Real Time with Bill Maher - Ep. #435: Reverend Jesse Jackson, Frank Bruni

Episode Date: August 26, 2017

Bill’s guests are Reverend Jesse Jackson, Frank Bruni, Paul Begala, Nayyera Haq, and Matt Welch. (Originally aired 8/25/17) See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO Late Night series, Real Time with Bill Maugh. Start the clock. We're at a show, I know it's exciting. But before we get to all that, I just have to say, you know what, I play Texas a lot. Spent a lot of time down there.

I love it down there. So they're having a hurricane. So our thoughts are with them. Hurricane Harvey. He's already wreaked a lot of havoc there. Trump came out with a very strong statement condemning the violence on both sides. Now, this is Trump's first natural disaster.

The others, he all caused himself. He has a message for the people of Texas in their time of need. He stands ready to tweet if he gets any shitty coverage. And that FEMA is standing by to provide bottles of Trump water and only slightly higher than retail prices. It's a very good deal. Very good deal. And...

Speaking of very good deals, it looks like this week. Did you see the two Trumps thing that they're all talking about? You know, General Kelly took over as the chief of staff a couple of weeks ago. You know, it looks like he made a deal with General Kelly that on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I will be teleprompter Trump. And the other days, I'll be able to free to tweet crazy bat shit and shout bullshit at rednecks and airplane hangers. So Monday, teleprompter Trump made a... foreign policy speech that was very normal and reassuring. And then the next day, he went to Arizona for a rebuttal.

A rebuttal to himself. That's the world we're living. And he was actually bragging about it. He tweeted the other day, Too bad for the Dems. They have no one who can change tones. Yeah, it's called schizophrenia, dipshit. It has gotten so bad that this week,

the tabloids were describing a shy of... LeBuff's behavior as erratic bordering on presidential. Very serious. It is at the point where when he is merely hypocritical, it is reassuring. I mean, for years, he never stopped tweeting about how he had to get out of Afghanistan.

Get out of Afghanistan. How stupid Obama was to be there. Stupid Obama. Well, now we're staying. Turns out if you like your endless war in Afghanistan, you can keep your endless war in Afghanistan. And, you know, this war has been going on for 16 years. 16 years.

Republicans, I've got to say, they do like their war. Wives come and go, but war they're willing to work at. So that was Monday, the big Afghan speech. And then Tuesday, the big rally in Phoenix, the fans loved it. Info wars gave it four and a half straight jackets. And Trump was in rare form. He was blasting the fake news media for how they misrepresented his response to Charlottesville.

Right. And, hey, you know, when people are unfairly saying you like Nazis, what better way to dispel that notion than to host a hate rally in Arizona with all white people? Perfect. Oh, yeah. People keep calling me a slut. I'll show them.

I'm going to the roadhouse. and fuck all the bikers. And I tell you, I give it to his fans. They do love them. It was hot. It was like 107. It was so hot, his fans were chanting, Jews, please replace us.

Oh, that guy gets it. No, but here's my little wisp of hope for this week. At the rally, this is the first time I've seen this. His fans, they got bored and started to leave early. Maybe the magic spell is wearing off. Because they're so sick of hearing the same old shit. The news is fake. Foreigners are taking your jobs.

I'm being treated unfairly. By the time he gets to build the wall, people are like, you know, if we leave during Drain the Swamp, we can beat the traffic. I mean, when he finally started in on Hillary, they were like, wrap it up. Wrap it up. All right, we got a great show, Paul Magala.

Neira Huck and Matt Welch are here and a little of him. He be speaking with the New York Times columnist Frank Bruney but first up he is the founder of the Rainbow Push Coalition when Charlottesville happened I was watching it on TV I said you know who I want to talk about this I want to get him on Jesse Jackson everybody you're not going to do a stage dive are you I mean I all right so listen um you're nervous why you've never done this it's been a while

Fake news. Fake news. But listen, I met what I said. I was watching that that Saturday day, and I was like, you know who I got to hear on this is you. You worked alongside, of course, Martin Luther King. You were there at the moment of the assassination. And this seemed like, I mean, his quote,

it's the letter from the Birmingham jail. I'm sure you know it better than all of us. He once said, and I thought it was apropos to this situation, He said, I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block is not the Ku Klux, Clanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice.

The context of that was those who hypocritically are embarrassed by behavior that's ugly. For example, there are those who are, decried Trump's statement about, a non-statement about Charlottesville. Right. But they also voted for Jefferson Beauregard Sessions to be Attorney General. They... Jefferson Beauregard said, right, the attorney...

They're named after Jefferson Davis and the general, the Confederate General, that's right. Those who are against Trump's statements, but then votes will shift health care money from the poor to wealth care for the rich. Right. They are moderate. They're nice guys. They don't like to be... They're embarrassed, but they're not change agents.

In other things, we need change agents. It's not just people who are embarrassed because that's personal. You know, we saw these people marching, and they were, you know, they were not wearing the hoods. They were carrying the tiki torches and the sometimes Nazi flags, shouting horrible things.

