Ep. #707: WH Border Czar Tom Homan, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), Alex Wagner

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

Start the clock.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much, everybody.

Still here.

Great.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, people.

Thank you so much.

Please, there's so much.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

I know why you're happy tonight.

I'm still on.

Oh, I tell you.

Man,

talk show hosts are going down like blockbusters in the 90s.

I mean, it...

Well, I guess you all heard Jimmy Kibble, my friend, my compatriot.

He's canned by ABC for comments he made about Charlie Kirk's assassin

right after the FCC guy came ahead of the FCC, said he's going to revoke ABC's license.

Let me just tell you something.

I am not intimidated by the FCC, and if President Trump is watching, I have one thing to say to you.

Have you lost weight?

You look terrific.

No, that's not me and never will be.

And we're going to get to all of it, but I think here's it.

Life is fucking weird.

It was 24 years to the day that I made comments on ABC that got me canceled from that network.

And Jimmy Kimmel took my slot.

Did you know that?

And politically incorrect?

Oh, yes, I got canceled before cancel even had a culture.

So a little headline.

Yeah,

this is on my wall from the variety.

White House keeps heat on ABC's more.

This shit ain't new.

It's worse, we'll get to that.

But, you know, ABC, they are steady.

ABC stands for Always Be Caving.

So, Jimmy.

Jimmy Powell, I am with you.

I support you.

And on the bright side, you don't have to pretend anymore that you like Disneyland.

That was always a great part of it for me when I got my ass canned over there.

But I mean, this intimidation on the right is just so hypocritical.

I mean, everyone is scared now, and they're all trying to kow-tow.

Good morning, America, is now changing its name to Good Morning America, even the scum who didn't vote for Trump.

I mean,

listen to this.

Next year, the Golden Bachelor is Rudy Giuliani.

I mean, come on.

You know what?

I'm telling you, everybody's good.

Wolf Blitzer is broadcasting live from the capitulation room.

That's...

And the FCC,

the FCC says they're going to go after maybe next, The View.

They've got a new show lined up.

It's going to be great.

It's called Morning Wood with James Wood.

But I got to say, and I'm friendly with the ladies on the view, but

they didn't say anything about this this week.

Nothing.

You know, because it's never been their thing to weigh in on the issues.

It's just,

you know, it's just an upbeat party show.

That's why they hired people named Joy and Sonny and Whoopie.

So, you know,

girls, let me go out strong, okay?

It won't kill you.

I promise it's happened to me, and I may go out after this show.

We don't know.

We don't know.

And, you know, Jimmy, look, I don't think what he said was exactly right.

I don't.

We don't agree on that.

He didn't lose his job for it.

He said the MAGA crowd was trying to characterize the assassin as anything but one of them because the guy's, the 22-year-old kid in Java, his family was MAGA.

As if a 22-year-old with a trans girlfriend never rebelled against their family?

I mean.

But was he on the left?

I don't know that either.

And I hate to do this.

I'm tipping the end of the show, which I work so hard on to keep a secret from the rest of the show, but it's too relevant.

What I'm talking about at the end, I'm gonna have to say now, which is that it is a fool's errand to try to say that these nuts who do these things are any team.

Jimmy's wrong, I think, to put him in one team.

But you know, look at what this guy is doing.

I mean, Jimmy has every right to be wrong, but look at this guy.

He was doing porn video games with furries.

He was on a game called Furry Shades of Gay 3.

This kid is in his basement with VR goggles on getting virtually ass fucked by a cartoon wombat

and you're going to put politics into this?

This kid doesn't belong in either party.

He belongs in a straitjacket.

He's an outpatient who should not be out.

But you have the right to be wrong or to have any opinion you want.

That's what the First Amendment is all about.

I was defending it last week on this show against what they're doing in England against the left.

Come on, guys, be fair.

Now Trump is going after the New York Times.

He sued them for $15 billion.

He said, they're a mouthpiece of the Democratic Party.

You know what, Don?

They are.

You're right.

And that's their right to be that.

Like, there's not a thousand people on the right who are your mouthpiece?

Okay, that's how we work in this country.

And he is mad at the New York Times today.

He put a tariff on Wordle.

But, you know, this, we can't go down this road, guys.

We really can't.

I mean, today Trump said he was designated Antifa, a major terrorist organization, and they were shocked.

They said, we're organized?

It's

we're not.

There is no organization.

Antique is a broad designation with no identifiable leader and no observable plan, like the Democrats.

So this.

So Jimmy, let me just say, pal, you did a great, funny show for two decades.

You should be proud of that.

If this firing goes for you the way it did for me, you'll get 23 years on a better network

he's the former ice director under president trump and known currently as the administration borders on tom holman tom

thank you for coming here

yes and i mean that since surely the first thing I have to tell you is that Republicans come here.

I was saying on my show a couple of weeks ago, and people I saw from the reactions on the internet were shocked that I mentioned this.

I should have said it before.

They think I don't invite the Democrats.

They think we never invited the Clintons.

We invite them every week.

They've never come.

They think we didn't invite Kamala Harris.

We invited her every week.

She didn't come.

AOC, these people don't come.

The Republicans, they show up and they engage in the debate.

And I know this is a little off your area and we're going to get to your area, but do you really think that they're not being a little hypocritical about the free speech issue now?

It is on Mary.

Look, I've never turned down an invitation.

