

Suddenly, vaccines became very, very lucrative.

And you've got the federal government ordering 200 million people to buy your product.

There is no advertising, no marketing, and you can't be sued.

So those new vaccines are worth a billion dollars.

a year to some of these companies.

We would hope that the people who add those vaccines to the schedule would be kind of geeky science types who are only concerned with human health.

But that's not how it works.

Most of them are vaccine industry insiders.

And I'm going to give you an example.

In 1999, Dr.

Paul Offutt, who's the consummate vaccine.

Yeah, I've seen him on TV.

Yeah, sure.

And he's the leading voice face for the vaccine industry.

He sat on

one of these committees that added the rotavirus vaccine to the schedule.

And he owned a rotavirus patent.

So six years later, he was able, and he voted, he didn't recuse himself, he voted to add them to the schedule.

Six years later, he sold his patent for $182 million.

He told Newsweek that it was like winning the lottery.

So the Inspector General's report said that 64% of the people who sit on those committees have the same kind of conflicts that Dr.

Offitt had, and that as many as 97% of them may have those conflicts because

they didn't fill out their conflict disclosure forms.

So

you've got a, the way that you've got American people who are saying, well, wait a second, all these new vaccines that we're taking, are they being added because

they're concerned with human health, or are they being added because these people are making money on it?

Number two, necessary.

Let me ask a broader question here.

Why can't we have a kind of a grand bargain on this?

It just seems like we're calling each other kooks and liars, and it seems like common sense that vaccines, I mean, even thermerosol, probably don't hurt most people.

I mean, if they did, we'd all be dead, because they're in a lot of vaccines that we all took.

But some do.

Obviously, some minority get hurt by this stuff.

I don't understand why this is controversial, why we have this emotional debate about something that there is science there.

It astounds me that liberals who are always suspicious of corporations, and you just laid out that case, and defending minorities, somehow when it comes to this minority that's hurt, it's like, you know what, shut the fuck up and let me take every vaccine that Merck wants to shove down my throat.

But, you know,

I'm focused on mercury because mercury is a thousand times more neurotoxic than lead.

There's no argument about that.

knows that.

Why would you put mercury in a vaccine that you're going to give a pregnant woman?

Why would you give it to children who are less than 24 hours old?

We know, would you give lead?

Would you shoot lead?

But in that movie, it says that the EPA.

This is the movie Trace Amounce,

which everybody should see.

Okay, but the movie says that the EPA allows two parts per billion of mercury, but the average vaccine has 50,000 parts

per billion.

Okay, if it was 25,000 times more dangerous than what's in water, again, wouldn't we all be dead?

No, because

first of all, mercury impact certain, mercury at that level is going to impact a lot of people.

And you know, at this point, CDC says that generation,

that vaccinated generation from 1989, one out of every six of them have a neurological disorder, ADD, ADHD.

So we count it differently now, too.

Which we diagnose.

You and I didn't know people when we were growing up with autism.

Right.

You know, the first we ever heard of it was on Rain Man.

But we didn't know gay people either.

Because they were in the class.

Anyway, I got to go.

But I applaud you for championing this because we do need to talk about it more.

And I thank you for doing this.

Well, thank you for having me on.

Yeah, I know a lot of people will.

It It takes a lot of courage to talk about this.

And the networks won't let anybody on.

I know.

And as you know, there's no checks and balances.

Well, because the pharmaceutical companies are the ones who sponsor the news.

Right.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

Robert F.

Kennedy.

All right.

Thank you, Bobby.

Let's meet our panel.

Okay, hey.

All right, here they are.

She's a political contributor to the Daily Beast and Bloomberg View.

Ana Marie Cox is with us.

Hey, Ana, how are you doing?

He's a senior editor at the Weekly Standard, Christopher Caldwell.

Hey, Chris.

And she's a Republican political consultant, Liz Mayer, back with us.

Hey, Liz, how you doing?

All right, remember to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and send us your questions for tonight's Overtime.

And if you're watching from outside the U.S., we'd like to hear from you for next week's special edition of Overtime Overseas.

Okay, so let's play a little game tonight, since we have two liberals and two conservatives of who's worse.

And tonight's topic is who's worse when it comes to being a bad American for selling out to foreign interests.

Now we can talk about two things.

We could talk about the Clinton cash.

You know, maybe they're selling their access to foreign interests.

That's what the allegation is.