But we saw their faces. And in this day and age, you can match those faces. We could look these people up and probably get them fired at their jobs. Is that a wise thing? Well, they feel emboldened. They feel they have protection from the White House. Right.

And that is a lot of strength to have. Today, Apeo, the sheriff of Arizona was pardoned in spite of his record on immigration in spite of his racial profiling. And so they feel protected by the president. And so when he put more focus, on being a fan of David Duke than Heather Haya

that says something about the climate in the country that's poisonous and we deserve we deserve much better. I read a poll that said 45% of Trump fans, his voters, think that whites are more discriminated

against. They are the most discriminated against. And Christians are the religion that's most discriminated against. Fifty-four percent said that. You've got to have a special kind of chip on your shoulder as a white Christian to think you're the one who got dealt a bad hand. That may be something else going on, really. 78% of Americans, 7.8% live paycheck to paycheck.

51% make $30,000 a year or less. There's a deep sense of anxiety where you've had, we've globalized the economy without any sense of care for these persons. They feel locked out, and they start skateboarding. Well, my problem is the Muslims are coming. My problem is the Jews are come up. And so they are being exploited, but there's tremendous anxiety that must not be ignored. Okay. Let me ask you about some other issues that are in the news.

Colin Kaepernick, I want to know what you think about that. Because, first of all, I predict he's going to get picked up by a team. It's becoming too big. He's actually not a bad player. And... The fact of him that is, he should have the right to express himself. He's not burning a flag. He's not hustling drugs for teammates.

He's not shooting people with guns. Jack Robertson once said that he would not salute the flag, not sang the national anthem, because he felt it was not protecting him. That's Thomas Smith and John Carlos at the Olympics showing their fish. Right. That's all he said, I will not go to the war because... Muhammad Ali, right? Did not go.

And so there's a lineage of athletes who've taken their stands. That is, the reason athletes get all of this super money today, because Kurt Floyd said he would not be sold. You have the right to sell him. So all the free agency comes from a guy who stood up. So maybe the

Cape Necker has had one guy who stands up. He should not. The owners have colluded. They have decided not let him play, and he should have the right to play and express himself at the same time. And it just seems so mean-spirited. I mean, considering how black people have been treated in this country, the whole stadium should get on their knee for the national anthem. Well, I think that the silence of the Pleas Association is a kind of betrayal.

They're too silent in light of what they face. They always face some issue that affects them personally, but never quite as noble as the issue of Kampenek. He's saying that blacks are shot down and it was lied about until the cameras exposed it. He says it's not right. You look at the case of Prevon Martin killed and the killer walks free. Look at the case in Ferguson, Missouri, and the killer walks free. Somebody says, Black Lives Matter.

He says it's not right. We deserve equal protection under the law. We should honor Kapanek. But is my last question. to you. I agree with that. But Steve Bannon, who just left the White House, his exiting statement was, I hope the Democrats keep pursuing

identity politics. Race is a loser for them. They play that card, and we're going to kill him in the next election. What do you say to that? Well, Hillary put... Have the Democrats played identity politics too much? No, we live in a multiracial, multicultural society. Hillary won by 3 million votes. Trump lost by 3 million votes.

When the Republicans want to embrace the statutes of Confederates who engage in secession and slavery and segregation and sedition, that's the into politics. When they have no regard for the rights of immigrants, they will be a wall between us and our next-to-neigh of Mexico. They suggest that a federal judge who's Mexican cannot dispense justice. that's the politics. And so we fight for gender politics and race politics. We fight for multiracial, multicultural society, and it's the right thing to do.

Thank you for coming here, Rev. You're an icon and you deserve to be. Jesse Jackson, everybody. All right, let's meet our panel. Thank you, well. Okay, here they are. He's the editor at large of Reason Magazine and co-host of The Reason podcast.

Matt Welch is over here. He's a Democratic strategist and a CNN contributor. He could have been a comedian. Paul Begall is over here. No, seriously. I've known some funny people. He's one of them. She's the former White House Senior Director

and State Department's Senior Advisor. Now, Eira Huck. How you doing? All right, don't forget as soon as your questions for tonight's overtime, so we're going to answer them after the show on YouTube. Okay, guys. Which Donald Trump should we talk about this week?

teleprompter Trump or his evil twin. Now, the evil twin, just today... Oh, do we have our news dump? You know, they love to... You know what a news dump is, everybody, right? It's like... I was going to say what it is, but fuck it. We have the picture.

It's like they dump the news on Friday when no one's paying attention. Okay, so he pardoned Joe Arpaio. Double down on no transgender's in the military. How brave of you? You're my heroes. He threatened a government shutdown earlier the week about the wall. I thought the Mexico was going to pay for the wall.

What happened to that? Now we don't pay for it. We're shutting the government down. So is the best we can do Trump, sane, half the time? Is that where we're at? Is that where the bar is? I think the bar's lower than that. I mean, there's five days in a week, Bill, so like the crazy Trump, I think, is the Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. We've seen the Friday trip on the Tuesday and Thursday flip.

