Ep. #683: Peggy Noonan, Dan Jones, Max Brooks

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Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO late Night series, Real Time with Bill Maher. How are you? How are you down there? Everybody with me? Okay.
Thank you very much. Thank you.
Please. There's so much to get through.
I appreciate it. Thank you very much.
Oh, I know. I know.

I know.

This happens every time of this year because you have Grammy fever.

It's Grammys this weekend.

And they're in L.A.

And, of course, L.A. is obvious this year for obvious reasons.

It can have to be a little more sober and somber of a ceremony.

Not the fires. It's because there's no after party at ditties.

I kid the music industry. I do.

So much bad news, of course, leading the way, that horrible crash in Washington, D.C. with the plane and the helicopter.
and Trump immediately came out and said, we don't know what caused the crash, and then ten seconds later, blamed DEI. And then the Democrats blamed Elon Musk for getting rid of the head of the FAA ten days earlier, and then Bobby Kennedy said they all died from the vaccine.
That's... So...
This is... It's, you know...
It's frustrating, this country. Is it not that...
Everything is just such an overreaction. Nothing ever stops in the middle.
You know, DEI, okay. We overreached with that.
Now, we have an accident like this, and Trump's view is, well, the air traffic controller was distracted because he was a Haitian eating a cat at the time. And he wasn't looking at the screen.
You know what? This administration is 11 fucking days old.

It seems longer, doesn't it?

And already they have gotten rid of the head of the FAA, the head of the TSA,

eliminated the Aviation Security Committee.

I know you guys are very big on firing, but maybe keep the people who talk to the airplanes.

Including the military airplanes, because this was a crash with an Army Black Hawk helicopter.

And Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, he said today, boy, did I find the wrong week to quit drinking.

I kid Pete.

But hey, I get it.

You guys are disruptors.

They're the disruptors.

Yeah, a little maybe too much, too fast.

Trump froze $3 trillion that Congress had voted. You can't do that, Don.
You just can't. I may revel in this.
J.D. Vance, Vice President Vance, he was on Fox, and he said that Trump is constantly on.
You know, like Robin Williams. He's always on, this guy.
He said, this is his quote, he said, he's all gas and no brakes. Well, no, he said that.
I mean, the all gas, I believe. But this is not necessarily a good way to run things, you know.
But these people, they really want the people in the government to quit, a lot of them. I mean, they're saying, if you quit now, we'll give you eight months' pay.
Just get the fuck out. And then, that's our official policy.
And then Elon Musk sent out an email and he said, if you're supportive of our agenda, you can stay. And if you're not, there's the door.
I don't think he's a Nazi, but it's an unfortunate gesture to me. Oh, and another thing that President Gallagher has taken a sledgehammer to...
Oh, wow. Is...
Immigration. He's got a new idea for that.
Guantanamo Bay. We just

spent 20 years finally almost

emptying the place. Now he wants to

send 30,000 illegal aliens

to Guantanamo Bay. I

get it, you guys. This is what people

voted for, but I kind of feel

sorry, very sorry for the

pitiful, powerless people he

is pushing around. I'm referring to Congress.

Oh, boy. Oh, boy.

And that, oh, big Oscar scandal.

Have you been following this, Angelinos?

Emilia Perez. Have you seen the movie?

Yeah, yeah.

One guy. Okay, well.
No, I saw it. It's not a fan favorite.
I mean, it's not horrible. Put that on your poster.
Bill Maher, not horrible. No, it's okay.
Anyway, Hollywood was very excited. They have a trans star was going to get nominated, or maybe has been nominated, I guess, was going to win an Oscar.
But, you know, the thing that brings so many people down. Yeah, this is a trans person, born a man, now a woman, dug up the old tweets.
Oh, the ghost of the old tweets. Always, everybody's downfall.
And she denigrates Islam and says George Floyd was a drug addict and a hustler.

I guess she didn't get rid of everything from her past.

Oh, we kidding.

What else?

Oh, Groundhog Day is Sunday.

It's bad news. Came early this year.
The groundhog came up, he saw his shadow, and then Bobby Kennedy put him in the blender. Well, I say that again.
Let me make a little joke. Because Bobby Kennedy, his cousin is Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of President John F.
Kennedy. They're cousins.
And wrote a scathing letter, because Bobby's trying to get confirmed now, he's before the Senate, saying that he used to put chicks and mice in his blender to feed to his hawk. And that he...
And that she... And that also he was addicted to attention and was a predator, what Republicans call presidential.
And, you know, this is his first cousin. And she put this in a letter to the U.S.
Senate. You think your Thanksgiving is uncomfortable.
All right. We've got a great show.
We have Max Brooks and Dan Jones. But first up, she's a Pulitzer Prize winning columnist at the Wall Street Journal, former speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan, and author of 10 books.
Her newest is called A Certain Idea of America, Selected Writings. Peggy Noonan.
Hey. So great to have you.
Thank you so much for coming. Thank you.
That was a great comment. Oh, I appreciate it.
I'm glad you're here. Okay.
I'm so glad you're here. And I must start this interview with something I've never done here before, which is an apology.
Oh, it's so true. Like many years ago in a galaxy far away, I did a show called Politically Incorrect.
We were young, we were brash. I say we, I mean me.
I mean, we all were, but we did not treat you right. We didn't.
We were stupid and I'm truly sorry. And you're big to come.
Aren't you nice? It's true. It's good to see you again.
It's just that. That's right.
It's been a quarter century. You're looking well.
Thank you very much. Okay.
Well, let's talk about the present. And when I read your book, it's just so great.
You've always been an amazing writer. A lot of your phrases have found their way into our language and people would recognize.

