Ep. #710: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Andrew Ross Sorkin, Mark Cuban

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

Start the clock.

Hello, people.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, everyone.

I appreciate it.

Welcome to the show.

Hi.

Thank you.

Okay.

So much to get to.

Good news and bad news for the Jews.

A peace deal in Gaza.

We have that, and the hostages are home.

That is the good news.

The bad news is Bobby Kennedy says circumcision causes autism.

So

it's a kind of a mixed bag

for the Jews today.

But yes,

how about that?

Finally, peace over there.

Ah, after two years, the Palestinians are returning to Palestine the hostagers coming back to Israel and everyone's blown away that Trump pulled it off I don't know why I mean if there's one thing he's good at it's sending people back where they came from

but I mean look

We're going to talk about it on the show.

I mean, I think you got to give credit where credit is due.

I mean, a lot of people tried to pull this off.

He did.

He is beloved in Israel more than any other president ever for a good reason.

He also won over the Arabs.

He's the only thing besides hummus they both like.

So

that's his big thing, solving wars.

You know, he says he's solved many of them around the world.

He has gotten involved, it's true.

And he's meeting with Putin in Hungary in a couple of weeks.

He met today with Zelensky at the White House.

Zelensky is asking for Tomahawk missiles to fire at Russia and Trump said, we'd love to, but we might need them for Chicago.

Oh yeah, he's

a little more popular overseas than he is here.

There's a big rally tomorrow.

Are you going to go?

No King's Day.

Oh, you are.

This is

all the people who are upset about the obviously anti-democratic things he's doing here and they are getting out in the streets are saying, we are not going to take this lying down.

Milling around, yes, we'll do it milling around, but

I was going to go, but I went into the attic to find my pussy hat and the moths had...

The moths had gotten to it, so I just.

No, the Republicans are saying this is not no Kings Day.

They said this is hate America Day.

Yeah,

liberals hate America.

That's what they think.

Yeah, if you won't stop assembling freely and speaking freely, we're going to send our massed unaccountable secret police to arrest you, as America should be.

No.

But no, I mean, Trump does not like this being called a king.

He said, I am not a king, and the next person who calls me one, they're going to find their ass in the dungeon, let me tell you.

He denied it.

He said, I am not a king.

I have no intention of becoming a king, but if some country wants to donate a gold crown, I'm not going to say no.

King.

Why would you think king?

The enemies list?

You know,

enemies list.

I remember when Nixon, you know, they accused Nixon of having an enemies list, and he denied it.

Trump reads it out loud.

I'm not kidding.

He just reads it out loud.

That's

a little bit of a difference.

The latest one, I mean, Comey's indicted, Letitia James invited, now John Bolton, his former national security advisor, wrote a book about him.

Not a good idea.

He's indicted.

It's like Trump is going after everyone that ever pissed him off.

He's like an authoritarian Taylor Swift.

It's amazing.

But hey,

here's an interesting story.

They say, are there any young Republicans here?

Yeah.

Wow, to be a young Republican.

Well, it's a group.

I didn't know it was an official group, and boy, are they in hot water.

They were on a group chat saying the most vile things, I mean, racist, sexist,

anti-Semitic, awful things, and now Democrats want these people fired.

Republicans even are issuing apologies.

And Stephen Miller said, they grow up so fast.

And this is where we are in America.

Caroline Levitt, she's the president's press spokesman.

This is a very official position.

This is a quote from her.

He said, Democrats' main constituency are Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals.

Okay, but we do make a killer mocha Frappuccino.

It's not all bad.

All right, we got a great show.

Mark Cubin and Andrew Ross Sarkin are here.

But first up, oh, I've waited for this moment for so many years.

A man who conquered both politics and show business superstardom, not to mention bodybuilding.

He's the author of the number one best-selling book, Be Useful.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is finally here.

Arnold, yes, how are you?

All right.

Welcome down.

Great to be in California, yes.

I thought you'd be bigger.

No, I mean, you're larger than life, but you were like almost the same height.

I thought that you would have better abs, but

I don't know what happened when they were like really falling short today.

All right, I

don't know how you'd know that, but all right.

But your opening monologue was fantastic.

Oh, thank you.

So funny.

Yeah, let's give him a big hand.

Thank you.

That was very, very funny.

Okay.

I'm here every week, you know.

But I know you're here to talk about a serious subject, and it's an interesting subject, which there are two sides to.

I think I'm on the other side of it than you, but just basically what's going on in this country is to give the broader picture, Trump does everything ten times more than other people have done.

Everybody always gerrymandered.

He's taken it to a completely new level.

He's getting legislatures now to redraw districts.

This is where the politicians pick the voters when really the people should be picking the politicians.

You reformed this in California and said we don't want that, which is the right thing to do in sort of just the

macro.

But things have changed.

Would you not say if the Republicans are doing it, how can the Democrats unilaterally disarm?

He's just, he wants Indiana now to be a state that's going to have zero

Democrat representatives.

If Texas is doing it, now California's Prop 50, Gavin Newsom Newsom wants us to undo what you did, made it fair, and go back to this because we can't unilaterally disarm.

What is your argument now, given the new information?

Well, I think that Prop 50 is a big scam.