No, the Arpaio thing tells us a lot about this president. He went outside to the normal process here. Normally when you're going to pardon somebody, you go through the Justice Department. The person may express a little bit of remorse, and you kind of do it this way, or you wait until sentencing is up. None of this happened, right? Joe Arpaio was gleeful about his activities. Donald Trump said he was punished for doing his job. So let's be clear about what his job that Joe Arpaio had done.

He violated the Fourth Amendment rights of citizens of the United States, as well as residents, by pulling them over because they maybe kind of looked a little bit of legal immigrantee and then would detain them and then hand them over to the feds in defiance of a court order month after month after month. So if you're going to go and you're going to suspend the normal process to pardon that guy, you're saying, you're telling every law enforcement in the country, look, civil liberties don't really matter here as long as you are breaking things a little bit

if you're going after illegal immigrants and immigrants. That's who this president is. He'll do that. Netella prompter, he'll do that as a rally. That is the core of his personality. It's something to worry about. And it's an insight into an actual ideology that Donald Trump might have. And it's not a Republican or conservative ideology.

It's the ideology that serves him as an autocrat, right? He attacks the fourth estate and the media and tries to break that down, remove trust that people can have as the media as their protector. He's already been talking about the judicial system as being activist, right, in the Ninth Circuit. In all of these instances, he doesn't like the judiciary, which has been the last place of resort for people of color, immigrants in particular, other people of color and women

when it comes to any civil liberties issues. So by pardoning Joe Arpaio, a vigilante who flouts the rule of law, Trump has said it no longer matters if you are holding to a standard of rule of law, and it scares, frankly, it's very scary for people of color to try to understand where can you go for recourse if the president is going to override the judicial system. Yeah, it's so funny, you know, all the talk about building the wall who are going to put, they don't need the wall. Just making life miserable and terrifying for anyone of dark skin has actually worked.

They're not coming anymore. By the way, long before Donald Trump became president, when Barack Obama was president, illegal immigration from Mexico was going down. Trump's wall will only slow down their departure, and maybe mine. I don't know. But I think on the pari of thing, yes, he has a soft spot for white nationalists.

We already knew that. And yes, he wants to flat the rule of law, and he's an autocrat wannabe. I think there's a larger game here he's playing. He wants to send a signal to the targets of the Mueller investigation. that if you hold tight and don't roll on me, I'll pardon you. Because Mueller is going after Trump Associates first. That's what they do in these things.

It's all about Russia. It is. It is all roads lead to Russia with this guy. It is so true. It's the Rosetta Stone of his poor mangled brain is he's always thinking about Russia. And that's what I do think he... Well, he's right to be worried about that. Yeah.

Because, I mean, whatever we know about it, he knows way more, and he knows what he did. And what he did was bad. What he did was basically he owed Russia money, and instead of paying them, them, he gave them America. Okay. So, let me ask about another country because he did make this big speech about Afghanistan this week.

And, you know, I must tell you, I'm of two minds about Afghanistan. On the one hand, we've been there for 16 years, I think of the John Kerry statement. How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a lie? On the other hand, you know, all these presidents, they talk about when they're running,

they want to get out. And then when they get in, the generals take them in in a little room and I'm like, what do they tell them? And I think what they tell them is it's all bullshit about Afghanistan.

We're there to babysit Pakistan. Pakistan already has the Taliban in there. They have nuclear weapons. They asked Obama once, what keeps you up at night? And he wouldn't answer and he wouldn't answer,

and he finally said, Pakistan, because they have nuclear weapons. And we can't let the Taliban take over that country with nuclear weapons. I'm kind of down with that, I must say. But if you notice in that speech in which Donald Trump committed us, frankly, to endless war,

he did not give any details of how we would be getting out of Afghanistan in a long run. In fact, repeated several of... But again, you're going for the fake thing. It's not about Afghanistan. We're not trying to end the war. That's the bullshit for the people. We are there forever because Pakistan has the nuclear weapons and the Taliban. And Donald Trump did not actually signal out, single out the Taliban as the actual enemy.

And that, I think, is a very important point to underscore when he talked broadly about terrorism. So 9-11 happens. The United States goes in under the Bush administration to take out these terrorist safe havens. The decision is made that a ground war is the best way to do that. The Taliban becomes the number one enemy. Several years go by, Obama administration comes in and realizes actually Osama bin Laden was housed by the Taliban, but we need to go after al-Qaeda, dismantle those terrorist networks. Yes, Osama bin Laden found in Pakistan.

now we have a president who has not said who is the actual enemy. Is it ISIS? What are these terrorist networks we are going after? Because frankly, a ground war is not what we do anywhere else in the world to attack and track down terrorists. Again, we're not really there because we think we can change Afghanistan or win anything. We're there because we need troops on the border of the country that might get taken over by crazy Taliban people who then have nuclear weapons. Do you think that is going to stop that from happening? I don't know if it would be...

