Ep. #689: Dana Carvey, Ezra Klein, Andrew Sullivan

I know every operating system like the back of my head.

I have 25 years of experience and have worked with several people from your company.

I've been recognized for my passion.

My team is everything.

LinkedIn delivers candidates who rise above the rest.

With an up-to-date view into shared connections, skills, and interests you won't find anywhere else.

See why 86% of small businesses who post a job on LinkedIn get a qualified candidate within a day.

Post a job for free at linkedin.com slash achieve. LinkedIn, your next great hire is here.
The basketball playoffs are here on PrizePix, the best place to cash in on the action. The app is simple.
Pick more or less on at least two players for a shot to win up to 2,000 times your cash. Download the PrizePix app today and use code FIELD, that's code FIELD, and get $50 instantly when you

play $5. That's code FIELD

on Price Picks to get $50

instantly when you play $5. Win or

lose, you'll get $50 for just playing. Guaranteed.

Price Picks. Run your game.

Must be present in certain states. Visit

pricepicks.com for restrictions and details.

Welcome to

an HBO podcast from the

HBO Late Night series, Real time with Bill Maher. Thank you, people.
How are you?

Thank you. Thank you, people.
How are you? Thank you.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

Thank you down there.

Hey, thank you so much.

I appreciate that.

Wow, what a crowd we got.

Thank you so much.

I tell you, my hat's off to you.

Thank you so much. I tell you, my hat's off to you.

You're just such a great crowd we get here because there's so much going on you could be unhappy about,

but you're all in a good mood.

I also try to look on the bright side.

Baseball season has started.

I'm very excited about that.

You know who loves baseball?

Donald Trump loves baseball.

His favorite position is the third base coach.

That's who's in charge of sending Latinos home.

We make little jokes.

I know. Oh, Trump.
I jokes. I know.

Oh, Trump. I'm going to tell you, this Donald Trump guy, he really wants immigrants out.
And he wants them to do it themselves. No, he does.
Self-deporting. This is the new thing.
He put out a video this week and an app for this. The app is called Boxcar.
Oh, it's not that bad. You'll get over that joke.
But, no, and the video, same thing, you know, like self-deport, and it's a follow-up on this shoplifting video called Put That Back. But the big controversy in all this is that he sent back all these Venezuelan gang members.
Well, we're not sure they're gang members. They're Venezuelan.
Well, we're not sure. They're not white.
That's what we know. Anyway,

some of them are definitely,

I'm sure,

Venezuelan gang members.

We don't want them here.

And Trump,

to do this,

he used the 1798 Alien Enemies Act.

Remember that one?

The 1798 Alien Enemies Act.

Yeah.

No, it's a real thing.

But the judge stopped him and the judge said,

you know,

you can't use that one

because that's only if we're at war. And Trump said, we are at war.
What about Canada? So that's how that went down. And then, oh, it's if you like authoritarianism it's been a good week for you.
I'll just put it that way. So this is a little bit in dispute, but the French say, there was a French scientist coming to Houston to talk at a conference.
They refused him entry. That's the true part for sure.
And they took his phone. They did that.
And they said it's because the Trump people looked at his phone and found criticism of Donald Trump and then detained him. That's, I mean, this kind of stuff is the kind of stuff that's going to start to lose people.
Taking someone's phone? LAUGHTER APPLAUSE And then, amid all this, the Republicans are claiming that anyone who disagrees with Donald Trump these days has TDS. You know what that is, I'm sure.
You have the Dakota ring? Okay. TDS, Trump derangement syndrome.
There's a state senator in Minnesota introduced a bill that wanted to recognize Trump derangement syndrome as a mental illness. Wait, interesting week this guy had.
After he introduced the bill, he got arrested for soliciting a minor for prostitution. Well, thank God he was just trying to fuck kids and not doing something really insane like disagreeing with Donald Trump.
That would be... So...
So, it's such an interesting thing here. No one can breathe a disagreement about Donald Trump.
And yet, he had a phone call this week with Vladimir Putin about Ukraine, and they said Putin kept Trump waiting for an hour

to get on the call, but that was okay.

An hour. Trump kept screaming

supervisor, supervisor.

And then...

And Musk heard it and said,

what?

But, uh...

Oh.

Oh.

Elon, he has his problems.

Liberals are furious at Elon, so they are burning Teslas.

Have you seen this? All sorts of demonstrations?

Burning Teslas?

I tell you, those two astronauts who were up in space for nine months and just got back, they must be like, wait, the liberals hate Tesla now? It's like... It's like drag queens attacking wigs.
And then, you know, and Trump's trying to defend his boy. Remember last week he was selling the Tesla on the White House lawn? And this week the Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick, was imploring Americans to buy a Tesla.
Buy, he said, Tesla stock is down, help this man. People, please, the richest man in the world is hurting.
Once you give what you can, $5, $10, even a dollar, could put a smile on an oligarch's face. So that's where the Republicans are.
As far as the opposition party, the Democrats approval rating at an all-time low, 27%.

People say the Democrats are in the wilderness.

That's not the wilderness.

That's getting eaten by a bear.

All right.

We've got a great show.

We have Andrew Sullivan and Ezra Klein.

But first up, he is a comedian, actor, and producer.

And his podcast is Fly on the Wall, which he co-hosts with David Spade.

He is beloved for a good reason.

