Episode #347 (Originally aired 3/20/15)

Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

I lit the fuse and my life turns into everything it wasn't supposed to be.

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was quick.

He kept saying, No, no, no, I'm in the hospital now, but next week I'll be ready for the show.

Now, Charlie's sober.

He's gonna tell you the truth.

How do I present this with any class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

AKA Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

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

Starts o'clock.

Good afternoon.

Afternoon.

Time will be

real time.

Thank you very much.

How you doing?

Thank you.

Ah, please.

Thank you very much.

What a crowd.

Oh, my God, man.

Thank you, folks.

Thank you.

Wow, you

seem like such a

What did we give this crowd?

Why haven't we been giving to the crowds for the last 13 fucking years?

No, that's a wonderful thing.

Thank you.

I think I know why you're happy.

It's spring.

It's the first day of spring.

Or as we say here in California, the last day of hope for rain, we're screwed.

That's a tough one.

But look, all the news is from that other desert in the world, the Middle East.

A lot of news out of there this week.

Shocking election in Israel.

You saw that?

Nets and Yahuwah was returned to power.

And the day before,

the day before the election, he said, there will never be a Palestinian state on my watch.

And the day after the election, he said, I'd like to see a two-state solution.

It was such an amazing 180.

Mitt Romney went, wow, that guy's good.

That is a.

Now, of course,

many people point out that a one-state solution for Israel is very dangerous because this is a country, after all, where the Arabs vote, and it is almost half-Arab.

And they asked Netanyahu today about that.

Did he have any message for Israeli Jews?

And he said, yeah, keep fucking.

Get in there, man.

Now, the Republicans are mad at President Obama because he did not call.

Prime Minister Netanyahu right away.

He did, finally, the other day.

and he said that we're going to have to reassess our options with Israel.

You're right.

We're going to stop dating Israel and

we're going to get together with Syria now.

That's going to be our new girlfriend.

I mean, could we have a little perspective?

Is anyone here up for a little perspective on this?

Oh, great.

Because

this week in Saudi Arabia, they sentenced a woman to 70 lashes, not tongue lashes, actual lashes, for the crime of arguing with a man.

And ISIS took a break from throwing gay people off the roof and burning pilots alive and beheading people to blow up two mosques in Yemen and a museum in Tunisia.

And I have to tell you, when I heard that they blew up a museum, my first thought was: thank God, no Americans were hurt.

If there was a buffet and a water slide, yes, it would have been a disaster here in America.

Meanwhile, John Boehner has announced that he will be visiting Israel.

He will be traveling under his Secret Service nickname, Agent Orange.

And

I...

Oh, I'm looking forward to that trip.

I would just like to say to the Israelis, if you think you've heard wailing at the Wailing Wall,

Wadel, old super soaker,

has a good cry when he's shit faced there.

That's going to be something.

Boehner refers to Israel as the land of milk and kalua.

He's...

Oh, he said it.

He said it was.

Another.

Another tough week for Republicans.

It pains me.

But

they lost one of their rising stars.

Illinois Congressman Aaron Schock had to resign.

Oh, there's Aaron.

Yes.

Ooh, look at that.

Yeah.

Isn't that what you want your congressman to do?

Work on his abs.

Yeah.

But he had to resign because apparently he was spending taxpayer money like it's going out of style.

And speaking of going out of style, he literally spent $100,000 of taxpayer money to redecorate his office in the style of Downton Abbey.

And he once took a private jet on taxpayer dollars to see a Bears game.

And that's always been the word around Washington about Aaron Schock.

He loves the Bears.

So

what did I say?

But apparently the last row was that he asked to be reimbursed by, again, the government for taxpayer money for 170,000 miles on this car.

But when he sold his car, it only had 80,000 miles on it.

And when they confronted him with this, he just went, up, I resign.

That was it.

Seriously.

And today Robert Durst said, dude, I cut a guy into 10 pieces and got off.

You can't explain 90,000 miles on your car?

Oh.

Yeah, man.

Yeah, man.

HBO caught a murderer top that Netflix.

Did you watch that documentary?

This was fascinating stuff.

Their ability to be able to capture Durst in those rare moments when he wasn't killing someone.

And they arrested him this week in New Orleans, not a minute too soon.

It looks like he was planning to flee.

He had with him 40 grand in cash, a gun, and five ounces of pot.

So

he was either going to make a run for it or produce a hip-hop album.

I don't know.

But

as I'm sure you know, one of the victims was here in LA, so the trial will be here, another celebrity trial here in LA, which means he will definitely get off.

Even though, as you saw, they have him on a hot mic saying the words, there it is, I'm caught.

What did I do?

Killed them all, of course.

But his already, his lawyers were already explaining this away.

They said when he said, you're caught, he was in the urinal.

He meant his dick in the zipper.

He said, you're caught.

I killed them all.

The cigarette butt's in there.

I killed them all.

And finally, did you see this?

I thought this was really interesting.

Starbucks, the CEO of Starbucks Initiative, says he wants his baristas there to initiate a conversation about race with the customers.

And I think, bravo.

But please, not before I've had my coffee.

All right, we've got a great show.

Jack Kingston, Christine Quinn, Mercedes Schlack are here in the little interview speaking with author Gerald Posner.

But first up, he is a 26-time Emmy Award-winning broadcaster for NBC and the MLB network.

The best who's ever done it.

Bob Costas is over here.

Bob.

Hey, Bill.

Bob.

How are we doing?

Look at that, Bob Costas.

Good to be back on HBO.

