Club Random with Bill Maher - Rob Reiner | Club Random with Bill Maher

Episode Date: September 22, 2025

Rob Reiner swings by Club Random for a fast, funny hang with Bill. They dig into the long-awaited Spinal Tap sequel – 41 years later – recounting how both films were built from nothing more than an outline and pure chaos. From Johnny Carson to TikTok, they unpack the death of a shared audience, trade sharp lines on aging, health, and bathroom wisdom, and rewind to All in the Family, the groundbreaking show that changed television and culture forever. Subscribe to the Club Random YouTube channel: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/c/clubrandompodcast?sub_confirmation=1⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Watch episodes ad-free – subscribe to Bill Maher’s Substack: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://billmaher.substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Subscribe to the podcast for free wherever you listen: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/ClubRandom⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Support our Advertisers: Go to https://www.zbiotics.com/random and use code random at checkout for 15% off your first order Connect with quality therapists and mental health experts who specialize in you at https://www.rula.com/random #rulapod #ad Head to https://www.nakedwines.com/random click ‘Enter Voucher’ and put in my code RANDOM for both the code AND password for 6 bottles of wine for JUST $39.99 with shipping included Check out https://www.neilnaturopathic.com and use code RANDOM at checkout for 20% off Buy Club Random Merch: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://clubrandom.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices ABOUT CLUB RANDOM Bill Maher rewrites the rules of podcasting the way he did in television in this series of one on one, hour long conversations with a wide variety of unexpected guests in the undisclosed location called Club Random. There’s a whole big world out there that isn’t about politics and Bill and his guests—from Bill Burr and Jerry Seinfeld to Jordan Peterson, Quentin Tarantino and Neil DeGrasse Tyson—talk about all of it.  For advertising opportunities please email: [e-mail] ABOUT BILL MAHER Bill Maher was the host of “Politically Incorrect” (Comedy Central, ABC) from 1993-2002, and for the last fourteen years on HBO’s “Real Time,” Maher’s combination of unflinching honesty and big laughs have garnered him 40 Emmy nominations. Maher won his first Emmy in 2014 as executive producer for the HBO series, “VICE.” In October of 2008, this same combination was on display in Maher’s uproarious and unprecedented swipe at organized religion, “Religulous.” Maher has written five bestsellers: “True Story,” “Does Anybody Have a Problem with That? Politically Incorrect’s Greatest Hits,” “When You Ride Alone, You Ride with Bin Laden,” “New Rules: Polite Musings from a Timid Observer,” and most recently, “The New New Rules: A Funny Look at How Everybody But Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass.” FOLLOW CLUB RANDOM https://www.clubrandom.com https://www.facebook.com/Club-Random-101776489118185 https://twitter.com/clubrandom_ https://www.instagram.com/clubrandompodcast https://www.tiktok.com/@clubrandompodcast FOLLOW BILL MAHER https://www.billmaher.com https://twitter.com/billmaher https://www.instagram.com/billmaher Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Book direct and save at Best Western. When I found out my friend got a great deal on a wool coat from winners, I started wondering. Is every fabulous item I see from winners? Like that woman over there with the designer jeans. Are those from winners? Ooh, are those beautiful gold earrings? Did she pay full price? Or that leather tote?

Or that cashmere sweater? Or those knee-high boots? That dress, that jacket, those shoes. Is anyone paying full price for anything? Stop wondering. Start winning. Find Fabulous for Less. What would you say to a white person?

What do you mean? Don't order that pumpkin spice latte. Get out of here. Whatever that thing is. We're talking about a man running for president that has that sensibility. It's just, all right. I give up.

I said my peace. I hear somebody. Rob. I hear a voice that I recognize. Your wife's already mad at me. What for what? You said, you've got a great place. I've never been invited here.

Which has got to, I've been to your house. Yeah. I just don't have, you know, when you're a bachelor, you don't really like have dinner. Yeah, I know. You say it was such a thing. Well, I used to be. I know. At one point in my life, never had a party when I was, yeah, never did that.

Well, not that kind of party. No. When you're single, you tend to pal around with single people. And when you're married, you have couples in a relationship. couple friends. Exactly. And when you have children, you gravitate towards couples that have children. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I'm so glad you're wearing the spinal top. Well, I'm doing it. It's a shameless promotion. I've had half a chubby ever since I've heard that this is coming out. I mean, I am one of a legion of people who have been waiting for years for a spinal top. You've been waiting 41 years. I understand.

You know, nobody's ever done a sequel, 41 years after the first one. It's great that they're all still here. Yes. It's a plus. It's a plus. Although we have a bit in the second one, which I hope you'll see at some point. Oh, first day. Yeah.

And there's a bit where the guy who's a promotion guy says to them, listen, it will help your legacy if at least one of you were to die. if at least one of you were to die during the concert because the, you know... So true. Yeah. I mean, it's the best career move anybody ever made. Right. And then, of course, they say, well,

Chris, you know, as Nigel says, well, I don't want to die. And then McKean, as David says, but you settle for a coma. And he says, oh, well, that's very good thinking outside the literal box actually oh that's yeah so so what are you drinking here that's uh tequila yeah this is this is sparkling water yeah and that's is that your drink of choice uh yes i mean i only and this is jing which makes the sparkling water into diet soda without chemicals really yeah um i'm very into health and that's why i know i know you are i know you are you look very spelt

well i'm trying you know i'm getting older and i don't want to it's a smart thing. It's a smart thing. But, you know, you lost the weight, but your face looks great. Some people who were heavy, they lose the weight and they look bad. I have a fat face. It's good. It didn't happen to you. You just look healthy. The other thing a fat face does is it keeps the wrinkles. Yes. You know, the fatness takes the wrinkles away. Yeah. It's not all bad being a fat face. No, no. But can I ask you an inside? You can ask me anything you want. Okay, baseball question. Sure. What percentage, I mean, you just told me a really hysterical scene from the movie.

Was that written? Was that all in the script? Is that part? No script. No script. No script. All that... Both movies, the first one and this one, all the dialogue is improvised.

Now, we did have a, you know, we had an outline and we knew what we were going to, you know, the tour was going to take. We have a basic outline, but every bit of dialogue is improvised. And this is a good little story. good little story. So when we did the first one, we put a billboard, you know, chalkboard, whatever. And if you had an idea for a scene, you put a card up. Harry, Harry Shearer, who plays Derek, he was dating a woman who worked at ABC News at the time. And do you remember Roger Grimsby? Do I remember? Of course. Okay. Because I grew up local New York. Yeah. He was, right. So, yeah. Roger

Grimsby, here now the news. Okay. That was his catch for it. Here now the news. And so I don't know how he got a whole of but he had a stack of promotional cards that had a picture of Roger Grimsby on the front and the back was empty. So if he ever came up with an idea that we thought, hmm, this could be a good interesting idea for a scene. We'd say to each other, does this warrant a Grimsby? In other words, should we put it up on the board? And so and the second time we did it, second movie, McKean comes in with a sack of Grimsby. So that's the way we do it. That is a name that if it wasn't his real name, someone would have had to invent it. It's just perfect. But that's so interesting. The way you just described making the movie,

no dialogue is written in the script, you just have this outline. Right. You invented that, apparently. That's not, I mean, I think people think curb your enthusiasm was the show that started. Yeah, yeah. Apparently this, and, you know, You're talking about 20 years before. Yeah, yeah. That's, that's in 1984. I mean... That's your method.

Yeah, and what's interesting is people have asked me over the years, they say, you know, it's your first film. Why would you do, you know, you make a film that has no script? I mean, there's no... And I said, yeah, that made more sense to me than the other way, because, you know, I mean, if you... If you... When you're snadled with somebody, you can either do it or you can't do it. And so you get people who can do it, and then it's like jazz musicians. It would not make sense if film wasn't cheap.

I've been on sets before back in the million years ago when I did acting, and I remember more than one director's, you know, could you do another take? Film's cheap. And this is even cheaper. Well, for film, you got ten minutes. This you've got an hour in a little chip. If you don't get it the first five times, do it five times more. So it's just, and then you just picked the best.