You think that that's going to give us some kind of tactical advantage. We're in a sink there. I don't agree with your premise here. If the Taliban took over, I would feel better if we had thousands of troops nearby. Crazy people run Pakistan and they have nukes. That's, let's just... Not crazy like the Taliban. Let's just say that that's a...

No, no, no, no. So the counterterrorism cooperation the United States has with Pakistan is critically important throughout the region. We do not have permanent military. bases the way we do in the Middle East right now to be launching and doing activities in Afghanistan and elsewhere. And to be fair, the Pakistan civilians and the military have made many, many sacrifices in the war on terror, for which the United States often reimburses monetarily. But there is a duplicity to this entire process, which is what has always gotten under the military's skin. And the duplicity is you have leadership in place that refuses to lose the power base of Mullahs being

able to turn out voters. So it is a, since the 19th, This is in a very tense and complicated relationship and a dance in which both sides are benefiting, but both sides are being duplicitous. Issue three. The eclipse. Turning into John McLaughlin. He's making me crazy. Trump is making me crazy, by the way. I so resent the fact that we just have to talk about him every week. That whatever brain fart comes out of his head, we have to all debate it because he's a five-year-old.

and where the man his mother brought home from the bar, and we have to pretend to be interested in what he says. Which is why he's never going to resign. You know, a lot of my fellow liberals think he's going to resign. Oh, please, he loves it. He's going to spend more time with his ex-wives. He's an attention whore. That's, yes.

Okay, so, all right. Ivanka Trump, greatest disappointment so far. I mean, really, Ivanka, you couldn't even stop the transgender in the military thing. I thought this was your area. Probably she has no way. sway of her daddy. But listen, for the eclipse, she tweeted

excited for eclipse. Remember to wear your glasses. Didn't get that note to dad either. And then hashtag NASA. Well, you know, NASA, you mean the group that your father rejects their climate change studies?

Because the eclipse, here's interesting about the eclipse. Scientists predicted something would happen. And then it happened. They didn't like take a poll or go to a town hall and asked the people if they thought it was a hoax, they predicted it would happen, and it did. Could we apply that to anything else?

It's a cheap laugh. Neil DeGrasse Tyson was making the same point. I think it's a cheap laugh. Because if you look at the way... The cheap laugh? Yeah, okay, there is no such thing as a cheap laugh. I'm sorry, but... No, there is, but...

In the sense that people, when they make predictions about climate change, which is real and the world's getting warmer and a man is causing this, but when they make predictions about it, Those predictions are difficult. They don't happen like clockwork like eclipses do. It's a different type of predictive science.

The actual science behind climate change is, according to science. That's a cheap point. Is 99% of scientists agree on climate change. 94% agree that tobacco causes cancer. So it's actually in scientific cases more certain than tobacco costs cancer. Yes, thank you. But here's what's happening. What are you talking about?

Of course, there's a hurricane now. Do we know if that hurricane was specifically souped up by climate change? No, because there are always going to be hurricanes, but we know that the weather is going to get more horrible because of climate change. We actually know the UN Intergovernmental Panel on climate change has studied hurricanes and have said there's no reported observed effect change in the intensity and frequency of hurricanes over the last 100 years. It's because they're scientists, just like epidemiologists, would hate to say, well, your lung cancer, not particularly because you smoke,

but there is a causal link. Here's what bothers me as a political person. The percentage of Republicans who deny climate science doubled between 2015 and 2016. There wasn't new science that said, oh, gee, we were wrong. It was Mr. Trump. It's a Trump effect.

Stupidity is contagious. Okay? And he is a typhoid merit of stupid. He's going across the country, feeding this garbage to people. I'm from South East Texas. I'm glad of what you said. I have family and friends

in the path of that storm. And my heart is with them now, too. And you're right, you can't say Harvey is caused by, you know, my SUV. It's a red herring. Yeah, but... Climate change has gotten to the point where the CIA and the military

are actively working. The military, right. The military is actually looking at climate change as a national security issue. They're on the page. Water levels rise. Droughts happen. These are the types of issues. Refugees, things that are going to involve them. Trump's golf course in Scotland

is dealing with climate change. He had to touch. to get some variance to try to build a seawall or something to protect them from the rising tide. So golf course Trump, businessman Trump, if he can make a buck, he's gonna be for it. But find a way, I don't know what it is, find a way that he makes money off of climate change.

He'll switch like that. So we have a Treasury, we have a Treasury Secretary, great looking guy, Steve Mnuchin, who is a newlywed. He's a very rich man, Steve. was a partner at Goldman Sachs, you know this, and he was rich enough to also be a movie producer, and I guess on the set,

he met an actress, Louise Linton, who grew up in Scotland, a castle in Scotland. And they fell in love, and they got married in June. It was provided over by Mike Pence. Wow, very exciting. So last week, the newlyweds decided to take a little day trip,

and they took a government plane to Fort Knox to look at the money. I am not making this up, which was bad enough, but when Mrs. Mnuchin got off the plane, she posted an Instagram pick getting off the plant and hashtagged all the designer stuff

she was wearing. Hashtag Roland Moray pants, Tom Ford Sunnies, Hermannys, Hermann scarf, Valentina, rock stud heels, Valentine's... Of course, she got killed on social media from being a clueless, entitled Marie Antoinette,

at which time she posted a response that was even worse. She wrote, Do you think this was a personal trip? Adorable. Have you given more to the economy than me and my husband? I'm pretty sure we paid more taxes today on our day trip than you did. Pretty sure the amount we sacrificed per year is a lot more than you'd be willing to sacrifice if the choice was yours.