I think the more we get out there and speak about truth versus fiction, miscommunication that's out there,

I think most Americans, there's a lot of people in this country that hate me because of what I do, but

they have the luxury of knowing, of not knowing what I know and wearing my shoes with 40 years.

So I don't turn down any invitation to talk to anybody.

I'm hoping that when I get done, people say, okay, I get that.

Well, that's what you're here for.

Let's get to it.

What do you know?

You're the border zero.

You used to be head of ICE.

You know all the facts and figures.

What I read, the border is just closed.

Give me the numbers.

We have the most secure border in the history of the nation right now.

And when you have that secure border, that means your national security is stronger.

I mean, in the last four years of Joe Biden, we had over 10 million people come to the border.

And what people need to understand, understand that they want to call it a humanitarian crisis, I get it.

But when you cause that sort of surge at the border, because before the election, I wrote an op-ed saying if Joe Biden became president, we'd lose the border, just because of what he was saying.

End ICE detention, have a moratorium on deportations, award amnesty and

free health care, all these things.

I said, when you make that type of offer, the whole world's going to come to the greatest nation on Earth, right?

So we got the most secure border in the nation's history now, and that means less overdoses of people on fentanyl, less sex trafficking in women and children, less known inspected terrorists crossing a border, right?

The criminal cartels of Mexico are going bankrupt right now.

So secure border helps protect our national security.

Under Trump 45, we have a total of 14 people on terrorist watch lists come across.

Under Joe Biden, over 400.

But the thing that scares me the most is we had over 2 million,

2 million known gotaways.

I say known because they're captured on video traffic,

drone traffic, or sensor traffic.

We know they crossed.

But they weren't captured.

They weren't apprehended.

They weren't vetted.

Who are they?

If we arrested 400 people from nation-sponsored terror, how many of that 2 million came from a country-sponsored terror?

The thing that scares me the most to this day, we don't know who they are, where they're at, or why they came to them.

Yeah, and I think most people are for that.

I certainly am.

You said it was 10 million that came under Joe Biden.

Yeah.

Trump in England said today it was 25.

No, it's 25 illegally here in the United States.

There is, look, they've been talking about 12, 15 million for two decades.

I've been doing this since 1984.

That 12 million is so old.

But we know over 10 million Joe Biden, so we just, let's say we accept the 15 million we've been talking about decades, talking well over 25 million.

Why do you think the Democrats did this?

I mean, it was not just bad for the country to have completely open borders.

I mean, even the liberals understand that now.

It was also bad politically.

Why?

What was it?

I get asked that all the time.

I don't understand.

You know I worked for six presidents with Ronald Reagan.

Every president I worked for, even Clinton Obama, took some steps to secure the border because they understood you can't have strong national security if you don't have border security.

No one did it better than President Trump.

Like Malova, most successful when it comes to border security and the safety of this nation, no one's done it better.

Joe Biden, the first president in the history of this nation that came into office and unsecured a border on purpose.

It wasn't an accident.

It wasn't.

Why?

Why?

I don't really know.

The only thing I can guess is they saw a future political benefit from letting millions of people in the United States, whether they thought they're future Democratic voters.

But remember, when he signed 90 executive orders destroying everything we did, he also overturned the Trump census rule, which means millions of people released in sanctuary cities will be counted in the next census.

What's that mean?

More seats in the House for the Damned.

There's no other reason.

I ask every Democrat I've ever talked to, what's the downside in a secure border?

What's the downside in less illegal drugs killing Americans?

What's the downside in less sex trafficking on women and children?

What's the downside less terrorists come across the country?

What's the downside?

They can't give you a downside.

So it must have solved future political balance.

And sanctuary cities was tremendously hypocritical.

These cities that were not on the border and didn't have the problem.

And then when people started sending them to those cities, they were like, oh, fuck, this is a terrible problem.

Sanctuary City.

I get that.

From day one, I said sanctuary cities for sanctuaries for criminals.

What does that mean?

We just want access to the jail.

The jail, we already locked somebody up and put them in a jail cell because they're obviously a public safety threat, and they're in the country legally.

Let us have access to them.

Because here's what the general public don't know.

If you and I get arrested tonight, you're going to be run through NCIC.

Your fingerprints are taken.

It gets run through NCIC.

But at the same time, it gets run against DHS databases.

So we get a notification.

Tom Holman, illegal alien from this country, just got booked in Holman County Jail.

So we contacted, hey, we want to talk to that guy.

We have a warrant for him.

He's been deported before.

We want him.

And they'd rather release the criminal public safety threat back into the public, which is just stupid.

You're releasing a public safety threat back into public to reoffend.

And they like saying sanctions are needed because it protects immigrants.

They want to report crimes.

You're a victim or a witness of a crime.

They want to feel welcome to come to the police and talk to them.

I'm all for that.

We're not looking for the victim witness.

We want the guy that you locked in a jail cell and the victim witness, they don't want him back in the neighborhood either.

So there is no justification for Sanctuary City other than just a public.

But you would agree that we need some immigration.

Like we used to have a quota, like a million people a year.

Say that's the right number.

We still do.

We're the most giving nation in the entire world.

Okay, so let's say it's that.

And we went overboard for the last four years under Biden, and we let in too many.

Wouldn't it be smarter now to say, now that it's zero, let's let that even out?

We should have had, we were going to have one or two million every year, but we let in 10 million.

Instead of uprooting all these people now, why not just an amnesty?