And then let's talk about, you know, Citizens United and Sheldon Adelson and why Republicans suddenly want to love Israel so much like they should marry it, I think.

Is that all just coming from someplace other than the fact that they get a lot of their money from a guy who also loves Israel that much?

But let's start with the Clinton situation.

Is there a there?

With the Clintons, there's always at least a...

at least a hair there, you know.

I think there's at least half of a there.

The thing about the Clintons that's so amazing to me is that, you know, you've heard that it's better to ask permission, or it's better to apologize than to ask permission.

They seem to not to want to ask permission or apologize.

I mean, they want to just do what they do, and if it looks shady, they raise their hands and can't believe that you're accusing them of anything.

I mean, this looks bad.

There's a part of me that feels like it looks so bad it can't possibly be true.

Like they're not that stupid.

But then again,

they're pretty stupid.

I hope to God.

I mean, I hope to God it's not true.

That's my general attitude towards this.

But with that being said, I agree with you.

I mean, it's bad optics, and there are some ethical problems here, regardless of whether anybody was buying access or Hillary did anything based on what donations were made to the Clinton Foundation.

I mean, fundamentally,

they were doing something they weren't supposed to do.

They didn't disclose it.

And then when it came out, they basically threw their hands up, handled it out of the city.

Given that he runs this giant, and it is a charity, let's not forget that.

It does a lot of good work, the Clinton Foundation.

It's not there to make money.

Democrats generally don't get their jollies from making money.

They are

do they?

Really?

I don't really think

that depends on your Democrats.

You think the Democrats are in it and the Clintons specifically to make money?

I think they're policy wonks who get their jollies from the government.

Whereas the Republicans.

I think Bill Clinton just wants to be loved.

Yeah.

Yes, more than money.

I agree.

More than money.

They like government and they like power would be the less charitable way of putting it.

But

if you wanted money, you'd go to work in Wall Street.

If you wanted power, you'd go to work in politics.

And in this case, I think that whether or not anything can be proved wrong,

whether or not it can be proved that the Clintons were offering anything, the people who gave the money in these foreign companies thought they were getting something.

Yeah, they obviously were hoping for it.

And she should, I think fundamentally, whether or not anything was being bought, she should have recused herself in the case of this year in Europe.

Let me just.

There is something wrong here, even if it's not what a lot of people are.

Okay, but I just want to push back on one point, which is this idea that the Clintons are constantly involved in a scandal of one sort or the other.

This is what Wayne Lapierre, the head of the NRA, said last week at the NRA convention.

He said, Hillary's history of scandal is almost endless.

Whitewatergate, Cattlegate, I don't remember that one.

Jennifer Flowersgate, that's her husband's mistress.

Nannygate, Lincoln Bedroom Gate, Travelgate, Troopergate, Filegate, Paula Jonesgate, Vince Fostergate, Helicopter Gate, I don't remember that one,

Coffeegate, Webb Huddle, Hubble, Hush, Moneygate, Monica Gate, again, somebody not her.

And I just want to say that Ken Starr, who was the special prosecutor, was assigned to look into all these and certainly wanted to find something.

In his report, Ken Starr's report, he said, I got nothing but the blowjob.

So, you know what?

It's kind of a bullshit meme that the media keeps perpetuating because they like a scandal no matter who would like to say.

Except also she keeps perpetuating it.

Because I would say, like, and I'm I support Hillary Clinton, but part of the problem is that they get wrapped up in these, in the, in their own, around their own axle on these things.

I mean, I agree with you, those aren't, those aren't actually, many of them aren't actually scandals.

There is no there there.

But somehow, the Clintons seem to behave as though there is.

And I wish that they would.

It's a structural thing.

It's a matter of interlocking directorates, basically.

I don't know how you wouldn't have some of this with a wife who's the Secretary of State and a husband who's in charge of this giant.

Well, and perhaps that's part of the issue.

So he should have given up the charity, is what you're saying.

Yeah, well,

or they should have stuck to the agreement that they had when she entered the administration about not taking foreign money.

But just to quickly add, I think looking at this from a political operator's perspective, it's amazing just how badly the Clintons routinely handle this.

And so, yeah, that perpetuates this too, honestly.

Some's the media, some's out.

Part two of who's worse.

The Sunlight Foundation says this about Citizens United.