Dana Carvey is over here. We'll see what happens.
We'll see what happens when you come. Dana, please.
Please be seated.

The love that you...

Wow, that's amazing.

That is so deserved.

I feel funny like when I used to climb the rope in gym class.

You can do it at any age.

This is why when you're on, I just feel...

Let me tell you.

Let me tell you.

I love it when Trump was sitting there and he's got the tie. No question, by the way.
Welcome to the Dana Carvey Show. My guest is Bill Maher.
Hi. So Trump's there, he's got the tie, and then Elon is up there talking, right? And I don't really do it yet, but I'm working on it.
Okay. We've got to go to Mars.
We're going to Mars. Because it comes to say, we've got to go to Mars.
This will be really cool. Okay? Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
And then they say, President Trump.

And Trump goes, what he said.

What he said.

What he said.

He's a smart cookie.

He's a tough cookie.

He's a cookie monster.

This one, he's smart.

Everybody talks about it.

He's like a ship so high.

Excuse me.

Excuse me.

Everybody knows it. And nobody works a word like Trump.
He's a smart, tough cookie. He's a cookie monster.
He's a lawn and dune. You know the lawn and dune? You know the lawn and dune? Anyway, so Bill...
How does someone... How does anyone on show business have the same job since 1992 in different incarnations?

That, has it ever been done before?

Oh, shut up.

You don't care about that.

I want to bet with my wife, he would tell me to shut up and then do it. No, no.

There is something about you that I want to just hug.

There's a kind of a guy that has a vulnerability that's...

Anyway, we'll talk later.

Now, this is why hosts feel so superfluous when you are on.

Not at all.

I can run through the stuff or I can be very serious. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, you don't dare.
Bobby Kennedy Jr. Oh.
Has dystonia, my brother has it, just rigid vocal cords. He always sounds like he just took a hit of pop.
We all sound like him. After that thing, you know, my dad never came to the game and I didn't know where he was.
We all do that. The pharmaceutical companies and the big A, I think he's really smart.
It's just he needs a JFK AI to interpret. We will attack the big pharma when we need to.
We don't do it because it's easy. We do it because it's hard.
How old do you have to be to get that reference? I love being JFK. Anyway, next.
Come on, Bill. I want to give you a hug so bad.
Because you're just amazing. But anyway.
I'm amazing. I haven't said a word.
How could I be? That is amazing. Go ahead.
I've been in the clubhouse. Yes, you've been on the club, Randall.
You were on our podcast, and now we're here. Yes, and didn't you just win an award? Whoops.
Fee-fi-fo-fear. Somebody won the comedy podcast of the year.

I think it was rigged.

But David Spade and I,

I Heart gave us the comedy podcast of the year. Yeah, it's a great podcast.

Is it?

It ain't no club random.

And that thing is random.

You get in there,

I'm sitting there for a half hour

just in the dark waiting.

And then you come in

and you're like,

well, whatever.

I got a little tipsy too. You know, I johnny carson when he gets pulled over for drunk driving oh well sorry officer i i didn't know i was swerving i had two slippery monkeys at the hook and crook what's funnier he got mad at it didn't he when you did when you did you did Carson, you still went on SNL.

Yeah.

And, you know, this is why you are just such a genius and a person.

You get at the essence of somebody.

Nobody could quite get Biden.

You got at the essence of him, George Bush.

I'm going to be serious right now.

Come on.

I'm coming around.

Come on.

Come on. You know when he itches his face?

When they would work Biden way too hard,

at the end of the day, he'd be wandering around.

Yeah, it's the people who go there.

And he would sit and be like,

Where's that? I'm being serious. Come on.
No, you got me going on that one. Well, because that's what I'm saying.
Like, everybody makes their commentaries about it. But like that gets to the essence of it.
And everybody can understand that. Well, I think with me, you know, obviously I admired Rich Little.
And he had Johnny doing the monologue, you know. And so I noticed Johnny interviewing.
I did not know that was one of the hooks. Yes.
Well, that is weird, wild stuff, you know. And so that was the most fun I ever had on Saturday Night Live.
But he did not take it well. Because you got at the essence.
I mean, it was the end of the reign. It was the, people don't remember this, we're going back those 30 years, but it was the end of Johnny Carson, been there for 30 years.
The king of late 90s. But he was in his late 60s.
Not that there's anything wrong with that. Yeah.
For this kind of show, it's fine.

But for that kind of a show,

and you kind of, like, showed the Emperor's clothes

were a little tatted.

A little bit.

And he didn't like that.

And, you know, Phil Hartman, God rest his soul,

he was playing Ed So Prilly.

And I love being out there with Phil.

