Ep. #705: Steven Pinker, Kaitlan Collins, Stephen Moore

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Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO Late Night Series, Real Time with Bill Ma.

Start the clock.

Thank you.

Thank you, people.

How you doing?

Thank you very much.

I appreciate it.

Hey, welcome to the show.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

That's a wonderful reception for.

Thank you.

I'm humbled.

Okay, all right.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

Thank you very much.

I'm glad you're putting on a brave face because I'm going to be honest, it's not all good news.

There's a new jobs report.

Oh, 22,000 jobs.

22,000.

Diddy hired more than that for a party

in the whole country.

And now

everyone now is worried about their job, especially the guy who wrote the report.

Because, you know, we don't fuck around with that anymore.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, but listen to this.

I know where there are some jobs, openings, because Homeland Security yesterday raided the Hyundai plant in Georgia.

Arrested 500, I guess, illegals, mostly South Koreans, because, hey, if anyone wants to build foreign cars, damn it, they should be Americans.

What are Koreans doing making Korean cars?

Oh,

we are at war with a lot of people.

We're at war with so many people, we're changing the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War.

I'm not making that up.

It was originally called the Department of War under George Washington.

Yeah, and then at some point we take it to the Department of Defense.

So it doesn't look like hey, we're looking for for one.

Trump, going back to the Department of War, he said it sends a message that we are fierce warriors.

And then he went back to his Twitter spat with Rosie O'Donnell.

But

on the fierce warrior front,

We did blow up a pleasure boat in Venezuela.

Okay,

well, we don't know if it looked like a pleasure boat to me, but we don't know.

It was off Venezuela.

They said it was involved in the drug trade.

Okay,

there are countries in the region that are involved in the drug trade.

I mean, Mexico, obviously, Colombia.

I seem to remember people calling cocaine Peruvian marching powder.

Okay, so.

But Venezuela, not one of them.

But Venezuela is our only true rival in the Missed Universe contest.

That is the truth.

No, I'm not making this up.

We've won it eight times.

They've won it seven times.

This is something I think the president is very interested in.

This is why he hates Venezuela so much.

They stole our pageant secrets.

Like, just how do you make a 19-year-old look like she's 40?

That would be my first question.

Anyway, while we were blowing up the motorboat there off Venezuela,

Fierce Warriors, China had like the scariest military parade anyone has ever seen in the world.

And don't ever say that Trump is not a uniter because somehow he got every bad guy in the world together.

They've never been in the same room together.

Kim Jong-un of North Korea came out.

He never comes out.

He was there.

The president of Iran, G.

Putin, anyone who has ever fed a journalist to a tiger was in this room.

This is quite an achievement, seriously.

I mean, Kim Jong-un never leaves the house.

And now he's so confident, so secure, that he made it a take your daughter to work day.

He brings his kid along,

who apparently grooming grooming for the top spot there in North Korea.

And, you know, they've never revealed her name, her age.

All we know about her is she hates being called a Nepo baby.

Just don't do that.

But here's

the interesting thing about this summit, there was a hot mic incident.

You know, hot mic incidents where they catch people saying something on the mic.

And it was Putin and G talking about how with organ transplants transplants nowadays, maybe they can live forever.

Seriously.

I mean, usually when you get a hot mic thing, it's the guys calling somebody an asshole or talking about pussy.

No, these guys are talking about organ harvesting.

And then

India was there too, the one who we've been trying to get on our side and should be on our side.

And Trump tweeted out, it looks like we've lost India and Russia to deepest, darkest China.

What do you mean we, white man?

I love when he forgets he's the president and just reacts to everything on the world stage like, ooh, look what happened.

So to recap, China had the scariest military parade ever and America is changing our stationery.

Yeah, we

the Department of Defense is now the Department of War.

Oh, also the Justice Department will now be the Bureau of Revenge.

The State Department is now just Marco Rubio at AOL.

And the Centers for Disease Control is now just Disease.

Oh, yeah, did you

the knives are out for Bobby Kennedy and I got to say I'm with the knives.

I tried, but you know what?

We're going to talk about it, but you mean he was grilled for three hours.

Show some of the tape.

It was pretty hard to watch.

You're a charlatan.

That's what you are.

You're just making stuff up.

You're talking gibberish.

Mr.

Secretary, I don't know what you're talking about.

Is this a question, Senator Cassidy, or is this the speech that you don't want me to ask?

Well, how can you be that ignorant?

Senator Catwell.

You're wrong.

You are a hazard to the health of the American people.

Poor Bobby, he talked so long, he gained his voice.

All right.

We got a great,

we have Steve Moore and Caitlin Collins.

But first up, he's a professor and author whose latest book is called, When Everyone Knows, That Everyone Knows, Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life.

Steven pinker is here the great intellectual mr pinker

professor how are you

you look very happy i'm so glad you see

okay look at you

and you should be happy you're the guy who i always quote about progressophobia that's your line that's your word it is the word that means that people especially the liberals don't acknowledge the progress we've made as much.

You always straighten us out as to when you think the world is falling off the the edge of a cliff.

Here's what's really going on.

Are you still that optimistic?

Well, progress is not a magical force that makes everything better all the time.

That would be a miracle.

And things sometimes do get worse.

War deaths have gotten worse.

It's taken us back to the level of the 1990s.

The world's gotten a bit less democratic than it was.

