Episode #350 (Originally aired 4/17/15)

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Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO late month series, Real Time with Bill Ma.

Start the clock.

Good afternoon.

Afternoon, time will be

real time.

Thank you so much.

Wow, stop it.

Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.

Wow.

Man, we get the best crowds in TV now.

Please, there are

There are so many,

so many new candidates to get to, ladies and gentlemen.

It's like every week now, another week, another candidate.

This week, everybody ready for Marco Rubio of Florida?

Oh, my God.

Yeah, they're all saying, you know, he's fresh, he's new.

I'll say, he looks like he could be Hillary Clinton's pool boy, this guy.

Well, you know, everybody's got to have a shtick, you know, everybody's got to have a thing.

And his thing is, I'm young.

I'm young I'm new I'm fresh I'm boyish yeah when Ted Cruz reads green eggs and ham he listens

he's young

now the other day he said I swear to God he proclaimed yesterday's over

it's fucking deep man okay you got my vote no he's his slogan is a new American century but He's against abortion in all situations, against gay marriage, against immigration reform, against legalizing pot, against clean energy development.

It sounds a lot like the old century to me.

You know what?

I am not a big fan of Mr.

Chris Christie, but at least he is talking about real problems.

He was in New Hampshire this week talking to a room full of old white people.

And he said, we have to cut your Social Security benefits and raise the retirement age.

I mean, you got to admit, he has balls.

He hasn't seen them in 30 years, but he has been.

But, you know,

he chose this week because we had Tax Day.

We all had to pay our taxes on Wednesday, I know.

But something else really important happened on Tax Day in the labor movement.

You may not have heard about it because Hillary ate a burrito in Iowa.

But on Tax Day, fast food workers went on strike in 230 cities around the country.

Yeah,

it's a big deal.

Trying to get a $15 an hour work fee, which is the least you need to live on, the right to form a union, they want better employee health care plan.

Right now, their employee health care plan is don't eat the food we make.

Of course, the fast food chains are all saying, you know, if we raise wages, we're going to have to charge more and use cheaper ingredients.

Could you really do that?

Have you tried the McHamster?

But don't worry, Congress felt the minimum wage workers' pain, and this week they passed a bold new plan to completely eliminate the inheritance tax on the super rich.

How does this happen in a democracy?

How does John Boehner look at himself in the mirror when he is varnishing his face?

I mean, people working for $8 an hour and the other people who are supposed to represent everyone, the same people who never shut up about the deficit, just voted a $20 billion hole in the budget to go to 5,000 club kids with a trust fund.

But the guy who landed on the Capitol and the gyrocopter who thinks we should get the money out of politics, he's the nut?

Not in my book.

And you know.

And you know, when you talk about this inheritance tax, which goes to like 5,000 people, this is where conservatives always say, what about family farmers?

Well, the last time they measured this in 2013, of those 5,000 millionaires and billionaires who pay the estate tax, farmers, 20.

20 farmers paid it.

24 Americans have been to the moon.

More astronauts have been to the moon than farmers who paid the inheritance tax in 2013.

There are more people in the Wu-Tang clan than have paid the inheritance tax.

There are more old guys in the expendable movies.

Jesus.

I tell you, the American capacity to distract ourselves from the real issues like people starving with bullshit.

Like this week I see the I won't serve gay people movement movement gathering steam.

First, it was just I won't give them a wedding cake, and then it was pizza parlors.

This week, get this, a car repair shop in Michigan.

Guy says, nope, I'm not going to do it.

It's a Christian auto shop.

So if you have a transmission that's possessed by demons, this is the place to go.

Meanwhile, well,

there is a positive story on the flip side of of that.

A Jesuit priest, that's Pope Frank's order, the Jesuits, in San Francisco, came out as gay.

That's happened before in the Catholic Church, but this is new, unprecedented.

He has the full blessing of his superiors.

This never happened before.

Not only are they accepting of him, they're fighting to see who gets to be his roommate.

Well,

so it was another iffy week, shall we say, for the police.

We saw a new wrinkle in apprehending a suspect.

Did you see the cop who just fucking ran down a guy?

Did you see that guy?

He just jumps the curb with his car and runs him down.

This was in Arizona, where, to be fair, it says right on the police cars to protect and swerve.

And in Oklahoma, you saw that one, a 73-year-old volunteer hobby sheriff

thought he was tasing a guy, but accidentally shot him.

He might have thought he had the remote in his hand.

You know, we've had

hands up, don't shoot.

We've had back turn, don't shoot.

Now we have whose idea is to take grandpa to ride along, don't shoot.

Oh, I'm getting all worked up.

The show's barely begun.

Okay, this is the fun story of the week.

This is really true.

I'm not making this up.

Scientists say they have a new treatment for erectile dysfunction.

It involves a drug that gives you wood when your penis is exposed to blue light.

I'm just saying, things could get pretty weird at Kmart.

All right, we got a great show.

John Meacham, Michelle Caruso, Cabrera are here, near attendant, and a little to me speaking with Clay Ach in his backstage.

first up, she was a New York Times investigative reporter for 28 years.

In a new memoir about the Iraq War, Valerie Playman, much more, is called The Story, A Reporter's Journey.

Please welcome Judith Miller.

Hey, Judith Miller.

