Real Time with Bill Maher - Ep. #511: Susan Rice, Neil deGrasse Tyson

Episode Date: October 19, 2019

Bill’s guests are Susan Rice, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Danielle Pletka, Sam Stein, and Thomas Chatterton Williams. (Originally aired 10/18/19) 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. You know why you're happy today. Because the G7, that's the big boy economies of the world, they're meeting every year in a different country,

and Trump announced that they're holding next year's G7 summit at the Trump-Dorral and golf resort. No relation. The headline on Fox News was Trump finds the G-spot. I can't even keep up anymore. Of course, this is such a ginormous violation of the Amoluments Clause in the Constitution, right, that says presidents cannot accept anything of value from a foreign country, like for instance large convention of rich foreigners in your hotel,

might qualify. You remember the Constitution, don't you, Republicans? That thing you used to hold up when you screamed that Obama for nothing? It's not just that he's always breaking the law, it's that he obviously

wants you to know about it. The Joker doesn't want to get caught this bad. This is Trump's idea of three-dimensional chess. I will distract you from impeaching me by committing more crimes.

It's like it's like he comes home and Melania says that lipstick on your collar and he says, you should see my dick. And, you know, as acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney had the nerve to say

that, you know, they looked all over the world for all of the country for the best spot for the G7 meeting. And, you know, it was just perfectly logical that it would be there. We didn't. It wasn't because he was Trump. He said,

it's almost like, he said, this Dural, almost like they built this facility to host this type of event. He said, when he was reached for comment inside of Trump's ass.

And, you know, of course, putting in it Derey was Trump's idea. And once Trump gets an idea in his head, it never goes away. unlike his casinos, his wives, his hair, and the Kurds. Oh, the Kurds.

Good news, we finally found someone in the Middle East to greet us as liberators. Bad news, it's ISIS. We let a lot of the ISIS people out. But if you haven't been following this story, Trump, last week gave Turkey to go ahead to invade Syria and kill all the Kurds. And then he got mad that they went and did so.

So he asked Mike Pence this week to interrupt his busy schedule of standing in the background and go to the war zone. And, you know, Mike Pence is not afraid of a war zone. When he sees someone kneeling at a football game, he runs like a little bitch. But war zone doesn't bother him. So Mike Pence was sent over there to the war zone to deliver Trump's message to the Kurds. and that message was, hey, you know, that war, I just started.

Okay, we're going to skip to the end. You lost. And Mike Pence, and I'm declaring a ceasefire, which means you get to run for your lives while the Turks reload. I'm sorry, did I say ceasefire? I'm in grease fire. This has got to be the ultimate

if Obama did it, right? I mean, we are bombing our own equipment there in the Syrian desert. We just lost Syria. Syria is now being taken over by Russia, Iran, and ISIS. Trump has created the only place in the world that is more

anti-American than Berkeley. So Wednesday, he has Pelosi and Schumer into the White House to talk about what the fuck are you doing in Syria, and he has a meltdown because Nancy Pelosi said all roads with you lead to Putin. Trump said,

how dare you accuse me of having a plan. I'm telling you. When your shit is too crazy for John Bolton and Rick Perry, because that's who quit in the last week. You got Perry today, Bolton about a week ago.

Bolton got wind of what they were doing in Ukraine and said, fuck that. He said, World War III, I'm all in, but that's cray-cra. And the sad news today, Rick Perry is resigning as energy secretary. No.

He said after almost three years on the job, he accomplished what he set out to do, finding the employee rest room. So he said he'll miss everyone at the department, and we just want to spend more time locking his keys in his car. He's not a bright man. And then Mick Mulvaney, the guy I mentioned before, not up a good week, he's not quitting, not yet.

But he is the acting, Chief of Staff. You know this. He's got other big job. He's head of the Office of Management and Budget. Running the White House is his side hustle. So, the whole defense of the Ukrainian scandal, which is

why he's getting him, Trump is getting impeached, is there was no quid pro quo. No quid pro quo is the new, no collusion. Mulvaney gets up there yesterday says, oh, fuck, yeah, quid pro pro. Oh, yeah. We are total quid pro quo people. all we do all day is quid pro, quid pro, quid pro.

And then he says, but it was absolutely appropriate. So appropriate, he had to go out there hours later and say, I'm sorry. You thought I said quid pro, crow, that it was okay to do quid pro quo? No, I said, Tic Tac Toe. Ticot is okay. I said, oh, it was a... Taekwondo is fine. They're the gang that couldn't do.

do treason straight. All right, we got a great show. We have Daniel Klepta, Danielle Pletka, Sam Stein, and Thomas, Chatterton Williams. And here a little later we'll be speaking with our good friend Neil deGrasse Tyson is here. The first up,

she was President Obama's National Security Director and United Nations Ambassador whose new memoir is Tough Love, My Story of the Things Worth Fighting for, Susan Rice. How you doing? Great to meet you. How are you? Okay. First thing I wanted to ask you, you're Susan Rice, you know in show business,

everybody gets mixed up at some point with somebody else, right? Everybody. Doesn't... Okay, there are people who have thought I was Bill O'Reilly. That's unfortunate. I'm never going to that strip club again. But I just had... Some people must do...

think your Condoleezza, Rice. It happens. It used to piss my mother off more than anything else. My late mother, when she got out... you, Condoleezza Rice's mother. And we have... Oh, yeah. We have ties to Stanford.