And Phil is that McMahon,

Johnny would make a reference, that's like Wild Wild West or James Garner's pants or whatever. And then Phil would go, Old reference, lost on younger viewers.
So... Bing! So, at first, Johnny loved it.
And I did Carsenio. It was a combination of Cinellar and Carson.
Ed, did you know that a crib is not actually, that's where you live? That's not where you put a... So, anyway, he liked it for a while, and then there was one where, and I was worried about it, kind of played him a little more senile.
He didn't know that Susan Day, who was the guest, had been off the Partridge family for ten years. And, you know, so I understand.
So anyway, he did get upset, and I didn't like that, you know, but I understood that he also would, you know, Wayne Newton and all those stories. But, you know, you've got to take the piss out of the powerful.
I agree. There's a movement to not do that anymore, and I think we're fighting back against that.
We saw the Tom Brady roast, Nikki Glaser... At the Golden Globes this year, starting to get back to that.
I mean, I know... Was it Bill Gates who walked out on you once when you were doing him? Well, they asked me to do a skit with Bill Gates at a big event as the church lady.
Without even... Yeah.
And I said, I do not sell out that character. They wanted me in the dress and the wig and to go in this giant arena with Bill Gates.
I said, I don't sell out the character. And then they told me what they were going to pay me and I said, I'll get the dress on right now of course and so I'm in I'm in this giant arena and they're so intense about Bill Gates so you

know he's like their you know god like get him Bill kind of this tension come on we have cue

cards I'm in the dress he's there just being Bill Gates hello you know he's got a little sweater

and I'm into the character

it wasn't on the script

I turned to him and said

well well well

we like ourselves don't we

apparently we made a deal with the devil

wait

the devil said we can have a hundred billion dollars

but we have to go through life looking like a turtle

So, Tim, I'm going to go through life looking like a turtle. So, what, you feel that he looks like a turtle? It was a joke.
Hey man, he does not look like an amphibious creature. I appreciate the funny stuff up front, but that went too far, dude.
So he walked off? Then he walked off. Well, then I said said let's do the superior dance because the whole thing is like a souffle

deflating. It's really tense

and then he goes, I go let's do

the superior dance. He goes no thank you

goodbye and he just walked off.

Yeah. And I go

backstage it's like Lord of the Rings

intensity. I'm being surrounded by these

Microsoft nerds and I

Oh my God. You made fun of the precious.
So, to your point. I want to know, it's just, it's really, it says a lot about people's character, whether they can take it or not.
I mean, Bush Sr., who you were, some would say, unmerciful to. Right.
He was your friend. He came from a different era.
We were friends for 35 years. We did a lot of charity events together.
I make fun of him on SNL. He loses the election in November.
In December, I get a call. This is the White House operator.
And all of a sudden, I'm talking to him. And he's like, hey, Dane, how you doing? You know? And I go, I'm Mr.
President. And he goes, you know, and then to cut to it, he's like, thought you might come out to D.C.
and cheer up the troops. He wanted me to kind of cheer up his staff.
They're down here. I want to bring them up in this area.
So this is. Thank you.
Greatest audience in the world. This is true.
At that moment, I'm a very young man, and I'm just thinking, D.C., what? And I said to the president, well, where would I stay? He thinks I'm negotiating, so he pauses. Well, he's staying in the White House right here with Barr and I.
Two weeks later, my wife and I are in the lincoln bedroom we stayed for three nights

we saw a lot of things all anyone want back home wanted to know was whether we did you did you do it did you do it in the lincoln bedroom i'm not gonna say but my son's middle name is a but my point

the Woody Allen

the Woody Allen

rhythm

always gets a laugh

just because The Woody Allen rhythm always gets a laugh.

But anyway, so that was a...

Can I do the biggest laugh in my act right now?

I thought that was it.

No, no.

This is so ridiculous and how big a laugh it gets.

I'll just walk from here.

Camera?

Okay.

Okay, here it is.

This is George Bush Sr. going off a high dive.
I don't know why this, and now it's going to bomb. Anyway.
Gotta do it. Gotta do it.
Not gonna do it. Why? Why? It's funny.
It's funny. It's funny.
It's funny. You're a funny guy.
Well, I think I was great tonight. What do you think? I don't think I've ever...
I love... I'm going to get corny.
I love making you laugh. I love making you laugh.
You think you love it. I love it.
I love it. We have a bromance? Is that what it's called? We should.
Mutual, you know. So, last thing.
Yes, sir. You missed the 50th SNL.
I heard you had the flu. Yeah.
Too bad, because you were certainly one of the all-time greats on that show. And I thought...
And since... But the person who closed the show was Paul McCartney.
And I thought, oh, I wish you had been there because that is one of my favourite impressions that you do. Talk about capturing the essence of Sunday.
I just love being Paul. And I do, like he is now, you know.
John and I, John and I, you know, we'd sit for a plonk, you know. We'd sit for a plonk and we're like facing each other.
I was left-handed. He was right beside facing a mirror, you know.
Facing a mirror. And there's never been anyone that humble with the genius he mentions.
We sat and we plonked, you know. And that's how we came up with Abbey Road.
You know, it's like, what?

I've had a lot of interactions with you.

I have a panel waiting who is going to hate me

because there's no way to follow Dana Carvey,

but we're going to try.

Thank you very much, my friend, for coming on here.

Let's have that go, man.

Let's do it.

Dana Carvey, everybody.

Thank you. All right, let's meet our panel.
Well. All right.
Your snacking routine can get a little dull. Time for a light and fit remix.
Like a crunchy storm of graham cookies, caramel pearls, and dark chocolate showering down into a smooth creamy yogurt. Enjoy three Light & Fit Remix varieties with craveable flavors and up to 120 calories and 10 grams of protein per 4.5 ounce serving.
See RemixYogurt.. By the time I hit my 50s, I'd learned a few things.
Like how family is precious. Work can always wait.
And 99% of people over 50 already have the virus that causes shingles. Not everyone at risk will develop it, but I did.
The painful, blistering rash disrupted my life for weeks. Don't learn about your shingles risk the hard way.
Talk to your doctor or pharmacist today. Sponsored by GSK.
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Commercial Insurance. Business owners meet Progressive Insurance.
They make it easy to get discounts on commercial auto insurance and find coverages to grow with your business. Quote in as little as six minutes at progressivecommercial.com.
Progressive Casualty Insurance Company. Coverage provided and serviced by affiliated and third-party insurers.
Discounts and coverage selections not available in all states or situations. I apologize.

