Real Time with Bill Maher - Ep. #522: Rachel Bitecofer, Brian Cox

Episode Date: March 7, 2020

Bill’s guests are Rachel Bitecofer, Brian Cox, Ross Douthat, Caitlin Flanagan, and Anthony Scaramucci. (Originally aired 3/6/20) 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. I love you too. Due to the virus, I will not be running through the audience high-fiving. I'm kidding, I never did that pandering bullshit ever.

But I do appreciate you being here for crying out loud. I mean, there's a lot of people there's people all over this country who are canceling, going to shows. I don't know what be like, to have to do a show if nobody was here. It'd be so awkward to have to pump in the sound of liberals pretending to be outraged at me.

But just so you know, California has officially declared a state of emergency about the coronavirus, but Disneyland is still open. Really? So, pack yourself in with strangers from all over the world and write a log.

A ride literally called Splash Mountain. But don't touch your face. This explains their new slogan, Disneyland. It will leave you breathless. But I'd say that, for me, that's nothing. Nothing. A little pop before the show.

The big lesson for me is that being asked not to touch your face, really makes you want to touch your face of you. Notice that? I mean, Jesus fucking Christ, could they get off this face? Think every day, don't touch, don't touch this, don't touch your face. It's like my face, me-toed my hand. They got me crazy. Yesterday I made a sandwich

with my elbows. Jesus. Get a grip, people. The experts this week said, yeah, the way not to touch your face, they said, keep your hands busy. This is just what teenage boys need to hear, is it? What are you doing in there?

I'm warding off the coronavirus. Also, you know, it's just panic. Whenever there's a threat, any kind, I understand this, toilet paper. Right? First thing to sell out because people are scared, shitless. It's terrible.

No, you can't even get it in stores now. There's even a new song about it by the, that band panic at the Costco? But don't worry about it because Donald Trump, MD, Trump University School of Medicine, is on the case. This man is a fountain of misinformation. This week he said it's okay for people infected

with the virus to go to work, which raises the question, can you get it from pulling stuff out of your ass? Is that a way you get the virus? because, oh, oh, I'm like, that's my face. And also, Trump said he had a hunch. He said he had a hunch that the virus wasn't as bad as the World Health Organization says.

So on the one side, you have the World Health Organization. On the other side, you have a guy who stared at an eclipse. But I tell you, politics? Whoa. Right? The difference a week makes? We were here. We were here... One week ago. There was seven people in the Democratic primary.

Now it is a two-man race between Bernie Sanders, a Democratic Socialist, and Joe Biden, the guy from the naked gun movies. So... Boy, don't tell Biden that he's fallen and he can't get up, because... This guy keeps coming at you. I mean, you know,

You know that he's been running for president since 1988? I'm serious. 1988. 1984? Air supply was a band. Now it's what Joe needs when he gets to the top of the stairs. Okay, all right. But the big story, Bernie's young voters did not show up.

The smell of victory was Old Spice, not Axe Body Spray. Yeah. Kids, I guess kids are kids. you know, after the polls closed on Tuesday, trending on Twitter, who's the hashtag, oh, that was today. So there's talk. I think this is crazy.

I don't think it's going to happen. There is talk that Bernie and Biden might team up for a 156-year-old ticket. They already have the slogan. Four more months. All right, we've got a great show. Anthony Scaramucci, Ross Bethad, and Caitlin Flanagan are here,

and later we will be speaking with the incredibly talented Ryan Cox. But first up, she's an analyst and a senior fellow at the Niskanen Center in Washington, AC, here tonight as our election specialist. Please welcome Rachel Biddecoffer. Rachel? Okay. Okay. Bitterkofer. I married that monstrosity, so you'll have to forgive me. Okay. I'm just saying in the middle of a pandemic. I know. It's a great joke, though, right? It's a weird name to have in a pandemic. Bidacoffer. Yeah. Bidacoffer.

Okay, we'll go past that. But you are... This is not wearing the mask, right? No mask. You are sort of the it girl for prognosticators. I think that's amazing because you got 2018 in a way that

nobody else did. What did you get right that everybody else kind of got wrong? Well, I mean, thank you. And actually, what I got right was understanding that this time period we're living in with hyper-polarization and all the extreme partisanship that we have has really changed electoral behavior. And what we were, I was expecting to see as a massive backlash to Donald Trump getting elected. Luckily for me, I had 2017 in Virginia to kind of

pilot my theory watching. And in that election, everyone thought it was going to be this competitive race between the Democrat and the Republican. And I was telling the whole state, oh, it's going to be this blowout. You're going to see this demographic muscle for the first time really flex in northern Virginia. It's going to transform the state, and that's exactly what happens. So in 2018, I was lucky I had that experience to build off of. So it's because it's just Trump hate. Oh, yes. It's absolutely Trump hate. That's no other issue. It's not, it's true.

It's not. It's not. So if I had James Carvel sitting here, I would grab him by the shoulders and say, it's Trump stupid, right? It's not the economy. Right. You know, basically what we look at the health care. They said that was the big issue. Right. We think about why Democrats were getting their asses kicked in 2010 and 2014 is because they were fat and happy in the White House. The Democratic Party is just god-awful at messaging, right?