Can I call you, Judy?

All right.

How you doing?

Good, very well.

Thank you.

I see you wore a Republican coat.

Oh, I didn't realize they had a cold.

Come on, the red coat.

Oh, it's pink.

Yeah, I don't see colors very well.

So

we're going to, of course, talk about Iraq, because you were so involved in that.

But first, let's talk about, as politicians say, it's always about the future.

And the future war I'm worried about is Iran.

Not that we're going there now, but say it's two years from now, President Ted Cruz is in office.

And they're beating the drums for war, because I hear it already.

They're talking about Iran's nuclear weapons program, even though no one has ever said they actually have a nuclear weapons program.

What would your advice be to a young reporter who was covering this and who might have suspected that the administration was trying to sell this war?

Try and find out whether or not Iran has a nuclear weapons program and try and find out what the arguments against that are.

And be skeptical of everything you hear from all sides.

Did you do that?

Yes, I tried.

Yeah, absolutely.

Okay, well, I read you.

Politicians lie.

You know that.

Of course they do.

But reporters, you know, are supposed to tell us when they're lie.

Well, the intelligence community is what politicians depend on to tell them the truth.

And the real problem with this bill was that they got very, very bad information from their intelligence community.

And these people work very hard, and they're not, by and large, ideological.

They just got it wrong.

Okay, but I mean, if I could quote from your Wall Street Journal article that you wrote, plugging your book, you said, no, this was being, you're being sarcastic.

You said, I took America to war in Iraq.

It was all me.

Yes.

Okay, so obviously.

A lot of people didn't know that was sarcasm.

Seriously?

Seriously, I got a lot of people saying thank you for finally acknowledging.

Wow.

And I said, well, that's powerful stupidness.

It really is.

Yeah,

that's extremely stupid.

I always say it's a stupid country, but they never cease to shock me.

Well, I didn't want to hog the credit.

I wanted to give a little to the president of the United States.

But I mean.

Well, okay, but

here's what you also said.

And this is also, you're being sarcastic.

Well, okay, you say, I had some help from a duplicious vice president, Dick Cheney.

There was George W.

Bush, a gullible president who wanted to avenge his father.

Then you say, and don't forget the neoconservatives who cherry-picked intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and fed it to reporters reporters like me.

And then you say none of these assertions happens to be true.

The reason I might have some trouble with your credibility is that I think all these assertions are true.

I think Dick Cheney is duplicious.

I think George Bush is gullible.

I think he was trying to avenge his father.

I think neocons did cherry-pick intelligence.

Why should I believe you if I don't believe any of these assertions?

Because the information they got from the intelligence community as opposed to those who wanted to go to war, Every administration has hawks and doves or hawks and pragmatists.

But the information they got was with high confidence that Saddam Hussein had biological and chemical weapons and moderate confidence that he did not yet have a nuclear weapon.

Now, if you're the president or the vice president in charge of securing the country after 9-11 and you've had an anthrax attack that has killed people and shut down post office.

Not by Iraq.

No, no, no.

But if you've had all that and you're responsible for the country and your intelligence community says, hey, this guy, really bad, 17 UN resolutions complaining about his lack of candor and his lack of complying with the promises he made, you're going to believe.

We all know he's a bad guy, but the world is full of bad guys.

But not all with WMD, which of course he didn't have.

You've made that point for me.

I think the soldiers I was covering made that point for me.

Yeah, of course.

And look, I take your point when you say you were singled out.

That's true.

You were hardly the only one.

First of all, you had editors who printed your stories.

They had the final say.

You had bylines that you shared with other people.

And somehow you're the only one in the picture.

So I'm sympathetic to that.

What I'm not so sympathetic to is the idea that nobody else was saying we shouldn't go to war.

Oh, many people were saying it and there were many, many articles about the people who didn't want to go to war and why they didn't want to go to war, but that wasn't what I was responsible for covering.

I really believe that there were a lot of people who felt even if Saddam Hussein had WMD, we shouldn't go to war.

And there were debates about that.

In hindsight, would you have been more skeptical about it?

I couldn't have been more skeptical.

I was more skeptical.

Every time I got information that contradicted something we had reported, I went back and did a second story.

But those articles in the New York Times did scare a lot of people.

For good reason.

Let me quote one thing you said: Iraq could try to disperse the biological agents by using aircraft or unmanned drones.

The germs could be dropped in a bomb or sprayed in the air.

Finally,

biological agents could be delivered against civilian targets by Iraqi agents.

Yeah, all that could happen.

Monkeys could fly out my my butt, but you know

to say, but at that moment it scared people.

And of course, there's a special place where the New York Times has in this, which is, you know, for liberals, the New York Times, this is the place that was Nixon's nemesis.

It printed the Pentagon papers.

So when they say something like this, it carries a different weight.

You appreciate that.

Absolutely.

But first of all, the New York Times was not alone.

Almost every paper in the country was was reporting this and network.

But beyond that, this information was coming from the men and women who had gotten Osama bin Laden right, who understood that the country was vulnerable to a biological weapons attack.

I was relying on those same sources.

They had never lied to me.

They were usually right.

We had lots of qualifiers in the story.

But how can we not tell the American people the information that the President is getting?

That's the information he was making his decision.