We were both national security advisor. We're both black women named Rice. And so, you know, it happens to me in airports. It happens to me all over the place where people say, he worked with President Bush. You were President Bush's National Security Advisor in Secretary of State. No. But the funniest time was when I was visiting China

for the first time as National Security Advisor on my own mission, on behalf of President Obama. And I met with President Xi, and I'm setting up a summit, and CCTV does a whole big spread in the nightly news, and they say, you know, Susan Rice is in China to see President Xi, and they'd put up Condi's picture. Oh. That shit happens to black folks.

Well, I'm glad you could come here to HBO and say it for real. And one thing I saw was very interesting in your book. You mentioned your mother. you made your career partly as a mediator and you sort of learned that because your parents were squabbling more than squabbling.

But as a very young girl you say seven years old you were doing diplomacy at home. Well unfortunately my brother and I were living in a house that was a tinderbox. I had two really wonderful extremely accomplished parents

that they had no business being married and their breakup was very ugly and sometimes even violent and I'd be trying to get to sleep upstairs as a little kid, and if I couldn't, I'd run downstairs and sort of spy on them and see how bad it was. And if it was really bad, I'd go in there and try to break it up sometimes physically, but also sometimes mediating between them, trying to listen to each side and help them come to Congress. You did shuttle diplomacy in your house. Well, it wasn't even

shuttle. It was, you know, like proximity talks in my own house. But I bet you that served you well in the job. Well, it turned out, but that wasn't the plan at the time. I was just trying to keep my house from burning down. Right. Well, speaking of a house is burning down. Yes. I just have to, what you must think with what went on this week

and the last week in the Middle East. Now, I remember from decades people talking about who lost. That was the, who lost China, right? Who lost Syria? You know, I saw the Turkish defense minister put up the new

map of Turkey with a big chunk of Syria. He bit off parts of Iraq. Greece. You know, I remember when George Bush went into Iraq in 2003, the idea, embraced by some liberals, was we have to remake the Middle East. We're going to put a democracy in the heart of the Arab world. Okay, that didn't work out. But Trump and Bush together, they have remade the Middle East. Well, Trump, especially in the last week. It's amazing. Well, Iraq, Iranian, now, Syria. Where do you see this going? It's going nowhere good.

I mean, what Trump has done in Iraq and now Syria is, in effect, to cede a portion of northern Syria, Kurdish homeland, to the Turks and to evacuate the Americans as if it's, you know, his Saigon. We've left our Turkish allies homeless. They're now going to scatter throughout the region. We've given Assad and Putin and the Iranians a green light to take over that territory

that they've been long wanting to take. And ISIS is going to come back. But Assad is going to be okay with Turkey biting off a chunk of his land? Well, if you're Assad, last week you were missing a third of your country. Now you're just missing a little sliver on the top. Wow. That's not bad for one week's work.

And watching Republicans not get that upset about this, more than upset than we've seen, but not to the point of we should get rid of them, must infuriate you having lived through Benghazi, that that was something that required hearing after hearing after hearing. Eight congressional inquiries. Yeah.

There's really no comparison. I mean, look, it was not a good thing that happened in Benghazi, but the idea that anyone could have stopped that? Well, Benghazi was a horrible tragedy, right? We lost four Americans, including an ambassador. But what we're going to lose as a result of what Donald Trump has done in Syria is we're going to have a

whole terrorist resurgence as a result of his pullout. So we'll see the the ramifications of that in American and allied lives. I think I'm afraid for years to come. You don't worry as me. I think back to 9-11, and I imagine after it happened,

bin Laden was saying to himself, wow, I didn't think they would destroy themselves this easily. I knew this was going to be a win for us. But we knocked down those buildings. They overreacted. They attacked the wrong country. They spent trillions of dollars. The Homeland Security Department,

that's a big bloated bureaucracy. This whole mess, Putin in 2016, spent a pittance and got Trump elected or certainly helped. What do you think about the fact, that idea that we're just, it's just too easy to get Americans to destroy themselves? Well, what is, I think, happening now

and what Putin's genius is, is that he understands that we're so divided internally. And that, I argue in my book, tough love, that our domestic political divisions are in fact our greatest national security vulnerability. We can't get stuff done. We can't build infrastructure.

We can't invest in technology to beat the Chinese and artificial intelligence. But we've also found ourselves so pitted against one another that all Putin had to do was jump in and exacerbate those divisions, pour salt in the wounds. And we are now almost like a flesh-eating disease, eating ourselves alive. I think we have the ability to fix it,

because it's a problem of our own making. our domestic divisions. Well, we have to stop hating each other. Absolutely. You know, I mean, to me, the Rubicon was crossed when one party, the Republican Party, said, and you see the T-shirts at Trump rallies, I'd rather be with the Russians than the Democrats.