The Republican Party tells their voters, you must vote because the fate of the world hangs on you voting. And Democrats like to send their voters like these big, thick policy briefs. They're like 20 pages long. So nobody gives a shit about it, right? Right. And so I understood that, like, taking away that. that comfort was going to be a major change in the electorate.

Right. I mean, it is amazing to me the way Trump can tell you what he's going to do. I saw him this week on Fox. And he will, show the clip. Brett Bear asked him, like, would you rather face Bernie or bite? Right. Here's what he said. So mentally, I'm all set for Bernie.

Communists, I had everything down. He's acting. I was all set. I mean, who gives it away like that? Right. You know, he's like the relief pitcher. He's like, I'm going to throw this 100 mile an hour fastball. Yeah, yeah.

You know it's coming. Yes. I know I'm throwing. And you still can't hit it. He's saying, I'm going to call him a communist. Oh, no. I know. He, like, reads the lines.

I mean, that said, I, like, wake up every day and I'm like, okay, how can I make the Democratic Party not walk into a obvious trap? It's like this rat trap sitting there with cheese. And I have to convince them every day, hey, you know, a major component of the GOP playbook for 2020 is going. is going to be to capitalize on whatever side loses, the moderates or the progressives, and then target them with propaganda to get them to either vote third party or to not show up and vote, right?

And so now, of course, we know that's probably going to be the progressives that are targeted, but you're right. He's very obvious about what the strategy is going to be. But you think it doesn't merely matter whether it's Bernie or Biden. You say it's all about Trump and it's all about who leaves the House, basically.

Yes, yeah. getting your, it's not about who's the candidates, who's voting, but really appealing to the base, which make, that's Trump's strategy. Right, and it's not so much the base as the coalition, right? So when people hear base, I think they think about progressive voters. And when I'm talking about, I'm talking about Latinos and African Americans, women, college-educated women, young people. So that wider coalition that may be Democrats, but they may be left-leaning independence,

getting them to show up and to vote, which is really critical because ultimately in the polarized era, if a competitive election's playing out, what's going to determine the party that wins it is the partisan composition of the electorate on election day. And who's worse? I read somewhere that 15% of Republicans, but 20% of Democrats, believe that the country would be better off

if great numbers of the other party just died. Yeah. This is actually some fantastic research by two political science colleagues. of mine, Lillianna Mason and Nathan Calmo, I really suggest people look at it, and it talks about negative partisanship. Mine is looking at

voting behavior in negative partisanship. They are looking at the willingness for people to actually inflict bodily harm on each other based on partisanship. It is disturbing. It's very, it's disturbing also that more Democrats felt that way than Republicans. I thought we

were the next people. Well, you know why? Ultimately, right now we're in this time period where Democrats are particularly angsty. So if we had asked, I am certain if they had done that survey experiment during Obama, it may have been an different outcome. Yeah, then they would want us to die. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's, but no, but it's very comforting. It's like, you know, we're having these conversations on Morning Joe and on Chuck Todd's show, and it's like, like, Trump's election never happened. Like, it was some normal thing that America would elect somebody like Donald Trump. Trump broke every

metric of electability of what a president should be able to meet in terms of holding and winning that office. And then like the, I think there was a time period where people recognized that was weird and then they just moved on and decided to normalize it, right? But clearly, we are not in a normal time period because we see our institutions failing. We see the Trump presidency and the way it's stretching out institutional norms and pervading the law enforcement agencies. But it kind of played out the way it has. in the past. I mean, the Democratic side this year reminded me of, you remember 2012 on the Republican side when it was, they wound up with Mitt Romney. They did. But they shopped around. Yes, they did.

Remember that? Herman Kane. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Michelle Bachman was leading, and Gingrich and Rick Perry. Everybody got a turn. I feel like that, like, it was that way with Joe Biden. There was really some big differences, though. I mean, number one, there really wasn't ever, aside from Bernie and Biden, a clear time period. Elizabeth Warren eclipsed Sanders in the Invisible Primary, which was something I had anticipated happening. But free tip, if you ever run for office, no $23 trillion detailed plans, okay?

Just don't do that, because that's a really bad idea. Biden was the one at the beginning. Right, right, right. And then he went down and other people went up. That's actually fairly typical for one of these party primaries. but what we saw, I mean, I just cannot possibly illustrate enough. In 2016, we saw a social movement emerge within a party, the never-Trump movement. That is not normal, right?

The never-Trump movement that I work with, those are all the founders of intellectual conservatism, and they have been excised from the Republican Party. They are no longer in their own party that they established, right? And they made a critical mistake, though, because they could not get everybody together and winnow down before Super Tuesday. Now, with the Democrats, the math was a fact. If they waited till after Super Tuesday, Bernie Sanders probably would have had what he needed in terms of delegates to either force a plurality to the convention or to win it outright.

So getting together in a coordinated way, doing that winnowing on Monday night, and then getting that Clyburn endorsement and all that momentum, that was a level of coordination that the usually incompetent Democratic Party really is shocked me to see. And I think that they... Well, let's just be happy to hand, right? Good job. I mean, they did it, right? So I assume your prediction is the Democrat will win the election?