Okay, it's not exactly culture how you got here.

But the amount of people you're scaring, I mean, I'm going to say to you the thing I said to him when I had dinner with him that horrible night.

And, you know, they hated it, but I I reported it honestly, that he does listen.

He looks you in the eye.

And he didn't not get mad one time when we were arguing about anything, about anything I contradicted him.

And I said to him, and I'll ask you now the exact words, you're scaring people.

Do you really want to scare your own people this much?

He talks about homegrowns are next.

I mean, people are scared, not just illegal immigrants.

And a lot of them are working.

I live in LA.

They're the only people here who do work.

So here's what you don't know.

First of all,

President Trump has promised we're going to concentrate on public safety threats and national security threats, right?

And the data shows every morning I look at 22 pages of data.

The last time I looked at the data was the day before yesterday.

70% of everybody arrested is a criminal.

70%.

Who's the other 30%?

Louder and national security threats.

We've arrested thousands of national security threats.

Most of them don't have criminal histories because they're laying low to do their dirty deed down the road.

And we arrest gang members.

A lot of gang members don't have criminal histories.

But let me get to the point, though.

If you want to send a message to the whole world,

cross the border legally.

It's a crime, but it's okay.

Have due process.

Get order removed by an immigration.

Just don't leave.

It's okay.

Just don't commit another crime.

You're good to go.

If that's the message we send to the whole world,

people are going to coming.

And let me tell you something, there's a whole, illegal migration is not a victim of crime.

But the reason I aim who I am, I've talked and got on my knees and talked to nine-year-old little girls who were raped by multiple members of a cartel just for passing her across the river.

I stood in the back of a tractor trailer and 19 dead people who baked to death.

I ran

operational ice store in Phoenix, Arizona, where smuggling organizations were ripping each other off because their smuggled people were worth more money than dope.

So they go to the house and rip each other off.

They call a relative up and say, I have your brother here.

You owe us $25,000.

They say, no, we agreed on $10,000.

Well, now it's $25,000.

You pay it or I kill him.

And they did.

Bodies are piling up.

They actually called relatives and tortured their son or their brother because they didn't pay the fees.

What I'm saying is,

that's why you have to show those consequences.

Because if you send a message, there's no consequence, and you want to reward illegal behavior, that's not going to stop you.

And I get all that.

And for all that, I thank you for your service, truly.

But what we also see is people being just taken away who are just regular day workers.

The waitress who worked for 14 years at some coffee shop.

And everybody's like, oh, you know what?

We voted to get rid of the bad people, you know, the people you were just talking about, but not Carol.

What's going on there?

Don't you think it's been a little heavy-handed?

Don't you think you've picked up a bunch of people who shouldn't be picked up at all?

It doesn't seem like it was done with a scalpel.

What I think about every day is, again, we prioritize the worst first.

In the numbers show we do it.

What I've said from day one, if you're in the country or league, you're not off the table.

You know why?

Because there are millions of people standing in line, taking their tests.

doing the background investigations, paying their fees to be part of the greatest nation on earth.

If you want to be a part of the greatest nation on earth, there's right way and wrong way to do it.

If you like it or not, the ones who are here illegally cheated the system.

They moved themselves to the front of the line, and they've overwhelmed the immigration court system back nine, ten years, which means that people who are really trying to come here the right way are sitting in the back of the bus, right?

It's just like what people don't talk about, these 10 million, 10.5 million who came to the border in Biden.

Well, they're asylum seekers.

What people don't understand, if you look at immigration court data over the last 10 years, nearly nine out of ten of them will get an order removal because they don't qualify for support asylum.

They're not escaping fear and persecution from the home government because of race, religion, political affiliation.

They're coming here for a better life, and I get that.

But while they're clogging up the system and cheating the system, there are literally thousands of people in this world that really are escaping fear and persecution from their home countries that are sitting in the back of the bus.

So there's a reason we're a nation of laws.

And

if you or people don't like what ISIS is doing, they go scream at Congress.

We're enforcing laws that they enact.

Well, I hope it all gets better.

I thank you for coming here and explaining it.

I appreciate it, Tom.

And ask the president to leave me on one more week.

I got a really funny bit next Friday.

I appreciate it.

Thank you very much.

Tom Holman, now let's meet our panel.

Okay.

Hey.

Just one more week.

I got a funny bit next Friday.

Okay.

He is a former senator from West Virginia whose new book is called Dead Center in Defense of Common Sense.

Joe Manchin holding up his book.

There you go.

And she is an MSNBC senior political analyst and a contributor to the Pod Safe America podcast.

Our returning champion, Alex Wagner, is here.

Very kind of you.

All right, slow news week.

But let's not bury the lead.

Let's just get first into the stunning, breathtaking level of hypocrisy about cancel culture, because apparently cancel culture, and then I do want to get into how complicit the left is in, you know, because everything, nothing happens in a vacuum, and we'll get to that.

We're not too far apart there.

What?

You and I are not that far apart on what's going on.

Yeah, well, we'll find out.

But, I mean, it does seem like cancel culture is really not about left or right.

It's just about who has the power.

And if you have the power, you can do it.

So let's just, you do your thing on this and then I'll vomit.

Bill, no.

Really?

Let me start on this one.

And Bill, let me just say that three, I think four days ago, the President said when he said that this person, this young person who's accused of assassination, basically is raised in a good family.

all the way brought up until he was about 15 years old and he got radicalized by the internet.