We never sort of went there. Like, yeah, I don't like the other political party, but I'm not going to go over to a foreign country. That's, to me, the big difference when we somehow went there. How do you get back from that? Well, Bill, I mean, it's horrible. and to say you'd rather be with our enemy

than your fellow American is, I think, a new low. But you get back from it by what we do as individuals in terms of our personal relationships, listening, hearing. It's what we do as a nation where we really need to change a lot of the rules of the game which are inviting these extremes to be empowered. I think we should stop talking politics to each other. That's part of it.

We didn't used to do it all the time. We had no idea how much we hated each other. I've got a very conservative son. A conservative son? I've got a very conservative son and a very progressive daughter. And my husband and I are in between. And one thing I've learned from having those differences in my very home at my dinner table is we can't talk about it all the time because we drive ourselves crazy.

But you can't not talk about it. Yeah. But not all the time. And then we've got to do some stuff, I think, at a national level, like mandatory national service for all Americans 18 to 22. think about it. If for six to 12 months if we're six to 12 months

we all had to work together and we had to understand each other from, you know, some rural kid from Idaho having to work with some kid from the South Bronx. Right. That would, it's hard to hate people when you actually know them. All right. Last question. Edward Snowden.

Got a new book. I'm trying to get him on this show. Yeah, he's in my book. I know. I mean, you're not easy on him. No. You say he has done immeasurable damage. Yes. He says the opposite. How do you know?

Well, I'm asking you. Yeah. I mean, and I usually side with people in your business. I was never one of those liberals who said, oh, no, I don't trust the CIA. I don't trust the FBI. I don't trust the FBI. I do in general. I think Edward Stone is a traitor like Alden or Walker, people who did it for money,

who were trying to sell out their country for themselves. I think he really thinks he's doing a good thing. but what say you? You say he's a traitor. I call him a traitor, and I mean that with great sincerity. I say that because I know what he did. He stole the most sensitive information. You know things we don't. He gave it to people who had no business having it. He's sitting in Moscow. Did it hurt people? Yes. We are. You know that? I do know that. I know we are profoundly less secure as a result of what he did. We're trying to recover, but that recovery is going to take a long time. And let me tell you, the reason I'm so blunt about what he did,

in the book is because I know quite how bad what he did is. And I'm not here to ascribe motives. You know, maybe he did it for what he thought were benign reasons. But the impact of what he did is what I want people to understand and why I go so far as to use a word that I have not used before. Yeah, no, no, no. I get it. It's so interesting that the Democrats are the ones now who understand what treason and patriotism is. We understand what national security is, too.

I know you do. Susan Rice. Thank you. Don't ever say. It's gone to meet you. Great to meet you. Thank you so much. I'm for your service.

All right. Let's meet our panel. Hi, Jay, Mel. Okay. All right, he is an MSNBC contributor and the Daily Beast Politics editor, Sam Stein. He's a New York Times contributing writer and author of self-portrait in black and white.

Thomas Chatterton Williams. I love that name. I'm going to call you, Sir, Thomas Chatterton Williams. She's senior vice president of the president. the American Enterprise Institute and an NBC analyst. Danielle Pletka's back with us. How you doing? Okay.

I'm going to pick up with what I was saying there. Who lost Syria? I heard this word a lot growing up. Who lost a country? The Russians now are taking over that northern part of the country. We're bombing our own equipment. I've used this phrase before, patriotic immunity. Why did the Republicans get this patriotic immunity?

Why can they do shit like this? Can you tell me? No. There's no real answer to this. It's a baffling foreign policy decision. I don't know the motivation of it. I can guess that the motivation is. But in the end, the results are catastrophic.

There was no motivation. He just wanted to get off the phone. It's possible. I really think that's all it was. He was talking to Erdogan. The hot pockets were ready. There's this. And he said, and he said, and he's,

said, really? I don't, I think you... Come on. I mean, yes, that's possible. Isn't that more charitable than saying you planned it? No, I assume that the hot pockets were in fact ready. But you can't talk about... It's not just about Donald Trump. This is about Syria. 500,000 Syrians died from 2011 to now, most of them under the Obama administration, I should add. Obama was the president of Syria at the time? Donald Trump is not the president of Syria either, my dear. No, but could any president have stopped that in Syria

without a full-scale U.S. invasion? We could have done much more. In fact, we didn't support the Kurds. You know, we only turned and started supporting the Kurds a few years ago. Before that, we were working with the Turks. This strikes me as a deflection from what we're supposed to be talking about, which is a decision that was made two weeks ago,

to ultimately just abandon a position that we had in Northern Sea. And there's no rationalization for it. We are meant to care about. And we're talking about civilian deaths. Obviously, that's important. Amnesty and National says 241 Kurds died in the past week. Okay. And they are more important than half a million Syrian, Sam?