Yeah, so my forecast since July has said... He's not leaving still. You know that, though. Well, yeah, we can talk about that next show. Next time. Okay. Yeah, I had said that only Bernie Sanders would be a risk to my model. And the reason is because, you know, going from, I'm running as a fiscal conservative Democrat, which is a bad way to run, it's a weakness run, doesn't mean you should rip off all your clothes, coat your body and glitter, and go naked, you know, skinny dipping with a socialist.

Like, there's great area in between, right? And, you know, I think what would have happened under a Sanders nomination is that the Republicans would have been able to trick Democrats, into running against their own party nominee. Sure. And then that upsets my model because the model is a boat that's rowing in one direction. All right.

Thank you so much. We've got this shit down. Thanks for having me. Hey, bow. Thank you, Rachel. Let's meet our panel. Okay. Hello, everybody.

Okay, here's our panel. We're not going to touch each other. He's the former White House Communications Director under President Trump and the founder of Skybridge Capital. one of us, Anthony's Karamucci is over here. Mooch! That's Mooch, not a boo.

He's a New York Times column. As an author of The Decadent Society, How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success, Ross. Doubted it. Ross, how you doing? And she's a staff writer for The Atlantic, and author of Girl and Caitlin Flanagan back with us. How you doing?

Okay, so don't forget to send us your questions for nights over time, so we can answer them after the show on YouTube. So Friday, when we're on live, it is news dump time. So about an hour before we came on, found out Trump has dumped Mulvaney. And sent him to Ireland. And sent him down. He's going to be the special envoy to Ireland. That's like shit-canning him to beyond. And I'm a Flanagan. I mean, we have an ambassador. It's like, what is he going to do? But he was like the all-purpose jackknife. It wasn't he the Swiss Army knife guy? Didn't he do all these jobs? So, what? Why now? What happened now? You've been shit-can by the Trump administration. Tony, you must have some insight into what happened here.

Publicly thank General Kelly for helping my career. Right. Now, listen, I would say that that was a long time coming. I think that his biggest mistake was the press conference where he said, we did this, get used to it, get over it, that sort of thing.

But the secondary mistake really is that you know, he is in that jigsaw, of obstruction of justice. And so, you know, it could be 2021 where people are looking back at people like William Barr and Mick Melvaney and saying, okay, what were those guys exactly doing

during that period of time in the White House? So it was a lot of different reasons to get rid of him. But by then he'll be in Ireland. No one. No one will find it. You can extradite no one from Ireland. He'll be the only survivor. You know, because the president operates, once he hits you with the bus, it's like,

he barely even knew you. How did he get into the administration? So he wouldn't even remember Melvaney's name. in about two weeks. So, speaking of getting shit-canned, a friend of mine lost his job this week, Chris Matthews, wanted to give him a shout-out because I will miss him, and a lot of other people, too.

And, you know, I thought we would talk about it because it's about, you know, MSNBC used to run this thing. This is who we are. Well, I didn't like who you were this week. And I don't think a lot of people who work there like this either, and I think this cancel culture is a cancer on progressivism. liberals always have to fight a two-front war. Republicans only have to fight the Democrats.

Democrats have to fight the Republicans and each other. Their own lunatic. I just want to go through some of the horrible things that Chris Matthews did. First, he made an analogy. I'm going to read it fast because I don't even understand what the insult was. He was talking about Bernie Sanders' lead in Nevada.

I was reading last night about the fall of France in the summer of 1940, and the general calls up Churchill and says it's over, and Churchill says, how can it be? You've got the greatest army in Europe. How can it be over? obviously he's a Nazi but he apologized for that

so I hope the victim's got some closure first mistake then he mistook Jamie Harrison who we've had on the show for Senator Tim Scott they're both African Americans he thought one was the other so plainly

he's a Klansman then he was oh this is terrible he was interviewing Elizabeth Warren about what Mike Bloomberg said to a woman about you know, maybe you should, he said it was a joke or maybe he didn't say it about

you should kill it, you know. And Chris says to Elizabeth Warren, you believe that the former mayor of New York said that to a pregnant employee, but you believe he's that kind of person, you believe he's lying. I just want to make sure you're clear about this. Why would he lie? Just to protect himself?

Again, they said he was mean to her. First of all, I got fired for doing what I do on a show called politically incorrect. This show was called Hardball. This sounds like

every question Chris has asked. And I hate it being interviewed by Chris, because he would ask you a question, you'd start to answer, and then he'd keep talking. Because he had so many thoughts. I'd like some more people on TV with thoughts. A lot of people couldn't interrupt themselves because they don't have a thought that the producer isn't putting

in their ear. And then his final thing was, yes, he said some things that are kind of creepy to women. You know, I just, it's, you know, guys are married for a million years. They want to flirt for two seconds. You know, he, he said to somebody, Laura Bassett four years ago, she's in makeup. He said, why haven't I fallen in love with you yet? Yes, it is creepy. But she said, I was afraid to name him at the time for fear of retaliation.