And the reason why I'm saying that is because it says that we should fight Trump.

and because he's a threat to democracy.

But in the meantime, they want to go and tear up the Constitution in California, get rid of the independent commission that draws the district lines and take the power away from the people and give it back to the politicians.

So how does this go fighting democracy or helping democracy or fighting Trump and imitating what

Texas is doing?

I mean, it doesn't make any sense to me the whole thing.

Well, it makes sense

in that...

We have the Democrats have no power now.

The only power they can have is if they win the midterm elections and take back the House.

If only the Republicans get to gerrymander, the Democrats will never take back the House.

No, no, gerrymandering is going on, that's been going on for 200 years.

Not on this level.

But this

look, there are states out there that have 40% of Republicans and only have like 20% representation in Congress.

There's the opposite also true.

So there's gerrymandering going on all over the world.

What we wanted to do in California is we wanted to be leaders.

and we wanted to show to America, as California has always been a leader.

What goes in California then goes nationwide.

So we finally, after a long kind of a battle, we passed legislation, not only legislation, but I mean the people actually voted for an independent commission.

And now we have had this independent commission and the politicians in California have performed much better because of this kind of a you know, kind of a fair drawing of

districts, so to speak.

And so I think that to undo all of that and to take away the power, see, this is a trick that you have to understand.

The Democrats are fighting the Republicans.

The Republicans are fighting the Democrats.

But you know something?

One of them is going to win.

Yes, it's going to be the Republicans because they didn't.

No, no, no, but they didn't follow your example into the halls of nobleness.

But you know who I want to win?

The people.

The people have to win.

This is what this is about.

See, I'm a Republican, but I'm not a Republican hack.

I'm not a political hack.

I don't serve the party.

I don't always serve the people.

The people are first.

We cannot undo something and rip away the power that the people in California have and give it back to the politicians.

We fought that for too long.

Let's not do that.

Let us be a good example.

Let the Democrats outperform the Republicans and therefore, because of their performance win and get the House back.

I mean this is the way I think you ought to be.

Okay, well I don't think that's very realistic but I read your speech at the 2004 convention.

I remember it very well where you talked about why I'm a Republican.

I was very moved by it at the time.

I thought it was a great speech.

I'm sure you remember it well.

You talked about growing up at a time when Vienna was actually occupied, right?

That's right.

Austria was still occupied.

You saw socialism.

The Russians.

Right.

So you saw socialism firsthand.

And that's why when you came to America, you didn't know what parties were.

You didn't know which...

And you heard the Democrats speak, and then you heard, I think, Nixon talk, and you heard the ideas of the Republican Party, and you said, I'm a Republican.

I hear that.

That's what I...

I get that.

You think that's still the party?

You think that still applies to the Republican Party?

What made you want to be a Republican, where they are today?

Bill, things change.

It's very clear that it has changed.

I'm a traditional Republican.

I'm the kind of a Republican like Lincoln, who made sure

that slavery stops.

He made sure that the blacks got a right to vote.

He made sure the Republican Party then made sure that the blacks become citizens of the United States and get the citizenship.

All of those kind of things.

Republicans did that.

Look what has happened over the years, how things have changed.

And this is how we are going through changes.

But it doesn't mean we have to give up.

I'm still a traditional Republican because remember it was Nixon that created the EPA in Washington to make sure that we have clean air and clean water.

Republican, Ronald Reagan here created the air resources board that enabled us to reduce our greenhouse gases by 25%

and to have the million solar roofs and to get our renewables up to 70%.

And all of this kind of stuff is because of the air resources board that Ronald Reagan created.

So they were great Republicans.

The party has changed now.

This is clear, but it doesn't mean that we have to change.

We have to fight to get the party back and to get the philosophy back because

it's order.

We have to...

I think the people should know

that it is important that we serve the people,

not the parties.

They make it their business to fight amongst each other.

Look at this, the most popular things in America, for instance, universal background check.

90% of the people have a universal background check, but it's not getting done.

I mean, think about that.

Who's holding it?

Because 75%

politicians.

The politicians.

Well, not the Democratic politicians.

But it doesn't matter.

They have to get together and solve those problems.

This is what negotiating is all about.

I was a Republican, and I was in Sacramento.

I got together with the Democrats, and I made it very clear.

I maybe think differently than you sometimes, but you're not my enemy.

I love working with you because with the Republican brain and with the Democratic brain together, we have the ultimate brain power, and we can really accomplish things.

So that was the idea.

But that's California.

No, it's me.

California isn't America.

California is one of those states, yes, where a moderate Republican governor can do well because it's a very blue state.

You might say it's too blue because we have this somebody running for president, for governor now, Katie Porter, and we saw she had a lot of problems this week with her image.

And she was asked a question about what would you do to get the Trump voters in this state?

And I think it was very telling what her answer was, which was basically, why are you even asking that question?

Why would I care about trying to get these deplorables on my side?

I don't need them.

Because this is.

Yes, wow.

Because

I'm paraphrasing, but that was the attitude, because she doesn't, probably, because this state is so blue.

You're the last Republican.

You're really the last Republican from California, the last guy who got elected in this state.

Well, you know, let me tell you something.