We do nothing to reel in the internet.

We do nothing on social media.

We do nothing on cable.

But

if you're in the mainstream or if you're freedom of speech, you have guardrails.

You can't holler fire.

You can't basically slander someone without a repercussion.

If the president really, truly, and I'm begging him, reel in, put Section 230 to the side, put the same guardrails that you have on freedom of speech, and that'll change.

It'll calm it down a little bit.

You can't say on whatever platform you're on, and that platform will be held responsible and accountable, if they let it go on and does damage or harm to someone.

Yeah.

Free speech is not absolute.

I have a list.

You can't slander, libel, direct threats, porn, copyright infringement, inciting violence.

Put all that on our plane.

We can't do any of that.

I think we think that's not what Jimmy Kimmel did.

Yeah,

and I think we're missing a little bit of the point.

The President of the United States said explicitly, Jimmy's next.

And then his FCC chair went out and channeled his best goodfellows impressions and said, we could do this the easy way or we could do this the hard way.

I mean, without the accent.

Well, what is the hard way, by the way?

The hard way, I guess, is, you know,

the FCC getting involved, but instead basically called the Sinclair and the affiliates out to make

trouble, basically, for ABC, and ABC caved.

ABC caved because ABC had caved before because Bob Iger had already paid Trump effectively $15 million as an apology for something George Depanopoulos said.

These guys have decided that the spinelessness is their active stance.

It's funny when they fired me, Ari Fleischer was asked in the press room about it and he said, Americans need to watch what they say.

And everybody was like, ooh, that's

so quaint.

That that was scandal.

And everybody was like, oh, no, Ari Fleischer, that's too far.

Americans don't need to watch what they say.

And now, I mean, these people do not understand free speech at all.

I mean, listen to Mike Pence.

The First Amendment of the Constitution protects against government censorship of individuals.

The First Amendment, though, does not protect entertainers who say crass or thoughtless things.

The fuck, yeah, it does.

What are you talking about?

It's like...

Doesn't protect crass or thoughtless things.

Even England would not go for that.

Well, and Brendan Carr's been like going on podcasts in the time since Jimmy's been taken off the air, saying this is about political ideology.

I mean,

like, give me a break.

This wasn't about whatever Jimmy Kimmel said on Monday.

This is about silencing people who are critics of this administration.

But here's Pam Bondi.

There's free speech, and then there's hate speech.

No.

Hate, that's the whole point, is that free speech means we defend the speech we hate.

The standard test is Nazis marching in Skokie,

a town full of Holocaust survivors.

The Supreme Court says you can do that.

If that's not right up to the line on

what were the

threat, direct threats and inciting violence, that is right up to there.

And they said, no, if you want to have a country with free speech, you let them.

And this guy's talking about crass

comments from...

Let me just say something on this, but you know, I've always said this.

I take constructive criticism well, because it's helped me.

It's helped me not make mistakes and repeat them over, and helped me basically how I would say things and how I approach things.

But the press has been if you.

Well, I hate your tie.

No, I'm good.

I'm good.

It's beautiful.

I'm just.

I wasn't even going to wear a tie.

If I thought for you, I would.

They said you were a brown.

He dressed up for you.

Yeah, I appreciate it.

You know, Ted Cruz, at least Ted Cruz said, this guy, the FCC,

is crazy.

You can't do that.

Get rid of him.

Right.

Well, okay, here's the ultimate irony, though.

Charlie Kirk said,

hate speech does not exist legally in America.

By the way, I've always been on the same page.

Look at the tapes over the decades.

This has always been my thing.

I never believed in the concept of hate crimes or hate speech.

It's a thought crime.

We didn't used to have it.

They changed it, the liberals.

And, you know, so I've always been what I think, doesn't matter what side.

Hate speech does not exist legally in America, says Charlie Kirk.

There's ugly speech, there's gross speech, there's evil speech, and all of it is protected by the First Amendment, Keep America Free.

Could you guys at least honor the person you're insisting that we honor by honoring his words?

The administration's wizard of Oz, Tucker Carlson, has come out

and said that this isn't.

He said that what Pam Bonnie said isn't okay.

Megan Kelly also said what Pam Bonnie said isn't okay.

They haven't weighed in on Kimmel, but I am eager to hear their thoughts because I think it is an extension of what Pam Bonnie was talking about.

Well, I mean,

I think we've moved the goalpost so much now because of what Jimmy Kimmel got fired for that we forget that as abhorrent, I at least feel it's abhorrent, a lot of people in this country apparently don't, it would be to mock somebody's death, even if you disagreed with them, completely abhorrent, but not illegal.

I'm sorry.

And this idea that they have, that they seem to be pushing, that we can't even utter his name, like he's the Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him.

No, this is, and again, we should call out those people.

Somebody on your network got shit canned, Matthew.

I think the official term was let go.

Okay, this is.

Matthew Dowd said you can't be saying these awful words and then not expect awful actions to take place.

Yes, you can.

I do expect that.

I do not expect awful actions to take place.

I think this is awful when you open this window.

Like, I didn't like what he said, and what he said was vile, and this and that.

Irrelevant.

Irrelevant.

We don't shoot people in this country.

And we don't defend it, and we don't mock their death.

You just.

There's no place for violence in this country of any kind.

But when there is violence, to have it in the political arena, the hardest thing I've got right now, Bill, is getting people to run for office.