All right, he is the host of the NYT podcast,

the Ezra Klein Show, and author of the new book, Abundance.

Ezra Klein is here.

All right.

And he writes the weekly dish newsletter and sub stack and hosts the podcast, The Dish Cast, with Andrew Sullivan.

Andrew Sullivan. Andrew Sullivan! Well, it's good we can laugh.
Isn't that? I didn't do that. You really do.
Oh, my God. You know, some people don't want to do that.
But we have to talk about serious stuff because we're the serious people now. So it seems like here we are.
I guess it's exact. It's the first day of spring and two months into Avengers Endgame.
And I see a pattern, which is that there are some things that some things I don't like altogether. But there's some things I think you and I both agree.
I don't know if you do on all of these,

but some of the things that Trump has ideas for,

like Europe should pay for their own defense.

Yeah, they should.

They're rich.

Border security.

Equity completely replacing the idea of equality.

I mean, some things, maybe biological men

should not be competing with women.

Lots of things.

But none of it he does well. He does the right way.
Which takes us to getting rid of the... So the big story this week, he got rid of...
And one of those things on the list of things, which I think are a pretty good idea, is I don't want Venezuelan gang members here either. Gang members have initiations where they have to kill a rando to get their fucking teardrop tattoo.
I don't want to be that guy. So I'm for getting rid of...
But you can't do it extra legally, which he did. And then the judge said, well, you can't do that.
And he said, this is the quote from Tom Holman, Trump's Borders Are, we are not stopping, I don't care what the judges think. Okay, it's not the way you can run a country.
My question for you guys is, to people who just don't follow stuff, all the nuance like we do, they just think, well, these are some good ideas. I don't know about all these laws.
How do you convince people that the conceptual, which is we got to follow laws, the founding fathers were pretty clear about you can't put people in jail without a trial. How do you convince people who don't follow it that closely that the concept is more important than the actual action? I don't know that you can on Venezuela and gang members.
The thing that I think is going to save democracy is that they are terrible at managing the economy. There are a bunch of things where Donald Trump has a strong argument.
And as you say, he's doing things in a very dangerous way. With them, there's always the policy and the message of the way to carry out the policy.
The policy is no Venezuelan gang members. The message is they are not bound by loss.
And they try to split politics in between the two, right? Because they know they have the winning side of the first issue. But the thing is, they have no restraint on anything, right? They don't have it on tariffs.
They don't have it on laws. They don't have it on Doge.
And so you're watching this guy lose altitude very, very quickly. Whether they care, I'm not sure.
But it took Joe Biden 221 days. His approval rating is highest ever this week.
It went down to, this week at least, or last week, it had gone down to negative. It took Joe Biden 221 days to go negative.
But for him, it's his highest. No, it is.
It's a little below 50. That's not horrible.
I have to say, I do not care about the economy if the government in this country claims it can break down anyone's doors, seize anyone with no due process, put them on a plane and send them to a foreign jail where who knows what's going to happen to them. I want to say the last person in this country who did that was called George III.
This is fundamental to this country's survival, to the meaning of this country. We do not let people violate people's security without due process and outlaw.
Period. I know I'm hyped up about this.
I know they're not necessarily citizens. I know I'm hyped up about this.

I know they're not necessarily citizens.

I know that some of them, a lot of them,

are horrible people that shouldn't be here.

But some of them are not.

The whole point of this is that innocent people

are caught up in this when they are and should not be,

when you're not giving them any chance to prove

that they shouldn't be there.

Again, but can I...

Sorry, I'm...

Yeah, yeah, calm down.

This is...

This is a strike.

This is America.

I'm an immigrant to this country.

I understand.

That's why I came here,

because this country is a country of freedom.

But, again...

And he's telling us it isn't.

Let's put...

I agree.

Sorry.

We're all on the same page.

Stop yelling at us.

I will.

I will.

But here, put yourself in the shoes of somebody who doesn't follow politics that closely. And Venezuelan gang members, why are we even arguing about this? They shouldn't be in this country.
This guy is finally doing something about it. He's kicking them out.
And a judge, one judge told him to stop. Well, what law is this? That any judge anywhere can...
I don't know why I'm using that accent.

I went into

my stupid voice.

Why is it that one judge

anywhere can say, oh, a president

can't do this? I mean, that's something

that's a little abstruse to a lot of people.

Look, I think you can make the argument.

