Ep. #706: Charlie Sheen, Tim Alberta, Ben Shapiro

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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 very much.

I appreciate it.

How are you?

Thank you very much.

Okay,

thank you for coming

on a somewhat difficult week.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

Well.

I hope that's for what I think it's for, because I've always wanted to be someone who wants to talk to people.

It was a very ugly week in America with violence of all kinds, political violence, regular violence, a lot of people talking about a civil war.

And then today in Congress, because Charlie Kirk got assassinated, Lauren Boebert stood up and said, we need to have a prayer.

So they started to have a prayer, a silent prayer, and then she started screaming, no, silent prayers get silent results.

As if praying out loud gets big results.

So then the Democrats started screaming at her that there was a school shooting in her state.

I tell you, so far the Civil War is not very civil.

But at least we have the killer now.

It's somebody named Tyler Robinson.

He is a stay-at-home son.

22-year-old white kid from Utah living with mom and dad.

They said he acted alone.

I'm sure this is not the only thing he does alone.

And here's a new wrinkle.

Now, the assassins are writing on the bullets.

Have you seen this?

This is not the first time.

He wrote on the bullet, if you're reading this, you're gay, laugh my ass off.

Because, you know, if you're going to be an assassin, have fun with it.

Also, he wrote, you know, hey, fascist, catch.

See, Gen Z, I tell you.

That's so Gen Z.

The ends justify the memes.

And

yesterday, the president weighed in on this.

He said, violence and murder are tragic consequences of demonizing those you disagree with day after day, year after year.

And that goes double for dogs, fat pigs, and terrible persons.

And

today they asked the president, what are you going to do to bring the country together?

And he said, I know this is going to get me in trouble, but I could care less.

He's a different kind of cat.

His message is, let the healing stop.

Okay.

His message, not mine.

Don't fucking.

No, he had a rough week.

And this shit has to stop, too.

He went out to dinner.

I wouldn't have done that.

in Washington, D.C., okay, and people started to gather around him and they were chanting, you're the Hitler of our time.

Okay, first of all, assholes, he's not Hitler.

Okay,

an insult to everybody in the Holocaust to begin with.

Second of all, calling somebody Hitler makes it a lot easier to justify things like assassination.

Let's put a shitload of that away, shall we?

And also, no, I'm not.

I'm not saying he's popular.

You know, he went out to dinner there in Washington, D.C., the kitchen had to send out for more spit.

But he's not Hitler.

And then,

to add to his bad week, the House Oversight Committee, they released a redacted copy of Jeffrey Epstein's 50th birthday book.

He had a 50th birthday party.

You know, people put together a book where people write in, and a lot of people wrote in this book.

Bill Clinton's in there, Dershowitz, a lot of world leaders, a lot of titans of industry.

I am not in the book.

I did give a blurb for the cover.

But that's

But there's an alleged letter from Trump that alleged, he denies it.

I want to be very clear because they're very litigious.

I got one going.

I can't do any more.

But no, alleged, completely alleged that Trump wrote in the book.

I don't know.

It is entirely possible that Jeffrey Epstein had two close friends named Donald Trump.

Absolutely.

We don't know.

He denies it.

But, you know.

They asked Trump about it this week and he said it's a dead issue.

And he keeps saying this and you know, he keeps wanting this to be a dead issue and it keeps not being a dead issue.

Something keeps coming up about the Epstein thing.

I'm not saying he's looking for a distraction from this, but if you're a Venezuelan, I wouldn't go boating this weekend.

That's all I'm going to do.

Oh, also.

This is also big news from the southern hemisphere, from Brazil.

Bolsonaro, the president down there who is on trial for trying to steal the election, was convicted for trying to overturn the election that he lost.

Trump is furious about this.

He accused the entire government of being a functioning democracy.

And

one last thing, kind of big news.

The Catholic Church, Catholics here, you have your first millennial saint.

Okay, all right.

Never had a millennial saint.

It's an attempt by the church to bring young people back into the fold.

Another option, stop molesting them.

All right, we've got a great show.

We have Ben Shapiro until Malberta.

The first up, oh my gosh, I'm so glad he's here.

This is going to be so much fun.

He's an actor.

He was always the number one in whatever he did.

He's now the subject of the two-part documentary on Netflix, aka Charlie Sheen, and the author of the book of Sheena memoir.

Charlie Sheen is over here.

Charlie, Sheen.

Thank you.

All right.

Hey, Carl.

Been a while.

How are you?

How are you?

Look at you.

Charlie, thank you.

Charlie,

so amazing.

You're amazing.

I had you in the Deadpool like so many people.

And yet here you are, I got to tell you, your memoir,

I watched the Netflix documentary last week, and I thought, oh, you know, I have it all weekend.

It's three hours long.

I'll watch an hour, Friday, an hour.

I couldn't go to the bathroom.

I mean,

there was ever a life that was meant for a memoir.

And then I read the book.

I couldn't stop putting that down.

That's amazing.

Thank you.

Well,

I mean, your excess is our entertainment.

And no ghostwriter.

This was not told to Phil Pepe.

I don't know who that is, but...

He did all the sports books.