We're still better off than we were during the 20th century, at any time in the 20th century.

And for other measures like life expectancy at birth, level of education, extreme poverty, after the dip during COVID, we're now at world levels.

So it's a mixed picture, and that's the way progress is going to be.

But is it still the best time to be alive throughout all of human history?

Would you rather now not be alive now than at any other time?

Putting all things together, yes.

What about 1982?

That was such a good year.

What?

I'm just, to me, I don't know.

All right.

So you're at Harvard.

Trump's had you, the university in his sights.

Where are you with that?

There was a ruling just this week.

Trump had a lot of reversals in federal courts.

Maybe this is the way that people will be able to stop some of the things they don't like that he's doing.

The ruling was that Trump can't freeze some of the

money that he took away from Harvard because their, let's be honest, their anti-Semitism.

You laugh.

Is that not true?

Well, three out of our last four presidents who served longer than a year were Jewish.

Three out of our last three provosts were Jewish.

The chairman of the board is Jewish.

40% of our university professors at the top rank are Jewish.

It's certainly an anti-Semitic institution.

Well, I've also seen a lot of Jews lately who

are not really for Israel.

Well, that is true.

That's a new thing.

But the university is committed to academic freedom.

People can say what they want, just as they can under the First Amendment.

And so

there are going to be people who are going to say obnoxious things, and the university can't fire them for that.

Now, I think Harvard has messed up in a number of ways, and

not in the interest of Jewish students, such as being very confused about protests that crossed the line from just expression of opinion to disruption and intimidation.

They were slow in coming up with a coherent policy.

There are some centers at Harvard that have, Harvard has about 400 centers, completely separate from their departments.

Some of them were taken over by activists and became kind of centers for anti-Israel studies, so to speak.

There have been mess-ups that were documented in the anti-Semitism report.

But nonetheless, the Trump administration broke the law in just cutting off funding for everything, including cancer research, robotics research, energy research,

without stipulating exactly which regulations Harvard broke and without giving Harvard a chance to reply.

But Harvard's endowment is over 50 billion, right?

They couldn't dip into that?

No.

No?

No.

Well they can, they have to kind of tide some researchers over, but 80% of it is earmarked for specific things like scholarships, like endowed professorships.

And also the math doesn't work.

Given the scale of Harvard's research, it would be eating its seed corn and it would spiral downward if it did that.

That sounds like bullshit.

I mean, you have

a pile of $50 billion.

And I'm not saying what Trump did was right.

I mean, it has nothing to do with what he was going after.

But we'll leave that aside.

But it's not like he didn't have a point about what colleges have become.

Am I wrong about that?

I read some study that said only 2% of people, the professors at Harvard, work

called themselves conservative.

That's not, for people who are always talking about how great diversity is, there's there's not a lot of diversity of opinion.

Isn't that a problem at elite universities?

It's a little incestuous.

Oh, and I've been among the first to point that out.

I've been a pretty strong critic of Harvard.

I co-founded the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard to push back on these things.

But nonetheless, the Constitution doesn't authorize Donald Trump to fix that problem.

No, correct.

And I don't trust him to fix that problem.

I don't either.

And the way he tried to fix it is illegal and violates the First Amendment.

So he lost in court.

Let's get to the subject of your book.

Okay.

Your book is, I loved it because I felt like it continued on from a book that I really love, which is Sapiens by our friend Yuval Harari.

It's about, they're both a lot about belief.

You know, he went into the idea that many of the things we do as Homo sapiens, We're the only species that does it because we have beliefs.

You can only get like a hundred apes to act cooperatively.

But you can get a million people or more to march with a cross because they all believe that Christ is God or Muhammad or whatever.

We believe in money.

We believe in crypto.

Yes.

We believe in invisible things.

And you go into, I think, what is the tipping point of that.

When, what's the phrase of the book?

When everyone knows.

That everyone knows.

Okay.

So explain what that means.

Yes.

So when everyone knows, that everyone knows.

When I know something, you know it.

I know that you know it.

You know that I know it ad infinitum.

That's called common knowledge.

and it is a prerequisite to coordination, for people being on the same page.

Money being an example.

Why do I accept a green piece of paper in exchange for something of value?

Because I know other people will accept it.

Why do they accept it?

Because they know that still other people will accept it.

What's crucial is not so much belief, and I agree with Harari that

social constructions, things that exist because people think they exist, are crucial for human interaction.

But the crucial thing is you can't just believe in them.

Because if you're the only one, then it doesn't exist.

What makes it exist is you believe that everyone else believes that everyone else believes that everyone else believes something.

That's what allows it to become its own reality.

When the kid says the emperor has no clothes, suddenly everybody who kind of was thinking that now believe because it was said out loud?

Well, yes, and the story of the emperor's new clothes is a story about common knowledge.

Because when the kid blurted it out, he actually wasn't telling anyone anything they didn't already know.

They could see the emperor was naked, but he still changed their knowledge because by blurting it out with an earshot of the others, now everyone knew that everyone else knew, that everyone else knew that everyone else knew.

And what that allowed them to do is change their relationship with the emperor from obsequious deference to ridicule and scorn.

And the thing about common knowledge in the social realm is that it's what props up our social relationships.

And so when something is blurted out, then it can change everything, changes the nature of your relationship with someone.

And we do have sort of a modern version of the emperor parable, which is Joe Biden.