Citizens United created an environment in which it's perfectly legal for shell non-profit corporations, and I would put quotes in non-profit, because we know they're really not, to engage in election-related spending on behalf of a hidden interest.

And there is nothing to ensure that that hidden interest is not a foreign national, a foreign company, or a foreign government.

And again, is the over-the-top love that the Republicans suddenly have for Israel not related to the fact that Sheldon Adelson, a man who wants to drop a nuke, he said that, there he is, good-looking guy, isn't he?

Wants to

Sheldon Adelson wants to drop a nuke.

in the Iranian desert just to show them we mean business.

This is something a drunk at houlahan says.

But

he loves him some Israel.

I mean, I'm a supporter of Israel.

But you know what?

Here's the Bloomberg poll on GOP support for Israel.

30% say Israel is an ally, but we should pursue America's interests when we disagree.

67%

Israel is an important ally, the only democracy in the region, and we should support it even if our interests diverge.

That's unconditional love.

We're not supposed to do that with other countries.

It's a funny thing, but it's a...

We barely have it in marriages in the European

No, I don't think it's that.

I don't think that's the only explanation for the

convergence between Republicans and

Adolis and on Israel.

There's a shared...

They see them as a beleaguered...

Israel is a beleaguered country fighting a war

surrounded by

terrorists.

Well,

but there's an overlap in beliefs, just the way there is, just the way

Democrats get a lot of money from labor unions.

And you would never say that it just occurred to them one morning

to support labor when they got the labor money.

I remember when Jim Baker said, fuck the Jews, they don't vote for us anyway.

And now he's advising Jeff Bush, so that's an interesting one, right?

I think if, I mean, you've made this point previously, I think, that a lot of Republican sentiment with regard to Israel isn't necessarily established by somebody like Adelson.

It's a lot to do with the evangelical base of the party because evangelicals do feel extremely strongly.

And so I think when we look at what's really driving sort of foreign policy stances when it comes to Israel, I mean, some of that is legitimately what people think, some of that is catering to the base.

And yeah, there may be a few people who sort of see anything they can get from Adelson as gravy, as it were.

But I think fundamentally, this is about a lot of the volunteer base that you're going to be dealing with, particularly in a state like Iowa, probably is more socially conservative, more evangelically inclined.

And so, you know, that's going to give people a reason to sort of.

But

if Sheldon Adelson was a Hindu,

that's what I'm saying.

Don't you think the issue would be we have got to stop killing cows?

I think we have got to.

I kind of want to test that in reality, you know?

I kind of like to see a presidential candidate stand up and like make a big deal about no killing of cows.

But I do honestly think until you see the base of the party also agreeing that we must not kill cows, probably that's going to be a rather fringe position that.

I mean, I don't know.

Henderson can stand out though that somebody's going to.

Jade Elderson is incredibly powerful.

He's the only person that Chris Christie has ever apologized to.

Ever.

I mean, and Chris Christie defended a lot of people.

Chris Christie's asked, has Bruce Springsteen ever asked Chris Christie to apologize?

Because I bet he'd apologize to, I bet he'd apologize.

Do you guys still defend Citizens United, the system we have now?

I think you've got to defend a part of it, which is that

there's a lot of people who know a lot about Hillary Clinton that they wouldn't have known other than the

without the movie that would have been banned by Citizens United, that would have been terrible.

Okay, but we're talking about the fact of the unlimited money so that billionaires can give.

I mean, I remember in 2008, you could give, what, $2,300?

Okay, 2012, I remember I gave a million dollars, okay, because I was trying to make the point, hey, this is where the field has moved to the million dollar level.

Well, that's quaint now.

A million dollars is, now we're at the billion-dollar level.

This is not free speech.

This is not what the founders intended.

This is not fair.

Citizens United fundamentally deals, Citizens United fundamentally deals with the issue of broadcast within certain time periods of the election.

It's a very specific thing.

I think generally people now hear Citizens United and they use that as sort of a shorthand for money in politics.

Well, yeah.

Okay, well, that's what I'm talking about.

Right.

The decision that allowed unlimited money in politics.

But it allowed something very specific.

My point is that if you weren't doing like broadcast-based particular electioneering, there was still unlimited politics.

I mean, you had lots of soft money in politics, you had lots of advocacy, and all of these things could influence it.

As for your point about the film, I actually don't know very many people who've seen that, so I actually don't know about it.

It's not about the movie, you two.

But of course, that's

this bullshit idea that it's about seeing a movie.