Yeah, yeah. The best of both worlds, you have the spontaneity. Yes, what's interesting about it. And this I learned in the first one is we shot each scene maybe two or three times. And Chris Guest, who's brilliant, he's in the moment and he never remembers what he did before. So it's new every time. So you have to figure out how do I stitch all this together to make it make sense. And what you discover is that you cut the audio, not so much the video, not so much you're cutting to make sure that there's no mismatches.

If the audio tracks and they sound like they're, you know, talking in some kind of rhythmic thing that makes sense, the audience will forgive all of the visual mismatches. And that's what we discovered. So you're essentially writing with the pieces of film. Isn't that every film to a degree? Well, made in the editing room? Well, some of them are, some, but usually the editor has a script, you know, has a story, and there's this scene that goes into this scene, goes into this scene.

We would move scenes around. You don't know, you know, take, there's a whole element, oh, that doesn't work, get that out of there, you know. Right, but I'm saying, you know, if you shoot, I mean, how many hours of footage did you shoot to make a movie that runs for, what, an hour for many minutes? An hour, actually, they both run 83 minutes, an hour, 23 minutes. I mean, you're just, you're doing the audio in such, you're squeezing out all the stuff that isn't awesome.

That's right. And I would always say, have in your mind, you're sculpting an elephant, whatever. Right. Then anything that doesn't look like an elephant, it goes. Even if you love it, even if it's a funny bit, but it doesn't attach itself. You get rid of it. But you do realize. that even that idea, which people of our generation take for granted, that is not the way

the younger generation necessarily looks at entertainment. And the proof of that is so much of what they watch on TikTok and so forth, YouTube, is just people doing ordinary things. And I've said to younger people, like, how could this be more interesting to you? That everything is available. You could watch any movie. You could watch any TV show. People, shows with great acting, great writing, and that's not what they want. Yeah, no, they watch these, what they call it's supposed to be reality. But in a weird way, it's not because they know they're putting themselves on TikTok. They know they're doing something on Instagram and they're doing something to perform to do that. Well, but I mean, there was this stage of a reality show, which is different

than what we're talking about with scripting and good writing and acting. That at least was entertaining because it was never of course really a, you know, they were put up to it. You're going to have a fight. Yeah, yeah. And then they do. Yes, it's not reality. But this is, this is a step removed from that. This is like watching people take their laundry out. Yes.

Yes. And here's what's interesting. Well, what is your analysis of that? Okay, well, here's the thing. I don't know if you ever saw this documentary years ago. It was called, We Live in Public. Did you ever see it? It was it was about the guy who created MySpace, which was

the precursor to, you know, Facebook. And he says at the beginning of the documentary, he says, Marshall McLuhan had it wrong. Marshall McLuhan said everybody wants their 15 minutes of fame. Now, that was Andy Warhol. Marshall McLuhan, didn't he? No, Marshall was one who said TV's a cool medium. Oh, cool medium.

Cool medium. Right. Warhol said 50. Warhol, right. You're right, you're right, you're right, you're right. Warhol says, everybody wants their 15 minutes of fame. No, he said they'll get it. He said, in the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.

Right. So here's the thing. It's not that they want 15 minutes of fame. They want 15 minutes of fame every day. Right. It's not, you know what I mean? It's not like, oh, they're going to know me. No, I want to be known every minute they want people to, hey, look at me, look at me.

That's so exactly right. They want it to continue. you and you know we live in this medium this medium culture now where everything is so dispersed everyone almost has their own channel or their own place to sell something we came up when there was like you went on johnny carson or you went on murph griff or dick that was it and you got noticed well of course because everyone was channeled and funneled and funneled into one of these two or three silos. Right, and you couldn't watch any.

I mean, it's not like you, now you do, you know, whether it's Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel or, you know, Steve and Colbert, they don't watch the whole show. They watch little bits and pieces of it on YouTube. Well, one of those shows doesn't even exist anymore or is going off. Well, Stephen, yeah. Yeah, the other two, I mean, you can't,

they still exist and you can still do it that way, but the reason why they're going off and they're just watching. is because everyone has their own talk show. Yeah. It's like if Johnny Carson was competing with Merv and four million other people who have a podcast. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so like when you try to get a guest for this podcast, very often it's like, well, you know, they're doing two other podcasts. Who are they? Well, their brother and their best friend, because everybody, either they themselves or someone they know or they're close to. It's very hard to find somebody who doesn't have a podcast. podcast. That's what I want to. Who doesn't? In our world, it really is. Yeah, yeah. This is something I've been thinking about for a while, and you hit on it a little bit. When I was on

this All in the Family, and by the way, young people, they don't even know All in the Family. They never heard of it. They don't know what it is. I mean, this is a show that was number one for five years in a row every single week. Not just number one at the time, but a culturally groundbreaking show. It was a show, again, I'm saying this for the people who don't know. Yeah, no, I'm telling you. Young people they don't know. They never heard of it. Let me set it up for them. We're talking about. We're not just talking about a show that was a hit show

on a grand scale. We're talking about a show that changed the game. Yeah. It wasn't just a difference of form. It was a difference of kind. Right, right. And that was, that meant a lot. Yeah, but think about this. Here we were a country of, at that time, 1971, about 200 million people around that number. Right. Every single week, 40 to 45 million people would watch all in the family.

So a quarter of the country. And they had to watch it when it was on. There was no DVR, there was no TiVo. There was none of that. You had to watch it when it was on. That meant that you were having a shared experience. with 40 to 45 million people. That has an impact.

You're then talking to people, the water cooler thing and all that. Now, we're a country of, what, $340 million or something like that? If you get a show that gets 10 million viewers, that's a big hit, and they're not all watching it at the same time. The $10 million is already out of date, Rob.

There's no show that gets that. I mean, those are numbers that you get for, like, special events, sports. Sports is the only show. They get that. That get that. Nobody else gets that. But think about a show, you know, some series that, you know, White Lotus.

I don't care what it is, a hot show. Right. If it's $6 million, $5 million, whatever the number is, that's in a country of $340 million. And they're not all watching it at the same time. Because you go to a dinner, you can't talk about the show. You go to dinner and you say, don't tell me, I only, I only saw the first two episodes. I'm only on season one. You can't.

What? I don't talk. So you can't even talk about the show you're on. you know no it's it's it's just so different i was having this friendly argument with my friend harvey levin recently because they showed a clip on tm z of a popster i can't remember her name which says a lot because i should because everybody in her world knows she's a big because she was on the make uh i was going to make room for daddy not make room for daddy call me daddy podcast oh well that's a big Podcasts. Make room for Daddy kids.

It was Danny Thomas. And we don't want to go there. And if you don't remember all in the family, you're really not going to remember that show. I can remember Make Room for Daddy. Was your father friends with Daddy Thomas? Oh, yeah. Danny Thomas was.

Yeah, Danny Thomas and his production company in Sheldon Leonard produced the Dick Van Dyke show, which was my dad's show. Of course. Did you know Danny Thomas? Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, I was friends with, you know, I mean, Marlowe. I'm friends with, you know, Tony Thomas, who dated my sister in high school and stuff like that, yeah. Was that true, the rumor that always went around about Danny that he was a plate man?

You know, I don't want to go there, Bill, because I don't have hard evidence or loose evidence. Or evidence that makes you hard, certainly. Okay, but there was always the rumor. Yeah, who knows, you know. He had, you know. Back then, Jerry Lewis, I was. all those guys. It was a different era. People were weirdos. Yeah.

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He doesn't even know who Joe Rogan is. who's a big deal now. Very big deal. I mean, in podcasting, he's number one. By far, you know, he was one of the first to it. And, you know, I think that's great. I don't always agree with him and that's okay. But not to have heard of him.

Yeah. And, you know, I said, that says a lot. And Harvey said, oh, no, she knows. I said, then why is she lying? And then he brought in two guys from his staff who were young, like 18, 19, but they were male. They weren't quite sure who Joe Rogan was either. Wow. And I thought, if

they don't know Joe Rogan, you know, we are all in our own silos. Right. And by the way, it's very humbling because it means that when we go, nobody's going to remember any of this stuff. I mean, you know, I was walking out of

a Beverly Hills Hotel one day and I run into Warren Beatty. Warren Beatty, Warren Beatty was as big a star in America as there ever was. And my kids, their young kids, they don't know. I said, Bonnie and Clyde, you know. But why would they have, I mean, they may, how old are the kids? Well, now they know who he is, but they were young. Right, but of course, like, there were great movies that when I was 12, I wasn't aware of.