The question is, can you get to where people are

listening to the argument? The thing about

the election, the thing about politics right now, is Donald Trump wins people who don't like to think about politics, right? That's very, very clear in all the polling. If you follow the news, you voted for the Democrats, by and large.
If you don't follow the news, you voted for him. And I'm not saying that that means that people who voted for him are less smart or anything like that.
But the problem the Democrats have, the problem that Andrew's argument has, that my argument has, that your argument has, is how do you reach people? It's not even really, I think, that the problem is, people hear that the Venezuelan gang members are being deported and who, you know, what is the judge's power over this? They don't hear about it at all, oftentimes. Right? I mean, this stuff is all the news, and if you're tuned it out, it's very hard to get to you.
And so the thing that I think they understand, I mean, you've had Steve Bannon on this show, right? I think we have him coming up. I guess we've had him, and we're going to have him again, and then he's going to have us.
His whole thing is you flood the zone of bullshit, because the pipe of information for most people is pretty narrow. And even if they hear about one thing, they don't hear about the other eight, they don't hear about the other ten.
You overwhelm the media. You overwhelm people.
And also you recognize that most people don't want to think about it, right? And so you can get a lot done under the cover of chaos. And it's a very genuine problem.
It's not a crazy strategy they're running. The one thing that is crazy about it is they flood their own zone.
They don't know what they're doing. The right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing.
They don't know the people they're firing. They don't know what might break.
So we don't really know what are the things that are going to break through because it turned out planes started dropping out of the sky or some group they fired led to a nuclear disaster, right? Like they also do not have a great sense of what they're doing. They don't mean to be deporting some of the people they appear to be deporting, but we don't know what will break through, because fundamentally you're trying to convince people who are not watching the show right now.
And also, I mean, we're doing this in a world where the Democrats now have a 27% approval rating. So explain that to me.
And by the way, 11% with independents, I think in the same NBC poll, 11% with independents. I mean, I said this at the end of last year, like you lost a crazy contest to a crazy person.
What is the answer for the Democrats there? Because they seem to be having a civil war right now. Some of them are going over to, I think, the reality wing of the party.
Gavin Newsom is here next week. I think he's made a big change.
I'd love to see that. some of them are going over to, I think, the reality wing of the party.
Gavin Newsom is here next week.

I think he's made a big change.

I'd love to see that.

Some of them are saying, get rid of Chuck Schumer, who kept the government running,

which was the practical thing to do.

And I think the Democrats would have looked worse if he didn't.

But they want to throw him out for AOC.

What's your view on that?

Well, I don't think they want to throw him out for AOC, but I agree they're in a simple Oh, a lot of them do. Yeah, but not the ones in power.
Look, they're going to look bad for a while because they don't have the power to do the thing their own people want them to do. People come up to me all the time and they say, the Democrats have no message.
Why don't they have a message? And I say to them, no, no, no. If you listen to them, and I do, it's my job.
They have a message. You'd like their message, fine, but they don't have as any power.

And so all their choices are bad.

What you want from them is to make it stop.

And they can't make it stop in a way they think they'll win.

But they had a chance.

They won.

And they had a chance to prove to the American people

for four years that they were moderate.

They did want to build things.

They were these old crazy lefties.

And they failed.

Are you plugging my book? Well, no, I'm happy to plug your book. I'm happy to plug your book.
And they... I love your book, and I love the idea that Democrats should get back into building things, into making things happen, into deregulating, into supercharging the economy.
I just think that until the Democrats address some of the core issues, they seem not to want to control immigration. They have extremist views about race.
They think that boys should compete with girls in sports and that children should have their sex reassigned. Until they grapple with that first and then have your argument, the two together will work.
But you can't do this to avoid that. Yeah.
I think they've moderated. I think the party has moved on a bunch of those issues.
Look, they pass the Lake and Riley bill. It's basically the first thing they did in this Congress.
They're not going to fight on that. What's that? Says the audience.
The Lake and and Riley... What's that, eggheads? The Lake and Riley bill.
Lost the election because we don't talk the normal language? The Lake and Riley bill is a very right-wing immigration enforcement bill. The argument against it was that you can basically pull people in without a lot of due process, actually.
But it was voted for by a bunch of Democrats, including sort of young Democrats like Ruben Gallego. The Democrats have moved on this.

They didn't move on it early enough, and it's part of why they lost the election.

You're not wrong on that.

But the problem right now, they're 27 percent right now.

The reason they've dropped right now is they're losing support from Democrats.

And the reason losing support from Democrats is Democrats want an opposition party, and

they don't have good leverage for the opposition yet.

Look, if you go back to early Obama or early Biden, you look at polling for the Republican Party, it's bad. Polling for a party after it loses an election is usually bad because it doesn't have the one thing its partisans want it to have, which is power.
Well, it's not this bad. I've never seen one this bad, and I think...
I think people realize something realize something is deeply wrong. Yeah, they do.
Something is deeply wrong with what's going on in the country. It's to do with the way Trump understands power.
You think about what you were saying before. How can one judge stop the will of the people, which is Musk's tweets? He doesn't seem to understand we have a judiciary, a legislative and executive.
The whole point is that we'd have that to avoid tyranny. And no one...
But that's my question. You've got to make that case.
We have not taught civics in this country. They're too busy learning that America is white supremacist without learning that there are three branches of government.
They're all separate, they're kept apart, so that we can be freer than other countries. Why are we teaching that? We should be teaching that.
I think the way you appeal to them is that this could happen to you. It could happen to one of your friends.
It could happen with one of your friends who has a tattoo that might not be the right tattoo, and it's suddenly gone. You talk to the people who have relatives in Europe, and they say, my friend came over.
He was thrown and treated terribly by the others for no good reason. You will tell the stories of the people who have been victimized by this, the good people in government who have been fired for no reason, the good programs that were working that have been gotten rid of for no good reason.
Everyone wants to reduce waste. Everyone wants to streamline government.
Not this way. I've got to keep you calm.
Okay, I'm sorry. So I'm going to interrupt just so you can catch your breath.
Let's do something light. Let's do something light, right? Let's do something light.
All right. I see confession signs are back in the news.
There was a couple in Texas who made their kid have one, and they're in trouble with the law now. But this was always a big thing with pets.
People would post their pets, you know, confession signs. Things like, I had one.
Oh, wait, I ate Alexa. Did you see that? I tricked my parents into feeding me dinner twice.
I shopped with a pet cow. You know, these are kind of funny.
So we thought, this is probably going to get a trend with people. And sure enough, people are doing it now.
Would you like to see some of the ones that I thought you might? For example, we got Blake Lively doing it. Even I'm not sure what I'm claiming he did.