I understand that Obama's... More important than half a million serious? Come on, Dean. It just seems like a deflection to bring Obama into this one with the discussion of Trump's decision. But again, I'm not sure what Obama could have done short of a full military investment. when we were just in the neighboring country of Iraq to stop fighting. We could have supported the Syrian people. We could have done more for the Syrian people.

Who are the people? Which faction? There are so many, which are the moderates? Who are the Syrian people that we were going to give guns to? Because there was a lot of different factions there. Those self-same Kurds we could have supported a long time ago and didn't. We could have done a lot more for the Syrian democratic forces. We could have done more for them when they were going to do.

The people who really fucked the Kurds before this was George Bush the first. Yes, that's true. All right. That's true. Sorry. I can't stop. Thinking of this 35-year-old

Kurdish politician who was dragged from her car and she was executed on the side of the road. Trump made this decision in between rounds of golf. It reminds me of what Fitzgerald said in the Great Gatsby. In the Great Gatsby, you know, he just smashes everything around him and then he kind of retreats into his money and his vast carelessness

and he just lets everybody else clean up the mess, or not, or not clean up the mess. But people are dying. Well, I just want you to see, I put together a little mashup here of what Trump said about Syria. Now, I think these folks are politically savvy and they read the paper, they know what went on. A lot of people in this country only listen to Donald Trump.

That's all the information they get, because the rest is fake news. Here's his version of the week in Syria. This is an incredible outcome. The Kurds and other people that are going to be taking great care of. We've gotten everything we could have ever dreamed of. This is a solution that really, well, it saved their lives, frankly.

I didn't know it was going to work out this quickly. I didn't know it would work out this well. So this was a great thing for everybody. The Kurds are very happy. Turkey is very happy. The United States is very happy. And you know what? Civilization is very happy.

Tough to argue with that. What a deal. Are you happy? I'm not happy I live in a country where half the people just see that and think that's what happened, huh? I'm not happy I live in a country where he said it doesn't matter

where the ISIS fighters go because that's Europe's problem. I live in France. Right. They're coming over this way. Like fuck them. Yeah. Not their allies or anything. No.

So, okay. Impeachment. A lot of people are saying that this doesn't really affect impeachment? I don't know about that. 55% of independence are now for impeachment, and I think the argument that Ukraine

does not equal impeachment got a little harder to make this week, no? Well, I think it matters to the degree that Republicans are finding a little bit of a voice to speak out against Trump, not many of them, but some of them. And to the degree that they aren't admonished by the president and hit back,

they get muscle memory. They know that they can. can speak out against the president, and maybe that translate into something more related to Ukraine in the impeachment process. Ultimately, though, this is, you know, a Pelosi-driven decision. Does she want to expand it beyond Ukraine to include things like Trump Doral, for instance, which is a textbook example of an impeachable offense?

It's unconstitutional, blatantly. That's her call. Right now, everything that I've heard from the Hill is they want to keep it very Ukraine-focused. And is that a bad decision? I don't know. I mean, I suppose you can make the case that people are getting it. the polls look pretty promising for Democrats, tons of momentum and revelations every day.

But then there's like a moral argument that if you see corruption, if you see lawlessness, don't you have a moral imperative to actually expose that as well? Shouldn't you put that in the grand process of the impeachment? I mean, you're talking about the politics of it, and that certainly is important. And for a long time, Trump has been saying, you know, they have to impeach me because they can't beat me at the ballot box.

But if that's true, why does he always need so much foreign help? Why is... I think the challenge the challenge for the Democrats in adding in the Durale decision which was, I mean, not good. No, not good.

Incomprehensible to me. But the challenge for the Democrats is that the claim that a lot of people have been making and that Trump has been making and that Trump's allies have been making is that the last few years have been their effort to find anything to tack on to that. Anything, whether it's Stormy Daniels

or it's his lawyer or it's, Well, he provides a lot of content. But all those things are impeachable. But in fact, maybe they are, and that's the decision of the House of Representatives. The point here that I think we're trying to make is that if you keep trying to pile things on, it does diminish the credibility. It's amazing how that works for him. There's a certain amount of the American population that no matter what he does is not going to budge. The New York Times has countless articles on Trump voters that just won't give up on them.

They just get more cynicism. about the political process. Because I only see that thing I just showed. Because I do think part of his strategy is what you were alluding to early on, which is it's like a fire hose of controversy and you just don't know what to do with it. And while you're focused on one thing,

he acquiesces to Turkey and then decides, you know, derailles the perfect location for the G7 and you're three steps behind him as he's onto the neck of controversy. I actually do think there's some madness and some strategy to him. I think even for him this week, he had like a plethora of crazy,

crazy quotes. To me, the one everybody sort of missed that was maybe the most important. He met with Schumer and Pelosi in the White House. Through a tantrum, they walked out. We heard all about

Nancy, you're a third-rate politician. It's the thing he said last in that meeting. See you at the polls. See you at the polls, is what he said to them. In other words, you keep doing this shit. We'll see how it turns out on election day.