I'm not afraid anymore. Thank you, Rosa Parks. I mean, Jesus fucking Christ. I guess my question is, do you understand why Democrats lose? Yes. Because we empower all this lunacy, and it's a very serious thing that's gone on here, because if every woman, if we are now empowered to take a flamethrower to every mosquito, then we've become the thing we hate.

Yes. What a great way to put it. And, you know, it's not funny when a man loses his job, And it's not funny when a man loses his career. And, I mean, you're saying it's creepy. How fragile can one woman be? She's a freelancer at home. Gets a big invitation to go on TV.

He's very excited. She goes over 30 minutes later. Someone tells her she's beautiful. She freaks out. She, like, loses all her vocabulary on air. She decompensates. And they still have her back on because she probably looks good on camera.

It's a visual medium. Right. And then, again, she gets a compliment. I mean, I know it's generational. Things have changed. I'm of the generation. Is she a compliment victim or a compliment survivor? I feel like there's a generational issue with the World War II thing, though, too, right?

Where if you know, and I'm going to stereotype in a different way here, but if you know any American man over the age of 60, you know that if they're going to make an analogy, it's going to have something to do with World War II, the Maginot line, Spatlingrad, Hitler. And if we set a rule that no man can make, you know,

World War II analogies, it's going to be canceled culture times a thousand. You're right. It's all right. The biggest surprise of me was the way Mayor Bloomberg fell into the trap of the tribal politics. When the Senator Warren turned to him and asked him about the NDAs,

if he had just looked at her and said, okay, listen, we're splitting ourselves as Democrats, let's unite. Those women, please don't turn them into infants. they did sign those agreements. Of course, I could look into them, and I will, but we'd made a mistake and we paid them, and they were adults signing those agreements. I think he would have had a much better debate,

and it ended up differently. And Chris did apologize for all of this, and he said, you know, the way I talk to women, it's not right now, and it wasn't right then, which is gracious of him. But I find it's such a cheap way to look enlightened that people do nowadays. Like, I'm not doing this thing that you do.

did then. Yeah, but if you were around then, you would have. So Scott Pelly on 60 Minutes berating Bloomberg about his blowjob joke. Really, Scott Pelly? Like in 1980, you never made a blowjob joke? Probably did. But it was about a machine, really. He said the machine could give the blowjob, it wasn't about a person.

So, okay. What's the machine just asking? No, he said that my Bloomberg terminal can do everything for, including giving you a blowjob joke. Yes. It's... I don't know. That machine would have been a lot more money in my office. Okay. Speaking of overreactions, I gotta talk about this virus.

I didn't even want to talk. I'm over this virus. I haven't had it. What I'm saying is I'm sick. I don't mean that either. I'm sick of the virus, but not from the virus. At this point, I just fucking want to get it. It's not to talk about it.

We're worried about touching my face anymore. Just go on a cruise. Go on a cruise. Two weeks, you'll get it, it'll be over, and, you know, and six months later you'll be allowed back home. The president won't let him off the cruise. They were, eventually. It's like herpes in the 80s, where it was just like...

Right. Right. No, tell me more. No, let's just, we'll move on. But, I mean, the way they talk about it on the news, and I quoted Jimmy Brezlin last week, who said the main point of television is to get you to watch more television. They make it sound like if you're within six feet of anyone who has

just get your affairs in order. But is it really... I really don't know because I have your attitude, but you say it is bad. It's bad. I mean, here's what's bad. What's bad is the response, right? So basically, we have examples around the world. You know, you look at South Korea and Hong Kong, and you can see that with a good response,

you get it under control. But the American response, and it's partially Trump, but it's up and down the bureaucracy. It's state and federal. It's the CDC, not getting the test going. South Korea is testing tens of thousands of people and we don't even know how many people we've tested. We're like, well, you know. But I'm just talking about the disease itself. Now, it could be something really, really virulent.

But as I said last week at the top of the show with our expert, the response is to have a good immune system. And it's really the only response. Well, we aren't all, you know, born with it like you, Bill. Well, I mean... Actually, almost all of us are born with it. And I'm not born with anything magical that anybody else doesn't have.

I've had many bad things. I just never missed a show. I just want to read, okay, the regular flu, just the normal flu, has killed 517 people just in California this season. Now, if that was on TV every day, I assume we'd be freaking out if there was a ticker at the bottom of this green.

14 people in the whole United States. Last year's flu killed 61,000 people. People die. That's what happens in life. I'm sorry. And I mean, I hate it when Trump talks like the guy at the end of the bar, which is what he does. So when he said, I have a hunch. It's not, it's like, oh, please, do you have to speak like this? But you know what? I know what he means, because Y2K was going to end the world. And the fires in Kuwait were going to end the world. And the BP oil spill was going to end the world. And every other fucking flu we've ever had. And they didn't.