And then I got to when I was 19. But eventually you would watch them. Well, I also think when I was, when we were younger, We looked up to older people, whereas now I think there's a tremendous kind of ageism in the country. Well, there's always been ageism. There has always been ageism, but I feel like it's more hostile. Maybe it's just because I am older. Are people being hostile to you?

Yes. Well, of course. You think it's because of your age? What do you think? Partly, yes. Is your opinions or something? Well, that's obviously part of it. But they will attack me not on the merits of the argument.

that's what I object to. It's like I've said it many times. I've said it publicly. I've said it on the air. Like, if you have a problem with this, don't say you're old. Yeah,

what is that? That's not an argument. No. In fact, that's a prejudice. It's an observation. It's a prejudice. It's an observation. Okay, but for the people who think

that they're the most liberal who absolutely hate any sort of prejudice, that is a prejudice. Why should I even listen to you? Or, you know, oh, he's just get off my lawn. Well, again, that's just, That's just to cut off the debate. Engage with the argument.

So you don't want to do that because they'll lose. So they just say, you're old, and then immediately you're just, you don't count what you have to say. You can't imagine doing that to any other group. No. I mean, we are the last acceptable group, which you can mock, make fun of. But you're a lot younger than me, not a lot, but a little bit, a little bit. But we, until there was the children of the baby boom. generation is the biggest chunk of people in, you know, in the population. So, you know, we have,

we have strength in numbers, even if we're losing our strength. Yeah. I saw this article when they canceled Stephen Colbert and it said 10 years ago, the average Colbert viewer was 58 years old. Today, they're 68 years old. I was like, yeah, it's the same guy. Yeah, yeah. Let me. me let me take a he's got loyal fans take a wild leap that this guy's going to be 78 in 10 years yeah i mean yeah and uh you know i i i am always open to everything anybody of any age says when i criticize ideas that i think are dumb with if they come from young people it's not because they're young no you know uh it's because i think your ideas are stupid yeah you know i mean giving communism another try

to me is a stupid idea because people of our generation remember how evil and horrible communism was but now we're at a different time now we're at a different time because it's not about like during the 60s the Vietnam War that was the whole idea was the creeping communism

and in the 50s was McCarthyism that there's communism under the bed everywhere you look is a communist and what we didn't want was to be like the Soviet Union. We were basically saying, you know, protect America for democracy. And we fought against Hitler, you know, to win the Second World War. And fascism, fascism. Not communist. No, no. We fought against fascism. Matter of fact, the Russians fought on our side during the Second World War. So we fought against fascism. And now that's the argument. Do because America as, you know,

as ugly as it's been over the years, fits and starts, it moves towards hopefully better things. I mean, women couldn't vote. They can vote. Blacks couldn't marry whites? They can. Gays couldn't get married? They can.

So we had a black president. I mean, things move along very slowly, and we certainly have an ugly past slavery and all of that. But this is the first time that we've had another, type of government, a form of government, taking away that slow and awkward progress. And that is, we're looking at, you know, authoritarians around the world, and we have a guy who wants to be one of those guys. And so it's, it's tough.

It's a very tough thing because I don't know. Maybe you can tell me. You may be able to tell me. Because right after the First World War, Germany was a. democracy for a minute before Hitler came in and then he said no the Weimar Republic yeah yeah so we're gonna do the Third Reich and all that and Hitler was elected yeah yeah yeah but but he was only he never had more than 25% of the of the electorate but he figured out a way to do it well in a parliamentary system yes very often people know yeah yeah that

that's many parties yeah that's true so but so he becomes a fascist the state and they do what they do which the horror, but and after the war, the Germany moves back towards a democracy, slowly becomes a democracy, one of the best, strongest democracies in the world right now. But here's what's uncomfortable for us right now, where we are. My wife, her mother was in Auschwitz. She was the only survivor of her whole family. The whole family died in Auschwitz. My Uncle Charlie was part of D-Day and fought in 11 major battles and, you know, liberated camps. My second father, Norman Lear, flew 52 bombing missions over Nazi Germany.

All in service, and millions and millions died, all in service of making sure that we would never become an authoritarian fascist state. And here we are, 80 years after that war, and we're moving towards that. It's scary. It's very scary. And, you know, I said this on my show a few weeks ago, I think I was the first guy to use the phrase

slow-moving coup. I did it before we won the first time. I never stopped. My big criticism of the people who were on my case for having dinner with them was just wait. See what I say after. If I change, if I start being complimentary or let it, no, I never changed. Never stopped saying what I've always been saying. Now it's not so slow moving anymore.

That's what I said a couple of weeks ago. I said, this is Act 4 of it. Like the point I was making, and I don't remember anybody saying this before, I did see it get picked up a lot, so I don't think so, was that this thing about stopping crime by putting troops in the streets, of course you can stop crime with more troops in the streets. The problem is, troops in the streets, once you get used to that, and once you have them in the streets, especially of our nation's capital, if there is a disputed election, you already have the private army in the street. They've been there for three, four years. This, to me, is textbook what you would do. Textbook. And, you know, this is pessimistic, but I honestly don't see the Democrats getting power back, not for a very long time.

You don't think there's any chance that there's any chance that there. Democrats could take back the House in 2000? They could win the vote without, and so what? Congress, I was saying today we should do something in January about, let's get rid of the State of the Union address, because it leads the country into a very bad thought, which is that the president is the one who suggests what should be done. That's not what the Constitution says. Congress does that.

The president just is supposed to execute the laws. We have switched it completely where people think he's the fucking. leader and because they don't know anything because the education system fell apart. And most people, most people are not directly, at this point, directly affected. We have people who are thrown out of the country. Those people are directly affected who shouldn't be many cases. There's no due process. We understand that's a horror.

That's a horror. But they, but the, you know, most Americans don't feel the pain of it yet, whether it's economically or their rights being taken away and they will feel it and the time they'll feel it whole unfortunately might be too late when it's already taken over now i here's what i think it's already too late well i just don't you may be right you may be right but here this is what i'm thinking you could stop you could slow the thing down to a point where you might be able to stop it because there's still going to be

hopefully an election in 2026. Well, there'll be an election. Well, wait a minute. Russia has elections. No, no, I'm saying a fair election. We don't know if that will be.

If there isn't, then you're right. Then then, like the Vegas guys do, like that, it's over. But if there's an election where the Democrats are able to regain the House, then they have the ability to hearings and stuff like that, and not going to change everything overnight, but it slows the thing down.

Yeah. It slows it down. Yeah, that's possible. Yeah. You don't think there will be a fair election in 2026. First of all, the way the Democrats are now, I just don't think they, I don't know if they would even win an election because they're very unpopular and for very good reason. Now, I didn't vote for Trump, as I always say to my woke friends, we voted for the same person. you're just why she lost i'm not saying that to you i'm just saying that's my line to them and i will

stand by that and everything everything trump is doing and by the way a lot of the things that he would say he's straightening out uh almost all of them i would say he's doing it in the wrong way colossally wrong but not wrong about like a lot of things that did needed straightening out the border for example yeah but he's not really straightening it i just said that he doesn't do it in the right way but the you know that instant and and there was a there was a bipartisan bill that called for stronger border security all of that and the republicans said yeah we don't want to that's and by the way it was it was developed by a bipartisan group in the senate and they're you know very conservative republican senators who were in favor of it anyway yeah we're far gone from that now

I mean we're so far from that right I just don't see them you know giving up power they they have all the levers of power and power begets power you know once you have it it's easier to get more of it yep like rabbits breeding well especially yeah especially if you have no if you have no compunction for thumbing your nose at a at a court ruling or the rule of law if you if you don't care about it and if the people um don't like the Democrats, again, often for very good reason, they don't seem connected to reality in a lot of ways, and they don't seem to be on the same page common sense-wise with a lot of people. So there's a lot of people in this country who just go, yeah, I don't love Trump.

He's crazy, but these people are even crazier. They have to get rid of that first. They don't even have a chance unless they do that. And they themselves are saying that now. I see that third way is at the group. It's a left-leaning thing tech put out. During the Clinton years, they had the third way. I think that's what it's named after.