I was going to say,

you're using your sportscaster sportscaster voice with me.

That's right.

You used to have a home here on HBO.

We used to trade time slots, didn't we?

We did.

And you know, even though it was primarily sports, there was more time to talk about the issues involved.

On network television, the coverage of sports is exquisite when it comes to the drama and the production of the theater and everything else.

There isn't as much within the formats that allows for the discussion of the issues that invariably crop up.

So, in the two days when I wish I could be back on HBO.

I noticed that you, especially now as you're entering the September of your years, as

remember the Sinatra song.

I think of your life, vintage wine, Bob, from fine old kegs.

They were all very good years.

Very good years.

But I noticed you are more and more up for speaking out.

I think that's great.

You're like the only sportscaster, almost the only broadcaster, who does it.

And, you know, it almost has to be done because these issues crop up in sports.

Gay, guns, all these head injuries.

And I'm sure you get people who say to you, hey, come on, I only watch sports to get away from the news.

Right.

There's no mixing politics and sports.

And sports has never had anything to do with social change in America.

Jackie Robinson didn't exist.

Arthur Ashe didn't exist.

Willie Gene King in Title IX.

Yeah.

You know, Tommy Smith and John Carlos at the Olympics, there was nothing political about that.

There was nothing political about Muhammad Ali.

Nothing whatsoever.

And it all should have been completely ignored.

You've mentioned a bunch of things that actually were political.

Exactly.

Okay.

My point precisely.

You know what?

I thought that's what we're talking about.

And basically, when people say that, what they're saying is, hey, just don't say something that I disagree with.

Right.

And stop interrupting the game.

Well, no one likes sports any more than I do, and the drama of it, I'm not talking about this with 10 seconds to go and the game on the line.

I'm not talking about this in the bottom of the ninth.

On these football games, it's halftime, Jack.

And you've seen all these highlights all day long.

Right.

And the idea that I'm doing it all the time is also untrue.

I do it rarely.

Most of the halftime things are about the history of football or some appreciation or observation about football.

Nor anything that you have said is really the least bit controversial.

Shouldn't be.

I mean, I know you for a long time.

You grew up in Long Island.

Yep.

Okay.

Not exactly a bastion of liberalism.

Then you were living in St.

Louis.

Yep.

Okay.

Again.

A purple state.

A purple state.

The city of St.

Louis is a different story.

Right.

In the suburbs, they shoot people who look kind of purple.

But okay.

Yeah.

But

like the thing you said about guns, and I know you got a lot of shit about that.

It was not that controversial.

Tell them what, first of all, you were quoting someone.

I quoted Jason Whitlock, a writer, oddly enough, on the the Fox Sports website.

But I didn't have enough time to get into every aspect of it.

I thought it was self-explanatory that it's a domestic violence issue.

That came up because a football player shot his girlfriend.

Exactly.

Exactly.

I've never talked about anything which some people might perceive as political that wasn't directly connected to sports.

Javon Belcher, the linebacker of the Chiefs, had killed his fiancée and then killed himself, drove to the team headquarters, killed himself in front of the general manager and the coach.

He also owned eight guns.

What Whitlock wrote about, and I only had a short period of time and I quoted him, but I agree with this, wasn't about the Second Amendment, wasn't about denying someone the right to protect their home and family or use a gun if that's their thing for sporting purposes.

It was about a gun culture run amok.

Sports Illustrated, the New York Times, they had all written about this years prior to, using the exact phrase gun culture.

It had to do with the attitudes of many people in society, and particularly in sports about guns.

If you think you need to tuck a Glock into

the waistband of your sweatpants to go to a club, you got a problem.

That has nothing to do.

I'm just saying.

But that's the wrong club.

Yeah, it's the wrong club.

I've said that for years.

Exactly.

And Plexico Burris should have known that.

Go to the club where they let you smoke weed in the back, not the one with the gun.

Yeah, look.

Unfortunately, they're off in the same club.

Greg Hardy, Greg Hardy, who just got signed by the Cowboys, but sat out most of last year because he was involved in a domestic violence case, which is prevalent in the National Football League and dominated a lot of the news last season.

But was kind of overlooked in all this.

He's slapping his girlfriend around.

He was found guilty by a judge, and then he had the right under Carolina law to take it to a jury trial.

And the case was dropped because she wouldn't testify against him.

She changed her mind.

But in any case, as part of this, he threw her on couch with loaded shotguns and assault weapons on the couch.

Now, is this what the founding fathers had in mind?

That Greg Hardy should be armed to the teeth, that private citizens should be able to purchase cop killer, armor-piercing bullets, that she should be able to have an AK-47?

I mean, carry it to its logical conclusion.

If you're fearful of a tyrannical government taking away your rights as a citizen, then you ought to have a bazooka.

You ought to have a tank.

You ought to be able to have nuclear weapons if you can get them them before ISIS can get their hands on them.

Well, you mentioned ISIS.

Let me tie it all together, Bob.

You mentioned ISIS.

You mentioned slapping your girlfriend around, and I mentioned perspective in the monologue.

And, you know, slapping your woman around in Muslim countries is legal, if not mandatory.

Don't you think political correctness is kind of out of hand, especially when the president says things like, we can't use the phrase Islamic extremism, we can only say violent extremism?

Yeah.

I applaud you.

You and I have spoken about it privately.

You need people on the left to call this bullshit out.

All right.

And I'm glad to be back on HBO.

You can say bullshit.

All right.

Just as you need people on the right to call conservative bullshit out.

There are legitimate conservative positions.