But I was told I had to keep global warming in the number one slot. Okay, global warming, global warming. and then Gary to Trump, get rid of Trump, get rid of Trump, I can't be a TV. And now I'm supposed to put this brand new one here. Right. Well, the new one is going back to freaking out about Trump being a dictator, really, because that's... How many voted, by the way, Tuesday? Okay, well, you know, I just want to say

there are a lot of things on the ballot. California pioneered this idea of ballot propositions. We own that. You know, we will vote on anything. We voted on whether porn starts had to wear condoms. And lost the porn business. And yes, you're right. So now, every state does this,

we got a hold of some of the ones that were on the ballot Tuesday. Would you like to hear something? People are going nuts with this. Like, here in California, we had Prop 85, which says if a drunk person gets into your car because they think you're an Uber, you get to keep them. That was on the ballot. Alabama passed Prop 22,

which said, jerky, can no longer be manufactured in the same facilities that make belts. Wow. That was on the ballot. Colorado passed Prop 420, which makes it illegal to keep telling everyone how high you are when you're the bus driver. Utah passed Prop 12, creating Mitt Romney Day, which honors acts of courage that don't make any difference. Here in California, he had Prop 56, which requires a permit to stand outside of Starbucks with a snake. In the way, I can't get through that one. Alabama passed Measure B, which makes it illegal to.

to marry your second cousin a second time. That's terrible. Alabama pass Prop 2, which requires you to wear shoes when you go shit-kicking. I think I have the flu. I'm sorry, I mean. California Pass Prop 61 mandates a seven-day waiting period

between movies about creepy dolls. Arkansas pass measure S, which makes bestiality illegal, except in cases where the wife's away or the internet is done. And California, Prop 8, this is a good one, requires landlords to replace the phrase bachelor apartment with the more gender-neutral,

overpriced shithole. I've been a fan of my next guest for a long time. He is a Golden Globe-winning actor who currently stars in HBO's succession. Please welcome, Brian Cox. Okay, all right. It was cold. So great to meet you.

It's lovely to meet you. I didn't meet you many, many years ago. You probably don't remember. I don't. I was stoned. I was so stoned. You were, actually. I remember I could feel the waft coming across me. Yeah. It was, I did a thing called Nuremberg, and I won an Emmy, and you sat behind me.

I was just going to... It's so funny. I was going to say to you, I first became aware of you from when you played Goring. Yeah, that's right, yeah, yeah. And that had to be like 25 years ago. Yeah, it was a long time ago. Something like that. And I swear to God, I said, that is a riveting actor. And when you got this part on Succession, and look, I'm a fan of Netflix.

I've said this before. I know those guys, and I certainly may need them someday. So I don't ever want to piss them off. No, but I love Netflix. But Netflix has a thousand shows. Oh, yeah, I want to see that. HBO always has one show where, like, I am so dying to see that one. And your show is that show.

Sorry for touching you with you. No, no, you can touch me as much as you like to touch it. I agree with you about this whole thing. Yeah. It's crazy. But... Excuse me. Just because I don't want to touch my face.

It's making me crazy. You can't touch anything. I mean, it's... And, you know, I know they've said the character in succession is Murdoch, but it seems more Trump to me, because... Well, I think he's more intelligent than Trump.

Way more intelligent. Way more intelligent than Trump. But what they have in common is that you hate him for what he does, but there is something that people like about balls. The sheer balls on, it must be fun to play

a guy, first of all, to be a leading man at your age. At my age. But especially one. I'm a sex symbol as well. Really? You're getting late on that show. You know, you have an affairs. I was doing a thing presenting for the new season and my wife was sitting next to somebody out in the audience

and I came on and this woman who was sitting next to my wife, she said well that Brian Cox is so hot. There you go. And then my wife said, thank you. I agree. I knew that she was so embarrassed. Oh, I'm so sorry.

It's a great role. You know, you have to wait nearly 60 years before you get a role like that. And it's a fantastic role. But again, I've got to say HBO, like you think about James Gandalfini in Sopranos or Steve Bouchemy in Boardwalk Empire. Nobody else would cast these people. But they're riveting and they are sexy. That's amazing. So, okay.

So you, I read, left home at 11? No, no, that's exaggeration. I left home at just, I was on the cusp of my 15th birthday. I was on 14. Still ridiculous. Yeah, yeah. I mean, in America, I mean, we don't let them, like, go to school. Well, I never left home.

I just went to work. That was all, you know. I got very bad information. No, no, no. I didn't know. Well, actually, my home left me because of family circumstances, so I was pretty on my own. And that's the Scottish way?

It's the way of poverty. Actually, that's what it's about. And that made you a socialist? Of course. Yeah. Yeah, of course. I'm proud of it. You know.

Yeah, and subsequently, well, really a social democrat. And subsequently, I... Thank you. And subsequently, a supporter of my country, Scotland, which is... As a separate country. As a separate country.

Because it's been... Which is... I mean... Because it's been treated like a ship pile for long enough. So was my ancestors Ireland? Well, I'm a Mick-Mack, which is an Irish... Well, we're the same people.