To decide it the other way would have meant saying you can't show this movie, which would have been an outright First Amendment movie.

But it's not about the movie.

It's not about the $889 million that the Koch brothers are going to put into the election, which makes them the equivalent of a third party.

Like that is enough.

That is as much as third party.

And that is, but what's really, really amazing about that, and I want people to put this in context, that is less than 1% of what the Koch brothers own.

But this is just a drop in the bucket.

They are just like play money.

I would say.

I'm $45 billion.

As a libertarian, I think.

Rhode Island is worth $47.

If they were willing to sort of exert that influence more to actually drive the Republican Party in a more expressly libertarian direction, I would feel far more comfortable with that.

Well, yeah, that's not having individuals giving all this money.

Yes, it's their individual whims that are in the middle of the future.

Well, that's the thing.

Depending on my feelings.

I'm going to interrupt because I'm glad we got into the subject of income inequality because I notice Republicans are using that phrase now.

But I also notice that they will not use the other two phrases that Democrats usually say along with that.

One of them is class warfare, and the other one is two Americas.

But we saw more evidence of two Americas this week.

There was a third grade, yes, third grade teacher in a very poor neighborhood in Denver who gave her class an assignment, and it was called, I Wish My Teacher Knew.

Write an essay, I wish my teacher knew.

And some of the responses were heartbreaking because it's a poor area.

Like, I wish my teacher knew I didn't have pencils at home to do my homework.

I wish my teacher knew how much I miss my dad because he got deported to Mexico.

So sad.

And then we thought, well, what about the other America?

What if we gave that assignment in Beverly Hills?

So we asked a teacher in Beverly Hills, would you like to hear some of the responses?

I wish my teacher knew the lady who comes to my parent-teacher conferences is actually my nanny.

I wish my teacher knew the more I learn, the less chance I have of landing a reality show.

I wish my teacher knew I can never tell when mommy's angry because her forehead doesn't move.

It's very

different there.

I wish my teacher knew how boring it is at Lake Como since Clooney got married.

Yeah,

these are so different.

I wish my teacher knew daddy helps the maid vacuum from behind.

Kids say the darndest things.

I wish my teacher knew that my sex tape drops on May 3rd.

I wish my teacher knew that my family came to this country with nothing but $30 million in Iranian currency.

I wish my teacher knew she hasn't taught me anything because all knowledge comes from Scientology.

All right, key host of ISARIS Wong's World and is the author of Fresh Off the Boat, a memoir, Eddie Wong is over here.

Eddie,

hey, great to meet you.

How you doing?

Definitely.

Definitely.

Eddie, how you doing?

I'm good.

How you doing?

I'm so glad we have you on.

We don't have nearly as many Asian Americans as we should have on.

I mean, have you had in it?

When was the last Asian American you had on here?

See, you're stuck.

David David.

No, we have Tiger Mom.

You ever had David Carradine?

David Carradine?

Yeah, Kung Fu the Legend continues.

Is he Asian?

No, no, no.

You're fucking out.

I'm sure you had him, though.

So your sitcom is

doing very well, fresh off the boat.

But

before we get to your interesting background, I want to know about the sitcom because you must be happy it's doing well and yet I know you are a little pissed off at the sitcom itself for not fulfilling the dream as you saw it so should we watch it or should we boycott it?

No, I think the thing is is you know the sex set the success of the show doesn't make me happy or unhappy.

I don't care.

I don't care if people watch it or not watch it.

I think people should make their own decision what they feel about this show.

And that's why I've been speaking out because I go to colleges, I talk to kids, I go on Twitter and I see their responses.

And there's a lot of Asiats out there that feel pressure to like this show.

And they have issues with it.

They see issues with it.

But they don't want to say anything because they're like, we finally got invited to the party.

We're finally having reflections and representations of ours.

But I feel like you wanted to break the stereotype.

And then you got caught in the Hollywood mill and you found out, no, the Hollywood feels, no, it better to use the stereotypes.

Is that what happened?

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, they want to tell universal white stories with yellow faces, black faces, brown faces, but they tell the same universal story.

And you go watch how these sitcoms are made in writers' rooms, they're like labs, dude.

It's like GMO faces they're making.

You're right.

But I gotta.

I know there are more important issues than this, but you mentioned this.

I never got the yellow thing.

I don't see Asian people as yellow.