I often find myself saying, that's a good point that George Will made.

That's a good point that Rich Lowry made.

It may not be the entire thing.

It's a conservative point, but there's some truth in it.

The DOJ report, to listen to Fox News, the only thing that was in it was that Darren Wilson was justified in shooting Michael Brown.

Fair enough.

To listen to MSNBC, the only thing that was in it was that there was systemic racism in the Ferguson Police Department.

Also fair enough.

And other places, Cleveland, we saw something in Fort Lauderdale just recently came out.

We know that this is true to a certain extent across the country.

But why can't people with common sense hold two truths in their head at the same time and realize that

what we want here is

common sense rather than just my tribe and your tribe.

Common sense

is not common, unfortunately.

No, not common.

No, and you know what you get.

Wait, wait,

before we run out of time, there's a big sports story that I have to ask you about, which is Chris Borland.

He's the guy, he's 24 years old.

He was a star, a rising star.

He was a rookie, linebacker with the 49.

With football.

And if I was football, I'd be very nervous.

Because it was, a lot of people said, yeah, you know what?

That's a smart idea.

Because we're way past the time where it's debatable whether you guys are injuring yourselves permanently.

We've seen too many people

come out with crazy heads.

You know, five years ago, I asked Roger Goodell on NBC on Sunday Night Football, what would you say to the parents of an athletically gifted 12 or 13-year-old boy who say, we're lifelong NFL fans, but knowing what we're now learning, we won't let our son play football.

And of course, I think Roger Goodell is concerned about it both from a human standpoint and a business standpoint.

There's a certain answer that he has to give that's politically correct in the world in which he lives.

I also predicted that there would be lawsuits, and some people scoffed.

Oh, no, willing assumption of risk.

Well, here come the lawsuits.

So, football is the sports colossus in America, but there may be cracks in the foundation because this is fundamental to football.

The risk in other sports, most not boxing, obviously, and a few others, but the risk in most other sports is incidental.

In football, it is unavoidable.

Right.

All right.

Bob, you should be on HBO more often.

I hope you don't have to kill three people to do it.

Podcasting, ladies and gentlemen.

Let's meet our panel.

Hey, how you doing?

All right, here they are.

He was a 10-term U.S.

Representative from Georgia and our old friend Jack Kingston.

Jack, you're liberated now.

I am.

I'm liberated from Congress.

He's going to be a fire-breathing liberal tonight.

I'm joking, of course.

She was speaker of the New York City Council and is now a resident fellow at Harvard's Institute of Politics.

Christine Quinn's back with us.

Hey, Christine.

And she's a Republican strategist who served as director of specialty media for President George W.

Bush.

I remember him.

Mercedes Schlab.

Hey, Mercedes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

Remember to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and send us your questions for Overtime, which starting tonight will be broadcast live on our YouTube channel.

Oh, we're entering the 21st century.

Great.

And if you're watching from abroad, hey, nice going.

Now, include the hashtag overtime overseas so we can address it on next week's special edition of Overtime.

Okay, so let's first talk about the Middle East.

There's so much going on there, the Israeli election.

A lot of people were angry at the way Nets and Yahoo won this election.

They said it was racist that he said at the last minute, Arab voters are coming out in droves to the polls.

And I guess that is racist in the strictest sense.

He's bringing race into the equation.

But first of all, like Reagan didn't win races with racism, or Nixon, or Bush, like they didn't play the race cart.

Reagan opened his campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi.

Remember that?

Remember Willie Horton?

Okay, point one.

Point two.

Point two.

Point two.

Obama would never have played the race card.

No, no, no.

He's been playing the race cart since he was elected.

I mean, that's a good idea.

Well, he's black.

Yeah.

Well, you can play it.

You can play it.

But he's used it to his advantage.

Come on, Bill.

He's used it to his advantage to get the voters to come out.

Here's the deal with Netanyahu.

The deal with Netanyahu was that he basically came out and said, look, these Arabs are going to come out and vote.

Hey, guys, conservative base, come out, vote for me, or I'm not going to win.

And that was a deal.

Whether you want to call it racist or not, Joe.

Oh, right.

That's what he was doing.

He was making sure that his base showed him out.

That's

what he's saying.

That's not fear.

It was not fear.

It was basically saying those Arabs are not going to vote for him.

And so he's going to have to bring out his vote.

This is what you do in an election.

I got on a tangent there.

Let me ask the question I was going to ask about this, which is when he said that Arab voters are coming out in droves to the polls.

I heard a lot of commentators here say it would be as if Mitt Romney in 2012, on the eve of the election, said black voters are coming out in droves to the polls.

But I don't know if that's really a great analogy.

I think that would be a good analogy if America was a country that was surrounded by 12 or 13 completely black nations who had militarily attacked us many times, including as recently as last year.

Would we let them vote?

I don't know.

When we were attacked by the Japanese, we didn't just not let them vote, we rounded them up and put them in camps.

You know, I think on this race, Netanyahu wasn't just motivated on his own re-election as much as he is on the survival of Israel.

To one side, he has the Gaza-strip Palestinian Authority recognizing Hamas.

To the north he has Hezbollah.

To Syria he now has ISIS.

I think he's actually very, very concerned about the future of his country and the fact that, as you're saying, these countries that are all around him have promised to wipe Israel off the map.

So he was fighting not just for his own political future but for Israel.

Well look, I mean I think that the truth of the challenge and the danger for Israel, that's real.

And I think it's really important that we as Americans stand with Israel 24-7.