Does he have a point? Well, I think he thinks that impeachment isn't going to go anywhere. I don't get your take on this. He's saying this is going to help me politically. Go ahead. He firmly believes it. That wasn't the quote that shocked me, though. The quote that shocked me was, he said,

someone told me to call this meeting and so I'm here. The White House had called the meeting. Did you not know that? No, he's not there. All right. So everyone in D.C. is talking about the latest it couple, Igorin left. I mean, we've shown their picture.

There they are. These are the two, they are, I love this term, associates, whenever that word comes up, that's never a good thing. Associates of Rudy Giuliani, they have a company called Fraud Guarantee. I couldn't, it sounds like something from a Bob Holt sketch. We'll call it Fraud Guarantee.

Okay, and they also, it came out this week, own a disco in Ukraine called Mafia Rave. Again, I am not... This is the website. This is the real thing. Igor and Lev own Mafia Rave. And... Wait, leave that up there, because I want to start the video. You see, there's a little arrow there?

I guess we don't. All right, well... Is that really the name? There it is. You see? You want me to push that arrow and show you the video of... This is... This is it. This is real. This video is real.

I'm a little suspicious of the voiceover, but see what you think. Welcome to Mafia Rafe, Ukraine's premier fun time, completely legit nightclub. Whether you are in purple satin shirt or purple velour track suit, we treat you like oligarch. Rated five stars on Yelpsky. With music from Putin's favorite band, Poison. Meet girl of your dreams with Lookin' Eye that says, Tonight is night I pee on bed for you.

Come see her American President Trump meet wife, twice. Mafia Rave is number one club in Ukraine for collusion. Ask Rudy what happens in Ukraine, stays in Ukraine. But no print-quo-quo, right, buddy? He is the host of Natio StarTalk, whose latest best teller is letters from an astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, everybody. Never disappoint the time.

Yeah. I'm glad. You're never disappointed. point with the tie. The universe is vast. How many universe ties do you have? Like Trump has all the red ones. You have all the... He occasionally wears a blue one, I have noticed, but not as often

as he wears a red tie. So, this tie, I have about 109. Wow. You know it right? About 1009. Sorry, yeah, okay. Could be 111? No, it was exactly 109. Exactly. You're a very exact person. You know, your book is so interesting. I noticed a lot of

the letters that people write to you, and this is a lot of the, you know, you care to, you're a very good with your fans. You want to know what they think. It was what I was doing under the hood for decades. While I had this public persona of talking about the universe, there's these personal, private things, issues that people had. And they wrote to me about it. Okay. And one of

the big ones that you get is, people are asking you to sort of mediate between, gosh, I want to believe in God, but I don't want to not believe in science. Is there a way we can square that circle? What advice do you? I get a lot of those letters. And what do you tell them? I like the way he said, square that

circle. That's very mathematical of you. Congratulations. You know me, Doc. I am all about the science. So what happens is I think people might be raised in one or another religious tradition, and then they start learning science. Then they find places where the science conflicts. And I think most people have never met a scientist,

much less can claim one as their friend. So they see me kind of as their friend, who could then offer perspective, or at least shine some kind of cosmic luminosity on what next decision they want to make about how to reconcile or not their religious traditions with science. Enlightened religious people don't have an issue.

If Jesus is your savior, no one is going to take that away from you in a country that protects free expression of religion. But if you're going to come around and say, my religious text tells me the universe is 6,000 years old and I'm going to stick it in your science classroom, I have an issue with that.

Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Because... Doesn't really help, though. Well, no, no. Basically saying I'm coming down on the side of science. No, however. Top shit.

However, when people write to me, I see it as a contract of communication. If I just speak and not care where they're coming from, then I'm just lecturing. You're letting them down nicely. It's like, you know what, people sometimes say, they love this in the murder. They say, everything happens for a reason, which I always think of you, because I'm like, that is so fucking stupid. Yeah, yeah.

Everything does not happen for a right. Am I right about that? That is so. Correct. Thank you so much. Because I try to be nice. Because I try to be nice. It's random. Right. And we create reason in it. Also, it's elitist.

Because it's something you can say when you live in an affluent society where you have a lot of, you know, enough money to change jobs or meet new people. You live in a city. There's like a billion people who live on a shit pile every day. And nothing happens for a reason for them. They're born into grinding party and they die in poverty.

Definitely an elitist point of view. Thank you. But what I wanted to say? I have no one to agree with you. There you go. So I just want to say that the contract I have, it's an unstated contract between those me and those who write to me, is that I will care about where they're coming from and how they're thinking and what receptors they might have

for arguments I might present. So, for example, in the case of the religious letters, I say there are three truths in the world. There's your personal truth. No one's going to take that from you. Jesus is your savior. Muhammad is your last prophet. These are truths.