Anyway, they put out a list trying to help the Democrats of 44 words and phrases they should never say again. That like just lost people, patriarchy and privilege and stuff like. Yeah, which bathroom you go into doesn't shouldn't be at the hill that you die on. Right. Right. And people who are age who pee a lot. Yeah. Really?

If there's a room, I can open it up and go in. I have that joke. I put it in bucket list, you know. I was making this movie American president. And they had a consultant on it. He was a retired Secret Service guy. And he was telling me, because he was an older guy, he said, the three things you got to remember when you get old.

And I put it right in bucket list. I had Nicholson say it. It says, never pass up a bathroom, never waste a heart on, and never trust a fart. That was the three. So, yes, if there's a bathroom there, we want to be able to access it. See, there's one you could redo. The bucket list? No, the American president.

Oh, the American president. Yeah. I mean, God, when you're thinking, now, this is Michael Douglas in 19. 1990 something? Six or yeah, something like that. Okay. I mean, that's 30 years ago and you think about what the presidency was. Yeah.

And, you know... And, you know... And the issues are still the same. We still have a gun. We still have too many guns and people getting, you know, murdered every day on the streets. And we still have problems with the environment. Those were the two issues that we focused on. Right. She was a lobbyist.

She was a lobbyist for an environmental group. Right. You know, that was the thing that I was interested in at the time. And Aaron Sorkin, who wrote the screenplay, he was interested in gun control. Yeah, and, you know, it was the, as I remember the film, the crux of it is, like, politics is about making deals. It's about bargains, and, like, of course, somebody can always get butt hurt about you're not pure enough. Again, this is a big problem with the left. Perfect is the enemy of the good.

Right. But that's why, like, Obama, he was great at that. I mean, he was that guy who thought that and said that. Perfect is the enemy of the good. And let's get, what can be done practically? But nobody's willing to do that now. Nobody is well. Both sides are not willing to do anything like what is the old, you know, the days, you know,

you talk to Chris Matthews who worked for Tip O'Neill. And he said he, tip O'Neill and, you know, and which they would talk all the time. Exactly. The opposite. I'm here for Bet Rivers Online Casino and Sportsbook with poker icon Phil Helmute. Thanks to Bet Rivers, I'm also a slots icon. Great.

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and enjoy the compliments. This is why it's, this would make some sense for the Democrats if they had any power but the idea of we don't talk to you when we don't even have the power of course you have to talk to people i mean there was an article somebody wrote he was uh but here's the thing you're right but here's the thing let's say we're going to have that argument you're going to try to talk to somebody and you have a point of view the other person has a point of view before you have the exchange you have to agree on certain facts no you don't you can't once you start down that Well, no, no. It's like these are, you just have to talk to people.

No, no, you talk to people. But if somebody says two plus two is four and the other guy says, no, it's not, how do you begin a discussion? Because, Rob, that's a slippery slope. It just, I agree, there are certain things that we all think. And then there are people, I'm sorry, they, everybody, I know this from doing this show. So many people who've sat here and they're like, oh, this is a smart person, this is a rational person this is a and then there's like one thing they don't believe we landed on the moon

and you're just like no if you start down that road if i can't talk to you if you believe this crazy thing because maybe okay so let's say you're having a conversation with that person they i don't believe oh i have okay so so what do you do what do you say after what do you do in a marriage if nobody guy says that and you say what no i'm serious same thing what you you would do in a marriage. And who would know better than me about what to do in a expert? Yeah. No, but in a relationship. But it says that, he says that and you go what? Okay, I'm answering you. That's entering in the way I want to answer. Okay, go ahead. It's very like a relationship. I, and now, I have not been there, but I've been in long-term

serious relationships. And I know there are moments where the person is believing something and you just, every five of your being, wants to be like, I've got to get this person not to see it that way, because I just think it's fucking nuts. And if you want that relationship to last, you're going to have to learn the three little words that are most important to any relationship, and they're not, I love you, they're, let it go.

Sometimes you just have to let it go. I mean, let's take our friend Bobby Kennedy. Now, I think they should let him go. I do. I mean, I've had extraordinary amount of patients with circumcised. I think you, I have to let him go, and you pull out a scissors, and I'm, what do you say? He's not circumcised? What are you saying? Because he doesn't believe in it, because there's too much tamarisol in that, in that scissors. Exactly. But we both like him. We both know them well. I've known him for a long time. I know you have. He married the woman who used to be our assistant.

Is that right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, Cheryl. She worked for us for a couple of years. He's still his wife. Cheryl Hyde. Yeah, yeah. She's not our assistant. She's his wife.

Yeah, no, she's still his wife, but not our assistant anymore. But she was your assistant? Yeah, and she would, you know, before she was an actress? She was an actress. She was going out for jobs, you know, interviews. And she got curb your enthusiasm while she was working for us. So we had to let her go. Oh, of course.

Yeah. I didn't know all that. Well, I mean, look, I tore Bradley Whitford a new asshole about this about a year ago because he, this is, again, what I really don't like about the left, because he was just so abusive in a tweet yelling at her for staying with her husband. Staying with her husband? No, well, that's not fair. That's not fair. It's a marriage. You want to attack Bobby Kennedy for believing, you know, let's put the bear in the trunk and drop them off at Central Park.

That's something you could talk about. No, it's, look, there's a great amount of disappointment I personally have, and a lot of people have because I've always been on the alternative side, shall we call it, of Western medicine. Not that I don't appreciate Western medicine, I'm glad we have it. But I think that the emphasis has always been on the wrong things like pills and surgery instead of prevention, stuff like that, that Bobby was all over. The idea that what really makes us sick is eating bad food, is the environment, the toxic stuff. I understand that part of it's good. Exactly. But we do know that they eliminated polio.

Yes. I mean, that's a thing. It is a thing. It's a little more complicated than just the vaccine. It also had to do with, at the time, you know, there was bad sanitation, that got better. But look, I'm a vaccine fan. I just don't want you ever to. His force one on me, so I was with him on that.

No, no, that's true. But, you know, my wife's pointed this out many times. I can guarantee you his children had to have been vaccinated when they were little. I'm sure they were. I'm sure he was vaccinated. He just, I gave him every amount of slack I could because I like him. And because the general idea. of it, I thought was good.

But he just has proved himself to be someone who won't listen to any science. He's just a cuck now. And he's fucking up the CDC. I mean, I could name, just by using letters, so many things. CDC, EPA,

DOJ. FDA. The Department of Justice, the scariest one, going after your political enemies. Like, there you're going back to the authoritarian playbook. That's authoritarianism. My list of things that are bad about this administration is a long one, and I get into it every week. I also think the reason why Trump does so well is because he identifies places where the Democrats did fuck up.

And I could go down that list, too, like the border, like DEI was at a conclusion. college is completely out of control. Elite universities where the kids are raised to be these anarchist America hating anti-Semites, and there is zero diversity of opinion. You know, the hypocrisy of diversity is the greatest thing in the world except of what we think, which is where it's also very important. Right. But the point is you can't force people, you know, the university, what he's trying to do is force the

force the federal government onto the universities and forcing them to, they're going to withhold certain things and let you do this. Well, I mean, if they're getting taxpayer dollars and they're supposed to be therefore in the service of this country to a degree, yes, I think then you have some right. Now, of course, the way he does it is always a bull and a China shark. He goes in there with a club and just starts breaking shit. I mean, what is taking away cancer funding have to do? with the anti-Semitism on campus.

But again, Harvard has an endowment of $50 billion. Really, they couldn't make that up? They can't find that $500 million themselves somewhere. So there's a lot of bullshit in hypocrisy. Well, right now, you know, the UC system is also going to be under attack. And Newsom is trying to fight back and say, you know, let's hold your line here. I mean, you know, and law firms are, you know, some cave. and a good friend of mine, Ted Boutros, who, you know, is with a law firm that is holding firm.

You know, gets him done is holding firm. So, you know, you pick your, you know, whatever. I have been trying to make governance and president for 15 years. People, I'm still on that page that he'd be a great candidate. Even though he would be. He would be. He would be. No, but he would be.

It's not about California anymore. It's about who is articulate, who is smart. who is smart, who knows how to govern, and in this case, who is pushing, who's strong and pushing back. So I'm with you on him. I mean, I'm, listen, I've known him since he was the mayor, and I know him before that.