Ah, okay, yeah, sorry.

No, I made a decision early on that's not the way I was going to tell my story

because I've always been kind of curious about how somebody can then go promote something and say that they wrote it when they, you know, told stories over the phone to a stranger.

You can tell it's your voice.

Oh, right on, right on.

Thank you.

And your spelling.

What?

Am I wrong?

Yeah, no, you're not wrong.

Yeah, because

in my mind, fucking has, you know, two Ks.

And an EN,

and cool just feels cooler with a K.

Well, I mean, you are a cool cat, and you prove it, because you have nine lives.

I mean, the stories, it's like one of those things from like the old West.

And it's all true.

Like, he really did kill a man just for snoring.

That's not in the book.

No, no, no.

Not that.

I'm just saying, I'm making it embarrassing.

I'm like, all the stories, like you really did

try crack for the first time while getting blown.

I mean, it's interesting

that you mentioned that.

I don't recommend it.

Which one?

But I highly recommend it.

But that wasn't to sensationalize

the act of that or the drug itself.

It was more about just giving a prime example of how the introduction to that drug had that attached.

And so I knew that like anything past that was going to have to mirror that or in the mirror doing that.

That was stupid.

And

yeah,

or it wouldn't feel the same, you know.

I'm just saying the human body is amazingly resilient.

I mean,

it really is.

And you especially, you actually do have tiger blood, is really what the punchline of the whole thing is.

I don't know a lot of other people who could have survived the amount that you did.

Yeah, no,

it was, you know,

revisiting all that stuff and then wanting to

take the reader, take the audience

deep into...

into those wells, you know,

I could sort of,

I had, you know, I was telling the truth and everything, obviously.

You can see that on the page, you know, but there were those moments of like, how am I able, like, why is it me writing this?

This should be somebody else writing about the memory of this guy because it was to a level of stuff that shouldn't be survived.

Well, a lot of people who would go through such a thing would then say, the fact that I'm here is evidence that there's God.

Now, that's not why my approach would be to it.

I don't know.

Right.

I mean,

would you say that?

Or if not, what is it evidence of?

I think it's evidence of something,

I don't call it God,

but I also don't

take any credit for

whatever that force is that

did choose to keep me alive.

And if that's God to some and others, that's great.

I don't reject that, you know, but

yeah,

it's an interesting thing.

And like,

you know,

my goal was to was to finally put all the stories out there

and make it, you know,

very, very, very readable, very watchable, and then kind of, you know, put all this stuff to rest and tell people moving forward, if you're curious about any of that stuff in the past,

you can watch it,

you can read it, or you can listen to it, you know?

And I thought, okay, yeah, it's going to quiet quiet things down.

And not the case.

Not the case.

Because I went into some areas that I've been keeping back here.

Because you're a bit of a folk hero, even when you went through the real crazy period.

And I remember doing jokes about it here, the 20s.

I hoped you would be doing jokes about that shit.

I mean,

that was a fucking mess.

The winning era.

It was a mess.

Well, it was a mess.

To say the least.

But,

and, you know people did not hate you for it.

I mean you went on that tour I think it sold out in 18 minutes.

I think it's the record for how fast somebody something sold out.

Seriously, wow.

Yeah.

Wow.

Because

there was nothing about that tour worth applauding.

No.

Wow.

Wow.

No, but people did like in

some way vicariously want to be that guy who can just give the finger to society, which, you know, I think keeps them down and they're not having a great life.

And this guy just says what he wants and does what he wants.

And you did too much drugs, but you had fun with it.

I mean, Matthew Perry sat in that seat not long before he died.

And I know you wrote about it in the book.

I did.

And it's a similar kind of addiction, but I feel like his was sad.

I don't feel like he had the fun you had.

I think you hurt your body and hurt other people, truly, but you had fun all the time.

Well, yeah.

The party, you know, generally included others.

You know,

it included

extensive invites, you know, and I'm sorry that you weren't invited.

No, I don't mean that.

No, no.

No, no.

No.

I think you're glad you weren't.

Well, I mean,

I'm glad now that it comes out that you're half gay.

No.

Not half.

Which half?

Well,

I mean,

this one I did not have on the bingo card, that at some point, you know,

you're very upfront about it.

You also, you said you turned the menu over, which I assume means, and then men, and you were with men.

Which were you?

Were you the

know.

Oh, you mean like when you're changing the fitted sheet and it says top or bottom?

Yeah.

Yeah.

No,

it never got there.

But everything else.

No,

and the reason that, you know, I've been just sitting on that stuff and I know there's been rumors out there and people talking about different things.

And I was finding like,

you know,

I know what it feels like to,

you know,

the energy

and the stress and the fear of hanging on to

those experiences.

I didn't know what it would feel like to just say, here,

this is a small part of my journey.

Okay.

A brief part of my journey.

But

isn't that how you imagine you got AIDS?

Well, it's interesting.

Well, it's not, it's HIV.

Okay, sorry.

Yeah, no, it's fine.

And yeah, that's why it's where it is in the book.

I don't come out and say that, but I do place it there in the chronology of events to talk about, okay, yeah, then it went to here.