We are the same people. We are. And we have all those memories in our DNA. I don't think people realize... that when the English conquered your country and my old country, they were conquering countries where people did not speak English. Wasn't that like they, I think they were

kind of a kindred spirit anyway? The Irish didn't speak English in 1850? No. And the Scots, I still can't understand it. No, no, no. Really? It's a different language. Absolutely. No, it's, I mean, you know,

it came to me because when I grew up, when I was a kid, and I used to, I live on a place, I grew up in a town called Dundee, which is my hometown. And I used to look at the River Tay, and I couldn't wait to get across it. And I did get across it. And then when I now, in those days, it was North Britain. That's what it was, because we had been through two wars so that we'd never,

and the Scots had been like cannon fodder, and particularly in the First World War. And the Second World War, it was pretty even, Stephen, all round. But we had not found ourselves And our country had been taken away from us At an earlier time When we lost our parliament And then we had the famous collardin and all of that But our independence had gone

And we've always been Treated very feudally And that still goes on You have a great accent Because there's a hint of it But not enough to go What the fuck is he talking about? Thank you

But yeah So let me ask you about this. You must have went through Brexit. Horrible. Okay. But I feel like Brexit was a harbinger of what was going to happen in this country.

And we didn't pay attention because it was soon after that Donald Trump got elected. And it was, you know, and you have Boris Johnson, who looks like Donald Trump. We have... And he's a liar. Yeah, very much.

You know, I mean, the world is ruled by liars. Well, it always... Netanyahu and Israel, liar. Putin, Russia, liar. Okay, politicians are generally liars. It's to a degree. Well, occasionally you get a good one. You know, occasionally you do come along.

A good liar or a good politician? Both. Okay. But what I'm asking you is, the Labor Party just lost a tremendous election. They ran a guy named Jeremy Corb. When he looks show the picture, he looks just like Bernie Sanders. And he is a 70-something socialist.

And they thought, you know what? The working class is going to love this guy. He was promising the same thing as Bernie Sanders is promising. Big social programs, taxes on the rich to pay for it, and the working class saw it as pie in the sky and said, no thanks. You lost the worst defeat since 1935. It's terrible, but then that's also partly to do

with the whole little Englander mentality. And also a mentality which... Oh, by the way, I better take these bloody glasses off. Sorry, about that. I mean, what happened? It's an interesting thing. I mean, his policies were interesting policies, but he has the charisma of a failed geography teacher.

Which one are we talking about? Both. All right. Well, actually, Trump wouldn't understand anything about geography, but I'm talking about Corbyn. But what I think was really interesting is his policies weren't bad. There were good policies.

But the problem was he couldn't sell them. And the problem was that we are so under that... It's so interesting. You see, what happened? You know, areas which were totally socialist for such a long, long time. Areas, by the way, by the way, in which in the last 10 years due to austerity, particularly in that area from the Tories, the death rate of women increased. It increased.

Women were dying at a much earlier age, and they had... done previously. And that's because of conservative austerity. And that is what, and it was crazy to me that they didn't bite on the bullet. They didn't say, oh, let's go with it. Let's go with it. Because the geography teacher

couldn't sell it. Let me bring this back to our panel and our candidate who was similar, which is Bernie Sanders. And I noticed Lawrence O'Donnell keeps pointing out that Bernie Sanders actually has lost half his support from 2016.

he was at like 50%. Now, there were more people in the race, or there were more choices. But still, people went to someone else. Does this guy... You mean on Tuesday? In general. In general. As through this whole campaign.

Well, it's partially the campaign he ran, though. I mean, Sanders... Well, so like Trump, right? Sanders had 25 or 30% of the Democratic Party that, you know, just wasn't happy with the state of the country, wanted to rebel. And there was a sales pitch then that he needed to make to the rest of the party that basically said, you can vote for me even if you're not a revolutionary.

My core voters want the revolution, but it's safe to vote for me otherwise. And there was a window after he won Nevada where he could have come out and given a version of that speech, and instead he got bogged down relitigating the Castro regime. And then it turned, you know, because the Democrats are still a real political party. But it really didn't move that much. There were other people in the moderate lane who crows. outed it and it looked more skewed than it was, but he always has this like 25%. So Bernie...

He's got that sort of almost sacred language of when the Democratic Party really was the party of the working man and woman. Sure. He's talking about the union and he's talking about the working person and he's talking about the power of the strike and the power of the boycott. And this is really powerful language that I don't know if our current landscape, if that would work or not. But in America, the word socialist, even if it's democratic socialist, that's so opposed to who we are and who we ever were.

But also, can I interrupt you. Yes, please. But I just think that you Americans, you Americans, I'm sorry, I'm also a dual citizen. So I told them all myself. You really don't understand the word socialist. Well, that's true. You really do not. You just simply do not understand.

You see it as a sort of, you know, it's like the Witches of Salem. Well, but that's generational. Yeah, but it's not generational. It's gone on for generations after generation. I mean, in fairness, Sanders is proposing, Sanders would say, I just want to be like Denmark. But if he actually added up the cost of everything he was proposing, it was more socialist than Denmark. And the President and the President said to come to the United States,

the Prime Minister, rather, and say we're not a socialist country. I think Brian is on to something that the Democrats really better pay attention. to the Bernie Sanders rallies are identical to the Trump rallies. And when I was on the Trump campaign, you could see the economic desperation of those people. And I went to three or four Bernie Sanders campaigns and the same thing. So the message for Joe Biden, if you win the nomination, you have to go to the area that Mr. Cox is describing, you know, metaphorically here in the United States that resemble Scotland or those areas that you're describing. Because if you go to those areas, somebody like Joe Biden can express himself in a certain way

to capture the imagination of those people, and I bet you he can move blue-collar Trump supporters over. Time and again, it's an area which is both... Thank you. Time and again, it's an area which is both exploited and ignored, hand in hand. And you see this. This is why the zeitgeist of what happened with Brexit

and what happened here. It's the same thing. It's the same thing. And the working man or the working woman is treated in a particular way. And they say, fuck it, I've heard it. You know, I'm going to go for Trump because Trump's, he's a businessman.