It's amazing what people will reveal.

John Fetterman did one.

At home, I wear Versace.

J.D. Vance says, it is eyeliner, and I look fabulous.

The Pope.

I'm not really sick.

This is a promotional stunt for Conclave.

Alec Baldwin.

I killed Gene Hackman. Oh, that's...

You've got to be on the edge.

I'm sorry.

One of the rescued astronauts.

This sucks.

I wish I was back in space.

Chuck Schumer.

I'm this close to going MAGA.

Bianca Sensori had this one.

I've never had that dream where I'm doing something naked.

Uh, Elon.

When a random kid approaches me, I just assume he's mine.

And, uh, Trump. I might have gotten Canada mixed up with Iran.

Okay, so just to continue on this for a minute, because I just saw this really bad news for Democrats.

2030 reapportionment, there's a group called the American Redistricting Project, and in five years we will be redistricting. California's projected to lose three seats, New York two.
Also going to lose a seat, Minnesota, Oregon, Rhode Island, Illinois, all blue states. Who's getting these? Texas, Florida, Idaho, and Utah.
I mean, this looks like game over, you know, and the reason why people are voting with their feet is a lot of what your book is about. Yeah.
Taxes and regulation. I certainly been screaming about it forever.
I did three years with a sign here that said, how long is it going to take me to get my solar hooked up? Three years talking about it on television in this state, you couldn't do it. This state has almost 400,000 regulations.
I just put in a new roof because of the fire. I thought, oh, let's get a roof that's not going to burn up.
Two inspections. Why are you inspecting my roof? It's my fucking roof.
If it falls on me, that's my problem.

And we're taxed more than any other state.

People are leaving these kind of states for places where they're not...

They feel the heavy breath of government on them.

It's just... It's not that hard for Democrats to understand this,

but they seem to be incapable of doing anything about it. So we poll this.
They're leaving on cost of living. That's all part of it.
They're leaving because they can't afford homes. And it's a huge, not just political problem, those numbers you just gave.
After 2030, if that holds, a Democrat could win every state Kamala Harris won, win Michigan, win Pennsylvania. And I'm just blanking on the third blue wall today, win Michigan, win Pennsylvania, and win Wisconsin, and lose the presidential election.
Right? The blue wall would no longer be enough for them to win. And you have to take that.
You mean they could win those three states and still lose? And lose. Lose the presidential.
That's how bad it is. Right? And that's because they are driving people out, working class families out of the states they govern because the cost of living is too high.
And the cost of living is too high in part for regulatory reasons, in part for taxes. But the big problem is they just don't have enough of the things people need.
Not enough homes, not enough energy, not a government capable of delivering. And they've been treating that as not a real problem.
You were talking about your solar sign. California high-speed rail, it's a huge disaster, but nobody's ever done anything about it.
If you tried to build it again, it would go the exact same way. High-speed rail? Yeah, California's high-speed rail.
I think we first passed it in 2008. Mm-hmm.
I think they just voted something about it again. It's projected.
Just give up. Just to just to just to build, I think, from Bakersfield to Merced.
Who the hell wants to go from Bakersfield to Merced? And they couldn't do that. I went out and toured this for the book.
And the people building it were perfectly clear with me.

Look, this doesn't work if we don't do L.A. to San Francisco.

And they don't have the money to do L.A. to San Francisco.

And they don't have the regulatory structure to do it.

They have been clearing.

They started clearing the rail track through environmental review.

The whole point of high-speed rail is it's good for the environment.

Right.

They started clearing it through environmental review in 2012.

By the end of 2024, when I was fact-checking the book, it was almost done. The reviews were almost done.
And the thing that bothers me about it, and it didn't get high speed rail, is they didn't change it. Right.
OK, huge failure. Learn something.
Make it so it won't happen again. The problem is the right, we've just been talking about this, the personality type of the right is autocratic now.