And I think that Prime Minister Netanyahu is concerned about the future of his country.

But let's not pretend it wasn't politics because the day of the year.

He went right back to the bottom.

Yeah, he's a politician.

By the way, in a real democracy that lets Arabs vote.

That's right.

So I'm just saying a little perspective.

But I think

it doesn't help that President Obama obviously

sent over his own political advisors over to Israel to organize

the Israelis against Netanyahu.

I mean that's created a big...

Well he came here to organize his voters against Netanyahu.

He should, absolutely.

You got to brought in the base.

Right.

When you do it, it's cool.

Yeah.

Okay, so the other big beef, of course, that we have with Netanyahu is that he doesn't want to deal with Iran.

So let me ask you this, especially our Republican friends.

I don't know if you noticed, but the Iraqi military in the last couple of weeks has been trying to take back the city of Takrit in Iraq.

And when I say the Iraqi military, I mean the Iranians.

Right.

Right.

It's the Iranians.

We are so dead set that we have to wipe out ISIS.

But we can't seem to find anybody willing to actually do that with boots on the ground except Iran.

When are we going to admit that our ally is Iran?

Or would that mess up the simple thought, Iran bad?

I think we can stick with Iran as bad.

I really do.

This is a country that's stirring up all kinds of front groups.

The attack in Yemen at the mosque,

perhaps Iranian back.

We're not 100% sure.

We know that they're supporting a lot of terrorist groups.

We know that they were supporting the Iraqis over us at the first time.

So I think if we're looking for allies in the Middle East, we'd start with Israel.

And then we'd look at Jordan.

But that's the given, Jack.

Of course, we're going to start with Israel.

Look, Iran is playing definitely a role in Iraq and trying to take over these cities.

But at the same time, I mean, their goal is to create a nuclear bomb.

And so there needs to be, you know, we have to hold them accountable.

And the question becomes, is there the trust factor, considering the fact that you do have those hardliners in Iran that chant death to America?

I mean,

how can you build that trust with that country and at the same time kind of push aside our allies?

I don't know.

When Nixon was president, you know, and the Shah was there, that was the place we trusted.

It was a little more sensible, real politic.

Tom Friedman wrote a column this week, and he said, why aren't we actually the allies of ISIS instead of bombing them?

He pointed out that Iran, the ultimate evil, apparently,

we have now basically put them in charge of four capitals in the Arab world.

Beirut, Damascus,

Baghdad, and the capital of Yemen.

So Dick Cheney's decision to erade Iraq, invade Iraq, looks real good right now, doesn't it?

I'm just saying, if Iran is so awful, why are we always doing their dirty work?

Why are we always helping them?

We toppled the Taliban.

We toppled Saddam Hussein.

Now we're going after ISIS.

We are always for ISIS.

We're barely going after ISIS.

I mean, there's so much more that we need.

There's so much more we can be doing to be going after ISIS.

ISIS continues to

Syria and to Iraq.

So we should put it in the middle.

No, that should be, all military options should be on the table.

And I should say

I think we have to make up our mind are we going to fight ISIS or not?

And then if we are, we do need to have, we're going to have air raids, we're going to have boots on the ground, and we're going to have a coalition.

This president has not been able to put together an international coalition the way that President Bush did.

And that was very standard really well.

Because his war put us where we are.

You mean the war that Hillary Clinton and John Kerry voted for?

That would be the war.

President Obama left a vacuum in Iraq, so he took the troops out, out wasn't able to agree on a deal with the iraqi government and then what leaves the vacuum so icebergs boots on the ground that were started by president bush were not notwithstanding many brave people who died and gave their lives

it was not successful and right now what's not successful so we keep seeing these beheadings these crucifixions these children and women that are becoming

successful

and we are seeing an expansion of ice and you think boots on the ground

if you ask boots on the ground it has to be a coalition and hunger's going to be in that coalition We need leadership coming from.

The president was re-elected on this thing that Al-Qaeda is on the run.

Does anybody see that today?

You guys see that?

But that's what his friend is.

You have such a fundamental misunderstanding of the Middle East.

So does everybody.

We really do.

That may be true.

That may be true.

The best thing we could do is just stay at it, but can't you see that they're having a war between themselves?

If we want them to use all their their energy, not on attacking us, but on attacking each other, they're doing it.

You know, there's a lot of people who are going to be able to do that.

Of course you do.

Bill, but what about Australia?

Bill, what about Australia?

How do you do that without killing a lot of innocent people?

But what about Australia and Paris and Copenhagen and the

1993 bombing of the World Trade Center?

You know, all this stuff happens

outside of that area.

But maybe if America wasn't in the middle of of this battle, that they need to have.

They need to have a battle, apparently, between the Sunnis and the Shiites, just the way the Catholics and the Protestants did in the 16th century, and between the Muslims who want to live in the 21st century and the Muslims who want to live in the 7th century.

They need to have that battle.

As long as we're in the middle of it, they have a common enemy.

You know that old saying in politics, don't stop someone who's committing homicide

when they're committing suicide.

These guys are literally committing suicide.

Let them have the battle amongst themselves.

That way we don't.

You know, Bill,

when the USS Cole was attacked, 17 Americans were killed in Yemen.

That was pre-9-11.

We weren't interfering in their business.

And as you know, Yemen was a very pro-American country.

And now it's a...

And here's the situation.

You've got 2,000 to 3,000 Americans that are going to these countries.

We don't know where they are.

We can't track track them to get trained in ISIS.

We don't know if they're going to return and come and do a tax here in the U.S.