What I would say to this is that that one of the, one of, to me, one of the most fundamental flaws of this great country,

great, oh yes, I'm saying it's a great country, but it has this military-industrial complex.

Eisenhower talked about it.

He was so right.

They always want to go to war.

It's one reason why we've been to war for a vast majority of our history.

We're always in it with somebody.

And we kind of depend on the Fourth Estate to call bullshit on the military-industrial complex because they are always

trying to do this.

But

that's true.

But there are also people who are not warmongers like Hillary Clinton and the people who read the intelligence.

There was an overwhelming vote in the Congress for this.

And Democrats believe this intelligence too, including John Kerry, who's now trying to negotiate the Iran deal.

There was a consensus.

And if that consensus was wrong, wrong, I think you can't blame either reporters for reporting what the consensus was or the intelligence analysts who got it wrong, though.

I wanted to go back and say, how did this happen?

That's why I wrote the book.

How did this happen?

How did they get it so wrong?

But you have an obligation as a reporter to do that.

And that's what we've stopped doing, pretty much.

We have a narrative now.

People lied.

They lied, people died.

But that's not what happened.

It was worse than that.

The intelligence community that is paid billions of dollars a year, 16 different agencies, totally got it wrong.

And I don't know why people are more comforted by the fact that with the notion that we were lied to

than that they got it wrong and they could get it wrong again.

All we can do as reporters is try and figure out when they're getting it wrong.

I have to leave it there, but I really hope they don't get it wrong again.

Because Iran would be even worse.

So far, we have an interim agreement, which I support and I have supported.

And let's just wait and see what the president produces.

Give peace a chance, man.

Give peace a chance.

Thank you, Judith Miller.

I really appreciate you coming on.

All right, let's meet our battle.

Hey, everybody.

All right, his biography about George H.W.

Bush, George I, comes out in November, and his latest book, Thomas Jefferson, The Art of Power, now out in paperback, our friend John Meacham back with us.

Hey, John.

How are you?

She's the president of the Center for American Progress, Nira Tandon, also a returning champion.

And she's

CNBC's international correspondent, Michelle Caruso Cabrera, is also back with us.

All returnees tonight.

All right, remember to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and send us your questions for tonight's overtime so we can answer them after the show on YouTube.

Okay, so we're often running in the campaign already.

I must think that other countries around the world think we are insane that there are four declared candidates a year and a half before the election.

There's no other country that does that, right?

Can I?

Oh.

Okay, great.

So

I'm already pissed off at the media because, you know, I feel like they just are so lazy.

Like, I hear so much about the Bush versus Clinton dynasties.

First of all,

dynasties.

The Clintons built their own,

right?

The Bushes, Jeb and George, inherited theirs.

Their father was the president.

Their grandfather was a senator.

Okay, that's one difference.

The other difference is, don't results matter?

The Clinton results were pretty good.

They left us with a surplus.

The three Bush administrations left us with $4.3 trillion in debt and wars.

That's right, Bill.

Yeah, that's right, Bill.

You can't show a label on here.

Is there?

I know.

I'm giving Clay the one with no water.

Here, Clay, I'll share my water.

Well,

anyone?

I'll start, sure.

So, full disclosure, I went to Wellesley.

I always wanted the first woman president to have gone to Wellesley.

Hillary went to Wellesley.

I thought it would be her.

I think she's going to have a tough time this time around with the female situation.

Yes, for sure.

Well, but, you know, didn't Bill Clinton.

And when you say dynasty, I mean, I think people will look at her as if she's, some people will look at her as if she's riding her husband's coattails.

It was her husband.

You'd be crazy not to vote for a third Clinton term.

You know,

Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton gave everything Republicans always promised to people.

He ended welfare, as we know it.

He left us with a surplus.

There was the biggest economic expansion.

NAFTA.

NAFTA?

Right.

They're not liberals.

She's much more to the left now.

She's being pushed more to the left than her husband ever would have been.

You know, I think it's odd to say a woman who's been Secretary of State, to be senator of New York, first lady, is writing her husband's coattails alone.

I think that's a little ridiculous, honestly.

Yeah.

I mean, when you're the most,

you'd be one of the most experienced presidents in our history.

He's saying she would be,

her

presidency would be just like his, right?

A third Clinton term, as as if she's distinguished from the terms.

I'm just saying if you're basic,

if you're saying they're dynasties and we shouldn't have dynasties,

let's look at it a little more closely and judge it by the results of what those dynasties wrought before.

Right.

I don't think dynasty is the right word.

I think they're brands.

Right.

I think that dynasty.

Which may be worse

to some extent, because this is Coke versus Pepsi to some extent.

Dynasty presupposes that it's an inherited privilege.

I disagree with you on that.

Well, it would be Coke if they left us with a $4 trillion debt and Pepsi a surplus.

So it's not really...

I mean, the great thing of a year and a half campaign is we'll be able to see what Hillary wants to do as president.

You know, she's entered the race.

I think we could actually take a few minutes and judge her on what she says she wants to do and her vision for the future.

Look, I do think that there is a difference between the Clinton years and the Bush years.

And, you know, she shares the values with President Clinton,

but she'll have an opportunity to say what she wants to do.

Let's go to the Republicans because they all have to run on some notion of this is how I beat Hillary.