I have never seen yellow when I don't see colors that great, but you're not.

I see you as a yellow person.

I just go with it so that I can still claim the emojis as my people.

Okay, you know.

That's the the one I'm getting up on it.

All right.

I'm glad we got that cleared up.

So who do the Asians cheat off of when they take a test?

Jewish people.

Jewish people.

Well, that's interesting because you say the way to understand Asians is through the Jewish family.

You say there's a lot of parallels.

There's a ton of parallels.

Like what?

Bagels, boughs, right?

Bagels, what?

Bagels and bowels,

breakfast items.

I know what what that is.

Laundromats.

We're both excellent with the laundromat game.

Oh, right.

Yeah.

We're also both excellent with the accounting game.

Right?

Cash businesses.

We love cash businesses.

Right?

Your parents want to be doctors, lawyers, accountants?

That's right.

Well, that's not allowed to touch.

That's such an interesting thing.

Here, riddle me this one.

Okay.

So

when we think of the stereotype of Asia, we think, well, Western man is proactive.

Eastern man is more fatalistic.

And yet, when they come to America, they're so super ambitious to the point where they drive their kids hard.

I think, you know, your memoir says your father was kind of cruel.

And

it comes from, I want you people to succeed.

That's the tiger mom thing.

Not fatalistic at all.

No, we have a lot of pressure to succeed, to be successful, but it's in a very defined way.

It's not success to the individual.

It's success to the greater society, to the family, to the 5,000 years of history.

Like, if I could count how many times, yeah, my mom, like, if I didn't do well in algebra, she's like, you are letting down 5,000 years of history.

Right?

Yeah.

And she's like, you have disappointed me eight lifetimes.

I'm like, why eight?

And she's like, I feel like I've been reincarnated eight times and you've let me down for all eight times.

That's the thing.

So you always carry the weight of everybody with you.

Do you do impressions of your family?

A lot of people do it together.

I'm not very good at impressions, especially like not on the spot.

But no, I'm not.

My brother's better at it.

He likes to imitate Vietnamese people at faux spots.

That's his thing.

That's his thing.

But I also find it.

They don't want him to do it on the show, though.

No, of course.

They don't want him to do it on the show.

It's interesting that, you know, you found sort of your savior in a couple of things.

Food.

You know.

I mean, when you were a kid, you moved to Orlando.

you were picked on, you were different, your lunch smelled funny, right?

Yeah, I still smell funny, but my lunch smells better.

Right.

Well, now that you're rich, nobody cares what you smell like.

Nobody cares.

My car is yellow.

Nobody cares.

That's right.

But yeah, I mean, and hip-hop.

You know, this was something you related to because you felt like, oh, I'm an outsider and they're speaking as outsiders, right?

Yeah, I mean, I feel like Asian men have been emasculated so much in America that we're basically treated like black women.

So I related a lot to

Tupacalypse, me against the world, and like when I sit on OK Cupid, I'm just like, no one wants to talk to me either.

I think it's great that you make them uncomfortable.

We need more of that.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, like, that's the thing with sitcoms, right?

Right.

If you keep telling jokes people have already heard, and like

you write these sitcoms and then they go in to test them with people and they have dials.

They're literally watching the show, turning the dials.

And what happens is they'll say, oh, that joke didn't land, the dials turned left.

Oh, that joke landed, it turned right.

And they go back to the writer's room and they're like, write to the test.

And it's very strange.

It's a strange way to make artwork.

You write a book, you probably do it in your home.

I write a book, I don't even have pants on.

Right.

All right.

One more Asian question.

I'm sorry.

Yeah, sure.

I love representing.

I just want to know,

why did the word Oriental become a.

No.

I mean, I understand why the N-word is horrible, but I understand why, like, one day it was like, well, that's an insult.

I don't know.

I mean, you don't know.

People have told me it is an insult, but I claim it.

I say I'm Oriental, like rugs and five spice.

Right.

Yeah.

And what about Chinaman?

I'm down.

It's the preferred nomenclature, right?

All right.

Just don't piss on my rug.

Right.

Okay.

All right.

I know you know a lot about criminal justice.

You went to law school.

Yes, I did.

I worked at the Institute Project for a year while I was there.

But yeah, one of the things that I've done.

Then this is perfect for you and the panel.

This is a big story in the news this week.

This is from the Washington Post.

The Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence for two decades before the year 2000, including 32 people who were put to death.