And that's a thing that we need to be prepared for.

You know, where, I said this before, where are the Muslims who want to go and fight ISIS?

The only Muslims I hear about going to the battlefield are the ones who want to be part of ISIS.

Maybe if we got out of it, we would encourage those Muslims, and there are many of them, who want to live in the 21st century, to oppose these people who want to to live in this medieval world.

But we are not allowing that to happen.

All right, moving on.

We settled that one really well.

Israel, we did.

We feel good about it.

Here at HBO, we have had quite a month between vice curing cancer and cracking this Robert Durst case.

I tell you, the morale in the cafeteria has been bad.

High-fiving each other.

And it doesn't, if you're a filmmaker, it doesn't get any better than what Direcki found when he, you know, discovered that he actually had on tape the guy they've been trying to catch mumbling to himself on a hot mic that he did it.

And it made me think, you know what?

I made a documentary once, Religilist, thanks very much.

And,

you know, I was thinking to myself, I remember we interviewed at the time it was Pope Benedict, the German Pope.

Remember Ratzinger?

I think it was in the Sistine Chapel.

And I remember him going to the bathroom.

I thought maybe he had a hot mic on him.

So I went back to look at all the footage.

Damn, if it wasn't true, would you like to see it?

Okay, this is.

I've never been seen in public before, but this is what we got from Pope Benedict.

There it is.

You're caught.

Bill Ma is right.

The whole religion thing is bullshit.

I scammed them all, of course.

How the hell would I know what happens after you die?

Oh, my publicist is so fired.

They said the whole God being his own father thing never made any sense.

Stupid.

Stupid.

And who's going to believe that Jesus walked on water like he's David Blaine?

Don't cough.

Immaculate conception.

Whose idea was that?

Sounds like something the Mormons would believe.

And what the hell am I wearing?

I'm a grown man in a full-length ball gown.

Idiot.

It was in front of me all this time, but I did not see.

Nazi.

Nazi.

No, a focus, dammit, focus.

There must be a way we can blame this on the Jews.

Okay, he is a best-selling author.

His latest book is God's Bankers, History of Money and Power at the Vatican.

Gerald Posner.

Hey, Gerald, how you doing?

Great to see you.

All right, well.

I was glad I wrote the book just to see that.

What a great promo for your book, right?

Well, as someone who actually knows a lot more about the Vatican than almost anybody, I have to admit, as you must know, I never really interviewed Pope Benedict.

He was not.

But I was at the Vatican.

We have a picture of it there.

Yeah,

we met a priest outside who let me in.

That's from inside.

I was not supposed to get in there.

You won't be back there.

Yeah, that's right.

I will not be back there.

So your book is fascinating, God's Bankers.

And I understand when you write about the Catholic Church like this, they call you a dirty Jew, and you were actually raised Catholic.

That's so funny.

They call me a dirty Jew and I was raised Catholic.

It's fantastic.

I love that.

It's so great and there's no better moment at which you get the email or a tweet or something and they say, you know, dirty Jews, I'm sick of you making money off of the Holocaust and off of the Vatican.

And then I'm able to say

eight years of Sisters of Charity, four years of Jesuits, altar boy, the whole routine.

Wow, you were raised a Catholic, and then that stops them for a minute.

They think it's a trick.

You were an altar boy, were you?

I was.

Anything funny, huh?

Let me break the news here.

No.

No.

Well, are you insulted?

Apparently, you are not a very cute kid.

Anyway,

but

everything I know about the Vatican Bank, I learned from the movie Godfather III,

which I think is a very underrated movie.

I happen to be a big fan of that movie.

But one thing I learned from your book that I didn't realize is that the Vatican Bank is actually very recent.

Whenever you hear Vatican attaches something, you think, oh, it must go back to the fifth century.

No, it goes back to what, World War II?

Just to World War II.

That's what I loved about this when I got into it, is here you have a 2,000-year-old institution, and they were really Pope kings.

They ran their own empires for a long time.

The Borgers, for those who have seen the series, they had 15,000 square miles of central Italy that was their empire.

They levied taxes, and then all of a sudden they lose that.

Italy gets united.

They get reduced to this little postage stamp piece of property, Vatican City.

But their own sovereign country.

But not yet.

So in 1870, they're not sovereign.

They're just then head of the Catholic religion, the biggest religion in the world.

Then in 1929, Benito Mussolini, the fascist dictator of Italy, hits an accord with them and says, I grant you sovereignty, you're a country, and they in turn support him.

And that's what gives them sovereignty back.

And then they have the rights as a country.

And in the middle of World War II, the financial wizard who's running all of their money, because Mussolini gave them about a billion dollars to make up for the loss of the Papal States, creates the Vatican Bank right in 1942 because he knows that the British and American intelligence units are looking to stop countries like the Vatican, these tiny little sovereigns, from doing business with the Nazis.

So he says, if we have a bank, a cross between a central bank and a Wall Street Investment Bank, we're off the radar.

They can't follow us.

And that was the start of the bank that's been this scandal-ridden, plagued place.

And it really was, I mean, I think from what I read in your book, that it was a lot about

the fact that they were looking to sort of get the pressure off them for not talking about the Holocaust.

And I don't think people realize this.

A lot of the Nazi hierarchy was Catholics.

And the Catholic Church, if they had said something about the Holocaust, could have really changed history.

There's a debate.

People say if the Pope had spoken out, it would have made a difference.

But this was a time in the 40s in which the Pope still carried that authoritarian weight that popes used to carry.