No one is going to take that from you. Then there's like a political truth. That's just what becomes true when it's repeated enough times, okay? But then there's the objective truth. Like those first two you just said. There's the objective truth, which are the methods and tools of science

are invented and designed to establish. Those are true whether or not you believe in them. And so I say you can keep your 6,000-year universe but understand that that's a personal truth that you get from your personal religion. If you rise to power and have control over laws and legislations in a pluralistic land, it is a recipe for disaster

if you're going to take your personal truths and create laws that have to then apply to everyone. So the world is not 6,000 years old, right? It is so not 6,000 years old. So we used to just have to deal with that. in the last few years, we've also had to deal with people who think it might be flat. Yeah. Which is stupid.

So I've said this before. I think the rise of the flat earthers is evidence of two things. One, we live in a country that protects free speech. Two, we have a failure of our educational system. So I don't want to run after all the flat earthers. I'm going to turn around back to the school system and say, where has it failed in such a way? a way that a full-grown adult coming out of this system can think the earth is flat.

That's where I'm focused. I agree. Right. And so you're on the side of a fact is a fact. Get over it. I'm on the side that Earth is round. Yes. But I bring this up. Facts can be anywhere. It's this collection of facts which when put together in wise and sage ways become knowledge. So I'd rather speak of knowledge than facts. But I bring this up because you've gotten to some hot water recently. there was a mass shooting, you tweeted something about it,

which was true. Yeah. Okay, if we're going to be facts or facts, people. I defended you, by the way. Yeah, I did catch that online. Yeah, I caught that. Well, where was my thank you now? You could have reached out a little.

Yeah, so... Okay, anyway, my point being, what you said was true. Yes. Okay. You weren't trying to... You even said the USA horrifically law... you went out of your way to be nice about it and then said, but the fact

is that on average across any 48 hours, we lose 500 to medical errors, 300 to the flu, blah, blah, our emotions respond more to spectacle than to data. Now, I know what it's like to have the Twitter mob come after you. I don't blame you for apology. I get it

to have to do it. But you were right. Facts matter. They do matter. However, so do emotions. We are an emotional species. So were I to do that again, I would have put some distance, time distance, between that tweet, because people are bereaved.

And so I wanted to have some... Retrospectively, that's what I would have done. All right. I want to ask about an explorer, because I know you want to go to Mars. We're not going to have that fight again, as we always do. Don't get me started. I don't get me started.

I know... Mars in the face, right there. Okay. Well. I bring Mars wherever I go. Okay, what? Talk about a shithole country, Mars. I mean, honestly, if we're going to make...

All right, we're not going to have that argument again. But... So you admire the explorers, as we all do. We had Columbus Day earlier this week. Okay. An explorer extraordinaire, you would agree? We would all agree as an explorer. He's an important explorer, yes.

Sure. Yes. Or else we'd be doing this show Barcelona. That would be so much better. For you, yes. And, I mean, the balls to get on the ocean

when they did, they thought it was flat, the world. His crew, but not him. He was smart enough to know. Yeah. That the world was not flat. Was not flat. But still, in that little rickety boat, it's less the size of the, it's like the size of this room. It took audacity. Unbelievable

balls. So, okay. So was he an asshole? And gonads, yes. You know, probably to have that kind of balls, you're not going to be Mr. Nice Guy all the time. So, of course, a lot of people say we should tear down his statues and blah, blah, blah, because he brought diseases, and he did. I read in Jill Lepore's book,

Haiti had 3 million people before the Europeans came, and then it was 5,000. So, okay, disease, he didn't try to do that, and then slaves, he took slaves. But so did our founding fathers. The Bible is cool with slaves.

Neither Jesus nor his dad God are against them. What? I'm not touching it. It's not his dad? I'm not touching this one. But I'm just saying he was a 15th century man.

The founders had slaves, the Bible have slaves, or Kelly still has them. I'm just saying Columbus Day, way in, discuss. I'm not touching this one either. Really? I think we need to be aware of the past of past atrocities

and we need to be sensitive to it. But I think we're almost... But they weren't. We're almost overdosing on history. We're mining the past constantly for fresh outrage. Yes. I don't think Christopher Columbus should be cancelled. I think we have to have a society that's mature enough

to handle moral ambiguity. Nice to hear that. Yes. Yes. I have an unorthodox perspective on Columbus. Yes. You know, there's Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand sent the man to the new world. Okay? And they gave a satchel of flags,

that were Spanish flags, it put them wherever you come. So I don't know why Columbus Day, to this day, is celebrated by Italians. They had nothing to do with his voyage. And if they did, more people than just a few in Brooklyn would be speaking Italian in the Western Hemisphere. Is that hard point?

I just... Had it really brought that one through. Yeah, I'm just trying to put that in perspective. Okay, all right. What? So, can I ask about this democratic debate that we had the other night? First of all, these debates.

Now it's 12 people? A little too many. It's like... I can't... There's too many characters. It's like, you know, some... Bill, you can count to 12. I don't understand what the problem is.

But I don't... It's like a Netflix show. Not that I ever watch Netflix. where you have to binge it for three seasons before it gets good. I mean, can we get it down to a reasonable number of people? And also, you know, Joe Biden, I don't know.

His whole thing for me was that he could be the one to beat Trump. I don't know if that's true anymore. I'm not sure that's true anymore either. I think a lot of people have doubts about whether Joe Biden can do it. That's why Elizabeth Warren's on top right now. And what do you think about that?