I mean, he was the emperor who everyone wouldn't say had lost his marbles.

No, that the.

I mean, is that not really the same story?

It is the same story because opinion polls showed that after that disastrous debate with Trump, the number of people who thought that he was cognitively impaired didn't go up by that much, went up by a few percentage points.

But before it, a majority of people thought that he was cognitively impaired.

The difference is when it's on TV where you're watching it, you know that the rest of the country is watching it, you know the rest of the country knows the rest of the country, then you can't, it's no longer private, it's common, and that's when he was challenged.

That was the end.

Okay, so I agree.

That happened.

We all saw that debate, and everybody changed their mind.

Why didn't it happen when Trump debated a few weeks later and was ranting about the reading the dogs,

the reading the cats.

Because I thought that was the moment when everyone was going to go, oh wow, this guy really is off it.

But nothing.

Trump has rewritten a lot of the rules because there are a lot of norms.

Yes.

Literally.

Yeah, and figuratively.

Because there are a lot of norms on just what politicians can do, can say.

They're not enforced by law.

There's no law that says you can't insult the physical appearance of your rival or of a woman.

You can't blatantly lie.

They're propped up by the knowledge that you just don't do that.

Why don't you do it?

Well, everyone knows you don't do that.

What he discovered was if you float that in public and you

live another day, then the norm is gone.

Because the norm depended on everyone knowing that it was a norm.

Then when he exploded it, it was gone.

Don't you think it has something to do also with the confidence with which you back up your bullshit?

I mean, he

we're going to talk about the economy on the panel.

I think he has for the economy, I don't see good things on the horizon.

Steve will just obviously argue with me about that.

But Trump has what I call contagious confidence.

He is so bullish and so competent.

Everybody, well, he must know what he's doing.

And at some point, I think it falls away.

But with the dogs and the cats thing, I think people, when we first heard it, we were like, come on, man.

they're eating the dogs?

We know they're not eating the dogs.

And yet he said it with such confidence that you can get by.

Yes, and he, well, and above that, he, even for people who knew that this was nonsense,

in the past it was, if you blatantly lie, you've killed your credibility forever.

You've at least got to pretend that you yourself think that you're telling the truth.

It's not clear that he actually believed it, but just by making the

whatever he says

and removing statements from the realm of things that you can fact-check, you can verify, just if the charismatic leader says it, that's good enough.

That is

a new norm that he established by getting away with what no previous politician, including conservative politicians, would dare.

All right, well, we'll follow up on that right now.

Great to see you, Professor.

It's a fascinating book.

Congratulations on it, and let's meet our panel.

Thank you very much.

Okay.

Hey.

All right.

Here they are.

He is Trump's.

That's President Trump TU, former economic advisor and co-author of the book, The Trump Economic Miracle and the Plan to Unleash Prosperity Again.

Steve Moore.

Steve, it's been a while to see you again.

And she is CNN's Chief White House correspondent and anchor of the sort with Caitlin Collins, airing week nights at nine.

Caitlin Collins is here with us on the panel.

All right.

So

Steve, it's been too long.

Remember, you were on the old show a lot?

You've become almost a conservative all of a sudden.

I have not.

I have not.

That is a misreading by stupid people.

But

well, I do find myself agreeing with you a lot more than I used to.

Yes, because there's so many woke assholes on the other side that for me to be be in the same...

Anyway,

we'll get to it.

So the economy is much on people's minds because the numbers are bad.

Or are they?

That's the thing.

We don't know what's the truth anymore.

Now, last month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics person came out with a bad jobs report and Trump fired her.

Right.

Okay.

Then you went to the White House.

I think we have a picture of you.

I was there, actually.

Oh, you were there.

You were there.

I was standing right in the room with Steve.

Okay, and Trump saw that you were saying he had good numbers, and shockingly, he liked that.

And invited you in to show your chart.

And can I tell you, we had like 10-minute heads up when that happened.

We didn't know we were going to the Oval that day, and they abruptly scrambled us in, and then we won't get away with it.

Trump didn't know he was going to do it.

He just.

No, he didn't.

So now there's a new guy there, a new head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, E.J.

Antonio.

He's 37 and went to a community college.

Well, he's not in yet.

He's been appointed, but he's not, he hasn't been in the city.

But I think that the new job numbers are even worse.

Is this his numbers, 22,000?

So the new guy,

his numbers now, no good too?

Well, the new guy isn't in yet.

Whose numbers are these that we're in?

The bureaucracy.

Oh, they were deep state.

The deep state.

Look, I mean,

it was a poor report, no question about it.

But, you know, so many of the other signs of the economy, I actually think the economy is strong.

I'm very super bullish.

I mean, we were producing more oil and gas than ever before.

We've got pretty low inflation.

We've got finally control of the border.

We've got a record stock market.

I mean, these are all pretty strong indicators the economy is headed in the right direction.

This is exactly what we said when he fired Dr.

Erica McIntarfur, who was heading the BLS, which is that they said the numbers were rigged, that it was the result of deep state, and they weren't doing the numbers properly.

Of Of course, now they come out today and they're just as bad, which shows that the numbers actually are an indication of where the economy is and where it could be going.

I mean there's fewer job openings than there are job seekers.

That hasn't happened in five years.

U.S.

manufacturing contracted.

I thought we were doing the tariffs to kind of have the opposite effect for the sixth straight month.