These people came in, we turned into that thing, and then,

you know, as I...

And how are you with it?

You look completely healthy.

Oh, thank you.

No,

I remember you

when you first came out, it was 10 years ago, and you were talking about it.

And you were saying, look, I mean, it's great that they have these drugs, but and then you said the word poopy pants, that was part of the problem with the drugs.

Yeah, I mean, that was.

Was that over?

Yeah,

that was the drugs and tons of whiskey.

Yeah.

And there's, as you know, there's poopy pants with whiskey without those drugs.

So,

no, but.

Yeah, you're right.

I'm glad I wasn't invited to.

But

I thought one of the greatest insights in there is when you talk about the fact that when you did bad things, and I think you're, I think what we can take away from this is you did bad things, but you're not a bad guy.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And

a lot of people

in your life

stood up for you in this documentary.

You didn't have to.

John Cryer is in it, and Denise Richards is in it, and Chris Tucker, and lots of people, your kids.

I mean,

but you say something so interesting, and it's important, I think, for people who are considering being a drug addict.

That when you did bad things,

you weren't mad at the person, Chuck Laurie or the wives or the girlfriend.

You were mad that the drug wasn't working as well as it used to be.

Drug addict kids, Two words, diminishing returns.

Yeah.

Especially Coke and those kind of drugs.

They have diminishing returns.

And when they didn't give you that feeling that you're always chasing,

that's what pissed you off.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

It's a frustration that

you can't fix.

And then

it's being confronted with the potential realization that,

you know, it's

it's got to be

adios, you know?

Well, I think the other great insight there is that we get from the book and the documentary,

you had a life with no consequences.

That's why it was very few.

That's why you were allowed to do this.

I mean, I remember when Trump was on the tape saying when you were, you know, the grab pussy tape.

Right.

And he says, when you're a star, they let you do it.

And I feel like that's the catchphrase for your, when you're a star, they let you do it.

And that's how it got so out of control.

Right, right.

There were no consequences for a while

until there were.

You know what I mean?

And then big time.

And then big time.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, I think you're well prepared now for a third act.

I know you haven't really worked a lot lately, but I think you should.

I think you're at a place now

where you could be a really...

I mean,

when you put your mind to it, In those movies, those big movies you did, you were quite a good actor.

It wasn't like you glided by just on the charm and the whoopie pants.

Thank you.

Thank you.

No, that's...

I think you should, and this is the kind of age where the actors are really good.

You should really,

you should do it.

You should get a really good job, do a movie, people are ready, you came clean.

So that's what I'm looking forward to.

But be patient, correct?

Waiting for

that great piece of material.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Don't do schlock.

Yeah, no, no.

No, I'm not going back to work on Monday.

I mean, what are we doing?

Right.

But, but.

All right.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

Cool.

Thank you, though.

Those are lovely words.

I appreciate that.

Glad you're still here with us.

Likewise, Charlie.

Charlie Seen, all right.

I'll see you soon.

All right, let's meet our panel.

Hey, guys.

All right.

He's a staff writer at the Atlantic and author of The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory.

Tim Alberta back with us.

Tim, how you doing?

And he's a co-founder of The Daily Wire and author of Lions and Scavengers, The True Story of America, and her critics.

Ben Shapiro.

Ben, how are you?

All right, so

I didn't realize this was going to be kind of a theme show because we write our editorial before the week starts, and so it was all about freedom of speech.

Then the assassination occurred, so this is turning into a theme show.

But it is kind of interesting that this guy was shot.

And he's been on our show, been on my podcast.

I talked to him.

I liked to him.

I like everybody.

I talk to everybody.

I think I'm glad I took that approach.

But he was shot under a banner that said, prove me wrong, because he was a debater.

And too many people think the way to do that, to prove you wrong, is to just eliminate you from talking altogether.

So the people who mocked his death or justified it, I think you're gross.

I have no use for you.

The people who are saying now we're at war, I have no use for you.

So my first question, true or false?

I think the real war is not between left or right.

It's for the people from the it's between the people on both sides who want war and the people who don't

I mean, I think that's accurate.

I knew Charlie for 13 years and when he was a kid, he was like an 18-year-old kid when I first met Charlie in the Breakers in Palm Beach and he was fundraising, running around, and I watched watched him grow into a man and watch him get married and have a couple of very young kids.

And whatever you thought of Charlie's views is irrelevant.

The fact is that what he made his living doing and what he actually did quite well, made himself really good at this, was just going and talking to people on the other side.

And that's

what he was killed doing.

He was literally in the middle of answering a question and picked up the microphone and was shot in the throat.

And we do have a serious problem in this country with people who believe that violence is the proper response to speech.

And that that does skew young.

I mean what the polls tend to show is that of Gen Z only 58% of Gen Z believes that there is no excuse for violence in response to speech, meaning that 42% believe that there are sometimes that violence ought to be a response to speech, which is deeply terrifying.

I mean on a personal level obviously I have 24-7 security.

I've had 24-7 security for a decade.

I've spoken at a lot of college campuses.

I never honest to God thought that we were going to get to this point.