We're talking here about saving democracy.

What I suggest that the way we save democracy nationwide is to really have a proposal like, for instance, the Safe

Democracy Act.

It's just an idea where we go and make Election Day a holiday so that everyone has time to go out and go to the election.

Again,

this is something Democrats are all for and Republicans are all against.

Here's the second point.

The second point is to have you have to have fair redistricting, to have independent redistricting commission in each state all over the United States.

And number three

that they won't do it.

And number three,

you have

a voter ID.

So when you go and vote, people should know that you are that person.

Those are all things that they have back in Europe.

So I come from Europe, I'm giving you just ideas, not that I created those ideas.

Those are things that are happening in Europe and have happened for centuries.

So this is why I think that it is important that we do the same thing here.

I think if we take those three things, there's something that the Republicans like, there's something that the Democrats like, get together and solve this problem.

It's the same, it's no different than talking about energy or anything like that, where Democrats and Republicans can get together.

You give something to the Republicans, you create more nuclear power, you give something to the Democrats, create more renewable power, and all of a sudden we have 80% of energy, of clean energy in America.

This is the way we have to do it.

We have to go talk to each other rather than hating each other.

Talk to each other because

people want, and that's what the people need.

Okay,

last question, I'll let you go, but

I have to ask you because you also conquered the world of show business in a big way, what do you think about what's going on in movies?

I mean, I hear people just fretting so much about it because, oh, no one's going to the theater anymore, for example.

You know, we can watch it in our house.

You know what?

Good.

I like watching it in my house.

I mean, they're trying to make me feel terrible about it, like, oh, the experience of being in a theater and hearing somebody somebody else laugh.

I don't give a fuck if this guy's laughing.

I'll make

the guy in Row 32B

loves it.

And stream it.

I mean, what is your take on the movie industry right now as a big movie stream?

I think that the movie business is doing really well.

I think that California is kind of out of the game because we don't have the incentives that other states have and that other countries have.

But the bottom line is I think there are some really good movies.

Whenever a good movie comes out like Avatar is going to come out again around Christmas time, I guarantee you they're going to make over a billion dollars again and everyone is going to go and run to the theater.

Why?

Because it's a good movie.

Jim Cameron makes great movies.

So if a movie is not that good, why would he be excited to go and pay for the parking and pay for the drink, pay for the park one, pay for the ticket, and then they sit in the theater and look at some shit, right?

I mean, then they're like, we don't want to do that.

We don't want to look at shit.

Thank you so much for kindly coming here, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I'm your biggest fan.

All right.

Governor Schwarzenegger.

Thank you.

Let's meet our panel.

Hi.

Hey, guys.

All right.

He is co-anchor on CSNBC Squawkbox and founder of the New York Times Deal Book, whose new book is 1929 Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History and How It Shattered a Nation.

We are going to get to it tonight.

Andrew Rosorkin is here.

And y'all know this guy, he's a minority owner.

Minority now?

Oh, no.

What happened?

Now, the mighty have fallen up.

The NBA's Dallas Mavericks and co-founder of Cost Plus Drugs, Mark Cuban.

Okay.

All right.

Let's talk about the Middle East first.

We are confronted here with a dilemma, I feel like.

There is President Trump, the overseas hero, who does make good deals overseas, it looks like.

Not just this place, but a couple other ones.

And then domestically, the threatener of democracy.

My first question is just, can we separate these two?

Because they are two different things, and some people do not want to.

I'm a separator usually, like I can recognize that R.

Kelly should not have had sex with little boys or little girls.

But Ignition is still a great jam.

You know and I'll play it tonight if I feel like it.

But what's your first answer on that?

Can we separate them and just give them...

I've got two ideas in your head at the same time.

Thank you.

There you go.

Absolutely.

You can give this president a standing ovation for getting to this point and not give him the Nobel Peace Prize, right?

I think you can look at this and say, this is a very good situation.

It's something that has not happened for the last two years.

We've been waiting for this moment.

And then we're going to have to see.

But why not?

It's the Nobel Peace Prize, not the Nobel Democracy Prize.

Well, the question is,

do we have real peace?

And I think the jury's going to be out on that.

We'll

see where we get.

But give him credit.

You can give, you can, you can not like this president at all.

No one's going to be good at everything, right?

And if he's good at getting deals done overseas, give him credit for it.

If he's not so good domestically, give him shit for it.

Yeah,

from my memory and history, the only thing that compares to this is when Reagan solved the Cold War, ended the Cold War, which I always said was, you know, Reagan did play his part in ending the Cold War.

But I think the Soviet Union was going to collapse anyway of its own weight, right?

This, I'm not so sure, isn't an actually greater achievement, if it lasts and if we have, but it looks like they're transforming the whole Middle East.

So I'm not going to hide my, yes, we certainly have had our differences.

And even after the dinner, he's still bitching at me.

So for those people who thought

it's okay, it's okay.

And I am not going to hide my admiration for somebody who did this differently than anybody else did and said, without apology, I'm with Israel.

You know what?

There's only one country in this whole equation, and this is where America, I think, fell down in the past.

We tried to be even, Stephen.

It wasn't.

Only one country that's a democracy.