Some people said it's going to be worse than the Great Recession.

The Big Beautiful bill is going to add $3.4 trillion, they say.

I don't know if that's bullshit to you, but that's

what that's what they have.

But some of this stuff, as I remember from you,

would make me think that you should be one of the biggest anti-Trumpers ever.

I mean, weren't you always against the debt and running up numbers and this kind of stuff?

What do you say about that?

Well, look, I am a free trader.

Every time I see Donald Trump, he says, there's Steve Moore.

He doesn't like my tariffs.

And look, I'm not a big fan of his tariffs, but I will say this, and look, I've heard you say on this show, that some of these trade deals, Trump has used the threat of tariffs to get some of these countries to give America a fair deal and to level out the playing field.

And I'm all for that.

I mean, he's got a deal now with China, he's got a deal with the Europeans, he's got a deal with Canada, they're going to bring money into the United States that's going to create jobs for Americans.

I mean, what's wrong with that?

Nothing except that he's alienated all of our allies, and he's also alienated.

I mean,

the biggest thing that's wrong with that is that he turned India.

India was supposed to be the counterweight to China.

China is not our friend.

Okay,

but there's only two countries with a billion-plus people.

And the other one was India.

And they were on our side.

And suddenly, we've got 50.

He just turned around.

I remember him holding hands with Modi.

Yeah.

Holding hands.

Well, that's Jeesh holding hands with Modi.

Yeah, now Modi's holding hands with the other guy.

But this is the question we've asked his trade people who are in there now, including Peter Navarro that you know, Steve, which is they're sanctioning India because of their buying and importing Russian oil.

China's doing way more than that, and they have not been tariffed for bringing in Russian oil, and they're bringing in way more than India is.

And I think that is why Modi and the Indians have had such a falling out with the White House over that discrepancy.

They're being punished for something that someone else is also doing who's not being punished for that.

There's no question China is the new evil empire.

There's no question about it.

I think Trump's strategy is to try to unify the world against China and to isolate them.

But he's not.

He's doing the opposite.

He's uniting them against us.

What we're getting out of this is that these countries have been taking advantage of the United States.

Why is it that our tariffs have been so much lower than theirs?

What's wrong with telling these countries, you better bring your tariffs down for our farmers, for our manufacturing workers, for our technology companies?

It's working out.

Well, that may be true, that we have been taken advantage.

To a degree, that is true.

I mean, he's not the first one to say that about China.

I remember when he said they're motherfuckers.

That was always, suddenly I thought it would be a big scandal.

They're like, well, no, they kind of are.

They do some really bad things.

But again.

We need a counterweight to China because they are the other superpower of the world.

So the last thing we would want to do is get India on their side.

I agree.

I mean, we had this meeting.

We saw it.

I mean, they've never had these four guys in a room at the same time.

Multiple.

Right.

Xi, Putin, Kim Jong-un, and the president of Iran.

This is Batman and the Joker.

I mean,

the Joker and the Red Rubber and I don't know, comic corporate,

Dr.

Doom, whoever the fucking bad guys are,

they're all ganging up on us.

This is a terrible...

This is not, whatever the tariffs were going to bring us, this is not worth it.

And Brazil, by the way.

Why Brazil?

Another one we needed on our side.

And I assume that's because his boyfriend Bolsonaro is under.

What else?

Why on?

I asked him about this because whenever he put the tariffs on Brazil, you know, the argument had been any country that has a trade deficit with us, a massive one that is taking advantage of us, we're going to do this to punish them.

And one day he came out for chopper talk, as it is, before he gets on Marine One.

And I said, why are you putting tariffs on Brazil?

They have a massive surplus with us.

What's your reasoning?

And he said, because I can.

That was truly his argument.

Oh, well, look, if you don't like tariffs, and I don't like tariffs, and you can get other countries to lower them by using American leverage, I think that's a good thing.

And I think most Americans would agree with that.

You know, the I can thing.

Yeah.

That's the way he does all his business.

I mean, here's his quote about Intel.

I said, you know what?

I think the United States should be given 10% of Intel.

Now, it sounds like I'm paraphrasing him.

No, that's the exact quote.

You know what?

I think the United States should be given 10% of Intel.

Now, it's interesting.

This is an interesting issue because Bernie Sanders is with him on this.

It's debatable.

I mean, Bernie Sanders said if microchip companies make a profit, blah, blah, blah, America should have a reasonable return on that investment.

When Biden was president, they passed the CHIPS Act.

They gave Intel

money.

Okay, let me finish.

They gave Intel money.

Right.

Just gave it to them, basically.

And Trump is saying, no, America should get a peace.

But, Steve Moore, you're the guy who said, I hate this idea.

Right, I do.

I hate, look, you always talk about on the show separation of church and state.

I believe in separation of business and state.

I don't think, right, we don't want businesses to be coming to Washington for all these types of favor.

And so

the point is, we gave, we should have never given $10 billion to Intel in the first place.

I mean, they're a loser.

And the stupid thing is,

Intel's losing money and then we're going to give them money, but Google's making money hand over foot and we're going to sue them.

I mean it just, what we're doing in Washington is rewarding the losers instead of rewarding the winners.

Well speaking of winners and losers,

he had a little

dinner there.

Was it yesterday?

Was it last night?

Yes.

Every talk about the Riddler, the Joker.