This is astounding.

They reviewed 268 trials, 95% of them.

They said they overstated forensic matches in a way that favored prosecutors.

Wow.

You know, I got to say, this country,

tough on the innocent.

Tough on the guilty, but tough on the innocent, too.

We're pretty light on the guilty.

I mean,

just to be totally honest.

I mean, that's true.

A likelihood.

Not if they're guilty in, like, Texas or Florida.

Well, actually,

what I was actually going to say, all of this is just a, I mean, I want to say first and foremost a really great example of why we should not have the death penalty, period.

That's true.

There are stories after stories that have come out.

The Innocence Project has done it, has done a lot of great work.

Recently, there was a man who was let out in Shreveport, Louisiana.

The prosecutor wound up writing an editorial himself saying he knew he was presenting flawed evidence.

I think there is something of a mentality, a go-get-em-bad guys mentality that we have

that weights us on the side, that somehow waits everyone on the side of guilty.

We really, we have this tenet in our system that you're supposed to be innocent until proven guilty.

We find again and again that people are presumed to be guilty.

This is what happened in the FBI.

The thing is, is that our justice system believes in an adversarial system, that truth comes out of adversarial conflict and contention.

And so the better lawyer is going to win.

That's exactly right.

But there's also.

Ask Robert Durst.

But science advances too,

and it's sort of, and part of our shock is that we now have the ability to do, this is mostly hair evidence, I think, this discredited evidence up till the year 2000, I think.

So it's not recent.

These are not very recent cases.

But I think that the fact that we can now do chemical analyses of this hair leads us to look at this

style of testing.

That's the one thing they said.

They were looking at it.

They said hair is bullshit.

I hope the people who are making their decisions in jury rooms based on watching CSI for 15 years know that the Guardian said on hair and although it is virtually worthless as a means of identifying somebody.

That's what they had.

But I don't know.

What they had was wrong.

I mean, to me,

this is obviously a horrible, horrible situation, and the story is awful.

But I also feel like, you know, for any libertarian, including myself reading this, we sort of look at that and we're like, oh, well, you know, I mean, that's horrible.

But it's also not surprising.

It's the government.

I mean, do we, like, we don't instinctively trust them?

Well, I think we don't instinctively trust them with a great deal anyway, so why would this be shocking?

But

I find it really shocking.

It should be shocking.

It's shocking.

I think it's horrible, depressing, and obviously it needs to be rectified, and I agree with you.

I don't see see it.

But it doesn't have to be that way.

I thought we were America, the greatest, most exceptional country in the world.

You know, I mean, between the abuse of racist cops and between the plea bargaining, you know that 97% of federal and 94% of state cases are plea bargained,

which is very easy to coerce.

It has a lot of power.

Well, and the money is on the side of the government in all of this.

I mean,

that's where expert testimony, people get paid by the government.

There's not a lot of money in like a fairly good idea.

Even very few,

there's Robert Durst.

In White white telecrony

and then there's everyone else even if that weren't the case it's it's just a it's just a structural issue i mean the government has a great deal of power this is a prime example of where you see that and i you know at the end of the day yeah we can do better than this and i have to do it how could we do worse theoretical but right but but i don't but i don't think you're going to get rid of the fundamental problem no but i mean

we do there's you know

I know we wanted, there was a certain point in the 70s and the 80s, dirty, how we wanted to bring down the crime rate.

This is how we did it, with bogus evidence and bad cops, and we are 4% of the world's population, and we put 22% of the people in jail.

Well, except that apparently we didn't because we've got a bunch of innocent people sitting in jail and a bunch of people who have been put there for doing very minimal non-violent things.

I mean, you look at like plot convictions.

I do.

No, I know.

But I mean, you know, so when people say,

oh, well, being tough on crime and this kind of thing, is specifically how we brought the crime rate down, that's actually just not substantiated by evidence in any way, shape, or form.

This is what makes people feel that we're doing a good job about being tough on crime because they look at the numbers.

I think there's a very

good question.

I'm sorry.

Correlation isn't causation.

I know it's not, but the fact is our murder rate now is down to about a quarter of what it was before the start of the war on drugs.

And you can call it abusive, you can call it excessive, but the two have something to do with the purpose of the purpose.

I don't think that that's necessarily true.

Are you saying the war on drugs brought down the murder rate?

That removed a lot of people from the streets.

It removed, yes.