If it was Trump versus Warren, what's your vote go to? It doesn't go to Elizabeth Warren or Donald Trump. So you'd sit it out. I don't understand that, to be honest. The never-Trump people, I don't know if, are you technically a never-Trumper? No.

Okay, well, putting you aside. Thank you. If you're a never-Trumper, I hear this a lot, they really hate Trump, but they just can't bring themselves to vote for Elizabeth Warren. It's like, well, then you're somewhat Trump, you know, you're like, you either have to go all in or not. And if you feel very strongly that Trump shouldn't be the president, there are other ways to, you know, box in a president Elizabeth Warren, vote for a Republican senator, Republican congressman.

But if you want Trump out, you have to go fully in, and you can't have it halfway. Yeah, but I want to put some... I have a question for this evening. I don't have... I'm just a scientist. But when I look at this field of 12, the Democrats can get together, vote in a primary, and they take the polls of likely voting Democrats, and we might pick the one we like the best. What is, what is it... What would it mean if the one we like the best is not... not the one most likely to be able to beat Trump.

Who is the primary? That's what we're dealing with. Wait, but how do we define who's most likely to beat Trump and where we're going on? We don't know that. We never know what the dog wants until you put it on the floor. But the point here is that... What does that even mean? I have a serious answer to this question.

My friends used to play this game called What Will Minnie Eat First? No, at a party, they would take four bits of food from the different food and they'd put it on the plate And everyone would bet on what the dog would eat first. And I never won that bet. You'd think the hot dog, he's going to go for that. No, we ate the cracker first. And then I'd bet on the cracker, and the next time he would eat the fucking ham first.

Never played a game up in the hood. You don't know what the voters want until that's how we got Trump. No one thought he could win. But that is the reason that we got Trump is the same reason that we have this problem with the Democrats, which is that the primary system used to be the closed door, back room, smoke-filled room, where guys tried to pick the one who was

going to win. Who would beat the opponent, yes. Now it's a very different system, and the passionate, passionate people and the base are the ones who choose who's going to be their candidate. So Joe Biden has a little Ukraine problem, too. You know,

he didn't answer that question too well, I thought, in the debate. He didn't own it. His son was getting 50 grand a month to do nothing in a field he knew nothing about. It's very swampy. My question is this. Al Franken had to go away for the Democrats because they said, well, we have to be like Caesar's wife on the Me Too issue. We can't have any tainting on that so that the Republicans can't say, oh, you guys are bad on that too.

Doesn't the same apply to Ukraine and Joe Biden? I think there are different issues, but I get your point. And I think liberals do a disservice if they just excuse what Joe Biden and Hunter Biden were up to. I don't think it rises to the level of what Trump's doing. No, it's not, of course. But neither did Al Franken. Of course. Something clearly, there was a clear issue where Hunter Biden got a job primarily almost exclusively because of his father's time and politics. There's no all-nought. There's no all-nought.

Exclusively. And if you think that that's fine, well, it's not. I mean, there's something unseemly about it and it's access. It's somewhat paid for play. And I think that liberals, again, are not doing a real service to themselves if they just try to sweep this under the room. Who is Kennedy's Attorney General? was Robert. Yeah, okay. Okay. Robert was at least, he was at least qualified

to be a turn to. Thank you so much for saying that. That's not your team and you're right. Yeah. He was qualified. It's not like a vunker. It's not like Bobby Kennedy was a purse designer.

But isn't this, but isn't this a problem? But isn't this a problem? A growing problem that we have that isn't just Hunter Biden. Why is, you know, why is Chelsea Clinton you know, up at the front,

why are any of these dynasties... Tell your fucking kids to get a real job. All right. Thank you, panel. I got to go to New Rules, everybody. New Rules. New Rule, to the woman who got vomit in her hair on a Spirit Airlines flight and had to wash her hair

in an airplane bathroom. What did you expect? You're flying spirit from Chicago to Baltimore. You're lucky you're alive. I'm just saying, when you book a flight that costs $89, you're subconsciously accepting the fact that you may get a little vomit in your hair.

You just happen to get a lot. New rule of Kim Jong-un wants to be taken seriously on the world stage. He's got to delegate the job of corn inspector to someone else. Here he is inspecting the corn. Here he is pleased with the quality. Here he is realizing they keep showing him the same corn year after year. Yes, Kim, that's the bad news.

That's all the corn there is in North Korea. The good news is, because of all these photo ops of you with corn, you've moved up to third in the Iowa caucus. Your old dispensaries need to stop acting like the highs from different marijuana are so radically different. This one's good for being social. This one's a mellow high. You know, they don't do that at a liquor store.