There's only one country that prizes life

over the sort of cult of death.

There's only one country

where you'd actually want to live, quite frankly, if you were living in the Middle East.

So let's throw our lot in with them, a country that actually shares our values.

Hopefully.

Especially about women.

I mean, you start with the Abraham Accord, right?

Slowly but surely they developed the relationships, worked together with each other countries, sent Jared over to get the job done, and they deserve credit.

Why not give credit where credit is due?

I mean, if this thing holds, you know, I don't know if he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize or something.

So then that becomes the question.

People will say, should he get the Nobel Peace Prize if it actually works?

And that, given what you just said about the domestic peace, if you will, that's still going to be in question.

But I agree 100%.

You know, I actually looked at who votes on the Nobel Peace Prize, and it's a bunch of academics.

It's not the type of people.

It's bullshit like the MEs.

Well, but still, it's a bunch.

It may be bullshit, but

if it's academics that are voting, there's no way academics are going to vote for Donald Trump.

Period end of story.

But what I think he should get credit for especially is just changing the way he approached this.

They did it the same for administration after administration tried the same thing, and it didn't work, and they kept doing it.

And now they sent like these three real estate guys over there.

Well, that's the thing.

They look at Witkoff, and they look at Jared Kushner, and they think, what are they doing?

And yet they make it work.

So why is that?

And what does that say about experts and expertise?

I'll tell you why.

Because first of all, the Trump Trump doctrine, which was basically, we don't judge anybody.

You know what?

Cutting off the head of that journalist, not cool, but

you know, everybody's got their thing.

And, you know, Biden didn't talk to Saudi Arabia for a year after that.

We're not talking to you.

And then he had to.

He had to go over there because it's Saudi Arabia, because they have the oil and they're the counterweight to Iran, and we had to talk to them.

Trump doesn't play that game.

And he said, look, we've always put Palestine itself at the center of this.

And we're going to, Palestine, which is never, let's be honest, a actual country.

Okay, he said, we're going to make deals with the actual countries.

There's some actual countries there.

like Saudi Arabia and like Bahrain and like Morocco and all the other countries, United Arab Emirates.

We're going to deal with them.

And you know what?

They were waiting for someone to do that.

Because the Arabs more than anybody knew this was bullshit.

They could have made Palestine its own country from 1948 to 1967 when they had it and they didn't.

So they know who's bullshitting more than anybody.

It's amazing.

The Jews like him, and the Arabs like him.

That's quite a hat-trick.

Yep.

Give him credit.

You know, why not?

Have you noticed that

now that Hamas has taken over again, they're

what?

Shooting everybody.

Shooting everybody.

Where are the protesters?

Suddenly, the

Kafir-wearing college kids are are very clown, yeah, can't be found anywhere.

This is okay.

It's just amazing the asymmetry of what goes on.

Because of all the sympathy.

Look, you can, again, this is the two ideas in your head at the same time that for some reason most people don't seem to want to participate in, which is you can look at Hamas and say that's a terrible terrorist organization and hate them, which you should, and at the same time have some sympathy for the Palestinian people.

I can do that.

And by the way, I'm an American Jew who thinks that Israel needs to be supported in all this.

I don't understand

why we as a country can't have that conversation and just say it like it is.

Yeah, the other thing is personal relationships.

It just showed, I know the world is run by giant bureaucracies, but every, no matter how big the bureaucracy is, there's always somebody at the head of it.

It's personal relationships and how people, just one person deals with another person and the human element.

It reminds me of your book, quite frankly, because it's all about Wall Street, its numbers, and it's all this important, really,

it's about people and the nature of people and the nature of whether they're going to panic and what makes them panic.

And I mean, according to your book, and I believe you're right,

that has not changed from 1929.

I got a little scared reading your book.

Well, look, I think there's reasons to be a little scared reading the book.

I'm not here to panic people.

I wrote this book about 1929 because I wanted to write a story about the people, like the actual people on the ground so we could actually understand who they were, what they were saying, what their incentives were, what their motivations were.

And I think you're right.

You realize that all these economic systems, structures, politics, policy is a story about people and the decisions they make.

And it's about people like Jared Kushner could have been in that book, if you will, meaning going off and trying to make a deal.

And it was about the personal relationship that led to that deal, not to put 1929 and what's happening in the Middle East all in one pocket.

But the broader story is it's a story about human beings and the relationships ultimately matter to almost everything that ultimately happened.

And I know you don't want to cause the panic, but I got to say, you know, you're like the guy on a

are you sure that this is not going to be a little bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy?

I swear to you, as I was writing this book, I thought I was writing a history book.

Now, the problem is, the truth was, as I was writing the book, I was seeing things in the headlines.

I'd be talking about things on TV, writing about things in the paper, and I'd go, oh my, that's exactly like that.

You know, 1930 comes around.

Smoot-Hawley tariffs are taking place.

Hoover decides he needs to do this because he pledged to the farmers who got to vote for him that he needed their vote.

And now he says he wants to.

And every economist in America back then was screaming from the rooftop saying, please don't do this, please don't do this.

Fast forward, what, just a couple months ago, same story.

Every economist is signing full-page ads in the New York Times saying, President Trump, please don't do this, please don't do this, and here we are.