He was supportive of ballot initiatives that I've done, and I like him. That's what I say. And I've just had discussions with him to his face about, because Gavin's good like that. He'll come, he'll talk, he could take a punch. Most of the Democrats can't. They won't even come on.

We invite them every week. They won't come. The Republicans. What am I doing here? The Republicans always come. And they take their beating like a man. It's awesome. But the Democrats, but not Gavin.

And I've said lots of things, I think, went way too far. And that is going to be his biggest liability. But as you say, well, they're now the fourth, California, the fourth largest economy in the country. It just surpassed Japan. So, you know, not that you're going to, it's no success. or anything like that but he's representing 40 million people yeah and they're not all liberal democrats rob he's going to win the state no no no he's not he's not running anymore for the state he's finished no i'm saying i'm saying in the general he's going to win the state oh no no no no he's got to win those

40 no i understand i understand um but but i think he can when you look at but he's pennsylvania wisconsin michigan which are the swing states you win those to but in in key ways he has recently, in the last six months, moved to the center on on different issues. He's never been, he's never been wildly liberal? Yes, he was.

But, well, when he married gay people when he was the mayor of San Francisco, he didn't. He officiated it. Yeah, yeah. He wasn't marrying. No, no, he was a marrying a gay person. He wasn't that liberal.

He was officiating over gay marriage. Which is great. He was out ahead on an issue that even Republicans now agree with. Some do. Oh, well, they're trying to undo a lot of that. They're not going to do that. I don't think they can, but they're going to try.

They're not. Sean McReece just wrote a great article in the Times about how much of Washington now is gay Trumpers who are, you know, staff positions and so forth. But they're very, they're well accepted and they're, and you know what? Again, you can't start not talking to people or hating people because part of them is something. you don't like or don't agree with. And he quoted Trump had a great, thought, quote in the article about his view when he was asked about gay, and he said, I go to a restaurant, some people like the spaghetti with red sauce, I like a steak.

That's why they have a menu. That's where restaurants are menus. And we should, we have to focus on, like, we have to focus on, like, like what to be worried about and that you start we have to worry about troops in the streets we have to worry about destroying a democracy yes of 250 years oh yeah that's and how i mean and what is the plan there's this terrible asymmetry we have where when the democrat loses the election it's over in a matter of hours and we concede and go home and that's that yeah and if the republican loses you just know it doesn't end that day yeah it could be a land

slide yeah and it won't be it never is but if it's if it's it doesn't matter how closer unclose it is they're gonna say they're gonna say they won't in Arizona she did that she lost pretty bad she still said he still hasn't conceded 2020 no publicly anyway yeah wink wink yeah so you think they'll do you think they'll be a 2028 election there's always an election even the but you think dictatorships have a real election yes i do i just think that they will find a way when the votes come in if they lose of contesting it just like they did in 2020 the only difference is in 2020 they had people like rapsenberger in georgia who wouldn't go along with the scheme yeah yeah well

they've had all this time to replace those people right the head of the FBI you know yeah yeah now all the people who you would need to go along with the scheme and you already have the army in the streets yeah yeah are there i i just you know i just don't see it i i don't see i don't you know you may be right i just and if we do and if you're right that will be the end of uh yeah american democracy i just don't know of any country that has had a democracy for as long as we have has gone to a authoritarian rule that has ever had a democracy that has ever had a democracy but democracy come back. I don't see that happening. So we have to hold on to it. We have to hold on to it. I don't see on November 10th, 2028, yes, Donald Trump sending out a truth saying,

I'd like to congratulate President-elect Klobuchar. Yeah. Well, do you think he'll try to run again in the third time? I don't, I think he's going to do the Medvedev move, which is what Putin did between 2008 and 2012, when Putin was technically by their constitution at the time prohibited from running, so he had his prime minister and him switched jobs, but nobody was fooled that he wasn't really. I mean, if it's J.D. Vance, you know, and Trump is still around, you don't think, first of all, Trump can destroy anyone with social media. So if he, if the person who's running the country, quote, unquote, gets out a line, he could just blast out his social messages. That's

where all the power is. He does it now. Yeah, well, this is the thing that I... But yeah, he might run. This is the thing I talked about with some friends after we, you know, we lost this past election. And we lost 2016 by a very small amount. It was 79,000 votes in three states. It was, you know, Wisconsin, the same Michigan and Pennsylvania. And what they did, and they were smart to do from an electoral standpoint, is they suppressed the vote in Milwaukee,

Detroit, and Philadelphia, which is predominantly black populations in those areas. And if you suppress enough, you know, it's not that many votes, 79,000 in three states aggregate. Yeah. That's what they did. And they knew because, you know,

Putin was playing with the farm in St. Petersburg and had all of that, you know, working. It didn't have to cost them very much money either. And then we won and we lost again. And I've said the only way we are going to be able to compete is to have the kind of grip they have on the media. And it's not just the regular media television news, social media, AI, all of the stuff that they have control of, unless we have something to come up, bounce up against it.

Do you remember when Air America came on? Because at the beginning when they had talk radio. What became MSNBC. Yeah. Remember talk radio. When talk radio first came into being, the shows that got huge ratings was Rush Limbaugh and right-wing talk. That was predominantly what there was, and the idea of Air America was to try to combat that. And I was at a meeting at the, you know, when Clinton was.

in the White House, and they had a meeting at Jay Rockefeller's house in Virginia was a senator at the time, and Gephardt was there, and Tom Dashel and Barry Diller and all these people there, talking about trying to create some kind of forum

where we could compete using media with them. And the Democracy Alliance came out of that, and Soros was one of the funders. I funded, you know, and what came out of was the Center for American Progress,

crew, which was a, you know, a legal group to, and media matters, you know. Well, those are the big things that came back. There's nothing compared to what they have. They have a juggernaut. You know, when you have, you know, American Enterprise Institute, and you have American Heritage Foundation,

and you've got Cato and all these things, and they are behind you with well-funded, like crazy, It's hard to push your ideas through. Because our base, yeah, we have our billionaires, but they have way more billionaires. And most of our constituents are not as rich. It's not the money that wins. No, no, but you have to build something.

Listen, I ran into Rupert Murdoch, and I ran into Rupert Murdoch. I want to, you know, thank you. Well, you run into a lot of people. Well, who else did I run into? Warren Beatty? Oh, that, yeah, but they're 20 years apart. Oh, okay.

No, I'm not running him to it in the same day. Hey, Warren. Hey, Rupert. I'm not doing that. I'm just saying you're a popular guy. Anyway, I see him and I say, I want to, you know, thank you for standing up and letting your, you know, your network come out and say these things. But there's very little, I mean, you know, he's, who knows where he is at this point, but we don't have the infrastructure. We don't have a media infrastructure the way the other side does. and we don't we don't we can't that's bullshit it isn't bullshit the new york times npr msnbc nobody

nobody reads these things nobody reads the new york times no no nobody reads the new york times and nobody watches msnbc and nobody anymore but people do read the new york times yes a group a small group of people read the new york times well first of all the new york times been doing very well um financially also they're a national they're doing well i'm talking about national paper and they would i would in my view they would do a lot better if they weren't so ideologically captured um they they're a very different paper than they were when i mean i've been reading it since it was listen i read it i've been reading it since i'm alluded to a kid but but but but here's the thing when i say rush limbaugh and those kinds of right wing shows dominant

Talk News, Fox is the one that does better than MSNBC, CNN, on the cable side. So that's what you have. You don't have parody. And then when you took on social media, Twitter, I don't know, you're still on Twitter? Well, it's X now. It's X now. X, yeah. Am I on it?

You know, I have a personally, not really. Okay. So I, you know, I was not. on any social media. My wife says to me, you know, when Trump first emerged in, when he was running for president, back in 2015, I guess it was. 16. She said, you should talk, you know, get, get out there. So I got onto Twitter and I built, you know, good following. You know, I'd like two and a half million followers or whatever. It's not nothing compared to, you know, dual leap or, you know, whoever. Duolipa. I don't know. I pulled Duolip out of my ass. You did. And it

was a perfect reference. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or, you know, Selena Gomez or whatever. But the point is I had this following, right? Then Elon Musk buys this, takes it over, and it changes whatever. And I'm saying, I don't want to be this. I have enough of this stuff. So I get off.