Marco Rubio got in the race this week.

Obviously, he's running on, she's an old lady.

I was in Menudo.

But what's so weird, and I hear people make this analogy to him and Obama because they were both young senators, except that, you know, the fresh new thing matched Obama's ideas right the fresh new thing doesn't match Marco Rubio's ideas he has stale old shitty ideas

of the of young members of the Republican Party millennial Republicans not that there are zillions of them but those that are there right support same-sex marriage Marco Rubio immediately this first week says he opposes same-sex marriage you know so it's hard to say that that you're the candidate of the future when you can't even have the guts to support something like same-sex marriage, where the younger voters in your party are a majority.

So why does he do it?

I don't even understand how politicians think.

Hillary is against medical marijuana.

Well, that may be your first mistake on the thinking.

No,

these are base plays right now, right?

I mean, there's, in fact, the Republicans have a very narrow path to the White House in a general election, which makes

the three millennial Republicans very important

and trying to get to 51 percent.

So right now, I wouldn't take it hugely seriously.

I do think one of the things that Senator Clinton has to worry about is the Clintons prove that elections are about the future.

It's about what are you going to do next.

And I think the more we talk about the past, which is dangerous for me to say,

to some extent, does it help?

You're a historian.

I know, I know, I know.

It's against interest here.

Absolutely.

We should talk about the past.

That's how we determine the future.

Remember the old saying, the famous saying, those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it?

I've heard that.

I'm glad that I got all party knowledge of American history.

I got that fortune cookie.

No,

I think that

elections are often about what people think you're going to do, not about what has been done.

Absolutely.

Look, these are new times, new challenges.

Hillary will have to have new solutions for them.

But I think that she has a track record on some issues, but she will have to lay out new ideas.

Well, let's talk about the other one who's in the race, Rand Paul.

So disappointing to me, because I've said for years,

same thing with his father.

I liked half of him.

And then the half went away.

He was going to be the only guy who wasn't the hawk.

There's one hawk because Hillary's a hawk.

So now we're going to have no debate.

He spoke the other day in front of an aircraft carrier.

You know what?

If his father spoke in front of an aircraft carrier, he would have gone, we just have to stop buying these things

if he's not going to be the hawk.

I mean, what happened?

It's like Ross Perot went in the phone booth and Mitt Romney came out.

Well,

I mean,

he does have to win amongst conservative voters.

I think that's one of the challenges.

I always consider.

He doesn't want to be his father, a loser.

Right, right.

You know, he wants,

he wants, you know, you make these compromises.

But the problem is, that may be such an essential compromise that if you undercut your initial appeal with the compromise, then you're...

I don't see how that's a winner because there's 15 other guys in the party who are more genuine on that issue than.

And he hates being asked about it and cuts people off and yells at my colleagues when they try to ask.

Women reporters who ask him he gets slightly uppity about that.

I think probably all reporters, he probably gets uppity about it.

Wouldn't he have

a better chance to at least stick to his principles and be the real guy?

Because his father was popular with younger people.

He could get new voters.

In New Hampshire, it's interesting.

In New Hampshire, he could be the Maverick.

But it's interesting, like, Chris Christie is trying to get some Maverick credibility, but instead it seems like he's worried about the base and conservatives.

Is it just the base, or don't you think the American public, as a result of ISIS, even Democrats have moved more toward a centrist position in terms of defense of the country?

Right, they can't run on the economy because it's the best it's been since Hillary's husband was in office.

So they have to run on where the American snipers are.

Yeah, but the difference is Democrats in Congress aren't calling for a massive expansion of the Pentagon budget.

Rand Paul and other Republicans have.

I mean, there are differences on budget issues.

Democrats have been saying,

But he was the one guy who was always saying we should cut the defense.

Now he's saying we should raise it $190 billion.

You know, it's crazy.

Yeah, I'm not going to be the one to defend Rand Paul on this panel.

I know, but I'm doing very well.

I feel I was all, you know, I said on the air, he's the one Republican in years that I would consider voting.

I would consider

that maybe

I'm in.

Yeah.

And I was like, done with that, buddy.

After Bill Maher, done.

If I went to a car dealer and said, you know, all your cars are automatics, I want to drive a stick.

And the guy said, oh, I got one stick.

It'll be here tomorrow.

And I come back.

And he's like, oh, no, now it's an automatic.

Well, what the fuck?

That was the

one thing I liked about it.

So there are two holidays coming up: Earth Day, Earth Day, people.

Earth Day.

Liberals love Earth Day.

That's Wednesday.

And the other holiday is 420.

Now, do it.

Do all you panelists know what 420 is?

I'm a little shaky on that.

Let me explain it to you, Joe.

Thank you.

Okay.

Now, it's some years.

I'll man up here.

No, I don't.

No idea.

Really?

Okay.

Some years ago, there was a bunch of stoners at some high school, I think it was in California, who got high every day at 4.20 in the afternoon, much like the way the English drink tea at 4.

You didn't know that one?

My people drink bourbon at 5.

Okay.

So then 4.20, April 20th, became kind of a stoner holiday.

And we are trying to get this to be a real holiday.

If you go on HBO, our HBO website,

hbo.com, there's a link there to change.org.

And you can try to do that.