But also the technology aspect of it, you know, that was what really got me, was this economy seems to now be more and more propped up by AI, as was in the 20s 20s, electricity.

You know, electricity was radio.

Everybody was excited about radio and telecommunications.

And, you know, RCA was like the NVIDIA of

1929.

Everybody wanted in on the action and they were all running to the brokers to make their bet and to gamble on it and they thought this was the future.

On margin, just like today.

And they were doing it on margin.

And you're a guy alone.

You certainly made your fortune betting on the new technology 25 years ago.

And today.

What do you think of AI?

I think it's overrated.

No, I think it's underrated.

Underrated, as I say.

But,

but.

Where we are today is just a smidgen of where it's going to be.

We're still in the the first preseason game in the first inning.

And what we see with ChatGPT and large language models and AI girlfriends, that's just the here and now.

That's not where we're going to end up.

And I think it's going to make us a lot of people.

What ended up with AI wives?

What are you going to end up with?

I'm not saying no, right?

Put a robot in there and anything is possible.

What's really the challenge, and it goes back to 1929.

You've got five companies effectively trying to find out if this is a winner-take-all AI market, right?

Or is there going to be one, two, three, four, five winners?

If it's winner-take-all, they're going to keep on spending money, and you can end up in five, ten years with those data centers just being hollowed out and not being used at all.

And that would create a calamity.

Speak against my book for a second.

There's one thing that we need to remember, which is to some degree, and I am always preaching caution, but speculation built America.

It's true.

When you think about all of the great technological revolutions that have taken place, whether it was technology in that period or in the dot-com boom or AI now, there was somebody who had to speculate on it, right?

When the first investors in Elon Musk's Tesla, when that seemed like a completely absurd idea, they were speculating on it.

And so we need to figure out a way to both have some semblance of speculation in the system, but to do it with guardrails and to do it in a way that's responsible.

And that is a hard

needle to thread because who's on humanity.

The stock market is all speculation.

The stock market is not, the top companies, they're not the ones that actually make the most money.

Sometimes the top ones aren't making any money.

Oh, no, of course.

The seven companies driving the entire stock market.

It's just what they think they're going to do.

Well, we learned a good lesson from crypto, right?

The question is, who's on the other side of the trade?

What happened with Sam Bankman Freed, they were loaning out stock and loaning out crypto, but nobody was taking the risk.

Everybody was just kicking the can down the road.

That's what I think happened way back when, right?

And that's the risk now.

And you're starting to see, and you can speak better of this than I can, with commercial real estate.

We don't even know how much commercial real estate loans are just being kicked down the road and just being renewed, renewed, without ever hope of being able to get it.

I'm going to tell you why I think AI is overrated.

I just mean overrated as something that's going to be good for the economy.

One, it's just going to put everybody out of work.

That cannot be good for the economy when it can do just about everybody's job.

And also, there's there's this idea that it's going to like make us more efficient.

I think we already passed that.

I don't think

the economy can, can Amazon really get more efficient?

Can an Amazon warehouse be replaced?

What?

Amazon can be replaced.

Replaced?

Amazon?

Without question, yes.

Just like RCA.

RCA was the dominant company.

Well, how do you replace Amazon?

By finding different ways to deliver product, by finding different...

Amazon just destroys small businesses.

Anybody can walk in right now and be from China and not not have to register their company in the United States of America.

That is going to backfire on Amazon.

All my shark tank companies hate working with Amazon.

You still need a truck or something to bring

to your house.

Right, but it's knowing what to buy, knowing what to sell, the pricing, the logistics.

Amazon has market dominance right now.

I think AI gives smaller companies a chance to compete with Amazon.

Oh, I see.

Okay.

Look, in the end, I think, and you were talking about commercial real estate and everything else, the thing that I worry about that creates a true crisis every single time is leverage in the system, too much debt.

When you have too much debt in the system, that is the light that matches,

that

lights the fire every single time.

And what we don't know today is where all the leverage is anymore.

So it used to be that we understood that credit was in the banks.

Banks were the ones who were loaning out money.

That's not where people get a loan anymore.

They get it from all of these other places, the shadow banking system.

And we have no idea what that looks like.

And that's the part actually that makes me nervous.

I'm very excited about AI.

I think actually AI is going to change our world, but I am also with you, which is to say that if AI is as successful as I think we all want it to be, to some degree, it has to make us so much more productive.

What does productivity mean?

That's a euphemism oftentimes, I think, for taking cost out and jobs.

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I have to cover all the stories.

That's what we do here.

The Pope is in the news.

I don't know if you...

What?

I have to tell you that this is true.

I don't know if you heard, but I think it was just this year that we got a new, the Vatican dropped a new pope,

an American, real name Bob, stripper name Leo.

And he was speaking with journalists at a Vatican conference this week, and I didn't know this was on his radar, but he's very concerned with clickbait.

He said communication must be freed from the misguided thinking that corrupts it it and the degrading practice of so-called clickbait.

Popes used to care about masturbation, and now they're.

Clickbait is what this guy.

And I didn't realize this, this is a whole genre called Catholic clickbait.

Would you like to see some of that?

Catholic.