But going over, you know, the time past, it just seems to me like it used to be a lot easier to be a Republican and a Democrat.

Am I right?

I mean, when I think about Ronald Reagan, I could do Ronald Reagan standing on my head.

George Bush, Mitt Romney is a day in the park for a drive with a dog on the roof. Do you feel that way? I do.
I have seen, I guess, the political environment change kind of seriously in front of my eyes. I think we all have.
It just feels culturally different and different in expectations and what you expect of the top guys and the top women. Our expectations have been very much affected by the past 10 years.
And I think the rise of Donald Trump, who also was a reflection of changes, I think, within us, a sort of desire for a politics that's maybe a little rougher and more direct. A little? Yeah.
And maybe more cutting and maybe more... Yeah.
Yeah. I get it.
You know, I mean, they asked them a question today, and I'm sure if you're of the type of person who just always hates the one team and loves what the other one does, they asked them a question about the crash. They said, will you visit the crash site? Now, every other politician would go, of course, it was a tragedy.
And he went, it's the water. What do you want me to do, swim there? And I was like, fuck right.
You're exactly right. It's a stupid question.
And you got just the answer you deserve. And that is why they like him.
Yeah. Yeah.
He also, it's so interesting to me that he meets with the press all the time.

Yeah.

Normally, if you're a member of the press, you're wondering what's the president really thinking and how's he going to play it? With Donald Trump, you never wonder that. He will actually tell you what he's thinking and how he might play it.
So it's an interesting, it's the positive side of a mixed bag, I guess. So I agree.

I was saying for months after he won,

I'm not going to pre-hate anything.

Yeah.

But now that he's there, I hate.

Go for it.

I know some things I hate.

Not everything.

Not everything, but...

You're pleased, yeah.

And...

But I know you didn't vote for him. Yeah.
But you wouldn't vote for the other person. No.
That's so interesting. I would not have been happy with that vote.
You ought to have some confidence going into a voting booth that you're doing the right thing and you're picking the right person of those who are offered to you. I have felt in the past that it was easier to make that decision, to have some confidence in the person you were going for.
I was not a supporter of Mr. Trump, but I also was not a supporter of the current Democratic Party as I see it.
And I didn't want to give them another pass for four years. Yeah, I mean, I've been a harsh critic of the left, and my friends on the right very often say, then why don't you join us? And I'm like, because you're worse.
And that's not even close to me. Because I don't like you.
I'm just part of your field. I understand.
Well, your guy does not concede elections. To me, everything else, there's no other argument there.
I'm lost there. You can't get me back until you start doing that.
Yeah. And then probably not, but maybe.
But, like, there's a great essay in your book about we have left the age of the gentleman. You think we need more, and I would agree,

men do not know how to be gentlemen anymore.

But he seems like he would be a prime example of one who is not.

Well, I can't differ with you on that.

I mean, it's striking as highly unusual

in, I think, the news conference you're mentioning

after this horrible, painful crash.