Even the assassination of political figures is not the same thing as just being being shot in the throat for the crime of debating issues in the public square.

And I thought wrong.

I thought that that's not what America is or what it should be about.

And we've come to someplace incredibly dark in our nation's history.

And

I weep for the country, I weep for Charlie.

It's horrific.

Yes, sir.

Thoughts?

Yeah, you know, to Ben's point,

a lot of the polling we've seen in recent years is all pointing in the wrong direction on this question about how acceptable political violence is.

And,

you know, I did not know Charlie.

We were sort of sparring partners from afar at times, disagreed on a lot of things.

I've got to say, one of the things that I really, really admired about the guy, especially over these last couple of years, I kept seeing these clips of him on campuses, on your podcast, talking with Gavin Newsome on his podcast.

He wanted the debate.

He wanted the dialogue.

He was not trying to cancel or censor or shut people down.

He wanted to have those conversations with you.

And

it's just, it's tragic and it's terrible on so many levels.

This is a young guy, he's a husband, he's a father, child of God.

And he was killed representing the very American ideal that we settle our fights with words, not with weapons.

Which sounds cliche, but it's how we're here.

It's how this experiment in self-government works.

And when that starts to fall apart,

we've seen a lot of political violence in recent years.

I mean,

I was with Steve Scalise in the hospital after he was nearly assassinated.

Gabby Giffords, January 6th, the attempts in Butler on President Trump's life.

And sadly, the response to this has not been shock and horror and a reversal of the trend line in these polls.

If anything, it seems as though, particularly to Ben's point among younger voters, that this is becoming mainstreamed and becoming acceptable in some way.

And also, the governor of the state said

social media is a cancer, which I think is true because when you read some of the comments from people,

they really are such in a bubble that they don't understand that it is happening on both sides.

And I think the only way this starts to get better is if both sides admit, okay,

let's not have this debate about who started it.

Let's not have the debate about who's worse, because plainly both sides do it now,

and the right has done it too a lot.

Now, here's a, somebody wrote,

these are looking like Civil War times.

They fired the first shot at Ashley Babbitt.

Okay, Ashley Babbitt was in the January 6th riot.

No one was going after her.

She was part of a riot that shouldn't have happened in the first place.

She got killed attacking law enforcement, or maybe she wasn't, but people were.

The second Donald Trump, okay.

The guy who shot Donald Trump, we don't know what his politics were.

That's just a disaffected nut, okay?

And the third Trump and the fourth Charlie Kirk, our side hasn't fired a bullet.

Your side has fired a lot of bullets and used hammers on Nancy Pelosi's husband and used firebombs on the Governor Shapiro's house.

I mean, again, I think that if we actually want to get specific and do the litany and try to break it down, a lot of these people are indeed mentally ill, but I think that when people say political violence has to stop, to to me, that's too vague.

It's the same thing saying violence has to stop.

Yes, true.

How is that useful?

The reality is that as somebody who receives an inordinate amount of death threats, and I know the kind of death threats that Charlie was getting, you can break down the death threats and where they are coming from.

And if we are not politically correct, then we understand that if there's a shooting at a synagogue, it is very likely to be either a white supremacist or a radical Muslim.

If it is a shooting of a Republican politician, it is very likely to be a trans-Antifa Marxist shooting.

That is just not.

We don't know what this kid is.

We do know this kid was of the left.

We do know that.

We do know what?

That this kid was of the political left.

That is according to contemporaneous reporting from The Guardian as well as Tablet Magazine today.

It's two days out.

We don't know shit.

We don't know shit.

They never do.

The Internet is undefeated in getting it wrong to begin with.

It's not about the Internet.

That's

about the actual reporting by mainstream acceptance.

The Guardian is not a right-wing.

Here's what we heard.

Here's what I was told so far, and I'll tell you what was wrong.

First, I heard he's a registered Republican.

Not true.

Not true.

Okay.

Then he was a donor to Trump.

Not true.

His father works in the sheriff's office.

Not true.

There was a picture of him wearing a pro-Trump shirt.

Not true.

Member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

Not true.

We don't know what he is.

How are you so sure he's of the left?

Now, I agree when you write on a bullet.

What did he write on the bullet for?

Catch his fascist, which is also a gamer thing.

Okay, but now I'm hearing he may have been part of that group for whom Charlie Kirk was not right-wing enough.

I mean the Groipers, yes.

I mean, so that would be...

But you're sure he's not that?

I'm not sure that he's not that.

Well, a minute ago you were sure he was.

Hold on, Bill.

Hold on.

Okay, because I've been...

You were.

The extreme high likelihood, given the fact that he said to his family that Charlie Kirk was too hateful, is that he was not a Groiper, because the Groipers would have said that Charlie wasn't hateful enough.

Okay, let's be very, like, I know this movement.

Okay, when it comes to the point that I'm making is there are permission structures that have been created in certain areas of our politics, and in particular, there is one on the left that is, again, very far radical left, trans-Antifa Marxist, and then there are two that are semi-on-the-right, white supremacists and radical Muslims, depending how you decide that you're going to actually categorize those things.