There's Catholic clickbait.

For example,

remember baby Jesus?

You won't believe what he looks like now.

Oh my gosh.

This penance hack will get you in and out of confessional in seconds.

We asked five Mother Superiors the best classroom object to hit a child with, and they all said the same thing.

The eight masturbation workaround, your priest doesn't want you to know.

would you believe this started out as water find out how

you won't believe what this guy did next

This friar took a vow of silence until he heard Taylor Swift's song about Travis Kelsey's death.

The best month for celebrating Christmas.

Well, that should be obvious to people.

He became the world's most famous carpenter without making a single piece of furniture.

Can you guess his name?

And

can you guess which one of these apostles is a snitch?

Play our game.

All right.

So, oh my God.

Let me ask you a broader, both of you economic geniuses, a broader economic question.

Well, economic and political, because it seems to me that there are two pillars that this country is founded on.

One is democracy.

And one is capitalism, free markets.

And it seems like one party wants to get rid of one,

and the other party wants to get rid of the other, right?

The Republicans are not that they don't democracy is just not number one on their list.

It just isn't.

It isn't.

It's behind Christianity and a few other things.

And the Democrats, I mean, I read these, 74%

are force democratic socialism.

Only 16% favor capitalism.

Is this going to be a country that I don't recognize in five to ten years if we don't have these two pillars?

If we don't, I mean, where are the Democrats going with this?

If Mondami is the face of the Democrats on the East Coast and Katie Porter is the face on the West Coast,

I don't know if that's great politically for that party.

It could be quite fun.

No, I mean, there is a challenge, right?

Kids don't like capitalism.

And I think a lot of it has to do with social media, the clickbait, right?

Rage bait works better in social media and gets more people's attention.

And if Mondami is out there saying, you're getting free housing, you're getting free transportation, you're getting cheaper groceries, I mean, of course, that's what they need, particularly in New York, and that's what they're going to respond positively to.

Is there any way that can work?

No.

No.

Of course not.

No.

Look, we have a financial...

We have a financial literacy problem in America.

But the financial literacy problem in America is affecting the politics in America, which is that if you don't understand that if you actually decide that you think rent stabilization is going to somehow increase the supply of

apartments and homing and homes in the country, you've got it completely backwards.

Because what happens is the developers say, well, if they're going to stabilize the rent in this town, we don't really want to be developing in this town, in which case there's not going to be enough supply, in which case it's going to cost more to rent your apartment.

That's just the way it is.

And unless people understand that,

when a politician stands up and says, excuse me, I'm over here and I'm very happy to give you rent stabilization and the free groceries and this and that, and then it doesn't happen, I think people are going to be in for a surprise.

But at the same time, I think Mandami's great for the Democratic Party.

You do?

And I'll tell you why.

Okay.

Because nobody, okay, ready?

If you're ready.

I'm ready.

I'm ready.

Because nobody in the Democratic Party knows how to sell.

but him.

Nobody in a Democratic Party knows how to use social media but him.

They will learn from him.

Now, New York may be fucked for four years, right?

But they will learn from him.

But seriously, right?

Who in the Democratic Party knows how to sell, knows how to convey a message, knows how to commit to the money.

It depends what the message is, though.

I've seen it.

Look, we've been living.

They don't want to sell anyways.

You know, if you gave a Democrat a dollar bill and told him to sell it for 50 cents, they wouldn't be able to do it.

Sure.

Donald Trump is a fabulous communicator.

He is.

Right?

Okay.

And look where it's gotten him, right?

If you got a little bit of a message.

Yes, but I think that you disagree with his message, and that's my point.

Of course I do.

So the fact that this guy is a fabulous messenger, if you don't have the message.

I'm not saying it's good for the city, but what I'm saying is he's a little Donald Trump.

You know, he's, you know, he's trying, yeah, oh, for sure.

Wow.

Always in a suit.

He could be anywhere.

Bernie Sanders rolls up his sleeves, wants to connect.

Madam is always in a suit.

He's telling you what you want to hear.

He has a social media team that designs the message, and it comes across geared towards Gen Z, geared towards even younger people, and they're accepting it.

That's one of the reasons people want, young kids want socialism, because of his ability to sell.

Just like Donald Trump wanted, because of his ability to sell.

I'm not going to completely say you're wrong because I don't know, because I would not have guessed that Trump 10 years ago would be where he is.

I was watching this, the Katie Porter thing.

Do we have any footage of Katie Porter this week having a meltdown?

Show that because

I have a question I would like to ask about that.

So you don't feel like this is unnecessarily argumentative.

I don't want to keep doing this.

I'm going to call it.

Thank you.

And the state could lose.

You're out of my fucking shot.

Now.

See,

it's getting applause.

Okay, I think.

I remember having Katie Porter on this show, and we did not get along.

I don't like her, and I found out nobody likes her.

And I think you see why.

Okay, but that doesn't mean this isn't effective.

I mean, when it came out, the first wave of stories where she's toast.

I don't know.

First of all, I got to ask, what was that person doing in the shot?

I mean, that's not how I would talk to my staff.

But that is what I would be thinking, is, what are you doing in my fucking shot?

In this world, in this new age we're in, I'm not so sure this

isn't.