Every.

It was amazing to watch everyone's faces as the other person was talking and just to.

Okay, this is every major motherfucker who's in.

Who's in the tech world?

And let's be honest.

That's how they labeled it on the White House sky.

That was the pyramid.

Every major motherfucker.

And let's be honest.

The reason why our economy has kicked ass so much is technology.

We have the biggest tech companies in the world, and we just have been dominant.

And the reason why I think the economy is still up there is because AI.

AI is to what is us to now what the dot-com stuff was in the 90s.

You know, Clinton rode that.

He's writing this.

Trump, I'll give him this.

He's always lucky.

And all the money's going to AI.

All these guys, Sam Altman, that's ChatGPT, that's OpenAI, Zuckerberg, Tim Cook from Apple, Sunday Pichet from Google, Bill Gates, Nadella from Microsoft, oh my, everybody was there.

They're here, Bryn, all of them.

And this is them sitting around, and I want to show you a piece of tape, and then we'll just ask the question, is this healthy?

Very grateful for your administration support.

We look forward to working together, and thanks for your leadership.

We're so grateful for that support.

Thank you for incredible leadership.

It's incredible to be among everyone here, particularly you and the First Lady.

I also want to thank you for helping American companies around the world.

And thank you for being such a pro-business, pro-innovation president.

When it comes to ass kissing, is this

kissing the ring, but A, not enough,

B, the right amount of ass kissing, or C, too much.

It's like one on a scale of one to cabinet level, basically.

I mean,

come on, man.

All right, they bent over.

Okay, I got it.

But these are, I mean, you got to give the credit,

these are some of the

greatest entrepreneurs and business builders.

And I mean, they're running trillion-dollar companies, Bill.

I mean, it's amazing.

I know.

But also, I think it does require.

Why isn't he kissing their ass?

Well, because they need him and they realize that.

And I think obviously what he has shown us over since taking office is that he will use the power of his office to go after people or universities that don't suit him or don't do what he believes they should be doing.

And all those people at the table could suffer as a result of that.

I mean he was praising Google yesterday, last night at that dinner.

His antitrust division of his DOJ is suing Google right now and fighting them for him.

Which is it?

Which I thought was remarkable.

He was kind of applauding them for having a good day, but the DOJ is suing them right now.

Well, Silicon Valley is,

you said it very well, Bill.

I I mean, Silicon Valley is blowing away the rest of the world.

We've dominated the internet age, and we've got to make sure we dominate the

robotics age, the AI age, the satellite age.

Pretty soon they're going to be flying cars.

I mean, we want to be first in ALA.

They're never going to be flying cars.

They've been saying not since I was in high school.

They're not going to fly cars.

I promise you, they would have had them by now.

It's going to be like the Jetsons, you know.

Okay.

Well, let's get to the really important news.

Taylor Swift got engaged.

And

I could not stop texting people.

I'm kidding, of course.

I can't believe what a loser you would be to have be important to somebody you don't even know.

But that's just me.

But since then, everybody has been giving her advice on the marriage, like some of the people who went.

Charlie Kirk, who's the supremely conservative guy.

I like Charlie, but I didn't realize these people, I mean, it's not just policy.

They want a Christian with three E's, America.

I'm from Alabama.

You can't make fun of me.

I disavow that for anybody wrong from Alabama.

Duly noted.

But Charlie's advice to Taylor was submit to your husband, Taylor.

You are not in charge, you got to change your name.

Okay, that's his honest advice.

Josh Allen of the Bills said, get a good wedding planner.

That's pretty interesting advice.

Oh, see, your

board mate there, Scott Jennings at CNN, said, my advice to Travis is that he has to remember that in this particular relationship, he's not the MVP, he's more like the kicker.

We're never going to hear about you unless you mess something up.

That's pretty good advice.

But they are not the only celebrities.

Would you like to hear what...

Oh, I...

A lot of other celebrities are weighing in with advice for Taylor Swift.

I mean,

Chris Christie said, never go to bed hangry.

That's such good advice.

Dislaine Maxwell said, make sure you both want children.

really

oh

close enough Madonna said don't be afraid to bring new things into the bedroom

for example a Puerto Rican backup dancer

Army Hammer said surprise your wife by making her dinner

also sometimes you can cook for her

Angelina Jolie said, if you're looking to adopt a kid, I got a guy.

Pete Hegsa said, schedule a date night once a week.

And also, find time to see your wife.

Kanye said, naked wife, happy life.

Arnold Schwarzenegger said, hire a really ugly cleaning lady.

Joe Biden said, vote for Joe Biden.

And Lyle Menende said, once you become parents, seriously, don't fuck that up.

Okay.

Now, before we use up all our time talking about economics, maybe we'll have time to go back.

I do want to talk about RFK a little bit because that was one of the big stories this week.

We saw a little bit of the tape there.

It was quite an event yesterday.

Were you there for that one on Capitol Hill?

No, we were just watching from afar.

But I was at part of his confirmation hearing, and I thought that was one of the craziest hearings I'd ever see.

I mean, this was probably,

I'm not kidding, it was one of the most contentious of the year.

Even people who were on, supposedly on his side.

Yeah, typically it's just the party in the minority who's going after the

person who's testifying.

This was Republican and Democrats going after him.

And he was also pushing back on these Republicans, like Bill Cassidy, who was instrumental in getting him confirmed to that job.