Well, that is a very important thing.

I agree that in some cases prosecutors have been trying to get violent.

You want to really bring down the murder rate and get rid of the war on drugs.

Really?

Yeah.

At least in Mexico.

Legalize it.

You'll remove a lot of it.

But broad sweeps like gang, what are the gang indictments that they have here?

Right.

The use of RICO against gangs and things.

Those two pull in more people than a more judicious system would pull in.

But I also think the correlation and causation between a good economy and a rising market

with the lowering murder rate, it's like when there's a good economy, people don't want to kill each other.

There's that, there's also occupation factors.

There are a whole range of societal factors.

I used to fight people in bars all the time.

Now I have money.

I don't want to fight anybody.

You just want to sit on okay keeping it.

I want to own the bar before I find that outside.

I don't want to fight you.

One more issue.

It was the anniversary of Columbine.

Remember Columbine?

It was 16 years ago.

Wow.

And I feel like that was the last time we actually thought we could do something about gun control.

And just to show you where we are on gun control now, Tim McGraw, the country music star, got in trouble with the NRA and assorted gun, I would say, nuts,

because a friend of his fiddle player in his band had a kid who was killed at Sandy Hook.

So Tim McGraw did a benefit for Sandy Hook Promise,

a nonprofit charity whose, quote, mission of protecting children from gun violence.

Okay, so

the right-wing websites got on him for that.

His opening act, quit, calling him a gun grabber, I think.

And so Tim McGraw had to release a statement.

He said, I support gun ownership.

Of course, he's a country music star.

I also believe that with gun ownership comes the responsibility of education and safety, most certainly when it relates to what we value most, our children.

I can't imagine anyone who disagrees with that.

Tim, you've got to imagine harder.

He doesn't really have to imagine.

But this is where we are with guns now.

That if you say you're sad about dead kids, you're anti-gun.

No, but

Sandy Hook was the turning point.

I think you're right.

If you looked forward from Columbine and asked yourself what would it take to totally change the attitude towards gun regulation in the country, you would imagine a sort of massacre of the type that happened at Sandy Hook at a time when

the White House was held by a Democrat, and that would be a trick.

And it didn't.

It didn't.

And so it's a sign that people are

very serious about

keeping the Second Amendment.

And it's also a sign that politicians

are a lobby or a minority.

People.

People.

The lobby works because there are people and voters who care about it.

And the way you can tell,

the way you can tell

is that no Democrats, with a very few exceptions, like Rosa DeLoro and Carl Schumer, in the last 10 years have said a peep against guns because they know how people vote.

Because they know how the money the NRA works.

They're hurt, though.

When was the last time you met met somebody that thinks for themselves like seriously i could count them on one large hold on actually wait a minute you know i mean there are surely there are five of us here now well actually structuralism though like people don't have a chance to speak up it's like yes or no i mean i went to orlando florida doing a show for vice and these guys hobbyists had mac 10s 12 gauge shotguns 45s ar-15s in their backyard and they're like we practice gun safety we want to show you what's going on they were throwing grenades and they almost shot our cameraman we have footage a bullet goes six inches past our cameraman and almost shoots him in the lens.

And that's actually the kind of violence that we say this is bad.

It's good television, but it's not Eddie.

It's good television, but it's all right.

I really want to get this in.

This is actually the kind of violence we should be talking about.

People don't realize this.

They think the problem is bad guys with guns.

There were 11,000 people who died of gun homicides last year.

There were 20,000 people who committed suicide.

Right.

Well, the problem is not bad guys with guns.

The problem is good guys with guns who use them on themselves.

I'd shift it to saying the problem is actually to do with mental health in this one.

It's not.

It's people not to do with guns.

It's access to guns that's the problem.

The problem is that third of the country that's a bunch of fucking rednecks.

All right.

I have to.

Agree.

Agree.

I have to end it there.

It's time for new rules, everybody.

New rules.

New role, if she wants to attract young voters, Hillary Clinton needs a campaign logo that looks less like hospital parking.

And speaking of logos, the designers of the logo for Sarah Palin's pack should talk to the guys who draw goofy.

They can explain that when you see stars, it doesn't really mean you're looking to the future.

It means you just walked into a stop sign.

New Roll, if you make your living stalking and killing innocent animals, as professional game hunter Ian Gibson did, and you're leading a safari to kill elephants, as Ian Gibson was, and during that safari an elephant tramples you to death,

good.