Because you think it looks like it's a truth-telling situation.

You go, oh, there's a real person.

I think it like Trump reflects the frustration that people have and the anger that they sometimes have.

This reflects, I think, the, you know what,

nobody's doing their goddamn job.

And I'm just, I'm just,

I've had it up to here and I'm not going to fake it anymore.

People don't like faking anything.

This is a new age of politics.

I think she's auditioning for Horrible Bosses 3.

I agree, but.

I don't know that it conveys any votes.

Okay,

but I'm afraid here in the following way.

We're all trying to comport ourselves into a way where we look like we're a certain thing.

And when people see that, they go, there's something that feels real about that.

Because I'm sure you've been in interviews where you've been like, F this person.

I can't believe they're asking me these questions.

I want to get out of the chair.

Hey, I'm sitting right here.

If her employees didn't say she was awful, you would be right.

Because no one goes to work and wants to be shit on.

And when you see a boss

shitting on their employees, I don't think it works for them.

That's not a good sign.

I just think it's an angry country full of assholes.

And, you know, it's like, hey, one of us.

One of us.

But

I've got to ask about.

Tomorrow, Morris, Morris.

I'll probably see you tomorrow at the No Kings thing.

I mean, what is going on?

Caroline Levitt, as I mentioned in the monologue, this is the president's spokesperson.

This is not just somebody at the end of the bar.

This is not just somebody ranting on social media.

The Democratic Party's main consensus is made up of Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals.

I mean, I see where the seed of all this comes from.

Hamas terrorists, yes, idiot college students, useful idiots who have been out there and were out there demonstrating for the wrong people.

Okay, illegal aliens, yes,

Biden had a terrible border policy, violent criminals, yes, did too much of that.

But the Democratic Party's main constituency, and this is what the no-kings thing is about, if people are wondering, is that it looks to me like either they really believe this, which is insane, or they are always looking for a pretext to say, to let the other side take over this country is just unthinkable.

I I mean, if you really believe this,

I would vote for a right-wing coup if I really thought half the country was Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals.

What do we do about that?

They're not taking the Governor Schwarzenegger approach to trying to bring people together.

That's for sure.

I think they're signaling to all right-wing media.

That's what they do really well.

The top creates the rage bait, and then all the right-wing podcasters and all the right-wing news sources, they go and get in alignment with the same thing.

That's what they're really good at, you know, rage farming.

But it looks to me like they are looking for a pretext always.

Sending the troops to Portland and Chicago, and now this thing that's going on tomorrow, I think they're rooting for violence because when violence happens, then it gives you the pretext to then send in more troops.

And they've already shown, they've already shown that they will absolutely not concede elections.

Trump still has not publicly conceded the 2020 election.

So like when you have this, if this is really the state of the country, I can see we have to cancel the next election.

There's just too much unrest.

We'll get back to elections, but we have to, it's just too much.

Once we get things safe, once we get things safe, this is what this looks like.

Or at least they have earned the suspicion.

Oh.

And I imagine you think six months before the next election, there will be a blue ribbon panel that will be announced to look into election integrity as they delay the election for 12 months.

Blue ribbon panel.

Oh,

it'll be chaired by Pam Bondi.

I don't think this crowd is big on blue ribbon panels.

Blue ribbon bake-offs, maybe, but not.

But the through line, the through line on all of these things is one thing, it's leverage.

I mean, and I'm not talking about leverage, we were talking about 1929, I'm talking about leverage over other people.

That's what all of this is about, right?

Whether you're sending the National Guard, that's about leverage.

Whether you're going after the law firms or going after the universities, that's about leverage.

Whether you're going after certain countries with tariffs, that's about leverage.

That is what that's the single piece of the whole thing.

No one knows how to use leverage better than Donald Trump.

I think what it's about is hanging on to power by making the case that it is an existential necessity for our side to hold on to power because this other side is, I mean, they...

Don't you want safer streets, right?

I mean, that's the whole pitch.

Safer streets, one thing.

But they actually are saying that there's a whole left-wing, organized, violent movement, and it's not organized, and it's not as bad as it was in the early 70s with the weathermen bombings.

It wasn't like, not even like 2020 with the

George Floyd riots.

But if you make that case that this country is off the hinges, then somebody's got to step in.

All right, I've got to step out.

Thank you, guys.

Time for Neural.

Okay.

Neural Nabbit Rite Aid has officially closed all its locations.

They have to tell us what's going to happen to each store's one employee.

Because I kind of liked her.

Not just the lack of eye contact, but also the sneering disdain for having to do her job of having to wait on you.

You know what, on second thought, bring on the robots.

I was wrong about that.

New role, the people complaining about bio-baiting, which is where people on dating apps purposely oversell themselves and accentuate their good qualities, have to tell us, as opposed to doing what?

Who is going to tell you the worst about themselves?

Late sleeper who's lax on hygiene enjoys noisy dinners and short walks anywhere but the beach.

And don't get me started on the herpes.

You know, Foster Farms, who just recalled millions of pounds of their frozen corn dogs because they contain extraneous material,

have to tell us what's extraneous material in a corn dog.

Actual meat.

Hey,

stay in your lane, corn dogs.