If he had said it is a mortal sin for Catholics to kill Jews, of the 50,000 Nazis who administered the concentration camps, three-quarters were Nazi, were Catholics.

There were some who were also Lutherans in that, but the hierarchy was all Catholic.

They revered the state, but the church was most afraid of the Bolsheviks, the Reds.

And so, what I find in this book is they did business with the Germans through the war.

That shouldn't really be surprising.

They did business with us.

They were buying U.S.

stocks and putting gold here.

They were buying real estate in London, but they also did business with the Nazis.

So, are you saying that religious people can do immoral things?

It doesn't sound right to me.

So, Bill,

the part of it is, but if you think, I was surprised the extent to which at times it was jaw-dropping in that I shouldn't have been surprised.

If you take billions of dollars and take men, put them in the dark, so

there's no sort of oversight at all, which there wasn't in the Vatican Bank, no wonder you end up with money launderers and the mafia and all of this, because they

do all types of things.

Certainly a lot of men in the dark.

So, how's Pope Frank doing on this issue?

I mean, he's, you know, I mean, I was very mad at him after Charlie Edbo.

I said some nasty things, but I can't stay mad at Pope Frank.

I just can't.

I mean,

it's a funny situation that I like the Pope and Mel Gibson doesn't.

It's a bad sign for the Pope.

But, you know, he's said some great things and some dumb things, but how is he on the banking issue?

On the banking issue, he's pretty good.

When he became pope, I was skeptical.

He said, we're going to clean it up, we're going to reform it.

But they've all said that.

Every pope who comes in says, I'm going to be a reformer, and then it gets worse.

It served as a political slush fund for Italy's biggest politicians through the 90s into the 2000s, $60 million funds for the former prime minister, and they were supposed to clean it up.

It's almost like an offshore bank in the middle of a foreign country, right?

You've just summarized it.

In the heart of Rome, here's a place that calls itself a country that's only two-tenths of a mile wide.

And if you deposit your money into that little two-tenths of a mile zone.

Can I?

No, you can't.

I can't.

You cannot.

None of us can.

Because it's me?

No, right, no?

No, you asked the right question.

Red flag?

Red flag, your face from that Vatican picture is there.

But no, because people think of it, it only has one branch.

It's in Vatican City.

It's teller.

ATMs are in Latin in part.

The only ones with dead language.

But the only people that can open up an account are priests who work there in Vatican City or religious orders or charities.

And that's the problem because charities open up and then they turn out not to exist outside of the Vatican Bank.

And so it's really run by a mobster from Sicily or a money launderer or in one case a police commander.

I love this one.

I'm sorry.

$30 million fund for a police commander and a monsignor who became a bishop who were also directors of Italy's largest psychiatric hospital, an 800-bed unit where the land had been bought from a group of nuns.

That's fabulous stuff.

You can't make this up.

You can't take it up.

It's good.

Wow.

And

I was fascinated to see last week that the Pope said that he is likely to step down, like the last Pope did.

He said he wants to direct.

No.

But

I mean, for 600 years, no Pope ever stepped down, and now it's a thing.

Yeah, all of a sudden it's a trend.

No, I don't believe it.

I've talked to the

bullshit.

I do, because I think.

The Pope?

Yeah, hard to imagine.

Here's my two-cent prediction that he intends to stay, but by saying I may get out of here in a year or two years, he energizes all of those clerics in Rome who want to do real reform to think, oh my God, this guy may not be around for a long time.

If Francis is leading, I better get the reform done now because the next Pope might be a traditionalist who rolls it all back.

When you're a Pope, you've got to be a politician, man.

That's for sure.

He's a populist.

So you're no stranger to justice and the criminal justice system.

You've covered assassinations and so forth.

Let me talk a little bit about Robert Durst, because that is really what's in the pop culture atmosphere this week.

I thought, well, maybe we shouldn't talk about it because who could I get on a panel to stick up for Robert Durst and say he's innocent?

What kind of moron?

And then I realized, oh, yeah, someone who's on a jury.

Did you see in the documentary, the people in the Galveston jury?

I mean, he kills a guy, obviously, cuts him up into 10 pieces, and these fucking clueless rubes.

Well,

he must be the most unlucky guy in Texas.

And

I just, you know, when did our criminal justice system get to be so bad?

Between stupid juries and slick lawyers who can convince people of anything and corrupt cops.

I mean, it's just like,

is any place better?

God for HBO.

Well, that's true.

You know,

the 100 million.

Shameless attempt to get back on the show.

Absolutely.

No, $100 million.

One thing that I think Republicans and Democrats can agree on is that justice is not equal when you have a big purse.

And $100 million, here's a guy who has been around very closely associated with four murders, and he's.

And there was like a hint, okay?

He had seven dogs, and his younger brother made this mention.

where mysteriously, the seven dogs disappeared.

So I'm sure the dogs don't have any heads anymore, poor things.

I mean, and then he put a severed cat at the former Texas judge's house, where she suspects that Robert Durst left the cat there for him.

So, again, if you're killing your animals and then you behead this guy, and then you can't find the guy's head, there's a problem.

Only

on that, we can agree.

Oh, my God.

On that, we can agree.

And his own brother took out a bodyguard, hired a bodyguard to protect anybody.

And do you know that 40% of homicides go unsolved?

You know, it's not a very good record.

And also, listen to this, 95% of convictions in America come from plea bargaining, which is often coerced.

It's like we have the worst of both worlds.

We don't convict the guilty enough, and we co coerce the innocent too much.

And I'm asking if anybody's better.