The thing that all these groups have in common is a structure,

a philosophical structure that says there is a system that is targeting me.

That system is a system of power and it is deadly to me.

Therefore, I am excused in using violence against that system.

That's the thing all of these movements have in common.

And that we need a cognitive behavioral therapy in our politics that says that that is not true.

That if I say a man is not a woman, that is not a genocidal threat to you.

That if you say that you have a differential policy on immigration, that is not a threat to me.

That if you say that you believe that Western civilization is superior to radical Islam, that that is not a threat to me.

And again, I don't think that those permission structures are equally distributed across the political spectrum.

I mean, I think you are projecting your own intellectual, rational world onto people who are not living in that universe.

But I want your thoughts on this.

I think in part, Bill, maybe the problem is that we have not broadened out sufficiently the definitions of political violence.

What I mean by that is, you know, when we see a transgender person shoot up a Christian school, that is in fact political violence.

When we see a white supremacist shoot up a synagogue, that is in fact political violence.

And I don't know that we as a society, I mean, we tend to go back to the 60s and think about Bobby Kennedy and MLK in a sort of narrower definition of what political violence is.

But in fact, if you were to consider sort of a bigger, more sweeping definition of much of the civic unrest that has begun to grip this country over the last, I would say, 10 to 15 years, actually quite a lot of it would fall into that category of political violence.

And that's where you need institutional leadership.

You need people who are in a position, whether it's in politics, government, whether it's in media, business, social media, whatever it is, starting with the three of us, to actually convey to people, hold them accountable, hold ourselves accountable, that this is not okay, right?

To Ben's point, that is the difference of what's going on with the younger generation.

It is very different than that old kind of political violence we talk about.

Luigi Mangioni is the best example.

Yes.

Not just that.

Do you remember about a month ago there was a killing in New York City?

Somebody was going after the NFL.

Okay, that seems a little irrational to begin with.

Didn't get the NFL, got off at the wrong floor, and killed someone in real estate at Blackstone.

This is a lady who works at Blackstone.

It's a big real estate company.

Internet flooded with people, nothing to mourn here.

One of them said, 1,000 Americans die from situations her company exacerbates.

That's real different.

When you're just unhappy with society is, how society is, and you want to blame people who, you know, we all have a little stake in what makes society not work perfectly.

That's a place we really can't go.

Well, those are the permission structures that I'm talking about.

That is a permission structure that says the healthcare system doesn't work the way that I want it to work, therefore Luigi Mangion,

shooting to death, the United Healthcare CEO, CEO is somehow justifiable.

And when I say permission structure, it does not exist equally on both sides for that.

I mean that I was very critical of Bill Burr, he and I got in a big fight about this.

Bill Burr literally said,

he said this repeatedly, free Luigi in the aftermath of that.

That is not a joke.

Okay, I'm sorry, you don't get to, you're a comedian.

That is not a joke, free Luigi after a murder.

And this sort of despicable behavior does raise the temperature.

If our body politic is basically a pot of water and you keep turning up the temperature, it's going to bubble over.

And young people are desensitized to this in ways that I don't think we can appreciate.

I mean, when you talk about even the generational juxtaposition, looking back at the 60s, for example, the shock and trauma that the country was going through in the wake of those assassinations, it's just night and day to where we are now.

I mean, these videos of Charlie being assassinated have tens of millions of views online.

Think about what that does to the body politic.

Think about what it does to the individual, but then think about what it does to the body politic.

And the social media system is so perverse.

I mean, these are snuff films films of my friend getting shot to death.

And those snuff films, they're people who get some sort of sick thrill from that.

And those are the next assassins.

And a permission structure that allows that, whether that's a social media or a political infrastructure that refuses to call out the movements that, again, say that other political arguments make you an enemy, a threat to my life that requires me to take action.

Any movement that does that is doing something deeply wrong.

All right, I have to cover many issues on this show, so moving on.

You know, this is like the worst segue I've ever done.

We like to give marriage advice here on the show.

I can't even.

And who's better than me?

So we saw this story at Todes Pridge, a guy named Arthur Sahakian.

His wife, who's Iranian, I think, by birth, and was here, her green card lapsed, and ICE arrested her.

And the husband, still backing Trump,

even though ICE came and took his wife away.

And so we thought we'd put out a pamphlet

for people who might need the called signs your husband loves Trump More Than He Loves You.

You like to see what's in this?

Okay.

He hugs the flag more than he hugs you.

Well, there you go.

That's

he turned his man cave into a ballroom.

Well

He's on the kiss cam with a woman from work at a League Greenwood concert

When you ask why he's always in the bathroom, he says that's where he keeps his top secret files

These are disways

It is phony put your your mother under the Department of War well

When you're sexting after he comes he types thank you for your attention to this matter

When he wants to have anal sex he calls it invading brownland

Oh, and if you don't have an orgasm, he says it's because your vagina is rigged.

All right.

So

I want to show the video of the Philadelphia Karen.

Have you heard about this story?

There is a lady.

There's a kid in, this is not the first time this happened.

There's a whole spate of things on the internet of adults snatching stuff from children.

What the fuck is wrong with with this?