Now I can't get back on. They can't get my name because apparently if you give it up, you can't get back. So I said, I try to get back on. And it says, you can't say Rob Reiner. It says actual Rob Reiner. What's the hell of it? And, you know, from two and a half million followers, I had 48 followers. And so it was, you know, it's like, but the point is they have all these followers.

They have truth social. He has his own, you know, platform. What happened with X was Twitter was a mess. My line about Twitter was always, anything I want to say on Twitter, I can't say on Twitter. Because it was so full. What did you say? What did you want to say you couldn't say? I'm going to tell you.

Okay. This is back, this is before Elon. onboard it. It had got so overtaken by left-wing scolds that they were just looking for something to catch you on. Another obnoxious trait of the far left. They just, they don't look to uplift, which is what traditional liberals like myself believe in, uplifting. It was just catching people and putting a scalp on the wall because we caught something you said. So I stopped tweeting, and it was too bad because it used to be fun. He said, oh, I had a brain for it. I could say it. But then they would just...

But if you say something that you really believe, and I've put a lot of things out there, if you look at my old Twitter feed, there's all kinds of stuff. Yeah, but nothing that offends the far left. Well, I don't know. Who it offends? All I know is they, you know,

the right would call me a libtard, which is, that's part for the course. But it got way worse than that. They had me living on Epstein's Island. And I took a summer home, there and I'm, you know, I'm Mr. Pedophilia. I mean, it's like crazy. Oh, it is crazy. Crazy stuff. Were you ever on the plane? No. Okay. No, I don't, I never met the guy. I don't even know the guy. Right, because some people were on the plane, but they didn't go to the island.

Yeah. The island, I mean, the plane, were you ever on the plane? No. The island? Well, how would I get, the island? You got to get on the plane to get the plane. Yes, but the plane went all over the world. Now, the island was like a hub. It was kind of like, it was kind of like, you know, what Atlanta is for Delta. But it was still, like, Clinton was on the plane a lot. I don't think he was ever on the island. No, not the island. But my point was that Elon took over, claiming that what he was going to do,

was get rid of this one-sided, and it was completely one-side. But he didn't do. And then he did the opposite. He went the other way. It just went. It's a perfect paradigm for the world we live in. Nothing ever stops in the middle. I call it pendulous.

The pendulum just got, and all he did was turn it into a place where now nobody, unless your super right wing feels comfortable there. Yeah, yeah, then you can't be there. So, like, how do we get back to a place where we do that? And I would say, job one, don't stop talking. Yeah, well, I agree. You know, I agree. I mean, I was going to tell you before, I was reading this article about a guy who was in the Obama, or no, Biden administration. And he cut off his brother who voted for Trump.

or maybe brother-in-law. And then he wrote this article, I forget for who. And it basically said, yeah, you know what? I re-looked at that issue. He's my brother-in-law. He's a good guy. He voted for Trump, you know. It's more complicated than that.

And then there was a backlash to that, you know. You got mad at him for, for giving him. Well, New York was like, it is perfectly okay to unfriend and cut off. I forget the word they used for, like, disengage with your family. Talk about family. Like the advice is don't go to Thanksgiving if they're true. And we just, that is just never going to make this country better.

And I know it's terrible to have to, like, suck it up and talk to people who, yes, hold views that, you know, you think you're morally superior to. And sometimes you actually are morally superior to. You still have to talk. No, you have to try to talk. But it is very frustrating when, you know, the truth is is ephemeral for sure. But there are certain things that are true, like two and to his four, like there's a man on the moon, like a man landed on. I know. Those things, you have to at least agree to that.

How do you have the conversation then? Okay. Well, we just had, we had this discussion before, and I told you my answer. And your answer is just let it go. Let it go. if you demand ideological purity about everyone you want to talk to, you're going to have a very small group of friends. I'm not saying ideological purity.

I'm just saying a basis for conversation. You can come at it different ways, but you have to agree that there's certain realities. Okay, but, you know, there are certain realities. In other words, like for example, they would say, and one of them is biological sex. So, you know, I was talking Biological sex, what do you mean?

Boys and girls? Oh, yeah. Penises and vaginas. X and Y chromosomes. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, that wasn't the left position for a long time,

certainly not the far left. Now, I was, you mentioned Epstein. I was having this discussion with somebody about Epstein like a month ago when it first hit, and, you know, we were talking about Trump and Epstein. And I said, you know, Trump is on,

I don't know what he did with Epstein, But he's on tape saying he grabs pussies. That's on tape. You know what his answer was? He said, okay, he's on tape doing that. But you want to talk about doing bad things to vaginas? And then he went into lots of facts and figures about transing kids who are younger than where they would do it anywhere else in the world based on self-diagnosis.

So if you want to get on your high horse about who's crazy, it's going to be a fight. Yeah, but you don't want to get into a question of what aboutism and that. We have to agree that it's not a good thing for a man to just grab a woman.

We do. We have to agree on that. We have to agree on that. He wasn't saying that wasn't a good thing. He was just saying, what about this other thing? That's what about ism? We can say that's not good either. But it's the point is we have to. But it's valid. And what

He was saying, it doesn't justify the first thing. Trump saying that. Bill, it doesn't justify the first thing. No one's saying it justifies it. Yeah. What is your sense of nuance. What we're saying is what this person was saying, and it's a valid argument, was like, what Trump did, okay, conceded, wrong. But it didn't actually, that comment itself, if he did it, it was wrong.

But is it actually worse than taking a child who perhaps shouldn't be having a. this kind of life-changing surgery. Kids are very confused. Should we really be this gung-ho? And again... We can have that discussion. We can talk about that. But that's not... It's not part of the discussion of this. There are two different

things. And we can have both of those discussions, but we shouldn't conflate them and say because he did, because this is bad, that that's okay. No one is saying that. I thought you were saying that. I'm not saying that. You're just missing the point. I'm missing the point. I'm missing the

point you are usual right not as usual but but you are there is a point to be made uh people who write into the show back me up on this no we're not saying what trump did was right we're not saying it shouldn't be condemned we're just saying if the subject is who's crazy about vaginas the subject is vaginas and craziness is the issue we think that what you're doing in this area is crazier and actually affects people more than him grabbing pussies. I'm going to say, that may be true. That may be true. But that person isn't running for president.

And this, no, no, but I'm saying, we're talking about a man running for president that has that sensibility. It's just, all right, I give up. It's disgusting. I said my peace. You either get it either. So you want that guy to.

I did, no. Can you not pause before running immediately right to all way over here. This is not where the argument it is, and straw man didn't show up to this party. That's not what I'm saying, and that's not what the issue is. I don't want Trump. I would have voted for him if I did, but I didn't. Right. And I would, you know, have paused. No, what you're saying is you should be able to engage anybody in any discussion about something that they are passionate about, and I agree with that. Part of the reason why the right is so, uh, but hurt about the left, it's not always just policy. It's like they feel very disrespected.

Like, I won't even talk to you. I won't even sit down and break bread with you. Really? They don't like that. Remember, the deplorables comment Hillary made. They just think that they're looked down. Well, that's a bad thing to be saying, if you're running for president, to call some people who are voters deplorable. Even if you think that, you don't say that's bad politics. But Trump doesn't have that problem. He says whatever the hell he wants, and nobody, he doesn't worry about that. He doesn't worry about what he says about people. He's such an instinctive politician.

You know, he talked about it back from the 80s that he was going to run. He kind of knew that in himself, and he just flipped the script. Everybody had become so press-sex spokesman, I just say the exact right thing and try not to offend anyone. and he was like, I'm just going to let my interior monologue out. I don't think he, I don't know if he can help himself. No, I don't think he can. He just says, this is what he really thinks.