People, good quality people, character, raised properly, in for the right reason, putting a country before themselves or before the party.

That's hard to find.

And when you do find them, they said, I don't think I want to go through all that scrutiny and people beating on me and calling me names and my family and all this.

I said, that's a small price to pay for a wonderful country that we live in, the wonderful life you have an opportunity.

for, but someone has to do it.

And when you have a representative form of government that we have, our democracy is based on, we are going to govern ourselves.

We can do that.

It's an experiment.

240 plus years in the making, 200 years has been pretty good.

We had a little rough spot in the Civil War, but we got through that.

Let's back that up and say you are a politician going for a joke, which they're bad at.

I was not teaching him.

I'm saving him, my dear.

I'm not hurting him.

He said something that they're going to jump on because he was downplaying.

I know you didn't mean I know you think that's hard.

I'm sorry.

Okay, I can tell right now.

Exactly.

Let's just quash it now.

Gotcha.

Because this bullshit has to stop.

This gotcha.

Don't go after Joe Manchin because he inartically said a bad joke.

Joe Manchin thinks slavery was horrible, and the Civil War was good that we fought it.

Yes.

Okay.

I'm glad we clear that up.

I'm going to say it more enthusiastically.

Absolutely.

It's horrible.

Okay, yes.

Okay, I said self-governing has been going on for 240 years plus.

Right.

Okay, and we've had some rough spots.

We've always gotten through it.

We've always gotten through that.

We've always come back as a country.

But when people quit caring, the only people left is those that don't care.

And when you have people that won't participate, won't run for office, and now they're scared for their life to be involved in political discourse, this is unbelievable.

Journalists don't want to be journalists anymore.

Nobody wants to do anything.

Well, at least you have a job for a while.

Do I?

That's so far.

Do any of us?

Yeah.

Do any of us?

We'll see next week.

I'll tell you somebody.

It's so interesting.

I'll tell you a journalist who's on TV who did not get fired who said something you might think is controversial, but he's still there.

Brian Kilmead.

He's on Fox News.

This is the morning show where they usually are wishing happy birthday to 100-year-olds.

They're talking about the homeless, and his co-host says, a lot of them don't want to take the programs to get the help.

Yes, that's true.

This is an issue that should be debated.

Either you, and they're saying to the homeless, either you take the resources that we're going to give you or you're going to be locked up in jail.

Well, I wouldn't lock them up in jail, but I agree they shouldn't be on the street.

Brian says, or just kill them.

And this apparently not controversial.

Crosses muster.

Not controversial.

Well, I dare say, but we live in a moment when maligning, insulting, or otherwise calling for the death of the poor, the weakest, people of color isn't exactly punished by

them before.

Let's be clear here.

This is new.

But just the fact that it just, oh, just the angel of death just passed right over that one.

At 8.30 in the morning.

Well, okay, so listen.

Civility is gone.

Someone says, I've hear all these rumors we're going to have war and we're going to have basically crusades.

The only crusade we really need is a crusade for civility.

And it starts at the top.

And I would ask President Trump, there's one person that can start it, and he can basically start bringing the country together because we cannot continue to divide us the way we are and he can't throw more fuel on the fire he could say something you know we're going to

tempt this down we're going to come together as a country I'm the leader of the country I said mr.

President we need a comforter we need somebody to comfort this country no not even everyone believes we should I saw Marjorie Taylor Green this week tweeting about how we need a national divorce, and she has done this before, and I looked it up.

She is not the only one who has said that.

Ben Shapiro talks about maybe a friendly separation would be the way to go.

Sarah Silverman is talking about.

It's worse than it is.

A USA 1, USA 2.

Candace Owen says you don't need a bloody war to secede.

You could just do it.

Glenn Beck said he's for succession, theirs.

See, but this is how we get into that.

Then who gets the name?

Who gets to call themselves American?

And this is where we get to the point where we need the lawyers.

We are going to have a national divorce.

We bring in the lawyers

and decide who gets what.

Would you like to hear

we're just going to decide which side, as they do in a divorce settlement.

For example, the Democrats will get Broadway, the Republicans get Branson.

That's just

fair.

The Republicans will get the mullet, the Democrats get the man bun.

Yes, that's.

The Republicans get the NRA, Democrats get NWA.

The Democrats get Barnes ⁇ Noble.

Republicans get Barnes.

Democrats get gluten-free vegan foods.

Republicans get flavor.

Democrats get the gay bars.

Republicans get the airport men's rooms.

Republicans get honky-tonk-bedonka-dunk, and Democrats get what-ass pussy.

I mean, that just,

that seems completely fair.

Republicans get daytime South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham.

Democrats get his nighttime alter ego, Myrtle Beach.

And

Democrats get a black Captain America and Republicans get a white jazz musician.

All right.

So

you mentioned Ted Cruz, and you're right.

Ted Cruz said, I hate it what Jimmy Kimmel said, but if the government gets in the business of saying what we, we don't like what you, the media, have said we're going to ban from the airwaves, it will end badly for conservatives.

I would add, Ted, for the country really should be even more.

But at least he did.

He's right on.

He's right on.

He's right.

And this is the point I'm always trying to make here.

You need to talk to people.

I've had Ted here.

I've had them all here.

I did my podcast with Charlie Clark.

Kirk, I'm glad I did.

I'm glad I got to know him.

I always say it, everybody's a monster until you talk to them.

Let me give you one story real quick.