Thank you. I mean, it's struck me as highly unusual in, I think, the news conference you're mentioning after this horrible, painful crash in Washington that his first thought was to blame people who he had an opinion might have been responsible for with no data.
So that was interesting and not really a gentlemanly impulse, which is more generous. I wrote about becoming a gentleman, how important it is to be a gentleman, in part because I think so many young men in America, teenage boys, 12-year-olds, they don't have anyone modeling that for them.
They're not making their way through life with a certain dignity. It's not about how you dress and sort of superficial things like that so much as it's the generosity with which you treat people.
It was once said, an Englishman was asked to define a gentleman, and he said, a gentleman is someone who never insults a person by accident. A gentleman is intentional, you know? And gentlemen make life easier for all of those around them, like ladies.
I think you're so right about men, young men especially, who their role models are either low-testosterone types, you know, Tim Walls types, or... LAUGHTER Or these Neanderthals that Trump surrounds himself with, you know, these macho guys, the Andrew Tate types.
I don't feel like there's a lot in the middle. Yeah, I know.
They seem like caricatures in a way as opposed to the real thing. A caricature of what a man should be like.
Yeah. I mean, they live in this world where we're going to be, I guess, foraging for food and prepping.
You know... This could happen.
I'm going to talk to these guys about it. But let me ask you about feminism, because that's the other side of that coin.
And there's this giant chasm between generations on this. I think people of our generation, we saw feminism as women.
I am woman. I am strong.
We're not always a victim. And now, I mean, I mean, Me Too is, of course, a necessary corrective and a great thing that happened.
But I've read many stories of, you know, someone who's accused and sometimes has to go away, a man. And the story, I'm reading and reading, and it's like, where's the part where he blocked the door? You know, he was mean to me.
Leave. You know, what happened to go? Walk out the door.
Don't turn around now. You're not welcome anymore.
I know, this tendency to see yourself as a victim and to act... People who see themselves as victims or portray that role in society now always say they're scared.
You know, it's like, but I'm scared. Oh, gosh.
Equality and being a grown-up, those things mean in part stand up for yourself, have rules, have expectations, enforce them. It means be an independent grown-up.
That's what what you want to be not a victim and not a person who's afraid another big gap between generations that's something you get into your fantastic book a lot is that the older generations just have a more positive idea of this country, America good. And you go into the fact that a lot of this is because people older, we read about communism and socialism.
And kids today, I don't know what they're teaching them in school. It doesn't seem like a hell of a lot.
But they have this idea that they live, not all of them, of course, but that they live in a bad country that has only done bad things. And it's probably the worst place in the world if they can only find a way to get out.
Yeah, totally true. And you know who that attitude is most damaging for? Kids who come from difficult families or really stressed circumstances, or it's just not a happy place.
In the old America, that kid was allowed to think, but if I open the door, I can go into a pretty just good place in the neighborhood, in the area, in the country in a larger way. I feel like for kids from stressed places now to tell them essentially it may be bad where you are, but don't worry, it's even worse outside in America? It's not a nice thing to tell them.
It starts them out with pessimism and a little paranoia and at a disadvantage. Hilton brings you new ways to stay.
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Look, to say the least, it's not perfect.

To say the least, it's had an uneven history.

But it is a great country

and historically has been a good country.

And it does self-correct. It does correct more than other places.
Self-criticism is good. Self-hatred is sick.
Self-criticism can get you to a good place. Self-hatred is going to stop you dead.
Right. I hope this doesn't last another 30 years that we don't see each other.
Thank you very much. Peggy Noonan, everybody.
I really appreciate it. All right, let's meet our panel.
Boys? Okay. Here's a fellow at the Modern War Institute at West Point and the author of Devolution, Max Brooks, one of our favorites.
We saw him grow up on this show. And he's a historian, TV presenter, and podcaster whose newest book is called Henry V, The Astonishing Rise of England's Greatest Warrior King, Dan Jones.
Okay. So, as I mentioned, we are 11 days into the Trump administration, 11 days that shook the world.

And we do have a little polling now, some information on what the people like and what they don't like.

The stuff about, shall we say, undoing some of the race and gender overreach of the last administration, they like that. They see that as a return to common sense.
Letting all the J6 rioters go, the ones who were beating up cops, they don't like that. And I think they don't like this, what are we talking about with Peggy there, like this, the pendulum never stops in the middle.
I mean, DEI, in my view, did go too far. And now we're living in this world where, of course, it never stops in the middle.
Now we have to go where it's blamed for everything. Right.
No, this is the issue of a great policy that was delivered poorly. Because the heart behind DEI is true.
There are some Americans who are so far behind, No matter how hard they work, no matter how hard they try, they'll never catch up. And as a society, we should help them to become productive citizens.
Yeah, that's the intention. But if there's a perception of unfairness, that is red meat to the other side.

And we actually saw this way before DEI.

There was an episode of All in the Family about this, talking about affirmative action,

where Archie was saying it's unfair and Meathead says, well, yeah, it's unfair, but nobody heard the but part.

It's just trying to counter unfairness with the perception of unfairness is handing your enemy a weapon.

And the truth is, yeah, if you look at a boardroom and everybody in there is white, well, then that's a problem. But the problem shouldn't start at the boardroom.
It should start in the classroom. It should start when the kids are born.
We should be investing. Right? Well, we invest a lot.

Right. Let's not pretend that we don't spend a lot of money at this problem.
I don't think

that's the problem. No, but throwing money...
It's probably they don't teach

them anything. No, it's true, but that's the thing.

Throwing money at the problem. Yeah.

Throwing money at the problem is different

than investing it wisely. Right?

Investing it in things like you always say.

Good nutrition, so their brains

can learn. Putting money behind so their brains can learn,

putting money behind schools so they can learn,

putting money into fair policing so they feel safe walking to school, and, and this is the big one, bringing the good jobs back so parents can be close enough to work so they can actually spend time with their kids. Thank you.
APPLAUSE Many of these fundamental underlying issues... What is that? OK.

And, I mean, many of these fundamental underlying issues that have characterised politics for generations, right?