I actually looked it up.

World Law Project studies this, and we're 19th.

Could be worse.

They studied 99 countries, but Norway, Sweden are at the top.

I'm going there, I'm going playing there in May.

Come save me.

And Denmark.

Those are the three top ones.

And,

you know, I just think America, we're always bragging about we're the most exceptional country.

We're number one.

We're not really number one in these things that.

It's true, but you know, but those three countries are at the top.

I mean, Sweden, of course, has an unsolved murder for its prime minister, Olal Palame.

So, you know, they may be great on a lot of of things, and they may be doing a good job of solving 90% of the murders, except for the murder of their own, you know, head of state.

So, they might be missing a big one.

Well, they've got the girl.

They've got the girl with the dragon tattoo.

She solves everything.

But do you think that Robert Dierst could plead sarcasm?

I mean, they have him saying these.

He's so old.

I mean, it's like just,

he's just, I think he's stuck.

But knowing him, he can go with insanity.

I mean, it could be just pure insanity.

He is, but a great

guy.

Yeah.

But I think if they get him back to Los Angeles, I think that listening to your district attorney here, they've already felt very burned on these celebrity trials.

He's not going to get out of jail.

And as Mercedes says, he probably won't have that much.

It's up to the jury, Jack.

You know, what can they do?

And the lawyers.

I mean, he might have one of these great lawyers.

He'll be well.

He's worth $100 million.

He definitely has a great history.

And you know what?

Everybody in the judicial system should have a good lawyer.

I mean, everybody.

That's right.

That's the way our system works, so that is important.

But everybody shouldn't get off when they chop up a bazillion bodies.

He must be salivating.

Local defense counsel must be salivating.

When you said $100 million

is coming in, there must be lawyers out there just itching to get that call to represent him and put together a dream team.

Yeah.

Okay.

A funny thing happened in New Hampshire this week.

Ted Cruz was speaking to a group of supporters.

I guess he's running for president.

He hinted that he's going to announce it on Monday.

And he scared the living crap out of a three-year-old.

Really, here's what he was saying this.

These are his exact words.

He said, the Obama economy is a disaster.

Obamacare is a train wreck.

And the Obama-Clinton foreign policy, the whole world is on fire.

And the three-year-old was like, what?

The world is on fire.

Because she's three.

She doesn't understand the concept of exaggerating threats to fleece gullible roobes.

And, you know, I must say,

first of all,

I don't think you should bring your three-year-old to a Ted Cruz record.

His target audience is five-year-olds.

So that's just wrong.

But, you know, I mean, there are statistics on how much the world is on fire.

And Obama came back with them on Wednesday in Cleveland.

He said, what are you talking about?

The economy is a disaster.

Unemployment was 10%

six months into my term.

Now it's 5.5%.

The Dow was under 8,000 when I took office.

Now it's almost 18,000.

GDP was minus 5.4%.

Now it's 2.8%.

The deficit was 9.8% of GDP.

Now it's 2.2%.

At what point, at what point?

I mean, these are...

no, no, I'm not saying it for a flex,

these are facts.

At what point do Republicans look foolish for being on the talking point page that no longer fits?

And you know what?

Those are the facts.

Those are the realities.

So if the world's on fire, burn, baby, burn.

Because we're doing pretty good if you think about it.

You know,

I want to get back to New Hampshire a minute because the thing is about the hyper

indignation, the feigned indignation of the left on some comment like that, in which the girl's mother said she wasn't scared and I support Ted Cruz.

And it's a rhetorical stuff.

Well, when Obama as a candidate was saying they're going to bring

their knives, we'll bring our guns.

Okay, hey, it was rhetoric.

I understand that.

But the left didn't get a lot of people.

That's the big question we're asking here.

The big question I'm asking here is the economy.

He says the economy is a disaster.

And I just read what the economy is.

How do you make this case?

Bill, do you hang out with Cubans?

Okay, let me tell you, I'm Cuban, so Ted Cruz is half-Cuban.

We like to really go with some exaggeration sometimes, but here's what we've got: Wow.

There are certain people who

are

exactly

closing on this show, but that may, you may,

I wish I had an award for you.

The Cupid ring, the Cuban ring.

But there are facts on it.

But they're still, look, our economy is still underperforming.

Poverty levels are at record high.

10 million people.

Wages are still staggering.

They're nuts.

We still have issues.

They're nuts.

We still, of course, we have issues.

We're not living in Eden.

Of course, there are issues.

Thank you.

These are facts.

And I'm coming back to that.

These are facts.

You know, the interesting thing, the interesting thing, he also talked about income inequality.

Now, the New York Times, hardly a Republican publication, quoting Berkeley, a study of Berkeley, again, hardly Pepperdine University, they came out with a study that showed that the top 1%

have done better under Obama than they did under Bush or under Clinton.

And what is the problem?

And that is going to take a lot of time.

And he keeps talking income inequality.

Anyone I blame income inequality on, it's the Democrats.

For years,

they have been the sticking points.

Are you

against the same thing?

Burke is insane.

Berkeley,

none of the New York Times published this.

But, Jack, none of their policies that they are suggesting.

But, Jack, what are the Republicans going to do about it?

No one's going to debate income inequality.

What are you going to do?

Are you going to raise the minimum wage?

Are you going to put more subsidies in for child care?

Are you going to support the president's community college initiative?

All of those things

will help income inequality.

All of a liberal government and more debt.

I'll tell you the way to do it is unshackle the private sector, get the nanny state out of the people's lives, let people start their own

businesses.