And the personality type of the left is bureaucratic. And you can't govern if you are this obsessed with process.
And you can see it in the outcomes. If you want to sideline dangerous populist right autocratic movements, you've got to offer people the fruits of effective government.
If the places you govern are not advertisements for your governance you are going to lose and it's just depressing to live in a country where it still takes nearly three hours to get from washington to new york this is the, right? You can't get there in less than three hours. It should be 40 minutes on a real train.
I couldn't agree with you more, but what I want to know is, why is that any different than what they're doing in the red states? So, deregulate, lots of energy, lots of building. There are places where red states have it right.
Look, Houston and Austin, when people move there, they build more houses. They just do.
They build multiples more houses per, you know, a thousand people who come in there than L.A. and San Francisco and New York City do.
L.A. and San Francisco and New York City should take a page out of Texas's book on this.
The problem with a bunch of the red states is the vision of where

they want to go with things, right? The fascinating thing to me about Texas is it's building as much

clean energy as it is, even though the politics are anti-clean energy. The Texas governor,

the Texas legislature, they keep putting up bills to make it harder. But because of the default in

Texas is it's easy to build and building clean energy is profitable because of the Inflation

Reduction Act and the technology and a bunch of other things, they're still building a ton of it.

Get out of it. Getting the default right, making it possible to do good things, gets you a lot of the way.
Energy from fossils and green energy, altogether the best sort of form of energy. Because I think climate change is a problem.
Yeah, I do too, but it's a... Well, if you build a lot of coal plants, it's going to get a lot worse.
No, I understand that, and I'm not in favor of that, but I'm just saying there's a tension here, is there not? There's a little tension. You want to let it rip, then you're not quite, not quite.
I don't mean, like, literally abundance of everything. We define what we think it should be an abundance of, right? If you say, oh, we've got an abundance of energy, but the entire state is on fire from wildfires, I'm not going to be like, great, well, we have an abundance of energy, right? We need to, you need to choose.
One of the dangers of naming your book Abundance is people think it's just more of everything. But it's actually about trade-offs, right? The core critique that my co-author Derek Thompson and I make of democratic governance is that it doesn't make trade-offs.
They pile everything in to every bill, to every project, and then things don't get done. But everything is a trade-off.
Yeah, decarbonization is a trade-off. Energy would be cheaper if we just built a bunch of coal plants, but then it's going to coat our lungs, it's going to coat our skies, and it's going to get worse.
I thought green energy was getting so cheap it didn't matter, that it was going to take over anyway. Well, not as fast as we'd like it to.
Oh, so it's a matter of adjusting this now. now.
I'm not adjusting. I want regulation.
I want good regulations that achieve the goal. What do you say to the young Latino dude who says he's ambitious in his life.
He's going to have a big-ass truck. Are you reading Josh Barrow? I am.
I'm studying Josh Barrow. I read that subject, too.
It was a great point. It's like, you know, you've got to talk to these working-class people who don't want to live in a perfectly green world.
They want to get their truck and get out there and live their lives. It's not going to be a perfectly green world, but there's no reason we can't power trucks on electricity.
Look, the cyber truck powers itself on electricity. Didn't Ford make an F-150 electric? It was right wing.
That's when you would do better. Listen, I thought the only good part of Elon Musk going MAGA was he was going to sell the right on electric vehicles.
And it just didn't happen, even with Trump doing the infomercials. Right? It was just not going to happen.
That's because they hate him for other reasons. They hate him for other reasons.
But the truth is, I mean, apropos of this discussion, we need an Elon Musk who would do to California what he's doing to the government in a sane way. In a sane way, yes.
If you have 400,000 regulations and you cannot build a high-speed rail that started in 2008, you need somebody to come in here. Who is this person on the left? The left doesn't want to deregulate.
It just has that instinct to deregulate. Let them do whatever they want.
But they're going to have to get over it. I know it's going to have to.
They're going to be the Whigs. They're getting over in Europe.
The new Labour government in Britain is spending a lot on housing. They're spending a lot of energy.
They're doing exactly this kind of thing. You're the future.
We need a new word. I really believe it's because I find this on the tour.
You say deregulate and a lot of liberal enough is just shut down, right? It's such a right-coded word. But often what I'm talking about here, sometimes you do need to deregulate the market.
I believe that on housing very, very much. Sometimes you're deregulating the government itself.
You just change the word to rules. Some rules are good.
Some rules are bad. Some rules serve your purposes.
Some don't. And you want to get rid of bad rules, including on the government.

The thing that liberals regulate more than anything else is the government itself.

People come up to me on the left and say, no, the answer here is public housing.

That's fine. But if you look at the rules under which the government would have to build public housing, you cannot build enough of it fast enough or affordably enough to solve any of your major problems.

You have to be outcomes focused. You have to decide what you are going to do.

at the end. you cannot build enough of it fast enough or affordably enough to solve any of your major problems.
You have to be outcomes focused. You have to decide what you are going to do and then do it.
Democrats do need to learn something from Elon Musk. Not lawlessness, but a kind of relentlessness about what you're trying to achieve.
And I love your thing about people with the long signs that say, in this house, we believe. But then they zone their neighborhoods in a way that it doesn't really follow through on their principles.
Yeah, when you've got no human being is illegal in a neighborhood all zone for single family homes where the working class families are fleeing it because they can't afford to live there, you're just doing symbolism. Right.
Or what you call the firefighter test. If a firefighter can't live in the neighborhood, he's protecting remember when we had we had riots here in 92 uh and and when the trial came was like all the cops live in simi valley i was like what the fuck is simi valley but that was part of the problem all right thank you guys i gotta take a take it to the end here because it's time for New Rules, everybody.

Okay.

All right.

New Rule, if the Menendez brothers

really want to get out of jail,

they need to stop looking so happy in their mug shots.