There is something new that's happening in politics at the moment,

and it's connected with technology,

it's connected with the way that we think about the world,

and a lot of it is to do with the sort of fusion

of human mind and machine mind. It's polarising, it's binary, that we're getting a lot of information from social media at the moment, which rewards divisive thinking, which rewards polarised thinking.
It's binary, it's zero or it's one, it's this or it's that. So you can either have DEI, forms of equity, forms of fairness, things that are sort of.
Or you can have the absolute opposite. And it's that search for the centre ground that's missing at the moment.
And it seems hard when you have two... Just take the presidency.
You have on the one hand of Biden, on the one hand of Trump. the search is for someone in the middle, someone who can

triangulate. Now, if you grew up in the

1990s, that was the story of politics.

In Britain, it was the third way.

Right. Tony Blair, Bill Clinton.

Tony Blair, Bill Clinton. This idea that, look,

there is a middle way. There is...

I mean, you could sum it up in one word.

Hope. Right? And that's

the thing that needs to come back into American

politics, and not just American politics. I want to ask you about this.
What's the technology? The technology part that you were mentioning? Right. Because this, I mean, the other huge story this week was about technology.
The Chinese came out with something called deep suck. No, deep suck.
Deep. Deep seek.
Well, they shouldn't have named it so well. It said a deep seek.
Okay, so a deep seek. This is, and it is kicking ChatGPT's ass.
It beat ChatGPT as the most downloaded free app in a week. And this was, they called it a Sputnik moment.
Now, kids, I know you don't know what Sputnik is. And you weren't born yet? Not an excuse.
Either was I. And I know what Sputnik is.
Okay? Not an excuse. Sputnik is, at the beginning of the space race, this is the late 50s, okay, there were Russians, we thought we were going to beat them to the moon, and Russians put up some satellite.
I forget what it was. It was Sputnik.
And suddenly we were like, oh, fuck, they could beat us. And now we are doing this.
We are at that moment. That's why they're calling it a Sputnik moment with AI.
We thought we were way ahead of China. It cost a trillion dollars of loss in the stock market.
That's how jolting this was. And I wonder, the other thing about this that troubles me is, I was reading Christopher Wray commenting on what China's doing lately.
The Chinese government is pre-positioning malware on American civilian critical infrastructure. And I'm guessing if they're ahead in AI now, this is only going to get worse.

They came up with something called Salt Typhoon last year, can read the texts of every single American.

They've been cutting undersea's communication cables.

And the next war, from two guys who have studied war, is going to be online, right? I mean, everything we do is online. What they can do to us, the water, the phones, the electricity, the car, everything.
It's already started. It's already started.
There's a lot of people who would say World War III has already started. It's more like Cold War II, right? That Sputnik moment in 1957, it wasn't the thing itself.
It was the signifier that America had misconstrued what was happening in the Soviet Union. And the same is true in China at the moment.
And that's not some great secret. Anyone who's listened to Xi over the last sort of 10, 15 years, they've been telling you what they're going to do.
And if you look at a map of Chinese investments in countries around the world, in both coasts of Africa, in the Pacific, in the Indian Ocean, it looks like a map of the British Empire in the 18th century. It's already happening.
So there's the geopolitical aspect of it. There's the technological aspect of it.
I mean, outside America, in the UK, where I'm from, there's, you know, China was recently banned from investing in infrastructure. But people are running cap in hand to China to build power stations, to build infrastructure, build communications.
And this goes back to a point in history called Desert Storm. In 1991, we fought a war and we annihilated the world's fifth largest army in 100 hours.
You're talking about Iraq. Iraq.
Under Saddam Hussein. Yeah, we wiped them out on CNN, and that was on purpose that we let the press embed because we thought we were teaching deterrence.
We thought we were teaching the world, if you mess with America on the battlefield, we will annihilate you. What we were teaching our enemies was asymmetry.
The idea that, okay, well, if you're going to mess with America, don't use bullets and bombs because they're way ahead of us. Use alternative means.
Cyber is one of them and they are ahead. And you can see a scenario right now because they've weaponized the private sector in a way the Soviets never could because they were communist.
And in the 1980s, we had deregulated the private sector. So we talk about this plane crash right now.
It's a perfect scenario. Xi Jinping calls Donald Trump and says, hey, we'd like to invest a trillion dollars in your meme coins if you privatize the FAA.
Next day, Trump makes a speech and says, government's inefficient. We're not going to do it.
My good friend Elon, he's got Airex. Airex is going to take over all the air traffic controls.
Flash forward a year from now, once Chinese spyware and worms are implanted, and all their chips are implanted in our aircraft, China's going to invade Taiwan. Then they call Donald Trump again, like a mafia Don, and say, remember that plane crash? Be a shame if another thousand planes all fell out of the sky.
So back the hell off Taiwan. And he will.
That's how asymmetry works. But there's another historical moment this goes back to.
And in a sense, this is make China great again, right? Because, you know, the U.S.'s history goes back to the 18th century. China's history as a great historical power goes back to the 2nd century B.C.
with the Qin Dynasty. You know, you look in the Middle Ages, that's the time I read about, you have these accounts of people being sent from the Pope, from the great kings of Europe, to walk to what's now Beijing, to talk to the Chinese emperor.
It's a long walk. It's a three-year walk.
Yeah, it's a walk. But they're going to beg trade and to beg military support.
And they keep diaries. They write about this...
Marco Polo.