But this woman in Philadelphia, somebody, the ball went in the stands.

I don't know who got it first, but she went over and took it.

Oh, here she is.

There she's confronting the father.

I got the ball, and look what he does.

He gives her the ball.

I just think this guy is my hero this week.

He's de-escalating.

He de-escalated something.

Can we do that?

Hey, listen, these are Philly fans.

These are the people who booed Santa Claus.

Just remember that, okay?

So this should not come as a surprise.

Okay.

Now let's talk about the other horrible violence we saw this week.

And of course, this is the kind of violence that happens every day to lots of people of all races and so forth.

This happens to be a white girl on a train who was killed by a black man, so people are making a lot out of that.

But this happened in Charlotte, North Carolina.

It, to me, is tailor-made for a Republican victory because the mayor there in Charlotte,

of course she said prayers and thoughts go out to the victim.

And then she is not villainizing those who struggle with their mental health or those who are unhoused.

She couldn't give, she couldn't resist giving a shout out to the mentally deranged homeless demographic.

I'm just going to say the Democrats are going to lose another election if they don't get it.

You can say homeless and crazy.

We could say those words.

And you can come out against this fully.

You You know, why not just do a land acknowledgement before you say this for fuck's sake?

And

this guy was, the guy who did it, had been arrested 14 times.

I mean,

this recidivism, this is Trump's next low-lying fruit.

I'm sure.

Because when you look at some of the stats of people, I mean, like in Washington, D.C., they say 500 people are responsible for 70% of the gun violence.

What is the point of arresting people if they go right back on the street?

What is the point of mass transit

if nobody feels safe on it?

You know,

traditionally, Bill, Democrats representing urban areas had taken these sort of soft on crime policies in part because they were afraid of alienating a core constituency, black voters.

What's interesting is that even as polling has shown clearly that more and more black voters have advocated for tougher policing policies, many of these same Democratic politicians have remained very reluctant to get tougher on crime.

Why?

Because they're afraid of alienating a different demographic

white liberals in the subject.

It's so racist.

It's kind of saying we think the black people are the criminals.

Some are.

Not most.

Not most.

Implicitly, the argument that we have to be soft on crime to help in order so that black votes, like black people want crime,

of course it is.

Of course it's racist.

And the idea that you're going to leave people on the street because they are crazy is so benighted.

Honestly, it's cruel to people who are severely mentally ill.

Truly.

Like leaving a bunch of people who are schizophrenic, homeless schizophrenics on the street, not taking their drugs is not good for them.

It's not good for society.

And releasing people back onto the streets after 14 arrests.

And then you know what the mayor said?

She said, you know, we can't incarcerate our way out of this problem.

Well, actually,

actually,

you can.

It turns out that you can.

It's certainly part of the solution.

Well, I mean, they're talking now.

Trump, I think, is talking now about bringing back what we used to call an insane asylum.

I'm sure that's a terrible word now.

Mental institution.

Whatever the fuck.

It doesn't.

We know what it is.

And we know the argument against that.

Yes, you don't want to be the person who somebody who you don't even know says, you know what, you're crazy, because we are all a little crazy.

But then there's just crazy, crazy.

And the fact that, you know, we let this situation, again, Trump takes advantage of all these things that Democrats just let fester.

That life, you know, on mass transit becomes this game of Russian roulette where you are on the streets many places where you just have to dodge and just accept the fact that there are some nutty people out there who could do God knows what.

By the way, the victim in that case, you know who she was wishing for?

Daniel Penny.

Right?

Daniel Penny.

Reminder Penny.

From the New York subway.

Remind me.

So Daniel Penny was on the New York York subway, and a deranged, homeless man was threatening people on the New York subway, and he was black, and Daniel Penny was white, and Daniel Penny put him in a submission hold, and he died.

And Daniel Penny was tried, and he was treated as though he was a racial criminal for this.

You wonder why nobody will step in and nobody will stop anything?

Maybe because you won't put enough cops on the street to stop this.

And then if a civilian steps in to try and stop it, you try him while giving everybody cashless bail in the city of New York.

That would be the reason.

He was exonerated.

Yeah, but you don't want to to go through a trial on me.

No, no, no, no.

Nobody wants that.

Listen, listen,

this whole thing is broken.

The conversation around policing and crime is broken.

And the left owns so much of the fault here.

Just to be clear, again, treating this as it's a political issue, this is overwhelmingly performative towards white liberals in the suburbs who themselves, when they come into the city for a ball game or for whatever else, have safety concerns.

But it's sort of sort of

what Rob Henderson says, right?

Socially and politically unacceptable to express that belief in certain circles.

But it's interesting because, you know, Donald Trump's approval on the issue of crime is far and away higher than any other issue for him.

The economy, immigration, you name it, everything else.

His highest approval ratings are on how he's handled crime.

And yet, we saw a polling this week that showed that even a lot of the voters who agree with his approach to crime did not approve of him sending the military into Washington, D.C.

So when I say the conversation is broken here, it seems as though we have a lot of noise coming from sort of two extremes here when the great majority of Americans live somewhere between the 30 and 40 lines.

The military was not the answer, in my view.