I mean, I personally find this very disappointing because I am the person who was sympathetic to what he was trying to do.

A lot of people like me who didn't think that the orthodox way of Western medicine was, not that we're against Western medicine or vaccines, I'm certainly not, but just like there's another way to look at it and a lot of stuff they were doing wasn't the right way.

There was much too much about pills and surgery and not enough about preventive care.

I mean, one of the first issues we ever did on my old show was called America Causes Cancer.

It's the toxicity, it's the environment.

I said said many times, I never had a Western doctor who ever said to me, Mona, what was wrong, what do you eat?

It just never came up.

I said, finally, we have a guy in there who cares about this stuff, but he's also just nutty.

He's just too nutty.

He just does not listen.

I mean, he just is.

And nothing ever, I call it pendulumism, nothing ever stops in the middle.

Okay, this needed a house cleaning in the CDC, but to fire all 17 of the top people.

Now you don't have that voice in there at all.

You just have your voice.

It's just, he's got to go.

And it just pains me to heard it saying because I like him.

Well, look, I'm personally very pro-vaccine.

Vaccines have saved millions and millions of lives.

I was surprised so many of these Democrats were talking about how important vaccines are.

I mean, the guy who saved millions of lives with vaccines was Donald Trump when we did Operation Warp Speed.

I mean he should have probably won a Nobel Prize for that.

That saved millions and millions of lives.

And so, you know, right, he should have gotten that.

He's hugely important.

But I also believe, Bill, that the reason there's been a bit of a backlash against vaccines is because the government was forcing people to take vaccines.

Correct.

And that

is something I'm against.

And also not putting any

stock in natural immunity.

Even if you had the disease, you still had to get the vaccine and also giving it to two-year-olds who would never get outrageous.

Outrageous.

So there was stuff to be done.

I mean again let me put the broad picture out there.

I had Andrew Huberman on two weeks ago here.

I think a lot of people pay attention to him and they should about medicine.

He's one of the smartest guys we have.

And I asked him a question.

I said the reason why some people come, so many people come against me on this is because I think they think that of all the things we could possibly know about medicine, because we've advanced so much and how the body works, we probably know 90%.

And I said, I think it's probably more like 20%.

And Andrew said, I think we're at 10%.

So if we're only at 10%,

we don't know if this is the truth, but yes, everything should be looked at.

But, I mean, for Bobby Kennedy to say, as he did last month, by September, a couple of months, by September, we will know what has caused the

autism epidemic.

Well, it's September.

And, you know, I was going to do a joke.

Yeah, we found out it's the Cheetos.

But

showing you that you can't parody reality, it's not the Cheetos, it's the Tylenol.

But can I say two things on that?

One, I questioned him about the autism deadline.

He actually pushed it back because anyone, I mean, this has been studied for decades.

And obviously, there are a lot of parents and medical professionals who want to know what that is.

And it's not something you could just do in three months.

But on the mRNA vaccines and Operation Ward Speed, I mean, it was truly built on mRNA vaccines.

It was an amazing technology that everyone watched happen in real time.

And the production that was accelerated by the Trump administration.

The CDC has canceled hundreds of millions of dollars in mRNA vaccine research that they were doing.

And so that is what the Republicans were putting to him, saying, do you believe that Trump deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for this?

And then do you also believe that that was an mRNA vaccine that saved lives?

And that was where he stumbled a lot in his questioning yesterday that puts him at odds theoretically with his boss.

Yeah.

So you know all the scuttle, but on Capitol Hill.

What is going to happen here?

Is he going to be able to survive?

Yeah, I think until the president loses confidence in him, he's fine.

I mean, and the Republicans who were

giving him tough questions yesterday, I mean, they voted to confirm him.

He is already in the job.

He's about as safe as he can get unless the president decides to change his mind.

And he's given no indication of that.

So again, this is what, this is leaked.

This is from the, we don't have his report yet, but this was in the Wall Street Journal, apparently, that pregnant women's use of Tylenol is potentially linked to autism.

There have been a couple of studies about this.

Is it true?

I don't know.

It's not a case, in my view, where you can say completely, that's just crazy.

It might be crazy.

Tylenol is not,

you know, not some banana.

I just took one before we came on the show.

Seriously?

Can I say that's a report that he is going to put out a report that says that from the HHS.

And obviously that's a very serious link to make that medical professionals that I have seen have not yet made.

And so that is really the question here is that if you're going to put out something saying that this is the cause of autism, people want to know that it's backed up by science.

Right.

But we might not have that science because it's sometimes

that Tylenol is completely benign.

Because people have died from too much Tylenol, too much just that emetophen.

It's not a completely benign drug.

It has a very serious effect on it.

You can take too much of it.

RFK for a minute.

One of the things that is really bad about American health care is we have a,

when new drugs are being developed, we should let these drugs go to the market, especially if they're dealing with cancer or heart disease or multiple sclerosis.

The FDA holds these things up by five to ten years, and it's actually killing people.

So why shouldn't we allow these drugs, let people try the drugs, use them to save lives?

But that's something that Kennedy wants to do.

Right, but that's, I think, your point is that there are parts of his platform that have widespread consensus.

And it's how a lot of Republicans, I think, got over the line to vote for him and because of his popularity.

That was not the center of the debate, though, yesterday.

That's not what he was being grilled over by Republicans.