This chick has balls, let me tell you. But this wasn't her first. arrogant post we had our real-time Russian hackers dig up some of the recent Instagrams from Mrs. Manuchin that she had deleted but we got them again would you like to hear them? Because oh yeah I like she put this on Instagram Fort Knox bitches he literally showed me the money

hashtag gold fingered back off girls he's mine Jews will not replace me Hashtag locks him up. That moment you fire one of the help for stealing your Gucci sunglasses, then realize they were on your head the whole time. Hashtag help wanted. Had three orgasms on our honeymoon night.

And I was just looking at his financial statement. Hashtag rocks my world bank. This is me on the set of Cabin Fever. This isn't a scene from the film. I'm shooting the caterer. I said no gluten. It costs a fortune and dozens of workmen to maintain this. The castle's expensive, too.

Hashtag rock the moat. Good morning, hey out of Unka Trump. Mine didn't make me convert to Jewism. Jealous much? Hashtag, getting piggy with it. When you rent the whole beach and some whale sh washes. Hashtag free willy. and you think I don't work, try fucking this.

Hashtag fake America great again. All right. Let's bring out Frank. He is a best-selling author and New York Times columnist Frank Bruney is over here. Frank. How are you, sir? Great pleasure to meet you.

Nice to see you. Okay. Well, Frank, I've wanted you here for a long time, but not more than lately because you have written two columns that were such music to my ears. The first one was called, I'm a white man. Hear me out.

What? About this new phenomenon that as a white man, somehow we're just disqualified for being in the debate, and somebody's got to speak up for the white men without the tiki torches. I mean, we still have something to offer. Absolutely, yeah. All right, we'll talk about it. All right. No, no, I wrote that because there are a lot of debates that happen these days.

I mean, you've listened to them. I think you've commented on them. where you get the message that if you are not part of a minority group, if you haven't suffered in that exact way, you can't possibly be empathetic and you can't possibly understand. And I think that's one of the things right now that divides us. I agreed with just about everything, Reverend Jackson said. I'm a white person, and that needs to be acknowledged that I'm not the enemy.

He's not saying I am, but often, you know, you go on Twitter, it's, of course, easy to talk about Twitter because it's such a flea market. But you go on Twitter and you see this sort of oppression Olympics, where if you are not as oppressed as I am, then don't tell me you can be on my side. What I said in that column, I'm a white man, and so, you know, a lot of people say you have nothing to say.

I'm also a gay man, right? So that brings about this assumption that I have some experience. But you know what, my being a white man, thank you, Bill. We're seeing each other after the show. Why? Is something changed?

In you. No, I mean, I am white, and I need to be cognizant of the fact that certain privileges utterly unearned have come with that, right? I am gay, and so I understand perhaps what it means to be an outsider. Neither one of those things tells you anything about my character, right? My character is what matters, not what category I fit into. A category isn't a credential. Right. So, you quote Mark Lila.

Yeah. Okay. Who is Mark Lilla? He's a Columbia University professor. Okay, I should know him better if you know him. Okay, so, and he wrote this great thing. He kind of summed it up. He said, we're kind of confronted with this demand.

You must understand my experience, and you can't understand my experience, which does put us in a crazy position that we can't possibly fulfill. It gives you no real estate to stand on. Okay. So the other one, the other column you wrote that I really loved was it called These campus inquisitions must stop. And I've been on this page for many, many years.

I've noticed. Yes. And I was myself disinvited to speak at Berkeley before they re-invited me. And it just seems to me like what you learn at college for maybe $60,000 a year is that if you can find anyone, anywhere, who is less sensitive than you, you can get them fired. Because

the best person is always the one who censors the most things. And this is tearing this country apart, I think. I agree. I agree. Well, I wrote that column specifically about something that happened at Evergreen State College. I think maybe some people know what happened there. That's in Washington, right? Yeah. There was a, there's something that happens every year. They're called The Day of Remembrance. And it's a day devoted to racial healing,

and usually black students voluntarily leave campus, to have discussions and all that about that sort of stuff. This year, someone suggested that maybe white students should leave instead. And a white biology professor said, you know, I don't like the sounds of that. That feels to me like someone's suggesting segregation. Now, you can agree or disagree with what he said. What came back at him for simply kind of, you know, putting that out there for debate, what came back at him was that he was a racist, that he was a white supremacist. This was shouted at him.