I have a boat on the river, Potomac River, and I try to bring Democrats and Republicans together.

A what?

A little boat on the river.

It's a hole.

A little boat on the river, yeah.

Okay.

Which I stay on when I'm there, because things get bad.

I can cut the ropes and go.

You live in a boat on the river.

I do on boat.

It's like every detective.

Yeah.

Anyway, let me, let me say, so one night I had people coming, okay, different Democrat and Republicans.

I had Tom Harkin there from Iowa.

Most beautiful person, good friend of mine.

Pretty far left, but it's just a great guy.

And then I'm talking to Tom.

He said, Joe, 30 years I've never been on the river and I can't wait for tonight.

And he says, Tom, glad to have you.

Gave me a glass of wine.

About that time, Ted Cruz started walking down the ramp to get on the boat.

Tom wanted to jump off.

And I said, Tom, no, no, you can't.

No, no.

We're in this now.

Come on.

Just have another glass of wine.

Everything's going to be fine.

So I said,

untie the ropes quick.

We got to get out of here.

So we started out, and I swear to God, before the night was over, the two were talking.

became friends and did an amendment the next day.

You're right.

Nobody knows anybody.

We spend no time together at all.

You understand we only have one bipartisan lunch a year.

He was going to jump off the boat?

A lunch, right?

Yeah, he wanted off the boat.

And I wanted to get out the dock, okay?

He wanted off the boat.

Maybe we have a helicopter waiting to

lift.

I guess, can I just say, like, I am, first of all, Doug Blessy for doing this work of trying to bring people together.

And there needs to be more of that.

But let's not ignore the elephant.

I mean, we have a president who,

less than 24 hours after Charlie Kirk was assassinated, was blaming the radical left, was not trying to bring the country together, who has built a platform on grievance and division, who encourages virulent behavior and activity

and rhetoric, and who has instilled in his entire administration a punitive streak and who has given light and rise to people

who want to highlight the most destructive parts of our our society and who want our differences to define okay but here's a test now don't say this about the other side wait a second because it could be also

but just do it just as a test can you do yes joe joe biden yeah joe biden did not do that barack Obama did not do that.

No, you're right.

The presidents did not actually do that.

But it matters.

He is the head of the party and he has co-opted the Republican people.

There's lots of people wearing free Luigi t-shirts out there.

There is a

formidable bunch of people who think, who are very comfortable with the idea of eat the rich.

And

if you are not the kind of person we think is a problem.

Absolutely that exists.

Absolutely that exists.

And that has to do with people feeling outside the system.

They are filled with rage.

We have a society that's splintering.

There are no common spaces anymore.

We've lost community.

People are tied up in social media instead of talking to each other.

I mean, it's a whole host of things.

And I'm not excusing that kind of behavior by a long shot, but let's not pretend like the people in power, the people who run the legislative and the executive branch and are at the Supreme Court, are fomenting division.

They are not trying to bring us together.

Okay,

I agree.

They're not.

That matters.

It matters.

It does, of course.

Let me ask you this.

What do you think if If just the Democrats says, Mr.

President, we want to work with you, help us calm this down, help us heal the country, we want to work with you and secure the borders.

We made a mistake.

Can you work with me on legal immigration so we can have a country that we have today in the future?

That's what has to be done.

But you can't just tighten it.

The first thing you have to do is talk to him.

I'm telling you.

Talk to everybody.

Like we're bringing you.

You've been with the president.

You've been with the president.

Exactly.

He's very accommodating.

I saw this weekend, last weekend, Jay-Z and Beyonce

had dinner in Atlantic City with Jared Kushner

and Devanka Trump.

Do we not talk to them now either?

Because it's an issue they get.

Oh, no, they get a pass.

Justice reform.

I mean, that matters.

All the issues matter.

And this is how any of them,

if we're going to make any progress with this.

He's your president for three more years.

He's my president.

He's your president.

He's all of our presidents.

My job, if I'm in a position as a United States Senator or a congressperson, is to do everything I can to make my president successful.

But never be afraid to speak truth to power.

But you have to do it respectfully.

You have to be respecting that office and the people that put you there, which is that we're self-governing, okay?

We made a decision.

We chose you.

If we chose you, then I don't care.

I'm not going to fight you.

I want to work with you.

I want you to succeed.

And I said, Mr.

President, we need that leadership now.

We need you to step up.

And if the Democrats, I said, calling him names, it's just like throwing fuel on a fire.

It's not going to make him any better.

But he, individually, when you were with him, I've been with him individually.

Most accommodating, gracious.

You can talk to him.

He's engaging.

Much more self-aware than he lets on in public.

They have this thing where when they go out in public, it has to be all war all the time.

I'm not saying that's a good way to handle it either.

I'm just saying it's more complicated than that, and you're good.

They have all the power.

You're not going to do anything by just doing the what the, I mean, the left does have this bad attitude of go no contact.

I mean, that's a big thing with your family.

And my little family

was in West Virginia where I was raised.

My grandmother took everybody in.

Back in the 50s, there was no social services.

She made us little kids white.

No, they believe in not talking to members of your family.

I mean, at the Emmys, would it have killed someone to get up there, since they all want to talk about their politics, would it have killed somebody to get up there, not give a speech about how much they like Charlie Kirk, just to say, we had a political assassination this week, and that's wrong.

And we should...

They would have been booed off the stage because he was on the wrong team.