No, but why should Americans, I've known Americans who've had to go to Mexico

to get stem cells.

Why can't we do that?

It's idiotic.

I totally agree.

People should have the right to try these things.

The FDA holds them up.

And Milton Friedman used to say that that agency kills people, because if a new drug comes out and saves 50,000 lives, why'd you hold it up for 10 years?

I mean, they went after him about antidepressants,

kids taking antidepressants, because he's made sweeping statements about that.

Again, nothing happens right in the middle.

But do any of us really think that putting kids on all these drugs when they're young doesn't have an effect?

That isn't

part of the problem with why there are school shootings and

kids doing crazy things?

Of course it is.

I remember Ariana Huffington coming on our show the first year talking about Prozac.

That was the issue that made her famous.

She was right then, it's right now.

We put kids on drugs way too early, way too often,

and then we wonder why they're using street drugs when they're 20?

Because they never knew what sobriety was.

They definitely would have put me on Riddlein if they'd had Ritalin back then, because I was bouncing off the walls.

And especially for boys, those drugs just sit there and stay strapped in your chair.

You're still bouncing off the walls, Steve Andrews.

And we're very glad to see it.

So

I mentioned to Dr.

Pinker there at the beginning, federal judge rulings.

I mean, we talked about the one freezing of federal grants to Harvard, but this looks like a trend to me.

This week, federal judges ruled tariffs are illegal.

His tariffs are illegal.

They ruled the National Guard being sent here to LA, illegal.

Wartime powers to deport Venezuelans, illegal.

Ousting a member of the Fed.

There's a good one, Steve, for you.

Do you think the Fed should be neutral?

Because he wants to take over the Fed.

This has always been

what?

This has always been a case where we separated the two for good reason.

We did not want the Fed to be influenced by

passing phase political considerations.

Yeah.

Well, look, I definitely believe in an independent Fed, but I also believe that the Fed should be accountable, and they haven't been very accountable.

I mean, they're the ones that let the prices go up by 21%.

You know, when Biden was president, it wrecked America's family.

But how do you mean accountable?

They're appointed to

14-year terms.

If Trump can't get rid of the Fed, then who can get rid of him?

They have to be accountable to someone.

Now, with respect to this woman, Well, no, they don't.

That's like saying the Supreme Court has to be accountable.

They're not accountable.

I'm sorry.

That's where the bucks are.

That's the problem.

I mean,

they're like a road agency that can do it.

They're one of the most powerful agencies in government.

They have control of our money supply, and they're just flooding the economy with cheap money.

With respect to this.

No, no, no.

He wants to do that.

He wants them to cut interest rates.

They're holding the line on that.

He wants the cheap money.

Well, look, my point is that...

Other than that, your point is that I'm going to talk about this.

I'm not necessarily in favor of that, but all I'm saying is that

Jerome Powell is no saint.

Let's put it like that.

But with respect to this woman,

Trump picked Jerome Powell.

He did.

And every time I say her, he said, I should have never picked him.

And I said, you're right, sir.

He makes mistakes now and then.

But

look, this woman who is on the Federal Reserve, who Trump wants to get off the Federal Reserve Board, she is alleged to have committed mortgage fraud.

Now,

look, why do you go?

Because it's like when the cop pulls you over because your taillight is out.

I mean,

mortgage fraud.

Are you serious?

Yes, I'm serious.

This mortgage fraud is what caused the housing crisis.

Millions of Americans committed mortgage fraud.

Every study shows this is what caused the collapse of the American economy.

This is a very serious thing.

And she didn't do it just once.

She did it on a number of occasions.

She has to go.

It got confirmed that she did it.

Well,

and the DOJ's investigation.

this is actually one of the things people did.

They would claim that the residency was their principal.

I'm just saying this book hasn't been found guilty of anything.

No, that is true.

She has not been, she is innocent until proven guilty.

But

I've got to tell you, I've talked to people at the Justice Department.

They think they got her dead to rights.

I'm sure.

Sure, of course, because the Justice Department is run by Trump Stooges.

We've got to go to new rules.

Thank you.

You guys are very entertaining.

All right.

Let me get to it.

New rule, now that this guy is back on the cracker barrel logo,

let's also make him the new logo of the Republican Party.

The elephant never really made sense, but an old white guy in overalls, yes, that's the grand old party I am.

Oh, and the barrel, that would be perfect for the Democrats.

It's wooden, it's splintered, and it's almost as old as Steny Hoyer.

Nero, let's be honest about why movies at film festivals get 15-minute standing ovations, because the people in the audience worked on the movie.

Frankenstein brings Venice to life with monstrous 13-minute ovation.

The rock sobs as the smashing machine gets 15-minute Venice ovation.

We get it, Europe.

You know how to clap.

You know when Americans clap?

When the Boeing we're on lands safely and we die.

New Rule, I have no issue with Bobby Kennedy and Pete Hegseth teaming up to issue a fitness challenge to the rest of America, but they must try to look less like Hans and Fran.

This picture doesn't say let's make America fit.

It says we want to trump you up.

New rule, after we congratulate Senator Corey Booker on his recent engagement, he has to explain why his engagement photos look like an ad for prescription drugs.

Because these pictures don't make me think, great, now we can run for president without the stigma of being a bachelor.

They make me think, don't let moderate to severe ulceratocolitis stand in your way.