And, you know, since 24 states now have marijuana being legal in some form,

we think it should be a real holiday.

You could get a Hallmark card for it, for sure.

It's more worthy than Columbus Day.

Why should we celebrate that racist psychopath?

So

I think non-stoners may not realize that we stoners

on 420, it's just like any other holiday.

We have rituals, we have family over, we exchange gifts, we have decorations,

we sing songs.

What happens on Stoner Day?

You just don't do anything?

Is that like

celebrating?

No, we read, Twas the night before 420.

Would you like to hear?

Yes,

T'was the night before 4.20 and all through the crib not a creature was stirring, not even...

Did you hear something?

With the door locked.

I was wearing a t-shirt and shorts from the gym.

I just settled down to watch adults swim.

The bowls were all packed in the vakes with great care.

In the hopes Willie Nelson soon would be there.

When from out in the yard came a crash and a bellow, whatever it was, it it was harching my mellow.

And what to my wandering eyes should appear?

It was a tall circus clown molesting a deer.

No,

no, wait, just a tree.

I'd made a mistake.

I guess I should mention I was thoroughly baked.

Then out of the shadows I saw it myself.

It was Willie Nelson and Snoop, his jolly old elf.

And a man who was grinning and wearing a hoodie I knew in an instant it was good old St.

Woody.

I knew by their manner and the lovely aroma that they'd all brought me something to cure my glaucoma

and I heard them exclaim as the light bathed them dimly Bill, you fucking stoner, let us in you don't have a chimney

we lit up a joint and ate a pot brownie and soon were as high as a young Robert Downey

when out on the lawn I heard such a crash I ran to the toilet to flush all our stash

I looked out the people and what did I spot the chief of police and eight hungry cops and then in a twinkling I heard overhead a fully armed SWAT team I thought we were dead Then in they all flew like Easter of fog.

They barked out commands and shot my poor dog.

but he'll be okay

they were after a pothead who matched my description but I reached in my pocket and pulled out my prescription

They looked at it closely.

They began to whine and to grouse, but they knew they had nothing.

So I said, get out of my house.

I said, you don't have a warrant, you don't have a writ.

Happy 420 to all, and to all some good shit.

Okay.

You met him on American Idol.

He now stars in the Esquire Network's documentary series, The Runner-Up, about his race for Congress in North Carolina last year.

Please welcome Clay Aiken.

Clay Aiken.

How are you doing, sir?

Great to meet you how are you

doing well I'm so glad you're here and I appreciate you being here because I know we made some jokes about you let no I know we did well you got in the political arena

it's fair game but I appreciate that of course we don't want to have beef no no beef not two gangsters like us no you don't want to fight me no I don't want to fight you

but I admired you getting into politics I mean I think a lot of people thought because American Idol was so huge when you were on that first year especially,

that you lived in Hollywood, you were in show business, but actually what I learned is that you just went right back to North Carolina.

Yeah, pretty much.

That's your home.

What was your upbringing like?

You know, I don't think too different than most people's.

I did have a single mom for the early part of my life,

but, you know, my mom, my stepbrothers and sisters, and, you know, it was, I like North Carolina.

I think it's, you know, it's a good place to grow up.

And it's now, unfortunately, being taken over by a bad man.

Several.

Yes, but especially this guy, Art Pope.

He's kind of the Koch brothers of the state.

He's worse than the Koch brothers.

Right.

He's a billionaire who basically bought the legislature.

And I know this is one of your big issues, which is gerrymandering the fact that they have 13 representatives in North Carolina.

10 of them are Republicans.

But 52% vote for Democrats.

There's something very wrong with that.

Well, Art Pope is

Art Pope is a problem in large part not only because he does what the Koch brothers do, he funds these political campaigns, but then he ended up buying himself positions as well.

And he got appointed as the state budget director, started cutting money from education, and now he's set himself up in a way to take over the university system.

They fired the University of North Carolina president for no cause whatsoever and even admit that there's no cause and people believe and I believe Art Pope is one of those folks who wants to get in there and take that position.

Okay, so now to our beef, not that it's really a beef.

I re-looked at the bid.

And you're right.

There were some pretty rough jokes in there.

Oh, listen, I'm used to rough jokes.

I think

the thing that people misconstrue sometimes is that, you know,

not all places in this country are purple, you know, and a lot of the districts have been gerrymandered.

That state is.

Obama won it.

North Carolina is purple, but as we talked about, some of these districts have been gerrymandered to hell to a place where it is incredibly red in the second district.

I mean, first of all, this thing we did was four days before the election, and I was very frustrated at the fact that it was not about just you.

It was about all the Democrats who were not standing with Obama.

And three of them, three of the senators, wouldn't even say they voted for Obama.

Democrats, who wouldn't say they voted for Obama.

How do you expect other people to vote for you if you can't even be with the guy who's on your team?

And by the way, the biggest star in the party who is still popular among Democrats.

And you said about Obama, I have nothing to do with him.

And I can find several areas where I disagree with him.

And I was just saying, I don't think this is how Democrats should act.

For a country that actually identifies more as Democrat, I think this is essentially why Democrats.

But I think at the same time, one of the reasons that I ran was because I think too many times people line up directly behind the party itself.