You can see the videos on YouTube. He had to stay away from campus for a while. He has to be allowed to bring up a point that's utterly worthy of debate without confronting those sorts of slurs. And when I wrote about this, interestingly, one of the responses I got from a reader was, was so many of the black students at Evergreen have experiences of suffering and all that. Why are you wasting your sympathy on a white man? And literally the reader wrote, he's white, he'll be fine.

That's the kind of thinking that I think is so divisive and destructive and that we have to do away with. And it's also the kind of thinking that got whites, which are still 69% of the country, I think, to vote like a minority in 2016. Because many of them felt like they were being treated that way, which is insane because they're not. But, I mean, this is a big problem. The Democratic Party has to face. Many Trump voters were absolutely out and out racist.

But some, I think, were frustrated with these things that we're describing right now. I think there are a lot of people out there of Goodhart, you know, who want to be able to have a conversation about all of this without feeling like they're stepping on eggshells all the time. And I think right now we have a world of eggshells. Exactly, yes. And, you know, who else was called a racist during the campaign was Hillary Clinton? Yeah, because she used the word super predator in the past. In 1996. and we won't even go into all that.

But, I mean, we saw these stats this week. A poll finally came out. 12% of Bernie Sanders voters didn't vote for Hillary. They voted for Trump. Yeah. Enough to swing the election. Yeah. Yeah.

Remember that. So speaking of Hillary, the book came out, or her book is coming out. So they released a little excerpt, and it was about the time at the debate when Trump was behind her. lurking and skulking. She said he was literally breathing down my neck, my skin crawled, and she wondered, do you stay calm and keep smiling and carry on,

even though, even as he was repeatedly invading your space? Or do you turn and look him in the eye and say loudly and clearly, back up, you creep, which would have been a better title for the book, by the way. Back up, you creep, right? To me, I would say so much better be. She chose A. Say it.

In a world now, in a country, absence, where people have any knowledge of politics or policy of what's going on, what they go by is authenticity. That would have been an authentic moment, and that, to me, is what cost her the election. She was never authentic. She never did what she felt. Trump does everything he feels.

I think you're dead right on that. I mean, she didn't need to say the word creep because I think we've all gotten that loud. clear. And Donald Trump has never pulled up right behind me and my skin crawls every day, nonetheless. Right. But you're right. If she had said, back up, you creep, or anything, I think people crave those moments from her. Remember, her best moment in 2008 was when she teared up in New Hampshire. And it wasn't about the tears. It was about the real feeling. I saw you make

effect. I totally disagree. First, she won the debates. That's her best times in the campaign. She wasn't the better stump speakers. She went the better this, that. She clocked him in the debate. And then lost the election. Well, yeah, but if she had said that, first off, all the right-wing media had been on her, she cracked under pressure, she can't do it. That was the authentic Hillary. Hillary is careful. She's reasoned.

She's cautious. She's very careful about her words. And that sounds really good to me right now, living under this president. Okay? I would take that, you know, freaking heartburn. And that goes, honestly, to the mixed messages, the mixed messages that women have been getting for a long time, and that my generation of women are trying to wrestle with and figure out.

You are told on the one hand that if you're in a parking lot at night, walking alone, take your keys and put him through your knuckles so you can knock that creeper out if he comes up against you. But if you're in the daytime in a business setting,

be like Teflon. Just deal with it and move on because you don't want to be the woman who complains. So Hillary's generation, Hillary's generation, that was their model. And the next generation of millennial women,

we are taking a different tack. I'm glad to see that authenticity matters, but we're only not. now seeing what that could look like for women in the public space. But she didn't read the next line in her book there, which I think would be more how she would be likely to play. It was something along the lines of, You will not intimidate me as you have intimidated so many other women.

It's like this robotic presentation that she's always had. That was the same debate, though. The creeper moment was the same debate of this. I think it was a week of finding out about where he called her a nasty woman and where we found out about all the grabbing women's cards. Right. There's a lot of context. around her saying, you're not going to do this to me.

But, see, this is my point. I have to push back against you a little. I really think the Democrats are fighting the last war in a country that no longer exists. In 2000, we all remember Hillary was debating Rick Lazio. Right. And he walked over to her, just walked over to her. And people were appalled. Just like in the 50s, they saw McCarthy, Joe McCarthy on TV.

And they were like, oh, we don't like this. I don't think that, I think that's a civilization gone with the wind. What I saw at that rally Tuesday night in Arizona was people chanting, now this is not the majority of Iraqis, but there were plenty of people in that hall who weren't objecting to people chanting that John McCain who has suffered a war hero, native son, suffering from brain cancer,

and they're chanting that he should die, that he's a traitor. They're looking at a guy who sold the country out to Russia and chanting that this guy is a traitor. So I just don't think we're in that country anymore that good country. I think that is a good thing. And Paul, I mean, just to push back

you in a different way, you said Hillary won the debate. She did. She won all three debates by miles. The problem is that's not what elections are all about. And if Democrat, I wanted her to win that election. I want them a creep in the debate. I want Democrats to take back Congress in 2018, but they have to realize which electorate they're playing to. And the

debates aren't everything. They have to be practical and ruthless and relentless in a way that they're not often good at. I totally get that, Frank. Believe me. But I also think If you try to make her into something she's not, which is she's not somebody who in a national stage is going to turn around and be rude or tough like that. I mean, she's very tough.