And by the way, we know the elephant is the nobler of the two because when the hunter wins, it's the greatest moment of his life.

And when the elephant wins, it's, ooh, what did I step in?

New rule, you could buy a $75 toaster that burns a picture of your face

into the bread, but if you just want women who stay over to never come back, say so.

What kind of needy loner says, hey, look at that bread you're eating.

It's really me.

New world, the woman who got a tattoo of her favorite band, The Lost Prophets, and then found out the lead singer is a child molester, has to tell the woman with the Cosby tattoo

that it could be worse.

By the way, the worst thing about getting a Cosby tattoo on your thigh, what happens when your leg falls asleep?

Neural, once you're dead, you have to shut up about politics.

North Carolina's Larry Upright, yes, Larry Upright,

was such a staunch Republican that in his obituary it said, the family respectfully asks that you do not vote for Hillary Clinton.

And then to honor Larry, they held a moment of Fox News on mute.

You know what, Larry?

If you can think it's funny to campaign against Hillary Clinton in your obituary, then I can think it's funny that you're dead and your name is upright.

And finally, new rule with Mother's Day and Father's Day coming up, we all must agree that the best gift an American kid can give his parents is to sit them down and say, Mom, Dad, we need some space.

Now, it's true I never had kids, but maybe that gives me some objectivity.

And what I see in the generation coming up is these kids are more anxious than a squirrel on crystal meth.

And that's not because the kids have changed.

It's because the parents have.

They're called helicopter parents because they're always hovering, too protective, too always on the case, too always just there.

Now if we can only get them to work for the Secret Service.

So

this topic has been much in the news lately because there are now families going against the grain who want to raise their children, guided by the radical concept of occasionally letting them out of their sight.

A movement that has been dubbed free-range parenting.

Or as we used to call it, parenting.

Actually,

we didn't even call it that because parenting wasn't a word, because being a parent wasn't a job description.

In the 70s, parenting meant you woke up, went to your kids' room, if they were alive, you were done for the day.

Crib monitors?

Why?

What are they going to do?

Turn into werewolves in the middle of the night?

But that's not how most parents see it these days.

And there have been cases of free-range parents running up against the law.

A couple in Silver Spring, Maryland, has twice had their kids, 10 and 6, picked up by the cops for walking home alone from the park, which is all of two blocks away.

She's, I walked farther than that to school every day when I was a kid that age, and nobody cared.

In fact, my mother always looked a little disappointed when I came back.

I mean, what kind of country do we live in where the sight of a kid walking alone in his own neighborhood requires a call to 911?

Were these kids being chased by a clown with his dick out?

Then shut up and go back to watching Judge Judy.

We're talking about Silver Spring, Maryland.

It's not that perilous.

The most dangerous thing out in the fresh air is probably the fresh air.

When did we get this idea that children should never endure even the slightest risk or experience any disappointment?

If the ice cream truck doesn't come, the parents panic and double-strap the kids in the car and rush over to Baskin-Robbins, where they disinfect the table and test the cones for gluten.

Ooh, fun.

And for what?

A new study confirms that all this excess time with kids is not having a positive effect.

Kids, free to engage the world on their own a bit, wind up coming out happier and more creative than the ones who have to put on a helmet to take out the garbage.

Let the little bastards breathe a little.

Do you know that American kids now spend 90% of their leisure time at home, plopped on the couch, watching TV, playing video games?

We're not raising citizens, we're fattening veal calves.

And all because we think outside is where the baby snatchers are, and inside is where it's safe.

Right.

Inside, where the pornography is at their fingertips 24-7.

I have news for you.

That's the thing that's going to really fuck them up for the rest of their lives.

When I was a kid, it was a thrill to find an old playboy in the neighbor's garage.

But now every 10-year-old can whip out his phone and in seconds be looking at a team of Japanese businessmen ejaculating on a squid.

And if that doesn't convince you, parents, nothing will.

All right, that's our show.

I'll be at the Kiva at Albuquerque, May 2nd, at the Bayou in Houston, May 3rd, and at the Ulster Arts Center in Kingston, New York, June 6th.

I want to thank Adamarie Cox, Chris Caldwell, Liz Mayer, Eddie Wong, and Robert Kennedy Jr.

Join us now at Overtime on YouTube.

Thank you, folks.

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

For more info, log on to HBO.com.