He knows what he's doing. And they say it here, fuck it, I'm going to go for Johnson. Well, Johnson's giving them a whole load of lies. And this is, this to me is what's so extraordinary about the now that we live in. Why are we, I mean, you said about liars, but there have never been so many obvious liars as they are at the moment. Yeah, they don't care anymore.

Well, they don't. But I'm also a little, I've got to say, I'm tired about people bitching when they don't get their way in a completely democratic process. Now, we wound up with two 78-year-old white guys, but they talk about it like it was taken away from you. You desperately want someone to be the bad guy here. Like, oh my God, this was done to me. It wasn't done to me. You did it to yourself. This is the Democratic Party.

This is the party of women. This is the party of minorities. they all got to vote, and this is who they picked. So what is this? And if Elizabeth Warren was lost because of sexism, so that means 70% of the Democratic Party are sexist. They think everybody in the Republican is. So how has anything happened?

Women have had all these achievements. It's just like some tiny little remnant of people? Right. We're so childish. I'm a Democrat. We're just children. It's work. Thank you.

And let me just review. Okay. there were two black candidates who could have been great. Andrew Gillum and Stacey Adrams chose not to run. Three black candidates, Harris, Booker, and DeVall Patrick, rejected by the Democrats.

It wasn't a sabotage. One Latino, Castro, a Samoan, who's still in the race, Gabbard, an Asian, Yang, four women candidates, Gillibrand, Williamson, Warren, and Clobuchar. Oh, Gillibrand. Yeah, I'm not a fan.

any of them. And a gay guy. The tribe spoke. I don't know why. Joe Biden, not my first choice either. But they're voting for stability bill. What they have to do is they've got to get some of the infusion of what you're describing. That pain, I saw

that pain. And I grew up in a blue-collar family, but I made my way, and I got a little distant from it. And I had an epiphany when I went back into the campaign into areas of the country where the factory had moved, and the people were getting two jobs. They were very local. quality jobs. And it was anger. Trump represented the avatar of their anger. He was the finger in the eye

of the establishment for those people. And you have to figure that out on the other side if you want to beat him. But I think it was Yang, who was such a visionary and we need to keep listening to him. Because he's the one who's saying, he's kind of like Al Gore 20 years ago, talking about global warming.

And people didn't want to really take that in. But Yang, no, but see. You're talking about with the robots. He's saying it's about automation. No, no, no, but it's not. So look, I love Yang, right? I love Yang. We interviewed him at the times. I think in certain ways, you know, he's got the spirit of, let's get out of the sort of two-party binary, let's have new ideas.

But fundamentally, and this is the core problem with the whole Western world right now, we're afraid of automation, but in fact, we don't have any, we aren't automating jobs. Productivity growth is low. We aren't having major technological change. Yang is talking about a world that's dynamic and changing too fast for people to keep up. But really, we're talking about. What are you talking about? Have you ever seen a picture of an Amazon warehouse? There's not a human on the floor.

What are you talking about? We're not automating jobs. There is a big shift in automation from 1970 through the early 2000s. The Amazon stuff isn't that dramatic. The main measure of technology's impact on the economy is productivity growth. And in Europe and the U.S. productivity growth is flat. Our technological change is all iPhones and nothing else. Yang is talking about a world that people think they're living in, but really,

really we live in Joe Biden's world. We live in sustainable decadence. You're missing one major thing. The Western politicians decided not to make any hard choices. They went with global coordinated monetary policy for 11 years. So they lowered the interest rates to the floor. Those men and women you're talking about are savers. They have no savings rate to speak of.

The asset prices went up for the people that are running firms like in secession, but none of the middle class workers, none of the lower middle class workers, could catch up. And that's where the thing is. And so if you had really responsible politicians, they would invest in infrastructure, invest in education, and retooling the society,

and then also speak the truth. It's a 10, 15-year project. It's not a two-minute cable news project or a two-year election cycle project. And if they did that, you could change the landscape. But they're just so easy with the monetary policy bill, and it's really crippled us in the West.

What? You're making faces. No, I don't think, that's not right either. No, monetary, no, monetary easing is, again, it's a sign that, so I half agree with it. Show is coming alive, monetary easing. Monetary, this is it. I mean, you know, people like Logan Roy, they like succession, but they're really here for monetary easing. And, no, it's true that that's a substitute, right, for real growth and real innovation, which we don't have.

but it's actually the best that we can do because we don't, you know, the U.S. economy is filled with rich companies sitting on money that don't know what to invest in. I don't agree with that with the right tax and social policy and the right leadership. Okay, we know now that one man or one woman can make a huge difference.