So let's talk about next time. But yeah, so next time. Next time, not that. Maybe we need to, but Marco Rubio tried to answer him insult for insult. Remember, mocked the size of our president's hands. And it didn't work for him. Get somebody good at it.

Yeah, but, you know. I... Right. Don't get another bad person. I totally get that. that. But I think that the needs for the Democrats are much deeper. And they're

well, to begin with, we have to talk, as you said. We have to be able to break out of our own bubble. And the Democratic Party from Franklin Roosevelt to Bill Clinton and really Barack Obama was minority working people and white working people. And all of a sudden somehow

we have, they, Trump appealed to them, but we have also dissed them. Right. Right. Their life expectancy is declining. And we didn't say anything about it. You know, so I think some of this is on the Democrats, but to come back to identity politics, that is not the answer for those folks,

because they just played identity politics. That's also the false assumption with the identity politics is that working class people are not diverse and do not understand or have experience with diversity. There is an aspect of losing equality, that's sorry, that losing privilege can feel like oppression. So equality can feel like oppression to some. It is not the same thing,

is actually genuinely being oppressed. It is such delusion. I mean, that guy who committed the crime in Charlottesville, he had the money to travel there. He had a Dodge Charger, I think. The idea that this guy thinks he's the one who's been dealt a bad hand in America, is just that is crazy delusion.

But the answer, as Frank said, is not victimization Olympics. When I first started work for Bill Clinton, the Republicans were big on wedge issues. And I said this to him, 1991, he's the governor of Arkansas. I said, governor, we've got to find our wedges to divide their car.

coalition. He said, no. And he stitched his fingers together. And he does have extraordinarily large hands. And he, he does. And he, I'm sorry Mr. Trump, but... And he was not afraid to use it. But he said... They were all over you. Yeah, go ahead. He said, we don't need

wedge issues. We need web issues. The truth is, if we had spoken to the legitimate economic needs of a lot of those white work classes, some of them would never be for us, because some are, as you said, racist. But most of them not. They're good people who love their country and we abandon them as much as they abandon us. And I think if we reach out beyond identity

to things that will stitch people back together, that's the only hope for Democrats. Republicans win by dividing. It's the Democrats who have to be able to pull people back together. Absolutely. Democrats also need youth. Yeah. They need to be youth. They have youth, they just need them to vote. They need to give the youth the chance to come to the foreground, you know?

Let me ask you one more thing. The monuments issue is really kind of big in this country right now, and obviously they're talking about getting rid of the Civil War generals and so forth. Now they're talking about getting rid of Frank Rizzo, who was the racist mayor of Philadelphia. I guess there's a statue of him. Columbus. Yeah, I agree. I mean, Columbus discovered America. First of all, he didn't. Second of all, if he hadn't, it's not like somebody else wouldn't have.

You think we'd still be undiscovered in 2017? Yeah, I mean, first of all, I don't give a shit about statues. I think they should all come down. for these assholes. They want to rename Fanniel Hall. But a friend of mine was saying last week I was in New York, and we were kind of laughing at it. He said, what about the statue of Ralph Cramden at the Port Authority bus station?

I mean, his catchphrase to his wife was, I'm going to punch you in the face. To the moon, Alice! And we were laughing. I was like, yeah, but you could get that going in two seconds. Trust me, it's on Twitter now. Bring Ralph Gramden down. hashtag no more hitting women into the moon.

I mean, you're talking about Democrats' problems in reaching out to people. How do you make a situation in which the entire country is engaged in an absolutely proper revulsion at what happened in Charlottesville and also, I think, critically, or rightly, being critical of the president's reaction to that? And then he tries to say, you know,

how do you draw a line between George Washington and Robert E. Lee? Pretty easy line to draw. So easy. Yes. One guy was engaged in treason for slavery. It's not so hard. And so to take that and say, okay, let's go after all the statues now. Let's actually engage in that slippery slope that he's warning us about ridiculously.

Don't do it. You don't have to do that. The Democrats should change their mascot from the donkey to the large mouth bass. Because any shiny object Trump trolls in front of us, bam, we hit it. No. Can we just stick on Nazis or not very fine people, Mr. President? Before we worry about General Lee or not, they should all go their participation trophies. if you ask me.

Okay, I don't think that losers they don't deserve those. But that's not the debate. That's not what Trump wants. It's not on the level. And I don't understand why liberals don't understand that. Trump is playing them.

Give one more quote, I'm sorry. This is, because this does get personal to me. And I would think everybody here because we're all media or media adjacent. He went after the media again this week. These are truly dishonest people. They're bad people. And I really think they don't like our country.

You know, this sort of dehumanize, the chanting about McCain, where you have absolutely no compassion, you know, this is what Rwanda and Nazi Germany, when you make it so that people don't feel any compassion for another group of people, you open the door for absolutely the worst demons. I don't think we're going to get machetes by the river, Bill.