And how are you going to help Ohio business owners do that?

Exactly what?

Small business owners are the ones who are going to be able to do that.

Last celebration and corporations, really, the CEOs who are making a lot more money than those in the bottom.

They're going to cap their income.

You've got to go.

They have to move that money to those people that are those agricultural Right.

Thank God, because you Republicans have been saying that forever.

Let's,

yes, Democrats, stop standing in the way of this.

First of all, Mitt Romney, when he ran, said, I'm going to get the unemployment rate down to 6%

by 2016 after my first term.

Obama's got it down to 5.5%.

Do you think he did that by 2020?

It's because Congress is not aware of that.

I think your Cuban argument is racist.

I love my Cuban.

You're saying that Cubans are hotheads

who cannot control their arguments.

Barely, barely, barely.

Even with El Castro, I mean, he's been reigning for how many years now?

I live in Miami.

I think she's great.

Thank you.

Thank you, panel.

It's time for new rules.

Nero, before mocking farmersonly.com,

the dating site for country folks, or as I call it, Hicks with Dicks,

you must remember it's better for rural America to date on FarmersOnly.com than where they used to date, Ancestry.com.

Neural, if this rich creep really dressed as an old deaf woman to get away with murder, HBO has to start hounding Miso Akawa, the world's oldest woman, because I'm pretty sure she's Sheldon Adelson.

New rule, since everyone else gets an award show, it's time we also had one for stock photo models.

Welcome to the 2015 Stockies,

recognizing excellence in the field of stock photo art.

This year's nominees for Stock Photo Model of the Year are Susan King for I Hate My Computer,

Beverly Hanbury Tennyson for Happy Black Persons,

and Barry Rogers Jr.

for My Dick Doesn't Work.

New rule, the makers of this fun, inflatable.

The makers of this fun, inflatable slide must apologize to these kids' parents.

They're supposed to be celebrating a birthday, not reliving one.

New rule, let's call the Elton John Dolce and Gabbana feud what it is.

A face-off between a classic old leathery bag and Dolce and Gabbana.

And finally, New Rule, before he leaves office, President Obama must send in the National Guard to desegregate America's last bastion of societal-approved racism, college fraternities.

That's right.

From now on, all fraternities must allow women.

as well as a diverse collection of races and ethnicities.

So you're not really fraternities anymore.

You're more like that hippie co-op on campus where a house full of art history majors gets stoned every night and makes a big lentil casserole.

That's right, fellas.

Gather up your beer funnels and your ass paddles and your lacrosse sticks and your big red plastic drinking cups and get the fuck out.

Sorry, bra.

From now on, if you want to live with 40 other dudes and hold secret homoerotic ceremonies, you're going to have to join the seminary.

You know, it's always struck me as strange that college campuses are where political correctness is the most stringently enforced, and yet smack in the middle are frat houses, these little Vatican cities of depravity that seem to enjoy diplomatic immunity from civilization.

There was a time when fraternities fit in with society as a whole, but that day is long gone.

If you don't believe me, go back and watch Animal House.

In 1978, watching a guy deciding whether he should have sex with an out-cold high school girl was something we all considered hilarious.

And Bill Cosby still does.

Revenge of the Nerds from 1982 has a scene where they break into a sorority and install cameras so they can watch the girls shower.

And again, we all laughed.

But this week, Penn State's Kappa Delta Row frat was caught basically pulling the same stunt, and no one's laughing.

For one thing, institutions that go out of their way to have no women around,

it always leads to abuse and madness and lighting farts.

I mean, Scientology is bad, but at least it admits women.

Every 10 years, someone has to pretend married Tom Cruise.

And this one other bad little thing about fraternities.

They kill people.

Every year, some kid dies when the hilarious dangle the pledge over the wood chipper prank

goes awry.

Since 1970, there's been at least one hazing related death every year, as pledges routinely endure alcohol poisoning, sleep deprivation, waterboarding, being dressed in diapers, buried in trash, force-fed cat food.

Jesus, why not just pledge ISIS?

Well, hey, a cult is a cult, and that's what a frat is: a place where they strip you of your personality and rebuild it in their image.

That's why, when a girl says, I'm dating a frat guy, no one ever says, Oh, yeah, what's he like?

I just told you I'm dating a frat guy.

My school had a lot of fraternities, but it never occurred to me to join one because finally in my life I was able to live on my own amongst women.

So it had no appeal to me when some frat guy said, hey, how about coming with me to live with a bunch of dudes?

Come on.

Come on, we'll stick a carrot up your butt.

No wonder they call it the Greek system.

And this is where someone always says, but Bill, fraternities are a tradition.

Yes, I was throwing virgins in a volcano for a while.

If you think tradition is a good enough reason to paint your face or degrade women or drink yourself sick, or if you think a good place for a bottle rocket is your ass,

then maybe college isn't for you to begin with.

Of all the bad things fraternities do, the absolute worst is that they take young people at the exact moment when they should be learning to be individuals.

and turn them into shit-eating, orders-following group thinkers.

Or maybe these guys all independently decided to wear shorts with a blazer and a bow tie.

All right, that's our show.

I'll be at the Pearl Theater at the Palms this weekend in Las Vegas

and at the Kiva Auditorium in Albuquerque, New Mexico, May 2nd at the Bayou Music Center in Houston, May 3rd.

I want to thank Jack Kingston, Christine Quinn, Mercedes Schlapp, and Daryl Posner, and Bob Costas.

Join us now for Overtime on YouTube.

Thank you.

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.