Yeah, Marco Polo.

They keep these, but other Franciscan friars as well.

And they have the hardships of the journey

and they finally get to the Chinese emperor

to plead for help, for support.

And the Chinese emperor takes a look at the piece of paper

and scrumples it up and says,

go back and tell the Pope to come here and bow down before me

and beg for mercy or I will destroy your world. Now, that's Chinese dominance as a world superpower in the 13th century.
I mean, that's the sort of the big memory, historical memory of what this superpower used to be. So it's no great surprise.
And it is kind of an evil empire, you know, and this kind of gets back to the DEI thing, because when you make everything

about race, not good. I mean, we couldn't look into the origins of COVID being from the lab, which now the CIA this week has joined the FBI and many other organizations.
It probably did come from, I said it from the beginning, it's being studied in this lab where it breaks out. really? We're going to even wonder about this?

Now, maybe it was a bat, but wait, let me just make this point. Okay, so we couldn't say that because the New York Times said to even look into that is racist.
Okay, China's like the new Islam. We can't be honest about them because they're not white.
And China... OK, I'm sorry, kids.
They do some bad things, China. And we should just recognise that.
Yeah, and, you know... APPLAUSE Totally agree.
Totally agree. And this is one of the broader problems with this obsession of all of these ideologies from the left, is that it hamstrings you in terms of thinking about sensible, common sense...
Thinking. Yeah.
Because, you know, if you're framing it in terms of a war, you're fighting with one arm tied behind your back. You're just not thinking about the world as you see it.
You're optimizing for signifying to the group around you, and whether that's academics. But there's also, I think it's also that there's a problem in that all of this hamstringing is coming from one group of people.
And I tend to call them guilty honkies. And guilty honkies don't want to talk about anything and they'll let anyone off because they're only interested in assuaging their guilt.
Now the good news is in this country, we have people of every ethnicity. If you want to take on not China, but the Chinese Communist Party, start with Chinese Americans who fled China, right? Because they'll have honest conversations and they're as much American as all of us and they don't have guilty honkiness.
Same with Muslims who fled Muslim countries. Yeah.
You want to talk shit about Fidel Castro? Go down to Miami. You'll find plenty of people willing to have that conversation.
Okay. Let me interrupt for a moment to just say, as I said at the top of the show, we're very excited because, you know, we are the award kings out here, and it is Grammy weekend, and it's going to be a great show.
And I always like to present this

on Grammy weekend.

The categories that you don't see on TV,

because they only present like seven or eight

of the big categories, but there are many others.

Here are some ones. These are real.

For example, there is Best

Tropical Latin Album. Not just

Latin, Best Tropical.

Best Melodic rap performance. I'm not making these are real.
Best new age ambient or chant album. Well, I don't think you should be lumping chanting in with ambient, but okay.
Best chamber music, small ensemble performance. Those are all real, and that's all I have to say about it.
No, no, no, I'm sorry. Would you like to hear some other ones? Oh, okay.
They also have, not going to be on TV, most regrettable facial tattoo. Best Christian gospel album by a singer, obviously in the closet.

Delta Blues artist of the year, non-blind.

Best song that Trump got sued for playing at his rally best rap song featuring a siren that makes you think there's a cop behind you Best song that celebrates losing control

by a singer who was... behind you.

Best song that celebrates losing control by a singer who was

actually eventually institutionalized.

Least awful acapella.

That's a terrible

category.

Best new age artist

whose voice makes your dog touch his head

I'm sorry. That's a terrible category.
Best New Age Artist, whose voice makes your dog touch his head in confusion. Oh, the best hip-hop track calling out the haters even though the haters have a point.
And best song with fucked-up lyrics that people still sing along to so so dictatorship is much in the news these days. And nervousness about authoritarianism.

And I thought it was all coming from one source,

but this is very surprising what I read this week.

Someone who's from your country in the U.K., 52% of Gen Z.

Gen Z say it would be a better place if a strong leader was in charge who did not have to bother with parliament and elections.