It's the good news that... Not machetes. We don't need it. We have better stuff than that. One of the kind of amusing things is that all that came about five minutes after he said, and this is a movement built on love. He went into that. But then he pointed out or tried to point out, the cameras, you know, they're turning them off. They won't show the crowd size. He says, as they're showing the crowd size, with the camera turned on.

At some point, he just becomes kind of what the Cubans used to do with Fidel Castro, which is watch him talk on TV with the sound down and laugh at him because he looks like a jackass, just waving his hands like this all the time. He's been playing these same things over and over again. I think it's kind of losing its effect. Okay. Last word did you want to say? Yeah, I was to say that this is part of the danger, the cultural challenge that we're facing right now

is a president who is insisting on undermining all the values of our democracy. And he's laughing to the bank as we do it. This is what happens in the developing world and none of us want to be living there. Okay. Thank you very much. Terrific panel. Time for new rules.

New rule, now that the dust has settled, let's all admit that this is really good lighting for white people. It just is. But put these guys outside in the daytime without the benefit of candlelight, and they look like this. New Rule, if you want to play the Powerball lottery, stop selling the tickets in sketchy liquor stores.

If you go into this place and come out alive, you've already won the lottery. New Rule, Parthly, we cover the waterfront here. Parsley, oh, this is an issue I've been wanting to get to. Parsley has to admit it's not a lot of. garnish. It's just a weed that photo bombs food. If all you do

is sit there and add color, you're not cuisine. You're the black guy at a Trump rally. Parsley. New rule, someone has to help me decide who is the bigger dumbass. Trump, who looked directly at the eclipse. Or are Jeff Sessions

who prayed to it? New rule, Sears, just stop. I know, we go way back, but this is getting sad. It's like at the end when Sinatra couldn't remember the words. At least make yourself useful. Open the doors and let the homeless sleep on the Sili Posterpedics. And finally, new rule, moving forward,

every previously unwritten rule about the presidency must be written down. If Donald Trump has taught everyone who ever dealt with him one thing, it's get it in writing. And the American people are... just the latest suckers to learn that the hard way. The Declaration of Independence starts with the words, we hold these truths to be self-evident, self-evident, because the founders assumed

some things were so obviously repugnant, they would just be covered by a sense of shame. And these were guys who owned slaves. But Trump reminds us that some people will break every rule that's not specifically enumerated from inviting Russian spies into the old, office to not releasing his taxes, from insisting law enforcement, be loyal to him personally, to maintaining a for-profit business empire while in office, we are learning. Nothing is just understood

anymore. It's like when they write, do not eat on silica gel packs. I wouldn't eat one, but apparently some people open a shipping box and say, great, my new sneakers are here, and they came with snacks. When you're a babysitter, when you hire a babysitter, you write down a list of rules. No boyfriend visits. No loud music. Stay out of my greenhouse. But no one thinks they have to write down.

Don't put the baby in the microwave. Well, with Trump, you do. He reminds me of that Disney movie, Gus. Remember Gus about a mule who's signed by a football team to be their kicker? You see, because the rulebook never speaks. specifically said that the players had to be human. And that's Trump. It is.

He's the owner of a football team who signs a mule because it doesn't explicitly say he can't. You think he's going to release his tax returns just because the others did? Not as long as Gus keeps kicking those field goals. Presidents certainly have the right to appoint who they want to top posts, but we forgot to write down,

okay, but they can't. all go to your son-in-law. Nepotism is fine if you're a junk dealer, like on Sanford and son. It's not fine when NATO is a conference on bioterrorism and you send your daughter the purse designer. American presidents, every one of them, just knew it was the right thing to divest themselves

of all business holdings if they were so honored as to become president. Because we don't want a president who's got his mind on his mind, money and his money on his mind. Jimmy Carter sold his peanut farm. George Bush sold his baseball team. Sarah Palin

closed down her meth lab. We did not elect a swamp draining reformer. We gave our pin number to a Nigerian prince. There is no more self-evident. We didn't think we had to write down when Russians

or Nazis attack America side with America. We didn't think we had to write down. Don't run your crime family from the Oval Office. Don't threaten to throw your political opponents in jail. Don't talk shit in front of children. Don't... Well, fuck. I didn't even know what this is, but don't do it.

And finally, a question that is asked a lot lately is, can a president pardon himself? And again, we don't know, since no. whenever had the balls or the bad taste to try. Because Madison and Jefferson never thought the executive branch would fall into the hands of a mule that plays football. But Trump actually asked his staff. He said, can I pardon myself?

And Steve Bannon told him, why not? I can blow myself. All right, that's our show. We're off next week and back September 8th. I'll be at the Microsoft here in L.A., October 7th. Out of Madison Square Garden, November 11th in New York. I want to thank Matt Welts Paul Begala, Niera Hook, Frank Bruni, and Reverend Jesse Jackson.

Join us down for overtime. Thank you. Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher every Friday night at 10 or watch them anytime on HBO On Demand. For more information, log on to HBO.com.