You have one job and one job only, to create unfortunate photos of presidential candidates.

New roll, the people now complaining that Bad Bunny shouldn't headline the Super Bowl halftime show because he speaks Spanish have to admit that when Kendrick Lamar headlined, you had no idea what the fuck he was saying even.

New Roll, someone needs to explain what the point is of leaving a review of an airport.

Oh look, Lady Posh98 says the food court doesn't have enough vegan options.

I guess we won't fly to see Grandma ever again.

Airports aren't supposed to meet your needs.

They're purgatories with a Penn Express.

You don't go because they're good.

You go because that's where the plane is.

And finally, New Rule, if you think your job is just to tell people what they want to hear, you're not a journalist.

You're a wedding DJ.

For years, I've complained about the media only telling half the story, lying by omission, when they leave out the part that doesn't feed their narrative.

A couple of weeks ago, Fox News and the New York Post committed the clearest example of this I've ever seen.

when they described my editorial of September 26th, where I called for a grand bargain between the far left and the far right,

but completely left out the far right part.

The post headline was: Bill Maher calls for a return to old America, tells left to scale back radical ideology, smug self-righteousness, all of which is true.

I said that and I stand by it.

But I thought, shouldn't you have also put the other half of what I said in your headline?

Well, I guess you'll get to it in the article.

But you didn't do that either, you fucking liars.

I know the right likes disappearing people now, but I'm not going to let you disappear my point.

And this is what happens after every show.

And not just on Fox News, and not just on the right.

Ironically, because the blue sky crowd hates me for calling them out on yes, they're voluminous bullshit.

They also will sometimes just print my critique of the left because they want people to think I'm a conservative.

You are fucking liars too.

Here's a test.

Let's see who reports what I'm saying now.

No.

No.

No, they won't because it's just so so easy not to.

If a truth falls in the algorithm, does it make a sound?

The Fox News New York Post piece even went so far as to giddily recount all the places I carved up the woke and then have the balls to write, wrapping up his monologue, Marr warned liberals that if they keep pushing radical progressive policies, those in power may never give that power back.

Yeah, I said that, and I believe that.

But that's not how I wrapped up my monologue.

Look, I have it here.

I have it.

That sentence came here, top of page two.

What about this part?

The part that starts with, which brings me to my friends on the right.

What happened to that part?

Here, let me read a chunk to you.

To my friends on the right, I say, an authoritarian police state is not going to work for you either.

Do you know what a drag it is to actually have to run a police state because half the population is seething, while all the time you know down deep that they're right about America becoming something it never was and never should be?

What happened to that part?

I don't want a retraction for you, I want an addition.

Leaving that part out would be like reviewing the movie Jaws and saying, it ends with three men who go fishing but don't catch anything.

Now I know why you do this.

Short answer, because you're cowards.

Because you know if you print the part that challenges your audience, you will get angry tweets and texts, not to mention dirty looks at the Lee Greenwood concert.

But, you know, there is a new spirit taking hold in the media, and I think in the country itself, a spirit of, let's cut the bullshit on both sides, shall we?

And I'm proud this show has been a part of fostering that.

Why don't you jump on the bandwagon?

Because the model you're working now isn't making you or your readers look good.

If you need every story in your feed to be, my team wins, and here's why my side is the good one, You're weak and deliberately keeping yourself ignorant.

And yes, that goes for both sides.

But

conservatives, I thought you were the strong people who laughed at safe spaces.

But you can't even read what I really said unless mommy promises you it has a happy ending.

Guys, we may not be heading for a happy ending.

And one reason is you keeping people in their information ghettos, which fosters hate and division and makes you nothing more than a human algorithm.

And algorithms are as much as anything, what keeps this country so fucked up.

I can't tell you exactly how they work because I'm not a virgin.

And I'm not a Bond villain who's on the spectrum, but

I know it's an evil gremlin that lives inside our phones and that it knows what you watch, what you like, what you click, what you buy, what you jerk off to,

what you comment on.

It knows all that, and then it owns you.

If you like it and love it, it gives you more of it.

And so you become a very boring, intellectually stunted, predictable person.

The good news is I have a way to break out of this.

No, not by throwing your phone away.

No one would do that.

But there's a better way.

Fuck with the algorithm.

Fuck with it.

Stop.

Yeah.

Stop letting it pigeonhole you.

It's so easy.

Just click on something you normally wouldn't.

If you're a liberal, search for Morgan Morgan Wallen tickets.

Order a set of shot glasses that looks like a rifle.

Ask Google how to reattach a finger after a bottle rocket accident.

And

if you're a conservative, go to a site that recaps the latest episode of RuPaul's Drag Race.

order a black lady church hat on Amazon

buy the Ruth Trader Ginsburg Halloween costume

and soon enough your algorithm will start treating you like a more well-rounded open-minded person and who knows then maybe you'll actually become one all right thank you very much ladies and gentlemen that's our show I want to thank Andrew Rossarkin Mark Gibbon and Arnold Schwarzenegger Club Random drops every Monday Monday on YouTube.

It's awesome this year.

Listen wherever you get your podcast.

Don't go watch Overtime on YouTube.

Thank you.

Thank you, folks.

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