And I've said many times, there are a lot of things, there are many things that I agree with the president on, and I said that during the campaign.

But there are things that I don't agree with him on.

And I think that my job, what I wanted to do, what I wanted to do was get into Congress so that I could support a lot of the things I agree with him on.

And you've said here yourself on this show, even a few weeks ago, that I'd rather have a representative who agrees with me on 85 to 90 percent of things than someone who agrees with me on nothing.

But if you do, then why don't you stand up there and say, you know, I'm very proud of this president.

And I, you know, I did.

Because it wasn't that hard a record to run on for Democrats.

I mean, he did turn the economy around.

We would have been in a depression without him.

I don't know.

Saved the auto industry, killed bin Laden.

gave Americans health care.

I mean,

I...

You disagree with that, but you have to, I mean, the reality is in a district where, you know, a lot of people, the Republican Party does a great job of demonizing someone.

And I was not in a position necessarily as a first-time

congressional candidate and a former American Idol contestant to necessarily change people and to necessarily change people's minds.

So I had to get them to stay at the table with me.

I got to tell you, Clay, you should have won that.

Which one?

The race.

The race.

Well, definitely that.

But also American Idol.

I told,

people knew you were coming on this show this week.

Somebody sent me,

because I never watched American Idol.

I'm sorry, I don't watch

singing contests.

But somebody sent me a video of you singing the BG's Immortal to Love Somebody.

And my God, you are a good singer.

Oh, thank you.

I mean,

that is a soulful rendition without any of that singing contest bullshit that they put in those videos.

Well, I appreciate it.

Yeah, so.

But I'm using my voice a different way now.

Really?

Well, I mean, I'm trying.

You know, one of the things.

I'm telling you, if you went back to singing.

Are you trying?

No, no, no.

I'm not saying that you should give up politics.

I'm just saying in this country that we live in, we're entering the city.

You should be safer.

Definitely.

No, but you could then have a bigger platform.

I'm just saying a couple of number one records and you could win.

It's helped.

It's helped.

That's America.

I've had a couple of number one records, and I still didn't win in Congress.

But it gave me enough of a platform to talk about things like money and politics and Jerry.

Let's talk about money and politics.

Let's all talk about money and politics.

I mentioned it in the monologue.

This guy who flew under the White House lawn with the gyro.

It was like a bicycle with a propeller, right?

And all I saw in the media was, like, let's talk about the gyroscope or the gyrocopter, and let's talk about no security.

And nobody talked about why he did it, which was to bring attention to a very important issue.

Maybe the most important issue is that elections are bought and sold now by billionaires.

This guy is a hero to me.

I'm not going going to make fun of him.

I agree with you.

And also,

you know, again, the media covering bullshit this week barely mentioned that Hillary Clinton actually did make news when she said we should have a constitutional amendment to get money out of politics.

I think the big change in politics over the last couple of years has been the Citizens United decision, which, you know, in my view, wrongfully decided that money is speech, which is ridiculous, which is, you know, truthfully just crap.

I mean, money is not the same as speech.

And it's created this arms race to see who can win an election through their pocketbooks instead of their voice.

And that's that's the system.

And it's too bad it would take a constitutional amendment.

What should really happen is the Supreme Court should change the decision it made.

We went through years, decades without that decision in place.

That's a decision that that's that's the way in which the court has really perverted the democracy.

The The only way you win is with money now.

I mean, the person who raises the most money always wins.

And I, you know, I tried to run for these folks who couldn't give me five dollars.

I mean, those are the people who people, politicians should be listening to.

But I had people pressuring me every day, spend 40 hours a week on the phone calling people outside of your state, outside of your district, ask them for money.

And you know what?

If you never talk to the people in your district, that's okay.

Just raise more money and run more ads.

And that's bullshit.

But

politicians are telemarketers next.

They spend all their time on the phone begging for money.

I think that's a really important point because of the psychic toll it takes to just do that and do those cold calls and do that.

The other thing is, it's more insidious because it's not as obvious, the actual influence buying.

You know this.

It's never, all right, I'm going to give you $5,000 and you're going to vote on this.

It's much more an ambient scandal.

And you find that you want to please these people.

I mean, even I, who didn't get into it for this purpose, found with all the pressure for asking to raise money, raise money, that I found that when I'd get on the phone with someone and they'd say, well, how do you feel about this issue?

I would start researching them on the internet to find out, make sure I didn't offend them.

You know, I mean, and that's from someone who...

I think I have a core, and I know a lot of these politicians sure as hell don't.

And if I find myself falling into that trap, you know some of these screw-ups are definitely falling into it.

Well,

a politician's unit of commerce, right, is pleasing the person they're talking to.

Of course.

So you put money into it and it's an explosive combination.

But the reason it attracts so much money is the bigger government gets, the bigger the stakes get, right?

The more government there is, the more money it's going to attract.

If you want less money going after government officials, you need smaller government in general.

You have small states, right?

Texas,

states where the government is smaller and smaller, the budget, the amount of money spent in the elections are bigger and bigger.

There's no correlation.

All those people are eventually ending up in the national Congress.

Whatever the problem is, whether it's the environment, whether it's health care, whether it's any of these issues, the reason we don't have anything done on them, the reason we can't improve, you know, we can't improve the environment, is because people are paying to make sure nothing gets done.