And that's in many ways refreshing, even when it's awful. But it's also, listen, I made a movie with my wife called God and Country, which was all about Christian nationalism. I know, I thought. Yeah, and the idea was that, and we had a lot of very, conservative Christians on the show talking about what they feel was

not only a danger to the country but a danger to Christianity and because they felt that this Christian nationalism was going so far field from the teachings of Jesus in their minds and the idea

that and this is something I remember back in 2004 when Bush was running for re-election and ran against Kerry. And I remember Carl Rove saying that we could win this election with just Christian evangelicals. If we get all of them, because they weren't getting them all to the polls. I mean, the Ralph Reeds of the world and the turning points and all that had not galvanized at that point. They started to, and they were able to, and they've been successful since.

then. But this whole idea that Donald Trump is the guy that they think is the second coming or is sent by God to represent them, it can't be further from, I mean, if you read it, then the teachings of Jesus. It can't be further from it. Okay, but there's one word. And they like, they love him. There's, they love his dirty draws. There's one word that explains this which is Cyrus well yeah of course Cyrus yeah Cyrus yeah I understand can you explain to the people who Cyrus is no you can explain okay so it's in the Bible and it's in it's a 45th chapter and he was the 45th president so I mean yeah no you can't argue with you do the math yeah but Cyrus was a king of Persia or he fought the Persians no he was the king

of Perthia. Anyway, he freed the Jews accidentally. He was like going to war against... I didn't mean that. Like, as a side show, it turned out very well for the Jews. That's who they think Trump is. He's a Cyrus figure. In other words,

he's very flawed. He's faulty, but he's our guy. But we're the Jews in this scenario. And most of these Christian conservatives like David French and Russell Moore, they feel that this movement has gone so far field from, you know, love thy neighbor and do unto others and all of those things that are part of the

Jesus thing. So, and if you looked at what happened in 9, you know, January 6th, there was a lot of Bibles and crosses. And they were all storming the capital. QAnon and Christian nationalism are absolutely. a Venn diagram that looks like a circle. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's all part of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is scary, that's scary, you know.

You know, Bush, you mentioned Bush, he was a super duper Christian. Yeah, yeah, but he didn't push it on others. Exactly. I mean, I remember reading. There was a separation of church and state at one point. There was, and that's what I'm going to get to where I want to ask you, because I do remember reading that, like a sly. dig during the Bush administration was a mischid Bible study yeah so they were full in on the Jesus see yeah yeah yeah but do you think given what we now see in the Trump administration and

things that are just so unprecedented do you think we were too hard on George Bush he was I wonder and it's hard to remember because it was 20 years ago to me the problem the biggest very hard on and I'm still not a huge fan. No, no, but it was a normal sort of republican. Yeah, yeah, he was, and so was Reagan. And yeah, I understand that. Yeah. But to me, the big thing with Bush was going to war in Iraq.

And that, to me, made him somebody that I, because it was a lie. Yeah. It was a lie like when we went into war in Vietnam and the Spanish-American War. There are lies, and we understand how they get people galvanized to go to war. That's when I had the problem with him. Oh, me too. Reagan didn't do anything like that. I also think Bush going into Iraq,

the reason they gave to get people behind it was a lie, true. But I think it was sincere him thinking that was the correct response, even though it wasn't Iraq who did it. He understood... Forget it wasn't Iraq who did it. The Iraq didn't have weapons of mass and such. I understand.

And they knew it. They knew it. We had... And I made a movie about that, too. shock and all. There were, you know, observers on the ground. We had a, we had a no-fly zone around that. It was contained like crazy. I agree. I'm like, I was not for the Iraq war. But I do think Bush, you know, he's not a genius. He's from Texas. And he was like, you know what? When they punch you, you punch him back. Doesn't have to be exactly who did it. I'm a big thinker,

big picture of war. You figure out where. Go get bin Laden. no i understand i'm not yeah yeah yeah i'm not arguing with you on these points yeah i'm just saying i wonder if looking back if i was too hard because for example i could think of two things that bush did that i three if you count sitting with michel obama and them seemed to get along well but he also had the opportunity to pardon scooter liby and he didn't no no i listen didn't. I don't. And he was like the, he was like his bottom bit. Which was the right thing to do. Exactly. I'm saying. But this guy we have is pardoning people who beat the crap out of cops. Exactly. I understand. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. Yeah. There's a difference. Yes.

And then the other thing I love the moment with Bush is that when Obama took office, they had all the ex-presidents there. And Bush stood next to Obama and said, we want you to succeed. Yes. I mean, it was, it's just such a different time. And Trump did not do that. He did not do that. He still hasn't conceded the election. Yeah. Again, these are people who we didn't vote for 20 years ago. And yet, when they took over, we just didn't have the worries we have now.

It just wasn't where we are. It wasn't at this existential way. It was like, okay, when the Democrats are in office, for us personally, for example, how are we affected? well, the top bracket goes from paying 36% under Republicans to paying 39% under Democrats. Yeah, no, you pay a little more. We switched. You pay a little more.

We've had giant election over 3%. Yeah, no, no, I understand. So it just wasn't that sort of like you go from here all the way over to, you know. Yeah. I mean, you have a... Well, that's why it's really scary because, you know, you talk about Bush, But I was, you know, I campaigned like crazy for Al Gore, went all over the country with him.

And, you know, I was actually with him the night that the Supreme Court ruling came in. And I was having dinner at this place. And we were working on an op-ed piece that was supposed to be in the New York Times the next day, called the Consent of the Government. And they came down with this ruling. And we're all sitting there watching CNN. And the guy on television says, I'm on the phone.

He says, oh, he says, I understand that the vice president is in his residence and he's on the phone talking to his advisors trying to understand this ruling along with the rest of us. It was like a Truman Show moment where, because he was on the phone with David Boyes and Ron Clayne trying to, because basically what the Supreme Court said was we want to remand this back to the Florida Supreme Court. But there's not enough time because of the December 12th ruling to be able to change and make it one way of counting all the votes so we can't do it so so you know Bush is president and they said that and that and I see I'm sitting right next one and gore says all this is he says bullshit that's all he said just one word and his daughter was there his son Albert was there and the daughter started crying hysterical. And he says, it's over. And she started crying. He went and hold her. He gave her hug. And he said, don't worry. It's going to be okay. It's going to be all right. And at that moment, I said, wow, we lost a great man. That could have been great precedent. I love it. Yeah. Because he had the decency and he had the calmness to be able to say that. And then, of course, he conceded right away. He took one for the team.

Yeah, conceded right away. And think about 20 years jump on climate change. Think about no going to war and Iraq. I mean, the things that change when you do things like, and, you know, that was 500 and what is it, 34 votes in Florida. We don't know how he would have handled 9-11. I mean, Hillary voted for the Iraq war. Yes.

No, no, no, I agree. How we would have handled 9-11? No, we don't know. No, no. But I don't think he would have gone to war in Iraq. I don't think so, but you just don't... No, I don't think so either. No.

I don't think so either, but... But the point is, we're at this point now with a guy who's so far off the charts in terms of normal governing that it's frightening. So how do we get the Democrats so united? Because, you know, you and I can't keep arguing if we're going to, like, ever... Well, we're trying. You know, we're... No, it's good to talk, isn't it? I guess, yeah, it is.

I mean... It is. Listen, I'm happy to talk to anybody. More information is always better than less information, is how I look at it. Listen, I had dinner with J.D. Vance years ago over at David Frum's house. Ran into him. No, no. He was invited to dinner.

I didn't run in. He was there. You're just always running into people. No, I didn't run to him. Okay. So I'm having dinner with him, and he had just written this book, Hillbilly Ellogy. Yeah. It was just pretty good.

Rod Howard made it into a movie. I thought it was pretty good. Yeah. And talking with him and blah, couldn't be more reasonable. Couldn't be, no, we didn't agree. I mean, he's, you know, what he is. He's a nice guy. Yeah.

Couldn't have been more reasonable. And then he becomes this sycophant, and they all are. Yes. All of them. Oh. So what am I going to do there? I mean, what are you, you know, this is like, you know, this is insanity. What you're going to do there is make them hate you less.

their whole policy is based on make them cry their liberal tears they think they're so fucking superior that they won't break bread with us just break the hate no you're not going to convince them to go against trump on an issue but trump famously is like a guy who sort of like follows whatever the last thing he hears now he's surrounded by asksters the last thing he hears is usually something stupid. He got out of the meeting with Putin. And he said, we should get rid of mail-in voting because Putin thinks mail-in voting is why our elections are rigged. Now, that's just... Well, he's always been saying that. I know. But the fact that he was like quoting Putin on electoral politics? Well, listen, he sat in Helsinki next to Putin and said, I don't think he did it.