This was surprising. And wait, Americans, Gen Z Americans, are substantially, this is from Newsweek, are substantially more likely than older generations to support a strong leader who rules without regard for Congress or the courts.
Right. What do we make of this, boys? You know...
Kids today, huh? I think you can be... You can be charitable or you can be uncharitable.
Let's be uncharitable. These idiots don't know any better.
When I say it, they get mad at me, but OK. Well, what I mean by that is...
There's a serious point here. I'm 43.
I remember my grandparents, all of whom had a role in the Second World War. My grandfather, my mother's side, was blown up by a Nazi U-boat, survived, swam out of the Thames, covered in oil, told the stories to us.
These were stories told by people we knew who'd fought in the war against tyranny and dictatorship in the 1930s and 40s. My kids do not have that memory.
Those people are gone now. So, in a sense, this is just history.
And history, famously, although not for want of trying, is hard to teach to people. It's very hard to get into people's heads what tyranny and autocracy can really mean for the world.
So, in a sense, no, they really don't know any better. I think it's also difficult to operate...
Difficult for kids whose means of getting information about the world are like a 30-second to three-minute video with, like, five hacks to get better teeth or whatever it might be. Like, if that's the attitude you bring in and all your information's coming from TikTok...
Parliamentary democracy seems really fucking difficult. Do you know what I mean? And, yeah, so I think that's difficult.
I think that it's not surprising. You've got to remember that quote once attributed to Napoleon, if you want to understand a man, think about what the world was like when he was 20.
Well, think about the world. This is the charitable bit from someone who's 20, who's Gen Z.
You know, parliamentary democracy does not seem to have delivered easy cost of living. It doesn't seem to have delivered good housing.
It doesn't seem to have delivered effective policies for dealing with climate change, and so on and so on and so on. So if you look at the system you've grown up in, if you are Gen Z, you would probably say, this is bullshit.
Give me something else. And if that's something else, it's...
Unless they... Unless, except if the schools taught history, they would know...
To compare. Yes, they have not done perfectly well with any of these issues compared to what the world was like even 20, 25 years ago.
Yeah. I mean, we've lifted so many people out of extreme poverty in the last 25 years.
This is

the best time in human history. Ever.

By far. Every metric

you choose, we now live at the best time.

Just a hot shower.

It was a luxury 100 years ago.

This is...

Hot showers, yes.

Absolutely.

I would just say,

this is what I would call

the spoil-asshole theory of history,

which is like...

Thank you. I would just say, this is what I would call the spoiled asshole theory of history, which is like, the more comfortable people are, the more you tend to see dissatisfaction of popular rebellion.
Right. In the Middle Ages, after the Black Death, there's a demographic crisis, but it means wages start to rise, living conditions start to get better.
What do people do? They come and smash up London, in England's case, and cut the heads off the whole government, because they are spoiled assholes. That's how the theory works.
Well, but I would also say that it's not... There are also people who are legitimately hurting, and hurting real, real bad in the middle of this country.
You know, we forget this. This has been starting since I was a kid.
The jobs first left our inner cities, right? The inner cities imploded. People begged for help.
Ronald Reagan told them to go to hell. Then in the 90s, NAFTA rusted the rust belt, moved the jobs down to Mexico.
The good blue-collar jobs were one person could make enough money to support a family. Then globalization whooshed millions over to China.
And now I can tell you, as a parent on the west side of L.A., the call is coming from inside the house. Parents are wondering, with their college educations, with their privilege, what the hell kind of jobs now with A.I.
are their kids going to do? So, I mean, if you want to talk about history and if you want to talk about Britain, how about that British Sex Pistols song, No Future? Right. Because that's a song playing in a lot of young people's heads right now.
Absolutely. And that's what I mean by understand the world when you're 20.
But if the solution to everything is bad is I want a dictatorship, then something is going seriously wrong. We're either not teaching history properly or we have forgotten, due to generations of relative peace

since the Second World War, what this really entails.

But I would say also our history teaches

that sometimes a country can be doing great,

but not for everybody.

That's true.

The height of the British Empire,

when you guys owned a quarter of the world,

it was still the time of Oliver Twist and, oh, my lord, might I have another band of racists? That was when you owned the world. So when you say, you know, America's doing great, not for everybody.
Not for everybody. But if the solution is communism, everyone gets the same.
We've seen that tried, and that costs like 100 million deaths. And we had a guy called FDR who said the way to stop communism is to build a great wall.
And it was called the middle class. Right.
Right. But FDR was not a dictator.
Was a long time ago It was not a dictator. I mean, this is the point, you know.
It's... The only way to combat this is to make the argument for democratic political systems as a better option.
Now, that is, of course, results-based. You can't argue for something that's failing forever.
Right. But there has to be this...
You know, we have to just keep repeating and showing the argument that tyranny is not the answer. A lot of people say that the reason why Europe has turned rightward is because of immigration.
I mean, reading your book, your great book, about the invasions, I've always been fascinated with this. Immigration is sort of, if you take it in the broad sense, the key issue in all of European history.
This country has never been invaded, because as George Bush used to say, oceans protect us. But Europe, I mean, first it was the Huns.
Oh, the Huns. Yeah, the Huns.
From China. People think they're German.
They just took that word. And then it was the Muslim world.
The Arabs in the 7th century took over up to Spain. And they've been trying to get, you know, I know kids don't like to hear that, but they've been trying to take over Europe in different times of history.
And then it was the Mongol invasions, Genghis Khan. The Vikings, Europe has this idea that we are always, you know, that's very present in their mind.
And this is possibly the... They're kind of seeing the same thing today.
They feel like we have a right to retain our culture, and something is being forced on us that we do not not want and that is why they turn to fascism. And that's the cultural difference between America and Europe, right? It's the reason right-wingers in this country have had such a hard time connecting with normies.
When they go, this is our land, most of us go like, yeah, it's kind of not. You know, we took it from indigenous people.
I mean, we're not giving it back. No, no, you're not wanting to.
Be acknowledged. So we're good.
And that's it. Whereas in his country, he's indigenous.
He's an English man. No, he's not.
No, he's not. My people.
Oh my God, what are you doing here? Good Lord. My people are indigenous.
The Celtic people. The Celtic world.
The Irish people. Then they were attacked and invaded by the Anglo-Saxons and the Jutes.
They are Germanic. Saxons.
Anglo-Saxon? Right. Saxons in Germany.
English are Germans. You're German.
Wow. Wow.
It's true. Welsh German.
Welsh German. You know What is the real name of the Windsor family? Saxe-Coburg.
Saxe-Coburg. Oh, my God.
The king at the time of the American Revolution didn't speak English. He spoke German.
Let's talk about the Germans. What do you think about...
What do you think about Elon's... Now, Elon was...
No, really, I wanted to read this.