Jesus, you're doing life without parole. You look like you're taking a selfie in Cabo.
These pictures don't say get us out of this stinking hellhole. They say the food's not much, but the sex is out of this world.
So sensual. Someone has to tell Muccia.
So sensible.

Someone has to tell Muccia, the whippet, seen here next to his best in-show trophy after winning the Crufts dog show in England, try not to feel so guilty, Muccia. It does kind of look like a fire hydrant.
New rule since Minnesota Republican Justice Ikorn started this week by triumphantly sponsoring a bill to declare Trump derangement syndrome a mental illness and then ended the week

by getting arrested for soliciting an underage girl for sex.

He has to tell us, was that always how you planned to celebrate? New Rule, now that the Democratic Party has an approval rating of just 27% and has lost the working class vote, the House, the Senate, the White House, and the Supreme Court, liberals have to take heart from the battles they have won. Okay, there's really only one, but it's a big one.
They now sell vibrators at Target. New rule, someone must explain why we always just assume it's Jesus when the face of a bearded man appears in things.
For once, I want to see people gathered around a tree stump and say, holy shit, it's James Brolin. And finally, New Rule, the Trump administration and its elite squad of Marvel Universe mutant budget Avengers known as Doge.
Must tell us what happened to going after the military. Let's check the military.
We're going to find billions, hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud and abuse. And, you know, the people elected me on that.
Well, today they reported back on what they found when they checked the military. And it wasn't hundreds of billions or even billions.
It was 580 million out of a defense budget of almost 900 billion. You know, when they were talking about shrinking the government, I said, yeah, great, but the acid test will be if they go after the biggest bloat of all, obsolete weapons programs.
So I was hopeful when in November, Musk wrote on X, some idiots are still building manned jet fighters like the F-35. Manned fighter jets are obsolete in the age of drones.
Please, in the name of all that is holy, let us stop the worst military value for money in history that is the F-35 program. Exactly your excellence.
But today, Trump announced, we're building a new fighter jet, the F-47.

And Trump said, we put in an order for a lot.

We can't tell you the price.

So what happened to fighter jets are obsolete in the age of drones?

Was that just the ketamine talking?

Because I feel like you guys are purposefully avoiding the elephant in the room.

Meet the new boss. Same

as the old boss. The two

trillion in waste that

you originally said you could cut?

Yeah, you're not going to get there by firing

mailmen and the guy who tells you to not lean over the rail at the Grand Canyon.

According to Doge's own wall of receipts,

after two months they've only reached $35 billion in verifiable cuts

across the whole government.

Meanwhile, the fattest target to hunt savings from sits unmolested across the Potomac at the Pentagon, a place Eisenhower warned us was out of control in 19-fucking-61. So, look, here's the federal budget.
Here's the discretionary spending part, what we could cut. You mean there's barely a penny of waste in this half? I may not know how to code like Elon's nerd brigade, but I can read a fucking pie chart.
Lastly, Congress appropriated the money to take us through to October,

and there was plenty of belt tightening, but not defense.

Oh, no. That can never be touched.

Good times, bad times, Republicans in charge, Democrats in charge.

It's amazing. The right and the left in this country despise each other.

But they do agree on two things. One, keep an eye on the Jews because they're always up to something.
And two, the

defense budget is always perfect, like the Virgin Mary. In fact, it's always okay if

it gets bigger. It's like a fat Virgin Mary.

Our defense budget is higher than the next nine countries combined.

It's more than triple that of our biggest adversary, China,

and eight and a half times that of our closest ally, Russia. The Pentagon itself says it has 19% more bases than it needs.
Wouldn't it be efficient to close some of those? The 750 bases in 80 countries we have around the world,

we need every one.

No place to fire up the old chainsaw there.

Vroom, vroom.

The Air Force, Air Force has 51 golf courses.

The Marines have 10. Guam has two.
Nothing? No vroom vroom for that? An internal watchdog once found Boeing marked up the price of a helicopter by 177,000%. Not 177%.
177,000%. That is almost as bad as my mechanic.
You know, I don't know what the army does before 9 a.m., but it's not reading receipts. Come on, you're Elon Musk.
The first cuts were easy, but playtime is over. Pick on someone your own size.
And I don't just mean the Pentagon. If you look up bloated bureaucracy in the dictionary, it's a picture of the Department of Homeland Security, a Frankenstein monster born in the panic after 9-11 when we took 22 separate government agencies and

merged them into one enormous bureaucracy, rounded by around one common goal, to make

sure that my container of lube doesn't exceed 3.4 ounces. And so far, Doge has cut $50 million out of its $150-70 billion budget.
You know, every other part of government has to tighten its belt. How about the part that makes me take mine off at the airport? It's been over 20 years of this bullshit.

We started doing it before there was smartphones or AI.

I'm guessing there's a better way to keep us safe than everybody undressing in public.

No one thinks you need your picture taken to fly from Tulsa to Spokane. It's not 9-11 anymore.
It's 2025. And I'm not afraid of hijackers.
I'm afraid of the plane. All right, that's our show.
I want to thank Ezra Klein, Andrew Sullivan, and Dana Carvey. Club Random drops every Sunday on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts.

Now go watch Overtime on YouTube.

Thank you, great audience.

I appreciate you.

Thank you very much.

Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher

every Friday night at 10.

Or watch them anytime on HBO On Demand.

For more information, log on to HBO.com.