Hi. What sort of drugs are you? are you looking for today? I recommend this one for calling old girlfriends, and the Kianti is nice for sobbing about your father. Of course, if you're looking

to call your mother-in-law a whore, I'd stick with brown liquor. Same goes for if you're looking to let the gay guy in your building blow you. And for anything like falling asleep on the kitchen floor or

or putting a pizza in the oven, and forgetting about it, you have to try our malt liquor. Now, if this is a really special night and you're thinking of walking up to the Taco Bell drive-thru window, I would recommend a sweet wine, and of course, vodka is always great

for getting a tattoo of a rocket that looks like a dick. New Rule, now that we have Doritos with names like Flaming Hot, Blaze, and Jacked, how about a version for those of us with the more refined culinary palette. I want to see something like Doritos subtly seasoned.

Or Doritos with a flavor. Or Doritos light and unprepossessing. Oh, hell, let's just call it what it is. Doritos Caucasian. New Role, the people who were shocked to see this Australian man jogging a popular trail in a pink thong and work boots must give the guy credit.

That's what we call an old school creed. He could easily be at home on the computer, masturbating on chat roulette, sending dickpicks, but he chose to put on his boots, go outside, and make people uncomfortable the old-fashioned way. And finally, new rule,

it's time somebody called out Donald Trump for something he's doing that I don't think anyone has caught on to yet. He's a big, When he announced he was running the first time, he said, I don't need anybody's money. I'm using my own money. I'm not using donors.

I don't care. I'm really rich. But he's not really rich. And he's used plenty of other people's money. 90% of his 2016 campaign was funded by other people's money. His whole reason for being there is a lie. This notion of, I can't be bought because I have so much money. I don't care about money anymore.

No, the exact opposite is true. The man is constantly for sale. That wasn't toilet paper on his shoe, it's a price tag. He grubs for every penny. He wasn't above cheating his charity. Trump University was a pyramid scheme. He just put a G7 meeting in one of his golf clubs. There is not a dollar.

He has ever left on the table since he took office. He's worried about Ukrainian corruption. The only time corruption bothers Donald Trump is when he's not in on it. If your country pays in cash, Saudi Arabia pays cash. You can literally get away with murder. You know, even I have a little money history with this guy. Remember, Mr. President, 2013, when you sued me?

Because I publicly offered you $5 million if you could prove you were not. not the son of an orangutic. He remembered this. It was a joke. But when you heard $5 million, like a bum who chases a dollar on the sidewalk tied to a string, you could not resist chasing

it into court. Well, you lost that one. But tonight... One of a second. Tonight, I want to give you another chance to get some money. out of me. Now, you and I have been going back and forth on whether

you will leave office if you lose the election. I mean, you have one guy on television. I'm telling you, he's not leaving. He's going to win, and then he's not leaving. So in 2024, he won't leave. I'm telling you, this is a serious

person. Thank you. Now, serious person to serious person. I will bet you a million right now that if you lose the 2020 election, I'm right and you won't leave. What am I saying? This is Donald Trump we're talking about.

Like he'd ever pony up, even if he lost a bet. That would involve two things he's never done. Admit defeat and pay a bill. Okay, so, okay, so forget the bet. I got a better idea. How about this? Just take my check for $1 million, my check for a million,

and I bet I could get another, thousand people just from here to the beach, including Malibu, of course, who would pay that much to see you resign. To those out there who are saying, my God, Bill, are you suggesting we pay this man to go away? Yes, that's exactly what I'm suggesting. In fact, I'm insisting.

Celebrities do nothing but waste their money on stupid crazy shit. shit, like castles and jewel-en-crested crucifixes and shark tanks and private islands. Here's something they could spend on and know it was doing some good. Let's speak to Donald Trump in the only language he has ever really understood. My whole life has been money. I want money. I want money. Greedy. I was greedy. Greedy. I want more money. More money. It's not like he was hiding it. It goes back to his childhood. From the moment his father

created his first teenage shell company money, money, money makes Donnie a winner Daddy loves good boy who gets money So, so Mr. President, it's really very simple.

You love money, we hate you. The money. You could finally be the billionaire you always pretended you were. Yes, I said billionaire because the kind of money I could get from just off the top of my head. Oprah, Cher, Madonna, Gaga,

Bono, Jay-Z, Beyonce, Pink, Rihanna, Usher, Farrell, Eminem. And that's just the ones with one name. Singers, actors, athletes, everyone fucking hate you. Here's a list of every single person in show business. This is a list of every single person in show business with the names of those who do not hate you crossed out.

Finally, let us not forget the millions and millions of not so rich and famous people who despise you to. Americans of modest means who would happily chip in five, ten, twenty bucks, or pawn their wedding rings, whatever it took. And that's why tonight I am formally announcing the formation of my national crowdfunding platform. for him to bribe President Trump to leave.

I mean, sir, win. And we call it Prickstarter. That's our show. I'll be at the Blaisdell and Honolulu New Year's Eve and at the Paranopt in Seattle, January 25th. I want to thank Sam Stein, Thomas Chatterson, Williams, Daniel Pletka, Field of Grass Tyson, and Susan Ray. Stay tuned for overtime on YouTube. Thank you. at Bill Maher every Friday night at 10,

or watch them anytime on HBO On Demand. For more information, log on to HBO.com.