To make sure they're size,

wait, wait, wait, wait.

Another reason is because

the blue-collar voters who should be voting for your party somehow got fooled into not voting for your party.

Well, these ads.

I'm not saying it's your fault.

No, no, no, I know, but it's not.

It is money.

Right, money.

But money wouldn't work if people couldn't be fooled.

Well,

I don't know what's going to fix that.

And SLC.

We can't say it's always just money.

I mean, look, in the 2012 election, President Obama campaigned for a tax increase on wealthy Americans, and a lot of wealthy people supported him.

So it's not like everyone votes your interest in every election.

And this idea that

nobody's getting anything done in Washington, President Obama, under his first term, did four massive pieces of legislation.

You'd have to go back to FDR to get all that done.

So don't tell me nothing got done.

I didn't like those policies, but he got them done.

Okay, but, you know, if Hillary Clinton wants to win the White House, she's got to win those blue-collar white voters, the old Reagan Democrats, they call them.

Well, I have a way she can do it.

There is a bill.

There is a bill in Kansas, and I understand that this bill is partly evil.

It's basically to stop people on welfare from spending their money, and they list places where if you get welfare in Kansas, you cannot spend money.

The spa, the liquor store, a psychic, a cruise,

the casino, the jewelry store, the tattoo parlor, piercings, massage parlors, lingerie stores, strip clubs.

Now, I understand.

They can still buy guns.

Of course.

This is American play.

And I noticed they can still get a weave.

Okay, but

I understand that this is just bait to get Tea Party guys hard.

And I also understand that most welfare goes to corporations.

But is it also reasonable for the state to say if we're going to give you free money, don't spend it in the strip club?

First of all, it can't be good for the strippers.

But

when you pose this question, you're going to think I'm taking a a crazy segue.

But this question is a perfect example of, for example, why social security should be privatized.

Because the minute you connect taxpayer dollars to people, people think they, other taxpayers think they have the right to say, you can't do this, you can't do that.

Remember, in the early part of the pro-gay marriage movement, some people came out and said, well, wait a minute, are they going to get Social Security benefits as a spouse, et cetera?

And if you had privatized Social Security, you could say, hey, you've got nothing to say about that because that's that individual's money and they can do what they want with it.

Whenever you have a lot of money.

How would that have worked out in the 2008 meltdown of the economy?

In Social Security?

Yeah, I mean, if it was privatized,

it would have been in the stock market.

People would have lost their retirement.

They would not have lost that retirement completely, absolutely not.

No, no, they'd just be impoverished on the streets.

No, that is not true.

Well, that's a fundamental disagreement.

Kansas is hardly the state to be doing.

I mean, Kansas has screwed this money.

This is why they need money.

Money.

I'm just saying.

If Hillary Clinton, as a Democrat, like her husband did with the sister soldier thing, if she would just make a point of saying, you know what, Democrats have too often in the past not paid attention to where taxpayer money goes.

And if you get free money from the government, we expect you to use it responsibly and not go to the tattoo parlor, I think she'd win Pennsylvania and Ohio and the election.

There you go, Hillary.

I just solved it.

Well,

in my view, thankfully, you're not her policy director, but I would say, I'd say, you know, look,

the hard thing, the hard time I have with things like this is a lot more money actually does go to corporate tax breaks.

And we never say,

hey, you know, with that corporate tax break and all the money you get, no more Las Vegas.

We're just talking about what works with the voters.

The voters, see, the voters are in the grocery store.

These kind of voters, they're not the people who live in Washington who don't see the common people.

They're right in line in the grocery store, and they see somebody ahead of them buying food who doesn't work.

That's what they vote on.

That's right, Bill.

So, okay.

I think

it may be the case.

See how I reached the voters?

You didn't reach the voter.

I reached the voter there.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes, that guy.

That guy's America.

Just one.

One vote.

Yes.

What?

Yes.

You know, millions more to go and you'll

be a future in politics.

One other big issue that happened this week, also not covered that much because they're watching the horse race, the president took Cuba off the terrorist list.

We are.

This unbecoming snit fit that we had with Cuba since, you know, 1962 or something is finally coming to an end.

And of course,

we're doing something smart to the Republicans hate it.

But isn't this a great thing to take Cuba off the terror list?

In fairness, I mean, to say something positive about Rand Paul, he supported taking Cuba off.

I mean, he supported the president's policies on Cuba, the opening with Cuba.

He's good on drugs, too.

And I think the issue is...

I don't mean he's good on drugs.

I mean he's.

You know, I mean, this is a failed policy.

It's hard to imagine.

We've had an embargo for a very long time.

It hasn't worked.

It does seem like the the goal of the embargo is to remove the Castros.

I mean, that was explicit and they're still there.

Yeah,

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

Give it another three decades.

Give it a chance.

Come on.

I'm so impatient.

This is terrible.

Thank you, panel.

It's time to go to New Rules.

All right.

New Roll, now that the Cleveland woman who dropped a two-year-old in the cheetah pit at the zoo

has been been punished with a leave of absence from her job at the daycare center.

Someone has to tell me what you've got to do over there to get fired.

Put twins in the wood chipper?

You know,

I get presumed innocent, but with that kind of job security, you should be a cop.