Two days before Holocaust Remembrance Day,

and this is the good and the bad of Elon.

He talked to the Germans.

I mean, people who hate Elon, I get why.

I mean, there are things, but he's trolling you.

Okay, it's all about making liberals cry their tears.

So don't always fall for the bait.

I don't think when he did the salute,

he was signaling, I'm a Nazi and let's kill all the Jews. But here's his thing, apropos to what you were just saying.
He said, it's okay to be proud to be German. That is a very important principle.
I disagree with that because I'm not proud of anything I didn't personally achieve. I'm not proud I'm from New Jersey or Irish.
It just happened. Okay.
But he said, I think there's frankly too much of a focus on past guilt, and we need to move beyond that. Children should not be guilty of the sins of their parents, let alone their great-grandparents.
I agree, but couldn't you spend one day for a crime that big? Wouldn't that be, again, the middle ground that we're always taking just one day?

And then, yes, but there's too much of that.

And he's really, when he's saying this,

he's really talking to Americans.

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

And this is... So I have every sympathy with the...

I don't think Elon Musk is a Nazi.

I don't think he's a neo-Nazi.

I do think he gives a lot of neo-Nazis a boner.

Yes.

I think the one he...

Yes.

I think there's only one who doesn't give a boner,

and that's Steve Bannon,

because he senses some competition at times.

Thank you. I do think he gives a lot of neo-Nazis a boner.
Yes. I think there's only one who doesn't give a boner, and that's Steve Bannon, because he senses some competition at times.
But, like... Yeah.
This salute... Yeah, this salute...
You're being trolled, telling Germans in the week of Holocaust... No.
..not to forget about the Nazis. Look, this has been a plank of German reconstruction, a very, very sensitive, culturally important thing, to try and move on and reconstruct a country guilty of the most enormous crime in the whole of the 20th century.
You don't fuck around with that stuff, is what I feel. Exactly.
That would be the mature response. That would be the mature response.
And for a man who has done genuinely great things... Right.
..with cars, with space rockets, with everything, come on, man, grow up. You're the most powerful and rich guy in the world.
You won. Throw the fuck up.
You won. You won.
What else do you want? But, by the way, when everyone says, oh, maybe he was impulsive, he didn't know what he was doing, for all the shit he's thrown out, he's never said a bad word about China. So let's be clear, he knows exactly what he is doing.
He doesn't always know it. He's a little

on the spectrum.

I honestly don't think he was

just excited. He jumps around.
He does this

and that. I just...

But he does more business in China

than in Germany. Yeah.
No.

So he's never said a word about them. He also likes

money. All right.
time for New Rule. Okay, New Rule.
Someone has to tell our new Homeland Security Secretary, Kristi Noem, whatever you're doing to your face, stop. Seriously, where are you getting your work done? A strip mall in Rapid City? I mean...
Come to Hollywood, where the professional plastic surgeons are. They'll make you look like...
Oh, never mind. Neural, someone must explain to me the juridoo...

Oh, I knew I'd fuck that up.

The juridiridoo, whatever that fucking thing is.

What is it?

Didgeridoo.

Didgeridoo, thank you.

I've heard the word many times, obviously never learned it, and seen pictures of it,

and now I see it's so beloved in Australia that it's being featured at the Sydney Opera House on Australia Day.

But please explain to me two things.

How do you sustain a continuous tone by inhaling through the nose while pushing air out of your mouth?

And two, where do you put in the weed?

Thank you.

I'm very proud.

New rule, let this photo of a model at Paris Fashion Week serve as a reminder of the first rule of fashion shows. Never walk in front of another supermodel when she's about to sneeze.
New Rule, from now on,

when tragedy strikes an American city,

let's just assume that they're strong.

I mean, first there was Boston strong,

and then Orlando strong, Dayton was strong, El Paso, you guessed it, strong.

San Bernardino strong, New Orleans strong, now there's Los Angeles strong.

And we are.

Los Angeles is a place where the people are strong, just not the water pressure.

New rule, now that Janaina Preseres has been named

by Playboy the most beautiful

woman in the world, and she

says her beauty routine includes

acquiring and applying

salmon sperm. Someone has to ask her, okay, you're the most beautiful woman in the world, but is it worth it if you have to jerk off a fish? And finally, new old Donald Trump must inform America what he's trying to tell us by continuing to do this dance.