So you're not even allowed to say that.

Can you imagine if a left-wing person was assassinated that week?

The whole show would have been about that.

I just, I mean, is that not true?

Can't you admit that?

I think

this needs that Charlie Kirk assassination needs to be reframed as an issue of

how our democracy actually functions and survives.

We cannot be assassinating people who are different from us, who believe different things, full stop.

Charlie Kirk's assassination is as bad for Democrats as it should be for

Republicans.

It is not okay.

Okay?

And like everybody needs to get on that same page.

And you can, you can, you do not have to agree with what he said or what he believed in, but you have to mourn what his death represents.

Yeah.

Right?

And that is not a good thing.

And him, as a human.

As a human.

But

there has been so much hate and vitriol spewed from the top of this administration and has infected the entire party.

I understand why people don't have the stomach for it sometimes, but I'm telling you.

It's coming from both sides.

It It really is.

It is not the same thing.

It is not when it comes to the correct.

It's not a concerted.

It is not.

There is more of a.

They always take it to a worse level.

I mean, yes, there was cancel culture on the left, but it didn't come this much from the government.

Yes, Biden did put his thumb on the scale a little with COVID and make

social media not say some of the things that we now know are true about that.

But generally, they didn't do that.

But Trump gets in office, of course, they're always going to take it to level 10.

But before we run out of time, I do want to ask you, because I think you're going to run for president again, probably.

Okay, well, I'll take that as a non-tops.

I'll take that as a non-denial.

Let me just tell you, our dear friend, this morning, this morning I had breakfast with our dear friend, Honor Schwarzenegger, and he and I were talking.

He says, Bill's my good friend.

He said, now, Bill's going to be a drink.

He never has done this show.

We've asked him to do this.

He doesn't want to do this show.

He wants to do this.

He's a great father.

Really?

I've asked him a billion times.

And he said, now, he says, now, he's very busy for 30 years.

He said, if Bill helped, now now if Bill will help you sell some books, he said, now, before he gets off, it's about selling the book.

This book tells you exactly

how most of us are raised.

We are who you are, but where you come from, how you're raised, and who raised you.

And be able to sit in the pinnacle of power and be able to look at the president, say, Mr.

President, I'm so sorry.

I don't believe that.

I can't go home and sell it.

It doesn't make sense.

I wasn't raised that way.

That's tough when the president says, the country needs you.

And I had to grab his hand back and say, the country needs you too, Mr.

President.

It needs us all.

We're all in this together.

And this little book here will tell you how to do it.

My daughter, Hannah Murger.

Okay.

So

but I'm going to tell, you're going to tell, Arnold's watching.

He said he's going to watch tonight, so you're going to talk to me.

So you're trying to get the nomination of the, not the Democratic Party anymore.

You're an independent party.

I think there should be an independent party.

I think there should be an American party.

Because the Democratic Party seems to be going the way of the Democratic Socialist Party.

That's a different party.

Bernie Sanders always said, I'm not a Democrat.

I'm a Democrat.

Exactly.

Exactly right.

A Democrat socialist.

I caucus with the Democrats, he said.

He ran as a Democrat, but he's a Democratic socialist.

Now, Mandami in New York, he is a Democratic socialist also, not a Democrat per se.

We only have two parties, so you get in that bit.

Could I ask the question?

Yes.

Is this where the Democratic Party is going?

Is the whole Democratic Party going to be the Democratic Socialist Party?

No, first of all, we are a long way away from 2028.

We are not at 2026.

We have not had any party primaries.

We are talking about two people who have very compelling messaging strategies and have gotten rightfully a lot of attention for them.

But don't think that defines a Democratic Party, which, by the way, is at this point the pro-democracy party.

It is a tent big enough.

It is a tent big enough to have...

It is Cheney and AOC.

That is an unwieldy tent.

It is very, very, very big.

And part of the problem is the Democrats have so many people inside the tent and so much chaos happening on the political landscape, they do not know which direction they're marching in.

But woe to anybody that is trying to write the epitaph for the Democratic Party.

Well, let me just say this.

I was a Democrat all my life.

They better figure out how they lost people like me.

Okay?

And the only thing I have said, when you quit worrying about the working person, their working conditions, you're worried more about a person that's able-bodied and capable of working that won't work versus me who will work.

There's something wrong.

And they lost me.

All right.

Gotta leave it there.

Thank you very much.

Time for new rules, everybody.

New rules.

Thank you.

I think it's been a great last show.

All right, new rule.

Someone must tell the headline writers at Instyle magazine, who wrote Priyanka Shrop Row goes topless under her plunging blazer, that it's not topless if we can't see your tits.

As if all women aren't topless underneath their clothing.

Not to start a scandal, but right now I'm bottomless underneath these pants.

New rule, just because penguins look like they're wearing tuxedos doesn't mean they want to get married.

there's been a lot of romanticizing penguin love in popular culture but what scientists recently learned is most penguins are monogamous only for the season then they find a new mate each year

not to mention all the penguins who never marry because they get cold feet

No one's going to get fired for that one, huh?

All right, new rule, it's time we admit that one reason our kids' test scores are going down is that we no longer make playgrounds designed to weed out the stupid ones.

New rule, if ducking down when you get out of a helicopter is the only thing keeping the blades from chopping your head off,

then maybe it's best just to wait till the fucking thing comes to a stop.

Call me paranoid, but giant whirring blades scare me.