I covered that last week.

But could I make a suggestion to the Democrats, get out ahead on one of these issues?

Pick the Assane asylum issue.

Get out ahead on it.

90% of New Yorkers I read, they're for that.

Getting the crazy people.

No kidding.

It's one area where the right wing is like, you know, big government, go ahead.

Right?

Like more funding for involuntary government for people who are mentally ill.

Gavin Newsom, who's now ahead in the polls, told you.

Told you.

He's for it.

I mean,

what will it take to break the spell for the Democrats before they can get out ahead on this?

Because I know what's going to happen.

They're going to be the Johnny come lately's as they always are.

After Trump demonstrates in the polling that they're behind him on this, like taxes on tips and all those other ones, then they're going to come along and go, oh yeah, no, we're us too, and that never works.

Trump has a magic power, which is if he says something, the Democrats must take the other side of the thing.

So if he says crime is bad, Democrats are like, well, is it though?

Let's give it a second thought.

Maybe it's like we can live.

Maybe it, you know,

it's a thing that happens.

We can't incarcerate anything.

They're not saying that, but, you know, this was a good example.

All right.

Final issue.

Israel struck Qatar this week.

And of course, in the legacy media, which always thinks inside the box, this was a terrible escalation of the war.

I think it was fine because, you know what?

Thank you.

Thank you, one guy.

Two guys.

This war, which has now been going on for almost a couple of years,

I mean, I wish they would wrap it up.

I don't know what's left to bomb, but I'm not in the IDF.

Maybe it's overkill, but Coleman Hughes made a great point.

He said, you know, maybe it was overkill when the North burned Atlanta to the degree they did, but you still wouldn't say that the North was on the wrong side of the war.

Okay, having said that, it's also been a war on hypocrisy.

Israel just had it with people being able to get away with things only they were not able to get away with.

And they just said, you know what, Iran, Lebanon, Syria, you can't hide anymore anywhere.

And Hamas was being ordered and run from luxury apartments.

These These guys were living in luxury lifestyles while

their people were starving and living in tunnels.

And Israel said, we're not going to put up with this anymore.

You are not safe anywhere.

And as this was the anniversary of 9-11 yesterday, I thought it was very apropos to mention that after 9-11, George Bush said his doctrine was, we will make no distinction between the terrorists and the people who harbor them.

I don't remember anybody objecting to that.

So why would anybody object to this?

I mean, it is quite terrible, obviously, to go into an allied country and a country allied with the United States and kill terror heads like, you know, Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, which is what we actually did.

Right?

Like, the idea that they should be immune because they are in Qatar is ridiculous.

Also, I will say Bernie Sanders, who is, of course, extraordinarily anti-Israel, he should be grateful to Israel because all these people were billionaires, and Israel just rid the world of a multiplicity of millionaires and billionaires who happened to be Hamas terrorists

living in Qatar.

I mean, I think the only answer

is a good impression.

I appreciate that.

I think, Bill,

the one answer, I think, potentially to the question you just posed is how'd that work out for George W.

Bush, right?

There is, you know, there is something about unintended consequences geopolitically.

And ultimately, W.

Bush, I think, by the end of the war on terror, had frayed alliances all over the Middle East and all over the world, really,

because he had overextended himself a bit and was a little bit maybe too cavalier.

I think that would be the risk people would say if you're just looking at this analytically, what is the downside potentially of striking inside Qatar?

That could be the risk, right, is that you have regional allies, you have allies elsewhere

who may take exception to it.

Okay, but they didn't invade Qatar

and they didn't occupy it.

They didn't get bogged down.

Now they are bogged down in Gaza, but that's we understand why that happened.

Now again, I don't know when this war should end.

I wish it would end tomorrow.

I mean, I don't know who else you can kill over there.

But

the problem is, obviously, the hostages.

How do you declare the war over when you still have 20 hostages who are in tunnels?

That's really the political problem there.

But on a military level, basically, Gaza City is the only thing that has been left relatively untouched.

That's why that is the IDF's last target.

This is going to end, I believe, in the next two to three weeks.

You will see a declaration of the end of the war by the Israeli government.

You will see a movement of most of the population into humanitarian centers in Rafah and humanitarian enclaves on the coast, coast, and then you will start to see a rebuilding because.

Let's end this show on a positive note there.

All right.

Thank you guys.

Let's hope that's true and time for new rules.

Okay.

New rule, if people are going to keep throwing dildos at sporting events,

a phenomenon which started in the WNBA but has now spread to football and golf,

We have to hire the ball boys from the U.S.

Open to run out and retrieve them.

Just like at a tennis match.

And then they should throw them back in the stands and give America's Karens something to really fight.

Nero, now that Trump has posted this image of himself declaring a military incursion into the city of Chicago, Chipocalypse Now, someone must tell him, Chipocalypse Now sounds like a high-end cookie store.

Nero, just because Hitler famously had a retreat in the Bavarian Alps called the Wolf's Lair doesn't mean that this restaurant that opened in Queens called Wolf's Lair is doing it as some sort of nod to Hitler.

It's purely a coincidence.