Ask your doctor about Saraxia.

New rule, if you're a MAGA man and you buy this new Trump daddy t-shirt,

someone needs to explain gay culture to you.

You see, Trump is the daddy.

He gets to wear the daddy t-shirt.

You, on the other hand, wear the t-shirt that says, daddy's boy.

And finally, new rules.

Someone has to ask cops, why aren't you insulted that Donald Trump thinks so little of of you that in city after city he's sending in military troops to do your job?

Why doesn't that piss you off?

So

in case you took the summer off from following the news, and who could blame me if you did,

America is now a country where, first in LA, then in Washington, D.C., and soon coming to a city near you,

the new normal is troops in the streets.

The exact thing we've never done here, except for true emergencies, and the thing we most don't want to become normal.

So here's what happened.

Remember Doge, the Elon Musk-helmed Department of Government Efficiency that brought in a teenage squad of tech geniuses to reduce the size of government and didn't even do that?

Well,

one of them, a 19-year-old named Big Balls, got jumped in D.C.

last month by some other teenagers, one, a 15-year-old girl.

So Trump called out the National Guard.

Because when Donald Trump was a little boy, someone forgot to teach him the difference between a policeman and an army man.

But there is a difference.

The Pentagon is not Paw Patrol, and

SEAL Team 6 is not Adam 12, and

we don't need to send in the Marines to pacify Shakeshack.

Like they say on Law and Order, the cops and the Navy are two separate but equally important groups.

And if you don't believe me, ask the village people.

Trump says, I'm not a dictator, I just know how to stop crime.

And I take him at his word because when has he ever told a lie?

But

I will say this, page one of the dictator handbook is pretexts.

You find a pretext to do what you want to do anyway.

Say you want to invade another country.

Well, you say that some some people of your ethnicity living in that country are being persecuted.

Voila, reason to invade.

But as pretexts go, big balls getting mugged, that takes some big balls.

Now, that's not to say crime in D.C.

isn't an actual problem.

It is the 36th most violent city in the country.

Not as violent as Little Rock, Arkansas, or Shreveport, the city represented by noted crime boss Mike Johnson.

But.

D.C.

has had 194 carjackings this year, most involving guns.

That's not Mayberry.

Poor Big Balls got carjacked on a date, which shocked everyone.

Not that he was carjacked, that he was on a date.

Now, you're way ahead of me.

All right.

Trump brags about the 87% decrease in carjackings in D.C.

since the troops moved in.

Yes, military states can reduce crime, point conceded.

Will militarizing our cities make them safer?

Yes, but not safer for democracy.

Once it's normal to have an army loyal to you already in the streets, game over.

That is how all future political disputes will be decided.

Folks, it's not worth the trade-off.

Everything in life is a trade-off.

You want to reduce traffic fatalities to zero?

Stop using cars.

You want to eliminate drug overdoses?

Make the penalty for possession death, like they do in Saudi Arabia.

But we're not the cut-off his hands people.

Qatar is a lovely place to get a free plane.

I wouldn't want to live there.

And not for nothing, when the teenagers were beating up big balls, it was plain old DC cops who rolled up in a regular police car and arrested them in progress.

So, yeah, the system needs improving.

What system doesn't?

But we're not a DEF CON one.

That's a pretext.

And it's not like we don't already have a lot of cops.

America has 750,000 sworn officers, 800,000 if you count the ones on TV.

There's state cops, local cops, county cops, sheriff's department, the highway patrol, ICE, FBI, DEA, TSA, ATF, U.S.

Marshals, Border Patrol.

Washington, D.C.

alone.

has Metro Police, Capitol Police, Secret Service, Park Police, protective services police, housing police, police for the U.S.

Mint, schools police, transit police, airport police, and I shit you not, they even have a library police.

You fuck with the Dewey Dessel system, your ass is dead.

Or take my town.

If you drive from Santa Monica to Burbank, you pass through the jurisdiction of six different police forces, which is stressful if you live in Santa Monica and your Coke dealers in Burbank.

Oh, we got cops.

We got a lot of people with guns and a license to kill.

And I'm not even saying we don't need most of them because this is a country that's a madhouse full of heavily armed, deranged, ranting crackpots and conspiracy theorists and just crazy motherfuckers.

Civilization is a mile wide and an inch deep.

We need our cops and should appreciate them.

But I also,

and I'm going to put this as kindly as I can, don't want the military picking up some of the bad habits cops have.

I don't want the Marines eating doughnuts.

I don't want the National Guard getting free-blow jobs from streetwalkers.

I don't want G.I.

Joe getting the blue flu.

Women should not have to worry about the 101st airborne pulling them over for driving while pretty.

I know the cops love Trump, and I know why.

Unconditional love.

Well, that's not the right approach, and neither was the attitude from too much of the left that cops were the enemy, all racist thugs who needed defunding.

But I would ask every cop to ask yourself, why is your boy disrespecting you so much now, telling you that we need to bring in someone better than you who can really get the job done?

It's like getting your mom to beat up the school bully.

Fuck the police.

This is more like cuck the police.

All right, that's our show.

I want to thank Steve Moore, Caitlin Collins, and Steven Pinker.

Club Random drops every Monday on YouTube for listening to every Get Your Podcast.

Now go watch Overtime on YouTube.

Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.

You were great.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher every Friday night at 10, or watch him anytime on HBO On Demand.

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