I won't even masturbate under a ceiling fan.

I mean,

when you're on a plane, they don't even let you stand up until you're at a full stop at the gate.

But helicopters, you're good to go.

Watch your head.

Watch it roll off your neck, you know.

New rules, stop expecting me to remember which of my 27 passwords went with your particular website, which I haven't visited since 2017.

It's like I'm on a 70s game show called Locked Out.

Bill Mar from Rivervale, New Jersey, you get three guesses or you get locked out.

Okay.

Is it my birthday, college graduation year, exclamation point?

Sorry, no.

Okay, is it my pet's name, favorite sports team 69?

No, not that.

Well, then fuck off.

Stop making me prove I'm me.

If the Russians stole my identity so they could pay my parking tickets, I give up.

Their long game is much better than mine.

And finally, new rule, we have to create a special five stages of grief just for mass shootings.

The one we have, anger, denial, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, that's fine for personal grief.

But if it's political at all, we should acknowledge our five stages really are, someone on your side definitely did it.

This theory I saw on the internet proves I'm right.

Fuck you, you're why everything is terrible.

I know you are, what am I?

And

please don't be the same ethnic group as me.

What I'd like to do now is prove to you what a fool's errand it is to try and connect today's brand of nut who commits political murder to the other side.

Take Ryan Ruth.

He's the lying-in-the-bushes weirdo who's on trial now for attempted assassination of President Trump.

And he's representing himself, always a great strategy right up there with doing your own dentistry.

He started his courtroom presentation by saying, Why are we here?

Is it not to care for one another and to hold one another?

Because nothing says care for one another like pointing a gun at someone's head while they're golfing.

Like all these killers, his politics was all over the map.

He somehow supported both Bernie Sanders and Vivek Ramaswamy, two guys who you couldn't sit next to each other at a wedding.

And his choice in 2016 was Trump, and then he tried to kill him.

So I guess he's a swing voter.

His politics are so in the weeds, he was literally in the weeds.

Trump's other would-be assassin, Thomas Crooks, aka McLoven,

had donated money to Democrats.

So Republicans said, well, there you go.

A liberal who took it too far and wanted Trump dead.

Except investigators believe Crooks left hundreds of social media comments that were anti-immigrant.

Then why shoot the most anti-immigrant president we ever had?

And Crooks, a registered Republican, had also been researching Biden's travel schedule, so it looks like he would have been just as happy to shoot him or Princess Kate, who it seems he'd been casing as a potential target.

So he was the worst kind of lone gunman, a slut.

On his voter registration, he checked it's complicated.

That's why this is such a tedious game, always hunting for evidence that whatever killer it is had whatever politics are the opposite of yours, trying to prove that because this week's chinless incel voted for Dr.

Oz, it means something.

It doesn't.

What this is really about is a hole in the soul and broken families and gun glorification and getting brain raped by the internet.

David the Pape was, according to the Chronicle, a hemp jewelry maker and pro-nudity activist from San Francisco.

Would you peg that guy as likely to break into Nancy Pelosi's house and try to kill her husband with a hammer?

Well, he did because he also believed in QAnon and Pizzagate and the Jews bankrolled Hitler.

Because he's not Antifa or MAGA, he's GA.

So was Cody Bomber, who set fire to the house of the governor of Pennsylvania, as one does when you're fed up with politics.

Cody sure was.

He once shared a meme that said, both Democrats and Republicans would rather argue with each other than work to solve the problems we are facing.

Exactly, Cody, a pox on both their houses, which I'll now start burning down.

This is not about politics.

Have you people really never had a bipolar girlfriend?

Last month brought us the Minnesota church killer, Robin Westman, born Robert Westman.

So naturally the conservatives were like,

see, trans.

That's some of that out there liberal shit.

See, this is what you get.

Well, no, that's not why we got what we got.

Trans was not the cause of this.

Now, maybe Robin really was trans, or maybe trans was one in a series of solutions that she tried on to fix her chronic unhappiness.

The joke is on you if you think you can decipher someone's manifesto that made about as much sense as Britney Spears' Instagram.

She displayed a defend equality sticker with the LGBT flag, which is very woke, but then also spoke of her hatred for filthy Zionist Jews.

But then again, so did everyone at the Emmys.

And now Tyler Robinson.

And again, we have to play the game where we each day find a tidbit about another confused, knowledge-free, I want you to hurt like I do, asshole, searching for a reason to do something insane so he can lol over watching the supposedly sane people try to make sense of it.

A kid brought up conservative in Utah who looks like every white kid who holds a rifle on a Republican's Christmas card

shoots a conservative, was he rebelling against his family?

Very possibly.

Confused feelings about his trans relationship?

Not unlikely.

Plus, violence in movies?

And getting used to murdering things from hunting?

And putting kids on Prozac when they're 12 and seed oils and whatever.

Politics, I wish this was about politics.

It's actually actually so much worse.

It's about nihilism, about not believing anything, about living in an online world.

That's one big inside joke about how stupid and useless is the America that conventional people of both parties are still living in.

This kid cared about furries, not foreign policy.

Because in America, life isn't black and white.

It's 50 shades of cray.

All right, that's it.

I want to thank my guests this week and every week,

for the last 23 years, maybe.

Joe Manchin, Alex Ragnar, Tom Holman.

Club Random drops every Monday on YouTube.

Or listen when we get your podcast.

Now go watch Overtime on YouTube.

Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.

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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