Look at the disaster job that Trump is making. All right. So I'm saying the right leadership. I'll do the policy. You run for president together. Well, he's got to be a vice president. All right. Thank you, panel. Time for new rules, everybody.

New rules. Okay. Neuro, someone must tell this angry newborn baby that he's not allowed to be this angry yet. I'm no doctorate, but if a baby comes out and makes this face, put him back in. He's not done. This look does not say miracle of life. It says, I'm born now. You're welcome.

Now, give me my phone. Neuro, the woman who found, the women, who found out that they were biological sisters after 17 years of friendship. must admit, they could have figured this out a lot earlier. Sure, looking nearly identical was probably a coincidence, but was no one suspicious when you kept showing up to the same family reunion every year? No rule, now that the new James Bond movie,

No Time to Die, is being pushed back seven months because of the coronavirus, they need to change the title to, November is a better time to die. New Rule, just admit it, this picture of a little doggy licking Joe Biden's ear is the most. most adorable thing you've seen all week. He got so excited he started peeing, and that really frightened the dog.

New Rule, I shouldn't have to say this, but given the extent of the virus in Iran, stop licking the shrines. Because this isn't helping, although ladies, try to find a man who loves you the way this guy loves that shrine. And, for you.

Finally, new role, Democratic candidates have to stop telling me who they will not take money from. Money from bad people? I don't care if they're bad. I just want to know if their money is good. Democrats always living in the world that ought to be, rather than the one that is. My campaign is funded by the people. Well, great, but I got some bad news for you. The people are broke. Bernie Sanders does the best among Democrats, raising 46 million in February. but in the same period, the Republicans raised 86 million.

Some of it from Americans. Because Trump will take money from anyone. Super PACs, corporate lobbyists, drug dealers, Russian mobsters, foreign dictators. He will and has stolen money from his own charities. Meanwhile, Democrats are competing to see not who can attract the most donors, but to see who can refuse the most.

Because they're pure. Pure losers. Bernie Sanders brags that he accepts no money from corporate packs, super PACs, fossil fuels, insurance, drug companies. No, serene, if you want to give Sanders money, you would better be able to prove you don't have any. Elizabeth Warren once boasted that a college student came up to her and said they had a total of $6 to their name but wanted to give Warren three. And she took it. She took half. from a person who had $6.

This isn't purity, it's vanity. It's unilateral disarmament. It's bringing a hug to a gunfight. In 2008, nobody took more money from Wall Street than Obama. And then he got elected and passed the biggest Wall Street reform in generations. He made Elizabeth Warren's plan the Consumer Financial Protection, a reality. So, when he ran for re-election,

Wall Street was pissed. And did not give him nearly as much. But he took what they gave, and then he fucked them again. This is how you played the game. Call him impure, a corporatist, a moderate. Fact is, he did more to rain in Wall Street than all the peacocking comment board socialists combined.

And I don't care which old white guy we wheel into the Oval Office. If Trump can take money from criminals and foreign governments, you can take it from Etna. And here's a little secret about economics. When you take money from bad people, it's money that they, the bad people, don't have. You see? It's not a donation at all. It's a fine. But Democrats, they don't just reject money.

They return it. Warren and Cory Booker gave back their donations from Harvey Weinstein. Why? The money didn't rape anybody. Because it's money. It doesn't know where it came from. For fuck's sake, it's money, not kale. Bernie loves to say my average donation is $18.

But that's also a donor class. Half the adults in this country live around the poverty level. They can't afford to be part of this. feel-good grassroots fundraising system, so none of it is pure. The only fair solution is complete public financing of campaigns. But until that happens,

get off your high horse about wine caves and billionaires who want to help. Purists keep saying, you can't buy an election. I say against Trump, please do. Not to sound like a trophy wife, but Mike Bloomberg's money is very attractive to me. He's promised to spend billions on whoever is the Democratic nominee.

That's a really good offer. Even if you hate him, think of it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to watch the world's ninth richest man spend a fortune to elect a socialist. Oh, but wait, Bernie says if he's the nominee, he's not taking a dime from Bloomberg. Really? Really? In an election, we have all agreed as existential. you couldn't use a billion-dollar war chest? Bloomberg's money wasn't dirty when it was changing gun politics

or getting tons of women elected or taking on climate change. He spent $40 million on 24 house races in 2018 and the Democrats won 21 of them. So maybe stop badgering the guy every five minutes because he told a blowjob joke in 1980. Be nice. He's paying or offering to for the election.

Let them. Just so I don't have to see any more of these mass text messages from candidates acting like they know me. Hey, Bill. Get the fuck out of here. You don't know me like that. I got one from Biden the other day

that just said, hey, you up? So, you say, some of the people donating to Democrats are bad. I say, here's how we know, they're good because they're giving you money to beat this guy. That's our show. I'll be on April 10th at the Dr. Phelps Center in Orlando, April 25. I want to thank Anthony Scaralajalucci, Ross, doubt that Caitlin Flanagan, Brian Cox, Rachel Bittercour. Stay tuned for overtime on YouTube. 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.