And now, making YMCA his anthem.

And look, it's a new year, a new administration, and I say, clean slate.

I'm not going to keep rehashing the bit I did so many times last year where I played the video of Trump doing the dance

and saying it looked like he was jerking off two guys at the same time. Even though it looks exactly like he's jerking off two guys at the same time.
And now he's doing it with the village people? What is he trying to tell us? And I'm not saying Donald Trump is secretly gay. It doesn't look like much of a secret.
No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding.
I don't think he is gay. Quite the contrary.
I think the message to his manosphere is that he's so masculine that he can literally jerk off two guys at once while dancing to the village people and still be considered a masculine icon. I mean, this guy is amazing.
You've got to give him that. No, no.
My quibble is that what he chose for our new anthem, not that it's gay, that would be fine, but if we're going to have a new anthem, I want one that accurately epitomizes America. And I know just the song.
It's by the man who's having a well-deserved victory lap these days, Bob Dylan. And I think that right now, while America is at peak Chalamet...

LAUGHTER

We should adopt this Dylan song as our new anthem. It's called Everything is Broken.
Broken lives, broken strings, broken dreads, broken strings.

Broken idols, broken heads, people sleeping in broken beds.

Ain't no use jiving, ain't no use joking.

Everything is broken.

Yeah, kids, you didn't know we could get down like that, did you?

Thank you. Yeah, kids, you didn't know we could get down like that, did you? But what a shame that the song also captures exactly how I feel about our health care system and immigration system and schools and colleges and families and cities, the media, race relations, how our government works.
Let's start with that one. Can anyone really say our government is not broken, given that every few months it's on the verge of a shutdown? Here's what our system has devolved into.
We vote to spend money we don't have. Spend it.
And then vote whether to pay the bill. Then one party threatens to crash the economy by not paying,

so then we vote just enough money to keep the government open for a few months at a time.

It reminds me of when I was broke and would put a dollar of gas in my car every time I filled up.

You can tell me that's not a broken system. The gerrymandering, the lobbyists writing the laws, the electoral college putting presidents in office who didn't win the parties, who don't even talk to each other anymore.
With our government, everything is broken. It's hard to even name an issue the government is involved with that isn't broken.
We have the most expensive health care system in the world, spending far more per person than any other country, with far worse results.

Life expectancy, 49th in the world.

Infant mortality, 54th.

More people here live with multiple chronic conditions than any other rich country.

It's enough to make you sick,

but you can't afford it.

Other cultures ask,

what are the roots of disease? We ask,

why didn't anyone tell me my eyelashes

were full of crust mites? I think families are broken. When I was growing up in Anytown, USA, in the 60s and 70s, I don't remember a single kid being the product of divorce.
The word never came up. Other words that never came up? Anxiety.
Attention deficit disorder. Influencer.
He not allergy. Anal.
Never came up. Cities are broken.
In New York, don't even ask what it would cost to get an apartment with a nice view of the air shaft and... and walking distance to the subway where they push you onto the track.
Okay, I'll tell you what it would cost. You need to make $165,000 a year to rent the average apartment in New York, which is triple what the average pay is.
Okay, that's broken. Because the economy is broken.
And if you're in the half that can afford Taylor Swift tickets or private firefighters or anything at Whole Foods.

It's still broken because it's not sustainable as long as the other half has no prayer of owning a home

and thinks their only hope of getting ahead

is to get lucky with a meme coin.

I mean, really, could a folk singer afford an apartment in New York today? Yeesh. Dylan, he used to live there.
Never mind. And if your answer to all this is, well, there's a new sheriff in town and he's going to fix it.
Dream on.

If we ever want this

nation to be not broken, both

sides have to admit what they

suck at. Ask a Republican

what the plan is for health care,

and you get Trump saying, something terrific.

It'll be cheaper and everyone will be covered,

and no one will ever die, and it'll be out in two weeks.

We're going to have fantastic health care.

We have a great plan coming out.

It's just about completed now.

Within two weeks.

Three weeks? Four weeks? Two weeks?

It might be Sunday, but it's going to be very soon. The Democrat version of that is immigration.
Here's a graph that shows immigration under Bush and then Obama and then Trump first term, pretty much the same. Then we get to Biden.
Well, Democrats can say they weren't for open borders,

but it sure looks like someone left the gate unlocked.

There are half a billion people in South and Central America. We can't take them all.
Someone's got to grow the cocaine. But there's also something really ugly about a government of billionaires blaming the desperately poor for all our problems.
So this year, because there's not much going on, from time to time I hope to take each of these issues and try to make the case that there's an almost always reasonable centrist position that would go a long way to making everything not fucking broken if we could just get there, if everyone would just stop being such a dick about it. All right.
Thank you very much. I want to thank Max Brooks, Dan Jones, and Peggy Noonan.
Now go watch Overtime on YouTube.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

Great, guys.

That was a lot of fun.

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