New old North Korean textbooks can claim Kim Jong-un writes musicals, won our yacht race in grade school, and learned to drive when he was three,

but they can't claim this is his picture.

I mean, I don't like kids and I hate dictators, but this is adorable.

I'm not even starving in North Korea and I want to eat him up.

And driving at three, that's a very young age to learn to not signal.

Neural, have you spent any time at all this week arguing whether the cat in this viral photo is coming up the steps or going down the steps?

You missed the bigger question.

How come the cat gets nine lives and you don't even have one?

Neural, the Fox News host who said Hillary Clinton ate at Chipotle to appeal to Hispanic voters

must answer me this: Where is she supposed to eat?

If she goes to Chick-fil-A, they'll claim she's flip-flopped on gay marriage.

Panda Express, she's not being tough enough on China.

Dunkin' Donuts, sympathizing with violent cops.

Dairy Queen, sounds too much like Welfare Queen, and thanks to her husband, forget about going to In-N-Out.

New Roll, somebody needs to tell this Korean guy, singing about how much he loves a big booty,

that he's in the wrong country.

You call that a booty?

We have toddlers with more junk in the truck.

You want to see a booty?

Go to a Walmart on Saturday.

We'll hook you up.

And finally, New Rule, in honor of Earth Day, this Wednesday, America must go all out to save a creature that's on the verge of extinction.

I'm talking, of course, about the Republican politician who believes in science.

And with that in mind, tonight we present Zombie Lies Environmental Edition.

Now, how many remember the zombie lie that I introduced last year?

It's the label I gave to political statements that are definitively proven proven wrong and yet refuse to die.

Now, most zombie lies about the environment are prefaced by the phrase, I'm not a scientist.

Jeb Bush says that.

So does Marco Rubio.

John Boehner says, I'm not qualified to debate science.

And Rick Perry says, oh, my God, my hands are gone.

Wait, they're in my...

Wait, they're in my pockets.

Oh, Rick, of all the things you have to worry about, people mistaking you for a scientist should be very far down the list.

No, Rick, you're a

legislator, which means you have to vote on things like building new highways, even though you're not a dump truck.

Rick also says, I don't believe man-made global warming is settled in science.

Well, they all have some variation on that one.

Jeb Bush's twist is to say it is not unanimous among scientists, because that feeds the needs more study myth that was pioneered by a long-discredited half-wit, or as Jeb calls him, my brother.

Now,

of course, scientific fact is never unanimous.

There will always be some mountain man somewhere with a PhD in bird calls who says temperature spikes are caused by God farts.

However, in 2013, an MIT professor studied almost 11,000 peer-reviewed articles about climate change, and there were only two dissenters.

So yes, there is a scientific community that doubts climate change, but it could fit on a motorcycle.

Or how about this one?

Let's not panic about the Earth warming.

In the 70s, everyone was told global cooling was a really big problem.

No, not everyone.

Just one article in Newsweek, that's for the deniers, is the Dewey Defeats Truman of Science.

The one-time newspaper in 1948, Chicago, got an election result wrong, and it proved that journalism is a hoax and Chicago is just a theory.

But here's the thing about that Newsweek story.

It didn't say an overwhelming consensus of scientists thought the Earth was cooling.

It said a few were floating that theory.

Or as Mike Huckabee remembers it, when I was in college, all the literature at that time from the scientific community said we were going to freeze to death.

And again, by all the literature, he means that one Newsweek article.

As if Newsweek is Nostradamus.

Here they are predicting that M.

Night Shyamalan will be the next Steven Spielberg.

He wasn't even the next Murray Spielberg.

Oh, there are so many echo zombie lies like carbon is good for you,

the climate is always changing, I just made a snowball, and

of course, Al Gore has a big house.

Trump card.

But my favorite is the one that says, even though there may be a scientific consensus, consensuses have been wrong before.

Ted Cruz says, says, just look at Galileo.

Oh, Ted, I worked with Galileo.

Galileo was a friend of mine.

You, sir, are no Galileo.

But as long as you want to look at Galileo, the consensus he disproved was that the sun orbits the Earth.

Which wasn't a scientific consensus.

It was a Bible myth from Caveman.

He was the scientist in the...

You know what?

Why am I getting excited and bothering?

This was never about facts to begin with.

But what is new is that it's not even about pandering to voters anymore.

Even half of Republicans now want this issue dealt with.

Well, good luck, because the zombie lies aren't for the voters.

They're for the donors who make their money killing the planet.

The question is not why today's politicians suck more than ever, it's who they're sucking more than ever.

The Koch brothers are in the oil business, and they're pledging almost a billion dollars in this election.

For that kind of money, Cruz and Bush and the rest of them will say anything.

It's what their fellow prostitutes in the sex industry call the girlfriend experience.

All right, that's our show.

I'll be in Dreyfus Hall at the Kravis Center in West Palm, June 3rd, Florida.

Hey, at Barbara Mann Performing Arts in Fort Myers, June 14th at the Carpenter Center in Richmond, Virginia, July 10th.

I want to thank John Meacham, near attend, and Michelle Caruso, Cabrera, Clay Aiken, and Judith Miller.

Join us now on Overtime on YouTube.

Thank you, folks.

Watch 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.