That's not the point. The point is, the point is, he does. He does. He just sort of listens to and repeats the last thing he hears so let's get more people in there who's saying things because i'm telling you he doesn't he didn't object to any time i contradicted him you know i said to him you're scaring people they're your people why do you want to scare people so what do you say to that i don't i don't i don't but it wasn't so it was it was it was a good conversation it was it was it was it was it made an impression on you well did you watch my report on it. No, no, but I want to know what he said to you.

I don't remember, but it wasn't all-stop, because I would have remembered that. Okay, from now on I don't think that. And I didn't expect it to be. But just the fact that something gets in there. Yeah, maybe. It's not the worst thing in the world. It may be the best thing in the world or best you can do. But, you know.

Racist, there's a blind spot they can't see. Yes, of course. They can't see. So how do you discuss, how do you talk to that? There's also blind spots on the other side with it. race. You think everything that comes out of the left on race makes sense? Like, give me an example.

Anything in Robin DiAngelo, Tonehisi Coates. What, by the way, give me specific. For example, I mean, he says, or maybe it's Ibrahimax-Kendi, says, I mean, I'm not quoting word for word, but it's very close to word for it. The only

solution to past racism is future racism. In other words, being racist in reverse. Yeah, well, that's ridiculous. Okay, then, but my point is, that's what a lot of people... But that's an argument. That's not saying, I, you know, a black person could say, I don't like any white people. That's racist. White person says, I don't like any black people.

That's racist. You can't argue with that. How do you argue that? You can't discuss that. Who's arguing? I mean... No, I'm saying you can't discuss those things with somebody who's going to say that. If the issue is Trump and racism, I think it's more nuanced than that.

I mean... Oh, I'm not saying him. I'm just saying, generally speaking, you know, a racist is somebody you can't really argue with. It's hard. But, I mean, I could show you, like, many TikToks of what? I don't know. Where are you going to go with that? I know.

Of, like, young, usually black women saying some variation of, I just can't deal with white people today. And you could hardly imagine that in reverse. No, I'm not mad at it. I'm just saying... We can understand what is built into a black person's experience why they would say something like that. Maybe not that person in particular. Well, I don't know that person, but...

I don't know that person either. But it could be possible that they're just somebody... Who was it? Oh, Thomas Tatteredton Williams that's on my show a couple of weeks ago was talking about microaggressions and the idea I said, It's funny because sometimes it seems like there's more anger now racially, and yet things were so much worse then. You know, you and I think the age.

Yeah, it is worse. And he said, yes, he said there's an interesting human psychological factor where like the better things get, the tinier the offense makes people anger. That's right, that's right. And you also forget where you were and you forget the progress. that's been made. Because you weren't alive for it. Because you're only focusing on the inequity right then and there.

And again, to your point before, about they don't know anything in the past, like they don't know your show. Yeah. They also don't know about the civil rights pioneers who actually endured horrible things. And died to try to get the right to vote. So, you know, could it be that a 20-year-old goes out in the world today? and has a terrible experience with white people. It could, but, you know, I don't think if you're in Los Angeles

and you're black and you walk into a Starbucks, they're going to say, we don't serve your kind here. No. No. Okay. So, you know, I don't know what the white, I don't know what white people out there are doing that you can't deal with today. I'm just saying you could never say that in reverse,

and you shouldn't say that in reverse. What would you say to a white person? What do you mean? Don't order that pumpkin spice lot. day get out of here whatever that thing is well it's the season of pumpkin spice i can't believe getting there getting i can't believe how fast the time goes so the movie opens the movie opens september 12 okay so in theaters around the town and i wanted it i wanted it to be in the theaters because you got to watch a comedy with people you want they want that shared experience if it's a

comedy or it's a thriller, horror. You want people to be there and enjoy it with them. It's not sitting at their home, going to the bathroom, getting something to eat or whatever. You are not the first director. I know. Who's been making this argument. Yeah.

And it's a valid argument and it's just really a hard. You're fighting a tsunami. No, no, no. And I know. It's very hard. I mean, it's very hard. I don't often get my ass out to the theater either. Yeah.

No, no. I mean, I've only gone a couple of that. But this one I would. Oh, good. This one I would. I mean, I can not wait to see. I can't wait. You'll like it.

I think there's some good laughs in it. There's some good laughs in it. Besides what I loved everything about that was in the first one, which is L.O.L. Like, ultimate L.O.L. kind of movie comedy was that there were people who did not understand it was a comedy. A lot of people at the beginning. They came up to me at the first screening. And in Dallas we had. And they said, I don't understand.

Why are you making a movie about a band I, nobody's ever heard of? And one, you know, why is you making, what are you doing? And I felt bad because we got the worst cards. You know, they signed these cards and they give you the thing. The worst cards ever. The only thing I felt good about is I counted five different ways they spelled the word movie. Really? Yeah.

There was M-O-V-I-E-Y. Yeah. There was M-O-V-E-Y. there was M-O-V-Y, M-O-V-E, and my favorite, M-O-V-E. Move. So I'm saying maybe they weren't geniuses. I don't know, but it took a long time for people to catch on to the movie and like it. Well, I don't think that's an accurate appraisal.

What it is was like, and look, it's just going to sound like I'm making fun of half the country. Half the, or however many, I'm sorry, but people are nuance impaired. This is a movie that's a mockumentary about a fan. You don't have to be a genius to get

the satire and the parody of everything about rock and roll that is so paradigable, if that's a word. Yeah, yeah, but we played it close to the bone. It was satire very close to the bone. Yes, but I just got to say you're a little fucking dead. if you're one of the people.

That spells it, M-O-V-E. The M-O-V-E person is not going to get it. You didn't get that this was parody. They took it seriously. Yeah, I know. Well, some rockers, some rock and roll people took it seriously, and they got mad.

Like Stephen Tyler was upset. Really? Yeah, oh, yeah, and then Axel Rose from Guns and Rose. And, you know, God bless him. You know, musicians are... Ozzy Osborne didn't love it to watch. They're so talented, but thinking ain't their thing. Rob.

No. You know, it's just... It's not high on the list. No. Well, we try to make fun of that, too. Of course. That's part of the way and so funny if you have this built-in. Yeah.

And the thing is about musicians, especially rock stars, what it is about music that gets to us, gets to us on such a deep level. Yeah, it's on a very emotional level, yeah. I remember when I visited Amsterdam and I had a friend who lived there and I said, what's it like here and he's telling me everything about it? And he said, and I said, the people are, they're, they're polite, but they're not warm. He said, right. He said, they don't get excited about anything except pop stars, just like everywhere else in the world.

When Michael Jackson was there, they went a fuck or not. It just gets to us. It does. It's a very versatile thing. The people who are the rock stars get to live in this world of their own. And we see it. I could mention a million names and just who've lived in this bubble of, Just like, I'm the greatest.

I don't have to know anything. I have assistance and everyone's glory. And, you know, that's what you're married. But most rockers did get it eventually. They all got it and they dug it. It was like a staple on the tour bus. It had the thing. Sting when the first time he met him, he said,

I've seen this movie a hundred times, 50 times. Every time I see it, I don't know if I should laugh or cry. No, because he's smart. Yeah, he's smart. He is smart. He is smart. Yeah, Paul McCarton, he's in the movie. Yeah, he's in the movie.

and he's really funny too. So what are you having as far as like the cameo? Paul McCartney, Elton John, wow, Garth Brooks. There's Questlove, you know. There's a whole thing where they're trying to find the new drummer because the drummers are always dying.

Right. They had 12 drummers. Which is true. Yeah, it's true, it's true. The last drummer, this guy, Skippy Scuffleton, he died because he sneezed himself to death. He couldn't stop sneezing. He had a fit, and he dropped it.

So we have to get a new drummer, and they put out a word to try to get a new drummer. And they talk to Questlove. They talk to Chad Smith from Red Hot Chili Peppers and Lars Ulrich from Metallica. And they all turn them down because they rather stay alive. They don't want to die. They love them, but they don't want to die. All right. Well, thank you.

Yeah, thanks for having me. I had the time of my life. I hope you did. I had the time of my life and I owe it all to you. Okay. All right, buddy.