It's a nice restaurant in a great location right across from Klaus Barbecue.

New ruler, now that Spirit Airlines has filed for bankruptcy for the second time in less than a year, they have to change their name to Dispirit Airlines

and then market themselves directly to Gen Z.

Disparate airlines.

We can't even.

Neuro, the trainers at a French marine zoo whose job it is to sexually stimulate a killer whale until it climaxes to keep it from ingreeting.

have to look on the bright side.

Sure, you spent four years earning a degree only to spend your afternoons jerking off a whale, but

it's the kind of job you'll never lose to AI.

And finally, new rule, you can love America and still be okay with burning the flag.

President Trump wants to make that illegal, and I know for conservatives, this is an issue that really drives them up a wall that Mexico isn't paying for.

But that's the great irony.

Flag burning is free speech, and free speech is one of the key things that makes America great.

So now that I have you on my side on that issue, don't be a hypocrite and defend attacks on speech from the left, because you either get the concept or you don't.

And sadly, a lot of people don't anymore.

Yes, mostly the young who were never taught it by their derelict educational system.

But also Lisa Cook.

she's the Fed board member Trump is trying to fire for bullshit reasons, and they are bullshit.

But when she tried to get another professor fired because he once, according to one student, was less than rapturous about Martin Luther King Day,

no, she should know better.

She said free speech should have its limits.

Yes, it should and does, and this comes nowhere close to them.

It's bad enough that Trump is attacking free speech from the right, throwing the Associated Press out of the press pool, calling reporters enemy of the people,

threatening and suing networks simply because he doesn't like the coverage.

This country can't become that.

But it also can't become what the UK is now, a place where you get arrested for tweets.

Something that happens 12,000 times a year now in Britain.

Last week, the Irish sitcom writer Graham Linehan, who's won an Emmy and five BAFTA awards, got off a plane at Heathrow and got arrested by five British cops.

Not because he was selling drones to the Houthis, just because he's a crank who spends way too much time online ranting about gender ideology.

Which is an odd obsession for a comedian from across the pond because if men weren't allowed to dress as women, British comedy wouldn't exist.

There'd be absolutely nothing left of Shakespeare but the sonnets and Monty Python movies would be 20 seconds long.

But in the words of that great Brit, Ricky Gervais, if you don't believe in a person's right to say things that you might find grossly offensive, then you don't believe in freedom of speech.

You shouldn't have to eat your words at the airport.

The chicken Alfredo on the flight was bad enough.

So

Linehan may be crude, but there's plenty of non-crazy people, liberal people, who think the left has gone a little mad with trans issues.

Some have expressed that opinion with literary sophistication like J.K.

Rowling.

Some by getting big laughs like Dave Chappelle.

And some are downright ugly about it, like Lenahan.

But ugly is the price of a freedom so great as speech.

Trump tried to disappear someone for writing an anti-Israel op-ed in a student newspaper, which I found offensive, but I still would go to the mat for that person to be able to print it.

And we can fight Trump on this because we have a First Amendment.

England does not.

And the fact that they don't, that's not a feature.

That's a bug.

And it's a bug that's going around Europe now.

In Germany, a guy called a politician a pimmel, which is the German word for dick,

and it triggered a police raid.

What a pimmel move.

A guy from North Yorkshire in Britain faced two years in prison for wearing a Halloween costume depicting the terrorist who bombed the Ariana Grande Grande concert.

Bad taste?

Yeah, bad taste is the whole point of Halloween.

This Scottish man was found guilty of hate speech for a YouTube video where he taught his pug to salute when he said Zigheil.

Zigheil.

Zieg Heil.

Elon Musk watched it and said, I don't see see it.

But, you know, Musk,

Kanye,

this fucking dog,

they're all wrong and they all have the right to be wrong.

Britain is now considering the so-called pub law.

Okay, it's not just about pubs.

It's a workplace bill.

aimed at preventing any kind of harassment in the workplace, including verbal remarks overheard.

Okay, problem is a pub is a workplace.

So is a bookstore.

Would a major chain like Waterstones risk hosting a book signing by a controversial author like J.K.

Rowling?

And pubs?

People go to pubs for two reasons: to drink and to exercise their inalienable right to talk shit.

They're not in the House of Lords.

They're in a bar called the Drunken Cock.

Any Brit will tell you, the food is awful, the weather sucks, but at least you can call each other a cunt.

And now that's gone, it's like making the rule at the dog park, no ass sniffing.

Okay, here's the kicker.

Get this.

Saudi Arabia is having a comedy festival this month.

Really?

Saudi Arabia.

It's going to be great.

If you die on stage, you get 72 virgins.

And

Chappelle is performing.

If you told me years ago that Saudi Arabia would be cool to have Dave Chappelle speak,

and England might arrest him, I would have said, what are you smoking?

All right.

Thank Thank you, folks.

I want to thank my guest, Tim Alberta, Venture Piero, and Starbucks team.

Club random drugs every Monday on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcast.

Now go watch Overtime on YouTube.

Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.

Oh, how kind of you.

Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher every Friday night at 10.

Or watch him anytime on HBO On Demand.

For more information, log on to HBO.com.

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